Beijing, Jun 15: China is locking now ten more neighbourhoods in Beijing to try and contain the spread of a new coronavirus outbreak linked to a food market, authorities announced Monday.
City official Li Junjie said at a press conference that fresh cases had been found in a second wholesale market in northwestern Haidian district, and as a result, the market and nearby schools would be closed, and people living in ten communities around it placed under lockdown.
Washington, Jul 7: President Donald Trump on Tuesday formally started the withdrawal of the United States from the World Health Organization, making good on threats to deprive the UN body of its top funding source over its response to the coronavirus.
Public health advocates and Trump's political opponents voiced outrage at the departure from the Geneva-based body, which leads the global fight on maladies from polio to measles to mental health -- as well as Covid-19, at a time when cases have again been rising around the world.
After threatening to suspend the $400 million (Dh1.47 billion) in annual US contributions and then announcing a withdrawal, the Trump administration has formally sent a notice to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, a State Department spokesperson said.
The withdrawal is effective in one year -- July 6, 2021 -- and Joe Biden, Trump's presumptive Democratic opponent, is virtually certain to stop it and stay in the WHO if he wins the November election.
A spokesman for Guterres and the global health body itself confirmed that the United States, a key founding WHO member, gave its notice.
In a speech earlier in the day, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said of Covid-19, "National unity and global solidarity are more important than ever to defeat a common enemy."
In line with conditions set when the WHO was set up in 1948, the United States can leave within one year but must meet its remaining assessed financial obligations, the UN spokesman said.
'Total control'
In late May, Trump said that China exerted "total control" over the WHO and accused the UN body led by Tedros, an Ethiopian doctor and diplomat, of failing to implement reforms.
Blaming China for the coronavirus, Trump, a frequent critic of the UN, said the United States would redirect funding "to other worldwide and deserving, urgent, global public health needs."
Democratic lawmakers have accused Trump of seeking to deflect criticism from his handling of the pandemic in the United States, which has suffered by far the highest death toll of any nation despite the president's stated hope that the virus will disappear.
"To call Trump's response to Covid chaotic and incoherent doesn't do it justice," said Senator Robert Menendez, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee.
"This won't protect American lives or interests -- it leaves Americans sick and America alone," he wrote on Twitter.
Representative Ami Bera, himself a physician, said that the United States and World Health Organization had worked "hand in hand" to eradicate smallpox and nearly defeat polio.
"Our cases are increasing," Bera said of Covid-19. "If the WHO is to blame: why has the US been left behind while many countries from South Korea to New Zealand to Vietnam to Germany return to normal?"
Even some of Trump's Republican allies had voiced hope that he was exerting pressure rather than making a final decision to abandon the World Health Organization.
The investigative news outlet ProPublica reported last month that most of Trump's aides were blindsided by the WHO withdrawal announcement, which he made during an appearance about China.
The Trump administration has said that the WHO ignored early signs of human-to-human transmission in China, including warnings from Taiwan -- which, due to Beijing's pressure, is not part of the UN body.
While many public health advocates share some criticism of the WHO, they question what other options the world body had other than to work with China, where Covid-19 was first detected late last year in the city of Wuhan.
The anti-poverty campaign ONE said the United States should work to reform, not abandon, the WHO.
"Withdrawing from the World Health Organization amidst an unprecedented global pandemic is an astounding action that puts the safety of all Americans the world at risk," it said.
Paris, Jul 20: Two coronavirus vaccine candidates have proven safe for humans and produced strong immune reactions among patients involved in separate clinical trials, doctors said on Monday.
The first trial among more than 1,000 adults in Britain found that the vaccine induced "strong antibody and T cell immune responses" against the novel coronavirus.
A separate trial in China involving more than 500 people showed most had developed widespread antibody immune response.
The studies, published in The Lancet medical journal, constitute a major step on the road towards a COVID-19 vaccine that is effective and safe for widespread use.
The authors of the studies said that they encountered few adverse side-effects from the vaccine candidates.
However, they cautioned that more research was needed, particularly among older adults, who are disproportionately at risk of dying of COVID-19.
Co-author Sarah Gilbert from the University of Oxford said the results "hold promise".
"If our vaccine is effective, it is a promising option as these types of vaccine can be manufactured at large scale."
Washington, Jun 3: US President Donald Trump's administration on Tuesday announced investigations into foreign digital services taxes it says are aimed squarely at American tech firms.
Following a similar trade investigation against France last year, the US Trade Representative office now is looking into taxes in Britain and the European Union, as well as Indonesia, Turkey and India.
"President Trump is concerned that many of our trading partners are adopting tax schemes designed to unfairly target our companies," USTR Robert Lighthizer said in a statement.
"We are prepared to take all appropriate action to defend our businesses and workers against any such discrimination."
Washington opposes the efforts to tax revenues from online sales and advertising, saying they single out US tech giants like Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Netflix.
The US and France have agreed to negotiate till the end of the year over a digital services tax Paris approved in 2019, after USTR found them to be discriminating and threatened retaliatory duties of up to 100 percent on French imports such as champagne and camembert cheese.
Trump has embroiled the US in numerous trade disputes since taking office in 2017, including a months-long trade war with China that cooled with the signing of a partial deal in January.
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