Senin, 10 Februari 2020
Barr addresses Rudy Giuliani's work in Ukraine - Fox News
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2020-02-10 17:33:01Z
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Angela Merkel's succession plan is in tatters. Who runs Germany next is anyone's guess - CNN
Kramp-Karrenbauer, better known as AKK, announced she would not stand as the Christian Democratic Union's (CDU) candidate to be German chancellor in the next federal election. She is also stepping down as the party's chairwoman, according to the CDU's press office.
Merkel, who has been chancellor for almost 15 years, said in 2018 that she would not run again when her term expires in 2021. At that time, she stepped down as party leader and endorsed Kramp-Karrenbauer as her successor. But her attempt at securing an orderly transition of power -- as well as her own legacy -- appears to have failed.
Some say the chaos is of Merkel's own making.
"To me, this failure is symptomatic of the way Angela Merkel has exercised power," said Henrik Enderlein, president of the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. "She never allowed anyone to rise within the federal government and become a natural heir."
Enderlein pointed out that after Merkel stepped down as CDU leader in 2018, the top three candidates for the post were Friedrich Merz, who had spent years outside of politics, and two rather junior politicians -- 38-year old health minister Jens Spahn and Kramp-Karrenbauer.
"AKK was a still relatively inexperienced regional governor of a tiny German state," Enderlein said.
Moving away from Merkel's politics
Florian Hense, an analyst at Berenberg Bank, said that despite the chaos, it seemed extremely unlikely that Merkel would change her mind and run again in 2021.
He said Merz and Armin Laschet, the prime minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, are likely to be the top contenders in the next leadership race.
Merz lost narrowly to AKK in 2018, and Hense said he might be better suited to take on the far-right Alternative for Germany than the other leadership candidates. He would certainly be a popular choice for those who are looking for a bigger change when Merkel's reign comes to an end.
Merkel formed a grand coalition with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), and some parts of the CDU have criticized her for what they see as a move to the left. Merz, a corporate lawyer who has spent the past decade working for the investment company BlackRock, would move the party more to the right.
Spahn is also likely to throw his hat into the ring, although Hesse said his chances are likely to be limited, since he is not as popular among the wider German population.
Whoever becomes the next leader of the CDU will face the challenge of reuniting a deeply divided party.
That division was on display last week, when a regional branch of the CDU in the eastern German state of Thuringia breached a decades-old taboo and teamed up with the AfD to elect a liberal candidate as the state's prime minister.
"Thuringia is an example of how the right wing of the CDU wants to take decisions autonomously and implicitly cooperate with the far-right AfD," Enderlein said.
AKK's failure to force the regional CDU in Thuringia to stick to the official party line was just the last in a long list of moves that made her leadership look weak.
Speaking at a news conference on Monday, she said the decision to resign had been growing in her mind for some time. She called on the party to become "stronger than today."
AKK's shock announcement has thrown the CDU -- and the whole of Germany -- into political uncertainty.
One likely consequence of that will be a greater focus on domestic issues among German political leaders, something which could spell bad news for the European Union, which is desperately looking for strong leadership as it recovers from the United Kingdom's exit from the bloc.
Enderlein said the episode shows that Merkel is still the cornerstone of German politics. The four-time chancellor is on her way out -- and she certainly doesn't want her legacy to be associated with chaos. But Enderlein warned that might be exactly what's on the cards.
"Her departure ... will leave a big void [and] is likely to fundamentally deeply destabilize the German political system," he said.
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2020-02-10 16:09:00Z
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Coronavirus infections surge on cruise ship in Japan - CBS News
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2020-02-10 14:53:43Z
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Diamond Princess Cruise Ship Has 65 More Coronavirus Cases : Goats and Soda - NPR
The quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship has 65 new cases of coronavirus, Japanese officials announced Monday. Here, passengers with ocean-facing rooms stand on their balconies as the ship sits at the Daikoku Pier Cruise Terminal in Yokohama, Japan. Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
There are 65 new coronavirus cases aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship that's been under a quarantine since last week, Japan's health ministry announced Monday. With the latest cases, a total of 135 people from the ship have been confirmed to have the respiratory virus.
