GOVERNMENT EMPHASISES GREATER INTERACTION WITH CITIZEN

Luanda - The Secretary of State for Mass Communication, Nuno Caldas Albino, said Thursday in Luanda, the Government's new posture was based on an approach of greater interaction with citizens, of greater participation in a privileged public space for clarification and reception of contributions.

The official, who was speaking at the end of the "Ideas Café" with journalists, noted that the initiative embodied the steps taken by the government aimed at decentralisation of the social sector.

According to Nuno Caldas Albino, the "Café de Ideias" reflected on the role of the Media in the mediation between the governors and the governed, allowing proximity and inclusion between the Government and the citizen.

The Ministry of Social Action, Family and Promotion of Women (MASFAMU), with support from MINTTICS, held the seminar called "Café de Ideias" with Journalists, with the purpose of bringing to the attention of Media professionals and public opinion in general, the programs that contribute to the fulfillment of the indicators of the I axis of the National Development Plan 2018/2022, on human progress and well-being, as well as the demining process underway in the country.

YOUTH MINISTER CALLS FOR INCENTIVE TO ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Uíge - The Minister of Youth and Sports, Ana Paula do Sacramento Neto, called Thursday in Bungo municipality, Uíge province, for youths to bet on entrepreneurship to ensure the promotion of self-employment.

Speaking at a meeting with the youth of Bungo, Sacramento Neto also called for the reinforcement of programmes for the insertion of more youths in the labour market, in order to reduce unemployment among youths.

She also reminded that the Government is committed to the implementation of projects that aim professional training and the delivery of carpentry kits, shoemaking, electricity, plumbing and other equipment to guarantee self-employment for young people.

The official also guaranteed the reinforcement of work means to the youths that have already benefited from work kits in order to improve their businesses so that they can give employment to other citizens.

She also appealed to the public managers to continue to implement financial education programmes directed to the youth so that they can provide quality of life to the citizens, through the savings culture.

COVID-19: ANGOLA REPORTS 223 NEW INFECTIONS, 170 RECOVERIES

Luanda- Angola announced, this Thursday, the diagnosis of 223 new cases, 8 deaths and the recovery of 170 patients, in the last 24 hours.

According to data from the daily bulletin, 141 were diagnosed in Luanda, 18 in Benguela, 15 in Bié, 15 in Huíla, 15 in Huambo, 6 in Zaire, 5 in Moxico, 3 in Uíge, 2 in Cuando Cubango, 2 in Lunda Sul and 1 in Cuanza Norrte.

With ages ranging from 6 months to 88 years, the list included 118 male and 105 female patients.

As for deaths, according to the data, three were registered in Bié, two in Benguela, one in Huambo, one in Huíla and one in Luanda.

Among those recovered, 118 reside in Luanda, 15 in Huambo, 9 in Moxico, 8 in Huila, 6 in Bié, 6 in Lunda Sul, 4 in Benguela, 2 in Cunene and 1 in Zaire.

In the last 24 hours, it said, the laboratories had processed 23,603 samples.

In the treatment centres 182 patients are hospitalised, whilst 163 citizens are in institutional quarantine and 1,164 are under epidemiological surveillance.

The overall picture in the country shows 48,004, with 1,235 deaths, 43,739 recovered and 3,030 active. Of the critical 7, 33 severe, 105 moderate, 37 mild and 2,848 asymptomatic.

At least 8 deaths as Hurricane Ida’s remnants hit Northeast

NEW YORK (AP) — The remnants of Hurricane Ida dumped historic rain over New York City, with at least eight deaths linked to flooding in the region, as it swamped subway cars and submerged vehicles and homes.

Catastrophic weather came to the largest city in the U.S. after a grim two weeks across the nation that has seen 20 dead in flooding in a small Tennessee town, wildfires threatening Lake Tahoe, Tropical Storm Henri in the Northeast and Ida’s landfall in Louisiana, which left 1 million people without power, maybe for weeks.

Late Wednesday evening a state of emergency was declared in New York City and the rest of the state. Ira’s remnants were exiting the country, but not without tornadoes in other parts of the Northeast.

Police in New York City reported seven deaths, including a 50-year-old man, a 48-year-old woman and a 2-year-old boy who were found unconscious and unresponsive late Wednesday inside a home. They were pronounced dead at the scene, police said. One death was confirmed in New Jersey.

New York’s FDR Drive, a major artery on the east side of Manhattan, and the Bronx River Parkway were under water by late Wednesday evening. Subway stations and tracks became so flooded that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority suspended all service, but some trains were running with limited service Thursday morning. Videos posted online showed subway riders standing on seats in cars filled with water.

