Month: September 2023

A prominent Thai human rights lawyer was convicted on Tuesday of insulting the monarchy and sentenced to four years in prison, the first conviction under a controversial law guarding the royal institution since a civilian government took office after years of military-backed rule.

Arnon Nampa was found guilty of defaming King Maha Vajiralongkorn during a student-led rally on Oct. 14, 2020, that commemorated a popular uprising in 1973 that led to the fall of a decade-long military dictatorship. He was also fined 20,000 baht ($550) for violating an emergency decree banning large public gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic.

Arnon, 39, still faces 13 more cases under the lese majeste law, which makes insulting the monarch, his immediate family and the regent punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

The court said in its ruling Tuesday that Arnon had declared at the rally that if it were dispersed, it would be at the order of King Maha Vajiralongkon. It said that statement was false because such actions would be up to the police to decide, and that Arnon had therefore defamed the king.

Arnon’s lawyer, Kritsadang Nutcharat, said his client will appeal and seek bail. Arnon hugged his son before being taken away to be jailed.

Arnon told reporters before entering the courtroom that even if he loses his freedom, his struggle is worth fighting for. He was accompanied by his wife, son and father. About 20 other people came to Bangkok Criminal Court to express their solidarity.

“The movement of the new generation created a phenomenon of change for the country in a way that cannot be turned back,” Arnon said. “I want the fight of the new generation to truly change the country.”

Arnon was awarded the 2021 Gwangju Prize for Human Rights by a South Korean foundation for his pro-democracy work.

He was among the first people to publicly call for reform of the monarchy and has remained one of the most vocal advocates of the movement. Earlier this year he accused the government of using internationally notorious Pegasus spyware to monitor his mobile devices.

The monarchy has long been considered a pillar of Thai society and criticism of it has been taboo. Conservative Thais, especially in the military and courts, still consider it untouchable. However, public debate on the topic has recently grown louder, particularly among young people.

Critics say the lese majeste law is often used to quash political dissent. At least 257 people have been charged in 278 cases since November 2020, including at least 20 minors, according to the group Thai Lawyers for Human Rights.

Opposition to reform of the monarchy was highlighted after Thailand’s general election in May which ended the nearly decade-long rule of Prayuth Chan-ocha, who initially took power in a 2014 military coup.

The progressive Move Forward Party won the most seats in the election but was denied power by Parliament. Conservative members of the military-installed Senate, which picks the prime minister together with the elected House of Representatives, voted to block party leader Pita Limjaroenrat from taking the post, citing his party’s call for a mild reform of the lese majeste law.

The populist Pheu Thai party, which ran second in the election, then formed a coalition with military-backed parties and succeeded in forming a new government led by Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin. Pheu Thai pledged not to touch the lese majeste law to win support for its rule.

An explosion in the city of Kryvyi Rig, the hometown of President Zelensky in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, damaged homes, farm buildings and solar panels.

The official Kremlin toll from last week’s strike in Sevastopol is one missing serviceman. Ukraine claims it took out the fleet’s commander and 34 other officers.

As thousands of Armenians fled their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh saying they feared ethnic cleansing, the United States called on Azerbaijan to protect the rights of civilians and allow in humanitarian and monitoring missions.

The Armenians of Karabakh – a breakaway part of Azerbaijan beyond Baku’s control since the dissolution of the Soviet Union – began fleeing this week after their forces were defeated in a lightning military operation by Azerbaijan’s military.

At least 13,550 of the 120,000 ethnic Armenians who call Nagorno-Karabakh home arrived in Armenia on the first day of the exodus, with hundreds of cars and buses crammed with belongings snaking down the mountain road out of Azerbaijan.

“We are calling on Azerbaijan to maintain the ceasefire and take concrete steps to protect the rights of civilians in Nagorno-Karabakh,” U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) chief Samantha Power told reporters in Yerevan.

