The royal “bullying” saga took an astonishing twist tonight as it emerged Prince William’s wife Kate could assist the probe into Harry’s wife Meghan.

Former aides are set to claim the Duchess of Cambridge witnessed Meghan’s “challenging behaviour”.

It was already revealed by several sources that Kate, 39, stood up for her own staff after they were berated.

But now she could be quizzed in a formal probe into alleged bullying by Duchess of Sussex Meghan.

Will you be watching Meghan and Harry’s Oprah interview? Tell us in the comments

And even Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, might be called upon to assist as Palace officials have vowed to carry out a thorough investigation.

The developments came as the Palace – and the world – braced itself for Meghan and Harry’s no-holds-barred interview with Oprah Winfrey.

The explosive two-hour chat goes out in the US on Sunday night – 1am UK time – and is on ITV at 9pm tomorrow.

The Queen, as ever, has maintained dignity throughout – showing calm leadership despite the ongoing worry of husband Prince Philip being in hospital after a heart procedure.

Her Majesty ordered the investigation into Meghan’s alleged bullying.

Palace aides will consider testimony from at least 10 ex-staffers who reportedly accuse her of “emotional cruelty and manipulation”.

The double whammy of the bully probe and the Oprah interview has sent royal households into a spin.

In their interview, no subject is “off limits” as Meghan and Harry tell why they quit as working royals. Pregnant Meghan, 39, says she feels “liberated”.

She, Harry and toddler son Archie now live in the millionaires playground of Montecito, California. They have signed £100million-plus deals with giants like Netflix and Spotify.

The Palace is braced for a raft of allegations after Meghan accused the royals of “perpetuating falsehoods”.

The duchess also discusses with Winfrey how the strain of living in the spotlight in Britain was “almost unsurvivable”.

It is also believed Meghan could confirm rumours of a rift with Kate by suggesting she failed to support her after she joined the family.

Afghanistan war veteran Harry has told Oprah his “biggest concern was history repeating itself” – referring to his mother Princess Diana, who felt hounded and isolated. She died in a Paris car crash in 1997, aged 36.

CBS reportedly paid Winfrey’s production outfit up to £7million for the interview. The chat host, 67, is worth £1.8billion, with stakes in cable channel OWN and Weight Watchers, for which she is brand ambassador.

ITV reportedly paid £1million for secondary rights to the interview, which will be screened in 68 countries.

It comes as aides revealed last week Meghan faced a bullying complaint during her time at Kensington Palace.

Former communications secretary Jason Knauf claimed, in 2018, Meghan drove two personal assistants out of the household and was undermining the confidence of a third staffer.

Two senior members of staff have claimed they were bullied when the Sussexes were sharing Kensington Palace staff with William and Kate.

Harry and Meghan later moved their offices to Buckingham Palace and relocated to Frogmore Cottage in the shadow of Windsor Castle.

Another former employee told The Times they had been “humiliated” by Meghan and claimed two members of staff had been bullied.

Previously, a source told of Kate standing up to Meghan for publicly rebuking staff.

A former staffer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said: “That was just one of a catalogue of instances where Meghan spoke out of turn to palace staff in front of other people. These aren’t isolated instances and there are plenty of people who witnessed Meghan’s challenging behaviour.”

In another incident, Kate was reportedly “left sobbing” by Meghan’s “outspoken demands” around the fitting of Princess Charlotte’s bridesmaid dress.

Meghan denies bullying and the first she and Harry knew of the probe was when it appeared in the press.

A source close to them said: “This is a whole tit-for-tat scenario. If this was a private company, we’ve effectively already been fired and I’m not entirely sure what any process could be.”

A spokesman for the couple has said they are victims of a “calculated smear campaign based on misleading and harmful misinformation”.

Harry and Meghan’s lawyers said the allegations were part of a “wholly false narrative” from the Palace.

It is understood Meghan has long believed that Palace courtiers and even royals themselves have been briefing the press on negative stories about her.

