country:china

  • Dozens of coal, iron ore freighters stuck off China ports amid customs delays - data, sources | Reuters
    https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-australia-coal-idUKKCN1PQ4E8

    Dozens of ships carrying coal and iron ore to China are stuck outside ports waiting to unload, according to shipping data, with traders saying harbour authorities are taking longer than usual to clear the imports with customs officials.

    Refinitiv data showed on Friday that more than 300 dry-bulk freighters in total are currently sitting idle, waiting to deliver into China. While dry-bulk ships carry many different commodities, most affected were those carrying coal and iron ore from Australia, according to the data and two bulk traders.

    While some congestion is normal, especially as China heads into a market shutdown for its week-long Lunar New Year holiday, a ship broker and bulk trader said the backlog had swollen significantly over the past week as dozens of new ships arrived while far fewer cleared customs.

    Two traders, who mostly deal with Australian coking or thermal coal, said several of their ships had been delayed clearing customs.

    We don’t know why...but there has definitely been a significant slowdown in clearing customs, especially for Australian coal,” said one of the traders.

    The ship broker, bulk and coal traders all declined to be identified citing company policy. They said they had not been notified of any restrictions on coal imports, nor any reason for the slowdown in customs processing.

    Officials at China’s customs administration did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment via phone or fax.

    The ports most affected by the slowdown are Dalian, Huanghua, Jingtang, Lanshan, the Ningbo and Zhoushan zone, Qingdao, Qinhuangdao, Shantou, and Yingkou, according to the Refinitiv data.

    Two port officials, one at Shantou and the other at Dalian, who both declined to be named, said they had received no notices on coal import restrictions.

    While China’s upcoming holiday is universally observed and will effectively halt most business in the world’s second-biggest economy for a week, traders said it should not have affected customs this week or last.

    #Nouvel_An_Lunaire

  • New Site Exposes How Apple Censors Apps in China
    https://theintercept.com/2019/02/01/apple-apps-china-censorship

    A new website exposes the extent to which Apple cooperates with Chinese government internet censorship, blocking access to Western news sources, information about human rights and religious freedoms, and privacy-enhancing apps that would circumvent the country’s pervasive online surveillance regime. The new site, AppleCensorship.com, allows users to check which apps are not accessible to people in China through Apple’s app store, indicating those that have been banned. It was created by (...)

    #Apple #VPN #censure #TheGreatFirewallofChina #web #surveillance

  • Erik Prince company to build training center in China’s Xinjiang | Reuters
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-idUSKCN1PP169

    BEIJING (Reuters) - Hong Kong-listed Frontier Services Group (FSG), co-founded by former U.S. military services contractor Erik Prince, has signed a deal to build a training base in China’s far western region of Xinjiang, the company said in a statement.

    Xinjiang is an important part of China’s sprawling Belt and Road infrastructure network but the region has faced attacks blamed on members of the Muslim ethnic Uighur minority, to which the government has responded with a security clampdown that has drawn condemnation from rights groups and Western governments.

    #Chine #blackwater (ex)

    • Les perspectives de marché dans le secteur de l’intervention armée et du maintien de l’ordre sont excellentes. Je crois que je vais vite réorienter mes investissements sur ces créneaux porteurs.

      En même temps, ce n’est pas si surprenant, mais c’est tellement désespérant !

  • Too Many Cities Are Growing Out Rather than Up. 3 Reasons That’s a Problem | World Resources Institute
    https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/01/too-many-cities-are-growing-out-rather-3-reasons-s-problem

    n our new World Resources Report paper, Upward and Outward Growth: Managing Urban Expansion for More Equitable Cities in the Global South, we analyzed growth patterns for 499 cities using remote sensing. While cities growing vertically through taller buildings are located predominantly in wealthier cities in North America, Europe and East Asia, cities in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are growing mainly outward. These cities have the fewest financial resources to manage their growth but are expected to hold more than 2 billion additional people by 2050. As we know from the latest UN data, just three countries—India, China and Nigeria—are expected to account for 35 percent of global urban population growth between 2018 and 2050. As these cities grow in population, continuing their unwieldy expansion outward could push them into crises.

    https://www.wri.org/wri-citiesforall/publication/upward-and-outward-growth-managing-urban-expansion-more-equitable

    #urban_matter #cartographie #visualisation

  • Are Indonesia and Malaysia Ready to Stand up for China’s Muslims ?
    https://www.cetri.be/Are-Indonesia-and-Malaysia-Ready

    The two Southeast Asian states might be the best hope for pressure from the Islamic world. By now, the scale of the crisis is clear. There are up to 3 million Turkic Muslims – primarily Uyghurs but also ethnic Kazakhs and Kyrgyz – in a vast network of concentration camps in China’s far western region of Xinjiang. The result is the 21st century’s greatest human rights crisis : Empty Uyghur neighborhoods. Students, musicians, athletes, and peaceful academics jailed. “Graduates” of these camps are (...)

