- How Prince William Wants His Future Coronation to Differ From His Father King Charles III’s Historic Event Entertainment Tonight
- Khloe Kardashian furiously rips fans who attack Kim for supporting Tristan Thompson in buried Instagram… The US Sun
- Why is Tristan Thompson on the Lakers? LeBron James relationship, veteran leadership among reasons for signing Sporting News
- Photo Agency Responds to Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s ‘Near-Catastrophic Car Chase’ Claims Entertainment Tonight
- Kim Kardashian’s betrayal of sister Khloé that no one understands Marca English
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: differ
Western allies differ over jets for Ukraine as Russia claims gains
KYIV, Jan 31 (Reuters) – Ukraine’s defence minister is expected in Paris on Tuesday to meet President Emmanuel Macron amid a debate among Kyiv’s allies over whether to provide fighter jets for its war against Russia, after U.S. President Joe Biden ruled out giving F-16s.
Ukraine planned to push for Western fourth-generation fighters like F-16s after securing supplies of main battle tanks last week, an adviser to Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said on Friday.
Asked at the White House on Monday if the United States would provide F-16s, Biden told reporters: “No.”
But France and Poland appear to be willing to entertain any such request from Ukraine, with Macron telling reporters in The Hague on Monday that “by definition, nothing is excluded” when it comes to military assistance.
In remarks carried on French television before Biden spoke in Washington, Macron stressed any such move would depend on several factors including the need to avoid escalation and assurances that the aircraft would not “touch Russian soil.” He said Reznikov would also meet his French counterpart Sebastien Lecornu in Paris on Tuesday.
In Poland on Monday, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki also did not rule out a possible supply of F-16s to neighbouring Ukraine, in response to a question from a reporter before Biden spoke.
Morawiecki said in remarks posted on his website that any such transfer would take place “in complete coordination” with NATO countries.
Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukraine president’s office, noted “positive signals” from Poland and said France “does not exclude” such a move in separate posts on his Telegram channel.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg was in Japan on Tuesday where he thanked Tokyo for the “planes and the cargo capabilities” it is providing Ukraine. A day earlier in South Korea he urged Seoul to increase its military support to Ukraine.
Biden’s comment came shortly after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia had begun exacting its revenge for Ukraine’s resistance to its invasion with relentless attacks in the east, where it appeared to be making incremental gains.
Zelenskiy has warned for weeks that Moscow aims to step up its assault after about two months of virtual stalemate along the front line that stretches across the south and east.
Ukraine won a huge boost last week when Germany and the United States announced plans to provide heavy tanks, ending weeks of diplomatic deadlock on the issue.
While there was no sign of a broader new Russian offensive, the administrator of Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, Denis Pushilin, said Russian troops had secured a foothold in Vuhledar, a coal-mining town whose ruins have been a Ukrainian bastion since the outset of the war.
Pushilin said that despite “huge losses” Ukrainian forces were consolidating positions in industrial facilities.
‘BATTLE FOR EVERY METER’
Pushilin said Ukrainian forces were throwing reinforcements at Bakhmut, Maryinka and Vuhledar, towns running from north to south just west of Donetsk city. The Russian state news agency TASS quoted him as saying Russian forces were making advances there, but “not clear-cut, that is, here there is a battle for literally every meter.”
Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said Ukraine still controlled Maryinka and Vuhledar, where Russian attacks were less intense on Monday.
Pushilin’s adviser, Yan Gagin, said fighters from Russian mercenary force Wagner had taken partial control of a supply road leading to Bakhmut, a city that has been Moscow’s focus for months.
A day earlier, the head of Wagner said his fighters had secured Blahodatne, a village just north of Bakhmut, although Kyiv said it had repelled assaults on Blahodatne.
Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield reports. But the locations of the reported fighting indicated clear, though gradual, Russian gains.
In central Zaporizhzhia region and in southern Kherson region, Russian forces shelled more than 40 settlements, Ukraine’s General Staff said. Targets included the city of Kherson, where there were casualties.
The Russians also launched four rocket attacks on Ochakiv in southern Mykolaiv, the army said, on the day Zelenskiy met the Danish prime minister in Mykolaiv city, to the northeast.
