The number of Covid-19 cases crossed 12.84 million across Southeast Asia, with 29,432 new cases reported on Tuesday (October 19), lower than Monday’s tally at 30,524. New deaths are at 530, increasing from Monday’s number of 382. Total Covid-19 deaths in Asean are now at 273,203.
Authorities in northern Laos’ Luang Prabang province have canceled the celebration of an annual light boats festival (Boun Lai Heua Fai) amid lockdown restrictions, as the number of Covid-19 cases keeps rising in Laos. The traditional practice of making merit through almsgiving toward the end of Buddhist Lent will also not be permitted in Luang Prabang. Residents of Luang Prabang will not be permitted to leave their homes to float small candle boats along rivers or in lakes to curb the spreading of Covid-19.
Singapore will allow vaccinated travellers from 8 countries to enter starting Tuesday under the new Travel Lane scheme. People travelling from the UK, US, Denmark, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Canada who have been fully vaccinated can enter the country without having to quarantine. Singapore has previously allowed travellers from Brunei and Germany to enter the country under similar rule since September.
Meanwhile, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has moved Singapore up from Level 3, or “high” risk for Covid-19, to Level 4 or highest risk category just one day before the Travel Lane scheme was announced.
The U.K. plans to expand access to Covid-19 vaccines for children, the head of the National Health Service said, following a surge in infections in schools.
Amanda Pritchard, head of the NHS in England, told Parliament on Tuesday that children ages 12 to 15 would be able to access vaccination centers through the national booking service. Until now, U.K. children were only eligible to receive vaccinations at school-based facilities.
“We want to do everything possible to expand and ensure we get the jabs in as efficiently and as safely as possible,” Max Blain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman, told reporters Tuesday. “There are a number of challenges to vaccinating 12-15 year olds at scale and at pace.”
An estimated 8% of U.K. children in school years covering ages 11 to 16 tested positive for coronavirus in the week ending Oct. 9, according to the most recent government figures. That number is eight times higher than every adult age group and has risen from about 2% in early September before schools restarted.
Unlike the U.S., which started inoculating young people in May, and most European countries, where vaccination was largely rolled out during the school holidays, the U.K. didn’t give the green light for 12-to-15-year-olds to receive the shots until mid-September.
Moscow told its unvaccinated seniors to stay home while Russia moved to impose other new restrictions nationwide against the spread of covid-19 as the country battles record levels of infections and deaths.
Unvaccinated people over 60 in the Russian capital will have to remain at home for four months starting Oct. 25, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said in a blog post Tuesday. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin told officials that President Vladimir Putin will be asked to declare Oct. 30 to Nov. 7 as non-working days nationwide. Regions with the most serious levels of cases should introduce the restriction from Oct. 23, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said.
“The burden on the healthcare system continues to increase and, in this situation, we need to get ahead of the curve,” Mishustin said, telling Golikova to present the proposals at a government meeting with Putin on Wednesday. “The experience of previous restrictions has shown the effectiveness of these measures.”
The government is turning to Putin after a week in which daily new infections have passed 30,000 for the first time since the crisis erupted last year, with deaths reaching a record high of 1,015 on Tuesday.
The Kremlin has resisted all calls to reintroduce a nationwide lockdown, placing responsibility on regional officials to announce social restrictions to try to curb the spread of the virus. Putin has sought to distance himself publicly from unpopular restrictions but has always supported the government’s proposals.
Only a third of people in the 60+ age group have been vaccinated, despite the group accounting for 86% of covid-19 deaths, Sobyanin said in justifying the lockdown. He also announced several new restrictions to fight the spread of the pandemic.
Moscow will increase the percentage of workers facing mandatory vaccination and reintroduce a work-from-home requirement for at least 30% of employees until Feb. 25, he said.
Although Putin last year touted Russia as the first country to approve a covid-19 vaccine, the inoculation program has been met with widespread skepticism. Just over 45% of the population has either vaccinated or recovered from infection by covid-19, far below the level needed for collective immunity, Golikova said.
Only 28 regions have introduced QR codes to restrict access to shopping centers, restaurants, fitness centers and other public spaces to those who’ve vaccinated or recovered from the illness, which is “insufficient,” Anna Popova, head of Russia’s public health watchdog, said at the meeting.
The worsening situation “requires a much larger volume of measures to be taken and a much faster response,” Popova said.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – An armed gang in Haiti holding members of a U.S. Christian missionary organization hostage is seeking a ransom of $1 million per person in exchange for their release, the Haitian justice minister told The Washington Post on Tuesday.
The 16 Americans and one Canadian national with the Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries were kidnapped Saturday by 400 Mawozo, a street gang notorious for violent mass abductions and a history of targeting religious figures and churches. The missionary group was returning from a visit to an orphanage when it was ambushed. Five children are among the hostages.
Liszt Quitel, Haiti’s justice minister, said it was not clear whether children were included in the ransom amount, and that the gang was probably expecting to negotiate. He said that while his team was assisting, he was not privy to more specific details and that “every case is different.”
“Usually, they request more, then people close to the kidnapped persons will negotiate,” Quitel said. “Usually, even when they ask for a ransom they know they don’t get all that they ask.”
The adult hostages, which include six men and six women, range in age from 18 to 48, according to Christian Aid Ministries. The youngest child is 8 months old and the oldest is 15 years old. The group said in a statement on Tuesday that it was “working diligently” to bring them home safely.
