Press freedom: What happened to missing Bangladeshi journalist Shafiqul Kajol?
More than a month ago, a Bangladeshi journalist disappeared without a trace after reporting on a government scandal. Bangladesh has a track record of media oppression and ranked 151 in the 2020 RSF ranking


Bangladeshi editor and photojournalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol disappeared 42 days ago, and his fate remains unknown despite an international campaign by rights activists to find him.

His disappearance is symbolic of Bangladesh's ongoing crackdown on free speech under a draconian "fake news" law called the Digital Security Act. Since Kajol's disappearance, four other editors and journalists have been charged with various offenses under the act.

In the 2020 World Press Freedom Index released Tuesday by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Bangladesh came in at 151 out of 180 countries, which is one point below last year's ranking. In the index, RSF said it noted a "disturbing increase in press freedom violations, including violence by political activists against reporters in the field, the arbitrary blocking of news websites, and arbitrary arrests of journalists."

Read more: Job uncertainty restricts journalists' freedom in Bangladesh

Kajol is an outspoken critic of Bangladesh's ruling Awami League party. The day before he went missing, he was charged under the act, having been targeted for a report linking an Awami lawmaker to a Dhaka escort service.

The editor was last seen in CCTV footage released by Amnesty International showing him leaving his office in Dhaka on the evening of March 10. The footage also showed people tampering with Kajol's motorcycle while he was in the office and running behind him after he rides off.

While experts consider it as strong video evidence that could be used to trace what happened to Kajol, the police have reportedly downplayed it. "We have sent the video footage to the police to find my father last month. But the investigative officer later told me that they hadn't found anything suspicious in the footage," Kajol's son, Monorom Polok, told DW.

"All I can say confidently is that my father has been abducted. And, we want police to find and return him to us."

In the 2020 World Press Freedom Index released Tuesday by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Bangladesh came in at 151 out of 180 countries

Gone without a trace

When contacted by DW, the lead investigator of Kajol's case said that he has not received any updates about the missing journalist. However, the official told local media that Kajol's mobile phone was briefly switched on in Benapole, a Bangladeshi town near the border with India on April 9, but police did not conduct an operation in the area due to lack of time and resources.

Meanwhile, an online campaign using the twitter hashtag #WhereIsKajol has been launched by journalists and activists to put pressure on the Bangladeshi authorities to find Kajol. Many people have posted pictures on social media with placards like "Where is Kajol?" printed on them.

"I strongly demand Kajol's safe return," Dil Afrose Jahan, an investigative journalist based in Dhaka, told DW. "The online campaign is not only for him, but it's also for all of us who are in this profession. We have to fight to protect ourselves, and we have to give ourselves a voice first."

Forced disappearances

Sofia Karim, an activist based in London, has been campaigning online to find Kajol since his disappearance. She said that the reluctance of police to find Kajol indicates that he might be another victim of forced disappearances in Bangladesh.

"Bangladesh has a track record of forced disappearances, and this case is disturbing and sinister," Karim told DW. "I feel for Kajol's family. This is unjust. It is our duty to speak out. We are talking about someone's life," she added.

An online campaign using the Twitter hashtag #WhereIsKajol has been launched by journalists and activists to put pressure on the authorities to find Kajol

Bangladeshi authorities have a history of being involved in arbitrary detentions and forced disappearances. Enforced disappearances have mushroomed in the country since Shiekh Hasina took power in 2009, according to rights groups.

The country's security forces have forcibly disappeared over 550 people over the past decade, according to local human rights organization Odhikar. This number includes many rights activists suspected to have been abducted by security agencies.

"The failure to reveal the whereabouts of Shafiqul Islam Kajol after more than a month is a disturbing display of the lack of empathy shared by the authorities with victims and their families," Saad Hammadi, a South Asia campaigner for Amnesty International, told DW.

More journalists charged

Meanwhile, four editors and journalists were charged on Saturday after a complaint filed by a ruling party leader under the Digital Security Act. They had been reporting on alleged embezzlement of aid for coronavirus victims from a district in Bangladesh.

