France broke a single-day record for the largest number of new coronavirus cases Saturday as the country grapples with a resurgence of the disease.
Data from the French Ministry of Health updated Saturday showed that there have been a total of 719,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country since the start of the pandemic, an over 26,896 case jump in the total since the previous day.
There were also 54 more deaths, for a total of 32,684.
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France is currently grappling with a new rise in coronavirus cases, leading the Health Ministry this week to order Lyons, the country’s third largest city, to close its bars.
Paris’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been heavily criticized by health care workers, who say the government’s roughly $10 billion investment in the hospital system has not been enough.
The country is facing a potential shortage of ICU beds, though when confronted by protesters, President Emmanuel MacronEmmanuel Jean-Michel MacronFrance breaks single-day record with large coronavirus case surge Lebanon’s prime minister-designate resigns Navalny released from hospital after suspected poisoning MORE dismissed concerns over resources or staffing, saying the country situation is “a question of organization,” according to The Associated Press.
As Syrian refugees displaced to Jordan plunge into a “deepening humanitarian crisis,” rife with unlivable conditions and abject poverty, the international community must not turn away from their plight, urges a report released Wednesday by the United Nations.
The study, based on UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) survey information collected from 41,976 Syrian refugee households in Jordan between January and June 2014, finds that two-thirds of this population is living below the absolute poverty line of $96 per person per month, with one in six trapped in absolute poverty with a budget of $1.30 per day.
Approximately 620,000 Syrian refugees are registered as living in Jordan, 84 percent of them outside of official refugee camps. When interviewed, nearly half of respondents said their living conditions are bad or uninhabitable, with 46 percent of households reporting no heating and 20 percent saying they have no functioning toilet.
Many displaced Syrians in Jordan have been forced to take their children out of school, sell their jewelry, borrow money, reduce food consumption, and live with other refugees to get by. The longer the displacement, the deeper the poverty, the report finds.
“Life as a Syrian refugee in Jordan is like being in quick sand,” said one respondent, identified as Mohammad, a father of four. “Whenever I move, I sink a little bit further.”
António Guterres, head of UNHCR, issued an urgent appeal for more global assistance.
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“Unless the international community increases its support to refugees, families will opt for ever more drastic coping strategies. More children will drop out of school to work and more women will be at risk of exploitation, including survival sex,” said Guterres, speaking from Jordan.
However, wealthy nations, including the United States, have been slow to respond to the crisis. The United States has taken in a mere 300 refugees so far, according to a New York Times article published last month, compared to the 3.8 million Syrian refugees absorbed by Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt.
Furthermore, according to a September 2014 report by the charity Oxfam, wealthy nations, especially the United States, are failing to provide their “fair share” in funds for resettlement and aid to Syrian people.
The UNHCR report on Jordan follows warnings from the United Nations Children’s Fund issued Tuesday that “at least seven million internally displaced and refugee children are in desperate need of assistance as bitter winter snows and torrential rains continue to batter the Middle East.”
As of Tuesday, at least six children in the region had lost their lives to extreme winter weather.
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Braving snow and blizzard warnings, health, labor and environmental activists rallied outside a New York City hotel on Monday where industry leaders met with international trade representatives to commence the “final negotiations” over the secret text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Leading the protest and carrying signs that read “Hands Off Our Medicine,” protesters with health groups Doctors Without Borders and Health Global Access Project (GAP) warned that the TPP will undermine efforts to ensure access to affordable, life-saving medicines in both the United States and abroad.
Roughly one hundred people, including the Teamsters and the Raging Grannies, joined the health activists in chanting “Derail Fast Track,” in reference to the Administration’s push to pass the agreement quickly without Congressional interference.
“The TPP would create a vicious cycle. The provisions currently proposed will allow for fracking and other practices that fuel environmental degradation and make people sick. Strengthened intellectual property rules will then prevent people from accessing life- saving medicines,” said Michael Tikili, national field organizer for Health GAP, in a press statement. “Thirteen million people living with HIV depend on generic AIDS medicines and another 20-plus million are waiting line for treatment. By protecting Pharma’s bloated profits, the Obama administration is undermining its own global AIDS initiative—this isn’t a trade agreement—it’s a death pact.”
