No evidence of terrorism in Las Vegas shooting, says FBI

Washington, Feb 5: Experts warned a US government panel last night that India's Muslims face risks of expulsion and persecution under the country’s new Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) which has triggered major protests.

The hearing held inside Congress was called by the US Commission on International Freedom, which has been denounced by the Indian government as biased.

Ashutosh Varshney, a prominent scholar of sectarian violence in India, told the panel that the law championed by prime minister Narendra Modi's government amounted to a move to narrow the democracy's historically inclusive and secular definition of citizenship.

"The threat is serious, and the implications quite horrendous," said Varshney, a professor at Brown University.

"Something deeply injurious to the Muslim minority can happen once their citizenship rights are taken away," he said.

Varshney warned that the law could ultimately lead to expulsion or detention -- but, even if not, contributes to marginalization.

"It creates an enabling atmosphere for violence once you say that a particular community is not fully Indian or its Indianness in grave doubt," he said.

India's parliament in December passed a law that fast-tracks citizenship for persecuted non-Muslim minorities from neighboring countries.

Responding to criticism at the time from the US commission, which advises but does not set policy, India's External Affairs Ministry said the law does not strip anyone's citizenship and "should be welcomed, not criticized, by those who are genuinely committed to religious freedom."

Fears are particularly acute in Assam, where a citizens' register finalized last year left 1.9 million people, many of them Muslims, facing possible statelessness.

Aman Wadud, a human rights lawyer from Assam who traveled to Washington for the hearing, said that many Indians lacked birth certificates or other documentation to prove citizenship and were only seeking "a dignified life."

The hearing did not exclusively focus on India, with commissioners and witnesses voicing grave concern over Myanmar's refusal to grant citizenship to the Rohingya, the mostly Muslim minority that has faced widespread violence.

Gayle Manchin, the vice chair of the commission, also voiced concern over Bahrain's stripping of citizenship from activists of the Shiite majority as well as a new digital ID system in Kenya that she said risks excluding minorities.

More than 40 people were killed last week in New Delhi in sectarian violence sparked by the citizenship law.

India on Tuesday lodged another protest after the UN human rights chief, Michele Bachelet, sought to join a lawsuit in India that challenges the citizenship law's constitutionality.

Washington/Seoul, Apr 26: A special train possibly belonging to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was spotted this week at a resort town in the country, according to satellite images reviewed by a Washington-based North Korea monitoring project, amid conflicting reports about Mr. Kim's health and whereabouts.

The monitoring project, 38 North, said in its report on Saturday that the train was parked at the “leadership station” in Wonsan on April 21 and April 23. The station is reserved for the use of the Kim family, it said.

Though the group said it was probably Kim Jong Un's train, Reuters has not been able to confirm that independently, or whether he was in Wonsan.

“The train's presence does not prove the whereabouts of the North Korean leader or indicate anything about his health but it does lend weight to reports that Kim is staying at an elite area on the country's eastern coast,” the report said.

Speculation about Mr. Kim's health first arose due to his absence from the anniversary of the birthday of North Korea's founding father and Mr. Kim's grandfather, Kim Il Sung, on April 15.

North Korea's state media last reported on Mr. Kim's whereabouts when he presided over a meeting on April 11.

China has dispatched a team to North Korea including medical experts to advise on Kim Jong Un, according to three people familiar with the situation.

A third-generation hereditary leader who came to power after his father's death in 2011, Kim has no clear successor in a nuclear-armed country, which could present major international risk.

On Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump downplayed reports that Mr. Kim was ill. “I think the report was incorrect,” Mr. Trump told reporters, but he declined to say if he had been in touch with North Korean officials.

Mr. Trump has met Mr. Kim three times in an attempt to persuade him to give up a nuclear weapons program that threatens the United States as well as its Asian neighbors. While talks have stalled, Mr. Trump has continued to hail Mr. Kim as a friend.

Reporting from inside North Korea is notoriously difficult because of tight controls on information.

A Trump administration official said continuing days of North Korean media silence on Mr. Kim's whereabouts had heightened concerns about his condition, and that information remained scant from a country U.S. intelligence has long regarded as a ”black box.”

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to questions about the situation on Saturday.

Daily NK, a Seoul-based website that reports on North Korea, cited one unnamed source in North Korea on Monday as saying that Kim had undergone medical treatment in the resort county of Hyangsan north of the capital Pyongyang.

