Author: CensorBiz

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced Australia and New Zealand to abandon almost all Anzac Day services Saturday. Lockdowns and social distancing regulations have forced many to mark the occasion, a day of remembrance of Australians and New Zealanders who have died in combat, with simple services at home.  
 
“This year we may not stand shoulder-to-shoulder but let us stand together in that spirit at dawn,” said a video by a veterans’ group to mark the occasion.
 
Under lockdown, many Australians and New Zealanders stood outside their homes to remember the Anzacs, and other servicemen and women.
 
Marches and parades that would usually attract large crowds were canceled because of the COVID-19 outbreak.A national service in Canberra was attended by a handful of political leaders and military veterans.  
 
Returned Service Nurse, Wing Commander Sharon Bown, spoke of her great-uncle, who landed at Gallipoli 105 years ago.
 
“In this time of crisis, let us realize the innate capacity within each of us to do the same.  To unite and protect the more vulnerable among us. To realize that the qualities for which we honor the Anzacs live on in each of us; endurance, courage, ingenuity, good humor, mateship and devotion to duty, to each other, to Australia — lest we forget,” Bown said.
 
In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spoke of her hopes for the future.  
 
“We honor the Anzac commitment and we reflect on our enduring hopes for peace and a world that does not ask for the sacrifice of war, but instead asks for a commitment to empathy, kindness and to our shared humanity.  May we remember that as we stand together this Anzac Day,” Ardern said.
 
Anzac Day commemorates the disastrous landing by the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps at Gallipoli in Turkey on April 25, 1915. To many, the courage of those troops under devastating enemy fire helped to forge the identities of both former British colonies.
 
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A U.S. federal judge has ordered the release of migrant children who have been detained at the Mexico border, after ruling Friday the Trump administration was again violating an agreement to release them within 20 days.
 
The Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law has been challenging the Trump administration’s child detention policies on behalf of plaintiffs who contend the coronavirus pandemic has triggered more delays in the release of the migrant children.
 
The center’s argument against the administration is being made under a 1997 pact known as the Flores agreement, which generally requires minors who have been detained in non-licensed facilities at the U.S.-Mexico border to be released within the 20-day period.
 
The plaintiffs maintain the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) stopped releasing children to their parents or other guardians in California, Washington state and New York to avoid getting involved with the states’ lockdown rules, which have been imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
 
They also allege the administration stopped the release process for some children because their parents or guardians could not easily arrange to be fingerprinted as required for background checks.
 
The plaintiffs argued the delays could expose the children to the coronavirus if it spreads in detention facilities. They cited a non-profit detention center in Texas where a 14-day quarantine order was put into effect.
 
In addition, the plaintiffs accused the government of releasing a teenager who turned 18 while in “quarantine” to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) instead of sending him to family placement program where arrangements had been made to accommodate him.
 
U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee, who oversees the case, did not agree with all of the allegations but once more ordered the administration to “expedite the release of the children.”
 
Gee concluded that “ORR and ICE shall continue to make every effort to promptly and safely release” the detained children who are represented by the plaintiffs.
 
In a separate ruling last month, Gee described the immigration detention centers as “hotbeds of contagion.”
 
