SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered officials to wage a tougher epidemic prevention campaign in “our style” after he turned down some foreign COVID-19 vaccines offered via the U.N.-backed immunization program.

During a Politburo meeting Thursday, Kim said officials must “bear in mind that tightening epidemic prevention is the task of paramount importance which must not be loosened even a moment,” the official Korean Central News Agency reported Friday, September 3, 2021. 

While stressing the need for material and technical means of virus prevention and increasing health workers’ qualifications, Kim also called for “further rounding off our style epidemic prevention system,” KCNA said.

Kim previously called for North Koreans to brace for prolonged COVID-19 restrictions, indicating the nation’s borders would stay closed despite worsening economic and food conditions. Since the start of the pandemic, North Korea has used tough quarantines and border closures to prevent outbreaks, though its claim to be entirely virus-free is widely doubted.

On Tuesday, UNICEF, which procures and delivers vaccines on behalf of the COVAX distribution program, said North Korea proposed its allotment of about 3 million Sinovac shots be sent to severely affected countries instead. North Korea was also slated to receive AstraZeneca shots through COVAX, but their delivery has been delayed. 

According to UNICEF, North Korea’s health ministry still said it would continue to communicate with COVAX over future vaccines.

Some experts believe North Korea may want other vaccines, while questioning the effectiveness of Sinovac and the rare blood clots seen in some recipients of the AstraZeneca vaccine. 

The previously allocated 1.9 million AstraZeneca doses would be enough to vaccinate 950,000 people — only about 7.3% of the North’s 26 million people — meaning North Korea would still need much more quantities of vaccine to inoculate its population. 

Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Seoul’s Ewha Womans University, said North Korea is likely angling to receive more effective jabs from COVAX and then strategically allocate them domestically. 

“Pyongyang appears to have issues with COVAX involving legal responsibility and distribution reporting requirements. So it might procure vaccines from China to deliver to border regions and soldiers while allocating COVAX shots to less sensitive populations,” Easley said.

“The Kim regime likely wants the most safe and effective vaccine for the elite, but administering Pfizer would require upgraded cold chain capability in Pyongyang and at least discreet discussions with the United States. The Johnson & Johnson option could also be useful to North Korea given that vaccine’s portability and one-shot regimen,” he said.

In a recent U.N. report on the North’s human rights situation, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres asked North Korea to “take all necessary measures, including through international cooperation and assistance, to provide access to COVID-19 vaccines for all persons, without discrimination.”

He also asked North Korea to form a plan to enable diplomats and aid workers to return to the North and revive humanitarian aid distribution systems as soon as possible in conjunction with its COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

After their meeting in Seoul last month, Sung Kim, the top U.S. diplomat on North Korea affairs, and his South Korean counterpart Noh Kyu-duk told reporters that they discussed humanitarian cooperation with North Korea in providing anti-virus resources, sanitation and safe water.

LONDON: An inquiry investigating child sexual abuse in a wide range of religious organisations and settings in England on Thursday found “shocking failures” in how many religions handled abuse allegations, with victim-blaming and abuse of power by religious leaders often contributing to under-reporting.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse looked into child protection in 38 religious organisations in England and Wales, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, Baptists, Methodists, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism and non-conformist Christian denominations.

It took evidence from two weeks of public hearings held earlier this year.

It cited figures showing that from 2015 to 2020, of all known institutions where abuse had been reported, 11% took place within a religious organization or setting.

Some 10% of suspects were employed by or linked to a religion.

” Some religious settings have no child protection policies in place, it found, and there is currently “either no or very limited oversight” of child protection in religious organisations.

“Religious believers can find it difficult to accept that members of their congregation or religious leaders could perpetrate abuse,” its report said.

“As a result, some consider that it is not necessary to have specific child protection procedures or to adhere strictly to them.

” The report cited examples including four victims who were sexually abused when they were about 9 years old while they were taught the Quran by a teacher in a mosque.

The teacher was convicted in 2017.

In another instance, the report said, a boy was abused by a prominent leader in an evangelical organization connected to the United Reformed Church at Sunday school camp and other places from 7 to 10 years old.

The abuser was convicted in 2017, decades after the abuse took place.

