Md Anwar Shawkat Afser, president of the Latin America-Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry, met Franco Agustín Senilliani Melchior, head of the Economic and Trade Section of the Embassy of Argentine in India, at a Dhaka hotel Monday. Latin America-Bangladesh Chamber board of directors also met the Argentine business delegate. Afser highlighted trade and commerce between Bangladesh and Argentina as well as Latin America. He also mentioned that a high-profile business delegation from Latin America-Bangladesh Chamber will visit Argentina and Brazil from May 12 to 17. Read more: Bangladesh attractive destination for business, investment: Momen tells Argentine delegation The Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA) and Latin America-Bangladesh Chamber will organise the visit. Prime Minister's Private Industry and Investment Adviser Salman Fazlur Rahman will lead the delegation. The executive chairman of the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA) and Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority (BEZA) will also be part of the team. Afser, Latin America-Bangladesh Chamber Senior Vice-President Md Shahid Alam, Joint Secretary General and Director Md Sayem Faroky; directors Md Shakawat Hossain Mamun, Jobayer Ahmed, Razeeb Haider, Noafel Bin Reza, Md Kawser Hossain; Coordinator Biswajit Roy, Administrative Officer Nazrul Islam Chowdhury, and Assistant Secretary Mohammad Emdadur Rahman were present at today's meeting.    

Bangladesh sees scopes to work closely with the Latin American countries on multiple fronts including trade and investment; and Argentine Foreign Minister Santiago Andrés Cafiero’s impending visit is part of Dhaka’s efforts to diversify and deepen the relations. “You are aware that a new dimension has recently been added in terms of Bangladesh’s diplomatic relations with the Latin American countries,” spokesperson at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Seheli Sabrin told reports at a weekly briefing on Thursday, hoping that the Argentine Foreign Minister will visit Bangladesh on February 27. The Argentine Foreign Minister will meet Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen and the leaders of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industries during his stay in Bangladesh. The two countries are likely to sign one or more MoUs during the Foreign Office Consultations (FOC). A formal announcement regarding the opening of Argentina’s Mission in Dhaka is likely to come during the Argentine Foreign Minister’s visit, Sabrin said. Also Read: World champions Argentina likely to visit Dhaka in next June She said it is a lengthy process to open a mission in any country and recalled that a fact-finding mission worked back in 2009 to explore opportunities in Latin American countries. On January 30, Foreign Minister Momen said his Argentine counterpart Santiago Andrés Cafiero will be in Dhaka on a two-day official visit in February – as the two sides want to strengthen ties in the coming days. “I have invited him. He (Argentine foreign minister) will come. I told him to bring Lionel Messi with him,” Momen told reporters at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, adding that it will be a plus for Bangladesh if Argentina opens a mission in Bangladesh. Asked whether Messi is coming, the MoFA spokesperson said there is no such confirmation yet. “We will let you know if we get any confirmation through the relevant ministry.” Argentina “in principle agreed” to open its mission or consulate in Dhaka and the government of Bangladesh also has a plan to open a mission in Argentina. Bangladesh has already opened a mission in Brazil. “We hope we will open a Bangladesh mission in Argentina in future,” Foreign Minister Momen said, adding that Bangladesh considers three things – size of Bangladeshi community there, importance of the host country, and flow of remittance into Bangladesh – before opening any mission abroad. Momen said Argentina is a good friend of Bangladesh and always remains supportive. “We have a very good relationship with Argentina.”    

