Month: August 2020

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is facing a growing Ebola outbreak in its northwest Equateur province in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) says. At his COVID-19 news briefing in Geneva on Thursday, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the outbreak is a “worrying” development, with 86 cases confirmed in the province.  He said the DRC government faces significant logistical challenges in trying to rapidly investigate and respond to the outbreak because the cases are spread over a vast area, sometimes separated by more than 250 kilometers, and many areas are accessible only by helicopter or boat. Tedros said the WHO has about 100 staff in the DRC and is working with the Ministry of Health, nongovernmental agencies, and people in communities to address the outbreak. He said his agency has also released $2.5 million in emergency response funds to support the immediate response. But he said more funding is needed to bring the outbreak under control and urged the international community to contribute.  He said the WHO, working with the DRC government as well as local and international partners collectively defeated a similar outbreak in the eastern part of the country, what he called “one of the most difficult Ebola outbreaks the world has ever faced.” Tedros said he knows from experience that this is not just a matter for one country’s health security. “It is a matter of global health security. Whether it’s COVID-19, Ebola or other high impact epidemics, we must be prepared, we need to be on high alert and we need to respond quickly.” 
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This week the Trump administration announced $122 million in new programs and partnerships under the National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien speaks during a Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) online event, at the State Department, in Washington, Aug. 11, 2020.“This is the type of bold action to expand the efforts of the federal government, the private sector and other partners that restrict women’s ability to participate in the local economies that has been the American model for success,” Trump said.     The initiative comes in the face of fresh challenges as COVID-19 exacerbates existing gender inequalities around the world. Reports from numerous countries have shown that women are disproportionately and uniquely impacted by the coronavirus across every sphere, from health and the economy to security and social protection.   According to U.N. data, 60 percent of women’s employment is in the informal economy with limited protection. This means women are often overlooked by bailout programs seeking to reinvigorate the economy while being particularly vulnerable to poverty and food insecurity, according to Megan O’Donnell, assistant director of the Center for Global Development’s gender program. “We’ve seen evidence that women’s businesses are more likely to close compared with men’s.”   FILE – Vicky Li Yip sets up a bubble machine for her children, left to right, Kelsey, 8, Toby, 10 and Jesse, 5, outside their home, July 10, 2020, in Houston, Texas.And with children out of school, women are picking up even more caregiving responsibilities, forcing many to step back from the workplace and exacerbating the economic consequences of the unpaid care work that women disproportionately perform. Moreover, women face an increase in domestic violence as a result of lockdowns, and find less access to sexual and reproductive health as limited resources are diverted to the pandemic.   Women also make up FILE – President Donald Trump speaks with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, July 31, 2020.In his first week in office, President Donald Trump reinstated and expanded the Global Gag rule, also known as the Mexico City policy, that prohibits U.S. global health assistance organizations from providing information, resources, or services on safe abortions.In 2018, the State Department removed reproductive health from its annual country reports, and in May 2020, FILE – U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Kelley Currie attends an event celebrating the anniversary of the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) initiative at the State Department in Washington, Feb. 12, 2020.Responding to VOA’s question, Kelley Currie, the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues, defended the initiative.   W-GDP is “very focused” and “very consensus-based,” Currie said. “We believe that this is the best way that we can use the resources we have to address the barriers that are holding back women.”    
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Beginning Thursday, U.S. Facebook users who post about voting may start seeing an addendum to their messages — labels directing readers to authoritative information about the upcoming presidential election.
It’s the social network’s latest step to to combat election-related misinformation on its platform as the Nov. 3 election nears — one in which many voters may be submitting ballots by mail for the first time. Facebook began adding similar links to posts about in-person and mail-in balloting by federal politicians, including President Donald Trump, in July.
These labels will link to a new voter information hub similar to one about COVID-19 that Facebook says has been seen by billions of users around the world. The labels will read, “Visit the Voting Information Center for election resources and official updates.”
Despite such efforts, Facebook continues to face widespread criticism around how it handles misinformation around elections and other matters. The company has generally refused to fact-check ads by politicians, for instance, and a two-year audit of its civil rights practices faulted the company for leaving U.S. elections “exposed to interference by the President and others who seek to use misinformation to sow confusion and suppress voting.”
