health
China rebuffs WHO’s terms for further COVID-19 origins study
China cannot accept the World Health Organization’s plan for the second phase of a study into the origins of COVID-19, a senior Chinese health official said Thursday.
Zeng Yixin, the vice minister of the National Health Commission, said he was “rather taken aback” that the plan includes further investigation of the theory that the virus might have leaked from a Chinese lab.
He dismissed the lab leak idea as a rumor that runs counter to common sense and science.
Read:China blasts dam to divert floods that killed at least 25
“It is impossible for us to accept such an origin-tracing plan,” he said at a news conference called to address the COVID-19 origins issue.
The search for where the virus came from has become a diplomatic issue that has fueled China’s deteriorating relations with the U.S. and many American allies. The U.S. and others say that China has not been transparent about what happened in the early days of the pandemic. China accuses critics of seeking to blame it for the pandemic and politicizing an issue that should be left to scientists.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of WHO, acknowledged last week that there had been a “premature push” after the first phase of the study to rule out the theory that the virus might have escaped from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan, the city where the disease was first detected in late 2019.
Most experts don’t think a lab leak is the likely cause. The question is whether the possibility is so remote that it should be dropped, or whether it merits further study.
The first phase was conducted earlier this year by an international team of scientists who came to Wuhan to work with their Chinese counterparts. The team was accused of bowing to demands from the Chinese side after it initially indicated that further study wasn’t necessary.
Zeng said the Wuhan lab has no virus that can directly infect humans and noted that the WHO team concluded that a lab leak was highly unlikely. He added that speculation that staff and graduate students at the lab had been infected and might have started the spread of the virus in the city was untrue.
Read:China rejects hacking charges, accuses US of cyberspying
Yuan Zhiming, the director of the biosafety lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, said they had not stored or studied the new coronavirus before the outbreak. “I want to emphasize that .... the Wuhan Institute of Virology has never designed, made or leaked the novel coronavirus,” he said.
The WHO team concluded that the virus most likely jumped from animals to humans, probably from bats to an intermediate animal. The experts visited markets in Wuhan that had sold live animals, and recommended further study of the farms that supplied the market.
“In the next step, I think animal tracing should still be the priority direction. It is the most valuable field for our efforts,” Liang Wannian, who headed the Chinese side, said at Thursday’s news conference.
Tedros said last week that he hoped for better cooperation and access to data from China. “We are asking China to be transparent, open and cooperate, especially on the information, raw data that we asked for in the early days of the pandemic,” he said.
His words were echoed at the same virtual news conference by Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, who called on China to intensify cooperation in the search for the origin of the virus.
Zeng said China has always supported “scientific virus tracing” and wants to see the study extended to other countries and regions. “However, we are opposed to politicizing the tracing work,” he said.
Read:It was premature to rule out Covid lab leak: WHO
China has frequently sought to deflect accusations that the pandemic originated in Wuhan and was allowed to spread by early bureaucratic missteps and an attempted coverup.
Government spokespersons have called for an investigation into whether the virus might have been produced in a U.S. military laboratory, a theory not widely shared in the scientific community.
China has largely ended local transmission of COVID through lockdowns and mask-wearing requirements, and has now administered more than 1.4 billion doses of Chinese vaccines. Just 12 new domestically spread cases were reported Thursday and China’s death toll from the virus has remained unchanged for months at 4,636.
Wildfire smoke clouds sky, hurts air quality on East Coast
Smoke and ash from massive wildfires in the American West clouded the sky and led to air quality alerts Wednesday on parts of the East Coast as the effects of the blazes were felt 2,500 miles (4,023 kilometers) away.
Strong winds blew smoke east from California, Oregon, Montana and other states all the way to other side of the continent. Haze hung over New York City, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
The nation’s largest wildfire, Oregon’s Bootleg Fire, grew to 618 square miles (1,601 square kilometers) — just over half the size of Rhode Island. Fires also burned on both sides of California’s Sierra Nevada and in Washington state and other areas of the West.
The smoke blowing to the East Coast was reminiscent of last fall, when large blazes burning in Oregon’s worst wildfire season in recent memory choked the local sky with pea-soup smoke but also affected air quality several thousand miles away. So far this year, Seattle and Portland have largely been spared the foul air.
Read:Size of Oregon wildfire underscores vastness of the US West
People in parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and elsewhere with heart disease, asthma and other health issues were told to avoid the outdoors. Air quality alerts for parts of the region were in place through Thursday.
“One of the things about this event that makes it so remarkable is that the smoke is affecting such a large swath of the U.S,” said Jesse Berman, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health and an expert on air quality. “You’re not just seeing localized and perhaps upstate New York being affected, but rather you’re seeing numerous states all along the East Coast that are being impacted.”
David Lawrence, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said wildfire smoke usually thins out by the time it reaches the East Coast, but this summer it’s “still pretty thick.”
In California, a wildfire burning completely uncontained south of Lake Tahoe crossed the state line into Nevada. New voluntary evacuation orders were issued for portions of Douglas County, Nevada.
The Tamarack Fire, started by lightning in Alpine County, California, has now burned more than 68 square miles (176 square kilometers). Authorities say more than 1,200 firefighters are battling the blaze, which has destroyed at least 10 structures.
