Live Streaming
Program Highlight
Company Profile
International News (6868)
March
Official from Suu Kyi's party dies in custody in Myanmar
Written by Nur Yasmin
Mar. 8 - An official from Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy died in custody in Myanmar overnight after being detained in a crackdown on anti-junta protesters, associates said, and a party leader said he suspected the man was tortured.
An officer at the police station in the Pabedan district of Yangon, the area where Khin Maung Latt was arrested on Saturday, declined to comment. A spokesman for Myanmar’s army did not answer phone calls seeking comment.
More than 1,700 people have been detained in Myanmar since the Feb. 1 coup, including elected leader Suu Kyi and dozens of members of her NLD, an advocacy group says. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) also says more than 50 protesters have been killed by security forces.
Khin Maung Latt, 58, was a local NLD chairman in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city.
According to his deputy chairman, pictures from the military hospital where he died showed he had a wound on the back of the head and bruises on his back.
“The doctor said those were not the cause of death,” Khin San Myint told reporters. “They said it was due to heart condition,” she said.
A charity worker who had seen the body said there were bruises on the head and chest and stitches on the side of the head. He declined to be named.
Reuters was unable to reach the doctor or the hospital for comment.
Khin Maung Latt was arrested after 9 p.m. on Saturday night, one friend said.
Ba Myo Thein, an NLD member of the upper house of parliament, which was dissolved after the coup, said the reports of bruising to Khin Maung Latt’s head and body raised suspicions that he had been abused.
“It seems that he was arrested at night and tortured severely,” he told Reuters. “This is totally unacceptable.”
The army has rejected accusations of using excessive force against protesters. It says it took power after the electoral commission rejected its allegations of fraud in an election last November in which the NLD won a landslide.
The army’s promise of new elections is scorned by protesters, who say the NLD’s victory must be respected. (Reuters)
March
South Korea, US scale back military drill over COVID-19
Written by nuke
South Korea, US scale back military drill over COVID-19 - Nikkei Asia
South Korea and the United States will conduct their springtime military exercise this week, but the joint drill will be smaller than usual because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Seoul said on Sunday (Mar 7).
The allies will begin a nine day "computer-simulated command post exercise" on Monday, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
The drills will not include outdoor manoeuvres, which have been carried out throughout the year, and the number of troops and equipment will be minimised due to the pandemic, Yonhap news agency reported.The exercises also provide a chance to assess South Korea's readiness to take over wartime operational control (OPCON), and the series of scaled back drills could complicate President Moon Jae-in's drive to complete the transfer before his term ends in 2022.
Even before the pandemic the drills had been reduced to facilitate US negotiations aimed at dismantling Pyongyang's nuclear programmes.
The combined drills are closely monitored by North Korea which calls them a "rehearsal for war".
While Pyongyang has sometimes responded to such drills with its own shows of military force, it may be unlikely to do so this time, said Chad O'Carroll, CEO of Korea Risk Group, which monitors North Korea.
"I think there'’s too much on the domestic agenda going wrong to risk any significant tit-for-tat escalation," he said on Twitter. "And this is a government which tends to focus most of its resources on dealing with one key issue at a time."
North Korea's drastic measures to prevent a COVID-19 outbreak have exacerbated human rights abuses and economic hardship, including reports of starvation, for its citizens, already battered by international sanctions, a United Nations investigator has said//CNA
March
Reopening England's schools is step towards normality, PM Johnson says
Written by nuke
Reopening England's schools is step towards normality, PM Johnson says - Evening Standard
The reopening of England's schools to all pupils on Monday (Mar 8) will mark the first step back towards normality, and is only possible because of the efforts of the public to bring COVID-19 infection rates down, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.
Johnson has announced a roadmap for lifting lockdown measures that sees schools open first, followed in later stages by the gradual easing of restrictions on mixing with other people and the re-opening of non-essential shops and other venues.
"The reopening of schools marks a truly national effort to beat this virus," Johnson said.
"It is because of the determination of every person in this country that we can start moving closer to a sense of normality – and it is right that getting our young people back into the classroom is the first step."
