Samoa declared a state of emergency this weekend, closing all schools and cracking down on public gatherings, after several deaths linked to a measles outbreak that has spread across the Pacific islands.

The island state of about 200,000, south of the equator and half way between Hawaii and New Zealand, declared a measles epidemic late in October after the first deaths were reported.

Since then, at least six deaths, mostly infants younger than 2, have been linked to the outbreak, the health ministry said in a statement late last week. Of the 716 suspected cases of measles, 40% required hospitalization.

Worst yet to come

As of the weekend, vaccination “for members of the public who have not yet received a vaccination injection, is now a mandatory legal requirement,” the government said in a statement. Only about two-thirds of the population has been immunized, according to the health ministry.

“The way it is going now and the poor (immunization) coverage, we are anticipating the worst to come,” Samoa’s Director General of Health Leausa Take Naseri was cited in the health ministry statement as saying.

He added that the children who died had not been vaccinated.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said Friday his country would send 3,000 doses of vaccine and 12 nurses to Samoa to assist with the outbreak.

“Measles is highly contagious, and the outbreak has taken lives in Samoa,” Peters said in a statement. “It is in everybody’s interests that we work together to stop its spread.”

Measles on the rise

Measles cases are rising globally, including in wealthy nations such as the United States and Germany, where some parents shun immunization mostly for philosophical or religious reasons, or concerns, debunked by medical science, that such vaccines could cause autism.

In Tonga, about 900km (559.23 miles) from Samoa, the ministry of health last week said an outbreak of measles in the country occurred following the return of a squad of Tongan rugby players from New Zealand.

Since then, 251 cases of confirmed or suspected measles have been identified, the ministry said in the statement.

American Samoa, a U.S. territory neighboring Samoa, declared a public health emergency Thursday following the measles outbreak in Samoa and Tonga, according to New Zealand media.

According to Samoa’s Naseri about 90% of population in Tonga and American Samoa has been immunized and neither of these countries have reported any measles-related deaths.

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A court in Pakistan has allowed ailing former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to travel abroad for four weeks for medical treatment.

Sharif, 69, was given a seven-year jail term by an anti-graft court in 2018 for corruption and money laundering. But doctors say his health has deteriorated because he is suffering from multiple medical complications.

The high court in the city of Lahore ordered the government on Saturday to remove Sharif’s name from a so-called “exit control list” or ECL that bars people or convicts from leaving the country.

The ruling gives Sharif four weeks to seek medical treatment abroad and the duration can be extended further on doctor recommendations.

The former prime minister was released on bail last month on medical grounds but his lawyers argued his ailment required him to consult his regular doctors based in London. Sharif’s travel plans were not known.

The Pakistani government had asked Sharif to deposit financial guaranties in the form of an “indemnity bond” to ensure he comes back home after receiving treatment and serve his prison term in addition to facing several other ongoing cases of corruption against him.

But Sharif’s opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N party refused to submit the indemnity bond and instead approached the court against the government’s one-time conditional permission to travel abroad and succeeded in getting the judicial relief for its leader.

The government of Prime Minister Imran Khan had maintained it wanted assurances from Sharif because five members of his family, including two sons, previously left Pakistan and have not returned to appear in courts in corruption cases against them.  The Sharif family rejects the corruption charges as politically motivated.

Sharif was forced by the Supreme Court in 2017 to step down from the office of the prime minister for not declaring his overseas assets in his election nomination papers.

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Iranian protesters are on the streets in dozens of towns and cities across the country as anger spreads following a government decision to double the price of fuel. The protests appear to have gained momentum after the top Shi’ite cleric in neighboring Iraq, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, sided with protesters in a Friday prayer sermon delivered by one of his followers.

Dozens of protesters in the capital of Iran’s Azerbaijan province, Tabriz, clashed with government security forces Saturday, pelting them with stones on a major highway through the city. Amateur video showed traffic stopped as police charged protesters in an attempt to chase them off the roadway.

Protesters also blocked traffic using cars and buses in the capital, Tehran, amid an unseasonal snow storm. Other video showed demonstrators chanting slogans in front of a pro-government militia office in Tehran.

