khktmd 2015
Thứ Bảy, 5 tháng 9, 2020
BẰNG CHỨNG CHO THẤY JOE BIDEN CHỐNG ĐỐI NGƯỜI TỊ NẠN VIỆT NAM TỚI ĐỊNH CƯ TẠI MỸ NĂM 1975
Dương Thiệu Tước, Tuổi Dần Mà Khoái Mần Thinh- Tác giả Quỳnh Giao
HỒI KÝ VỀ CÁI CHẾT CỦA ĐẠI TÁ PHẠM VĂN SƠN - Tác giả Trường Xuân Phu Tử
Chúng tôi từ nhiều trại “tập trung cải tạo” thuộc tỉnh Hoàng Liên Sơn, gồm đủ mọi thành phần “nặng ký” khác nhau, đều bị chuyển xuống miền trung du, vì Trung Quốc sắp xua quân xâm lăng biên giới… Nói chung, Cộng Sản đã ghép chúng tôi vào loại “ác ôn” vì trong chế độ VNCH chúng tôi đã phục vụ ở các ngành: Tuyên Úy, Tình Báo, An Ninh Quân Ðội, Cảnh Sát, Chiến Tranh Chính Trị, Tâm Lý Chiến…
Thứ Sáu, 4 tháng 9, 2020
"Tôi sẽ chiến đấu đến cùng": Thông điệp của nhà văn Úc gốc Hoa Yang Hengjun phía sau song sắt nhà tù
Nhà văn Úc gốc Hoa Yang Hengjun (Dương Hằng Quân) đã gửi một thông điệp phản kháng đến gia đình, bạn bè và những người ủng hộ, rằng ông sẽ tiếp tục đấu tranh để chống lại cáo buộc gián điệp mà chính quyền Trung Quốc đã gán cho ông.
Trong một thông điệp được gửi đi trong tuần này, ông Yang nói: “Tôi muốn ra tòa, tôi sẽ không bao giờ thú nhận điều mà tôi không làm. Tôi không nhận tội.
“Bị giam giữ trong 19 tháng là không công bằng. Tôi vô tội. Họ có thể ngược đãi tôi. Đây là một cuộc đàn áp chính trị.”
Từ Thượng Hải, vợ của Tiến sĩ Yang là Yuan Ruijuan nói với SBS News rằng chồng bà chưa bao giờ thú tội.
“Yang muốn nói rõ rằng điều đó không đúng, ông đã không thú nhận và ông luôn khẳng định mình vô tội,” bà nói.
"Điều khó khăn nhất là khi tôi nghe rằng ông cảm thấy rất cô độc, hoàn toàn bị cô lập với mọi người trong 19 tháng nay."
Tiến sĩ Yang là một cựu quan chức ngoại giao Trung Quốc, sau đó trở thành một nhà hoạt động dân chủ, có thể đối mặt với án tử hình nếu được xác định là hoạt động gián điệp.
Người đàn ông 55 tuổi này bị bắt giữ tại sân bay Quảng Châu vào tháng 1/2019.
Bà Yuan xác nhận luật sư Mo Shaoping đã được phép gặp nhà văn Úc gốc Hoa hôm thứ Năm.
“Đã lâu rồi tôi không nghe tin gì từ ông ấy. Việc luật sư xác nhận cuộc gặp đã khiến tôi được an ủi phần nào, nhưng tình hình không ổn chút nào, có nhiều điều tôi không được biết, có nhiều điều luật sư không được phép nói với tôi.”
Giáo sư Feng Chongyi, một người bạn thân của Tiến sĩ Yang, cho rằng các luật sư được phép tiếp cận với ông bởi vì giới chức Trung Quốc sắp sửa mở phiên tòa xét xử.
“Hệ thống luật pháp của Trung Quốc dựa rất nhiều vào lời thú tội khi xử án.”
Giáo sư Feng cho biết Tiến sĩ Yang đã phải trải qua hơn 300 giờ thẩm vấn kể từ khi ông bị giam giữ cách đây 19 tháng, mỗi lần có khi kéo dài đến 5 tiếng.
"Đó là một hệ thống pháp luật nằm dưới sự kiểm soát của Đảng Cộng sản Trung Quốc, ở Trung Quốc không có bất kỳ phiên toà độc lập nào cả."
Giáo sư Feng, người trước đây cũng bị Trung Quốc giam giữ, nói rằng ông không cho rằng Tiến sĩ Yang sẽ được xét xử công bằng.
Trong một thông cáo, Bộ Ngoại giao Úc cho biết họ sẽ “tiếp tục hỗ trợ cho bác sĩ Yang và gia đình của ông trong thời điểm khó khăn này”.
