Proposals criticised amid fears countries may use coronavirus crisis to rein in commitments
Japan has laid out new plans on greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris agreement ahead of vital UN climate talks later this year, becoming the world’s first major economy to do so.
But its proposals were criticised by campaigners as grossly inadequate, amid fears the Covid-19 crisis could prompt countries to try to water down their climate commitments.
Continue reading...Moscow announces lockdown of 12m people; Syria records first death
Covid-19 infections worldwide have risen to 732,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. The US had the most cases, with over 142,000; Italy was second with nearly 98,000; and Spain has passed China’s 82,000 cases with 85,000. Italy still had the highest death toll, with nearly 10,800. Spain was second with 7,340. More than 2,500 people have died in the US.
Two of Brazil’s most iconic football stadiums - Rio de Janeiro’s Maracanã and the Pacaembu in São Paulo - are being converted into Covid-19 field hospitals as the country braces for an explosion of coronavirus cases.
The Pacaembu - whose turf has been graced by giants of Brazilian football including Pelé, Socrates and Ronaldo - is expected to open on Wednesday as a 200-bed clinic for coronavirus patients who do not require intensive care treatment.
“From what we have seen in Asia and Europe, the hospital system will fast become overloaded if we don’t have parallel infrastructure,” told Brazilian television network Globo on Sunday night.
The Maracanã - which has hosted two World Cup finals, in 1950 and 2014 - will also reportedly be turned into a hospital in early April.
Other Brazilian cities turning football stadiums into temporary hospitals include Boa Vista in the Amazon state of Roraima and Fortaleza in northeast Brazil.
As of Sunday Brazil had officially confirmed 4,256 cases and 136 Covid-19 deaths - the majority in Rio (17) and São Paulo (98). Those numbers are expected to rise significantly in the coming days as testing increases and the virus spreads. Brazil’s health ministry has warned the hospital system could collapse by the end of April.
Centers for Disease Control advice after president backed away from sealing state borders; worldwide deaths pass 30,000 with a third in Italy
Qatar Airways will continue to operate flights as long as necessary to get stranded travellers home but might run out of cash soon, Reuters reported.
Chief executive Akbar al-Baker said: “We have enough cash to take us through a very short period of time,” adding that the airline would eventually have to seek support from its owner, the Qatar government.
Domestic abuse victims are allowed to leave home to seek help despite the lockdown rules, the home secretary Priti Patel has said.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Patel said restrictions imposed on the population by the government to stay indoors were even more challenging to cope with for people whose “home is not the safe haven it should be”.
Continue reading...Mike Pompeo labelling the virus ‘Chinese’ has added to lack of international cooperation
When the UN security council and the G7 group sought to agree a global response to the coronavirus pandemic, the efforts stumbled on the US insistence on describing the threat as distinctively Chinese.
There are other reasons for the lack of collaboration in the face of a global crisis, but the focus on labelling the virus Chinese and blaming China pursued by the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, helped ensure there would be no meaningful collective response from the world’s most powerful nations.
Continue reading...Latest in flurry of launches draws particular criticism amid coronavirus pandemic
North Korea fired what appeared to be two short-range ballistic missiles into the ocean off its east coast on Sunday, the latest in an unprecedented flurry of launches that South Korea decried as “inappropriate” amid the global coronavirus pandemic.
Two “short-range projectiles” were launched from the coastal Wonsan area and flew 230km (143 miles) at a maximum altitude of 30km (19 miles), South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said.
Continue reading...Trump invokes Defence Production Act; Syria introduces travel restrictions; The UK, Spain, Italy see biggest daily rise in deaths. Follow the latest updates
Afghanistan has reported 15 new Coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, pushing the total number of infections to 110 - including four NATO forces and two foreign diplomats, Akhtar Mohammad Makoii reports from Herat.
Eleven of the new positive cases have been confirmed in western province of Herat, raising the total number of infections in Afghanistan’s worst affected province to 76. Herat neighbours Iran, where authorities have been struggling to control one of the world’s worst outbreaks.
This tweet from the air traffic tracking service Flightradar24, showing the number of planes in the air on Friday evening compared to four weeks earlier, shows the remarkable impact of travel restrictions across Europe.
