Category Archives: India

Indian authors speak out over plan to reissue Narendra Modi exam book

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Pankaj Mishra and Arundhati Roy attack Penguin Random House India for putting out book by a prime minister they say has mishandled Covid and persecuted writers

Leading Indian authors Pankaj Mishra and Arundhati Roy have spoken out against Penguin Random House India’s decision to publish and promote a book by Narendra Modi during the country’s coronavirus crisis, with Mishra accusing PRH India of “enlist[ing] in a flailing politician’s propaganda campaign”.

In a letter published in the London Review of Books blog, Mishra wrote to the chief executive of PRH India, Gaurav Shrinagesh, after the publisher announced it would be reissuing Modi’s book Exam Warriors while, in Mishra’s words, “smoke from mass funeral pyres rose across India”. India suffered a world record one-day death toll from Covid-19 on Wednesday – 4,529 – with the overall figure believed to be much higher than the official death toll of 283,248.

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Climate disasters ‘caused more internal displacement than war’ in 2020

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Refugee organisation says 30m new displacements last year were due to floods, storms or wildfires

Intense storms and flooding triggered three times more displacements than violent conflicts did last year, as the number of people internally displaced worldwide hit the highest level on record.

There were at least 55 million internally displaced people (IDPs) by the end of last year, according to figures published by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

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Stench of death pervades rural India as Ganges swells with Covid victims

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Stigma and cost of wood leave families with no choice but to immerse their dead in river

There was a time before when the Ganges was “swollen with dead bodies”.

In 1918, when the great flu pandemic swept through India and killed an estimated 18 million people, the water of this river – upon which so many lives depended – was filled with the stench of death.

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Covid vaccines: India export delay deals blow to poorer countries

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Efforts in Africa and elsewhere hit by decision not to export AstraZeneca jab until end of year

Vaccine programmes across Africa and much of the developing world will suffer big delays after the world’s biggest producer said it would not be exporting the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine until the end of the year.

“We continue to scale up manufacturing and prioritise India … We also hope to start delivering to Covax and other countries by the end of this year,” Adar Poonawalla, chief executive of the Serum Institute of India (SII), said in a statement on Tuesday.

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Indian mosque bulldozed in defiance of high court order

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Local officials in Uttar Pradesh demolish mosque that had stood since time of British rule

A local administration in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has defied a state high court order and bulldozed a mosque, in one of the most inflammatory actions taken against a Muslim place of worship since the demolition of the Babri Mosque by a mob of Hindu nationalist rioters in 1992.

The mosque, in the city of Ram Sanehi Ghat in Uttar Pradesh, had stood for at least six decades, since the time of British rule, according to documents held by its committee.

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Scott Morrison denies Australians in India ‘unfairly blocked’ from return amid Covid

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Prime minster says rigorous testing essential for entering country but Anthony Albanese says government failed stranded citizens

Scott Morrison has rejected suggestions Covid-positive Australians were “unfairly blocked” from returning from India, despite conceding problems with the pre-flight testing regime.

About 80 returnees are now in quarantine in the Howard Springs facility in the Northern Territory after they landed from India on Saturday following the lifting of the travel ban from the virus-ravaged country.

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Johnson ‘must think again on plans to relax Covid rules’

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Top adviser warns of India variant impact as scientists urge delay in lockdown changes

Boris Johnson was under mounting pressure on Saturday to reconsider Monday’s relaxation of Covid rules in England because of the threat posed by the India variant. His own advisers and independent health experts raised fears that it could lead to a surge in hospital admissions, especially among young adults.

From Monday people will be able to meet in groups of up to 30 outdoors, while six people or two households will be permitted to meet indoors. Pubs, bars, cafes and restaurants will be allowed to serve customers indoors. Indoor entertainment such as museums, cinemas and children’s play areas can also open along with theatres, concert halls, conference centres and sports stadiums.

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Australian government urged to have standby system in place for next repatriation flight from India

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Indian community leaders call on officials to do more to avoid a repeat of the scores of empty seats on the first post-ban flight

The Australian government needs to do more to avoid a repeat of the scores of seats left empty on the first post-ban repatriation flight from virus-ravaged India, one community leader has said.

Eighty Australians touched down in Darwin on Saturday morning and were moved to the Howard Springs quarantine facility on the city’s outskirts.

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Cabinet Office blocks publication of Lord Mountbatten’s diaries

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University of Southampton spends ‘hundreds of thousands’ on legal battle preventing access due to government veto

When the diaries and letters of Lord and Lady Mountbatten were “saved for the nation” in 2010, it should have created an invaluable public resource. Instead, a writer has spent four years and £250,000 of his own money in an ongoing – but still frustrated – attempt to force Southampton University and the Cabinet Office to allow the public to view them.