To fully examine bullying claims, Meghan would have to be part of the process, but it is not clear what role, if any, she will play in proceedings.

The Palace said: “We are clearly very concerned about allegations following claims made by former staff of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

“Accordingly, our HR team will look into the circumstances outlined in the article. The royal household will not tolerate bullying or harassment in the workplace.”

When two Canadian citizens were ransomed by Beijing two years ago, it first exposed us to the geopolitical realities of China’s hostage diplomacy.

Now, all Canadians are being held hostage to China’s so-called “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy,” a new psychological reality personified by its envoys abroad.

The old, understated diplomacy personified by visionary leaders such as Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai — talk softly over chopsticks, deftly wining and dining the likes of Pierre Trudeau and Richard Nixon — has now been replaced by the big stick.

Wolf Warrior diplomacy is inspired by a wildly popular action movie franchise of the same name. Released in 2017, “Wolf Warrior 2” became a top grossing film, thrilling Chinese audiences — and, apparently, ambassadors — with a storyline showing People’s Liberation Army soldiers rescuing Chinese civilians trapped in an African country.

Now real life diplomacy has become performance art, imitating, in turn, cinematic art. Off-screen, it’s not a good look in the real world.

These days, all the world’s a stage for the Middle Kingdom. This week, Ottawa served as centre stage for China’s ambassador Cong Peiwu, who publicly pilloried Canada for indulging in “megaphone diplomacy” while perpetrating “lies of the century” against his country.

It was a repeat performance by the ambassador, who has turned Wolf Warrior diplomacy into a form of prowling and howling against Canada. From its sprawling embassy compound in Ottawa — a former convent where spiritual contemplation once prevailed — Chinese envoys regularly summon the Canadian media for undiplomatic harangues of reporters and their readers.

Cong’s predecessor as ambassador, Lu Shaye, pioneered the tactic by famously accusing Canada of “white supremacy” over the 2018 detention of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, when U.S. authorities invoked an extradition treaty. With Canada caught in a standoff between two superpowers, Beijing retaliated not against Washington but the softer target in Ottawa.

China detained career diplomat Michael Kovrig and entrepreneur Michael Spavor — the so-called “two Michaels” — on trumped up espionage charges without any evidence. It then offered them up as a quid pro quo if we quietly acquiesced on the Huawei affair by freeing Meng from America’s clutches, assuming we could short circuit our own legal processes with the same caprice practised in China.

In the aftermath, Canada’s has been forging alliances with other aggrieved countries that have felt the sting of China’s aggressive tactics. It culminated with a declaration last month against “coercive diplomacy” that, while not citing China by name, targeted the tactic that Beijing has deployed against one country after another.

With the last-minute signature of the Philippines, 58 countries and the European Union have signed on, with but one defection (Ghana demurred after being dissuaded by Beijing, which is precisely how coercive diplomacy is practised). By diplomatic standards, it was an impressive feat of multilateralism choreographed by Canada, which appears to have provoked China’s ire — hence the ambassador’s bitter rhetoric about our “megaphone diplomacy.”

In diplomatic parlance, a megaphone is hardly an insult, conveying as it does the metaphor of a soft-spoken middle power amplifying its voice and spreading its message to elicit a multilateral response. It is pushback against Beijing’s bully-boy tactics around the world and across China — where the people of Xinjiang , Tibet and Hong Kong feel the sting of Chinese rule, not merely its rhetoric.

By any name — hostage diplomacy, coercive diplomacy, Wolf Warrior diplomacy — it is a far cry from the quiet diplomacy of China’s paramount leader of old, Deng Xiaoping, who argued in the 1980s: “Hide your strength, bide your time, never take the lead.”

I attended university in Canada with a savvy Chinese student who later joined their diplomatic corps, and years later joined foreign correspondents on a (paid) trip down the Yangtze Three Gorges — before the deluge, as it were — with senior officials who had also studied here. I don’t doubt that their foreign ministry is divided between today’s generation of Wolf Warriors and the old guard who still defend their country’s deeds and misdeeds, as diplomats do, without hurting their own cause.

