Pollution kills three times more people than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined, according to new estimates. It’s one of the leading causes of death. But it’s a neglected issue in most of the world, despite the enormous toll. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.

Jury selection resumed Monday at the trial of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, who has pleaded not guilty to charges he raped a woman in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013 and sexually assaulted another in 2006.

The initial screening process, now on its fifth day, has been stymied by a host of challenges and distractions, including repeatedly denied requests from the defense and a noisy protest outside the courthouse.

Both sides hope to deliver opening statements before the end of this month.

If convicted at a trial expected to last into March, the 67-year-old could face life in prison.

The former studio boss behind such Oscar winners as I and “Shakespeare in Love” has said any sexual activity was consensual.

About 120 prospective jurors are being summoned to court each day. Last Tuesday, they were introduced as a group to Weinstein and were read a list of names that could come up at trial, including actresses Salma Hayek, Charlize Theron and Rosie Perez.

As his New York trial was getting underway a week ago, Los Angeles prosecutors announced new charges in a separate case against Weinstein. Those charges accuse him of raping one woman and sexually assaulting another woman there on back-to-back nights in 2013, days before he walked the Oscars with his then-wife, fashion designer Georgina Chapman, who was pregnant at the time.

Weinstein has not entered a plea in the Los Angeles case, which will be tried later.

 

A former soldier told a court on Monday he had been hired to kill Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak — a reporter known for his corruption investigations whose murder triggered anti-graft protests that brought down the prime minister.

Marcek, 37, said his cousin — co-defendant Tomas Szabo — had approached him with an offer to do the contract killing and drove him to the house.

Marcek told the Special Criminal Court in Pezinok, north of the capital, that he had not known who Kuciak or Kusnirova were when he killed them.“

I want to apologize to those affected for the harm that we have caused. Nothing can make up for that, there is no satisfactory apology. Seeing them on television, seeing their pain forced me to talk,” he told the court, according to Aktuality.sk news website.

Prominent businessman Marian Kocner was also in court, accused of ordering the hit. He denied the charge, but he admitted to a lesser illegal arms offense — the police found undeclared ammunition at his place.

A third defendant, Alena Zsuzsova, denied charges of being an intermediary in the killings. Szabo, a former police officer charged alongside Marcek with murder, did not enter a plea.

The case is seen as a test of Slovak police and judicial independence after an investigation into the murders exposed business and personal links between Kocner and security officials.

Kuciak, a postgraduate student of journalism, had delved into fraud involving businessmen with political connections.

He had reported on Kocner’s business activities, including the takeover of a television station and property deals.

A fifth suspect, Zoltan Andrusko, confessed in December to facilitating the murder and a court handed him a 15-year prison sentence.

Long-serving Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, his cabinet, and later the national police chief, resigned after the murder provoked the country’s biggest protests since the fall of communism.

Crowds called for an independent investigation and an end to widespread corruption.

Democratic presidential candidates meet for a critical debate Tuesday in Iowa, less than three weeks before Iowa voters kick off the presidential nomination process on February 3rd.  A total of six Democratic contenders will be on stage with signs of growing tensions among some of the candidates.  The debate also comes amid military tensions with Iran and the impending Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.  VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.

The Boko Haram jihadist group has exploited high unemployment to recruit new fighters in Cameroon along the Nigerian border.  To counter those efforts, some charity groups are offering training for unemployed youth to help them start their own businesses. Moki Edwin Kindzeka has this report by Anne Nzouankeu in Amchidé, Cameroon.

Paris commuters battled to reach work again on Monday as a 40-day-old strike dragged on and France’s premier vowed “to go to the end” with the pension reforms that sparked the action.

There was still major disruption on the Paris metro and the national railway system, even after Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced a major concession to unions at the weekend.

But the situation was somewhat improved from previous weeks, with all Paris metro lines now open in peak hours and the trains running slightly more regularly.

National rail operator SNCF said eight out of ten high-speed TGV trains were operating, although slower regional trains were more affected.

“We are going to go to the end” in implementing the pension reforms, Philippe said on France 2 television late Sunday.

“Those who incite (workers) to continue the strike are leading them perhaps into a dead end… I think that they need to assume their responsibilities,” he said.

