LONDON: The British government on Saturday launched a campaign to help domestic violence victims during the coronavirus lockdown following an increase in the number seeking assistance, while figures showed that the number of people in the UK dying after testing positive for COVID-19 neared 10,000.
Home Secretary Priti Patel also said that Prime Minister Boris Johnson needs to take time to rest and recuperate following his three-day stint in intensive care with COVID-19. Patel said it was “vital” that the prime minister, who remains in a London hospital for a seventh night, returned to full health.
Johnson “continues to make very good progress” at St. Thomas' hospital, his office at 10 Downing Street said in a statement. Johnson was hospitalized on April 5 and was transferred to the intensive care unit the following day where he received oxygen, but wasn't put on a ventilator. He spent three nights there before moving back to a regular ward on Thursday evening.
Patel, who was hosting her first daily government coronavirus media briefing, also said she was “sorry if people feel that there have been failings” regarding the supply of personal protective equipment, or PPE, to staff in the National Health Service. The government has faced mounting criticism over PPE following sustained reports of some nurses using garbage bags to protect themselves. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said earlier that 19 front-line NHS staff have died after testing positive for COVID-19.
Patel said the government will bolster online support services and hotlines for domestic violence and launched a national communications campaign that aims to “signpost victims” to where they can access help.
“For the victims of these crimes, home is not the safe haven that it should be," she said.
Though there hasn't yet been a sustained rise in reports of domestic abuse during the lockdown to police, Patel said that there has been an “extremely concerning” increase in those seeking help.
She noted that last week Britain's national domestic violence hotline reported a 120% increase in the number of calls it received in just one 24-hour period. She also said the government's “stay at home” message didn't apply to victims of domestic abuse and that authorities will work to ensure there is refuge for victims and their children if they need to escape their home.
Martin Hewitt, chairman of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, warned abusers to “not think that this is a time where you can get away with this.”
Overall, he said there had been a 21% fall in overall crime in the last four weeks compared to the same period last year and that as of Thursday, police had issued 1,084 fines for breaches of coronavirus regulations in England and Wales. He said a “small minority of people” have failed to follow the government’s guidance and that police will publish enforcement data every two weeks during the crisis.
“In those few cases where police forces have made mistakes with those new regulations, they have quickly sought to correct them and provide clarity,” he said.
Earlier, the government reported 917 more people died in the hospital after testing positive for the coronavirus, taking the total to 9,875. The increase was slightly lower than the daily high of 980 recorded in the previous 24-hour period. That increase was higher than the daily peaks recorded in Italy and Spain, the two European countries with the highest total number of coronavirus-related deaths. Comparisons may not be precise. The UK deaths reported each day occurred over several days or even weeks, and the total only includes deaths in hospitals.
For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. But for others, especially older adults and people with health problems, it can cause severe symptoms like pneumonia.
Queen Elizabeth II, meanwhile, stressed the need for the British people to continue to abide with lockdown restrictions over the rest of the Easter weekend.
In a two-minute audio broadcast from Windsor Castle, the queen said that by “keeping apart, we keep others safe” and that the coronavirus “will not overcome us.”
Social distancing rules were observed, with the queen delivering the address alone into a microphone from the castle’s White Drawing room while the sound engineer was in a nearby room.
Though inevitably different this year, the queen said “Easter isn’t canceled; indeed, we need Easter as much as ever.”
UK boosts help for abuse victims during virus lockdown
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UK boosts help for abuse victims during virus lockdown
- Last week Britain's national domestic violence hotline reported a 120% increase in the number of calls it received in just one 24-hour period
- The Home Secretary said that authorities will work to ensure there is refuge for victims and their children if they need to escape their home
Under-fire Spain minister defends state agencies’ role in floods
“I would like to thank the work and dedication of the public servants who issued the information as was their duty“
MADRID: Spain’s under-fire ecological transition minister, a candidate for a top European Commission post, on Wednesday said questioning the role of state agencies during the country’s devastating floods was “dangerous.”
The state weather and environment services have faced intense scrutiny over their response to the October 29 disaster that wreaked widespread destruction and killed 227 people.