The quaint old foreign ministry vocabulary, in which China repeatedly swore off “hegemony,” has given way to the “fighting spirit” that China’s current president, Xi Jinping, demands of his diplomats. Which is why Lu, the former ambassador to Ottawa, was rewarded for his hostile rhetoric with a 2019 promotion to Paris.

Echoing the official line last year, the state-run Global Times tabloid sang the praises of China’s Wolf Warrior diplomats for standing up to “hysterical hooligan style diplomacy” in the West. But when diplomacy panders to domestic and nationalistic impulses, foreign policy pays the price.

When the diplomat corps embodies the tactics of celluloid soldiers, inspired by patriotic deeds, escalation is inevitable. Unlike in the movies, a war of words in international relations rarely follows a pre-written script and too often goes off the rails.

Empowered by its economic muscle, boasting the world’s second biggest GDP — purveyor of PPEs to the world and lender of last resort to indebted countries — China under Xi has resolved to stand up and push back against Western criticism. But coercive diplomacy invites retaliation and escalation from countries such as Canada, Australia, India, America, Britain, Sweden and many others that are not pushovers when their citizens are taken hostage or otherwise abused.

We will one day get the two Michaels back, though the delay to date has been unconscionable and the date is uncertain. The only certainty is that it will take China far longer to win back its reputation as a reliable partner in the unpredictable realm of international relations.

Economic power is a formidable force, quantifiable in GDP and statistical charts. But soft power is a more ephemeral force that, once squandered, is not easily salvaged.

After working for so many decades to undo the humiliation of colonization, China has become the aggressor and the transgressor. The problem with China rising, and the Wolf Warriors howling, is that pride often presages the fall.

The mad scramble for vaccines is the incident where the reality about moralizing and hypocrisy by Western powers is clearly demonstrated along with the bias of some media and headline grabbing politicians in the Philippines, who are a major source of rumors and fear and cause of the delays in acceptance of vaccination by our countrymen.

What should our countrymen know that these media and politicians hide? First of all, stop all the chatter; the people should get vaccinated. Let’s save ourselves.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently deplored that 10 high income countries have administered 75 percent of all vaccines, while over 130 countries had not received a single dose.  Duke University had studied that contracts show the European Union had more than enough to inoculate its population two times, and Canada and the United Kingdom by five times.  The United States, which had procured almost a quarter of the world’s supply at the time covering its population several times over, used a defense law to disallow sale of any production in the US to outsiders until it was fully supplied first, and blocked and took over shipments of medical supplies for other countries.  Pfizer has been accused of “bullying”, asking some countries to put up embassy buildings and military bases as a guarantee against the cost of any future legal cases, various international media reported but hardly a tweet by the loudest critics in the Philippines.  Some officials criticized the Philippine government for not securing Pfizer supplies, but Biden’s spokesperson Jen Psaki said just last week that Canada and Mexico won’t be supplied yet until the US gets all it wants.

Why do our critical media and some senators or supposed think tank analysts not mention that the Western supplies are not available yet anyway because of selfish interests, that Filipinos mostly didn’t want to be vaccinated because of disastrous management of vaccines by a previous administration, and that the Chinese, Russian or Indian donations are effective?  Do they know Chinese pharmaceuticals over the last dozen years supplied major shares of vaccines in the Philippines, including for flu, at affordable prices?  When vaccine nationalism began raging in Europe, Germany stated Russian and Chinese should be considered.

Ironically, the few countries that didn’t succumb to the temptation of “vaccine nationalism” were mostly from the developing world — India, Russia and China — which all shipped significant portions of their production to other countries even while not having covered their own populations totally yet.

In addition, during the global race for medical supplies in the early critical months of the pandemic, more than 70 flights of Philippine Air Force planes as well as a number of Philippine commercial jets have been allowed by China to land in several airports in southern China to pick up such medical supplies for the Philippines, according to Ambassador Chito Sta Romana.