Those newly diagnosed include 45 Japanese and 11 Americans, as well as smaller numbers of people from Australia, Canada, England, the Philippines and Ukraine, according to Princess Cruises.
Even before the latest cases were confirmed, the cruise ship already represented the largest cluster of Wuhan coronavirus cases outside mainland China. The virus, identified as 2019-nCoV, has killed more than 900 people in China, where more than 40,000 people have been infected since it emerged in the city of Wuhan, in Hubei province.
The Diamond Princess is under a 14-day quarantine that's set to expire on Feb. 19. But health officials say the isolation period could be extended for any passengers and crew in close contact with people who are newly diagnosed with the coronavirus.
Passengers aboard the ship have been told to stay in their rooms for all but brief periods of the day, with the crew bringing meals and other necessities to their door.
The ship had roughly 3,700 passengers and crew aboard when it arrived at the Yokohama terminal south of Tokyo early last week. Japan's health ministry has been taking people off the cruise ship using special sanitation measures, such as a tent-like tunnel and white medical suits. Patients are then transported to local hospitals with infectious-disease wards.
To limit the potential spread of the coronavirus, passengers are allowed to visit the deck only in shifts, for roughly 90-minute periods. They're also checking their temperatures regularly, using thermometers distributed by the crew. During their brief time in larger groups, the passengers are asked to keep their distance from other people and to wash their hands thoroughly afterward.
Princess Cruises has announced compensation for the passengers — some of whom are already facing four weeks on the ship because of the quarantine — saying it will refund their full fare and other expenses, from air travel to hotel and transportation costs.
"In addition, guests will not be charged for any onboard incidental charges during the additional time onboard," the company said.
The cruise line said it will also give guests a future travel credit, for a trip equal to the fare they paid for the current voyage — which officially ended Feb. 4, when the ship was held at the Japanese port.
To ease the strain of prolonged isolation, Princess Cruises announced last week that it is providing free Internet and phone service to passengers. And to stave off boredom, it also expanded the passengers' TV and movie options, along with offering games, puzzles and other distractions.
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2020-02-10 14:40:00Z
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel's anointed successor resigns - The - The Washington Post
Markus Schreiber AP
BERLIN — German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s would-be successor said on Monday she will not run for the premiership following a rocky year at the helm of her party, which culminated in a crisis last week as regional representatives aligned with the far right.
The announcement from Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the leader of Merkel’s Christian Democrats, that she will not run for chancellor in next year’s elections plunged the party, and the country, into political uncertainty.
Kramp-Karrenbauer said she will step aside as party leader when a new candidate for the premiership is chosen. “We are currently feeling strong centrifugal forces within our society and party,” she said in a news conference. “We have to be stronger, stronger than today.”
She said that she believed that the separation of the role of chancellor and the party leadership had weakened the Christian Democrats.
Government spokesman Steffen Seibert said that Kramp-Karrenbauer wishes to remain defense minister and that Merkel supports that “wholeheartedly.”
[‘Black day’: German politics shaken as far right becomes regional kingmaker]
The move opens up the party leadership to more conservative strains within the Christian Democrats that want to steer it back to the right as it jettisons voters. A protegee of Merkel, Kramp-Karrenbauer beat out rivals to take over the reins of the conservative Christian Democrats in late 2018. However, she has failed to rally the party behind her, and there was widespread speculation that she would be ousted before the annual party conference in November after a series of missteps.
At that conference, she came out swinging against her rivals in a combative speech, but developments in the eastern German state of Thuringia last week left her authority in tatters.
The local branch of the Christian Democrats defied party guidance over political cooperation with the far right when it backed the same candidate for the state premiership in the Thuringia region as the far-right Alternative for Germany party.
The alignment shook German politics, breaking a pledge from mainstream parties that they would not cooperate with the far right. Spontaneous street demonstrations took place in German cities after the move, which was seen as a break in the post-World War II political consensus.
