Lockdown lifted at US base in South Korea |
Lockdown on Osan Air Base was put in place as precaution after an unscheduled "active shooter drill" was reported.
The US Osan Air Base in South Korea lifted a lockdown that had been ordered as a precaution after someone reported an unscheduled "active shooter drill" at a high school on the base.
Security forces swept the school and its perimeters and found no injuries or suspicious activities, according to a posting on the base's Facebook site on Monday.
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Thursday, December 4, 2014
Hong Kong Protesters Considering Retreat
Student Leaders Weigh Pullback as Tactics Frustrate Public, Fail to Sway Officials
HONG KONG—Student protesters demanding greater democracy for Hong Kong said Thursday they are more seriously weighing a retreat from the roads they have occupied for more than two months.
The remarks were the latest sign of the narrowing options that the protesters face as police have increased their efforts to remove the demonstrators from the streets and public support for the occupation of busy city thoroughfares has faded significantly.
The Hong Kong Federation of Students, a group of university students at the helm of the protests, and Scholarism, a teenage student protest group, could issue a decision over whether to retreat from the encampments within the next week, according to student leaders.
Yvonne Leung, a spokeswoman for HKFS, made the remarks on a local radio program. Eighteen-year-old Scholarism leader Joshua Wong separately told The Wall Street Journal that his group, which works closely with HKFS, is also considering a retreat. Mr. Wong is in the third day of a hunger strike, along with four other teen members of his group.
Protesters are calling for the right of citizens to select their own candidates for the city’s top leadership post, not those vetted by Beijing as per a decision handed down by the National People’s Congress in August. Those calls have been rejected by the government as nonnegotiable under Hong Kong’s Basic Law, a “mini-constitution” held with Beijing. The city will vote in 2017 for its next chief executive, a five-year appointment.
A street cleaner pushes her cart between rows of tents at the pro-democracy movement's main protest site in Hong Kong's Admiralty district. AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Student leaders for weeks have grappled with how to proceed with the protest but have been hesitant to leave the streets without a strong concession from the government. City leaders have repeatedly dismissed the protesters’ demands as unreasonable, and new clashes in recent days between protesters and police have further eroded public support. A government spokesman on Thursday reiterated that the protesters should retreat from the protest area as soon as possible because the assembly is illegal under Hong Kong law.
“For me, I think it’s time to adjust tactics,” said one student leader. “Retreat doesn’t necessarily mean failure.”
A large encampment in Hong Kong’s Admiralty district, home to the city’s main government offices, is largely what remains of the demonstration after a separate site in the Mong Kok neighborhood was dismantled last week by thousands of police on a court order. Dozens of protesters continue to agitate for their cause nightly there, disrupting shopping and playing cat-and-mouse with police. Tents are still standing and roads are still blocked at a third, much smaller site in the city’s Causeway Bay neighborhood.
Weather in the subtropical city has turned harsher this week, posing another challenge for the occupation. Temperatures on Thursday fell as low as 13 degrees Celsius, or 55 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the Hong Kong Observatory. Protesters at the Admiralty site Thursday wore down jackets and scarves. Some die-hard protesters said they also agreed it was time to retreat and focus on other tactics.
“Occupying here doesn’t put enough pressure on the government,” said 18-year-old student Timothy Sun, who said he has camped at the site since the demonstration began in late September. “If it put enough pressure, we wouldn’t be here two months.”
He said he believes canvassing the city and educating the public on their cause is the best way to proceed with the demonstration. “In the end, we didn’t get what we want, but this movement inspired people that we can’t live like this anymore.”
In a statement Wednesday evening, Hong Kong’s chief executive’s office said, “Expressing views on constitutional reform through illegal and confrontational means is bound to be futile. We hope the students who are undergoing hunger strike could take good care of their health.”
Another major pro-democracy group effectively ended its support for street protests on Wednesday when the founders of the group, Occupy Central with Love and Peace, attempted to surrender to police. Three middle-aged founders of that group this week urged the students to leave the streets and said their offer to surrender was in response to escalating violence. Police on Wednesday declined to arrest them.
A court injunction on Monday called for police to clear part of the main protest site in the Admiralty district on Hong Kong island. A judgment on the injunction, filed by a bus company claiming the protest has led to financial losses, is expected to be issued Friday.
—Chester Yung and Fiona Law contributed to this article.
Hong Kong protesters defy calls to abandon camps
One day after three movement leaders urged an end to the months-long democracy protest, many activists remain committed
Pro-democracy protesters who have been occupying public streets in Hong Kong since September dug their heels in for a prolonged battle, one day after three of the movement’s leaders announced they would surrender to authorities and urged demonstrators to abandon their encampments.
