The American tanker plane that crashed while fighting Australian wildfires had just dropped a load of retardant on a fire before it went down in New South Wales state, investigators said Friday.The crash of the C-130 Hercules tanker Thursday killed Capt. Ian H. McBeth, 44, of Great Falls, Montana;First Officer Paul Clyde Hudson, 42, of Buckeye, Arizona; and Flight Engineer Rick A. DeMorgan Jr., 43, of Navarre, Florida, their employer, Canada-based Coulson Aviation, said in a statement.
The crash occurred during an unprecedented wildfire season that has left a large swath of destruction in Australia’s southeast.Specialist investigators were sent to the crash site in the state’s Snowy Monaro region and a team was working to recover the victims’ bodies, Australian Transport Safety Bureau Chief Commissioner Greg Hood told reporters in the nearby town of Numeralla.He described a difficult process of securing evidence of the crash and the victims’ remains, since the wildfire is still burning and potential hazards such as aviation fuel are present.Upward of 500 firefighting aircraft from several countries are fighting Australia’s wildfires, Hood said, adding “So, if there are lessons to be learned from this particular accident it’s really important that not only Australia learns these, but the world learns them.”He and other Australian officials extended condolences on the deaths of the three Americans.
Coulson Aviation said McBeth “was a highly qualified and respected C-130 pilot with many years fighting fire, both in the military and with Coulson Aviation.”McBeth, who is survived by his wife and three children, also served with the Montana and Wyoming National Guard, the company said.Hudson “graduated from the Naval Academy in 1999 and spent the next twenty years serving in the United States Marine Corp in a number of positions including C-130 pilot,” Coulson said. He is survived by his wife.DeMorgan served in the U.S. Air Force with 18 years as a flight engineer on the C-130, the company said. He had had more than 4,000 hours as a flight engineer with nearly 2,000 hours in combat.
“Rick’s passion was always flying and his children,” Coulson said. He is survived by two children, his parents and his sister.New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said a memorial service would be held in Sydney on Feb. 23 for the American firefighters and three Australian volunteer firefighters who have died during this wildfire season.“We will pay tribute to the brave firefighters who lost their own lives protecting the lives and properties of others,” she said.“I know that many members of the public, the RFS (Rural Fire Service), and emergency services personnel will want to come together as families and communities work their way through this unbelievable loss.”The three deaths brings Australia’s toll from the blazes to at least 31 since September. The fires have also destroyed more than 2,600 homes and razed more than 10.4 million hectares (25.7 million acres), an area bigger than the U.S. state of Indiana.Coulson grounded other firefighting aircraft as a precaution pending investigation, reducing planes available to firefighters in New South Wales and neighboring Victoria state. The four-propeller Hercules drops more than 15,000 liters (4,000 gallons) of fire retardant in a single pass.Berejiklian said more than 1,700 volunteers and personnel were in the field, and five fires were being described at an “emergency warning” level _ the most dangerous on a three-tier scale _ across the state and on the fringes of the national capital Canberra.
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Category: East
East news. East is the direction toward which the Earth rotates about its axis, and therefore the general direction from which the Sun appears to rise. The practice of praying towards the East is older than Christianity, but has been adopted by this religion as the Orient was thought of as containing mankind’s original home
At Least 8 Chinese Cities on Lockdown to Contain Coronavirus; 830 Confirmed Cases Across Country
The Chinese National Health Commission said Friday that there are 830 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus country-wide, while at least 25 people have died.The Chinese government isolated more cities Friday, an unprecedented move to contain the coronavirus, which has spread to several other countries.At least eight cities, and a total of at least 25 million people, have been put on lockdown — Wuhan, Ezhou, Huanggang, Chibi, Qianjiang, Zhijiang, Jingmen and Xiantao — all in central China’s Hubei province, on the eve of the Lunar New Year, when millions of Chinese traditionally travel.The municipality authorities of Wuhan, where the coronavirus is believed to have originated, said Friday that the city is building a 1,000-bed hospital, expected to be completed by Feb. 3.On Thursday authorities first banned planes and trains from leaving the city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus is believed to have originated. Toll roads were closed, and ferry, subway and bus services were suspended.A passenger wearing a protective facemask to help stop the spread of a deadly SARS-like virus that originated in the central city of Wuhan waits at Beijing railway station in Beijing, Jan. 24, 2020.Wuhan authorities have demanded that all residents wear masks in public and urged government and private sector employees to wear them in the workplace, according to the Xinhua news agency, which cited a government official.Similar measures were taken hours later in the nearby cities of Huanggang and Ezhou.The government also canceled holiday events in Beijing that usually attract large crowds.Fifteen medical workers are among those who have been infected by the virus, which has spread from Wuhan to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong province, as well as Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan and the United States.WATCH: WHO Warns Coronavirus Is ‘High Risk,’ Stops Short of Declaring EmergencySorry, but your player cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
Director-general of WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus speaks during a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland, Jan. 23, 2020.WHO considers an international emergency an “extraordinary event” that puts other countries at risk and one that requires a coordinated global response.The U.S. announced its first case Tuesday in the northwestern state of Washington. Health officials there said a man who returned to Seattle from Wuhan last week is hospitalized in good condition with pneumonia.U.S. President Donald Trump assured reporters during a press conference in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday that U.S. officials “have a plan” to deal with the new outbreak, praising experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as “terrific, very great professionals, and we’re in great shape.”Airports around the world have begun screening travelers from Wuhan for any signs of the virus.A coronavirus is one of a large family of viruses that can cause illnesses ranging from the common cold to the deadly SARS.
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US-China Trade War Has Given a Lift to Other Countries, but Not Indonesia
Southeast Asia has been a major winner in the U.S.-China trade war. The region has seen a wave of new factories, as manufacturers move out of China to avoid U.S. tariffs. But Southeast Asia’s biggest economy, Indonesia, has struggled to attract new investment. That’s in part because of the country’s sprawling bureaucracy, as VOA’s Bill Gallo explains.
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WHO: Deadly Virus Not Yet Global Emergency
The World Health Organization said Thursday the deadly virus that prompted the Chinese government to lock down nearly 20 million people in three cities has not developed into a worldwide health emergency.”This is an emergency in China, but it has not yet become a global health emergency,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said after a two-day emergency meeting in Geneva.The U.N. health agency’s decision came after it received details from independent experts who spent two days assessing information about the spread of the new coronavirus.WHO considers an international emergency an “extraordinary event” that puts other countries at risk and one that requires a coordinated global response.The Chinese government isolated three cities Thursday, an unprecedented move to contain the virus, which has spread to several other countries.Authorities first banned planes and trains from leaving the city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus is believed to have originated. Toll roads were closed, and ferry, subway and bus services were also suspended.Similar measures were taken hours later in the nearby cities of Huanggang and Ezhou.The cities were put on lockdown on the eve of the Lunar New Year, when millions of Chinese traditionally travel. The government also canceled holiday events in Beijing that usually attract large crowds.Past mistakesThe virus has killed at least 17 people, all in and around Wuhan, and infected nearly 600 others.Wuhan authorities have demanded that all residents wear masks in public and urged government and private sector employees to wear them in the workplace, according to the Xinhua news agency, which cited a government official.Paramilitary police stand guard at an entrance to the closed Hankou Railway Station in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei Province, Jan. 23, 2020.China’s efforts to contain the virus are apparently aimed at avoiding mistakes in its handling of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak that spread from China to more than a dozen countries in 2002-03 and killed about 800 people.Even after SARS had spread worldwide, China housed patients in hotels and transported them in ambulances to hide the actual number of cases and to avoid WHO experts.Global spreadFifteen medical workers are among those who have been infected by the new virus, which has spread from Wuhan to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong province, as well as Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan and the United States.The U.S. announced its first case Tuesday in the northwestern state of Washington. Health officials there said a man who returned to Seattle from Wuhan last week was hospitalized in good condition with pneumonia.A man stands in front of a screen showing that multiple departure flights have been cancelled after the city was locked down following the outbreak of a new coronavirus, at an airport in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, Jan. 23, 2020.U.S. President Donald Trump assured reporters during a press conference Wednesday in Davos, Switzerland, that U.S. officials “have a plan” to deal with the new outbreak, praising experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as “terrific, very great professionals, and we’re in great shape.”Chinese health experts say they know little about the new strain, dubbed 2019-nCoV. They suspect the outbreak started in a Wuhan seafood market, which also sold other animals such as poultry, bats, marmots and wild game meat. China’s National Health Commission announced Monday the virus, which causes a type of pneumonia, can be transmitted person to person and not just from animals to people. Airports around the world have begun screening travelers from Wuhan for the virus. Health experts are especially concerned about the chance of a pandemic as millions of Chinese citizens plan to travel across the country and overseas for the Lunar New Year holiday that starts Saturday. A coronavirus is one of a large family of viruses that can cause illnesses ranging from the common cold to the deadly SARS.
