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Beijing digs in to avoid repeating Hong Kong’s Covid mistakes

Published

3 years ago

March 19, 2022

Beijing digs in to avoid repeating Hong Kong’s Covid mistakes

In late February, Xi Jinping’s Covid tsar travelled south to Hong Kong the place he witnessed panic and chaos sweeping via the monetary hub as physique baggage overflowed from intensive care models and mortuaries whereas the town struggled to search out sufficient coffins.

Liang Wannian, who heads the Covid-19 response crew on the Nationwide Well being Fee, returned to Beijing 12 days later underneath no illusions: even underneath China’s zero-Covid coverage, healthcare techniques may very well be swiftly overwhelmed by Omicron, inflicting mass casualties amongst older residents.

Because the begin of March, China has recorded greater than 20,000 circumstances of the quickly transmitting coronavirus variant. Tens of thousands and thousands of individuals have been locked down of their house compounds and factories have shut, together with within the southern expertise hub of Shenzhen.

The newest outbreak is irritating Beijing’s efforts to flee from its zero-Covid coverage greater than two years after the preliminary explosion of coronavirus circumstances from Wuhan.

Xi advised a high Chinese language Communist occasion physique on Thursday that virus containment needed to be achieved at a minimal price and endorsed using extra focused measures to melt the financial blow.

Nevertheless, he additionally directed officers to concentrate on “early detection, early reporting, early isolation and early therapy”, and reiterated that China’s pandemic controls “exhibit some great benefits of the CPC’s management and the socialist system”.

A employee carrying protecting gear in Shanghai earlier this week © Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty

Underlying Beijing’s warning is the worry of a lethal end result, repeating Hong Kong’s failures however on an enormous scale.

Information launched by China’s well being officers this week revealed that about 50mn Chinese language aged 60 and over — 20 per cent in that age bracket — weren’t absolutely vaccinated. Two-thirds of China’s extreme Covid-19 circumstances contain aged people who find themselves not vaccinated.

Jerome Kim, the Seoul-based director-general of the Worldwide Vaccine Institute, mentioned inoculating folks “at best danger of loss of life” was vital if China was to halt the unfold of Omicron and transfer past its relentless lockdowns.

“You don’t need to be within the scenario that Hong Kong was, the place, for no matter cause, 70 per cent of the aged determined to not get vaccinated,” he added.

Whereas China has delivered 3.2bn vaccine doses throughout its inhabitants of 1.4bn, there are doubts over its inoculation protection in addition to the effectiveness of the nation’s jabs.

“Towards older variants and notably at a time comparatively near vaccination, they have been saying that the vaccines have been efficient. How that works in opposition to Omicron now, six to 9 months after the preliminary vaccinations, is a second query,” mentioned Kim.

Some well being consultants imagine China can purchase foreign-made vaccines that use extra superior mRNA expertise, equivalent to these made by BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna. Beijing is but to approve the BioNTech vaccine for basic use regardless of an settlement made with Chinese language firm Fosun to produce 100mn doses to the nation.

Elsewhere, equivalent to in Hong Kong, consultants have really helpful that those that have obtained two doses of Sinovac obtain a BioNTech booster as a result of the Chinese language vaccine, which makes use of the older inactivated virus expertise, is much less efficient in opposition to Omicron.

“China has had no publicity to the virus, so when the virus will get in, anybody who’s underneath vaccinated can be actually weak,” mentioned Karen Grepin, a well being coverage knowledgeable at Hong Kong College. In contrast to in different international locations which have suffered mass outbreaks, “the unvaccinated are fully immunologically naive”.

There are indicators that the federal government’s initiatives to hurry up vaccinations for the aged are having an impact.

Medical employees at a neighborhood vaccination centre within the capital’s Daxing district mentioned many aged folks had just lately obtained their first jab, whereas one other in Chaoyang distinct was working out of pictures every day due to rising demand.

Nevertheless, vaccine hesitancy continues to be prevalent amongst some teams of aged folks and their households.

At one dwelling for the aged in Fangshan district, south-west Beijing, employees mentioned of 120 residents solely about 50 had obtained two vaccine doses. “It’s their households which might be reluctant to get them vaccinated, not the aged themselves,” a carer mentioned.

At one other facility, additionally in Fangshan, most residents had two jabs however others had resisted receiving a single dose, terrified of problems to underlying sicknesses. “There are some people who find themselves afraid,” a employees member mentioned.

