- Shakira flees Barcelona after ex Gerard Piqué’s dad serves eviction: report Page Six
- Shakira Departs Barcelona With Her Kids “In Search Of Their Happiness” Yahoo Entertainment
- Shakira ‘leaves Barcelona after being served with an ”eviction notice”’ Daily Mail
- Gerard Pique’s Ex Shakira Shares a Cryptic Message As She Jets off For Permanent Relocation to USA – “Sometimes We Run but We Don’t Arrive” EssentiallySports
- Gerard Pique’s father kicks Shakira out of Barcelona home Football Espana
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Tag Archives: flees
Woman flees James W. Parrillo Jr., heads to New Jersey gas station after being held captive for nearly a year, authorities say – CBS News
- Woman flees James W. Parrillo Jr., heads to New Jersey gas station after being held captive for nearly a year, authorities say CBS News
- Woman kidnapped in border state, held captive for nearly 1 year escapes to New Jersey gas station: police Fox News
- Man allegedly held woman hostage for months in ‘deeply disturbing’ case, NJ officials say PIX11 New York News
- N.J. gas station owner tells CBS2 how he helped woman escape her alleged kidnapper CBS New York
- Caught on camera: Woman escapes from alleged kidnapper WRAL News
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Andrei Medvedev: Former Wagner commander flees to Norway
CNN
—
A former commander in Russia’s Wagner private military company has fled to Norway and is seeking asylum after crossing that country’s arctic border, according to Norwegian police and a Russian activist.
Andrei Medvedev, in an interview with a Russian activist who helps people seek asylum abroad, said that he feared for his life after refusing to renew his service with Wagner.
Medvedev said that after completing his contract, and refusing to serve another, he was afraid of being executed in the same manner of Yevgeny Nuzhin – a defector from Wagner who was killed on camera with a sledgehammer.
“We were just thrown to fight like cannon fodder,” he told Vladimir Osechkin, head of Gulagu.net, a human rights advocacy group, in a conversation published on YouTube.
A spokesperson for Norway’s Police Security Service confirmed to CNN Monday that Medvedev was in Norway and seeking asylum.
“This is so far a local police investigation,” Eirik Veum told CNN. “But the Security Service, we are informed, and follow the investigation of course.”
The mercenary group, headed by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, has emerged as a key player in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – recently doing much of the fighting in the small eastern town of Soledar.
The group is often described as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s off-the-books troops. It has expanded its footprint globally since its creation in 2014, and has been accused of war crimes in Africa, Syria and Ukraine.
Medvedev said that he crossed the border near the Russian town of Nikel, in a phone call from Norway with Osechkin, which was published online.
The account aligns with that of the Finnmark Police District, who without naming Medvedev, said that it made an “undramatic” arrest of a man in Pasvik on the Norwegian side of the border at 1.58 a.m. on Friday, January 13.
In his own account, Medvedev said that he crossed the border and approached the first house he could find.
“I told a local woman in broken English about my situation and asked for help,” he told Osechkin in the phone call. “While I was on the road, I was approached by the border force and police. I was taken to a department, where I was questioned and charged with illegal crossing. I explained to them everything and told them why I did it.”
“It was a miracle I managed to get here,” he said.
Medvedev had previously tried to cross into Finland twice and failed, Osechkin told CNN Monday.
The head of Wagner, Prigozhin, confirmed on Telegram Monday that Medvedev had served in his company, and said that he “should have been prosecuted for attempting to mistreat prisoners.”
In a December conversation with Osechkin, which was published on YouTube, Medvedev denied that he had committed any crimes in Ukraine.
“I signed a contract with the group on the 6th of July 2022. I had been appointed commander of the first squad of the 4th platoon of the 7th assault detachment,” he recalled. “When the prisoners started arriving, the situation in Wagner really changed. They stopped treating us like humans. We were just thrown to fight like cannon fodder.”
“Every week they sent more prisoners to us. We lost a lot of men. Casualties were high. We would lose 15 to 20 men just in our platoon. As far as I know, a majority of them were buried in LPR [Luhansk People’s Republic] and declared missing. If you are declared missing, there is no insurance pay-out to the relatives.”
He claimed that prisoners were “shot dead for refusing to fight, or betrayal.”
“I am afraid for my life,” he said in December. “I did not commit any crime. I have refused to participate in maneuvers of Yevgeny Prigozhin.”
Osechkin told CNN Monday that he began helping Medvedev after being approached by a friend at the end of November.
Prigozhin, he explained, had ordered all contracts to be automatically renewed starting in November. When Medvedev refused to renew, he was beaten, Osechkin claimed.
“Andrei decided to leave Wagner,” Osechkin told CNN. “Once this happened, he became wanted by security services of Wagner and Russian special services. There was a threat to his life.”
“He was afraid he will be executed in the same manner as Yevgeny Nuzhin – with a sledgehammer. We, as human-rights defenders, decided to help him and protect his life.”
