Free Republic

HONG KONG—For months now, I’ve been told that Hong Kong’s protests would end soon. They’ll end when school starts, I heard during the summer. School did start, but the protests wore on, only now I saw high-school students in crisp school uniforms joining the protesters’ ranks. Next, the mask ban of early October was supposed to slow protesters down, but the very first day after that ban, I watched streams of protesters in masks and helmets make their way to their usual haunts on Hong Kong Island. The government shut down many of the subway lines that day, a practice...

HONG KONG — Under the cover of darkness early Thursday, authorities in Hong Kong tore down a public sculpture dedicated to the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre, accelerating a campaign to erase the crackdown from public recollection and stamp out dissent in a city that until recently was one of Asia’s freest. The 26-foot-tall artwork, known as the “Pillar of Shame,” had stood at the University of Hong Kong for nearly a quarter-century and honored the hundreds, if not thousands, of students and others killed on June 4, 1989, when the Chinese military crushed pro-democracy protests....

Pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong took to several shopping malls on Wednesday for protest events marking the birthday of Chief Executive Carrie Lam, complete with a fake birthday cake and celebratory singing modified to “happy birthday, f*ck you.”

Beijing's aggression confirms that the Chinese Communist Party is fully committed to fulfill its own great power ambition regardless of the consequences to other states. While nations worldwide were busy dealing with health care and economic crises caused by the Wuhan virus pandemic, Beijing is exploiting the attendant confusion to tighten its control over Hong Kong and the South China Sea.Beijing Tightens Its Grip on Hong Kong Since summer 2019, an extradition bill that would have eroded Hong Kong’s judicial independence ignited the city’s pro-democracy movement. The spread of the coronavirus added a new dimension to the movement in 2020....

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has hit out at United States senator Josh Hawley for his “irresponsible” remark that Hong Kong is becoming a police state. Hawley, the youngest sitting senator in the US, arrived in the city on Sunday to observe the anti-government protests, which have raged for more than four months. At the end of the visit, he urged demonstrators in Hong Kong to shun violence, but he blamed Hong Kong police for aggravating the crisis, accusing them of ramping up their use of force. He also said the city is in “danger of sliding into...

A federal court case about a Louisiana law that regulates abortion clinics and the doctors who perform abortions will be heard by the US Supreme Court...... The man behind the knife attack that killed four and wounded on at the Paris police headquarters Thursday had converted to Islam in 2008..... The "Wall Street Journal" reporting Friday increasing concern from US officials that Turkey will launch a major military operation against Kurdish forces in Syria.... "This has nothing to do with politics or a political campaign against the Bidens. This has to do with their corruption" In part that is one...

Carrie Lam has withdrawn the bill that triggered mass protests, confirming earlier reports from the South China Morning Post, Cable TV and online news portal HK01. (Interesting)

"We don't know the thoughts of the shooter" Those the words of Dayton, Ohio Mayor Nan Whaley at a news conference following a mass murder attack.... The attack in Dayton within hours of the El Paso mass murder attack where 20 are reported dead and 26 wounded. The attacker, Patrick Cruisus, has expressed views hostile to mass immigration, major corporations and in defense of environmental protection.... The White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said on the ABC 'This Week' program Sunday morning that: "crazy people....should not be able to get guns".... Iran says it seized an oil tanker in...

Has Beijing’s extradition bill in Hong Kong reached the go-through-its-pockets-and-look-for-loose-change stage, or is it only mostly dead? Carrie Lam, the enclave’s embattled chief executive, claims that “the bill is dead,” but Lam thus far has not formally withdrawn it. She told Hong Kong citizens, a sizable number of them in the streets demanding her resignation, that the government will not attempt to pass it again.They’re skeptical, to say the least, and so is CNN: Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam on Tuesday said a bill that would allow extraditions to mainland China is effectively “dead” and conceded that her government’s...

HONG KONG, June 15 (Reuters) - Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam on Saturday indefinitely delayed a proposed law that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China, in a dramatic retreat after anger over the bill triggered the city's biggest and most violent street protests in decades. The extradition bill, which would have covered Hong Kong's seven million residents as well as foreign and Chinese nationals there, was seen by many as a threat to the rule of law in the former British colony. Around a million people marched through Hong Kong last Sunday to oppose the bill, according to organisers...