Saturday, April 25, 2020
Companies give Yemen tens of thousands of coronavirus test kits to ease shortage
DUBAI (Reuters) - A group of multinational companies said on Wednesday it was donating tens of thousands of coronavirus testing kits and medical equipment to Yemen, where a five-year war has destroyed the health system and left millions vulnerable to disease.
Yemen, which has very limited testing capabilities, has reported only one laboratory-confirmed case of the novel coronavirus, announced on April 10. The United Nations and aid groups have warned of a catastrophic outbreak should the disease spread among an acutely malnourished population.
The International Initiative on COVID-19 in Yemen (IICY) said in a statement that its first 34-tonne shipment would reach Yemen next week and contained 49,000 virus collection kits, 20,000 rapid test kits, five centrifuges and equipment that would enable 85,000 tests, and 24,000 COVID-1
9 nucleic acid test kits.IICY was founded by the charity arm of multinational Yemeni family conglomerate Hayel Saeed Anam (HSA), Tetra Pak, Unilever, the World Bank-backed Yemen Private Sector Cluster, and the Federation of Yemen Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
It is working with the United Nations which will distribute the donated equipment, including 225 ventilators and more than half a million masks. HSA is providing the first shipment, the statement said.
Up to now Yemen has had the capacity to test only a few thousand people, provided by the World Health Organisation. The country also faces a shortage of ventilators and protective clothing.
“Yemen’s healthcare infrastructure will not be able to cope with the pressure placed on the system by COVID-19. We all fear that the result will be a major loss of life,” said IICY Chairman Nabil Hayel Saeed Anam, urging other private sector companies to join their initiative.
Around 80% of Yemen’s population, or 24 million people, requires humanitarian aid and millions are on the verge of starvation. Only half the Arabian Peninsula country’s medical facilities are functional and struggle to deal with other outbreaks such as cholera and dengue fever.
(This story refiles to add dropped phrase “in Yemen” to foundation name in paragraph 3)
Fear of coronavirus haunts Egypt's cramped jails
AMERICAN STUDENT PROTESTED ARRESTED A YEAR AGO NOW A PRISONER REMAINS IN JAIL A POTENTIAL DEATH ROW BUT NOT A WORD OUT OF POMPEO, TRUMP OR THE KARDASHIANS
CAIRO (Reuters) - Last April, medical student Mohamed Amashah stood on Cairo’s Tahrir Square and held up a sign saying “Freedom for prisoners”. He was detained.
FILE PHOTO: A handout picture shows Egyptian-American medical student Mohamed Amashah posing for a photo in New York, U.S. January 10, 2017. Handout via REUTERS
Now awaiting trial for more than a year on charges of misusing social media and helping a terrorist group, the Egyptian-American fears the spread of the coronavirus in Egypt’s crowded jails.
Last month Amashah, who suffers from an autoimmune disease and asthma, started a hunger strike to draw attention to his plight, his parents said.
He is one of 114,000 prisoners in Egypt, according to a recent U.N. estimate.
Egypt, which has a population of 100 million, has reported 3,490 cases of the new coronavirus, including 264 deaths.
Top officials have expressed confidence they can contain the outbreak through measures including quarantine, a night curfew in place since March 25, and public information campaigns.
But since the country’s first case on Feb. 14, relatives and rights groups have called for the release of detainees, including political prisoners swept up in a crackdown on dissent under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Some rights groups, lawyers, and current and former prisoners say inmates are often kept in cramped, dirty cells and lack running water, adequate ventilation and healthcare: conditions ripe for the rapid transmission of disease.
While countries including Iran, Germany and Canada have freed prisoners in an effort to contain the coronavirus epidemic, Egypt has given no public sign it will do so.
The government press centre forwarded to Reuters an Interior Ministry statement on Thursday saying that it was taking all necessary preventative and protective measures for prison staff, ensuring cleaning, healthcare and testing inside places of detention.
The government also suspended family visits to prisons on March 10 to limit risk of infection, though some families say the measure makes it harder for them to deliver supplies including soap and medicine.
The interior ministry said it allowed for prisoners’ belongings to be brought in, and the exchange of messages.
In November, authorities organised tightly supervised tours of Cairo’s sprawling Tora prison complex, where former President Mohamed Mursi collapsed and died in a prison courtroom last year, and where Amashah is held.
The tours followed a report by U.N. experts that said that poor prison conditions may have led directly to Mursi’s death and was putting thousands more at severe risk.
PRISON PROTEST
A hunger strike started on several wards at Tora in late February in protest at poor conditions, a lack of information about the new coronavirus and a failure to disinfect cells, said a human rights lawyer in contact with inmates.
The lawyer added that the hunger strike had ended after about a week when prison officials began letting in more medicine, clothes and letters.
An Interior Ministry spokesman did not respond to phone calls or Whatsapp messages asking for comment on the lawyer’s account.
Amashah continued his protest and was moved to the prison hospital, his father Abdel-Megeed told Reuters, saying he feared his son could suffer the same fate as Moustafa Kassem, an Egyptian-American who died in prison in Egypt in January after staging a liquid-only hunger strike.
“Will they leave him until he dies? I know nothing about him, I am unable to even talk to him to tell him to stop,” said Amashah’s mother, Naglaa Abdel Fattah. The Interior Ministry spokesman could not be reached for comment on Amashah’s case.
The U.S. embassy in Cairo declined to comment directly on Amashah, but said it had requested permission to speak with an unspecified number of incarcerated American citizens by phone until visits resumed.
On April 10, a group of bipartisan U.S. senators sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asking him to call for the release of U.S. prisoners, citing the risk from the new coronavirus. The letter mentioned Amashah and 14 other prisoners including two more in Egypt and others in countries including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria.
The U.S. State Department declined to comment on the letter specifically. David Schenker, Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, said in February that detained Americans came up “with some frequency” in dialogue with Egypt.
‘STATE OF PANIC’
Alaa Abdel Fattah, a leading activist in Egypt’s 2011 uprising held in remand detention at Tora on charges including spreading false news, belonging to a terrorist organisation and misusing social media, also started a hunger strike on April 13, his relatives said.
“While Egypt enters its third week of curfew, family members on both sides of the prison walls are being kept in a state of panic,” they said in a statement.
The Interior Ministry did not respond to a request for comment on Abdel Fattah’s situation.
Abdel Fattah’s mother, sister and aunt were briefly detained last month after staging a rare public protest to highlight the risk of the coronavirus in prisons.
Rights researchers fear guards could bring the virus to prisons and said there had been several suspected cases in Tora and at Wadi al-Natroun prison, northwest of Cairo.
Reuters was unable to confirm independently whether any prisoners had tested positive. Two prison sector sources said 14 suspected cases in three prisons had all tested negative.
Conditions at prisons vary.One detainee contacted by Reuters said he feared the spread of the virus because physical distancing was impossible at his Cairo prison, where the 15 inmates in his cell each had about 0.5 square metres (5.3 square feet) - not an unusual level of overcrowding, according to researchers.
The International Committee of the Red Cross recommends minimum accommodation space globally of 3.4 metres squared (36.6 square feet) for each detainee.
In March, as Egypt began to see its first clusters of cases, information about the illness inside prisons was restricted, the detainee and a recently released detainee said.
At police stations, where men rounded up for breaching the night curfew or the closure of mosques have been held overnight before being fined and released, overcrowding can be worse than in prison, said the former detainee, who was required to report to a Cairo police station once a week.
Reporting by Cairo bureau; Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Washington; Editing by Mike Collett-White
AMERICAN STUDENT PROTESTED ARRESTED A YEAR AGO NOW A PRISONER REMAINS IN JAIL A POTENTIAL DEATH ROW BUT NOT A WORD OUT OF POMPEO, TRUMP OR THE KARDASHIANS
CAIRO (Reuters) - Last April, medical student Mohamed Amashah stood on Cairo’s Tahrir Square and held up a sign saying “Freedom for prisoners”. He was detained.
FILE PHOTO: A handout picture shows Egyptian-American medical student Mohamed Amashah posing for a photo in New York, U.S. January 10, 2017. Handout via REUTERS
Now awaiting trial for more than a year on charges of misusing social media and helping a terrorist group, the Egyptian-American fears the spread of the coronavirus in Egypt’s crowded jails.
Last month Amashah, who suffers from an autoimmune disease and asthma, started a hunger strike to draw attention to his plight, his parents said.
He is one of 114,000 prisoners in Egypt, according to a recent U.N. estimate.
