South Africa's itinerant wastepickers lose livelihood in lockdown

Tim Cocks

SOWETO, Johannesburg (Reuters) - They perform one of South Africa’s most important services, collecting recyclables that would otherwise swell the country’s rubbish dumps and burden municipal trash collection, but the coronavirus lockdown has left thousands of wastepickers jobless.

The shutdown ordered by President Cyril Ramaphosa that began on March 20, and was extended until April 30, is among the toughest in the world. It bans anyone apart from essential workers leaving their homes except to buy food or medicine.

Yet although municipal rubbish collectors were classified as essential workers, authorities excluded itinerant wastepickers who ply the streets of Johannesburg pulling heavy carts laden with more than three quarters of the city’s total recycling.

For the past decade, 55-year old grandmother Abigail Kubheka has been rising at 3 a.m. every morning in her house in the township of Soweto. She walks some 10 kilometres a day to scavenge for recyclable trash and load it onto her cart.

“If you leave much later, you’ll get nothing,” she told Reuters at a Soweto yard where other wastepickers with whom she works sorted plastic from glass bottles and aluminium cans.

Even when she goes to church on Sunday, she carries a waste bag to scoop up any promising items on the way back. Besides doing wonders for her fitness, her activities have enabled her to feed, clothe and educate three children — one is now at university — and support two grandchildren.

But with the lockdown, everything dried up.

“People think wastepickers are low down, but I find it good. I’m healthy and I’m free,” she said. “Now I’m just sitting at home because we can’t work.”

A spokesman for the environment ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

A 2016 report by South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) estimated there were up to 90,000 waste pickers in the country, which is notorious for having the world’s worst extremes of wealth and poverty.

The same report said they collect 80-90% of the paper and packaging that South Africa recycles, saving municipal authorities 750 million rand ($39.54 million) in one year.

Another report by South Africa’s plastic industry body put its recycling of plastics at 46% in 2018, compared with just 31% across Europe, thanks largely to the wastepickers’ efforts.

Wastepicking also fill stomachs in a country with 30 percent unemployment and large families often depending on a single breadwinner. Adelina Nkopane, who works with Kubheka, was pulling in 1,000 rand a week — a good wage in South Africa.

“Since the lockdown, I don’t have money to buy food or pay my rent. My husband is not working and I never manage to keep money for more than a few days. It’s a disaster,” she said, before stuffing a sack full of plastic drink bottles.

Instead, she has been queuing up for government food handouts. “If they can just allow us to work and we respect the rules and they gave us masks, we could be very happy,” she said.

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World must ensure equal access for all to COVID-19 vaccines, drugs: WHO

GENEVA/LONDON (Reuters) - All new vaccines, diagnostics and treatments against the new coronavirus must be made equally available to everyone worldwide, the World Health Organization said on Friday as it outlined a plan to accelerate work to fight COVID-19.

Launching what he called a “landmark collaboration” to speed the development of effective drugs, tests and vaccines to prevent and treat COVID-19, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the lung disease was a “common threat which we can only defeat with a common approach”.


“Experience has told us that even when tools are available they have not been equally available to all. We cannot allow that to happen,” Tedros said in a virtual conference.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that the objective at a global pledging effort in early May would be to raise 7.5 billion euros ($8.10 billion) to ramp up work on prevention, diagnostics and treatment.

“This is a first step only, but more will be needed in the future,” she told the conference.

Cyril Ramaphosa, chairman of the African Union, praised WHO’s “excellent stewardship” in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic that has swept around the world. He warned that the African continent was “extremely vulnerable to the ravages of this virus and is in need of support”.

Italy's coronavirus epidemic began in January, study shows

Another team of Italian scientists has said the coronavirus may have reached Italy from Germany, not directly from China, in the second half of January.

ROME (Reuters) - The first COVID-19 infections in Italy date back to January, according to a scientific study presented on Friday, shedding new light on the origins of the outbreak in one of the world’s worst-affected countries.
A worker wearing protective clothing disinfects a vehicle after disembarking from a ferry in Capri, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues in Capri, Italy, April 24, 2020. REUTERS/Ciro De Luca

Italy began testing people after diagnosing its first local patient on Feb 21 in Codogno, a small town in the wealthy Lombardy region.

Cases and deaths immediately surged, with scientists soon suspecting that the virus had been around, unnoticed, for weeks.

Stefano Merler, of the Bruno Kessler Foundation, told a news conference with Italy’s top health authorities that his institute had looked at the first known cases and drawn clear conclusions from the subsequent pace of contagion.


“We realized that there were a lot of infected people in Lombardy well before Feb. 20, which means the epidemic had started much earlier,” he said.

“In January for sure, but maybe even before. We’ll never know,” he said, adding that he believed the immediate surge in cases suggested the virus was probably brought to Italy by a group of people rather than a single individual.

A separate study based on a sample of cases registered in April said 44.1% of infections occurred in nursing homes and another 24.7% spread within families. A further 10.8% of people caught the virus at hospital and 4.2% in the workplace.

Italy was the first major western country to face the viral disease, which originated in China late last year and has spread around the world. Italian authorities have recorded some 190,000 confirmed cases and 25,500 deaths.

In a bid to prevent the outbreak, Italy halted air traffic to and from China on Jan. 31 after two Chinese tourists tested positive in Rome. But scientists say it was probably too late.

Another team of Italian scientists has said the coronavirus may have reached Italy from Germany, not directly from China, in the second half of January.

Sanofi CEO warns Europe on cornavirus vaccine race

PARIS (Reuters) - Sanofi’s chief executive on Friday urged stronger European co-ordination in the hunt for a vaccine against the new coronavirus, criticising Europe for being too slow to act in a fiercely competitive global race.

April 24, 2020. REUTERS/Charles Platiau

The French drugmaker is working on two vaccine projects, including one in partnership with GlaxoSmithKline. That venture has received financial support from the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.

Europe risked the United States securing first access for its citizens if U.S. cash funded the successful development of a vaccine.

“It is quite conceivable that if they are successful the American government will ask for Americans to be vaccinated first,” Hudson told reporters.


“There has been too much of a lack of co-ordination at a European level. It is starting to move now but the level of preparedness to the pandemic is very, very low,” he said.

There are no approved treatments or vaccines for COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus which has claimed the lives of nearly 190,000 people and infected more than 2.7 million others.

Hudson said Sanofi, which published its first-quarter results on Friday, had contacted the European Commission to discuss the matter.

“Maybe it is too complicated for them (the Commission) but we will work with member states and try to get this thing moving,” Hudson said.


“We do not want to get to next summer and not have enough vaccines for Europe.”

World leaders pledged on Friday to accelerate work on tests, drugs and vaccines against the coronavirus and to share them around the globe, but the United States did not take part in the launch of the World Health Organization (WHO) initiative.

Fires near Chernobyl pose 'no risk to human health', IAEA says

EXCEPT THEY HAVE BEEN BURNING FOR A MONTH LONGER THAN PREDICTED THE SMOKE AND PARTICULATE CREATE TOXIC AIR POLLUTION


FILE PHOTO: A view shows a wooden house on fire, as an operation to extinguish wildfires around the defunct Chernobyl nuclear plant continues, in Lyudvynivka in Kiev Region, Ukraine April 18, 2020. REUTERS/Volodymyr Shuvayev

VIENNA (Reuters) - Radiation from fires that have torn through forests around Ukraine’s defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant poses “no risk to human health”, the U.N. atomic agency said on Friday, based on data provided by Ukraine.

The main fire among several blazes was extinguished last week but advanced far into the 30 km exclusion zone around the plant, the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986. Smaller fires are still burning in the exclusion zone, its administration said on Friday evening.

Footage from the site has shown plumes of smoke billowing from the charred landscape, and environmental activists have said the burning of contaminated trees and other vegetation could disperse radioactive particles, posing a health risk.

“The recent fires in the Exclusion Zone near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine have not led to any hazardous increase of radioactive particles in the air,” the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a statement.

The Vienna-based IAEA, which acts as the U.N. nuclear watchdog but also aims to encourage the peaceful use of nuclear energy, said it was basing its assessment on data provided by Ukraine.

