Monday, January 18, 2021

Six In The Morning Monday 18 January 2021

 

Trump's presidency expected to end with pardon spree as Biden era beckons

Updated 1451 GMT (2251 HKT) January 18, 2021

President-elect Joe Biden's shouldering of the presidency on Wednesday will finally end twice-impeached Donald Trump's four-year assault on truth and law and a corrupt administration set to test the propriety of the presidency to his final hours in office with a flurry of controversial pardons.

The inauguration will be the culmination of an epic week for a battered nation haunted by sickness, death and political divisions in which constitutional principles will triumph over lies and insurrection with the transfer of power from one president to the next.

Activists will write to companies in bid to persuade them to use their influence with Chinese government

 Diplomatic editor
Mon 18 Jan 2021 06.00 GMT

Campaigners fighting against the persecution of Uighur Muslims in China are to target private companies sponsoring the Beijing Winter Olympics in an attempt to persuade them to use their influence with the Chinese government ahead of the 2022 event.

Uighur campaigners in 10 different countries are coming together to write to companies asking them to use their platforms to educate and inform the world of the persecution under way in Xinjiang province. The first to be targeted is the chief executive officer of Airbnb, Brian Chesky.

Calling the Winter Olympics the “Genocide Games”, the campaign group would ideally like for Airbnb to withdraw its sponsorship, but will probably graduate their demands.


Alexei Navalny: Russian court jails Kremlin critic for 30 days


Mr. Navalny urged his supporters to take to the streets at the weekend

Oliver Carroll

Moscow Correspondent

@olliecarroll


A Russian court has sentenced Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to 30 days in prison, pending a trial, a speedy judgment following an unprecedented, ad-hoc one day hearing which seemed to ignore most aspects of law and process.

The hearing, in a police station, started earlier on Monday, less than 24 hours after Mr Navalny had been arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on his return to Russia since surviving a nerve agent attack in August.

It took a little over an hour for Judge Yelena Morozova to retire and consider her sentence against Mr Navalny.  


Lee's jail sentence casts cloud on Samsung's business



Leadership vacuum may hamper investment decisions amid growing competition

By Kim Bo-eun

The country's largest conglomerate has hit a major setback after an appellate court handed a prison sentence of two-and-a-half years to Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong in a re-hearing of a major bribery case, Monday.

The court ruling puts the tech giant back into a leadership vacuum hampering major investment decisions in new businesses, which many expect will hurt the company's global competitive edge

Right after the ruling, the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), the country's top business lobby group representing the interests of conglomerates, said it had no official comment regarding Lee's sentence. The Federation of Korean Industries (FKI), another business lobby, released a statement expressing regret over the court's decision.


Tunisia arrests over 600, deploys army after violent protests

Unrest spread across Tunisia after the government imposed an anti-virus lockdown amid economic hardship. Many Tunisians are frustrated by the lack of political reforms a decade after the Arab Spring.

Tunisian authorities have arrested more than 600 people after a third consecutive night of riots in several cities throughout the North African country, officials said on Monday.

Defense ministry spokesman Mohamed Zikri said the army has deployed troops in several areas including Bizerte in the north, Sousse in the east and Kasserine and Siliana in central Tunisia.

Israel to rein in rights groups over use of ‘apartheid state’

Education minister says groups calling country ‘apartheid state’ will be banned from lecturing at schools.

Groups that call Israel an “apartheid state” will be banned from lecturing at schools, Israel’s education minister has said.

The move targets one of Israel’s leading human rights groups B’Tselem after it began describing Israel and its control of the occupied Palestinian territories as a single apartheid system.

Late on Sunday, Israel’s Education Minister Yoav Galant tweeted he had instructed the ministry’s director-general to “prevent the entry of organizations calling Israel ‘an apartheid state’ or demeaning Israeli soldiers from lecturing at schools”.



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