TAIPEI: A leading Taiwanese chip testing and packaging company said on Monday (Jun 7) that all its migrant employees have been suspended from working for around two weeks to contain a coronavirus outbreak.
At least 206 employees, mostly migrant workers, at facilities run by King Yuan Electronics Company in northern Miaoli county have tested positive, according to the government.
The cluster is the first major outbreak in Taiwan's semiconductor industry, which is operating at full capacity to meet a worldwide shortage.
King Yuan employs more than 7,000 people, including around 2,100 migrants, and counts some top international tech firms as clients, such as Intel, Qualcomm and Nvidia.
King Yuan said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange that its June output and revenue are expected to drop 30 to 35 per cent due to the suspension of work.
Local media raised concerns that the suspension could impact the global chip shortage as King Yuan's business is a key final step in the semiconductor supply chain.
Two other tech firms in Miaoli have also reported infection clusters and suspended migrant workers.
Taiwan's semiconductor factories have been struggling to plug a pandemic-driven shortage of chips that power essential electronic devices.
The water-intensive facilities are running at full capacity, even as Taiwan suffers its worst drought in decades, although recent heavy rains have brought some temporary relief.
Taiwan emerged largely unscathed from the pandemic last year with just a few hundred cases and single-digit deaths thanks to one of the world's best coronavirus responses.
But it is now battling a sudden outbreak. Infections have jumped to more than 11,000 with 286 deaths in more than a month after a cluster initially detected among airline pilots spread.
The government announced on Monday that strict social distancing restrictions, including closing public venues and schools, would be extended to Jun 28.
NEW DELHI: India's capital New Delhi and financial hub Mumbai began a gradual easing of restrictions on Monday (Jun 7) as coronavirus infections in the country fell to a two-month low.
India on Monday reported 100,636 new infections - after several days of 400,000-plus cases in May - and 2,427 deaths.
Hospitals in the megacities, which have a combined population of about 40 million, were overwhelmed by a deadly COVID-19 wave in April and May, with severe shortages of oxygen and other critical medicines.
The huge spike saw India report record-breaking numbers of cases and deaths to become the second worst-hit nation after the United States, with just under 29 million infections.
Authorities in Delhi and Mumbai, as well as other cities and states, imposed restrictions on movement and activities to combat the surge.
"We have to stay safe from corona infection and also bring the economy back on track," Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted on Monday as some shops and malls reopened.
He ordered half of the capital's shops to open on odd and even numbered days of the month respectively, in a bid to limit crowds, but allowed offices and the Delhi underground rail network to run at 50 per cent of capacity.
But some curbs were retained, such as the ban on dining in at restaurants and the use of theatres and gyms in a city still slowly recovering from a surge in the months of April and May that overwhelmed hospitals.
The northern city was reporting an average of 25,000 daily cases during its peak. It fell to 381 infections on Sunday, officials said.
A healthcare worker collects a swab sample from a court employee during a rapid antigen testing campaign for COVID-19 at a court in Mumbai, India, Mar 25, 2021. (Photo: REUTERS/Niharika Kulkarni)
MAHARASHTRA
Maharashtra, India's richest state of which Mumbai is the capital, eased restrictions based on infection rates and hospital bed occupancy.
Authorities allowed businesses to run until late afternoon, staffed with half their employees, and opened gyms, salons and spas.
In Mumbai - where the caseload soared to 11,163 in early April - there were 794 new infections on Sunday.
Malls were allowed to reopen in the city with restrictions, but were reopened fully in cities with lower infection rates such as Nagpur and Aurangabad.
"This is a step in the right direction," said Rajendra Kalkar of Phoenix Mills, which manages three shopping centres in Maharashtra.
"Businesses at our malls are coming back slowly. This is a very welcome step for thousands of mall staff and retail employees."
A man getting a haircut is reflected on a mirror at a barber shop in Mumbai, India, Jun 7, 2021.(Photo: AP/Rafiq Maqbool)
The Hotel and Restaurant Association of Western India estimated that more than 2 million jobs were lost during the Maharashtra lockdown.
"We are very happy to open our doors again today," the restaurant manager of the Mumbai branch of popular eatery Social, who gave his name as Malay, told AFP.
VACCINATIONS
The reopening efforts come as authorities struggle to vaccinate the population of nearly 1.4 billion, in a strategy officials say is the only way to limit any third wave of infections.
But tight supplies have meant that fewer than 5 per cent of 950 million adult Indians have received the mandatory two vaccine doses.
The pressure to resume some economic activity has grown as millions depend on daily wages to pay for food and rent.
"I have opened my shop after 40 days," a tea vendor, Monu Yadav, told Reuters partner ANI in the northern city of Varanasi, adding that only some of his customers have returned.
Passengers walk outside the New Delhi railway station in New Delhi, India, Jun 7, 2021. (Photo: AP/Ishant Chauhan)
Last week, the central bank cut its forecast for economic growth to 9.5 per cent from 10.5 per cent for the fiscal year 2021/2022.
The second wave has "impaired the nascent recovery that was underway", but "not snuffed it out", said Shaktikanta Das, the governor of the Reserve Bank of India.
Experts warn that while the crisis has eased in Delhi, Mumbai and other major cities, the disease is still spreading in rural areas and some southern states.
The death toll - which usually lags infection figures by several weeks - was still at elevated levels, they added.
The health ministry said total deaths were just under 347,000 so far, although experts warn the actual toll could be much higher and there have been claims of under-counting.