The IAEA said it found “the increase in levels of radiation measured in the country was very small and posed no risk to human health”.

There had been “some minor increases in radiation”, the IAEA said, adding the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine had found “the concentration of radioactive materials in the air remained below Ukraine’s radiation safety norms”

SEE 
Air quality levels in Ukraine dip to 'moderate' as fires continue to burn
APRIL 18, 2020
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/04/chernobyl-wildfire-air-quality-levels.html

Chernobyl fire under control, Ukraine officials say
BBC 14 April 2020
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/04/chernobyl-fire-under-control-ukraine.html

Chernobyl fire: Huge forest blaze moves within one kilometre of abandoned nuclear plant
Wednesday, April 14, 2020
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/04/chernobyl-fire-huge-forest-blaze-moves.html

POLISH NATIONAL PARK BURNS ON EARTH DAY
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/04/wildfire-ravages-polands-largest.html

Peru indigenous warn of 'ethnocide by inaction' as coronavirus hits Amazon tribes

Maria Cervantes
LIMA (Reuters) - Indigenous tribes in Peru’s Amazon say the government has left them to fend for themselves against the coronavirus, risking “ethnocide by inaction,” according to a letter from natives to the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

FILE PHOTO - A member of an indigenous group from the Amazon region attend a meeting with Pope Francis at the Coliseo Regional Madre de Dios in Puerto Maldonado, Peru, January 19, 2018. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi

The formal complaint asks the U.N. and international courts to force the government to take “concrete action” to ensure their survival, citing the 1948 U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Eight native leaders representing 1,800 communities in the Peruvian Amazon signed the letter which was published by indigenous group AIDESEP on Thursday.

Health experts have warned the spreading virus could be lethal for the Amazon´s indigenous people, who have been decimated for centuries by diseases brought by Europeans, from smallpox and malaria to the flu.

“They send messages every day about what the (government) is going to do in the cities, but nothing for indigenous peoples,” Lizardo Cauper, president of AIDESEP, told Reuters. “For us, this is discrimination.”
At least four natives from the Puerto Bethel region, a remote Amazon wilderness community two hours by river from the capital of Ucayali, have contracted the disease, according to a spokesman for the Ministry of Health.

The Ministry of Culture said earlier this week that it shipped supplies for improving sanitation and hygiene to Puerto Bethel and was monitoring the situation.

BANANA LEAVES

The natives infected with coronavirus have self-isolated in a local community, said Ronald Suarez, president of the Shipibo Konibo Xetebo ethnic group. But they have few supplies to protect themselves, he told Reuters.

“People put up banana leaves to protect themselves,” Suarez said, explaining they could be used as a makeshift mask.

He said medications and treatment options are also in short supply, forcing many to treat symptoms with medicinal plants.


Peru’s Ombudsman’s Office warned earlier this month the disease could spread quickly to other indigenous communities if officials do not take fast action.

The ombudsman says only 4 of 10 communities have health care facilities in this poor, remote region of the Amazon.

Peru reported 21,648 cases of the coronavirus on Friday, the second highest tally in Latin America, and 634 related deaths. There have been no reports of indigenous people killed by the virus.


Reporting by Maria Cervantes; Additional reporting by Marco Aquino; Writing by Dave Sherwood; Editing by Daniel Wallis

Special Report: India's migrant workers fall through cracks in coronavirus lockdown

Alasdair Pal, Danish Siddiqui

JUGYAI, India (Reuters) - Most days, you can find Dayaram Kushwaha and his wife, Gyanvati, hauling bricks for stonemasons in a booming northern suburb of New Delhi. They bring their 5-year-old son, who plays in the dirt while they work.

But now a hush has come over the clattering construction site, silenced by India’s nationwide order to shelter in place to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. Site managers no longer come to the intersection where Dayaram and many others stand, hoping to pick up work.

And so, with no way to feed his family or pay the rent, Dayaram hoisted his son Shivam onto his shoulders and began to walk to the village where he was born, 300 miles away.

He tried not to worry about what would happen once he got there, with empty pockets instead of the money he usually sent home to help support those left behind. At least he would have a home.

By dusk on the second day, Dayaram and around 50 others from his extended family had reached a deserted expressway running south out of the capital.

The family were hungry, thirsty and tired, and the police were never far away. Every time they stopped to rest, officers would shout at them to keep moving in single file, to maintain distance from one another to avoid spreading the virus. Officers are under orders to enforce the lockdown, but on that day they were allowing people to move.

Dayaram, 28, looked around. Thousands of other migrant workers were doing the same thing, in one of the biggest mass movements of people in the country since the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947.

It began to rain. Dayaram’s thoughts turned to his other son, 7-year-old Mangal, who had been left behind in the village with elderly relatives because it was too hard to care for two children while he and his wife worked. He missed him.

In the middle of a pandemic, there was one consolation: “At least I will be with him.”

PUSH AND PULL

For decades, villages across India have been emptying out.

To many people, the decision is one of simple arithmetic: to earn $6 per day instead of $3 back home. In areas like the parched Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh state, home to Dayaram’s ancestral village, living off the land has become increasingly difficult as rainfall recedes.

Others seek something more abstract: the prospect of escape that pulls anyone toward a big city.


But after the shutdown, the cities themselves began to empty. Dayaram and his family were among the first to move. As the days went on, and the situation became more desperate, hundreds of thousands of migrants emerged from factories and workplaces in search of a way home.

Indian officials say the shutdown is necessary to beat coronavirus in the densely populated country of 1.3 billion people, with a health infrastructure that can ill afford a widespread outbreak.

But for Dayaram and many of India’s estimated 140 million migrant laborers, the epidemic is much more than a threat to their health – it endangers their very economic survival.

In the shutdown, India has banned domestic and international travel, and factories, schools, offices and all shops other than those supplying essential services have been shut. Taken together, the measures amount to one of the harshest lockdowns in the world.

Cases here have spiked to nearly 17,000, with more than 500 deaths. On April 14, the government extended the curbs until at least May 3, prompting clashes between police and migrants trying to leave India’s financial capital, Mumbai.

Migrants are the backbone of the urban economy. Construction workers such as Dayaram are a necessity for India’s rapidly expanding cities. Others clean toilets, drive taxis and deliver takeout. They predominantly earn daily wages, with no prospect of job security, and live in dirty, densely populated slums, saving money to send back home.

That money is essential to the young and elderly left behind in villages. Around $30 billion flows from urban to rural areas in India each year, according to government and academic estimates.

Now that infusion of money, transferred through rural banks or in worn stacks of rupees borne home on rare visits, has come to a halt.
TURN BACK TIME

The journey from New Delhi deep into rural India is one not just of distance, but of traveling back in time.

Skyscrapers and well-paved toll roads give way to fields of wheat and okra. Bare-backed men till the land with buffalo; an elderly shepherd herds his goats down a dusty lane.

After four days of walking and hitching lifts on a series of goods trucks, Dayaram, Gyanvati and Shivam reached their family’s two-room concrete hut in Jugyai, a farming village of 2,000 people.

In a dingy room in the house filled with sacks of grain and clothes, an unframed poster hangs on the wall. It depicts a handsome red-roofed house on a lake, sun setting behind snow-capped mountains. A pair of mallard ducks fly overhead.



FILE PHOTO: Dayaram Kushwaha, a migrant worker, carries his 5-year-old son, Shivam, on his shoulders as they walk along a road to return to their village, during a 21-day nationwide lockdown to limit the spreading of coronavirus, in New Delhi, India, March 26, 2020. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

“I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other,” it says.

Though he can’t read the English text on the poster, Dayaram agrees with the sentiment. He misses this village that can no longer sustain him.

“It’s not that I love Delhi,” he said. “I need the money to survive. If we had it, we would have stayed here. This is home.”

His mother, 53-year-old Kesra, is more practical. She too had gone to New Delhi with her family, leaving the village behind.

“Home is wherever the family is,” she said. “At least in Delhi there is money to buy food.”

But now they are all back, and there is no money to buy food. Making it even worse, suspicion is never far away. The returnees must deal with new prejudice from villagers who used to be their friends.

