A student at a Hong Kong university who fell during protests earlier this week died Friday, the first student death in months of anti-government demonstrations in the Chinese-ruled city that is likely to be a trigger for fresh unrest.

Chow Tsz-lok, 22, an undergraduate student at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, died of injuries sustained early Monday. The circumstances of how he was injured were unclear, but authorities said he was believed to have fallen from the third to the second floor in a parking garage when police dispersed crowds in a district east of the Kowloon Peninsula.

Chow’s death is expected to spark fresh protests and fuel anger and resentment against the police, who are already under pressure amid accusations of excessive force as the city grapples with its worst political crisis in decades.

Demonstrators had thronged the hospital this week to pray for Chow, leaving flowers and hundreds of get-well messages on walls and notice boards inside the building. Students also staged rallies at universities across the former British colony.

“Wake up soon. Remember we need to meet under the LegCo,” said one message, referring to the territory’s Legislative Council, one of the targets of the protest rallies. “There are still lots of things for you to experience in your life.”

Another read: “Please add oil and stay well,” a slogan meaning “keep your strength up” that has become a rallying cry of the protest movement.

Leading the protests

Students and young people have been at the forefront of the hundreds of thousands who have taken to the streets since June to press for greater democracy, among other demands, and rally against perceived Chinese meddling in the Asian financial hub.

The protests, ignited by a now-scrapped extradition bill for people to be sent to mainland China for trial, have evolved into wider calls for democracy, posing one of the biggest challenges for Chinese President Xi Jinping since he took charge in 2012.

Protesters have thrown petrol bombs and vandalized banks, stores and metro stations, while police have fired rubber bullets, tear gas, water cannon and, in some cases, live ammunition in scenes of chaos.

In June, Marco Leung, 35, fell to his death from construction scaffolding after unfurling banners against the extradition bill. Several young people who have taken their own lives in recent months have been linked to the protests.

Graduation day

Chow, an active netball and basketball player according to his university peers, had been studying a two-year undergraduate degree in computer science.

Chow’s death came on graduation day for many students at his university, located in the city’s Clear Water Bay district.

Hundreds of students, some in their black graduation gowns and many wearing now banned face masks, held a silent gathering in the main piazza of the campus after receiving their degrees. Some were in tears.

They later moved to a stage where the graduation ceremonies had been held. Chanting “Stand with Hong Kong” and “Five demands and not one less,” they spray painted Chow’s name and pinned photos and signs of him on nearby walls.

“I can’t put a smile on my face thinking about what has happened,” said Chen, a female graduate in biochemistry, who was wearing a formal gown and holding bouquets of flowers.

A memorial at the carpark where Chow fell and a vigil on campus are planned by students for Friday night.

Hong Kong’s government said in a statement that it expressed “great sorrow and regret” and that the crime unit was conducting a “comprehensive investigation” into Chow’s death.

Further rallies

At a separate event, around 1,000 people rallied in the city’s main financial district to protest against alleged police brutality and actions. Many held white flowers in memory of Chow.

“I am very sad over Chow’s death. If we don’t come out now, more people might need to sacrifice (themselves) in the future,” said Peggy, an 18-year-old university student at the University of Hong Kong.

High school pupils are also planning a rally in the eastern district of Kwun Tong, they said in advertisements before Chow’s death.

Protests scheduled over the weekend include “Shopping Sunday” centered on prominent shopping malls, some of which have previously descended into chaos as riot police stormed areas crowded with families and children.

Last weekend, anti-government protesters crowded a shopping mall in running clashes with police that saw a man slash people with a knife and bite off part of the ear of a local politician.

Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula, allowing it colonial freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland, including an independent judiciary and the right to protest.

China denies interfering in Hong Kong and has blamed Western countries for stirring up trouble.

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From: MeNeedIt

U.S.-Chinese trade contracted again in October, despite optimism about possible progress in talks aimed at ending a tariff war that threatens global economic growth.

Chinese imports of U.S. goods fell 14.3% from a year earlier to $9.4 billion, customs data showed Friday. Exports to the United States sank 16.2% to $35.8 billion.

President Donald Trump announced a tentative deal Oct. 12 and suspended a planned tariff hike on Chinese imports. But details have yet to be agreed on and earlier penalties stayed in place. That is depressing trade in goods from soybeans to medical equipment.