Read:Huge Oregon blaze grows as wildfires burn across western US
Meanwhile, Oregon on Wednesday banned all campfires on state-managed lands and in state campgrounds east of Interstate 5, the major highway that is commonly considered the dividing line between the wet western part of the state and the dry eastern half.
The regulation includes the designated fire rings at campsites, as well as candles and tiki torches. Propane grills are still allowed, but the state still urged campers to pack food that doesn’t require heating or cooking.
The lightning-caused Oregon fire has ravaged the sparsely populated southern part of the state and has been expanding by up to 4 miles (6 kilometers) a day, pushed by gusting winds and critically dry weather that’s turned trees and undergrowth into a tinderbox.
Fire crews have had to retreat from the flames for 10 consecutive days as fireballs jump from treetop to treetop, trees explode, embers fly ahead of the fire to start new blazes and, in some cases, the inferno’s heat creates its own weather of shifting winds and dry lightning. Monstrous clouds of smoke and ash have risen up to 6 miles (10 kilometers) into the sky and are visible for more than 100 air miles (161 kilometers).
Authorities in Oregon said lower winds and temperatures allowed crews to improve fire lines, and they hoped to make more progress Wednesday. The fire was approaching an old burn area on its active southeastern flank, raising hopes it would not spread as much.
The blaze, which is being fought by more than 2,200 people, is about one-third contained. It was within a few hundred acres of becoming Oregon’s third-largest wildfire in modern history.
Read:Western wildfires threatening American Indian tribal lands
At least 2,000 homes have been evacuated at some point during the fire and an additional 5,000 threatened. At least 70 homes and more than 100 outbuildings have burned, but no one is known to have died.
Extremely dry conditions and recent heat waves tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight. Climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.
While Berman is hopeful that the smoke will last only a couple of days, he said we may see more of it due to climate change.
“We fully expect that you’re going to see more situations where smoke, from fires occurring farther away, is going to travel long distances and affect people in other parts of the country,” Berman said. “I would not be surprised at all if these events did become more frequent in the future.”
US virus cases nearly triple in 2 weeks amid misinformation
COVID-19 cases nearly tripled in the U.S. over two weeks amid an onslaught of vaccine misinformation that is straining hospitals, exhausting doctors and pushing clergy into the fray.
“Our staff, they are frustrated,” said Chad Neilsen, director of infection prevention at UF Health Jacksonville, a Florida hospital that is canceling elective surgeries and procedures after the number of mostly unvaccinated COVID-19 inpatients at its two campuses jumped to 134, up from a low of 16 in mid-May.
“They are tired. They are thinking this is déjà vu all over again, and there is some anger because we know that this is a largely preventable situation, and people are not taking advantage of the vaccine.”
Across the U.S., the seven-day rolling average for daily new cases rose over the past two weeks to more than 37,000 on Tuesday, up from less than 13,700 on July 6, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Health officials blame the delta variant and slowing vaccination rates. Just 56.2% of Americans have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Read:Biden says getting vaccinated ‘gigantically important’
In Louisiana, health officials reported 5,388 new COVID-19 cases Wednesday — the third-highest daily count since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020. Hospitalizations for the disease rose to 844 statewide, up more than 600 since mid-June. New Orleans leaders urged people to resume wearing masks indoors.
Utah reported having 295 people hospitalized due to the virus, the highest number since February. The state has averaged about 622 confirmed cases per day over the last week, about triple the infection rate at its lowest point in early June. Health data shows the surge is almost entirely connected to unvaccinated people.
“It is like seeing the car wreck before it happens,” said Dr. James Williams, a clinical associate professor of emergency medicine at Texas Tech, who has recently started treating more COVID-19 patients. “None of us want to go through this again.”
He said the patients are younger — many in their 20s, 30s and 40s — and overwhelmingly unvaccinated.
As lead pastor of one of Missouri’s largest churches, Jeremy Johnson has heard the reasons congregants don’t want the COVID-19 vaccine. He wants them to know it’s not only OK to get vaccinated, it’s what the Bible urges.
“I think there is a big influence of fear,” said Johnson, whose Springfield-based church also has a campus in Nixa and another about to open in Republic. “A fear of trusting something apart from scripture, a fear of trusting something apart from a political party they’re more comfortable following. A fear of trusting in science. We hear that: ‘I trust in God, not science.’ But the truth is science and God are not something you have to choose between.”
Now many churches in southwestern Missouri, like Johnson’s Assembly of God-affiliated North Point Church, are hosting vaccination clinics. Meanwhile, about 200 church leaders have signed onto a statement urging Christians to get vaccinated, and on Wednesday announced a follow-up public service campaign.
Opposition to vaccination is especially strong among white evangelical Protestants, who make up more than one-third of Missouri’s residents, according to a 2019 report by the Pew Research Center.
“We found that the faith community is very influential, very trusted, and to me that is one of the answers as to how you get your vaccination rates up,” said Ken McClure, mayor of Springfield.