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The worldwide number of COVID-19 cases continues to climb, bringing misery and pain to all echelons of society.The global count of cases has reached more than 2.8 million people, and more than 197,000 people have died.There have been a growing number of coronavirus cases aboard an Italian cruise ship docked in Japan with a crew but no passengers.  The Costa Atlantica had been headed to China for repairs but was diverted to Nagasaki earlier this year.Crew members were told to stay aboard the ship but media reports say some of them were spotted in Nagasaki.Local officials say at least 91 crew members, many of them asymptomatic, have tested positive for the virus. One has been hospitalized.In Europe, Spain has more than 219,000 coronavirus cases and more than 22,500 deaths, followed by Italy with more than 192,000 cases and almost 26,000 deaths.A nurse wearing a face mask writes down a telephone message from a deceased patient’s family member, to be put in the victim’s coffin, in Corsica on April 23, 2020.Several European countries have seen a decrease in new cases and are preparing to gradually reopen businesses and ease restrictions.The number of U.S. infections is creeping up to a million with more than 905,000 cases and nearly 52,000 deaths. Despite the rising tally, several states took steps Friday to reopen their economies, with Georgia and Oklahoma allowing salons, spas and barbershops to reopen. Some business owners said it was too early to open and doing so could spark a new surge in coronavirus infections, despite facing financial collapse if they do not.The U.S. Congressional Budget Office says the economic hardship caused by the coronavirus in the United States will last through next year, as the pandemic wreaks havoc on the financial health of countries around the world.The nonpartisan agency said the U.S. budget deficit will grow from $1 trillion to $3.7 trillion this year and said the unemployment rate would rise from 3.5 percent in February to 16 percent in September. It predicted that unemployment would fall after that time but would remain in double digits through 2021.The report puts pressure on the U.S. government as it tries to balance the concerns over the growing federal deficit with the approval of stimulus money meant to combat the outbreak’s economic effects.A woman wears a face mask to protect herself from COVID-19 as she walks past a painting in Hong Kong, April 25, 2020.On Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump signed a $484 billion relief package to extend additional support for small business loans and to help hospitals expand COVID-19 testing. The money is part of more than $3 trillion the U.S. government has spent to boost the economy.Earlier Friday, the G-20 called on “all countries, international organizations, the private sector, philanthropic institutions, and individuals” to contribute to its funding efforts to fight COVID-19, setting an $8 billion goal.An international forum for the governments and central bank governors of 19 nations and the European Union said Friday the G-20 already has raised $1.9 billion. Saudi Arabia, the current holder of the G-20 presidency, contributed $500 million.With no proven remedy for the coronavirus, health officials worldwide are recommending protective measures such as hygiene, social distancing and wearing masks and gloves. But people in many places are growing tired of restrictions, even as the number of cases grows.The coronavirus has had a devastating effect on the global economy, but the International Monetary Fund and other organizations warn that developing countries will be the worst hit.The United Nations food agency projects that some 265 million people could experience acute hunger this year, twice as many as last year. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on governments to ensure health care is available to all people and that economic aid packages help those most affected.   
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When the COVID-19 pandemic struck the United States in mid-March, visits to doctors’ offices dropped precipitously as people stayed home to protect themselves from the virus.But the stay-at-home order has spurred people to seek medical help in another way – talking to a doctor over the phone, email or video, according to a new study.Now, 30% of all outpatient visits are televisits, up from less than 1% in early March, FILE – A patient sits in the living room of her apartment in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Jan. 14, 2019, during a telemedicine video conference with her doctor.Waiting for the telemedicine revolutionCommunicating electronically with a doctor isn’t new. With some specialties such as dermatology and mental health, phone or video appointments are common.In many U.S. rural communities, which have seen a decline in the number of hospitals and doctors, telemedicine has been a lifeline.But when it comes to primary care, doctors, patients and regulators alike have mostly stuck with how medical care has been delivered forever: in-person meetings.Some doctors say a lot can be accomplished over video.“Looking at a rash, looking at a spot on an arm, that’s perfect for telehealth, because we have the video capabilities,” said Dr. Edward Lee, an internal medicine physician and chief information officer at the Permanente Federation, a consortium of eight medical groups that deliver care to Kaiser Permanente’s 12.2 million patients and members.FILE – A telemedicine hub, run by Avera Health, is seen in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, June 22, 2015.“If I needed to do an injection, if I need to do a minor procedure, I’m not going to be able to do that over video or a phone,” he said. “And so, in those situations where there are urgent needs, we would bring the patient in to see us.”
