Before he was laid to rest Sunday, the Angolan man known as Pai Grande, or Big Dad, drew a crowd of at least 1,000 people – including most, if not all, of his 156 surviving children and 250 grandchildren – to pay their respects. At least 1,000 people gathered for the burial of Francisco Tchikuteny Sabalo despite prohibitions on large gatherings in Angola, April 19, 2020.Tchikuteny was a Christian who belonged to the New Ecclesiastic Order of Angola, a relative said. He was buried in a nearby cemetery newly dedicated to his family. That family includes 42 current wives; another seven had left the family earlier, relatives said. FILE – The late Francisco Tchikuteny Sabalo is shown in 2015 with some of his family. When he died April 14, 2020, he had 42 wives and 156 children. (Photo by Armando Chicoca) In 2015, Tchikuteny told VOA that he prized education and spent more than $1,500 a year on school supplies.He had expressed a desire for seeing some of his children trained in science and technology. Three daughters currently are studying medical sciences and two sons are learning computer science, all at the high school level. Lumbaneny Sabalo had volunteered as an elementary school teacher for five years. At Sunday’s service, Gonçalves Hunandumbo, the director of the island’s school, praised Tchikuteny for supporting education and starting “a revolution against illiteracy. … He was a man and a complete human being.” According to his family, Tchikuteny had fathered 281 children, but 125 predeceased him. He is survived by his wives, children, grandchildren and 67 great-grandchildren. With Tchikuteny’s death, “We lost a father,” Lumbaneny Sabalo said. He asked journalists and others to continue to visit the island, “where the greatest in Angola lived, and he will remain alive in the history of this country.” This reported originated in VOA’s Portuguese Service.
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Month: April 2020
US Senate Passes Additional Funding for Small Businesses, Hospitals
The U.S. Senate passed $484 billion in additional funding for small businesses and hospitals Tuesday, the latest in a series of congressional efforts to address the historic economic and public health crises caused by the coronavirus outbreak. U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted his support for the measure that replenishes funding for parts of the largest relief package in U.S. history, the $2 trillion CARES Act that lawmakers passed last month. “I urge the Senate and House to pass the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act with additional funding for PPP, Hospitals, and Testing. After I sign this Bill, we will begin discussions on the next Legislative Initiative with fiscal relief,” Trump wrote before the Tuesday vote. FILE – House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland speaks during a news conference on health care, on Capitol Hill, Feb. 4, 2020.House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters Tuesday that House lawmakers are being asked to return to Washington, D.C., by 10 a.m. Thursday to pass the legislation. Trump would then be able to sign the measure into law. The majority of the additional funding will be targeted at small businesses that missed out on an earlier pool of rescue money. Hoyer said the $320 billion in new funding for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) includes assistance specifically directed to women and minority-owned businesses, as well as individuals who do not have access to banks. Under the PPP, if a business used the aid to pay employees during the next two months then the government will assume responsibility for the costs and the business will not have to pay it back. The program was enormously popular, running out of funds within days of its April 7 launch date. The additional funding was the focus of almost two weeks of negotiations, with Republicans seeking a fast-track vote that would have immediately upped funding for the PPP. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized Democrats for delaying the vote to seek additional funding for other programs. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky speaks with reporters after the Senate approved a nearly $500 billion coronavirus aid bill, on Capitol Hill in Washington, April 21, 2020.”Republicans never wanted this crucial program for workers and small businesses to shut down. We tried to pass additional funding a week before it lapsed. But Democratic leaders blocked the money and spent days trying to negotiate extraneous issues that were never on the table,” McConnell said in a statement announcing the deal. Democrats touted the agreement as a victory, saying they had “flipped this emergency package from an insufficient Republican plan that left behind hospitals and health and frontline workers and did nothing to aid the survival of the most vulnerable small businesses on Main Street,” according to a joint statement from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. FILE – Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer of N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., walk on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 12, 2020.Officials want to help people stay employed and have businesses as ready as possible to ramp up their activity when it becomes safe for customers to return. According to unemployment filings, 20 million people lost their jobs in the last four weeks as coronavirus-related shutdowns took effect. Reopening the economyThe governors of several U.S. states have announced plans to begin relaxing stay-at-home orders, including some beginning next week. Some states have seen small protests calling for a return to regular economic activity. “There’s been much talk about reopening the economy,” Hoyer noted Tuesday. “I think everybody is hopeful that we can reopen the economy quickly, but that it must be done and I emphasize must be done with safety to the communities to our families, to other workers, to those we’ve come in contact with. Testing is critically important for that.” FILE – Vice President Mike Pence, right, and President Donald Trump watch a video of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaking during a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House, April 19, 2020.The additional funding set to pass this week also provides $25 billion to help states with testing for the coronavirus as well as $75 billion for hospitals whose resources have been exhausted by the crisis. Governor Andrew Cuomo, whose home state of New York is the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States, criticized the lack of assistance for local governments in the latest funding measure. “I think it’s a terrible mistake not to provide funding for the states. I get small businesses; I get airlines, how about police? How about fire? How about health care workers? How about teachers? We are not going to fund schools? I don’t get it,” Cuomo said in a press conference Tuesday. Lawmakers will immediately turn to negotiations on a second massive aid bill, already referred to as CARES Act 2. Hoyer said Democrats’ efforts to include additional funding for state, local and tribal governments failed in this round of negotiations but would be pursued for the next measure.
