Overseas News

In short:

Luigi Mangione has pleaded not guilty to state murder and terror charges.

Mr Mangione is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel.

What's next?

Prosecutors say the state case is expected to run parallel to a federal prosecution.

A growing number of Chinese are fleeing their home country, where rising authoritarianism under the rule of Xi Jinping and the difficulties of a faltering economy has prompted some people to look for a way out. The phenomenon has become so widely discussed online that it has its own nickname: runxue, or run philosophy, a coded term for emigration.

Some are relocating on student or business visas, joining growing diaspora communities in places like Japan or Thailand. But tens of thousands of others who don’t qualify or have the resources for such pathways are fleeing in other unconventional and often dangerous ways, known as zouxian, or walking the line.

Most head for the US, trekking from South America through the hostile jungle of the Darian Gap. In September the Guardian revealed a small but growing number were also flying into the Balkans to find smugglers to take them to Germany. Now, another emerging high-stakes escape route has been revealed, through the Indonesian archipelago to a smuggler’s boat destined for Australia.

[...]

Experts say the arrival of Chinese people on this route signals growing discontent at home.

Some Chinese migrants in the US and Europe have said tightening restrictions on political, religious and social freedoms during Xi’s rule led them to flee. Others cited stifling public health policies during the pandemic, and the economic downturn, housing crunch, and youth unemployment crisis that followed.

Meredith Oyen, an associate professor at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, specialising in Chinese migration, says politics and economics are push factors.

“The zero-Covid policy ended up destroying a lot of small businesses and a lot of middle class people’s economic life … The combination of that and the draconian nature of some of those policies led to frustrations and more political dissatisfactions.

“Even if you’re not driven by political repression, the experience of bankruptcy in China is political, it has more blowback on your life compared to places like the US. So it feels like if you’re just going to be languishing in China and you don’t see hope for recovery in a way that makes you a welcome member of society, you might as well risk it.”

[...]

China does not release statistics on people leaving, but the UN’s refugee agency – which has registered around a third of all displaced people and refugees – recorded 137,143 asylum seekers from China in 2023, five times the number registered a decade earlier at the start of Xi’s rule. By July this year it had grown to 176,239.

[...]

Last week, a Chinese resident commented on a Douyin video about zouxian [a term used in mainland China usually for Chinese trying to escape to the U.S. via the -dangerous- Darien Gap in Latin America] to Australia. “I’m at the end of the road. I can’t survive any more. I want to go. I want to go very much,” he said.

[...]

In short:

The Red Cross, citing government sources, says at least 14 people have died after a magnitude-7.3 earthquake struck off Vanuatu on Tuesday.

Locals have reported "mass casualties" and say Port Vila's hospital is overwhelmed.

What's next?

Australia is sending "immediate" assistance including urban search and rescue teams.

In short:

A woman who threw a banana milkshake at British politician Nigel Farage during this year's UK election campaign has been handed a suspended 13-week jail sentence.

Victoria Thomas Bowen was also ordered to pay about $300 in compensation and complete 120 hours of community service work.

What's next?

The 25-year-old will not serve time behind bars unless she commits another criminal offence within the next 12 months.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17595490

In a significant political move on December 12, the Czech Chamber of Deputies' Foreign Affairs Committee adopted a resolution challenging China's interpretation of United Nations Resolution 2758. The resolution champions Taiwan's participation in international organizations, as per an official statement released by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC).

The resolution, led by Czechia IPAC Co-Chair Rep. Eva Decroix and backed by key committee members, addresses Beijing's sovereignty claims over Taiwan derived from the UN resolution. It denounces China's military provocations in the Taiwan Strait and calls on the European Union to support Taiwan's inclusion in global forums.

This is the sixth parliamentary motion under IPAC's "Initiative 2758," aimed at countering China's influence and promoting Taiwanese representation on the world stage. Echoing initiatives from other regions like the EU and Canada, this resolution reaffirms a widening international consensus supporting Taiwan.

