Rains lash parts of Saudi Arabia; severe weather claims 14 lives

Belgrade, June 23: Novak Djokovic tested positive for the coronavirus on Tuesday after taking part in a tennis exhibition series he organized in Serbia and Croatia.

The top-ranked Serb is the fourth player to test positive for the virus after first playing in Belgrade and then again last weekend in Zadar, Croatia.

His wife also tested positive. “The moment we arrived in Belgrade we went to be tested. My result is positive, just as Jelena's, while the results of our children are negative," Djokovic said in a statement.

Djokovic has been criticized for organizing the tournament and bringing in players from other countries amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Viktor Troicki said Tuesday that he and his pregnant wife have both been diagnosed with the virus, while Grigor Dimitrov, a three-time Grand Slam semifinalist from Bulgaria, said Sunday he tested positive.

Borna Coric played Dimitrov on Saturday in Zadar and said Monday he has also tested positive. There were no social distancing measures observed at the matches in either country and Djokovic and other players were seen hugging each other and partying in night clubs and restaurants after the matches.

 “Everything we did in the past month, we did with a pure heart and sincere intentions,” Djokovic said.

“Our tournament meant to unite and share a message of solidarity and compassion throughout the region.” Djokovic, who has previously said he was against taking a vaccine for the virus even if it became mandatory to travel, was the face behind the Adria Tour, a series of exhibition events that started in the Serbian capital and then moved to Zadar.

He left Croatia after the final was canceled and was tested in Belgrade. The statement said Djokovic was showing no symptoms.

Despite the positive test, Djokovic defended the exhibition series. “It was all born with a philanthropic idea, to direct all raised funds towards people in need and it warmed my heart to see how everybody strongly responded to this,” Djokovic said.

"We organized the tournament at the moment when the virus has weakened, believing that the conditions for hosting the Tour had been met. “Unfortunately, this virus is still present, and it is a new reality that we are still learning to cope and live with.”

Djokovic said he will remain in self-isolation for 14 days and also apologized to anyone who became infected as a result of the series. Organizers of the Adria Tour said the third stage of the event, scheduled to held next week in Bosnia, has been cancelled.

Beijing, Feb 3: The first batch of patients arrived on Monday at a specialised hospital built in just 10 days as part of China's intensive efforts to fight a new virus.

Huoshenshan Hospital and a second facility with 1,500 beds that's due to open this week were built by construction crews who are working around the clock in Wuhan, the city in central China where the outbreak was first detected in December.

The Wuhan treatment centres mark the second time Chinese leaders have responded to a new disease by building specialised hospitals almost overnight. As severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, spread in 2003, a facility in Beijing for patients with that viral disease was constructed in a week.

The first batch of patients arrived at the Huoshenshan Hospital at 10 am on Monday, according to state media. The reports gave no details of the patients' identities or conditions.

The ruling Communist Party's military wing, the People's Liberation Army, sent 1,400 doctors, nurses and other personnel to staff the Wuhan hospital, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The government said earlier some have experience fighting SARS and other outbreaks.

Authorities have cut most road, rail and air access to Wuhan and surrounding cities, isolating some 50 million people, in efforts to contain the viral outbreak that has sickened more than 17,000 and killed more than 360 people.

The Huoshenshan Hospital was built by a 7,000-member crew of carpenters, plumbers, electricians and other specialists, according to the Xinhua News Agency.               Photos in state media showed workers in winter clothing, safety helmets and the surgical-style masks worn by millions of Chinese in an attempt to avoid contracting the virus.

About half of the two-storey, 600,000-square-foot building is isolation wards, according to the government newspaper Yangtze Daily. It has 30 intensive care units.

Doctors can talk with outside experts over a video system that links them to Beijing's PLA General Hospital, according to the Yangtze Daily. It said the system was installed in less than 12 hours by a 20-member "commando team" from Wuhan Telecom Ltd.

The building has specialised ventilation systems and double-sided cabinets that connect patient rooms to hallways and allow hospital staff to deliver supplies without entering the rooms.

