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14 confirmed Ebola cases in Congo as emergency meeting held

Agencies
May 18, 2018

Kinshasa, May 18: There are now 14 confirmed Ebola cases in Congo's latest outbreak as health officials rush to contain the often deadly virus in a city of more than one million.

Vast, impoverished Congo has contained several past Ebola outbreaks but the spread of the hemorrhagic fever to an urban area poses a major challenge. The city of Mbandaka, which has one confirmed Ebola case, is an hour's flight from the capital, Kinshasa, and is located on the Congo River, a busy travel corridor.

The World Health Organization was holding an emergency meeting on Friday. It now calls the risk to the public in Congo "very high" and the regional risk "high". It says no international travel restrictions are in place. The Republic of Congo and Central African Republic are nearby.

"This is a major, major game-changer in the outbreak," Dr. Peter Salama, WHO's emergency response chief, warned on Thursday after the first urban case was announced. "Urban Ebola can result in an exponential increase in cases in a way that rural Ebola struggles to do."

The outbreak tests the new experimental Ebola vaccine, which proved highly effective in the West Africa outbreak a few years ago. More than 4,000 doses have arrived in Congo this week, with more on the way. One challenge will be keeping the vaccine cold in a region with poor infrastructure and patchy electricity.

Just one Ebola death in this current outbreak has been confirmed so far. Congo's health ministry late Thursday said the total number of cases is 45, including 10 suspected and 21 probable ones.

The health ministry said two new deaths have been tied to the cases, including one in a suburb of Mbandaka. The other was in Bikoro, the rural area where the outbreak was announced last week. It is about 150 kilometers (93 miles) from Mbandaka.

Until now, the outbreak had been confined to remote rural areas, where Ebola, which is spread via contact with bodily fluids of those infected, travels more slowly.

Doctors Without Borders said 514 people believed to have been in contact with infected people were being monitored. WHO said it was deploying about 30 more experts to Mbandaka.

This is the ninth Ebola outbreak in Congo since 1976, when the disease was first identified. The virus is initially transmitted to people from wild animals, including bats and monkeys.

There is no specific treatment for Ebola. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding. The virus can be fatal in up to 90 per cent of cases, depending on the strain.

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News Network
June 27,2020

Moscow, Jun 27: The number of people who have contracted the coronavirus infection in Russia has increased by 6,852 over the past day to a total of 627,646, the country's COVID-19 Response Center said in a daily update on Saturday.

"Over the past day, 6,852 new COVID-19 cases were confirmed in 85 regions of Russia, including 2,058, or 30 per cent, of asymptomatic cases," the response centre said.

Of the total 6,852 newly detected cases, 750 have been confirmed in Moscow, 366 in Moscow Region, and 280 in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area, according to the report.

The reported daily dynamics included 188 new fatalities, which brought the cumulative death toll to 8,969.

Total recoveries now count 393,352, an increase of 9,200 over the past day, including 1,852 in Moscow, 1,421 in Moscow Region and 716 in St. Petersburg.

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Agencies
May 25,2020

The Japan government on Monday decided to lift the state of emergency for COVID-19 in Tokyo and four other prefectures of the country, the only places where the measure implemented to curb the pandemic had remained in force.

The lifting of the alert was backed by the coronavirus advisory panel and will be formally approved by the government later day, the economic revitalization minister and head of the working group to coordinate Japan's fight against COVID-19, Yasutoshi Nishimura, said.

The Japanese authorities made the decision after taking into account the number of infections and the situation of the health system in Tokyo, the three neighbouring prefectures of Chiba, Kanagawa and Saitama and the northern Hokkaido, the only ones where the state of emergency declared more than a month ago to control the pandemic remained in effect, reports Efe news.

The health alert was initially declared in Tokyo and six other prefectures on April 17 and subsequently extended across the country.

It allowed local authorities to ban large-scale public events and close bars and restaurants at night, among other measures, while the government has launched a campaign to encourage teleworking and staying at home.

The government resorted to this measure for the first time in the country's recent history to contain the spread of the virus and is now withdrawing it after a sustained slowdown in infections throughout the archipelago, where around 16,600 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 839 deaths have been recorded, according to the latest data.

