US rejects Pakistan's plea to facilitate talks with India: Qureshi

Agencies
October 5, 2018

Washington, Oct 5: The US has rejected Pakistan's plea to facilitate talks with India and pressed for the bilateral engagement between the two South Asian neighbours, foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said.

Pakistan wants the US to facilitate talks with India as the two nations are not engaging bilaterally, the top Pakistani diplomat told a Washington audience Wednesday.

"When we asked the US, to play facilitating role...Why do we ask? Simply because we are not engaging bilaterally. And that bilateral disengagement is…a distraction," Qureshi said in response to a question at the US Institute of Peace, a US Congress-funded top American think-tank.

"We want to focus, we want to move on the western side of the border, which we are not being able to because we have to watch our back from eastern side (of the border with India). That is not a healthy situation to be in," he said.

"Now can you (United States) facilitate (the talks)? The answer from them is no. They wanted bilaterally. But there is no bilateral movement," Qureshi said, a day after he had meetings with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton, during which he raised the issue only to be pushed back by the Trump administration.

India is opposed to any third country mediation in its relations with Pakistan. Pakistan has continuously sought mediation to sort out the differences, including over Kashmir.

Qureshi warned that the absence of bilateral talks with India could lead to escalation of tension between the two countries.

"If that lack of facilitation leads to escalation and some of the statements that have come out of late have not been very helpful," the Pakistani foreign minister said in an apparent reference to the remarks by Indian leaders.

The new government of Prime Minister Imran Khan, he claimed, is not shy of engaging.

Referring to the cancelling of his meeting with external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj in New York last month, he alleged that India backed off.

However, he quickly skipped India's reasons for this – glorification of terrorists by issuing postal stamps and brutal killing of the Indian security personnel.

"If the Indians have a better option, share it with us. If disengagement, if not talking to each other will resolve and stabilise the region, fine. If that's their analysis fine," Qureshi said.

Qureshi, who left for Pakistan after his meetings with the Trump administration officials, said it is unfortunate that the two countries are not engaging.

"It's unfortunate. That's the way it is. Now. What does this government want? We want normalisation. We want co-existence. You've got to recognise the reality. Pakistan is a reality. So is India. We have issues. How do we resolve them?" he asked.

After coming to power, the first speech made by the Prime Minister Khan was "that every step you (India) take towards peace, we will take two. And he meant it. It wasn't just because it sounded good. It wasn't to please anyone. He is too blunt a person to please people. He can be very straight and he can be very blunt. But he said that because he feels that way," Qureshi said.

India has said that Pakistan created the conditions for cancellation of the talks – due to issuing of postage stamps glorifying terrorists and brutal killing of its three security personnel.

The Pakistan foreign minister did not mention that in his answer and only said that the stalled dialogue process is not good for the two countries and the region.

Responding to a question on India's stand that talks and terrorism cannot go together, a view which is shared by Washington too, Qureshi referred to a statement by Khan while he was an opposition leader and met Prime Minister Narendra Modiduring a trip to New Delhi that there would always be spoilers.

"There will always be spoilers. There will always be elements that will scuttle the process of peace. But when they do that, let re-engage to fight them. They will push us back. But we have to see what is in our interest, what is in the regional interest. What's in Pakistan's interest," Qureshi said quoting what Khan had told Modi.

Soon, he raised the Kashmir issue.

"They have to realise, and I think they were being simplistic, if they feel that everything that's wrong on the Indian side of Kashmir is all of Pakistan's making, that is an unrealistic approach," he said.

India, he said, should also revisit its policies and see why and how people have been alienated.

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Agencies
June 24,2020

Washington, Jun 24: Twitter has once again flagged a tweet from US President Donald Trump which promoted violence by saying if protesters tried to set up an "autonomous zone" in Washington, DC they would be met with "serious force".

This is the fourth time Twitter has red flagged Trump's tweet for glorifying violence or violating its policies.

Trump has been critical of the "autonomous zone" in Seattle, an area occupied by protestors for much of this month.

"We've placed a public interest notice on this Tweet for violating our policy against abusive behaviour, specifically, the presence of a threat of harm against an identifiable group," Twitter's safety team tweeted late Tuesday.

Trump had tweeted: "There will never be an ‘Autonomous Zone' in Washington, D.C., as long as I'm your President. If they try they will be met with serious force!"

Twitter earlier labeled a video tweeted by him which mocked CNN as manipulated media.

According to Twitter, "this Tweet has been labeled per our synthetic and manipulated media policy to give people more context".

In May, Twitter labeled two Trump tweets that made false claims about mail-in ballots in California.

Twitter later labeled another Trump tweet glorifying violence in which he said, "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."

Facebook also removed a Trump campaign ad featuring a symbol used by Nazis for political dissenters, saying the ad violated its policies.

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News Network
May 27,2020

Geneva, May 27: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide has increased by nearly 100,000 over the past 24 hours to surpass 5.4 million, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said.

According to the WHO, the global case tally currently stands at 5,404,512 -- a rise by 99,780 over the past day.

The death count worldwide amounts to 343,514 -- an increase by 1,486.

Most cases of infection are recorded in the Americas -- 2,454,452, with 143,739 deaths.

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Agencies
March 28,2020

Canadian researchers are developing a DNA vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and has currently infected nearly 5,00,000 people worldwide and crippled the global economy.

Entos Pharmaceuticals, a health-care biotechnology company headed by a University of Alberta researchers, develop new therapeutic compounds using the company's proprietary drug-delivery platform and has begun manufacturing vaccine candidates against the novel coronavirus.

"Given the urgency of the situation, we can have a lead candidate vaccine within two months. Once we have that it's a race to get it into clinical trials," said John Lewis, CEO of Entos and a Professor at the University of Alberta in Canada.

Lewis said in comparison to a traditional vaccine, DNA-based vaccines hold several advantages.

Nucleic acids are introduced directly into the patient's own cells, causing them to make pieces of the virus--tricking the immune system into mounting a response without the full virus actually being present, the researcher said.

According to the company, the approach is recognised as being easier to move into large-scale manufacturing, offers improved vaccine stability and works without needing an infectious agent.

In the current absence of a vaccine for COVID-19, several companies around the world are mounting efforts to begin similar work.

The first clinical trial using a DNA-based vaccine developed by Moderna Inc.in the US on March 13.

Their approach allows for antibodies to be made in the human trial volunteers against a specific protein on the surface of the coronavirus that lets the virus enter human cells.

The hope is that the antibodies will stop the interaction.

Though this approach is designed to be effective against COVID-19 specifically, Lewis said Entos is taking a different tack.

The company plans to use plasmid DNA to amplify the production of key coronavirus surface and structural proteins with each injection, with an eye to the bigger picture.

"Many of the structural proteins in the virus are pretty well conserved across all the coronaviruses, including SARS and MERS," said Lewis.

"We're hoping that if we express more of the structural proteins that are common to most coronaviruses, we can inhibit the current COVID-19, and also potentially protect against all coronaviruses both past and future," Lewis added.

To move the project forward quickly, the company is seeking financial support from both provincial and federal levels of government.

"We have the opportunity to save a lot of lives, and I think it's really upon us and governments to find solutions for that," Lewis said.

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