Angola Newswire

One-third of Israel’s seniors — about 420,000 of those age 60 and older — have received a coronavirus booster shot, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Sunday, adding that the figure could reach 500,000 by the end of the day.

Bennett announced the progress of the vaccine campaign, which began 10 days ago and uses the Pfizer vaccine, at a Cabinet meeting.

Israel became a vaccination leader early in the pandemic, with about 5.4 million of its population of 9.3 million people fully vaccinated. Still, with hospitalizations on the rise, almost exclusively with the delta variant, the government offered the third shot and reinstated a mask mandate indoors.

With the world a year and a half into the pandemic, the United States, India and Brazil have suffered the most cases of COVID-19 and deaths from the virus by far, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

The U.S. has reported more than 35.7 million cases and more than 616,000 deaths. India has reported nearly 32 million cases and nearly 428,000 deaths. Brazil has reported 20.1 million cases and more than 563,000 deaths.

France, Russia and the United Kingdom fill the next three spots with more than 6 million cases each and 112,000 to 162,000 deaths.

India, which faced a devastating second wave of the virus earlier this year, said Sunday that it had recorded more than 39,000 new COVID-19 cases in the previous 24-hour period. Brazil reported more than 43,000 new cases on Sunday. The U.S. reported just more than 44,000 new cases, all figures according to Johns Hopkins.

Neither the U.S. nor any European country has yet authorized booster shots of the vaccine. Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) called for a moratorium on discussions of booster shots until more of the global population is vaccinated.

In India, just more than 8% of its population has been fully vaccinated. In Brazil, that figure stands at 21%, and the U.S. sits at almost 51%, all according to Johns Hopkins.

Coronavirus cases are rising in the United States, which confirmed an average of 100,000 new infections every day in the last week. Infections have been rising, due to the more contagious delta variant.

Frances Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, told ABC’s “This Week” Sunday that the country was failing in its pandemic response.

“We should not really have ever got to the place we are,” he said.

More than 230,000 people marched Saturday in cities across France to protest measures meant to counter the spread of the coronavirus, including vaccines for health care workers and a health pass needed for many public indoor activities.

This fourth week of protests was also the largest, and included marches in Paris, Nice, Montpellier and Lyon, where police used tear gas on protesters who threw objects at police. The measures have brought together France’s hard-left anarchists and hard-right militants, according to Reuters.

Health care workers have until September 15 to get their shots or face suspension.

“I’d rather not be paid than be forced to have the vaccine,” hospital psychiatrist Diane Hekking told Reuters as she protested in Paris.

The health pass shows proof of vaccination, a recent negative COVID-19 test or recovery from COVID-19. One will be needed starting Monday to enter cafes and restaurants, travel on intercity trains and access nonemergency care at hospitals. The pass was already needed for cinemas, concert halls, sports arenas and theme parks that hold more than 50 people, according to The Associated Press.

France isn’t the only European country to turn to health passes.

Italy’s Green Pass took effect Friday. Denmark pioneered vaccine passes with little resistance. In Austria, the pass is needed to enter restaurants, theaters, hotels, sports facilities and hairdressers, the AP said.

In Poland, though, thousands marched Saturday in protest as the government debated whether to place restrictions on unvaccinated people, Reuters reported.

In the past month, Poland has reported nearly 3,300 new cases of coronavirus and 167 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.

Johns Hopkins reported early Sunday more than 202.2 million global COVID-19 infections. The university said over 4.4 billion vaccine doses had been administered.
 

Source: Voice of America

 

BERLIN – Two spacecraft are set to swoop past Venus within hours of each other this week, using the maneuver to do a little bit of bonus science on the way to their main missions at the center of our solar system.

The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter probe, a cooperation with NASA, will swing around Venus early Monday, using the planet’s gravity to help put it on a course to observe the Sun’s poles.

