30, September 2020

French Cameroun Crisis: Rights Groups condemn police stationed at Kamto’s Home ⁰

Human rights groups in Cameroon have condemned the de facto house arrest of opposition leader Maurice Kamto, who has spent a week at his residence surrounded by riot police. Authorities say Kamto’s Cameroon Renaissance Movement party is being investigated for attempts to destabilize the country after last week’s anti-government protests.

Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior central African researcher for Human Rights Watch says several hundred people have been arrested in Cameroon since September 22 protests. Opposition leader Maurice Kamto called for demonstrations demanding the cancellation of upcoming regional elections and to protest Paul Biya’s leadership of the country.

Allegrozzi says by cracking down on protesters, Cameroon disrespects fundamental rights.

“This follows a well-documented pattern of politically motivated arrests and prosecutions and also threats to crush opposition parties and silence dissent,” Allegrozzi said. “It is a step backwards for Cameroon and authorities should immediately end the crackdown and release all those who have been unjustly imprisoned since the demonstration of September 22nd.”

Allegrozzi said several hundred civilians were arrested and some have been released. She said it was unjust for anti-riot police to surround the Yaounde residence of Maurice Kamto after the September 22 protests.

Christopher Ndong, secretary general of Kamto’s Cameroon Renaissance Movement Party says 600 civilians were arrested in the coastal city of Douala, the capital Yaounde, the western towns of Bafoussam and Mbouda and the northern town of Garoua. He says the arrests and the presence of anti-riot police at Kamto’s residence will not stop the CRM from asking Biya to peacefully hand over power.

“I want to reiterate that Professor Maurice Kamto is in good health but for the fact that his rights of movement have been restricted and this act is illegal,” Ndong said. “That march{protest} was peaceful but for the security forces that beat, killed, imprisoned and are now torturing more than 600 of our militants{supporters}. We decry that dehumanizing situation, creating terror and in fact refusing people to express their democratic rights.”

The police have not issued a statement regarding their presence at Kamto’s home. VOA contacted the communication unit of the Cameroon police but received no comment.

The government’s communication minister, Rene Emanuel Sadi, says Kamto’s CRM party is being investigated for attempts to destabilize state institutions and mount insurrection. Sadi says many supporters and CRM party executive members have been arrested and are helping the police in investigations.

“Its leader and its cronies have once against singled themselves out in an engrained and systematic logic of provocation, defiance of state authority and confrontation of public authorities,” said Sadi. “It should be recalled that this political party (CRM) had already in the same way disturbed public order in the aftermath of the presidential election of October 2018”

Sadi did not say how many people have been arrested, but noted that some of Kamto’s associates are wanted by police.

On September 22, the CRM said Cameroon’s police violently suppressed opposition party demonstrations throughout the country, beating protesters and arresting journalists.

In January, 2019, police detained Kamto and 200 of his supporters who insisted Biya stole the 2018 presidential election, which Kamto claims he won.

Amid international criticism, Biya pardoned Kamto last November and had him released.

Source: VOA

30, September 2020

November 6: President for life will mark 38 years in power facing protests as the Ambazonia crisis rumbles on ⁰

This Nov. 6 will mark 38 years president Paul Biya has clung on to power in Cameroon—making him Africa’s second longest-serving head of state, after his peer Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea.

Biya, 87, became president in 1982, long before the majority of the central African country’s 25 million people were born. His current mandate will expire in 2025 when he’ll be 92.

As has been tradition, Biya supporters and members of the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) party, often use the day to feast, pledge their “unalloyed and unconditional” support to the president and call on him to continue leading the country indefinitely. But this year’s anniversary will also be coming up at a particularly uncertain time as a campaign is to end his four-decade reign picks up steam.

Biya’s former ally, Maurice Kamto, now one of his sternest critics who leads the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM) party, has been publicly calling for the president’s ouster.

On Sept. 22, mass protests were organized in the capital Yaounde, the economic hub Douala, and a few other localities across the country. But the popular uprising was met with force as security forces used water cannons and teargas to break up demonstrations. In what the Human Rights Defenders Network in Central Africa (REDHAC) described as “serious violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms,” the clampdown was so intense that hundreds of people were arrested and detained. At least eight journalists were also arrested while covering the protests and locked up.

Authorities have vowed to prosecute those arrested and go after others on the run. Rene Emmanuel Sadi, minister of communication, said any move at toppling the government, citing specifically the “insurrection” launched by the CRM party, will be crushed. He said the government will “resolutely pursue its salutary action to defeat all internal and external attempts at destabilization.”

