French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah has been sentenced to six-years in prison by an Iranian court, according to her lawyer.The lawyer, Saeid Dehghan, said Adelkhah was sentenced to five years for conspiring against Iran’s national security and one year for propaganda against the Islamic Republic.France has called for Adelkhah’s release, but Iran does not recognize dual citizenship for Iranians.Adelkhah, a sixty-year-old anthropologist, was arrested last June with Roland Marchal, a French academic.Marchal was released by Iran earlier this year as part of a prisoner exchange with France. 
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Ten people died in gunbattles between police and suspected gang members in a shantytown in Brazil on Friday.Police chasing a gang leader raided the Alemao slum in northern Rio de Janeiro, triggering the gunbattles. Authorities said in a statement that there were “multiple clashes.”An elite Brazilian police unit known by its Portuguese acronym BOPE carried out the operation. The local drug kingpin sought in the raid was among the dead, the statement said.Police did not release the man’s identity but said he had escaped prison in 2016 and was on the list of leading drug traffickers in slums, bordering Rio’s iconic Copacabana and Ipanema neighborhoods. 
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A Montenegrin prosecutor on Friday ordered the release from detention of a Serbian Orthodox Church bishop and eight priests, whose arrests had sparked protests and clashes with police.Several hundred people gathered outside the detention facility in the western town of Niksic, greeting Bishop Joanikije and the other priests as they left it late Friday.”Let this fight continue but with God’s means, truth and justice, and with love towards our homeland, ” Joanikije said.The priests were detained Tuesday for leading a procession attended by a few thousand people without wearing surgical masks or respecting distancing rules.Their arrests sparked protests in several towns in Montenegro and Serbia, during which protesters clashed with police, and dozens were arrested.Meanwhile, tensions between the government and the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro over a religious law are continuing. The church says the law would strip it of its property.The ban of large gatherings in Montenegro is still in force, as one of the measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
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The United States will donate 200 medical ventilators to Moscow via U.S. military transport beginning next week, to aid against the worsening coronavirus outbreak in Russia.Government communications obtained by VOA reveal that the first 50 ventilators are being produced in California and will be ready for shipment to a surgical center in Moscow on Wednesday. The remaining 150 will be ready for shipment on May 26.The U.S. government is donating 100 percent of the cost of the ventilators, their start-up components and their delivery expenses, which officials said totals roughly $4.7 million.U.S. military aircraft will be used to transport the medical ventilators, considered the “best option” due to extremely limited commercial flights. Officials stressed within the communications that the ventilators are for the Russian people and do not signal a partnership with the Russian military.“There is no cooperation between the U.S. and Russian militaries, as is prohibited under the National Defense Authorization Act,” according to the communications.The COVID-19 outbreak has recently surged in Russia, which now has the second-highest number of cases in the world at nearly 263,000 cases, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Only the U.S., with 1.4 million cases, has more.The deliveries later this month will fulfill an offer made by President Donald Trump during a news conference in mid-April.Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin accepted Trump’s offer to provide ventilators during a call between the two leaders that focused on the coronavirus as well as arms control, according to the White House.The United States has aided many countries battling the coronavirus pandemic and will continue to do so in the future, according to officials.Ventilator firesOn Wednesday, Russia suspended the use of some Russian-made, Aventa-M medical ventilators following fatal hospital fires in Moscow and St. Petersburg reportedly involving the machines.Russia sent a batch of the same type of ventilators to the United States in the beginning of April due to projected shortages in the states of New York and New Jersey.U.S. officials have said the Russian ventilators were not used or deployed to hospitals due to a flattening of the coronavirus curve, and the two states are returning the ventilators to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “out of an abundance of caution.”  
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Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven defended his country’s strategy in fighting the spread of COVID-19, pushing back on the notion Sweden has taken a “business as usual” attitude toward the pandemic.Speaking to foreign correspondents Friday in the capital, Stockholm, Lofven insisted life is not carrying on as normal in Sweden, as he said its international reputation would suggest.Other European nations have expressed concern about Sweden’s relatively “soft approach” to fighting the coronavirus. While they did ban large gatherings, restaurants and schools for younger children have stayed open. The government has urged social distancing, and Swedes have largely complied.A woman sits respecting social distancing at the Gallerian shopping center, as the spread of the coronavirus disease continues, in Stockholm, Sweden, May 12, 2020.Lofven said many people have been staying home, which he says has had a positive effect. He did acknowledge Sweden’s 3,500 deaths, which was far higher, per capita, than its Scandanavian neighbors Finland, Norway and Denmark, all which took a stricter approach.Lovgren said most of Sweden’s casualties were among the elderly, which, he says had little to do with people “walking around” the streets.He said Sweden, like several other countries, did not manage to protect the most vulnerable people, including the elderly, despite best intentions.Swedish media in recent weeks have reported cases where retirement homes have seen a large death toll, with staff continuing to work despite a lack of protective gear or despite exhibiting symptoms and potentially infecting residents.Some retirement homes also have seen a shortage of staff because employees either have refused to work or have been encouraged to stay home even with mild symptoms. 
 
