Beijing, Jun 15: China is locking now ten more neighbourhoods in Beijing to try and contain the spread of a new coronavirus outbreak linked to a food market, authorities announced Monday.
City official Li Junjie said at a press conference that fresh cases had been found in a second wholesale market in northwestern Haidian district, and as a result, the market and nearby schools would be closed, and people living in ten communities around it placed under lockdown.
Saint Martin's Island, Feb 12: At least 15 women and children drowned and more than 50 others were missing after a boat overloaded with Rohingya refugees sank off southern Bangladesh as it tried to reach Malaysia Tuesday, officials said.
Some 138 people -- mainly women and children -- were packed on a trawler barely 13 metres (40 feet) long, trying to cross the Bay of Bengal, a coast guard spokesman told news agency.
"It sank because of overloading. The boat was meant to carry maximum 50 people. The boat was also loaded with some cargo," another coast guard spokesman, Hamidul Islam, added.
Nearly one million Rohingya live in squalid camps near Bangladesh's border with Myanmar, many fleeing the neighbouring country after a 2017 brutal military crackdown.
With few opportunities for jobs and education in the camps, thousands have tried to reach other countries like Malaysia and Thailand by attempting the hazardous 2,000-kilometre journey.
In the latest incident, 71 people have been rescued including 46 women. Among the dead, 11 were women and the rest children.
Anwara Begum said two of her sons, aged six and seven, drowned in the tragedy.
"We were four of us in the boat... Another child (son, aged 10) is very sick," the 40-year-old told news agency.
Fishermen tipped off the coast guard after they saw survivors swimming and crying for help in the sea.
The boat's keel hit undersea coral in shallow water off Saint Martin's Island, Bangladesh's southernmost territory, before it sank, survivors said.
"We swam in the sea before boats came and rescued us," said survivor Mohammad Hossain, 20.
Coast guard commander Sohel Rana said three survivors, including a Bangladeshi, were detained over human trafficking allegations.
An estimated 25,000 Rohingya left Bangladesh and Myanmar on boats in 2015 trying to get to Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Hundreds drowned when overloaded boats sank.
Begum said her family paid a Bangladeshi trafficker $450 per head to be taken to Malaysia.
"We're first taken to a hill where we stayed for five days. Then they used three small trawlers to take us to a large trawler, which sank," she said.
Shakirul Islam, a migration expert whose group works with Rohingya to raise awareness against trafficking, said desperation in the camps was making refugees want to leave.
"It was a tragedy waiting to happen," he said.
"They just want to get out, and fall victim to traffickers who are very active in the camps."
Islam said in the past two months dozens of Rohingya reported approaches from traffickers to his OKUP migration rights group.
"Human smuggling and trafficking in the Bay of Bengal is particularly difficult to address as it requires concerted effort from multiple states," the Bangladesh head of UN agency the International Organization for Migration, Giorgi Gigauri, told news agency.
"The gaps in coordination are easily exploited by criminal networks."
Since last year, Bangladeshi authorities have picked up over 500 Rohingya from rickety fishing trawlers or coastal villages as they waited to board boats.
Trafficking often increases during the November-March period when the sea is safest for the small trawlers used by traffickers.
Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a repatriation deal to send back some Rohingya to their homeland, but none have agreed to return because of safety fears.
The charity Save the Children called on Myanmar to "take all necessary steps to ensure the Rohingya community can return to their homes in a safe and dignified manner".
"The tragic drowning of women and children... should be a wake-up call for us all," the group's Athena Rayburn said in a statement.
Toronto, Apr 25: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday (local time) announced a new CAD 1.1 billion package supporting vaccine research and clinical trials as well as expanded testing capacity.
"We are putting in place an additional CAD 1.1 billion dollars for a national medical and research strategy to address COVID-19," Trudeau said during his daily novel coronavirus pandemic briefing on Thursday.
"This plan has three pillars -- research on vaccines and other treatments, support for clinical trials and expanding national testing and modelling," he added.
Trudeau pointed out that CAD 82 million of the total sum will be directed to the development of a vaccine and treatments against the virus, while CAD 471 million will go towards supporting clinical trials.
A further CAD 249 million is being allocated for expanding testing capacity and modelling, the Prime Minister added.
According to Trudeau, this funding will be allotted to a new "immunity task force" commissioned with conducting serology testing -- blood tests looking for the presence of antibodies indicative of exposure to the virus and subsequent immune response.
He said the taskforce, comprising the country's top medical experts, including Chief Public Health Officer Dr Theresa Tam, will test at least a million Canadians over the next two years.
The funding announced today comes in addition to the CAD 200 million committed for COVID-19-related research on March 11.
Trudeau has repeatedly stressed the daily constraints that much of the population is adhering to will be the new normal until a vaccine is developed.
As of Thursday, Canada has confirmed a total of 40,824 COVID-19 cases since the onset of the outbreak, out of which more than 2,000 have proven to be fatal, according to the latest figures from the country's public health agency.
More than one in six youths were jobless since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic while those who remain employed have seen their working hours cut by 23 per cent, according to a report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
According to the 'ILO Monitor: COVID-19 and the world of work: 4th edition' published on Wednesday, youths are being disproportionately affected by the pandemic, and the substantial and rapid increase in youth unemployment seen since February is affecting young women more than young men, reports Xinhua news agency.
The pandemic is inflicting a triple shock on young people.
Not only is it destroying their employment, but it is also disrupting education and training, and placing major obstacles in the way of those seeking to enter the labour market or to move between jobs, said the report.
At 13.6 per cent, the youth unemployment rate in 2019 was already higher than any other group.
There were around 267 million young people not in employment, education or training worldwide.
"If we do not take significant and immediate action to improve their situation, the legacy of the virus could be with us for decades," said ILO Director-General Guy Ryder.
"If their talent and energy is sidelined by a lack of opportunity or skills, it will damage all our futures and make it much more difficult to re-build a better, post-COVID economy."
The report called for urgent, large-scale and targeted policy responses to support youth, including broad-based employment/training guarantee programs in developed countries, and employment-intensive programs and guarantees in low- and middle-income economies.
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