Benny Tai, Chan Kin-man and Reverend Chu Yiu-ming on Wednesday entered a police station just two subway stops from their movement's main protest site in Admiralty to turn themselves over to police. After completing paperwork, the three leaders were allowed to leave without facing criminal charges.
"I hope we can show others the meaning of the surrender. We urge the occupation to end soon and more citizens will carry out the basic responsibility of civil disobedience, which is to surrender," said Tai, one of the most prominent protest leaders, after he left the police station.
Police said that 24 people aged between 33 and 82 had also surrendered for "taking part in an unauthorized assembly," and authorities would conduct follow-up investigations based on the information provided.
The South China Morning Post reported Wednesday that at least 200 people have been placed on a list for investigation. Citing an unnamed police source, newspaper said that no action had been taken yet because the current focus was on clearing the remaining protest camps.
The mostly peaceful protests, led by a restive generation of students, have called for China's Communist Party rulers live up to constitutional promises to grant full democracy to the former British colony, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
Hong Kong is ruled under a "one country, two systems" formula, which allows the territory wide-ranging autonomy and freedoms and specifies universal suffrage for Hong Kong as an eventual goal.
But Beijing ruled on Aug. 31 that it would screen candidates who want to run for the city's chief executive in 2017, which democracy activists said rendered the universal suffrage concept meaningless. The protesters are demanding free and open elections for their leader.
On Tuesday the three protest leaders called on demonstrators, many of whom are students, to retreat from protest sites in Asia’s financial hub amid fears of further clashes with police.
Joshua Wong, leader of student protest group Scholarism, responded by calling on supporters to regroup and launch a hunger strike.
The students' defiance underscored the growing split between young protesters and veteran activists, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“We are on a hunger strike until the chief executive will agree to talks with students,” Wong said.
Two more members of Scholarism said Wednesday night they would join Wong in his hunger strike, the Journal reported.
In a statement issued late Wednesday, Hong Kong's chief executive’s office said the hunger strikes were "futile."
"Expressing views on constitutional reform through illegal and confrontational means is bound to be futile," the statement read. "We hope the students who are undergoing hunger strike could take good care of their health."
More than 100,000 people took to the streets at the height of the demonstrations in late September but numbers have dwindled to only a few hundred, mostly students. Public support has also waned as the protests continue to block key roads and disrupt business.
Jean Pierre Cabestan, an expert in Chinese politics at Hong Kong Baptist University, said Wednesday the movement was "in tatters."
"The trouble and one of the weaknesses of the movement is there's not much coordination between the Hong Kong Federation of Students and the pan-democrats," he told foreign correspondents in Beijing.
The protesters are united in their calls for democracy for the former British colony but are split over tactics, two months after the demonstrations, also branded illegal by Beijing, began.
Hong Kong returned to Chinese Communist Party rule in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" formula that gave it some autonomy from the mainland and a promise of eventual universal suffrage.
Al Jazeera and Reuters
Obama says China's Xi has consolidated power quickly, worrying neighbors
(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Wednesday Chinese President Xi Jinping had consolidated power faster than any Chinese leader in decades, raising human rights concerns and worrying China's neighbors.
Obama, who met Xi last month in Beijing, told the Business Roundtable group of U.S. chief executives that the Chinese leader had won respect in the short time since he had taken over.
"He has consolidated power faster and more comprehensively than probably anybody since Deng Xiaoping," Obama said, referring to the man who led China from 1978 to 1992.
"And everybody's been impressed by his ... clout inside of Chinaafter only a year and a half or two years."
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Thailand's Royal Family Embroiled In Corruption Scandal
News about Thailand’s royal family, the country’s most venerated institution, is difficult to come by, thanks to tight secrecy, a culture of reverence around the monarchy and strict censorship laws. But a growing corruption scandal involving relatives of the crown princess has opened a small window into some of the drama unfolding inside the palace walls.
Australia Woes Boost Rate-Cut Bets
Australia’s Central Bank Keeps Interest Rates on Hold in Attempt to Cushion Economy From China’s Slowdown and End of Mining Boom
SYDNEY—Tumbling commodity prices and signs of slowdown in China have reversed bets on the chances of an Australian rate cut next year.
As recently as two weeks ago, financial markets were pricing in a negligible chance of interest rates—currently at a record low to help spur a weak economy—moving up or down for at least the next year.
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