The agency Reuters has reported that circa 4,000 recovered COVID-19 patients from the religious group Shincheonji Church of Jesus at the center of South Korea’s largest outbreak will donate plasma for research, an official said on Tuesday.
In February and March, a massive outbreak among members of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus made South Korea the scene of the first large outbreak outside of China.
Church founder Lee Man-hee had internally advised recovered members to donate their plasma, which is badly needed for coronavirus research, Shincheonji media coordinator Kim Young-eun told Reuters.
Many of recovered church members wanted to donate to express thanks to the government and medical staff, she said.
Daegu authorities had previously filed a complaint against the church apparently “falsely accusing” it of not submitting a full list of members and facilities, and not cooperating with city health efforts. Such a request in Europe would be completely illegal.
Shincheonji says have fully complied with government efforts of prevention.
Over 200 people have so far come forward to donate plasma as of the end of June, said the National Institute of Health, and also said they were in talks with Shincheonji for donations.
South Korea health officials have said that in the absence of other treatments or vaccines, plasma therapy may be a way to lower the death rate, especially in critical patients.
At least 17 South Koreans have received the experimental therapy, which involves using plasma from recovered patients with antibodies to the virus, enabling the body to defend against the disease.
The Public Affairs Office of The Church of The Light of the World (La Luz del Mundo), has issued a statement vindicating the innocence and dignity of their leader Naasón Joaquín García. In their press release published on facebook, they said:
“The Ministry of Public Relations of the Light of the World Church reports that today’s hearing, in which the Superior Court was scheduled to dismiss all the charges against the Apostle of Jesus Christ Naasón Joaquín García pursuant to the ruling of the Court of Appeals, has been continued to August 6th, at which time the Court announced it will dismiss all the charges. The charges were scheduled to be dismissed in May, but the delays have been caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is important to note that the decision issued by the Court of Appeals determining that the Apostle Naasón Joaquín García’s constitutional rights had been violated, causing him significant harm and damage and noting various procedural violations to the detriment of his human rights, was issued in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution of the United States of America and laws of the State of California.
The Court of Appeal’s decision strengthens the confidence of the members of the Church in the judicial institutions tasked with imparting justice. We continue to publicly express our confidence in the integrity, innocence and honorability of the Apostle of Jesus Christ.
We thank God for his favorable response, as well as all those who have accompanied us with their solidarity and understanding throughout this process. May God bless you.”
The Church of the Light of the World has been working with local authorities to help their members and population at large, to cope better in these times of Covid19.
On the 25th anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica, the entire world realises that we failed to protect those who were most in need of our protection. It is our duty to remember, speak up and act: No more blood in the name of race or religion. No more genocides, never again.
On the 25th anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica, the entire world realises that we failed to protect those who were most in need of our protection. It is our duty to remember, speak up and act: No more blood in the name of race or religion. No more genocides, never again. pic.twitter.com/zi9V41iAoY
Today we commemorate the 25th anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica. We pay tribute to all the victims and their families. And to those who still have no confirmation of the fate of their loved ones. I am with you. Europe is with you. We will not rest until justice is served.
25 years ago, horrendous acts were committed in Srebrenica. Thousands of men and boys were brutally killed and buried in mass graves. Women, children and elderly were forced away, raped and abused. We remember and we honour the memory of all those who perished and who suffered in these atrocities.
All Europeans should be humbled, and furious, at what was allowed to happen in Srebrenica. It is one of the darkest chapters of modern European history. By remembering, we renew our commitment to never let such atrocities happen again.
Such despicable acts go against our deepest European values. A quarter of a century later, they are still shocking, still almost inconceivable. Yet even today, we continue to hear similar language that led to these shameful acts. Revisionists minimise, or even deny the genocide. Others glorify war criminals.
We have a unique responsibility to lead by example. Only when all leaders recognise the crimes that took place can the peoples of your country finally heal and come together. Both the European Union and the Western Balkans have shown enormous solidarity, consideration, and care for one another. That gives us reason for hope. Today, we condemn the genocide at Srebrenica. We must remain vigilant and challenge hatred and intolerance, in Europe, and in your country.
