TEHRAN, 22 September 2020, (TON): The Iranian government has requested the international community to join hands against United States unlawful action, after Washington announced unilateral measure and declared UN sanctions stand reinstated.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh again repeated his earlier statement, "We expect the international community and all the countries in the world to stand against these reckless actions by the regime in the White House and speak in one voice."  

Britain in the past isolated itself from the European Union (EU) and joined the pole of United States leaving France and Germany in another pole but the joint statement issued by the three nations indicate that there is a shift in the British policy towards Iran.  No doubt, all three countries seems determined to continue with the nuclear deal with Iran.

At UN General Assembly this week, a number of issues are likely to be discussed including US action of slapping UN sanctions on Iran, Indian occupation of disputed Jammu and Kashmir State, Palestine and Situation in the Middle East.

WASHINGTON, 21 September 2020, (TON): Microsoft co-founder and global health philanthropist Bill Gates criticized the current state of the United States’ response to the Covid-19 pandemic on Sunday, including slow turnaround times for tests.

Gates told “Fox News Sunday” that the access to fast testing is still inadequate more than six months into the pandemic and that the U.S. was set up for a rough fall of virus cases. 

“Even today, people don’t get their results in 24 hours. It’s outrageous that we still have that,” Gates said.

The United States has suffered more than 6.7 million confirmed cases of Covid-19, resulting in nearly 200,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. That puts the country with a much higher rate of infection and death per capita than many other developed countries, including South Korea, Australia, Germany and Canada. 

The early stages of the pandemic were marked by a severe shortage of tests, though the amount of daily testing has improved significantly over time. Gates said that political and health leaders need to publicly admit that the current testing situation is inadequate and find ways to make the system more efficient, saying that “we can’t pretend that we get a good grade even today.”

“I do think we need to own up to the fact that we didn’t do a good job. Part of the reluctance I think to fix the testing system now is that nobody wants to admit that it’s still outrageous ... The U.S. has more of these machines, more of this capacity than other countries by a huge amount. And so partly the reimbursement system is creating a perverse incentive,” Gates said. 

On CNN’s “State of Union” Adm. Brett Giroir from the Department of Health and Human Services said that part of the reason testing had not reached 1 million per day as he has had predicted was because the rate of new cases had slowed, lowering the number of contact tracing tests required. He also said that the administration would soon distribute $150 million of 15-minute tests.

Cases and hospitalizations have spiked in several European countries in recent weeks, which some experts have linked to “panademic fatigue” as adherence to social distancing measures slips. Daily cases in Spain and France have surpassed the United States when adjusted for population.

The U.S. saw initial outbreaks on the West Coast and in northeastern states during the spring, with rolling outbreaks spreading across the country in the months since. Gates attributed that in part to the travel restrictions imposed by the Trump administration, which created a “rush” of American citizens and residents to return home at a time when the U.S. did not have proper testing or quarantine protocols.

“That’s led to us not just having a bad spring — we’ve had a pretty tough summer. And sadly, because of the seasonality, until we get these new tools the fall is looking to shape up as pretty tough as well,” he said. 

In a statement to CNBC, a White House spokesperson said President Trump has always put the well-being of the American people first and highlighted the administration’s efforts to help develop a vaccine.

Gates had for years warned about the dangers of a global health emergency like a pandemic, and the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation has spent billions on health and anti-poverty initiatives around the world. 

ADDIS ABABA, 21 September 2020, (Nation): Ethiopia announced Saturday it was charging leading opposition politicians Jawar Mohammed and Bekele Gerba with crimes including terrorism and incitement to violence, a move that risks further inflaming tensions in the restive Oromia region.

The charges -- which could bring life imprisonment -- relate to violence that erupted after the shooting death in June of Hachalu Hundessa, a popular singer from the Oromo ethnic group who gave voice to Oromo feelings of political and economic marginalisation. In the days that followed Hachalu’s June 29 killing, up to 239 people died in inter-ethnic violence and clashes with soldiers and police that underscored security challenges facing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, winner of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Jawar and Bekele were among more than 9,000 people caught up in subsequent mass arrests that have stoked criticism that Abiy is seizing on the unrest to silence political opponents and critics. The attorney general’s office announced charges against 24 suspects in a Facebook post Saturday.