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Chinese Lab with Checkered Safety Record Draws Scrutiny over COVID-19
In the more than four months since China reported an outbreak of viral pneumonia in Hubei province, the coronavirus has raced to nearly every corner of the world, but there are still no firm answers as to where it all began.China has said the first infected people caught the virus from live animals being sold in a wet market in Wuhan, Hubei’s main city. But since the first public reports of an unusual viral outbreak emerged last December, many observers have also noted that China’s first Level 4 bio-safety lab, which conducts research on animal coronaviruses, is located just a few kilometers from the wet market.The Wuhan Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market, where a number of people fell ill with a virus, sits closed in Wuhan, China, Jan. 21, 2020.Is it merely coincidence? Or did the lab play a more substantial role in the outbreak? Without firm evidence, speculation has filled the void. Here’s what we know.U.S. safety concernsNestled in the hilly outskirts of Wuhan, the high-security bio-safety laboratory is Asia’s first maximum security lab, housing more than 1,500 virus strains.It has also been a source of concern for U.S. officials dating back at least two years.Two State Department cables show that American embassy officials in Beijing made several visits to the research facility and sent two official warnings back to Washington in early 2018 about the lab’s inadequate safety measures. This was at a time when researchers were conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats, The Washington Post reported, citing intelligence sources.An aerial view shows the P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province, April 17, 2020.Current and former U.S. intelligence officials in recent days also told different news outlets in the U.S. that the intelligence community is examining whether the coronavirus emerged accidentally from the lab and whether “patient zero” worked there.However, intel sources told VOA that the U.S. intelligence community “has not collectively agreed on any one theory” for the origin of the coronavirus.While the U.S. investigates, officials say the Chinese government’s continuing lack of transparency, including with respect to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, raises questions over how the outbreak began. Officials also accuse Beijing of still not sharing all of their data with the international community.Chinese safety concernsChina strongly rejects the possibility that the virus originated in the biosecurity lab instead of from animal-to-human transmission in Wuhan. However, authorities have offered little evidence to back up the claim.Instead, there is Chinese evidence that the lab had safety problems. VOA has located state media reports showing that there were security incidents flagged by national inspections as well as reported accidents that occurred when workers were trying to catch bats for study.This file photo taken on Feb. 23, 2017 shows workers next to a cage with mice (R) inside the P4 laboratory in Wuhan, capital of China’s Hubei province.About a year before the coronavirus outbreak, a security review conducted by a Chinese national team found the lab did not meet national standards in five categories.The document on the lab’s official website said after a rigorous and meticulous review, the team gave a high evaluation of the lab’s overall safety management. “At the same time, the review team also put forward further rectification opinions on the five non-conformities and two observations found during the review.”In addition to problems in the lab, state media also reported that national reviewers found scientists were sloppy when they were handling bats.One of the researchers working at the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention described to China’s state media that he was once attacked by bats and he ended up getting bat blood on his skin.In another incident the same researcher forgot to take protective measures, and the urine of a bat dripped “like rain onto the top of his head,” reported China’s Xinhua state news agency.In China, no single bio-safety enforcerChina’s government has long championed biotechnoloy, but more recently China’s top leader Xi Jinping has made lab safety a higher priority. Xi told a leadership meeting in Beijing last February that the country needed to accelerate the introduction of its first biosecurity law, outlining national policies for handling dangerous pathogens. A draft law was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, the nation’s top legislative body, for review in October last year.Chinese President Xi Jinping learns about the hospital’s operations, treatment of patients, protection for medical workers and scientific research in Wuhan, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak, Hubei province, March 10, 2020.An independent American review of China’s bio-safety controls in 2016 found that the country had a “shortage of officials, experts, and scientists who specialize in laboratory biosafety.”Beth Willis, the former Chairwoman of Containment Laboratory Community Advisory Committee, a citizen Lab Advisory Committee based in Maryland, said the greatest danger to the public from labs housing dangerous pathogens are when lab workers unknowingly become infected and then go into the community.”This actually happened more than once from the USAMRIID (The United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) labs at Fort Detrick, Maryland. While the worker became ill, or was hospitalized with a deadly pathogen, that pathogen was not infectious person to person, and an outbreak did not occur,” she said in an email to VOA.“Accidents happen on a regular basis. We have seen a few cases of high-profile labs in recent years where accidents happened or mistakes were made. For instance, in 2014 at the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) there were safety lapses involving Ebola virus, anthrax and bird flu, and there have been lapses at the NIH (National Institutes of Health) involving variola virus which causes smallpox,” said Dr Filippa Lentzos, a biosecurity expert at King’s College London.“These are just the tips of the iceberg.” Lentzos said.Chinese investigations into origin of COVID-19While Chinese diplomats and officials have floated a variety of conspiratorial theories about where the outbreak began, the country’s foreign ministry has insisted the search must be left up to the experts.Medical staff treat a critical patient infected by the COVID-19 with an Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) at the Red Cross hospital in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province, March 1, 2020.”China has mentioned many times that the origin of the virus is a scientific question, which should be evaluated by scientists and medical experts, and should not to be politicized, “Geng Shuang, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at a routine press briefing on Monday.But Chinese officials themselves have produced little data for scientists to examine, and have kept the lab and critical parts of Wuhan virtually sealed off from foreign investigators.The People wearing face masks walk down a deserted street in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei Province, Jan. 28, 2020.”A major component of the novel-bat-virus project at Wuhan Institute of Virology involved infection of laboratory animals with novel bat viruses,” said Richard H. Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University.“Therefore, the possibility of a lab accident includes both: (1) scenarios with direct transmission of a bat virus to a lab worker, and (2) scenarios with transmission of a bat virus to a laboratory animal, such as a ferret, and then to a lab worker.”Bio-safety level 4 labs like the one in Wuhan are the most sophisticated containment labs that are designed to work with the world’s deadliest pathogens. However lab design cannot overcome poor training or human error.Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli (L) is seen inside the P4 laboratory in Wuhan, capital of China’s Hubei province, Feb. 23, 2017.This risk is increased if the laboratory is culturing a virus that is readily able to infect humans, particularly via the respiratory tract, as then any droplet caused by simple splash or aerosolization of liquid can be inhaled unknowingly and infect the operator,” said Dr. Nikolai Petrovsky, a professor at Flinders University and Research Director in Australia.”Similarly, if they are wearing gloves that are contaminated and don’t take them off properly this can cause accidental infection. Lastly, if waste material or animal carcasses that are infected are not properly incinerated at high temperature then this could cause contamination including, for example, if the waste is dumped on a garbage pile that is frequented by rats or cats etc.,” Petrovsky said in an email to VOA.Rutgers University Professor Ebright said in an email to VOA that lab’s previous safety violations indicate it is a possible infection source that should be taken seriously.”Documentary evidence indicates that the novel-bat-virus projects at Wuhan CDC and Wuhan Institute of Virology used PPE and bio-safety standards that would pose high risk of infection of lab staff upon contact with a virus having the transmission properties of the outbreak virus,” Ebright said.VOA’s correspondents Jeff Seldin and Nike Ching contributed to this story.
