World Holocaust Forum: Leaders gather to denounce anti-Semitism - The - The Washington Post

Ammar Awad Reuters Visitors enter the Hall of Names to look at pictures of Jews killed in the Holocaust during a visit to the Holocaust History Museum at the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Jan. 15, 2020.

JERUSALEM — Leaders from almost 50 countries gathered here Thursday to mark 75 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp and, drawing on the memory of its horrors, to mount a united stand against the resurgence of anti-Semitism around the world.

Vice President Pence and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi were among the dignitaries and delegations filling Yad Vashem, the city’s somber memorial to the Holocaust’s 6 million Jewish victims, for the World Holocaust Forum, one of the largest international events ever hosted by Israel.

Leaders of World War II’s four allied powers addressed the body, including Pence, Britain’s Prince Charles, French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin, along with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

[All eyes on Putin as world leaders gather in Jerusalem amid hopes for backpacker jailed in Russia]

 With about 100 of the fast-dwindling number of Holocaust survivors present, participants warned that the hatred that fostered the industrial murder that took many of their families is festering again in incidents both trivial and terrorizing, from swastikas painted on gravestones to mass shootings at synagogues.

Now is the time, organizers said, to turn honoring the victims of the Holocaust into a real-time call to action.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I commit that those words, ‘Never Again,’ will not be an empty slogan, but will be an ongoing decree, an imperative that must be followed,” said Netanyahu. He called the unprecedented gathering “a sign of hope.”

Rivlin warned that “if we do not remember, then history can be repeated.”

“Anti-Semitism is a chronic disease,” Rivlin said. “It comes from left and right, taking on and discarding forms during history.”

Moshe Kantor, the Russian philanthropist and president of the World Holocaust Forum Foundation who organized the gathering, compared the moment to attempts by world leaders to address rising anti-Jewish violence in Europe eight decades ago at a conference in Evian, France.

Pool

Via Reuters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara receive Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of the World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem, Jan. 23, 2020.

The 1938 Evian Conference “ended up with no agreement and no result,” Kantor said in an interview, a failure that paved the way for the atrocities that followed. “This is why the level of anti-Semitism in the world should serve as a moral barometer.”

President Trump, who has been criticized for not condemning anti-Semitic rhetoric by some of his supporters, including at a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, did not attend the forum. But along with other heads of state, the president did provide a comment to be collected in a commemorative album about the event.

“We have a fundamental and collective duty to ensure that each new generation knows the truth,” Trump wrote. “The lessons of the Holocaust must forever be engrained in the consciousness so that we can fulfill our solemn and sacred promise that such evil and hatred will never again come to power.”

Pence, in his remarks, joined the call to link historic atrocities — such as those exposed when Soviet soldiers entered the gates of Auschwitz — with more recent offenses.

“We must confront and expose the rising tide of vile anti-Semitism fueling hate and violence across the broader world,” Pence said.

He and Netanyahu both singled out Iran as a particular threat. ,Pence said Tehran is the “one government in the world that denies the Holocaust as a matter of state policy and threatens to wipe Israel off the map.”

Prince Charles, whose paternal grandmother Princess Alice is honored by Israel for hiding a Jewish family in Athens during the Holocaust, cited his personal connection to many survivors, and to today’s victims of hatred.

“The Holocaust must never be allowed to become simply a fact of history,” he said. “We must be vigilant in discerning these ever-changing threats.”

The gathering of the World Holocaust Forum all but took over the Holy City, closing streets and schools and drawing more than 11,000 security officers from around the country and some 500 journalists from around the world (including 107 who came with Putin). Hotels scrambled to accommodate presidents and princes as motorcades filled roads otherwise as quiet as a Saturday sabbath.

With the city overbooked with world leaders, the U.S. delegation, not headed by a head of state, was staying not in one of the luxury hotels near the Old City, but at the local Crown Plaza, a hotel better known for bus tours of young visitors than high-level diplomacy.

Many of the participants were traveling straight from another global gathering, the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. Among those who had planned to make the trip was Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and keeper of the long-delayed White House “Deal of the Century” peace proposal between Israel and the Palestinians.

Kushner, however, canceled his stop in Jerusalem on Wednesday, citing potential weather-related flight delays and quashing speculation, for now, that the debut of “the deal” was imminent.

Plenty of other politicians did find their way into the solemn gathering, however. Macron caused a stir when he was shown shouting at Israeli security personnel as he was entering the Church of St. Anne, a medieval edifice owned by the French government. The vocal dispute apparently had to do with whether French or Israeli security would escort Macron into the nave, a reflection of the byzantine turf conflicts that riddle Jerusalem’s holy sites. (Control of the nearby Church of the Sepulcher is divided among six separate Christian sects.)

Ammar Awad

AP

Vice President Pence and his wife Karen disembark from a plane upon their arrival at Ben Gurion International Airport to attend the World Holocaust Forum, Jan. 23, 2020.

