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Minggu, 02 Februari 2020

First person outside of mainland China dies of Wuhan coronavirus - CNN

Philippines health officials announced Sunday that a 44-year-old Chinese man had died the day before from coronavirus after flying into the country from Wuhan, the Chinese city of 11 million at the center of the outbreak.

There are more than 14,300 confirmed cases around the world, and 305 people have died. All but one of the deaths have been in mainland China.

Within China, almost 60 million people remain on effective lockdown as the country battles to contain the virus amid reports its health system is on its knees, running out of beds and supplies.

International response

There are now more than 160 confirmed cases in 26 countries or territories outside of mainland China. And as the virus continues to spread around the world, governments are stepping up their responses.

The United States, Australia and New Zealand have all announced that they will not allow foreign nationals who have traveled from or transited through China to enter. All three countries will continue to allow citizens who have visited China to enter, although they will need to be quarantined.

Some governments have also raised their travel advisory warnings. The US, for instance, has labeled China a "do not travel" destination -- the highest possible warning.

A number of countries have evacuated their citizens from Wuhan. The US evacuated 195 Americans, who are under a 14-day quarantine on an air force base in California.

US Defense Secretary Mark Esper has also approved a request to provide military housing for up to 1,000 people who may need to be quarantined after arriving in the US from overseas travel, the Pentagon said in a statement.

Fears over the pandemic have rattled global stock markets and forced both US and global carriers to amend flight schedules as demand for China travel declines.

Major airlines -- including British Airways and Australia's Qantas -- have announced they will no longer fly to mainland China. Delta said it will suspend flights between the US and China starting on Sunday until at least April 30, according to a press release.

Chinese response

In mainland China, tens of millions of people remain under effective quarantine after the government imposed travel restrictions on a number of cities in Hubei province. Wuhan -- where the outbreak was first reported -- is the capital of Hubei province.

Although the outbreak has spread to every province and region of China, the outbreak remains worst in Hubei, where more than 7,100 have been diagnosed with coronavirus and 249 people have died.

A total of 57 million people across 15 cities in Hubei are on some form of lockdown. Huanggang -- a city of 7.5 million in Hubei province -- is only allowing one representative from each household to leave their home every other day to go out for grocery shopping in order to minimize the flow of people in the city.

The unprecedented decision to shut down entire cities comes as the country faces a shortage of medical supplies. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has even asked the European Union to help China procure medical supplies, according to a Chinese government statement.

Patients and medical staff have also told CNN of delays in testing for the virus, raising concerns that the outbreak in China may be worse than is reported.

CNN's Yong Xiong and Steven Jiang in Beijing; and Carly Walsh in Hong Kong contributed reporting.

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2020-02-02 10:25:00Z
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First person outside of mainland China dies of Wuhan coronavirus - CNN

There are more than 14,300 confirmed cases around the world, and 305 people have died. All but one of the deaths have been in mainland China.

Within China, almost 60 million people remain on effective lockdown as the country battles to contain the virus amid reports its health system is on its knees, running out of beds and supplies.

International response

Some governments have also raised their travel advisory warnings. The US, for instance, has labeled China a "do not travel" destination -- the highest possible warning.

A number of countries have evacuated their citizens from Wuhan. The US evacuated 195 Americans, who are under a 14-day quarantine on an air force base in California.

Fears over the pandemic have rattled global stock markets and forced both US and global carriers to amend flight schedules as demand for China travel declines.

Chinese response

Although the outbreak has spread to every province and region of China, the outbreak remains worst in Hubei, where more than 7,100 have been diagnosed with coronavirus and 249 people have died.

Patients and medical staff have also told CNN of delays in testing for the virus, raising concerns that the outbreak in China may be worse than is reported.

CNN's Yong Xiong and Steven Jiang in Beijing; and Carly Walsh in Hong Kong contributed reporting.

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Sabtu, 01 Februari 2020

U.S. confirms its eighth case of coronavirus, quarantine in effect - Reuters

(Reuters) - U.S. health officials on Saturday confirmed an eighth case of the fast-spreading new coronavirus in the United States in a person who had traveled to China.

FILE PHOTO: A woman wears a mask in Chinatown following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. January 30, 2020. REUTERS/Kamil Krzaczynski/File Photo

The latest U.S. patient, who was not identified, is in Massachusetts, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in an emailed statement.

