Thousands of Hong Kong residents took to the streets Wednesday for
the city’s largest antigovernment protest in weeks, hoping to inject new
momentum into a monthslong movement that has seen violent clashes and
many arrests.
Wednesday’s protest is only the second large-scale
demonstration to be authorized by the police since voters in November
overwhelmingly elected pro-democracy politicians to neighborhood
offices. That vote, a stinging rebuke to Communist Party officials in
China, ushered in the longest period of relative calm since the city was
first convulsed by protests in June.
More than 6,000 people have
been arrested since the demonstrations began over legislation, since
scrapped, that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China. The
protests have since expanded to include a broad range of demands for
police accountability and greater democracy.
If one were of a skeptical nature, one might suppose that Mr. He's research was bunk and therefore embarrassing to the Chinese establishment at home and abroad. This is, after all, the country that steals organs from political dissidents. What modicum of human decency could they be referring to?:
He Jiankui, a Shenzhen researcher who drew widespread condemnation
when he revealed his experiment last year, will also have to pay a 3
million yuan ($430,000) fine, said a report from Xinhua News Agency,
citing the verdict of a court in the southern Chinese city.
Two
others who assisted him were also sentenced. Zhang Renli, a researcher
at the Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital, received a prison term of
two years and Qin Jinzhou, a researcher at the Shenzhen Luohu Hospital
Group, received a term of 18 months, suspended for two years.
The
verdict is China’s first public statement on the fate of He, who
disappeared from view after his 2018 experiment sparked a global
backlash. His work to edit the genes of embryos to make babies who are
resistant to the virus that causes AIDs was sharply critiqued by the
international scientific community as an abuse of new gene-engineering
methods that are still not fully understood.
He’s experiment — which took place in near secrecy and was revealed
only after twin baby girls were born — also ignited concern that China
is not properly regulating its ambitious researchers in its push to
become a global leader in science and medicine.
The Xinhua report
said that in He’s experiment, for which he recruited couples with HIV
who did not want to pass the disease to their offspring, two women
became pregnant and three gene-edited babies were born. The trial
proceedings were not made public to protect the identities of the
children and their parents, said Xinhua.
The court found that He
and the two others had forged ethical review documents and used
“impersonating and concealing tactics” on unsuspecting doctors to
complete their experiment, said the report.
In the wake of the
controversy, China said earlier this year that it would more strictly
control clinical trials involving gene-editing and other experimental
life science technologies. Researchers will now require approval from
the highest level of government before they can do such work.
Not only did Beverley McLachlin get her first taste of being a
part-time judge in the territory in recent weeks, she did it as a
protest movement of historic proportions swirled around her. That
movement is aimed in part to defend the legal system from Chinese
interference.
But McLachlin said her initial experience on Hong
Kong’s Court of Final Appeal left her convinced the body is immune to
such outside pressure, and unlikely to suffer “deterioration.”
This Beverly McLachlin:
She made waves with a 1985 judgment she wrote while on the Supreme Court of British Columbia, ruling that adults accused of sexually assaulting children can use consent as a defence, provided they were not in a position of authority ...
As a B.C. Court of Appeal judge, she wrote well-regarded decisions defining the Charter’s
right to equality. She saw the law as an “organic” entity that grows
and transforms in keeping with the evolution of societal views — known
as the “living tree” doctrine. McLachlin saw this conception of gradual,
tempered growth as quite different from the sort of judicial activism
that had angered opponents of judicial power since the 1982 enactment of
the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
McLachlin revealed the core of her judicial philosophy in a lecture she delivered at the University of Saskatchewan in 2001, observing that courts can justify making substantial changes to the law
if, in doing so, they are reflecting clear changes in social values.
Even then, she cautioned, courts ought to embark on these changes only
when legislators have failed to address an underlying, pressing problem.
She was notable for her unwillingness to intrude on government budgetary priorities. In a 2004 case known as Auton v. British Columbia, for example, she ruled that it would not be unconstitutional for British Columbia to discriminate against autistic children by failing to provide them with intensive behavioral therapy.
An order in council posted
on October 26 sets out the annuity for Chief Justice Beverley
McLachlin, who is set to retire on December 15 after a 36-year judicial
career, 17 years of which were spent as the top court’s lead judge.
The order “grants to the Right
Honourable Beverley M. McLachlin an annuity of $270,266, commencing on
December 15, 2017 and continuing during her life.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called for active “diplomatic and
military countermeasures” to preserve the country’s security in a
lengthy speech at a key political conference possibly meant to
legitimize major changes to his nuclear diplomacy with the United
States.
It has long been
known that alleged agents or informers were often killed by the
Provisional IRA, but the newly declassified documents include fresh
details about those killed between 1978 and 1994.
During “The Troubles,” the government did not usually confirm whether those killed were informers.
“In a number of cases, persons murdered by the IRA have not been informers,” the official record, found in the archives, says.