Despite the government warming, the revolution organizers are keen on carrying on even as opposition leader Maurice Kamto remains under house arrest. “We are preparing for another one [protest], which will then become regular until the regime yields to our demands,” Fah Elvis Tayong, CRM deputy national communication secretary, told Quartz Africa.

Street protests seem to be the most viable option people have at their disposal for political change in Cameroon as there are no indications for reforms or the long-serving president quitting power, according to Jeffrey Smith, executive director of Vanguard Africa; a pro-democracy advocacy group. “Biya is a prime example of a leader who has stayed in power long beyond his political expiration date,” Smith says..

Making allusion to Zimbabwe and Algeria, Smith says sustained citizen protests that are held peacefully could lead to change. But he estimates it can’t be an easy task in Cameroon because the country is highly authoritarian. He suggested the CRM has to bring more opposition parties and civil society organizations on board in order to be successful.

The battle lines were drawn between Biya and his main challenger in the 2018 contentious election when the former on Sept. 7 convened the electoral college for the first-ever regional council election without heeding to the latter’s demands. Kamto had requested that there should be electoral reforms to ensure free and fair election before any voting can take place.

The CRM leader had also insisted that the government negotiates a ceasefire and organizes genuine dialog to end the drawn-out armed separatist conflict in the country’s English-speaking regions. Kamto has repeatedly blamed the Biya government for mishandling the crisis which erupted in 2016 as low-level protests over real and perceived marginalization of Anglophones by the Francophone-dominated government.

Back then, the government’s instinct was to respond with force to squash the protests. But four years into the conflict, government troops continue to have running battles with defiant armed separatists who remain resolute to establish their independent state called “Ambazonia.” The belligerent parties have both inflicted heavy casualties on each other, as well as on civilians. So far, 680,000 people have been internally displaced while a further nearly 60,000 have fled to neighboring Nigeria, according to UNHCR. Local rights groups say over 5,000 people have been killed.

In July, there was brief hope when jailed separatist leaders said they were in talks with government to negotiate an end to the crisis. But then, the government said the declaration was “not consistent with reality.”

The Boko Haram insurgency, humanitarian crisis, economic downturn, political upheavals, Anglophone crisis, coupled with the coronavirus pandemic which seemed to have grounded the president from his frequent trips abroad has made life difficult for Biya and his bloated government.

Culled from Quartz Africa

29, September 2020

US: Five key takeaways from the report on Trump’s tax returns ⁰

A New York Times report that President Donald Trump paid just $750 in federal income tax the year he entered the White House — and, thanks to colossal losses, no income tax at all in 11 of the 18 years that the Times reviewed — served to raise doubts about Trump’s self-image as a shrewd and successful businessman.

That Sunday’s report came just weeks before Trump’s re-election bid served to intensify the spotlight on Trump the businessman — an identity that he has spent decades cultivating and that helped him capture the presidency four years ago in his first run for political office. The Times’ report deepens the uncertainty surrounding a tumultuous presidential campaign set against the backdrop of a viral pandemic, racial unrest in American cities and a ferocious battle over the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Since entering the White House, Trump has broken with tradition set by his predecessors by not only refusing to release his tax returns but by waging a legal battle to keep them hidden. The Times report suggests why that might have been so. It reported that many of Trump’s top businesses are losing money, even as those losses have helped him shrink his federal tax bill to essentially nothing.

Eugene Steuerle, a tax expert at the Urban Institute, said he wasn’t surprised that it turns out that Trump had paid almost no federal income tax. Most commercial real estate developers deduct large interest payments on their debts from taxable income, thereby lowering their tax bills. Typically, they also often avoid capital gains taxes by plowing profits from the sale of one building into the purchase of another.

“Most tax experts expected you would find little in the way of tax payments by President Trump,” said Steuerle, who served as a Treasury Department official under President Ronald Reagan.

The Times noted that Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said of the Times report that “most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate” and asked for the documents on which the reporting was based, which the Times declined to provide in order to protect its sources. The Times said Garten then directly disputed only the amount of taxes Trump had paid.

Here are some key takeaways from the Times’ reporting:

Trump paid just $750 in taxes in both 2016 and 2017

The newspaper said Trump initially paid $95 million in taxes over the 18 years it studied. But he managed to recover most of that money by claiming — and receiving — a stunning $72.9 million federal tax refund. According to the Times, Trump also pocketed $21.2 million in state and local refunds, which are typically based on federal filings.

