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.