China has since donated vaccines to more than 50 developing countries even before it had completed vaccinations for its own country, causing some domestic criticism — a price it paid for helping others. China has four vaccine producers already in phase 3 trials and more in the process of approval.  Petrovax of Russian and Cansino Biologics are also in joint research and production arrangements, just as Pfizer is working with Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical.

China has been a key donor and supplier of anti-Covid equipment, PPE sets, money and supplies to the Philippines in billions of pesos for the months of the greatest pressure when nothing was available from elsewhere. China’s latest donation of 1 million vaccine doses cost nearly a billion pesos. Despite critics, these are in great demand now from the hospitals and municipalities nationwide.

India shipped millions of doses to Afghanistan, Bangladesh and even some Caribbean countries.  The Russian vaccine Sputnik V was originally looked down on by the West, but it has proven to be among the most effective, inexpensive, easy to use.  It will also be produced in South Korea, India, China and elsewhere. It is already approved in 18 countries and growing — Mexico, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Hungary and Venezuela, among others.

Delayed, but desperate enough to offer Philippine nurses or the use of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) for vaccines in exchange, the government was roundly criticized. But we were still ignored by the West, and no donations or preferential supplies came.  What alternatives are Vice President Leni Robredo, Senators Risa Hontiveros, Kiko Pangilinan, Richard Heydarian and other “constant-critics” proposing when there are none?  It’s true our problems are also because of poor selection of some of the key managers and for allowing them to remain in control, causing many of the unnecessarily poorly managed situation procurement, information and logistics.  But why demonize China, like a beggar insulting the only donor after days of starvation and continued uncertainty and risk of peril?

The key message for our Filipino family: vaccines are almost a hundred percent effective on the severe cases; have low incidence of reactions with some differences in type of reaction among brands; and have had millions of users already without major incidents.  In no cases are the long-term effects known yet for any of the brands, but the theoretical safest are the Chinese vaccines using previously standard inactivated or dead virus to inoculate.

Every moment of delay costs lives and possibly hundreds of billions that we cannot afford.

Let’s know how to thank, whether it’s China or the US or whatever country, instead of demonizing when others are helping us. President Duterte’s sincere thanks to China for her donations and recognizing it as a “gesture of friendship and solidarity” and to the donor countries that made the AstraZeneca delivery policy will bring more goodwill to benefit countless more Filipinos.  In the same way, the US should not forget that up to a third of the health workers and nurses who have died for Americans were Filipinos. We must not forget the frontliners who died trying to help stem the worst of the pandemic and to let the rest of humanity make a better future.

Who used Sinovac’s CoronaVac?  Here are a few:

Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo, Jordan’s King Abdullah and Crown Prince Hussein, and Bahrain’s Prime Minister Salman and Crown Prince Salman.

Turkey has inoculated over 1 million people and would vaccinate more with over 10 million more arriving soon. Indonesia has ordered 125 million doses; Brazil, 100 million; Turkey 50, million; and Malaysia, 14 million.

St. Luke’s Medical Center’s president Dr. Arturo de la Peña, a Covid-19 survivor; chief medical officer Dr. Benjamin Campomanes; and assistant chief medical officer Dr. Deborah Ignacia Ona. SMLC has requested 5,000 doses of CoronaVac for its personnel.

Others inoculated were Chinese General Medical’s top oncologist, Dr. Samuel Ang; UP college of medicine professor and TCM expert Dr. Philip Tan-Gatue; and infectious disease expert Dr. Edsel Salvana, who said, “Vaccines work! Thank you, science!”

Among public officials vaccinated were vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr.; Bases Conversion and Development Authority chief Vince Dizon; Food and Drugs Administration Director Eric Domingo, an ophthalmologist; Philippine General Hospital head Dr. Gerardo Legaspi, an award-winning neurosurgeon); and 12 percent or 400 to 500 of PGH health workers.

More than 1,500 Filipino OFWs in UAE; Filipino doctors in China; Pele, football’s 80-year-old icon — the list goes on.

