A dozen cities in China's Henan province flooded as river banks burst - CNA

BEIJING: Heavy rain pounded the central Chinese province of Henan on Tuesday (Jul 20), bursting the banks of major rivers, flooding the streets of a dozen cities and shutting the world-famous Shaolin Temple.

Henan, a major logistics hub, has been hit by storms since the weekend in an unusually active rainy season. Train services were suspended, while many highways were closed and flights delayed or cancelled.

In the provincial capital of Zhengzhou, by the banks of the Yellow River, at least three people have died as it braces for further severe downpours. 

Unverified videos on social media showed passengers in a flooded underground train carriage in central Zhengzhou clinging to handles as the water surged up to shoulder height, with some standing on seats.

Water could be seen gushing through an empty underground platform in state broadcaster CCTV's footage.

The city's subway operator said in a statement Tuesday that it would close all stations on all its lines due to the bad weather.

Residents were also seen wading through knee-high water to cross submerged street intersections.

A resident wearing a rain cover stands on a flooded road in Zhengzhou, Henan province, China on Jul 20, 2021. (Photo: cnsphoto via Reuters)

At least one person died and two more were missing since the heavy rain started Monday, according to the state-run People's Daily, which reported that houses have collapsed.

Local media reported earlier that two people had been killed when a wall collapsed in another district of the city.

In Ruzhou, a city southwest of Zhengzhou, streets have been turned into torrents, sweeping away cars and other vehicles, footage on social media showed.

READ: Flights cancelled and schools closed as Beijing hit by storm

A rising Yi River also threatened to hit the Longmen Grottoes, a UNESCO World Heritage site featuring millennium-old Buddhist statues etched into limestone cliffs near the city of Luoyang.

Like the Longmen Grottoes, the Shaolin Temple in Dengfeng city, famous in the West for its martial arts, has been temporarily shut.

Also in Dengfeng, an aluminium alloy plant exploded on Tuesday as water from a river surged into the factory.

At least 31 large and medium-sized reservoirs in the province have exceeded their warning levels.

From Saturday to Tuesday, 3,535 weather stations in Henan saw rainfall exceed 50mm, of which 1,614 registered levels above 100mm and 151 above 250mm.

The highest was in Lushan city, which saw 498mm of rain, according to the provincial weather bureau.

READ: Thousands evacuated from floods in China's Sichuan, more rain forecast

"This is the heaviest rain since I was born, with so many familiar places flooded," said an Internet user in the inundated city of Gongyi on Chinese social media.

Rain is forecast to stop by Thursday.

Floods are common during China's rainy season, which causes annual chaos and washes away roads, crops and houses.

But the threat has worsened over the decades, due in part to widespread construction of dams and levees that have cut connections between the river and adjacent lakes and disrupt floodplains that had helped absorb the summer surge.

Earlier this month hundreds of flights were cancelled in the capital Beijing and other nearby cities with schools and tourist sites closed as torrential downpours and gale-force winds battered the region.

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2021-07-20 15:31:50Z
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Indonesia's COVID-19 cases have fallen, curbs to ease on Jul 26 if trend continues: President Jokowi - CNA

JAKARTA: Indonesian President Joko Widodo said on Tuesday (Jul 20) that the country’s COVID-19 cases have fallen and if the trend continues, the current restrictions will gradually be lifted from Jul 26.

Indonesia had imposed COVID-19 restrictions on Jul 3 for the island of Java and Bali, which include curbing travel and shutting malls. 

People’s movements are restricted according to the sectors they work in, and only employees in critical sectors such as energy and health are allowed to go back to the workplace.

After the measures were imposed, the COVID-19 caseload and bed occupancy rate have now dropped.

READ: Indonesians turn to healthy drinks and food as COVID-19 rages, but authorities warn of misinformation

READ: Fear, stress, relief: How CNA's Nivell Rayda tested positive for COVID-19 as cases spike across Indonesia

“We always monitor, understand the dynamics in the field and also hear the voices of communities affected by PPKM (community-level public activity restrictions enforcement).

“Therefore, if the trend of cases continues to decline, then on Jul 26, the government will lift it gradually,” the president said in a televised address.

Jokowi, as the president is popularly known, said that traditional markets that sell basic daily needs would be able to operate until 8pm with a maximum capacity of 50 per cent and under strict health protocols, while other traditional markets may be allowed to operate until 3pm. 

