SYDNEY: Sydney’s cafes, gyms and restaurants welcomed back fully vaccinated customers on Monday after nearly four months of lockdown, as Australia aims to begin living with the coronavirus and gradually reopen with high rates of inoculation.
“I see it as a day of freedom, it’s a freedom day,” New South Wales (NSW) state Premier Dominic Perrottet told reporters in Sydney, the state capital. “We are leading the nation out of this pandemic but this will be a challenge.”
Perrottet warned that infections would rise after reopening, and virus-free states such as Western Australia and Queensland are watching what living with COVID-19 is going to look like amid concerns health systems could be overwhelmed.
While NSW’s dual-dose vaccination rate in people above 16 hit 74 percent, in neighboring Queensland, whose borders remain closed to Sydney-siders, the rate is only 52 percent and the state government is following an elimination strategy with rapid lockdowns to control any outbreak.
Perrottet has declared an end to lockdowns in NSW and has strong support for reopening in Sydney, whose more than 5 million residents endured severe restrictions from mid-June following an outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant.
The outbreak has since spread to Melbourne and Canberra, forcing lockdowns in those cities, even as case numbers dwindle in NSW.
New South Wales on Monday reported 496 new locally acquired cases, well down from their peak last month, while Victoria logged 1,612 new infections, the lowest in five days.
Under the relaxed rules for NSW, retail stores and restaurants reopened with reduced capacity, and more vaccinated people were allowed to gather in homes and attend weddings and funerals.
The state aims to hit an 80 percent vaccine rate around late October, when more curbs will be relaxed. But the unvaccinated must remain at home until Dec. 1.
Kyl Raggio, owner of the KR Performance gym in the Sydney suburb of Randwick, said Australia could no longer afford to rely on rolling lockdowns to combat the virus.
“I hope that we can deal with whatever happens now moving forward, looking at the rest of the world hopefully we can stay open and do our thing,” said Raggio, who welcomed his clients back into his training facility early Monday morning.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison urged Sydney residents to “enjoy the moment.”
“Today is a day so many have been looking forward to — a day when things we take for granted, we will celebrate,” he said.
Morrison, who must call an election before next May, has come under pressure to press all states to reopen borders to bolster the economy and allow families separated by state border closures to reunite by Christmas. Some states with few cases have not said when they will re-open their borders.
With the vaccine rollout gaining momentum, Australia is planning a staggered return to normal, letting fully vaccinated residents enter and leave the country freely from November, although New South Wales plans to bring forward those dates.
Australia shut its international borders in March 2020, helping keep its coronavirus numbers relatively low, with 130,000 cases and 1,448 deaths.
Sydney reopens as Australia looks to live with COVID-19
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Sydney reopens as Australia looks to live with COVID-19
- But state Premier Dominic Perrottet warns that infections would rise after reopening
Pakistan records ‘wettest April’ in more than 60 years: weather agency
- Pakistan received more than twice as much rain as usual for the month
- Pakistan is increasingly vulnerable to unpredictable weather, as well as often destructive monsoon rains that usually arrive in July
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan experienced its “wettest April since 1961,” receiving more than twice as much rain as usual for the month, the country’s weather agency said in a report.
April rainfall was recorded at 59.3 millimeters, “excessively above” the normal average of 22.5 millimeters, Pakistan’s metrology department said late Friday in its monthly climate report.
There were at least 144 deaths in thunderstorms and house collapses due to heavy rains in what the report said was the “wettest April since 1961.”
Pakistan is increasingly vulnerable to unpredictable weather, as well as often destructive monsoon rains that usually arrive in July.
In the summer of 2022, a third of Pakistan was submerged by unprecedented monsoon rains that displaced millions of people and cost the country $30 billion in damage and economic losses, according to a World Bank estimate.
“Climate change is a major factor that is influencing the erratic weather patterns in our region,” Zaheer Ahmad Babar, spokesperson for the Pakistan Meteorological Department, said while commenting on the report.
While much of Asia is sweltering dure to heat waves, Pakistan’s national monthly temperature for April was 23.67 degrees Celsius (74 degrees Fahrenheit) 0.87 degrees lower than the average of 24.54, the report noted.
