Pope, ending Mozambique visit, slams corrupt leaders

Agencies
September 6, 2019

Maputo, Sept 6: Pope Francis, ending his visit to Mozambique, on Friday scolded political and business leaders in the resource-rich but poor East African country who allow themselves to be corrupted by outsiders.

On his last day in the country, Francis visited a hospital for HIV-AIDS sufferers run by the Sant' Egidio community and then said a mass for some 60,000 of people in Maputo's national stadium.

At the hospital and in his homily, Francis spoke of all four of the main themes of the trip to this country as well as Madagascar and Mauritius - peace, poverty, corruption, and environmental protection.

"Mozambique is a land of abundant natural and cultural riches, yet paradoxically, great numbers of its people live below the poverty level," Francis said in the stadium, in an area of the capital where many people live in shantytowns with houses of corrugated metal roofs.

At the AIDS hospital, the pope saw a cross made of wood and shards of metal from the collapsed roof of the home of an elderly woman.

According to the U.N. World Food Programme, 80% of Mozambique's population of about 30 million cannot afford the minimum costs for an adequate diet.

"At times it seems that those who approach with the alleged desire to help have other interests. Sadly, this happens with brothers and sisters of the same land, who let themselves be corrupted. It is very dangerous to think that this is the price to be paid for foreign aid," Francis said.

BILLION-DOLLAR SCANDAL

Mozambique ranks in the lowest quarter of Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index.

While the pope did not give any specific examples of corruption, Mozambique is still struggling to recover from the impact of a $2 billion debt scandal, which saw hundreds of millions of dollars in borrowing guaranteed by the Mozambique government disappear.

The money was borrowed ostensibly to develop shipyards, maritime security, and a tuna fishing venture, but U.S. authorities now say the projects were an elaborate front for a bribe and kickback scheme. Boats acquired for the projects meanwhile are rusting in harbors across Mozambique.

Criminal and civil court cases related to the scandal and spanning three continents have ensnared international investment bank Credit Suisse, which helped arrange the loans, three of its former bankers, a former finance minister, and the former Mozambique president's son.

Credit Suisse says it continues to cooperate with regulatory and enforcement authorities in connection with multiple investigations related to the Mozambique maritime transactions. It has said the bankers hid their misconduct from the bank. Mozambique has charged 20 people over the affair is suing Credit Suisse and others.

Mozambique, already one of the world's most impoverished countries, is still on the hook for the loans, some of which the government did not disclose. When it admitted to the undisclosed borrowing in 2016 it prompted donors such as the International Monetary Fund to cut off support, triggering a currency collapse and debt crisis.

Francis also spoke earlier of his concern over the environmental degradation in Africa, some it caused by rampant deforestation and extraction industries.

He said that assisting the poor could help put people in touch in touch with the earth, which is also vulnerable, and suffers from "symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life ... the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor".

Deforestation, along with soil erosion, made Mozambique more vulnerable when two cyclones hit the country this year.

According to the World Bank, Mozambique has lost 8 million hectares of forest, about the size of Portugal, since the 1970s.

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News Network
February 18,2020

Beijing, Feb 18: A hospital director at the epicentre of China's virus epidemic died on Tuesday, state media said, the latest medical worker to fall victim to the new coronavirus spreading across the country.

The COVID-19 virus, which is believed to have originated in Wuhan late last year, has infected more than 72,000 people and killed nearly 1,900.

Liu Zhiming, the director of Wuchang Hospital in Wuhan, died Tuesday morning after "all-out rescue efforts failed," state broadcaster CCTV reported.

China said last week that six medical workers had died from the virus, while 1,716 have been infected.

Liu's death was initially reported by Chinese media and bloggers shortly after midnight on Tuesday -- but the stories were later deleted and replaced with reports that doctors were still trying to save him.

After initial reports of his death were denied, the hospital told AFP on Tuesday morning that doctors were giving him life-saving treatment.

Liu's death has echoes of that of Wuhan ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, who had been punished by authorities for sounding the alarm about the virus in late December.

Li's death prompted a national outpouring of grief as well as anger against the authorities, who were accused of mishandling the crisis.

People took to social media to mourn Liu on Tuesday, with many users on the Twitter-like Weibo platform drawing critical comparisons between Liu's death and Li's.