Protests were reported Saturday in dozens of Iranian towns and cities for the second straight day, following a government decision to raise fuel prices. A number of people reportedly were killed or wounded, but reports were conflicting over the exact casualty count. Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV reported that 9 protesters were killed Saturday.

Amateur video showed protesters in the region of Karaj chasing police after officers shot and reportedly killed two unarmed demonstrators. VOA could not confirm the deaths.

Arab media also reported that Iran closed a major border crossing with neighboring Iraq as demonstrations there continued unabated. Iraq’s top Shi’ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, came out in support of protesters against government corruption during a Friday prayer sermon delivered by one of his followers.

Former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani Sadr told VOA there are many Iranians who follow Ayatollah Sistani and that his message of support for the Iraqi people undoubtedly is reverberating in Iran as well.

Bani Sadr said that Ayatollah Sistani came out in favor of the people as the source of legitimacy of the government. That is a direct rebuke against Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the principle of the Vilayet-al-Faqih. which requires that the country be ruled by an enlightened religious figure.

Bani Sadr also stressed that the economic situation in Iran is “extremely serious,” and that the country has a massive budget deficit of more than $5 billion. The decision to raise fuel prices, he insisted, was made directly by Ayatollah Khamenei, and not the Iranian parliament, inciting anger against him.

Amateur video showed protesters setting fire to billboards showing the picture of Ayatollah Khamenei in the town of Islamshahr, near the capital, Tehran.

Amateur video also showed protesters setting fire to a branch of the Iranian central bank in the town of Behbahan. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Protesters also chanted against Iran’s military involvement in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestinian territories in several towns and cities. Protesters in Islamshahr chanted “no money, no gas, screw Palestine.”
 

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A senior White House budget official arrived on Capitol Hill Saturday to testify behind closed doors before congressional investigators who are conducting an impeachment inquiry against U.S. President Donald Trump.

Mark Sandy, a longtime career official with the Office of Management and Budget, is the first agency employee to be deposed in the inquiry after three employees appointed by Trump defied congressional subpoenas to testify. It remains unclear if a subpoena had been issued to Sandy.

Sandy could provide valuable information about the U.S. delay of nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine last summer, allegedly in exchange for the newly-elected Ukrainian president to launch investigations into 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden and his son at Trump’s request. Investigators are also exploring debunked claims promoted by Trump and allies that Ukraine, and not Russia, interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Sandy was among the career employees who questioned the holdup, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

His signature is on at least one document that prevented the provision of the aid to Ukraine, according to copies of documents investigators discussed during an earlier deposition. A transcript of the discussion has been publicly disclosed.

Sandy appears before the House foreign affairs, intelligence, and oversight and reform committees.

In a statement, the three Democratic-led committees said they are investigating “the extent to which President Trump jeopardized national security by pressing Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election and by withholding security assistance provided by Congress to help Ukraine counter Russian aggression, as well as any efforts to cover up these matters.”

Sandy’s deposition comes one day after the ousted former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, testified at the congressional impeachment inquiry into U.S. President Donald Trump that she was “shocked and devastated” over remarks Trump made about her during a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

“I didn’t know what to think, but I was very concerned,” she told the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington. “It felt like a threat.”

Her testimony was consistent with her closed-door testimony last month when she said she felt “threatened” and worried about her safety after Trump said “she’s going to go through some things.”

A career diplomat, Yovanovitch was unceremoniously recalled to Washington after Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, and his allies waged what her colleagues and Democrats have described as a smear campaign against her. Two Giuliani associates recently arrested for campaign finance violations are accused of lobbying former Republican House member Pete Sessions of Texas for her ouster.

Yovanovitch was mentioned in Trump’s July 25 call with Zelenskiy that triggered the impeachment probe after a whistleblower filed a complaint. According to the White House summary of the call, Trump said Yovanovitch was “bad news.”

An unusual exchange occurred during the hearing that began when Trump took to Twitter to again criticize Yovanovitch.  He tweeted, “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad.”

Democratic committee chairman Adam Schiff interrupted the proceedings to read the tweet and asked her to respond. Yovanovitch paused before saying, “It’s very intimidating” and added: “I can’t speak to what the president is trying to do, but the effect is to be intimidating.”

Schiff responded that, “Some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously.”

