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MARCH 11 (GMT) – MARCH 12 (AEST), 2021

ASIANORTH AMERICAASIA

Military accused of ‘lethal tactics’

Amnesty International has accused Myanmar’s military government of using battlefield weapons against peaceful protesters and conducting systematic, deliberate killings. Myanmar has been roiled by protests and other acts of civil disobedience since a Feb. 1 military coup that toppled the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi just as it was to start its second term. The coup reversed years of slow progress toward democracy in the Southeast Asian nation.

Brazil buckles as death toll soars

Brazil’s hospitals are faltering as a highly contagious coronavirus variant tears through the country, the president insists on unproven treatments and the only attempt to create a national plan to contain COVID-19 has just fallen short. For the past week, Brazilian governors sought to do something President Jair Bolsonaro obstinately rejects: cobble together a proposal for states to help curb the nation’s deadliest COVID-19 outbreak yet.

China tightens grip on Hong Kong

China’s ceremonial legislature have endorsed the Communist Party’s latest move to tighten control over Hong Kong by reducing the role of its public in picking the territory’s leaders. The measure adds to a crackdown against a protest movement in Hong Kong calling for greater democracy. The crackdown has prompted complaints Beijing is eroding the autonomy promised when Hong Kong was handed to China in 1997.

Congress backs virus relief bill

A Congress riven along party lines approved a landmark $US1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, as President Joe Biden and Democrats claimed a triumph on a bill that marshals the government’s spending might against twin pandemic and economic crises that have upended a nation. The House gave final congressional approval to the sweeping package by a near party line 220-211 vote precisely seven weeks after Biden entered the White House.

‘Desperate situation’ in Tigray

Thousands of people who have been hiding in rural areas of Ethiopia’s Tigray region have begun arriving in a community that can barely support them — and more are said to be on the way. For months, one great unknown in the Tigray conflict has been the fate of hundreds of thousands of people in vast rural areas beyond the reach of outside aid. With the region largely cut off from the world since November, fears of violence and starvation have grown.

Labour targets nurses’ pay

Sir Keir Starmer will target the Government’s controversial 1% pay rise for NHS workers during the campaign for the May elections, declaring “a vote for Labour is a vote to support our nurses”. The Labour leader will launch the party’s campaign for the local and mayoral elections by demanding key workers are given “a proper pay rise” at a virtual event. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s move to recommend the low increase for health workers in England has been widely criticised.

UKAFRICASOUTH AMERICA

YOUR DAILY TOP 12 STORIES FROM FRANK NEWS

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MARCH 11 (GMT) – MARCH 12 (AEST), 2021

AUSTRALIAASIAEUROPE

Concern at rising interest rates

Prospects for a stimulus-fueled recovery in the US are pushing up market interest rates – and that’s a headache for European policymakers because their economy remains stuck in a double-dip recession and can’t afford higher borrowing costs. European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde is expected to address rising bond yields. She will speak after the bank’s 25-member governing council meets to decide monetary stimulus settings for the 19 countries that use the euro currency.

Cambodia reports COVID death

Cambodia has confirmed its first death from COVID-19 since the pandemic began more than a year ago as it battles a new local outbreak that has infected hundreds of people. A 50-year-old man was confirmed infected last month while working as a driver for a Chinese company in coastal Sihanoukville and died at the Khmer-Soviet friendship hospital, the Health Ministry said in a statement. Cambodia has confirmed only 1,163 cases of infection.

PM defends tourism rescue plan

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has dismissed widespread criticism of his $1.2 billion stimulus package for the shattered tourism industry. The prime minister is offering 800,000 discounted airline tickets as well as loans for struggling tourism operators, designed to ease the pain when JobKeeper wage subsidies end this month. The major airlines have lauded the half-price return flights to more than a dozen regional tourism destinations.

Danger lurks in nuclear plant

A decade ago, a massive tsunami crashed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Three of its reactors melted down, leaving it looking like a bombed-out factory. Emergency workers risked their lives trying to keep one of history’s worst nuclear crises from spiraling out of control. Proper equipment has now replaced ragged plastic hoses held together with tape and an outdoor power switchboard infested by rats, which caused blackouts.

