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Highest UN peacekeeper deaths in last 70 years from India

Agencies
May 30, 2018

United Nations, May 30: India has lost the highest number of its peacekeepers in various UN peacekeeping operations in the last 70 years, with 163 military, police and civilian personnel from the country laying down their lives in the line of duty.

According to the UN, of the 3,737 peacekeepers who have died since 1948, 163 have been from India, the highest total from any troop-contributing country.

India is currently the third largest contributor of military and police personnel to UN peacekeeping, with 6,693 now deployed in Abyei, Cyprus, Congo, Haiti, Lebanon, the Middle East, South Sudan and Western Sahara.

However, the UN owes India USD 92 million for troops, formed police units and contingent-owned equipment as at April 30, 2018.

The UN commemorated the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers on Tuesday, paying tribute to the service and sacrifice of peacekeepers around the world.

Currently, more than 96,000 uniformed personnel from 124 troop and police-contributing countries serve under the blue flag, alongside more than 15,000 international and national civilian staff and nearly 1,600 United Nations Volunteers.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the establishment of United Nations peacekeeping, the flagship enterprise of the Organization described by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as "a proven investment in global peace, security and prosperity".

"We express our gratitude to the more than one million men and women who have served under the UN flag, saving countless lives. We honour the more than 3,700 Blue Helmets who have paid the ultimate price. And we pay tribute to the 14 peacekeeping missions working around the clock to protect people and advance the cause of peace," Guterres said in Mali to mark the International Day of UN Peacekeepers.

The north-west African country is the most dangerous place in the world to be a UN 'blue helmet' and last year 21 troops serving with the UN Stabilisation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) lost their lives, together with seven civilians.

Upon his return from Mali, the Secretary-General will preside over the observance of the day on June 1.

He will lay a wreath to honour those who lost their lives while in the service of peace and will also officiate at a ceremony to posthumously present the Dag Hammarskjold Medal to 132 military, police and civilian personnel from 37 countries who lost their lives in peacekeeping operations during 2017.

No peacekeeper hailing from India was killed while serving in any UN peacekeeping mission in 2017.

In 2016, two Indian peacekeepers - Rifleman Brijesh Thapa who served with the UN Organization Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) and Private Ravi Kumar who was deployed with the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) - died in the line of duty and posthumously received the Dag Hammarskjold Medal.

At a time of increasingly complex conflicts and rising peacekeeper fatalities, the Secretary-General said, "as we recognise a legacy of service and sacrifice around the world, I am also committed to taking Action for Peacekeeping — action to make our operations more effective and safer in today's challenging environments".

Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix said the service and sacrifice of UN peacekeepers inspired "us to work harder to support a sustainable peace in some of the world's most complex and challenging places".

Under-Secretary-General for Field Support Atul Khare said the international community owed a "debt of gratitude" to the brave men and women who risk their lives every day in service to others.

"We grieve with the families and nations of our fallen colleagues. But beyond gratitude, we owe our peacekeepers all the support we can muster to ensure they are well equipped, well trained and well prepared to complete their missions successfully," Khare said.

The General Assembly established the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers in 2002 to pay tribute to all men and women serving in peacekeeping, and to honour the memory of those who have lost their lives in the cause of peace.

The Assembly designated May 29 as the Day because it was the date in 1948 when the first United Nations peacekeeping mission — the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization — began operations in the Middle East.

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News Network
March 18,2020

Washington, Mar 18: Hundreds of distressed Indian students, stuck in the Philippines, are seeking help through video messages as they are unable to fly back home due to the travel restrictions imposed by India to contain the spread of the deadly novel coronavirus, according to friends and relatives of some of these students in the US.

The Indian government on Tuesday banned the entry of passengers from Afghanistan, Philippines and Malaysia to India with immediate effect amid stepped up efforts against the spread of COVID-19.

In a video message by one of these students Akhil Bala Nair, around 200 Indian students had booked their flight tickets for India in the next few days. But all of them have been cancelled due to the new policy.

Most of the students, she said, had booked their flights for March 17 and rest were schedule to travel to India on March 19 and 20. But the flights were cancelled and scores of Indian students are now stuck at the airport in Manila, Nair said in the video message sent to Prem Bhandari, head of the Jaipur Foot USA.

“It is need of the hour that the Indian government send a plane to bring these Indian students back home,” Bhandari, who in the past has worked for the cause of the Indian diaspora, and who was approached by these students told PTI.

According to these students, some 100 of them have been at the airport since Tuesday.

They all have confirmed tickets but the airport authorities are not allowing them to check in because of the new travel regulations.

While the airport authorities have asked them to go back to their respective place of residence, the students said they were unable to travel because of the absence of local taxi or shared ride services.

The students said that they are running out of time as the Philippines government has given them 72 hours time to exit the country, which started from March 16, after which the country will go into lockdown.

“This means we would not be able to travel anywhere outside Philippines after March 20,” Nair said in her message.

The students said that there are many of them who have applied for renewal of their visas and are unable to travel to India.