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Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, has asked Google to block an article about the controversy over official data on coronavirus deaths in the country on the website of MBKh Media independent online publication.MBKh Media said late on May 14 that its article was based on a report by the Financial Times, which estimated that the real number of people who have died in Russia from COVID-19 could be 70 percent higher than reported by the country’s health officials.
 MBKh Media said it had received a message from Google a day earlier, saying that the request to block the article was based on the decision of the Prosecutor-General’s Office that claimed the article contained “calls for riots, extremist activities, [and] participation in mass public events held in violation of the established order.”
 
According to MBKh Media, which is hosted on the Google Cloud Platform, Google asked it to remove the article from its website or make it inaccessible in Russia.
 
The Roskomnadzor request was not listed on the Google transparency report web page as of May 15.
 
MBKh Media also said the article in question indicated that its content was based on the Financial Times report.
 
As of May 15, Russian authorities said the country had 10,598 new infections, bringing the official number of confirmed cases to 262,843, the second-highest total in the world, lagging only behind the United States. The death toll stands at 2,418, up 113 over the previous day.
 
Experts have questioned whether testing procedures were flawed, or whether local and regional officials were misclassifying cases. In some places, such as St. Petersburg, for example, the number of pneumonia cases went sharply above seasonal norms.
 
The Moscow City Health Department issued a statement on May 13 saying that more than 60 percent of coronavirus patients’ deaths in the city had been caused by “alternative causes,” and therefore such deaths had not been included to COVID-19 death toll.
 In a May 13 interview with Current Time, the World Health Organization’s representative in Russia downplayed doubts about the country’s coronavirus statistics.
 
Melita Vujnovic also told the television channel in the interview that the epidemic is “in the stabilization phase and is moving into the decline phase.” Current Time is a Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.
 
