COVID — SHANGHAI DEATHS CONTRADICT OFFICIAL NUMBERS: "Dozens of elderly patients at a hospital in Shanghai have died after contracting Covid-19, but official government figures claim no deaths in the city have been caused by the disease since 2020," the BBC reported over the weekend. Come Monday, authorities in Shanghai have admitted to three Covid deaths. COVID — INDIA BLOCKING EFFORTS TO UPDATE GLOBAL COVID DEATH TOLL: The real death toll is around 15 million (though some statisticians argue it's closer to 18 million ), rather than the officially noted 6 million. One reason you're not getting better updated numbers is that experts think India is responsible for around 3 million of the deaths not officially attributed to Covid, and the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi refuses to update its count of 520,000 deaths, blocking World Health Organization efforts to update the global figure. MYSTERY HEPATITIS IN CHILDREN SPREADING IN EUROPE: Cases of the hepatitis first identified in children in the U.K. have now been found in Ireland and Spain, the World Health Organization said in a statement, following news of 74 cases of severe hepatitis in children in the U.K. reported on April 5. Six of those 74 children now require a liver transplant. G-20 — INDONESIAN PRESIDENT FACES BACKLASH FOR NAMING POP STAR AS SPOKESPERSON: Indonesia's president Joko Widodo is raising eyebrows with his appointment of Ayunda Faza Maudya — a 27-year-old singer and actress better known as Maudy Ayunda — as spokesperson for the country's G-20 presidency. Think of it like Joe Biden naming Miley Cyrus as a G-7 spokesperson, or Britain getting Dua Lipa to front the NATO press podium. No word yet on how Ayunda plans to handle sneaky tactics from the Russia delegation at this year's G-20 summit. "At her first briefing, she appeared to ignore questions about [ Vladimir] Putin's attendance. Organizers told journalists to ask about her personality instead," South China Morning Post reported. IMF — TRUST US: The International Monetary Fund board has approved a Resilience and Sustainability Trust financing mechanism to operate from May 1. The idea is to funnel at least $45 billion of the Fund's $650 billion in Special Drawing Rights to developing countries. Njuguna Ndung'u , a former Central Bank Governor of Kenya now with African Economic Research Consortium, said via email that the trust "fills a major gap in the international finance architecture at a crucial moment," but remains skeptical. "I do not see its current capitalization at $45 billion being enough to build resilience around the world" — neither around "short-term instabilities" nor "longer-term investment in net-zero transitions and adaptation." DIPLOMACY — WASHINGTON'S LONELIEST MAN: Russia's ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, can't get meetings with American officials and lawmakers, much less take a photo, writes Nahal Toosi. "Not even Russian leader Vladimir Putin chats with him. The pair haven't had a conversation since just before Antonov departed for Washington in 2017, the envoy admits." That may explain how Antonov ends up with special perspectives on the war. He told POLITICO's Toosi: "It cannot be excluded that there may be provocations by Ukrainians against the military supplies from NATO and EU member states to Ukraine. They can deliberately organize such diversions to subsequently accuse Russia thereof." Translation: While Ukraine is begging NATO members for weapons it says it is desperately short of — Antonov thinks you should still expect it to blow up those weapons before using them, as a way of creating a negative media narrative about Russia. FRENCH ELECTION SMALL BOUNCE FOR MACRON: Incumbent President Emmanuel Macron is now leading by an average of 54 percent versus Marine Le Pen's 46 percent in POLITICO's Poll of Polls aggregator. HEADSCARF DEBATE IS BACK: Le Pen's promise to ban the headscarf in public places, and fine women for wearing one, is making headlines again in France, as the candidate struggles to explain how she would enforce the policy. Le Pen said in a TV interview on Friday that her opposition to the headscarf is not the "most urgent element" of her campaign, representing only a small part of her drive to combat the "totalitarian Islamist ideology." But she also insists the headscarf is "a uniform imposed by Islamists." Her spokesperson Sébastien Chenu said Le Pen would leave it up to parliament to impose limits on the headscarf. Background: In France, religious symbols including crosses and head coverings are banned in