SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Zoom Video Communications temporarily shut the account belonging to a group of U.S.-based Chinese activists after they held an event to commemorate the 31st anniversary of China’s Tiananmen Square crackdown, the activists said on Thursday.
FILE PHOTO: A 3D printed Zoom logo is placed on the keyboard in this illustration taken April 12, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Humanitarian China said the event they held on May 31 was hosted by a paid account and was joined by over 250 people worldwide via video-conferencing platform Zoom, while more than 4,000 streamed it on social media, many of whom were from China. The account was shut on June 7, they said in a statement.
Zoom confirmed the U.S.-based account had been suspended but had now been reactivated.
“When a meeting is held across different countries, the participants within those countries are required to comply with their respective local laws,†it said in an e-mailed statement.
“We aim to limit the actions we take to those necessary to comply with local law and continuously review and improve our process on these matters.â€
The anniversary of China’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests at Tiananmen Square is a highly sensitive matter in China and content related to it is regularly blocked or censored by authorities.
Humanitarian China founder Zhou Fengsuo said on his Twitter account that the group had yet to receive an answer from Zoom about why its account was closed.
The group said in a statement that Zoom was essential for reaching Chinese audiences “remembering and commemorating Tiananmen Massacre during the coronavirus pandemicâ€.
California-based Zoom has said it is working to fix flaws in the security of its platform as user numbers soar with the imposition of lockdowns and social distancing restrictions around the world.
Some schools and businesses have already stopped using Zoom over privacy concerns, among them Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX.
Toronto-based internet watchdog Citizen Lab said in April that it had found evidence some calls made in North America, as well as the encryption keys used to secure those calls, were routed through China. Zoom said it had mistakenly allowed Chinese data centres to accept calls.
Last month, Zoom said it was suspending free user registrations in China, which analysts said was targeted at reducing the company’s exposure to China. [nL4N2D13EQ]
Reporting by Brenda Goh; Additional Reporting by Yew Lun Tian in Beijing; Editing by Stephen Coates
With restrictions being lifted from the nation-wide lockdown due to coronavirus outbreak, film and TV shootings will soon resume adhering to the government guidelines. Amongst the few films, John Abraham and Emraan Hashmi starrer Mumbai Saga may resume shooting in Hyderabad.
After receiving a go-ahead from the Telangana government and following the guidelines by Producers Guild Of India, filmmaker Sanjay Gupta will begin his 12-day shooting schedule in July in Hyderabad. Confirming the same, he revealed that the team will shoot at Ramoji Film City since they are equipped with all facilities. From the in-house crew to providing hotel service and technical team to the Mumbai team, it has everything that is required within the studio premises which will cut down the safety risks.
The entire ensemble cast will be present for the 10-12 day schedule in Hyderabad. Sanjay Gupta said that the team’s well being is of utmost importance. He said that everyone has positively worked hard on the film and is keen on completing the project so that they can present it to the audience soon.
Sanjay Gupta admits working on editing from home along with his production team. But, he added that the team requires another four months from finishing the film to locking the final print of the film.
Mumbai Saga also stars Suniel Shetty, Prateik Babbar, Jackie Shroff, Rohit Roy, and Gulshan Grover.
WAtoday has approached the Banjima people for comment, but it is unlikely the group will speak out because of an ironclad land use agreement signed with BHP for the South Flank mine that does not allow them to publicly oppose it.
He said through the process the Banjima people did identify a new significant site that was not included in a list of 72 exclusion zones identified in the land use agreement signed in 2015.
Mr Wyatt said he did not receive an objection to the Section 18 application, though he did encourage BHP to work with the Banjima people to avoid disturbing the newly identified site regardless of the approval.
Mr Wyatt defended his decision to approve the South Flank application and said he wanted less government involvement in negotiations between companies and native title holders.
“As Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, I want to see impacts to Aboriginal sites limited to the practical extent possible. I am also a great believer in self-determination for Aboriginal people and support native title groups using their hard-won rights to make commercial agreements with land users,†he said.
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“The ability to negotiate such agreements is one of the real tangible benefits which come from the often long and torturous process to have native title rights recognised.