The person recently returned from Hubei province in central China, the epicenter of the outbreak. No other details were provided.

The flu-like coronavirus, which is believed to have originated in a market that traded illegally in wildlife in Wuhan, the provincial capital of Hubei, has so far resulted in 259 deaths in China, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday.

All but one of the patients in the United States was believed to have contracted the disease while they were traveling in the Wuhan area of China. U.S. officials this week reported the first human-to-human transmission of the disease in the United States in Illinois.

Nearly 12,000 people have been infected globally, according to the WHO, with all but just over 130 of those cases occurring in China.

Concerns about the spread of the virus spurred the Trump administration to declare a public health emergency and bar entry to the United States of foreign nationals who have recently visited China. Despite that, U.S. health officials have said risks to the United States remain low.

In addition, U.S. citizens who have traveled within the past two weeks to Hubei will be subject to a mandatory quarantine of 14 days, believed to be the incubation period of the virus, officials said.

Americans who visited other parts of mainland China will undergo special health screening upon their return, followed by up to 14 days of “monitored self-quarantine,” under the temporary restrictions.

The first quarantines of U.S. citizens potentially exposed to coronavirus in China began hours before the White House announcement on Friday.

Nearly 200 Americans evacuated earlier this week from Wuhan and voluntarily confined to a California military air base for 72 hours of health screenings were placed under a mandatory 14-day quarantine on Friday.

It marked the CDC’s first quarantine order in 50 years.

Reporting by Brad Brooks in Austin, Texas; Editing by Bill Berkrot

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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2020-02-01 19:25:00Z
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Arab League rejects Trump's Middle East plan - Al Jazeera English

The Arab League has completely rejected US President Donald Trump's Middle East plan during an emergency meeting in Egypt's capital, saying it would not lead to a just peace deal.

In a statement on Saturday, the pan-Arab bloc said it "rejects the US-Israeli 'deal of the century' considering that it does not meet the minimum rights and aspirations of Palestinian people."

More:

Arab states also agreed "not to ... cooperate with the US administration to implement this plan," adding that Israel should not implement the initiative by force. They insisted on a two-state solution that includes a Palestinian state based on borders before the 1967 war, when Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. They also called for East Jerusalem to be the capital of the future Palestinian state.

The session was requested by Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), who urged Arab nations to take a clear stance against Trump's proposed plan.

The 181-page proposal was unveiled by Trump last week at the White House as he spoke standing next to Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

'This is a disgrace'

The plan, dubbed by Trump as the "deal of the century", was presented on Tuesday after being negotiated with Israel but with no input from the Palestinians, who had cut off all ties with the Trump administration after its 2017 decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The proposed plan envisions the Israeli annexation of large swaths of the West Bank, including illegal settlements and the Jordan Valley, giving Israel a permanent eastern border along the Jordan River.

"They told me Trump wants to send me the deal of the century to read, I said I would not," Abbas told the meeting of Arab League foreign ministers.

"Trump asked that I speak to him over the phone, so I said 'no', and that he wants to send me a letter, so I refused to receive it."

Holding up a map that shows the gradual geographic reduction of Palestine through four stages from pre-1948 to Trump's Middle East plan, Abbas said: "I challenge any of you, if you can even see us on the map. If you ask a child in first grade to draw Trump's map he will never know how to."

"This is a disgrace," he added.

Abbas also said that he will cut security ties with both Israel and the US: "We've informed the Israeli side ... that there will be no relations at all with them and the United States, including security ties," he said.

The Western-backed Palestinian leadership has been under mounting pressure from ordinary Palestinians and its rivals in Hamas to cut off security ties with the two countries, or even dismantle the increasingly unpopular Palestinian Authority.

Reporting from Ramallah, Al Jazeera's Nida Ibrahim said many Palestinians there "might not even know that there is an Arab league meeting taking place".

"It doesn't seem that the street is holding so much hope," she said.

Arab League's foreign ministers meet in Cairo

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas arrives for the emergency meeting in Cairo, Egypt [Mohamed Abd el-Ghany/Reuters]

'Clear declaration'

Abbas said the Palestinians remain committed to ending the Israeli occupation and establishing a state with its capital in East Jerusalem.