About 33 hours later, the European-Japanese spacecraft BepiColombo will get even closer to Venus in a maneuver designed to help it slow down sharply and safely steer into the orbit of Mercury in 2025.

“Without the flyby, we would not be able to reach our target planet,” said Elsa Montagnon, the spacecraft operations manager for BepiColombo. “The energy required to enter into orbit of Mercury would be prohibitively expensive in terms of propellant.”

Both probes have numerous scientific instruments on board, some of which will be used to take a closer look at Venus as they zoom past.

The measurements will add to those taken by the Japanese probe Akatsuki, which is already in orbit around Earth’s hotter neighbor. NASA and the European Space Agency are planning to send three more missions to Venus toward the end of the decade.

 

 

Source: Voice of America

 

TOKYO – The official price tag for the Tokyo Olympics in $15.4 billion, which a University of Oxford study says is the most expensive on record. What else could those billions buy?

The ballpark figure for building a 300-bed hospital in Japan is $55 million. So you could put up almost 300 of these.

The average elementary school in Japan costs about $13 million. For that price, you get 1,200 schools.

A quick search finds a Boeing 747 is priced at roughly $400 million. Voila: 38 jumbo jets for the cost of the Tokyo Olympics.

The point is that Olympic Games are costly and may bump aside other priorities. In fact, several Japanese government audits say the real outlay for the Tokyo Games is even more than the official figure, perhaps twice as much. All but $6.7 billion comes from public money from Japanese taxpayers. According to the latest budget, the IOC’s contribution is $1.3 billion. It also chipped in several hundred million more after the pandemic.

Olympic costs have been dissected in a  study by the University of Oxford, which found that all Games since 1960 have had cost overruns averaging 172%. Tokyo’s cost overrun is 111% or 244%, depending on which cost figure you select.

Embarrassment

“The IOC and host cities have no interest in tracking costs, because tracking tends to reveal cost overruns, which have increasingly become an embarrassment to the IOC and host cities,” Oxford author Bent Flyvberg said in an email. Flyvberg also pointed out that costs would be reduced if the IOC picked up more of the bills rather than opening organizers’ wallets.

Following costs is a tedious exercise, dotted with arguments about what are — and what are not — Olympic expenses. Flyvberg explained that numbers from different games can be “opaque and noncomparable” and require sorting and tracking.

“The problem is disentangling what is Olympics cost and what is just general infrastructure spending that would have happened anyways but was sped up for the Olympics,” Victor Matheson, who studies sports economics at College of the Holy Cross, wrote in an email.

For example: The 1964 Tokyo Games, he says, “were either one of the cheapest or one of the most expensive Games depending on how much of the preparation costs count as the Olympics.”

The 2008 Beijing Olympics, usually listed as costing more than $40 billion, and the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, priced at $51 billion, are often singled out incorrectly as the most expensive.

“The numbers for Beijing and Sochi likely include wider infrastructure costs: roads, rail, airports, hotels, etc. Our numbers do not,” Flyvberg wrote in an email.

The blur around costs — and who pays — allows the IOC to pitch the Olympics as a global party that brings the world together and promotes world peace. Everybody is seen to benefit, and the financial interests of the not-for-profit IOC are hidden behind national flags, pomp and ceremony, and heart-tugging stories about athletes winning gold and beating the pandemic.

Tokyo, of course, saw costs soar with the postponement. Officials say the delay added $2.8 billion to the final total. The postponement and a subsequent ban on fans also wiped out virtually all ticket sales income, which was budgeted at $800 million. That shortfall will have to be picked up by Japanese government entities — likely the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.

Sponsors’ complaint

Tokyo organizers raised a record $3.3 billion from domestic sponsors, driven by giant Japanese advertising company Dentsu Inc. But many sponsors complained openly in the run-up to the Games that their investment was wasted without fans. Toyota, one of the IOC’s top 15 sponsors, pulled its Games-related advertising off television in Japan because of public discontent about holding the Olympics in the middle of a pandemic.

