Chinese telecom giant Huawei has asked a U.S. federal court to rule, without going to trial, that a law prohibiting government agencies, contractors and grant recipients from buying or using Huawei products is unconstitutional.

Huawei lawyers filed a motion for summary judgment Tuesday seeking an accelerated end to the lawsuit the company originally filed in March.

The motion says the provision in the National Defense Authorization Act violates due process and amount to Congress judging the company guilty without a trial and without any way for Huawei to challenge the result. It asks a judge to decide there is no disputing the facts of the case and to rule in Huawei’s favor.

U.S. lawmakers included the provision in the defense funding bill last year because of what they allege are ties between Huawei and the Chinese government, and security concerns that arise from that relationship.

Huawei has denied that is under control of any Chinese government entity.

The company says the U.S. ban has stigmatized the company and its employees, disrupted existing contracts and “seriously threatens Huawei’s continued ability to do business in the United States.”
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Electric vehicles have struggled to gain mass appeal in much of the world despite the fanfare surrounding Tesla Motors, the world’s best-selling brand of plug-in cars last year. Drivers worry about prices, comfort and what happens when a battery expires in the middle of a trip.

But in Taiwan, scooter vendor Gogoro doubles its sales every year largely because of a widespread battery exchange network supported by a central government that’s keen to control emissions. Gogoro designs what it describes as ride-able scooters as well as engines for other brands, filling what the chief executive officer calls earlier market voids.

“People say we’re the two wheels of Tesla, and in some ways, we are,” CEO and co-founder Horace Luke said. “We do a little bit of everything.”

The company, which launched in 2011, first had to prove that it could all be done.

“Nobody could believe that an electric vehicle could be cool and fun to ride, so we built that,” said Horace Luke, founder of Gogoro. “Nobody believed that you could swap batteries, so we enabled that.”

Battery swaps

Gogoro stands out among other electric scooter developers by working with Taiwan’s central government plus the city of Taipei to locate and pay for 1,300 battery swap stations. Those alleviate rider fears of running out of juice in mid-trip, a barrier to development of the world’s $17.43 billion electric vehicle industry.

Battery swap sites are placed every 500 meters in urban Taiwan, usually in obvious roadside locations. They turn up every two to five kilometers in other parts of the island. The central government pays half the cost of building the swap stations and offers publicly accessible land, Luke said. The government’s National Development Fund invested venture capital in Gogoro in 2014.

“You should have seen how hard it was for first 50 stations; it was almost impossible,” recalled Luke, 49, a Seattle native and former software designer who moved to Taiwan for the engineering talent and supply chain. He co-founded Gogoro in 2011. 

“And our consumers are the ones voicing out. They go to the government and say ‘I want this here’,” he said. 

Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration has set a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 10 percent from 2005 levels by 2025 and hacking them by 20 by 2030. 

For the government now, Luke added, “it’s a win-win situation for them to adopt electric.” 

Gogoro’s stations do 90,000 swaps per day. Those transactions give Gogoro the data it needs to know where it should resupply batteries.

Worldwide, just “a handful” of countries have “significant market share” of electric cars, the independent, intergovernmental International Energy Agency says. Norway led in 2017 with 39 percent of new sales in 2017, followed by Iceland at 11.7 percent and Sweden at 6.3 percent.

Taiwanese still want to know more about their next battery, said Paul Hsu, co-founder of Okgo.life, a fellow Taiwanese electric scooter brand with an app that lists types and prices of batteries at the swap sites on its roster.

“Every rider has a plan for every trip. The riders know where they’re going but not how much money it will take to get there,” Hsu said. For example, he said, “a short trip should have a short-distance vehicle and a short-distance price.”

‘Fun to ride’

Gogoro has raised its sales as well by designing scooter models attractive to men who like bigger motorcycles along as well as vehicles aimed at female riders. Sales doubled last year and they’re on track to double again this year, Luke said. 

Total sales are about 160,000, or 16 percent of the total Taiwan scooter fleet. Tesla, by comparison, sold about 532,000 cars worldwide from 2012 to 2018.

Taiwanese adapted especially fast because of the earlier prevalence of gas-powered scooters. Riders were comfortable with the idea of scooters in general – just not the noise and pollution they kick up.

Tsai Cheng-yang, 36, an urban designer of the southern Taiwan city Tainan, has five electric scooters in his household. Compared to gas-powered scooters, he said, electric ones a quieter, give off less heat and lack the stench of fuel, he said. Operation costs are about the same, he said.

“If all vehicles were an electric powered, you’d feel it was quite peaceful, with no odors either, quite happy and a different experience,” Tsai said.