Students erect pro-Palestinian camp at Ireland’s Trinity College
DUBLIN: Students at Trinity College Dublin protesting Israel’s war in Gaza have built an encampment that forced the university to restrict campus access on Saturday and close the Book of Kells exhibition, one of Ireland’s top tourist attractions.
The camp was set up late on Friday after Trinity College’s students’ union said it had been fined 214,000 euros ($230,000) by the university for financial losses incurred due to protests in recent months not exclusively regarding the war in Gaza.
Students’ union President Laszlo Molnarfia posted a photograph of benches piled up in front of the entrance to the building where the Book of Kells is housed on the X social media platform on Friday. The illuminated manuscript book was created by Celtic monks in about 800 A.D..
“The Book of Kells is now closed indefinitely,” he said in the post.
Trinity College said it had restricted access to the campus to students, staff and residents to ensure safety and that the Book of Kells exhibition would be closed on Saturday.
Similar to the student occupations sweeping US campuses, protesters at Trinity College are demanding that Ireland’s oldest university cut ties with Israeli universities and divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Protests at universities elsewhere have included Australia and Canada.
In a statement last week, the head of the university, Linda Doyle, said Trinity College’s was reviewing its investments in a portfolio of companies and that decisions on whether to work with Israeli institutions rested with individual academics.
More than
34,600 Palestinians
have been killed in Israel’s seven-month-old assault on the Gaza Strip, say health officials in the Hamas-ruled enclave. The war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and abducting 253 others, of whom 133 are believed to remain in captivity in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Ireland has long been a champion of Palestinian rights, and the government has pledged to formally recognize Palestine as a state soon.
($1 = 0.9295 euros)
India opposition social media chief arrested over doctored video
- Congress party’s Arun Reddy was detained in connection with the edited footage, showing Interior minister Amit Shah
- Shah is often referred to as the second-most powerful man in India after Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi
NEW DELHI: Indian police said Saturday they had arrested the social media chief of the country’s main opposition party over accusations he doctored a widely shared video during an ongoing national election.
The Congress party’s Arun Reddy was detained late Friday in connection with the edited footage, which falsely shows India’s powerful interior minister Amit Shah vowing in a campaign speech to end affirmative action policies for millions of poor and low-caste Indians.
Shah is often referred to as the second-most powerful man in India after Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the pair have been close political allies for decades.
Reddy “was arrested yesterday on investigation about... a doctored video of the home minister,” deputy commissioner of Delhi police Hemant Tiwari told AFP.
“We produced him in the court and he is in police custody.”
Congress spokesperson Shama Mohamed confirmed Reddy’s arrest to AFP but denied he was responsible for creating or publishing the clip.
“He is not involved in any doctored video. We are supporting him,” she said.
Authorities seized Reddy’s electronic devices for forensic verification, the Indian Express newspaper reported Saturday, quoting an unnamed police officer who accused Reddy of having “cropped and edited” the video.
Shah has been campaigning on behalf of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is widely expected to win a third term when India’s six-week election concludes next month.
Analysts have long expected Modi to triumph against a fractious alliance of Congress and more than two dozen parties that have yet to name a candidate for prime minister.
His prospects have been further bolstered by several criminal investigations into his opponents and a tax investigation this year that froze Congress’s bank accounts.
Opposition figures and human rights organizations have accused Modi’s government of orchestrating the probes to weaken rivals.
Modi’s government remains widely popular a decade after coming to power, in large part due to its positioning of the nation’s majority Hindu faith at the center of its politics despite India’s officially secular constitution.
That in turn has left India’s 220 million-strong Muslim community feeling threatened by the rise of Hindu nationalist fervor.
Since voting began last month, both Modi and Shah have stepped up campaign rhetoric on India’s principal religious divide in an effort to rally voters.
In the original campaign speech at the center of the police investigation against Reddy, Shah vows to end affirmative action measures for Muslims established in the southern state of Telangana.
Modi last month used a campaign rally to refer to Muslims as “infiltrators” and “those who have more children,” prompting condemnation and an official complaint to election authorities by Congress.