Read:US life expectancy in 2020 saw biggest drop since WWII
The two hospitals in his city are teeming with patients, reaching record and near-record pandemic highs. Steve Edwards, who is the CEO of CoxHealth in Springfield, tweeted that the hospital has brought in 175 traveling nurses and has 46 more scheduled to arrive by Monday.
“Grateful for the help,” wrote Edwards, who previously tweeted that anyone spreading misinformation about the vaccine should “shut up.”
Jacob Burmood, a 40-year-old Kansas City, Missouri, artist, said his mother has been promoting vaccine conspiracy theories even though her husband — Burmood’s stepfather — is hospitalized on a ventilator in Springfield.
“It is really, really sad, and it is really frustrating,” he said.
Burmood recalled how his mother had recently fallen ill and “was trying to tell me that vaccinated people got her sick, and it wasn’t even COVID. I just shut her down. I said, ‘Mom, I can’t talk to you about conspiracy theories right now.’ ... You need to go to a hospital. You are going to die.”
His mother, who is in her 70s, has since recovered.
In New York City, workers in city-run hospitals and health clinics will be required to get vaccinated or get tested weekly as officials battle a rise in COVID-19 cases, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday.
De Blasio’s order will not apply to teachers, police officers and other city employees, but it’s part of the city’s intense focus on vaccinations amid an increase in delta variant infections.
The number of vaccine doses being given out daily in the city has dropped to less than 18,000, down from a peak of more than 100,000 in early April. About 65% of all adults are fully vaccinated, compared with about 60% of public hospital system staffers, said system leader Dr. Mitchell Katz.
Read:Natural origins theory of Covid-19 still the most likely: Fauci
Meanwhile, caseloads have been rising in the city for weeks, and health officials say the variant makes up about 7 in 10 cases they sequence.
“We have got to deal with it aggressively. And in the end, there is also a thing called personal responsibility,” de Blasio said, urging inoculated people to raise the issue with unvaccinated relatives and “get up in their face.”
Back in Louisiana, New Orleans officials issued the new guidance on indoor masks, hoping to avoid the kind of virus-related shutdowns that devastated the city’s tourism economy in 2020. Mayor LaToya Cantrell stopped short of requiring masks. She said the advisory “puts the responsibility on individuals themselves.”
The announcement came as the city’s seven-day average of new cases rose to 117, the highest level since early February. It had fallen as low as eight in mid-June.
Biden says getting vaccinated ‘gigantically important’
President Joe Biden expressed pointed frustration Wednesday over the slowing COVID-19 vaccination rate in the U.S. and pleaded that it’s “gigantically important” for Americans to step up and get inoculated against the virus as it surges once again.
Biden, speaking at a televised town hall in Cincinnati, said the public health crisis has turned largely into a plight of the unvaccinated as the spread of the delta variant has led to a surge in infections around the country.
“We have a pandemic for those who haven’t gotten the vaccination — it’s that basic, that simple,” he said on the CNN town hall.
The president also expressed optimism that children under 12 will be approved for vaccination in the coming months. But he displayed exasperation that so many eligible Americans are still reluctant to get a shot.
Read: Biden backs Trump rejection of China’s South China Sea claim
“If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in the IC unit, and you’re not going to die,” Biden said at the forum at Mount St. Joseph University. “So it’s gigantically important that ... we all act like Americans who care about our fellow Americans.”
Over 80 minutes, Biden fielded questions on many of the pressing issues of the day, including his infrastructure package, voting rights and the makeup of the congressional commission that will investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. He also reflected on what it’s like to be president, saying he’s sometimes taken aback by the pomp that comes with the job and the weight of being “the last guy in the room” left to make the call on daunting decisions.
Six months into his presidency, taming the coronavirus remains his most pressing problem.
U.S. hospitalizations and deaths are nearly all among the unvaccinated. But COVID-19 cases nearly tripled in the U.S. over two weeks amid an onslaught of vaccine misinformation that is straining hospitals, exhausting doctors and pushing clergy into the fray.
Across the U.S., the seven-day rolling average for daily new cases rose over the past two weeks to more than 37,000 on Tuesday, up from less than 13,700 on July 6, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Just 56.2% of Americans have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The president noted that the rise has become so concerning that even his critics are pushing back against vaccine disinformation.
Biden made an indirect reference to high-profile conservative personalities at Fox News who have “had an altar call” and are now more openly speaking to their skeptical guests about the benefits of getting vaccinated. Sean Hannity recently told viewers, ”I believe in the science of vaccination” and urged them to take the disease seriously. Steve Doocy, who cohosts “Fox & Friends,” this week told viewers the vaccination “will save your life.”
Before boarding Air Force One to return to Washington, Biden told reporters he was “glad they had the courage to say what they’ve said.”
Asked about rising prices, Biden acknowledged “there will be near-term inflation” as the economy rebounds from the pandemic but said it was “highly unlikely long-term inflation will get out of hand.”
Read:Vaccination 'most patriotic thing', COVID not yet finished: Biden
Biden, who traveled to Ohio as he’s trying to rev up support for his economic agenda, visited a union training center ahead of the town hall.
