DUBAI: The World Health Organization sent out a fresh warning on Monday over the dangers of the new coronavirus even as France returned to life by staging an annual music festival and sending millions of children back to school.
In spite of numerous European countries further easing their lockdown restrictions, cases around the world are rising especially in Latin America with Brazil now registering over 50,000 deaths.
There are also fears of a second wave with Australians being warned against traveling to Melbourne.
“The pandemic is still accelerating,” WHO’s director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the virtual health forum organized by Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
“We know that the pandemic is much more than a health crisis, it is an economic crisis, a social crisis and in many countries a political crisis.
“Its effects will be felt for decades to come.”
Tedros said the greatest threat facing the world is not the virus itself, which has now killed over 465,000 people and infected nearly nine million worldwide, but “the lack of global solidarity and global leadership.”
“We cannot defeat this pandemic with a divided world,” he said. “The politicization of the pandemic has exacerbated it.”
Brazil falls into that bracket with President Jair Bolsonaro comparing the virus to a “little flu” and arguing that the economic impact of shutdowns is often worse than the virus itself.
Brazil is the second worst-affected country behind the United States, another country where political infighting has prevented a unified policy to handle the virus.
The spread of COVID-19 is accelerating across Latin America, with Mexico, Peru and Chile also hard-hit as death tolls soar and health care facilities are pushed toward collapse.
Mexico City has delayed reopening markets, restaurants, malls, hotels and places of worship, with the country now recording over 20,000 COVID-19 deaths.
Highlighting the region’s woes, Peru passed 8,000 deaths on Sunday despite preparing to reopen shopping malls on Monday.
In Europe, meanwhile, the feelgood factor continues as countries ease their lockdown restrictions.
Thousands of French danced and partied well into Monday for an annual music festival, in the first big blow out since the lockdown.
Revellers packed the streets of Paris, most shunning masks and social distancing, to enjoy concerts in cafes and on street corners.
Although none of the usual extravaganzas were held beyond what French electronic music legend Jean-Michel Jarre billed as the world’s first live virtual “avatar” concert, many felt the authorities were too lax.
“This is not what a gradual end to the lockdown looks like,” said Dr. Gilbert Deray.
“I understand that the Festival of Music is something of a liberation, but did we really have to have it this year?“
Swimming pools and cinemas also reopened on Monday — with one cinema opening one minute after midnight for a sneak preview of the upcoming French comedy, “Les Parfums” (The Perfumes).
Children up to the age of 15 also returned to school as attendance was switched from voluntary to compulsory.
Fears remain, however, that the virus, may be on its way back even as countries where infections have ebbed lift their lockdowns to restart battered economies.
Australians were warned Monday to avoid traveling to Melbourne, as the country’s second biggest city tightened restrictions over fears of a second wave.
Victoria state has recorded more than 110 cases in the past week — many of them in Melbourne — prompting leaders of other regions to warn against visiting the city’s six designated virus “hot spots.”
China, Germany and Japan are also battling new outbreaks with some reintroducing containment measures.
Kyrgyzstan also reported a significant rise in coronavirus cases on Monday, less than a month after the Central Asian nation’s government lifted restrictions in key cities.
The spike in infections increased nervousness in the business world as markets mostly fell on Monday.
After enjoying a broadly positive week, with equities rallying from their March trough, traders turned cautious on news of a worrying jump in fresh cases in several US states including California, Texas and Florida.
German airline group Lufthansa, meanwhile, says it has backup plans ready in case shareholders reject a nine-billion-euro ($10.1 billion) pandemic rescue plan agreed with the state.
Like rival airlines, Lufthansa was plunged into crisis after efforts to contain the coronavirus brought air travel to a near standstill for several months this year.
Investors are to meet Thursday to sign off on the rescue.
The sporting world has been reemerging from the darkness, although for every step forward it seems to take one back.