schools and for civil servants, due to the country's secularity principle known as laïcité. EU FRAUD AGENCY IN NEW LE PEN INVESTIGATION: The EU's anti-fraud office OLAF has sent a report to French authorities detailing a list of accusations against Le Pen and several of her party colleagues for misuse of EU funds when she was a member of the European Parliament between 2004 and 2017. The investigation, revealed by French outlet Mediapart on Saturday, comes on top of previous charges against Le Pen's party for misusing EU parliamentary funds. A lawyer for Le Pen denied any wrongdoing. How much? The report says Le Pen is personally liable to pay back $148,000, and her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, $327,000. The investigators allege the Le Pens filed "fictitious" expenses, paid out to commercial companies in the orbit of Le Pen's party National Rally party. UKRAINE FRONTS RUSSIAN BANKRUPTCY "ONLY A MATTER OF TIME" SAYS EU PRESIDENT: Rejecting suggestions that EU and allied sanctions are taking too long to bite, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen insisted they're working. "Russia's national bankruptcy is only a matter of time . With this war, Putin is also destroying his own country and the future of its people," she told Germany's highest-circulation newspaper Bild am Sonntag. MARIUPOL — NO SURRENDER: Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told ABC Sunday that soldiers in Mariupol would "fight to the end." Russia is planning to further restrict access to the besieged city from today, the BBC reported. Ukraine's richest man vows to rebuild the besieged city. RUSSIAN MISSILE STRIKES: The Ukrainian statement comes in the wake of missile strikes on Kyiv and intensified shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city. In his nightly address on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at least 18 people had been killed and more than 100 injured during shelling in Kharkiv over the past four days. "The need for an embargo on oil supplies from Russia is growing every day," Zelenskyy said. EU MEMBERSHIP — QUESTIONS ANSWERED: Ukraine has completed its EU membership questionnaire, Ihor Zhovkva, deputy head of Zelenskyy's office, told the Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine in an interview. FOOD CRISIS — AFRICA'S SAHEL WILL NEED SUPPORT BY JUNE: Africa's Sahel region — already plagued by Islamist-driven instability and climate change — may need emergency food assistance as early as June. "Ukraine's crisis is going to worsen the food situation, which is already disastrous," said EU Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič. Adjacent: War in Ukraine offers a palm oil comeback to the horror of green groups. CONSCRIPTION — AN ELEMENT YOU MAY NOT HAVE THOUGHT OF: "About 134,000 enlisted soldiers are going to leave the Russian force in the next couple months," Retired U.S. Army Gen. Kevin Ryan, a longtime Russian hand at the Pentagon, told SpyTalk podcast co-hostJeanne Meserve. "And they're going to go back home with stories and impressions and whatever morale they had, they're gonna take back with them. And the impact of those people on Russian society … is gonna be tremendous." REFUGEES — BRITISH MINISTER WELCOME FLEEING FAMILY INTO HIS HOME: Transport Secretary Grant Shapps became the first British Cabinet minister to welcome a Ukrainian family into his home under his government's sponsorship scheme. SOUTH KOREA — SEOUL SEEKS TO RAMP UP AMERICAN ENGAGEMENT: President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol has named a pro-U.S. foreign minister in his first U.S. interview ahead of his inauguration, he told the Washington Post's Min Joo Kim, that presidents Lincoln (for developing a workable federal system) and Kennedy (for frank admission of mistakes) are his American political role models. CRYPTO — BIGGEST NEW LOBBYING GAME IN TOWN: The Tech Transparency Project, an advocacy group focused on tech accountability, in February identified 235 examples of U.S. officials who have moved from the public sector to crypto companies. Larry Summers, the former Obama Treasury secretary whose signature is literally on U.S. currency, now serves as an adviser to no fewer than three crypto companies. More from POLITICO's Emily Birnbaum. METAVERSE METRICS: Morning Consult surveyed American adults about their metaverse hopes and dreams. They're "most enthused by the idea of attending a live music event in the metaverse, and are most concerned about misuses of their personal data."
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