A Taiwan-based company is planning a $12 billion semiconductor factory in the U.S. state of Arizona.Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is the world’s largest contract manufacturer of computer chips.The firm said Friday the factory will create as many as 1,600 jobs. Thousands more jobs are expected to be created along the supply lines to support production of the 5-nanometer chips.The factory will be able to produce 20,000 of the wafers each month. They’re used in an array of consumer electronics, including the iPhones and defense equipment.Construction of the facility is to begin next year, and the location in Arizona has not been determined.“This project,” the company said, “is of critical, strategic importance to a vibrant and competitive U.S. semiconductor ecosystem that enables leading U.S. companies to fabricate their cutting-edge semiconductor products within the United States.”The firm has another U.S. factory in Washington state.U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross lauded the plan as showing the success of President Donald Trump’s programs.The company’s plan to set up the facility, he said, “is yet another indication that President Trump’s policy agenda has led to a renaissance in American manufacturing and made the United States the most attractive place in the world to invest.”Also praising the move was Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who said the facility will “increase U.S. economic independence, bolster our safety and competitiveness, and strengthen our leadership in high-tech manufacturing.”“This historic deal also strengthens our relationship with Taiwan, a vibrant democracy and force for good in the world,” he said.TSMC’s stock rose more than 1.5 percent Friday morning which outperformed the 0.8 percent gain in the main Taiwan stock market.
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Month: May 2020
COVID Emerges in Rohingya Refugee Camp in Bangladesh
A Rohingya refugee in the massive Cox’s Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh has tested positive for COVID-19.A local resident has also tested positive for the virus.World Health Organization spokesperson Catalin Bercaru told AFP, the French news agency, that rapid investigation teams have been deployed and the contacts of both men “are being traced for quarantine and testing.”Both patients have been placed in quarantine.“Now that the virus has entered the world’s largest refugee settlement . . . , we are looking at the very real prospect that thousands of people may die from COVID-19,” Dr. Shamim Jahan, Save the Children’s health director in Bangladesh, said in a statement. “This pandemic could set Bangladesh back by decades.”Aid workers had warned that if the virus emerged in the vast camp it would spread rapidly because of the settlement’s unsanitary conditions.The refugee camp is home to almost a million people.The Rohingya fled to Cox’s Bazar more than two years ago, following a military offensive that targeted them in Myanmar.Before the emergence of the virus in the refugee camp, Bangladesh was already engaged in a battle against COVID-19. The South Asian nation has nearly 18,000 confirmed cases of the virus, with almost 300 deaths.
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Fighting for Liberty: Protests in the U.S. Push Against Lockdown Rules
This week in Michigan, protesters gathered at the state capitol to express their frustration with the state’s lockdown rules. Such protests have sprouted up around the United States as some people buck against what they see as overreaching government control in their lives. Matt Dibble reports.
Camera: Sam Paakkonen Produced by: Matt Dibble, Barry Unger
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Nominee to Lead US Media Agency Under Investigation
The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said Thursday the nonprofit organization run by President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the federal agency with oversight of Voice of America is under investigation by the District of Columbia attorney general’s office.New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez said late Thursday the attorney general’s office is investigating whether Michael Pack’s use of funds from his nonprofit, Public Media Lab, was unlawful and whether he improperly used those funds to benefit himself.The U.S. Agency for Global Media is the agency that oversees U.S. government broadcasting, including the Voice of America, among others.Menendez said that since Pack’s confirmation hearing in September, “Mr. Pack has refused to provide the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with documents it requested that get to the heart of the matter that the OAG (Office of Attorney General) is now investigating, or to correct false statements he made to the IRS.”Menendez said he is urging the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Republican Jim Risch, to put the Pack nomination on hold.There has been no response so far from Pack or the White House to the Menendez statement. VOA has asked for comment from Risch.Trump nominated Pack to take over the USAGM nearly two years ago.
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Nairobi Neighborhood’s Residents Struggle to Make Living During COVID Lockdown
Kenyan authorities last week locked down the Nairobi neighborhood of Eastleigh because of a jump in confirmed coronavirus infections. As a result of the restriction of movement in and out of the area, aimed at slowing the spread of the virus, businesses in Eastleigh are struggling to get by.Mohamed Said, a food seller in the neighborhood, said business was poor, as few people were willing or able to shop at his store.Slack time in the morning”People are not coming to buy foodstuffs the way they used to before,” he said. “There is less movement of people around 4 in the evening. That’s when you see a few people around. When I come to the shop early in the morning, you regret coming to the shop that early because there are no people.”The lockdown is heightening frustration in the Somali-majority neighborhood in central Nairobi. Said’s neighbor, Hussein Osman, also a food seller, said he might soon go out of business.“Since the lockdown began, our business has gone down, and the lockdown has brought us a lot of losses,” he said. “We cannot afford to pay rent, and we are requesting the government to help whenever it can.”There were few people in the streets of Nairobi’s Eastleigh neighborhood, a predominantly Somali area, on May 14, 2020. Movement in and out of the area is restricted because of COVID-19. The lockdown is set to end May 20. (Mohammed Yusuf/VOA)Kenyan authorities closed off the area until May 20 after 29 new cases of the coronavirus were found there in a single day. Authorities are allowing only essential service providers, like medics and those delivering food, to enter and leave the area.Mohamed Mohamud said the restriction had made life difficult.“People here are businesspeople,” he said. “Some used to receive money from their relatives in Western countries, but now there is nothing. Coronavirus has crippled our people in the West, and the income we were getting from here — it’s closed. There is no help. There is no hope.”’We will succeed together’On Wednesday, Kenya’s interior minister, Fred Matiangi, met the leadership of Eastleigh and the Muslim community. He said the lockdown was meant to protect the community, and he rejected claims that the residents were singled out because they are mainly ethnic Somalis.“We are facing this challenge together,” the minister said. “We will succeed together if we continue to stand together. It’s unfortunate that perception can exist, but I came to confirm to you — and believe you me, for sure, this is the position of the government — there is no effort to target anyone on account of their creed, on account of their ethnic community.”The restriction on movements in the area is expected to end next week, but the decision will depend on how well the virus has been contained.