Osechkin said that he helped Medvedev with groceries, clothes, and a telephone.
“We are not trying to justify his actions in relation to his participation in Wagner Group. But it should be understood that he decided to flee Wagner Group as terrorist organization which kills both Russians and Ukrainians.”
Twitter dissolves Trust and Safety Council, Yoel Roth flees home
The email dissolution arrived less than an hour before members of the council were expecting to meet with Twitter executives via Zoom to discuss recent developments, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plans.
Dozens of civil rights leaders, academics and advocates from around the world had volunteered their time for years to help improve safety on the platform.
“We are grateful for your engagement, advice and collaboration in recent years and wish you every success in the future,” said the email, which was simply signed “Twitter.”
In less than two months, Musk has undone years of investments in trust and safety at Twitter — dismissing key parts of the workforce and bringing back accounts that previously had been suspended. As the body unravels, Musk is tightening his grip on decisions about the future of content moderation at Twitter, with less input from outside experts.
The move is just throwing away “years of institutional memory that we on the council have brought” to the company, said one council member, who asked to remain anonymous due to concern about harassment on the platform. “Getting external experts and advocates looking at your services makes you smarter.”
The Trust and Safety Council unraveled after Musk himself had pitched the creation of a content moderation council that would have weighed in on key content moderation decisions, but later appeared to change his mind about introducing such a body.
Many members were already on the verge of resigning, said Larry Magid, chief executive of ConnectSafely, a Silicon Valley nonprofit that advises consumers about children’s internet use.
“By disbanding it, we got fired instead of quit,” he said. “Elon doesn’t want criticism, and he really doesn’t want the kind of advice he would very likely get from a safety advisory council, which would likely tell him to rehire some of the staff he got rid of, and reinstate some of the rules he got rid of, and turn the company in another direction from where he is turning it.”
Twitter first formed the Trust and Safety Council in 2016, as social networks were coming under greater scrutiny for their role in amplifying hate, terrorism, child exploitation and other problematic content online. The council convened a wide range of civil society groups, think tanks — and even some of Silicon Valley’s biggest critics. Twitter executives would regularly brief the council on new products in development and policies.
“I don’t understand the logic of doing this when many of these relationships were hard fought to develop,” said another member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the council’s dissolution.
Twitter told Trust and Safety members that their “regional points of contact will remain the best people to contact to escalate concerns.” However, Twitter’s Trust and Safety and policy teams have been gutted by recent layoffs, as well as employee departures following an ultimatum from Musk.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which was a member of the council, will be “keeping a lookout for how they restructure,” said Gavin Portnoy, the center’s vice president.
“For the moment, we’ll continue to encourage reporting to the CyberTipline and hope to continue to have a seat at the table to address child safety on Twitter,” he said.
Last week, three members of the Trust and Safety Council resigned, warning that the “safety and wellbeing of Twitter’s users are on the decline.”
Musk responded to replies to their tweet announcing their resignation, writing, “It’s a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!”
Jack Dorsey, the company’s former CEO, responded to Musk, calling the claim “false.” But Musk’s comment nonetheless prompted a wave of threats and harassment at the board members who left the council, as well as some who remained.
The Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit that was a member of the council and has received funding from tech companies, said in a statement that it was “dismayed by Twitter leadership’s irresponsible actions to spread misinformation about the Council, which have endangered Council members and eroded any semblance of trust in the company.”
Musk’s treatment of the board mirrored a wave of attacks that enveloped a former top executive at the company over the weekend.
Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, and his family were forced from their home after Elon Musk’s tweets misrepresented Roth’s academic writing about sexual activity and children. The online mob also sent threats to people Roth had replied to on Twitter, forcing some of Roth’s family and friends to delete their Twitter accounts, according to a person familiar with Roth’s situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to concerns about Roth’s safety.
Musk’s followers also directed harassment at professors who reviewed the dissertation that Roth wrote in 2016, as well as at his graduate school, the University of Pennsylvania, the person said. The university did not respond to a request for comment.
As head of trust and safety at Twitter, Roth was involved in many of the platform’s decisions about what posts to remove and what accounts to suspend. His communications with other Twitter officials have been posted in recent days as part of what Musk calls the Twitter Files, a series of tweets by conservative journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss.
Musk’s tweets to his tens of millions of followers have for years prompted his supporters to deluge the targets of his ire with online threats — famously, a participant in the rescue of a boys soccer team trapped in a cave in Thailand, whom Musk branded “pedo guy.” But now that Musk owns one of the most powerful social networks in the world and has gutted the company division that previously policed online harassment, the stakes are even higher.
Musk tweets about Roth recalled the QAnon conspiracy movement, which claims incorrectly that Democratic Party leaders direct a child sex abuse network.
“Looks like Yoel is arguing in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services in his PhD thesis,” Musk tweeted Saturday, attaching a screenshot of Roth’s dissertation.
