Wuhan exodus sparks virus hope despite mounting death toll

People wearing face masks sit outside Hankou Railway Station in Wuhan as people arrive in the hope of taking one of the first trains leaving the city in China's central Hubei province early on April 8, 2020. (File/AFP)
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Updated 08 April 2020
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Wuhan exodus sparks virus hope despite mounting death toll

  • China has come under fire for its handling of the coronavirus crisis that originated there late last year
  • Its march across the planet has affected every level of society, with Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson fighting the illness in intensive care

WUHAN, China: Thousands of relieved citizens streamed out of China’s Wuhan on Wednesday after authorities lifted months of lockdown at the coronavirus epicenter, offering some hope to the world despite record deaths in Europe and the United States.

China has come under fire for its handling of the coronavirus crisis that originated there late last year and President Donald Trump threatened to cut US funding to the World Health Organization over perceived bias toward Beijing.

From Wuhan, the coronavirus spread rapidly to infect nearly every country on Earth, killing more than 80,000, battering the global economy and forcing around half of humanity into some form of lockdown.

Its march across the planet has affected every level of society from workers to royals, with Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson fighting the illness in intensive care.

But the joy of people finally free to leave — many of them queuing up to depart in hazmat suits — provided some cheer to a gloomy world, offering proof the virus would not last forever.

“You have no idea! I was already up around 4am. I felt so good. My kids are so excited. Mum is finally coming home,” said Hao Mei, a 39-year-old single mother rushing to nearby Enshi to see her young children for the first time in two months.

“I’ve been stuck for 77 days! I’ve been stuck for 77 days!” shouted one man, who arrived at the railway station for a train back to his home province of Hunan.

A robot whizzed through crowds of passengers at the station, spraying their feet with disinfectant and playing a recorded message reminding them to wear face masks.

While China celebrated its first day without coronavirus deaths on Tuesday, the relentless disease chalked up fresh milestones in hard-hit areas of Europe and the US.

A total of 1,939 people died in the US over the past 24 hours, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University, as the country approaches tolls in worst-hit Italy and Spain.

Virus deaths hit a new daily high in Britain, where 55-year-old leader Boris Johnson was said to be “stable” and in “good spirits” despite receiving oxygen treatment in intensive care.

And Paris toughened its lockdown measures, banning daytime jogging to keep people from bending the rules as France breached 10,000 deaths.

In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo said the state appeared be nearing the peak of its pandemic but urged citizens to continue staying indoors.

Trump, under fire for his own response to the virus, lashed out at the WHO and said there would be a “hold on money” provided to the UN body, which he accused of being “very China-centric.”

Exhausted medical staff around the world are battling with a stream of patients as makeshift hospitals spring up on ships, at hotels and even in a New York cathedral.

In Barcelona, Antonio Alvarez, a 33-year-old nurse working in intensive care, said his experience of the pandemic was akin to bereavement.

“I’ve had my phases of anger, of denial, you go through all of them.

“Now we are still a little overwhelmed but it is better. Fewer patients are dying,” he told AFP.

The global economy is also on life support as governments pour in unprecedented sums to stem the worst crisis many countries have seen in a century.

While Japan agreed a stimulus package worth around $1 trillion, a divided eurozone is battling over whether to pool debt for “coronabonds” to prop up the economy.

Individuals have also stepped in, with Twitter co-founder and chief executive Jack Dorsey committing $1 billion of his personal fortune to the coronavirus fight.

And the stock market continued its rollercoaster ride, the Dow Jones index soaring around 1,000 points on Tuesday before ending up slightly lower.

The UN’s International Labour Organization said 81 percent of the world’s 3.3 billion-strong workforce is now affected by “the worst global crisis since the Second World War.”

“We don’t know how to feed our kids... and if, God forbid, something happens to any of them, I won’t be able to foot a hospital bill,” he said.
Others have been using their skills to try to lift the gloom.

In Copenhagen, a troupe of circus performers juggle and do tricks from a courtyard for those stuck at home and watching from their windows.


The UK says thousands of Afghans have been brought to Britain under a secret resettlement program

Updated 3 sec ago
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The UK says thousands of Afghans have been brought to Britain under a secret resettlement program

The government now plans to close the secret route
About 36,000 more Afghans have been relocated to the UK under other resettlement routes

LONDON: Thousands of Afghans including many who worked with British forces have been secretly resettled in the UK after a leak of data on their identities raised fears that they could be targeted by the Taliban, the British government revealed Tuesday.

