Archives for April 2021

Putin calls Argentine leader with COVID despite Sputnik shot

MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin on Monday called his Argentine counterpart, who has tested positive for COVID-19 despite receiving a Russian vaccine.

The Kremlin said in its readout of the call that Argentine President Alberto Fernández told Putin that he only had minor symptoms thanks to receiving the Sputnik V vaccine. Fernández thanked Russia for offering assistance in fighting the coronavirus and expressed interest in getting additional supplies of the Russian vaccine, according to the Kremlin statement.

Putin congratulated Fernández, who turned 62 on Friday, on his birthday and wished him a quick recovery.

In a tweet Saturday, Fernández said he had a headache and was experiencing a fever of 37.3 Celsius (99.1 Fahrenheit). He said he otherwise has slight symptoms, is isolating and is “physically well.”

The Argentine president received a dose of Sputnik V on Jan. 21 and a second dose a few days later.

The Russian Gamaleya Institute, which produced the vaccine, tweeted that it wished the president a quick recovery, and said the vaccine has a 91.6% rate of effectiveness against infection and 100% against critical cases.

More than 650,000 people in Argentina have received both scheduled shots of the vaccine and only about 1,000 of those have been found to be infected more than 14 days after the final dose, according to national health statistics.

None of the vaccines used against the new coronavirus completely eliminate infections, though they have been shown to sharply reduce the rate of infection and its severity.

___

Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at:

https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic

https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine

https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

SKorea’s LG to exit loss-making mobile phone business

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean electronics maker LG said Monday it is getting out of its loss-making mobile phone business to focus on electric vehicle components, robotics, artificial intelligence and other products and services.

LG’s board approved the shift in strategy and the company expects to fully exit the mobile phone business by the end of July, it said in a statement.

LG was once the third-largest mobile phone maker but has lost market share to Chinese and other competitors.

It was still No. 3 in North America, with a 13% market share behind Apple’s 39% and Samsung’s 30% as of the third-quarter of 2020, according to Counterpoint Technology Market Research.

LG earlier said it was assessing its strategy as it reported that its sales rose 5% from a year earlier in the last quarter of 2020 but profitability declined do to sluggish sales of premium products.

The company said it was selling its phone inventory and would continue to provide services and support for various periods of time depending on where they are sold.

Details related to jobs would be decided “at the local level,” it said.

The company’s shares fell 2.5% on Monday.

Fired-up Alexander-Arnold heads into CL with point to prove

It was the kind of cross that few in world football could have expected to deliver, certainly not a player whose status has apparently plunged to being the fourth best right back in England.

Yet there was Trent Alexander-Arnold, bending in a stunning delivery with whip, pace and precision from the right wing for Diogo Jota to head home and set Liverpool on its way to a big Premier League win at Arsenal.

Alexander-Arnold turned away, pumped both fists and — with a fierce stare — gave out a guttural roar. It was a release of emotion that probably wasn’t lost on England coach Gareth Southgate.

Or Real Madrid.

Liverpool heads into its matchup with Madrid in the Champions League quarterfinals with some of its key players back on song after a difficult season — among them a player who, in a way, has redefined the right-back role.

From his position out wide, Alexander-Arnold has been the most creative player on a team that has conquered Europe and, finally after 30 years, the English game over the past couple of years.

His long-range passing, his set pieces and most obviously his assists have made him arguably the world’s stand-out right back since 2018, even if his defending has been the subject of criticism on occasion.

This season, though, his level has dipped. He missed some of the condensed preseason after contracting the coronavirus and then picked up some niggly injuries. Playing in a patched-up Liverpool defense missing injured center backs Virgil van Dijk, Joe Gomez then Joel Matip hardly helped Alexander-Arnold during the middle part of the season as the champions’ Premier League title defense imploded and its star right back visibly struggled for confidence.

One game particularly stood out: the 1-0 loss to Southampton on Jan. 4 when Alexander-Arnold gave the ball away 38 times, a league-high for the season, before being substituted in the 77th minute.

The last couple of months have been more like the Alexander-Arnold of recent seasons, however, even if that wasn’t enough to convince Southgate to pick him in his most recent England squad — the last before Southgate must choose his 23-man group for this summer’s European Championship.

That left Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp flabbergasted.

“I am not criticizing Gareth Southgate, and I don’t want to have an argument. I respect his role and his decisions,” Klopp said. “But I know the player better than anybody else, any other coach, and I can say that he is a world-class player, and not only offensively.”