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Ugandan Security Forces Arrest Writer, TV Anchor After Coronavirus Posts
Ugandan security forces have arrested a writer and a television news anchor over posts they allegedly wrote on social media related to the coronavirus pandemic. Author Kakwenza Rukirabashaija appeared in court Monday, charged with committing an act that could spread the virus. Police also detained TV anchor Samson Kasumba as he left work and say he is under investigation. Kakwenza was arrested Monday by a team of operatives from the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence who stormed his home in Iganga district, Eastern Uganda.Kakwenza is the author of a satirical book titled The Greedy Barbarian, which most readers see as a comment on the president, Yoweri Museveni.After his arrest, he appeared before a Grade One Magistrate Court in Iganga and was charged with conducting an act likely to spread a disease.He is accused of posting a Facebook message on April 6 that allegedly urged the public not to comply with public health guidelines issued to prevent the spread of COVID-19.In the message, Kakwenza posted a picture taken inside a market, showing how people in Iganga were ignoring government guidelines on social distancing.The message suggested the president needs to “be serious” about enforcing directives, and said, “If the country plunges into the abyss of famine … never blame coronavirus but yourself and bigoted methods.”Eron Kiiza, Kakwenza’s lawyer, spoke to VOA via Whatsapp.“They produced him in court, but now not in Kampala, in Iganga and he was remanded up to 6th May. They refused him the chance to make his bail application yesterday and he has some torture marks, especially on his feet. But, we are happy that he’s at least from military detention to civil detention,” said Kiiza.In a separate incident, police arrested a Kampala television anchor, Samson Kasumba, as he left his TV station Monday night.Police spokesman Fred Enanga spoke about the arrest on Tuesday.“He’s a subject of investigation and it’s not connected in any way to his journalistic work. But, he’s being investigated together with others for alleged subversive activities,” he said.The spokesman did not specify what the alleged activities were. Over the weekend, Kasuma posted a Facebook message about the coronavirus that appeared to be non-controversial. The message said recoveries have surpassed active cases in Uganda, and asked if Uganda was the first country to accomplish this.Arnaud Froger, head of the Africa desk for media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, said the group has recorded 65 press freedom violations in sub-Saharan Africa since the start of the coronavirus crisis.He said authorities in multiple countries are trying to make journalists stick to the government line on the pandemic.“Because they are afraid that independent information may get out. They are afraid that their official discourse may not be what corresponds to the facts that journalists are finding independently,” said Froger.Reporters Without Borders insists correct information is essential in the fight against the pandemic and has called on governments to make the media their ally, not an enemy.
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Britain Says 2 Research Teams Progressing on Potential COVID Vaccines
British Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced Tuesday that two separate British research teams are making significant progress on a COVID-19 vaccine, with one them planning to run trials on people on Thursday.At a news briefing in London, Hancock said researchers at both the Imperial College of London and Oxford University had are moving into the trial stage with their potential vaccines.He said the Oxford team, which has been working closely with Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) was prepared to begin conducting clinical trials on people this week. He said the government is allocating about $25 million to fund their effort.He said the government is also allocating more than $27 million to Imperial College to fund phase two of its clinical trials, and for it to start a phase three trial.Hancock said normally it would take years to get to this stage of vaccine development. He said Britain will invest heavily in manufacturing capability so that, in event one of the vaccines is proven effective, they can quickly make it available.
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Thai Monks Adopt Earth Day Practices to Eliminate Plastic Waste
The monks of Pa Book temple in Lamphun, Thailand, observe Earth Day every morning by collecting alms through methods that minimize waste. They’ve transformed the village of Pa Book into a model for zero-waste living. VOA’s Warangkana Chomchuen reports.
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New York Governor Heads to Washington to Seek COVID-19 Testing Assistance
New York’s governor is heading to Washington Tuesday, where he said he will “tell the truth” to President Donald Trump about the need for the federal government to help states carry out large-scale coronavirus testing. “You tell the truth,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said about how he will approach the president, with whom he has sometimes had a difficult relationship. “I said that to the president from Day One. And by the way, he has done the same vis-à-vis me. He has no problem telling me when he disagrees, and he tells me when he agrees.” Cuomo wants Washington to step up and assist U.S. states with both diagnostic testing — to know if an individual has COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus — and to do antibody testing to learn whether a person has some immunity to the virus. Specifically, the governor wants help procuring the pieces to the test kits — nasal swabs, test tubes, chemical reagents and solutions. These are needed in vast quantities to make large-scale testing possible, and Cuomo has said it is too big a job for individual states to handle. He has also repeatedly complained that the purchasing process pits individual states against each other in shopping and bidding wars, especially when purchasing overseas. “I think the federal government has to take that national manufacturers’ supply chain issue,” he said, of the domestic firms that cannot meet demand. “You shouldn’t expect all these governors to go run around and do an international supply chain while they are trying to put together their testing protocol, in their state.” There is little traffic on 125th Street, April 16, 2020, in the Harlem neighborhood of New York during the coronavirus pandemic.New York has been the hardest hit U.S. state by the pandemic. The state crossed the 250,000-case mark on Tuesday, and while new case numbers are stabilizing, and new deaths dropped below 500 for the second day in a row, the crisis is far from over. The southern part of New York has been hardest hit by the outbreak than the upstate region. Ninety-three percent of all confirmed virus cases have been in the southern region; only 7% have been upstate. The governor spoke to reporters in the town of Buffalo in the far western part of the state. He said he would consider reopening upstate businesses first, once the infection rate has stabilized. “It’s more the ‘when’ and the ‘how’,” he said of reopening the western part of the state. “When do you reopen it? Look at the data. Look at the hospital rate. Look at the infection rate and tell me where you are.” He said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines also say a region must be stable or declining in coronavirus infections for at least two weeks before loosening restrictions. Cuomo also emphasized that reopening should be data-driven, not based on political pressure. “If you don’t want to take the political heat, you shouldn’t be in the political kitchen, which is called being an elected official,” he said.
