Author: CensorBiz

Most of Thailand’s provinces have banned sales of alcoholic beverages, heeding a central government call to discourage festive celebrations for the Thai New Year as the country seeks to limit the spread of the coronavirus.Thailand is among Southeast Asian countries that are canceling or scaling back traditionally boisterous Buddhist New Year celebrations amid the global pandemic.The Thai New Year or water-splashing Songkran celebrations are usually held April 13-15, but this year the government has postponed the holidays that would normally be taken then.A 10-day ban on the sale of wine, beer and spirits in Bangkok went into effect on Friday. Forty-seven of Thailand’s 77 provinces have implemented bans to April 15 or until the end of the month, the interior ministry said in a statement.Bangkok, which typically closes off streets during April for traditional water fights, has called off the activities and urged businesses and malls to do likewise. The government has also urged Thais to refrain from traveling back to their hometowns as they would normally do for the New Year.On Saturday, Thailand reported 45 new coronvirus cases and two deaths, bringing its total to 2,518 confirmed infections and 35 deaths.
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Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson was making “very good progress” Saturday in his recovery in a hospital from coronavirus, officials said, as the country’s death toll from the disease approached the grim milestone of 10,000.The 55-year-old leader was spending his second full day out of intensive care at London’s St. Thomas’ Hospital, where he has been able to take short walks between periods of rest, according to Downing Street.”The prime minister continues to make very good progress,” a No. 10 spokeswoman said.News of his improvement contrasted with the latest official statistics showing Britain recorded nearly 1,000 daily COVID-19 deaths for the second consecutive day, one of the worst rates globally.The health ministry announced another 917 coronavirus hospital patients had died in the latest 24-hour period, down from the toll on Friday but still the country’s second highest yet.An 11-year-old was among the victims, according to England’s National Health Service (NHS).As of Saturday evening, the total number of COVID-19 fatalities in the U.K. was 9,892, while the number of confirmed cases climbed to 79,874, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center in Baltimore, Maryland. The actual number of cases was thought to be higher, because not everyone has been tested for the virus.FILE – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson holds a news conference addressing the government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, at Downing Street in London, March 12, 2020.”The prime minister continues to make good progress, but these stark figures highlight the gravity of this national emergency,” interior minister Priti Patel told reporters at a daily briefing.’Keep others safe’Despite the sobering statistics, Stephen Powis, NHS England’s medical director, said there was a “leveling off” in the number of new cases and “the first signs of a plateauing of people who unfortunately need hospitalization.”He credited a nationwide lockdown introduced on March 23 for halting the virus’ spread, but added the mortality rate would be “the very final thing” to decrease.”We are confident that if everybody follows the instructions … then that will begin to translate in the next weeks into a reduction in the daily deaths,” Powis said.”I’m afraid this year it has to be for all of us a stay-at-home Easter.”Queen Elizabeth II echoed that in what was believed to be her first pre-recorded Easter address, released by Buckingham Palace on Saturday evening.”By keeping apart we keep others safe,” the 93-year-old monarch said. “We know that coronavirus will not overcome us.”Her resolute comments came a week after a rare televised address to the nation in which she told people to unite to beat COVID-19.Spirits liftedJohnson is the most high-profile leader to suffer from coronavirus infection, and his hospitalization is unprecedented for a British prime minister during a national emergency in modern times.He was admitted Sunday for a persistent cough and high temperature 10 days after self-isolating with the virus. A day later he was transferred to the intensive care unit as his condition deteriorated.The Conservative leader left the unit Thursday evening in “extremely good spirits” and waving at staff “in gratitude,” his spokesman has said.The Mail on Sunday reported Johnson’s friends had revealed he came close to death while in intensive care and said he owed his life to the hospital’s medical team.It remains unclear when he might be discharged from hospital and how quickly he would return to work once out.Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has been standing in for Johnson.The prime minister’s spokesman stressed Friday that his recovery was “at an early stage” and he would act only “on the advice of his medical team.”The Sun reported that Johnson’s spirits had been lifted this week by his pregnant fiancee Carrie Symonds, who sent him “love letters” and scans of their unborn child.Symonds, who has also suffered from coronavirus symptoms in recent weeks, and the British leader have reportedly not seen each other for nearly a month. Their baby is due this summer.Meanwhile, it is also uncertain when Britain might be able to lift the stringent social distancing regime.Implemented for an initial three weeks, the measures are set for a formal review next week and are likely to remain in place until at least the end of the month.
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The commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan has met with leaders of the Taliban insurgency under their bilateral peace-building agreement to discuss ways to reduce violence in the war-torn country, both sides said Saturday. 
 
A Taliban spokesman tweeted about the meeting with General Scott Miller, who also commands NATO’s non-combat Resolution Support mission in the country, saying it happened Friday night in Doha, Qatar, which hosts the insurgent political office.  
 