Street vendors, grocery stores, cell phone agents or outlets, barbershops, laundry shops, small automotive repair shops, hawkers and other similar small businesses can open until 9pm under strict health protocols. The details will be further regulated by the local governments, Jokowi said.

Each patron can visit for a maximum of 30 minutes, he added. 

READ: Indonesians celebrate Eid al-Adha festival under COVID-19 curbs

READ: Aerial images of expanding graves capture Indonesia's deadliest days

The president stressed that the government will continue to provide social assistance such as cash handouts, staple food and Internet quota for students. 

COVID-19 cases in Indonesia are currently among the highest in the world.

Infections have been around 50,000 daily in the past week. On Tuesday, authorities reported 38,325 new cases.

Indonesia has logged more than 2.9 million infections and 76,000 deaths. 

BOOKMARK THIS: Our comprehensive coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and its developments

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2021-07-20 14:23:02Z
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South Korea leaders apologise for navy ship COVID-19 outbreak amid vaccine furore - CNA

SEOUL: South Korea's prime minister and defence minister apologised as hundreds of COVID-19-infected sailors were flown to Seoul on Tuesday (Jul 20) after a navy destroyer patrolling the waters off Africa was found to be riddled with the coronavirus.

Almost 250 of the 301-strong unvaccinated crew aboard the destroyer Munmu the Great were infected, the country's biggest cluster of COVID-19 military cases, sparking a public furore at the government's failure to protect those serving abroad.

"I apologise for having failed to take better care of the health of our soldiers who devoted themselves to the country," Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum told an intra-agency COVID-19 meeting as he promised treatment and recovery support for the crew, which includes 12 in critical condition.

Defence Minister Suh Wook apologised for not immunising the crew before they departed for the Gulf of Aden in early February on an eight-month counter-piracy mission, and said he would examine anti-virus policies for all overseas military units.

The rare double apology underscored simmering anger in South Korea over the handling of the pandemic as a fourth wave of infections sweeps through the country with just 13 per cent of the 52 million population fully inoculated amid vaccine shortages.

The destroyer left South Korea just a couple of weeks before officials kicked off a national vaccination programme. Authorities decided that inoculating at sea would not be feasible due to limited emergency responses and cold storage requirements for some vaccines, the defence ministry said.

READ: South Korea military suffers worst COVID-19 outbreak aboard anti-piracy ship off Africa

But opposition lawmakers said the government should have sought help from other countries or replaced the crew with vaccinated personnel, and urged President Moon Jae-in to apologise and fire Suh.

"The government revealed its own incompetence by giving lame excuses such as transport issues, that they didn't have diplomatic power to secure cooperation from nearby countries," said Kim Ki-hyeon, floor leader of the main opposition People Power party.

Moon said he would accept criticism over the "insufficient, complacent" handling of the issue, and ordered improved measures to ensure the health and safety of troops and diplomats serving abroad.

Opposition lawmakers also blamed poor initial responses for aggravating the outbreak on board the destroyer, as a sailor who first reported symptoms on Jul 2 was only given cold medicine.

The military initially used less accurate antigen testing kits and only began using full-scale polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests when six members were confirmed to be infected on Jul 15, said Han Ki-ho, an opposition People Party lawmaker who sits on the parliamentary defence committee.

CREW COMES HOME

All 301 of the crew - members of the high profile and publicly popular counter-piracy Cheonghae Unit - were due to arrive in Seoul on Tuesday after the government carried out an emergency air evacuation.

The critically ill will be hospitalised and the others infected taken to treatment centres, officials said. The minority who tested negative will be retested and held in isolation at military facilities.

READ: South Korean youth fight 'click war' in hunt for COVID-19 vaccines

They were replaced on the destroyer by a 200-strong immunised crew who will steer the ship home over the next 50 days.

Some Korean news reports suggested the sailors contracted the virus from contaminated food brought onboard while the ship was docked at an unspecified port near the Gulf of Aden to purchase supplies from Jun 28 to Jul 1.

Lee Sang-won, an official at the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), said on Tuesday the likelihood of infection from eating or touching food was low. The KCDC would begin an investigation once the crew had arrived home, he said.

South Korea is battling its worst-ever COVID-19 wave, while struggling to turbocharge its vaccination campaign amid global supply shortages and shipment delays.

The country has largely successfully tackled previous COVID-19 waves, aided by a massive tracing and testing system. But only 31.7 per cent of its 52 million people have received at least one dose of a vaccine as of Monday, well below many other advanced nations.

The KDCA reported 1,278 new cases for Monday, taking the country's total to 180,481 infections, with 2,059 deaths.