(this is a few days old)

This week, in an announcement [link corrected] that stunned New Zealand’s research community, the country’s center-right coalition government said it would divert half of the NZ$75 million Marsden Fund, the nation’s sole funding source for fundamental science, to “research with economic benefits.” Moreover, the fund would no longer support any social sciences and humanities research, and the expert panels considering these proposals would be disbanded.

Universities New Zealand, which represents the nation’s eight universities, called the planned disinvestment in social science and humanities “astonishing.” It was among several academic groups and many scientists calling for the government to reverse the unexpected decision.

In announcing the change, Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins said the fund should focus on “core science” that supports economic growth and “a science sector that drives high-tech, high-productivity, high-value businesses and jobs.”

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17544837

Archived

The term “revenge society,” or “revenge against society,” is used in China to refer to acts of violence against innocent civilians committed in blind desperation by those on the bottom rung of society to protest social and political injustices for which there seems no recourse. Emerging online in the early 2000s, the term has been applied in both mainstream (CCP-led) news coverage and online discourse to random attacks on unsuspecting victims, generally in cases where the perpetrators are thought to have disadvantaged and precarious positions economically and socially.

On November 11, 2024, dozens of Chinese were killed and many more injured as a 62-year-old driver unhappy about a divorce settlement plowed his car into a stadium in the southern city of Zhuhai, running down people on the sports track. Just five days later, eight people were killed and 17 wounded in a knife attack on the campus of a vocational school in Yixing, in Jiangsu province, a city famed since ancient times for its clay teapots. The suspect was reportedly enraged because he had failed an exam and not received his graduation certificate.

These cases were merely the latest in a string of brutal attacks in China killing scores of people in the fall of 2024. Collectively, they brought renewed discussion over a period of weeks of a phenomenon that has been a feature of Chinese media coverage of such cases since at least the 1990s — “social revenge” (报复社会). Not used in other Chinese-language contexts such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, “social revenge,” or “revenge against society,” is the idea that assailants, particularly from the disaffected ranks of society, have perpetrated attacks against innocent people in a desperate bid to air their grievances.

...

The term “revenge society” was regularly used through the 2000s. In August 2005, after a 42-year-old farmer with terminal lung cancer set off a homemade explosive on a bus in the city of Fuzhou, injuring 31 people, the magazine Lifeweekly (三联生活周刊) called the incident “individual terrorism” (一个人的恐怖主义), but noted that the incident did not clearly fit the pattern of “revenge against society.” People discussing the case, it noted, had been “unable to find the actual rationalization behind his social revenge” (却找不到他报复社会真实).

The term often seemed a way to frame or make sense of cases of incredible and sometimes mysterious brutality — particularly against the backdrop of a controlled media environment in which it was difficult to openly discuss many of the objective social factors behind these cases, including labor rights violations, forced demolition, and migrant discrimination.

...

The late 2000s was still a time of relative discursive space for China’s press, though always under the watchful eye of Chinese Communist Party “guidance.” In its own, indirect way, China Youth Daily was suggesting that more responsibility should be placed on the government in such cases, implying that poor governance, and failing rule of law, were factors behind issues of social injustice. “When revenge is committed against society, the government should understand that it can change society and transform it through good governance to achieve social justice at a higher level,” the newspaper wrote.

...

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17526254

The Presidential Office yesterday called on China to stop all “provocative acts,” saying ongoing Chinese military activity in the nearby waters of Taiwan was a “blatant disruption” of the “status quo” of security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.

Defense officials said they have detected Chinese ships since Monday, both off Taiwan and farther out along the first island chain. They described the formations as two walls designed to demonstrate that the waters belong to China.

[...]

Taiwan has been expecting drills following stops by President William Lai (賴清德) in Hawaii and the US territory of Guam during an overseas trip to diplomatic allies in the Pacific last week.

Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) in a statement said that China’s military actions were a “blatant disruption” of regional stability and Beijing should immediately stop all “provocative acts.”

She said that it is customary for presidents to go overseas and that “Taiwan’s normal international exchanges with other countries are not an excuse for China’s provocations.”

Meanwhile, the Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday demanded China cease its military intimidation and “irrational behavior” that endangers regional peace and stability.

