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Monday, May 3, 2021

Global coronavirus cases are surging, driven by India and South America (NYT) The number of new daily cases has exceeded 800,000 for more than a week. The spike is largely driven by the outbreak in India, which now accounts for more than 40 percent of the world’s new cases. The U.S. plans to halt travel for non-U.S. citizens from India starting Tuesday. Vaccines in India are running short, hospitals are swamped and cremation grounds are burning thousands of bodies every day. Health experts and political analysts say that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s overconfidence and domineering leadership style bear a huge share of the responsibility for the crisis. Meanwhile, Indians living abroad are frantically seeking to help sick relatives. Much of South America is also faring poorly. Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Peru, Argentina and Colombia all rank among the 20 nations with the highest number of Covid deaths per capita.

Elderly statesman? (NYT) Arnold Schwarzenegger left the California governor’s mansion 10 years ago. He is a more popular political figure today than when he was elected. Over the past year, the former Republican governor, now 73, has been in demand, embracing an unlikely role that he describes as “elderly statesman.” He’s made public service announcements on hand washing, raised millions of dollars for protective health gear and is now being sought out for guidance on the Republican-led effort to oust Gov. Gavin Newsom, the same mechanism that led to Schwarzenegger’s election in 2003. “When you leave office, you realize—well, I realized—that I just couldn’t cut it off like that,” he said in a three-hour interview.

Looming showdown as Michigan governor orders Canadian pipeline shut down (Washington Post) For Michigan’s governor, the 645-mile pipeline jeopardizes the Great Lakes. For Canada’s natural resources minister, its continued operation is “nonnegotiable.” The clash over Calgary-based Enbridge’s Line 5, which carries up to 540,000 barrels of crude oil and natural gas liquids across Michigan and under the Great Lakes each day, is placing stress on U.S.-Canada ties. In a move applauded by environmentalists and Indigenous groups on both sides of the border, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) in November ordered the firm to shut down the nearly 70-year-old lines by May 12. Canadian officials, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have appealed to their American counterparts, including President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm for help. Joe Comartin, Canada’s consul general in Detroit, said a shutdown would have “significant” impacts on both sides of the border. He predicted effects ranging from months-long propane shortages to higher costs for consumers to fuels being carried by rail, truck or boat—methods that he said are less emissions-friendly and more dangerous than a pipeline. One “irritant,” he said, is “the claim from the state that they are doing this to protect the Great Lakes, that they’re more interested in protecting the Great Lakes than we in Canada are. Basically, we reject that completely.”

NYC Eyes Reopening (Bloomberg) New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said yesterday the city would aim to fully reopen July 1, lifting restrictions on restaurants, gyms, and all other businesses. A return to normal would mark a symbolic moment for both New Yorkers and the country—America's most populous city was a global epicenter early in the pandemic, registering an average of 800 deaths per day last April. The city is averaging roughly 1,700 new cases per day, down 70% since January, reporting about 30 deaths per day.

Kissinger warns of ‘colossal’ dangers in US-China tensions (AFP) Acclaimed diplomat Henry Kissinger said Friday that US-China tensions threaten to engulf the entire world and could lead to an Armageddon-like clash between the two military and technology giants. The 97-year-old former US secretary of state, who as an advisor to president Richard Nixon crafted the 1971 unfreezing of relations between Washington and Beijing, said the mix of economic, military and technological strengths of the two superpowers carried more risks than the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Strains with China are “the biggest problem for America, the biggest problem for the world,” Kissinger told the McCain Institute’s Sedona Forum on global issues. “Because if we can’t solve that, then the risk is that all over the world a kind of cold war will develop between China and the United States.” While nuclear weapons were already large enough to damage the entire globe during the Cold War, he said advances in nuclear technology and artificial intelligence—where China and the United States are both leaders—have multiplied the doomsday threat. “For the first time in human history, humanity has the capacity to extinguish itself in a finite period of time,” Kissinger said.

Thousands march in Colombia in fourth day of protests against tax plan (Reuters) Thousands of Colombians took to the streets on Saturday for International Workers’ Day marches and protests against a government tax reform proposal, in a fourth day of demonstrations that have resulted in at least four deaths. Unions and other groups kicked off marches on Wednesday to demand the government of President Ivan Duque withdraw the reform proposal, which originally leveled sales tax on public services and some food. Cali, the country’s third-largest city, has seen the most vociferous marches, some looting and at least three deaths connected to the demonstrations.

