Several thousand anti-government protesters took to the streets in Thailand’s capital Saturday to demand amendments to the military-written constitution, new parliamentary elections and the end of repressive laws in the country.The protest, organized by the Liberation Youth group, was the largest since the government declared a state of emergency in March to deal with the coronavirus pandemic outbreak.Since then, the restrictive measures and social distancing have helped the government contain the spread of the virus, but they have also used as political weapons, to contain protests.Saturday’s 2,500 demonstrators gathered around Bangkok’s iconic Democracy Monument in the old part of the city, defying the ban on public gatherings to chant anti-government slogans and wave placards expressing their demands. 
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The Trump administration is seeking to block congressional plans to provide additional billions of dollars to states for coronavirus testing and tracing, and for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies.Senate Republicans are attempting to craft another coronavirus relief bill to fight the increasing number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the United States, aid individual citizens whose unemployment funds may be running out, and reverse some of the most damaging impacts on the nation’s economy.The Trump administration’s stance “has angered some GOP senators,” according to a report in The Washington Post, as the politicians continue to work on ensuring the money remains in the bill.Preliminary plans for the measure include not only $25 billion for individual states for testing and tracing and another $25 billion for the CDC and the National Institutes of Health, but also more billions for the Pentagon and State Department to combat the pandemic at home and around the world.Negotiations between Republicans and Democrats are continuing on what will likely be the last coronavirus relief bill before the November presidential election.Coronavirus relief measures that have already been enacted, including expanded unemployment benefits, are due to expire in the coming weeks.President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that the U.S. infection rate is high because of widespread testing, but health officials say there has not been enough testing in the United States.Anonymous sources said the White House would like to see funding in the bill for projects that have nothing to do with the pandemic, including funding for a new FBI building.
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A fast-rising tide of new coronavirus cases is flooding emergency rooms in parts of the United States, with some patients moved into hallways and nurses working extra shifts to keep up with the surge.Patients struggling to breathe are being placed on ventilators in emergency wards since intensive care units are full, officials say, and the near-constant care they require is overtaxing workers who also are treating more typical ER cases like chest pains, infections, and fractures.In Texas, Dr. Alison Haddock of the Baylor College of Medicine said the current situation is worse than after Hurricane Harvey, which swamped Houston with floodwaters in 2017. The state reported a new daily record for virus deaths Friday and more than 10,000 confirmed cases for the fourth consecutive day.”I’ve never seen anything like this COVID surge,” said Haddock, who has worked in emergency rooms since 2007. “We’re doing our best, but we’re not an ICU.”Patients are waiting “hours and hours” to get admitted, she said, and the least sick people are lying in beds in halls to make room for most seriously ill.Around Seattle, which was the nation’s first hot spot for the virus that causes COVID-19, a new wave of patients is showing up at emergency departments, said nurse Mike Hastings.”What’s really frustrating from my side of it is when a patient comes into the emergency department, and is not really having symptoms of COVID, but they feel like they need that testing,” said Hastings, who works at an area hospital and is president of the Emergency Nurses Association. “Sometimes we’re not able to test them because we don’t have enough test supplies, so we’re only testing a certain set of patients.”In Florida, another state that is seeing surging case numbers, hospitals say they are in desperate need of remdesivir — a medication that has been shown to shorten average hospitalization times — to treat the coronavirus patients who are filling up beds.In response, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced 30,000 vials of the drug were being shipped to the state — enough to treat about 5,000 patients.On Saturday, Florida reported more than 10,200 new cases of the virus and 90 additional deaths, while Missouri recorded a pandemic-high 958 new cases in one day. Arizona, which conducts periodic reviews of death certificates, reclassified 106 deaths as having been from COVID-19, bringing the number of fatalities reported Saturday to 147.Confirmed coronavirus cases around the world have surpassed 14 million, and deaths neared 600,000, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University. On Saturday, the World Health Organization, which also tracks the virus, reported a single-day record of new infections — over 259,000 worldwide — for the second day in a row. The true toll of the pandemic is thought to be even higher, in part because of shortages in testing and shortcomings in data collection.The United States, Brazil and India top the list of cases, and South Africa — with more than 350,000 cases, roughly half of all confirmed infections in Africa — entered the top five this weekend.In the United States, where infections are soaring in many Sunbelt states, Megan Jehn, associate professor of epidemiology at Arizona State University in Tempe, said it’s important to monitor emergency room visits since increases there can signal that the virus is spreading more rapidly.But it’s difficult to get a complete picture of how emergency rooms are faring in many places. In Arizona, one of the few states that reports data on visits to the emergency room by people with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 symptoms, numbers started to spike in early June and peaked earlier this month. More than 2,000 people went to an ER with coronavirus symptoms on a single day, July 7.On Friday, COVID-19-related hospitalization figures for Arizona were near but below recent records set after the state became a national hot spot.Dr. Robert Hancock, who works at multiple hospitals in Texas and Oklahoma and serves as president of the Texas College of Emergency Physicians, said some Texas emergency rooms are facing backups of patients awaiting ICU beds. And many of them are on ventilators, meaning they require more attention than other patients.”Unfortunately, because of the increased demand for personnel, there typically isn’t anybody free to come down to the ER to help a lot of times from a nursing standpoint,” he said.Burnout could await these health workers, as it did some in New York City, when it was the epicenter of the nation’s outbreak in the spring.Emergency room doctors and nurses were caught off guard by the relentless stream of severely sick patients during shifts that often lasted 12 hours, said Dr. Bernard P. Chang of New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center.”You were on high alert the whole shift,” Chang said. “It was a brutal, sustained battle.”  
