Mideast in Pictures: Kuwait National Museum sheds light on ancient life
Located in Kuwait City, Kuwait National Museum highlights the countrys cultural heritage through exhibitions on Kuwati life and traditions throughout history.
The collection includes artifacts found on Failaka Island, animal fossils, and bronze coins from the Bronze period and the Hellenistic period.
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Photo taken on Aug. 11, 2021 shows an exhibit in Kuwait National Museum in Kuwait City, Kuwait
Photo taken on Aug. 11, 2021 shows an exhibit in Kuwait National Museum in Kuwait City, Kuwait
Photo taken on Aug. 11, 2021 shows a pottery jar in Kuwait National Museum in Kuwait City, Kuwait.
Photo taken on Aug. 11, 2021 shows a pottery jar in Kuwait National Museum in Kuwait City, Kuwait.
Photo taken on Aug. 11, 2021 shows exhibits in Kuwait National Museum in Kuwait City, Kuwait.
Photo taken on Aug. 11, 2021 shows exhibits in Kuwait National Museum in Kuwait City, Kuwait.
Russia has confirmed 21,571 new COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, taking the nationwide tally to 6,512,859, the official monitoring and response center said Wednesday.
The nationwide death toll grew by 799 to 167,241.
During this period, the nationwide death toll grew by 799 to 167,241, while the number of recoveries increased by 20,067 to 5,808,777.
Meanwhile, Moscow, Russia’s worst-hit region, reported 2,076 new cases, taking the city’s total to 1,533,065.
More than 170 million COVID-19 tests have been conducted across the country so far.
The number of Covid-19 cases in Southeast Asia crossed 8.31 million, with 97,857 new cases reported on Wednesday, higher than Tuesday’s tally of 94,201.
There were 2,723 more deaths, decreasing from Tuesday’s 3,201 and taking total Covid-19 deaths in Asean to 178,346.
The Philippines reported 12,021 new cases and 154 deaths on Wednesday, bringing cumulative cases in that country to 1,688,040 patients and a total 29,374 deaths so far.
The government will give a handout of 1,000 pesos, or THB661, to people who have been affected by the latest lockdown in Manila. About 80 per cent of the city’s 13 million residents are expected to be eligible for the handout.
The Manila lockdown includes nighttime curfew, no dining in at restaurants and a ban on outdoor activities. It is estimated to cost the economy around THB100 billion per week.
Vietnam meanwhile reported 8,766 new cases and 342 deaths, bringing cumulative cases in the country to 236,901 patients and a total 4,487 deaths.
The fourth wave of the pandemic in Vietnam, which started on April 27, is the fastest spreading wave with a total of 228,990 new infections.
Most of the new cases have been found in the country’s economic hub of Ho Chi Minh City, prompting the government to put the city and surrounding southern provinces under maximum control measures until September 1.
Alibaba worker desperate plea for help sparks #metoo reckoning
Few paid much attention when she first turned up at the center of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.s packed cafeteria on Friday, a stack of leaflets in one hand and a megaphone in the other.
It had been more than a week since she accused her boss of sexual assault, and she was losing patience.
“An Alibaba executive raped his female employee, but the company has taken no action!” she screamed, handing out the leaflets to stunned colleagues until security guards forcibly removed her. “No one is taking responsibility!”
The allegations she printed on those pages, and in a lengthy post over the weekend that went viral on China’s tightly controlled internet, are now reverberating across the upper echelons of Alibaba and in C-suites across much of the country. The accused Alibaba manager has been fired, two senior executives at the e-commerce giant have resigned and Chief Executive Officer Daniel Zhang has issued a remarkable mea culpa, calling the company’s handling of the incident a “humiliation.”
In a nation that’s been slow to absorb lessons from the global #MeToo movement, the episode has triggered what many say is a long overdue examination of the ways Chinese women are too often treated at work: overlooked, objectified, forced to take part in male-dominated rituals like drinking with clients, and brushed aside when reporting abuse. It comes at a time when much of China’s corporate world, particularly the tech industry, is under intense government scrutiny on issues ranging from anti-monopoly violations to the treatment of low-wage workers.
“This weekend will remain in our memories forever,” Zhang wrote in a pre-dawn memo on Monday to employees of Alibaba, China’s second-largest company by market value. “Behind everyone’s deep concern about the incident was not just sympathy and care for the traumatized colleague but also tremendous sadness for the challenges in Alibaba’s culture.”