“Companies such as BHP make significant investment decisions on the basis of these agreements with native title groups which in turn generate substantial benefits.â€
Mr Wyatt said these issues were the very reason the WA government was in the process of reforming Aboriginal heritage legislation, which would end the Section 18 process and reinforce the need for land users to negotiate directly with traditional owners.
“Native title holders are the bodies best-placed to made decision about their own heritage places,†he said.
“Australia has a sad history of governments deciding what is in the best interests of Aboriginal people.â€
A BHP spokeswoman said it valued its relationship with the Banjima they had developed over many years, including 10 years of consultation and scientific research at South Flank.
“As part of our ongoing engagement, we speak regularly with the Banjima community and have reiterated our commitment to working closely with them through the lifecycle of the South Flank development to minimise impacts on cultural heritage,†she said.
The spokeswoman said the company’s first principle was to avoid impacts to cultural heritage, which was supported by the land use agreements it signed with traditional owners.
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WA Greens MP for the mining and pastoral region Robin Chapple is a vocal critic of the land use agreements, which he said left traditional owners with a decision to receive payment for the destruction of heritage sites or fight it and risk the government intervening and have it happen anyway without compensation.
“You’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea,†he said.
On Tuesday hundreds of protesters rallied outside Rio Tinto’s Perth headquarters calling for the immediate resignation of Rio Tinto chief executive Chris Salisbury, and state and federal Aboriginal affairs ministers Ben Wyatt and Ken Wyatt following the Juukan Gorge blast.
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The government is preparing to announce changes to the probation system in England and Wales
Some high-risk offenders in England and Wales may not have been monitored as closely as they should have been during the lockdown, a report suggests.
An internal Ministry of Justice document shows probation staff did not carry out planned checks in about half of cases, during one four-week period.
The National Probation Service (NPS) has insisted supervision was adequate.
It comes as the government is expected to announce the NPS will take over the probation system in England and Wales.
This would end the involvement of private companies.
Since the coronavirus lockdown, the state-run NPS has scaled back face-to-face supervision of thousands of sex offenders and violent criminals, to prevent infection.
Emergency plans were drawn up for most offenders to be contacted by telephone or visited on their doorstep.
But, according to the MoJ document seen by BBC News, in the four weeks to May 17, only 51% of high-risk offenders under supervision had the contact that had been planned for.
The statistics also show that during the week leading up to May 17, 18% of high-risk prisoners did not have immediate appointments with probation officers on release.
They should have had a meeting within one “business day” of leaving jail.
‘Unreliable data’
However, the NPS disputed the significance of the figures.
A spokesperson said: “This data is partial, experimental and unreliable.
“We don’t use it in isolation to judge performance and the public shouldn’t do either.
“All our wider evidence in combination shows offenders are receiving the right levels and types of supervision.”
Private firms, known as community rehabilitation companies – which supervise low and medium-risk offenders in England – had planned contact in 61% of cases during the four weeks, according to the data.
Under government plans, outlined in May 2019, the companies would have lost their offender supervision role to the NPS – but would have been able to bid to run unpaid work schemes, drug misuse programmes and training courses.
But ministers have halted the process and are believed to have decided that the NPS should deliver rehabilitation services as well as managing the entire caseload of offenders.
However, it is thought there will still be opportunities for voluntary groups and charities to operate specialist offending behaviour schemes.
Anderson Cooper went after Donald Trump’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, on Wednesday for being the “president’s chief apologist and lie teller†after she defended his decision to tweet a baseless conspiracy theory smearing a protester injured by police in Buffalo, New York.
During Wednesday’s White House press briefing, McEnany claimed Trump was simply “raising questions about a report that he saw†when he tweeted a day earlier suggesting protester Martin Gugino “could be an ANTIFA provocateur†involved in “a set up†― parroting a report aired on right-wing network OANN, which is known to indulge conspiracy theories. Gugino, 75, remained hospitalized Wednesday with a serious head injury after falling and cracking his skull on concrete when he was shoved by Buffalo police last Thursday. Video of the incident has drawn worldwide outcry, and the two officers involved were suspended without pay and charged with second-degree assault.
McEnany insisted Trump’s tweet “is not a baseless conspiracy theory,†despite a reporter pointing out he had no facts to support his claims.
