Covid-19: Angola announces 863 recoveries, 20 new infections

Luanda – Angola reported this Sunday the recovery of 863 patients, 20 new cases and 1 death, in the last 24 hours.

According to the daily bulletin, 853 recovered people reside in Luanda, 5 in Huambo, 3 in Bié and 2 in Benguela.

The new cases, whose ages range from 6 to 86 years, were diagnosed in Luanda. The list included 12 male and 8 female patients.

In the last 24 hours, the laboratories processed 681 samples by RT-PCR, with a daily positivity rate of 2.9 percent.

The death involves a 64-year-old patient residing in the province of Huila.

Angola has 64,674 confirmed cases, of which 1,720 deaths, 60,016 recovered and 2,938 active. Of the active cases, 10 are critical, 6 severe, 23 moderate, 19 mild and 2.880 asymptomatic.

At treatment centers, 58 patients are hospitalized, while 83 citizens are serving institutional quarantine and 96 contacts of positive cases are under medical surveillance.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Nationwide Polio Eradication Campaign Starts in Afghanistan

The Taliban-run Afghan public health ministry announced Sunday the start of a four-day nationwide polio vaccination campaign aimed at inoculating children younger than 5.

For the past three years before taking control of Afghanistan, the Taliban had barred U.N.-organized vaccination teams from doing door-to-door campaigns in parts of the country under their control. The group apparently was suspicious the team members could be spies for the previous government or the West.

Because of the ban and ongoing fighting, some 3.3 million children over the past three years have not been vaccinated.

“Without any doubt polio is a disease that without treatment will either kill our children or cause them with permanent disability, so in this case the only way is to implement the vaccination,” said Dr. Qalandar Ebad, the Taliban’s acting public health minister.

Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan are the only countries in the world where polio remains endemic, and the disease can cause partial paralysis in children. Since 2010, the country has been carrying out regular inoculation campaigns in which workers go door to door, giving the vaccine to children. Most of the workers are women, since they can get better access to mothers and children.

The four-day campaign will start Monday and take place countrywide, Ebad said. The estimated target population is Afghanistan’s 10 million children younger than 5, including the more than 3.3 million who could not be reached since 2018.

“Vaccination of [children] less than five years of age in the country during the national immunization days is a gigantic task. It is not possible for the ministry of public health alone to complete this task successfully, so we need the support of all lined departments,” said Nek Wali Shah Momin, a health ministry official in the polio eradication department.

The Taliban’s reported endorsement of the campaign appeared aimed at showing the international community they are willing to cooperate with international agencies. The longtime militant insurgent force has been trying to win the world’s recognition of its new government and reopen the door for international aid to rescue the crumbling economy.

The World Health Organization and the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF in a joint statement last month said they welcomed the decision by the Taliban leadership supporting the resumption of house-to-house polio vaccinations across the country.

Large sections of the country have been out of reach for vaccinations in recent years. In parts of the south, particularly, the ban by the Taliban was in effect. In other areas, door-to-door campaigns were impossible because of fighting between the government and insurgents, or because of fears of kidnappings or roadside bombs. In some places, hardline clerics spoke out against vaccinations, calling them un-Islamic or claiming they were part of a Western plot.

Source: Voice of America

Poland’s Health Ministry Clarifies Abortion Law After Woman’s Death

Poland’s Health Ministry issued instructions Sunday to doctors confirming that it is legal to terminate a pregnancy when the woman’s health or life is in danger, a directive that comes amid apparent confusion over a new restriction to the country’s abortion law.

The document addressed to obstetricians comes in reaction to the hospital death of a 30-year-old mother whose pregnancy was in its 22nd week. The woman died in September but her death became widely known this month. Doctors at the hospital in Pszczyna, in southern Poland, held off terminating her pregnancy despite the fact that her fetus lacked enough amniotic fluid to survive, her family and a lawyer say.

The doctors have been suspended and prosecutors are investigating.