The scene in Alibaba’s cafeteria, captured on video and corroborated by employees who asked to remain anonymous, is just one part of the accuser’s harrowing story. Much of the account below comes from descriptions of events she posted on Alibaba’s internal employee forum on Saturday. Known publicly only by the nickname she — like most other Alibaba employees — adopted after joining the company, “Xinyue” couldn’t be reached for comment. Nor could the manager she accused.Representatives for Alibaba, which hasn’t addressed many of the specifics of Xinyue’s allegations, echoed many of Zhang’s conclusions in a statement provided to Bloomberg News. Zhang has said the accused manager confessed to “intimate acts” with Xinyue while she was inebriated and that the company is cooperating with local police. A police official in Jinan, the eastern Chinese city where the assault is alleged to have happened, said they couldn’t comment on the investigation when contacted by Bloomberg.
“We are incredibly disappointed with the shortcomings in action by the relevant team leaders who were first notified about this incident,” the company said in a statement. “They did not make timely decisions nor took appropriate actions such as escalation. Their lack of empathy, care and sense of responsibility is unacceptable.”
The following account of the alleged assault is largely based on Xinyue’s post. Alibaba has corroborated several key points and elaborated on others.
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Xinyue was reluctant when her boss broached the idea of a trip to see a client in Jinan. She repeatedly tried to beg off, citing a typhoon raging through Hangzhou and how she could stay in email contact with the customer. But her boss insisted.
After a day of meetings on July 27, Xinyue’s manager — as is customary in China — invited the clients they were visiting to dinner. Her boss told the guests she was good at drinking and offered her alcohol. As a junior employee, she felt compelled to accept. She became drunk and at one point during the dinner was groped by a client who has since been fired by his employer.
The next morning, Xinyue said, she woke with a hangover in her hotel room and grew alarmed when she noticed signs of rape, including an opened condom package. She called her boss but he wasn’t forthcoming. She then called her husband and the police.
According to Xinyue, she watched hotel CCTV footage with the police that showed her boss entering her hotel room four times during the night after getting a key card made at the front desk. The manager was summoned to the local police station that afternoon and briefly detained. He denied wrongdoing.
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Xinyue said she spent the next few days on the verge of an emotional breakdown. She tried to cut her wrist with a piece of broken glass but her husband — who had joined her by this time in Jinan — stopped her. All the while, her supervisor continued to work as usual.
On Aug. 2, Xinyue said, the couple returned to Alibaba’s hometown of Hangzhou and she reported the case to other managers. She contacted two executives and a human resources manager within her business unit via group chat, but none of them responded in the chat. She then direct messaged them separately.
Eventually, her boss’s manager offered to talk. During the conversation, he stressed several points: what happened was business-related, this job is easier for men than women, and you can’t secure clients if you don’t drink.
That evening, she met with the HR leader and the manager again, demanding her boss be fired. She also requested a long paid leave. They told her to wait three days.
(According to Alibaba, the company set up a task force around this time to handle the matter. The task force decided to refrain from taking action until the police investigation could be completed and allowed Xinyue’s boss to continue working. It was “a major misjudgment that displayed a lack of empathy,” Jiang Fang, the female Alibaba partner who was later appointed to head up an investigation, wrote on the company’s internal forum.)
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On Aug. 5, according to Xinyue, she and her husband met again with the HR leader and her boss’s manager. They told the couple Alibaba had decided not to terminate her boss, for the sake of her reputation. She again insisted her boss should be fired. The Alibaba managers agreed to do so within a day, according to her account.
The next day, the HR leader and the manager informed Xinyue they couldn’t fire her boss after all. Instead, they asked the couple to provide video evidence of excessive drinking.
Xinyue decided to escalate the matter to Li Yonghe, the newly appointed head of the high-profile local services division where she worked, and Xu Kun, the overseer of HR within the group. Xu called her and delivered two messages during a subsequent 19-minute chat: stay calm, and we can’t fire your manager. Li read Xinyue’s messages but didn’t respond (Alibaba’s CEO Zhang confirmed this point in his subsequent memo to employees).
Later that day, Xinyue printed out her pamphlets and brought a megaphone to the staff canteen. “I had my back to the wall,” she wrote later on the forum. “If civilized manners solve nothing, then I can only deal with it like this.” (According to Jiang, the female Alibaba partner, Xinyue’s appearance in the cafeteria was what first alerted the company’s senior management to her allegations.)