Beijing announced Thursday the two sides agreed to a gradual reduction in punitive tariffs if talks on the “Phase 1” deal make progress. However, there has been no sign of progress on major disputes about China’s trade surplus and technology ambitions.

Optimism about the talks “could improve the climate for exports in the coming months by improving global sentiment and trade. But we remain cautious,” said Louis Kuijs of Oxford Economics in a report.

“It is unlikely that the bulk of existing tariffs will be removed soon,” Kuijs said. He said a “substantial gap” in perceptions about what each side is gaining means “there is a substantial risk of re-escalation of tensions in 2020.”

China’s global exports declined 0.9% to $212.9 billion, a slight improvement over September’s 3% contraction. Imports tumbled 6.4% to $170.1 billion, adding to signs Chinese demand also is cooling.

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From: MeNeedIt

A magnitude 5.9 earthquake struck northwestern Iran early Friday, killing at least five people and injuring more than 300 others, officials said.

The temblor struck Tark county in Iran’s Eastern Azerbaijan province at 2:17 a.m., Iran’s seismological center said. The area is about 400 kilometers (250 miles) northwest of Iran’s capital, Tehran.

More than 40 aftershocks rattled the rural region nestled in the Alborz Mountains, and residents rushed out of their homes in fear. The quake injured at least 312 people, state television reported, though only 13 needed to be hospitalized. It described many of the injuries happening when people fled in panic.

The head of Iran’s emergency medical services, Pirhossein Koulivand, gave the casualty figures to state television. There were no immediate video or images broadcast from the area.

Rescuers have been dispatched to the region, officials said. State TV reported the earthquake destroyed 30 homes at its epicenter.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake’s epicenter was at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). Shallow earthquakes tend to cause more damage.

Iran sits on major seismic faults and experiences one earthquake a day on average. In 2003, a magnitude 6.6 earthquake flattened the historic city of Bam, killing 26,000 people.

A magnitude 7 earthquake that struck western Iran in 2017 killed more than 600 people and injured more than 9,000.

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From: MeNeedIt

Studies show when people pet an animal, their blood pressure goes down along with stress and anxiety. That’s why therapy dogs are increasingly found in schools, counseling centers and even in hospitals. VOA’s Carol Pearson reports on two hospitals that use therapy dogs to help patients on their medical journey.
 

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From: MeNeedIt

When billboards in Chinese start appearing, along with Korean and Japanese grocery stores and restaurants that span tastes from almost all of Asia, they are signs that you have entered California’s San Gabriel Valley.

For some people, it is a bedroom community of Los Angeles. For others, the Asian enclave is a home away from home.

Known to the locals as the “SGV,” San Gabriel Valley spans 36 kilometers east of downtown Los Angeles, with close to half a million Asians living there. Nine cities in the area are majority-Asian.

They include the city of Walnut, where Mike Chou’s family settled in 1989 when they immigrated from Taiwan. Walnut already had an established Chinese community.

“My parents, they didn’t speak English at the time, so it’s made it easier for them to kind of get around,” said Chou, who was 5 when his family arrived in the United States. “It’s so close to all the shopping. It’s so close to the (Chinese) grocery stores. It made fitting in there a lot easier.”

Chinese arrived in 1970s

According to the 2019 San Gabriel Valley Economic Forecast and Regional Overview Report, the SGV has a large ethnic Chinese population that started in the 1970s, with a flood of immigrants from Taiwan.

Chou is now a real estate agent with an 80% Asian clientele — half of them Chinese. Speaking fluent Mandarin and English, Chou has been so successful in real estate that he now leads a multilingual team of agents, including Roxane Sheng, who immigrated to the United States from China in 2005 for graduate school and stayed.

“Most of my clients are Mandarin-speaking Chinese,” Sheng said. “But they’re either living here and work here, or study here. Or they come to United States just to reinvest, to buy investment property. But they still go back to China and live there.”

In the past 10 to 15 years, Chou said people from mainland China have become the new immigrants to the SGV.

WATCH: California’s San Gabriel Valley a Mecca for Asian Americans

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Mild climate, lots of land

Sheng said the area’s mild climate and the relatively close distance to China make Southern California attractive to Chinese homebuyers. A common language is another attraction.

“Everyone speaks Mandarin.” Sheng said. “They can walk into a bank, post office, grocery stores — they can do everything without speaking English.”