Mehrotra, the Harvard professor, says doctors and patients are embracing telemedicine now, out of necessity, but are also realizing its limits.“Given what I’ve heard from clinicians who’ve tried it, I have to think this will accelerate growth in the post-pandemic period,” he said. “But I’m also hearing from a lot of doctors, ‘It’s cool, but I like in-person visits. I can’t do the tests, I can’t do the full exam.’”Paying the same for video and in-person visits
Policy decisions are also driving the adoption of telemedicine. Until the pandemic, government agencies and insurers paid less than half their normal amount for telemedicine visits. Now they have increased the pay for a televisit so it is on par with an in-person one, according to Kaiser Health News.Federal regulators have also paused enforcing patient privacy rules, so that doctors can use popular applications like Skype, FaceTime and Whatsapp, according to Consumer Reports. The alternative for hospitals and doctors is finding a telemedicine firm that provides secure video calls, a process that can be time consuming.Mehrotra questions whether widespread adoption of telemedicine, post-pandemic, is the right course for U.S. health care.But one place where telemedicine might make huge strides, he said, is in rural parts of developing countries, places where access to health care can be difficult.“Telemedicine has great potential in that context,” he said. “It can be life-saving.” 
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An attack on civilians at Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo killed at least 18 people, including 12 rangers.The rangers were killed “while coming to help a civilian vehicle which had come under fire by the assailants,” the park management said in a statement. “Others were injured, including some who are fighting for their lives.”Virunga is a UNESCO World Heritage site with an area about 7,800 square kilometers over the borders of DRC, Rwanda and Uganda.It is Africa’s oldest and most biologically diverse protected habitat.The park with a large population of famous mountain gorillas has been a scene of rising instability and violence for at least two decades.At least 176 of its rangers have been killed in the last 20 years in attacks by rebel groups, militias and poachers.There has been no claim of responsibility by any person or group for Friday’s attack.
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The Ethiopian community in the Washington, D.C., area is mourning the loss of a woman who died from coronavirus shortly after giving birth, without seeing her newborn.Wogene Debele of Takoma Park, Maryland, was eight months pregnant when she began experiencing symptoms including fever, shortness of breath and loss of sense of smell. On March 25 she was hospitalized, and her son was born one month early via emergency cesarean section. On April 21 she died due to complications from the virus. Her son is healthy and does not have the disease.On Friday at the Wilkes Street Cemetery Complex in Virginia, mourners wore masks and stood at a safe distance from one another.  Her husband, Yilma Asfaw, collapsed on the casket, crying out in Amharic. “You didn’t see the boy you were looking for. You left your four children, and what would I do for them?” Despite his distress, his friends and family were unable to comfort him due to the distancing restrictions.Her 17-year-old daughter, Mihret Yilma, said the loss is impossible to process. “I didn’t just lose one person. I lost three. I lost my mother, my sister and my friend. We were very close. She left without saying goodbye,” she told VOA, speaking a mix of Amharic and English.  “She taught me the meaning of strength and faith. We are safe because of her prayer night and day.”The daughter has been thrust into the role of mother, mixing milk formula to feed the baby and taking care of the newborn for three weeks. She said she takes solace in her new responsibility.“The newborn baby reminds me of my mother,” she said. “I feel like I am finding my mother through my siblings. From now on, they are all I’ve got. Mom used to say when I have my own children that I wouldn’t need a babysitter and that she would raise my children.”Wogene Debele of Takoma Park, Maryland, was eight months pregnant when she fell ill. She died from coronavirus shortly after giving birth. Here, her family mourns at her graveside.Yilma, 50, and Wegene, 43, won the Diversity Visa Lottery to come to the United States 10 years ago, bringing their daughter Mihret and son Naol Yilma, now 10. They had their third child, another son, Asher Yilma, after arriving in the U.S. The father is a school bus driver for Montgomery County, Maryland.The Washington, D.C., area is home to the largest population of people of Ethiopian descent in the U.S., with an estimated 100,000 living in the region.“This family is going to need us in the future. They’re going to need our support and our assistance, like so many families in our community,” Takoma Park Mayor Kate Stewart told local television station WUSA9.Etsegenet Bekele is a neighbor and had known Wegene since she came to the U.S. She lived on the third floor and Wegene on the eighth. “This is so painful for a new mother. I have no words. It is so painful,” she said. “She was a good person for everyone, but she would die for her children more than anything. She is a soldier for children.”She said to mourn in such circumstances is painful, as people are keeping distance and can’t console each other. “You can’t get over it even after crying and everything is done from a distance. In our culture to be buried like this is deeply painful.”Yilma said he still can’t accept the loss of the woman he has loved since they were both children.“We have been together for 25 years,” he said. “She was my childhood friend; she was my childhood partner. She was my adviser, my lead, I don’t even know what to say. She loved her children. She was the kind of person who welcomed people with open arms. My sorrow is deep and bitter,” he told VOA.This story originated in the Africa Division with reporting contributions from VOA Amharic Service’s Tsion Girma. 
