Rovieng, Cambodia – At the edge of a forest on the northern plains of Cambodia, an indigenous community is building its own security system.

It comprises a small outpost made of timber confiscated from illegal loggers at the main access point looters use as they look to rob the forest of its riches.

For the community’s self-appointed forest patrol, it is a key line of defence when most indigenous people have been reduced to bystanders as their ancestral forests are felled.

“We can’t depend on the law, it’s too slow,” says Ruos Lim, the 67-year-old patrol leader.

A group of mostly tribal elders, they see themselves as vigilantes, tasked with defending the forests that provide them with food and income.

“Day and night, we will lead our children and grandchildren to protect our livelihoods from all intruders,” says Lim, who believes that if the forests are destroyed, next goes the community, its traditions, its language, and potentially an entire way of life.

Banking on the forests

The forest has wild fruit, timber and honey. 

“This place is a special kind of bank,” says Lim. “We invest by nurturing the forest, and there is always plenty to take out.”

He has lived his entire life in the tiny village of Bang Khanphal, which backs the Chom Penh forest, part of the 242,500-hectare Beng Per Wildlife Sanctuary.

Chom Penh has provided the village with building materials, food and higher-value products like honey and resin for trading.

For Lim’s grandparents – members of the Koi indigenous minority, with populations through the north of Cambodia and across the border into Thailand – the forest was the community’s only source of wealth. 

“The trees, the streams, the mountains are our gifts to our children,” Lim said late one night, swinging in an old hammock and puffing on wild tobacco rolled in a leaf. “The forest is their inheritance and we must protect it from the thieves.”

But as deforestation has increased, indigenous people are forced to venture further into Beng Per to find products of value, putting Chom Penh, at the heart of the sanctuary, increasingly under threat. 

Satellite images show grids of rubber plantations eating away at the lush green Beng Per Sanctuary. 

In 2013 alone, Beng Per lost 12.4 percent of its forest cover, according to satellite data by Licadho, a Cambodian rights group. It has lost at least 33 percent since 2000.

‘We are the only active patrollers here’

For more than two decades indigenous communities have been fighting against a wave of investment from agribusinesses, foreign and local, that bought permission from the central government to clear, according to Licadho, more than half of Cambodia’s arable land, an area roughly the size of El Salvador.

This land is then leased to concessionaires, mostly well-connected tycoons, who use it to launder billions of dollars’ worth of luxury timber stolen from the surrounding forests. Once the wood makes it onto a concession, it’s as good as legal, its source untraceable. 

National parks and wildlife sanctuaries, where logging is prohibited, became targets of those hired to cut down trees for concession owners.

And as the oldest and most valuable trees were picked off, reclassified as “degraded forest”, they were turned into plantations. 

In Southeast Asia’s most corrupt country, according to Transparency International, poorly paid rangers have little incentive to confront logging cartels with the cash and connections to bend the law.

“In remote areas, groups like the rangers tend to work for the highest bidder,” says Marcus Hardtke, a German environmentalist who has been chronicling the illegal timber trade in Cambodia since 1996.

“In these situations, the local communities are the final and only line of defence for forest and wildlife.”

“In reality, we are the only active patrollers here,” Lim says. “The rangers’ only concern is who pays for their fuel.”

Journalists and environmental watchdogs have published evidence tying unlawful deforestation to the highest levels of authority in Cambodia, including the prime minister’s office.

In 2011, Try Pheap, an associate of Prime Minister Hun Sen with a 10,000-hectare rubber plantation in Beng Per, donated $100,000 to build a ranger station for the sanctuary.

Global Witness, a watchdog that was kicked out of Cambodia after releasing a damning expose of the timber industry, labelled Pheap a timber gangster “destroying Cambodia’s last forests and robbing indigenous communities of their livelihoods”.

In a 2015 report, Global Witness said: “The very officials in Cambodia who should be stopping [illegal logging] are conspiring to ensure that contraband wood enjoys safe passage and is exported as seemingly legitimate lumber.”

Despite evidence, Phnom Penh has rejected such reports. 

Every so often, a new enforcement drive is launched, such as in 2016, when the prime minister ordered military police in helicopters to fire rockets on illegal loggers “without mercy”.

No rockets were fired, and, in recent months, with deforestation again on to the national agenda, the prime minister recycled his rockets and helicopters measure using almost identical language.