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China Locking Down Cities With 18 Million Inhabitants to Stop Virus
Chinese authorities Thursday moved to lock down three cities with a combined population of more than 18 million in an unprecedented effort to contain the deadly new virus that has sickened hundreds of people and spread to other parts of the world during the busy Lunar New Year travel period.
The open-ended lockdowns are unmatched in size, embracing more people than New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago put together.
The train station and airport in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, were shut down, and ferry, subway and bus service was halted. Normally bustling streets, shopping malls, restaurants and other public spaces in the city of 11 million were eerily quiet. Police checked all incoming vehicles but did not close off the roads.
Authorities announced similar measures would take effect Friday in the nearby cities of Huanggang and Ezhou. In Huanggang, theaters, internet cafes and other entertainment centers were also ordered closed.
In the capital, Beijing, officials canceled major events indefinitely, including traditional temple fairs that are a staple of holiday celebrations, in order to “execute epidemic prevention and control.” The Forbidden City, the palace complex in Beijing that is now a museum, announced it will close indefinitely on Saturday.
Seventeen people have died in the outbreak, all of them in and around Wuhan. Close to 600 have been infected, the vast majority of them in Wuhan, and many countries have begun screening travelers from China for symptoms of the virus, which can cause fever, coughing, trouble breathing and pneumonia.
Chinese officials have not said how long the shutdowns will last. While sweeping measures are typical of China’s communist government, large-scale quarantines are rare around the world, even in deadly epidemics, because of concerns about infringing on people’s liberties. And the effectiveness of such measures is unclear.
“To my knowledge, trying to contain a city of 11 million people is new to science,” Gauden Galea, the World Health Organization’s representative in China, said in an interview. “It has not been tried before as a public health measure. We cannot at this stage say it will or it will not work.”
Jonathan Ball, a professor of virology at molecular virology at the University of Nottingham in Britain, said the lockdowns appear to be justified scientifically.
“Until there’s a better understanding of what the situation is, I think it’s not an unreasonable thing to do,” he said. “Anything that limits people’s travels during an outbreak would obviously work.”
But Ball cautioned that any such quarantine should be strictly time-limited. He added: “You have to make sure you communicate effectively about why this is being done. Otherwise you will lose the goodwill of the people.”People queue for receiving treatment at the fever outpatient department at the Wuhan Tongji Hospital in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, Jan. 22, 2020.During the devastating West Africa Ebola outbreak in 2014, Sierra Leone imposed a national three-day quarantine as health teams went door-to-door searching for hidden cases. Frustrated residents complained of food shortages amid deserted streets. Burial teams collecting Ebola corpses and people transporting the sick to Ebola centers were the only ones allowed to move freely.
In China, the illnesses from the newly identified coronavirus first appeared last month in Wuhan, an industrial and transportation hub in central China’s Hubei province. Other cases have been reported in the U.S., Japan, South Korea and Thailand. Singapore, Vietnam and Hong Kong reported their first cases Thursday.
Most of the illnesses outside China involve people who were from Wuhan or had recently traveled there.
Images from Wuhan showed long lines and empty shelves at supermarkets, as residents stocked up for what could be weeks of isolation. That appeared to be an over-reaction, since no restrictions were placed on trucks carrying supplies into the city, although many Chinese have strong memories of shortages in the years before the country’s recent economic boom.
Local authorities in Wuhan demanded all residents wear masks in public places. Police, SWAT teams and paramilitary troops guarded Wuhan’s train station.
Liu Haihan left Wuhan last Friday after visiting her boyfriend there. She said everything was normal then, before human-to-human transmission of the virus was confirmed. But things had changed rapidly.
Her boyfriend “didn’t sleep much yesterday. He disinfected his house and stocked up on instant noodles,” Liu said. “He’s not really going out. If he does, he wears a mask.”
The sharp rise in illnesses comes as millions of Chinese travel for the Lunar New Year, one of the world’s largest annual migrations of people. Chinese are expected to take an estimated 3 billion trips during the 40-day spike in travel.
Analysts predicted cases will continue to multiply, although the jump in numbers is also attributable in part to increased monitoring.
“Even if (cases) are in the thousands, this would not surprise us,” the WHO’s Galea said, adding, however, that the number of those infected is not an indicator of the outbreak’s severity, so long as the mortality rate remains low.
The coronavirus family includes the common cold as well as viruses that cause more serious illnesses, such as the SARS outbreak that spread from China to more than a dozen countries in 2002-03 and killed about 800 people, and Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, or MERS, which is thought to have originated from camels.
China is keen to avoid repeating mistakes with its handling of SARS. For months, even after the illness had spread around the world, China parked patients in hotels and drove them around in ambulances to conceal the true number of cases and avoid WHO experts.
In the current outbreak, China has been credited with sharing information rapidly, and President Xi Jinping has emphasized that as a priority.
“Party committees, governments and relevant departments at all levels must put people’s lives and health first,” Xi said Monday. “It is necessary to release epidemic information in a timely manner and deepen international cooperation.”A picture released by the Central Hospital of Wuhan shows medical staff attending to patient at the The Central Hospital Of Wuhan Via Weibo in Wuhan, China on an unknown date.Health authorities were taking extraordinary measures to prevent additional person-to-person transmissions, placing those believed infected in plastic tubes and wheeled boxes, with air passed through filters.
The first cases in the Wuhan outbreak were connected to people who worked at or visited a seafood market, which has since been closed for an investigation. Experts suspect that the virus was first transmitted from wild animals but that it may also be mutating. Mutations can make it deadlier or more contagious.
WHO convened its emergency committee of independent experts on Thursday to consider whether the outbreak should be declared a global health emergency, after the group failed to come to a consensus on Wednesday.
The U.N. health agency defines a global emergency as an “extraordinary event” that constitutes a risk to other countries and requires a coordinated international response.
A declaration of a global emergency typically brings greater money and resources, but may also prompt nervous governments to restrict travel to and trade with affected countries. The announcement also imposes more disease-reporting requirements on countries.
Declaring an international emergency can also be politically fraught. Countries typically resist the notion that they have a crisis within their borders and may argue strenuously for other control measures.
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3 Chinese Cities on Lockdown in Bid to Contain Deadly Virus
China decided Thursday to lock down three cities that are home to more than 18 million people in an unprecedented effort to try to contain a deadly new viral illness that has sickened hundreds and spread to other cities and countries in the Lunar New Year travel rush.
Police, SWAT teams and paramilitary troops guarded Wuhan’s train station, where metal barriers blocked the entrances at 10 a.m. sharp. Only travelers holding tickets for the last trains were allowed to enter, with those booked for later trains being turned away.
Normally bustling streets, shopping malls, restaurants and other public spaces in the city of 11 million people were eerily quiet. In addition to the train station, airport, ferry, subway and bus services were also halted.
Similar measures will take effect from Friday in the nearby cities of Huanggang and Ezhou. Theaters, internet cafes and other entertainment centers were also ordered closed, further increasing the economic costs of the response to the outbreak.
“To my knowledge, trying to contain a city of 11 million people is new to science,” Gauden Galea, the World Health Organization’s representative in China, told The Associated Press in an interview at the WHO’s Beijing office. “It has not been tried before as a public health measure. We cannot at this stage say it will or it will not work.”
The illnesses from a newly identified coronavirus first appeared last month in Wuhan, an industrial and transportation hub in central China’s Hubei province. The vast majority of mainland China’s 571 cases have been in the city.
Other cases have been reported in the United States, Japan, South Korea and Thailand. One case was confirmed Thursday in Hong Kong after one was earlier confirmed in Macao. Most cases outside China were people from Wuhan or who had recently traveled there.
A total of 17 people have died, all of them in and around Wuhan. Their average age was 73, with the oldest 89 and the youngest 48.