Research discovered the aged have increased vaccine hesitancy in China than different adults, with issues about jab security, in addition to the decrease an infection danger underneath Beijing’s zero-Covid technique decreasing uptake.

“Similar to the scenario in Hong Kong . . . partly due to complacency, they felt good that they have been so profitable in containing the virus,” mentioned Jin Dong-yan, epidemiologist on the College of Hong Kong. “The identical is true in China . . . due to zero-Covid folks assume there isn’t any have to get vaccinated.”

Xi’s newest intervention adopted a collection of tweaks to the zero-Covid coverage. That included increasing the vary of authorised check kits, shaving time from isolation durations for individuals who have recovered and elevating the bar for hospitalisations. All gentle and asymptomatic circumstances, nevertheless, will nonetheless be detained in quarantine services.

Most analysts imagine there’s little likelihood that the state’s heavy-handed pandemic controls will disappear fully within the subsequent 12 months. This 12 months is vital for Xi as he breaks precedent to cement a 3rd five-year time period in energy. In a 12 months the place social and political obedience is paramount, private freedoms will probably be sacrificed for stability.

Ting Lu, Nomura’s high China economist, mentioned Beijing’s newest modifications marked neither an finish to zero-Covid nor a highway map to a brand new living-with-Covid technique. “We preserve our view that the chance of Beijing releasing its [zero-Covid] grip earlier than March 2023 may be very small,” he added.

Extra reporting by Maiqi Ding and Nian Liu

News

Menendez Brothers Resentenced to Life With Parole, Paving Way for Freedom

Published

7 hours ago

May 13, 2025

Press Room

Menendez Brothers Resentenced to Life With Parole, Paving Way for Freedom

Lyle and Erik Menendez were resentenced on Tuesday to life in prison with the possibility of parole, setting the stage for their possible release after more than three decades behind bars for killing their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion.

The decision, by Judge Michael V. Jesic of Los Angeles Superior Court, came after a day of testimony by family members, who said the brothers had turned their lives around inside prison through education and self-help groups. They urged the court to reduce the brothers’ sentences for the 1989 killings.

“This was an absolutely horrific crime,” Judge Jesic said as he delivered his ruling. But as shocking as the crime was, Judge Jesic said, he was also shocked by the number of corrections officials who wrote letters on behalf of the brothers, documented support that clearly swayed his decision.

“I’m not suggesting they should be released,” he said. “That’s not for me to decide.”

But, he continued: “I do believe they have done enough over the last 35 years to get that chance.” The brothers’ futures, he said, would now be in the hands of Gov. Gavin Newsom and state parole-board officials.

While Judge Jesic’s decision was the most important legal step so far in the brothers’ long effort to win release, it is not the final step. In reducing the brothers’ sentences, the judge has allowed them to be immediately eligible for parole.

Now the attention will be on the state’s parole officials. The brothers were already scheduled to appear before the board on June 13 as part of Mr. Newsom’s consideration of clemency, a separate process that has unfolded in parallel to the resentencing effort.

It was unclear if the June hearing would address both the resentencing and clemency request. A spokesperson for Mr. Newsom said his office was reviewing the judge’s decision and determining next steps.

Lawyers for the brothers made only brief statements after the hearing, thanking supporters.

Anamaria Baralt, a cousin of the brothers who testified on Tuesday, faced the dozens of cameras assembled outside the courthouse. “I have been crying all day long. These are tears of joy, for sure,” she said.

Nathan J. Hochman, the Los Angeles district attorney who has opposed resentencing for the brothers, did not provide statements after the ruling. He and his team have argued repeatedly that the brothers failed to demonstrate that they have “full insight” into their crimes. The brothers, they argued, never renounced their claim that they killed their parents because they feared their parents would kill them first, which prosecutors maintained was a lie.

The decision to resentence the brothers is a remarkable turn in a saga that has gripped the nation’s attention for decades. The brothers tried unsuccessfully to appeal their convictions for many years, and they had said that over time, their hopes of being released had diminished. As the years passed, the brothers evolved into cultural icons in their own right, amassing a loyal following as a series of docudramas and documentaries retold their stories for a younger audience.

