Day: July 24, 2021

Mungo – Angola’s Vice President Bornito de Sousa visited an agro-ecological farm on Friday and met with local authorities in Mungo municipality, central Huambo province.

Bornito de Sousa acknowledged that Mungo municipality has a strong tourist, economic and social potential, capable of enhancing local integrated development.

Speaking at a consultation meeting with authorities and community members, Bornito de Sousa said that Mungo’s potential, especially from the agricultural and tourism point of view, if well explored can increase the region’s economic capacity.

“Mungo has great potential in tourism and agriculture, as I have just seen in the agro-ecological project with the municipality’s name, as well as Kaniñgili’s cave paintings, which can attract national and foreign tourists,” said the Vice-President.

He called for the need to set up a medium-sized polytechnic institute, in order to provide technical and professional training for young people and prevent them from escaping, in order to ensure the promotion and development of agro-tourism.

He said that it is important to give priority to the local (Mungo) young people in public tender for access to education and health sectors.

Bornito de Sousa also expressed concern about the lack of the Public Television of Angola (TPA) signal and the poor coverage by National Radio (RNA) station in the area, located 130 kilometers from the capital city of Huambo.

During his visit to the 900-hectare agro ecological farm, Bornito de Sousa toured the project for testing process of the production of avocado.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

DAKAR, July 23 (Reuters) – Sierra Leone’s parliament voted unanimously on Friday to repeal the death penalty more than two decades after the West African country carried out its last execution.

Sierra Leone has observed a moratorium on executions since 1998, but prisoners sentenced to death still live separately from other inmates, which activists say is dehumanising.

“This is exactly what we were calling for,” said Rhiannon Davis of Advocaid, an advocacy group in the capital Freetown.

“It allows for judges to interpret the law and pass sentence in individual cases, which is particularly important in cases involving people who have experienced sexual or gender-based violence,” she said.

Sierra Leone is one of several African countries moving to end capital punishment. Malawi’s Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in April, and Chad ended executions for those charged with terrorism last year.

Sierra Leone’s last executions took place in 1998, when 23 soldiers were executed by firing squad at the height of an 11-year civil war. But death sentences have continued to be issued.

As of June 2020, 99 people were on death row for crimes ranging from aggravated robbery to murder, despite pledges from the last three administrations to abolish capital punishment.

“One of the things we have to clarify in the fine print is how this will be interpreted for those currently on death row,” Davis said.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

About 150 schools have been vandalized during the recent wave of violence and bombings that shook South Africa, authorities said today, raising the death toll from 337 to 330.

“Educational centers and institutions have been vandalized and looted,” South African Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga said at a press conference, quoted by the Spanish news agency EFE.

The official explained that 137 schools were damaged due to incidents in KwaZulu-Natal province (east) and 11 schools in Gauteng (where Johannesburg and Pretoria are located), a province that has already been vandalized against 43 schools. since the beginning of the year.

According to Moshekgi, the total damage to the education system during the unrest in the two provinces is estimated at 300 million rand (more than 17 million euros).

During the riots in schools, baths, hydroelectric installations, plumbing, electrical installations and fences were destroyed.

Computers and kitchen equipment were also looted, and classrooms and office buildings were set on fire.

“This is unprecedented and as an education sector we are concerned about the destruction of much needed infrastructure. This is a serious setback for the industry, which is already under pressure to provide adequate conditions for the education system, ”complained Motshekga.

Despite everything, the minister hopes that on Monday, July 26, the destroyed educational centers will be able to reopen, like the rest of the schools.

The riots also resulted in the loss of 47,500 doses of COVID-19 vaccine after looting more than 120 pharmacies in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces, 71 of which functioned as vaccination sites.

As for the death toll, it was revised below from 337 to 330.

“The death toll is reviewed when there is confirmation that they are associated with incidents, or when the injured have died from their injuries,” – said at a press conference, acting Minister of South African President Kumbudzo Ntshaveni.

A wave of violence began after the arrest of former President Jacob Zuma.

Zuma, 79, a former ANC president, has been imprisoned since July 7 at Estkur Correctional Center, about 150 kilometers from his home in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal countryside, for contempt of the Constitutional Court.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Rescue teams in India struggled through thick sludge and debris yesterday to reach dozens of submerged homes as the death toll from landslides and accidents caused by torrential monsoon rain rose to 138.

Maharashtra state is being hit by the heaviest rain in July in four decades, experts say. Downpours lasting several days have severely affected the lives of hundreds of thousands, while major rivers are in danger of bursting their banks.

“138 accidental deaths reported in Maharashtra due to rain and other monsoon-related incidents,” Maharashtra Minister of Relief and Rehabilitation Vijay Wadettiwar said yesterday.

In Taliye, about 180 km (110 miles) southeast of the financial capital of Mumbai, the death toll rose to 42 with the recovery of four more bodies after landslides flattened most homes in the village, a senior Maharashtra government official said.

“About 40 people are still trapped. The possibility of rescuing them alive is thin as they’ve been trapped in mud for more than 36 hours,” said the official, who declined to be identified as he is not authorised to talk to the media.

