LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Sunday (Dec 13) he still hoped for a post-Brexit trade deal with the European Union but that failure remains the "most likely" outcome.
"I'm afraid we're still very far apart on some key things, but where there is life, there's hope, we're going to keep talking to see what we can do. The UK certainly won't be walking away from the talks," Johnson told reporters.
"I've got to repeat the most likely thing now is of course that we have to get ready for WTO terms, Australia terms."
Johnson added that a deal was there to be done if the EU wanted one. He said Britain would go the extra mile and repeated his offer to speak to other EU leaders.
"We are always happy to talk and to make progress where we can. I do think, as I say, there is a deal to be done if our partners want to do it, but we remain very far apart on these key issues," Johnson said.
"I repeated my offer, which is, if it's necessary to talk to other capitals then I'm very happy to do that. The Commission is very determined to keep the negotiations on the way that they have been done, between us and the Commission, and that's fine."
Earlier on Sunday, Johnson and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen agreed to continue post-Brexit trade talks in search of an elusive deal.
"We had a useful phone call this morning," they said, in a joint statement that von der Leyen read out on EU television. "We discussed the major unresolved topics.
"After almost a year of negotiations, despite the fact that deadlines have been missed over and over we think it is responsible at this point to go the extra mile.
"We have accordingly mandated our negotiators to continue the talks and to see whether an agreement can even at this late stage be reached."
Britain quit the EU in January but remains an informal member until Dec 31 - the end of a transition period during which it has remained in the EU single market and customs union.
SEOUL: South Korea's President Moon Jae-in warned on Sunday (Dec 13) that COVID-19 restrictions may be raised to the highest level after a second day of record increases in cases as the country battles a harsh third wave of infection.
Presiding over an emergency meeting at the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters for the first time since February, Moon urged vigilance and called for all-out efforts to contain the virus.
"Unless the outbreak can be contained now, it has come to the critical point of considering escalating social-distancing measures to the third level," he said, referring to the tightest curbs under the country's five-tier system.
Greater Seoul, home to about half of South Korea's 52 million people, is under level 2.5 restrictions. Gatherings of more than 50 people are banned and restaurants are prohibited from serving customers after 9pm.
A country that had initial success controlling COVID-19, South Korea reported 1,030 new coronavirus infections on Sunday after 950 the previous day, bringing total infections to 42,766 with 580 deaths.
Of the new cases, 1,002 were locally transmitted, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said.
"Our back is against the wall," Moon said. "This is a crucial moment to devote all our virus control capabilities and administrative power to stopping the coronavirus spread."
Level 3 curbs would essentially mean a lockdown for the first time in Asia's fourth-largest economy. Schools would switch to remote learning, companies could allow only essential workers in offices and gatherings of more than 10 people would be banned.
South Korea was praised for its early success in containing the coronavirus without a lockdown by relying heavily on contact tracing and testing after the country's first case was confirmed in January.
SEOUL: South Korea's President Moon Jae-in warned on Sunday (Dec 13) that COVID-19 restrictions may be raised to the highest level after a second day of record increases in cases as the country battles a harsh third wave of infection.
Presiding over an emergency meeting at the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters for the first time since February, Moon urged vigilance and called for all-out efforts to contain the virus.
"Unless the outbreak can be contained now, it has come to the critical point of considering escalating social-distancing measures to the third level," he said, referring to the tightest curbs under the country's five-tier system.
Greater Seoul, home to about half of South Korea's 52 million people, is under level 2.5 restrictions. Gatherings of more than 50 people are banned and restaurants are prohibited from serving customers after 9pm.
A country that had initial success controlling COVID-19, South Korea reported 1,030 new coronavirus infections on Sunday after 950 the previous day, bringing total infections to 42,766 with 580 deaths.
Of the new cases, 1,002 were locally transmitted, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said.
"Our back is against the wall," Moon said. "This is a crucial moment to devote all our virus control capabilities and administrative power to stopping the coronavirus spread."
Level 3 curbs would essentially mean a lockdown for the first time in Asia's fourth-largest economy. Schools would switch to remote learning, companies could allow only essential workers in offices and gatherings of more than 10 people would be banned.
South Korea was praised for its early success in containing the coronavirus without a lockdown by relying heavily on contact tracing and testing after the country's first case was confirmed in January.
WASHINGTON: Thousands of red-hatted protesters filled Washington streets Saturday (Dec 12) to support Donald Trump's claims of election fraud, undeterred by the US Supreme Court's rejection of what may have been his last chance to overturn the results.
Thousands gathered around Freedom Plaza, a few blocks from the White House, in a festive atmosphere earlier in the day, while scuffles broke out later between protesters and counter-demonstrators.