Now is the time to overcome the dark legacy of the past. The EU is the greatest peace and reconciliation project ever. From the ashes of World War Two, the Union has shown what can be achieved when peoples reconcile, and come together. We hope and trust to see you advance on your European path. Only when we learn from the past, can we build a better future for the generations to come. They deserve peace, justice and true reconciliation. In our common house – Europe.
EURONEWS – The football world is paying tribute to Jack Charlton, England World Cup winner in 1966 and later manager of Ireland’s national team, who has died at the age of 85.
The news of his death was announced on Saturday by Leeds United, the club with whom he spent his entire playing career. Charlton’s family said he died at home on Friday in Northumberland, northern England.
A robust, uncompromising central defender, Jack Charlton played alongside his brother Bobby in England’s triumphant side that beat West Germany 4-2 after extra time in the 1966 World Cup final at Wembley Stadium.
This was undoubtedly his greatest achievement as a player, but he also won every domestic honour, including the league title with Leeds in 1969. He played a record number of 773 times for the club in a career that spanned over 20 years, from the early 1950s until his retirement in 1973.
Charlton then went into management, where he was easily the most successful of England’s World Cup winners. In his first season he took Second Division Middlesbrough to a runaway league title and promotion to the top flight, where the club established itself throughout his four-year tenure.
Further impressive management spells followed with Sheffield Wednesday and Newcastle United until he was hired by Ireland in 1986 as the country’s first foreign coach.
In charge of the national side, Charlton took Ireland to three major tournaments, notably the World Cup in Italy in 1990 where the team reached the quarter-finals though without winning a match in open play.
With a direct, physical style, Charlton got the best out of Ireland’s hard-working players. The country also played in the finals at the 1988 European Championship, achieving a notable 1-0 win over England — and at the 1994 World Cup in the United States where they achieved their first victory at a finals, also 1-0 against pre-tournament favourites Italy.
Jack Charlton resigned in 1995 and was awarded honorary Irish citizenship a year later.
As reported by the European Conservatives and Reformists, after the adoption of the EU Mobility package by the European Parliament without any amendments, ECR Transport coordinator Roberts Zīle MEP said:
“What is seemingly symbolically ironic, is that on the day when chancellor Merkel takes over the reigns of Council presidency, singing a rhapsody of solidarity, the newly approved road freight transport rules – originated from then French minister Macron – demonstrate a stark protectionism that will not only erode the integrity of the EU Single Market but furthermore exemplify division against higher and lower income Member States.
Zīle has continued saying: “Moreover, these rules, namely the compulsory return of the trucks to the Member State of establishment, will generate an enormous ecological burden crippling the whole Green Deal idea in its core. Sadly enough, even the coronavirus disturbances and health and safety risks had not stemmed the rules disbarring drivers to rest in their truck cabins, that would often provide much better health safety than poorly maintained ‘multi bed per room’ hostels.
Kosma Zlotowski, ECR´s co-shadow rapporteur, also criticised the new regulation as being “incompatible” with the spirit of “economic integration” and the single market’s principles:
“The Mobility Package is a clear example of economic protectionism. It discriminates against transport companies from countries such as Poland, Hungary, Bulgariaand the Baltic States. These rules go against the very freedoms, which includes services, on which the values and success of the European Union have been built. Sadly, the Mobility Package is a sign that this process is being abandoned. Of course, the fight is not over. Certainly, Member States will bring their complaints concerning these regulations to the European Court of Justice. Contrary to the intentions of the initiators of these changes, the costs of the Mobility Package will affect consumers across Europe and have a negative impact on the prices of all goods. In times of crisis brought about by the coronavirus epidemic, this could be a barrier to the swift recovery of the EU economy.”
Eurochamber deplores Maduro’s threats to expel EU Ambassador from Caracas
The European Parliament on Friday expressed its rejection of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s threats to expel the European Ambassador from Venezuela, a decision that was eventually rescinded, and called for the European sanctions list to be extended to the regime if the situation continues to worsen.
