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, 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 city’s leader...

(AP) UNITED NATIONS – Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister and longtime U.N. diplomat known as a strong-willed, independent broker, has agreed to replace former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan as peace envoy to Syria, the United Nations announced Friday. Brahimi, who served as a U.N. envoy in Afghanistan and Iraq, formally accepted the post and will resume efforts for a diplomatic solution to Syria’s crisis, said Eduardo del Buey, deputy spokesman for Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. “The violence and the suffering in Syria must come to an end,” del Buey said. “The Secretary-General appreciates Mr. Brahimi’s willingness to bring his considerable talents and experience to this crucial task for which he will need, and rightly expects, the strong, clear and unified support of the international community, including the Security Council.” Annan announced earlier this month that he would resign on Aug. 31 as joint U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria, after failing to broker a cease-fire as the country descended into civil war. The U.N. says at least 18,000 people have been killed since March 2011. Brahimi, 78, who emerged last week as the leading candidate to replace Annan, brings a long record of working in the Arab and Islamic world. He served as Algeria’s foreign minister from 1991-93 and joined the United Nations in 1994, 서귀포출장만남 where he served in a variety of high-profile posts until he retired in...

(AP) UNITED NATIONS – Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister and longtime U.N. diplomat known as a strong-willed, independent broker, has agreed to replace former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan as peace envoy to Syria, the United Nations announced Friday. Brahimi, who served as a U.N. envoy in Afghanistan and Iraq, formally accepted the post and will resume efforts for a diplomatic solution to Syria’s crisis, said Eduardo del Buey, deputy spokesman for Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. “The violence and the suffering in Syria must come to an end,” del Buey said. “The Secretary-General appreciates Mr. Brahimi’s willingness to bring his considerable talents and experience to this crucial task for which he will need, and rightly expects, the strong, clear and unified support of the international community, including the Security Council.” Annan announced earlier this month that he would resign on Aug. 31 as joint U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria, after failing to broker a cease-fire as the country descended into civil war. The U.N. says at least 18,000 people have been killed since March 2011. Brahimi, 78, who emerged last week as the leading candidate to replace Annan, brings a long record of working in the Arab and Islamic world. He served as Algeria’s foreign minister from 1991-93 and joined the United Nations in 1994, 서귀포출장만남 where he served in a variety of high-profile posts until he retired in...