ROME: Italy reported a 45% one-day increase in people infected with the coronavirus as other countries in Europe recorded their first cases Tuesday, producing evidence that travelers are carrying the virus from the European outbreak’s current epicenter.
Italian officials reported 11 deaths and 322 confirmed cases of the virus, 100 more than a day earlier. While the majority were concentrated in northern Italy, some of the new cases showed up in parts of Italy well outside the country’s two hard-hit regions, including three in Sicily, two in Tuscany and one in Liguria.
An Italian couple from the afflicted north tested positive in the Canary Islands off Africa, forcing the quarantine of their hotel in what one guest said felt like being “monkeys in a cage.” Austria, Croatia and Switzerland reported their first cases, all in people who recently traveled to Italy.
The four new deaths in Italy, like the seven reported earlier, were in patients who were elderly, suffering from other ailments, or both, officials said.
Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte defended the measures Italy has taken to contain the outbreak and predicted a stabilizing of numbers soon. But he acknowledged that the rise in cases — the most outside Asia — was “worrisome.”
“Obviously I can’t say I’m not worried because I don’t want anyone to think we’re underestimating this emergency,” he said before a meeting with a visiting World Health Organization mission. “But we trust that with the measures we’ve implemented there will be a containing effect in the coming days.”
Italy has closed schools, museums and theaters in the two regions where clusters have formed and troops are enforcing quarantines around 10 towns in Lombardy and the epicenter of the Veneto cluster, Vo’Euganeo.
But Italy hasn’t yet identified the source of the outbreak. Angelo Borrelli, the head of the Italian civil protection department, said the increase in cases from 222 to 322, representing a 45% increase, came from people who tested positive for the virus in a 24-hour period from Monday evening to Tuesday evening.
The southern island of Sicily reported its first three positive cases from a woman vacationing from Bergamo, in Lombardy and two others traveling with her. Two cases were also reported in Tuscany, south out of the epicenter.
Spain counted three active cases: a woman in Barcelona who had been in Lombardy in recent days, and a doctor from northern Italy and his partner who were vacationing in Tenerife, in the Canary Islands.
The hotel where the couple was staying, the H10 Adeje Palace was locked down after they tested positive for the virus and 1,000 tourists prevented from leaving, according to Spanish news media and town officials in Adeje.
“We do remain patient but we haven’t had anything to eat and drink at the hotel today,” Harriet Strandvik, the mother in a family of four stuck at the hotel, told Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat. “We feel a little bit like monkeys in a cage here as there are media representatives present near the hotel and police officers guarding the area are wearing masks.”
The Canary Islands, an archipelago located around 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of the African coast, is a popular vacation destination that attracts Europeans year-round. Many Italians are vacationing this week as schools have a mid-winter break.
Conte shocked Lombardy officials by taking to task the hospital in Codogno, southeast of Milan, where Italy’s first positive patient went on Feb. 18 with flu-like symptoms. The man was sent home, only to return a short time later with worsening conditions, at which point he was tested for the virus.
Many of Lombardy’s 200-plus positive tests have a traceable connection to the Codogno hospital, including several doctors and nurses, patients and relatives who visited them.
Conte told reporters that the Lombardy cluster grew “because of the hospital management that wasn’t completely proper according to the protocols that are recommended for these cases.”
“This surely contributed to the spread,” he said.
Lombardy’s chief health official, Giulio Gallera, expressed shock at Conte’s remarks and defended the region’s handling of the crisis.
“It’s offensive. It’s unacceptable,” Gallera said, noting that the man presented none of the main risk factors for the virus — travel to China or contact with an infected person — when he first went to the emergency room.
The man was eventually tested after doctors ascertained from his wife that he had met with someone who had recently returned from China. But officials have excluded that contact as the source of the outbreak since that person tested negative.
As officials worked to get ahead of the spread nationally, the reality of a two-week quarantine was setting in for residents of Italy’s isolated “red zones” — the cluster of 10 towns in Lombardy and Veneto’s tiny Vo’Euganeo.
