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King’s
College at Cambridge. Other universities are also backing away from
in-person classes: In Canada, McGill University said it will offer most
of its courses online in the fall.Credit...Tom Jamieson for The New York Times
Cambridge University announces that it will hold all lectures online for the next academic year.
Cambridge
University on Tuesday became the first British university to move all
student lectures online for the entire upcoming academic year,
underscoring the far-reaching changes the coronavirus is forcing on
higher education institutions around the world.
The
800-year-old university said in a statement that it was “likely that
social distancing will continue to be required” during the next academic
year, which begins in October and concludes in the summer of 2021. The
university said that the decision will be reviewed if official
coronavirus guidance changes.
“Lectures
will continue to be made available online and it may be possible to
host smaller teaching groups in person, as long as this conforms to
social distancing requirements,” the university said.
That
suggested that other important aspects of teaching, such as tutorials
and smaller group classes, might be permitted to take place
face-to-face. The authorities believe that these sessions could be
possible with participants sitting at a safe distance from each other.
Colleges and universities around the world, largely forced to end in-person instruction in the most recent term, are studying whether and how to move forward with classes next year.
In the United States, for example, some schools are bringing students back with pledges to test them and track infections.
Others
are not holding in-person classes at all: California State University,
the largest U.S. four-year public university system, said classes would take place
almost exclusively online this fall, with some possible exceptions for
clinical classes in the nursing program or certain science labs. In
Canada, McGill University in Montreal and several other schools have
said they will offer most of its courses online in the fall.
Other
schools are considering adapting in other ways, including having fever
checkpoints at entrances to academic buildings, one-way paths across the
grassy quad and requiring face masks in classrooms and dining halls.
In
Britain, the pandemic has also threatened the finances of some
universities because of the drop in the number of international studentsexpectedin the fall.
ONLINE CLASSES?
American colleges and universities are fiercely debating whether they can safely reopen their campuses next year.
A 100-year-old who raised millions for British health workers by doing 100 laps on a patio will be knighted.
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Captain Tom Moore outside of his home, where he completed his record-breaking walk to raise money for the N.H.S.Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times
Tom
Moore, the 100-year-old former British army officer who raised $40
million for Britain’s National Health Service by walking 100 laps of a
patio next to his garden, is set to be knighted by Queen Elizabeth II,
an honor that completes his transformation from media sensation into national hero.
He was recommended for a knighthood by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the government will announce the honor on Wednesday.
“Colonel
Tom’s fantastic fund-raising broke records, inspired the whole country
and provided us all with a beacon of light through the fog of
coronavirus,” Mr. Johnson said in a statement. “On behalf of everyone
who has been moved by his incredible story, I want to say a huge thank
you.”
Mr.
Moore’s campaign, which he began a few weeks before his 100th birthday,
caught fire after it was posted on an online charity service. It became
a hugely popular good-news story in a country especially hard-hit by
the pandemic.
Mr.
Moore, who served as a captain during the Burma campaign in World War
II, has already received several awards for his achievement, including
being named an honorary colonel of the Army Foundation College.
He
said in an earlier interview that he wanted to recognize those on the
front line, “just as we were backed up” during World War II.
TOM MOORE
Captain Tom, as he was quickly nicknamed in the British press, has said he would like to travel the world after the pandemic subsides.
Most cases in Israel are linked genetically to the United States, a new study found.
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Tel Aviv as lockdowns were lifted in early May.Credit...Dan Balilty for The New York Times
People
arriving from the United States played a significant role in spreading
Covid-19, a nationwide genomic study of Israeli cases has found.
Theanalysis,
led by biologists at Tel Aviv University, sequenced the genomes of
virus samples from a randomly chosen, representative group of more than
200 patients at six hospitals across the country and then compared those
to samples sequenced worldwide.
The
findings, which have not yet been peer-reviewed, called into question
the Israeli government’s decision to admit travelers from the United
States until March 9, though visitors from some European countries were
barred as early as Feb. 26.
While
only 27 percent of all travelers who tested positive for the virus had
arrived from the United States, more than 70 percent of virus samples
sequenced had originated there.
Had
American travelers been barred just as fast, the researchers concluded,
“a substantial fraction of the transmission chains in Israel would have
been prevented.”
