Tokyo, Jun 18: Several people were feared dead, including a nine-year-old girl, after a strong quake shook the city of Osaka in western Japan, local media reported today.
Public broadcaster NHK and private station TV Asahi both reported "several" deaths, with the Kyodo news agency saying a nine-year-old girl had been trapped by a damaged wall in a swimming facility north of Osaka city.
Local police said they could not confirm the reports.
May 18: Risk managers expect a prolonged global recession as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, a report by the World Economic Forum showed on Tuesday.
Two-thirds of the 347 respondents to the survey - carried out in response to the outbreak - put a lengthy contraction in the global economy top of their list of concerns for the next 18 months.
Half of risk managers expected bankruptcies and industry consolidation, the failure of industries to recover and high levels of unemployment, particularly among the young.
“The crisis has devastated lives and livelihoods. It has triggered an economic crisis with far-reaching implications and revealed the inadequacies of the past," said Saadia Zahidi, managing director of the World Economic Forum.
Environmental goals risk being discarded as a result of the pandemic, the report said, but governments should try to carve out a "green recovery".
"We now have a unique opportunity to use this crisis to do things differently and build back better economies that are more sustainable, resilient and inclusive," Zahidi said.
The report was compiled by the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Advisory Board together with Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc and Zurich Insurance Group.
Risk managers were surveyed between April 1 and 13.
Beijing, Jul 6: A city in northern China on Sunday sounded an alert after a suspected case of bubonic plague was reported, according to official media here.
Bayannur, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, announced a level III warning of plague prevention and control, state-run People’s Daily Online reported.
The suspected bubonic plague case was reported on Saturday by a hospital in Bayannur. The local health authority announced that the warning period will continue until the end of 2020.
"At present, there is a risk of a human plague epidemic spreading in this city. The public should improve its self-protection awareness and ability, and report abnormal health conditions promptly,” the local health authority said.
On July 1, state-run Xinhua news agency said that two suspected cases of bubonic plague reported in Khovd province in western Mongolia have been confirmed by lab test results.
The confirmed cases are a 27-year-old resident and his 17-year-old brother, who are being treated at two separate hospitals in their province, it quoted a health official as saying.
The brothers ate marmot meat, the health official said, warning people not to eat marmot meat.
A total of 146 people who had contact with them have been isolated and treated at local hospitals, according to Narangerel.
Bubonic plague is a bacterial disease that is spread by fleas living on wild rodents such as marmots. It can kill an adult in less than 24 hours if not treated in time, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
A couple died of bubonic plague in the western Mongolian province of Bayan-Ulgii last year after eating raw marmot meat.
The news of bubonic plague came after Chinese researchers issued an early warning over another potential pandemic caused by an influenza virus in pigs.
Scientists from China Agricultural University, the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and other institutes detected a pig influenza virus bearing genotype 4 (G4), which is contagious among pigs and has the possibility of jumping to humans, as the G4 virus is able to bind with human cells, state-run Global Times reported last week.
The researchers are concerned that it could mutate further so that it can spread easily from person to person, and trigger a global outbreak, BBC reported.
"Controlling the prevailing G4 EA H1N1 viruses in pigs and close monitoring in human populations, especially workers in the swine industry, should be urgently implemented," Chinese researchers warned in the paper.
The new diseases were reported even as China grappled with the second attack of Covid-19 in Beijing after controlling it in Wuhan where it was first reported in December last year.
On Saturday, Beijing reported a single-digit Covid-19, local authorities said Sunday.
The number of newly confirmed Covid-19 cases reached a peak in Beijing on June 13 and 14 and then started declining in general, Xinhua quoted local officials as saying.
From June 11 to July 4, the city reported 334 confirmed locally transmitted cases, 47 per cent of whom are workers of the Xinfadi wholesale food market, the official said.
Bueno Aires, Apr 25: Dozens of prisoners at a jail in Argentina's capital Buenos Aires rioted on Friday demanding urgent health measures after confirmation of a coronavirus case inside the facility.
Police surrounded the prison, which holds around 2,200 inmates, as explosions were heard, news agency reporters at the scene said.
A group of prisoners managed to climb onto a roof, burn mattresses and throw objects at security guards trying to quell the uprising.
Authorities have yet to comment on the riot or whether there are any injuries.
Inmates could be heard shouting demands for a judge to hear their case and for better protection against the pandemic, just a few days after a warden at the Villa Devoto prison was confirmed to have contracted the novel coronavirus.
"COVID-19 in Devoto, genocidal judges," read a banner hung from the prison roof. "We refuse to die in prison," read another.
The inmates are demanding, among other things, that releases that were pending before the pandemic be processed.
Several other riots broke out in prisons last week, including in Florencio Varela in Buenos Aires province where one inmate died and 20 were injured.
Argentina has been in lockdown since March 20 and has recorded more than 3,400 coronavirus cases and 167 deaths.
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