“I am scared,” said Sai Ram Lal, a neighbor who works in a soybean-oil factory here.

“It was spreading in Delhi, and I am worried that they have brought it here. We keep our distance. We don’t interact with them like we used to before.”

For Dayaram, that has left him an outsider in his own village.
“WE ARE LIKE GARBAGE”

The Bundelkhand region is famous for the towering 16th century sandstone temples and mausoleums of nearby Orchha. It has its own distinct culture, and young men still listen to high-tempo music in the local Bundeli language on their mobile phones.

The region used to get up to 35 inches of rain per year, according to the India Meteorological Department, but over the last decade, that has almost halved.

For many of the villagers, who have traditionally earned their living farming, it is a slow-motion disaster, forcing most able-bodied men and women to migrate in search of work.

It is early April, and even before the full onset of the fierce Indian summer, where temperatures climb toward 50 degrees Celsius, or 120 Fahrenheit, the air is already uncomfortably dry.


In a neighboring village where the majority of Dayaram’s extended family lives, two dozen men stood idling by the road.

Only one, 62-year-old Lal Ram, has never been to Delhi. “I had some money, so I never went,” he said with a shrug.

He’s also the only one with a ration card, a sore point for those who migrated to Delhi. The Targeted Public Distribution Scheme allows India’s poorest to purchase 5 kilograms of subsidized grains per month each. But because the migrant workers are no longer permanent residents, they’re left without access to the food doled out from a nearby grain silo.

“Nobody listens to us,” one of the men said bitterly. “We are like garbage.”

Harshika Singh, the top government official in the district where both villages lie, didn’t respond to requests for comment on the migrants’ case.

After this story was published, Indian government spokesman K.S. Dhatwalia issued a statement to Reuters on Friday outlining measures being taken to assist the poor during the pandemic. The government was offering food and cash for essential supplies to poor and marginalized people, Dhatwalia said, and relief camps have been set up in different parts of the country.

Dayaram’s father, 58-year-old Takur Das, was the first in the family to set off for New Delhi in search for work when it became increasingly difficult to make a living off the parched land.

That was a decade ago. Eventually, he sent for his son, too. The work there was hard, but it was steady.

“We can get some money for your wedding,” he told Dayaram.

Many people in New Delhi would struggle to find Alipur, the Delhi suburb where they settled, on a map. It rarely makes the national news but for misfortune involving laborers: 25 children rescued by authorities in a series of warehouse raids; four men, including two brothers, crushed to death by sacks of rice.

Dayaram says his heart sank when he saw the crowded, tarpaulin-roofed slum where the family slept 12 to a room. His first thought was to run away back to the village.

But he stayed. What else could he do?

Dayaram talks continuously about fate. His marriage, his move to New Delhi, his flight back home – all were decisions made not out of choice, but necessity.

Dayaram’s maternal aunt played matchmaker when it came time for him to marry. He and Gyanvati were from the same Kushwaha caste, from a lower rung of India’s ancient social order who traditionally worked in agriculture.


Slideshow (16 Images)

They first met a month before their wedding day.

“She was OK,” Dayaram said, a smile briefly crossing his face, remembering their meeting.

“But whatever is in my fate is fine, whether it is good or bad.”

After Mangal was born, Gyanvati stayed behind in Jugyai to look after him. When he was 1½, she came to New Delhi with him, too.

But after Shivam was born, they were faced with a choice: take Mangal, too, or leave him in the village.

“It’s easier to carry one child while working, but two is too difficult,” Gyanvati said. “So we had to leave him behind.”

NO ALTERNATIVE

The family’s return this month coincided with harvest of the winter wheat crop. One morning, after a night on a rope-strung bed under the light of the pink supermoon, Dayaram put on a shirt ripped at the left armpit and headed to a nearby field.

His sons trailed behind, picking unripe berries from a bush. Shivam, wearing the same faded shirt in yellow checks as when he left New Delhi, put his hand on his elder brother’s shoulder.

Dayaram, Gyanvati and three other relatives began cropping stalks by hand with well-worn scythes. After three days there, harvesting almost a ton of wheat, they received no payment – just 50 kilograms of the crop to take to the village flour mill.

The family’s basket of lumpen potatoes would last a week. When that ran out, they would have to survive on bread alone.

In good months in New Delhi, they were able to save 8,000 rupees, or about $100, a month to send back home, and to repay a loan taken out when Gyanvati fell sick early in their marriage.

But soon, Dayaram said, he would be forced to borrow again from local money lenders, charging interest at 3% a month – a rate that can quickly spiral into unpayable debts.

Despite being separated for months at a time, Mangal and Shivam are still close. Both have their father’s broad nose and mother’s lively eyes, the same matching bowl haircuts with unevenly shorn sides.


“They cut each other’s hair,” said Gyanvati, laughing. “That’s why they look like that.”

Both boys shrugged when asked if they wanted to go school, as if the issue had never really been discussed.

Dayaram worries that the shutdown will end any hope of providing his children with an education.

“No parent wants their child to work as a laborer,” he said. But there is no alternative, he said: “They will have to do what I have done.”

Beneath the brilliant red blossoms of the Indian coral tree, the family finished

FREE WESTERN PAPUA

Indonesia convicts Papua activists of treason for holding protest

Agustinus Beo Da Costa

JAKARTA (Reuters) - An Indonesian court convicted six activists of treason for organising a protest demanding independence for the easternmost province of Papua, in a verdict slammed by rights groups.


FILE PHOTO: Dano Anes Tabuni, Ambrosius Mulait, Paulus Suryanta Ginting, Arina Elopere, Charles Kossay, and Isay Wenda, pro-Papuan activists who were arrested on suspicion of treason, sing a solidarity song as they arrive at the courtroom before their trial at Central Jakarta District Court in Jakarta, Indonesia, December 19, 2019. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan

The peaceful protest of about 100 people had been held outside the presidential palace and military headquarters on Aug. 28 in the capital of Jakarta and followed a period of unrest in Papua.

In a sentencing hearing on Friday held online due to the coronavirus outbreak, Judge Agustinus Setya Wahyu Triwiranto said he had found the six defendants “guilty of treason”.

Activists Ambrosius Mulait, Surya Anta, Charles Kossay, Dano Tabuni, and Arina Elopere were convicted and sentenced to nine months in prison, while Isay Wenda was given an eight-month sentence.

All six have been held in prison since August. Prosecutors accused them in December of organising a rally demanding the Indonesian government allow a vote in Papua to let it separate from Indonesia.

International rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch criticised the convictions, stating that the activists had been attending a peaceful rally over perceived ethnic discrimination.

“The six who were sentenced today did nothing but attend a peaceful protest, enjoying their rights to freedom of expression and assembly,” said Amnesty International Indonesia director Usman Hamid.
Amnesty noted the six activists are part of 57 “prisoners of conscience” from Papua being held for peacefully expressing their views.

Resource-rich Papua was a Dutch colony that was incorporated into Indonesia after a controversial U.N.-backed referendum in 1969, which has since endured decades of mostly low-level separatist conflict.

Thousands of Papuans staged rallies in August to protest an incident that saw a racist slur against Papuan students who were hit by tear gas in their dormitory and detained in the city of Surabaya. The resulting protests were the biggest in years and triggered some calls for independence.

Oky Wiratma, the lawyer for the activists, told Reuters on Saturday the verdict was disproportionate, and the Papuan activists had “protested peacefully against racism”.

He said the six activists were expected to be released in the coming weeks based on the time already served, barring a decision by prosecutors to appeal.

Prosecutors had originally sought 18-months sentences for the activists. Prosecutors were not immediately reachable for comment.

Reporting by Agustinus Beo Da Costal; Writing by Fanny Potkin; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman

Exclusive: Venezuela Socialists, opposition leaders begin secret talks amid pandemic - sources

Corina Pons, Mayela Armas


CARACAS (Reuters) - Allies of both Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his bitter foe, opposition leader Juan Guaido, have secretly begun exploratory talks as concerns grow about the possible impact of the spread of the coronavirus, according to sources on both sides.



