Hong Kong Leader Carrie Lam to Withdraw Extradition Bill



https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49575381

Carrie Lam, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, announced on Wednesday that she will withdraw the highly controversial extradition bill which has triggered months of protests in Hong Kong. Last June, Lam said that she would “indefinitely suspend” the bill, but she stopped short of scrapping it, angering protesters, who wanted full withdrawal as one of their five key demands. In Wednesday’s televised address, Lam also said that she would do community outreach to talk to people to better understand their problems, and initiate a study on the causes of Hong Kong’s social injustices. But even as Lam said she hoped these moves would jump-start a dialogue, she remained critical of the protests, which she said had turned Hong Kong into an “unfamiliar place.”

Pro-democracy advocates have dismissed Lam's compromises as "fake,” suspecting she is simply trying to buy time. They have also pointed out that the two people running the police complaints council that Lam set up were both connected to her election campaign. As for her plans to go to the streets and speak with citizens, many believe it to be nothing more than a publicity stunt.

After months of protests, more than 1000 protesters arrested, many more beaten by thugs, and extensive police brutality, the people of Hong Kong have finally achieved a small victory against the Chinese government. The announcement of this concession does point towards the Chinese government being at least somewhat willing to meet the demands of protesters, which is a good sign for the future of this situation. However, the protesters still have 4 more demands, several of which are far more ambitious than striking down the extradition bill, but given that they have held out this long, its seems like they will not stop until all of their demands are met. While the Chinese government may be willing to forfeit some control over Hong Kong, they will definitely not meet Hong Kong’s demand for free elections. With both sides refusing to back down, there’s no end in sight for this political struggle.

Questions

1. Do you believe that Ms. Lam is sincere in trying to help the cause of the Hong Kong protesters?

2. Given the recent escalation of violence, should this still be treated as a domestic issue or should other countries intervene?

Chinese official states Trump's fentanyl tweets are "not true at all"

Link: https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/03/asia/china-us-fentanyl-trump-intl-hnk/index.html

One of Beijing's top drug officials has rejected allegations by US President Donald Trump that China is to blame for the majority of the supply of the lethal drug fentanyl to the United States.  Meanwhile, fentanyl-related deaths in the US have risen further," he said Tuesday. "These two points clearly show that President Trump's tweets about fentanyl in the US mainly coming from China are not true at all." In April, the Chinese government announced it would add the entire class of fentanyl-related substances to their list of controlled drugs from May 1, a win for Trump and his administration. But in August, Trump appeared to lose patience with the speed of the crackdown. "I am ordering all carriers ... to search for and refuse all deliveries of fentanyl from China," the US leader tweeted on August 23. "Fentanyl kills 100,000 Americans a year. President Xi said this would stop -- it didn't!" On August 24, the US Office of National Drug Control Policy tweeted that China "continues to pour poison into our communities." The issue has become part of the ongoing trade war between the two countries, with Trump using Xi's alleged failure to follow through on his promise as one reason to impose further tariffs on China. Drug enforcement chief Liu said that the Trump administration shouldn't bring the fentanyl discussion into trade talks, adding both sides were still cooperating to stop drug smuggling.

I believe all kinds of drugs have become such a widespread problem in America. This is  due to the excessive use of whatever drug citizens are abusing. While America and China are trying to find solutions the slow solution making is causing controversy between Trump and China which is only making communications worse. The abuse of drugs has led to the destruction of too many lives including many of our own loved ones. I wish there was an easy solution to solve all these drug enhanced fatalities. The reason it’s so tough to help or have drug users quit is because it is way easier to start, than it is to quit. 

Questions:

1. What is your opinion on the current drug laws and how can we do a better job to remove drugs that are involved in citizens lives? How do we solve this abusive drug enhancive fatality problem besides obviously just try our best to take them away? 
2. How do these fentanyl cases affect Trump’s/ China’s relationship and communications? How do we can we better notify Americans of the dangerous results of drug using from drugs that aren’t prescribed and most likely made in other countries like China?

Shooting Spree Across 15 Miles in West Texas Terrorized Two Towns and Killed 7

Article Link

On September 1, 2019 another mass shooting occurred in Odessa, Texas. In another iteration of mass violence in America, a 36-year-old man attacked two West Texas towns with an assault rifle. In the aftermath, the Odessa Police Department reported 22 injuries, including 7 deaths. Three police officers were involved as well as a 17-month-old toddler. This shooting follows another recent one that happened only a few weeks ago in El Paso, Texas. Officials report that the gunman, who had been fired from his trucking job the morning of the attack, hijacked a United States Postal Van, killing the driver and opening fire as he drove. The brutality eventually stopped in a parking lot where police officers terminated the attacker. According to officials, while the gunman was fired from his job that morning, his motive for the violent action is still unclear. 

This mass shooting has followed several other ones in recent times. It is clear that America is going through a huge epidemic and action needs to be taken immediately. Currently, the political gridlock in Congress has prevented any gun legislation from being passed, and as a result, these mass shootings keep transpiring. Gun violence has become a serious issue in our country; at what point do we say enough is enough and pass the necessary legislation that will prevent these acts of mass violence from occurring again? As the leading nation in the world, we need to set a better example for developing countries, currently we are displaying ourselves as a country of hate rather than one of peace. It is critical that we portray our country as the peaceful and democratic nation it was founded to be. We need to foster a less perilous environment for the generations to come.

