#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40001485

With over 25,000 new Covid-19 cases, Asean crosses 4 million mark

The number of Covid-19 cases crossed 4 million across Southeast Asia with 25,603 new cases reported on Sunday, lower than Saturday’s 28,716.

The number of deaths also was lower at 390, down from Saturday’s 457. Total Covid-19-related deaths in Asean rose to 78,515.

Singapore reported 25 new cases on Sunday, bringing cumulative cases in the country to 62,028, 32 have died and 61,423 people have been cured and discharged. Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is preparing to announce plans to control the outbreak and the reopening of the country.

Cambodia reported 579 new cases and six deaths on Sunday, bringing cumulative cases in the country to 29,404 with 209 deaths, while 20,900 people have been cured and discharged. Kampot province has ordered all casinos and markets near borders with other provinces to shut down for 14 days to control the spread of the infection.

Published : May 31, 2021

By : THE NATION

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40001481

This concert ticket costs $18 – or $1,000 if youre not vaccinated

This spring, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order forbidding businesses from making their patrons prove that they have been vaccinated against the coronavirus. He also signed into law a bill to give the ban more teeth, threatening violators with fines in the thousands of dollars.

One Florida concert promoter thinks he has a workaround: offer $18 tickets to anyone who is vaccinated and charge $999.99 for everyone else.

“I’m not denying entry to anyone,” said Paul Williams. “I’m just offering a discount.”

The governor’s office says the unorthodox pricing violates Florida’s rules: “Charging higher ticket prices for individuals who do not furnish proof of vaccination unfairly discriminates against people who have enumerated rights under Florida law,” said Christina Pushaw, press secretary for the Republican governor’s office, in an email to The Washington Post.

Williams said he figured his tactics were safe – the executive order carries limited penalties, and the new law does not go into effect until shortly after his small punk rock event planned for June 26 in St. Petersburg. But he said he was unprepared for the vitriol that followed: The anti-vaccination Facebook messages, the sudden spam calls, the misspelled email that warned the band their next show could be their “last” and said: “You’re fans are going to kill you.”

“I didn’t know that caring about my community would make me Hitler,” he said in an interview Saturday, declining to give his age out of concern for his privacy. He said he and the band are flagging the threatening email to law enforcement.

The backlash around a modest event for a couple hundred people underscores the deep divisions over what the United States’ return to normal should look like amid lingering resistance to vaccination. As the rate of shots slow, public health officials have warned that the country may not reach the oft-repeated goal of “herd immunity” against a virus that has killed nearly 600,000 people in the United States and slowed the economy. But some states including Florida have sought to limit businesses’ ability to check vaccinations after a year of coronavirus restrictions becoming politicized.

Asked Saturday whether he regrets the pricing move – which brought national news coverage – Williams said: “We’re still sticking to our guns.”

A few of the “discount” tickets were left as of Saturday afternoon, he said; headliner Teenage Bottlerocket’s website listed the St. Petersburg show as having sold out. None of the “standard” price tickets had sold.

Williams said attendees must present photo ID and a coronavirus vaccination card the day of the concert to enter at the lower price, which was reported by Creative Loafing: Tampa Bay.

Miguel Chen, the bassist for Teenage Bottlerocket, said in an interview that his group was eager to get back out after canceling international tour plans during the pandemic – a devastating time for many in the music scene. Chen said the band’s most recent show was in March 2020.

“It’s obvious that covid and music are going to kind of have to coexist for a while,” he said. “So we had this idea of … let’s contact these promoters and kind of spitball and come up with creative ways to do safe shows.”

Some events are moving outdoors. Others are limiting capacities. Then there was Williams’s idea.

“When we first heard it, we thought it was a joke,” Chen said. But band members had gotten their shots as soon as possible, he said, eager to protect their families and resume playing. They agreed that if Williams thought this was “the best way to safely throw a party in his town, then we back him and we support it,” Chen recalled.

Hailing from Texas – another Republican-led state where covid-19 restrictions have drawn pushback – Chen said he’s familiar with the divisions over vaccination and wants to respect people’s views.

But “I never in my life thought I’d be in a place where I’m getting threatened for trying to play music and spread joy,” he said.

Williams said he did not know of anyone turning to a similar pricing plan. Legal experts told The Post that others in Florida should be wary of following suit, especially when the state’s new law backed by fines takes effect in July.

Such a large price hike for the unvaccinated “violates the spirit” of Florida’s ban on requiring proof of immunization, said Andrew Zelmanowitz, a business lawyer based in Fort Lauderdale. It’s different, he said, from the modest incentive programs many businesses are using to encourage vaccination.

Eric Feldman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s law school who has expertise in health policy, agreed: “It’s basically saying unless you show us proof of vaccine status, we’re going to treat you really badly.”

Pushaw said that the governor’s office “cannot speculate on what will happen in any specific case” and that the concert would violate the spirit of the executive order.