The big winner appears to be the Switzerland-based International Olympic Committee, which by holding the Olympics — even without fans — assured broadcast rights income of $3 billion to $4 billion. The IOC is essentially a sports and entertainment business, and almost 75% of its income is from selling broadcast rights, with another 18% from sponsors.

The IOC was able to drive the Games forward, partly because the terms in the so-called Host City Agreement favor the IOC and not the Japanese hosts.

In an interview last week, President Thomas Bach said financial interests were not at the center of the IOC’s decision to postpone instead of cancel.

“We could have canceled the Games 15 months ago,” Bach said. “Financially, it would have been the easiest solution for the IOC. But we decided at the time not to cancel the Games, not to draw on the insurance we had at the time.”

The IOC has never said how much insurance coverage it has for such eventualities, nor what is covered.

So why did Tokyo want the Olympics? Why does any city? German sports economist Wolfgang Maennig said the Olympics offer little economic boost. So any value must be elsewhere. He has often likened the Olympics to throwing a big party for your friends and overspending, hoping they go away happy and remember you fondly.

“After three decades of empirical research, economists agree that the Olympics do not generate any significant positive effect on national (or even regional) income, employment, tax income, tourism etc.,” Maennig, a 1988 Olympic gold medalist in rowing, wrote in a email.

Good for the home team

He said any benefits were elsewhere and include home-field advantage and more medals for home athletes, new sporting facilities, enhanced international awareness and fast-track decision-making around urban regeneration. Japan’s Olympic performance has been in line with that; it has won more gold medals and overall medals than ever before.

Much of the Olympic benefit goes to construction companies and contractors. Tokyo built eight new venues. The two most expensive were the National Stadium, which cost $1.43 billion, and the new aquatic center, priced at $520 million. The next two Olympic organizers — Paris in 2024 and Los Angeles in 2028 — say they are cutting back drastically on new construction.

Though Tokyo probably suffered short-term economic losses from the pandemic and absence of fans, any losses are relatively small for a country with a $5 trillion economy.

In another study of Olympic costs by Robert Baade and Victor Matheson, “Going for Gold: The Economics of the Olympics,” they point out that Olympic investment is risky and only a few reap the benefits.

“The goal should be that the costs of hosting are matched by benefits that are shared in a way to include ordinary citizens who fund the event through their tax dollars,” they wrote. “In the current arrangement, it is often far easier for the athletes to achieve gold than it is for the hosts.”

 

Source: Voice of America

The U.S. averaged more than 107,000 new COVID-19 cases a day for the first week of August, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center on Saturday.

For comparison, on June 7, the U.S. reported just more than 10,000 new COVID-19 cases, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The increase in coronavirus infections comes as the highly contagious delta variant continues to spread quickly throughout the United States.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in an interview with CNN earlier this week that government data shows infections in the U.S. “could be up to several hundred thousand cases a day, similar to our surge in early January.”

After peaking at nearly 250,000 infections per day in early January, cases bottomed out in June, but began ramping up even as U.S. adults were being vaccinated. More than 70% of all U.S. adults have been at least partially vaccinated, AP reported.

The seven-day average for daily fatalities in the U.S. increased from about 270 a day to almost 500 a day over the past week as of Friday, according to Johns Hopkins.

 

More than 166.2 million people, or 50.6% of the population, have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins’ vaccine tracker.

The southeast U.S. has some of the lowest vaccinations rates in the country, such as Alabama and Mississippi, in which fewer than 35% of residents are vaccinated, AP reported. The region also has seen the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients increase 50%, to a daily average of 17,600 over the past week from 11,600 the previous week, according to the CDC, as reported by AP.

Florida, which last week was called the national epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic by the CDC, broke another record for the number of COVID-19 cases on Saturday.

The CDC said the state reported 23,903 new infections in a 24-hour period ending Friday. The figure is the largest single-day number of cases in Florida since the pandemic began more than a year ago.

