For Cherie Wong, the threats of rape and murder she receives on social media are only a semi-constant reminder that many supporters of the Chinese Communist Party see her as an enemy.
They’re not what scares her the most.
Back in January, Wong — executive director and co-founder of Alliance Canada Hong Kong, a group pressing the Canadian government to defend the former British colony’s democracy — flew to Vancouver for events associated with the alliance’s launch. Someone had been keeping tabs on her, she said.
“My hotel room was booked by someone else as a security measure. And two days after the launch … I received a threatening phone call to my hotel room demanding that I leave immediately, that these people are coming to collect me,” she said.
“That was something that really shocked me.”
Pro-China counter-protesters, wearing red, shout down a man in a black shirt during an anti-extradition rally for Hong Kong in Vancouver on Saturday August 17, 2019. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)
Wong said she still doesn’t know how her whereabouts were disclosed. She said she reported the call to the police but was told there was little they could do.
Wong’s experience is one of a number of disturbing incidents reported to a new parliamentary committee tasked with looking into Canada’s fraught relationship with China. The committee’s proceedings were interrupted by the Trudeau government’s decision to prorogue Parliament until later this month.
Doxxed in the diaspora
Wong said activists in her group had a foretaste of the impotence of Canadian police in the face of such harassment on August 17, 2019, when members of the Hong Kong diaspora rallied in 30 cities around the world to back Hong Kong’s anti-extradition protests. They were met by counter-protesters waving Chinese flags.
Wong said she was one of a number of protest participants who were subsequently “doxxed” by online antagonists. “They took photos of me and started digging up my personal information, my email address, where I was living, my phone number,” she said. “And [they] shared that kind of information maliciously through WeChat channels.”
Hong Kong activists point to the similarities between the counter-protests that occurred in August 2019 — in almost every city that saw pro-Hong Kong demonstrations — as evidence that they are being centrally organized.
They point to the behaviour of the counter-protesters, who often arrive and leave in large groups and carry brand-new Chinese flags with the ironing creases still visible. But they know that it’s hard to prove top-down coordination.
“What we saw is a pattern, whether it is in Canada, in the U.S., in Germany in Japan in Taiwan,” said Wong. “The counter-protesters show up with Chinese flags singing the Chinese national anthem. Their slogans are similar: ‘Hong Kong is a part of China’, ‘Say no to violence, say no to riots.’
“We have seen evidence of these counter-protesters being paid. We saw large scale coordination on WeChat and Weibo and I think there’s more to be seen than just angry individuals.”
A Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protester holds up a sign in front of pro-China counter-protesters during opposing rallies in Vancouver, on August 17, 2019. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian press)
While CBC News has not seen conclusive evidence that Hong Kong counter-protesters are being paid, it has spoken to Canadians who received cash payments to appear at another pro-Beijing demonstration in support of detained Huawei executive Meng Wangzhou.
Wong said that while she doesn’t object to counter-protesters exercising their right to free expression, she’s alarmed by the fact that some of them have been spotted photographing pro-Hong Kong demonstrators.
“These individuals who show up to protest are also saying that they are part of the Chinese Communist Party, that they are sending this information back to the consulate, to the embassy,” she said. “And coming from an authoritarian regime like the Chinese Communist Party, [which] has been known to conduct surveillance operations, suppression tactics, we can’t just dismiss this as just counter-protesters.”
A history of harassment
Phil Gurski heads Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting in Ottawa. Before joining the private sector he spent three decades as a security intelligence analyst, much of it at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).
He said Chinese-Canadian dissidents have been harassed in Canada by organs of the Chinese state “since Adam and Eve” — but the Chinese embassy would take care to avoid the appearance of direct involvement in the most provocative activities.
“Obviously the people in the embassy have to be a little more careful because they are here in Canada,” he said. “And if it is found out that they are engaged in activities not consistent with a diplomatic posting, they could in fact be declared persona non grata and expelled from the country.”
Gurski said China can employ more subtle forms of pressure than loud aggressive counter-protests — such as threats and warnings issued directly to dissidents in person, by phone, or through social media.
That kind of pressure from diplomatic missions in Canada “is something we’ve been warning about for decades,” he added.