“There are individuals who have medical issues or religious beliefs that don’t allow them to get vaccinated, and those individuals are members of protected classes,” Pushaw said in an email Saturday. “Also, the governor has been clear on his stance that no one should face discrimination due to vaccination status.”

The executive order says business in Florida may not require “any documentation certifying COVID-19 vaccination or post-transmission recovery to gain access to, entry upon, or service from the business,” similar language to the new law. It says violators are ineligible for state-funded grants or contracts, and it directs state agencies to enforce compliance.

A spokeswoman for Teenage Bottlerocket, Vanessa Burt, said the band understands Williams is operating within the law by offering a discount and has “assured us that he will deal with any hang-ups.”

Williams and Chen said they have gotten support for their promotion of getting vaccinated – but also anger, underscoring the intensity of the country’s resistance to vaccination. The blowback, Williams said, has extended to the concert venue, a St. Petersburg post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW).

A man who answered the phone at Post 39 on Saturday said no one was available to talk, but the post seemed to respond to the furor Friday in a Facebook post: “The VFW does not promote any kind of discrimination, this is a place for combat veterans and their families to support each other.”

Dozens of upset people have contacted Williams through his promoter Facebook page, he said. Some are vulgar; some refer to the Holocaust, repeating much-criticized comparisons of vaccination requirements to Nazi persecution and murder of Jews. Williams said that he cannot be sure of the source of a sudden torrent robocalls, but that he was being targeted for his position on vaccinations.

“Your life is fine … and then and then your phone just blows up insane out of nowhere,” he said.

Published : May 31, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Hannah Knowles

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40001479

Boris Johnson says I do in private wedding that outfoxes Britains media

LONDON – LONDON – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson married his fiancee, Carrie Symonds, in a secret ceremony at Westminster Cathedral, the first time a British leader has married in office in 199 years.

Johnson, 56, and Symonds, 33, said “I do” at the Roman Catholic church in central London Saturday afternoon in front of a small group of family and friends.

“The Prime Minister and Ms. Symonds were married yesterday afternoon in a small ceremony at Westminster Cathedral,” a Downing Street spokeswoman confirmed Sunday morning. Symonds is taking her husband’s family name and will now be known as Carrie Johnson.

The bride and groom appear to have outfoxed the British media with their top-secret nuptials. Johnson dislikes discussing his private life with the media.

The Sun newspaper reported recently that the couple sent save-the-date cards telling guests they would “celebrate their wedding” on July 30, 2022.

On Saturday evening, the Sun became the first to report the wedding, saying the couple exchanged vows in a Catholic ceremony that caught senior staff off guard.

“Boris Johnson MARRIES Carrie Symonds at Westminster cathedral in ceremony so secret even top aides didn’t know about it,” ran the headline in the Sun.

Downing Street, asked Saturday if the couple were hitched, said “no comment.” But on Sunday morning, with many British newspapers carrying the story on their front pages and the BBC featuring photos of musicians leaving Downing Street on Saturday night, it confirmed the reports.

It also released a photo of the newlyweds smiling at each other in the garden of 10 Downing Street. The bride wore a white dress and a floral headband; the groom, a black suit and blue tie, with a white rose boutonniere.

Conservative lawmaker James Cleverly posted a photo of the newlyweds on social media.

The prime minister’s office said the couple would celebrate with family and friends next summer.

Britain is emerging from its third national lockdown. Weddings are still limited to a maximum of 30 attendees.

The wedding comes at the end of a difficult week for Johnson, whose former chief adviser lashed out at the government’s handling of the pandemic.

Johnson and his wife live with their 1-year-old son, Wilfred, in a lavishly renovated apartment at 11 Downing Street, the financing of which is the subject of several probes. They were the first unwed couple to occupy the government’s Downing Street complex.

The last prime minister to marry while in office was Robert Banks Jenkinson, who married Mary Chester in 1822, after the death of his first wife.

Carrie Johnson, a prominent environmental activist, grew up in southwest London and studied art history and theater at Warwick University before going into politics. She became head of communications for the Conservative Party at 29. She has worked as a special adviser to senior Conservative lawmakers and was on the campaign team to help reelect Johnson when he was mayor of London.

It’s Boris Johnson’s third marriage and Carrie’s first. They announced their engagement in February 2020, the month Johnson reached a divorce settlement with Marina Wheeler, a lawyer and childhood friend with whom he has four children. They separated in 2018.

Johnson met his first wife, Allegra Mostyn-Owen, when they were students at Oxford University. They wed in 1987. Less than two weeks after their divorce in 1993, Johnson married Wheeler, who was pregnant with their first child.

The Sun quoted an unnamed staff member saying that when Symonds walked down the aisle, Johnson “didn’t take his eyes off her. They read each other’s vows and then they shared a kiss. They looked besotted.”

Published : May 31, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Karla Adam

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40001477

Leading scientist says that without a full investigation of lab leak theory, the world will face covid-26 and covid-32

A prominent scientist on Sunday added his voice to the growing number of experts calling for a full investigation into the origins of covid-19, saying the future of public health is at stake.