Friday evening in Europe - February 28 vs March 27https://t.co/EqV2Vo80Kd pic.twitter.com/4puKM9G1f2
Continue reading...Shortages in funds, medicines and masks threaten charity work around the world
Last Thursday morning Louisa Baillie drove down the five-kilometre dirt track that connects her jungle home in the Amazon rainforest to the main road. At the junction, she parked, hiking the rest of the way into Mera, a town of about 8,000 people.
After filling her backpack with fruit and vegetables from local sellers, she grabbed some leaves and set about plucking termites off trees along the roadside, stuffing them into a bucket containing small fragments of the insects’ nests. Baillie works as a veterinarian at Merazonia, a wildlife rescue centre in Ecuador. The termites were dinner for Andy the anteater, a baby recently confiscated at a police checkpoint.
Continue reading...From underground aqueducts to tree-bridges and fish that love sewage, indigenous customs could save the planet – but are under threat. Landscape architect Julia Watson shares her ‘lo-TEK’ vision
On the eastern edge of Kolkata, near the smoking mountain of the city’s garbage dump, the 15 million-strong metropolis dissolves into a watery landscape of channels and lagoons, ribboned by highways. This patchwork of ponds might seem like an unlikely place to find inspiration for the future of sustainable cities, but that’s exactly what Julia Watson sees in the marshy muddle.
The network of pools, she explains, are bheris, shallow, flat-bottomed fish ponds that are fed by 700m litres of raw sewage every day – half the city’s output. The ponds produce 13,000 tonnes of fish each year. But the system, which has been operating for a century, doesn’t just produce a huge amount of fish – it treats the city’s wastewater, fertilises nearby rice fields, and employs 80,000 fishermen within a cooperative.
Watson, a landscape architect, says it saves around $22m (£18m) a year on the cost of a conventional wastewater treatment plant, while cutting down on transport, as the fish are sold in local markets. “It is the perfect symbiotic solution,” she says. “It operates entirely without chemicals, seeing fish, algae and bacteria working together to form a sustainable, ecologically balanced engine for the city.”
Continue reading...Indonesian man forced to watch his father’s execution is among those who will get compensation
An Indonesian man forced to watch his father’s summary execution by a Dutch soldier when he was 10 years old has spoken of his gratitude after a court in The Hague ordered the Dutch state to pay compensation to victims of colonial massacres in the 1940s.
Andi Monji, 83, who travelled to the Netherlands to tell his story to the court, was awarded €10,000 (£9,000) while eight widows and three children of other executed men, mainly farmers, were awarded compensation of between €123.48 and €3,634 for loss of income.
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I’m handing over to the team in Australia now. Thanks so much for joining me. Here are the developments in the global coronavirus outbreak this evening:
After many delays, and then a series of tweets earlier today, US President Donald Trump is invoking the Defense Production Act to compel General Motors to built ventilators for hospitals, he announced at the White House’s daily coronavirus briefing.
The Defense Production Act gives the president powers to direct domestic industrial production to provide essential materials and goods needed in a national security crisis. It allows the president to require businesses and corporations to prioritize and accept contracts for required materials and services.
Related: Coronavirus US live: Trump signs $2.2tn stimulus bill after invoking Defense Production Act
Continue reading...Company becomes first major employer in the country to stop forcing dress code on women
Female flight attendants working for Japan Airlines will no longer be required to wear high heels or skirts, the airline has said, in a rare victory for Japan’s #KuToo campaign against workplace dress codes for women.
The airline is the first major Japanese company to relax its regulations in response to complaints from women that having to wear high heels was uncomfortable and often left them in considerable pain.
Continue reading...Box office numbers for drive-in cinemas in Seoul, South Korea, are on the rise as people find a way to avoid crowds during the coronavirus outbreak
Continue reading...Tokyo governor warns of measures to prevent ‘explosion’ of cases as Hong Kong health expert calls for curfew to handle cases arriving from overseas
Tokyo faces further isolation measures to prevent an “explosion’ of coronavirus cases and there are calls in Hong Kong for a curfew to stop the health system collapsing amid fears of a second wave of infections in eastern Asia.
The governor of Tokyo has asked the city’s residents to stay at home this weekend “at all costs” to avoid an “explosion” of Covid-19 infections following a rise in the number of local cases.