MEP Hermann Tertsch, on twitter said: “The resolution against Maduro remains a sad cry. The ECR group with Vox as negotiator withdrew from a resolution in which the PP have given themselves to the PSOE, already open and jealous protector of Maduro”.
In a resolution adopted by 487 votes in favour, 119 against and 79 abstentions, MEPs also rejected the violations of the “democratic, constitutional and transparent” functioning of the National Assembly and the acts of violence against its members, as well as the suspension of the parliamentary immunity of several of its members.
PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea — After a recent series of tragic events, public calls for an end to violence against women have intensified in Papua New Guinea. The National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the country have issued a statement on the equality of women and men, speaking to a global concern that has been exacerbated during the pandemic.
Published in a national newspaper and on social media, the statement is stimulating constructive conversations in the capital city, Port Moresby, and beyond.
“Gender-based violence has become so deeply entrenched in our country,” the National Assembly writes in the statement. “It is a… manifestation of a chronic disease affecting our society. The Baha’i community believes that this disease, from which our progress and prosperity is so severely crippled, is in part due to the failure to recognize the equality of men and women.”
Reflecting on this statement, the Secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly, Confucius Ikoirere, says, “This is a moment when our society is thinking deeply about how its culture and traditions affect women. Religious communities have a responsibility to be a source of guidance and to help dispel superstitions that harm women. The hope is for this statement to create opportunities for individuals to speak about this important subject, so that this conversation can take root in all homes and penetrate communities.”
The statement highlights several Baha’i principles which it says are essential for a society that is to reflect the equality of women and men. What has drawn particular attention, as the statement circulated on social media, is a passage quoted from the Baha’i writings that likens men and women to the two wings of a bird—both of which need to be strengthened equally for the bird to fly.
“The reality is that some attitudes common in society place women as inferior to men, restricting them to the home and excluding them from decision making,” says Gezina Volmer, Director of the Baha’i Office of External Affairs in Papua New Guinea. “A profound principle of the Baha’i Faith expressed in the statement is that the soul has no gender. Once people come to appreciate this and other related spiritual truths, they see that there is no basis for inequality in society. This leads to a significant change in perception of and conduct toward women. It creates a greater understanding of unity and allows for consultation on equal terms between men and women.”
Slideshow 2 imagesPhotograph taken before the current health crisis. A devotional gathering at the site of the future national Baha’i House of Worship in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.
Felix Simiha, a member of the National Spiritual Assembly, says, “During the pandemic families are strengthening a habit of coming together to pray, which is essential to the process of Baha’i consultation. When a family makes decisions through consultation, women, men, and children have a voice and violence has no place.”
The statement is a contribution of the country’s Baha’i community to the discourse on equality. The principles it conveys are at the heart of Baha’i community-building and educational efforts in Papua New Guinea.
“Aspects of our culture can change, particularly when we teach new values to our children from a young age,” says Zha Agabe-Granfar of the country’s Baha’i Office of External Affairs. “We see firsthand how girls and boys learn to interact with unity and collaboration, and then bring these lessons home to their families.
“From large cities to the remotest areas, we are seeing positive changes in communities striving to embody the equality of women and men. Women are being encouraged to study, their voices are valued, they are taking on decision-making roles, and barriers that had previously excluded them from full participation are being removed.”
(this is a non revised translation of original here)
Vox is not going to fight the left with the same weapons, in whole or in part. Vox’s weapons are called common sense, and a social and national sense of things.
Since May 68, the parties of the left, throughout Europe, have renounced two banners of attachment: the defence of the interests and needs of the workers, and the conscience of the nation.
They decided at that moment to change their political “hooks” to initiate a policy of “identities and collectives”: feminism, ecology, immigrationism, animalism, and in the last phase, the gender movements; all “transversal” movements where the family, the social and the national are irrelevant circumstances; because in reality their objective is to demolish everything.
