07-02-2021

SUNDAY, FEbrUArY 7, 2021
7
Military authorities in charge of Myanmar broadened a ban on social media following this
week's coup and shut Twitter and Instagram, as residents in the biggest city again banged pots
and plastic bottles to show their opposition to the army takeover.
Photo : Internet
Myanmar junta shuts Twitter
and Instagram to curb protests
YANGON : Military authorities in
charge of Myanmar broadened a ban
on social media following this week's
coup and shut Twitter and
Instagram, as residents in the
biggest city again banged pots and
plastic bottles to show their
opposition to the army takeover.
In addition to Facebook and
related apps, the military
government on Friday ordered
communications operators and
internet service providers to cut
access to Twitter and Instagram. The
statement said that some people are
trying to use both platforms to
spread fake news.
Netblocks, which tracks social
media disruptions and shutdowns,
confirmed the loss of Twitter service
starting 10 p.m. Instagram was
already subject to restrictions.
In a statement, Twitter said it is
"deeply concerned" about the order
to block internet services in
Myanmar and vowed to "advocate to
end destructive government-led
shutdowns."
"It undermines the public
conversation and the rights of people
to make their voices heard," the
Coronavirus cases
drop at US homes
for elderly and
infirm
BIRMINGHAM : Coronavirus
cases have dropped at U.S.
nursing homes and other
long-term care facilities over
the past few weeks, offering
a glimmer of hope that
health officials attribute to
the start of vaccinations, an
easing of the post-holiday
surge and better prevention,
among other reasons.
More than 153,000
residents of the country's
nursing homes and assisted
living centers have died of
COVID-19, accounting for
36% of the U.S. pandemic
death toll, according to the
COVID Tracking Project.
Many of the roughly 2
million people who live at
such facilities remain cut off
from loved ones because of
the risk of infection. The
virus still kills thousands of
them weekly.
The overall trend for longterm
care residents is
improving, though, with
fewer new cases recorded
and fewer facilities reporting
outbreaks. Coupled with
better figures for the country
overall, it's cause for
optimism even if it's too
early to declare victory.
"We definitely think
there's hope and there's light
at the end of the tunnel,"
said Marty Wright, who
heads a nursing home trade
group in West Virginia.
Nursing homes have been
a priority since vaccinations
began in mid-December,
and the federal government
says 1.5 million long-term
care residents have already
received at least an initial
dose.
spokesperson said, reports BSS.
Telenor, a Norway-based
telecommunications company
operating in Myanmar though a
subsidiary, said it had complied with
the order but also challenged "the
necessity and proportionality of the
directive."
State media are heavily censored
and Facebook in particular has
become the main source of news and
information in the country. It is also
used to organize protests.
For the fourth night Friday, the
cacophony of noise from windows
and balconies reverberated through
the commercial capital of Yangon, as
resistance to the coup and arrests of
activists and politicians gathered
steam.
Earlier Friday, nearly 300
members of Aung San Suu Kyi's
National League for Democracy
party declared themselves as the sole
legitimate representatives of the
people and asked for international
recognition as the country's
government.
They were supposed to take their
seats Monday in a new session of
Parliament following November
elections when the military
announced it was taking power for a
year.
The military accused Suu Kyi and
her party of failing to act on its
complaints that the election was
fraudulent, though the election
commission said it had no found no
evidence to support the claims.
In New York, Secretary-General
Antonio Guterres pledged Friday
that the United Nations will do
everything it can to unite the
international community and create
conditions for the military coup in
Myanmar to be reversed.
He told a news conference it is
"absolutely essential" to carry out
the Security Council's calls for a
return to democracy, respect for
the results of the November
elections, and release of all people
detained by the military, "which
means the reversal of the coup that
took place."
Guterres said Christine Schraner
Burgener, the U.N. special envoy for
Myanmar, had a first contact with
the military since the coup and
expressed the U.N.'s strong
opposition to the takeover.
ICC ruling a ‘victory
for justice’: Palestinian
prime minister
JERUSALEM : Palestinian prime minister
Mohammed Shtayyeh on Friday praised the
International Criminal Court for ruling it had
jurisdiction over the situation in the
occupied Palestinian territories.
"This decision (of the ICC) is a victory for
justice and humanity, for the values of truth,
fairness and freedom, and for the blood of
the victims and their families," Shtayyeh
said, according to the official Wafa news
agency. The move is a "message to
perpetrators" who "will not go unpunished",
Shtayyeh added, calling on the ICC to speed
up legal proceedings over the 2014 conflict in
the Gaza Strip, Palestinian prisoners and the
expansion of Israeli settlements in the
occupied West Bank.
Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda had asked the
court for its legal opinion on whether its
reach extended to areas occupied by Israel,
after announcing in December 2019 that she
wanted to start a full probe.
The ICC said in a statement it had
"decided, by majority, that the Court's
territorial jurisdiction in the Situation in
Palestine, a State party to the ICC Rome
Statute, extends to the territories occupied
by Israel since 1967, namely Gaza and the
West Bank, including East Jerusalem."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu called the ICC a "political body",
saying the court's decision undermined the
"right of democracies to defend themselves
against terrorism".
Gaza, an Israel-blockaded territory, is
controlled by the Islamist group Hamas.
Israel has fought three wars with Hamas
since the Islamists ousted loyalists of
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas from
the territory in 2007.
Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh on Friday praised the
International Criminal Court for ruling it had jurisdiction over the
situation in the occupied Palestinian territories. Photo : Internet
AP analysis:
Federal executions
likely a COVID
superspreader
WASHINGTON : As the
Trump administration was
nearing the end of an
unprecedented string of
executions, 70% of death
row inmates were sick with
COVID-19. Guards were ill.
Traveling prisons staff on
the execution team had the
virus. So did media
witnesses, who may have
unknowingly infected others
when they returned home
because they were never told
about the spreading cases.
Records obtained by The
Associated Press show
employees at the Indiana
prison complex where the 13
executions were carried out
over six months had contact
with inmates and other
people infected with the
coronavirus, but were able to
refuse testing and declined
to participate in contact
tracing efforts and were still
permitted to return to their
work assignments.
Other staff members,
including those brought in
to help with executions, also
spread tips to their
colleagues about how they
could avoid quarantines and
skirt public health guidance
from the federal government
and Indiana health officials.
The executions at the end
of Donald Trump's
presidency, completed in a
short window over a few
weeks, likely acted as a
superspreader event,
according to the records
reviewed by AP. It was
something health experts
warned could happen when
the Justice Department
insisted on resuming
executions during a
pandemic.
China granted
WHO team
full access in
Wuhan
WUHAN : A member of the
World Health Organization
expert team investigating
the origins of the
coronavirus in Wuhan said
the Chinese side granted full
access to all sites and
personnel they requested - a
level of openness that even
he hadn't expected, reports
UNB.
Peter Daszak told The
Associated Press on Friday
that team members had
submitted a deeply
considered list of places and
people to include in their
investigation and that no
objections were raised.
"We were asked where we
wanted to go. We gave our
hosts a list ... and you can see
from where we've been,
we've been to all the key
places," Daszak said.
"Every place we asked to
see, everyone we wanted to
meet. ... So really good," said
the British-born zoologist,
who is president of the NGO
EcoHealth Alliance in New
York City.
Daszak said the team has
now concluded site visits
and will spend the next few
days trolling through data
and consulting with Chinese
experts before presenting a
summary of their findings at
a news briefing prior to their
departure on Wednesday.
"I can't really say too much
about what we've found yet
because we're at that exact
point in time where the
teams are coming together
looking at different
pathways, different issues,"
he said. He said questions
include what were the first
cases, what was the link with
animals and what, if any,
was the role of the so-called
"cold chain" - the possibility
the virus was brought into
China on packaging from
imported frozen food, an
unproven theory that China
has long put forward.
"And of course, we're
looking at every hypotheses
that's been out there and
seeing where the data take
us and do they point to any
particular one," Daszak said.
'Britain's worst Zoom
meeting' goes viral
LONDON : Parish councils have long been
seen as the genteel backbone of local
democracy in towns and villages across
England, overseeing the upkeep of bus stops,
and the maintainance of footpaths and street
lighting.
But one group of parish councillors has
been accused of holding "Britain's worst
Zoom meeting", after a chaotic and
frequently aggressive online session.
Britain's tabloid newspapers on Friday
bestowed the dubious accolade on the online
meeting of Handforth Parish Council after
YouTube highlights garnered hundreds of
thousands of views on social media.
The uploaded footage made the principal
characters in the Zoom spat - council
chairman Brian Tolver and clerk Jackie
Weaver - overnight celebrities.
Like so many video conferencing calls, the
meeting of the council in northwest England
in December was plagued by technical
problems.
Members forget to turn their mics off, one
councillor interrupts to take a phone call and
participants arriving late aren't sure if the
meeting has officially started.
