The Nation Newspaper

Category: Foreign

  • Pope seeks equitable recovery plan

    Pope seeks equitable recovery plan

    Pope Francis has called for an all-embracing vision of the world after the Covid-19 crisis, saying moving on without global solidarity or excluding sectors of society from the recovery would result in “an even worse virus”.

    The pope left the Vatican for the first time in more than a month to say Mass in an almost empty church a few blocks away to mark Divine Mercy Sunday.

    In his homily at the Mass, as well as in his traditional Sunday message afterwards, Francis said the recovery could not leave anyone behind and that now was the time to heal injustice around the world because it undermined the health of the entire human family.

    Read Also: Pope celebrates Easter Mass without worshippers at Basilica

     

    “Now, while we are looking forward to a slow and arduous recovery from the pandemic, there is a danger that we will forget those who are left behind,” Francis said in his homily in the church of Santo Spirito in Sassia, chosen because it is also known as the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy.

    “The risk is that we may then be struck by an even worse virus, that of selfish indifference. A virus spread by the thought that life is better if it is better for me, and that everything will be fine if it is fine for me,” he said.

    Francis, who last ventured into a deserted Rome on March 15 to pray at two shrines for the end of the pandemic, said the recovery should not sacrifice “those left behind on the altar of progress”, particularly the poor.

     

     

  • FAO, AU express commitment to support access to food, others

    FAO, AU express commitment to support access to food, others

    From Juliana Agbo, Abuja

     

    THE Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and African Union (AU) have expressed commitment to support access to food and nutrition for Africa’s most vulnerable.

    The organisations have also agreed on the need to provide Africans with social safety nets and to minimise disruptions to the safe movement of essential people.

    In a statement yesterday, FAO and AU stated that the transport and marketing of goods and services, keeping borders open on the continent for the food and agriculture trade will be supported.

    They described the food and agriculture system as “an essential service that must continue to operate during periods of lockdown, emergency, curfew and other containment measures”.

    The agreement was reached at a gathering co-organised by the AU and FAO and convened virtually. All 55 AU member states were represented, 45 at ministerial level. The debate was moderated by the AU Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture Josefa Sacko.

    FAO Director-General QU Dongyu said quick, strategic action was needed to lessen the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food security in Africa.

    “Border closures restrict trade and limit food availability in many countries, particularly those dependent on food imports,” he said.

    Read Also: COVID-19: Need to avert the imminent food crisis

     

    He expressed support for measures that do not lead to disruptions in food supply chains.

    Also, South Africa Minister for Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development Angela Thoko Didiza cautioned against any move to weaken inter-regional trade. Both officials highlighted the toll taken by lockdowns in a continent where informal markets, rather than supermarkets, provide a lifeline for most consumers.

    FAO’s Chief Economist Maximo Torero pointed to growing evidence of logistical strains in food markets – strains which Qu suggested should be mitigated by “shortening the chain”, producing more, better, and locally, if possible.

    The CEO of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), Ibrahim Mayaki, warned of risks to social stability if food and cash were to run low among Africa’s urban residents. Many government representatives described strenuous efforts to bolster welfare benefits, often at great cost to national budgets.

    Also, European Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski outlined an EU support package for Africa that should eventually exceed $20 billion. The World Bank’s Simeon Ehui also detailed support initiatives, including the possibility of re-purposing $3.2 billion in uncommitted funding.

     

  • Pray at home during Ramadan, Saudi tells Muslims

    Pray at home during Ramadan, Saudi tells Muslims

    Agency Reporter

     

    Saudi Arabia’s top Islamic authority has called on Muslims around the world to perform prayers at home during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus.

    Ramadan, marked by intense worshipping, is set to begin on April 23 but most Muslim countries have shut down mosques in an effort to contain the illness.

    A feature of the fasting month is a special nightly prayer called “taraweeh,” usually performed in packed mosques.

    The Saudi Senior Scholars’ Council said on Sunday that Muslims should perform communal prayers including the taraweeh at home if authorities in their respective countries recommend it.

    Read Also: ‘Sustain your good deeds after Ramadan’

    “The Muslim should avoid gatherings because they are considered the main reason for spreading infection, according to related medical reports,” the council said, according to the state Saudi news agency SPA.

    The council advised against group meals during Ramadan and underlined the importance of preserving life in Islam.