In this way, the left became the main ally of the large multinationals that have only one objective: to globalize consumer habits, to globalize production and profits, to save on labor; to eliminate national regulations that protect what is their own, to eliminate the union defense of the workers, to give just one example.
That is why, all over the world, there is no longer a confrontation between left and right in the classical sense; but between patriots and globalists. We have seen this in the George Floyd affair when the multinationals have allied themselves with the anti-fa terrorist movements.
Both want a world without nation-states. Both of them respond to the same concept of human being: an isolated individual, who determines and asserts himself every morning, sexually, in the family, socially; uprooted, without memory and without tradition. That individual who is proposed rejects everything that is given to him: the family and the nation; he is an isolated individual. He is the perfect target for the big corporations that place their products on him, even though he does not need them: the perfect consumer.
In Vox we believe that the person, the human being is something else: he is not an isolated individual but a being in relation to his past, his tradition, his customs, history, family, his democratic institutions, his nation. At VOX we know that the family or the nation is an essential part of who we are, and they are good things, which should be preserved and strengthened. We know, because common sense says so, that happiness is not in self-determination every day and consuming anything even if it’s cheaper, but in being what one is, in feeling like a member of a family or a nation, which is a guarantee of rights and protects you when they go wrong.
The left has deceived the Spanish worker and left him alone, helpless and uprooted, to be a mere consumer. The interests are common: it is in the interest of the left-wing parties to have an uncritical citizen who consumes the intellectual rubbish that they propagate in the media and social networks; and it is in the interest of the large conglomerates to have a citizen who satisfies their thirst for freedom and happiness by consuming things and services that are often unnecessary.
They no longer defend the Spanish worker against his or her real problems: the search for a job; decent jobs, real reconciliation of work and motherhood, housing, safety in the streets, illegal competition from foreign products and services, illegal immigration.
Their banners are far from biological reality (gender), physical reality (global warming versus protection of the natural environment) or historical reality (official truth versus freedom of thought).
And that is why, more than ever, the interests of the worker are intimately linked to those of the self-employed and the small or medium business owner, to the defense of private property, of the primary and industrial sectors, of the rural world, and of the freedom of enterprise; all of them threatened by mundialist movements that globalize ideas destructive of the political order, intellectual misery and social control.
In paying tribute to the thousands of mainly Muslim men and boys brutally murdered in the July 1995 massacre during the Balkan wars, António Guterres pledged that they will never be forgotten.
“A quarter century ago, the United Nations and the international community failed the people of Srebrenica. As former Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, this failure will ‘haunt our history forever’”, he stated.
“Confronting that past is a vital step towards rebuilding trust.”
Counter hate, mistrust and fear
Reconciliation, he said, must be underpinned by mutual empathy and understanding. It also means rejecting denial of genocide and war crimes, as well as efforts to glorify convicted war criminals.
The Secretary-General called on people in the region and beyond to counter hate speech, divisive rhetoric, and narratives of mistrust and fear.
“On this somber anniversary, we are reminded that peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina is still fragile”, he said.
“We cannot let up in working towards genuine reconciliation. We owe this to the victims of the Srebrenica genocide, the survivors, the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to all humanity.”
Honour the victims
UN independent human rights experts have echoed the Secretary-General’s message.
They urged governments to honour the victims of the Srebrenica genocide by building peaceful, inclusive and just societies to prevent such atrocities from happening again.
“Genocides are not spontaneous. They are the culmination of unchallenged and unchecked intolerance, discrimination and violence. They are the result of sanctioned hatred, fostered in permissive environments where individuals first spread fear, then hatred for material or political gain, fracturing the pillars of trust and tolerance between communities and resulting in devastation for all”, the experts said in a statement.
The Srebrenica genocide anniversary is also an opportunity to remember other communities that have been subjected to mass atrocities based on their identity, and the experts called on the international community to take urgent action to “fend off the virus of hate and discrimination”, including online.
The 19 experts who signed the statement were appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to monitor specific country situations or themes.
They are not UN staff members, nor are they paid by the Organization.
