Federal Grand Jury indicts Chauvin, three others in George Floyd’s deat

The three-count indictment names Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao.

THIS JUST IN — A federal grand jury has indicted the four former Minneapolis police officers involved in George Floyd’s arrest and death, accusing them of violating the Black man’s constitutional rights as he was restrained face-down on the pavement and gasping for air, according to indictments unsealed Friday.

The three-count indictment names Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao. Specifically, Chauvin, Thao and Kueng are charged with violating Floyd’s right to be free from unreasonable seizure and excessive force. All four officers are charged for their failure to provide Floyd with medical care. Chauvin was also charged in a second indictment, stemming from the arrest and neck restraint of a 14-year-old boy in 2017.

Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J. Kueng appeared via videoconference in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis. Chauvin was not part of the court appearance.

Chauvin was convicted last month on state charges of murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s death and is in Minnesota’s only maximum-security prison as he awaits sentencing. The other three former officers face a state trial in August, and they are free on bond. They were allowed to remain free after Friday’s federal court appearance.

Floyd, 46, died May 25 after Chauvin pinned him to the ground with a knee on his neck, even as Floyd, who was handcuffed, repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe. Kueng and Lane also helped restrain Floyd — state prosecutors have said Kueng knelt on Floyd’s back and Lane held down Floyd’s legs. State prosecutors say Thao held back bystanders and kept them from intervening during the 9 1/2-minute restraint.

Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, argued during his murder trial that Chauvin acted reasonably in the situation and that Floyd died because of underlying health issues and drug use. He has filed a request for a new trial, citing many issues including the judge’s refusal to move the trial due to publicity.

Floyd’s arrest and death, which a bystander captured on cellphone video, sparked protests nationwide and widespread calls for an end to police brutality and racial inequities.

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Balsamo reported from Washington.

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African Leadership Group Early Graduate Program 2021 for young African graduates.

Application Deadline: 21st May, 2021 https://bit.ly/3tsJwlz

Join the African Leadership Group team and get hands-on experience in a global, fast-growing company. Receive the support, coaching and training needed to advance your career.

African Leadership Group is looking for graduates with 0-3 years of work experience to fill generalist roles across various functions in the group such as Finance, Data & Technology, Communications, Social Media Marketing, Operations, Customer Support and many more.

Requirements

Qualifications: Completed a Bachelor's Degree program

Language: Proficient in verbal and written English

Coachability: Be willing to ask for help and embrace feedback and work well in a team-oriented environment

Entrepreneurial mindset: Be willing to creatively define how the role objectives are met without necessarily sticking to “how it’s done’.

Customer obsessed: Be willing to understand customer needs and work wholeheartedly to deliver against those needs.

Benefits

A chance to make history: Become part of the team who is developing 3M leaders for Africa and help us convert a potential crisis into an era of global innovation & prosperity

A powerful network: Join our powerful network of thousands of talented individuals who are living impactful lives across industries and geographies

Professional development: Get access to the learning programs that made us the most innovative company in Africa for “remaking education for a new era”

A talented & diverse team: Join a group of top performers coming from across the world and work alongside them in a fast-paced, impact-driven, environment

Autonomy & empowerment: Enjoy the autonomy of working remotely and be empowered to achieve clear and ambitious goals in an outputs-driven organization

International Women’s Forum (IWF) Leadership Foundation’s Fellows Program 2021/2022 for women leaders worldwide.

Application Deadline: June 1st 2021 

Each year, IWF invests in making women stronger, smarter and more influential through its Fellows Program, a year-long, intensive leadership development experience. The Fellows Program was launched in 1994 with seed-funding from the U.S. Labor Department as a direct result of the Glass Ceiling Commission and annually convenes approximately 35 Fellows from around the world for a total of 20 days. Featuring academic partnerships with Harvard Business School and INSEAD, the program offers customized leadership training for high-achieving women leaders on their path to the C-suite. The approach is holistic and focused on the participant’s personal and professional development, career path, and trajectory, while embracing the value of an outside perspective.

COVID-19 UPDATE

The 2021-2022 Fellows Program is moving forward as planned with applications due by June 1, 2021. We expect the program modules, with the exception of the IWF World Leadership Conference, to take place in person unless challenges associated with COVID-19 remain and CDC guidelines recommend otherwise. Below is the planned module schedule:

September 29-October 1, 2021

2021-2022 Fellows Program Launch in Washington, DC.

November 3-5, 2021

IWF Virtual World Leadership Conference.

February 28 - March 3, 2022

INSEAD Executive Education Module in Fontainebleau, France.

June 6-11, 2022

Harvard Business School Executive Education Module in Cambridge, MA.

Structure

The program convenes approximately 35 Fellows from around the world for a total of 20 days, comprised of three separate sessions. It is executed in partnership with INSEAD and Harvard Business School. The Fellows Program offers creative, multidisciplinary training aimed at developing leadership and strategic management capabilities.

