Trump says ‘something has to be done’ on North Korea

Manila, Mar 16: The Philippines has detected an outbreak of avian flu in a northern province after tests showed presence of the highly infectious H5N6 subtype of the influenza A virus in a quail farm, the country's farm minister said on Monday.

Agriculture Secretary William Dar said the bird flu virus, the same strain that hit some local poultry farms in 2017, was detected in Jaen municipality in Nueva Ecija province, where about 1,500 quails had died on one farm alone.

A total of 12,000 quails have been destroyed and buried to prevent further infections, Dar said, citing field reports.

"We are on top of the situation," he said. "Surveillance around the 1-km and 7-km radius will be carried out immediately to ensure that the disease has not progressed around the said perimeter."

Animal quarantine checkpoints have also been set up to restrict the movement of all live domestic birds to and from the quarantine area, he said.

"We would like to emphasise that this is a single case affecting one quail farm only," Dar said.

Dr. Arlene Vytiaco, technical spokeswoman for avian flu at the agriculture department, said that while there is a possibility of transmission to humans through excretion and secretion, "the chances are very slim".

"There is also zero mortality rate," she said.

Dar said his department and the local government were jointly conducting an investigation and contact-tracing to determine the source of infection.

To ensure steady domestic supply of poultry, he said the transport of day-old chicks, hatching eggs and chicken meat will be allowed provided the source farms have tested negative for bird flu.

Istanbul, Jul 11: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Friday that the Hagia Sophia, one of the architectural wonders of the world, would be reopened for Muslim worship, sparking fury in the Christian community and neighbouring Greece.

His declaration came after a top Turkish court revoked the sixth-century Byzantine monument's status as a museum, clearing the way for it to be turned back into a mosque.

The UNESCO World Heritage site in historic Istanbul, a magnet for tourists worldwide, was first constructed as a cathedral in the Christian Byzantine Empire but was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

The Council of State, Turkey's highest administrative court, unanimously cancelled a 1934 cabinet decision to turn it into a museum and said Hagia Sophia was registered as a mosque in its property deeds.

The landmark ruling could inflame tensions not just with the West and Turkey's historic foe Greece but also Russia, with which Erdogan has forged an increasingly close partnership in recent years.

'Millions of Christians not heard'

Greece swiftly branded the move by Muslim-majority Turkey an "open provocation to the civilised world".

"The nationalism displayed by Erdogan... takes his country back six centuries," Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said in a statement.

The Russian Orthodox Church was equally scathing.

"The concern of millions of Christians were not heard," Church spokesman Vladimir Legoida told Interfax news agency.

The decision "shows that all pleas regarding the need to handle the situation extremely delicately were ignored," he said.

UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay said she "deeply regrets" the decision made without prior dialogue with the UN's cultural agency.

The move was also condemned by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which said it was an "unequivocal politicisation" of the monument.

Hagia Sophia, which stands opposite the impressive Sultanahmet Mosque -- often called the Blue Mosque, has been a museum since 1935 and open to believers of all faiths.

Transforming it from a mosque was a key reform under the new republic born out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire.

Sharing a presidential decree which named Hagia Sophia as a "mosque", Erdogan announced its administration would be handed over to Turkey's religious affairs directorate known as Diyanet.

"May we be blessed," he commented. The decree was published on the official gazette.

Erdogan has in recent years placed great emphasis on the battles which resulted in the defeat of Byzantium by the Ottomans, with lavish celebrations held every year to mark the conquest.

Muslim clerics have occasionally recited prayers in the museum on key anniversaries or religious holidays.

"The decision is intended to score points with Erdogan's pious and nationalist constituents," said Anthony Skinner of the risk assessment firm Verisk Maplecroft.

"Hagia Sophia is arguably the most conspicuous symbol of Turkey's Ottoman past -- one which Erdogan is leveraging to strengthen his base while snubbing domestic and foreign rivals," he told AFP.

'Chains broken'

A few hundred Turks carrying Turkish flags gathered outside Hagia Sophia shouting "Chains broken, Hagia Sophia reopened".

Police heightened security measures around the building, according to AFP journalists.

"It's been a dream since we were kids," said Erdal Gencler, an Istanbul resident.

"(Hagia Sophia) finds its true purpose again. We are very excited, proud, and hopeful that there will be beautiful services here," he added.

Fatma, a woman with tearful eyes, said: "Of course I am crying. (Hagia Sophia) belongs to us."

Ahead of the court decision, Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul shared a picture of Hagia Sophia on his official Twitter account, with a message: "Have a good Friday."

Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, Erdogan's son-in-law, tweeted that Hagia Sophia would be reopened to Muslim worship "sooner or later", referring to a quote from Turkish poet Necip Fazil Kisakurek.

The Council of State had on July 2 debated the case brought by a Turkish group -- the Association for the Protection of Historic Monuments and the Environment, which demanded Hagia Sophia be reopened for Muslim prayers.

Since 2005, there have been several attempts to change the building's status. In 2018, the Constitutional Court rejected one application.

Despite occasional protests outside the site by Islamic groups, Turkish authorities had until now kept the building as a museum.

Washington, May 1:The novel coronavirus, that has killed over 230,000 people globally so far and has shattered economies, emerged from a virology lab in the Wuhan city of China, US President Donald Trump claimed Thursday with a high degree of confidence.

"Yes, I have. Yes, I have," Trump told reporters at the East Room of the White House when asked if he has seen anything at this point that gives him a high degree of confidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is where the virus originated.

The president, however, refuse to provide any details, except for saying that investigations are on and it would be out soon.

Asked what gave him a high degree of confidence that the virus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, he said, "I can't tell you that. I'm not allowed to tell you that."

The president, however, did not hold his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping responsible for this. "I don't want to say that, I don't want to say that, but certainly it could have been stopped. It came out of China and it could have been stopped and I wish they had stopped it and so does the whole world wish they had stopped it."

Reiterating that this is something that could have been contained at Wuhan ground zero, he said that China could have contained it. "They were either unable to, or they chose not to. And the world has suffered greatly."

One of two things happened, he reasoned. "They either didn't do it and you know they couldn't do it from a competent standpoint or they let it spread and I would say probably it got out of control."

"But there's another case that how come they stopped all of the planes and all of the traffic from going into China, but they didn't stop the planes and the traffic from coming into the United States and from coming into all over Europe," he said, citing the example of Italy, the hardest-hit European country.

"This country (the US) is very lucky and I'm very lucky that I put the ban on China, as you know, very early on. In January, we put the ban on China and that was a very early day. That wasn't a late day, that was an early day. Then, we later put the ban on in Europe," he said.

Before holding them accountable, Trump said he wants to find out what happened. "I think we'll be able to get a very good -- a very powerful definition of exactly what happened. We're working on it strongly now and I think it's going to be very powerful," he said.

"But they could have stopped it. They are a very brilliant nation, scientifically and otherwise. It got loose, let's say, and they could have capped it. They could have stopped it, but they didn't. And they stopped the planes from going to China, but they didn't stop them from going to the rest of the world. What was that all about?” he asked.

"We should have the answer to that in the not-too-distant future and that will determine a lot how I feel about China," Trump said.

When asked if President Xi misled him, Trump said, "Something happened. I don't say misleading or not. I'll let you know that. I mean, I'll be able to give you that answer at some point in the hopefully not-too-distant future."

The entire world has suffered as a result of this, he said.

"We have had tremendous death and tremendous sorrow, sadness, and nobody's ever seen anything like it. So, have most of the countries of the world. They've suffered tremendously. It's something that is going to have to be dealt with. We'll have to see," said the president.