SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Shanghai carried out another round of mass COVID-19 testing on Saturday, this time testing residents at least twice in a single day, as a city official in China’s financial hub acknowledged shortcomings in the handling of the outbreak. It was the fourth consecutive day of city-wide testing in Shanghai, which reported a record 23,600 new locally transmitted cases. While those case numbers are small by global standards, the city has become a test bed for the country’s elimination strategy, which seeks to test, trace and centrally quarantine all positive COVID cases. Beijing intervened after the failure of Shanghai’s initial effort to isolate the virus by locking down in stages, insisting that the country stick to its zero-tolerance policy to prevent its medical system from being overwhelmed. But the curbs have sharply squeezed supplies of food and other essential goods for the city of 26 million, as numerous supermarkets have been shut and thousands of couriers locked in. Access to medical care has also been a concern.

 

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NEW YORK (Xinhua) – A UN spokesperson says some 6 million people in Somalia are likely to face crisis or worse food insecurity from April to June this year.  “The latest famine projections indicate that more than 6 million people are likely to face crisis or worse food insecurity from April through June of this year,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told a regular briefing with journalists, Xinhua news agency reported. The spokesman noted that Somalia now “faces a risk of famine in six areas” through June if the rainy season from April to June fails, as it is predicted; if food prices continue to rise; and if humanitarian assistance is not scaled up to reach the most vulnerable populations. However, as of April 7, the 2022 Humanitarian Response Plan, which calls for nearly 1.5 billion U.S. dollars to help 5.5 million men, women and children of the most vulnerable Somalis remained significantly underfunded, at just 4.4 percent. “The drought is worsening across the country. An estimated 4.9 million people across Somalia have been affected, including more than 719,000 internally displaced people. Acute food insecurity has increased significantly since the beginning of the year,” he said.

  

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MANILA (Reuters) – Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte and Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed the need to exercise restraint to maintain peace in the South China Sea, Manila’s presidential office said on Saturday. The two leaders held an hour-long telephone summit on Friday, discussing a broad range of topics including concerns over the Ukraine crisis and COVID-19 pandemic responses. “The leaders stressed the need to exert all efforts to maintain peace, security and stability in the South China Sea by exercising restraint, dissipating tensions and working on a mutually agreeable framework for functional cooperation,” the presidential office said in a statement. Both parties were committed to broaden the space for positive engagements even as disputes existed, Duterte’s office said. Since taking office in 2016, Duterte has pursued warmer ties with Beijing, setting aside a longstanding territorial spat over the South China Sea in exchange for billions of dollars of aid, loans and investment pledges.

The two presidents spoke of the importance of continuing discussions and concluding the code of conduct on the South China Sea.

 

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ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan’s parliament abruptly adjourned before a planned vote on ousting Prime Minister Imran Khan and had not reconvened as scheduled on Saturday as political uncertainty continued to grip the country. Members of Khan’s party had suggested on Friday they would try to delay the vote as much as possible. The cricket star turned politician has vowed to “struggle” against any move to replace him, the latest twist in a crisis that has threatened political and economic stability in the South Asian nation of 220 million people. Khan’s allies had blocked a similar no-confidence vote last Sunday, but the country’s Supreme Court ruled that move unconstitutional, ordering parliament to reconvene. Speaker Asad Qaiser, a Khan ally, said the session would resume at 12:30 p.m. (0730 GMT), but an hour after that there were no signs of parliament reconvening. Before the adjournment, opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif, expected to become prime minister if Khan is ousted, addressed the assembly, urging Qaiser to ensure the vote was carried out as a matter of priority. The speaker said he would implement the court order “in true letter and spirit”.

 

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BRASILIA (Al Jazeera) – Brazil has set a new grim record for Amazon deforestation during the first three months of 2022 compared with a year earlier, government data shows, spurring concern and warnings from environmentalists. From January to March, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose 64 percent from a year ago to 941sq km (363sq miles), data from national space research agency Inpe showed. That area, larger than New York City, is the most forest cover lost in the period since the data series began in 2015. Destruction of the world’s largest rainforest has surged since President Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019 and weakened environmental protections, arguing that they hinder economic development that could reduce poverty in the Amazon region. The new data was especially worrying because Brazil is in the midst of its rainy season – a time when loggers typically do not cut down trees and farmers do not burn them to clear the land. 

 

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SAN JUAN (Dispatches) – Nearly 850,000 customers in Puerto Rico were still without electricity after a massive outage that forced the U.S. territory to cancel classes and schools. The power outage, which left 1.5 million customers without electricity, began on Wednesday evening after a fire erupted at one of the island’s four main power plants. The exact cause of the interruption of service is under investigation.  “The extent of the outage has impacted each generating facility in Puerto Rico and a significant effort to restore service is underway,” LUMA Energy said in a statement. Given how widespread the outage is, the government and the energy company said there is no timetable for full restoration. “We are continuing to make progress in restoration but due to extensive damage at Costa Sur substation, we are not in position to provide an estimate of full restoration at this time,” LUMA said. “Every single (piece of) equipment (at the plant’s switchyard) needs to be inspected and tested to make sure that when it’s back in service, we can restore power for customers reliably and safely,” Shay Bahramirad, LUMA Energy’s senior vice president of engineering and asset management, told reporters in San Juan on Friday.