Each step on the roadmap will depend on the level of COVID-19 cases, the government has said. It hopes the pandemic can be contained by a vaccine programme that has already delivered a dose to nearly 22 million people, as well as regular testing.
Many secondary schools and colleges had already started inviting students for their first "lateral flow" COVID-19 tests, which give rapid results, with nearly 1 million conducted last week, the government said.
After three initial tests on site, students will be provided with two tests to use each week at home, it said, adding that nearly 57 million tests had been delivered to schools and colleges across the country//CNA
March
COVID-19: New Zealand's Auckland emerges from lockdown, Australia starts AstraZeneca vaccinations
Written by nuke
New Zealand's Auckland emerges from lockdown - NZ
Auckland, New Zealand's biggest city, emerged on Sunday (Mar 7) from a strict weeklong lockdown imposed after a community cluster of the more contagious British coronavirus variant.
There were no new local COVID-19 cases recorded on Sunday, health officials said, marking a full week of no community transmissions across the country.
Auckland, a city of nearly 2 million, will continue to have limits on public gathering and masks are obligatory on public transport. Restrictions might be further eased on Friday.Neighbouring Australia also had no local COVID-19 cases on Sunday, making it the 37th day of no infections this year. There have been no related deaths in 2021.
Swift public health measures combined with aggressive contact tracing, border closures and compulsory quarantine for travellers have been credited with making New Zealand and Australia highly successful in keeping the pandemic from spreading.
Both countries saw their economies recovering speedily in the second part of 2020. Australia's economy expanded at a much faster than expected pace in the final quarter of last year and all signs were that 2021 has started on a firm footing too.
COVID-19 inoculation began in both countries, with the vaccination roll-out in Australia becoming slightly complicated after Italy blocked a shipment of AstraZeneca's vaccine.
Australia's Health Minister Greg Hunt, among the first to receive the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine on Sunday after an earlier shipment, said the roll-out is on track.The government is spending more than A$6 billion (US$4.6 billion) to support the vaccine roll-out with contracts for more than 150 million doses of various COVID-19 vaccines//CNA
March
Canada clears Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, first to approve
Written by nuke
Canada clears Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, first to approve - WPRI.com
Canada's drug regulator has approved Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine, the fourth such shot to be given the green light, the government said on Friday (Mar 5), amid frustration over the slow start to the country's inoculation program.
Health experts are eager for a one-and-done option to help speed vaccination. Canada has also approved vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca and Health Canada is the first major regulator to approve four different vaccines, said Dr Supriya Sharma, Health Canada’s chief medical adviser.
Canada has pre-purchased 10 million Johnson & Johnson doses, with options to buy another 28 million. It was not immediately clear when Canada would get its first shipment.
“This is the fourth vaccine to be deemed safe by Canada's health experts - and with millions of doses already secured, we're one stop closer to defeating this virus,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted.
The vaccine shortage is so acute in Canada that provincial governments are now saying they will extend the interval between the two doses of Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines to four months rather than three to four weeks so they can quickly inoculate more people.
Canadians 80 and above in the general public are only starting to get vaccinated this month and the National Advisory Committee on Immunisation said this week that extending the dose interval to four months would allow as many as 80 per cent of Canadians over the age of 16 to receive a single dose by the end of June simply with the expected supply of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.Canada also faces the prospect of vaccine delivery disruptions from the European Union. A shipment of over a quarter million AstraZeneca vaccines destined for Australia has been blocked from leaving the European Union in the first use of an export control system instituted by the bloc to make sure big pharma companies respect their local contracts//CNA
March
US administers 85 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines: CDC
Written by nuke
US administers 85 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines: CDC - US News
The United States has administered 85,008,094 doses of COVID-19 vaccines as of Friday (Mar 5) morning and delivered 114,133,115 doses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The tally of vaccine doses are for both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, vaccines as of 6:00am on Friday, the agency said.
The agency said 55,547,697 people had received one or more doses, while 28,701,201 people have received the second dose as of Friday.