The government now plans to close the secret route.

Defense Secretary John Healey said a dataset containing the personal information of nearly 19,000 Afghans who had applied to come to Britain after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was released in error in 2022, and extracts were later published online.

That prompted the then-Conservative government to set up a secret program to resettle the Afghans. The government obtained a court order known as a superinjunction that barred anyone from revealing its existence.

The injunction was lifted on Tuesday in conjunction with a decision by Britain’s current Labour Party government to make the program public. It said an independent review had found little evidence that the leaked data would expose Afghans to greater risk of retribution from the Taliban.

“I have felt deeply concerned about the lack of transparency to Parliament and the public,” Healey told lawmakers in the House of Commons.

About 4,500 people – 900 applicants and approximately 3,600 family members — have been brought to Britain under the secret program, and about 6,900 people are expected to be relocated by the time it closes, at a total cost of 850 million pounds ($1.1 billion).

About 36,000 more Afghans have been relocated to the UK under other resettlement routes.

British troops were sent to Afghanistan as part of a deployment against Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. At the peak of the operation there were almost 10,000 British troops in the country, mostly in Helmand province in the south. Britain ended combat operations in 2014.

‘Existential hour’ for Palestine at 30-country conference in Colombia

Updated 15 July 2025
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‘Existential hour’ for Palestine at 30-country conference in Colombia

  • UN special rapporteur: ‘The time has come to act in pursuit of justice and peace’
  • Participants will lay groundwork for implementing UNGA motion calling for end to occupation

LONDON: A 30-country conference aimed at ending Israel’s occupation of Palestine is one of the most significant political developments of the past 20 months, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has said.

The two-day event starts on Tuesday in the Colombian capital Bogota, and will be attended by representatives from countries including China, Spain and Qatar.

Albanese will announce that the conference comes at “an existential hour,” The Guardian reported on Tuesday.

Participating countries will use the event to lay the groundwork for implementing a UN General Assembly motion calling on member states to pressure Israel into ending its illegal occupation of Palestine.

The motion included a deadline of September for putting into action the International Court of Justice’s 2024 opinion that found Israel’s occupation of Palestine to be unlawful.

The court’s advisory opinion last July called on Israel to end its occupation “as rapidly as possible.”

UN member states also have an obligation “not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the occupied Palestinian territory,” it found.

Conference host Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s president, said the meeting will demonstrate a global will to move from condemnation to collective action against Israel.

In an article for The Guardian last week, he said: “We can either stand firm in defense of the legal principles that seek to prevent war and conflict, or watch helplessly as the international system collapses under the weight of unchecked power politics.”

The Hague Group behind the conference was initially established by Colombia and South Africa, but now includes Spain, Qatar, Indonesia, Algeria and Brazil.

The group met in January at a nine-country conference and agreed to implement the ICJ’s provisional measures.

Albanese will tell the Bogota meeting: “For too long, international law has been treated as optional — applied selectively to those perceived as weak, ignored by those acting as the powerful. This double standard has eroded the very foundations of the legal order. That era must end.

“The world will remember what we, states and individuals, did in this moment — whether we recoiled in fear or rose in defense of human dignity.

“Here in Bogota, a growing number of states have the opportunity to break the silence and revert to a path of legality by finally saying: enough. Enough impunity. Enough empty rhetoric. Enough exceptionalism. Enough complicity.

“The time has come to act in pursuit of justice and peace — grounded in rights and freedoms for all, and not mere privileges for some, at the expense of the annihilation of others.”


Some airlines checking Boeing fuel switches after Air India crash

Updated 15 July 2025
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Some airlines checking Boeing fuel switches after Air India crash

  • Precautionary moves by India, South Korea and some airlines in other countries
  • Some airlines around the world said they had been checking relevant switches since 2018

NEW DELHI: India on Monday ordered its airlines to examine fuel switches on several Boeing models, while South Korea said it would order a similar measure, as scrutiny intensified of fuel switch locks at the center of an investigation into a deadly Air India crash.

The precautionary moves by India, South Korea and some airlines in other countries came despite the planemaker and the US Federal Aviation Administration telling airlines and regulators in recent days that the fuel switch locks on Boeing jets are safe.

The locks have come under scrutiny following last month’s crash of an Air India jet, which killed 260 people.

