Foreign News
Former UK PM Boris Johnson says his gov’t underestimated COVID-19 threat
Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has acknowledged his government “got some things wrong” in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as he gave evidence at a public inquiry into his handling of the global health crisis.
In the first of two days in the witness box on Wednesday, Johnson apologised for “the pain and the loss and the suffering” caused to the families of the victims.
Testifying under oath, Johnson acknowledged that “we underestimated the scale and the pace of the challenge” when reports of a new virus began to emerge from China in early 2020.
The former prime minister has faced a barrage of criticism from former aides for alleged indecisiveness and a lack of scientific understanding during the pandemic.
Johnson – forced from office last year over lockdown breaching parties held in Downing Street during the pandemic – accepted that “mistakes” had “unquestionably” been made but repeatedly insisted he and officials did their “level best”. “I understand the feeling of the victims and their families and I’m deeply sorry for the pain and the loss and the suffering to those victims and their families,” he said.
Johnson, 59, was briefly interrupted as a protester was ordered out from the inquiry room after refusing to sit down during the apology.
Several others were also later removed.
“Inevitably we got some things wrong,” Johnson continued, adding he took personal responsibility for all the decisions made. “At the time I felt … we were doing our best in very difficult circumstances.”
![Protesters holds a placard reading "The dead can't hear your apologies" during a gathering outside the UK Covid-19 Inquiry building in west London, on December 6, 2023 [HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/dead-cant-hear-1701874429.jpeg?w=770&resize=770%2C492&quality=80)
Ex-Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the inquiry last week that he had tried to raise the alarm inside the government, saying thousands of lives could have been saved by putting the country under lockdown a few weeks earlier than the eventual date of March 23, 2020.
Britain went on to have one of Europe’s longest and strictest lockdowns, as well as one of the continent’s highest COVID-19 death tolls, with the coronavirus recorded as a cause of death for more than 232,000 people.
Grilled by inquiry lawyer Hugo Keith, Johnson acknowledged that he did not attend any of the government’s five crisis meetings on the new virus in February 2020, and only “once or twice” looked at meeting minutes from the government’s scientific advisory group. He said he relied on “distilled” advice from his science and medicine advisers.
Johnson’s understanding of specialist advice was doubted last month by his former chief scientific officer, Patrick Vallance, who said he was frequently “bamboozled” by data.
The ex-leader has also denied claims he said he would rather “let the bodies pile high” than impose another lockdown.
His former top aide Dominic Cummings and communications chief Lee Cain both criticised their ex-boss when they gave evidence at the inquiry.
Cummings, who has faced his own criticism for writing expletive-filled WhatsApp messages, said Johnson circulated a video to his scientific advisers of “a guy blowing a special hairdryer up his nose ‘to kill Covid’.”
Cain said COVID-19 was the “wrong crisis” for his ex-boss’s skillset, adding that he became “exhausted” by his alleged indecision in dealing with the crisis.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who was Johnson’s finance minister during the pandemic, is due to be questioned at the inquiry in the coming weeks.
Johnson – whose lengthy written submission to the inquiry will be published later on Wednesday – insisted the “overwhelming priority” of his government had been protecting the National Health Service (NHS) and saving lives.
Rebutting evidence that Britain fared worse than its European neighbours, he argued “every country struggled with a new pandemic” while noting the UK had an “extremely elderly population” and is one of the continent’s most densely populated countries.
Johnson, who was treated in intensive care for COVID-19 early on in the pandemic, has reportedly spent weeks with his lawyers, reviewing thousands of pages of evidence ahead of his testimony.
His grilling began with questions about a failure to provide about 5,000 WhatsApp messages on his phone from late January 2020 to June 2020.
“I don’t know the exact reason,” he claimed, adding the app had “somehow” automatically erased its chat history from that period. Asked if he had initiated a so-called factory reset, Johnson said: “I don’t remember any such thing”.
(Aljazeera)
Rescuers are rushing to locate dozens of people missing in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing, after a deadly landslide buried homes in the area, according to Chinese authorities.
