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24 Established 1961 News Thursday, January 30, 2020 flights to and from China, citing the travel advice of the Kuwait warns foreign office. “We apologize to customers for the incon- venience, but the safety of our customers and crew is India school faces sedition charges; always our priority,” the airline said in a statement. against visiting... Indonesia’s Lion Air Group, Southeast Asia’s biggest carrier by fleet size, then said it would halt services to and airlines ban comic for midair rant Continued from Page 1 from China from Saturday “until further notice”. NEW DELHI: Indian police have launched a sedition al register of citizens, has stoked fears that India’s 200 Meanwhile Kazakhstan, an important China trade partner, investigation against a primary school over a play that million Muslims will be marginalized. The play ended symptoms. “Due to the global nature of travel”, it is stopped issuing visas to Chinese citizens and said it would allegedly criticized a contentious citizenship law, offi- with a poem written by a Bollywood lyricist that has expected that more cases will appear in other countries, it halt cross-border passenger train traffic and suspend reg- cials said yesterday. There have been widespread street become a rallying point for hundreds of thousands of said. The WHO’s regional director, Ahmed Al-Mandhari, ular flights between the neighbors. Airlines from Myanmar demonstrations against the law introduced by the protesters across India. The British-era sedition law urged “individuals to stay calm and take the necessary and Nepal also announced suspensions of all China Hindu-nationalist government that grants citizenship to enacted in 1860 carries a maximum penalty of life in precautions to keep themselves and their loved ones safe”. routes. Cathay Pacific has reduced flights, citing low religious groups from three neighboring countries, but prison. Prosecutions are rare but it has frequently been Gulf airports, including Dubai which is one of the world’s demand and the Hong Kong government’s response plan excludes Muslims. used against critics of the government of the day. biggest aviation hubs, said last week they would screen all against the virus. Meanwhile, four Indian airlines have banned a top Dozens of demonstrators have been charged with passengers arriving from China amid the outbreak of the In one of the most dramatic measures, the tiny Pacific stand-up comic over a midair confrontation with a star sedition in the ongoing protests. On Tuesday, New deadly virus. The disease has spread to more than 15 nation of Papua New Guinea announced no travellers from political television presenter that has become an Delhi police arrested a student activist on sedition countries since it emerged out of Wuhan late last year, Asia would be allowed in. Mongolia closed its border to Internet sensation. Kunal Kamra was banned for six charges after a video posted on social media allegedly months by Indigo - the airline carrying him during the with the death toll soaring to 132 and confirmed infections cars from China earlier this week. China has taken extraor- showed him telling a crowd to “cut off” India’s north- nearing 6,000. incident - while Air India, GoAir and Spice Jet barred east to force the government to roll back the law. Last dinary measures to try and stop the disease spreading, the outspoken comic “until further notice”. All confirmed fatalities have so far been in China. including bans on tour groups travelling overseas, sus- week, women protesters in northern Uttar Pradesh Cases have been reported across the Asia-Pacific region Police said they were laying initial charges under the state, which is ruled by the BJP, were charged with sedi- pending schools and extending the Lunar New Year holi- British colonial-era law against the principal and the and in North America and Europe, but the infected fami- day. Authorities last week banned most street traffic in and tion for holding a sit-in in the heart of its capital ly in the UAE are the first in the Middle East. Dubai’s management of the school in Bidar district in the south- Lucknow. Kamra said that when he saw Arnab Goswami around Wuhan in an unprecedented quarantine effort, ern state of Karnataka. The probe came after a member government said last Thursday that some 989,000 leaving more than 50 million people shuttered in their on the Mumbai-Lucknow flight, he “politely asked” to Chinese tourists visited the glitzy emirate last year - a of the youth wing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s have a conversation but the presenter “pretended to be on homes. “This is the first day since the lockdown that I’ve rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party filed a complaint number expected to cross the one million mark in 2020. a phone call”. In a video