Tourist bus plunges into ravine

A tourist bus has plunged into a ravine on Indonesia’s main island of Java after its brakes apparently malfunctioned, killing at least 27 people and injuring 39 others. The bus was carrying a group of Islamic junior high school students, teachers and parents from the West Java province town of Subang when the accident happened on a winding road, said local police chief Eko Prasetyo Robbyanto. He said the bus was on its way back to Subang from a pilgrimage site.

Nursing shortages a problem

Counties Manukau District Health Board is short 150 nurses, a revelation the New Zealand Nurses Organisation is calling outrageous. The shortages were highlighted during the parliamentary health select committee’s annual review of the DHB. Chief nurse Jenny Parr said it was a problem as the DHB tried to juggle staff working in managed isolation facilities, while the country’s closed borders restricted access to overseas workers.

NEW ZEALANDASIAASIA

YOUR DAILY TOP 12 STORIES FROM FRANK NEWS

FULL STORIES START ON PAGE 6

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MARCH 11 (GMT) – MARCH 12 (AEST), 2021

SOUTH AMERICA

COVID-19 patients lie on beds at a field hospital built inside a sports coliseum in Santo Andre, on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, Brazil. – AP

Brazil buckles as death toll soarsBrazil’s hospitals are faltering as a highly contagious coronavirus variant tears through the country, the president insists on unproven treatments and the only attempt to create a national plan to contain COVID-19 has just fallen short.

For the past week, Brazilian governors sought to do something President Jair Bolsonaro obstinately rejects: cobble together a proposal for states to help curb the nation’s deadliest COVID-19 outbreak yet. The effort was expected to include a curfew, prohibition of crowded events and limits on the hours non-essential services can operate.

The final product was a one-page document that included general support for restricting activity but without any specific measures. Six governors, evidently still wary of antagonizing Bolsonaro, declined to sign on.

Piaui state’s Gov. Wellington Dias said that unless pressure on hospitals is eased, growing numbers of patients will have to endure the disease without a hospital bed or any hope of treatment in an intensive care unit.

“We have reached the limit across Brazil; rare are the exceptions,” Dias, who leads the governors’ forum, said. “The chance of dying without assistance is real.”

Those deaths have already started. In Brazil’s wealthiest state, Sao Paulo, at least 30 patients died this month while waiting for ICU beds, according to a tally published Wednesday by the news site G1. In southern Santa Catarina state, 419 people are waiting for transfer to ICU beds. In neighboring Rio Grande do Sul, ICU capacity is at 106%.

Alexandre Zavascki, a doctor in Rio Grande do Sul’s capital Porto Alegre, described a constant arrival of hospital patients who struggle to breathe.

“I have a lot of colleagues who, at times, stop to cry. This isn’t medicine we’re used to performing routinely. This is medicine adapted for a war scenario,” said Zavascki, who oversees infectious disease treatment at a private hospital. ■

Anti-coup protesters retreat from police in Yangon, Myanmar. – AP

ASIA

Military accused of ‘lethal tactics’Amnesty International has accused Myanmar’s military government of using battlefield weapons against peaceful protesters and conducting systematic, deliberate killings.

Myanmar has been roiled by protests and other acts of civil disobedience since a Feb. 1 military coup that toppled the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi just as it was to start its second term. The coup reversed years of slow progress toward democracy in the Southeast Asian nation after five decades of military rule.

The military “is using increasingly lethal tactics and weapons normally seen on the battlefield against peaceful protesters and bystanders across the country,” Amnesty International said in a report.

“By verifying more than 50 videos from the ongoing crackdown, Amnesty International’s Crisis Evidence Lab can confirm that security forces appear to be implementing planned, systematic strategies including the ramped-up use of lethal force. Many of the killings documented amount to extrajudicial executions,” the report said.

Security forces have used live ammunition against protesters, causing the deaths of about 60 people.

There were new but unconfirmed accounts of additional deaths Wednesday and Thursday as police attempted to break up anti-coup protests in cities and towns across the country using tear gas and other weapons.