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Volunteers Step in to Help South African Rhino Orphanage
A South African baby rhino sanctuary found itself facing a dual threat from the COVID-19 pandemic: an influx of newly orphaned rhinos and a lack of volunteers.The Rhino Orphanage in South Africa’s Limpopo province is a non-profit facility that specializes in raising baby rhinos left orphaned by poachers and eventually returning them to the wild.They rely on foreign volunteers for much of their staffing, but the coronavirus pandemic forced them to leave when their visas were revoked.Orphanage staffer Yolande van der Merwe said they were also concerned the lockdown would lead to an uptick in poaching, resulting in more orphaned rhinos coming to the facility.A series of phone calls and social media posts led to hundreds of South Africans willing to step up — many of whom, themselves, were out of work because of the pandemic.Africa’s rhino population has been decimated over decades by poachers who sell them to meet the demand for rhino horns in Asia.
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From Cycle Couriers to Fruit Sellers: Hungary’s Workers Adapt to COVID-19 Crisis
As Europe counts the human and economic costs of the coronavirus lockdowns, Hungary appears to have gotten off lightly. It has nearly 2,100 reported cases and 213 deaths so far, compared to tens of thousands in the worst-hit countries. Nevertheless, economists predict the country’s GDP will shrink by close to 10 percent. As Henry Ridgwell reports, many workers are having to adapt quickly to the dramatically changing labor market in the nation of nearly 10 million people. Gabor Ancsin and Justin Spike in Budapest also contributed to this report.
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Solving Cambodia’s Plastic Problem Seen as Key to Minimizing Waste
Lang Teng and his wife Him Chan Ouen have sold vegetables for more than four decades. They own two stalls totaling four meters square in the Boeng Keng Kong market, where shoppers can get a haircut or purchase housewares on the way to buying groceries for the day’s meals.
Lang Teng opened his business in Phnom Penh not long after the murderous Khmer Rouge rule ended in 1979.
Today he remembers how shoppers arrived at the market back then, each with an empty basket. They moved from stall to stall, buying basics—vegetables, meat, fish, eggs—and tucking purchases into the baskets that always seemed to have room for another item.Until the late 1990s, Lang Teng said vendors wrapped items in “leaves like banana leaves, [and] water hyacinth strings. Now, we don’t see that anymore.”
Today, people go to the market without baskets and return home with food wrapped in plastic carried in plastic bags. Even big blocks of ice are protected in plastic,
a big change from the traditional way of tying up ice blocks with water hyacinth strings to carry them.
Cambodians of Lang Teng’s basket-carrying generation remember routinely living a life that produced little to no waste. With a per capita income of $103, they had little disposable income and weren’t big consumers. What they had, they used until it wore out, then repurposed whatever remained. Ahead of the trend, they lived a zero-waste life.
The Zero Waste International Alliance defines it as “the conservation of all resources by means of responsible production, consumption, reuse, and recovery of products, packaging, and materials without burning and with no discharges to land, water, or air that threaten the environment or human health.”
People in Cambodia’s capital city of Phnom Penh produce about 3,000 metric tons of solid waste every day. Nearly 60 percent of municipal solid waste comes from households, followed by hotels and guesthouses (16.7%), restaurants (13.8%), markets (7.5%), to shops (5.4%) and offices (1.4%), according to a 2016-2018 A man rummages through trash at Dangkor Landfill, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Dec. 31, 2019. (Tum Malis/VOA Khmer)Local authorities opened the Dangkor Landfill in 2009, predicting it would swallow waste without a hiccup for the next 25 years. Designed at 31 hectares, after just five years, the first phase, comprising 14 hectares, was full, according to a 2016 case study, Reforming Solid Waste Management in Phnom Penh.
“Since opening, the amount of waste entering the landfill has increased from approximately 800 tons per day in 2009, to 1,475 tons per day in 2014, with some forecasts estimating that this will increase to 2,200 tons per day by 2020,” said the case study published by The Asia Foundation.
In May, 2019, Keo Channarith, director of the Dangkor Dumpsite Management Committee, told the Phnom Penh Post the dump would be full by the end of 2020 or early 2021.
“The expected lifetime of the Dangkor [Landfill] was much longer,” said Rajeev Kuman Singh, a police researcher at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) in Japan. He has consulted with the Cambodian government on waste management planning.
Rapid population growth, little organized recycling and growing prosperity were among the factors that lead to an exponential increase in the amount of waste that overwhelming the landfill, according to Singh. In 1979, Cambodia’s population was 6.77 million and in 2018, it was 16.2 million, according to the World Bank, which figured the per capita income was $1,510 in 2018.
In the Cambodian government’s Phnom Penh Waste Management Strategy and Action Plan 2018-2035, the focus is on waste management, which is the collection, transportation and disposal of waste. The 166-page document released in October 2018 discusses the importance of the “3Rs” (reduce, reuse, and recycle of waste) and the need to promote educate waste-producers on how to dispose of it properly.
Uncontrolled disposal is the “least favored option” and reducing waste, or minimization, is the “most favored option”.
“This zero-waste concept is applicable in Asian countries including Cambodia, however, achieving zero waste for Asian countries is a long journey” said Rajeev.
A seller across from Lang Teng’s stall made an observation. Fifty-year-old pork seller Chrin Chhenglea, said to reduce plastic it has to start from buyers.
“It’s possible when it starts from shoppers,” said Chhenglea. “Sellers like us don’t want to give out plastic bags; it has to start with shoppers. They should bring their own shopping bag.”Water gets delivered to shelter dwellers at Dangkor Landfill, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Dec. 31, 2019. (Tum Malis/VOA Khmer)Chhenglea added it would be more effective if the campaign to reduce plastic use was promoted in markets like Beung Keng Kang because many Cambodian patronize them instead of the more expensive malls.