And critics of the regime say that the fact that many Chinese-Canadians still have family members in China gives Beijing durable leverage over them.
The embassy reacts
CBC News asked the Chinese embassy about some of the allegations of harassment that have emerged from the committee’s hearings. The embassy didn’t answer that question directly but appeared to respond to another concern that came up at the Canada-China committee: the extraterritorial nature of China’s new “national security” law, which makes no distinction between pro-democracy political activity in Hong Kong and similar protests in Canada.
The law “only targets a very narrow category of acts that seriously jeopardize national security,” the embassy said in a written statement.
“Hong Kong is under the rule of law, where no one has extra-judicial privilege. In any country, every right or freedom has its legal boundaries. In exercising rights or freedoms, one must abide by the requirements of law. Anyone who crosses the boundaries and limits of the law shall be brought to justice.
“Hong Kong is part of China and Hong Kong affairs are purely China’s internal affairs. We urge the Canadian side to have a clear understanding of the reality and the overwhelming trend, and stop interfering in the affairs and judicial independence of Hong Kong SAR [Special Administrative Region].”
Hong Kong pro-democracy movement supporters hand out T-shirts to NBA Toronto Raptors fans in Toronto Oct. 22, 2019. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press)
Hostages to fortune
“‘We know where your parents live,'” said Cheuk Kwan of the Toronto Association for Democracy in China. “This is the phrase that they use all the time.
“You know, it could be just a little kind of phone call that says, ‘Hey, by the way, I see your parents are doing well in … somewhere.’ You right away know that they know where your parents live.
“People would say, ‘OK, I better be quiet, I better shut up or I better not do something.’ And … if you talk to people, the RCMP or CSIS, they will say, well, you can’t prevent people from calling people up and saying, ‘How are your parents doing?’ Right?”
Gurski acknowledges that it’s difficult for Canadian authorities to thwart that kind of back-channel pressure.
“I absolutely agree [that] if these are people who are engaged in activity here in Canada which the government of the People’s Republic of China would see as threatening or besmirching the reputation of the PRC, they would certainly reach out to them and threaten them exactly that way,” he said.
“The problem is if I call up and say, ‘Hey, how’s Mom and Dad?’, you and I may know exactly what I’m talking about, but how do you prove that is actually a very subtle yet very direct threat against one’s family, with the intended impact that you’ll stop what you’re doing? And if you don’t … then you may have something happen to your relatives back home?
“It may be as obvious as the nose on your face [but that’s] just not the same as proving it in a court of law.”
‘In an authoritarian country, this kind of subtle threat is very deep in the sense that people have an awareness that you’re supposed to act certain way when you receive a message like that,” said Kwan.
“And I’ve seen a lot of people getting that – even people in the Chinese-language media or editors of TV or newspapers, who might get a phone call from the Chinese consulate or their proxies … saying, ‘Hey, we don’t like what you just published. Please be careful next time.'”
Kwan said Chinese authorities can deploy even more subtle forms of coercion, such as leaning on Beijing-friendly businesses to withhold advertising spending from certain outlets seen as hostile to Beijing.
Far from home, but not from fear
In the past, said Kwan, implied threats to family members were more alarming for immigrants from mainland China than for Hong Kong ex-pats — who had reason to believe their families were safer. That’s beginning to change, he added.
Davin Wong (no relation to Cherie) said he’s felt that change personally. The former acting head of the Student Union of the University of Hong Kong fled the island city last year following a targeted attack. He has no family members in mainland China.
“Canada, of course, is a society with greater freedom and at least I feel more secure here than in Hong Kong,” he said. “But at the same time, what I have witnessed is that other activists who are fighting for Hong Kong in Canada … were facing harassment or maybe intimidation as well. So I would say I do not feel entirely safe here …
“I do have family members back in Hong Kong and that is one of the concerns that has always been in the back of my mind, because what we can see is that the freedom and also autonomy of Hong Kong has been deteriorating so fast in the past two years that Hong Kong is no longer a distinctive city apart from any other cities in China.
“I think it is fair to say that having family members back in Hong Kong … feels as the same risk of having family members in China.”
Wong said he applauds the Trudeau government’s decision to end Canada’s extradition treaty with Hong Kong in response to China’s new national security law. But he said the federal government’s efforts to help Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp would be better served by recognizing that welcoming Hong Kong’s dissidents to Canada while leaving their family members behind allows Beijing to maintain a hold over them.
