Swiss News

Die Heilmittelbehörde Swissmedic hat Coop Vitality gebüsst: Die Apothekenkette warb mit irreführenden Aussagen zur Wirkung der Covid-19-Impfung. Die Massnahmenkritiker jubeln bereits – doch ganz so einfach ist es nicht.

Credit: Office of New York City Mayor

By Thalif Deen
NEW YORK, Apr 3 2026 (IPS)

A fifth wave of a new Covid 19 variant BA.2, followed by a surge in infections, is threatening to undermine the safety of New York city (NYC) which was gradually returning to normal after a prolonged pandemic shutdown. As a result, the City went on “high Covid alert.”

But NYC Mayor Eric Adams has assured New Yorkers he will not bring back mask and vaccine mandates in work places, shopping malls, restaurants and Broadway theaters. Instead, he said he will focus on anti-virus treatment and home-testing.

Briefing reporters at a press conference, he said “I think the reason we are here—and not seeing drastic actions – is because we’ve done an amazing job of telling people—vaccines, boosters”.

“When I was hit with Covid, it was just a tickle in my throat. I was still able to exercise, didn’t have any breathing issues, no pain,” he added.

“We are staying prepared and not panicking. When I look at the hospitalizations and deaths, the numbers are stable”, Adams assured.

Back in March, the Mayor released a new color-coded system that tracks COVID-19, alerts and keeps New York City residents apprised of the risks they face.

This new system will better help New Yorkers understand the current level of COVID-19 risk and how they can best protect themselves and others based on the current risk.

The system consists of four alert levels that outline precautions, and recommends actions for individuals and government—and is based on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Community Burden Indicator.

Meanwhile, there was a rising wave of celebrity infections in the US last month, including Attorney General Merrick Garland, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and several members of Congress, including Joaquin Castro, Susan Collins and Adam Schiff, along with Broadway stars Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick and Daniel Craig.

The United States also reached a milestone: one million deaths from the coronavirus infection.

According to the New York Times, more Americans have died from Covid-19 than in two decades of car crashes or on battlefields in all of the country’s wars combined. The U.S. toll is higher than that of any other country in the world.

Die Schweizer Hotellerie schlägt Alarm: Trotz Rekordübernachtungen kämpfen Familienhotels ums Überleben – und suchen nach Käufern. In 20 Jahren schlossen 1400 Betriebe. Ein Branchenvertreter warnt vor einer anhaltenden Schliessungswelle.

Mayor Adams announces “unprecedented Investments” in safe haven beds and resources for New Yorkers experiencing unsheltered homelessness

By Thalif Deen
NEW YORK, Apr 3 2026 (IPS)

Faced with a growing problem of homeless people living and sleeping in park benches and on subway trains, New York city (NYC) authorities are physically moving them out—mostly under protest– to some 150 encampments or public shelters.

A cleanup crew removed all of their belongings lying scattered in a “miniature tent city” across from Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan. As an alternative, the NYC is providing them with “safe Haven” communal shelters.

New York Mayor Eric Adams said makeshift housing is dangerous, and shelters are far safer.

But one advocate for the homeless said the process is “tired and cruel,” and chases people out of the city rather than providing them a place to live safely.

The clearing of the encampments was supervised and coordinated by dozens of police officers and a sanitation truck, with a police loudspeaker repeatedly announcing: “you are ordered to leave the area.” But few responded.

As a result, eight protesting homeless people were arrested and charged with obstructing governmental administration for blocking the planned cleanup. The people arrested also included activists from anti-eviction organizations and groups supportive of the homeless.

Currently, there are an estimated 50,000 homeless people living in shelters. The problems arising from the homeless include crimes committed by some of the mentally ill, including a woman killed after being pushed onto an oncoming subway train, dozens of syringes and drug paraphernalia and, in one instance, the discovery of over 500 discarded needles across homeless campsites.

“Our teams are working professionally and diligently every day to make sure that every New Yorker living in the street knows they have a better option while ensuring that everyone who lives in or visits our city can enjoy the clean public spaces we all deserve,” the Mayor said.

He said NYC was in the process of opening up some 500 beds in specialized shelters. “You cannot continue to live in carboard boxes or sleeping in a tree in the park. You don’t deserve that,” the Mayor noted.

Sie gaben sich auf die Mütze: Ein Schwergewichts-Duell über sieben Runden, Intensität bis zum Abwinken. Servette gegen Lausanne – eine Serie für die Ewigkeit. Ist aber trotzdem vorbei.