In 1989, the story of sexual abuse and murder in one of America’s ritziest cities was irresistible to the media and public, and it foreshadowed an even greater obsession with another Los Angeles story — the murder case against O.J. Simpson.

The brothers said they burst into the den of their Beverly Hills mansion on a Sunday evening in 1989 and killed their parents with shotguns because they had endured years of sexual abuse from their father. They said they feared their parents would kill them to keep the abuse secret. At the time, Lyle was 21 and Erik, 18.

Now two middle-aged men, the brothers appeared remotely at the resentencing hearing on Tuesday from their prison near San Diego, sitting stoically in blue jumpsuits while witness after witness testified on their behalf.

After Judge Jesic said that he would resentence the brothers — but before he said what the new sentence would be — the brothers made statements. Through a video feed, they took responsibility for the crimes and apologized to their relatives in the courtroom, who could be heard softly sobbing.

Lyle spoke first, saying that all the choices he made in August 1989 were his own, including “the choice to reload, return to the den and run up to my mother and shoot her in the head.” And he took responsibility, he said, for making a “mockery of the criminal legal system” by lying to the police and trying to solicit others to lie for him on the witness stand at trial.

He said that at the time, he was a young man “scared and filled with rage,” who was too ashamed of the sexual abuse happening in his house to find someone and ask for help.

Erik also took responsibility for the crimes and said he had spent a long time wondering what his parents must have been thinking the night they were murdered, and “the terror they must have felt when their own son fired a gun at them.”

Back then, the case played out as a sort of reckoning of the policies and culture of the 1990s: the tough-on-crime measures that left California’s prisons overcrowded; the societal attitudes about sexual abuse that eyed the brothers’ story with skepticism; the gavel-to-gavel televised trial coverage; and the late-night comics who regularly mocked the brothers as privileged dilettantes.

Their first trial, in 1993, landed during a tumultuous time in Los Angeles. Officers in the beating of Rodney King had been acquitted of assault, catalyzing deadly riots.

After their first trial ended in mistrials — the brothers were tried together with separate juries — they went on trial a second time after Mr. Simpson’s acquittal.

This time, the brothers faced different rules in the courtroom. Cameras were banned, and the judge limited testimony and evidence about sexual abuse. The jury convicted the brothers of murder, and they were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

In recent years, the brothers have drawn sympathy from many young people who were not alive at the time of the crimes. Learning about the case online, they have come to believe that the brothers were mistreated by the criminal justice system and the media, and have rallied to their cause on social media.

Laurel Rosenhall contributed reporting.

News

Donald Trump lauds Saudi Arabia as he unveils AI and defence deals

Published

10 hours ago

May 13, 2025

Press Room

Donald Trump lauds Saudi Arabia as he unveils AI and defence deals

Donald Trump hailed the US’s relationship with Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, just hours after the White House unveiled what it said was $600bn worth of defence, artificial intelligence and other deals with the kingdom.

The US president lauded the kingdom and its de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as he began the first leg of his dealmaking, three-nation tour of the oil-rich Gulf.

“He’s an incredible man, I’ve known him a long time now. There’s nobody like him,” Trump said to a packed auditorium in Riyadh. Among the guests were Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, private equity baron Stephen Schwarzman, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang and dozens of other US executives.

The US-Saudi relationship had been a “bedrock” of security and prosperity, Trump said. He added: “Today, we reaffirm the bond and take the next steps to make our relationship closer, stronger, more powerful than ever before . . . And it will remain that way.”

In a press release before Trump’s speech, the White House had hailed “Saudi Arabia’s $600bn commitment to invest in the US” and “economic ties that will endure for generations to come”.

Prince Mohammed said the two countries would work over the coming months to increase the total to $1tn.

“We are working on partnership opportunities with the US worth $600bn, including agreements of more than $300bn announced today during this forum,” the crown prince said.

The deals unveiled by the White House included a commitment by Saudi Arabia’s new state-owned AI company, Humain, to build AI infrastructure in the kingdom using several “hundred thousands” of Nvidia’s most advanced chips over the next five years.

That would make it one of the biggest AI chip orders by a state company, underlining the scale of Prince Mohammed’s ambitions to position Saudi Arabia as a global AI hub and boosting Nvidia’s desire to build “sovereign AI” infrastructure around the world.

