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newstfionline · 3 years ago

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Friday, September 3, 2021

US faith groups unite to help Afghanistan refugees after war (AP) America’s major religions and denominations, often divided on other big issues, have united behind the effort to help receive an influx of refugees from Afghanistan following the end of the United States’ longest war and one of the largest airlifts in history. Among those gearing up to help are Jewish refugee resettlement agencies and Islamic groups; conservative and liberal Protestant churches; and prominent Catholic relief organizations, providing everything from food and clothes to legal assistance and housing. “It’s incredible. It’s an interfaith effort that involved Catholic, Lutheran, Muslim, Jews, Episcopalians ... Hindus ... as well as nonfaith communities who just believe that maybe it’s not a matter of faith, but it’s just a matter of who we are as a nation,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. The U.S. and its coalition partners have evacuated more than 100,000 people from Afghanistan since the airlift began Aug. 14, including more than 5,400 American citizens and many Afghans who helped the U.S. during the 20-year war.

Hurricane Ida’s aftermath, recovery uneven across Louisiana (AP) In New Orleans, an ongoing power outage after Hurricane Ida is making the sweltering summer unbearable. But in some areas outside the city, that misery is compounded by a lack of water, flooded neighborhoods and severely damaged homes. Four days after Hurricane Ida struck, the storm’s aftermath—and progress in recovering from it—are being felt unevenly across affected communities in Louisiana. In New Orleans, power was restored Wednesday to a small number of homes and businesses, city crews had some streets almost completely cleared of fallen trees and debris and a few corner stores reopened. Outside New Orleans, neighborhoods remained flooded and residents were still reeling from damage to their homes and property. More than 1,200 people were walking through some of Ida’s hardest-hit communities to look for those needing help, according to the Louisiana Fire Marshal’s office.

More than 45 dead after Ida’s remnants blindside Northeast (AP) A stunned U.S. East Coast faced a rising death toll, surging rivers and tornado damage Thursday after the remnants of Hurricane Ida walloped the region with record-breaking rain, drowning more than 40 people in their homes and cars. In a region that had been warned about potentially deadly flash flooding but hadn’t braced for such a blow from the no-longer-hurricane, the storm killed at least 46 people from Maryland to Connecticut on Wednesday night and Thursday morning. In New York, nearly 500 vehicles were abandoned on flooded highways, garbage bobbed in streaming streets and water cascaded into the city’s subway tunnels, trapping at least 17 trains and disrupting service all day. Videos online showed riders standing on seats in swamped cars. All were safely evacuated, with police aiding 835 riders and scores of people elsewhere. The National Weather Service said the ferocious storm also spawned at least 10 tornadoes from Maryland to Massachusetts, including a 150-mph (241 kph) twister that splintered homes and toppled silos in Mullica Hill, New Jersey, south of Philadelphia.

President’s murder inquiry slow amid Haiti’s multiple crises (AP) In the nearly two months since President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated, Haiti has suffered a devastating earthquake and a drenching tropical storm, the twin natural disasters deflecting attention from the man-made one that preceded them. Add the constant worry over deteriorating security at the hands of gangs that by some estimates control territory that’s home to about a fifth of Haiti’s 11 million citizens, and the investigation into Moïse’s killing is fast fading from the public consciousness. Even those still paying attention, demanding accountability and pressuring for a thorough investigation give no chance to the crime’s masterminds being brought to justice in a country where impunity reigns. It doesn’t help that Moïse was despised by a large portion of the population. “The hope for finding justice for Jovenel is zero,” said Pierre Esperance, executive director of the National Human Rights Defense Network.

Fancy a beer in Britain? In some pubs, supplies are running low. (Washington Post) Fears are brewing among pint-loving Brits amid reports of a national beer shortage. Some pubs say they are running low on pints of Carling and Coors—the latest victims of the United Kingdom’s supply chain crisis, sparked by Brexit and exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, that has led to headline-grabbing scarcities of items including McDonald’s milkshakes, beloved Nando’s chicken and the polarizing breakfast spread Marmite. “We are experiencing some supply problems,” a spokesman for pub chain Wetherspoons said Tuesday, apologizing for any inconvenience caused to customers. The lack of beer has been attributed to the ongoing shortage of truck drivers to transport goods, a problem sparked by Britain’s decision to leave the European Union following a 2016 referendum that divided the country. The driver shortage has not been helped by the country’s “pingdemic,” in which tens of thousands of workers were forced to self-isolate after being contacted by the National Health Service app for coming into contact with someone who tested positive for coronavirus.

Merkel steps down with legacy dominated by tackling crises (AP) Angela Merkel will leave office as one of modern Germany’s longest-serving leaders and a global diplomatic heavyweight, with a legacy defined by her management of a succession of crises that shook a fragile Europe rather than any grand visions for her own country. In 16 years at the helm of Europe’s biggest economy, Merkel did end military conscription, set Germany on course for a future without nuclear and fossil-fueled power, and introduce a national minimum wage and benefits encouraging fathers to look after young children, among other things. But a senior ally recently summed up what many view as her main service: as an anchor of stability in stormy times. He told Merkel: “You protected our country well.”

India locks down Kashmir after top separatist leader’s death (AP) Indian authorities cracked down on public movement and imposed a near-total communications blackout Thursday in disputed Kashmir after the death of Syed Ali Geelani, a top separatist leader who became the emblem of the region’s defiance against New Delhi. Geelani, who died late Wednesday at age 92, was buried in a quiet funeral at a local graveyard organized by authorities under harsh restrictions, his son Naseem Geelani told The Associated Press. “They snatched his body and forcibly buried him. Nobody from the family was present for his burial. We tried to resist but they overpowered us and even scuffled with women,” said Naseem Geelani. As most Kashmiris remained locked inside their homes, armed police and soldiers patrolled the tense region. Government forces placed steel barricades and razor wire across many roads, bridges and intersections and set up additional checkpoints across towns and villages in the Kashmir Valley. Authorities cut most of cellphone networks and mobile internet service in a common tactic employed by India in anticipation of mass protests.

Women and technology in Japan (NYT) Japan is facing a severe shortage of workers in technology and engineering. And in university programs that produce workers in these fields, Japan has some of the lowest percentages of women in the developed world. Up to age 15, Japanese girls and boys perform equally well in math and science on international standardized tests. But at this critical juncture, when students must choose between the science and humanities tracks in high school, girls appear to lose confidence and interest in math and science. In these fields, the higher the educational level, the fewer the women, a phenomenon many blame on cultural expectations. “The sex-based division of labor is deeply rooted,” one young woman said. To help change the trend, two women with science backgrounds co-founded a nonprofit called Waffle, which runs one-day tech camps for middle and high school girls. Asumi Saito and Sayaka Tanaka offer career lectures and hands-on experiences that emphasize problem solving, community, and entrepreneurship to counter the stereotypically geeky image of technology. “Our vision is to close the gender gap by empowering and educating women in technology,” Saito said.

Taiwan Warns China Can ‘Paralyze’ Island’s Defenses in Conflict (Bloomberg) Taiwan warned that China could “paralyze” its defenses in a conflict, a stark new assessment expected to fuel calls in Washington for more support for the democratically ruled island. China is able to neutralize Taiwan’s air-and-sea defenses and counter-attack systems with “soft and hard electronic attacks,” Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said in an annual report to lawmakers seen by Bloomberg News. The document offered a more alarming assessment than last year’s report, which had said China still lacked the capability to launch an assault. While Beijing isn’t believed to possess the transport and logistical capacity necessary for an invasion of Taiwan’s large and mountainous main island, the ministry recommended monitoring Chinese efforts to expand training and preparations for complex landing operations. China already has the ability to seize Taiwan’s surrounding islands, it said.

Those left in Afghanistan complain of broken US promises (AP) Even in the final days of Washington’s chaotic airlift in Afghanistan, Javed Habibi was getting phone calls from the U.S. government promising that the green card holder from Richmond, Virginia, his wife and their four daughters would not be left behind. He was told to stay home and not worry, that they would be evacuated. Late Monday, however, his heart sank as he heard that the final U.S. flights had left Kabul’s airport, followed by the blistering staccato sound of Taliban gunfire, celebrating what they saw as their victory over America. “They lied to us,” Habibi said of the U.S. government. He is among hundreds of American citizens and green card holders stranded in the Afghan capital. Victoria Nuland, undersecretary of state for political affairs, would not address individual cases but said all U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents who could not get evacuation flights or were otherwise stranded had been contacted individually in the past 24 hours and told to expect further information about routes out once those have been arranged.

#headlines #news

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anastkantdhangar · 4 years ago

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Why India’s Social Milieu Needs An Urgent Contemplation

India, traditionally, has been offering astounding variety in virtually every aspect of social life - diversities of ethnic, linguistic, regional, economic, religious, class, and caste groups crosscut Indian society, which gives light to its very inclusive, secular and democratic character. But why there has been a social unrest lately?

India ranks 144th on the World Happiness Index out of a total 156 countries on the list, even behind the likes of Pakistan, ranked 66th, and Bangladesh, ranked 107th.

17th June, 2019, a 24-year old man called Tabrez Ansari was mob-lynched in Jharkhand. He was tied to a pole sometime around midnight, and was beaten brutally till 6 in the morning, and was also forced to chant Hindu sayings. As usual, police arrived late, Tabrez was taken to the hospital, where even his blood pressure was not recorded. He died four days later.

Kashmiri Pandits were victims to a similar unfortunate happening. They were forced to exodus from their own home, and ever since, Kashmir has been even more of a hot topic.

It was a similar mob which chased and killed Inspector Subodh Kumar Singh in December, 2018 in Bulandshahr. He was trying to control a mob that had gone on the rampage after cow carcasses were discovered nearby the locality. The same mob also raised slogans against the police during the unfortunate happening.

Back then, between 2015-2018 specifically, such things were done in the name of cows, an animal which holds a religious significance in Hindu mythology. Considerable amount of such happenings on the name of cow slaughtering frequently grabbed news headlines back then, and as a consequence, consumption of beef in India saw some low. When reports of cow being starved to death in official government shelters started coming in, and also about that stray cattle were destroying crops and farmers were not very pleased with it, politics abandoned cows. It is obvious that cows, along with other animals, need to be protected, also given the fact that dairy products are a must, there needs more to be done to protect and nurse them. But the project of fear and violence that had been started, still continues in various forms.

But, unfortunately, cases of mob-lynchings still take place in our beloved India. The very recent case of Palghar district in Maharashtra, where two Hindu saints, while being in police custody and being taken to Gujarat, were attacked by locals. Reports suggest that the rumors were spread in the area about a gang which abducts children, and on the suspicion of the same, the saints were beaten to death, while the act of police standing quietly beside raised many questions.

A particular section of society, including sections of media, left no stone unturned to give it a communal angle. And there is no denying that there are communal and casteist angles to most of such cases, but there is a larger angle to it. The fact that somehow normal and a routine act it has become to lynch anyone you disagree with, who is outnumbered, is a thing which we need to question. What message are we passing on to the youth? Aspiring to be a global superpower, what are we projecting ourselves as?

The Larger Picture

Democracy has space for various views, expressing dissent in a dignified manner, solving issues, but no democracy can justify use of violence or any arbitrary means to deal with dissent. The very feeling of people that they too are ours should not be compromised at any cost.

The fact that the frequency of such acts has increased in last few years outlines that a message has been passed on to the society, especially the youth, that to beat up someone who does not agree with you, or who expresses any or some form of dissent is a normal practice. Of course, there also has to be some manner and dignity in which dissent should be expressed in a democratic society. But to suppress dissent brutally should not be a solution in a civil society.

This the reason why a new debate had acquired the headlines for some time about whether and how India has been growing intolerant rapidly, but the media and the viewers, the public, a large part of it, did not pay much attention to it. This was and is, what I believe, still a relevant question to ask and explore.

A considerable section of the youth has grasped that dissent or disagreement can be or has to be suppressed, even if it needs violence, which is more than worrisome. This is very much evident owing to recent JNU Campus Violence amongst students back in winter during anti-CAA protests. And the youth today, is the future tomorrow, which is why this makes it even more worrisome.