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The senior Department of Homeland Security official who was thrust into the spotlight by President Donald Trump to describe the effects of temperature on COVID-19 has been the subject of misconduct allegations for his previous government work.A Department of Energy Inspector General investigation was still pending Friday based on evidence submitted by a whistleblower that William Bryan abused his government position with energy consulting work in Ukraine.It’s unclear if Trump was aware of that investigation when he called on Bryan at his daily briefing Thursday to explain DHS research that prompted a presidential riff on the potential to cure the virus with disinfectant and kill it with sunlight.Bryan has been acting undersecretary for the DHS Science and Technology Directorate since May 2017. Before that, he was president of ValueBridge International’s Energy Group, a consulting firm in Virginia, following previous work with the Department of Energy.Trump nominated him to be the undersecretary of the directorate, which is charged with developing technology for the components of DHS. But days after his Senate hearing in August, a government whistleblower and his attorneys received a letter from the Office of the Special Counsel that information they provided about Bryan showed a “substantial likelihood of wrongdoing.”The letter, first reported by The Hill newspaper in September, said the Office of the Special Counsel, an independent federal investigative agency, had referred the matter to the Department of Energy Office of Inspector General, which opened an investigation.The letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, said the IG would conduct an investigation to see if his allegations could be substantiated and would inform Congress and the president.Bill Bryan, head of science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security, speaks about the coronavirus April 23, 2020, in Washington, D.C.The allegations against Bryan, which were reported by The New York Times in October 2018, center around his time as a senior adviser in the Office of International Affairs in 2016. He was designated a “special government employee,” which allowed him to do limited private sector work.The whistleblower, Robert Ivy, alleged that Bryan used his DOE position to develop his business interests with ValueBridge, including by providing money to foreign officials with the goal of influencing their actions and improperly sharing proprietary information.The allegations reference players who featured prominently in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.The complaint, which was also obtained by AP, describes Bryan’s dealings with Rinat Akhmetov, the Ukrainian energy oligarch who hired Paul Manafort as an adviser years before Manafort became chairman of Trump’s presidential campaign. According to the complaint, Bryan denied ever interacting with Manafort, who was convicted in Mueller’s Russia investigation related to Manafort’s work in Ukraine — though they did stay at the same Hyatt Hotel in Kyiv on one occasion recounted by the whistleblower.It says Bryan, as the head of an international Energy Department team that traveled to Ukraine with the goal of stabilizing the country’s energy security, aligned himself with Ahkmetov, became manipulated by the oligarch and his lieutenants and cashed in “personally on the cowboy capitalism that has driven so much of the former Soviet Union.”FILE – The Department of Energy is seen in Washington, D.C., May 1, 2015.Ivy, a former DOE official who now works in the private sector, and his attorney said Friday that they provided information to the IG investigation but have not received any notice of a conclusion. Both expressed surprise that Bryan, who has a military background but is not a scientist, was called upon by the Trump to discuss the research.”Bill Bryan should not be in that position in the first place,” said John Tye, Ivy’s attorney and the founder and CEO of Whistleblower Aid. “The U.S. government found a substantial likelihood of wrongdoing by him on both the corruption and security violation matters.”The Department of Energy referred questions about the investigation, which remains open, to its Inspector General’s office, which did not respond to a request for information. DHS also did not respond to questions or make Bryan available for an interview.Bryan presides over an organization that has had its budget cut by the Trump administration, despite the prominent role the president gave it during his briefing to discuss how work done at an agency lab in Maryland showed the virus breaking down when exposed to light and humidity.Under the final year of President Barack Obama, the agency had a budget of $841 million, more than half of which was for research and development. The Trump administration cut that to around $583 million in its first budget to fund other priorities. It proposed restoring some of that this year and raising it to $643 million. 