Andrzej Duda, president of Poland, where Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps were located, boycotted the gathering entirely in protest of not being offered a speaking role at the Yad Vashem ceremony. The perceived snub came amid a growing blame-game between Poland and Russia over who started World War II. Duda has accused Putin of spreading a “historical lie” about Poland’s willingness to help the Nazis while downplaying Russia’s own nonaggression pact with Germany. Duda will attend commemorative events at Auschwitz on Monday.

Locally, though, Israelis were fixated on Putin, particularly whether he would use his visit to announce the release of a 27-year-old American Israeli backpacker imprisoned in Russia on minor drug charges. The case is widely seen as part of a wider geopolitical tussle between Russia and the United States, including efforts by Washington to have an alleged Russian hacker extradited from Israel.

The plight of the New Jersey-born Na’ama Issachar, who was found with a small amount of hashish when transiting the Moscow airport on a flight from India, has become a cause celebre here. “Free Na’ama” signs hang over highways, and her mother has become a frequent, pleading presence on television.

Putin appeared with the mother Thursday after meeting Netanyahu at the prime minister’s residence, telling her that “everything will be fine” and promising to consider her request to let her daughter come home.

Pence was also scheduled to meet with Netanyahu, and the prime ministered personally welcomed Pelosi and the U.S. congressional delegation. Both also met briefly with Benny Gantz, the former Israeli army chief who is Netanyahu’s main rival in a year-long political standoff. Israel is holding its third election in a year in March, with the prime minister under indictment on corruption charges.

Another fraught encounter is possible for Pence in the person of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the leader at the center of impeachment proceedings in Washington. Pence skipped Zelenksy’s inauguration in May at a time when Trump was seeking to pressure the Ukrainian to investigate a Democratic rival.

It was unclear if the two would bump into each other on the Yad Vashem stage, however. Zelensky reportedly surrendered his seat during the main ceremony at Yad Vashem to Holocaust survivors.

Pence was also planning a visit with his wife to the Western “Wailing” Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City. Putin was slated to visit the West Bank city of Bethlehem for a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Putin attended the dedication of a new Jerusalem memorial to the Siege of Leningrad in the 1940s. About 800,000 people died during the more than two years the city, now known as St. Petersburg, was under siege, including many Jews.

More than a million Russian-speaking Jews emigrated to Israel after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, and they have carved out a central role in Israeli politics and culture. The memorial, a soaring bronze tower, was funded by Jewish organizations and the city councils of St. Petersburg and Jerusalem.

Russian immigrants are a growing presence in Israeli politics and culture, and the memorial, a soaring bronze tower, was funded by Jewish organizations and the city councils of St. Petersburg and Jerusalem.

Isabelle Khurshudyan in Moscow contributed to this report.

Read more:

How Helene, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, became Leila, the matriarch of a Palestinian Muslim clan

On his first day in Jerusalem, France’s Macron rips into Israeli security

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2020-01-23 14:46:00Z
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Live Updates: 75 Years After Auschwitz Liberation, Leaders Gather Against Rise of Anti-Semitism - The New York Times

Here’s what you need to know:

• Putin, Pence and Prince Charles join luminaries in Jerusalem.
• The Russian president hinted at a deal to free an Israeli woman.
• Holocaust survivors should get my seats, Ukraine’s leader says.
• Pence: ‘He’s unstoppable. Like somebody else I know.’
• Auschwitz survivors dwindle as the 75th anniversary arrives.

World leaders gathered at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem on Thursday.Credit...Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

Putin, Pence and Prince Charles join luminaries in Jerusalem.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Vice President Mike Pence and the Prince of Wales joined dozens of Western leaders in Jerusalem on Thursday morning at Yad Vashem, the hillside memorial to the Holocaust, for an extraordinary demonstration of resolve to fight anti-Semitism.

The afternoon ceremony recalled the Jan. 27, 1945, liberation of Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in occupied Poland where 1.1 million people perished, by Red Army troops. But it drew pointed connections to the resurgence of anti-Semitism across much of Europe and North America.

President Reuven Rivlin of Israel stressed that Israel’s establishment was “not a compensation for the Holocaust,” but a return to the homeland of the Jewish people. He said Israel sought from other nations a “partnership, a full-fledged one in the battle against anti-Semitism.”

“Anti-Semitism has not changed, but, yes, we have,” Mr. Rivlin said. “The state of Israel is not a victim. We will always defend ourselves in our country. And we will always be responsible for Jewish communities abroad, for their safety and security.”

Mr. Pence and his wife, Karen Pence, arrived in Israel on Air Force Two on Thursday morning. It was not his first official visit to commemorate the camp’s liberation: Last winter, he visited the concentration camp, alongside President Andrzej Duda of Poland.

“We just felt waves of emotion,” Mr. Pence said about his time there.

Later Thursday, Mr. Pence is scheduled to visit the Western Wall and will also meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the new, and hotly contested, location of the United States Embassy in Jerusalem.

It is the biggest political gathering in Israel’s history, and the Holy City was teeming with police officers, with some schools canceling classes and the main highway from the airport closed as motorcades streamed through with arriving heads of state.