“I think if they talk more about it inside the wet market like this, we would be more informed,” Chhenglea said “everyone would be reminded to bring their own bags to shop.”
Activists and international NGOs say they are working to increase understanding of the 3Rs. Many are focused on reducing plastic waste. At Sotheavy, founder of Think Plastic, a campaign that raises awareness about plastic usage and how to reduce it, thinks Cambodia may need to improve its basic waste management before embracing the notion of zero waste.“I would never plan to be that extreme. I never thought about it, I could never see myself going toward zero waste at all,” At Sotheavy said. “It is too extreme.”Although At Sotheavy supports the idea of zero waste, she asked, “How would we begin on step 10 when we’re only doing steps 1, 2 and 3? We just started to talk about waste management.”
And that conversation is going on as Lang Teng says his customers rely “on us giving away plastic bags.”
Baskets, banana leaves, and water hyacinth strings and trunks may have suited Cambodians when Lang Teng began his business, but four decades later, plastic is so cheap and so convenient that millions of plastic bags are used each day Phnom Penh, according to a 2019 report by the United Nations Development Program. The city with its metropolitan area has a population of about 2.2 million.
As long as the country lacks a waste management infrastructure, the report says “effective recycling of plastic waste in Cambodia is nearly impossible.”
While Cambodia needs to set up its system of waste management and reduce waste, the processes must be well thought out, according to Nick Beresford, UNDP’s country director in Cambodia.
“We want to be able to do this transition without the burden falling on the poorest people,” he said. ““This is really at the heart of the issue that we are looking at with the government, because it’s no point to simply banning the use of plastic that we don’t have the particularly good alternatives,” said Beresford.
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US Pork Farmers Panic as Virus Ruins Hopes for Great Year
After enduring extended trade disputes and worker shortages, U.S. hog farmers were poised to finally hit it big this year with expectations of climbing prices amid soaring domestic and foreign demand.
Instead, restaurant closures due to the coronavirus have contributed to an estimated $5 billion in losses for the industry, and almost overnight millions of hogs stacking up on farms now have little value. Some farmers have resorted to killing piglets because plunging sales mean there is no room to hold additional animals in increasingly cramped conditions.
“One producer described it to me the other day as a snowball rolling downhill, and every additional disruption that we have just kind of adds to that and how fast and how big it’s going to be when it finally hits,” said Mike Paustian, who farms 2,400 acres (971 hectares) of corn and soybeans and sells 28,000 pigs a year near the small eastern Iowa community of Walcott.
COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has created problems for all meat producers, but pork farmers have been hit especially hard.
They entered this spring in shaky financial condition because tariffs had drastically reduced sales to China and Mexico. Many operations have struggled to get enough workers, in part due to federal immigration policies. Then demand plunged because the virus forced the closure of restaurants, hotels and other businesses that buy about 25% of pork, including nearly three-quarters of bacon produced in the U.S.
The biggest problem could be getting worse as additional giant slaughterhouses that can process more than 20,000 hogs a day have had to close at least temporarily as the virus spreads among workers. The industry slaughters from 10 million to 12 million pigs a month.
Whereas poultry producers can slow production by not hatching baby chicks and ranchers can keep cattle on pastures longer, pork farmers don’t have good options. Hogs are raised inside barns with limited space, and it takes time to stop the birthing cycle for pigs.
“We are in crisis and need immediate government intervention to sustain a farm sector essential to the nation’s food supply,” said Howard Roth, a pig farmer from Wauzeka, Wisconsin, and president of the National Pork Producers Council, an industry trade group.
The group has asked the federal government to buy $1 billion worth of pork in cold storage that had been destined for restaurants and instead give it to food banks, which have been besieged by people who have lost their jobs as much of the economy has shut down.
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it would spend $3 billion to buy fresh produce, dairy and meat that will be sent to food banks. Roth said the purchase will hopefully help move a backed up supply of pork and help raise hog prices. The USDA also said it planned $1.6 billion in direct payments to pork farmers with limits of $250,000 per individual.
Roth said the aid was appreciated but wasn’t enough to meet their problems.
Farmers have also received emergency waivers from the government to increase the number of pigs they can keep in barns beyond normally allowed limits. Still, farmers without extra space are faced with the prospect of killing baby pigs they can’t afford to feed.
“Sadly it’s true that euthanizing is a question that’s going to come up on farms,” Roth said.
Paustian, the eastern Iowa farmer, said the most frustrating part has been the uncertainty of scheduling deliveries of hogs to meat producers that fall through. Even as the majority of slaughterhouses have continued to operate, most plants are large and their closure is a severe hardship for hog farmers who operate in the region, he said.
Because a plant has closed about 40 miles (64 kilometers) away in Columbus Junction, Iowa, Paustian said farmers in his area are sending hogs to other plants in the state and Indiana.
“Producers are on pins and needles every day right now, and nobody knows if they’re going to get loads out. They get loads scheduled then they get canceled. It’s kind of a roller coaster of emotion for producers right now,” Paustian said.
Producers he knows have been able to sell about half of the pigs they’d normally send to market. It’s enough to get by for a few weeks, but it’s not sustainable, Paustian said.
For many pork producers, the coronavirus pandemic may be the final straw, said Nick Giordano, a vice president at the National Pork Producers Council.
“We are hearing from lots of producers. They’re hanging on for dear life,” Giordano said.
Besides seeking the purchases for food banks and direct payments to producers, the group wants to make agricultural businesses eligible for a federal economic injury disaster loan program.
While not denying the industry’s problems, some people who raise pigs independently say the coronavirus has revealed that the industry is too reliant on a few large international corporations that oversee everything — from raising hogs to processing plants and even marketing and sales.