Images obtained from inside Wuhan following the closure showed long lines and empty shelves at supermarkets, as residents stocked up for what could be weeks of relative isolation. That appeared to be an over-reaction, since no restrictions have been placed on trucks carrying supplies into the city, although many Chinese still have strong memories of shortages and privations in the years before the country’s recent economic boom.
Such sweeping measures are typical of China’s authoritarian communist government, although their effectiveness in containing the outbreak remains uncertain.
Local authorities in Wuhan have demanded all residents wear masks in public places and urged government staff to wear them at work and for shopkeepers to post signs for their visitors, Xinhua news agency quoted a government notice as saying.
Xinhua cited the city’s anti-virus task force as saying the measures were taken in an attempt to “effectively cut off the virus spread, resolutely curb the outbreak and guarantee the people’s health and safety.”
Liu Haihan left Wuhan last Friday after visiting her boyfriend there. She said everything was normal then, before human-to-human transmission of the virus was confirmed. But things have changed rapidly.
“(My boyfriend) didn’t sleep much yesterday. He disinfected his house and stocked up on instant noodles,” Liu said. “He’s not really going out. If he does he wears a mask.”
The significant increase in illnesses reported just this week come as millions of Chinese travel for the Lunar New Year, one of the world’s largest annual migrations of people. Chinese are expected to take an estimated 3 billion trips during the 40-day spike in travel.
While state broadcaster CCTV has largely ignored the outbreak to emphasize traditional observances of the festival, reports have filtered in of events such as temple fairs being canceled in cities including Beijing.
Analysts have predicted the reported cases will continue to multiply.
“Even if (the number of cases) are in the thousands, this would not surprise us,” the WHO’s Galea said, adding, however, that the number of cases is not an indicator of the outbreak’s severity, so long as the mortality rate remains low.
The coronavirus family includes the common cold as well as viruses that cause more serious illnesses, such as the SARS outbreak that spread from China to more than a dozen countries in 2002-2003 and killed about 800 people, and Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, which developed from camels.Passengers wear protective face masks at the departure hall of the high speed train station in Hong Kong, Jan. 23, 2020.China is keen to avoid repeating mistakes with its handling of SARS. For months, even after the illness had spread around the world, China parked patients in hotels and drove them around in ambulances to conceal the true number of cases and avoid WHO experts.
In the current outbreak, China has been credited with sharing information rapidly, and President Xi Jinping has emphasized that as a priority.
“Party committees, governments and relevant departments at all levels must put people’s lives and health first,” Xi said Monday. “It is necessary to release epidemic information in a timely manner and deepen international cooperation.”
Health authorities were taking extraordinary measures to prevent additional person-to-person transmissions, placing those suspected to be infected in plastic tubes and wheeled boxes where air passed through filters.
The first cases in the Wuhan outbreak were connected to people who worked at or visited a seafood market, which has since been closed for an investigation. Experts suspect the virus was first transmitted from wild animals but the virus also may be mutating. Mutations can make it deadlier or more contagious.
WHO plans another meeting of scientific experts Thursday on whether to recommend declaring the outbreak a global health emergency, which it defines as an “extraordinary event” that constitutes a risk to other countries and requires a coordinated international response.
Many countries are screening travelers from China for illness, especially those arriving from Wuhan. North Korea has banned foreign tourists, a step it also took during the SARS outbreak and in recent years due to Ebola. Most foreigners going to North Korea are Chinese or travel there through neighboring China.
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UN Court Orders Myanmar to Steps to Protect Rohingya Muslims
The U.N.’s International Court of Justice has ordered Myanmar to “take all measures within its power” to prevent any acts of genocide against the Rohingya Muslims, the ethnic group that was forced to flee their homes amid a bloody military crackdown in 2017.
The court’s ruling Thursday was in response to a complaint filed last November by the West African nation Gambia on behalf of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation against Myanmar, accusing it of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention. Rohingyas who fled Myanmar over the past decades live in this decrepit Kutupalong illegal Rohingya refugee colony in Cox’s Bazar district, Bangladesh.More than 700,000 Rohingyas fled across the border into Bangladesh in August 2017 to escape a scorched earth campaign launched by the Myanmar military in response to attacks on security posts by Rohingya militants in northwestern Rakhine state. A U.N. investigation concluded the campaign was carried out “with genocidal intent,” based on interviews with survivors who gave numerous accounts of massacres, extrajudicial killings, gang rapes and the torching of entire villages.
In reading the court’s opinion from its headquarters at The Hague, President Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf said the Rohingya remained at a “real and imminent risk” of persecution at the hands of the military.
The court ordered Myanmar to ensure those responsible for the genocide be held responsible; to ensure the military and any allied armed groups not commit acts of genocide, or involve itself in conspiracy to trigger genocide against Rohingya; to preserve all evidence related to the crimes, and to facilitate the repatriation of the Rohingyas back to Rakhine state.
The ICJ also ordered Myanmar to submit a report within four months on what actions it is taking to comply with the court’s decision, and to submit follow up reports every six months after that. FILE – In this photo taken on Dec. 11, 2019, Myanmar’s State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi (C) stands before the UN’s International Court of Justice next to Abubacarr Tambadou (2L), minister of justice of the Gambia.Myanmar’s military was defended during last month’s hearings by Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto leader. Standing before the court in her official role as foreign minister, Aung San Suu Kyi reiterated her government’s claim that the military was targeting Rohingya militants.Writing Thursday in the London-based newspaper The Financial Times, Aung San Suu Kyi said Myanmar would conduct domestic investigations and prosecutions of civilians and military personnel who “may have participated in looting or burning villages.” But she added that an investigation by the Independent Commission of Inquiry found no evidence of genocide.
Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her pro-democracy stand against Myanmar’s then-ruling military junta, which placed her under house arrest for 15 years until finally freeing her in 2010. But her defense of the military’s actions against the Rohingyas has permanently wrecked her reputation among the international community as an icon of democracy and human rights.
In the cramped refugee camp at Cox’s Bazaar, the Rohingyas began the day with prayers as they awaited the court’s ruling. Hours later, cheers broke out through the camp as news spread of the ruling spread, as the refugees praised Gambia and the rest of the international community for bringing the matter before the court.
The Rohingya were excluded from a 1982 citizenship law that bases full legal status through membership in a government-recognized indigenous group. Myanmar considers the Rohingya illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, effectively rendering the ethnic group stateless.
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Virus-Related Tourism Ban Could Hurt North Korea’s Economy
North Korea has temporarily banned foreign tourists in response to the outbreak of a dangerous new virus in neighboring China. Depending on how long the ban lasts, it could hurt North Korea’s economy, which though heavily sanctioned, has received a boost by a recent influx of Chinese tourists.Starting Wednesday, North Korea closed its borders to foreign tourists, according to Young Pioneer Tours, a China-based company that leads trips to North Korea. On its website, the company says it is not clear how long the suspension will last, but that authorities say they intend to reopen the border as soon as they institute precautionary measures.The pneumonialike respiratory illness, which can be transmitted among humans, originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. It has infected more than 500 people, 17 of whom have died. Cases have been reported in countries including South Korea, Japan, the United States, and Thailand.FILE – Foreigners and North Koreans, facing increased safety measures to prevent the possible spread of Ebola, board an Air Koryo flight bound for Beijing in Pyongyang, North Korea, Oct. 28, 2014.Willing to close borderIt is not the first time North Korea has banned visitors in response to international outbreaks of infectious diseases. In 2014, the country shut its borders for four months during the Ebola outbreak, even though the disease never reached Asia. North Korea also restricted some visitors during the SARS epidemic in 2003.“North Korea is probably more willing to shut down exit and entry than any other country,” said Andray Abrahamian, who specializes in North Korea at the George Mason University Korea.But the move may be especially painful this time, Abrahamian said, since tourism is one of the only legal ways for the North Korean government to make money.“(During previous outbreaks) they had a number of legal revenue streams that are now prohibited by sanctions. Tourism was small. Now, tourism is a much bigger industry and their last major nonsanctioned sector. So shutting down the border will have a relatively higher impact,” he said.North Korea has been under United Nations sanctions since 2006, and unilateral U.S. sanctions for even longer, as a result of its nuclear and missile programs.FILE – Tourists from China pose for photos before the Three Charters monument in Pyongyang, April 15, 2019. North Korea will ban foreign tourists to protect itself against a new SARS-like virus that has claimed at least 17 lives in China.Need for tourism money growsAs the sanctions have expanded, North Korea has increasingly relied on the money brought by foreign tourists, almost all of whom come from China.NK News, a North Korea-focused online publication, estimates that around 350,000 mainland Chinese tourists visited North Korea in 2019, providing about $175 million in extra revenue for Pyongyang.North Korea is now in the middle of winter, typically off-peak season for foreign tours. But as the weather gets warmer, it may feel pressure to resume tourism as soon as possible.“There will be a number of stakeholders hoping the Wuhan virus doesn’t spread in the coming weeks as the weather warms up and more tourists are expected,” Abrahamian said.Rowan Beard, North Korea tours manager for Young Pioneer Tours, tells VOA that his company has had to delay some tours, but says the move is understandable given North Korea’s proximity to the outbreak and its apparently limited capacity to deal with the disease.“North Korea is very vulnerable due to its shared border with China, its largest trading partner,” said Kee Park, a faculty member at Harvard Medical School who also specializes in North Korea public health.“They also understand that drastic action is needed to prevent the new virus from entering North Korea since their capacity to diagnose, treat and contain the virus is limited should an outbreak occur inside North Korea,” Park said.Park, who frequently participates in medical exchange trips to North Korea, says humanitarian organizations “should send medical and isolation supplies immediately and the (U.N.) sanctions committee should be proactive and issue a special exemption.”North Korea has not yet reported any cases of the coronavirus. The World Health Organization (WHO) is working with North Korean officials to prevent an outbreak, North Korea state media reported this week, according to NK News.
