Washington: President Donald Trump on Monday made the surprise announcement that he is taking hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug that his own government experts say is not suitable for fighting the novel coronavirus.
Trump, noting that he has tested negative for the virus and shows no symptoms, said he’d been taking the drug as a preventative measure for about a week and a half.
“I take a pill every day,” he said, adding that he combines this with zinc.
Asked why, he said: “Because I think it’s good. I’ve heard a lot of good stories.”
Trump has shown interest for weeks in promoting the use of hydroxychloroquine, even if some doctors think it does not work for coronavirus patients and US government regulators warn it has “not been shown to be safe.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it’s “not a good idea” for Trump to be taking the drug as a potential treatment for the coronavirus.
“I would rather he not be taking something that has not been approved by the scientists, especially in his age group and in his, shall we say, weight group, which is morbidly obese, they say,” Pelosi said during an appearance on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.”
“So, I think that it’s not a good idea,” she added.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called Trump’s decision to take the drug “reckless.”
“It gives people false hope, has people avoid real medical attention, and can actually cause them trouble. It is just dangerous what he did,” Schumer said on MSNBC.
Trump’s latest remarks came out of the blue, immediately grabbing headlines on a day when US deaths from COVID-19 topped 90,000 people — almost a third of the total world toll.
“You’d be surprised at how many people are taking it, especially the front-line workers, before you catch it. The front-line workers — many, many are taking it. I happen to be taking it,” he let slip to reporters attending a White House meeting devoted to the struggling restaurant industry.
“I’m taking it, hydroxychloroquine, right now, yeah. A couple of weeks ago, I started taking it,” he said.
Trump has often played down the dangers of coronavirus, including last week when he said it threatened only a small number of people. He also pointedly refuses to wear a mask, despite federal recommendations to do so and the fact that most of his staff have taken to covering their faces in public.
A personal valet to Trump has tested positive for the coronavirus, as has Katie Miller, Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary.
Trump said his use of the medicine was approved by the White House physician, Sean Conley. However, Trump insisted that he, not the doctor, took the first step.
“I asked him, ‘what do you think?’ He said, ‘if you’d like it.’ I said ‘yeah, I’d like it.’“
Conley later issued a statement saying that he had agreed to Trump using the anti-viral drug “after numerous discussions” between them about the pros and cons.
“We concluded the potential benefit from treatment outweighed the relative risk,” Conley said.
Trump said he has received many “positive calls” from people, whom he did not identify, telling him about the malaria drug. He mentioned a letter he’d received from a New York doctor, also unidentified, who reported giving the medicine to hundreds of patients and “I haven’t lost one.”
By contrast, the government’s Food and Drug Administration warns against giving hydroxychloroquine for either prevention or treatment of the coronavirus, noting reported side effects including “serious heart rhythm problems in patients with COVID-19.” Only emergency use is authorized under temporary rules.
Earlier this month, a medical paper out of New York suggested that combining hydroxychloroquine with the dietary supplement zinc sulfate, which has antiviral properties, could create a more effective treatment against coronavirus.
But Matthew Heinz, an Arizona doctor who served under Barack Obama’s government, said medicines like hydroxychloroquine are not “benign” and open for unregulated use.
“I cannot stress enough how reckless it is to encourage anybody to take hydroxychloroquine or any other unproven remedy,” he said in a statement.
Trump signalled, as he has throughout the crisis, that there was nothing to lose by trying possible treatments.
“It seems to have an impact, and maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t but if it doesn’t, you’re not going to get sick or die,” Trump said. “I take a pill every day. At some point I’ll stop.”
The president said again on Monday that he showed “zero symptoms.”
“Every couple days they want to test me, you know, for obvious reasons. I mean I am the president, so they want to test me. I don’t want to be tested but they want to test me,” he said. “I’ve shown always negative.”