Japan announced that up to 5,000 fans will be able to attend football and baseball games from July 10 but the presence of fans at other sporting events, notably in the Balkans, appears to have caused problems.
Five players from Serbian club Red Star Belgrade tested positive for coronavirus after playing a match attended by 16,000 people, the club said Monday.
Montenegro, which had declared itself virus-free, announced a new cluster of cases, predominantly football fans who had traveled to Belgrade to watch the match.
In neighboring Croatia, Borna Coric became the second top tennis player, after Grigor Dimitrov, to test positive after taking part in an exhibition tournament featuring world number one Novak Djokovic.
WHO warns of ‘accelerating’ pandemic as Brazil reaches 50,000 deaths
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WHO warns of ‘accelerating’ pandemic as Brazil reaches 50,000 deaths
- “The pandemic is still accelerating,” says WHO’s director general
Indonesia’s Supreme Court reverses acquittal of former official in slavery case
Condemned internationally and at home, the senior official in the provincial government in North Sumatra, Terbit Rencana Perangin-angin, had been accused of human trafficking, torture, forced labor, and slavery.
Prosecutors launched an appeal after a lower court acquitted him of the charges in July.
Indonesia’s Supreme Court said he would serve four years in jail, without specifying reasons, in a ruling dated Nov. 15 and seen on the court’s website on Tuesday.
The Supreme Court and prosecutors did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Reuters has sought comment from Terbit’s lawyer.
The macabre case came to light in 2022, when a police corruption investigation into Terbit found people detained in cages on his property, drawing condemnation from rights groups.
A police investigation found 665 people had been held in cells on his property since 2010, court documents showed.
Terbit, who was jailed for nine years for corruption in 2022, had previously claimed the detained individuals were participating in a drug rehabilitation program.
Prosecutors said they had been tortured and forced to work on his plantation. Six had died in captivity, Indonesia’s rights body found.
Four Pakistan security forces killed as ex-PM Khan supporters flood capital
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani protesters demanding the release of ex-prime minister Imran Khan on Tuesday killed four members of the nation’s security forces, the government said, as the crowds defied police and closed in on the capital’s center.
More than ten thousand protesters armed with sticks and slingshots took on police in central Islamabad on Tuesday afternoon, AFP journalists saw, less than three kilometers (two miles) from the government enclave they aim to occupy.
Khan was barred from standing in February elections that were marred by allegations of rigging, sidelined by dozens of legal cases that he claims were confected to prevent his comeback.
But his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has defied a government crackdown with regular rallies. Tuesday’s is the largest in the capital since Khan was jailed in August 2023.
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said “miscreants” involved in the march had killed four members of the paramilitary Rangers force on a city highway leading toward the government sector.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the men had been “run over by a vehicle.”
“These disruptive elements do not seek revolution but bloodshed,” he said in a statement. “This is not a peaceful protest, it is extremism.”
The government said Monday that one police officer had also been killed and nine more were critically wounded by demonstrators who set out toward Islamabad on Sunday.
The capital has been locked down since late Saturday, with mobile Internet sporadically cut and more than 20,000 police flooding the streets, many armed with riot shields and batons.
The government has accused protesters of attempting to derail a state visit by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who arrived for a three-day visit on Monday.
Last week, the Islamabad city administration announced a two-month ban on public gatherings.
But PTI convoys traveled from their power base in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the most populous province of Punjab, hauling aside roadblocks of stacked shipping containers.
“We are deeply frustrated with the government, they do not know how to function,” 56-year-old protester Kalat Khan told AFP on Monday. “The treatment we are receiving is unjust and cruel.”
The government cited “security concerns” for the mobile Internet outages, while Islamabad’s schools and universities were also ordered shut on Monday and Tuesday.
“Those who will come here will be arrested,” Interior Minister Naqvi told reporters late Monday at D-Chowk, the public square outside Islamabad’s government buildings that PTI aims to occupy.