The first phase of Humain’s investment would involve deploying 18,000 of Nvidia’s latest “Blackwell” servers, the chipmaker said. Based on the price of a single Nvidia graphics processing unit, estimated at $30,000-$40,000, the Saudi investment would run into multiple billions of dollars.

AMD, one of Nvidia’s main competitors in the AI chip market, is also co-investing up to $10bn with Humain to deploy its own infrastructure in the country. Amazon made a similar $5bn commitment covering data centre infrastructure.

Nvidia shares rose 5.6 per cent on Tuesday, while AMD’s gained 4 per cent. Amazon was 1.3 per cent higher.

Tesla chief and Trump adviser Elon Musk, left, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang along with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman © Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Jimmy Goodrich, senior adviser for technology analysis to the Rand Corporation think-tank, said the “massive scale” of the Middle East AI announcements would “undoubtedly eat into future US data centre growth”.

“Instead of offshoring the future economic revolution to the Middle East, a better approach would be to channel Gulf state money into American re-industrialisation and energy dominance,” Goodrich said.

The White House also cited on Tuesday what it said was a “nearly $142bn” agreement to provide Riyadh “with state-of-the-art warfighting equipment and services from over a dozen US defence firms”.

It added this would include air force and space capabilities, missile defence, maritime and border security, land forces modernisation and upgrades to communication systems.

The US also referred to plans by Saudi Arabian DataVolt to invest $20bn in AI data centres and energy infrastructure in the US.

Trump is looking to secure deals and investment pledges worth more than $1tn on his trip to the Gulf, which will also include stops in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

The traditional US allies are among the biggest buyers of American weapons, boast sovereign wealth funds that collectively manage in excess of $3tn and have all stated their ambitions to invest heavily in AI.

Many of the US’s most powerful tech executives were also in Riyadh, including Musk, Huang and OpenAI’s Sam Altman as Saudi Arabia hosted a glitzy investment forum. Top financiers including Blackstone’s Schwarzman, BlackRock’s Larry Fink and Citigroup’s Jane Fraser also attended.

US tech companies have been increasingly looking to the Gulf, which manages some of the world’s largest and most active sovereign wealth funds, to raise capital and lure investments.

The Trump administration last week scrapped a Biden-era rule under which Saudi Arabia, along with dozens of other countries including India and Singapore, would have faced limitations on their purchases of the most powerful US-designed AI chips.

Riyadh launched Humain, which will be chaired by Prince Mohammed and owned by the Public Investment Fund, the $940bn sovereign wealth fund, to steer its strategy and investments in the sector on Monday, the day before Trump arrived.

Just days after Trump’s inauguration in January, Prince Mohammed committed Saudi Arabia to investing $600bn in the US over the next four years — the same amount that was announced on Tuesday.

The UAE followed up with a similar gesture in March, pledging to invest $1.4tn over the next 10 years. It is also seeking to establish itself as a leading AI hub and has taken a strategic decision to invest in US tech.

Analysts question how the Gulf states will be able to deploy such a vast scale of capital in the timeframes announced, particularly Saudi Arabia as it grapples with lower oil prices, a widening budget deficit and the scale of its own domestic projects.

Additional reporting by Michael Acton in San Francisco

News

Takeaways from Sean 'Diddy' Combs' ex-girlfriend Cassandra Ventura's testimony

Published

11 hours ago

May 13, 2025

Press Room

Takeaways from Sean 'Diddy' Combs' ex-girlfriend Cassandra Ventura's testimony

Madeline Halpert

BBC News in New York court

Reuters/Jane Rosenberg In a courtroom sktech, Sean "Diddy" Combs watches as his former girlfriend Casandra "Cassie" Ventura reacts during testimony to prosecutor Emily Johnson

Prosecutors’ star witness, Sean “Diddy” Combs’ ex-girlfriend Casandra Ventura, took the stand on Tuesday in the hip-hop mogul’s sex trafficking trial, accusing the rapper of controlling her life and coercing her into “humiliating” sex acts.

Mr Combs has pleaded not guilty to charges including racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution.

Family and friends have come to court in large numbers to support Mr Combs, whose legal team has not yet questioned Ms Ventura.

Ms Ventura, who is pregnant, told prosecutors about the alleged physical and emotional abuse she endured at the hands of the rapper during so-called “freak-offs”, or sexual encounters the couple had with male escorts.

Here are some of the most notable parts of her first five hours of testimony.

Warning: This story contains details that some readers may find distressing.