Suhail Shaheen wrote that the two delegations discussed details on how to implement the U.S.-Taliban agreement, which the two adversaries signed Feb. 29 in the Qatari capital with a goal to end the nearly 19-year-old Afghan war. FILE – U.S. Army General Scott Miller, center, commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, is seen at the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, Nov. 6, 2018. “General Miller met with Taliban leadership last night as part of the military channel established in the agreement. The meeting was about the need to reduce the violence,” a U.S. Forces spokesman told VOA. 
 
Shaheen said the U.S.-Taliban agreement’s “violations, particularly attacks and night raids in non-combat areas, came under serious discussion.” He added that the Taliban delegation “called for a halt to such attacks.” 
 
In a recent statement, the U.S. military denied insurgent allegations of breaches, noting the agreement allows foreign troops to act in defense of Afghan security forces if attacked by the Taliban. 
 
The accord binds insurgents not to attack U.S.-led foreign forces, who have committed to gradually withdraw from Afghanistan by July 2021, in return for Taliban counterterrorism guarantees. FILE – Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen is seen during talks in the Qatari capital Doha, July 7, 2019. 
The “conditions-based” troop drawdown also requires the Taliban to negotiate a sustainable peace and power sharing with other Afghan factions to end four decades of hostilities in the country. 
 
The Taliban and Washington both have said they are fully committed to uphold the agreement, which offers the best chance for Afghan peace, analysts say.  
 
But a lingering political dispute over who has emerged as the legitimate president of Afghanistan following the controversial September election, and a delay in releasing thousands of Taliban prisoners by the Kabul government, have blocked efforts to open the crucial peace talks between Afghan parties to the conflict.  
 
Incumbent President Ashraf Ghani has been officially declared the election winner, but his chief rival Abdullah Abdullah rejected the outcome as fraudulent, and both held competing inauguration ceremonies last month.  
 
The standoff has politically paralyzed the turmoil-hit country, with both the rival leaders seemingly not ready to give up their claims. FILE – Afghan presidential election opposition candidate Abdullah Abdullah (L) and Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani are seen after a press conference at the presidential palace in Kabul, Feb. 29, 2020.Under the U.S.-Taliban deal, the intra-Afghan talks were supposed to begin several weeks ago.  
 
The insurgent group maintains those negotiations can start only after Washington, as part of its commitments, helps to get the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners from Afghan jails.  
 
The Taliban has committed to free 1,000 detainees, mostly Afghan security forces, from its custody. Discussions over the prisoner swap collapsed earlier this week, although the Afghan government has since freed 200 Taliban detainees after seeking written assurances the freed men would not return to the battlefield. 
 
But the Taliban has disapproved the release process, saying it violates provisions of the deal with the U.S., which requires unconditional freedom for insurgent inmates.  
  
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Iraq’s Prime Minister-designate Mustafa Kadhimi met with top members of the outgoing government Saturday to try to put together a new cabinet quickly, amid a rare level of support from the country’s political establishment at a time of serious internal and external crises.Amid reports the U.S. is deploying missile batteries to protect several key military bases against threats from Iran and its proxy militias, Kadhimi also appears to enjoy the support of Tehran and its local allies.Khattar Abou Diab, who teaches political science at the University of Paris, told VOA that Kadhimi  was a “personal friend” of Iran’s national security adviser, Admiral Ali Shamkhani, one of Tehran’s two point men on Iraq since Major General Qassem Soleimani was killed by a U.S. drone strike in early January.Abou Diab said Kadhimi, who is also the country’s intelligence chief, was “probably not the U.S.’s first choice to be Iraq’s new prime minister, but that Washington has had fairly good relations with him in the past and probably is prepared to live with his nomination.”US-Iraq dialogueU.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo proposed this week that Washington and Baghdad “hold a strategic dialogue in June” to discuss the presence of American forces in Iraq. Kadhimi told Iraqi TV on Friday that he would be a stickler for defending national sovereignty.He said that Iraq’s sovereignty was a “red line” and that he would not be flexible about it. Iraqi sovereignty, he insisted, will not be a subject for debate, and Iraq’s destiny is in the hands of its people, to whom it belongs.Kadhimi insisted that “no one, outside the government, should be allowed to bear arms,” but he left a loophole by confirming that the country’s Shiite Popular Mobilization Units, known as Hushd al-Shaabi, are a government entity.The U.S. has placed a $10 million bounty on the head of Sheikh Mohammed Kawtharani, head of the the pro-Iranian Iraqi Hezbollah militia, which is part of Hushd al-Shaabi. Washington suspects that Kawtharani is responsible for past attacks on American forces inside Iraq and also is preparing fresh attacks.Given the precipitous recent decline of oil prices, Iraq, a major oil exporter, is facing serious threats to its ability to pay its civil servants, in addition to meeting the many demands of protesters for better public services and less corruption, among other things.Dr. Paul Sullivan, a professor at the U.S. National Defense University, told VOA that Kadhimi “is a tough and smart fellow,” and as a veteran intelligence agency chief “likely has files on everyone of note and could call on those files to pressure people to toe the line.””[But] trying to create a peaceful and stable Iraq,” Sullivan added, “may be one of the toughest jobs out there. If the economy and jobs don’t turn around, even the toughest people cannot keep [the country] together for long.”
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The World Health Organization is expressing alarm at the large number of health workers becoming infected by the deadly coronavirus.  The U.N. health agency is appealing for international support to provide health workers with the supplies and other tools needed to keep them safe.
  