The event has not been without moments of friction: Mr. Macron’s visit Tuesday afternoon to a church in the Old City that France considers its sovereign territory was briefly marred by a dispute between Mr. Macron and accompanying Israeli security officers.

For Mr. Netanyahu, the presence of so many global chieftains — and the opportunity to meet with them in bilateral talks — was an important boon at an opportune time. Mr. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving leader, is battling for his political life, awaiting trial on serious corruption charges even as he campaigns for re-election in the third ballot in a year, set to take place on March 2. The previous two elections were inconclusive.

His centrist opponent, Benny Gantz, a former army chief, was holding his own meetings, including a morning session with a bipartisan delegation from the United States Congress that included the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

The Russian president hinted at a deal to free an Israeli woman.

After months of hope and suspense in Israel, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia hinted soon after his arrival that the painful saga of a young Israeli woman imprisoned in Russia might be coming to an end, telling her mother, “Everything will be fine.”

The Israeli-American citizen, Naama Issachar, 26, was sentenced last year to a long prison term in Russia after the authorities found a few grams of marijuana in her luggage as she waited at a Moscow airport to board a connecting flight home.

Ms. Issachar’s mother, Yaffa Issachar, joined Mr. Putin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for part of a breakfast meeting in Jerusalem. She had spent months in Russia dealing with lawyers and the authorities and leading an emotional public campaign for her daughter’s release, winning the hearts of many Israelis.

Ms. Issachar and the two leaders, along with Sara Netanyahu, the prime minister’s wife, emerged from the meeting on Thursday smiling.

“I have just met with Naama’s mother,” Mr. Putin said, speaking in Russian. “It’s clear to me that Naama comes from a very good and decent family.”

“The mother is very worried, and I see this,” he added. “I told her, and I would like to repeat it, that everything will be fine.

Apparently referring to Mr. Netanyahu’s push for a pardon for Naama Issachar, Mr. Putin said he was aware of the Israeli leader’s position, adding, “All this will be taken into account in the taking of a final decision.” He said that Ms. Issachar would meet later Thursday with the person responsible for maintaining human rights in Russia.

Holocaust survivors should get my seats, Ukraine’s leader says.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine arrived in Israel before dawn on Thursday and quickly stirred up dust, announcing that he would not attend the Yad Vashem commemoration.

He asked that his delegation’s seats be given instead to Holocaust survivors, following the lead of several Israeli government ministers who had done so after learning that only a few dozen survivors would be among the nearly 800 guests at the ceremony.

“These people deserve these honors most of all,” Mr. Zelensky, Ukraine’s first Jewish president, said on Twitter. He headed instead to the Western Wall for a private visit.

But officials at Yad Vashem said that it was far too late to arrange to bring frail survivors to the ceremony, and called Mr. Zelensky’s decision regrettable.

“It is a shame he decided to take such a step at an event under the banner of the memory of the Holocaust and fighting anti-Semitism,” the officials said in a statement.

The pomp and circumstance surrounding the Jerusalem gathering at a time when 45,000 survivors of the Holocaust live below the poverty line in Israel has drawn growing anger. Some protesters picketed outside Yad Vashem with signs calling it unseemly that such a somber event had been turned into a “celebration.”

The roads around Jerusalem were heavily fortified Thursday afternoon with police and security forces. Adults and children lined the streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the many motorcades snaking through the city.

The surge in hotel reservations by visiting dignitaries had led to at least one unexpected lodging scenario: Vice President Mike Pence is staying in the same hotel as Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House speaker who led the impeachment effort against President Trump.

Pence: ‘He’s unstoppable. Like somebody else I know.’

Not even an event as solemn as Holocaust remembrance could escape its share of high-level schmoozing.

At Yad Vashem, the memorial to the Holocaust, world leaders delayed the beginning of the program by engaging in a lengthy round of hellos, good-jobs and handshakes before they took their seats.

For his part, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flitted from leader to leader, offering praise and smiles.

“That was a great speech last night,” he told King Felipe VI of Spain before moving on. As he greeted other dignitaries with laughs and half-hugs, Mr. Netanyahu huddled with President Emmanuel Macron of France before the two turned away from a wall of cameras, apparently to speak privately.

Vice President Mike Pence was less discreet about their interaction as he appeared to broach political matters back home.

“We’re contending,” Mr. Pence told Mr. Netanyahu. “He’s unstoppable. Like somebody else I know,” the vice president added, an unmistakable nod to the impeachment battle that President Trump is waging at home.

Just before the program started, Prince Charles entered, bypassing the Pences completely before greeting other leaders and taking his seat.

Auschwitz survivors dwindle as the 75th anniversary arrives.

When Piotr Cywinsk took over as the director of Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland more than a decade ago, every day he would meet a survivor. Their stories were invariably wrenching, often surprising and always stirring.

But as the years have passed, he said, those encounters have grown scarce.

“We barely meet with survivors now in our daily educational work,” he said.