Egypt, which has a population of 100 million, has reported 3,490 cases of the new coronavirus, including 264 deaths.
Top officials have expressed confidence they can contain the outbreak through measures including quarantine, a night curfew in place since March 25, and public information campaigns.
But since the country’s first case on Feb. 14, relatives and rights groups have called for the release of detainees, including political prisoners swept up in a crackdown on dissent under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Some rights groups, lawyers, and current and former prisoners say inmates are often kept in cramped, dirty cells and lack running water, adequate ventilation and healthcare: conditions ripe for the rapid transmission of disease.
While countries including Iran, Germany and Canada have freed prisoners in an effort to contain the coronavirus epidemic, Egypt has given no public sign it will do so.
The government press centre forwarded to Reuters an Interior Ministry statement on Thursday saying that it was taking all necessary preventative and protective measures for prison staff, ensuring cleaning, healthcare and testing inside places of detention.
The government also suspended family visits to prisons on March 10 to limit risk of infection, though some families say the measure makes it harder for them to deliver supplies including soap and medicine.
The interior ministry said it allowed for prisoners’ belongings to be brought in, and the exchange of messages.
In November, authorities organised tightly supervised tours of Cairo’s sprawling Tora prison complex, where former President Mohamed Mursi collapsed and died in a prison courtroom last year, and where Amashah is held.
The tours followed a report by U.N. experts that said that poor prison conditions may have led directly to Mursi’s death and was putting thousands more at severe risk.
PRISON PROTEST
A hunger strike started on several wards at Tora in late February in protest at poor conditions, a lack of information about the new coronavirus and a failure to disinfect cells, said a human rights lawyer in contact with inmates.
The lawyer added that the hunger strike had ended after about a week when prison officials began letting in more medicine, clothes and letters.
An Interior Ministry spokesman did not respond to phone calls or Whatsapp messages asking for comment on the lawyer’s account.
Amashah continued his protest and was moved to the prison hospital, his father Abdel-Megeed told Reuters, saying he feared his son could suffer the same fate as Moustafa Kassem, an Egyptian-American who died in prison in Egypt in January after staging a liquid-only hunger strike.
“Will they leave him until he dies? I know nothing about him, I am unable to even talk to him to tell him to stop,” said Amashah’s mother, Naglaa Abdel Fattah. The Interior Ministry spokesman could not be reached for comment on Amashah’s case.
The U.S. embassy in Cairo declined to comment directly on Amashah, but said it had requested permission to speak with an unspecified number of incarcerated American citizens by phone until visits resumed.
On April 10, a group of bipartisan U.S. senators sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asking him to call for the release of U.S. prisoners, citing the risk from the new coronavirus. The letter mentioned Amashah and 14 other prisoners including two more in Egypt and others in countries including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria.
The U.S. State Department declined to comment on the letter specifically. David Schenker, Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, said in February that detained Americans came up “with some frequency” in dialogue with Egypt.
‘STATE OF PANIC’
Alaa Abdel Fattah, a leading activist in Egypt’s 2011 uprising held in remand detention at Tora on charges including spreading false news, belonging to a terrorist organisation and misusing social media, also started a hunger strike on April 13, his relatives said.
“While Egypt enters its third week of curfew, family members on both sides of the prison walls are being kept in a state of panic,” they said in a statement.
The Interior Ministry did not respond to a request for comment on Abdel Fattah’s situation.
Abdel Fattah’s mother, sister and aunt were briefly detained last month after staging a rare public protest to highlight the risk of the coronavirus in prisons.
Rights researchers fear guards could bring the virus to prisons and said there had been several suspected cases in Tora and at Wadi al-Natroun prison, northwest of Cairo.
Reuters was unable to confirm independently whether any prisoners had tested positive. Two prison sector sources said 14 suspected cases in three prisons had all tested negative.
Conditions at prisons vary.One detainee contacted by Reuters said he feared the spread of the virus because physical distancing was impossible at his Cairo prison, where the 15 inmates in his cell each had about 0.5 square metres (5.3 square feet) - not an unusual level of overcrowding, according to researchers.
The International Committee of the Red Cross recommends minimum accommodation space globally of 3.4 metres squared (36.6 square feet) for each detainee.
In March, as Egypt began to see its first clusters of cases, information about the illness inside prisons was restricted, the detainee and a recently released detainee said.
At police stations, where men rounded up for breaching the night curfew or the closure of mosques have been held overnight before being fined and released, overcrowding can be worse than in prison, said the former detainee, who was required to report to a Cairo police station once a week.
Reporting by Cairo bureau; Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Washington; Editing by Mike Collett-White
Trump officials eye blocking uranium from Russia, China to help U.S. nuclear industry
Timothy Gardner APRIL 23, 2020 REUTERS
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Trump administration officials on Thursday recommended granting U.S. energy regulators the ability to block imports of nuclear fuel from Russia and China and detailed plans for setting up a government stockpile of uranium sourced from domestic miners.
FILE PHOTO: One of the two now closed reactors of the San Onofre nuclear generating station is shown at the nuclear power plant located south of San Clemente, California, U.S., December 5, 2019. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo
The recommendations are meant to address growing concern in Washington that the United States has ceded its global leadership in nuclear technology in recent decades, and to boost domestic nuclear power producers and uranium miners suffering from a lack of investment.
Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette told reporters on a call that the report from the Nuclear Fuel Working Group was a “road map for what we think needs to be done to not only revitalize but re-establish American leadership in this entire industry.”
President Donald Trump created the working group last July after rejecting a request by two U.S. uranium mining companies, Energy Fuels Inc [UUUU.A] and Ur-Energy Inc [URG.A], seeking quotas for domestic uranium production to protect them against foreign competition.
The report recommended enabling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to deny imports of certain uranium supplies from Russia and China for national security purposes.
It also recommended that the Commerce Department extend the Russian Suspension Agreement, which established a maximum cap for imports of Russian uranium to 20% of the U.S. market, “to protect against future uranium dumping.” It suggested “further lowering the cap” on Russian imports in the agreement, which expires this year.
The report mentioned TVEL, a unit of Russian state-owned Rosatom, which launched a project in 2008 to develop replacement fuel for reactors using U.S. technology abroad and in the United States. That project is on hold, but would pose a risk to the U.S. nuclear industry if revived, it said.
The report also recommended the U.S. government set up a uranium reserve allowing it to make direct purchases of uranium from domestic producers. Trump’s budget released in February proposed $1.5 billion over 10 years for the creation of a uranium reserve, but Congress has yet to act on it.
Brouillette said it was possible Trump would issue executive orders to support the findings of the report, which also sought to boost research and development of new reactor technologies, and streamline permitting for uranium mining.
NATIONAL TREASURES
America Fitzpatrick, a senior representative of The Wilderness Society environmental group, said her organization opposed efforts to bolster the U.S. nuclear industry and worried that it would increase mining near national parks.
“Enriching special interests with taxpayer resources so they can plunder national treasures like Bears Ears and the Grand Canyon will harm our land, water and public health,” she said.
SEE
Trump officials pitch nuclear plan that would bolster struggling uranium industry THE HILL - 04/23/20
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/04/trump-officials-pitch-nuclear-plan-that.html
Cleanup of US nuclear waste takes back seat as virus spreads
Friday, April 10, 2020
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/04/cleanup-of-us-nuclear-waste-takes-back.html
Timothy Gardner APRIL 23, 2020 REUTERS
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Trump administration officials on Thursday recommended granting U.S. energy regulators the ability to block imports of nuclear fuel from Russia and China and detailed plans for setting up a government stockpile of uranium sourced from domestic miners.
FILE PHOTO: One of the two now closed reactors of the San Onofre nuclear generating station is shown at the nuclear power plant located south of San Clemente, California, U.S., December 5, 2019. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo
The recommendations are meant to address growing concern in Washington that the United States has ceded its global leadership in nuclear technology in recent decades, and to boost domestic nuclear power producers and uranium miners suffering from a lack of investment.
Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette told reporters on a call that the report from the Nuclear Fuel Working Group was a “road map for what we think needs to be done to not only revitalize but re-establish American leadership in this entire industry.”
President Donald Trump created the working group last July after rejecting a request by two U.S. uranium mining companies, Energy Fuels Inc [UUUU.A] and Ur-Energy Inc [URG.A], seeking quotas for domestic uranium production to protect them against foreign competition.
The report recommended enabling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to deny imports of certain uranium supplies from Russia and China for national security purposes.