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says every single person has a role to play in ending this pandemic, which already has claimed more than 100,000 lives worldwide. Among the major players in this grisly drama are the frontline responders, the health care workers who tend to the sick and dying.   
  
While they are putting their lives on the line to save others, Tedros says health workers are not getting the support they need to keep them safe. FILE – World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is seen at a daily press briefing on the coronavirus, at the WHO headquarters, March 11, 2020, in Geneva.“In some countries there are reports of up to 10% of health workers being infected. This is an alarming trend. When health workers are at risk, we are all at risk,” he said.
    
Tedros said some health workers become infected outside health facilities, in their homes or communities.  But the majority are being infected within health facilities where they are exposed to the deadly virus throughout the day.   
  
Many become sick, he said, because they are not sufficiently trained or lack experience in recognizing COVID-19, and dealing with respiratory pathogens. He added that long hours tending to sick patients and lack of rest also can weaken resistance to the virus. 
    
“However, the evidence also shows that when health workers wear personal protective equipment the right way, infections can be prevented.  That makes it even more important that health workers are able to access the masks, gloves, gowns and other PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) they need to do their jobs safely and effectively,” Tedros said.A new United Nations Supply Chain Task Force has been set up to ease the equipment shortage. Tedros said the WHO and the World Food Program will be coordinating this effort.   
  
He said the supply chain may need to cover more than 30 percent of the world’s needs in the acute phase of the pandemic.  To meet this demand, he said, well over 100 million medical gowns and masks, respirators, diagnostic kits and other essential equipment will have to be shipped every month to areas most at risk.   
  
The storing and shipping costs, he said, are about $280 million. He noted the cost of procuring these supplies will be much greater.   
  
 
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Brazil is the first South American country to record more than 1,000 COVID-19 deaths. The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said early Saturday Brazil has nearly 20,000 confirmed cases of the virus with 1,074 deaths.  Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been reluctant to impose quarantine restrictions to slow the spread of the disease.  He has said he is concerned about the economic impact of the restrictions.   The president has made fun of the coronavirus, calling it the “little flu.”  Almost all of Brazil’s governors have introduced quarantine measures.  Bolsonaro visited a hospital Friday without wearing a face mask. He was seen wiping his nose and shaking the hand of an elderly person, the BBC reported.  Medical experts are especially concerned about the impact the virus could have on Brazil’s poor and crowded neighborhoods and the country’s indigenous population.  A 15-year-old member of the Yanonami ethnic group died this week, the BBC reported.  He was the first indigenous person to die from the virus.  Bolsonaro’s popularity is falling.  Protests against him have been staged in several cities.     
 
