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Eight COVID-19 patients died in India when a fire engulfed the critical care unit of a hospital in Ahmedabad city in the western Gujarat state early Thursday.The victims included five men and three women.About 35 other patients in the hospital were shifted to other facilities.Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that he was “saddened by the tragic hospital fire” and said that all possible assistance is being given to those affected.Gujarat, Modi’s home state, is among the worst affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.Preliminary investigations revealed that the fire, which broke out around 3:30 a.m. in the private hospital, was caused by an electrical short circuit. It spread to the intensive care ward within minutes, municipal commissioner Mukesh Kumar told the Press Trust of India.Poor safety standards are often a cause of fires in India.Firemen who fought the blaze will have to undergo quarantine, fire officials said. 
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A team of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) is in South Africa to help the country get control of its rapid rise in coronavirus cases.The WHO said in a statement that 43 experts in specialties including, epidemiology, health education, and surveillance, prevention and control will support the COVID-19 response team.The WHO’s surge team will first observe the work of South Africa’s health department before lending special support to the hardest-hit jurisdictions, including Eastern Cape, Free State, Gauteng, Kwazulu Natal, and Mpumalanga.The rise in the spread of the virus has pushed South Africa to nearly 530,000 cases, the fifth highest in the world.South Africa has confirmed more than 9,200 deaths from the coronavirus.In a separate development, Health Minister Dr. Zwelini Mkhize said, cases in Gauteng, Western Cape, and Eastern Cape have slowed but it’s too early to determine if the cases have peaked.
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Colombian media outlets say that former President Alvaro Uribe is self-quarantining with the coronavirus Thursday. The local media reported Wednesday that Uribe was infected with the virus, a day after the Supreme Court ordered that he be placed on house arrest. The court is investigating if Uribe was involved in a plot to bribe witnesses in a case involving former members of paramilitary death squads. Uribe, one of the most influential politicians in Colombia, is said to be in good health with no symptoms of the virus at his ranch in Córdoba. Bogotá’s El Tiempo newspaper says Uribe is expressing concern for his wife’s well-being, with their sons Jerónimo and Tomás also infected with the coronavirus. The status of the couple’s sons is unclear.   Colombia has confirmed more than 345,700 cases of the coronavirus and more than 11,000 deaths. 
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Some people in a Brazil hotspot for the coronavirus are taking extraordinary steps to receive a free coronavirus test in Sao Paulo state, the hardest hit region in the country. A day after missing her test because the supply ran out, Manuela Souza said, she secured her place in line and slept in the car with her children overnight to make sure she got tested. The drive-thru tests are being administered by the Butantan Institute for Biological Research. Juliana Carvalhal, the project manager at Butantan Institute said, their goal is to identify asymptomatic people carrying the virus. Carvalhal said, people unaware they are infected continue to socialize and potentially infect others.Brazil aims to test up to 400 people in Sao Paulo daily through next Monday. Sao Paulo state has confirmed 585,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 24,000 deaths. Brazil leads all of Latin America with more than 2,860,000 cases and more than 97,400 deaths. 
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Due to concerns about the spread of the coronavirus, a growing number of U.S. states are expanding options for voting by mail instead of in person for the November presidential election. Voting by mail has a long history in the U.S., dating back to the Civil War. However, President Donald Trump claims mail-in voting will lead to election fraud or months of uncertainty following the vote.  White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara reports on how a routine voting option is becoming a central political debate of the 2020 election.  Produced by:  Bakhtiyar Zamanov
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Police in Florida said three teenage boys were arrested after they entered U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort with an AK-47 in a backpack.Palm Beach Police spokesperson Michael Ogrodnick said the three 15-year-old boys jumped a wall at Mar-a-Lago while fleeing a police officer late last Friday.The officer had approached the boys as they sat in a car a few miles north of the resort. The boys sped off in the car, trying to escape. They abandoned the car near Mar-a-Lago when they saw another police cruiser and escaped onto the grounds of the resort, Ogrodnick said.”They didn’t try to get into any buildings, they just jumped over the wall and tried to hide,” he said.Trump was not at the resort when the incident took place.The teens, who were not identified, are being held in a juvenile facility while prosecutors decide if they should be charged as adults. The teens have denied they owned the AK-47, saying they had found it.Trump’s resort has been the scene of several invasions since he became president.In January, two women were arrested after police opened fire on them for running two security checkpoints nearby, in a car chase not related to Trump.In February, a Chinese woman was sentenced to six months in jail for resisting arrest during an incident last year when she entered Mar-a-Lago without permission. That took place just months after another Chinese woman was found guilty of lying to federal officers and trespassing onto the resort.   
