THE NET NEWS- GLOBAL

It is not the first catastrophe they have faced.

But while today’s global pandemic bears no resemblance to Syria’s almost decade-long civil war, some refugees believe their experience of violence and exile helps them deal with the anxiety sparked by the novel coronavirus.

AFP interviewed four Syrians in France who said that past ordeals such as prison and exile had primed them for coping with the lockdown, by helping them find the optimism and power to overcome the challenges.

The filmmaker

The minute France’s stay-at-home orders began, Mohammad Hijazi said he thought back to what he had learnt from living through war and the dark days of his three-month detention by the Syrian regime.

Keeping a strict routine helps, said the 31-year-old filmmaker from Damascus, who was held because of his political views in 2012-2013.

His experience has taught him the importance of community, eating healthily and expressing yourself “through singing, drawing, praying everyone has their own way, but they all work just as well”.

“I suppose that people who have lived through these types of experiences have more training on how to keep a sense of perspective,” Hijazi told AFP, speaking via a video conference app in Paris, his home since 2017.

“We immediately go back to the mechanisms we used before to manage in times of crisis,” he said.

And, he added: “We know what to stock up on.”

Lockdown has also revived memories of the loneliness he felt in his first few months living in France.

Now, with filming suspended, he is using his equipment to set up an online radio, named “Maazoul”, meaning “isolated” in Arabic.

It enables him to maintain a sense of community and stay upbeat, he said.

The web developer

Seeing war close-up does not make living through a pandemic any easier, as Yazan al-Homsy knows.

He survived more than a year under siege and bombing in the city of Homs and said the first week of the lockdown took him back to that terrifying time.

Before planes were grounded by the virus, the sound of them taking off and landing at Lyon airport near his new home began to trigger memories of fighter jets that pounded his native city.

“I’d wake up thinking, where am I? I was lost in the feeling and didn’t go out for a week,” said Homsy, whose name has been changed for this story out of concern for his family’s safety in Syria.

With “no healthcare to speak of in Syria” after years of conflict, the 34-year-old web developer and data analyst is also scared for his elderly parents.

After everything he has been through, he says the best advice he can give anxious friends in France is to remember that “their government is working for their safety” and that “they have rights”.

– Worker, student, mum –

In these troubled times, living in a democracy is also reassuring for Dunia Al Dahan from Damascus.

“There is a system, there is a state, and there are people who are expressing their views,” the mother of two young children said.

Having lived in Paris since 2014, she values the freedom to be able to speak out, citing the example of a televised interview with a French doctor who lambasted the authorities over a lack of preparedness for a pandemic.

But she acknowledged that the death toll from COVID-19 had “frightened” her and made her reassess the devastating loss in her own country.

“What really frightened me was the news of the deaths, the number of deaths,” said Dahan, 40, who co-founded the Portes Ouvertes Sur L’Art (Open Doors to Art) association supporting exiled artists and is studying for a doctorate.

“It shocked me because it made me wonder: how could we bear it when we would hear how many people were being killed in Syria?”

More than 380,000 have been killed since the conflict began nine years ago and much of the infrastructure has been shattered.

The chef

Having started from scratch once, Emad Shoshara, a Damascene chef, is not letting the string of cancelled catering contracts for the lucrative spring-summer season get him down.

In Syria he owned a transport company but he had to find a new trade when war forced him to flee.

He set up in Paris in 2015 offering Syrian cuisine and has a list of clients, from wedding planners to theatres and galleries.

But the coronavirus has wreaked havoc on businesses, big and small, all over the world.

And now Shoshara spends his days making time-lapse video recipes to share on Instagram such as his bright purple, beet-tinted version of hummus, the star of the Levantine kitchen.

“In Syrian slang, we say: every time you fall, you stand up again,” he said, preparing grilled octopus.

The 36-year-old hopes his virtual cooking will help lift viewers’ spirits.

“(Problems) are not a reason to give up,” he said.

“Remember, you are on a path in life and there are obstacles. Maybe you’ll overcome this obstacle, maybe you’ll trip over the next one. But whatever happens, just keep going.”