“Activists like myself feel the same risk and the same pressure as if we hadn’t left Hong Kong at all.”
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. syphilis epidemic slowed dramatically last year, gonorrhea cases fell and chlamydia cases remained below prepandemic levels, according to federal data released Tuesday.
The numbers represented some good news about sexually transmitted diseases, which experienced some alarming increases in past years due to declining condom use, inadequate sex education, and reduced testing and treatment when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Last year, cases of the most infectious stages of syphilis fell 10% from the year before — the first substantial decline in more than two decades. Gonorrhea cases dropped 7%, marking a second straight year of decline and bringing the number below what it was in 2019.
“I’m encouraged, and it’s been a long time since I felt that way” about the nation’s epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, said the CDC’s Dr. Jonathan Mermin. “Something is working.”
More than 2.4 million cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia were diagnosed and reported last year — 1.6 million cases of chlamydia, 600,000 of gonorrhea, and more than 209,000 of syphilis.
Syphilis is a particular concern. For centuries, it was a common but feared infection that could deform the body and end in death. New cases plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when infection-fighting antibiotics became widely available, and they trended down for a half century after that. By 2002, however, cases began rising again, with men who have sex with other men being disproportionately affected.
The new report found cases of syphilis in their early, most infectious stages dropped 13% among gay and bisexual men. It was the first such drop since the agency began reporting data for that group in the mid-2000s.
However, there was a 12% increase in the rate of cases of unknown- or later-stage syphilis — a reflection of people infected years ago.
Cases of syphilis in newborns, passed on from infected mothers, also rose. There were nearly 4,000 cases, including 279 stillbirths and infant deaths.
“This means pregnant women are not being tested often enough,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California.
What caused some of the STD trends to improve? Several experts say one contributor is the growing use of an antibiotic as a “morning-after pill.” Studies have shown that taking doxycycline within 72 hours of unprotected sex cuts the risk of developing syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia.
In June, the CDC started recommending doxycycline as a morning-after pill, specifically for gay and bisexual men and transgender women who recently had an STD diagnosis. But health departments and organizations in some cities had been giving the pills to people for a couple years.
Some experts believe that the 2022 mpox outbreak — which mainly hit gay and bisexual men — may have had a lingering effect on sexual behavior in 2023, or at least on people’s willingness to get tested when strange sores appeared.
Another factor may have been an increase in the number of health workers testing people for infections, doing contact tracing and connecting people to treatment. Congress gave $1.2 billion to expand the workforce over five years, including $600 million to states, cities and territories that get STD prevention funding from CDC.
Last year had the “most activity with that funding throughout the U.S.,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.
However, Congress ended the funds early as a part of last year’s debt ceiling deal, cutting off $400 million. Some people already have lost their jobs, said a spokeswoman for Harvey’s organization.
Still, Harvey said he had reasons for optimism, including the growing use of doxycycline and a push for at-home STD test kits.
Also, there are reasons to think the next presidential administration could get behind STD prevention. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump announced a campaign to “eliminate” the U.S. HIV epidemic by 2030. (Federal health officials later clarified that the actual goal was a huge reduction in new infections — fewer than 3,000 a year.)
There were nearly 32,000 new HIV infections in 2022, the CDC estimates. But a boost in public health funding for HIV could also also help bring down other sexually transmitted infections, experts said.
“When the government puts in resources, puts in money, we see declines in STDs,” Klausner said.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists can’t know precisely when a volcano is about to erupt, but they can sometimes pick up telltale signs.
That happened two years ago with the world’s largest active volcano. About two months before Mauna Loa spewed rivers of glowing orange molten lava, geologists detected small earthquakes nearby and other signs, and they warned residents on Hawaii‘s Big Island.
Now a study of the volcano’s lava confirms their timeline for when the molten rock below was on the move.
“Volcanoes are tricky because we don’t get to watch directly what’s happening inside – we have to look for other signs,” said Erik Klemetti Gonzalez, a volcano expert at Denison University, who was not involved in the study.
