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.
An American scientist convicted of lying to US authorities about payments from China while he was at Harvard University has rebuilt his research lab in Shenzhen, China, to pursue technology the Chinese government has identified as a national priority: embedding electronics into the human brain. Charles Lieber, 67, is among the world’s leading researchers in brain-computer interfaces. The technology has shown promise in treating conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and restoring movement in paralyzed people. It also has potential military applications: Scientists at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army have investigated brain interfaces as a way to engineer super soldiers by boosting
Jailed media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai (黎智英) has been awarded Deutsche Welle’s (DW) freedom of speech award for his contribution to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. The German public broadcaster on Thursday said Lai would be presented in absentia with the 12th iteration of the award on June 23 at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn. Deutsche Welle director-general Barbara Massing praised the 78-year-old founder of the now-shuttered news outlet Apple Daily for standing “unwaveringly for press freedom in Hong Kong at great personal risk.” “With Apple Daily, he gave journalists a platform for free reporting and a voice to the democracy movement in
PHILIPPINE COMMITTEE: The head of the committee that made the decision said: ‘If there is nothing to hide, there is no reason to hide, there is no reason to obstruct’ A Philippine congressional committee on Wednesday ruled that there was “probable cause” to impeach Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte after hearing allegations of unexplained wealth, misuse of state funds and threats to have the president assassinated. The unanimous decision of the 53-member committee in the Philippine House of Representatives sends the two impeachment complaints to deliberations and voting by the entire lower chamber, which has more than 300 lawmakers. The complaints centered on Duterte’s alleged illegal use and mishandling of intelligence funds from the vice president’s office, and from her time as education secretary under Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Duterte and the
As evening falls in Fiji’s capital, a steady stream of people approaches a makeshift clinic that is a first line of defense against one of the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemics. In the South Pacific nation — a popular tourist destination of just under a million people — more than 2,000 new HIV cases were recorded last year, a 26 percent increase from 2024. The government has declared an HIV outbreak and described it as a national crisis. “It’s spreading like wildfire,” said Siteri Dinawai, 46, who came to be tested. The Moonlight Clinic, a converted minibus parked in a suburban cul-de-sac in Suva, is
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