The pun demick is accelerating it took 67 days from the 1st reported case to reach the 1st 100000 cases 11 days for the 2nd 100000 cases just 4 days for this. 100000 cases the u. N. Is calling for a global ceasefire to allow the world to focus on the fight against the pandemic thats a syria has now confirmed its 1st case humanitarian groups say a major outbreak in the war torn country would be particularly catastrophic women and children and people with disabilities the marginalized and displaced by the highest price they also at the highest risk of suffering devastating losses from poor feed 19. 00. Lets not forget that in war ravaged countries now systems of collapse else professionals already few in number and often been targeted refugees and other these placed by violent conflict are doubly vulnerable the fury of the vials illustrates the folly of war if you see why today i am calling for an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world it is time to put Armed Conflict on lockdown and focus together on the to fight of our lives. Has reported the 1st death of a coronavirus patient after confirming its 1st cases this past weekend the government has closed schools and banned large gatherings but there are concerns over the countrys ability to handle an outbreak Zimbabwes Health system has suffered critical shortages of equipment and drugs for years and late last year the un warned the country is on the brink of manmade starvation with some 8000000 people facing Food Insecurity south africas president has announced a nationwide lockdown for 21 days from thursday the army will be deployed to enforce the restrictions there are more than 400 confirmed cases of corona virus in south africa but no deaths. This is the decisive measure to save lives of the africans from infection and save the lives of hundreds of thousands of our people. While this measure will have a considerable impact on peoples livelihoods and the lives of our society and on our economy the human cost of delaying this action would be far far greater. Coble Financial Markets continue to suffer as the coronavirus pandemic worsens the dow jones in new york is trading down more than 3 percent after another day of falls across asia and europe no traders were allowed into the New York Stock Exchange on monday and all market trading is happening elektra honestly because of the shutdown off new york. Meanwhile the u. S. Senate has failed to agree on a trillion dollar stimulus bill aimed at boosting the economy during the pandemic this is the 2nd time the legislation hasnt passed politicians are under increasing pressure to prevent an economic collapse but theyve been divided on what the final package should actually look like democrats are saying that republican proposals are favoring corporations rather than putting workers 1st. Here today tz where the headlines on aljazeera more news coming up after sound wars an ecological investigation unveils a global emergency. We bought the house about 2 years ago hoping that we would be able to retire here but from here you could see how much sand weve lost underneath the house. The world is running out of sand consumed by industry and construction stolen and transported by criminal mafias around the world that bought them to have them put it all got up at the foot of creativity i like the dock im not exactly. Washed away by rising sea levels we have been in the middle of the indian ocean for the last 5000 its become just. Lost to human greed and stupidity. When we use nets and that means we loose. Our life. Weve never needed so much sand so badly with beaches and entire islands already disappearing pool in the sand worse. For most of us san makes us think of days at the beach sand castles and sunshine and once the holidays are over we slip back into our busy lives. But is feeling the sand between our toes or caught in our bathing suits the whole story. Does this so familiar substance play any other role in our daily lives. Standard is what i like to call the Unsung Heroes of law its because theyre just endlessly examples. Of the way in which sand intersects with daily lloyds which we all really know commonly aware of. Sand has quietly infiltrated every corner of our world melted and transformed into glass it sits on every shelf. Its also the source of silicone dioxide. A mineral found an hour winds cleaning products detergents paper dehydrated foods hairspray toothpaste cosmetics. And an astounding variety of other products we use every day. But its. Mended such as. You. Think about your computer. You know and it can be manufactured if you do not have high quality said. The minerals extracted from sand are at the core of our Hyper Connected Society they form a basic material for microchips without which our computers Credit Cards Bank machine cell phones and many other devices would not exist. Sand even alps or supply in our airplanes the plastics lightweight alloys of the fuselage and jet engines even the paint and tires are all made with sand. Its almost become like a the a we dont think too much about it but you cant live without it. And the industry with the biggest appetite for sand. Construction. For the last 150 years sand mixed with cement to form concrete has shaped the contours of our increasingly urbanized world. Because of its low cost strength and ease of use disgrace larry has become the dominant Building Material around the globe. The quantities used are astronomical. To build an average house it takes 200. 00 tons of sand. For a larger building like a hospital around 3000 tons. Each kilometer of highway devours 30000 tons. And to build a Nuclear Plant the estimate is about 12000000. 