Angered Poles held massive nationwide protests over the weekend, blaming the woman’s death on Poland’s restrictive abortion law. Women’s rights activists say it has a chilling effect on doctors in this predominantly Roman Catholic nation.

The ministry stressed it is in line with the law to terminate a pregnancy when the woman’s health is in danger, even more so in case of threat to her life. It included guidance in case of premature loss of the amniotic fluid.

“It should be clearly stressed that doctors must not be afraid to take evident decisions. stemming from their experience and the available medical knowledge,” the ministry said.

Until a year ago, women in Poland could have abortions in three cases: if the pregnancy resulted from a crime like rape, if the woman’s health or life was at risk, or in the case of irreparable defects of the fetus. That last possibility was eliminated a year ago, when the Constitutional Tribunal ruled it went against Poland’s law.

Source: Voice of America

Restoring Mexico’s Mangroves Can Shield Shores, Store Carbon

When a rotten egg smell rises from the mangrove swamps of southeast Mexico, something is going well. It means that this key coastal habitat for blunting hurricane impacts has recovered and is capturing carbon dioxide — the main ingredient of global warming.

While world leaders seek ways to stop the climate crisis at a United Nations conference in Scotland this month, one front in the battle to save the planet’s mangroves is thousands of kilometers away on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

Decades ago, mangroves lined these shores, but today there are only thin green bands of trees beside the sea, interrupted by urbanized areas and reddish segments killed by too much salt and by dead branches poking from the water.

A few dozen fishermen and women villagers have made building on what’s left of the mangroves part of their lives. Their work is supported by academics and donations to environmental groups, and government funds help train villagers to organize their efforts.

The first time they came to the swamp for seasonal restoration work was more than a decade ago with Jorge Alfredo Herrera, a researcher at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the Mexican Polytechnic Institute in Yucatan. He told them the mangroves needed a network of interlaced canals where fresh and salt water would mingle.

To dig them was a hard work and paid only $4 a day. Men from Chelem, a fishing village of Progreso, turned down the job but a group of women took it on, believing they could accomplish a lot with little money.

Recently, after an intense rainy season, the women worked to finish the second part of the restoration process: planting young mangroves in a swamp near this port city. Under the sun, they chuckled, remembering the time they encountered a crocodile and barely managed to run away.

Then they placed 20-inch mangrove seedlings into mounds of mud held together by mesh, creating tiny islands about a yard (meter) square.

“The happiest day is when our plants take,” said 41-year-old Keila Vázquez, leader of the women who now are paid $15 a day and take pride in putting their “grain of sand” into the planet’s well-being. “They are like our children.”

GLOBAL THREAT TO MANGROVES

This mangrove restoration effort is similar to others around the globe, as scientists and community groups increasingly recognize the need to protect and bring back the forests to store carbon and buffer coastlines from climate-driven extreme weather, including more intense hurricanes and storm surges. Other restorations are underway in Indonesia, which contains the world’s largest tracts of mangrove habitat, Colombia and elsewhere.

“Mangroves represent a very important ecosystem to fight climate change,” said Octavio Aburto, a marine biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California.

While the tropical trees only grow on less than 1% of the Earth’s land, he said, “on a per-hectare basis, mangroves are the ecosystem that sequesters the most carbon … They can bury around five times more carbon in the sediment than a tropical rain forest.”

Yet around the globe, mangroves are threatened.

From 1980 to 2005, 20% to 35% of the world’s mangrove forests were lost, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

From 2000 to 2016, the rate of loss declined as governments and environmental groups spotlighted the problem, but destruction continued — and about 2% of the world’s remaining mangrove forests disappeared, according to NASA satellite imagery.

In Mexico, as in much of the world, the largest threat to mangroves is development. The region near Cancun lost most of its historic mangroves to highways and hotels starting in the 1980s.