Ngoại trưởng Úc Marise Payne trước đó đã kêu gọi trả tự do ngay lập tức cho ông Yang và nói rằng “không có cơ sở” nào cho thấy ông là gián điệp.
Bộ Ngoại giao Trung Quốc đã nhiều lần cảnh báo Úc không nên can thiệp vào vụ việc của ông Yang.
China's Bad Loans Climb With Economic Recovery
China's commercial banks have come under increasing pressure from government plans to support economic recovery with eased credit policies and mounting bad loans.
On Aug. 20, banking regulators reported an "uncommon" 9.4- percent drop in net profits for China's commercial banks in the first half of the year to 1 trillion yuan (U.S. $144.5 billion, the official Xinhua news agency said.
The average return on bank assets fell 0.15 percentage points at the end of the first quarter to 0.83 percent at midyear, according to the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC).
New loans jumped 25 percent in the first half from the year-earlier period to 12.09 trillion yuan (U.S. $1.74 trillion).
The official ratio of non-performing loans (NPLs) climbed to a decade high of 2.04 percent at the end of the first quarter, the CBIRC reported in mid-June.
At the time, the agency urged banks to make "a bona fide classification of their assets, truthfully exposing their NPLs."
"Any actions aimed at glossing over bad loans and manipulating their balance sheets will be resolutely dealt with," the CBIRC warned. So far, there have been few signs that an industry-wide reform is in the works.
The wording of the statement in June suggested a firm but cautious approach.
Regulators said they would "guide" banks to set aside adequate loan loss provisions in case of defaults.
As of the end of the second quarter, commercial banks had raised loan loss reserves to 5 trillion yuan (U.S. $722.6 billion), or 182.4 percent of presumed loans at risk.
But the cushion appears somewhat smaller, based on statements by CBIRC Chairman Guo Shuqing in a Xinhua interview reported by the South China Morning Post on Aug.
13.
Guo said banks will face 3.4 trillion yuan (U.S. $491.3 billion) of NPLs this year, a 41-percent jump over the problem loan figure of 2.41 trillion yuan (U.S. 348.2 billion) reported for 2019.
That would put set asides slightly below the 150-percent "red-line" level unless provisions are increased.
More pressure expected
In the past week, Reuters reported that all of China's top banks expect further pressure on profits as "forebearance policies" on bad debt expire.
"The external challenges in the second half are unprecedented," said Wang Jiang, president of Bank of China Ltd.
The rise in problem debt was "inevitable" because of the COVID-19 crisis, said Guo, predicting that the effects would spill over into 2021.
"As many loans are rolled over, some problems will only emerge next year," he said.
The quote appeared to imply that banks would prefer to roll over at-risk loans rather than classify them as non- performing and drive businesses into bankruptcy.
Critics have long decried the practice in normal times, particularly in the case of under-performing state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that have been supported by loan extensions year after year.
China's relatively low NPL ratios have long been a point of contention with financial analysts and institutions, including the International Monetary Fund.
In a 2016 report, Fitch Ratings Inc. estimated that actual NPL ratios could be as high as 15 to 21 percent at a time when China's regulators put the ratio at 1.8 percent.
"The solvency of the banking system is a state secret," said Derek Scissors, an Asia economist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
"Nothing said publicly is anywhere close to accurate," Scissors said.
On Wednesday, a Fitch statement voiced a mixed view of the outlook for China's banks as a result of rising provisions and their impact on profits.
"Continued NPL recognition and resolution should help prevent a further build-up of credit risks in the system, and we view these factors as having a more lasting impact on our assessment of China's operating environment than near-term profitability pressures," the rating agency said.
While the official NPL ratios may be only a token of bad loan problems, the reported 4.5-percent rate for the manufacturing sector at the end of the first quarter was more than double the rate for all bank lending, suggesting deeper troubles for industrial production.
But with government pressures to recover from the pandemic, banking regulators had openly called for extending more credit to smaller enterprises with outstanding loans that could already be classified as NPLs.
Limited access to credit
The loosening followed months of complaints from smaller businesses about limited access to credit.
The CBIRC "will appropriately increase the tolerance for potentially non-performing loans granted to micro and small enterprises," said Vice Chairman Zhou Liang at a press conference in February, as reported by the official English- language China Daily.
"It will also encourage banks to establish long-term institutions that will lend to small businesses, increase their willingness to lend, and enhance their lending capabilities," Zhou said.
On Aug. 25, a CBIRC official told reporters that the risk of loans to small and micro-sized businesses was "generally controllable."
