Singapore approves covid breath test with 1-minute result
A breath test designed to detect covid-19 and give accurate results within one minute has been approved for use in Singapore, the National University of Singapore said in a statement.
The test, developed by NUS spinoff start-up Breathonix, works much like a standard breathalyzer test that police might use to see if an erratic driver is drunk. A person blows into a one-way valve mouthpiece, and compounds in the person’s breath — think of it as a breath signature — are compared by machine-learning software to the sort of breath signature expected from someone who’s Covid-positive.
Accurate tests at that speed could be key to unlocking a travel sector that’s crucial for Singapore’s economy but has slowed to a crawl during the pandemic. Even as the U.S. and parts of Europe begin to reopen with higher viral caseloads, Singapore and other “Covid-Zero” countries in Asia have been hesitant to open borders and have cracked down harshly on any sign of flare-ups.
The breathalyzers “may potentially facilitate opening the borders in the longer run, but of course that’s up to the ministry’s assessment,” said Du Fang, the company’s chief operating officer. Travelers from countries defined as low-risk “can just simply do a breath test, and then they can easily enter into Singapore and we can open the borders to those green countries sooner.”
Singapore will use the breathalyzers in a deployment trial to screen some incoming travelers from Malaysia, the Straits Times reported. Anyone who tests positive in the breath test would be screened in a confirmatory PCR swab test. Singapore currently screens entrants with antigen rapid tests, which would continue alongside the breathalyzers.
The tests will sell for $3.80 (S$5) to $15 (S$20) each, Du Fang said.
The Breathonix test so far has undergone two clinical trials in Singapore and another in Dubai. It achieved a sensitivity of 93% and specificity of 95% in one early Singapore-based pilot study that involved 180 patients.
Published : May 25, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Derek Wallbank
E.U. promises swift retaliation after Belarus forces airliner to land, detains dissident
RIGA, Latvia – Belarus on Monday was facing international isolation, with European leaders discussing measures to deal a crushing blow to the economy and the White House calling for an investigation, a day after Belarusian authorities forced down a civilian jet and pulled off a dissident journalist.
Outrage mounted about the brazen move by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who on Sunday sent a MiG-29 fighter jet to snatch a Ryanair plane out of the sky as it was flying from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania, and arrest one of its passengers, Roman Protasevich, the founder of an opposition media outlet. Protasevich faces 12 years or more in prison.
The power play set a fearsome precedent for journalists and political opponents, who must now worry about flying through the airspace of repressive regimes, even if they are moving from one free capital to another.
The move was a “brazen affront to international peace,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, saying that the Biden administration is demanding an international investigation.
The United States condemns Lukashenko’s “regime” for “ongoing harassment and arbitrary detention of journalists simply for doing their job,” she said at a White House briefing.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNN the safety of flight paths over Belarus should be assessed. Britain, Ukraine, Lithuania and Latvia all asked commercial air traffic to avoid Belarusian airspace, to protect their citizens from what some officials called state-sponsored hijacking.
And E.U. leaders were discussing economic retaliation against Belarus at a prescheduled summit in Brussels on Monday. Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics said in an interview with The Washington Post that he and others would seek “harsh economic sanctions,” far beyond measures currently in place, in a bid to isolate Lukashenko and starve his regime of funds.
“Yesterday I think was the test of the West,” Rinkevics said. “But it was also a show of force and confidence to his own people and the opposition: ‘Look, I can come and get you anyway.’ This is an inter-European flight, from Athens to Vilnius, with a European company performing the flight, with a person who is under European protection because he is an opposition activist. This is a direct attack against Europe.”
Lithuanian authorities have taken the lead on the investigation into the incident, interviewing the Ryanair crew to try to understand the sequence of events that forced them to make a steep bank turn within minutes of the Vilnius airport, which is just over the border from Belarus. The Lithuanians are also trying to verify the identity of three passengers who stayed behind in Minsk along with Protasevich and a woman reported to be his girlfriend, both of whom were forced to remain in Belarus. A spokeswoman for the prosecutor general’s office, Elena Martinoniene, said that 126 people were aboard the plane when it departed from Athens, but 121 people landed in Vilnius.
Verifying the identity of the passengers could help Western officials understand whether Belarus pulled off the operation itself, or whether it had help from Russia, a possibility some officials were not ruling out on Monday.