    #Southern_Social_Movements_Newswire

    / #Le_Sud_en_mouvement, #Chine, #Indonésie, #Malaisie, #Répression, #Religion, The (...)

    #The_Diplomat

  • #Canada trapped in China-US feud over #Huawei extradition - Nikkei Asian Review
    https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-Relations/Canada-trapped-in-China-US-feud-over-Huawei-extradition

    Canada is one of five anglophone countries with whom the U.S. shares confidential information, a group known as the “Five Eyes.” Denying an American request for extradition could be seen as giving into Chinese pressure, harming future security cooperation. Canada, which relies on the U.S. for half its imports and over 70% of its exports, cannot afford to ignore the impact on its economy, either.

    But Trudeau also faces growing concerns about Chinese retaliation if Meng is handed over. Chinese authorities have arrested two former Canadian diplomats, accusing them of jeopardizing national security, and sentenced a Canadian citizen to death for drug smuggling. Trudeau has called the death sentence arbitrary and issued a travel warning for China.

  • Why Vietnam Appeals as Possible Host for Trump-Kim Summit - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/world/asia/trump-kim-summit-vietnam.html

    Vietnam, a former enemy of South Korea and the United States, has joined the global economy and become a strategic ally and robust trading partner for both countries.

    Vietnam and South Korea normalized relations in 1992, and Hanoi is now Seoul’s fourth-largest trading partner after China, the United States and Japan, with two-way trade valued last year at $62.6 billion.

    Vietnam and the United States normalized relations in 1995, two decades after North Vietnam defeated the American-backed South Vietnamese regime to end the Vietnam War. From 1995 to 2016 — a period of heady economic growth in Vietnam — trade between the United States and Vietnam grew to nearly $52 billion from $451 million. Hanoi is now among Washington’s fastest-growing export markets.

  • Au Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU, à propos du #Venezuela, on « dépoussière les vieilles expressions du temps de la Guerre froide : #pays_satellites ».

    El enfrentamiento entre Rusia y EE UU sobre el tema Venezuela en la ONU
    http://www.el-nacional.com/noticias/bbc-mundo/enfrentamiento-entre-rusia-sobre-tema-venezuela-onu_268304


    Vasily Nebenzya de Rusia y Mike Pompeo de EE UU se enfrentaron en el Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU
    Getty Images

    Hubo llamados a tomar posición por un lado u otro. Acusaciones de intento de golpe de Estado o desestabilización. Y hasta se desempolvaron viejas expresiones, como la de «países satélites».

    El Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas (ONU) reunido en Nueva York pareció volver a los tiempos de la Guerra Fría al abordar la crisis de Venezuela este sábado, con un choque directo entre Estados Unidos y Rusia.

    El encuentro ocurrió días después que el líder opositor venezolano, Juan Guaidó, se juramentara el miércoles "presidente interino" de su país y recibiera el reconocimiento de EE UU, Canadá y las mayores naciones de Sudamérica.

    Sin embargo, Rusia y China mantienen su respaldo a Nicolás Maduro, que acusa a Guaidó de querer dar un «golpe de Estado» dirigido por Washington.

    En este contexto, la reunión en la ONU convocada por EE UU —que estuvo representado por su secretario de Estado, Michael Pompeo— concluyó sin un acuerdo entre las grandes potencias.

    Pero marcó la primera vez que el Consejo de Seguridad discutió formalmente sobre Venezuela, reflejando hasta qué punto el país sudamericano se volvió un asunto de interés internacional y otro escenario del pulso global entre Washington y Moscú.

    Le Venezuela, enjeu de l’affrontement global entre É.-U. et Russie,… perspectives sombres pour les Vénézuélien·ne·s !

