World News Briefs For Friday, 31 January 2020
Hello Australia!! - The Wuhan Coronavirus is now a Global Emergency - Australia races to create the cure for 2019-nCoV - Argentina goes to work repairing the damage of austerity - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:
The UN World Heath Organization (WHO) has (finally) declared a global health emergency over the 2019-nCoV Wuhan Novel Coronavirus, which continued to spread weeks after first appearing in Wuhan City, China. "The main reason is not what is happening in China but what is happening in other countries," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Australia is now up to nine confirmed infections. The United States has confirmed its first person-to-person transmission: The Chicago-area woman who was hospitalized after traveling to Wuhan gave it to her husband, who didn't accompany her on that trip. Thanks for the souvenir, Honey! So far, all of the 170 deaths have occurred in China, but doctors are most concerned about what might happen when the virus hits a country with a health care system even weaker than America's.
The 2019-nCoV coronavirus grown in a Melbourne lab - the first time outside China - has been transferred to CSIRO's high-security site in Geelong, which also houses some of the world's most deadly viruses such as Ebola, Zika, and SARS. "By having the live virus, we can test the antivirals in a test tube, which means we can get some idea of which ones might be working against this virus and which ones to take forward into trials," said Professor Bill Rawlinson from NSW Health Pathology and the University of New South Wales. Other research going on in Oz, the University of Queensland is racing to develop a vaccine within 16 weeks.
More than 6,000 passengers and crew are trapped aboard a cruise ship docked off Italy, because two of the passengers might have the coronavirus. The couple is Chinese and are being held in isolation - the Costa Smeralda cruise ship is being held in the port of Civitavecchia, north of Rome, with those on board barred by nervous Italian officials from disembarking.
Police in India arrested a 17-year old suspect for allegedly firing a handgun at a protest rally against India's new citizenship law near the Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) university in capital New Delhi. At least eight people were hurt. The gunman shouted as shots rang out, while police and media watched the whole thing. The Citizenship Amendment Act, which fast-tracks Indian citizenship for minorities from three neighboring countries as long as they're not Muslim, has been the subject of nationwide protests by those who say it is immoral and violates India's secular constitution.
Russian warplanes helping Syrian forces bombed one of the last rebel areas in Idlib, killing at least ten civilians in the waning days of the Syrian Civil War, which has been running for eight years and ten months.
Argentina's new Leftist government has begun distributing food cards to low income people to fight malnutrition. Extreme poverty and food insecurity had been eliminated or greatly reduced on Argentina during the Leftist presidencies of Nastor Kirchner and his wife Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (CFK) from 2003 through 2015. But these problems came roaring back during the conservative Mauricio Macri years, due to his widely loathed austerity policies. Now with CFK as vice president and making up for lost time, the government of President Alberto Fernandez (no relation to his VP) is giving between US$50 and $90 a month to the people passed over my Macri so they could buy certain food items. Macri has left the country in an economic crisis and the two Fernandez are gearing up to restructure about US$100 Billion in debt.