“This was a major operation. These were skilled professionals, skilled guys on board,” a senior European official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the details of the investigation.
British Transport Secretary Grant Shapps instructed his country’s civilian aviation authority to ask U.K. airlines to avoid Belarusian airspace “to keep passengers safe,” he wrote on Twitter. He said he had suspended permits for Belavia, Belarus’s national carrier, to operate in Britain.
The Ukrainian ban on flights to Belarus and on Ukrainian-registered aircraft from flying above Belarus was also likely to have a significant impact on regional passenger traffic as well, since Belarus became the main air corridor between Ukraine and Russia after direct flights between those countries were cut off after hostilities began in 2014.
E.U. leaders converging on Brussels for a pre-scheduled summit on Monday were considering multiple responses, including banning Belavia flights and declaring Belarus’s airspace unsafe, according to diplomats and other officials involved in the discussions. Economic sanctions could include full-scale bans on doing business with Belarus’s biggest companies, state-owned operations that are crucial to keeping Lukashenko afloat.
All explanations for the forced landing of the plane other than to detain Protesevich “are completely implausible,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters on her way into the meeting, saying that there would “certainly” be new sanctions.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the forcing down of the plane “outrageous behavior” and said that what happened was a “hijacking.”
Fresh accounts of what happened were still surfacing on Monday.
People on the flight told Lithuanian media that they had the sensation of a sudden evasive maneuver – a loop that reversed the plane’s course and sent it on a path toward Minsk. Some thought it was because of weather.
Belarusian authorities appear to have engineered a false bomb threat against the airplane.
“It was intercepted, there was effectively warning given to the pilots and crew that there was a security risk on board, and then the plane was escorted by military jet to the Minsk airport, which was not the closest airport,” Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney told Ireland’s RTE radio on Monday.
Passengers who were sitting close to Protasevich said he became intensely anxious as he realized that the plane was landing in the Belarusian capital, where the plane was surrounded with police, military vehicles and firefighters.
“It was obvious that he was beginning to panic,” Marius Rutkauskas, a passenger sitting in the row ahead of Protasevich, told Lithuania’s LRT broadcaster. “He said, ‘the death penalty awaits me in Belarus.'”
Authorities came aboard the aircraft and took Protasevich off first, witnesses said. Then they commanded everyone to disembark. Passengers were searched and held for hours before they were allowed back on the plane – without Protasevich or Sofia Sapega, a Russian citizen studying at the European Humanities University in Vilnius and who some news accounts identified as his girlfriend. The university said in a statement Monday that she had also been detained and called for her release.
Coveney called the incident “aviation piracy” and said only one or two people were actually arrested from the plane, but five or six stayed on the ground in Belarus. “So that certainly would suggest that a number of other people who left the plane were secret service,” he said. “We don’t know from what country, but clearly linked to the Belarusian regime.”
In a statement posted on the Belarusian Foreign Ministry’s website, spokesman Anatoly Glaz said Belarus would “guarantee full transparency” and is open to receiving experts and presenting materials on what happened.
There is “no doubt that the actions of our competent authorities were also in full compliance with the established international rules,” he said, criticizing the “openly bellicose” statements from European leaders.
Later on Monday, a Belarusian official appeared on state television to read out what he said was the threat they had received to the safety of the plane, which he said was from “Hamas soldiers” demanding an Israeli cease-fire in Gaza. European officials gave little credibility to the announcement from Artem Sikorsky, the director of the Aviation Department of the Ministry of Transport and Communications.
Lukashenko has already waged a campaign of violence and repression for months, following August elections in which he arrested most of his opponents, then, according to Western observers, falsified results to produce a crushing victory against the lone remaining candidate.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the candidate, fled into exile in Lithuania. It was her visit to Athens last week that brought Protasevich to Greece from Vilnius, where he also lives in exile.
The European Union imposed sanctions following the election and the crackdown. But Sunday’s actions – which European officials said they were certain had been approved by Lukashenko – crossed a new line. There appeared to be little precedent for a nation-state to use its military to force down a commercial flight for political ends.
Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary called the situation a “state-sponsored hijacking,” and told Ireland’s new radio on Monday that Belarusian authorities had appeared intent on removing Protasevich and his traveling companion, who Belarusian opposition media said was his girlfriend.
