News Headlines - 29 May 2021
▽Hong Kong changes electoral law, reduces direct public vote : The Asahi Shimbun
Hong Kong’s legislature on Thursday passed a bill amending electoral laws that drastically reduces the public’s ability to vote and increases the number of pro-Beijing lawmakers making decisions for the city.
The new law empowers the city’s national security department to check the backgrounds of potential candidates for public office and a sets up a new committee to ensure candidates are “patriotic.”
The number of seats in Hong Kong’s legislature will be expanded to 90, with 40 of them elected by a largely pro-Beijing election committee. The number of legislators elected directly by Hong Kong voters will be cut to 20, from the previous 35.
▽Jimmy Lai and nine others jailed for 14 to 18 months over National Day protest ｜ Apple Daily
Ten Hong Kong democracy advocates, including Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai, on Friday received prison terms of 14 to 18 months for their roles in an unauthorized assembly that took place on Oct. 1, 2019, at the height of a citywide anti-government movement.
All admitted last week to organizing the unauthorized protest on China’s National Day more than a year ago.
▽London man charged in shooting of Black Lives Matter activist | Reuters
An 18-year-old London man was charged with conspiracy to murder in connection with the shooting of Black Lives Matter activist Sasha Johnson, who remained hospitalised in critical condition, British police said on Friday.
Cameron Deriggs will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Saturday, London's Metropolitan Police said in a statement. Deriggs was one of five men arrested in the case on Wednesday on suspicion of attempted murder. The other four were released on bail until next month.
Johnson, a 27-year-old mother of two, was at a party on Sunday when four men burst in and opened fire, media reports have said.
An award-winning radio presenter died following blood clots after she received the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID vaccine, her family has said.
Lisa Shaw, 44, began suffering from "severe" headaches a week after having the jab, which has been linked to clotting, and fell seriously ill a few days later, according to relatives... The benefits of having the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab outweigh the risks associated with taking it, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) had said.
But the MHRA has admitted that, while it has not been proven the vaccine causes clots, the link is getting firmer.
▽Groundbreaking ceremony for Hyper-Kamiokande held in Hida, Japan | The University of Tokyo
The groundbreaking ceremony for the Hyper-Kamiokande, a new world-leading international scientific research project which is set to start experiments in 2027, was held at its construction site in Hida City, Gifu Prefecture, Japan on May 28, 2021. As nine areas including Tokyo and Osaka were under the COVID-19 state of emergency, about half of the 50 participants attended online.
The Hyper-Kamiokande detector is planned to have a fiducial mass eight times larger than its predecessor detector, Super-Kamiokande, and it is equipped with newly-developed high-sensitivity photosensors. The aim of the project is to elucidate the Grand Unified Theory and the history of the evolution of the universe through an investigation of proton decay and CP violation (the asymmetry between neutrinos and antineutrinos), together with the observation of neutrinos from supernova explosions. The budget of the construction was approved for the first time in the Japanese Diet in February 2020, which marked the official start of the project. The project has been working so far on a geological survey of the site for the cavern excavation and on crafting the newly-developed photosensors.
