Author: News Desk

A tornado ripped through several villages on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, killing at least two people, damaging hundreds of homes, and fatally knocking over a cow, a disaster official said Thursday. Another six people, most with serious injuries, were taken to a hospital after the tornado touched down late Wednesday in Lampung province’s Tulang Bawang district, said Raditya Jati, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman, The Associated Press (AP) reported. The powerful winds damaged 245 homes in three villages and knocked out power to most of the area, Jati said. The storm also threw a cow to its death, he said.…

India’s capital Delhi on Thursday reported its highest coronavirus spike with 571 cases in a day. With this, the total reached 11,659 in the national capital. No COVID-19 patient died in 24 hours, but the deaths’ number became 194 with 18 unreported additions. This is for the third time in a row that the national capital has reported its highest single-day spike. In the last 24 hours, 375 coronavirus patients were discharged from hospital, taking the total of those cured in Delhi to 5,567. There are 5,898 active cases in Delhi as of now. Earlier this week, the Delhi government…

China is proposing to introduce a new security law in Hong Kong that could ban sedition, secession and treason. The move is likely to provoke strong opposition internationally and in Hong Kong, which last year saw months of pro-democracy protests. China’s delayed National People’s Congress, its legislature, will debate the issue when it opens on Friday. Hong Kong’s mini-constitution requires it to bring in such a law but it failed to do so amid widespread opposition. The so-called Basic Law was introduced when the UK handed back Hong Kong’s sovereignty to China in 1997 and provides certain freedoms not available…

The Bahrain Ministry’s contact tracing programme has identified 32 additional COVID-19 cases in connection with the Bahraini family, up from 16 when the cases were first announced on 9 May 2020. Contact tracing is ongoing. On 9 May the Ministry announced the transmission of COVID-19 among 16 members of a Bahraini family who had been exposed to the virus by contact tracing case no. 2,930, a family member who attended Iftar at their brother’s house. The family had been congregating in a large group of 30 without wearing masks, not adhering to social distancing measures established by the Ministry. This…

Kuwait has reported 1,041 new coronavirus cases, taking the total confirmed cases in the country 18,609, according to the Ministry of Health. The new cases were found after 4,757 NP swab tests in the past 24 hours, as the country ramps ups its efforts to test more people and detect cases early, according to the health ministry spokesman. So far, Kuwait has conducted more than 261,071 coronavirus tests. Some of the newly reported cases are from people who were infected due to contact between active cases, while others are under epidemic investigation. 5 patients died of the coronavirus in the…

The Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities Department in Dubai, IACAD, has announced that Eid Takbeer will be broadcast through various mosques in Dubai on the morning of Eid al-Fitr. The broadcast during the current time will help revive the Sunnah and the community’s link with the mosques. Congregational prayers continued to be suspended in mosques. Mohamed Ali bin Zayed Al Falasi, Executive Director of the Mosques Affairs Sector, said that Eid Takbeer will be broadcast after the Fajer prayer for an hour before sunrise on the first day of Eid from the mosques’ minarets. The decision to broadcast Eid Takbeer…

Bahrain has reported 151 new COVID-19 cases, of which 96 are among expatriate workers, 48 are contacts of active cases and 7 are travel-related. These new cases bring up the total cases in the kingdom to 8,039 and there are 4,312 active cases of which 9 are critical and the rest stable, according to the Ministry of Health.  27 of the active cases receiving treatment. MOH also reported 147 new recoveries from COVID-19, bringing the total recoveries in the country to 3,715. Bahrain has so far conducted 260,897 COVID-19 tests for the early detection of the virus. So far Bahrain has reported…

British healthcare workers will on Thursday begin taking part in a University of Oxford-led international trial of two anti-malarial drugs to see if they can prevent COVID-19, including one U.S. President Donald Trump, says he has been taking. The ‘COPCOV’ study will involve more than 40,000 frontline healthcare workers from Europe, Africa, Asia and South America to determine if chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are effective in preventing the novel coronavirus. Demand for hydroxychloroquine surged after Trump touted it in early April. Earlier this week the U.S. leader said he was now taking the drug as preventive medicine against the virus despite…

The U.S. government has ordered 300 million doses of a potential COVID-19 virus being developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University and hopes first doses can be made available by October, the Department of Health and Human Services said on Thursday according to Reuters. “This contract with AstraZeneca is a major milestone in Operation Warp Speed’s work toward a safe, effective, widely available vaccine by 2021,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement. After demands by President Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of Health agreed to provide up to $1.2 billion to accelerate AstraZeneca’s vaccine development and secure doses of…

China began its most important political event of the year on Thursday after a two-month delay because of the coronavirus pandemic. The opening of the annual session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference is a further sign of what the government says is its victory over the outbreak that originated in the central city of Wuhan late last year, The Associated Press (AP) reported. That will be followed Friday by the opening of the National People’s Congress, the ceremonial parliament, highlighted by a speech from Premier Li Keqiang outlining economic and social goals for the year. It remains unclear…