Upswelling ground and increased earthquake activity near the volcano resulted from magma rising from lower levels of Earth’s crust to fill chambers beneath the volcano, said Kendra Lynn, a research geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and co-author of a new study in Nature Communications.
When pressure was high enough, the magma broke through brittle surface rock and became lava – and the eruption began in late November 2022. Later, researchers collected samples of volcanic rock for analysis.
The chemical makeup of certain crystals within the lava indicated that around 70 days before the eruption, large quantities of molten rock had moved from around 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) to 3 miles (5 kilometers) under the summit to a mile (2 kilometers) or less beneath, the study found. This matched the timeline the geologists had observed with other signs.
The last time Mauna Loa erupted was in 1984. Most of the U.S. volcanoes that scientists consider to be active are found in Hawaii, Alaska and the West Coast.
Worldwide, around 585 volcanoes are considered active.
Scientists can’t predict eruptions, but they can make a “forecast,” said Ben Andrews, who heads the global volcano program at the Smithsonian Institution and who was not involved in the study.
Andrews compared volcano forecasts to weather forecasts – informed “probabilities” that an event will occur. And better data about the past behavior of specific volcanos can help researchers finetune forecasts of future activity, experts say.
(asterisk)We can look for similar patterns in the future and expect that there’s a higher probability of conditions for an eruption happening,” said Klemetti Gonzalez.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Waymo on Tuesday opened its robotaxi service to anyone who wants a ride around Los Angeles, marking another milestone in the evolution of self-driving car technology since the company began as a secret project at Google 15 years ago.
The expansion comes eight months after Waymo began offering rides in Los Angeles to a limited group of passengers chosen from a waiting list that had ballooned to more than 300,000 people. Now, anyone with the Waymo One smartphone app will be able to request a ride around an 80-square-mile (129-square-kilometer) territory spanning the second largest U.S. city.
After Waymo received approval from California regulators to charge for rides 15 months ago, the company initially chose to launch its operations in San Francisco before offering a limited service in Los Angeles.
Before deciding to compete against conventional ride-hailing pioneers Uber and Lyft in California, Waymo unleashed its robotaxis in Phoenix in 2020 and has been steadily extending the reach of its service in that Arizona city ever since.
Driverless rides are proving to be more than just a novelty. Waymo says it now transports more than 50,000 weekly passengers in its robotaxis, a volume of business numbers that helped the company recently raise $5.6 billion from its corporate parent Alphabet and a list of other investors that included venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and financial management firm T. Rowe Price.
“Our service has matured quickly and our riders are embracing the many benefits of fully autonomous driving,” Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said in a blog post.
Despite its inroads, Waymo is still believed to be losing money. Although Alphabet doesn’t disclose Waymo’s financial results, the robotaxi is a major part of an “Other Bets” division that had suffered an operating loss of $3.3 billion through the first nine months of this year, down from a setback of $4.2 billion at the same time last year.
But Waymo has come a long way since Google began working on self-driving cars in 2009 as part of project “Chauffeur.” Since its 2016 spinoff from Google, Waymo has established itself as the clear leader in a robotaxi industry that’s getting more congested.
Electric auto pioneer Tesla is aiming to launch a rival “Cybercab” service by 2026, although its CEO Elon Musk said he hopes the company can get the required regulatory clearances to operate in Texas and California by next year.
Tesla’s projected timeline for competing against Waymo has been met with skepticism because Musk has made unfulfilled promises about the company’s self-driving car technology for nearly a decade.
Meanwhile, Waymo’s robotaxis have driven more than 20 million fully autonomous miles and provided more than 2 million rides to passengers without encountering a serious accident that resulted in its operations being sidelined.
That safety record is a stark contrast to one of its early rivals, Cruise, a robotaxi service owned by General Motors. Cruise’s California license was suspended last year after one of its driverless cars in San Francisco dragged a jaywalking pedestrian who had been struck by a different car driven by a human.
Cruise is now trying to rebound by joining forces with Uber to make some of its services available next year in U.S. cities that still haven’t been announced. But Waymo also has forged a similar alliance with Uber to dispatch its robotaxi in Atlanta and Austin, Texas next year.
Another robotaxi service, Amazon’s Zoox, is hoping to begin offering driverless rides to the general public in Las Vegas at some point next year before also launching in San Francisco.
