Many countries that believed they were past the worst are grappling with new outbreaks, says WHO
Mexico has recorded more than 9,000 daily coronavirus cases for the first time, as the country overtook the UK with the world’s third-highest number of deaths from the pandemic after the US and Brazil.
The surging numbers were reported as the World Health Organization warned of “response fatigue” and a resurgence of cases in several countries that have lifted lockdowns.
Continue reading...Reporters for independent outlets, many in rural areas, say pressure won’t deter them from covering embarrassing stories
Facing a continuing upward trajectory in Covid-19 cases, the Indian government is clamping down on media coverage critical of its handling of the pandemic.
More than 50 Indian journalists have been arrested or had police complaints registered against them, or been physically assaulted.
Continue reading...A bicycle boom has seen Indians swapping cars – the ultimate status symbol – for a more humble mode of transport
With cases of Covid-19 surging past the one million mark, Indians are shunning crowded buses and trains to travel on what has traditionally been regarded in this status-conscious society as the poor man’s mode of mobility: the bicycle.
At Bike Studio in Bhopal, owner Varun Awasthi is almost out of stock. Sales are up by 30% and he expects them to rise to 50% once he gets more bicycles.
Continue reading...Despite flood planning efforts hundreds have been killed and millions hit as third of land is submerged by non-stop rain
Bangladesh could be plunged into a humanitarian crisis as it undergoes the most prolonged monsoon flooding in decades while it is still recovering from the effects of super-cyclone Amphan.
Despite the UN has lauding its new initiatives for early intervention aimed at preparing communities for crisis, 550 people have been killed and 9.6 million affected by the disaster in Bangladesh, Nepal and north-eastern India, according to the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.
Continue reading...Teenager Qamar Gul and her younger brother fought a battle with an insurgent group who stormed their village
An Afghan girl shot dead three Taliban fighters after they killed her parents because they supported the government, local officials have said.
The incident happened last week when a group of 40 insurgents stormed the village of Geriveh, in central Ghor province, where 16-year-old Qamar Gul was living with her parents and brother.
Continue reading...Hurried evacuation of millions of residents will increase coronavirus cases, officials say
Severe flooding in India’s tea-growing state of Assam and neighbouring Nepal has killed at least 200 people and displaced millions, severely hampering efforts to stop the spread of coronavirus.
In Assam, heavy monsoon rains burst the banks of the Brahmaputra River, causing more than 2,000 villages to be enveloped in floods and mudslides and displacing 2.75 million people in the past two weeks. There have been 85 deaths reported in the state.
Continue reading...Lam says situation out of control, while Melbourne makes face masks compulsory
The coronavirus situation in Hong Kong is “really critical”, with a record 100 new infections recorded on Sunday, the territory’s leader, Carrie Lam, said, as Melbourne became the first city in Australia to make wearing masks compulsory in response to a resurgent and aggressive outbreak there.
Hong Kong was held up months ago as a model for its success in keeping down Covid-19 cases in the crowded city-state of 7.5 million people, but its caseload – although still low by European and American standards – had grown by a third in the past fortnight to nearly 1,800. Lam has shuttered bars, gyms and nightclubs in the past week and on Sunday announced new guidelines including mandatory mask-wearing indoors.
Continue reading...Country becomes third in world to reach figure; alarming peak in French region of Brittany
India has become the third country to record more than 1m coronavirus infections, following the US and Brazil, as it reported 34,956 new cases in the past 24 hours, taking the national total to 1,003,832.
New peaks continue to appear around the world, including an alarming rise in the Brittany region of France.
Continue reading...Muralists are covering the Afghan capital’s blast walls with agitprop imagery and calling out corruption
From the killing of George Floyd in the US and the drowning of Afghan refugees in Iran, to the signing of the US-Taliban agreement towards peace and brutal murder of a Japanese aid worker, a group of Afghan artists have taken paintbrushes to adorn Kabul’s grey blast walls with vivid imagery.
The barriers have been transformed into politically inspired murals, which the artists hope will create “visual dialogue” and raise awareness of corruption and injustices.
Continue reading...A job scheme for women who may otherwise be shunned as outcasts is giving many the opportunity to rebuild their lives
Margaret Heera runs her fingers through her customer’s hair. “You must manage time for yourself and your skin,” she says, as she ties the hair into an elaborate knot.
The beauty salon in Lahore is busy. Sitting between potted plants on chairs facing full-length mirrors, women are waiting to get their hair cut or styled, for manicures and pedicures.
Continue reading...Ruling may persuade shipping companies that scrapping vessels in the dangerous, unregulated yards of south Asia is a false economy
A widow whose husband fell eight storeys to his death while breaking up a supertanker in Bangladesh can pursue a negligence claim against Maran (UK), a British company involved in the ship’s sale, according to a high court ruling.
The judge in London ruled shipping firm Maran (UK) Ltd arguably had a duty of care towards Mohammed Kalil Mollah, 32, who died working on the Ekta, a 300,000-tonne vessel, that was being scrapped at a yard in Chittagong, now Chattogram, Bangladesh. The Guardian wrote about Mollah’s death earlier this year.