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Fake news about the coronavirus can do real harm. Polygraph.info is spotlighting fact-checks from other reliable sources here​. Daily Debunk”Fact-checking 22 claims from Donald Trump’s Axios interview,” PolitiFact, August 4.Social Media DisinfoScreenshotCirculating on social media: Claim that Dr. Anthony Fauci said in 2005 that hydroxychloroquine was both a cure and a vaccine for coronavirus.Verdict: FalseRead the full story at: Lead StoriesFactual Reads on CoronavirusCoronavirus: WHO gears up for main mission into China to hunt for the origins of Covid-19
WHO and Chinese experts have drafted terms of reference for probe into the epidemiology of early infections.
— South China Morning Post, August 4Everything you need to know about the UK’s new 90-minute coronavirus test
Two new coronavirus tests that can return results in just over an hour are set to be released in the UK, the government has announced.
— Euronews, August 3
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The United States is pushing ahead with its bid to extend an international arms embargo on Iran by way of a second draft U.N. Security Council resolution, despite what some diplomats say is a lack of enthusiasm for such a move among its 15 members.The U.S.-drafted resolution needs at least nine votes in favor to force Russia and China to use their vetoes, which Moscow and Beijing have signaled they will do. Some diplomats question whether Washington can even secure those nine, however.”We have tabled a resolution that we think accomplishes what we think needs to be accomplished,” U.S. Iran envoy Brian Hook told the Aspen Security Forum, held virtually, on Wednesday.FILE – U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook speaks to VOA Persian at the State Department in Washington, Feb. 26, 2020.”The easy way is to do a rollover of the arms embargo,” he said. “It’s not difficult. There’s all the reasons in the world to do it. But we will do this, one way or another.”The arms embargo on Iran is set to end October 18 under Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, which Washington quit in 2018.The second draft circulated by Washington is virtually unchanged from the first text shared with the council in June.Return of all sanctionsIf the United States is unsuccessful in extending the embargo, it has threatened to trigger a return of all U.N. sanctions on Iran under a process agreed to in the 2015 deal.Such a move would kill the deal, touted as a way to suspend Tehran’s suspected drive to develop nuclear weapons. Washington argues it can trigger the sanctions because a Security Council resolution still names it as a participant.Iran has breached parts of the nuclear deal in response to the U.S. withdrawal and Washington’s reimposition of sanctions.”For as long as Iran is allowed to enrich, we’re going to be having this discussion: How close is Iran to a nuclear breakout? … We need to restore the U.N. Security Council standard of no enrichment,” Hook said.Iran denies it is seeking to build a nuclear bomb.Diplomats say Washington would face a tough, messy battle if it tried to trigger a return to sanctions.The United States would have to submit a complaint to the council, which would then have to vote within 30 days on a resolution to continue Iran’s sanctions relief. If such a resolution is not put forward by the deadline, sanctions would be reimposed — what is known as a snapback.Some diplomats have suggested the United States will submit its complaint by the end of August to ensure the 30 days ends in September, before Russia takes the monthly rotating council presidency in October.