“I think you know the phrase —  ‘you need to know how to end a strike’. We are not far now,” he added.

 ‘Not end of the story’

Philippe announced Saturday that he would drop plans to increase the official age for a full pension to 64 from 62, a move welcomed by more moderate trade unions like the CFDT.

President Emmanuel Macron, who has sought to stay above the fray throughout the crisis by relying on Philippe to deal with the unions, called the change “a constructive and responsible compromise.”

But the more hardline CGT, FO and Solidaires unions were standing firm, calling for the strike and protests to continue, including another major demonstration on Thursday.

Demonstrators in the capital on Saturday, some masked and hooded, broke shop windows and set fires along their protest route, and threw projectiles at police in riot gear who responded with tear gas.

The government however is not budging on its overall plan for a universal scheme to rationalise 42 existing pension schemes into a single, points-based system it says will be fairer and more transparent.

“The end of the pivot age does not mean the end of the strike,” commented the Le Parisien daily.

Laurent Berger, the head of the moderate CFDT, France’s largest union, also struck a cautious note while reaffirming his welcome for the withdrawal of the so-called “pivot age” of 64 as “extremely important.”

“We are far from being at the end of this story on the universal system for pensions and we will need to keep up the pressure,” he told RTL Radio.

The strike has also been observed by other public-service workers affected by the reforms, including staff at the Paris Opera, which on Saturday cancelled its performance of “The Barber of Seville,” its first show of 2020.

Lawyers have also been striking, with the first day of the keenly awaited trial of Bernard Preynat, a priest who is charged with abusing dozens of boy scouts in the southeastern Lyon area in the 1980s and 1990s, delayed to Tuesday from Monday.

“We are aware that this trial is very important but we think it would not be appropriate to give it special treatment,” said the head of the Lyon bar association Serge Deygas at the court, accompanied by a dozen striking lawyers.

The World Health Organization confirmed Monday the first case in Thailand of a new virus from the same family as SARS that is behind a Chinese pneumonia outbreak.

The U.N. health agency said a person traveling from Wuhan, China, had been hospitalized in Thailand on January 8 after being diagnosed with mild pneumonia.

“Laboratory testing subsequently confirmed that the novel coronavirus was the cause,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told AFP in an email, referring to the new virus.

WHO said it might soon host an emergency meeting on the spread of the new virus.

The case marks the first outside of China, where 41 people with pneumonia-like symptoms have so far been diagnosed with the new virus in the central city of Wuhan, with one of the victims dying last Thursday.

The episode has caused alarm due to the specter of SARS, or Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which in 2002-2003 killed 349 people in mainland China and another 299 in Hong Kong, whose economy was hit hard by the epidemic’s devastating impact on tourism.

The WHO has confirmed that the outbreak in China has been caused by a previously unknown type of corona virus, a broad family ranging from the common cold to more serious illnesses like SARS.

The agency said Monday it had been informed by Thai health officials that the patient there was recovering from the illness.

It stressed that it was not surprising that the virus had spread beyond China.

“The possibility of cases being identified in other countries was not unexpected, and reinforces why WHO calls for on-going active monitoring and preparedness in other countries,” it said in a statement.

It pointed out that it had issued guidance on how to detect and treat people who fall ill with the new virus, and stressed that China’s decision to rapidly share the genetic sequencing of the virus made it possible to quickly diagnose patients.

WHO has not recommended any specific measures for travelers or restrictions on trade with China, but stressed Monday it was taking the situation seriously.

“Given developments, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus will consult with Emergency Committee members and could call for a meeting of the committee on short notice,” it said in a statement.

 

Leila Ben Gacem guides a visitor through the Tunis Medina, ducking the cars and carts rattling down narrow, cobblestoned streets, and the occasional smear of dog poop.

“Historically, the Medina was the heart of trade, craft and art, and it’s structured with many souks — each dedicated to a specific craft,” she says.

She points down the maze of roads towards markets dedicated to coppersmiths, and those making Tunisia’s famous, flat-topped chechia hat, which exports to Libya and parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

A municipal councillor in a village outside the capital, Ben Gacem is also a social entrepreneur on a mission; helping not only to preserve the Medina’s ancient buildings and community, but also to revitalize trades that once powered this historic quarter, some of which risk going extinct.