Neth Pheaktra, a spokesman for the Environment Ministry says that the government supports community patrols and would act on any reports of illegal logging.

He says that clear-cutting protected forests was necessary to “develop the country and create jobs” and that an environmental effect assessment was conducted before each concession was handed over.

“We found that [there would be] no impact on the sanctuary,” he says.

The challenges in Beng Per started in the sanctuary’s southeast, and as the destruction churns towards Chom Penh, Lim and his band of vigilantes are bracing for further looting.

And in the world of illegal logging, no one is safe. 

About 200km east of Chom Penh, a military police officer, a government ranger and a conservation worker were murdered earlier this year after confiscating chainsaws from loggers inside a protected area. 

The suspects, Cambodian soldiers, are in prison awaiting trial.

Defending their riches

Lim and his men have turned their regular forest jaunts into rolling patrols. 

Their mission is to stop Chom Penh from being pillaged, and they use a combination of education, scolding and threats.

On a clear day in August, two patrol teams left Bang Khanphal village before dawn, on foot and in opposite directions to look for intruders.

The main party departed hours later, on a ko yun – or mechanical cow – a long, flat trailer attached to a diesel engine on wheels. 

They carried fuel, hammocks and four days’ worth of rations: 30kg of rice, 10 litres of rice wine, energy drinks and salt. Everything else would come from the forest.

Aside from locals coming out of their earth-floor homes to stop the party and offer a winter melon or some spices for the trip, the planning and departure was carried out with military precision, and later that day, when the patrol hit the southern reaches of Chom Penh, Lim’s background bubbled forth. 

“This is the war zone,” he said. 

At the age of 21, Lim joined the Khmer Rouge, rising from lowly village spy to the head of a local security unit whose area encompassed parts of Chom Penh. 

At 67, he claims that he never killed anybody in battle or lost control of his forest.

Today, his front line is marked by chainsaw-scarred trees and piles of freshly cut timber – the remnants of battles won and lost.

“If we find thieves here today,” Lim says, a patrol team of six in tow, “it will make me very happy.” 

The pillagers the patrol eventually encountered, however, were mainly opportunists. Ninety percent of the “thieves” the patrol finds are Koi people whose community forests have been razed, driving them closer to Chom Penh in search of a quick buck. 

“Some days they find a single piece of wood, some days they find nothing,” Lim explained later, as he rested in his hammock. “They don’t’ know how to find a job. They’ve lost their forests, their farms – it’s all been cleared. That’s why they come looking.”

Having to scavenge for a livelihood is exactly the fate he is trying to keep from his people.

One afternoon, after tracking the buzz of chainsaws to a makeshift logger’s camp just outside Chom Penh, Lim called out, “The rangers are here, the rangers are here. Come and face us.” 

Three young men caked in sweat and sawdust emerged and faced a group of grandfathers carrying pick axes and knives. They sat in the dirt as Lim stood over them and delivered an impassioned scolding.

“Do you understand how important the forest is to your people,” he said. “Have you forgotten who you are?”

The loggers said they’d heard rumours the forest would soon be cleared and replanted with rubber and decided that they may as well get a piece of the loot.

“It’s a trick to make you cut down your own forest,” Lim said. “You are listening to outsiders and they have made you crazy about money.”

In about a dozen encounters with loggers on the patrol’s four-day trip, only one group tried to escape. The patrollers tracked them down later in their village and handed them over to the police.

The rest accepted their punishment, a vocal beatdown from a local elder they knew, feared and respected. One absorbed his lecture and then joined the patrol team.

Reporting for this story was supported by the Earth Journalism Network’s 2018 Asia-Pacific Story Grants.

New Zealand v Ireland in the ICC Women’s World Twenty20 – in-play clips, radio & text – Live – BBC Sport

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Image: Roger Askew/REX/Shutterstock

Commentator Bill Maher disparaged Stan Lee, the seminal creator of iconic comic book superheroes like Spider-Man, The Hulk, and The Fantastic Four, in an unsolicited 293-word Saturday morning blog titled “Adulting.”

Twitter was quick to rebut Maher’s cultural musings after he mocked the late Lee’s widely-appreciated work, belittled millions of people who value comics, and broadly labeled comics as “stupid stuff.”

“I’m not saying we’ve necessarily gotten stupider,” Maher wrote, before adding, “The problem is, we’re using our smarts on stupid stuff.” 