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Pamela Austin, a recruiter at Adventist Health Bakersfield in California, made seven job offers to foreign nurses in February and just finished a first round of interviews with 12 more candidates. They are from all over the world, including the United Kingdom, the Philippines, Australia and Malaysia.The international candidates fill the private hospital’s critical need for experienced nurses who can work in emergency rooms and intensive care units, Austin said — jobs that can’t be met only with U.S. nurses, many of whom are recent graduates.That need could go unfilled, however, if U.S. President Donald Trump extends a 60-day hold on green cards he ordered in the name of protecting American jobs amid the coronavirus outbreak.”It would be a huge setback,” Austin said. “Those are holes I don’t have people to fill.”Trump says the measure is necessary at a time when unemployment has climbed to levels last seen during the Great Depression.A car drives on a highway parallel to a border fence between the United States and Mexico in El Paso, Texas, April 22, 2020.Critics have dismissed the move as the president’s veiled attempt to achieve cuts to legal immigration that he previously suggested but couldn’t persuade Congress or the courts to accept — and to distract voters from his handling of the pandemic.But immigrant advocates and political opponents are not the only ones who oppose the measure: Hardliners from Trump’s base say it doesn’t go far enough to limit immigration.The order “is designed to satisfy powerful business interests that value a steady flow of cheap foreign labor,” Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, wrote in a letter to the president Thursday.The Center for Immigration Studies, another hardline group, said the 60-day pause “will provide little relief to Americans” and criticized an exemption for foreigners who agree to invest at least $900,000 in the U.S.The proclamation, signed Wednesday, excludes temporary nonimmigrant visas for hundreds of thousands of workers a year, including farm workers, software engineers and others in fields deemed to have labor shortages. It doesn’t apply to green-card applicants already in the United States.Many families will be barred from immigrating as long as the freeze lasts — more than 200,000 people at last year’s levels. Spouses of U.S. citizens and their children under 21 are exempt, but parents, adult children, grandchildren, adult siblings and other relatives aren’t.Carl Shusterman, a Los Angeles immigration attorney who advises hospitals, said he had hoped Trump’s proclamation would provide a blanket exemption for nurses, who often arrive on green cards. Instead, it only exempts health care workers whose work is deemed essential to recovering from the COVID-19 outbreak.”Embassies and consulates make the decisions,” he said. “They don’t have any special expertise in COVID-19, like none of us do.”Houston immigration attorney Raed Gonzalez said he doesn’t expect the suspension to have much of an effect — at least in the short term — because embassies and consulates had already halted routine visa processing last month in response to the pandemic.”This is more of a show from the administration than anything else,” he said.But other immigrant advocates predict profound changes if the measure becomes permanent.This undated image from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service shows the front of a sample ‘green card,’ formally known as a Permanent Resident Card.Doug Rand, co-founder of Boundless, a company that advises families and individuals on green cards, estimates 358,000 applicants a year would be unable to get permanent residency if the order were extended.He said the casualties would include roughly 50,000 diversity visas each year for countries that send fewer people to the U.S., and that the measure would have a big impact on immigrants from Asia, Central America and eastern Europe.Rand says Trump is using the pandemic to achieve changes to the immigration system that he couldn’t get past Congress or the courts. He called the 60-day halt a “double fig leaf” to make the measure more palatable.”I don’t think it takes much guesswork that President Donald Trump is going to use his discretion to extend it 60 days from now and again and again and again,” Rand said.The edict has similarities to legislation Trump tried unsuccessfully to pass in 2017 that would slash legal immigration, largely through family-based visas that the president has referred to derisively as “chain migration.”Last month, the administration effectively suspended asylum by rapidly expelling anyone who enters the country along borders with Mexico and Canada. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week extended the policy through May 20 on public health grounds.Trump told reporters that he may extend the most recent order or modify it next week, in two months or “as we go along” to be “made tougher or made less tough.””We don’t want to hurt our businesses, and we don’t want to hurt our farmers,” he said Wednesday. “Very important.”Joe Biden, Trump’s presumed Democratic rival in November’s election, echoed those who called the measure an attempt to divert attention from the president’s handling of the pandemic.”Rather than execute a swift and aggressive effort to ramp up testing, Donald Trump is tweeting incendiary rhetoric about immigrants in the hopes that he can distract everyone from the core truth: He’s moved too slowly to contain this virus, and we are all paying the price for it,” Biden said Tuesday.Matt Hill, a campaign spokesman, said Thursday that Biden would not maintain the policy if elected. 
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President Donald Trump said Friday that he wouldn’t approve a $10 billion loan for the U.S. Postal Service unless the agency raised charges for Amazon and other big shippers to four to five times current rates.”The Postal Service is a joke because they’re handing out packages for Amazon and other internet companies and every time they bring a package, they lose money on it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.The president was responding to a question about reports his administration plans to force major changes in postal operations as the price for approving a $10 billion loan that was included in the government’s $2 trillion economic rescue package.Under the rescue package legislation, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin must approve the loan before the Postal Service can receive the money. Officials at the Postal Service had no immediate reaction to Trump’s comments.Trump said the changes the administration would insist on would make it a “whole new ballgame” at the Postal Service. He said the Postal Service did not want to make the changes because they did not want to offend Amazon and other companies.Looking at Mnuchin, who was with him in the Oval Office, the president said, “If they don’t raise the price of the service they give … I’m not signing anything and I’m not authorizing you to do anything.”