Không còn được "ăn táo" mỗi ngày

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...Apple Daily, a popular newspaper in Hong Kong, has long needled Beijing with its rambunctious (om sòm, ồn ào, ầm ĩ, huyên náo) support of pro-democracy protesters, aggressive investigations of officials and lampooning (đả kích, bài bác) of China’s Communist Party leadership. Now China has effectively silenced (làm câm họng) the paper — and along with it, one of its most defiant (thách thức, công khai phản đối) critics.

Apple Daily said on Wednesday that it was closing less than a week after the police froze its accounts, raided its offices and arrested top editors, as the government’s escalating campaign against dissent takes aim at the city’s once vaunted media freedoms.

The forced closure of Apple Daily struck a blow to the unique character of the city itself. The paper churned out stories on celebrity gossip and lurid (ghê gớm, khủng khiếp) scandals, as well as hard-hitting (không kiêng dè, bốp chát) political news and analysis, always with a decidedly antigovernment slant (phê bình gián tiếp, cạnh khóe) and an irreverence (thiếu tôn kính, bất kính) antithetical to what the Communist Party would allow in the mainland. Even in the face of advertising boycotts, assaults on its journalists and firebomb attacks, the paper persevered (kiên gan, bền chí) and thrived, remaining one of the most widely read newspapers in the city, living proof of the freedoms Hong Kong enjoyed despite its return to Chinese rule in 1997.