“If investments are inclusive and pay attention to shared economy,” she says, “then maybe the whole community will grow together.”

It’s a lesson that might inform Tunisia’s next government, still under construction nearly three months after elections. The Arab Spring’s only democracy to date, the North African country is challenged to turn around its sluggish economy and deepening poverty that has fed emigration and unrest.  While up to one-third of Tunisia’s youth are jobless, some old Medina trades are struggling for manpower.

A fading tradition

At his cramped shop, Mohammed Ben Sassi reverently opens an old Quran he is working on, its pages decorated in blue and gold. Behind him are piles of half-finished tombs. At 64, Ben Sassi is the Medina’s only surviving bookbinder.

“There’s demand, but young people are no longer interested,” Ben Sassi says.

He isn’t the only craftsman facing challenges. While central Medina still houses more than 500 artisan workshops, that number is about half what it was fifty years ago, according to Ben Gacem’s research. The decline, she believes, translates to a broader loss for the country’s very identity.

‘’Throughout history, Tunisians have worked  with their hands,” she says. “I can’t imagine a Tunisian family that doesn’t have an artisan.”

The reasons for the decline are multiple, Ben Gacem says. The country’s sinking economy and currency have made some quality raw materials unaffordable, driving artisans to abandon trades handed down through generations. Others have switched to inexpensive substitutes –making the final product less attractive to buyers.

But revitalizing these trades might also suggest a broader rethink of one key economic driver. Tourism has largely turned around Tunisia’s beachfronts and deserts, and less on its artistic heritage — including the centuries-old Medina, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

“We’re not promoting Tunisia with all it’s wealth, especially in the tourism industry,” Ben Gacem says. “We haven’t communicated the best story. We have communicated the easiest story.”

Revitalizing the Medina

Founded in the 7th century, the Tunis Medina was restored under hardline president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, but suffered under the 2011 revolution that ousted him, and subsequent instability. Building codes were sidelined, traditional residents fled to safer places, and squatters occupied historic mansions. Tunisians from the south moved in, further fraying a once close-knit community.

“But the revolution also had a positive impact,” says architect Soulef Aouididi of the Medina Conservation Association. From the association’s headquarters in a sumptuous, 19th-century palace, she describes new civic groups springing up, including those offering school tours of the Medina, helping the next generation better appreciate its history.

Aouididi’s association also organizes events bringing together the quarter’s disparate population, to help restitch relations.

“Our strategy is to safeguard the buildings, but also the social heritage,” she says.

Several blocks away, a pair of elegant guesthouses offer another experiment in community development. Ben Gacem has converted two dilapidated Medina mansions into boutique tourist hotels, tapping local residents to run them, and sourcing her supplies from area businesses.

She also networks with local artisans like Ben Sassi, organizing workshops so hotel guests can learn about their craft, as one way to bring in business—while offering tourists an “authentic experience” of Tunisia.

“It’s part of creating a new economic dynamic to preserve the artistry and culture around historical urban spaces,” Ben Gacem says.

The last hat maker?

Whether such initiatives can help to preserve old trades however is uncertain.

“Young Tunisians aren’t interested in working,” says Mohamed Troudi, a chaouachine, or chechia hat maker, as he points to his own calloused hands. “They want office, Facebook and a coffee at 10 am.”

Troudi himself started his career as a computer technician. He soon made a U-turn back to the family trade.  Like Ben Sassi, he is part of Ben Gacem’s network of artisans. He has no lack of business—in no small part because the numbers of chaouachine are dwindling.

At 28, he is the Medina’s youngest traditional hat maker. One day, he fears, he may be its last.

“See that old man,” Troudi says, pointing to a colleague across from his workshop. “His son doesn’t want to work in the trade, so his store will shut. It’s a big problem.”

Insurgents in Kenya have killed three people in Garissa county, near the country’s border with Somalia.

The militants also damaged a telecommunications mast and a police station in the attack Monday.

The Associated Press reported al-Shabab militants were responsible for the attack.

Al-Shabab has launched several attacks inside Kenya, including assaults on schools and shopping malls.

U.S. airstrikes in Somalia targeting the al-Qaida affiliate have drastically increased during President Donald Trump’s administration.

