Month: January 2021

Categories
World News

China says it’s going to sanction U.S. officers for ‘nasty’ conduct on Taiwan

China says it will sanction U.S. officials for 'nasty' behavior on Taiwan

A Chinese and US flag on a booth during the first China International Import Expo in Shanghai, November 6, 2018.

Johannes Eisele | AFP | Getty Images

SINGAPORE – China will impose sanctions on US officials who have acted “badly” in relation to Taiwan, the Chinese State Department said on Monday.

The decision was announced by Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying in response to a reporter’s question about what China would do in response to the lifting of US restrictions on its relations with Taiwan.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced earlier this month that his country would no longer restrict contact between his officials and their Taiwanese counterparts. China hit the decision and vowed to fight back.

China claims Taiwan – a democratic and self-governing island – is its territory that will one day have to be reunited with the mainland. and insists that the island has no right to participate in its own international diplomacy. The Chinese Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan.

Experts have warned that Taiwan will remain a contentious issue in US-China bilateral relations. Former Australian Kevin Rudd, a longtime China observer, told CNBC last week that Pompeo’s move could provide an important foundation for US-China relations.

Rudd was referring to the “One China Policy”, the principle by which the US and the international community recognize that there is only one central Chinese government – under the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.

Categories
Business

Jay Y. Lee, Chief of South Korea’s Samsung Empire, Is Despatched to Jail

Jay Y. Lee, Chief of South Korea's Samsung Empire, Is Sent to Prison

SEOUL, South Korea – The Seoul Supreme Court sentenced Samsung’s top leader Lee Jae-yong to two and a half years in prison on Monday for bribing former South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

Mr. Lee’s case can still go to the Supreme Court if either Mr. Lee or the prosecution wants to take it there. In South Korea, the Supreme Court can either approve a lower court ruling on a case or send it back for retrial. It cannot override the judgment of a lower court.

When Mr. Lee’s case first reached the Supreme Court in 2019, the court returned it to the Seoul Supreme Court for retrial, stating that it had the amount of bribes Mr. Lee gave to Ms. Park and her secret confidante Choi Soon- paid, underestimated. sil while Mrs. Park was in power. The amount was supposed to be 8.6 billion won ($ 7.8 million), not 3.6 billion as the lower court found.

In its ruling on Monday, the Seoul Supreme Court accepted 8.6 billion won as the correct amount as instructed by the Supreme Court. The decision to do so meant that it was far from settled, that the Supreme Court would approve the verdict should the case end there again.

Mr. Lee has already spent a year in prison after being arrested in 2017 in connection with the prosecutor’s bribery case. He is now expected to spend only a year and a half in prison, which takes away the day-to-day running of one of the world’s most valuable technology giants.

After the court issued its verdict on Monday, Mr. Lee was immediately arrested in the courtroom so that he could serve his time.

Categories
Health

Extra Weight Throughout Being pregnant Tied to Fertility Points in Sons

Excess Weight During Pregnancy Tied to Fertility Issues in Sons

Overweight mothers may be more likely to have infertile sons, Danish researchers report.

Their study included 9,232 men and women aged 31 to 34 years. In this group, 10 percent of underweight mothers were born with a body mass index below 18.5. 77 percent of mothers of normal weight; and 13 percent for overweight or obese mothers with a pre-pregnancy BMI over 25.

When examining the records of the diagnosis and treatment of infertility, the researchers found that sons of overweight mothers were 40 percent more likely to be infertile than sons of mothers of normal weight. Sons with underweight mothers did not have increased infertility rates, and a mother’s weight did not affect her daughters’ fertility. The study, published in AOGS, controlled maternal age, smoking, alcohol consumption, socio-economic status, and other factors.

The reason for the association is unknown, but the authors suggest that obesity is an indication of a hormonal imbalance that could affect prenatal development of the male reproductive system.

The lead author, Dr. Linn H. Arendt, obstetrician at Aarhus University in Denmark, said that being overweight in pregnancy is unhealthy for several reasons, and that most women are aware that obesity is a risk. She said this is the first study to show an association between maternal BMI and infertility in adult sons, but that it would not warn women about the problem.