It said that Mr. Kim was recovering after undergoing a cardiovascular procedure on April 12.

Since then, multiple South Korean media reports have cited unnamed sources this week saying that Mr. Kim might be staying in the Wonsan area.

On Friday, local news agency Newsis cited South Korean intelligence sources as reporting that a special train for Mr. Kim's use had been seen in Wonsan, while Mr. Kim's private plane remained in Pyongyang.

Newsis reported Mr. Kim may be sheltering from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Mr. Kim, believed to be 36, has disappeared from coverage in North Korean state media before. In 2014, he vanished for more than a month and North Korean state TV later showed him walking with a limp.

Speculation about his health has been fanned by his heavy smoking, apparent weight gain since taking power and family history of cardiovascular problems.

Shanghai, Jan 27: The death toll from a coronavirus outbreak in China rose to 81 on Monday, as the government extended the Lunar New Year holiday and more big businesses shut down or told staff to work from home in an effort to curb the spread.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited the central city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, as the government sought to signal it was responding seriously to the crisis.

The total number of confirmed cases in China rose about 30% to 2,744, about half of them in Hubei province, whose capital is Wuhan.

As worries grew around the world, Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, which has had eight confirmed cases, banned entry to people who had visited Hubei in the past 14 days. The ban did not cover Hong Kong residents.

The number of deaths from the flu-like virus in Hubei climbed to 76 from 56, health officials said, with five deaths elsewhere in China, including the southern island province of Hainan, which reported its first fatality on Monday.

While a small number of cases have been confirmed in more than 10 countries, linked to people who traveled from Wuhan, no deaths have been reported elsewhere.

Li is the most senior leader to visit Wuhan since the outbreak began. Clad in a blue protective suit and mask, he inspected efforts to contain the epidemic and spoke to patients and medical staff, the government said.

The government is extending the week-long Lunar New Year holiday by three days to February 2, in a bid to slow the spread of the virus. The Lunar New Year is usually a time for millions of people to travel, but many have had to cancel their plans because of travel curbs over the virus.

Incubation

Wuhan is already in virtual lockdown and severe limits on movement are in place in several other Chinese cities.

The city of 11 million clamped down further on Monday, announcing the suspension of visa and passport services until January 30.

Despite the curbs, the mayor of Wuhan said on Sunday that five million people had left the city for holidays and other reasons.

Images from Wuhan showing hospital corridors packed with people seeking treatment have circulated on social media, along with complaints of soaring prices for essentials such as vegetables.

Chinese leaders have urged transparency in the crisis, after public trust was eroded by the cover-up of the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), a coronavirus that originated in China and killed nearly 800 people globally in 2002 and 2003.

Much is not known about the newly identified coronavirus, including how easily it spreads and just how dangerous it is. It can cause pneumonia, which has been deadly in some cases.

National Health Commission minister Ma Xiaowei said on Sunday the incubation period could range from one to 14 days, and the virus was infectious during incubation, unlike SARS.

That compares with a World Health Organization (WHO) estimate of two to 10 days for the incubation period.

“Understanding the time when infected patients may transmit the virus to others is critical for control efforts,” the WHO said.

The virus is believed to have originated late last year in a Wuhan market illegally selling wildlife. It has spread to other cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, as well as more than 10 countries including France, Japan and the United States.

‘Overwhelmed’

Australia confirmed its fifth case on Monday involving a woman on the last flight out of Wuhan to Sydney before China’s travel ban.

Health minister Greg Hunt told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) authorities aimed to get about 100 Australian children and young people out of Wuhan.

One father of two, Nathan Wang, told the ABC his wife was stuck in Wuhan with the children. “We absolutely want the children to come back, because hospitals in Wuhan are overwhelmed,” he said.

Airports around the world have stepped up screening of passengers from China, although some health experts have questioned its effectiveness.

Last week the WHO stopped short of calling the outbreak a global health emergency, but some health experts question whether China can contain the epidemic.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is due to travel to Beijing to meet officials and health experts.

Australia, France, Italy, Japan and the United States have all said they are working to evacuate citizens from Wuhan.

Some of China’s biggest companies have been affected, with hotpot restaurant chain Haidilao International Holding shutting branches nationwide from Sunday until Friday.

Gaming giant Tencent Holdings Ltd advised staff to work from home until February 7, and e-commerce firm Alibaba removed vendors’ offers of overpriced face masks from its online Taobao marketplace as prices surged.