Online newspaper editors Toufique Imrose Khalidi, and Mohiuddin Sarker, as well as local journalists Tanvir Hasan, and Rahim Shubho, were charged with the "publishing of offensive, false, defamatory, or fear-inducing data or information." Khalidi runs Bangladesh's most popular online news website, bdnews24.com.

Hasan claimed that the lawsuit was filed to muzzle journalists so that they avoid reporting on corruption committed by ruling party politicians. "Police have acted swiftly in taking on the case. It's an attempt to stop us from writing about corruption," he told DW.

Human rights experts have said the Digital Security Act is draconian and demanded that the law be abolished since it was enacted in 2018. They said that the measure can be used to systematically muzzle journalists and rights activists.

"When journalists are accused of criminal charges for performing their professional duties, this means that the state is defining a boundary beyond which no one is eligible to exercise their right to freedom of expression," said rights activist Saad Hammadi.

"Some of the provisions of the Digital Security Act are vague, highly repressive because of the harsh punishment they entail, and in violation of international human rights law."

Bernhard Hertlein, a German journalist and rights activist, told DW that the "draconian" law targets everyone from journalists to ordinary citizens. "Even doctors who write about the danger of the coronavirus on Facebook face charges under the law. It should be abolished," he said.


BANGLADESH'S 'DEATH SQUAD' SECURITY AGENCY TO SCAN SOCIAL MEDIA
Tarnished reputation
The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) was formed in 2004 to battle growing Islamism in Bangladesh. It initially managed to arrest or kill some top terrorists. But it did not take long for RAB's good reputation to be tarnished as it slowly became a symbol of fear. It's now seen as an all-powerful "death squad" unit that acts on the fringes of the law and imposes its own brand of justice.

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Coronavirus: Tough times ahead as Afghanistan struggles to manage pandemic

Health experts warn that the pandemic could have devastating consequences for the war-ravaged nation. Without a unified response and access to enough tests and ventilators, it risks facing a highly deadly outbreak.


The first COVID-19 case in Afghanistan was recorded on February 24 in western Herat province, when a newly deported Afghan asylum-seeker from neighboring Iran — host to around 2.5 million Afghans — showed symptoms. Herat soon became Afghanistan's coronavirus hotspot as Tehran continued deporting Afghans at an accelerated rate.

Since then, the virus has spread to other parts of the conflict-ridden nation, with 1,092 confirmed cases and 36 fatalities. But experts believe that the number of infections could be much higher.

"The number is on the rise because we have not yet reached the peak of the pandemic," Wahidullah Mayar, the Afghan Public Health Ministry spokesman told DW. "Therefore, the coming two to three weeks will be very critical for us," he added.

The number of people tested for coronavirus in Afghanistan remains very low, with only 6,612 tests conducted so far in a country of over 35 million.

"We have a shortage of tests," Mayar said, adding that Kabul was working to resolve the issue and had received 5,000 testing kits on Monday, with 3,000 more arriving by the end of the week. The Afghan government is aiming to purchase 100,000 extra coronavirus testing kits, but it is unclear if the deal will be finalized due to high demand worldwide.

Medical experts, however, stress that testing is an essential tool in identifying infections early on in order to isolate the patients and halt the spread of the disease.

"Testing has been negligible in Afghanistan, and this will take a tragic toll on the country over the coming weeks and months," Khesrow Sangarwal, the clinical director of the network of North West London Urgent Treatment Centers, told DW.

In addition to a shortage of tests, there is a shortage of ventilators and trained staff to administer the use of the medical machines in Afghanistan. According to health officials, Afghanistan only has 300 ventilators available for the entire country, and is planning to buy 300 more. However, like the tests, obtaining the much-needed ventilators could prove to be a challenge due to high global demand for the machines.