Bad loans to small enterprises had risen 9.5 percent so far this year, said senior economist Li Junfeng, while the NPL ratio for the segment reached 2.99 percent, 0.88 percentage points higher than the ratio for all loans.
The statements are a reminder of how heavily the government has relied on bank lending to revive the economy, forming a second leg of support along with tax cuts and other fiscal policies.
State media have portrayed the deteriorating condition of China's banks as a result of their altruism rather than a consequence of government policy and control.
"China's banking industry seeks to shield real economy from epidemic shock," read the headline from Xinhua's report on Aug. 20.
The loss of profits "was not due to worsening operational capability of commercial banks, but the result of intensified endeavor to share profits with the real economy," said a researcher at the National Institution for Finance and Development, as quoted by Xinhua.
While the condition of China's banks may depend on the actual extent of bad loans, the government has signaled that it believes that the worst of the economic crisis is over and that pressures on banks may be gradually reduced.
"China has suspended its large-scale monetary easing, as the economy is recovering, and shifted to innovative monetary measures to channel funds into weak sectors in more targeted ways," China Daily reported on Aug. 19, citing analysts' views.
In July, new yuan-denominated loans fell 6 percent from a year earlier to 992.7 billion yuan (U.S. $143.4 billion), while the broader category of year-to-date total social financing rose 12.9 percent.
"The PBOC (People's Bank of China) noted the focus in the second half is to ensure monetary policy becomes more precise, and China may pull this off, although history suggests that monetary policy is a blunt tool rather than a scalpel," said Shaun Roche, Asia-Pacific chief economist for S&P Global Ratings, as quoted by China Daily.
But Guo's remarks may be taken as a sign that bad debt disposal will take place only carefully and gradually with demands for more targeted credit measures extending NPL "recognition and resolution" well into next year.
Which cooking oil is the healthiest?
Oils are all packed with fat and calories, but their chemistry – and effect on our health – can be very different.
ooking oils are a kitchen staple. But there’s a lot of conflicting information regarding how healthy each of them are. With so many on the shelves – from coconut to olive, vegetable to canola, avocado to rapeseed oil – how do we know which ones to use, and if we should be avoiding any altogether?
Oils used for cooking tend to get their name from the nut, seeds, fruits, plants or cereals they’re extracted from, either by methods of crushing, pressing, or processing. They’re characterised by their high fat content, including saturated fat, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids.
In recent years, coconut oil, which is around 90% saturated fat, has become the latest trendy “superfood”. It’s been hailed as a superfood (including that it's less likely to be stored in the body as fat and more likely to be expended as energy) – but one Harvard University epidemiologist calls it “pure poison”.
Consuming too much saturated fat – more than 20g for women and 30g for men per day, according to UK guidelines – makes the body produce cholesterol in our bodies that increases the risk of heart disease.
All fat molecules are made of chains of fatty acids, which are either held together with single bonds (saturated) or double bonds (unsaturated). There are three types of fatty acids: short, medium and long chain. Short and medium chain fatty acids are absorbed directly into the bloodstream and used for energy, but long chain fatty acids are transported to the liver, which raises blood cholesterol levels.
“Coconut oil enjoyed popularity three or four years ago, when there were claims it had a special effect,” says Alice Lichtenstein, Gershoff professor of nutrition science and policy at Tufts University in Massachusetts, US.
“But when you look at studies that compared it with other oils, the results showed it’s high in saturated fat, and no clinical trial supported any initial claims.”
Most randomised controlled trials show that coconut oil increases levels of harmful cholesterol low, density lipoprotein (LDL), which is linked with heart disease and stroke, but it also raises beneficial cholesterol, high density lipoprotein (HDL), which carries LDL away from the bloodstream.
One explanation as to why a food so high in saturated fat could increase HDL cholesterol is because it contains a relatively high amount of lauric acid, which has been found to raise levels of HDL in the blood far more than it does LDL .
Experts advise opting for an oil lower in saturated fat, and higher in other types of fats that are healthier in moderation
But Taylor Wallace, an adjunct professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at George Mason University in Virginia, argues lauric acid is not as healthy as some claims suggest. It is categorised as a C12 fatty acid, meaning it has 12 carbon atoms, and that puts it at the limit of the definition of a medium chain fatty acid.
“C12s are like long chain fatty acids that got categorised into medium chain,” says Wallace. “About 70% of C12s act as long chain fatty acids, which are transported to the liver.” Longer chain fatty acids are more likely to be stored in the liver as fat and could, over time, cause health issues such as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.
Instead, experts advise opting for an oil lower in saturated fat, and higher in other types of fats that are healthier in moderation. Polyunsaturated fat, including omega 3 and omega 6, and monounsaturated fat have been found to lower cholesterol levels and provide essential fatty acids and vitamins. They’re found in many different types of vegetable oils, although the exact amount depends both on the plant and the technology process used during their production.