“We believe there were some KGB agents offloaded at the airport as well,” O’Leary said, without explaining how he knew that. Belarus’s feared security service is still known by its old Soviet abbreviation, unlike Russia’s.
But despite his concern, Ryanair continued to fly over Belarusian airspace on Monday, with a flight from Cyprus to Estonia entering Belarusian territory even though several other airlines rerouted away from the country.
A spokesman for the airline did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Lukashenko has been Belarus’s heavy-handed ruler since 1994. Protasevich became his enemy for helping to organize the protests against his widely doubted election win.
Analysts said the situation could drive the Belarusian leader closer to the Kremlin, with which he has long had an up-and-down relationship. The Kremlin has long pushed for the two countries to form a unified state – something they agreed to in 1999 but have not fully implemented, in part because Lukashenko has dragged his feet.
Now the economy may be left without alternatives. As Lukashenko has cracked down on all forms of opposition, including media, he has been emboldened by Russia’s support. Although the E.U. has already sanctioned Lukashenko and other Belarusian officials, Minsk is dependent on Moscow, which issued a $1 billion loan to Belarus in December.
“I would assume that in this circumstance, Russia will help, and Lukashenko relies on Russia to help,” said Artyom Shraibman of Sense Analytics, a Minsk-based political consultancy. “He’s now a very anti-Western actor, and he thinks that these anti-Western actions must be rewarded or covered up by Moscow.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to meet with Lukashenko in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi this week.
A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, said that “what’s shocking is that the West calls the incident in the airspace of Belarus ‘shocking.'” In a statement on Facebook, she listed other aviation incidents that she said drew a muted response.
The Kremlin declined to comment.
Protasevich’s Nexta and Nexta Live channels on Telegram, a popular social media and messaging app, became a main source for news during the demonstrations as Belarusian authorities often moved to shutter Internet and mobile service. Telegram continued to work during the outages, and Nexta, then run by Protasevich, became a resource for where, when and how to protest. It went on to expose police brutality against protesters.
In November, Belarus placed Protasevich and Nexta’s founder, Stepan Putilo, on a terrorist watch list, charging him with three protest-related crimes that could land him in prison for more than 12 years. Protasevich and Putilo were the only Belarusian citizens on the list at the time.
Franak Viacorka, an adviser to Tikhanovskaya, said on Twitter that he and the former opposition candidate took the same Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius just a week earlier.
“We were lucky we got to Vilnius safely,” he said. “After [Sunday’s] incident, Belarusian airspace must be closed for international flights, the perpetrators – brought to justice.”
A number of Russian officials praised the move. Lawmaker Vyacheslav Lysakov wrote on his Telegram that it was a “brilliant special operation” by Belarus’s state security services. Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of the government-funded TV channel RT, formerly Russia Today, said on Twitter that Lukashenko “performed beautifully,” adding that she is envious of Belarus.
Published : May 25, 2021
By : The Washington Post · Michael Birnbaum, Isabelle Khurshudyan
George Floyds family gathers in Minneapolis to mark one year since his death
MINNEAPOLIS – Members of George Floyds family took to the streets Sunday to mark the one-year anniversary of his death, marching with hundreds of people, including activists and others who have lost loved ones to the hands of police, in the first of multiple events planned across the country to remember him and rally for racial justice.
Several of Floyd’s siblings and his children returned to the steps of the Hennepin County Government Center, where just weeks ago a jury found former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s death and where three other former officers charged in his killing are set to go on trial next year.
While many praised Chauvin’s conviction, calling it a first step toward “justice,” the family spoke of enduring loss and continued questions about why Floyd died.
“I still don’t know why,” said Bridgett Floyd, his younger sister, who now runs a memorial foundation in her brother’s name. Taking the stage at a rally before the march, she spoke of the family’s pain and how their lives had changed in the “blink of an eye.”
“It’s been a long year. It’s been a painful year,” Bridgett Floyd said. “That officer doesn’t understand what he took from us.”
Floyd was remembered a year after his death sent millions across the country into the streets in some of the largest sustained protests in American history. Minneapolis, the city at the center of that movement, continues to struggle with its own reckoning over policing and racial justice.
His younger sister joined other speakers – including the Rev. Al Sharpton and civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents the Floyd family – who said the fight for justice continues, even with Chauvin’s conviction.