Thursday’s report came after the inquiry’s earlier investigations into the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches that detailed widespread abuse.

The long-running inquiry, which has heard from thousands of victims, has also looked into allegations of abuse linked to British government institutions and lawmakers.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Wednesday said the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan was not “responsible or orderly”, warning that the “consequences of abandonment” could lead to a civil war in the war-ravaged country if the West failed to engage with the Taliban.

The last C-17 cargo aircraft carrying US forces took off from the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul in the early hours of Tuesday, ending America’s military campaign in Afghanistan.

The Taliban, ousted from power by the US shortly after the 9/11 attacks, now control nearly all of the country.

“Things could become chaotic, there could be anarchy, and that will give space to the organisations we all dread: the international terrorist organisation that we do not want their footprint to grow in Afghanistan,” he said.

The foreign minister said that the “consequences of abandonment” are dangerous and could “lead to a civil war.”

Qureshi said that the West should now test the new Taliban government to ensure it keeps its promises.

He said that if the West did not maintain dialogue with the Taliban, Afghanistan could fall victim to another civil war and a new wave of terrorism could spread in the region.

“They should have learned from their mistakes,” he said.

“And I think the attitude and the approach they are taking is reflective of a different approach,” the minister said.

“What I’m saying is test them (Taliban) before trusting them. They’re (making) big statements but let us see if they live up to them and if they do, then build on it because the other option is far worse,” he said.

Qureshi said the initial statements made by the Taliban leadership were positive and encouraging.

He hoped that the Taliban would work to establish an inclusive government in the multi-ethnic state.

“One option is engagement as opposed to isolation, you know we’ve withdrawn, let’s wash our hands, we’ve done our bit, we leave. That is a dangerous option. That is an option of abandonment of Afghan people,” he said.

He said that the same mistake was committed in the 1990s and urged the international community not to repeat the same mistake again.

Washington: The US has conducted a drone strike against an Islamic State “planner” in Afghanistan, striking back at the terror outfit in less than 48 hours after a suicide bombing claimed by the group killed 169 Afghans and 13 American soldiers at the Kabul airport.

“US military forces conducted an over-the-horizon counterterrorism operation today against an ISIS-K planner. The unmanned airstrike occurred in the Nangahar province of Afghanistan. Initial indications are that we killed the target, Capt Bill Urban, spokesperson of US Central Command, said on Friday.

We know of no civilian casualties,” he said.

Earlier in the day, the White House said President Joe Biden does not want the terrorists, who planned the attack at the Kabul airport, to live any longer.

I think he made it clear yesterday that he does not want them to live on the Earth anymore, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at her daily news conference.

However, it wasn’t immediately known if the ISIS-K planner was involved specifically in Thursday’s Kabul airport attack, claimed by the Islamic State’s Afghanistan affiliate — Islamic State Khorasan or ISIS-K.

The US airstrike came a day after President Biden vowed to “hunt” down the terrorists and make them “pay” for the Kabul airport attack and ordered his commanders to develop plans to strike back at them.

“To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm notice, we will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay. I will defend our interests and our people with every measure at my command,” Biden had said in his remarks at the White House on Thursday.

NEW DELHI: The G7 leaders, who met to discuss the situation in Afghanistan on Tuesday, have decided that India would be included in further discussions on the war-torn country. According to sources, the decision to include India in future discussions was taken keeping in mind India’s interests in the region. India has economic interests worth around $3 billion in Afghanistan.

It is learnt that the decision to include India in further negotiations by the G7 was taken after Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a 45-minute conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two leaders agreed to establish a permanent channel to deal with the situation in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, sources said India is ready to engage with anyone who has its national interests in mind. Without naming the Taliban, sources added that New Delhi was ready to protect its interests in Afghanistan by engaging with entities who are ready to secure their economic and security interests in the war-torn country.

Earlier also, India had hinted that it was engaging with the Taliban. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, when asked about India holding talks with the group, had said it was a fact that the militant group and its representatives had taken control of Afghanistan. “It is time to take it forward from here,” he added.