Categories
Politics

Biden nationwide safety advisor requires Russia to launch Navalny

Biden national security advisor calls for Russia to release Navalny

A file photo dated September 29, 2019 shows Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny during a rally in support of political prisoners on Prospekt Sakharova Street in Moscow, Russia. Alexei Navalny is passed out in hospital after allegedly being poisoned, according to his press secretary.

Sefa Karacan | Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

WASHINGTON – President-elect Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan called for the immediate release of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was arrested at a Moscow airport on Sunday after his arrival.

The previous Sunday, Navalny flew from Berlin to Russia, where he had recovered for almost six months since being poisoned last summer. He was arrested at passport control.

Last week, Russian authorities issued an arrest warrant for Navalny alleging that he had violated the three and a half year suspended sentence he received in 2014 for embezzlement.

“Mr. Navalny should be released immediately and the perpetrators of the outrageous attack on his life must be brought to justice,” Sullivan wrote on Twitter.

The White House and State Department did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Sullivan’s call for Navalny to be released comes days before President-elect Joe Biden takes office. Biden’s new government is expected to increase pressure on Russia.

After the poisoning of Navalny last year, Biden vowed “to work with our allies and partners to hold the Putin regime accountable for its crimes,” and accused President Donald Trump of not being tough enough.

A non-partisan group of US senators had urged the Trump administration to impose sanctions on Russia in response to the poisoning of Navalny. Trump, who is leaving office on Wednesday, did not do so.

The United Kingdom and the European Union, close allies of the United States, swiftly imposed targeted sanctions on six Russians and a government research center in October.

On the return flight to Moscow, Navalny told reporters that he was feeling great and that the trip home was “the best moment in five months.”

“I feel great. I’m finally going back to my hometown,” he said, according to a Reuters report.

Last year, Navalny was medically evacuated to Germany from a Russian hospital after falling ill after reports that something had been added to his tea. Russian doctors treating Navalny denied that the Kremlin critic had been poisoned, blaming his comatose condition for low blood sugar levels.

In September, the German government announced that the 44-year-old Russian dissident had been poisoned by a chemical agent on nerves and described the toxicological report as “clear evidence”. The nerve agent was in the Novichok family, which was developed by the Soviet Union.

Following the test results, the White House said it was “deeply concerned” by the matter and called the poisoning “utterly reprehensible.”

“The United States is deeply concerned about the results released today,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Ullyot said in a written statement at the time. “The poisoning of Alexei Navalny is completely reprehensible. Russia has used the chemical nerve agent novichok in the past,” he said, referring to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England in 2018.

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied a role in the poisoning of Navalny and Skripal.

Navalny’s arrest Sunday faces another strain on relations between European leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin and comes while the Kremlin works to secure a gas pipeline project, Nord Stream 2, to Germany.

Categories
Business

Gary Gensler Set to Lead S.E.C.

Gary Gensler Set to Lead S.E.C.

The Biden administration is using two Obama administration’s financial regulators to oversee key departments that eased control of the industry under President Trump, according to two people with knowledge of the plans.

Gary Gensler, who headed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission during the Obama administration from 2009 to 2014, will be Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s nominee for the Securities and Exchange Commission. Rohit Chopra, the former deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has been selected to lead this agency.

Mr. Gensler is a seasoned regulator who played a key role in getting the big banks going after the 2008 financial crisis and giving a supervisory authority new teeth. Recently, as an academic, he has become familiar with digital currencies like Bitcoin, which have become an important part of the SEC’s regulatory mandate. He led the transition team and advised Mr. Biden on overseeing financial oversight.

Gensler, 63, is about to join an agency that has been criticized for being too lenient in prosecuting high profile cases involving Wall Street and the American corporation.

“I think he has a more developed enforcement philosophy, given the work he’s done at the CFTC, and is likely more aggressive than the previous chairman,” said Matt Solomon, former chief litigation attorney at the SEC and a partner with the law firm Cleary Gottlieb.

The agency that Mr. Chopra will take over has been mangled under Mr. Trump. The consumer bureau was founded as an idea by Senator Elizabeth Warren under the Dodd-Frank Financial Overhaul Act and largely ineffective after Trump named Mick Mulvaney as interim chairman. He promised to run the agency with “humility and prudence” and did not request funding from the Federal Reserve. Kathy Kraninger, who took over the helm of the agency in 2018, has been accused by Democrats of undermining the office they have accused of denying “millions of dollars in relief” to consumers. Democrats have put pressure on Ms. Kraninger to resign or be fired.