On Saturday, Xinyue posted her 8,000-character account of the entire ordeal to Alibaba’s internal forum. Her post leaked to social media, where it quickly went viral.
Local media began asking questions and picking up the story as the topic started trending on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter. Xinyue’s post was replicated on scores of websites and reposted on dozens of social media platforms, with views soaring rapidly into the hundreds of millions.
That triggered a chain of events in the executive suite. On Sunday, Alibaba’s CEO Zhang issued a memo saying he was “shocked, furious and ashamed.” And a day later, before dawn, he announced Xinyue’s manager had been dismissed and that Li and Xu had resigned. Li and Xu couldn’t be reached for comment.
“As for our colleague Xinyue, this incident has caused tremendous harm to her,” Zhang wrote. “We will do everything we can to take care of her.”
As Xinyue and Alibaba await results of the police investigation, one question looming over all of China Inc. is how far this episode will spread the #MeToo-like reckoning.
There are some tentative signs of broader change afoot. The People’s Daily, a mouthpiece for China’s ruling Communist Party, has highlighted the incident as an example of why companies must pay more attention to culture the larger they grow. The Party’s anti-graft watchdog called for curbs on “under the table rules” like forced drinking and workplace bullying in a Tuesday commentary on the Alibaba incident.
“What we have seen from the #MeToo movement is that this comes in waves,” said Pocket Sun, co-founder of SoGal Ventures, which invests in female entrepreneurs. “More brave women stand up for themselves for what happened in the past that they didn’t have an opportunity to expose. I hope this is a beginning of more women to stand up against this.”
On Monday, one of the top trending items on Alibaba-backed Weibo, with more than 800 million views, was an online declaration from about 6,000 Alibaba staffers that they were banding together to protest and overhaul “systemic inadequacies and a lack of protection for female employees.”
Representatives from the group have joined the company’s task force handling the incident, and have promised to keep everyone posted on their progress, according to several employees who asked to remain anonymous. They named their support group “Brave Calf,” a nod to the cartoon cow Xinyue adopted as her avatar on Alibaba’s DingTalk work app.”I’ll fight till the end!” Xinyue wrote in her post on Saturday. “Never surrender!”
Published : August 12, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Coco Liu, Zheping Huang
Get vaccines or face punishment, Kenya orders state workers
Kenya will require all government workers to receive at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine before Aug. 23 or face disciplinary action, according to Joseph Kinyua, the head of the nations public service.
Some staff members have opted not to get inoculated so they can continue working from home, which is hurting service delivery, according to a letter sent by Kinyua to senior state officials and verified by Bloomberg News. There has been low uptake by security officers and teachers in particular, he said.
“Vaccination is voluntary — why are civil servants the only ones being punished?” said Tom Odege, secretary general of the Kenya Union of Civil Servants, a union that received the note. “The government should instead encourage civil servants to get vaccinated.”
Kenya’s government spokesman, Cyrus Oguna, didn’t respond to calls and text messages on the authenticity of the letter, which was widely shared on Twitter.
Governments and companies around the world are increasingly starting to use proof of vaccination as a means to reopen economies and borders more than 18 months since the start of the pandemic. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, said state and local governments should require teachers to get doses, while Citigroup Inc. told employees returning to major U.S. offices on Tuesday they’ll need to be vaccinated.
Guinea’s government plans to impose a directive similar to Kenya’s. State workers and visitors will need a health pass to access public offices, President Alpha Conde ordered. The west African nation’s goal is to vaccinate 70% of the population of 12 million people by November.
Kenyan state workers who haven’t complied will be “treated as discipline cases and appropriate action taken against them,” according to the letter from Kinyua.
East Africa’s biggest economy has had a stop-start vaccination rollout, although all those over 18 years old have been eligible since about July. The government has ordered 13 million single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccines, which are expected to start arriving this month. Only 2.6% of Kenyan adults are fully inoculated, primarily with the two-shot AstraZeneca Plc vaccine, according to the Ministry of Health.
Health authorities have recorded 213,756 covid-19 cases and 4,211 related deaths. President Uhuru Kenyatta vowed to ensure about 10 million people are inoculated by the end of December, and the entire adult population next year.