Power, who earlier handed Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan a letter of support from U.S. President Joe Biden, said Azerbaijan’s use of force was unacceptable and that Washington was looking at an appropriate response.

She called on Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev to live up to his promise to protect ethnic Armenian rights, fully reopen the Lachin corridor that connects the region to Armenia and let in aid deliveries and an international monitoring mission.

Aliyev has pledged to guarantee the safety of Karabakh’s Armenians but said his iron fist had consigned the idea of the region’s independence to history.

Ethnic Armenians who managed to get to Armenia gave harrowing accounts of fleeing death, war and hunger.

Some said they saw many dead civilians – one said truckloads. Others, some with young children, broke down in tears as they described a tragic odyssey of running from war, sleeping on the ground and with hunger churning in their bellies.

“We took what we could and left. We don’t know where we’re going. We have nowhere to go,” Petya Grigoryan, a 69-year-old driver, told Reuters in the border town of Goris on Sunday.

Reuters was unable to independently verify accounts of the military operation inside Karabakh. Azerbaijan has said it targeted only Karabakh fighters.

“We are going to learn a lot more in a hurry about the severity of those conditions and what those individuals have gone through causing them to leave Nagorno-Karabakh,” USAID’s Power said.

As Armenians rushed to leave the Karabakh capital, known as Stepanakert by Armenia and Khankendi by Azerbaijan, fuel stations were overwhelmed by panic buying.

The authorities there said at least 20 people were killed and 290 injured when a fuel storage facility blew up on Monday.

“The doctors and medical staff in Stepanakert are doing their best to save the lives of the wounded in these difficult and cramped conditions,” the local Armenian authorities said.

The Azerbaijani victory changes the balance of power in the South Caucasus region, a patchwork of ethnicities crisscrossed with oil and gas pipelines where Russia, the United States, Turkey and Iran are jostling for influence.

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Armenia had relied on a security partnership with Russia, while Azerbaijan grew close to Turkey, with which it shares linguistic and cultural ties.

Armenia has sought closer ties with the West and blames Russia, which had peacekeepers in Karabakh but is now preoccupied with the war in Ukraine, for failing to protect Karabakh. Moscow denies blame and has told Pashinyan that he is making a big mistake by flirting with the United States.

Aliyev hinted on Monday at the prospect of creating a land corridor to Turkey across Armenia.

Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to the United States, told Washington to stop stoking anti-Russian sentiment in Armenia.

U.S. Treasury yields scaled fresh 16-year peaks on Tuesday, keeping the dollar near a 10-month high, as investors responded to the message from the Federal Reserve and other major central banks that rates are likely to stay elevated for longer.

Asia-Pacific stock benchmarks sagged along with gold, with European equities also set for a weaker open, while crude oil continued to drift back from 10-month highs.

The yield on 10-year Treasury notes rose as high as 4.566%, a level not seen since October 2007.

The U.S. dollar index – which measures the currency against six major developed market peers, including the euro and yen – ticked up 0.09% to 106.04, after reaching 106.10 overnight for the first time since Nov. 30.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares (.MIAP00000PUS) slumped 0.66%.

Tokyo’s Nikkei (.N225) lost 0.93%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng (.HSI) slipped 0.98% and mainland Chinese blue chips (.CSI300) retreated 0.4%.

U.S. stock futures pointed 0.35% lower, following a 0.4% rise for the S&P 500 (.SPX) overnight. Pan-European STOXX 50 futures fell 0.17%.

Westpac strategists see risks skewed toward even higher yields in the near term, buoying the dollar.

“We expect 10-year yields to establish a new, higher, range in coming weeks,” with a possible peak around 4.75%, they wrote in a client note. “Medium term, we would be looking to get long at some stage, but that time is not yet upon us.”

The next target for the dollar index is 107.20, they said.

By contrast, IG analyst Tony Sycamore says technical indicators suggest a top for Treasury yields is close.