Click Here to apply https://bit.ly/3b8celo

International Women’s Forum (IWF) Leadership Foundation’s Fellows Program 2021/2022 for women leaders worldwide.

Prazo para inscrição: 1º de junho de 2021 https://bit.ly/3b8celo

A cada ano, a IWF investe para tornar as mulheres mais fortes, inteligentes e influentes por meio de seu Programa de Bolsas, uma experiência intensiva de desenvolvimento de liderança que dura um ano. O Programa de Fellows foi lançado em 1994 com financiamento inicial do Departamento do Trabalho dos Estados Unidos como resultado direto da Glass Ceiling Commission e reúne anualmente cerca de 35 Fellows de todo o mundo por um total de 20 dias. Apresentando parcerias acadêmicas com a Harvard Business School e INSEAD, o programa oferece treinamento de liderança personalizado para mulheres líderes de alto desempenho em seu caminho para a diretoria. A abordagem é holística e focada no desenvolvimento pessoal e profissional, na carreira e na trajetória do participante, ao mesmo tempo que abraça o valor de uma perspectiva externa.

ATUALIZAÇÃO DO COVID-19

O Programa de Bolsistas de 2021-2022 está avançando conforme planejado com inscrições para 1º de junho de 2021. Esperamos que os módulos do programa, com exceção da Conferência de Liderança Mundial da IWF, ocorram pessoalmente, a menos que os desafios associados ao COVID-19 permaneçam As diretrizes do CDC recomendam o contrário.

Abaixo está a programação do módulo planejado:

29 de setembro a 1º de outubro de 2021

2021-2022 Lançamento do Programa de Fellows em Washington, DC.

3 a 5 de novembro de 2021

Conferência de Liderança Mundial Virtual da IWF.

28 de fevereiro - 3 de março de 2022

Módulo de Educação Executiva INSEAD em Fontainebleau, França.

6 a 11 de junho de 2022

Módulo de Educação Executiva da Harvard Business School em Cambridge, MA.

Estrutura

O programa reúne cerca de 35 Fellows de todo o mundo por um total de 20 dias, compreendendo três sessões separadas. É executado em parceria com o INSEAD e a Harvard Business School. O Programa de Fellows oferece treinamento criativo e multidisciplinar voltado para o desenvolvimento de capacidades de liderança e gestão estratégica.

Click here to apply; https://bit.ly/3b8celo

Peru’s COVID crisis: ‘Almost all Peruvians know someone who died’

Cocktail of factors, from poverty to a crumbling public health system, push Peru atop global per capita death rankings.

Lima, Peru – While the world watches in horror as India’s coronavirus case count explodes, another intense outbreak is unfolding – albeit on a much smaller scale – in Peru, which sits atop the global per capita mortality rankings.

The Andean nation has registered more than 4,000 excess dead per million residents since the start of the pandemic, or more than 166,815 deaths, the Financial Times reported, a 123 percent rise compared with the historical average.

Excess deaths are viewed as more accurate than the official Peruvian health ministry figure of 62,126 confirmed deaths linked to the coronavirus.

“Almost all Peruvians know someone who has died from COVID,” said Cesar Carcomo, an epidemiologist at Cayetano Heredia University, Peru’s leading medical school.

The country also is experiencing its deadliest period since the novel coronavirus first arrived, with 9,458 deaths recorded in April – its highest monthly death toll – although the figures have now started to come back down.

Experts attribute Peru’s disastrous pandemic performance to a cocktail of factors: poverty, a crumbling public healthcare system, a national oxygen duopoly that has failed to meet demand, and the emergence of new strains of the virus.

Poverty manifests itself in a series of ways in the context of COVID-19, from overcrowded, multigenerational housing, to the fact that 70 percent of the Peruvian workforce is informally employed, frequently needing to violate public health restrictions or go hungry.

Compounding the crisis has been widespread coronavirus disinformation, including even experts urging people to use anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, a medicine used to treat bacterial infections, to prevent or treat COVID-19.

Neither medication works, according to scientific studies, and both can have “collateral effects”, said Carlos Lescano, president of the Peruvian Society of Intensive Care Doctors.

Yet with Peru’s healthcare system overwhelmed – the national waiting list for intensive care beds hit 2,000 patients last month – many Peruvians have had little choice but to treat gravely ill relatives at home, with some buying oxygen at speculative prices.

Administering oxygen without medical supervision has also made matters worse, said Lescano, leading families to delay inevitable hospital admissions until it is too late. “By the time they arrive, these patients often need mechanical ventilation,” he told Al Jazeera.

