China plays 'Fight the Landlord' to tame Hong Kong

In the current chaotic situation in Hong Kong, many young people are venting their dissatisfaction with high housing prices and expensive rents at the government," wrote an official commentary by the party's Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, which oversees China's police and courts. "They're probably blaming the wrong target."The return of "Fight the Landlord" lays bare the Communist Party's shifting attitudes toward the business world. Hong Kong's property tycoons were once big beneficiaries of an unspoken pact between Beijing and business: They could wheel and deal as they liked, so long as they helped China achieve its economic dreams and left the politics to the Communist Party.Today, as the party tightens its grip over daily Chinese life, business has become another tool for control. Business leaders who aren't sufficiently loyal can suddenly find themselves at risk.And in Hong Kong, where companies operate under a different set of laws but still depend on the mainland for their profits, China's state media is increasingly willing to threaten or humiliate any business leader who stands in the way.The party's growing reach raises questions about the future of people like Li - and, by extension, of all of Hong Kong. Li was a consummate player of the old game, cultivating ties with Beijing's most powerful leaders even as he grew his wealth. But under Xi Jinping, China's top leader, the party has demanded absolute loyalty, eliminating some of the grey areas where business in Hong Kong once stood."One of the biggest characteristics of Xi's ruling style is that he's not interested in uniting different interest groups," said Leung Man-tao, a Hong Kong writer and commentator who has big followings in both the mainland and Hong Kong. "He can't see the value of grey areas. He wants absolute loyalty."In the mainland, the party has taken a direct role in how some of China's biggest and most successful companies do business.This past summer, Chinese officials met the country's two most powerful Internet tycoons, Jack Ma of Alibaba and Pony Ma of Tencent, to talk about deeper cooperation between state-owned enterprises and the tech giants. Just two years ago, their companies ploughed billions of dollars into backing one state-owned telecommunications company.In September, officials in the Chinese city of Hangzhou said they would appoint a government representative to serve as a liaison in the top offices of companies based there, including Alibaba. They said the goal was to improve coordination between government and business.Business people who don't get on board risk becoming targets.Wang Gongquan, a billionaire venture capitalist who advocated more liberal political and social policies, was detained in September 2013 and jailed for five months. Ren Zhiqiang, a property developer, found his social media accounts deleted when he used them to criticise the party's tightening control over discourse and is no longer allowed to leave the country.Since the protests began, Beijing has taken a more direct role in Hong Kong. State-controlled media has castigated Cathay Pacific and other employers whose workers joined the protests. Beijing has urged representatives from nearly 100 of China's biggest state-run companies to step up investment and assert more control of companies in Hong Kong, according to Reuters.Now the government is taking on Hong Kong's property developers, a group that has long sought to stay in Beijing's good graces. Hong Kong's largest pro-Beijing political party in September called on the city government to take back land from developers to build affordable housing. Beijing's accusations against Li and the other real estate tycoons aren't groundless. The cozy relationship between the Hong Kong government and wealthy property developers has long drawn criticism from experts who say it worsens housing affordability. DailyhuntDisclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by Dailyhunt. Publisher: The Telegraphhttp://krachelart.com/UserProfile/tabid/43/userId/220341/Default.aspx

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Kashmir has been made a 'prison', will visit Farooq Abdullah: Vaiko

That is the first goal. I will visit Farooq Abdullah at his residence in Srinagar at an appropriate time". On his plea in the top court, he said, "I expect that justice will be done in the Supreme Court". The counsel submitted in the top court that the Kashmir leader, a friend of Vaiko for about 40 years, was invited to a party conference and he too had agreed to participate. Abdullah, however, could not be contacted and his whereabouts not known, Vaiko said, quoting his counsel as informing the Supreme Court. Earlier in the day, the apex court sought a response from the Centre and the Jammu and Kashmir administration on Vaiko's plea, seeking to produce Abdullah before the court, Farooq Abdullah has been detained under the stringent Public Safety Act (PSA), which enables authorities to detain any individual for two years without trial. Last month, Vaiko had alleged that the Centre had entangled India in "quicksand" by revoking the special status for Jammu and Kashmir. He had claimed that Kashmir would not be a part of India when the country celebrates the centenary of its independence. DailyhuntDisclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by Dailyhunt. Publisher: The New Indian Expresshttps://anotepad.com/notes/c8exh2