External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi, in response to a question and without denying the engagement with the Taliban, had stated India was in touch with all stakeholders in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, there were unconfirmed reports that some of the evacuees from Afghanistan, who landed in the capital on Tuesday, have tested positive for coronavirus. They are said to be asymptomatic and are in quarantine. Some of theose who tested positive, had come in contact with Union ministers Hardeep Singh Puri and V Muraleedharan at the airport.

KABUL: A firefight at one of the gates of Kabul’s international airport killed at least one Afghan security officer early Monday, German officials said, the latest chaos to engulf Western efforts to evacuate those fleeing the Taliban takeover of the country.

The shooting near the military side of the airport came as the Taliban sent fighters northward to face a nascent rebellion against the insurgents who seized the country over a week ago in a lightning offensive.

So far, the Taliban said there had been no fighting though the rebels already have seized three rural districts in the mountains of the Hindu Kush.

Though the security forces of Afghanistan’s central government largely collapsed or fled the Taliban advance, some armed Afghans remain at Kabul airport assisting Western countries and others as they struggle to evacuate those gathered there.

The gunfire that killed the Afghan officer early Monday broke out near the airport’s northern gate, the same scene of chaos that on Saturday saw a crush of a panicked crowd kill seven Afghan civilians.

Who opened fire and the circumstances of the shooting around 6:45 a.m. local time remained unclear.

However, the German military said in a tweet that one member of the Afghan security forces was killed and three others were wounded by “unknown attackers.”

The U.S. military and NATO did not immediately acknowledge the shooting.

The Taliban as well did not acknowledge the incident.

The tragic scenes around the airport have transfixed the world as thousands of Afghans poured into the facility last week.

In the chaos, some plunged to their deaths while hanging onto an American C-17 taking off from the runway.

At least seven people died that day, in addition to the seven killed Sunday.

The Taliban blame the chaotic evacuation on the U.S. military, saying there’s no need for Afghans to fear them, even though their fighters shoot into the air and beat people with batons as they try to control the crowds outside the airport perimeter.

The Taliban have pledged amnesty to those who worked with the U.S, NATO and the toppled Afghan government, but many Afghans still fear revenge attacks.

There have been reports in recent days of the Taliban hunting down their former enemies.

It’s unclear if Taliban leaders are saying one thing and doing another, or if fighters are taking matters into their own hands.

As the airlift continues, the U.S. government has activated the Civil Reserve Air Fleet program, requesting 18 aircraft from U.S. carriers to assist in transporting Afghan refugees after they are evacuated to other countries.

The voluntary program, born in the wake of the Berlin airlift, adds to the military’s capabilities during crises.

Already early Monday, a Delta Air Lines flight part of those evacuations landed in Dubai and later took off for Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, where evacuees already crowd hangars there.

A steady stream of military transport planes continue to fly people out of Kabul to airfields across the Mideast.

There also have been concerns about a potential attack on the Kabul airport by a local Islamic State affiliate, whether through suicide bombers targeting the gathered crowds there or using portable surface-to-air missiles to bring down aircraft.

U.S. military planes have been executing corkscrew landings, and other aircraft have fired flares upon takeoff, measures used to, prevent missile attacks.

Meanwhile in Baghlan province, some 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of Kabul, fighters calling themselves the “People’s Uprising” claimed to have seized three districts in the Andarab Valley, nestled the Hindu Kush.

Others have gathered in Panjshir province, the only of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces not to fall to the Taliban.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the insurgents’ forces had begun surrounding Panjshir province.

Amurllah Saleh, Afghanistan’s vice president under the country’s absent President Ashraf Ghani, wrote on Twitter that Taliban fighters have massed near the province after facing ambushes.

ABU DHABI: Former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani said Wednesday he hopes to return home, after fleeing to the United Arab Emirates in the face of the Taliban’s rapid advance, and said he supported talks between the Taliban and top former officials.

“For now, I am in the Emirates so that bloodshed and chaos is stopped,” he said in a video message — his first appearance since leaving the capital on Sunday. He noted he had “no intention” to remain in exile. 

“I am currently in talks to return to Afghanistan.”

The United Arab Emirates announced earlier in the day that it was hosting Ghani “on humanitarian grounds”.

In his message posted to Facebook, Ghani added that he supports talks between the Taliban and top former government officials, after it emerged that Taliban members had met with former president Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, who headed the failed peace process. 