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign and the national Republican Party have sued to block the western state of Nevada from sending a mail-in ballot to every registered voter in the state, even as Trump says absentee voting is fine by him in his adopted home state of Florida. The federal lawsuit filed Tuesday claims the Nevada voting plan approved by the state legislature Sunday night will result in “inevitable” fraud in the Nov. 3 national presidential election.  President Donald Trump speaks during a briefing with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House, Aug. 4, 2020, in Washington.In an interview on the “Fox & Friends” television show Wednesday, Trump sought to draw a distinction between absentee voting — when states send voters applications for ballots which they must return before being sent an actual ballot — and states like Nevada that are planning to automatically mail all registered voters a ballot. “Absentee is OK because you have to go through a process,” said Trump, who has voted by mail in Florida. “What they’re going to do [in Nevada] is blanket the state. Anybody who ever walked, frankly, will get one.” For weeks, Trump has disparaged mail-in voting across the country as potentially rife with fraud and claimed that it will lead to a “rigged” election stolen by Democrats to defeat him. But he abruptly reversed course Tuesday on mail-in voting in Florida, a state critical to his reelection chances, after surveys showed that some Republican voters were more inclined than Democrats to not vote by mail after Trump’s repeated complaints about the practice. Trump won Florida en route to his 2016 upset victory, and he almost certainly will have to win the state again for a second four-year term. The southeastern state has 29 of the 270 electoral votes needed to claim the presidency through the Electoral College, the indirect voting system in which state-by-state voting outcome determines the national outcome, not the national popular vote.  FILE – A Miami-Dade County Elections Department employee places a vote-by-mail ballot for the August 18 primary election into a box for rejected ballots at the Miami-Dade County Elections Department, in Doral, Florida, July 30, 2020.Trump claimed in the television interview that Florida’s mail-in voting is more reliable because it has had “two good governors,” Republicans Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott. Nevada’s Democratic governor, Steve Sisolak, is a Trump critic. “They have an infrastructure that’s taken years to build,” Trump said about Florida’s mail-in voting system. Despite Trump’s complaints, election fraud is rare in the U.S. But the vast increase in mail-in voting expected this year as voters shun in-person voting during the coronavirus pandemic could lead to substantial vote-counting problems. In some state elections this year, officials have been overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of extra mailed-in ballots compared to previous elections. In some instances, with the tedious vote-counting of the mailed-in ballots, it has taken weeks for the outcomes of close elections to be determined, contrary to the usual practice in the U.S. when winners and losers are most often known within hours of polls closing on Election Night. Trump contended that the outcome of the presidential election “could be for months and months. It could be for years.” By law, however, the next U.S. president is set to be sworn in Jan. 20, 2021. But Trump expressed hope that the coronavirus pandemic will have abated substantially in less than three months, making voters less fearful of heading to polls to vote in person. “By the time we get there, we’ll probably be in very good shape,” he predicted. “November 3rd is a long way off. That’s an eternity, as far as I’m concerned.” In the Nevada lawsuit, the Trump campaign and Republicans claimed the voting law is unconstitutional because it allows for ballots to be counted even if they are received up to Nov. 6, three days after the election, and even if they lack a postmark. In a statement Monday after signing the legislation, Sisolak said the law would protect Nevadans and “safeguard their right to make their voices heard.” 
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A series of explosions rocked a North Korean city near the border with China this week, according to multiple reports, resulting in possible casualties.Neither North Korean officials nor state media have commented on the blasts, which reportedly occurred late Monday in a residential area in the city of Hyesan.Videos, posted by the Associated Press and the Seoul-based Daily NK, showed repeated explosions, along with orange flames and dark smoke rising from a neighborhood in Hyesan. The videos were shot from China, which lies just across the Yalu River from North Korea.Daily NK, which relies on a network of anonymous sources across North Korea, reported that the explosion killed at least 15 people. That figure has not been confirmed.The outlet said the initial blast appeared to be caused by a gas leak in a house, which exploded a liquid petroleum gas cylinder. That set off as many as 10 other explosions at nearby houses, it reported.North Korea frequently does not report deadly accidents.
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A Slovak court has postponed verdicts in the trial of a businessman and others charged with killing an investigative journalist in 2018, a case that shocked the nation and reshaped its political landscape.A court spokeswoman said a hearing would take place on Sept. 3, shifted from a planned verdict on Wednesday, to give more time to review the rulings.The murders of Jan Kuciak and his fiancee, Martina Kusnirova, sparked mass protests and forced then prime minister Robert Fico to step down amid public anger over perceived graft in public life.Fico’s Smer party lost a general election to anti-corruption politician Igor Matovic’s party in February, ending the leftist group’s nearly decade-and-a-half rule in the central European country.Anger over the killings and demands to end corruption have remained a strong theme in civic life since mass protests two years ago that were sparked by the killings at Kuciak’s home in February 2018.Prosecutors say Slovak entrepreneur Marian Kocner, the subject of Kuciak’s reporting on corruption involving politically connected businesspeople, had contracted the reporter’s killing.He and two co-defendants, who deny wrongdoing, face 25 years in prison if found guilty.Two others have already been sentenced after admitting guilt. A former soldier received 23 years in prison in April for shooting and killing Kuciak and his fiancee while a fifth suspect admitted to arranging Kuciak’s murder and was jailed for 15 years in December.
