Posted: Up to date:
A person carrying a masks has a haircut with a barber carrying a protecting go well with to forestall the unfold of the brand new coronavirus as folks practising social distancing are mirrored on a window in Manila, Philippines on Monday, June eight, 2020. Barbershops and sweetness salons are actually allowed to function underneath strict well being measures because the lockdown continues to ease within the capital. (AP Photograph/Aaron Favila)
BANGKOK (AP) — A Philippine peace award has been canceled this 12 months because of the coronavirus pandemic, marking solely the third disruption in six many years for the annual prize thought to be an Asian Nobel.
The Manila-based basis that arms out the Ramon Magsaysay awards stated Tuesday it has no selection “with the COVID-19 pandemic virtually immobilizing the world.”
The awards had been additionally cancelled attributable to a monetary disaster in 1970 and a disastrous earthquake in 1990. They’re named after a well-liked Philippine president who died in a 1957 aircraft crash and honor “greatness of spirit in selfless service to the peoples of Asia.”
The greater than 330 awardees to this point had included leaders like late Philippine President Corazon Aquino and Mom Teresa, recognized for her missionary work in India.
The 5 recipients of final 12 months’s awards included a South Korean who helped struggle suicide and bullying; a Thai girl who turned a human rights defender after shedding her husband to violence in southern Thailand; journalists from India and Myanmar; and a musician credited with serving to to form trendy Philippine musical tradition.
The Philippines is a coronavirus hotspot in Southeast Asia, with about 22,400 infections, together with greater than 1,00zero deaths. It has eased lockdowns for tens of millions of individuals in a tightrope transfer to bolster its economic system, which contracted within the first quarter.
In different developments within the Asia-Pacific area:
— WHO FINDS PANDEMIC WORSENING: The top of the World Well being Group warned that the coronavirus pandemic is worsening. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus famous Monday that about 75% of instances reported to the U.N. well being company on Sunday got here from 10 nations within the Americas and South Asia. Day by day case experiences have topped 100,00zero on 9 of the previous 10 days. Tedros famous that a number of nations had been seeing optimistic indicators however added: “In these nations, the most important risk now’s complacency.”
— SOUTH KOREA CASES GROW: South Korea has reported 38 new instances of COVID-19 and another demise, bringing nationwide totals to 11,852 infections and 274 virus-related fatalities. Figures from South Korea’s Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention on Tuesday confirmed 35 of the brand new instances got here from the Seoul metropolitan space, the place officers have struggled to hint transmissions linked to leisure venues, church gatherings and low-income employees who couldn’t afford to remain house. At the very least 1,300 infections have been linked to worldwide arrivals, with round 90% of them being South Koreans who returned house because the virus unfold.
— UNGAWON’T MEET IN NEW YORK: The president of the U.N. Normal Meeting says world leaders is not going to be coming to New York for his or her annual gathering in late September for the primary time within the 75-year historical past of the United Nations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However Tijjani Muhammad-Bande hopes to announce another for leaders to ship their common speeches in the course of the meeting’s so-called Normal Debate.