Trump’s outsize refund became the subject of a now-long-standing Internal Revenue Service audit of his finances. The audit was widely known. Trump has claimed it was the very reason why he cannot release his returns. But the Times report is the first to identify the issue that was mainly in dispute.

As a result of the refund, Trump paid an average $1.4 million in federal taxes from 2000 to 2017, the Times reported. By contrast, the average U.S. taxpayer in the top .001% of earners paid about $25 million annually over the same timeframe.

Trump has financed an extravagant lifestyle with the use of business expenses

From his homes, his aircraft — and $70,000 on hair styling during his television show “The Apprentice” — Trump has capitalized on cost incurred from his businesses to finance a luxurious lifestyle.

The Times noted that Trump’s homes, planes and golf courses are part of the Trump family business and, as such, Trump classified them as business expenses as well. Because companies can write off business expenses as deductions, all such expenses have helped reduce Trump’s tax liability.

Many of his best-known businesses are money-losers

The president has frequently pointed to his far-flung hotels, golf courses and resorts as evidence of his success as a developer and businessman. Yet these properties have been draining money.

The Times reported that Trump has claimed $315 million in losses since 2000 on his golf courses, including the Trump National Doral near Miami, which Trump has portrayed as a crown jewel in his business empire. Likewise, his Trump International Hotel in Washington has lost $55 million, the Times reported.

Foreign visitors have helped support Trump’s properties

Since Trump began his presidential run, lobbyists, foreign governments and politicians have lavished significant sums of money on his properties, a spending spree that raised questions about its propriety and legality.

The Times report illustrates just how much that spending has been: Since 2015, his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida has taken in $5 million more a year from a surge in membership. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association spent at least $397,602 in 2017 at Trump’s Washington hotel. Overseas projects have produced millions more for Trump — $3 million from the Philippines, $2.3 million from India and $1 million from Turkey.

Trump will face financial pressure as debts come due

Trump seems sure to face heavy financial pressures from the enormous pile of debt he has absorbed. The Times said the president appears to be responsible for $421 million in loans, most of which will come due within four years. On top of that, a $100 million mortgage on Trump Tower in New York will come due in 2022.

Source: AP

29, September 2020

Coronavirus: Testing drive unveiled as deaths pass one million ⁰

Coronavirus tests that deliver results in 15-30 minutes are to be rolled out across the United States and in scores of poorer countries, as health authorities worldwide try to get a handle on a disease that has now killed more than a million people.

US President Donald Trump announced 150 million tests would be distributed in America, while the World Health Organization said 120 million more would be available for the developing world at $5 each as long as funding was secured.

The testing push comes as the virus shows no sign of receding, with infection numbers climbing rapidly in Europe again and governments there clamping down on movement in an attempt to curb the surge.

Paris, London and Madrid have all been forced to introduce controls to slow infections, and on Monday Dutch authorities became the latest to tighten curbs, while the Czech Republic and Slovakia said they were preparing to declare a state of emergency.

The WHO said its $600 million scheme to roll out the quick diagnosis kits across 133 countries in the next six months would enable low- and middle-income nations to close the gap in testing with the rich world.

The kits are far faster, cheaper and easier to administer than regular standard polymerase chain reaction (PCR) swab tests but are less sensitive and more likely to return false negatives.

“This will enable the expansion of testing, particularly in hard-to-reach areas that do not have lab facilities or enough trained health workers to carry out PCR tests,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual press conference.

Experts have for months been calling for widespread adoption of this low-cost technology so that people can test themselves several times a week.

Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina said the testing drive “is terrific and is a great start”.

But the amount being distributed by the US government was “simply not sufficient” and production should be multiplied ten- or twentyfold, he added.

– ‘Whatever is necessary’ –

The tests are part of a limited toolkit available to governments as they seek ways to get the wheels turning on economies that have been crippled in recent months by lockdowns and other restrictions on people’s lives.

A million Madrid residents are under partial lockdown, with the city and the surrounding region at the centre of Spain’s second wave.

The national government on Monday warned the local authorities of drastic measures if the region failed to move decisively to slow the uncontrolled spread.

“There is no doubt that (the central government) is prepared to do whatever is necessary,” Justice Minister Juan Carlos Campo told Spain’s RNE public radio.