PTI’s chief demand is the release of Khan, the 72-year-old charismatic former cricket star who served as premier from 2018 to 2022 and is the lodestar of their party.
They are also protesting alleged tampering in the February polls and a recent government-backed constitutional amendment giving it more power over the courts, where Khan is tangled in dozens of cases.
Sharif’s government has come under increasing criticism for deploying heavy-handed measures to quash PTI’s protests.
“It speaks of a siege mentality on the part of the government and establishment — a state in which they see themselves in constant danger and fearful all the time of being overwhelmed by opponents,” read one opinion piece in the English-language Dawn newspaper published Monday.
“This urges them to take strong-arm measures, not occasionally but incessantly.”
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said “blocking access to the capital, with motorway and highway closures across Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has effectively penalized ordinary citizens.”
The US State Department appealed for protesters to refrain from violence, while also urging authorities to “respect human rights and fundamental freedoms and to ensure respect for Pakistan’s laws and constitution as they work to maintain law and order.”
Khan was ousted by a no-confidence vote after falling out with the kingmaking military establishment, which analysts say engineers the rise and fall of Pakistan’s politicians.
But as opposition leader, he led an unprecedented campaign of defiance, with PTI street protests boiling over into unrest that the government cited as the reason for its crackdown.
PTI won more seats than any other party in this year’s election but a coalition of parties considered more pliable to military influence shut them out of power.
Russia’s Medvedev warns West over discussing nuclear weapons for Ukraine
MOSCOW: Senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday that if the West supplied nuclear weapons to Ukraine then Moscow could consider such a transfer to be tantamount to an attack on Russia, providing grounds for a nuclear response.
The New York Times reported last week that some unidentified Western officials had suggested that US President Joe Biden could give Ukraine nuclear weapons, though there were fears such a step would have serious implications.
“American politicians and journalists are seriously discussing the consequences of the transfer of nuclear weapons to Kyiv,” Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012, said on Telegram.
Medvedev said that even the threat of such a transfer of nuclear weapons could be considered as preparation for a nuclear war against Russia.
“The actual transfer of such weapons can be equated to the fait accompli of an attack on our country,” under Russia’s newly updated nuclear doctrine, he said.
China sends naval, air forces to shadow US plane over Taiwan Strait
- The US Navy’s 7th fleet said a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft had flown through the strait
BEIJING: China’s military said on Tuesday it deployed naval and air forces to monitor and warn a US Navy patrol aircraft that flew through the sensitive Taiwan Strait, denouncing the United States for trying to “mislead” the international community.
Around once a month, US military ships or aircraft pass through or above the waterway that separates democratically governed Taiwan from China — missions that always anger Beijing.
China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and says it has jurisdiction over the strait. Taiwan and the United States dispute that, saying the strait is an international waterway.
The US Navy’s 7th fleet said a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft had flown through the strait “in international airspace,” adding that the flight demonstrated the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.
“By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations,” it said in a statement.
China’s military criticized the flight as “public hype,” adding that it monitored the US aircraft throughout its transit and “effectively” responded to the situation.
“The relevant remarks by the US distort legal principles, confuse public opinion and mislead international perceptions,” the military’s Eastern Theatre Command said in a statement.
“We urge the US side to stop distorting and hyping up and jointly safeguard regional peace and stability.”
In April, China’s military said it sent fighter jets to monitor and warn a US Navy Poseidon in the Taiwan Strait, a mission that took place just hours after a call between the Chinese and US defense chiefs. (Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Additional reporting and writing by Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
Ukraine says Russia launched ‘record’ 188 drones overnight
KYIV: Russia staged a record number of drone attacks overnight over Ukraine, damaging buildings and “critical infrastructure” in several regions, the air force said Tuesday.
“During the night attack, the enemy launched a record number of Shahed strike unmanned aerial vehicles and unidentified drones,” the air force said, referring to Iranian-designed drones and putting the figure at 188.
