Europe Aims to Emerge Smarter From Latest Lockdowns

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One by one, governments across Europe are reintroducing strict new measures to tame a resurgent pandemic after concluding that light-touch strategies aimed at containing Covid-19 have failed to keep infections in check. Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, Austria and Belgium are all now back under pandemic-containment regimes similar to those imposed in the spring, with bars … Read more

Public-Health Experts Rethink Lockdowns as Covid Cases Surge

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As Covid-19 cases surge across large parts of Europe and the U.S., officials are reluctant to force another round of nationwide lockdowns of the sort imposed in March. But this time—unlike in the spring—public-health experts broadly and increasingly agree, with some worried that the general public won’t cooperate with another monthslong, generalized lockdown against a … Read more

Honduran Migrant Caravan Disbands in Guatemala

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MEXICO CITY—A caravan of several thousand Honduran migrants that set out last week for the U.S. via Guatemala and Mexico had virtually disbanded by Monday after Guatemalan authorities turned many of them back and Mexico prepared to halt them at its border. “Fortunately the caravan from Honduras isn’t continuing,” Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador … Read more

New Migrant Caravan From Honduras Heads Toward U.S. Border

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MEXICO CITY—A group of about 3,000 Honduran migrants, including many women and children, overwhelmed soldiers and police and crossed into Guatemala on Thursday, heading toward the U.S. southern border to flee poverty and rising joblessness brought by the coronavirus pandemic. With the U.S. presidential election a little more than a month away, the new caravan … Read more

Venezuela’s Food Chain Is Breaking, and Millions Go Hungry

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Ana Nuñez, a 62-year-old retired municipal worker in western Venezuela, says her meals often consist of just a few corn-flour pancakes, known as arepas. Even when she has money to buy groceries in the city of Maracaibo’s teeming flea market, she said that “instead of quality food they sell garbage, like animal hides and rotten … Read more

Coronavirus Deals Setback to Global Vaccination Programs, Gates Report Finds

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The Covid-19 pandemic has driven nearly 37 million people into extreme poverty and reversed two decades of progress in vaccinating children against once-common childhood diseases, according to a new report by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The number of people living in extreme poverty globally has risen 7.1% so far this year in the … Read more

Covid-19 Forces 100,000 Venezuelan Migrants Back to Broken Country

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CHOCONTÁ, Colombia—Haggard and hungry, Nelson Torrelles took a midmorning breather at a truck stop after walking for hours with his wife and 5-year-old daughter along a Colombian highway leading back to their home in Venezuela. Three hundred more miles, many to be covered on foot, remained. The Torrelles family are among the five million Venezuelans … Read more

How Coronavirus Overpowered the World Health Organization

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GENEVA—Sylvie Briand landed in China looking for answers. Nearly a month had passed since word of a mysterious pneumonia had emerged. It was now late January and the World Health Organization was struggling to learn more about it. Frustrated with mounting cases and limited information from China, the WHO’s top brass, including Dr. Briand, flew … Read more

China’s CDC, Built to Stop Pandemics Like Covid, Stumbled When It Mattered Most

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BEIJING—Before going to bed, George Gao, the head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, typically completes his 10,000 steps for the day and then checks the news online. When he scanned his feed on Dec. 30, he was stunned. Two leaked local-government notices warned about cases of unexplained pneumonia in the Chinese … Read more

Lebanese Face Threat of Widespread Hunger After Beirut Explosion

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BEIRUT—In the wake of the massive explosion that devastated large parts of the Lebanese capital, a new danger is stalking the struggling country: hunger. The early August blast, which killed more than 150 people and displaced hundreds of thousands from their homes, destroyed the grain silos storing most of the country’s wheat supplies and badly … Read more