KEY COVID NOS. WORLDWIDE

Pos   /   Country   /   New Daily cases   /   Total Deaths   /        Daily Deaths /           Active Cases   /           Deaths/1M Pop

               World    8,15,097              /             32,82,493            /             12,980   /             1,86,06,172               /             421.1

1             USA        45,484   /             5,94,884              /             748        /             66,68,591            /               1,788

2             India      4,01,271              /             2,38,265              /             4,194     /             37,31,278               /             171

3             Brazil     73,426   /             4,19,114              /             1,938     /             10,22,857            /               1,960

4             France   19,124   /             1,06,101              /             235        /             8,23,590              /               1,622

5             Iran        17,076   /             74,241   /             335        /             4,78,764              /             874

6             Italy       10,554   /             1,22,470              /             207        /             3,97,564              /               2,028

7             Ukraine 8,404     /             45,830   /             379        /             3,28,436              /               1,053

8             Turkey   20,107   /             42,465   /             278        /             2,93,296              /             499

9             Germany              17,550   /             85,056   /             245        /             2,90,156              /               1,012

10           Argentina            22,552   /             66,872   /             609        /             2,73,360              /               1,468

11           Russia    8,386     /             1,12,622              /             376        /             2,70,532              /               771

12           Mexico  2,846     /             2,18,173              /             166        /             2,60,945              /               1,677

13           Spain     8,186     /             78,792   /             66           /             2,40,606              /               1,685

14           Netherlands        7,481     /             17,290   /             22           /             2,26,695              /               1,007

15           Hungary               1,541     /             28,403   /             106        /             2,06,949              /               2,947

16           Poland   6,047     /             69,445   /             453        /             1,99,921              /               1,837

17           Sweden                /             14,173   /             36           /             1,58,161              /               1,396

18           Honduras             631        /             5,502     /             63           /             1,31,510              /               548

19           Colombia             17,525   /             76,867   /             453        /             1,03,008              /               1,497

20           Belgium               3,518     /             24,444   /             38           /             1,02,553              /               2,101

WHO GIVES EMERGENCY APPROVAL TO SINOPHARM, FIRST CHINESE COVID-19 VACCINE

The World Health Organization (WHO) approved for emergency use a COVID-19 vaccine from China's state-owned drugmaker Sinopharm on Friday, bolstering Beijing's push for a bigger role in inoculating the world.

The vaccine, one of two main Chinese coronavirus vaccines that have been given to hundreds of millions of people in China and elsewhere, is the first developed by a non-Western country to win WHO backing.

It is also the first time the WHO has given emergency use approval to a Chinese vaccine for any infectious disease. Earlier this week, separate WHO experts had expressed concern about the quality of data the company provided on side effects.

A WHO emergency listing is a signal to national regulators that a product is safe and effective. It also allows it to be included in COVAX, a global programme to provide vaccines mainly for poor countries, which has hit supply problems.

"This expands the list of COVID-19 vaccines that COVAX can buy, and gives countries confidence to expedite their own regulatory approval, and to import and administer a vaccine," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing.

Senior WHO adviser Bruce Aylward said it would be up to Sinopharm to say how many doses of its vaccine it can provide to the programme, but added: "They are looking at trying to provide substantial support, make substantial doses available while at the same time of course trying to serve China's population."

MOHAMED NASHEED: MALDIVES EX-PRESIDENT IN CRITICAL CONDITION AFTER BOMB BLAST

Former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed was in a "critical" condition on Friday following an assassination attempt, doctors said.

Nasheed, 53, the Maldives' first democratically elected president and still an important figure in the island nation's murky politics, was rushed to hospital after an explosion late Thursday.

Since then he has undergone 16 hours of life-saving operations in the capital Male for injuries to his head, chest, abdomen and limbs.

The private ADK hospital said Friday evening that Nasheed was "in a critical condition in intensive care".

In a televised address to the nation, President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih announced that a team from the Australian Federal Police (AFP) would arrive Saturday to help with the investigation into the blast.

Solih described the attack as an assault on the fledgling democracy, promising the perpetrators "would face the full force of the law".

Maldivian police said they were treating Thursday's bomb attack as a "deliberate act of terror" and urged the public to provide any information that could identify the perpetrators.

IRAQ BRINGS SAUDI, IRAN CLOSER AS BIDEN RESETS POLICY

Iraq is carving out a mediating role between Iran and Gulf Arab oil producers including Saudi Arabia, a shift for a country better known as a victim of regional conflict than a conduit to defuse it.

In recent weeks, Iraq convened indirect talks between its neighbors Saudi Arabia and Iran, with a focus on Yemen’s war, where the two countries back opposing sides. Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, a former intelligence chief experienced in regional security issues, is seen by Saudi Arabia and its ally the United Arab Emirates as having a degree of autonomy from Iran. He’s been able to build up trust to make such engagement possible, four people briefed on the talks say.