  • 2018: The Downfall of Crypto Funds
    https://hackernoon.com/2018-the-downfall-of-crypto-funds-9d7a2642dc96?source=rss----3a8144eabfe

    “Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance”Crypto hedge funds are part of a larger group of crypto funds, including those based on venture capital and private equity. Grouped together, there are currently 622 crypto funds across all categories, 303 of those being crypto hedge funds, which represent assets of less than $4 billion, according to the research. Half of the funds are based in the U.S., multiple launches have been seen in Australia, China, Malta, Switzerland, The Netherlands and the U.K. this 2018. 2017 was a great year to start a crypto hedge fund. Great returns.Is it hard to perform in bull markets?2018, on the other hand, has seen a significant downturn in many of the cryptocurrencies. Many of these coins make up a strong percentage of most of the (...)

    #cryptocurrency #finance #blockchain #investing #bitcoin

  • The Real Wall Isn’t at the Border. It’s everywhere, and we’re fighting against the wrong one.

    President Trump wants $5.7 billion to build a wall at the southern border of the United States. Nancy Pelosi thinks a wall is “immoral.” The fight over these slats or barriers or bricks shut down the government for more than a month and may do so again if Mr. Trump isn’t satisfied with the way negotiations unfold over the next three weeks.

    But let’s be clear: This is a disagreement about symbolism, not policy. Liberals object less to aggressive border security than to the wall’s xenophobic imagery, while the administration openly revels in its political incorrectness. And when this particular episode is over, we’ll still have been fighting about the wrong thing. It’s true that immigrants will keep trying to cross into the United States and that global migration will almost certainly increase in the coming years as climate change makes parts of the planet uninhabitable. But technology and globalization are complicating the idea of what a border is and where it stands.

    Not long from now, it won’t make sense to think of the border as a line, a wall or even any kind of imposing vertical structure. Tearing down, or refusing to fund, border walls won’t get anyone very far in the broader pursuit of global justice. The borders of the future won’t be as easy to spot, build or demolish as the wall that Mr. Trump is proposing. That’s because they aren’t just going up around countries — they’re going up around us. And they’re taking away our freedom.

    In “The Jungle,” a play about a refugee camp in Calais, France, a Kurdish smuggler named Ali explains that his profession is not responsible for the large numbers of migrants making the dangerous journeys to Europe by sea. “Once, I was the only way a man could ever dream of arriving on your shore,” the smuggler says. But today, migrants can plan out the journeys using their phones. “It is not about this border. It’s the border in here,” Ali says, pointing to his head — “and that is gone, now.”

    President Trump is obsessed with his border wall because technology has freed us from the walls in our heads.

    For people with means and passports, it’s easy to plot exotic itineraries in a flash and book flights with just a glance at a screen. Social feeds are an endless stream of old faces in new places: a carefree colleague feeding elephants in Thailand; a smug college classmate on a “babymoon” in Tahiti; that awful ex hanging off a cliff in Switzerland; a friend’s parents enjoying retirement in New Zealand.

    Likewise, a young person in Sana, Yemen, or Guatemala City might see a sister in Toronto, a neighbor in Phoenix, an aunt in London or a teacher in Berlin, and think that he, too, could start anew. Foreign places are real. Another country is possible.

    If you zoom out enough in Google Earth, you’ll see the lines between nations begin to disappear. Eventually, you’ll be left staring at a unified blue planet. You might even experience a hint of what astronauts have called the “overview effect”: the sense that we are all on “Spaceship Earth,” together. “From space I saw Earth — indescribably beautiful with the scars of national boundaries gone,” recalled Muhammed Faris, a Syrian astronaut, after his 1987 mission to space. In 2012, Mr. Faris fled war-torn Syria for Turkey.

    One’s freedom of movement used to be largely determined by one’s citizenship, national origin and finances. That’s still the case — but increasingly, people are being categorized not just by the color of their passports or their ability to pay for tickets but also by where they’ve been and what they’ve said in the past.
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    This is what is happening on that front already:

    A 2017 executive order barred people from seven countries, including five with Muslim majorities, from entering the country. An older rule put in place during the Obama administration compelled anyone who’d even just visited seven blacklisted nations to obtain additional clearance before traveling to the United States. Even as the Trump administration’s policy has met with legal challenges, it means that the barrier to entering the United States, for many, begins with their data and passport stamps, and is thousands of miles away from this country.

    The Trump administration would also like to make it harder for immigrants who’ve received public assistance to obtain citizenship or permanent residence by redefining what it means to be a “public charge.” If the administration succeeds, it will have moved the border into immigrants’ living rooms, schools and hospital beds.