The university bought the Broadlands archive, named after the Mountbattens’ Grade I-listed house, for £2.8m in 2010, attracting funding by stating it would “preserve the collection in its entirety for future generations to use and enjoy” and “ensure public access”.

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Coronavirus live news: jabs like Pfizer and Moderna appear able to ‘neutralise’ Indian variant, says EMA

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European medicines watchdog says there is ‘promising evidence’ the vaccines work against variant first encountered in India

Greece is to lift its internal travel restrictions on 14 May, the day it’s tourism season opens, officials have said, whilst retaining health safeguards for the country’s more vulnerable islands.

AFP reports:

For the first time since a second Covid-19 lockdown was imposed in November, Greeks will no longer be required to notify authorities by SMS when leaving their homes. However, anyone travelling to Greek islands by sea or air must show a vaccination certificate or a negative test result, minister Akis Skertsos told reporters.

Officials aim to fully vaccinate at least 35% of island populations by the end of June. Greece is keen to attract crowds of holidaymakers back to its idyllic islands, which are some of its most popular travel destinations, with tourism bringing in as much as a quarter of Greece’s annual income

We now have confirmation that Norway will not resume the use of AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine and has delayed a decision on whether to start using jabs made by Johnson & Johnson, following a press conference led by the country’s prime minister Erna Solberg.

It comes after a government-appointed commission recommended that both vaccines should be excluded from Norway’s vaccination programme due to a risk of rare but harmful side-effects.

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Scores more bodies of suspected Covid victims found in Indian rivers

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At least 90 more corpses wash up in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh as virus continues spreading into poor rural areas

At least 90 more bodies of suspected Covid-19 victims have washed up in rivers in India, as the virus continues to spread into poor rural areas and the country recorded its highest daily death toll so far.

More than 70 corpses were discovered floating in the Ganges River in the Buxar district of the state of Bihar and dozens more bodies were found upstream in the Ghazipur and Ballia districts in the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh.

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Why is the world still being hit by wave after wave of Covid when we know how to stop it? | Helen Clark and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

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Leaders failed to act fast enough when Covid-19 appeared. They must not keep making the same mistakes

Death and illness from Covid-19 is steadily rising once again. In the last week of April, more than 93,000 people died – approaching the worst of the global second wave. How can this still be happening? How can some countries still be experiencing wave after wave of infection when we know how to prevent them?

For the past eight months, the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response has been rigorously reviewing the evidence of what happened to allow Covid-19 to take a firm grip – and why. The panel spoke to hundreds of experts and people on the frontline of the response, and conducted extensive original research and numerous literature reviews.

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Coronavirus live news: Scotland to allow indoor meetings from Monday; arrests at AstraZeneca patent protest

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First minister confirms easing of restrictions; EU pressuring AstraZeneca to deliver 120m doses by end of June; arrests made at protest over vaccine patents

Brazilian states halted vaccination of pregnant women on Tuesday after a death in Rio de Janeiro led health regulator Anvisa to warn against the use of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine for expecting mothers, Reuters reports.

A pregnant woman in Rio de Janeiro died after receiving the AstraZeneca shot, according to state Health Secretary Alexandre Chieppe, in a case authorities are still investigating.

Sao Paulo state suspended Covid-19 vaccination for pregnant women with risk factors and Rio state suspended immunisation of all pregnant women. Both states cited the Anvisa recommendation as a reason for the decision.

AstraZeneca investors narrowly approved pay package proposals for its chief executive, Pascal Soriot, after nearly 40% voted against the policy, which could hand him pay and perks of up to £17.8m for 2021, Julia Kollewe reports.

Related: Nearly 40% of AstraZeneca investors reject boss’s bonus rise

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What is the deadly ‘black fungus’ seen in Covid patients in India?

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Usually very rare, mucormycosis has a high mortality rate and is difficult to treat

A rare black fungus that invades the brain is being increasingly seen in vulnerable patients in India, including those with Covid-19, as the health system continues to struggle in the midst of the pandemic.

The health ministry on Sunday released an advisory on how to treat the infection. In the state of Gujarat, about 300 cases had been reported in four cities, including Ahmedabad, according to data from state-run hospitals.