Even if Kabul is able to obtain the ventilators, finding qualified staff could be difficult. "It is not just the machines that are needed, you will also have to train and retrain professionals to use those machines," said Sangarwal.

Watch video Afghanistan takes measures to avoid COVID-19 outbreak

Ineffective lockdown

Afghan officials implemented a lockdown in Kabul at the end March to fight the rapid spread of the virus. Other provinces soon followed suit. Despite the lockdown, many locals still left their homes in order to find work or buy essential goods.

The measures also took a particularly heavy toll on the many poor families across Afghanistan who rely on daily wages. "I waited the whole day, but no one offered me work. I have nothing left and don't know what will happen," 60-year old Sawab Khan, who is responsible for providing for his family of 10 in eastern Khost province, told DW.

The Afghan government has launched a program to help those in need with food and other essentials, but it remains unclear how many families have so far received the aid.

In other cases, many provinces failed to ensure that the lockdown was effective. In western Kandahar, for example, local officials introduced a lockdown during the day, but allowed shops to open at night.

"I don't understand the logic of this decision because a virus spreads the same way at night as it would during the day," Mukhtar Ahmad Afghanyar, a local activist, told DW.

Avoiding medical attention

A lack of public awareness about how the virus spreads, combined with misinformation about medical staff's conduct with COVID-19 patients, has convinced some Afghans to take matters into their own hands, with life-threatening consequences in some cases.

"I had symptoms of the virus but I never went to the hospital because they are not able to do anything, so there was no point in visiting a doctor," Kabul resident Abdullah, who like many Afghans has only a first name, told DW. Many people who went to the hospital didn't receive their test results for several days, he added.

Abdullah was never tested, but his wife, who has pre-existing medical conditions, later came down with the same symptoms.

As many regions lack their own tests, health officials have had to resort to sending samples to Kabul, resulting in days- and sometimes weeks-long waits to get test results back.

Facing multiple crises at once

The coronavirus pandemic has not put an end to violence in Afghanistan. At least 19 pro-government forces were killed by the Taliban in night attacks in the northern Takhar province, officials said Monday, while the militant group has been carrying out attacks against Afghan security forces in other provinces, despite signing a peace deal with Washington in February.

The Taliban have rejected all calls for a ceasefire during the pandemic, making it impossible for healthcare workers to access the millions of Afghans living in areas under the group's control. At the beginning of the outbreak, the Taliban claimed to have the capacity to test suspected COVID-19 patients and offer health services to locals, but officials doubt that the claim is true.

On top of the armed conflict, Afghanistan is also facing a major political crisis as President Ashraf Ghani's main rival in the 2019 elections, Abdullah Abdullah, continues to contest the result of the vote. Both Abdullah and Ghani took parallel oaths of office last month, as efforts to bring the two sides together continued to fail.

Despite the conflicts, however, it is essential for Afghans to work together if they want to control and minimize the damage caused by the pandemic, according to Sangarwal. But it's unlikely that the Afghan government and the Taliban will cooperate to test Afghans across the country, as both sides continue to target each other despite the health crisis.

"This pandemic cannot be combated in sections. If we have learned anything from this pandemic, it is the fact that we cannot hide behind borders," said Sangarwal.

Watch video Afghanistan talks: No women, no peace

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CANADIAN Nobel Prize winner — posthumously

RESEARCHERS AND THEIR SELF-EXPERIMENTS

The Canadian physician Ralph Steinman fell ill with pancreatic cancer and underwent an immunotherapy he developed himself. According to his physician, this therapy was unable to prevent Steinman's death, but — contrary to the prognosis — could possibly have prolonged his life by over four years. Steinman died in 2011, a few days before the Nobel Prize was awarded, which he received posthumously.

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Germany to start first coronavirus vaccine trial

With more than 2.5 million people now infected worldwide in the COVID-19 pandemic, Germany has authorized the first clinical trial of a coronavirus vaccine. The first human tests will begin before the end of April.