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Search for Coronavirus Vaccine Sparks Tensions
There are currently no known vaccines for COVID-19 but fighting over those that might be produced has begun.French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi has denied promising the United States priority access to its potential COVID-19 vaccine. French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe insisted Thursday that the access to any vaccine produced by the French company would be equal for all.The remarks came after Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson told Bloomberg News that the U.S. government had “the right to the largest preorder because it has invested in taking the risk.” The French company has plants in the United States, but most of them are in Europe.Sanofi Chairman Serge Weinberg told France 2 television that “there will be no particular advance given to any country.”In a similar controversy in March, the German public and the government reacted angrily to reports that U.S. President Donald Trump had allegedly offered German biopharmaceutical company CureVac $1 billion to secure the vaccine exclusively for the United States.German foreign minister Heiko Maas said at the time that German scientists were working to develop a COVID-19 vaccine as part of global cooperation.“We cannot allow a situation where others want to exclusively acquire the results. of their research,” Maas said.U.S. officials responded that the report had been exaggerated and that the U.S. government had talked to a number of pharmaceutical companies worldwide that are working on cure for COVID-19. An official said most of those companies had received some initial funding from U.S. investors.French President Emmanuel Macron intervened Thursday and said that a potential COVID-19 vaccine should not be subject to market forces and that he will address the issue with top Sanofi officials next week.A group of 140 current and former world leaders, experts and eminent citizens from around the world have published an open letter calling for a patent-free vaccine that would be made available at no cost to people everywhere.The stormy reactions reflect growing displeasure with pharmaceutical companies that seek to make a profit from people whose health and even whose lives are at stake.Medical face masks and portraits of St.Petersburg’s medical workers who died from coronavirus infection hang at a unofficial memorial in front of the local health department in St. Petersburg, Russia, May 14, 2020.The number of COVID-19 cases worldwide approached 4.5 million Thursday, with more than 300,000 recorded deaths.About 100 organizations worldwide are working on developing a coronavirus vaccine.Experts say that if a successful vaccine were found, producing enough to meet the immediate global demand would require a massive effort. Health officials warn of a new and possibly more deadly wave of COVID-19 infections in the fall.The Trump administration has been rejecting accusations that it ignored the outbreak during the crucial first few weeks and attempted to shift some of the blame onto the previous administration. The president has often been at odds with his own health officials, including the government’s chief infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, regarding the danger posed by the coronavirus.On Thursday another U.S. government health official told a congressional hearing that he had been removed from his post for raising concerns about U.S. preparedness for the coronavirus. Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), which is a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, told a House panel that the United States could face “the darkest winter” of recent times if it does not improve its response to the pandemic.Before the hearing, Trump called Bright a “disgruntled employee” who should no longer work for the government.The United States leads the world with the highest number of COVID-19 cases. More than 1.4 million people in the country have been infected and close to 86,000 have died, according to the Johns Hopkins University tally. The outbreak has ravaged the economy and led to the highest unemployment in the history of the U.S.The World Health Organization has warned that the coronavirus may become endemic, like HIV, even if a vaccine is found, and that communities must find ways to live with it.In addition to causing respiratory problems, the coronavirus pandemic has affected many people’s mental health as they worry about their financial future and live in prolonged isolation.
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Myanmar Migrants Rescued in Thailand
Twenty Myanmar trafficked migrants stranded at the Thai-Malaysia border for two months have been rescued, according to an official of the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok.U Sai Aye, the official interpreter of the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok, told VOA Burmese that the victims had languished in one room after an agent, who had promised them jobs in Malaysia, abandoned them in the face of travel restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic.When the embassy received a call from the group, none of the migrants knew where they were. The Myanmar Embassy requested assistance from the Thai military.The Thai military, with the help of immigration police, rescued the group in Sungai Kolok, a town in Narathiwat province, near the border with Malaysia, according to Sai Aye. The Thais handed over the victims to Myanmar authorities.Myanmar nationals who were rescued by Thai military in Sungai Kolok, near the border with Malaysia on May 13, 2020, after the group had been abandoned by a labor agent. (Courtesy photo)The labor agent, who was trafficking the Burmese, had charged each 1 million Myanmar kyats ($1,000) and promised to take them from Myanmar to Malaysia via Bangkok, according to Sai Aye. The agent told the victims they did not need passports for the trip, which was routed through illegal border crossings.When all border crossings became difficult because of heightened security designed to contain the spread of COVID-19, the agent abandoned the group, according to Sai Aye.The group eventually managed to contact the embassy, which gave the GPS information from their call to the Thai military.”They were rescued this morning and are safe under military care,” Sai Aye said Tuesday. He added that the victims will be handed over to Thai Immigration for repatriation.There is no information on the agent’s whereabouts.Late last month, Thai authorities in the same Sungai Kolok district of Narathiwat arrested seven Myanmar nationals, Department of Special Investigation deputy director-general Traiyarit Temahiwong told the Bangkok Post. The youngest person arrested was 15 years old, according to the newspaper.Trafficking reportMyanmar “is not making significant efforts” to eliminate trafficking, according to the 2019 U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report. Although the State Department credits the government with raising awareness of trafficking, the report states that “there were reports that government officials were complicit in both sex- and labor-trafficking, including by hindering law enforcement efforts against the perpetrators.”The State Department report found that Thailand “is making significant efforts” to meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.”These efforts included identifying more victims, sentencing convicted traffickers and complicit officials to significant prison terms, developing several manuals in partnership with civil society to standardize anti-trafficking trainings and policies,” according to the report. “Labor inspectors, for the first time, identified and referred potential victims to multidisciplinary teams, resulting in the identification of labor trafficking victims.”The report pointed out problems in Thailand, where “the government restricted the movement and communication of victims residing in government shelters, official complicity continued to impede anti-trafficking efforts, and officials did not consistently identify cases of trafficking, especially labor trafficking.”Malaysia is “making significant efforts” to eliminate trafficking, according to the State Department report. Malaysia has “continued to overhaul its foreign worker management system.” However, the report added that the “government’s victim protection efforts remained largely inadequate and some rehabilitation services such as medical care, telephone calls, freedom of movement, and the issuance of work permits were inconsistently implemented, if at all.”