Austin Ong is a program manager of IDSI and an organizer of Asean networking events. He has assisted the Department of Trade and Industry in helping Filipino connect with the global economy. He studied in Northeastern Boston, UP Diliman, and Tsinghua University and taught globalization at Tsinghua University and De La Salle University.

New Worlds by IDSI (Integrated Development Studies Institute) aims to present frameworks based on a balance of economic theory, historical realities, ground success in real business and communities, and attempt for common good, culture, and spirituality. We welcome logical feedback and possibly working together with compatible frameworks ([email protected]).

US President Joe Biden has made a statement warning that America could reinstate sanctions on Myanmar in light of the military takeover in the country.

Myanmar’s military detained National League for Democracy Party (NLD) leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other officials on 1 February, citing fraud concering the NLD’s recent landslide election win.

© REUTERS / STRINGER

Myanmar’s military checkpoint is seen on the way to the congress compound in Naypyitaw, Myanmar

Biden’s statement on Monday said “the international community should come together in one voice to press the Burmese military to immediately relinquish the power they have seized, release the activists and officials they have detained, lift all telecommunications restrictions, and refrain from violence against civilians”.

​Recalling that Washington had removed sanctions on Myanmar over the past decade based on its “progress toward democracy”, the president added:

“The reversal of that progress will necessitate an immediate review of our sanction laws and authorities, followed by appropriate action”.

Joe Biden emphasised that “force should never seek to overrule the will of the people or attempt to erase the outcome of a credible election”. The US president concluded the statement by underscoring:

“The United States will stand up for democracy wherever it is under attack”.

US-Myanmar Relations

From 1962 until 2011, Washington had restricted bilateral relations with Myanmar, also known as Burma. The political relationship between the United States and Myanmar, already tense because of the Burma Socialist Programme Party, became further strained in the wake of events in 1988.

Known as the 8888 Nationwide Popular Pro-Democracy Protests, the developments were triggered by a student movement largely driven by students in Yangon (Rangoon) on 8 August 1988.

The events culminated on 18 September after a crackdown by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC).

It was during this crisis that Aung San Suu Kyi emerged as figurehead of the protest movement. When the military arranged an election in 1990, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, won 81 percent of the seats in the government.

Refusing to recognise the results, the military continued to govern the country as the State Law and Order Restoration Council, while placing Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest. Her house arrest was finally lifted in 2010.

Then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Myanmar in November–December 2011, in the first such visit by a secretary of state since 1955, meeting with the democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi. Soon after, Washington announced a relaxation of curbs on aid and hinted at the possibility of an exchange of ambassadors.

In 2012, the Obama administration hailed the reforms in Myanmar, formally easing sanctions in July of that year, as the US president made a landmark visit to the country.

© AFP 2021 / YE AUNG THU

Myanmar President Thein Sein (C-white top) stands next to US President Barack Obama (8th R) and China’s Prime Minister Li Keqiang (9th L) and other leaders as they pose for a group photo before the Plenary Session for the 9th East Asia Summit (ESA) in Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw on November 13, 2014.

In September 2016, after Aung San Suu Kyi and her party won a landmark election and claimed a staggering majority in parliament, the former activist visited the US as State Counsellor of Myanmar.

At the time, Barack Obama lifted the executive order-based framework of the Myanmar sanctions, accordingly restoring the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) trade benefits to Myanmar.

However, the violent crackdown on Muslim Rohingya later triggered accusations of “genocide” against the government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

A wave of criticism both inside and outside the country surged after more than 700,000 Rohingyas fled from Myanmar to neighbouring Bangladesh as the authorities in the state of Rakhine unleashed an offensive in retaliation for an attack by Rohingya insurgents on security posts in the area on 25 August 2017.

Since then, some members of the US Congress have urged for more restrictions because of perceived human rights violations. Washington slapped sanctions on the military chief in Myanmar in 2019 over the crackdown on the Rohingya Muslims.

