Trinetra Dainik

by Mahmoud Fouly, Abdel-Meguid Kamal CAIRO, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- The recent reconciliation agreement signed in Saudi Arabia by Qatar and the boycotting states is a "positive step" through which Egypt and Qatar showed good faith to resume bilateral relations, said Egyptian and Qatari experts. While Qatari analysts expect the deal to ease differences between Cairo and Doha and mark a new beginning for their ties based on mutual understanding and respect, Egyptian counterparts see that complete resumption of ties may take some time in light of "outstanding issues" to be addressed. Last week, Qatar and the Arab quartet comprising Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt signed a Kuwaiti-sponsored reconciliation deal in Al-Ula city in northwestern Saudi Arabia during the 41st Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Summit. The four states jointly cut diplomatic and economic ties with Qatar in June 2017, accusing Doha of supporting terrorism and interfering...

JAKARTA, Jan 10, 2021 (AFP) - Authorities have pinpointed the location of two black boxes from a crashed Indonesian jet, they said Sunday, referring to cockpit voice and flight data recorders that could help explain why the aircraft went down with 62 people aboard. The announcement came as divers pulled body parts, wreckage and clothing from waters off Indonesia's capital Jakarta. "We have located the position of the black boxes, both of them," said Soerjanto Tjahjanto, head of Indonesia's transport safety agency. "Divers will start looking for them now and hopefully it won't be long before we get them." The Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500 went into a steep dive about four minutes after it left Soekarno-Hatta international airport in Jakarta on Saturday afternoon. Indonesia's President Joko Widodo expressed his "deep condolences", and called on citizens to "pray together so that victims can be found". But the frantic se...

BERLIN, Jan 10, 2021 (AFP) - The total number of Germany's coronavirus deaths crossed 40,000 on Sunday, as Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that the coming weeks would be "the hardest" yet. Germany recorded 465 deaths over the past 24 hours, the Robert Koch Institute for disease control said, raising the toll since the start of the pandemic to 40,343. More than 1.9 million people have been infected so far, with almost 17,000 new cases added since Saturday. In her weekly video message on Saturday, Merkel said the full impact of socialising over the Christmas and New Year's period was yet to show up in the statistics. She warned Germans that "these next winter weeks will be the hardest phase of the pandemic" so far, with many doctors and medical staff working at their limits. Germany fared better than many other European countries during the first Covid-19 wave in the spring but it has been hit hard by the second wave. The nation of 83 million peopl...

GENEVA, Jan 10, 2021 (AFP) - Switzerland's decision in the spring to shutter schools was one of the most effective measures in reducing mobility and thus also transmission of Covid-19, a study showed Sunday. Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, ETH, determined that the closure of Swiss schools last March was responsible for cutting mobility by more than a fifth.  "School closures reduced mobility by 21.6 percent," Stefan Feuerriegel, an ETH professor of management information systems who headed the study, told AFP in an email. "School closures reduce mobility, (which) then reduces new cases" of Covid-19, he said. His team analysed some 1.5 billion movements in Swiss telecommunication data between February 10 and April 26 last year to evaluate the impact on mobility as various anti-Covid measures were introduced. In decentralised Switzerland, its 26 cantons introduced measures at different paces before a country-wide par...

ISLAMABAD, Jan 10, 2021 (AFP) - Power was gradually being restored to major cities across Pakistan Sunday after it was hit by a massive electricity blackout, officials said. The electricity distribution system in the nation of more than 210 million people is a complex and delicate web, and a problem in one section of the grid can lead to cascading breakdowns countrywide. The latest blackout was caused by "an engineering fault" in southern Pakistan at 11:41 pm local time on Saturday (1841 GMT), which tripped the system and caused power plants to shut down, power minister Omar Ayub Khan told a press conference in Islamabad. "Our experts are trying to determine the exact location of the fault." Khan said that will take "another few hours as the area is still covered in dense fog", but that power had been partially restored in most areas of Punjab, the most populous province, as well as the economic hub Karachi in the south. "We hope to bring ...