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the ransom demand.
Officials from the State Department and the FBI are on the ground in Haiti seeking the release of the hostages, U.S. officials said this week. They have provided few details about those efforts or the identities of the hostages, citing privacy considerations.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki has said that President Joe Biden was receiving “regular updates” about the work of the State Department and the FBI to secure the release of the group. She told reporters on Tuesday that she could not discuss “operational details” about those efforts, and said that the United States advises against travel to Haiti because of the risk of kidnapping and civil unrest.
“We know these groups target U.S. citizens who they assume have the resources and finances to pay ransoms, even if that is not the case,” Psaki said.
Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police said it was collaborating with U.S. and Haitian counterparts and that it “does not comment on ongoing investigations conducted by other countries.” Canada’s foreign ministry said it was providing consular assistance to the family of the Canadian national.
“Canada takes this situation very seriously and is collaborating with Haitian and American policing authorities, as well as implicated NGOs on this incident,” said Jason Kung, a spokesman for Global Affairs Canada, in an email.
The abduction of the missionaries over the weekend is part of an alarming surge in kidnappings of people from all walks of life – preachers, doctors and bus drivers, among them – by powerful gangs that exert control over large swaths of the Caribbean nation and whose rise and influence, analysts say, threaten the very fabric of the state. The country has the world’s highest number of kidnappings per capita.
It is also one of several calamities facing the western hemisphere’s poorest country – each of which, on their own, would pose a challenge and could imperial regional stability. In July, President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated, opening up a political vacuum that has seen rival factions jockeying for power. Then, in August, a powerful earthquake struck the largely rural south, killing more than 2,200 people, damaging critical infrastructure and creating a massive humanitarian crisis that further destabilized the country.
Such was the desperation in Haiti that local unions and other groups had planned a widespread general strike even before the kidnapping of the missionaries to protest the deteriorating security situation and the inability of the country’s political leaders and police forces to ameliorate it. It continued Tuesday.
Christopher Sabatini, senior Latin America research fellow at the international affairs think tank Chatham House, said the kidnapping of Haitian schoolchildren, clergy and small-business owners was increasingly common, but that such a “massive and unusual” foreign kidnapping raised the profile of the country’s deteriorating security situation.
“There’s just a vacuum of state in the midst of an economic crisis . . . and a preexisting pandemic of criminality,” he said.
The U.S. government has a long-standing policy of not paying ransoms for American citizens abroad. The Canadian government, which has said little about the kidnapping, has previously said that it has the same policy.
Sabatini said it was likely that America’s approach would “hold true” in Haiti, or risk setting a “dangerous precedent.” The kidnapping would also probably deter diplomatic and humanitarian personnel from traveling to the country, further jeopardizing the rebuilding of Haiti – particularly outside the capital – he added.
400 Mawozo controls parts of Ganthier in the Croix-des-Bouquets area, east of Port-au-Prince, where the Christian Aid Ministries vehicle was hijacked. It was behind about 80 percent of abductions in the third quarter of 2021, according to Gédéon Jean, director of the Center for Analysis and Research in Human Rights in Port-au-Prince.
The gang is known for targeting religious groups and has engaged in mass kidnappings from buses and cars in the past. In April, 400 Mawozo kidnapped five priests and two nuns, some of whom were French nationals. All were eventually released.
Even several days after the kidnapping, little information had emerged about those taken. Congressman Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., said some of the missionaries appeared to have been from the western part of his state, and that his office was working with the Biden administration to secure their return.
Christian Aid Ministries, based in Ohio, was founded in 1981 as a “channel for Amish, Mennonite, and other conservative Anabaptist groups and individuals to minister to physical and spiritual needs around the world,” according to its website.
It has worked for years in Haiti, providing emergency services, running anti-poverty programs and spreading Christian teachings. Its American staff members returned to Haiti last year after being pulled out for nine months because of the political unrest.
In a statement Tuesday, it said its members had been working throughout the country, distributing Bibles, teaching Haitian pastors, supplying medicines, feeding the elderly and coordinating a project to rebuild homes after August’s temblor.
Ichimonjiya Wasuke หรือ Ichiwa ร้านโมจิเก่าแก่ในญี่ปุ่น ยืนหยัดมาได้กว่า 1,000 ปี
ญี่ปุ่นเร่งฟื้นเศรษฐกิจ ผู้เชี่ยวชาญเตือนโควิดระบาดอีกช่วงหน้าหนาว
คนรุ่นใหม่แห่ลงทุนในคริปโตดันอินเดียขึ้นแท่นอันดับ 1 ประเทศที่มีจำนวนคนถือครองสกุลเงินดิจิทัลมากที่สุดในโลก ส่วนใหญ่อายุต่ำกว่า 35
นักประดาน้ำค้นพบดาบเก่าแก่ 900 ปีที่เชื่อว่าเป็นของนักรบสงครามครูเสด ใต้ก้นทะเลเมดิเตอร์เรเนียน
จีนใช้เทคโนโลยีการพยากรณ์อาชญากรรมล่วงหน้าคล้ายกับภาพยนตร์เรื่อง Minority Report ในซินเจียง
จีนพิจารณาร่างกม. ห้ามพ่อแม่ให้ ‘ภาระการเรียน’ แก่ลูกมากเกินไป