A total of 7,306,425 vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said//CNA
March
Mars rover Perseverance takes first spin on surface of red planet
Written by nuke
A portion of a panorama made up of individual images taken by the Navigation Cameras, or Navcams, aboard NASA's Perseverance Mars rover shows the Martian landscape February 20, 2021. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via REUTERS
NASA's Mars rover Perseverance has taken its first, short drive on the surface of the red planet, two weeks after the robot science lab's picture-perfect touchdown on the floor of a massive crater, mission managers said on Friday (Mar 5).
The six-wheeled, car-sized astrobiology probe put a total of 6.5m on its odometer on Thursday during a half-hour test spin within Jezero Crater, site of an ancient, long-vanished lake bed and river delta on Mars.
"It went incredibly well," Anais Zarifian, a JPL mobility test engineer for Perseverance, said during a teleconference briefing with reporters, calling it a "huge milestone" for the mission.
NASA displayed a photo taken by the rover showing the wheel tread marks left in the reddish, sandy Martian soil after its first drive.
Another vivid image of the surrounding landscape shows a rugged, ruddy terrain littered with large, dark boulders in the foreground and a tall outcropping of rocky, layered deposits in the distance - marking the edge of the river delta.
Some additional, short-distance test driving is planned for Friday. Perseverance is capable of averaging 200 meters of driving per day.
But JPL engineers still have additional equipment checks to run on the rover's many instruments before they will be ready to send the robot on a more ambitious journey as part of its primary mission to search for traces of fossilised microbial life.
So far, Perseverance and its hardware, including its main robot arm, appear to be operating flawlessly, said Robert Hogg, deputy mission manager. The team has yet to conduct post-landing tests of the rover's sophisticated system to drill and collect rock samples for return to Earth via future Mars missions.
NASA announced it has named the site of Perseverance's Feb 18 touchdown as the "Octavia E. Butler Landing," in honor of the award-winning American science-fiction writer. Butler, a native of Pasadena, California, died in 2006 at age 58//CNA
March
WHO head wants COVID-19 vaccine patents waived to boost supply
Written by nuke
Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus speaks - WHYY
The head of the World Health Organization called Friday (Mar 5) for patent rights to be waived until the end of the coronavirus pandemic so that vaccine supplies can be dramatically increased, saying these “unprecedented times” warrant the move.
At a press briefing, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said countries with their own vaccine capacity should “start waiving intellectual property rights ” as provided in special emergency provisions from the World Trade Organization.
The Associated Press found factories on three continents whose owners say they could start producing hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccines at short notice if only they had the blueprints and technical know-how.
But that knowledge belongs to the large pharmaceutical companies that have produced the first three vaccines authorised by countries including Britain, the European Union and the US - Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca.
The factories are all still awaiting responses.
Pharmaceutical companies that took taxpayer money from the US or Europe to develop inoculations at unprecedented speed say they are negotiating contracts and exclusive licensing deals with producers on a case-by-case basis because they need to protect their intellectual property and ensure safety.
March
What you need to know about the coronavirus right now
Written by Nur Yasmin
Mar. 5 - Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:
Vaccine confidence grows as side-effect worries fade
Confidence in COVID-19 vaccines is growing, with people’s willingness to have the shots increasing as they are rolled out across the world and concerns about possible side-effects are fading, a survey showed on Friday.
Co-led by Imperial College London’s Institute of Global Health Innovation and the polling firm YouGov, the survey found trust in COVID-19 vaccines had risen in nine out of 14 countries covered, including France, Japan and Singapore which had previously had low levels of confidence.
The latest update of the survey, which ran from Feb 8. to Feb. 21, found that people in the UK are the most willing, with 77% saying they would take a vaccine if one was available that week.
Doubling masks offers little help preventing viral spread
Japanese supercomputer simulations showed that wearing two masks gave limited benefit in blocking viral spread compared with one properly fitted mask.
The findings in part contradict recent recommendations from the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention that two masks were better than one at reducing a person’s exposure to the coronavirus.
Researchers used the Fugaku supercomputer to model the flow of virus particles from people wearing different types and combinations of masks, according to a study released on Thursday by research giant Riken and Kobe University.
India passes key vaccination milestone
India administered 1.4 million vaccine doses in the past 24 hours, health ministry data showed on Friday, the highest in a day since the campaign began in mid-January as the government moves to address initial hiccups.