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Protesters in Montenegro took on the streets again Thursday, a day after police arrested dozens of demonstrators demanding the release of priests detained after leading a religious procession in disregard to the lockdown regulations.Protesters had clashed with police at rallies Wednesday over the detainment of eight Serbian Orthodox Church priests who are facing charges of violating health regulations.Authorities said 26 police officers were injured during the clashes in the towns of Niksic and Pljevlja. One policeman has been hospitalized.Montenegrin Prime Minister Dusko Markovic condemned the clashes in a televised statement on Thursday.”Everything we have achieved in the past three months of devoted work and mutual renunciation has been brought into question,” Markovic said. “We are afraid that in 10 days we could find ourselves in the same situation we were in two months ago with the great danger and consequences to the heath and lives for you all. There is no reasonable explanation or justification for such behavior.”The priests had led a procession Tuesday attended by a few thousand people without wearing surgical masks or respecting distancing rules.In Serbia, meanwhile, a few hundred protesters gathered in the capital, Belgrade, to demand the release of the eight priests.The ban of large gatherings in Montenegro is still in force as one of the measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus.  
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Brazil’s Sao Paulo state is building thousands of vertical funeral plots in order to meet the demand caused by the surge in coronavirus victims.Heber Vila, director of Evolution Technology Funderaria, the company that manufactures these vertical cemeteries, said the plots being constructed of recyclable materials are safe as it prevents any type of contact between cemetery visitors in the form of liquids or gases from the body.An estimated 13,000 vertical plots are being built in three cemeteries in Sao Paulo state, one of the areas in Brazil hardest-hit by the COVID-19 outbreak.The impact of the virus on Sao Paulo prompted Gov. Joao Doria to repeat his stance of gradually easing lockdown restrictions, although President Jair Bolsonaro has complained that the lockdown measures to contain the spread of the virus have hurt the economy.Brazil leads all Latin America in coronavirus infections with more than 200,000 confirmed cases, and the death toll is nearing 14,000. 
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Colombia launched new measures Thursday night aimed at stopping a rise in coronavirus infections near the border with Brazil.President Iván Duque said residents in the Amazon region are instructed to stay home unless making essential trips for food or medical help.The military has also dispatched troops to strengthen border security.The latest restrictions are aimed at helping Colombia’s overwhelmed hospital system and to provide safeguards for the indigenous people of the Amazon region, where there has been a spike in COVID-19 cases.The Associated Press says the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia reports 146 COVID-19 infections and six deaths among the population.Duque said Colombia finds itself in a situation that could turn critical, given the differences, from an epidemiological viewpoint, with its neighbors.Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro resisted anti-COVID measures and criticized many of the country’s local leaders for closing businesses in Brazil, which has the highest COVID rate in Latin America.   
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Health officials in the Yucatan area of the Mexican peninsula say coronavirus deaths peaked Thursday, with a record number of nine people losing their lives during a 24-hour period.The spike in COVID-19 deaths brings the number of people in Yucatan who have died with the virus to 92. The total number cases in Yucatan reached 982 cases.The latest human toll of the virus came on the same day Gov. Mauricio Vila Dosal announced aerospace, aeronautical and automotive factories in Yucatan will resume operations on Monday, after hygiene safeguards are put in place.Dosal also announced an extension of the ban on alcohol sales until the end of the month.The Yucatan Business Council, a group of stakeholders from various industries and business experts, will resume discussions Thursday on how to resume operations in agriculture, with an announcement of a comprehensive back-to-work plan next Friday.Yucatan’s construction industry is currently preparing a plan to meet safety requirements in order to reopen June 1. 
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A powerful Venezuelan official is seeking an investigation of the nation’s academy of scientists for publishing research that questioned official figures on coronavirus cases and estimated the pandemic may hit the country hard in the coming months. Venezuela’s In this April 2, 2019 file photo, Diosdado Cabello, Venezuela’s socialist party boss and president of the National Constituent Assembly attends a session in Caracas, Venezuela.”The numbers that they use are not supported,” Socialist Party Vice President Diosdado Cabello said, referring to the report on his weekly show Wednesday night. “It should be investigated.”  On Thursday the academy released a statement in response, reiterating the report’s two main conclusions: that testing should be increased and that it was unlikely the pandemic’s curve would be flattened at this time, underscoring the country should prepare for a forthcoming peak in the pandemic.   “It worries us as scientists, that we are harassed and marked for a technical report intended to improve management of the pandemic,” the statement added. The report used a mathematical model that the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine had developed earlier this year.  Venezuela’s information ministry did not respond to a request for comment.  Venezuela’s testing program has largely relied on rapid blood tests donated by the Chinese government, while its polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing capacity remains low. The PCR molecular tests are recommended by the World Health Organization and are considered more reliable than the rapid blood tests.  Only positive PCR tests certified by a single, overstretched Caracas lab — the National Institute of Hygiene — that can test a maximum of 100 samples per day, are included in the government’s official coronavirus case count. This has created a backlog that has kept the country’s confirmed case count artificially low, according to four of the people with knowledge of the facility. The government has previously sought to arrest critics of the nation’s rickety health care system, where some hospitals lack basics like soap and running water. The critics have said the government is ill-prepared to confront the deadly pandemic. “Providing scientific facts in an unbiased way for the well-being of our people who are suffering the worst crisis in our history, is a heroic act that deserves to be recognized by all Venezuelans,” the opposition-controlled National Assembly said in a statement denouncing the threats against the academy. 
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Turkey is easing COVID-19 restrictions as the government claims success in containing the virus. While infection and death rates are falling, concerns remain that the move may be coming too soon. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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Once they scrambled to grab what they could from a disintegrating Soviet state, exploiting the political and economic chaos of the post-communist Boris Yeltsin era to secure state enterprises, oilfields and mineral deposits at knockdown prices. But now Russia’s uber-wealthy oligarchs are rushing to shore up a failing state effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
 