This even stops many from expressing their views, fearing that might get beaten up by the people having other views, and by not letting other ideas to be out there in the society, the prevailing ideas of the authorities are being hailed as champions. This is where we are failing as a democratic society. We have stopped or started to prevent asking questions.

A democratic society is always full of different ideas, views and perspectives, that is the beauty of democracy. A democratic society always cleaves up, if a one and only idea prevails in the society, there has to be something wrong, we are never going to realize what's wrong in such a scenario, and we have contemporary examples of such autocracies. And there were reasons why human, with time, switched from monarchy to democracy, he liked the idea of discussing various angles and coming up with one which could be best, as it will cover as many as loopholes, angles and point of views as possible, for the best of interests for every section of the society.

The Core Youth Issue

India’s 65% population comprises of people aged 35 or below, making it potentially one of the youngest country in the world, but what’s fresh in them?

A child learns most of the civil and moral values at home, he learns what he sees, and tends to practice the same, this is the normal scenario. What he learns through the education system, along with his moral values, is somewhat an outline of what kind of a person one is, how one’s attitude is. And India’s education system has been questioned ever since.

The Indian government’s very own draft education policy tells us that National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) rates 68% of our Universities average or below average, and 91% of our colleges are rated average or below average. These second-and third-grade colleges would have produced generations of average or below average students and scholars.

Today’s youth of India has been in the making for decades. A great deal of efforts must have been put in to finish off all the curiosity and hunger for knowledge and information. The youth no longer wants to understand why a system made them spend lakhs of rupees studying, when at the end most of them could not find jobs which could even earn them Rs.20,000 per month, but still are repaying their education loans. It is the official data released back in 2018 that around 67% families in India survive with a monthly family income of Rs. 10,000 or below.

Those who demand information, who understand their world, those who question the status quo, are the ones who sustain democracies. Can we expect such democratic ideals from the youth of a country where 91% colleges and 68% Universities are average or below average? 65% of Indians might be under the age of 35, but there’s little sign of anything fresh in their thinking. Their minds are not young. They were first burdened with great ignorance, and now they’ve been blinded by communalism.

With 91% colleges being second and third rate, it was inevitable that the youth is kept away from the realm of knowledge. This must have had a large say on why WhatsApp University became so popular, the very messages people received on their private chats must have felt to them that they now had an access to knowledge, the very fact that it was so easily accessible, made it very impactful. Lies and misleading information designed to prejudice them and incite them to violence now began to reach their smartphones as personal texts.

Fear Of Speaking Out (FOMO FOSO)

Our Lok Sabha has passed amendments to Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act last year, that gives authorities the power to declare any individual a ‘terrorist’. After it was amended, many social workers who have worked for the under-privileged for years, and raised important issues which was not in the best of interests for the authorities, have been imprisoned under UAPA.

As an obvious consequence, many have held themselves back to not speak out on issues they would have spoken on otherwise, the fear of intolerance of some sections of the society which may turn ugly and the fear of trolls of social media of the great IT Cell may also have been the reasons for the same.

There was a very popular dissent outrage in the form of protests in the form of anti-CAA-NRC protests. Protests in cities and college campuses took place across the nation, some also turned ugly as violence broke out in certain protests. To counter anti-CAA-NRC protests, pro-CAA-NRC protests were also being held in various parts of the country, which was first of its kind. The national lockdown owing to the coronavirus pandemic has brought the topic to a stop, but during this lockdown, various student leaders of anti-CAA-NRC have been charged under UAPA.

JP Narayan addressing a rally during JP movement in 1974. Many scholars speculate that the real Emergency started not in 1975, but in 1974.

In the history of independent India, its hard to remember any other popular mass protest where people across the nation came to roads to express dissent to the authorities, only one such example crosses our minds - the JP Narayan movement in 1974, during the time when Indira Gandhi used to be the PM of India, which mostly included students, and was ultimately suppressed after imposition of Emergency in 1975. But owing to a new practice we have accepted of labeling every sound that questions the authorities as anti-nationals or leftists.

India has had a history of patriarchy, which still prevails in many forms. Women in India, historically, have not been provided equal rights and recognition as men do. In such a nation, be it in the name of anti-CAA-NRC, such a large all-women protest of a scale as big as Shaheen Bagh is a very, very rare thing. Irrespective of our political affiances and interests, the fact that historically deprived women actually came out and led a mass protest on their own, which lasted for more than 3 months and has come to a haul owing to the pandemic, this certainly deserved some thoughts.

Motive of the protest, political interests and such stuffs can be and should be questioned, but in the process we should also give some recognition to things which are rare and important.

We all may share different political thoughts, different political affiliations, but at the end of the day, we all belong to one nation, and our ideas should be for the best of interests for our nation and its people as a whole.

#india #indian government #Indian Media #indian youth #dissent #politics #society #ndtv #India Today #CNN #bbc #new york times

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brajeshupadhyay · 4 years ago

