LONDON: The British government was on Thursday expected to extend a nationwide lockdown for another three weeks, amid signs the coronavirus outbreak is peaking but also warnings of more deaths to come.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who is standing in for Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he recuperates after spending a week in hospital with COVID-19, met with ministers and officials to finalise the plans.
An announcement is due later but the government has already said that, with the death toll approaching 13,000 and still rising, now is not the time to rescind the stay-at-home order imposed on March 23.
"It is too early to make a change," Health Secretary Matt Hancock told BBC television on Thursday.
"Whilst we've seen a flattening of the number of cases, and thankfully a flattening of the number of deaths, that hasn't started to come down yet. And as far as I'm concerned that is still far too high."
He said the vast majority of Britons had followed rules not to go out except for exercise and to buy essential items.
"I don't want to put all of that good effort to waste," said Hancock, who himself has also had coronavirus but recovered quickly.
"Because if we just released all the measures then this virus would run rampant once again, and we can't let that happen."
He did not say how long the lockdown would continue, but the law states that the measures must be reviewed every 21 days.
England's chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, said Wednesday that the outbreak was peaking but warned the numbers of deaths would keep rising.
Health ministry figures show 12,868 people in hospital in Britain have so far died, making it one of the worst affected countries in the global outbreak.
The main opposition Labour party supports extending the lockdown, but has called for the government to set out its exit strategy -- a demand ministers say is premature.
There are particular concerns about the slow expansion of testing for coronavirus, something many people believe is crucial to easing the confinement measures.
Professor Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London and a government adviser, said Thursday there must be a "single-minded emphasis in government" on scaling up testing and contact tracing.
Speaking to BBC radio, he added that even then, "it's not going to be going back to normal".
"We will have to maintain some form of social distancing, a significant level of social distancing, probably indefinitely until we have a vaccine available."
The government says it currently has capacity to test 35,000 people a day, but wants to reach 100,000 by the end of the month.
Among the dead are 27 staff who work for the state-run National Health Service (NHS), Hancock confirmed.
They include 28-year-old pregnant nurse, Mary Agyeiwaa Agyapong, who died on Sunday.
The baby, a little girl, was delivered by caesarean section before she died and is said by the hospital to be doing well.
"We are all deeply touched and moved by deaths of nurses like this," Hancock said.
But healthcare staff have repeatedly warned they are not getting the protective equipment they need, amid shortages of gowns, gloves, masks and visors.
Dave Prentis, head of Britain's biggest trade union Unison, warned that "for all the warm words and promises about supplies of protective equipment, the situation appears to be getting worse, not better".
In a rare piece of good news, a World War II veteran doing sponsored laps of his garden has now raised more than £12 million ($15 million, 13.8 million euros) for the NHS.
Captain Tom Moore, 99, completed 100 laps of his 25-metre (82-foot) garden -- using a walking frame -- before his 100th birthday at the end of the month.
UK set to extend coronavirus lockdown
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UK set to extend coronavirus lockdown
- "It is too early to make a change," Health Secretary Matt Hancock told BBC
Italy blames badly drafted ICC warrant for Libyan suspect’s release
- Justice Minister Carlo Nordio told parliament Wednesday that Najim had been arrested on a warrant “that I do not hesitate to define as characterised by inaccuracies “
- Najim was freed after an appeals court refused to validate his arrest
ROME: Italy’s government shifted blame Wednesday for its much-criticized release of a Libyan war crimes suspect to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which it said had presented a poorly written arrest warrant.
Osama Almasri Najim, the head of Libya’s judicial police, was arrested in the northern Italian city of Turin on January 19 on an ICC warrant, only to be released and flown home to Tripoli two days later on an Italian air force plane.
Opposition parties have denounced the decision to free a man wanted on charges including murder, rape and torture relating to his management of Tripoli’s Mitiga detention center.
Justice Minister Carlo Nordio told parliament Wednesday that Najim had been arrested on a warrant “that I do not hesitate to define as characterised by inaccuracies, omissions, discrepancies and contradictory conclusions.”
Najim was freed after an appeals court refused to validate his arrest.
The justice minister said the court had noted discrepancies concerning dates within the arrest warrant, with crimes attributed to Najim in places dated to February 2011 and others to February 2015.
“An irreconcilable contradiction emerges regarding an essential element of the criminal conduct of the arrested person, regarding the time of the crime committed,” said Nordio, citing “patent, gross and serious contradictions” within the warrant.
The ICC six days later sent a “corrected version” of the arrest warrant, Nordio said, including the dissenting opinion of a judge who had questioned a lack of jurisdiction by the court.
AFP asked for comment from the ICC, but did not immediately receive a response.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni revealed last week that she, Nordio and Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi were under investigation over the case.
A complaint had been made to a Rome prosecutor, who passed it onto the special court that considers cases against ministers.
Elly Schlein, leader of the center-left opposition Democratic Party, said Wednesday that Italy’s “international credibility has been tarnished” by the case.
And she called again for Meloni to come to parliament herself to explain what she said was the government’s “deliberate choice... to free and escort home a Libyan torturer.”
“What kind of country do we want to be, colleagues? On the side of the tortured or on the side of the torturers?” Schlein asked in parliament.
Piantedosi spoke to MPs shortly after Nordio, where he repeated that once Najim had been released from custody, he was deemed too dangerous to remain in Italy.
He denied suggestions that Italy had bowed to pressure from Libya in repatriating Najim.
Some opposition politicians have alleged the suspect was sent home to avoid jeopardizing relations with Libya.
Italy has a controversial agreement dating from 2017 with the UN-backed Libyan government in Tripoli in which Rome provides training and funding to the Libyan coast guard for help deterring the departures of migrants, or returning those already at sea back to Libya.
