Tag Archives: 21st
Hong Kong Protests Flare for 21st Weekend Amid Global Unrest
(Bloomberg) — Hong Kong pro-democracy activists demonstrated for the 21st straight weekend as unrest inspired by the movement spread around the globe, from South America to Europe to the Middle East.Police fired tear gas on Sunday at protesters in Tsim Sha Tsui who blocked roads and disrupted traffic. That followed a night of clashes in the New Territories district of Yuen Long and a peaceful rally that drew thousands in Central. Some protesters set fire to shops in Jordan and hurled petrol bombs at a police station in Sham Shui Po, an area in Kowloon, while others threw smoke grenades at train exits.The Monday morning commute was normal, with nearly all train lines running as scheduled. Rail operator MTR Corp. announced that all subway lines would shut down at 11 p.m., except for the Airport Express.The rallies have become increasingly violent over the course of October, with two protesters shot and a police officer slashed. Efforts by Hong Kong’s authorities to quell the protests have largely failed, from banning marches and withdrawing the proposed extradition bill, to using an emergency law to outlaw face masks and pledging to make housing more affordable.The protests have been cited as inspiration for demonstrators around the world who’ve flooded the streets of major cities this month over economic inequality, regional grievances and alleged corruption.Spanish authorities are facing down separatist riots in Catalonia. In Chile, opposition to a 4-cent subway-fare hike has snowballed into the worst unrest there in decades, with at least 18 people killed so far. And in Lebanon, nationwide protests for more than a week, including hundreds of thousands demonstrating in Beirut, have pressured the country’s leader to shake up his cabinet. There have also been protests in Iraq.Last week, reports surfaced that China’s leaders were mulling a plan to replace Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam by early next year in a bid to calm public anger.Data due in Hong Kong this week will likely signal a technical recession is under way after a contraction in the second quarter. The benchmark Hang Seng Index tumbled 8.6% last quarter, the biggest loss among major global gauges tracked by Bloomberg.(Adds details on commute in third paragraph.)\–With assistance from Denise Wee.To contact the reporter on this story: Iain Marlow in Hong Kong at imarlow1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Gregory Turk, Ros KrasnyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
China's Missiles Could be a New 21st Century Kamikaze Weapon
Factbox: Impact on U.S. government widens on 21st day of shutdown
The White House and congressional Democrats remain divided over Republican President Donald Trump’s demand for money for a border wall, even as the president warned in Texas on Thursday that he may use emergency powers to bypass Congress and get billions of dollars to build it. The shutdown, which began on Dec. 22, is the 19th since the mid-1970s, although most have been brief. A 1995-1996 shutdown over a funding battle between Democratic President Bill Clinton and Republican House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich also lasted 21 days.
Major Idlib raid could spark worst catastrophe of 21st century: UN
The UN’s new humanitarian chief warned Monday that a large-scale military operation against the rebel-held Syrian province of Idlib could create “the worst humanitarian catastrophe” of this century. “There needs to be ways of dealing with this problem that don’t turn the next few months in Idlib into the worst humanitarian catastrophe with the biggest loss of life in the 21st century,” Mark Lowcock told reporters in Geneva. Since 2015, Idlib has been home to a complex array of anti-regime forces: secular rebels, Islamists, Syrian jihadists with ties to Al-Qaeda — and their foreign counterparts.
Syria: The Largest (and Most Important) Conflict of the 21st Century
The Syrian conflict, which appears that it will drag on for a decade, has been a source of regional instability and chaos. Justifying airstrikes against Syria, U.S. President Donald Trump harkened back one hundred years to World War I. “Following the horrors of World War I a century ago, civilized nations joined together to ban chemical warfare,” he said on April 14. The Syrian war conjures up many past conflicts with commonalities to saber-rattling of the Cold War and the fragmentation of the Thirty Years War.