Nicole Hingle wasn’t surprised when the call came. Frustrations had been building inside juvenile detention centers nationwide as the number of coronavirus cases continued to climb. Now, her 17-year-old son Jace, was on the phone telling her around 40 kids had rioted at his facility in Louisiana – the same state where more than a dozen youths escaped during two breakouts at another site this month.

Hingle said her son described whirring helicopters above the Bridge City facility just outside New Orleans. Juveniles kicked down their doors, a SWAT team swarmed in, kids were pepper-sprayed and a staffer was injured during the melee.

“It’s a real mess,” the teen told his mother. “Everything is destroyed.”

Due to coronavirus lockdown measures, it’s been more than two months since Hingle has been able to visit her son. She has accused administrators of keeping her in the dark, and said she was growing increasingly upset by the lack of a clear plan to protect or release those held inside. Ten youths have tested positive at Bridge City in recent weeks.

“This could be life or death for my child,” said Hingle, adding that her son was among a group transferred to the Acadiana Center for Youth after the brawl, where they were pepper-sprayed twice over the weekend by parole officers brought in to help due to short staffing.

“I don’t want condolences from the state. I don’t want condolences from the governor,” she said. “I do not want sympathy. I want them to do what is right on behalf of our kids because they cannot save themselves nor can we save them without the help of these politicians.”

As more and more state and local officials announce the release of thousands of at-risk inmates from the nation’s adult jails and prisons, parents along with children rights’ groups and criminal justice experts say vulnerable youths should be allowed to serve their time at home. But they say demands for large-scale releases have been largely ignored. Decisions are often not made at the state level, but instead carried out county by county, with individual judges reviewing juvenile cases one by one.

Such legal hurdles have resulted in some kids with symptoms being thrown into isolation for 23 hours a day, in what amounts to solitary confinement, according to relatives and youth advocates. They say many have been cut off from programs, counselors and school. Some have not been issued masks, social distancing is nearly impossible and they have been given limited access to phone calls home. One mother reported that her daughter was so cut off from the outside world – with no TV and staff not wearing any protective gear – that the girl had no idea a deadly virus was even circulating in America. In some states, authorities have been shuttling kids between facilities, trying to make sure sick and healthy young people are kept apart.

Growing fears and frustrations have led to violence and mayhem not just in Louisiana, but at juvenile centers in other coronavirus hot spots such as New York. Young people are calling their parents to say they’re scared and desperate to escape. Sheriff’s deputies responded to a facility in Portland, Oregon, this month after a “disturbance” broke out, but no injuries were reported.

“The department has maintained essential staff at the juvenile detention center in accordance with national standards throughout the COVID-19 outbreak, and is working hard to balance the social and emotional needs of youth in our care during this extraordinary time,” the Multnomah County Juvenile Services Division said in a statement.

Vincent Schiraldi, co-director at Columbia University Justice Lab and a former correctional administrator, said he hoped these problems would serve as a warning to other juvenile facilities, especially those that have not yet been hit by the virus.

“If this storm is coming in your direction, don’t wait until you have 100 mile-an-hour winds to put the boards up on the windows,” he said. “Deal with it now. Come up with your COVID plan now. Get everybody out of your facility that can be gotten out, start training your staff, start developing your lines of communication, so that if people start getting sick and staff start calling in sick, then you can manage it as best you can.”

As of Monday, 150 juveniles and 283 staff had tested positive for COVID-19 at facilities nationwide, according to an unofficial log being kept by Josh Rovner at the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit The Sentencing Project. He said because testing has been so limited, it’s likely the real numbers are “much, much higher.”

New York is one of the few cities that operates two juvenile facilities. At the first sign of illness there, the city agency that oversees the sites decided to put healthy kids at the Crossroads Juvenile Center in Brooklyn, while moving all of the infected residents to the Horizon Juvenile Center in the Bronx.

Fernando Cabrera, a Bronx council member, said he saw the potential danger of suddenly ripping kids away from familiar staff and routines, especially during a time of crisis.

“You transfer all these kids to another borough, they are going to be anxious,” he said after dozens of police responded when a fight broke out in Crossroads about two weeks ago. “They are in self-preservation mode.”

The city’s Administration for Children’s Services provided few details about the brawl, but said some staff suffered minor injuries, including one who needed offsite medical treatment.