Taliban leaders have said they have “pardoned all former government officials”, according to the monitoring group SITE.

Ghani succeeded Karzai as leader of Afghanistan in 2014.

As per the new guidelines, only one person from a household would be permitted to go out and purchase essentials while all shopping malls have been asked to shut.

COLOMBO: The Sri Lankan government on Wednesday issued fresh guidelines restricting the movement of people even as businesses have started imposing a self-lockdown in view of the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the country.

As per the new guidelines, only one person from a household would be permitted to go out and purchase essentials while all shopping malls have been asked to shut.

These guidelines are to be in force until the end of August, the Director General Health Services Asela Gunawardena said.

Meanwhile, the health trade unions held protests to urge the government to order a total lockdown to arrest the third wave of coronavirus.

“We ask the government to lockdown the country for 10 days,” said Ravi Kumudesh, a health trade unionist.

In several areas, businesses are imposing self-lockdowns.

Shops remain shut as the number of cases have seen a rapid increase.

The government has decided to purchase nine million doses of Sinopharm and 14 million doses of Pfizer vaccines, the Cabinet spokesman and minister Ramesh Pathirana told reporters.

He said that the aim was to vaccinate all above 18 by September 30.

According to the health ministry, over 2,400 new infections were recorded on Wednesday.

With 174 more fatalities, the death toll has crossed the 6,400-mark, the ministry added.

OUAGADOUGOU: Burkina Faso’s president declared three days of national mourning from Thursday after suspected jihadists killed 47 people, including 30 civilians, in an attack in the north of the country.

The assault Wednesday near the town of Gorgadji also left 14 soldiers and three militia volunteers dead, the communications ministry said.

The soldiers and militia had been “guarding civilians setting off for Arbinda,” another town in northern Burkina.

In an ensuing gunbattle, security forces killed 58 “terrorists” and put the rest to flight, according to the government. Nineteen people were also wounded, it said.

“Rescue and relief operations are continuing,” it said.

The area is in the notorious “three-border” zone where Burkina Faso meets Mali and Niger, a focus of the jihadist violence that plagues the wider Sahel region of west Africa.

It was the third major attack on Burkinabe soldiers in the past two weeks, including one on August 4 near the Niger border which killed 30 people, including 11 civilians.

President Roch Marc Christian Kabore declared three days of national mourning from Thursday for the victims of the latest attack, according to an official decree.

Flags would be flown at half-mast from public buildings and festivities banned during the period, it said.

Burkina Faso, a poor country in the arid sub-Saharan Sahel region, has since 2015 been battling increasingly frequent and deadly attacks by jihadist groups affiliated with the Islamic State group and Al-Qaeda.

On June 4-5, gunmen killed at least 132 people, including children, in the northeast village of Solhan, Burkina’s deadliest attack in the history of the insurgency.

Raids and ambushes have been concentrated in the north and east close to the borders with Mali and Niger, both of which have also faced deadly violence by jihadists.

These attacks along with inter-communal violence have left more than 1,400 people dead and forced 1.3 million to flee their homes, according to official estimates.  

Along with central Mali, the vast, arid “three-border” region straddling Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso has become the worst-hit area in the jihadists’ Sahel campaign.

Militants linked to Al-Qaeda emerged in northern Mali in 2012, prompting French military intervention. After being scattered, the jihadists regrouped and spread to neighbouring countries.

Even before Taliban could cement its political footprint in Afghanistan, capital Kabul is already facing a grim makeover. One sans pictures, ad posters of women on showrooms and beauty salons.

A photo of two men covering up such posters in the city has gone viral on Twitter.

The picture surfaces at a time when women in Afghanistan, who have been vulnerable targets of the Taliban regime in the past, are terrified of what lies ahead.

Multiple ‘reassurances’ from Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen that women’s rights will be respected this time around, in adherence to norms that suit Afghanistan’s future as an Islamic Emirate, has done little to help the cause.

Women from all spheres of society, football players to graduate students, are crying for help as the country’s inevitable instability leaves less to no options for them.

The Taliban swept into the capital on Sunday after the Western-backed government collapsed and President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, bringing an end to a two-decade campaign in which the US and its allies had tried to transform the country.