Police, some in riot gear, used their bodies and bicycles to keep the groups apart. There was also at least one clash between police and counter-protesters.
Six people were arrested, following five arrests Friday night related to a brawl, local media reported.
A protest in Washington on December 12, 2020 drew several thousand supporters of President Donald Trump; many insisted without evidence that he defeated Democrat Joe Biden in the November election. (AFP/TASOS KATOPODIS)
Some pro-Trump demonstrators showed up in tactical gear, chanting "USA" and "four more years" for the outgoing president.
It was a sizable crowd, but noticeably smaller than a similar rally a month ago when 10,000 people converged near the White House to support Trump.
"We're not gonna give up," said Luke Wilson, a sixty-something protester who had come all the way from the western state of Idaho.
"I believe there is a big injustice being done to the American people," added Dell Quick, a regular at Trump's political rallies. He brandished a flag defending gun rights.
Protesters offered no shortage of explanations for the results of the Nov 3 election won by Democrat Joe Biden, even though it has been affirmed by state election officials - several of them Republican - and by judges in several key states.
Every state has now certified Biden's victory, giving the Democrat 306 votes in the Electoral College to Trump's 232, with 270 required for election. Electors are to formally cast their votes Monday.
But protesters insisted, as Trump has repeatedly done, that there was widespread fraud in the election.
Some pointed to "foreign interference," others to software that allegedly erased millions of votes for the president - but not those for other Republican candidates on the same ballots.
Quick told AFP that "there's no way possible" Biden was elected.
Protesters, including some in Donald Trump masks, marched in Washington on December 12, 2020 to protest Joe Biden's victory in the November election and to insist Trump lost only because of widespread fraud. (AFP/TASOS KATOPODIS)
Susan Bowman, a 62-year-old from Hampton, Virginia, said "this is not a banana republic. We need to fix the election."
Those who addressed the crowd included Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser who lied about his Russian contacts and was recently pardoned by the president.
"STOLEN" ELECTION
Dozens of court cases alleging fraud or contesting the result have been decided - virtually all in Biden's favour, with some judges offering stinging criticism of the lack of evidence.
But that was not enough for 47-year-old Darlene Denton, who wore a "Trump 2024" badge on her sweatshirt.
"Nobody wants to hear evidence, nobody wants to hear cases, everything just gets thrown out," said Denton, who had come from Tennessee to support a president she said had given "a voice to the people."
Trump, in stark defiance of the clear result and of US tradition, has refused to concede to Biden.
"Wow! Thousands of people forming in Washington (D.C.) for Stop the Steal," he tweeted early Saturday. "Didn't know about this, but I'll be seeing them!"
Not long afterward, his helicopter lifted off from the White House grounds and passed over the crowd - many singing the US national anthem - as Trump headed to New York to attend the annual Army-Navy football game.
Among the protesters, members of the far-right militia group the Proud Boys were clearly visible - in their signature black-and-yellow outfits, some wearing bulletproof vests - and they often drew cheers from others in the crowd.
Some blocks away, supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement held their own, much smaller, rally, chanting "Nazis out!"
Occasional violent clashes with counter-protesters during the November rally left a few people with stab wounds. Police made some 20 arrests related to that event.
KUALA LUMPUR: Yubaraj Khadka, a worker in Malaysia for Top Glove Corp, took two photos in May of fellow employees crowding into a factory of the world’s biggest maker of medical-grade latex gloves.
As the coronavirus pandemic raged, the photos seen by Reuters show dozens of workers lined up less than a metre apart to have their temperatures checked before starting the night shift as a precaution against the disease.
The company required everyone to wear masks and gloves, but Khadka and five other workers told Reuters that social distancing was not enforced or followed outside the factory.
Afraid of losing his job if he complained directly to management, Khadka, 27, sent the photos to a workers’ rights campaigner in his native Nepal who sent them on to the company and the Malaysian government, without identifying who took them.
On Sep 23, Top Glove sent Khadka a letter terminating his employment for sharing the photos. In the letter, seen by Reuters, the company said it identified him as the originator of the photos from CCTV coverage of workers entering the factory.
Fast-forward almost three months, Top Glove’s complex of factories and dormitories in Klang, 40 km west of Kuala Lumpur, has become Malaysia’s biggest coronavirus cluster with more than 5,000 infections, about 94 per cent of them foreigners, the country’s health ministry said in a statement on Dec 1.
Top Glove did not comment on that number at the time. It said on Wednesday (Dec 9) that a total of 5,147 workers in its Klang factories have tested positive.
The episode is another indicator of how the risk of infection by the virus has fallen most heavily on poorer, manual workers in crowded facilities across the world, from meat-packing plants to shipping warehouses.
