Saudi Arabia detains three senior members of royal family - BBC News

Three senior members of Saudi Arabia's royal family, including the king's brother, have been arrested for unexplained reasons.

Two of the men were among the kingdom's most influential figures.

The detentions are seen as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman tightening his grip on power.

In 2017 dozens of Saudi royal figures, ministers and businessmen were confined to Riyadh's Ritz-Carlton hotel after the crown prince ordered their arrests.

Mohammed bin Salman, a controversial figure, has been considered the de facto ruler of the kingdom after he was named crown prince by his father in 2016.

The detentions were first revealed by the Wall Street Journal newspaper, which said they took place early on Friday.

The three men arrested are the king's younger brother Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, former crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef, and a royal cousin, Prince Nawaf bin Nayef.

Mohammed bin Nayef was interior minister until he was removed from his role and placed under house arrest by Mohammed Bin Salman in 2017. In his previous role, he was seen as a close and trusted partner by US intelligence officials.

Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, 78, is the king's only surviving full brother. In 2018 he made comments seen as critical of the crown prince to protesters in London but later said he had been misinterpreted.

Both men were seen as potential rivals to the 34-year-old crown prince, who is first in line for the throne.

Guards arrived at the homes of the royals wearing masks and dressed in black, and searched the properties, the Wall Street Journal says.

This is a significant move by Saudi Arabia's powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to consolidate his position. Prince Ahmed bin Abdelaziz is one of the last surviving sons of the country's founder, King Abdelaziz, and widely respected amongst older members of the ruling family.

The other senior prince, Mohammed bin Nayef, was next in line to the throne before he was suddenly replaced three years ago. Before that, as interior minister, he was credited with defeating the al-Qaeda insurgency that gripped Saudi Arabia in the 2000s.

There has been no immediate official confirmation or denial of the story published in the US media but palace affairs in Saudi Arabia are often shrouded in secrecy.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman won international praise in 2016 when he promised a series of economic and social reforms to the deeply-conservative country.

However he has been embroiled in a series of scandals, including the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul in 2018.

He has also been criticised over the continuing conflict in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia backs pro-government forces, and the harsh treatment of women's rights activists. despite the lifting of some restrictions including the right to drive.

In recent days Saudi Arabia has been taking measures to contain the spread of the deadly new coronavirus.

Foreign pilgrims have been prevented from entering the country to perform Umrah, or pilgrimage, and there are questions over whether the hugely important annual Hajj will go ahead this year,

On Thursday Islam's holiest city Mecca was emptied to allow a deep clean.

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2020-03-07 09:11:15Z
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Kabul Shooting Kills Dozens At Shiite Memorial; Taliban Deny Responsibility - NPR

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Emergency response workers load an injured man into an ambulance after an attack Friday in the Afghan capital, Kabul, left more than two dozen people dead. Rahmat Gul/AP hide caption

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Gunmen opened fire on a memorial ceremony Friday in Kabul, killing at least 27 people and wounding dozens more in the first major attack in the Afghan capital since the U.S. signed a peace framework with the Taliban late last week. Several prominent politicians, including the country's chief executive and recent presidential candidate, Abdullah Abdullah, were in the audience but escaped unharmed.

A spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of the Interior said the gunmen retreated to a nearby building, where they were killed during an hours-long standoff with security forces.

It is unclear whether a larger group is responsible for the violence.

The Taliban, which have launched a wave of attacks against Afghan forces across the country in recent days, denied any connection with the assault Friday. Given the focus of the targeted ceremony — which marked 25 years since the death of Abdul Ali Mazari, a leader of the country's Shiite minority — suspicion has fallen on the Islamic State, the Sunni militant group that targeted a similar event last year.

"This situation looks endless in our country," one of the people injured in the attack told local media. "There are political games, but only the poor people pay the price — how long will this continue?"

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said he called Abdullah, his erstwhile rival for the presidency, and Karim Khalili, the chief of Afghanistan's high peace council. Khalili had been delivering an address at the ceremony when loud gunfire erupted, followed by screams. He emerged from the attack unscathed.

"The attack is a crime against humanity and against the national unity of Afghanistan," Ghani said in a statement posted to Twitter.

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For Afghans, the attack caps a bloody week across the country.

Just six days ago, the U.S. and Taliban announced that they had signed an agreement, offering hope for peace between the two longtime adversaries. The deal outlined a 14-month timeline for the withdrawal of the thousands of Americans still stationed in Afghanistan, which would bring an end to the longest war in U.S. history.

The U.S. troop drawdown is partly conditioned on the Taliban fulfilling their promises to combat and prevent the spread of terrorist groups such as ISIS and al-Qaida.

But trouble quickly followed, as Ghani pushed back against the deal's proposal for a prisoner exchange, and the Taliban — after a seven-day reprieve — redoubled their deadly attacks on Afghan troops throughout the country. The violence escalated to the point that the U.S. said it carried out a "defensive strike" on the Taliban, seeking to support its Afghan allies at a military checkpoint earlier this week.

Now Afghanistan must cope with yet another spasm of violence — this time in its capital, and so far with the assailants unknown.