In the text, Roth suggested that services like the gay dating app Grindr should adopt safety strategies to accommodate teenagers using their platforms, rather than drive them out entirely. Musk also commented on a 2010 tweet in which Roth wrote, “Can high school students ever meaningfully consent to sex with their teachers?” Roth then linked to an article about a Washington State Supreme Court ruling about what age students can consent to having sex with their teachers.
Musk’s critical comments about Roth are something of an about-face from his early days at the company, when Roth appeared to be one of the few high-level Twitter executives Musk supported. On Oct. 30, the billionaire tweeted, “I want to be clear that I support Yoel. My sense is that he has high integrity, and we are all entitled to our political beliefs.”
And Roth appeared measured in his comments on Twitter’s new owner, seeking to reassure the public about company efforts to fight hate and protect elections. He even appeared alongside Musk in a call intended to reassure advertisers.
Even after he left Twitter in November, Roth was muted in his criticism. He warned in an op-ed in the New York Times that there was “little need” for a trust and safety function at a company where “policies are defined by edict.” But he also said publicly that it wasn’t accurate to depict Musk as the “villain of the story” in his takeover of the company.
“I think one of the things that is tricky about Elon, in particular, is that people really want him to be the villain of the story, and they want him to be unequivocally wrong and bad, and everything he says is duplicitous,” Roth said during an interview at the Knight Foundation conference. “I have to say … that wasn’t my experience with him.”
Still, Roth is the most visible former Twitter executive assessing Musk’s actions, and his role at the company has been highlighted in the Twitter Files.
Twitter employees have long been wary of Musk’s ability to stoke online criticism. Shortly after he announced his plans to take over the company in April, he tweeted a meme to his tens of millions of followers with the face of Twitter’s top lawyer, Vijaya Gadde, that appeared to suggest the company’s decisions are affected by a “left wing bias.”
Twitter users quickly piled on — calling on Musk to fire Gadde or using racist language to describe her. Gadde was born in India and immigrated to the United States as a child. One user said she would “go down in history as an appalling person.”
Such harassment is part of a years-long pattern for Musk, with few legal consequences to date. Musk ultimately was not held liable in a defamation suit brought after he made his “pedo guy” remarks.
Joseph Menn and Naomi Nix contributed from San Francisco.
Putin Rumored God-Daughter Ksenia Sobchak Flees Russia
- A Russian media star with strong ties to Putin fled the country, per multiple reports.
- Ksenia Sobchak, rumored to be Putin’s god-daughter, is in Lithuania, an official there said.
- Sobchak left after her home was searched in connection with a high-profile extortion case.
A prominent journalist rumored to be the god-daughter of President Vladimir Putin has fled Russia, according to multiple reports.
Ksenia Sobchak left Russia and entered Lithuania using an Israeli passport late on Tuesday, state-controlled media outlet TASS reported, citing unnamed law-enforcement officials.
On Wednesday, police searched her Moscow home as part of an extortion case targeting one of her colleagues, TASS said, again citing an anonymous law-enforcement source. The source said there was a warrant for her arrest.
Sobchak sought to confuse police by buying tickets to Dubai and Turkey, before fleeing to Lithuania via Belarus by land late on Tuesday, per the TASS report.
Video circulating on social media, which Insider has been unable to authenticate, appears to show her walking across the Belarus-Lithuanian border accompanied by two men.
Sobchak, who runs the Ostorozhno.Media group, fled after her commercial director Kirill Sukhanov was detained and his house searched.
Follwing Sukhanov’s arrest, she posted to Telegram saying the case is “nonsense” and “another pressure on journalism in the country.”
The former editor of Russian Tatler magazine, Arian Romanovsky, was arrested in the same case, TASS reported.
Russian authorities accused the pair of extortion from the head of defense conglomerate Rostec, TASS reported.
Misha Japaridze/AP
Sobchak, 40, is a prominent TV anchor and socialite who became famous via reality TV shows. She later distanced herself from her image as “Russia’s Paris Hilton” to make a bid for Russia’s presidency .
She is the daughter of Anatoly Sobchak, was the first post-Soviet mayor of St Petersburg in the early 1990s and had Vladimir Putin as a deputy.
Putin has since described Sobchak as a mentor, and Ksenia has long been rumored to be Putin’s god-daughter.
Though she has at times taken a liberal stance and has criticized Putin’s government, her presidential run was cast by some critics as a feint staged to give the impression of competitive elections in Russia.
Putin has clamped down hard on Russian media outlets in the last years, an effort that has, as of the invasion of Ukraine, all but silenced independent journalism in the country.
Lithuanian counterintelligence chief Darius Jauniškis said Sobchak has the right to remain in Lithuania for 90 days, TASS reported.
Ksenia Sobchak: Kremlin critic with ties to Putin flees Russia after apartment search
CNN
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Russian TV host and 2018 presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak has fled Russia for Lithuania, Russian state news agency TASS reported Thursday.