The study also found that so-called superspreaders
in Israel have been unusually potent: While, with many viruses, 20
percent of patients are often responsible for 80 percent of cases,
researchers said, the Israeli coronavirus data showed that only five
percent of patients were responsible for spreading the disease to 80
percent of those ultimately infected.
Israel has reported 16,650 cases and 277 deaths linked to the coronavirus.
The
study also suggested that the country is nowhere near achieving herd
immunity, said Dr. Adi Stern, its lead author. According to a
statistical model the researchers developed based on the genetic
sequencing, no more than 1 percent of the population has contracted the
virus, she said.
On
the bright side, the study estimated that slamming the door on
tourists, enforcing social-distancing rules and imposing a lockdown on
citizens cut the virus’s rate of transmission in Israel by two-thirds.
Dr. Stern said it highlighted “how important it is to follow quarantine
measures wherever possible, and to close borders.”
W.H.O. ignores Trump and pledges an ‘impartial’ investigation of its pandemic response.
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Representatives of the World Health Organization largely ignored Mr. Trump’s demand for an overhaul.Credit...Denis Balibouse/Reuters
President
Trump’s angry demands for punitive action against the World Health
Organization were rebuffed on Tuesday by the organization’s other member
nations, which decided instead to conduct an “impartial, independent”
examination of the W.H.O.’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
In
a four-page letter late Monday, Mr. Trump had threatened to permanently
cut off U.S. funding of the W.H.O. unless it committed to “major,
substantive improvements” within 30 days. It was a major escalation of
his repeated attempts to blame the W.H.O. and China for the spread of
the virus and deflect responsibility for his handling of a worldwide
public health crisis that has killed more than 90,000 people in the United States.
But
representatives of the organization’s member nations rallied around the
W.H.O. at its annual meeting in Geneva, largely ignoring Mr. Trump’s
demand for an overhaul and calling for a global show of support in the
face of a deadly pandemic.
The
outcome left the United States isolated as officials from China, Russia
and the European Union chided Mr. Trump over his heated threats even as
they acknowledged the need for a review of how the W.H.O. performed as
the virus spread from China to the rest of the world.
Video
0:46‘This Is Futile’: China Criticizes Trump’s W.H.O. Funding Threat
A
spokesman for China’s foreign ministry spokesman criticized President
Trump’s pledge to pull funding from the World Health Organization.CreditCredit...Zhang Yuwei/Xinhua, via Getty Images
The
resolution approved by W.H.O. members without objection promised a
“comprehensive evaluation” of the organization that would review
“experience gained and lessons learned from the W.H.O.-coordinated
international health response to Covid-19.”
Foreign
policy experts said Mr. Trump’s attacks on the W.H.O. provided a
strategic opening for China, which announced on Monday that it would
spend $2 billion in the global fight against the pandemic, and served
mainly to undercut the interests of the United States by angering its
closest allies.
The border between the U.S. and Canada will stay closed for another month, Trudeau says.
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The U.S.-Canada border crossing in Lacolle, Quebec. The border between the two countries is closed to most traffic.Credit...Christinne Muschi/Reuters
Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said on Tuesday that the border
between his country and the United States would remain closed for at
least another month after the two countries reached an agreement to
extend its closing.
The closing was introduced in March and set to expire on Thursday.
Recently,
several Canadian provincial leaders have said that they oppose a rapid
reopening of border. The outbreak in the United States is much more
severe; the United States has reported about 463 cases per 100,000
people, more than double Canada’s number.
Mr.
Trudeau said at a news conference that the closing had protected people
on both sides of the border. He added that American officials had been
“completely open” to the extension.
Mr. Trudeau declined to speculate on when the measure might be permanently lifted.
“Every step, we have to make the right decisions based on the circumstances,” he said.
The measure has caused some frustration, particularly among spouses who have been separated by its restrictions.
A super cyclone racing toward India and Bangladesh threatens their coronavirus response.
Video
0:58West Bengal Coast Braces for Super Cyclone
Residents
and government officials in West Bengal, India, prepared for Cyclone
Amphan, as the storm moved across the Bay of Bengal toward India and
Bangladesh.CreditCredit...Mehaboob Gazi/Associated Press
A
crushing cyclone barreled up the Bay of Bengal on Tuesday, heading for a
swampy stretch along the border of India and Bangladesh and threatening
to unleash 165-mile-an-hour winds and massive floods when it makes
landfall on Wednesday.