Three hours after being freed from a giant migrant camp under an international bridge, Mackenson Veillard stood outside a gas station and took stock of his sudden good fortune as he and his pregnant wife waited for a Greyhound bus to take them to a cousin in San Antonio. The couple camped with thousands for a week under the bridge in Del Rio, Texas, sleeping on concrete and getting by on bread and bottled water. “I felt so stressed,” Veillard, 25, said this week. “But now, I feel better. It’s like I’m starting a new life.” Many Haitian migrants in Del Rio are being released in the United States, according to two U.S. officials, undercutting the Biden administration’s public statements that the thousands in the camp faced immediate expulsion to Haiti. Haitians have been freed on a “very, very large scale” in recent days, one official said Tuesday. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter and thus spoke on condition of anonymity, put the figure in the thousands. Many have been released with notices to appear at an immigration office within 60 days, an outcome that requires less processing time from Border Patrol agents than ordering an appearance in immigration court and points to the speed at which authorities are moving. Read: Options shrink for Haitian migrants straddling Texas border The releases come despite a massive effort to expel Haitians on flights under pandemic-related authority that denies migrants a chance to seek asylum. A third U.S. official not authorized to discuss operations said there were seven daily flights to Haiti planned starting Wednesday. Ten flights arrived in Haiti from Sunday to Tuesday in planes designed for 135 passengers, according to Haitian officials, who didn’t provide a complete count but said six of those flights carried 713 migrants combined. The camp held more than 14,000 people over the weekend, according to some estimates. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, during a visit Tuesday to Del Rio, said the county’s top official told him the most recent tally was about 8,600 migrants. U.S. authorities have declined to say how many have been released in the U.S. in recent days. The Homeland Security Department has been busing Haitians from Del Rio, a town of 35,000 people, to El Paso, Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley along the Texas border, and this week added flights to Tucson, Arizona, the official said. They are processed by the Border Patrol at those locations. Criteria for deciding who is flown to Haiti and who is released in the U.S. are a mystery, but two officials said single adults were a priority. If previous handling of asylum-seekers is any guide, the administration is more likely to release those deemed vulnerable, including pregnant women, families with young children and those with medical issues. The Biden administration exempts unaccompanied children from expulsion flights on humanitarian grounds. The system is a “black box,” said Wade McMullen, an attorney with Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, who was in Del Rio. “Right now, we have no official access to understand what processes are underway, what protections are being provided for the migrants.” On Wednesday, more than 300 migrants had been dropped off in Border Patrol vans by early afternoon at a welcome center staffed by the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition. They waited for buses to Houston, a springboard to final destinations in the U.S. Many were required to wear ankle monitors, used to ensure they obey instructions to report to immigration authorities. “Hello. How are you?” volunteer Lupita De La Paz greeted them in Spanish. “We will help you. You have arrived in Del Rio, Texas. It’s a small town. There are not many options. We will help you get to another place.” Read: US launches mass expulsion of Haitian migrants from Texas Rabbiatu Yunusah, 34, waited with her 3-year-old daughter Laila, was headed to settle with an uncle in Huntsville, Alabama. She felt “very happy to be in this country, to be free.” Jimy Fenelon, 25, and his partner, Elyrose Prophete, who is eight months pregnant, left the camp Tuesday and were headed to Florida to stay with an uncle. “Everyone has their luck. Some didn’t have luck to get here.” Fenelon said. Accounts of wide-scale releases — some observed in Del Rio by Associated Press journalists -- are at odds with statements Monday by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who traveled to Del Rio to promise swift action. “If you come to the United States illegally, you will be returned, your journey will not succeed, and you will be endangering your life and your family’s life,” he said at a news conference. Homeland Security, asked to comment on releases in the United States, said Wednesday that migrants who are not immediately expelled to Haiti may be detained or released with a notice to appear in immigration court or report to an immigration office, depending on available custody space. “The Biden Administration has reiterated that our borders are not open, and people should not make the dangerous journey,” the department said in a statement. “Individuals and families are subject to border restrictions, including expulsion.” Meanwhile, Mexico has begun busing and flying Haitian migrants away from the U.S. border, signaling a new level of support for the United States as the camp presented President Joe Biden with a humanitarian and increasingly political challenge. The White House is facing sharp bipartisan condemnation. Republicans say Biden administration policies led Haitians to believe they would get asylum. Democrats are expressing outrage after images went viral this week of Border Patrol agents on horseback using aggressive tactics against the migrants. Read: Haitians on Texas border undeterred by US plan to expel them Immigrants have described a screening process at the camp where people were given colored tickets for four categories: single men; single women; pregnant women; and families with young children, McMullen said. The vast majority of immigrants he and other advocates have interviewed and who have been released into the U.S. have been families with young children and pregnant women. Wilgens Jean and his wife, Junia Michel, waited in Del Rio this week for relatives to send the $439 in bus fare to get to Springfield, Ohio, where Jean’s brother lives. Michel, who is pregnant, huddled under the little shade the parking lot had to offer from the brutal heat. Her only request was for sunscreen that she softly rubbed on her pregnant belly. On the concrete in front of them lay two backpacks and a black garbage bag which held everything the couple owns. The pair left in Haiti in April and were in the Del Rio camp for five days. Jean said because his wife is expecting, they were released from the camp on Monday. “I entered by crossing the river,” Jean said. “Immigration gave me a ticket.” After an initial stay with family in San Antonio, Veillard eventually hopes to get to New York City to live with his sister. He will take any job he can find to support his growing family. Veillard and his wife left Haiti four years ago and had been living in Brazil until they began their journey to the United States in June, much of it on foot. “I don’t know how I’m going to feel tomorrow but now I feel lucky,” he said.

