Scramble to Track Cambodia Cruise Passengers After Coronavirus Case Reported
SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia—Health authorities scrambled on Feb. 17 to track hundreds of passengers who disembarked from a cruise ship in Cambodia last week after a woman tested positive for coronavirus, heightening fears about the spread of the disease around the world. The new case raises questions about how companies and countries should handle monitoring and quarantine for people who may have been exposed to the new virus, since the American woman from the Westerdam cruise ship had passed the usually presumed incubation period of 14 days. Holland America Line, which is owned by cruise giant Carnival Corp., said it is working with governments and health experts to track passengers. “Guests who have already returned home will be contacted by their local health department and be provided further information,” the company said…
BISHKEK鈥擜 Chinese company has pulled out of a $280 million project to build a logistics center in Kyrgyzstan after protests by hundreds of locals in a fresh display of anti-Beijing sentiment in Central Asia.
The deal signed during Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to the former Soviet republic last year envisaged construction of warehouses, transport terminals, hotels and other facilities in a free-trade zone near Kyrgyzstan’s border with China.
However, hundreds of locals saw it as a land grab by Kyrgyzstan’s giant neighbor and held a series of protests demanding that the project be canceled.
The joint venture set up by China’s One Lead One (HK) Trading Limited and a Kyrgyzstan partner issued a statement late on Feb. 17, saying that it was impossible to work on a large, long-term project when a part of local population opposes it.
“They have assessed the risks and made a decision,” a spokesman for Kyrgyz Prime Minister Mukhammedkalyi Abilgaziyev said.
Last year hundreds of locals clashed with workers of a Chinese mining company in Kyrgyzstan’s Naryn province鈥搕he same region that had been earmarked for the abandoned logistics project鈥攁fter accusing the miner of poisoning local water supply.
Similar clashes have happened in other parts of Kyrgyzstan.
By Olga Dzyubenko
This article is from the Internet:China-Led $280 Million Kyrgyzstan Project Abandoned After Protests
University Tells Professors to Stop Sending Students for Coronavirus Tests Over Coughing
After receiving complaints, the University of Florida (UF) has told its faculty members that they should not exclude students who may be visibly sick from class due to fears of the new coronavirus. There has been no confirmed case of the coronavirus, called COVID-19, on the UF campus that hosts some 6,000 international students, but at least one professor reportedly asked coughing and sniffing students to leave class and be tested for the virus, reflecting anxieties about the disease’s spread amid Florida’s flu season. “We are aware that some instructors have asked students who are showing visible cold- or flu-like symptoms to leave class and return with a letter from the Student Health Care Center confirming that they do not have coronavirus,” the school’s provost, Joseph Glover, wrote to deans…