"We extend our condolences to the families of the victims & thank the Afghan security forces for swift response," Ross Wilson, the U.S. charge d'affaires in Kabul, tweeted. "We stand with Afghanistan for peace."

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2020-03-06 17:50:40Z
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Coronavirus cases surpass 100,000 worldwide while US deaths top 14 - CNBC

Fire fighters and municipality workers with protective suits disinfect the streets, buses and taxies as a precaution to the coronavirus (Covid-19) in Tehran, Iran on March 06, 2020.

Fatemeh Bahrami | Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

COVID-19 cases surpassed 100,000 worldwide on Friday as the new flu-like coronavirus continues to spread outside of China, the epicenter of the outbreak.

The total number of cases now stands at 100,055 as of 8 a.m. ET on Friday, according to data compiled by John Hopkins. The majority of the cases are in mainland China, followed by South Korea, Iran and Italy. In the United States, there are at least 233 cases and 14 deaths, according to John Hopkins. 

At least 3,398 people have died due to the virus, which emerged a little over two months ago.

On Thursday, the World Health Organization called on all nations to "pull out all the stops" to fight the COVID-19 outbreak as it continues to spread across dozens of countries.

"This epidemic can be pushed back but only with a coordinated and comprehensive approach that engages the entire machinery of government," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing at the agency's headquarters in Geneva. "We're calling on every country to act with speed, scale and clear-minded determination."

Tedros said world health officials are "deeply concerned" about the increasing number of countries reporting cases, especially those with weaker health-care systems. He's also worried that some countries aren't taking this seriously enough or have decided that there's nothing they can do to curb local outbreaks.

World health officials said Tuesday the mortality rate for COVID-19 is 3.4% globally, higher than previous estimates of about 2%.

Health officials have said the respiratory disease is capable of spreading through human-to-human contact, droplets carried through sneezing and coughing and germs left on inanimate objects. 

The COVID-19 epidemic has not yet met world health officials' designation of a global pandemic that spreads far and wide throughout the world.

Tedros has said WHO hasn't declared a pandemic in part because most cases of COVID-19 were still traced to known contacts or clusters of cases, and there wasn't any "evidence as yet that the virus is spreading freely in communities."

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2020-03-06 14:35:42Z
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Donald Trump calls off trip to disease control agency over staffer’s ‘Covid-19’ - Yahoo News

President Donald Trump’s visit to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta has been called off because of concerns that a staff member may have been infected by Covid-19.

Mr Trump told reporters that concerns were raised Thursday about “one person who was potentially infected” who worked at the CDC.

“Because of the one person they didn’t want me going,” he added, explaining why a planned stop at the agency, which is working with state and local officials to help combat the spread of the new virus, was left off his schedule.

A Centres for Disease Control and Prevention logo at the agency’s federal headquarters in Atlanta (David Goldman/AP)

Mr Trump said the person has since tested negative for the new virus.

He said he still hopes to visit the agency.

Covid-19 so far has killed 12 people in the US, most of them in Washington state.

Mr Trump had planned to sign an 8.3 billion US dollar coronavirus response funding bill at the CDC.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar looks on as President Donald Trump shows a spending bill to combat Covid-19 (Evan Vucci/AP)

Instead he signed it at the White House before his departure to travel to view tornado damage in Tennessee.

The White House said in a statement that Mr Trump would no longer visit the agency because he “does not want to interfere with the CDC’s mission to protect the health and welfare of their people and the agency”.

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2020-03-06 14:45:00Z
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No new coronavirus cases reported in China's Hubei province in 24 hours, excluding Wuhan - Fox News

For the first time since the outbreak began, zero new cases of the coronavirus were reported in China’s Hubei province in 24 hours as of Thursday – excluding the city of Wuhan.

Chinese health authorities reported on Friday that while there were 143 new COVID-19 cases confirmed throughout the country, there were no new infections elsewhere in wider Hubei as of March 5, The Wall Street Journal reports, marking a notable first.

Meanwhile, schools in other provinces that have not reported new coronavirus cases in numerous days have begun to announce reopening dates, according to Reuters.

FIRST CORONAVIRUS CASE CONFIRMED AT VATICAN: REPORT

Medical workers attend a a morning conference outside a tent on the square in front of the Wuhan Living Room Temporary hospital in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province in this February photo.  (Zhang Junjian via AP)

The northwestern Qinghai province, which had not seen any new infections for 29 days as of March 5, said that schools will tentatively reopen with staggered opening dates between March 11 and March 20. In southwestern Guizhou, schools are said to begin reopening from March 16.

Now, some Chinese authorities are focusing on fighting potential infections from abroad.

In Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, officials have all sworn to quarantine travelers arriving from other nations that have been hard hit by the ongoing outbreak. Reuters reports that travelers from South Korea, Japan, Iran and Italy have been listed by Beijing as high-risk.

CLICK HERE FOR FOX NEWS' CONTINUING CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE

As of Friday morning, the viral disease has reportedly infected at least 97,993 people in about 83 countries and claimed the lives of 3,383 others. Among the total count, there are at least 80,710 cases of COVID-19 in China.

