'Enough is enough': British PM calls for tougher anti-terror measures

June 5, 2017

London, Jun 5: British Prime Minister Theresa May has called for stronger counter-terrorism measures following Saturday's killing spree on the streets of London — the third deadly terror attack in the UK in less than three months.

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Three attackers drove a hired van into pedestrians on London Bridge and stabbed others nearby, killing seven people and wounding 48, before the assailants were shot dead by police.

“It is time to say enough is enough,” May said in a statement outside her Downing Street office on Sunday.

“We cannot and must not pretend that things can continue as they are,” she added, calling for new measures that could include longer jail sentences for some offenses and new cyberspace regulations.

May said the series of attacks in the UK were not connected in terms of planning and execution, but were inspired by what she called a “single, evil ideology of Islamist extremism” that represented a perversion of Islam and of the truth.

“While we have made significant progress in recent years, there is — to be frank — far too much tolerance of extremism in our country,” she said, urging Britons to be more robust in stamping it out in society.

King Salman sent a cable of condolences to May.

“We have received the news of the terrorist attack that took place in London, which resulted in deaths and injuries,” King Salman said.

The Muslim World League (MWL) condemned the terrorist attack.

MWL Secretary-General Mohammed bin Abdul Karim Al-Issa stressed upon the league's consistent position toward terrorism and its supporters.

Terrorists aim to target the UK's excellence as a model of tolerance and human coexistence, he said, adding that these groups' ideology includes exporting their misery and despair as well as attacking the values of this civilized state in order to create a civilizational and cultural conflict.

Daesh claimed responsibility for the London attack.

One analyst on terrorism told Arab News the incident comes at a time when Daesh is stepping up attacks on global targets.

Peter Lehr, lecturer in Terrorism Studies at the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrews University, Scotland, pointed to a previous call by Daesh spokesman Abu Mohammed Al-Adnani, who urged followers to attack Western targets by any means necessary.

“Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him from a high place,” Al-Adnani said in 2014.

Lehr said: “This attack perfectly fits the bill. What is important in this regard is that unlike the Manchester suicide bombing, carrying out such an attack doesn't require any advanced skills such as bomb making nor any lengthy preparations, that make it more likely to be discovered by intelligence (services) or police before the perpetrators are ready to strike.”

Eyewitnesses of Saturday's terror atrocity described harrowing scenes as the attackers' white van veered on and off the bridge sidewalk, hitting people along the way. The three men then ran into an area packed with bars and restaurants, stabbing people indiscriminately.

One eyewitness told Arab News that she saw a man with his throat cut stumbling away from the scene. “We saw a man coming off the bridge with blood all over him and it looked like he had his throat slashed,” she said. “He was holding his neck.”

Mark Rowley, head of counter-terrorism police, said eight officers had fired about 50 bullets to stop the attackers, who were wearing what turned out to be fake suicide vests.

Police on Sunday arrested 12 people in east London, where at least one of the attackers is believed to have resided, according to Sky News.

Saturday's attack came five days before the UK parliamentary election on Thursday, which May said would go ahead as planned. The string of terror attacks in the UK is likely to be central issue of debate in the last few days of campaigning.

Around two weeks ago, a suicide bomber killed 22 children and adults at a concert by US singer Ariana Grande in Manchester in northern England. In March, in an attack similar to Saturday's, five people died after a man drove into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge in central London and stabbed a policeman.

World leaders, including those from the Middle East, were quick to condemn the recent attacks in London.

An official source at Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed the Kingdom's “strong condemnation and denunciation of the attacks.”

In a statement to the Saudi Press Agency, the source offered the Kingdom's condolences to the families of the victims and to the UK government and people, wishing a speedy recovery to the wounded.

The official source reiterated the “Kingdom's solidarity with the United Kingdom against terrorism and extremism which target security and stability around the world without exception.”

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News Network
June 13,2020

Shanghai, Jun 13: Authorities in Beijing have temporarily shut a major wholesale agricultural market following a rise in locally transmitted novel coronavirus infections in China's capital city over the past two days.

The closure of the Xinfadi wholesale market at 3 a.m. local time on Saturday (1900 GMT on Friday), came after two men working at a meat research centre who had recently visited the market were reported on Friday as having been infected by the novel coronavirus. It was not immediately clear how the men had been infected.

Concern is growing of a second wave of the new virus, even in many countries that seemed to have curbed its spread. It was first reported at a seafood market in Wuhan, the capital of central China's Hubei province, in December.