German Health Minister Jens Spahn has announced the first clinical trials of a coronavirus vaccine. The Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI), the regulatory authority which helps develop and authorizes vaccines in Germany, has given the go-ahead for the first clinical trial of BNT162b1, a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

It was developed by cancer researcher and immunologist Ugur Sahin and his team at pharmaceutical company BioNTech, and is based on their prior research into cancer immunology. Sahin previously taught at the University of Mainz before becoming the CEO of BioNTech.

In a joint conference call on Wednesday with researchers from the Paul Ehrlich Institute, Sahin said BNT162b1 constitutes a so-called RNA vaccine. He explained that innocuous genetic information of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is transferred into human cells with the help of lipid nanoparticles, a non-viral gene delivery system. The cells then transform this genetic information into a protein, which should stimulate the body's immune reaction to the novel coronavrius.

Watch video Global race to find coronavirus vaccine

Numerous vaccines in development

Aside from BNT162b1, which is now in the stage 1 testing phase, BioNTech — jointly with Pfizer — is working on three other similar mRNA vaccines. PEI head Klaus Cichutek, meanwhile, has said other pharmaceutical companies are also developing vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, based on a variety of vaccine platforms in Europe, China and the United States.

Read more: Pandemic driving tech solutions in sub-Saharan Africa

The first medical tests of BNT162b1 will involve 200 healthy volunteers between the ages of 18 and 55. The aim is to determine the immune response and whether the vaccine causes any unwanted side effects.

"Trials of vaccine candidates in humans are an important milestone on the road to safe and efficacious vaccines against COVID-19 for the population in Germany and internationally," the PEI said in a statement.


Cichutek said testing would be completed by June, at the earliest. After this stage is complete, the PEI will determine if the vaccine can progress to further trial stages. Cichutek warned, however, that an approved vaccine was unlikely to be ready for the general public in 2020.

More than 2.5 million people have been infected by the COVID-19 pandemic in the last four months, and at least 179,000 people have died.


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German states announce new hotline for male victims of domestic violence

The coronavirus pandemic has seen a spike in reports of domestic violence in Germany. While this issue "predominantly affects women," two German states have announced a new hotline specifically for male victims.



Two German states have set up a hotline for men at risk of violence, ministers of Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia announced on Wednesday.

The hotline, specifically for men, can be used by male victims of domestic abuse or sexual violence, but also those by those who are at risk of other kinds of violence. Examples include victims of stalking and arranged marriage.

"With the hotline we hope to make an inroad in the struggle to tackle violence against men," Bavarian Family Minister Carolina Trautner and North Rhine-Westphalia's Equality Minister Ina Scharrenbach said in a press release.

The two ministers also called on other German states to join the initiative.

Lockdowns result in global increase in domestic violence

Domestic violence increasing due to coronavirus

Restrictions on public life have led to families spending a lot more time together at home, and German Families Minister Franziska Giffey has repeatedly warned about the impact of such restrictions on the victims of domestic violence.

Read more: Coronavirus: Fears of domestic violence, child abuse rise

Minister Scharrenbach stressed that domestic violence "predominantly affects women" and confirmed that most funding and resources will continue to go to helping female victims.

Women's refuges and resources to help victims of violence have been put under increasing pressure since social distancing regulations were introduced.

Many existing nationwide services for victims of abuse are also open to men. Figures from 2018 estimate that 18.7% of the victims of domestic violence between couples are male.

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PRIVATE NURSING HOME INDUSTRY
Here is the horrible reason why nursing homes are being unnecessarily overrun by the Trump pandemic

By Sarah Okeson, DCReport @ RawStory April 22, 2020

Former Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson, a Democrat but the CEO of a nursing home industry group, wrote Trump after the 2016 election seeking a “collaborative approach” to regulation, much like the one the Federal Aviation Administration has had with the aircraft industry.

Team Trump acquiesced, rolling back fines and proposing to weaken rules for infection prevention employees. That collaborative approach has failed, much as it did with the FAA , the agency that enabled failures in the design of the Boeing 737 Max.