The trip comes as the fate of his infrastructure proposal remains unclear after Senate Republicans rejected a $1 trillion blueprint i n a key test vote Wednesday. A bipartisan group of 22 senators said in a joint statement after the vote that they were close to coming to terms on a deal and requested a delay until Monday.
Biden expressed confidence in the outcome, saying, “It’s a good thing and I think we’re going to get it done.”
While lawmakers wrangle over the details of that proposal on Capitol Hill, Biden made the case that his nearly $4 trillion package is needed to rebuild the middle class and sustain the economic growth the country has seen during the first six months of his presidency.
The president’s visit took him near the dangerously outdated Brent Spence Bridge — a chokepoint for trucks and emergency vehicles between Ohio and Kentucky that the past two presidents promised without success to replace.
Biden made a passing reference to the structure, telling town hall attendees it’s time to “fix that damn bridge of yours.”
He delved into the personal when he faced a question about the scourge of drug addiction, noting he’s “so damn proud” of his son Hunter Biden, who has published a memoir about his struggles with substance abuse. The president also noted he feels a bit self-conscious about some of the fringe benefits that come with the office. He elicited laughter when he said he told some of the White House staff not to come in to serve breakfast. The real reason: The president likes to eat breakfast in his robe.
Biden defended the filibuster against repeated questions from CNN moderator Don Lemon about why he feels the need to protect what some critics argue is a legislative tactic once used to protect racist policies.
He said he’s trying to bring the country together around the need to protect voting rights, and he doesn’t want “the debate to only be about whether or not we have a filibuster.” Biden said if Democrats removed the filibuster “you’re going to throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done.”
Read:Biden: Infrastructure vow was not intended to be veto threat
Back in Washington, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday rejected two Republicans selected by House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy to sit on a committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. McCarthy said the GOP won’t participate in the investigation if Democrats won’t accept the members he appointed.
Lemon asked how Biden could have confidence that Republicans and Democrats can get together on anything when they can’t even come to agreement on investigating the most brazen attack on the U.S. Capitol in 200 years.
Biden simply replied, “These people,” a nod to forum’s spectators and his faith in Americans writ large. But Biden seemed to also acknowledge the partisan rift in Washington had become maddening.
“I don’t care if you think I’m Satan reincarnated,” Biden said. “The fact is you can’t look at that television and say nothing happened on the 6th and listen to people who say this was a peaceful march.”
Japan girds for a surreal Olympics, and questions are plenty
After a yearlong delay and months of hand-wringing that rippled across a pandemic-inflected world, a Summer Games unlike any other is at hand. It’s an Olympics, sure, but also, in a very real way, something quite different.
No foreign fans. No local attendance in Tokyo-area venues. A reluctant populace navigating a surge of virus cases amid a still-limited vaccination campaign. Athletes and their entourages confined to a quasi-bubble, under threat of deportation. Government minders and monitoring apps trying — in theory, at least — to track visitors’ every move. Alcohol curtailed or banned. Cultural exchanges, the kind that power the on-the-ground energy of most Games, completely absent.
And running like an electric current through it all: the inescapable knowledge of the suffering and sense of displacement that COVID-19 has ushered in, both here and around the world.
Read: Zero risk? Virus cases test Olympic organizers' assurances
All signs point to an utterly surreal and atomized Games, one that will divide Japan into two worlds during the month of Olympics and Paralympics competition.
On one side, most of Japan’s largely unvaccinated, increasingly resentful populace will continue soldiering on through the worst pandemic to hit the globe in a century, almost entirely separated from the spectacle of the Tokyo Games aside from what they see on TV. Illness and recovery, work and play, both curtailed by strict virus restrictions: Life, such as it is, will go on here.
Meanwhile, in massive (and massively expensive) locked-down stadiums, vaccinated super-athletes, and the legions of reporters, IOC officials, volunteers and handlers that make the Games go, will do their best to concentrate on sports served up to a rapt and remote audience of billions.
Since the pandemic canceled the originally scheduled version in 2020, the Japanese media have been obsessed with the Games. Will they really happen? If so, what will they look like? And the endlessly fascinating — shocking, really, to many here — prospect of staging an Olympics during what can seem like a slow-motion national disaster has permeated the society nearly as thoroughly as the virus.
“The mindset that the Olympics can be pushed through by force and that everyone should obey the order has invited this mess,” the Asahi newspaper said in a recent editorial. IOC and Japanese officials “should learn that their absurdity has deepened the public distrust in the Olympics.”
Of course, it’s too early to predict what, exactly, will happen when these cross-currents converge during the Games, as about 15,000 athletes and, by some estimates, nearly 70,000 officials, media and other participants insert themselves into the flow of Tokyo life in sequestered and limited, yet ubiquitous, ways.
Read:Tokyo's daily COVID-19 cases top 1000 for 3rd straight day
Will the normally hospitable Japanese people warm to the visitors or become increasingly infuriated as they watch fully vaccinated guests enjoy freedoms they haven’t experienced since early 2020? Will the Olympians and others play by the rules meant to protect the country they’re visiting? Will they bring in variants that will spread through Japan? Will the effort to vanquish the coronavirus be impeded?