Speaking before an audience that included several elected officials, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, both Democrats, Crump called out dozens of names of other Black men and women who had been killed by police, including Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man who was shot by a suburban Minneapolis police officer during a traffic stop last month during Chauvin’s trial.
“We are better than this, America. We need to have a more just America!” Crump said.
He pointed to the disproportionately violent response of police across the country when it comes to Black people, compared with White suspects, citing several recent cases where Black men have been shot at and killed while running away from the police.
“What is it about a Black man running away from the police that it is the most dangerous thing in America?” Crump asked, looking directly toward Frey and other elected officials who sat nearby.
He and Sharpton called for additional police policy changes nationwide, including the passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act – which has been approved by the U.S. House but has languished in the Senate. Floyd’s family has been invited to the White House on Tuesday to meet with President Joe Biden, which Sharpton described as a “nice” gesture, but not enough.
“George Floyd should not go down in history as someone with a knee on his neck, but as someone who broke the chain of police brutality and illegality,” Sharpton said.
Floyd died May 25, 2020, when he was restrained, handcuffed and facedown, on a South Minneapolis street during an investigation in a 911 call about a fake $20 bill that had been passed at a local market. Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck and back as Floyd begged for breath and ultimately went limp while two other officers – Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane – restrained Floyd’s back and legs. A fourth officer, Tou Thao, held back bystanders who sought to intervene.
Chauvin is scheduled to be sentenced on June 25. Kueng, Lane and Thao, who are charged with aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter, are scheduled to go on trial in March. All four are also facing federal civil rights charges in the case.
Published : May 25, 2021
By : The Washington Post · Holly Bailey, Paulina Villegas
Asean sees sharp drop in Covid-19-related deaths and new cases
Southeast Asia reported the lowest number of Covid-19 cases on Sunday in four days while deaths linked to the disease were the lowest in over a week.
Asean countries reported a total of 19,462 new cases on Sunday, taking the number of Covid-19 cases since the outbreak to over 3.83 million, while 237 patients died, down from Saturday’s 391.
Total Covid-19-related deaths in Asean rose to 75,774.
Vietnam reported 131 new cases and one death, bringing cumulative cases in the country to 5,217 and total deaths to 42.
So far, 2,721 people have been cured and discharged.
The World Health Organization is considering Vietnam’s proposal to be the manufacturing hub of mRNA vaccine in the region.
Laos reported 19 new cases and no death on Sunday, pushing cumulative cases in the country to 1,801 patients, while two patients have died so far, and 1,074 people have been cured and discharged. Lao authorities in provinces that share a border with Thailand are increasing screening measures on several thousands of labourers working in Thailand and wish to travel back home.
European leaders condemn Belarusian authorities after plane is forced to land and opposition journalist is detained
MOSCOW – Belarusian authorities on Sunday forced a civilian jetliner that was traveling over the country to land in Minsk and arrested an opposition journalist on board – an act that some European leaders compared to a hijacking.
The seizure of the Ryanair flight traveling between Athens and Vilnius, Lithuania – the capitals of two NATO nations – had little recent precedent, and European leaders said they were considering sanctions against Belarus.
Minutes before the Ryanair flight was to exit Belarusian airspace and cross into Lithuania, its crew received an order from Belarus’s air traffic control to turn around because of possible explosives on board. A Belarusian MiG-29 fighter jet scrambled to escort the Boeing 737-8AS to Minsk, though the aircraft was at that point much closer to Vilnius.
The Belarusian opposition said the supposed bomb scare was a pretext for the real reason strongman President Alexander Lukashenko ordered the plane carrying 123 passengers to land: the arrest of Roman Protasevich, an opposition journalist on board.
Lukaschenko, who has been in power since 1994, has cracked down on dissent since claiming a sweeping victory in last year’s elections. The claim, which has been rejected domestically and internationally, fueled months of popular protests; most of the opposition is exiled or jailed.
The news service for the airport in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, said no bomb was found on the plane. Lukashenko personally ordered the fighter escort, the BelTA state news agency said.
While Belarus’s most important ally, Russia, was largely silent, Western leaders condemned the action.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Sunday that those responsible for the “hijacking must be sanctioned.” She wrote on Twitter that European leaders would discuss what “action to take” at a previously scheduled meeting Monday in Brussels.
Julie Fisher, the U.S. ambassador to Belarus, said Lukashenko’s “regime today showed again its contempt for international community and its citizens.”