“There’s going to be covid-26 and covid-32 unless we fully understand the origins of covid-19,” Peter Hotez, a professor of pediatrics and molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor University and a leading expert on the virus, said Sunday on NBC News’s “Meet The Press.” He said coming to firm conclusions about how the virus emerged was “absolutely essential” in preventing future pandemics.

New reports suggest that China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology was at the center of the outbreak, not animal-to-human transmission elsewhere in Wuhan, which was the long-prevalent opinion. President Joe Biden last week ordered a fresh 90-day intelligence review of the virus’s origins with the goal of examining the possibility that it accidentally leaked from the Wuhan lab instead of being transmitted from bats or other animals to humans in a zoonotic transmission.

The White House wants a deeper understanding of how a virus that has killed about 600,000 Americans and 3.5 million people worldwide came into existence and has charged the CIA and other agencies with doing more to find out.

Hotez, however, said intelligence-gathering alone wasn’t enough.

“I’m personally of the opinion we’ve pushed intelligence as far as we can. What we need to do is an outbreak investigation,” he said, noting that ideally this would be a six- to 12-month operation in Wuhan, in Hubei province, with scientists on the ground collecting extensive samples and other forensic evidence.

Initially raised as a possibility by then-President Donald Trump and some Republicans on Capitol Hill but dismissed by Democrats and many experts, the lab-leak theory has gained currency in recent weeks. Many experts cite a World Health Organization report from earlier this year mostly dismissing the possibility as co-authored by Chinese scientists and unconvincing.

The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, reported last week that a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report had found that three scientists from the lab were hospitalized for symptoms consistent with covid-19 as early as November 2019, before the coronavirus began spreading in China.

Both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill have been sounding the call for a deeper inquiry.

“The American people deserve to know about the origins of covid-19,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said on the Senate floor last week before the passage of a bill requiring the declassification of certain covid-19 information. “We have to have answers to these questions,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who is on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and ensured harsh effects from the virus infection.

There may be growing financial pressure, as well. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, on Sunday called for U.S. economic retribution if China doesn’t cooperate.

“My response to this whole thing is supply chain. We need to pull our supply chain out of the region,” McCaul said, citing a range of industries, including medical supplies and semiconductor chips.

Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” McCaul, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said, “If we can pull these chains out of China, it will hurt them economically . . . and that would be very punitive.” He called Biden’s review “long overdue.”

Experts like Hotez say it would be extremely difficult to get facts about the virus’s origins without Chinese cooperation.

Some experts say they still believe it is very unlikely that the novel coronavirus that causes covid-19 could have come from a lab. But others have noted both the presence of the advanced lab in Wuhan and the lack of horseshoe bats in the city as factors for such a leak.

Former Food and Drug Administration chief Scott Gottlieb said Sunday that the lack of Chinese cooperation provided its own form of circumstantial evidence.

“China could provide evidence that would be exculpatory here,” he said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” noting blood samples from lab workers and source strains of the virus. “They have refused to do that.”

Gottlieb said that knowing conclusively whether the virus came from a lab would help inform future security decisions at such facilities worldwide. “It’s important to understand what the possibility is that this came out of lab so we can focus more international attention on trying to get better inventories around these labs, what they’re doing, better security, make sure they’re properly built,” he said.

The covid inquiry has been delicate for the Biden administration, which needs to balance a desire for scientific truth with concerns about stoking violence against Asian Americans, which has registered an alarming rise since the pandemic’s outbreak.

The White House also must head off geopolitical tensions. China has been pushing back against the growing U.S. call for more transparency.

“The U.S. doesn’t care about facts or truth at all, neither is it interested in a serious scientific study on the origins,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said last week, referencing Fort Detrick, a U.S. Army research laboratory in Maryland. Chinese state media have suggested without evidence that Fort Detrick could be the source of the outbreak. “Its only aim is to use the pandemic for stigmatization and political manipulation to shift the blame.”

Published : May 31, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Steven Zeitchik

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40001475

Hong Kong Customs seizes heroin worth $29 million from Thai consignment

Hong Kong Customs has confiscated about 23.5 kilograms of suspected heroin with an estimated market value of about $29 million at Kwai Chung Customhouse Cargo Examination Compound on May 27.

Customs officers inspected a seaborne consignment that had arrived from Thailand. Upon examination of the consignment declared as electrical appliances, the suspected heroin was found concealed inside false compartments of 13 water filters and nine coffee machines.

After follow-up investigation, Customs officers arrested two men aged 27 and 47, suspected in connection with the case in Yau Ma Tei and Tsuen Wan respectively on May 28.

Investigation is ongoing.

Under the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance, trafficking in a dangerous drug is a serious offence. The maximum penalty upon conviction is a fine of $5 million and life imprisonment.

Published : May 30, 2021

By : The Nation