Gogoro plans to overcome competitors such as Yamaha and Aeon by selling motors to them, giving it a cross-brand presence, Luke said. “The idea is to create a platform allowing others to create their own vehicles,” he said.
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Carla Babb contributed to this report.

JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM — A  total of six American troops have been identified so far from 55 boxes of human remains that North Korea turned over last year, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.

Lieutenant Colonel Ken Hoffman, a spokesman for the U.S. Defense POW/MIA Account Agency (DPAA), said four families have been notified of the remains, while two other families are awaiting notification. 

The remains were returned to the U.S. by North Korea after a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore in June 2018. The two leaders had signed an agreement allowing for recovery of the remains of U.S. soldiers from the 1950-53 Korean War.

However, after a second summit between Trump and Kim in Hanoi in February ended with no agreement, the military said earlier this month it had suspended efforts with North Korea to recover U.S. soldiers’ remains.

The DPAA, based in Hawaii, recovers U.S. soldiers’ remains from around the world.

Military officials say about 5,300 American troops are believed lost in what is now North Korea.
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Rights groups in Indonesia investigating charges of police brutality are complaining that police are operating with impunity against demonstrators after the release of election results last week.

The investigation is examining the police response to rioters, who reportedly attacked a Jakarta police academy during protests. City of Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan says eight people were killed.

“As a moment of moral clarity, you can’t deny that it was a grave oversight. It could annul the good perception that the public has of the police,” Usman Hamid, country director of the Indonesian chapter of Amnesty International, told VOA. Noting that police have been praised by some for their restraint in their handling of the riots, he said, “We demanded that the police investigate the violence, identify the suspects openly, and give justice to the victims.”

Rioters threw rocks and Molotov cocktails last week at the police academy and in front of a building housing the elections oversight body. The riots followed peaceful protests against presidential election results.

In video authenticated by National Police, 30-year-old Andri Bibir is seen being hit by police officers. “Even killers and corruptors have to stand before the law,” Usman said.

Andri says it is him being beaten in the video and admitted at a news conference conducted by National Police that he was collecting rocks to throw.

The mass protests — in which demonstrators demanded the April 17 Indonesian elections results confirming President Joko Widodo’s re-election be thrown out for foul play — initially were peaceful. But National Police say new groups entered several Central Jakarta neighborhoods and started rioting. Police deployed tear gas and fired blank bullets in response.

National Police General Dedi Prasetyo told VOA an investigation of the police to determine what happened and who is responsible “will be put in place.” He previously said no officers were armed with real bullets.

The riots led to blocked streets, including the major thoroughfares of Medan Merdeka Barat and Imam Bonjol roads. The Indonesian government also restricted use of Instagram and Facebook to curb the spread of rumors — action that rights groups decried.

Political opposition groups protested official election results when they were released last week. Many claimed foul play, including the case of pre-marked ballots in Malaysia, took place. The police also have charged politician Eggi Sudjana and former military officer Kivlan Zen with treason. Additionally, the National Police last week named former military officer Soenarko for allegedly supplying firearms to protesters.

Incumbent President Joko was re-elected in Indonesia’s April 17 vote. His opponent, Prabowo Subianto, and his legal counsel filed an appeal Friday to the Constitutional Court.

Police impunity

National Police Commissioner Poengky Indarti said the brutality during last week’s riots cannot be considered impunity. “There’s still legal process that the National Police go through,” she said. “Violence can be a last resort if the [acts committed by rioters] endanger the lives of the police, the people or the loss of property.”

Poengky says journalists and medical teams also were subjected to police brutality, adding that both sides’ participation in the violence should be examined. “But I agree that excessive force should not be used,” she said.

In 2011, police officers violently dispersed the Third People’s Congress on the country’s easternmost island of Papua. In 2014, police and military personnel fired bullets at 800 peaceful demonstrators, leaving six dead. On Papua alone, Amnesty International says that between January 2010 to February 2018, there were 69 unlawful killings perpetrated by the military or police.

Usman of Amnesty International said the case of Andri Bibir is an example of the impunity in play.

“The punishment for those who collected and threw the rocks is different,” he said. “Do the people who collect rocks need to be instantly executed by getting stomped, kicked or dragged [like Andri]?”
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A court in northern Vietnam on Wednesday sentenced a student activist to six years in prison for using social media to promote a multiparty system and press freedom amid a heightened crackdown on dissent.

Phan Kim Khanh was also given four year of probation after being convicted of spreading propaganda against the state at the trial that lasted half a day in Thai Nguyen province, his lawyer Ha Huy Son said.

“The evidence (presented against him) was groundless and I think the sentencing is absurd,” Son said.

Son said the court convicted Khanh of opposing the communist state by using his two blogs and a YouTube channel to promote multiparty democracy and press freedom.

