As Pakistan elects new PM, crowds root for Imran Khan

Agencies
July 31, 2017

Islamabad, Jul 31: Pakistan’s parliament will meet Tuesday to elect a new prime minister after the disqualification of three-term prime minister Nawaz Sharif, as thousands gathered in the capital Islamabad Sunday to voice support for opposition leader Imran Khan.

Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League party, which enjoys a comfortable majority in parliament, nominated Sharif’s longtime loyalist Shahid Khaqan Abbasi for the top slot on Saturday. Sharif proposed Abbasi as interim prime minister until his brother Shahbaz Sharif, who is the chief minister of Punjab province, can contend in a by-election for the seat left vacant by his brother’s disqualification.

The opposition is expected to name a candidate to challenge Abassi in a vote in parliament, but the six-time lawmaker is expected to win.

Sharif’s party holds 188 of 342 seats in parliament’s lower house and with additional votes from its allies is expected to obtain 214 votes. To win the top slot, Abbasi needs only 172 votes.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court disqualified Sharif from office on Friday for not being honest and concealing assets. The probe against him began after his children were named in the leaked so-called Panama papers for owning off-shore accounts and properties.

Sharif’s party has resolved to file a review petition in the Supreme Court to reverse the disqualification.

The probe was triggered by petitions filed by the conservative Jamaat-e-Islami party and cricket player-turned-politician Imran Khan.

Celebrating the Supreme Court verdict of ousting Sharif from premiership, Khan said Sunday in Islamabad that the court verdict has given the nation hope and “laid the foundation for a new Pakistan”.

Thousands of Khan’s jubilant supporters, chanting slogans and dancing to drum beats at a vast arena, raised placards reading ‘Prime Minister Imran Khan’.

Addressing the crowd, Khan said: “This nation is awakening now and determined to make Pakistan a great country free of corruption.”

Sharif has had a history of rocky relations with Pakistan’s powerful military and he has been removed from office three times.

He was first elected as prime minister in 1990 and was hardly half way through his five-year tenure when he was removed from office by the army’s hand-picked president in 1993. Sharif made a comeback in the 1997 elections but again his government was toppled by then-army chief Gen. Pervez Musharraf in a bloodless coup in October 1999. Sharif was tried for alleged hijacking, convicted and given a life prison sentence but later was exiled to Saudi Arabia. He returned to the country in 2007 after Benazir Bhutto struck a deal with Musharraf and returned from exile. She was assassinated in December 2007 after an election rally in Rawalpindi.

In seven decades, no civilian government has ever completed its term in Pakistan. The country has been ruled by military generals for more than half of its 70-year history and the military unwilling to see its influence challenged.

 

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News Network
May 3,2020

London, May 3: The British government had a contingency plan for prime minister Boris Johnson’s death as his condition deteriorated while he battled COVID-19 last month in intensive care, Johnson said in an interview with The Sun newspaper.

Johnson returned to work on Monday, a month after testing positive for COVID-19. Johnson, 55, spent 10 days in isolation in Downing Street from late March, but was then was taken to London’s St Thomas’ Hospital where he received oxygen treatment and spent three nights in intensive care.

“They had a strategy to deal with a ‘death of Stalin’-type scenario,” Johnson, 55, was quoted as saying by The Sun. “It was a tough old moment, I won’t deny it.”

After Johnson was discharged, St Thomas’ said it was glad to have cared for the prime minister, but the hospital has given no details about the gravity of his illness beyond stating that he was treated in intensive care.

Johnson and his fiancée, Carrie Symonds, on Saturday announced the name of their newly born son as Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas, partly as a tribute to two of the intensive care doctors who they said had saved Johnson’s life.

“The doctors had all sorts of arrangements for what to do if things went badly wrong,” Johnson said of his COVID-19 battle. “The bloody indicators kept going in the wrong direction.”

He said doctors discussed invasive ventilation.

“The bad moment came when it was 50-50 whether they were going to have to put a tube down my windpipe,” he said. “That was when it got a bit . . . they were starting to think about how to handle it presentationally.”

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News Network
May 25,2020

Islamabad, May 25: Pakistan’s coronavirus cases on Monday reached 56,349 with 1,748 new patients while the death toll climbed to 1,167, the health ministry said.

The Ministry of National Health Services reported that 22,491 cases were diagnosed in Sindh, 20,077 in Punjab, 7,905 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, 3,407 in Balochistan, 1,641 in Islamabad, 619 in Gilgit-Baltistan and 209 in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

So far 1,167 people have died of the COVID-19 including 34 who lost their lives in the last 24 hours. A total of 17,482 patients have recovered from the deadly contagion.

The authorities have conducted 483,656 tests in the country, including 10,049 on Sunday. The trajectory showed that the number was steadily going up with authorities fearing a rise in cases in the wake of the easing of lockdown before Eid which was observed in the country on Sunday.

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Agencies
July 29,2020

If everything goes as Russia’s expectation, it will be world’s first country to approve a coronavirus vaccine for widespread in the second week of August despite safety and efficacy concerns, according to a report. The adenoviral vector-based vaccine developed by Russian military and government researchers is currently in phase 2 trials.

According to a report from CNN, Russian officials are hoping to get approval for the COVID-19 vaccine developed by the Moscow-based Gamaleya Institute on Agust 10 or even before that. The officials told the outlet that the vaccine will be approved for public use with frontline healthcare workers receiving it first.

“It’s a Sputnik moment,” said Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, which is financing Russian vaccine research, referring to the successful 1957 launch of the world’s first satellite by the Soviet Union, according to CNN.

“Americans were surprised when they heard Sputnik’s beeping. It’s the same with this vaccine. Russia will have got there first,” he was quoted as saying.

However, Russia is yet to release the scientific data on its coronavirus vaccine trials, hence, questions remain about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, said the report. The vaccine is in the second phase of testing with developers planning to launch the phase 3 trials sometime after August 3.

Earlier, Interfax reported, citing Health Minister Mikhail Murashko, that the vaccine will be widely used in parallel with phase 3 trials. He said the country plans to vaccinate medics who are at high-risk for COVID-19 next month before clinical trials are completed.

Murashko added that individuals at higher risk of getting infected with the coronavirus such as older people or those with health conditions will also be prioritised for the vaccine, although he did not estimate or reveal when that would happen. The minister added 800 people will be recruited for the phase 3 trials.

Meanwhile, health officials were more cautious considering the fact that human testing of the vaccine is incomplete, and the state registration is expected to begin after August 3, reported The Moscow Times.

On Monday, Moderna and Pfizer announced the commencement of the final phase 3 trials of their candidate vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which has so far claimed at least 654,477 lives and infected 16,514,500 people worldwide. 

Researchers will recruit up to 30,000 volunteers in separate trials both backed by the US government. India's first indigenous coronavirus vaccine, COVAXIN, is undergoing phase 1 human clinical trials across the country. More than 150 COVID-19 vaccines are being developed all over the world with at least six candidates already in late-stage clinical trials.

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