Shoddy federal oversight of planes helped kill 346 people. The death toll from the pandemic, where health officials Seema Verma and Alex Azar helped turn our nation’s nursing homes into Trump death traps, is more than 46,000.

“Nursing homes are incubators of epidemics,” said Betsy McCaughey, the chair of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths.

So far, more than 7,000 residents or people connected to nursing homes have died. That number includes 12 residents at the Milford Center in Delaware owned by Genesis HealthCare which has an executive, Michael Wylie, who previously chaired the American Health Care Association board.

Parkinson was paid about $3.3 million in 2017 by the association which represents more than 14,000 nursing homes. The association had 45 lobbyists in 2019, including Brian Ballard, the former chairman of Trump’s fundraising committee.
Especially Vulnerable

Nursing home residents are especially vulnerable to infections spread among groups such as the flu and norovirus. In a normal year, almost 388,000 of our nation’s elderly and disabled die of infections they got in nursing homes.

Under Obama, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services created a new position for nursing homes to try to help prevent infections from spreading. The employees, infection preventionists, are supposed to make sure nursing home staff properly clean their hands, disinfect surfaces and other measures to prevent illnesses in residents and staff.

The requirement was part of a 2016 rule that was the first major update to requirements for long-term care providers since 1991. The rule also included protections against abuse, neglect and exploitation of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.

In 2016, a fifth of skilled nursing facilities were cited for actual harm or jeopardy to residents. Only 6.5% had no deficiencies in 2016.

Fines Drop

Under Trump, fines for nursing homes that injured or endangered residents dropped to an average of $28,405 compared to $41,260 during the last year of Obama’s administration. In 2017, CMS put an 18-month moratorium on fines and other penalties for some of the tougher regulations, saying it would use the time to “educate surveyors and the providers.”

Now, Verma and Azar want to weaken the infection preventionist position, changing the position from at least part-time to spending “sufficient time” at the facility. Nursing home inspectors started focusing exclusively on infection control after the pandemic started.

Knock ‘Em Out

More than 1,500 people or organizations commented on the proposed changes, many of them from the nursing home industry. The cutbacks, which also include weakening a resident’s right to file a grievance and allowing nursing homes to medicate residents with antipsychotic drugs indefinitely, are expected to save nursing home operators more than $600 million a year.

Some of the nursing home executives who asked federal regulators to weaken the standards for infection preventionists have had coronavirus outbreaks in their facilities.

Deb Fournier, the chief operations officer for Maine Veterans’ Homes, said in September that she supported the proposed Trump changes in employees charged with preventing infections.

“This will allow LTC facilities to use workforce resources in a manner that best meets the needs of their organizations,” she wrote.

Two people have died at the veterans’ home in Scarborough, Maine, and 38 people have gotten sick.

---30---

Company that failed to deliver ventilators awarded huge new contract from the Trump administration: report

 April 22, 2020 By Pro Publica


by Patricia Callahan and Sebastian Rotella

The Dutch company that received millions of taxpayer dollars to develop an affordable ventilator for pandemics, but never delivered them, has struck a much more lucrative deal with the federal government to make 43,000 ventilators at four times the price.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Wednesday that it plans to pay Royal Philips N.V. $646.7 million for the new ventilators — paying more than $15,000 each. The first 2,500 units are to arrive before the end of May, HHS said, and the rest by the end of December.

Philips refused to say which model of ventilator the government was buying. But in response to questions from ProPublica, HHS officials said the government is purchasing the Trilogy EV300, the more expensive version of the ventilator that was developed with federal funds

The deal is a striking departure from the federal contract Philips’ Respironics division signed in September to produce 10,000 ventilators for the Strategic National Stockpile at a cost of $3,280 each.



“This kind of profiteering — paying four times the negotiated price — is not only irresponsible to taxpayers but is particularly offensive when so many people are out of work,” said Dr. Nicole Lurie, who served as the HHS assistant secretary for preparedness and response during the Obama administration. “And besides, most of these ventilators will come too late to make a difference in this pandemic. We’ll then ’replenish’ the stockpile at a ridiculously high price.”

