RIYADMEDIA

Finns in the Nordic nation’s eastern border region say they haven’t seen anything like this since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.  The closure of Finland’s border with Russia amid the coronavirus pandemic has put an abrupt stop to visits by the nearly 2 million Russian tourists who prop up the local economy each year.  Finland shares a 1,340-kilometer (832-mile) land border with Russia complete with several crossing points in what is one of the European Union’s longest external borders. It was shut down both by Helsinki and Moscow in mid-March due to the pandemic. Given Russia’s sustained infection rate, there is little hope that the border will be opened for Finland’s summer tourism season — and many believe the border will likely remain shut even longer. “It definitely has had a big effect. You just wouldn’t imagine such risks relate to the border anymore in the year 2020,” said Petteri Terho, spokesman for the Zsar Outlet Village, a large upscale shopping area catering to both Finns and Russians near the Vaalimaa border station, the busiest crossing point between the two nations. The closure has caused cross-border tourism to the South Karelia region, entry point to Finland’s picturesque lake district that is a favorite of locals and Russian tourists alike, to collapse overnight.  Above all, it has deprived local businesses of an estimated 25 million euros ($28 million) for every month the border remains closed.  People enjoy their lunch on a sunny May 28, 2020 by the River Aura in Turku, Finland amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.Finland has seen 6,859 cases of COVID-19 and 320 deaths but most have been in and around Helsinki, the capital. But in the South Karelia region, 250 kilometers (155 miles) northeast of Helsinki, only 24 positive cases have been diagnosed, with no fatalities so far. Russia has over 405,000 coronavirus infections,  the third-highest number in the world. It has reported 4,693 virus deaths, a figure experts call a significant undercount of the true situation. “This is a whole new situation for all of us,” said Katja Vehvilainen of the Imatra Region Development Company, a local Finnish business promotion agency, adding that the South Karelia region enjoyed a growth of 15% in tourism last year. “The corona situation has unfortunately completely changed the direction.” Still, locals remain unfazed, given Finland’s long history of dealing with the ups and downs of Russian tourism in the wake of its neighbor’s political and economic upheavals. The last tourism crisis hitting South Karelia took place in 2014-2015 when the value of the Russian rouble plunged against the euro, instantly denting visits by Russians. “It looks pretty bad now,” said Markku Heinonen, development manager for the city of Lappeenranta, the region’s biggest center with 73,000 residents. “But the previous crises [with Russian tourism] have taught companies to prepare for something like this.” The region hosted 1.9 million foreign tourists last year, most coming from Russia for shopping daytrips or longer holidays to enjoy spas, restaurants and lakeside cottages in an area known for its pristine beauty.  Lappeenranta, a key center for wood products, has been dealing with Russia since it was founded in 1649. It’s just 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the border station of Nuijamaa. From there, it’s mere 180 kilometers (112 miles) to Russia’s second city of St. Petersburg, whose population of nearly 5.5 million equals the entire population of Finland. “Our business has dried up almost completely. One can say it melted away in one day [after the border closure],” said Mohamad Darwich, who runs the Laplandia Market, a grocery store catering to Russian tourists near the Nuijamaa border post. Darwich, who arrived in Finland from Russia in 1992 after studying in St. Petersburg, listed fresh fish, cheese and dishwashing liquid among the most popular items bought by Russian visitors. He has reopened the store now for locals and hopes the border will be reopened by October at the latest  “under an optimistic scenario.”  Citing a recent study, Heinonen said if the border stays closed until the end of the year or even beyond — a worst-case scenario — the South Karelia region is estimated to lose at least 225 million euros ($247 million) in tourism income this year and risks losing about 900 jobs, a large number in this region.  Locals are now eyeing domestic or European visitors as possible substitutes for the missing Russians this year.  Ryanair, which suspended its European routes from Lappeenranta until further notice due to the pandemic, has indicated it’s ready to resume some flights in July, which could bring in western European tourists. But even the Irish airline has largely catered to Russian clients living near the Finnish border who used the Lappeenranta airport. “There are plenty of summer cottages in the area and holidaying Finns around, so domestic travel is absolutely crucial for us,” said Terho, the Zsar Outlet Village spokesman. He said the venue reopened Saturday with high hopes following the Finnish government’s gradual relaxation of coronavirus lockdown restrictions.  
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The White House announced Sunday that it has delivered two million doses of  hydroxychloroquine, or HCQ, to Brazil to help the South American country in its fight against the coronavirus. “HCQ will be used as a prophylactic to help defend Brazil’s nurses, doctors, and healthcare professionals against the virus,” the White House said in a statement Sunday.  “It will also be used as a therapeutic to treat Brazilians who become infected.” HCQ is a widely used malaria drug.  Trump, in a controversial move, has ignored his public health advisers and has pushed for the use of the drug in the fight against the coronavirus even though there is no evidence that the drug is effective against the virus.  Trump recently announced that he has taken a round of HCQ. The statement also said the two countries have entered a joint “research effort that will include randomized controlled clinical trials.  These trials will help further evaluate the safety and efficacy of HCQ for both prophylaxis and the early treatment of the coronavirus.” There are more infections in the U.S. and Brazil than anywhere else. The U.S. has 1.7 million cases while Brazil, which is emerging as the world’s hotspot for the virus, has more than 514,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.Relatives are seen during a mass burial of people who passed away due to the coronavirus disease, at the Parque Taruma cemetery in Manaus, Brazil, May 26, 2020.U.S. health officials say they are bracing for a surge in coronavirus infections, following  protests around the country over the death of George Floyd, an African American man who died after a police officer in Minneapolis was charged with  pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck as Floyd was handcuffed while lying on the ground.  Some protesters wore masks and some did not. Social distancing was almost impossible. The prime minister of Armenia has tested positive for the coronavirus. Nikol Pashinyan told Public Radio of Armenia that he and his family have tested positive, but all of them are asymptomatic.  Australia is continuing to ease coronavirus restrictions, allowing more people to gather in restaurants, public parks and other attractions.  Gatherings in the country’s largest state, New South Wales, had been limited to 10 people. That limit has been increased to 50.  Museums, libraries and zoos are reopening. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he hopes the easing of restrictions will help the economy rebound which, like so many other global economies, has been hit hard by the pandemic.Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison makes a joint statement with Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo at Parliament House Monday, Feb. 10, 2020.But Morrison said another government stimulus package may be necessary.  About 90,000 mosques across Saudi Arabia opened for the first time in more than two months Sunday, but some restrictions remain in place.  Worshippers 15 years old and younger are not allowed inside, and the elderly are being encouraged to stay home to pray. Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, remains closed, but Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque – Islam’s holiest site outside Saudi Arabia – was open again Sunday for the first time since mid-March. All who enter must have their temperatures checked.    With the U.S. Atlantic hurricane season officially starting Monday, the Associated Press reports many counties across the southern U.S. still do not have complete plans on how to open up public shelters if a storm strikes during the coronavirus outbreak.  “Our biggest change to our hurricane plan is sheltering. How are we going to shelter those that have to evacuate? How are going to shelter those that are positive COVID patients? There are multiple ideas that we are considering right now,” Mississippi Emergency Management Agency Director Greg Michel said. Vice President Mike Pence said last week that the federal government is ready should there be the twin disaster of a hurricane and COVID-19. The federal emergency plan includes urging people to stay in hotels. But some state officials say that may not be an option because of the current unemployment crisis caused by the pandemic.   U.S. forecasters say this will be an unusually busy hurricane season with as many as six major storms hitting the U.S. 
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Hundreds of demonstrates converged on the square in front of the Rio de Janeiro state government palace Sunday, protesting crimes committed by the police against black people in the Brazilian city’s poor neighborhoods, known as favelas. Protesters chanted, “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” in reference to George Floyd, the black man who died while in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota.    “We are here today because we want to live. We are here today because we are tired of this genocidal state. We are here to say no more, no more!” activist Santiago said.  Protesters were holding signs reading in Portuguese “Stop killing us” and “Favela asks for peace.”Military police fire the shotguns at demonstrators during a protest against crimes committed by the police against black people in the favelas, outside the Rio de Janeiro’s state government, Brazil, Sunday, May 31, 2020.As recently as May 18, a 14-year-old black boy was killed during a Federal Police operation in the Complexo Salgueiro favelas. The teenager, Joao Pedro Pinto, was at home with cousins when police broke into his house, allegedly pursuing drug traffickers, and shot him dead. The protest in Rio de Janeiro called “Black Lives Matter,” was interrupted when police used tear gas to disperse people.  In 2019 Rio’s police, one of the deadliest law enforcement units in Brazil, killed 1,546 people during police operations. That was the highest number since 1998 in the country, and most of the killings took place in favelas. 
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The arrival in Venezuela of five Iranian oil tankers is expected to ease the South American nation’s gasoline crisis, while challenging U.S. sanctions targeting both countries.  
 