Distilling decades of comic book history, culture, and meaning down to a short, oversimplified opinion is naturally going provoke the ire of the public, especially those who possess a greater familiarity of both comics and Lee’s intellectual influence. 

As Mashable’s Adam Rosenberg wrote following the comic legend’s Nov. 12 death: “Lee, and through him Marvel, recognized that superheroes were still fundamentally human, capable of all the same flaws and fears as anyone else. It’s a mindset that led to more human stories, but also one that unavoidably flirted with the political climate as well.”

As New York Times reporters Jonathan Kandell and Andy Webster noted, “Under Mr. Lee, Marvel transformed the comic book world by imbuing its characters with the self-doubts and neuroses of average people, as well an awareness of trends and social causes and, often, a sense of humor.”

Maher, forever a firestarter, probably wrote what he wrote to provoke a response. That doesn’t make the drags aimed at him any less entertaining, though.

Tijuana, Mexico – It was the day of the 2017 general elections in Honduras when unknown men approached Obedi Miranda and her husband, Allan Escobar, two opposition Libre party activists.

“They told us to leave, or else,” Miranda said this week, sitting on a couch in a corner of a migrant and refugee shelter after just arriving in Tijuana.

She and Escobar, along with their two-year-old son, are more than 4,000km from their home in Trinidad, in the Copan department of Honduras.

The family fled the town the day they had received the death threats, first to another part of Honduras, then to southern Mexico, and finally to Tijuana after joining an exodus of migrants and refugees headed to the US border in hopes of applying for asylum.

Miranda, Escobar and their son are three of the more than 2,000 migrants and refugees who arrived in the Mexican border town this week as part of what is now being called the Central American exodus. Thousands more are heading north in subsequent waves to join them, and other groups forming in El Salvador and Honduras plan to follow behind.

The story of each migrant and refugee in the collective exodus is different, but overall, the reasons for leaving are generally the same. Many are fleeing poverty, unemployment, gang violence or political persecution. Often, it is for multiple reasons. 

Miranda and Escobar fled for safety, from the threat of politically motivated violence in a country where killings of activists are all too common.

2009 Honduran coup

Miranda got involved in politics after the 2009 coup d’etat, when the Honduran military ousted elected President Manuel Zelaya, forcibly removing him from his home and flying him out of the country. 

The coup sparked months of protests and marches around the country, and tens of thousands of Hondurans who had never before participated in social movements joined in. Miranda and Escobar were among them.

Other civilian politicians from the Liberal Party, not the military, took over the presidency. It was not long before the United States and Canada recognised the new government, prompting a normalisation of international relations, even as massive protests and repression continued in the streets.

Within a year the country held the country held an election, which many considered illegitimate, and the National Party took over, leading to widespread repression and heightened violence.

The Libre party grew out of opposition to the coup.

In the years the followed, Miranda and Escobar said they participated in the Libre party in the municipality, eventually becoming more well known in the region. In the November 2017 election, Escobar became Libre’s alternate to Copan department congressional candidate Juan Carlos Ruiz.

The campaign was an uphill battle in a department dominated by the ruling party. Due to the threat, the couple immediately left their hometown without sticking around for the election results.

After the general election, things only got worse.

Government crackdown

The November 2017 presidential election between President Juan Orlando Hernandez of the National Party and Salvador Nasralla of an opposition alliance was already marred in controversy before campaigning really got started. 

A Supreme Court ruling permitted Hernandez to run for a second term despite a constitutional ban on presidential reelection.

During the election, Nasralla had a five-point lead when the preliminary results were first announced. The elections data transmission system then went down for hours, and when it came back online, Hernandez was in the lead, prompting months of street protests and highway blockades.

The government instituted a crackdown on the protesters with tear gas and live ammunition. Hundreds were arrested and rights groups documented at least 30 deaths, which they reported occurred mostly at the hands of the military police.

Calls for total recounts and new elections lost momentum after the US government recognised Hernandez as the winner in late December. But the protests and government crackdown continued, prompting Miranda and Escobar, along with their son, to leave Honduras altogether and head to Mexico.

Roughly half of the dozens of Hondurans with whom Al Jazeera has spoken over the past month along their journeys through Guatemala and Mexico, including those simply fleeing poverty not violence, have cited the re-election of Hernandez and ensuing crisis as a motivating factor behind their decisions to leave Honduras this year.

