Police fired gunshots into the air and used water cannon and rubber bullets on Tuesday as protesters across Myanmar defied bans on big gatherings to oppose a military coup that halted a tentative transition to democracy.

Four people were hurt by rubber bullets in the capital Naypyitaw, and one of them, a woman, was in critical condition with a head wound, a doctor said.

The Feb. 1 coup and detention of elected civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi has brought the largest demonstrations in more than a decade and a growing civil disobedience movement affecting hospitals, schools and government offices.

Witnesses said police fired guns into the air in Naypyitaw as a crowd refused to disperse on the fourth straight day of protests. One witness told Reuters demonstrators ran away as guns were fired into the air.

A doctor said four people, including the woman with a head wound, were brought to his hospital after being struck by rubber bullets.

Police had earlier fired water cannon at the protesters, who responded by throwing projectiles, the witness said.

Video from the town of Bago, northeast of the commercial hub of Yangon, showed police confronting a large crowd and blasting them with jets from water cannon.

Police arrested at least 27 demonstrators in the second-biggest city of Mandalay, including a journalist, domestic media organisations said.

The unrest has revived memories of almost half a century of direct army rule until the military began a process of withdrawing from civilian politics in 2011, though it never gave up its overall control over the Suu Kyi’s civilian government after it won a 2015 election.

That transformation was brought to a halt by the coup that ousted the government as it was preparing to begin its second term in office after Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) swept a November election.

“We are so disappointed and so sad whenever we think about why this has befallen us again,” Yangon resident Khin Min Soe said of the return of military rule.

Promises on Monday from junta leader General Min Aung Hlaing to eventually hold a new election in his first address since seizing power drew scorn. He repeated unproven accusations of fraud in the election which he used to justify the coup.

“We will continue to fight,” youth activist Maung Saungkha said in a statement, calling for the release of political prisoners and the end of “dictatorship”.

Activists are also seeking the abolition of a 2008 constitution drawn up under military supervision that gave the generals a veto in parliament and control of several ministries, and for a federal system in ethnically diverse Myanmar.

An older generation of activists who confronted the military in bloody 1988 protests called for strike action by government workers for another three weeks.

The civil disobedience movement, led by hospital workers, has resulted in a plunge in coronavirus tests, official testing figures showed.

Myanmar has suffered one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in Southeast Asia with 31,177 deaths from more than 141,000 cases.

ELECTION PROMISE

A curfew from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. has been imposed on Yangon and Mandalay.

State media signalled possible action against the protests on Monday when it said the public wanted rid of “wrongdoers” and while orders banning gatherings of more than four people have been imposed, there has been no elaboration from authorities. . 

In his first televised address as junta leader on Monday, Min Aung Hlaing said the junta would form a “true and disciplined democracy”, different to previous eras of military rule, which brought years of isolation and poverty.

“We will have a multiparty election and we will hand the power to the one who wins,” he said. The electoral commission had dismissed his accusations of fraud in last year’s ballot.

Min Aung Hlaing gave no time frame but the junta has said a state of emergency will last one year.

Western governments have widely condemned the coup, although there has been little concrete action to press the generals.

New Zealand has suspended all high-level political and military contact and will ensure aid does not benefit the military and impose a travel ban on its leaders.

A Singapore businessman plans to exit his investment in a Myanmar tobacco firm linked to the military, joining Japanese drinks giant Kirin Holdings which last week scrapped its Myanmar beer alliance.

The U.N. Security Council has called for the release of Suu Kyi and other detainees. The U.N. Human Rights Council will hold a special session on Friday to discuss the crisis at the behest of Britain and the European Union.

Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for campaigning for democracy and spent nearly 15 years under house arrest.

The 75-year-old faces charges of illegally importing six walkie-talkies and is being held in police detention until Feb. 15. Her lawyer said he has not been allowed to see her. The U.S. State Department said it tried to reach her but was denied.

Suu Kyi remains hugely popular at home despite damage to her international reputation over the plight of the Muslim Rohingya minority. — Reuters

BEIJING — China’s hotels and restaurants are bracing for a lackluster Lunar New Year holiday, as travel curbs and government advice to stay home and avoid big gatherings look set to deal a blow to domestic tourism this year.

The week-long holiday that begins on Friday traditionally kicks off one of China’s biggest spending sprees, surpassing 1 trillion yuan ($155 billion) in 2019, before the coronavirus disruptions, government figures show.

“Our business is barely half of what we usually see before the Lunar New Year,” said Lin Haiping, founder of Baheli, a beef hotpot chain with more than 100 outlets in 16 cities.

“We are in a dilemma as we don’t want to have too many customers,” he added, citing the advice against large gatherings as a reason for avoiding promotional offers to drum up business.

“I’m afraid of having too many people under the current policies.”

The tougher measures spawned by recent sporadic outbreaks threaten a hit to transport and tourism during the holiday that could shave as much as 150 billion yuan ($23 billion) from household spending, brokerage CITIC Securities has said.

Infections have recently fallen from a mid-January peak, when the daily number of locally transmitted COVID-19 cases hit their highest in more than 10 months.

Many people have canceled holiday flights or trips back to hometowns after local authorities tightened measures for arrivals, such as requiring virus testing.

Such cancellations, for example, have more than halved the cost of flights to duty-free beach destination Sanya on the southern island of Hainan, a mecca for purchases of luxury goods as the pandemic deters Chinese from overseas travel.