“Faking a bomb threat and sending MiG-29s to force @Ryanair to Minsk in order to arrest a @nexta journalist on politically motivated charges is dangerous and abhorrent,” she wrote on Twitter.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said “this is a serious [and] dangerous incident which requires international investigation.” British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said, “This outlandish action by Lukashenko will have serious implications.”
Protasevich, 26, ran the popular social media Telegram channel Nexta, which exposed Belarusian police brutality during the anti-government demonstrations last year. The channel and its sister channel, Nexta Live, have close to 2 million subscribers.
In November, he was added to a list of individuals purportedly involved in terrorist activities. He has been living in exile in Vilnius.
Before departing Greece early Sunday, Protasevich said on his Telegram channel he may be under surveillance. He was detained upon the plane’s landing. He now faces more than 12 years in prison.
Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya demanded Protasevich’s “immediate release.” She called on the International Civil Aviation Organization to take action.
The ICAO said it was “strongly concerned by the apparent forced landing of a Ryanair flight and its passengers, which could be in contravention of the Chicago Convention.”
Ryanair said Belarusian air traffic control notified its crew that there was “a potential security risk on board” and instructed it to divert “to the nearest airport, Minsk.” But the plane was much closer to the Vilnius airport than it was to the one in Minsk, the Flightradar24 website shows.
Nothing untoward was found, Ryanair said in a statement. The flight departed Minsk, without Protasevich, at 7 p.m. local time in Minsk.
A senior European diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the unfolding situation, said European policymakers would need to discuss whether it was still safe to fly over Belarusian airspace.
Flights in Northern and Eastern Europe often try to avoid Russian airspace. If Belarusian airspace is also a no-go, north-south flights in Europe could become circuitous.
Protasevich had been in Athens taking photographs during a visit by Tikhanovskaya to Greece, so his whereabouts would have been public to anyone with an interest. The senior diplomat noted that investigative open-source outlets such as Bellingcat have been able to purchase flight manifests and that it would probably not have been difficult for Belarusian authorities to gain access to information about Protasevich’s travel plans.
Published : May 24, 2021
By : The Washington Post · Isabelle Khurshudyan, Michael Birnbaum
Many Israelis who live near Gaza oppose cease-fire
ASHDOD, Israel – In the nearly two-week battle between Israel and Hamas, Linoi Hazam says, she ran for shelter from rocket fire more times than she can count.
Hazam, a 22-year-old security guard in this city 20 miles from Gaza, was driving on the highway one day during the conflict when shrapnel from an intercepted rocket fell onto the road a few miles ahead. She leaped out of her car and lay facedown on the asphalt, hands over her head.
The Egyptian-brokered cease-fire that took effect 2 a.m. Friday halted the exchanges of fire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist militant group that rules Gaza. The beaches, bars and cafes are filled again, schools and offices have reopened, and life has snapped back to routine. But Hazam worries that Israel’s readiness to agree to a cease-fire last week communicated weakness to Hamas, whose leaders have already threatened to open the next round of fighting.
“There shouldn’t be a cease-fire,” Hazam said. “Hamas did get hit hard, but not hard enough.”
For many Israelis in the south, the halt to hostilities has left a nagging feeling that the 11-day operation – which left at least 248 Gazans dead, including 66 children, and 12 Israelis dead, including a teenage girl and a 5-year-old boy – was ultimately pointless.
Seventy-two percent of Israelis said they did not agree with the cease-fire reached between Israel and Hamas, according to a poll published last week by Channel 12.
The “unconditional” cease-fire did not address Israel’s initial demands, which included the return of the remains of two civilians and two soldiers that are believed to be held by Hamas, or the broader goal of stopping Hamas from raining rockets down on Israeli citizens. It did not address the border blockade enforced by Israel and Egypt that limits the movement of the 2 million people who live in Gaza.
Over the weekend, as Gazans sifted through the rubble of obliterated buildings and began counting their dead, Israelis voiced their disillusionment with the way the operation was ended.
“The country has abandoned us, unequivocally,” said Yulie Lavie, 34, who lives in Ashdod and serves in the Israeli army. “We got the cease-fire, but what about after that? It’s clear to all of us that it’s only a matter of time until the next round.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that Israel had struck “a severe blow to terrorist organizations . . . while establishing deterrence.”