Rumblings of discontent are growing in Russia over Vladimir Putin’s handling of the pandemic. His approval ratings fell to an historic low for him — down to 59 % last month from 63 % the previous month, according to the independent pollster Levada Center.
 
Even the normally loyal state-owned broadcaster Russia Today ran a report last week warning that the country risks a double-digit unemployment rate and a “return to the pain of the economic miasma of the Yeltsin years [that] would have unpredictable consequences for President Putin.”
 
The Russian leader is facing the biggest test of his presidency, but has passed on most of the responsibility for battling the deadly virus to the country’s regional governors.
 
Tasking regional governors with the main responsibility for tackling the coronavirus reverses the policy Putin has pursued since coming to power, say analysts and Russian media commentators. The Kremlin has over the years curbed the powers of the governors, insisting Russia needs a strong a central government.
 
“It is in the interest of all of us for the economy to return to normal quickly,” Putin said Monday when announcing the end of the non-working period. But a return to normality seems a long way away. On Tuesday his own spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, checked himself into a hospital after testing positive, the fifth senior official to have to do so.FILE – Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen during a teleconference at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence, outside Moscow, May 11, 2020.Putin is being accused of wanting to distance himself from the pandemic, fearing the political fallout, say some analysts. Earlier this week the Russian leader announced the end of a nationwide “non-working period,” leaving to the governors to decide whether to ease lockdowns in their regions or not. His announcement draw derision from many Muscovites, who pointed out that just hours before his announcement, health authorities reported the biggest one-day increase so far in infections.
 
“Despite having created a highly centralized political system, he is not going to be the commander-in-chief of this war. Instead, he would rather force local leaders to take the tough decisions, demanding they both save lives and save the economy, while sniping at them from the sidelines,” according to Mark Galeotti, an analyst at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), and a columnist for the Moscow Times.“He is retaining real power, but handing his boyars the burden of coronavirus,” he adds.  
 FILE – Russian steel magnate Alexei Mordashov speaks during an interview at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, in St. Petersburg, Russia, May 25, 2018.In their turn the governors have found Russia’s oligarchs ready to try to help them to plug the holes left by the state in the struggle to curb the virus.  The embrace of social responsibility by some of Russia’s prominent high-rollers — including steel magnate Alexei Mordashov, who instructed four regional governors to lock down their cities where he has mills, and mining magnate Vladimir Potanin, who has spent more than a hundred million dollars on testing kits, protective masks and ventilators — has surprised some.  
 
