More than 1600 arrested in anti-Putin street protests in Russia

Agencies
May 6, 2018

May 6: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and more than 1,600 anti-Kremlin activists were detained by police on Saturday during street protests against Vladimir Putin ahead of his inauguration for a fourth term as president.

Navalny had called for demonstrations in more than 90 towns and cities across Russia against what he says is Putin`s autocratic, tsar-like rule.

"We will force the authorities, made up of swindlers and thieves, to take into account the millions of citizens who did not vote for Putin," Navalny said beforehand.

Putin overwhelmingly won re-election in March, extending his grip over Russia for six more years - a tenure of 24 years that would make him Moscow`s longest-serving leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

Navalny, who was barred from running in the election on what he says was a false pretext, was detained soon after showing up on Moscow`s Pushkin Square, where young people chanted "Russia without Putin!" and "Down with the Tsar!".

Video footage showed five policemen hauling him to a waiting van by his arms and legs, a scene that was repeated dozens of times with his supporters. Moscow police said he had been detained for organising an unsanctioned rally.

"NOTHING WILL CHANGE"

Navalny, who has been detained and jailed numerous times for organising similar protests, had managed to address his supporters briefly, saying he was glad they had shown up.

One protester in Moscow, wearing a rabbit`s mask with the legend "Tsar of the Animals", said he was unsure what the protest would achieve.

"I have the feeling that people are gathering just to let off steam and that nothing will change," said the 31-year-old man called Alexander, who declined to give his surname.

OVD-Info, a rights organisation that monitors detentions, said it had received reports of police detaining over 1,600 people across Russia, nearly half of them in Moscow. It cited its sources at the Moscow protest as saying pro-Kremlin Cossacks had beaten protesters with leather whips, sparking a fight.

A police spokesman said around 1,500 people had protested in Moscow, the Interfax news agency reported. Reuters reporters estimated the crowd numbered several thousand.

Protests also took place in the Far East, Siberia and St Petersburg. In the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, around 1,500 km (900 miles) east of Moscow, a Reuters reporter saw more than 1,000 people protesting, some shouting "Down with the Tsar!"

FATHER OF THE NATION

Putin, 65, has been in power, either as president or prime minister, since 2000.

Backed by state TV and the ruling party, and credited with an approval rating of around 80 percent, he is lauded by supporters as a father-of-the-nation figure who has restored national pride and expanded Moscow’s global clout with interventions in Syria and Ukraine.

The authorities regard most of the protests as illegal, arguing that their time and place was not approved beforehand, and that the police have a duty to protect public order.

Putin has dismissed Navalny as a troublemaker bent on sowing chaos on behalf of Washington. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, a close Putin ally, has called Navalny a political charlatan.

Putin is due to be inaugurated on Monday in a Kremlin ceremony heavy on pomp.

With more than 56 million votes, almost 77 percent of the total, his March election win was his biggest ever and the largest by any post-Soviet Russian leader, something he and his allies say gave him an unequivocal mandate to govern.

European observers said there had been no real choice in the election, and complained of unfair pressure on critical voices. Critics like Navalny accuse Putin of overseeing a corrupt authoritarian system and of annexing Ukraine’s Crimea illegally in 2014, a move that isolated Russia internationally.

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News Network
July 1,2020

As Peru begins to ease its strict coronavirus lockdown, the country's biggest LGBTQ nightclub opened its doors on Tuesday, but there will be no nighttime revellers; its dance floor will instead be filled with shelves stocked with groceries.

Instead of slinging cocktails at the bar or dancing on stage, ValeTodo Downtown's famed staff of drag queens will sell customers daily household products as the space reopens as a market while nightclubs are ordered to remain closed.

The Peruvian government will lift the lockdown in most regions of the country at the beginning of July but will keep borders closed, as well as nightclubs and bars.

The lockdown has been a struggle for the club's 120 employees like drag queen Belaluh McQueen. Her life completely changed when the government announced the quarantine. Her nights were spent at home, rather than performing as a dancer at the club in vivid-coloured costumes.