Orderlies pushed Jertha Ylet’s bed from the center of the hospital ward to one side so Dr. Michelet Paurus could plug in his electric saw. She was silent as the doctor cut off her plaster cast in measured strokes. Today she would have to leave the hospital, the doctor said. Ylet had resisted until the cast came off. She’d been at Les Cayes’ General Hospital since being brought there Aug. 14, unconscious and with her leg crushed, after a 7.2-magnitude earthquake destroyed her house, killing her father and two other relatives and seriously injuring her brother. There is no home to return to. A surgeon inserted a metal rod in her lower left leg on Thursday. Ylet, 25, had not been out of bed, much less tried to walk, since she arrived. Her 5-year-old daughter, Younaika, who was not injured, shared her bed and spent her days playing with other children around the ward. Read:Haiti raises earthquake death toll, passes 2,200 More than a week after the earthquake on Haiti’s southwestern peninsula killed at least 2,207 people, injured 12,268 and destroyed nearly 53,000 houses, Ylet represents an emerging dilemma for the region’s limited health care services: how to turn over hospital beds when discharged patients have nowhere to go. “I said to the doctor, ‘I don’t have any place to go,’” Ylet said. “I told them everything. The doctor doesn’t understand.” In the first days after the quake, the hospital was overwhelmed with patients. The injured lay on patios and breezeways awaiting care. Now there are still people in those areas, but they are discharged patients or people who were never admitted at all, who have been drawn by the donations of food, water and clothing that arrive at the hospital daily. “We have a lot patients who have been discharged, but are still hanging out in the yard,” said hospital director Peterson Gede. “The fact they know they will receive food and water ... they don’t have any intention to leave.” On Monday, Gede issued an order for hospital staff to begin to “motivate” patients to leave, “to make them understand that we need beds for new patient admissions.” It proved easier said than done. Not having a home to return to was a significant obstacle for Ylet and many others. Ylet lost consciousness when a wall of her cinderblock house in Camp-Perrin fell on her as the quake struck. Her boyfriend, Junior Milord, had left 20 minutes earlier for work. He froze in the street until the shaking stopped, then ran back to Ylet’s house. He found her buried near the front of the building, which unlike the back, had not completely collapsed. “I thought she was dead when I first started removing the blocks,” Milord said. He pulled her out and flagged down a passing car, which took her to the hospital in Les Cayes. “When I woke up I was in the hospital,” she said. Milord then returned to help dig out the bodies of Ylet’s father, cousin and brother-in-law. Their bodies are still at a funeral home, because the family doesn’t have the money to bury them. Milord lost his own home, plus two uncles, an aunt and a brother in the quake. Read: In Haiti, close relation between the living and the dead Milord said some of Ylet’s surviving relatives are camping in her yard. If Ylet and her daughter have to leave, he said, they will end up there too. Across the ward, nurse Gabrielle Lagrenade understands that reality as well as anyone. Lagrenade and her 21-year-old daughter, Bethsabelle, have been sleeping outside since the quake hit. They struggle to sleep on the gravel roadside with their heads less than 6 feet from the highway. All night long mopeds, SUVs and tractor trailers rain dust and pebbles on them. It’s the only level ground around the two-story building where they’d rented an apartment above a small clothing store. The land drops precipitously from the road to a stream running behind the building, which was constructed on reinforced concrete columns above a drainage gully that feeds into the stream. Two columns now display gaping spaces between the bottom of the building and the top of the supports. The landlord has wisely decided to tear it down. Despite her own precarious situation, Lagrenade, 52, continues to arrive daily for her shift at the hospital, carefully folding and stowing her bedding, discreetly slipping behind the row of roadside buildings to bathe and re-emerging in her spotless white nurse’s smock to hail a motorcycle taxi for the ride to work. Ylet is on her ward. About 22 beds spread across the room. Nurses and doctors wear masks, but patients do not, despite virtually no one in Haiti having been vaccinated for COVID-19. Nurses