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Virus Outbreak: Sixty-six at S African hospital have virus, mostly staff

Sixty-six people at a single hospital in South Africa have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past few days, South African Minister of Health Zweli Mkhize said on Tuesday, as anxiety rose among health workers over the shortage of protective gear.

At least 48 of the people who tested positive at St Augustine’s Hospital in Durban are staff, Mkhize said, adding that authorities were looking into closing parts of the facility.

He also sought to ease the fears of health workers after one union went to court last week pressing the government for more protective equipment.

Masked medical staff walk outside St Augustine’s Hospital in Durban, South Africa, on Friday last week.
 Photo: AP

South Africa’s supplies should last up to eight weeks, he said, adding that no one would be forced to work where they feel unprotected.

St Augustine’s is one of Durban’s largest private hospitals, said Denis Chopera, a virologist working in the city.

“This definitely shows the problem of protecting our healthcare workers,” he said. “These healthcare workers are going to go home and infect their families. Many will return home to townships and informal settlements that are crowded places where the virus could spread. There needs to be regular, frequent testing of workers. This is a big challenge for South Africa.”

“This is an untenable situation. Front-line medical staff must be protected at all times,” South African Medical Association chair Angelique Coetzee said last week.

South Africa, the most developed country in Africa, has the most confirmed virus cases on the continent, with more than 1,700.

Mkhize said fewer than 100 people across the nation are hospitalized.

Cases across the continent on Tuesday topped 10,000 and shortages of protective gear are acute in many countries that have some of the world’s most ill-equipped and poorly funded health systems. One is South Sudan, which on Sunday announced its first case.

A growing number of countries have imposed tough measures to try to contain the virus’ spread, from national lockdowns in South Africa and Rwanda to the closing-off of some of Africa’s largest cities, including Lagos in Nigeria.

In Nairobi, a day after travel in and out of Kenya’s capital was cut off, there were signs of frustration.

“I had traveled from my home in Nairobi to go back to my village to collect some food for the market, but then I got stuck without the bus fare to get back home,” said one thwarted traveler, Joyce Mueni. “Eventually I borrowed the money, but now I’m stranded.”

Some families set off with bags and children, and avoided roadblocks, walking through fields in or out of the city.

“There is a lot of hiccups,” said Catherine Ringera, with the Athi River police station.

Fifty-two of Africa’s 54 countries now have the virus.

In Ethiopia, Ethiopian Airlines chief executive Tewolde Gebremariam said three cabin crew members had tested positive. He gave no details.

And in the latest example of the financial pain created by the pandemic, he said the airline has lost about US$550 million in revenue and cut 90 percent of flights.

He dismissed claims the airline is laying off employees.

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For the first time since halting play four weeks ago, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman on Tuesday raised the possibility of not completing the regular season to squeeze in time to award the Stanley Cup.

Bettman also acknowledged in an interview with NBCSN that the league is considering having games played at neutral sites in the event not all teams will be allowed into their home rinks.

However, Bettman said that these are among myriad options being considered with nothing determined, because it would take at least two more weeks to gain a clearer picture on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the league’s 31 markets.

“We’re looking at all options. Nothing’s been ruled in. Nothing’s been ruled out,” Bettman said in the interview broadcast on the league’s US broadcast partner.

“The best thing and the easiest thing would be if at some point we could complete the regular season and then go into the playoffs as we normally do,” he said. “We understand that may not be possible... and that’s why we’re considering every conceivable alternative to deal with whatever the eventuality is.”

Bettman had not previously raised the possibility of shortening the regular season, which was halted on March 12 with 189 games remaining.

The 16-team playoffs were scheduled to start yesterday, although they likely will not begin until late June — at the earliest — and could stretch into August and potentially September.

NHL players have been asked to self-quarantine through Wednesday next week, a date that has been pushed back twice already and is expected to be moved once again.

The number of NHL players who have tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday rose to eight as the league announced a third Colorado Avalanche player tested positive, joining five members of the Ottawa Senators.

The season was put on hold with teams having played an uneven amount of games and with tightly contested races taking place in each of the two conferences. The NHL has not placed a firm deadline on the latest when the playoffs could start.

However, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said in an e-mail to reporters that the league would eventually have to establish “some last possible day” so not to cut into the start of the following season.

“It’s nothing that we are even close to setting at this point in time,” he wrote.

The possibility of playing at neutral sites is being considered because the pandemic is affecting regions at different times.

North Dakota, among a handful of states without stay-at-home orders, was mentioned as a potential site, because the state is not densely populated and the University of North Dakota features an NHL-caliber facility.

Buffalo, New York, has also been discussed because the Sabres, who are out of contention, have a two-rink practice facility connected to their downtown arena and a 200-plus room hotel.

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title: NHL commissioner raises possibility of abbreviated season


title: Virus Outbreak: African Americans are dying at higher rates

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The coronavirus is not biased about who it infects — so why does data emerging from some US states suggest that African Americans are bearing the brunt of the pandemic there?

Experts have said that blacks are disproportionately affected by underlying health conditions linked to poverty, face discrimination in medical care and are more likely to work jobs that require them to leave their homes.

“We know that blacks are more likely to have diabetes, heart disease, lung disease,” US Surgeon-General Jerome Adams said on Tuesday.

A medical worker takes a patient to a special coronavirus intake area at Maimonides Medical Center in the Brooklyn borough of New York City on Tuesday.
 Photo: AFP

These chronic illnesses, which are linked to poverty and structural racism, can lead to more serious forms of COVID-19.

Adams, who is himself black and has high blood pressure and asthma, added: “I represent that legacy of growing up poor and black in America, and I, and many black Americans, are at higher risk for COVID.”

There is no nationwide data available on COVID-19 cases by race, but a pattern of over-representation by black Americans has emerged in states or jurisdictions that are sharing the numbers.

Sixty-eight percent of COVID-19 deaths in Chicago have been among African Americans, who make up just 30 percent of the city’s population.

“Those numbers take your breath away. This is a call to action for all of us,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said on Monday at a coronavirus briefing.

The trend is repeated in North Carolina, Louisiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and the US capital, Washington.

The issue is also linked to social class, with black people more likely to work jobs deemed essential that expose them to potential infection, American Public Health Association executive director Georges Benjamin said.

“That population is more public facing: more bus drivers, more people taking public transportation to work, more people providing services in nursing homes, more folks working in grocery stores,” Benjamin said.

The problem is compounded by implicit and explicit bias that African Americans face in the medical system.

James Hildreth, president of the historically black Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, said that in his city, most of the initial testing took place at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Most of the patients who go to hospital systems such as Vanderbilt have insurance and Nashville only recently built three assessment centers for underprivileged and minority communities — one of them located on the campus of Meharry Medical College and run by its staff.

“My point is, depending on which community you live in, and whether or not you have insurance ... the chances for getting assessed are much less,” he said.

It is also well-documented that when black people seek care, healthcare workers are less likely to believe their symptoms and provide adequate care, University of Virginia Medical Center anesthesiologist Ebony Hilton said.

For example, black women are less likely to have their breast cancer mammograms seen by a specialist as opposed to a general radiologist, a 2012 study released by the University of Illinois at Chicago showed.

Black heart patients who present with elevated levels of a group of proteins indicating cardiac injury are also less likely to be seen by specialists, a 2018 study showed.

The civil rights group Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law wrote this week to US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, calling on him to “release daily racial and ethnic demographic data related to COVID-19 testing, disease burden and patient outcomes.”

This is necessary to ensure a robust public health response, and to make certain that care and testing are not being administered in a discriminatory manner, the group said.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collects the information, but deliberately withholds it, it said.

Hilton said that it was in the interests of Americans as a whole to address the problem, because — unlike high rates of heart disease or cancer — a wave of coronavirus spreading through the black and Hispanic population would ultimately affect everyone else.

“When you have a system that’s not treating these people of lower social economic status and these minority groups, they are then not being tested, they’re sent back home to infect their community,” she said. “Those workers who are now infected are going to the grocery store, and when the upper echelon of America is going to get their food, they will get infected, too.”

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title: WeWork suing Softbank for backing out of rescue

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Office-sharing giant WeWork on Tuesday sued Softbank Group Corp, claiming the Japan-based technology investment group breached its contractual obligations by backing out of a US$3 billion rescue plan.

The lawsuit filed in a US court in Delaware came just days after Softbank said it was backing out of the plan to purchase WeWork shares to shore up the finances of the struggling sharing-economy giant.

WeWork’s board of directors called the Softbank action “a clear breach of its contractual obligations” under an agreement between the two firms last year, as well as a breach of Softbank’s fiduciary obligations to the firm’s current and former employees who were to sell their equity.

SoftBank Group chief executive Masayoshi Son speaks at a news briefing on the company`s financial results in Tokyo on Nov. 6 last year.
 Photo: AFP

The complaint alleges Softbank yielded to pressure from “activist investors” and made the move after it had “received most of the benefits” under the deal, including control of WeWork’s board.

WeWork is asking the court to force Softbank to live up to the agreement or pay damages.