BOOKMARK THIS: Our comprehensive coverage of the coronavirus outbreak and its developments

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2021-07-20 10:59:20Z
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Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam shrugs off scenes of residents leaving at airport, says city has ‘prosperous future’ ahead - Yahoo Singapore News

Hong Kong’s leader on Tuesday brushed off recent scenes at the airport suggesting an exodus of residents, adding that she would tell anyone considering leaving that the city would continue to prosper with Beijing’s support and the help of the national security law.

Asked to address the apparent wave of departures at her weekly press briefing, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said her government held no official position on the phenomenon.

“Every now and then in the history of Hong Kong, there are such emigration trends,” Lam said.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

“But if you really ask me to say something to those who are seeking to emigrate or have already emigrated, I would tell them Hong Kong has a prosperous future.”

Chief Executive Carrie Lam speaks to the press on Tuesday. Photo: Nora Tam

Lam pointed to the roles laid out for Hong Kong by Beijing under its Greater Bay Area plan – an initiative to integrate the financial hub, Macau and nine Guangdong cities into an economic and business powerhouse – as well as its 14th five-year plan, China’s new development blueprint.

She also cited the Beijing-imposed national security law and the central government’s recent move to overhaul Hong Kong’s electoral system to ensure only “patriots” ran the city.

“I think this in itself is already an assurance to their confidence,” she said.

“For those who feel a sense of belonging to Hong Kong and are willing to toil away here, this is the best time. But if they choose to leave, this is a personal decision.”

New BN(O) passport rule for members of Hong Kong’s powerful election body

Following the imposition of the security law last year, some concerned residents have left the city for good, with many heading to Britain, which recently established a new pathway to citizenship for locals with British National (Overseas) status.

In recent weeks, relatives and friends have gathered in the terminal of Hong Kong International Airport to see off those departing, with ground staff checking in lines of passengers loaded with suitcases for flights bound for Britain.

The scenes were particularly striking over the weekend, as departing residents attempted to beat the deadline for Britain’s Leave Outside the Rules scheme, which gives people six months to apply for the necessary BN(O) visa after arriving in the country. The arrangement expired on Monday, meaning those intending to leave now will have to acquire the visa in Hong Kong before they fly.

Hong Kong’s elderly face uncertain future, less support as children emigrate

Lam on Tuesday said the government would uphold Hong Kong residents’ right to enter and leave the city.

According to government figures, the city’s population decreased by 0.6 per cent at the end of 2020, with a net outflow – which means more people leaving than those arriving – of 49,900 Hong Kong residents.

As of May this year, more than 34,000 Hongkongers had applied for the BN(O) visa. The document allows applicants to stay in Britain for up to five years, with the right to work and study, and to apply for citizenship after six years.

Chung Kim-wah, deputy chief executive officer of Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute, which conducted polls to gauge public sentiment in the city, said Lam’s remarks showed she no longer cared about public perception.

“If people think what she touted was good … why were there so many people trying to leave before the rules scheme expired,” he said.

Separately, Lam also elaborated on why she would not uphold a previous campaign promise to extend certain provisions of the Prevention of Bribery Ordinance to cover her own office.

Sections 3 and 8 of the statute prevent corrupt conduct of ministers and civil servants, but exempt the chief executive.

“I honestly and boldly confess that I have learned in the last two or three years about the role, the very important role, of the chief executive, that he or she has dual accountabilities,” Lam said, referring to Hong Kong and Beijing.

No time for by-elections to fill vacated district council seats: Hong Kong leader

Having come to understand the constitutional arrangement “more fully”, she added, the chief executive must remain above the executive branch, legislature and judiciary.

While the chief executive was not above the general criminal law, she continued, the bribery offence in question “sort of deals with the integrity of the chief executive”.

As such, it would be against “the constitutional position” to subject the chief executive to a local bribery law applicable to other public officers, Lam said.

Lam also declined to answer questions asking her to compare the way her government dealt with three senior security officials found breaching social-distancing rules at a high-end dinner with Taiwan’s handling of a similar recent incident.

Why Hong Kong security trio’s mystery hotpot dinner is still on the boil

That case saw Taiwanese civil servant Chen Jheng-Wun tender his resignation on Sunday after being accused of attending a hotpot dinner that broke the island’s social-distancing rules.

Hong Kong Commissioner of Customs and Excise Hermes Tang Yi-hoi, Director of Immigration Au Ka-wang and Undersecretary for Security Sonny Au Chi-kwong were recently found to have done exactly that, and were issued standard fines.

