CODOGNO: Scrambling to contain rapidly rising number of new coronavirus infections in Italy, the largest amount outside Asia, authorities on Sunday stepped up measures to ban public gatherings, including stopping Venice’s famed carnival events, which have drawn tens of thousands of revelers to a region that is now in the heart of the outbreak.
“The ordinance is immediately operative and will go into effect at midnight,” announced Veneto regional Gov. Luca Zaia, whose area includes Venice, where thousands packed St. Mark’s Square to join in carnival fun. Carnival, would have run through Tuesday. Buses, trains and other forms of public transport — including boats in Venice — were being disinfected, Zaia told reporters. Museums were also ordered to shut down after Sunday in Venice, a top tourist draw anytime of the year.
Authorities said three people in Venice have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus, all of them in their late 80s and who are hospitalized in critical condition. Zaia said among those infected was a nurse.
Nearly all of Italy’s 133 known cases are clustered in the north, at least 25 of them in the Veneto region.
Authorities expressed frustration they haven’t been able to track down the source of the virus spread in the north, which surfaced last week when an Italian man in Codogno in his late 30s became critically ill.
“The health officials haven’t been yet able to pinpoint Patient Zero,” Angelo Borrelli, head of the national Civil Protection agency, told reporters in Rome.
At first, it was widely presumed that the man was infected by an Italian friend he dined with and who recently returned from his job, based in Shanghai. When the friend tested negative for the virus, attention turned to several Chinese who live in town and who frequent the same cafe visited by the stricken man. But Lombardy Gov. Attilio Fontana told reporters all of those Chinese have tested negative, too.
So for now, Borrelli indicated, strategy is concentrating on closures and other restrictions to try to stem the spread in the country which already had taken such measures early on in the global virus alarm, including banning direct flights from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau. Italy has also tested millions of airport passengers arriving from other places for any sign of fever.
In Lombardy, with 90 cases, so far the hardest-hit region, schools and universities were ordered to stay closed in the coming days, and sporting events were canceled. Lombardy’s ban on public events also extended to Masses in churches in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation.
But while public Masses were forbidden in some towns in the hardest-hit areas, in the south, thousands turned out in the port city of Bari for a Mass by visiting Pope Francis, who shook hands with the faithful during his public appearance.Among those shaking the pope’s hand in Bari was Italian President Sergio Mattarella, who came to Bari for the event.
Museums, schools, universities and other public venues will be shut as well in Venice and the rest of Veneto. The shutdown is expected to last at least through March 1.
In Turin, the main city of the northern Piedmont region, a least three cases were diagnosed. That region also announced closure of all schools and universities.
The biggest jump in cases of confirmed COVID-19 was reported by authorities in Lombardy, a populous region which includes the country’s financial capital, Milan. Nearly all the cases were in the countryside, mainly in Codogno and nine neighboring towns, where only grocery stores and pharmacies were apparently allowed to stay open while other businesses were ordered shuttered and people — in theory at least — weren’t supposed to enter or leave the towns.
Melissa Catanacci, who lives on one of Codogno’s main roads, said that while entry points were open, others were closed.
Speaking by telephone from her home, she said she ventured outside for a stroll in the morning along with her husband and two children, ages 10 and 13.
“Every quarter-hour or so a car goes by” on the main road, she said. With businesses closed, the usual Sunday “passeggiata” — a leisurely stroll through local streets — didn’t last very long, she said. ”Nothing is open,” not even the town supermarket despite permission to do so, she said. “After a half hour, one turns around and goes back home.”
With school to stay shut through the week, her children were visiting other friends’ houses and vice versa, she said, to break the boredom. For Catanacci, there was no reason to be overly concerned. COVID-19 is “a new virus, it’s still unknown to our body” and its antibodies, Catanacci said, adding: “it’s similar to influenza.”
Italians’ other cherished Sunday routines – from soccer to church-going – were being touched by the spread of the contagion, almost entirely based in the north. Sports events in the affected northern areas, including local kids’ sports team practices to three Serie A soccer matches, were canceled following a long meeting Saturday night by the Italian government to decide infection-containing measures.
Italy’s explosion of infections was sparking concern elsewhere on the European continent.