Long wait begins

For those, including Miranda and Escobar, who have made it to Tijuana, the next phase of their journey has just started. 

There was confusion and fear at the downtown shelter where Miranda and Escobar stayed on Thursday. The shelter was full, rumours of detentions were circulating, and people did not know whom they could trust or where they would sleep.

“There is a collective hysteria,” Escobar said. A woman nearby nodded in agreement.

A group of anti-migrant protesters also confronted newly-arrived migrants and refugees nearby on Wednesday, adopting the same language used by President Donald Trump, who has falsely called the collective exodus an “invasion”.

On Friday, local Tijuana government officials announced that they were expecting some 10,000 migrants and refugees to arrive and that the situation would last for months. The federal government has not yet provided financial assistance to continue to shelter the Central Americans at a local sports complex, local officials said. 

Meanwhile, the migrants and refugees must now begin to navigate the long and seemingly complicated process of applying for asylum at the the US border.

Miranda, Escobar and their son are prepared to wait in Tijuana for as it long as it takes. On Friday morning, the family signed up on the waiting list. It will be three weeks until the family can claim asylum in the US, they were told.

Listen to Ireland v New Zealand autumn international live – BBC Sport

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We’re in the golden age of soundbars. It’s a world flush with affordable, high-quality speakers for your TV that don’t require putting different kinds of speakers all over your room, with multiple diagrams and sync options to ensure everything is just so. The soundbar is a gift for people who want to hear, and feel, their entertainment without the hassle of multiple wires.

The soundbar world is on the brink of a big change, though: the integration of digital assistants. The Polk Command Bar is one of the first of the breed, a soundbar with Amazon Alexa built int. At $299, it’s one of the most affordable options out there, and it’s worth your hard-earned currency — if you’ve bought into the Alexa ecosystem, that is.

The Polk Command Bar starts off as an unwieldy, albeit cleverly designed, package. The shipping box itself is shaped like a guitar case or a saxophone, with the soundbar providing the length while the subwoofer is in the compartment atop the soundbar. There’s a handle for easier transport.

Unpacking is easy enough. Take the subwoofer out, slide the soundbar away from the box, and collect the various plugs and cables to begin setting up your new audio system.

The Command Bar easily connects to your TV. Plug it into power, connect the HDMI cable from the HDMI port on your Command Bar to your TV, and you’re all done. Polk provides an optical cable if you happen to have a non-ARC HDMI input. For the subwoofer, all you have to do is plug it in and it’ll automatically wirelessly sync up with the Command Bar.

You can find two HDMI inputs in the back of the Command Bar along with a dedicated port for the Amazon Fire Stick, plus a USB port. You can switch between inputs using the remote or your voice once you connect everything to the Command Bar’s HDMI ports. There’s also built-in Bluetooth if you want to use your phone to stream music.

The subwoofer is deceptively large and round, so it won’t fit elegantly on the shelf. But, you can hide it away in a corner easily enough. 

If you care about looks, the Command Bar is not as sleek as the Sonos Beam. It’s heftier (it weighs just under 5 pounds), and it measures about 43 inches long. At two inches tall, the Command Bar fits discreetly underneath your TV. Alternatively, you can mount the soundbar to the wall.

Within the plastic and fabric housing are two three-inch drivers located near the center of the Command Bar and two one-inch tweeters located on opposite sides. You also get Dolby/DTS surround sound decoding that supplies the “theater” in home theater.

With all of that out of the way, it was time to watch a movie.

A noticeable difference

Right away, I could tell I was having an improved television experience from the built-in speakers of my TV. I could hear and feel the bass rattling the floor. Out of the box, the sound itself felt richer.

Polk provides many ways to customize your experience. You can pump up or turn down the bass depending on your preference. There’s also a handy way to increase vocal clarity.

If you’re not inclined to tinker with audio settings, there are four preset modes. Night mode lowers the bass and increases the vocal clarity so you don’t disturb neighbors or sleeping kids with late-night binges. Sport mode highlights vocal clarity and crowd sounds. Movie mode offers a dynamic mix that highlights bass and the soundtrack. Music mode adds some fullness to your tunes.