WESTERN DELAYS
Zelenskiy is urging the West to hasten delivery of its promised weapons so Ukraine can go on the offensive, but most of the hundreds of tanks pledged by Western countries are months away from delivery.
British Defence Minister Ben Wallace said the 14 Challenger tanks donated by Britain would be on the front line around April or May, without giving an exact timetable.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Western countries supplying arms leads “to NATO countries more and more becoming directly involved in the conflict – but it doesn’t have the potential to change the course of events and will not do so.”
The U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War think-tank said “the West’s failure to provide the necessary materiel” last year was the main reason Kyiv’s advances had halted since November.
The researchers said in a report that Ukraine could still recapture territory once the promised weapons arrive.
The Belarusian defence ministry said on Tuesday that Russia and Belarus had started a week-long session of staff training in preparation for joint drills in Russia in September.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow justifies as necessary to protect itself from its neighbour’s ties with the West, has killed tens of thousands of people and driven millions from their homes.
Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Doina Chiacu and Stephen Coates; Editing by Cynthia Osterman & Simon Cameron-Moore
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
How Omicron Symptoms Differ From Delta, Past COVID-19 Variants: Charts
- Sore throats and runny noses are increasingly common in vaccinated people with Omicron.
- But Omicron patients report fewer instances of fever, cough, and loss of taste or smell.
- The charts below show which Omicron symptoms are most common, and how they compare to prior variants.
Almost as soon as Omicron started spreading, doctors noticed slight differences in their patients’ symptoms relative to prior variants. Mild, cold-like symptoms such as sore throats, sneezing, and runny noses were increasingly common — but former hallmarks of COVID-19 like fevers, coughs, and loss of taste or smell had dwindled.
“The most-reported symptoms of Omicron are really very much like a cold, especially in people who’ve been vaccinated,” Dr. Claire Steves, a scientist involved with the Zoe COVID Symptom Study, said in a recent video.
The Zoe study uses a smartphone app to log how hundreds of thousands of people are feeling every day across the UK. It offers a comprehensive look at how COVID-19 symptoms have changed over the course of the pandemic — most notably, with the advent of the Delta and Omicron variants.
The following chart shows how Omicron symptoms compare to those of its predecessors, based on data collected by the Zoe app.
Runny nose, headache, fatigue, sneezing, and sore throat were the top five symptoms among people in the UK who recorded a positive COVID-19 test in the past few weeks. Meanwhile, just 44% of people in that group reported a persistent cough and 29% reported a fever. Loss of taste or smell was even less common, as the chart below shows.
While the data don’t distinguish between vaccinated and unvaccinated people, 70% of the UK population has had at least two vaccine doses as of Thursday.
Omicron cases often start with a scratchy sore throat, headache, and congestion
Dr. Jorge Moreno said he’s seen an influx of COVID-19 cases lately at his outpatient clinic in Connecticut. Most of those patients are vaccinated, he said, so their symptoms tend to be milder and relatively short-lived.
Many patients start out with a dry, scratchy throat that causes sharp pain when they swallow.
“It’s a very prominent symptom,” Moreno, an assistant professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine, told Insider. “It’s not like a little tickle in the throat. If they’re reporting it, they’re saying that their throat feels raw.”
Sore throats are often coupled with sinus congestion and headache, he added, followed by a cough a day or so later. At a December news briefing, Ryan Noach, CEO of Discovery Health, South Africa’s largest private health insurer, said Omicron patients commonly report a scratchy throat first, followed by nasal congestion, dry cough, and body aches.
“Cough is still part of the symptoms, [but] it’s not as bad as it was,” Moreno said. Vaccinated people, he added, “don’t have those respiratory symptoms as much.”
Jessica Christian/The San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images
Loss of smell is also relatively rare among Omicron patients.
As of this month, less than 20% of people in the UK who recorded a positive COVID-19 test were logging the symptom into the Zoe app. Back in June, when the Delta variant was dominant in the UK, loss of smell was the sixth most common COVID-19 symptom among fully vaccinated people. In March, before Delta was detected and vaccines were widely available, 60% of UK adults ages 16 to 65 on the Zoe app reported loss of smell at some point in their illness.
By contrast, fatigue is becoming more pronounced among outpatients, who often report feeling tired and achy, Moreno said.