Trump’s Twitter attack drew the ire of Congresswoman Liz Cheney, the third highest-ranking Republican in the House.

She said Trump “was wrong” and that Yovanovitch “clearly is somebody who’s been a public servant to the United States for decades, and I don’t think the president should have done that.”

The White House later issued a statement denying accusations of intimidation.

“The tweet was not witness intimidation, it was simply the President’s opinion, which he is entitled to,” the statement said. “This is not a trial, it is a partisan political process—or to put it more accurately, a totally illegitimate, charade stacked against the President. There is less due process in this hearing than any such event in the history of our country. It’s a true disgrace.”

Yovanovitch also told lawmakers that she was the target of a “campaign of disinformation” during which “unofficial back channels” were used to oust her.

Yovanovitch said repeated attacks from “corrupt interests” have created a “crisis in the State Department,” which she said “is being hallowed out within a competitive and complex time on the world stage.”

The veteran diplomat said that senior officials at the State Department, right up to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, failed to defend her from attacks from Trump and his allies, including Guiliani.

Yovanovitch, who served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from July 2016 to May 2019, also testified last month that U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland had recommended she praise Trump on Twitter if she wanted to save her job.

During opening remarks, Schiff said Yovanovitch was “smeared and cast aside” by Trump because she was viewed as an obstacle to Trump’s political and personal agenda.

Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, described the hearings as nothing more than “spectacles” for Democrats to “advance their operation to topple a duly elected president.”

Republicans, led by Nunes and their lead counsel, Steve Castor, tried to portray Yovanovitch as immaterial to the impeachment inquiry.

Nunes suggested that Yovanovitch’s complaints are a personnel matter that is “more appropriate for the Subcommittee on Human Resources on Foreign Affairs” and declared she is “not a material fact witness.”

Castor peppered Yovanovitch with questions aimed at proving her irrelevance, including whether she was involved in preparations for the July 25 call between Trump and Zelenskiy or plans for a White House meeting between the two leaders. She answered in the negative to all the questions.

Nunes also read a rough transcript of an April call Trump had with newly elected Zelenskiy that shows Zelenskiy was eager to have Trump attend his inauguration in Ukraine. The White House released the transcript just minutes after the hearing began, apparently an attempt to dispel any notions of wrongdoing by the president.

“I know how busy you are, but if it’s possible for you to come to the inauguration ceremony, that would be a great, great thing for you to do to be with us on that day.”

Trump vowed to have a “great representative” attend the event if he was unable to.

The U.S. delegation to inauguration was led by Energy Secretary Rick Perry after Vice President Mike Pence canceled the trip.

Yovanovitch’s removal sent shockwaves through the foreign service, with more than 50 former female U.S. ambassadors writing a letter to Trump and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to protect foreign service officers from political retaliation.

William Taylor, acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and George Kent, a senior State Department official in charge of U.S. policy toward Ukraine, testified on Wednesday during the first day of the historic televised hearings that could lead to a House vote on articles of impeachment before the end of the year.

All three diplomats have previously testified behind closed doors about Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and Biden’s son, Hunter, and to probe a discredited conspiracy theory regarding the 2016 president election.

Democrats say the open hearings will allow the public to assess the credibility of the witnesses and their testimonies. Republicans hope to discredit the impeachment proceedings and poke holes in the witnesses’ testimony.

Also Friday, David Holmes, a staffer at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, appeared before House investigators for closed-door testimony. Holmes testified he overheard Trump ask Sondland about the status of “investigations” during a phone call after Trump’s July 25 conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart.

Sondland later explained the probes pertained to Biden, a former U.S. vice president, and his son, Hunter, according to Holmes. No wrongdoing by either Biden has been substantiated.

Holmes’ testimony was one of the first direct accounts of Trump pursuing investigations of a political rival.

Democrats launched the impeachment inquiry to determine if Trump withheld nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine unless President Zelenskiy publicly committed himself to investigating 2020 Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden for corruption.

Trump also has repeated an unfounded claim that Ukraine, and not Russia, meddled in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Democrats and their candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Republicans have contended that Trump did not improperly pressure Ukraine to investigate political rivals for political advantage.

Under pressure from Trump, Republican lawmakers have waged a vigorous defense of the president’s actions in dealing with Ukraine over a several-month period, and they have asserted that the Democrats’ case for impeachment against Trump is non-existent.