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Nobuhiko Obayashi, one of Japan’s most prolific filmmakers who devoted his works to depicting war’s horrors and singing the eternal power of movies, has died. He was 82.The official site for his latest film, “Labyrinth of Cinema,” said that Obayashi died late Friday.Obayashi was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2016, and was told he had just a few months. But he continued working, appearing frail and often in a wheelchair.”Labyrinth of Cinema” had been scheduled to be released in Japan on the day of his death. The date has been pushed back because of the coronavirus pandemic, which has closed theaters.”Director Obayashi fought his sickness to the day of the scheduled release of his film. Rest in peace, director Obayashi, you who loved films so much you kept on making them,” the announcement said.The film was showcased at the Tokyo International Film Festival last year, which honored him as a “cinematic magician” and screened several of his other works.Obayashi stayed stubbornly true to his core pacifist message through more than 40 movies and thousands of TV shows, commercials and other video.His films have kaleidoscopic, fairy tale-like imagery repeating his trademark motifs of colorful Japanese festivals, dripping blood, marching doll-like soldiers, shooting stars and winding cobblestone roads.”Labyrinth of Cinema” is an homage to filmmaking. Its main characters, young Japanese men who go to an old movie theater but increasingly get sucked into crises, have names emulating Obayashi’s favorite cinematic giants, Francois Truffaut, Mario Bava and Don Seigel.Obayashi’s “Miss Lonely,” released in 1985, was shot in seaside Onomichi, the picturesque town in Hiroshima prefecture where Obayashi grew up and made animation clips by hand.His other popular films include his 1977 “House,” a horror comedy about youngsters who amble into a haunted house, and “Hanagatami,” released in 2017, another take on his perennial themes of young love and the injustices of war that unfolds in iridescent hues.Obayashi was a trailblazer in the world of Japanese TV commercials, hiring foreign movie stars like Catherine Deneuve and Charles Bronson, highlighted in his slick film work that seemed to symbolize Japan’s postwar modernization.He was born in 1938, and his childhood overlapped with World War II, years remembered for Japan’s aggression and atrocities against its neighbors but also a period during which Japanese people suffered hunger, abuse and mass deaths. His pacifist beliefs were reinforced by his father, an army doctor, who also gave him his first 8-millimeter camera.His works lack Hollywood’s action-packed plots and neat finales. Instead, they appear to start from nowhere and end, then start up again, weaving in and out of scenes, often traveling in time.During an Associated Press interview in 2019, Obayashi stressed his believe in the power of movies. Movies like his, he says, ask that important question: Where do you stand?”Movies are not weak,” he said, looking offended at such an idea. “Movies express freedom.”He said then he was working on another film, while acknowledging he was aware of the limitations of his health, all the work taking longer.At the end of the interview, he said he wanted to demonstrate his lifetime goal for his filmmaking. He showed his hand, three fingers held up in the sign language of “I love you.””Let’s value freedom with all our might. Let’s have no lies,” said Obayashi.Obayashi is survived by his wife Kyoko Obayashi, an actress and film producer, and their daughter Chigumi, an actress.A ceremony to mourn his death was being planned, according to Japanese media, but details were not immediately available. The Tokyo city and central government have requested that public gatherings are avoided because of the pandemic.   
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California newspapers are asking the state to help rescue their industry, as the economic crisis from the coronavirus slashes print advertising revenues, causing layoffs in an already battered industry, even as reporters are deemed essential workers during the pandemic.In a dire request this week from the California News Publishers Association to the governor and state lawmakers, the newspapers asked for tailored grants and loans, sales tax exemptions for local papers and tax deductions for subscribers and advertisers.”The COVID-19 virus has left the newspaper industry, already struggling financially, gasping for air,” wrote the group’s president, Simon Grieve, the publisher of Gazette Newspapers in Long Beach.It comes after 33 daily newspapers reported losing an average of $1 million in print ads in March. That has forced several papers to cut printing schedules and staff. Nationwide, readers have been turning to local news sites for information about coronavirus in their communities. But hundreds of journalists have already been laid off or furloughed.Ken Doctor, a news media analyst, said that other outlets nationwide are considering seeking help from governments and Congress, but legislators already have their hands full.”It’s a tsunami. You can’t really lobby for specific benefits right now in the peak of the crisis, but they are looking for a range of proposals,” Doctor said.The California News Publishers Association has not yet heard back from officials, said its general counsel, Jim Ewert. He said replies from lawmakers’ staff have been “mostly empathy, but nothing in detail yet.””We are looking at their request,” said Lizelda Lopez, a spokeswoman for Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, in an email.The Legislature suspended work on March 16. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a Los Angeles Democrat, announced Friday that lawmakers will host their first hearing focused on the state’s spending on April 20. Rendon is “still reviewing this letter, and has not yet made any decisions,” spokeswoman Katie Talbot said.The governor’s office didn’t immediately comment. Ewert said the association is hoping for”some help to survive in the next two to three months,” not an ongoing government subsidy.Grieve’s letter suggests part of that help could come through state agencies taking out more advertisements in newspapers for public health announcements. Even as news has moved online, print advertisements remain more lucrative than digital ads for most newspapers.The news publishers association surveyed all its members, over 400 outlets including student publications, on the extent of the revenue hit. The association said the average print ad revenue loss for 33 daily papers was $1.03 million in March and is projected to rise to $1.8 million a month in April and May. Thirty-two ethnic and community newspapers also reported an average print advertising revenue loss of $35,000 in March.”The COVID crisis has exacerbated an already precarious situation, with many large businesses putting their advertising on hold – a development that is a crippling blow to California news outlets,” Grieve wrote.Doctor said he didn’t believe there are issues with newspapers seeking grants and loans during a crisis from governments they cover.”You kind of have the sniff test. Does it make sense that this program would affect coverage newspapers have of government? And the answer I think is no,” he said.  