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Protesters trying to topple a Christopher Columbus statue in downtown Chicago’s Grant Park clashed with police who used batons to beat people and made at least a dozen arrests after they say protesters targeted them with fireworks, rocks and other items.The clash Friday evening unfolded after at least 1,000 people tried to swarm the statue in a failed attempt to topple it following a rally in support of Black and Indigenous people.Police said 18 officers were injured and at least 12 people were arrested during the clash. Four protesters were also hurt during the confrontation, which led local elected officials and activists to condemn the officers’ tactics.”We unequivocally condemn Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s decision to send the Chicago police to beat, arrest, and terrorize the demonstrators and journalists gathered in Grant Park tonight,” a group of elected officials said in a statement released late Friday.The statement was signed by several members of the City Council, including Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor and Alderwoman Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez, and two members of the Legislature — state Rep. Delia Ramirez and state Sen. Robert Peters.Lightfoot said Saturday that she “will always fight for the rights of individuals to peacefully protest on any issue” but noted that “a portion of the protesters turned violent” during Friday’s protest.”A number of individuals came with frozen water bottles, rocks, bottles, cans and other gear to throw at officers. People in the crowd also threw fireworks and other incendiary devices at police, causing injury in several cases. These violent acts are unacceptable and put everyone at risk,” she said in a statement.The mayor said reports of excessive force by officers during their response to the protest “are also unacceptable” and urged anyone who believes they were mistreated by police to file a complaint with the city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability, or by dialing 311.Local news site Block Club Chicago reported that one protester, an 18-year-old woman, had several of her front teeth knocked out when an officer punched her. It also shared a video of that assault and a photo of the woman’s bloodied mouth and missing teeth. It identified her as Miracle Boyd, a member of the anti-gun violence group GoodKids MadCity.The police department said in a statement that officers assembled in the park as the protesters converged there and were “providing security and protecting their First Amendment right to peacefully assemble.” It said that as demonstrators approached the statue “some members of the crowd turned on the police and used the protest to attack officers with fireworks, rocks, frozen bottles, and other objects.”Amika Tendaji, an organizer for the protest, during which artists tagged the statue with slogans including “Decolonize Chicago” and “Black Lives Matter,” decried the officers’ use of force to protect a statue.”I think the people of Chicago and the world have proven that they are over police brutalizing people,” she said. “They’re over police murder, they’re over police terrorism, so the people are going to keep fighting.”The Columbus statue in Grant Park and another in the city’s Little Italy neighborhood were also vandalized last month.Protesters across the county have called for the removal of statues of Columbus, saying that the Italian explorer is responsible for the genocide and exploitation of native peoples in the Americas.Statues of Columbus have also been toppled or vandalized in cities such as Miami; Richmond, Virginia; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Boston, where one was decapitated.  
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As the coronavirus continues to spread in Nigeria, the country’s Center for Disease Control is fighting back with aggressive testing. The NCDC says it aims to test millions of people in the coming months. Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja.Videographer: Timothy Obiezu
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Construction for the Pakistani government-approved Shri Krishna Mandir complex in Islamabad has been halted by municipal authorities amid protest by hardline Islamic clerics and politicians who say the Hindu temple has no place in the Pakistani capital. VOA Urdu service’s Gaitty Ara Anis filed this report from Islamabad. 