Next week, the House panel will hold public hearings again. The schedule for testimony includes:
 
Tuesday: Jennifer Williams, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence; Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, former director for European Affairs at the National Security Council, Ambassador Kurt Volker, former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine; and Tim Morrison, a White House aide with the National Security Council focusing on Europe and Russia policy.
 
Wednesday: Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union; Laura Cooper, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian Affairs; and David Hale, under secretary of state for political affairs.
 
Thursday: Fiona Hill, former National Security Council senior director for Europe and Russia.

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The impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump centers on the question of whether he suspended close to 400 million dollars in U.S. military aid to Ukraine to pressure President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate one of his own political opponents. Top U.S. diplomats and other foreign policy experts said any threat to that U.S. security assistance sends the wrong signal, both to Ukraine, and to the stronger power it is fighting on its own soil, Russia. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from Washington.
 

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Myanmar’s government has rejected the International Criminal Court’s decision to allow prosecutors to open an investigation into crimes committed against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority.

Government spokesman Zaw Htay said at a Friday night press conference that Myanmar stood by its position that the Netherlands-based court has no jurisdiction over its actions.

He cited a Myanmar Foreign Ministry statement from April 2018 that because Myanmar was not a party to the agreement establishing the court, it did not need to abide by the court’s rulings.

The court’s position is that because Myanmar’s alleged atrocities sent more than 700,000 Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh for safety, it does have jurisdiction because Bangladesh is a party to the court and the case may involve forced jurisdiction.

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A federal jury found Friday that an anti-abortion activist had illegally recorded workers secretly at Planned Parenthood clinics and was liable for violating federal and state laws. The jury ordered him and others to pay nearly $1 million in damages. 
 
After a six-week civil trial, the San Francisco jury found David Daleiden had  trespassed on private property and had committed other crimes in recording the 2015 videos. He and the Center for Medical Progress contended that Planned Parenthood illegally sells fetal tissue, which the group says it does not do. 
 
Daleiden and a co-defendant, Sandra Merritt, are set to go on trial starting Dec. 6 on 14 counts each of invasion of privacy. They have pleaded not guilty and argue they are undercover journalists shielded from prosecution. 
 
Planned Parenthood sued the activists as part of what the group called “a multiyear illegal effort to manufacture a malicious campaign.” 
 
“The jury recognized today that those behind the campaign broke the law in order to advance their goals of banning safe, legal abortion in this country, and to prevent Planned Parenthood from serving the patients who depend on us,” the organization’s acting president and CEO, Alexis McGill Johnson, said in a statement. 

‘Biased judge’
 
Daleiden said the jury had reached the verdict after a “biased judge with close Planned Parenthood ties spent six weeks trying to influence the jury with pre-determined rulings and suppressed the video evidence.” 
 
The judge barred the release of some of the videos. 
 
Daleiden and Merritt sneaked into numerous Planned Parenthood meetings and other abortion rights gatherings and shot undercover videos of their attempts to buy fetal material. They published the videos in 2015. 
 
Planned Parenthood says it doesn’t sell fetal material for profit and charged only modest expenses to cover costs of donating it for medical research. The organization stopped seeking reimbursement for its shipping costs, and it never faced charges. 
 
Planned Parenthood said punitive and compensatory damages from Friday’s ruling totaled $2.3 million. 

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U.S. regulators on Friday approved a new medicine that can prevent some extremely painful sickle cell disease flare-ups.

The Food and Drug Administration approved Novartis AG’s Adakveo for patients 16 and older. The monthly infusion, which halves occurrences of sickle cell pain episodes, will carry a list price of roughly $85,000 to $113,000 per year, depending on dosing. Insured patients generally will pay less.

Sickle cell disease is one of the most common inherited blood disorders, affecting about 100,000 Americans, most of them black, and about 300 million people worldwide.

Its hallmark is periodic episodes in which red blood cells stick together, blocking blood from reaching organs and small blood vessels. That causes intense pain and cumulative organ damage that shortens the lives of people with the disease.

“The duration and severity of these pain crises worsens with aging. Often patients die during one of these crises,” said Dr. Biree Andemariam, chief medical officer of the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America.