Tracts of mangroves on the country’s southern Pacific coast also have been cleared to make room for shrimp farming, while oil exploration and drilling in shallow waters off the Gulf of Mexico threatens mangroves there, said Aburto.

Mexico began to protect some of its mangroves only after the excessive tourism development of the 1980s. And although Mexico took steps to establish a climate action plan in 1998 and was one of the first developing countries to make voluntary commitments under the Paris Climate Accord, its commitment to the environment began to backslide in 2015, said Julia Carabias, a professor on the science faculty at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

In the past six years, Mexico has cut resources for environmental conservation by 60%, according to Carabias.

And that, combined with increasing government support of fossil fuel energy and ongoing infrastructure and tourist projects in the region, is sounding alarms.

Despite the country’s monitoring system, local researchers say that for every hectare (2.5 acres) of mangrove restored in southeast Mexico, 10 hectares are degraded or lost.

EFFORTS TO SAVE SWAMPS

The halting efforts in Mexico to protect and restore mangroves, even as more are lost, mirror situations elsewhere. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency estimated in 2007 that 40% of Indonesia’s mangroves had been cut down for aquaculture projects and coastal development in the previous three decades.

But there have been restoration efforts as well.

In 2020, the Indonesia government set an ambitious target of planting mangroves on 600,000 hectares (1.5 million acres) of degrading coastline by 2024. Key ministries are involved in restoration efforts that include community outreach and education.

Yet there have been some setbacks. Precise mapping and data on mangroves is hard to come by, making it difficult for agencies to know where to concentrate. Newly planted mangroves have been swept out to sea by strong tides and waves. Community outreach and education have been slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Mexico, successes exist, even if they are slow in coming.

Manuel González, a 57-year-old fisherman known as Bechá, proudly shows off recovering mangroves in the seaside community of Dzilam de Bravo, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) east of Progreso. He walks through mud, avoiding the interlaced mangrove roots that burrow into it. Some trees are already 30 feet (9 meters) tall.

In 2002, Hurricane Isidoro devastated this area, but after a decade of work, 297 acres have been restored. The fisherman says that now storms don’t hit the community as hard. And the fish, migratory birds, deer, crocodiles and even jaguars have returned.

But the mangroves face a new risk, as stumps scattered among the trees attest.

“In 10 years, you have a very nice mangrove for someone with a chainsaw to come and take it,” González said. “That’s something that hurts me a lot.”

Cutting mangroves has been a crime since 2005, but González says authorities shut down and fine projects, only to have them later reopen.

The Yucatan state government said it is aware of complaints of illegal logging yet the harvest has only grown.

While more funds are needed for protection and restoration, some communities prefer to think about how to make conservation a profitable activity.

José Inés Loría, head of operations at San Crisanto, an old salt harvesting community of about 500 between Progreso and Dzilam, thinks the way to make the local mangrove part “of the community’s business model” is using the new financial tools such as blue carbon credits.

Those instruments, already in use in Colombia and other countries, allow polluting businesses to compensate for emissions by paying others to store or sequester greenhouse gases.

Some in Mexico say credits are still not well regulated in the country and could invite fraud and scams. But Loria defends them. “If conservation doesn’t mean improving the quality of life of a community, it doesn’t work.”

Source: Voice of America

COVID-19: Angola registers 1660 recoveries

Luanda- The Angolan health authorities announced, this Saturday, the recovery of 1660 patients and 42 new infections in the last 24 hours.

According to the daily bulletin, 1650 recovered people live in Luanda and 10 in Huíla province.

As for the new infections 25 were diagnosed in Luanda, 7 in Uíge, 5 in Cabinda, 2 in Cunene and Moxico and 1 in Bengo.

With ages between 1 month and 72 years, the group has 26 male and 16 female patients.

In the past 24 hours, the local labs have processed 2,547 samples by RT-PCR, with a daily positivity rate of 1.6%.