It also recommended that the Commerce Department extend the Russian Suspension Agreement, which established a maximum cap for imports of Russian uranium to 20% of the U.S. market, “to protect against future uranium dumping.” It suggested “further lowering the cap” on Russian imports in the agreement, which expires this year.
The report mentioned TVEL, a unit of Russian state-owned Rosatom, which launched a project in 2008 to develop replacement fuel for reactors using U.S. technology abroad and in the United States. That project is on hold, but would pose a risk to the U.S. nuclear industry if revived, it said.
The report also recommended the U.S. government set up a uranium reserve allowing it to make direct purchases of uranium from domestic producers. Trump’s budget released in February proposed $1.5 billion over 10 years for the creation of a uranium reserve, but Congress has yet to act on it.
Brouillette said it was possible Trump would issue executive orders to support the findings of the report, which also sought to boost research and development of new reactor technologies, and streamline permitting for uranium mining.
NATIONAL TREASURES
America Fitzpatrick, a senior representative of The Wilderness Society environmental group, said her organization opposed efforts to bolster the U.S. nuclear industry and worried that it would increase mining near national parks.
“Enriching special interests with taxpayer resources so they can plunder national treasures like Bears Ears and the Grand Canyon will harm our land, water and public health,” she said.
Energy Fuels Inc and Ur-Energy Inc, as well as more than two dozen Western state lawmakers, have argued that U.S. nuclear generators rely too heavily on foreign suppliers, including Russia, China and Kazakhstan. Canada has also long been a top supplier of uranium to the United States.
Maria Korsnick, chief executive of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s lobby group, thanked “the administration for its support to revitalize and bolster” the sector.
The U.S. nuclear energy industry is virtually emissions-free but suffering from high safety costs and low prices for natural gas, a competitor in generating power. Since 2013, about nine nuclear plants have closed, and eight are scheduled to close in coming years.
Maria Korsnick, chief executive of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s lobby group, thanked “the administration for its support to revitalize and bolster” the sector.
The U.S. nuclear energy industry is virtually emissions-free but suffering from high safety costs and low prices for natural gas, a competitor in generating power. Since 2013, about nine nuclear plants have closed, and eight are scheduled to close in coming years.
SEE
Trump officials pitch nuclear plan that would bolster struggling uranium industry THE HILL - 04/23/20
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/04/trump-officials-pitch-nuclear-plan-that.html
Cleanup of US nuclear waste takes back seat as virus spreads
Friday, April 10, 2020
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/04/cleanup-of-us-nuclear-waste-takes-back.html
Masks reused and bodies mount as Peru strains under coronavirus
Marco Aquino APRIL 22, 2020
LIMA (Reuters) - Peru’s hospitals are straining to deal with a rapid rise in the number of COVID-19 infections, with bodies being kept in hallways, masks being repeatedly reused, and protests breaking out amongst medical workers concerned over their safety.
FILE PHOTO: A health worker holding a sign reading "Enough indolence, change of director" protests the lack of proper medical supplies outside of Maria Auxiliadora hospital amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Lima, Peru April 20, 2020. REUTERS/Sebastian Castaneda
Peru has the second highest number of cases in South America after Brazil, despite a tough lockdown aimed at halting the spread of the coronavirus.
Confirmed numbers have risen sharply in recent days, passing 17,000 on Tuesday, double the figure from just one week ago. Almost 500 people have died.
“We as a hospital have a capacity for only six bodies,” Deisy Aguirre, leader of the nurses union at the Maria Auxiliadora hospital in Lima, told Reuters outside the hospital on Monday.
“Daily we have been seeing 13 to 16 bodies crowded on the first floor.”
The health ministry says it expects patient numbers to peak within days or in the following week.
On Monday, dozens of health workers protested in front of the Maria Auxiliadora hospital, holding banners decrying a lack of protective equipment such as masks.
A doctor at the protest who declined to give his name provided video showing at least four dead bodies covered in white or black covers in a hospital corridor.
Susana Oshiro, the hospital’s director, told Reuters that at some point the number of dead had exceeded the capacity of the hospital as there was only space for six bodies in the mortuary.
“We have now contracted a freezer, a refrigerated container to store the bodies while they come to collect them for cremation,” she said. The 100-body freezer has been in operation since Monday, she added.
Even the cremation of remains has become an issue, with Lima’s six crematoriums already exceeding capacity.
Edgar González, head of Lima’s Santa Rosa crematorium, told Reuters by telephone that before the pandemic they cremated 10 bodies a day and now they are cremating up to 30.
RECYCLED MASKS
Peru reported its first case of coronavirus on March 6 and it took 25 days to add 1,000 infections. Fourteen days later it reached 10,000 cases, official data show.
The government has also been gradually increasing the amount of tests, which totaled over 155,000 as of Tuesday, one of the highest levels in the region.
In Latin America, only Brazil has more confirmed cases, with over 40,000. Chile is third, with over 10,000.
Rosmini Ayquipa, another nurse from the María Auxiliadora hospital, told Reuters workers had had to wear the same masks for several days due to a shortage.
“We have to use three masks throughout the month, so we re-use and re-use it and what has happened? Where I work, colleagues have caught the disease,” she said.
Oshiro, the hospital director, said the complaint related to N95 type masks, which she said everyone wanted to use but which were only given to personnel involved in the treatment of COVID-19 patients. Everyone else has surgical masks, she said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says limited re-use of masks is generally acceptable, though not all types of masks can be reused and they should be discarded when “soiled, damaged, or hard to breathe through.”
Reuters could not confirm how many workers had become sick at the María Auxiliadora hospital.
However, Ciro Maguiña, vice dean of the Peruvian Medical College, said 237 doctors nationwide had been infected to date, with nine in intensive care using mechanical respirators. One doctor had died. Those numbers do not include nurses or other health workers.
President Martín Vizcarra has acknowledged that the country’s hospitals are already close to capacity. He has taken steps to increase intensive care units and the number of hospital beds.
“In the next few days we are going to have an increase in the capacity of care with ventilators arriving,” he said in a news conference on Monday.
For a graphic on coronavirus cases worldwide open in a browser: here
Reporting by Marco Aquino and Reuters TV; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Rosalba O'Brien
Marco Aquino APRIL 22, 2020
LIMA (Reuters) - Peru’s hospitals are straining to deal with a rapid rise in the number of COVID-19 infections, with bodies being kept in hallways, masks being repeatedly reused, and protests breaking out amongst medical workers concerned over their safety.
FILE PHOTO: A health worker holding a sign reading "Enough indolence, change of director" protests the lack of proper medical supplies outside of Maria Auxiliadora hospital amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Lima, Peru April 20, 2020. REUTERS/Sebastian Castaneda
Peru has the second highest number of cases in South America after Brazil, despite a tough lockdown aimed at halting the spread of the coronavirus.
Confirmed numbers have risen sharply in recent days, passing 17,000 on Tuesday, double the figure from just one week ago. Almost 500 people have died.
“We as a hospital have a capacity for only six bodies,” Deisy Aguirre, leader of the nurses union at the Maria Auxiliadora hospital in Lima, told Reuters outside the hospital on Monday.
“Daily we have been seeing 13 to 16 bodies crowded on the first floor.”
The health ministry says it expects patient numbers to peak within days or in the following week.
On Monday, dozens of health workers protested in front of the Maria Auxiliadora hospital, holding banners decrying a lack of protective equipment such as masks.
A doctor at the protest who declined to give his name provided video showing at least four dead bodies covered in white or black covers in a hospital corridor.
Susana Oshiro, the hospital’s director, told Reuters that at some point the number of dead had exceeded the capacity of the hospital as there was only space for six bodies in the mortuary.
“We have now contracted a freezer, a refrigerated container to store the bodies while they come to collect them for cremation,” she said. The 100-body freezer has been in operation since Monday, she added.
Even the cremation of remains has become an issue, with Lima’s six crematoriums already exceeding capacity.
Edgar González, head of Lima’s Santa Rosa crematorium, told Reuters by telephone that before the pandemic they cremated 10 bodies a day and now they are cremating up to 30.
RECYCLED MASKS
Peru reported its first case of coronavirus on March 6 and it took 25 days to add 1,000 infections. Fourteen days later it reached 10,000 cases, official data show.
The government has also been gradually increasing the amount of tests, which totaled over 155,000 as of Tuesday, one of the highest levels in the region.
In Latin America, only Brazil has more confirmed cases, with over 40,000. Chile is third, with over 10,000.