So the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp seemed like a chance — perhaps the last one — to bring together as many as they could to mark the occasion.

On Monday, when the liberation will be observed by a solemn ceremony, some 200 survivors will make their way back to the camp.

While the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, will speak — given that the German death camp was in occupied Poland — Mr. Cywinsk said, they had sought to keep the event as free from politics as possible.

Mr. Duda had been invited to the Jerusalem gathering but declined to attend over what he saw as a snub: He was not given a slot to speak, though the Russian president was.

“This place is too sacred to allow it to be used in an opportunistic way,” Mr. Cywinsk said. “And politics, by its nature, is opportunistic.”

Instead, the focus will be on survivors and their stories. The philanthropist Ronald S. Lauder, who is also speak at the event, said that was as it should be.

“Almost half the survivors have died in the last five years,” Mr. Lauder noted in an interview.

In view of the rise in anti-Semitism across Europe, he said, their voices needed to be heard both as a reminder and a warning. Mr. Lauder has been involved in conservation efforts at Auschwitz for more than three decades, and Mr. Cywinsk said those conservation efforts were essential in battling those who would distort or deny what had taken place here.

But the burden of telling that story, he said, should no longer fall on the shoulders of the survivors. “They have done their job,” he said. “It is our responsibility now.”

Saudi Arabia sends an envoy, a Muslim cleric, to Auschwitz.

A prominent Muslim cleric from Saudi Arabia was to visit Auschwitz on Thursday as part of a joint delegation between the Mecca-based Muslim World League and the American Jewish Committee.

The cleric, Mohammad al-Issa, served as the Saudi justice minister before being named to lead the league by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler. He has since become the most public face of Prince Mohammed’s efforts to rebrand Saudi Arabia as an Islamic society open to other religions through his meetings with Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders around the world.

In a statement, the American Jewish Committee hailed Dr. al-Issa’s visit at the head of a delegation including Muslims from 28 countries as “the most senior Islamic leadership delegation to ever visit Auschwitz or any Nazi German death camp.”

On its English-language Twitter feed, the Muslim World League said that Dr. al-Issa would be “the senior-most Muslim leader” to visit Auschwitz.

“I believe that by paying my respects to the victims of Auschwitz, I will encourage Muslims and non-Muslims to embrace mutual respect, understanding and diversity,” Dr. al-Issa was quoted as saying by the committee statement during the signing last April of an agreement between it and his organization.

After visiting Auschwitz on Thursday, the joint delegation will see a Jewish history museum and a synagogue in Warsaw on Friday before an interfaith dinner to observe the start of the Jewish Sabbath.

“By educating people on the horrors of history, we can plant the seeds for a future where Jews, Muslims and all other groups can live free of fear,” Davis Harris, the American Jewish Committee’s chief executive, said in the statement.

Ben Hubbard, Katie Rogers and Marc Santora contributed reporting.

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2020-01-23 12:22:13Z
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China locks down city of Wuhan, new details about U.S. coronavirus victim emerge - CBS This Morning

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2020-01-23 12:23:44Z
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Coronavirus latest: quarantine in China expands beyond Wuhan - The - The Washington Post

China Daily Reuters Staff members check body temperatures of passengers arriving by train at Hangzhou Railway Station from Wuhan, China, Jan. 23, 2020.

BEIJING — The central Chinese city of Wuhan pulsated with fear and anger Thursday, as 11 million people awoke to news that they were being confined to a metropolis-sized quarantine zone designed to contain a widening coronavirus outbreak.

The quarantine is also spreading, with nearby Huanggang and Ezhou announcing they were shutting down travel networks, effectively confining some 20 million people to their municipalities.

In Wuhan, train and bus stations were abruptly closed, hundreds of flights were canceled, and some roads were blocked to stop people from leaving the city Thursday, a day when transportation networks should have been heaving with passengers heading to their hometowns for the official start of the Lunar New Year holiday on Friday night.

But experts warned that it would not be enough to stop the spread of the pneumonia-like virus, which has now killed 17 people in Wuhan and surrounding Hubei province. The number of people infected in China stood at 617 on Thursday afternoon.

“A bigger outbreak is certain,” said Guan Yi, a virologist who helped identify severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003. He estimated — “conservatively,” he said — that this outbreak could be 10 times bigger than the SARS epidemic because that virus was transmitted by only a few “super spreaders” in a more defined part of the country.

“We have passed through the ‘golden period’ for prevention and control,” he told Caixin magazine from self-imposed quarantine after visiting Wuhan. “What’s more, we’ve got the holiday traffic rush and a dereliction of duty from certain officials.”

[Travel ban goes into effect in Chinese city of Wuhan as authorities try to stop coronavirus spread]

Authorities initially said that the virus, which began in a Wuhan food market selling exotic animals for consumption, was mild and could not be transmitted between humans. But that changed this week when the numbers of people infected by the virus, which has an incubation period as long as 14 days, began to rise rapidly.