Softbank last week said it was terminating the agreement, claiming WeWork failed to live up to its obligations and cited “multiple, new and significant pending criminal and civil investigations” surrounding WeWork and its cofounder, Adam Neumann.

Neumann was to have received an estimated US$1 billion from the Softbank investment.

The deal also would allocate about US$450 million to current or former WeWork employees who have equity in the group.

A WeWork board special committee said it “regrets the fact that Softbank continues to put its own interests ahead of those of WeWork’s minority stockholders.”

Softbank said in a statement it would “vigorously defend” its position that it has no legal obligation to proceed with the share purchase, known as a tender offer.

“Nothing in the special committee’s filing today credibly refutes Softbank’s decision to terminate the tender offer,” a SoftBank spokesperson said in an e-mail.

“Their filing today is a desperate and misguided attempt now to rewrite that agreement and to rewrite the history of the past six months,” they added.

The move by Softbank marked a dramatic turn of events at troubled WeWork, once hailed as a shining unicorn valued at US$47 billion.

Things began to unravel last year as WeWork lost cash and canceled its share offering, with Neumann pushed out — albeit with a generous package.

The tender offer would have most benefited Neumann, his family and major institutional stockholders such as Benchmark Capital, Softbank has said.

Softbank has said its decision would not impact the day-to-day operations of WeWork.

The Japanese firm and its Vision Fund have already committed more than US$14.25 billion to WeWork.

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China’s second accounting scandal in less than a week is underscoring concern over lax corporate governance at some of the country’s fastest-growing companies.

TAL Education Group (好未來教育集團), a tutoring business for kindergarten to year 12 students whose success turned founder Zhang Bangxin (張邦鑫) into one of China’s richest people, delivered the latest bombshell on Tuesday, after saying a routine internal audit found an employee had inflated sales by forging contracts.

The Beijing-based company said the wrongdoing affected its “Light Class” business that generates as much as 4 percent of revenue and the worker is now in police custody, but it did not give further details on the value of the affected sales or how long they had taken place.

People wearing masks are seen outside a Luckin Coffee Inc outlet in Shanghai on Friday last week, three days after the company said its board was investigating reports that senior executives and employees fabricated transactions.
 Photo: Bloomberg

TAL’s American depositary receipts (ADRs) sank as much as 18 percent in late US trading.

The sell-off follows the 83 percent slump in NASDAQ-listed Luckin Coffee Inc (瑞幸咖啡) since the company announced on Thursday last week that its chief operating officer and some underlings might have fabricated billions of yuan in sales for last year.

Accounting firm Ernst & Young later said it discovered the fabrications when it audited the firm’s financial statements.

Trading in its ADRs was suspended on Tuesday.

While China Inc is no stranger to claims of financial irregularities — particularly from short sellers who have targeted both TAL and Luckin in the recent past — the fresh wave of revelations is once again putting the spotlight on corporate malpractice at US-listed Chinese firms.

The fallout has already affected other listings from the nation and is likely to deter some overseas investors from buying into future initial public offerings.

The cases are “reviving the big question for investors in Chinese firms: The financial data may look pretty, but can you trust it?” Prudential Brokerage Ltd (信誠證券) associate director Alvin Cheung (張智威) said. “The latest case has further fueled anxiety over Chinese firms’ financials, especially under a slowing economy and a difficult business environment.”

Moves in other education stocks show how investor nerves can quickly spread: New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc (新東方教育科技集團) lost 4.6 percent in US post-market trading.

Hope Education Group Co (希望教育集團) yesterday fell 3.3 percent in Hong Kong, while CAR Inc (神州租車), a vehicle-rental firm founded by Luckin’s chairman, dropped another 17 percent.

The declines vindicate short sellers such as Carson Block’s Muddy Waters, which has for years targeted Chinese firms listed on US exchanges.

Peer Wolfpack Research on Tuesday released a new critical report on iQiyi Inc (愛奇藝), alleging that the video-streaming company overstates revenue and subscriber numbers.

Muddy Waters assisted Wolfpack in its research and said it is also short of the company.

Iqiyi denied the claims. ADRs in the company fell 3 percent in extended trading.

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title: Two accounting scandals in China burn investors


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The June 14 Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal on Tuesday joined a growing list of Formula One races postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with this season yet to get on the starting grid.

The race is the ninth to be affected by the coronavirus, with the March 15 season-opening Australian Grand Prix canceled along with next month’s showcase Monaco Grand Prix.

Commercial rights holder Liberty Media hopes to get the championship started in the European summer with a reduced and greatly rearranged schedule of between 15 and 18 races that could run into the new year.

Ferrari’s Sebastien Vettel wins the Canadian Grand Prix at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal on June 10, 2018.
 Photo: Reuters

“At the moment it is crucial that all of our energies be put together to overcome COVID-19. We will welcome you with open arms at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve as soon as it is safe to do so,” Canadian Grand Prix CEO Francois Dumontier said.

The race is promoted by Octane Racing Group and organizers said that the decision to postpone, after regular discussions with city authorities and Formula One, was not taken lightly.

“We have heard the directives issued by public health officials and as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic are following the expert guidance provided by the authorities,” the organizers said.

Almost half of Canada’s COVID-19 cases are in Quebec Province, of which Montreal is the largest city.

Quebec Premier Francois Legault on Sunday said that he hoped to see the number of new cases peak in a number of weeks.

He also extended a shutdown of nonessential businesses for another three weeks to May 4.

Formula One chairman Chase Carey said that Formula One supported the “necessary decision to ensure the safety of fans and F1 community.”

“We always look forward to travelling to the incredible city of Montreal and while we will all have to wait a bit longer, we will put on a great show when we arrive later this year,” he added.

Organizers said that tickets would remain valid and spectators would be informed of their options when a new date was decided.

Canada is to have two drivers this season, with Nicholas Latifi a rookie at Williams, while Lance Stroll continues at Racing Point, a team owned by his father, Lawrence Stroll.

Formula One now has to try to reschedule races in Bahrain, Vietnam, China, Azerbaijan, the Netherlands and Spain, as well as Canada, with France, Austria and Britain looking likely to join the list.

The British Grand Prix has set a deadline of this month to decide whether it can go ahead.

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title: Canadian Grand Prix to be rescheduled due to disease


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title: EDITORIAL CARTOON


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‘CHINA-CENTRIC’:
 The US president accused the WHO of keeping information about the virus secret, but walked back on a threat to immediately cut funding

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday hunted for a new scapegoat in an increasingly frantic attempt to shift blame for thousands of American deaths from COVID-19, accusing the WHO of having “called it wrong” and being “China-centric.”

The US president contradicted himself within minutes, first vowing to put “a very powerful hold” on his government’s funding of the WHO, then insisting such a freeze was only under consideration.

Trump’s early inaction has come under renewed scrutiny in the past day after a New York Times report that White House National Trade Council Director Peter Navarro warned in a memo in late January that the virus could put millions of Americans at risk and cost trillions of US dollars.

US President Donald Trump speaks at a daily coronavirus task force briefing at the White House in Washington on Tuesday.
 Photo: Reuters

Former US national security adviser Susan Rice told the Washington Post that Trump’s missteps “cost tens of thousands of American lives.”

The US president has repeatedly denied responsibility and sought to blame China, the administration of former US president Barack Obama and the media.

On Tuesday, with the US death toll exceeding 12,000, he unleashed a tirade at the WHO, even though it raised the alarm in January, after which he made statements downplaying the coronavirus and comparing it to the common flu.

“They’ve been wrong about a lot of things,” Trump said at the daily White House coronavirus task force briefing. “And they had a lot of information early and they didn’t want to — they seemed to be very China-centric” — implying that the WHO had toed the line of Beijing’s early efforts to minimize the scale of the outbreak.

He added: “They called it wrong, they called it wrong. They missed the call. They could have called it months earlier. They would have known and they should have known and they probably did know. So we’ll be looking into that very carefully and we’re going to put a hold on money spent [sic] to the WHO.”

“We’re going to put a very powerful hold on it and we’re going to see. It’s a great thing if it works, but when they call every shot wrong, it’s not good,” he said.

However, soon after, Trump was asked if the middle of a pandemic was the time to suspend money for the WHO.

“No, maybe not,” he replied, backtracking from his earlier remark. “I’m not saying I’m going to do it, but we’re going to look at.”

A reporter interjected: “You did say that.”

Trump retorted: “No, I didn’t, I said we’re going to look at it. We’re going to investigate it, we’re going to look at it. But we will look at ending funding, yeah, because you know what, they called it wrong, and if you look back over the years even, everything seems to be very biased toward China. That’s not right.”

The WHO declared COVID-19 a public health emergency on Jan. 30, nearly a month before Trump tweeted: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,” adding: “One day - it’s like a miracle - it will disappear.”

He eventually declared a national emergency on March 13.

Trump has long been skeptical about multinational organizations.

In its most recent budget proposal in February, his administration requested a reduction of the US contribution to the WHO from an estimated US$122.6 million to US$57.9 million.

On Tuesday, Trump also played down January and February memos from Navarro, saying that he had not seen them at the time, but did “more or less” what his trade adviser suggested by imposing travel restrictions on China.