Tehran 'no' to Rouhani meeting with Trump

is comments come after an attack on two major oil installations in Saudi Arabia on Saturday further escalated tensions between Iran and the US. The Houthi rebels in Yemen, who receive support from Iran, claimed responsibility for the strikes, but the Trump administration has accused Tehran of being behind the attack.On Sunday, American officials cited intelligence assessments to support the accusation, and Trump warned that he was prepared to take military action.Earlier, the White House had said that it was not ruling out the possibility of a meeting between Trump and Rouhani on the sidelines of the UN summit. But the events of the weekend have jeopardised any potential for discussion.The relationship between the two nations has devolved since last year, when Trump abruptly withdrew the US from the 2015 deal to limit Iran's nuclear programme.Last week, Trump said that he was open to the idea of meeting with Rouhani on the sidelines of the UN summit.But on Sunday, he walked back those statements, saying on Twitter that reports that he was willing to meet with Iran with no conditions were "incorrect".Trump has refrained so far from directly accusing Iran of the attacks on the Saudi oil facilities, but other administration officials have not.Shortly after the attacks on Saturday, secretary of state Mike Pompeo accused Iran of being behind what he called "an unprecedented attack on the world's energy supply" and asserted that there was "no evidence the attacks came from Yemen". He did not, however, specify an alternative launch site. DailyhuntDisclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by Dailyhunt. Publisher: The Telegraphhttp://langleygymnastics.ca/ActivityFeed/tabid/60/userId/922077/Default.aspx

US Open champion Bianca Andreescu flexes muscle with customised WWE belt

(sic)' Welcome to come to @WWE anytime, but you may have a challenger for that title. Congratulations again! @usopen  https://t.co/XlO3ml4mMu — Triple H (@TripleH) September 13, 2019 To her post, WWE superstar Triple H responded: 'Welcome to come to WWE anytime, but you may have a challenger for that title. Congratulations again! The WWE belt contains Andreescu's full name along with the logo of the US Open.   'Never knew they existed,' WWE Universal Champion Seth Rollins finds out he has a brother and sister after 33 years On September 8, the teenager became the first Canadian to win the US Open title after she defeated former world No.1 Williams 6-3, 7-5 in the summit clash at the Arthur Ashe Stadium. After Andreescu's win, Triple H had congratulated her and tweeted: 'Her first appearance in the US Open. Her first grand slam title. The first Canadian to win the US Open. And now her first WWE Raw Women's Championship to celebrate! Congrats Bianca Andreescu (sic).' (with agency inputs) function catchException() {try{ twitterJSDidLoad(); }catch(e){}} function getAndroidVersion(ua) {ua = (ua || navigator.userAgent).toLowerCase(); var match = ua.match(/android\\s([0-9\\.]*)/);return match ? match[1] : false;}; var versions='4.2.2'; var versionArray=versions.split(',');var currentAndroidVersion=getAndroidVersion();if(versionArray.indexOf(currentAndroidVersion)!=-1){var blocks = document.getElementsByTagName('blockquote'); for(var i = 0; i < blocks.length; i++){blocks[i].innerHTML = '';}}DailyhuntDisclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by Dailyhunt. Publisher: Hindustan Timeshttp://knowledge.thinkingstorm.com/UserProfile/tabid/57/userId/323584/Default.aspx

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Creches to come up on sites for labourers' children

The NGO staff will look after children aged zero to six. We are trying this on a pilot basis with 10 creches in Bengaluru, and intend to expand to a 100 in the future," said Rohini Sindhuri, secretary of KARWWB. "The creches will not just have toys and food, but will also serve as centres of early education, for pre-primary levels. They will be able to accommodate 15 to 20 kids, who will be supervised and engaged in activities by NGO staff. We have given Rs 10 lakh to run a creche per year to each NGO," she added. So far, the board has tied up with three such NGOs - Delhi-based Mobile Creches, Bengaluru-based Sampark and Sparsha trust. In two to three months, the welfare board intends to scale the numbers up based on how the pilot goes. The pilot will begin in around 15 days, until which time the NGO staff will be trained. "Once the construction is complete and the labourers move, it will be disbanded. Big construction companies often have a fixed set of labourers who travel with them and work with them, by putting them up in colonies near the building site," Sindhuri explained. DailyhuntDisclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by Dailyhunt. Publisher: The New Indian Expresshttps://justpaste.it/3igub

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Subha shines in Mohun Bagan win

If things go according to plan, not just Bagan but even East Bengal cxould play quite a few of their I-League (home) matches in Kalyani.The current facilities at the venue there may not be of the Salt Lake Stadium's level, but they are certainly better than the rest in the state. To talk of the game, Subha, coming in as a substitute for Britto PM early in the second half, scored in the 66th minute that eventually separated the two sides. Off Joseba Beitia's corner, Subha, timing his jump to perfection, beat his marker and his powerful header did not give the Rainbow AC goalkeeper a chance to move.Subha's inexperience is one reason why coach Kibu Vicuna hesitates to give him a start. But his agility, positional awareness and vibrancy are well and truly a strong point for Bagan as the season progresses. DailyhuntDisclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by Dailyhunt. Publisher: The Telegraphhttp://www.gdempsey.com/UserProfile/tabid/57/userId/113965/Default.aspx

Chhichhore movie review: All about losers this time!