The effectiveness of such labels will depend on how well Facebook’s artificial intelligence system identifies the posts that really need them, said Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Civic Media. If every post containing the word “vote” or “voting” gets an informational link, he said, “people will start ignoring those links.”
Facebook expects the voter hub to reach at least 160 million people in the U.S., said Emily Dalton Smith, who serves as head of social impact at the company. The primary focus is registering people to vote, she said, but the information people see will evolve throughout the election season.
“This is a unique election and a unique election season,” she said. “Certainly we have never gone through an election during a global pandemic.”
Other tech companies, Twitter and Google, which owns YouTube, have undertaken similar efforts around the November election. Twitter said it is working on expanding its policies to address “new and unique challenges” related to this year’s elections, including misinformation around mail-in voting.
Looking ahead to November, Facebook said it is “actively speaking with election officials about the potential of misinformation around election results as an emerging threat.”
The company did not give details on the potential threats, but said that a prolonged ballot process where results are not immediately clear “has the potential to be exploited in order to sow distrust in the election outcome.”
“One way we plan to fight this is by using the Voting Information Center and the US Elections digest in Facebook News to make sure people have easy access to the latest, authoritative information and news on and after Election Night,” Naomi Gleit, vice president of product management and social impact, wrote in a blog post.
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Two cities in China have found traces of the new coronavirus in imported frozen food and on food packaging, local authorities said on Thursday, raising fears that contaminated food shipments might cause new outbreaks.A sample taken from the surface of frozen chicken wings imported into the southern city of Shenzhen from Brazil, as well as samples of outer packaging of frozen Ecuadorian shrimp sold in the northwestern Xi’An city, have tested positive for the virus, local authorities said on Thursday.The discoveries came a day after traces of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 were found on the packaging of frozen shrimp from Ecuador in a city in eastern Anhui province. China has been stepping up screenings at ports amid the concerns over food imports.Shenzhen’s health authorities traced and tested everyone who might have come into contact with potentially contaminated food products, and all results were negative, the city’s notice said.The Brazilian embassy in Beijing did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reuters could not immediately reach the Ecuadorean embassy in Beijing.”It is hard to say at which stage the frozen chicken got infected,” said a China-based official at a Brazilian meat exporter.The Shenzhen Epidemic Prevention and Control Headquarters said the public needed to take precautions to reduce infection risks from imported meat and seafood.The health commission of Shannxi province, where Xi’An city is located, said authorities are testing people and the surrounding environment connected to the contaminated shrimp products sold in a local market.In addition to screening all meat and seafood containers coming into major ports in recent months, China has suspended some meat imports from various origins, including Brazil, since mid-June.The first cluster of COVID-19 cases was linked to the Huanan seafood market in the city of Wuhan. Initial studies suggested the virus originated in animal products on sale at the market.Li Fengqin, who heads a microbiology lab at the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment told reporters in June the possibility of contaminated frozen food causing new infections could not be ruled out.Viruses can survive up to two years at temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius, but scientists say there is no strong evidence so far the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 can spread via frozen food.Xinfadi market in China’s capital city Beijing, a sprawling food market linked to cluster infections in June, where virus was found on the chopping board on which imported salmons were handled, will be reopened from the weekend.How the virus entered the market in the first place is yet to be determined, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said in its latest update of the investigation in July.