Chris Petersen, a northern Iowa farmer, raises Berkshire pigs “the old fashioned way” — in individual A-frame houses instead of large confinement buildings. He laments the loss of the independent farmers who marketed pigs to nearby buying stations that delivered the animals to smaller packing plants much closer to the farms.
“It’s a very fragile system because everything has to work just right,” Petersen said.
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Algeria Targets Online Media
Algerian authorities have blocked a third online news website that covered the anti-government “Hirak” protest movement, stirring condemnation Monday from media watchdog Reporters Without Borders. RSF also voiced concern that a draft law on “fake news” could be used as another channel to “muzzle the press.” The draft legislation aims to “criminalize … fake news,” which authorities say could undermine national security. “Algeria is the country recording the largest numbers of deaths related to the coronavirus in Africa but authorities prefer to hound the free press,” said the RSF director for North Africa, Souhaieb Khayati. Algerian authorities earlier this month shut down online media sites Maghreb Emergent and Radio M. On Sunday, news website Interlignes was also hit by the censor’s axe and no longer accessible online, said founder Bouzid Ichalalene. “The authorities are trying to push serious media to close and allow only the mediocre ones to exist,” Ichalalene told AFP. There was no immediate comment from the authorities. In July last year, Interlignes was targeted by the authorities for its coverage of the Hirak protest movement. For more than a year, Algeria was gripped by weekly protests which started in February 2019 and led to the resignation of veteran president Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Demonstrations continued even after he stepped down in April with protesters demanding a complete overhaul of the political establishment. But the rallies have been suspended as the authorities imposed lockdowns to try to stem the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Algeria has declared 384 deaths and more than 2,700 confirmed cases, according to latest figures. Said Salhi, vice president of the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights, said authorities were targeting online media outlets because they are “more active” and “escape government control.” Salhi said the new draft law was “another turn of the screw against freedoms” in Algeria. The bill is aimed at “legalizing the campaign of repression which for months has targeted activists of the Hirak movement, journalists and human rights defenders,” Salhi said. RSF said it fears that the draft legislation will become a “tool” in the hands of the authorities to “muzzle the press.” At least two journalists are behind bars in Algeria, including Khaled Drareni, correspondent of French channel TV5 Monde and RSF.
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Queen Elizabeth II Marks 94th Birthday Without Fanfare
Britain is marking Queen Elizabeth II’s 94th birthday with silence Tuesday, as the nation in lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic forgoes the usual gun salutes and ringing of bells. With thousands dead amid the outbreak, the monarch decided that the celebratory display of military firepower would not be appropriate. Nor will there be a celebratory peal of bells at Westminster Abbey, as the church where the queen was married and crowned is currently closed. The royal family took to social media to share images of Elizabeth as she marks the occasion — but in keeping with social distancing rules, there will be no visits. The queen will mark the day with her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, 98, at Windsor Castle in Berkshire.
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Driver Killed in WHO Vehicle Carrying Virus Swabs in Myanmar’s Rakhine
A World Health Organization vehicle carrying swabs from patients to be tested for coronavirus came under gunfire in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state and the driver was killed, the United Nations said on Tuesday.It did not say who carried out the attack in a region where fighting between the army and Arakan Army insurgents has intensified despite global calls for a ceasefire over the pandemic that killed five and caused 119 infections in Myanmar.The driver, Pyae Sone Win Maung, had died in the state’s Minbya township on Monday, the United Nations office in Myanmar said in a Facebook post.”The WHO colleague was driving a marked U.N. vehicle from Sittwe to Yangon, transporting COVID19 surveillance samples in support of the Ministry of Health and Sports,” it added.Both Myanmar’s army and the Arakan Army denied responsibility for the attack and accused each other.In a statement, the information ministry said the U.N.-marked car came under gunfire from insurgents while carrying swabs from Rakhine to the biggest city, Yangon. The Arakan Army blamed the military.Government troops and insurgents from the Arakan Army, which wants greater autonomy for Myanmar’s western region, have been locked in fierce fighting for more than a year, but clashes have intensified recently.”Why would the military shoot them?” replied Major General Tun Tun Nyi, a military spokesman, when Reuters asked about the incident by telephone.”They are working for us, for our country. We have the responsibility for that… Everyone who has a brain knows that. If you are a Myanmar citizen, you shouldn’t ask that.”Another healthcare worker injured in the attack is being treated in hospital.The driver’s father, Htay Win Maung, said his son, aged 28, had worked for the WHO in Sittwe for three years.”My heart is broken for him,” he told Reuters by telephone. “I am trying to calm myself thinking he died in serving his duty at the frontline. He went there in the midst of fighting when many people didn’t dare to go.”Britain and the United States are among the countries that have called for an end to fighting in Rakhine, not least to help protect vulnerable communities from the pandemic.The Arakan Army declared a month-long ceasefire for April, along with two ethnic armed groups, citing the pandemic. The army rejected the plea, with a spokesman saying a previous truce declared by the government went unheeded by insurgents.
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Hard Hit by COVID-19, Spain Slowly Begins Easing Lockdown
Spain, with one of the highest death tolls from coronavirus, enacted strict social-distancing measures in mid-March. But with the number of infections and deaths now slowing, the prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, has announced the kingdom is cautiously moving to relax those measures. In this report narrated by Jonathan Spier, Alfonso Beato in Barcelona says Spaniards are anxiously awaiting a return – even if it is a slow one – to normal life.
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European Markets in Freefall Tuesday
European stock exchanges are in a slump Tuesday, as the historic drop in U.S. crude oil prices the day before continues to send shockwaves through the global economy. London’s FTSE exchange is down 1.7% in late-morning trading, while the CAC-40 in Paris and Frankfurt’s DAX index are both down 1.9%, A woman wearing face mask walks past a bank electronic board showing the Hong Kong share index at Hong Kong Stock Exchange, April 21, 2020.Tuesday’s drop began in Asian, with Japan’s Nikkei index losing 1.9% at the closing bell, while Australia’s S&P/ASX lost 2.5%, the Hang Seng in Hong Kong plunged 2.2%, and Seoul’s KOSPI lost a full one percent. Shanghai’s benchmark closed 0.9% lower. The negative trading in Asia and Europe seems likely to spill over onto Wall Street later in the day, with the S&P, Dow Jones and Nasdaq all down in futures trading. In oil futures trading, the U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude oil was trading near $12 per barrel for the second straight day, providing a welcome relief for investors who saw the price plunge to $-37.63 per barrel Monday, the first time in history the price of U.S. crude has dropped below $0 per barrel. Economic activity has ground to a halt worldwide amid the coronavirus pandemic, wiping out demand for gas and causing such a massive glut of oil that producers may have to pay their customers to take the excess supply off their hands. Meanwhile, international benchmark Brent crude was trading at $19.50 per barrel, down 6.4%.