A preliminary report found that the switches had almost simultaneously flipped from run position to cutoff shortly after takeoff. One pilot was heard on the cockpit voice recorder asking the other why he cut off the fuel. “The other pilot responded that he did not do so,” the report said.

The report noted a 2018 advisory from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which recommended, but did not mandate, operators of several Boeing models including the 787 to inspect the locking feature of fuel cutoff switches to ensure they could not be moved accidentally.

India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation said it had issued an order to investigate locks on several Boeing models including 787s and 737s, after several Indian and international airlines began making their own inspections of fuel switches.

The regulator oversees the world’s third-largest and fastest-growing aviation market. Boeing planes are used by three of the country’s four largest airlines.

Precautionary checks

Some airlines around the world said they had been checking relevant switches since 2018 in accordance with the FAA advisory, including Australia’s Qantas Airways and Japan’s ANA.

Others said they had been making additional or new checks since the release of the preliminary report into the Air India crash.

Singapore Airlines said on Tuesday that precautionary checks on the fuel switches of its 787 fleet, including planes used by its low-cost subsidiary Scoot, confirmed all were functioning properly.

A spokesperson for the South Korean transport ministry said checks there would be in line with the 2018 advisory from the FAA, but did not give a timeline for them.

Flag carrier Korean Air Lines said on Tuesday it had proactively begun inspecting fuel control switches and would implement any additional requirements the transport ministry may have.

Japan Airlines said it was conducting inspections in accordance with the 2018 advisory.

Boeing referred Reuters’ questions to the FAA, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Over the weekend, Air India Group started checking the locking mechanism on the fuel switches of its 787 and 737 fleets and has discovered no problems yet, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday.

About half the group’s 787s have been inspected and nearly all its 737s, the source added, speaking on condition of anonymity. Inspections were set to be completed in the next day or two.

The Air India crash preliminary report said the airline had not carried out the FAA’s suggested inspections as the FAA’s 2018 advisory was not a mandate.

But it also said maintenance records showed that the throttle control module, which includes the fuel switches, was replaced in 2019 and 2023 on the plane involved in the crash.

In an internal memo on Monday, Air India CEO Campbell Wilson said the preliminary report found no mechanical or maintenance faults and that all required maintenance had been carried out.


Indonesia rescues 11 who swam for hours to survive boat capsize

Updated 15 July 2025
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Indonesia rescues 11 who swam for hours to survive boat capsize

  • Two boats and dozens of rescuers hunted for those missing after the boat with 18 aboard overturned off the Mentawai Islands in the province of West Sumatra

JAKARTA: Indonesian rescuers found alive on Tuesday 11 people missing at sea who had survived a boat capsize in bad weather by swimming for at least six hours to the nearest island, officials said.

Two boats and dozens of rescuers hunted for those missing after the boat with 18 aboard overturned off the Mentawai Islands in the province of West Sumatra at about 11 a.m. on Monday, regional officials said.

“It was raining hard when the incident happened,” island official Rinto Wardana said. “Some of the passengers managed to swim and reach the nearest island.”

Seven had been rescued earlier, Wardana added. Ten of those on board were local government officials on a business trip to the town of Tuapejat, the boat’s destination when it left Sikakap, another small town in the Mentawai Islands.

The Mentawai Islands consist of four main islands and many smaller ones.

Boats and ferries are a regular mode of transport in Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, where accidents are caused by bad weather and lax safety standards that often allow vessels to be overloaded.

When a ferry sank this month near the tourist resort island of Bali with 65 aboard, 30 passengers survived, while 18 died and 17 went missing.


Bangladesh struggles to contain the fallout of an uprising that toppled its leader last year

Updated 15 July 2025
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Bangladesh struggles to contain the fallout of an uprising that toppled its leader last year

  • One year after Hasina’s ouster, interim government faces growing unrest, delayed reforms, political fragmentation
  • Rights concerns remain a major issue, conservative religious factions gain ground and Yunus resists calls for early elections

DHAKA: Bangladesh was on the cusp of charting a new beginning last year after its former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was removed from power in a student-led uprising, ending her 15-year rule and forcing her to flee to India.

As the head of a new interim government, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus promised to hold a credible election to return to democracy, initiate electoral and constitutional reforms and restore peace on the streets after hundreds were killed in weeks of violence that began on July 15, 2024.

A year later, the Yunus-led administration has struggled to contain the fallout of the uprising. Bangladesh finds itself mired in a growing political uncertainty, religious polarization and a challenging law-and-order situation.