“I’ve seen a lot more people reporting fatigue as one of their main symptoms,” he said. “They’re young people that typically can push through things. They need rest. They need to sleep. They’re napping more.”
Why are COVID-19 symptoms changing?
Patrick Pleul/Picture Alliance/Getty Images
Scientists aren’t sure exactly why COVID-19 symptoms are changing.
Vaccines help reduce the severity of disease, but Omicron might be a less virulent virus on its own. Two recent lab studies, which haven’t been peer reviewed, suggest that Omicron may be less effective at attacking lung cells compared with prior variants. Another not-yet-peer-reviewed study, published Wednesday, found that Omicron inherently reduced the risk of severe hospitalization or death from COVID-19 by 25% compared with Delta.
Omicron may also change the way the virus replicates or congregates in the body. A December study from the University of Hong Kong, which hasn’t been peer reviewed, found that Omicron replicates 70 times faster in the main airways, or bronchi, compared with Delta, but 10 times slower in the lung tissue. Another preprint study, released earlier this month, showed that the viral load from an Omicron infection peaked in saliva one to two days before it peaked in nasal swabs — a sign that Omicron may infect the throat before it infects the nose.
Still, doctors have noticed a clear gradient of symptoms based on a person’s vaccination status.
“People that are unvaccinated go through a little bit of a longer and tougher course,” Moreno said. “People that are vaccinated have a middle-of-the-way course. The boosted people, in many cases it’s almost like an old cold: the sinus symptoms, the sore throat.”
Before Omicron, Moreno said, his COVID-19 patients used to feel crummy for around 10 to 14 days. Lately, he said, people who’ve received a booster shot report shorter bouts of illness than those who have received fewer doses, or none at all.
“Those individuals that are boosted, within five days, seven days of their onset of symptoms, their energy level comes back,” he said. “Their symptoms are resolved.”
What to Watch for and How They May Differ Based on Vaccine Status – NBC Chicago
With omicron now the dominant strain in the U.S. and cases rapidly rising across Illinois and the country, experts say there are some symptoms that appear prominent with the new COVID variant and differ from what many came to expect with the delta variant.
Dr. Katherine Poehling, an infectious disease specialist and member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, told NBC News last week that a cough, congestion, runny nose and fatigue appear to be prominent symptoms with the omicron variant. But unlike delta, many patients are not losing their taste or smell.
The evidence so far, according to Poehling, is anecdotal and not based on scientific research. She noted also that these symptoms may only reflect certain populations.
Still, CDC data showed the most common symptoms so far are cough, fatigue, congestion and a runny nose.
But some experts suggest the symptoms could depend on vaccination status and underlying health conditions.
Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said she’s “feeling pretty confident” that the variant will lead to more breakthrough cases and reinfections in those who have already had COVID, but the severity of cases, particularly in vulnerable populations and the unvaccinated, remains unclear despite early breakthrough cases in the Midwest showing mild symptoms, if any.
“We think based on what we’re seeing now, omicron is unlikely to be more severe than delta, which is which is very, very good news, but I’m still skeptical of claims that there’s significantly reduced severity,” Arwady said. “So great news, it doesn’t look like it’s making people sicker than what we have now, but I do know there are a lot of people who feel like this is really not making people sick at all and that is not yet something that my team feels that the data shows.”
In New York, where cases continue to surge, an ER doctor who became known on social media during the pandemic for his documentation of the battle against COVID, reported breakthrough cases he has seen in those with booster shots experienced “mild” symptoms.
“By mild I mean mostly sore throat. Lots of sore throat,” Craig Spencer wrote on Twitter. “Also some fatigue, maybe some muscle pain. No difficulty breathing. No shortness of breath. All a little uncomfortable, but fine.”
Cases in people who were fully vaccinated with either Pfizer or Moderna’s vaccine, but not boosted, remained mild, but slightly more intense.
“More fatigued. More fever. More coughing. A little more miserable overall. But no shortness of breath. No difficulty breathing,” he wrote.
For those with Johnson & Johnson who were not boosted, he wrote the patients “felt horrible,” with fevers, fatigue, coughs and shortness of breath, but did not require hospitalization or oxygen.
In the unvaccinated, however, the symptoms were more severe.