– ‘Made peace with it’ –

Worldwide the virus has now infected more than 33 million people and killed over a million, according to an AFP tally compiled from official sources.

On Monday the number of cases in India surpassed six million, with the country on course to overtake the United States in the coming weeks as the nation with the most infections.

Locals in Delhi said while they remained cautious, their fears had lessened since the pandemic began earlier this year.

Himanshu Kainthola, 61, who recovered from the virus last month, said his family’s worries had “reduced substantially”.

“We take the necessary precautions and invest in increasing our immunity rather than being anxious or scared of it,” he said. “We have made peace with it.”

Source: AFP

29, September 2020

Japan: Southern Cameroonian posed as American woman online in swindle of Nagoya man ⁰

Aichi Prefectural Police have arrested a male Cameroonian national who is suspected of swindling a man in Nagoya by posing as a woman online, reports TBS News (Sept. 25).

Last month, Niba Manfred Che, 33, allegedly collected 80,000 U.S. dollars from the victim, 64, for the fraudulent sale of what he claimed were chemicals that could “turn black paper to currency.”

The Minami Police Station, which seized stacks of black paper, smartphones and a computer during the investigation, did not reveal whether the suspect admits to the allegations.

In July, Che got to know the victim via a social-networking site in which the suspect posed as an American woman, police said.

During their exchanges the suspect suggested marriage. “My family’s fortune is valued at 1 billion yen,” he falsely wrote. “But a handling charge is necessary [for me to receive it].”

For the latter claim, the suspect is also believed to have received an additional 7 million yen from the suspect. Police are continuing the investigation.

Source: Tokyo Reporter

29, September 2020

Southern Cameroons Crisis: 9 Amba fighters, several Biya regime troops dead ⁰

Cameroon has launched a campaign to encourage parents to send their children to schools that were closed in rebel conflict areas and for fleeing teachers to return. Cameroon authorities want the schools to reopen by October 5 and say the areas are secure but some parents and teachers question the safety of returning to the schools. Cameroon’s military liberated more than a hundred schools from rebel occupation in weekend fighting that left at least nine rebels and several troops dead.

Cameroon’s Ministry of National Education says it has dispatched hundreds of its staff members to English-speaking regions to campaign for schools to reopen on October 5. Bernard Mbuwel, a pedagogic inspector is one of them. He says the future of 400,000 children is at risk should schools remain closed.

“When education is attacked, you have a generation that is failing, there is no succession,” he said. “You have increase in cycle of crisis because conflicts cannot be resolved when the children are not educated. We find children evolving while those that are conflict stricken cannot evolve. The children will not be competitive in the job market because they are not educated.”

Laboratory technician Philomena Ayeah, 41, fled fighting in the English-speaking northwestern town of Batibo to the capital Yaounde in July. She says she wants her younger siblings to have education without which their future remains bleak in a highly competitive world.

“I am very glad for the children to go back to school,” she said. “They should go and learn. They have forgotten so many things. For now they are in the house. They only eat. It is not easy. They play. They have forgotten so many things.”

Cameroon’s military reports that within the past four days, troops chased separatist fighters from at least a hundred schools in the English-speaking Northwest region. The Catholic church in the area said the corpses of two soldiers were seen in the northwestern village of Kikaikelaki.

Deben Tchoffo, the region’s governor did not confirm troops were killed but says at least 9 separatist fighters lost their lives and 12 others were arrested in Kumbo, Ndop, Santa, Bafut and Wum.

“It was not an easy process, but they [military] are doing their best to secure the region and it is hoped that come 5th of October we must have improved on the security of this region to allow schools to resume,” he said. “We have asked the population to organize themselves in vigilante groups to create security around the schools.”

Tchoffo said the attacks on schools used by fighters as hideouts is carried out at the same time as the campaign to reopen the schools.

Separatists’ spokesperson Capo Daniel admits that some fighters were attacked. Capo says the separatists now want privately owned schools to reopen in the country’s Anglophone regions after 4-years of closure. He says fighters have been asked to keep government schools closed.

“In terms of the Cameroon government schools, we have complete non tolerance which is a complete ban of all schools that are sponsored or functioning under the Cameroon Ministry of National Education,” he said. “In areas that we control we have opened up community schools and the teachers who are providing education are doing so on a voluntary basis.

The government of Cameroon this week said the military will escort teachers and students who want to return to schools in various towns and villages.

Teacher Shuri Quinta, 26, who escaped from Kumbo to Yaounde after she was attacked in June for encouraging schools to reopen says their security is not assured.

