Washington: President Donald Trump will travel to India later this month on a two-day visit, the White House announced on Tuesday, in what would be his first trip to the country as the president of the United States.

The president and First Lady Melania Trump will travel to New Delhi and Ahmedabad during the visit from February 24-25, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said.

His predecessor, Barack Obama, had travelled to India twice, in 2010 and 2015.

During a phone call over the weekend, Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed the trip would further strengthen the India-US strategic partnership and highlight the strong and enduring bonds between the American and Indian people, she said.

“President Trump’s trip to India is timely in view of the bilateral trade issues that need to be resolved and in light of the collaborations between the US and India in various realms,” M R Rangaswami, Indian-American philanthropist and head of Indiaspora, told PTI.

Describing this as a significant visit, Mukesh Aghi, president of the US-India Strategic and Partnership Forum, noted that last three American presidents had made trips to India.

“It’s essential to send a message to the region that India is a significant partner and the president values that.

According to him, India has a role to play not only in its immediate neighbourhood, but in making sure that the South China Sea and the Indo Pacific region is part of the international global order. 

There have been 97 new deaths from the virus — with 91 in hardest-hit Hubei province — bringing the national toll to 908.

BEIJING: The number of confirmed infections in China’s coronavirus outbreak has reached 40,171 nationwide with more than 3,000 new cases reported, the National Health Commission said Monday.

In its daily update, the commission said there had been 97 new deaths from the virus — with 91 in hardest-hit Hubei province — bringing the national toll to 908.

Millions of people in China were returning to work Monday after an extended holiday designed to slow the spread of the new coronavirus

And although the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said there are tentative signs the epidemic is stabilising in China, the agency’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that the number of cases recorded overseas could be just “the tip of the iceberg”.

His comments came as an advance team of WHO international experts left late Sunday for China, led by Bruce Aylward, a veteran of previous health emergencies.

In an attempt to contain the virus, cities in Hubei have been locked down and transport routes across the country cut to stop the movement of hundreds of millions of people who usually visit family during the annual Lunar New Year holiday.

The unprecedented measures included an extension of the holiday, with citizens told to stay inside as much as possible.

Officially the holiday was extended by only three days, but many cities and provinces pushed the deadline until February 10.

The measures have left businesses, shops, factories and tourist sites closed and turned many cities into ghost towns, sparking concerns about the impact of the outbreak on the economy.

But there were some signs Monday of the country beginning to make a return to normality.

Roads in Beijing and Shanghai had significantly more traffic than in recent days and the southern city of Guangzhou said it would start to resume normal public transport from Monday.

The city had been running a partial service due to the epidemic, said city authorities — who reminded people to continue avoiding crowded places.

The death toll from the novel coronavirus has overtaken global fatalities.

China drew international condemnation for covering up cases during the SARS outbreak, but the WHO has praised the measures Beijing has taken this time.

However, the health body has warned that the figures could still “shoot up”.

Ian Lipkin — a professor at Columbia University who worked with China on the SARS outbreak — also warned of the risk of a “bump” in infection cases when people return to work.

Beijing: The death toll in China due to novel coronavirus epidemic rose to 811, while the confirmed cases jumped to over 37,000, the National Health Commission announced on Sunday.

Eighty-nine deaths were reported on Saturday and there were 2,656 new confirmed cases of the deadly infection, it said in its daily report.

A total of 811 people have died of the disease so far and 37,198 confirmed cases have been reported in 31 provincial-level regions, according to the commission.

Among the 89 deaths, 81 were from Hubei province, the epicentre of the outbreak, two in Henan, and one each in Hebei, Heilongjiang, Anhui, Shandong, Hunan and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, it said.

On Saturday, 600 people recovered and walked out of the hospitals. This included 324 in Hubei province, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. 

Nakhon Ratchasima (Thailand): The Thai soldier who killed at least 20 people and holed up in a mall overnight was shot dead on Sunday morning by commandos, ending a near-17-hour ordeal which left dozens wounded and stunned the country.

It was unclear how many people remained trapped inside the Terminal 21 mall in Nakhon Ratchasima — also known as Korat — where the gunman held out through the night, armed with assault weapons stolen from his barracks.

Volleys of gunfire rang out as the siege ran into dawn, hours after Thai security services stormed the ground floor and freed scores of stunned, terrified shoppers from a bloody rampage that the gunman — a junior army officer identified as Sergeant-Major Jakrapanth Thomma — had relayed via Facebook posts.

“He was shot dead thirty minutes ago” (0200 GMT), chief of the Crime Suppression Division Jirabhob Bhuridej told AFP.

Commandos from elite Thai police units killed the gunman, a police spokesman added, after an operation involving hundreds of security personnel.

“The official death toll is 20 and wounded 42… nine are in surgery,” Narinrat Pitchayakamin, a Korat doctor, told reporters, revising down an initial death toll of 21.

But it was unclear if there were more victims inside the multi-level complex which was packed with Saturday shoppers when the gunman stormed in.

A fleet of ambulances left the front of the complex and forensic police poured into the grim crime scene, shortly before the gunman’s death was confirmed.

The night was peppered with heavy exchanges of gunfire and sporadic evacuations. A police officer who took part in a raid to flush out the gunman died, according to deputy prime minister Anutin Charnvirakul.

“He had been hit and unfortunately, he couldn’t make it,” said Anutin.

Shocked evacuees recounted how an ordinary Saturday shopping day at the busy mall descended into horror as the gunman entered.

“It was like a dream… I’m grateful I survived,” Sottiyanee Unchalee, 48, told AFP, explaining she hid in the toilet of a gym inside the mall as she heard the gunfire. “I’m so sorry for those who died… (and) the people still trapped inside.”