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The United States, the world leader in COVID-19 infections and deaths, continues to set new daily records for coronavirus infections.U.S. states reported more than 76,400 cases Friday, the second time reported infections for a single day exceeded 70,000 and the 11th time in the past month a single-day record had been set.The U.S. has more than 3.67 million of the world’s 14.1 million COVID-19 infections, according to Johns Hopkins University statistics, largely because of surges in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia and Texas.The surges come as the U.S. lacks a clear national plan to contain the spread of the coronavirus and no requirement for people to wear protective masks in public.“I want people to have a certain freedom, and I don’t believe in that,” President Donald Trump said in an interview with Fox News that is scheduled to air Sunday.FILE – U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called Saturday for an end to worldwide inequalities that triggered recent anti-racism protests and have been further exposed by the coronavirus pandemic.“COVID-19 has been likened to an X-ray, revealing the fractures in the fragile skeleton of the societies we have built,” Guterres said at an event in Johannesburg marking what would have been former South African President Nelson Mandela’s 102nd birthday.Stunning statistic on wealthTo help make his point, Guterres said the world’s 26 richest people have as much wealth as half the world’s population. He accused developed countries of investing in their own survival and said they had “failed to deliver the support needed to help the developing world through these dangerous times.”Brazil follows the U.S. with 2 million cases and India comes in third with 1 million infections, according to Johns Hopkins statistics.Brazilian health experts blame their federal government for the country’s large number of cases.“The virus would have been difficult to stop anyway. But this milestone of 2 million cases, which is very underestimated, shows this could have been different,” said Dr. Adriano Massuda, a health care professor at Sao Paulo’s Getulio Vargas Foundation University. “There’s no national strategy for testing, no measures from the top … too little effort to improve basic care so we find serious cases before they become too serious, no tracking.”Health workers take residents’ blood samples at a testing site for COVID-19 amid the new coronavirus pandemic in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 17, 2020. The federal health ministry said the country had passed 2 million confirmed cases of infection.Although the number of cases appears to be ebbing in some of the larger Brazilian cities, the disease is now starting to hit places that had been spared.The World Health Organization said Friday that Brazil was “still in the middle of this fight.”EU sessionIn Europe, leaders gathered in Brussels on Saturday, the last day of a two-day meeting to negotiate the terms of an $855 billion economic rescue plan. As of Saturday afternoon, there was no sign a deal was imminent. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said EU leaders’ views on the stimulus plan remained “diametrically different” after Friday’s talks.In Spain, officials asked residents of Barcelona to stay at home as much as possible to stop the spread of the virus.Israel imposed a new weekend shutdown in an attempt to lower infection rates.FILE – A pharmacy tech pours out pills of hydroxychloroquine at Rock Canyon Pharmacy in Provo, Utah, May 20, 2020.Another trial of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine has proved it to be ineffective as an early treatment for mild cases of COVID-19, researchers at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine concluded.“There is not convincing evidence that hydroxychloroquine can either prevent COVID-19 after exposure or reduce illness severity after developing early symptoms,” said Caleb Skipper, lead author of the study. “While disappointing, these results are consistent with an emerging body of literature that hydroxychloroquine doesn’t convey a substantial clinical benefit in people diagnosed with COVID-19, despite its activity against the coronavirus in a test tube.”Trump had promoted hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment early in the pandemic and said he took the drug himself. He has tested negative for the coronavirus.After initially approving it as an emergency treatment, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reversed itself once doctors warned of potentially deadly side effects.