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Senate Votes to Renew Federal Surveillance Powers
The Senate has passed legislation that would extend a series of expired federal surveillance tools designed to help law enforcement officials track suspected terrorists, moving one step closer to reviving them. The legislation passed the Senate 80-16 Thursday. The bill is a bipartisan compromise that has the support of Attorney General William Barr, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Yet it’s unclear how quickly the legislation can become law. The House passed the bill in March but will have to pass it again because of a change in the Senate. The House has been holding votes on a limited basis during the coronavirus pandemic. President Donald Trump has said he will support the compromise, but GOP senators who are longtime skeptics of federal surveillance have tried to change his mind. They want him to veto it. The bill would renew the expired surveillance authorities and impose new restrictions to try to appease civil liberties advocates in both parties. The provisions at issue allow the FBI to get a court order for business records in national security investigations, to conduct surveillance without establishing that the subject is acting on behalf of an international terrorism organization, and to more easily continue eavesdropping on a subject who has switched cellphone providers to thwart detection. FILE – In this April 21, 2020, file photo Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., speaks with reporters after the Senate approved a nearly $500 billion coronavirus aid bill on Capitol Hill in Washington.”The attorney general and members of Congress have worked together to craft a compromise solution that will implement needed reforms while preserving the core national security tools,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “These intense discussions have produced a strong bill that balances the need for accountability with our solemn obligation to protect our citizens and defend our homeland.” McConnell urged senators to vote against amendments altering the bill. He said the legislation was already a “delicate balance” and warned changing it could mean the underlying provisions won’t be renewed. “We cannot let the perfect become the enemy of the good when key authorities are currently sitting expired and unusable,” McConnell said on the Senate floor before the vote. But senators adopted one amendment anyway, with more than three-fourths of the chamber supporting it. Another amendment came just one vote short of the 60 votes needed. The successful amendment, from Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, would boost third-party oversight to protect individuals in some surveillance cases. It was adopted 77-19. The proposal that fell just short of 60 votes would have prevented federal law enforcement from obtaining internet browsing information or search history without seeking a warrant. Senate Intelligence Committee member Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. questions CIA Director John Brennan on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 9, 2016.”Should law-abiding Americans have to worry about their government looking over their shoulders from the moment they wake up in the morning and turn on their computers to when they go to bed at night?” said Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon. “I believe the answer is no. But that’s exactly what the government has the power to do without our amendment.” Wyden co-sponsored the proposal with Republican Sen. Steve Daines of Montana. Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a think tank, said the near-adoption of the amendment “suggests a sea change in attitudes” about surveillance. A third amendment, by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a longtime skeptic of surveillance programs, was soundly defeated 11-85. It would have required the government to go to a traditional federal court, instead of the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, to get a warrant to eavesdrop on an American. The congressional debate coincides with internal efforts by the FBI and Justice Department to overhaul their surveillance procedures after a harshly critical inspector general report documented a series of problems in the FBI’s investigation into ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign. The report identified significant errors and omissions in applications that were submitted in 2016 and 2017 to monitor the communications of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Though the problems revealed by the Russia investigation relate more to the accuracy of surveillance applications than to the effectiveness of the expired tools at issue Thursday, they nonetheless drew additional scrutiny to the government’s spy powers as well as concerns from some in Congress that those authorities should be reined in. The FBI has announced steps designed to ensure that the application process is more accurate and thorough, and that information that cuts against the premise of the requested surveillance is disclosed to the court.
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Turkey’s Erdogan Eases Coronavirus Restrictions Despite Complacency Fears
Turkey is easing COVID-19 restrictions as the government claims success in containing the virus. While infection and death rates are falling, concerns remain that the move may be coming too soon. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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Asia Democracies Show Alternatives to Beijing’s Heavy-Handed COVID Strategy
China is touting its success in curbing its outbreak of COVID-19 that has now spread to the rest of the world. But the so-called success came at a steep price: The state’s massive surveillance network now intrudes even further into people’s lives, with more crackdowns on speech and more government critics in prison. Beijing argues the hard-line measures are needed, but other countries show such extreme measures may not be necessary. VOA State Department correspondent Nike Ching reports.
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Cameroon Arrests People Without Masks as COVID-19 Cases Increase
Police in Cameroon have detained several hundred people for not wearing face masks in public, as COVID-19 cases in the central African state continue to rise. Seventeen-year-old David Ngwa Fru said a team of police and gendarmes detained him and his two younger sisters in the capital, Yaounde, on Thursday morning.”The police removed us from a taxi on our way to the market because we were not wearing our masks. They detained us at the police station for three hours. We paid 2,000 (each) before we were released. Many people who did not pay the money are still there.”Fru, speaking to VOA through a messaging app, said that although they were not issued any receipts, the police told them that the $9 he and his siblings paid were fines for not wearing their masks, and assured them that the money would be sent to the state treasury.FILE – A health worker wearing protective equipment disinfects a member of medical staff amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at an hospital in Douala, Cameroon, April 27, 2020.Police official Oswald Ateba said officers are implementing a Cameroon government order that everyone in public must wear a face mask as of 6 a.m. Thursday. He said they have been instructed to arrest everyone found along the streets, markets, bars and popular spots without masks and to impound all vehicles and motorcycles that are seen with drivers and passengers not wearing masks.The police said authorities have detained hundreds of people, seized 250 motorcycles and impounded hundreds of taxis in Yaounde alone as part of efforts to implement the new rules.Government spokesperson Rene Emmanuel Sadi said the decision to make arrests came after lockdown restrictions were eased, but a majority of Cameroonians were not wearing masks.He said the government is also battling the growing stigmatization of people testing positive for COVID-19 and those who have recovered from the disease, stressing that COVID-19 is neither shameful nor a curse and any person can be contaminated.Cameroon has about 3,000 reported cases of COVID-19 and has recorded 139 deaths.Even though the government has eased the strict lockdown measures, Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute said on Wednesday no one should think that COVID-19 has been conquered in the central African state.
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Wisconsin Bars Fill After Court Lifts COVID-19 Lockdown
A Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling Wednesday rejecting the midwestern state’s stay-at-home order threw communities into chaos as some bars opened immediately and were packed with customers, while some local leaders moved to keep COVID-19-related restrictions in place.The 4-3 ruling essentially reopens the state, lifting caps on the size of gatherings, allowing people to travel as they please and permitting shuttered businesses, including bars and restaurants, to reopen.The Tavern League of Wisconsin swiftly posted the news on its website, telling members, “You can OPEN IMMEDIATELY!”The decision let stand language that had closed schools, and local governments can still impose their own health restrictions.In Dane County, home to the capital of Madison, officials quickly imposed a mandate incorporating most of the statewide order.But elsewhere, bars did not wait. The Iron Hog Saloon in the city of Port Washington opened its doors at 3 p.m. Wednesday. Owner Chad Arndt said his nine employees had not been paid in months.Video taken inside the bar showed customers did not wear masks or practice social distancing. Arndt said he has enhanced cleaning protocols but understands if customers do not want to come back.
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Trump Confident COVID-19 Vaccine Will Be Available by Year’s End
U.S. President Donald Trump is saying he is confident there will be a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year, and mass inoculations of the public will occur quickly.