Sobchack entered Lithuania using her Israeli passport, according to the country’s State Security Department director Darius Jauniskis.
“Yes, I can confirm that Sobchak is in Lithuania,” TASS cited Jauniskis as saying.
Sobchak left the country after it was revealed on Wednesday that her apartment had been searched as part of the criminal case against her commercial director Kirill Sukhanov, who was detained on extortion charges.
“Our commercial director Kirill Sukhanov has been arrested. They are trying to charge him with extortion,” Sobchak wrote on her Telegram channel Wednesday.
Sobchak denounced this as “nonsense” and an attack on her editorial team.
“I don’t believe [these charges] at all, and I hope that now they will quickly sort everything out and will see that all this is some kind of nonsense,” she said. “If not, then it is obviously a raid on my editorial office – the last free editorial office in Russia, which had to be clamped down.”
Sobchak is a suspect in the case of her director accused of extortion of 11 million rubles (roughly $179,000) from the head of Rostec state corporation Sergei Chemezov, a law enforcement agency source told TASS.
The defense is planning to appeal Sukhanov’s detention, his lawyer Svetlana Lipatova said Wednesday.
Born and raised in St. Petersburg, Sobchak has close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was mentored by her late father, reformist politician Anatoly Sobchak, at the start of his political career.
In the 2010s Ksenia Sobchak frequently attended opposition protests and rallies, but lost support from opposition figures after running for the Russian presidency in 2018.
Her decision to run for the presidency was widely criticized by leaders of the Russian opposition, including Alexey Navalny, who accused her campaign of being a sham and labeled her as a “Kremlin project.”
Russian journalist Marina Ovsyannikova flees house arrest condemns Putin war
“Respected employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service, put such a bracelet on Putin,” she said in a video, referring to the electronic tracking device she has been forced to wear on her ankle by Russian officials. “It is he who must be isolated from society not me, and he should be tried for the genocide of the people of Ukraine and for the fact that he destroys the male population of Russia en masse.”
Ovsyannikova, a former editor on Russian state-owned Channel 1 television, made international headlines earlier this year after bursting onto the set of the channel’s flagship news program holding a poster that read “stop the war.” Her protest was widely hailed as a dangerous act of resistance as Russia moved to crack down on critics and public displays of dissent amid its invasion of Ukraine.
On Wednesday, Ovsyannikova once again urged Russians not to believe government lies, saying that she had been targeted for simply telling the truth. After Russia’s February invasion, media access was swiftly blocked and Moscow banned what it deemed to be “fake” news of its assault on Ukraine. Russia’s media clampdown has forced many journalists to flee the country.
Russia has fined Ovsyannikova twice for the offense of discrediting its military and in August placed her under a two-month house arrest on charges of spreading fake news about the military, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years.
It remains unclear how she managed to escape, along with her 11-year-old daughter. Ovsyannikova did not respond to calls and text messages from The Washington Post in recent days.
Ovsyannikova’s ex-husband first reported to authorities on Saturday that she was missing, Russian media reported. Igor Ovsyannikov told the pro-Kremlin RT network that he did not know where his ex-wife was, but that his daughter did not have a passport.
Ovsyannikova’s remarks came as Putin signed a document formalizing the annexation of four regions of Ukraine, a breach of international law. Despite the move, Ukrainian troops are making a “fast and powerful advance” in the country’s south and liberating “dozens of settlements” from Russian control, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Natalia Abbakumova contributed to this report.
Leonard Francis, mastermind in Navy corruption scandal, flees before sentencing
“He cut off his GPS monitoring bracelet on Sunday morning,” the U.S. Marshals Service announced late Monday. “Task Force Officers went to his residence and upon arrival noticed the house was now vacant.”
Days before he vanished, neighbors recalled seeing moving trucks at Francis’s home, Supervisory Deputy Omar Castillo with the U.S. Marshals’ district in Southern California told the San Diego Union-Tribune.
“He was planning this out, that’s for sure,” Castillo told the newspaper, which was the first to report Francis’s escape.
Devin Burstein, Francis’s attorney, said in an email to The Washington Post that he had “no comment at this time.”
Francis pleaded guilty in 2015 to offering Navy officials $500,000 in cash bribes in the service’s biggest corruption scandal. According to prosecutors, it was all part of an effort to swindle the military branch out of some $35 million.
Francis’s Singapore-based company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, provided items and services that Navy submarines and ships need in port, such as food, water, waste removal and fuel. But investigators alleged that Francis’s company overcharged for its services and faked some invoices.
He bribed Navy personnel in the Asia-Pacific region in exchange for classified information about ship movements to win more military contracts. Francis offered about $1 million in Cuban cigars; luxury items; meals in Michelin-starred restaurants; and a party with, what prosecutors described as a “rotating carousel of prostitutes,” an investigation by The Post found. Other items included tickets to a Lady Gaga concert and a Gucci fashion show, according to court documents.
