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Lanka Prez,leaders from S'pore, Malaysia condole Jaya's death

[email protected] (Agencies)
December 6, 2016

Colombo/Kuala Lumpur, Dec 6: Leaders from countries that have a significant Tamil population like Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore, including Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena, today condoled J Jayalalithaa's demise with the diaspora grieving the loss of their beloved leader.modi-jayalalitha

"Chief Minister (Tamil Nadu) Jayalalithaa was a leader dearly loved by her people. I express my condolences to her loved ones and the people of Tamil Nadu," Sirisena said.
Former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa also offered his condolences, saying "she captured the hearts of India's Tamil community".

Rajapaksa, during his presidency, had invited Jayalalithaa to visit Sri Lanka to witness the post-war conditions. Jayalalithaa had a checkered relationship with Sri Lanka. While the Sinhala majority supported her strong anti-LTTE sentiments, they did not favour her for her pro-Tamil nationalist stance.

The Tamil minority in Sri Lanka favoured Jayalalithaa for her ability to pressure New Delhi to nudge Sri Lankan political leadership to grant concessions to Tamils. Singapore Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan is travelling to Chennai to pay tributes to Jayalalithaa.

Balakrishnan willbe travellingwith hisMinistry officials, a government statement said.
According to official statistics, 74 per cent of Singapore's population is of Chinese ethnicity, while 13 per cent are of Malay heritage and 9 per cent of Indian, including Tamils.

In Singapore, Tamil is an official language along with English, Mandarin and Malay.Foreign Affairs Minister Balakrishnan was also born to a Tamil father. In Malaysia, the country's largest ethnic Indian party condoled Jayalalitha's demise, describing her as a "super woman".

"As we all know, the late J Jayalalithaa was a charismatic leader and had done a lot for the Indian people, especially concerning for welfare of the poor, the women and the marginalised community," said Vel Paari, Treasurer General of the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) and son of Samy Vellu, who served as MIC president for almost three decades.

Malaysia's Senate President S A Vigneswaran also expressed condolences over Jayalalithaa's death.

"I am very sad. All (of us) knew Jayalalithaa. She was also a famous actress. Hope the people (of Tamil Nadu) will be calm," he said.

Malaysia's 28 million population comprises 8 per cent ethnic Indians a majority of whom are Hindu Tamils. Their ancestors came to Malaysia more than 100 years ago and many were brought by the British.

In South Africa, the South African Tamil Federation (SATF) has called on all its affiliates across the country to host special prayer services for the late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, describing her as "a friend of the Tamil community worldwide".

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Agencies
July 9,2020

The new visa regulations requiring international students in the US with an F-1 visa to take at least one in-person course or face the prospect of deportation is likely to "cause uncertainties and difficulties" for some students, the Indian Embassy has said.

"These new modifications at a time when many of the US universities and colleges are yet to announce their plans for the new academic year are likely to cause uncertainties and difficulties for some Indian students wishing to pursue their studies in the US," said a spokesperson of the Indian Embassy.

Responding to media queries, the spokesperson said the Indian government has taken up the matter with concerned US officials.

At the India US Foreign Office Consultations held on July 7, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla conveyed India's concerns on the matter to Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale.

According to a recent report of Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), there were 1,94,556 Indian students enrolled in various academic institutions of the US in January this year. Of these 1,26,132 were males and 68,405 were females.

Noting that partnership in higher education is a key component of the strong people-to-people ties between India and the US, the spokesperson said in the last two decades Indian students in American universities and colleges have been the harbingers of a strong partnership between technology and innovation sectors between the two countries.

The spokesperson hoped that the US authorities would provide adequate flexibility in their visa rule, keeping in mind the extraordinary circumstances created by the COVID-19 pandemic for the Indian students community.

We continue to engage all the stakeholders in the matters, including the US administration officials, Congressional leaders, universities and colleges as well as the Indian students community in the US as we move forward towards the 2020-21 academic year to further strengthen our bilateral partnership in higher education, the spokesperson said.

Announced by the SEVP on July 6, the new rules provide temporary exemptions for nonimmigrant students on F-1 and M-1 visas taking online classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic for the fall semester of the 2020 academic year.

While these modifications do provide some flexibility for US universities and colleges to adopt a hybrid model -- that is a mixture of online and in person classes -- they also restrict international students on F-1 and M-1 visas from taking courses entirely online, the spokesperson 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 7,2020

Islamabad, May 7: Pakistan's COVID-19 cases have crossed 24,000 after 1,523 new infections were detected, while the death toll has jumped to 564 with 38 more people succumbing to the coronavirus, health officials said on Thursday.

Even as the country is seeing an increase in the number of coronavirus cases and fatalities, Prime Minister Imran Khan will discuss the easing of lockdown restrictions with his top aides on Thursday.

The Ministry of National Health Services said that out of the 24,073 total cases, Punjab reported 9,077, Sindh 8,640, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 3,712, Balochistan 1,495, Islamabad 521, Gilgit-Baltistan 388 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir 76 cases.

After 38 more deaths on Wednesday, the total coronavirus patient death toll jumped to 564. Another 6,464 have recovered. A total of 1,523 new patients were added in a single day, the ministry.

So far, 244,778 tests have been conducted, including 12,196 in the last 24 hours, it said.

Prime Minister Khan will chair the National Coordination Committee (NCC) meeting on easing the lockdown restrictions in the country. The meeting will be attended by all chief ministers.

The issue was debated in the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) on Wednesday and in the Cabinet on Tuesday.

Planning Minister Asad Umar said that different proposals to allow certain businesses to open were prepared and will be presented before the Prime Minister for a final decision.

Earlier, Khan, undeterred by the mounting number of deaths and the new cases, announced that he was against a lockdown as it hits the poor people badly.

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