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UNICEF Aiding British Children Amid Pandemic

VOA News

   UNICEF UK, for the first time in its 70-year history, is giving food
   assistance to Britain's children whose families have been affected by
   the coronavirus pandemic.

   A little more than $1 million will be distributed to 30 organizations.

   UNICEF UK's action has angered a British politician, accusing the
   United Nations Children's Fund of playing a "political stunt."

   Tory minister Jacob Rees-Mogg said Thursday in the Commons: "I think
   it's a real scandal that UNICEF should be playing politics in this way
   when it is meant to be looking after people in the poorest, the most
   deprived countries in the world, where people are starving, where there
   are famines and there are civil wars ... It is a political stunt of the
   lowest order."

   Not all politicians agreed with Rees-Mogg. Ed Davey, the Liberal
   Democratic Leader, called Rees-Mogg's comments "abhorrent -- a
   modern-day version of 'let them eat cake.'"

   "The only scandal here is this rotten Tory government leaving 4.2
   million children living in poverty," said Angela Rayner, Labor's deputy
   leader.

   UNICEF UK said in a statement that an estimated 2.4 million British
   children were already food insecure before the pandemic.

   French President Emmanuel Macron has joined the list of world leaders
   who has tested positive for the coronavirus. Macron has left Elysée
   Palace and is temporarily working at an official residence in
   Versailles.

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