Chinese hospitals, funeral homes ‘extremely busy’ as COVID-19 spreads unchecked

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Passengers walk at the Hong Kong International Airport in Hong Kong on December 28, 2022. (AFP)
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This picture shows Covid-19 patients on beds at Tianjin Nankai Hospital in Tianjin on December 28, 2022. (AFP)
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Updated 29 December 2022
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Chinese hospitals, funeral homes ‘extremely busy’ as COVID-19 spreads unchecked

BEIJING: Chinese hospitals and funeral homes were under intense pressure on Wednesday as a surging COVID-19 wave drained resources, while the scale of the outbreak and doubts over official data prompted some countries to consider new travel rules on Chinese visitors.

In an abrupt change of policy, China this month began dismantling the world’s strictest COVID-19 regime of lockdowns and extensive testing, putting its battered economy on course for a complete re-opening next year.

The lifting of restrictions, which came after widespread protests against them, means COVID-19 is spreading largely unchecked and likely infecting millions of people a day, according to some international health experts.

The speed at which China, the last major country in the world moving toward treating the virus as endemic, has scrapped COVID-19 rules has left its fragile health system overwhelmed.

China reported three new COVID-19-related deaths for Tuesday, up from one for Monday — numbers that are inconsistent with what funeral parlors are reporting, as well as with the experience of much less populous countries after they re-opened.

Staff at Huaxi, a big hospital in the southwestern city of Chengdu, said they were “extremely busy” with COVID-19 patients.

“I’ve been doing this job for 30 years and this is the busiest I have ever known it,” said one ambulance driver outside the hospital who declined to be identified.

There were long queues inside and outside the hospital’s emergency department and at an adjacent fever clinic on Tuesday evening. Most of those arriving in ambulances were given oxygen to help with their breathing.

“Almost all of the patients have COVID-19,” one emergency department pharmacy staff member said.

The hospital has no stocks of COVID-19-specific medicine and can only provide drugs for symptoms such as coughing, she said.

Car parks around the Dongjiao funeral home, one of the biggest in Chengdu, were full. Funeral processions were constant as smoke billowed from the crematorium.

“We have to do this about 200 times a day now,” said one funeral worker. “We are so busy we don’t even have time to eat. This has been the case since the opening up. Before it was around 30-50 a day.”

“Many have died from COVID-19,” said another worker.

At another Chengdu crematorium, privately-owned Nanling, staff were equally busy.

“There have been so many deaths from COVID-19 lately,” one worker said. “Cremation slots are all fully booked. You can’t get one until the new year.”

China has said it only counts deaths of COVID-19 patients caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure as COVID-19-related.

Zhang Yuhua, an official at the Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, said most recent patients were elderly and critically ill with underlying diseases. She said the number of patients receiving emergency care had increased to 450-550 per day, from about 100 before, according to state media.

The China-Japan Friendship Hospital’s fever clinic in Beijing was also “packed” with elderly patients, state media reported.

Nurses and doctors have been asked to work while sick and retired medical workers in rural communities have been rehired to help. Some cities have been struggling with drug shortages.

TRAVEL RULES

In a major step toward freer travel, China will stop requiring inbound travelers to go into quarantine from Jan. 8, authorities said this week.

The global financial hub of Hong Kong also said on Wednesday it would

scrap

most of its last remaining COVID-19 restrictions.

Online searches for flights out of China spiked on Tuesday from extremely low levels, but residents and travel agencies suggested a return to anything like normal would take some months yet, as caution prevails for now.

Moreover, some governments were considering extra travel requirements for Chinese visitors.

US officials cited “the lack of transparent data” as reasons for doing so.

India, Taiwan and Japan would require a negative COVID-19 test for travelers from mainland China, with those testing positive in Japan having to undergo a week in quarantine. Tokyo also plans to limit airlines increasing flights to China.

The Philippines was also considering imposing tests.

