Beijing, Jun 15: China is locking now ten more neighbourhoods in Beijing to try and contain the spread of a new coronavirus outbreak linked to a food market, authorities announced Monday.
City official Li Junjie said at a press conference that fresh cases had been found in a second wholesale market in northwestern Haidian district, and as a result, the market and nearby schools would be closed, and people living in ten communities around it placed under lockdown.
Geneva, Mar 30: The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide has reached 634,835, among them 29,957 fatalities, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Sunday.
Over the past 24 hours, 63,159 people were confirmed to be infected with the novel coronavirus and 3,464 people died, the WHO said.
According to the latest situation report, the majority of the confirmed cases - more than 361,000 - are presently concentrated in Europe, with Italy leading the tally with over 92,000 cases, followed by Spain with over 72,000 cases, and Germany with over 52,000 cases.
Italy and Spain are also the countries that top the worldwide death toll from COVID-19, with 10,023 and 5,690 fatalities, respectively.
The second most affected region is currently the Americas with over 120,000 verified COVID-19 cases, of which the majority - over 103,000 - have been found in the United States. The US is also the country with the highest single tally of COVID-19 cases at the moment.
The WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11.
Tehran, Feb 28: The coronavirus epidemic in Iran has cost 26 lives, the health ministry announced Thursday, with a vice president becoming the latest top official to be infected as the spread appeared to accelerate.
Health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour told a news conference that the tally of infections had risen to 245 with 106 more cases confirmed -- the highest number for a single day since Iran announced its first infections on February 19.
The Islamic republic has the highest death toll from the virus outside China, where COVID-19 first emerged.
Among the latest coronavirus sufferers is one of Iran's seven vice presidents, Massoumeh Ebtekar, who oversees women's affairs.
Ebtekar, a former spokeswoman for students who took 52 Americans hostage at the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, is being treated at home and members of her team have been tested, state news agency IRNA reported.
Mojtaba Zolnour, head of parliament's national security and foreign affairs committee, also contracted the virus, appearing in a video posted by Fars news agency saying he was in self-quarantine.
The cleric is a deputy for the Shiite holy city of Qom in central Iran where the country's first cases were detected.
According to media reports, among the deceased in Qom on Thursday was theologian Hadi Khroroshahi, who in 1981 was named Iran's first ambassador to the Vatican.
The announcement by Zolnour comes two days after another top official, deputy health minister Iraj Harirchi, head of the government's coronavirus task force, said he too had contracted the virus.
On Wednesday, Iranian authorities announced domestic travel restrictions for people with confirmed or suspected infections.
They also placed curbs on access to major Shiite pilgrimage sites, including the Imam Reza shrine in second city Mashhad and the Fatima Masumeh shrine in Qom.
Visitors to the shrines will be allowed to visit on condition they are provided "with hand-washing liquids, proper (health) information, masks", Health Minister Saeed Namaki said.
They must "not gather together in groups but just pray and leave", he said.
In a rare move, authorities announced the cancellation of the main Friday weekly prayers in Tehran, Qom and Mashhad as well as in the capitals of 22 of Iran's 31 provinces and other infected areas.
"All of these decisions are temporary and if the situation changes, we might intensify or ease them," Namaki said.
Jun 4: Mahatma Gandhi’s statue outside the Indian Embassy in Washington DC was vandalised with graffiti and spray painting by unknown persons allegedly involved in the ongoing protests in the US against the custodial killing of African-American George Floyd.
This has prompted the mission officials to register a complaint with the local law enforcement agencies.
The incident is reported to have taken place on the intervening night of June 2 and 3 in Washington DC.
The Indian embassy has informed the State Department and registered a complaint with local law enforcement agencies, which are now conducting an investigation into the incident.
On Wednesday, a team of officials from Metropolitan Police in consultation with the Diplomatic Security Service and National Park Police visited the site and are conducting inquiries.
Efforts are on to clean up the site at the earliest.
Vandalism of the statue of the apostle of peace comes during the week of nationwide protests against the custodial killing of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.
Several of these protests have turned violent which many times has resulted in damage of some of the most prestigious and sacred American monuments.
In Washington DC, protestors this week burnt a historic church and damaged some of the prime properties and historic places like the national monument and Lincoln Memorial.
One of the few statues of a foreign leader on a federal land in Washington DC, the statue of Mahatma Gandhi was dedicated by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in the presence of the then US president Bill Clinton on September 16, 2000, during his state visit to the US.
In October 1998, the US Congress had authorised the government of India to establish and maintain a memorial “to honour Mahatma Gandhi on Federal land in the District of Columbia."
According to the Indian Embassy website, the sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi is cast in bronze as a statue to a height of 8 feet 8 inches. It shows Gandhi in stride, as a leader and man of action evoking memories of his 1930 protest march against salt-tax, and the many padyatras (long marches) he undertook throughout the length and breadth of the Indian sub-continent.
The statue, the design of which was created by Gautam Pal, is a gift from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). The pedestal for the statue of Mahatma Gandhi is a block of new Imperial Red also known as Ruby Red a block originally weighing 25 tonnes reduced to a size of 9'x7'x3'4". It now weighs 16 tonnes.
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