AUSTRALIAN PM TESTS POSITIVE FOR COVID FOR SECOND TIME
SYDNEY/WELLINGTON: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday afternoon and would work from home while isolating.
“I encourage anyone who is unwell to test and to take any extra precautions to keep their families and neighbours well,” Albanese said in a statement.
It is the second Covid infection for Albanese, who was sidelined for some of the national election campaign earlier this year after a positive test.
Meanwhile, New Zealand is launching an inquiry into whether it made the right decisions in battling Covid-19 and how it can better prepare for future pandemics.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday the coronavirus had posed the greatest threat to the nation’s health and economy since World War II.
She said now was an appropriate time to examine the government’s response. Among the questions will be whether or not New Zealand took the right approach initially by imposing strict lockdowns and border restrictions in order to try and wipe out the virus entirely.
MARSEILLE: French writer Dominique Lapierre, the author of best-selling books on India like Freedom at Midnight and City of Joy and whose novels sold tens of millions of copies, has died.
“At 91, he died of old age,” his wife Dominique ConchonLapierre told the French newspaper Var-Matin on Sunday.
She added that she is “at peace and serene since Dominique is no longer suffering”.
Born on July 30, 1931, in Chatelaillon, Lapierre has sold about 50 million copies of the six books he wrote in collaboration with the American writer Larry Collins - the most famous being Is Paris Burning?
The non-fiction book published in 1965 chronicled the events leading up to August 1944, when Nazi Germany surrendered control of the French capital, and was adapted for the silver screen by Francis Ford Coppola and Gore Vidal.
His 1985 novel City of Joy - about the hardships of a rickshaw puller in Kolkata - was also a massive success. A movie based on it was released in 1992, starring Patrick Swayze and directed by Roland Joffe. Lapierre donated the bulk of his royalties from City of Joy to support humanitarian projects in India.
When he visited Mother Teresa in Kolkata in the early 1980s, he presented her with $50,000, admitting it was “only a drop in the ocean of need”.
The Albanian nun reportedly replied: “If this drop did not exist, even the ocean would not”.
In 2005, Lapierre said that thanks to his funding of humanitarian work, as well as donations from readers, it became “possible to cure a million tuberculosis patients in 24 years (and) to care for 9,000 children with leprosy”.
“It’s not enough to just be a best-selling author,” said the adventure-loving novelist, who spoke fluent Bengali.
“You need to fight against the injustices you write about in your books.”
‘Idol’ in West Bengal
Born to a diplomat father and a journalist mother, Lapierre worked as a reporter for French magazine Paris-Match in the 1950s - a job that sent him around the world.
In West Bengal, he was “revered as an idol” - according to a 2012 article by Paris Match magazine - when he banged the drum for funding for humanitarian centres as donations dried up following the economic crisis in the United States and Europe.