“I think that over the next three or four days, we’re going to see yields start to come off, and U.S. equities could start to base,” he said. “But between now and then, it could get more ugly, that’s for sure.”

Traders now put the odds of another quarter-point Fed hike by January at a coin toss, and have pushed the likely start of rate cuts to summer.

Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said on Monday that inflation staying entrenched above the central bank’s 2% target remains a bigger risk than tight Fed policy slowing the economy more than needed.

Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said more rate hikes are likely needed given the surprising resilience of the U.S. economy.

The European Central Bank and Bank of England have also touted higher rates for longer in policy meetings since the middle of the month.

The relative outperformance of the U.S. economy – with investors increasingly betting on a soft landing while growth in the euro zone and Britain stagnate – has buoyed the dollar against those currencies.

The euro sagged 0.08% to $1.0584, approaching the overnight low of $1.0575, a level last seen in mid-March.

Sterling slipped 0.14% to $1.2196, taking it back toward Monday’s six-month low of $1.21945.

The dollar also held near an 11-month peak of 148.97 yen from overnight, raising the risk of intervention by Japanese authorities.

Gold drifted slightly lower to $1,914.15, extending its slump from above $1,947 over the past week.

Crude oil remained weak amid concerns that fuel demand will be crimped by major central banks holding interest rates higher for longer, even with supply expected to be tight.

Brent crude futures were down 38 cents at $92.91 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures were trading 34 cents lower at $89.34.

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The United States says the Biden administration will seek to secure $100 million in funding for a U.N. mission to Haiti. Thousands of ethnic Armenians have fled Nagorno-Karabakh; what does it mean for the region? Emergency services worldwide are racing to recruit thousands of new volunteers.

U.S. Federal Communications Commission chair Jessica Rosenworcel plans to begin an effort to reinstate landmark net neutrality rules rescinded under then-President Donald Trump, sources briefed on the matter said Monday.

The move comes after Democrats took majority control of the five-member FCC on Monday for the first time since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021 when new FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez was sworn in.

The FCC is set to take an initial vote on the net neutrality proposal in October, the sources added.

In July 2021, Biden signed an executive order encouraging the FCC to reinstate net neutrality rules adopted under Democratic then-President Barack Obama in 2015.

The FCC voted in 2017 to reverse the rules that barred internet service providers from blocking or throttling traffic, or offering paid fast lanes, also known as paid prioritization. Days before the 2020 presidential election, the FCC voted to maintain the reversal.

Rosenworcel denounced the repeal in 2017 saying it put the FCC “on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of the law, and the wrong side of the American public.”

She plans a speech to outline her plans on Tuesday, the sources added. A spokesperson for Rosenworcel declined to comment.

In 2022, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 3-0 that the 2017 decision by the FCC to reverse federal net neutrality protections could not bar state action, rejecting a challenge from telecom and broad industry groups to block California’s net neutrality law. Industry groups abandoned further legal challenges in May 2022.

The appeals court said that since the FCC reclassified internet services in 2017 as more lightly regulated information services, the commission “no longer has the authority to regulate in the same manner that it had when these services were classified as telecommunications services.”

Days after Biden took office, the U.S. Justice Department withdrew its Trump-era legal challenge to California’s state net neutrality law.

Donald Trump pushed back at U.S. prosecutors’ request to curb some of his public statements about people involved in the federal court case accusing him of attempting to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The former U.S. president’s lawyers sharply opposed the request from Special Counsel Jack Smith for a court order limiting Trump’s out-of-court statements about potential witnesses in the case and barring disparaging or intimidating remarks about the judge, prosecutors and potential jurors.

Trump’s defense team said in a court filing late on Monday that such restrictions would violate his free speech rights as he runs for president as the clear front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2024.

Trump had already publicly attacked Smith’s request, arguing it was an attempt to limit his criticism of the President Joe Biden, his likely opponent in the 2024 election.

“At bottom, the Proposed Gag Order is nothing more than an obvious attempt by the Biden Administration to unlawfully silence its most prominent political opponent,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in the filing.