“What else,” she asked, “won’t we be able to buy as a result?”

In an article March 30, ProPublica detailed how the agency’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, known as BARDA, had anticipated a decade ago that hospitals would run short of life-saving ventilators in the event of a pandemic. BARDA tried to find a company that could produce an inexpensive, durable ventilator that could be operated by people with minimal training during a crisis. After a deal with one company fell apart, HHS in 2014 agreed to pay Philips $13.8 million to design the stockpile ventilator with an option to purchase 10,000 for $3,280 each. The company won Food and Drug Administration clearance for its Trilogy Evo Universal ventilator in July, and in September HHS put in its order.

But Philips didn’t deliver any ventilators to the stockpile even as the coronavirus spread across the globe and hospitals scrambled for ventilators to keep their patients alive. Rather than making the government-funded design, Philips has been manufacturing more expensive commercial versions of the Trilogy Evo at its Pennsylvania plant and selling them overseas and in the United States.

Philips said it was within its rights to sell the commercial versions first because its contract with HHS gave the company until 2022 to produce the cheaper stockpile version. Philips had only made the stockpile version in small batches and didn’t want to ramp up production on a ventilator that it hadn’t mass produced, a slower process than increasing production of other models, company spokesman Steve Klink explained last month. He also said the government contract did not cover all of the costs for the ventilators’ development.

Now the company won’t have to try. The Philips contract announced Wednesday is for the commercial version, the Trilogy EV300, with the government paying $15,039 each.

The HHS statement said the agency purchased “what was immediately available” under “negotiated pricing” with Philips. President Donald Trump directed HHS Secretary Alex Azar to invoke the Defense Production Act in brokering the deal, the statement said.

The government still expects Philips to produce the 10,000 stockpile versions of the ventilator, but no completion date was given in the statement.

Lurie was in charge of the HHS office that struck the 2014 deal with Philips. During her time, congressional Republicans elected on a Tea Party wave forced cuts in federal spending that hampered efforts to bulk up the stockpile. The goal of the Philips deal, Lurie said, was to produce a low-cost, easy-to-use ventilator and use the stockpile’s budget responsibly. But it was also an effort to show the industry that low-cost ventilators were feasible.

“This was a strategy to reduce health care costs,” Lurie said. “This feels like a conspiracy to keep them high.”

In a news release touting the deal on Wednesday, Philips said that it has been ramping up production and this year has delivered several thousand ventilators to U.S. hospitals — including one in hard-hit New York City. The company, which only makes ventilators in the U.S., said it wanted to continue selling ventilators to other countries in need. Klink declined to comment further.

John Hick, an emergency medicine specialist in Minneapolis who has advised HHS on pandemic response, said it would have been better to have a simpler and cheaper ventilator on hand.

“Don’t get me wrong, I am happy they are getting ventilators,” he said. “If you could buy four times as many for the price, why wouldn’t you do that?”

Hick hopes that federal officials will learn a lesson from the Philips deal.

“We have lost a lot of time,” he said. “It’s kind of like telling someone we are going to hurricane-proof your house after the hurricane has hit.”

Humanity must ‘tackle two crises at once,’ says Greta Thunberg of climate and COVID-19 on 50th Earth Day

April 22, 2020 By Common Dreams


4 VIDEOS ARE AT THE END OF THE ARTICLE

U.N. Chief António Guterres declared the pandemic “an unprecedented wake-up call” and urged world leaders to pursue a “green recovery.”

The 50th annual global Earth Day coming amid the coronavirus pandemic sparked fresh demands from Fridays for Future founder Greta Thunberg, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, and others for the international community to simultaneously tackle the COVID-19 and climate crises.

“Today is Earth Day and that reminds us that the climate and environmental emergency is still ongoing and we need to tackle both the corona pandemic, this crisis, at the same time as we tackle climate and environmental emergency, because we need to be able to tackle two crises at once,” said 17-year-old Thunberg.