Rosmini Ayquipa, another nurse from the María Auxiliadora hospital, told Reuters workers had had to wear the same masks for several days due to a shortage.
“We have to use three masks throughout the month, so we re-use and re-use it and what has happened? Where I work, colleagues have caught the disease,” she said.
Oshiro, the hospital director, said the complaint related to N95 type masks, which she said everyone wanted to use but which were only given to personnel involved in the treatment of COVID-19 patients. Everyone else has surgical masks, she said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says limited re-use of masks is generally acceptable, though not all types of masks can be reused and they should be discarded when “soiled, damaged, or hard to breathe through.”
Reuters could not confirm how many workers had become sick at the María Auxiliadora hospital.
However, Ciro Maguiña, vice dean of the Peruvian Medical College, said 237 doctors nationwide had been infected to date, with nine in intensive care using mechanical respirators. One doctor had died. Those numbers do not include nurses or other health workers.
President Martín Vizcarra has acknowledged that the country’s hospitals are already close to capacity. He has taken steps to increase intensive care units and the number of hospital beds.
“In the next few days we are going to have an increase in the capacity of care with ventilators arriving,” he said in a news conference on Monday.
For a graphic on coronavirus cases worldwide open in a browser: here
Reporting by Marco Aquino and Reuters TV; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Rosalba O'Brien
Special Report: Peruvian coca farmers to Paris pushers, coronavirus upends global narcotics trade
Gabriel Stargardter, Drazen Jorgic APRIL 22, 2020
RIO DE JANEIRO/MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Countries around the world have spent billions of dollars bailing out businesses affected by the coronavirus outbreak. Peru’s coca farmers, who grow the bushy plant used to make cocaine, say they want help, too.
FILE PHOTO: A cocaine brick seized during an operation is displayed to the media at the Peruvian police headquarters in Lima, Peru July 11, 2017. REUTERS/Mariana Bazo
Prices for coca leaves sold to drug gangs have slumped 70% since Peru went on lockdown last month, according to Julián Pérez Mallqui, the head of a local growers’ organization. He said his members cater to Peru’s tightly regulated legal coca market, but acknowledged some growers sell on the black market. Peruvian officials say more than 90% of the country’s coca crop goes to traffickers who are now struggling to move product.
With the sector in turmoil, Pérez’s group is crafting a plan to ask the government to buy up excess coca inventory.
Peru “has to design clear intervention strategies for coca,” Pérez said. “We’re screwed, just like everyone else in the world.”
A spokesman for Peru’s anti-drugs agency said it may funnel more development aid to hard-hit areas.
The coronavirus outbreak has upended industries across the globe. The international narcotics trade has not been spared. From the cartel badlands along the U.S.-Mexico border and verdant coca fields of the Andes, to street dealers in London and Paris, traffickers are grappling with many of the same woes as legitimate businesses, Reuters has found.
On three continents, Reuters spoke with more than two dozen law enforcement officials, narcotics experts, diplomats and people involved in the illicit trade. They described a business experiencing busted supply chains, delivery delays, disgruntled workers and millions of customers on lockdown. They also gave a window into the innovation - and opportunism - that are hallmarks of the underworld.
Cecil Mangrum, a narcotics detective with the Los Angeles Police Department, said an informant recently got a call from a Mexican connection offering 25 pounds of methamphetamine for $3,200 a pound. That’s more than triple the going rate from just a few weeks ago, and the highest price that he has seen for the powerful stimulant in his decade on the drugs beat.
“I wish there was a website (where) you could report the cartels for price gouging, because the prices are ridiculous,” Mangrum said.
Latin America is the epicenter of a global drugs trade that is estimated to be worth up to $650 billion a year, according to Global Financial Integrity, a U.S.-based think tank. Gangs reap huge profits producing and transporting cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine, heroin and fentanyl that is sold worldwide.
The disruptions are likely to be short-lived, some anti-narcotics experts said. Cartels have proven adept at surmounting any obstacles. The pandemic will eventually ease, trade routes will open, customers and dealers will come out of their homes.
Still, coronavirus has managed to do what authorities worldwide have not: slow the global narcotics juggernaut almost overnight and inflict a measure of pain on all who participate.
In Mexico, the Sinaloa Cartel has faced many threats over the years, including the jailing of former leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. But never one like the coronavirus pandemic.
Disruptions to global trade have jacked up prices for imported chemicals such as ephedrine that are needed to manufacture meth, a major piece of the organization’s narcotics empire. Meanwhile, a partial shutdown of the U.S.-Mexico border to slow the spread of the virus has complicated distribution, according to two Sinaloa Cartel members who spoke with Reuters.
“As the border is closed, we are having problems crossing it,” said one of the people, who helps produce the synthetic opioid fentanyl for the syndicate.
Thousands of kilometers to the south in Brazil, drug gangs face similar distribution woes. At the giant seaport of Santos, the launching point for a substantial portion of South American cocaine headed for Europe, seizures last month were down 67% compared to March 2019, according to Brazil’s Federal Revenue Service. Ciro Moraes, the chief federal police officer in Santos, said it’s a sign that traffickers are experiencing their own personal “recession,” courtesy of COVID-19.
“This cripples their business,” he said, if only temporarily.
MEXICAN STANDSTILL
The United States is Mexico’s top trade partner and the No. 1 consumer of its illegal drugs. Last year some 950,000 people entered the United States daily on foot or in vehicles through dozens of checkpoints along the 1,954-mile (3,145km) border, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Most narcotics are smuggled in passenger cars that face far fewer checks than commercial trucks, security analysts said. The March 21 closing of the border to all non-essential travel has thrown a monkey wrench in that well-oiled machine.
“Everything has stopped at the border,” said the Sinaloa Cartel fentanyl “cook” who spoke with Reuters.
Wholesale prices are up about 10% in recent weeks, he added. A kilogram of fentanyl sold wholesale by his organization to a drug buyer in Sinaloa would go for about 12,000 pesos ($490), he said, but that price would soar to about $50,000 a kilo if delivered to New York.
Raw materials are also bedeviling the cartel. Fentanyl and meth, which kill tens of thousands of Americans each year, are made with chemicals often manufactured in China, India and Germany, Mexican and U.S. officials said.
They said factory closures, staff shortages, shipping slowdowns and tighter borders all along the methamphetamine precursor supply chain have created scarcity. A Sinaloa Cartel meth producer told Reuters that the outbreak had led to a threefold jump in prices for some ingredients, pressuring profit margins.
Seven anti-narcotics officials in the United States, including three U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials, described a U.S. drugs market in flux.
Methamphetamine has been the most affected, with half of the DEA’s domestic offices reporting price rises, said one senior DEA source familiar with the agency’s nationwide assessment of coronavirus disruptions.
Supplies of fentanyl, the leading cause of U.S. overdose deaths, appear to be holding steady, several authorities said.
John Callery, Special Agent in Charge of the DEA’s San Diego Field Office, said drug prices in his sector were up about 20% across the board, except for methamphetamine, whose price has more than doubled in the last couple of weeks to as much as $2,000 a pound. Price gouging could be to blame, he said.
In cities with looser coronavirus lockdowns, illicit activity is more resilient, police said.
In Houston, the drugs market was holding up fine, as dealers still had hefty stockpiles, said Lieutenant Stephen Casko of the Houston Police Department. “As those reserves get used up, that’s when you’re going to start to feel the stress,” he said.
Jerome Washington, a sergeant in the El Paso County Sheriff’s office in Texas, said the decline in vehicle traffic had prompted dealers to reduce the number of drug runs they make across the border.
“They are just being more selective,” Washington said. “It’s like a numbers game: The more cars on roads, the more cars you can send across that will blend in.”
Cartels appear to be looking for alternative transport, U.S. officials said. There are signs the gangs are moving more product through cross-border tunnels, according to a senior CBP official. Increased sightings of drones and ultralight aircraft at the border suggest gangs may be ramping up aerial deliveries, he added.
“The smuggling tactic has changed,” the official said. Traffickers “either go over or under.”
Repatriating drug money to Mexico has also proved to be a headache, anti-narcotics agents said.
In Los Angeles, Mexican cartels launder illicit proceeds through storefront businesses in the city’s garment district, according to a senior DEA investigator in California. Profits from U.S. drug sales flow south in the form of exported household goods that the cartels sell in Mexico to get their cash, the agency said. But the closure of nonessential businesses in California has impeded that scheme, the DEA investigator said.