huddle around a wooden table at one end. Medical waste is tossed into a cardboard box in a corner. Lagrenade is not unsympathetic to Ylet’s plight and that of other newly homeless patients, but she is pragmatic. The beds are needed, she said. “After someone gets well they have to go,” Lagrenade said. This is what Paurus was trying to explain to Ylet. An orthopedist who came from Port-au-Prince to operate on her leg had cleared her to leave, the doctor said. “If we decide to keep patients whose homes were destroyed there won’t be room for (new) patients,” he said. “We have a lot of patients and emergencies who need a bed.” Read: Oxygen plant among earthquake-damaged buildings in Haiti Then Paurus got his saw. After her cast was off, Ylet said she would give up her bed, but camp outside on the hospital grounds, because they told her to come back Thursday for a follow-up appointment. But then some volunteers brought hot lunches. By the end of the day, Ylet was still in her bed. Milord said no one had come back to tell her to leave so there she was. “The doctor needs to understand that I don’t have a place to go and I am not leaving,” Ylet said. “I will stay in the hospital’s yard and sleep there until I am able to figure it out.”

Haitian officials raised the death toll from a deadly weekend earthquake by more than 500 on Tuesday after Tropical Storm Grace forced a temporary halt to search and rescue efforts, a delay that fed growing anger and frustration among thousands who were left homeless. Grace battered southwestern Haiti, which was hit hardest by Saturday’s quake, and officials warned some areas could get 15 inches (38 centimeters) of rain before the storm moved on. Intermittent rain fell in the earthquake-damaged city of Les Cayes and in the capital of Port-au-Prince. Late Tuesday afternoon, the Civil Protection Agency raised the death toll to 1,941 and the number of injured to 9,900, many of whom have had to wait for medical help lying outside in wilting heat. Read: Haiti quake death toll rises to 1,419, injured now at 6,000 The devastation is centered in the country’s southwestern area, where health care has reached capacity and people have lost homes and loved ones. Patience was running out in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation. Haitians already were struggling with the coronavirus, gang violence, worsening poverty and the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse when the quake hit. Bodies continued to be pulled from the rubble, and the smell of death hung heavily over a pancaked, three-story apartment building. A simple bed sheet covered the body of a 3-year-old girl that firefighters had found an hour earlier. Neighbor Joseph Boyer, 53, said he knew the girl’s family. “The mother and father are in the hospital, but all three kids died,” he said. The bodies of the other two siblings were found earlier. Illustrating the lack of government presence, volunteer firefighters from the nearby city of Cap-Haitien had left the body out in the rain because police have to be present before a body can be taken away. Another neighbor, James Luxama, 24, repeated a popular rumor at many disaster scenes, saying that someone was sending text messages for help from inside the rubble. But Luxama had not personally seen or received such a message. A throng of angry, shouting men gathered in front of the collapsed building, a sign that patience was running out for people who have waited days for help from the government. “The photographers come through, the press, but we have no tarps for our roofs,” said one man, who refused to give his name. The head of Haiti’s office of civil protection, Jerry Chandler, acknowledged the situation. Earthquake assessments had to be paused because of the heavy rain, “and people are getting aggressive,” Chandler said Tuesday. Some children were orphaned in the quake and some youngsters were starting to go hungry, said Carl-Henry Petit-Frère, a field manager for Save the Children, which said in a statement that it was distributing what it could to people living on the streets without protection from the wind and rain. “I see children crying on the street, people asking us for food, but we are low on food ourselves as well,” Petit-Frère said, adding that children were warned not to go into houses because they could collapse. “The organizations that are here are doing what they can, but we need more supplies. Food, clean water and shelter are needed most, and we need them fast.” About 20 soldiers finally showed up to help rescuers at the collapsed apartment building. Prior to