The Navy prohibits personnel from accepting gifts worth more than $20. There’s a $50 annual limit on accepting gifts from a single source. But hundreds of active-duty and retired personnel — including some 60 admirals — were under scrutiny for possibly violating military laws or ethics rules as part of the probe, The Post reported. Most were later cleared of wrongdoing.
More than 30 people — including Navy officers, enlisted sailors, contractors and Francis’s employees — have either been found guilty of or pleaded guilty to participating in the plot.
The scope of the scandal has befuddled both civilians and military members since it came to light in 2013, with many wondering: How did the fleet succumb so easily to Francis’s temptations?
“That’s what this case is really about, is how easily Navy souls were sold, Navy honor were sold for prostitutes, for lavish dinners, for money over American interests,” Rachel VanLandingham, a former Air Force officer and military legal expert, told NPR in June.
In a nine-part podcast on the scandal, Francis told Tom Wright, “I’m nonmilitary, I’m just a civilian, I’m not a U.S. citizen, and all these senior naval officers would just snap on my command: ‘Do this,’ and they’ll move the ships for me.”
His reach, nevertheless, came crashing down in 2013, when federal agents arranged a sting operation in a San Diego hotel. Since pleading guilty in 2015, Francis has worked as a cooperating witness for federal prosecutors building cases against others involved in the plot — and shared evidence, including records from Glenn Defense Marine Asia’s computer servers.
Following health complications — including a bout with kidney cancer, swollen knees and a hernia, according to court records — Francis was released from federal detention in 2018 and has been held under house arrest. His home is under surveillance by a security entourage for which he pays.
But that arrangement was one that prosecutors had fought against in 2013 and 2015 — arguing that he might try fleeing for the Mexican border, The Post reported.
That’s one of the scenarios authorities are contending with almost a decade later.
Castillo told the Union-Tribune that international borders and airports are on alert, but Francis might already be across the Rio Grande.
Sri Lankan president flees to Maldives, protesters storm prime minister’s office
COLOMBO, July 13 (Reuters) – Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled to the Maldives on Wednesday,bringing to an apparent end his family’s near two-decade dominance of the country after a massive popular uprising brought on by an economic collapse.
But his decision to leave his ally Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in charge as acting president triggered more demonstrations, with protesters storming the premier’s office demanding that he go too.
Wickremesinghe’s office initially declared a state of emergency and a curfew with immediate effect, then cancelled them but said the measures would be announced again later.
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Police stationed outside the prime minister’s office fired several rounds of tear gas and a military helicopter briefly circled overhead, but protesters appeared undeterred and finally surged into the compound. Wickremesinghe’s team declined to reveal his whereabouts.
“It feels pretty marvellous, people were trying to take this place for about three hours,” said college student Sanchuka Kavinda, 25, standing next to a mangled, open gate of the prime minister’s office. “No matter what, everyone in this crowd will be here until Ranil also steps down.”
In a statement, Wickremesinghe said the protesters “have no reason to storm the prime minister’s office”.
“They want to stop the parliamentary process. But we must respect the Constitution. So security forces have advised me to impose an emergency and a curfew. I’m working to do that.”
On the lower floor of the two-storied, whitewashed colonial-era building, dozens of protesters gathered to sing Sinhala pop songs. In a nearby air-conditioned room, sat a large group of security personnel armed with assault rifles.
Protest organisers and security personnel manned a central wooden staircase at the heart of the building, guiding sightseers to and from the upper floor where the prime minister’s room is located.
At an adjoining room on the top floor, where Reuters interviewed Wickremesinghe a few weeks ago, the plush furniture had been hastily pushed to the corners and a line of armed security personnel ushered visitors through.
NEW LEADER DUE NEXT WEEK
Parliament is expected to name a new full-time president next week, and a top ruling party source told Reuters Wickremesinghe was the party’s first choice, although no decision had been taken.
An attempt by Wickremesinghe to cling on would infuriate the protesters who say he is a close ally of the Rajapaksa family, which has dominated the country since Rajapaksa’s older brother Mahinda became president in 2005.
Demonstrators gather outside the office of Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, amid the country’s economic crisis, in Colombo, Sri Lanka July 13, 2022. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
“An MP with one seat is appointed as PM. Now the same person is appointed as acting President,” the opposition presidential nominee, Sajith Premadasa, said on Twitter. “This is the Rajapaksa style of democracy. What a farce. What a tragedy.”
The president, his wife and two bodyguards left the main international airport near Colombo aboard an air force plane early on Wednesday, the air force said in a statement.
The parliament speaker, Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, said Rajapaksa had phoned him and told him his resignation letter would arrive later on Wednesday.
A government source and a person close to Rajapaksa said he was in Male, the capital of the Maldives. The president would most likely proceed to another Asian country from there, the government source said.