The pneumonia-like novel coronavirus first originated in the eastern city of Wuhan in December 2019.

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2020-03-06 15:01:38Z
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Tensions escalate in Asia over coronavirus - Al Jazeera English

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1. Tensions escalate in Asia over coronavirus  Al Jazeera English
2. Coronavirus: Japan and South Korea in quarantine row  BBC News
3. Coronavirus quarantine plans ignite row between South Korea and Japan  The Guardian
4. India, South Korea report new coronavirus cases: Live updates  Al Jazeera English
5. Coronavirus, Stock Markets, Blued: Your Friday Briefing  The New York Times
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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2020-03-06 12:55:28Z
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Coronavirus Cases Exceed 100,000 as Countries Struggle to Contain Spread - The Wall Street Journal

Travelers pass soldiers conducting disinfection work at an airport in Daegu, South Korea, on Friday.

Photo: kim kyung-hoon/Reuters

By

Lucy Craymer

Lucy Craymer
The Wall Street Journal
• Biography
• @lucy_craymer
• Lucy.Craymer@wsj.com

Updated March 6, 2020 8:54 am ET

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases globally topped 100,000 on Friday, as infections outside of China continued to mount and many countries and cities struggled to get the epidemic under control.

There were 100,329 confirmed cases of the virus world-wide, more than a fifth of which were in countries other than China, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. South Korea, the second worst-hit country, reported another jump in infections, bringing its tally to 6,593. The novel coronavirus is now in around 90 countries, less than three months after it was first identified in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December.

High-Speed Trains, International Flights: How the Coronavirus Spread

Chinese health authorities on Friday reported 143 new infections, but said that for the first time there were no new cases in the wider Hubei province outside of its capital of Wuhan in the previous day. The vast majority of China’s 80,555 cases have been in Hubei province, and authorities in late January locked down Wuhan and neighboring cities to help contain the disease’s spread.

Globally, 3,406 individuals have died from the illness known as Covid-19 and 55,694 have recovered. In the U.S., there have been 233 confirmed cases and 12 deaths, mostly in the state of Washington, where some schools in the Seattle area will be closed for two weeks and companies have told employees to work from home.

On Friday, a top Hong Kong university released research that surmised the “fatality risk” for symptomatic Covid-19 patients was 1.4%, based on data its researchers analyzed from the city of Wuhan.

That is lower than the 3.4% mortality rate cited earlier this week by the World Health Organization, which was calculated from the number of deaths relative to the total number of confirmed infections.

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U.S. health officials, in contrast, have said they think the mortality rate for the novel coronavirus is likely between 0.1% and 1%, in part because there could be many unreported cases or asymptomatic carriers of the virus.

Gabriel Leung, dean of the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong, said that the estimated 1.4% mortality rate among people who showed symptoms means Covid-19 is deadlier than the 2009 swine flu epidemic, though less so than the 1918 influenza pandemic.

And given the large and rising global tally of coronavirus infections, “that means a lot of lives,” he added.

Dr. Leung’s organization—which is a WHO Collaborating Center for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control—calculated the disease’s mortality rate from its own estimates of how many people in Wuhan had symptoms of the disease before Feb. 25, rather than using case numbers reported by the Chinese government, which some experts suspect are understated. During the period they studied, there were 2,080 reported deaths.

The Latest on the Coronavirus

• Johns Hopkins: 100,329 cases of infection world-wide, 3,406 deaths
• U.S. has 233 cases, 12 people have died
• South Korea reports 6,593 cases

On Friday, global stocks fell again and investors piled into safe government bonds on rising expectations that central banks will take more decisive action to cushion the economic blow from the coronavirus epidemic.

A day earlier, a top WHO official warned that many countries weren’t doing enough to help contain the epidemic. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director general, said that while the bulk of coronavirus cases are currently concentrated in a few countries, other governments need to respond more forcefully to the global spread by activating emergency plans, educating the public, readying hospitals and increasing their capacity for testing for the virus.

A worker disinfects the Hankou Salvation Church in Wuhan, China, on Friday.

Photo: str/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

“This epidemic can be pushed back, but only with a collective, coordinated and comprehensive approach that engages the entire machinery of government,” Mr. Ghebreyesus told a briefing at the U.N. health agency’s Geneva headquarters late Thursday. “This is not a drill,” he added.

Other countries in Asia reported higher case numbers on Friday. Japanese authorities said there were 31 new cases, taking the country’s total to 348. Of those, 35 showed no symptoms.

A report from the Asian Development Bank on Friday estimated the coronavirus epidemic could reduce the world’s economic output by $77 billion-$347 billion, or 0.1%-0.4%, of global gross domestic product.

It said the virus will have a significant impact on developing Asian economies through numerous channels, including sharp declines in domestic demand, lower tourism and business travel, trade and production linkages, supply disruptions and health effects.

Coronavirus

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• Coronavirus Live Coverage

Write to Lucy Craymer at Lucy.Craymer@wsj.com

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2020-03-06 13:54:00Z
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