‘Postal reform program’Mnuchin told reporters that he had Treasury officials working with the Postal Service on the terms of the loan if postal officials decided they need more money.”We are going to post certain criteria for [a] postal reform program as part of the loan,” Mnuchin said. He said the Postal Service board already was searching for a new postmaster general to run the agency and undertaking reforms of operations.The Washington Post, which first reported the administration’s push for changes at the Postal Service, quoted unnamed officials as saying that senior Postal Service officials had been told the administration wanted to use the $10 billion loan as leverage to influence how much the agency charges for delivering packages and how it manages its finances.Trump has complained for years that the Postal Service is being exploited by Amazon and other shippers and that that is why the agency is losing so much money.
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VOA Connect Episode 119 – As the world continues to contend with social distancing, we meet people trying to stay connected – through music, yoga and more.  
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Police in Cameroon used force on Friday to disperse Muslims praying at mosques at the start of the holy month of Ramadan, saying they were violating government orders not to gather because of the coronavirus.Cameroon has confirmed at least 1,300 COVID-19 infections and 43 deaths, making it the West African country hardest hit by the pandemic.In a statement, police said they used force to disperse Muslims from at least 13 mosques in the country’s West, Center and Far North regions, where people had gathered for prayers during the Ramadan fasting period that began Friday. The government had banned such gatherings in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19.Awah Fonka, governor of the western region of Cameroon, said he asked police to force out Muslims who didn’t heed the order and were praying in mosques in the towns of Foumban, Foumbot and Bafoussam. He spoke via a messaging app from Bafoussam.He said he will not spare anyone who refuses to respect measures taken by the government of Cameroon to protect its citizens from the deadly coronavirus that is killing people around the world.Police said that some Muslims were targeting people from Cameroonian towns hardest hit by the coronavirus and that they had received 175 complaints from Cameroonians who were either stigmatized or chased from their villages.Gaston Asabe, a 34-year old fruit and vegetable seller, was one of them. He said when he arrived in his northern village of Koza on Thursday night, villagers and his relatives chased him, saying that he was a carrier of the coronavirus since he was coming from Yaounde, which has the highest number of COVID-19 infections in Cameroon. He spoke via a messaging app from the northern town of Maroua, where he’d fled for safety.He said he struggled to explain that he was not contaminated, but no one listened to him.Imam Dairou Abdoulahi of the 5th Mosque in Koza said Asabe was attacked after the government reiterated that mosques should remain closed during Ramadan. Abdoulahi said Muslims in the village argued that they have not had any cases of COVID-19 and will remain safe attending prayers in their mosques if they keep visitors from towns where the virus has been confirmed from coming to their villages. Abdoulahi, in a phone interview from Koza, said he asked the Muslims to stay home and be safe.He added that no one should blame the government for asking for the closure of mosques, because it is a decision that will save lives.Manaouda Malachie, Cameroon minister of health, speaking through a messaging app, called on the population to respect measures taken by the government to stop COVID-19 no matter their religious or traditional beliefs.He said that believers should know that by staying safe and praying at home, they are not only protecting themselves, but other other faithful from being sickened by the coronavirus. Manaouda said they will be time to celebrate when the virus is conquered.Cameroon’s first case of COVID-19 was confirmed on March 5. The government, among other measures, asked Christians and Muslims to pray at home to avoid its spread. The health ministry said that the cases will continue to rise if Cameroonians fail to take COVID-19 seriously.    
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Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Friday his country will cooperate with “like-minded countries” to change the World Health Organization.Morison said although Australia continues to support the agency’s work in the Pacific region, it agrees with the United States that the WHO needs to be reviewed.“What happens at the upper echelons of these organizations, and how they operate, I think is in need of change,” Morrison said. “And Australia will continue to advocate for that change with like-minded countries who share our concerns. What ultimate decision the United States ultimately takes on funding will be a matter for them. We will certainly want to see an improved set of arrangements at the WHO, and we’ll continue to push for that.”U.S. President Donald Trump directed his administration to freeze WHO funding, saying it did not give adequate early reports on the coronavirus.Morrison also announced that Parliament will be in session May 12-14 for its usual legislative business and some virus-related bills. He said more sessions may be scheduled through June.Meanwhile, authorities in Sydney closed three beaches that had been reopened to the public for exercise Monday, after people ignored social distancing guidance.   