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Nepal says its Covid response is under control – everyone can see it’s not true

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I’ve watched from the UK as family and friends share increasingly desperate news. Nepal’s leaders have ensured the lack of preparation

Waiting for India’s Covid wave to break over Nepal has been as painful as it was inevitable. Now that it’s happening, this country of 30 million people is even more hapless and unprepared than India seems to have been.

My friend, Dr Rakshya Pandey, a pulmonary care doctor in Kathmandu, says that during her long shifts, the thought sometimes enters her mind: ‘‘Where would I go if I get sick? Where would I take my mother if she gets the virus?”

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India: dozens of suspected Covid victims wash up on Ganges River banks

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Locals believe bodies were dumped in river because cremation sites are overwhelmed

Dozens of bodies believed to be Covid-19 victims have washed up on the banks of the Ganges River in northern India as the pandemic spreads into India’s vast rural hinterland, overwhelming local health facilities as well as crematoriums and cemeteries.

Local official Ashok Kumar said that about 40 corpses washed up in Buxar district near the border between Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, two of India’s poorest states.

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‘Like purgatory’: diaspora in despair as India sinks deeper into Covid crisis

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Indian Americans scramble to secure oxygen canisters for family members, desperately work to raise funds and pressure US legislators to lift vaccine patents

Since the pandemic began, Fatima Ahmed has lost 29 of her family members in India and one in the US to Covid-19.

A few days ago, her uncle died in his car as he was driving back home from a hospital in Hyderabad, a city in southern India. “All the hospitals were at capacity, so they couldn’t take him in,” said Ahmed. “He pulled over and he called the rest of the family, the khandan – before he passed.”

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Coronavirus live news: Johnson to announce timetable for lifting England restrictions

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People to mix indoors from next week ... China to set up ‘separation line’ on Everest peak to stop Nepal Covid spread ... calls grow for India national lockdown. Follow latest updates

Australia’s international travel ban is based on politics and not science, according to health experts who say there are a number of countries Australia could safely resume travel with this year.

On Sunday the treasurer Josh Frydenberg told SBS News that the budget expectation is that international travel will begin in 2022, with further detail expected when the budget is released on Tuesday. Meanwhile the prime minister Scott Morrison posted on Facebook that borders would only open “when it is safe to do so”, saying during media interviews over the weekend that Australians do not have an “appetite” for opening borders if it means further lockdowns and restrictions.

Related: ‘Politics rules’: Australia’s international travel ban not based on science, health experts say

The reopening of outdoor bars and restaurants in France will go ahead on 19 May 19, health minister Olivier Veran has said on Monday, as the number of Covid cases in intensive care eases.

“The prospects look rather good but we must not let down the guard,” Veran told LCI television.

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Covid live news: EU not renewing orders for AstraZeneca jabs after June; third of UK adults fully vaccinated

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Latest updates: pressure builds on Indian government to announce national lockdown; third of UK adults now fully vaccinated against Covid-19; Laos records first Covid death

The number of Covid-19 patients in French intensive care units fell below 5,000 for the first time since late March on Sunday, Reuters is reporting that health ministry data showed.

The number was down for a sixth day in a row at 4,971, against 5,005 the previous day, the ministry said.

The United States is closer to getting the coronavirus pandemic under control and health officials are focused on the next challenge: getting more Americans vaccinated, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said on Sunday, Reuters reports.

“I would say we are turning the corner,” Zients said in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union.”

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Coronavirus live news: Merkel says vaccine patent waiver ‘not the solution’; UK ‘to be protected by summer’

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German chancellor says US should export more of its supplies; outgoing chief of UK taskforce says population should be protected before winter

Italy plans to lift quarantine restrictions for travellers arriving from European countries, including Britain and Israel, as early as mid-May to revive the tourism industry, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said on Saturday.

After meeting Health Minister Roberto Speranza to discuss the easing of restrictions for countries where vaccination levels are high, Di Maio said, quarantine requirements may also be scrapped for those arriving from the United States from June.

Tourism is an important key to Italy’s restart, and we need to plan the summer well so that health, economy and work are not put in danger.

With Minister Roberto Speranza we had a first confrontation on reopening measures to foreign tourists who want to visit our country this summer.

The German chancellor Angela Merkel said Europeans could forward to travelling this summer if coronavirus cases continue declining on the continent.

While the European Union is developing a vaccine certificate, valid throughout the 27-nation bloc, summer holidays should be possible again for people who haven’t had their shots against the virus, the chancellor said.

Merkel said that Germany also appears to have broken its most recent outbreak.

“Step by step, more will be possible in Germany, too, wherever the incidence drops, and that will hopefully be the case for all of Europe,” she said.

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