It looked more like April than January across parts of the eastern U.S. after powerful spring-like storms pummeled several states over the weekend.

Tornadoes, floods, and hurricane-strength winds killed at least 11 people in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Alabama.

About 200,000 people were without electricity Sunday as the strong storms blew down power lines, overturned cars, and tore up trees.

Gusty winds also knocked out power along the East Coast while flood warnings were out Sunday in several other southern states.

Meanwhile, millions in the Northeast let their winter coats hang in the closet Sunday as record-breaking warmth gave a treat to runners, golfers, and just about anyone who loves the outdoors.

Thermometers reached highs of 22 Celsius in Boston and 20 in New York City and Washington, D.C.

Meteorologists say an intense polar vortex — frigid air in high altitudes surrounded by powerful winds — has been keeping the cold in the Arctic.

But forecasters say the East can expect more January-like temperatures the rest of the week.

 

Contempt for regulators, airlines and their own colleagues coupled with a casual approach to safety: a series of emails by Boeing employees paint an unflattering portrait of a company culture of “arrogance” imbued with a fixation on cost-cutting.

The emails underscore the task awaiting incoming CEO David Calhoun when he takes the company’s reins on Monday, under intense pressure to restore public confidence — and that of aviation regulators worldwide — after two fatal crashes of the 737 MAX aircraft.

The emails were contained in some 100 pages of documents dated between 2013 and 2018 and transmitted to U.S. lawmakers by the Seattle-based aviation giant. The messages were seen by AFP after their release Thursday.

Often cutting, dismissive, mocking or cavalier, the messages show that Boeing’s current difficulties reach far beyond the 737 MAX, shining a light on a level of dysfunction that seems almost unimaginable for a company that helped democratize air travel — and which builds the US president’s iconic Air Force One airplane.

The emails show that Boeing tried to play down the role of its MCAS flight-control system in order both to avoid the costs involved in having to train pilots on the system in flight simulators and to speed the federal green-lighting of the MAX plane.

Investigators singled out the role of the MCAS (the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) in the fatal crashes of MAX planes flown by Indonesia’s Lion Air (Oct. 29, 2018) and Ethiopian Airlines (March 10, 2019).

Those crashes claimed 346 lives and led to the plane’s worldwide grounding last March.

“I want to stress the importance of holding firm that there will not be any type of simulator training required,” one Boeing employee messaged a colleague on March 28, 2017, a few months before the MAX received federal certification.

The message went on: “Boeing will not allow that to happen. We’ll go face-to-face with any regulator who tries to make that a requirement.”

A few months later, the same employee — a test pilot — bragged about having “save(d) this company a sick amount of $$$$.”

The names of most of the employees who sent the messages were blacked out.

‘I wouldn’t’

In 2018, several employees working on the MAX simulators complained of encountering numerous technical difficulties.

“Would you put your family on a MAX simulator-trained aircraft? I wouldn’t,” said a message sent in February 2018, eight months before the first crash.

“No,” a colleague agreed.

Two other employees said they were concerned about the impact on Boeing’s image at a time, they said, when the company’s leaders seemed obsessed with the idea of gaining ground on Airbus’s narrow-body A320neo.

“All the messages are about meeting schedule, not delivering quality,” one employee said.

A colleague replied: “We put ourselves in this position by picking the lowest-cost supplier and signing up to impossible schedules.

“Why did the lowest-ranking and most unproven supplier receive the contract? Solely because of the bottom dollar.”

Robert Clifford, a US lawyer representing victims’ families from the Ethiopian Airlines crash, said the Boeing culture led to “unnecessary and preventable deaths.”

“Excuses will not be heard,” he said in a statement on his law firm’s website.

‘Ridiculous’

The documents also show Boeing employees questioning the competence of the company’s engineers.

“This is a joke,” an employee wrote in September 2016, in a reference to the MAX. “This airplane is ridiculous.”

“Piss poor design,” said another, in April 2017.

And yet for decades Boeing was seen as representing the very best in aerospace engineering and design. It developed the 747, nicknamed the “queen of the skies,” and contributed to the Apollo program that sent man to the moon.

The aerospace company and its huge network of suppliers are goliaths of the U.S. economy.