“Not everything is known to the public yet, and, by the way, not everything is known to Hamas, but our set of achievements will be revealed over time,” he said in a televised statement.
Israeli military spokesman Hidai Zilberman has said that at least 100 high-ranking military leaders from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, a smaller militant group in the Gaza Strip, were assassinated during the conflict. He said Israeli airstrikes inflicted “significant” damage on the underground tunnel network known as the metro, where Hamas is believed to produce and store its stockpiles of weapons.
“The military phase is over,” Defense Minister Benny Gantz said. “Now is the time for political resolution.” He said he was talking with leaders from “moderate Arab countries” to pursue that goal.
President Joe Biden said last week that the conflict showed “we still need a two-state solution,” in which an independent Palestinian state would be established alongside Israel.
Lior Damari, a 25-year-old computer and electrical engineering student in Ashdod, said a two-state solution was impossible.
“The truth is that no diplomatic solution would be enough for them,” he said. “It’s not that we’re against the idea of two states for two people – no, we’d prefer it. But there’s no one to talk to, there’s no one to take responsibility when, in the midst of negotiations, some young Palestinian tries to blow it all up.”
Amoyel Mair, 75, drinking coffee with friends on a bustling main street two blocks from the beach, said Israel’s problem with the Palestinians in Gaza was rooted in its conflict with Iran. He said Iranian funding and support enabled Hamas’s new tactic: heavy rocket barrages launched toward multiple locations almost simultaneously in an attempt to overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome antimissile defense system.
“Once the Iran problem is fixed, the Hamas problem, the Hezbollah problem, all of these local problems will be much easier to control,” he said. Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed group in Lebanon, sat out this month’s conflict. It’s believed to have a far larger stockpile of missiles compared with Hamas, and has, since the Israel-Lebanon war in 2006, regularly exchanged war threats with Israel.
As Israel tends conflict on multiple fronts with no end in sight, many here expect the country will continue to “mow the grass” – in this case, striking Hamas’s rocket production and storage facilities – periodically and indefinitely. As a result, they say, wars will continue to break out every few years.
“In a few years, maybe less, this whole scene will be back again,” said Hazam, the 22-year-old Ashdod resident. “For us, now, we’re going back to life, but we’re also waiting for the next war.”
Congos Nyiragongo volcano erupts, causing thousands to flee; at least 15 dead
NAIROBI – Fifteen people have died after a volcano eruption in Congo late Saturday that turned the sky above a fearsome red and sent thousands fleeing from a city that was devastated by lava flows in 2002 and 1977.
Government spokesman Patrick Muyaya said on Sunday night that two people had burned to death in the eruption of Mount Nyiragongo, that nine had died in a crash while attempting to flee and that four prisoners who had tried to escape their cells had been killed. He said property damage was reported in 17 villages surrounding the volcano, including Goma’s suburbs.
Journalists reported that the still-smoking molten rock had stopped just short of the outskirts of Goma, a picturesque lakeside city that is eastern Congo’s hub for trade and transport, averting greater disaster.
Goma residents remember well the eruption in January 2002, when swift lava and its accompanying carbon dioxide fumes left by some counts hundreds dead and more than 100,000 homeless. More than 1 million people live near the active crater.
A din of people and honking horns could be heard in videos taken early Sunday of the red-glowing eruption shared on social media. Rwandan officials said more than 3,500 Congolese people had sought refuge across the border in Rwanda.
“Panic spread as we were in contact with the residents of the north of the city who from their roofs could see the path of the lava as it made its way to the airport,” said Patient Iraguha, a resident of Rwanda who works in Goma.
“Information was circulating in all directions,” he told The Washington Post on Sunday from Rwanda. “During this time no official statement dictated any instructions, and nothing came out on the radio like on national television to give the right information on the direction of the lava and the escape route to take.”
The coronavirus pandemic has created unusual uncertainty at the Congo-Rwanda border crossing at Goma, which is one of the world’s busiest, seeing tens of thousands of people cross on foot each day. While the border remains open, confusion over temperature checks and other monitoring measures put in place added to the chaos, Iraguha said.
Goma’s volcano observatory, which is meant to provide quick warnings of increased activity in Nyiragongo and its companion volcano Nyamulagira, has been hobbled by the World Bank’s recent decision to not renew funding. A Reuters report in March linked that decision to allegations of embezzlement at the observatory. The observatory’s director told a local radio station on Sunday that it had not conducted its work between November 2020 and April, when provisional funding from a different source was obtained.