The hospital received a donation of "medical robots" from a Chinese company for use in delivering medicines and carrying test samples, according to the Shanghai newspaper The Paper.

In other cities, the government has designated hospitals to handle cases of the new virus.

In Beijing, the Xiaotangshan Hospital built in 2003 for SARS is being renovated by construction workers. The government has yet to say whether it might be used for patients with the new disease.

Jan 13: For the first time in years, the government of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is playing defense. Protests have sprung up across the country against an amendment to India’s laws — which came into effect on Friday — that makes it easier for members of some religions to become citizens of India. The government claims this is simply an attempt to protect religious minorities in the Muslim-majority countries that border India; but protesters see it as the first step toward a formal repudiation of India’s constitutionally guaranteed secularism — and one that must be resisted.

Modi was re-elected prime minister last year with an enhanced majority; his hold over the country’s politics is absolute. The formal opposition is weak, discredited and disorganized. Yet, somehow, the anti-Citizenship Act protests have taken hold. No political party is behind them; they are generally arranged by student unions, neighborhood associations and the like.

Yet this aspect of their character is precisely what will worry Modi and his right-hand man, Home Minister Amit Shah. They know how to mock and delegitimize opposition parties with ruthless efficiency. Yet creating a narrative that paints large, flag-waving crowds as traitors is not quite that easy.

For that is how these protests look: large groups of young people, many carrying witty signs and the national flag. They meet and read the preamble to India’s Constitution, into which the promise of secularism was written in the 1970’s.

They carry photographs of the Constitution’s drafter, the Columbia University-trained economist and lawyer B. R. Ambedkar. These are not the mobs the government wanted. They hoped for angry Muslims rampaging through the streets of India’s cities, whom they could point to and say: “See? We must protect you from them.” But, in spite of sometimes brutal repression, the protests have largely been nonviolent.

One, in Shaheen Bagh in a Muslim-dominated sector of New Delhi, began simply as a set of local women in a square, armed with hot tea and blankets against the chill Delhi winter. It has now become the focal point of a very different sort of resistance than what the government expected. Nothing could cure the delusions of India’s Hindu middle class, trained to see India’s Muslims as dangerous threats, as effectively as a group of otherwise clearly apolitical women sipping sweet tea and sharing their fears and food with anyone who will listen.

Modi was re-elected less than a year ago; what could have changed in India since then? Not much, I suspect, in most places that voted for him and his party — particularly the vast rural hinterland of northern India. But urban India was also possibly never quite as content as electoral results suggested. India’s growth dipped below 5% in recent quarters; demand has crashed, and uncertainty about the future is widespread. Worse, the government’s response to the protests was clearly ill-judged. University campuses were attacked, in one case by the police and later by masked men almost certainly connected to the ruling party.

Protesters were harassed and detained with little cause. The courts seemed uninterested. And, slowly, anger began to grow on social media — not just on Twitter, but also on Instagram, previously the preserve of pretty bowls of salad. Instagram is the one social medium over which Modi’s party does not have a stranglehold; and it is where these protests, with their photogenic signs and flags, have found a natural home. As a result, people across urban India who would never previously have gone to a demonstration or a political rally have been slowly politicized.

India is, in fact, becoming more like a normal democracy. “Normal,” that is, for the 2020’s. Liberal democracies across the world are politically divided, often between more liberal urban centers and coasts, and angrier, “left-behind” hinterlands. Modi’s political secret was that he was that rare populist who could unite both the hopeful cities and the resentful countryside. Yet this once magic formula seems to have become ineffective. Five of India’s six largest cities are not ruled by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in any case — the financial hub of Mumbai changed hands recently. The BJP has set its sights on winning state elections in Delhi in a few weeks. Which way the capital’s voters will go is uncertain. But that itself is revealing — last year, Modi swept all seven parliamentary seats in Delhi.

In the end, the Citizenship Amendment Act is now law, the BJP might manage to win Delhi, and the protests might die down as the days get unmanageably hot and state repression increases. But urban India has put Modi on notice. His days of being India’s unifier are over: From now on, like all the other populists, he will have to keep one eye on the streets of his country’s cities.