In both cases their deaths were initially reported in state media posts -- later deleted -- and their deaths denied, before being finally confirmed again.

"Has everyone forgotten what happened to Li Wenliang? They forcefully attempted resuscitation after he died," one Weibo commenter wrote.

Another commenter said, Liu "already died last night, (but) some people are addicted to torturing corpses".

A hashtag about Liu's death had 29 million views by Tuesday afternoon.

Doctors in Wuhan face shortages of masks and protective bodysuits, with some even wearing makeshift hazmat suits and continuing to work despite showing respiratory symptoms, health workers have told AFP.

Hubei province and its capital Wuhan have been the hardest hit by the virus, accounting for nearly 1,800 of the deaths from the virus so far.

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News Network
June 9,2020

Jun 9: The World Health Organization says it still believes the spread of the coronavirus from people without symptoms is “rare,” despite warnings from numerous experts worldwide that such transmission is more frequent and likely explains why the pandemic has been so hard to contain.

Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO''s technical lead on COVID-19 said at a press briefing on Monday that many countries are reporting cases of spread from people who are asymptomatic, or those with no clinical symptoms.

But when questioned in more detail about these cases, Van Kerkhove said many of them turn out to have mild disease, or unusual symptoms.

Although health officials in countries including Britain, the U.S. and elsewhere have warned that COVID-19 is spreading from people without symptoms, WHO has maintained that this type of spread is not a driver of the pandemic and is probably accounts for about 6 per cent of spread, at most.

Numerous studies have suggested that the virus is spreading from people without symptoms, but many of those are either anecdotal reports or based on modeling.

Van Kerkhove said that based on data from countries, when people with no symptoms of COVID-19 are tracked over a long period to see if they spread the disease, there are very few cases of spread.

“We are constantly looking at this data and we''re trying to get more information from countries to truly answer this question,” she said. “It still appears to be rare that asymptomatic individuals actually transmit onward.”

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News Network
May 29,2020

Washington, May 29: Reiterating his offer to mediate on the border dispute between India and China, US President Donald Trump has said that he spoke with Narendra Modi about the "big conflict" and asserted that the Indian Prime Minister is not in a "good mood" over the latest flare-ups between the two countries.

Speaking with the reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on Thursday, Trump said a "big conflict" was going on between India and China.

"I like your prime minister a lot. He is a great gentleman," the president said.

"Have a big conflict …India and China. Two countries with 1.4 billion people (each). Two countries with very powerful militaries. India is not happy and probably China is not happy," he said when asked if he was worried about the border situation between India and China.

"I can tell you; I did speak to Prime Minister Modi. He is not in a good mood about what is going on with China," Trump said.

A day earlier, the president offered to mediate between India and China.

Trump on Wednesday said in a tweet that he was "ready, willing and able to mediate" between the two countries.

Responding to a question on his tweet, Trump reiterated his offer, saying if called for help, "I would do that (mediate). If they thought it would help" about "mediate or arbitrate, I would do that," he said.

India on Wednesday said it was engaged with China to peacefully resolve the border row, in a carefully crafted reaction to Trump's offer to arbitrate between the two Asian giants to settle their decades-old dispute.

"We are engaged with the Chinese side to peacefully resolve it," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said, replying to a volley of questions at an online media briefing.

While the Chinese Foreign Ministry is yet to react to Trump's tweet which appears to have caught Beijing by surprise, an op-ed in the state-run Global Times said both countries did not need such a help from the US President.

"The latest dispute can be solved bilaterally by China and India. The two countries should keep alert on the US, which exploits every chance to create waves that jeopardise regional peace and order," it said.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Wednesday that both China and India have proper mechanisms and communication channels to resolve the issues through dialogue and consultations.

Trump previously offered to mediate between India and Pakistan on the Kashmir issue, a proposal which was rejected by New Delhi.

The situation in eastern Ladakh deteriorated after around 250 Chinese and Indian soldiers were engaged in a violent face-off on the evening of May 5 which spilled over to the next day before the two sides agreed to "disengage" following a meeting at the level of local commanders.

Over 100 Indian and Chinese soldiers were injured in the violence.

The incident in Pangong Tso was followed by a similar incident in north Sikkim on May 9.

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