Austria’s top security official, Franz Lang said that the country could activate border controls to Italy within one hour. Normally both countries are part of the visa and passport-free Schengen zone, but in specific situations, single countries can reactivate border controls. Lang said the situation on the border and possible reactions to the virus outbreak would be discussed in meetings Monday, local Austrian media reported.
Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte on Saturday night said for now Italy wasn’t suspending Schengen zone rules.
In Switzerland, which, like Austria, borders Italy, there was a call for calm. Daniel Koch, the head of the department for contagious diseases at the heath office, told SRF public broadcaster that the country had not been contacted regarding possibly infected persons traveling to Switzerland and that there was no need to change the current strategy.
“The news from Italy are worrisome ... but it is too early to think that a wave is rolling our way,” Koch said.
German travelers returning from northern Italy were being asked to check the official German health adviseries online regarding possible exposure to the virus. The German health ministry said it had initiated a phone conference for all European Union public health authorities about the outbreak in northern Italy on Monday.
Italy’s first cases — that of a married Chinese couple who were on vacation in Rome — surfaced in early February.
To date, two deaths — of elderly persons in the north — have been reported among the 133 cases.
Elsewhere in Europe, French Health Minister Olivier Veran said that authorities were getting ready for a possible outbreak in France of the new virus. In an interview published Sunday in French newspaper Le Parisien, he said he was monitoring very closely the “very serious” situation, including in neighboring Italy.
France reported earlier this month the first death outside Asia of a person infected with the virus, an 80-year-old Chinese tourist.
Italy cancels Venice Carnival in bid to halt spread of virus
https://arab.news/p5ara
Italy cancels Venice Carnival in bid to halt spread of virus
- Authorities said three people in Venice have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus, all of them in their late 80s
Drone, missile attack on Kyiv injures 21, officials say
A combined Russian missile and drone attack triggered fires in several districts of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv early on Thursday, injuring 21 people, officials said.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko, writing on Telegram, said six fires were reported in Sviatoshynskyi district west of the city center, causing serious damage. Twenty-one people were being treated in hospital, including three children.
Klitschko had earlier said residents of one dwelling were trapped under rubble.
Fires and incidents of falling metal fragments were reported in other areas.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, 30 km (18 miles) from the Russian border, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said seven missiles had struck a series of targets. Windows were smashed in a high-rise apartment building, but there was no word on casualties.
Within an hour, Terekhov also reported a drone attack on the city, though there was no indication of any casualties.
India downgrades ties with Pakistan after attack on Kashmir tourists kills 26
- New Delhi suspends key water sharing treaty, and closes only land border crossing
- Pakistan prime ministers calls meeting Thursday to discuss response
SRINAGAR/NEW DELHI: India announced a raft of measures to downgrade its ties with Pakistan on Wednesday, a day after suspected militants killed 26 men at a tourist destination in Kashmir in the worst attack on civilians in the country in nearly two decades.
Diplomatic ties between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors were weak even before the latest measures were announced as Pakistan had expelled India’s envoy and not posted its own ambassador in New Delhi after India revoked the special status of Kashmir in 2019.
Pakistan had also halted its main train service to India and banned Indian films, seeking to exert diplomatic pressure.
Tuesday’s attack is seen as a setback to what Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party have projected as a major achievement in revoking the semi-autonomous status Jammu and Kashmir enjoyed and bringing peace and development to the long-troubled Muslim-majority region.
On Wednesday, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri told a media briefing that the cross-border involvement in the Kashmir attack was underscored at a special security cabinet meeting, prompting it to act against Pakistan.
He said New Delhi would immediately suspend the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty “until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism.”
The treaty, mediated by the World Bank, split the Indus River and its tributaries between the neighbors and regulated the sharing of water. It had so far withstood even wars between the neighbors.
Pakistan is heavily dependent on water flowing downstream from this river system from Indian Kashmir for its hydropower and irrigation needs. Suspending the treaty would allow India to deny Pakistan its share of the waters.
India also closed the only open land border crossing point between the two countries and said that those who have crossed into India can return through the point before May 1.
With no direct flights operating between the two countries, the move severs all transport links between them.
Pakistani nationals will not be permitted to travel to India under special South Asian visas, all such existing visas were canceled and Pakistanis in India under such visas had 48 hours to leave, Misri said.
All defense advisers in the Pakistani mission in New Delhi were declared persona non grata and given a week to leave. India will pull out its own defense advisers in Pakistan and also reduce staff size at its mission in Islamabad to 30 from 55, Misri said.