that Kamra posted on social had to go out,” a man in his 50s told AFP on the mostly against the school. “We have started an investigation About 3.6 million Chinese transited through the emirate’s deserted streets of the industrial city yesterday. “I have no media, Kamra is seen posing questions and then asks into the complaint by an activist who alleged that the whether Goswami was “a coward or a nationalist” - a main airport in 2019. choice because I need to buy food.” play criticized and disrespected Modi,” Bidar police phrase often used by Goswami on his shows. Goswami is Dubai International Airport in 2018 served over 89 mil- Thousands of foreigners have been among those chief T Sreedhara told AFP. shown wearing sunglasses with earphones plugged in, lion passengers, including more foreign passengers than trapped in Wuhan, now a near ghost-town. Countries have He added that the young student actors, aged ignoring Kamra. any other airport worldwide for the fifth year in a row. The scrambled for days to try and get their citizens out of between nine and 10 years old, were also being ques- The comedian ends the showdown by referring to UAE’s Abu Dhabi International Airport, another major hub, Wuhan safely, but have faced huge logistical, medical and tioned, but would not be charged. A school official Rohith Vemula, a low-caste Dalit scholar whose 2016 has also begun screening passengers arriving from China. bureaucratic hurdles. One US charter flight left Wuhan told AFP they were being “unnecessarily” targeted by suicide sparked protests across India. In the video, Between them, the two Emirati hubs operate dozens of yesterday with 210 Americans on board - including con- the government for expressing their views. The play, Kamra accuses Goswami of harassing Vemula’s mother. flights a week serving Chinese cities. sulate staff - according to US Centers for Disease Control which was performed on Sunday, was part of Shaheen “I did it for my hero...I did it for Rohith,” Kamra wrote. China is the UAE’s top trading partner and Abu Dhabi and Prevention (CDC). They will be screened and moni- Public School’s founding day celebrations. A video of Kamra is an outspoken critic of the rightwing govern- is among the 15 top crude oil suppliers to Beijing. Several tored before arriving at March Air Reserve Base in the five-minute play shared on social media showed hundred Chinese companies have offices in the UAE. The students talking about how they feared the govern- ment of Modi. The BJP regularly criticizes him and avia- California, the CDC said, adding that they will be evaluat- tion minister Hardeep Singh Puri went on to Twitter to coronavirus has caused alarm because of its similarity to ed on landing and then monitored again for symptoms. ment would ask millions of Muslims to prove their SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which killed nationality or be expelled from India. call for airlines to impose restrictions on Kamra. The Some 250 French citizens and 100 other Europeans bans followed soon after. — AFP nearly 650 people across mainland China and Hong Kong will be flown out of Wuhan on board two French planes The citizenship law, combined with a mooted nation- in 2002-2003. Like SARS, it can be passed among this week. The Italian government said it would send an humans via the respiratory tract. aircraft today. Up to 70 Italians are reportedly in Wuhan. The UAE health ministry said it has taken “all the nec- France said it would keep its returnees in a holding facility essary precautions” in line with standards approved by in Paris for 14 days - the estimated incubation period for the World Health Organization. It said that the country’s the virus. Australia plans to house any citizens evacuated health system “works very efficiently and that the ministry on an island normally used to detain asylum seekers. is closely following the situation in a way that guarantees The number of confirmed cases across China climbed the health and safety of everyone.” to 5,974, while the death toll nationwide jumped to 132. Foreign airlines began suspending flights to and from The virus has rattled global markets and started to dent an China yesterday as global fears mounted over the coron- already-slowing Chinese economy. Japanese automaker avirus epidemic. The flight announcements came hours Toyota said it would keep its plants in China closed until at after some countries began airlifts of their nationals least February 9. trapped in Wuhan. Among the 206 Japanese nationals Tech giant Foxconn said yesterday that Taiwan staff at who returned home, 12 were hospitalized for tests and its vast network of factories in China do not need to return monitoring because they felt unwell or showed flu-like to work until mid-February, a move likely to impact global symptoms.

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