100 feared dead in Mediterranean after migrant boat capsize

Washington, Feb 6: U.S. president Donald Trump drew on staunch Republican support to defeat the gravest threat yet to his three-year-old presidency on Wednesday, winning acquittal in the Senate on impeachment charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Only the third U.S. leader ever placed on trial, Trump readily defeated the Democratic-led effort to expel him from office for having illicitly sought help from Ukraine to bolster his 2020 re-election effort.

Trump immediately claimed "victory" while the White House declared it a full "exoneration" for the president -- even as Democrats rejected the acquittal as the "valueless" outcome of an unfair trial.

Despite being confronted with strong evidence, Republicans stayed loyal and mustered a majority of votes to clear the president of both charges -- by 52 to 48 on abuse of power and 53 to 47 on obstruction of Congress -- falling far short of the two-thirds supermajority required for conviction.

"Two thirds of the senators present not having found him guilty of the charges contained therein, it is therefore ordered and adjudged that the said Donald John Trump be, and he is hereby, acquitted," said Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts, who presided over the trial.

The months-long impeachment of the 45th US leader shone a harsh light on America's political divide, with Trump's core support base united behind him in rejecting it as a "hoax."

One Republican, senator Mitt Romney, a longtime Trump foe, risked White House wrath to vote alongside Democrats on the first count, saying Trump was "guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust." He voted not guilty on the second charge.

But the verdict was never truly in question since the House of Representatives formally impeached Trump in December, and has now cleared out a major hurdle for the president to fully plunge into his campaign for re-election in November.

Trump to speak Thursday

Responding to the verdict, Trump announced he would deliver a formal statement Thursday from the White House "to discuss our Country's VICTORY on the Impeachment Hoax!"

Shortly before, the president tweeted a montage depicting a fake cover of Time magazine declaring him president for all eternity.

The White House declared that Trump had obtained "full vindication and exoneration."

But Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker and top Democrat in Congress, said that by clearing Trump, the Republicans had "normalized lawlessness."

"There can be no acquittal without a trial, and there is no trial without witnesses, documents and evidence," she said.

"Sadly, because of the Republican Senate's betrayal of the Constitution, the president remains an ongoing threat to American democracy, with his insistence that he is above the law and that he can corrupt the elections if he wants to."

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said the acquittal was "virtually valueless" since Republicans refused witnesses at his trial.

'Forever impeached'

The Democrats' intense 78-day House investigation faced public doubts and high-pressure stonewalling from the White House.

Concerned about the political risk for the party, Pelosi rejected a call early last year to impeach Trump on evidence compiled by then-special counsel Robert Mueller that he had obstructed the Russia election meddling investigation.

But her concerns melted after new allegations surfaced in August that Trump had pressured Ukraine for help for his 2020 campaign.

Though doubtful from the outset that they would win support from Republicans, an investigation amassed with surprising speed strong evidence to support the allegations.

The evidence showed that from early in 2019, Trump's private lawyer Rudy Giuliani and a close political ally, Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, were scheming to pressure Kiev to help smear Democrats, including Trump's potential 2020 rival Joe Biden, by opening investigations into them.

"We must say enough -- enough! He has betrayed our national security, and he will do so again," Adam Schiff, who led the House investigation, argued on the Senate floor this week.

"He has compromised our elections, and he will do so again," Schiff said.

'Colossal' mistake

In the trial, Trump's defence was not seen as having undermined the facts compiled by Schiff's probe, and several Republican senators acknowledged he did wrong.

But his lawyers and Senate defenders argued, essentially, that Trump's behaviour was not egregious enough for impeachment and removal.

And, pointing to the December House impeachment vote, starkly along party lines, they painted it as a political effort to "destroy the president" in an election year and insisted voters should be allowed to decide Trump's fate.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said impeachment will benefit Republicans.

"Right now this is a political loser for them. They initiated it. They thought this was a great idea. At least for the short term, it has been a colossal political mistake."

Manila, Mar 16: The Philippines has detected an outbreak of avian flu in a northern province after tests showed presence of the highly infectious H5N6 subtype of the influenza A virus in a quail farm, the country's farm minister said on Monday.

Agriculture Secretary William Dar said the bird flu virus, the same strain that hit some local poultry farms in 2017, was detected in Jaen municipality in Nueva Ecija province, where about 1,500 quails had died on one farm alone.

A total of 12,000 quails have been destroyed and buried to prevent further infections, Dar said, citing field reports.

"We are on top of the situation," he said. "Surveillance around the 1-km and 7-km radius will be carried out immediately to ensure that the disease has not progressed around the said perimeter."

Animal quarantine checkpoints have also been set up to restrict the movement of all live domestic birds to and from the quarantine area, he said.

"We would like to emphasise that this is a single case affecting one quail farm only," Dar said.

Dr. Arlene Vytiaco, technical spokeswoman for avian flu at the agriculture department, said that while there is a possibility of transmission to humans through excretion and secretion, "the chances are very slim".

"There is also zero mortality rate," she said.

Dar said his department and the local government were jointly conducting an investigation and contact-tracing to determine the source of infection.

To ensure steady domestic supply of poultry, he said the transport of day-old chicks, hatching eggs and chicken meat will be allowed provided the source farms have tested negative for bird flu.

Paris, Apr 10: French pharma major Sanofi said on Friday it has decided to donate 100 million doses of hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug which could be a potential weapon against novel coronavirus, across 50 countries.

The company has already doubled its incremental production capacity on top of the usual production for current indications across its eight hydroxychloroquine manufacturing sites worldwide and is on track to quadruple it by the summer.

"In this global health emergency, Sanofi stands ready to assist as many countries as possible, starting with countries where its medicine is registered for current approved indications as well as countries where there are no hydroxychloroquine suppliers or countries with underserved populations," it said in a statement.

Sanofi called for coordination among the entire hydroxychloroquine chain worldwide to ensure the continued supply of the medicine if proven to be a well-tolerated and effective treatment in COVID-19 patients.

"The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented health and economic crisis which is shaking some of the very fundamentals of international solidarity and cooperation among countries," said Chief Executive Officer Paul Hudson. "This virus does not care about the concept of borders, so we should not either," he added.

"It is critical that international authorities, local governments, manufacturers and all other players involved in the hydroxychloroquine chain work together in a coordinated manner to ensure all patients who may benefit from this potential treatment can access it. If the trials prove positive, we hope our donation will play a critical role for patients," said Hudson.

While hydroxychloroquine is generating a lot of hope for patients around the world, said Sanofi, it should be remembered that there are no results from ongoing studies and the results may be positive or negative.

To date, there is insufficient clinical evidence to draw any conclusion over the safety and efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in the management of COVID-19 patients.

It is one of several medicines being investigated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in its international clinical trial seeking a treatment solution for COVID-19. "Sanofi is supporting ongoing trials by providing the medicine to some participating investigator sites and other independent research centres," it said.