“The concern is palpable, people are worried, partly because of what they hear on television, information, on social media,” said Davide Passerini, the mayor of Fombio, one of the Lombardy towns under lockdown. “Life is like it is in other isolated villages: Everything is shut, people go out just to do their shopping.”
And they wait to see if they develop symptoms.
Italy initially tested anyone who came into contact with an infected person. But with the numbers growing and supply issues with test kits, masks and protective gear, Italy’s national health system revised its containment strategies.
People who live or have visited the quarantined areas, or who who have been in contact with positive cases, are advised to self-quarantine for two weeks. They are instructed to take their temperatures twice a day, and stay in touch with their doctors or the national health service via an overwhelmed toll-free number.
Only if they develop symptoms are they tested, most often by a team performing house calls to prevent hospitals and clinics being overly stressed, said Elia Delmiglio, mayor of Casalpusterlengo, another of the 10 towns in Lombardy’s “red zone.”
“Local health structures are doing their best, but in some cases they were not ready to face such an emergency,” Delmiglio said.
The town — with more than 15,000 inhabitants — doesn’t have a working emergency room, only a hospital mainly specializing in cancer patients, who are particularly at risk for contracting the virus.
In another hotbed of the virus outbreak — Veneto’s tiny town of Vo’Euganeo, which has most of Veneto’s 43 cases — local authorities were still planning to test all 3,300 residents and 600 acting hospital staff.
“I’m being optimistic and I feel well,” said resident Andrea Casalis, as he waited to be tested. “People continue to go out here and talk in the streets, but we try to keep some security distance.”
Tuesday sees Italy virus cases rise 45%; 11 dead
https://arab.news/g2edd
Tuesday sees Italy virus cases rise 45%; 11 dead
- Infections in other European countries traced to people who had recently travelled to Italy
- The country has the most confirmed cases in Europe
US embassy in Kyiv shuts down over anticipated air attack
- The warning comes a day after Ukraine used US ATACMS missiles to strike Russian territory,
“Out of an abundance of caution, the embassy will be closed, and embassy employees are being instructed to shelter in place,” the department said in a statement published on the website of the US embassy in Kyiv.
“The US Embassy recommends US citizens be prepared to immediately shelter in the event an air alert is announced.”
The warning comes a day after Ukraine used US ATACMS missiles to strike Russian territory, taking advantage of newly granted permission from the outgoing administration of US President Joe Biden on the war’s 1,000th day.
Russia had been warning the West for months that if Washington allowed Ukraine to fire US, British and French missiles deep into Russia, Moscow would consider those NATO members to be directly involved in the war in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in October that Moscow will respond to Ukraine’s strikes with US-made weapons deep into Russia.
On Tuesday, Putin lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike in response to a broader range of conventional attacks, with nuclear risks rising amid the highest tensions between Russia and West in more than half a century.
Time ticks down for negotiators at UN climate talks to find deal to curb warming and its effects
- Vulnerable nations are seeking $1.3 trillion to deal with damage from climate change and to adapt to that change, including building out their own clean-energy systems
- Rich potential donor nations have so far been reluctant to offer a starting figure to replace that
BAKU: With time running down, negotiators at the United Nations annual climate talks on Wednesday returned to the puzzle of finding an agreement to bring far more money for vulnerable nations to adapt than wealthier countries have shown they’re willing to pay.
Pressure was building to drive a deal by the time COP29, as this year’s summit is known, concludes this week. COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev asked negotiators to clear away the technical part of talks by Wednesday afternoon so they can focus on substance.
That substance is daunting. Vulnerable nations are seeking $1.3 trillion to deal with damage from climate change and to adapt to that change, including building out their own clean-energy systems. Experts agree that at least $1 trillion is called for, but both figures are far more than the developed world has so far offered.
Half the world away in Rio, Brazil, where the Group of 20 summit was wrapping up, the United Nations Secretary-General told the group of the world’s largest economies that “the success of COP29 is largely in your hands.”
“That goal, the financial goal, in its different layers, must meet the needs of developing countries, beginning with a significant increase in concessional public funds.”
And the president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said developed nations should consider moving their 2050 emission goals forward to 2040 or 2045.