“Continuous kidnapping and beating of staff [teachers] and students of this region is an indication of inadequate security. I so much long for schools to reopen but in a secured atmosphere. It therefore falls on both sides of the ongoing conflict to guarantee this security and to institute confidence building measures otherwise we are going to be heading for an illiterate society and its associated ills,” she said.

The United Nations says Cameroon’s four-year separatist conflict has left over 3,000 people dead and half a million displaced. The crisis started in 2016 when teachers and lawyers took to the streets to complain about the overbearing influence of the French language in the bilingual country. The military responded with a crackdown and separatists took up weapons claiming that they were defending civilians. They asked for a school shutdown and vowed to make the English-speaking regions ungovernable.

Source: VOA

29, September 2020

Ambazonia Interim Gov’t, Biafra group collaborate for separatist agitations ⁰

The Biafra Nations Youth League, BNYL, has formed an alliance with Southern Cameroon’s separatist group, Ambazonia, in pursuant to secession from their respective countries to become independent nations.

Arising from BNYL’s convention in Enugu, during the weekend, attended by representatives of Cameroon’s Ambazonia, BNYL leader, Princewill Chimezie said that the collaboration of the two agitating groups had been on for a long time but was being re-engineered to give stronger voice for their self-determination pursuits.

Chimezie disclosed that the Enugu convention was predicated on how to re-strategize and encourage self-defense mechanisms for Biafrans and Ambazonians in the escalating security challenges facing the people of Eastern Nigeria and Southern Cameroon.

He noted that BNYL was a multi-national pro-Biafra group whose membership were drawn from all the ethnic nationalities in the former Eastern Nigeria that were parts of the defunct Republic of Biafra led by General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu between 1967 and 1970.

Chimezie said: “We resolved to defend ourselves by any means possible and we are not afraid to say that because we can’t continue to sit down and watch enemies massacre our people. I am afraid we may resort to guerilla movement. We have been most prominent in the Bakassi areas where we developed partnership with Ambazonia because we found out that Biafra has a similar problem with southern Cameroon.

“Ambazonia needs our help just as we need theirs. We have both had affinity to achieve independence in different ways and the collaboration is meant to hear one another’s cry.”

One of the Ambazonia’s representatives and President of Universal Negro Improvement Association, UNIA in Calabar Cross River state, Comrade Enow Arrey said he was a refugee in Nigeria because of the horrible killings of Ambazonians in Southern Cameroon.

Arrey said: “I found out that my brothers in Nigeria have the same problem with Southern Cameroon people. My mission is to speak that Africa has the right to decolonize their place. We’ve decided that our people must be one as they were before colonization.

“UNIA will support the Biafra movement before we can deserve respect. We are fighting for peace in Cameroon and if that peace needs a separate state, we will do that. The peace is either for federalism or separation, just like we are in support of self-defense.”

Source: Vanguard

28, September 2020

US: Trump’s former campaign head hospitalized after suicide threat ⁰

Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale was taken to a Florida hospital after his wife told officers he threatened to commit suicide, media reports said.

Parscale, an imposing and outspoken figure, was replaced as campaign manager in July — just four months ahead of November’s presidential election — when Donald Trump was sinking in the polls.

Officers were called to a home “in reference to an armed male attempting suicide,” Fort Lauderdale police officer DeAnna Greenlaw told CNN on Sunday.

The man was later identified as Parscale by officers, who said his wife had made the call.

Parscale’s wife said her husband was “armed and had access to multiple firearms inside the residence and was threatening to harm himself,” Greenlaw told CNN in a statement.

He quickly surrendered to officers under a Florida law that allows the temporary detention of someone impaired by mental illness.

Parscale was demoted shortly after a Trump campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma that was widely panned for its poor attendance and a rambling speech by the president.

He remained a senior member of the campaign team.

“Brad Parscale is a member of our family and we all love him. We are ready to support him and his family in any way possible,” Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh told the South Florida Sun Sentinel newspaper.

“The disgusting, personal attacks from Democrats and disgruntled RINOs have gone too far, and they should be ashamed of themselves for what they’ve done to this man and his family.”

AFP

28, September 2020

Football: Vincent Aboubakar back to Turkish club Besiktas ⁰

Cameroon’s forward will be looking to restart his football career with Turkish side Besiktas after being stuck on the bench in FC Porto.