Harsh weather has hit several parts of the world in recent weeks, with floods in China and Western Europe and heat waves in North America, raising new fears about the impact of climate change.

Parts of India’s west coast have received up to 594 mm (23 inches) of rain, forcing authorities to move people out of vulnerable areas as they released water from dams about to overflow. The hill station of Mahabaleshwar recorded its highest ever rainfall – 60 cm in 24 hours.

Rescuers were searching for victims of landslides in four other places in the state, the official said.

“Around 90,000 people were rescued from flood affected areas,” the Maharashtra government said in a statement, as authorities released water from overflowing dams.

Thousands of trucks were stuck for more than 24 hours on a highway linking Mumbai with the southern technology hub of Bengaluru, with the road submerged in some places.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was in anguish over the loss of lives.

“The situation in Maharashtra due to heavy rains is being closely monitored and assistance is being provided to the affected,” Modi said on Twitter on Friday.

In the southern state of Telangana, heavy rain caused flooding in the state capital of Hyderabad and other low-lying areas.

Indian environmentalists have warned that climate change and indiscriminate construction in fragile coastal regions could lead to more disasters.

“The rain fury that lashed Mahabaleshwar … is a strong warning against any more tampering with the ecologically fragile Western Ghats,” environment economist Devendra Sharma said on Twitter referring to the range of hills along India’s west coast.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

OMAHA, NEBRASKA – Several states scaled back their reporting of COVID-19 statistics this month just as cases across the country started to skyrocket, depriving the public of real-time information on outbreaks, cases, hospitalizations and deaths in their communities.

The shift to weekly instead of daily reporting in Florida, Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota marked a notable shift during a pandemic in which coronavirus dashboards have become a staple for Americans closely tracking case counts and trends to navigate a crisis that has killed more than 600,000 people in the U.S.

In Nebraska, the state stopped reporting on the virus altogether for two weeks after Governor Pete Ricketts declared an end to the official virus emergency, forcing reporters to file public records requests or turn to national websites that track state data to learn about COVID statistics. The state backtracked two weeks later and came up with weekly reports of some basic numbers.

Other governments have gone the other direction and released more information, with Washington this week adding a dashboard on breakthrough cases to show the number of residents who contracted the virus after getting vaccines. Many states have recently gone to reporting virus numbers only on weekdays.

When Florida changed the frequency of its virus reporting earlier this month, officials said it made sense given the decreasing number of cases and the increasing number of people being vaccinated.

Cases started soaring soon afterward, and Florida cases earlier this week made up one-fifth of the country’s new coronavirus infections. As a result, Florida’s weekly releases — typically done on Friday afternoons — have consequences for the country’s understanding of the current summer surge, with no statewide COVID stats coming out of the virus hotspot for six days a week.

In Florida’s last two weekly reports, the number of new cases shot up from 23,000 to 45,000 and then 73,000 on Friday, an average of more than 10,000 day. Hospitals are starting to run out of space in parts of the state.

With cases rising, Democrats and other critics have urged state officials and Governor Ron DeSantis to resume daily outbreak updates.

“There was absolutely no reason to eliminate the daily updates beyond an effort to pretend like there are no updates,” said state Representative Anna Eskamani, a Democrat from the Orlando area.

Alarming trend

The trend of reducing data reporting has alarmed infectious-disease specialists who believe that more information is better during a pandemic. People have come to rely on state virus dashboards to help make decisions about whether to attend large gatherings or wear masks in public, and understanding the level of risk in the community affects how people respond to virus restrictions and calls to get vaccinated.

“We know that showing the data to others actually is important because the actions that businesses take, the actions that schools take, the actions that civic leaders take, the actions that community leaders take, the actions that each of us individually take are all influenced by our perception of what the risk is out there,” said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, who leads the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California-San Francisco.

Reporting the numbers weekly still allows people to see the overall trends while smoothing out some of the day-to-day variations that come from the way cases are reported. And experts have long advised that it makes sense to pay more attention to the seven-day rolling average of new cases because the numbers can vary widely from one day to the next.

And Florida health officials say that they have not curtailed the sharing of data with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Overwhelmed staff

Maintaining daily updates on the virus does require significant resources for states. For instance, Kansas went to reporting virus numbers three times a week in May because the state health department said providing daily statistics consumed too much of its overwhelmed staff’s time.

In Nebraska, officials decided that continuing to update the virus dashboard daily wasn’t the best use of state resources now, partly because there had been a steady decline in the number of views of the website, indicating less interest in the numbers, spokeswoman Olga Dack said. The state could return to providing daily updates if the governor’s office decided that was needed, she said.

State health departments have a long history of providing the public regular updates on other diseases like flu and West Nile, but those viruses have none of the political baggage associated with COVID-19.

In Florida, a former health department employee was fired last year after publicly suggesting that managers wanted her to manipulate information on coronavirus statistics to paint a rosier picture. The employee, Rebekah Jones, did not allege any tampering with data, but her comments sowed doubts about the reliability of the metrics.