She emphasized that while it is always “important” and “essential” to be guided by science, “during crises like this it is even more important that we listen to scientists, science, and to the experts. That goes for all crises, whether it’s the corona crisis or whether it’s the climate crisis.”

Thunberg’s comments came in a livestreamed conversation with Johan Rockström, a Swedish professor who is joint director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany, hosted by the Nobel Prize Museum. The teen activist, also a Swede, has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Price.

Thunberg’s youth-led climate action movement Fridays for Future marked Earth Day by releasing a short video entitled “Our House Is On Fire,” evoking a speech the activist delievered at the World Economic Forum’s annual summit in Davos, Switzerland in January 2018.

“We believe it’s time people realize that climate change isn’t going to happen, but that it’s already happening,” Fridays for Future U.S. spokesperson Joe Hobbs said in a statement. “We hope that by watching this video people will realize they need to take action now, instead of putting it off until later.”

During a video address Wednesday, Guterres said: “On this International Mother Earth Day, all eyes are on the COVID-19 pandemic—the biggest test the world has faced since the Second World War. We must work together to save lives, ease suffering, and lessen the shattering economic and social consequences.

“But there is another deep emergency—the planet’s unfolding environmental crisis,” he added. “Biodiversity is in steep decline. Climate disruption is approaching a point of no return. We must act decisively to protect our planet from both the coronavirus and the existential threat of climate disruption.”

Guterres declared that “the current crisis is an unprecedented wake-up call” and outlined six “climate-related actions to shape the recovery and the work ahead,” urging world leaders to pursue a green recovery from the pandemic that ensures “a healthy and resilient future for people and planet alike.”

As the coronavirus has spread across the globe, killing nearly 180,000 people, infecting more than 2.59 million, and devastating the world’s economy, climate and environmental activists have called for a global Green New Deal and just recovery that prioritizes a rapid transition to renewable energy and other efforts to reduce planet-heating emissions and pollution more broadly. Recent studies tying poor air quality to COVID-19 deaths have added weight to those demands.

The U.N. chief’s comments Wednesday were welcome by 350.org, a global environmental advocacy group leading the calls for a just recovery from the public health crisis:

#EarthDay2020 BREAKING: Secretary General of @UN calls on governments to use their economic response to the Coronavirus pandemic to respond to the “even deeper emergency” of #ClimateCrisis with #JustRecovery for all (via @ReutersUK
) https://t.co/COCJ4AqycV #FightEveryCrisis
— 350 dot org (@350) April 22, 2020

Author and activist Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, discussed Earth Day, the climate crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic on Democracy Now! Wednesday morning. McKibben’s interview echoed his piece for The New Yorker last week entitled “How We Can Build a Hardier World After the Coronavirus.”

Among the key messages that the coronavirus pandemic is sending the world, according to McKibben, is the importance of listening to science. As he put it during the show: “If they say stand six feet apart, we stand six feet apart. If they say it’s time to stop burning coal and gas and oil, then that’s what we need to do.”

“Similarly, we’re learning lessons about delay in timing here that are crucial,” McKibben continued. “As you know, the countries that flattened the coronavirus curve early on are doing far better than those like ours, which delayed. That’s a pretty perfect analog to the 30 years that we’ve wasted in the climate crisis.”

“And I think third, maybe most powerfully,” he added, “the lesson that we’re learning is social solidarity is almost everything.”

Addressing how the ongoing coronavirus-related lockdowns have caused a massive decline in emissions and pollution around the world, McKibben said that “there are people on Earth who are getting literally their first lungfuls of clean air this month in their lives… Even as we all live through the horror of this pandemic, there are people who are glimpsing the way that the world could be.”

Facebook ‘complicit’ in Vietnam censorship: Amnesty

April 22, 2020 By Agence France-Presse

Amnesty International on Wednesday accused Facebook of “caving” to Vietnam’s strict censorship regime, after the US tech giant confirmed it was blocking content deemed illegal by the country’s communist government.