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As the number of coronavirus cases from the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier continued to rise in Guam, the defense secretary said he would not rule out the possibility of reinstating the ship’s fired captain upon the conclusion of an investigation into the situation.Navy officials said 447 of the Roosevelt’s sailors had tested positive for coronavirus, which as of early Tuesday was more than 20% of all U.S. service members who had been confirmed with the virus worldwide. More than 3,100 sailors have been transferred off the ship.Last week, the carrier’s commanding officer, Captain Brett Crozier, wrote a letter of concern to his superiors, urging them to take “decisive action” to prevent deaths from the coronavirus. He was fired by the acting secretary of the Navy, who later resigned.Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mike Gilday told a small group of reporters that the investigation of the Roosevelt matter was complete. He said he had begun to go through the report and would act based on where the investigation led.Defense Secretary Mark Esper told CBS on Friday that he had issued guidance that “no further action will be taken against Captain Crozier until the investigation is completed.”“We’ve taken nothing off the table,” Esper said, “so we’ll see how that plays out.”Medics, not spaceAs the military looks to Detroit, New Orleans and the state of Texas as the next COVID-19 hot spots, Thomas McCaffery, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said the Pentagon appeared to have provided more hospital spaces than needed in hard-hit areas from coast to coast.In Seattle, a field hospital set up by the Army in a professional American football stadium shut down without ever seeing a patient. Washington state Governor Jay Inslee said Thursday that the move was to shift resources to a place where there was more urgent need.The temporary hospital at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan and the Navy hospital ship Comfort docked in New York Harbor are together filled with thousands of empty hospital beds, with the Javits Center treating just 255 patients and the Comfort treating just 64 patients as of Friday morning. The facilities have a combined capacity of about 3,000 hospital beds.But medical officials say New York City hospitals continue to be inundated with COVID-19 patients.McCaffery said Friday that the Pentagon had learned during the outbreak response that civilian hospitals really needed extra manpower and staffing.’Good due diligence’When asked why so few patients had been treated by the military, McCaffery said it was likely because of “a shortage of the doctors and nurses and the staff you need to run a facility.”“I wouldn’t say that the states got it wrong. I would say that the states were doing good due diligence,” he said, “rather than being in a situation where they need that capacity and it’s not there.”Esper told CBS on Friday that the Defense Department had about 2,500 doctors, nurses and others in New York City, and on Friday deployed another 300 to help local hospital workers.As of early Friday, 3,054 coronavirus cases around the globe were related to the U.S. military — 2,031 service members, 493 civilians, 325 dependents and 205 contractors — the Pentagon said. There have been 13 DOD-related COVID-19 deaths, including one service member.
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Signs of deadly prison unrest in Iran have made it the latest country to see prisoners’ anxieties about exposure to coronavirus outbreaks in cramped jails erupt into violence in recent weeks.In a Thursday statement, London-based rights group Amnesty International cited “credible” sources as saying that Iranian security forces have killed several dozen protesting inmates and wounded hundreds of others at three Iranian prisons since late March. It said the prisoners had joined protests against authorities’ refusal to grant them temporary releases to reduce their risk of contracting the virus inside crowded and unsanitary prison compounds.Iran has not released data on coronavirus cases inside its prisons, but human rights activists began reporting outbreaks in several major prisons in early March.In a March 29 announcement, Iran’s judiciary said that in order to curb the spread of the coronavirus, it was granting furloughs until mid-April to 100,000 prisoners, more than half of its publicly-declared prison population of 189,500 as of November 2019. But authorities have kept tens of thousands of inmates behind bars, among them Iranians charged with political crimes designated as “security” offenses.Live ammunition, tear gasAmnesty said its sources reported Iranian security forces using live ammunition and tear gas to suppress protests against ongoing detentions at two prisons in the southwestern city of Ahvaz on March 30 and 31.The rights group said it believes “up to 15” inmates were killed at Sepidar prison and “around 20” others were killed at Sheiban prison. It also said Danial Zeinolabedini, a juvenile offender who had joined prison protests in the northwestern province of West Azerbaijan, died in “suspicious circumstances” on April 2 after security force beatings that “possibly” led to his death.Amnesty said its sources for the reports of prison killings by Iranian security forces included prisoners’ families, independent journalists and human rights activists.In a VOA Persian interview on Friday, Philippe Nassif, Amnesty International USA’s Middle East and North Africa advocacy director, said Iran is not the only country in the region to have witnessed such violent coronavirus-related disturbances inside its prisons in the past month.“We know that the virus has entered Syrian prisons and authorities have reacted violently to some of the protests that have occurred in these facilities,” Nassif said. He singled out Syria’s notorious Sednaya prison north of Damascus as of greatest concern, saying Amnesty suspects it has a coronavirus outbreak started by infected residents of the nearby town.“We don’t have any more information about prison violence in Syria, because that’s an even more difficult place from which to get timely information,” Nassif said.Egypt releases some dissidentsThe rights activist said Amnesty also has seen evidence of recent protests inside Egyptian prisons, in addition to protests outside of jails where prisoners’ family members have demanded that their relatives be released rather than remain exposed to the virus in detention.Egypt released more than a dozen dissidents from prison last month. But neither Cairo nor Damascus have announced any significant releases of the tens of thousands of inmates in their prison populations to mitigate the risk of coronavirus spread.In a March 26 article, The Washington Post reported other incidents of prison violence linked to the coronavirus in Europe and Latin America.The report said prison riots in Italy had left 13 inmates dead and 59 guards injured since the start of the month. It said riots also killed at least 23 people in Colombian jails and plagued prisons in Peru and Chile, while as many as 1,000 inmates escaped detention in Brazil and five inmates were fatally shot trying to do the same in Venezuela.This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service.
