AirAsia plane with 162 aboard missing en route to Singapore

Singapore, May 6: Oil prices slipped back Wednesday after two days of gains, although Brent crude remained above $30 a barrel, as renewed US-China tensions offset optimism about the easing of coronavirus lockdowns.

Brent, the international benchmark, fell 1.1 per cent to $30.63 a barrel in early Asian trade. On Tuesday, the contract surged 14 per cent and rose above $30 for the first time since mid-April.

US marker West Texas Intermediate slipped 1.9 per cent and was changing hands for $24.13 a barrel.

Oil markets have been battered as the virus strangled demand due to business closures and travel restrictions, with US crude falling into negative territory last month for the first time.

They started rallying strongly this week as countries from Europe to Asia ease curbs and economies start shuddering back to life.

But gains were capped Wednesday as dealers follow a brewing US-China row after Donald Trump hit out at Beijing over its handling of the outbreak, saying it began in a Wuhan lab, but so far offering no evidence.

"Traders are incredibly cautious this morning, weighing all the possible China responses," said Stephen Innes, chief global market strategist at AxiCorp.

"And the one that would hurt the most would be for China to reduce imports of US oil."

This week's rally was in part driven by a deal agreed between top producers to reduce output by almost 10 million barrels a day, which came into effect on May 1.

There have also been signs that the massive oversupply in the market is starting to ease as demand slowly comes back.

Energy data provider Genscape said earlier this week that stockpiles at the main US oil depot in Cushing, Oklahoma had increased by only 1.8 million barrels last week following weeks of major rises.

Sheikhupura, May 26: Younus, the brother-in-law of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman convicted of blasphemy by a Pakistani court, was killed in Sheikhupura city of Punjab province in Pakistan on Monday.

According to the FIR, Younus had gone to his farms on May 24 and did not return home at night. His body with throat slit was traced in the farm the following morning.

It is believed that, hailing from minority Christian community, Younus was killed in a rivalry.

This is not the first time that somebody associated with Asia Bibi has been murdered in cold blood.

In 2011, Salman Taseer, the influential governor of Punjab was assassinated after he made headlines by appealing for the pardon of Asia Bibi, who had been sentenced to death for allegedly insulting Prophet Muhammad.

A month after Taseer was killed, Religious Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian who spoke out against the laws, was shot dead in Islamabad, underlining the threat faced by critics of the law.

Asia Bibi is now living in exile after the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted her based on insufficient evidence in October 2018.

Recounting the hellish conditions of eight years spent on death row on blasphemy charges but also the pain of exile, Asia Bibi recently broke her silence to give her first personal insight into an ordeal that caused international outrage.

French journalist Anne-Isabelle Tollet, who has co-written a book about her, was once based in the country where she led a support campaign for her."You already know my story through the media," she said in the book.

"But you are far from understanding my daily life in prison or my new life," she said. "I became a prisoner of fanaticism," she said. In prison, "tears were the only companions in the cell".

She described the horrendous conditions in squalid jails in Pakistan where she was kept chained and jeered at by other detainees.

Pakistan's blasphemy laws carry a potential death sentence for anyone who insults Islam. Critics say they have been used to persecute minority faiths and unfairly target minorities.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan defended the country's strict blasphemy laws during his election campaigns. The status quo is still in place.

No government in Pakistan was ready to make changed to the blasphemy law due to fears of a backlash.

Beijing, Jul 6: A city in northern China on Sunday sounded an alert after a suspected case of bubonic plague was reported, according to official media here.

Bayannur, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, announced a level III warning of plague prevention and control, state-run People’s Daily Online reported.

The suspected bubonic plague case was reported on Saturday by a hospital in Bayannur. The local health authority announced that the warning period will continue until the end of 2020.

"At present, there is a risk of a human plague epidemic spreading in this city. The public should improve its self-protection awareness and ability, and report abnormal health conditions promptly,” the local health authority said.

On July 1, state-run Xinhua news agency said that two suspected cases of bubonic plague reported in Khovd province in western Mongolia have been confirmed by lab test results.

The confirmed cases are a 27-year-old resident and his 17-year-old brother, who are being treated at two separate hospitals in their province, it quoted a health official as saying.

The brothers ate marmot meat, the health official said, warning people not to eat marmot meat.

A total of 146 people who had contact with them have been isolated and treated at local hospitals, according to Narangerel.

Bubonic plague is a bacterial disease that is spread by fleas living on wild rodents such as marmots. It can kill an adult in less than 24 hours if not treated in time, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

A couple died of bubonic plague in the western Mongolian province of Bayan-Ulgii last year after eating raw marmot meat.

The news of bubonic plague came after Chinese researchers issued an early warning over another potential pandemic caused by an influenza virus in pigs.

Scientists from China Agricultural University, the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and other institutes detected a pig influenza virus bearing genotype 4 (G4), which is contagious among pigs and has the possibility of jumping to humans, as the G4 virus is able to bind with human cells, state-run Global Times reported last week.

The researchers are concerned that it could mutate further so that it can spread easily from person to person, and trigger a global outbreak, BBC reported.

"Controlling the prevailing G4 EA H1N1 viruses in pigs and close monitoring in human populations, especially workers in the swine industry, should be urgently implemented," Chinese researchers warned in the paper.

The new diseases were reported even as China grappled with the second attack of Covid-19 in Beijing after controlling it in Wuhan where it was first reported in December last year.

On Saturday, Beijing reported a single-digit Covid-19, local authorities said Sunday.

The number of newly confirmed Covid-19 cases reached a peak in Beijing on June 13 and 14 and then started declining in general, Xinhua quoted local officials as saying.

From June 11 to July 4, the city reported 334 confirmed locally transmitted cases, 47 per cent of whom are workers of the Xinfadi wholesale food market, the official said.