A similar situation occurred at two branches of the Swanson Center for Youth in Louisiana. Its facility in Columbia had been designated for healthy youths, while its Monroe site was reserved for the infected, resulting in kids being transferred back and forth. So far, at least 17 have tested positive for the coronavirus in the two facilities, according to The Sentencing Project. In addition, two escapes occurred this month at Monroe involving 13 youths, according to a statement from the Louisiana Office of Juvenile Justice.

One of the main obstacles to monitoring the spread of the coronavirus in youth lockups is that so few tests are being administered. In addition, some juvenile justice agencies, citing privacy concerns, have refused to release even basic information, including the number of people infected.

Virginia’s Department of Juvenile Justice initially didn’t release figures. But on April 17, it revealed that more than two dozen kids had tested positive at the Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center outside Richmond, accounting for a quarter of all reported cases at youth facilities nationwide at that time, according to The Sentencing Project. On Monday, the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services said 26 youths have tested positive at the Memphis Center for Success and Independence.

No severe cases were reported at Bon Air, and the majority were asymptomatic, according to a statement from Christopher Moon, the department’s chief physician.

But Rachael Deane, of the Legal Aid Justice Center’s Just Children Program, accused the department in a letter of not providing proper medical care to kids housed at Bon Air. She said one client with symptoms was not tested and another whose swab came back positive was never examined by a doctor. Deane also alleged that the department wasn’t communicating with parents when their kids became infected and that some clients had been denied access to counseling for weeks. She charged that legal rights were also being violated.

“Our clients report they are kept in their rooms for at least 23 hours per day. Although they are supposed to receive one hour per day outside their rooms, this is not always honored,” the letter said. “Even when their free hour is made available, residents are sometimes forced to choose between using it for essential activities, like taking a shower, instead of exercise and recreation.”

Valerie Boykin, director of the Virginia department, said in a statement that Bon Air residents’ parents and loved ones are kept informed in a timely manner.

More than 2.2 million people are incarcerated in the United States – more than anywhere in the world. But the threat posed by COVID-19 extends well beyond the prison walls. Even though most personal visits have been stopped, hundreds of thousands of guards, wardens and other correctional facility administrators go in and out every day, potentially carrying the virus home to their families and communities.

The juvenile population behind bars has been decreasing over the past couple of decades and stood at around 43,000 in 2017, the last available count. Roughly 70% were accused of low-level crimes.

It’s unclear exactly how many kids have been released due to the coronavirus, but a new survey by the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation looked at a snapshot of juvenile justice agencies in 30 states housing more than 3,700 youths. The survey found the number of young people in local secure detention centers – where they are held until a court decides whether to confine them until their hearings or allow them to wait at home – dropped 24% from March to April, mostly due to fewer admissions. However, the data only represents about one-tenth of counties nationwide.

Nate Balis, director of the foundation’s juvenile justice strategy group, said far more young people should be released to home confinement to prevent the spread of COVID-19, especially given that the overall population is only a fraction of the number of adults behind bars.

“Whether or not kids are being released has to do with who’s calling the shots and that is very different from state to state,” he said. “We’re talking about states that may have a couple hundred young people in custody or less.”

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied a petition earlier this month asking it to limit new admissions and allow for the immediate release of some detained youths to prevent the spread of the virus in juvenile facilities.

Maryland’s Court of Appeals denied a similar petition but offered guidance to administrative judges, saying the health and well-being of the juveniles should be taken into consideration during the public health crisis. Since the filing, 164 juveniles have been released, according to the public defender’s office. There are now about 450 kids remaining in the system.

The coronavirus doesn’t typically hit young people hard, but it has been shown to attack anyone with underlying health problems. Locked-up children face much higher rates of asthma and other respiratory ailments, along with substance abuse issues.

Up to 70% have mental health problems and many have learning disabilities or are illiterate, with more than half placed in a grade level below their age, according to the nonprofit Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights.

Seven youths and 11 staff have tested positive in juvenile detention centers in Connecticut.

Jibrelle Milner said her 17-year-old son is only getting out of his two-person room at the Manson Youth Institution in New Haven County for one or two hours a day. She said he’s supposed to graduate high school this year, but he’s a special education student who’s only receiving learning packets to complete on his own.

