In US, we're guilty until proven innocent

Newswires and social media were awash with angry arguments yesterday about H&M and other garment firms declaring that they never used materials traceable to Xinjiang farms at which Uygur "slaves" picked cotton.

What's the story?

US patriots are ratifying a new American law which says that all companies producing goods in Xinjiang will be assumed to be guilty of illegally using slave labor unless they can prove otherwise.

The law makes millions of men and women of all ethnicities in Xinjiang into workers for criminal operations by default.

Shocked business people, including Americans in Hong Kong who source products from Xinjiang, are baffled about how to react - which explains the flurry of confused statements.

But one Uygur source, writing yesterday on social media, said that the debate over whether cotton pickers were "slaves" or paid workers was simply an error.

"Farms in Xinjiang pick cotton using automated harvesters," he said, attaching a video showing just that.

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Reader Michael Gazeley saw an entire new building in Tsim Sha Tsui East which is going to be dedicated to pets, as shown in the picture - a multistory shopping paradise for our four-legged friends and their owners.

But then he noticed that in the open area around the building someone has placed multiple official signs forbidding the presence of dogs.

"So is this just some really bad town planning, or is someone in power a very dedicated cat person?" he asked.

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I saw a lost, confused bird that had accidentally flown into the shopping mall above Hung Hom station and used it to explain to my wife how I felt when she makes me go to Ikea.

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People being vaccinated in Hong Kong are handed information on joining the city's central health database.

A reader, Ling Ling, yesterday told us she was happily signing up at the Sun Yat Sen Park vaccination facility in Sheung Wan when the nurse interrupted her. "Are you sure you want to share your information?" the nurse asked, giving her a look.

We all know there are some paranoid people in Hong Kong. But health system staff spreading distrust of the health system? Ling Ling felt that was a bit much.

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You know those signs in minibuses that tell passengers the speed they are moving at? They have the same thing in China's maglev trains, said Francois Ouellete, a Canadian, yesterday. The sign over his head showed it was moving at 295 kilometers an hour to Shanghai. "Short ride, of course, at that speed," he said.

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Jasnah Kholin, a self-described "microbiologist at Hong Kong University" wrote an article in Apple Daily calling for a pause in the use of Sinovac.

But puzzled readers noted that there was no person of that name listed among staff at the University of Hong Kong. A request for information to the relevant department received no response, and a search for academic papers show none with that name.

Kholin, who favors foul language, writes ACAB after her name on social media, an acronym popularly used to stand for "All Cops Are B******s". She yesterday retweeted the phrase: "Burning cops cars is free speech."

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Not sure if I have been watching too many movies, but there has to be some percentage chance that my vaccine jab will give me superpowers, right?

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