“Actually, it is,†Cooper said, providing the definition of a conspiracy theory. He added: “The president said Mr. Gugino was a member of the group of antifa, which the president has, without evidence, portrayed as the driving force behind the protests, but it’s not. He said he was a provocateur, and there was no evidence he was. â€
McEnany also claimed Trump is just “standing back and saying, ‘We need to ask questions before we destroy lives and convict people in the court of public opinion.’â€
“That is such doublespeak. It’s Orwellian,†Cooper said. â€â€˜He was just asking questions.’â€
“He sent out a tweet defaming this man, convicting him in the court of public opinion to 81 million of his followers. This is a 75-year-old guy who’s been protesting for a lot of his life.â€
If Trump was “just asking questions,†Cooper said, there were questions he’d like answered himself.
“What kind of person is so impulse-driven, so lacking in empathy that he attacks an elderly man in a hospital bed who is simply protesting peacefully?†he asked.
“Here’s another one. What kind of person is too vain and cowardly to ever admit a mistake? Just asking.â€
He then took aim at McEnany for her first-day pledge as press secretary and her much-less-positive past comments about Trump’s rhetoric:
“What kind of person hires someone who promises never to lie to us, as Kayleigh McEnany did on her first day on the job, and then breaks that promise repeatedly? Just asking. And what kind of person is so in need of making a name for themselves in the public arena that they betray the convictions they once expressed openly on television when they called Donald Trump’s statement on Mexican immigrants ‘racist’ but now lie about why they said that in order to keep their job as the president’s chief apologist and lie teller? Just asking.â€Â
Watch the segment on “Anderson Cooper 360†below.
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New polling data from 21 cities across six European countries shows a clear majority in favor of measures geared at preventing a return to pre-pandemic levels of air pollution. There is strong support for new zero emissions zones, banning cars from urban areas and maintaining road space gains for bike lanes and pedestrian paths implemented during the health crisis.
According to data provided to POLITICO, 68 percent of 7,545 respondents to a YouGov survey conducted for the NGOs Transport & Environment and the European Public Health Alliance said they wanted to see air pollution reduction policies — including restrictions on car access to city centers — kept in place.
The survey covers major cities in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the U.K. and the Brussels metropolitan area, and was conducted between May 14 and 21.
While 55 percent of Germans agreed that “effective measures to protect citizens from air pollution” should be introduced “even if it means preventing polluting cars from entering the city,” in other countries, where lockdown measures were more extreme, between 74 percent and 82 percent of the population supported such policies.
Lockdowns kept people at home and roads empty, leading to a drop in air pollution throughout Europe. However, pollution numbers are rapidly returning to normal as restrictions are lifted.
In order to cater to new mobility habits aimed at ensuring social distancing, policies were put in place that ranged from pop-up bike lanes in Berlin to new speed limit restrictions in the center of Brussels, and reduced parking slots in places such as Dublin and Vilnius.
The measures have given urban dwellers a look at the kind of city that environmentalists and green city planners have been demanding for years. The survey shows people like the new look.
“We know which way we have to go; COVID has only given us a push forward,” Bart Dhondt, the Brussels municipality’s alderman for mobility with the Dutch-speaking Greens party, told POLITICO.
The wider Brussels region’s mobility plans include measures to curb car traffic, boost bikes and public transport and redistribute public space.
The coronavirus crisis “will put more pressure on going forward with these policies of creating a city that’s good to live in,” Dhondt said. “These objectives of clean air, of public space, parks, green areas in your neighborhood are really important to ensure that people … stay in a city.”
Three-quarters of those polled expressed support for “reallocating public space to walking, cycling and public transport.”
Politicians are reacting to the change in sentiment. In Berlin, one of the first cities to implement wider bike lanes at the expense of car traffic, officials are clear they want to turn the temporary yellow markings and mobile traffic warning signs that demarcate the routes into permanent bike paths by the end of the year.
Fight for space
“Europeans are demanding more bike lanes, safer public transport and fewer polluting cars,†said William Todts, executive director at T&E. “The challenge now is to make these ‘temporary’ sustainable measures permanent, replace polluting cars with shared, electric vehicles and get other cities to follow suit.”
