AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
Lockdowns mean millions of women can't reach birth control
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The callers were in tears. One by one, women in homes across rural Zimbabwe had a pleading question: When would family planning services return?
Lockdowns imposed to curb the coronavirus’ spread have put millions of women in Africa, Asia and elsewhere out of reach of birth control and other sexual and reproductive health needs. Confined to their homes with their husbands and others, they face unwanted pregnancies and little idea of when they can reach the outside world again.
In these uncertain times, women “have to lock down their uterus,” Abebe Shibru, Zimbabwe country director for Marie Stopes International, told The Associated Press. “But there is no way in a rural area.”
Eighteen countries in Africa have imposed national lockdowns, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. All but essential workers or those seeking food or health care must stay home for weeks, maybe longer. Rwanda, the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to impose a lockdown, has extended it for two weeks, a possible sign of things to come.
Even where family planning remains available, providers say many women fear venturing out and being beaten by security forces and accused of defying the new restrictions. Meanwhile, outreach services, the key to reaching rural women, have largely stopped to avoid drawing crowds and the risk of workers spreading the virus from one community to another.
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As outbreaks flatten in places, Japan, India see more cases
NEW YORK (AP) — Coronavirus infections are spiking in Japan and creating hot spots in India's congested cities just as the U.S. and some of the hardest-hit European countries are considering when to start easing restrictions that have helped curb their outbreaks of the disease.
Japan reported more than 500 new cases for the first time Thursday, a worrisome rise since it has the world's oldest population and COVID-19 can be especially serious in the elderly. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared a state of emergency, but not a lockdown, in Tokyo and six other prefectures earlier this week. Companies in the world's third-largest economy have been slow to embrace working from home, and many commuters were on Tokyo's streets as usual.
India, whose 1.3 billion people are under a lockdown until next week, has sealed dozens of hot spots in and around the capital, and will supply residents with food and medicine while not allowing them to leave. The number of confirmed cases exceeds 5,000, with 166 deaths, according to India’s Health Ministry.
Meanwhile, deaths, hospitalizations and new infections have been leveling off in places like Italy and Spain, which together have more than 30,000 deaths. Even New York has seen encouraging signs amid the gloom. At the same time, politicians and health officials warn that the crisis is far from over and a catastrophic second wave could hit if countries let down their guard too soon.
“We are flattening the curve because we are rigorous about social distancing,” New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. “But it’s not a time to be complacent. It’s not a time to do anything different than we’ve been doing.”
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HHS: Federal stocks of protective equipment nearly depleted
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Strategic National Stockpile is nearly out of the N95 respirators, surgical masks, face, shields, gowns and other medical supplies desperately needed to protect front-line medical workers treating coronavirus patients.
The Department of Health and Human Services told the Associated Press Wednesday that the federal stockpile was in the process of deploying all remaining personal protective equipment in its inventory.
The HHS statement confirms federal documents released Wednesday by the House Oversight and Reform Committee showing that about 90% of the personal protective equipment in the stockpile has been distributed to state and local governments.
HHS spokeswoman Katie McKeogh said the remaining 10% will be kept in reserve to support federal response efforts.
House Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney, D-N.Y., said in a statement that the Trump administration is leaving states to scour the open market for scarce supplies, often competing with each other and federal agencies in a chaotic bidding war that drives up prices.
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As pandemic deepens, Trump cycles through targets to blame
NEW YORK (AP) — First, it was the media that was at fault. Then, Democratic governors came under fire. China, President Barack Obama and federal watchdogs have all had a turn in the crosshairs. And now it’s the World Health Organization that's to blame.
President Donald Trump is falling back on a familiar political strategy as he grapples with the coronavirus pandemic: deflect, deny and direct blame elsewhere.
As he tries to distance his White House from the mounting death toll, Trump has cycled through a long list of possible scapegoats in an attempt to distract from what critics say were his own administration’s missteps in slowing the spread of the coronavirus on American shores.
The strategy relies on validation from supportive media personalities and Republicans, evoking White House tactics during other challenging times for Trump’s presidency. The effort is taking on more urgency during a once-in-a-century health crisis playing out just seven months before voters go to the polls.
The list of those Trump has blamed is lengthy, and shifting:
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Taiwan protests WHO leader's accusations of racist campaign
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwan's foreign ministry on Thursday strongly protested accusations from the head of the World Health Organization that it condoned racist personal attacks on him that he alleged were coming from the self-governing island democracy.
The ministry expressed “strong dissatisfaction and a high degree of regret" at WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus' remarks at a press briefing Wednesday. It requested he “immediately correct his unfounded allegations, immediately clarify, and apologize to our country.”
Taiwan’s 23 million people have themselves been “severely discriminated against” by the politics of the international health system and “condemn all forms of discrimination and injustice,” the statement said.
Taiwan is a "mature, highly sophisticated nation and could never instigate personal attacks on the director-general of the WHO, much less express racist sentiments," it said.