[Edit typo.]

In short:

The New Zealand government has announced it will end greyhound racing to protect the welfare of the racing dogs.

It said the legislation will be passed with urgency on Tuesday to prevent any unnecessary killing of racing dogs as a result of the impending ban.

What's next?

A committee has been set up to help manage a 20-month transition, including rehoming the roughly 2,900 racing greyhounds around the country.

Australia and Nauru have signed a new treaty that will lock other nations out of providing security or critical infrastructure to the island nation.

The deal has been inked as Australia competed with China for influence in the Pacific. Commonwealth Bank will establish operations in Nauru as part of the $140 million deal.

In return, the government of Nauru has agreed with Australia that the country's critical infrastructure "shall not be used by any third party for security purposes".

Australia will also be able to veto any engagements by third countries in Nauru's "security and key critical infrastructure sectors".

The agreement is similar in some ways to the Falepili Union which Australia signed last year with the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu.

[...]

The pacts are part of a broader push by Australia to cement its strategic position in the Pacific in the face of increasingly fierce competition with China.

Nauru switched recognition from Taiwan to China in January this year, and representatives from the Bank of China have visited the Pacific nation earlier this year to explore setting up a branch in the wake of Bendigo's exit.

The Prime Minister Anthony Albanese met with Nauru's President David Adeang on Monday morning in Canberra to sign the new agreement, which will see the government hand over $100 million in budget support over five years, along with $40 million in security support.

[...]

Nauru faces a deeply uncertain financial outlook, and Mr Albanese said Australia's ongoing budget support would "strengthen Nauru's longer-term stability and economic resilience" and "give the Nauru government the certainty it needs to make long-term investments for its citizens in areas like education, health and social services".

[...]

Summary

• Syrian army says Assad rule has ended
• Assad boards plane, leaves Damascus, say senior army officers
• Assad's destination unknown, officers say
• Rebels enter Damascus
• Thousands celebrate "Freedom" in Damascus

In short:

UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson was shot dead out the front of a hotel on Wednesday in what police are calling a "premeditated, targeted attack".

The first unmasked photographs of a person of interest in the case have been released by the New York Police Department.

Multiple US media organisations, citing unnamed investigators, say the ammunition used to shoot Mr Thompson were inscribed with the words "deny," "defend" and "depose".

Update: South Korea's president will lift his martial law declaration. Here's how it unfolded

I've noticed a lot of comments (and posts) from non-Australians in here recently. For sake of brevity, when I say 'Australian'/'Aussie' here, I mean anyone who does live or has lived in Australia.

It defeats the whole point of having a separate comm for 'world news from an Australian perspective' if we have high levels of participation (votes/comments/posts) from non-Australians. It becomes just the same as any general world news comm.

I was thinking one measure we could take would be to change the display name of the comm to 'World News for Aussies'. It's succinct, clear, and may discourage participation by non-Australians to some degree.

Another matter is posts by non-Australians. Obviously, if we reduced voting participation by non-Aussies, it's less of an issue if we have posts by non-Aussies - the comm would still largely be 'from an Australian perspective' by virtue of voting selection (although it would still be annoying if, like me, you mainly browse local by 'new').

That said, when 13 of the last 20 posts in the comm are from a user that appears not to be in/from Australia, maybe there's a problem to be addressed. It doesn't help that this poster has a clear and consistent agenda.

I'm obviously not proposing we start checking IDs or anything, but we could at least have a rule for participation only by people who do live or have lived in Australia. Then, if a problem becomes noticeable, the mods can send direct messages or take action where they judge it reasonable.

Interested to hear thoughts from users and mods (@lodion@aussie.zone @deadcat@aussie.zone)

In short:

Outgoing US President Joe Biden has pardoned his son Hunter Biden, saying "raw politics … led to a miscarriage of justice".

Hunter Biden was convicted of gun charges and tax evasion and was facing sentencing hearings scheduled for mid-December.

Joe Biden said he made the decision over the weekend while spending the Thanksgiving holiday with his family.