The European Parliament has blocked Teresa Ribera’s appointment to an influential EU commission role encompassing environment and competition, with opponents accusing her of neglecting her duties during the floods.
Regions are in charge of disaster management in Spain’s decentralized political system, but the hardest-hit Valencia region’s conservative leader Carlos Mazon said he received “insufficient, inaccurate and late” information.
Doubting state agencies was “deeply unfair and deeply dangerous,” Ribera told parliament, in a veiled retort to the conservative opposition.
“I would like to thank the work and dedication of the public servants who issued the information as was their duty,” she added.
Mazon defended his handling of the catastrophe last week, citing an “information blackout” and criticizing a government agency responsible for monitoring river levels.
But Ribera said “there was never an information blackout” and enumerated a lengthy list of warnings issued by public bodies to the regional authorities.
Although the national weather agency issued the highest red alert in the morning of October 29, Valencia residents in many cases only received telephone warnings when water was already gushing through towns.
The socialist-led central government has argued Mazon bore responsibility for the late issuing of the emergency alert.
“Having all the necessary information is of little use if the one who must respond does not know how,” Ribera added.
The right-wing opposition Popular Party (PP) has accused the government of abandoning the Valencia region before and after the floods for political gain.
Anger has coursed through Spain over the authorities’ perceived mishandling of the country’s deadliest floods in decades and the ensuing political polarization has spilled over at EU level.
The conservative EPP parliamentary group to which the PP belongs refused to approve Spain’s nomination for the commission until she reported to the Spanish parliament.
“The European Commission does not deserve to come into existence with a candidate under suspicion,” PP leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo wrote on X.
The Socialists and Democrats group have complained that the Spanish right was trying to make Ribera “the scapegoat” for its own failure to manage the floods in Valencia.
By doing so, it was “pushing the entire European Union to the brink in the most irresponsible way,” it said.
Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Tuesday said his party always backed PP candidates for the commission and urged “reciprocity” from them.
Spain will legalize hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants in the next 3 years
- The policy aims to expand the aging country’s workforce and allow foreigners living in Spain without proper documentation to obtain work permits and residency
- Spain has largely remained open to receiving migrants even as other European nations seek to tighten their borders to illegal crossings and asylum seekers
MADRID: Spain will legalize about 300,000 undocumented migrants a year, starting next May and through 2027, the country’s migration minister said Wednesday.
The policy aims to expand the aging country’s workforce and allow foreigners living in Spain without proper documentation to obtain work permits and residency. Spain has largely remained open to receiving migrants even as other European nations seek to tighten their borders to illegal crossings and asylum seekers.
Spain needs around 250,000 registered foreign workers a year to maintain its welfare state, Migration Minister Elma Saiz said in an interview on Wednesday. She contended that the legalization policy is not aimed solely at “cultural wealth and respect for human rights, it’s also prosperity.”
“Today, we can say Spain is a better country,” Saiz told national broadcaster Radiotelevisión Española.
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has often described his government’s migration policies as a means to combat the country’s low birthrate. In August, Sánchez visited three West African nations in an effort to tackle irregular migration to Spain’s Canary Islands.
The archipelago off the coast of Africa is seen by many as a step toward continental Europe with young men from Mali, Senegal, Mauritania and elsewhere embarking on dangerous sea voyages there seeking better job opportunities abroad or fleeing violence and political instability at home.
The new policy, approved Tuesday by Spain’s leftist minority coalition government, simplifies administrative procedures for short and long-term visas and provides migrants with additional labor protections. It extends a visa offered previously to job-seekers for three months to one year.
By mid-November, some 54,000 undocumented migrants had reached Spain this year by sea or land, according to the country’s Interior Ministry. The exact number of foreigners living in Spain without documentation is unclear.
Many irregular migrants make a living in Spain’s underground economy as fruit pickers, caretakers, delivery drivers, or other low-paid but essential jobs often passed over by Spaniards.
Without legal protections, they can be vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Saiz said the new policy would help prevent such abuse and “serve to combat mafias, fraud and the violation of rights.”
Spain’s economy is among the fastest-growing in the European Union this year, boosted in part by immigration and a strong rebound in tourism after the pandemic.
In 2023, Spain issued 1.3 million visas to foreigners, according to the government.