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The chief minister's swab samples were sent for testing as a BJP leader he had attended an event with on 1 July had tested posiitve for the infection, 22:58 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Uttar Pradesh Latest Updates Gautam Buddh Nagar reports five deaths, CMO tests positive Uttar Pradesh's Gautam Buddh Nagar on Saturday recorded five more deaths due to COVID-19, while 83 more people,including the chief medical officer, were found positive for the infection in the district, official data showed. 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The cabinet secretary is also learnt to have made it clear that economic activities as allowed under the guidelines should be expedited so that normal life could be resumed, an official privy to the meeting said. 22:28 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Odisha Latest Updates Father, brother of groom arrested for violating safety protocols The father of a groom and his brother were arrested on Saturday in Odisha's Ganjam district, a COVID-19 hotspot, for violating safety protocols during the marriage function, police said.The district administration has also imposed a penalty of Rs 50,000 and registered FIR against other family members of the groom and bride in this connection, they said. PTI 21:48 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Maharashtra Latest Updates 1,180 new cases, 68 deaths recorded in Mumbai today 1,180 COVID-19 cases, 1071 recoveries and 68 deaths were reported in Mumbai today. Total number of cases in the city is now at 82,814, including 53,463 recovered/discharged, 24,524 active cases and 4,827 deaths, reports ANI quoting the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). 21:35 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Maharashtra Latest Updates Maharashtra records 7,074 new cases, toll mounts to 8,671 Maharashtra reported 7,074 COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, pushing the total number of cases to 2,00,064, said a state health department bulletin. The toll rose to 8,671 with 124 deaths reported in the last 48 hours and 171 added from the previous period. Over 1.98 lakh patients have been discharged till date and the recovery rate stands at 54.02 percent, said the bulletin. Maharashtra reported 7,074 COVID-19 cases and 295 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking total number of cases to 2,00,064 and death toll to 8,671. Number of active cases stands at 83,295: State Health Department pic.twitter.com/1khzthSUgi — ANI (@ANI) July 4, 2020 21:17 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Goa Latest Updates Goa's active cases climb to 853 Goa recorded 108 fresh COVID-19 cases on Saturday, taking the number of active cases in the state to 853, reports ANI quoting the state health department. Goa recorded 108 fresh COVID-19 cases today, taking active cases to 853: State Health Department pic.twitter.com/akjPsJGZyk — ANI (@ANI) July 4, 2020 21:06 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Jammu and Kashmir Latest Updates Amarnath Yatra to be conducted in 'restricted manner' Asserting that the upcoming annual Amarnath Yatra would have to be undertaken in a "restricted manner" due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Jammu and Kashmir administration on Saturday said only 500 pilgrims would be allowed per day by road from Jammu to the 3,880-metre-high holy cave shrine. It also said the standard operating procedures (SOPs) for testing of persons entering the Union Territory would also be applicable to the intending Amarnath pilgrims. PTI 20:51 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Gujarat Latest Updates Gujarat records 712 new cases, 21 deaths in 24 hours 712 fresh COVID-19 cases and 21 deaths were reported in Gujarat in the last 24 hours, taking total cases to 35,398 including 25,414 recoveries and 1,927 deaths, reports ANI quoting the State Health Department. 20:35 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Punjab Latest Updates College, University exams cancelled in Punjab University and college examinations in Punjab have been cancelled in view of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said on Saturday.The students will be promoted on the basis of their previous years' results and will also have an option to take the exams later, Singh announced in his weekly 'AskCaptain' Facebook live. However, the online exams being conducted by some universities will continue uninterrupted. 20:32 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Karnataka Latest Updates Karnataka reports 1,839 new cases, 42 deaths today Karnataka reported 1,839 new cases, taking total number of cases to 21,549. Of these, 11,966 cases are active while 9,244 people (including 439 people today) have been discharged. According to a bulletin issued by the state health department, 42 people succumbed to the disease on Saturday, taking the toll to 335 while four patients have died of non-COVID causes. Covid19 Bulletin: 4th July 2020 Total Confirmed Cases: 21549 Deceased: 335 Recovered: 9244 New Cases: 1839 Other information: Telemedicine facility, Corona Watch Application and Helpline details.#KarnatakaFightsCorona#Covid19Karnataka@BSYBJP pic.twitter.com/sUoAhmpEut — CM of Karnataka (@CMofKarnataka) July 4, 2020 20:01 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Bihar Latest Updates Nitish Kumar takes COVID-19 test, results expected tomorrow Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Saturday sent his swab sample for COVID-19 test after he shared the dais with Legislative Council Acting Chairman Awdesh Narayan Singh, who has been found to be infected with the contagious virus, officials told news agency PTI. The sample has been sent to Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS), they said. Besides the chief minister, samples of 15 staffers of the Chief Minister's Office have been collected for COVID-19 test, the sources said, adding results are expected on Sunday. Kumar had shared the dais with the Council Acting Chairman during the oath ceremony of newly elected MLCs on 1 July. 19:44 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Mizoram Latest Updates Two BSF jawans test positive in Mizoram Two Border Security Force (BSF) jawans posted in Mizoram's Lunglei district have tested positive for COVID-19 on Saturday, taking the northeast states tally to 164, an official said. The two jawans aged 50 and 53 have returned from Kerala recently, the official said. PTI 19:30 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Maharashtra Latest Updates Pune Mayor tests positive Pune Mayor Murlidhar Mohol said he had tested positive for COVID-19 after feeling feverish. Taking to Twitter, Mohol said that his condition was stabel and he would continue to remain in touch with authorities while undergoing treatment. थोडासा ताप आल्याने मी माझी #COVIDー19 टेस्ट केली असता, ती पॉझिटिव्ह आली आहे. माझी प्रकृती स्थिर असून लवकरच बरा होऊन पुन्हा तुमच्या सेवेत असेल. उपचारादरम्यान सर्व यंत्रणांच्या संपर्कात राहून परिस्थितीचा आढावा घेत राहील. आपला, मुरलीधर मोहोळ, महापौर — Murlidhar Mohol (@mohol_murlidhar) July 4, 2020 19:25 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Delhi Latest Updates Delhi records 2,505 new cases Delhi recorded 2,505 fresh coronavirus cases on Friday, taking the tally in the city to over 97,000, while the death toll from the disease mounted to 3,004, reports PTI. Fifty-five fatalities have been recorded in the last 24 hours, the Delhi health department said in a bulletin. It also said that 26 earlier deaths have been included in the cumulative figure. The bulletin said the death toll from coronavirus infection has risen to 3,004, and the total number of cases mounted to 97,200. 19:18 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Maharashtra Latest Updates Only two new cases reported in Mumbai's Dharavi Only two new coronavirus patients were found in Mumbai's Dharavi on Saturday, taking its case tally to 2,311, a senior Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) official told news agency PTI. The area, known as Asia's largest slum cluster, has recorded such a small rise in COVID-19 cases for the first time since the first week of April. The BMC did not reveal if any fresh virus-related death has been reported in the area. The slum area now has 519 active COVID-19 cases with 1,704 patients having been discharged after recovery 19:03 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Kerala Latest Updates Kerala's case count up by 240 to 5,204 Kerala's COVID-19 case count went past 5,000 on Saturday with 240 fresh cases being reported, the highest single- day surge so far.Of the positive cases, 152 had come from abroad and 52 from other states, Health minister K K Shailaja said in a press release. The total case count has now touched 5,204. According to the release, there have been 209 recoveries today. The hotspots as of today have touched 135. PTI 18:52 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Tamil Nadu Latest Updates Tamil Nadu reports 4,280 new cases, 65 fatalities Tamil Nadu on Saturday reported 4,280 fresh COVID-19 cases and 65 deaths, taking total cases to 1,07,001 and the toll to 1,450. Number of active cases stands at 44,956, reports ANI quoting the State Health Department. Tamil Nadu reported 4,280 fresh COVID-19 cases and 65 deaths today, taking total cases to 1,07,001 and death toll to 1,450. Number of active cases stands at 44,956: State Health Department pic.twitter.com/Tnpdev9fkk — ANI (@ANI) July 4, 2020 18:49 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Bihar Latest Updates Narendra Modi addresses Bihar BJP workers "Some believed that COVID-19 will spread more in east India due to high poverty but they have been proved wrong," said Narendra Modi while addressing Bihar BJP workers. "Several of our workers despite knowing the danger, kept working in the service of people and lost their lives. I pay my tributes to all of them and express condolences to their families," ANI quotes him as saying. 18:13 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Tamil Nadu Latest Updates Tamil Nadu CM announces relaxations in Chennai from Monday Tamil Nadu chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami announced that relaxations in Chennai lockdown will come in effect from 6 July, reports ANI. Vegetable and grocery shops will be allowed to open from 6 am to 6 pm, textile and hardware shops from 10 am to 6 pm, and restaurants from 6 am to 9 pm for takeaway services, he said. Chennai and its suburbs have been under an intense lockdown from 19 June. 17:59 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in India Latest Updates Mizoram postpones re-opening of schools indefinitely The Mizoram government has postponed the opening of schools for the 2020-21 academic session for an indefinite period as part of measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease, said state education minister Lalchhandama Ralte. The government had earlier decided to open educational institutions for the current academic session from 15 July. PTI 17:44 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Maharashtra Latest Updates COVID-19 patient kept in ambulance for one day for want of bed, alleges family The family of a 64-year-old man who succumbed to the coronavirus infection in Navi Mumbai has alleged that he had to be kept in an ambulance for a whole day before he could be admitted to a hospital. They said that the man developed symptoms on 20 June but could not be admitted to Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation's (NMMC) COVID hospital at Vashi as there was no bed with with oxygen supply available. The man's son said he continued approaching private hospitals and in the meantime his father was kept in a cardiac ambulance as he required oxygen support. When he was finally admitted the next day, the family did not have the money to buy an injection that cost Rs 32,000. The man, who performed in a music band, died on 25 June. PTI 17:12 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Tamil Nadu Latest Updates Lockdown extended in Madurai, surrounding areas till 12 July, announces CM The lockdown has been extended till 12 July in Madurai and area limits of adjoining rural civic bodies of Paravai and Thiruparankundram panchayats, ANI quotes Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami as saying. The lockdown imposed to control the spread of COVID-19 amid rising number of cases in Madurai was slated to end on 5 July. 17:03 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in India Latest Updates Process for trials of COVID-19 vaccine being expedited in accordance with global norms, safety remains top priority: ICMR The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Saturday issued a release stating that the process to expedite the human trials for a potential COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Bharat BioTech, NIV and ICMR, were being carried out in accordance with global norms. "In the larger public health interest, it is important for ICMR to expedite clinical trials with a promising indigenous vaccine. Faced with the unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, all other vaccine candidates across the globe have been similarly fast-tracked," new agency ANI quotes the country's top medical research body as saying."The ICMR’s process is exactly in accordance with globally accepted norms to fast-track the vaccine development for diseases of pandemic potential wherein human and animal trials can continue in parallel," states the release while adding that ICMR remains committed to the safety and interest of the people of India. The announcement that a vaccine would be made available by 15 August had come under criticism from many quarters, with political leaders alleging that the process was being expedited so that the announcement could be made on Independence Day. In the larger public health interest, it is important for ICMR to expedite clinical trials with a promising indigenous vaccine. Faced with the unprecedented nature of the #COVID19 pandemic, all other vaccine candidates across the globe have been similarly fast-tracked: ICMR https://t.co/gJiGKjZ2ku — ANI (@ANI) July 4, 2020 16:40 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Arunachal Pradesh Latest Updates Total lockdown in Arunachal Pradesh's Capital Complex from 6 to 12 July The Arunachal Pradesh government on Saturday announced that a week-long total lockdown will be imposed in the Capital Complex, comprising Itanagar and Nagarlagun, from 6 July in view of the rising number of COVID-19 cases, said Chief Secretary Naresh Kumar. The total lockdown will be imposed at 5 am on 6 July and will be in place till 5 pm on 12 July,the official said.There will be certain exemptions which would be announced on 5 July, Kumar said. Itanagar capital complex will be under lockdown from 6th July (Monday) till 12th July (Sunday). Detailed Guidelines and SOP for compliance will be issued shortly. #StayHomeStaySafe — Pema Khandu (@PemaKhanduBJP) July 4, 2020 16:15 (IST) 237 Maharashtra Police personnel test positive in 72 hours 237 personnel of Maharashtra Police were found COVID-19 positive in the last 72 hours, taking active number of cases in the force to 1,040. A total of 64 police personnel have succumbed to the infection: Maharashtra Police pic.twitter.com/jMVSbqKV7B — ANI (@ANI) July 4, 2020 16:05 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Kolkata Latest Updates Kolkata bans flights from coronavirus hotspots like Delhi, Mumbai Kolkata Airport announced on Saturday that no flights shall operate to Kolkata from Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Chennai and Ahmedabad from 6th to 19th July 2020 or till further orders are issued. The West Bengal government had been requesting Centre to susoend inbound flights to Bengal from COVID-19 hotspots. 15:37 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Bengaluru Latest Updates Bengaluru to go under lockdown over weekend "Complete lockdown to be imposed from 8pm today till 5am on Monday in Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) limits, as per instructions by Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa in view of, COVID19," BBMP Commissioner Anil Kumar said. He added that sale of essential items will be allowed during the lockdown, including meat shops. "Police action will be taken against people found roaming outside unnecessarily," he said, 15:22 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in India Latest Updates Scientists strike note of caution as govt plans to fast-track 'Made in India' vaccine, covaxin India's COVID-19 vaccine programme has gained sudden traction but it is imperative to strike a balance between giving it high priority and rushing into a process that takes months, even years, several scientists said on Saturday, a day after the ICMR announced it envisaged a preventive by next month. "Fast tracking a vaccine trial in four weeks for safety, immunogenicity and efficacy is just not possible if things are to be done correctly," Shahid Jameel, virologist and CEO of the Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance, a public charity that invests in building biomedical sciences and health research framework, told PTI. 15:07 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Himachal Pradesh Latest Updates Another COVID-19 death in Himachal Pradesh takes toll to nine With one more death reported in Himachal Pradesh on Saturday, the COVID-19 toll in the state rose to nine. However, no new positive cases were reported. With this, the total number of cases in the state now stands at 1,033 including 332 active cases. So far, 677 patients have recovered, said the state health department. 14:48 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Bihar Latest Updates Bihar's COVID-19 toll climbs to 84 after six more die The COVID-19 toll in Bihar increased to 84 on Saturday after six more patients succumbed to the viral infection. While 197 fresh cases have pushed the state's total to 11,111, according to the state health department. The state has 2,816 active coronavirus cases, while 8,211 patients have recovered from the disease. This takes the recovery rate to 73.89 percent. 14:28 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Andhra Pradesh Latest Updates 765 fresh COVID-19 infections in Andhra Pradesh Andhra Pradesh registered 17,699 coronavirus cases on Saturday after 765 more people tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The COVID-19 toll reached 218, said the state health department. Of the total positive cases, there are 9,473 active cases in the state. 13:52 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Gujarat Latest Updates Vijay Rupani visits Surat to assess COVID-19 situation Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani and Deputy chief minister Nitin Patel arrived at Surat on saturday to assess the COVID-19 situation, PTI reported. Surat has reported 5,461 COVID-19 cases, including 198 deaths, so far. 13:51 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in China Latest Updates WHO team to visit China next week to probe origin of COVID-19 Amid global concerns that China delayed giving information regarding the novel coronavirus outbreak, a team of World Health Organisation (WHO) will visit the country next week to investigate the origins of the virus and its spread to human beings. The visit will take place more than six months after the WHO's Country Office in China picked up a statement from the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission on cases of 'viral pneumonia'. WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus spoke in January about an agreement with China for sending a team of international experts "as soon as possible" to work on increasing the understanding of the outbreak. 13:36 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in India Latest Updates Forcing development of COVID-19 vaccine fraught with horrendous human costs: Sitaram Yechury CPM General Secretary Sitaram Yechury on Saturday alleged that the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is trying to expedite the production of an indigenous COVID-19 vaccine so Prime Minister Narendra Modi can announce the cure for the infectious disease on Independence Day. "Scientific advances can never be 'made to order'. Forcing the development of an indigenous vaccine, bypassing all health and safety norms, to be announced by Narendra Modi on Independence Day is fraught with horrendous human costs," tweeted Yechury. But...scientific advances can never be ‘made to order’. Forcing the development of an indegenous vaccine as a cure for Covid-19, bypassing all health & safety norms, to be announced by PM Modi on Independence Day is fraught with horrendous human costs. #Covid_19 #Vaccine #ICMR pic.twitter.com/x2xbPFvRyy — Sitaram Yechury (@SitaramYechury) July 4, 2020 13:19 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Delhi Latest Updates Jama Majid reopens for public today Jama Masjid reopens for the public from today. The mosque will remain open from 9 am to 10 pm and everyone will have to follow physical distancing norms, said Syed Ahmed Bukhari, the shahi imam of the mosque. Delhi: Jama Masjid reopens for the public from today. Syed Ahmed Bukhari, Shahi Imam of the mosque said that it will remain open from 9 am to 10 pm while following social distancing norms. #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/hEtvux9GB5 — ANI (@ANI) July 4, 2020 13:16 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Jharkhand Latest Updates Six police personnel in Ranchi test COVID-19 positive Six personnel of Ranchi Police have tested COVID-19 positive on Saturday. "They have been quarantined and are receiving treatment. Their contact tracing within and outside the department is being done," said Surendra Kumar Jha, SSP Ranchi 12:13 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in India Latest Updates I-T department further extends ITR filing deadline The extension on income tax return filing date comes just a couple of days after the I-T department on Thursday extended the deadline for tax saving investments/payments for the financial year 2019-20 up to 31 July. As a result, taxpayers will now be able to make investments for claiming deductions under the Income Tax Act for the financial year 2019-20 up to 31 July. 11:59 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in India Latest Updates ITR filing deadline for FY 2019-20 extended till 30 Nov The Income Tax Department has announced a further extension to the deadline for filing income tax return (ITR) for the financial year (FY) 2019-20 to 30 November. The department, in a tweet, said that the move has been taken "understanding and keeping in mind the times that we are in" and hoped it will help taxpayers "plan things better." 11:32 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Mizoram Latest Updates Mizoram postpones opening of schools for 2020-21 academic session The Mizoram government has postponed the opening of schools for the 2020-21 academic session for an indefinite period as a part of the containment measures to curb the coronavirus outbreak, a minister said. The government had earlier decided to open educational institutions for the current academic session from 15 July. 11:30 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Karnataka Latest Updates No public transport to operate in Karnataka from 8 pm today Public transport - buses, autos and cabs will not operate in Karnataka during the curfew, which will be enforced from Saturday at 8 pm. Places of worship, malls and dine-in service at hotels and restaurants, shops selling non-essential commodities, including liquor, will remain shut. 11:28 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Karnataka Latest Updates Karnataka to enforce curfew from 8 pm today A curfew in Karnataka will be implemented from 8 pm on Saturday til 5 am on Monday. It will not be any different from the restrictions imposed during previous curfews and lockdowns, said BH Anil Kumar, Commissioner of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to The Hindu. "The restrictions that were in place then will be imposed now also," said Kumar. 11:19 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Odisha Latest Updates Odisha reports 8,601 COVID-19 cases with 34 deaths After five more people die of the novel coronavirus in Odisha, the COVID-19 toll in the state climbed to 34 on Saturday. The total number of confirmed cases increased to 8,601 after 495 more individuals tested positive, said the health department. 10:58 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in Rajasthan Latest Updates 204 new cases, three deaths in Rajasthan As per the Rajasthan health department, there were 204 new COVID-19 positive cases and three deaths reported till 10:30 am. The total number of cases stands at 19,256, including 3,461 active cases and 443 deaths, as per the health department 10:36 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in India Latest Updates Over 95 lakh COVID-19 samples tested: ICMR At least 95,40,132 COVID-19 samples have been tested so far, said the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), adding that 2,42,383 samples were tested on Friday alone. 10:27 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in India Latest Updates India's COVID-19 recovery rate at 60.80% Of the total 6,48,315 positive cases, as many as 3,94,227 COVID-19 patients have so far been cured of the virus, said the health ministry on Saturday. This takees the COVID-19 recovery rate to 60.80 percent. 10:22 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in India Latest Updates India's COVID-19 mortality rate at 2.88% after 18,655 patients die With the death of 442 more individuals in the past 24 hours, the COVID-19 toll jumped to 18,655 on Saturday, according to the latest data released by the health ministry. The COVID-19 mortality rate is now at 2.88 percent. 10:18 (IST) Coronavirus Outbreak in India Latest Updates India records over 6.48 lakh COVID-19 infections India registered 22,771 new coronavirus cases for the first time in a single day, taking the total count to 6,48,315 on Saturday. As many as 442 deaths were reported in the past 24 hours, said the health ministry. Coronavirus Updates: Maharashtra reported 7,074 COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, pushing the total number of cases to 2,00,064, said a state health department bulletin. The toll rose to 8,671 with 124 deaths reported in the last 48 hours and 171 added from the previous period. University and college examinations in Punjab have been cancelled in view of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said on Saturday. However, the online exams being conducted by some universities will continue uninterrupted. Delhi recorded 2,505 fresh coronavirus cases on Friday, taking the tally in the city to 97,200, while the death toll from the disease mounted to 3,004. Tamil Nadu chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami announced that relaxations in Chennai lockdown will come in effect from 6 July, reports ANI. Vegetable and grocery shops will be allowed to open from 6 am to 6 pm, textile and hardware shops from 10 am to 6 pm, and restaurants from 6 am to 9 pm for takeaway services, he said. Responding to criticism over its 15 August deadline for COVAXIN, which is being developed by Bharat Biotech, the ICMR said that all COVID-19 vaccine trials across the world are being similarly fast-tracked, while adding that the safety and interest of the people of India remain its topmost priority. Kolkata Airport announced on Saturday that no flights shall operate to Kolkata from Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Chennai and Ahmedabad for two weeks starting from Monday Bengaluru will go under complete lockdown from 8 pm today until 5 am on Monday, city's municipal commissioner told ANI. The COVID-19 toll in Bihar increased to 84 on Saturday after six more patients succumbed to the viral infection. While 197 fresh cases have pushed the state's total to 11,111, according to the state health department. The state has 2,816 active coronavirus cases, while 8,211 patients have recovered from the disease. This takes the recovery rate to 73.89 percent. Amid global concerns that China delayed giving information regarding the novel coronavirus outbreak, a team of World Health Organisation (WHO) will visit the country next week to investigate the origins of the virus and its spread to human beings. The visit will take place more than six months after the WHO's Country Office in China picked up a statement from the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission on cases of 'viral pneumonia'. The Jama Masjid will reopen for the public from Saturday. The mosque will remain open from 9 am to 10 pm. "Everyone will have to follow physical distancing norms," said Syed Ahmed Bukhari, the shahi imam of the mosque. A curfew in Karnataka will be implemented from 8 pm on Saturday til 5 am on Monday. It will not be any different from the restrictions imposed during previous curfews and lockdowns, said BH Anil Kumar, Commissioner of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to The Hindu. As per the Rajasthan health department, there were 204 new COVID-19 positive cases and three deaths reported in the state till 10:30 am. The total number of cases stands at 19,256, including 3,461 active cases and 443 deaths, as per the health department India registered 22,771 new coronavirus cases for the first time in a single day, taking the total count to 6,48,315 on Saturday. As many as 442 deaths were reported in the past 24 hours, said the health ministry. At least 11,300 'Make In India' ventilators have been dispatched so far under Centre's 'Atma Nirbhar Bharat' mission, said the Union health minister on Saturday. Of the total ventilators, 6,154 have been delivered to hospitals. Ministry of Health is also supplying 1.02 lakh oxygen cylinders across India; 72,293 have been delivered, said Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan. Telangana reported eight more COVID-19 deaths on Friday, taking the toll to 283. After 1,892 fresh cases were registered for the first time in a day, the state's tally was pushed to 20,462. Maharashtra registered 6,364 fresh COVID-19 cases on Friday for the first time in a single day taking the total number of positive cases to 1,92,990. The toll due to the pandemic rose to 8,376 with 198 new deaths reported in the past 24 hours, a health department statement said. Even as India's COVID-19 recovery rate crossed 60 percent on Friday, the number of confirmed cases soared by over 20,000 in a day for the first time, data from the Union Health Ministry showed. The contrasting figures emerged even as the country's apex medical body ICMR announced its plan to launch the world's first COVID-19 vaccine, the indigenously developed COVAXIN, by 15 August. Experts, however, said such a timeline may not be realistic. In the meantime, Union HRD minister Ramesh Pokhriyal aannounced that the JEE and NEET exams have been postponed to September in view of the coronavirus pandemic, while the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) decided to suspend all the international flight operations in the country till 31 July. Friday also saw Goa re-opening its doors for domestic tourists and Himachal Pradesh said that it would allow entry of tourists with conditions such as a test report showing negative for COVID-19 and a prior hotel booking of at least five days. The hilly state had imposed a ban on tourism three-and-a-half-months ago to check the spread of the novel coronavirus. COVID-19 cases and deaths as of today India has confirmed 6,25,544 COVID-19 cases so far while 18,213 have lost their lives since the virus made its first appearance in Kerala's Thrissur in January. The number of recoveries stands at 3,79,891, while one patient has migrated. There are 2,27,439 active cases of coronavirus infections currently in the country. Most of the 20,903 coronavirus infections reported in a 24-hour span till Friday 8 am came from Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Telangana and Karnataka, PTI said, adding that 379 people died during the same period. Tamil Nadu crossed one lakh COVID-19 cases with the state reporting 4,329 fresh infections and 64 fatalities, pushing the toll from the deadly virus to 1,385. Of the total 18,213 deaths reported so far, Maharashtra accounted for the highest 8,178 fatalities followed by Delhi with 2,864 deaths, Gujarat with 1,886, Tamil Nadu with 1,321, Uttar Pradesh with 735, West Bengal with 699, Madhya Pradesh with 589, Rajasthan with 430 and Telangana with 275 deaths. The COVID-19 death toll reached 272 in Karnataka, 251 in Haryana, 198 in Andhra Pradesh, 152 in Punjab, 115 in Jammu and Kashmir, 77 in Bihar, 42 in Uttarakhand, 27 in Odisha and 25 in Kerala. Jharkhand has registered 15 deaths, Chhattisgarh 14, Assam and Puducherry 12 each, Himachal Pradesh 10, Chandigarh six, Goa four and Meghalaya, Tripura, Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh have reported one fatality each, according to the ministry. More than 70 percent deaths took place due to comorbidities, it said. According to health ministry's 8 am data, Maharashtra has reported the highest number of cases at 1,86,626, followed by Tamil Nadu at 98,392, Delhi at 92,175, Gujarat at 33,913, Uttar Pradesh at 24,825, West Bengal at 19,819 and Rajasthan at 18,662. The number of COVID-19 cases has gone up to 18,570 in Telangana, 18,016 in Karnataka, 16,097 in Andhra Pradesh, 15,509 in Haryana, and 14,106 in Madhya Pradesh. It has risen to 10,471 in Bihar, 9,013 in Assam, 7,849 in Jammu and Kashmir and 7,545 in Odisha. Punjab has reported 5,784 novel coronavirus infections so far, while Kerala has 4,753 cases. A total of 3,013 have been infected by the virus in Chhattisgarh, 2,984 in Uttarakhand, 2,584 in Jharkhand, 1,435 in Tripura, 1,482 in Goa, 1,279 in Manipur, 1,014 in Himachal Pradesh and 990 in Ladakh. Puducherry has recorded 802 COVID-19 cases, Nagaland 501, Chandigarh 450 and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu together have reported 230 COVID-19 cases. Arunachal Pradesh reported 195 cases, Mizoram has 162 cases, Andaman and Nicobar Islands has 109, Sikkim has registered 102 infections so far, while Meghalaya has recorded 56 cases. The ICMR said that a total of 92,97,749 samples were tested for COVID-19 up to 2 July, with 2,41,576 of those tested on Thursday. Representational image. AP COVID-19 vaccine by 15 August, says ICMR India's apex medical body ICMR said Friday that it has identified 12 clinical trial sites, including medical institutions and hospitals, and has asked their principal investigators to ensure that the subject enrolment is initiated no later than 7 July. The trial sites included AIIMS, New Delhi, AIIMS, Patna and SRM Medical College Hospital and Research Centre in Tamil Nadu. In its letter to principal investigators of the 12 sites, ICMR Director General Dr Balram Bhargava noted that the clinical trial of Covaxin is one of the "top priority projects which is being monitored at the top-most level of the government". However, it is not clear how the clinical trials can be completed and the vaccine released on 15 August when the normal period for a vaccine to be approved is 12 to 18 months. Several experts have questioned the ICMR's timeline, asking if the efficacy of the vaccine is "pre-decided" and cautioned it from applying "excess pressure". Over seven vaccines are being researched in India and only Bharat Biotech's COVAXIN and Zydus' ZyCoV-D have got the go-ahead to start human clinical trials, just this week. Globally, over 100 candidates are being tested on humans but no vaccine has yet been approved. Speaking to Firstpost, Bharat Biotech chairman Dr Krishna Ella, said said that COVAXIN was reported to be safe and immunogenic in all animals. "We have now moved forward towards the clinical development of this vaccine," he added. Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials of Covaxin in COVID-19 patients will begin this month. According to PTI, Zydus said that is planning to initiate the clinical trials in July 2020 across multiple sites in India in over 1,000 subjects, however, the company did not say when the vaccine will be ready for commercial use, unlike Covaxin, which is targeting for release on 15 August. The vaccine candidate, ZyCoV-D, showed a "strong immune response" in animal studies, and the antibodies produced were able to completely neutralise the wild type virus, Zydus said. With inputs from agencies