Now cases have been detected around the country, from Harbin in the north to Shenzhen in the south. The Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macao have both reported cases, as have countries including the United States, Japan, South Korea and Thailand.

The ruling Communist Party, which initially tried to show transparency after being criticized for covering up the SARS virus outbreak 17 years ago, has now shown signs of reverting to its default position of censoring bad news.

The Wuhan Health Commission admitted Thursday evening that it was struggling under the strain of the outbreak.

“At present, there is an obvious increase in the number of patients with fever in the city, and it is true that there are long queues and a shortage of beds in fever clinics,” the commission said in a post that was online for less than an hour.

A post from Wuhan Railway saying that 300,000 people traveled by train out of Wuhan on Wednesday, headed to every corner of the country, was also quickly deleted.

Analysts said the heavy-handed reaction underscored the political risks for Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the ruling Communist Party, already under pressure amid an economic slowdown and accused of mishandling an outbreak of swine flu last year, which led to a sharp spike in prices for China’s beloved pork.

“This outbreak may be the biggest threat to Xi and the Party in years, which is why they will stop at nothing to try to control and then eradicate it,” said Bill Bishop, publisher of the influential Sinocism newsletter.

AFP/Getty Images

Residents of Wuhan wear masks to buy vegetables in a market on Jan. 23, 2020.

Wuhan ground to a halt on Thursday as the travel ban took effect.

The three main railway stations, 13 bus stations, the entire subway network and almost all city bus lines were shut down at 10 a.m. Thursday. Half of the 566 flights scheduled at Wuhan’s international airport for Thursday were canceled, as were 251 ferry sailings on the Yangtze River, according to the Wuhan Transportation Bureau.

Many people flocked to the roads to try to avoid getting caught in the quarantine. Television footage showed health workers in hazmat suits taking motorists’ temperatures as they waited at toll booths.

Others did not make it out. Hubei’s highway management authority closed multiple expressways in and around Wuhan, at least for some periods.

Neighboring Huanggang said it would join Wuhan’s quarantine from midnight on Thursday, shutting down transport networks and telling people they should not leave the city without special reason. Nearby Ezhou announced it would close its railway stations “to efficiently cut off channels for spreading the virus.”

A raft of Chinese companies, both public and private, began to impose their own travel restrictions to try to avoid infection. CITIC Securities, China’s largest investment bank, told employees from Hubei province not to return home for the holidays. It said that if they did, they would have to work remotely for 14 days before being allowed back into the office.

Other measures were taken to limit public gatherings.

English tests scheduled for next month were canceled, and film companies delayed the release of seven blockbuster movies that were expected to attract big crowds over the Spring Festival holiday, which officially starts Friday.

“Everyone wishes for peace and health,” the producers of “Detective Chinatown 3” said, announcing the delay. “In the face of the virus, our wills are united like a fortress. We will cooperate hand in hand, and we will overcome difficulties together.”

In Macao, where one case has been found, the government said it might shut down the territory’s casinos if the epidemic worsens. Macao’s gambling sector is seven times the size of Las Vegas’s. The authorities have already called off a public festival to ring in the new year.

[Here’s how the unprecedented quarantine of one of China’s largest cities could play out

In Wuhan, a city with about 3 million more people that New York, many residents were incensed at the sudden announcement of the travel restrictions on Thursday.

“I didn’t even receive a notice,” said one woman who found herself stranded at Hankou Station. She had been on her way from Henan province southwest to Sichuan and was changing trains in Wuhan when she got caught up in the suspension.

She said indignantly that she would go back to Henan. But when a reporter asked how, she conceded that she did not know.

Others interpreted the fact that the health authorities announced the travel ban at 2:30 a.m. as a sign that the outbreak was more serious than they were letting on.

“The notice shouldn’t come out so late, when everyone's asleep,” said Jeffrey Yang, a 27-year-old Wuhan local working in the financial industry. “It makes people panic and feel like they’ve missed the opportunity to change their fate.”

Kiyoshi Ota

Bloomberg

A passenger looks at a flight information board displaying a canceled flight to Wuhan in a departure hall at Narita Airport in Narita, Japan, on Thursday, Jan. 23, 2020.

Yang had planned to leave Wuhan on Friday to join his parents in the southern coastal city of Beihai to celebrate the new year. After a friend called to warn him, he managed to get a flight out before the travel ban came into force. But when he arrived at his destination, the hotel owner refused to allow him to check in after hearing that he had traveled from Wuhan.

“I feel quite nervous,” he said. “I think there must be some things about this virus that remain undisclosed.”

Some people resorted to extreme measures to escape the travel ban. One man who could not get a taxi to the station to catch an earlier train persuaded a food delivery driver to give him a lift on his scooter. The desperate traveler paid $72 to have the delivery man, who would usually make less than half that in a day, drop him at the station. “We were flying,” he said.

Others, especially those in the age groups most affected by the virus, thought the ban was warranted.