Trump's plan also proposes making Abu Dis, just outside Jerusalem, the capital of a future Palestinian state, which was also instantly rejected by the Palestinians.

The Arab League's head, Ahmed Aboul-Gheit, said on Wednesday an initial study of the plan's political framework showed that it "ignored legitimate Palestinian rights in the territories".

He said the Palestinian response would be key in shaping a "collective Arab position" on the plan, which he noted was a "non-binding US vision".

In a tacit sign of support for the US initiative, ambassadors from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Oman attended the unveiling of the plan in Washington. Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Arab states that are close US allies, said they appreciated Trump's efforts and called for renewed negotiations without commenting on the plan's contents.

Egypt urged in a statement Israelis and Palestinians to "carefully study" the plan. It said it favours a solution that restores all the "legitimate rights" of the Palestinian people through establishing an "independent and sovereign state on the occupied Palestinian territories".

Jordan warned against any Israeli "annexation of Palestinian lands" and reaffirmed its commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines, which would include all the West Bank and Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem. Qatar said it welcomed efforts to broker "long-standing and just peace" but warned that was unattainable without concessions to the Palestinians.

Analysts said the "divided" reaction from Arab states to Trump's plan was no surprise, noting the main reason for support - whether strong or subtle - was to guarantee Washington's backing against a common regional enemy, Iran.

"The US-Iran brief military confrontation in January has convinced some Gulf countries that Washington is their only protector," Ramzy Baroud, a Palestinian author and journalist, told Al Jazeera.

"Some Arabs have completely forsaken Palestine and are embracing Israel to fend against an imaginary Iranian threat," Baroud said.

Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain, which traditionally championed the Palestinian cause, have cosied up to Israel in recent years as they see Iran as a bigger regional threat.

"I think that what has been done is these people have adopted the approach that my enemy's enemy is my friend," Diana Buttu, analyst and former legal adviser to Palestinian peace negotiators, told Al Jazeera.

"And it shouldn't have to neutralise Iran, or deal with Iran ... It would come at the expense of the Palestinians," she said.

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2020-02-01 16:45:00Z
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What if Brexit Works? - The New York Times

LONDON — Britain’s departure from the European Union on Friday drew a mournful reaction from many people who have long viewed Brexit as consigning their country, once the vanguard of Europe, to a future of economic mediocrity and geopolitical irrelevance.

But there are many others who view Brexit as a day of liberation, when Britain, unshackled from the bureaucracy of Brussels, will stride into a future of economic innovation and vigorous, clear-eyed politics — a “moment of real national renewal,” in the words of Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

That positive case for Brexit will now be tested, and it is prompting even those who ardently opposed it to wrestle with a question they had mostly dismissed during three and a half years of debate: What if it works?

“Disruptive change can be beneficial for a country,” said Tony Travers, a professor of politics at the London School of Economics. “That is, in a sense, what Brexit has accomplished.”

Britain is no stranger to disruptive change, of course. After the end of World War II, it adjusted to the end of empire by embedding itself in an Atlantic alliance and building a European-style welfare state. In the early 1980s, Margaret Thatcher led a free-market revolution that dismantled parts of that state and nurtured a British nationalism that fully flowered in the wrenching debate over Brexit.

Now, Britain is remaking itself yet again, cast off from Europe and facing an uncertain future in which the shape of its society and economy, and its place in the world, are still very much up for grabs.

By giving the Brexiteers a chance to put their ideas into action, Professor Travers said, British politics could be reinvigorated. With the country shorn of its links to the European Union, Mr. Johnson and his aides will not be able to blame Britain’s shortcomings on anyone else. British voters will get to hold their leaders accountable.

The economic case for Brexit is harder to make. Most experts said Britain’s decision to leave the bloc was likely to deprive the country of significant additional growth over the next decade or so. But the warnings of catastrophe are probably overstated, and it is hard for people to miss what they never had.

Britain, experts said, is likely to grow in line with the rest of Europe over the next several years — a growth rate that is hardly sparkling, but likely to be a shade higher than those of Germany or France.

If that happens, and Britain is able to establish a stable trading relationship with the European Union, Brexit’s champions may claim a measure of vindication. That is even more likely if, as many experts predict, the bloc enters a bumpy stretch economically.