“Most studies indicate that foods higher in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease,” says Lichtenstein. “It’s recommended we replace sources of unsaturated fat with polyunsaturated fat, primarily plant-based oils, and nuts and seeds,” she says.
One observational study associated replacing saturated fat with olive oil, for example, with a lower risk of heart disease. Substituting butter, margarine, mayonnaise or dairy fat olive oil reduced the risk by 5 to 7%.
Marta Guasch-Ferre, author of the study and a research scientist Harvard University’s TH Chan School of Public Health’s nutrition department in Boston, analysed the health and diets of more than 100,000 people over 24 years, and found that those with higher intake of all types of olive oil had a 15% lower risk of heart disease.
Olive oil, which is made by crushing olives and separating the oil from their pulp, is renowned for being the healthiest of plant oils
“But it’s not just that you’re adding olive oil into the diet, but that olive oil is substituting other unhealthier fats,” says Guasch-Ferre.
Olive oil, which is made by crushing olives and separating the oil from their pulp, is renowned for being the healthiest of plant oils. One review of research found olive oil has beneficial effects on gut microbiota and heart disease, and that extra virgin olive oil can be beneficial in preventing cancer and type 2 diabetes.
“The monounsaturated fatty acids and compounds found in olive oil help prevent noncommunicable diseases, not through any special mechanisms, but because our body needs them,” says Francisco Barba, professor at the University of Valencia’s preventive medicine and public health department in Spain.
Olive oil is synonymous with the Mediterranean diet, which is high in fruit, vegetables and legumes, and low in saturated fat, and is associated with a reduced risk of heart disease, despite the high fat content.
“What makes the Mediterranean diet different from other types of healthy diets is olive oil,” Guasch-Ferre says. “Most other components – nuts, fruit and vegetables – are parts of numerous diets, including plant-based.”
Some research has found that extra virgin olive oil is associated with the most health benefits
However, some research suggests these health benefits could be partly driven by other components in the diet, rather than olive oil. One review of evidence found that the only benefit of olive oil independent of the Mediterranean diet was its ability to raise levels of beneficial cholesterol HDL.
Researchers reviewed 30 studies where participants’ diets were altered to test the effects of olive oil, and found that the Mediterranean diet led to lower glucose levels and higher LDL compared to the Western diet. Intervening that diet with olive oil, where it had a high polyphenol content, further increased HDL.
However, consuming olive oil by following the Mediterranean diet was associated with improved glucose levels, which is associated with a greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes if it is too high. It also reduced the level of triglycerides, a type of fat in the blood, and LDL cholesterol levels.
These studies tested numerous types of olive oil, but some research has found that extra virgin olive oil is associated with the most health benefits, including a possible lower risk of heart disease.
Extra virgin olive oil is rich in antioxidants and vitamin E, and researchers have found that it’s better at protecting against LDL cholesterol than other types of olive oil. Other types of olive oil are processed after the oil is extracted, which causes them to lose some nutritional qualities.
Extra virgin olive oil, however, has a lower smoke point, which means it starts to smoke at a lower temperature, and in recent years there have been concerns that this could release harmful compounds, and that some of its benefits are lost through the heating process.
“Extra virgin olive oil is especially beneficial when it’s not cooked, but even under cooking it has a very high percentage of monosaturated fatty acids,” says Barba.
The message isn’t to add lots of oil because we think it’s good for us, because that’s just adding lots of calories – Alice Lichtenstein
Recent studies have shown that extra virgin olive oil is safe to use for cooking. Researchers carried out a number of experiments monitoring extra virgin olive oil as it cooked at 120C (248F) and (338F) on a pan for different lengths of time. They found that temperature, but not time, had some effect on the polyphenol content in the oil.
In 2011, the European Food Safety Authority concluded that makers of olive oil can say it reduces oxidative stress – an imbalance of free radicals and antioxidants in the body – and protects cells and LDL cholesterol from oxidative damage, which can age cells. The researchers carrying out the experiments found that extra virgin olive oil used for cooking still falls within the guidelines for the health claim.
Lichtenstein argues that olive oil doesn’t have any unique properties aside from what you’d normally expect from an oil high in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. But what is clear is that the evidence supports using this and other vegetable oils instead of saturated fats, but to limit our intake of oil in general.
“The message isn’t to add lots of oil because we think it’s good for us, because that’s just adding lots of calories,” she says.
“Once we shift the balance of saturated fat to unsaturated fatty acids, we should then be able to choose the oil we prefer.”