In Southgate’s opinion, Kieran Trippier, Kyle Walker and Reece James are in better form than Alexander-Arnold. To Klopp, that should not matter.

“If you compare Lionel Messi every year with his best season ever, then he is not performing now like he was performing in 2005 and 2006 maybe,” Klopp said. “But he is still the world’s best player.”

Thankfully for Liverpool, whereas Messi is 33, Alexander-Arnold is 22. The best years of his career are, in theory, ahead of him.

Indeed, England’s loss might be Liverpool’s gain in the short term. Alexander-Arnold was able to have a couple of weeks off from the intensity of competition, train hard with Liverpool, and recharge his batteries ahead of the season run-in that will see the Reds attempt to win the Champions League for the second time in three years and get back into the top four of the Premier League.

“For us, it was not a character test or whatever. What we did was not two weeks working on how we can show Gareth Southgate that he was not right with his decision,” Klopp said Monday. “What we wanted to do was to get Trent to play his best football. What he did quite a few times in the past for us.”

Liverpool’s right-hand side looks well-equipped to cause Madrid problems in the first leg at the Santiago Bernabeu on Tuesday, with winger Mohamed Salah also scoring against Arsenal in the 3-0 win.

Madrid coach Zinedine Zidane must choose between Marcelo and Ferland Mendy at left back. Mendy, in particular, has struggled defensively in a 3-5-2 formation that Zidane sometimes uses when switching from a traditional 4-3-3. Madrid is also without its central-defensive stalwart Sergio Ramos.

So expect balls to fly into the area from the flank of the re-energized Alexander-Arnold, probably English football’s best crosser since David Beckham.

Alexander-Arnold is playing with a point to prove as he seeks a way back into the England squad for the Euros. And that can only benefit Liverpool in its quest to finish a difficult season with the high of a seventh European Cup title.

___

More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

___

AP Sports Writer Tales Azzoni in Madrid contributed to this story.

___

Steve Douglas is at https://twitter.com/sdouglas80

Twitter slowdown in Russia until mid-May; no block for now

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian authorities said Monday they would continue to slow down Twitter until mid-May, but wouldn’t block the social media platform for now because it has started to remove banned content faster.

The announcement marks somewhat of a reprieve in the recent standoff between the Russian government and the platform, which has played a role in amplifying dissent in Russia.

Russia’s state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor accused Twitter last month of failing to remove content encouraging suicide among children, as well as information about drugs and child pornography. The agency announced on March 10 it was slowing down the speed of uploading photos and videos to the platform, and less then a week later threatened to block it within a month if it continues to not comply with the demands.

In response to the accusations, Twitter has emphasized its policy of zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation, the promotion of suicide and drug sales.

Roskomnadzor said in a statement Monday that it decided not to block the social media platform, “taking into account the decision made by Twitter for the first time to change the principles and speed of its own moderation service in Russia, and the removal of a significant part of the prohibited content.”

The agency said that Twitter has taken down around 1,900 of 3,100 posts containing child pornography, and information about drugs and suicide. The platform has increased the speed of deleting banned content, according to Roskomnadzor — it currently takes 81 hours to do it. Still, Russian laws require social media to take down prohibited content within 24 hours of being notified about it.

In light of these developments, Roskomnadzor will continue to slow down Twitter until May 15, giving it “additional time to remove all prohibited content … and bring its operations into full compliance” with Russian law.

Russian authorities criticized social media platforms earlier this year for bringing tens of thousands of people into the streets across the country in January to demand the release of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is President Vladimir Putin’s most well-known critic. The wave of demonstrations was the largest in years and posed a major challenge to the Kremlin.

The authorities alleged that social media platforms failed to remove calls for children to join the protests. Putin has urged police to act more to monitor social media platforms and to track down those who draw children into “illegal and unsanctioned street actions.”

The Russian government’s efforts to tighten control of the internet and social media date back to 2012, when a law allowing authorities to blacklist and block certain online content was adopted. Since then, a growing number of restrictions targeting messaging apps, websites and social media platforms have been introduced in Russia.

The government has repeatedly aired threats to block Facebook and Twitter, but stopped short of outright bans — probably fearing the move would elicit too much public outrage. Only the social network LinkedIn, which wasn’t very popular in Russia, has been banned by authorities for the failure to store its user data in Russia.

European countries scramble to tamp down latest virus surge

BOCHNIA, Poland (AP) — European countries scrambled Monday to tamp down a surge in COVID-19 cases and ramp up vaccinations, hoping to spare hospitals from becoming overwhelmed by the pandemic’s latest deadly wave of infections.

