Hello. We cover economic disaster in Sri Lanka, Covid-19 frustration in Shanghai and health equity in India.
Sri Lanka is on the brink
Sri Lanka’s economic crisis may be worse than during its three decades of civil war: petrol pumps are nearly dry and new Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has revealed that the growing disaster is even worse than expected. imagined it.
Wickremesinghe, who assumed the role last week after widespread protests forced his predecessor into hiding, told national television on Monday that the government had not even found $5 million to import gasoline. Without money, the tankers remained anchored offshore, their cargoes out of reach.
“The next two months will be the hardest of our lives,” Wickremesinghe said.
Details: Much of the population struggles to cook three meals a day and the cooking gas has been out for weeks. Hospitals are running out of life-saving drugs because pharmaceutical companies have not been paid for months.
Background: Despite years of warnings that the ruling Rajapaksa family was mismanaging the country, the collapse is dizzying. Wickremesinghe said foreign exchange reserves stood at $7.5 billion when the Rajapaksas returned to power in 2019. Since then, they have fallen to almost nothing.
Analysis: Other low- and middle-income countries face overlapping disasters, as Russia’s war in Ukraine collides with an economic slowdown in China.
Shanghai still under lockdown
City health officials said Shanghai’s Covid outbreak was under control. Officials said they had reached “societal zero”, a term used by Chinese authorities to indicate the absence of uncontrolled community transmission.
But even as state media celebrated the news, some Shanghai residents noted they were still under strict lockdown measures. After months of open frustration, locals aired their grievances again on Weibo, under a state media post celebrating what he described as a return to normalcy.
The most popular comment was from a user who explained that he had just taken another mandatory test and was not allowed to leave the neighborhood. Others said they were still unable to receive deliveries and were running out of essentials.
Details: Some businesses, bus lines and parks have resumed operations, and officials have announced their goal to fully reopen by June. But schools remain closed, as do theatres, gymnasiums and other cultural venues. State media acknowledged that even in areas with looser restrictions, residents needed permission to leave their neighborhoods.
Here are the latest pandemic updates and maps.
In other updates:
Health workers heal India
An army of one million female health workers provides basic health care to India’s most vulnerable women and children, sometimes at the risk of their lives.
Now, after helping save hundreds of thousands during the pandemic, they are protesting their meager salaries. Right now, the women earn about $40 a month, with incentives. They want a monthly base salary of around $150.
A public health researcher said health workers have helped fill huge gaps in health service delivery in the most remote corners of the country, but they are still seen as volunteers.
Background: Public health care remains grossly underfunded; India is short of more than 600,000 doctors and two million nurses, according to a recent report. The maternal mortality rate, although still high, has come down in recent years, partly thanks to health workers.
Covid19: These women have contributed to early case detection and shared information on prevention, countering vaccine hesitancy and helping India run one of the largest vaccination campaigns in the world. Yet dozens of people have died after being exposed to the coronavirus, in part because they lacked protective gear.
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Canadians largely respect Queen Elizabeth II, the ailing 96-year-old British monarch. But many are increasingly skeptical of the monarchy and also dislike Prince Charles, who is touring the country this week to celebrate his Platinum Jubilee.
“The general approach now in Canada is that the monarchy is here, it’s not broken,” said one expert. “Don’t bother with it, but don’t give it more room than it actually needs either.”
ARTS AND IDEAS
A tooth solves a riddle
The Denisovans, a branch of ancient humans who died out around 50,000 years ago, are among the ancestors of people living in Australia and the Pacific today.
But for more than a decade, their migration remained a mystery. Scientists have found Denisovan remains only in Siberia and Tibet, far from the path of humans who moved from Africa through Southeast Asia before reaching the Pacific.
An ancient tooth, found in a mountain cave in Laos, offers an answer by placing the Denisovans in the way of modern humans moving east. “We knew the Denisovans should be here,” said a co-author of the new study. “It’s good to have hard evidence of their existence in this area.”
Researchers estimate the tooth, a girl’s molar, to be between 164,000 and 131,000 years old, making it almost twice as old as the earliest evidence of modern humans found in the area. The discovery places the Denisovans exactly where they needed to be to interbreed with modern humans in Southeast Asia.
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What to cook
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