It was reported this week that nearly 40,000 people have flown from China to the US since the partial ban came into effect on Feb. 2.

He would not have wanted to act prematurely, Trump added, when it was not clear how bad the situation would become.

“I don’t want to create havoc and shock and everything else. I’m not going to go out and start screaming: ‘This could happen, this could happen.’ I’m a cheerleader for this country,” he said.

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title: Virus Outbreak: Trump considers cutting WHO funding


title: Cyclone flattens homes, causes injuries in Fiji

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A powerful tropical cyclone yesterday battered the South Pacific island nation of Fiji, witnesses said, destroying buildings and causing injuries in the capital, Suva, pressuring a population already bracing for the COVID-19 outbreak.

Cyclone Harold, its strength ranked in the highest category of five, passed over Fiji’s south at about midday, leveling homes and snapping communications links in the archipelago, which has adopted curbs on movement to rein in the virus.

“We’ve seen reports of injuries,” Fijian National Disaster Management Office Director Vasiti Soko said by telephone. “As to the number, as well as the intensity, of the injuries, that’s yet to be ascertained.”

There were no immediate reports of deaths, but about 10 houses in Suva were reported destroyed, Soko added.

Flooded streets, wild winds and ruined buildings on the country’s main island home to Suva featured in unverified video images and photographs circulated on social media.

Emergency officials were scrambling to establish contact with the southern island of Kapavu, after the storm severed communications with it, Soko added.

The ferocious storm has cut a path through the Pacific, which is already on high alert for an outbreak of the coronavirus.

Although Fiji has just 15 infections and no deaths, Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama has banned unnecessary gatherings of more than 20 people, among other curbs.

Bainimarama urged all Fijians to stay indoors unless told to evacuate.

“Our evacuation centers are safe, they are sanitized and monitored to ensure they do not surpass capacity,” he said in a social media posting. “Those under quarantine due to the threat of coronavirus will not mix with others.”

The cyclone, which has killed dozens in the Solomon Islands before destroying buildings in Vanuatu, was expected to make its way to Tonga within days, weather forecasters said.

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Virus Outbreak: Mexicans urged to stop harassing health workers

They are the first line of defense against the COVID-19 pandemic, but in parts of Mexico, doctors, nurses and other health workers are being harassed to the point that federal authorities have pleaded for Mexicans to show solidarity.

While tributes to courageous medical personnel putting themselves in the virus’ path circle the globe, Mexico and some other places have seen disturbing aggression born of fear.

Staff at a hospital in Guadalajara — Mexico’s second-largest city — were told to wear civilian clothes to and from work rather than their scrubs or uniforms, because some public buses refused to allow them to board.

Mariachis on Tuesday serenade outside the National Hospital for Respiratory Diseases in Mexico City to boost the morale of medical personnel fighting the COVID-19 outbreak.
 Photo: EPA-EFE

Other medical personnel have reported attacks and this week someone threw flammable liquid on the doors of a new hospital under construction in the northern border state of Nuevo Leon.

“There have been cases, you could say isolated, but all outrageous,” Mexican Undersecretary of Health Hugo Lopez-Gatell said on Monday night. “Fear produces irrational reactions — reactions that make no sense, have no foundation and have no justification when they have to do with respecting the dignity and the physical integrity of people.”

It also comes as the Mexican government has embarked in a massive recruiting drive to bolster the thin ranks of its public health system before the virus hits with its full force.

“It’s even more outrageous when it concerns the health professionals that we all depend on in this moment, because they are on the front lines facing this epidemic,” Lopez-Gatell said. “The declaration is of indignation and a demand that this not occur because it is completely punishable, sanctionable and won’t be allowed.”

Mexico has nearly 2,800 confirmed COVID-19 infections and 141 deaths.

Authorities were moved to speak out publicly, because the incidents have continued spreading. Harassment of medical personnel in Guadalajara became a daily occurrence in the past few weeks.

Edith Mujica Chavez, president of Jalisco state’s Interinstitutional Commission of Nurses, denounced the attacks including physical aggression, verbal harassment and even having bleach solutions thrown at nurses.

In a letter to Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro, her organization asked for help and public condemnation of the attacks.

“We all know we are potentially at risk in public health, but violence can never be tolerated, even though we are afraid of catching coronavirus,” the letter said.

“We have to maintain our mental health and share information so that they know nurses are not enemies of society,” it said.

A group of taxi drivers calling themselves “Code Red” in the city banded together to offer free or reduced-cost rides to health workers.

However, the attacks have not been limited to that city.

A nurse in the city of Merida wrote on Facebook of an attack.

“While I was waiting for my ride, two people on a motorcycle threw an egg at my uniform,” wrote Rafael Ramirez, who works at a public health clinic.

“I didn’t think these kinds of things happened in our city. I felt powerless not being able to do anything while they rode on laughing.”

“We don’t deserve it,” he wrote. “Am I afraid to go to work? Of course I am.”

In the state of Morelos late last month, residents of the rural community of Axochiapan protested outside a local hospital, which they heard might be used to treat coronavirus patients.

When the hospital director came out to say nothing had been decided yet, a man shouted that they would burn the hospital down.

The hospital attacked this week in Nuevo Leon had been turned over to the military to receive COVID-19 patients.

“To threaten the physical safety of medical personnel or to affect the functioning and operation of the hospital infrastructure dedicated in this moment to the health emergency puts at risk the capacity of response that the population requires,” said Victor Hugo Borja, director of medical services for Mexico’s public health system.

Mexico is not the only place seeing such harassment of medical personnel.

In Argentina, each night residents go out to their balconies or windows to applaud those working in the health system.

However, in one incident, a group of residents in an apartment building advised a doctor living there that she not be in the building’s common spaces or risk legal consequences.

They told her to “not touch door handles, stairway railings and to not be on the terrace.”

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Virus Outbreak: Erdogan under pressure as cases spike in Turkey

AN ‘ALARMING’ SPREAD:
 With 34,109 cases and 725 deaths nationwide, a doctor at a hospital in Istanbul said that it is soon likely to reach the limits of its capacity

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stepped up measures to stem a rapidly growing number of COVID-19 cases in Turkey, but his refusal to impose a full lockdown to keep the economy afloat is drawing criticism.

With gatherings banned, restrictions on intercity trips, and the obligation to wear masks almost anywhere, Erdogan has imposed a series of tough measures, but has thus far resisted calls for a complete confinement.

Parliament began on Tuesday debating a government-sponsored bill to release up to one-third of detainees in the country’s overcrowded prisons as a safety measure against the coronavirus outbreak.

With 34,109 cases and 725 deaths, according to official figures published on Tuesday, Turkey is the ninth-most affected country in the world by the COVID-19 pandemic.

What is alarming is the fast spread of the disease in Turkey, which reported its first official case on March 11. The number of cases is doubling in every few days: From 7,400 on March 28, it reached 15,000 on Wednesday last week and exceeded 30,000 on Monday, official figures showed.

The government very quickly took nationwide measures from shutting schools and cultural spaces to suspending flights with the countries hit by the virus.

They have been gradually reinforced with a confinement order for people aged 65 and older, and under the age of 20, and dozens of towns and villages have been quarantined.

On Tuesday, Turkish Minister of Health Fahrettin Koca said in a reassuring tone that the occupancy rate in intensive care units was only about 60 percent, but as the number of victims soars, there have been increasing calls on the government to impose a complete confinement as seen in Italy or France.

“Everyone absolutely has to stay at home, it must be made compulsory,” a doctor who treats infected patients under intensive care at an Istanbul hospital told reporters on condition of anonymity.

“We are receiving more and more patients every day. We will soon reach the limits of our capacity,” the doctor said.

Opposition parties, the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) and unions have also urged the government to take tougher measures to deter people from going out.

“It will be impossible to control this pandemic if millions of people ... go out to work,” TTB president Sinan Adiyaman, told the Turkish media this week.

In an interview last week, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu called for a confinement in the country’s economic capital where more than half of the COVID-19 cases have been recorded.

“Even if 15 percent of the population goes out, we quickly reach 2 million people... This has the potential to increase the threat,” Imamoglu said.

Erdogan has so far urged Turks to place themselves in “voluntary quarantine” rather than declare a compulsory order for them to stay home, in an attempt not to stop an already fragile economy, which has been in a recovery state after years of crises.

Before any hardening of the measures, many Turks have already taken their own precautions.

Most of Istanbul’s usually busy arteries, including the pedestrian Istiklal Street, are almost completely deserted.

Many Turks no longer set foot outside — some of them have returned to the age-old tradition of lowering baskets through their window for their groceries, while some others rely on very efficient delivery services.

The doctor hailed residents’ common sense and “good measures” taken by the government, which has ramped up tests to more than 200,000.

However, he said: “If the number of cases keeps increasing at this pace, the result will be the same as elsewhere: many losses of lives. We have already lost a lot of time.”