“By protecting Pharma’s bloated profits, the Obama administration is undermining its own global AIDS initiative—this isn’t a trade agreement—it’s a death pact.” —Michael Tikili, Health GAP
As Tikili further explained to Common Dreams, national efforts to end epidemics such as HIV and Hepititis C are being thwarted by the prospective trade laws which would threaten generic manufacturers in countries with patent suits. For instance, Tikili says, the U.S. government says it is “going to war on HIV” while at the same time pushing laws that limit drug production and access in certain countries.
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“It is a public health issue, a global health issue,” Tikili said. “Countries are trying to fight epidemics and this really limits that. It puts the process over people.”
Most of the agreement details have been so kept in the shadows that many members of Congress have not seen the text. What little is known has been revealed through leaks.
According to Health GAP, leaked drafts of the TPP revealed that the U.S. is seeking stronger, longer, and more accessible patent monopolies on medicines and new monopolies on drug regulatory data that would prevent marketing of more affordable generic equivalents. The TPP will reportedly also place some of the “most severe intellectual property rules ever demanded in international trade,” including strict price control measures and enhanced investor rights that would permit Big Pharma to sue governments when they expect profits will be undermined by government policy.
After the rally, protesters reportedly marched to the office of Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to call on the lawmaker to oppose Fast Track authorization and demand to see the the contents of the agreement.
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Though unsubstantiated, the Islamic State (ISIS) claimed on Friday that a female U.S. hostage, named as Kayla Jean Mueller, was killed in during a bombing raid on Syrian targets by the Jordanian military.
As the Guardian reports:
Mueller, originally from Prescott, Arizona, was allegedly kidnapped by ISIS fighters in August 2013 after leaving a hospital run by the Spanish branch of Medecins San Frontieres in the Syrian city of Aleppo.
In the statement posted to social media, those appearing to speak on behalf ISIS said that nobody but Mueller was killed in the attack, stating, “The criminal crusader coalition planes targeted sites outside Raqqa city today at noon time while people were performing Friday prayers… The raids continued on the same site for more than an hour. God has disappointed their endeavours and foiled their plot by not hitting any jihadi man thank God.”
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According to the Associated Press:
Despite not knowing the veracity of Friday’s claims, the tensions surrounding the U.S.-led war on ISIS have intensified following the release of a video earlier this week showing the execution a Jordanian pilot and Jordan’s subsequent retribution which included the execution of two alleged ISIS allies and new airstrikes that began on Thursday. As Common Dreams reported on Thursday, the threat of wider war continues to increase as the bombing raids continue, ground battles drag on, and escalations flourishing on all sides.
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The Nobel Peace Prize is failing to reflect the work Alfred Nobel intended to honor, while legitimate recipients have been rendered invisible, a watchdog group has charged.
The Nobel Peace Prize Watch, a project of the Sweden based Lay Down Your Arms Association, outlined its concerns in a letter (pdf) to the Nobel Foundation, Norwegian Nobel Committee and Parliament of Norway, stating that it was necessary “to ensure that the prize will really, as Nobel intended, ‘confer the greatest benefit’ on all citizens of the world.”
The letter was sent less than two weeks ahead of Tuesday’s announcement that the Norwegian Nobel Committee was demoting its head, Thorbjørn Jagland, whose six-year tenure included controversial awardings of the prize to President Barack Obama and the European Union.
That committee selects the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, and is made up of five members appointed by the Norwegian Parliament (Storting).
Agence France-Presse reports that the change “means the committee will be steered by a majority of right-wing politicians.”
But Nobel Peace Prize Watch states that the selection process was already fundamentally flawed.
From their letter:
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The letter goes on to state that recent history has shown an “unfortunate development” in the prize, citing Obama’s win in 2009 despite his engaging military interventions and failing to reduce the nuclear weapons stockpile, and the 2012 awarding of the prize to EU leaders, who followed up their win with further investment in militarism. The letter also calls out the 2014 prize to Malala Yousafzai, stating that the committee championed her education activism while ignoring her speaking out against militarism and drone warfare.
