Trump says WHO Failed

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday halted funding to the World Health Organisation (WHO) over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, drawing condemnation from infectious disease experts as the global death toll continued to mount.

Trump, who has reacted angrily to criticism of his administration's response to the worst epidemic in a century, has become increasingly hostile towards the WHO.

The Geneva-based organisation had promoted China's “disinformation” about the virus that likely led to a wider outbreak than otherwise would have occurred, Trump said.

Nearly 2 million people globally have been infected and more than 124,000 have died since the disease emerged in China late last year, according to a Reuters tally.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said it was not the time to reduce resources for the WHO.

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Muslim vote gains significance as race for White House tightens

WASHINGTON: Muslim voters may play a larger than size role in the US elections next week as the race for the White House shapes into a close competition between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

The competition, which clearly favoured Clinton until this week, tightened after investigators revisited her email issue and media reports claimed that they discovered thousands of new emails that were not reported before.

A summary of the opinion surveys released on Sunday showed that the revived email scandal narrowed Hillary Clinton’s double-digit lead to single digits. The RCP poll average gave Clinton 47.6 per cent chances of winning the election against Trump’s 43.3. This narrowed Clinton’s lead to 4.3pc, compared to a more than 10-point lead she had last week. Both candidates, however, still have negative favourability ratings: minus 7.4 for Clinton and minus 21.2 for Trump.

This makes the race so tight that every vote counts, even those of Muslims.

There were 3.3 million Muslims in the United States in 2015, which is about 1 per cent of the country’s population, according to the Washington-based Pew Research Centre. Compare this with 17pc Latinos and 13pc blacks and it shows why in previous elections nobody talked about winning over or losing Muslim votes.

And it also shows why both Democrats and Republicans are reaching out to Muslim voters this year, particularly in the urban areas of key swing states where Muslims do have a noticeable presence.

Their near-total rejection of Donald Trump discourages Republicans from contacting Muslims but as the race tightened, they started contacting Muslim media outlets, including Dawn, with messages emphasising Trump’s business contacts with the Muslim world.

Democrats are more active and vocal too. Last week, they released a video featuring Khizr Khan, the father of a slain US soldier, and it had an “incredibly powerful message,” as The Washington Post noted.

Mr Khan talks about how Mr Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric hurts all, even those who sacrificed their loved ones for the country. Mr Trump attacked Mr Khan as a Democratic trickster, playing on grief to help elect Hillary Clinton.

The Clinton campaign is playing the ad in swing states, including Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where Muslim votes can make a difference. And such messages are having an impact.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an umbrella organisation with offices across the country, released a survey report this week, showing that 72pc of those surveyed intend to vote for Mrs Clinton, while just four per cent pledged to vote for Mr Trump.

Three in five Muslims also said they believe the Democratic Party was friendly toward them while 37pc said it was neutral. By contrast, less than one in 10 felt the same way about the Republican Party, though 31pc said the party was neutral.

The CAIR report also claimed that Muslims were fired up this election cycle as 86pc of registered Muslim voters plan to cast ballots.

US media surveys of predominantly Muslim neighbourhoods also confirm this finding as most outlets reported overwhelmingly pro-Democratic sentiments among the residents.

The CAIR report acknowledges that Muslims are only one per cent of the total US population but said that when they are clubbed with South Asians, Middle Easterners and other non-Latino immigrants, “they form a Democrat-leaning mass.”

US media reports warn that in some places, even a few thousand votes can swing the results either way.

Winning these votes is also important because US presidents are not chosen by popular vote, but through an Electoral College system that elevates the importance of several competitive states, such as Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia. The Electoral College consists of 538 electors, distributed among states according to their representation in Congress.

A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the president and that’s why it is also important to win states, not just an overall majority.

Muslim voters are concentrated in areas, which can swing a state either way. In Florida, Hillary Clinton leads polls by less than three per cent; in Ohio, her lead is narrower than two points.

But Sajid Tarar, a Pakistani-American businessman, rejects the suggestion that most Muslims would vote for Hillary Clinton.

“Muslims are a religious community and Mr Trump backs for issues that are closer to Islam,” says the Trump supporter who also addressed the Republican convention earlier this year. “Democrats spouse same-sex marriage, legalising cannabis and socialism, values that negate Islam.”

But the CAIR survey shows that 85pc Muslims blame Mr Trump for fanning Islamophobia and this is enough for them to vote for his rival.

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Four officers likely to be called back from India

ISLAMABAD: The government is considering pulling out from India four of its officers posted in Pakistan’s High Commission in New Delhi, days after Indian authorities declared one official persona non grata.

“This is under consideration. A final decision would be taken shortly,” a source at the Foreign Office said on Monday.