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Three Americans Killed in Australia Firefighting Plane Crash
Three people died Thursday when a C-130 Hercules aerial water tanker crashed while battling wildfires in the Snowy Monaro region of Australia’s southern New South Wales state, officials said.New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian confirmed the deaths and crash in comments to reporters as Australia attempts to deal with an unprecedented fire season that has left a large swath of destruction.“The only thing I have from the field reports are that the plane came down, it’s crashed and there was a large fireball associated with that crash,” said Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons.He said all three aboard were U.S. residents.“Unfortunately, all we’ve been able to do is locate the wreckage and the crash site and we have not been able to locate any survivors,” he said.Berejiklian said there were more than 1,700 volunteers and personnel in the field, and five fires were being described at an “emergency warning level.”Firefighters battle the Morton Fire as it consumes a home near Bundanoon, New South Wales, Australia, Jan. 23, 2020.Also Thursday, Canberra Airport closed because of nearby wildfires, and residents south of Australia’s capital were told to seek shelter.The blaze started Wednesday, but strong winds and high temperatures caused conditions in Canberra to deteriorate. A second fire near the airport that started Thursday morning is at the “watch and act” level.
“Arrivals and departures are affected due to aviation firefighting operations,” the airport authority said in a tweet.Another tweet from traffic police said “the fire is moving fast and there are multiple road closures in the area. Please avoid the area. Local roadblocks in place.”Residents in some Canberra suburbs were advised to seek shelter and others to leave immediately.“The defense force is both assisting to a degree and looking to whether that needs to be reinforced,” Defense Minister Angus Campbell told reporters.“I have people who are both involved as persons who need to be moved from areas and office buildings that are potentially in danger, and also those persons who are part of the (Operation) Bushfire Assist effort,” he said.
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Father, Daughter Discuss Visiting Chinese Students
Longfellow Middle School in Falls Church, Virginia, canceled a visit by a group of 20 students from Yichang, Hubei province, China, about 321 kilometers from Wuhan, where the coronavirus outbreak is occurring.Sorry, but your player cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline. Embed” />CopyPing Song, who went to Longfellow to retrieve his daughter, told VOA’s Mandarin Service (translated): “We have known that there would be a group of exchange students from Yichang, China, visiting. They would enter the building at 2:30 or later this afternoon. We are very worried about this, because the coronavirus outbreak in China is severe now, and people discuss this issue on WeChat every day. We can’t say that those people surely carry this virus, but we’d like to be cautious just in case, since the situation is not too optimistic at this point. This morning we had a meeting with the school, and they thought it hasn’t reached the level to make changes to the plan. So we think the exchange students will still enter the building this afternoon according to their plan. Therefore, I discussed this with my wife, and decided to pick up our daughter earlier today, and then see how it goes, if there are any changes for the next step.”His daugher, nicknamed Xixi, said in Mandarin (translated): “I’m pretty worried if they carry the virus, because it’s contagious. A lot of my classmates around are discussing about this issue, wondering if we might be infected. Everyone is talking about this in group chat, and we are considering not coming to school perhaps.”In Wuhan, China, the government issued Wednesday a lockdown on travel to avoid the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
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China Slams US for ‘Spreading Rumors’ About BRI Investments in Pakistan
China has defended its infrastructure development investments in Pakistan as “open and transparent,” refuting renewed U.S. criticism of the ongoing multibillion-dollar economic collaboration under Beijing’s global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Chinese embassy in Islamabad issued the rebuttal Wednesday in response to comments in Pakistani media attributed to a visiting senior U.S. diplomat questioning the transparency and fairness of projects being implemented in what is known as the bilateral China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship of the trillion-dollar BRI.”The entire process is open and transparent and is in line with the international norm. We keep in touch with the relative accountability agencies of Pakistan and it is agreed that the CPEC is clean,” the Chinese diplomatic mission stressed in its statement.’Debt trap’ allegationsPrincipal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Alice Wells, who visited Pakistan this week, was also quoted as saying the CPEC-related financing was burdening Pakistan with expensive Chinese loans. She had raised similar concerns and questions while delivering a public speech in Washington last November.FILE – Alice Wells, acting assistant secretary to South Asia, testifies during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sept. 19, 2019.Critics in the U.S. and elsewhere see China’s BRI program as a “debt trap” for countries like Pakistan, which have struggling economies that would make it difficult for them to make Chinese loan repayments.”The U.S. keeps fabricating the so-called debt story, their mathematics is bad, and their intention is worse,” the Chinese Embassy asserted. “China has never forced other countries to pay debts, and will not make unreasonable demands on Pakistan.”China has invested around $30 billion, mostly in direct foreign investment, over the past five years in early harvest CPEC projects. The investment has significantly improved local transportation infrastructure and constructed power plants, effectively ending crippling nationwide electricity shortages.’Rock-solid’ tiesChinese and Pakistani officials say the economic collaboration has also created more than 75,000 jobs directly for locals and contributed 1%-2% of the GDP growing in Pakistan.The Chinese embassy cited the Pakistani central bank’s statistics, saying the total foreign debt of Pakistan stood at $110 billion, with Western financial institutions, including the Paris Club and International Monetary Fund (IMF), being the largest creditors of the country.”Loan for the CPEC is about $5.8 billion, accounting for 5.3% of Pakistan’s total foreign debt, with a repayment period of 20-25 years and an interest rate of approximately 2%,” the Chinese statement noted. The repayments will start in 2021, with annual repayments of about $300 million, it explained.The embassy alleged the “negative propaganda” against CPEC by the U.S. was aimed at undermining Beijing’s close relationship with Islamabad.FILE – Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan reviews the honor guard during a welcome ceremony with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, Oct. 8, 2019.”China-Pakistan ties are rock-solid and unbreakable. China will continue to work with the Pakistani government and people to steadily advance the BRI and CPEC to promote regional peace and development,” stressed the Chinese statement.CPEC has also built and opened Pakistan’s strategically located deep-water Arabian Sea port of Gwadar, which is being operated by a Chinese state company. U.S.-Pakistan talksU.S. diplomat Wells during her four-day visit to Islamabad this week, which officially ended Wednesday, held extensive talks with senior Pakistani officials, focusing on boosting bilateral trade and investment ties. Her trip took place amid Islamabad’s warming relations with Washington stemming from recent joint efforts aimed at ending the war in Afghanistan, America’s longest.U.S. President Donald Trump met with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the third interaction between the two leaders since their July 2019 White House meeting.”We’re getting along very well. I would say we’ve never been closer with Pakistan than we are right now. And that’s a big statement,” Trump acknowledged while speaking to reporters before his meeting with Khan.Pakistani officials say they want to enhance commercial ties with the U.S. but will not “compromise” on Islamabad’s relations and CPEC commitments with China.