Jakrapanth relayed his shooting spree through Facebook posts which charted the attack from the army barracks in the city to the mall, where an unknown number of shoppers remained trapped.

A volunteer rescue worker recounted a bloody scene of horror after his team carried four corpses to the hospital.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Peerapong Chatadee told AFP.

“I just feel so sad. He is a soldier, he should not have fired at unarmed people.”

The bloodshed began Saturday afternoon when Jakrapanth shot three people — among them at least one soldier — at a senior officer’s house and then at the nearby army barracks, before driving an army vehicle to the town centre.

There the gunman used weapons stolen from the military arsenal to unleash carnage in the town centre.

He “used a machine gun and shot innocent victims resulting in many injured and dead”, said police spokesman Krissana Pattanacharoen.

Throughout the day, Jakrapanth posted images of himself and wrote several posts on his Facebook page as the attack unfolded.

In one Facebook video — since deleted — the assailant, wearing an army helmet, filmed from an open-top jeep, saying, “I’m tired… I can’t pull my finger anymore” as he made a trigger symbol with his hand.

There were also photos of a man in a ski mask holding up a pistol.

A Facebook spokesperson said: “We have removed the gunman’s accounts from our services and will work around the clock to remove any violating content related to this attack as soon as we become aware of it.”

The city is home to one of the largest barracks in Thailand, a country where the military is enmeshed in politics and society.

The nation also has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world, and several shootings at courthouses last year renewed concern about gun violence.

A thermal screeening device checks passengers arriving in India from China including Hong Kong in view of outbreak of Novel coronavirus (CoV) in China

Washington: US health authorities on Tuesday announced the first case of a person on American soil sickened by a new virus that emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, and intensified airport health screenings.

The man, a US resident in his 30s who lives near Seattle, is in good condition, according to federal and state officials.

The man is being “hospitalised out of an abundance of precaution, and for short term monitoring, not because there was severe illness,” said Chris Spitters, a Washington state health official.

The news came as Asian countries ramped up measures to block the spread of the new virus as the death toll in China rose to six and the number of cases surpassed 300.

China is about to embark on the Lunar New Year holiday — a huge travel time for hundreds of millions of people. The man hospitalised in Washington state had travelled to the US from Wuhan, but did not visit the seafood market thought to be at the heart of the outbreak.

He entered the US on January 15 — two days before health screenings for those travelling from Wuhan began at airports in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco — and approached health authorities himself after reading news reports about the virus.

Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will now be deployed to two additional international airports, in Chicago and Atlanta.

All travellers on flights from Wuhan, either direct or connecting, will now be re-routed to the five airports with screening systems in place.

Nations across the Asia-Pacific region stepped up checks of passengers at airports to detect the SARS-like coronavirus.

Fears of a bigger outbreak rose after a prominent expert from China’s National Health Commission confirmed late Monday that the virus can be passed between people.

Davos: President Donald Trump has said that the US is watching the developments between India and Pakistan over Kashmir “very closely” and repeated his offer to “help” resolve the longstanding dispute between the two neighbours as he met Prime Minister Imran Khan on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum here in the Swiss ski resort.

Addressing the media with the Pakistan Prime Minister prior to their private meeting on Tuesday, President Trump asserted that trade and borders were both critical points for discussion, while Khan said that for him, Afghanistan was the top priority.

Trump told Khan, whom he referred to as “my friend”, that he would speak to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the ongoing Kashmir issue. The US president is expected to visit India in the coming weeks, marking his first visit after taking up his post in the White House.

“What’s going on between Pakistan and India if we can help, we certainly will be willing to. We have been watching it very closely and it’s an honour to be here with my friend,” he said.

“The Pakistan-India conflict is a very big issue for us in Pakistan and we expect the US to always play its part in deescalating the tensions, because no other country can,” Khan said.

President Trump has repeatedly offered to mediate following India’s August 5 decision to revoke the special status to Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcate the state into two Union Territories, evoking strong reaction from Pakistan which has been trying to internationalise the Kashmir issue

New Delhi has defended the move, saying Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India and the issue was strictly internal to the country, and the special status provisions only gave rise to terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir.

“The country took the decision of abrogation of Article 370, which had only given separatism and terrorism to that state,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at a function in October last year.

This is the third meeting between Trump and Khan since Pakistan premier assumed office in 2018 and it came against the backdrop of Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s recent trip to the US, amid reports that the US and Afghan Taliban were close to striking a peace deal.

“There are issues we want to talk about. The main issue is Afghanistan because it concerns the US and Pakistan. Fortunately, we are on the same page. Both of us are interested in peace there and an orderly transition in Afghanistan with talks with Taliban and the government,” Khan said.

When a reporter asked Trump if he would visit Pakistan considering he was already set to visit India, the US president said he was meeting the Pakistan premier in Davos.

“Well, we’re visiting right now. So we don’t really have to. I wanted to say that from a relationship standpoint, we got a great relationship. From the standpoint our two countries, we’re getting along very well. I would say we’ve never been closer with Pakistan the way we’re right now. And this is a big statement,” Trump said .

Khan left for Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum and meet the world leaders, including President Trump, on the sidelines of the annual event which kicked off at the ski resort town of Davos on Tuesday.

The four-day summit marks the 50th anniversary of the forum.

A total of 53 heads of State are on the guest list. Nearly 3,000 participants from 118 countries are expected to attend the event during which political leaders, business executives, heads of international organisations and civil society representatives are set to deliberate on contemporary economic, geopolitical, social and environmental issues.