Hundreds missing in Laos after hydropower dam collapse

Mexico City, Jun 13: The number of people, who have died of COVID-19 in Mexico, has risen by 544 to 16,448 within the past 24 hours, Jose Luis Alomia, the director of epidemiology at the Health Ministry, said.

He also said on late Friday that the number of confirmed coronavirus cases had increased by 5,222 to 139,196 within the same period of time.

A day earlier, the Latin American nation has recorded 4,790 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus, with 587 fatalities.

The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11. To date, more than 7.6 million people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, with over 425,000 fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Washington, Mar 29: The number of known coronavirus US cases soared well past 115,000, with more than 1,900 dead, as President Donald Trump said on Saturday he was considering imposing a quarantine on the hard hit New York region.

American healthcare workers in the trenches of the pandemic are appealing for more protective gear and equipment to treat a surge in patients that is already pushing hospitals to their limits in virus hot spots such as New York City, New Orleans and Detroit.

Trump told reporters he could order a quarantine on three states, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, which between them have recorded at least 64,000 infections and 895 deaths.

He also appeared to soften his previous comments calling for the US economy to be swiftly reopened. Asked whether he thought the United States would restart by Easter Sunday, April 12, Trump replied, "We'll see, what happens."

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he had no details on any possible quarantine order for his state, telling a briefing: "I don't even know what that means. I don't know how that would be legally enforceable, and from a medical point of view I don't know what you would be accomplishing."

He said New York was postponing its presidential primary election to June 23, from April 28.

As the crisis deepened, nurses at Jacobi Medical Center in New York's borough of the Bronx protested outside the hospital on Saturday, saying supervisors asked them to reuse personal protective equipment, including masks. Some held signs with slogans including "Protect our lives so we can save yours."

"The masks are supposed to be one-time use," one nurse said, according to videos posted online. "Now, all of a sudden the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is saying that it's fine for us to reuse them. These choices are being made not based on science. They're being made based on need."

One resident at New York Presbyterian Hospital said they were issued with just one mask.

"This is your mask forever. You can bring it home with you. Here's how you can clean your mask," said the resident, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media. "It's not the people who are making these decisions that go into the patients' rooms."

Doctors are also especially concerned about a shortage of ventilators, machines that help patients breathe and are widely needed for those suffering from COVID-19, the pneumonia-like respiratory ailment caused by the highly contagious novel coronavirus.

Hospitals have also sounded the alarm about scarcities of drugs, oxygen tanks and trained staff.

By Saturday afternoon, the US number of cases stood at 115,842 with at least 1,929 deaths, according to a Reuters tally. The United States has had the most recorded cases of any country since its count of infections eclipsed those of China and Italy on Thursday.

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As shortages of key medical supplies abounded, desperate physicians and nurses were forced to take matters into their own hands.

New York-area doctors say they have had to recycle some protective gear, or even resort to bootleg suppliers.

Dr. Alexander Salerno of Salerno Medical Associates in northern New Jersey described going through a "broker" to pay $17,000 for masks and other protective equipment that should have cost about $2,500, and picking them up at an abandoned warehouse.

"You don't get any names. You get just phone numbers to text," Salerno said. "And so you agree to a term. You wire the money to a bank account. They give you a time and an address to come to."

Nurses at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York said they were locking away or hiding N95 respirator masks, surgical masks and other supplies that are prone to pilfering if left unattended.

"Masks disappear," nurse Diana Torres said. "We hide it all in drawers in front of the nurses' station."

One nurse at Westchester Medical Center, in the suburbs of the city, said colleagues have begun absconding with scarce supplies without asking, prompting better-stocked teams to lock masks, gloves and gowns in drawers and closets.

An emergency room doctor in Michigan, an emerging epicenter of the pandemic, said he was wearing one paper face mask for an entire shift due to a shortage and that hospitals in the Detroit area would soon run out of ventilators.

"We have hospital systems here in the Detroit area in Michigan who are getting to the end of their supply of ventilators and have to start telling families that they can't save their loved ones because they don't have enough equipment," the physician, Dr. Rob Davidson, said in a video posted on Twitter.

Sophia Thomas, a nurse practitioner at DePaul Community Health Center in New Orleans, where Mardi Gras celebrations late last month fueled an outbreak in Louisiana's largest city, said the numbers of coronavirus patients "have been staggering."

In the nation's second-largest city, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said spiking cases were putting Southern California on track to match New York City's infection figures in the next week.

Sheikhupura, May 26: Younus, the brother-in-law of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman convicted of blasphemy by a Pakistani court, was killed in Sheikhupura city of Punjab province in Pakistan on Monday.

According to the FIR, Younus had gone to his farms on May 24 and did not return home at night. His body with throat slit was traced in the farm the following morning.

It is believed that, hailing from minority Christian community, Younus was killed in a rivalry.

This is not the first time that somebody associated with Asia Bibi has been murdered in cold blood.

In 2011, Salman Taseer, the influential governor of Punjab was assassinated after he made headlines by appealing for the pardon of Asia Bibi, who had been sentenced to death for allegedly insulting Prophet Muhammad.

A month after Taseer was killed, Religious Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian who spoke out against the laws, was shot dead in Islamabad, underlining the threat faced by critics of the law.

Asia Bibi is now living in exile after the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted her based on insufficient evidence in October 2018.

Recounting the hellish conditions of eight years spent on death row on blasphemy charges but also the pain of exile, Asia Bibi recently broke her silence to give her first personal insight into an ordeal that caused international outrage.

French journalist Anne-Isabelle Tollet, who has co-written a book about her, was once based in the country where she led a support campaign for her."You already know my story through the media," she said in the book.

"But you are far from understanding my daily life in prison or my new life," she said. "I became a prisoner of fanaticism," she said. In prison, "tears were the only companions in the cell".

She described the horrendous conditions in squalid jails in Pakistan where she was kept chained and jeered at by other detainees.

Pakistan's blasphemy laws carry a potential death sentence for anyone who insults Islam. Critics say they have been used to persecute minority faiths and unfairly target minorities.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan defended the country's strict blasphemy laws during his election campaigns. The status quo is still in place.

No government in Pakistan was ready to make changed to the blasphemy law due to fears of a backlash.