One thing seems certain: These games will have far less of what the world has come to expect from the Olympics, with its attractive mixture of human competition at the highest level amid celebrations and cultural exchanges on the sidelines by fans, athletes and local people.
Usually, the Olympics are a vibrant time — a two-week party for a host city eager to show the world its charms. They teem with tourists and all the fun that an exotic locale and interesting visitors can bring. This go-round. though, will be strictly choreographed for TV, with the skeptical people of Japan largely isolated as yet another state of emergency places more constraints on their daily lives.
The story that foreign visitors focus on for these Games will also be very different from the reality on the nation’s streets.
Barring catastrophe, the IOC, local newspapers (many of which are also sponsors), Japanese TV, and rights holders like NBC will likely be unified in their message: Just getting through will be cast as a triumph.
Not many visiting journalists, however, will linger in ICUs or chase down interviews with angry residents who feel these Games were hoisted onto the nation so that the IOC could collect its billions in TV money.
Read:6 athletes to represent Bangladesh in Tokyo Olympics
More likely, there will be plenty of made-for-TV images of a tour-book version of Japan, one that mixes shots of ancient history, tradition and natural beauty with a high-tech, futuristic sensibility: Think of a sleek, silver bullet train, for instance, streaking past a snow-capped Mount Fuji. A reality, in other words, riddled with easy-to-digest cliches and predictable establishing shots.
As Tokyo grapples in coming weeks with the intrinsic oddness of these pandemic Olympics, the disconnect between sports and sickness, rhetoric and reality, visitor and local will be hard to miss for many here.
Just how a reluctant Japan will weather a high-risk experiment that might come to define the coronavirus pandemic in future years, however, must wait until the visitors pack up and go home. Only then will the true price that the host nation must pay for these Surreal Games come into focus.
With pandemic in mind, pared-back hajj in Mecca for 2nd year
Tens of thousands of vaccinated Muslim pilgrims circled Islam’s holiest site in Mecca on Sunday, but remained socially distanced and wore masks as the coronavirus takes its toll on the hajj for a second year running.
The hajj pilgrimage, which once drew some 2.5 million Muslims from all walks of life from across the globe, is now almost unrecognizable. It is being scaled back for the second year in a row due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The pared-down hajj prevents Muslims from outside Saudi Arabia from fulfilling an Islamic obligation and causes financial losses to Saudi Arabia which in pre-pandemic years took in billions of dollars as the custodian of the holy sites.
The Islamic pilgrimage lasts about five days, but traditionally Muslims begin arriving in Mecca weeks ahead of time. The hajj concludes with the Eid al-Adha celebration, marked by the distribution of meat to the poor around the world.
Read:Grand Mosque in Macca receives 1st batch of pilgrims as Hajj begins
This year, 60,000 vaccinated Saudi citizens or residents of Saudi Arabia have been allowed to perform the hajj due to continued concerns around the spread of the coronavirus. L ast year’s largely symbolic hajj saw fewer than 1,000 people from within the kingdom taking part.
It’s unclear when Saudi Arabia will play host again to millions of Muslims. The kingdom has no clear standard for a vaccine passport, vaccination rates are uneven in different countries and new variants of the virus are threatening the progress already made in some nations.
The kingdom’s Al Saud rulers have staked their legitimacy in large part on their custodianship of hajj sites, giving them a unique and powerful platform among Muslims around the world. The kingdom has gone to great lengths to ensure the annual hajj continues uninterrupted, despite changes caused by the pandemic.
Robots have been deployed to spray disinfectant around the cube-shaped Kaaba’s busiest walkways. The Kaaba is where the hajj pilgrimage begins and ends for most.
Saudi Arabia is also testing a smart bracelet this year in collaboration with the government’s artificial intelligence authority. The touchscreen bracelet resembles the Apple Watch and includes information on the hajj, a pilgrim’s oxygen levels and vaccine data and has an emergency feature to call for help.
Read: 2021 Hajj: Registrations limited to Saudi citizens, residents
International media outlets already present in the kingdom were permitted to cover the hajj from Mecca this year, but others were not granted permission to fly in as had been customary before the pandemic.
Cleaners are sanitizing the vast white marble spaces of the Grand Mosque that houses the Kaaba several times a day.
“We are sanitizing the floor and using disinfection liquids while cleaning it two or three times during (each) shift,” said Olis Gul, a cleaner who said he has been working in Mecca for 20 years.
The hajj is one of Islam’s most important requirements to be performed once in a lifetime. It follows a route the Prophet Muhammad walked nearly 1,400 years ago and is believed to ultimately trace the footsteps of the prophets Ibrahim and Ismail, or Abraham and Ishmael as they are named in the Bible.
The hajj is seen as a chance to wipe clean past sins and bring about greater unity among Muslims. The communal feeling of more than 2 million people from around the world — Shiite, Sunni and other Muslim sects — praying together, eating together and repenting together has long been part of what makes hajj both a challenging and a transformative experience.
There are questions around whether the hajj will be able to again draw such large numbers of faithful, with male pilgrims forming a sea of white in white terrycloth garments worn to symbolize the equality of mankind before God and women forgoing makeup and perfume to focus inwardly.