FILE PHOTO: Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a news conference at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela, March 12, 2020. REUTERS/Manaure Quintero/File Photo

The discussions emerged from concerns about the respiratory illness COVID-19, hyperinflation and growing fuel shortages, as well as worries among some members of the ruling Socialist Party about how to ensure their political survival under a possible change of government as Washington tightens sanctions, the sources said.

The talks, which have no clear agenda, show that allies of both Maduro and Guaido remain unconvinced they can defeat the other amid a global pandemic and a broad U.S. sanctions program meant to push Maduro from office.

“There are two extremes: Maduro and those who believe that the virus will end Guaido’s leadership, and those on the other side (who) hope this crisis will bring down Maduro,” said an opposition legislator in favor of the rapprochement.

“I think we have to find solutions.”

Reuters was unable to determine when the talks began, where or how they are taking place, and how Maduro and Guaido view them. Seven sources, who represent both sides of Venezuela’s deep political divide, confirmed the talks.

Maduro and Guaido are competing with one another to help combat the effects of the pandemic, with each side convinced the outbreak will undermine the other politically, said the sources, who asked not to be identified.

Activists and rights groups around the world have urged the two factions to seek a truce in order to coordinate the delivery of aid and boost gasoline imports.


The U.S. State Department in March offered to begin lifting parts of the sanctions if members of the Socialist Party form an interim government without Maduro, a plan backed by Guaido but quickly shot down by the government.

Venezuela’s information ministry and Guaido’s press team did not reply to a request for comment about the current talks.

Guaido later on Tuesday denied the approach after the initial Reuters story was published. “This information is false,” he wrote on his Twitter account. “The democratic alternative is united in its cause and there is only one possible agreement to save Venezuela: to form a National Emergency Government, without drug traffickers in Miraflores, that can access international aid that we need.”

A source in Washington familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday: “There are many private conversations among people in the regime and the opposition, especially since the U.S. announced the transition plan.” The person added: “And there are certainly efforts by Guaido and others to get more aid in to fight the pandemic. That’s led to more conversations by individuals in the opposition and individuals in the regime. What has not happened is any political negotiation.”

The State Department confirmed conversations between representatives of the opposition and officials in Maduro’s government.

“For weeks, Interim President Juan Guaido has been urging the former Maduro regime to take the pandemic more seriously and has been seeking ways to use Venezuelan official funds he can access in the United States to help the struggle against COVID-19,” said a representative of the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. “This has led to many conversations by representatives of international organizations with regime officials, and some direct conversations between opposition representatives and regime officials, seeking a practical way forward.”

Maduro has frequently said he is willing to hold dialogue.

“We are ready for dialogue, to understand one another and reach a humanitarian agreement to attend to the coronavirus (pandemic),” Maduro said during a televised broadcast over the weekend, without making reference to any specific set of talks.


Guaido, head of the national assembly who assumed an interim presidency last year after disavowing Maduro’s 2018 re-election, is recognized by the United States and more than 50 countries as the nation’s legitimate leader. But other powers such as China and Russia still back Maduro.

One source linked to the government acknowledged the talks were going on.

“There are proposals coming and going” between Maduro allies and members of the four principal opposition parties, said the source.

“There are approaches,” said one opposition deputy who is aware of the discussions. “There are key elements in the government that want to negotiate their salvation.”

The two sides last year participated in a dialogue brokered by Norway in which the opposition had pressed for a new presidential election. But Maduro’s side walked away from the process in protest of U.S. sanctions.

Maduro assures his government has controlled the coronavirus outbreak in Venezuela with the support of China, while Guaido accuses him of using the pandemic as an excuse for disastrous economic policies.

A senior Trump admninistration official said Maduro alone was responsible for “the humanitarian toll in Venezuela, compounded by the recent COVID-19 crisis and the gas shortages.”

Venezuela as of Monday had reported 285 coronavirus infections. The United Nations has called it one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to the virus due to the lack of soap and water in hospitals and the overall impoverishment of the population.

Guaido, who controls Venezuelan government funds held in offshore accounts, is seeking to provide $20 million to the Pan American Health Organization to acquire supplies, according to three sources.

But Maduro’s government is aiming to block the operation via the United Nations, which still recognizes his government.

The Venezuelan offices of the Pan American Health Organization and the United Nations did not respond to requests for comment.

Guaido has offered to pay $100 per month to doctors and nurses with the help of the Organization of American States, a mechanism that has not yet started.


Reporting by Corina Pons, Mayela Armas and Sarah Kinosian in Caracas, and Humeyra Pamuk and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Writing by Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Alistair Bell and Matthew Lewis

Lebanon legalizes cannabis farming for medicinal use
BACK IN THE DAY WE GOT GREAT HASHISH FROM LEBANON AND THEN A WAR BROKE OUT
FILE PHOTO: A farmer is seen tending to cannabis plants in a field in the Yammouneh area west of Baalbek, Lebanon, August 13, 2018. REUTERS/Mo
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Lebanese parliament legalized cannabis farming for medicinal use on Tuesday, a potentially lucrative export for an economy in dire need of foreign currency as it grapples with a paralyzing financial crisis.

Although growing the plant is illegal in Lebanon, cannabis has long been farmed openly in the fertile Bekaa Valley.


Parliament’s decision was “really driven by economic motives, nothing else”, said Alain Aoun, a senior MP in the Free Patriotic Movement founded by President Michel Aoun. “We have moral and social reservations but today there is the need to help the economy by any means,” he told Reuters.

The move would bring revenue for the government and develop the agricultural sector while legalizing cultivation which was in any case going on illegally, he said. “We don’t want to speculate on numbers ... but let’s say it is worth a try”.


Hezbollah, a Shi’ite Islamist group backed by Iran, was one of the only parties to oppose the legislation approved in a session on Tuesday.

The idea of legalizing cannabis cultivation with the aim of producing high value-added medicinal products for export was explored in a report by consultancy firm McKinsey commissioned by Lebanon in 2018.

Last month, Lebanese police carried out the country’s biggest drug bust when they seized about 25 tonnes of hashish that were set to be smuggled to an African state.


Reporting by Tom Perry; Editing by Mark Heinrich

Famed Buenos Aires opera house turns its sewing machines to mask masking

Women sew face masks at the Colon Theater's sewing workshop during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Buenos Aires, Argentina April 24, 2020. 

REUTERS/Agustin Marcarian

(Reuters) - A Buenos Aires landmark and one of the world’s great opera houses, Teatro Colon has adapted its enormous basement workshops to making face masks, churning out 1,500 a week to help Argentina’s health workers cope with the coronavirus pandemic.

“This is a factory of dreams,” said stage director Enrique Bordolini. “The Colon has this advantage that everything you see on stage, when the curtain opens, is made right here.”

More than 50 volunteers who normally work to create stage props, sew tutus, and manage special effects, have been cutting and stitching felt and cloth to make face masks, stamped with the theatre’s logo.

“I feel the same joy that I do when I make costumes. For me, it’s the same pride and I do it just as happily,” said Stella Maris Lopez, the Colon’s head seamstress.

All performances and tours of the theatre have been suspended. Most public places have been closed since March 20 in Argentina, which has reported over 3,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 167 deaths.

Despite risks, auto workers step up to make medical gear

This photo provided by Cindy Parkhurst. shows Cindy Parkhurst working at the Ford Flat Rock Assembly Plant in Flat Rock, Mich. Like hundreds of workers at Ford, General Motors, Toyota and other companies, Parkhurst has gone back to work to make face shields, surgical masks and even ventilators in a wartime-like effort to stem shortages of protective gear and equipment during the coronavirus pandemic.(Cindy Parkhurst via AP)

DETROIT (AP) — Cindy Parkhurst could have stayed home collecting most of her pay while the Ford plant where she normally works remains closed due to coronavirus fears.

Instead, she along with hundreds of workers at Ford, General Motors, Toyota and other companies has gone back to work to make face shields, surgical masks and ventilators in a wartime-like effort to stem shortages of protective gear and equipment.

“I didn’t give it a second thought,” said Parkhurst, 55, a tow motor driver who is now helping Ford and its partner 3M manufacture and ship respirators. “It’s a neat thing to do for the community, for the first responders who definitely need this kind of protective gear.”