“The CCS reviewed the overall security situation and directed all forces to maintain high vigil,” Misri, the most senior diplomat in the foreign ministry, said referring to the security cabinet.
“It resolved that the perpetrators of the attack will be brought to justice and their sponsors held to account...India will be unrelenting in the pursuit of those who have committed acts of terror, or conspired to make them possible,” he said.
There was no immediate response to the Indian announcement from Pakistan’s Foreign Office.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has called a meeting of the National Security Committee on Thursday morning to respond to the Indian government’s statement, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar posted on X.
Tourist boom
India’s response came a day after the attack in the Baisaran Valley in the Pahalgam area of the scenic, Himalayan federal territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
The region has been at the heart of India-Pakistan animosity for decades and the site of multiple wars, insurgency and diplomatic standoffs.
The dead included 25 Indians and one Nepalese national and at least 17 people were also injured in the shooting that took place on Tuesday.
It was the worst attack on civilians in India since the 2008 Mumbai shootings, and shattered the relative calm in Kashmir, where tourism has boomed as an anti-India insurgency has waned in recent years.
A little-known militant group, the “Kashmir Resistance,” claimed responsibility for the attack in a social media message. It expressed discontent that more than 85,000 “outsiders” had been settled in the region, spurring a “demographic change.”
Indian security agencies say Kashmir Resistance, also known as The Resistance Front, is a front for Pakistan-based militant organizations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen.
Pakistan denies accusations that it supports militant violence in Kashmir and says it only provides moral, political and diplomatic support to the insurgency there.
“We are concerned at the loss of tourists’ lives,” Pakistani foreign ministry spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan said in a statement earlier on Wednesday. “We extend our condolences to the near ones of the deceased and wish the injured a speedy recovery.”
Setback to Modi
In Kashmir, security forces rushed to the Pahalgam area and began combing the forests there in search of the attackers.
Police also released sketches of three of the four suspected attackers, who were dressed in traditional long shirts and loose trousers and one of them was wearing a bodycam, one security source said.
There were about 1,000 tourists and about 300 local service providers and workers in the valley when the attack took place, he said.
On Wednesday, the federal territory shut down in protest against the attack on tourists, whose rising numbers have helped the local economy.
Protesters turned out in several locations shouting slogans such as “Stop killing innocents,” “Tourists are our lives,” “It is an attack on us.”
“I want to say to the people of the country that we are ashamed, Kashmir is ashamed,” former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti said. “We are standing with you in this time of crisis.”
Airlines were operating extra flights through Wednesday from Srinagar, the summer capital of the territory, as visitors were rushing out of the region, officials said.
Militant violence has afflicted Kashmir, claimed in full but ruled in part by both Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan, since the anti-Indian insurgency began in 1989. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, although violence has tapered off in recent years.
A dozen states sue the Trump administration to stop tariff policy
- The suit asks the court to declare the tariffs to be illegal, and to block government agencies
NEW YORK: A dozen states sued the Trump administration in the US Court of International Trade in New York on Wednesday to stop its tariff policy, saying it is unlawful and has brought chaos to the American economy.
The lawsuit said the policy put in place by President Donald Trump has left the national trade policy subject to Trump’s “whims rather than the sound exercise of lawful authority.”
It challenged Trump’s claim that he could arbitrarily impose tariffs based on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The suit asks the court to declare the tariffs to be illegal, and to block government agencies and its officers from enforcing them.
A message sent to the Justice Department for comment was not immediately returned.
The states listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit were Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York and Vermont.
In a release, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes called Trump’s tariff scheme “insane.”
She said it was “not only economically reckless — it is illegal.”
The lawsuit maintained that only Congress has the power to impose tariffs and that the president can only invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act when an emergency presents an “unusual and extraordinary threat” from abroad.
“By claiming the authority to impose immense and ever-changing tariffs on whatever goods entering the United States he chooses, for whatever reason he finds convenient to declare an emergency, the President has upended the constitutional order and brought chaos to the American economy,” the lawsuit said.
Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, sued the Trump administration in US District Court in the Northern District of California over the tariff policy, saying his state could lose billions of dollars in revenue as the largest importer in the country.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai responded to Newsom’s lawsuit, saying the Trump administration “remains committed to addressing this national emergency that’s decimating America’s industries and leaving our workers behind with every tool at our disposal, from tariffs to negotiations.”