Lam, however, declined to pursue further disciplinary action, previously telling the public to move on and to view the matter in “a more humane way”.

More from South China Morning Post:

This article Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam shrugs off scenes of residents leaving at airport, says city has ‘prosperous future’ ahead first appeared on South China Morning Post

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2021-07-20 06:02:33Z
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South Korea President Moon Jae-in drops plan to visit Japan amid uproar over sexual innuendo - The Straits Times

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has decided not to attend the upcoming Olympics in Japan, his office said on Monday (July 19), dashing hopes that the two countries could improve strained ties if their leaders were to hold their first bilateral summit on the sidelines of the Games.

The announcement came amid an uproar in South Korea over lewd comments by a Seoul-based senior Japanese diplomat, who last week described Mr Moon’s efforts to improve relations between the two countries as “masturbating”.

Mr Moon’s press secretary Park Soo-hyun said on Monday that the two countries had “meaningful discussion” on how to advance from historical issues and boost future-oriented cooperation, including holding a first summit between Mr Moon and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who took office last September.

Mr Park added that the two sides made “considerable progress, but it was not sufficient to be regarded as a summit result”.

“The decision was made in consideration of other circumstances too,” he added, without elaborating.

Another official from Mr Moon’s office said they would “continue efforts to have dialogue with Japan”, and that they hope there would be another chance for the two leaders to meet.

In response to Mr Moon’s decision not to visit Japan, Mr Suga told reporters he will “continue to communicate firmly with the South Korea side based on Japan’s consistent position”, in order to restore their relationship to a healthy one.

When asked if the Japanese diplomat’s lewd remark led to Mr Moon’s decision, Mr Suga said that he was not in a position to comment on Seoul’s decision-making rationale.

However, he acknowledged that “it was a very inappropriate statement for a diplomat, and I regret that the statement was made”.

Japan is planning to remove the diplomat, Kyodo News reported on Monday, citing a government source.

Ties between Seoul and Tokyo soured over historical issues such as wartime sex slaves and forced labour, before escalating into a 2019 trade spat that saw South Koreans boycotting Japanese brands.

Under pressure from the new United States administration under President Joe Biden, South Korea has been eagerly trying to engage Japan, but with little success, as Tokyo wants Seoul to come up with concrete action first to address the forced labour dispute.

A diplomatic tug-of-war ensued over President Moon’s potential visit to Tokyo. Mr Suga said Japan would accommodate Mr Moon if he were to visit Tokyo, but the South Korean leader wanted not only a courtesy call but a “meaningful and substantive outcome” from their first summit.

Experts lamented that Seoul and Tokyo are missing an opportunity for reconciliation and their ties are unlikely to improve during the rest of Mr Moon’s term, which is slated to end in May next year.

Dr Lee Seong-hyon, a fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Corean-American Studies said “it is easy to blame the fiasco on the ‘masturbating’ comment, but a deeper look reveals a more fundamental discord on the thorny bilateral issues surrounding forced labour and sex slave matters”.

“On the historical issues, if Moon wins, Suga loses. If Suga wins, then Moon loses,” Dr Lee told The Straits Times.

“So Suga cannot accept South Korean demands for making concessions on the wartime history issues. Knowing that, Moon seems to have decided to forgo his plan to attend an Olympics that will not give him any diplomatic trophy.”

Dr Lee added that Japan’s attitude towards South Korea has hardened because “Tokyo is confident that Washington values Tokyo’s fuller commitment to the US Indo-Pacific policy”, and this allows Japan to “deal with South Korea from a position of strength, more than before”.

“It’s very unfortunate that both Seoul and Tokyo cannot use the Olympics as an opportunity for reconciliation,” he said. “On the contrary, it makes their relationship drift further apart. Bilateral ties are likely to remain sterile.”

• Additional reporting by Walter Sim in Tokyo

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2021-07-19 08:34:57Z
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US and allies accuse China of global hacking spree - CNA

WASHINGTON: The United States and its allies accused China on Monday (Jul 19) of a global cyberespionage campaign, mustering an unusually broad coalition of countries to publicly call out Beijing for hacking.

The United States was joined by NATO, the European Union, Britain, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and Canada in condemning the spying, which US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said posed "a major threat to our economic and national security."

Simultaneously, the US Department of Justice charged four Chinese nationals - three security officials and one contract hacker - with targeting dozens of companies, universities and government agencies in the United States and abroad.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Chinese officials have previously said China is also a victim of hacking and opposes all forms of cyberattacks.