Authorities regularly sentence domestic critics to harsh prison terms but have come under fire recently for targeting dissent on the world’s most popular social network.
Facebook is a popular platform for activists in Vietnam, where all independent media is banned, but the company confirmed in a statement to AFP that it had been instructed by Hanoi to restrict access to content “deemed to be illegal”.

“We have taken this action to ensure our services remain available and usable for millions of people in Vietnam, who rely on them every day,” a spokesperson said.

But Amnesty said the decision was “a devastating turning point for freedom of expression” in the country.

“Ruthless suppression of freedom of expression is nothing new, but Facebook’s shift in policy makes them complicit,” said the rights watchdog’s William Nee.

More than 53 million people in Vietnam — over half the population — use Facebook. The platform is also a crucial marketing tool for local business.

Domestic social media networks have so far failed to win a share of that lucrative online market.

Since the beginning of the year, authorities have questioned hundreds of Facebook users over posts connected to the coronavirus pandemic and the government’s handling of the health crisis.

Several were slapped with fines and had their posts removed after admitting they had spread “fake news”.

The government introduced a new regulation this month that makes it easier for authorities to fine and jail online critics.

Around 10 percent of Vietnam’s current crop of political prisoners were jailed because of their activity on Facebook, Amnesty says.

© 2020 AFP

2019 was Europe’s hottest year ever: EU


April 22, 2020 By Agence France-Press


Last year was the hottest in history across Europe as temperature records were shattered by a series of extreme heatwaves, the European Union’s satellite monitoring surface said Wednesday.

In its annual report on the state of the climate, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said that 11 of the continent’s 12 warmest years on record have been since 2000 as greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.

Warm conditions and summer heatwaves contributed to widespread drought across southern Europe, while areas of the Arctic were close to one degree Celsius hotter than a typical year, it said.

Overall, temperatures across Europe have been 2C hotter during the last five years than they were in the latter half of the 19th century, C3S’s data showed.

2019 globally was second-hottest only to 2016, a year that experienced an exceptionally strong El Nino warming event.

C3S director Carlo Buontempo said that while 2019 was Europe’s hottest year on record, it was important to focus on the continent’s long-term heating.

“One exceptional warm year does not constitute a warming trend, but to have detailed information from our operational service, that covers many different aspects of our climate, we are able to connect the dots to learn more about how it is changing,” he said.

Some parts of Europe experienced periods up to 4C hotter than the historic baseline last year, and heatwaves — notably in June and July — saw temperature records shattered in France, Germany and Britain.

The Paris climate deal commits nations to limit global temperature rises to “well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels.

To do so, and to stand any hope of meeting the accord’s more ambitious cap of 1.5C of warming, the UN says emissions from fossil fuel use must fall 7.6 percent annually by 2030.

– ‘Massive emissions reductions’ –
While carbon pollution levels are expected to drop significantly in 2020 due to the economic slowdown from the pandemic, there are fears that emissions will surge back once a vaccine is found.

“The response to the COVID-19 crisis could exacerbate the climate crisis if bailouts of the fossil fuel industry and fossil-intensive sectors are not conditional on a transition to clean technologies,” said Cameron Hepburn, director of the University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.

Andrew Shepherd, director of the University of Leeds’ Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, said C3S’s data was all the more worrying as it foreshadowed accelerated melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

“We can’t avoid the rapid changes in climate that are happening around our planet, even if they occur miles away in the polar regions, because they affect our weather today and will affect our coastlines in the future,” he said.

Anna Jones, a climate scientist at British Antarctic Survey, said she wasn’t surprised by the C3S findings.

“Concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are obstinately increasing as a result of human activity,” she said.

“With this rise come changes in our climate – warming trends and events of extreme weather.”

“For things to improve, we need massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions – there is no other way,” Jones added.

© 2020 AFP