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title: [ LETTER ]

content_text:
Thank you Tsai Ing-wen

Dear Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文),

Thank you for taking care of us. It seems that you have presided over a nonpolitical, cohesive and effective healthcare strategy that saw Taiwan effectively beat back the first wave of Wuhan pneumonia [COVID-19] by the middle of last month. Taiwan is also not doing all that badly with the second wave of infections, which is almost more amazing considering what is currently going on throughout the rest of the world.

Of course, every effective captain needs a good crew, and the government workers, doctors, nurses, police, administrators, security guards, and the local and foreign community have all stepped up and played a role in our ongoing battle against Wuhan pneumonia.

Then when the rest of the world saw how effective Team Taiwan had been, they adopted similar approaches, and as a global community, a brotherhood and sisterhood of nations, we collectively did something never before achieved in human history, and beat back a deadly pandemic with only a small number of casualties.

Well that is what could have happened.

Unfortunately, while Team Taiwan has been receiving some positive press throughout the world and rightly so, much of the rest of the world has been dancing to the beat of a different set of drums played by our noisy neighbors and their partners in crime the WHO.

Do you remember when the WHO was praising China’s transparency and holding up its approaches as a model that other countries could adopt in the global battle against Wuhan pneumonia?

How could it utter such a statement when clear evidence to the contrary shows that this is certainly not the case?

Surely the leaders of the free world, and even the not-so-free world, have the critical thinking abilities to assess the validity of a range of approaches that would best protect their citizens from this insidious and terrible pandemic.

Unfortunately, it seems not.

It is worth pointing out how Team Taiwan has achieved this with few negative effects on our daily lives. Sure, the kids were at home from school for a couple of weeks.

As a busy father with busy children, I kind of enjoyed that. Sometimes we are all too busy in Taiwan, and a few months before the kids were required to stay at home, I was asking myself why do I need to make an appointment to spend time with my children?

Yes, we have had to line up for masks, but at least we received them, and yes, we have to sign in, have our temperature’s taken and sanitize our hands before we do anything communally, which can take up a bit more time, but it is certainly time well spent.

Have you noticed how there are fewer colds and instances of the flu in schools and communities right now? Although, we have taken these actions to stem the tide of this deadly pandemic, as it pushed back against Wuhan pneumonia, it also gave common colds and the flu a bit of a kicking, too.

Is anyone collecting data on the incidences of other respiratory problems at this time? Probably not, since we are too busy. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see if improvements in personal, communal and societal hygiene levels are having a positive effect by lessoning the incidence of other sicknesses?

The level of transparency of your government has also been unprecedented. Team Taiwan has provided daily updates, so we know where it is relatively safe to go, and also where we should avoid.

We knew when community transmissions were lessening and how the government was dealing with the wave of imported incidences of Wuhan pneumonia in round two of this terrible battle. That gave us all, and is continuing to give us, peace of mind to go about our daily lives in a way that people in many other countries simply cannot do at this time. It is also minimizing negative effects to the economy and society.

When Maria Bartiromo from Mornings with Maria on Fox News told Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) that “this has been an incredible approach and a successful one,” Wu explained Team Taiwan’s “whole government approach” clearly and concisely, later adding that “overall speaking this is quite successful.”

I had to laugh. You have got to love that kind of Taiwanese understatement, since Team Taiwan is arguably the world leader in this battle against Wuhan pneumonia.

Is it hyperbole to say that Taiwan’s “whole government approach” has provided a model for the rest of the world to follow? Is it hyperbole to say that Team Taiwan has achieved something never before achieved in human history and successfully pushed back against a currently incurable infectious disease that is causing so much damage throughout the rest of the world?

Well, the battle continues, but when the dust settles and the international community starts to get back on its feet, we will have time to talk about this in more detail.

There have been some opinion pieces in the local and global press about whether technological and tracking-based approaches taken by Team Taiwan are jeopardizing freedoms, privacy rights and even human rights, and this is a great debate to have in a thriving and progressive democracy.

However, when I post online about yoga and then I am bombarded with a series of targeted ads about yoga classes, this is most definitely an infringement of my right to privacy. Arguably, this is how technology is used in a negative manner to the detriment of its users, and many like that almost everything they do in the Internet era can be tracked.

In this case, it can be said that Team Taiwan has provided a model of how to use the best of modern technology to help its citizens.

So what is next? China and the WHO have effectively and unequivocally closed off one road which would have allowed Taiwan to assist other countries in their battles against Wuhan pneumonia. Why? For geopolitical, egotistical reasons, maybe? For reasons too convoluted to address here.

Forget about this for now and concentrate on helping the people who need it. While the WHO arguably has a significant amount of blood on its hands, Team Taiwan can still save lives by looking for bilateral opportunities to assist others, who so clearly need it.

Taiwan has been unceremoniously and unjustifiable left out in the cold politically for a long time. It is time to return the favor by showing the rest of the world our generosity in their time of dire need.

As I am writing this letter, my wife has just told me that I can now send 30 masks back to my grandmother in the UK, so thanks for that, too. [Editor’s note: At the time of publication, mask shipments are limited to first and second-degree relatives with Republic of China citizenship.]

Apologies for the length of this letter. Hopefully, you get the sense of the depth of my gratitude, but I will try to summarize as simply and clearly as possible: Thank you for protecting my children, my family, my local community and my adopted country, and keep up the good work in what must be a busy and stressful time for you.

Taiwan has always had a special place in my heart and is unequivocally more than ever before No. 1.

Steven (family name withheld)

Taipei

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people: 蔡英文 吳釗燮


title: Record-size hole opens above Arctic

content_text:
UNKNOWN ORIGINS:
 Scientists said the ozone hole is not related to the COVID-19 shutdowns, and it is too early to say whether it is linked to the climate crisis

A rare hole has opened up in the ozone layer above the Arctic, in what scientists say is the result of unusually low temperatures in the atmosphere above the North Pole.

The hole, which has been tracked from space and the ground over the past few days, has reached record dimensions, but is not expected to pose any danger to humans unless it moves further south.

If it extends further south over populated areas, such as southern Greenland, people would be at increased risk of sunburn.

However, on current trends the hole is expected to disappear altogether in a few weeks.

Low temperatures in the northern polar regions led to an unusual stable polar vortex, and the presence of ozone-destroying chemicals such as chlorine and bromine in the atmosphere — from human activities — caused the hole to form.

“The hole is principally a geophysical curiosity,” Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service director Vincent-Henri Peuch said.

“We monitored unusual dynamic conditions, which drive the process of chemical depletion of ozone. [Those dynamics] allowed for lower temperatures and a more stable vortex than usual over the Arctic, which then triggered the formation of polar stratospheric clouds and the catalytic destruction of ozone,” he added.

The hole is not related to the COVID-19 shutdowns that have drastically cut air pollution and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

It is also too early to say whether the unusually stable Arctic polar vortex conditions are linked with the climate crisis, or part of normal stratospheric weather variability.

Peuch said there were no direct implications for the climate crisis.

Temperatures in the region are already increasing, slowing the depletion of ozone, and the hole would start to recede as polar air mixes with ozone-rich air from lower latitudes.

The last time similar conditions were observed was in spring 2011.

The hole was tracked by the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which is based in Reading, UK, and funded by the European Commission.

While a hole over the Arctic is a rare event, the much larger hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic has been a major cause for concern for more than four decades.

The production of chemicals that deplete the ozone has been drastically reduced, under the 1987 Montreal Protocol, but some sources appear still to be functioning — in 2018, unauthorized emissions were detected from eastern China.

The Antarctic ozone hole was the smallest in 35 years in November last year, showing the success of efforts to cut the production of the harmful pollutants.

The ozone layer protects the earth from harmful levels of ultraviolet radiation from the sun.

New sources of ozone-depleting chemicals were not a factor in the hole observed in the Arctic, Peuch said.

“However, this is a reminder that one should not take the Montreal Protocol measures for granted, and that observations from the ground and from satellites are pivotal to avoid a situation where the chlorine and bromine levels in the stratosphere could increase again,” he said.

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content_text:
As the COVID-19 outbreak continues, the WHO has proposed six tips to cope with anxiety about the pandemic. Firstly, it is normal to feel sad, stressed, confused, scared or angry during a crisis. Talking to people you trust can help. Secondly, if you must stay at home, maintain a healthy lifestyle, including proper diet, sleep, exercise and basic social contacts.

Third, don’t use smoking, alcohol or other drugs to deal with your emotions. If you feel overwhelmed, talk to a health worker or counselor. Have a plan for where to go to and how to seek help. Fourth, get the “facts!” Gather information that will help you accurately determine your risk, so that you can take reasonable precautions. Find a credible source you can trust.

Fifth, limit worry and agitation by lessening the time you spend watching or listening to media coverage that you perceive as upsetting. Finally, draw on skills you have used in the past that have helped you manage adversity. Use those skills to help you manage your emotions.