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U.N. agencies say a lack of money is threatening the lives of millions of people in developing countries from COVID-19-related hunger and disease.The United Nations recently appealed for more than $10 billion to help hundreds of millions of people in the poorest, worst-hit countries in the world survive the pandemic. Nearly half the amount of the updated appeal is slated for food assistance, with an additional $500 million to be spent on famine prevention.However, the international response has been tepid since the U.N. launched its first of three Global Humanitarian Response Plans for COVID-19 in March, asking for $2 billion. To date, only $1.7 billion of the $10.3 billion needed has been received.The U.N. warns the number of hungry people caught in a state of crisis could increase from the current 149 million to 270 million before the end of the year without international aid.World Food Program spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said the agency’s director, David Beasley, has warned the world runs the risk of a famine of biblical proportions.“Millions of the world’s very poorest families have been forced even closer to the abyss,” Byrs said. “Livelihoods are being destroyed at an unprecedented level. Now, to prevent the worst, WFP is scaling up its operation to provide food assistance to 138 million people who face a desperate level of hunger.”FILE – A youth controls a soccer ball outside apartments in the Fuerte Apache neighborhood in Buenos Aires, Argentina, June 15, 2020. The Argentina office of UNICEF says the child poverty rate in Argentina could reach 58.6% by year’s end.The U.N. children’s fund runs humanitarian operations in 155 countries and territories. It said it had received less than half of the $2 billion needed to support its activities for women and children.UNICEF spokeswoman Marixie Mercado said projections by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health show COVID-19 is affecting children in ways that will have lasting impact.She said the study showed that 6,000 children could die from preventable causes every day over the next six months because of disruptions in essential services related to COVID-19.“The data from the first four months of 2020 already show a substantial drop in the number of children completing three doses of the vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis. … We know that at least 30 measles vaccination campaigns were or are at risk of being canceled,” Mercado said. “And, this, of course, could result in further outbreaks in 2020 and beyond.”The pandemic also is having a devastating impact on education. UNESCO estimated that nearly 1.2 billion students in 150 countries had been affected by school closures, causing mental and psychological distress for many. And according to the U.N. Population Fund, millions of girls and women are subject to violence because of COVID-19 lockdown measures.
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As India races past the 1 million mark of COVID 19 cases, public health experts warn that the pandemic is set to accelerate with the emergence of new hotspots in places that so far had escaped the ravages of the virus, including its vast countryside.More than half the cases were added in the last fortnight as the country reached a record high of nearly 35,000 cases in recent days. Even these numbers could be off the mark as testing remains sparse in a country of 1.3 billion say public health experts.   “From my perspective, it is gross underreporting, my hunch is that numbers would be much larger,” according to Kapil Yadav, assistant professor of Community Medicine at the premier All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. “It will run its course and we may or may not see the typical peak we have seen in Western developed countries.” That is because in the vast country, different places are seeing surges at different times – while Delhi and the states of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu accounted for a bulk of the cases until recently, infections now are spiralling in cities like Bengaluru and the northeastern state of Bihar, home to more than 100 million people and one of India’s poorest states.  Virologists who had warned that the highly contagious coronavirus will hit like an avalanche in a country of densely packed cities and huge urban slums where social distancing is impossible, say India’s long and stringent 10-week lockdown only delayed the onset of the pandemic, but could not stop it. The virus has marched on since cities began opening in June – markets are up and running and many businesses are open. Roadside vendors selling colored tiles and stones have no business as traffic remains thin in cities. (Photo: Anjana Pasricha/VOA)The spurt in cases has led to huge uncertainties as India tries to get its broken economy back on track. There are few customers in markets and vendors trying to sell their wares on roadsides are struggling because traffic is still thin.  In the mega cities of Delhi and Mumbai, metro and train services, the lifeline of these cities, have not been restored, although they are seeing a dip in new cases. Schools and colleges remain shut.  
 Delhi, which saw a huge spike in cases last month, has still not restored metro train services, the lifeline of the city. (Photo: Anjana Pasricha/VOA)Millions of people have been ordered back into lockdown in the past week – the sprawling eastern state of Bihar, the Information Technology hub of Bengaluru and the tourist city of Goa were among several places that clamped stay-at-home orders.Public health experts warn, though, that shutdowns will do little to stop the havoc wrought by the virus.  “The only justification for lockdowns is giving your public health system time to prepare,” says Yadav. “If we have not prepared in five months, another week is not going to make much of a difference.”Concerns are high about the dismal state of health infrastructure in rural areas where even primary healthcare facilities often are lacking and people must travel to cities to get to a hospital.  “Should the virus start spreading, there definitely will be challenges. All we can hope is that facilities will be extended to reach the rural areas,” says K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India in New Delhi. Worries are especially high over Bihar, a largely rural and poor state that has emerged as a new hotspot. Its surging cases are blamed on laxity when cases were low – a wedding last month in its capital Patna with 300 guests is reported to have become a super spreader event. Authorities say tens of thousands of migrants who returned in recent days have brought the virus from cities.  Reddy is hopeful, however, the spread will be slower in villages than in urban areas. “The virus can hitchhike long distances easily in cities where people move fast, whereas in villages, people move around at a much slower pace and meet less people, so it does not have the same mobility.”  The Times of India newspaper warned in an editorial of the devastating economic costs being extracted by lockdowns as millions lose jobs and incomes. “A cyclical lifting and imposing of lockdowns also sends out a very wrong and dangerous message: That it’s okay to let the guard down when the lockdown is lifted.” Public health experts also say the public is not getting the right message from lockdowns.   “People believed that lockdowns are a strong solution for an enemy we have not seen, this will stop the virus and you don’t have to do anything more,” says virologist Jacob John. “There has been no socio-cultural behaviour change education – that alone will make people understand that if I wear a mask, it is not for me alone but for my wife and children and parents at home.” India is nonetheless drawing some consolation from its relatively low death rate – the more than 26,000 deaths counted so far are lower than in many Western countries. Experts say the nation’s much younger population might be helping the country hold mortality rates down.