The resignation throws the Christian Democrats into a leadership crisis. Merkel, chancellor for more than 14 years, has said she will not stand for reelection in 2021 and stepped aside as party leader in a move designed to open the door for the new generation.
When Kramp-Karrenbauer won the party leadership in 2018, it was seen as affirmation of Merkel’s legacy. But analysts say holding the role of party leader without the chancellery has left Kramp-Karrenbauer in an inherently weak position.
Karrenbauer pointed to that on Monday when she said that she believed that going forward, the two roles should not be separated.
But public criticism of her leadership has also mounted. She was lampooned for insulting transgender people with a joke about gender-neutral bathrooms and for announcing support for a safe zone in Syria without consultation.
Kramp-Karrenbauer announced the news in a meeting with politicians from her party on Monday morning. “It was a shock,” said Elmar Brock, a veteran politician with the Christian Democrats who was present. He said that the party faces a “difficult” future but that a new clear leadership process could also bring opportunity.
Luisa Beck in Berlin contributed.
Read more
Merkel’s preferred heir survives an effort to oust her, but Germany’s ruling party remains in crisis
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2020-02-10 14:23:00Z
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Coronavirus death toll passes 900 as more Americans diagnosed on quarantined cruise ship - CBS News
China confirmed a rise in the number of new coronavirus cases on Monday, quashing hopes after several days of declining infection rates that strict control measures could be paying off. The death toll from the new virus had jumped to 908 by Monday morning, more than were killed during the SARS virus outbreak in 2003.
The number of confirmed infections in mainland China rose 15% Sunday to at least 40,171. More than 300 cases have been confirmed outside China, including 12 in the U.S., and global health officials have warned that could be just "the tip of the iceberg" as they learn more about how easily the disease spreads.
Dozens of new cases were confirmed Monday on a quarantined cruise ship in Yokohama, Japan, meanwhile, including more Americans. The number of passengers already removed or soon to be removed from the Diamond Princess for treatment in Japanese hospitals stood at 136 Monday. That includes at least 23 American passengers, 11 of whom were among the 66 new cases confirmed Monday. Most of the 3,711 passengers and crew remained under isolation orders on the ship.
The Chinese government's efforts to silence people who tried to raise the alarm about the outbreak early on — and allegedly ongoing efforts to stop people reporting on it — have created a mounting backlash on the country's heavily-censored social media.
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2020-02-10 12:34:00Z
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Coronavirus Updates: Cases on Cruise Ship Double; 97 Die in One Day in China - The New York Times
Here’s what you need to know:
- Coronavirus cases on a cruise ship in Japan nearly double, surpassing 130.
- China records most deaths from the virus in a single day.
- After a long break, China slowly returns to work.
- China finally allows World Health Organization experts to visit.
- Chinese officials are split on whether the virus can spread through the air.
- Prices jump in China as the virus disrupts supplies.
- Nine family members infected after hot-pot meal.
Coronavirus cases on a cruise ship in Japan nearly double, surpassing 130.
An additional 66 cases of the new coronavirus have been confirmed on a cruise ship quarantined in Yokohama, Japan, raising the total number to 136, the ship’s captain told passengers on Monday.
Japan’s health ministry has not publicly confirmed the sharp rise in cases. The ministry has announced new cases almost daily since the quarantine began a week ago, and the increase reported by the captain on Monday was the largest yet.
The outbreak on the ship, the Diamond Princess, which has been docked at the Yokohama port since Monday, is the largest outside China. About 3,700 people, including about 2,600 passengers and more than 1,000 crew members, are quarantined on the ship, with passengers largely confined to their cabins.
Passengers have grown increasingly fearful that the quarantine is putting them in jeopardy. The Japanese authorities have tested a few hundred people for the coronavirus who were believed to be at particular risk, but as the number of cases has risen, some passengers have pressed for everyone on board to be screened.
For days, Japanese officials have said they do not have the capacity to test all 3,700 people on board. But on Sunday, the health minister, Katsunobu Kato, said his ministry needed to consider whether it could do so, while noting the challenges of carrying out such a large screening.