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As the world fights the coronavirus pandemic, there are questions about whether restrictions to contain the virus are leading to cleaner air and skies. Some say there is a correlation between lockdowns and pollution levels, but others disagree. VOA correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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A former Kyrgyz customs officer has alleged that his ex-boss urged him to bring an RFE/RL Kyrgyz service journalist back to Kyrgyzstan “dead or alive.”Emilbek Kimsanov made the allegation in an undated video that was posted on Facebook on April 10 by his wife, Maria Zavorotnyaya.In the video, Kimsanov says that former Kyrgyz State Customs Agency Deputy Chairman Raimbek Matraimov sent him contact information in Prague for RFE/RL journalist Ali Toktakunov along with the command to bring him in “dead or alive.”Kimsanov showed screenshots on his telephone with the information about Toktakunov.Matraimov was not available to comment on the video. His brother, Kyrgyz lawmaker Iskender Matraimov, dismissed the video in comments to RFE/RL.”Kimsanov will answer not only before God, but also before the law,” Iskender Matraimov said. “Let law enforcement check his statements. I would ask the people not to believe the claims of just anyone.”Joint probeToktakunov was the lead reporter in a joint investigation by RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz service, known locally as Radio Azattyk; the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP); and the Kyrgyz news site Kloop.The investigation, Plunder and Patronage in the Heart of Central Asia, which implicated Raimbek Matraimov, chronicled how a 37-year-old Uighur businessman from China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang, self-confessed money launderer Aierken Saimaiti, moved hundreds of millions of dollars out of Kyrgyzstan.Toktakunov has received credible death threats in connection with the investigation and has been named by Matraimov and his family as a defendant in a libel lawsuit. According to the OCCRP, as many as 12 people who reported on or criticized the Matraimov family over the last 10 months have been harassed.Kimsanov was detained in St. Petersburg, Russia, in February and extradited to Kyrgyzstan. He faces charges connected to the 2018 beating of a son of former Interior Minister Moldomusa Kongantiev.On March 31, a Kyrgyz court ordered Kimsanov transferred from house arrest to pretrial detention.Wife’s statementOn Wednesday, Zavorotnyaya released a video statement in which she appealed to President Sooronbai Jeenbekov to protect her husband, claiming that the case against him had been trumped up by “an influential man of Kyrgyzstan.” She did not mention the man’s name.However, Kimsanov’s brother, Emirbek Kimsanov, earlier appealed to Jeenbekov to protect his brother from Matraimov and his family, who he said had been persecuting Emilbek Kimsanov for his refusal to participate in Matraimov’s alleged illegal activity.Jeenbekov’s office has not responded to the appeals.Emilbek Kimsanov’s lawyer, Nazgul Suyunbaeva, said Wednesday that “unknown people” had threatened her client before his transfer to custody by saying, “We will put you behind bars where they are already waiting for you.”Suyunbaeva asked prison officials to look into the alleged threats against Kimsanov.
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COVID-19 travel restrictions in Ethiopia are forcing pregnant women to give birth at home, health workers say.For Kenasa Kumera, receiving panicked phone calls from women going into labor has become an everyday occurrence.  Ever since Ethiopia implemented strict travel bans last month to stop the spread of the coronavirus, the Marie Stopes International maternity center he manages in Adama, roughly 100 kilometers from the capital, Addis Ababa, has received up to 10 calls a day from women unable to reach his center to give birth.  The trend, he said, is of particular concern in poor areas with no ambulances and where traveling even small distances can be difficult.”This morning, one client has called in need of an ambulance. She had two Caesarean sections before and she was appointed for another Caesarean section,” Kenesa told VOA via a messaging app. “She has been suffering due to the shortage of transportation and she asked for an ambulance. I immediately sent her one. Now she is admitted and the third Caesarean section is safely conducted.”FILE – Roads in the capital lie empty after they were closed to be disinfected to halt the spread of the new coronavirus, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, March 29, 2020.Kenasa said he was concerned that many other women have not been able to arrange transportation, so are forced to give birth at home where medical emergencies cannot be treated.”Definitely there could be complications since there is no means of transportation and proper health service provisions in the towns,” he said. “No doubt complications will happen.”Parliament on Friday approved a nationwide state of emergency, giving authorities sweeping powers to prevent the movement of people. Schools, bars, cultural restaurants, hairdressers and gyms were already closed.On March 23, the government issued orders to public transporters to cease overcrowding. The regions of Oromia, Amhara, Harari and Tigray have banned or restricted public transport to help limit the spread of the coronavirus. Ethiopia has recorded 65 cases.  The Ethiopian Ministry of Health did not respond to questions on access to health services for pregnant women. Risha Hess, country director for Marie Stopes in Ethiopia, told VOA via a messaging app that people all over the country were no longer able to reach health services for delivery or post-natal care. “We’re able to pick people up and bring them to the hospitals and so far that’s what we’ve done,” Hess said. “If it continues who knows — we only have one ambulance at every hospital. There will likely be people who we can’t get to fast enough or because we don’t have the capacity. I can only imagine what’s happening with all the other maternity centers in the country.”There are shortages of sexual and reproductive health products from India because factories there have closed and the borders are shut. This, she said, could result in “years of problems and backlogs” due to the borders shutting down across the world. 
 