At the press briefing in Geneva, Tedros vocally defended himself and the U.N. health agency's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He accused Taiwan's foreign ministry of being linked to a months-long campaign against him and said that since the emergence of the new coronavirus, he has been personally attacked, including receiving at times, death threats and racist abuse.
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Biden vs. Trump: General election battle is now set
The stage is set for November.
Barring unforeseen disaster, Joe Biden will represent the Democratic Party against President Donald Trump this fall, the former vice president's place on the general election ballot cemented by Bernie Sanders' decision to end his campaign.
Biden likely won’t secure the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination until June. But without any Democratic rivals left, a general election campaign that will almost certainly be the most expensive and among the nastiest in U.S. history is underway.
“It won’t be easy. Nobody’s confused about that. But we are ready for the general election. We are ready for our standard-bearer,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez said. “I’m confident because Joe Biden's values reflect the values of the majority of the American people that we can win."
In Biden and Trump, voters will choose between two white septuagenarians with dramatically different prescriptions for health care, climate change, foreign policy and leadership in an era of extreme partisanship.
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Trump quietly shuts down asylum at US borders to fight virus
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A U.S. Border Patrol agent wouldn't let Jackeline Reyes explain why she and her 15-year-old daughter needed asylum, pointing to the coronavirus. That confrontation in Texas came just days after the Trump administration quietly shut down the nation's asylum system for the first time in decades in the name of public health.
“The agent told us about the virus and that we couldn't go further, but she didn't let us speak or anything,” said Reyes, 35, who was shuttled to a crossing March 24 in Reynosa, Mexico, a violent border city.
She tried to get home to crime-ridden Honduras despite learning her brother had been killed there and her mother and 7-year-old daughter had fled to the Nicaraguan border. But she was stuck in Mexico as the virus closed borders in Central America.
The U.S. government used an obscure public health law to justify one of its most aggressive border crackdowns ever. People fleeing violence and poverty to seek refuge in the U.S. are whisked to the nearest border crossing and returned to Mexico without a chance to apply for asylum. It eclipses President Donald Trump's other policies to curtail immigration — which often rely on help from Mexico — by setting aside decades-old national and international laws.
Mexico is again providing critical support. It's accepting not only Mexicans, but people from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras who accounted for well over half of all U.S. border arrests last year.
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'Houston, we’ve had a problem’: Remembering Apollo 13 at 50
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Apollo 13′s astronauts never gave a thought to their mission number as they blasted off for the moon 50 years ago. Even when their oxygen tank ruptured two days later — on April 13.
Jim Lovell and Fred Haise insist they’re not superstitious. They even use 13 in their email addresses.
As mission commander Lovell sees it, he's incredibly lucky. Not only did he survive NASA’s most harrowing moonshot, he’s around to mark its golden anniversary.
“I’m still alive. As long as I can keep breathing, I’m good,” Lovell, 92, said in an interview with The Associated Press from his Lake Forest, Illinois, home.
A half-century later, Apollo 13 is still considered Mission Control’s finest hour.
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103-year-old Italian says 'courage, faith' helped beat virus
ROME (AP) — To recover from the coronavirus, as she did, Ada Zanusso recommends courage and faith, the same qualities that have served her well in her nearly 104 years.
Italy, along with neighboring France, has Europe’s largest population of what has been dubbed the “super old" — people who are at least 100. As the nation with the world’s highest number of COVID-19 deaths, Italy is looking to its super-old survivors for inspiration.
“I’m well, I’m well,” Zanusso said Tuesday during a video call with The Associated Press from the Maria Grazia Residence for the elderly in Lessona, a town in the northern region of Piedmont. “I watch TV, read the newspapers.”
Zanusso wore a protective mask, as did her family doctor of 35 years beside her, Carla Furno Marchese, who also donned eyewear and a gown that covered her head.
Asked about her illness, Zanusso is modest: “I had some fever.”
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Dubai allows alcohol home delivery as virus shuts down bars
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The Champagne corks no longer pop at Dubai's infamous alcohol-soaked brunches. The blaring flat-screen televisions stand silent in the sheikhdom's sports bars. And the city-state's pubs have shrink-wrapped their now-idle beer taps.
This skyscraper-studded desert metropolis on the Arabian Peninsula has long been one of the wettest places in the Mideast in terms of alcohol consumption, its bars and licensed restaurants serving tourists, travelers and its vast population of foreign workers.
Up until the global coronavirus pandemic, that is. With the virus now threatening a crucial source of tax and general revenue for its rulers, Dubai's two major alcohol distributors have partnered to offer home delivery of beer, spirits and wine, yet another loosening of social mores in this Islamic city-state.
“Luxury hotels and bars have been the worse impacted within the sector and this had a direct impact on the alcohol consumption ... in the United Arab Emirates,” said Rabia Yasmeen, an analyst for market research firm Euromonitor International.
Maritime and Mercantile International, a subsidiary of the government-owned Emirates airline known as MMI, and African & Eastern partnered to create the website offering home delivery. Its products range from a $530 bottle of Don Julio 1942 Tequila to a $4.30 bottle of Indian blended whiskey, with beers and wines in between.