Six In The Morning Monday 10 May 2021

 

Fauci joins calls for nationwide lockdown to contain India's Covid crisis

By Helen Regan, Swati Gupta and Manveena Suri, CNN

Updated 0828 GMT (1628 HKT) May 10, 2021

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is under increasing pressure to impose a nationwide lockdown as the country grapples with the world's worst Covid-19 outbreak.

On Monday, India reported 366,161 new cases, its health ministry said -- the first time daily infections have dipped below 400,000 since May 6. Its total caseload is now more than 22 million since the pandemic began.

The health ministry also reported an additional 3,754 virus-related deaths on Monday, after two consecutive days of reporting more than 4,000 fatalities. The country has now recorded 246,116 total Covid-19 deaths -- among the highest in the world -- with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington estimating that by August, India may have reached 1 million deaths.

Dozens of suspected Covid victims wash up on Ganges River banks

Locals believe bodies were dumped in river because cremation sites are overwhelmed

Agence France-Presse in New Delhi

Mon 10 May 2021 15.42 BST

Dozens of bodies believed to be Covid-19 victims have washed up on the banks of the Ganges River in northern India as the pandemic spreads into India’s vast rural hinterland, overwhelming local health facilities as well as crematoriums and cemeteries.

Local official Ashok Kumar said that about 40 corpses washed up in Buxar district near the border between Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, two of India’s poorest states.

“We have directed concerned officials to dispose of all bodies, to either bury or cremate them,” Kumar told AFP.

Agent Orange: French court rejects claim against Bayer

A French woman of Vietnamese origin took multinational companies to court over the production and supply of the highly toxic defoliant used in the Vietnam War by the US.

A French court on Monday ruled a complaint against 14 firms over the production or sale of  the highly toxic Agent Orange defoliant to the United States during the Vietnam War was "inadmissible."

The court in the Paris suburb of Evry said it did not have the jurisdiction to judge a case involving the wartime actions of the US government, the ruling said.

The case was brought forward by Tran To Nga, a French woman of Vietnamese origin. The defendants included US agrochemical firm Monsanto, now owned by German giant Bayer. 

Suga says he has never put Olympics first and that IOC has final say

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said on Monday that he has never "put the Olympics first", the same day an opinion poll showed nearly 60% of people in Japan want the Olympics canceled less than three months before they begin.

Japan has extended a state of emergency in Tokyo until the end of May and is struggling to contain a surge in COVID-19 cases, raising further questions about whether the Games should go on. Its vaccination rate is the lowest among wealthy nations.

International Olympic officials, Tokyo planners and Suga himself have insisted the Games will go on in "a safe and secure" way. Foreign spectators have been barred and planners issued an elaborate playbook of rules last month aimed at preventing coronavirus infections.

China Targets Muslim Women in Push to Suppress Births in Xinjiang

Amy Qin

Mon, May 10, 2021

When the government ordered women in her mostly Muslim community to be fitted with contraceptive devices, Qelbinur Sedik pleaded for an exemption. She was nearly 50 years old, she told officials in Xinjiang. She had obeyed the government’s birth limits and had only one child.

It was no use. The workers threatened to take her to the police if she continued resisting, she said. She gave in and went to a government clinic where a doctor, using metal forceps, inserted an intrauterine device to prevent pregnancy. She wept through the procedure.

“I felt like I was no longer a normal woman,” Sedik said, choking up as she described the 2017 ordeal. “Like I was missing something.”

French soldiers accuse government of trying to ‘silence’ warnings of civil war

Second letter from military staff says threat of punishment ‘quite perverse’ and repeats: ‘Civil war is brewing in France’

Kim Willsher in Paris

Mon 10 May 2021 11.04 BST

Serving members of the French military have fired a second salvo at Emmanuel Macron’s government in an open letter accusing it of “cowardice, deceit, perversion”, just weeks after a first letter said the country was heading for “civil war”.

Like the first letter, it appears in the rightwing magazine Valeurs Actuelles. It was reportedly signed anonymously “by active military personnel” and is appended with a petition on the magazine’s website for others to sign.

The letter’s signatories refer to the seventh verse of La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, that refers to the “avenging” slain elders or following them to “their coffins”.