Trump says he is taking hydroxychloroquine
https://arab.news/rtbxm
Trump says he is taking hydroxychloroquine
- Trump: “I’m taking it, hydroxychloroquine, right now, yeah. A couple of weeks ago, I started taking it,”
- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: I think that it’s not a good idea
France asks Indonesia to transfer national on death row
- Indonesia has in recent weeks released half a dozen high-profile detainees
- French diplomats have acknowledged that talks were underway for the transfer of Serge Atlaoui
Indonesia has in recent weeks released half a dozen high-profile detainees, including a Filipino mum on death row and the last five members of the so-called “Bali Nine” drug ring.
French diplomats have acknowledged that talks were underway for the transfer of Serge Atlaoui, a 61-year-old Frenchman arrested in 2005 at a drugs factory outside the capital Jakarta.
The Indonesian government has now confirmed it received the official transfer request, which will be discussed in early January.
“We have received a formal letter requesting the transfer of Serge Atlaoui,” senior law and human rights minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra said.
The French embassy in Jakarta declined AFP’s request for comment.
Father-of-four Atlaoui has maintained his innocence, claiming that he was installing machinery in what he thought was an acrylics plant.
He was initially sentenced to life in prison, but the Supreme Court in 2007 increased the sentence to death on appeal.
Atlaoui was held on the island of Nusakambangan in Central Java, known as Indonesia’s “Alcatraz,” following the death sentence, but he was transferred to the city of Tangerang, west of Jakarta, in 2015 ahead of his appeal.
That year, he was due to be executed alongside eight other drug offenders but won a temporary reprieve after Paris stepped up pressure, with Indonesian authorities agreeing to let an outstanding appeal run its course.
In the appeal, Atlaoui’s lawyers argued that then-president Joko Widodo did not properly consider his case as he rejected Atlaoui’s plea for clemency — typically a death row convict’s last chance to avoid the firing squad.
The court, however, upheld its previous decision that it did not have the jurisdiction to hear a challenge over the clemency plea.
Atlaoui’s lawyer, Richard Sedillot, said last month that there was still “considerable hope” for a transfer.
Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) said the official request is the “penultimate step in a long fight” for those at the Paris-based organization who have campaigned for years to prevent Atlaoui’s execution.
“We are now waiting for this transfer to become a reality,” ECPM director Raphael Chenuil-Hazan said.
Earlier this month, Filipino inmate Mary Jane Veloso tearfully reunited with her family after nearly 15 years on Indonesia’s death row. She was transferred to a women’s prison in Manila where she awaits a hoped-for pardon for her drugs conviction.
Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest drug laws and has executed foreigners in the past.
At least 530 people were on death row in the Southeast Asian nation, mostly for drug-related crimes, according to data from rights group KontraS, citing official figures.
According to Indonesia’s Immigration and Corrections Ministry, more than 90 foreigners were on death row, all on drug charges, as of early November.
Despite ongoing negotiations for prisoner transfers, the Indonesian government recently signaled that it would resume executions — on hiatus since 2016 — of drug convicts on death row.
India’s former PM Manmohan Singh cremated with state honors
- Singh’s body, draped in Indian flag, was carried through the capital on a flower-decked carriage pulled by a ceremonial army truck
- Modi, who called Singh one of the nation’s ‘most distinguished leaders,’ attended the funeral, along with President Droupadi Murmu
NEW DELHI: The body of Manmohan Singh, the former Indian prime minister whose death has spark outpourings of grief at home and accolades from abroad, was cremated on Sunday on the banks of the Yamuna River in New Delhi with full state honors.
The funeral was conducted in the Sikh tradition as priests chanted hymns, after Singh’s body, draped in the Indian flag, was carried through the capital on a flower-decked carriage pulled by a ceremonial army truck.
The flag was removed and the body covered with a saffron cloth before it was placed on the pyre.
Since Singh died on Thursday at 92, many have taken up his comment near the end of his 10-year rule that “history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media.”
He was referring to a perception of weak leadership as he headed a coalition government facing numerous charges of corruption, which was thrown out of office in the 2014 election won by his successor Narendra Modi.