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What We Know So Far About New China Virus
A new SARS-like virus has killed 17 people in China, infected hundreds and reached as far as the United States, with fears mounting about its spread as hundreds of millions travel for Lunar New Year celebrations, which start Friday.Many countries have stepped up screening of passengers from Wuhan, the Chinese city identified as the epicenter, and the World Health Organization has called an emergency meeting.Here’s what we know so far about the virus:It’s entirely newThe pathogen appears to be a never-before-seen strain of coronavirus — a large family of viruses that can cause diseases ranging from the common cold to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which killed 349 people in mainland China and another 299 in Hong Kong between 2002 and 2003.Arnaud Fontanet, head of the department of epidemiology at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, told AFP the current virus strain was 80% genetically identical to SARS.China has already shared the genome sequencing of this novel coronavirus with the international scientific community.It has been named “2019-nCoV”.It’s being passed between humans The WHO said Monday it believed an animal source was the “primary source” of the outbreak, and Wuhan authorities identified a seafood market as the center of the epidemic.But China has since confirmed that there was evidence the virus is now passing from person to person, without any contact with the now-closed market.The virus has infected more than 400 people across the country, with most cases in Wuhan, according to officials. Li Bin of China’s National Health Commission on Wednesday said 1,394 people were still under medical observation.Doctor Nathalie MacDermott of King’s College London said it seems likely that the virus is spread through droplets in the air from sneezing or coughing.Doctors at the University of Hong Kong published an initial paper on Tuesday modeling the spread of the virus which estimated that there have been some 1,343 cases in Wuhan — similar to a projection of 1,700 last week by scientists at Imperial College, London.Both are much higher than official figures.Health Officials in hazmat suits wait at the gate to check body temperatures of passengers arriving from the city of Wuhan, Jan. 22, 2020, at the airport in Beijing, China.It is milder than SARSCompared with SARS, the symptoms appear to be less aggressive, and experts say the death toll is still relatively low. However, the milder nature of the virus can also cause alarm.The outbreak comes as China prepares for the Lunar New Year holiday, with hundreds of millions traveling across the country to see family.Professor Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva, told AFP that the fact that the virus seems milder in the majority of people is “paradoxically more worrying” as it allows people to travel further before their symptoms are detected.International public health emergency? The WHO will hold a meeting on Wednesday to determine whether the outbreak constitutes a “public health emergency of international concern” and if so, what should be done to manage it.Cases have so far been confirmed in Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Macau and the United States.The WHO has only used the rare label a handful of times, including during the H1N1 — or swine flu — pandemic of 2009 and the Ebola epidemic that devastated parts of West Africa from 2014 to 2016.The Chinese government announced Tuesday it was classifying the outbreak in the same category as the SARS outbreak, meaning compulsory isolation for those diagnosed with the disease and the potential to implement quarantine measures on travel.Global precautions As the number of confirmed deaths and infections has risen, so has concern worldwide about the disease spreading to other countries.In Thailand, authorities have introduced mandatory thermal scans of passengers arriving at airports in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phuket and Krabi from high-risk areas in China.In Hong Kong, where hundreds died during the SARS outbreak, authorities have said they are on high alert, carrying out scans at the city’s airport — one of the world’s busiest — and at other international land and sea crossing points.The United States also ordered the screening of passengers arriving on direct or connecting flights from Wuhan, including at airports in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.Taiwan has issued travel advisories, and went to its second-highest alert level for those traveling to or from Wuhan. Vietnam has also ordered more border checks on its border with China.In Europe, Britain and Italy have said they will introduce enhanced monitoring of flights from Wuhan, while Romania and Russia are also strengthening checks.
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High-Level UN Panel Seeks Solutions to Problems of Internal Displacement
More than 41 million people globally have been forcibly displaced within their own countries because of conflict, violence and violations of their human rights, according to U.N. estimates. Another 17 million people have been forced to flee their homes because of natural disasters and climate-related events.People displaced within their own countries are among the most vulnerable in the world because they lack the legal international protections accorded refugees when they cross an international border. In an effort to right this wrong, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has established the first-ever High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement to seek concrete long-term solutions for the beleaguered millions and to raise global awareness of the unending misery in which they are caught.”The issue of internal displacement tends to be forgotten, while it is one of the major, not only humanitarian, but also, I would say, political crises that our times are seeing,” said Federica Mogherini, the co-chair of the panel and former European Commission High Representative for Foreign Affairs. “So, our first task will be to keep, or rather put this as high as possible on the agenda and try to provide some good advice on how this can be addressed,” she added. The panel’s eight distinguished members come from all regions of the world, some from countries that have big problems of internal displacement. They are expected to draw upon their wealth of experience in government, international organizations, civil society and the private sector to map out a realistic plan for improving the lives of the displaced and for garnering greater support for the communities that host them.”We have been clearly tasked to focus on specific issues. So, we will try to be as concrete and focused on the results that we can realistically achieve,” said Mogherini.
“First of all, we have been tasked to focus on prevention of displacement and mitigation of its effects. On capacity building, to better deal with this issue and how to mobilize at best international support, first and foremost for the states that are affected by this issue,” she said.Crucially, she said, the panel has been asked to address what she called the three main drivers of displacement: climate change, disaster risk reduction and peace action.The panel held its first “brainstorming” session on Tuesday in preparation for the complex and challenging work that will get underway on February 26. Guterres has given the group only one year in which to deliver a realistic plan, one that will be “sustainable and durable over time.”The secretary-general announced the establishment of the panel on October 23, the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the African Union Convention on Internally Displaced Persons in Africa, known as the Kampala Convention.The U.N. refugee agency reports 17.8 million people are internally displaced in sub-Saharan Africa, the largest regional displacement in the world. Panel co-chair Donald Kaberuka noted that a Convention on Internal Displacement would “ensure that the work, which has been done in the field of refugees and migrants, was completed.”On December 17, 2018, the General Assembly adopted the Global Compact on Refugees followed by the adoption on December 18, 2018 of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration.Kaberuka, the former president of the African Development Bank Group and minister of finance and economic planning in Rwanda said he hoped to bring his experience from the development world to find practical solutions to the displacement crisis.He told VOA it was not possible to separate “development, environment and security,” all elements involved in displacement. He said all three matters must be addressed together.For instance, he said, “I do not see any solution in the Sahel at the moment… What is happening to the climate and how it has fallen into a social problem and now into a security problem. Those will have to be addressed together.” The panelists have agreed that they want a positive, productive outcome to their year-long deliberations. They said they do not intend to point fingers of shame or dwell on governmental shortcomings but would try to get countries to work together to meet the needs of the displaced. Mogherini said the panel would “try to avoid politicizing this issue and try to look at what can help people live better in a situation that is in itself very difficult… We believe that this could be a win-win approach.”
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World Health Experts Assess Global Risk of Deadly China Virus
Experts meeting in emergency session at the World Health Organization will look at the spreading Coronavirus to see whether it constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern and decide on recommendations needed to manage it. The WHO has confirmed 440 cases of the disease, including 17 deaths. Since the new coronavirus was detected in a fish market in Wuhan city, China three weeks ago, the previously unknown virus has moved with frightening speed internally and abroad. Deaths have been reported in China, Thailand, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.The first case of the disease has been reported in the United States in a man who returned to the West Coast city of Seattle last week from Wuhan. He is hospitalized in good condition, but the appearance of the case has put officials in the U.S. and other countries on heightened alert. FILE – Medical staff carry a box as they walk at the Jinyintan hospital, where the patients with pneumonia caused by the new strain of coronavirus are being treated, in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, Jan. 10, 2020.Many airports are screening travelers from China. U.S. President Donald Trump, who was attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, has told media that he trusts the information coming out of China on coronavirus and that the situation was under control.Nevertheless, the World Health Organization is urging countries to continue preparedness measures to protect themselves from the possibilities of a large-scale outbreak. WHO spokesman Tarek Jasarevic says WHO experts and health officials in China are conducting investigations into the outbreak.”Much remains to be understood about this novel coronavirus. Not enough is known to draw definitive conclusions about how it is transmitted, clinical features of the disease, its severity, the extent to which it has spread or its source,” he said.Based on previous experience with respiratory illness, Jasarevic says limited human to human transmission is likely occurring. But he adds, this is not an airborne disease and people have to be in close contact to get infected. He says WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has convened the emergency meeting because little is known about the coronavirus and expert advice is needed to calm nerves and to know what protective actions are required. He notes a Public Health Emergency of International Public Concern has been declared only five times by the WHO.