http://sansaartimes.blogspot.com/2020/07/coronavirus-updates-confirmed-cases-in.html

#SEO #Local SEO training #daily news paper #daily news india #daily news newspaper #technology news a

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hu2a1fa-blog · 5 years ago

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Days Before Quarantine.

Today we have a guest who came to us without any invitation whose name is QUARANTINE. Being a student I was tired because of the hard life routine as everyone has in their own field but as a student I didn't like to get up early in the morning and to go university to attend classes without any interest. When, I heard about the lock down in our country due to the CORONA VIRUS which is also known as COVID-19. I was very happy to get some break from routine and to relax at home. But now when it is over 15 days I get very annoyed with this situation. And I want to go out to meet my friends and to spend my normal routine which was in DAYS BEFORE QUARANTINE.

Then I came up with a question of why. Why? I am now tired of getting at home and away from people then I realized that as Humans are a social animals and they want to live with other and they cannot live without others. Then I realized why solitary confinement is so painful and people say solitary confinement is a difficult situation to bear.

After all this observation I came to a result which I would like to share with you. The result is that we people take many things for granted in our life. For example Independence to go anywhere as we live in a Independent world/country we can go anywhere we want to go but we do not have any time to think about the people they are not blessed with this basic right of life. We take many people as for granted means we have people they wanted to interact with us in our daily life but we do not want to interact with them because of any reason but now what we have. No one to talk, no one to sit with us and no one with whom we can share our opinions, ideas and other problems of daily life. Although technology got us so close but they cannot replace the importance of live meetings and I think people are realizing this now in this condition.

