The international community pledged $1.8 billion at a conference to drum up support for Sudan on Thursday, in an effort to help the northeast African country battle economic woes after the ousting of long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir.”This conference opened a new chapter in the cooperation between Sudan and the international community to rebuild the country,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said at the video conference co-organised by Germany with Sudan, the European Union and the United Nations.
 
Some 50 countries and international organisations pledged a total of more than $1.8 billion, while the World Bank Group offered a grant of $400 million.
 
“This conference marks the start of a process, which will be followed by subsequent engagement by the international community to take stock of the progress made by Sudan in implementing reforms and to allow its partners to adapt their support accordingly,” the conference’s concluding statement said.
 
Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok called the conference “unprecedented” and said it laid a “solid foundation for us moving forward”.
 
Sudan has been battling an economic crisis since Bashir was ousted by the military in April 2019 after months of street demonstrations against his three-decade rule.
 
Facing mounting cases of coronavirus, the country is now also grappling with acute medicine shortages.
 
Last week, dozens of pharmacists protested in the capital Khartoum holding banners that read: “Lack of drugs kills in silence” and “Medications are a right, not a privilege.”
 
They urged Hamdok, who took office in August heading a post-Bashir transitional administration, to make funds available to import medicine. 
Economic initiatives
 
Much of the aid pledged on Thursday will go towards economic initiatives, including Sudan’s Family Support Program, which aims to provide assistance to millions of vulnerable people.
 
But direct help is also envisaged to enhance Sudan’s efforts to tackle COVID-19.
 
The pledges included $356 million from the United States, which voiced optimism on Wednesday for a resolution in the coming weeks on Sudan’s hopes to be delisted as a state sponsor of terrorism.
 
Washington first blacklisted Sudan in 1993 as Bashir turned toward Islamism.
 
Sudan’s Foreign Minister Asma Abdalla told AFP on Tuesday that the government was finishing a deal to compensate victims of the simultaneous 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
 
Once the deal is complete, she said she expected the US to move ahead with the delisting of Sudan “as soon as possible.”
 
Germany said it would contribute 150 million euros ($168 million) and France 100 million euros.
 
Sudan’s new transitional government has sought to repair the country’s international standing, but it still faces daunting economic challenges more than a year after Bashir’s ouster.
 
The International Monetary Fund says Sudan’s economy “contracted by 2.5 percent in 2019 and is projected to shrink by eight percent in 2020” because of the pandemic.
 
Other challenges include galloping inflation, massive public debt and acute foreign currency shortages. 
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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Thursday rejected calls from former Canadian parliamentarians and diplomats, as well as the Chinese government, to release executive Meng Wanzhou of China’s telecom giant Huawei and unilaterally end her extradition process.This week, a group of 19 high-profile Canadians, including former foreign affairs ministers Lloyd Axworthy and Lawrence Cannon, signed a letter to Trudeau saying Canadian Justice Minister David Lametti should intervene to free Meng.Speaking in Ottawa at his regular COVID-19 update briefing, Trudeau said he respected the signees of the letter, but, “I deeply disagree with them.” He said giving in to China’s demands would put other Canadians at risk by showing other nations the country can be intimidated.In 2018, Canadian authorities took Meng into custody regarding U.S. allegations of violating sanctions on Iran. Her extradition case is now before a court in British Columbia.Soon after Meng was arrested, Beijing detained two Canadians, entrepreneur Michael Spavor and former diplomat Michael Kovrig, on allegations of undermining China’s national security. Canada considered those detentions as retaliation.Trudeau Thursday described Spavor and Kovrig’s detentions as “arbitrary” and “political,” and said he will continue to work to get them released.
 