Stefanie Giesinger prangert in ihrem Podcast «G-Spot» die ungesunden Schönheitsideale der Modebranche an. Nach einer Buchung für die Fashion Week wurde sie überraschend ausgeladen – sie sei «zu dick» für die Marke.

2014 gewann Stefanie Giesinger «Germany’s Next Topmodel». Heute spricht sie im «G Spot Podcast» offen über Schönheitsdruck und Körperideale.

Bald feiert der Volksmusik-Moderator seine 250. «Potzmusig»-Sendung. Anlässlich des Jubiläums nimmt er die GlücksPost mit zu den Schönheiten seiner Wahlheimat im Appenzellerland.

Business Forum: Harnessing Opportunities, Unlocking Growth - March 12th, photo by IDB

By Claudia Escorza
MEXICO CITY, Apr 3 2026 (IPS)

In Asunción, Paraguay last month, finance ministers, central bank presidents, and private sector leaders gathered for the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) Annual Meetings to talk about growth.

In a session titled “Seizing Opportunities, Stimulating Growth” hosted by IDB Invest, the bank’s private sector institution, they discussed how investment and innovation could strengthen agribusiness and food systems across Latin America.

One place to start is clear: the IDB Invest should exclude industrial livestock production from its portfolio. Industrial animal agriculture is a leading driver of deforestation, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions in the region.

It puts profits in the hands of a few, while rural and Indigenous communities are left to deal with dirty water, damaged land, and fewer ways to earn a living. Yet at the very session dedicated to agribusiness, livestock was conspicuously absent from the conversation.

If the IDB Invest won’t even acknowledge the problem, it’s obviously not trying to solve it. Public development money shouldn’t be funding an industry that worsens the climate crisis and harms communities.

Equally troubling is the lack of transparency when projects do move forward. When the IDB Invest supports a project, communities have a right to understand its risks, impacts, and benefits. That did not happen, for example, in the case of Pronaca, an Ecuadorian agribusiness company that received a $50 million loan from IDB Invest.

An independent investigation by the Bank’s own accountability mechanism found seven violations of environmental and social safeguards, including failures to disclose critical information and assess the company’s role in the contamination of a local river that the Indigenous Tsáchila community rely on for food and hygiene, and which holds deep spiritual significance within their cosmology.

But key environmental documents were classified as confidential, and meaningful information was never shared. This isn’t just a problem with the IBD’s internal procedures. It can have real impacts on human rights.

Perhaps most importantly, the IDB Invest must ensure the effective participation of affected communities from the very beginning of any project. In the Pronaca case, the investigation found no evidence that nearby Indigenous communities were consulted at all, even though one community is located just a few hundred meters from a facility.

This absence of consultation wasn’t accidental, but instead part of a deep imbalance of power, where decisions are made in boardrooms and imposed on territories without consent. Communities must have a seat at the table, not as an afterthought, but as decision-makers with the ability to shape, or reject, projects that affect their futures. Anything less is incompatible with the IDB Invest’s stated mission to reduce inequality.

This month’s meeting in Paraguay showed that the IDB Group is quite ambitious when it comes to growth in Latin America. However, it would be a mistake for the IDB to believe that growth is the only measure of progress and should be the priority no matter the cost.

Right now, the IDB has the opportunity and the responsibility to pursue a sustainable growth agenda by excluding harmful industries, committing to full transparency, and including the impacted communities at every step of the process. To do that, the IDB must listen to those who were not in the room, and must recognize that economic growth cannot be built on weakened ecosystems and silenced communities.

Claudia Escorza, the Latin America Regional Coordinator for “Stop Financing Factory Farming (S3F) coalition, is based in Mexico City, and advocates sustainable food systems.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Wie hat sich die Polizei von Uri auf den Osterstau vorbereitet? Was muss ich im Stau beachten? Polizeikommandant Thorsten Imhof beantwortet die wichtigsten Fragen.

Public Domain. Smoke rises above Tehran, Iran. Source: UN News

By Daniel D. Bradlow
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Apr 3 2026 (IPS)

By Easter 2026 it was still not clear when – or how – the war initiated by Israel and the US against Iran would end. But what was already clear was that it would harm Africa in a number of ways.

Firstly, it would adversely affect the global supply and prices of oil and gas, fertilisers and food. Secondly, local currencies would be affected. More than a month after the war had started a number of African currencies had begun to lose value against the US dollar.

Thirdly, interest rates stopped falling and further rate increases were highly likely. Fourth, there will be a decline in access to affordable foreign financing.

How should Africa respond?