Published : August 12, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Helen Nyambura, David Herbling
Wildfires in Algeria kill 42, including two dozen soldiers
Devastating wildfires ripping through Algeria killed 42 people Tuesday, including 25 soldiers working to put out the flames.
Starting Monday in the Kabylie region, east of the capital, the fires grew in number, and the army was deployed to both battle blazes and help evacuate residential areas.
With homes burning around them, families rushed to escape through blinding smoke. Some residents in desperation tried to extinguish nearby fires by smothering them with tree branches and spraying water on them, armed only with plastic buckets. The flames continued to spread.
“We had a horror night. My house is completely burnt,” Mohamed Kaci, who fled alongside his family to a hotel from the village of Azazga, told Reuters.
Tuesday’s fatal wildfires add Algeria to a growing list of countries marred by destructive blazes this summer: Recently, parts of Lebanon, Russia, Greece and Turkey have gone up in flames. The Western United States and Canada have also been plagued by wildfires.
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune offered his condolences to the families of the soldiers on Twitter: “We bow in reverence before the souls of the righteous sons of the nation.”
“It is with great sadness that I have learned of the martyrdom of 25 soldiers after they were successful in rescuing around 100 citizens from the flames in the mountains of Bejaia and Tizi Ouzou,” the president wrote.
Interior Minister Kamel Beldjoud accused arsonists of the fire outbreak, though he did not provide more details on the allegation.
“Only criminal hands can be behind the simultaneous outbreak of about 50 fires across several localities,” he said, according to Reuters.
He also vowed to compensate people affected by the fires.
Millions of coronavirus vaccine doses around the world face expiration
For months, a refrigerator at a government facility in the Dutch university town of Leiden has housed 90 or so small white boxes that contain thousands of dollars worth of AstraZeneca vaccine doses. But most of them are emblazoned with six small numbers that will soon render them worthless: 08.2021.
For Dennis Mook-Kanamori, a doctor at Leiden University Medical Center who until recently was administering vaccines there, the upcoming expiration of thousands of doses is tragic. What really incenses him, however, is that the Dutch government is set to let the doses expire rather than send them abroad.
“It’s an elitist, decadent attitude,” Mook-Kanamori said.
The situation is mirrored in countless freezers, refrigerators and backrooms around the world as millions of coronavirus vaccine doses, developed at record-breaking speeds, march quietly toward expiration before they can be used. And as demand slows in wealthy nations like the Netherlands, more dust is gathering – and more doses are expiring.
Last month, Mook-Kanamori and his colleagues threw away 600 doses. By the end of August, the number is set climb by another 8,000. Unless something changes, by October, all 10,000 or so doses in the refrigerators in Leiden will have been thrown out. Doctors estimate there may be 200,000 AstraZeneca doses in the Netherlands facing a similar fate.
Much of the world has yet to see enough doses to vaccinate even the most vulnerable. Across Africa, as of late last month, only 2.2 percent of people had received at least one dose, while the Netherlands had vaccinated well over half of its population. The Dutch government, which owns the doses, has said that for legal and logistical reasons they cannot be exported, despite criticism from Dutch doctors.
While vaccination programs always have some waste, even standard levels mean mind-boggling numbers of unused doses at the scale of global coronavirus vaccination. But just how many doses have already expired, or are about to, is unclear.
“There is no one who tracks expired doses systematically,” said Prashant Yadav, an expert on health-care supply chains at the Center for Global Development, a think tank. Instead, information has trickled out in news reports and little-publicized official statements.
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In Israel, 80,000 expiring Pfizer-BioNTech doses were set to be tossed at the end of July; 73,000 doses from various manufacturers have been disposed of in Poland; and 160,000 Sputnik V doses nearing expiration were returned from Slovakia to Russia, their final status unknown. In the United States, North Carolina alone is estimated to have 800,000 doses soon to expire.
According to data compiled by the World Health Organization, approximately 469,868 doses from various manufacturers had expired in Africa as of Aug. 9. “Most of the vaccines arriving have a very short expiration date,” said Richard Mihigo, coordinator of immunization and vaccine development for the WHO’s Africa arm.
The lack of global data masks the price tag. In the United States alone, estimates of total expired or close-to-expired doses run in the millions. With some vaccines costing as much as $20 a shot, the cost could run into many tens of millions of dollars, if not more.