In such narratives, some shenanigans go down, and everyone has a wacky time too. At least, if the writing is good, and the characters don't go over the top, it can be a fun watch, for sure. Nitesh Tiwary's second directorial after Dangal, Chhichhore follows the story of a group of friends from engineering college and progresses into their middle-age life with dollops of jokes thrown in that are mostly culled from the lives of many youngsters in professional colleges. The premise is certainly sound — four college buddies reuniting some two decades later not just to reinforce their strong bonds, but to help one of the affected among them tide over a crisis. That it jumps into an area with sudden sentimentality infuses it with an egregiously unconcealed and thin sensibility that goes on to eventually remove some of its few positive attributes. To be fair, the trio of writers Piyush Gupta, Nikhil Mehrotra and Tiwary himself do give you more than a glimpse of the way small-town boys (there aren't too many girls seen on such campuses) and some coming-of-age young men normally behave. But with only a few genuinely funny, some accidental laughs and a dash of half-hearted sincerity. As it starts off on a college campus where students are seen having midnight fun splashing bucketful of water at one another, the film seems settling in for a comic caper. Soon, though, it takes a time leap where one of the four friends, Ani or Anirudh (Sushant Singh Rajput), is seen as a middle-aged single father and is in his home where he lives with his teenaged son Raghav (Mohammad Samad). As it touches upon the age-old fear of teenagers being 'losers' that has afflicted them from time to time, it becomes rather too ambitious as we learn about Ani and his divorced wife Maya (Shraddha Kapoor) being great in their respective academic careers. When all the college friends are informed about Ani's son Raghav being critically ill in a hospital after he failed his engineering entrance exam and tried to commit suicide, it's time for all of them Sexa (Varun Sharma), Mummy (Tushar Pandey), Acid (Naveen Polishetty), Bevda (Saharsh Kumar Shukla) and Derek (Tahir Raj Bhasin) to get together and lend their emotional support. And so they begin telling of their past that centres on the silly jokes, the slow and steady lifelong friendships, a bit of romance, watching porn and guzzling beer. A bedridden, bandaged and virtually incapacitated Raghav battling for life keenly listens to the detailed sessions as one by one his father and his father's buddies narrate incidents that go on to prove that each one of them had vices and thus, were dumped into H4 hostel which was meant only for all the losers who came last in the college competition named GC General Championships. Raghav is all ears even as doctors attending to him keep reminding the parents that he continues to be critical and needs to be operated upon yet again. After being fed up with the stigma of failure, the losers are bent upon proving their true potential of being of some worth, and promise to try their best 30 sports. Obviously, they wish to rewrite their own fate, and decide to alter the narrative. While the flashbacks continue to take you back, many of the present day crisis and other dilemmas in the present are shown as parallels juxtaposed to demonstrate and substantiate a point — that losing is not the end of the world. Neither is losing in life an assurance of remaining a loser permanently. Chhichhore is the kind of film where it's the characters (and not necessarily the actors) which rise above the script that tends to be repetitive, or not too subtle, and often runs out of any freshness to deal with its overall objective. Maybe Tiwary wanted to do a 3 Idiots that became such a cult film in its time on the subject of youth who want to do what they truly want to do. Though later we do see some of these 'losers' discussing grand plans in their boardroom meetings, this is one film that doesn't give us winners — it has mostly losers who are always seeking attention and are desperate failures. It does looks relatable for many of us on that count. Singh has had a successful run at the box office, but needs to grow as an actor if he wants to stay longer. As the forty-something father, neither his prosthetic look nor his sudden quiet and sober act is impressive. Kapoor has little to do, save to look cute in college, and attractively appealing as a middle-aged mama. She doesn't have anything funny to do either. Bolstering the futile obsessive mania of the students to excel in academics as the underlying message, or that being ordinary is not a crime, the film goes on to have its spotlight on sports as an alternative in some way. And when eventually, nearly all of them become hugely successful corporate guys, it also tries to convey that outshining other students in school or college by coming out trumps is not a certification for future success as well. All the other actors in the supporting cast have far to do with some memorable lines for you to chuckle on. Sharma as the sex-obsessed Sexa nails some of the adult jokes with elan. By the way, there are quite a few double meaning words and sexual innuendos that are bound to have the audience laughing out riotously. What failed to move me was the lack of emotional investment on the part of the actors, mainly the lead stars, who seem to be mouthing lines only from the outside but not with any far reaching intensity. Ani's emotional belief that the friends' storytelling would actually heal his son battling for life may be novel but will be pooh poohed in the medical fraternity. Some of the jokes are juvenile, while some look typical of any professional college — one-liners, pranks and wisecracks (mostly by Sharma) are very amusing too. The saviour in the film — as I mentioned before — in the 145-minute film that dodges and weaves through many clichés and familiar tropes — is that some of the characters are played by decent actors. ... DailyhuntDisclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by Dailyhunt. Publisher: Deccan Chroniclehttps://www.avitop.com/cs/members/simenrjeekran.aspx