Military Takeover

On 1 February, Myanmar’s Tatmadaw declared a year-long state of emergency and arrested National League for Democracy Party (NLD) leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other top government officials. Army chief Min Aung Hlaing’s office declared that action was taken in response to alleged voter fraud during the 8 November elections and the military would hold a “free and fair general election” after the emergency is over.

The NDL had won a landslide victory , sweeping up 396 out of 476 seats in the combined lower and upper houses of parliament, leaving the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) trailing behind.

The Tatmadaw insisted that the NLD  had rigged the elections, citing 10.5 million cases involving irregularities, Myanmar’s Election Commission has been dismissing the claims as groundless. Myanmar’s new parliament was due to convene for its first session on Monday.

© REUTERS / Athit Perawongmetha

Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi attends the opening session of the 31st ASEAN Summit in Manila

Aung San Suu Kyi urged the country’s population to oppose the military’s move, denouncing it as “an attempt to bring the nation back under the military dictatorship without any care for the COVID-19 pandemic people are facing”.

“We urge people to strongly oppose the unacceptable military coup. The people themselves are the most crucial”, said the Nobel Peace Prize laureate in a statement posted on the NLD’s Facebook page, confirmed by a spokesperson.

As the political leadership crisis and underdevelopment in Africa increases as a new dawn crawls her face into reality, without the hope of a better tomorrow in Africa as a result of what African politicians are doing to their various countries through immeasurable socioeconomic and sociopolitical corruptions, some well meaning Africans are busy trying to figure out how wealthy Africa can reach its promise land towards overtaking the so called world powers.

Making the statement in Nairobi,  Kenya recently, a Nigerian poet, writer and journalist,  Godspower Oshodin in a brainstorming session with the Ambassador representing Kenya and South Sudan at the United Nations, Amb. Chol M.U Ajongo, alongside Kenya’s Activist Prof. PLO Lumumba, and Nigeria’s Comrade Timi Frank, discussed on how Africa can attain adulthood as she still suffers from malnourished embryo, and other things like how Africa as a formidable continent will not die.

“If we must talk about Africa, we must talk about it with that cautious overview that – if we do not take charge immediately, our so called ‘political’ leaders will sell out the World’s richest Continent (Africa) to the Western World, through their various Loans/Aides ruse.

“We must begin to liberate ourselves from this force belief that the African Politicians are the Leaders. They’re not leaders, but just dealers!

READ ALSO: Bayelsa, NIMASA plan N115.8trillion Agge deepsea port, scouts for investors

“The Western world has created some International monetary Organisations to process and continue steal from Africa. The same money these Organisations give to Africa belongs to Africa. These organisations are created to tame Africa, they’re not there to save Africa.

“They understand that the average African politician is only interested in immediate gratification. They’re not interested in protecting Africa’s interest.

“And just watch after the COVID-19 might have relapse, they’ll invite our Africa Leaders to China for some contrived Africa/China merger whatever, and they will all get dressed and run to China. And the only time they contribute in such deceptive Assembly, is during photo sessions. They’ll all stand in front of the camera, so they can be properly framed.

“China is beginning to hijack the Sovereignty of various Africa Nations through these unending paper-loans our Political Leaders are collecting and sharing amongst themselves. And ofcourse, we all know the clause attached to these loans if you default.

“It is still better they give us the ugly truth, than a pretty little lie. The African Politicians are gradually montgaging the future of Africa. An average African child is born into debt. So where is our Africa that possesses all the natural resources on earth, the most fertile land and friendly weather. Why are all of these bountiful resources not reflecting in the people?

“We need to take charge now! As for these Political Leaders, they’re not interested in our future, so we have to take advantage of the Africa youthful population, which is the biggest Young population in the world. We all need to stand up to the original reality that Africa belongs to all,” Godspower concludes.

The young poet, Godspower who is the President of the Nigeria Bloggers Forum, and founder of Solution Media Global Limited is actively into advocacy for good leadership. He is mass communication graduate and also a student of International Law and Diplomacy.

Vanguard News Nigeria