Coronavirus: America’s ‘essential’ farmworkers fearful as Covid-19 infections rise
Andrew Buncombe travels to Yakima Valley in Washington state to meet the farmers and immigrant labourers risking their lives to keep America fed during the pandemicAndrew BuncombeWapato
Standing amid lines of wire fencing that soon should be laden with hazelnuts, Jose Louis Jimenez was careful to keep some distance from his fellow workers.
The company had provided them gloves and masks, but while standing at such a distance from other people, he did not feel the need to wear one now.
Not that he was taking the threat of coronavirus lightly. Officials recently revealed at least 70 farmworkers in Yakima County had tested positive for the disease, and the 56-year-old knew two people who had died – both of them men who owned stores in the valley.
How the face mask became the world's most coveted commodity
The global scramble for this vital item has exposed the harsh realities of international politics and the limits of the free market. By Samanth SubramanianTue 28 Apr 2020 06.00 BST
If Ovidiu Olea is astonished by the fact that he’s gone from being a finance guy to a mask mogul in four months, he shows no sign of it. The transition started innocuously. Late in January, when the coronavirus spread beyond Wuhan, Olea decided he would buy masks for his staff. He lives in Hong Kong, where he runs a payment technology firm. His staff isn’t large – just 20 employees – but finding even a few hundred masks proved hard. Part of the problem was that last year, after protesters in Hong Kong used masks to hide their identity, the Chinese government restricted supplies from the mainland. Before the pandemic, half the world’s masks were manufactured in China; now, with production there shifting into overdrive, that figure may be as high as 85%. If China isn’t sending you masks, you likely aren’t getting any at all. We have no masks, local pharmacies told Olea, but if you find some, we’ll buy them from you.
Will Covid-19 end the age of Big Oil?
by Nafeez Ahmed
US oil prices have dropped below zero for the first time in history. The crisis is a direct consequence of the sudden slump in economic demand as the world locks down due to the Covid-19 pandemic. But given the likely duration of our economic woes, this could well be the beginning of the end for the age of oil.
The global oil crisis is laying bare structural vulnerabilities in the hydrocarbon energy system — and industrial civilization — that Big Oil has obscured for decades. Seven years ago, I wrote in detail about some of those structural vulnerabilities: ‘The shale gas revolution was meant to bring lasting prosperity,’ I warned. ‘But the result of the gas glut may be just a bubble, producing no more than a temporary recovery that masks deep structural instability.’
Extreme weather disasters and wars displace millions
Forced from their homes by floods, storms and wars, millions of internally displaced people are now at risk of a pandemic.
Extreme weather displaced 24 million people within their countries in 2019, with conflict and other disasters driving a further 9.5 million from their homes, according to a report published Tuesday by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC).
Floods and storms — particularly cyclones, typhoons and hurricanes — displaced 10 million and 13 million people respectively, with wildfires, droughts, landslides and temperature extremes contributing to another 900,000 displacements. About one million people fled volcanoes and earthquakes.
China is installing surveillance cameras outside people's front doors ... and sometimes inside their homes
Updated 1142 GMT (1942 HKT) April 28, 2020
The morning after Ian Lahiffe returned to Beijing, he found a surveillance camera being mounted on the wall outside his apartment door. Its lens was pointing right at him.
After a trip to southern China, the 34-year-old Irish expat and his family were starting their two-week home quarantine, a mandatory measure enforced by the Beijing government to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus.
He said he opened the door as the camera was being installed, without warning.
Kim Jong-un: Who might lead N Korea without Kim?
Speculation and rumour about Kim Jong-un's health may amount to nothing, but questions about who might succeed him in the short or long term will always be there. The BBC spoke to analysts about the contenders and whether history is on their side.
A male member of the Kim family has been in charge of North Korea ever since its founding by Kim Il-sung in 1948 - and the mythology of this family runs deep throughout society.
Propaganda about its greatness begins for citizens before they can even read: pre-schoolers sing a song called: "I want to see our leader Kim Jong-un."
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