Other videos showed vehicles submerged up to their windows on major roadways in and around the city and garbage bobbing down the streets.

“We’re enduring an historic weather event tonight with record breaking rain across the city, brutal flooding and dangerous conditions on our roads,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said while declaring a state of emergency in New York City late Wednesday.

Gov. Kathy Hochul also declared a state of emergency for New York state.

Video shot by New York TV station WABC-TV showed firefighters carry a man from his vehicle to dry ground. The man’s SUV was one of a number of vehicles stuck in the water on the Bronx River Parkway.

The National Weather Service office in New York declared its first-ever set of flash flood emergencies in the region Wednesday night, an alert level that is reserved for “exceedingly rare situations when a severe threat to human life and catastrophic damage from a flash flood is happening or will happen soon.”

New York City put in place a travel ban until 5 a.m. ET Thursday for all nonemergency vehicles, and a travel advisory was in effect after it expired. All nonemergency vehicles were advised to stay off of streets and highways.

The National Weather Service recorded 3.15 inches (8.91 centimeters) of rain in New York’s Central Park in one hour Wednesday night, far surpassing the 1.94 inches (4.92 centimeters) that fell in one hour during Tropical Storm Henri on the night of Aug. 21, which was believed at the time to be the most ever recorded in the park.

Earlier Wednesday, the storm blew through the mid-Atlantic states with at least two tornadoes, heavy winds and drenching rains that collapsed the roof of a U.S. Postal Service building in New Jersey and threatened to overrun a dam in Pennsylvania.

Social media posts showed homes reduced to rubble in a southern New Jersey county just outside Philadelphia, not far from where the National Weather Service confirmed a tornado Wednesday evening. Authorities did not have any immediate information on injuries.

The roof collapsed at the Postal Service building in Kearny, New Jersey, with people inside, police Sgt. Chris Levchak said. Rescue crews were on scene into the night, with no immediate word on the number of people or severity of injuries.

Gov. Phil Murphy declared a state of emergency in all of New Jersey’s 21 counties, urging people to stay off the flooded roads. Meteorologists warned that rivers likely won’t crest for a few more days, raising the possibility of more widespread flooding.

“There’s a lot of hurt in New Jersey,” Murphy told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Thursday as he discussed damage caused by flooding in the northern part of the state and tornadoes in the southern part of the state.

At least one death was reported in the state as floodwaters rushed through city streets, trapping motorists. Passaic Mayor Hector Lora said a 70-year-old man was swept away. “His family was rescued, they were all in the same car. Unfortunately, the car was overtaken by the waters, and the firefighters who were being dragged down under the vehicle were unable to get him out,” Lora told WCBS-TV. The mayor said there was an unconfirmed report of another death in the city.

Newark International Airport shut down Wednesday night due to the weather but was allowing limited flights Thursday morning.

All Amtrak service between Philadelphia and Boston with an initial departure before 9 a.m. ET Thursday was canceled, and regional train service connecting New York City with Long Island was suspended. More than 61,000 homes and businesses in New Jersey were without electricity by 6 a.m.

Among the other deaths reported in New York City, a 48-year-old woman and a 66-year-old man died after being found at separate residences, and a 43-year-old woman and a 22-year-old man both died after being found inside a home. Causes of death and identifications were pending.

Soaking rains prompted the evacuations of thousands of people after water reached dangerous levels at a dam near Johnstown, a Pennsylvania town nicknamed Flood City. An official said later Wednesday that the water levels near the dam were receding.

Utilities reported hundreds of thousands of customers without power in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

In Rockville, Maryland, water had almost reached the ceilings of basement units Wednesday when crews arrived at an apartment complex. A 19-year-old was found dead, another person was missing and about 200 people from 60 apartments near Rock Creek were displaced, Montgomery County Fire Chief Scott Goldstein said Wednesday.

A tornado was believed to have touched down along the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.

“In many years I have not seen circumstances like this,” Goldstein said.

The National Weather Service had predicted flooding from what remained of Hurricane Ida, saying steep terrain and even city streets were particularly vulnerable to a band of severe weather that extended to Massachusetts, where tornado warnings were issued early Thursday.

Tropical Storm Henri hit the region a little more than a week ago, causing flooding and leaving the region saturated and more vulnerable to this week’s torrents.

Tropical Storm Larry was strengthening and moving quickly westward after forming off the coast of Africa earlier Wednesday. Forecasters predicted it would rapidly intensify in a manner similar to Ida, becoming a major hurricane with top wind speeds of 120 mph (193 kph) by Saturday.