“I think distribution will take place almost simultaneously because we’ve geared up the military,” Trump explained on Thursday, adding that further details will be released on Friday.
The president’s prediction contrasts with testimony heard on Capitol Hill shortly before Trump spoke on the White House South Lawn.
The ousted director of the federal government’s vaccine agency told lawmakers, “We don’t have a plan” to mass-produce and distribute a coronavirus vaccine. Hope for such a vaccine within 12 to 18 months assumes “everything goes perfectly,” Dr. Rick Bright testified. “We’ve never seen everything go perfectly.”
More than 90 vaccines for the novel coronavirus are in development around the world. German company CureVac said Thursday that one of its mRNA candidate vaccines has protected animals from the virus at low doses. Clinical trials are expected to begin next month.
Bright was removed as the director of the Biomedical Advance Research and Development Authority (BARDA), which is under the Department of Health and Human Services, an action that prompted the immunologist to file a whistleblower complaint.
Trump told reporters he watched some of Thursday’s testimony by Bright and “he looks like an angry, disgruntled employee who, frankly, according to some people, didn’t do a very good job.”Dr. Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, testifies before a House panel on the coronavirus pandemic, on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 14, 2020.Bright told a House health subcommittee that higher officials, including those at the White House, ignored his early warning about COVID-19, and the federal government was ill-prepared to respond to a pandemic.
The current administration blames any shortcomings on plans and supplies left by the previous administration of Barack Obama, who turned the presidency over to Trump in January 2017.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said this would be explained “line by line” in a briefing for reporters on Friday.
The president, prior to visiting a medical supply distributor in Pennsylvania, returned to his previous controversial promotion of an unproven malaria drug for treatment of the novel coronavirus.
“We’ve had tremendous response to the hydroxy(chloroquine),” asserted Trump, who also criticized Bright for “fighting it” when he was running BARDA.
Bright and others cautioned about the need for scientific studies about using the drug for COVID-19 treatment and warned of its dangers, including the possibility it could kill people.
Asked by a reporter if the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is over-counting U.S. deaths from the coronavirus, Trump replied, “I don’t know how they’re counting. I never discussed it with them. Death is death. We don’t want people dying in this country. And we’ve done a great job.”
The United States has recorded the most deaths and most COVID-19 cases of any country.
As of Thursday, according to records compiled by Johns Hopkins University, 1.4 million people have tested positive for the virus, and more than 84,000 have died in the country.
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Nigeria’s Poor Face Education Challenges During Pandemic
While the coronavirus has forced schools globally to switch to online learning, in developing countries like Nigeria, millions of children without remote- learning access have been left behind. Forty percent of Nigerians live on less than $1 a day and only one in four have internet access.Seated under a pine tree on a sunny afternoon, 13-year-old Charity Yakubu’s older sister, Susan, is playing the role of teacher as she takes Charity through lessons she would have been learning in school.This has been their routine since March, when the coronavirus pandemic led Nigeria to close schools.“I feel very sad because I don’t get to learn new things, all the things I’ve learnt, I’ve forgotten them. By God’s grace, let this coronavirus pandemic finish so that everybody can get to go back to school,” said Charity.Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics says only one in four Nigerians have internet access but three out of four have mobile phones.Nigerian educators, like Bala Babangida, the principal of the Unique Schools in Jos, says that while some Nigerians have been able to switch to online and social media learning, there are challenges.“Looking at the cost of data, and even the devices to use for effective learning, it is a bit problematic to Nigerians. I think if the government can do something about it, it will go a long way to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor,” said Babangida.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline. Embed” />CopyWith 40 percent of Nigerians living on less than a dollar a day, the added costs make remote learning, for the vast majority, out of reach.Veronica Ayuba has her 10-year-old daughter with her at her vegetable stall to help with the sales.Ayuba said she would rather have her daughter at home learning her schoolwork, but she is unable to help.Ayuba points out that authorities are saying parents should begin to teach children at home, but she said doesn’t know how to read, and she doesn’t know where to start.Making matters worse, the restrictions brought on by COVID-19 have cost many their jobs, including Yakubu’s mother, Salome, a domestic house maid.There is no money, Salome said, including money for food. She wonders where they can find the money to buy a good phone so they can learn on the internet.To help bridge the education gap, Nigeria is broadcasting lessons on state run television and radio stations, while children wait for the pandemic to ease up enough to allow schools to re-open.
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In Russia, Rumblings of Discontent Grow as Oligarchs Move to Plug Gaps
Once they scrambled to grab what they could from a disintegrating Soviet state, exploiting the political and economic chaos of the post-communist Boris Yeltsin era to secure state enterprises, oilfields and mineral deposits at knockdown prices. But now Russia’s uber-wealthy oligarchs are rushing to shore up a failing state effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Rumblings of discontent are growing in Russia over Vladimir Putin’s handling of the pandemic. His approval ratings fell to an historic low for him — down to 59 % last month from 63 % the previous month, according to the independent pollster Levada Center.
Even the normally loyal state-owned broadcaster Russia Today ran a report last week warning that the country risks a double-digit unemployment rate and a “return to the pain of the economic miasma of the Yeltsin years [that] would have unpredictable consequences for President Putin.”
The Russian leader is facing the biggest test of his presidency, but has passed on most of the responsibility for battling the deadly virus to the country’s regional governors.
Tasking regional governors with the main responsibility for tackling the coronavirus reverses the policy Putin has pursued since coming to power, say analysts and Russian media commentators. The Kremlin has over the years curbed the powers of the governors, insisting Russia needs a strong a central government.
“It is in the interest of all of us for the economy to return to normal quickly,” Putin said Monday when announcing the end of the non-working period. But a return to normality seems a long way away. On Tuesday his own spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, checked himself into a hospital after testing positive, the fifth senior official to have to do so.FILE – Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen during a teleconference at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence, outside Moscow, May 11, 2020.Putin is being accused of wanting to distance himself from the pandemic, fearing the political fallout, say some analysts. Earlier this week the Russian leader announced the end of a nationwide “non-working period,” leaving to the governors to decide whether to ease lockdowns in their regions or not. His announcement draw derision from many Muscovites, who pointed out that just hours before his announcement, health authorities reported the biggest one-day increase so far in infections.
“Despite having created a highly centralized political system, he is not going to be the commander-in-chief of this war. Instead, he would rather force local leaders to take the tough decisions, demanding they both save lives and save the economy, while sniping at them from the sidelines,” according to Mark Galeotti, an analyst at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), and a columnist for the Moscow Times.“He is retaining real power, but handing his boyars the burden of coronavirus,” he adds.