ECONOMIC PAIN

China’s $17 trillion economy is expected to suffer a slowdown in factory output and domestic consumption as workers and shoppers fall ill.

News of re-opening borders sent global luxury stocks higher, but the reaction was more muted in other corners of the market.

US carmaker Tesla plans to run a reduced production schedule at its Shanghai plant in January, according to an internal schedule reviewed by Reuters. It did not specify a reason.

Once the initial shock of new infections passes, some economists expect Chinese growth to bounce back with a vengeance from what is this year expected to be its lowest rate in nearly half a century, somewhere around 3 percent.

Morgan Stanley economists expect 5.4 percent growth in 2023, while those at Goldman Sachs see 5.2 percent.


UN migration agency says aid to Rohingya in Indonesia reinstated

Updated 2 min 18 sec ago
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UN migration agency says aid to Rohingya in Indonesia reinstated

  • Chief of mission, Jeff Labovitz, said there is no current planned reduction in services

JAKARTA: The United Nations’ migration agency has reinstated its humanitarian assistance to Rohingya refugees in Indonesia, its chief of mission in Jakarta told Reuters on Tuesday.
Chief of mission, Jeff Labovitz, said there is no current planned reduction in services.
A Reuters report last week cited the agency as saying it would slash aid to hundreds of Rohingya sheltering in the city of Pekanbaru on the island of Sumatra.


Dalai Lama says his successor to be born outside China

Updated 7 min 40 sec ago
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Dalai Lama says his successor to be born outside China

  • Tibetans worldwide want the institution of the Dalai Lama to continue after the 89-year-old’s death
  • Tibetan tradition holds that the soul of a senior Buddhist monk is reincarnated in the body of a child on his death

NEW DELHI: The Dalai Lama’s successor will be born outside China, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism says in a new book, raising the stakes in a dispute with Beijing over control of the Himalayan region he fled more than six decades ago.
Tibetans worldwide want the institution of the Dalai Lama to continue after the 89-year-old’s death, he writes in “Voice for the Voiceless,” which was reviewed by Reuters and is being released on Tuesday.
He had previously said the line of spiritual leaders might end with him. His book marks the first time the Dalai Lama has specified that his successor would be born in the “free world,” which he describes as outside China. He has previously said only that he could reincarnate outside Tibet, possibly in India where he lives in exile.
“Since the purpose of a reincarnation is to carry on the work of the predecessor, the new Dalai Lama will be born in the free world so that the traditional mission of the Dalai Lama – that is, to be the voice for universal compassion, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and the symbol of Tibet embodying the aspirations of the Tibetan people – will continue,” the Dalai Lama writes.
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, fled at the age of 23 to India with thousands of other Tibetans in 1959 after a failed uprising against the rule of Mao Zedong’s Communists.
Beijing insists it will choose his successor, but the Dalai Lama has said any successor named by China would not be respected.
China brands the Dalai Lama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for keeping alive the Tibetan cause, as a “separatist.”
When asked about the book at a press briefing on Monday, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry said the Dalai Lama “is a political exile who is engaged in anti-China separatist activities under the cloak of religion.
“On the Tibet issue, China’s position is consistent and clear. What the Dalai Lama says and does cannot change the objective fact of Tibet’s prosperity and development.”
Supporters of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan cause include Richard Gere, a follower of Tibetan Buddhism, and Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the US House of Representatives. His followers have been worried about his health, especially after knee surgery last year. He said in December that he might live to be 110.
In his book, the Dalai Lama says he has received numerous petitions for more than a decade from a wide spectrum of Tibetan people, including senior monks and Tibetans living in Tibet and outside, “uniformly asking me to ensure that the Dalai Lama lineage be continued.”
Tibetan tradition holds that the soul of a senior Buddhist monk is reincarnated in the body of a child on his death. The current Dalai Lama was identified as the reincarnation of his predecessor when he was two.
The book, which the Dalai Lama calls an account of his dealings with Chinese leaders over seven decades, is being published on Tuesday in the US by William Morrow and in Britain by HarperNonFiction, with HarperCollins publications to follow in India and other countries.
He expressed faith in the Tibetan government and parliament-in-exile, based with him in India’s Himalayan city of Dharamshala, to carry on the political work for the Tibetan cause.
“The right of the Tibetan people to be the custodians of their own homeland cannot be indefinitely denied, nor can their aspiration for freedom be crushed forever through oppression,” he writes. “One clear lesson we know from history is this: if you keep people permanently unhappy, you cannot have a stable society.”
Given his advanced age, he writes, his hopes of going back to Tibet look “increasingly unlikely.”