The group of experts advising the government appreciated the efforts made by citizens to comply with the recommendations to achieve the target of reducing interpersonal contact by 80 percent, top government spokesperson Yoshihide Suga said at a press conference on Monday.

The recommendation for citizens to avoid unnecessary trips outside and the request for non-essential businesses to close were not mandatory nor accompanied by fines or other penalties for non-compliance, unlike the stricter containment measures implemented in other countries.

The government plans to formally approve the lifting of the state of emergency on Monday after consulting with other political parties in parliament and another meeting with the advisory panel, following which Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will hold a press conference.

The government had already decided to lift the emergency in 39 prefectures on May 14 after they reported a marked decrease in the number of infections, leaving out the more populated regions such as Tokyo and Osaka.

To avoid new outbreaks of the virus, Abe has urged people to become accustomed to a "new lifestyle" that includes maintaining social distancing, the use of masks outside as well as a series of guidelines for the reopening of shops, restaurants and public facilities.

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Agencies
August 4,2020

Washington, Aug 4: US President Donald Trump gave popular Chinese-owned video app TikTok six weeks to sell its US operations to an American company, saying Monday it would be "out of business" otherwise, and that the government wanted a financial benefit from the deal.

"It's got to be an American company... it's got to be owned here," Trump said. "We don't want to have any problem with security."

Trump said that Microsoft was in talks to buy TikTok, which has as many as one billion worldwide users who make quirky 60-second videos with its smartphone app.

But US officials say the app constitutes a national security risk because it could share millions of Americans' personal data with Chinese intelligence.

Trump gave the company's Chinese parent ByteDance until mid-September to strike a deal.

"I set a date of around September 15, at which point it's going to be out of business in the United States," he said.

Whatever the price is, he said, "the United States should get a very large percentage of that price because we're making it possible."

Trump compared the demand for a piece of the pie to a landlord demanding under-the-table "key money" from a new tenant, a practice widely illegal including in New York, where the billionaire president built his real estate empire.

"TikTok is a big success, but a big portion of it is in the country," he said. "I think it's very fair."

But Trump also threw a surprise new condition in any deal, saying the sale of TikTok's US business would have to result in a significant payout to the US Treasury for initiating it.

"A very substantial portion of that price is going to have to come into the Treasury of the United States, because we're making it possible for this deal to happen," Trump told reporters.

"They don't have any rights unless we give it to them," he said.

Sell or shut down

The pressure for a sale of TikTok's US and international business, based in Los Angeles, left the company and ByteDance facing tough decisions.

Trump has made TikTok the latest front in the ongoing political and trade battles between Washington and Beijing.

The app has been under formal investigation on US national security grounds because it collects large amounts of personal data on all its users and is legally bound to share that with authorities in Beijing if they demand it.

Both its huge user base and its algorithm for collecting data make it hugely valuable.

But being forced by the US government to sell at least its US business or be shut down -- and to then split the sale price with the US Treasury as Trump is demanding -- was an almost unheard-of tactic.

Shutting down could force users to switch to competitors, and many content creators are already encouraging followers to follow them on other social media platforms.

"The most obvious beneficiaries are Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter, with Snapchat likely being the biggest beneficiary," said investment analysts at Lightshed Partners.

Earlier Monday, ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming acknowledged the hefty pressure and said in a letter to staff, reported by Chinese media, that they were working around-the-clock "for the best outcome."

"We have always been committed to ensuring user data security, as well as the platform neutrality and transparency," Zhang said.

However, he said, the company faces "mounting complexities across the geopolitical landscape and significant external pressure."

He said the company must confront the challenge from the United States, though "without giving up exploring any possibilities."

According to Britain's The Sun newspaper Monday, as a possible consequence of the pressure, ByteDance is planning to relocate TikTok's global operations to Britain.

Pushing back

China's foreign ministry pushed back Monday, calling Washington hypocritical for demanding TikTok be sold.

"The US is using an abused concept of national security and, without providing any evidence, is making presumptions of guilt and issuing threats to relevant companies," said spokesman Wang Wenbin.

"This goes against the principle of market economy and exposes the hypocrisy and typical double standards of the US in upholding so-called fairness and freedom," he added.

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