But the prime minister has not been sanctioned for his remarks despite election rules prohibiting campaigning on “communal feelings” such as religion, prompting frustration from the opposition camp.
“Where is the election commission when the Prime Minister is spewing hate every day?” Shama said.
India’s foreign minister rejects Biden’s ‘xenophobia’ comment
NEW DELHI: Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar rejected US President Joe Biden’s comment that “xenophobia” was hobbling the South Asian nation’s economic growth, The Economic Times reported on Saturday.
Jaishankar said at a round table hosted by the newspaper on Friday that India’s economy “is not faltering” and that it has historically been a society that is very open.
“That’s why we have the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act), which is to open up doors for people who are in trouble ... I think we should be open to people who have the need to come to India, who have a claim to come to India,” Jaishankar said, referring to a recent law that allows immigrants who have fled persecution from neighboring countries to become citizens.
Earlier this week, Biden had said “xenophobia” in China, Japan and India was holding back growth in the respective economies as he argued migration has been good for the US economy.
“One of the reasons why our economy’s growing is because of you and many others. Why? Because we welcome immigrants,” Biden said at a fundraising event for his 2024 re-election campaign and marking the start of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast last month that growth in Asia’s three largest economies would slow in 2024 from the previous year.
The IMF also forecast that the US economy would grow 2.7 percent, slightly brisker than its 2.5 percent rate last year. Many economists attribute the upbeat forecasts partly to migrants expanding the country’s labor force.
Canada arrests three Indians over killing of Sikh activist
- The murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar plunged Canada, India into a serious diplomatic crisis last fall
- Nijjar, who immigrated to Canada in 1997, advocated for a separate Sikh state, known as Khalistan
VANCOUVER: Canadian police on Friday arrested three men over the killing last year in Vancouver of a Sikh separatist, whose death has been linked to the Indian government.
The murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar plunged Canada and India into a serious diplomatic crisis last fall after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested Indian government involvement in the homicide.
India dismissed the allegations as “absurd” and responded furiously, briefly curbing visas for Canadians and forcing Ottawa to withdraw diplomats.
Three Indian nationals, two aged 22 and one aged 28, were arrested Friday and charged with first degree murder and conspiracy charges. They are accused of being the shooter, driver and lookout on the day Nijjar was killed.
They were arrested by police in Edmonton, in the neighboring province of Alberta, where they reside, and are being held pending further proceedings.
All had been in Canada for between three and five years, police said at a news conference.
“This investigation does not end here. We are aware that others may have played a role in this homicide,” said Mandeep Mooker of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s homicide investigations team.
Nijjar — who immigrated to Canada in 1997 and became a citizen in 2015 — advocated for a separate Sikh state, known as Khalistan, carved out of India.
He was wanted by Indian authorities for alleged terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder.
On June 18, 2023, he was shot dead by masked assailants in the parking lot of the Sikh temple he led in suburban Vancouver.
Trudeau announced several months later that Canada had “credible allegations” linking Indian intelligence to the killing and expelled an Indian official, spurring the diplomatic tit-for-tat with New Delhi.
Mooker said Canadian police are still investigating the ties of the suspects, “if any, to the Indian government.”
“It is a bit of a sigh of relief that the investigation is moving forward,” Moninder Singh, a close friend of Nijjar, told AFP.
“It is ultimately India who is responsible and hiring individuals to assassinate Sikh leaders in foreign countries,” said Singh, spokesperson for the British Columbia Council of Gurdwaras.
In November, the US Justice Department charged an Indian citizen living in the Czech Republic with allegedly plotting a similar assassination attempt on American soil.
Prosecutors said in unsealed court documents that an Indian government official was also involved in the planning.
The shock allegations came after US President Joe Biden hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a rare state visit, as Washington seeks closer ties with India against China’s growing influence.
US intelligence agencies have assessed that the plot on American soil was approved by India’s top spy official at the time, Samant Goel, The Washington Post reported this week.
Canada is home to some 770,000 Sikhs, who make up about two percent of the country’s population, with a vocal minority calling for an independent state of Khalistan.