Such wins stand in stark contrast to what Alfred Nobel wanted the prize to honor, the group states. “The prize has changed towards near total disregard of the purpose in the last decade,” they write. “Nobel wished to support the movement and the persons who work for a demilitarized world, for law to replace power in international politics, and for all nations to commit to cooperating on the elimination of all weapons instead of competing for military superiority.”
If Committee members fails to honor the real intention of the prize, “they should resign” the letter states.
But true peace champions—legitimate recipients—do exist, the letter states; the problem is that the “Committee keeps them invisible by not giving them the prize.”
The group urges the Committee to scrap the undemocratic secrecy surrounding the nominee process, adding: “It is unlikely that the prize could have strayed so far from its purpose if the process had been transparent.”
The letter recommends the Parliament of Norway fully evaluate whether it has given seats to Committee members who truly believe in a weapons-fee world.
Nobel Peace Prize Watch offers a tentative list of what is says are “true Nobel candidates” for 2015, including NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and David Krieger, co-founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
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In a landmark admission, the U.K. government conceded on Wednesday that British intelligence agencies have been illegally spying on private communications between lawyers and clients for the past five years.
According to the Guardian, the government’s admission that it violated human rights law is “a severe embarrassment.”
“In view of recent IPT judgments, we acknowledge that the policies adopted since [January] 2010 have not fully met the requirements of the ECHR, specifically article 8 (right to privacy),” a government spokesperson stated on Wednesday. “This includes a requirement that safeguards are made sufficiently public.”
The announcement follows several recent legal developments in the high-profile torture case of Libyan political activist Abdelhakim Belhadj, one of the surveillance targets.
Belhadj is suing several British intelligence agencies—including MI-5 and MI-6—for their alleged role, along with the CIA, in his and his wife’s rendition, imprisonment, and torture by then-Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi’s forces, from 2004 to 2010. His wife, Fatima Boudchar, was pregnant at the time of their kidnapping.
In October, Britain’s Court of Appeal ruled that Belhadj’s case must be heard, despite attempts by the U.K. government to throw the case out on the grounds that it might damage the country’s diplomatic relations with the U.S.
A month later, the government was forced to disclose secret GCHQ, MI-6, and MI-5 policies advising intelligence staff to “target the communications of lawyers” and use legally privileged material “just like any other item of intelligence.” “The government has been caught red-handed. The security agencies have been illegally intercepting privileged material and are continuing to do so—this could mean they’ve been spying on the very people challenging them in court.” — Rachel Logan, Amnesty UK
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On Wednesday, the government admitted its human rights violations with a caveat. “It does not mean that there was any deliberate wrongdoing on their part of the security and intelligence agencies, which have always taken their obligations to protect legally privileged material extremely seriously,” the spokesperson stated. “Nor does it mean that any of the agencies’ activities have prejudiced or in any way resulted in an abuse of process in any civil or criminal proceedings.”
Cori Crider, director of legal charity Reprieve and one of Belhadj’s lawyers, said in response to the government’s statement, “By allowing the intelligence agencies free rein to spy on communications between lawyers and their clients, the Government has endangered the fundamental British right to a fair trial… they have violated a right that is centuries old in British common law.
“Worryingly, it looks very much like they have collected the private lawyer-client communications of two victims of rendition and torture, and possibly misused them,” Crider continued. “While the government says there was no ‘deliberate’ collection of material, it’s abundantly clear that private material was collected and may well have been passed on to lawyers or ministers involved” in Belhadj’s case.
Rachel Logan, legal director at Amnesty U.K., added, “We are talking about nothing less than the violation of a fundamental principle of the rule of law—that communications between a lawyer and their client must be confidential.”
“The government has been caught red-handed. The security agencies have been illegally intercepting privileged material and are continuing to do so—this could mean they’ve been spying on the very people challenging them in court,” Logan continued.