Read:Hajj pre-registration to continue throughout this year
Like last year, pilgrims will be drinking water from the holy Zamzam well in plastic bottles. They were given umrbellas to shield them from the sun. They have to carry their own prayer rugs and follow a strict schedule via a mobile app that informs them when they can be in certain areas to avoid crowding.
“I hope this is a successful hajj season,” said Egyptian pilgrim Aly Aboulnaga, a university lecturer in Saudi Arabia. “We ask God to accept everyone’s hajj and for the area to be open to greater numbers of pilgrims and for a return to an even better situation than before.”
Prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, the kingdom was working to vastly expand Mecca’s ability to host pilgrims with a $60-billion Grand Mosque expansion. On the mosque’s south side stands the 1,972-foot (600-meter) clock-tower skyscraper, part of a completed seven-tower complex that was built to accommodate wealthier pilgrims.
The kingdom, with a population of more than 30 million, has reported over half a million cases of the coronavirus, including more than 8,000 deaths. It has administered nearly 20 million doses of coronavirus vaccines, according to the World Health Organization.
Vietnam puts southern region in lockdown as surge grows
Vietnam put its entire southern region in a two-week lockdown starting midnight Sunday, as confirmed COVID-19 cases exceeded 3,000 for the third day in a row.
The lockdown order includes the Mekong Delta and Ho Chi Minh City metropolis, the country’s financial and economic hub with over 35 million people — nearly a third of Vietnam’s population.
Read:Covid-19: Government orders 66 crore vaccine doses worth RS 14,505 crore
Officials say they have to act as the number of infections reached nearly 50,000 since the outbreak reemerged at the end of April after several months of no cases being recorded. Most of the 225 COVID-19 dead — 190 of them — have occurred since April.
Ho Chi Minh City, the epicenter of the surge, had already announced a full lockdown a week ago, after dozens of cases were reported in late May. The city now accounts for most of the cases in the country with over 2,000 daily.
“The situation is getting serious with a high rate of transmission, especially with the dangerous delta variant. We have to put the health and safety of the people as top priority,” Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh was quoted as saying in announcing the restrictions.
Read:Vaccine deliveries rising as delta virus variant slams Asia
The government order bans all gatherings of more than two people in public places except for government offices, hospitals and a handful of essential businesses. People are requested to only leave home to buy necessities such as food, medicine, or for vital matters.
Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam, head of the country’s committee for COVID-19 pandemic prevention, said the lockdown order must be applied strictly since the latest wave has spread to 57 of the country’s 63 municipalities and provinces while the vaccine supply is still limited.
“We have to keep the transmission rate at the lowest possible to ensure the health system functions effectively and is not being overloaded,” Dam said.
Read:Malaysia shuts vaccination center after 204 staff infected
According to the Ministry of Health, Vietnam has received only about 6 million of the 124 million doses of vaccine it had secured through the U.N.-backed COVAX facility and in direct orders with vaccine manufactures.
Over 4 million people have received at least one dose. Vietnam aims to inoculate at least 70% of the population by the end of the year.
‘Titane’ wins top Cannes honor, 2nd ever for female director
Julia Ducournau’s “Titane,” a wild body-horror thriller featuring sex with a car and a surprisingly tender heart, won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, making Ducournau just the second female filmmaker to win the festival’s top honor in its 74 year history.
The win on Saturday was mistakenly announced by jury president Spike Lee at the top of the closing ceremony, broadcast in France on Canal+, unleashing a few moments of confusion. Ducournau, a French filmmaker, didn’t come to the stage to accept the award until the formal announcement at the end of the ceremony. But the early hint didn’t diminish from her emotional response.
“I’m sorry, I keep shaking my head,” said Ducournau, catching her breath. “Is this real? I don’t know why I’m speaking English right now because I’m French. This evening has been so perfect because it was not perfect.”
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After several false starts, Lee implored Sharon Stone to make the Palme d’Or announcement, explaining: “She’s not going to mess it up.” The problems started earlier when Lee was asked to say which prize would be awarded first. Instead, he announced the evening’s final prize, as fellow juror Mati Diop plunged her head into her hands and others rushed to stop him.
Lee, himself, spent several moments with his head in his hands before apologizing profusely for taking a lot of the suspense out of the evening.
“I have no excuses,” Lee told reporters afterward. “I messed up. I’m a big sports fan. It’s like the guy at the end of the game who misses the free throw.”
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“I messed up,” he added. “As simple as that.”
Ducournau’s win was a long-awaited triumph. The only previous female filmmaker to win Cannes’ top honor — among the most prestigious awards in cinema — was Jane Campion for “The Piano” in 1993. In recent years, frustration at Cannes’ gender parity has grown, including in 2018, when 82 women — including Agnes Varda, Cate Blanchett and Salma Hayek — protested gender inequality on the Cannes red carpet. Their number signified the movies by female directors selected to compete for the Palme d’Or — 82 compared to 1,645 films directed by men. This year, four out of 24 films up for the Palme were directed by women.