    The walls of the future go beyond one administration’s policies, though. They are growing up all around us, being built by global technology companies that allow for constant surveillance, data harvesting and the alarming collection of biometric information. In 2017, the United States announced it would be storing the social media profiles of immigrants in their permanent file, ostensibly to prevent Twitter-happy terrorists from slipping in. For years, Customs and Border Protection agents have asked travelers about their social media, too.

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation has said these practices can “chill and deter the free speech and association of immigrants to the United States, as well as the U.S. persons who communicate with them.” In other words, it’s no longer enough to have been born in the right place, at the right time, to the right parents. The trail of bread crumbs you leave could limit your movements.

    It’s possible to get a glimpse of where a digital border might lead from China. Look at its continuing experiment with social-credit scoring, where a slip of the tongue or an unpaid debt could one day jeopardize someone’s ability to board a train or apply for a job. When your keystrokes and text messages become embedded in your legal identity, you create a wall around yourself without meaning to.

    The Berkeley political theorist Wendy Brown diagnoses the tendency to throw up walls as a classic symptom of a nation-state’s looming impotence in the face of globalization — the flashy sports car of what she calls a “waning sovereignty.” In a recent interview for The Nation, Professor Brown told me that walls fulfill a desire for greater sovereign control in times when the concept of “bounded territory itself is in crisis.” They are signifiers of a “loss of a national ‘we’ and national control — all the things we’ve seen erupt in a huge way.”

    Walls are a response to deep existential anxiety, and even if the walls come down, or fail to be built in brick and stone, the world will guarantee us little in the way of freedom, fairness or equality. It makes more sense to think of modern borders as overlapping and concentric circles that change size, shape and texture depending on who — or what — is trying to pass through.
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    It’s far too easy to imagine a situation where our freedom of movement still depends entirely on what has happened to us in the past and what kind of information we’re willing to give up in return. Consider the expedited screening process of the Global Entry Program for traveling to the United States. It’s a shortcut — reserved for people who can get it — that doesn’t do away with borders. It just makes them easier to cross, and therefore less visible.

    That serves the modern nation-state very well. Because in the end, what are borders supposed to protect us from? The answer used to be other states, empires or sovereigns. But today, relatively few land borders exist to physically fend off a neighboring power, and countries even cooperate to police the borders they share. Modern borders exist to control something else: the movement of people. They control us.

    Those are the walls we should be fighting over.


    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/26/opinion/sunday/border-wall-immigration-trump.html#click=https://t.co/BWNDIXplPK
    #mobile_borders #frontières_mobiles #ligne #ligne_frontalière #frontières #ubiquité

  • China’s Old Oil Guard Dabble in Wind Power as ’We Know’ Offshore - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-24/china-s-old-oil-guard-dabble-in-wind-power-as-we-know-offshore


    _Photographer: Eric Thayer/Bloomberg

    China’s offshore oil and gas experts are dipping their toes in wind power, bringing their experience working on the ocean floor and adding a new twist to their portfolios.

    Cnooc Ltd., the country’s top offshore oil explorer, said it wants to use its expertise in marine geology to replicate its success in the offshore wind sector. The company entered its first offshore wind project in Jiangsu province this month. China Oilfield Services Ltd. echoed that view, saying its experience operating in deep waters offers a competitive advantage as the company looks for more contracts in offshore wind services.

    When we see opportunities in building offshore wind farms, we know immediately it would be an easy task for us,” Qi Meisheng, chairman of China Oilfield, told reporters on Thursday. “We know offshore geology, we know how to drill and we know how to make the process go as smoothly as it can be.

    China is turning to renewable power to aid its fight against the pollution that blights the world’s most populous nation. Wind is the country’s third-largest source of energy behind coal and hydro.

    Consultancy Wood Mackenzie Ltd. predicts an almost 10-fold surge in China’s offshore wind capacity to 33 gigawatts by 2027. Government targets will drive development, but the lack of technical expertise will present a hurdle, said Robert Liew, a senior analyst at Woodmac.

  • Beware ! Les hordes asiatiques vont déferler sur l’Occident !
    Il s’agit de produits intermédiaires (diesel) raffinés en Chine.