Despite its confession on Wednesday, the U.K. government refused to confirm or deny whether the agencies named in the lawsuit had conspired to kidnap and render Belhadj and Boudchar.
“Only time will tell how badly their case was tainted,” Crider continued. “But right now, the Government needs urgently to investigate how things went wrong and come clean about what it is doing to repair the damage.”
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Amid ongoing Saudi-led airstrikes—including a bombing Friday that killed at least nine people from the same Yemeni family—the United Nations is considering calls for a ceasefire in Yemen to allow urgent humanitarian aid deliveries and evacuation of civilians.
And on Sunday, Reuters cited a senior Houthi member who said the Houthis “are ready to sit down for peace talks as long as a Saudi-led air campaign is halted and the negotiations are overseen by ‘non-aggressive’ parties.”
Warplanes and ships from a Saudi-led coalition have been bombing the Iran-allied Houthi forces for 11 days.
However, as Juan Cole notes, the airstrikes “have repeatedly hit civilian neighborhoods in cities like Sanaa and have, intentionally or no, struck soft targets of no obvious military value, including a refugee camp.”
Hundreds have reportedly died, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, in its appeal for an immediate “humanitarian pause,” described harrowing conditions for civilians.
The Red Cross said, “hospitals and clinics treating the streams of wounded from across much of Yemen are running low on life-saving medicines and equipment. In many parts of the country, the population is also suffering from fuel and water shortages, while food stocks are quickly depleting. Dozens of people are being killed and wounded every day. The streets of Aden are strewn with dead bodies, and people are afraid to leave their homes.”
Summer Nasser, a human rights activist and blogger in Aden, told Al Jazeera that it seemed the humanitarian crisis in that city “is actually getting worse by the hour.”
If relief supplies and medical personnel are unable to reach affected areas, Robert Mardini, head of Red Cross operations in the Near and Middle East, warned that “many more will die.”
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Russia similarly appealed to the United Nations Security Council, pressing for suspensions of the airstrikes to allow evacuation of foreign civilians and diplomats and demanding rapid and unhindered humanitarian access. The council met Saturday in New York to consider the proposal, but made no decisions. Click Here: NRL Telstra Premiership
BBC reports that the council’s president, Dina Kawar, who is also Jordan’s UN ambassador, said members needed time to “reflect on the proposal.”
According to Al Jazeera:
Meanwhile, the Guardian reported that three Arab-American advocacy groups—The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus (ALC)—have created StuckInYemen.com as part of a campaign to highlight the plight of Yemeni Americans, currently trapped in the war-torn country, who fear they have been abandoned by their own government.
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Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) on Wednesday announced his endorsement to lead the Democratic National Committee (DNC), backing a lesser-known candidate instead of the two most prominent names in the race.
O’Malley told Politico he’s supporting South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg to be DNC chairman. The top two players in the race are Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and former Labor Secretary Tom Perez.
O’Malley said he’s known Buttigieg for many years, calling him “one of those new, up-and-coming leaders in our country and in our party that’s really bringing forward a new and better way of governing.”
Click Here: los jaguares argentina“He speaks with a clarity that our party really, really needs right now. He has been successful in a so-called red state; he brings to the public service of being mayor and the background of having served in our armed forces. ADVERTISEMENT”Our party sometimes talks about bringing forward a new generation of leadership. Well, hey, man, there’s never been a better time.” Buttigieg has built little momentum in the DNC race, which has been seen as a de facto showdown between the progressive Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersThe Hill’s 12:30 Report: Milley apologizes for church photo-op Harris grapples with defund the police movement amid veep talk Biden courts younger voters — who have been a weakness MORE (I-Vt.) wing of the party and the establishment wing. Ellison was an early backer of Sanders’s presidential bid last year, while Perez was a close ally of former President Obama and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonWhite House accuses Biden of pushing ‘conspiracy theories’ with Trump election claim Biden courts younger voters — who have been a weakness Trayvon Martin’s mother Sybrina Fulton qualifies to run for county commissioner in Florida MORE.
“It shouldn’t be about what faction of the losing party you were in in this last election,” O’Malley said. “Who cares?”