Andemariam, a former Novartis adviser, said the drug appears to work better the longer patients receive it.

The Swiss drugmaker is continuing patient testing to determine whether Adakveo, also known as crizanlizumab, lengthens patients’ lives, said Ameet Mallik, the company’s head of oncology and blood disorder research.

He said severe pain episodes send U.S. patients to emergency departments about 200,000 times per year. About 85% are hospitalized for days to a week, running up big bills.

The debilitating condition also causes anemia, delayed growth, vision damage and painful swelling in hands and feet, making it hard for some people to maintain jobs or attend school.

Current treatments include a 21-year-old cancer drug called hydroxyurea and Endari, approved in 2017.

In patient studies, Endari reduced frequency of pain episodes about 25% and hydroxyurea reduced them by half. Hydroxyurea can have serious side effects and requires weekly blood tests. 

Both drugs have complicated dosing and don’t work — or stop working — in some patients.

In a one-year study of 198 patients, those getting the higher of two Adakveo doses averaged 1.6 pain episodes over that year and 36% had none. A comparison group on placebo averaged three pain episodes that year and 17 percent had none. Adakveo’s side effects included influenza and high fever.

Danielle Jamison, of Islandton, South Carolina, has suffered with sickle cell pain episodes since shortly after birth. The 35-year-old previously had a half-dozen pain crises requiring hospital trips each year. Those lessened by about half when she began taking hydroxyurea nine years ago.

She hasn’t been in the hospital since she started taking crizanlizumab two years ago as part of a patient study. She still has mild daily pain, but she said she can now take care of her home and drive her 9-year-old daughter to activities.

“It’s made a huge difference in how much I’m able to do,” Jamison said.

All three drugs work through different mechanisms, so doctors may switch patients to Adakveo or to add it to their current treatment, said Andemariam, head of University of Connecticut’s sickle cell treatment and research program.

Meanwhile, numerous drugs to treat sickle cell disease and gene therapies to possibly cure it are being tested.

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Student protesters are barricading themselves in at universities across Hong Kong, stockpiling makeshift weapons and turning campuses into what look like war zones. It marks a dangerous new phase in Hong Kong’s five-month-old anti-government protests. VOA’s Bill Gallo went behind the scenes at one campus where students said they were preparing for the worst.

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A San Francisco Bay Area real estate heiress who was under house arrest on $35 million bail for more than two years plans to reconnect with her children and visit family in China after a jury acquitted her of killing the father of her kids, her attorney said Friday.

After deliberating for 12 days, jurors found Tiffany Li not guilty on charges of murder and conspiring with her boyfriend to kill 27-year-old Keith Green in 2016 over a custody dispute.

The case drew global attention when Li’s family, who made a fortune in real estate construction in China, posted one of the highest bail amounts on record in the United States.

Li wept Friday as the verdicts were read and rushed out of the building afterward. Jurors were still deliberating on murder and conspiracy charges against Li’s co-defendant and boyfriend, Kaveh Bayat.

Attorney Geoffrey Carr said Li plans to travel to see family in China and strengthen her relationship with her children. She plans on bettering herself as a person, he said.

“Any time any defendant is found not guilty in a serious crime, they’re (given) a gift by somebody — I don’t believe in God, but somebody — and they should pay attention,” Carr said.

He bristled at a question that Li’s immense wealth allowed her to build a strong defense team that secured the not-guilty verdict. Carr said the team of three lawyers and four investigators would have worked just as diligently had they been appointed by a judge to a poor defendant.

San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said jurors gave “their heart and soul” to the decision.

“Obviously disappointed, obviously we don’t agree,” he said. “But as we always say, this is how the jury system works, and we respect the jury for what it does.”

Prosecutors said Li lured Green, her former boyfriend, to her mansion in Hillsborough, south of San Francisco, to discuss custody of their children. They say Bayat shot Green in the mouth and the two hired a friend to dispose of the body.

Prosecutors presented evidence that Green’s blood was found in Li’s Mercedes and gunshot residue was discovered in her garage.

Li’s attorneys argued that Green was killed in a botched kidnapping plot and that she had nothing to do with his death. She had settled the custody issues with her former boyfriend, they said.

