SOMALIA
Governor killed in blast
A governor in Puntland state has been killed in a suicide bombing claimed by al-Shabaab militants, police and hospital sources said yesterday. Nugaal Governor Abdisalan Hassan Hersi succumbed to his injuries after being rushed to hospital in Garowe, the capital of Puntland where the blast occurred on Sunday. “The doctors tried to save the governor’s life, but unfortunately he died from his injuries,” Puntland police officer Mohamed Weli said by phone. “He was in a critical condition when he was admitted to hospital.” A former police commander and a civilian also wounded in the blast were being treated at hospital, officials said yesterday. Several witnesses described the attacker running at the governor’s vehicle before detonating a suicide vest, triggering an explosion.
JORDAN
Quarantined travelers out
The government yesterday began releasing thousands of travelers who were quarantined for the past two weeks at five-star hotels on the Dead Sea to prevent the spread of COVID-19. More than 4,200 Jordanians and 1,500 foreigners have been held at the hotels. The Jordanians were to be sent home via Uber and were asked to remain at home for another 14 days. Foreign travelers are to be released today. It was not immediately clear where they would go, but authorities said they would be in contact with their embassies and the foreign ministry. The nation has reported 259 infections and three deaths from COVID-19. At least 18 people have recovered.
THAILAND
Phuket on lockdown
Phuket yesterday started a one-month lockdown, with all transportation to the island banned except by air, in the latest effort to contain the spread of COVID-19 in the popular tourist destination. Vehicles and vessels providing essential goods and services are exempted. The southern province is the nation’s first to carry out such measures. Restricting access to the island is a toughening of state-of-emergency rules imposed by the government last week under which non-essential businesses are shut and interprovincial travel is discouraged, but not banned. Phuket has one of the nation’s biggest clusters of COVID-19 cases, along with another popular tourist destination, Pattaya, as well as Bangkok and several provinces in the south. The nation yesterday reported 136 new cases and two new deaths, raising the total number of infections to 1,524 and fatalities to nine.
GERMANY
Minister dies of ‘suicide’
Hesse minister of finance Thomas Schaefer has committed suicide apparently after becoming “deeply worried” over how to cope with the economic fallout from COVID-19, Hesse Premier Volker Bouffier said on Sunday. Schaefer, 54, was found dead near a railway track on Saturday. The Wiesbaden prosecution’s office said they believe he died by suicide. “We are in shock, we are in disbelief and above all we are immensely sad,” Bouffier said in a recorded statement. A visibly shaken Bouffier recalled that Schaefer, who was Hesse’s finance chief for 10 years, had been working “day and night” to help companies and workers deal with the economic impact of the pandemic. “Today we have to assume that he was deeply worried,” Bouffier said. “It’s precisely during this difficult time that we would have needed someone like him.” Popular and well-respected, Schaefer had long been touted as a possible successor to Bouffier. He leaves behind a wife and two children.
UNITED STATES
FDA approves use of drugs
A limited, emergency-use authorization for two antimalarial drugs has been issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat people with COVID-19. In a statement published on Sunday, the Department of Health and Human Services detailed recent donations of medicine to a national stockpile — including chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, both being investigated as potential COVID-19 treatments. It said the FDA had allowed them “to be distributed and prescribed by doctors to hospitalized teen and adult patients with COVID-19, as appropriate, when a clinical trial is not available or feasible.”
UNITED STATES
Trump touts viewership
President Donald Trump on Sunday said that media were reacting badly to the viewership numbers for his press briefings on the COVID-19 pandemic. “Because the ‘Ratings’ of my News Conferences etc. are so high, ‘Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers’ according to the @nytimes, the Lamestream Media is going CRAZY,” Trump tweeted. “‘Trump is reaching too many people, we must stop him.’ said one lunatic. See you at 5:00 P.M.!” The daily updates have attracted an average audience of 8.5 million on cable news, the New York Times reported on Wednesday last week.
UNITED STATES
Trump not paying for royals
President Donald Trump on Sunday said that the nation would not pay security costs for Britain’s Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, appearing to confirm that the couple have moved to California. They reportedly flew by private jet from Canada to Los Angeles before the border between the two countries closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “I am a great friend and admirer of the Queen & the United Kingdom,” Trump tweeted. “However, the U.S. will not pay for their security protection. They must pay!” A spokeswoman for the pair later released a statement saying they had no intention of soliciting help from Washington, media reports said.
UNITED STATES
NY stabbing victim dies
Josef Neumann, who was among five people stabbed during a Hanukkah celebration north of New York City, has died three months after the attack, the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council said. Neumann, 72, died on Sunday, the council wrote in a tweet. The funeral for Neumann, a father of seven and great-grandfather, was to be held yesterday. Rabbi Yisroel Kahan, who is the community liaison for the Ramapo Police Department that serves Monsey, told the Journal News: “We were hoping and praying he would then pull through. This is so very sad he was killed celebrating Hanukkah with friends just because he was a Jew.”
MEXICO
Leader visits Guzman town
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Sunday shook hands with the mother of jailed drug trafficker Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman during a visit to their hometown. In a 30-second video posted on Twitter, Lopez Obrador can be seen approaching the passenger side of Maria Consuelo Loera’s car on the outskirts of Badiraguato in the northwestern state of Sinaloa. Lopez Obrador told Loera that she need not get out of the car, they shook hands and after a brief exchange he told the mother of the jailed kingpin that he had “received her letter.” He did not elaborate. The video then showed Lopez Obrador having a chat with one of Guzman’s lawyers, Jose Luis Gonzalez Meza.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing
RSS