The Trump administration on Wednesday filed an emergency request to the Supreme Court seeking to halt the 2020 census count.
The filing comes hours after a California-based U.S. appeals court denied a similar request from the administration to reverse a lower court’s order requiring the count to continue through October, rather than reinstate the administration’s since-passed Oct. 5 deadline.
The administration told the justices that the shorter window is necessary to allow the Commerce Department to wrap up operations in time to meet its end of year deadline to report the results to the White House.
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But critics say the move risks undercounting minority populations composed of both legal and undocumented immigrants.
Earlier Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit denied the administration’s appeal of the district judge’s order that extended the census deadline through Oct. 31.
The panel wrote that failure to meet the Dec. 31 reporting deadline was unlikely to invalidate the numbers delivered to President TrumpDonald John TrumpFive takeaways from the vice presidential debate Harris accuses Trump of promoting voter suppression Pence targets Biden over ISIS hostages, brings family of executed aid worker to debate MORE.
The appeals court also left open the option of Congress passing an extension if the numbers are delivered after the deadline. Congress took similar steps in the census counts conducted for three decades in the 19th century.
The administration has continued its push to exclude undocumented immigrants from the count, despite a Supreme Court ruling that blocked the administration from including a question on the census about the recipient’s legal status in the U.S.
Writer E. Jean Carroll’s attorneys moved to block the Department of Justice (DOJ) from intervening in her defamation lawsuit against President TrumpDonald John TrumpState Department revokes visa of Giuliani-linked Ukrainian ally: report White House Gift Shop selling ‘Trump Defeats COVID’ commemorative coin Biden says he should not have called Trump a clown in first debate MORE through a Monday motion.
Carroll’s lawyers Roberta Kaplan and Joshua Matz countered the DOJ’s request from last month to defend the president through a motion to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Carroll has accused the president of raping her in the 1990s and sued Trump for defamation in November after he responded to the allegations by denying knowing her.
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In Monday’s filing, the attorneys rejected the DOJ’s assertion that the president was “acting within the scope of his office” when he said he didn’t know her and denied her rape allegations.
“There is not a single person in the United States — not the President and not anyone else — whose job description includes slandering women they sexually assaulted,” the lawyers wrote.
They labeled the DOJ’s move as “another stratagem” for Trump to “avoid accountability,” noting the president has claimed parts of his actions while in office, such as his tweets and business deals, were private, while other actions like comments on Carroll are considered part of his public role.
“The Justice Department intervened to shield Trump from legal accountability only after his state court stall tactics, procedural gambits, and assertions of immunity were all rejected,” the lawyers wrote.
“Only in a world gone mad,” they added, “could it somehow be presidential, not personal, for Trump to slander a woman who he sexually assaulted.”
The White House deferred comment to the DOJ, which did not immediately return a request for comment.
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Last month, the Justice Department made the unusual move of requesting to replace Trump’s private lawyers and move Carroll’s defamation case to federal court, saying Trump was acting in his official presidential capacity when commenting on the writer.
The action came after a New York judge ruled that Carroll’s defamation case could continue in the court after the president’s legal team repeatedly tried to delay the suit.
Attorney General William BarrBill BarrMan who conspired with 9/11 hijackers sues Trump and US officials alleging ‘cover up’ Barr reverses, will quarantine for several days after potential coronavirus exposure Doctors, White House staff offer conflicting messages on president’s health MOREdefended the department’s actions during a press conference last month, calling the case law “crystal clear.” He later said the White House directed the DOJ’s action.
“The little tempest that’s going on is largely because of the bizarre political environment in which we live,” he said.
If the court accepts the DOJ’s request, “Carroll’s complaint would be effectively dismissed,” The New York Times reported.
Carroll, a columnist for Elle magazine, wrote in her 2019 memoir that Trump raped her almost 30 years ago in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store. The president has denied the allegations.
She has requested a DNA sample from Trump to see if it is linked to material on a dress she said she wore during the alleged assault.
More than a dozen women have accused the president of sexual misconduct before he was elected, which Trump has denied.