    Armada of Giant New Tankers Lines Up to Ship Diesel Out of Asia - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-24/armada-of-giant-new-tankers-lines-up-to-ship-diesel-out-of-asia


    Photographer : Tim Rue/Bloomberg

    • Maintenance season in Europe seen pulling cargoes West
    • New China refineries, weak local demand seen driving shipments

    A fleet of giant newly built oil tankers is gearing up to ship diesel out of East Asia.

    Five very large crude carriers, which typically carry about 2 million barrels of oil each, are currently positioned in the seas off China’s eastern and southern coasts, according to shipping intelligence and tracking company Kpler. Two more newbuilds are set to swell that fleet shortly. If all were fully loaded, they would haul a total approaching what is currently held in independent storage in Europe’s key trading hub of the Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp ports.

    It’s a large volume coming at once,” said Olivier Jakob, director at Petromatrix GmbH in Zug, Switzerland.

    China is boosting output, with more refinery capacity coming online, while weak local demand for middle distillates is helping to push products west, said Jakob. The start of refinery maintenance season in Europe also stoking Western demand for the fuel. China’s first round of export quotas also signaled an increase in diesel exports at the start of the year, while independent gasoil/diesel stocks in ARA are at their lowest seasonally since 2014.

    Three of the seven VLCCs highlighted by Kpler — the San Ramon Voyager, Ascona and Olympic Laurel — have already taken on board a combined 3.5 million barrels of diesel, according to a Bloomberg calculation from Kpler data, but are not yet fully loaded. Of the remaining four, one is currently loading, one is en route to Singapore where it may take on product, and two have yet to fully leave their construction yards.

    We expect the majority of these cargoes to head west around the Cape of Good Hope,” said Eli Powell, a Kpler analyst. Discharging is likely in northwest Europe, with possible partial discharges in West Africa.

    European demand conditions are quite favorable,” said Harry Tchilinguirian, global head of commodity markets strategy at BNP Paribas in London. “It would make sense to try to move a lot of volume into Europe in short order to meet that demand.

    The surge in Asian exports mirrors an increase in shipments of oil products, much of it diesel, from India and the Middle East into Europe in recent weeks. January’s monthly arrivals from India are set to hit their highest since at least 2017, and shipments from the Persian Gulf will be at their highest since July last year.

  • Child Inmates of South Korea’s Immigration Jail

    Helene* had a challenge that no mother would want. She, with her husband, was a refugee in a foreign land with a foreign language, trying despite all odds to raise her children as best she could. If this weren’t enough of a challenge, Helene was in jail, locked up in a 10-person cell with others she didn’t know. The only time she could leave her cell was for a 30-minute exercise time each day. But her task was more daunting still. Her children were locked up with her.

    Helene’s jail was an immigration detention facility, and her crime was not having enough money to begin refugee applicant proceedings. She spent 23 days in that cell with her two sons. Her oldest, Emerson, was three years and eight months old, and her youngest, Aaron, was only 13 months old. She watched their mental health and physical health slowly deteriorate while her pleadings for help fell on deaf ears.

    *

    In June, American news media were shocked by the revelation that migrant children, who were only guilty of not possessing legal migrant status, were being held in large-scale detention facilities. This was something new—a part of President Donald Trump’s ‘tough on immigration’ stance.

    In South Korea, detaining children simply due to their migration status, or the migration status of their parents, is standard practice.

    Children make up a very small percentage of the total picture of unregistered migrants in South Korea. However, as the nation’s foreign population reaches 2 million and beyond, that small percentage becomes a large number in real terms. The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) doesn’t keep statistics on the exact number of unregistered child migrants in the country.

    Most unregistered child migrants in South Korea fall into one of two broad categories: teenagers who come alone, and infants or toddlers brought by their parents or born to migrants already living in the country. In both cases, the majority of children (or their parents) come from other parts of Asia seeking work in the industrial sector.

    These children often end up in detention facilities when immigration authorities carry out routine crackdowns targeting workplaces in industrial districts or transportation routes workers use to get to these districts. Authorities, by policy, detain any unregistered migrant who is 14 or older. Younger children are technically exempt from detention orders, but parents are often caught in crackdowns while with their children. The parents can’t leave their children on the street to fend for themselves, and so, left with no other options, they choose to bring their children with them into the detention facilities.

    Helene’s case was different. She and her husband brought their sons to South Korea with them when they fled religious persecution in their home country of Liberia. The South Korean government rejected their refugee applications, and the family only had enough money to begin a legal challenge for one person. Emerson and Aaron, along with Helene, became unregistered migrants.