As with all things nowadays, there’s also a Polk Command app. It’s… there. It exists to connect your Command Bar with your WiFi. After that, it’ll just take up room on your phone. There are some helpful reminders and a few settings for changing your Amazon and Alexa settings, but that’s all there is to this app. All of the firmware updates are automatically downloaded to the Command Bar.

I soon settled in with the Command Bar, using it for a binge session, some disappointing football results, and a few movies for good measure. There’s been a big difference in the sound compared to what was coming out of the TV. I wasn’t straining to hear the dialogue on some of the quieter shows I’ve watched. Movies sound fuller and sports sounded lively. The Command Bar also checks the box when it came to music.

Surround sound wasn’t the best. Did I ever feel like an onscreen plane was flying overhead, or someone was sneaking up on me from behind? Not really, but the Command Bar is definitely an upgrade from my TV’s speakers even if it’s not delivering a truly immersive experience in my dream surround sound scenario.

I appreciate more than enjoy bass, so it’s usually the first thing I fiddle with. The subwoofer adds a hefty thump to proceedings, but it can feel gratuitous at times. However that can be remedied with a simple press of a button.

Best of all, though, you can use your voice to ask Alexa to raise the volume, drop the bass, or tell you the day’s weather.

But, it has Alexa

Amazon’s voice assistant is what separates the Command Bar from the pack, with Alexa’s distinctive light ring located in the center of the soundbar. Polk eschews subtlety for functionality, essentially plopping an Echo Dot into this speaker. And, guess what. It works.

Alexa functionality is well-integrated into the Command Bar. You can ask her a whole range of questions, and she responds as you would expect. When you ask Alexa something, your program is momentarily muted, so maybe wait until a commercial or a break in the action.

However, pretty much everything you would normally do with Alexa works here. Turning on lights or playing your Spotify playlist can all be accomplished with ease. I never experienced a moment where the Command Bar and Alexa didn’t hear me.

There are times when the remote works better than asking Alexa to do it for you. If you don’t want to distract from the viewing experience, a quick volume or vocal clarity adjustment is just a button away.

The Polk Command Bar doesn’t support every Alexa feature just yet. The Drop In intercom feature, multi-room music playback, using an alternative wake word, messaging, and custom alarm sounds are a few Alexa features that aren’t yet supported by the Command Bar. Polk says it is working closely with Amazon and all features will be automatically downloaded to the Command Bar when they’re available. 

If you’re a smart home enthusiast, the Command Bar should have you covered. The soundbar is compatible with Philips Hue lighting, Samsung SmartThings, WeMo plugs, Amazon connected devices, and Ecobee devices. 

Image: Charles Poladian/Mashable

If you have a smart home and want to make it smarter, the Command Bar may be a great hub to  lock the doors, dim the light, load up the old Fire Stick, and start watching Netflix. If you don’t have all of that and want to check the weather or see if there are any delays on your morning commute, you can do that, too. 

There’s a lot to enjoy about the Command Bar in its current state and you can definitely see a scenario where Polk’s soundbar continues to get smarter with frequent updates. 

So, the sound is pretty solid and Alexa works. However, there’s a Sonos-sized elephant that needs to be addressed.

Does the Command Bar stack up?

While I don’t own a Sonos Beam, the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive from users and reviewers, which is what you would expect from a respected player like Sonos. The Beam has a few more bells and whistles than the Command Bar, including a calibration system within the Sonos app.

“For watching TV, the Beam is a huge improvement over the wimpy speakers built into my skinny flat screen,” our own Raymond Wong wrote in his of the Sonos Beam. However, the Beam also retails for $399. At $299 (and at a recent sale price of $250), the Polk Command Bar is the more affordable option for Alexa-enabled sound.

If you haven’t already bought into the Sonos brand and can do without a couple of extras, the Polk Command Bar delivers a clear improvement from your TV’s speakers, and the Alexa integration is just as good. That’s not bad for $299 and certainly sounds even better at $249.99.

Tens of thousands of people across France have protested against high fuel prices, in mass rallies that turned violent when clashes erupted in parts of the country and a protester was accidentally run over and killed by a car.

An estimated 240,000 people gathered on Saturday at 2,000 locations, blocking roundabouts and motorway exits as part of what has been dubbed the “yellow vests” protest.

The movement, named for the high-visibility jackets worn by protesters, erupted on social media last month with calls for mass blockades of roads and highways.