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Zimbabwe HIV Positive Patients Struggle to Collect Their Meds
People living with HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe are having trouble accessing their medication due to the lockdown imposed because of COVID-19. The government recently extended the restrictions to run until May 3. VOA correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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Financially Strapped Virgin Australia Enters into Voluntary Administration
The coronavirus pandemic has forced Australia’s second-largest airline, Virgin Australia, into a voluntary administration agreement under which it will be run by an outside entity. The airline said Tuesday it had entered into an agreement with the global financial services company Deloitte after the Australian government rejected its request for a $887 billion loan. Administration is the equivalent of provisions in U.S. bankruptcy laws that are used to restructure financially ailing companies. Vaughan Strawbridge, one of the airline’s new administrators, said in a statement that the intention was “undertake a process to restructure and refinance the business and bring it out of administration as soon as possible.” Strawbridge says there are already several parties who have expressed interest in taking part in a restructuring plan. Virgin Australia was already mired in over $3 billion in debt when the government shut down international flights in and out of the country to limit the spread of COVID-19, forcing Virgin to ground most of its fleet and the majority of its 10,000 employees. The airline’s possible collapse would have left rival Qantas Airways with a virtual monopoly in Australia. Virgin Australia’s major shareholders include British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, which owns a 10 percent stake in the struggling airline.
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Data Analysis: Less Testing Could Account for Poorer Nations’ Lower Virus Cases
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in developing nations in Asia is relatively low when compared to those in other regions, but that is unlikely to be the good news optimists hope it is. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) conducted a data analysis suggesting the low figures are due to less testing—meaning there’s a danger the contagion could explode as cases go undetected.
ADB consultants Trinh Long and Peter Morgan looked at the number of tests and infections in Asian nations, and then compared them to the income per capita in those nations. Their study showed a “strongly positive relationship” in which wealthier nations had more “aggressive testing programs,” while poorer nations did far less testing per capita, they said.
“The prevalence of the virus in Asian emerging economies has been surprisingly subdued on the whole, so far,” Long and Morgan said in an analysis for the ADB Institute shared by email Friday. They added, “There are two possible interpretations—either people in lower-income economies have higher immunity, or those economies have less testing.”
There is no evidence to suggest people’s income has something to do with their immunity to a virus. Many of the developing nations in the analysis also are in hot climates, including India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand. People have said COVID-19 could go away in hotter weather. The World Health Organization, however, says on its “myth busters” page this is not true.Medical staff members of a government-run medical college collect swabs from people to test for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at a newly installed Walk-In Sample Kiosk in Ernakulam in the southern state of Kerala, India, April 6, 2020.“COVID-19 virus can be transmitted in areas with hot and humid climates,” the WHO said. “You can catch COVID-19, no matter how sunny or hot the weather is.”
In the absence of testing, people have used other proxies to deduce if rates of infection or death linked to the virus may be higher than are reported.
In the Indonesia capital of Jakarta, the number of funerals rose 40% in March, which the governor attributes to the virus, according to Reuters. The Economist magazine is compiling data that shows how many deaths various governments are reporting, compared with the number of deaths usually expected this time of year.
There is more than one factor that might explain why test rates are so low in developing nations in Asia, according to the ADB Institute’s Long, a project consultant, and Morgan, a senior consulting economist. These include cost, expertise and facilities.
“First, simply obtaining testing kits may be difficult due to their cost and competition with advanced countries for limited supplies,” they said. “Even if testing kits reach a country, the capacity to use them may be limited due to inadequacies in the health care system, a lack of laboratory facilities, or a relatively high share of the rural population, which is more difficult to reach. Country-level strategies may focus on testing only those with symptoms, rather than trying to sample the whole population.”
Not testing those without symptoms, however, could affect a nation’s ability to control the pandemic, they say.
Long and Morgan are calling on development agencies like theirs to aid nations to get test kits, provide medical care and buttress the economy from coronavirus impact. Without aid, they said, there is a “risk of rapid increases in infection rates in the future.”