Beijing authorities had earlier halted beef and mutton trading at the Xinfadi market, alongside closures at other wholesale markets around the city.

Reflecting concerns over the risk of further spread of the virus, major supermarkets in Beijing removed salmon from their shelves overnight after the virus causing COVID-19 was discovered on chopping boards used for imported salmon at the market, the state-owned Beijing Youth Daily reported.

Beijing authorities said more than 10,000 people at the market will take nucleic acid tests to detect coronavirus infections. The city government also said it had dropped plans to reopen schools on Monday for students in grades one through three because of the new cases.

Health authorities visited the home of a Reuters reporter in Beijing's Dongcheng district on Saturday to ask whether she had visited the Xinfadi market, which is 15 km (9 miles) away. They said the visit was part of patrols Dongcheng was conducting.

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China reported 11 new COVID-19 cases and seven asymptomatic cases for Friday, the national health authority said on Saturday. And all six locally transmitted cases were confirmed in Beijing.

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Agencies
July 17,2020

Washington, Jul 17: US President Donald Trump's economic adviser Larry Kudlow has said that TikTok may cut off ties to its Chinese parent and become a 100 per cent American company to circumvent demands to ban it as India has done.

"I think TikTok is going to pull out of the holding company which is China-run and operate as an independent American company," he told reporters at the White House on Thursday.

The US has not made a final decision on whether to ban it - which has been suggested by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, he said.

TikTok being divested by ByteDance Technology Company "is a much better solution than banning or pushing away", said Kudlow, who is the Director of the National Economic Council.

He said that its services will be located in the US and "it will become an hundred per cent American company".

If it becomes a US company without Chinese links, India may have to reconsider the ban on the short video app wildly popular in the country.

India banned TikTok along with 58 other Chinese apps on June 29 citing threats to its defence and national security.

The ban came after a deadly clash between Indian and Chinese troops along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh.

Under Beijing's National Security Law, all Chinese companies have to provide intelligence requested by the government, creating risks for users and their countries.

India was TikTok's biggest market outside of China, where it operates as Douyin.

There were about 200 million users in India and over 300 million downloads.

The US comes next with over 30 million users for the app.

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Agencies
March 15,2020

Houston, Mar 15: Researchers, studying the novel coronavirus, have found that the time between cases in a chain of transmission is less than a week, and over 10 per cent of patients are infected by someone who has the virus, but does not show symptoms yet, a finding that may help public health officials contain the pandemic.

The study, published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, estimated what's called the serial interval of the coronavirus by measuring the time it takes for symptoms to appear in two people with the virus -- the person who infects another, and the infected second person.

According to the researchers, including those from the University of Texas at Austin, the average serial interval for the novel coronavirus in China was approximately four days.

They said the speed of an epidemic depends on two things -- how many people each case infects, and how long it takes cases to spread.

The first quantity, the scientists said, is called the reproduction number, and the second is the serial interval.

Due to the short serial interval of the disease caused by the coronavirus -- COVID-19 -- they said, emerging outbreaks will grow quickly, and could be difficult to stop.

“Ebola, with a serial interval of several weeks, is much easier to contain than influenza, with a serial interval of only a few days,” said Lauren Ancel Meyers, study co-author from UT Austin.

Meyers explained that public health responders to Ebola outbreaks have much more time to identify and isolate cases before they infect others.

“The data suggest that this coronavirus may spread like the flu. That means we need to move quickly and aggressively to curb the emerging threat,” Meyers added.

In the study, the scientists examined more than 450 infection case reports from 93 cities in China, and found the strongest evidence yet that people without symptoms must be transmitting the virus -- known as pre-symptomatic transmission.

More than one in ten infections were from people who had the virus but did not yet feel sick, the scientists said.

While researchers across the globe had some uncertainty until now about asymptomatic transmission with the coronavirus, the new evidence could provide guidance to public health officials on how to contain the spread of the disease.

“This provides evidence that extensive control measures including isolation, quarantine, school closures, travel restrictions and cancellation of mass gatherings may be warranted,” Meyers said.

The researchers cautioned that asymptomatic transmission makes containment more difficult.

With hundreds of new cases emerging around the world every day, the scientists said, the data may offer a different picture over time.

They said infection case reports are based on people's memories of where they went and whom they had contact with, and if health officials move quickly to isolate patients, that may also skew the data.

“Our findings are corroborated by instances of silent transmission and rising case counts in hundreds of cities worldwide. This tells us that COVID-19 outbreaks can be elusive and require extreme measures,” Meyers said.

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