00 tons. Of production of sand exceeds 15000000000 tons. And that is a quantity that is so huge that its beyond imagination how much is 15000000000 you dont know because no other resource is used in such vast quantities as maybe with the exception of water. So where in the world does that much sand come from. Lets just say the sand men who work in the aggregate business have not been affected by the economic downturn. Behind air and water sand is the most used commodity in the world. Business is booming but meeting this demand is not always an easy task sand is not something thats easily found like you might think it is used to be that youd have a sand and gravel deposit and youd simply go and dig it up out of the ground so youd have sand to make your roads bridges and buildings up but that type material has all been taken away its gone abuse it already. With the positives of surface sand exhausted we started dredging rivers for sand but this is lead to flooding. Now weve turned to the oceans for sand. To satisfy our seemingly insatiable appetite for sand weve industrialized extracting it from beneath the waves. And the workhorse of the industry is a dredger. A giant tanker equipped with a suction arm capable of pumping huge quantities of sand to the surface. And. The right bessel in the right location can pump up to 400000 cubic metres of sand to the surface every single day. Each dredger cost anywhere from 25000000. 00 to 200000000. 00. But the sand is free. So the thousands of tankers combing the worlds oceans at every incentive to suck up as much sand as possible for their increasingly hungry clients. An astonishing example of this appetite within a few decades this fishing village has morphed into a modern architecture is a sandbox for developers were no fantasies too grandiose. But as projects. Of sand and huge volumes of sand and Construction Projects concrete and just making land has been doing with the with the official reconstructed island. Landfills or even bigger consumers of sand and concrete with a booming economy the emirate launched an ambitious expansion project. After the year 2000 with the price of state soaring as a result of speculation Developers Bet that it would be cheaper to make land than to buy it. But. The world cost over 12000000000. 00 and devoured more than 150000000. 00 tons of sand. With a giant palm still under construction flying high in the seemingly Endless Supply of money and sand embarked on an even more extravagant project. The world. The world is an island paradise would run president had opportunity can be found it is almost as resort official archipelago of 300. 00 islands designed as a map of the world absorbed 14000000000. 00 and 3. 00 times as much sand as the palm. The. Place beyond imagination. Today the world is a mirage the work site has been abandoned since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008. Deserted island is now parked in the sun awaiting the uncertain day when millionaire buyers will again descend on the buy and restore its glory. For new kill the Corporation Managing the palm of the world the crisis is more than financial overdevelopment is totally liquidated by his natural Sand Resources and you think youll find of course dubai is on the edge of that theres a theyve got old asylum they need like all the gulf states dubai has sand everywhere so why doesnt the emirates simply help itself to the desert desert sand is the wrong color end of sand for building a lot of fishel islands why because desert sand all the grains have been blown around by the wind and is typically very round and very smooth if you want to use it to build an island they dont stick together you need sand that that is more angular rougher rougher age sand that naturally sticks together. See sand is perfect for island building and construction but its in limited supply sand is not a sustainable resource. Although its own stocks are exhausted dubai is far from given up. The burj khalifa at the time of construction the worlds tallest building was built with sand from half a world away. We have a saying in english this is selling sand to the arabs which is obviously. That thats actually come true in the case of the by. 3500. 00 Australian Companies exports into the Arabian Peninsula their profits of tripled in 20 years accounting for a 5000000000. 00 jackpot. And australia is just one small part of a global trend that reliant on importing sand from other areas and so you see is this he. Trade around the world moving from one areas for another for different purposes such as construction and land reclamation. Singapore is another city at the heart of the sand wars. And 30 years the country known as the switzerland of beijing has become one of the richest in the region during this time the population has more than doubled and the 63 islands that make up the cities today are bursting at the seams singapore its were lying on the import of sand for its very existence and the land masses literally increased 20 percent over the last 40 years and thats largely been reclamation so literally pouring sound into the sea to create new land. Singapore is already transformed 130 square kilometers of water into land and is planning to add another 100 square kilometers by 2030. Having devoured all its own reserves its ferocious appetite has targeted its neighbor supplies. One after another cambodia. Malaysia and indonesia have beach decided to ban trade with singapore but its addiction descent is not easy to restrain. Singapore is being accused of expanding its coast and illegally dredged from neighboring states. Suspicions of sand trafficking hang over singapore and the dozens of barges still to the brim which imo daily and its important prove that the city state has found an alternative source but where does the saying come from. Tommy guns fear. Guns. You come here every day every week. This is what is driving the visuals so awkward. Know what. Your individual. Your 4th division or your. Thanks to local traffic and Networks Singapore and dealers with false identities working for fictional Companies Continue to find supplies of sand in neighboring countries. But the other company. Is it just it was invisible. But this is the this place. To take your. Flaunt the law with the tacit support of the government their most loyal client. The sun trading singapores he usually have a classical as the mass of the baucus is ours were concerned its just a is bill the south as you know leader in the region in particular the last global sun thats but their companies will brain imports of that country and should be its Human Rights Violations environmental degradation and damage the livelihoods of local people. The effects of underwater dredging are far from benign. Much of the ocean floors rocky or covered with only a thin layer of sand. Built up over tens or even hundreds of thousands of years. As you dredge up a set. Of course all the the any walls and. On the sea floor they will all be dredged up as well and therefore whatever Living Communities are they will just be the sand is the primary link in the underwater food chain remove it and the survival of all species from the smallest to the largest is threatened. Like many archipelagos many of indonesias islands are literally made of sand and intense dredging has triggered a series of chain reactions. 