Ukraine’s biggest drone attack on Moscow kills one, disrupts air and train transport

Updated 48 min 50 sec ago
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Ukraine’s biggest drone attack on Moscow kills one, disrupts air and train transport

  • Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that at least 69 drones were destroyed that approached the city in several waves
  • Moscow and its surrounding region, with a population of at least 21 million, is one of the biggest metropolitan areas in Europe

Ukraine targeted Moscow early on Tuesday in what seemed its biggest drone attack of the war on the Russian capital, killing at least one person, sparking fires and suspending air and train transport in the region, authorities said.
“Today at 4 a.m. a massive drone attack began on Moscow and the Moscow region,” Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyov said in a post on the Telegram messaging app. “At the moment, one person is known to have died and three were injured.”
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that at least 69 drones were destroyed that approached the city in several waves.
Moscow and its surrounding region, with a population of at least 21 million, is one of the biggest metropolitan areas in Europe, alongside Istanbul.
Russia’s aviation watchdog said flights were suspended at all four of Moscow’s airports to ensure air safety after the attacks. Two other airports, in the Yaroslavl and Nizhny Novgorod regions, both east of Moscow, were also closed. Vorobyov said that at least seven apartments were damaged and residents forced to evacuate in a multi-story building in the Ramenskoye district of the Moscow region, about 50 km (31 miles) southeast of the Kremlin.
Rail infrastructure at the train station in the Domodedovo district, about 35 km south of Moscow, was damaged as result of falling drone debris, RIA news agency reported.
Baza, a news Telegram channel that is close to Russia’s security services, and other Russian news telegram channels posted videos of several residential fires around Moscow that they said were sparked by the attacks. The strikes came as the United States is pushing for an end to the three-year war that Russia started with its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. On Tuesday, US and Ukrainian teams are scheduled to meet for peace talks in Saudi Arabia.
Governors of Ryazan region, just southeast of the Moscow region, and the Belgorod region on border with Ukraine, also said that their regions were under drone attacks. Several settlements in the Belgorod region were left without power, the regional governor said.
A November drone attack on Moscow, the largest in the war at that point, led to the destruction of at least 34 drones. At least one civilian was killed and dozens of homes wrecked around the capital.
Kyiv has often said that its strikes inside Russia are aimed at destroying infrastructure key to Moscow’s overall war efforts and are in response to Russia’s continued bombing of Ukraine.
Both sides deny targeting civilians in the attacks, but thousands of them have died in the conflict so far, the vast majority of them Ukrainian.


Former Philippine president Duterte arrested for crimes against humanity

Updated 11 March 2025
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Former Philippine president Duterte arrested for crimes against humanity

  • Duterte was arrested after landing at Manila’s international airport following a brief trip to Hong Kong
  • Duterte is still hugely popular among many in the Philippines, and he remains a potent political force