“Almost every single patient that I’ve taken care of that needed to be admitted for Covid has been unvaccinated,” Spencer wrote. “Every one with profound shortness of breath. Every one whose oxygen dropped when they walked. Every one needing oxygen to breath regularly.”
Dr. Angelique Coetzee, the South African doctor who first raised the alarm over the new strain, told the BBC that she started to see patients around Nov.18 presenting with “unusual symptoms” that differed slightly to those associated with the delta variant.
“It actually started with a male patient who’s around the age of 33 … and he said to me that he’s just [been] extremely tired for the past few days and he’s got these body aches and pains with a bit of a headache,” she told the BBC.
The patient didn’t have a sore throat, she said, but more of a “scratchy throat” but no cough or loss of taste or smell — symptoms that have been associated with previous strains of the coronavirus.
Coetzee said she tested the male patient for COVID, and he was positive, as was his family, and then said she saw more patients that day presenting with the same kinds of symptoms that differed from the delta variant.
Other patients she had seen so far with the omicron variant had also experienced what she described as “extremely mild” symptoms, and she added that her colleagues had noted similar cases.
Similarly, in the first U.S. case, the president’s chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said the person was vaccinated but had not received a booster shot and was experiencing “mild symptoms.”
Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel told CNBC that omicron symptoms reported in South Africa may not be a good predictor of the variant’s virulence in other parts of the world, because the country has a much younger and healthier population than European nations and the U.S.
According to early findings of a study by the U.K.’s Imperial College London, there is no evidence that the omicron variant is any less severe than the delta variant based on reported symptoms.
“The study finds no evidence of omicron having lower severity than delta, judged by either the proportion of people testing positive who report symptoms, or by the proportion of cases seeking hospital care after infection,” a research team led by professor Neil Ferguson said Friday in a blog post accompanying the study.
The data included 24 hospitalizations of patients suspected of having the omicron variant, with researchers saying “hospitalisation data remains very limited at this time.” The study is yet to be peer-reviewed.
In Illinois, hospitalizations have been rising.
Allan Spooner, CEO of Franciscan Health South Suburban Chicago, said Monday that COVID-19 cases at the system’s hospitals have grown four times over the past three weeks – from 10 to 42%. More than 70% of critical care patients have COVID-19, with 30% of them requiring a ventilator, he said.
Physician and staff infections have also risen as the latest surge increases, Spooner said, “exacerbating an already precarious staffing shortage across health care.”
Rex Budde, president and CEO of Southern Illinois Healthcare, reinforced a similar message.
“The number one thing that we can do is get vaccinated,” he said.
Budde said 40% of the Carbondale hospital’s medical beds are occupied with COVID patients. As is the case at other health systems, he said to treat COVID patients, the hospital has had to pull resources from other parts of the facility and delay treatment for others, including stroke and heart care patients.
“People are dying from this virus that don’t need to die,” he said. “Imagine being a nurse or a physician or a care tech who have to look at this and deal with this every single day. The staff is worn out. Nurses are worn out. Physicians are worn out.”
Despite some differences reported between omicron and delta, Chicago experts say looking at the symptoms is not enough.
“The trick is you’re not going to be able to tell the difference between omicron, delta, lambda, plain COVID from the beginning,” Dr. Emily Landon, infectious disease specialist and chief hospital epidemiologist at University of Chicago Medicine, said. “Influenza or even common rhinovirus causes most of our common colds in the winter. You’re not going to know the difference between those if you just look at your symptoms. For many people, those symptoms are overlapping. And while there are some parts of the Venn diagram like taste, loss of taste and smell, or common COVID than these other things, there’s a lot of overlap. You’re just not going to know especially at the beginning of an illness, what kind of illness you have. You have to get tested.”
And getting tested won’t necessarily tell you if you have the omicron variant, Landon said.
“When you get a COVID test they’re just looking for whether or not you have COVID,” she said. “They’re not on which kind of in order to figure out the exact strain of COVID. You have to do this thing called sequencing, which takes a lot longer. It’s much more intensive. You certainly can’t get that back in 24 hours, and it’s only done by specialized labs.”