While a flurry of statements from Western powers represent a broad alliance, cyber experts said the lack of consequences for China beyond the U.S. indictment was conspicuous. Just a month ago, summit statements by G7 and NATO warned China and said it posed threats to the international order.

Adam Segal, a cybersecurity expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, called Monday's announcement a "successful effort to get friends and allies to attribute the action to Beijing, but not very useful without any concrete follow-up."

Some of Monday's statements even seemed to pull their punches. While Washington and its close allies such as the United Kingdom and Canada held the Chinese state directly responsible for the hacking, others were more circumspect.

NATO merely said that its members "acknowledge" the allegations being leveled against Beijing by the U.S., Canada, and the UK. The European Union said it was urging Chinese officials to rein in "malicious cyber activities undertaken from its territory" - a statement that left open the possibility that the Chinese government was itself innocent of directing the espionage.

The United States was much more specific, formally attributing intrusions such as the one that affected servers running Microsoft Exchange earlier this year to hackers affiliated with China's Ministry of State Security. Microsoft had already blamed China.

U.S. officials said the scope and scale of hacking attributed to China has surprised them, along with China's use of "criminal contract hackers."

"The PRC’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) has fostered an ecosystem of criminal contract hackers who carry out both state-sponsored activities and cybercrime for their own financial gain," Blinken said.

US security and intelligence agencies outlined more than 50 techniques and procedures that "China state-sponsored actors" use against US networks, a senior administration official said.

Washington in recent months has focused heavy attention on Russia in accusing Russian hackers of a string of ransomware attacks in the United States.

The senior administration official said US concerns about Chinese cyber activities have been raised with senior Chinese officials. "We're not ruling out further action to hold the PRC accountable," the official said.

The United States and China have already been at loggerheads over trade, China's military buildup, disputes about the South China Sea, a crackdown on democracy activists in Hong Kong and treatment of the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region.

Blinken cited the Justice Department indictments as an example of how the United States will impose consequences.

The defendants and officials in the Hainan State Security Department, a regional state security office, tried to hide the Chinese government's role in the information theft by using a front company, according to the indictment.

The campaign targeted trade secrets in industries including aviation, defense, education, government, health care, biopharmaceutical and maritime industries, the Justice Department said.

Victims were in Austria, Cambodia, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia, Norway, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

"These criminal charges once again highlight that China continues to use cyber-enabled attacks to steal what other countries make, in flagrant disregard of its bilateral and multilateral commitments," Deputy U.S. Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in the statement.

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2021-07-19 15:22:30Z
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S'pore to make regular oxygen shipments to Indonesia to fight Covid-19 surge - The Straits Times

SINGAPORE - Singapore has arranged for regular shipments of emergency oxygen supplies to Indonesia, under a programme to support its neighbouring country's fight against Covid-19.

The Oxygen Shuttle programme will see more than 500 tonnes of oxygen shipped to Indonesia till August, to supplement the urgent need at medical facilities there, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said in a statement on Monday (July 19).

This comes as Indonesia faces a surge in Covid-19 infections in recent weeks.

The country reported a record 1,338 new Covid-19 deaths on Monday, pushing its total fatalities to 74,920.

The number of new cases recorded on Monday was 34,257, bringing the overall infections to more than 2.91 million.

On Monday, four tanks containing 80 tonnes of liquid oxygen arrived at Tanjung Priok Port in Jakarta. The next shipment is scheduled in a week's time.

Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security Teo Chee Hean said the shipments under the programme will be done on a weekly basis over the next month. In a Facebook post on Monday, he said 80 tonnes of liquid oxygen can fill about 10,000 cylinders with oxygen gas. 

Mr Teo added that he has been in touch with Indonesia’s Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investments Luhut Pandjaitan, who is overseeing the nation’s Covid-19 response. 

“We will do our utmost to ride out this tough time together with Indonesia,” he noted.

The programme is coordinated by the MFA, and supported by the Ministry of Defence and the Changi Regional Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Coordination Centre.

In addition, the Singapore Government sent oxygen cylinders and concentrators, ventilators and other medical supplies and equipment to Indonesia on July 9 and 11.

MFA said: "These efforts, as well as the contributions organised by non-government and private entities, attest to the close relationship, solidarity and strong mutual support between Singapore and Indonesia in overcoming the shared challenges of Covid-19."

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2021-07-19 11:30:10Z
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