Europe’s economy shrinks amid slow vaccine rollouts and lockdowns (Washington Post) With swaths of Europe still under lockdown restrictions and facing a stuttering vaccination rollout, the region’s economy slid into a double-dip recession in the first quarter of the year, in contrast to a rosy outlook in the United States. The European economy shrank by 0.6 percent in the first quarter of the year, according to data released Friday. The U.S. economy grew by 1.6 percent over the same period, amid massive federal stimulus spending and a speedy vaccination rollout. Export-dependent Germany, which had already been heading toward recession before the pandemic as manufacturing dropped off, saw its economy shrink by 1.7 percent, the most in Europe. The economies of Spain, Italy and Portugal also contracted. Much of Europe is battling a third wave of coronavirus infections. Germany has a nighttime curfew in place in 15 of its 16 states, and shopping requires booking appointments and getting a negative test.

Dozens of German police injured in May Day riots (AP) At least 93 police officers were injured and 354 protesters were detained after traditional May Day rallies in Berlin turned violent, Berlin’s top security official said Sunday. More than 20 different rallies took place in the German capital on Saturday and the vast majority of them were peaceful. However, a leftist march of 8,000 people through the city’s Neukoelln and Kreuzberg neighborhood, which has often seen clashes in past decades, turned violent. Protesters threw bottles and rocks at officers, and burned garbage containers and wooden pallets in the streets. There’s a nightly curfew in most parts of Germany currently because of the high number of coronavirus infections. But political protests and religious gatherings are exempt from the curfew.

Big Myanmar protests aim to ‘shake the world’; seven killed (Reuters) Myanmar security forces opened fire on some of the biggest protests against military rule in days, killing at least seven people on Sunday, media reported, three months after a coup plunged the country into crisis. The protests, after a spell of dwindling crowds and what appeared to be more restraint by the security forces, were coordinated with demonstrations in Myanmar communities around the world to mark what organisers called “the global Myanmar spring revolution”. Streams of demonstrators, some led by Buddhist monks, made their way through cities and towns including the commercial hub of Yangon. The protests are only one of the problems the generals have brought on with their Feb. 1 ouster of the elected government. Wars with ethnic minority insurgents in remote frontier regions in the north and east have intensified significantly over the past three months, displacing tens of thousands of civilians, according to U.N. estimates. In some places, civilians with crude weapons have battled security forces while in central areas military and government facilities that have been secure for generations have been hit by rocket attacks and a wave of small, unexplained blasts.

Vaccinated faithful throng Jerusalem church for Holy Fire (AP) Hundreds of Christian worshippers made use of Israel’s easing of coronavirus restrictions Saturday, packing a Jerusalem church revered as the site of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection for an ancient fire ceremony a day before Orthodox Easter. The faithful gathered at The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, waiting for clergymen to emerge with the Holy Fire from the Edicule, a chamber built on the site where Christians believe Jesus was buried and rose from the dead after being crucified. As bells rang and the top clerics from different Orthodox denominations appeared, the worshippers scrambled to light their candles and pass the fire on. Within a minute, the imposing walls of the old church glowed.

Israel asks whether autonomy of the ultra-Orthodox contributed to the deadly stampede (Washington Post) Israel’s ultra-Orthodox residents exist in a world within the world, citizens of Israel but pledging their allegiance, attention and obedience instead to their rabbis and God. In isolated enclaves, they are exempt from the military draft, outside the national school system and—in apartments usually without Internet or television—largely oblivious to the surrounding culture. Now, this shocked country is asking whether that self-segregation—and the secular politicians who have enabled it for decades—is responsible for the worst civilian catastrophe in Israel’s history, the trampling death of 45 ultra-Orthodox men and boys at a massively overcrowded religious festival in the early hours of the morning Friday. The ultra-Orthodox, or Haredim as they are known in Israel, follow some of the most conservative tenets in Judaism and have a lifestyle based on the Jewish culture that evolved hundreds of years ago in the communities of Eastern Europe. Since Israel’s founding, state leaders have sought preserve this culture after much of it was devastated during World War II. When more than 100,000 members of the Haredim convened for a boisterous annual festival at an ancient rabbi’s tomb on Mount Meron, they overflowed a narrow, sloped compound known to both government and religious leaders as a potentially dangerous setting. Sunday, as the final victims were being buried and flags around the country flew at half-mast in a national day of mourning, multiple investigations were getting underway that will target police planning, local regulators, site managers and national ministries with responsibility for oversight. Already, journalists and whistleblowers have unearthed a shocking paper trail of warnings ignored, recommendations overruled and absent supervision. Officials have been called to account for meetings in recent weeks in which specific recommendations from health and safety authorities were overruled at the behest of Haredi groups.

#headlines #news

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