The Iranian fuel tankers began arriving in Venezuela last week under the protection of Venezuelan military forces, with the fifth cargo reportedly arriving on Sunday.
 
Venezuela’s oil sector has been acutely damaged by years of political and economic instability. Iran says the fuel shipment provided to Venezuela is about 1.53 million barrels of gasoline and petrochemical components.
 
U.S. sanctions imposed on Venezuelan state-owned oil company PDVSA also have crippled Venezuela’s ability to import certain types of fuel from abroad, but the government of President Nicolas Maduro has turned to Iran for refining parts and fuel.
 
On Saturday, Venezuelan officials announced that the Iranian gasoline has arrived at hundreds of gas station across the country.
 
“Venezuela has the right to buy in the world whatever it wants to buy,” Maduro said in a recent speech. “Fortunately, Venezuela has more friends than what people can imagine.”
 Defying Washington   
 
Iran and Venezuela are under U.S. economic sanctions, which has brought the two countries closer economically and politically.
 
“Iran and Venezuela have always supported each other in times of difficulty,” Venezuelan foreign minister Jorge Arreaza said in today last week, adding that, “Today we see the fruits of the multipolar world, of our Bolivarian Diplomacy for Peace and South-South Cooperation.”
The South-South cooperation refers to the technical cooperation among developing countries in the Global South, including the sharing of skills and resources.
 
Some experts believe that the Iranian move to transport oil to Venezuela is a show of defiance against the U.S. by the two allies.A Venezuelan oil worker holds a small Iranian flag during a ceremony marking the arrival of Iranian oil tanker Fortune at the El Palito refinery near Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, May 25, 2020.“This move is very significant,” said Alireza Mehrabi, a political analyst in Tehran. “It sends a message that U.S. hegemony is nose-diving, and countries of the South should strengthen their relations and circumvent threats and sanctions imposed by Washington through building strategic ties.”
 
Other Iranian experts, however, say that this dominant narrative propagated by the Iranian government could send mixed signals.
 
“This sends a signal that [U.S. President Donald] Trump’s maximum pressure policy on Tehran has been effective so much so that Iran is willing to take grave risks to sell its oil (products) to Venezuela under a very uncertain barter deal,” said Mehdi Mottaharnia, a Tehran-based international affairs analyst.
 US pressure
   
U.S. officials said the United States was applying pressure to deter Iran and Venezuela from carrying out the oil transfer, while also warning foreign governments, seaports, shipping companies and insurers that they could face U.S. sanctions if they assist the tanker fleet.
 
“We’ve alerted the shipping community around the world, ship owners, ship captains, ship insurers, and we’ve alerted ports along the way between Iran and Venezuela,” Elliott Abrams, U.S. special representative on Venezuela, told Reuters Friday.
 
Earlier in May, the U.S. issued a global maritime advisory, giving guidance to the shipping industry on how to avoid sanctions related to Iran, North Korea and Syria.
 
But Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned last week that any U.S. intervention against Iranian oil tankers bound to Venezuela would be met with retaliation.
 
“Any pirate-like action by the U.S. Navy against the Iranian fuel shipments to Venezuela would trigger a harsh response,” Rouhani was quoted as saying by pro-Iranian government Nour News Agency.Men push a car that ran out of gas to a state-run oil company gas station, in Caracas, Venezuela, May 25, 2020.No desire for conflict
 
Observers believe that Washington has no desire to start a conflict with Venezuela over a fuel shortage that could be seen “a humanitarian crisis.”
 
“Under the circumstances, the passing of the tankers can be interpreted as a weakness for the United States,” said José Toro Hardy, a prominent Venezuelan economist and a former director of the country’s PDVSA.
 
“But I thought for humanitarian reasons, (the Americans) were going to let the tankers pass. I also thought that they could have stopped some of the tankers to guarantee if the only thing they brought was gasoline, because it has also been said that (Iranian tankers) could bring other things,” he told VOA.
   
“I believe that any action the U.S. takes or has been taking in the form of sanctions, is taken when the U.S. is interested to do so,” Hardy added.
 
Washington backs Maduro’s rival Juan Guaido and considers him as Venezuela’s legitimate leader following a presidential crisis in January 2019.
 
Yousof Azizi, a research assistant at the Virginia Tech university, says while this oil transaction between Iran and Venezuela “is not significant and plays no major role in Iran’s sanction-stricken economy,” it could have a political motive behind it.   
 
“Tehran has meticulously evaluated the U.S. political climate in the months leading to the (presidential) election and decided to challenge Washington, reckoning that no response should be expected from Washington despite pressure from ‘Hawks’ within the incumbent administration,” he told VOA.
 
Azizi noted that the U.S. hasn’t decided to take any immediate action against Iran, “partly due to the fact that the U.S. is aware that escalating tensions would not be beneficial to Trump’s bid for a second term.”
 Workforce shortage
   
The supply reportedly will help Venezuelans authorities expand retail sales of gasoline under a system combining subsidies and international prices.
“Iran has sent additives, in this case alkylate, one of the components necessary to refine gasoline,” said Ivan Freitas, leader of the Unitary Federation for Oil Workers in Venezuela.A worker wearing a face mask to protect against the coronavirus waits while a tanker truck fills the gasoline reservoir of a state oil company gas station, in Caracas, Venezuela, May 31, 2020.“Iran assumes that Venezuela can obtain the other components on its own to restart the refineries. But even if this is the case, the conditions in which these plants find themselves, four in total in the country, are very bad,” he told VOA.
 
But Freitas noted that Venezuela faces a massive shortage of qualified oil workers capable of operating oil refineries.
 