Danish military says it staying close to Chinese ship after data cable breaches
- Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3 was anchored in the Kattegat strait between Denmark and Sweden on Wednesday
- “The Danish Defense can confirm that we are present in the area near the Chinese ship Yi Peng 3,” the military said
STOCKHOLM: The Danish military said on Wednesday that it was staying close to a Chinese ship currently sitting idle in Danish waters, days after two fiber-optic data telecommunication cables in the Baltic Sea were severed.
Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3 was anchored in the Kattegat strait between Denmark and Sweden on Wednesday, with a Danish navy patrol ship at anchor nearby, MarineTraffic vessel tracking data showed.
“The Danish Defense can confirm that we are present in the area near the Chinese ship Yi Peng 3,” the military said in a post on social media X, adding it had no further comments.
It is quite rare for Denmark’s military to comment publicly on individual vessels traveling in Danish waters. It did not mention the cable breaches or say why it was staying with the ship.
The Chinese ship left the Russian port of Ust-Luga on Nov. 15 and was in the areas where the cable damages occurred, according to traffic data, which showed other ships to have been in the areas too.
One cable running between Sweden and Lithuania
was cut
on Sunday and another one between Finland and Germany was severed less than 24 hours later on Monday.
The breaches happened in Sweden’s exclusive economic zone and Swedish prosecutors started a preliminary investigation on Tuesday on suspicion of possible sabotage.
Swedish Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin told Reuters on Tuesday that the country’s armed forces and coast guard had picked up ship movements that corresponded with the interruption of two telecoms cables in the Baltic Sea.
A Chinese government spokesperson told a daily news briefing on Wednesday that it always required its vessels to abide by relevant laws and regulations.
“We also attach great importance to the protection of seabed infrastructure and, together with the international community, we are actively promoting the construction and protection of submarine cables and other global information infrastructures,” the spokesperson said.
Russia dismissed on Wednesday any suggestion that it had been involved in damaging the two cables.
European governments accused Russia on Tuesday of escalating hybrid attacks on Ukraine’s Western allies, but stopped short of directly accusing Russia of destroying the cables.
Asked about the matter on Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a regular news briefing: “It is quite absurd to continue to blame Russia for everything without any reason.”
Pakistan’s ex-PM Imran Khan gets bail in state gifts case, his party says
- “If the official order is received today, his family and supporters will approach the authorities for his release,” one of his party’s lawyers, Salman Safdar, told journalists
- Safdar added that, as far as he knew, Khan had been granted bail or acquitted in all the cases he faced
ISLAMABAD: A court in Pakistan granted bail to jailed former prime minister Imran Khan in a case relating to the illegal sale of state gifts, his party said on Wednesday.
Khan, 71, has been in prison since August 2023, but it was not immediately clear if the embattled politician would be released given that he faces a number of other charges too, including inciting violence against the state.
“If the official order is received today, his family and supporters will approach the authorities for his release,” one of his party’s lawyers, Salman Safdar, told journalists. Safdar added that, as far as he knew, Khan had been granted bail or acquitted in all the cases he faced.
However, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, a member of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, told Geo TV Khan lacked bail in cases in which he is charged with planning riots by his supporters in the wake of his arrest in May last year.
Khan denies any wrongdoing, and alleges all the cases registered against him since he was removed from power in 2022 are politically motivated to keep him in jail.
The case in which he was granted bail on Wednesday by the Islamabad High Court is known as the Toshakhana, or state treasury case.
It has multiple versions and charges all revolving around allegations that Khan and his wife illegally procured and then sold gifts worth over 140 million rupees ($501,000) in state possession, which he received during his 2018-22 premiership.
Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, were both handed a 14-year sentence on those charges, following a three-year sentence handed to him in late 2023 in another version of the same case.
Their sentences have been suspended in appeals at the high court.
The gifts included diamond jewelry and seven watches, six of them Rolexes — the most expensive being valued at 85 million rupees ($305,000).
Khan’s wife was released last month after being in the same prison as Khan for months.