Faculty at Duba Elementary School in Tainan uses claw machines to reduce students’ anxiety on the school opening day on Feb. 25.
台南市渡拔國小的教職員們，在開學日利用夾娃娃機來減輕學童的焦慮，攝於二月二十五日。
 Photo: Wang Han-ping, Liberty Times

照片︰自由時報記者王涵平

(Eddy Chang, Taipei Times)

武漢肺炎持續爆發中，世界衛生組織則提出六種方法，來解決人們對該流行病的焦慮。一、在危機中如果感到悲傷、緊張、疑惑、害怕或生氣是正常的，與信任的人交談對此有所助益。二、如果你必須待在家中，請保持健康生活方式——包括適當飲食、睡眠、運動、基本社交接觸。

三、請勿吸煙、飲酒或服用其它藥物緩解你的情緒。如果你覺得不知所措，請向衛生工作者或輔導員諮詢。亦可制定計劃，例如該去哪裡及如何尋求幫助。四、了解「事實」真相！收集有助於準確判定疫情風險之訊息，以採取合理預防措施。找到值得信任的可靠消息來源。

五、減少觀看或收聽你認為令人心煩的媒體報導，進而減少憂慮與煩躁。六、利用以前曾讓你成功克服困境的技巧，來協助控管個人情緒。

（台北時報張聖恩)

Publication Notes
 TODAY’S WORDS
今日單字
 1. pandemic n.

流行病 (liu2 xing2 bing4)

2. anxiety n.

焦慮 (jiao1 lu4)

3. overwhelm v.

不知所措 (bu4 zhi1 suo3 cuo4)

4. credible adj.

可靠的、可信的 (ke3 kao4 de5, ke3 xin4 de5)

5. agitation n.

煩躁 (fan2 zao4)

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title:
6 tips for anxiety during COVID-19 outbreak
面對全球疫情  六招減輕焦慮


content_text:
A software developer’s epiphany inspires this admirable critique of capitalism, starting with the west coast tech tyrants

A month ago, when I began reading Wendy Liu’s polemic, I felt inclined to dismiss her as a millennial flibbertigibbet, motivated by a grudge against an industry that seemingly had no use for her.

Liu grew up as a computing whiz-kid in Montreal and moved to San Francisco to develop software that aspired, a little tackily, to be “Tinder for advertisers.” When her entrepreneurial scheme fizzled out she transferred to the London School of Economics to study inequality, which turned her into an evangelizing radical. In her book, she attacks the depressing doctrine of “capitalist realism” and its assumption that our current social and economic arrangements are unchangeable; with born-again zeal, she chastises her own “petty and narcissistic” nature and even laments “the tragedy of the human condition.”

A bit excessive, surely, as a response to the failure of a startup?

But as I read on, everything changed. We now have good reason to question the pursuits of the vaunted innovators with whom Liu consorted n California — the blissed-out cultists at Google, whose only worry is over “the wrong kind of sparkling water in the microkitchens,” or the manic experts who specialize in “envisioning hyperplanes in n-dimensional space.”

As Liu came to see, techies like these were already living extraterrestrially, having opted out of the earthly, bodily necessities that currently weigh us down. A colleague of hers said he would happily volunteer to join Elon Musk’s projected colony on Mars, the “backup” planet for menaced humanity.

“You know you can never come back,” warned another of Liu’s friends. “I’d work remotely,” grinned the would-be Martian.

Anecdotes like this made me understand Liu’s disenchantment with her fellow programmers, and by the time I finished the book, my irritation about her own West Coast fads — her partiality for rides on Lyft scooters, her meals of quinoa washed down with kombucha — seemed trivial, or perhaps petty and narcissistic. I ended up admiring her idealism, sharing her outrage and wondering whether her prescription for a revolutionary upheaval might not go far enough.

Her agenda is not only political. She thought of her work in Silicon Valley as “a stepladder to a higher plane of existence” — a cosmological undertaking, even a religious quest. In Einstein’s day, the pioneers of the new physics thought they were engaged in “world-building;” Liu similarly remarks that designing a Web site opens a hole in the universe through which we can study its inner mechanics. Her experiments in coding would, she believed, confer on her “a kind of immortality.”

What prompted her self-reappraisal was the need to step over homeless sleepers on the streets outside San Francisco’s glassy, gleaming corporate palaces. Soon afterwards it dawned on her that all those abstract trips on hyperplanes were only of value to investors if they served as market research: the purpose of algorithms is to track and to reinforce our performance as consumers.

Then came the election of Trump, Liu’s realization that her collaborators regarded data as just “something to trade,” and her penitent retreat to LSE. Now she calls for “open protocols and decentralized services,” and wants secretive competition between developers to be replaced by “democratic oversight and open collaboration.”

Liu’s blueprint for a “socialist media system” may still sound impractical, but her emphasis on public space and the public good have an eerie resonance at present: who knows what changes might come when we creep out of our enforced solitude and reconstitute a functioning society?

A German hackathon in late March , when 43,000 participants joined forces online to discuss ways of outwitting coronavirus, may be exactly what she had in mind.

As Liu reviews her tech-obsessed adolescence, she describes a life spent in Plato’s cave, that recess of illusion where people turn away from sunlit reality and amuse themselves by watching shadows cast on the wall by the fire they have kindled. She sees her youthful self as “a solitary figure lit by the weary flicker of an LCD screen,” and admits that she disparaged her young contemporaries — less driven, therefore less worthy — who spent their time at play “out in the sunshine.”

Gradually, as Liu’s values alter, a lyrical appreciation of the nature she ignored enters her book: she notices how the “icy air” of the Montreal winter “bit like pinpricks” to make “every breath sharp,” and she watches enraptured as the sun dissolves feathery wisps of fog that curl under the Bay Bridge in San Francisco.

Before the revolution there has to be a reawakening, or a resuscitation, and this happens here as Liu begins to live in her body rather than her digitized head. The metaphorical blue-sky thinking recommended by startup accelerators in Silicon Valley is no substitute for the blue sky itself, which will go on shining whether we are here to look at it or not.

title: Book review: Abolish Silicon Valley


content_text:
UNITED STATES

More funds sought for PPP

Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin on Tuesday said he would ask the Congress to reinforce a new small business loan program that has been overwhelmed with applications. The government launched the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) on Friday last week to provide US$350 billion in what are essentially grants as long as businesses use the funds to pay their workers. Banks have been flooded with requests and warned that the amount would not be sufficient. Mnuchin said on Twitter that he has reached out to both the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives “to secure an additional $250 billion for the #PPPLoan program to make sure small businesses get the money they need!”

RETAIL

Special dividend for Tesco

Tesco PLC yesterday said it would pay a ￡5 billion (US$6.2 billion) special dividend, after the UK’s largest grocer saw a 30 percent surge in revenue early last month on panic buying amid concerns about the spread of COVID-19. Most of the rationing measures it had put in place are no longer necessary, and stock levels have stabilized, it said. However, its costs are increasing as it hires more staff to make up for absences, Tesco said. It said it had hired more than 45,000 people in the past two weeks, largely to cover supermarket workers affected by the virus.

BANKING

OCBC pledges no layoffs

Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp (OCBC, 華僑銀行), Southeast Asia’s second-largest bank, has joined some global peers in pledging it would not lay off staff due to the pandemic. “We do not plan to have retrenchment exercise arising from this outbreak,” OCBC chief executive officer Samuel Tsien (錢乃驥) said in a recent memo to employees. Despite the expected hit to the bank’s revenue growth, Singapore-based OCBC has “strong levels of capital, funding and liquidity to guide us through these uncertain times,” Tsien wrote.

AIRLINES

Korean Air furloughing staff

Korean Air Lines Co is to put 70 percent of its 19,000 staff on furlough, the South Korean national carrier said yesterday. Most of the staff are to go on leave from Thursday next week for six months in response to “deteriorating business circumstances,” it said in a statement. According to normal South Korean practice, the workers will receive 70 percent of their normal pay, with most of it — reportedly up to 90 percent — to be funded by a government scheme for industries in need of special assistance due to pandemic.

SOFTWARE

Shareholder sues Zoom

Zoom Video Communications Inc has been accused by a shareholder of hiding flaws in its videoconferencing app, part of a growing backlash against security loopholes that were laid bare after an explosion in worldwide usage. In a complaint filed on Tuesday in San Francisco federal court, the company and its top officers were accused of concealing the truth about shortcomings in the app’s software encryption, including its alleged vulnerability to hackers, as well as the unauthorized disclosure of personal information to third parties, including Facebook Inc. Investor Michael Drieu, who filed the suit as a class action, claims a series of public revelations about the app’s deficiencies starting last year have dented Zoom’s stock price.

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references: Twitter Facebook

title: World Business Quick Take


content_text:
For decades, Thae Yong-ho served the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, rising to become Pyongyang’s deputy ambassador to London before defecting.

Now he is standing for election in South Korea’s multiparty democracy.

If he wins his constituency in Gangnam, the wealthy Seoul district made famous by rapper Psy, Thae would become the first former Northern official ever to be directly elected to South Korea’s parliament.

An aide on March 28 records a live video as North Korean defector and South Korean parliamentary candidate Thae Yong-ho, seen reflected in a mirror, speaks at his campaign headquarters in Seoul’s Gangnam District.
 Photo: AFP

He believes it would send an unmistakable message to the upper echelons of which he was once part — that abandoning Kim Jong-un’s regime could open up a different path for the country.