Qualified workers have left Venezuela. Only 2 or 3% of qualified (workers) have remained,” he said, adding that if the Venezuelan government “put a plant into service, it would be a lottery to know for how long it will work. There will be no operational stability. In these conditions, the refineries are of high risk.”
 Gold payment
   
Some experts say that given Venezuela’s deteriorating economy and following the departure of Russian oil company Rosneft from the country, Caracas will likely pay Iran in gold for its fuel supply.
 
“It looks like the only way [Venezuela)] can pay is with gold. Simply because Venezuela’s oil production has declined, and oil represented 97% of Venezuela’s foreign exchange earnings,” economist Hardy said.
 
He added that “there is no foreign exchange income. The other foreign exchange income was through the remittances of the more than 5 million Venezuelans who have left and were sending money to their families, but during the COVID-19 pandemic that has been abruptly interrupted.
 
“The only alternative that Venezuela could have that interests Iran in economic terms is gold,” Hardy concluded.
 Some information in this report came from Reuters.
 
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Tropical Storm Amanda has killed at least seven people in El Salvador as heavy rains made rivers overflow, flooded city streets and produced landslides, Interior Minister Mario Duran said Sunday.”We’ve seen people asking for help, asking for the government. We haven’t deployed everywhere, the situation is overwhelming,” Duran said.Among those killed was an 8-year-old boy, who died after the house he was in collapsed, while another person was killed by a falling wall and another drowned in a swollen river, Salvadoran civil protection authorities said.The U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Amanda or its remnants are expected to produce rain totals of 10 to 15 inches (25-38 centimeters) across El Salvador, southern Guatemala, western Honduras, and the Mexican states of Tabasco and Veracruz.The storm’s heavy rainfall could “cause life-threatening flash floods and mudslides across portions of Central America and southern Mexico, and these threats will continue over the next several days even after Amanda is no longer a tropical cyclone,” the NHC said.Amanda was packing maximum sustained winds of nearly 40 miles per hour (65 kilometers per hour) with higher gusts and was expected to weaken “very soon” as its center moves farther inland, the NHC said.It is forecast to degenerate into a remnant low or dissipate over the mountains of Central America later Sunday.
 
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The shocking on-camera death of African American George Floyd is drawing attention around the globe.Anti-U.S. protests deploring the man’s death erupted in Western capitals on Sunday and newspaper headlines heaped scorn on American police over the incident last week in Minneapolis.Floyd, a black man, died after white police officer Derek Chauvin pressed a knee on the back of his neck for more than eight minutes, even as Floyd repeatedly said he could not breathe. The incident was captured on video.Thousands of protesters gathered in central London to voice support for American demonstrators who have marched in dozens of U.S. cities over the last five days to condemn the police conduct. Some of the worst U.S. violence in decades has erupted, with police cars and government buildings set afire, stores ransacked and looted, and public monuments defaced.The British protesters chanted, “No justice! No peace!” and waved placards with the words, “How many more?”People protest in Berlin, Germany, May 31, 2020 after the violent death of the African-American George Floyd by a white policeman in the USA against racism and police violence, among other things with a sign “Who do call when police murders”.Denmark, Germany
Protesters in Denmark marched to the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen, carrying placards with such messages as “Stop Killing Black People.” In Germany, protesters carried signs saying, “Hold Cops Accountable,” and “Who Do You Call When Police Murder?”Germany’s top-selling Bild newspaper carried a provocative Sunday headline: “This killer-cop set America ablaze” with an arrow pointing to a photo of Chauvin, who has been fired and charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in Floyd’s death.In some newspapers, Floyd’s death and the ensuing American protests have pushed news of the ongoing worldwide fight against the coronavirus pandemic to second-tier status, at least for the moment.  Authoritarian regime perspective
In countries with authoritarian governments, state-controlled media showcased the demonstrations in the context of U.S. government complaints about crackdowns on protesters in other countries, such as China’s treatment of pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong.Hu Xijin, the editor of the Chinese Communist Party-run Global Times newspaper, said U.S. officials can now see the protests out of their own windows: “I want to ask [House] Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi and Secretary [of State Mike] Pompeo: Should Beijing support protests in the U.S., like you glorified rioters in Hong Kong?”Iranian state television has shown frequent images of the U.S. unrest, with one unsubstantiated report accusing U.S. police agencies in Washington of “setting fire to cars and attacking protesters.”Russia said Floyd’s death was an example of U.S. police violence against African-Americans and accused the U.S. of “systemic problems in the human rights sphere.””This incident is far from the first in a series of lawless conduct and unjustified violence from U.S. law enforcement,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “American police commit such high-profile crimes all too often.”  Lebanon
Lebanese anti-government protesters flooded social media with tweets supporting U.S. protesters, with the hashtag #Americanrevolts becoming the top trending tag in Lebanon.
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Greece may be a top vacation destination, but for the British, Americans and Italians dreaming of getting away, the country will be off limits for some time. The government in Athens has left them off a list of 29 countries from which Greece will start accepting visitors, as it scrambles to mitigate the damage that the COVID-19 pandemic has spelled for its biggest money-making industry: tourism. 
  
Greek tourism officials say travelers from the permitted countries will be able to enter Greece beginning June 15… allowed to touch down only at the capital’s main international airport… and the northern metropolis of Thessaloniki… not other sun-kissed destinations. 
  
The list of 29 countries was drafted following a strict review of global airport regulations and COVID-19 infection rates. 
  
Tourism minister Harris Tehoharis explains why. 
  
He says the so-called safe list is part of a plan stitched together to best secure both foreign travelers and the country after the government in Athens managed to successfully handle the pandemic by taking draconian lockdown measures early on … keeping registered infection rates under 3,000 and the death toll at 175.   All 29 countries, including several Balkan nations, Israel and even China and Japan, boast low infection rates. Travelers coming in from them will be screened for COVID-19 but allowed to vacation freely without the need of lockdown requirements or quarantines. 
  
Depending on changes in infection rates, the list of countries could change before all travelers will be allowed to the country on July 1. 
  
But with the US, Britain and Italy hit hardest by the pandemic, health experts like Gikas Magiorkas warn it may be months, even beyond the July date, before travelers from those countries will be able to visit. 
  
“I don’t see them visiting any time soon, he says. Depending on how the first wave of entries goes, authorities may increase the number of screening tests for those coming in from high-risk countries, to boost security and tracking levels,” said Magiorkas. 
  
British and American travelers normally make up the biggest and most affluent pool of visitors to Greece… bringing in billions each year in hard currency. 
  
Italy, meantime has snapped back at Greece’s designs, saying blacklisting countries and travelers isn’t fair, and that Italy would not allow itself to be viewed and treated as what one leading official called “a leper colony.” 
  
Despite Greece’s scramble to open for tourism, many industry officials remain reluctant. 
  
Grigoris Tassis, president of the Greek hotel owners association, explains 
  
He says hotel owners have not received fundamental directives from the state, including information on how to deal with COVID-19 cases that may emerge while travelers are on holiday here. 
  
On the island of Crete, a favorite holiday destination, many large hotel chains are choosing to open just a fraction of their facilities… adjusting as the summer and the spread of the pandemic proceeds. 
  