Protesters blame a 20 percent rise in diesel prices in the last year on the so-called “green taxes” under President Emmanuel Macron.

At Pont-de-Beauvoisin, in southeast France, a woman trying to get her daughter to the doctor panicked when protesters surrounded her car and started banging on the roof. She accidentally struck and killed a woman in her 60s, the interior ministry said.

In Paris, protesters holding “Macron resign!” signs and singing the national anthem partially blocked the Champs Elysees in the heart of the French capital.

Al Jazeera’s Neave Barker, reporting from Paris, said violent clashes broke out between the police and protesters, during which the security forces used tear gas.

At least 47 people were injured during the clashes, three of them seriously, police said.

Injuries were also reported in other areas as some drivers confronted protesters or tried to force their way through the blockades.

Across the country, 106 people were injured overall, and 52 were arrested, according to the interior minister.

Among those injured was a police officer in the southern town of Grasse.

“The protesters were united in two things: the first was the symbol of their protest, the yellow vest they were wearing, and the second was that they were angry and frustrated at the president in the hike of petrol and diesel,” Barker said.

He added that the protesters are demanding that big businesses and industries should be the ones to bear the burden of the green taxes imposed by the government, and not ordinary drivers.

Waning popularity

Anger over the high fuel prices has resulted in Macron’s popularity taking a hit over the recent months – from 39 percent in July to 21 percent in October.

According to an opinion poll last week, 73 percent of respondents backed the “yellow vests” movement, a much higher figure than in other protests since Macron was elected on a reformist platform last year.

Protesters say he is neglecting the lower and middle classes, pointing to tax cuts he has pushed through for high earners and companies.

Last week, the French government announced a series of measures to try and quell the anger over fuel prices, including energy subsidies and higher bonuses towards cleaner vehicles.

In a TV interview this week, Macron admitted he had “not succeeded in reconciling the French with their leaders” and that “we have probably not given them enough consideration”.

SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies

Nations League: Can McLeish’s Scotland get back on track? – Live – BBC Sport

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Critics everywhere have slammed the latest Harry Potter spin-off, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, as there’s an absurd amount of confounding plot crammed into the 134-minute film. 

Yet, the film carries a problematic canonical oversight, too: Minerva McGonagall briefly appears as a young-adult wizarding instructor at Hogwarts in 1927. The trouble is, according to Harry Potter lore, she wouldn’t have even been born at that point.

(Pottermore, for those who might not know, is the online portal for all things Harry Potter and Wizarding World. It features original writing from creator J.K. Rowling that is recognized as official canon.)

As Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling reveals in the original series, the famously strict Professor McGonagall first started teaching at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in 1956, when she was a spry 21 years old. 

On Twitter, some have argued that this “Minerva McGonagall” may have actually been Professor McGonagall’s witch mother. But this is almost certainly wrong. Mashable reviewed the original screenplay, which explicitly cites a “Minerva McGonagall” in the film. Minerva’s mother was named “Isobel Ross,” and later “Isobel McGonagall” after marrying the muggle Robert McGonagall.

Isobel, notably, was also never a professor at Hogwarts. Fans have been pointing all of this out for days, since the first details about Grindelwald started making their way online. Some see McGonagall’s appearance as an error. Others think it’s part of the plan, and there’s more to be revealed.

Rowling, who is credited for writing the Fantastic Beasts sequel script, couldn’t slip this mistake past vigilant Potter fans. Perhaps such lapses won’t occur in next installment of Fantastic Beasts, which this film largely existed to set up. 

Rowling, who is very active on social media, hasn’t yet weighed in on the issue of Professor McGonagall’s age in The Crimes of Grindelwald.

Much-changed Wales scored 10 tries in Cardiff as they beat Tonga with a record score and winning margin.

Warren Gatland’s side are now one win away from a first autumn clean sweep and face South Africa next Saturday.

Wales took charge with three quick tries, but Tonga briefly threatened a shock victory as they rallied to level at 24-24 just after half-time.

But Wales responded with 50 unanswered points, including Liam Williams’ second try of the game on his 50th cap.

The hosts, showing 14 changes from the side that beat Australia last weekend, made a storming start with three tries inside 12 minutes as they built up a 24-3 lead.

But Tonga rallied as they battered Wales into submission to draw level just after the interval.

Wales regained their composure to produce a clinical second-half display – seven unanswered tries completing a record points tally against Tonga.