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PETAL, MISSISSIPPI — An appeals court has upheld a ruling that a Mississippi police officer was justified when he fatally shot a Black Louisiana man, who called police after a car crash.U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett ruled in September that Petal police officer Aaron Jernigan was protecting himself when he fatally shot Marc Davis of LaPlace, Louisiana, in 2017.On Monday, the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals agreed with Starrett’s ruling, The Clarion Ledger reported.  Davis, 34, was driving on Mississippi 42 on June 2, 2017, when he was involved in a car crash in Petal.  Davis called police and Jernigan arrived, but later the pair got into an argument and Jernigan shot Davis three times. Davis later died at the hospital.  Jernigan said Davis physically assaulted him, attempted to take his gun, and refused orders to stand down.  Yoshanta Albert, mother of Davis’ five children, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in 2018, claiming Jernigan shot Davis unexpectedly and without a warning shot. The lawsuit also claimed that Jernigan used excessive force.  Starett threw out the lawsuit, stating Jernigan didn’t use excessive force and if he did, Jernigan was “entitled” to, considering the situation.  Albert was among the large crowd that rallied earlier this month in front of the state Capitol  against police brutality after the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed in Minneapolis last month while in police custody.  “This is not what justice looks like: a child without a father,” Albert said at the protest, as she waved a photo of her 2-year-old daughter, Leah, standing next to her father’s casket. “I waited three years. His death was swept under the rug.” 
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The number of U.S. workers claiming unemployment compensation declined again last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday, even as new outbreaks of the coronavirus threaten more disruption to the American economy.Thousands of U.S. businesses have reopened after the shutdowns mandated three months ago by the coronavirus pandemic, but many are still laying off workers. Now, some companies are re-closing again as the number of infections reaches new heights in the country’s three biggest states, California, Texas and Florida.Nearly another 1.5 million laid-off U.S. workers filed for unemployment compensation last week, the 14th straight week the figure had dipped. But the figure was down only slightly from just above 1.5 million each of the last two weeks, all unusually big figures for the world’s largest economy.The number of workers seeking jobless benefits has now dropped steadily from the 6.9 million who filed for jobless benefits in one week in late March. But key U.S. economic officials are predicting that the country’s full recovery from the pandemic will take a lengthy period, extending well into 2021.In all, 47 million workers have filed for unemployment compensation since mid-March, more than a quarter of the U.S. labor force of 164.6 million. The number currently receiving benefits has dropped to about 19.5 million as millions of workers have now returned to their jobs.People shop at Macy’s Herald Square store on the first day of the phase two re-opening of businesses following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in the Manhattan borough of New York City, June 22, 2020.With a sudden jump in new coronavirus cases, some businesses that had reopened are now shutting their doors again. The new coronavirus cases are largely across the southern tier of the country that had been spared by the initial outbreak in New York and northern states in March and April.The Apple technology consumer products company shut stores it had reopened in four states — Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Arizona — and on Wednesday closed seven stores in Houston, Texas. Some local and state governments have announced layoffs of workers in the aftermath of the pandemic, while giant retailer Macy’s said it is eliminating 3% of its workforce, 3,900 employees.Governor Greg Abbott in the southwestern state of Texas, who was one of the earliest state officials to permit the reopening of businesses, urged residents to stay home. He said that if the new outbreak of coronavirus cases cannot be controlled, the state might have to impose new restrictions.Struggling economyAs the U.S. economy struggles to regain its standing, President Donald Trump and lawmakers in Congress are debating additional payments to most Americans. But they have yet to reach a consensus on how much the payments would be and who would get them.The $600-a-week federal payments to unemployed workers on top of lesser normal state jobless benefits end in about five weeks.But Trump said this week he supports another round of stimulus payments to most taxpayers, even as some of his fellow Republicans voiced concerns about the country’s ever-increasing national debt that now totals more than $26 trillion.Trump said he envisions again sending $1,200 checks to most individuals, as was already done earlier this year.“We will be doing another stimulus package,” he told one interviewer. “It’ll be very good. It’ll be very generous.”Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters, “As we’ve said before, we’re talking about a bunch of different ideas that we may need to do in another bill.”But he cautioned, “We’re going to take our time and make sure that we’re thoughtful. Whatever we do, it will be much more targeted, much more focused on jobs.”House Democrats have approved about $3 trillion in new spending, which would provide more aid for states and cities, among other things. But Senate Republicans and the White House have rejected the plan and are considering other options to boost the economy.  Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks during a news conference, March 3, 2020, in Washington.A week ago, Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, the country’s central bank, told a congressional committee that while the U.S. economy has started to rebound from the worst of the coronavirus devastation, “levels of output and employment remain far below their pre-pandemic levels, and significant uncertainty remains about the timing and strength of the recovery.”Overall, he said, “The shock that we received — the economy received — was the largest in living memory.”Powell said the sharp downturn wrought by the pandemic has had a pronounced impact on certain segments of the American workforce.“Low-income households have experienced, by far, the sharpest drop in employment, while job losses of African-Americans, Hispanics and women have been greater than that of other groups,” he said. “If not contained and reversed, the downturn could further widen gaps in economic well-being that the long expansion had made some progress in closing.”The official U.S. jobless rate was 13.3% in May, although officials say that when a survey error was accounted for, the rate should have totaled 16.4%.    The Fed has predicted that U.S. unemployment will fall to 9.3% by the end of this year and to 6.5% by the end of 2021, a rosier advance than some economists are forecasting.The U.S. death toll from the virus has now topped 121,000, by far the most in the world, and health experts predict tens of thousands more will die in the coming months.The coronavirus has had a major effect on U.S. commerce, with more than two dozen companies filing for bankruptcy protection in May.A closed sign is seen in the front window of the Welch Ave Station bar, June 23, 2020, in Ames, Iowa.Yelp, which publishes crowd-sourced reviews about businesses, says that more than 143,000 U.S. businesses have closed since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and that about 50,000 of those businesses are not expecting to reopen.  