With more than half the world under some form of lockdown and millions of jobs lost, the UN’s World Food Programme says the poor are hit hardest
President Donald Trump partially blocked immigration to the US “to protect American workers” from the economic shock of the coronavirus, as the UN warned the world was facing “a humanitarian catastrophe”.
“I want to stress that we are not only facing a global health pandemic, but also a global humanitarian catastrophe,” the WFP executive director David Beasley told the UN Security Council on Tuesday. “Millions of civilians living in conflict-scarred nations ... face being pushed to the brink of starvation.”
The US is the hardest-hit country in the world, with nearly 45,000 deaths and more than 800,000 coronavirus infections, and healthcare infrastructure in major hot-spots such as New York City has struggled to cope.“The same thing every day ... is draining,” said Heather Isola, a physician assistant. “What is it going to do to us? The anxieties, the PTSD, the experience of death and dying. Most people haven’t seen death and dying like this.
The German government’s restrictions on large gatherings also mean the Berlin Marathon will not go ahead as planned this year in September, organisers said. Spain, which is set to allow children some movement in a week, said it is scrapping the annual bull-running festival in Pamplona. Across the Atlantic in the US, the NFL draft — a three-day annual, glitzy marketplace to choose the top collegiate talent — will be held virtually from Thursday, with teams making their picks from remote locations across the country.With billions locked down, economies halted and travel extremely limited, a dramatic drop in the demand for oil has sent prices crashing in recent weeks. Major cuts promised by the world’s top producers have failed to stabilise the crude market.
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