Surveys indicate that some 65% of Greek hotels could go bankrupt if they fail to break even this summer.   
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Pope Francis is cautioning against pessimism as many people emerge from coronavirus lockdowns to lament that nothing will ever be the same.  During Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica to mark Pentecost Sunday, Francis noted a tendency to say “nothing will return as before.” That kind of thinking, Francis said, guarantees that “the one thing that certainly does not return is hope.”   He took to task his own church for its fragmentation, saying it must pull together.   “The world sees conservatives and progressives” but instead all are “children of God,” he said, telling the faithful to focus on what unites them.   “In this pandemic, how wrong narcissism is,” Francis said, lamenting “the tendency to think only of our needs, to be indifferent to those of others, and to not admit our own frailties and mistakes.”   “At this moment, in the great effort of beginning anew, how damaging is pessimism, the tendency to see everything in the worst light and to keep saying that nothing will return as before!” the pope said. “When someone thinks this way, the one thing that certainly does not return is hope.”   A few dozen faithful, wearing masks and sitting one to a pew, attended the ceremony as part of safety measures to avoid spreading COVID-19.   While the Vatican has re-opened the basilica to tourists, the rank-and-file faithful still aren’t allowed yet to attend Masses celebrated by the pope for fear of crowding.   In a videotaped message for the Pentecost service led by the Anglican church leader, Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury, Francis spoke of how during the pandemic people are required to keep a safe distance from each other. “Yet we have also come to understand, perhaps better, what others are experiencing. We have been brought together by fear and uncertainty.”   Francis encouraged prayers for those who must make “complex and pressing decisions,” which he said should be focused on investing in “health, employment and the elimination of inequalities and poverty.”   “Now as never before, we need a vision rich in humanity. We cannot start up again by going back to our selfish pursuit of success without caring about those who are left behind,” the pope said.  
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Turkey joins other countries in relaxing its strict lockdown measure because of the coronavirus pandemic by letting people go to mosques across the country to perform Friday prayers. Although this lifting of restrictions did not allow people older than 65 to participate in the Friday prayers, many of them nonetheless were seen at mosques. VOA’s Turkish Service’s reporters from Ankara, Istanbul and Diyarbakir visited mosques and filed this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
Produced by: Alparslan Esmer
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As a nurse on the front lines of Mexico’s coronavirus battle, Gisela Hernandez has stayed away from her children for nearly two months, sleeping in a hotel and even her car to avoid infecting them because she feels inadequately protected at work.At night, she video calls Santiago, 5, and Renata, 9, who are both asthmatic, to hear about what they’ve done during the day and remind them how much she misses them.While Hernandez says she loves her work, and considers the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases (INER) in Mexico City her second home, she is also afraid of contracting the novel coronavirus. COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, has killed 9,415 people in Mexico.“I don’t regret becoming a nurse, because I like to help my patients,” said Hernandez, 40, whose hospital is one of the city’s main treatment centers for COVID-19.But she said she is “scared of getting sick … scared of never seeing my kids again.”Health workers account for about a quarter of all of Mexico’s coronavirus infections, government data shows, one of the highest rates in the world. The risks are made worse by shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE).COVID-19 cases are surging in Latin America, which along with the United States is now an epicenter of the global pandemic. Frontline workers in Mexico City’s hospitals, including Hernandez, have taken to the streets to complain about the conditions. A national march is planned for Monday.INER, which has been at full capacity over the past week, said 49 of its workers have been infected at the hospital and another 54 have contracted the virus in the community, of which two have died.In a May 8 memo seen by Reuters, INER’s Biosafety Committee said a global PPE shortage would require workers to don reusable surgical uniforms and cloth hospital gowns, instead of disposable gear. The letter also told workers to use their N95 masks for full shifts.In response to requests for comment, the hospital shared with Reuters a statement it sent workers this week in which it said the measure regarding usage of masks was in line with World Health Organization advice. It also confirmed that workers were instructed to use non-disposable gowns and uniforms.“To date, no sterilized N95 masks have been reused.”However, a video seen by Reuters shows an official at INER telling staff to reuse sterilized N95 masks.“We exploded when we were told we were going to recycle the N95s,” said Alejandro Cabrera, an INER nurse with two decades of experience.Cabrera said workers are required to put their names on masks so the gear can be sent off for sterilization. “It’s terrible!” he said.Heavy TollMexico ranks eighth in the world in COVID-19 deaths, with Mexico City and a neighboring state accounting for some 40 percent of the country’s fatalities.The Mexican government says it needs another 6,600 doctors and 23,000 nurses to battle the crisis, a shortage exacerbated by the high infection rate among medical staff — 11,394 health workers had contracted the virus and 149 had died as of May 17.Medical professionals had accounted for 23 percent of all of the country’s infections as of that date. That compares to 3.7 percent in the United States, according to data released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week.Despite the danger, Hernandez is doing her part to combat the disease.She points to a box of chocolates and a yellow note from the family of one of her patients thanking and encouraging her to keep “working to save lives.”“That’s one of the reasons I love my job so much, and despite the risks I still enjoy taking care of my patients,” she said. 
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Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement Saturday in which they expressed “regret” about the United States decision to end sanctions waivers for Iranian civilian nuclear projects intended to prevent weapons development.  “We deeply regret the decision by the United States to end the three exemptions for key nuclear projects of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), including the Arak reactor modernization project,” the statement said.”These projects, including the Arak reactor modernization project, endorsed by U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, have served the non-proliferation interests of all and provide the international community with assurances of the exclusively peaceful and safe nature of Iranian nuclear activities,” the three counties said.
Wednesday the United States announced the end of the waivers, which had allowed the continuation of projects related to Iran’s civil nuclear program, even though the Trump administration abandoned the 2015 international plan of action in 2018.Under the waivers Russian, Chinese and European companies worked on the conversion of Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor to civilian purposes and on the transfer of nuclear fuel abroad.
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France has charged 13 suspects with people trafficking in connection with the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants last year, AFP reports citing a judicial source Saturday.Six of the suspects, arrested by French police on Tuesday in the Paris region, were also charged with manslaughter after an alleged key smuggler was caught in Germany.On Wednesday, Belgian and French police announced the arrests of 26 people in connection with the case. British police had initially arrested four suspects, including the driver of the container truck, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in April.Investigators has announced that the migrant smuggling network which continues its operation even after the tragedy, was charging about $16,000 to $22,000 to transport migrants from France to Britain.The bodies of the Vietnamese migrants, 31 men and 8 women, were found last October in a refrigerated truck in southeastern Britain, in a smuggling case that shocked the world.
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Dozens of people, some armed with what appeared to be hunting rifles, clashed in broad daylight on Friday in a residential suburb outside the capital Kyiv, and at least three people were wounded, according to officials.The violence, captured in amateur footage taken from surrounding apartment blocks and posted online, occurred in the morning in Brovary.Unidentified men shoot during an armed conflict in the residential area of Brovary town, Ukraine, in this still image from a video taken May 29, 2020. (Oleksandr Tkachenko/Handout via Reuters)According to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, about 100 people took part in the clashes, some of whom came from another region.The footage, which Reuters could not immediately verify independently, showed men in masks and dark clothes exchanging fire with hidden adversaries who were obscured by trees. Reuters counted around 40 shots.President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged the government to investigate the incident and punish those responsible, the presidential press service said.”The head of the interior ministry reported to the president that the conflict occurred between representatives of companies involved in passenger transportation in Brovary,” it said in a statement.Avakov said 20 people were detained.The interior ministry said that the head of police in the region of Vynnytsya, where some of those who took part in the clashes came from, had been sacked. It was not clear whether the two were related. 
 