that, the only help that arrived was from poorly equipped volunteers. “All we have are sledgehammers and hands. That’s the plan,” said Canadian volunteer Randy Lodder, director of the Adoration Christian School in Haiti. Sarah Charles, assistant administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, said its disaster response teams were forced to suspend operations as the storm arrived Monday, but members were back Tuesday to assess its impact and continue helping. Read:What makes Haiti prone to devastating earthquakes “We do not anticipate that the death toll related to this earthquake will be anywhere near the 2010 earthquake, where more than 200,000 people were killed,” Charles told reporters. The scale of the damage also was not as severe as that earthquake, she said, adding: “That’s not what we’re seeing on the ground right now.” In a statement, the U.S. military’s Southern Command said it was moving eight helicopters from Honduras to Haiti and that seven U.S. Coast Guard cutters were en route to support the USAID team. Two cutters already are there along with two Coast Guard helicopters and U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon aircraft that are taking aerial images of earthquake devastated areas, the statement said. The effort was being mounted “to provide the kind of emergency response that is necessary in a human tragedy and catastrophe like this,” U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters at the White House. John Morrison, public information officer for the Fairfax Co. (Virginia) Urban Search and Rescue, said its team was still trying to find survivors. Two U.S. Coast Guard helicopters had ferried searchers to six stricken communities on Monday. “The team reports that food, health care services, safe drinking water, hygiene and sanitation and shelter are all priority needs,” Morrison said. He added that rescuers had not seen any signs of people trapped alive in buildings. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters Tuesday that the organization had disbursed $8 million to its agencies so that they could get supplies they need immediately. He said the U.N. is “playing a leading role” supporting Haiti, but added that “the government has the primary responsibilities.” “I think the lesson learned is always for better and improved coordination so as not to see the chaotic scenes that we had” in the aftermath of the country’s devastating 2010 earthquake, Dujarric said. “We sometimes see where countries are, with the best of intentions, sending aid that may not be needed. ... So, I think the lesson learned is always better and more improved coordination to avoid waste and to avoid redundancies.” Rain and wind raised the threat of mudslides and flash flooding as Grace slowly passed over southwestern Haiti’s Tiburon Peninsula before heading toward Jamaica and southeastern Cuba. Forecasters said it could become a hurricane before hitting Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Officials said the magnitude 7.2 earthquake destroyed more than 7,000 homes and damaged nearly 5,000, leaving about 30,000 families homeless. Hospitals, schools, offices and churches also were demolished or badly damaged. In the village of Bonne Fin, a one-hour drive from from Les Cayes on dirt roads, the mountaintop Hospital Lumiere illustrated the anguish and complexity of Haiti’s medical crisis and dire need for outside help. No one died or was injured at the hospital when the quake hit, but the operating rooms partially collapsed. Through cracks in a wall, Dr. Frantz Codio could see three glistening anesthesia machines he needed to perform orthopedic operations on broken bones. But he could not get to them because the building’s cement roof was leaning at a crazy angle — in some places just 3 or 4 feet (0.9 meters to 1.2 meters) above the floor. Despite warnings not to go inside the structure, Codio did so on Sunday and pulled one of the machines out. “People said, ‘Don’t go in there, it’s too dangerous,’ but I had God with me,” Codio said. Read: Death toll of powerful earthquake in Haiti soars to 1,297 Etzer Emile, a Haitian economist and professor at Quisqueya University, a private institution in Port-au-Prince, said the earthquake will almost certainly result in more long-term poverty for Haiti’s struggling southwestern region. Political instability and gang criminality along the southern roads into the region have particularly hobbled economic activity in recent years. “The earthquake has just given a fatal blow to a regional economy already on its knees for about 2 1/2 years,” Emile said.