Cleaner cities have health impacts. Air pollution is associated with higher coronavirus fatality rates, while the European Environment Agency estimates smog caused some 400,000 premature deaths in 2016 and there are even concerns about noise pollution from traffic.
“Now the invisible killer is visible: air pollution made us sick, worsened the pandemic and hit the most deprived the hardest,†said Sascha Marschang, acting secretary-general of the European Public Health Alliance.
But there are national differences.
While an average of 64 percent of respondents agreed that they had experienced clean air and said they “don’t want to go back to the air pollution levels” from before the pandemic, only 52 percent of German respondents were in favor.
While car-crazy Germany has had its own long-running debates over vehicular pollution, Jens Müller, clean air manager at T&E, said: “The fact that support for new policies is somewhat less strong than in other countries may also be due to fact that the effects of the pandemic have been better contained there.”
In hard-hit Italy and Spain, in contrast, over three-quarters of those surveyed said that zero-emissions zones should be put in place to slash air pollution and keep dirty cars out of cities.
But with 82 percent of Spaniards expressing support for these, MartÃnez-Almeida may now have to rethink the plan.
The data also suggests lukewarm enthusiasm for public transport, something that’s more troubling for environmental advocates who have been pushing for decades to get people out of cars and into subways and buses. Some 39 percent of Germans say they will not use public transport “due to the risk of contagion of the coronavirus.”
However, just over half of Spaniards say they would return to mass transit if “sufficient hygiene measures are taken to prevent contagion,” for example mandatory masks and reduced capacity, an opinion shared by a large number of Italian and Brussels-based respondents.
The survey was conducted in Brussels, Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, Milan, Paris, Marseille, Lille, Lyon, Toulouse, Nice, Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt, Munich, Greater London, Greater Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Glasgow.
This article is part of POLITICO’s premium policy service: Pro Mobility. From the digitization of the automotive sector to aviation policy, logistics and more, our specialized journalists keep you on top of the topics driving the Mobility policy agenda. Email pro@politico.eu for a complimentary trial.
Paris Fashion Week closed in March with a spectacle held by Louis Vuitton in a shadowy courtyard of the closed Louvre museum. Though no one knew it at the time, the event may have been the last traditional catwalk show of 2020. Shortly afterward, the spread of the coronavirus put an end to physical gatherings, including the runway circus more commonly known as fashion week.
In its stead — for now anyway — comes a whole new digital experience. This week, London will up the ante on the industry experiment as the city becomes the first of the four fashion capitals to take its runway shows online.
Previously called London Fashion Week Men’s, the shows, held in June, were a weekend roundup of British men’s wear that acted as a curtain raiser for the bigger, beefier men’s wear lineups shown later elsewhere in Europe.
Now London Fashion Week has dropped the “men’s†and will be a digital platform catering to all genders. It will roll out from June 12 to June 14 and showcase new designs, virtual showrooms, short films, podcasts and playlists, all from a new home (londonfashionweek.co.uk) and new hashtag (#LFWreset).
The “reset†part of the hashtag is actually what it’s all about.
“Canceling London Fashion Week was never an option,†said Caroline Rush, the British Fashion Council chief executive. “The big question was around what sort of format it would take in lockdown.â€
The answer is a Netflix-style home page with three category streams. There is an official schedule of roughly 20 brands that would normally show in London, like Chalayan, Marques Almeida and Nicholas Daley, unveiling new or existing product lines on the site at specific time slots alongside links to look books, digital showrooms and e-commerce sites. There is also an exploration portal where brands, schools, retailers and cultural institutions can display creative content, like 3-D films and poetry readings.
And finally there is footage produced by the British Fashion Council, including interviews and video diaries from designers like Roksanda and Liam Hodges.
“This is about keeping fashion week going culturally at a time when it can’t take place physically,†Ms. Rush said. “Designers can tell a story and build their brand on this platform in whatever way they choose.â€
Not every brand has embraced the new format. Ms. Rush noted that when the fashion council made the decision to produce the digital event, it didn’t know whether many designers would be able to produce new collections in the current climate.
The official lineup of participants was published on June 5. Few established names from the London women’s wear scene, like Burberry, Victoria Beckham and Erdem were on it.