The U.N. mission MONUSCO tweeted that it was running reconnaissance flights and posted footage of a fiery landscape.
Congo’s President Félix Tshisekedi cut short a trip to Europe to return home Sunday and coordinate aid.
Muyaya, the government spokesman, said that the prime minister had called an emergency meeting and that authorities would set more plans in motion Sunday.
Muyaya urged people to avoid engaging with “everything that is being said in social media” in the face of an “extremely serious situation.” He vowed that officials would do their best to keep people updated and manage a crisis that “touches us all.”
In one especially deadly eruption of Mount Nyiragongo in 1977, about 2,000 people were reported killed.
“This is the most dangerous volcano in the world!” volcanologist Dario Tedesco told Science magazine last year.
Published : May 24, 2021
By : The Washington Post · Max Bearak, Hannah Knowles, Paulina Villegas
ROME – An Alpine cable car plunged into forested mountains in northern Italy on Sunday, killing 14 passengers, according to rescue authorities. At least one of the victims was a child, among the two minors initially taken by helicopter to a hospital in Turin.
Photos shared on social media by rescuers showed a mangled cable car, along with at least two downed cables, next to rows of pine trees high above Lake Maggiore. The collapse occurred at a relatively high point on the cable car’s 20-minute ride, which starts lakeside and leads to a popular vista about 5,000 feet above sea level, an area that includes a ski resort and an amusement park.
“The fall was obviously significant,” Walter Milan of the Alpine rescue service told Rai News 24. He said the cables were particularly high off the ground at that point on the course.
Infrastructure Minister Enrico Giovannini said there would be a government inquiry into the incident.
According to the newspaper Corriere della Sera, the cable car system had reopened April 24 after a closure during Italy’s coronavirus-related lockdown. The system had been renovated in 2016, the newspaper said, undergoing a high-tech examination of the cable tightness. The cabins were also upgraded.
The cable car system’s website says the service was inaugurated in 1970, with two cars and one stop at a midway point between the lakeside and mountaintop. The site says the cable car is an “integral part” of tourism in the area, which is 75 minutes by car from Milan.
Politicians and other Italian figures expressed sadness about the collapse.
“With shock, I am following the news of the tragedy of the cable car #Verbania #Mottorone on a Sunday that should have been one of sunshine and hope and which for many families will be one of mourning and despair,” tweeted Enrico Letta, head of Italy’s Democratic Party.
“A prayer for the children admitted in serious condition,” said Attilio Fontana, governor of the Lombardy region, the site of the collapse.
Prime Minister Mario Draghi said in a statement that he was in touch with local authorities and civil protection.
“I express the condolences of the entire government to the families of the victims, with a special thought for the children who were seriously injured and their families,” Draghi said.
Italy has been no stranger to deadly infrastructure-related accidents, most recently in 2018, when a highway bridge in Genoa collapsed during a torrential rainstorm, killing more than 40. Italy also suffered a ski gondola disaster in 1998, though it was not an infrastructure failure but a freak incident: A U.S. Marine Corps aircraft, flying too low, severed a cable, causing 20 people to plunge to their deaths.
Malaysia announces rules to reduce movements in virus fight
Malaysia on Saturday detailed further restrictions on movements to contain a record surge in covid cases.
Businesses will only be allowed to operate from 8 a.m until 8 p.m. daily from May 25, Defense Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob told a briefing. About 80% of government officers and 40% of private sector employees will work from home, with the move affecting 7 million to 8 million workers.
High-risk places will be shut immediately and usage of public transportation will be limited to 50% capacity, Ismail said. The Trade Ministry will announce further guidelines for the economy, he added.
The moves are an attempt by Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin to tamp down new infections without derailing the nascent economic recovery by imposing a nationwide lockdown. Malaysia’s economy lost about 700 million ringgit ($169 million) a day when only essential sectors were allowed to operate in January.
“Life is important; I also don’t want the economy to collapse,” Muhyiddin said in an interview with state-owned RTM television on Sunday. “If the economy collapses, I may have to spend half a trillion now. That’s what we have learnt over time. We have to balance. The government’s decision is based on the situation.”
Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz estimated that the curbs could result in a 1% hit on the nation’s gross domestic product, according to a report from Bernama.