For immigrants who largely lived in expensive high-rise apartments in China, the San Gabriel Valley offers an additional perk.

“We have plenty of single-family homes,” Sheng explained. “They just find a house. They get the land. They get the yard, and they have no neighbors up or down below them. And home prices are still cheaper if they move from Beijing or Shanghai.”

Beyond Chinese

Immigrants from other Southeast Asian countries also live in the region.

Annie Xu, another agent on Chou’s real estate team, was raised in the Philippines of ethnic Chinese parents. She speaks Tagalog, Hokkien, Mandarin and English.

“I’ve been doing real estate for three years, because I used to be a stay-at-home mom,” said Xu, who came to the U.S. with her husband. “And then when my youngest turned 2, I decided that I want to do something. Real estate is a business that you don’t need a lot of startup costs.”

As a real estate agent, she has worked with immigrants from China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia.

One of her clients is Shabana Khan, a half-Pakistani Indian immigrant seeking a house with a yard. Khan moved to the San Gabriel Valley from New York.

“New York has the vibe of the energy and stuff, but you can get it here, too,” Khan said. “But as soon as you have kids, I think California is the best place to settle down. San Gabriel Valley is amazing. You have so many different cultures within Asia.”

Many immigrants, some undocumented

South Asians are among the fastest-growing Asian American groups in the SGV, according to a 2018 report by the civil rights group Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles.

Using numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, Advancing Justice also found that more than 67% of Asian Americans in the SGV are immigrants, including an estimated 58,000 people who are undocumented. Close to a third in the region are low income, according to the report.

“Some of them just immigrated here, and they haven’t found a stable job. Or their English is not good enough that they have to compromise for a job that’s not ideal for them,” Sheng said.

Regardless of socioeconomic status, the report found that San Gabriel Valley’s Asian population continues to grow.

“You have a lot of restaurants and grocery stores that are in Chinese. And some of the workers, they only speak Chinese, so they don’t speak English. It makes it easy if you’re an immigrant to come here and just kind of feel very much at home,” Chou said.

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From: MeNeedIt

U.S. Democrats are celebrating election victories in the states of Virginia and Kentucky that could point to trouble for Republican President Donald Trump and his bid for re-election next year. 

Thanks to support from suburban voters, Democrats took control of both chambers of the state legislature in Virginia, a boon to the state’s Democratic Governor Ralph Northam.

“Because I am here to officially declare today, November the 5th, 2019, that Virginia is officially blue (Democratic). Congratulations!” Northam told the crowd on election night.

Kentucky race

Democrat Andy Beshear declared victory in the governor’s race in Kentucky over incumbent Republican Matt Bevin. Beshear said he won with a focus on local issues, perhaps a lesson for Democrats nationwide.

“My message would be that this race is not about who is in the White House.  It is about what is going on in your house,” he said.

Bevin, perhaps the least popular state governor in the country, has yet to concede but had hoped a last-minute push from Trump would carry him to victory.

“Kentucky is leading the way and we support the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump!” he said.

Mississippi

Trump had better luck in conservative Mississippi, where he rallied support for the winning gubernatorial candidate, Republican Tate Reeves.

“The national liberals believe that if they can come to Mississippi and win this election, that it will hurt Donald Trump in 2020,” Reeves said.

National Democrats were encouraged by the latest results including party Chairman Tom Perez.

“Yesterday’s victory was a victory for all Democrats and, I think, it was a victory for our Democratic values,” Perez said, ” and I cannot say enough about all the great partners in the ecosystem.”

WATCH: Jim Malone’s report

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Suburban voters

Republican support among suburban voters was down in this latest round of voting and polls also show the president is losing ground with independent voters as he looks ahead to next year’s election.

Trump remains intensely focused on his political base, says Susan Page of USA Today newspaper.

“Maybe the biggest surprise of the Trump presidency, and I say that recognizing there have been all kinds of surprises, is that he has not from the day of his inauguration tried to expand his support.  He has focused almost exclusively on fortifying the support of his core backers,” Page said.

Trump trails his main Democratic rivals in some new national polls but does better in surveys of key battleground states that he narrowly won in 2016.