In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the President had authority to remove the CFPB director before his five-year term was up.

During his tenure in the consumer office until 2015, Mr. Chopra was the agency’s first “Student Loan Ombudsman” advocating greater protection for borrowers. Student loans are expected to be a focus for Mr. Chopra in addition to payday loan protection and debt collection provisions. On these issues, he would most likely have an ally in Bharat Ramamurti whom former Warren advisor Biden has won as director of the National Economic Council for Financial Reform and Consumer Protection.

For the past three years, Mr. Chopra has served as Commissioner for the Federal Trade Commission and has often spoken out against the Republican majority. Instead, he advocated stricter enforcement measures against companies like Facebook.

At the SEC, one of Mr. Gensler’s most pressing decisions will be the election of an enforcement director – an important role in setting regulatory priorities. But the new administration and the Congress Democrats, who will control both chambers, have already established a number of chambers.

Mr Biden has spoken about companies needing to disclose more information about their environmental impact, while members of Congress discussed limiting buybacks of company shares and enforcing greater control over so-called shadow banking activities by hedge funds and private equity firms.

“This entire government is prioritizing climate change in terms of what any agency can bring to the table to help us fight climate change – and the SEC is really playing a vital role in that,” said Mary Schapiro, the former Chairwoman of the SEC who worked closely with Mr. Gensler when he was with the commodities regulator. Ms. Schapiro probably named the climate, along with issues of trade and market structure, one of the priorities for Mr. Gensler.

When Mr. Gensler took the helm of the CFTC, it had a poor reputation, largely confined to taking enforcement action against small trading companies. There have even been calls in Congress to merge it with the SEC. But Mr. Gensler’s responsibility after the financial crisis of 2008 calmed this criticism. His agency often shared the spotlight with the SEC – and sometimes even overshadowed it.

Under his leadership, the CFTC took action against the manipulation by large banks of Libor – the London Interbank Bank Offered Rate – which sets the interest rates on many bank loans. Working with the Justice Department, Mr. Gensler and the CFTC pulled heavy fines from banks and led to a plan to replace Libor with a new benchmark that is less subject to abuse.

The CFTC also shared the stage with the SEC investigating the so-called flash crash of 2010, when the Dow Jones Industrials fell 1,000 points in just 10 minutes – a record drop at the time. A joint investigative report from the two regulators never found an exact cause, but found that a combination of high-frequency trading and fast trading in e-mini stock futures – a sophisticated exchange-traded fund – contributed to the turmoil.

“Wall Street interests are not always the same as the public,” he told the New York Times in 2010.

After retiring from the CFTC, Mr. Gensler began teaching at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was well educated in digital currencies. He even taught a course on blockchain technology and how it can play a role in transforming markets and replacing middlemen on Wall Street – an experience that would make him the first commission chairman to speak the language of crypto enthusiasts without having to resort to Google for translation.

Mr. Gensler will succeed Jay Clayton, who stepped down last month. Mr. Clayton was a corporate attorney who joined the SEC from Sullivan & Cromwell after working for many large banks and corporations. One of his mandates is to make it easier for companies to go public and to protect investors on Main Street.

Categories
Entertainment

Mads Mikkelsen Dancing Days Have been Over Till ‘One other Spherical’

Mads Mikkelsen Dancing Days Were Over Until ‘Another Round’

Martin is a history teacher with the listless, sloping posture of a comma. He walks slowly, as if every step causes a pain in the ass. His job is not very inspiring; his marriage is falling apart. “Am I getting bored?” he asks his wife. “Do you find me boring?”

Her answer seems to confirm what he already knows: “You are not the same Martin I first met.”

In Danish director Thomas Vinterberg’s “Another Round”, a film about breaking the rules and thus freeing oneself, Martin is one of four high school teachers who decide to test a theory about alcohol: as long as they maintain a uniform theory Level of it in their blood, their life will get better.

The experiment has its problems. But in the end Martin, played by Mads Mikkelsen, finds a release that is expressed in a dance at the end of the film. The slightly drunk dance shows Mikkelsen’s nimble ability to balance daring and control. It fits: he was once a professional dancer.