Preen and Marques Almeida had signed on, but most brands had opted to wait to show in September. Others offered up what may be termed collection-adjacent productions.
Nicholas Daley, for example, a London-based men’s wear designer who was a finalist for the LVMH Prize this year until the competition was canceled in April, decided to produce a playlist rather than a full new collection.
Known for his colorful explorations of multiculturalism within British identity, Mr. Daley has built his brand on manufacturing via local craftspeople and infusing music into his fashion week presentations. He will also appear on the schedule with a short film on his AW20 collection, with behind-the-scenes footage from his January runway show.
“I am genuinely grateful that this fashion week platform exists and think it was the right thing to do to make sure it was there for those who wanted it,†said Mr. Daley, who received a grant from the BFC Foundation Covid Crisis Fund, an initiative started in March to make 1 million pounds in emergency assistance available for designer businesses affected by the pandemic.
Mr. Daley’s musical playlist will reflect his inspirations for his spring-summer 2021 collection, and be accompanied by sketches and snapshots of fabrics — “an interactive mood board†was how he described it.
“It wasn’t feasible for me to complete a collection with so much of my time being taken up by keeping the business afloat,†he said. “But I wanted to do this. Contributing is better than stagnating.â€
Rosh Mahtani, the founder of Alighieri jewelry, will uploadproduct and contact information to the platform but will not be showing anything new. At the last London Fashion Week, in February, Princess Anne presented Ms. Mahtani with the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design.
But Alighieri’s revenue from wholesale sales was cut in half during the shutdown (although e-commerce sales went up), the company said, and Ms. Mahtani had to desert her studio for months with only a few hours notice; several of her employees got sick.
“I’ve found it really hard during lockdown,†she said. “I just felt insecure and quite confused. I wished I could make ventilators not jewelry.â€
Although Ms. Mahtani added that she liked the fact that this London Fashion Week would be open to everyone and that customers can join as well as press and buyers, ultimately, “I want to take the time to do something amazing and relevant in September,†she said.
London is not the first city to move its fashion week online since the outbreak began; Shanghai and Moscow went digital for their fashion weeks in late March and April. But it is something of a test case for what will follow: digital offerings from Paris (couture and men’s wear) from July 6 to July 13, and Milan from July 14 to July 17.
If these digital fashion weeks attract millions of viewers far beyond the traditional attendees and give designers a new creative outlet, they are sure to add momentum to existing questions about the long-term viability of the old runway model.
In May, two groups of designers and brands published memos that called for, among other things, an overhaul of the fashion calendar so that collections would be displayed in a more seasonally, and audience-appropriate, way.
“The current situation is leading us all to reflect more poignantly on the society we live in and how we want to live our lives and build businesses when we get through this,†Ms. Rush said. She added that the new London Fashion Week platform would be here to stay, even when physical shows were feasible again.
“Right now we are trying to build something that fits our needs today,†she said. “But we are also investing in a global showcase for the future.â€
In Texas and North Carolina, there are currently more COVID-19 patients hospitalized than there were a month ago. With half a million tests performed per day, the country is the world champion in screening per capita. According to an average of 11 epidemiological models conducted by researchers at the University of Massachusetts, the number of COVID-19 deaths in the US is expected to approach 130,000 by July 4, Independence Day.
The coronavirus pandemic advanced steadily Wednesday through Latin America, where the death toll passed the grim milestone of 70,000 fatalities even as Europe planned to reopen its external borders to foreigners in July.
The Americas — North and South — remained the epicenter of the global health crisis, accounting for almost half the 412,926 deaths and 7.3 million infections worldwide, based on an AFP tally of figures released by national health ministries by 1900 GMT.
Brazil accounts for almost 40,000 — or more than half — of Latin America’s total deaths, registering 1,274 fatalities in the last 24 hours. Even as the virus continued to cut a swath through the country, economic capital Sao Paulo began reopening shops on Wednesday as part of a gradual resumption of activity.
Shopping malls were set to reopen in a slew of cities on Thursday, the day before Brazilians celebrate Valentine’s Day. Mexico, with nearly 15,000 COVID-19 deaths, and Peru, with almost 6,000 deaths from 208,000 cases, are also battling a deep surge.
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