‘EVERYTHING IS PARALYZED’
South America was awash in cocaine long before anyone had heard of COVID-19. Record production in recent years has weighed on prices. Drug gangs ramped up exports, authorities said, shipping unprecedented quantities to longstanding markets in the United States and Europe, while cultivating new customers in the Middle East and Asia.
In the United Kingdom, cocaine seizures in the 2018/19 financial year reached 9.65 tonnes, the highest total since records began in 1973, and up nearly 200% compared with the 2017/18 total, the Home Office said.
In Peru, the world’s No. 2 producer behind Colombia, a national lockdown to stem the virus has functioned like a shutoff button on the country’s cocaine conveyor belt, according to Miguel Ángel Ramírez Vásquez, a senior member of Peru’s anti-narcotics police. With borders closed, flights reduced and roads more rigorously patrolled, he said gangs are having trouble moving drugs.
“Everything is paralyzed. Nobody is buying and nobody is selling,” Ramírez said.
Among the hardest-hit areas is the verdant valley of the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro rivers. Known as the VRAEM, it produces around 43% of Peru’s 50,000-hectare harvest, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Pérez, the coca growers’ representative, said almost all of the region’s 500,000 people live off the crop.
The state-run National Coca Company (ENACO) purchases some of the country’s production for pharmaceuticals and beverages at prices well below what drug traffickers normally pay. But an estimated 93% of Peru’s crop is converted illegally into cocaine, ENACO has said.
Pérez said his group, known as FEPAVRAE, is discussing ways to get ENACO to buy up their excess coca. He declined to share details.
“It’s an internal discussion within the organization,” he said. “We’re working on it.”
Cristian Galarza, the general manager of ENACO, said he had not heard of the internal FEPAVRAE plan. But he was not surprised.
“Because of the coronavirus situation, everyone has to get creative and find alternatives,” he said. Still, he said it’s unlikely that ENACO, which has annual sales of about 35 million soles ($10.34 million), could help many of those affected.
“If there is a coca grower ... who has been selling illegally, we won’t work with them,” Galarza said. “If they go to the other side, it’s difficult, they’ve crossed a line.”
Rubén Vargas, the head of Peru’s anti-drug agency DEVIDA, was also unaware of the coca growers’ plan. He said DEVIDA had already budgeted 70 million soles ($20.68 million) this year for rural development projects in the VRAEM, and may provide more to help areas most affected by the outbreak.
“We will work with all the social organizations and producers who have additional proposals in the framework of this emergency that we’re living,” he said.
Ramírez, the anti-drugs cop, was apoplectic about the growers’ plan.
“When it’s going well for them, they sell to drug traffickers; and when it’s going badly, they stick out their hand for government support,” he said. “What do they think they’re growing? Pineapples?”
SUPPLY PRESSURE
Across the border in Brazil, traffickers face the opposite problem: Cocaine prices are up sharply due to dwindling supplies, according to a federal police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity.
He said the wholesale price of a kilo of cocaine has risen 40% to 20,000 reais ($3,735) in recent weeks in the northern Amazon city of Manaus, a transit hub for moving Andean cocaine through Brazil and on to Europe.
While drugs are piling up in Colombia and Peru, “here (in Brazil) the price is expensive, as there is no product,” the federal cop said.
In the southeastern Brazilian port of Santos, Latin America’s biggest, seizures of Europe-bound cocaine have dwindled, according to Moraes, the federal police chief there. Customs officials nabbed just over a tonne of cocaine in March 2020, compared with 3 tonnes in the same month last year.
Moraes believes less cocaine is entering Brazil. He also suspects European demand is down, in part because trafficking outfits there are struggling to move the product amid lockdowns.
In France, the shutdown of bars and party venues has led to a decrease in the use of recreational drugs like cocaine, MDMA, ketamine and LSD, the French Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT) said in an April report examining the impact of the pandemic on the nation’s illicit drugs trade.
Dealers have been quick to react to the new reality, the report said, with some maintaining a safe distance from clients and even “selling hand sanitizer, gloves and masks.”
Reporting by Gabriel Stargardter in Rio de Janeiro and Drazen Jorgic in Mexico City; Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington; Andrew Hay in Taos, N.M.; Jesus Bustamente in Culiacan, Mexico; Lizbeth Diaz in Mexico City; Michael Holden in London; Francesco Guarascio in Brussels, David Lewis in Nairobi; Marco Aquino in Lima; Daniela Desantis in Asuncion; and Luis Jaime Acosta in Bogota; Editing by Marla Dickerson
‘Cartels are scrambling’: Virus snarls global drug trade
1 of 7
This March 2020 photo provided by the U.S. Border Patrol's San Diego Tunnel Team shows a tunnel under the Otay Mesa area of San Diego, Calif. Federal authorities seized a panoply of narcotics inside the newly discovered underground passage connecting a warehouse in Tijuana with south San Diego. The bust of $30 million worth of street drugs was also notable for its low amount of fentanyl - about 2 pounds. (U.S. Border Patrol via AP)
APRIL 19,2020
NEW YORK (AP) — Coronavirus is dealing a gut punch to the illegal drug trade, paralyzing economies, closing borders and severing supply chains in China that traffickers rely on for the chemicals to make such profitable drugs as methamphetamine and fentanyl.
One of the main suppliers that shut down is in Wuhan, the epicenter of the global outbreak.
Associated Press interviews with nearly two dozen law enforcement officials and trafficking experts found Mexican and Colombian cartels are still plying their trade as evidenced by recent drug seizures but the lockdowns that have turned cities into ghost towns are disrupting everything from production to transport to sales.
Along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border through which the vast majority of illegal drugs cross, the normally bustling vehicle traffic that smugglers use for cover has slowed to a trickle. Bars, nightclubs and motels across the country that are ordinarily fertile marketplaces for drug dealers have shuttered. And prices for drugs in short supply have soared to gouging levels.
“They are facing a supply problem and a demand problem,” said Alejandro Hope, a security analyst and former official with CISEN, the Mexican intelligence agency. “Once you get them to the market, who are you going to sell to?”
Virtually every illicit drug has been impacted, with supply chain disruptions at both the wholesale and retail level. Traffickers are stockpiling narcotics and cash along the border, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration even reports a decrease in money laundering and online drug sales on the so-called dark web.
This March 2020 photo provided by the U.S. Border Patrol shows drugs seized from a tunnel under the Otay Mesa area of San Diego, Calif. Federal authorities seized a panoply of narcotics inside the newly discovered underground passage connecting a warehouse in Tijuana with south San Diego. The bust of $30 million worth of street drugs was also notable for its low amount of fentanyl - about 2 pounds. (U.S. Border Patrol via AP)
“The godfathers of the cartels are scrambling,” said Phil Jordan, a former director of the DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center.
Cocaine prices are up 20 percent or more in some cities. Heroin has become harder to find in Denver and Chicago, while supplies of fentanyl are falling in Houston and Philadelphia. In Los Angeles, the price of methamphetamine has more than doubled in recent weeks to $1,800 per pound.
“You have shortages but also some greedy bastards who see an opportunity to make more money,” said Jack Riley, the former deputy administrator of the DEA. “The bad guys frequently use situations that affect the national conscience to raise prices.”
Synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine and fentanyl have been among the most affected, in large part because they rely on precursor chemicals that Mexican cartels import from China, cook into drugs on an industrial scale and then ship to the U.S.
“This is something we would use as a lesson learned for us,” the head of the DEA, Uttam Dhillon, told AP. “If the disruption is that significant, we need to continue to work with our global partners to ensure that, once we come out of the pandemic, those precursor chemicals are not available to these drug-trafficking organizations.”
Cartels are increasingly shifting away from drugs that require planting and growing seasons, like heroin and marijuana, in favor of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, which can be cooked 24/7 throughout the year, are up to 50 times more powerful than heroin and produce a greater profit margin.
Though some clandestine labs that make fentanyl from scratch have popped up sporadically in Mexico, cartels are still very much reliant upon Chinese companies to get the precursor drugs.
Huge amounts of these mail-order components can be traced to a single, state-subsidized company in Wuhan that shut down after the outbreak earlier this year, said Louise Shelley, director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center at George Mason University, which monitors Chinese websites selling fentanyl.
This April 17, 2020 image from a website shows an offer for a chemical known as "99918-43-1" made in China. According to C4ADS, a Washington research group, the price of the chemical, which can be used to make fentanyl, has risen since late February 2020.
“The quarantine of Wuhan and all the chaos there definitely affected the fentanyl trade, particularly between China and Mexico,” said Ben Westhoff, author of “Fentanyl, Inc.”