Angola has a total of 64,654 confirmed cases, of which 1,719 deaths, 59,153 recoveries and 3,782 active.

Regarding the current diseased, 10 are in critical conditions, 6 severe, 25 moderate, 20 mild and 3721 asymptomatic.

There are 61 hospitalized patients in the treatment centers, while 61 citizens are in institutional quarantine and 96 contacts of positive cases are under medical surveillance.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Musk Asks Twitter if He Should Sell 10% of His Tesla Stock

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk on Saturday asked his 62.5 million followers on Twitter if he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock.

“Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock,” Musk wrote in a tweet referring to a “billionaires’ tax” proposed by Democrats in the U.S. Senate.

Musk tweeted that he would abide by the results of the poll.

The poll received more than 700,000 responses in one hour since he posted it, with nearly 56% of respondents approving the proposal to sell the shares.

Musk’s shareholding in Tesla comes to about 170.5 million shares as of June 30 and selling 10% of his stock would amount to about $21 billion based on Friday’s closing, according to Reuters calculations.

Analysts say he may have to offload a significant number of shares anyway to pay taxes since a large number of options will expire next year.

The comment from Musk comes after a proposal in the U.S. Congress to tax billionaires’ assets to help pay for President Joe Biden’s social and climate-change agenda.

Musk is one of the world’s richest people and owner of several futuristic companies, including SpaceX and Neuralink. He has previously criticized the billionaires’ tax on Twitter.

“Note, I do not take a cash salary or bonus from anywhere. I only have stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock,” Musk said on Twitter.

Tesla board members including Elon Musk’s mother, Kimbal, have recently sold shares of the electric carmaker. Kimbal Musk sold 88,500 Tesla shares while fellow board member Ira Ehrenpreis sold shares worth more than $200 million.

Source: Voice of America

World Bank vice presidents in Angola for new partnerships

Luanda – The World Bank Regional Vice-President for Eastern and Southern Africa, Hafez Ghanem, arrives in Angola on the 8th of this month, for a new partnership with the Angolan Executive.

In addition to Hafex Ghanem, the full delegation also includes Sérgio Pimenta, Regional Vice-President of the IFC-International Finance Corporation, one of the arms of the World Bank Group (WBG).

The joint visit to Angola, from 8 to 11 November 2021, aims to discuss the work of the World Bank Group and the new partnership for Angola, focused on the agenda of reforms and economic diversification strategies.

Climate change and adaptation, empowering women and girls are other items on the agenda.

During the joint visit, Hafex Ghanem and Sérgio Pimenta will meet with Angolan Government officials, civil society organizations, development partners and representatives of the private sector.

The two vice-presidents will be guided by the executive director of the WBG for Angola, Armando Manuel, who is a former finance minister.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Angola at intra-African fair with about 20 companies

Luanda – Angola will participate with around twenty companies in the 2nd edition of the Intra-African Trade Fair (IATF 2021), which takes place from 15 to 21 November, in Durban, South Africa, under the motto “Transforming Africa”.

In this event, Angola hopes, through the Private Investment and Export Promotion Agency (AIPEX), to attract investors to the most diverse sectors of the economy with the presentation of a set of business opportunities, tax incentives and favorable conditions provided for in the “Law of Private Investment”.

The business class, which will occupy a large part of the Angola pavilion, will seek to establish partnerships and exhibit their products and services.

The Angola pavilion plans to host, among other stands, the stands of Sonangol, Opaia, BAI, Catoca and Refriango, ZEE, Kubinga, Gulkis, Steel Door, Food Care, Sino-Ord, JPNM, Alltrans, Federation of Women Entrepreneurs of Angola ( FMEA), the Community of Exporting and Internationalized Companies of Angola (CEEIA) and the Private Investment and Export Promotion Agency (AIPEX).