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Brazil’s health minister confirmed 407 new coronavirus deaths Thursday, the country’s largest single-day increase since the virus struck the South American country.The majority of the deaths were in Sao Paulo, the epicenter of the pandemic in the country, where Mayor Bruno Covas warned the greatest hardship is yet to come.The virus casualties in Brazil come as President Jair Bolsonaro has started advocating to move away from social isolation measures that still are being supported by most governors and mayors to contain the virus.Meanwhile, Brazil’s new health minister, Nelson Teich, is casting doubts about the way governors are using data to impose self-isolation measures to fight the spread of the coronavirus, urging a standard model to analyze information.”If you produce ‘alarming’ numbers and people treat a mathematics model as the truth, you will worsen the scare and expectations of the society,” Teich said Thursday.Teich appeared to be echoing the sentiments of Bolsonaro, who fired the previous health minister partly over his support of the governors’ stay-at-home measures that Bolsonaro said are harming the economy.Teich said next week he’ll unveil the administration’s model for handling the outbreak.Brazil has reported more than 43,000 infections and upward of 3,300 deaths.So far, nearly 50,000 people have tested positive for the disease in Brazil.   
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A cruise ship that is the single biggest source of COVID-19 infections in Australia has left a port south of Sydney after being ordered to leave by Border Force officials.The Ruby Princess has become a symbol of death and disease.  It is responsible for about 10 percent of all COVID-19 cases in Australia — more than 600 cases and at least 21 deaths.  Dozens of crew members also tested positive.  The ill-fated cruise liner has now left Australian waters, but many questions remain.The police are investigating whether the ship’s owners knowingly let infected passengers disembark when the ship docked in Sydney last month.  More than 2,700 people were allowed to leave the ship in March without being tested for the coronavirus.Opposition New South Wales lawmaker Ryan Park said major mistakes were made by Australian agencies.“This has been without a doubt the worst public health disaster this community, this state and this nation has ever faced,” he said.About a third of Australia’s coronavirus cases can be traced to cruise liners, and state authorities in New South Wales have launched an independent investigation into the Ruby Princess.  It reportedly is sailing to the Philippines with about 500 crew members still onboard. Hundreds of other staff have been flown home.Australia has proposed a global review into the coronavirus pandemic.  Prime Minister Scott Morrison said his government would press for the inquiry during the World Health Organization Assembly in May.Australia’s call for international action comes as it successfully slows the spread of COVID-19, with new infections well below 1 percent daily.  
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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Trump administration on Thursday, saying industry cannot avoid the Clean Water Act when it pumps wastewater into the ground instead of directly into oceans and rivers.In a 6-3 decision, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the majority. He said putting the polluted water into the ground before it eventually reaches oceans and rivers is “the functional equivalent” of directly releasing it into the ocean, and permission from the Environmental Protection Agency is needed.In his dissenting opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that according to current laws, a permit is needed only for directly dumping polluted water into a waterway.Attorney David Henkin argued the case on behalf of the environmental group Earthjustice.“This decision is a huge victory for clean water. The Supreme Court has rejected the Trump administration’s effort to blow a big hole in the Clean Water Act’s protections for rivers, lakes and oceans,” he said.Thursday’s decision stems from a case in Hawaii involving the question of whether a sewage treatment plant needs permission from the EPA to pump treated wastewater into the ground instead of straight into the Pacific Ocean.Environmentalists said even through this indirect route, the dirty water damaged a fragile coral reef.President Donald Trump has promised to cut government regulations and rules he says stifle business and kill jobs. But environmentalists say cutting back on such enforcement and oversight is harmful not only to the air and water but also to human health. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump said he would probably sign on Thursday night a $484 billion bill aiding small businesses and hospitals severely impaired by the coronavirus pandemic.The funds in the fourth spending package in just two months will allow tens of millions more Americans to receive critical relief since COVID-19 forced the closure of much of American commerce.More than 26 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits since the outbreak began, and the figure grew by 4.4 million last week, according to numbers released Thursday.The legislation was overwhelmingly approved on a 388-5 vote in the House as Trump and Vice President Mike Pence held a coronavirus briefing for reporters at the White House.