Capri Holdings, owner of luxury brands Jimmy Choo and Versace, told analysts it expected strong sales performance from outlets on Hainan, though “not quite as strong as we had all anticipated,” thanks to the likely slowdown in travel.

The transport ministry has estimated passenger trips will fall 40% from the 2019 figure during the 40-day spring travel season, when millions of migrant workers normally head from cities to homes in the countryside.

Mainland China reported more than 2,000 domestic virus infections in January, but recovery remains on track in the world’s second-largest economy, which grew 2.3% on the year in 2020.

That made it the only major economy to dodge a contraction last year, as many nations struggled to rein in the pandemic, which disrupted China’s holiday festivities that year, too.

Government warnings against large gatherings, such as weddings or annual company parties, also drove cancellations.

“We are open, but there is no difference with being closed,” said Shen Xiaolin, the manager of Qingxi Guesthouse in the eastern province of Zhejiang.

The 17-room boutique hotel has no holiday guests this year, a far cry from previous years, when it was booked out the entire week.

As many people opt to stay put in their place of work, some businesses are banking on in-city consumption for some reprieve, but they must still grapple with pressure to limit patrons.

Hotpot chain Haidilao is among the firms turning to technology to ease such headaches. 

It has launched an online streaming service offering video conferencing facilities for diners to feast simultaneously with family and friends in outlets in other cities.

The service is available in 52 restaurants across 41 cities in China, as well as five in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

“We deliberately chose some outlets in the third- and fourth-tier cities, where many young people…can’t go home this year,” said Zhou Zhaocheng, the firm’s chief strategy officer.

“We are trying to make people feel they are together, even though they are physically apart.” — Reuters

A bid by Malaysian amateur investors to pull off a short squeeze-fueled rally in glove makers is fizzling out, just like the one by their American peers in GameStop Corp.

Shares in Top Glove Corp., the sector’s bellwether and Malaysia’s most shorted stock, have given up almost all of the gains it made since some investors started Bursabets, a Reddit community idealized after r/wallstreetbets to defend Malaysian stocks. Top Glove topped the sell list for retail investors for the week ended Feb. 5, a report by CGS-CIMB Securities Sdn. showed. And short positions have started inching up again.

From its start on Jan. 28, the online forum was up in arms with a rallying call: support medical glove makers whose shares had come under pressure from short sellers following their meteoric gains in 2020. The forum now has almost 13,000 members.

Now those calls to buy and hold them are falling on deaf ears for three key reasons.

Slowing virus infections and global vaccine rollouts are instilling confidence that the pandemic’s end is in sight and therefore the extraordinary demand for gloves is set to ease.

The frenzy in American stocks popular with Reddit crowds has itself started to come crashing down. GameStop’s shares dropped 5.9% in New York trading, adding to last week’s 80% plunge, a drop that followed three weeks of dizzying gains.

Malaysia, like many other Asian markets, limits the amount of short selling that can happen on a stock. So technically there weren’t any gigantic short positions in glove makers to begin with.

Top Glove is about 1.3% away from its pre-Bursabets level as of 11:57 a.m. in Kuala Lumpur trading, while its rival Supermax Corp. fell below that level on Monday. Hartalega Holdings Bhd. is about 3.5% away from reaching that zone. These stocks had been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the global pandemic last year. — Bloomberg L.P.

The coronavirus variant first identified in the United Kingdom (UK) is deadlier than earlier variants, a new study confirms. 

Researchers tracked roughly one million individuals tested for COVID-19 from November to January in community settings, including about 3,000 who ultimately died from it. 

After accounting for other factors that affect coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outcomes, patients with the new variant had a roughly 35% higher risk of death, they reported on Wednesday on medRxiv ahead of peer review. 

Among male patients ages 55-69, around 1-in-180 died after becoming infected with older versions of the virus. With the new variant “that’s gone up to around … 1-in-140,” said co-author Nicholas Davies of the London School of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene. 

The absolute risk of death remains low under age 54, his team said. 

For women ages 70-84, the risk of death within 28 days went from 2.9% with the original variant to 3.7% with the new UK variant, and for those age 85 and older it went from 12.8% to 16.4%. For males ages 70-84, the mortality rate rose from 4.7% to 6.1% and for older males from 17.1% to 21.7%. 

The researchers did not have data on people who were diagnosed in hospitals or on infected people who were never tested. Mr. Davies said his team is updating its analysis with more data, “and it looks like the increase in mortality may well be higher than 35%.” — Reuters

Two US carrier groups conducted joint exercises in the South China Sea on Tuesday, days after a US warship sailed near Chinese-controlled islands in the disputed waters that have emerged as another flashpoint in strained Sino-US relations.

The Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group and the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group “conducted a multitude of exercises aimed at increasing interoperability between assets as well as command and control capabilities,” the US Navy said, marking the first dual carrier operations in the busy waterway since July 2020.

The exercise comes days after China condemned the sailing of the destroyer, the USS John S. McCain, near the Chinese-controlled Paracel Islands in what the United States calls a freedom of navigation operation — the first such mission by the US navy since President Joe Biden took office.

The United States has contested China’s extensive territorial claims in the region, accusing it of militarizing the South China Sea and trying to intimidate neighbors such as Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, who have claims that overlap with China’s in the resource-rich area.

“We are committed to ensuring the lawful use of the sea that all nations enjoy under international law,” Rear Admiral Jim Kirk, commander of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group, said in a statement.

China has been infuriated by repeated US sailings near the islands it occupies and controls in the South China Sea. China says it has irrefutable sovereignty and has accused the United States of deliberately stoking tension. — Reuters