She said he suffers from allergies and asthma and is still recovering from injuries after being shot twice last year. She worries about the virus but is equally concerned about his mental health.

“There’s no visitation, there’s no school going on,” Milner said. “I feel like it’s incarceration on top of incarceration.”

Bushy moustaches, thick Syrian accents, fistfights in 1930s Damascus and… medical masks? A parody of a popular Syrian television show is raising awareness on curbing the coronavirus outbreak in neighbouring Iraq.

Artists in Iraq’s southern port city of Basra have adapted the beloved characters of “Bab al-Hara” (“The Neighbourhood Gate”) — a 10-season period drama watched across the Arab world — to convince their compatriots to take the pandemic seriously.

In one skit, the show’s main character Abu Issam returns to the Syrian capital Damascus unannounced after a long absence, just in time to keep his son from getting into a street fight.

“Put on your mask!” Abu Issam, played by Iraqi artist Mohammad Qassem, scolds his son.

When his wife — also played by Qassem — later draws close to welcome him home, Abu Issam slaps her.

“Don’t you know that hugging and kissing are forbidden? We’re in the time of corona(virus)! Disinfect the house!”

The scenes are meant to be lighthearted, but the messages behind them are no laughing matter, Qassem told AFP.

“We created these skits to raise the public’s awareness of what measures the health ministry has asked them to commit to, how to disinfect and clean your hands, and how to abide by the lockdown,” he said.

‘The world is crazy’

Iraq imposed a nationwide lockdown in mid-March to combat the spread of the virus, but relaxed measures to an evening and weekend curfew last week.

People quickly flooded the streets as stores opened across the country, with very few practising social distancing or wearing masks and gloves.

The language of comedy may convince people to take preventative action against the virus in ways government orders could not, said Youssef al-Hajjaj, who plays Abu Issam’s son in the “Bab al-Hara” parody.

“These sketches use comedy to spread inform information about staying protected when leaving your homes,” Hajjaj said.

Pop hits have also been used to persuade Iraqis to stay home, including a remixed music video of a beloved Egyptian hit featuring a police officer at a checkpoint.

“Corona’s got us under curfew here, the world is crazy and full of fear,” he croons.

Iraqi singers Wissam Daoud and Thaer Hazem were quick to put out their own tune, a ballad set to the jumpy percussion typical of Iraqi music.

“Be careful and don’t go out, it’ll get easier day by day. That’s how you’ll stay well and this crisis will go away,” they advise.

Iraq has recorded more than 2,000 novel coronavirus cases, including over 90 deaths, although many suspect the real number of cases is much higher as authorities have yet to introduce widespread testing or contact tracing.

Basra, where health services are notoriously poor, is witnessing an uptick in infections, with nearly 100 new cases in recent days raising the total to 450.

Authorities fear a jump in case numbers could overwhelm Iraq’s dilapidated health system — ravaged by decades of conflict and underdeveloped due to little investment and widespread corruption.

‘Stay strong’

Qassem and his team have dedicated songs to medical staff and other artists have produced skits to show solidarity with those working long hours at Iraqi hospitals.

One video depicts a young female nurse calling her husband from the hospital, tearfully confessing she was exhausted.

“Stay strong. It’s not any tougher than what we’ve already been through,” he tells her over the phone.
Artistic director Abdullah Khaled, 28, considered it an “artistic responsibility” to support medical staff and spread reliable information about the virus.

Another film his team produced features practical tips, including how to disinfect produce and limit outings to one person per household.

Khaled’s team says these videos, viewed thousands of times on Instagram, would have more of an impact than the government’s conventional communications strategy.

“Awareness through videos is one of the most important tools we have to persuade people to protect themselves,” said the videos’ 29-year-old director Mustafa al-Karkhy.

“These videos are why people stay safe.”

The United States has long hailed its aid overseas as a sign of good intentions, but friends and foes alike are seeing opportunities of their own by helping the global power ravaged by the coronavirus.

Turkey, looking to end a rough spell with its NATO ally, and Egypt, whose autocratic leader counts on support from President Donald Trump, both sent military jets full of supplies in the past two weeks, while Taiwan, reliant on Washington for its defense and praised for its effective coronavirus response, has sent millions of masks.