FILE – Russian steel magnate Alexei Mordashov speaks during an interview at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, in St. Petersburg, Russia, May 25, 2018.In their turn the governors have found Russia’s oligarchs ready to try to help them to plug the holes left by the state in the struggle to curb the virus. The embrace of social responsibility by some of Russia’s prominent high-rollers — including steel magnate Alexei Mordashov, who instructed four regional governors to lock down their cities where he has mills, and mining magnate Vladimir Potanin, who has spent more than a hundred million dollars on testing kits, protective masks and ventilators — has surprised some.
When the virus was bearing down on Russia, some independent news outlets reported wealthy Russians were rushing to buy ventilators, adding to shortages. Moscow-based medical pulmonologist Vasiliy Shtabnitskiy, told reporters he was aware of rich Muscovites hoarding ventilators. Although he added that might not do them any good without plenty of supplies of pressured oxygen and other crucial equipment as well as trained staff. But for the super wealthy — especially the mega-rich oligarchs — bespoke medical teams would not be beyond their reach.FILE – Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska is seen outsite his GAZ car production plant in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, April 16, 2019.But in recent weeks as cases have mounted — Russia has the second fastest rate of new infections globally — and discontent increased with a smattering of protests, the oligarchs started to intervene. Metals magnate Oleg Deripaska is funding three COVID-19 clinics in Siberia. The oligarchs have presented their involvement as being motivated by patriotism, avoiding overt criticism of the state strategy, although Deripaska publicly urged in March the Kremlin to seal shut all borders and to impose a 60-day quarantine on the country.
Analysts say oligarchs need to be mindful of the unwritten deal between them and Putin of not getting involved in politics. They have examples to warn them of the danger of breaking the deal, including the case of oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was the world’s 16th richest man when arrested in 2003 on charges of fraud and embezzlement and sentenced to a nine-year prison stretch.
Patriotism or not, some analysts hazard that the oligarchs are moving now to try to fill in the holes for fear that the system Putin presides over — which also protects their wealth — is facing serious risks.
The Russian president has had to put on hold his plans to rewrite the Russian constitution, which would allow him another 12 years in office, “while the Kremlin tries to deal with both the virus and a new economic crisis,” says Tatiana Stanovaya, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, a think tank. “These twin challenges represent the biggest shock the Putin regime has ever faced and are likely to feed popular dissatisfaction,” she adds.
The economic fallout is mounting. A quarter of working-age Russians say they have lost their jobs or expect they will soon. Six out of ten Russians have no savings. There have been isolated protests and analysts say there’s a real prospect of much wider unrest, once the pandemic starts to accelerate beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg, where hospitals and local health services have been neglected for years. FILE – Medical personnel wearing protective gear move what appears to be a bag containing a human body, outside a hospital for coronavirus patients, on the outskirts of Moscow, Russia May 12, 2020.On Monday, the Kremlin appeared to understand the danger. Putin made his fifth address to the nation since the coronavirus outbreak, announcing new measures for supporting ordinary Russians as well as small businesses. Among the measures — bonuses for doctors and social workers, benefits for families with children, preferential credit terms for company owners and tax exemptions for small businesses. There had been mounting public criticism of the neglect of small business with preferential treatment going to much bigger concerns previously.
The measures received praise from economists. “For the first time during the crisis we are seeing that the size of payments is at least somewhat in line with what economists wrote about, and what opposition leaders suggested,” Konstantin Sonin, a professor at the University of Chicago and Russia’s Higher School of Economics, told Meduza, an independent news site.
Evsey Gurvich, an economist, agrees, but told Meduza it would have been better “if there had been a large-scale, anti-crisis program announced at the very beginning of the crisis — this would have helped many to decide not to close their businesses.”
Whether the new measures will dampen political frustration is unclear. For working-class Russians the new payments will cover their grocery costs for one month.
And few believe the coronavirus death toll the Kremlin has been publishing. In Moscow alone, the country’s coronavirus hotspot where 52 % of the officially registered confirmed cases have occurred, analysts as well as the city’s mayor say coronavirus-related cases and fatalities are being seriously under-reported.
Russia confirmed 9,974 new coronavirus infections Thursday, bringing the country’s official tally of cases to 252,245. The total nationwide death toll is put at 2,305 — a mortality rate much lower than other European countries with better reserved and rated health-care systems. The Kremlin says Russia was able to learn lessons from the experiences of western Europe.
Trust in the mortality rate officially given is low. Russia’s first recorded virus-related fatality — an elderly woman who died on March 19 — was reclassified as having died from a blood clot.
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Nigeria’s Poor Face Education Challenges Amid Pandemic
While the coronavirus has forced schools globally to switch to online learning, in developing countries like Nigeria, millions of children without remote learning access have been left behind. Forty percent of Nigerians live on less than $1 a day and only one in four have internet access. Ifiok Ettang looks at how families are trying to cope, in this report from Jos, Nigeria.
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80-Year-Old Russian Woman Defies COVID Fears to Help Others
In a world full of bad news on coronavirus, the good deeds of quiet people often go unnoticed. In a report narrated by Jonathan Spier, Ricardo Marquina and Sergey Smolyakov bring us the story of an octogenarian in St. Petersburg, Russia, who – despite being in the highest-risk group – goes out every day to help those who need it most.
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Trump Eyes China Crackdown as Coronavirus Retribution
U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday he is eyeing ways to crack down on China as retribution for the way it handled the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.”There are many things we could do,” Trump told Fox News. “We could cut off the whole relationship.””Now, if you did, what would happen?,” Trump asked rhetorically. “You’d save $500 billion if you cut off the whole relationship,” although it was not clear how Trump arrived at such a figure.The Trump administration has been considering ways it could punish Beijing for what it believes was its withholding of information about the virus late last year and into early 2020 as it spread from the initial outbreak in Wuhan, China across the globe.The U.S. could give Americans to right to sue China for the damage COVID-19 has caused to the world-leading American economy and to human life. The U.S. already has recorded 84,000 deaths, by far the biggest national total, with 147,000 expected to die by August. An employee works in a research and development lab of Beijing Applied Biological Technologies, a firm which is developing COVID-19 molecular diagnostic test kits, during a government organized tour for journalists in Beijing,May 14, 2020.The U.S. could also impose sanctions and travel bans, while restricting U.S. businesses from making loans to Chinese companies.“I’m very disappointed in China,” Trump said.The U.S. could force Chinese companies to follow U.S. accounting standards before their securities are listed on U.S. exchanges, which they currently are not required to do. That has led to some investor losses.The president acknowledged that if the U.S. were to impose such an accounting requirement on Chinese companies many of them would leave for exchanges in Hong Kong or London.As of early 2019, 156 Chinese companies worth $1.2 trillion were listed on American stock exchanges.Earlier this week, the Trump administration ordered a retirement fund for U.S. government workers to divest $4 billion of equity stakes in Chinese companies, claiming China poses investment and national security risks.