So beside the all negative effects of the coronavirus, we have to learn some positive aspects as well. We should live our every day as the last day. For example if we people now that after that day (day before lock down) we could not be able to meet with each other would our attitude be the same as it was then? The answer is NO. So we have to make a change in our life and behavior with others and we have to spread love.

The last thing I want to say is that as we realized the importance of independence now we should raise voice in favor of people who do not have this blessing like people of #Kashmir, # Palestine.

I hope we go back to the DAYS BEFORE QUARANTINE very quickly.

#coronavirus #quarantine #feelings #Days Before Quarantine

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behealthy99 · 3 years ago

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AY.4.2: At least 17 cases of new coronavirus lineage found in India. Details here | Latest News India

New Post has been published on https://behealthy99.com/ay-4-2-at-least-17-cases-of-new-coronavirus-lineage-found-in-india-details-here-latest-news-india/

AY.4.2: At least 17 cases of new coronavirus lineage found in India. Details here | Latest News India

The AY.4.2 lineage of Covid-19, a subvariant of the Delta coronavirus strain, has appeared in at least six states of India, manifesting in as many as 17 cases reported so far, according to data uploaded on GISAID, an open-source database tracking the genomic signature of coronavirus variants. While the central government has said that a panel of experts was looking into this new coronavirus strain which is believed to be behind the recent infection explosion in the United Kingdom, British authorities have posited that AY.4.2 could possibly be even more transmissible than Delta, although there currently is no evidence suggesting that it caused more severe diseases or rendered vaccines ineffective.

The most recent cases of AY.4.2 coronavirus variant reported in India was when two suspected cases were identified earlier this week and the samples were sent to a laboratory in Bengaluru for genome sequencing. As per data available on GISAID, the 17 samples of AY.4.2 found so far in India include – seven in Andhra Pradesh, four in Kerala, two each in Telangana and Karnataka, and one each in Maharashtra and Jammu and Kashmir.

What is AY.4.2 sub-lineage?

Matthew Bashton and Darren Smith, from Northumbria University in Newcastle, said that 75 AY lineages of the coronavirus have been identified till now, each with different additional defining mutations in their genome.

Talking about these in The Conversation, the duo said one of these variants – the AY.4 – has been steadily growing in proportion in the UK over the last few months, accounting for 63 per cent of new cases in the last 28 days.

“The defining change in AY.4.2 is the mutation A1711V, which affects the virus’s Nsp3 protein, which plays a number of roles in viral replication. However, the impact of this mutation is unknown,” Bashton and Smith said in their article.

Is there a need to be worried?

Although the AY.4.2 coronavirus variant has entered several European countries at this point, experts believe that it has yet to take hold somewhere else other than the United Kingdom. It has dropped off the radar in Germany and Ireland, though it is lingering in Denmark.

It is still too early to tell if this is the beginning of the next dominant lineage, and any ability this variant might have of escaping immunity needs to be confirmed by experimental work.

#News

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xtruss · 3 years ago

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The Future of American Power

Arundhati Roy on America’s Fiery, Brutal Impotence

The US leaves Afghanistan humiliated, but now faces bigger worries, from social polarisation to environmental collapse, says a novelist and essayist

— September 3rd, 2021

— By Arundhati Roy

This By-invitation commentary is part of a series by a range of global thinkers on the future of American power, examining the forces shaping the country's standing.

IN FEBRUARY 1989 the last Soviet tank rolled out of Afghanistan, its army having been decisively defeated in a punishing, nearly decade-long war by a loose coalition of mujahideen (who were trained, armed, funded and indoctrinated by the American and Pakistani Intelligence services). By November that year the Berlin wall had fallen and the Soviet Union began to collapse. When the cold war ended, the United States took its place at the head of a unipolar world order. In a heartbeat, radical Islam replaced communism as the most imminent threat to world peace. After the attacks of September 11th, the political world as we knew it spun on its axis. And the pivot of that axis appeared to be located somewhere in the rough mountains of Afghanistan.

For reasons of narrative symmetry if nothing else, as the US makes its ignominious exit from Afghanistan, conversations about the decline of the United States’ power, the rise of China and the implications this might have for the rest of the world have suddenly grown louder. For Europe and particularly for Britain, the economic and military might of the United States has provided a cultural continuity of sorts, effectively maintaining the status quo. To them, a new, ruthless, power waiting in the wings to take its place must be a source of deep worry.

In other parts of the world, where the status quo has brought unutterable suffering, the news from Afghanistan has been received with less dread.

The day the Taliban entered Kabul, I was up in the mountains in Tosa Maidan, a high, alpine meadow in Kashmir, which the Indian Army and Air Force used for decades to practise artillery and aerial bombing. From one edge of the meadow we could look down at the valley below us, dotted with martyrs’ graveyards where tens of thousands of Kashmiri Muslims who had been killed in Kashmir’s struggle for self-determination are buried.

In India, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a Hindu nationalist group, came to power cunningly harnessing post-9/11 international Islamophobia, riding a bloody wave of orchestrated anti-Muslim massacres, in which thousands were murdered. It considers itself a staunch ally of the United States. The Indian security establishment is aware that the Taliban’s victory marks a structural shift in the noxious politics of the subcontinent, involving three nuclear powers: India, Pakistan and China, with Kashmir as a flashpoint. It views the victory of the Taliban, however pyrrhic, as a victory for its mortal enemy Pakistan, which has covertly supported the Taliban in its 20-year battle against the US occupation. Mainland India’s 175m-strong Muslim population, already brutalised, ghettoised, stigmatised as “Pakistanis”—and now, increasingly as “Talibanis”—are at even greater risk of discrimination and persecution.

Most of the mainstream media in India, embarrassingly subservient to the BJP, consistently referred to the Taliban as a terrorist group. Many Kashmiris who have lived for decades under the guns of half a million Indian soldiers, read the news differently. Wishfully. They were looking for pinholes of light in their world of darkness and indignity.

The details, the nuts and bolts of what was actually happening were still trickling in. A few who I spoke to saw it as the victory of Islam against the most powerful army in the world. Others as a sign that no power on Earth can crush a genuine freedom struggle. They fervently believed—wanted to believe—that the Taliban had completely changed and would not return to their barbaric ways. They too saw what had happened as a tectonic shift in regional politics, which they hoped would give Kashmiris some breathing space, some possibility of dignity.

The irony was that we were having these conversations sitting on a meadow pitted with bomb craters. It was Independence Day in India and Kashmir was locked down to prevent protests. On one border the armies of India and Pakistan were in a tense face-off. On another, in nearby Ladakh, the Chinese Army had crossed the border and was camped on Indian territory. Afghanistan felt very close by.

In its scores of military expeditions to establish and secure suzerainty since the second world war, the United States has smashed through (non-white) country after country. It has unleashed militias, killed millions, toppled nascent democracies and propped up tyrants and brutal military occupations. It has deployed a modern version of British colonial rhetoric—of being, in one way or another, on a selfless, civilising mission. That’s how it was with Vietnam. And so it is with Afghanistan.

Depending on where you want to put down history’s markers, the Soviets, the American- and Pakistan-backed mujahideen, the Taliban, the Northern Alliance, the unspeakably violent and treacherous warlords and the US and NATO armed forces have boiled the very bones of the Afghan people into a blood soup. All, without exception, have committed crimes against humanity. All have contributed to creating the soil and climate for terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, ISIS and their affiliates to operate.

If honourable ‘intentions’ such as empowering women and saving them from their own families and societies are meant to be mitigating factors in military invasions, then certainly both the Soviets and the Americans can rightly claim to have raised up, educated and empowered a small section of urban Afghan women before dropping them back into a bubbling cauldron of medieval misogyny. But neither democracy nor feminism can be bombed into countries. Afghan women have fought and will continue to fight for their freedom and their dignity in their own way, in their own time.

Does the US withdrawal mark the beginning of the end of its hegemony? Is Afghanistan going to live up to that old cliché about itself—the Graveyard of Empires? Perhaps not. Notwithstanding the horror show at the Kabul airport, the debacle of withdrawal may not be as big a blow to the United States as it is being made out to be.

Much of those trillions of dollars spent in Afghanistan circulated back to the US war industry, which includes weapons manufacturers, private mercenaries, logistics and infrastructure companies and non-profit organisations. Most of the lives that were lost in the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan (estimated to be roughly 170,000 by researchers at Brown University) were those of Afghans who, in the eyes of the invaders, obviously count for very little. Leaving aside the crocodile tears, the 2,400 American soldiers who were killed don’t count for much either.

The resurgent Taliban humiliated the United States. The Doha agreement signed by both sides in 2020 for a peaceful transfer of power is testimony to that. But the withdrawal could also reflect a hard-nosed calculation by the US government about how to better deploy money and military might in a rapidly changing world. With economies ravaged by lockdowns and the coronavirus, and as technology, big data and AI make for a new kind of warfare, holding territory may be less necessary than before. Why not leave Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran to mire themselves in the quicksand of Afghanistan—imminently facing famine, economic collapse and in all probability another civil war—and keep American forces rested, mobile and ready for a possible military conflict with China over Taiwan?

The real tragedy for the United States is not the debacle in Afghanistan, but that it was played out on live television. When it withdrew from the war it could not win in Vietnam, the home front was being ripped apart by anti-war protests, much of it fuelled by enforced conscription into the armed forces. When Martin Luther King made the connection between capitalism, racism and imperialism and spoke out against the Vietnam war, he was vilified. Mohammad Ali, who refused to be conscripted and declared himself a conscientious objector, was stripped of his boxing titles and threatened with imprisonment. Although war in Afghanistan did not arouse similar passions on American streets, many in the Black Lives Matter movement made those connections too.

In a few decades, the United States will no longer be a country with a white majority. The enslavement of black Africans and the genocide and dispossession of native Americans haunt almost every public conversation today. It is more than likely that these stories will join up with other stories of suffering and devastation caused by US wars or by US allies. Nationalism and exceptionalism are unlikely to be able to prevent that from happening. The polarisation and schisms within the United States could in time lead to a serious breakdown of public order. We’ve already seen the early signs. A very different kind of trouble looms on another front too.

For centuries America had the option of retreating into the comfort of its own geography. Plenty of land and fresh water, no hostile neighbours, oceans on either side. And now plenty of oil from fracking. But American geography is on notice. Its natural bounty can no longer sustain the “American way of life”—or war. (Nor for that matter, can China’s geography sustain the “Chinese way of life”).

Oceans are rising, coasts and coastal cities are insecure, forests are burning, the flames licking at the edges of settled civilisation, devouring whole towns as they spread. Rivers are drying up. Drought haunts lush valleys. Hurricanes and floods devastate cities. As groundwater is depleted, California is sinking. The reservoir of the iconic Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, which supplies fresh water to 40m people, is drying at an alarming rate.

If empires and their outposts need to plunder the Earth to maintain their hegemony, it doesn’t matter if the plundering is driven by American, European, Chinese or Indian capital. These are not really the conversations that we should be having. Because while we’re busy talking, the Earth is busy dying.

— Arundhati Roy is a novelist and essayist.

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thenorthlines · 3 years ago

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J&K allows schools, colleges, universities to reopen with riders

New Delhi: The Jammu and Kashmir administration on Sunday (September 5) allowed reopening schools for Classes 12 and 10 subject to certain riders in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. For Class 12 students, schools are allowed to reopen with 50% capacity given that students and staff are vaccinated against the coronavirus. Deputy Commissioners can permit Class 10 students to resume physical…

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Thursday, May 6, 2021

Nearly 20 million more people hit by food crises last year (Reuters) Nearly 20 million more people faced food crises last year amid armed conflict, the COVID-19 pandemic and weather extremes, and the outlook for this year is again grim, according to a report by the Global Network Against Food Crises. The humanitarian agency, set up in 2016 by the European Union and United Nations, also warned that acute food insecurity has continued to worsen since 2017, the first year of its annual report into food crises. “We must do everything we can to end this vicious cycle. There is no place for famine and starvation in the 21st century,” said U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres. He added that conflict and hunger need to be tackled jointly, as they reinforce one another. Defined as any lack of food that threatens lives, livelihoods or both, acute food insecurity at crisis levels or worse impacted at least 155 million people last year, the highest number in the report’s five-year existence.