Trump was indicted in August on four felony counts for allegedly attempting to intervene in the counting of votes and block the certification of the 2020 election, one of four criminal cases he faces. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Smith’s office said in a court filing this month that Trump threatened to undermine public confidence in the case and influence potential jurors with “near daily” social media attacks on prosecutors, U.S. Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case, and residents of Washington, D.C. who will serve as jurors.

Prosecutors said Trump has a history of inspiring his supporters to harass and threaten people he singles out for public criticism.

Thousands of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, fighting with police and sending lawmakers fleeing for their lives, in a failed bid to overturn Trump’s election defeat. Trump continues to make the false claim that his loss was the result of fraud.

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Ford is halting work on a major battery plant in the northern U.S. state of Michigan, the automaker said Monday, just seven months after launching the project with a Chinese partner.

The stoppage, which a Ford representative confirmed to AFP, comes as the company faces a major strike along with both of the other “Big Three” U.S. automakers, Stellantis and General Motors.

The Ford spokesperson insisted the decision about the $3.5 billion battery plant had not been related to the ongoing strike, but rather the site’s future economic viability.

“We’re pausing work and limiting spending on construction on the Marshall project until we’re confident about our ability to competitively operate the plant,” the spokesperson said.

“We haven’t made any final decision about the planned investment there,” he added.

In February, Ford announced the project in Marshall, Michigan, as a way to diversify its battery profile away from its current exclusive use of nickel cobalt manganese (NCM), which are costly to produce because of raw material scarcity.

Ford said it would work with the Chinese company Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. to manufacture lithium iron phosphate batteries beginning in 2026 at the Marshall plant.

Several Republican officials had voiced opposition to the plant due to the partnership with a Chinese company.

The technology involves less-expensive raw materials and can tolerate more frequent and faster charging than NCM batteries, the company said at the time.

The auto giant said it is targeting annual global output of 600,000 electric vehicles by end-2023 and 2 million by the end of 2026.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, touted the announcement in February as “another win for Michigan,” citing the addition of 2,500 new manufacturing jobs.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday is set to visit Michigan to join a UAW picket line in support of striking workers at the Detroit Three automakers.

Donald Trump was never the most coherent or cogent communicator, to put it politely. But if you’ve been paying attention over the past two and a half years you’ve seen Trump’s cognitive abilities gradually collapse, to the point where he’s turned into an incoherently pale imitation of his former self. Now that Trump feels pressure to put himself out there more often in order to combat the perception that he’s a defendant not a candidate, his senility is becoming more clear to all involved.

On Monday alone, Trump incoherently appeared to claim that Jeb Bush was President of the United States. Trump also claimed that he’s facing Joe Biden in an election five months from now, meaning he either thinks the general election is in February, or he thinks Biden is his Republican primary opponent. And this was just one day.

Trump has also recently claimed that he ran against Barack Obama in 2016, suggested that we’ve only had one World War thus far, and didn’t appear to understand that he was the one who gave Dr. Fauci a medal.

Our friends over at Meidas Touch are referring to Donald Trump as “disoriented and confused,” and that sums it up well. It’s important to remember that while Trump is declining rapidly these days, he’s been senile for quite awhile now. It’s just that during the previous two and a half years, Trump’s handlers mostly kept him out of public view. But anyone who has been paying close attention has seen this coming since early 2021. Trump has been on a harsh downward cognitive spiral ever since he was forced out of office.

Donald Trump isn’t merely misspeaking. These aren’t gaffes. These aren’t occasional senior moments. This is a guy who now says incoherently senile things every time he appears in public. He doesn’t remember who he ran against. He doesn’t appear to remember his time in office. He definitely doesn’t understand who he’s currently running against or how far away the next election is. Trump’s senility is as serious of a story as his criminal trials, and it’s well past time for the mainstream media to start acknowledging that Trump is full blown senile.

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