The dance begins after Martin, who had a history of jazz ballet classes, attended a friend’s funeral and received text messages from his wife suggesting a reunion. He and his friends greet the graduates at the harbor while the song “What a Life” by the Danish band Scarlet Pleasure plays. At first, its movement is a little tentative, full of stops and starts. But as soon as he starts, he throws himself in, makes wide crossed steps, sways and turns with silky strength to the ground and jumps up – while taking a sip from a can of beer.

As his body melts to the beat of the song, it is clear that this is more than a dance: Martin has been given another chance – or round – in life and he is taking it. The 55-year-old Mikkelsen jumps unrestrained and robust through space, hits the air and jumps powerfully before making a spectacular jump over the water. The film ends with him in the air.

In collaboration with Mikkelsen, the choreographer Olivia Anselmo said: “He started the whole rehearsal with the words: ‘Well, I’m not like I used to be, I’m no longer young and blah, blah, blah. ‘And then the first thing he does is go into a slide and roll on the floor and jump up and do this thing where he put his leg around the other leg – like a yoga pose. He just did it. “

Mikkelsen started out as an acrobat before discovering dance, despite making a name for himself as an actor. He was the Bond villain at Casino Royale and Dr. Hannibal Lecter in the television series “Hannibal”. For his role in Vinterberg’s film “The Hunt” (2012) he won a prize for best actor in Cannes. But for Anselmo it is different. “When I was in the studio with him, I didn’t think, wow, this is this world famous actor,” she said. “It was so cozy and relaxed. I just thought this is just another dancer. “

Recently Mikkelsen spoke about dance and his professional dance years, which lasted around nine years. Switching to drama, he said, “to pull out another drawer and find something new,” he said. “I was always more in love with the drama of dancing than with the aesthetics of dancing.”

What follows are edited excerpts from a recent conversation.

How was it for you to dance in the movie?

I thought it would be difficult to get away with a realistic movie – to really dance. In my world it was more like a drunken dream or a drunken picture or a drunken fantasy, but in Thomas’ world it was literally a man dancing while surrounded by many young people. [Laughs]

He wanted the ending to be a balance between a flying man and a falling man, and obviously the dance was perfect for that.

How did you get into dancing in the first place?

I started as a gymnast and a choreographer came to our club. She wanted some acrobats in the background who could flip, and she wanted us to take a few steps too. She thought I had some talent and asked me if I wanted to learn the trade and I had absolutely nothing else to do.

I did a couple of shows with her, musical things, and then it just felt like I had to honor the dance. I really had to learn from the grassroots.

Where did you go to college?

I applied for a scholarship and spent two summers in New York with Martha Graham. Then I joined a contemporary ballet company in Denmark and did a lot of musicals like “La Cage Aux Folles” and “Chicago”. “West Side Story.” But I was trained as a Martha Graham contemporary dancer.

Was Martha there? She must have been pretty old.

Yes. I had the opportunity to meet her. It was a wonder time. She obviously wasn’t a teacher [anymore]but she once came along with her arthritis for the guru she was. She was helped out of the car. She was breathtaking. She had this huge hair. She sat on the floor and watched us. And suddenly she did just one more move – her spine just straightened and she put her nose on the floor.

That’s magic.

We were all like what? And then all the boys came very close because she didn’t speak aloud. She said, “The boys have to jump in the air.” And so we went in there and jumped and jumped and jumped and then we looked at her and she was asleep. [Laughs] But it was fantastic to get to know her.

When did you start doing gymnastics?

I was probably in first or second grade. You have to understand that gymnastics in Denmark in the sense that we sucked was on a completely different level than the rest of the world. I remember a Russian club came to us as a friendship club and it was just crazy how good they were. It was just like this, Jesus, we are wasting our time.

How old were you when you switched to dancing?

I think it was around 5 or 6 when that happened. So I was a working class little boy – almost like a Billy Elliot story. I couldn’t really tell my friends what I was doing. That’s how it is when you’re a working class kid, but when they finally found out I told them to do the math, “How many girls, how many boys?” They all said: “Yes, I want to be a dancer too.”

How was it dancing for “Another Round” again?

It was like saying hello to an old friend. I’m the type of dancer who doesn’t dance when I’m in a club with friends. I’ve always been a little reluctant because I think it was my job. I knew this character was rusty and he wasn’t a professional dancer like me, but he’d done it as a young man, as a kid. At the same time, I got a little ambitious.

