News in Brief
CARACAS (Reuters) -- Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza on Saturday criticized a U.S. court ruling authorizing a sale of the shares in the parent company of U.S. refiner Citgo Petroleum Corp, calling it the result of a "fraudulent judicial process.” Citgo is a unit of Venezuelan state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela. A federal court in Delaware this week approved the sale as a way for Canadian gold miner Crystallex to collect on a $1.4 billion judgment for expropriation of its assets, though U.S. sanctions currently bar the transaction. In a state television appearance, Arreaza called the decision "a procedural fraud that intends to steal from the people of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela the main asset they have abroad.” "Venezuela will never give up on the defense of its rights and interests in the appropriate forums with the goal of conserving its patrimony,” Arreaza said. Arreaza said the Venezuelan government was not given the right to defend itself.
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GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemalan soldiers blocked part of a caravan of as many as 9,000 Honduran migrants Saturday at a point not far from where they entered the country seeking to reach the U.S. border. The soldiers, many wearing helmets and wielding shields and sticks, formed ranks across a highway in Chiquimula, near the Honduras border, to block the procession of migrants. Guatemala’s immigration agency distributed a video showing a couple of hundred men scuffling with soldiers, pushing and running through their lines, even as troops held hundreds more back. Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei issued a statement calling on Honduran authorities "to contain the mass exit of its inhabitants.”
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BERLIN (AP) — Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right party chose Armin Laschet, the pragmatic governor of Germany’s most populous state, as its new leader Saturday. The choice sent a signal of continuity months before an election in which voters will decide who becomes the new chancellor.
Laschet will have to build unity in the Christian Democratic Union, Germany’s strongest party, after beating more conservative rival Friedrich Merz. And he will need to plunge straight into an electoral marathon that culminates with the Sept. 26 national vote for the next parliament. The decision by party delegates on Saturday isn’t the final word on who will run as the center-right candidate to succeed Merkel as chancellor, but Laschet will either run himself or have a big say in who does. He said the candidate will be chosen in April. Laschet, 59, was elected in 2017 as governor of North Rhine-Westphalia state, a traditional center-left stronghold.
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BEIJING (AP) — The coronavirus was found on ice cream produced in eastern China, prompting a recall of cartons from the same batch, according to the government. The Daqiaodao Food Co., Ltd. in Tianjin, adjacent to Beijing, was sealed and its employees were being tested for the coronavirus, a city government statement said. There was no indication anyone had contracted the virus from the ice cream. Most of the 29,000 cartons in the batch had yet to be sold, the government said. It said 390 sold in Tianjin were being tracked down and authorities elsewhere were notified of sales to their areas. The ingredients included New Zealand milk powder and whey powder from Ukraine, the government said. The Chinese government has suggested the disease, first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019, came from abroad and has highlighted what it says are discoveries of the coronavirus on imported fish and other food, though foreign scientists are skeptical.
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NEW DELHI (AP) — India started inoculating health workers Saturday in what is likely the world’s largest COVID-19 vaccination campaign, joining the ranks of wealthier nations where the effort is already well underway. India is home to the world’s largest vaccine makers and has one of the biggest immunization programs. But there is no playbook for the enormity of the current challenge. Indian authorities hope to give shots to 300 million people, roughly the population of the U.S and several times more than its existing program, which targets 26 million infants. The recipients include 30 million doctors, nurses and other front-line workers, to be followed by 270 million people who are either over 50 or have illnesses that make them vulnerable to COVID-19. The first dose was administered to a sanitation worker at the All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences in the capital, New Delhi, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi kick-started the campaign with a nationally televised speech.
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TOKYO (Reuters) -- Suicide rates in Japan have jumped in the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly among women and children, even though they fell in the first wave when the government offered generous handouts to people, a survey found. The July-October suicide rate rose 16% from the same period a year earlier, a stark reversal of the February-June decline of 14%, according to the study by researchers at Hong Kong University and Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology. "Unlike normal economic circumstances, this pandemic disproportionately affects the psychological health of children, adolescents and females (especially housewives),” the authors wrote in the study published on Friday in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. The early decline in suicides was affected by such factors as government subsidies, reduced working hours and school closure, the study found.
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GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemalan soldiers blocked part of a caravan of as many as 9,000 Honduran migrants Saturday at a point not far from where they entered the country seeking to reach the U.S. border. The soldiers, many wearing helmets and wielding shields and sticks, formed ranks across a highway in Chiquimula, near the Honduras border, to block the procession of migrants. Guatemala’s immigration agency distributed a video showing a couple of hundred men scuffling with soldiers, pushing and running through their lines, even as troops held hundreds more back. Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei issued a statement calling on Honduran authorities "to contain the mass exit of its inhabitants.”
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BERLIN (AP) — Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right party chose Armin Laschet, the pragmatic governor of Germany’s most populous state, as its new leader Saturday. The choice sent a signal of continuity months before an election in which voters will decide who becomes the new chancellor.
Laschet will have to build unity in the Christian Democratic Union, Germany’s strongest party, after beating more conservative rival Friedrich Merz. And he will need to plunge straight into an electoral marathon that culminates with the Sept. 26 national vote for the next parliament. The decision by party delegates on Saturday isn’t the final word on who will run as the center-right candidate to succeed Merkel as chancellor, but Laschet will either run himself or have a big say in who does. He said the candidate will be chosen in April. Laschet, 59, was elected in 2017 as governor of North Rhine-Westphalia state, a traditional center-left stronghold.
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BEIJING (AP) — The coronavirus was found on ice cream produced in eastern China, prompting a recall of cartons from the same batch, according to the government. The Daqiaodao Food Co., Ltd. in Tianjin, adjacent to Beijing, was sealed and its employees were being tested for the coronavirus, a city government statement said. There was no indication anyone had contracted the virus from the ice cream. Most of the 29,000 cartons in the batch had yet to be sold, the government said. It said 390 sold in Tianjin were being tracked down and authorities elsewhere were notified of sales to their areas. The ingredients included New Zealand milk powder and whey powder from Ukraine, the government said. The Chinese government has suggested the disease, first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019, came from abroad and has highlighted what it says are discoveries of the coronavirus on imported fish and other food, though foreign scientists are skeptical.
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NEW DELHI (AP) — India started inoculating health workers Saturday in what is likely the world’s largest COVID-19 vaccination campaign, joining the ranks of wealthier nations where the effort is already well underway. India is home to the world’s largest vaccine makers and has one of the biggest immunization programs. But there is no playbook for the enormity of the current challenge. Indian authorities hope to give shots to 300 million people, roughly the population of the U.S and several times more than its existing program, which targets 26 million infants. The recipients include 30 million doctors, nurses and other front-line workers, to be followed by 270 million people who are either over 50 or have illnesses that make them vulnerable to COVID-19. The first dose was administered to a sanitation worker at the All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences in the capital, New Delhi, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi kick-started the campaign with a nationally televised speech.
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TOKYO (Reuters) -- Suicide rates in Japan have jumped in the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly among women and children, even though they fell in the first wave when the government offered generous handouts to people, a survey found. The July-October suicide rate rose 16% from the same period a year earlier, a stark reversal of the February-June decline of 14%, according to the study by researchers at Hong Kong University and Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology. "Unlike normal economic circumstances, this pandemic disproportionately affects the psychological health of children, adolescents and females (especially housewives),” the authors wrote in the study published on Friday in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. The early decline in suicides was affected by such factors as government subsidies, reduced working hours and school closure, the study found.