America’s new normal: A degree hotter than two decades ago (AP) America’s new normal temperature is a degree hotter than it was just two decades ago. Scientists have long talked about climate change—hotter temperatures, changes in rain and snowfall and more extreme weather—being the “new normal.” Data released Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration put hard figures on the cliché. The new United States normal is not just hotter, but wetter in the eastern and central parts of the nation and considerably drier in the West than just a decade earlier. “Almost every place in the U.S. has warmed from the 1981 to 2010 normal to the 1991 to 2020 normal,” said Michael Palecki, NOAA’s normals project manager.

Nature at its craziest: Trillions of cicadas about to emerge (AP) Sifting through a shovel load of dirt in a suburban backyard, Michael Raupp and Paula Shrewsbury find their quarry: a cicada nymph. And then another. And another. And four more. In maybe a third of a square foot of dirt, the University of Maryland entomologists find at least seven cicadas—a rate just shy of a million per acre. A nearby yard yielded a rate closer to 1.5 million. And there’s much more afoot. Trillions of the red-eyed black bugs are coming, scientists say. Within days, a couple weeks at most, the cicadas of Brood X (the X is the Roman numeral for 10) will emerge after 17 years underground. There are many broods of periodic cicadas that appear on rigid schedules in different years, but this is one of the largest and most noticeable. They’ll be in 15 states from Indiana to Georgia to New York; they’re coming out now in mass numbers in Tennessee and North Carolina. When the entire brood emerges, backyards can look like undulating waves, and the bug chorus is lawnmower loud.

Reuniting refugee families (Washington Post) President Biden began fulfilling a campaign promise Tuesday as U.S. authorities started to help to reunite a number of migrant families forcibly separated by the previous administration. President Donald Trump imposed a “zero tolerance” policy on those crossing the U.S. border illegally that led to myriad unauthorized migrants being rushed through criminal proceedings and deported while their children who had accompanied them remained in the United States. It was easier to track the children than their parents. In some instances, advocates had to post radio advertisements in Mexico and Central America. The reunions Tuesday would mark, Kevin Sieff wrote, “the start of a massive relocation of parents deported by one U.S. president and returned by another. In total, more than 1,000 families are expected to be reunited.”

The Little Nation That Could (Guardian) The island of Cuba is dealing with a pandemic while suffering its worst economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The US trade embargo restricts the medical equipment the island can import; even so, of the 27 coronavirus vaccines in final stage testing around the world, two are Cuban. The UN has called on the US to lift sanctions on the island during the pandemic, but the embargo has actually toughened since the outgoing Trump administration put Cuba on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism. “The US is trying to starve Cuba into submission,” said one of the doctors on the coronavirus taskforce. “It’s not only that it’s difficult to buy things directly from the US. It’s also that all these sanctions that the Trump administration put in place have dried up many sources of revenue.” Nevertheless, Cuban scientists are confident that widespread vaccination will be attained this year. “When you have everything, you don’t have to think so much.” said another scientist. “But when you have difficulties, you have to think up new ways to innovate.”

Years of Unheeded Warnings. Then the Subway Crash Mexico City Had Feared. (NYT) The capital had been bracing for the disaster for years. Ever since it opened nearly a decade ago, the newest Mexico City subway line—a heralded expansion of the second largest subway system in the Americas—had been plagued with structural weaknesses that led engineers to warn of potential accidents. Yet other than a brief, partial shutdown of the line in 2014, the warnings went unheeded by successive governments. On Monday night, the mounting problems turned fatal: A subway train on the Golden Line plunged about 50 feet after an overpass collapsed underneath it, killing at least 24 people and injuring dozens more. The accident—and the government’s failure to act sooner to fix known problems with the line—immediately set off a political firestorm for three of the most powerful people in Mexico: the president and the two people widely believed to be front-runners to succeed him as leaders of the governing party and possibly, the country.

Brexit problems (Foreign Policy) France has threatened “retaliatory measures”—including cutting power to Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands—as tensions rise over fishing rights between Britain and France. Since the post-Brexit trade deal, French fishermen have been angered by delays in newly required licenses that have prevented them from accessing British waters—an area they say is necessary for their livelihoods.

Scottish independence 'front and center' in May 6 election (Washington Post) Scotland goes to the polls Thursday in a vote that could eventually lead to a truly historic event: the crackup of the United Kingdom. The independence movement has gained momentum in the wake of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit. And the pandemic has further encouraged the idea that Scotland might be better off going its own way, with policies determined in Edinburgh viewed more favorably by Scots than those pronounced at Westminster. As a result, the Scottish National Party, led by the popular First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, 50, is expected to perform well in Thursday’s vote for seats in the regional Parliament, with pro-independence parties winning a solid majority of the 129 seats in Holyrood. The talk shows, political magazines and news columns in Britain are full of speculation about a looming breakup. Since 2014, Scotland has voted overwhelmingly against Brexit, 62 percent to 38 percent. Many Scots then saw Johnson’s hard-split version of Brexit as an unnecessary affront. And since Britain left the European Union, Scotland has tallied more harms than benefits. The Scottish fishermen, for instance, say their industry is in crisis.

Belgian cyberattack (1440) Belgium was hit with a sweeping cyberattack yesterday, leaving its parliament, government agencies, universities, and other organizations without internet service for hours. The effort knocked out both websites and internal systems, including the country’s coronavirus vaccine registration portal. Hackers targeted the government’s service provider with a distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack—a strategy that overwhelms networks with massive amounts of artificial internet traffic. Experts say such attacks are often meant to knock systems offline rather than steal information. It was unclear who was behind the attack. The incident highlights the growing ability of cybercriminals, either independent or state-affiliated, to strike unprepared governments and companies—some estimate cyberattacks will cost the global economy $6T in losses in 2021.

EU seeks rapid response military force, two decades after first try (Reuters) Fourteen European Union countries including Germany and France have proposed a rapid military response force that could intervene early in international crises, a senior EU official said on Wednesday, two decades after a previous attempt. The countries say the EU should create a brigade of 5,000 soldiers, possibly with ships and aircraft, to help democratic foreign governments needing urgent help, the official said. First discussed in 1999, the EU in 2007 set up a combat-ready system of battlegroups of 1,500 personnel to respond to crises, but they have never been used. Those battle groups could now form the basis of a so-called First Entry Force, part of a new momentum towards more EU defence capabilities. From this year, the bloc has a joint budget to develop weaponry together, is drawing up a military doctrine for 2022 and detailed its military weakness last year for the first time.

Staunch anti-India Kashmir politician dies in police custody (AP) A prominent politician in Kashmir who challenged India’s rule over the disputed region for decades died Wednesday while in police custody. Mohammed Ashraf Sehrai was 78. Sehrai’s son, Mujahid Sehrai, said his father was denied proper medical care while in jail. Sehrai was arrested last July under the Public Safety Act, which allows authorities in Indian-controlled Kashmir to imprison anyone for up to two years without trial. All Parties Hurriyat Conference, the main separatist grouping in Kashmir, said authorities had left Sehrai unattended in jail until his condition worsened. In a statement, it said it “deeply regrets this inhuman attitude of the authorities and is pained by it.” It also expressed concern about the health of hundreds of other Kashmiri political detainees as India faces a massive health crisis because of an explosion of coronavirus cases. Last week, the grouping said the prisoners were being denied “even basic amenities,” leading to “serious health problems among the prisoners.”

India’s COVID-19 surge spreads to Nepal (Reuters) Nepal is being overwhelmed by a COVID-19 surge as India’s outbreak spreads across South Asia, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said on Wednesday. Nepal is now recording 57 times as many cases as a month ago, with 44% of tests now coming back positive. Nepalese towns near the Indian border could not cope with the growing number of people needing treatment, while only 1% of the country’s population was fully vaccinated.

Myanmar’s military disappearing young men to crush uprising (AP) Myanmar’s security forces moved in and the street lamps went black. In house after house, people shut off their lights. Darkness swallowed the block. When the military’s trucks finally rolled away, Shwe’s 15-year-old brother was missing. Across the country, Myanmar’s security forces are arresting and forcibly disappearing thousands of people, especially boys and young men, in a sweeping bid to break the back of a three-month uprising against a military takeover. In most cases, the families of those taken do not know where they are, according to an Associated Press analysis of more than 3,500 arrests since February. It is a technique the military has long used to instill fear and to crush pro-democracy movements. The boys and young men are taken from homes, businesses and streets, under the cover of night and sometimes in the brightness of day. Some end up dead. Many are imprisoned and sometimes tortured. Many more are missing.

Turkey and Egypt on the mend (Foreign Policy) Representatives from Turkey and Egypt meet in Cairo today for “exploratory” discussions “on the necessary steps that may lead towards the normalization of relations” according to a joint statement. Relations between the two countries have frayed due to maritime border disputes, Libya’s civil war, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s opposition to the 2013 coup which brought Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to power. There were some signs of rapprochement in March, when the Turkish government directed Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated media channels in the country to refrain from criticizing the Egyptian president.

Why Nearsightedness Is on the Rise in Children (NYT) Look and you shall see: A generation of the real-life nearsighted Mr. Magoos is growing up before your eyes. A largely unrecognized epidemic of nearsightedness, or myopia, is afflicting the eyes of children. People with myopia can see close-up objects clearly, like the words on a page. But their distance vision is blurry, and correction with glasses or contact lenses is likely to be needed for activities like seeing the blackboard clearly, cycling, driving or recognizing faces down the block. The growing incidence of myopia is related to changes in children’s behavior, especially how little time they spend outdoors, often staring at screens indoors instead of enjoying activities illuminated by daylight. Gone are the days when most children played outside between the end of the school day and suppertime. And the devastating pandemic of the past year may be making matters worse. The prevalence of myopia in the United States increased from 25 percent in the early 1970s to nearly 42 percent just three decades later. And the rise in myopia is not limited to highly developed countries. The World Health Organization estimates that half the world’s population may be myopic by 2050.

#headlines #news

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creepingsharia · 4 years ago

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South Florida ‘ISIS’ Imam: Christianity is the main problem in America; 'Jews Behind All Corruption in the Earth'

By Joe Kaufman

Fadi Kablawi (Qablawi), head imam of the North Miami Islamic Center (NMIC) and FBI ‘person of interest,’ is a radical Muslim’s radical. His targets comprise of Jews, Christians, homosexuals, women, Hindus and Muslims, even his fellow radical Muslims. This past July, he made the claim that Jews are behind all the corruption on Earth. He did so, during one of his Friday khutbas (sermons), in front of his congregation, which includes young and impressionable children. At times, he draws large crowds. Will Kablawi’s dangerous rhetoric drive one or more of his followers to commit acts of violence? Has it already?

Fadi Yousef Kablawi, a.k.a. Abu Ubeidah, was born in Amman, Jordan, in 1978. At the age of 17, he moved to the US with his family. After finishing high school, Kablawi attended Florida International University (FIU) for his undergraduate studies and completed his doctoral degree in dental medicine, at the University of Pennsylvania, in 2005. Working alongside his wife, he had a thriving Miami dentistry, until August 2017, when he was arrested for allegedly using his business to overcharge his patients and commit Medicaid fraud. A video news report depicts a somber Kablawi handcuffed and sporting an orange jumpsuit, standing in front of Bond Court judge, Mindy Glazer, who happens to be Jewish.

Incorporated in September 2010, the North Miami Islamic Center (NMIC), a.k.a. Masjid As Sunnah An Nabawiyyah, is the brainchild of Kablawi. In fact, the mosque’s colorful logo bears the name of Kablawi’s former corporation, al-Tayyib, which is as well the mosque’s website address, altayyib.com. A children’s school, Reviver Academy, shares the identical North Miami location of the mosque. According to Kablawi, he created the school in order to provide a pure and unfiltered form of Islam for the kids. Photos and video footage from the school show the children using the same area of the mosque where Kablawi emits his hate speech.