The landslide took place around 9:10am (01:10 GMT) on Friday in Chongqing’s Pengshui county, killing eight people, leaving 34 unaccounted for and displacing more than 1,100, reported state media.
Footage shared by China’s CCTV broadcaster showed a huge buildup of rocks and dirt covering part of a residential and commercial street at the bottom of a mountain in the region.
Ten people have been rescued from the debris, including two who are seriously injured, reported China’s state-run Xinhua news agency.
Water, electricity and gas supplies were cut off within a one-kilometre (0.6-mile) radius of the landslide to prevent further disruptions. More than 800 rescuers have gone to the site, reported CCTV.
Authorities said they sent more than 8,000 disaster relief items to Chongqing, including tents, folding beds and family emergency kits.
Pengshui county is located in the southeast part of Chongqing, bordering the provinces of Hubei and Guizhou.
The area where the landslide happened is known for “unpredictable” steep terrain, a local official told a news conference, adding that dangerous rocks remain along the sides of the cliff.
The government has allocated 50 million yuan ($7.36m) in natural disaster relief funds to support the rescue and relief operations and to provide assistance to affected residents, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Emergency Management said.
[Aljazeera]
Almost 5,000 people are known to have died in two earthquakes that devastated Venezuela in June, but the United Nations estimates that as many as 50,000 people may still be missing – with many feared buried under rubble.
The number of confirmed deaths is now higher at 4,930, lawmaker Jorge Rodriguez announced on Thursday
The disaster almost a month ago impacted tens of thousands of others. Nearly 17,000 people are wounded, and 21,120 are living in shelters.
Venezuelan teams have been operating since the earthquake struck, but locals say their response has been slow.
“From the very first moment, from when the earthquake happened, there was an immediate response, but from civilians. Civilians and independent people. The state’s response is only being seen now,” Cinthia Pulido, a Venezuelan displaced by the earthquakes, told Al Jazeera. “We’re watching and waiting for some kind of answer.”
International rescue teams sent in the immediate aftermath of the disaster have left as the focus moves to providing humanitarian relief.
“The little I can get is just for me to survive, support my children, and help my mum,” Louismarez Paez, who has also been displaced, told Al Jazeera.
Her mother, she said, does not receive any assistance other than that which she herself provides.
Venezuela has ‘crucial resources’ it cannot access
Venezuela has faced tight US sanctions since 2015, which experts say is making the government’s job even harder.
“Venezuela has crucial resources that it is not being allowed to access,” Mark Weisbrot, senior economist and co-director at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said.
That includes $11bn blocked by the US and European countries that Venezuela “should legally have”, Weisbrot said.
Earlier this week, a group of 14 Democratic lawmakers in the US sent a letter urging the White House to ease economic sanctions on Venezuela to aid recovery efforts, according to a report from Spanish newspaper El Pais.
The sanctions, they wrote, are “severely hampering urgent relief efforts” and have “severely undermined the country’s response and reconstruction efforts”.
The UN estimates that the recovery efforts in Venezuela could cost the country $37bn.
[Aljazeera]
Argentina face the prospect of a Fifa fine after their players celebrated the World Cup semi-final win against England with a banner in support of their country’s claims to the Falkland Islands.
The defending world champions produced a dramatic late comeback in Atlanta, scoring twice to defeat Thomas Tuchel’s side 2-1 and book a showdown with Spain in Sunday’s final.
After the final whistle, Argentina players celebrated while holding a banner reading “Las Malvinas son Argentinas”, which translates as “The Falklands are Argentine”.
The Falkland Islands, a British overseas territory in the south-west Atlantic Ocean, remain the subject of a sovereignty dispute between Britain and Argentina.
The two nations went to war over the group of islands, situated 300 miles off Argentina’s east coast, from April to June 1982.
The 74-day conflict led to the deaths of 655 Argentine and 255 British servicemen. Three people from the islands also died.
In 2014, Fifa fined the Argentine Football Association 20,000 pounds after its players held up a banner with the same message before a friendly against Slovenia.
World football’s governing body said the gesture had breached rules on political action and team misconduct.
[BBC]
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