Some notes about our Earth (from the Morning Brew website):
Earth happens to be located in a remote corner of the Milky Way, a location that presents fewer threats, like a huge star devouring us with its gravity. The star we do have nearby, the sun, is stable and the perfect distance away to sustain liquid water (important!).
When the sun does send deadly flares our way, they’re not calamitous because the Earth’s core produces a magnetic field that deflects radiation.
“….other developed countries have racism, demagoguery, and the internet. The reason only the United States has so many mass shootings is its lax gun laws.”
More than 155,000 shops and institutions have signed up to participate in the “Stop Covid-19” program which seeks to record who visits a site in order to assist contact tracing if necessary should a Covid-19-infected person visit that location. When introducing the scheme, the government downplayed any concerns about privacy but there are no restrictions or limitations on the way the government can use a person’s personal information if the person uses her phone to scan the QR code at a store.
Human Rights Watch has warned: “Cambodia’s QR Code system is ripe for rights abuses because it lacks privacy protections for personal data. These concerns are heightened by the government’s stepped-up online surveillance of Cambodians since the outset of the pandemic, putting government critics and activists at greater risk.”
From January, 2020 to February, 2021, Cambodia experienced about 375 COVID-19 infections. Then on 20 February, two infected people started a series of infections and in the next two weeks another 600 infected people were found. Click here to see more background on this development.
Our Asia superior in Hong Kong reported today that John Clancey was arrested under Hong Kong’s new draconian state security laws. John was a Maryknoll priest in Hong Kong right before I came. He left Maryknoll but stayed on in Hong Kong as a lawyer working for civil and human rights. He must have been doing good work to get Beijing riled up. Hang in there, John!