On Nov 23, Malaysia’s government ordered Top Glove to begin shutting its factories in stages, so workers could be tested. The country’s Labour Department said earlier this month it would file charges against Top Glove over its worker accommodation, which it found to be cramped and poorly ventilated.
"There was no one-metre distancing. That's what I wanted to show," Khadka told Reuters from Nepal, where he is looking for work. "Even at the factory, after the first few months (of infections in Malaysia), the social distancing markers were thrown out."
After he was dismissed from his job as a quality assessor, he made his own way back to Nepal, paying US$400 for his flight home and another US$70 for a coronavirus test. It came back negative.
Top Glove told Reuters in a statement on Monday that it introduced temperature screening and more regular sanitisation of factories, offices, transport vehicles and dormitories at the beginning of the pandemic, and that it is in the process of improving its workers’ accommodation.
A view of Top Glove hostel in Klang, Malaysia on November 20, 2020. (Photo: Handout via REUTERS)
"Our 21,000 workforce is the backbone and foundation of the company and crucial to our mission of ensuring safe human protection globally,” the company said.
None of the workers has died. Top Glove said on Wednesday during its financial results call that 94 per cent of workers tested are now fit to return to work.
The company told Reuters it resolved matters with Khadka amicably, but declined to comment further on the issues raised by his photos and by a complaint from the workers’ rights campaigner, Andy Hall.
Five current workers who spoke to Reuters corroborated Khadka’s account. They said that from March they were given masks, face shields and sanitisers, and markers were placed on factory floors to help maintain distance between workers. But they said there was no consistent enforcement of the rules and it was hard to maintain distancing in production areas, where they had to work closely in groups of two and three, and in packing areas where up to a dozen people have to work together.
Hall, 41, said he sent the photos to officials at Malaysia’s trade and health ministries and did not receive a reply. A Malaysia health ministry report in May said Top Glove's coronavirus prevention measures were "very satisfactory," although it noted that social distancing in its factories could be improved and more hand sanitiser provided. Malaysia’s health ministry has not commented publicly since then on the conditions inside Top Glove’s factories. It did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters.
The Malaysian government did not respond to questions from Reuters.
HARD TO DISTANCE
Top Glove makes a quarter of the world’s medical rubber gloves, up to about 250 million per day. Its profits have surged during the pandemic.
For the financial year ended in August, the company reported a net profit of US$470 million, more than five times the US$90 million the year before. Its market value peaked at almost US$20 billion in early August. The company said in September it was exploring listing its shares in Hong Kong.
It runs 47 plants in all, 41 in Malaysia and the remainder in Thailand, China and Vietnam. Thirty-six of them produce gloves. It has about 16,000 factory employees, just over half of them in factories in Klang. Almost all of them are migrant workers from Bangladesh and Nepal, earning the minimum wage of US$295 per month.
Production continued at Top Glove’s factories, according to the workers interviewed by Reuters, even after a spike of infections in migrant worker dormitories in neighbouring Singapore.
Workers leave a Top Glove factory after their shifts in Klang, Malaysia on December 7, 2020. (Photo: REUTERS/Lim Huey Teng)
The workers said canteens and entrances to the factories were often crowded, as were the buses to their dormitories, where up to 20 people live in one room. Photos taken by workers, seen by Reuters, show clothes and towels hung from bed frames, and food, dishes and electrical appliances stored under and around bunk beds. People seen in the photos of the dormitories are not wearing masks.
The dormitories are provided by Top Glove. The company did not reply to questions from Reuters about the number of people living in the rooms. Since the outbreak, the company has moved some workers into hotels temporarily, but they will eventually move back to the dormitories. Top Glove told Reuters that wearing masks was mandatory for workers, but did not specify whether that included in dormitories.
"We are mindful there is much more to be done to uplift the standard of our employee welfare and promise to rectify shortcomings immediately," Top Glove said in its quarterly earnings statement on Wednesday.
It said it has spent about US$5 million buying apartments for workers in the last two months and is renting more houses for them. It said it has earmarked about US$25 million for investment in workers’ facilities and accommodation, including what it called "mega-hostels."
The workers, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of losing their jobs, said there was no regular testing for coronavirus. Top Glove said on Wednesday that prior to the outbreak, workers were only tested before they flew home, in line with the requirements of most airlines.
PRESSURE TO PRODUCE
Business started to boom for Top Glove in the first months of this year, as coronavirus infections spread across the globe.
The Malaysian government imposed strict lockdown measures in mid-March, in an effort to contain the country’s first big outbreak, which limited Top Glove to operating with only half its staff.
