Mes: agosto 2019

(AP) HONG KONG – The Hong Kong government calls it national education. But parents, teachers and pupils in the former British colony call it “brainwashing” and fear it’s a ploy by Beijing authorities to indoctrinate the city’s young into unquestioning support of China’s Communist Party. Plans by the government to introduce the classes have triggered mass protests and hunger strikes, the latest sign of the widening gulf between Beijing and the freewheeling semi-independent southern Chinese financial center, 15 years after Britain handed it back to China. The dispute deepened as classes started this week, with activists including a handful of hunger-strikers camping out in front of Hong Kong government headquarters in a bid to force officials to drop plans to introduce the subject in primary and secondary schools. They’ve been joined each evening by thousands of protesters wearing black. A local TV station fanned the flames when it called the activists a “destructive faction” controlled by London and Washington. The rising tensions forced the city’s Beijing-backed leader, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, 현금 포커 to call off his trip to a high-profile Asia-Pacific summit this weekend in Vladivostok, Russia. The protesters are afraid of what they see as underhanded attempts to indoctrinate the city’s next generation with Beijing-style nationalist education classes used in schools all over China to inculcate support for the Communist government. Many believe Leung, who became the...

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday warned Syria against launching an attack on the country’s last rebel stronghold with the help of Russia and Iran, saying the offensive could trigger a “human tragedy.” Syrian forces are massing around the northwestern province of Idlib, in preparation for the assault. “President Bashar al-Assad of Syria must not recklessly attack Idlib Province. The Russians and Iranians would be making a grave humanitarian mistake to take part in this potential human tragedy,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “Hundreds of thousands of people could be killed. Don’t let that happen!” Moscow shirked the warning, as Russian warplanes carried out a number of airstrikes targeting rebels positions in Idlib province. London-based war monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), said it was the first time Russian strikes had targeted the northwestern province in about three weeks, but they were limited in scope; reportedly hitting rebel positions in uninhabited areas and causing unclear damage. There was no indication as of Tuesday that it was the beginning of a wider offensive in Idlib. More in Syria crisis A spokesman for the Kremlin in Moscow dismissed Mr. Trump’s warning about the looming offensive, saying it failed to address the root problem of “a nest of terrorists” in the province, where an estimated 3 million civilians also remain. Russia, like the Syrian government, refers to all opposition...

(AP) BEIJING – A series of earthquakes collapsed houses and triggered landslides Friday in a remote mountainous part of southwestern China where damage was preventing rescues and communications were disrupted. At least 64 deaths have been reported. The quakes started with a 5.6-magnitude shock before 11:30 a.m. along the borders of Guizhou and Yunnan provinces, and another equally big quake struck shortly after noon followed by more than 60 aftershocks, Chinese and U.S. government seismologists said. Though of moderate strength, the quakes were shallow, which often causes more damage. Hardest hit was Yiliang County, where all but one of the deaths occurred, according to the Yunnan provincial government’s official website. Another 715 people in the county were injured, the sites said. Yiliang county’s high population density, weak building construction, and propensity for landslides were blamed for the relatively high death toll. China Central Television showed roads littered with rocks and boulders, and pillars of dust rising over hillcrests — signs of landslides. Footage showed a couple hundred people crowding into what looked like a school athletic field in Yiliang’s county seat, a sizeable city spread along a river in a valley bottom. With some roads impassable, https://www.ljhmn8o3.online rescuers had yet to reach some outlying villages and towns, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Though quakes in the area occur frequently, buildings in rural areas and China’s fast-growing smaller cities...