Kadhimi has also kept open channels between Tehran and President Joseph Biden’s administration, which two people briefed on the Iraqi side say has welcomed the separate avenue to engage diplomatically with Iran. World powers are holding talks in Vienna to try to resurrect a 2015 deal with Iran to rein in its nuclear activity in exchange for sanctions relief.

A Saudi Foreign Ministry official confirmed his country is in discussions with Iran, according to Reuters. Rayed Krimly, head of policy planning at the ministry, told the news agency that Riyadh wanted to see “verifiable deeds” before evaluating the talks.

“The U.S. is pushing its Gulf allies to talk directly to Iran,” said Renad Mansour, a senior research fellow and project director of the Iraq Initiative at Chatham House. “That’s part of the two-track approach that Biden is pursuing to get all sides involved in the process.”

US WITHDRAWS PROPOSED BIOMETRICS RULE FOR IMMIGRATION

The US government on Friday withdrew a Donald Trump-era proposal which sought to collect the biometric details of every applicant under immigration and naturalisation benefits.

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said the withdrawal of the proposed rule was consistent with the Executive Order signed by President Joe Biden, regarding restoring faith in the legal immigration system.

As per the proposed rule, which was notified in the Federal Register on September 11, 2020 during Donald Trump’s term as president, any applicant, petitioner, sponsor, beneficiary, or individual filing or associated with an immigration benefit or request, including US citizens, must appear for biometrics collection without regard to age.

Secondly, the DHS had proposed to authorise biometric collection, without regard to age, upon arrest of an illegal immigrant.

Such a move was welcomed by a large number of Indian-Americans who were impacted by the biometrics requirement.

The DHS said it will continue to require submission of biometrics where appropriate and remains committed to national security, identity management, fraud prevention and program integrity.

INDIA’S WELFARE ‘CRITICALLY IMPORTANT’ TO U.S.: KAMALA HARRIS

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said that the welfare of India was critical to the United States. She highlighted the assistance the U.S. was sending India and offered her condolences to those who have lost people to the pandemic.

“As many of you know, generations of my family come from India. My mother was born and raised in India. And I have family members who live in India today. The welfare of India is critically important to the United States,” Ms. Harris said in a recorded message delivered at a diaspora event on COVID-19 relief for India.

The other speakers at the event were senior State Department official Ervin Massinga, who is involved with the U.S. effort in India, USAID official Anjali Kaur, Virginia State Senator Ghazala Hashmi, physician and volunteer Gunisha Kaur, entrepreneurs and philanthropists Lata Krishnan and M.R. Rangaswami.

“The surge of COVID-19 infections and deaths in India is nothing short of heartbreaking,” Ms. Harris said, as she offered her condolences.

“As soon as the dire nature of the situation became apparent, our Administration took action,” she said. While U.S. lawmakers and private citizens had been vocal for support to India as the second COVID-19 wave broke across the country, the Biden administration was widely criticized for being slow to act , with administration officials keeping largely silent days after other countries had stepped in to offer help to India.

DEADLY POLICE SHOOTOUT IN BRAZIL PROMPTS CLAIMS OF ABUSE

A bloody, hourslong gunbattle in a Rio de Janeiro slum echoed into Friday, with authorities saying the police mission killed two dozen criminals while residents and activists claimed human rights abuses.

It was just after sunrise Thursday when dozens of officers from Rio de Janeiro state’s civil police stormed Jacarezinho, a favela in the city’s northern zone. They were targeting drug traffickers from one of Brazil’s most notorious criminal organizations, Comando Vermelho, and the bodies piled up quickly.

When the fighting stopped, there were 25 dead — one police officer and 24 people described by the police as “criminals.”

Rio’s moniker of “Marvelous City” can often seem a cruel irony in the favelas, given their violent conflicts, stark poverty and subjugation to drug traffickers or militias. But even here, Thursday’s clash was a jarring anomaly that analysts declared one of the city’s deadliest police operations ever.

And it was by far the most violent since Brazil’s Supreme Court issued a ruling banning most such actions during the pandemic, which drew a rebuke from the UN’s human rights office.

The bloodshed also laid bare Brazil’s perennial divide over whether, as a common local saying goes, “a good criminal is a dead criminal.” Fervent law-and-order sentiment fuelled the successful presidential run in 2018 by Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain whose home is in Rio. He drew support from much of society with his calls to diminish legal constraints on officers’ use of lethal force against criminals.

The administration of Rio state’s Governor Cláudio Castro, a Bolsonaro ally, said that it lamented the deaths, but that the operation was “oriented by long and detailed investigative and intelligence work that took months.”

