TURKEY
Minister to stay in post
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday refused to accept the resignation of Minister of the Interior Suleyman Soylu over an abrupt nationwide lockdown that triggered a spate of panic-buying. Soylu came in for fierce criticism after the 48-hour shutdown to counter the spread of COVID-19 was announced on Friday night with just two hours’ notice. The declaration sent thousands flocking to markets and bakeries in defiance of “social distancing” rules. Soylu said the lockdown had been on the “instructions” of the president. However, on Sunday he accepted “entire responsibility for the implementation of this measure,” which he said had been carried out “in good faith.” However, Erdogan refused to accept Soylu’s resignation.
ISRAEL
Ex-chief rabbi dies of virus
The country’s former chief rabbi Eliahou Bakshi-Doron, who was known for promoting interfaith dialogue, died of COVID-19 on Sunday, the Shaare Tzedek hospital in Jerusalem said. Bakshi-Doron, 79, was the Sephardic chief rabbi of the country from 1993 to 2003. Born in Jerusalem in 1941, he was chief rabbi of the northern port city of Haifa for 18 years before being elected chief rabbi of the nation. He met Pope John Paul II in 2000 during the pontiff’s visit to the country, sparking criticism from some orthodox rabbis. An advocate of interfaith dialogue, he increased engagement with Muslim and Christian leaders.
ITALY
Millions watch Bocelli
Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli performed a solo Easter concert from an empty Milan cathedral streamed live to millions of people around the world in lockdown. The “Music for Hope” performance, which was streamed on YouTube from Milan’s Duomo cathedral, has been watched more than 22 million times. Accompanied by an organist, Bocelli sang four songs inside the magnificent Gothic building.
RUSSIA
Gagarin slight criticized
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has accused the US Department of State of spreading disinformation by not mentioning Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in a Facebook post about the International Day of Human Space Flight. The UN General Assembly in 2011 proclaimed the annual observance held on the anniversary of the solo one-orbit mission that made Gagarin the first human in space on April 12, 1961. A post on the department’s Russian-language page on Sunday said that the first crewed spaceflight took place 59 years ago, but did not name the person who performed it. “Not noting this is disinformation and a base trick of the post-truth epoch,” the ministry said on its own page.
PERU
Chinese held for illegal tests
Police in Lima on Sunday arrested a Chinese citizen for illegally conducting rapid COVID-19 tests on the public with newly delivered kits allegedly stolen from the Peruvian Ministry of Health. Tianxing Zhang, 36, was arrested in Brena District as he was about to take samples from two women at the door of their house, police said. He “was proceeding to carry out rapid tests for COVID-19 that he had stolen” from the Lima Sur health authority where he worked, a police statement said. Zhang was wearing a mask and a light blue medical apron at the time of his arrest by the state security police.
PAKISTAN
Fighter jet crash kills two
A fighter jet crashed yesterday morning during a routine training mission near the city of Gujrat in Punjab Province, killing the instructor and trainee pilot on board, the military said. There were no casualties on ground, the military said, without elaborating. The latest incident came weeks after an air force pilot died when his F-16 jet crashed near the capital, Islamabad, during maneuvers ahead of National Day celebrations. The military also reported that a two-year-old child was killed on Sunday by Indian fire in the Pakistani-administered Kashmir. On Sunday, Indian police said three civilians, including a woman and a child, were killed when shells fired from the Pakistani army hit homes in the Indian-administer Kashmir. The two sides commonly accuse each other of initiating fire.
JAPAN
Plastic shields for shoppers
Some of the nation’s ubiquitous convenience stores have taken a novel approach to social distancing by hanging plastic sheets from the ceiling to provide a barrier between customers and staff at the cash register amid the COVID-19 pandemic. While many businesses in Tokyo and elsewhere are now shut, most convenience stores, numbering about 58,000 nationwide, have stayed open as they are considered essential. “I actually feel safer,” said 53-year-old restaurant owner Isao Otsuka, who was shopping at one of about 150 7-Eleven stores, mainly in Tokyo, that have installed the transparent plastic curtains. 7-Eleven’s owner, Seven & i Holdings, has asked employees to wear masks, check their temperatures, wash their hands frequently and sterilize surfaces.
JAPAN
Narita offers cardboard beds
Narita Airport has prepared an impromptu hotel of cardboard beds and quilts in its baggage-claim area for passengers from overseas who might have to stay there while awaiting the results of tests for COVID-19. Although flights at Narita are down so sharply that the airport has closed one of its runways, planes are still landing with passengers arriving from countries including the US and Italy who are required to undergo tests for the virus before they can head home. With passengers forbidden to take public transportation, those with nobody to pick them up have to wait — and the cardboard beds have been readied in case nearby facilities currently being used to house passengers are full, he added. Developed for use in evacuation centers during disasters and any other time when temporary bedding is needed, the beds — made of heavy-duty cardboard — contain a mattress and a quilt.
SINGAPORE
‘Floating hotels’ ready
The government is preparing to house hundreds of foreign workers in accommodation vessels typically used for offshore and marine industry staff, as it races to find alternatives to dormitories where the novel coronavirus has been spreading rapidly. Tens of thousands of migrant workers, many from South Asia, live in cramped dormitories across the nation, which have become the biggest source of coronavirus infections in recent days. Authorities are moving some of the healthy residents of those facilities to other sites, including military camps, an exhibition center, vacant public housing blocks and the accommodation vessels, which they have called “floating hotels.” “Each facility can hold a few hundred occupants and can be suitably organized to achieve safe distancing,” Minister of Transport Khaw Boon Wan said on Facebook on Sunday after he visited one of the vessels.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
Millions of dollars have poured into bets on who will win the US presidential election after a last-minute court ruling opened up gambling on the vote, upping the stakes on a too-close-to-call race between US Vice President Kamala Harris and former US president Donald Trump that has already put voters on edge. Contracts for a Harris victory were trading between 48 and 50 percent in favor of the Democrat on Friday on Interactive Brokers, a firm that has taken advantage of a legal opening created earlier this month in the country’s long running regulatory battle over election markets. With just a month
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