Weekly updates, no updates

Infectious-disease specialist Dr. David Brett-Major said that for many people, national websites such as the one run by the CDC can be a good source of data on the latest state trends, and that weekly updates could be OK. The World Health Organization often uses weekly updates, but he said they do that for practical data management reasons, not political ones.

He said the message Nebraska sent when it ended its dashboard — that the state emergency was over and conditions were returning to normal — was troubling.

“The main problem is that it reflects a disinterest in pandemic risk management,” said Brett-Major, with the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

Janet Hamilton, executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, said part of the problem is that public health officials generally don’t have sophisticated data systems, which makes it more labor intensive to produce the daily dashboards. Even though public health agencies have money for operations at a time when pandemic government spending is flush, they haven’t necessarily had the chance to upgrade.

“It would be great if daily reporting could be made widely available, but public health would have to be funded better to do that and right now that is just not the case,” Hamilton said.

And even in states where virus numbers aren’t being reported publicly every day, health officials are still looking at the latest data, Hamilton said.

But at a time when the delta variant is, in the words of the CDC director, “spreading with incredible efficiency,” Bibbins-Domingo said it is important that everyone can see the latest trends and understand the risks.

“Even if we know that they are available to decision-makers on a daily basis, there is considerable value to providing the data to the public,” she said.

Source: Voice of America

PARIS – Tens of thousands of people protested in Australia, France, Italy and Greece on Saturday, sparking clashes with police as they railed against COVID-19 measures and government sanctions against the unvaccinated aimed at prodding more people into getting their shots.

Dozens of protesters were arrested after an unauthorized march in Sydney, with the city’s police minister calling those who took part “morons.”

Organizers had dubbed the protest a freedom rally. Attendees carried signs and banners reading “Wake up Australia” and “Drain the Swamp.”

In France, where police deployed tear gas and a water cannon against some protesters, an estimated 160,000 took to the streets in nationwide protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s health pass that will drastically curtail access to restaurants and public spaces for unvaccinated people.

‘Don’t touch our children’

“Freedom, freedom,” chanted demonstrators in France, carrying placards denouncing “Macron, Tyrant,” “Big Pharma shackles freedom” or saying “No to the pass of shame.”

The demonstrations highlight the conflict globally between the advice of the World Health Organization and other public health agencies and people who for one reason or another refuse to be vaccinated.

In Indonesia and the United Kingdom, governments have eased pandemic restrictions even in the face of surging cases of coronavirus infection.

Meanwhile, around 5,000 people demonstrated in Athens, carrying placards touting slogans such as, “Don’t touch our children,” according to an AFP journalist at the scene.

Thousands of people protested in at least 80 cities across Italy as Rome tries to slow an upturn in COVID-19 infections. Most were not wearing masks.

The Green Pass, an extension of the EU’s digital COVID certificate, will be required starting Aug. 6 for anyone who wants to enter cinemas, museums, indoor swimming pools or sports stadiums, or eat indoors at restaurants.

It will serve as proof bearers have either been vaccinated, undergone a recent negative COVID-19 test, or recovered from a coronavirus infection.

The decision Thursday to make the pass mandatory for many activities saw a boom in vaccine bookings, up 200% in Italy’s smaller regions, according to COVID-19 emergency chief Francesco Figliuolo.

Half of Australia in lockdown

Earlier in Sydney, demonstrators pelted officers with potted plants and bottles of water as they defied a monthlong stay-at-home order, a day after authorities suggested the restrictions could remain in place until October.

New South Wales state Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she was “utterly disgusted” by the protesters whose “selfish actions have compromised the safety of all of us.”

Police said they issued nearly 100 fines and arrested 57 people.

In Melbourne, six people were arrested. police said.

New South Wales Police Minister David Elliott said a team of detectives would be scouring footage to identify and charge as many people as possible in the coming days.

“Sydney isn’t immune from morons,” he said.

Sydney, a city of more than 5 million people, is struggling to contain an outbreak of the delta variant, first identified in India and now spreading globally.

After escaping much of the early pandemic unscathed, about half of Australia’s 25 million people are now in lockdown across several cities.

There is growing anger at the restrictions and the conservative government’s failure to provide adequate vaccine supplies.

Just 11% of the population is fully vaccinated.

Harder to put off shots

In France, as elsewhere in Europe, the government is making it harder for reluctant citizens to put off getting their shots.

Legislation now being considered by lawmakers will make vaccinations compulsory for certain professions, while the controversial health pass will severely restrict social life for holdouts starting at the end of this month.

There were signs the tougher measures announced on July 13 were having the desired effect: 48% of the population were fully vaccinated as of Friday, up 8 percentage points from July 10.

While more than three-quarters of French people backed Macron’s measures, according to a July 13 Elabe poll for BFMTV, a sizeable and vocal minority do not.

Elodie, 34, a care assistant at a Strasbourg nursing home, denounced “the blackmail of caregivers who were at the front line” during the first wave and who are now threatened” with “no more pay” and even being fired.

“They’ve been lying to us since the beginning,” she said.

Source: Voice of America