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Indonesia chooses new capital 'to save' congested Jakarta

Agencies
August 26, 2019

Jakarta, Aug 26: Indonesia has chosen the eastern edge of jungle-clad Borneo Island for its new capital, President Joko Widodo said Monday, as the country looks to shift its political heart away from congested megalopolis Jakarta.

The proposed location, near the regional cities of Balikpapan and Samarinda, is in the geographical centre of the Southeast Asian archipelago and an area where the government already owns some 180,000 hectares (445,000 acres) of land, he added.

The site in the province of East Kalimantan is at "minimal" risk of natural disasters, he added.

"As a large nation that has been independent for 74 years, Indonesia has never chosen its own capital," Widodo said in a televised speech.

"The burden Jakarta is holding right now is too heavy as the centre of governance, business, finance, trade and services," he added.

The government would draft a bill for the move which would be sent to parliament, Widodo said.

He said the estimated cost of the project was around 466 trillion rupiahs (US$33 billion).

The move comes as concerns about Jakarta's future soar.

The megacity, first established by Dutch colonists nearly 500 years ago, of is one of the fastest-sinking cities on earth, with environmental experts warning that one-third of it could be submerged by 2050 if current rates continue.

The problem is largely linked to excessive groundwater extraction.

But the city of 10 million, a number that bloats to about 30 million with surrounding satellite cities, is also plagued by a host of other ills, from eye-watering traffic jams and pollution to the risk of earthquakes and floods.

Its foundations have been further stressed by unchecked development and poor urban planning.

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News Network
June 29,2020

Paris, Jun 29: More than half a million people have been killed by the novel coronavirus, nearly two thirds of them in the United States and Europe, according to an news agency tally at 2200 GMT Sunday based on official sources.

The official death count for the disease now stands at 500,390 deaths from 10,099,576 cases recorded worldwide. The United States has suffered the highest death count (125,747), followed by Brazil (57,622) and the United Kingdom (43,550).

The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.

Many countries are testing only the most serious cases.

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Agencies
August 3,2020

New York, Aug 3: The number of coronavirus cases confirmed all over the world has surpassed 18 million, while the global COVID-19 death toll stands at over 687,000 according to data from the Johns Hopkins University's Coronavirus Resource Center.

As of 06:00 Moscow time on Monday (03:00 GMT), there are 18,017,556 confirmed coronavirus cases in the world. The global death toll from COVID-19 stands at 687,930. The number of recovered individuals stands at 10,649,108.

The United States remains the country with the largest number of cases (4,665,932) and the highest COVID-19 death toll (154,841), according to the latest data from the Johns Hopkins University.

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News Network
May 20,2020

May 20: The novel coronavirus is behaving differently in patients in northeast China who have contracted it recently compared with early cases, indicating it is changing as it spreads, a prominent doctor said.

China, which has largely brought the virus under control, has found new clusters of infections in the northeastern border provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang in recent weeks, raising concern about a second wave.

Qiu Haibo, an expert in critical care medicine who is part of a National Health Commission expert group, said the incubation period of the virus in patients in the northeast was longer than that of patients in Wuhan, the central city, where the virus emerged late last year.

COVID-19 Pandemic Tracker: 15 countries with the highest number of coronavirus cases, deaths

"This causes a problem, as they don't have any symptoms. So when they gather with their families they don't care about this issue and we see family cluster infections," Qiu told state broadcaster CCTV in a programme broadcast late on Tuesday.

Patients in the northeastern clusters were also carrying the virus for longer than earlier cases in Wuhan, and they were taking longer to recover, as defined by a negative nucleic acid test, he said.

Patients in the northeast also rarely exhibited fever and tended to suffer damage to the lungs rather than across multiple organs, he said.

He said the virus found in the northeastern clusters was probably imported from abroad, which could account for the differences.

He did not say where he though they might have come from but both Jilin and Heilongjiang border Russia.

China reported five new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, down from six a day earlier.

Four of the new cases were local transmissions and one was imported by a traveller coming from abroad, the commission said in a statement, compared with three imported cases reported the previous day.

China's total number of coronavirus infections stands at 82,965, while the death toll 4,634. 

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