But simmering tensions from the start
between Tolver and his nemesis Weaver boil
over on an issue of bureaucracy - whether the
meeting has been called legally and who was
in charge.
"You have no authority here, Jackie
Weaver! No authority at all!" Tolver bellows
down the camera after the clerk threatens to
eject him from the meeting.
Moments later, Weaver quietly carries out
her earlier threat and kicks the chairman out.
After she suggests a vote for a replacement,
vice-chairman Aled Brewerton erupts.
"I take charge!" he says before telling
Weaver to "read the standing orders".
"Read them and understand them!"
Brewerton shouts before he in turn is booted
out of the virtual meeting by Weaver.
As the footage has made its way into the
mainstream media, the spat has gained
momentum in the public sphere.
"I'm not actually sure who was in charge,"
Weaver told BBC radio on Friday in one of
several media appearances.
Tolver has remained steadfast in his own
view and called Weaver's actions an
"appalling attack on democratic rights".
Parish councils have long been seen as the genteel backbone of local
democracy in towns and villages across England, overseeing the
upkeep of bus stops, and the maintainance of footpaths and street
lighting.
Photo : Internet
Trump impeachment trial confronts
memories of Capitol siege
WASHINGTON : The impeachment trial of
Donald Trump is more than an effort to
convict the former president of inciting an
insurrection. It's a chance for a public
accounting and remembrance of the worst
attack on the U.S. Capitol in 200 years.
In the month since the Jan. 6 siege by a
pro-Trump mob, encouraged by his call to
"fight like hell" to overturn the election,
defenders of the former president say it's
time to move on.
Trump is long gone, ensconced at his Mara-Lago
club, and Democrat Joe Biden is the
new president in the White House. With the
trial set to begin Tuesday, and a
supermajority of senators unlikely to convict
him on the single charge, the question arises:
Why bother?
Yet for many lawmakers who were
witnesses, onlookers and survivors of that
bloody day, it's not over.
One by one, lawmakers have begun
sharing personal accounts of their
experiences of that harrowing afternoon.
Some were in the Capitol fleeing for safety,
while others watched in disbelief from
adjacent offices. They tell of hiding behind
doors, arming themselves with office
supplies and fearing for their lives as the
rioters stalked the halls, pursued political
leaders and trashed the domed icon of
democracy. "I never imagined what was
coming," said Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif.,
recounted in a speech on the House floor.
Memory is a powerful tool, and their
remembrances, alongside the impeachment
proceedings, will preserve a public record of
the attack for the Congressional Record. Five
people died and more than 100 people have
been arrested in a nationwide FBI roundup
of alleged ringleaders and participants, a
dragnet unlike many in recent times. While
that is sufficient for some, assured the
perpetrators will be brought to justice, others
say the trial will force Congress, and the
country, to consider accountability.
Todd Shaw, an associate professor at
University of South Carolina, said the
founders envisioned a check on the
presidency and the trial provides a moment
that will demarcate whether American
democracy makes a course correction and
says "things have gone too far" - or not, he
said.
"We're in a period where a lot of Americans
are very aware of that question," he said.
Defenders of the former president are
casting doubt over the legality of the
impeachment trial, the rationale for
punishing an elected official no longer in
office and the political fallout of preventing
him from being elected again.
India restores 4G mobile internet
in Kashmir after 550 days
SRINAGAR : India ended an 18-month-long
ban on high speed internet services on
mobile devices in disputed Kashmir, where
opposition to New Delhi has surged after it
revoked the region's autonomy.
The order late Friday lifted the ban on 4G
mobile data services However, the order
issued by the region's home secretary,
Shaleen Kabra, asked police officials to
"closely monitor the impact of lifting of
restrictions."
A blanket internet ban, the longest in a
democracy which rights activists dubbed as
"digital apartheid" and "collective
punishment," came into effect on August
2019 when India stripped Kashmir of its
statehood that gave its residents special
rights in land ownership and jobs. The
region was divided into two federally
governed territories. The move
accompanied a security clampdown and
total communications blackout that left
hundreds of thousands jobless, impaired the
already feeble health care system and paused
the school and college education of millions.
Months later, India gradually eased some of
the restrictions, including partial internet
connectivity.
In January last year, authorities allowed
the Indian-controlled territory's more than
12 million people to access governmentapproved
websites over slow-speed
connections.
Two months later, authorities revoked a
ban on social media and restored full
internet connectivity but not high speed
internet. In August, 4G services were allowed
in two out of the region's 20 districts.