As widespread protests against its takeover continue, the junta is facing a new challenge from the country’s ethnic guerrilla forces, which until recently had limited themselves to verbal denunciations of last month’s coup.

Reports from Kachin, the northernmost state, said guerrilla forces from the Kachin ethnic minority attacked a government base and were in turn attacked. The armed wing of the Kachin political movement is the Kachin Independence Army, or KIA. ■

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MARCH 11 (GMT) – MARCH 12 (AEST), 2021

AFRICA

People displaced by the recent conflict gather around water points at a makeshift camp in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia. – AP

‘Desperate situation’ as Tigray crisis worsensThousands of people who have been hiding in rural areas of Ethiopia’s Tigray region have begun arriving in a community that can barely support them — and more are said to be on the way.

For months, one great unknown in the Tigray conflict has been the fate of hundreds of thousands of people in vast rural areas beyond the reach of outside aid. With the region largely cut off from the world since November, fears of violence and starvation have grown.

Now those people are starting to arrive, many by foot, in the community of Shire, aid workers who are there and who have visited say. The Associated Press obtained permission to use rare photos largely from the International Rescue Committee of the dire conditions facing these displaced people. Photos from the region have been hard to come by, with electricity cut for much of the conflict and ethnic Tigrayans telling the AP that being caught with photos endangered their lives.

Some 5,000 people had arrived between last Wednesday and Sunday, and humanitarian teams are being sent to find those said to be on the way, Oliver Behn, general director for Doctors Without Borders-Holland said. “They are coming in very bad conditions … very exhausted, dehydrated, skinny,” Behn said. “It’s becoming a desperate situation very quickly.”

The people arriving bring an idea of the deprivation gnawing at the Tigray countryside. Aid workers say some describe surviving by eating leaves — or the seeds they had put aside for planting, in a sign of even worse hunger to come.

It is not clear exactly what new threats of violence caused these thousands of people to flee western Tigray, where US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said war crimes have been committed. Some people from Ethiopia’s neighboring Amhara region are accused of occupying communities.

The ethnic Tigrayans described hiding in the hills for weeks after the fighting erupted between Ethiopian and allied forces and those of the Tigray regional leaders who once dominated the country’s government. ■

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. – AP

NORTH AMERICA

Congress approves virus relief billA Congress riven along party lines approved a landmark $US1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, as President Joe Biden and Democrats claimed a triumph on a bill that marshals the government’s spending might against twin pandemic and economic crises that have upended a nation.

The House gave final congressional approval to the sweeping package by a near party line 220-211 vote precisely seven weeks after Biden entered the White House and four days after the Senate passed the bill without a single Republican vote. GOP lawmakers opposed the package as bloated, crammed with liberal policies and heedless of signs the crises are easing.

Most noticeable to many Americans are provisions to provide up to $1400 direct payments this year to most adults and extend $300 per week emergency unemployment benefits into early September. But the legislation goes far beyond that.

The measure addresses Democrats’ campaign promises and Biden’s top initial priority of easing a one-two punch that first hit the country a year ago. Since then, many Americans have been relegated to hermit-like lifestyles in their homes to avoid a disease that’s killed over 525,000 people — about the population of Wichita, Kansas — and plunged the economy to its deepest depths since the Great Depression.

“Today we have a decision to make of tremendous consequence,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, “a decision that will make a difference for millions of Americans, saving lives and livelihoods.”

For Biden and Democrats, the bill is essentially a canvas on which they’ve painted their core beliefs — that government programs can be a benefit, not a bane, to millions of people and that spending huge sums on such efforts can be a cure, not a curse. The measure so closely tracks Democrats’ priorities that several rank it with the top achievements of their careers, and despite their slender congressional majorities there was never real suspense over its fate. ■

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MARCH 11 (GMT) – MARCH 12 (AEST), 2021

UK

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. – AP

Labour to campaign on nurses’ paySir Keir Starmer will target the Government’s controversial 1% pay rise for NHS workers during the campaign for the May elections, declaring “a vote for Labour is a vote to support our nurses”.