China records most deaths from the virus in a single day.
Ninety-seven people died from the coronavirus on Sunday, a new daily record since the new coronavirus was first detected in December, as the death toll rose to 908, China’s National Health Commission said on Monday.
That new total surpasses the toll from the SARS epidemic of 2002-3, according to official data.
The number of confirmed infections in the country rose to 40,171 and 3,062 new cases were recorded in the preceding 24 hours, most of them in Hubei Province, the heart of the outbreak. A United States citizen died from the coronavirus in Wuhan, the provincial capital, American officials said on Saturday.
The SARS epidemic, which also began in China, killed 774 people worldwide. There have been only two confirmed deaths from the new coronavirus outside mainland China: one in Hong Kong and one in the Philippines.
Many doctors believe that deaths and infections from the current epidemic are undercounted in China because testing facilities are under severe strain.
But for the tenth day in a row, the number of people recovering in the central province of Hubei, the epicenter of the outbreak, exceeded the number of deaths, raising hopes that the epidemic could be less fatal than previously feared.
Official data showed there were 356 people who recovered in the province on Sunday.
The rate of infection, however, has continued to soar, signaling that the worst of the outbreak is still to come.
The cure rate in Hubei rose to 6.1 percent on Monday, compared with the 1.7 percent on January 27. Officials suggested that could mean experimental medical treatments were working.
After a long break, China slowly returns to work.
Some factories and offices across China resumed work on Monday, the end of an extended Lunar New Year holiday intended to slow the spread of the virus.
The return to business occurred slowly as many workers were reluctant to return to large cities from their hometowns, and as managers tried to respond to a slew of new health regulations issued by local governments across the country.
The new rules vary somewhat from city to city but have some common denominators. In big manufacturing centers like Shenzhen, Suzhou and Nanjing, companies are required to learn the travel history of every employee.
Companies were told to bar entry to anyone who had visited in the past two weeks areas with large outbreaks of the virus, particularly Hubei province but with some cities also prohibiting the return to work of anyone who had been to Wenzhou, a city in Zhejiang province that has also had numerous cases.
City governments were also requiring companies frequently check their employees’ temperatures and set up hand-washing protocols.
American companies in central China are restarting production as soon as they obtain permission, but are also required to establish elaborate new procedures.
“They want to protect staff, but also nobody wants to get caught offsides when it comes to the labor law or the daily announcements from the government,” said Ker Gibbs, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.
In many large cities, the outbreak has continued to disrupt daily life. Across the country, teeming cities are effectively locked down, schools have been closed for weeks, trains and flights canceled.
The Hong Kong International Airport, one of the world’s busiest, was eerily empty on Sunday. Cathay Pacific, the city’s flag carrier, said last week that it would force employees to take three-week unpaid furloughs.
Parents in the territory and elsewhere across China, including Shanghai and Guangdong, scrambled to find child care after schools announced they would continue to remain closed for the month of February even as many workers were told to return to their jobs on Monday.
In Beijing, the city’s typically teeming subway, had far fewer riders on Monday and train cars were largely empty
China finally allows World Health Organization experts to visit.
An advance team of experts from the World Health Organization was scheduled to arrive in Beijing on Monday evening, nearly two weeks after the organization’s director general met with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and praised the country’s handling of the coronavirus epidemic.
The team will be led by Bruce Aylward, a Canadian physician and epidemiologist who has previously overseen international campaigns to fight Ebola and polio, the organization’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced on Sunday in Geneva.
Since Dr. Tedros’s trip to Beijing in January, the organization has sought to dispatch a team, but until now the Chinese government had balked. The delay raised questions about China’s sensitivity to international assistance in combating the epidemic, though a spokeswoman said it was simply a matter of “sorting out arrangements.”
Dr. Tedros did not announce other members of the team or its exact mission, though it is likely to focus on the government’s efforts to contain the virus and the lessons other countries could learn from it.
The state-controlled People’s Daily reported on Monday that the team would include “international experts in various fields” who would “work with their Chinese counterparts to increase understanding on the epidemic and guide the work of global responses.”