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These include “trying to incite ethnic and religious based conflict to cause citizens to turn on their fellow citizens”.

Among the other suspects are several high-profile Abiy critics living abroad like prominent Oromo activist Tesgaye Regassa and former Abiy ally-turned-critic Berhanemeskel Abebe.

Jawar’s lawyer, Tuli Bayyisa, told AFP Saturday that he had not been informed of the charges but dismissed them as baseless. “It’s very astonishing. I’m 100 percent sure that, it might take years and years and years, but they will not prove these allegations if the law really works,” Tuli said.

The attorney general’s statement did not provide details about the charges, but Tuli said in Jawar’s case they seemed to concern a scuffle over Hachalu’s dead body that resulted in the death of a police officer.

“No single witness has consistently spoken about any crime... by either Mr Jawar or Mr Bekele,” he said. Jawar played a central role in anti-government protests that swept Abiy to power in 2018.

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Abiy is Ethiopia’s first Oromo leader, but he faces intense criticism from Oromo nationalists like Jawar who accuse him of being a poor advocate for their interests and behaving like a dictator.

Putting Jawar on trial risks fuelling violence in Addis Ababa and in Oromia, the country’s most populous region which surrounds the capital.

Last month security forces shot dead at least five people in a crackdown on demonstrations against Jawar’s detention triggered by reports he was not receiving proper medical care.

And last October scores were killed after Jawar accused security forces of trying to orchestrate an attack against him.

Jawar and Bekele, both members of the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress, are expected to appear in court Monday.

MOSCOW, 21 September 2020, (AFP News Agency): Vil Mirzayanov's apology comes as another scientist who worked on programme denied Navalny was poisoned with Novichok.

A scientist involved in the secret Soviet programme to create the Novichok nerve agent has apologised to the Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny, who is recovering from poisoning in Berlin.

Vil Mirzayanov, a chemist who was the first to reveal Novichok's development, in an interview with Russia's TV Rain on Saturday evening said he wanted to apologise to Navalny after Germany said it found "unequivocal evidence" he was poisoned with Novichok.

Navalny described his severe symptoms after falling ill on a plane on August 20, including the inability to form words, saying he still struggled to pour a glass of water or use a phone.

"I offer my profound apologies to Navalny for the fact that I took part in this criminal business, developing this substance that he was poisoned with," said Mirzayanov, who now lives in the United States and wrote the first articles on Novichok's development in the early 1990s.

Germany has said laboratory tests in three countries have determined he was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent, and Western governments have demanded an explanation from Russia.

Mirzayanov's apology comes as another scientist who worked on the programme has denied that Navalny could have been poisoned with Novichok.

Mirzayanov predicted that Navalny would eventually recover.

"Navalny will just have to be patient but in the end, he should be healthy," Mirzayanov said, predicting recovery would take "almost a year".

He suggested that Navalny most likely took in the poison orally, since he appears not to have contaminated others.

This counters a suggestion by another scientist who worked on Novichok, Vladimir Uglev, who told Proyekt investigative site that Navalny's survival suggested he had only skin contact.

Navalny's aides gathered discarded objects from his hotel room in the Siberian city of Tomsk and sent them to German experts who found Novichok on a water bottle.

Russian scientist Leonid Rink, who state media says worked on the programme to develop Novichok, poured scorn on Mirzayanov's comments on Sunday.

Speaking to the RIA Novosti news agency, Rink said Mirzayanov, while he worked at the same research centre, he was an "ordinary" chemist not directly involved in Novichok's creation.

"He has nothing to do with the creation of Novichok," Rink insisted, adding Mirzayanov could not know its "biological effects".

Rink argued that if Novichok had been used on Navalny,  the opposition leader would have died.

"He wouldn't have survived if it was Novichok," he said.

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