A week before, on July 30, the state had set a record with 21,683 new cases.

The delta variant of the coronavirus is fueling the rise in cases in Florida and across the U.S.

In Houston, health officials are warning that COVID-19 cases are on the rise.

Texas health officials are concerned, chief state epidemiologist Jennifer Shuford told Houston Public Media.

“We’ve been living this pandemic now for a year and a half,” she told the news organization. “We thought we had seen the worst of it with those first two pandemic waves that we experienced. This third wave that we’re having right now in Texas is showing a very steep increase in cases and hospitalizations, as great or even steeper than what we were seeing with those first two waves.”

 

Coronavirus-related hospitalizations in Harris County, where Houston is located, have increased nearly 262% over the past month, the Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council reported on Thursday, according to Houston Public Media.

On Friday, there were 8,522 people in Texas hospitals with COVID-19, the most since February 11, the AP reported. In Harris County, the state’s largest with more than 4.5 million residents, nearly 1,700 people were hospitalized with COVID-19, according to the Houston Public Media report.

Dr. David Persse, who is serving as the chief medical officer for the city of Houston, spoke to the AP about the latest increase in COVID-19 cases.

“The health care system right now is nearly at a breaking point. … For the next three weeks or so, I see no relief on what’s happening in emergency departments,” he said.

Persse said some ambulances were waiting hours to offload patients at Houston area hospitals because no beds were available. He told AP that he feared this would lead to prolonged respond times to 911 medical calls.

In the U.S. Midwest, more than 98% of all new COVID-19 cases are from the delta variant, according to the CDC.

The Omaha Board of Education, which oversees the largest school district in Nebraska with 52,000 students, will discuss on Monday whether to require face coverings inside school and district buildings.

The Omaha Education Association, a union that represents teachers and staff, is concerned by the rise in delta variant cases and the state’s middling vaccination rate. The group had called on the district to require masks, according to an Omaha World-Herald report.

Of the state’s nearly 2 million residents, roughly half (49.9%) are fully vaccinated, similar to the U.S. figure of 50.6% announced, according to Johns Hopkins.

As of midday Saturday, there were more than 202 million infections and nearly 4.3 million deaths worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins. The U.S. continued to lead the world in cases, with more than 35.7 million, and fatalities, with more than 616,000, according to Johns Hopkins.

 

Source: Voice of America

Luanda – The Secretariat of the ruling MPLA party’s Politburo Friday in Luanda rejected as “incoherent and irresponsible” the assessment made by the opposition so-called Broad Patriotic Front of the state of the nation.

 

 

The Broad Patriotic Front is a three-party political force willing to challenge the ruling MPLA party in the 2022 election.

In a note released Saturday in Luanda, the ruling MPLA party’s Political Bureau Secretariat says the “self-proclaimed Front does not come with an alternative governing programme to that of MPLA” and “has no vision for  the future of the country”.

As to the MPLA’s loss of legitimacy to continue running the country mentioned by the “Front”, the ruling party says “such statement is revealing of the known lack of sense of Statesmanship and of respect for the democratic institutions the opposition forces, with UNITA at the head, have been showing.”

The ruling party underscores that Angolans know that the only possible way to legitimately achieve power in the country is through election and it is the MPLA and its President João Lourenço they entrusted, in the 2017 general elections, the legitimacy to rule until the next election.

According to the note, those who claim, with no mandate whatsoever, the right to call into question the legitimacy entrusted by the people of Angola at the ballots, clearly show their lack of respect for the Constitution they swore to respect.

The communique further states that the attempt to mislead the citizens with the narrative that MPLA has lost the legitimacy to run Angola can only expose the purpose of inciting Angolans into rebellion and disobedience against the legitimate institutions.

It also says the resulting consequences thereof could only be imputed to the promoters of the self-proclaimed “Patriotic Front”.