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A report released this week by the U.N.’s World Food Program (WFP) warns that social and economic measures aimed at slowing the spread of COVID-19 could create a food crisis in Latin America and the Caribbean, threatening nearly 14 million people with food insecurity.The WFP estimates that in 2019, there were already 3.4 million people in the region facing food insecurity – that is, they were not able to meet their basic food needs. But speaking in Geneva Friday, WFP Senior Spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said the socio-economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic is likely to push another 10 million people into food insecurity.The WFP runs projects in Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Peru and other small island developing states in the Caribbean. Byrs says she is particularly concerned about Haiti, where, she says 700,000 people are already facing severe food shortages. She expects that number to jump to 1.6 million in the coming months.The WFP is urging governments in the region to adapt and expand programs to serve the most vulnerable populations. They also urged the general public to make donations to the WFP or directly to food programs in their countries.
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For over a thousand years, Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia operated as the biggest Greek Orthodox Christian church before being converted into a mosque, then a museum and, most recently, a United Nations-designated cultural landmark.At the direction of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a reading of the Quran will take place Friday at the ancient building.In announcing his decision, Erdogan said the Conquest Sura, a section of the Quran, would be recited at the site, and that prayers would also be held as part of a celebration organized by the country’s culture ministry in commemoration of the fall of the Byzantine empire in 1453.FILE – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan listens during a teleconference with his cabinet in Istanbul, May 11, 2020.Whether followers will be allowed to pray inside Hagia Sophia or around the massive structure, or across its sprawling courtyard, remained unclear.Erdogan’s announcement comes as Turkey, among the countries hardest hit by the coronavirus, moves Friday to ease restrictions as death and infection rates from the pandemic have plummeted, according to state statistics.Still, the Quran recital has angered the neighboring Greeks, the former keepers of the monument.”Any move to change the existing status of Hagia Sophia, as safeguarded by UNESCO, cannot be accepted,” Deputy Foreign Minister Miltiades Varvitsiotis said. “The monument has long relinquished its religious character … and any attempt to alter its status will isolate Turkey even further,” he told the Athens-based Real FM radio station.Pundits, politicians and the press condemned the move Friday, as national television networks topped news bulletins with developments on what they called a “provocation” by Ankara.”It is obvious that Erdogan is playing to his local audience with this move,” Deputy Defense Minister Alkiviadis Stefanis said. “But for us, the Greek nation, it is a move that touches on sensitive chords: our religious and national sentiments.”History of Hagia SophiaBuilt in the sixth century, the Hagia Sophia, which means Holy Wisdom in Greek, was converted to a mosque soon after the Ottomans conquered what was then called Constantinople, 567 years ago. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed, hundreds of years later, secular Turkish leaders transformed the mosque into a museum in 1935.FILE – An aerial view of the Byzantine-era monument of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey, April 24, 2020.A masterpiece of Byzantine architecture, the building features an immense dome propped on massive pillars. It is sheathed with marble and decorated with mosaics.With the Turkish economy stuttering, analysts suggest Erdogan’s play on Hagia Sophia aims to rally his electoral base, fulfilling a longstanding demand by hardline Islamists in his country bent on converting the UNESCO landmark back into a mosque.”This is an act of desperation and will lead to no good,” said Elmira Bayrasli, director of the Globalization and International Affairs program at Bard College.Heightened tensionsErdogan’s announcement comes as relations between Greece and Turkey have taken a turn for the worse.While both NATO allies, Greece has been aggressively boosting its border security since Ankara fanned what Greek officials have called “a migrant offensive,” allowing over 150,000 refugees to travel freely into Europe.Turkey has since then also sent exploratory ships to drill in areas of the eastern Mediterranean, which Greece and Cyprus claim exclusively their own. Mock dogfights between Greek and Turkish fighter jets have also become a daily occurrence over the Aegean Sea that divides the two countries, heightening fears of an accident and all-out offensive between the traditional enemy states.”In just one day this week, we had to send up 62 jet fighters to intercept Turkish aircraft in Greece airspace,” said Stefanis.It was not immediately clear whether Greece would seek recourse with the United Nations or in other international fora to block the Quran readings from proceeding at Hagia Sophia on Friday. Still, opposition lawmakers in Athens are advising a more tempered stance by the government, saying a reading of the Quran does not explicitly constitute prayer or any semblance of disrespect for the 1,000-year-old monument. 
 