The Southeast Asian economy contracted for the fourth straight quarter in the first three months of the year, albeit at a slower pace. The government and the central bank expect the economy to grow 6% to 7.5% this year after a 5.6% contraction in 2020.
“Downside risks to the overall 2021 outlook are building despite stronger-than-expected 1Q GDP and oil prices holding up,” Tamara Mast Henderson, Asean economist for Bloomberg Economics, wrote in a report Friday. “Herd immunity from vaccines appears unlikely until next year. Meanwhile, more infectious variants of covid-19 have emerged, threatening to prolong outbreaks and lockdowns.”
New cases in Malaysia neared 7,000 on Sunday, a fifth straight day that infections have remained above 6,000.
Zafrul on Saturday announced an additional allocation of 200 million ringgit ($48 million) for the Health Ministry to procure screening kits and personal protective equipment, The Star newspaper reported.
“We will see how long this crisis continues,” Zafrul was quoted as saying. “If there is a need, then we will have to look at supporting (the economy) from a very targeted approach to the industries that are most affected by the pandemic.”
Less than 3% of Malaysia’s population have been fully vaccinated. That tally trails neighbors such as Indonesia and Singapore, and puts Malaysia at risk of falling well short of its inoculation goals for the year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The government has said the pace would accelerate from June with more supplies coming in from Pfizer, Sinovac and AstraZeneca.
“Our procurement deal is to cover more than 100% of Malaysians; the question is when the supplies arrive,” Muhyiddin said in the interview. “We have more than 600 centers and we should be able to vaccinate 150,000 a day, but we haven’t reached there yet.”
Muhyiddin said supplies of all booked vaccines will arrive by the year-end, helping the country achieve herd immunity or 80% vaccine coverage sooner than the 2022 target.
Meanwhile, intensive care unit beds for covid-linked admissions are at 84%, Health Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah said in a Facebook post Friday. The nation’s healthcare system is under huge stress and people should adhere to virus protocols, he said.
“We have to stay safe and it’s safest to stay home and follow the SOPs,” Muhyiddin said. “We should all practice self-lockdown.”
Published : May 24, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Anisah Shukry
Iran likely to extend UN nuclear monitoring deal by a month
Iran is likely to extend a U.N. nuclear inspections agreement by one more month, buying diplomats time to revive a landmark deal that would usher a return of the Persian Gulf nation to world oil markets in exchange for curbs on its atomic work.
An extension of the interim arrangement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which expired on Saturday, would avert a potential crisis in talks involving world powers and set the stage for them to finalize the return of the U.S. to the 2015 nuclear accord that former President Donald Trump abandoned three years ago.
Diplomats warned last week, after the fourth round of negotiations in Vienna, that failing to extend the IAEA monitoring agreement could scuttle a fragile process that seeks to end a standoff between Tehran and Washington that has roiled oil markets and almost sparked a war between the two sides. The IAEA pact requires Iran to preserve video recorded by the agency’s cameras installed at nuclear facilities.
Iranian state TV, citing a person close to the country’s Supreme National Security Council, reported that the extension will be on condition that the multilateral talks lead to Washington’s return to the accord and the removal of Trump-era sanctions within the next month.
“We are fully prepared to go back to the original deal as it was,” U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told CNN, adding that he had yet to see whether the Iranians are on the same page.
“The U.S. has clearly expressed readiness to lift sanctions under the nuclear deal,” President Hassan Rouhani said in an earlier statement published on his official website. “We will continue talks until a final agreement.”
The IAEA is expected to provide a briefing on the latest developments on Iran later on Sunday in Vienna.
Tehran has threatened to erase recorded video material after 90 days unless sanctions were lifted. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi repeatedly warned that such a move would have jeopardized the continuity of inspectors’ knowledge of the program.
According to Sunday’s report on Iranian state TV, the recorded footage will be handed over to the IAEA only if the next round of talks, due to start in Vienna in the coming days, lead to a final agreement between Iran and the U.S. Otherwise, the material will be “deleted once and for all,” the person close to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council was quoted as saying.
Rouhani is eager to restore the accord and secure the removal of Trump’s tough sanctions regime before he leaves office later this year. Reviving the nuclear deal will loosen restrictions on Iranian oil exports, the nation’s main source of foreign currency revenue.
Published : May 24, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jonathan Tirone, Arsalan Shahla
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