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The World Health Organization is urging caution from nations anxious to lift restrictions imposed on their citizens to fight the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Speaking at the organization’s regular news briefing from Geneva on Friday, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the organization wants to see things return to normal as much as anyone, but he cautioned “the way down may be as dangerous as the way up” if not handled properly. The leaders of several nations – the United States included – had, at one time, marked this weekend, the weekend of Easter observances, as the date when restrictions would be lifted. Most nations, however, have backed away from that, and some have even extended their lockdowns and shelter-in-place rules to the end of the month. Tedros said the WHO is working with affected countries on strategies for gradually and safely easing their restrictions. The general-director said the pandemic has exposed weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the health care systems of even the strongest nations.   
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Indonesia, despite a growing coronavirus caseload, has avoided locking down population centers in favor of softer control measures to sustain an economy already stressed by poverty.The virus hitting most of the world now has sickened 3,293 people in Indonesia and killed 280. On Friday, the capital Jakarta ordered a two-week closure of offices, and banned gatherings of more than five people but did not issue a stay-at-home order and allowed some public transit to keep running. Schools and restaurants had been closed already.Although the order extends to an urban area of about 30 million people, other parts of the archipelago, including its mines and palm farms, are unaffected. About 265 million people live across Indonesia’s 13,000 islands.Officials must mind their country’s poverty rate of nearly 10 percent, analysts said, since business closures hurt incomes. Yet to ignore the deadly virus would let it spread and strain hospitals in rural areas.“If we get to the point where they have to go into total lockdown like India, or Malaysia, then the economic impact will be much greater,” said Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist at IHS Markit. “There’s a lot of downside risk for Indonesia right now.Police officers check the number of people seated inside a car during the imposition of large-scale social restriction, at a checkpoint in Jakarta, Indonesia, April 10, 2020.“Many people live on the poverty line or below the poverty line in Indonesia,” he added.As it is, Indonesia’s GDP should grow 3 percent this year rather than about the 5 percent expected at the start of 2020, said Anushka Shah, vice president with Moody’s Sovereign Risk Group in in Singapore. Limited forced closures will keep mines, farms and factories running, Shah said. Indonesia exports palm oil, coal, rubber and minerals.But Shah expects a fall in Indonesian exports, along with their prices, because of a slump in demand from overseas where hundreds of millions of consumers are locked down and without jobs.“The shape and form that the government measures take with regard to potential shutdowns will determine production, but then a lot also depends on demand, because global demand has meaningfully slowed, and you’ve also seen a fall in prices,” Shah said.Relatively light containment measures will send a message to people that the coronavirus spread isn’t too severe, warned Philips Vermonte, executive director of Jakarta-based research organization Centre for Strategic and International Studies.Complicating the situation, in most years Indonesians travel in large numbers to their hometowns for the Ramadan holiday, which begins later this month, a movement that could make more people sick, Vermonte added. “In some corners, people will lose their guard & think it’s OK — and they’re (disease) carriers,” he said.A man reads the Quran at an empty mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia, April 10, 2020.“I think the first thing that came to the mind of the government back in March was the economy, and probably they were thinking the emergency wasn’t there at that time,” he said. COVID-19 cases began growing noticeably in mid-March.Now the central and local governments worry that hospitals and doctors lack the capacity to handle a spiraling caseload, Vermonte said.Indonesia has announced a total $8.725 billion in stimulus to ease economic losses.The Southeast Asian country’s current account and budget deficits are low, good for absorbing economic shocks, Moody’s said in an April 3 research note. But weak “debt affordability” could challenge the government later to assuage economic damage, the note said.The poor may just leave Jakarta. A lot are migrant workers who sell from the street sides to offices and schools, said Paramitaningrum Supamijoto, international relations lecturer at Bina Nusantara University in Jakarta.“Closing the stores, closing the offices, closing the schools will affect their income, especially if you are selling food, selling goods,” Supamijoto said. “Nobody is going out, or they prefer (to) order by online.”If the migrant workers go home, she said, they risk spreading the virus from Jakarta to the rest of Indonesia.Around Jakarta, most retailers had already closed as of early Friday and people were staying home whenever possible, including attending classes online, Supamijoto said. Muslims still pray at mosques however, she said, and malls with supermarkets or drugstores remain open. 
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Yemen’s internationally recognized government Friday announced the first confirmed case of coronavirus in the war-torn country, stoking fears that an outbreak could devastate an already crippled health care system.
Yemen’s Minister of Health Nasser Baoum told The Associated Press the case is a 73-year-old Yemeni national who works at the al-Shahr port in Hadramawt province. He added that he is in a stable condition, without further details.