Did you hurt yourself

No not at all. It was all good. But it was all adrenaline. I felt very young again, but for the next week I felt very old.

Because you were sore

I was super sore. I do a lot of sport. I ride my bike and play tennis and do all sorts of things, but they’re not the same muscles.

What did you think of in the last dance?

We wanted it not to be about the dance, but about what’s in the character. It’s more than a performance, it’s an internal journey. It’s almost like a close-up.

Categories
Health

When the Most cancers Physician Leaves

When the Cancer Doctor Leaves

Some were angry. Unbeknownst to me, my hospital, which has always been efficient, had sent out a letter informing patients of my departure and giving them the opportunity to choose one of eight other doctors to take care of them – even before I had a chance, some to inform person from them. How should they choose and why hadn’t I told them I would go, they indignantly demanded.

Feeling just like my patients, I quickly sent out my own follow-up letter choosing a specialist in their specific cancers and telling my patients I would miss them.

I personally apologized for the first letter for weeks.

And although I always tell my patients that the best gift I could ever hope for is their good health, many brought gifts or cards.

A man in his sixties had just received another round of chemotherapy for a leukemia that kept coming back. I think we both knew that the next time the leukemia returned, it would stay here. When I walked into his exam room, he greeted me where my other patient had left off.

“I can’t believe you’re leaving me.”

Before I could even sit down, he handed me a simple brown bag with white tissue paper sticking out from the top and asked me to remove the contents.

Inside was a drawing of the steel truss arches of Cleveland’s I-90 Innerbelt Bridge, above which the city skyline rose.

“It’s beautiful,” I told him. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You can hang this on your office wall in Miami,” he suggested and started to cry. “This is how you will always remember Cleveland.” And then, covid-19 precautionary damn, he went over and gave me a big bear hug. After a few seconds we parted.

“No,” I said, ripping open. “I’ll hang the picture and I’ll always remember you.”

Mikkael Sekeres (@mikkaelsekeres), former director of the Leukemia Program at Cleveland Clinic, is the director of the hematology department at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami and author of When Blood Breaks Down: Life Lessons From Leukemia. “

Categories
Business

Most Main Economies Are Shrinking. Not China’s.

Most Major Economies Are Shrinking. Not China’s.

SHANGHAI – With most nations around the world grappling with new lockdowns and layoffs in the face of the growing pandemic, only one major economy has recovered after getting most of the coronavirus under control: China.

The Chinese economy grew 2.3 percent last year, the country’s National Bureau of Statistics said in Beijing on Monday. In contrast, the United States, Japan, and many nations in Europe are expected to have suffered a sharp decline in economic output.

China’s strength seemed unlikely a year ago when the virus hit the central Chinese city of Wuhan. When the travel and business situation almost came to a standstill, the economy contracted 6.8 percent from January to March compared to 2019, the first decline in half a century.

Since then, the economy has improved steadily and closed the year with a growth of 6.5 percent in the last three months compared to the same period last year. While the recovery remains uneven, factories across China are in full swing to fulfill overseas orders and cranes are constantly busy on construction sites – a boom in exports and infrastructure that should fuel the economy for the coming year.

At booths in Wuhan Taiyuan Textile Market in Hubei Province, apparel factory managers have ordered large samples of fabric to meet domestic and international apparel orders. At Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group in Jiangsu Province, facilities are in operation day and night to keep up with the demand for new earthmoving and pile driving equipment. Huahong Holding Group, a large exporter of framed prints and oil paintings in Zhejiang Province, has doubled profits.

“This is the only major economy that has quickly recovered from the pandemic and is able to operate normally,” said Zhou Linlin, a Shanghai financier on Huahong’s board of directors. “So all of these orders are coming to China from all over the world.”

However, the general resilience of the Chinese economy hides weaknesses.

There are many jobs for blue-collar workers, but they were rare for young college graduates with little experience. Service companies such as hotels and restaurants did well in large coastal cities such as Beijing and Shanghai late last year, but never fully recovered in inland provinces. Consumer electronics and personal protective equipment manufacturers have benefited from the pandemic, but exporters to poor disease-ravaged countries have not.

Zhang Shaobo, the owner of a Halloween mask factory in Yiwu, received news in March last year that one of his most consistent export customers in India had contracted the coronavirus. In May the man was dead. New customers from Mr. Zhang’s main markets in India and South America also stopped coming to China to view his latest products.