    Observant Muslims abstain from eating, drinking and smoking from dawn to dusk during the lunar month of Ramadam.

    Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, has suspended congregational prayers in mosques and halted religious journeys to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina as part of strict measures to control the outbreak.

    Saudi authorities have installed thermal cameras at the entrances of the Holy Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet Mohammed Mosque in Medina to check the body temperatures of visitors, Saudi-owned television Al Arabiya reported.

    “Activating these cameras in the two holy mosques represents a quality step in the level of precautionary measures,” Abdel-Rahman al-Sudeis, the head of a state agency in charge of the two sites, said, according to Al Arabiya.

    This kind of cameras has a feature of storing the recorded temperatures of people and their image for one month for retrieval when needed, the broadcaster said.

    Later Sunday, the Saudi Health Ministry announced five more deaths from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, bringing the country’s overall death toll to 97.

    The ministry also confirmed 1,088 new virus cases, SPA reported, citing a spokesman.

    The latest cases raise to 9,362 the total number of infections in the oil-rich monarchy, the highest tally in an Arab country. (dpa/NAN)

     

     

     

  • COVID-19 cases top 20,000, deaths hit 1,000 in Africa – WHO

    COVID-19 cases top 20,000, deaths hit 1,000 in Africa – WHO

    Agency Reporter

     

    The World Health Organisation (WHO), Regional Office for Africa in Brazzaville, Congo says the number of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases in Africa has risen to over 20,000.
    The UN’s health agency gave the update on its official twitter account @WHOAFRO on Sunday.

    “Over 20,000 COVID-19 cases and 1,000 associated deaths have been reported on the African continent,’’ WHO said.

    The breakdown on the WHO African Region COVID-19 dashboard showed that South Africa, Algeria and Cameroon had continued to top the list of countries with the highest reported cases.

    South Africa has 3,034 cases and 52 deaths followed by Algeria with 2,534 cases and 367 deaths while Cameroon has 1,016 confirmed cases with 21 deaths.

    According to the dashboard, South Sudan, Sao Tome and Principe, Burundi and Mauritania still remain countries with lowest confirmed cases in the region.

    Read Aalso: Expert writes FG to verify his claim for COVID-19 cure

     

    It showed that South Sudan and Sao Tome and Principe were the lowest confirmed cases, which had four cases each with zero death.

    Burundi was the second country with the lowest confirmed cases with five reported cases and zero death.

    Mauritania, the third category with lowest cases, had recorded seven confirmed cases with one death.

    Also, the dashboard showed that COVID-19 cases had risen to 373 confirmed cases with 11 deaths in Nigeria.

    But in its update, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) says 542 confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been reported in Nigeria, 166 cases treated and discharged with 19 deaths as at Saturday, April 18.

    In addition, WHO said that Equatorial Guinea had received the UN ‘Solidarity Flight’, carrying COVID-19 medical supplies to support health workers.

    “The WHO’s cargo transported by World Food Programme (WFP) includes critical personal protective equipment, including 10,560 masks and 19,000 pairs of gloves and two ventilators,’’ the UN health agency said. (NAN)

  • Singapore records rise in new COVID-19 cases

    Singapore records rise in new COVID-19 cases

    Singapore reported 942 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, a single-day high for the tiny city-state that pushed its total number of infections to 5992, including 10 deaths.

    The sharp one-day spike in the tiny city-state of nearly six million people is the highest seen in Southeast Asia.

    READ ALSO: No Nigerian has tested positive for coronavirus in Singapore, says NIDO official

    The number of cases in Singapore has more than doubled over the past week amid an explosion of infections among foreign workers staying in crowded dormitories. This group now makes up around 60 per cent of Singapore’s cases.

    Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Saturday that it will take time to break the chain of transmission in the dorms. He wrote on Facebook that the vast majority of cases among migrant workers were mild, as the workers are young.

    (www.newsnow.co.uk)

  • COVID-19: UK to review relationship with China

    COVID-19: UK to review relationship with China

    United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Dominic Rabb, who is also currently standing in for Prime Minister Boris Johnson whilst he recovers, has said that there will have to be a review of the UK’s relationship with China once the Coronavirus pandemic has ended.

    At the daily briefing, broadcast from 10 Downing Street, Foreign Secretary Rabb told journalists that: “There’s no doubt we can’t have business as usual after this crisis. We’ll have to ask the hard questions about how it came about and how it could have been stopped earlier.”