“The G20 is responsible for 80 percent of greenhouse effect emissions,” he said. “Even if we are not walking the same speed, we can all take one more step.”
Negotiators are fighting over three big parts of the issue: How big the numbers are, how much is grants or loans, and who pays. The “how big” question is the toughest to negotiate and will likely be resolved only after the first two are solved, COP29 lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.
“There are interlinkages of the elements. That’s why having one of them agreed could unlock the other one,” Rafiyev said.
“All presidencies must at this point show that they have what it takes to move from administration to leadership,” German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan said. “They must set the expectation for ambitious outcomes across the board. ... It is now up to the presidency to ensure that we move at full speed toward a green future.”
The current goal of $100 billion annually was set in 2009. Rich potential donor nations have so far been reluctant to offer a starting figure to replace that. Rafiyev said the conference presidency has sought to pressure them, telling them that the figure should be “fair and ambitious, corresponding to the needs and priorities of the world.”
India’s junior environment minister Kirti Vardhan Singh, who is at the Baku talks, said that “the Global South are bearing a huge financial burden.”
“This is severely limiting our capacity to meet our developmental needs,” he said.
The European Union is expected to finally offer a figure, likely ranging from $200 billion to $300 billion annually, Linda Kalcher, executive director of the think tank Strategic Perspectives, said Tuesday.
That wasn’t enough for Debbie Hillier, climate policy lead for the humanitarian group Mercy Corps, who called it “wildly out of step with the needs of developing countries” and a failure by richer nations to live up to the agreement of the 2015 Paris climate talks.
“If $200-300 billion is indeed the ballpark for what developed countries will offer, then this is a betrayal — a betrayal of the communities around the world who, whilst least responsible for climate change, are bearing its most devastating consequences,” she said.
Some wealthy nations were talking of loans that could be leveraged to attract other money — grants, more loans and private investment — to multiply the funds they can offer.
But poorer nations say they are already drowning in debt and most money should come in the form of grants.
Whatever the form of the finance, Ireland’s environment minister Eamon Ryan said it would be “unforgivable” for developed countries to walk away from negotiations in without making a firm commitment toward developing ones.
“We have to make an agreement here,” he said. “We do have to provide the finance, particularly for the developing countries, and to give confidence that they will not be excluded, that they will be center stage.”
Trump has called for dismantling the Education Department. Here’s what that would mean
- The Education Department manages approximately $1.5 trillion in student loan debt for over 40 million borrowers
- Federal education money is central to Trump’s plans for colleges and schools
WASHINGTON: Throughout his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump heaped scorn on the federal Department of Education, describing it as being infiltrated by ” radicals, zealots and Marxists.”
He has picked Linda McMahon, a former wrestling executive, to lead the department. But like many conservative politicians before him, Trump has called for dismantling the department altogether — a cumbersome task that likely would require action from Congress.
The agency’s main role is financial. Annually, it distributes billions in federal money to colleges and schools and manages the federal student loan portfolio. Closing the department would mean redistributing each of those duties to another agency. The Education Department also plays an important regulatory role in services for students, ranging from those with disabilities to low-income and homeless kids.
Indeed, federal education money is central to Trump’s plans for colleges and schools. Trump has vowed to cut off federal money for schools and colleges that push “critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content” and to reward states and schools that end teacher tenure and enact universal school choice programs.
Federal funding makes up a relatively small portion of public school budgets — roughly 14 percent. Colleges and universities are more reliant on it, through research grants along with federal financial aid that helps students pay their tuition.
Here is a look at some of the department’s key functions, and how Trump has said he might approach them.
Student loans and financial aid
The Education Department manages approximately $1.5 trillion in student loan debt for over 40 million borrowers. It also oversees the Pell Grant, which provides aid to students below a certain income threshold, and administers the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which universities use to allocate financial aid.
The Biden administration has made cancelation of student loans a signature effort of the department’s work. Since Biden’s initial attempt to cancel student loans was overturned by the Supreme Court, the administration has forgiven over $175 billion for more than 4.8 million borrowers through a range of changes to programs it administers, such as Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
The loan forgiveness efforts have faced Republican pushback, including litigation from several GOP-led states.