Khanh admitted in court to have run the social media platforms, but said his main purpose was to fight corruption and he did not know that constituted a crime, Son said.

The 24-year-old was arrested in March while in his final year of an international studies degree at the Thai Nguyen University.

Human rights groups have appealed for his immediate release and called on leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Vietnam next month, including President Donald Trump, to pressure Hanoi to improve its rights record.

“International donors and trade partners need to step up pressure on the country’s leaders to improve its abysmal rights record, and the APEC Summit is a good moment to start,” Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

Police have arrested at least 28 people and charged them with “vaguely interpreted” national security violations over the past year, according to Human Rights Watch.

The communist state does not tolerate any challenge to its one-party rule and maintains that only law breakers are put behind bars.
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Cambodian political observers say intimidation has been a widely used tool in the government for decades but that recently, there has been a shift in the practice to ensure the ruling party wins the next national election.

Scores of former opposition members and activists were summoned to court, self-exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy was sentenced to prison, and a group that included opposition supporters was interrupted while eating traditional Cambodian noodles.

Authorities say the summoning of opposition members was needed to investigate alleged illegal activities and the disregarding of court orders.

But Mu Sochua, vice president of the now-dissolved opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, thinks the developments are part of a long-term strategy by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s party to secure a victory in the elections scheduled for 2023.

She said local authorities wouldn’t dare act without direction from their superiors and were implementing orders from the prime minister. “He [Hun Sen] is very certain that he cannot compete with us. And he is now even more threatened,” she said. “He knows that the grassroots of the CNRP are very, very deep, deep in every single village. He knows it because after 2017, when the party was dissolved, the grassroots did not defect as he expected…”

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, agreed, and said in an email to VOA that the court summonses serve to “harass and intimidate local CNRP councilors.”

“Clearly, the government aims to compel silence at the grassroots in the provinces and further pressure exiled CNRP leaders to dedicate precious time and efforts to defend their members. So far, the Cambodian government has been effective in stampeding many activists out of the country and it looks like they are now taking aim at the thousands of local CNRP councilors, who were stripped of their seats when the government-controlled court banned the party,” he said.

Last week, human rights group Civicus Monitor observed “ongoing judicial harassment and attacks on opposition leaders and activists.”

Cambodia government spokesman Phay Siphan denied that authorities were attempting to harass local opposition activists. Instead, he said they were investigating whether national security was under threat, with local activists potentially meeting to plot against the government. They were also collecting evidence, he said, as to whether a Supreme Court ruling that banned 118 opposition members from politics for five years had been disregarded.

“It doesn’t mean ex-opposition party members have the right to do everything they like, no! They have to respect national security,” he said.

Old strategy in a new framework

Robertson and Sochua said they believed that intimidation of the opposition had long belonged to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party’s playbook on how to govern; however, they both argued that a perceived shift had taken place in recent months.

“What’s new in the government’s strategy is the focus on targeting local CNRP councilors who have previously been largely ignored while the authorities went after party leader Kem Sokha, national [members of parliament], and CNRP leaders in exile,” Robertson said.

The apparent targets are the provinces Battambang, Banteay Meanchey and Kampong Thom, regions that traditionally have supported opposition parties.

While agreeing that a shift had taken place since the dissolution of the CNRP, political analyst Meas Nee views the recent action in a larger context. He argues that the Cambodian People’s Party, or CPP, had lost its grip over local communes and was now trying to re-establish control of villages and communes that it had held in the 1980s, but had gradually lost since.

“I think the structure of the ruling party to control the people has been weakened,” he said, explaining that human rights abuses, such as land grabbing, had pushed people to increasingly support opposition movements.

But while in the 1990s many people were too afraid to openly align with opposition parties because some supporters were killed, he said people were now less afraid to support the CNRP. The CPP, he argues, was therefore attempting to regain control by monitoring people on the local level. “Now I think [authorities] have their own system back in place,” he said.

The ruling party ran a two-coin strategy, Nee said, of strengthening its own local structure, while at the same time attempting to destroy the opposition.

For opposition figure Sochua, the government pretexts to intimidate the opposition were unlikely to stop soon, and would often take place under the justification of an alleged “color revolution,” or resistance effort, being planned by the opposition.

“Whether we eat noodles, whether we drink coffee, whether we dig a hole together, whether we stand on a street together, there will always be an excuse used to label it as color revolution. Whether we walk around naked, it will still be a color revolution,” she said.
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Myanmar’s early release of seven soldiers who were jailed for killing a group of Rohingya Muslims is drawing criticism from rights activists.