More controversially, China and Russia — considered top global rivals by Washington — have both sent medical goods to the United States, whose Covid-19 death toll is by far the highest in the world at more than 66,000.

Nicholas Cull, a professor at the University of Southern California who studies international reputation, said that gifts were often more about donors’ domestic audiences as leaders try to show that they are “winning the respect and admiration of the world.”

Cull said the most successful gifts come when a nation has no obvious political motivation and appears to be acting out of emotional attachment to another country.

He pointed to the rousing reception in Italy for doctors sent by Albania, one of the poorest nations in Europe.

By contrast, China’s aid has been met by suspicion that Beijing is trying to assert itself or obscure the origins of the respiratory sickness, which was first discovered in the metropolis of Wuhan.

Welcoming aid, mostly

Recent history is full of disaster-hit nations whose prideful governments have refused help, but the United States has said it welcomes international cooperation against the virus.

“We appreciate the generosity and support from around the world,” a State Department spokesperson said.

Other assistance has included testing kits from the United Arab Emirates and dispatches of medical teams from US allies, notably Poland.

The US government has not directly taken aid from China, with Trump eager to blame Beijing over the pandemic amid criticism around his own performance.

But China has channeled assistance to US states or through private donations.

Jack Ma, China’s richest person, in March announced a donation of 500,000 test kits, while New York Governor Andrew Cuomo thanked Ma and other Chinese businesspeople — as well as Beijing’s consulate — for sending 1,000 ventilators.

More recently, Chinese provinces donated supplies to the states of Maryland and Utah, with photo-ops showing local US officials holding signs that salute friendship.

Russia gave prominent coverage when it sent a military plane of masks, ventilators and other supplies to New York.

Trump, who has sought closer ties with President Vladimir Putin, called the gesture “very nice,” although the State Department insisted the goods were purchased, not donated.

Virus infections have since jumped inside Russia, and some social media users in both Egypt and Turkey have questioned whether their governments were really in a position to help others.

Turkey has sent aid to some 55 countries. Its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been hoping to defuse tensions with the United States, especially with Congress over Turkey’s purchase of an air defense system from Russia.

The aid shipment marks part of an effort to reach out broadly to the United States after Erdogan “put all its eggs in Trump’s basket,” said Gonul Tol, director of the Turkey program at the Middle East Institute.

“I’m sure there is an understanding in Ankara that this could be Trump’s final year,” Tol said, while adding: “Turkey’s problems with the US are too deep to be resolved by this PR campaign.”

Billionaire investor Warren Buffet said Saturday he’s confident the US economy will bounce back from its pummeling by the coronavirus pandemic because “American magic has always prevailed.”

The 89-year-old made the sanguine prediction about the world’s largest economy as his holding company Berkshire Hathaway reported first-quarter net losses of nearly $50 billion.

Buffett also announced Saturday that his company had sold all its stakes in four major US airlines last month, as the pandemic clobbered the travel industry.

“It turns out I was wrong,” he said of his acquisitions of 10 per cent stakes in American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines.

Berkshire Hathaway had paid $7 billion to $8 billion, and “we did not take out anything like that,” he said.

Between the purchases that took place over months, and the sale, “the airlines business I think changed in a very major way” and could no longer meet Berkshire criteria for profitability, he said.

Buffett’s announcement may further hurt airlines already pushed to the brink by coronavirus lockdown measures, now looking to the US government for $25 billion in relief funds.

‘American miracles, American magic’

Berkshire Hathaway, based in Omaha, Nebraska, called its first-quarter setback “temporary” but said it could not reliably predict when its many businesses would return to normal or when consumers would resume their former buying habits.

“We’ve faced great problems in the past, haven’t faced this exact problem — in fact we haven’t really faced anything that quite resembles this problem,” Buffett said in a lengthy speech on the country’s economic history.

“But we faced tougher problems, and the American miracles, American magic has always prevailed and it will do so again.”

“We are now a better country, as well as an incredibly more wealthy country, than we were in 1789… We got a long ways to go but we moved in the right direction,” he said, referencing the abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage.

“Never bet against America.”