Overall, the symptoms for COVID reported by the CDC include:
- Fever or chills
- Cough
- Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
- Fatigue
- Muscle or body aches
- Headache
- New loss of taste or smell
- Sore throat
- Congestion or runny nose
- Nausea or vomiting
- Diarrhea
Aaron Rodgers, Antonio Brown protocol violations differ significantly
TAMPA — Since news broke of the suspension of two Bucs players (and a former one) for using fake COVID-19 vaccination cards, cyberspace has become infested with double-standard allegations.
The outcries read like an algebra equation: Why doesn’t AR equal AB?
Or in simpler terms, why is Bucs receiver Antonio Brown serving a three-game suspension while Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers keeps flinging spirals in the NFC Central? Weren’t both found to have violated COVID-19 protocols agreed upon by the NFL and NFL Players Association?
Yes, but the circumstances differ. Considerably.
One (Rodgers) misled the public. The other (Brown) misled his employer, in a manner that could be subject to felony charges.
Rodgers, who tested positive in early November, said over the summer he was “immunized” when reporters asked about his vaccination status, but he since has acknowledged being unvaccinated. The three-time league MVP has said that his teammates and the Packers organization have known he was unvaccinated.
In lieu of the vaccines — Rodgers has said he’s allergic — he has said that he received monoclonal antibody treatment and took ivermectin to combat the virus and that he informed the NFL of his approach.
Aside from arriving mask-less at news conferences (a protocol violation for unvaccinated players), Rodgers said on The Pat McAfee Show that he has “followed every single protocol to a T, minus (the one regarding masks news conferences), which makes absolutely no sense to me.” Check out his interview, starting around the one-hour, eight-minute mark.
The Packers were fined $300,000 for violating rules agreed upon by the NFL and NFLPA. Rodgers and wide receiver Allen Lazard were fined $14,560 for attending a gathering of more than three people (in this case, a Halloween party), which violates protocols for unvaccinated players.
Brown, safety Mike Edwards and former Bucs receiver John Franklin III were suspended three games each without pay, the NFL said Thursday, after a league investigation concluded that the three “misrepresented their COVID-19 vaccination status.”
The suspensions are the first for the NFL under its COVID-19 policy.
Using and/or selling fake vaccination cards is a felony subject to fines and up to five years in prison.
Brown tested positive early in the season, missing the Week 3 game against the Rams in Los Angeles.
Contact Joey Knight at jknight@tampabay.com. Follow @TBTimes_Bulls
• • •
Sign up for the Bucs RedZone newsletter to get updates and analysis on the latest team and NFL news from Bucs beat writer Joey Knight.
Never miss out on the latest with the Bucs, Rays, Lightning, Florida college sports and more. Follow our Tampa Bay Times sports team on Twitter and Facebook.
Billboards show how Pixel 6 & 6 Pro designs, screens differ
On Thursday, we got a look at the print campaign Google is running for its upcoming flagship. Additional Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro billboards highlight how the design — especially the screens — between the smaller and larger models diverge.
The latest billboards from photographer David Urbanke show off the phones in almost every color — there’s no black Pixel 6 Pro. When possible, Google is advertising the 6 and 6 Pro together, though the larger phone appears first — either on top or at the left. It remains interesting that Google is marketing these devices individually rather than as part of a family/line. Meanwhile, each billboard advertises a different feature in the upper-right corner of the phone: Google Lens, Maps, Chat, or Camera.
These side-by-side shots help demonstrate how the Pixel 6 Pro’s 6.7-inch display is curved at the edges versus the flat 6.4-inch screen on the Pixel 6. The latter ends up having noticeably thicker bezels when looking at the device head-on, especially at the corners.
This effect is further highlighted by the regular 6 having black matte rails. In comparison, the Pro has a matching (black, silver, or gold) aluminum frame that helps distinguish the screen from the body, especially at the top and bottom.
Overall, the differences are minute, but serve as a continuation of how Pixel design has historically differed between sizes. While the original Pixel and Pixel 4 were visually identical across the regular and XL variants, the Pixel 2 and 3 drastically differed. In fairness, Google is not advertising the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro as the same device as the specs (camera lenses, refresh rate, etc.) have to differ.
More about Pixel 6:
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Check out 9to5Google on YouTube for more news:
Japan PM candidates differ on same-sex, women rights issues
TOKYO, Sept 18 (Reuters) – Candidates to become Japan’s next prime minister all said they would have better policies to fight the pandemic and reduce the income gap during television debates on Friday, but they were split on diversity issues from same-sex marriage to married couples having separate surnames.