The Labour leader will launch the party’s campaign for the local and mayoral elections by demanding key workers are given “a proper pay rise” at a virtual event.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s move to recommend the low increase for health workers in England, despite their year-long toil during the coronavirus pandemic, has been widely criticised.

Sir Keir, who has been seen to be struggling to overturn the Tories’ popularity after taking over the Labour leadership, will hope focusing on nurses’ pay will provide his campaign with much-needed momentum as he tries to centre the elections on Britain’s recovery.

He will stress “this is a different Labour Party, under new leadership” in attempting to highlight the distance between himself and Jeremy Corbyn, who led the party to a dismal general election defeat in 2019.

Sir Keir is anticipated to tell the virtual launch alongside candidates and leaders from across the UK that the party’s priorities are “securing the economy, protecting the NHS, rebuilding Britain”.

“So, if you want to support our nurses, to rebuild social care and to reward our key workers, then vote Labour. My mum was a nurse, my sister was a nurse, my wife works for the NHS,” he is expected to add.

“I know how tough this year has been for our NHS and I know that now, more than ever, is the time to give our key workers a proper pay rise.

“Every vote in this election is a chance to show the Conservatives that the British people value our NHS and our key workers so much more than this Government does.”

He will declare the elections are “about how Britain recovers”. ■

A paramilitary policeman stands watch in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. – AP

ASIA

China tightens control on Hong KongChina’s ceremonial legislature have endorsed the Communist Party’s latest move to tighten control over Hong Kong by reducing the role of its public in picking the territory’s leaders.

The measure adds to a crackdown against a protest movement in Hong Kong calling for greater democracy. The crackdown has prompted complaints Beijing is eroding the autonomy promised when Hong Kong was handed to China in 1997 and hurting its status as a global financial center.

The National People’s Congress voted 2,895-0, with one abstention, to endorse changes that would give a pro-Beijing committee power to appoint more of Hong Kong’s lawmakers, reducing the number elected by the public. NPC members, who are appointed by the party, routinely endorse party plans by unanimous vote or overwhelming majorities.

President Xi Jinping and other party leaders sat on stage in front of delegates as they cast votes electronically in the cavernous Great Hall of the People. The NPC has no real powers but the party uses its brief annual meeting, the year’s highest-profile political event, to showcase government plans and major decisions.

Also, the NPC endorsed the ruling party’s latest five-year development blueprint. It calls for stepping up efforts to transform China into a more self-reliant technology creator — a move that threatens to worsen strains with Washington and Europe over trade and market access.

Under the Hong Kong changes, a 1,500-member Election Committee would pick the territory’s chief executive and an unspecified “relatively large” number of members of its 90-seat legislature.

Committee members would come from five segments of society including business and political figures. That would give pro-Beijing forces more influence than a popular vote would.

Hong Kong news reports said earlier the Election Committee would pick one-third of legislators. ■

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MARCH 11 (GMT) – MARCH 12 (AEST), 2021

ASIA

Buddhist monks wearing face masks in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. – AP

Cambodia reports first coronavirus deathCambodia has confirmed its first death from COVID-19 since the pandemic began more than a year ago as it battles a new local outbreak that has infected hundreds of people.

A 50-year-old man was confirmed infected last month while working as a driver for a Chinese company in coastal Sihanoukville and died at the Khmer-Soviet friendship hospital, the Health Ministry said in a statement.

Cambodia has confirmed only 1,163 cases of infection with the coronavirus since the pandemic began, but it is battling a new local outbreak that has infected several hundred people.

According to the Health Ministry, the new outbreak was traced to a foreign resident who broke quarantine in a hotel and went to a nightclub in early February. That caused a slew of infections and led the government on Feb. 20 to announce a two-week closure of all public schools, cinemas, bars and entertainment areas in Phnom Penh.

The government has since extended the closures for more two weeks for schools, gyms, concert halls, museums and other entertainment venues in Phnom Penh, nearby Kandal province and the coastal province of Sihanoukville.

The Health Ministry said 39 cases were reported from local transmission.

As the outbreak grows, a defunct luxury hotel in the capital has been converted into a 500-room coronavirus hospital, and authorities are enforcing a new law imposing criminal punishments for violating health rules.