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Australia’s highest court ruled on Friday to make public letters between Queen Elizabeth II and her representative that would reveal what knowledge she had, if any, of the dismissal of an Australian government in 1975.
The High Court’s 6-1 majority decision in historian Jenny Hocking’s appeal overturned lower court rulings that more than 200 letters between the now 94-year-old monarch of Britain and Australia and Governor-General Sir John Kerr before he dismissed Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s government were personal and might never be made public.
The only dismissal of an elected Australian government on the authority of a British monarch triggered a political crisis that spurred many to call for Australia to sever its constitutional ties with Britain and create a republic with an Australian president. Suspicions of a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency conspiracy persist.
Hocking, a Monash University academic and Whitlam biographer, said she expected to read the 211 letters at the National Archives of Australia in Canberra next week when a coronavirus lockdown is lifted.
She described as absurd that communications between such key officials in the Australian system of government could be regarded as personal and confidential.
“That they could be seen as personal is quite frankly an insult to all our intelligence collectively — they’re not talking about the racing and the corgis,” Hocking told The Associated Press, referring to the queen’s interest in horse racing and the dog breed.
“It was not only the fact that they were described quite bizarrely as personal, but also that they were under an embargo set at the whim of the queen,” she added.
Archives director David Fricker later said staff had begun assessing whether there was any information in the letters that should still be withheld. The archives have 90 business days — or more than four months — to do so.
Kerr dismissed Whitlam’s reforming government and replaced him with opposition leader Malcolm Fraser as prime minister to resolve a month-old deadlock in Parliament. Fraser’s conservative coalition won an election weeks later.
The archives has held the correspondence, known as the Palace Letters, since 1978. As state records, they should have been made public 31 years after they were created.
Under an agreement struck between Buckingham Palace and Government House, the governor-general’s official residence, months before Kerr resigned in 1978, the letters covering three tumultuous years of Australian politics were to remain secret until 2027. The private secretaries of both the sovereign and the governor-general in 2027 still could veto their release indefinitely under that agreement.
A Federal Court judge accepted the archives’ argument that the letters were personal and confidential. An appeals court upheld that ruling in a 2-1 decision.
Buckingham Palace said in a statement that the High Court decision was a “legal matter in the Australian courts and we would not comment.”
Dickie Arbiter, the queen’s spokesman for 12 years until 2000, said the letters should not be made public in her lifetime.
“I would have thought that the right time for the release of these documents is on the demise of the crown,” Arbiter told Nine Network television.
Hocking has been fighting since 2016 to access the letters written by Kerr to the queen through her then private secretary, Martin Charteris.
The British royal family is renowned for being protective of its privacy and keeping conversations confidential.
The family went to considerable lengths to conceal letters written by the queen’s son and heir, Prince Charles, in a comparable case in Britain that was fought through the courts for five years.
Britain’s Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that 27 memos written by Charles to British government ministers could be made public despite objections that their publication might damage public perceptions of the future king’s political neutrality.
Years of dogged research by journalists and historians have pieced together answers to many of the questions surrounding how and why Whitlam’s government was dismissed and who was behind it.
Kerr, who died in 1991, rejected in his memoirs media speculation that the CIA ordered Whitlam’s dismissal over fears that his government would close the top secret U.S. intelligence facility that still exists at Pine Gap in the Australian Outback.  
In the 1985 Hollywood spy drama “The Falcon and the Snowman,” a CIA plot to oust Whitlam motivated a disillusioned civilian defense contractor played by Sean Penn to sell U.S. security secrets to the Soviet Union.
Australian rock band Midnight Oil also blamed “Uncle Sam” for Whitlam’s downfall in the lyrics of its protest song “Power and the Passion.”
The Australian Republic Movement, which campaigns for an Australian president to replace the British monarch as head of state, welcomed the ruling as a win for Australian sovereignty.
“These letters provide a crucial historical context around one of the most destabilizing and controversial chapters in Australian political history,” the movement’s Chair Peter FitzSimons said.
Philip Benwell, national chairman of the Australian Monarchist League and a vocal advocate of the British monarch remaining Australia’s head of state, had warned before the High Court decision that releasing the letters would create a constitutional crisis “if the queen’s personal opinions became known.”
He said after the ruling that the letters’ exposure will strengthen Australia’s ties to the monarchy.
“It will show that the queen had done everything that she could to protect the people’s interests,” Benwell said.
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In northern Hungary, one of the European Union’s poorest regions, many Roma who live with hardship in the best of times are facing hunger as the coronavirus brings the economy to a halt. Justin Spike reports for VOA from the town of Ózd, northeast of Budapest.
Camera: Gabor Ancsin, Agency  Producer: Rod James
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Protesters supporting Kosovo’s ruling Self-Determination Movement, or Vetevendosje!,  took to the streets of Pristina, the capital, Thursday to oppose President Hashim Thaci’s nominee to be the country’s new prime minister after the Constitutional Court upheld his decree for the nomination.A poster read “We want elections,” and a banner said, “On the side of justice, not the president.”Arlind Manxhuka, a spokesperson for Vetevendosje!, said the peaceful gathering of a few thousand supporters was intended to show the party’s ability to organize a protest while respecting coronavirus pandemic restrictions.”Taking into consideration the many requests we received from activists and citizens to organize a protest against the latest political developments in our country [Kosovo], we felt obligated to demonstrate a way in which an eventual protest could be held in this new condition of the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.Thaci nominated Avdullah Hoti, from the center-right Democratic League of Kosovo, or LDK, to replace acting Prime Minister Albin Kurti, who lost a no-confidence vote in March.  That vote was spurred by the LDK, then a junior partner in governing coalition with Vetevendosje!The movement argues Hoti’s nomination to form a new government is unconstitutional, saying that it is the only party entitled to do so because it won the most seats in Kosovo’s October parliamentary election. It has further said that if it cannot form a government, the country should hold new elections.The LDK says it has at least the 61 votes in the 120-seat parliament, required for his confirmation.Kosovo’s Constitutional Court had suspended the nomination decree until May 29. 
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In Brazil, the crippling coronavirus appears to be no match in defeating true love.Dozens of couples anxious to wed in the midst of the pandemic are taking advantage of a drive-thru wedding facility offered by a marriage registry office in Rio de Janairo.The couples wore masks as they pulled up and exchanged their vows and rings, sealing their union, with one witness in the backseat.One bride said she was surprised to wed at a drive-thru but said that it was very good.An official of the marriage registry, Alessandra Lapoente, said the drive-thru system allows more couples to move forward with their nuptials, despite the ongoing threat of the coronavirus.Brazil is at the top of the coronavirus epicenter in Latin America, with more than 430,000 infections, the second-highest number of coronavirus cases in the world.Brazil has also confirmed more than 26,000 deaths.  
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For years, Cruz Pelico made a living by tending to onions, carrots and lettuce in the rolling fields outside his small Guatemalan town. But even with the long, labor-intensive hours, the 25-year-old farmer struggled to support his wife and 5-year-old son. So in 2019 he began planning to migrate to the United States to lift his family out of poverty.But as coronavirus tears through the U.S. and lockdowns cut off migrant pathways, Pelico dropped his plans to migrate.“I’m not thinking about going anymore. With this situation, you can’t get there now,” Pelico said. “The United States has fallen into crisis, too. Many Guatemalans who are there have told me,” he said. “There’s no work anymore. I’ve started thinking it’s better to be here.”Instead of embarking on their journeys northward as people in his town, Zuníl, had done for decades, Pelico said recently departed Guatemalans were returning out of fear. It is unprecedented for a town whose economy was sculpted by generations of migration.A health worker takes a sample from a vendor to test for COVID-19 at La Terminal market in Guatemala City, May 21, 2020.DeterredZuníl’s situation is not unique. Migration northward is dropping off across the region as rising obstacles — fear of contagion, lack of work in the U.S., mobility restrictions and the Trump administration’s restrictions on migration during the pandemic — have made the journey all but impossible.“They never made it,” Pelico said. “They are returning because they were scared of this pandemic we’re suffering, because of everything happening in the United States.”That could be disastrous for tens of thousands of Central American and Mexican migrants who have fled not just poverty but also an onslaught of violence in recent years.From March to April, when the U.S. began to lock down, total apprehensions along its southern border dropped by 50%, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection People stand in line to buy food from a small grocery store in the “La Reformita” neighborhood during a lockdown in Guatemala City, May 15, 2020.CriticismCritics like Jessica Bolter, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), said that with the latest measures, the Trump administration was “taking advantage” of the health crisis to end asylum.The clampdown comes after months of the U.S. government implementing policies that make it harder to legally migrate or seek asylum. Among those policies are Trump’s A woman wearing a mask against the spread of the new coronavirus poses for a photo at La Terminal market in Guatemala City, May 21, 2020.LimboKino’s soup kitchen once bustled with recent deportees, and volunteers offered medical, psychological and legal help to migrants. In 2019, more asylum-seekers began arriving at its doorstep, a product of the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which requires those seeking asylum to wait in Mexico for their cases to be heard.Gonzalo, a Venezuelan asylum-seeker whose surname is being withheld for his safety, had been waiting since June 2019 in Nogales on the Mexican side of the border, just opposite the U.S. state of Arizona.Gonzalo fled Venezuela after he was kidnapped and faced death threats, and is among 5 million people who have fled the crisis-stricken country in recent years. He said the terror he felt in Venezuela, he also feels in Mexico as illegal armed groups sow violence and target and kidnap migrants like him. “There are urban terrorist groups, there’s a lot of narco-trafficking. We’re very scared to be here for so much time because we’re easy targets for these groups,” he said.Now, with the U.S.’s indefinite migration restrictions, Gonzalo said he has nowhere to go, and fears exposure to the virus as he washes cars on the streets and struggles to find small handyman jobs to survive. The shelter he and many other migrants once stayed at has closed its doors, and other organizations like Kino say that they have had to reduce services to protect staff and the migrants they serve from infection. Returning to Venezuela is not an option, but waiting on the border might kill him all the same.“The hardest thing is waiting with this virus, to be so exposed.” he said. “We’re living with the same fear for our lives.”A small handful of asylum-seekers who have been let through in recent weeks allow him to hold on to hope and continue his yearlong limbo.Bolter, the MPI analyst, said it’s likely that the Trump administration will continue these heightened migratory measures even after the pandemic ends in order to continue deterring migration to the U.S.At the same time, Pelico in Guatemala, also feels stuck. He worries that staying may mean starvation for his family as a government quarantine makes it impossible for him to work more than a few hours a day or sell his crops in markets. Before, he earned less than $10 a day.“I’m just a farmer. Day to day, we live off what we grow,” he said. “My fear, my worry, is if they close us in for a month, two months, what are we going to eat?”But Pelico knows the risks of going north: He made the journey through Mexico and perilous border desert terrain in 2013. He worked in Oklahoma and returned home less than a year later because his mother was sick. With the pandemic, though, he said the risks are too great.Guatemala is where he will stay for now, but Pelico said that as time ticks on, his mind might again wander northward.“I hope that God will give us a future that will let me go in the next year, but not until what we’re going through calms down,” he said. “Then, I’d think once again about if I stay or if I go.”
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It was mid-January and Jordan Goudreau was itching to get going on a secret plan to raid Venezuela and arrest President Nicolás Maduro when the former special forces commando flew to the city of Barranquilla in Colombia to meet with his would-be partner in arms.
To get there, Goudreau and two former Green Beret buddies relied on some unusual help: a chartered flight out of Miami’s Opa Locka executive airport on a plane owned by a Venezuelan businessman so close to the government of the late Hugo Chávez that he spent almost four years in a U.S. prison for trying to cover up clandestine cash payments to its allies.
The owner of the Venezuela-registered Cessna Citation II with yellow and blue lines, identified with the tail number YV-3231, was Franklin Durán, according to three people familiar with the businessman’s movements who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Durán over two decades has had numerous business ties with the socialist government of Venezuela, making him an odd choice to help a band of would-be-mercenaries overthrow Maduro, the handpicked successor of the late Chávez
Durán and his associates are now at the center of multiple investigations in the U.S., Colombia and Venezuela into how Goudreau, a combat veteran with three Bronze Stars but little knowledge of Venezuela, managed to launch a failed raid that ended with the capture and arrest of his two special forces colleagues.  
Durán’s role and his closeness to top officials have revived allegations floated by opposition leader Juan Guaidó and U.S. officials that he was secretly working on Maduro’s behalf and had co-opted “Operation Gideon,” the name of Goudreau’s foiled plot.
“There’s financing here from the dictatorship,” Guaidó said in an interview following the raid with EVTV Miami, an online media outlet run by Venezuelan exiles. “A businessman, a front man closely linked to the host of the gossip show,” he said in reference to socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello, whose weekly TV program, fed by nuggets from Venezuela’s vast intelligence network that he controls, first aired in March the accusations of a planned attack by Goudreau.  
Maduro has claimed that Guaidó, whose aides signed a 42-page agreement last year with Goudreau in Miami outlining a plan to take control of the country, was behind last month’s raid, with backing from the CIA or the Drug Enforcement Administration. However, Goudreau said he was never paid and the two sides angrily split. For its part, the Trump administration has denied it was behind the plot, with the president joking that had the U.S. been involved it would have gone very badly for Maduro.
The Associated Press on May 1 first broke the story of Goudreau’s bizarre plan to train a volunteer army made up of a few dozen Venezuelan military deserters at clandestine camps along the border in neighboring Colombia. They planned to attack military bases and ignite a popular uprising. Goudreau’s partner, in what some opposition leaders called a suicide mission, was retired Venezuelan army Gen. Cliver Alcalá, who had been living in Barranquilla after fleeing his homeland in 2018.  
Alcalá surrendered to U.S. authorities in March after he was indicated on drug charges, just a few days after Colombian police seized a cache of weapons that the retired military officer said belonged to the rebel cadre he and Goudreau were readying to bring down Maduro.
But despite no overt U.S. support, a poorly-trained force that stood no chance against Venezuela’s sizable military and indications that Maduro’s spies had infiltrated the group, Goudreau nonetheless pushed ahead with his plans.  
On May 3 — two days after the AP article — he appeared in a video from Florida claiming that a few dozen “freedom fighters” he commanded had launched a beach raid to enter Venezuela and capture Maduro. The invaders were caught almost immediately and the embattled leader paraded on state TV the American combatants as evidence of a U.S.-backed coup attempt. The raid has been widely ridiculed on social media as the “Bay of Piglets,” in reference to the 1961 Cuban fiasco.
Why the plan went forward remains a mystery. But much attention has now shifted to the role of Durán and his brother Pedro.
Both men were quietly arrested Sunday in Venezuela, although Pedro was later released, according to Edward Shohat, Franklin Durán’s Miami-based lawyer. The government has yet to comment on the arrests and has not indicated if it intends to charge either with a crime.
The story of Goudreau’s flight aboard Durán’s plane was first reported by the PanAm Post, a conservative online publication run by mostly Venezuelan exiles from Miami.  
According to Colombian flight documents the PanAm Post shared with the AP, the Jan. 16 trip was chartered by Servicios Aereos Mineros (SERAMI), a for-hire airline that started in the gold-producing Venezuelan state of Bolivar.  
An aviation industry executive confirmed the authenticity of the documents and said SERAMI was used by the Durán brothers to charter their frequent flights between Colombia and Venezuela.
The person said Franklin Durán would frequently travel to Barranquilla — passenger manifests provided to the AP show he made at least four flights between the two countries between November 2019 and January 2020 — to bring back food and other supplies to Venezuela, where U.S. sanctions and years of mismanagement have stripped store shelves of many goods.  
SERAMI is partly owned by Juan Carlos Ynfante, according to two people familiar with the company. Ynfante was arrested last year in Grand Cayman island for piloting an aircraft with $135,000 in undeclared cash. Ynfante was also named as SERAMI’s president in a 2008 U.S. federal forfeiture case in which a plane with the company’s logo was seized in Ft. Lauderdale trying to smuggle 150 kilograms of cocaine.  
In addition to Goudreau and Durán’s two longtime pilots, passengers on the mid January flight included Luke Denman and Airan Berry — two of the former Army veteran’s colleagues from the 10th Special Forces Group in Stuttgart, Germany, where he was based before retiring from the U.S. Army in 2016. The two Texas natives have said in videotaped confessions that they believed Goudreau’s company, Silvercorp USA, had been hired by Guaidó.
Its unclear why the men traveled on the plane to Colombia or if Durán even knew about it. Goudreau hung up when contacted by the AP on Wednesday. He did not respond to a text messages asking about the flight.  
Also on the flight was Yacsy Álvarez. The would-be insurgents in the Colombian camps described the 39-year-old as a trusted aide to Alcalá who also worked for Durán.  
One volunteer solider said that when he needed to fly for meetings between Bogota and Barranquilla it was Álvarez who would purchase his tickets. On other occasions, he would electronically transfer her via Zelle, the digital payments network, small amounts of money he had collected from friends and family to feed the ragtag army. Denman, in his jailhouse statement, said it was Álvarez who drove him and Berry from Barranquilla to a rustic camp where the rebels were training.  
Álvarez’s whereabouts are unknown.  
Álvarez was named in 2017 director of Industrias Venoco de Centroamerica, two years after the company was registered in Panama. The company is a subsidiary of Industrias Venoco, a once market-leading auto lubrication manufacturer that Durán controlled before it was nationalized by Chávez in 2010.  
Durán at the time he lost Venoco was serving out a 4-year sentence in the U.S. for acting as an unregistered agent of Chávez. The firebrand leader had sent Durán to pressure businessman Alejandro Antonini, who was implicated in the so-called “Suitcase Scandal” when an attempt to smuggle $800,000 in cash to the 2007 campaign of former Argentine President Cristina Fernandez aboard a chartered aircraft was caught.  
During the trial, prosecutors pointed out that Durán used to carry a badge identifying him as a Venezuelan naval intelligence officer. The men urged their one-time friend to take the fall and stay quiet but unbeknownst to them Antonini was cooperating with the FBI and recorded their conversations.  
Upon Durán’s release in 2011 and return to Venezuela, a legal battle with the Venezuelan state to reclaim Venoco ensued. Durán maintained a low profile while he received treatment for cancer. Eventually some of Venoco assets, including the brand name, were returned to him, including a unit in Barranquilla. His brother, going by the artistic name Pedro “The Voice,” tried to develop a career singing salsa.  
A woman answering the phone at the Panama-based unit listed on Venoco’s website said the company is privately held and run from Barranquilla. An email sent to the Panama unit through Venoco’s website went unanswered and the two phone numbers listed for the Barranquilla-based unit on Venoco’s website did not work.
 