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Taiwan Urges China to Release All Information on New Virus
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen urged China on Wednesday to release all information about the outbreak of a new virus and work with Taiwan on curbing its spread.At China’s insistence, Taiwan is not a member of the World Health Organization and is not allowed to participate in any of its meetings. However, large numbers of Taiwanese travel to and live in China, where hundreds of people have been sickened and nine have died in an outbreak that apparently originated in the city of Wuhan.
Despite Beijing’s restrictions, the Taiwan Center for Disease Control said earlier this month it had been notified on Jan. 15 by its Chinese counterpart about the outbreak. It said it had also sent two experts to Wuhan to visit health care facilities in order to “better understand the treatment process of the cases.”
Tsai made no mention of those interactions at her news conference Wednesday. Calls to her spokesman rang unanswered.
“I especially want to urge China, being a member of international society, that it should fulfill its responsibilities to make the situation of the outbreak transparent, and to share accurate information on the outbreak with Taiwan,” Tsai told reporters.
One case of the previously unknown coronavirus has been confirmed in Taiwan and others in Macao, South Korea, Japan, Thailand and the United States. The Taiwanese patient, a businesswoman who recently returned from Wuhan, is recovering, Tsai said.
Sharing information is also important for the health of the Chinese population and Beijing “should not put political concerns above the protection of its own people,” Tsai said.
China regards Taiwan as its own territory and says it is not entitled to representation in most international bodies.
“I want to reiterate that Taiwan is a member of international society. The 23 million people here, like all other people in every corner of the world, are facing threats to their own health,” Tsai said.
Taiwan, which was heavily affected by the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak that also originated in China, has enacted strict monitoring, detection and quarantine measures.
In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the Taiwanese experts had visited Wuhan at Taiwan’s request on Jan. 13-14 and held exchanges with Chinese colleagues.
“No one cares more about the health welfare of Taiwan compatriots than the Chinese central government,” Geng said at a daily briefing on Wednesday.
Chiu Chui-cheng, deputy minister of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, told The Associated Press that the visit was facilitated by an existing bilateral agreement covering medicine and public health.
“They dealt with issues related to the health and well-being of both countries’ people,” Chiu said.
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China to Hold Coronavirus Emergency Meeting With WHO
The first case to be diagnosed with the Wuhan coronavirus in the United States (in Seattle) was confirmed Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The outbreak, which originated in China, has so far spread to other countries including Japan, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines. China says it will attend an emergency World Health Organization summit this week on the coronavirus outbreak, which has infected several hundred and killed at least six. VOA correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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US Reports First Case of New Coronavirus
The United States is reporting its first case of the new coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China, and has killed at least six people.Health officials in the northwest U.S. state of Washington said a man who returned to Seattle from Wuhan last week is hospitalized in good condition with pneumonia. They say he poses no threat to doctors or hospital staff members.U.S. authorities are screening travelers from Wuhan at airports in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they are adding Atlanta and Chicago to the list of airport screenings this week.The United States is the fifth country to report cases of the new coronavirus, joining China, Japan, South Korea and Thailand.A health official watches travelers on a thermographic monitor at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia, Jan. 21, 2020.The number of confirmed cases is approaching 300, and six deaths have been reported in Wuhan. Most of the fatalities are in patients 60 years and older.China’s National Health Commission says it now knows the virus can be transmitted person-to-person and not just from animals to people.Chinese and U.S. health officials are particularly concerned because as many as 1.4 billion Chinese plan to travel across the country and overseas for the Lunar New Year holiday that starts Saturday. Chinese health experts say they know little about the new strain, dubbed 2019-nCoV. They suspect the outbreak started in a Wuhan seafood market, which also sold other animals such as poultry, bats, marmots, and wild game meat.Pharmacist Liu Zhuzhen stands near a sign reading “face masks are sold out” at her pharmacy in Shanghai, Jan. 21, 2020.The World Health Organization says an animal source seemed to be “the most likely primary source” with “some limited human-to-human transmission occurring between close contacts.” The WHO is to hold an emergency committee Wednesday to discuss the situation.Health officials are urging caution but say there is no reason to panic. The WHO is not recommending against travel to China, and China’s National Health Commission says the current outbreak is “preventable and controllable.”A coronavirus is one of a large family of viruses that can cause illnesses ranging from the common cold to the deadly Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. SARS, which also started in China, killed nearly 800 people globally during an outbreak nearly 20 years ago.
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Washington Man is 1st in US to Catch New Virus From China
The U.S. on Tuesday reported its first case of a new and potentially deadly virus circulating in China, saying a Washington state resident who returned last week from the outbreak’s epicenter was hospitalized near Seattle.The man, identified only as a Snohomish County resident is in his 30s, was in good condition and wasn’t considered a threat to medical staff or the public, health officials said.U.S. health officials stressed that they believe the virus’ overall risk to the American public remained low.The newly discovered virus has infected about 300 people, all of whom had been in China, and killed six. The virus can cause coughing, fever, breathing difficulty and pneumonia. The U.S. joins a growing list of places outside mainland China reporting cases, following Thailand, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.A health official watches travelers on a thermographic monitor at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia, Jan. 21, 2020.Airports around the world have stepped up monitoring, checking passengers from China for signs of illness in hopes of containing the virus during the busy Lunar New Year travel season.Late last week, U.S. health officials began screening passengers from Wuhan in central China, where the outbreak began. The screening had been under way at three U.S. airports — New York City’s Kennedy airport and the Los Angeles and San Francisco airports. On Tuesday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced it would add Chicago’s O’Hare airport and Atlanta’s airport to the mix later this week.What’s more, officials will begin forcing all passengers from Wuhan to go to one of those five airports if they wish to enter the U.S.The U.S. resident had no symptoms when he arrived at the Seattle-Tacoma airport last Wednesday, but he contacted doctors on Sunday when he started feeling ill, officials said. Lab testing on Monday confirmed he had the virus”The gentleman right now is very healthy,” said Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the CDC.The hospital, Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, said in a statement that it expected the man would be monitored there at least until Thursday.CDC officials said they sent a team to Washington to try to track down people who might have come in contact with the man. The hospital also said it was contacting “the small number of staff and patients” who may have been with the man at a clinic.Health officials described the number of possible contacts since he got back to the U.S. as small.China numbersLast month, doctors began seeing the new virus in people who got sick after spending time at a food market in Wuhan. More than 275 cases of the newly identified virus have been confirmed in China, most of them in Wuhan, according to the World Health Organization.Pharmacist Liu Zhuzhen stands near a sign reading “face masks are sold out” at her pharmacy in Shanghai, Jan. 21, 2020.The count includes six deaths — all in China, most of them age 60 or older, including at least some who had a previous medical condition.Officials have said it probably spread from animals to people, but this week Chinese officials said they’ve concluded it also can spread from person to person.Health authorities this month identified the germ behind the outbreak as a new type of coronavirus. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses, some of which cause the common cold; others found in bats, camels and other animals have evolved into more severe illnesses.SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, belongs to the coronavirus family, but Chinese state media say the illness in Wuhan is different from coronaviruses that have been identified in the past. Earlier laboratory tests ruled out SARS and MERS — Middle East respiratory syndrome — as well as influenza, bird flu, adenovirus and other common lung-infecting germs.The new virus so far does not appear to be as deadly as SARS and MERS, but viruses can sometimes mutate to become more dangerous.Researcher: Don’t panicUniversity of Washington coronavirus researcher David Veesler said the public “should not be panicking right now.”The response has been “very efficient,” Veesler said. “In a couple of weeks, China was able to identify the virus, isolate it, sequence it and share that information.”Veesler added: “We don’t have enough data to judge how severe the disease is.”The CDC’s Messonnier said health officials expected to see more cases in the U.S. and around the world in the coming days.
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UN Rights Panel Finds Climate Change Can be Cause for Asylum
A U.N. human rights panel has ruled for the first time that people fleeing the effects of climate change may be entitled to claim asylum, even as it dismissed an individual plaintiff’s case against his deportation from New Zealand.The U.N. Human Rights Committee published its ruling Tuesday in the case of a man from Kiribati who was sent back to the Pacific island nation after being denied asylum by New Zealand in 2015.
The Geneva-based panel, which monitors states’ compliance with the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, concluded that although the deportation was legal, similar cases might in future justify asylum claims.