Buffett is considered one of the savviest investors anywhere. His fortune of $72 billion is the fourth-largest in the world, according to Forbes, and in normal years, the company’s annual gathering in Omaha is a high-point of the calendar for investors, a “Woodstock for capitalists.”

But the devastating economic impact of the pandemic has hit hard at Berkshire Hathaway’s wide range of investments, and the need for social distancing forced it to hold the annual meeting online.

Buffett addressed his shareholders in a livestream flanked only by Gregory Abel, who is in charge of Berkshire’s non-insurance operations.

His business partner for six decades, 96-year-old Charlie Munger, did not appear.

Growth by one measure

Buffett, in a statement, played down his company’s bleak-looking net figure. He said a better measure of the company’s performance was its operating earnings, which exclude investments and are less subject to sharp fluctuations.

By that measure, Berkshire Hathaway saw growth to $5.9 billion from $5.55 billion a year earlier.

The brutal drop in the net — to a loss of $49.75 billion from a profit last year of $21.7 billion — resulted primarily from the virus-related decline in value of its broad investment portfolio, which ranges from energy to transport to insurance and technology.

The annual meeting often has an almost carnival atmosphere, as thousands of fans and investors flock to Nebraska to hear from the celebrated “Oracle of Omaha.” Buffett, famous for his relatively modest lifestyle, turns 90 on August 30.

In documents filed Saturday, Berkshire noted that until mid-March many of its companies were posting “comparative revenue and earnings increases” over the same 2019 period.

Many of its companies — including in rail transport, energy production and some manufacturing and service businesses — are deemed essential and are able to continue working amid the far-reaching confinement orders.

But their turnover slowed considerably in April, the company statement said.

Moves taken by those companies such as employee furloughs, salary cuts and reductions, and capital spending reductions are “necessary actions” and “temporary,” it said.

IndiaToday.in has plenty of useful resources that can help you better understand the coronavirus pandemic and protect yourself. Read our comprehensive guide (with information on how the virus spreads, precautions and symptoms), watch an expert debunk myths, check out our data analysis of cases in India, and access our dedicated coronavirus page. Get the latest updates on our live blog.

Pakistan on Saturday registered its highest single-day increase in the coronavirus cases with 1,952 new infections, taking the total number of Covid-19 patients to 18,770, officials said.

The death toll due to the viral infection jumped to 432 with 47 fatalities recorded in the last 24 hours, the Ministry of National Health Services said.

As many as 4,715 patients have been recovered, it said.

A record number of 1,952 Covid-19 cases were registered in the last 24 hours, the ministry said.

Officials, however, said the spike in the Covid-19 cases is not surprising as it is due to the increase in the coronavirus tests.

As many as 193,859 tests have been conducted so far, including 9,164 in the last 24 hours, they said.

A 26-year-old female doctor died from the coronavirus at Rawalpindi’s Holy Family hospital. The hospital’s medical superintendent said that the young doctor had complained about mild flu and cough symptoms on April 20 which the doctors declared as “normal fever”.

When her condition worsened after four days, she was brought to the hospital. She was put on a ventilator but died on April 30.

Meanwhile, Special Assistant on Health Dr Zafar Mirza told reporters that Pakistan is increasing its testing capacity.

He said the coronavirus is still under control in the country and the death rate due to the disease is also lower.

“Pakistan’s death rate is still less than the projected numbers and secondly when we see the worldwide situation, it is far less than that. If you take care of yourself, it is guaranteed that you and your family will stay safe,” he said.

Of the total 18,770 cases, Punjab registered the highest number of 6,854 followed by Sindh at 7,102, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 2,907, Balochistan 1,136, Islamabad 365, Gilgit-Baltistan 340 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) at 66, the health ministry said.

Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday launched the second phase of the cash programme for those who lost their jobs due to the pandemic.

Khan said he is personally monitoring the distribution of the corona relief fund to ensure transparency

“So far Rs 81 billion have been distributed to people…I am personally monitoring this process,” he said, launching the second phase of the Ehsaas cash scheme.

The first phase was launched last month. A fund of Rs 144 billion has been set aside for the scheme.

Urging affluent citizens to contribute to the fund set up for people affected by the coronavirus pandemic, Khan said the government would contribute Rs 4 for every Rs 1 donated.