All over the country, blue-collar and salaried workers have raised their hands to make medical equipment as companies repurpose factories to answer calls for help from beleaguered nurses, doctors and paramedics who are treating patients with the highly contagious virus. Workers also are making soap and hand sanitizer, which early in the crisis were in short supply.

At Ford, over 800 people returned to work at four Detroit-area sites. General Motors, which President Donald Trump had alternately criticized and praised for its work, has about 400 at a now-closed transmission plant in suburban Detroit and an electronics factory in Kokomo, Indiana, working on shields and ventilators. About 60 Toyota workers, both salaried and blue-collar, are making protective equipment in Kentucky, Texas, Michigan and Alabama.

Most automakers in the U.S. temporarily stopped making vehicles about a month ago after workers complained about the risks of infection at the factories. Many white-collar workers are being paid to work remotely but members of the United Auto Workers who don’t have that option are still collecting pay and unemployment benefits that equal about 95% of regular take-home wages.

Those workers making medical gear will get their full base pay, but that’s not what’s motivating them to keep coming to the factories. Many simply want to help.

Jody Barrowman has been making face masks at a repurposed former General Motors transmission factory near Detroit since early April.

“Instead of being home and not helpful, I thought I’d be productive here,” she said.

She jumped at the chance to work because GM is donating the masks to hospitals and first responders “which is where it needs to go,” she said.

Barrowman said that the operation has been so efficient that workers have been allowed to take masks home for family members.

“I dropped some off at my grandparents. My parents took a full packet of masks at my house. So, it’s not just helping the first responders. It’s helping me and my family feel safe,” she said.
This photo provided by Toyota shows Toyota employee Kirk Barber making face shields at the Toyota factory in Georgetown, Ky. Hundreds of workers at Ford, General Motors, Toyota and other companies, have gone back to work to make face shields, surgical masks and even ventilators in a wartime-like effort to stem shortages of protective gear and equipment during the coronavirus pandemic.(Toyota via AP)

Inside a building on Toyota’s giant factory complex in Georgetown, Kentucky, mechanical engineer Kirk Barber helps to ship thousands of face shields that workers are making while plants are shut down. Sometimes he personally delivers boxes to hospitals or the state government, which is distributing them.


All of the workers, he said, had to undergo a cultural change to make sure they stay more than 6 feet apart to protect themselves from possible contagion.

“It’s a hard habit to break when you’re typically up and talking to someone, pointing to a document,” Barber said. “People are very quick to point out ‘hey, you guys need to keep your distance.’”

Twenty-four UAW members have already died from COVID-19 but it’s unclear when or where they contracted the disease. Ford, GM and Toyota said they aren’t aware of any infections among workers who returned to make medical gear. Still, there’s no denying the risks are likely higher at the factories than in the safety of one’s home.
Full Coverage: Virus Outbreak

Joseph Holt, associate professor at Notre Dame’s business school who specializes in ethics and leadership, said the workers and their companies are examples of business doing its best to quickly fill a critical unmet need.

“Courage is doing what you think is right even when it might cost you,” Holt said. “Those workers being willing to go in to work to produce the medical equipment and personal protective gear, even at personal risk — that is moral courage in action.”

The Detroit automakers are trying to restart production on their vehicles, perhaps as soon as early May, but both Ford and GM say medical gear production will continue. Ford says it has enough workers to do both while GM says it won’t need all factory workers right away because it plans a gradual restart.

Back at the Ford complex in Flat Rock, Michigan, where Parkhurst works, she’s hoping the respirators she’s helping to ship make their way to the hospital in nearby Dearborn, where nurses treated her mother with compassion before she died of a stroke about a year ago. She knows they must be “going through hell” now because the Detroit area one of the national hotspots for the virus.

“When I compared that to taking maybe a small risk and going in and making respirators, I feel all right,” she said.

____

AP Video Journalist Mike Householder contributed to this report from Warren, Michigan. This story has been corrected to show that Cindy Parkhurt’s mother died about one year ago, not 15 years ago.

Brazil becoming coronavirus hot spot as testing falters

By DAVID BILLER, DIANE JEANTET AND LEO CORREA

1 of 13
A cemetery worker stands before the coffin containing the remains of Edenir Rezende Bessa, who is suspected to have died of COVID-19, as relatives attend her burial, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Wednesday, April 22, 2020. After visiting 3 primary care health units she was accepted in a hospital that treats new coronavirus cases, where she died on Tuesday. “People need to believe that this is serious, it kills", said her son Rodrigo Bessa who works at a hospital as nurse in the Espirito Santo state. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Cases of the new coronavirus are overwhelming hospitals, morgues and cemeteries across Brazil as Latin America’s largest nation veers closer to becoming one of the world’s pandemic hot spots.

Medical officials in Rio de Janeiro and at least four other major cities have warned that their hospital systems are on the verge of collapse, or already too overwhelmed to take any more patients.

Health experts expect the number of infections in the country of 211 million people will be much higher than what has been reported because of insufficient, delayed testing.

Meanwhile, President Jair Bolsonaro has shown no sign of wavering from his insistence that COVID-19 is a relatively minor disease and that broad social-distancing measures are not needed to stop it. He has said only Brazilians at high risk should be isolated.

In Manaus, the biggest city in the Amazon, officials said a cemetery has been forced to dig mass graves because there have been so many deaths. Workers have been burying 100 corpses a day — triple the pre-virus average of burials.

Ytalo Rodrigues, a 20-year-old driver for a funerary service provider in Manaus, said he had retrieved one body after another for more than 36 hours, without a break. There were so many deaths, his employer had to add a second hearse, Rodrigues said.

So far, the health ministry has confirmed nearly 53,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 3,600 deaths. By official counts, the country had its worst day yet on Thursday, with about 3,700 new cases and more than 400 deaths, and Friday was nearly as grim.

Experts warned that paltry testing means the true number of infections is far greater. And because it can take a long time for tests to be processed, the current numbers actually reflect deaths that happened one or two weeks ago, said Domingos Alves, adjunct professor of social medicine at the University of Sao Paulo, who is involved in the project.

“We are looking at a photo of the past,” Alves said in an interview last week. “The number of cases in Brazil is, therefore, probably even greater than what we are predicting.”

Scientists from the University of Sao Paulo, University of Brasilia and other institutions say the true number of people infected with the virus as of this week is probably as much as 587,000 to 1.1 million people.

The health ministry said in a report earlier this month that it has the capacity to test 6,700 people per day — a far cry from the roughly 40,000 it will need when the virus peaks.


“We should do many more tests than we’re doing, but the laboratory here is working at full steam,” said Keny Colares, an infectious disease specialist at the Hospital Sao Jose in northeastern Ceara state who has been advising state officials on the pandemic response.

Meanwhile, health care workers can barely handle the cases they have.

In Rio state, all but one of seven public hospitals equipped to treat COVID-19 are full and can only accept new patients once others have either recovered or died, according to the press office of the health secretariat. The sole facility with vacancy is located a two-hour drive from the capital’s center.

At the mouth of the Amazon, the city of Belem’s intensive-care beds are all occupied, according to online media outlet G1. As the number of cases rises in the capital of Para state, its health secretary said this week that at least 200 medical staff had been infected, and it is actively seeking to hire more doctors, G1 reported.

On Saturday, the city of Rio plans to open its first field hospital, with 200 beds, half reserved for intensive care. Another hospital erected beside the historic Maracana football stadium will offer 400 beds starting next month.

In Ceara’s capital, Fortaleza, state officials said Friday that intensive care units for COVID-19 patients were 92% full, after reaching capacity a week ago. Health experts and officials are particularly worried about the virus spreading into the poorest neighborhoods, or favelas, where people depend on public health care.

Edenir Bessa, a 65-year-old retiree from Rio’s working-class Mangueira favela, sought medical attention on April 20; she was turned away from two full urgent care units before gaining admission to a third located 40 kilometers (25 miles) away.

Hours later, she was transferred by ambulance almost all the way back, to the Ronaldo Gazzola hospital, according to her son, Rodrigo Bessa. Still, she died overnight, and he had to enter the hospital to identify her body.