Four officers and three enlisted service members were freed last November, Reuters first reported, after being sentenced in 2018 to 10 years in prison with hard labor for killing 10 Rohingya men and boys the year before.

Prisons department head Myint Soe confirmed to reporters Tuesday in Yangon the soldiers were “no longer in custody,” but he declined to provide more information.

The soldiers served less time than two Reuters reporters who were jailed for exposing the massacre. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were jailed last September after being sentenced to seven years on charges linked to their reporting. They served 500 days and then were released after receiving a presidential pardon.

The massacre occurred during a military crackdown in 2017 that forced nearly three-quarters of a million Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh.

United Nations investigators have said the violence warrants the prosecution of top military leaders for “genocide.” The International Criminal Court has launched a preliminary investigation into the killings.

Human Rights Watch Deputy Asia Director told the VOA Burmese Service the early release of the soldiers reveals that top Myanmar military leaders “don’t really consider the Rohingya to be human, and were never committed to seeing anyone held accountable for their crimes in Rakhine state.”

Asia Human Rights Commission attorney Min Lwin Oo said in an interview with VOA Burmese the soldiers’ early release “obviously shows that the military does not care about the judicial system.”

The Rohingya are widely viewed in Myanmar as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The military has justified its 2017 crackdown, which involved mass killings, gang rapes and widespread arson, as a way of eradicating Rohingya insurgents.
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A rare all-white panda has been caught on camera at a nature reserve in southwest China, showing albinism exists among wild pandas in the region, state media reported.

The spotless, red-eyed animal was photographed while trekking through the forest mid-April in southwestern Sichuan province, said official news agency Xinhua on Saturday.

The panda is an albino between one to two years old, said Li Sheng, a researcher specializing in bears at Peking University, who was quoted in Xinhua’s report.

The Wolong National Nature Reserve — where the animal was spotted — told AFP it had no further details about the albino panda.

More than 80 percent of the world’s wild pandas live in Sichuan, with the rest in Shaanxi and Gansu province.

There were about 548 giant pandas in captivity globally as of November, reported Xinhua.

The number living in the wild has dwindled to fewer than 2,000, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

Famed for its “panda diplomacy”, in which China dispatches the rare animals to other countries as a symbol of close relations, Beijing has invested in different programs to protect its furry ambassadors in recent years.

In 2018, China announced plans to create a bastion for giant pandas three times the size of Yellowstone National Park to link up existing wild populations and encourage breeding of the notoriously slow-reproducing animal.

At least 10 billion yuan ($1.45 billion) had been budgeted for the Giant Panda National Park in mountainous southwestern China state-run China Daily reported.

Pandas are currently listed as a vulnerable species, which means that while their survival is still threatened, conservation efforts have helped reduce their danger of extinction.
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Indonesian police say four top government officials were the targets of an assassination plot that may have been linked to last week’s deadly post-presidential riots in Jakarta.

National police chief Tito Karnavian told reporters Tuesday the intended victims of the plot were chief security minister Wiranto who uses just one name, intelligence agency chief Budi Gunawan, maritime affairs minister Luhut Pandjaitan, and Gories Mere, a special adviser to President Joko Widodo. Karnavian said the identities of the targets were revealed after six people were arrested on Monday in connection with the plot.

Wiranto, who appeared at the press conference with Karnavian, said the plot was intended to “create fear.”

At least eight people were killed and hundreds injured during two nights of clashes in the Indonesian capital between security forces and supporters of presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto, a former special forces general who was soundly defeated by President Widodo in the April 17 vote. Security officials say they believe the protests, which began after Widodo was officially declared the winner, were organized by several groups, including hardline Islamic militants.

Prabowo has refused to concede the election, alleging massive fraud and irregularities while providing no evidence, and challenged the result in the Constitutional Court.
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A mass stabbing in the Japanese city of Kawasaki on Tuesday injured at least 19 people, among them one person left with “no vital signs,” the local fire department said. 

“The number of injured people is now 19, including one who is seriously injured and now shows no vital signs,” Kawasaki Fire Department spokesman Keiichi Hayakawa told AFP. 

“A man stabbed them,” another spokesman for the department, Dai Nagase, earlier told AFP. “We received an emergency call at 7:44 a.m., which said four elementary schoolchildren were stabbed.” 

Public broadcaster NHK said at least three people were in critical condition. 

Police said one suspect, a man, had been detained. NHK said he had stabbed himself, suffering a serious wound. 

The broadcaster said two knives were spotted at the scene, but there was no immediate confirmation from officials. 

The attack occurred at a park not far from a local train station, local media said, at the time of the morning commute. 

Footage broadcast on local TV stations showed multiple police cars, ambulances and fire engines at the scene. Emergency medical tents were put up to treat the wounded. 
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