US defense chief regrets China’s decision not to meet during Southeast Asian security talks
- The decision by Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun “is a setback for the whole region,” Austin said after the first day of meetings
- “It affects the region because the region really wants to see us, two significant players in the region, two significant powers, talk to each other, and that reassures the entire region”
VIENTIANE, Laos: US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin expressed regret Wednesday that his Chinese counterpart chose not to hold talks with him during meetings of Southeast Asian defense chiefs in Laos, calling it a setback for the entire region.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is holding security talks in Vientiane at a time of increasing maritime disputes with China and as the transition to a new US president approaches.
The decision by Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun “is a setback for the whole region,” Austin said after the first day of meetings.
“It’s unfortunate. It affects the region because the region really wants to see us, two significant players in the region, two significant powers, talk to each other, and that reassures the entire region,” he said.
There was no immediate comment from China on its decision not to meet with Austin.
Austin just wrapped up meetings in Australia with officials there and with Japan’s defense minister. They pledged to support ASEAN and expressed their “serious concern about destabilizing actions in the East and South China Seas, including dangerous conduct by the People’s Republic of China against Philippines and other coastal state vessels.”
In addition to the United States and China, other nations attending the two-day ASEAN meetings from outside Southeast Asia include Japan, South Korea, India and Australia.
Along with the Philippines, ASEAN members Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei have competing claims with China in the South China Sea, which Beijing claims almost entirely as its own territory.
Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos are the other ASEAN members.
Opening the talks, Laotian Defense Minister Chansamone Chanyalath said he hoped for productive meetings that would “become a standard for us to continue ASEAN’s cooperation in defense, including how to handle, thwart, and manage security challenges in the present and in the future.”
As China has grown more assertive in pushing its territorial claims in recent years, ASEAN members and Beijing have been negotiating a code of conduct to govern behavior in the sea, but progress has been slow.
Officials have agreed to try to complete the code by 2026, but talks have been hampered by thorny issues, including disagreements over whether the pact should be binding.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who has called for more urgency in the code of conduct negotiations, complained at a meeting of ASEAN leaders last month that his country “continues to be subject to harassment and intimidation” by China’s actions, which he said violated international law.
Chinese and Philippine vessels have clashed repeatedly this year, and Vietnam in October charged that Chinese forces assaulted its fishermen in disputed areas in the South China Sea. China has also sent patrol vessels to areas that Indonesia and Malaysia claim as their exclusive economic zones.
At the meeting of ASEAN leaders last month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington was “very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes.”
He pledged that the US would “continue to support freedom of navigation, and freedom of overflight in the Indo Pacific.”
In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said US and other non-regional militaries present in the sea were the main source of instability.
“The increasing military deployment and activities in the South China Sea by the US and a few other non-regional countries, stoking confrontation and creating tensions, are the greatest source of instability for peace and stability in the South China Sea,” Mao said.
It is not clear how the incoming administration of US President-elect Donald Trump will address the South China Sea situation.
After Austin’s meetings in Australia, the Defense Department said the US, Australia and Japan had agreed to expand joint drills and announced a defense consultation body among the three countries’ forces to strengthen their cooperation.
When asked Tuesday while in the Philippines about whether the strong US defense support would continue for the country under Trump, Austin said he would not speculate.
Although Austin failed to hold talks with Chinese Defense Minister Dong, Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani was expected to meet with Dong and express concerns about Beijing’s military activities, Japan’s NHK public television reported.
Japan has protested that a Chinese military aircraft violated its airspace briefly in August, and in September expressed “serious concerns” after a Chinese aircraft carrier and two destroyers sailed between two Japanese islands.
The meetings are also likely to touch on tensions in the Korean Peninsula, the Russia-Ukraine war, and wars in the Middle East. They are also expected to discuss other issues, including natural disasters, cybersecurity and terrorism.
Another thorny regional issue is the civil war and humanitarian crisis in ASEAN member Myanmar. The group’s credibility has been severely tested by the war in Myanmar, where the army ousted an elected government in 2021, and fighting has continued with pro-democracy guerillas and ethnic rebels.
More than a year into an offensive initiated by three militias and joined by other resistance groups, observers estimate the military controls less than half the country.
Myanmar military rulers have been barred from ASEAN meetings since late 2021, but this year the country has been represented by high-level bureaucrats, including at the summit in October.
