John Hayward

Two medical workers from hospitals in Guangzhou, China, wrote a profoundly disturbing letter to famed British medical journal the Lancet this week, detailing hideous working conditions in coronavirus wards, dire shortages of medical supplies, and an atmosphere of anxiety and despair among nursing staff. The letter was suddenly retracted on Wednesday at the request of the authors, raising suspicions they were pressured to discredit themselves by the Chinese Communist Party.

An airstrike in Syria’s Idlib province on Thursday killed at least 33 Turkish soldiers and wounded numerous others. The attack was a serious escalation of hostilities and the worst loss of life for Turkish forces during their invasion of Syria. Both Syrian and Russian air forces were blamed for the attack, with Moscow on Friday claiming that Syrian planes carried out the bombing.

Uyghur activists say the situation their oppressed people face in China’s Xinjiang province is even worse than previously believed, with hunger sweeping the area and medicine shortages caused by the coronavirus lockdown.

According to Iranian state media, the rapidly-spreading coronavirus epidemic claimed Vice President for Women and Family Affairs Masoumeh Ebtekar as a new patient on Thursday, the first member of President Hassan Rouhani’s cabinet to test positive for the disease.

According to Chinese state media reports, five officials in the city of Jingmen – located in Hubei province, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak – have been mildly disciplined for reporting a negative number of virus infections.

Dr. Zhong Nanshan, China’s “top respiratory specialist” according to state-run media, on Thursday floated a completely unsubstantiated theory that the Wuhan coronavirus did not originate in China. 

Chinese state media continued their efforts this week to mitigate political damage from the coronavirus epidemic by claiming Western concerns about the spread of the disease, and complaints about China’s lack of transparency, are founded in “xenophobia” and “white supremacist racism” reminiscent of the “Yellow Peril” hysteria of the late 19th Century.

Outspoken Lebanese pop star Elissa, one of the most popular female singers in the Arab world, on Monday accused her government of refusing to cancel flights from Iran to keep the Wuhan coronavirus at bay because officials feared to antagonize Hezbollah, a Lebanese terrorist organization and political party supported by Tehran.

Kenyans have long complained that the massive Standard Gauge Railroad (SGR) project financed by loans from China’s Belt and Road (BRI) infrastructure project was an expensive indulgence that created few good jobs for local people because Chinese managers and engineers were brought in to handle the work. Documents made public this week from the Chinese contractor that handled the project revealed that the number of workers imported from China was much higher than previously admitted, and the cost of their high salaries and very comfortable accommodations was borne by Kenyan taxpayers.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that two Turkish soldiers have been killed in Libya, where Turkish forces were deployed to support the Government of National Accord (GNA) against the forces of the Libyan National Army (LNA) under Gen. Khalifa Haftar.

During the Democrat debate in South Carolina on Tuesday night, the candidates tried to score some points against President Donald Trump by criticizing his administration’s response to the coronavirus epidemic. Former Vice President Joe Biden claimed he played a role in saving “millions of lives” in the United States during the Ebola epidemic that occurred during the Obama administration.

The appearance of the Wuhan coronavirus in Iran is causing a great deal of anxiety in the region and producing some immediate negative effects as trade across Iran’s borders shuts down. The Kurdistan Region experienced a bout of petrol panic on Monday as rumors of an impending fuel shortage spread, even though the authorities said there has been no significant supply disruption to date.

Chinese state media reported on Monday that the sale of wild animals and consumption of their meat has been banned to slow the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus, which is generally believed to have spread from animals to humans. The wild animal trade in China is valued at almost $75 billion and employs over 14 million people.

Chinese officials announced the first confirmed coronavirus cases among the oppressed Uyghur Muslims of Xinjiang province last week.

North Korea still officially claims it has zero cases of coronavirus infection, but one of its officials told Radio Free Asia (RFA) on Saturday that 1,300 people suspected of carrying the virus have been quarantined at a hotel in Pyongyang. 

Protesters fought with police in New Delhi, India, on Monday over India’s highly controversial citizenship law. A policeman and two civilians identified as Muslims were killed just hours before the arrival of visiting U.S. President Donald Trump.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who returned to power at the age of 92 in 2018 with a surprising election victory over his former protege Najib Razak, made an equally stunning departure on Monday by resigning his office without warning or explanation. Mahathir has agreed to serve as interim prime minister at the request of Malaysia’s king until a replacement can be sworn in.

Population Research Institute President Steven W. Mosher wrote at the New York Post on Saturday that China’s coronavirus epidemic could have been unleashed by researchers who sold laboratory animals to the notorious “wet markets” of Wuhan for extra cash.

Iraq and Afghanistan confirmed their first cases of the Wuhan coronavirus on Monday. Both cases were detected near the Iranian border and involved patients who recently traveled to Iran, where an outbreak spreading from the city of Qom has officially infected 61 people and killed 12, although a lawmaker from the area claims there have been 50 deaths and 250 people are under quarantine.

The Wuhan coronavirus spread further through Iran on Friday, with a total of 13 new cases reported in several other cities besides Qom, where the first infections were reported this week. There may also be an Iranian connection to what Canadian officials described as a “sentinel event,” the first confirmed case of infection in a person who has never visited China or had contact with people who did. The Canadian patient did recently travel to Iran.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is sending letters to service members notifying them that their personal information may have been compromised by hackers who breached a computer network managed by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).

The Chinese government is desperately trying to get some positive spin out of the coronavirus epidemic by ostentatiously saluting the medical personnel fighting (and in some cases dying) on the front lines of the epidemic.

The Chinese government on Friday tried using its “sharp power” to push online retail colossus Amazon into withdrawing a T-shirt that reads “Coronavirus Made in China” and apologize for ever allowing the garment to be sold.

Eastern Africa is facing a food crisis after a devastating plague of desert locusts, the worst seen in the region for several generations.

Iran reported at least three more cases of the Wuhan coronavirus on Thursday, adding to the two cases confirmed on Wednesday. According to Iranian state media, two of the infected persons have died from the disease.

An anonymous Chinese woman courageously posted a video message to her fellow citizens on Sunday in which she called for resistance to the Communist Party, accusing it of destroying countless lives by bungling its response to the Wuhan coronavirus and warning that even now, the Party is primarily interested in suppressing dissent and maintaining power than fighting the disease.

The New York Times on Thursday published an op-ed written by Sirajuddin Haqqani, deputy leader of the Taliban and a globally designated terrorist with a $5 million FBI reward on his head. Haqqani used the opportunity extended by the Times to recite Taliban propaganda and lay out the terrorist organization’s terms for peace in Afghanistan.

China’s state-run media launched an all-out political offensive against the United States over coronavirus assistance on Wednesday, simultaneously accusing the U.S. of not doing enough to help and condemning it as racist for offering to help at all.

The Epoch Times on Tuesday reported that China has “engaged over 1,600 censors to scrub the internet of ‘sensitive’ information relating to the coronavirus outbreak.” The information control effort apparently accelerated after Chinese President Xi Jinping emerged from relative seclusion and asserted himself as being in control of the coronavirus response.

North Korean police have issued a decree warning of harsh penalties for smugglers, potentially including execution, in a bid to keep the Chinese coronavirus at bay.