“I deny in the most categorical manner that... the government received any act or communication that could even remotely be considered a form of undue pressure,” Piantedosi said.
Belgian police hunting two suspects after Brussels metro shooting
- Police initially launched a manhunt in the tunnels of the metro system
- Broadcaster VRT said the shooting was probably drug-related and said the shooters
BRUSSELS: Belgian police were hunting two suspects on Wednesday after a shooting near the Brussels South international railway station, the city’s prosecutor’s office said.
Nobody was injured in the shooting, which happened around 6.00 am (0500 GMT), at the Clemenceau metro station in central Brussels, prosecutors said, adding there were no indications of a terrorist motive in the incident.
Police initially launched a manhunt in the tunnels of the metro system, which was partially closed after two men carrying machine guns were seen fleeing into the Clemenceau station.
Broadcaster VRT said the shooting was probably drug-related and said the shooters had aimed at one person but had missed.
VRT showed on its website images of two people walking into Clemenceau metro station in central Brussels and opening fire with automatic weapons. The station along with several others around the station were shut for hours after the incident.
Another video showed a large group of heavily armed police assembling at the Clemenceau station, as a massive search for the suspects got underway.
The incident crippled traffic on the heavily used metro system in Brussels, which hosts many European Union institutions and NATO’s headquarters.
By 2 p.m. (1300 GMT) the whole city metro system had reopened, including the stations around the Gare du Midi international train station, the arrival point for Eurostar trains from Paris and London.
Ukraine brings back 150 POWs in latest swap with Russia, Zelensky says
- “Some of the boys were held captive for more than two years,” Zelensky said
KYIV: Ukraine has brought back 150 troops from Russian captivity, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday, announcing the latest prisoner swap with Russia.
“All of them are from different sectors of the front... Some of the boys were held captive for more than two years,” he said on the Telegram messaging app.
Frenchman returns home after Indonesian death row reprieve: airport source
- Serge Atlaoui, 61, was to be driven from the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris to court and then on to jail
- Atlaoui’s lawyer Richard Sedillot has said he would work to have his client’s sentence “adapted” so that the father of four could be released
Atlaoui’s lawyer Richard Sedillot has said he would work to have his client’s sentence “adapted” so that the father of four could be released
BOBIGNY, France: A Frenchman reprieved after 18 years on death row in Indonesia for alleged drug offenses landed back in France on Wednesday, an airport source said.
Serge Atlaoui, 61, was to be driven from the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris to court and then on to jail, according to a source close to the case and the prosecutor’s office in the nearby town of Bobigny.
Under an agreement last month between both countries for his transfer, Jakarta has left it to the French government to grant him either clemency, amnesty or a reduced sentence.
France abolished capital punishment in 1981.
A prosecutor in Bobigny would inform Atlaoui “of his imprisonment in France in execution of his sentence,” the public prosecutor’s office there said before he landed.
He will then immediately be taken to prison, it added.
Atlaoui’s lawyer Richard Sedillot has said he would work to have his client’s sentence “adapted” so that the father of four could be released.
Atlaoui was arrested in 2005 at a factory in a Jakarta suburb where dozens of kilogrammes of drugs were discovered, with Indonesian authorities accusing him of being a “chemist.”
A welder from Metz in northeastern France, he has always denied being a drug trafficker, saying that he was installing machinery in what he thought was an acrylic factory.
Atlaoui had left Jakarta for Paris on Tuesday evening on board a KLM flight via Amsterdam.
His return was made possible after an agreement between French Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin and his Indonesian counterpart, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, on January 24.
In the agreement, Jakarta said it had decided not to execute Atlaoui and authorized his return on “humanitarian grounds” because he was ill.
Atlaoui was tight-lipped and wore a face mask at a news conference at Jakarta’s main airport, after he was driven there in a black van from the capital’s Salemba prison and handed over to French police officers.
Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest drug laws and has executed foreigners in the past.
The Southeast Asian country has in recent weeks released half a dozen high-profile detainees, including a Filipino mother on death row and the last five members of the so-called “Bali Nine” drug ring.
According to French association Ensemble contre la peine de mort (“Together Against the Death Penalty“), at least four other French citizens are on death row around the world: two in Morocco, one in China, and a woman in Algeria.
Philippine lawmakers vote to impeach VP Sara Duterte
- Duterte is first sitting vice president to face impeachment in Philippine history
- Final decision to remove her from office is now with the upper house
MANILA: The Philippine House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte, following a petition signed by the majority of legislators.
House of Representatives Secretary-General Reginald Velasco told a plenary meeting of the lower house that more than two-thirds of lawmakers had endorsed a complaint seeking to remove Duterte from office.
“The total number of House members who verified and swore before me this impeachment complaint is 215 House members,” he said.
In the Philippines, an impeachment complaint requires at least one-third of support from the 306-member House of Representatives before it can be transmitted to the upper house, where the 23 senators would serve as jurors in a process that could result in Duterte’s removal from office and her lifetime disqualification from holding office.
“There is a motion to direct the secretary-general to immediately endorse to the Senate … the motion is approved. The secretary-general is so directed,” House Speaker Martin Romualdez said.
Duterte is the first sitting vice president to face impeachment in the country’s history. She has been embroiled in a row with Marcos, following the collapse of a powerful alliance between their families that brought them a landslide victory in the 2022 election.
She has faced at least four impeachment complaints by a number of legislators and activist groups over a range of issues, including a death threat that she publicly made against Marcos, his wife and the House speaker last year, betrayal of public trust, as well as misusing millions of dollars in public funds.
The daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte has consistently denied wrongdoing, describing the moves against her as a political vendetta.
She is expected to stay in office until the Senate delivers its judgment. A trial date has not yet been set.