He fired all but four of his 20 factory workers and began making preparations to close his business in Yiwu’s wholesale market. Since the business is so weak, he said, “I’m not going to keep renting it.”

China’s top leader Xi Jinping paid tribute to the economic challenges in a speech published by Communist Party magazine Qiushi on Friday.

“There are profound adjustments in the international economy, technology, culture, security and politics, and the world is in a period of turbulent change,” Xi said in the speech delivered in August. “In the coming period, we will face an external environment with increasing headwinds and countercurrents and we must prepare to respond to a range of new risks and challenges.”

These challenges could get worse in the coming weeks. After notable success in taming the coronavirus, China has suffered a number of minor outbreaks recently. The government was quick to mobilize by building hospitals, running mass tests and banning at least 28 million people.

Updated

Jan. 17, 2021, 10:48 p.m. ET

Authorities are starting to reintroduce a variety of health checks that are deterring consumers from spending. Not everyone was doing well before the recent outbreaks. Consumer confidence never fully recovered in the past year. Chinese families have shown themselves to be particularly cautious when it comes to large expenses such as renovation projects or new furniture.

Lin Jinting, a worker in Wuhan, can typically earn nearly $ 100 a day bringing heavy loads home for buyers. Now many people are postponing major purchases and work is scarce.

“I came here this morning at 8:00 am and I didn’t get any orders today,” he said one afternoon.

Keeping the virus at bay has been critical to China’s economic success over the past year. As the pandemic devastates other nations, Beijing’s aggressive top-down approach prevented the virus from spreading rapidly across the country.

In China, nearly 100,000 cases and fewer than 5,000 deaths have been reported, mostly in Wuhan. Around 150 cases have been reported daily in the current outbreaks. In the United States, there were over 220,000 cases and 3,300 deaths a day.

Mary Wu, a 26-year-old saleswoman in Jiande, southeast China, was only allowed to leave her home once every three days during a lockdown last spring. The local schools closed for their children between the ages of 4 and 9. But life quickly returned to normal, schools reopened, and Ms. Wu and her family started eating out again.

Ms. Wu even sent her older child to additional classes to make sure they caught up any ground they lost. She no longer worries about the virus.

“We all wear masks,” she said.

With the virus largely under control, Beijing has relied on its old game book to help boost the economy.

When Wuhan was still under lockdown, the authorities moved to restart production in other areas. They provided long-distance buses to take the workers back to the factories from their home villages after the Chinese New Year. State banks provided special loans to factories, while many government agencies partially reimbursed corporate taxes paid before the pandemic.

China, already the world’s largest manufacturer, expanded its lead this year. Despite the trade war and tariffs, American and European companies turned to parts and goods of China when factories elsewhere struggled to meet demand. Factories in China turned to nearby suppliers to replace imports as transoceanic utilities became less reliable.

The “Made in China” label was particularly popular as people stuck in their homes were being renovated and refurbished. At the Xingxing refrigerated factory in Taizhou, managers cannot hire staff fast enough to keep up with the strong demand for freezers for people looking to store more food during a pandemic.

The consumer electronics sector in China is particularly strong right now, for both white-collar and blue-collar workers. When American managers could no longer travel to China last spring to oversee technology projects, the demand for electronics project managers who were already in China soared.

“Companies found everyone they could find,” said Anna-Katrina Shedletsky, general manager of Instrumental, a remote quality monitoring system used by global brands to track and manage electronics manufacturing.

Beijing also increased its infrastructure spending. Every major city in China was already connected by high-speed rail lines enough to span the continental United States seven times. However, smaller cities were quickly expanded to include new routes in the past year. New highways crossed remote western provinces. Construction companies switched on floodlights at many locations so that work could continue around the clock.

Exports and infrastructure were key drivers of last year’s growth. China’s exports rose 18.1 percent in December and 21.1 percent in November compared with the same month last year. Investments in property, plant and equipment, from high-speed lines to new residential buildings, rose 2.9 percent last year.

Both are expected to power the economy in 2021.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences predicted last week that the country’s economy will grow by 7.8 percent this year. If it did, it would be China’s strongest achievement in nine years.

Liu Yi and Coral Yang contributed to the research.