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South Korean Officials Deny Talk About Kim Jong Un’s Health
South Korea’s government is disputing reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is seriously ill after undergoing heart surgery. A South Korean presidential spokesperson said Seoul has detected no unusual activity in North Korea and has “nothing to confirm” regarding the reports about Kim, who was absent from a key public celebration last week. The Daily NK, a South Korea-based online publication with a network of contacts in North Korea, on Tuesday reported Kim was in stable condition after a heart operation. The report cited unnamed “sources” who speculated the surgery was due to “a number of factors, including [Kim’s] obesity, prolific smoking habits, and ‘overwork.’” CNN, the U.S.-based television news network, later quoted unnamed U.S. officials who said they are “monitoring intelligence” that Kim is in “grave danger” after the surgery. The nature of the intelligence was not clear. Another unnamed U.S. official quoted by Bloomberg News said, “the White House was told that Kim underwent surgery last week and took a turn for the worse.” That report said Kim was in critical condition. Western countries are believed to have very few if any intelligence assets in North Korea, one of the most secretive and oppressive countries in the world. North Korea has not commented on the matter. Rumors about Kim’s health have spread since the 36-year-old leader was absent from last week’s public celebrations of North Korea’s most important political holiday.FILE – A woman talks on a mobile phone as Korean People’s Army soldiers gather for a memorial tribute before the statues of late North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, on Mansu hill in Pyongyang, North Korea, April 15, 2019.Kim made no public appearances during the Day of the Sun holiday, which marks the birth anniversary of Kim’s grandfather, the country’s late founding leader, Kim Il Sung. His last public appearance was April 11 at a meeting of the Korean Workers’ Party. The next day, Kim skipped a key session of North Korea’s rubber-stamp Parliament. According to the unconfirmed Daily NK report, Kim underwent surgery on April 12 at the Hyangsan Hospital in North Pyongan Province. The facility is “exclusively for the use of the Kim family,” the paper reported. “Kim is reportedly under the care of doctors at the Hyang San Villa, which is near the hospital,” the report added. But a source close to the South Korean government disputed the report, telling VOA the facility is not likely set up for major operations like heart surgery. “They have three major medical facilities in Pyongyang to deal with the leader and upper crust guys. I really doubt he’d have heart surgery there,” said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk publicly about the matter. The source also pointed to a Sunday statement from North Korea’s foreign ministry, which denied Kim had recently sent a letter to U.S. President Donald Trump. “If something had happened to Kim, the foreign ministry would probably not issue a statement like that, which means up until Sunday, Kim was in control,” the source said. A European diplomat based in Seoul also was skeptical. “As of right now, I wouldn’t take these rumors too seriously,” the diplomat told VOA. “But of course, who knows. Even though he’s very young, he’s clearly overweight.” It isn’t the first time that Kim Jong Un has been absent from major events or state media coverage. In 2014, Kim disappeared from state media for more than a month, before eventually appearing in public using a cane. “Kim Jong Un’s poor health and premature death was always a wild card in potential North Korea scenarios,” said Jung Pak, a former North Korea analyst for the CIA. She now works at the Brookings Institution. “At 36, Kim is obese and has a family history of heart disease. His reported ill health since summer might explain why his sister has been issuing statements in her own name in recent weeks,” Pak adds. Kim took power after the unexpected death of his father, Kim Jong Il, in 2011. Kim, who suffered a massive heart attack, had been dead for days before the rest of the world became aware of his death.
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US Lawmakers Close to Deal to Help Small Businesses, Hospitals
U.S. lawmakers are close to an agreement on a $450 billion package to help small businesses and hospitals in the latest move to respond to the coronavirus outbreak. The Senate could vote as early as Tuesday on the legislation. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said if the Senate gives its approval Tuesday, the House “could meet as early as Thursday” to consider the bill. The majority of the money would be targeted at small businesses that missed out on an earlier pool of rescue money. Under that program, if a business used the aid to pay employees during the next two months then the government will assume responsibility for the costs and the business will not have to pay it back. Officials want to help people stay employed and have businesses as ready as possible to ramp up their activity when it becomes safe for customers to return. A homeless panhandler checks his bucket for money along Wall Street where much of the Financial District stands empty as the coronavirus keeps financial markets and businesses mostly closed on April 20, 2020 in New York City.The governors of several U.S. states have announced plans to begin relaxing stay-at-home orders, including some beginning next week. Some states have seen small protests calling for a return to regular economic activity. But the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warned Monday that those who are ignoring the stay-at-home orders could be hurting the chances for economic recovery. “Unless we get the virus under control, the real recovery economically is not going happen,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” show. “So what you do if you jump the gun and go into a situation where you have a big spike (in more coronavirus cases), you’re going to set yourself back.” Trump has praised the protesters, saying that some governors “have gone too far” in imposing restrictions.
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Lesotho Coalition Government Calls for Prime Minister’s Immediate Resignation
The southern African country of Lesotho’s coalition government is calling for the immediate resignation of scandal-plagued Prime Minister Thomas Thabane. The 80-year-old leader has been under pressure to leave office after being linked to the murder of his estranged wife, 58-year-old Lipolelo Thabane, three years ago. The prime minister’s current wife, Maesaiah Thabane, is charged with shooting to death Lipolelo, two days before Thabane’s inauguration in 2017. Both the government of Lesotho and South African mediators released a joint statement Monday, saying Thabane’s departure should be graceful and that he gets what is described as a secure retirement. Its unclear if that means Thabane would no longer face legal consequences for his alleged ties to his estranged wife’s murder. Thabane has also been criticized for calling up troops over the weekend to restore order in Lesotho, following his claim some leaders in law enforcement were seeking to undermine democracy in the small country surrounded by South Africa. Observers believe the troop deployment to the capital, Maserua, was a last ditch effort by Thabane to remain in power. A day before he called up the troops, his authority took another hit when the constitutional court ruled against his decision to suspend parliament. Although Thabane has previously promised to leave office at the end of July, South African mediator Jeff Radebe told reporters his departure should be imminent.
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Covid-related Medical Supplies Arrive in Argentina from China
Tons of covid-related medical supplies are arriving in Argentina from China. A second plane of masks, protective suits, and chemicals used for coronavirus tests purchased from Beijing arrived in Argentina Monday, with more supplies expected to follow. Argentina is boosting its inventory to combat the virus as the country’s month long- lockdown comes to an end on Sunday. The imported supplies are flowing into Argentina just as the country’s Ministry of Productive Development issued a disposition to change the tariff codes, making it easier for supplies needed by medical professionals and the public to fight the virus to enter the country. Argentina is hoping by simplifying guidelines for importing certain products that its less likely to face shortages. Argentina has reported more than 2,900 coronavirus cases and 142 deaths linked to the disease.
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Trump Says US Suspending Immigration Due to Coronavirus
U.S. President Donald Trump says he will temporarily halt immigration due to the coronavirus outbreak. In a late Monday tweet, Trump called the outbreak “the attack from the Invisible Enemy,” and he cited a “need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens.”In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 21, 2020He offered few details, saying only the move would come by way of executive order. The United States has by far the most confirmed COVID-19 cases in the world. In March, the Trump administration closed the Mexican and Canadian borders to non-essential travel, and it also barred entry to any foreign nationals who in the past 14 days had been in China, Iran or the countries that make up Europe’s Schengen area.
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