“The main reason China has been the main supplier is the main reason China is the supplier of everything — it does it so cheaply,” Westhoff said. “There was really no cost incentive for the cartels to develop this themselves.”
But costs have been rising and, as in many legitimate industries, the coronavirus is bringing about changes.
Advertised prices across China for precursors of fentanyl, methamphetamine and cutting agents have risen between 25% and 400% since late February, said Logan Pauley, an analyst at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a Washington-based security research nonprofit. So even as drug precursor plants in China are slowly reopening after the worst of the coronavirus crisis there, some cartels have been taking steps to decrease their reliance on overseas suppliers by enlisting scientists to make their own precursor chemicals.
“Because of the coronavirus they’re starting to do it in house,” added Westhoff.
This April 16, 2020 image from a website shows an offer for the chemical xylazine made in China. According to C4ADS, a Washington research group, the price of the chemical, which can be used as a cutting agent for heroin, has risen since late February 2020.Some Chinese companies that once pushed precursors are now advertising drugs like hydroxychloroquine, which President Donald Trump has promoted as potential treatment for COVID-19, as well as personal protective gear such as face masks and hand sanitizers.
Meanwhile, the gummed up situation on the U.S.-Mexico border resembles a stalled chess match where nobody, especially the traffickers, wants to make a wrong move, said Kyle Williamson, special agent in charge of the DEA’s El Paso field division.
“They’re in a pause right now,” Williamson said. “They don’t want to get sloppy and take a lot of risks.”
Some Mexican drug cartels are even holding back existing methamphetamine supplies to manipulate the market, recognizing that “no good crisis should be wasted,” said Joseph Brown, the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Texas.
“Some cartels have given direct orders to members of their organization that anyone caught selling methamphetamine during this time will be killed,” said Brown, whose sprawling jurisdiction stretches from the suburbs of Dallas to Beaumont.
To be sure, narcotics are still making their way into the U.S., as evidenced by a bust last month in which nearly $30 million worth of street drugs were seized in a new smuggling tunnel connecting a warehouse in Tijuana to southern San Diego. Shelley said that bust was notable in that only about 2 pounds of fentanyl was recovered, “much lower than usual shipments.”
This March 2020 photo provided by the U.S. Border Patrol's San Diego Tunnel Team shows an agent in a tunnel under the Otay Mesa area of San Diego, Calif.
Trump announced earlier this month that Navy ships were being moved toward Venezuela as part of a bid to beef up counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean following a U.S. drug indictment against Nicolás Maduro.
But the pandemic also has limited law enforcement’s effectiveness, as departments cope with drug investigators working remotely, falling ill and navigating a new landscape in which their own activities have become more conspicuous. In Los Angeles County, half of the narcotics detectives have been put on patrol duty, potentially imperiling long-term investigations.
Nonetheless, Capt. Chris Sandoval, who oversees special investigations for the Houston-based Harris County Sheriff’s Office, said there’s a new saying among his detectives: “Not even the dope dealers can hide from the coronavirus.”
___
Bleiberg reported from Dallas. AP writers Erika Kinetz in Rieti, Italy, Mark Stevenson in Mexico City and Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
___
Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org
CORONAVIRUS VS CRIMINAL CAPITALISM
1 of 7
This March 2020 photo provided by the U.S. Border Patrol's San Diego Tunnel Team shows a tunnel under the Otay Mesa area of San Diego, Calif. Federal authorities seized a panoply of narcotics inside the newly discovered underground passage connecting a warehouse in Tijuana with south San Diego. The bust of $30 million worth of street drugs was also notable for its low amount of fentanyl - about 2 pounds. (U.S. Border Patrol via AP)
APRIL 19,2020
NEW YORK (AP) — Coronavirus is dealing a gut punch to the illegal drug trade, paralyzing economies, closing borders and severing supply chains in China that traffickers rely on for the chemicals to make such profitable drugs as methamphetamine and fentanyl.
One of the main suppliers that shut down is in Wuhan, the epicenter of the global outbreak.
Associated Press interviews with nearly two dozen law enforcement officials and trafficking experts found Mexican and Colombian cartels are still plying their trade as evidenced by recent drug seizures but the lockdowns that have turned cities into ghost towns are disrupting everything from production to transport to sales.
Along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border through which the vast majority of illegal drugs cross, the normally bustling vehicle traffic that smugglers use for cover has slowed to a trickle. Bars, nightclubs and motels across the country that are ordinarily fertile marketplaces for drug dealers have shuttered. And prices for drugs in short supply have soared to gouging levels.
“They are facing a supply problem and a demand problem,” said Alejandro Hope, a security analyst and former official with CISEN, the Mexican intelligence agency. “Once you get them to the market, who are you going to sell to?”
Virtually every illicit drug has been impacted, with supply chain disruptions at both the wholesale and retail level. Traffickers are stockpiling narcotics and cash along the border, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration even reports a decrease in money laundering and online drug sales on the so-called dark web.
This March 2020 photo provided by the U.S. Border Patrol shows drugs seized from a tunnel under the Otay Mesa area of San Diego, Calif. Federal authorities seized a panoply of narcotics inside the newly discovered underground passage connecting a warehouse in Tijuana with south San Diego. The bust of $30 million worth of street drugs was also notable for its low amount of fentanyl - about 2 pounds. (U.S. Border Patrol via AP)
“The godfathers of the cartels are scrambling,” said Phil Jordan, a former director of the DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center.
Cocaine prices are up 20 percent or more in some cities. Heroin has become harder to find in Denver and Chicago, while supplies of fentanyl are falling in Houston and Philadelphia. In Los Angeles, the price of methamphetamine has more than doubled in recent weeks to $1,800 per pound.
“You have shortages but also some greedy bastards who see an opportunity to make more money,” said Jack Riley, the former deputy administrator of the DEA. “The bad guys frequently use situations that affect the national conscience to raise prices.”
Synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine and fentanyl have been among the most affected, in large part because they rely on precursor chemicals that Mexican cartels import from China, cook into drugs on an industrial scale and then ship to the U.S.
“This is something we would use as a lesson learned for us,” the head of the DEA, Uttam Dhillon, told AP. “If the disruption is that significant, we need to continue to work with our global partners to ensure that, once we come out of the pandemic, those precursor chemicals are not available to these drug-trafficking organizations.”
Cartels are increasingly shifting away from drugs that require planting and growing seasons, like heroin and marijuana, in favor of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, which can be cooked 24/7 throughout the year, are up to 50 times more powerful than heroin and produce a greater profit margin.
Though some clandestine labs that make fentanyl from scratch have popped up sporadically in Mexico, cartels are still very much reliant upon Chinese companies to get the precursor drugs.
Huge amounts of these mail-order components can be traced to a single, state-subsidized company in Wuhan that shut down after the outbreak earlier this year, said Louise Shelley, director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center at George Mason University, which monitors Chinese websites selling fentanyl.
This April 17, 2020 image from a website shows an offer for a chemical known as "99918-43-1" made in China. According to C4ADS, a Washington research group, the price of the chemical, which can be used to make fentanyl, has risen since late February 2020.
“The quarantine of Wuhan and all the chaos there definitely affected the fentanyl trade, particularly between China and Mexico,” said Ben Westhoff, author of “Fentanyl, Inc.”
“The main reason China has been the main supplier is the main reason China is the supplier of everything — it does it so cheaply,” Westhoff said. “There was really no cost incentive for the cartels to develop this themselves.”
But costs have been rising and, as in many legitimate industries, the coronavirus is bringing about changes.
Advertised prices across China for precursors of fentanyl, methamphetamine and cutting agents have risen between 25% and 400% since late February, said Logan Pauley, an analyst at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a Washington-based security research nonprofit. So even as drug precursor plants in China are slowly reopening after the worst of the coronavirus crisis there, some cartels have been taking steps to decrease their reliance on overseas suppliers by enlisting scientists to make their own precursor chemicals.
“Because of the coronavirus they’re starting to do it in house,” added Westhoff.
This April 16, 2020 image from a website shows an offer for the chemical xylazine made in China. According to C4ADS, a Washington research group, the price of the chemical, which can be used as a cutting agent for heroin, has risen since late February 2020.Some Chinese companies that once pushed precursors are now advertising drugs like hydroxychloroquine, which President Donald Trump has promoted as potential treatment for COVID-19, as well as personal protective gear such as face masks and hand sanitizers.