TALKS ‘INTENSIFY’ ON BRINGING U.S. BACK TO IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL

World powers held a fourth round of high-level talks on Friday aimed at bringing the U.S. back into the nuclear deal with Iran, with both sides signalling a willingness to work out the major stumbling blocks.

The talks began in Austria in early April. Russian delegate Mikhail Ulyanov tweeted following Friday’s meeting that “the participants agreed on the need to intensify the process.”

“The delegations seem to be ready to stay in Vienna as long as necessary to achieve the goal,” he wrote.

Delegates to the Vienna talks concede, for example, that Iranian nuclear scientists cannot unlearn the knowledge they acquired in the last three years, but it is not clear whether Iran’s new centrifuges would need to be destroyed, mothballed and locked away, or simply taken offline.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, said after the meeting that his impression was that all sides were committed to finding a solution.

Not clear how serious Iran is on N-deal: US

US President Joe Biden said on Friday he believed Iran was serious about negotiations over its nuclear programme, but it was unclear how serious.

His reaction came as world powers held the fourth round of high-level talks in Austria, aiming to bring the US back into the nuclear deal with Iran. Russian delegate Mikhail Ulyanov tweeted after the meeting that the participants agreed on the need to intensify the process.

AL-AQSA MOSQUE: DOZENS HURT IN JERUSALEM CLASHES

At least 163 Palestinians and six Israeli police officers have been hurt in clashes in Jerusalem, Palestinian medics and Israeli police say.

Most were injured at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, where Israeli police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades as Palestinians threw stones and bottles.

Tensions have been rising over the potential eviction of Palestinians from land claimed by Jewish settlers.

The Red Crescent has opened a field hospital to treat the wounded.

The Al-Aqsa mosque complex in Jerusalem's Old City is one of Islam's most revered locations, but is also a Jewish holy site, known as the Temple Mount.

The site is a frequent flashpoint for violence, which unfolded again on Friday night after thousands had gathered there to observe the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Israeli Police said they had used force to "restore order" due to the "rioting of thousands of worshippers" after evening prayers.

An Aqsa official called for calm over the mosque's loudspeakers. "Police must immediately stop firing stun grenades at worshippers, and the youth must calm down and be quiet!", Reuters news agency quoted them as saying.

IRAN'S LEADER KHAMENEI CALLS ISRAEL 'NOT A COUNTRY, BUT A TERRORIST BASE'

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday called Israel "not a country, but a terrorist base" during a speech on Al-Quds Day, an annual show of solidarity with the Palestinians.

Thousands massed for rallies across several Muslim-majority countries including Iraq, Yemen and Pakistan for the day, seen in Israel as an expression of hatred and anti-Semitism.

Tensions have been running high between arch-foes Iran and Israel following a series of maritime attacks, an explosion at an Iranian nuclear facility and the assassination of a top nuclear scientist that Tehran blamed on Israel.

"Israel is not a country, but a terrorist base against the nation of Palestine and other Muslim nations," Khamenei said in live televised remarks.

"Fighting this despotic regime is fighting oppression and terrorism, and (doing so) is everyone's duty," he added.

Khamenei also blasted Israel's normalisation of ties with "some weak Arab governments" during the past year as attempts to undermine the Israeli "nightmare of Muslim unity".

"I say this decisively: these attempts will get nowhere," Khamenei said, calling on Palestinians to continue their resistance and for Muslim governments to support them.

"The decline of the enemy Zionist regime has begun and will not stop."

U.K. ADVISES UNDER-40s GET ALTERNATIVE TO ASTRAZENECA JAB

The scientific committee overseeing Britain's coronavirus vaccination programme on Friday recommended that under-40s are offered an alternative to the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid jab.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said it was taking the "precautionary approach" for adults aged 30-39, after assessment of blood clot risks.

Professor Wei Shen Lim of the JCVI advisory committee said that those aged 30-39 will be "preferentially offered an alternative to the AstraZeneca vaccine".

This will happen as long as an alternative is available and does not create a substantial delay in vaccination, and as long as the U.K. keeps its virus situation under control, he added.

Mr. Lim said the aim was to "further increase vaccine confidence" as under-40s are due to be vaccinated soon, by showing that the government is putting a "high priority on safety".

The U.K. -- which launched its mass vaccination drive in December last year with the Pfizer-BioNTech shot -- is still on track to give all adults a first vaccine dose by the end of July, Mr. Lim said.

He added that the success of the vaccine rollout means that "a future wave of infection is likely to be smaller than anticipated".

June Raine, who heads the U.K.'s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, said it was not changing its advice on the AstraZeneca vaccine as side effects were "extremely rare".