“We’re very close to the vaccine” for the novel virus, Trump said, adding that “unfortunately we’re not very close to testing” it.Scientists say if preliminary research goes well on vaccine candidates, they would be ready for clinical trials in a year to 18 months.Fauci points to problemsThe nation’s top infectious-disease specialist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told Time magazine on Thursday that there are still problems in the United States securing supplies needed to conduct coronavirus tests, such as swabs and chemicals.”I am not overly confident right now at all that we have what it takes” to do testing, said Fauci, a prominent member of the White House coronavirus task force. “We’re doing better, and I think we’re going to get there, but we’re not there yet.”Trump, asked about Fauci’s comment, replied: “If he said that, I don’t agree with him.”Don’t drink bleachDuring Thursday’s briefing, William Bryan, the acting undersecretary for science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security, revealed that experiments with the virus indicate it dies faster when exposed to sunlight, in warm temperatures and under humid conditions.“The virus is dying at a much more rapid pace just from exposure to higher temperatures and just with exposure to humidity,” Bryan said. “You inject sunlight into that, you inject UV rays into that … the half-life [of the virus] goes from six hours to two minutes.”Trump then suggested it should be studied whether disinfectants and “ultraviolet light” could be injected inside the human body to fight the virus.His remark prompted cable news networks to quickly warn people not to drink or inject disinfectants, such as bleach.As of Thursday evening EDT, more than 867,000 people in the United States have tested positive for COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University statistics. The nation has reported more than 49,000 deaths from the virus, nearly a third of them in New York City.About 14 percent of New Yorkers have likely had the disease, according to preliminary results of antibody testing released by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Thursday.Officials in the northeastern state randomly tested 3,000 people at shopping locations to see if they had the antibodies that fight the coronavirus, an indication that they could have been infected and recovered without experiencing significant symptoms.’Promise made, promise kept’On the U.S. West Coast, the state of California recorded its deadliest 24-hour period from the virus, Governor Gavin Newsom said Thursday, announcing that 115 people in the state had succumbed to COVID-19 the previous day, bringing the state’s total number of deaths to 1,469.California’s total hospitalizations and the number of people in intensive care because of the virus have both dropped, Newsom said.“But with deaths and still positives going up, again, I caution people that we’re not out of the woods,” said the governor.Newsom also announced that the federal government had sent the state 90,000 testing swabs out of a promised initial shipment of 100,000 — assistance that the president had committed to during a conversation with the governor the previous day.”Promise made, promise kept,” Newsom said.A social media account of the president’s reelection campaign promptly included the Democratic governor’s remarks in a video. 
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Canada pledged new money on Thursday to develop and eventually mass-produce vaccines in its fight against the coronavirus, while the western province of Saskatchewan unveiled its plan to gradually restart its economy. Canada’s 10 provinces have closed non-essential businesses and urged people to stay at home since mid-March to slow the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the new coronavirus. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters that Ottawa would spend C$1.1 billion ($782 million) to bolster vaccine research, clinical trials and national testing.”Once we’ve developed a vaccine, whether it be in Canada or elsewhere around the world, we’re going to need to produce it,” Trudeau said.Global scrambleNoting there had been a competitive global scramble to obtain personal protective equipment (PPE) amid the pandemic, “part of the investment we’re making … is to establish the capacity of developing vaccines and mass-producing vaccines here in Canada.” Canada’s total coronavirus deaths rose to 2,028 on Thursday, up 8% from a day earlier, official data showed.Some provinces have seen daily case numbers dwindle.Saskatchewan plans a phased approach to reopening, starting on May 4 with medical services such as dentists and chiropractors. Golf courses reopen on May 15.Second phaseThe second phase, starting on May 19, allows retail stores and services such as hairdressers and massage therapy to open. Broader restrictions, such as at seniors homes, and limits on gatherings to 10 people, remain in place. Testing and contact tracing will increase.”We have to find middle ground that continues to keep our case numbers low … while allowing Saskatchewan people to get back to work,” Premier Scott Moe said. The province has not set dates for subsequent phases to reopen restaurants, theaters, pools and casinos. The timing will depend on the spread of the coronavirus during the first two phases, Moe said.On Wednesday, there were only 61 active cases and five hospitalizations in the province, which is about 70% below the Canadian average, he said. Ontario — the most populous province — extended its shutdown until at least May 6. Quebec has prolonged its closures until early May.Similar guidelinesAsked about Saskatchewan’s plan, Trudeau said Ottawa was coordinating with provinces so that decisions are made using similar guidelines.”Different provinces are in very different postures related to COVID-19 and will be taking decisions appropriate for them,” Trudeau told reporters.In the United States, some businesses prepared to reopen in Georgia and a few other states for the first time in a month. Their plans have drawn criticism from health experts who warn that a premature easing of stay-at-home guidelines could trigger a surge in cases. 
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