The country began its vaccination campaign in February with 600,000 doses of the Chinese-produced Sinopharm vaccine. It also received 324,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine this month that were donated by and produced in India. ■

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde. – AP

EUROPE

Rising interest rates cause concernProspects for a stimulus-fueled recovery in the US are pushing up market interest rates – and that’s a headache for European policymakers because their economy remains stuck in a double-dip recession and can’t afford higher borrowing costs.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde is expected to address rising bond yields. She will hold a news conference after the bank’s 25-member governing council meets to decide monetary stimulus settings for the 19 countries that use the euro currency.

Here’s Lagarde’s problem: Interest rates on 10-year government bonds have risen by about 0.3% since the start of the year. It’s regarded as a spillover from higher bond yields in the US. The higher US bond yields reflect expectations for stronger growth and inflation, following plans for a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill pushed by new US President Joe Biden.

And those higher rates on US Treasurys are leading to higher yields on European bonds, too. The rise in European rates is not big, and it’s only taken rates to about where they were before the pandemic. Market interest rates are still very low by historical standards.

But it’s the wrong time for borrowing costs to be going up in Europe. The eurozone economy is expected to shrink over the first three months of the year and isn’t expected to reach pre-pandemic levels of output until 2022. That means Europe is lagging well behind the US, where the COVID-19 recession was shallower and the new administration’s stimulus efforts have raised hopes for a bounce-back this year.

Reasons include Europe’s smaller fiscal stimulus in the form of relief payments to struggling businesses and workers, and the slower rollout of vaccinations which mean business closures and travel restrictions may remain in effect longer.

Lagarde could try to talk interest rates down by warning bond market participants that the ECB has plenty of tools available to intervene. Some analysts think she may go farther and lay out concrete steps that the bank could take. ■

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MARCH 11 (GMT) – MARCH 12 (AEST), 2021

ASIA

The wreckage of the bus after the crash on on Indonesia’s main island of Java. – AP

Tragedy as tourist bus plunges into ravineA tourist bus has plunged into a ravine on Indonesia’s main island of Java after its brakes apparently malfunctioned, killing at least 27 people and injuring 39 others.

The bus was carrying a group of Islamic junior high school students, teachers and parents from the West Java province town of Subang when the accident happened on a winding road, said local police chief Eko Prasetyo Robbyanto.

He said the bus was on its way back to Subang from a pilgrimage site in the province’s Tasikmalaya district when it plunged into the 20-meter (65-foot) -deep ravine after the driver lost control of the vehicle in an area with a number of sharp declines in Sumedang district.

Police were still investigating the cause of the accident, but survivors told authorities that the vehicle’s brakes apparently malfunctioned, Robbyanto said.

Bandung search and rescue agency chief Deden Ridwansah said the 27 bodies and 39 injured people were taken to a hospital and a nearby health clinic, including a body of a young boy who was pinned under the overturned bus and pulled from the wreckage.

Thirteen of the injured were treated for serious injuries, Ridwansah said. The driver was among those killed.

Television video showed police and rescuers from the National Search and Rescue Agency evacuating injured victims and carrying the dead to ambulances. Grieving relatives waited for information about their loved ones at Sumedang’s general hospital, others tried to identify the bodies laid at a morgue.

Road accidents are common in Indonesia because of poor safety standards and infrastructure.

In December 2019, 35 people were killed when a passenger bus fell into a 80-meter (262-foot) -deep ravine and crashed into a fast-flowing river on Sumatra island. In early 2018, 27 people killed after a packed tourist bus plunged from a hill in West Java’s hilly area. ■

A young evacuee is screened for leaked radiation from the tsunami-ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011. – AP

ASIA

Danger lurks in nuclear plant at FukushimaA decade ago, a massive tsunami crashed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Three of its reactors melted down, leaving it looking like a bombed-out factory. Emergency workers risked their lives trying to keep one of history’s worst nuclear crises from spiraling out of control.

Proper equipment has now replaced ragged plastic hoses held together with tape and an outdoor power switchboard infested by rats, which caused blackouts. Radiation levels have declined, allowing workers and visitors to wear regular clothes and surgical masks in most areas.