"I was very depressed because I have been doing this art for years, but you have to adapt to new challenges for the future," said McQueen, who is identified by her stage name.

Now McQueen is back to work as a grocery store employee, wearing a sequined suit, high heels and a mask. A DJ will play club music as patrons shop. "We have a new job opportunity," McQueen added.

Renamed as Downtown Market, the club, which has been a mainstay hallmark of the local LGBTQ community, ushered in its reopening with an inauguration ceremony.

"Before, I used to come here to dance and have a good time, but now we come to buy," said Alexandra Herrera, a regular attendee of the club. "The thing is to reinvent yourself."

The club's general manager, Claudia Achuy, said that the pandemic impacted the heart of Lima nightlife, but she chose to reopen as a market rather than risk cutting staff. "If we had just stayed as a nightclub we did not have a close horizon or a way of working," Achuy said.

Peru's confirmed coronavirus cases rose to 282,364 with 9,504 associated deaths on Monday, according to government data. It has the second-highest outbreak in Latin America after Brazil, according to a Reuters tally.

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News Network
March 4,2020

Tokyo, Mar 4: Takeda Pharmaceutical Co said on Wednesday it was developing a drug to treat COVID-19, the flu-like illness that has struck more than 90,000 people worldwide and killed over 3,000.

The Japanese drugmaker is working on a plasma-derived therapy to treat high-risk individuals infected with the new coronavirus and will share its plans with members of the U.S. Congress on Wednesday, it said in a statement.

Takeda is also studying whether its currently marketed and pipeline products may be effective treatments for infected patients.

"We will do all that we can to address the novel coronavirus threat...(and) are hopeful that we can expand the treatment options," Rajeev Venkayya, president of Takeda's vaccine business, said in the statement.

Takeda said it was in talks with various health and regulatory agencies and healthcare partners in the United States, Asia and Europe to move forward its research into the drug.

Its research requires access to the blood of people who have recovered from the respiratory disease or who have been vaccinated, once a vaccine is developed, Takeda said.

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News Network
June 26,2020

Washington, Jun 26: The United States reported more than 39,000 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, its highest-ever single-day count as the government relaxed restrictions and is downplaying the threat of the deadly virus.

According to the Washington Post, experts believe there is a troubling lack of consistent, unified messaging from President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. They have downplayed the danger and denigrated effective disease defences such as mask-wearing, testing, and social distancing.

Churches, beaches, and bars are filling up with people and so are hospital beds, the report said.

The counties home to Dallas, Phoenix, and Tampa all reported record-high averages on at least 15 straight days in June.

The hardest-hit states are California, Texas, Florida and those that thought they had the virus under control, like Utah and Oregon.

"I think the politicians are in denial," said Kami Kim, director of the Division of Infectious Disease and International Medicine at the University of South Florida.

The chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Utah Health, Andrew T. Pavia, is of the view that the push to reopen quickly even as cases climb sends a dangerous and inaccurate message.

"On the one hand, you get messages from politicians and the business community that we have to go, go, go and open up," he said. "On the other hand, you're seeing epidemiological indicators that we still have to be very careful."

"It's cognitive dissonance," he added.

The Trump administration has tried to downplay the rising number. Pence called concerns about another surge of infections "overblown," the product of media "fearmongering."

Some governors have followed the administration's lead, blaming rising caseloads on more testing.

Testifying before a congressional committee this week, Anthony S. Fauci, the nation's top infectious-diseases expert, said the new cases were "a disturbing surge" spurred by community transmission rather than testing.

"That's something I'm really quite concerned about," Fauci said. "A couple of days ago, there were 30,000 new infections. That's very disturbing to me."

Several states like Arizona, Arkansas, the Carolinas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas and Utah have recently reported new highs in the number of coronavirus patients hospitalized.

"We're seeing a 40 per cent increase in the last two weeks in hospitalizations," said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins (D), the jurisdiction's top elected official. "We're by far at our record numbers, and we're at record numbers in north Texas. Houston is at a record, the state is at a record." The Texas Medical Center in Houston, a massive medical complex, reported Thursday that 100 per cent of the beds in its intensive care unit are occupied.

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