“I think we can fully understand why they made the decision; they have no alternative,” said Zhu, a 56-year-old university professor in Wuhan who declined to give a full name. “But it’s difficult to tell how effective it will be.”

[As families tell of pneumonia-like deaths in Wuhan, some wonder if China virus count is too low]

Still, distrust of authorities is mounting.

Although local authorities said they had enough food for residents and medical supplies to treat patients, Wuhan residents posted photos on social media showing empty shelves in grocery stores. Prices have spiked, with cabbages selling for double the usual amount.

Wuhan authorities have ordered residents to wear masks in public places, but the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, posted on social media that the province was short of masks and protective clothing. The post, which was widely shared, was soon deleted.

Speculation swirled that the government had silenced Zhong Nanshan, the renowned respiratory expert who helped discover SARS in 2003 and is known for his bluntness.

Zhong, a member of the National Health Commission’s group of experts investigating the outbreak, had been on Chinese television constantly this week and announced the finding that the coronavirus could pass from human to human. But he has disappeared from screens in recent days.

Luwei Rose Luqiu, a journalism professor formerly with the Phoenix Television network, tweeted that Zhong was banned from speaking to media after giving an interview to Phoenix in Guangzhou on Tuesday. Zhong did not answer phone calls from The Washington Post.

There were also widespread reports on social media of hospitals in Wuhan turning away patients, reports that were indirectly confirmed when the Wuhan Health Commission sent out a notice saying the 61 outpatient fever treatment clinics “should not be closed for any reason.”

Rebecca Zhang had tried to get treatment for her 65-year-old father, who developed a fever on Jan. 13, at two hospitals in Wuhan, but they were turned away because of “lack of capacity.” The hospitals refused to even test him for the coronavirus, apparently to avoid having to admit him, Zhang wrote on Weibo.

Other hospitals would not see him without a positive diagnosis of coronavirus. “He was stuck in an infinite loop!” she wrote on Wednesday, saying he had still not been admitted despite scans showing serious inflammation in both lungs.

Another Wuhan woman, He Lianna, said that her father, who was feverish and having difficulty breathing, was admitted to hospital on Wednesday only after her complaint on social media about the situation was shared thousands of times.

As the uncertainty continued, Guan, the virologist who identified SARS, offered a chilling perspective on the outbreak.

“I’ve seen it all: bird flu, SARS, influenza A, swine fever and the rest. But the Wuhan pneumonia makes me feel extremely powerless,” he told Caixin. “Most of the past epidemics were controllable, but this time, I’m petrified.”

Wang Yuan, Liu Yang and Lyric Li contributed to this report.

Read more

Mapping the spread of the new coronavirus

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Travelers at 3 U.S. airports to be screened for new, potentially deadly Chinese virus

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2020-01-23 11:48:00Z
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Chinese Authorities Begin Quarantine Of Wuhan City As Coronavirus Cases Multiply - NPR

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A traveler walks past a display board showing a canceled flight from Wuhan at Beijing Capital International Airport Thursday. China closed off the city of more than 11 million in an unprecedented effort to try to contain a deadly new viral illness that has sickened hundreds and spread to other cities and countries during the Lunar New Year travel rush. Mark Schiefelbein/AP hide caption

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Mark Schiefelbein/AP

Wuhan's public health authorities say they are in a "state of war" as they quarantine the Chinese city in an attempt to halt the spread of a never-before-seen strain of the coronavirus.

"Strictly implement emergency response requirements, enter into a state of war and implement wartime measures to resolutely curb the spread of this epidemic," urged a committee of Wuhan's top officials. "Homes must be segregated, neighbors must be watched."

Beginning at 10 a.m. local time (9 p.m. Wednesday ET), authorities in Wuhan, about 500 miles west of Shanghai, started sealing off public transportation, including its metro system, airport, train station and long-haul bus hubs. Live-streamed videos from the city show soldiers wearing face masks barricading the entrances to the city's train station Thursday morning to prevent passengers from entering and leaving the city.

As of early afternoon, cars were still allowed to exit Wuhan, the epicenter of a rapidly-growing outbreak of a coronavirus that has sickened more than 570 within China and killed at least 17, according to health authorities.

But officials also began sealing off highways entering the city. Authorities said they were screening passengers leaving and entering Wuhan, checking for fever and the illegal transport of wild animals thought to be the original vector for the virus.

Online, people expressed doubt whether the quarantine came in time to check the disease's spread. Influential bloggers have been calling on the mayor of Wuhan, Zhou Xianwang, to step down after he admitted the city government's initial public health responses "were not sufficient." The disease has spread to virtually all other Chinese provinces as well as Hong Kong, none of which has been quarantined.

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Passengers wear masks as they arrive at Manila's international airport, Philippines, on Thursday. The government is closely monitoring arriving passengers as a new coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China has infected hundreds. Aaron Favila/AP hide caption

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Aaron Favila/AP

The sudden decision to lock down the city of 11 million residents, who were given less than eight hours notice of the suspension of public transportation, suggests the severity of the outbreak has alarmed China's leaders. Wuhan's lock down comes only two days before the official start of Lunar New Year, a major, week-long holiday during which hundreds of millions normally travel within and outside China.