Weeks later, Top Glove and many other Malaysian businesses deemed as essential were given exemptions by the government and allowed to operate with full staff.
The European Union, desperate for more gloves, had pressed hard for the exemption, as did other customers. Then-EU ambassador to Malaysia, Maria Castillo Fernandez, wrote to Malaysia’s Trade Minister Azmin Ali on Mar 25, saying: "Any effort to exceptionally maintain full production of this particular sector with global implications will be greatly appreciated."
FILE PHOTO: A worker inspects newly-made gloves at Top Glove factory in Shah Alam, Malaysia August 26, 2020. REUTERS/Lim Huey Teng/File Photo
According to the letter, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, she suggested running factories 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Fernandez, who now has a different EU role, declined to comment. EU representatives in Kuala Lumpur and Brussels declined to comment on the letter. Malaysia’s trade ministry did not reply to a request for comment on the letter from Reuters.
"Almost every country in the world was panicking," said one senior executive in Malaysia’s rubber glove industry who does not work for Top Glove. "We told the embassies, 'If you want us to help you, we want you to help us lobby our government to allow the glove industry to operate.'"
Once full operation was resumed in March, Khadka and five other Top Glove workers say supervisors told them to work harder and set bigger targets for production and packing as the company scrambled to fulfil demand. The company said it ramped up production and paid workers about US$2 for every hour they voluntarily worked on what was supposed to be their one rest day per week.
Even with imminent coronavirus vaccines, and the closure of some factories, Top Glove's business outlook is strong. Analysts expect profit for the current financial year to more than quadruple, based on rising demand for gloves. On Wednesday, Top Glove posted a record quarterly net profit.
The day before, Reuters witnessed hundreds of workers lining up closely to exit one of the factories in Klang, using two fingerprint readers to mark their exit. There was no social distancing in effect and no hand sanitisers next to the fingerprint reader.
LIMA (REUTERS) - Peru suspended trials for China's Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine due to a "serious adverse event" that occurred with one of the volunteers for the study, the Peruvian government said in a statement on Saturday (Dec 12).
The health ministry said the event is "under investigation to determine if it is related to the vaccine or if there is another explanation."
Sinopharm Group, which is conducting its trials in Peru with some 12,000 volunteers, was about to complete the first stage of the trials in the next few days.
Some 36,544 people have died so far in Peru from the coronavirus pandemic.
"The decision to temporarily suspend clinical trials is a safety measure contemplated in the regulations for clinical trials and protocols established to protect the health of research subjects, the health ministry said in the statement.
German Malaga, chief researcher at the local Cayetano Heredia University, which is involved with the study, said one volunteer had experienced decreased strength in his legs among other symptoms.
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump lambasted the Supreme Court on Saturday (Dec 12) for declining to take a case he hoped would overturn President-elect Joe Biden's election victory and called Attorney General William Barr a "disappointment."
On Friday evening the nation's high court rejected a long-shot lawsuit by Texas seeking to throw out voting results from four states.
The decision comes ahead of a meeting by the US Electoral College on Monday to make Democrat Biden's victory official.
Trump, a Republican, has refused to concede despite losing to Biden, who took 306 votes to Trump's 232 in the state-by-state Electoral College, which allots votes to all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on population.
"This is a great and disgraceful miscarriage of justice. The people of the United States were cheated, and our Country disgraced. Never even given our day in Court!" Trump wrote on Twitter on Saturday morning.
"The Supreme Court had ZERO interest in the merits of the greatest voter fraud ever perpetrated on the United States of America."
The court said Texas did not have legal standing to bring the case, abruptly ending what Trump had touted in recent days as his best hope for overturning the election. The three justices nominated by Trump - Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh - signed on to the court's order without comment.
In a series of apparently frustrated tweets, the president also lashed out at his attorney general after the Wall Street Journal reported that Barr knew earlier this year about an investigation into Biden's son Hunter's taxes.
In a statement released by the president-elect's transition team, Hunter Biden said on Wednesday that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Delaware was investigating his tax affairs, which he said he had handled "legally and appropriately."
Trump retweeted a comment from radio host Todd Starnes saying Barr should be fired. "A big disappointment!" Trump said in his tweet.
Barr's fate in the waning days of the Trump administration has been in question since he said last week that a Justice Department investigation had found no sign of major fraud in the November election, contradicting Trump's false claims.
The president has continued to press his allegations of widespread fraud without evidence despite dozens of failures in courts. Though he has said he will leave the White House on Jan 20 if the Electoral College affirms Biden's win, he is likely to continue to decry the election as rigged and seek to undermine the legitimacy of Biden's presidency.
Conservative groups supporting Trump rallied in Washington and elsewhere around the nation on Saturday to press the issue.