Categories
World News

Navalny Arrested on Return to Moscow in Battle of Wills With Putin

Navalny Arrested on Return to Moscow in Battle of Wills With Putin

MOSCOW – Aleksei A. Navalny returned to his home country on Sunday, five months after a near-fatal nerve agent attack and was arrested at the border. This is a sign of the fearlessness of Russia’s most prominent opposition leader and the concern of President Vladimir V. Putin.

In hours of live streaming drama that took place in Berlin, in the air and at two Moscow airports, Mr Navalny fell headlong into near-safe custody after deciding to leave the relative security of Germany, where he fell from the last Summer had recovered from poisoning.

Hundreds of people brave the bitter cold outside Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport to greet Mr Navalny, but the cheap Russian airline he was flying was diverted to another Moscow airport just before landing. There, Mr. Navalny was confronted with uniformed police officers in black masks during passport control.

He hugged his wife Yulia Navalnaya before being led away.

“I’m not afraid,” Navalny told reporters shortly before his arrest, standing in front of a neon sign at the airport depicting the Kremlin. “I know that I am right and that all criminal proceedings against me are fabricated.”

The arrest of Mr Navalny had been expected, but the day presented some of the most dramatic images of the past few years, underscoring both Russia’s growing domestic dissatisfaction and the Kremlin’s unrest over it.

Countless riot police in camouflage uniforms and shiny black helmets swarmed the arrival halls of Vnukovo and detained dozens. Other officials, some in plain clothes, came across some of Mr. Navalny’s finest employees while they were dining at an airport cafe and leading them away.

Russia’s independent media offered uninterrupted live coverage, which was freely available on Russia’s mostly uncensored Internet, from the moment German police officers escorted Mr. Navalny onto the asphalt in Berlin. Dozhd, an online television station, reported that its live feed was viewed six million times on Sunday night.

Always aware of the social media look at home, Mr Navalny responded in Russian to questions he was asked in English when he boarded the plane in Berlin. Shortly before the start, he published a video on Instagram in which his wife delivered a line from a popular Russian crime thriller: “Bring us vodka, boy. We’re going home. “

His style – tough, populist and humorous at the same time – contributed to the 44-year-old Navalny becoming Russia’s most famous opposition leader. An online audience of millions watches his YouTube videos showing corruption rife among the ruling elite.

But his followers aren’t the only ones watching.

In August, Mr. Navalny was poisoned in Siberia by a military grade nerve agent. He and Western officials said it was an assassination attempt by the Russian state.

In December, after an investigation by the Bellingcat research group, Mr Navalny pretended to be a Russian officer and called a security agent who was part of the unit that tried to kill him and extracted what sounded like a confession.

However, last Wednesday, Mr Navalny said he was coming home despite the threat of arrest. “Russia is my country,” he said. “Moscow is my city. And I miss her. “

The question now is whether Mr Navalny will only be detained for a few days or weeks – as has happened to him repeatedly in recent years – or for much longer.

Shortly after his arrest on Sunday evening, the Russian State Prison Service announced that Mr. Navalny would remain behind bars pending a trial for violating the terms of a suspended sentence he originally received in 2014. The sentence arose from a financial crime case brought against him and his brother, which the European Court of Human Rights later found unjustified.

According to the prison service, Mr Navalny did not report twice a month during his recovery in Germany last year, as requested by the court. In the days leading up to his return home, the service warned that he would be arrested for these reasons.

Mr Navalny’s fate may depend in part on the intensity of the backlash to his arrest at home and abroad. In Russia, his supporters called for protests in the coming days and found that his lawyer had not been given access to the opposition leader.

“Aleksei Navalny was kidnapped, he is in danger,” a senior adviser to Mr. Navalny, Leonid Volkov, posted on the telegram a few hours after his arrest. “He’s in the hands of people who have tried to kill him.”

In the United States, Jake Sullivan, national security adviser-designate to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., posted a Twitter request for the immediate release of Mr. Navalny: “The Kremlin’s attacks on Mr. Navalny are not just a violation of human rights, but an affront to the Russian people who want their voices to be heard. “

Outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also condemned the arrest. “Aleksei Navalny is not the problem,” he said in a statement. “We demand his immediate and unconditional release.”

