News in Brief

Date: 06 May 2020 - 21:36

News ID: ۷۸۳۰۰

LONDON (AFP) -- Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday made his first appearance in parliament since being hospitalized for coronavirus, the day after Britain became the European country worst hit by the global pandemic. He faced a new adversary in Keir Starmer, who was elected leader of the main opposition Labour party on April 4 and has called for a "national consensus” on how Britain tackles the outbreak. Health ministry figures on Tuesday showed 29,427 people with COVID-19 have died in Britain, while broader official data put the toll above 32,000 -- making the country second only to the United States in world rankings. Johnson was quizzed on why things have gone so wrong during his first weekly prime minister’s questions (PMQs) in the House of Commons since March 25. MPs asked about how Britain will end a nationwide stay-at-home order introduced six weeks ago, which has successfully slowed the spread of the virus.

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BEIJING (AFP) -- Chinese youngsters in the global virus epicenter of Wuhan filed back to class on Wednesday, wearing masks and walking in single file past thermal scanners. Senior school students in 121 institutions were back in front of chalk boards and digital displays for the first time since their city -- the ground zero of the coronavirus pandemic -- shut down in January. "School is finally reopening!” posted one user of Weibo, China’s Twitter-like short messaging platform. "This is the first time that I’m so happy to go back to school, although I have to sit a monthly examination on the 8th.” Teenagers sat at individual desks spaced a meter (3.3 feet) apart, seeing their teachers in the flesh after months of distance learning. Wednesday’s back-to-school was the latest step in a gradual normalizing of life in Wuhan and surrounding Hubei province. The city, where the coronavirus appeared late last year before spreading around the world, was locked down for 76 days and only reopened last month.

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SEOUL (AFP) -- South Korea returned largely to normal Wednesday as workers went back to offices, and museums and libraries reopened under eased social distancing rules after new coronavirus cases dropped to a trickle. The South endured one of the worst early outbreaks of the disease outside China and while it never imposed a compulsory lockdown, strict social distancing had been widely observed since March. But the South appears to have brought its outbreak under control thanks to an extensive "trace, test and treat” program that has drawn widespread praise. In a population of 51 million, its death toll is little more than 250, and new cases have slowed to just a handful -- 13 in the past three days, all of them arriving international passengers. More than 90 of the South’s imported cases are returning citizens.

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SYDNEY (Reuters) -- A delayed rotation of U.S. Marines to a base in Australia’s northern city of Darwin will go ahead based on strict adherence to COVID-19 measures, Australia’s defense minister said after speaking with her U.S. counterpart. Up to 2,500 U.S. Marines had been scheduled to arrive in April, in a major defense alliance cooperation exercise, but this was postponed in March because of the coronavirus pandemic.  The remote Northern Territory, which has recorded just 30 COVID-19 case, closed its borders to international and interstate visitors in March, and any arrivals must now undergo mandatory quarantine for 14 days.

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VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -- Pope Francis said on Wednesday employers must respect the dignity of workers, particularly migrants, despite economic difficulties brought on by the coronavirus crisis. "It’s true that the crisis is affecting everyone but the dignity of people must always be respected,” Francis said at the end of his general audience, held from the papal library instead of St Peter’s Square because of the lockdown in Italy. He said he had received numerous messages about labor problems on May 1, the day most countries celebrate workers’ rights. He made particular mention of the exploitation of farmworkers in Italy, most of whom are migrants. In recent weeks, there has been a series of arrests in Italy of farm owners and gangmasters who recruit and supervise field workers. The gangmasters were in most cases also migrants. Last week, three farm owners and a Gambian migrant were arrested on charges of exploiting about 50 migrant farmworkers in the southern Puglia region.

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WARSAW (Reuters) -- Poland may need to dissolve parliament and hold a snap election unless lawmakers allow a presidential vote, which the government wants to hold by postal ballot during the coronavirus crisis, the prime minister’s chief of staff said on Wednesday. Polls show incumbent Andrzej Duda of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party on course to win the presidential election, which was scheduled for May 10. But politicians have been bitterly divided over whether it is possible to stage the election during a pandemic that has put the country on lockdown. PiS wants the vote to go ahead this month, and has proposed a postal ballot to reduce the health risks from the coronavirus. But so far it has been unable to persuade parliament to back that proposal, with many lawmakers arguing that even voting by mail would be too dangerous. The upper house of parliament voted on Tuesday to reject a postal ballot. Poland’s lower house, the Sejm, was expected to vote again on Wednesday or Thursday on the issue.