The toll for human health may be even graver. “The doses we have aren’t enough,” said Lawrence Gostin, global health law professor at Georgetown University. “They’re expiring, they’re spoiling with electrical shortages, they’re not being delivered to the population. It’s a whole catastrophe.”
Vaccines often degrade at a higher rate than many other drugs that can be stockpiled, such as Tamiflu, which can be stored for years, according to Jesse Goodman, a professor at the Georgetown School of Medicine and former chief scientist of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
As doses age, they “might not engender the same immune response,” Goodman said, turning a strong, potentially lifesaving inoculation into a weakened dud. And mRNA vaccines, such as those developed by Pfizer and Moderna, are particularly fragile.
Expiration dates are set by the manufacturer and approved by local regulatory authorities. Many coronavirus vaccines were given initial emergency use authorization when only six months of data was available, resulting in cautiously short expiration dates.
In a statement to The Washington Post, the WHO said that unlike opened-vial wastage, where multi-dose vaccine vials were opened but could not be used before expiration, unopened vial wastage, such as expiry, was “avoidable.” In general, the global health body said, it is recommended to keep all vaccine wastage to below 1 percent.
That may be no easy task. Data compiled by the global vaccine alliance Gavi on non-coronavirus vaccines shows wastage can often hit 10 percent, and sometimes far higher.
Marco Blanker, a doctor in the Dutch town of Zwolle, said he had to throw away 58 doses in one day in the spring due to no-shows amid negative publicity about the AstraZeneca vaccine.
“It was devastating for the team,” he said. “We did all our best in the previous weeks to not have any spillage – we didn’t lose a drop.”
Blanker posted a photograph of the discarded doses on Twitter, sparking a public debate in the Netherlands. Soon other Dutch doctors teamed up to create an app to help redistribute the doses.
Demand in the Netherlands eventually dried up. The country is now 55 percent fully vaccinated and AstraZeneca is only recommended for certain age groups. So Blanker and other doctors such as Mook-Kanamori began looking for other nations that might accept the doses.
Namibia, a West African nation struggling for doses, looked like a good destination. There was even a Dutch doctor who said he was willing to fly them there himself, Mook-Kanamori said. But the Dutch government has stuck to the same position: The doses must be disposed of after they expire.
The Dutch Ministry of Health did not respond to a request for comment. The Netherlands has pledged to donate other vaccine doses, including 75,000 AstraZeneca doses to Namibia.
Even when doses do go to those in need, expiration dates can pose problems. Across Africa, most countries have tailored their rollouts around a three-to-four-month delivery window, Mihigo said. But shipping delays have forced some to contend with shorter periods.
Liberia had 15 days to distribute tens of thousands of AstraZeneca shots from the African Union. About 27,000 expired. “We just didn’t have enough time,” said the country’s health minister, Wilhemina Jallah.
Benin discarded 51,000 doses in July after struggling for three months to deliver them, said Landry Kaucley, the country’s director of vaccine logistics. Fears of the shots lingered after European nations paused rollouts to investigate blood clot risks.
Other countries have gone a step further. In Malawi, the government burned almost 20,000 expired AstraZeneca doses in May, in what local officials said was a move to show the public that they would not receive expired doses. Some health authorities, such as the Palestinian Authority, have refused to accept doses they said were too close to expiration.
Expiration dates can change. The FDA last month extended the expiry for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the United States to six months from 4½ months. A representative of the Russian Direct Investment Fund said that they expected the expiration of Sputnik V to be increased from six months to one year. Such moves can help claw back doses.
Some experts hope to see Covax, the U.N.-backed vaccine-sharing mechanism, or bilateral deals help move vaccine doses to where they need to be before they expire. But finding a way to share doses is not really the problem, according to doctors like Mook-Kanamori.
“I can get 8,000 shots into an arm in Namibia next week, if there’s a will,” he explained. “The problem is that there is no will.”
Published : August 12, 2021
By : The Washington Post · Adam Taylor, Danielle Paquette
Pakistans tourism industry makes headway amid COVID-19 challenges
Despite the limited inflow of tourists from abroad to Pakistan under the pandemic, the local tourism industry remains robust. The improvement of road infrastructure under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has also played a vital role.
Pakistan is endowed with a myriad of natural wonders as well as historical and religious tourist sites that attract a large number of both local and foreign tourists every year.
However, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic direly affected Pakistan’s tourism sector in 2020. Despite the limited inflow of tourists from abroad owing to pandemic-related travel restrictions, local tourists have boosted the local tourism industry this year.
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Pakistani experts and government officials believe that as Pakistan has a huge potential for tourism, all-out efforts should be made to further ramp up the thriving tourism sector and attract not only local tourists but also people from all over the world once the pandemic subsides.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said that the promotion of tourism in the country is one of his government’s top priorities to generate revenue and job opportunities.
“The promotion of tourism will not only create economic activity in the local areas, but will also have a positive impact on the national economy,” the prime minister said recently.
In 2019, the total contribution of travel and tourism to Pakistan’s gross domestic product (GDP) was 5.7 percent, Managing Director of the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) Aftab-ur-Rehman Rana told Xinhua, adding that in 2020 when the pandemic hit the world, the total contribution to the country’s GDP decreased to 4.4 percent, cutting down a large number of employments.
In a conversation with Xinhua, Latif-ur-Rehman, spokesperson for Culture, Sports, Tourism, Archaeology and Youth Affairs Department of Pakistan’s northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province said that last year, the tourism industry of Pakistan suffered as most of the tourist places were closed due to coronavirus-induced fears and restrictions.
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He said in 2020, COVID-19 caused losses of more than 10 billion rupees on the tourism industry of KP when a number of businesses associated with tourism were left paralyzed.
“With some relaxation in restrictions recently, a huge influx of tourists is being witnessed in the country’s northern areas and KP province,” he said, adding that both of the regions are center-point of domestic tourism from May to October and are immensely popular among the nature-lovers and adventure seekers thanks to the world’s highest peaks, glaciers and scenic views in the regions.
Rehman said that the number of tourists has overwhelmingly increased since the onset of summer which led to the shortage of accommodation, forcing many to stay in makeshift shelters, tents and houses of local people.
More than 65 billion rupees of business activities were generated by the tourists in the province from May to July, he said, adding that the activities also generated job opportunities for locals in these areas.
A horse dances on the beats of drums during the Islamabad Tourism Festival in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, March 5, 2021.
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During the recent Eid al-Adha holidays in Pakistan, more than 3 million tourists flocked to tourist destinations in KP including Naran, Kaghan, Kalam, Swat and Chitral, he said.
People visit the Faisal Mosque after the mosque was recently reopened to tourists in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, Aug. 10, 2020.
Saleem Rehman, a member of Pakistan’s National Assembly or the lower house of the parliament, said that the improvement of road infrastructure under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has also played a vital role in unlocking the enormous potential of tourism in Pakistan.
The Karakoram Highway (KKH) Phase Two project from Havelian to Thakot under the CPEC greatly improved the access to the most sought-after tourism spots of KP and northern areas of the country, the lawmaker told Xinhua.
“The traveling to these areas was not easy before the completion of these new avenues. Tourists influx was not according to the potential the areas have… However, this summer the inflow of local visitors was quite high,” he said.
Rana, managing director of the PTDC, said that the notable surge in domestic tourists is due to the government’s prudent tourist-friendly policies.
Rana said that the government has been taking a keen interest in promoting the culture of tourism in the country and adopting measures to revamp the infrastructure and ensure all the required facilities for the tourists.
“More destinations are being identified and developed, historic and religious places are being refurbished and preserved, roads and motorways leading to tourist destinations are being built, and new hotels and accommodations are being set up,” he said, adding that the country is also providing online visa services to foreign tourists.
“Once the COVID-19 situation normalizes, Pakistan is expected to receive more foreign visitors too,” Rana told Xinhua.
Both federal and provincial governments must take extraordinary measures and make comprehensive strategies to further improve the tourism sector and make it more attractive, especially for foreign tourists to earn valuable foreign exchange while rebranding Pakistan on the world stage, Rana said. (100 Pakistan Rupees equals 0.61 U.S. dollars)
Photo taken on Aug. 10, 2020 shows the reopened Faisal Mosque in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan.
Asia Album: Singapore light show marks 56th anniversary of independence
Singapore saw light projections on buildings to celebrate the countrys 56th anniversary of independence.
shows light projections on the facade of the Stamford Arts Center in Singapore in celebration of the country’s 56th anniversary of independence.
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Photo taken on Aug. 10, 2021 shows light projections on the facade of Objectifs, a center for photography and film arts in Singapore, in celebration of the country’s 56th anniversary of independence.