ECONOMIC CRISIS
Protests against the economic crisis have simmered for months and came to a head last weekend when hundreds of thousands of people took over key government buildings in Colombo, blaming the Rajapaksas and their allies for runaway inflation, shortages and corruption. read more
Government sources and aides said the president’s brothers, former president and prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and former finance minister Basil Rajapaksa, were still in Sri Lanka.
Wickremesinghe, whose private residence in Colombo was set ablaze on Saturday, had offered to resign as prime minister but did not repeat that offer after he became acting president on Wednesday. If he does go, the speaker would be acting president until a new president is elected on July 20 as scheduled.
Amid the economic and political chaos, Sri Lanka’s sovereign bond prices hit fresh record lows on Wednesday.
The U.S. Embassy in Colombo, which is in the central district of the city, said it was cancelling consular services for the afternoon and for Thursday as a precautionary measure.
The island nation’s tourism-dependent economy was hammered first by the COVID-19 pandemic and then a fall in remittances from overseas Sri Lankans. A ban on chemical fertilisers hit output although the ban was later reversed. read more
The Rajapaksas implemented populist tax cuts in 2019 that hurt government finances, while shrinking foreign reserves curtailed imports of fuel, food and medicines.
Petrol has been severely rationed and long lines have formed in front of shops selling cooking gas. Headline inflation hit 54.6% last month and the central bank has warned that it could rise to 70% in coming months.
Mahinda Rajapaksa, president from 2005-2015 and later prime minister under his brother, resigned in May after protests against the family turned violent. He remained in hiding at a military base in the east of the country for some days before returning to Colombo.
On Tuesday, Sri Lankan immigration officials prevented Basil Rajapaksa, who quit in April as finance minister, from flying out of the country. read more
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Additional reporting by Kanishka Singh and Alasdair Pal; Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Krishna N. Das; Editing by Sam Holmes, Shri Navaratnam and Kim Coghill
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Newsmaker of the Week: Monkeypox patient flees, found and more
This week’s development as Newsmaker of the Week just ended is the announcement by the Ministry of Health and Wellness that monkeypox has been detected in Jamaica.
The story then took a short, bizarre and chaotic twist on Saturday, as the patient who was in Clarendon, absconded a health facility there. Some reports suggested that the patient was in isolation at the May Pen Hospital in Clarendon.
The man was subsequently found by the police and health officials at a house belonging to a close relative of his, and was taken back into isolation.
The close relative of the patient is now in quarantine.
Details on the patient’s escape from the Health and Wellness Ministry were that after midday on Saturday, the patient, who presented to the public health system on July 5, having arrived in Jamaica some five days earlier from the United Kingdom, left through a bathroom window of the facility and had a car waiting.
There were reports, too, that the man had told other hospitalised persons of his plan to leave the health facility, as he reportedly indicated that he had not spent a large sum of money to come Jamaica to “not enjoy himself”.
The police launched a search for the suspect, and health officials appealed to persons not to harm the individual if he was located.
The news of the then escaped patient with monkeypox generated chaos and uproar across social media, with several persons calling for the photograph of the man to be released, and for Clarendon to be placed under a form of lockdown to curtail any potential spread of the virus.
“Just publish his name and face. He’ll be found sooner that way,” @coolieboyrhaj tweeted.
“Where was (were) the security guards at the time? This is clearly a sign of negligence by hospital,” commented Shanice J Bell on Facebook.
Rick Foster commented that, “Clarendon needs an SOE now, now to locate the man. What kind of carelessness this? How him make call and gone through window?”
Reacting to the patient’s subsequent readmission to isolation, Christopher Shakes wrote: “They need to charge him and set an example to others who would like to endanger others.”
Donarene Morris-Henry questioned: “How many has he infected now? Give us grace Lord.”
Before the weekend chaos, the country was continuing to return to normal after two years of curfew measures and mandated mask-wearing, due to COVID-19.
Then came the news on Wednesday that another virus of international interest – monkeypox – had found its way to Jamaica.
One of the main symptoms of the disease is skin rash.
Some Jamaicans have already expressed that they are not concerned about the virus, citing information from health officials that the disease is not as severe as COVID-19, and has a low fatality rate globally.
The Government, through remarks by Health and Wellness Minister, Dr Christopher Tufton, has already signalled that it will be business as usual relative to the management of monkeypox.
Simply put, there will be no more lockdowns as was the case with the management of COVID-19, Tufton disclosed at Wednesday’s emergency press conference to announce the arrival of the virus on Jamaican shores via the Clarendon man who recently travelled from the United Kingdom.
Monkeypox is a viral zoonotic disease that is spread primarily through animals. While person-to-person spread is uncommon, it may occur through direct contact with an infected individual.Infection typically results in a number of symptoms, including fever, back pain and muscle pain, and the formation of lesions and skin rashes.
More than 6,000 cases of monkeypox have now been reported from 58 countries in the current outbreak, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Wednesday, July 6.
A majority of the cases, approximately 80 per cent, are from Europe, the health agency said in an update also on Wednesday, the same day that Jamaica announced its first case.