There are nearly 1,000 Indian students presently in Manila who are willing to travel back home, they said.

Meanwhile, the Indian Embassy in Manila, in a tweet, said that they, along with the Ministry of External Affairs, are trying to work out a solution.

“It is requested to all to kindly have patience,” the embassy said.

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Agencies
August 5,2020

Ninety per cent of a sample group of coronavirus-recovered patients from a prominent hospital in China's Wuhan city where the pandemic broke out have reported lung damage and five per cent of them are again in quarantine after testing positive for the virus, according to a media report on Wednesday.

A team at the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University led by Peng Zhiyong, director of the hospital's Intensive Care Unit, has been conducting follow-up visits with '100 recovered patients' since April.

The first phase of this one-year programme finished in July. The average age of the patients in the study is 59.

According to the first phase results, 90 per cent of the patients' lungs are still in a damaged state, which means their lungs ventilation and gas exchange functions have not recovered to the level of healthy people, state-run Global Times reported.

Peng's team conducted a six-minute walking test with the patients. They found that the recovered patients could only walk 400 metres in six minutes while their healthy peers could walk 500 metres in the same period.

Some recovered patients have to rely on oxygen machines even three months after being discharged from the hospital, Liang Tengxiao, a doctor from the Dongzhimen Hospital, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, was quoted as saying by the report.

Liang's team is also conducting follow-up visits with recovered patients aged above 65.

The results also showed that antibodies against the novel coronavirus in 10 per cent of the 100 patients have disappeared.

Five per cent of them received negative results in Covid-19 nucleic acid tests but positive results in Immunoglobulin M (IgM) tests, and thus have to be quarantined again, the report said.

IgM is usually the first antibody produced by the immune system when a virus attacks. A positive result in an IgM test usually means that a person has just been infected by the virus.

It is still unclear if this means these people have been infected again.

The 100 patients' immune systems have not fully recovered as they showed a low level of B cells -- - a primary force for killing viruses in the human body -- but a high level of T cells which only recognise viral antigens outside infected cells.

"The results revealed that the patients’ immune systems are still recovering," Peng said.

The patients also suffered from depression and a sense of stigma. Most of the recovered patients told the team that their families were not willing to have dinner with them at the same table, the report said.

Less than half of the recovered patients have returned to work, it said.

The findings are significant as the coronavirus first emerged in Wuhan city.

Hubei province for which Wuhan is the provincial capital has reported a total of 68,138 confirmed Covid-19 cases till now. The disease has claimed 4,512 lives in the province, according to the official data.

China reported 27 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, including 22 locally-transmitted cases, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Wednesday.

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News Network
May 21,2020

Canberra, May 21: Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, are looking forward to deepening the countries' strategic relationship, with both sides expected to sign a range of pacts from defence to trade in strategic sectors amid heightened tensions with China over Beijing's response to coronavirus pandemic.

During a virtual summit, scheduled to take place on June 4, both leaders are expected to ramp up efforts to diversify Australia's export markets and find trusted suppliers of vital products and components, a local newspaper, The Australian reported on Tuesday.

The new agreements will focus on reliable supply chains in key strategic sectors, including medical goods, technology and critical minerals, amid heightened tensions with China over Beijing's response to coronavirus pandemic.

The leaders will seal a new defence agreement allowing reciprocal access to bases and co-operation on military technology projects, while a new education partnership will be on the table to help overcome Australian university reliance on Chinese students.

The talks in terms of strategic convergence, now have greater significance as COVID-19 exacerbates the strategic contest between the US and China, and forces like-minded countries to seek out reliable partners.

Australian farmers could also benefit, with talks underway on expanding agricultural exports to India, including barley, as China throws up new trade barriers, media reports stated.

The virtual summit follows the cancellation of Morrison's planned state visit to India in January due to the bushfires.

Morrison said last year, ahead of his planned visit, that India was "a natural partner for Australia", referring to the countries' "shared values" -- a point of differentiation with China.

Former Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary Peter Varghese, who wrote a landmark report on the bilateral relationship in 2018, was quoted by the newspaper as saying that India would be even more important to Australia in the post-COVID world. "If one of the lessons from COVID is that countries need to spread their risk, then finding new markets or building up existing markets is a crucial part of that," he added.

Varghese noted that India, a member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue along with Australia, Japan and the US, was a vital strategic partner to Australia in helping "constrain China's ambitions to be the predominant power".

"That shared objective between Australia and India of not wanting to see the region dominated by China is a key component of building up our geopolitical relationship," he told The Australian.

The summit also follows recent talks between Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on the pandemic response and Australia's call for an independent inquiry, which was overwhelmingly backed at the World Health Assembly on Tuesday.

Australia wants to support India to develop a domestic critical minerals processing industry, which would provide Western nations with an alternative to sourcing the materials from China.

Meanwhile, India has strong expertise as a manufacturer of drugs and medical equipment, while Australia is a centre of biomedical research, opening the possibility for closer co-operation in the key sector, the media reported further.

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