“I saw a lot of bodies also suspected of (having) COVID-19 in the hospital’s basement,” said Bessa, a nurse at a hospital in another state.

The hospital released Edenir’s body with a diagnosis of suspected COVID-19, meaning that her death — like so many others — doesn’t figure into the government’s official tally. A small group of family members gathered for her burial on Wednesday, wearing face masks.

“People need to believe that this is serious, that it kills,” Bessa said.

Bolsonaro has continued to dismiss health officials’ dire predictions about the virus’s spread in the country. Last week, the president fired a health minister who had supported tough anti-virus measures and replaced him with an advocate for reopening the economy.

Bolsonaro’s stance largely echoes that of his counterpart and ally U.S. President Donald Trump, who has been stressing the need to put people back to work as unemployment figures reach Depression-era levels. Unlike Bolsonaro, however, Trump has moderated his skepticism about the virus.

The fight to reopen business “is a risk that I run,” Bolsonaro said at the swearing-in of his newly appointed health minister, Nelson Teich. If the pandemic escalates, Bolsonaro said, “it lands on my lap.”

Gaza factories roar back to life to make protective wear
By FARES AKRAM

In this Monday, March 30, 2020 file photo, Palestinians make protective overalls meant to shield people from the coronavirus, to be exported to Israel, at a local factory, in Gaza City. For the first time in years, some sewing factories in the Gaza Strip are back to working at full capacity — producing masks, gloves and protective gowns, some of which are bound for Israel.(AP Photo/Adel Hana, File)

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — For the first time in years, sewing factories in the Gaza Strip are back to working at full capacity — producing masks, gloves and protective gowns, some of which are bound for Israel.

It’s a rare economic lifeline in the coastal territory, which has been blockaded by Israel and Egypt since the Hamas militant group seized power from rival Palestinian forces in the strip in 2007. The blockade, and three wars between Hamas and Israel, have devastated the local economy, with unemployment hovering around 50%.

But the sudden opportunity also shows how Gaza’s economy is at the mercy of those enforcing the blockade — and how depressed wages have become. Workers earn as little as $8 a day.

So far, Gaza appears to have been largely spared from the coronavirus pandemic, with only 17 cases detected, all within quarantine facilities set up for those returning from abroad. Many still fear an outbreak in the impoverished territory, which is home to 2 million people and where the health care system has been battered by years of conflict. But for now, authorities are cautiously allowing most businesses to stay open.

Rizq al-Madhoun, owner of the Bahaa garment company, said he has produced more than 1 million masks in the past three weeks, “all for the Israeli market.”

Gaza may not have the advanced machinery seen in other places, but he said residents’ sewing skills are unmatched. “Gaza workers are distinguished in handiwork and they are better than workers in China or Turkey,” he said.


FILE- In this Monday, March 30, 2020 file photo, Palestinians make protective overalls meant to shield people from the coronavirus, to be exported to Israel, at a local factory, in Gaza City. For the first time in years, some sewing factories in the Gaza Strip are back to working at full capacity — producing masks, gloves and protective gowns, some of which are bound for Israel. (AP Photo/Adel Hana, File)
Another factory, Unipal 2000, is able to employ 800 workers across two shifts to produce protective equipment around the clock.

Both factories import fabric and other materials from customers in Israel and then produce items like masks, gloves and surgical gowns. Unipal makes about 150,000 pieces a day, and demand is high as countries around the world grapple with shortages.

Asked about doing business with Israeli customers, both factory owners said they did not want to discuss politics and framed their work in terms of business and humanitarian needs.

“Despite the siege in Gaza, we export these masks and protective clothes to the whole world without exception,” Bashir Bawab, the owner of Unipal 2000, said. “We feel we are doing a humanitarian duty.”

In recent years, Tamer Emad, a skilled textile worker, was able to work one week per month at best. But over the past month, he has been on the Unipal factory floor every day, earning around $8 per shift.

“This has provided us with a good opportunity ahead of Ramadan,” he said, referring to the Muslim holy month, which began Thursday, when families traditionally splurge on food and shopping.

Such wages are typical in the depressed Gazan economy, but would barely keep a family afloat. It costs around $250 a month to rent a two-bedroom apartment.

Omar Shaban, an economist who heads a local think tank, said the conditions created by the blockade allow for “exploitation,” but that low-wage jobs still provide income for many people.

Unipal 2000 first opened in an industrial zone along the frontier in 1998, when the peace process was in full swing. But like many other Gaza businesses, it was forced to shut down after the Hamas takeover and the blockade. Israel says the blockade is needed to prevent Hamas, an Islamic militant group that opposes Israel’s existence, from arming itself.

Israel began easing some restrictions after the 2014 Gaza war, and the factory reopened two years later. But by then most of its clients had found suppliers elsewhere, so it only operated intermittently.

Its fortunes could change again — especially if there is an outbreak.

Gisha, an Israeli group that advocates for easing the blockade on Gaza, appealed to Israeli leaders to do more to promote economic activity in the territory.

“The pandemic has created demand for these products,” it said. “But Israel must lift restrictions on trade entirely so that Gaza residents can work and so that Gaza’s faltering economy can brace itself as much as possible against the wider global crisis caused by the pandemic.”

The virus causes mild to moderate flu-like symptoms in most patients, who recover within a few weeks. But it is highly contagious and can cause severe illness or death, particularly in older patients or those with underlying conditions.

Israel has reported more than 14,800 cases and nearly 200 deaths. The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the occupied West Bank, has reported around 260 cases and two deaths. Both imposed strict lockdowns more than a month ago.

Elsewhere in Gaza, a startup has produced hundreds of medical face shields using 3D printers.
The Glia project, established by Tarek Loubani, a Palestinian physician based in Canada, has previously used 3D printers to produce inexpensive stethoscopes in the isolated territory. Last year it produced tourniquets for first responders to treat Palestinians shot and wounded by Israeli forces during weekly protests along the frontier.

“Because of the global shortages, we are trying to provide a resupply with alternatives from the local market,” said Mohammed Attar, of Glia team in Gaza.

The initiative currently produces 30 face shields a day and hopes to one day export them.

BELLA CIAO APRIL 25 RESISTANCE DAY ITALY

AP PHOTOS: Veterans honor Italy’s WWII uprising from home

By BEATRICE LARCO

THE OTHER 12 PICTURE BIOS HERE

A combo of 15 images showing fifteen former Italian partisans posing at their home in several Italian cities between Thursday, April 23, and Friday, April 24, 2020. On April 25 every year Italy celebrates the end of the Nazi occupation during WWII. The date is also the occasion for the members of the National Association of Italian Partisans to celebrate their uprising against the fascist rule of dictator Benito Mussolini, backed up by the Nazis, with marches throughout the country. The COVID-19 outbreak in Italy this year forced the cancellation of all the activities to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Italian Liberation Day. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini. Alessandra Tarantino, Luca Bruno, Antonio Calanni, Domenico Stinellis, Bruno Anastasi)

Former partisan Laura Wronowki, 96, poses at her window in Milan, Italy, Friday, April 24, 2020. On April 25 every year Italy celebrates the end of the Nazi occupation during WWII. The date is also the occasion for the members of the National Association of Italian Partisans to celebra Liberation Day. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni) On April 25 every year Italy celebrates the end of the Nazi occupation during WWII. The date is also the occasion for the members of the National Association of Italian Partisans to celebrate their uprising against the fascist rule of dictator Benito Mussolini, backed up by the Nazis, with marches throughout the country. The COVID-19 outbreak in Italy this year forced the cancellation te their uprising against the fascist rule of dictator Benito Mussolini, backed up by the Nazis, with marches throughout the country. The COVID-19 outbreak in Italy this year forced the cancellation of all the activities to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Italian of all the activities to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Italian Liberation Day.