The agency said, too, that it will reconvene a meeting of the committee that will advise on declaring the outbreak a global health emergency, the WHO’s highest level of alert, in the week beginning July 18 or sooner, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual news conference from Geneva.
At its previous meeting on June 27, the committee decided that the outbreak, which has seen cases rising both in the African countries where it usually spreads, and globally, was not yet a health emergency.
“I continue to be concerned by the scale and spread of the virus across the world,” Ghebreyesus was quoted as saying by the Associate Press (AP).
He noted that a lack of testing meant that there were likely many more cases going unreported, adding that around 80 per cent of cases are in Europe.
In breaking the news of monkeypox locally, Tufton implored Jamaicans to remain calm, as health authorities are capable of treating and tracking the virus, due to its relatively mild nature.
“I am confident that given the nature of the virus, (and) given the nature of the virus globally, to date, discovering one case doesn’t make or create a crisis,” he said at the ministry’s emergency virtual press briefing on Wednesday.
Tufton said there was always the possibility that the country would record a case of monkeypox, given that the country’s borders were opened and other countries continued to record cases of the virus.
“Having said that, we do believe that we have the capacity to respond and, particularly, if Jamaicans play their part. And so, I do not envision the kind of response to the novel coronavirus when it came on board in March 10, 2020,” he asserted.
“I believe that we can manage this current threat, and if we play our part, we can manage it in a way where we can continue to live our normal existence, whether (at) play or otherwise.
Dr Christopher Tufton
“I would say to Jamaicans, just play your part. God knows the country cannot deal with another extremity. We have a lot of side effects to this point from the COVID-19 pandemic. So, we are not only going to pray and ask God for guidance, but we gonna work to ensure that kind of guidance is taken advantage of by ourselves, and the role that we play,” insisted Tufton.
In declaring that “it is business as usual in terms of the functioning of the economy”, Tufton said Prime Minister Andrew Holness has been notified of the health development.
“The honourable prime minister and I spoke, and he is ready and always able to provide the leadership and guidance that is necessary,” said Tufton, adding that Cabinet had also been informed of the development.
Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Dr Jacquiline Bisasor-McKenzie, in also seeking to soothe the fears of Jamaicans, informed that the disease is milder than “what we are used to, and what we are seeing so far across the world”.
She said the same measures that were used to prevent the spread of COVID-19, including wearing a mask and physical distancing, are to be used in preventing the transmission of monkeypox.
Covering skin rashes is also of utmost importance.
Bisasor-McKenzie said the man who tested positive for monkeypox is from Clarendon, but there is no risk posed to the communities there, as all close contacts of the positive individual are presently in quarantine.
“This is the reason for not panicking; we don’t anticipate any risk. Our persons are on the ground as usual. We are very good at contact tracing, and we will uncover the cases and we will do our work to minimise the chance of spread to the population,” she outlined.
“This is a mild disease and it does require very close contact for transmission. Those are other reasons why persons should not panic. If you become sick, this is something that you can see, and therefore, you are spurred to action immediately in terms of isolating yourself,” indicated Bisasor-McKenzie.
In chiming into that leg of her response, Tufton warned that, “Panic leads to chaos… and we are not promoting chaos.
“We are promoting responsible behaviour in light of the new development,” he said, while urging persons with symptoms to present to a medical facility.
Tufton said the spread of monkeypox may occur when a person comes into close contact with an infected animal or rodents.
Person-to-person spread is generally uncommon, but can occur through direct contact with monkeypox skin lesions or scabs, contact with clothing or sheets or towels used by an infected person, as well as from cough or sneezing of an infected individual.
The virus enters the body through broken skin, even if not visible, or the mucus membranes (eyes, nose or mouth).
“The incubation period, as we understand it, is between five and 21 days. Symptoms, usually mild to moderate, can include fever, intense headaches, swelling of the lymph nodes, back pains, swelling, rash,” stated Tufton.
Noticeable, some monkeypox cases overseas were being identified in persons engaged in certain sexual practices, including homosexuality.
Asked a question on that issue at Wednesday’s press briefing, Bisasor-McKenzie was quick to stress that monkeypox is not a sexual transmitted disease, but is rather a virus that is transmitted through any close encounter.
In elaborating on that point, the CMO explained that while scientists were studying whether the virus is transmitted through sexual fluids, there has been no confirmation of that to date.
“First of all, monkeypox is not a sexually transmitted disease. The lesions and rashes – they can be present on any part of the body, including the genitalia. And therefore, they will spread through close personal contacts,” she informed.
Dr Jacquiline Bisasor-McKenzie
“However, we have noted, and scientists all over the globe have noted this connection, and are, of course, investigating this connection to see if there is actual transmission through sexual fluids. However, we have not had any confirmation of that as yet,” Bisasor-McKenzie indicated.
Still, she stressed that it is possible that close sexual contacts with rashes can pass on the virus to others.