Kablawi is an equal opportunity offender, attacking all faiths, including his own, though Jews are by far his primary target. Last month, he told his congregants, “[A Muslim] doesn’t associate his behavior with an iman (faith). The Jews are different. They will use the iman, which is ‘We’re Jews,’ to justify every heinous thing they do.” Also last month, he stated, “You will find the most enemies to the believers are the Jews.” This past July, Kablawi told his congregation the following about Jews: “Look at the façade and the corruption in the Earth, today. You’ll find them behind it, in everything.”

Kablawi is not happy that some of his fellow Muslims are making peace with Israel. On September 15th, at the White House, historic peace agreements were signed between Israel, Bahrain and the UAE. On October 2nd, Kablawi told his audience, “Anything you sign as peace is nothing but selling out, is nothing but cowardice, is nothing but humiliation, is nothing but debasement.” On September 20th, he stated, “If anybody who brings this issue up… tell them brotherhood is stronger than cousinhood. When they abuse and kill our brothers… the Muslims in Palestine are brothers not cousins, and when my cousin kills my brother I will kill my cousin.”

Kablawi is also not friendly towards Muslims who side with Hindus wishing to resettle in the Indian state of Kashmir, following years of terror and dispossession at the hands of Islamists. In August 2019, he tweeted his own mini fatwa (religious ruling), stating, “Whoever allies himself, celebrates and honors the Hindus for what they have done to Muslims in Kashmir is an apostate, out of the fold of the religion of Muhammad…”

Kablawi likes vilifying Christians, too. Last month, he told his congregants, “[T]he Christians don’t think. They just follow whatever.” He said that Christians have a “hallucinating imagination.” He called Christianity “fake.” In January 2019, he told his congregation, “The Christian religion makes no sense… If you look at all the religions in the world, Christianity can compete for first place in stupidity.” This past July he stated, “Someone might ask, ‘Why are there a lot of Christians?’ There are lots of Christians, because their fitra (state of purity/innocence) got corrupted.”

Kablawi also hates gays with a passion. Last month, he railed against gay rights. He stated to his audience, “20 years or 30 years ago, talking to someone about the rights of homosexuals – crazy! God knows what there will be tomorrow… Maybe the straight ones will be the gay ones. We will be looked at as abnormal.” He referred to gays as “Sodomites.” In March 2019, Kablawi bizarrely attacked gays and Christians together, tweeting, “After long research, I think I finally discovered the virus responsible for LGBTQ disease… It is called the Church virus; most dangerous mutation of such virus is the Catholic one.” Kablawi has even attacked Islamist favorite Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and a leader from CAIR for cavorting with LGBT.

And when it comes to jihad, for Kablawi, there is only one primary meaning, and that is holy war. In July, he said, “[J]ihad is when you put your life on the line. Not the cute jihad, as they call everything ‘jihad’ today. A brother sent me a message, ‘This is the Real Jihad’… about coronavirus. This kid somewhere in Falastin. They stopped him from seeing his mother, at the hospital, who was infected with the virus. He would climb, every night, the walls of the hospital and sit next to the room of his mother… May Allah reward him for being righteous and dutiful to his mother. But that’s not the real jihad. Real jihad is not climbing walls. Real jihad is climbing over people’s necks and heads and skulls.”

This past July, hundreds of mosque goers packed Kablawi’s NMIC, as Kablawi stood in front leading prayers. No doubt, his type of no frills Islamic fundamentalism has attracted a significant segment of the Muslim community. One must therefore question how much of Kablawi’s extreme and bigoted rhetoric has his congregants taken to heart, and are they willing to act on it, meaning violently? One of his followers, Salman Rashid, this past December, was charged with soliciting ISIS to murder the deans of two South Florida colleges. And according to Kablawi, he himself is considered by the FBI to be a member of ISIS.

Fadi Kablawi is a danger and threat to society. The message that he sends to his congregation and all who watch and share his videos is one of hatred and violence. Kablawi believes that he is teaching the Islamic religion in the proper manner – one that is unfiltered and unapologetic – and that may very well be so. However, what Kablawi is doing, as well, is inspiring his followers and congregants, including very young and impressionable children, to retain this hatred and to potentially carry out the same type of jihad that Kablawi lauds and embraces.

#Islam #Muslim #Sharia #Jihad #Mosque #Legal #Law #Immigration #News #Media #politics #religion #Florida

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jknewsinfo · 3 years ago

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BHADERWAH Over 200 participate in trekking camp in Bhaderwah @indianarmy.adgpi @adgpi BHADERWAH: Over 200 people, including 75 women, on Thursday joined a 10-day long trekking-cum-physical education camp being organised here in a bid to revive the adventure sports sector, which has been severely hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, officials said. The Directorate of Sports and Physical Education (DSPE), University of Jammu, in collaboration with the Army's Rashtriya Rifles (RR) unit based at Bhaderwah is organising the camp which will see the participants trekking between altitudes ranging from 10,000 and 13,500 feet, they said. The trekking expedition to Hayan hills located in the mighty Kailash mountain range was flagged off by DSPE Director Dawood Iqbal Baba along with the commanding officer of the RR unit from Bhaderwah campus, marking the commencement of the first major physical activity in the region in last three years. The tourism and sports sector were badly hit across Jammu and Kashmir since August 2019 when the centre announced the abrogation of Article 370 and bifurcation of the erstwhile state into two union territories. The coronavirus lockdown and restrictions for months together did not allow full-fledged revival of the activities since the outbreak of the pandemic last year. The officials said the expedition is being led by the DSPE director and two officers of the Army and involves hikes to Kailash, Jaie and Kansar hills of Bhaderwah besides trekking to the mighty Ashapati glacier. ''The camp aims at inculcating the spirit of adventure and develop camaraderie among the youth and rekindle their spirit to take part in physical activities after prolonged hiatus forced by the pandemic,'' Baba told PTI after flagging off the ceremony. He said the camp was also aimed at bringing adventure tourism back on track after it got badly hit over the last three years. The camp has come as a big relief for adventure sports lovers who expressed their happiness and thanked the organisers. ''As a sportsperson, it is very difficult and nerve-wracking to sit idle and do no physical activity for such a long period. We were frustrated and feeling depressed... now, https://www.instagram.com/p/CR6jvY3M-Qv/?utm_medium=tumblr

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timespakistan · 4 years ago

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More restrictions to be imposed if people continue to defy SOPs, warns CM Extension of restrictions related to Covid-19 in Sindh for two more weeks was inevitable as the detection rate for the disease has been constantly on the rise in Karachi and other major cities of the province, due to which three major hospitals in Karachi have no more room left for the Covid-19 patients. Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said this on Sunday as he addressed a news conference at the CM House. “In such a situation when the cases of coronavirus are on the rise and the death rate is also showing an upward trend, relaxation in the restrictions could not be considered. We may impose more and strict restrictions if the people continue to defy the SOPs [standard operating procedures],” said. Accompanied by Sindh Health Minister Dr Azra Pechuho, Education Minister Saeed Ghani, Irrigation Minister Sohail Anwar Siyal, Law Adviser Murtaza Wahab, Dr Abul Bari of the Indus Hospital and Dr Faisal Mahmood of the Aga Khan Hospital, the CM said Eidul Fitr was celebrated on May 24, 2020, last year and on that day, there were 846 new cases but within 15 days after the Eid, the number of daily new cases had increased to 3,036 on June 11, 2020, which constituted a 30 per cent detection rate. “This year, Eidul Fitr was on May 13, 2021 and on that day, we had 1,232 cases and within eight days [May 22], the number of cases increased to 2,135. Our hospitals, particularly the Infection Disease Institute, Indus and Aga Khan have no beds for Covid patients,” he said. Talking about the PCR tests, Shah said that after Eidul Fitr, 2,809 tests had been conducted per a million population because the government wanted to assess the situation to make an appropriate strategy. He added that during the last one week, the positive cases ratio had been recorded at 8.37 per cent, which was quite dangerous. The CM remarked that when Ramazan started, the ratio of the positive Covid cases was lower in Sindh than other provinces. As the month of Ramazan passed, the number of cases went on increasing because inter-provincial transport kept plying and moving passengers from one province to the other. “Had it [transport] been banned for two weeks as was suggested by the Sindh government, the pandemic would have been contained,” he said. He added that marriage halls, expo halls, parks, indoor gyms, sports facilities, amusement parks, cinemas, beauty parlours, shrines and all tourist spots had been closed for two weeks starting Monday. “All the educational institutions, including schools, colleges and universities, have been closed all over Sindh till further orders,” he explained and added that the transport vehicles were allowed with 50 per cent occupancy of their capacity. Shops, including supermarkets, would operate from 6am to 6pm, Shah said. “We would not allow supermarkets to operate under the pretext of having a pharmacy,” he said, adding that pharmacies at hospitals and separate medical stores would operate round the clock. The restaurants would offer only takeaways and home delivery service, he stated. The CM urged the people of the province to get vaccinated. “The whole world is opening because they have vaccinated their people,” he said, adding that the government had been running 234 vaccination centres all over the province from where people could get themselves vaccinated against Covid-19. The health minister said more vaccinations were being procured to cover the entire population. She added that mobile vaccinations units were being launched to cover elderly and bedridden people. The speakers also dismissed rumours regarding magnetic powers in the body after the vaccination. “This is something to misguide the people,” it was said. Dr Bari said the UK variant of the novel coronavirus was quite dangerous as it affected people intensely. He added that people could make themselves secured through vaccination. Dr Qaiser Sajjad of the Pakistan Medical Association said more restrictions should be imposed until the spread of the virus was contained. He suggested that every day at least 500,000 to 600,000 people should be vaccinated. At the outset of the press conference, the CM also condemned the Israeli and Indian terrorism in Palestine and Kashmir respectively. https://timespakistan.com/more-restrictions-to-be-imposed-if-people-continue-to-defy-sops-warns-cm/19476/

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pakurdutube · 4 years ago

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Story of Hamzah Khan Nasheed Artist from London

Hamzah Khan Is A 23 year old faith inspired singer. Born and bread in Luton United Kingdom. Hamzah first began reciting Nasheeds/Naats (Faith Inspired Poems/Songs) at the Age Of 6. HAMZAH family originally from Azad Kashmir who were very encouraging of his talent and actively helping him pursue his career in the arts. The Hamzah went from reciting in mosques and small gathering in Luton to now performing internationally. Read also: – - 100+ Profitable Micro Niche Blog Ideas 2021|Top Blogging Niches - 10 Best Ways Make Money From Home In Coronavirus - What Is Meta Tags? How To Add Meta Tags In Blogger? - List Of Insurance Companies In Pakistan | Insurance In Pakistan - Highest CPC Keywords And Best Adsense Niches For Urdu Blogger - Adsense High CPC Keywords List 2020 Once Hamzah began further education at the university of Bedfordshire. his career excelled with in a fast paced environment and juggling studying towards a Undergraduate degree in business information systems with working part time and recording his singles in the studio.

Hamzah gained popularity very quickly with a very mixed and growing fan base with people of all ages. With the help of family and a growing fan base Hamzah has gone on to release many more singles and YouTube releases which have already hit over 2 million views. Hamzah has also furthered his brand by releasing a clothing line under the name of Hamzah Khan London. Selling premium quality asian couture! Hamzah Graduated from the university of Bedfordshire in 2020 & since has become a world performing artist and influencer embarking on his first international tour of Pakistan in January 2020. Since the early doors of his career Hamzah has also been a keen humanitarian worker across the globe , giving back to the communities who have helped shaped his career. Read the full article

#HamzahKhan #HamzahKhanNasheedArtist #HamzahKhanNasheedArtistfromLondon #hamzahkhanofficial

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marwahstudios · 4 years ago

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Sandeep Marwah Inaugurated International Edu Conclave 2021

New Delhi: “The COVID-19 has resulted in schools & colleges shut all across the world. Globally, over 1.2 billion children are out of the classroom. As a result, education has changed dramatically, with the distinctive rise of e-learning, whereby teaching is undertaken remotely and on digital platforms. Research suggests that online learning has been shown to increase retention of information, and take less time, it is for sure that the changes coronavirus have caused might be here to stay,” said Dr. Sandeep Marwah President & Chancellor of AAFT University while inaugurating the International Edu Conclave 2021 designed by Farheen Khan of Educacio World.