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Why Open a store? Chinese Merchants Go Livestreaming Instead
At the height of China’s coronavirus outbreak, the skincare-products maker Forest Cabin closed more than half of its 300 stores across the nation as shoppers stayed home. With sales plunging, founder Sun Laichun decided it was time to reach his customers more directly.
“We knew it was time for us to focus on an online strategy to survive,” Sun said. But the company didn’t launch an online ad blitz or announce big giveaways. Instead, it trained hundreds of its salespeople to begin hosting live video streams where viewers could get skincare tips and buy products without ever cutting away from the online patter. Within just a month, Sun said, Forest Cabin’s February sales were up by 20% compared to a year earlier, despite a plunge in store sales.
These days, shoppers are making their way back to once deserted malls and shops as China emerges from its long winter of coronavirus shutdowns. But so many of the region’s retailers ended up embracing livestreaming that they’ve kicked off a new boom in Chinese “shoppertainment” that lets retailers interact with distant customers in real time.
Some of China’s largest e-commerce companies are betting big on livestreaming. Alibaba’s Taobao Live platform saw more than a sevenfold increase in first-time business customers in February, while Pinduoduo’s livestreaming sessions grew fivefold from February to March. Overall, livestreaming e-commerce revenue will likely double this year to 961 billion yuan ($136 billion), according to Chinese market intelligence firm iiMedia Research.
Livestreaming has also created a profitable new niche for existing livestream stars who are now reaping hefty commissions as their shows draw millions of viewers. The trend might even suggest alternatives for battered retailers in the U.S. and Europe as those regions cope with stay-at-home orders and customers remain wary of crowds.
Commercial Chinese livestreaming goes well beyond the American formula pioneered by the Home Shopping Network and QVC, which play infomercials around the clock, said Michael Norris, research and strategy manager at the marketing firm AgencyChina.
In China, “there’s actually education about products and how to use them, and elements of entertainment wrapped up in the livestreaming,” he said. That plus instant sales makes livestreaming an excellent marketing tool, he added.
Some Chinese retailers host their own streams. Others hire livestreaming celebrities with large followings. Viya Huang and Li Jiaqi, for instance, are full-time livestreamers with tens of millions of followers who boast hundreds of millions of dollars in sales via livestreaming each year.
Both go live on the platform for about four hours, five to six nights each week. Millions of viewers tune in to catch their suggestions on skincare, snacks and household products.
On a recent evening, Huang’s live online audience had reached nearly 20 million people when she lifted a box of spicy duck necks — a specialty of Wuhan, the Chinese city where the coronavirus was first reported. “These will be prepared fresh and shipped to you, it’s the most popular flavor,” Huang said, holding up a piece to the camera before biting into one.
Within seconds, viewers snatched up 70,000 boxes, their purchases benefiting a Wuhan recovery charity initiative. By the end of her four-hour stint, Huang had hawked everything from sugar-free cookies and Hello Kitty-branded mints to sanitary napkins and pairs of white Skechers sneakers, almost all of which sold out their limited inventories.
For viewers, the fast pace of celebrity livestreams provide a constant sense of urgency that they’d be missing out on great deals if they don’t act quickly.
“It’s really exciting to watch,” said Coco Lu, a civil servant in Chongqing, a city roughly 400 miles (643.74 kilometers) west of Wuhan, who is still avoiding stores. “The hosts are very persuasive and there are giveaways, plus deals are only available for a very short period of time.”
Adam An, who works in marketing in Hangzhou, finds them a relaxing form of retail therapy. Watching a Li livestream “feels almost as if a friend is chatting with me, recommending me great products to buy,” he said.
Livestream sales are a godsend for small entrepreneurs like Dou Ma, who sells discount clothing, mostly costing less than 50 yuan ($8), from the comfort of her home in the southwestern city of Kunming. After putting her two young children to bed, she hops online and streams from her living room for about three hours.
All Dou needed to get started was her mobile phone. Her earliest streams in late March drew fewer than 20 viewers a night, but recently, they’ve begun drawing more than 100. Dou streams at a leisurely pace, warmly welcoming every viewer who joins and thanking them for their support.
“It’s okay if you don’t buy anything from me today, you’re welcome to just chat with me if you want,” Dou told nearly 100 viewers in a recent stream, as she held up a winter coat priced at just 59.90 yuan (about $8.50) with shipping.
When a viewer asks about the sizing of a dress via the comments section, Dou whips out her measuring tape, rattling off measurements. During her streams, she chats with her viewers, talking about everything from parenting tips to previous vacations she’s taken.
“Because of this pandemic, livestreaming has become a good option,” she said. “It’s no longer practical for newcomers like me to open an offline store anymore.”
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COVID Deaths Increase in Spain
Spain’s health ministry reported Thursday the country’s daily coronavirus death toll rose above 200 for the first time in five days, with 217 fatalities reported since Wednesday.Spain’s death toll currently stands at more than 27,100, according to the Johns Hopkins University’s COVID-19 dashboard. COVID-19 is the illness caused by the virus.At news briefing in Madrid, the health ministry’s director of emergency coordination, Fernando Simón, said the higher number of deaths does not necessarily reflect a change in the situation in Spain. Rather, these were patients who were already hospitalized, likely in intensive care. He said it would take about a week to assess if this reflects a trend of any kind.Simon also said there were 506 new confirmed COVID cases Thursday, a slight increase (0.22 percent) that raises the number of cases to almost 230,000.More than half of the new cases were in Catalonia, where 195 were recorded. Eighty-eight cases were reported in Madrid.The two regions are not yet part of the national plan to ease lockdown restrictions due to their high infection rates.Simon also said that it was too soon to see an impact of the easing of the measures.