Former partisan Teresa Vergalli, 93, nicknamed Annuska, holds a note reading in Italian "Resistance always, long live Aprile 25", as she poses at her window in Rome, Thursday, April 23, 2020. On April 25 every year Italy celebrates the end of the Nazi occupation during WWII. The date is also the occasion for the members of the National Association of Italian Partisans to celebrate their uprising against the fascist rule of dictator Benito Mussolini, backed up by the Nazis, with marches throughout the country. The COVID-19 outbreak in Italy this year forced the cancellation of all the activities to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Italian Liberation Day. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Former partisan Rodolfo Lai, 92, nicknamed Rudy, waves from his balcony in Rome, Thursday, April 23, 2020. On April 25 every year Italy celebrates the end of the Nazi occupation during WWII. The date is also the occasion for the members of the National Association of Italian Partisans to celebrate their uprising against the fascist rule of dictator Benito Mussolini, backed up by the Nazis, with marches throughout the country. The COVID-19 outbreak in Italy this year forced the cancellation of all the activities to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Italian Liberation Day. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)


ROME (AP) — Veterans of Italy’s anti-Fascist World War II resistance have held marches throughout Italy every April 25 since 1945, to honor the uprising that helped end their country’s Nazi occupation.

This year’s 75th anniversary was long anticipated among the dwindling band of elderly survivors. But lockdown measures in the coronavirus-afflicted country mean no marches can be held. So the veterans have resorted to the inventiveness they once employed in sabotage missions and guerrilla tactics against the Germans.

At 3 p.m. on Saturday, when the traditional parade would have started in Milan, where Italian Fascist ruler Benito Mussolini’s body was publicly displayed after his execution by resistance fighters, the National Association of Italian Partisans has invited all to sing “Bella Ciao,” the anthem of Italy’s communist resistance, a major component of the liberation efforts.

On the eve of the anniversary, Associated Press photographers portrayed 15 former partisans at their balconies and windows in several Italian cities. Two display their arrays of medals, most drape the tricolored Italian flag around their necks.

Rodolfo Lai, 92, who, aged 15, killed a German paratrooper with a hand grenade to protect an escaping Italian officer, lamented the cancellation of the marches.

“Never we would have imagined that after 75 years of our resistance against a visible enemy ... today we would have found ourselves resisting an enemy ... invisible and insidious,” Lai said from his Rome apartment, referring to the novel coronavirus.

Silvio Anastasi, 88, said life during the war “was much easier for me. The shrewdness, courage and tactical skills we used against the Nazi-Fascists are of no help today in fighting the coronavirus. I feel helpless.”

Elderly people are considered among the most vulnerable for potentially fatal complications of COVID-19.

When Umberto Graziani, 96, was asked how he will celebrate this year, he sounded resigned: “Nothing, no march, I’ll stay home, how sad.”

FEMA field hospitals expand Navajo Nation's COVID-19 response

Care on the Navajo Nation has been expanded with recovery centers built by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA as the COVID-19 pandemic sickens more reservation residents. Photo via FB Live, courtesy of the Navajo Nation.
DENVER, April 24 (UPI) -- Expecting the cases of COVID-19 on the Navajo Nation to peak in mid-May, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Federal Emergency Management Agency are constructing three reservation field hospitals to be used as alternative care sites, the tribe said Friday.

"COVID-positive patients will be kept here isolated so they can recover here and then go home," said the nation's President Jonathan Nez said in a live video feed from the Miyamura High School gymnasium in Gallop, N.M., which had been converted into a 60-bed recovery center.

"It looks nice, but believe me, you don't want to end up here, you don't want to be away from your family for a long time. ... We're preparing for a worst-case scenario," Nez said.

Two other care sites are being built in Chinle, Ariz., and Shiprock, N.M., Nez said.

RELATED Navajo Nation extends shelter-in-place order for COVID-19 outbreak

The reservation, with a population of around 175,000 people, has been a national hotspot for reported positive cases of the coronavirus. Its an infection rate is higher than any state except New York and New Jersey, according to state health care department statistics.

The Navajo Epidemiology Center has reported 78 new cases confirmed positive cases since Wednesday, reaching a total of 1,360.

Fifty-two deaths on the reservation have been attributed to the virus, and about 7,500 tests have been completed. The average age of positive virus patients was 43, and the average age of death was 65, the health agency said.

RELATED Navajo leaders self-quarantine after COVID-19 exposure

As the reservation prepares for a third weekend curfew and stay-at-home orders, the tribal government on Thursday organized a drive-through distribution of care packages, food supplies and firewood to about 250 remote reservation residents in Jeddito, Ariz.

The Window Rock, Ariz.,-based Navajo Times newspaper has published a list of resources and non-profit groups that were providing emergency relief to tribal members.

The Navajo Nation, about the size of the state of West Virginia, has only 13 grocery stores, and about 30 percent of residents lack running water or electricity.

RELATED Solar-powered cisterns bring running water to Navajo homes

The Hopi Nation, located within the Navajo Nation, has three villages with no running water, Cassandra Begay, communications director for the non-profit Navajo & Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund, said in a video.

The group has delivered 1,500 food baskets across the two reservations and is coordinating volunteers to sew masks for residents, especially the elderly.

"In many homes on the reservation, there are multi-generational families that live there," Jessica Stago, who coordinates water for the relief effort, said in a statement. "The virus is attacking this important family unit by spreading among entire families who cannot isolate from each other," she said.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the Navajo Nation joined a multi-tribe lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that asks the U.S. Treasury Department to exclude 230 Alaska Native corporations from the $8 billion in federal COVID-19 relief of CARES Act funds.

Three Sioux tribes, the Cheyenne River, Oglala and Rosebud Sioux, and others, including three Alaskan native tribes, say the corporations are for-profit entities, owned by shareholders, many of them non-Indian.

"Allocating funds from the Coronavirus Relief Fund to the Alaska Native corporations will severely impact the Navajo Nation's ability to fight COVID-19, and will impact every other tribe, as well," Navajo President Nez said in a statement.

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=NAVAJO

Tribes prepare hemp, CBD strategies after USDA approval

The U.S. Department of Agriculture approved an industrial hemp plan for the Sac & Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa, which has incorporated new hemp and CBD companies. Photo courtesy of Sac & Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa

DENVER, April 24 (UPI) -- Newly approved federal plans for tribal industrial hemp production are giving U.S. sovereign nations a competitive advantage in growing the plant and selling CBD, the tribes say.

As U.S. farmers rush to plant industrial hemp after 80 years of prohibition, tribal sovereign governments find they have an advantage because they can cut through red tape and become the first entrepreneurs in state markets to offer their own CBD and hemp products.




"The tribe is very excited about hemp," said Joseph VanGorp, hemp operations director for the Sac & Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa. "It's been a long time coming."

The 2018 Farm Bill allowed tribes to apply directly for approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for hemp programs. USDA has approved 20 tribal nations' plans, with 18 more under review or in drafting stages.

As sovereign nations, tribes can craft their own hemp plans, and tribal hemp companies do not have to be licensed by the agriculture departments of states in which they are situated.

Tribal-owned hemp operations can potentially bring new revenue into the tribal coffers to pay for member social services.

In Tama, Iowa, the 7,000-acre sovereign Sac & Fox Tribe, or Meskwaki Nation, can use its sovereign jurisdiction to regulate the CBD that the tribe will produce, hemp director VanGorp said.

Iowa has some of the most restrictive laws for CBD, which can only be sold with a doctor's prescription, according to the state attorney general. The tribe will sell its own CBD at its truck stop in Tama and through wholesalers. It already sells tobacco and vaping products.

"CBD is difficult to obtain in Iowa," VanGorp said. "It will be a lot easier for people to just come to Tama and choose what they want to buy."

VanGorp, who formerly worked in Colorado as a chemist in CBD extraction, said the tribe also plans to open an extraction facility -- the first in the state.

RELATED Navajo Nation positive COVID-19 cases, deaths continue to rise

After hemp was allowed again in the 2018 Farm Bill, the Iowa Department of Agriculture approved a hemp plan for 2020 and some farmers are obtaining licenses. But no processing facilities have been approved in the state.

Iowa had a rich history of industrial hemp production before the plant was federally prohibited. "There were about 11 processing plants for hemp in the state in the 1940s," VanGorp said.