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is meeting Thursday with leaders in Slovenia, where they are set to sign a joint declaration on 5G technology.Over the past year, European countries including Poland, Estonia and the Czech Republic have signed agreements with the United States pledging that 5G suppliers would not be subject to control by a foreign government without independent judicial review, which effectively excludes Chinese firms.Pompeo’s visit to Slovenia is the first by a U.S. secretary of state since 2011.His schedule Thursday includes meetings with Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa, Foreign Minister Anze Logar and President Borut Pahor.The State Department said some of the key topics in the talks would be nuclear energy, Western Balkan integration and energy issues.Pompeo was in the Czech Republic on Wednesday and said there that China’s economic power is in some ways a greater global threat than the Soviet Union was during the Cold War.“The challenge of resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) threat is in some ways more difficult,” Pompeo said in a speech to the senate in the Czech Republic. “The CCP is already enmeshed in our economies, in our politics, in our societies in ways the Soviet Union never was.”Pompeo’s remarks came after China’s ambassador to London accused the United States last month of instigating conflict with Beijing before the November U.S. presidential election.US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, center, arrives for a meeting of the senate in Prague, Czech Republic, Aug. 12, 2020.U.S.-China relations have deteriorated sharply this year over issues such as Beijing’s management of the coronavirus, its security clampdown in Hong Kong and activities in the disputed South China Sea.Pompeo held talks with Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis in Prague earlier Wednesday on the second day of his weeklong visit to central Europe.The two leaders discussed nuclear energy cooperation and the Three Seas Initiative, a political platform to promote connectivity among nations in central and eastern Europe by supporting infrastructure, energy and digital interconnectivity projects.The initiative gets its name from the three seas that border the region: the Baltic, Black and Adriatic Seas.The chief U.S. diplomat began the day taking part in a roundtable discussion with a group of leaders from tech companies from the U.S. and the Czech Republic to highlight the benefits of U.S. investment, and according to the State Department, “underscore the attractiveness of the United States as an investment destination for Czech start-ups.”Pompeo’s trip this week will also include stops in Vienna, Austria; and Warsaw, Poland.The trip comes as the Pentagon prepares to move forward with a plan to pull almost 12,000 troops from Germany and redeploy part of the U.S. forces to Poland and other NATO nations, raising concerns at home and in Europe even as senior FILE – A view of a Verizon 5G promo poster during the coronavirus pandemic on May 13, 2020, in New York City.Austria hosts the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog of the United Nations in charge of monitoring Iran’s adherence to the 2015 nuclear deal from which the U.S. has withdrawn.Pompeo will also hold talks with IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, as Washington is calling on other members of the U.N. Security Council to indefinitely extend an arms embargo on Iran that is set to expire on October 18.In Warsaw, the chief U.S. diplomat will meet with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz on deepening defense ties, recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, securing 5G networks, and improving regional energy and infrastructure through the Three Seas Initiative. COVID-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus.Pompeo will also meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda, who visited the White House in late June.Poland sees Nord Stream 2, which would double Russia’s gas export capacity via the Baltic Sea, as a threat to Europe’s energy security.Last month, the State Department said people making investments or engaging in activities related to Nord Stream 2, including pipe-laying vessels and engineering service in the deployment of the pipelines, could face U.S. sanctions.”It’s a clear warning to companies: aiding and abetting Russia’s malign influence projects will not be tolerated,” said Pompeo during a July 15 news conference.”Let me be clear. These aren’t commercial projects. They are the Kremlin’s key tools to exploit and expand European dependence on Russian energy supplies,” Pompeo said. 
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Iran shut down a newspaper on Monday after it published remarks by an expert who said the official figures on coronavirus cases and deaths in the country account for only 5% of the real toll, allegations rejected by the Health Ministry. Mohammad Reza Sadi, the editor-in-chief of Jahane Sanat, told the official IRNA news agency that authorities closed his newspaper, which began publishing in 2004 and was mainly focused on business news. On Sunday, the daily quoted Mohammad Reza Mahboobfar, an epidemiologist the paper said had worked on the government’s anti-coronavirus campaign, as saying the true number of cases and deaths in Iran could be 20 times the number reported by the Health Ministry. He also said the virus was detected in Iran a month earlier than February 19, when authorities announced the first confirmed case. He said they held up the announcement until after the commemorations of the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and parliamentary elections earlier that month. “The administration resorted to secrecy for political and security reasons,” he said, and only provided “engineered statistics” to the public. He also criticized testing efforts and warned of a renewed outbreak next month as universities hold entrance exams and people mark major Shiite holidays. Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari rejected the allegations and said Mahboobfar had no role in the government’s anti-coronavirus campaign. IRNA quoted her as saying the ministry has provided figures in a “transparent” way. “The Health Ministry is not a political body and health of people is its main priority,” she said. The ministry has reported a total of nearly 330,000 cases and 18,616 deaths, including 189 fatalities in the past 24 hours.  Authorities in Iran have come under heavy criticism since the start of the pandemic because of their reluctance to impose the kind of sweeping restrictions seen elsewhere in the region. Iran is home to the deadliest outbreak in the Middle East.  
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