Modi, who called Singh one of the nation’s “most distinguished leaders” after his death, attended the funeral, along with President Droupadi Murmu and representatives of various countries. Modi’s government has decided to allocate land for Singh’s memorial.
Singh, considered the architect of India’s economic liberalization, had criticized Modi’s economic policies such as demonetization and introducing a goods and services tax.
Singh is survived by his wife and three daughters.
Congress Leader Rahul Gandhi accompanied Singh’s family on the truck to the Nigambodh Ghat cremation site after the procession from party headquarters in New Delhi, where people joined Congress party leaders and members to pay their last respects.
The leaders of the US, Canada, France, Sri Lanka, China and Pakistan were among those expressing grief at Singh’s death and highlighting his international contributions.
Regular flights between Ashgabat and Moscow suspended for a month from Dec. 30, says TASS
MOSCOW: Regular flights between Ashgabat and Moscow are to be suspended for a month from Dec. 30 after an Azerbaijan Airlines jet crashed in Kazakhstan, the state-run TASS news agency reported on Saturday citing Turkmenistan's national air carrier.
A passenger jet operated by Azerbaijan Airlines crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, after diverting from an area of southern Russia where Moscow has repeatedly used air defence systems against Ukrainian attack drones.
Turkiye’s pro-Kurd party to meet jailed PKK leader Saturday
ISTANBUL: A delegation from Turkiye’s main pro-Kurdish DEM party is due on Saturday to visit jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving life on a prison island off Istanbul, a party source said.
“The delegation left in the morning,” the source told AFP, without elaborating how they would travel to the island for security reasons.
The visit would be the party’s first in almost 10 years.
DEM’s predecessor, the HDP party, last met Ocalan in April 2015.
On Friday, the government approved DEM’s request to visit Ocalan, who founded the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) nearly half a century ago and has languished in solitary confinement since 1999.
The PKK is regarded as a “terror” organization by Turkiye and most of its Western allies, including the United States and European Union.
Detained 25 years ago in a Hollywood-style operation by Turkish security forces in Kenya after years on the run, Ocalan was sentenced to death.
He escaped the gallows when Turkiye abolished capital punishment in 2004 and is spending his remaining years in an isolation cell on the Imrali prison island south of Istanbul.
Saturday’s rare visit became possible after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s nationalist ally, MHP party leader Devlet Bahceli, invited Ocalan to come to parliament to renounce “terror,” and to disband the militant group.
Erdogan backed the appeal as a “historic window of opportunity.”
Afghan Taliban forces target ‘several points’ in Pakistan in retaliation for airstrikes – Afghan defense ministry
KABUL: Afghan Taliban forces targeted “several points” in neighboring Pakistan, Afghanistan’s defense ministry said on Saturday, days after Pakistani aircraft carried out aerial bombardment inside Afghanistan.
The statement from the Defense Ministry did not specify Pakistan but said the strikes were conducted “beyond the ‘hypothetical line’” – an expression used by Afghan authorities to refer to a border with Pakistan that they have long disputed.
“Several points beyond the hypothetical line, serving as centers and hideouts for malicious elements and their supporters who organized and coordinated attacks in Afghanistan, were targeted in retaliation from the southeastern direction of the country,” the ministry said.
Asked whether the statement referred to Pakistan, ministry spokesman Enayatullah Khowarazmi said: “We do not consider it to be the territory of Pakistan, therefore, we cannot confirm the territory, but it was on the other side of the hypothetical line.”
Afghanistan has for decades rejected the border, known as the Durand Line, drawn by British colonial authorities in the 19th century through the mountainous and often lawless tribal belt between what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan.
No details of casualties or specific areas targeted were provided. The Pakistani military’s public relations wing and a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Afghan authorities warned on Wednesday they would retaliate after the Pakistani bombardment, which they said had killed civilians. Islamabad said it had targeted hideouts of Islamist militants along the border.
The neighbors have a strained relationship, with Pakistan saying that several militant attacks that have occurred in its country have been launched from Afghan soil – a charge the Afghan Taliban denies.