When the virus was bearing down on Russia, some independent news outlets reported wealthy Russians were rushing to buy ventilators, adding to shortages. Moscow-based medical pulmonologist Vasiliy Shtabnitskiy, told reporters he was aware of rich Muscovites hoarding ventilators. Although he added that might not do them any good without plenty of supplies of pressured oxygen and other crucial equipment as well as trained staff. But for the super wealthy — especially the mega-rich oligarchs — bespoke medical teams would not be beyond their reach.FILE – Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska is seen outsite his GAZ car production plant in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, April 16, 2019.But in recent weeks as cases have mounted — Russia has the second fastest rate of new infections globally — and discontent increased with a smattering of protests, the oligarchs started to intervene. Metals magnate Oleg Deripaska is funding three COVID-19 clinics in Siberia. The oligarchs have presented their involvement as being motivated by patriotism, avoiding overt criticism of the state strategy, although Deripaska publicly urged in March the Kremlin to seal shut all borders and to impose a 60-day quarantine on the country.
 
Analysts say oligarchs need to be mindful of the unwritten deal between them and Putin of not getting involved in politics. They have examples to warn them of the danger of breaking the deal, including the case of oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was the world’s 16th richest man when arrested in 2003 on charges of fraud and embezzlement and sentenced to a nine-year prison stretch.   
 
Patriotism or not, some analysts hazard that the oligarchs are moving now to try to fill in the holes for fear that the system Putin presides over — which also protects their wealth — is facing serious risks.  
 
The Russian president has had to put on hold his plans to rewrite the Russian constitution, which would allow him another 12 years in office, “while the Kremlin tries to deal with both the virus and a new economic crisis,” says Tatiana Stanovaya, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, a think tank. “These twin challenges represent the biggest shock the Putin regime has ever faced and are likely to feed popular dissatisfaction,” she adds.  
 
The economic fallout is mounting. A quarter of working-age Russians say they have lost their jobs or expect they will soon. Six out of ten Russians have no savings. There have been isolated protests and analysts say there’s a real prospect of much wider unrest, once the pandemic starts to accelerate beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg, where hospitals and local health services have been neglected for years.  FILE – Medical personnel wearing protective gear move what appears to be a bag containing a human body, outside a hospital for coronavirus patients, on the outskirts of Moscow, Russia May 12, 2020.On Monday, the Kremlin appeared to understand the danger. Putin made his fifth address to the nation since the coronavirus outbreak, announcing new measures for supporting ordinary Russians as well as small businesses. Among the measures — bonuses for doctors and social workers, benefits for families with children, preferential credit terms for company owners and tax exemptions for small businesses. There had been mounting public criticism of the neglect of small business with preferential treatment going to much bigger concerns previously.
 
The measures received praise from economists. “For the first time during the crisis we are seeing that the size of payments is at least somewhat in line with what economists wrote about, and what opposition leaders suggested,” Konstantin Sonin, a professor at the University of Chicago and Russia’s Higher School of Economics, told Meduza, an independent news site.
 
Evsey Gurvich, an economist, agrees, but told Meduza it would have been better “if there had been a large-scale, anti-crisis program announced at the very beginning of the crisis — this would have helped many to decide not to close their businesses.”
 
Whether the new measures will dampen political frustration is unclear. For working-class Russians the new payments will cover their grocery costs for one month.
 
And few believe the coronavirus death toll the Kremlin has been publishing. In Moscow alone, the country’s coronavirus hotspot where 52 % of the officially registered confirmed cases have occurred, analysts as well as the city’s mayor say coronavirus-related cases and fatalities are being seriously under-reported.  
 
Russia confirmed 9,974 new coronavirus infections Thursday, bringing the country’s official tally of cases to 252,245. The total nationwide death toll is put at 2,305 — a mortality rate much lower than other European countries with better reserved and rated health-care systems. The Kremlin says Russia was able to learn lessons from the experiences of western Europe.
 
Trust in the mortality rate officially given is low. Russia’s first recorded virus-related fatality — an elderly woman who died on March 19 — was reclassified as having died from a blood clot.
 