In New York's Cayuga Nation, the new hemp program this year will get a jump on other New York farmers, said Clint Halftown, the tribe's federal representative.

New York does not yet appear on the USDA's list of state-approved plans, although Gov. Andrew Cuomo approved hemp regulations in December 2019. As a result, hemp-growing still must be coordinated through a university pilot program.

Approved hemp programs for Cayuga Nation, and the affiliated Seneca Nation, will have more flexibility to grow hemp and market their own CBD products, tribal leader Halftown said.

The tribe, which grows vegetables and soybeans and raises cattle near Seneca Falls, N.Y., plans to plant hemp this spring.

"Our nation-owned and operated hemp program and our own line of CBD will stimulate another avenue revenue source for the community," Halftown said.

The USDA last week also approved a hemp plan for the Montana-based Blackfeet Nation. The tribe belongs to the Blackfoot Confederacy, a family of tribes on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border.

Canadian farmers have been growing hemp for seed and fiber for more than 20 years, and some Canadian sovereign nations began to grow cannabis last year. Canada legalized recreational marijuana in 2018.

Flight attendants union: Halt leisure travel until coronavirus contained

Grounded commercial aircraft are stored at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, Calif., on Wednesday. All U.S. carriers have cut most flights and parked aircraft during the coronavirus emergency. Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

April 24 (UPI) -- The head of a large flight attendants union has called on the Trump administration to end all non-essential flights until the coronavirus has been contained to stop the spread and protect its tens of thousands of members.

In a letter Thursday, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA urged the U.S. Departments of Transportation and Health and Human Services to bar all leisure travel until the virus is contained.

"We call on lawmakers and regulators to take further action to limit the spread of the virus by restricting air travel to only that necessary to continue essential services," AFA International President Sara Nelson wrote in the four-page letter, addressed to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and HHS Secretary Alex Azar.

"While this global system is integral to our modern economy, its essential inter-connectedness also provides a convenient pathway for opportunistic pathogens to hitch rides on unsuspecting crewmembers and travelers and spread all over the world.

"As some of the most frequent travelers, flight attendants feel a deep responsibility to ensure that our workplace risks of acquiring and spreading communicable diseases are minimized as much as possible."

Nelson said flight attendants have been on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic and have been "hit hard" as at least 250 of the union's 50,000 members at 20 carriers have so far tested positive for the virus, and some have died.

"The scars run deep," she added. "Recent media reports document the guilt felt by those who question if we are helping to spread the virus, feelings of fear and grief as coworkers die and wonder about when this will all be over."

The letter calls for the departments to mandate the use of masks by crew, employees and passengers on airplanes and in airports, as well as require employers to provide workers with personal protective equipment.

"We believe that ... ensuring air travel is not aiding in spread of the virus requires a halt to all leisure travel until the pandemic is brought under control according to health authorities," it concludes. " In addition, we request messaging from all leadership to encourage the public to end leisure travel until we have 'flattened the curve.'"

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Protest at Slovenian care homes over government 'neglect'

AFP: 24/04/2020
 

Employees at the care home in Domzale staged their protest to demand better conditions while accusing the government of neglecting the elderly Jure Makovec AFP

Domžale (Slovenia) (AFP)

Hundreds of employees from care homes in Slovenia protested on Friday over what they say is government neglect of the elderly and demanded more support to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

The scene at one care home in the town of Domzale, ten kilometres (six miles) north of the capital Ljubljana, was repeated at dozens of sites across the country as care staff came out for around 15 minutes to articulate their grievances with the government.

One of the employees at the home read out a statement from the Slovenian Care Homes' Association stating: "We will not remain silent while (the authorities), using the coronavirus as a cover, try to transform care homes into cheap nursing hospitals".

The statement added care homes in Slovenia had entered the epidemic unprepared and with all their accommodation at full capacity while being understaffed and left to cope with the coronavirus by themselves.

Shortly after Slovenia declared an epidemic in mid-March, a new centre-right government was appointed which moved to implemente a strict lockdown.

The country has been successful in curbing the spread of the infection overall but a number of care homes have been severely hit.

According to the latest available figures, as of April 19 care home residents represented 58 out of the 80 coronavirus patients who have died in Slovenia.

Friday's protest -- backed by over 70 care homes all over Slovenia -- was called to demand a clearer protocol for dealing with infections, including the hospitalisation of all elderly care home residents who test positive for the novel coronavirus.

The health ministry said the protest was "politically" motivated and added the removal of all care home residents infected with coronavirus would be "debatable from an ethical and moral point of view".

The protest comes a day after the public RTV Slovenija TV station ran a report accusing Economy Minister Zdravko Pocivalsek of wrongdoing and abuse of power in relation to the acquisition of masks and protective equipment for hospitals and care homes.

Pocivalsek has rejected the allegations, insisting that he acted in the best interests of the state and to bridge the initial lack of protective equipment.

© 2020 AFP

Transgender players kick down doors in Argentina football



Issued on: 24/04/2020 - 23:34Modified: 24/04/2020 - 23:32

Mara Gomez trains with her team Villa San Carlos in La Plata, Argentina, on February 14, 2020 JUAN MABROMATA AFP

La Plata (Argentina) (AFP)

Out on the pitch, they finally can feel like themselves.

In addition to the sheer joy that football brings them, Mara Gomez and Marcos Rojo have the extra satisfaction of knowing that after a long and difficult journey, they are blazing a trail for transgender players in Argentina.

Tall, slim and with her hair tied back in a ponytail, Gomez plays for the team of Villa San Carlos in La Plata, 60 kilometers (40 miles) south of Buenos Aires.

At 23, she aims to become the first transgender player in the new women's professional league in her native country.

"I suffered a lot from discrimination, exclusion, verbal abuse in the street and in school. Football was like therapy for me," Gomez told AFP.

She started playing at 15, encouraged by neighbors.

In the women's league in La Plata, Gomez distinguished herself as a leading goal scorer in the past two seasons.

That prompted Villa San Carlos, in last place in the women's professional league, to seek to recruit her.

"She's quick and is very good at kicking on target," said trainer Juan Cruz Vitale.

"Unlike what people and the media were thinking, she isn't that strong. I have a number of girls who are stronger and even though she's fast, I have girls who are faster," he noted.

But Vitale added: "She's smart and learns quickly. And she gets goals, which is what we were lacking."

The club is in the process of submitting its application to the Argentine Football Association to sign Gomez up, once the current coronavirus lockdown ends.

"There is a law on gender identity that they can't get around. We are convinced she is going to be a star," the coach said.

Argentina led Latin America by passing a gender identity law in 2012, which allowed Gomez to officially change her gender on her national identity card when she turned 18.

"I am very happy to know that as a society we are doing a little more, we are opening up minds," she said as she contemplated the prospect of becoming a professional player in a country that has produced some of the world's best footballers, including Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi.

- 'Playing with the men' -

Rojo, 20, started playing this year as a center forward with the club Union del Suburbio in Gualeguaychu in the northeast of the country, the first time he has played on a men's team.

Two years ago, he changed his name and gender on his national identity card, and the team had no qualms about signing him.

The league in the province of Entre Rios will issue his membership as soon as footballing activities restart.

In Rojo's living room hangs a picture of him at his 15th birthday party, when he still officially identified as a girl. His family has given him its full support during his transition.

"I wanted to make the change in my official papers because I had always wanted to play with the men. Since I was little, I felt like I was one of them," Rojo said.

"Football was a big step for me because it was the thing I was always looking for, what I wanted," he said. "The support of a team for this change means a lot."

Rojo said men's football is "much more demanding."

"The boys are all good kickers. For me, it will be a huge achievement if I manage to play in the premier division at some point."

- 'Right to play' -

Sebastian Rajoy, Union del Suburbio's president, said that "everyone has the right to play sports."

"Clubs on the margins are the ones offering the opportunity. Someone has to take the first step, and in this case it is us," he said.

In this early stage of incorporating transgender players, Gomez and Rojo are aware they could be asked to submit to a hormone test before they are fully accepted into the leagues.

"The discussion is linked to the dilemma between biology and respect for people's rights," said Ayelen Pujol, a specialist in gender identity in sports.

© 2020 AFP