The
power of the storm is not the only threat, as the cyclone, Amphan,
nears coastal areas. It also poses a risk to the coronavirus response as
hundreds of thousands of people begin moving toward emergency shelters.
In
the eastern Indian state of Odisha, the authorities have fewer shelters
to work with because many have been turned into Covid-19 quarantine
centers. Officials were struggling to evacuate people and prepare for
flooding and destruction while still under a partial lockdown. Some
shelters were being filled to only 50 percent capacity for fear of
spreading coronavirus in dense quarters.
Meteorologists
said the cyclone, which is expected to pass over Kolkata, one of
India’s biggest cities, was weakening as it moved closer to land, but
could intensify overnight.
In
Bangladesh, officials said the storm could bring slashing rains to the
muddy, wooden shacks of about a million Rohingya refugees living in
Cox’s Bazar. Those refugees fled ethnically driven massacres in Myanmar
in 2017 and have been rendered stateless, stuck in limbo in squalid camps that have been flooded time and again.
Boris Johnson is grilled on his coronavirus response in a chamber emptied by distancing rules.
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Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain in the House of Commons last week.Credit...Jessica Taylor/UK Parliament, via Associated Press
For
Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, debating in Parliament used to
be a raucous affair, as backbenchers from his Conservative Party booed
his rivals and cheered him on like a classmate in a schoolyard brawl.
These days, to his evident chagrin, it is more like a legal deposition.
Facing off in a quiet chamber against the lawyer-turned-opposition leader, Keir Starmer, Mr. Johnson has had to endure a forensic weekly grilling
on his handling of the coronavirus. The social distancing of Parliament
means that most of the 650 members take part remotely, turning a
gladiatorial arena, in which Mr. Johnson was once a big cat, into Mr.
Starmer’s courtroom.
Mr.
Starmer, 57, has deployed all his courtroom skills against his
adversary, starting with a prosecutor’s technique of trapping the
witness with a question to which you already know the answer.
“Can
the prime minister tell us: How on earth did it come to this?” Mr.
Starmer asked two weeks ago, after noting that Britain’s death toll was
among the highest in the world.
Mr.
Johnson replied that direct country-to-country comparisons were not
valid, and that the true human cost of the pandemic could only be judged
after the fact.
Leaping
out of his seat, Mr. Starmer noted the government had made exactly
those comparisons for weeks, when Britain’s death toll looked
comparatively better. Mr. Johnson’s argument, he concluded, “just
doesn’t really hold water.”
PARLIAMENT
The opposition leader, Keir Starmer, has put Mr. Johnson on the defensive, as the pandemic has quieted what would typically be raucous debate.
Wuhan voices: Life is slowly getting back to normal.
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Next to the East Lake in Wuhan, China, on Sunday.Credit...Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Her friends had posted all over social media: The milk tea shops had reopened! Wuhan was coming back!
But
when Rosanna Yu, 28, took a sip of her first order in two months, she
was unimpressed. “Did you guys forget how to make milk tea?” she posted
jokingly on WeChat in late March. “How is it this bad?”
Still,
disappointing milk tea is better than none. And while normalcy and good
bubble tea may still be out of reach, just the prospect has Ms. Yu
feeling buoyant.
She
recently took a video of the long line at a local restaurant for
takeout “hot dry noodles,” Wuhan’s signature dish. She has to pause for
traffic before crossing the street — a burden that has never felt less
like one.
“Seeing a lot of cars, I’m actually so happy,” she said.
Her
optimism is born, in part, of luck. None of her friends or family were
infected. The lockdown was hard at first, but she distracted herself by
learning to bake crullers and sweet buns.
Some
things are undeniably harder. Ms. Yu quit her job as a secretary last
year, planning to look for a new one in January. But her parents now
want her to wait until the fall, for safety reasons.
She rarely sees friends, because there is nowhere to go; dining in at restaurants is not allowed.
But for the most part, Ms. Yu has embraced Wuhan’s new normal. She plans to keep baking. She may take online classes.
And
she has a new kinship with her neighbors. During the lockdown,
residents who were barbers offered free haircuts. The neighborhood’s
group chat, formed to coordinate bulk grocery buys, has became a virtual
support circle.