According to the communique, it is not surprising that the will to reach power at any cost, even without any reliable project of Nation, leads the promoters into ignoring all that is being done towards a sustainable solution to the problem of the draught in the southern region of the country.

In this regard, the Secretariat of the Political Bureau mentions that structuring projects are about to take off to deal with the situation.

It also mentions that there is no record in Angola’s history of investments of the dimension of those underway to take advantage of the Cunene river waters.

Besides, the note further states, Angolans and the southern province’s populations are aware of the ruling party-backed Executive’s commitment   to continuing to assist the needy and rally to the civil society for the solidarity movement.

The note states that since President João Lourenço visited the regions most severely hit by the draught in the southern provinces of Cunene and Namibe, the assistance to the affected populations with foodstuffs, water, clothing, trucks and bike-tankers and water boreholes has significantly improved.

The note mentions that, right now, trucks laden with more than 200 tons of assorted goods raised under the “Abraço Solidario” Campaign, launched by the media fraternity, are on their way to the needy regions.

Regrettably, the communique says, the country has no record of any initiative from the opposition, that is rather busy inciting the youths into bad causes, like violent demonstrations, vandalising and destroying public property.

The note reaffirms that the ruling MPLA is truly committed to fighting corruption and impunity to moralise the society and safeguard the common wellbeing.

The ruling MPLA party’s Politburo Secretariat states in the note that the election is won at the ballots with the people’s vote, stressing that those who claim to be confident about an early victory should neither fear the people nor seek excuses “for their more than likely defeat”.

 

According to the note, the ruling MPLA has no doubt that the citizens are closely watching the present challenges and the Executive’s endeavour to continue improving Angolans’ living.

The ruling MPLA party reiterates its commitment to peace, stability and continued and devoted effort to keep making reforms the country needs to always do better for everyone, the note reads.

 

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Luena – Ruling MPLA party’s vice president Luísa Damião Saturday in Luena (Moxico) recommended the party’s youth wing (JMPLA) more strategic and tactical-operational rigor.

Speaking at a rally, ahead of the second inter-provincial meeting (Moxico, Lunda Sul and Lunda Norte), held in Luena, Luísa Damião directed the JMPLA to continue and intensify the political work.

Political work, according to Luísa Damião, requires strategic and tactical-operational rigor.

As for the party’s women wing (OMA), the politician urged for speed up the mobilisation of women to support the leader, President João Lourenço.

The MPLA vice-president highlighted that the party has “an enormous potential of people who work day and night, talented women full of determination, resilient and competent young people, brave and victorious men, and, above all, militants committed to the values ​​and principles of the party and the leader, strongly rooted in the founding values ​​of the glorious MPLA”.

On Saturday, the MPLA vice-president paid tribute to King Mwene Mbandu III, sovereign of the Mbunda people, who died on 21 July last at the Moxico General Hospital (HGM), at 71 years of age, victim of illness.

 

 

Source: Angola Press News Agency

 

Catumbela – The leader of the main opposition UNITA party Adalberto Costa Júnior has urged for courage and national commitment to hold the country´s first municipal elections.

Angola has already approved eight laws of the Municipal Legislative Package, but the Parliament still need to schedule a diploma on the Institutionalisation of the Municipalities.

 

The leader of the main opposition in Angola was speaking during the celebration of the 87th anniversary of the party’s founding president, Jonas Savimbi,  held in coastal Benguela province on Saturday.

 

He said that local elections were crucial for the wellbeing of the Angolans, adding that it is necessary courage to meet this goal.

 

On the other hand, the politician regretted the fact of the Covid-19 pandemic to disrupt the fulfillment of strategic goals for the country, such as the municipal elections.

 

Local elections were initially scheduled for 2020, but the process did not take place due to the lack of conditions.

