AUSTRALIA
Doubling of cases at facility
Thirty people at the Anglicare Newmarch House, a nursing home in New South Wales, have tested positive for COVID-19, a doubling in the facility’s number of cases overnight. An Anglicare spokesman yesterday morning said that 10 staff and 20 residents at the western Sydney facility had tested positive for the virus, a marked increase from the six staff and nine residents diagnosed on Thursday. “Anglicare has deployed a specially trained team of staff assigned to care for the residents who have tested positive,” he added. An outbreak occurred in the home after a nurse worked for six days without knowing that she had the virus, as she only had mild symptoms of a sore throat and running nose.
AUSTRALIA
Scientists trial shading reef
Scientists have carried out a trial of prototype cloud-brightening equipment on the Great Barrier Reef that they hope could be scaled up to shade and cool corals, and protect them from bleaching caused by rising global temperatures. The experiment used a modified turbine with 100 high-pressure nozzles to spray trillions of nanosized ocean salt crystals into the air from the back of a barge. In theory, the tiny salt crystals are able to mix with low-altitude clouds, making them brighter and reflecting more sunlight away from the ocean surface.
GEORGIA
Traffic ban tightens curbs
The government has banned the movement of all private vehicles from yesterday until Tuesday next week, tightening a state of emergency in an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the government said on Thursday. “In case of breaches of these restrictions, the government will be forced to declare a strict quarantine,” government spokesman Irakli Chikovani told a media briefing. The state of emergency is in place until May 10, with a 9pm to 6am curfew; closures of restaurants, cafes, shops, pharmacies and gas stations; a ban on public transport and on gatherings of more than three people — grocery stores remain open.
MYANMAR
Virus fears liberate inmates
More than a quarter of the nation’s prison population is to be released, the presidential office announced yesterday, as calls grow to ease pressure on overcrowded jails with COVID-19 fears gripping the country. The government grants an annual amnesty to thousands of prisoners to mark its New Year holiday this month, but this is the largest ever recorded. The country is under a nationwide lockdown and there has been growing pressure to release inmates from what Human Rights Watch calls “horribly overcrowded and unsanitary” jails.
HONDURAS
Cubans to help fight virus
Minister of Health Alba Consuelo Flores on Thursday said that a Cuban medical brigade would join local medics in the fight against COVID-19 as it spreads in the poor Central American nation. Cuba has sent its “armies of white robes” to disaster sites around the world, largely in poor nations, since its 1959 communist revolution. “Right now, we’re seeing that health personnel are making us sick,” Flores told a news videoconference. The Cuban brigade is made up of four emergency surgeons, two epidemiologists, six intensive-care nurses and four biomedical technicians, she said, without specifying when they would arrive.
GUATEMALA
Migrant flights suspended
Flights deporting migrants from the US are to be temporarily suspended, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday, after a mass COVID-19 infection was reported on a flight. Forty-four of 76 migrants who arrived in the nation on a US deportation flight on Monday subsequently tested positive for COVID-19. A spokesman for the presidency said that the government would test deportees again regardless of whether they had been tested before. “Guatemala is working with US authorities to evaluate the health status of Guatemalans returned in recent days,” he said.
BRAZIL
Health minister fired
President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday fired Minister of Health Luiz Henrique Mandetta after they disagreed over how to confront COVID-19 and a person familiar with the matter said that the president would appoint oncologist Nelson Teich in his place. Mandetta on Twitter wrote that Bolsonaro had told him of his dismissal. The two have clashed for weeks over the need for widespread social isolation. Bolsonaro argues the outbreak is being blown out of proportion. Teich, a medical consultant, has posted on social media defending many of the same positions Mandetta holds, including “horizontal” isolation of the whole population, which Bolsonaro opposes.
UNITED NATIONS
Children could die: report
Hundreds of thousands of children could die this year due to the global economic downturn sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic, while tens of millions more could fall into extreme poverty as a result of the crisis, the UN said on Thursday. A risk report said that nearly 369 million children across 143 nations who normally rely on school meals for a reliable source of daily nutrition have been forced to look elsewhere. “What started as a public health emergency has snowballed into a formidable test for the global promise to leave no one behind,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.
ITALY
Governor urges reopening
Lombardy Governor Attilio Fontana on Thursday began waging a lonely campaign to get the nation to reopen for business and follow the lead of some smaller European states. Fontana wrote on social media that businesses should follow basic social distancing rules and reopen when the nationwide lockdown expires on May 4. “Many other European countries are already beginning to reopen,” Fontana said in a second post, responding to criticism of the first. “We need to immediately start thinking about our future.” Lombardy makes up more than one-fifth of the nation’s economy, but it has also recorded more than half of its confirmed COVID-19 deaths.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday vowed that those behind bogus flood control projects would be arrested before Christmas, days after deadly back-to-back typhoons left swathes of the country underwater. Scores of construction firm owners, government officials and lawmakers — including Marcos’ cousin congressman — have been accused of pocketing funds for substandard or so-called “ghost” infrastructure projects. The Philippine Department of Finance has estimated the nation’s economy lost up to 118.5 billion pesos (US$2 billion) since 2023 due to corruption in flood control projects. Criminal cases against most of the people implicated are nearly complete, Marcos told reporters. “We don’t file cases for
Ecuadorans are today to vote on whether to allow the return of foreign military bases and the drafting of a new constitution that could give the country’s president more power. Voters are to decide on the presence of foreign military bases, which have been banned on Ecuadoran soil since 2008. A “yes” vote would likely bring the return of the US military to the Manta air base on the Pacific coast — once a hub for US anti-drug operations. Other questions concern ending public funding for political parties, reducing the number of lawmakers and creating an elected body that would
‘ATTACK ON CIVILIZATION’: The culture ministry released drawings of six missing statues representing the Roman goddess of Venus, the tallest of which was 40cm Investigators believe that the theft of several ancient statues dating back to the Roman era from Syria’s national museum was likely the work of an individual, not an organized gang, officials said on Wednesday. The National Museum of Damascus was closed after the heist was discovered early on Monday. The museum had reopened in January as the country recovers from a 14-year civil war and the fall of the 54-year al-Assad dynasty last year. On Wednesday, a security vehicle was parked outside the main gate of the museum in central Damascus while security guards stood nearby. People were not allowed in because
A feud has broken out between the top leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on whether to maintain close ties with Russia. The AfD leader Alice Weidel this week slammed planned visits to Russia by some party lawmakers, while coleader Tino Chrupalla voiced a defense of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The unusual split comes at a time when mainstream politicians have accused the anti-immigration AfD of acting as stooges for the Kremlin and even spying for Russia. The row has also erupted in a year in which the AfD is flying high, often polling above the record 20 percent it
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