    How they were detained would be comical if their case were not so tragic. After a trip to a hospital, the family was trying to board a subway to return home. Their stroller could not fit through the turnstiles, and after a brief altercation an upset station manager called the police. The police asked to see the family’s papers, but only Helene’s husband had legal status. The police were obligated to arrest Helene due to her unregistered status and turn her over to immigration authorities. Because her children were very young – the youngest was still breastfeeding – she had no viable option but to bring her children with her.

    *

    Helene and her sons were sent to an immigration detention facility in Hwaseong, some 60 kilometers southwest of Seoul. Inside and out, the facility is indistinguishable from a prison. Detainees wear blue jumpsuits with the ironic Korean phrase “protected foreigner” printed in large white letters on the back. They live in 10-person cells with cement walls and steel bars at the front. Each cell has a small common area up front with tables, a sleeping area in the middle, and a bathroom at the back.

    For detainees, these cells become the entirety of their existence until they are released. Food is delivered through a gap in the bars, and the only opportunity to leave the cell is for a brief 30-minute exercise period each day.

    These facilities were never intended to house children, and authorities make little to no effort to accommodate them. Young children have to live in a cell with a parent and as many as eight other adults, all unknown to the child. The detention center doesn’t provide access to pediatricians, child appropriate play and rest time, or even food suitable for young children.

    Government policy states that education is provided only for children detained for more than 30 days. Children have no other children to interact with, and no space to play or explore. During daytime, when the sleeping mats are rolled up and stored, the sleeping area becomes a large open space where children could play. According to Helene, whenever her sons entered that area guards would shout at them to come back to the common area at the front of the cell.

    Emerson’s fear of the guards’ reprimand grew to the point that he refused to use the toilets at the back of the cell because that would mean crossing the sleeping area, instead choosing to soil himself. Even after the family was eventually released, Emerson’s psychological trauma and his refusal to use bathrooms remained.

    The stress and anxiety of being locked in a prison cell naturally takes a severe toll on children’s wellbeing. Like the adults they’re detained with, they don’t know what will happen to them or when they will be released. Unlike the adults, they don’t understand why they are in a prison cell to begin with. Without any way to alleviate the situation, the stress and anxiety they feel turn into mental disorders. These conditions can include depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and even increased rates of suicide and self-harm.

    Kim Jong Chul has seen many examples of these symptoms firsthand. Kim is a lawyer with APIL, a public interest law firm, and he’s worked to secure the release of many migrant children held in detention.

    In one such case, May, a 5-year-old migrant from China, spent 20 days in a detention facility with her mother. Over those 20 days, May’s extreme anxiety produced insomnia, a high fever, swollen lips and more. Despite this, her guards never brought a doctor to examine her.

    For most migrants in immigration custody, children included, their release comes only when they are deported. In 2016, authorities held 29,926 migrants in detention, and 96 percent of them were deported. The whole deportation process, from arrest to boarding a plane, typically takes ten days.

    But for children, ten days in detention are enough to develop severe stress and anxiety. Special cases, including refugee applications or a migrant laborer with unpaid wages, can take much longer to process. South Korea’s immigration law doesn’t set an upper limit on migrant detention, and there are cases of migrants held for more than a year. The law also doesn’t require regular judicial review or in-person checks from a case worker at any point in the process. According to Kim from APIL, the longest child detention in recent years was 141 days.

    Existing children’s welfare services would benefit migrant children, but the MOJ opposes any such idea. In the view of the MOJ and the Ministry of Health and Welfare, welfare facilities should be reserved only for citizens and foreigners with legal status.

    Children between the ages of 14 and 18 are yet another matter. The MOJ’s stance is that most of these children are physically similar to adults, highly likely to commit crimes and in general a danger to society, and they need to be detained.

    Kim argues that it’s hard to interpret the MOJ’s stance that migrant teenagers are all potential criminals as anything other than institutional racism. South Korean citizens who are under 18 are considered minors and treated differently in the eyes of the law.

    International treaties ban detaining children, including teenagers, due to migration status, and the South Korean government has signed and ratified each of the UN treaties that relate to children’s rights. It means that under the country’s constitution, the treaties have the same power as domestic law. And yet abuses persist.