The names of the officers — commercial counsellor Syed Furrukh Habib and first secretaries Khadim Huss­ain, Mudassir Cheema and Shahid Iqbal — were made public after Indian officials released to media a recorded statement of a high commission staffer Mehm­ood Akhtar, who was expelled from India after being declared persona non grata.

Mr Akhtar told Dawn that he had given the statement under duress.

“They took me to a police station after detaining me where I was forced to read out a written statement provided by them in which the names of the four officers were given and was told to state that they belonged to Pakistan’s intelligence services,” the former high commission official, who returned to Islamabad last week, said.

Mr Akhtar narrated how he was manhandled and picked from outside a zoo while on his way back from Nizamuddin shrine and taken to a Delhi police station, where he was coerced into recording a statement before being expelled from the country.

Indian officials, he said, tortured him to extract the statement and threatened to inject him with heart attack inducing injection if he refused to comply.

The incident has jeopardised the security of the officers and their families besides restricting the normal diplomatic functioning of the high commission.

Pakistan and India have in the past expelled each other’s diplomats and officials due to their tense relationship, but it is one of those rare occasions where one of the countries took the extreme step of revealing the identities of officers.

Pakistani officials believe that India did this on purpose to heighten the tensions.

“We consider it as a serious breach of diplomatic norms. The Indian move has complicated the already tense situation and threatened the lives of our diplomatic staff,” an officer said, adding it was a “deliberate and provocative action”.

Talking about the difficulties being faced by high commission staff, the officer said a son of one of the officers had to be taken back from school after he was ridiculed by his class fellows following this disclosure.

He said public attitude towards high commission staff had stiffened.

One of the family members of the staff earlier talking over the phone to Dawn criticised the Pakistan government for “not proactively and forcefully” responding to the threats to their safety. “It is a matter of life and death for us, but the government’s response has been too meek,” the family member said.

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Yemen rebel missile shot down near Makkah

RIYADH: Yemeni rebels have launched one of their longest-range strikes against Saudi Arabia, firing a ballistic missile that was shot down near Makkah, the Saudi-led coalition fighting them said on Friday.

But the rebels insisted that the missile had targeted Jeddah, the Red Sea city in the region, and not Makkah.

The coalition has been carrying out a bombing campaign against the rebels since March last year and there have been rebel strikes towards the bases from which the coalition mounts air raids.

Saudi Arabia has deployed Patriot missiles to intercept the rebel fire.

Houthi rebels launched the missile “towards the Makkah area” on Thursday evening from their Saada province stronghold just across the border, a coalition statement said.

“The air defence was able to intercept and destroyed it about 65km from Makkah without any damage.”

The rebels’ sabanews website said their ballistic missile targeted the international airport in Jeddah.

The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council condemned the attack which it described as “clear evidence” that the rebels are not willing to accept a political solution to Yemen’s 19-month-old conflict.

United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan went further, criticising Iran for the attack.

“The Iranian regime backs a terrorist group that fires its rockets on Mecca... Is this an Islamic regime as it claims to be?” he wrote on Twitter.

Qatar called the attack “a provocation to the feelings of millions of Muslims worldwide”.

All GCC states, apart from Oman, are members of the Saudi-led coalition.

The UAE itself is a major pillar of the Sunni alliance.

The coalition as well as the United States accuse Iran of arming the rebels, a charge denied by Tehran.

The Houthi rebels are a minority group that has fought six wars against Yemen’s government between 2004 and 2010.

In a statement on sabanews.net, Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam accused Saudi Arabia of “political nonsense”.

“The Saudi regime which claims it intercepted the missile 65 kilometres away from Makkah which is holy and precious to the hearts of every Yemeni and Muslim could have avoided such media platitude and political nonsense by directly mentioning the city of Jeddah where a military target for the ‘Burkan 1’ missile lies on its northern outskirts,” said Mr Abdulsalam.

“Hiding behind holy sites is... a repugnant attempt to instigate the feelings of Muslims,” he said.

Unless the coalition ends its “aggression, lifts the blockade, and seeks peace”, the rebels “have the right to confront the aggressors in all legitimate and rightful means,” he added.

Second long-range strike Makkah lies more than 500km from the border.

It is the second time this month that the rebels have fired a missile of that range. On Oct 9, the coalition said it had intercepted a missile near Taif, the site of a Saudi airbase some 65km from Makkah.

That launch came a day after a coalition air strike killed more than 140 people attending a mourning gathering for the father of a rebel leader in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, prompting threats of revenge.

In a separate incident on Thursday, rebel fire hit a two-storey residential building in the Saudi border district of Jazan without causing casualties, the civil defence agency said.

The coalition has been fighting the Houthi rebels and forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who control much of the north of Yemen, including Sanaa, since March 2015 to try to restore the internationally recognised president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, now in exile.

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Information Minister Pervaiz Rasheed asked to step down amid Dawn story probe

Information Minister Parvaiz Rasheed has resigned from his position as Minister for Information, Broadcasting and National Heritage, DawnNews reported Saturday.