African countries cannot avoid being harmed by the current Gulf war. Nevertheless, based on my work in international economic law and global economic governance, I think there are two lessons that, if followed, can help the continent emerge from the crisis in a better place.

First, governments and societies need to be pragmatic. Their first priority must be to do whatever they can to mitigate the impact of the war, particularly on their most vulnerable citizens. This will require governments to make trade-offs.

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They will have to reallocate budgets to at least maintain the level of imports necessary to meet the society’s basic needs. They will need to convince their creditors to help finance their necessary imports. They will also need to persuade them to be flexible enough that they leave governments with at least some policy space.

Second, states and societies need to identify opportunities within the crisis for actions that over the medium term can help them meet their financing, economic, environmental and social challenges. This requires collaboration between the state and its non-state stakeholders. Business, labour, religious groups, civil society organisations and international organisations all have something to contribute.

Oil price surge is hurting African economies: scholars in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa take stock

Action in the short run

The focus of Africa’s efforts in the short term must be on minimising the negative effects of the war and on managing the state’s external debts in the most sustainable and effective way.

This is easy to state, but hard to implement. This is particularly the case in the current international environment, in which it is not realistic to expect donor countries and other international sources of finance to be particularly generous.

African countries will need to convince their creditors to acknowledge that this crisis is beyond Africa’s control and that they should not compound the pain that’s being experienced. This will require, at a minimum, that the creditors agree to suspend debt payments for the next year.

Creditors have already accepted the principle that debt payments can be suspended when debt challenges arise from sources beyond the debtor’s control. Many of them have accepted clauses requiring such action under specific conditions in their most recent debt contracts. They also did this during COVID.

Second, African countries, which are already heavily indebted, should challenge their multilateral creditors to accept the consequences of being among the biggest creditors for the continent. This includes the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Bank. By custom these institutions are treated as preferred creditors.

This means that they get paid before all other creditors. Instead of participating in any debt restructurings, they also make new loans to the debtor in crisis. This shifts the debt restructuring burden onto the debtor’s other creditors. It also increases the total amount owed to the multilaterals.

This cannot continue. These institutions need to be more creative in providing Africa to financing. This should include:

• Using their financial resources to guarantee the financial transactions of African countries so that they can reduce their borrowing costs and attract new equity investments.
• More generously supporting innovative debt for development swaps. These involve creditors agreeing with African sovereign debtors to convert a portion of the existing debts into financing for specific local projects, for example in health or education.
• Helping African governments convert their foreign exchange denominated debts into local currency debts at affordable interest rates.

Third, governments should work with the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions to use these institutions more effectively to finance African development. For example:

• They should require the institutions to only undertake transactions that are consistent with their development mandates. This means no more opaque transactions like the recent one that the African Finance Corporation concluded with Senegal.
• African governments should take the necessary action to activate the African Financial Stability Mechanism that they agreed to establish last year. This would create a useful financial safety net for the continent.

Fourth, African governments must build on the efforts they began last year to become a more effective advocate for African development financing interests at the international level. Among these efforts was the initiative by African ministers of finance to develop common African positions on sovereign debt restructurings. Another was South Africa’s launch of the African Expert Panel that proposed a number of initiatives on African debt and development financing.

In the medium term

African countries should advocate for the IMF to review its governance arrangements so that it becomes more accountable and responsive to developing countries, including African states and societies.

They should also advocate for the IMF to more use its existing resources, including its gold reserves, more creatively to support Africa.

Second, Africa should call for a debate on the preferred creditor status of multilateral financial institutions. This has become particularly relevant because the members of the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions are claiming that, like all other multilateral financial institutions, they are entitled to this status.

It is not clear that there are good arguments for excluding these institutions from preferred creditor status while protecting the position of the legacy institutions. This suggests that there is a need for some general principles that help determine which institutions should be treated as preferred creditors. These should be acceptable to all multilateral financial institutions and other market participants.

Third, African societies must make every effort to demonstrate that they are taking control of their own development. They should demand that their governments and all other actors in African development finance behave responsibly in regard to the financial, economic, environmental and social aspects of these transactions.

Another medium-term objective should be to limit the illicit financial flows that are so often associated with international trade and investment. This goal would be advanced by the successful conclusion of the current efforts to agree on a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation.

Prof Daniel D. Bradlow, Professor/Senior Research Fellow, Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria, was Senior Non-Resident Fellow, Global Development Policy Center, Boston University and Professor Emeritus, American University Washington College of Law

Source: Conversation Africa

IPS UN Bureau

 

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