The recent jump in the number of confirmed cases in China has also raised suspicions among both researchers and residents that authorities have delayed reporting the true extent of a public health threat.

Thursday's front page of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, made no mention of the viral outbreak and focused instead on the country's leadership. The top story covered Chinese leader Xi Jinping's New Year's wishes to former senior officials.

A London Imperial College study published Wednesday estimated that the number of those infected in China with the new coronavirus should be at least 4,000 based on past outbreaks of similar viral diseases, far fewer than the 570 or so officially acknowledged as of Thursday.

"This is a mathematical model. The number you were referring to was the maximum in the range predicted. Faced with viruses like this, facts must be facts and theories are just theories," Gao Fu, the director of China's Bureau of Disease Prevention and Control, told reporters yesterday when asked about a similar study from the same authors.

Part of the problem with reaching an accurate count may be that overstretched hospitals have been unable to cope with the numbers of potential cases needing to be screened. Hundreds of residents with fevers seeking screening posted on social media Wednesday night that they had been turned away from overloaded Wuhan hospitals. The posts were deleted by the following morning.

In one case, a man from Liaoning province who sought treatment in a Wuhan hospital on Jan. 12 was simply prescribed oral medication and turned away, according to a notice posted by the Liaoning Public Health Commission. Five days later, he flew to Dalian, a major city in Liaoning, for further care as his symptoms worsened and were diagnosed as coronavirus pneumonia. He is currently in critical condition.

Wuhan says it will add 3,400 more beds to hospitals which are equipped to treat the virus, bringing the overall number to 5,400, indicating authorities expect the scale of the outbreak to grow. Caixin, an independent Chinese-language outlet, quoted doctors in Wuhan saying they expected the outbreak to eventually infect as many as 6,000 people, though they did not give a timeline. SARS, which also belongs to the coronavirus family, infected more than 8,000 from 2002 to 2003.

Hospitals are struggling to find enough doctors to treat the growing numbers of patients. An account of a 23-year-old man treated for the virus and eventually released last week described how his doctors had been transferred from other institutions within Wuhan and even from as far away as Beijing. As the crisis worsened, they worked sixteen hours a day, "from dawn to dusk."

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2020-01-23 08:35:00Z
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Three Americans killed as firefighting plane crashes in Australia - The Washington Post

David Gray Reuters A television reporter stands in front of a C-130 Hercules as it drops a load of around 15,000 liters during a display ahead of the bush fire season in Sydney, Sept. 1, 2017.

MELBOURNE, Australia — Three Americans died Thursday when their aerial water tanker crashed while battling bush fires in the mountainous terrain of the Australian state of New South Wales.

The Rural Fire Service confirmed a C-130 Hercules crashed while fighting fires in hazardous conditions near Cooma, in the northeast of the Snowy Mountains.

“All three occupants on board were U.S. residents,” said Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons in a news conference. “We simply lost contact with the machine and the flight tracker we used stopped — there is no indication at this stage what caused the accident.”

“There was a large fireball associated with the crash,” he said, adding that it was still an active fire scene and it took “quite some time” to locate the wreckage.

[Australia fire crisis fuels protests calling for bolder action on climate change]

He said the plane was operated by Coulson Aviation which is based in Canada and contracted by the fire service. The C-130 could carry up to 15,000 liters of water.

Coulson grounded its fleet on Thursday as a mark of respect for the victims and to reassess safety conditions.

Fitzsimmons said the grounding of the large air tankers will impact firefighting capabilities on the ground in New South Wales, where there are still 70 fires burning, 44 of them out of control and three of them at an emergency warning level. Bush fires have also closed the airport in Australia’s capital, Canberra.

The fires have been burning across Australia since September last year, in what is being called an “unprecedented” season. Dangerous and widespread fires have engulfed millions of acres and displaced many communities. Several Australian firefighters have been killed on the job and millions of wildlife are feared dead.

Some 150 American firefighters and ground staff have been helping out with the bush fires in New South Wales and Victoria.

Crew from United States were helping out on the front line fighting fires, while also helping in operation command centers to oversee the response on the ground.

Last year Australia also requested assistance from U.S. aviation specialists to observe fires from helicopters and planes, and to help decide where to send firefighters on the ground and where to drop retardant or water bombs.

“Our thoughts are not just with family and loved ones but for anyone who feels impacted by what has unfolded this afternoon. We can’t thank enough people who continue, notwithstanding the conditions, to put their safety at risk to protect lives and property of others,” said Fitzsimmons.

Coulson Aviation has provided water-bombing aircraft to New South Wales for nearly five years.

The company said it was sending a team to the crash site to assist with emergency operations and are expected to arrive in the next 24 hours.

“The aircraft had departed Richmond, NSW with a load of retardant and was on a firebombing mission,” the statement said. “The accident is reported to be extensive and we are deeply saddened to confirm there are three fatalities.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison tweeted his condolences to the “loved ones, friends and colleagues of those who have lost their lives. Such a terrible tragedy.”

