Yesterday—after a decade of democratic transition, five years of elected government, and several days of threats, apparent walkbacks, and rumors—Myanmar’s military executed a coup and returned to power. Myawaddy TV, a station owned by the military, announced that Min Aung Hlaing—the army’s commander in chief, who faces war-crimes allegations linked to the persecution of the country’s Muslim Rohingya population—would take power. (The announcement couched the coup as a constitutional “state of emergency,” justified by “terrible fraud” in November elections that returned the civilian National League for Democracy to power and handed a heavy defeat to the military’s proxy party, that will last for one year ahead of new elections.) Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s elected leader, has been detained and her whereabouts remain unclear; hundreds of elected lawmakers, meanwhile, have been placed under house arrest. The United Nations fears that the coup will lead to yet more devastating consequences for the Rohingya; more than three-quarters of a million Rohingya have already fled for neighboring Bangladesh, while around six hundred thousand remain in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, around one fifth of whom are effectively detained in camps. As the military set the coup in motion, internet and telephone access became patchy; NetBlocks, a company that monitors web access globally, reported that connectivity dropped to half its normal level in the early hours of yesterday morning in a manner... Continue reading at 'Columbia Journalism Review'
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2021-02-02 13:37:45 UTC ]
An attorney for former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh said she has now fulfilled her end of a 2017 deal in which the University of Maryland Medical System paid her $100,000 for 20,000 copies of her self-published “Healthy Holly” children’s books. Pugh “has 100 percent performed her... Continue reading at Baltimore Sun
[ Baltimore Sun | 2019-06-11 09:00:00 UTC ]
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