WHO probe of origins of coronavirus takes team to Wuhan site

WUHAN, China — Members of a World Health Organization team investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic visited another Wuhan hospital that had treated early COVID-19 patients on their second full day of work Saturday.

Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital was one of the first in the Chinese city to deal with patients in early 2020 suffering from a then-unknown virus and is a key part of the epidemiological history of the disease.

“Just back from visit at Jinyintan hospital, that specialised in infectious diseases and was designated for treatment of the first cases in Wuhan,” Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans said in a post on Twitter. “Stories quite similar to what I have heard from our ICU doctors.”

Zoologist Peter Daszak of the U.S. group EcoHealth Alliance, who is a member of the team, said in a tweet that the visit was an “important opportunity to talk directly” with medics who were fighting the virus at the critical time.

The team’s first face-toface meetings with Chinese scientists took place Friday, before the experts who specialize in animal health, virology, food safety and epidemiology visited another early site of the outbreak, the Hubei Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine Hospital.

There have been more than 102 million confirmed coronavirus cases around the world and over 2.2 million deaths from COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Indian farmers’ hunger strike:

Indian farmers taking part in more than two months of protest against new agriculture laws began a daylong hunger strike Saturday, as they sought to reaffirm the peaceful nature of their movement following recent clashes with police.

Farmer leaders said the hunger strike was timed to coincide with the death anniversary of Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, who was famed for his nonviolent resistance to colonial rule. Nevertheless, the protesters said they remained furious at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government.

Tens of thousands of farmers have been camped on the edge of New Delhi since November, seeking the repeal of laws passed in September that they say will favor large agribusiness and corporations, devastate the earnings of many farmers and leave those with small plots behind.

Modi and his allies say the laws are necessary to modernize Indian agriculture. Multiple rounds of talks between the two sides have been unsuccessful

Massive NJ fire:

A huge fire engulfed a recycling plant overnight in northern New Jersey and raged into Saturday as firefighters battled flames, wind and cold that turned water from their hoses into ice. Officials warned it could burn for days.

Two firefighters suffered minor injuries, but all 70 employees at the Atlantic Coast Fibers plant are accounted for, Passaic Mayor Hector Lora said.

The blaze broke out around midnight, shooting flames into the dark as more than two dozen fire departments responded. There were at least two explosions, one involving a truck with gas tanks on it, Lora said.

Smoke billowed into the sky even after sunup, and Lora said firefighters planned to tap the Passaic River to keep dousing an inferno that could take days to extinguish.

The cause is under investigation, an official said.

Myanmar denies coup threat:

Myanmar’s military on Saturday denied that controversial statements by its chief were meant as a threat to stage a coup, claiming the media had misinterpreted his words.

Political tension in the Southeast Asian nation soared last week after a spokesman for the military said a coup could not be ruled out if military complaints of widespread voting fraud in last November’s election were ignored.

The commander-inchief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, had told senior officers in a speech Wednesday that the constitution could be revoked if the laws were not being properly enforced. Adding to the concern was the unusual deployment of armored vehicles in the streets of several large cities. Saturday’s statement from the military said that “some organizations and media” wrote without foundation when they said the military threatened to revoke the constitution. The statement said Min Aung Hlaing’s speech was taken out of context, and was actually an observation to senior officer trainees on the nature of the constitution.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party captured 396 out of 476 seats in the Nov. 8 polls, allowing them to form the government for another five years. The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party won only 33 seats.

Ethiopia’s Tigray region unsettled:

Ethiopia’s government has privately told Biden administration staffers its embattled Tigray region has “returned to normalcy,” but new witness accounts describe terrified Tigray residents hiding in bullet-marked homes and a vast rural area where effects of the fighting and food shortages are yet unknown.

The conflict that began in November between Ethiopian forces and those of the Tigray region who dominated the government for nearly three decades continues largely in shadow. Some communications links are severed, residents are scared to give details by phone and almost all journalists are blocked. Thousands of people have died.

Despite Ethiopia’s latest assertions, its recently appointed administrators in Tigray have estimated that more than 4.5 million people, or close to the region’s entire population, need emergency food aid and some people have begun dying of starvation.

Famed investigator on life support:

Jack Palladino, the private investigator who worked on high-profile cases ranging from the Jonestown mass suicides to celebrity and political scandals, has been placed on life support after suffering a head injury during an attempted robbery.

Palladino, 70, had just stepped outside his San Francisco home Thursday to try out his new camera when a car pulled up and a man jumped out to grab it from him, police and the detective’s stepson Nick Chapman told the San Francisco Chronicle.

As the suspect grabbed the camera, Palladino fell and hit his head on the pavement, causing a head injury.

Chapman said Palladino was not expected to survive after undergoing surgery.

Among Palladino’s more famous cases involved Bill Clinton, whose 1992 presidential campaign hired him to quell rumors of his extramarital affairs, and Courtney Love, who hired Palladino to talk to journalists investigating whether she played a role in the 1994 death of her husband, rock star Kurt Cobain.

Police said no suspects have been arrested.

GETTY-AFP A joint effort involving Saudi-backed Sudanese-Yemeni military experts removes and deactivates some 5,000 landmines Saturday, which they said were planted by the Iran-aligned Huthi rebels in Yemen’s northern coastal town of Midi, located in the conflict-ridden Hajjah governorate near the border with Saudi Arabia on the Red Sea.