    This comes after growing calls from within the Conservative Party in Parliament to take a tougher stance on China over their mishandling of the spread of COVID-19.

    Senior Conservative MP and Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee Tom Tugendhat had written a series of articles in the UK press calling for the government to launch an investigation into the way China mislead the world over the extent to which the virus had spread.

    Read Also; Trump says travel restrictions top priority as U.S. reopens

    In one article Tugendhat said: “Now, more than ever, Britain needs to consider its relationship with China, our hunger for its goods and investment. Do we want to import China’s authoritarian value system as well as its products? Or should we work with other free nations and reduce our growing dependence on this dictatorship?”

    The Foreign Secretary backed calls for an investigation into the actions of the Chinese Communist Party saying: “There absolutely needs to be a very deep dive on lessons, including on the outbreak of the virus, and I don’t think we can flinch from that at all,” Mr Rabb hinted that other countries were willing to back these calls for a review.

    Speaking during the daily briefing, Foreign Secretary Rabb concluded that “the one thing the coronavirus has taught us is the value, and the importance, of international cooperation.”

    (www.newsnow.co.uk)

  • Nairobi governor gives out alcohol to ‘kill’ coronavirus

    Nairobi governor gives out alcohol to ‘kill’ coronavirus

    Our Reporter

    THE governor of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, has distributed bottles of cognac to the poor, saying it protects against the new coronavirus, though the drink maker and national government chided him for propagating a myth.

    Cognac is a specific type of brandy, an alcoholic beverage produced from distilled white wine.

    Mike Mbuvi Sonko, known for his chunky gold jewellery, impromptu raps and arrest in 2019, posted images of Hennessey bottles tucked inside food packages with flour and other staples on social media this week.

    “We are giving some small bottles of Hennessey in the food packs that we are giving to our people,” Sonko said in a video, wearing a face mask and shield.

    “From the research which has been conducted by the World Health Organisation and various health organisations, alcohol plays a very major role in killing the coronavirus or any sort of virus.”

    LVMH, the world’s biggest luxury goods group which makes Hennessey cognac, however, said Sonko was wrong.

    LVMH, however, urged people to follow guidelines that include frequent washing of hands with soap.

    Kenya has 225 confirmed cases of the COVID-19 disease so far and movement has been restricted to slow the spread.

     

  • British WWII veteran, 99, raises £12m for health workers

    British WWII veteran, 99, raises £12m for health workers

    NINTY-nine-year-old British World War II veteran on Thursday completed 100 laps of his garden in a fundraising challenge for healthcare staff that has captured the heart of the nation, raising more than £12 million ($15 million, 13.8 million euros).

    “Incredible and now words fail me,” said Tom Moore, a captain who served in India, after finishing the laps of his 25-metre (82-foot) garden with the help of his walking frame.

    Moore initially set himself the goal of raising £1,000 for a National Health Service charity in time for his 100th birthday at the end of the month, after receiving treatment for a broken hip and cancer.

    But his efforts – a rare bit of good news during the global coronavirus pandemic that has killed almost 13,000 people in Britain alone – have made him a star in his own country and abroad.

    “Thank you all for your amazing support. It has been a memorable experience. Thank you so much,” he wrote on Twitter.

    The final lap of his garden in Bedfordshire, south England, was met with a guard of honour from the Yorkshire Regiment and broadcast live on British TV.

    “I’m surrounded by the right kind of people,” Moore told the BBC. “I’m feeling fine; I hope you are all feeling fine too.”

    Previously, he has spoken of his admiration for medical staff.

    “In the last war it was soldiers in uniform on the front line. This time our army are the doctors and nurses (in) uniforms,” he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain earlier this week.

    Health Secretary Matt Hancock called Moore “an inspiration to us all”.

    “This is an awful crisis, but there are some little shafts of light,” he told BBC television.

    “Captain Tom, he served his country in the past, and he’s serving his country now, both by raising that money for the NHS… but also cheering us all up.

    “We all need a bit of cheering up sometimes.”

    More than 645,000 people have contributed funds, with the rate of donations causing the JustGiving page to temporarily crash.

    His efforts have been lauded around the world.