But deep inside the plant, danger still lurks. Officials don’t know exactly how long the cleanup will take, whether it will be successful and what might become of the land where the plant sits.

Journalists from The Associated Press recently visited the plant to document progress in its cleanup on the 10th anniversary of the meltdowns and the challenges that lie ahead.

WHAT’S THE ENDGAME?A decade after the accident, Japan doesn’t yet have a plan to dispose of the highly radioactive melted fuel, debris and waste at the plant. Technology also isn’t advanced enough yet to manage the waste by reducing its toxicity.

TEPCO says it needs to get rid of the water storage tanks to free up space at the plant so workers can build facilities that will be used to study and store melted fuel and other debris.

There are about 500,000 tons of solid radioactive waste, including contaminated debris and soil, sludge from water treatment, scrapped tanks and other waste.

It’s unclear what the plant will look like when the work there is done. Local officials and residents say they expect the complex to one day be open space where they can walk freely. But there’s no clear idea if or when that might happen. ■

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MARCH 11 (GMT) – MARCH 12 (AEST), 2021

Nursing shortages an ongoing problemCounties Manukau District Health Board is short 150 nurses, a revelation the New Zealand Nurses Organisation is calling outrageous.

The shortages were highlighted during the parliamentary health select committee’s annual review of the DHB.

Chief nurse Jenny Parr said it was a problem as the DHB tried to juggle staff working in managed isolation facilities, while the country’s closed borders restricted access to overseas workers.

“We do have a number of additional nurses that are working in our managed isolation facilities so that does have a constraint around our ability to get casual staff when there’s a need.”

She said the DHB had a vacancy rate of less than 5 percent for its 3200 nurses and said staff turnover had been significantly reduced since the country’s borders shut.

New Zealand Nurses Organisation manager of industrial services Glenda Alexander said such workforce shortages were having an impact on nurses working in hospitals.

“That’s why we have members reporting that they are stressed and overwhelmed,” Alexander said.

“It takes its toll because they are tired and working extra shifts to make up for the shortages. It’s the whole compounding effect of it, which impacts on their health and well-being.

“It’s outrageous that it has that number of vacancies. But it’s not surprising. We know there are huge numbers of nurses we need in the workforce that just aren’t there.”

She said the union had been working with DHBs to try to improve staffing levels in the health sector.

Alexander agreed with Parr’s comments about the impact of the pandemic on nursing.

“One of the things contributing to the number of vacancies is the border closures, because we’ve been relying on internationally qualified nurses to supplement our workforce.” ■

NEW ZEALAND

– RNZ

Morrison defends $1.2b tourism rescue planPrime Minister Scott Morrison has dismissed widespread criticism of his $1.2 billion stimulus package for the shattered tourism industry.

The prime minister is offering 800,000 discounted airline tickets as well as loans for struggling tourism operators, designed to ease the pain when JobKeeper wage subsidies end this month.

The major airlines have lauded the half-price return flights to more than a dozen regional tourism destinations.

But Flight Centre managing director Graham Turner says the $1.2 billion package will do little for the tourism industry.

“It is a very small, very meagre package at best,” he said.“I don’t think this is going to help at all, really. It is about the

borders. Keeping the domestic borders open and getting the international borders open as soon as possible.”

Tourism industry groups have also complained about the size of the package.

Margy Osmond from the Tourism and Transport Forum said cheap flights are a good start, but nowhere near enough to save wider tourism jobs.

She wants a simply administered wage subsidy scheme targeted at the sector alongside dedicated cash boosts to stave off mass job losses.

“From accommodation providers and tourism operators through to transport companies, attraction operators, business event organisers and cultural organisations, many businesses are at the wall,” Osmond said.

An estimated 800,000 government-subsidised tickets will be offered over the scheme’s duration which includes the Easter and winter school holidays.

Return flights to eligible locations will receive a 50 per cent discount between April 1 and July 31.

Initially, the government has listed Gold Coast, Cairns, the Whitsundays and Mackay region including Proserpine and Hamilton Island and the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. ■

– AAP

AUSTRALIA