In June 2018, one employee messaged his own analysis of the problem: “It’s systemic. It’s culture. It’s the fact that we have a senior leadership team that understands very little about the business and yet are driving us to certain objectives” while not “being accountable.”

Michel Merluzeau, an analyst with Air Insight Research, said, “Boeing needs to re-examine an operational culture from another era.”

Greg Smith, Boeing’s interim chief executive officer, insisted that “these documents do not represent the best of Boeing.”

In a message to staff sent Friday and seen by AFP, he added, “The tone and language of the messages are inappropriate, particularly when used in discussion of such important matters.”

Some emails are dismissive of federal regulators, starting with those from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) who approved the MAX.

“There is no confidence that the FAA is understanding what they are accepting,” an employee wrote in February 2016.

Nor were airlines spared.

“Now friggin’ Lion Air might need a sim(ulator) to fly the MAX, and maybe because of their own stupidity,” an employee wrote in June 2017, more than a year before a 737 MAX crashed near Jakarta. “Idiots!”

Yet another employee, this one more somberly, wrote in February 2018: “Our arrogance is (our) pure demise.”

 

A decade after the devastating earthquake that killed more than 200,000 Haitians and left millions more homeless life has not improved for many survivors.    

Ma Drapo, Sent Mari and Taba Isa, three refugee camps located in the capital, Port-au-Prince, is where survivors are living post-quake. Residents of Sent Mari told VOA Creole they lack clean water, sanitation and food.

In Ma Drapo, a refugee camp for handicapped quake survivors, residents decry the violence.

“There’s non-stop shooting, so we can’t leave in peace,” a woman told VOA Creole. “We are running around all day for fear of being shot. We (have to) grab our kids and run and sometimes we don’t even know where we’re going.”

At the Taba Isa camp, a woman told VOA Creole she had been relocated after the earthquake and has lived there ever since. “They initially told us it was for three years, but three years has become 10 years,” she said. “And we have no security, we are charged with protecting ourselves and I’d like to know if they have plans to construct houses for us at some point.”

The mother of two said the residents are isolated, having no access to hospitals or adequate schools for their children.

Another female resident spoke about the lack of attention. “In the beginning they were coming often to take care of us but it’s been a long time since we were visited (by government officials). We aren’t living well. If heavy rain falls, we’re at risk. Our children can’t go to school because of overcrowding,” she said.

“If you’re asking about government assistance, it’s zero,” a male resident said. “When we call the police station, no one comes. Even if there’s an arrest warrant out against the person we are calling them about, they just ignore our calls.” 

The White House is voicing strong support for Iranian protesters who took to the streets to decry the shoot down of a Ukrainian commercial jetliner outside Tehran last week. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, the Trump administration faces continued bipartisan pressure from Congress to provide more details on the intelligence that prompted the U.S.’s targeted killing of an Iranian general, as Democrats seek to rein in the president’s ability to unilaterally order military action against Iran.

Hong Kong denied entry to the executive director of Human Rights Watch, the international watchdog said Sunday.

Kenneth Roth, who traveled to Hong Kong with plans to launch the organization’s “World Report 2020,” was told he could not enter when he landed at Hong Kong International Airport on Sunday. Human Rights Watch said that immigration agents gave no reason as to why the U.S. citizen was denied entry.

“I had hoped to spotlight Beijing’s deepening assault on international efforts to uphold human rights,” Roth said. “The refusal to let me enter Hong Kong vividly illustrates the problem.”

I flew to Hong Kong to release @HRW’s new World Report. This year it describes how the Chinese government is undermining the international human rights system. But the authorities just blocked my entrance to Hong Kong, illustrating the worsening problem. https://t.co/GRUaGh8QUbpic.twitter.com/iTHVEXdbwO

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) January 12, 2020

Human Rights Watch was scheduled to release the report on January 15th at a news conference. Roth’s introductory essay to the 652-page report warns that China’s government is “carrying out an intensive attack on the global system for enforcing human rights.”

The watchdog said Roth will now present the report Jan. 14 from New York City.

 

Four members of Iraq’s military were wounded in a rocket attack on a base north of Baghdad, Iraq’s military said Sunday.