The ruling has no immediate legal impact, but it is likely to be cited by people who say their rights are endangered by the impacts of climate change — such as violent storms and sea level rise.The plaintiff in the case, Ioane Teitiota, had argued that he and his family were threatened by the lack of fresh water and violent land disputes as the ocean encroaches on Kiribati. The panel concluded that he had failed to provide sufficient evidence for his claims and that while Kiribati is likely to become uninhabitable, there is still a chance the island’s government might avert this.Still, the committee’s 18 independent experts acknowledged that “environmental degradation, climate change and unsustainable development constitute some of the most pressing and serious threats to the ability of present and future generations to enjoy the right to life.”
“This ruling sets forth new standards that could facilitate the success of future climate change-related asylum claims,” committee member Yuval Shany said.
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Thai Opposition Party Survives Sedition Scare, But Threats Still Loom
Thailand’s Constitutional Court acquitted the country’s most vocal opposition party of sedition on Tuesday, sparing it an imminent death but setting the stage for its possible dissolution over a loan the party received in an alleged breach of election laws.The upstart Future Forward Party has been a cornerstone of Thailand’s opposition bloc in Parliament since finishing a strong third in national elections last March that returned 2014 coup leader Prayut Chan-ocha to power, ostensibly ending five years of military rule.Despite its junior role to the bloc’s larger Pheu Thai Party, it has been more brazen in challenging the military’s continued grip on power through its own proxy party, Palang Pracharath, and an appointed Senate.Natthaporn Toprayoon, a lawyer and former adviser to the Ombudsman of Thailand, filed a complaint last year accusing Future Forward of seeking to overthrow the monarchy, which the constitution places beyond reproach. To make his case, Natthaporn cited the party leaders’ speeches, the party’s regulations and even its logo — a triangle — which he likened to the symbol of the Illuminati, a supposed secret society bent on world domination.The party dismissed the allegations as politically motivated.Shortly after noon in Bangkok on Tuesday, the Constitutional Court announced that the evidence proffered could not support conviction.Calls for parties to join reform agendaGreeting a room full of cheering supporters at party headquarters a few hours later, Future Forward leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit struck a tone both conciliatory and defiant, inviting the parties in power to join its reform agenda.”We hope that if our bills [go] to the parliament, we would go beyond the opposition and the governing coalition line and work for the bills that benefit the people together,” he said.”Outside the Parliament, we will continue to campaign on the amendment of the 2017 constitution, because we believe that the Thai society as a whole needs to come sit down together and design what kind of country, what kind of Thailand, we would like to live [in] together.”Many Thais blame the political powers the military gave itself in the constitution it drafted while in power for tipping last year’s election in its favor.Heading into the verdict, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political analyst and lecturer at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University, said he expected Future Forward to survive the sedition charge given how thin the case appeared.The Constitutional Court, already bruised by its controversial handling of election complaints, would have been reluctant to dissolve the party on such flimsy grounds, he added, or to be seen dragging the monarchy into politics.But Thitinan said it was too soon for Future Forward to breathe easy, suspecting the sedition charge to be a mere “decoy” for a loan case against the party the Constitutional Court is due to decide on next, though no date has been set.Thanathorn, an auto parts billionaire, extended his young party a hefty line of credit to see it through last year’s campaign season, allegedly breaking laws on lending limits and funding sources in the process.Future Forward denies wrongdoing, and a pair of Election Commission subcommittees appeared to agree, according to local news reports citing leaked commission records. Responding to the leaks, the Election Commission said the subcommittees’ recommendations to drop the case were not binding and defended its decision to pursue the charge.”If the decision has been made to dissolve Future Forward because it represents a clear and present danger to the Prayut government … they will have to look for a case. And the loan case, I think they could fudge it easier than the Illuminati,” Thitinan said.’Case was more technical’Thammasat University political science professor Prajak Kongkirati agreed that the government was more likely to convict and dissolve Future Forward over the loans. He said the case was more “technical,” echoing the court’s conviction of Thanathorn in November for owning shares in a media company during the election campaign, costing him his seat in Parliament. Thanathorn denied the charge.With the party and its leaders still facing some 20 lawsuits between them, Future Forward remains squarely fixed in the government’s crosshairs.More than any other party in the opposition bloc, Thitinan said, “Future Forward has been calling the shots. [It] has been taking the government and the military to task without fear, and that’s why they are on the chopping block.”Government challenged by Future Forward partyThe party has taken the lead in challenging the government’s defense budget and in calling for an end to military conscription. Prajak said the party’s collective vote against an emergency decree in October to transfer two army units to the Royal Palace was another case in point.”It’s unthinkable,” he said. “No political analysts or observers [thought] that any party would dare to do that, but finally Future Forward did it. So, clearly they commit to what they [said] during the election campaign, that they want to change Thai society, they want to … reform the army, reduce the power of the army. And that is something that the army and Prayut could not tolerate.”At party headquarters, Thanathorn sounded hopeful that Future Forward would survive its coming court battles, as well. But the party has been preparing for its potential demise regardless, and with good reason. Thailand’s courts have dissolved three opposition parties since 2007.Future Forward announced plans weeks ago to set up a proxy party its lawmakers and supporters could jump to if and when it is dissolved.Prajak and Thitinan said the ruling coalition would likely manage to poach a few Future Forward lawmakers if that happens and bolster its razor thin majority in the House of Representatives. But they warned that it could also prove a springboard for more and larger protests demanding that the government step down.A pair of anti-government rallies in Bangkok drew several thousand people in late December and early January.
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China Sentences Ex- Interpol Boss to 13 Years for Bribes
China has sentenced the former president of Interpol, Meng Hongwei, to 13 years and six months in prison on charges of accepting more than $2 million in bribes.
Meng was elected president of the international police organization in 2016, but his four-year term was cut short when he vanished after traveling to China from France in late 2018.
Interpol was not informed and was forced to make a formal request to China for information about Meng’s whereabouts amid suspicion he had fallen out of political favor with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Meng’s wife, who remains in France with their two children, has accused Chinese authorities of lying and questioned whether her husband was still alive.
Grace Meng is now suing Interpol, accusing it of failing to protect him from arrest in China and failing to look after his family. Meng’s lawyers last year filed a legal complaint in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands.
In a statement sent to The Associated Press, she said Interpol “breached its obligations owed to my family” and “is complicit in the internationally wrongful acts of its member country, China.”
A statement Tuesday from the No. 1 Intermediary Court in the northern city of Tianjin said Meng accepted the verdict and would not appeal. In addition to his prison sentence, he was fined 2 million yuan ($290.000) .
It said Meng, 66, admitted he abused his position to accept 14.4 million yuan ($2.1 million) in bribes while serving in various offices, including as a vice minister of public security and maritime police chief, often in exchange for favors and using his influence with other officials.
Meng has already been fired from his positions and expelled from the Communist Party. The relatively light sentence was likely a result of what the court called his cooperative attitude and willingness to admit to and shore remorse for his crimes.
While serving at Interpol, Meng retained his title as China’s vice minister of public security. It wasn’t clear when or how he had crossed Xi, who has leveraged a wide-ranging campaign against corruption at all levels to eliminate or intimidate political rivals.
As a long-serving vice minister of public security, Meng served for a time under Zhou Yongkang, the former security chief who was sentenced to life in prison, becoming the most powerful figure to fall in Xi’s anti-graft campaign.