‘PURGE’ TARGET

“I want to tell them that there is a new way for their future,” Thae said.

The general assumption in Pyongyang is that “if Korea is reunited under the concept of freedom or democracy,” those who have previously served the Kim family “must be the target of the purge,” he said.

“I’m sure once we can change the minds of the elite group in North Korea, we can easily bring down the Kim system,” he added.

Voting styles are radically different on either side of the Demilitarized Zone that divides the neighbors — which are technically still at war.

In the isolated, nuclear-armed North Korea, citizens line up to cast ballots preprinted with a single candidate’s name, under the watchful gaze of portraits of the country’s founder Kim Il-sung and his son and successor Kim Jong-il.

In South Korea, a plethora of parties compete in a rambunctious, sometimes ferocious, contest for power, deploying everything from social media campaigns to squads of party members bowing to commuters to seek support.

The vote on Wednesday next week is to elect a new parliament through a mix of first-past-the-post constituencies like Thae’s and proportional representation.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s position is not at issue as he is directly elected, but the vote is largely a referendum on his performance.

Thae comes from a family with good revolutionary credentials, but fled his post in London in August 2016 after becoming disillusioned with Kim Jong-un’s regime.

‘KIND OF SLAVERY’

Thae said he defected to prevent his children — who had lived in both Pyongyang and Europe — living “miserable” lives in North Korea.

“Once in the outside world, you can’t endure that kind of slavery,” he added.

About 33,000 North Koreans have fled to South Korea in the past two decades, but it is rare for high-level officials to change sides.

Thae has since become a prominent and outspoken critic of North Korea and the engagement approach pursued by Moon.

He joined the conservative United Future Party (UFP) — the main opposition — and has been rewarded with the candidate’s nomination for a seat in Gangnam, one of its electoral strongholds.

In a bright pink jacket — the color of his party — he has been out canvassing among its designer boutiques and luxury apartment complexes.

In South Korea’s “bottom up” democracy, he said, each individual voter’s support had to be secured “one by one.”

“If you want to win, you have to go to the streets, you have to bow all the time, you have to say hello,” he said.

99.99 PERCENT

There is no such campaigning in North Korea, he said.

The ruling Workers’ Party has an iron grip on power and every five years holds an election for the rubber-stamp legislature, known as the Supreme People’s Assembly.

Turnout at the last poll in March last year was 99.99 percent, the official Korea Central News Agency reported, and “100 percent of them cast their ballots for the candidates.”

PRIME TARGET

The exercise has all the trappings of democracy elsewhere, from electoral rolls to sealed ballot boxes, but in keeping with Pyongyang’s enduring slogan of “single-minded unity,” there is only one approved name on each paper.

The authorities, “want to show the world that North Korea is a republic system, but actually it is a dynasty system,” Thae said.

“North Korea’s election is top down. If you win Kim Jong-un then you can be in parliament,” he said.

North Korea’s state media has denounced Thae as “human scum” and accused him of embezzling state funds, raping a minor and spying for South Korea in exchange for money.

He is considered a prime target for assassination — North Korea is widely blamed for the poisoning of Kim’s older brother Kim Jong-nam at Kuala Lumpur airport in 2017 — and is accompanied by several bodyguards at all times.

A win could make him an even more marked man, Thae acknowledged, but added: “In order to make a breakthrough or change, anyone must take a risk.”

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title: Former N Korean diplomat running for office in Seoul


title: Human impact on wildlife to blame for spread of viruses

content_text:
Hunting, farming and the global move of people to cities has led to massive declines in biodiversity and increased the risk of dangerous viruses like COVID-19 spilling over from animals to humans, a major study has concluded.

In a paper that suggests the underlying cause of the present pandemic is likely to be increased human contact with wildlife, scientists from Australia and the US traced which animals were most likely to share pathogens with humans.

Taking 142 viruses known to have been transmitted from animals to humans over many years, they matched them to the IUCN’s red list of threatened species.

A guard stands at the entrance to the Bronx Zoo on Monday in New York City. A tiger at the zoo has tested positive for COVID-19, the Wildlife Conservation Society said in a statement Sunday.
 Photo: AFP

Domesticated animals like cattle, sheep, dogs and goats shared the highest number of viruses with humans, with eight times more animal-borne viruses than wild mammal species.

Wild animals that have adapted well to human-dominated environments also share more viruses with people. Rodents, bats and primates — which often live among people, and close to houses and farms — together were implicated as hosts for nearly 75 percent of all viruses. Bats alone have been linked to diseases like SARS, Nipah, Marburg and Ebola.

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found that the spillover risk was highest from threatened and endangered wild animals whose populations had declined largely due to hunting, the wildlife trade and loss of habitat.

“Human encroachment into biodiverse areas increases the risk of spillover of novel infectious diseases by enabling new contacts between humans and wildlife. We found that species in the primate and bat orders were significantly more likely to harbor zoonotic viruses compared to all other orders,” it said.

“Spillover of viruses from animals are a direct result of our actions involving wildlife and their habitat,” said lead author Christine Kreuder Johnson, director of the EpiCenter for Disease Dynamics at the One Health Institute, a program of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

“The consequence is they’re sharing their viruses with us. These actions simultaneously threaten species survival and increase the risk of spillover. In an unfortunate convergence of many factors, this brings about the kind of mess we’re in now,” she said.

“We need to be really attentive to how we interact with wildlife and the activities that bring humans and wildlife together. We obviously don’t want pandemics of this scale. We need to find ways to co-exist safely with wildlife, as they have no shortages of viruses to give us,” said Johnson.

Separately, more than 200 of the world’s wildlife groups have written to the WHO calling on it to recommend to countries a highly precautionary approach to the multi-billion dollar wildlife trade, and a permanent ban on all live wildlife markets and the use of wildlife in traditional medicine.

The COVID-19 pandemic, says the letter, is believed to have originated at wildlife markets in China, and to have been transmitted to humans as a result of the close proximity between wildlife and people.

The groups, which include the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the Zoological Society of London and Peta, say a ban on wildlife markets globally will help prevent the spread of disease, and address “one of the major drivers of species extinction.”

“This decisive action, well within the WHO’s mandate, would be an impactful first step in adopting a highly precautionary approach to wildlife trade that poses a risk to human health,” says the letter.

The organizations argue that zoonotic diseases are responsible for over 2 billion cases of human illness and over 2 million human deaths each year, including from Ebola, Mers, HIV, bovine tuberculosis, rabies and leptospirosis.

The letter follows acting UN biodiversity chief Elizabeth Maruma Mrema’s call this week for a global ban on wildlife markets.

Unlike the conservation groups, Mrema, the acting executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, emphasized that millions of people, particularly in Africa, depend on wild animals for food and that alternatives to wet markets are needed.

In a growing sign that global organizations are embarrassed by the emergence of zoonotic diseases in traded animals, Cites, the body which regulates the international trade of animals, refused to be drawn into the growing debate about the origins of Covid-19.

In a terse statement it said: “Matters regarding zoonotic diseases are outside of Cites’s mandate and the Secretariat does not have the competence to make comments on the recent news on the possible links between human consumption of wild animals and COVID-19.”

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content_text:
RUSSIA

Lab reveals vaccine plan

The head of a top research center on Tuesday told President Vladimir Putin that his lab was ready to start human trials of experimental COVID-19 vaccines in June. Rinat Maksyutov, head of the Vektor State Virology and Biotechnology Center, said that his facility proposed first-phase clinical trials of three vaccines from June 29, on 180 volunteers. Maksyutov was speaking during a video-link meeting between Putin and the heads of top research centers. “Groups of volunteers have already been formed,” he told Putin, adding that a lot of people wanted to take part in the trials. “We have already received more than 300 applications.” Maksyutov said scientists at the top-secret lab complex located in Koltsovo outside the Siberian city of Novosibirsk had developed several prototype vaccines.

UNITED STATES

Trump urges moon mining

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order encouraging the country to mine the moon for minerals. The executive order makes clear that the country does not view space as a “global commons,” opening the way for the mining of the moon without any sort of international treaty. “Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery and use of resources in outer space,” the order says, adding that the country had never signed a 1979 agreement known as the moon treaty. It stipulates that any activities in space should conform to international law. In 2015, the Congress passed a law explicitly allowing US companies to use resources from the moon and asteroids. According to the executive order, the country would object to any attempt to use international law to hinder its efforts to remove chunks of the moon or, should the opportunity arise, additional mining of Mars and “other celestial bodies.”

UNITED STATES

Head of navy resigns

Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly on Tuesday resigned over his mishandling of an outbreak of the coronavirus on the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper announced. Modly stepped down five days after removing the Roosevelt’s captain, Brett Crozier, for writing a letter — which was leaked to the media — describing the virus-struck vessel’s dire situation and alleging that the Pentagon was not paying adequate attention to it. The removal of Crozier, respected in the military and popular with his crew, was seen as heavy-handed and decided too quickly, before an investigation was carried out.