Prime Minister Khan also wished his Russian counterpart Mikhail Mishustin speedy recovery and good health after he was tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

“Wishing PM of Russia Mikhail Mishustin a speedy recovery and good health. Coronavirus is a common challenge and we stand together with our Russian friends in battling this challenge,” he tweeted.

Minister for Industries Hammad Azhar told media that as part of the measures initiated for businesses facing the heat of the pandemic, the government will pay three-month electricity bills for firms whose consumption is between five and 70KW per month.

Some of the other measures include reducing the interest rate and “unprecedented tax incentives for the construction sector”.

The government would also bring an interest-free loan scheme for small businesses, Azhar said.

Meanwhile, Special Assistant on National Security Moeed Yusuf has said that some influential people coming from abroad were escaping the mandatory testing and quarantine procedures.

“We want all Pakistanis to return as soon as possible but in a safe manner. We cannot have them coming back and infecting their loved ones, which is why we cannot give any exemption to anyone for coronavirus testing,” he said.

Yusuf said the repatriation process of Pakistanis from abroad is slow because the country’s “quarantine facilities can take 7,500 to 8,000 people at a time”. Another reason, he said, is that most airports and flights across the globe are not functioning.

IndiaToday.in has plenty of useful resources that can help you better understand the coronavirus pandemic and protect yourself. Read our comprehensive guide (with information on how the virus spreads, precautions and symptoms), watch an expert debunk myths, check out our data analysis of cases in India, and access our dedicated coronavirus page. Get the latest updates on our live blog.

Tara Reade, the former Senate staffer who alleged Joe Biden sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, said she filed a limited report with a congressional personnel office that did not explicitly accuse him of sexual assault or harassment.

“I remember talking about him wanting me to serve drinks because he liked my legs and thought I was pretty and it made me uncomfortable,” Reade said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press. “I know that I was too scared to write about the sexual assault.”

Tara Reade said she described her issues with Biden but “the main word I used – and I know I didn’t use sexual harassment – I used ‘uncomfortable.’ And I remember ‘retaliation.'”

Reade described the report after the AP discovered additional transcripts and notes from its interviews with Reade last year in which she says she “chickened out” after going to the Senate personnel office. The AP interviewed Reade in 2019 after she accused Biden of uncomfortable and inappropriate touching. She did not raise allegations of sexual assault against Biden until this year, around the time he became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

The existence of the Senate report has become a key element of the accusations against Biden, which he has flatly denied. Reade says she doesn’t have a copy of the report, and Biden said Friday that he is not aware that any complaint against him exists. He asked the Senate and the National Archives to search their records to try to locate a complaint from Reade.

But Tara Reade is suggesting that even if the report surfaces, it would not corroborate her assault allegations because she chose not to detail them at the time.

According to a transcript of her 2019 interview with the AP, Reade said: “They have this counselling office or something, and I think I walked in there once, but then I chickened out.” She made a similar statement in a second interview with AP that same day, according to written notes from the interview.

On Friday, Reade said she was referring to having “chickened out” by not filing full harassment or assault allegations against Biden. In multiple interviews with the AP on Friday, Reade insisted she filed an “intake form” at the Senate personnel office, which included her contact information, the office she worked for and some broad details of her issues with Biden.

On Saturday, Reade told the AP there may have been a box to check on the form noting a sexual harassment complaint, but she couldn’t remember and wouldn’t know for sure until she saw the form. Reade also said she cancelled a planned television interview with “Fox News Sunday” because of security concerns.

Reade was one of eight women who came forward last year with allegations that Biden made them feel uncomfortable with inappropriate displays of affection. Biden acknowledged the complaints and promised to be “more mindful about respecting personal space in the future.”

During one of the April 2019 interviews with the AP, she said Biden rubbed her shoulders and neck and played with her hair. She said she was asked by an aide in Biden’s Senate office to dress more conservatively and told “don’t be so sexy.”

She said of Biden: “I wasn’t scared of him, that he was going to take me in a room or anything. It wasn’t that kind of vibe.”

The AP reviewed notes of its 2019 interviews with Reade after she came forward in March with allegations of sexual assault against Biden. But reporters discovered an additional transcript and notes from those interviews on Friday.