Green’s body was found along a dirt road north of San Francisco nearly two weeks after he was last seen meeting with Li about their children. The pair met around 2009.

The prosecution faced a setback earlier this month when its chief witness, Olivier Adella, was arrested on charges of contacting an ex-girlfriend and witness for the defense. Adella was expected to testify that Li and Bayat asked him to dispose of Green’s body, but prosecutors did not call him as a witness.

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The founder of a Malawian maternity clinic for poor women says it has set a record – delivering more than 8,800 babies with not a single death of mother or child. For her efforts improving access to safe childbirth, Charity Salima has become known as “Malawi’s Florence Nightingale,” the English founder of modern nursing. Lameck Masina reports from Lilongwe.
 

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The Hong Kong government condemned Friday an attack by a “violent mob” on the city’s justice secretary in London, the first direct altercation between demonstrators and a government minister during months of often violent protests.

Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng, who was in London to promote Hong Kong as a dispute resolution and deal-making hub, was targeted by a group of protesters who shouted “murderer” and “shameful.”

A statement by the Hong Kong government said Cheng suffered “serious bodily harm” but gave no details. Video footage of the incident showed Cheng falling to the ground.

Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam said in a statement she strongly condemned what she described as an attack on Cheng.

The Hong Kong government said in a separate statement: “The secretary denounces all forms of violence and radicalism depriving others’ legitimate rights in the pretext of pursuing their political ideals, which would never be in the interest of Hong Kong and any civilized society.”

Street cleaned dies, city paralyzed

The incident came amid escalating violence in Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, where a student protester died earlier this month after falling from a parking garage during demonstrations.

A 70-year-old street cleaner, who videos on social media showed had been hit in the head by a brick thrown by “masked rioters,” died Thursday, authorities said.

The Food and Environmental Hygiene Department expressed profound sadness Friday at the death of its cleaning worker and said it was providing assistance to his family.

Anti-government protesters paralyzed parts of Hong Kong for a fifth day Friday, forcing schools to close and blocking some highways as students built barricades in university campuses and authorities struggled to tame the violence.

Protesters used barriers and other debris to block the Cross-Harbour Tunnel that links Hong Kong island to Kowloon district, leading to severe traffic congestion. The government once again urged employers to adopt flexible working arrangements amid the chaos.

Protesters call for elections

Thousands of students remain hunkered down at several universities, surrounded by piles of food, bricks, petrol bombs, catapults and other homemade weapons.

Police said the prestigious Chinese University had “become a manufacturing base for petrol bombs” and the students’ actions were “another step closer to terrorism.”

Those protesters demanded that the government commit to holding local elections Nov. 24. The protesters and warned of unspecified consequences if the government didn’t meet their demand within 24 hours.

The district council elections are seen as a barometer of public sentiment in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. Pro-democracy activists say the government may use the escalating violence as a reason to cancel the elections.

Around 4,000 people, between the ages of 12 and 83, have been arrested since the unrest escalated in June.

No end in sight to violence

The demonstrations have paralyzed parts of the city and battered the retail and tourism sectors, with widespread disruptions across the financial center and no end in sight to the violence and vandalism.

The protests escalated in June over a now-scrapped extradition bill that would have allowed people to be sent to mainland China for trial. They have since evolved into calls for greater democracy, among other demands.

Cheng, the embattled Lam’s chief legal adviser, played a key role in pushing forward the proposed extradition bill that ignited the protests.

The months-long protests have plunged the former British colony into its biggest political crisis in decades and pose the gravest popular challenge to Chinese President Xi Jinping since he came to power in 2012. Xi, speaking in Brazil on Thursday, said stopping violence was the most urgent task for Hong Kong.

The territory is also expected to confirm Friday it has fallen into recession for the first time in a decade amid concerns the economy could be in even worse shape than feared as the anti-government protests take a heavy toll.

Alibaba Group Chairman Daniel Zhang, however, said Hong Kong’s future is “bright” as the e-commerce giant kicked off a retail campaign for its secondary listing in the city.

Many in Hong Kong are angry at what they see as China stifling freedoms guaranteed under the “one country, two systems” formula put in place when Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

China denies interfering in Hong Kong and has blamed Western countries, including Britain and the United States, for stirring up trouble. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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