Trump has criticized Biden’s efforts to cancel debt as illegal and unfair, calling it a “total catastrophe” that “taunted young people.” Trump’s plan for student debt is uncertain: He has not put out detailed plans.
Civil rights enforcement
Through its Office for Civil Rights, the Education Department conducts investigations and issues guidance on how civil rights laws should be applied, such as for LGBTQ+ students and students of color. The office also oversees a large data collection project that tracks disparities in resources, course access and discipline for students of different racial and socioeconomic groups.
Trump has suggested a different interpretation of the office’s civil rights role. In his campaign platform, he said he would pursue civil rights cases to “stop schools from discriminating on the basis of race.” He has described diversity and equity policies in education as “explicit unlawful discrimination” and said colleges that use them will pay fines and have their endowments taxed.
Trump also has pledged to exclude transgender students from Title IX protections, which affect school policies on students’ use of pronouns, bathrooms and locker rooms. Originally passed in 1972, Title IX was first used as a women’s rights law. This year, Biden’s administration said the law forbids discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, but Trump can undo that.
College accreditation
While the Education Department does not directly accredit colleges and universities, it oversees the system by reviewing all federally recognized accrediting agencies. Institutions of higher education must be accredited to gain access to federal money for student financial aid.
Accreditation came under scrutiny from conservatives in 2022, when the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools questioned political interference at Florida public colleges and universities. Trump has said he would fire “radical left accreditors” and take applications for new accreditors that would uphold standards including “defending the American tradition” and removing “Marxist” diversity administrators.
Although the education secretary has the authority to terminate its relationship with individual accrediting agencies, it is an arduous process that has rarely been pursued. Under President Barack Obama, the department took steps to cancel accreditors for a now-defunct for-profit college chain, but the Trump administration blocked the move. The group, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, was terminated by the Biden administration in 2022.
Money for schools
Much of the Education Department’s money for K-12 schools goes through large federal programs, such as Title I for low-income schools and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Those programs support services for students with disabilities, lower class sizes with additional teaching positions, and pay for social workers and other non-teaching roles in schools.
During his campaign, Trump called for shifting those functions to the states. He has not offered details on how the agency’s core functions of sending federal money to local districts and schools would be handled.
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a sweeping proposal outlining a far-right vision for the country that overlaps in areas with Trump’s campaign, offers a blueprint. It suggests sending oversight of programs for kids with disabilities and low-income children first to the Department of Health and Human Services, before eventually phasing out the funding and converting it to no-strings-attached grants to states.
Australia’s plan to ban children from social media proves popular and problematic
- Supporters say social media is doing too much harm to not have an age limit. More about how the ban would work may be known next week when the legislation is introduced in Parliament
MELBOURNE: How do you remove children from the harms of social media? Politically the answer appears simple in Australia, but practically the solution could be far more difficult.
The Australian government’s plan to ban children from social media platforms including X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram until their 16th birthdays is politically popular. The opposition party says it would have done the same after winning elections due within months if the government hadn’t moved first.
The leaders of all eight Australian states and mainland territories have unanimously backed the plan, although Tasmania, the smallest state, would have preferred the threshold was set at 14.
But a vocal assortment of experts in the fields of technology and child welfare have responded with alarm. More than 140 such experts signed an open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemning the 16-year age limit as “too blunt an instrument to address risks effectively.”
Details of what is proposed and how it will be implemented are scant. More will be known when legislation is introduced into the Parliament next week.
The concerned teen
Leo Puglisi, a 17-year-old Melbourne student who founded online streaming service 6 News Australia at the age of 11, laments that lawmakers imposing the ban lack the perspective on social media that young people have gained by growing up in the digital age.
“With respect to the government and prime minister, they didn’t grow up in the social media age, they’re not growing up in the social media age, and what a lot of people are failing to understand here is that, like it or not, social media is a part of people’s daily lives,” Leo said.