People stand with empty oxygen tanks while waiting to refill them for patients suffering from COVID-19, in Lima in February [Sebastian Castaneda/Reuters]

Government failures

At the start of the pandemic, then-President Martin Vizcarra was praised for swiftly implementing one of the strictest lockdowns in the world. “The fact that we had a significant surge after that first lockdown was relaxed just shows it worked,” said Carcomo.

Nevertheless, the government has also been accused of failing to follow the science. Initially, when the first few coronavirus cases were reported, the health ministry tracked down the patients’ contacts. But even before the pandemic got out of control, the Vizcarra administration abandoned that effort.

The next misstep, critics argue, was Peru’s reliance during the first wave on blood tests, which reveal whether a person has coronavirus antibodies – in other words, whether they have been infected at least a week or two previously. Unlike the PCR, or molecular, tests widely used elsewhere, those blood tests do not show whether a person is contagious at the time they are carried out.

“The mistake wasn’t in using these tests. They are useful, especially if you’re trying to find out how many people have already been infected. But we were using them the wrong way,” said Carcomo.

Another key element in Peru’s inability to tame the pandemic has been what Camille Webb, an infectious diseases expert at Lima’s Alexander von Humboldt Institute of Tropical Medicine, describes as the government’s “inability to communicate very simple messages”.

To this day, there has yet to be a sustained campaign of primetime TV public service announcements to share basic messages about social distancing and other public health measures.

Under political pressure from a hostile Congress that removed Vizcarra last November, the current government, led by interim President Francisco Sagasti, has adopted a similar approach to the Vizcarra administration.

Meanwhile, as Peru heads to a presidential runoff in June, candidates Keiko Fujimori and Pedro Castillo are promising to vaccinate all Peruvians this year but have been criticised for lacking detailed plans to manage the pandemic and disregarding social distancing rules at campaign events.

Fujimori has also put in charge of her coronavirus team a molecular biologist who previously made headlines for falsely claiming that vaccines were made from distilled water and even raised the risk of contracting COVID-19, in an apparent attempt to destabilise the Sagasti administration.

New variants

Another reason Peru has recorded sky-high coronavirus numbers may be the arrival of new, more easily transmissible coronavirus variants, experts say.

In March, it emerged that a strain first discovered in Brazil accounted for 40 percent of new cases in Lima, the capital. But now scientists believe that the dominant variant in Peru may be one that originated in the country itself, or in Chile. It was discovered in March by Pablo Tsukayama, a researcher at Cayetano Heredia University.

Little is known so far about this new strain, including whether it is more contagious or more lethal.

“We think that 40 percent of Peruvians were infected in the first wave,” said Carcamo. “The fact that the second wave has been even worse tells me that people are getting re-infected.”

Health workers arrive to administer COVID-19 vaccines to elderly residents of the El Agustino district of Lima last month [Ernesto Benavides/AFP]

Meanwhile, vaccinations began in January but have been moving slowly. As of Tuesday, 635,147 people had received two doses – principally of China’s Sinopharm jab – out of a total population of 32 million. Another 546,394 have received a single shot and are waiting for their second dose.But for the family of Denisse Hauyon, a 38-year-old travel agent in Lima, those vaccinations are coming too late.

In the last two weeks, she has lost three relatives to COVID-19. Her 72-year-old uncle, Tito Geldres, a lawyer, passed away in a public hospital just days before he was due to get vaccinated, and her aunt, Norma Abad, 70, who lives in New York but was staying with relatives in Peru to support them through the pandemic, passed away at their home.

“Tito was very careful. We can’t work out how he was infected,” said Hauyon. “The system is not working. Everything is just so dark right now.”

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

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Bolt launches its car-sharing service Bolt Drive

Bolt, the leading European mobility platform, launches its car-sharing service, Bolt Drive.

The new service allows customers to rent a car for short periods of time using the Bolt app. Bolt will invest €20 million in launching Bolt Drive in Europe this year, starting with a pilot in its home market, Estonia.

Bolt is the first mobility platform in Europe to offer car-sharing, ride-hailing and micromobility with scooters and electric bikes in one app.

By enabling customers to quickly and conveniently rent a car at the tap of a button, Bolt allows them to be less dependent on personal cars and encourages the use of alternative modes of transport for short-distance trips.

Markus Villig, CEO at Bolt, said, “Personal cars are the primary cause of problems in urban transport. They are responsible for traffic, environmental emissions and taking up city space. Bolt’s mission is to help people give up their personal cars by providing a better alternative.

“For people to switch from ownership to on-demand transport, we need to offer a more convenient, affordable and environmentally sustainable option for every distance. We are already doing this for short and medium distance trips.

“Bolt Drive now covers the rest of the use cases, whether it’s a trip to a shopping mall or a weekend getaway. Our customers will have access to a car at any time, from the same app they already use for scooters, e-bikes and ride-hailing”.

Bolt Drive is a free-floating car-sharing service, allowing customers to see the vehicles nearest to them on a map and book a car using the Bolt app.

