Britain. France. Germany. Holland. Canada. All are sending warships to the South China Sea in growing “pushback” against Beijing.
 
Britain’s defence ministry says a multinational task force centred on its new 65,000-ton aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth will arrive in South East Asia between April and June.
 
France sent one of its nuclear-powered attack submarines which passed through the South China Sea earlier this month. Now it’s sending the 21,000-ton amphibious assault ship FS Tonnere and a frigate through the disputed waters in coming weeks.
 
And last month, the Royal Canadian Navy frigate Winnipeg passed through the contested Taiwan Strait to emphasise a “free and open Indo-Pacific”.

Beijing doesn’t want any of them in its backyard.
 
“By dispatching naval assets to the South China Sea, France and the UK are contributing to the US’ anti-China stratagems,” states the Beijing-controlled China Daily.
 
It accuses the West of a “crafty” and “neo-imperial” scheme to support Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia “which could in turn provoke regional crisis”.

A new report reveals patent applications belonging to Huawei and a group of China-based artificial intelligence companies for systems that can detect people who are part of a Muslim minority group.
 
The ethnic Uighurs, who live mostly in China’s west, have been identified by the United Nations, United States, United Kingdom and others as a repressed group. Authorities allegedly use widespread surveillance technology to monitor the region’s Uighur population. The Chinese government denies mistreating Uighurs and says those camps are vocational training centers.

China: Covid-19 Discrimination Against Africans
Forced Quarantines, Evictions, Refused Services in Guangzhou

The Chinese government should end the discriminatory treatment of Africans related to the Covid-19 pandemic, Human Rights Watch said today. Authorities should also protect Africans and people of African descent throughout China from discrimination in employment, housing, and other realms.
 
In early April 2020, Chinese authorities in the southern city of Guangzhou, Guangdong province, which has China’s largest African community, began a campaign to forcibly test Africans for the coronavirus, and ordered them to self-isolate or to quarantine in designated hotels. Landlords then evicted African residents, forcing many to sleep on the street, and hotels, shops, and restaurants refused African customers. Other foreign groups have generally not been subjected to similar treatment.
 
“Chinese authorities claim ‘zero tolerance’ for discrimination, but what they are doing to Africans in Guangzhou is a textbook case of just that,” said Yaqiu Wang, China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Beijing should immediately investigate and hold accountable all officials and others responsible for discriminatory treatment.”

Japan adopts strike-first policy to counter Chinese aggression

In 1945, Japan renounced war and became a pacifist state. 75 years later, it is shifting away from pacifism. Japan is adopting what looks like a strike-first policy. What does it mean?  
 
Japan's Coast Guard can fire missiles if a foreign vessel intrudes into the Senkaku islands. That's what Tokyo has announced.

Now, Japan will strike first to protect this turf. Pacifism is part of the Japanese Constitution and the government hasn't changed the Constitution.  
 
It has just found a way around it. Japan has changed the way one law is interpreted. And the result is that the Japanese Coast Guard can strike first. Technically, Japan doesn't have an army but it maintains a self-defence force that has vowed never to use force first.

Here is why it was necessary. China is deploying vessels with lethal firepower around Japan. Hundreds of Chinese vessels entered the waters around the Senkaku islands last year.  
 
Reports say Chinese vessels were spotted there for a record 333 days. For 111 days, these Chinese vessels maintained a continuous presence. So, Japan has now told its coast guard. It is free to shoot at foreign vessels and it is also getting more firepower.  

“The National Security Council decided today to push for an early return of the territories occupied by 26 U.S. military bases, which will be moved to Pyeongtaek and other areas,”

Since the pandemic, there have been 28 incidents of Covid-related hate crimes against Asians, and all but one involved Asian victims, said NYPD Deputy Inspector Stewart Loo, who heads the Asian Hate Crime Task Force, which was formed last year.

Prior Muflihi's confession at the New York County District Attorney's Office, the New York City Police Department's hate crimes unit was investigating the attack but their probe ended when Muflihi turned himself in and said that the stabbing was not motivated by race or ethnicity, according to NBC New York.

À partir de 1971, la question de la souveraineté des îles Senkaku se transforme en conflit territorial non armé entre la République populaire de Chine, la République de Chine et le Japon qui revendiquent tous les trois l'archipel. De nombreux incidents, démonstrations nationalistes et manifestations se produisent. Selon le point de vue du droit international, la souveraineté japonaise est établie mais, comme pour les autres différends maritimes de mer de Chine méridionale, les Chinois évoquent des « droits historiques »

Wuhan already had 13 variants of Covid by December 2019, WHO team finds

The Chinese city of Wuhan had more than a dozen Covid variants by December 2019, new findings by a team of World Health Organisation (WHO) scientists probing the origins of the pandemic suggest.
 
Peter Ben Embarek, who led a team of WHO investigators in Wuhan, said 13 different genetic sequences of the SARS-COV-2 virus were found in the Hubei province city, adding thousands more blood samples have been requested for analysis.
 
It suggests that the infection had been circulating in China earlier than previously thought, although Mr Embarek refused to be drawn on the matter.

Mr Embarek said Chinese officials had presented his team with 174 cases of coronavirus in and near the Wuhan area in December 2019, around 100 of which had been laboratory test-confirmed, with the remaining cases identified through the clinical diagnosis of the patients' symptoms.
 
He said this suggested there could have been as many as 1,000 cases of the disease in Wuhan by December. "We haven't done any modelling of that since," he said. "But we know... in big ballpark figures... out of the infected population, about 15 per cent end up severe cases, and the vast majority are mild cases."

Mr Embarek said that the 13 variants examined alongside other patient data across China in 2019 could provide vital clues to the origins of the outbreak.
 
He added: "Some of [the variants] are from the markets... some of them are not linked to the markets. This is something we found as part of our mission... part of the interaction we had all together."