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From: MeNeedIt

Several senior U.S. diplomats, including former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, are key witnesses in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Trump is accused of having withheld U.S. military aid to Ukraine until that country’s new president agreed to investigate one of Trump’s political opponents, former Vice President and current presidential candidate Joe Biden. As transcripts from diplomats’ closed-door Capitol Hill hearings are released, many are questioning why Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not shield or even support Yovanovitch from an administration campaign that led to her eventual ouster.

Then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Yovanovitch told lawmakers in sworn testimony she was shocked to get a phone call in the middle of the night, telling her to leave her post and take the next plane home.

WATCH: Cindy Saine’s video report

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She said she was told she had done nothing wrong but was in immediate diplomatic trouble, not from unrest in Ukraine, but from a potential tweet by President Trump undermining her.

A transcript of her deposition was released this week. She outlined her 33 years as a Foreign Service officer, serving under six presidents. She said U.S. diplomats frequently put themselves in harm’s way, believing that in return, their government will protect them if they come under attack. However, she said this basic understanding no longer holds true.

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Testimony: US Former Ambassador to Ukraine Advised to Tweet Support for Trump

Marie Yovanovitch said she was never disloyal to Trump in newly released testimony to lawmakers

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended her early recall on ABC News “This Week,” saying she is still a diplomat in good standing.

“Ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the president. When a president loses confidence in an ambassador, it is not in that ambassador, the State Department, or America’s interest for them to continue to stay in their post,” he said.

However, another career diplomat, former U.S. Ambassador Laura Kennedy, told VOA that Pompeo’s lack of support for Yovanovitch is extraordinary.

 “She is one of the most straight-arrow, dedicated professionals I know. And the fact that she didn’t even get a hearing or any direct communication with the secretary of state,” Kennedy said.

Yovanovitch testified that U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland had advised her to tweet out her support of Trump to save her job. Unthinkable, former Ambassador Kennedy said.

“We support, of course, the policy of the administration which we serve, we are obligated to support that policy publicly, that’s our job,” she said. ” But again, we, the career diplomats, as other public servants, they pledged their support to the Constitution, not to any particular person.”

Some former diplomats say confidence in Pompeo has taken a hit at the State Department, and they fear it has already hurt recruitment efforts.

WATCH: What does Quid Pro Quo Mean?

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From: MeNeedIt

A Chinese court Thursday jailed nine people, one with a suspended death sentence, for smuggling fentanyl into the United States, saying this was the first such case the two countries had worked together on.

China has faced U.S. criticism for not doing enough to prevent the flow of fentanyl into the United States, and the issue has become another irritant in ties already strained by a bruising trade war the two are now working to end.

The announcement of the successful action against the smugglers comes as the two countries are expected to sign an interim trade deal.

Fentanyl is a highly addictive synthetic opioid, 50 times more potent than heroin. It is often used to make counterfeit narcotics because of its relatively cheap price, and it has played an increasingly central role in an opioid crisis in the United States.

US-China teamwork

Yu Haibin, a senior official with China’s National Narcotics Control Commission, told reporters in the northern city of Xingtai where the court case was heard, that Chinese and U.S. law enforcement had worked together to break up the ring, which smuggled fentanyl and other opioids to the United States via courier.

One of the people sentenced by the court was given a suspended death sentence, which in practice is normally commuted to life in jail, and two got life sentences, Yu said.

More than 28,000 synthetic opioid-related overdose deaths, mostly from fentanyl-related substances, were recorded in the United States in 2017, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

U.S. drug enforcement has pointed to China as the source of fentanyl and its related supplies. China denies that most of the illicit fentanyl entering the United States originates in China, and says the United States must do more to reduce demand.

Issue of demand

Yu said that the issue of fentanyl was not something any one country could resolve.

“If illegal demand cannot be effectively reduced, it is very difficult to fundamentally tackle the fentanyl issue,” Yu said.

In August, U.S. President Donald Trump accused Chinese President Xi Jinping of not fulfilling a promise to crack down on fentanyl and its analogs.

Yu said China was willing to work with U.S. law enforcement authorities and all other international colleagues to fight narcotics and “continue to contribute China’s wisdom and power for the global management of narcotics.”