The industrial and trade hub - the capital of China's most populous province, Guangdong, and the home to almost 19 million people - reported 64 new infections in two weeks since May 21, plus 13 asymptomatic cases.
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SYDNEY: Australia's Victoria state on Monday reported its biggest rise in new locally acquired COVID-19 cases in a week as authorities rushed to track the source of the highly infectious Delta variant found among infections in the latest outbreak.
Victoria, the country's second-most populous state, reported 11 new locally acquired cases on Monday, versus two a day earlier. Monday's data includes two cases announced on Sunday which were recorded after the midnight cut-off deadline.
COLOMBO: A black box from a container ship sinking off Sri Lanka was recovered but a dive on Sunday (Jun 6) to check for oil leaks had to be aborted, the navy said.
The Voyage Data Recorder, also known as a maritime "black box", was found intact and is expected to help investigators review procedures and instructions ahead of an accident.
The navy said divers were deployed for a third time on Sunday to examine the fuel tanks of MV X-Press Pearl, but they were unable to carry out their mission due to poor visibility and choppy seas.
However, they did not notice any oil slick in the area, a navy officer told AFP. He said another dive would be attempted when the weather improved.
Sri Lankan authorities hope the black box will provide details of the ship's movements and its communications with the harbour in the capital Colombo, where it had been due to dock.
"The navy facilitated technicians to remove the VDR from the bridge which is still above the waterline," navy spokesman Indika de Silva told AFP.
The Singapore-registered vessel has been slowly sinking into the Indian Ocean since Wednesday after a fire that raged for nearly two weeks within sight of the coast.
The ship, carrying 25 tonnes of nitric acid and a huge amount of plastic raw materials, was heading to Colombo from Gujarat, India.
Tonnes of microplastic granules from the ship have swamped an 80-kilometre (50-mile) stretch of beach in Sri Lanka. (Photo: AFP/Lakruwan Wanniarachchi)
Sri Lankan officials have said an acid leak since May 11 may have sparked the blaze. Ports in Qatar and India had refused to offload the leaking nitric acid, they added.
Police on the island nation launched a criminal investigation, interviewing the vessel's skipper and chief engineer - both Russians - and its chief officer, an Indian, and seizing their passports.
Authorities are bracing for a possible oil spill after the stern submerged. There has been no sign of any leaks so far, they added.
Tonnes of microplastic granules from the ship swamped an 80-kilometre stretch of beach declared off-limits for residents. Fishing in the area was also banned.
Sri Lankan environmentalists on Friday sued the government and the ship's operators for allegedly failing to prevent what they called the "worst marine disaster" in the country's history.
JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday (Jun 6) a newly formed Israeli coalition that is poised to unseat him was the result of "the greatest election fraud" in the history of democracy.
He made his sweeping accusation at a time when Israel's domestic security chief has warned publicly about the prospect of political violence. Netanyahu focused his allegations on a broken campaign promise from the man set to replace him as prime minister, nationalist Naftali Bennett.
Bennett had pledged not to partner with left-wing, centrist and Arab parties, but on Wednesday announced with opposition leader Yair Lapid that they had formed a governing coalition with factions from across the political spectrum.
Under a rotation deal, Bennett will serve first as prime minister, followed by Lapid.
No date has been set for a vote in parliament to approve the new government, which follows an inconclusive Mar 23 election, but it is widely expected to be sworn in on Jun 14.
"We are witnessing the greatest election fraud in the history of the country, in my opinion in the history of any democracy," Netanyahu said in comments to legislators of his right-wing Likud party.
"That's why people justifiably feel deceived and they are responding, they must not be shut up," he said in the remarks, which were broadcast live and referred indirectly to Bennett's campaign promise not to team up with Lapid and others.
Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving leader, has been in office since 2009, and his tenure has been clouded by an ongoing corruption trial, in which he has denied any wrongdoing.
The prospective new government caps political jockeying since the election - Israel's fourth in two years. People angry at the alliance have held protests outside the homes of opposition politicians, whose security has been beefed up after threats on social media.
'ENDANGERING ISRAEL'
In a rare public warning, the head of the Shin Bet internal security agency said on Saturday that increasingly extreme online discourse could lead to violence.
While condemning violence and incitement, Netanyahu, 71, repeated his designation of the Lapid-Bennett coalition as a dangerous leftist alliance.
"This government is endangering Israel with such a danger the likes of which we have not seen for many years," he said.
"We, my friends and I in Likud, we will vehemently oppose the establishment of this dangerous government of fraud and surrender. And if, God forbid, it is established, we will bring it down very quickly."
Netanyahu said the politically diverse new coalition would not be able to stand up to the United States if Washington returns to a nuclear deal with Iran nor deal forcefully with Gaza's Hamas militants, who engaged Israel in 11 days of cross-border fighting last month.
He also criticised Facebook and Twitter, saying the two social media platforms, which he uses extensively, had been blocking legitimate right-wing criticism of the Lapid-Bennett coalition.
Netanyahu said Facebook had removed a right-wing post that included the address of a legislator where a protest had been set to take place. He said a left-wing post that listed the same address but called on demonstrators to support the lawmaker had not been taken down.
"It's a scientific case, simply scientific, clinical, that proves an attempt to shut up the right-wing," Netanyahu said.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for Facebook said:
"Privacy and the protection of personal information are important to helping people feel safe on our services.
"Under our global Community Standards, we do not allow people to post personal or confidential information about others, including people’s addresses and phone numbers, therefore we remove such content once we become aware of it."