92 percent in the nations fiscal challenges come from tension of the city because of. This we. We lost fish. Livelihood. Everything loss of fish habitat directly endangers the survival of thousands of indonesian families but thats only the 1st of sand dredging to adverse effects. If you have an oil made of sand its only there because of could spirit sea of natural processes wind waves water currents time of year and so if you start removing that. Then youve upset the balance of the conspiracy and waves and currents will then start to move the rest of the set. After the extraction of sand a combination of waves currents and gravity slowly fill in the back you. So the removal of underwater sand can have a very noticeable effect on nearby beaches and islands. And so by a combination of the match will prove this is and human excavation the island can literally disappear. One of the nice stunning and pax of the trade is the disappearance of some of the islands off the coast of indonesia which have literally vanished when we use that sand. Once an island disappears the International Maritime boundary changes all is required to these become geopolitical issues as well as simply commercial and resource issues. 25 indonesian islands have already disappeared. Like coal and gas sand is now on the frontline of the worlds hunger for raw materials. Scarcity and dangers local communities and sets governments against each other. As demand builds the circle only becomes more vicious. Moroccos gentle climate has been welcoming tourists for years. But its famous beaches have also been attracting some strange 4 legged visitors a constant stream of men and donkeys descend on the beaches 7 days a week. In search of. Sand. The men in the donkeys have taken so much sand that some beaches now look like the surface of the moon. Rock has been experiencing a construction boom spurred on by a competitive real estate market. The builders are happy but they need plenty of sand legal and otherwise. I repair i have i dont want to give you. A bit about are you going to bend and addenda going to be mad or not do you have enough to know what coming up to no no no no my love my double got nothing. By that i mean i got them help oh yeah. Look i do one thing yes i did was really i do what cigars right with their day but they didnt come but you know youre not going out your head not them have them couldnt get up at will create a video i like them i like that lap its estimated that 40 to 45 percent of the sand used in construction in morocco has been stolen mostly from its beaches. Loaded onto trucks the sand is sold directly to unscrupulous developers but thats not where the problem ends. Without proper treatment salty beach sand mixed with cement is highly corrosive make americas New Buildings ticking time bombs in danger of collapse. Ironically the beach is meant to lure the tourists are being stripped bare to build hotels and condos that may turn out to be death traps. In the maybe enjoy. The position of being the Financial Capital of the country andrea also have a huge housing Boom Construction boom thats because of the influx of so many new people into the city. With the Indian Economy booming construction has to keep pace and like in so many other battlegrounds of the sand wars easy profits lead to corrupt practices. The value of sand is such that its a commercial commodity that is smuggled i mean the its a big business is smuggling the fam. Sand mafia is the most powerful criminal organization in india. A lot of the people in the whole. Who control of the sun mafia oh so control and a lot of the construction the Construction Materials businesses in bombay as well as the constructions themselves in addition to that they also control the administration through their political contacts so that just completes the whole value chain right from the extraction to construction the the profits in each bottle fit the administration and the police. Under the eyes of corrupt authorities the sand arts ply their trade in broad daylight and more than 8000. 00 drugs inside scattered across the coastline river banks of the subcontinent. For the mafias beaches are easy prey because the sand is literally within arms reach so they had even the most popular tourist sites the places where you expect to stretch out on the beach and worship the sun. The tender calls of the mafias however are just adding to the pressures facing the world speeches. Just 2 years ago there was a row of houses here. About i think about 8 houses from about here all the way down to the condo and those houses verano water the shoreline with going right past them so they ended up taking them out of these houses here with her on the beach front were row number 2 and i have the fact that the house wont be here and 5 here. We thought the house about 2 years ago hoping that we would be able to retire here. But from here you could see how much sand weve lost underneath the house. Because it was up to level with the cement but of course it went out into the ocean. So. The beach area was about the length of a football field and over the last 2 years the scart mint is underneath the houses so. The erosion on this part of the beach is much quicker than we anticipated or there is steam t