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Feds Seize Senator Burr’s Cell Phone in Stock Sale Probe
The top U.S. law enforcement agency has seized Senator Richard Burr’s cell phone after serving a search warrant on him as part of a federal investigation into whether he sold stocks after receiving inside information about the coronavirus pandemic.Agents with the FBI took possession of the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman’s cell phone at his Washington area home Wednesday, three months after he sold stock valued between $628,000 and $1.72 million in 33 separate transactions.The day before Burr dumped the stocks on February 13, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a record high 29,551.42. On February 20, stock prices began to plunge on concern the coronavirus pandemic would severely weaken the global economy.The markets tumbled after Burr received daily coronavirus briefings as Senate Intelligence Committee chairman. The Washington Post reported Burr had access to classified intelligence reports that warned of calamitous consequences from the pandemic.ProPublica reported last week that Burr’s brother-in-law, Gerald Fauth, who was appointed to the National Mediation Board by President Donald Trump, also sold stock on February 13 valued between $97,000 and $280,000.Burr has said he did not act on information he received as a senator. His attorney, Alice Fisher, said her client “participated in the stock market based on public information and he did not coordinate his decision to trade on February 13 with Mr. Fauth.”The federal STOCK Act prohibits legislators from acting on nonpublic information they receive as public officials to personally profit from stock transactions.Then-President Barack Obama signed the prohibition into law in 2012 after the Senate passed it by a 93-3 vote.Burr was among the three senators who voted against the measure.
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Obama Emerges as Central Figure in 2020 Presidential Race
Nearly eight years after he was last on the ballot, Barack Obama is emerging as a central figure in the 2020 presidential election.Democrats are eagerly embracing Obama as a political wingman for Joe Biden, who spent two terms by his side as vice president. Obama remains the party’s most popular figure, particularly with black voters and younger Democrats, and Biden’s presidential campaign is planning for him to have a highly visible role in the months to come.For President Donald Trump, that means an opportunity to focus the spotlight on one of his favorite political foils. In recent days, Trump and his allies have aggressively pushed conspiracy theories about Obama designed to fire up the president’s conservative base, taint Biden by association and distract from the glut of grim health and economic news from the coronavirus pandemic.”Partisans on both sides want to make this about Obama,” said Ned Price, who served as spokesperson for Obama’s White House National Security Council.The renewed political focus on Obama sets the stage for an election about the nation’s future that will also be about its past. As Biden looks to Obama for personal validation, he’s also running to restore some of the former president’s legacy, which has been systematically dismantled by Trump. The current president is running in part to finish that job.Yet Trump’s anti-Obama push also frequently takes on a darker, more conspiratorial tone that goes far beyond differences in health care policy and America’s role in the world. His current focus is on the actions Obama, Biden and their national security advisers took in the closing days of their administration, as they viewed intelligence reports about Michael Flynn. Flynn had a short-lived stint as Trump’s national security adviser before being fired for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his interactions with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.Trump’s own administration acknowledged on Wednesday that Obama advisers followed proper procedures in privately “unmasking” Flynn’s name, which was redacted in the intelligence reports for privacy reasons. Flynn ultimately pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, though Trump’s Justice Department moved last week to drop the case against him.Despite there being no evidence of wrongdoing by Obama, Biden or other administration officials, Trump is eagerly pushing the notion of an unspecified crime against the former president, branding it “Obamagate.” He’s being backed up by Republican allies, including Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley who took to the Senate floor this week to ask of the Flynn matter: “What did Obama and Biden know, and when did they know it?”Trump’s zeal has sparked fears among some former Obama and Biden advisers about how far he may be willing to go in using the levers of government to push his case against them in an election year. The Justice Department is conducting an investigation into the origins of the Russia probe that ensnared Flynn and other Trump associates.Trump’s renewed focus on Obama comes as Republicans grow increasingly anxious that the rising coronavirus death toll and cratering economy will damage the president’s reelection prospects in November. More than 84,000 Americans have died from the virus, and more than 30 million have claimed unemployment.Biden’s campaign drew a direct connection between the president’s attacks on Obama and the twin crises battering his administration.”It’s no surprise that the president is erratically lashing out at President Obama, desperate to distract from his own failures as commander in chief that have cost thousands of Americans their lives during this crisis,” said TJ Ducklo, a Biden campaign spokesman.Trump’s emphasis on Obama also comes as the former president begins to emerge from a three-year period of political restraint as he prepares to embrace his role as leading surrogate for Biden. Last week, Obama told a large gathering of alumni from his administration that DOJ’s decision to drop the Flynn case put the “rule of law at risk.” He also criticized the Trump White House’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.Biden’s campaign has been eager to get Obama involved in the election, though his exact role is still forming, particularly given that the pandemic has upended the campaign’s plans for rallies and other in-person events in battleground states. The former president is also expected to campaign for Democratic House and Senate candidates across the country.Though Obama campaigned for Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterms, he has mostly tried to avoid overt politics since leaving the White House. He’s spoken out publicly against Trump on rare occasions, frustrating many Democrats who have wanted him to be more aggressive in calling out his successor.But the 2020 election has always loomed as the moment when Obama would step off the sidelines, and he’s told advisers he’s eager to do so. Despite his strident public neutrality during the Democratic primary, he spoke to Biden regularly and has continued to do so as the campaign moves into the general election, according to aides.Biden’s campaign sees Obama as a clear asset as they seek to not only energize Democrats,but to also appeal to independents and more moderate Republicans who may be wary of four more years of Trump in the White House.A recent Monmouth University poll found 57% of Americans say they have a favorable opinion of Obama. That includes 92% of Democrats and 19% of Republicans.Obama’s favorable ratings are higher than either of the men who will be on the ballot in November. The same poll showed 41% of Americans had a favorable opinion of Biden, and 40% viewed Trump in a favorable light.
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EU: Possible Virus Drug Approval ‘Before The Summer’
The European Medicines Agency predicted that there could be licensed drugs to treat the new coronavirus in the next few months and that a vaccine might even be approved in early 2021, in a “best-case scenario.”
Dr. Marco Cavaleri, who heads the European regulator’s vaccines department, told a media briefing on Thursday that approving medicines to treat COVID-19 might be possible “before the summer,” citing ongoing clinical trials. Recent early results for the drug remdesivir suggested it could help patients recover from the coronavirus faster, although longer-term data is still needed to confirm any benefit.
Although it typically takes years to develop a vaccine, Cavaleri said that if some of the shots already being tested prove to be effective, they could be licensed as early as the beginning of next year.
Cavaleri cautioned, however, that many experimental vaccines never make it to the end and that there are often delays.
“But we can see the possibility that if everything goes as planned, vaccines could be approved a year from now,” he said. Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline. Embed” />CopyMore than 140 heads of states and health experts, including South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz issued an appeal Thursday calling on all countries to unite behind a “people’s vaccine” against COVID-19, to ensure any effective treatments and vaccines be available globally to anyone who needs them, for free.