  • UK extends lockdown measures for three more weeks

    UK extends lockdown measures for three more weeks

    Our Reporter

    Britain has extended its nationwide lockdown for no less than another three weeks, as stand-in leader Dominic Raab ordered Britons to stay at home to prevent the spread of a coronavirus outbreak, which has already claimed over 138,000 lives globally.

    “Relaxing any of the measures currently in place would risk damage to both public health and the economy,” he told newsmen.

    Raab is deputising while Prime Minister Boris Johnson recuperates from COVID-19 complications that nearly cost him his life.

    The UK has the fifth-highest official death toll from COVID-19 in the world, after the U.S., Italy, Spain and France, though British figures only cover hospital fatalities and the real number is probably much higher.

    The announcement, which had been widely expected, means Britons must stay at home unless they are shopping for basic necessities, or meeting medical needs.

    Citizens are allowed to exercise in public once a day, and can travel to work if they are unable to work from home.

    The measures were announced on March 23 for an initial three-week period.

    The arrangements, which mirror similar restrictions in many other countries, are unprecedented in peacetime Britain and have effectively shuttered vast swathes of the world’s fifth largest economy.

    Earlier, Health minister Matt Hancock warned the virus would “run rampant”, if the restrictions were lifted too soon.

    A YouGov poll conducted before the announcement showed 91 per cent of Britons supported a three-week extension to the lockdown.

    The UK’s death toll from COVID-19 in hospitals rose 861 to 13,729, as of 1600 GMT on April 15.

    Read Also: COVID-19 Lockdown: NCDC re-emphasises goals

    Broader statistics that include deaths in care homes and in the community suggest the total toll is much larger.

    Prince William, the grandson of Queen Elizabeth, yesterday opened an emergency COVID-19 hospital built in just eight days in the Exhibition Centre of Britain’s second city, Birmingham.

    William, the Duke of Cambridge, opened the new NHS Nightingale Hospital at the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) via video link.

    The hospital is the second of seven being constructed around England in response to the novel coronavirus outbreak, which has killed nearly 13,000 people in Britain so far.

    It has a 500-bed capacity, which can be increased to 1,500.

    More than 400 civilian contractors, along with military personnel and about 500 clinical staff, were involved in its building.

  • WHO chief lists six conditions for easing COVID-19 restrictions

    THOSE countries that want to lift coronavirus restrictions must meet a row of conditions to prevent another surge of infections, World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has stated.

    In his weekly address to Geneva-based diplomats, Tedros said easing social and economic curbs “must be done extremely carefully”.

    “If done too quickly, we risk a resurgence that could be even worse than our present situation,” he warned.

    First of all, governments must ensure that the spread of the novel coronavirus is under control.

    According to new WHO guidelines, this means that health authorities must know the origin of every single case and cluster of infections.

    National health systems must also be able to find, test, isolate and treat every new case, and all recent social contacts of every infected person must be tracked down.

    In addition, Tedros stressed that countries that want to ease their curbs must minimise infection risks in hot spot settings such as hospitals and nursing homes.

    As a fourth condition, Tedros said preventive measures must be in place in workplaces, schools and other essential locations.

    This includes physical distancing, hygiene etiquette and, possibly, temperature measurements, according to the new WHO guidelines.

    Countries must also manage the risk of importing new cases from abroad, by detecting infected travellers, and by quarantining those who arrive from hot spot countries.

    Lastly, Tedros said it is important that “communities are fully educated, engaged and empowered to adjust to the ‘new norm’” of behaving in ways that prevent new infections.

    China: we reject theory coronavirus originated in lab, not market

    China yesterday denied suspicions reportedly raised by U.S. intelligence sources that the coronavirus might have originated in a medical laboratory rather than a food market in the city of Wuhan.

    Though more research was needed to clarify the origin of the virus, there was no evidence to suggest it was man-made, or that it originated in a laboratory, said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian.

    “The World Health Organisation said there is no evidence that it was manufactured in a laboratory.

    “Many renowned medical experts have also confirmed that the allegation that the virus leaked from a laboratory has no scientific basis,” the spokesman said.

    The Chinese repudiation came a day after U.S. President Donald Trump was asked during a news conference to comment on media reports that U.S. intelligence was investigating whether the coronavirus came from a Chinese laboratory.

    “I don’t want to say that. But I will tell you that we hear this story more and more,” Trump said.