The government says the national economy dropped 4.8% in the first quarter, but that was before the full impact of the pandemic became apparent for the April-to-June quarter.Numerous states still require social distancing of at least two meters between people in stores and some major retail outlets are requiring their employees and customers to wear face masks. Some governors are limiting restaurants to half capacity or only allowing outdoor eating with appropriate social distancing.  But in other states, the restrictions have been significantly lifted and crowds have quickly emerged to resume life, shopping or enjoying a day at Atlantic and Pacific beaches, often ignoring the admonitions of health experts to maintain a safe distance from others or to wear a face mask.But the millions of jobless benefit claims have still been unparalleled over decades of U.S. economic history, reaching back to the Great Depression in the 1930s. The number of claims has far exceeded those made during the Great Recession in 2008-2009. 
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The northeastern U.S. state of New York, which bore the initial brunt of the novel coronavirus pandemic, is requiring visitors from eight states to enter into a two-week quarantine period.The order announced Wednesday by New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo applies to residents of Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Utah, all of which have reported a rising number of new cases in recent weeks. Cuomo was joined by video conference by fellow Democrats Ned Lamont and Phil Murphy, governors of the neighboring states of Connecticut and New Jersey, which are duplicating New York’s quarantine requirements.The tri-state quarantine mandate was issued the same day the United States reported more than 36,000 new COVID-19 infections, the highest one-day number of new cases since late April. The bulk of the new infections stretch across the nation, from Florida in the southeast, through the southwest including Arizona and Texas and into the western state of California.Disney delaysSeveral states reported their highest number of coronavirus hospitalizations since the start of the pandemic in March, including Texas, which recorded over 5,000 total new cases, including over 4,000 hospitalizations, and California, which posted a staggering 7,000 total new cases. The soaring rates of infections in California has prompted the Disney entertainment giant to postpone the planned reopening of its popular Disneyland and Disney California Adventure theme parks, which were scheduled for July 17, the 65th anniversary Disneyland’s opening.The company said it will wait until state officials issue its theme park reopening guidelines, which will occur sometime after July 4.Disneyland’s sister theme park, Florida-based Walt Disney World, which is also slated to reopen next month, will host the National Basketball Association when it resumes its regular season. But those plans were overshadowed when three NBA players, Malcolm Brogdon of the Indiana Pacers and Jabari Parker and Alex Len of the Sacramento Kings, announced they had tested positive for the coronavirus. The trio’s positive results came as part of the mandatory testing for the 22 teams that will participate in the resumed season that is set to tipoff on July 30.The United States leads the world in both total number of infections with more than 2.3 million cases, about one-fourth of all cases, and nearly 122,000 deaths as of early Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center.Latin America has emerged as the world’s newest epicenter for COVID-19 with the regional death toll surpassing 100,000 with more than half, 54,000, in Brazil.10 million casesWorld Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says the number of coronavirus cases throughout the world could reach 10 million next week, a sharp increase from the 9.3 million cases, including over 482,000 deaths, currently reported.WHO emergencies chief Dr. Mike Ryan said Wednesday the pandemic for many countries in the Americas still has not peaked, and that the outbreak in the region was “still intense,” particularly in Central and South America.Ryan said many countries in the Americas have seen increases in cases in the last week ranging between 25 percent and 50 percent.Tedros said the 10 million milestone projected for next week is “a sober reminder that even as we continue our research into vaccines and therapeutics, we have an urgent responsibility to do with the tools we have now to suppress transmission and save lives.”
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Australia’s military is being called in to help the state of Victoria cope with a sharp rise in coronavirus cases. Authorities have reported a spike in COVID-19 infections in the past week and have urged residents not to leave several disease hot spots in Melbourne.Victoria recorded 33 new coronavirus infections Thursday, the ninth consecutive day of double-digit growth in case numbers. Lockdown restrictions that have been eased in recent weeks could be reimposed.Sending in the military is a significant move. One thousand Australian troops will boost security at quarantine facilities for travelers returning from overseas. They will also help with testing as the state struggles with a surge in COVID-19 cases. Complacency and a flouting of distancing and hygiene protocols have been blamed.“The primary lever that we have now is a test-and-trace mechanism, broadening the testing availability, and the messaging and reach everyone about the need to test if they are symptomatic is our key driver to get numbers down,” said Brett Sutton, Victoria’s chief medical officer.The virus is spreading, especially in Melbourne, the state’s largest city and the second-largest city in Australia, and hot spots could again be forced into lockdown.Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews described the pandemic as a “public health bushfire,” a reference to the deadly summer blazes that tore across much of southeastern Australia.Andrews said there will be a testing blitz in 10 suburbs, and more than 100,000 tests are planned in the next 10 days.“People are going to be knocking on your door and they are going to be asking you to get tested,” Andrews said. “Please say yes. Please go and get tested. That is the most important thing that you in those suburbs can do to help us contain this virus.”State government health care workers will be using a new type of saliva swab, rather than nasal pads, to screen for the disease.Authorities have said that large family gatherings, permitted following the easing of lockdown restrictions in Victoria, have been the source of the new infections.Officials in New South Wales, the nation’s most populous state, remain concerned about active community transmission of the virus. Health Minister Brad Hazzard said it was not a time for residents to be complacent.There is some good news, though. The state of Queensland has now gone eight days without any new COVID-19 cases.Australia has recorded 7,521 confirmed coronavirus cases, 104 people have died. 
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