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The U.N. secretary-general called Saturday for a new social contract and global deal to create equal opportunities for all in an address on the birthday of late anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela.“A new social contract within societies will enable young people to live in dignity, will ensure women have the same prospects and opportunities as men, and will protect the sick, the vulnerable and minorities of all kinds,” Antonio Guterres said in a keynote speech to South Africa’s Nelson Mandela Foundation on what would have been the late president’s 102nd birthday.Guterres said people want social and economic systems that work for everyone, and a say in the decisions that affect their lives.“They want their human rights and fundamental freedoms to be respected,” the U.N. chief said. “The new social contract, between governments, people, civil society, business and more, must integrate employment, sustainable development and social protection, based on equal rights and opportunities for all.”His address was delivered virtually from New York, due to the coronavirus pandemic. South Africa has more than 325,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.South African Hospitals Forced to Turn Away COVID-19 PatientsHealth care providers plagued by lack of staff, equipment“COVID-19 is a human tragedy,” Guterres said. “But it has also created a generational opportunity — an opportunity to build back a more equal and sustainable world.”His remarks focused on addressing global inequalities, which he said the pandemic has underscored.The U.N. chief urged reform to tackle the heart of the problem.“Inequality starts at the top: in global institutions,” Guterres said. “Addressing inequality must start by reforming them.”He also warned against populism, nationalism, extremism and racism, saying they would only lead to more division and inequality in society.Guterres, who referred to himself as “a proud feminist,” also called for dismantling the “patriarchy” and moving toward gender parity.“Globally, women are still excluded from senior positions in governments and on corporate boards. Fewer than one in 10 world leaders is a woman,” Guterres said. “Gender inequality harms everyone because it prevents us from benefiting from the intelligence and experience of all of humanity.”He has acted to put this into practice at the United Nations, where the ranks of his senior management reached gender parity on January 1 of this year. But the shift at other levels in the organization has been slower.The so-called “digital divide” is also exposing global inequalities, particularly between developed and developing countries, he said. In 2019, nearly 90% of people in developed nations used the internet, while the figure was only 19% for developing countries.“We are in danger of a two-speed world,” Guterres cautioned.His proposal includes social safety nets, including universal health coverage and the possibility of a universal basic income. He called on governments to implement affirmative action programs and policies to resolve historic inequalities in gender, race or ethnicity, and he said “the vicious cycle” of corruption must be broken. His plan also considers the effects of climate change and urges a greening of the economy to both protect the planet and create new jobs.Guterres said he is observing the beginnings of a new movement in demonstrations for racial equality and campaigns against hate speech.“This movement rejects inequality and division, and unites young people, civil society, the private sector, cities, regions and others behind policies for peace, our planet, justice and human rights for all,” he said. “It is already making a difference.”He said world leaders must decide whether they will give in to chaos, division and inequality or right the wrongs of the past.“We are at breaking point, but we know which side of history we are on,” the U.N. chief said.Mandela was South Africa’s first democratically elected president and its first Black head of state. Madiba, as he is affectionately known, was president from 1994-1999. He died in 2013 age 95.In December 2009, the U.N. General Assembly declared his birthday “Nelson Mandela International Day” to recognize his role in promoting democracy and peace. People around the world are encouraged to mark his birthday doing good works for 67 minutes – the number of years he spent fighting for social justice. It is meant to symbolize that every individual can do good things and that small steps can lead to big changes.
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