Intra-African Trade Fair – Organization

The event, which will take place specifically in the KwaZulu-Natal region, is an initiative of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbak), in collaboration with the African Union and the Secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

According to the organization of IATF 2021, projections for this event indicate business and investments valued at US$40 billion, against US$32 billion in the first edition (2018).

For this year, 10,000 delegates, visitors, traders and journalists from 55 countries are expected to attend the conference, while in 2018 the number of participants was 2,500 participants from 45 countries.

Regarding the number of exhibitors, the 2nd edition of the IATF 2021 is expected to host 1 100.

Key Sectors

The exhibition is aimed at the sectors of agriculture, livestock, automobile, clothing and textiles, construction and infrastructure, goods and services, creative industries including entertainment, education, energy and power, engineering, finance, health and pharmaceutical, ICT, innovation, logistics, production, mining exploration standards and young start-up.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

COVID-19: State minister reiterates call for vaccination

Mbanza Kongo- Minister of State for the Social Sector Carolina Cerqueira has reiterated the need for the eligible population to take the Covid-19 vaccine to halt the spread of the disease in the country.

The minister made the appeal on Friday in Mbanza Kongo, northern Zaire province, during the inauguration of the bust of the Kingdom of Kongo’s envoy to the Vatican, Dom António Manuel Nsaku Nvunda.

The official called for compliance with the Executive’s measures aimed at combating this deadly evil.

“Covid-19 is ravaging the world and threatening humanity, so we must continue to believe that the vaccine and respect for biosafety measures will prevent further human losses as a result of this virus,” she said.

She said that she hoped that this health crisis, which has had serious consequences for the social and economic fabric of the country and the rest of the world, will be overcome in the near future.

The minister thanked the Angolan population for their understanding of the constraints created at the personal, family and community level due to the measures that have been taken to mitigate the effects of this pandemic.

The country has 64, 612 confirmed cases, of which 57, 493 recoveries and 1,719 deaths.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

ANGOLA’S CRUDE OIL PRODUCTION TO REACH 1.3 MLN BPD BY DECEMBER – OPEC

Luanda – Angola’s crude oil production is set to reach 1.3 million barrels per day, according to the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

The decision is expressed in its production table for December published on its website, after the 22nd Ministerial Meeting.

OPEC) and non-OPEC countries agreed Thursday to maintain plans to increase oil production by 400,000 barrels per day (bpd), starting in December this year.

Angola is the third largest producer in Africa, but is currently experiencing a decline, with production standing at around 1.1 million barrels per day, an amount that could increase if the new marginal fields come into operation.

In his State of the Nation Address, the President of the Republic, João Lourenço, said that work is being done to reverse the downward trend in the oil sector, through the swift application of the new legislation approved in the field of Oil and Gas.

Among other preconditions, the reversal of the decrease in crude will also involve an increase in the recovery rates of production fields and the re-launch of oil exploration in general, according to the Angolan Executive.

Accelerating the production of non-associated natural gas and using associated gas production to supply Angola Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) are other aspects stated by the President of the Republic to achieve this goal.

In Thursday’s meeting, OPEC and non-OPEC reiterated the decision taken at the 10th Ministerial Meeting of the organisation and partners, on April 12, 2020, including subsequent ones, such as the 19th Ministerial Meeting, held on July 18, 2021.

However, the Organisation decided to maintain the current production strategy, which involves extending the agreement established last August, that is, monthly increases of 400,000 barrels per day (bpd).

As a result, the Group reiterates the critical importance of adhering to full compliance and the compensation mechanism, taking advantage of the extension of the compensation period until the end of December 2021.

According to the organisation, the plans must be presented in accordance with the declaration of the 15th, emerged from the Ministerial Meeting of OPEC and non-OPEC.

The 23rd OPEC and non-OPEC Ministerial Meeting is scheduled for next December 2.

Angola presides over the presidency of the OPEC Conference, represented by the minister of Mineral Resources, Oil and Gas, Diamantino Azevedo.

Source: Angola Press News Agency