 

 

Source: Angola Press News Agency

 

U.S. employers added more than 940,000 jobs in July, the U.S. Labor Department reported Friday, beating analyst expectations and providing the latest sign the job market may be recovering from steep losses sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 943,000 jobs added last month topped the 850,000 from the previous month, despite a shortage of available workers.

July’s unemployment rate dropped to 5.4% from 5.9% the month before.

“While it is doubtless we will have ups and downs along the way as we continue to battle the delta surge of COVID, what is indisputable now is this: The Biden plan is working, the Biden plan is producing results and the Biden plan is moving the country forward,” said President Joe Biden at the White House Friday.

The president said his administration is the first in U.S. history to oversee an economy that added jobs “every single month in our first six months in office” and noted that “economic growth is the fastest in 40 years.”

The rollout of the coronavirus vaccine encouraged restaurants and other businesses to reopen after being forced to close for months after the pandemic began. But Biden warned there was more to be done not just on the economy, but also on fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

“Because of our success with the vaccination effort, this new delta variant wave of COVID-19 will be very different to deal with than the one that was underway when I took office,” Biden warned. “Yes, cases are going to go up before they come back down. This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

The prospects of a strong monthly jobs report were bolstered Thursday when the Labor Department reported that 385,000 jobless workers filed for compensation, down 14,000 from the revised figure of the week before.

The U.S. said a week ago that the economy expanded at a 6.5% annual rate of growth from April through June, a slightly faster pace than in the first three months of the year.

The size of the U.S. economy – nearly $23 trillion – now exceeds its pre-pandemic level as it recovers faster than many economists had predicted during the worst of the business closings more than a year ago.

But the surging delta variant of the coronavirus is threatening to impair business activity in some regions of the U.S. and, as a result, analysts say the economy could cool somewhat in coming months.

 

The second quarter growth was fueled by widespread business reopenings, vaccinations for millions of people and trillions of dollars of government pandemic aid that was sent to all but the wealthiest American families. Some economists and many Republican lawmakers have warned of inflation risks sparked by record-high government stimulus.

“Inflation is skyrocketing & Americans are paying higher prices after Dems’ wild spending spree earlier this year,” Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota tweeted earlier this week.

The number of weekly unemployment benefit claims has tracked unevenly in recent weeks, but overall has fallen by more than 40% since early April, while remaining well above the pre-pandemic levels.

About 9.5 million people remain unemployed in the U.S. and are looking for work. There also are 9.2 million job openings, the government says, although the skill sets of the jobless do not necessarily match the needs of employers.

Some employers are offering cash bonuses to new hires.

State governors and municipal officials across the U.S. have been ending coronavirus restrictions, in many cases allowing businesses for the first time in a year to completely reopen to customers. That could lead to more hiring of workers.

But the number of new coronavirus infections recorded each day has increased by tens of thousands in recent weeks and is still growing, especially in parts of the U.S. where millions of people have, for one reason or another, resisted getting vaccination shots.

The number of new vaccinations had been falling in the U.S. but now is increasing again as more people see others in their communities hospitalized from the virus and their lives endangered.

More than 60% of U.S. adults have now been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.

 

Source: Voice of America

 

 

The Vatican Museums began requiring visitors Friday to present a so-called Green Pass, a digital certificate proving they have been vaccinated, tested negative or recovered from COVID-19 using a digital or paper certificate.

The Green Pass is an extension of the European Union’s COVID-19 certificate, designed to make travel, as well as entry into certain venues, easier.

Early Friday, tourists could be seen waiting to enter the museums to have QR codes scanned. The pass can be downloaded as a smartphone app, and is available in a paper version.

The Vatican implemented its rules the same day the surrounding country of Italy implemented mandatory use of the pass to access places like bars and restaurants, gyms, theaters, museums, sporting events, and concerts.

France was the first EU nation to make proof of immunity mandatory to access a range of services and venues.

The Italian government announced Thursday it will widen the Green Pass requirement to all teachers, university students and long-distance transport beginning September 1.

 

Source: Voice of America