    Lawmaker Keum Tae-seob from the ruling Minjoo Party—often called one of the most progressive members of the National Assembly— is fighting this reality. He has proposed a revision to the current immigration law that would ban detention of migrant children, but it has met opposition from the MOJ. Ironically, the ministry argues that because South Korea has signed the relevant international treaties, there is no need to pass a separate domestic law that would ban such detention. This is despite the fact that immigration authorities, who belong to the MOJ, have detained over 200 children over the past 3 years, including many under the age of 14.

    To rally support for a ban on detaining migrant children, APIL and World Vision Korea launched an awareness campaign in 2016, complete with a slick website, emotional videos and a petition. As of this writing, the petition has just under 9,000 signatures, and APIL is hoping to reach 10,000.
    Back in June of last year, another petition received significant media attention. A group of Yemeni refugee applicants—fewer than 600—arrived on the island of Jeju, and in response a citizen’s petition against accepting refugees on the office of the president’s website garnered over 714,000 signatures. A collection of civic groups even organized an anti-refugee rally in Seoul that same month.

    APIL’s campaign has been underway for more than two years, but the recent reaction to Yemeni refugees in Jeju has unveiled how difficult it will be change the government’s position on asylum seekers. A Human Rights Watch report released on Thursday also minced no words in critiquing the government policies: “even though [South Korean president] Moon Jae-in is a former human rights lawyer,” he “did little to defend the rights of women, refugees, and LGBT persons in South Korea.”

    For now, Keum’s bill is still sitting in committee, pending the next round of reviews. Helene’s family has been in the UK since her husband’s refugee status lawsuit failed.

    *Helene is a pseudonym to protect the identity of her and her family.

    https://www.koreaexpose.com/child-migrant-inmates-south-korea-immigration-jail-hwaseong
    #enfants #enfance #mineurs #rétention #détention_administrative #Corée_du_Sud #migrations #sans-papiers #réfugiés #asile

  • The European Space Agency wants to mine the moon for oxygen and water - MIT Technology Review
    https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/612822/the-european-space-agency-wants-to-mine-the-moon-for-oxygen-and-wa

    The moon may look barren, but its hidden resources have multiple space agencies eyeing its potential.

    The news: This week, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced a deal with ArianeGroup, parent company of launch provider Arianespace, to study and prep a possible 2025 moon mission. The goal: mine the lunar surface for resources. They have also recruited former Google Lunar X Prize competitor PTScientists to provide the lander for the mission.

    Precious moon dust: The ESA is focusing on regolith (a.k.a. lunar soil), which contains both oxygen and water. When extracted from the soil, these resources can be used to create fuel and life-support systems in space. Other countries, like China and India, have also investigated pulling helium-3 from the moon; this substance is extremely rare on Earth, but abundant there. It could be used as safer nuclear fuel to power spacecraft.

    What’s next? Well, ESA still has to long way to go. This is step one in a long process. The initial contract lasts for a year and will decide whether or not this mission is feasible. That means looking at how the materials could be mined and stored on the moon and the technology that needs to be developed. The results of the study will likely be used to attempt to get funding for the full-fledged mission in 2025.

    Why it matters: More space agencies are looking at space mining as they plan longer-term crewed missions away from Earth. Being able to acquire fuel and oxygen after liftoff makes for lighter takeoff loads and could enable extended stays. This year, more countries and former Lunar X Prize competitors are planning moon landings, so it could also bring interest in moon mining to the forefront once again.

    #Espace #Communs #Extractivisme

  • Casting the Tablets: #crispr
    https://hackernoon.com/casting-the-tablets-crispr-2bb98335c79d?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4

    And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses’ anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.Exodus 32:19Just a few months ago now, twin girls were born in Shenzhen, China. There birth is the stuff of international news, over forty eight thousand children are born in the country everyday — but something else about LuLu and Nana is. LuLu and Nana’s CCR5 gene was disabled by a technique known as CRISPR/Cas9.The girls will likely never be able contract to HIV.He Jiankui, the lead researcher, has been ‘disappeared’ into state custody for months (and now may even face the death penalty). Public reaction has been no more kind — casting him as a reckless and vain terroristic actor. However, if (...)

    #science #ccr5-gene #crispr-cas9 #casting-the-tablets

  • Blackwater Founder Says US Troops In Syria Could Be Replaced By Private Contractors | Zero Hedge
    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-15/blackwater-founder-says-us-troops-syria-could-be-replaced-private-contrac
    https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com/s3fs-public/styles/max_650x650/public/2019-01/Erick+Prince%20Syria_0.jpg?itok=Su5mDM6R

    “American history is filled with public and private partnerships, of places that the private sector can fill those gaps, where a very expensive military probably shouldn’t be,” Prince said. “If there is not some kind of robust capability to defend from a ground invasions from the very conventional power that the Iranians and the Syrians have, our allies will be smashed,” he continued.