“… But close contacts, including sexual contact, which we all know is close, will pass on the disease if it is that you have the vesicles present.
“So, I want to reassure the public that this is not a sexual transmitted disease. It is a close-contact transmission that can occur in any kind of close encounter,” the CMO declared.
In relation to whether the sexual history of the man who tested positive for monkeypox in Clarendon is being probed, she did not respond directly to whether that will be done.
She, however, emphasised that the sexual history of any patient forms part of a doctor’s “history-taking”.
“… And, of course, in doing public health investigations, we do pay particular attention to our history-taking, and make sure all our bases are covered,” the CMO stated.
Turning to partygoers and persons looking forward to entertainment activities this summer, Bisasor-McKenzie advised them to adhere to the COVID-19 protocols in order to avoid contracting monkeypox.
“So for everybody who is planning to go out there and party, I should hope that they bear this in mind: that close contact is still something that is to be avoided, and to use your precautions – the wearing of masks, sanitising, (and) handwashing frequently to prevent contact,” she advised.
She also called on persons to stay home and desist from venturing to such events once they start developing symptoms of monkeypox, including lesions on the face, fever, body aches and chills.
“Once you recognise that you start to have a rash, then there is the possibility of monkeypox, (and) even more reason for you to stay home,” warned Bisasor-McKenzie.
Though Government health officials and the portfolio minister remained adamant that the virus is of low risk to citizens, Opposition Spokesman on Health, Dr Morais Guy, called for comprehensive contact tracing and isolation to be done of all the persons the infected patient interacted with.
“We have been advised that the quarantine of those contacts has been in place, but what needs to be interrogated is what other places and environment the traveller went to prior to the symptoms developing,” he said in a media interview on Thursday.
According to Guy, he was also disappointed that the island’s isolation facilities were just being assessed, as was announced by Tufton at Wednesday’s press conference.
“I would have expected that it would have been done prior, so that everything would go seamlessly… It would seem now, based on how he (Tufton) presented, that nothing was done and now we are running around looking like chickens that have lost our heads,” chided Guy.
Dr Morais Guy
Still, public health specialist, Dr Alverston Bailey, emphasised that there is no need for criticisms or alarm, as the presence of the virus should not cause chaos locally.
“The good news is that of the 6,027 cases (globally of monkeypox), only three persons have died,” Bailey said in a radio interview.
Another medical doctor, Leslie Meade, who is the President-elect of the Medical Association of Jamaica (MAJ), said it is crucial that the island’s surveillance for monkeypox remains effective, to contain any potential spread.
“We need to be able to detect persons who are coming in, and we need to also check those who are coming into our healthcare facilities early, because that is where we will be able to do the contact tracing that is necessary, and isolating the contacts (of any positive patients),” Meade said during a radio interview.
For Bailey, the fact that the WHO has been issuing bi-weekly updates on monkeypox globally, all public health professionals locally should be aware of the virus’ symptoms, the prevention protocols and treatments.
“Therefore, we (the doctors) are well informed and ready to deal with the virus,” he said.
Meade agreed, and pointed out that the Ministry of Health and Wellness has been educating the doctors in the public sector, in particular, and bulletins have been issued to all senior medical officers (SMOs) at hospitals.
“We at the MAJ are also in the process of organising a webinar to really get our private care and public physicians up to speed… The information is available, and all our members are encouraged to get up to speed with the information on the WHO and PAHO websites,” he informed.
As various perspectives from the medical community continue to emerge surrounding the announced presence of monkeypox in Jamaica, the perspectives from Jamaicans in general were varied.
Facebook user, John Wood, questioned: “How much people will now spread this virus ’cause remember we nuh have no discipline?”
Roque New Brown, in response to that remark, commented: “Plus its summer holidays”.
Susan Smith stated that, “Well back inside for me then, because I can’t take no more virus”.
There were others who said that neither coronavirus nor monkeypox would stop them from enjoying the summer period.
“A could a monkeypox, COVID, dengue or anything. Nothing not stopping me from take to the beach over this summer. So come again deh Tufton with this news,” wrote Arlene Reid.
It’s party time, monkeypox or no monkeypox, say some people.
“Right now is carnival, my ting dat, and party, party this summer. Monkey who? Don’t care,” commented Orlando Ritchie.
Still, there were some persons who were skeptical about Tufton’s plea for calm after the single case of the disease was recorded locally.
“That’s what was said the first time a case of COVID-19 was discovered here: ‘No need to panic’… Then it started spreading like wildfire and all kinds of stuff started happening… Curfew and the whole works,” stated Koyak Wahs.
Chris Lewis wrote: “I do get the salient point the minister is driving – the nation shouldn’t panic – but when he used the premise “business as usual” to drive that point, it creates a scenario that he is tone-deaf.
“The minister seems to think the economy can be healthy if the citizens become unhealthy. Tell the citizens that monkeypox in Jamaica is concerning, but if everyone take necessary precautions, then there is no need to panic,” stated Lewis.