“Furthermore, in
other cases alleged informers have had to leave Northern Ireland at a
moment’s notice and start a new life elsewhere, knowing that they can
never return to their homes without facing the prospect of torture and
murder, possibly having to cut off their links with close family members
in order to avoid the risk of their new location being revealed.”
Informer
or not, many of those named in the newly opened archives were dumped
near the Irish border after being shot in the head.
Australia’s wildfire crisis intensified on Tuesday as coastal towns
across the southeast caught ablaze, forcing thousands of stranded
tourists and locals to seek refuge on beaches.
Thick black smoke
billowing from infernos in Victoria and New South Wales states turned
the morning sky pitch black or choked the coastline in a haunting red
haze. Two people were killed as a fire ripped through the small
community of Cobargo, taking the death toll since the devastating fire
season began several weeks ago to 12. Five others are missing.
There’s
no end in sight to the emergency as strong winds fan flames, wreaking
havoc in popular tourist spots such as Batemans Bay during the peak
summer holiday season.
The hatred that liberals dare not name - ever:
Anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise around the country, leaving Jews
and their communities feeling frightened and unsafe. In New York City,
anti-Semitic crimes have jumped 21% in the past year. According to the
Anti-Defamation League, there were 1,879 incidents of anti-Semitism in
the United States in 2018, including more than 1,000 instances of
harassment. The 2019 figures are expected to meet or exceed that number.
This year, Canadians are going to get the government they richly deserve good and hard:
Association president Jack Jedwab notes Pierre Trudeau was chosen by
respondents in parts of the country key to current prime minister Justin
Trudeau’s electoral successes.
“Justin Trudeau, who in many ways
articulates the key pillars of his father’s vision … is today popular
with the same constituents as his father is in the survey,” Jedwab says.
I'll just leave these right here:
When Trudeau came to power in 1968 under the slogan Just Society, he
found the fundamentals of the Canadian economy in solid shape. Our
dollar was strong and stable, unemployment hovered around 4%, the books
were balanced, the economy was booming, and the federal debt represented
about one-quarter of our economy (Flaherty’s long-term target).
Trudeau‘s
first significant socialist salute was the 1971 Unemployment Insurance
Act. The period of qualifying work was reduced by 73%, the benefits
increased by 65%, and the benefit period extended by 40%. Turning
seasonal employment into year-round income, at ski hills around the
country exuberant youth began sporting t-shirts pledging their affinity
to the “UIC ski team.”
The number of UI claimants doubled
overnight. Provinces designed short-term work programs to get people off
provincially financed welfare — to make them eligible for federally
financed UI.
Trudeau’s folly, experts concluded, caused unemployment
rates in Canada to rise by between two percentage points nationally and
up to four percentage points in Atlantic Canada. Thus did Canada began
to seriously underperform our major trading partners.
Rather than
protect civil liberties, as was his expressed passion, during the
October Crisis 500 people were thrown into jail without being charged,
10,000 homes were searched without a warrant, and press censorship was
the rule of the day.
Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault’s mandate letter includes
regulations targeting the removal of illegal online content “harms such
as radicalization, incitement to violence, exploitation of children, or
creation or distribution of terrorist propaganda.”
Heritage minister Steven Guilbeault’s mandate letterFirms such as Facebook or Twitter would be required to remove such content within 24 hours or face punishment.
If that seems a bit vague, it is because the definition of “illegal content” is not yet set, but according to iPolitics, Minister Guilbeault has said he will be meeting with Justice Minister David Lametti to clearly define it.
Tal
also chalks up a big part of the gap to taxes, which account for 30 per
cent of gross income in Canada compared to 10 per cent in the U.S. The
discrepancy is mostly explained by the higher level of
government-provided services in Canada.
“Growth
in gross income in the U.S. rose roughly at the same rate as net
income. At the same time in Canada, net income rose more slowly,” he
wrote.
“We
estimate that the impact of faster-rising taxes and other transfers to
governments [such as CPP] in Canada have accounted for close to
one-quarter.”
These kinds of taxes:
When Finance Minister Bill Morneau introduced a motion earlier this month to
keep the Liberals' election pledge to cut income taxes for the middle
class, he called the measure "significant" and said it would impact 20
million Canadians.
But
most Canadians would have to study their pay stubs very closely after
Jan. 1 to detect that tax cut and other changes to deductions that
arrive with the new year. And unless they live in Alberta, they may not
notice this year's tax changes at all ...
The federal carbon tax comes into effect in Alberta on Wednesday, but
the provincial government insists it’s nowhere near done fighting
against the Liberal attempt to cut down emissions, saying Albertans
voted against the tax in the election last spring.
British lexicographer Peter Mark Roget—who is most famous for
publishing The Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (a.k.a. Roget’s Thesaurus)
in 1852—was born on January 18, 1779. As such, this is a day to honor,
celebrate, extol, laud, praise, revere, salute, etc. his contributions.
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