Here’s what to know about Bangladesh a year after the protests that toppled Hasina.

Chaotic political landscape

Uncertainty about the future of democracy looms large in Bangladesh.

The student protesters who toppled Hasina formed a new political party, promising to break the overwhelming influence of two major dynastic political parties — the Bangladesh Nationalists Party, or BNP, and Hasina’s Awami League.

But the party’s opponents have accused it of being close to the Yunus-led administration and creating chaos for political mileage by using state institutions.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s political landscape has further fragmented after the country’s largest Islamist party, the Jamaat-e-Islami, returned to politics more than a decade after it was suppressed by Hasina’s government.

Aligned with the student-led party, it’s trying to fill the vacuum left by the Awami League, which was banned in May. Its leader, Hasina, is facing trial for crimes against humanity. The strength of Jamaat-e-Islami, which opposed Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan in 1971, is unknown.

Both BNP and the Jamaat-e-Islami party are now at loggerheads over establishing supremacy within the administration and judiciary, and even university campuses.

They are also differing over the timing of a new parliamentary election. Yunus has announced that the polls would be held in April next year, but poor law and order situation and a lack of clear-cut political consensus over it have created confusion. The chief of Bangladesh’s military also wanted an election in December this year — a stance Yunus didn’t like.

“Post-revolution honeymoons often don’t last long, and Bangladesh is no exception,” says Michael Kugelman, a Washington-based South Asia analyst and senior fellow of Asia Pacific Foundation. “The interim government faced massive expectations to restore democracy and prosperity. But this is especially difficult to do as an unelected government without a public mandate.”

Yunus wants reforms before election

Yunus has delayed an election because he wants reforms — from changes to the constitution and elections to the judiciary and police. Discussions with political parties, except Hasina’s Awami League, are ongoing.

Some of the reforms include putting a limit on how many times a person can become the prime minister, introduction of a two-tier parliament, and appointment of a chief justice.

There appears to be little consensus over some basic reforms. While both the BNP and the Jamaat-e-Islami parties have agreed to some of them with conditions, other proposals for basic constitutional reforms have become a sticking point.

The Jamaat-e-Islami also wants to give the interim government more time to complete reforms before heading into polls, while BNP has been calling for an early election. The student-led party mostly follows the pattern of the Jamaat-e-Islami party.

Kugelman says the issue of reforms was meant to unite the country, but has instead become a flashpoint.

“There’s a divide between those that want to see through reforms and give them more time, and those that feel it’s time to wrap things up and focus on elections,” he says.

Human rights and the rise of Islamists

Human rights in Bangladesh have remained a serious concern under Yunus.

Minority groups, especially Hindus, have blamed his administration for failing to protect them adequately. The Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council says minority Hindus and others have been targeted in hundreds of attacks over the last year. Hasina’s party has also blamed the interim government for arresting tens of thousands of its supporters.

The Yunus-led administration denies these allegations.

Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, says while the interim government has stopped enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions that had occurred under the Hasina government, “there has been little progress on lasting security sector reforms or to deliver on the pledge to create robust, independent institutions.”

Meanwhile, Islamist factions — some of whom have proposed changes to women’s rights and demanded introduction of Sharia law — are vying for power. Many of them are planning to build alliances with bigger parties like the BNP or the Jamaat-e-Islami.

Such factions have historically struggled to gain significant electoral support despite Bangladesh being a Muslim majority, and their rise is expected to further fragment the country’s political landscape.

Diplomatic pivot and balancing with global powers

During Hasina’s 15-year rule, Bangladesh was India’s closest partner in South Asia. After her ouster, the Yunus-led administration has moved closer to China, which is India’s main rival in the region.

Yunus’ first state visit was to China in March, a trip that saw him secure investments, loans and grants. On the other hand, India is angered by the ousting of its old ally Hasina and hasn’t responded to Dhaka’s requests to extradite her. India stopped issuing visas to Bangladeshis following Hasina’s fall.

Globally, Yunus seems to have strong backing from the West and the United Nations, and it appears Bangladesh will continue its foreign policy, which has long tried to find a balance between multiple foreign powers.

But Kugelman says the country’s biggest challenge may be the “Trump factor.”

In January, the Trump administration suspended USAID funds to Bangladesh, which had sought significant levels of US support during a critical rebuild period post Hasina’s ouster.

“Dhaka must now reframe its relations with an unconventional US administration that will largely view Bangladesh through a commercial lens,” Kugelman says.