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Putin to begin fourth term, but what happens in 2024?

Agencies
May 7, 2018

Moscow, May 7: Vladimir Putin will be inaugurated for a historic fourth term on Monday, extending his almost two-decade rule by another six years after predictably winning Russia's March presidential election.

But with no successor and no political competition, what are the possible scenarios when his term ends in 2024?

Without constitutional reform, Putin will not be able to run for the fifth time -- Russian law forbids serving more than two consecutive terms.

Putin, who will turn 72 in 2024, could decide to leave the Kremlin after 24 years in power, making way for a successor.

Russian politics is now dominated by infighting between rival clans of technocrats and the "siloviki" -- representatives of the security services and the army.

"There is already a fight for influence," said political analyst Nikolai Petrov. "Nobody will wait passively, each group will try to promote its interests," he added.

In a March interview to American TV channel NBC, Putin said he had been thinking of a potential successor since 2000.

"There is no harm in thinking about it but at the end of the day it will be the Russian people who decide."

But in making sure no one can compete with him, no politician is currently popular enough to succeed the Kremlin chief. Many analysts say Putin leaving power in six years is unlikely.

One way Putin could continue ruling Russia after 2024 is to stay in power in a different role.

The Russian strongman could revisit his 2008 move, which saw him put forward Dmitry Medvedev as president while he himself became prime minister before returning to the Kremlin in 2012.

"Putin may prepare the regime for a transfer of power. But not from Putin to another president but from Putin to Putin in some other role," said Petrov.

But memories of mass protests in Moscow when Putin and Medvedev swapped back and Putin returned to the Kremlin may put the Russian leader off this option.

Putin's age also makes this scenario problematic. Putin will be 78 in 2030, when he is constitutionally allowed to run for another term.

Konstantin Kalachev, head of the Political Expert Group think tank in Moscow, said Putin knows his successor will have to introduce unpopular economic reforms and wants to "go down in history as the man who did not lose at anything".

Putin could choose to follow China's Xi Jinping in abolishing presidential term limits, thus allowing him to remain president for life.

"I don't think he will refuse power in 2024 even if he has had enough, he is (already) visibly tired," said independent political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin.

"He can't leave because he does not believe that anyone will protect him," he added, saying that Putin has built a system in which everything depends on who is at the top.

So far, Putin has ruled out ruling Russia for life.

"I never changed the constitution, especially for it to benefit me and I do not have this kind of intention today," he told NBC in March.

Oreshkin said Putin does not want to be remembered for changing the constitution and that if he were to remain president for life, it would be done "more elegantly" than in China.

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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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Agencies
March 8,2020

Washington, Mar 8: An attendee at last week's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which also saw the participation of US President Donald Trump, has tested positive for COVID-19, the American Conservative Union (ACU) said.

The exposure occurred prior to the conference held in National Harbor, Maryland, just south of Washington D.C., Xinhua news agency quoted the ACU as saying in a statement on Saturday.

A New Jersey hospital tested the person, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the positive result, said the statement.

"The individual is under the care of medical professionals in the state of New Jersey, and has been quarantined," it said.

Trump and Vice President Mike Pence spoke at the gathering, which took place from February 26-29.

Also present at the event were a number of administration and cabinet officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, and newly-appointed White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement Saturday that the White House was aware of the development.

"At this time there is no indication that either President Trump or Vice President Pence met with or were in close proximity to the attendee," Grisham said in a statement.

"The President's physician and US Secret Service have been working closely with White House Staff and various agencies to ensure every precaution is taken to keep the First Family and the entire White House Complex safe and healthy."

The news emerged as Washington D.C. and neighbouring state of Virginia respectively confirmed their first cases of COVID-19 on Saturday.

In a press conference on Saturday night, Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said a resident in his 50s showed symptoms of a respiratory virus in February. He was admitted to a hospital in the District on March 5.

The patient had no history of recent international travel, nor had he been exposed to anyone who was confirmed to be infected, according to Bowser.

The Mayor said D.C. health authorities were investigating the man's contact with other people before he went to the hospital.

A US Marine assigned to Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County, Virginia, tested positive on Saturday for COVID-19 and is currently being treated at Fort Belvoir Community Hospital, according to a Pentagon spokesman.

"The Marine recently returned from overseas where he was on official business," tweeted Jonathan Rath Hoffman, adding that Secretary of Defence Mark Esper and the White House have been briefed.

As of Saturday night, more than 420 cases of COVID-19 were reported in the US with 17 deaths, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

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News Network
June 29,2020

Paris, Jun 29: More than half a million people have been killed by the novel coronavirus, nearly two thirds of them in the United States and Europe, according to an news agency tally at 2200 GMT Sunday based on official sources.

The official death count for the disease now stands at 500,390 deaths from 10,099,576 cases recorded worldwide. The United States has suffered the highest death count (125,747), followed by Brazil (57,622) and the United Kingdom (43,550).

The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.

Many countries are testing only the most serious cases.

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