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White House officials and top congressional Democrats plan to meet again Wednesday as they aim to agree on a new coronavirus aid package by the end of the week. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said after 90 minutes of negotiations Tuesday that the goal was to finalize the proposal in the coming days in order to allow for a vote in Congress next week. Wednesday will be the third straight day of talks between Mnuchin, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. “We really went down issue by issue by issue, slogging through,” Schumer said after Tuesday’s session. “They made some concessions, which we appreciated.  We made some concessions, which they appreciated.  We are still far away on a lot of the important issues, but we’re continuing to go at it.” Meadows called the Tuesday meeting “probably the most productive meeting we’ve had to date.”White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, right, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin arrive at the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the Capitol to resume talks on a COVID-19 relief bill, Aug. 1, 2020, in Washington.The two sides have been divided by the size of their proposed aid packages, with Democrats calling for $3.4 trillion in new spending and Republicans wanting to limit it to $1 trillion.   Among the items under discussion are sending out another round of stimulus payments, helping renters avoid eviction, aiding the Postal Service and action to address $600-per-week federal unemployment payments that expired last week.   Republican leaders have proposed passing a smaller aid package that addresses some items while leaving negotiations on others for later. Democrats have dismissed that approach, arguing instead that the federal government needs to take big action to confront the economic challenges facing the country.   The White House criticized Democrats for blocking passage of a short-term bill Friday that would have extended the unemployment benefits for seven days, giving congressional leaders more time to negotiate.   “That should tell you exactly where the Democrats stand,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a briefing Tuesday.   But Democrats are aware they have a better negotiating position since Senate Republican leadership needs their votes for passage.   Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged Tuesday he would not have full Republican support as he did in March when Congress quickly agreed on a massive aid package addressing the beginning of the crisis.  “If we’re looking for a total consensus among Republican senators, you’re not going to find it,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday. “So, we do have divisions about what to do. What we’re hoping for here is a bipartisan proposal negotiated by the president of the United States and his team and the Democratic majority in the House to sign a bill into law that can appeal to a significant percentage of Republicans.”   Mnuchin signaled some flexibility Monday, telling reporters, “We’re open to a bigger package if we can reach an agreement.” 
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U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar will visit Taiwan “in the coming days,” a move that is sure to anger China. Secretary Azar will become the highest-ranking U.S. cabinet member to visit the self-ruled island since 1979, when Washington formally switched diplomatic ties from Taipei to Beijing. He will also be the first cabinet-level official to visit Taiwan since then-Environmental Protection Agency administrator Gina McCarthy visited in 2014. In a statement released late Tuesday, the agency said Azar’s “historic visit  will strengthen the U.S.-Taiwan partnership and enhance U.S-Taiwan cooperation to combat the global COVID-19 pandemic.” Azar praised Taiwan’s “remarkable success battling COVID-19 as a free and transparent democratic society.” Azar will hold talks with his Taiwanese counterparts and Taiwan health experts about the island’s COVID-19 response and its role as a reliable global supplier of medical equipment and critical technology.   Azar held a rare telephone conference back in April with his Taiwan counterpart, Health Minister Chen Shih-chung. His planned visit is the latest move by President Donald Trump’s administration to build stronger ties with Taiwan, which broke away from China in 1949 after Chaing Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces settled on the island when they were driven off the mainland by Mao Zedong’s Communist forces. China considers the self-ruled island a breakaway province and has vowed to annex the island by any means necessary, including a military invasion. Taiwan has had surprising success in limiting the coronavirus outbreak to just 476 confirmed cases and seven deaths. But Taiwan is neither a member of the World Health Organization nor the United Nations because of opposition from Beijing.   