In 2019, another genre film — Bong Joon-Ho’s “Parasite” — took the Palme before going on to win best picture at the Academy Awards, too. That choice was said to be unanimous by the jury led by Alejandro González Iñárritu, but the award for “Titane” — an extremely violent film — this year’s jury said came out of a democratic process of conversation and debate. Juror Maggie Gyllenhaal said they didn’t agree unanimously on anything.
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“The world is passion,” said Lee. “Everyone was passionate about a particular film they wanted and we worked it out.”
In “Titane,” which like “Parasite” will be distributed in the U.S. by Neon, Agathe Rousselle plays a serial killer who flees home. As a child, a car accident leaves her with a titanium plate in her head and a strange bond with automobiles. In possibly the most-talked-about scene at the festival, she’s impregnated by a Cadillac. Lee called it a singular experience.
“This is the first film ever where a Cadillac impregnates a woman,” said Lee, who said he wanted to ask Ducournau what year the car was. “That’s genius and craziness together. Those two things often match up.”
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On stage, Ducournau thanked the jury “for letting the monsters in.” Afterward, she acknowledged to reporters her place in history, but also said she “can’t be boiled down to just being a woman.”
“Quite frankly, I hope that the prize I received has nothing to do with being a woman,” said Ducournau. “As I’m the second woman to receive this prize, I thought a lot about Jane Campion and how she felt when she won.”
More women will come after her, Ducournau said. “There will be a third, there will be a fourth, there will be a fifth.”
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Cannes’ closing ceremony capped 12 days of red-carpet premieres, regular COVID-19 testing for many attendees and the first major film festival to be held since the pandemic began in almost its usual form. With smaller crowds and mandated mask-wearing in theaters, Cannes pushed forward with an ambitious slate of global cinema. Last year’s festival was completely canceled by the pandemic.
The slate, assembled as a way to help stir movies after a year where movies shrank to smaller screens and red carpets grew cobwebs, was widely considered to be strong, and featured many leading international filmmakers. The awards were spread out widely.
The grand prize was split between Asghar Farhadi’s Iranian drama “A Hero” and Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen’s “Compartment No. 6.”
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Best director was awarded to Leos Carax for “Annette,” the fantastical musical starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard that opened the festival. The award was accepted by the musical duo Sparks, Ron and Russell Mael, who wrote the script and music for the film.
Jurors also split the jury prize. That was awarded to both Nadav Lapid’s “Ahed’s Knee,” an impassioned drama about creative freedom in modern Isreal; and to Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasthakul’s “Memoria,” a meditative film starring Tilda Swinton.
Caleb Landry Jones took home the best actor prize for his performance as an Australian mass killer in the fact-based “Nitram” by Justin Kurzel. Renate Reinsve won best actress for Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Best screenplay went to Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Drive My Car,” a Haruki Murakami adaptation he penned with Takamasa Oe.
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The Croatian coming-of-age drama “Murina,” by Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović, took the Camera d’Or award, a non-jury prize, for best first feature. Kusijanović was absent from the ceremony after giving birth a day earlier.
Lee was the first Black jury president at Cannes. His fellow jury members were: Gyllenhaal, Mélanie Laurent, Song Kang-ho, Tahar Rahim, Mati Diop, Jessica Hausner, Kleber Mendonça Filho and Mylène Farmer.
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Martine Moïse, wife of slain president, returns to Haiti
Martine Moïse, the wife of Haiti’s assassinated president who was injured in the July 7 attack at their private home, returned to the Caribbean nation on Saturday following her release from a Miami hospital.
Her arrival was unannounced and surprised many in the country of more than 11 million people still reeling from the killing of Jovenel Moïse in a raid authorities say involved Haitians, Haitian-Americans and former Colombian soldiers.
Martine Moïse disembarked the flight at the Port-au-Prince airport wearing a black dress, a black bulletproof jacket, a black face mask, and her right arm in a black sling as she slowly walked down the steps of what appeared to be a private plan one by one. She was greeted by Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph and other officials.
Read: Power vacuum rattles Haiti in wake of president’s killing
Earlier this week, she tweeted from the Miami hospital that she could not believe her husband, Jovenel Moïse, was gone “without saying a last word,” she wrote. “This pain will never pass.”
On Friday, government officials had announced that Jovenel Moïse’s funeral would be held on July 23 in the northern Haitian city of Cap-Haitien and that his wife is expected to attend.
She arrived hours after a key group of international diplomats on Saturday appeared to snub the man currently running Haiti by urging another politician, the designated prime minister, to form a government following Moïse’s killing.
Joseph has been leading Haiti with the backing of police and the military despite the fact that Moïse had announced his replacement a day before the president was killed.
Joseph and his allies argue that the designated successor, Ariel Henry, was never sworn in, though he pledged to work with him and with Joseph Lambert, the head of Haiti’s inactive Senate.
The statement was issued by the Core Group, which is composed of ambassadors from Germany, Brazil, Canada, Spain, the U.S., France, the European Union and representatives from the United Nations and the Organization of American States.
The group called for the creation of “a consensual and inclusive government.”
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“To this end, it strongly encourages the designated Prime Minister Ariel Henry to continue the mission entrusted to him to form such a government,” the group said.
