Thai king Adulyadej dies after 7-decade long reign

Washington, May 21: US President Donald Trump China is on a "massive disinformation" campaign and is desperately trying to deflect the "pain and carnage" that it spread throughout the world, US President Donald Trump has said, upping the ante on Beijing over its handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

Trump, who has expressed disappointment over China's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, claimed that it was the "incompetence" of Beijing that led to the mass killing across the globe. 

"China is on a massive disinformation campaign because they are desperate to have Sleepy Joe Biden win the presidential race so they can continue to rip-off the United States, as they have done for decades, until I came along!" Trump said in a tweet on Wednesday.

"Spokesman speaks stupidly on behalf of China, trying desperately to deflect the pain and carnage that their country spread throughout the world. Its disinformation and propaganda attack on the United States and Europe is a disgrace… It all comes from the top. They could have easily stopped the plague, but they didn't," he said in a series of tweets.

Trump blamed China for spreading the coronavirus globally and accused it of being incompetent.
"Some wacko in China just released a statement blaming everybody other than China for the Virus which has now killed hundreds of thousands of people. Please explain to this dope that it was the 'incompetence of China', and nothing else, that did this mass Worldwide killing!" Trump said.

China has denied covering up the extent of its coronavirus outbreak and accused the US of attempting to divert public attention by insinuating that the virus originated from a virology laboratory in Wuhan.

"China was the first country to report the COVID-19 to the World Health Organisation (WHO), (and) that doesn't mean the virus originated from Wuhan... There has never been any concealment, and we'll never allow any concealment," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said last month.

"A discerning person will understand at a glance that the purpose is to create confusion, divert public attention, and shirk their responsibility," he said.

The novel coronavirus which first originated in Wuhan in December last year has claimed 328,120 lives and infected nearly 5 million people globally. The Us is the worst affected country with 93,439 deaths and over 1.5 million infections, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Meanwhile, the US Senate passed a bill boosting oversight of companies based in China and other nations that could lead to their removal from American stock exchanges.

The Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act, proposes to increase oversight of Chinese and other foreign companies listed on American exchanges and delist and ban over-the-counter trading for firms that are out of compliance with US regulators for a period of three years.

In a related development, a group of top Republican Senators led by Marco Rubio sent a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin following disturbing reports that China's state-owned and-directed enterprises were looking to exploit the economic crisis by buying US and foreign companies.

As companies backed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) approach banks to identify the purchase of companies in the US and in Europe affected by the pandemic, the senators urged Mnuchin to protect against the China's and the CCP's predatory economic behaviour during the COVID-19 crisis.

"We write to express our concerns related to the People's Republic of China's (PRC) efforts to exploit the economic crisis wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic to gain control of distressed companies or shirking its international responsibilities amidst a worldwide crisis.

"In both Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and PRC policy documents, Beijing has made no secret of its intentions to dominate strategic industrial and emerging technology sectors as well as influence standards at the expense of liberal, rules-based governance," wrote the senators.

As the crisis reverberates across the globe, the PRC's predatory lending practices — including the use of non-disclosure agreements for bilateral loans — not only damage the fiscal situation of recipient countries but also undermine the international community's ability to respond effectively to the crisis, they said.

"Without US and international pressure for accountability and transparency, those countries that are in debt to the PRC will not have the political cover or protection to open their financial books. Such countries will face the risk of default or a currency crisis, leaving the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and Western countries to clean up the PRC's mess," the senators said.

During a campaign round table Katrina Pierson, Senior Advisor to the Trump 2020 Campaign, said that only the US President will defeat the coronavirus, hold China accountable for their negligence, and defend the American people from socialism. 

Beijing, Feb 18: A hospital director at the epicentre of China's virus epidemic died on Tuesday, state media said, the latest medical worker to fall victim to the new coronavirus spreading across the country.

The COVID-19 virus, which is believed to have originated in Wuhan late last year, has infected more than 72,000 people and killed nearly 1,900.

Liu Zhiming, the director of Wuchang Hospital in Wuhan, died Tuesday morning after "all-out rescue efforts failed," state broadcaster CCTV reported.

China said last week that six medical workers had died from the virus, while 1,716 have been infected.

Liu's death was initially reported by Chinese media and bloggers shortly after midnight on Tuesday -- but the stories were later deleted and replaced with reports that doctors were still trying to save him.

After initial reports of his death were denied, the hospital told AFP on Tuesday morning that doctors were giving him life-saving treatment.

Liu's death has echoes of that of Wuhan ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, who had been punished by authorities for sounding the alarm about the virus in late December.

Li's death prompted a national outpouring of grief as well as anger against the authorities, who were accused of mishandling the crisis.

People took to social media to mourn Liu on Tuesday, with many users on the Twitter-like Weibo platform drawing critical comparisons between Liu's death and Li's.

In both cases their deaths were initially reported in state media posts -- later deleted -- and their deaths denied, before being finally confirmed again.

"Has everyone forgotten what happened to Li Wenliang? They forcefully attempted resuscitation after he died," one Weibo commenter wrote.

Another commenter said, Liu "already died last night, (but) some people are addicted to torturing corpses".

A hashtag about Liu's death had 29 million views by Tuesday afternoon.

Doctors in Wuhan face shortages of masks and protective bodysuits, with some even wearing makeshift hazmat suits and continuing to work despite showing respiratory symptoms, health workers have told AFP.

Hubei province and its capital Wuhan have been the hardest hit by the virus, accounting for nearly 1,800 of the deaths from the virus so far.

Moscow, May 19: Russia confirmed 9,263 new coronavirus infections Tuesday, bringing the country’s official number of cases to 299,941.

On Sunday, the head of Russia's public health watchdog, Anna Popova, said the growth of new coronavirus cases in Russia is stabilizing.

Russia is the second most-affected country in terms of infections.

A record 115 people have died over the past 24 hours, bringing the total toll to 2,837 — a rate considerably lower than in many other countries hit hard by the pandemic.

Russia began easing nation-wide lockdown restrictions last week and announced the national football league would restart in late June.

Critics have cast doubt on Russia's low official mortality rate, accusing authorities of under-reporting in order to play down the scale of the crisis.

Russian health officials say one of the reasons the count is lower is that only deaths directly caused by the virus are being included.

Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova over the weekend denied manipulation of numbers, saying hospitals had a financial interest in identifying infections because they are allocated more money to treat coronavirus patients.

Authorities also say that since the virus came later to Russia, there was more time to prepare hospital beds and launch wide-scale testing to slow the spread.