Discussion Questions:

1. With such political divide today, how can we work to pass legislation that will prevent more mass shootings like this occurring?
2. What factors do you think, that are prevalent in society today, are driving these attackers to commit acts of mass violence?
3. Do you think an outright ban on private weapons is the best solution to this problem, or do you believe this will be an infringement on citizens’ 2nd amendment right?

The Racial Inequality in Gifted Education

Article Link

Source: Andrew Lichtenstein / Corbis via Getty Images

Recently, a school diversity task group in New York City wrote a report recommending that the public school district eliminate gifted and talented programs, claiming that they contribute to segregation and racial inequality. Following Brown v. Board in 1954, one of the ways white schools pushed back against integration was by creating more advanced classes that catered to white students, but that was 65 years ago. Today, in the New York City public school district, admission into the more selective programs are based off of things like test scores which some claim favor Caucasian and Asian students who generally have greater resources to prepare for admission tests, putting African-American and Hispanic students at an unfair disadvantage, thus leading to increased segregation. However, others believe that having these gifted and talented programs prevent segregation because they encourage Caucasian and wealthy families to put their kids in the public schools rather than putting them in private schools or moving to the suburbs.

As it stands, although I do recognize there is racism baked into these special programs, I think that getting rid of gifted and talented programs that provide a more rigorous academic education to students would be extremely harmful because then those who can’t afford to go to a private school or move to another school district would have little to no options if they want to pursue a more rigorous education. I think a better approach to this situation would be to fix the current system.

Discussion Questions
1. As a student who attends a school that offers several AP classes, do you think these programs should be eliminated?
2. If you were a student in the NYC public school district, would you support or fight the elimination of gifted and talented programs based on the claim that they are racist?
3. Are there any ways the existing system can be fixed so it is more equal?

The Amazon, Siberia, Indonesia: A World of Fire

Fires detected from August 2018 to 2019

An increased rate of wildfires from global warming, along with intentional fires by farmers and organizations for agriculture, have attracted a considerable amount of attention from the media in the past few weeks. Global warming is by no means a new topic, yet the conditions continue to worsen every year, with the Arctic melting at a historic rate, warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. In order to meet higher demands for soy and cattle, many farmers are setting fires in the Amazon as a form of deforestation. This is also occurring in Indonesia, as well as many other countries.
It has long been a high value of the United States to fix the problems that we have, as demonstrated by our thirty-three amendments to the United States Constitution. Yet as long as global warming has been denounced as a serious problem, I do not think we have taken sufficient action, especially being seen as one of the leading nations of the world.

Questions:
1) What is your opinion on Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro's statement: "No country in the world has the moral right to talk about the Amazon. You destroyed your own ecosystems"?
2) What do you think is the right course of action to protect ecosystem in the coming years?
3) Do you think there is a turnaround for this continually worsening issue?

New York Times Article
TIME Article

OpenAI Said Its Code Was Risky. Two Grads Re-Created It Anyway

https://www.wired.com/story/dangerous-ai-open-source/

In February, Elon Musk’s OpenAI artificial intelligence (AI) research company created a language generator so realistic it can create “authentic” spam, fake news, and clickbait (such as this blog post), much faster (and maybe even better) than a human. Since OpenAI’s goal is to “benefit humanity as a whole,” one would be surprised when they didn’t release this software. But two young folks fresh out of grad school, claiming they “aren’t out to cause havoc,” compiled millions of Reddit links (you know something’s about to go wrong), basically replicated OpenAI’s project, and posted their software on the internet, culminating in a philosophical clickbait bot (that happens to support Trump). Even better, this is something that a high school freshman can create with some time, effort, and copy-and-pasting skills. What could possibly go wrong? (This is just a rhetorical question; actual ones are below.)

I’m just a bit worried. Several years ago, British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica harvested personal info from millions of Facebooks, used this data to create algorithms displaying *personalized* fake news to people in swing states in the U.S. during the 2016 election, and potentially… changed things up. But as this article clearly demonstrates: we’ve learned our lessons.

Questions:

1. Am I overreacting?
2. (How) can we regulate AI?
3. What can a Model Don do about this?

The Police Photoshopped His Mug Shot for a Lineup. He’s Not the Only One.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/24/us/police-photoshop-tattoos.html

This article outlines a specific incident in which police airbrushed the tattoos of a suspect of a bank robbery for the lineup photo because the surveillance footage showed the robber without face tattoos. Upon further investigation, it was found that this was not an uncommon practice. Many large police departments use photo editing software, but some criminal justice experts believe there are valid reasons for doing so that sometimes make lineups much fairer. There are was an instance of police adding the distinguishable birthmark of a suspect to the other people in the lineup in order to make the suspect less distinguishable. Most people are enraged, saying it is completely unjust to alter a suspect's image to look more like an eye witness' description.
The public's view of the police in today's political climate is extremely divided. There are many that view the police as corrupt or see them as the enemy, largely in response to senseless murders of black men. Therefore, the photoshopping of pictures of a black man definitely do not help this negative view many people already have of the police.

What do you think about the concept of police photoshopping images of suspects? Do you think it is ever justified?
How do you feel about the way many people view police today (about how many people believe the police to be the enemy or those who are anti-police)? Do you think people are justified in being anti-police?