“This
was my first time feeling like the entire neighborhood, and all of
Wuhan, was all in something together, working toward the same goal,” Ms.
Yu said.
As Italy further loosened Europe’s first lockdown
against the coronavirus and allowed restaurants, bars, churches and
stores to open, Lucilla Vettraino went directly to her hair salon.
“I look like a witch with this hair!” Ms. Vettraino, 78, said on Monday as she held strands the color of Campari.
And
perhaps nowhere is that passion for primping as sharply felt as in
Italy, where — amid fights between the national and regional
governments, concerns about a resurgent epidemic and fears of a coming
economic catastrophe — Italians greeted Monday’s opening as a chance for a Great Beautification.
Italy
is a capital of coiffuring, with 104,000 hair salons and tens of
thousands more beauty parlors for nail care, eyebrow threading, body
waxing and massaging, according to a government study by the agency
representing the Chamber of Commerce.
On
Monday, Italy allowed unlimited travel within individual regions, and
permitted businesses to open up across most of the country. Many
restaurants decided not to open because rules requiring tables to be 6.5
feet apart would make it impossible to turn a profit. But the salons
had customers.
An Emirati plane carrying coronavirus aid for Palestinians landed in Israel, marking a first.
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A cargo plane unloads coronavirus aid for Palestinians, at Ben Gurion Airport in Lod, Israel, on Tuesday.Credit...Israel Airports Authority
A
government-owned airline in the United Arab Emirates flew coronavirus
aid for Palestinians from Abu Dhabi to Israel on Tuesday, marking what
is believed to be the first direct commercial flight from the Emirates
to Israel.
The
Etihad Airways flight appeared to be another indication of the growing
openness between the Emirates and Israel, which do not maintain formal
diplomatic relations, though both view Iran as a regional foe.
At
least three Israeli ministers have attended events in Emirati cities in
the past two years and Israel is slated to participate in a major world
fair in Dubai next year.
Etihad’s
plane, which did not bear the company’s logo, landed at Ben Gurion
Airport near Tel Aviv just before 10 p.m., said Ofer Lefler, a spokesman
for the Israel Airports Authority.
The
flight was carrying 14 tons of personal protective equipment, 10
ventilators and other materials to help Palestinians in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip in their fight against Covid-19, said Jamie McGoldrick,
the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian
territories.
The
aid will be collected by the U.N.’s World Food Program at the airport,
Mr. McGoldrick said, adding that Palestinian officials, in cooperation
with U.N. organizations, woulddetermine how to distribute it.
Mr.
McGoldrick said that regional sensitivities about coordination between
the Emirates and Israel did not present an obstacle to arranging the
shipment.
South Sudan’s vice president and defense minister test positive for the coronavirus.
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Riek Machar, center, and his wife, right, Angelina Teny, South Sudan’s defense minister.Credit...Akuot Chol/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
South
Sudan’s vice president, Riek Machar, and his wife, Angelina Teny, who
serves as defense minister, have tested positive for the coronavirus,
the Reuters news agency reported on Monday.
A number of his office staff and bodyguards also tested positive, the agency reported.
Appearing on state television, Mr. Machar said that he would self-isolate for 14 days in his residence, according to Reuters.
Two
years South Sudan gained independence from Sudan, a civil war broke out
when Mr. Kiir, who belongs to the majority Dinka ethnic group, fired
his deputy, Mr. Machar, who belongs to the Nuer ethnic group. That war
has since cost an estimated 400,000 lives and ignited Africa’s biggest
refugee crisis in years.
The
United Nations said last week that two people at a crowded displacement
camp run by the organization had tested positive for the coronavirus, according to Reuters. The camp is home to nearly 30,000 people.
In
all, fewer than 2,000 working ventilators have to serve hundreds of
millions of people in public hospitals across 41 African countries, the
World Health Organization said, compared with more than 170,000 in the United States.
Books, like people, will be quarantined to keep the virus from spreading.
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Shelves of books at a Waterstones store in Horsham, Britain, last year.Credit...Suzie Howell for The New York Times
Quarantine has become a way of life for millions of people around the world. Now, books will be isolated, too.
Waterstones,
a British bookstore, said it will set aside books, or any other item
plucked from its shelves, for at least 72 hours when its stores
eventually reopen, in order to minimize the risk of spreading the virus.