They can start the ride by unlocking a car with a mobile phone and finish it anywhere in the city, within an area indicated in the app. Users do not have to pay for parking or fuel.

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China emissions greater than all developed nations combined

China spews out more greenhouse gas than all of the world’s developed nations combined, new research by Rhodium Group finds.

China now accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than all of the world’s developed nations combined, according to new research from Rhodium Group.

China’s emissions of six heat-trapping gases, including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, rose to 14.09 billion tons of CO2 equivalent in 2019, edging out the total of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development members by about 30 million tons, according to the New York-based climate research group.

The massive scale of China’s emissions highlights the importance of President Xi Jinping’s drive to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and reach net-zero by 2060. China accounted for 27% of global emissions. The U.S., the second biggest emitter, contributed 11% while India for the first time surpassed the European Union with about 6.6% of the global total.

Still, China also has the world’s largest population, so its per capita emissions remain far less than those of the U.S. And on a historical basis, OECD members are still the world’s biggest warming culprits, having pumped four times more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than China since 1750.

“China’s history as a major emitter is relatively short compared to developed countries, many of which had more than a century head start,” the researchers said. “Current global warming is the result of emissions from both the recent and more distant past.”

SOURCE: BLOOMBERG

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Malawi orders thousands of refugees to return to overcrowded camp

Despite years of integration, the government claims refugees could pose a threat to national security by living with locals.

The Malawian government has ordered thousands of long-integrated refugees to return to its sole but badly overcrowded refugee camp, in a controversial move that many have vowed to resist.

The UN estimates there are around 2,000 refugees residing outside the camp at Dzaleka, about 40 kilometres (30 miles) north of the capital Lilongwe.

Many have lived there for years, setting up businesses in the town or marrying Malawians and having children with them.

But the government argues they pose a potential danger to national security by living among locals.

“We are not chasing them, and we just want them to be where they should be,” Homeland Security Minister Richard Chimwendo told AFP.

“Those who have businesses… will have to operate from Dzaleka.”

“If they are married they must apply for permanent residence” instead of “just spreading themselves across the country”.

“We are not sending them back to their countries,” he argued.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR in Malawi said the directive was in line with the country’s encampment laws, but advised the government to reconsider.

It said, according to an official communication it received from the Homeland Security ministry, the decision was also taken in the light of “security concerns in order to protect both refugees and host communities following the volatile situation in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado area”.

But Chimwendo said the decision to relocate the refugees was not linked to the insurgency in neighbouring northern Mozambique, where armed groups have wreaked havoc for over three years.

With an initial capacity of between 10,000 and 14,000 refugees around 1994, the camp now houses 49,386 people and several hundred continue to arrive each month, according to the UNHCR.

‘We are not comfortable’

The deadline for refugees to return to the camp was April 28, but a last-minute court injunction gave them a brief respite.

Jean Minani, a longtime Burundian refugee who resides out of the camp, is among many who object to the order.

Speaking in one of Malawi’s main languages, Chichewa, he told AFP he sought asylum in the southern African country 13 years ago, eventually setting up a small retail business, a food store.

Like many asylum seekers, Minani sees a return to Dzaleka as unimaginable for him and his family after their successful integration into a local community.

“We are not comfortable” with the idea, Minani said, voicing fears of catching COVID-19 in the overcrowded camp.

He also feared the move would disrupt their children’s education while they are facing exams, and he scoffed at the monthly food ration, worth $5 (four euros).

Kanamula John, who represents Rwandan refugees in the camp, is also concerned about congestion at the facility.

“Some of us have married Malawian women and some Malawian men have married refugees. We don’t know what will happen to our children,” John said.

The minister admitted there was not enough accommodation at the camp, but vowed “we are looking at how best we can settle that.”

Burundian national Ntizo Muheba, who arrived in Malawi in 2005, has returned to the camp but is sleeping rough for lack of accommodation there.

“I have four children, and it is hard to live like this,” he said.

About 62 percent of the refugees are from the Democratic Republic of Congo, 23 percent from Burundi, 14 percent from Rwanda while the rest are from Somalia and Ethiopia.

Congolese refugee John Muhirwa pleaded with the government “to bear with us and allow us to live outside the camp for our children to return to their schools. We were living peacefully with the local people”.

Rights groups have urged the government to treat the refugees with dignity and safeguard their financial property.

“We don’t want to see scenarios where people will take advantage to grab or ransack the refugees’ assets,” said Human Rights Defenders Coalition chairman, Gift Trapence.

While the UNHCR acknowledged that the government has legal grounds for ordering the relocation, it warned of “serious human rights implications”.

In an email response to AFP, it said schools would be congested and water supplies would be stretched as well as health facilities.

Meantime, Malawi insists it will challenge the court injunction, the latest in a series of legal tussles between the government and the refugees since 2016.

SOURCE: AFP

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