In a series of posts on Twitter, Dr. Tedros expressed concern that countries experiencing a handful of cases with no direct connection to China could yet see a jump in new infections.
“The detection of a small number of cases may indicate more widespread transmission in other countries,” he wrote. “In short, we may only be seeing the tip of the iceberg.”
He called on all countries to share information about the coronavirus “in real time” with the organization.
Chinese officials are split on whether the virus can spread through the air.
The new coronavirus is capable of spreading through the air, a Chinese official said recently, a disturbing revelation that suggests the strain can be transmitted more easily than previously thought.
Zeng Qun, the deputy head of Shanghai’s Civil Affairs Bureau, said at a news conference on Saturday that aerosol transmission is among the ways the novel coronavirus can be spread. Airborne transmission is particularly dangerous because it can occur even if people are not in proximity.
But a second Chinese official discounted those claims and said aerosol transmission had not been confirmed and needed further study.
Shen Yinzhong, the medical director of the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, told The Paper, a Shanghai newspaper, the coronavirus can spread through the air “in theory,” confirmation requires further research.
The conflicting reports underscore the confusion surrounding the virus. There have been several cases which appear to have occurred without direct contact with an infected person.
The Chinese government and the World Health Organization have said that most infections occurred among people in close physical contact.
The related virus that caused SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak, said in 2004 that virus could be spread through the air under some circumstances. An outbreak in Hong Kong occurred, experts said, when the wind carried the virus through the air from an apartment complex in which several people were infected.
Prices jump in China as the virus disrupts supplies.
The coronavirus has helped push inflation to an eight-year high, the Chinese government said on Monday, adding to Beijing’s problems.
Consumer price inflation rose to 5.4 percent year on year in January, compared to a 4.5 percent rise in December. That signified the highest level since November 2011, according to China’s statistics bureau. The outbreak has disrupted China’s supply chains, making it difficult in many places to get products to market.
While nonfood related prices, including energy, rose slightly, it was food prices that pushed inflation up. The price of pork, which has surged for months, has now more than doubled over the past year after an outbreak of African swine fever led to a shortage of pigs.
The latest inflation figures mark a new challenge for China’s central bank. The People’s Bank of China has opened the spigots to provide money to local governments that are trying to contain a vicious outbreak. Last week it announced it had pumped $175 billion into the financial system.
The government has told banks to extend favorable terms to companies that have been closed by efforts to contain the outbreak, which include means to keep people at home. In many cases, employers have been responsible for employee wages after closing factories or other operations.
But printing money to inject into the economy also helps push prices up, creating a double-edged sword for China’s authorities.
Inflation typically rises slightly during the holiday, when families buy presents and food to feed large family gatherings. Economists say they rose faster than usual and stayed higher for a longer period of time.
Nine family members infected after hot-pot meal.
Nine members of a Hong Kong family were found to be infected with the new coronavirus after sharing a hot-pot meal in late January, officials said on Sunday. Two members of the family — a 24-year-old man and his 91-year-old grandmother — were confirmed first, followed by the man’s parents, aunts and cousins.
Officials said that the family was part of a gathering of 19 who had shared a hot-pot meal, in which diners add meat and vegetables to a communal vat of boiling broth. Chuang Shuk-kwan, a health official, said on Sunday that most of those who had attended had shown either no symptoms, or minor ones not immediately distinguishable from the flu. The 24-year-old had consulted a private doctor several times before being admitted to a hospital with a fever that would not subside.
Two relatives at the meal on Jan. 26 had traveled from the neighboring mainland province of Guangdong, Hong Kong health officials said. The nine cases, who were being isolated at two hospitals, were among 10 new cases reported in Hong Kong on Sunday, bringing the territory’s total to 36.
Reporting and research was contributed by Russell Goldman, Keith Bradsher, Ben Dooley, Motoko Rich, Sui-Lee Wee, Amber Wang, Alexandra Stevenson, Tiffany May, Zoe Mou, Albee Zhang, Yiwei Wang and Claire Fu.
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2020-02-10 11:14:00Z
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