Continue reading...Low priority for reproductive health during lockdown leaves millions unable to access contraception or safe terminations
Sadhna Gupta* discovered she was pregnant just after India imposed a crippling lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19.
The 21-year-old from the eastern Indian city of Bhubaneswar didn’t want to be pregnant. With no public transport available, clinics closed and Bhubaneswar at a standstill, she bought an abortion pill without consulting a doctor. While what she did was not unusual, Indian law requires a prescription for the pills from a licensed medical professional.
Continue reading...Infections are accelerating in largely untouched countries and those which hoped they had come through the worst. But there is hope
“Most of the world sort of sat by and watched with almost a sense of detachment and bemusement,” said Helen Clark, appointed to investigate the World Health Organization’s handling of the pandemic. The former New Zealand prime minister was describing the early weeks of the outbreak, and the sense that coronavirus was a problem “over there”. The failure to recognise our interconnection created complacency even as the death toll rose.
It took three months for the first million people to fall sick – but only a week to record the last million of the nearly 13 million cases now reported worldwide. As England emerges from lockdown at an unwary pace, Covid-19 is accelerating globally. The WHO has reported a record surge of a quarter of a million cases in a single day. The death toll is over half a million people and rising fast.
Continue reading...Indian cases pass 800,000; Johannesburg struggles to find vital equipment; Texas warns ‘worst is yet to come’
India reported a record spike in coronavirus cases on Saturday, taking the national total to more than 800,000 and pushing several states to bring back lockdowns, despite the punitive economic cost.
Now the world’s third-worst affected country by case load, it reported a spike of 27,114 cases on Saturday, although mortality rates have been lower than in other badly affected countries with confirmed death toll now 22,123.
Continue reading...Starvation looms from Afghanistan to Haiti as coronavirus restrictions wipe out incomes and cut food supplies
Millions of people are being pushed towards hunger by the coronavirus pandemic, which could end up killing more people through lack of food than from the illness itself, Oxfam has warned.
Closed borders, curfews and travel restrictions have disrupted food supplies and incomes in already fragile countries, forcing an extra million people closer to famine in Afghanistan and heightening the humanitarian disaster in Yemen, where two-thirds already live in hunger.
Continue reading...Employers are avoiding paying maternity benefits and purging union members as orders plummet during Covid-19, say activists
A few weeks ago, Kalpona Akter’s phone started vibrating. She watched with mounting dread as message after message poured in. First there was the garment worker who had been sacked for demanding personal protective equipment for his colleagues. Then pregnant women and union members started calling for help, saying they were also losing their jobs.
As Bangladesh’s garment sector reels from the economic impact of Covid-19 and the shock of £2.4bn of cancelled or suspended orders inflicted on the industry by overseas fashion brands, a wave of job losses has swept across the country. Moreover, during lockdown hundreds of thousands of workers were not paid for work they had already done.
Continue reading...Facing the prospect of rotting crops and ruined livelihoods, Indian farmers have embraced virtual marketplaces to sell produce
When the call finally comes, the connection is so poor that Silme Marak can barely catch the words. After running upstairs to the roof of her house for a better signal, the 39-year-old farmer finally hears the first piece of good news to come her way in months: an order for 600 pineapples from a harvest that she had feared might have to be left to rot.
Marak lives in the Tura town of Meghalaya, a hilly place in north-east India whose name translates as “the abode of clouds”. She is among millions of farmers in India – agriculture contributes nearly a seventh of the country’s GDP – in despair at the prospect of seeing their produce rot as the country entered a severe lockdown in the third week of March. According to a Credit Suisse report, vegetable farmers alone have lost upwards of Rs 20,000 crore (£2.5bn).
Continue reading...Time and again, the president has failed to protect military personnel. For Trump, he always comes first, no matter who dies
Donald Trump likes to suggest he has got the back of US soldiers battling America’s foes around the world. It was a big theme of his 2016 campaign and his West Point speech earlier this month. So great was his boundless care for America’s fighting men and women, he said, that he would halt the endless, costly foreign wars prosecuted by his predecessors – and bring them home.
Related: Trump's ties to Putin under fresh scrutiny in wake of Russia bounty reports
Continue reading...LA closes beaches and businesses as hospitals fill up while Bavaria announces ‘test offensive’
California has reported record new infections following its reopening as Los Angeles county ordered all beaches closed for 4 July and the re-shuttering of some businesses.
Amid warnings hospitals were filling up and others could run out of intensive care beds in the coming weeks, the state broke its record on Monday for the highest number of new coronavirus cases reported in a single day, with more than 8,000 – the third time in eight days the state has broken a record for new cases.
Continue reading...PIA will not be able to fly into the EU for at least six months because of doubts over validity of pilot licences
The European Union’s aviation safety agency announced today that Pakistan’s national airline would not be allowed to fly into Europe for at least six months after the country’s aviation minister revealed that nearly a third of Pakistani pilots had cheated during their pilot’s exams.
Pakistan International Airlines spokesman Abdullah Hafeez said PIA had not been flying to Europe because of the pandemic. But the airline had hoped to resume its flights to Oslo, Copenhagen, Paris, Barcelona and Milan within the next two months.
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