MANILA: Former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte was arrested Tuesday in Manila by police acting on an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant citing crimes against humanity tied to his deadly war on drugs.
The 79-year-old faces a charge of “the crime against humanity of murder,” according to the ICC, for a crackdown in which rights groups estimate tens of thousands of mostly poor men were killed by officers and vigilantes, often without proof they were linked to drugs.
“Early in the morning, Interpol Manila received the official copy of the warrant of the arrest from the ICC,” the presidential palace said in a statement.
“As of now, he is under the custody of authorities.”
The statement added that “the former president and his group are in good health and are being checked by government doctors.”
Duterte was arrested after landing at Manila’s international airport following a brief trip to Hong Kong.
Speaking to thousands of overseas Filipino workers there on Sunday, the former president decried the investigation, labelling ICC investigators “sons of whores” while saying he would “accept it” if an arrest were to be his fate.
The Philippines quit the ICC in 2019 on Duterte’s instructions, but the tribunal maintained it had jurisdiction over killings before the pullout, as well as killings in the southern city of Davao when Duterte was mayor there, years before he became president.
It launched a formal inquiry in September 2021, only to suspend it two months later after Manila said it was re-examining several hundred cases of drug operations that led to deaths at the hands of police, hitmen and vigilantes.
The case resumed in July 2023 after a five-judge panel rejected the Philippines’ objection that the court lacked jurisdiction.
Since then, the government of President Ferdinand Marcos has on numerous instances said it would not cooperate with the investigation.
But Undersecretary of the Presidential Communications Office Claire Castro on Sunday said that if Interpol would “ask the necessary assistance from the government, it is obliged to follow.”
Duterte is still hugely popular among many in the Philippines who supported his quick-fix solutions to crime, and he remains a potent political force. He is running to reclaim his job as mayor of his stronghold Davao in the May mid-term election.
Charges have been filed locally in a handful of cases related to drug operations that led to deaths, only nine police have been convicted for slaying alleged drug suspects.
A self-professed killer, Duterte told officers to fatally shoot narcotics suspects if their lives were at risk and insisted the crackdown saved families and prevented the Philippines from turning into a “narco-politics state.”
At the opening of a Philippine Senate probe into the drug war in October, Duterte said he offered “no apologies, no excuses” for his actions.
“I did what I had to do, and whether or not you believe it or not, I did it for my country,” he said.


Australian police say crime ring preyed on Jewish ‘vulnerability’

Updated 11 March 2025
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Australian police say crime ring preyed on Jewish ‘vulnerability’

  • New South Wales Police said Tuesday that 14 people had been arrested and charged with 65 offenses, including taking part in a “criminal group,” arson and destroying property

SYDNEY: Australian police said Tuesday they have charged 14 members of an organized crime ring accused of menacing the country with attacks dressed up as religiously motivated hate crimes.
Jewish neighborhoods in Sydney city have in recent months seen synagogues daubed in anti-Semitic graffiti, buildings firebombed in the dead of night and cars torched by vandals.
Although the crime wave stoked fears about rising anti-Semitism in Australia, police said they no longer believed many of these incidents were driven by “ideology.”
Instead, police said it appeared to be an attempt by organized criminals to gain favor by carrying out high-profile attacks — and then tipping off authorities later.
New South Wales Police said Tuesday that 14 people had been arrested and charged with 65 offenses, including taking part in a “criminal group,” arson and destroying property.
“None of the individuals we have arrested... have displayed any form of anti-Semitic ideology,” NSW Police deputy commissioner David Hudson said Monday evening after a series of raids.
“I think these organized crime figures have taken an opportunity to play off the vulnerability of the Jewish community,” he added.
The most alarming incident was the discovery of explosives in an abandoned caravan alongside a purported list of Jewish targets.
At the time, NSW Premier Chris Minns said the caravan appeared to be part of a foiled “mass casualty” terror plot.
Police now believe it was nothing more than a carefully constructed “criminal con job.”
“I can reveal that the caravan was never going to cause a mass casualty event, but instead was concocted by criminals who wanted to cause fear for personal benefit,” senior officer Krissy Barrett said on Monday evening.
Police said they suspected the same “individual or individuals” were behind both the anti-Semitic attacks and the caravan hoax.
“It was about causing chaos within the community, causing threat, causing angst, diverting police resources away from their day jobs to have them focus on matters that would allow them to get up to, engage in other criminal activity,” said deputy commissioner Hudson.
“There are a variety of reasons why individuals do this.”