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N. Korea’s New ‘Blunt’ Foreign Minister May Reinforce Foreign Policy Realignment
North Korea has appointed a former military officer with a blunt-speaking reputation to be the country’s new foreign minister, the latest evidence Pyongyang may be realigning its foreign policy after apparently losing hope in nuclear talks. North Korea has notified foreign embassies in Pyongyang that Ri Son Gwon has been named as foreign minister, a diplomatic source confirmed to VOA. The story was first reported by NK News, a Seoul-based online publication with contacts in North Korea. The move comes as North Korea continues to boycott nuclear talks, amid frustrations Washington has not offered enough concessions. The appointment of Ri as foreign minister may be the latest evidence North Korea will take a hardline approach in 2020.A former army colonel, Ri has relatively little diplomatic experience and apparently no history working on nuclear issues. Most recently, he was the chairman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country, which handles relations with the South. He has led North Korean delegations for inter-Korean talks, including in 2018. During those talks, Ri gained a reputation for straightforward and sometimes standoffish behavior, according to South Korean media reports.FILE – The head of the North Korean delegation Ri Son Gwon, center, is greeted by an unidentified South Korean official as Ri crosses to the South side for the meeting with South Korea at Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone, Oct. 15, 2018.Policy still dictated by KimHowever, many analysts cautioned against reading too much into Ri’s reputation or background.”North Korean diplomats can be both blunt or charming, depending on the situation. So his reported bluntness is secondary” to whatever message North Korea wants him to convey, says Ramon Pacheco Pardo, a Korea specialist who teaches at King’s College London.”Policy decisions will still come from Kim Jong Un, not from the foreign minister. So in terms of substance, it does not matter much who is the foreign minister,” he adds. Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, agrees that the new foreign minister’s past experience and policy positions are “less important than what he is empowered to do by the Kim regime.”Will he be entrusted with restarting denuclearization talks with Washington and inter-Korean exchanges with Seoul? Or will it be his job to stonewall [U.S. Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo and [U.S. North Korea envoy Stephen] Biegun while overseeing a pressure campaign including the demolition of South Korean-built tourism facilities at Mt. Kumgang? Recent signs from North Korea are not encouraging,” Easley said. North Korea has not formally announced Ri as new foreign minister. It is not clear what happened to his predecessor, Ri Yong Ho, a career diplomat who served in the position for about four years. Some analysts have suggested that Kim may be reprimanding Ri for the failed nuclear talks.”I agree that it’s a way to show displeasure with the lack of progress,” says Pacheco Pardo. “If there was a deal, I don’t think we would have seen the changes in personnel.” Stalled talksKim Jong Un had set an end-of-year deadline for the U.S. to make a new offer in nuclear talks. After the deadline passed without any U.S. concessions, many analysts had expected him to lay out a starker “new path” for his country. But Kim’s New Year’s comments were more pessimistic than provocative. Kim warned of a “long-term” standoff with the U.S. and said he no longer felt bound by his self-imposed suspension of nuclear and long-range missile tests. But he also did not rule out talks altogether. Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump have met three times. In June 2018, they signed a vague agreement to work toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The talks have been stalled since February 2019, when a Hanoi summit between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump ended abruptly in no deal. There are signs that the Trump-Kim diplomacy has reached its limit. Earlier this month, a North Korea foreign ministry official said that while the two men’s relationship remains “not bad,” talks would not resume unless the United States first unconditionally accepts the North’s demands.
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Indonesia Fights Growing Pressure from China to Let it Use Use Disputed Waters
China is raising pressure on Indonesia over rights to use a contested tract of sea and challenging the militarily weaker Southeast Asian country to consider options from friendly dialogue to strong protests.
Indonesia spotted as many as 63 “trespassing” Chinese vessels in 30 locations within its maritime exclusive economic zone last month, the research platform East Asia Forum says in a January 15 report. Another spate followed in early January. Chinese coast guard vessels had escorted some, media reports from Jakarta say.
Though not a first between the two big Asian countries, this escalation near Indonesia’s Natuna Islands raises the specter of a new flash point in a normally quiet part of the broader, heavily disputed South China Sea.”On the Indonesian side, I think that there’s a growing sense at the security level that China is becoming a more problematic actor,” said Stephen Nagy, a senior associate professor of politics and international studies at International Christian University in Tokyo.
China may hope Indonesia will bargain over the tract of sea that’s near the 272 tiny Natuna islands northwest of Borneo, possibly in exchange for economic aid, Asia scholars say.
But if Indonesia fears talks would validate China’s claim, it might instead make diplomatic protests instead or get help from powerful Western-allied countries that already resent China’s maritime expansion.”I think you’ll see a lot more of China pushing not just on us but on Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines and others through incursions and get us to eventually acknowledge their right to a negotiation, and I think this is why we’re still very much resisting the notion that we should come and talk to the Chinese about this,” said Evan Laksamana, senior researcher for the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Jakarta.”And I think China also doesn’t want to make (the coordinates of its claim) that clear yet, so that’s why these are kind of gradual, low-level incursions, that of course I think will escalate if Indonesia doesn’t respond strongly and forcefully and provide actual diplomatic protest notes so that under international law we always challenge China’s incursions,” Laksamana said.South China Sea Territorial Claims
China vies separately with Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines over parts of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer South China Sea north of the Natuna Islands. China uses a nine-dash line, sourcing it to maritime records from dynastic times, to claim about 90% of the waterway that multiple countries value for its fisheries and undersea fossil fuel reserves. The nine dashes cut into the Indonesian exclusive economic zone, or EEZ.
Indonesia and China are in a new phase of testing each other’s bottom line, said Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow with the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. Competing ship movements will continue “for a while”, he believes. “In recent years, I think both China and Indonesia came to the realization that the Natuna Island EEZ and nine-dash line, they do intersect one another, so they are literally testing the water now,” Oh said.
Friction between the two sides dates back to 2016, when Indonesian President Joko Widodo showed signs of taking a harder line in the maritime dispute compared to his predecessors.Authorities in his government have burned dozens of foreign fishing boats found in the EEZ. Vessels from the two countries entered a standoff in 2016 when Indonesian authorities tried to arrest a private boat operator but a Chinese coast guard vessel intervened. Indonesia said then that China had officially included waters near the Natuna Islands on a territorial map. Two years later Indonesia opened a Natuna Islands military base for up to 1,000 personnel.
China hinted this month that the two sides should talk. “I can tell you that China and Indonesia have always carried out dialogue through diplomatic channels,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a news briefing January 7 as quoted on his ministry’s website. “We believe the Indonesian side also can see the issue from the vantage of bilateral relations and regional stability and resolve disputes with the Chinese side.”
China often offers aid and investment to ease rifts with smaller countries. Before Widodo took office in 2014, Indonesia normally said little about Chinese vessels near the Natuna Islands. China had invested in Indonesia’s infrastructure and bought oil from its palm plantations. Indonesian officials today have been cautious on any deals to accept infrastructure aid under Beijing’s $1 trillion, Belt and Road Initiative aimed at building trade routes across Asia.
Indonesia indicated it would assert its maritime claim without dialogue.Maritime and Fisheries Minister Edhy Prabowo made a working visit January 15 to the Natuna Islands “in order to follow up President Jokowi’s instructions that Indonesian sovereignty is not negotiable,” according to a statement on the ministry’s website. Jokowi is the president’s nickname.
Indonesia protested diplomatically over the December ship movements and China replied that it had rights to use those waters.
Jakarta might look to Australia, Japan and the United States for help such as “capacity building”, Nagy said. Eventually, he said, nothing will be settled. That way China can show it’s not being influenced by smaller countries and Indonesian people won’t see their government as a pushover, he said.
China would avoid any moves that might incite anger among Indonesian people, the source of deadly anti-Chinese riots in 1998, Nagy added.
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South Korea Naval Unit to Expand Operations to Strait of Hormuz
A South Korean anti-piracy unit has temporarily expanded its mission to the Strait of Hormuz, a vital global oil route at the center of soaring tensions between Iran and the United States.South Korea’s Defense Ministry announced the expansion Tuesday, saying it was meant to help ensure the safe passage of South Korean vessels and nationals through the waterway. South Korea has conducted anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden since 2009 and is expanding to the strait that connects the Gulf of Oman and Persian Gulf. Tensions in waters around the Arabian Peninsula have soared since President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal and a U.S. airstrike earlier this month killed Iran’s top general.Iran was accused of sabotaging oil tankers in the Persian Gulf last year, allegations it denied. It seized a British-flagged oil tanker after an Iranian oil tanker was seized by authorities in Gibraltar over suspected sanctions violations. Both ships were released weeks later. The United States last week warned of threats to commercial vessels in and around the Persian Gulf following the latest tensions.The South Korean ministry’s statement said the unit will work independently but cooperate with a U.S.-led coalition if necessary. It said two South Korean soldiers will be liaison officers at the International Maritime Security Construct headquarters. Observers say the decision suggested South Korea considered both its relations with Iran and chief ally United States, which has asked it for a contribution to help guard oil tankers.The South Korean naval unit refers to a 4,400-ton-class destroyer with 300 troops and a helicopter, according to the navy. According to the statement, the Strait of Hormuz is a shipping lane for more than 70 percent of South Korean oil imports and South Korean vessels sail through the area about 900 times annually. It said about 25,000 South Korean nationals live in the Middle East.
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