James
Daunt, the chief executive of Waterstones, said in an interview on
Tuesday that customers who pick up a book — but don’t buy it — will be
asked to put it on a trolley. The items in the trolleys will then be
taken to the back of the bookstore and left there “for a couple of
days,” he said.
Bookstores around the world have tried to adapt. Some have offered free curbside pickup or delivery. Others have reconfigured their layouts to keep people apart.
Mr.
Daunt said he did not know when Waterstones would reopen. But he said
customers would be provided hand sanitizers and made to socially
distance.
“There will be a very limited number of customers we’ll allow at any one time,” Mr. Daunt said of his bookstores.
BOOKSTORES
Booksellers are wrestling with how to safely open their stores, which often serve as community centers and cultural outposts as much as retail operations.
Prince Charles calls for workers to ‘pick for Britain’ in the absence of migrant farm laborers.
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Picking lettuce in Canterbury, England, in late April.Credit...Mary Turner for The New York Times
Prince
Charles, Queen Elizabeth II’s eldest son and the heir to the British
throne, has urged people across the nation to join a government campaign
aimed at finding farm labor to “pick for Britain” and save the season’s crops as the country faces a dearth of migrant workers.
“If
we are to harvest British fruit and vegetables this year, we need an
army of people to help,” Prince Charles said in a message that was
broadcast on Tuesday.
“Food does not happen by magic,” he said, adding that the crucial work would be at times unglamorous and challenging.
George Eustice, the British cabinet minister responsible for food and farming, said last month that Britain had just one third of its typical migrant agricultural work force because of the coronavirus lockdown.
Germany, whereas many as 300,000 migrant workers from Eastern Europe
would usually arrive to harvest asparagus, pick strawberries and plant
late-season crops, has its own solution: It is allowing farmers to
airlift workers from Romania and Bulgaria. The farmers must organize and
pay for charter flights, and the program was capped at 40,000 workers a
month in April and May.
The
move has eased the labor shortage, but not solved it. The cost and
logistical challenges have meant that only about 28,000 workers have
been flown in so far, well short of the number needed. It has also
raised concerns about importing infections and exploiting vulnerable
workers.
For weeks, Western governments have grumbled about the reliability or speed of Chinese-made tests to detect the coronavirus. On Tuesday, a senior Chinese official hit back: at least we had a test.
Wang
Zhigang, China’s minister of science and technology, spoke on Tuesday
at one of the first in a series of ministerial news conferences ahead of
the annual session of the National People’s Congress, the country’s
legislature, which begins on Friday.
“We
developed the testing kits from the beginning, but it may take a little
longer and may have a lower sensitivity,” he said. “We are gradually
improving it in the process of later use and adding new technical
elements, solving the problem: high sensitivity, fast detection.”
China
has had a separate series of scandals in recent years regarding
fraudulent academic research, although none so far regarding the
coronavirus. Mr. Wang volunteered at the end of his news conference that
while he believed almost all Chinese researchers to be honest, the
authorities would respond with the full force of the law if another
scandal did take place.
“For a few people, they are not worthy of the name of scientists, we have zero tolerance for them,” he said.
Some newly opened schools in France close again as a small number of new infections emerge.
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Observing social distance rules at the Saint Germain de Charonne school in Paris last week.Credit...Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Just
a week after many schools were reopened in France, the discovery of 70
coronavirus cases in classrooms across the country forced the
authorities to shutter some preschools and elementary schools.
The
cases are spread throughout France, from Brittany in the west to Nice
in the south, in the latest example of the challenge faced by European
countries in reopening their societies while seeking to avoid new waves of infections.
The
education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, said Monday that such
developments were “inevitable,” but that the cases remained a minority
among the 150,000 pupils who returned to schools last Monday.
“The consequences of not going back to school are much more serious,” Mr. Blanquer said on RTL radio.
Although
schools have not been seen as a major source of outbreaks in Europe,
countries that eased restrictions last week, like France and Spain, are
keeping careful watch for signs of a spike in coronavirus cases.
The
first students in Britain may return to school on June 1, and Gavin
Williamson, the country’s education secretary, has used the example of
Denmark, whose pupils were the first in Europe to go back to schools in mid-April, to argue in favor of reopening.
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ReplyDeleteEvery day I use to read a new article which gives me little motivation, to write some amazing articles like yours for my blog.
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