Yemen is a uniquely dangerous place for the coronavirus to spread. Repeated bombings and ground fighting over five years of war have destroyed or closed more than half its health facilities. Deep poverty, dire water shortages and a lack of adequate sanitation have made the country a breeding ground for disease.
The Saudi-led coalition fighting the Iran-backed Houthi rebels declared a cease-fire on Thursday on humanitarian grounds to prevent the spread of the pandemic. However, fighting continued unabated Friday, diminishing hopes that a halt in the fighting will open doors for peace talks.
Yemen’s war erupted in 2014, when the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa and much of the country’s north. The U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition intervened to oust the rebels and restore the internationally recognized government. The conflict has killed over 100,000 people and largely settled into a bloody stalemate.
The U.N. has described Yemen as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. Cholera outbreaks are the worst in modern history. Over 24 million people in the country require humanitarian assistance, many of them on the brink of starvation.
Even before the war, the southern province of Hadramawt saw some of the worst pockets of malnutrition and disease in the country. It recently witnessed an outbreak of dengue fever, with hundreds of cases filling the public hospital of al-Shahr, where the coronavirus was detected.
In Yemen’s under-equipped and barely functioning health system, it’s hard to distinguish between viral diseases. One young man with dengue fever died after a hospital in Mukalla, the provincial capital of Hadramawt, refused to admit him for fear he was carrying the coronavirus, two local aid and government officers said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press.
Some of the symptoms of dengue fever are similar to the coronavirus, including muscle aches and and fever.
To try to curb the spread of the virus, provincial Gov. Farag al-Bouhsni announced on his Facebook page a partial curfew. He also placed all workers at one of the area’s key ports, Al-Shahr, under a 14-day quarantine. Residents criticized the governor for not shutting down all the ports Hadramawt which are the main lifeline of aid and commercial shipments for southern Yemen. The adjacent governorate of al-Mahra, which also borders Oman, sealed off its entry points just hours after the announcement of the first case in Yemen.
Experts have dreaded the virus’ eventual appearance in the country.
“The arrival of coronavirus in Yemen will be disastrous for many reasons,” said Altaf Musani, representative of the World Health Organization in Yemen.
In Israel, the number of coronavirus infections has risen to more than 10,000. The government imposed strict measures to contain the pandemic early on but has seen it tear through the insular ultra-Orthodox religious community.
The Health Ministry on Friday reported more than 10,000 cases, including 92 deaths.
The virus causes mild to moderate symptoms in most patients, who recover within a few weeks. But it can cause severe illness or death, particularly in older patients or those with underlying health problems.
Israeli authorities moved quickly in mid-March to close borders, ground flights and shut down all non-essential businesses. But in the early days and weeks of the pandemic many in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community ignored guidelines on social distancing, which health experts say is key to containing the outbreak.
In Oman on Friday, authorities ordered those living in the capital, Muscat, to remain there while banning people from traveling into the city over the virus. The country has more than 450 confirmed cases with two confirmed deaths.
There are more than 134,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the Middle East, including over 5,300 fatalities. Some 4,200 of those deaths are in Iran, which has the largest outbreak in the region. Authorities there had recorded over 68,000 total cases as of Friday.
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Detainees in Australian immigration centers are pleading to be released because of COVID-19 fears. They say it is impossible for them to self-isolate and protect themselves from the disease.Detainees at the Villawood immigration center in Sydney fear an outbreak of the new coronavirus inside the facility that houses more than 400 people would be impossible to control.  They are pleading to be released, and some said they are so desperate they’ve gone on a hunger strike.“We are not going to break or wreck anything, but this is the only form of way that we can reach out is by striking like this to do not eat in order to get some form of attention,” one detainee said.  “No eat, no drink.  We are sick of being in the dark and being in the shadows.  We are human beings, so we urge you, we are pleading with the Australian government to act now.  The time is now before it gets here and it is too late.”In a letter to the Prime Minister Scott Morrison, detainees insist they are living in a potential COVID-19 “death trap.”“We ask the community and the prime minister and the lawyers to help our family and  help us before the disease comes inside the detention (center) and sweep everybody,” a second detainee said.So far there has been one confirmed case of the new coronavirus in Australia’s detention network.“This COVID-19 virus is taking you out there and it hits in here like it is already the rumors are, we are all gone, we’re all going to die,” a third said. “We just get buried with nothing. They might as well just come and shoot the lot of us now.”The government insists there are established plans for dealing with a potential coronavirus outbreak within Australia’s detention network.  A spokesperson said detainees showing symptoms of COVID-19 would be quarantined and tested.There are about 1,440 people, including those from Iran, New Zealand and Sudan, being held in detention on the Australian mainland.  Forty percent are asylum seekers, while around 600 are being held for visa breaches.The average length of time in detention is more than 500 days.   
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