The country of 1.35 billion people still has to nearly double its current rate of vaccination to meet its target of covering 300 million people by August. The two vaccines in use in India need to be administered in two doses, four to six weeks apart.
India has so far given 18 million doses to about 15 million people.
Moldova first European country to receive COVAX vaccines
Moldova became the first European country to receive shots from the global vaccine-sharing COVAX scheme, President Maia Sandu said on Friday.
The first batch of 14,400 doses arrived on Thursday, Sandu said on Twitter.
Moldova and neighbouring Ukraine, two of Europe’s poorest countries, have lagged behind the rest of the continent in the scramble for vaccines and welcomed donations from friendly governments.
World no closer to answer on COVID origins
The world is no closer to knowing the origins of COVID-19, according to one of the authors of an open letter calling for a new investigation.
“At this point we are no further advanced than we were a year ago,” said Nikolai Petrovsky, an expert in vaccines at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, and one of 26 global experts who signed the open letter, published on Thursday.
In January, a team of scientists picked by the World Health Organization visited hospitals and research institutes in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus was first identified. But the mission has come under fire, with critics accusing the WHO of relying too much on politically compromised Chinese fieldwork and data. (Reuters)
March
Pope Francis arrives in Baghdad for risky, historic Iraq tour
Written by Nur Yasmin
Mar. 5 - Pope Francis landed in Baghdad on Friday for his most risky foreign trip since his election in 2012, saying he felt duty-bound to make the “emblematic” visit because Iraq had suffered so much for so long.
An Alitalia plane carrying him, his entourage, a security detail, and about 75 journalists, touched down at Baghdad International Airport slightly ahead of schedule just before 2 p.m. local time.
Iraq is deploying thousands of additional security personnel to protect the 84-year-old pope during the visit, which comes after a spate of rocket and suicide bomb attacks raised fears for his safety.
“I am happy to be making trips again,” he said in brief comments to reporters aboard his plane, alluding to the coronavirus pandemic which has prevented him from travelling. The Iraq trip is his first outside Italy since November 2019.
“This is an emblematic trip and it is a duty towards a land that has been martyred for so many years,” Francis said, before donning a mask and greeting each reporter individually, without shaking hands.
Francis’s whirlwind tour will take him by plane, helicopter and possibly armoured car to four cities, including areas that most foreign dignitaries are unable to reach, let alone in such a short space of time.
He will say Mass at a Baghdad church, meet Iraq’s top Shi’ite Muslim cleric in the southern city of Najaf and travel north to Mosul, where the army had to empty the streets for security reasons last year for a visit by Iraq’s prime minister.
Mosul is a former Islamic State stronghold, and churches and other buildings there still bear the scars of conflict.
VIOLENCE AND HOPE
Since the defeat of the Islamic State militants in 2017, Iraq has seen a greater degree of security, though violence persists, often in the form of rocket attacks by Iran-aligned militias on U.S. targets, and U.S. military action in response.
On Wednesday 10 rockets landed on an airbase that hosts U.S., coalition and Iraqi forces. Hours later, Francis reaffirmed he would travel to Iraq.
Islamic State also remains a threat. In January, a suicide attack claimed by the Sunni militant group killed 32 people in Baghdad’s deadliest such attack for years.
Francis will meet clergy at a Baghdad church where Islamist gunmen killed more than 50 worshippers in 2010. Violence against Iraq’s minority religious groups, especially when a third of the country was being run by Islamic State, has reduced its ancient Christian community to a fifth of its once 1.5 million people.
The pontiff will also visit Ur, birthplace of the prophet Abraham, who is revered by Christians, Muslims and Jews, and meet Iraq’s revered top Shi’ite Muslim cleric, 90-year-old Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
The meeting with Sistani, who wields great influence over Iraq’s Shi’ite majority and in the country’s politics, will be the first by a pope.
Some Shi’ite militant groups have opposed the pope’s visit, framing it as Western interference in Iraq’s affairs, but many Iraqis hope that it can help foster a fresh view of Iraq.
“It might not change much on the ground, but at least if the pope visits, people will see our country in a different light, not just bombs and war,” said Ali Hassan, a 30-year-old Baghdad resident picking up relatives at the airport. (Reuters)