It was further evidence of the growing Wales strength in depth before the 2019 World Cup in Japan.

With this win adding to victories over Scotland and the Wallabies, Wales will be looking to finish off November with victory over the Springboks.

They have won eight games in a row for the first time since 2005 and this is the longest winning sequence of Gatland’s reign. It was also a seventh successive win at home, and they have 18 victories in their past 22 matches in Wales.

Tier two struggles

Wales’ recent autumn struggles against Tier Two nations had included defeats by Samoa, a draw against Fiji and unconvincing wins over Georgia and Japan.

Those results have normally arisen from sweeping changes and this year’s policy was no exception, with only lock Adam Beard keeping his place from last weekend’s win.

Leicester’s Jonah Holmes made his debut at full-back, Dan Biggar was included at fly-half and versatile forward Seb Davies started at number eight alongside flanker Ellis Jenkins, who captained the side – though it was wing Williams who led the side out on his 50th cap.

Ospreys prop Ma’afu Fia was the only uncapped player in the Tonga starting XV, which included players based in France, England, and New Zealand.

Storming start

Wales made a fast start from a 22-metre driving line-out, with Australian referee Nic Berry awarding a penalty try and giving a yellow card to lock Leva Fifita.

A shocked Tonga conceded a converted Biggar try in the sixth minute before consolidating with a Sonatane Takulua penalty.

This only delayed the Wales onslaught and Liam Williams produced a brilliant finish, squeezing in at the corner after a flowing move.

Tonga were restored to 15 men and thought they had responded with a try from prop Siegfried Fisi’ihoi, only to be denied by TMO Olly Hodges for a knock forward.

Biggar slotted over a penalty after Tonga flanker Dan Faleafa was penalised for a heavy off-the-ball tackle on opposite number Aaron Wainwright.

Tonga number eight Sione Vailanu led the charge with two storming carries, the latter leading to a Fifita try, which Takulua converted.

Power play

Tonga’s power game continued to pay dividends just before half-time as they battered Wales into submission, with Sitiveni Mafi over for a second converted try that cut the hosts’ lead to 24-17 at the interval.

The renaissance continued early in the second half when Vailanu intercepted a Tomos Williams pass from a Wales line-out to sprint 60 metres to score, and Takulua converted to level the scores.

Wales rallied immediately with a barnstorming break from second-row Jake Ball, which laid the foundation for Biggar’s precise chip-kick to be collected by wing Steff Evans.

Wales’ resurgence continued with a Biggar penalty before his half-back partner Tomos Williams went over.

Biggar converted with his last action before being replaced by Rhys Patchell who was playing his first game for six weeks after recovering from concussion.

A sixth try followed for centre Tyler Morgan, who completed his return to international rugby after being diagnosed with type one diabetes earlier this year, while his Dragons team-mate Cory Hill provided the seventh score.

Wales’ dominance continued with a wonderful team move finished by replacement scrum-half Aled Davies, before Patchell’s brilliant 70-metre individual try provided another magical moment – and it was fitting that Liam Williams rounded off the scoring.

Wales: 15-Holmes; 14-Williams, 13-Tyler Morgan, 12-Watkin, 11-Steff Evans; 10-Biggar, 9-Williams; 1-Jones, 2-Dee, 3-Brown, 4-Ball, 5-Beard, 6-Wainwright, 7-Jenkins (captain), 8-Seb Davies

Replacements: 16-Elias, 17-Rob Evans, 18-Francis, 19-Hill, 20-Moriarty, 21-Aled Davies, 22-Patchell, 23-Adams.

Tonga: 15-Lilo; 14-Lolohea, 13-Taufa, 12-Piutau (capt), 11-Kilioni; 10-Morath, 9-Takulua; 1-Fisi’ihoi, 2-Ngauamo, 3-Fia, 4-Fifita, 5-Mafi, 6-Dan Faleafa, 7-Lokotui, 8-Vailanu.

Replacements: 16-Sakalia, 17-Talakai, 18-Fa’anunu, 19-Havili, 20-Mike Faleafa, 21-Fukofuka, 22-Hala, 23-Pakalani.

Match officials

Referee: Nic Berry (Australia)

Touch judges: Angus Gardner (Australia) & Shuhei Kubo (Japan)

TMO: Olly Hodges (Ireland)

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