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In a world full of bad news on coronavirus, the good deeds of quiet people often go unnoticed. In a report narrated by Jonathan Spier, Ricardo Marquina and Sergey Smolyakov bring us the story of an octogenarian in St. Petersburg, Russia, who – despite being in the highest-risk group – goes out every day to help those who need it most. 
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Spain’s health ministry reported Thursday the country’s daily coronavirus death toll rose above 200 for the first time in five days, with 217 fatalities reported since Wednesday.Spain’s death toll currently stands at more than 27,100, according to the Johns Hopkins University’s COVID-19 dashboard. COVID-19 is the illness caused by the virus.At news briefing in Madrid, the health ministry’s director of emergency coordination, Fernando Simón, said the higher number of deaths does not necessarily reflect a change in the situation in Spain. Rather, these were patients who were already hospitalized, likely in intensive care. He said it would take about a week to assess if this reflects a trend of any kind.Simon also said there were 506 new confirmed COVID cases Thursday, a slight increase (0.22 percent) that raises the number of cases to almost 230,000.More than half of the new cases were in Catalonia, where 195 were recorded. Eighty-eight cases were reported in Madrid.The two regions are not yet part of the national plan to ease lockdown restrictions due to their high infection rates.Simon also said that it was too soon to see an impact of the easing of the measures.
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The European Medicines Agency predicted that there could be licensed drugs to treat the new coronavirus in the next few months and that a vaccine might even be approved in early 2021, in a “best-case scenario.”
Dr. Marco Cavaleri, who heads the European regulator’s vaccines department, told a media briefing on Thursday that approving medicines to treat COVID-19 might be possible “before the summer,” citing ongoing clinical trials. Recent early results for the drug remdesivir suggested it could help patients recover from the coronavirus faster, although longer-term data is still needed to confirm any benefit.  
Although it typically takes years to develop a vaccine, Cavaleri said that if some of the shots already being tested prove to be effective, they could be licensed as early as the beginning of next year.  
Cavaleri cautioned, however, that many experimental vaccines never make it to the end and that there are often delays.  
“But we can see the possibility that if everything goes as planned, vaccines could be approved a year from now,” he said.  Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline. Embed” />CopyMore than 140 heads of states and health experts, including South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz issued an appeal Thursday calling on all countries to unite behind a “people’s vaccine” against COVID-19, to ensure any effective treatments and vaccines be available globally to anyone who needs them, for free.
At the moment, there are about a dozen vaccine candidates being tested in China, Britain, Germany and the U.S. The World Health Organization has estimated it could take about 12 to 18 months for an effective vaccine to be found.  
While some experts have proposed dropping the requirement for large-scale advanced clinical trials altogether, Cavaleri said that wasn’t currently being considered.  
“Our current thinking is all vaccines under development should undergo large phase 3 trials to establish what is the level of protection,” he said.  
But he acknowledged that could change if the situation worsened.  
“Things may evolve as the pandemic will evolve and we will see if we need to do something else,” Cavaleri said.
Some officials have warned that a vaccine might never be found; previous attempts to develop a vaccine against related coronaviruses like SARS and MERS have all failed. But Cavleri was optimistic an immunization against COVID-19 would eventually be discovered, as there are various technologies being tried globally.  
“I think it’s a bit early to say, but we have good reason to be sufficiently optimistic that at the end of the day, some vaccines will make it,” he said.
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Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra said the rate of coronavirus cases is peaking and will begin a gradual decline as the country moves into the “final stage” of a lockdown which began more than two months ago.Vizcarra said until the lockdown ends on May 24, citizens will remain under a nightly curfew and social distancing will be enforced at markets, other businesses and on public transportation.Vizcarra said some markets in Lima temporarily closed after more than half the merchants in the capital city tested positive for coronavirus.Peru has the second-highest rate of coronavirus cases in Latin America, with Wednesday’s count reaching 76,306.Peru’s health ministry said 2,169 people have died from the virus.Peru’s all-important mining, fishing and construction industries have already begun a measured restart of operations. 
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