Continue reading...The country already has the most deaths in south-east Asia, but research suggests the official 800 infections so far may only be 2% of the total
It was just last month that Indonesia’s coronavirus cases stood at zero, with officials fiercely rejecting suggestions that infections were spreading undetected.
Weeks later, 78 fatalities have now been linked to the virus, the highest number in south-east Asia. Seven health workers are among those who have died.
Continue reading...In Wellington it felt downright bizarre as people took exaggerated arcs on the footpath to avoid each other, while near-empty buses sped past
By the time they locked down Italy, it seemed like it was already too late. Hundreds of people there had died of Covid-19 , with thousands infected. Over the next two weeks, the death toll soared. In New Zealand, we have oddly been in the opposite position: no one has died from the virus. Seven people are in hospital but they’re not in intensive care or on ventilators. There are more than 280 people confirmed to have the disease.
Yet this country has begun at least four weeks of some of the strictest restrictions anywhere in the world to fight Covid-19, clamping down on most movement, association and – to the chagrin of some – shopping, in the hope that a tragedy like the one unfolding in Italy and elsewhere can be avoided.
Continue reading...India locks down; Prince Charles tests positive for coronavirus; Senate and White House reach stimulus deal
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael say they’ve “agreed the need form a strong, stable government” in Ireland as the number of confirmed cases in the country rises by 235 to 1,564. Ireland’s health department has also confirmed two more deaths, bringing the total number to nine.
The Irish general election earlier this year resulted in an almost tied result with Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael dominating. None won enough seats to form a government by itself and numerous rounds of talks between parties have failed to result in an agreement to form a coalition government. The statement reads:
Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael met this afternoon and had a productive meeting. They both agree the need to form a strong stable government that will help Ireland recover post Covid-19.
They are working to develop a programme for government that provides stability and majority support in the Dáil. They will meet again over the coming days and will both continue to reach out and engage with other parties.
Andy Burnham, a former UK health secretary and now the mayor of Greater Manchester in the north of England, says he is taking legal advice on whether firms forcing employees to work without adequate protection and not observing guidance to keep them two metres apart are breaking the law.
After a conference call with Greater Manchester MPs, he tweeted:
... I am taking legal advice about whether @gmpolice or other GM agencies can take enforcement action against companies which are exposing their employees in this way. If you would like to make a confidential report, please do so using: the.mayor@greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk 2/2
Following government instructions to stay at home, the move to accommodate hundreds of homeless people in hotel rooms is a recognition of the vulnerability of many rough sleepers and homeless people in shared accommodation spaces, and their need for support and a safe place to stay at this difficult time.
Continue reading...US tsunami warning centre says quake capable of generating destructive wave
A 7.5-magnitude earthquake hit off Russia’s Kuril Islands on Wednesday, the US Geological Survey said, prompting a tsunami warning.
The quake hit at a depth of 59km (37 miles), around 1,400km north-east of the Japanese city of Sapporo, USGS added. There were no early reports of casualties.
Continue reading...What are the symptoms caused by the Covid-19 virus, how does it spread, and should you see a doctor?
It is caused by a member of the coronavirus family that has never been encountered before. Like other coronaviruses, it has transferred to humans from animals. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared it a pandemic.
Continue reading...Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post use open letter to urge reversal of decision
Publishers of the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal have pleaded with the Chinese government not to expel their reporters, in an open letter published on Tuesday.
Earlier this month at least 13 journalists from the three major US news organisations were ordered to leave China in response to what the government said was “unreasonable oppression” of Chinese journalists in the US.
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Edouard Philippe, the French prime minister, has said that country’s lockdown could last several more weeks, with new restrictions – including limits on daily exercise outside the home – now in place:
Any morning constitutional/jogging now has to be within 1km of home, 1 hour max, alone, and only once per day. https://t.co/3CvQzDtZpb
The International Olympic Committee is facing almost irresistible pressure to postpone the Tokyo Olympics this week rather than wait until its mid-April deadline – with a growing number of athletes, governments and national federations saying it is unfair to keep them in limbo during the coronavirus pandemic.
Veteran IOC member Dick Pound told USA Today that the Games would be postponed, likely to 2021, with the details to be worked out in the next four weeks. “The parameters going forward have not been determined, but the Games are not going to start on July 24, that much I know.”
Related: Athletes across globe call for Olympic postponement as countries pull out
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