At the moment, there are about a dozen vaccine candidates being tested in China, Britain, Germany and the U.S. The World Health Organization has estimated it could take about 12 to 18 months for an effective vaccine to be found.
While some experts have proposed dropping the requirement for large-scale advanced clinical trials altogether, Cavaleri said that wasn’t currently being considered.
“Our current thinking is all vaccines under development should undergo large phase 3 trials to establish what is the level of protection,” he said.
But he acknowledged that could change if the situation worsened.
“Things may evolve as the pandemic will evolve and we will see if we need to do something else,” Cavaleri said.
Some officials have warned that a vaccine might never be found; previous attempts to develop a vaccine against related coronaviruses like SARS and MERS have all failed. But Cavleri was optimistic an immunization against COVID-19 would eventually be discovered, as there are various technologies being tried globally.
“I think it’s a bit early to say, but we have good reason to be sufficiently optimistic that at the end of the day, some vaccines will make it,” he said.
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France’s Pasteur Institute on Front Lines of Africa’s COVID Response
There are few days when the Paris-based Pasteur Institute and its far-flung network are not in the news.
Last week, France’s flagship research foundation and its U.S. counterparts announced promising compounds for clinical testing against COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
Its scientists estimated a French strain of the virus could have circulated here earlier than previously thought, and that less than 5 percent of French have contracted the infection – indicating confinement measures were working.
In Africa, where the institute is present in nearly a dozen countries, the Pasteur Institute’s Dakar facility plans to roll out potentially game-changing rapid testing kits, and has earned African Union designation as a coronavirus reference center.
Yet even as the African facilities are lauded for their work and state-of-the-art equipment, some see them entwined with France’s colonial legacy, amid growing calls for building a home-grown response to COVID-19 and other health crises.
Others, however, see Pasteur’s presence in places like Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Yaounde (Cameroon) or Antananarivo (Madagascar)—answerable to national health ministries and mostly staffed and headed by Africans—as an essential part of the continent’s research landscape and development.
“Each institute is autonomous,” said Pierre-Marie Girard, director of the Pasteur Institute’s international network in an interview.
A global presence
Founded in 1887 and named after iconic creator and French biologist Louis Pasteur, the institute quickly launched branches overseas, starting with a facility six years later in Tunisia, which was then a French protectorate. Today, it has facilities in 25 countries, including nations in Europe and Latin America.
In Africa, Pasteur researchers have focused on diseases like malaria, Zika and Ebola. The foundation has also partnered with the African Academy of Sciences to strengthen scientific collaboration between the continent’s anglophone and francophone regions. Some of its scientists have been tapped as Fellows of the Next Einstein Forum, aimed at building African expertise in science and technology.FILE – Lab technicians work in the virus epidemic department of the Pasteur Institute of Ivory Coast, near Abidjan, May 11, 2020.France designates roughly $7.6 million in annual funding to Pasteur Institute facilities in Africa and Southeast Asia — many located in former French colonies—along with another $4 million for the current coronavirus response. It sends over researchers and offers fellowships. Two of the facilities are headed by French nationals.
The institutes mostly “have their own programs and research financing,” Girard said, coming from host governments, grants and other sources.
Still, each must sign onto the foundation’s basic principles of research, teaching, technology transfer and working to improve the health of local populations.
Now, with the coronavirus ticking upward on the continent, the research has shifted to a new health crisis.
In Senegal, scientists are partnering with British technology firm Mologic to develop 10-minute detection kits, costing roughly $1 apiece. Pasteur Institute Dakar Director Amadou Sall says they should be ready in June.
The overall aim is “bringing local solutions to Africa’s health problems, that take local contexts into account,” Sall, a trained virologist, told France 24 news channel.
Such remarks resonate in a continent struggling to fill major gaps in its health sector—especially now. Ethiopia is upgrading old ventilators to serve COVID-19 patients—and training doctors on how to use them, according to news reports. Zimbabwean universities are making masks, gloves and hand sanitizers.
Other efforts are more controversial. Madagascar is touting an herbal remedy for COVID-19, which the World Health Organization cautions remains untested. Nonetheless, the product has sparked demand from a number of African countries.
“What if this remedy had been discovered by a European country, instead of Madagascar?” Malagasy President Andry Rajoelina said in an interview with France 24 and RFI radio. “Would people doubt it so much? I don’t think so.”FILE – A lab technician at the Pasteur Institute of Ivory Coast looks at collected samples to be tested for the coronavirus and other samples for analysis, near Abidjan, May 11, 2020.Colonial imprint
Others point more directly to the negative imprint of colonial medicine. Within this context, the Pasteur Institute’s past sometimes sits uneasily.
“The French justification of colonialism relied on an idea of the ‘civilizing mission,’ and providing modern hygiene and medicine was a key part of the promise,” said Aro Velmet, a University of Southern California historian who authored a book on the Pasteur Institute.
“Yet the French government was utterly unwilling to invest in the colonies in any capacity even close to the level of public health infrastructure being pursued” in France, he added in an email interview.
That legacy has left an imprint on international pharmaceutical companies today, Velmet said. He said they “tend to focus on studying and treating diseases that bring a lot of scientific prestige to the investigators, but are hardly the most urgent in the societies where the studies are being conducted.”
The current pandemic is also stirring old fears.
Last month, a pair of French doctors sparked widespread outrage, after one suggested, in a television interview, that trials be conducted in Africa on the effectiveness of a tuberculosis vaccine against the coronavirus. “No, Africans aren’t guinea pigs,” French anti-discrimination group SOS Racisme said. Both researchers quickly apologized, saying their remarks were clumsy but not racist. The vaccine is only being tested in Europe and Australia.
But some critics remain unswayed.
“The dialogue was neither an accident nor ‘fake news,’” wrote francophone studies professor Mame-Fatou Niang in the publication Slate Afrique. Rather, she said, it exposed “a whole set of practices that have accompanied the event of modern Western medicine” in Africa dating from colonial days.
Alfred Babo, a professor of anthropology at Fairfield University in the U.S. state of Connecticut, also called for the continent to “emancipate itself” when it came to Western research.
“African research and knowledge is given little credibility,” he wrote in France’s Le Monde newspaper, “especially if it doesn’t agree with reputed institutions like the Pasteur Institute.”
Pasteur Institute’s Girard says its facilities in Africa are essentially African ones — even if they get some French support.“Does it mean, because we’re partners—either through financing or experts—that this can be branded neocolonialism?” he asked.
“I understand that people want their Pasteur Institute completely autonomous,” he added. “But at our level, research is inevitably international.”
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