Missionary pilot dies carrying COVID-19 supplies

INDONESIA: Missionary pilot Joyce Lin, 40, died on Tuesday when her plane crashed en route to delivering COVID-19 rapid test kits and other supplies to a clinic in the Papua highlands. Mission Aviation Fellowship has been supplying remote villages where symptoms suggest the virus is spreading, and Lin was on her way to Mamit in the country’s easternmost province when she radioed with an emergency and her Kodiak aircraft descended into Papua’s Lake Sentani. There were no other passengers on board due to coronavirus flight restrictions, MAF spokesman Brad Hoagland told Christianity Today, and the group has not had a fatal accident in 23 years.

RUSSIA: President Vladimir Putin, just months off vanquishing mortal foes to extend his rule, is confronting a growing coronavirus threat. Russia has overtaken the U.K. to move into second place behind the United States in the number of cases—with Putin’s government grappling with an outbreak in the Kremlin, a high percentage of hospitalizations in a broken system where doctors are going unpaid, and deficient equipment. On Tuesday, a defective ventilator burst into flames, killing five COVID-19 patients.

AFGHANISTAN: Gunmen stormed a maternity hospital in Kabul on Tuesday, killing 24, including two newborns, and triggering a battle with security forces that lasted hours. “In my more than 20-year career I have not witnessed such a horrific, brutal act,” said Dr. Hassan Kamel of the attack, which took place only hours after a suicide bomb at a funeral in Nangarhar killed 32. Doctors Without Borders opened the 55-bed maternity unit inside Dasht-e-Barchi hospital in 2014, delivering more than 5,000 babies a year and offering critical care treatment in a country with one of the world’s highest infant mortality rates. ISIS claimed responsibility for the funeral attack, and experts believe it also was behind the Kabul shooting, though no group has claimed it.

The Taliban condemned both attacks, earning praise from U.S. officials. But longtime Taliban expert Thomas Joscelyn explained why the U.S. partnership with the Taliban in the February U.S. withdrawal agreement won’t lead to peace.

SUDAN has rejected Ethiopia’s proposal to begin filling Renaissance Dam Lake, putting on hold any further negotiations for the completion of Ethiopia’s controversial $6 billion Blue Nile dam project.

AFRICA: World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley cautioned that disruptions in the global supply chain already caused by COVID-19 could double the number of people on the brink of starvation in 2020. “We could be facing multiple famines of Biblical proportions within a short few months,” the former governor of South Carolina warned. “You can go a few weeks exposed to a disease, but you can’t go two weeks without food.”

UNITED STATES: Coronavirus testing in the United States lags behind more than a dozen other countries in the number per confirmed case, an indicator of a country’s scale. Public health experts said at least 3.5 million or more tests a week are necessary to reopen the country safely. The United States is now conducting 300,000 tests a day, or just over 2 million a week, according to President Donald Trump.

Countering the viral video Plandemic and other propaganda requires a checklist of skills most news consumers can master in an age of division and misinformation.

GLOBAL: The good news is the number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases has started to level off on a global basis. The bad news, displayed in this infographic, is that it’s now largely rising in the poorest parts of the world lacking healthcare resources. That’s why I’ve argued here and here this week for Marshall Plan–type attention. Left to ravage parts of Asia, Africa, and South America heading into their winter months, the coronavirus may gain force to again ravage the Northern Hemisphere during its winter. In their battle also lies ours.

I’M READING Global Transmission, Global Mission, an e-book overview by Operation World on the implications of the coronavirus for the global church. Take a look and send thoughts.

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