The crush of coronavirus patients has been relentless for hospitals in Poland, where daily new infections hit records of over 35,000 on two recent days and the government ordered new restrictions to prevent large gatherings over the long Easter weekend. France’s health minister warned that the number of intensive care unit patients could match levels from a year ago.

But in a sign of the disparities from one country to the next, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that barbers, gyms and outdoor bar and restaurant patios would be able to open next week after the country reported progress with vaccines and its recent lockdown. Meanwhile, the U.S. vaccination campaign kept accelerating, with 40 percent of the nation’s adult population receiving at least one dose.

On Sunday, coronavirus patients filled almost all of the 120 beds at the County Hospital of Bochnia, 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of the southern city of Krakow. One patient, 82-year-old Edward Szumanski, voiced concern that some people still refuse to see the virus that has killed over 2.8 million people worldwide as a threat. About 55,000 of those deaths have occurred in Poland.

“The disease is certainly there, and it is very serious. Those who have not been through it, those who do not have it in their family, may be deluding themselves, but the reality is different,” he said.

The more contagious and more aggressive virus variant identified in Britain is fueling much of the increase in Europe. Meanwhile, voters in many countries are angry at the European Union’s strategy but also at their own governments’ handling of the pandemic and the failure to prevent repeated spikes in infections.

France’s health minister, Olivier Veran, warned Monday that the number of COVID-19 patients in the country’s intensive care units might match the level of the first crisis a year ago. Speaking on TF1 television, he said the country could approach the ICU saturation levels of April 2020, when French ICUs held more than 7,000 virus patients, many of whom were in temporary facilities because demand far outstripped the country’s pre-pandemic ICU capacity.

Veran expressed hope that France’s new infections could peak this week thanks to new partial lockdown measures. After long resisting calls for a new lockdown, the French government closed schools and shuttered all non-essential stores nationwide and imposed travel restrictions for four weeks.

“We will manage,” Veran said.

The British government announced Monday that all adults and children will be able to have routine coronavirus tests twice a week as a way to stamp out new outbreaks. The tests are being introduced as Johnson announces the next steps in the country’s road map out of its three-month lockdown.

Britain has recorded almost 127,000 coronavirus deaths, the highest toll in Europe. But both infections and deaths have fallen sharply during the lockdown and since the start of a vaccination campaign that so far has given a first dose to more than 31 million people, or 6 in 10 adults.

Authorities in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, introduced tighter lockdown restrictions following a recent spike in virus cases. All schools in the city of 3 million people will be closed for the next two weeks, and only people with special passes will be allowed on public transport.

“The hospitals are almost full. The situation is difficult,” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

Elsewhere, North Macedonia has delayed mass immunization amid vaccine shortages as its hospitals fill up following record new COVID-19 infections and deaths last week.

In Greece, which is struggling to emerge from a deep recession, most retail stores were allowed to reopen Monday despite an ongoing surge in COVID-19 infections. Lockdown measures have been in force since early November, although shops opened briefly around the Christmas season. The prolonged closures piled pressure on the economy.

Serbia also has eased measures against the coronavirus despite high numbers of infections and a slowdown in vaccinations. The government on Monday allowed bars and restaurants to serve guests outside at reduced capacity and with respect of social distancing rules.

In the U.S., a top public health official said young people are driving the latest uptick in COVID-19 cases, as the increasing rate of vaccination in older Americans prevents the most serious cases among seniors.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cited the increasing spread of variants as well as a rise in youth sports and extracurricular activities as factors contributing to the steady increase in cases over the last four weeks.

But Walensky pointed to positive developments among seniors, who are the most vulnerable age group. Senior virus deaths have fallen to their lowest level since the early fall. More than 75% of those age 65 or older nationally have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and nearly 55% are fully vaccinated.

“What we’re seeing is both a decrease in emergency department visits as well as hospitalizations associated with that demographic,” she said Monday.

More than 23% of all adults in the U.S. are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.

Many states are making vaccines available to younger demographics. Starting Monday, any adult in Florida is eligible to receive the vaccine. In addition, the state announced that 16- and 17-year-olds also could get the vaccine with parental permission.

___

Charlton reported from Paris. Associated Press writers Michael Kunzelman in College Park, Maryland; Jill Lawless in London; Zeke Miller in Washington; Yuras Karmanau in Kyiv, Ukraine; Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Serbia; Konstantin Testorides in Skopje, North Macedonia; Derek Gatopoulos in Athens, Greece; and Costas Kantouris in Thessaloniki, Greece, contributed to this report.

Archives for April 2021

Footer