A statement issued by the Prime Minister's office said: "Evidence available so far pints to a lapse on part of the information minister, who has been directed to step down from the office to enable holding of an independent and detailed inquiry.”

The development comes after the publication of Dawn's story "Act against militants or face international isolation, civilians tell military", which reported details of a high level civil-military meeting discussing the issue of Pakistan's banned outfits.

The report of the high-profile security meeting has forced the government to initiate an inquiry to identify the person responsible for its leak.

Sources also said Rasheed's portfolio was taken away after a preliminary inquiry was launched by Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan. They added that the premier has ordered a formal inquiry as to whether Rasheed was involved in the leak from the meeting.

Speaking to DawnNews, PM spokesperson Musadiq Malik said, " A committee has been formed for the investigation of Dawn's story and investigations have entered the final phase.”

“Pervaiz Rasheed was responsible for the Information Department and he is temporarily suspended from his post until investigations conclude," Malik added.

"The committee was formed because no conclusive evidence has come forth. The details are with the committee Ch Nisar was heading," he said, adding that a press conference will be held by the interior minister tomorrow (Sunday).

"The investigation report will only come when the investigation is over. The investigation is being done with all sobriety, all responsible will be punished."

A statement issued today by the PM House contains details of the inquiry committee: “An inquiry committee including senior officers of ISI, MI and IB is being formed by the government to apportion the blame, identify interests and motives and expose all those responsible for this episode of stern action in the national interest."

The Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) said earlier this week that Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Interior Minister Ch Nisar and Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif called on the army chief to brief him on the progress of the investigation and recommendations related to the story. The meeting was also attended by DG ISI General Rizwan Akhtar.

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Pakistan to expel Indian diplomat in tit-for-tat move

The Foreign Secretary on Thursday summoned the Indian High Commissioner today and conveyed the decision of the Government of Pakistan to declare Surjeet Singh, an official of the Indian High Commission, as persona non grata, said a statement released by the Foreign Office.

The statement added that the Foreign Secretary expressed deep concern over the activities of the Indian official that were in violation of the Vienna Convention and established diplomatic norms.

“The Indian High Commission has been asked to make urgent necessary arrangements for Surjeet Singh and his family to leave Pakistan by October 29, 2016.”

Earlier today, India decided to expel a Pakistani high commission staff member for “espionage activities”, a foreign ministry official said, as local media reported that New Delhi police had detained him.

The Indian foreign secretary summoned Pakistani ambassador to India Abdul Basit to inform him that a Pakistan High Commission staffer has been declared persona non grata for espionage activities, Spokesperson of Indian Ministry of External Affairs Vikas Swarap said in a tweet.

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FS summons Pak High Commissioner to convey that Pak High Commission staffer has been declared persona non grata for espionage activities

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Delhi police crime commissioner Ravindra Yadav said the official had been detained on Wednesday with defence and other documents in his possession.

The documents included information on deployment of India's border security forces, Yadav told a press conference.

A Pakistani diplomatic source said the visa official, named as Mehmood Akhtar, had been given 48 hours to leave the country.

Akhtar was released in about three hours on intervention by our High Commission, the Foreign Office said.

Two other officials, identified as Maulana Ramzan and Subhash Jangir, have also been arrested for allegedly passing on sensitive information to the staffer.

Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit "strongly protested with Indian Foreign Secretary at the detention and manhandling of Pakistan High Commission staff," a spokesperson of the Pakistan High commission in Delhi said.

The high commissioner also said the detention contravened the 1961 Vienna Convention.

He asked the Indian government to ensure that such harassment does not happen in the future and strongly rejected accusations of the Indian government.

“Pakistan never engages in activity that is incompatible with its diplomatic status,” the envoy said.

"This act clearly reflects Indian actions to shrink diplomatic space for the working of Pakistan High Commission," the FO said.

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China’s Communist Party declares Xi Jinping ‘core’ leader

BEIJING: China’s ruling Communist Party declared its General Secretary Xi Jinping the “core” of its leadership on Thursday, elevating his already powerful status.

A communique issued by top party leaders after a four-day meeting in Beijing called on all its members to “closely unite around the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core”, said the People’s Daily, the party’s official mouthpiece.

The announcement followed a gathering of 400 top party leaders in Beijing for a meeting known as the Sixth Plenum to discuss changes to party structure and discipline.

Scenes of the meeting shown on state broadcaster CCTV showed a relaxed but business-like Xi, clad in a black windbreaker, lecturing a ballroom of rapt party members.

He has sought to bend the party to his will since taking its helm in 2012, and has already taken control of more levers of power than any leader since Mao Zedong.

Regional cadres began using the term “core” for Xi last December, but it then disappeared, suggesting that the Chinese president had encountered resistance to his efforts to further consolidate his power.