The attack on Balad air base, some 80 kilometers north of Baghdad, hosts American trainers. A U.S. defense official confirmed there were no Americans on base at the time.

Eight Katyusha rockets were fired at the base, just days after Iran fired ballistic missiles at two bases in Iraq which also house American military.

Balad Airbase targeted with 8 Katyusha rockets, wounding 4 members of the Iraqi Air Force, according to #Iraq official. US defense official confirms no US troops are on base. #BREAKING

— Carla Babb (@CarlaBabbVOA) January 12, 2020

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Sunday’s attack.

The attack comes amid increasing tensions between Iran and the United States after a U.S. drone strike killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top general, earlier this month.

The U.S. announced new sanctions on Iranian companies and eight senior officials, in response to the Iranian missile attacks against bases housing U.S. forces in Iraq. U.S. officials have insisted Soleimani was plotting attacks on U.S. facilities.

VOA’s Carla Babb contributed to this report.

With two-thirds of its population under the age of 30, Cambodia is undergoing a generational shift that is challenging the nation’s social and political status quo.  VOA’s Brian Padden reports from Phnon Penh that with no memory of the Khmer Rouge’s bloody rule in the 1970s, or the long years of civil war, many young people today are less worried about upheaval than their elders and more willing to advocate for greater freedom and change.

Britain’s ambassador to Tehran has said he was detained briefly by Iranian authorities as he attended a vigil for the victims of last week’s crash of a Ukrainian passenger jet.

Iran’s Mehr news agency said Rob Macaire was arrested on Saturday for his alleged “involvement in provoking suspicious acts” at the gathering in front of Tehran’s Amir Kabir University.

Students held a gathering at the school after Iran said the Ukrainian airliner was downed by mistake by Iranian antiaircraft missiles.

In a post to Twitter Sunday, Macaire said he attended the event to pay respects to the victims, and was not attending any demonstration.

Thanks for the many goodwill messages. Can confirm I wasn’t taking part in any demonstrations! Went to an event advertised as a vigil for victims of #PS752 tragedy. Normal to want to pay respects- some of victims were British. I left after 5 mins, when some started chanting.

— Rob Macaire (@HMATehran) January 12, 2020

The British Foreign Ministry called Macaire’s detention “a flagrant violation of international law.”

“The Iranian government is at a crossroads moment. It can continue its march towards pariah status with all the political and economic isolation that entails or take steps to deescalate tensions and engage in a diplomatic path forwards,” the ministry said.

Iranian officials did not immediately make any statement about the incident.

More protests were expected later on Sunday, amid building outrage among some Iranians about the downing of the Ukrainian jet.

Hundreds of people protested in several cities around Iran on Saturday after the military admitted to mistakenly shooting down a civilian Ukrainian plane, killing all 176 on board. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.

Thousands of Thais joined a run in the capital Sunday in what appeared to be the biggest show of dissent against the government of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, although he also drew a big show of support at a rival event.

Police estimated nearly 13,000 runners and supporters gathered before sunrise at a park in Bangkok, wearing athletic outfits and colorful shoes, to participate in the “Run Against Dictatorship” event.

Some of them shouted slogans such as “Prayuth, get out!” or “Long live democracy!” while running the 2.6-km (1.6-mile) course amid a sprinkling of security forces. Many also gave a three-finger salute of resistance to authority.

“I want things to be better,” said Bangkok resident Waraporn Waralak, 45, after completing her run. “I want Prayuth to get out.”

Thailand’s government is headed by Prayuth, 65, after an election in March 2019 that the opposition described as having been manipulated to favor the leader’s pro-army party.

“This is the biggest gathering since the coup,” said Anusorn Unno, dean of the sociology and anthropology faculty at Bangkok’s Thammasat University, adding that the harmless nature of the activity had spurred greater participation than usual.

An excited crowd watched as organizers auctioned bibs bearing numbers significant in Thai politics, such as 2475, the Buddhist calendar year of the revolution that ended absolute monarchy in 1932.

To loud cheers, a bib numbered 0044, in reference to the former ruling junta’s Article 44 that gave Prayuth absolute executive power, was ripped in two on stage.

The event was held in line with people’s rights and no laws were broken, a government spokeswoman told Reuters.