    Prince — the brother of billionaire Education Secretary Betsy DeVos — has over the past years since selling his mired-in-controversy Blackwater group (now Academi) begun a new mercenary empire in China called Frontier Services Group (FSG), in a market where Western firms of necessity find themselves working closely with Chinese state authorities. He’s reportedly had success in securing security and logistics contracts in Africa and China, and has since at least 2017 lobbied both top US generals and Congressional leaders to consider massive privatization of the now fast approaching two decade long quagmire in Afghanistan, from which Trump has recently vowed to extricate the United States.

    Infamous private paramilitary firm Blackwater planning comeback. First stop: Syria - U.S. News - Haaretz.com
    https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/syria/blackwater-looks-to-trump-for-a-comeback-in-syria-1.6850563

    Prince, however, is eyeing a major comeback by offering Trump a way to both safeguard U.S. allies in Syria while pulling out U.S. troops – a promise from his 2016 presidential campaign made all the more relevant by U.S. soldiers being killed by an ISIS bomb in Syria this week.

    “If there is not some kind of robust capability to defend from a ground invasion from the very conventional power that the Iranians and the Syrians have, our allies there will be smashed,” Prince told Fox Business this week.

  • Did the Cryptocurrency Revolution Fail?
    https://hackernoon.com/did-the-cryptocurrency-revolution-fail-988bf9b2fc90?source=rss----3a8144

    Blockchain Seemed Poised On The Edge Of Greatness — Is It Dead?Nothing brings change like a revolution. If successful, they disrupt the status quo and nothing is ever the same again. If they fail, they fail in catastrophe, with bodies swinging from the gallows. But whether successful — the American, French, and Internet revolutions — or failures — the Boxer Rebellion in China or the Great Jewish Revolt against Rome, they are milestones of history. Some fail because outside forces brutally crush them and some fail because the doctrine itself has insurmountable limitations. As the market sits at nearly 10% of its previous high, we stand shaken, witnesses to an attempted revolution. We nurse our wounds, redistribute our meager portfolios, and turn to face the question:“Everyone WAS getting (...)

    #cryptocurrency-revolution #hackernoon-top-story #cryptocurrency-fail #crypto-revolution-fail #blockchain

  • Hundreds sacked after Bangladesh garment strikes - Channel NewsAsia
    https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/hundreds-sacked-after-bangladesh-garment-strikes-11130318

    The country’s US$30-billion clothing industry is the world’s second-largest after China. Its some four million workers at 4,500 factories make garments for global retail giants H&M, Walmart and many others.

    Protests by thousands of employees over low wages began earlier this month, prompting scores of manufacturers to halt production.

    One worker was killed and more than 50 injured last week after police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at protesters in a key industrial town outside the capital Dhaka.

    The demonstrations died down this week after the government agreed to raise salaries, but many returned to work on Wednesday to discover they had been laid off.

    A top union leader said at least 750 workers at various companies in the manufacturing hub of Ashulia had found notices hanging on factory gates informing them of their dismissal along with photos of their faces.

    “This is unjust. The owners are doing it to create a climate of fear so that no one can dare to stage protests or demand fair wages,” the leader said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

    “Police told me not to create trouble. Otherwise I’ll be disappeared.”

    Police and a senior factory manager gave a lower total of around 400 workers fired for damaging equipment during the strike - with more than half from one Ashulia plant called Metro Knitting and Dyeing.

  • China accuses US of suppressing its high-tech companies
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/17/chinas-huawei-reportedly-targeted-in-us-criminal-investigation

    US said to be in ‘advanced’ stages of inquiry over alleged Huawei theft of trade secrets China has accused the US of trying to suppress its high-tech companies, as US prosecutors reportedly investigate allegations that the company stole trade secrets from US businesses. Adding to pressure on the Chinese telecom giant, US lawmakers have proposed a ban on selling US chips or components to the company. “The real intent of the United States is to employ its state apparatus in every conceivable (...)

    #concurrence #spyware

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/4491ff8f6206a3a9796ea93add2816625b1ddbf0/0_0_3500_2101/master/3500.jpg