Analysts have speculated that Xi could seek to stay in power beyond the traditional 10-year term. The declaration was “very significant”, said Willy Lam, professor of politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, because in Chinese politics the “core” has traditionally denoted a degree of individual authority unconstrained by term limits. “The core of leadership can last forever,” he said. “There’s no idea of tenure, retirement age associated with the core.”

China has a constitutional limit of two five-year terms for the national president, another of Xi’s titles, but no formal rule on tenure for the general secretary of the ruling party, the post from which he derives his power.

Deng Xiaoping, the economic reformer who was China’s paramount leader throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, was referred to as the “core” of the leadership.

But his successor Jiang Zemin was only called the core of the third generation of leaders, effectively limiting the duration of the description, Lam said. Xi’s immediate predecessor Hu Jintao never achieved the status.

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Twitter's video-sharing mobile app Vine to close

Twitter Inc announced Thursday that it would discontinue the video-sharing mobile app Vine, as it moves to cut 9 per cent of its workforce worldwide to keep costs down after beating Wall Street quarterly earnings expectations.

The decision comes on the heels of a failed attempt to sell Twitter as it fights against stagnant user growth and mounting competition from other social media platforms.

In a post published jointly by Twitter and Vine to the blog platform Medium, the social media services said that the Vine website would stay live even after the mobile app is discontinued, giving users the chance to download and save any videos.

A Twitter spokeswoman told Reuters the app will shutter in coming months but did not specify a date.

Twitter introduced Vine in January 2013 as a way for users to share small snippets of video that were six seconds or less. The service was popular with members of the microblogging site and spawned several so-called "Vine stars", attracting millions of followers.

Social media users reeled over the news and Vine quickly became the top-trending topic on Twitter in the US with over 1.64 million tweets.

"RIP VINE #GoneTooSoon," tweeted Patricia Laire (@patricialaire).

"VINE IS A QUARTER OF MY LIFE I'M SO UPSET," wrote Twitter user moon (@hrtbreaker_mp3).

Others, however, saw the news as inevitable.

"We all knew Vine was not forever," tweeted Tyzano (@Tyzano). "It just could not compete with other platforms."

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US cracks down on India-based call centre fraud racket

WASHINGTON: US justice authorities announced action on Thursday to shut down a group of Indian call centres that had cheated victims in the United States of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Justice Department said tens of thousands of victims, most of them from South Asia, were extorted by callers pretending to be US tax or immigration officials threatening them with arrest and deportation if they did not remit money to the government.

But the victims were then directed to people working with the call centres in the United States to collect the “fines” through prepaid debit cards or wire transfers, and the money was quickly laundered out of the country, according to the Justice Department.

The agency said it had arrested 20 people and unveiled charges against five call centres and 32 individuals in India in the Ahmedabad-based operation.

The charges lodged by the US attorney in the southern district of Texas sets charges against a total of 56 people and five Indian companies for conspiracy to commit identity theft, false personation of an officer of the United States, wire fraud and money laundering.

“These individuals demanded immediate payments from the people they called to avoid deportation, to avoid arrest or to cover supposedly unpaid income taxes,” said Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell.

“In the process, these criminals took hundreds of millions of dollars from this scam alone. The victims include people all over the United States... and targeted primarily immigrants and the elderly.” The call centre racket made use of informal money transfer businesses known as hawalas to move the money. Many of the people contacted did not know the money being transferred was part of an extortion scheme, according to the Justice Department.

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US official warns over 9/11 law during Saudi visit

RIYADH: A United States law allowing victims of the Sept 11, 2001 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia could have “serious implications” for shared US-Gulf interests, a top Obama administration official said on Thursday.

US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew made the comments at the opening of a meeting with finance ministers from the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, whose most powerful member is Saudi Arabia.

The US Congress voted overwhelmingly in September to override President Barack Obama’s veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA).

Fifteen of the 19 Al Qaeda hijackers who carried out the 9/11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people were Saudi, but Riyadh denies any ties to the plotters.

JASTA allows attack survivors and relatives of terrorism victims to pursue cases against foreign governments in US federal court and to demand compensation if those governments are proven to bear some responsibility for attacks on US soil.

Lew said JASTA “would enact broad changes in long-standing international law regarding sovereign immunity that, if applied globally, could have serious implications for our shared interests.”

He said the Obama administration has proven its determination to hold people responsible when they commit “horrendous acts”, but “there are ways to do that without undermining important international legal principles.” In opposing the law, Obama said it would harm US interests by opening up the US to private lawsuits over its military missions abroad.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have also expressed concern about erosion of sovereign immunity, a principle sacrosanct in international relations. But the potential implications go far beyond the Gulf.

Some British, French and Dutch lawmakers have threatened retaliatory legislation to allow their courts to pursue US officials, threatening a global legal domino effect.

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