UNITED STATES

Folk singer dies of COVID-19

John Prine, a folk legend widely considered one of his generation’s most influential songwriters, died on Tuesday following COVID-19-related complications, his publicist told reporters on behalf of his family. He was 73 years old. On Friday last week, Prine’s wife, Fiona, had posted on social media the beloved country and folk star was on his eighth day in an intensive care unit on a ventilator, and had pneumonia in both lungs. Once dubbed the “Mark Twain of American songwriting,” over his five decades in the music business, Prine carved an image as an off-the-cuff wordsmith who forged melancholy tales with a dose of surrealist wit. Bob Dylan has named Prine among his favorite songwriters, citing the literary yarn Lake Marie as a favorite from his fellow folk bard’s vast catalogue.

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title: World News Quick Take


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As COVID-19 infections rise steadily in Brazil and threaten to cause chaos in its densely populated favelas, some of the country’s leading athletes are stepping up to help the most vulnerable communities.

Olympic judo medalist Flavio Canto is among those giving his time and money to battle the COVID-19 pandemic in South America’s biggest nation.

“When all this is over, those that have a lot are going to have a lot less, but they’ll still have more than most, and they have an obligation to help those who have nothing,” Rio de Janeiro-based judoka Canto told reporters.

From left, former Brazil international Paulo Cesar Tinga, Internacional’s Andres D’Alessandro and former Brazil captain Dunga help distribute food to poor people in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on Tuesday.
 Photo: Reuters

A bronze medalist in the men’s 81kg category at the 2004 Athens Games, Canto is almost as famous in Brazil for his work with the Instituto Reacao, a charity that uses martial arts to help transform young people’s lives.

Canto is raising funds for a project that would give a monthly stipend to thousands of families in Rio de Janeiro and Cuiaba who are under quarantine or suffering financially due to unemployment or the need to self-isolate.

The monthly stipend of about 100 reais (US$19.15) would come in the form of a prepaid cash card that can be used in local supermarkets.

In a nation where corruption is rife and the government’s coronavirus strategy has come under scrutiny, Canto said that athletes are the ideal group to spearhead relief efforts, because they are trusted by the public.

“One of the big problems in Brazil is that people lack the confidence their money and resources will be distributed properly,” he said by telephone from Rio de Janeiro.

“My charity has 20 years of experience in that field and the other athletes are people with the same profile, who have experience in charity work and therefore credibility,” he added.

One such athlete is Dunga, who captained Brazil’s national soccer team to their 1994 FIFA World Cup win.

The former Internacional and ACF Fiorentina midfielder is working with business contacts and former players — including former Brazil internationals Jorginho, Edmilson and Paulo Cesar Tinga — to help disadvantaged communities in his home state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Like Canto, Dunga has run a charitable foundation for many years, helping orphanages, retirement homes and social projects.

In the past few days he has persuaded supermarket owners, food producers and transportation companies to donate and distribute more than 10 tonnes of food to local charities as a growing number of people suffer from the economic effects of the novel coronavirus.

“We saw that there are a lot of people in the favelas who aren’t working and they don’t have food, so I called the friends I still play football with and said: ‘Let’s do something,’” Dunga told reporters.

Dunga has spent much of his spare time over the past week not just calling friends asking for help, but also loading boxes of produce into trucks, and delivering fruit and vegetables to local charities.

His closest helpers are former players, but some active professionals have also contributed.

Argentine midfielder Andres D’Alessandro, who plays for Porto Alegre, Brazil-based side Internacional, was with him on Tuesday as they loaded sacks of produce into cars and trucks.

Local media have also reported that Brazil internationals Neymar, Roberto Firmino and Paulinho have also contributed in their home states.

Dunga encouraged more to get involved.

“We ex-players still have doors open to us,” he said. “Imagine what the players who are active today could do.”

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title: Athletes step up to fight virus in Brazil’s favelas


title: Qatar denies paying off FIFA officials to be World Cup host

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Qatar on Tuesday called allegations that it bribed FIFA officials for the right to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup “baseless” and said that they “will be fiercely contested.”

US Department of Justice documents released on Monday showed that FIFA officials received bribes to vote in favor of awarding the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 tournament to Qatar.

Qatar said that it “strongly denies the allegations contained within the court papers.”

Workers walk inside the construction site for the Lusail Iconic Stadium, which is to host matches of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, in Doha on Dec. 20 last year.
 Photo: Reuters

The timing of the global soccer spectacle, scheduled to be held in November and December 2022, remains unchanged by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced the postponement of the UEFA Euro 2020 and the Tokyo Olympics. Both are now to take place next year.

The allegations are linked to a wide-ranging 2015 corruption scandal that left world soccer’s governing body in turmoil and led to the downfall of then-FIFA president Sepp Blatter.

In the ensuing years, the US government has accused 45 people and various sports companies of more than 90 crimes, and of paying or accepting more than US$200 million in bribes.

“They are part of a long-standing case, the subject of which is not the 2018/2022 FIFA World Cup bidding process,” Qatar’s Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, which is responsible for stadiums and other infrastructure for the competition, said in a statement.

“Despite years of false claims, evidence has never been produced to demonstrate that Qatar won the rights to host the FIFA World Cup 2022 unethically or by means that contravened FIFA’s strict bidding rules,” it added.

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title: Virus Outbreak: India cracks down on misinformation

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SOCIAL MEDIA:
 The government has asked TikTok and Facebook to remove accounts targeting Muslims, with some using religion to justify defiance of health advisories

India has told Facebook and Chinese video app TikTok to remove users found to be spreading misinformation about COVID-19 following concern about videos intended to mislead Muslims, a government source and a letter seen by Reuters said.

The move follows a report by Delhi-based digital analytics firm Voyager Infosec, which identified a pattern of targeted disinformation in many social media videos that appeared to be aimed at Muslims, with some using religious beliefs to justify defiance of health advisories over the virus.

In one video that Reuters reviewed on Tuesday, a TikTok user says he is not scared of the coronavirus because, as a Muslim, he is a follower of the Prophet Mohammed and fears only Allah.

Residents watch a sanitization process after the locality was sealed following suspected cases of COVID-19 in Noida, a suburb of Delhi, India, yesterday.
 Photo: AP

In another, a young man throws away a mask to put on a Muslim skull cap, and makes a gesture of praying.

Concerns about such content forced the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to write to TikTok and Facebook on Sunday, the government source said.

The letter, seen by Reuters on Tuesday, asks companies to remove users who are spreading misinformation and “preserve” their details for sharing with law enforcement when requested.

“You need to ensure that such rogue messages do not go viral,” the ministry’s letter said.

Such messages “have the potential for creating panic... This effectively weakens the all-out effort being made by the Indian government for containing the coronavirus,” the letter added.

In a statement, TikTok said it was “actively working with the government to support” its efforts to fight misinformation, while proactively working toward elevating credible information related to COVID-19 on its platform.

Facebook said it was taking “aggressive steps to stop misinformation and harmful content from spreading on our platforms.”

It said it would remove misinformation about COVID-19 that could contribute to imminent physical harm.

The coronavirus crisis has been accompanied by what the WHO has called an “infodemic” of misinformation.

Globally, platforms such as Facebook have responded by barring users from posting misleading information about the virus, including denials of expert guidance and encouragement of fake treatments.

India has reported 4,421 COVID-19 cases and 115 deaths, and is in lockdown nationwide.

The government has been issuing Twitter posts cautioning people against misinformation and debunking fake news.

India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday also raised concerns about “fake news” social media posts, saying its cybercell was reviewing at least one Facebook and six TikTok videos. It gave no further details.

“We will definitely take action... We are also sending details to the Indian government from our end,” senior state official Avanish Kumar Awasthi told reporters.

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Tommy Fleetwood’s caddie, Ian Finnis, has raised ￡10,000 (US$12,300) to help his fellow European Tour bagmen whose earnings have been affected financially due to golf’s suspension amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The tour has either postponed or canceled events scheduled between last and next month. The Open Championship has been scrapped this year, while the other three majors — the Masters, PGA Championship and US Open — have all been postponed.

Fleetwood has five European Tour victories, including last year’s Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa, and has earned more than 18 million euros (US$19.54 million) in prize money during his career, the European Tour Web site showed.

Finnis, who has worked with the English golfer since 2016, on Tuesday said on Twitter that he was selling 1,000 raffle tickets at ￡10 each, with all proceeds going to benefit caddies.

The prizes included flags from Europe’s Ryder Cup team, a hat autographed by Fleetwood and tournament caddie bibs.

Four hours after launching the drive, he said on Twitter that it had already met its target.

“Please no more donations,” he wrote. “Unreal from the golf world 1,000 tickets sold in four hours, ￡10k donations.”

“Was expecting it to take a lot longer!!! Thank you to all that donated,” he added.

Finnis said on a GoFundMe Page he set up for the drive that it was a “tough time for everyone.”

“Some caddies will really be feeling this, with families and possibly no wages for three months so auctioning what I can to help them out,” he said.

“Me and my family struggled early on in my caddying career, so I know how hard it is at times and especially now,” he added.

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title: Fleetwood’s caddie raises funds for fellow bagmen


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Virus Outbreak: Americans are resorting to cutting their own hair, but not always successfully

The economy might have slowed and normal life come to a standstill, but in the world of hair, a follicle free-for-all unencumbered by the coronavirus has Americans asking one critical question: To cut or not to cut?

For Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the answer was clear: “I thought I would do it myself, but I thought it would be a disaster.”

Lightfoot only admitted to having had her hair cut after being caught red-handed when her hairdresser posted on Facebook that giving the mayor a trim had been a pleasure.

Cue a chorus of public shaming.

In her defense, Lightfoot invoked her visibility and the fact that the hairdresser wore a mask, but the accusations of privilege and elitism poured in.

Stuck at home for several weeks, Americans are finding their normally carefully coiffed hairdos growing roots or even transforming into mullets.

Rather than despair, many are using their intriguing growth patterns and bird’s nest-like locks as an antidote to tragedy, posting jokes, memes, video montages and even helpful video tutorials online.

Even the New York Times has gotten in on the act with articles explaining “How to Take Care of Your Hair at Home” and “How to Touch Up Your Roots at Home.”

Not everyone, celebrities included, has seen success. Actor Riz Ahmed of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story seemed to have taken a razor to his head with a near buzz cut.

“Anyone else do a #StayAtHome haircut that got outta hand?” he wrote on Twitter, along with a photograph of his new look and a forlorn expression.

“Least now feels like there’s someone else here when I look in mirror,” he said.

Mary Lee Gannon, a 59-year-old Pittsburg resident, is not a celebrity, but said that her spouse was beginning to look like one.

“I offered to cut my husband’s hair two weeks ago because he looked like Mick Jagger — he turned me down,” she said.

When he finally took her up on her offer, she armed herself with an old pair of scissors previously used to cut their dog’s hair and took his tresses to task.

“He was very pleased, it worked out OK,” she said of the end result.

For child star Julia Butters from Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood cutting her father’s hair did not end in a happily-ever-after storybook finish, even if the experience — and extremely patchy looking hairdo — provided a bit of fun.

“This is one of the bravest fathers I have ever met,” she said as she went to town on his hair in a video posted online.

His response: “There is a thin line between bravery and stupidity.”

Most hairdressers live by the adage that it is better to wait for a cut than embark on experiments that later need to be fixed.

“Don’t cut your hair! You’re going to have more anxiety,” celebrity hairstylist Scotty Cunha, who has counted the Kardashians among his clients, said on the Page Six Style Web site.

This is even more true for chemically dyed hair.

“I worry that some of the individuals who put products on their head do not understand the impact of those chemicals,” said Leslie Young, vice president of communications for the Associated Bodywork and Massage Corp, an organization of workers in the field.

Some people are “so desperate” that they go to their hairdresser’s house or having the stylist come to their home, Young said.

With salons closed, some hairdressers might be tempted to accept, but Young strongly advises against the practice.

“It’s dangerous,” she said, adding that their insurance would not be valid in the event of any issues.

Some stylists are trying to make a little side money by giving their advice in online videos or directly to their clients by videoconferencing.

Even though Americans normally go every six to eight weeks to the hairdresser, Young said that most seem resigned to waiting longer — and too bad it if means revealing a few secrets in the meantime, particularly in the very blond world of television.

Faced with that very prospect, journalist Kayla Tausche of CNBC posted a picture of herself on Twitter as a child.

“You’re going to find out soon and it’s best you hear it from me directly. I’m a dark brunette,” she said.

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SEAL THE DEAL:
 Low-frequency sounds emitted by ships during periods of heavy traffic drown out male seals’ roars, making it difficult for them to find mates

Cruise ships are drowning out seals’ roars that are important for securing a mate, researchers found in one of the latest studies to reveal the consequences of human activity on wildlife.

Ships are known to produce low-frequency sounds that can overlap with calls made by marine creatures, but researchers studying harbor seals have said that such noise could be taking its toll.

“As it gets noisier, it becomes harder for harbor seals to be heard,” Cornell University researcher and study coauthor Michelle Fournet said, adding that the animals’ roars serve a number of purposes — including advertising to females and establishing territories underwater.

A trainer feeds a seal at the New England Aquarium in Boston, Massachussets, on Tuesday.
 Photo: AFP

Fournet and colleagues reported in the journal Biology Letters that they lowered an array of microphones into Glacier Bay in Alaska and recorded underwater sounds between May and October 2015, before analyzing data from a nine-day period that overlapped with the peak breeding period for harbor seals.

Among the sounds recorded were roars of male harbor seals, as well as noise from other animals and passing ships.

“Vessels in general are one of the largest contributors to underwater sound in this area,” Fournet said.

Overall, the team analyzed recordings of 545 underwater roars, produced by at least four male harbor seals.

Fournet said that widespread animals, such as harbor seals, are generally thought to be resilient to human activity, but the team found little — if any — difference in the loudness of the seals’ roars during noisy periods, when cruise ships were known to be passing, compared with those made during quiet periods, when the ships were absent.

The duration or frequency of the roars also showed no tangible difference.

The team instead found that the loudness of a roar beyond the rest of the soundscape fell by about 0.86 decibels for every 1 decibel increase in noise in the environment caused by the cruise ships, meaning that the area over which they could communicate shrank.

“Because the harbor seals are already calling as loud as they can possibly call, as ocean noise gets louder, the ability to detect that signal goes down,” Fournier said, adding that the animals were likely calling loudly even during quiet periods, as this would be advantageous both in bagging a mate and defending territory — but it meant that they might not be able to turn up the volume when cruise ships passed by.

The findings might mean that it is more difficult for males to find a mate, not least since the peak time for vessels overlaps with the animals’ breeding season, the team said.

Further research is needed to see if this is the case, the team said, adding that the passage of cruise ships in Glacier Bay is concentrated to just two periods of the day.

The COVID-19 pandemic has opened up new opportunities for research, Fournier said.

“We are working right now on trying to get a hydrophone in the water so that we can listen [during breeding season] in the absence of ships for the first time,” she said.

Noise from human activity has been increasing in the oceans, a trend that could change animals’ behavior or mask sounds that they make for important activities, said University of Portsmouth marine scientist Sarah Marley, an expert on the effects of noise on marine animals and who was not involved in the study.

However, the new findings do not necessarily mean that harbor seals have failed to adapt, she said, adding that even quiet times in Glacier Bay might be noisier than locations without any shipping and hence require a louder roar.

“It could be that the seals are already roaring at maximum levels during the so-called ‘quiet’ periods, and just can’t go any further to communicate during the really noisy periods,” she said.

Marley added that the findings could have important ramifications for the UK, which has a population of about 43,000 harbor seals living in areas that, at least in part, overlap with those used by humans.

“If artificial noise is impeding the breeding success of harbor seals, this could have important repercussions at the local and national level for seal management and conservation,” she said.

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title: Amorous seals forced to contend with cruise ships


content_text:
A : It’s a long story, and I had to do some research before I found out myself.

B : Does every family do tomb sweeping on different days?

A : Yes. Actually, Qingming is one of the 24 solar terms and it generally falls 15 days after the spring equinox.

B : The 24 solar terms are related to the position of the sun. Qingming is around April 5 every year, but this year is a leap year, so it falls on April 4.

A : 這件事說來話長，我自己也是研究了一下才知道的。

B : 每個家庭掃墓日期不同嗎？

A : 是啊，其實清明是二十四節氣之一，通常落在春分的十五天後。

B : 二十四節氣是跟太陽運行位置有關，難怪每年清明都在四月五日前後，今年正逢閏年，所以落在四月四日。

English 英文:

Chinese 中文:

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title: EVERYDAY ENGLISH


content_text:
Virus Outbreak: German state falls victim to mask fraud scheme

Authorities in Germany have fallen victim to a multimillion-dollar fraud involving masks much needed in the COVID-19 pandemic, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state and one of the hardest hit, last month paid 14.7 million euros (US$15.95 million) for about 10 million masks only to discover they did not exist, prosecutors in Traunstein, Bavaria, said.

The German managing director of two distribution companies based in Zurich, Switzerland, and Hamburg, Germany, raised the alarm after realizing he had been tricked.

Two packages of FFP3 protective masks, center, are pictured at a logistics center of the Federal Agency for Technical Relief in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, on Tuesday.
 Photo: EPA-EFE

According to the man’s police report, he received an offer from companies allegedly based in Asia in the middle of last month to supply the masks and subsequently attracted the large order from North Rhine-Westphalia.

State authorities transferred 14.7 million euros to the company, which then made a 2.4 million euros down payment.

Bavarian investigators said that 52 vehicles had been lined up to pick up the coveted masks in the Netherlands and deliver them under police protection.

The distribution company has refunded 12.3 million euros to the state authorities.

However, it remains unclear whether the remaining 2.4 million euros, which has been frozen in foreign bank accounts, can be recovered.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday said that a lesson to be learned from the pandemic was that Europe needed to develop self-sufficiency in the production of critical medical equipment such as masks.

“Regardless of the fact that this market is presently installed in Asia ... we need a certain self-sufficiency, or at least a pillar of our own manufacturing” in Germany or elsewhere in the EU, the chancellor told reporters in Berlin.

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