Ms Ventura fell ‘in love’ with Mr Combs

Prosecutors began by questioning Ms Ventura – one of their two central witnesses in the case – about her 11-year, on-and-off relationship with Mr Combs.

Now 38 and pregnant in her third trimester with her third child, Ms Ventura met Mr Combs when she was a 19-year-old aspiring singer and he was 37. Mr Combs’ record label would later sign Ms Ventura as an artist, and shortly after, their romantic relationship began.

Their relationship progressed over a series of several trips. At the time, she testified, she felt like they were in a monogamous relationship, though she knows now that he had other girlfriends.

She said she “fell in love” with the “larger than life entrepreneur and musician”. But it was not long before she noticed another side to him, she said.

REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg A court sketch shows as Sean "Diddy" Combs watches as his former girlfriend Casandra "Cassie" Ventura is sworn in as a prosecution witness

Mr Combs wanted to ‘control’ every part of her life, Ms Ventura says

Mr Combs wanted to “control” her life, Ms Ventura said. She said he paid for her home, her cars, her phone and other technology that he would sometimes take away to “punish” her.

“Control was everything, from the way that I looked … to what I was working on,” Ms Ventura said.

Eventually, she claimed, the control turned violent. Mr Combs would “bash on my head, knock me over, drag me and kick me” frequently, Ms Ventura testified, sometimes through tears.

She alleged that she was left with swollen lips, black eyes and knots on her forehead.

Ms Ventura felt ‘humiliated’ by ‘freak-offs’

Prosecutors spent hours on Tuesday asking Ms Ventura about so-called “freak-offs”.

Ms Ventura told the court how Mr Combs introduced her to the sexual events during the first year of their relationship: They would hire a male escort or stripper to have sex with Ms Ventura while Mr Combs watched.

Ms Ventura told the court that she first tried the encounters to make Mr Combs “happy”. But she said they humiliated her, and sometimes lasted three to four days.

“I felt pretty horrible about myself,” she told the court, wiping away tears. “It made me feel worthless.”

Ms Ventura told the court she never wanted to have sex with anyone but Mr Combs, and claimed she would take myriad drugs – marijuana, ecstasy and ketamine – to help her perform to Mr Combs’ satisfaction, but also to “disassociate”.

The drugs were “a way to not feel it for what it really was”, she said, “having sex with a stranger I didn’t really want to be having sex with”.

Mr Combs flew male escorts in for freak-offs, court hears

As prosecutors pressed Ms Ventura about the “freak-offs”, she told the court of how Mr Combs would direct her to find male escorts, strippers or dancers to have sex with while he watched.

She alleged that Mr Combs would pay the men anywhere from $1,500 to $6,000 in cash, depending on their performance.

They found the men through stripper companies and sites like Craigslist. Some of their photos were displayed to the jurors, including Daniel Phillip, who finished his testimony earlier on Tuesday.

Ms Ventura and Mr Combs had the enounters in cities around the world, including Los Angeles, New York, Las Vegas and Ibiza, Spain, Ms Ventura testified.

Sometimes, men would be flown in during vacations, she alleged, and Mr Combs would direct her to ask staff to pay for and arrange their travel, calling them new employees.

Among other charges, prosecutors are trying to prove that Mr Combs engaged in sex trafficking – human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation – and transportation to engage in prostitution.

Mr Combs ‘directed’, Ms Ventura says

As prosecutors pressed Ms Ventura for graphic details, one key element emerged: Ms Ventura claimed that Mr Combs controlled every part of the encounters.

He chose the outfits she wore – down to the extremely high heels she kept on for hours – as well as the sexual acts that transpired and the lighting, Ms Ventura told jurors.

“If Sean wanted something to happen, that was what was going to happen,” she said. “I couldn’t say no.”

Sometimes, Ms Ventura said, she would take the lead on which male escorts to hire because Mr Combs was “very busy”, but she only did so at his direction, she said.

She said freak-offs had a very specific “pattern” of sexual acts each time.

“He was controlling the whole situation,” she alleged. “He was directing it.”

At times, Ms Ventura said, she tried to tell Mr Combs that she felt “horrible”. But when he dismissed her concerns, she said, she relented, worried he would get angry or question their relationship.

Ms Ventura is expected to continue her testimony on Wednesday, when she could also face cross-examination.