Ever since the pandemic began, Haiti had perplexed experts with seemingly low infection and death rates from COVID-19 despite its rickety public health system, a total lack of vaccines and a widespread disdain for safety measures like masks and distancing. That is no longer the case. The few Haitian hospitals treating COVID cases have been so swamped in recent days that they report turning away patients, while plans to open another hospital to treat the infected have been delayed. Official figures remain relatively low for a nation of more than 11 million people: Just 2,271 cases and 62 deaths have been recorded over the past month in government data collected by Johns Hopkins University. A total of 15,700 cases and more than 330 deaths have been reported since early last year. Read:Sinovac vaccine restores a Brazilian city to near normal But experts are united in saying those figures miss the true scale of what they say is the largest spike in cases since the new coronavirus first landed. The government declared a health emergency on May 24 and imposed a curfew and safety measures — though few Haitians appear to be following them. Most shun, or can’t afford, face masks and it’s nearly impossible to keep a distance while shopping in bustling marketplaces or riding the crowded, colorful buses known as tap taps that most Haitians rely on to get around. “There is no time to waste,” said Carissa Etienne, director of the Pan American Health Organization, which is working with the government to scale up testing to identify and isolate infected people — a difficult task in a place where few think they can afford to be sick. Sanorah Valcourt, a 27-year-old mother and hairstylist, said she felt sick for for two weeks last month with a fever and symptoms including loss of taste. But she didn’t get tested, or even take measures such as wearing face masks she finds uncomfortable. “I didn’t feel well enough to hop on a tap tap and spend hours at a hospital to get tested,” she said. The lack of cases early this year had led authorities to reduce the number of beds available for COVID patients to about 200 — more than half of those at the nonprofit St. Luke Foundation for Haiti in the capital of Port-au-Prince. But by early this month, that clinic was at capacity and announced it was turning away patients. “Many people are dying on arrival in ambulances,” the foundation said. “We have received many nuns as patients, a sure sign (COVID-19) is in the poorest areas.” Marc Edson Augustin, medical director of the St. Luke hospital, said he’s especially worried about the deaths he has seen among those aged 17 to 22, and that groups of up to seven people are showing up at the same time seeking treatment for COVID. Read:In Argentina, doctors adapt as COVID-19 strains hospitals “The situation is real, and we want to tell people that the situation is getting worse,” he said. “We’re working to keep people alive as much as possible.” Haiti’s Health Ministry had planned to have another 150 beds elsewhere for COVID-19 patients, but that effort was delayed. Meanwhile, Bruno Maes, representative in Haiti for UNICEF, said the children’s agency is working to help hospitals get oxygen and fuel. “It’s not enough, for sure,” he said. “We have to be ready for a bigger influx of cases. ...It could get out of control.” So far, Haiti hasn’t received a single vaccine, though officials say they expect to get 130,000 AstraZeneca doses this month. The U.S. government also said it would donate a portion of six million doses for Haiti, though officials haven’t specified how many or when they will arrive. Some 756,000 doses of AstraZeneca shots had been slated to arrive in May via the United Nations’ COVAX program for low-income countries, but they were delayed due to the government’s concern over possible clotting as a side effect and a lack of infrastructure to keep the vaccines properly refrigerated. PAHO said it would help Haiti’s Health Ministry solve those problems, and is prioritizing vaccinating health workers. The medical system also has been struggling with other problems, including unpaid wages for some workers. President Jovenel Moïse recently asked the Ministry of Economy and Finance to ensure they get paid. Even when vaccines arrive, experts worry many people may not get a jab — some for fear of venturing through crime-wracked neighborhoods to reach a clinic. Read:Why are so many babies dying of Covid-19 in Brazil? Valcourt mentioned such dangers as one reason why she avoided getting tested. Like many Haitians, she turned to a home remedy — in her case, a tea made with parsley, garlic, lime, thyme and cloves. Manoucheka Louis, a 35-year-old street merchant who sells plantains and potatoes, said she got sick earlier this year but didn’t have the roughly $20 needed to see a private doctor, who she trusts more than public institutions. “Health care is not something I can afford,” she said, adding that she was coughing a lot and was fighting a fever, loss of taste and an aching body and head. Her two children had the same symptoms, and they all relied on homemade teas and regular cold medicine. She said she still can’t afford to always wear a mask. They can cost about 50 cents each in a country where many people make less than a dollar or two a day.

A crisis over the supply of medical oxygen for coronavirus patients has struck nations in Africa and Latin America, where warnings went unheeded at the start of the pandemic and doctors say the shortage has led to unnecessary deaths.

Argentina’s Senate passed a law legalizing abortion early Wednesday after a marathon 12-hour session, a victory for the women’s movement that has been fighting for the right for decades.

UN chief Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday said as COVID-19 continues to spread throughout the world, Latin America and the Caribbean have become the “hotspot of the pandemic.”

The West African nation of Mali has roughly one ventilator per 1 million people — 20 in all to help the critically ill with respiratory failure. In Peru, with more than 32 million people, about 350 beds in intensive care units exist.