“Boris Johnson’s argument is that 10, 15, or 20 years from now, we’ll look back and say, ‘Getting out was in our national interest,’” said Mujtaba Rahman, a managing director at the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group. “The jury is out on that, but if he can pull this off, there are reasons to think Britain will prosper.”

The Brexiteers are far less guarded. They speak of a “global Britain,” bursting with technological innovation, unencumbered by regulations — an agile free agent, ready to do business with the world. Britain, they said, would strike lucrative trade deals and become a magnet for foreign investment.

“It starts with free trade,” said Patrick Minford, an economist at Cardiff University. “Everyone talks about the E.U. as if it is a bastion of free trade, but it’s not. We want to trade freely with everybody, especially the United States.”

Professor Minford contends that Britain could add 8 percent to its gross domestic product over the next decade if it is able to strike down all trade barriers, and 4 percent if it is able only to eliminate a portion of them. There could be further gains from technological innovations in industries like artificial intelligence, he said.

Most mainstream studies, though, predict Brexit will inflict losses on Britain’s gross domestic product of between 1.2 percent and 4.5 percent, depending on the terms of its exit from the European Union.

Having taken back control of their affairs from the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, the British people will be able to enact rules that suit them, not 27 other countries. They will be rule makers, not rule takers, in a popular phrase often used by Brexiteers. That, they said, is a stirring victory for sovereignty.

“The elemental case for Brexit is the democratic one,” said Daniel Hannan, who just stepped down as a Conservative member of the European Parliament. “Having got power back from Brussels, we should not let it fester in Whitehall. This requires not just leaving the E.U. but reviving our domestic democracy.”

Even some of those who lobbied to stay in the European Union acknowledge that in the post-Brexit era, the debates in Parliament could become more rational — focused on what kind of society and economy Britain now wants to have.

They also concede that Britain’s membership in the European Union was deeply unsatisfying. Because it refused to join the monetary union, Britain was always going to feel left out of Europe’s innermost councils. After the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 — which formally established the European Union — Europe became as a much a political union as an economic club, something that many in Britain never accepted.

“We opted out of bits and pieces of it, so we were never at the top table,” said Jonathan Powell, who was a chief of staff to former Prime Minister Tony Blair. “If you’re going to be a halfhearted partner, then there’s no point to being in it at all.”

Still, Mr. Powell said, it was fanciful to assume that by leaving the European Union, Britain would be able to discard the bloc’s rules and regulations. Other nonmembers, like Norway or Switzerland, adhere to European standards as a condition of trading with it. That will be particularly true in Northern Ireland, which will stay closely aligned with a maze of European rules and regulations.

Britain, the critics say, will continue to be a rule taker. It just will no longer have a seat at the table where those rules are drafted.

Despite his landslide election victory last December, Mr. Johnson has not really articulated the pro-Brexit case. He has spoken in general terms about reunifying and reviving the country but has yet to lay out an agenda for how Britain plans to exploit its independence for economic or political gain.

Partly that may reflect Mr. Johnson’s determination not to be triumphalist after a debate that divided the country. Partly, his critics say, it reflects the prime minister’s lack of fixed convictions. He used Brexit more as a vehicle to amass power, they said, than to impose a particular worldview.

Mr. Johnson must also balance the different parts of his Brexit coalition.

Voters in the Midlands and the North of England, where many districts abandoned the Labour Party to embrace Mr. Johnson’s promise to “get Brexit done,” have a very different vision of what Brexit means from the free-market evangelists in London, who want to remake Britain as a kind of Singapore-on-Thames — an enclave with little regulation and low taxes.

“The pain will be felt differentially,” said Mr. Powell, the former chief of staff to Mr. Blair. “Sunderland and other places that voted for Brexit will be hardest hit,” he said, referring to the industrial city in northern England where the early returns from the June 2016 referendum foretold that the country would vote to leave the union.

With Britain likely to hammer out some sort of trade agreement with the European Union, the most alarmist predictions about Brexit — food shortages, trucks lined up for miles at ports — are not likely to happen. Rather than a triumph or a tragedy for the country, Brexit may end up being a long twilight.

“We’re not going to go off a cliff,” Mr. Powell said. “It will be more of a glide path. Britain is going to have to come to terms with being a small country.”

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2020-02-01 15:47:00Z
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