Informing about AAFT online programs of creative arts Dr. Sandeep Marwah very well expressed the advantages of virtual learning including the access to coursework from anywhere at any time, effective time management, Sharpening of digital skills and expanded world market on which he emphasised.

Dr. Marwah congratulated the organizers for opting for the appropriate theme of the summit-‘Virtual Education Innovating a Classroom Without Boundaries’ Later Dr. Marwah presented awards to many international educationist from different parts of the World.

Prof. Vedrana Saree from Croatia, Evangelia Vassilakou The English Academy of Languages Athens Greece, Rohini Aima Founder Principal Jammu Sanskriti School Jammu & Kashmir India, Manish Gupta Founder Director Buddhi World India, Dr. Shama Hussain Chairperson Muscat NIST Oman, Dr. Muthmainnah S.Pdl Universitas Al Asyariah Mandar Indonesia, Rania Lampou Ministry of Education Greece, Dr. Andi Asrifan Educator from Indonesia, Dr. Sc. Enkeleda Lulaj Haxhi Zeka University Kosova and Kai Vacher Principal British School Muscat Oman also presented their papers and views.

#Dr. Marwah Inaugurated International Education Summit #Dr. Sandeep Marwah President of Marwah Studios

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techminsolutions · 4 years ago

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Kashmir University defers UG, PG offline exams till May 2

The Kashmir University (KU) has decided to postpone the offline exams for all undergraduate and postgraduate courses until May 2. The main campus of the university will also remain closed till April 28. In an official statement, the university said that the exams are being postponed due to the worsening coronavirus situation. Read | AIIMS defers MBBS supplementary exams for second and third-year…

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Headlines

American tourists face bans and restrictions across the world amid pandemic (Yahoo) The reputation and prestige once associated with a passport from the United States have suffered as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. For Americans right now, traveling is harder than ever before—they aren’t welcome in the majority of the world’s countries because of the U.S. response to the outbreak. As a result, the U.S. passport ranking has fallen 50% in the last year, down from the no. 3 spot to the no. 19 spot in the Passport Index. “The American passport was always in the top five passports over the last five years,” Armand Arton, founder of Passport Index, told Yahoo Money. Pre-pandemic, an American passport holder could access 70% of the world’s countries without a visa. Arton said the “only reason” for America’s sudden fall from grace was the coronavirus. “It is not foreign policy,” he said. “It is not the visa restrictions. It is really the temporary limitation of travel of U.S. citizens, based on the fact that the rest of the world doesn’t want U.S. citizens coming to their countries.”

Millennials and younger are new US majority (AP) Sorry, boomers. Millennials and their younger siblings and children now make up a majority of the U.S. population. A new analysis by the Brookings Institution shows that 50.7% of U.S. residents were under age 40, as of July 2019. The Brookings’ analysis of population estimates released this summer by the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the combined millennial, Generation Z and younger generations numbered 166 million people. The combined Generation X, baby boomer, and older cohorts represented 162 million U.S. residents. Millennials typically are defined as being born between 1981 and 1996. Baby boomers, long considered a primary driver of demographic and social change in the U.S. because of their large numbers, were born between the end of World War II and the arrival of the Beatles in the U.S. in 1964.

The Pandemic Workday Is 48 Minutes Longer and Has More Meetings (Bloomberg) We log longer hours. We attend more meetings with more people. And, we send more emails. From New York City to Tel Aviv, the telecommuting revolution has meant a lot more work, according to a study of 3.1 million people at more than 21,000 companies across 16 cities in North America, Europe and the Middle East. The researchers compared employee behavior over two 8 week periods before and after Covid-19 lockdowns. Looking at email and meeting meta-data, the group calculated the workday lasted 48.5 minutes longer, the number of meetings increased about 13% and people sent an average of 1.4 more emails per day to their colleagues. During the two month time frame, there was one part of working that did improve: Those additional meetings were shorter, according to the analysis by researchers at Harvard Business School and New York University.

Pandemic Is Changing the Military, From Boot Camp to Office Work (Bloomberg) The U.S. military is finding its footing and changing how it operates as cases of the coronavirus keep rising. The services have been forced to continue widespread use of quarantines and to rethink future training, deploying, and day-to-day work. The virus curve has shot up from 10,462 cumulative cases in early June to 37,824 total cases by late July, according to the Defense Department. The figure includes more than 14,300 current infections among active-duty troops, as well as total cases reported among civilian workers, dependents and contractors since the pandemic began.

Seeking refuge in US, children fleeing danger are expelled (AP) When officers led them out of a detention facility near the U.S.-Mexico border and onto a bus last month, the 12-year-old from Honduras and his 9-year-old sister believed they were going to a shelter so they could be reunited with their mother in the Midwest. They had been told to sign a paper they thought would tell the shelter they didn’t have the coronavirus, the boy said. The form was in English, a language he and his sister don’t speak. The only thing he recognized was the letters “COVID.” Instead, the bus drove five hours to an airport where the children were told to board a plane. “They lied to us,” he said. “They didn’t tell us we were going back to Honduras.” More than 2,000 unaccompanied children have been expelled since March under an emergency declaration enacted by the Trump administration, which has cited the coronavirus in refusing to provide them protections under federal anti-trafficking and asylum laws. Lawyers and advocates have sharply criticized the administration for using the global pandemic as a pretext to deport children to places of danger. No U.S. agents looked at the video the boy had saved on his cellphone showing a hooded man holding a rifle, saying his name, and threatening to kill him and his sister, weeks after the uncle caring for them was shot dead in June. And even though they were expelled under an emergency declaration citing the virus, they were never tested for COVID-19, the boy said.

Coronavirus surprise: Remittances to Mexico rise during pandemic (Washington Post) It was an intuitive prediction, supported by virtually every expert who had studied the subject: As the coronavirus pandemic caused the global economy to tumble, remittances to Mexico and Central America would crash. It turns out the forecast was wrong. Instead of collapsing, remittances to Mexico were up year-over-year in five of the first six months of 2020. In June, payments to El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras also increased compared to the same period in 2019, after a dip earlier this year. In March, the month the World Health Organization declared a pandemic, remittances to Mexico topped $4 billion—a record. Across the United States, migrants and the children of migrants say they have prioritized sending money to family in Mexico and Central America during the pandemic.

Economy tanking, Cuba launches some long-delayed reforms (AP) With its airports closed to commercial flights and its economy tanking, Cuba has launched the first in a series of long-promised reforms meant to bolster the country’s struggling private sector. The island’s thousands of restaurants, bed-and-breakfasts, auto mechanics and dozens of other types of private businesses have operated for years without the ability to import, export or buy supplies in wholesale markets. While the communist government began allowing widespread private enterprise a decade ago, it maintained a state monopoly on imports, exports and wholesale transactions. As a result, the country’s roughly 613,000 private business owners have been forced to compete for scarce goods in Cuba’s understocked retail outlets or buy on the black market. That has limited the private sector’s growth and made entrepreneurs a constant target of criminal investigation. With the essential tourism business cut off by the novel coronavirus and the government running desperately low on hard currency, the government last month announced that it would allow private restaurants to buy wholesale for the first time. Ministers also announced that private businesspeople could sign contracts to import and export goods through dozens of state-run companies with import/export licenses.

Former Colombian president placed under house arrest (Economist) Colombia’s Supreme Court ordered that Álvaro Uribe, a conservative former president, be placed under house arrest. It is examining whether Mr Uribe had tried to tamper with witnesses in an investigation that he instigated against a left-wing senator. Mr Uribe, the mentor of Colombia’s current president, Iván Duque, is the first sitting or former president since the 1950s to be detained.

Emergency lockdown in Scotland (Foreign Policy) Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon moved quickly to impose a partial lockdown in the city of Aberdeen on Wednesday, after 54 new cases of COVID-19 were reported. The outbreak was linked to a bar, leading Sturgeon to close all pubs in the city and impose a ban on all non-essential travel. Sturgeon told reporters that the lockdown was a necessary measure. “We need to take decisive action now in order to prevent a larger outbreak and further harm later on,” she said.

Closed for vacation: France faces new virus testing troubles (AP) With virus cases rising anew, France is struggling to administer enough tests to keep up with demand. One reason: Many testing labs are closed so that their staff can take summer vacation, just as signs of a second wave are building. Testing troubles have plagued the U.S. and other countries too. But France’s August ritual of fleeing cities for weeks of holiday rest on seashores, mountainsides or grandma’s country house is an added tangle. “Closed for vacation” signs dangle from door after door across Paris this month, from bakeries to shoe shops and iconic cafes. Doctor’s offices and labs are no exception. Their staff need a rest more than ever this difficult year. But this August, socially distanced lines snake outside the scattered Paris labs that remain open, from the Left Bank to the city’s northern canals. Trying to get a test appointment can take a week or more. So can getting results.

Pakistan stands behind Kashmir (Foreign Policy) On the first anniversary of the Indian government’s decision to revoke Kashmir’s special autonomous status, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan heaped criticism on his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, and reiterated his support for Kashmiri self-determination. In a statement, Khan called Indian activity in the region since the move a “crime against humanity,” and in a subsequent address to the legislative assembly, he said Modi has been “exposed in the world.” One year later, the region is still saturated with troops, communications are slow, and arrests are a routine part of daily life.

He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (Foreign Policy) Anti-government protests took place in Thailand earlier this week as demands for limits on the power of the monarchy grow. Due to strict laws forbidding criticism of royals, the demonstrations featured a happy twist. Many of the 200 activists showed up dressed as Harry Potter and other characters from the popular book and film series in an effort to draw parallels between their fight against the government and Harry Potter’s battle against the totalitarianism of Lord Voldemort.

Survivors mark 75th anniversary of world’s 1st atomic attack (AP) HIROSHIMA, Japan—Survivors of the world’s first atomic bombing gathered in diminished numbers near an iconic, blasted dome Thursday to mark the attack’s 75th anniversary, many of them urging the world, and their own government, to do more to ban nuclear weapons. An upsurge of coronavirus cases in Japan meant a much smaller than normal turnout, but the bombing survivors’ message was more urgent than ever. As their numbers dwindle—their average age is about 83—many nations have bolstered or maintained their nuclear arsenals, and their own government refuses to sign a nuclear weapons ban treaty. The United States dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, destroying the city and killing 140,000 people. The United States dropped a second bomb three days later on Nagasaki, killing another 70,000. Japan surrendered Aug. 15, ending World War II and its nearly half-century of aggression in Asia. But the decades since have seen the weapons stockpiling of the Cold War and a nuclear standoff among nations that continues to this day.

As Smoke Clears in Beirut, Shock Turns to Anger (NYT) Since an orphaned shipment of highly explosive chemicals arrived at the port of Beirut in 2013, Lebanese officials treated it the way they have dealt with the country’s lack of electricity, poisonous tap water and overflowing garbage: by bickering and hoping the problem might solve itself. But the 2,750 tons of high-density ammonium nitrate combusted Tuesday, officials said, unleashing a shock wave on the Lebanese capital that gutted landmark buildings, killed 135 people, wounded at least 5,000 and rendered hundreds of thousands of residents homeless. Beirut’s governor said the damage extended over half of the city, estimating it at $3 billion. The government has vowed to investigate the blast and hold those responsible to account. But as residents waded through the warlike destruction on Wednesday to salvage what they could from their homes and businesses, many saw the explosion as the culmination of years of mismanagement and neglect by the country’s politicians. And with the country already deep in the throes of a major economic crisis, residents had no idea how they would afford to rebuild. Because of the financial crisis, banks have placed strict limits on cash withdrawals to prevent runs.

U.S. eyes Saudi nuclear program (NYT) American intelligence agencies are scrutinizing efforts by Saudi Arabia, working with China, to build up its ability to produce nuclear fuel. A classified analysis has raised alarms that doing so could be a cover to process uranium and move toward development of a weapon, U.S. officials told The Times. American officials have searched for decades for evidence that the Saudis are moving toward a nuclear weapon, and the kingdom has made no secret of its determination to keep pace with Iran. But the spy agencies have been reluctant to warn of progress, for fear of repeating the colossal intelligence mistake that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

#headlines #news

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