U.S. officials could not be immediately reached for comment. A U.N. spokesman declined comment except to say that the U.N. is part of the group that issued the statement. Meanwhile, an OAS spokesman only said the following: “For the moment, there is nothing further to say other than what the statement says.”
Henry and spokespeople for Joseph did not immediately return messages for comment.
The group also asked that “all political, economic and civil society actors in the country fully support authorities in their efforts to restore security.”
Robert Fatton, a Haitian politics expert at the University of Virginia, said the statement is very confusing especially after the U.N. representative had said that Joseph was in charge.
“More confusion in a very confusing and bewildering situation,” he said.
The question of who should take over has been complicated by the fact Haiti’s parliament has not been functioning because a lack of elections meant most members’ terms had expired. And the head of the Supreme Court recently died of Covid-19.
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A day after the assassination, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price noted that Joseph was the incumbent in the position and was serving as acting prime minister before the assassination: “We continue to work with Claude Joseph as such,” he said.
On July 11, a delegation of representatives from the U.S. Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, and National Security Council traveled to Haiti. They reviewed critical infrastructure, talked with Haitian National Police and met with Joseph, Henry and Lambert in a joint meeting.
France: Thousands protest against vaccination, COVID passes
Over 100,000 people protested across France on Saturday against the government’s latest measures to push people to get vaccinated and curb rising infections by the delta variant of the coronavirus.
In Paris, separate protest marches by the far-right and the far-left wound through different parts of the city. Demonstrations were also held in Strasbourg in the east, Lille in the north, Montpellier in the south and elsewhere.
Thousands of people answered calls to take to the streets by Florian Philippot, a fringe far-right politician and former right hand of Marine Le Pen who announced earlier this month that he would run in the 2022 presidential election. Gathered a stone’s throw away from the Louvre Museum, protesters chanted “Macron, clear off!”, “Freedom,” and banged metal spoons on saucepans.
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While Philippot has organized small but regular protests against the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, Saturday’s demonstration drew a larger and more diverse crowd of people broadly disaffected with politics: yellow vest activists angry over perceived economic injustice, far-right supporters, medical staff and royalists.
They denounced the government’s decision on Monday to make vaccines compulsory for all health care workers, and to require a “health pass” proving people are fully vaccinated, have recently tested negative or recovered from the virus in order to access restaurants and other public venues. President Emmanuel Macron’s government is presenting a draft law Monday to enshrine the measures.
“I will never get vaccinated,” Bruno Auquier, a 53-year-old town councilor who lives on the outskirts of Paris. “People need to wake up,” he said, questioning the safety of the vaccine.
While France already requires several vaccinations to enter public school, Auquier pledged to take his two children out of school if the coronavirus vaccine became mandatory. “These new measures are the last straw,” Auquier said.
The government warned of the continued spread of the delta variant, which authorities fear could again put pressure on hospitals if not enough people are vaccinated against the virus. The pandemic has cost France more than 111,000 lives and deeply damaged the economy.
During a visit to a pop-up vaccination center in the southwest, Prime Minister Jean Castex exhorted the French to stick together in order to overcome the crisis.
“There is only one solution: vaccination,” he said, stressing it “protects us, and will make us freer.”
At the Paris protest, a manual worker in his sixties expressed bitterness about jobs in his sector sent offshore. A 24-year-old royalist said he was there to demand “the return of God and the King.”
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Lucien, a 28-year-old retail shop manager, said he wasn’t anti-vaccine, but thought that everyone should be able to do as they please with their own body. “The government is going too far,” he said. His 26-year-old friend Elise said, “I am vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus, and polio. But the COVID vaccine is just too experimental.”
While a majority of French health care workers have had at least one vaccine dose, some are resisting the government’s decision to make vaccination compulsory for all staff in medical facilities.
At Saturday’s Paris protest, a 39-year-old green party supporter and hospital laboratory worker said she might resort to buying a fake vaccination certificate to avoid losing her job. A health care worker dressed as the Statue of Liberty called it “act of violence” to force people to get vaccinated.
In Montpellier, more than 1,000 people marched to the train station, chanting “Liberty!” and carrying signs reading “Our kids aren’t Guinea pigs.” Security officials closed the main entrance to travelers and a dozen police officers took posts in front.
The Interior Ministry said 114,000 people took part in protests nationwide.
Overnight on Friday, vandals ransacked a vaccination center in the southeast. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin asked prefects and police chiefs to reinforce security for elected officials, after several complained they had received threats in recent days over the latest anti-COVID measures.
Vaccine hesitancy is considered widespread in France, though appears to have faded somewhat as 36 million French people have gotten coronavirus vaccine doses in recent months. Millions more have gotten injected or signed up for vaccinations since Monday’s announcement.
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French health care workers have until Sept. 15 to get vaccinated. The requirement for COVID passes for all restaurants, bars, hospitals, shopping malls, trains, planes and other venues is being introduced in stages starting Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the French government announced tightened border controls starting Sunday, but also said it would allow in travelers from anywhere in the world who have been fully vaccinated.
That now includes people who received AstraZeneca’s Indian-manufactured vaccine. The move came after a global outcry over the fact that the European Union’s COVID-19 certificate only recognizes AstraZeneca vaccines manufactured in Europe.