Durán was also the founder of Ruibal & Durán, a company that used to sell bulletproof vests and other equipment to Venezuela’s security forces — gear that would’ve been valuable to an invading army.  
He and his brother were also close to Alcalá. Photos circulating on social media show Pedro Durán and Alcalá together including one  where the two are sitting casually around a dining table with the army general sporting a Venoco t-shirt.
Franklin Durán’s U.S.-based attorney on Wednesday declined to discuss what, if any relationship, he had with Goudreau or to discuss the January flight.  
But Durán appears to have never wavered in his support of the anti-imperialist revolution to which he owed his fortune.
“I’m a man of principles and convictions, which were put to the test when they tried to force me to accept a set-up against the institutions of Venezuela,” he wrote in a public letter from his Texas prison cell in 2010. “Despite all the weight of the empire’s media, and having spent more than nine months in solitary confinement, I never gave up my values.”
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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced Thursday a new global fundraising campaign to finance the development and worldwide distribution of testing, vaccines and treatments against COVID-19, seeking to ensure they are equally shared.In an address from EU headquarters in Brussels, von der Leyen said the new effort — called “Global Goal: Unite for Our Future” — is meant to raise tens of billions of dollars with private and public donations. It would feature a month of fundraising and awareness, culminating with a June 27 pledging summit featuring businesses, foundations and citizens. She said 15 governments have also pledged their support.The new initiative follows another EU-led global campaign for the same goal which in less than a month raised nearly $11 billion, more than half of it from EU nations and institutions. The U.S. did not participate.The EU is increasingly taking a role as a champion of global cooperation while the United States and China, which have the world’s largest economies, favor national initiatives. The new campaign, which is being launched in cooperation with international advocacy organization Global Citizen, illustrates the need for funds to develop and make vaccines and treatments available for everyone.
 
