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Thunberg donates $ 100,000 to support children during pandemic
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has donated a $ 100,000 prize she won from a Danish foundation to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) for use against the Covid-19 pandemic, the world body said on Thursday.
“Like the climate crisis, the coronavirus pandemic is a crisis of the rights of the child,” Thunberg, 17, said in the UNICEF statement.
“It will affect all children, now and in the long term, but vulnerable groups will be the most affected,” he added.
“I ask everyone to step forward and join me in supporting Unicef’s vital work to save children’s lives, protect health and continue education.”
Danish anti-poverty non-governmental organization Human Act will match the donation of $ 100,000, the statement added.
Unicef said the funds would give it a boost as it struggles to support children affected by anti-virus closings and school closings, particularly in the fields of “food shortages, strained health care systems, violence and lost education. “
– AFP
UK farmers forced to throw away fresh produce
Farmers’ leaders in the UK warn of a possible catastrophe for dairy farming unless action is taken.
Due to the coronavirus blockade, fresh produce that would generally go to restaurants and cafes is being scrapped.
Farmers are known for dealing with the unpredictable, finding solutions in the worst of seasons.
– Al Jazeera
Yemen, devastated by war, reports first virus deaths fueled fears
Yemen has recorded its first two deaths from coronavirus, the health minister said Wednesday night, after the war-torn country confirmed five new cases, fueling fears of a major outbreak.
Yemen’s health system has been affected by years of war that have expelled millions from their homes and plunged the country into what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Yemen recorded five new cases of Covid-19 in its second city of Aden on Wednesday, the outbreak monitoring committee said on Twitter.
The country has largely escaped the effects of the pandemic, with a total of six cases reported so far, the first in April in the government-controlled southeast province of Hadramawt.
“There was an announcement of five coronavirus cases today, of those infections there were two deaths,” Health Minister Nasser Baoum told Yemen television.
“We ran the tests twice, and they were positive,” he said. “Therefore, there is no doubt under these global circumstances that we have to announce that they were cases of coronavirus until proven otherwise.”
The deaths come after aid organizations warned that any coronavirus outbreak could have serious consequences after six years of civil war.
– AFP
Eritrea values image of citizens by rejecting Covid-19 aid
When the founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, Jack Ma, offered to send hundreds of fans and hundreds of thousands of personal protective equipment (PPE) to 54 countries in Africa, most of African leaders, such as Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia and Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Quickly accepted the donation and expressed his gratitude.
The leaders of Eritrea, a country ranked 182/189 on the 2019 United Nations Human Development Index, however, surprisingly chose to reject the vital equipment Ma offered to send them.
On April 5, the head of Economic Affairs of the ruling party of the Popular Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) of Eritrea, Hagos “Kisha” Gebrehiwet, publicly confirmed that the Eritrean government rejected Ma’s donation.
Speaking as a guest speaker at the bi-weekly Hagerawi Nikhat (“national consciousness”) teleconference, an exclusive online seminar in which senior party officials have the opportunity to communicate with their cadres in the diaspora, said the man in charge of the economy of Eritrea. the country does not want to become a “download site” for “unsolicited donations”.
Accepting such offers would be against “the principled position of the Eritrea government that advocates self-sufficiency,” he added.
Within the same webinar, Gebrehiwet explained that the Eritrea leadership is now trying to buy the necessary medical equipment to treat the Covid-19 cases from the incredibly competitive Chinese market and arrange to ship these items to Eritrea by chartered aircraft.
Of course, despite its rejection of foreign aid, the Eritrean government does not have the necessary funds to make such purchases quickly.
As a result, he turned to his own suffering citizens and launched aggressive fundraising campaigns to make them donate what little money they have to the state to help in efforts to combat the virus.
Thanks to these aggressive campaigns, some of Eritrea’s most distressed citizens, including members of the national service, have already been forced to make donations. However, it is not yet known whether these donations proved sufficient for the country to buy everything it needs to contain the spread of the virus.
While the Eritrean government undoubtedly hampered the country’s ability to respond to this public health emergency by rejecting Ma’s generous donation, this was just one example demonstrating its tendency to value its own image and survival more than the welfare of its constituents, even during a pandemic.
– AFP
Coronavirus cases in Russia increase more than 100,000
Coronavirus cases in Russia rose more than 100,000 on Thursday, the government said, with an increase of 7,099 confirmed infections in the past 24 hours.
So far, Russia has recorded 106,498 cases and 1,073 deaths from the virus, the government coronavirus information site said in a daily update.
Russia recently beat Iran and China in the total number of confirmed infections and is now the eighth in the world in virus cases.
With the number of infections steadily increasing by several thousand each day, President Vladimir Putin warned this week that the situation was still “very difficult.”
He said that Russia had managed to stop the spread of the epidemic, but warned that: “This should not reassure us.”
Doctors in Russia have complained about a shortage of protective equipment and test kits, and hospital staff are increasingly concerned about deaths in the medical community.
This week, the Kremlin extended a “jobless” period until May 11 in which the Russians would stay home but still receive their wages as part of radical efforts to contain the virus.
However, the move has brought uncertainty to the economy and to business owners struggling to pay full wages to employees while closing their doors on customers.
Despite the steady increase in cases, Putin said Russia can gradually start lifting different quarantine regimes across the country from mid-May.
– AFP
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