NEW DELHI — United Arab of Emirates (UAE) lifted the ban for transit travelers from six countries, traveling from and to UAE, which was banned due to the Covid-19 pandemic. T ban has been lifted for India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Nigeria, and Uganda. The National Emergency, Crisis, and Disaster Management Authority (NCEMA) and General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) have announced that entry to the UAE will be allowed for some categories of passengers from countries where inbound flights to the Emirates have been banned. “This exemption will apply to certain categories of passengers from countries such as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Nigeria, and Uganda, as…
Author: zenger.news
NEW DELHI — An official of the Indian government’s think tank for policy, NITI Aayog, has said that serosurveys cannot be extrapolated to estimate mortality rates of Covid-19 or undercounting of the number of coronavirus infections. “Serosurveys are not meant to cover granularity at the level of the state,” NITI Aayog member (health) V.K. Paul said on July 3, amid allegations by certain opposition leaders, that the Indian government had undercounted Covid-19 cases. “Serosurvey is carried out with the specific purpose of enunciating how many people have previous experience of Covid-19,” said Paul when asked about the fourth round of Indian Council for Medical…
MUMBAI, India — A new report from the global property consultancy, Knight Frank, has said that Mumbai added 56 megawatts of supply in the first quarter of 2021 to clock the sharpest increase in data center capacity across the Asia Pacific region. The financial capital’s total supply is at 753 megawatts, as per Knight Frank’s latest report published in partnership with leading data center research and analytics platform DC Byte. The report cited that EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) markets have seen a rise of 4 percent in uptake in the first quarter of 2021 to 120 megawatts with a 10 percent…
NEW DELHI — India placed its top priority on counter-terrorism and on the wider use of technology at the first BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) Workshop on Digital Forensics on Aug. 3. “Today’s workshop thus fits in with the topmost priorities of BRICS and in fact, straddles two of them- on counter-terrorism and on the wider use of technology,” said Sanjay Bhattacharyya, Secretary Consular of Passport, Visa & Overseas Indian Affairs (CPV&OIA). India had earlier defined the objectives of its Chairship is based on three pillars — political and security, economic and financial, and cultural and people to…
A German man who had kept a World War II Nazi tank and an anti-aircraft gun in a huge arsenal of weaponry in his cellar has been fined more than $30,000. Retired financial broker Klaus-Dieter Flick kept the 1943 Panther (Panzer) tank in his villa in the town of Heikendorf. Flick told authorities several times that he bought the tank as scrap in Great Britain in 1977. He also said that the country’s Bundeswehr [army] helped him repair its engine, charging him about $33,000 for doing so. However, the court decided Flick had broken the country’s War Weapons Control Act.…
CANBERRA, Australia — An Afghan refugee “desperately” worried for his family’s safety at home has been granted mediation by the Federal Circuit Court to determine his removal to another country. The Federal Circuit Court is an Australian court with jurisdiction over matters broadly relating to family law and child support, administrative law, admiralty law, bankruptcy, copyright, human rights, industrial law, migration, privacy, and trade practices. The man is separately applying through the Federal Court for an emergency visa to rescue his immediate family due to the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, as per the court documents. His lawyer Daniel Taylor asked the judge to expedite…
SYDNEY — Reserve Bank of Australia’s governor Philip Lowe is confident that the nation can resume its strong recovery once it overcomes the latest round of Covid-19 lockdowns, which will see the economy contract in the September quarter. Following Reserve Bank’s monthly board meeting, where the cash rate was left at a record low of 0.1 percent, Lowe also warned the unemployment rate will rise in the near term due to lockdowns and having hit a decade low of 4.9 percent in June. But again, his central scenario is that the jobless rate will quickly resume its downward trend, reaching 4.25 percent at…
MELBOURNE, Australia — A disability support worker has admitted pocketing more than AU$10,000 ($7,417.8) in fraudulent payments while volunteering in the community and supporting women in need. Ana Boal, 52 and a single mother of four, helped women in situations of domestic violence and gave back to her community despite having little in the way of money or assets. “She was committed to improving the lives of others,” Melbourne magistrate Tara Hartnett said, describing the irony of Boal’s decision to defraud the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The support worker from the Kurunjang suburb of Melbourne was the owner of a business…
MELBOURNE, Australia — A 103-year-old tradition of reciting the Lord’s Prayer when Victoria’s upper house sits could be scrapped under a proposal by crossbencher Fiona Patten. The Reason Party leader will move on August 4 to replace the prayer with a moment of silence so politicians can pray or reflect on their responsibilities to Victorians. Patten, an atheist, said the current proceedings do not reflect Victoria’s diverse community. “We have got members of parliament from many diverse backgrounds, including Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, which was not the case when prayer was first introduced into parliament,” she said. “We should be doing everything we can…
BRISBANE, Australia — The Sunshine State, Queensland, is battling to contain a growing Delta outbreak, counting on an offer of extra vaccines by the Commonwealth, the delivery timeline of which is not set in stone. Queensland Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said she found out about the offer for an extra 150,000 doses of AstraZeneca via the media. Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt had announced in a press conference on August 2 that he could make an offer of 150,000 doses to Queensland if the state government asked for it. “I will be writing to Greg Hunt today to ask that the 150,000 (doses) go directly to the…