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The World Health Organization said Thursday that since early March about 159,000 more people have died in 24 European countries than would have ordinarily been expected, with a “significant proportion” of the increase linked to COVID-19.WHO official Katie Smallwood told reporters during a remote briefing Thursday that while that figure reflects all causes of deaths in those countries, its timing coincides with the peak period during which people were dying of COVID-19 in hospitals in Italy, France, Spain and Britain.Smallwood said that is a good indication the significantly higher death toll during the period is linked to COVID-19.WHO Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge said during the briefing there are now more than two million confirmed cased of COVID-19 in Europe, up 15 percent over the past two weeks, with Russia, Turkey, Belarus and Britain leading the way in new infections.  More than 175,000 people have died in Europe from COVID-19 since the pandemic began.Smallwood said European countries that may ease restrictions, including on bars, discos and other social hubs, must have robust disease detection, testing and tracing systems in place first, to help keep at bay a potential “second wave,” where the pandemic might re-emerge.
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Alec de Rham sat with his back against a stone obelisk marked “International Boundary” as he and his wife visited with a daughter they hadn’t seen in 10 weeks.  
Hannah Smith took a bus and a bicycle from Vancouver, British Columbia, to the border to meet her “main person,” Jabree Robinson, of Bellingham, Washington.
And beside a large, white arch symbolizing U.S.-Canadian friendship, Lois England and Ian Hendon kissed giddily, reunited for a few hours after the longest separation of their three-year relationship.
Families, couples and friends — separated for weeks by the pandemic-fueled closing of the border between the U.S. and Canada — are flocking to Peace Arch Park, an oasis on the border where they can reunite, and touch, and hug.
The park covers 42 acres (17 hectares) of manicured lawn, flower beds, and cedar and alder trees, extending from Blaine, Washington, into Surrey, British Columbia, at the far western end of the 3,987-mile (6146-km) contiguous border. As long as they stay in the park, visitors can freely roam from the U.S. to the Canadian side, and vice versa, without showing so much as a passport.  
It’s a frequent site of picnics and sometimes weddings, not to mention an area for travelers to stretch their legs when holiday traffic clogs the ports of entry. And for now it’s one of just a few areas along the along the entire border where those separated by the closure can meet.
Officials closed the park in mid-March over coronavirus concerns. The U.S. side reopened early this month, as Washington Gov. Jay Inslee eased some of the restrictions in his stay-home order, and the Canadian side reopened two weeks ago. England, of Sumas, Washington, said she cried when Hendon called to give her the news and they quickly made plans to meet.
England said she and Hendon have generally been careful about social distancing, but there was no thought of keeping 6 feet apart when they saw each other.
“I was really getting depressed over it — this was a huge reprieve,” she said.
It typically takes 40 minutes for England to get to Hendon’s home in Surrey, and they have usually seen each other at least once a week since they met online three years ago. Hendon, an electrician, has kept busy with work during the pandemic, while England has spent time with her daughter and her mother, who live nearby.
The couple chat by Skype almost every morning, but England missed Hendon so badly a few weeks ago that she tried to enter Canada as an “essential” visitor — a category reserved for medical workers, airline crews or truckers hauling crucial goods. Canadian guards turned her away.
One reunion was not enough. The next day, they returned with a barbecue and steaks.
About a half-hour drive to the east, other families met where roads on either side closely parallel a small ditch marking the border. Visitors set up chairs across from each other and had long chats; there’s less freedom to touch there.  
Before they tried it, Tim and Kris Browning thought it might be too hard to see each other without touching. Kris lives north of the border in Abbotsford, where she is a hospital cook, and Tim lives just south, where he works as an electrician for a berry grower. They married in 2014 after meeting online; the virus has delayed Tim’s application to move to Canada.
But chatting across the ditch and a rusty guard rail, or in a nearby raspberry field owned by Tim’s employer, has become a weekly highlight — much better than a device, they said.
“It’s been really heartwarming to see all the families out, and everyone’s been so nice,” said Tim, who usually spends three days a week with Kris and her two children in Canada. “One Border Patrol agent came by and said, ‘Why aren’t you hugging your wife? Go on, hug your wife!'”
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