“It’s part of their communities, it’s part of work, it’s part of entertainment, it’s where they watch content – young people aren’t listening to the radio or reading newspapers or watching free-to-air TV – and so it can’t be ignored. The reality is this ban, if implemented, is just kicking the can down the road for when a young person goes on social media,” Leo added.
Leo has been applauded for his work online. He was a finalist in his home state Victoria’s nomination for the Young Australian of the Year award, which will be announced in January. His nomination bid credits his platform with “fostering a new generation of informed, critical thinkers.”
The grieving mom-turned-activist
One of the proposal’s supporters, cyber safety campaigner Sonya Ryan, knows from personal tragedy how dangerous social media can be for children.
Her 15-year-old daughter Carly Ryan was murdered in 2007 in South Australia state by a 50-year-old pedophile who pretended to be a teenager online. In a grim milestone of the digital age, Carly was the first person in Australia to be killed by an online predator.
“Kids are being exposed to harmful pornography, they’re being fed misinformation, there are body image issues, there’s sextortion, online predators, bullying. There are so many different harms for them to try and manage and kids just don’t have the skills or the life experience to be able to manage those well,” Sonya Ryan said.
“The result of that is we’re losing our kids. Not only what happened to Carly, predatory behavior, but also we’re seeing an alarming rise in suicide of young people,” she added.
Sonya Ryan is part of a group advising the government on a national strategy to prevent and respond to child sexual abuse in Australia.
She wholeheartedly supports Australia setting the social media age limit at 16.
“We’re not going to get this perfect,” she said. “We have to make sure that there are mechanisms in place to deal with what we already have which is an anxious generation and an addicted generation of children to social media.”
A major concern for social media users of all ages is the legislation’s potential privacy implications.
Age estimation technology has proved inaccurate, so digital identification appears to be the most likely option for assuring a user is at least 16.
The skeptical Internet expert
Tama Leaver, professor of Internet studies at Curtin University, fears that the government will make the platforms hold the users’ identification data.
The government has already said the onus will be on the platforms, rather than on children or their parents, to ensure everyone meets the age limit.
“The worst possible outcome seems to be the one that the government may be inadvertently pushing toward, which would be that the social media platforms themselves would end up being the identity arbiter,” Leaver said.
“They would be the holder of identity documents which would be absolutely terrible because they have a fairly poor track record so far of holding on to personal data well,” he added.
The platforms will have a year once the legislation has become law to work out how the ban can be implemented.
Ryan, who divides her time between Adelaide in South Australia and Fort Worth, Texas, said privacy concerns should not stand in the way of removing children from social media.
“What is the cost if we don’t? If we don’t put the safety of our children ahead of profit and privacy?” she asked.
Trump names former wrestling executive as Education Secretary
Describing McMahon as a “fierce advocate for Parents’ Rights,” Trump said in a statement: “We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort.”
McMahon is a co-chair of Trump’s transition team ahead of his return to the White House in January. It is tasked with filling some 4,000 positions in the government.
Regarding McMahon’s experience in education, Trump cited her two-year stint on the Connecticut Board of Education and 16 years on the board of trustees at Sacred Heart University, a private Catholic school.
McMahon left WWE in 2009 to run in vain for US Senate, and has been a major donor to Trump.
Since 2021, she has chaired the Center For The American Worker at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute.
During the election campaign Trump promised to do away with the federal education department when he returns to the White House.
“I say it all the time. I’m dying to get back to do this. We will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Education,” he said in September during a rally in Wisconsin.
At the Republican convention in Milwaukee, McMahon said she was “privileged to call Donald Trump a colleague and a boss,” as well as “a friend.”
Her ties with Trump go back to her years in the professional wrestling industry — she said she first met him as chief executive at WWE.
At the culmination of a staged feud, Trump once body-slammed her husband, legendary wrestling promoter Vince McMahon, and shaved his head in the middle of a wrestling ring on live television.
In 2017, she was confirmed as the head of the Small Business Administration, which is responsible for supporting America’s millions of small businesses, which employ around half the country’s private-sector workforce.
In nominating her, Trump pointed to her experience in business, helping to grow the WWE.
After leaving the administration, she served as chair of the pro-Trump America First Action SuperPAC, or political action committee.