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From: MeNeedIt

The Berlin Wall’s demise 30 years ago brought an end to a divided  Berlin — and symbolized the eventual liberation of East Germany, and later the rest of Eastern Europe, from Soviet communist rule. Yet the wall’s anniversary comes as the politics of east and west continue to reverberate through German society.  In former communist East Germany, a democratic slogan from the revolution of 1989 rebounds – and resonates – among the present day nationalist far right. Charles Maynes reports from Thuringia in eastern Germany.

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From: MeNeedIt

A lone attacker on Wednesday stabbed three foreign tourists and their tour guide at a popular archaeological site in northern Jordan, the official Petra news agency reported.

The agency said the attacker also wounded a policeman before he was subdued and arrested. The wounded were taken to a hospital.
 
Amateur video showed a bloody scene next to the Jerash archaeological site, an ancient city whose ruins, including a Roman amphitheater and a columned road, are one of the country’s top tourist destinations.
 
In one video, a woman can be heard screaming in Spanish. “It’s a dagger, it’s a dagger, there is a knife. Please, help him now!”
 
One woman is seen lying on the ground, with much blood around her, as someone presses a towel to her back. Another man sits nearby with an apparent leg wound.
 
There were no further details, but the al-Ghad newspaper said the tourists were Mexican and suffered serious wounds.

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From: MeNeedIt

Suspected separatist insurgents stormed a security checkpoint in Thailand’s Muslim-majority south and killed at least 15 people, including a police officer and many village defense volunteers, security officials said on Wednesday.

It was the worst single attack in years in a region where a Muslim separatist insurgency has killed thousands.

The attackers, in the province of Yala, also used explosives and scattered nails on roads to delay pursuers late on Tuesday night.

“This is likely the work of the insurgents,” Colonel Pramote Prom-in, a regional security spokesman, told Reuters. “This is one of the biggest attack in recent times.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, however, as is common with such attacks.

A decade-old separatist insurgency in predominantly Buddhist Thailand’s largely ethnic Malay-Muslim provinces of Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat has killed nearly 7,000 people since 2004, says Deep South Watch, a group that monitors the violence.

The population of the provinces, which belonged to an independent Malay Muslim sultanate before Thailand annexed them in 1909, is 80 percent Muslim, while the rest of the country is overwhelmingly Buddhist.

Some rebel groups in the south have said they are fighting to establish an independent state.

Authorities arrested several suspects from the region in August over a series of small bombs detonated in Bangkok, the capital, although they have not directly blamed any insurgent group.

The main insurgency group, the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), denied responsibility for the Bangkok bombings, which wounded four people.

In August, the group told Reuters it had held a secret preliminary meeting with the government, but any step towards a peace process appeared to wither after the deputy prime minister rejected a key demand for the release of prisoners.

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From: MeNeedIt

Iranian media reported Wednesday that Iran has put a container containing 2,000 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride in its Fordow nuclear facility in order to begin injecting uranium gas into centrifuges.

The move is Iran’s latest step away from the agreement it signed in 2015 with a group of world powers to limit its nuclear activity in exchange for sanctions relief.

Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran was allowed to keep 1,044 centrifuges at Fordow in six cascades, four of which were to remain idle while the other two were allowed to spin without uranium.

“Iran’s 4th step in reducing its commitments under the JCPOA by injecting gas to 1044 centrifuges begins today,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani wrote on Twitter.  “Thanks to U.S. policy and its allies, Fordow will soon be back to full operation.”

Reuters quoted a spokesman from the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency saying its inspectors were on the ground in Iran and would report “any relevant activities” to its headquarters in Vienna.

The United States has criticized Iran’s increased nuclear activity, which followed last year’s U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal and a subsequent push by Iran for the remaining signatories to help Iran deal with U.S. sanctions.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said Tuesday that Iran’s actions are a “transparent attempt at nuclear extortion.”

“We have made clear that Iran’s expansion of uranium enrichment activities in defiance of key nuclear commitments is a big step in the wrong direction, and underscores the continuing challenge Iran poses to international peace and security,” Ortagus said in a statement.  “The JCPOA was a flawed deal because it did not permanently address our concerns with respect to Iran’s nuclear program and destabilizing conduct.”

Iran previously went past limits on the amount of enriched material it is allowed to stockpile and the level to which it is allowed to enrich uranium.

Rouhani said in a televised address Tuesday that all the steps Iran has taken so far are reversible if the other parties to the nuclear deal uphold their commitments to provide Iran with relief from economic sanctions.

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From: MeNeedIt