Meanwhile, the gummed up situation on the U.S.-Mexico border resembles a stalled chess match where nobody, especially the traffickers, wants to make a wrong move, said Kyle Williamson, special agent in charge of the DEA’s El Paso field division.
“They’re in a pause right now,” Williamson said. “They don’t want to get sloppy and take a lot of risks.”
Some Mexican drug cartels are even holding back existing methamphetamine supplies to manipulate the market, recognizing that “no good crisis should be wasted,” said Joseph Brown, the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Texas.
“Some cartels have given direct orders to members of their organization that anyone caught selling methamphetamine during this time will be killed,” said Brown, whose sprawling jurisdiction stretches from the suburbs of Dallas to Beaumont.
To be sure, narcotics are still making their way into the U.S., as evidenced by a bust last month in which nearly $30 million worth of street drugs were seized in a new smuggling tunnel connecting a warehouse in Tijuana to southern San Diego. Shelley said that bust was notable in that only about 2 pounds of fentanyl was recovered, “much lower than usual shipments.”
This March 2020 photo provided by the U.S. Border Patrol's San Diego Tunnel Team shows an agent in a tunnel under the Otay Mesa area of San Diego, Calif.
Trump announced earlier this month that Navy ships were being moved toward Venezuela as part of a bid to beef up counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean following a U.S. drug indictment against Nicolás Maduro.
But the pandemic also has limited law enforcement’s effectiveness, as departments cope with drug investigators working remotely, falling ill and navigating a new landscape in which their own activities have become more conspicuous. In Los Angeles County, half of the narcotics detectives have been put on patrol duty, potentially imperiling long-term investigations.
Nonetheless, Capt. Chris Sandoval, who oversees special investigations for the Houston-based Harris County Sheriff’s Office, said there’s a new saying among his detectives: “Not even the dope dealers can hide from the coronavirus.”
___
Bleiberg reported from Dallas. AP writers Erika Kinetz in Rieti, Italy, Mark Stevenson in Mexico City and Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
___
Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org
EU regrets U.S. refusal to allow economic aid for Iran to fight coronavirus
THEY SHOULD DENOUNCE IT AS A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union has urged the United States to ease its sanctions on Iran and approve economic aid to help deal with the coronavirus pandemic, but its calls were rejected, the EU’s top diplomat said on Wednesday.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell holds a virtual news conference at the end of a videoconference of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium, April 22, 2020. Olivier Hoslet/Pool
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the United States was preventing the International Monetary Fund from assisting Iran, the Middle Eastern country most affected by the coronavirus, adding that he regretted Washington’s position.
“We supported first to soften the sanctions and second, the request by Iran to the International Monetary Fund for financial help,” Borrell told a virtual news conference after a video conference of EU foreign ministers.
“I regret that the Americans are, at this stage, opposing the International Monetary Fund from taking this decision. From a humanitarian point of view, this request should have been accepted,” he said.
Washington has said it is not letting up on its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran despite the coronavirus, continuing to use sanctions to try to limit Tehran’s ballistic missile program and influence across the Middle East.
U.S. President Donald Trump reimposed sanctions on Tehran’s petroleum exports in 2018 after withdrawing from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers. The European Union helped to negotiate the agreement.
Tehran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
Reuters reported on April 15 that the United States opposed a massive IMF liquidity injection through issuance of new Special Drawing Rights, akin to a central bank making new money, that would have benefited Iran and other countries.
The program could have provided hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign exchange reserves for all of the global lender’s 189 member countries, according to sources familiar with the IMF’s deliberations. The U.S. Treasury declined to comment for the Reuters April 15 report.
Iran has almost 86,000 confirmed cases of COVID 19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and more than 5,000 deaths, according to a Reuters tally.
The European Union, which has provided some humanitarian aid to Iran despite U.S. sanctions, said on March 23 that it supported Iran’s request for IMF help.
Reporting by Robin Emmott;editing by Grant McCool
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union has urged the United States to ease its sanctions on Iran and approve economic aid to help deal with the coronavirus pandemic, but its calls were rejected, the EU’s top diplomat said on Wednesday.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell holds a virtual news conference at the end of a videoconference of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium, April 22, 2020. Olivier Hoslet/Pool
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the United States was preventing the International Monetary Fund from assisting Iran, the Middle Eastern country most affected by the coronavirus, adding that he regretted Washington’s position.
“We supported first to soften the sanctions and second, the request by Iran to the International Monetary Fund for financial help,” Borrell told a virtual news conference after a video conference of EU foreign ministers.
“I regret that the Americans are, at this stage, opposing the International Monetary Fund from taking this decision. From a humanitarian point of view, this request should have been accepted,” he said.
Washington has said it is not letting up on its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran despite the coronavirus, continuing to use sanctions to try to limit Tehran’s ballistic missile program and influence across the Middle East.
U.S. President Donald Trump reimposed sanctions on Tehran’s petroleum exports in 2018 after withdrawing from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers. The European Union helped to negotiate the agreement.
Tehran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
Reuters reported on April 15 that the United States opposed a massive IMF liquidity injection through issuance of new Special Drawing Rights, akin to a central bank making new money, that would have benefited Iran and other countries.
The program could have provided hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign exchange reserves for all of the global lender’s 189 member countries, according to sources familiar with the IMF’s deliberations. The U.S. Treasury declined to comment for the Reuters April 15 report.
Iran has almost 86,000 confirmed cases of COVID 19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and more than 5,000 deaths, according to a Reuters tally.
The European Union, which has provided some humanitarian aid to Iran despite U.S. sanctions, said on March 23 that it supported Iran’s request for IMF help.
Reporting by Robin Emmott;editing by Grant McCool
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Banksy's 'Girl with a Pierced Eardrum' gains a coronavirus face mask
LONDON (Reuters) - Banksy’s “Girl with a Pierced Eardrum” has been updated for the coronavirus era with the addition of a blue surgical face mask.
The mural, a take on Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” but with a security alarm replacing the pearl, was painted on a harbourside building in the street artist’s home city of Bristol in west England in 2014.
It is not known whether Banksy, whose identity is a closely guarded secret, or somebody else attached the fabric face mask to the painted girl.
The newly adorned mural did not appear on Banksy’s Instagram page where he usually posts images of his work.
The COVID-19 pandemic has already inspired the artist.
He unveiled a scene of his trademark stencilled rats running amok in a bathroom rather than on the streets last week, reflecting official advice form the British government to stay at home.
“My wife hates it when I work from home,” he commented alongside the photos.
SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=BANKSY
LONDON (Reuters) - Banksy’s “Girl with a Pierced Eardrum” has been updated for the coronavirus era with the addition of a blue surgical face mask.
The mural, a take on Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” but with a security alarm replacing the pearl, was painted on a harbourside building in the street artist’s home city of Bristol in west England in 2014.
It is not known whether Banksy, whose identity is a closely guarded secret, or somebody else attached the fabric face mask to the painted girl.
The newly adorned mural did not appear on Banksy’s Instagram page where he usually posts images of his work.
The COVID-19 pandemic has already inspired the artist.
He unveiled a scene of his trademark stencilled rats running amok in a bathroom rather than on the streets last week, reflecting official advice form the British government to stay at home.
“My wife hates it when I work from home,” he commented alongside the photos.
SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=BANKSY
Haiti receives more deportees from U.S. despite coronavirus fears
Andre Paultre
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haiti received a deportation flight on Thursday from the United States of 129 Haitians, including minors, days after three deportees who arrived on the previous flight tested positive for the new coronavirus.
Haitian migrants ride on a bus after arriving on a deportation flight from the United States, amidst the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Port-au-Prince, Haiti April 23, 2020. REUTERS/Jeanty Junior Augustin
A growing trend of contagion among deportees from the United States to Latin America has fostered criticism that it is exporting the virus to poorer countries that have fewer confirmed cases and would be devastated by a major outbreak.
Haiti Foreign Ministry senior official Israel Jacky Cantave told Reuters Haiti had asked for all deportees to be tested but the U.S. government had only agreed to test those with symptoms - a problem given many carriers are asymptomatic.
The poorest country in the Americas, which has limited testing capacity, is placing all deportees in a quarantine facility for two weeks upon arrival.
But security at such facilities has proven to be weak, with one of the three deportees from a flight two weeks ago to have tested positive for the virus last weekend having escaped.
Critics of the Haitian government blame it for not standing up to the administration of President Donald Trump which has backed President Jovenel Moise throughout the violent protests that have rocked his term in office.