A recording of one of the interviews was deleted before Reade emerged in 2020 with new allegations against Biden, in keeping with the reporter’s standard practice for disposing of old interviews. A portion of that interview was also recorded on video, but not the part in which she spoke of having “chickened out.”

The AP declined to publish details of the 2019 interviews at the time because reporters were unable to corroborate her allegations, and aspects of her story contradicted other reporting.

In recent weeks, Reade told the AP and other news organizations that Biden sexually assaulted her, pushing her against a wall in the basement of a Capitol Hill office building in 1993, groping her and penetrating her with his fingers. She says she was fired from Biden’s office after filing a complaint with the Senate alleging harassment.

The accusation has roiled Biden’s presidential campaign, sparking anxiety among Democrats. Republicans have accused Biden backers of hypocrisy, arguing that they have been quick to believe women who have accused President Donald Trump and other conservatives of assault. Trump has faced multiple accusations of assault and harassment, all of which he denies.

Reade says she was reluctant to share details of the assault during her initial conversations with reporters over a year ago because she was scared of backlash, and was still coming to terms with what happened to her.

Two of Reade’s associates said publicly this past week that Reade had conversations with them that they said corroborated aspects of her allegation. One, a former neighbor, said Reade told her about the alleged assault a few years after Reade said it happened. The other, a former coworker, said Reade told her she had been sexually harassed by her boss during her previous job in Washington.

The AP has also spoken to two additional people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their families’ privacy, who said Reade had told them about aspects of her allegations against Biden years ago.

One friend, who knew Reade in 1993, said Reade told them about the alleged assault when it happened. The second friend met Reade more than a decade after the alleged incident and confirmed that Reade had a conversation with the friend in 2007 or 2008 about experiencing sexual harassment from Biden while working in his Senate office.

Doctors treating Boris Johnson for coronavirus prepared to announce his death after he was taken to intensive care, the British prime minister said on Sunday, in his first detailed comments about his illness.

“It was a tough old moment, I won’t deny it,” he was quoted as saying by the Sun on Sunday newspaper in an interview. “They had a strategy to deal with a ‘death of Stalin’-type scenario.

“I was not in particularly brilliant shape and I was aware there were contingency plans in place. The doctors had all sorts of arrangements for what to do if things went badly wrong.”

Johnson, 55, first announced he had contracted COVID-19 on March 27 but maintained he had only mild symptoms. Yet he failed to shake the illness after a week of self-isolation.

He was taken to hospital as a precaution on April 5 for further tests but within 24 hours was moved to intensive care.

The Conservative party leader spent three days receiving “oxygen support”, and admitted after his discharge on April 12 that his fight with the virus “could have gone either way”.

But although he told the newspaper he did think “how am I going to get out of this?”, he did not think at any point he was going to die.

Johnson, who returned to work last Monday and became a father again when his fiancee Carrie Symonds gave birth on Wednesday, said he was given “litres and litres” of oxygen in hospital.

He said he felt frustrated he was not getting better but the reality hit home when doctors were deliberating whether to intubate him and put him on a ventilator.

“That was when it got a bit… they were starting to think about how to handle it presentationally,” he told the weekly tabloid.

‘Pretty groggy’

Johnson has repeatedly paid tribute to staff of the state-run National Health Service (NHS) for their care.

He and Symonds’ baby boy, Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson, is named in part after two of the doctors who led his care — doctors Nick Price and Nick Hart.

Both are experts in infectious diseases and ventilation.

Symonds, 32, said in an Instagram post earlier to announce the boy’s name that Hart and Price “saved Boris’ life last month”.

The Sun on Sunday said Johnson was emotional when recalling his treatment and recovery, which he called “an extraordinary thing”.

He said he had been “in denial” about the seriousness of his condition at first, as he tried to continue to work despite feeling “pretty groggy”.

He also said he did not want to go to hospital at first but doctors were adamant because of his low oxygen levels. “Looking back, they were right to force me to go,” he said.

Johnson said the experience had made him more determined to fight the disease and get the country back to normal.

His comments came as the government announced 621 more deaths in the outbreak, taking the overall cumulative toll to 28,131 — just behind Europe’s worst-hit country, Italy.

He said he would announce a “roadmap” towards easing the lockdown restrictions imposed in late March later this week.