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Merkel prepares to step down with legacy of tackling crises

BERLIN (AP) — Angela Merkel will leave office as one of modern Germany’s longest-serving leaders and a global diplomatic heavyweight, with a legacy defined by her management of a succession of crises that shook a fragile Europe rather than any grand visions for her own country.

In 16 years at the helm of Europe’s biggest economy, Merkel did end military conscription, set Germany on course for a future without nuclear and fossil-fueled power, enable the legalization of same-sex marriage, introduce a national minimum wage and benefits encouraging fathers to look after young children, among other things.

But a senior ally recently summed up what many view as her main service: as an anchor of stability in stormy times. He told Merkel: “You protected our country well.”

“All the major crossroads you had to navigate … we never mapped out in any election program — they came overnight and you had to govern well,” Bavarian governor Markus Soeder said.

Merkel passed her first test in 2008, pledging at the height of the global financial crisis that Germans’ savings were safe. Over the following years, she was a leading figure in the effort to save the euro currency from the debt crisis that engulfed several members, agreeing to bailouts but insisting on painful spending cuts.

In 2015, Merkel was the face of a welcoming approach to migrants as people fleeing conflicts in Syria and elsewhere trekked across the Balkans. She allowed in hundreds of thousands and insisted that “we will manage” the influx, but ran into resistance both at home and among European partners.

And in the twilight of her career — she announced in 2018 that she wouldn’t seek a fifth term — she led a COVID-19 response that saw Germany fare better than some of its peers.

On the international stage, Merkel insisted on seeking compromises and pursuing a multilateral approach to the world’s problems through years of turbulence that saw the U.S. drift apart from European allies under President Donald Trump and Britain leave the European Union.

“I think Ms. Merkel’s most important legacy is simply that, in such a time of worldwide crises, she provided for stability,” said Ralph Bollmann, a biographer of Merkel and a journalist with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper.

There was “a constant succession of crises that were really existential threats and raised questions over the world order we are used to, and her achievement is that she led Germany, Europe and perhaps to some extent the world fairly safely through that, for all that you can criticize details,” Bollmann said.

Before winning the top job in 2005, he noted, Merkel campaigned as “a chancellor of change, who wanted to make Germany more modern,” seeking deeper economic reforms and a more socially liberal approach than her center-right party had previously taken.

But she ditched much of her economic agenda after almost blowing a huge poll lead by turning off voters with talk of far-reaching reforms, instead embracing what she called an approach of “many small steps.” Along with a pragmatic willingness to jettison conservative orthodoxy such as conscription when opportune, it enabled her to dominate the center ground of German politics.

Crises consumed so much energy that “not much time was left to deal with other issues,” Bollmann said. There is plenty of unfinished business: Merkel has conceded that “the lack of digitization in our society” is a problem, ranging from notoriously patchy cell phone reception to many health offices using faxes to transmit data during the pandemic.

Merkel’s political longevity is already historic. Among democratic Germany’s post-World War II leaders, she lags only Helmut Kohl, who led the country to reunification during his 1982-98 tenure. She could overtake even him if she is still in office on Dec. 17. That’s feasible if parties are slow to form a new government after the Sept. 26 election.

Merkel, 67, insists that others must judge her record. Still, she highlighted a few achievements at a rare campaign appearance last month, starting with the reduction of the number of unemployed in Germany from over 5 million in 2005 to under 2.6 million now.

Predecessor Gerhard Schroeder, whose welfare-state trims and economic reforms were beginning to kick in when he left office, arguably deserves part of the credit.

Merkel also inherited a plan to exit nuclear power from Schroeder, but abruptly accelerated it following the meltdowns at Japan’s Fukushima plant in 2011. More recently, she set in motion Germany’s exit from coal-fueled power.

The chancellor pointed to progress on renewable energy, saying its share of the German energy mix has risen from 10% to well over 40%. Merkel was often referred to as the “climate chancellor” in her early years, but also has drawn criticism for moving too slowly; her government this year moved forward the date for reducing German greenhouse gas emissions to “net zero” to 2045, after the country’s top court ruled that previous plans place too much of the burden on young people.

Merkel praised her government’s drive to improve Germany’s public finances, which enabled it to stop running up new debt from 2014 until the coronavirus pandemic pushed it into huge rescue packages. Opponents argue that it skimped on necessary investments in infrastructure.

“I could talk about how we saved the euro,” she said, adding that “our principle of combining the affected countries’ own responsibility with solidarity was exactly the right method to give the euro a future.” Merkel’s austerity-heavy approach was resented deeply in parts of Europe and controversial among economists, but allowed her to overcome reluctance at home to bail out strugglers.

Whatever the ultimate verdict, Merkel can celebrate a unique end to her tenure: she is set to become the first German chancellor to leave power when she chooses.

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