Aboubakar won’t be heading in unknown territory, as he was already loaned to the club for the 2016-2017 season. Vincent Aboubakar had brilliantly performed with the “Black Eagles”.

With 20 goals in 63 matches in his International Career, Aboubakar is regarded as one of Cameroon’s finest players.

Source: Africa News

28, September 2020

Global Covid-19 death toll passes one million ⁰

The global death toll from the new coronavirus, which emerged less than a year ago in China and has swept across the world, passed one million on Sunday.

The pandemic has ravaged the global economy, inflamed geopolitical tensions and upended lives, from Indian slums and Brazil’s jungles to America’s biggest city New York.

World sports, live entertainment and international travel ground to a halt as fans, audiences and tourists were forced to stay at home, kept inside by strict measures imposed to curb the virus spread.

Drastic controls that put half of humanity — more than four billion people — under some form of lockdown by April at first slowed its pace, but since restrictions were eased cases have soared again.

On Sunday 2230 GMT the disease had claimed 1,000,009 victims from 33,018,877 recorded infections, according to an AFP tally using official sources.

The United States has the highest death toll with more than 200,000 fatalities followed by Brazil, India, Mexico and Britain.

For Italian truck driver Carlo Chiodi those grim figures include both his parents, who he says he lost within days of each other.

“What I have a hard time accepting is that I saw my father walking out of the house, getting into the ambulance, and all I could say to him was ‘goodbye’,” said Chiodi, 50.

“I regret not saying ‘I love you’ and I regret not hugging him. That still hurts me,” he told AFP.

With scientists still racing to find a working vaccine, governments are again forced into an uneasy balancing act: Virus controls slow the spread of the disease, but they hurt already reeling economies and businesses.

The IMF earlier this year warned that the economic upheaval could cause a “crisis like no other” as the world’s GDP collapsed.

Europe, hit hard by the first wave, is now facing another surge in cases, with Paris, London and Madrid all forced to introduce controls to slow cases threatening to overload hospitals.

Masks and social distancing in shops, cafes and public transport are now part of everyday life in many cities.

Mid-September saw a record rise in cases in most regions and the World Health Organization has warned virus deaths could even double to two million without more global collective action.

“One million is a terrible number and we need to reflect on that before we start considering a second million,” the WHO’s emergencies director Michael Ryan told reporters on Friday.

“Are we prepared collectively to do what it takes to avoid that number?

Waking up to Covid-19

The SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes the illness known as Covid-19 made its first known appearance in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, ground zero of the outbreak.

How it got there is still unclear but scientists think it originated in bats and could have been transmitted to people via another mammal.

Wuhan was shut down in January as other countries looked on in disbelief at China’s draconian controls, even as they went about their business as usual.

By March 11, the virus had emerged in over 100 countries and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic, expressing concern about the “alarming levels of inaction.”

Patrick Vogt, a family doctor in Mulhouse, a city that became the outbreak’s epicentre in France in March, said he realised coronavirus was everywhere when doctors started falling ill, some dying.

“We saw people in our surgery who had really big breathing problems, young and not-so-young who were exhausted,” he said. “We didn’t have any therapeutic solutions.”

Frustrations, protests

Nor did the virus spare the rich or famous this year.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson spent a week in hospital. Madonna tested positive after a tour of France as did Tom Hanks and his wife who recovered and returned home to Los Angeles after quarantine in Australia.

The Tokyo Olympics, Rio’s famed Carnival and the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca are among the major events postponed or disrupted by the pandemic. Premier League football has restarted but with empty stadiums. The French Open tennis tournament is limiting its audiences to 1,000 a day.

Israel has gone into full lockdown again and Moscow’s vulnerable have been ordered to stay home.

As the restrictions tighten, protests and anger are rising as businesses worry about their survival and individuals grow frustrated about their jobs and families in the face of another round of lockdown measures.

Anti-lockdown protesters and police clashed in central London on Saturday as officers dispersed the thousands at a demonstration.

“This is the last straw — We were starting to get back on our feet,” said Patrick Labourrasse, a restaurant owner in Aix-en-Provence, a French city near Marseille which is again being forced to close down bars and restaurants.

Along with the turmoil, though, lies some hope.

The IMF says the economic outlook appears brighter now than it had been in June, even if it remains “very challenging”.

Crucially, nine vaccine candidates are in last-stage clinical trials, with hopes some will be rolled out next year though questions remain about how and when they will be distributed around the world.

(AFP)