Twitter suspends over 70 million accounts in 2 months: Washington Post

Washington, Jan 9: The U.S. and Iran stepped back from the brink of possible war Wednesday as President Donald Trump signaled he would not retaliate militarily for Iran's missile strikes on Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops. No one was harmed in the strikes, but U.S. forces in the region remained on high alert.

Speaking from the White House, Trump seemed intent on deescalating the crisis, which spiralled after he authorized the assassination of Iran's top general, Qassem Soleimani. Iran responded overnight by firing more than a dozen missiles at two installations in Iraq, its most direct assault on America since the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Trump's takeaway was that “Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world.”

The region remained on edge, however, and American troops including a quick-reaction force dispatched over the weekend were on high alert. Hours after Trump spoke, an ‘incoming’ siren went off in Baghdad's Green Zone after what seemed to be small rockets “impacted” the diplomatic area, a Western official said. There were no reports of casualties.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the overnight strike was not necessarily the totality of Iran's response. “Last night they received a slap,” Khamenei said. “These military actions are not sufficient (for revenge). What is important is that the corrupt presence of America in this region comes to an end.”

The strikes had pushed Tehran and Washington perilously close to all-out conflict and left the world waiting to see whether the American president would respond with more military force. Trump, in his nine-minute, televised address, spoke of a robust U.S. military with missiles that are “big, powerful, accurate, lethal and fast.'' But then he added: “We do not want to use it."

Iran for days had been promising to respond forcefully to Soleimani's killing, but its limited strike on two bases--one in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil and the other at Ain al-Asad in western Iraq--appeared to signal that it too was uninterested in a wider clash with the U.S. Foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that the country had “concluded proportionate measures in self-defence.”

Trump said the U.S. was “ready to embrace peace with all who seek it.” That marked a sharp change in tone from his warning a day earlier that “if Iran does anything that they shouldn't be doing, they're going to be suffering the consequences, and very strongly.”

Trump opened his remarks at the White House by reiterating his promise that “Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.” Iran had announced in the wake of Soleimani's killing that it would no longer comply with any of the limits on uranium enrichment in the 2015 nuclear deal crafted to keep it from building a nuclear device.

The president, who had earlier pulled the U.S. out of the deal, seized on the moment of calm to call for negotiations toward a new agreement that would do more to limit Iran's ballistic missile programmes and constrain regional proxy campaigns like those led by Soleimani.

Trump spoke of new sanctions on Iran, but it was not immediately clear what those would be.

Geneva, Jun 22: The global count of coronavirus cases has surpassed 8.7 million, with 183,020 new cases recorded on Sunday, the World Health Organisation said in its daily situation report.

Over the last 24 hours, 4,743 people died from COVID-19 worldwide, taking the death toll to 461,715 fatalities, according to the report.

The cumulative global toll of confirmed cases has now reached 8,708,008, as stated in the report.

The WHO Regional Director for Europe, Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, shared that Europe accounts for 31 per cent of COVID-19 cases and 43 per cent of COVID-19 deaths globally.

Dr Kluge highlighted that several countries continue to face increasing disease incidence and that "preparing for the autumn is a priority now at the WHO Regional Office for Europe"

The United States continues to be worst affected by the contagion with the highest count of cases and fatalities -- 2.2 million and 118,895, respectively.

The novel coronavirus was declared a pandemic by WHO on March 11.

Washington, Apr 12: The US has overtaken Italy as the country with the highest number of deaths due to COVID-19 pandemic with the fatalities crossing 20,000, according to Johns Hopkins University data, as the novel coronavirus continues to wreak havoc across the globe.

The deadly coronavirus, that originated in China in December last year, has so far killed more than one lakh people across the globe. The United States on Saturday became the country with the highest number of deaths at 20,597, surpassing Italy's 19,468 fatalities.

More than 5.3 lakh Americans have tested positive for coronavirus, which is about the same for the next four countries put together: Spain (163,027), Italy (152,271), Germany (125,452) and France (93,790). In terms of fatalities, the US and Italy are followed by Spain (16,606), France (13832) and United Kingdom (9,875), the varsity data showed.

New York City, the financial capital of the world, has emerged as the epicenter of coronavirus in the world. A city of 8.3 million, which is one of the most densely populated cities in the US, by Saturday night had as many as 8,627 deaths and more than 180,000 people had tested positive for COVID-19.

President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency and all the 50 States have been notified with major disaster declaration. More than 95 per cent of the country's 330 million population are under stay-at-home order. Trump has deployed more than 50,000 personnel from the armed forces in fight against COVID-19.

After an initial two-week social mitigation measures, that includes social distancing, the measures have been extended till April 30. Initially, members of the White House Task Force on Coronavirus had projected between one and two lakhs deaths. Now, they have dropped the projection to 60,000 deaths, mainly due to the successful implementation of these measures.

"The people of our country have gone through a lot. But we did it the right way. And we look like we'll be coming in on the very, very low side, really below the lowest, the lowest side of the curve of death," Trump told Fox News on Saturday night.

Trump asserted that situation was improving in places like New York, where there is a drop in new patients. Responding to a question, he said he wanted the country to open up as soon as possible.

However, he has not taken a decision so far, even as some media reports said that he the President was looking for early May.

"I think it's going to be the toughest decision that I've ever made. I really, hopefully that I ever will have to make. But it's certainly the toughest decision that I've ever made. I hope that I'm going to make the right decision," Trump said, adding that he will be making a decision reasonably soon.

"We're setting up a council now of some of the most distinguished leaders in virtually every field including politics and business and medical. We'll be making that decision fairly soon," Trump said.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reported that its investigations have revealed that the president was warned about a potential pandemic but that internal divisions, lack of planning and his faith in his own instincts led to a halting response.

According to The Washington Post, coronavirus is killing about one in 10 hospitalised middle-aged patients and four in 10 older than 85 in the United States. It is particularly lethal to men even when taking into account common chronic diseases that exacerbate risk.

Globally, the novel coronavirus has killed 108,862 people and infected over 1.7 million people globally. The US has the highest number of infections at 529,887, according to Johns Hopkins University data.