Palestinian student remains detained in Vermont with a hearing set for next week
- In court documents, the government argues that Mahdawi’s detention is a “constitutionally valid aspect of the deportation process”
- Mahdawi is still scheduled for a hearing date in immigration court in Louisiana on May 1, his attorneys said
BURLINGTON, Vermont: A large crowd of supporters and advocates gathered outside a Vermont courthouse Wednesday to support a Palestinian man who led protests against the war in Gaza as a student at Columbia University and was arrested during an interview about finalizing his US citizenship.
Mohsen Mahdawi, a legal permanent resident for 10 years, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on April 14. He made an initial court appearance Wednesday during which a judge extended a temporary order keeping Mahdawi in Vermont and scheduled a hearing for next week.
Mahdawi’s lawyers say he was detained in retaliation for his speech advocating for Palestinian human rights.
“What the government provided thus far only establishes that the only basis they have to currently detaining him in the manner they did is his lawful speech,” attorney Luna Droubi said after the hearing. “We intend on being back in one week’s time to free Mohsen.”
In court documents, the government argues that Mahdawi’s detention is a “constitutionally valid aspect of the deportation process” and that district courts are barred from hearing challenges to how and when such proceedings are begun.
“District courts play no role in that process. Consequently, this Court lacks jurisdiction over Petitioner’s claims, which are all, at bottom, challenges to removal proceedings,” wrote Michael Drescher, Vermont’s acting US attorney.
According to his lawyers, Mahdawi had answered questions and signed a document that he was willing to defend the US Constitution and laws of the nation. They said masked ICE agents then entered the interview room, shackled Mahdawi, and put him in a car.
“What we’re seeing here is unprecedented where they are so hellbent on detaining students from good universities in our country,” attorney Cyrus Mehta said. “These are not hardened criminals. These are people who have not been charged with any crime, they have also not been charged under any of the other deportation provisions of the Immigration Act.”
Mahdawi is still scheduled for a hearing date in immigration court in Louisiana on May 1, his attorneys said. His notice to appear says he is removable under the Immigration and Nationality Act because the Secretary of State has determined his presence and activities “would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling US foreign policy interest.”
Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department was revoking visas held by visitors who were acting counter to national interests, including some who protested Israel’s war in Gaza and those who face criminal charges.
According to the court filing, Mahdawi was born in a refugee camp in the West Bank and moved to the United States in 2014. He recently completed coursework at Columbia and was expected to graduate in May before beginning a master’s degree program there in the fall.
As a student, Mahdawi was an outspoken critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and organized campus protests until March 2024.
US Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont, a Democrat, met with Mahdaw i on Monday at the prison and posted a video account of their conversation on X. Mahdawi said he was “in good hands.” He said his work is centered on peacemaking and that his empathy extends beyond the Palestinian people to Jews and to the Israelis.
“I’m staying positive by reassuring myself in the ability of justice and the deep belief of democracy,” Mahdawi said in Welch’s video. “This is the reason I wanted to become a citizen of this country, because I believe in the principles of this country.”
Mahdawi’s attorney read a statement from him outside the courthouse Wednesday in which he urged supporters to “stay positive and believe in the inevitability of justice.”
“This hearing is part of the system of democracy, it prevents a tyrant from having unchecked power,” he wrote. “I am in prison, but I am not imprisoned.”
Meanwhile, the government is appealing a decision by a different Vermont judge who said another detained student, Rumeysa Ozturk of Tufts University, should be returned to Vermont.
On Tuesday, members of Congress from Massachusetts traveled to Louisiana to meet with Ozturk and Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil. US Sen. Ed Markey and US Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Jim McGovern expressed concern at a news conference Wednesday that the students, as well as other detainees, were being deprived of nutritious meals, sleep and blankets in the cold facilities.
Khalil and Ozturk have not committed any crimes, the delegation said — they are being unlawfully detained for exercising their right to free speech.
“They are being targeted and imprisoned because of their political views,” McGovern said.
Trump plans to exempt carmakers from some tariffs, FT reports
US President Donald Trump is planning to spare carmakers from some tariffs, The Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing two people with knowledge of the matter.
Car parts would be exempted from tariffs that are being imposed on imports from China over fentanyl and tariffs levied on steel and aluminum, the report added.