Haitian Prime Minister Joseph Jouthe has said repeatedly the deportees have the right to come home although his government has issued requirements for other Haitians to return so onerous they would be hard to fulfill.
According to the new rules, made public this week, they must present proof of a negative coronavirus test and pay to be quarantined for 14 days at one of two Port-au-Prince hotels designated by the government.
The new virus has spread slowly in Haiti, which has confirmed 72 cases and 5 deaths so far. But the U.S. deportations and return of thousands of Haitian workers from the Dominican Republic, which is one of the worst affected countries in the region, could soon change that.
Doctors warn a major outbreak would be devastating as the healthcare system is already collapsing - Haiti has just 100 ventilators for 11 million residents. The supply of water and sanitation infrastructure is poor and the country is densely populated.
Moreover, with two thirds of Haitians living under the poverty level, most cannot afford to self isolate and continue to go about their daily lives. Vendors in the capital protested on Thursday against a decision by authorities to limit market days to three times a week.
Andre Paultre
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haiti received a deportation flight on Thursday from the United States of 129 Haitians, including minors, days after three deportees who arrived on the previous flight tested positive for the new coronavirus.
Haitian migrants ride on a bus after arriving on a deportation flight from the United States, amidst the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Port-au-Prince, Haiti April 23, 2020. REUTERS/Jeanty Junior Augustin
A growing trend of contagion among deportees from the United States to Latin America has fostered criticism that it is exporting the virus to poorer countries that have fewer confirmed cases and would be devastated by a major outbreak.
Haiti Foreign Ministry senior official Israel Jacky Cantave told Reuters Haiti had asked for all deportees to be tested but the U.S. government had only agreed to test those with symptoms - a problem given many carriers are asymptomatic.
The poorest country in the Americas, which has limited testing capacity, is placing all deportees in a quarantine facility for two weeks upon arrival.
But security at such facilities has proven to be weak, with one of the three deportees from a flight two weeks ago to have tested positive for the virus last weekend having escaped.
Critics of the Haitian government blame it for not standing up to the administration of President Donald Trump which has backed President Jovenel Moise throughout the violent protests that have rocked his term in office.
Haitian Prime Minister Joseph Jouthe has said repeatedly the deportees have the right to come home although his government has issued requirements for other Haitians to return so onerous they would be hard to fulfill.
According to the new rules, made public this week, they must present proof of a negative coronavirus test and pay to be quarantined for 14 days at one of two Port-au-Prince hotels designated by the government.
The new virus has spread slowly in Haiti, which has confirmed 72 cases and 5 deaths so far. But the U.S. deportations and return of thousands of Haitian workers from the Dominican Republic, which is one of the worst affected countries in the region, could soon change that.
Doctors warn a major outbreak would be devastating as the healthcare system is already collapsing - Haiti has just 100 ventilators for 11 million residents. The supply of water and sanitation infrastructure is poor and the country is densely populated.
Moreover, with two thirds of Haitians living under the poverty level, most cannot afford to self isolate and continue to go about their daily lives. Vendors in the capital protested on Thursday against a decision by authorities to limit market days to three times a week.
THESE DEPORTEES ARE HAITIAN REFUGEES THAT HAD BEEN APPROVED FOR THE US RESIDENCE STATUS IN THE USA AS FAR BACK AS THE CLINTON PRESIDENCY!!!! BUT LIKE THE VIETNAMESE BOAT PEOPLE, THEY ARE ALSO BEING DEPORTED BY THE REICHSFUERHER MILLER GOVERNMENT
Spray it, don't say it: Kenya graffiti artists spread health message
Ayenat Mersie
NAIROBI (Reuters) - A six-foot image of a sad-eyed man, baseball cap askew and mask covering his nose and mouth is spray painted on a building in a Nairobi slum. Next to it are the words “Corona is real”.
There are six other pieces of graffiti like it around Mathare, the Kenyan capital’s second-largest slum. One urges people to wash their hands, another to use mobile money rather than germ-ridden cash.
All are public health messages to avoid the new coronavirus. As of Wednesday, Kenya had 303 confirmed cases of the disease and 14 deaths.
In a densely crowded settlement where social distancing and working from home are a pipe dream for most, the campaign is designed to teach people tangible ways in which they can protect themselves and their community from the coronavirus.
Unlike the stuffy government news conferences on television, the campaign uses the voices of the people who live there.
The graffiti campaign is the brainchild of Antony Mwelu, a 24-year-old content creator with Light Art Club and graffiti artist Brian Musasia Wanyande.
Children look on as Brian Musasia Wanyande, an artist from the Mathare Roots's youth group, paints an advocacy graffiti against the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at the Mathare Valley slum, in Nairobi, Kenya April 19, 2020. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya
Mwelu, who was born and raised in Mathare, realised he needed to do something after visiting the neighbourhood several weeks ago.
“I was sitting with the boys and I asked them ‘Do you believe in corona?’. Most of them were like ‘No we don’t believe it’.”
Wanyande had a similar experience.
“There’s a lot of misinformation going around,” Wanyande said. “And some of the real information has been given out in difficult English words.”
So, Wanyande said, he saw a need not only for catchy images but also accessible language to get the message across. Some of the graffiti is in Sheng, a local slang.
Mathare residents – who might number as many as half a million, according to the Mathare Foundation – have taken to the new images.
As Wanyande painted the pieces urging people to use mobile money – which included a larger-than-life image of a grinning man leaning against his motorbike taxi and a woman in front of her street-side banana stall – a crowd gathered.
Dozens of residents ogled the art, with some squinting into their smartphones to take pictures.
The team includes and employs residents, too. Wanyande – who is well-known in Nairobi graffiti circles – has worked with up-and-coming Mathare artists on several pieces.
Other people have been hired to help in other ways, including with security, Mwelu said. The cash they can earn is badly needed as other casual labour dries up.
For now, the project is self-funded. Mwelu’s team is using money made on corporate campaigns.
“For the purpose and the people, rather than the profit,” he said.
Editing by Katharine Houreld, Robert Birsel
Ayenat Mersie
NAIROBI (Reuters) - A six-foot image of a sad-eyed man, baseball cap askew and mask covering his nose and mouth is spray painted on a building in a Nairobi slum. Next to it are the words “Corona is real”.
There are six other pieces of graffiti like it around Mathare, the Kenyan capital’s second-largest slum. One urges people to wash their hands, another to use mobile money rather than germ-ridden cash.
All are public health messages to avoid the new coronavirus. As of Wednesday, Kenya had 303 confirmed cases of the disease and 14 deaths.
In a densely crowded settlement where social distancing and working from home are a pipe dream for most, the campaign is designed to teach people tangible ways in which they can protect themselves and their community from the coronavirus.
Unlike the stuffy government news conferences on television, the campaign uses the voices of the people who live there.
The graffiti campaign is the brainchild of Antony Mwelu, a 24-year-old content creator with Light Art Club and graffiti artist Brian Musasia Wanyande.
Children look on as Brian Musasia Wanyande, an artist from the Mathare Roots's youth group, paints an advocacy graffiti against the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at the Mathare Valley slum, in Nairobi, Kenya April 19, 2020. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya
Mwelu, who was born and raised in Mathare, realised he needed to do something after visiting the neighbourhood several weeks ago.
“I was sitting with the boys and I asked them ‘Do you believe in corona?’. Most of them were like ‘No we don’t believe it’.”
Wanyande had a similar experience.
“There’s a lot of misinformation going around,” Wanyande said. “And some of the real information has been given out in difficult English words.”
So, Wanyande said, he saw a need not only for catchy images but also accessible language to get the message across. Some of the graffiti is in Sheng, a local slang.
Mathare residents – who might number as many as half a million, according to the Mathare Foundation – have taken to the new images.
As Wanyande painted the pieces urging people to use mobile money – which included a larger-than-life image of a grinning man leaning against his motorbike taxi and a woman in front of her street-side banana stall – a crowd gathered.
Dozens of residents ogled the art, with some squinting into their smartphones to take pictures.
The team includes and employs residents, too. Wanyande – who is well-known in Nairobi graffiti circles – has worked with up-and-coming Mathare artists on several pieces.
Other people have been hired to help in other ways, including with security, Mwelu said. The cash they can earn is badly needed as other casual labour dries up.
For now, the project is self-funded. Mwelu’s team is using money made on corporate campaigns.
“For the purpose and the people, rather than the profit,” he said.
Editing by Katharine Houreld, Robert Birsel
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.
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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