The run followed a rally last month staged by Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, the 41-year-old leader of the progressive Future Forward Party, who has emerged as the most outspoken opponent of Thailand’s new civilian government.

Thanathorn was charged Friday with breaching a law on public assembly over the December rally, and Future Forward faces dissolution this month by the constitutional court.

Run or walk?

Sunday’s event was called “Wing Lai Loong” in Thai, which translates as “Run to Oust the Uncle,” in an apparent reference to Prayuth’s nickname of “Uncle Tu.”

It prompted a rival “Walk to Cheer the Uncle” event, held in another park, about 14 km (9 miles) away, to show support for Prayuth, where thousands also turned out.

The clashing views of the two camps aroused memories of protests that periodically roiled the Thai capital before culminating in coups in 2006 and 2014.

Supporters of Prayuth, who as army chief, had led the 2014 coup, put nationalism on display by brandishing the Thai flag, while branding Thanathorn and his supporters “nation haters” for their liberal views.

They took turns hitting giant fruit piñatas with a wooden stick, to symbolize frustration at the Future Forward Party, with an orange, for example, signifying the party’s official color.

Both crowds encompassed a wide age range, but Prayuth’s supporters were older on the whole.

“We support the prime minister because he shows loyalty to the monarchy, our king,” said Sorasak Katkonganapan, a 62-year-old retiree at the walk.

Fresh from a landslide reelection victory, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen met Sunday with the de facto U.S. ambassador to Taipei, as China warned that countries should stick with recognizing communist-ruled Beijing as the rightful government of “One China,” including Taiwan.

William Brent Christensen, a U.S. diplomat who is director of the American Institute in Taiwan, congratulated Tsai on her victory and she thanked him for his support.

“The Taiwan-U.S. partnership has already grown from a bilateral partnership to a global partnership. In the future, we will continue to build on the foundation we have created over the past three years to strengthen our cooperation on global issues,” Tsai said, according to a record of the remarks from the U.S. side.

China considers self-governed Taiwan a part of its territory and opposes any official contact with the U.S. as an interference in its domestic affairs. The U.S. does not have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan but is legally bound to ensure that Taiwan can defend itself against threats.

Pressure from China

Tsai has sought closer relations with the U.S. while pushing back against pressure from China, and the Trump administration has reciprocated.

Since separating from China during civil war in 1949, Taiwan has developed its own identity but never declared formal independence. Beijing still claims sovereignty over the island of 23 million people and threatens to use force to seize control if necessary.

In her victory speech after her rival, Han Kuo-yu of the Nationalist Party, conceded defeat, Tsai urged China to resume talks with Taiwan without preconditions while warning against threatening use of force.

“Today I want to once again remind the Beijing authorities that peace, parity, democracy and dialogue are the keys to stability,” Tsai said. “I want the Beijing authorities to know that democratic Taiwan and our democratically elected government will never concede to threats.”

Setback for Xi

Tsai’s victory is a setback for Chinese President Xi Jinping at a time when Beijing is grappling with an economic slowdown and long-running, sometimes violent anti-government demonstrations in Hong Kong.

After election results were announced late Saturday, Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said China is willing to work with the Taiwanese people to advance the “peaceful reunification of the country.”

But he cautioned that China would firmly protect its territorial integrity and opposes any separatist moves and Taiwan independence, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

“We hope and believe that the international community will continue adhering to the One China principle, understand and support the just cause of Chinese people to oppose the secessionist activities for ‘Taiwan independence’ and realize national reunification,” said a statement from Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang.

The scale of Tsai’s win is a loss of face for Xi and could raise sensitivity from Beijing toward moves to draw closer to Washington and to strengthen Taiwan’s sovereignty, the Eurasia Group said in an analysis.

Opinion polls had showed Tsai leading before the election, but a huge turnout helped her claim more than 8 million votes. She got 57% of the vote to Han’s 39%. Her Democratic Progressive Party also managed to win in areas that often go to the China-friendly Nationalists in central and southern Taiwan. It retained its majority in the 113-seat Legislative Yuan, though the vote was closer there.

Tsai has acknowledged that Beijing may well up its pressure on Taiwan following her victory. But she received a resounding public mandate for her rejection of China’s suggestion for a “one country, two systems” approach to governing Taiwan.