Photo taken on Aug. 10, 2021 shows light projections on the facade of the National Museum of Singapore in celebration of the country’s 56th anniversary of independence.
Photo taken on Aug. 10, 2021 shows light projections on the facade of the Stamford Arts Center in celebration of the country’s 56th anniversary of independence.
“Lebanon and Israel are currently incapable of bearing the repercussions of a war which will be destructive for both countries,” a Lebanese military analyst said.
The recent exchange of rockets between Lebanon and Israel do not necessarily imply an imminent risk of war between the two countries, Lebanese analysts said.
Youssef Diab, political analyst at the Lebanese University, told Xinhua that the recent exchange of rockets aimed mainly at conveying a message from Hezbollah that “any attack by Israel or the United States against Iran or Iranian ships in the Gulf will face a retaliation by the Iran-backed Shiite party from southern Lebanon.”
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Hezbollah fired rockets last Friday against Israeli targets in the occupied Shebaa Farms in retaliation for Israeli airstrikes one day before in southern Lebanon.
Confrontations began on Aug. 4 with a rocket strike on Israel from Lebanon for which no group claimed responsibility. That attack, on which Hezbollah has not commented, drew retaliatory Israeli air strikes.
According to Diab, Hezbollah saw a necessity to retaliate to Israeli airstrikes after Israel blamed Iran “for an attack implemented on July 29 on an oil tanker operated by an Israeli-owned company in the coast of Oman in the Arabian Sea,” while announcing that it is rallying global action against Iran to respond to the attack.
“Hezbollah aimed to tell Israel that Lebanon’s front will be used for retaliation in the event of any attack by Israel or the U.S. against Iran,” Diab said.
Hisham Jaber, a military analyst and retired army general, said that recent confrontations between Lebanon and Israel meant to be limited, noting that both parties attacked unpopulated and open ground areas.
“Lebanon and Israel are currently incapable of bearing the repercussions of a war which will be destructive for both countries,” he said.
For his part, Mohammad Barakat, editor-in-chief of a global news website Asas Media, told Xinhua that tensions are expected to escalate on the Lebanese-Israeli borders as months of talks over Iranian nuclear deal failed to produce an agreement.
Israeli security members deal with the wreckage of a rocket launched from Lebanon into northern Israel, near the city of Kiryat Shmona, on Aug. 4, 2021.
Barakat cited earlier remarks by Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz about Iran being 10 weeks away from acquiring weapons-grade materials necessary for a nuclear weapon, as indicative of a possible escalation in tensions between Israel and Iran.
“Hezbollah will continue to reinforce its loyalty to Iran by opening Lebanon’s front if necessary,” Barakat said.
As for Diab, he believes that any miscalculated future confrontations between Lebanon and Israel may escalate into war if they result in casualties.
“Israel will not accept any casualties on its side,” he said.
Diab warned that any possible war will be destructive for Lebanon as hospitals are not sufficiently equipped to treat the injured given the shortage in medicines and equipment.
Meanwhile, Barakat said that any tensions on the border will threaten the lives of 5 million Lebanese people who are already suffering from the state’s complete failure.
Lebanon has been witnessing multiple crises caused by the absence of an efficient government capable of implementing structural reforms to attract aid by the international community. Lebanon’s crisis was further exacerbated by the Beirut port explosions on Aug. 4, 2020 which destroyed a big part of the city.
Recent confrontations between Lebanon and Israel sparked fears among the Lebanese about further escalations that may cause further damage on the economic, social, infrastructure and security fronts.
Photo taken on Aug. 11, 2021 shows an exhibit in Kuwait National Museum in Kuwait City, Kuwait
Photo taken on Aug. 11, 2021 shows a pottery jar in Kuwait National Museum in Kuwait City, Kuwait.
Photo taken on Aug. 11, 2021 shows exhibits in Kuwait National Museum in Kuwait City, Kuwait.
A horse dances on the beats of drums during the Islamabad Tourism Festival in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, March 5, 2021.
People visit the Faisal Mosque after the mosque was recently reopened to tourists in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, Aug. 10, 2020.
Photo taken on Aug. 10, 2020 shows the reopened Faisal Mosque in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan.
Israeli security members deal with the wreckage of a rocket launched from Lebanon into northern Israel, near the city of Kiryat Shmona, on Aug. 4, 2021.