Gladys Berejiklian, the premier of New South Wales, said there were more than 1,700 volunteers fighting fires across the state and flags will be flown at half-mast as a sign of respect.

“Today again demonstrated the fire season is far from over,” she said.

Read more

In Australia, the air poses a threat; people are rushing to hospitals in cities choked by smoke

7 questions about traveling to Australia during catastrophic fires, answered

In Australia, fires energize environmental movement

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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2020-01-23 09:53:00Z
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Three Americans dead after firefighting water bomber crashes in rural Australia - CNN

The water-bombing tanker had been chartered by the New South Wales Rural Fire Service (NSW RFS), state Premier Gladys Berejiklian said in a news conference on Thursday. It was called in to fight a bushfire near the town of Cooma, in the state's southeast.

The Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council told CNN the casualties were American. The crew members belonged to Coulson Aviation, an aerial firefighting company that owned the aircraft contracted to the NSW RFS.

Coulson Aviation said in a statement that the crew had been on a firebombing mission when the accident occurred.

"Today is a stark and horrible reminder of the dangerous conditions that our volunteers, our emergency services personnel across the number of agencies take on a daily basis," Berejiklian said. "It demonstrates the dangerous work currently being undertaken. It also demonstrates the conditions that our firefighters are working under."

According to the NSW RFS commissioner, Shane Fitzsimmons, contact was lost with the C-130 water-bombing plane shortly before 1:30 p.m. local time on Thursday.

"Tragically, there appears to be no survivors as a result of the crash down in the Snowy Monaro area," Fitzsimmons said in the news conference. "It's impacted heavily with the ground. And initial reports are there was a large fireball associated with the impact of the plane as it hit the ground."

The cause of the crash is not yet clear.

Traci Weaver, a United States public information officer with firefighting teams on the ground, called the crash a "heartbreaking" incident.

"We're just here taking care of our folks," she told CNN. "And it hits close to home when it's Americans too -- as tight a family as we are in the firefighting community -- it's just hard."

Fires have been burning in the state for months, and several countries have sent personnel and firefighting assistance, including the US and New Zealand.

The US announced Wednesday it was sending two more 20-person crews to Australia, only days after sending air support personnel and other emergency management teams. So far, the US has deployed more than 200 staff to Australia, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Fires are still raging in several states, particularly in New South Wales, Victoria, and the Australian Capital Territory, home to the national capital Canberra.

The Canberra airport closed on Thursday, with arrivals and departures grounded as bushfires burned nearby. One of the fires, only a few miles away, is "out of control" and has reached an emergency alert level, according to the territory's emergency agency.

The airport has not been evacuated, but closed "due to aviation firefighting operations," it said in a tweet. Photos from the airport show planes grounded on smoky runways, and the entire city shrouded in a thick, reddish haze.

Authorities have advised residents in the area to seek shelter, warning that roads are closed and that "it is too late to leave."

"The fire may pose a threat to all lives directly in its path," the ACT Emergency Services Agency said. "People in these suburbs are in danger and need to seek immediate shelter as the fire approaches."

The emergency-level fire began on Wednesday, but worsened on Thursday due to strong winds and high temperatures, according to CNN affiliate Seven News.

It rained mud in Melbourne

Much of southeastern Australia -- where Canberra is located -- has been battered by severe weather for the past week. Canberra was hit by a hailstorm on Monday, with hailstones the size of golf balls shattering car windows and injuring scores of birds.

There have also been heavy winds all week -- apart from exacerbating the persistent and widespread fires, the wind created apocalyptic scenes of massive dust storms engulfing towns last Sunday.

Australia has been gripped by a devastating drought since 2017 -- which has not only destroyed livelihoods, but has left the land parched and dry, full of loose soil and dust that are easily whipped up into the air by wind.

In normal conditions, dust storms are not common occurrences. But because of the drought and wind, they are happening more and more frequently in Australia. The major city of Melbourne, south of Canberra in the state of Victoria, was hit with a dust storm on Wednesday night and then rain on Thursday, creating a whole new kind of weather disaster.

The dust had been spread in the air by the wind -- so when the rain came, it combined into a rust-colored sludge of mud that coated the city. Photographs from Melbourne show the Yarra River turned completely brown with the dust-mud, and cars covered with dirt. People woke up to see their household pools and bird baths filled with brown dusty water.

The Australian Open, now in its fourth day, even had to delay matches for several hours because the outdoor courts were covered with mud. Staff at the tennis tournament rushed to clean the court with towels, hoses, and "high pressure cleaning," finally opening it back up to matches in the late afternoon.

There are "damaging winds" across much of the state on Thursday, with the strongest wind gust reaching 85 miles per hour in a national park northeast of Melbourne, according to the Victoria Bureau of Meteorology. Milder winds are forecast for Friday and across the weekend.

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2020-01-23 08:27:00Z
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