Whoever wins the Liberal Democratic Party presidency on Sept. 29 will become prime minister because of the LDP’s majority in the lower house of parliament, and campaigning began in earnest on Friday with a series of televised debates.
Widely seen as the leading contender, vaccine minister Taro Kono, 58, recently veered from mainstream thinking in the conservative party by saying he favours the introduction of same-sex marriage, and during a debate broadcast by TV Asahi, he asked his main contender about his stance on the issue.
Former foreign minister Fumio Kishida, 64, answered by saying he had “not reach to the point of accepting same-sex marriage”.
The two other candidates in the race are both women; Seiko Noda, a 61-year-old former gender equality minister, and Sanae Takaichi, 60, an ultra-conservative former internal affairs minister.
While they are not seen as frontrunners the contest is still regarded as unpredictable, and if either were to pull off a surprise win they would become Japan’s first female prime minister.
The four candidates will line up for another televised debate on Saturday as they battle to expand support in a party that has suffered a sharp drop in approval ratings due to the handling of the pandemic under Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s leadership.
Among the more divisive issues separating the candidates is whether to allow married couples to have separate surnames.
Advocates for women, including lawmakers across the political spectrum want women to be able to choose which name they use, but it is not possible under Japanese law.
Takaichi, the more conservative of the two female candidates, said in a debate on Fuji TV that the country should continue the existing system in order to avoid confusion among couples, and their children, with different family names.
The two male candidates adopted a different stance. Kono supports allowing married couples to have different surnames, while Kishida said the public’s opinion should be understood before parliament decides.
Reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Myanmar coup protests differ from previous demonstrations, researcher says
People protesting on the streets of Myanmar following a military coup are doing so under very different circumstances compared with previous demonstrations in the country, according to an analyst at the policy research firm Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Police clashed with demonstrators on Tuesday during which four people were hurt, including one critical injury, Reuters reported. It was the most violent day of protests against the military, which this month overthrew the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
“This is what people have been fearing all week as these protests grew and you had tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of people on the streets of Yangon and Mandalay and Naypyitaw,” Gregory Poling, senior fellow for Southeast Asia at CSIS, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Wednesday.
Protesters ride scooters in a large convoy demonstration against the military coup in Naypyidaw, Myanmar on February 7, 2021.
STR | AFP | Getty Images
He explained that these protests are very different from the large-scale demonstrations that took place in 2007, known as the “Saffron Revolution,” which was triggered by the military government’s decision to raise fuel prices.
“This is a Myanmar that’s spent the last 10 years opening to the world, democratizing,” Poling said. “Most citizens have mobile internet access — or they did before the coup. Most of the people on the streets probably don’t remember the Saffron Revolution directly and have certainly no memory of 1988.”
Myanmar saw nationwide protests, marches and civil unrest in 1988, in what is sometimes referred to as the 1988 Uprising.
“That could be both good and bad because it may very well convince them that the military won’t crack down,” Poling said about the current protesters. “Or perhaps it gives them the confidence to go out and show the generals that they don’t rule the same Myanmar that they did 15 years ago.”
He explained that while it is a “remarkably dangerous moment” for Myanmar, the junta has not immediately leaped to the worst possible response. In previous protests, demonstrators had been killed in crackdowns while many were arrested.
Protesters in capital Naypyitaw and other cities like Mandalay have been hurt by security forces, Reuters reported, citing local media. The agency reported that police largely fired into the air and used water cannon and tear gas to disperse demonstrators. CNBC could not independently verify those reports.
The United States has condemned the military takeover and threatened sanctions. Beijing’s response has been milder, with the foreign ministry in recent press briefings characterizing China as a “friendly neighbor of Myanmar” and calling for solutions that would that would ensure the latter’s political and social stability.
But China, Japan, Singapore and Thailand have greater influence on the Myanmar economy than the U.S. does.
“I think the real question is what Japan does, because it’s the only one of those major players likely to impose any kind of economic pain on the generals,” he said.
Japan’s deputy defense minister warned this month that if the world closes channels for communications with Myanmar’s military generals in response to the coup, that could push the Southeast Asian nation closer to China, local reports said.