Teheran, Apr 9: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday that the United States was the real "leader of world terrorism" after Washington blacklisted Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a "foreign terrorist organisation".
"Who are you to label revolutionary institutions as terrorists?" Rouhani asked in a speech broadcast live by state television.
"You want to use terrorist groups as tools against the nations of the region... you are the leader of world terrorism," he said.
Washington, Jul 9: The United States recorded 55,000 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours on Wednesday (Thursday in Malaysia), a tally by Johns Hopkins University showed, bringing its total to 3,046,351 recorded infections since the pandemic began.
The country, the hardest-hit in the world, had earlier on Wednesday passed the grim milestone of three million infections. The actual number is likely far higher due to issues over getting tested in March and April.
The US also added an additional 833 virus deaths, bringing the death toll to 132,195, the Baltimore-based institution showed at 8.30pm (0030 GMT Thursday).
US President Donald Trump regularly downplays the numbers, attributing them to an increase in testing capacity during the month of June.
Coronavirus cases are surging in several southern hotspots including Texas, Florida, Louisiana and Arizona, but the pandemic has almost entirely receded from its former epicentre in New York and the north-east.
Several states have been forced to suspend their reopening processes or even reverse course, with some ordering bars to close again.
On Wednesday morning, Trump called on schools throughout the country to reopen in the fall, lashing out at his own top health agency to ease health and safety requirements aimed at slowing the spread of the virus, such as social distancing.
Tehran, Mar 10: Twenty-seven people have died from methanol poisoning in Iran after rumours that drinking alcohol can help cure the novel coronavirus infection, state news agency IRNA reported on Monday. The outbreak of the virus in Islamic republic is one of the deadliest outside of China, where the disease originated.
Twenty have died in the southwestern province of Khuzestan and seven in the northern region of Alborz after consuming bootleg alcohol, IRNA said.
Drinking alcohol is banned in Iran for everyone except some non-Muslim religious minorities. Local media regularly report on lethal cases of poisoning caused by bootleg liquor.
A spokesman for Jundishapur medical university in Ahvaz, the capital of Khuzestan, said 218 people had been hospitalised there after being poisoned.
The poisonings were caused by "rumours that drinking alcohol can be effective in treating coronavirus," Ali Ehsanpour said.
The deputy prosecutor of Alborz, Mohammad Aghayari, told IRNA the dead had drunk methanol after being "misled by content online, thinking they were fighting coronavirus and curing it." If ingested in large quantities, methanol can cause blindness, liver damage and death.
Iran has been scrambling to contain the spread of the COVID-19 illness which has hit all of the country's 31 provinces, killing 237 people and infecting 7,161.
According to IRNA, 16 out of 69 confirmed cases have died of coronavirus infection in Khuzestan as of Sunday.
Canberra, May 21: Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, are looking forward to deepening the countries' strategic relationship, with both sides expected to sign a range of pacts from defence to trade in strategic sectors amid heightened tensions with China over Beijing's response to coronavirus pandemic.
During a virtual summit, scheduled to take place on June 4, both leaders are expected to ramp up efforts to diversify Australia's export markets and find trusted suppliers of vital products and components, a local newspaper, The Australian reported on Tuesday.
The new agreements will focus on reliable supply chains in key strategic sectors, including medical goods, technology and critical minerals, amid heightened tensions with China over Beijing's response to coronavirus pandemic.
The leaders will seal a new defence agreement allowing reciprocal access to bases and co-operation on military technology projects, while a new education partnership will be on the table to help overcome Australian university reliance on Chinese students.
The talks in terms of strategic convergence, now have greater significance as COVID-19 exacerbates the strategic contest between the US and China, and forces like-minded countries to seek out reliable partners.
Australian farmers could also benefit, with talks underway on expanding agricultural exports to India, including barley, as China throws up new trade barriers, media reports stated.
The virtual summit follows the cancellation of Morrison's planned state visit to India in January due to the bushfires.
Morrison said last year, ahead of his planned visit, that India was "a natural partner for Australia", referring to the countries' "shared values" -- a point of differentiation with China.
Former Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary Peter Varghese, who wrote a landmark report on the bilateral relationship in 2018, was quoted by the newspaper as saying that India would be even more important to Australia in the post-COVID world. "If one of the lessons from COVID is that countries need to spread their risk, then finding new markets or building up existing markets is a crucial part of that," he added.
Varghese noted that India, a member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue along with Australia, Japan and the US, was a vital strategic partner to Australia in helping "constrain China's ambitions to be the predominant power".
"That shared objective between Australia and India of not wanting to see the region dominated by China is a key component of building up our geopolitical relationship," he told The Australian.
The summit also follows recent talks between Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on the pandemic response and Australia's call for an independent inquiry, which was overwhelmingly backed at the World Health Assembly on Tuesday.
Australia wants to support India to develop a domestic critical minerals processing industry, which would provide Western nations with an alternative to sourcing the materials from China.
Meanwhile, India has strong expertise as a manufacturer of drugs and medical equipment, while Australia is a centre of biomedical research, opening the possibility for closer co-operation in the key sector, the media reported further.
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