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The FBI has opened more than 300 domestic terrorism investigations since late May and arrested nearly 100 people in Portland, Oregon, a focal point of the George Floyd protests, a top federal prosecutor said on Tuesday.Erin Nealy Cox, U.S. Attorney, Northern District of Texas, testifies during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on police use of force and community relations on on Capitol Hill, June 16, 2020, in Washington.Erin Nealy Cox, the U.S. attorney for the northern district of Texas and co-head of a recently formed Justice Department task force on “antigovernment extremists,” told congressional lawmakers that the investigations were opened after May 28, three days after Floyd, an African American, died while in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His death sparked nationwide protests.“That does not include any potential civil rights investigations or violent crime associated with the civil unrest,” Cox said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the protests that have at times been marked by violence.Attorney General William Barr announced the creation of the Justice Department task force in late June, saying “antigovernment extremists” had “engaged in indefensible acts of violence designed to undermine public order.”Justice Department U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 9, 2020, to examine COVID-19 fraud.The task force, co-headed by Craig Carpenito, the U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey and composed of prosecutors and FBI agents, is charged with developing “detailed information about violent antigovernment extremist individuals, networks and movements.”“Any group, regardless of their name, if they’re violent and antigovernment, we will be looking at them,” Cox said during the hearing. “If it is a white supremacist that is engaging in gang or drug activity, that would not fall under the purview of our task force.”The establishment of a task force focused on antigovernment extremists has raised concern that the Justice Department is giving short shrift to investigating white supremacist groups at a time the threat from far-right extremists is on the rise. Last year, FBI Director Christopher Wray said most of the bureau’s domestic terrorism cases are linked to white supremacy.Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois asked Cox why the Justice Department “has stopped tracking white supremacist incidents as a separate category of domestic terrorism.” Cox said she did not know.The hearing brought into sharp relief partisan passions over at times violent confrontations between protesters and law enforcement officers in recent weeks.Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said the protests over police brutality and racism had been hijacked by “rioters and looters and those who cynically exploit the protests for their own evil ends.”“Peaceful protests must be protected. Riots must be stopped,” Cruz said, accusing Democrats of refusing to condemn the violence.Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee business meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 11, 2020.Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono, saying “no one is condoning violence,” accused federal law enforcement officers of unleashing violence against peaceful protesters.“In Portland, federal agents used excessive and discriminate force to break up people gathered to peaceably protest,” Hirono said.Last month, the Trump administration sent dozens of federal law enforcement agents into the city, with President Donald Trump accusing the city leadership of losing “control of the anarchists and agitators” targeting a federal courthouse.Subsequent reports that the agents had used excessive force against protesters and grabbed demonstrators off the streets of Portland while driving in unmarked vehicles provoked a backlash, eventually prompting the federal personnel to agree to pull out of the city.Ken Cuccinelli, a senior official with the Department of Homeland Security, denied that the situation has grown quieter since the department agreed to withdraw its agents.“Last night, the local police declared a riot,” Cuccinelli said. “Not the federal but the local police.”Since the protests started in May, 140 law enforcement officers have sustained injuries in Portland, he said. 
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Afghan officials said Tuesday that dozens of Islamic State and Taliban prisoners were able to escape from a prison in eastern Nangarhar province after it was attacked by militants. IS took responsibility for the attack. VOA’s Zabiullah Ghazi reports from Jalalabad.
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Fake news about the coronavirus can do real harm. Polygraph.info is spotlighting fact-checks from other reliable sources here​. Daily Debunk”What Science Says About Children, COVID-19 and School Reopenings,” FactCheck.org, July 24.Social Media DisinfoScreenshotCirculating on social media: Photo claiming to show crowds protesting in Berlin against coronavirus restrictions.Verdict: FalseRead the full story at: ReutersFactual Reads on CoronavirusEverything you need to know about the UK’s new 90-minute coronavirus test
Two new coronavirus tests that can return results in just over an hour are set to be released in the UK, the government has announced.
— Euronews, August 3
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New York City’s health commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, resigned Tuesday, expressing her “deep disappointment” with the way New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has handled the COVID pandemic and his use of the department’s expertise.In her resignation letter, sent to de Blasio and members of the media, Barbot said, “I leave my post today with deep disappointment that during the most critical public health crisis in our lifetime, that the Health Department’s incomparable disease control expertise was not used to the degree it could have been.”Earlier this year, the New York Times reported de Blasio initially ignored Barbot’s advice about canceling large gatherings and closing businesses. Last month, he stripped control of the city’s COVID-19 contact-tracing program from the health department, and placed the program under Health and Hospitals, the agency that runs the city’s public hospitals.Barbot’s replacement was announced as Dr. Dave Chokshi—a Rhodes Scholar who served at the Louisiana Department of Health during Hurricane Katrina and was the principal health adviser to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs in the Obama administration.At his Tuesday news conference, de Blasio thanked Barbot for her service and the important work she did during the crisis. He told reporters it became clear it was time to move forward and “create a new approach” for how to handle the pandemic.Earlier this year, New York City was the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, with daily deaths passing 400 per day. But this past month, the city saw the lowest number of hospitalizations since the pandemic began. 
 
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