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56 journalists killed in 2019: UN

Agencies
January 21, 2020

Fifty-six journalists were killed in 2019 and most of them died outside conflict zones, a United Nations spokesperson said.

The number dropped by nearly half from the year 2018, but perpetrators enjoyed almost total impunity, Xinhua news agency quoted Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, as saying on Monday citing Unesco figures.

The figure was published in the 'Unesco Observatory of Killed Journalists' on Monday.

In total, Unesco recorded 894 journalist killings in the decade from 2010 to 2019, an average of almost 90 per year. The number in 2019 was 99.

Journalists were murdered in all regions of the world, with Latin America and the Caribbean recording 22 killings, the highest number, followed by 15 in Asia-Pacific, and 10 in Arab States.

"The figures show that journalists not only suffer extreme risks when covering violent conflict, but that they are also targeted when reporting on local politics, corruption and crime - often in their hometowns," the Unesco said.

Almost two thirds (61 per cent) of the cases in 2019 occurred in countries not experiencing armed conflict, a notable spike in a wider trend in recent years, and a reversal of the situation of 2014, when this figure was one third.

More than 90 per cent of cases recorded in 2019 concerned local journalists, consistent with previous years, it added.

In response to these figures, Audrey Azoulay, the Director-General of Unesco, said: "Unesco remains deeply troubled by the hostility and violence directed at all too many journalists around the world.

"As long as this situation lasts, it will undermine democratic debate."

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News Network
January 31,2020

Wuhan, Jan 31: The World Health Organization declared a global emergency over the new coronavirus, as China reported Friday the death toll had climbed to 213 with nearly 10,000 infections.

The UN health agency based in Geneva had initially downplayed the threat posed by the disease, but revised its risk assessment after crisis talks.

suspended or reduced service to China include British Airways, German flag carrier Lufthansa, American Airlines, KLM and United.

Chinese efforts to halt the virus have included the suspension of classes nationwide and an extension of the Lunar New Year holiday.

All football matches across the country also will be postponed, the Chinese Football Association said on Thursday, including games in the top-tier Chinese Super League.

World stock markets tumbled again Thursday on fears that trouble in the "world's factory" would upset global supply chains and dent profits.

Toyota, IKEA, Starbucks, Tesla, McDonald's and tech giant Foxconn were among the corporate giants temporarily freezing production or closing large numbers of outlets in China.

Volkswagen announced Thursday its China joint-venture plants would not start production again before February 9.

US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the coronavirus posed a fresh risk to the world economy.

Throughout China, signs of paranoia multiplied, with residents of some Beijing residential compounds erecting makeshift barriers to their premises.

In one of many similar photos posted online, a man wearing a surgical mask and brandishing a traditional martial arts weapon squatted on a barricade outside a Chinese village, near a sign saying: "Outsiders forbidden from entering".

The crisis has caused food prices to spike, and the central government on Thursday blamed this partly on overzealous preventive measures, issuing a directive banning any roadblocks or other hindrances to food shipments.

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News Network
June 19,2020

London, Jun 19: Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner who once took a bullet for campaigning for girls' education in Pakistan, was over the moon on Friday after completing her degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Britain's prestigious Oxford University.

Malala, 22, who attended Oxford's Lady Margaret Hall college, took to Twitter to share two pictures that show her celebrating the milestone with her family.

"Hard to express my joy and gratitude right now as I completed my Philosophy, Politics and Economics degree at Oxford," she said in the tweet, accompanied by two pictures - one showing her sitting with her family in front of a cake that says: 'Happy Graduation Malala', and the other in which she is covered with cake smiling for the camera.

In the tweet, the famed human rights activist also revealed her plans for the immediate future - Netflix, reading and sleeping.

"I don't know what's ahead. For now, it will be Netflix, reading and sleep," she wrote.

Malala was shot in the head by the Taliban militants in December 2012 for campaigning for female education in the Swat Valley in northeastern Pakistan.

Severely wounded, she was airlifted from one military hospital in Pakistan to another and later flown to the UK for treatment.

After the attack, the Taliban released a statement saying that they would target Malala again if she survived.

At the age of 17, Malala became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her education advocacy in 2014 when she shared the coveted honour with India's social activist Kailash Satyarthi.

Unable to return to Pakistan after her recovery, she moved to Britain, setting up the Malala Fund and supporting local education advocacy groups with a focus on Pakistan, Nigeria, Jordan, Syria and Kenya.

The Taliban, who are against girls' education, have destroyed many schools in Pakistan.

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Agencies
August 5,2020

Ninety per cent of a sample group of coronavirus-recovered patients from a prominent hospital in China's Wuhan city where the pandemic broke out have reported lung damage and five per cent of them are again in quarantine after testing positive for the virus, according to a media report on Wednesday.

A team at the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University led by Peng Zhiyong, director of the hospital's Intensive Care Unit, has been conducting follow-up visits with '100 recovered patients' since April.

The first phase of this one-year programme finished in July. The average age of the patients in the study is 59.

According to the first phase results, 90 per cent of the patients' lungs are still in a damaged state, which means their lungs ventilation and gas exchange functions have not recovered to the level of healthy people, state-run Global Times reported.

Peng's team conducted a six-minute walking test with the patients. They found that the recovered patients could only walk 400 metres in six minutes while their healthy peers could walk 500 metres in the same period.

Some recovered patients have to rely on oxygen machines even three months after being discharged from the hospital, Liang Tengxiao, a doctor from the Dongzhimen Hospital, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, was quoted as saying by the report.

Liang's team is also conducting follow-up visits with recovered patients aged above 65.

The results also showed that antibodies against the novel coronavirus in 10 per cent of the 100 patients have disappeared.

Five per cent of them received negative results in Covid-19 nucleic acid tests but positive results in Immunoglobulin M (IgM) tests, and thus have to be quarantined again, the report said.

IgM is usually the first antibody produced by the immune system when a virus attacks. A positive result in an IgM test usually means that a person has just been infected by the virus.

It is still unclear if this means these people have been infected again.

The 100 patients' immune systems have not fully recovered as they showed a low level of B cells -- - a primary force for killing viruses in the human body -- but a high level of T cells which only recognise viral antigens outside infected cells.

"The results revealed that the patients’ immune systems are still recovering," Peng said.

The patients also suffered from depression and a sense of stigma. Most of the recovered patients told the team that their families were not willing to have dinner with them at the same table, the report said.

Less than half of the recovered patients have returned to work, it said.

The findings are significant as the coronavirus first emerged in Wuhan city.

Hubei province for which Wuhan is the provincial capital has reported a total of 68,138 confirmed Covid-19 cases till now. The disease has claimed 4,512 lives in the province, according to the official data.

China reported 27 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, including 22 locally-transmitted cases, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Wednesday.

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