Mr Putin, who has ruled for 21 years, retains tight control over television waves, domestic politics and an extensive security apparatus. But its popularity with the Russian public has waned in recent years amid stagnant incomes and widespread aversion to official corruption.

Mr Navalny has taken advantage of the discontent, built a nationwide network of local offices, and used social media to highlight the hidden wealth of the elite and the struggles of regular Russians.

Vladimir Murzin, a 50-year-old legal advisor, was among the supporters who wanted to greet him at Vnukovo Airport on Sunday. Mr Murzin said he and several others had come from Tambov – a 300 mile drive – to be there. The poisoning of the opposition leader only intensified his “years of anger over the injustice of what is happening in our country under the Putin regime”.

“This is a man the masses will follow,” said Mr Murzin of Mr Navalny. “Any citizen who does not agree with the current regime needs mutual support.”

But Mr Navalny’s flight on the Russian state airline Pobeda – which means “victory” – never made it to Vnukovo.

As the Boeing 737 approached Moscow, air traffic controllers radioed the flight’s pilots and said the plane could not land because of a blocked runway. The flight – and three others – was diverted to another Moscow airport, Sheremetyevo.

An official statement later blamed a stuck snowplow for the diversions. But it seemed like a transparent ploy by the Russian authorities to defuse the protests of the Navalny supporters gathered in Vnukovo.

“This shows once again what is happening in Russia,” said Navalny after his flight was rerouted and apologized to his fellow passengers for the inconvenience. “The rulers are not only disgusting thieves, but also totally pathetic people who spend their time with utter nonsense.”

The scale of the operation to cope with the opposition leader’s return contradicted Putin’s insistence that Mr Navalny is of minor importance. In December, Putin denied that the state had anything to do with the poisoning of Mr. Navalny, saying, “Who needs him?”

Mr Navalny – who was banned from running for the presidency in 2018 – has warned Russians to use elections to lose Putin’s power by voting for the best-positioned opposition candidate, even though the votes are not free and fair. The next test of this strategy will take place in September, when national parliamentary elections are scheduled.

Last year, Putin gave himself the opportunity to rule until 2036 by making constitutional changes that allowed him to run for two more terms. At the Moscow airports where the drama took place on Sunday, some of his opponents admitted that achieving political change in their country seemed increasingly to be a long, dangerous and potentially bloody road.

“It will be necessary to sacrifice many lives,” said Svetlana A. Utkina, a 52-year-old Russian teacher and supporter of Navalny, in an interview in Sheremetyevo shortly after the opposition leader was arrested there.

“I’m a pessimist and an idealist,” she said. “Because if you keep squeezing people for a long time, people’s fear will eventually be suppressed.”

Mr. Navalny’s wife was not arrested, and the arrival hall burst into chants of “Yu-li-a!” when she got out of customs without her husband.

A crush of journalists followed her into the Moscow night outside the airport. Shortly before getting into a car, she said, according to video footage from the scene, “The most important thing Aleksei said today is that he is not afraid. I am also not afraid and I urge you all not to be afraid. “

Oleg Matsnev and Sophia Kishkovsky contributed to the research.

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launch of fourth quarter, full-year 2020 GDP

release of fourth quarter, full-year 2020 GDP

Employees working on a dry-type transformer production line at a power generation factory in Haian, east China’s Jiangsu Province, Jan. 4, 2021.

Stringer | AFP | Getty Images

BEIJING – China reported GDP rose 2.3% over the past year as the world battled to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

However, Chinese consumers continued to be reluctant to spend as retail sales fell 3.9% over the year. Retail sales increased 4.6% year over year in the fourth quarter.

The gross domestic product grew by 6.5% in the fourth quarter compared to the previous year.

Economists expected China to be the only major economy to have grown over the past year and forecast GDP growth of just over 2%.

Covid-19 first appeared in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of 2019. To control the virus, Chinese authorities closed more than half the country and the economy contracted 6.8% in the first three months of 2020.

However, China returned to growth in the second quarter. Economists polled by Reuters forecast GDP to grow 6.1% in the fourth quarter, faster than the 4.9% pace in the previous quarter.

China’s GDP growth this year is expected to come from a lower base.

In late December, the National Bureau of Statistics cut China’s official growth rate for 2019 to 6.0% from the 6.1% previously reported. The cut came mostly in manufacturing as factories dealt with new US tariffs on Chinese goods valued at billions of dollars.