US President Joe Biden said on Thursday he will almost certainly release an intelligence report he ordered on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

Asked by reporters if he would pledge to release it in full, Biden said, "Yes, unless there's something I am unaware of." He did not elaborate before getting on Air Force One for the state of Ohio.

Biden tasked his intelligence community on Wednesday with intensifying its investigation into the origins of the pandemic and gave intelligence agencies 90 days to report back to him on their findings, saying he asked "for areas of further inquiry that may be required, including specific questions for China."

Biden said the intelligence community has “coalesced around two likely scenarios” regarding the origins of COVID-19 but noted they have not "reached a definitive conclusion on this question."

Both scenarios have been assessed with low or moderate confidence, with two agencies leaning toward one scenario and a third leaning toward the other, Biden said. But he noted, "the majority of elements do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other.”

Biden did not specify which scenarios are being considered but there has been growing debate about whether the virus emerged from a laboratory or was a natural development.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that three researchers at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became seriously ill in November 2019 and required hospital care to treat symptoms consistent with a COVID-19 infection and other seasonal illnesses.

The report was based on US intelligence.

The pandemic is widely regarded as beginning in December 2019 in the Chinese city of Wuhan. It has claimed more than 3.5 million lives and infected 168 million people since it was first detected, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University./aa

Turkey’s aid agencies on Thursday sent six trucks with humanitarian aid to northwestern Syria where millions remain in need of help because of internal conflict.

Trucks arrived in the Yayladagi district in Turkey’s southern Hatay province.

Water, flour, dry food, clothes and supplies were collected and sent to points where humanitarian aid is distributed from the Syrian border.

Aid will be distributed to families living in tent cities in rural Idlib.

Syria has been ravaged by a civil war since early 2011 when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protesters.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and millions more displaced.

Idlib falls within a de-escalation zone forged under an agreement between Turkey and Russia. The area has been the subject of multiple cease-fire understandings, which have frequently been violated by the regime and its allies./aa

Standard & Poor’s credit rating agency (S&P) expects that Kuwait will record the highest deficit-to-GDP ratio among the Gulf states in 2021, at 20 percent, followed by Bahrain and the UAE at 6 percent, Saudi Arabia 5 percent, Oman 4 percent, and Qatar 1 percent, Al Rai daily reported.

The agency estimated that the cumulative deficit of Gulf governments would reach about $355 billion in the period between 2021-2024. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the largest economy in the region, would account for about 60 percent of this deficit, followed by Kuwait at 25 percent, and then the Emirates at 7% and Oman at 4%.

S&P also expected that Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia will finance most of their deficits through debt securities, while Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, and Qatar will rely more on liquidating part of their assets. Kuwait is likely to issue a public debt law in 2021. The fiscal deficit that the agency expects until 2024 implies that the borrowing that will be authorized under the law (which was previously proposed to have a ceiling of KD20 billion) will likely be exhausted within 3 years.

“As such, the current problems will likely return,” the agency said, stressing that any sustainable solution that lasts for a longer period could include a comprehensive program of reforms and measures to control public finances, including reducing subsidies, filling spending gaps, and imposing new taxes, like many others. From other Gulf countries.
It added that, however, such reforms remain difficult to achieve in Kuwait due to the confrontational nature of the relationship between Parliament and the government.

S&P indicated that thanks to the oil and gas wealth it possesses, some Gulf governments have accumulated large financial assets they can use to finance their public finances deficits, noting that government assets in Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Ras al-Khaimah exceed government debts, by a large margin in some cases. As for Bahrain, Oman, and Sharjah, the size of their debts exceeds the size of their assets.

The agency pointed out that Gulf governments may hesitate to liquidate the assets they have allocated for future generations, as is the case of the Kuwait Future Generations Fund./agencies

Powerful Cyclone Yaas battered Bangladesh on Wednesday, affecting 27 subdistricts of nine southern coastal districts, according to official sources. 

Most of the impacted areas were inundated by a tidal surge spawned by the cyclone that affected croplands, homes, roads, bridges and cattle, said a statement issued by the country's Disaster Management and Relief Ministry.

At a press briefing late Wednesday, however, State Minister Md Enamur Rahman said the country is now out of danger.

"Bangladesh is now fully out of the impacts of Cyclone Yaas," Rahman said, adding 76,000 volunteers along with members of the Bangladesh Scouts, Red Crescent Society and Ansar VDP, a paramilitary auxiliary force, were prepared to serve people.

Regular police forces also monitored disciplinary measures at all cyclone shelters, where people were given sufficient amounts of hand sanitizer and facemasks to contain the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

“As the severe cyclone did not hit Bangladesh heavily, most of the people left the cyclone shelters by Wednesday night,” he added.

According to preliminary records collected from the affected areas by the ministry, as of Wednesday evening, 12 fish firms and several hectares of croplands had been submerged in the southern district of Pirojpur, while 250 homes were damaged and nearly 900 cattle were washed away in the island district of Bhola. In addition, the cyclone left 21 villages under flood water in Bagerhat district, affecting thousands of people, and in other areas, roads and bridges were damaged.

A man was also killed after being hit by a falling tree during gusty weather late Tuesday while a fisherman died Tuesday after his boat capsized in the sea amid the rough weather due to the impact of the cyclone, according to official sources.

The South Asian delta nation has frequently experienced natural disasters for decades as it is also one of the world's most affected countries from climate change.

In the last five decades, nearly half a million people in Bangladesh have died from more than a dozen cyclones, according to official records.

Following the extremely severe Cyclone Sidr in 2007, Bangladeshi authorities have constructed many cyclone shelters and developed other settlements to contain the damage from natural disasters, resulting in comparatively fewer casualties from natural calamities.

In May last year, 31 people in Bangladesh died from Cyclone Amphan, which also hit parts of neighboring India.

Rohingya on remote island unaffected

Meanwhile, 20,000 Rohingya on a remote Bangladeshi island in the southern Bay of Bengal were not affected by the cyclone.

But due to its impact, water levels rose, and many Rohingya were seen catching fish in the water.

The persecuted people, who were relocated there, also took refuge at cyclone shelters which double as learning centers under an island project.

The Bangladeshi government has constructed 1,400 big cluster houses four feet above the ground with concrete blocks and 120 multi-storied cyclone shelters on the island. Each cluster house is made up of 16 rooms.

Spending over $350 million from its domestic resources, the Muslim-majority country has developed a resettlement project on 13,000 acres for temporarily resettling 100,000 Rohingya Muslims.

According to official sources, the silt island, located 50 kilometers (31 miles) off Bangladesh’s southwestern coast and nearly 193 kilometers [120 miles] south of the capital Dhaka, remains disconnected from the mainland and any potential assistance during natural disasters./agencies

Despite over a year of "relative calm," the Syrian people are in the midst of soaring humanitarian suffering, the UN's special envoy for the country said Wednesday. 

"It is a tragic irony that this time of relative calm, compared with earlier years of the conflict, is also a period of immense and growing humanitarian suffering of the Syrian people," Geir Pedersen told the UN Security Council via teleconference.

"It is a time of economic destitution, a pandemic, displacement, detention and abduction, all while violent conflict, terrorism and human rights abuses continue," he added.

Pedersen said that while battle lines have not shifted in some time, there are "recurring signs" that Syria's 10-year conflict could turn "hot," including "mutual shelling" and airstrikes in northwestern Syria, "more shelling in and around Afrin and Ayn Issa," and Israeli airstrikes in southwestern Syria and regime-held areas.

Troubling too is the country's dire economic situation, which despite a relative stabilization in the Syrian pound is still in the midst of soaring inflation, with the price of basic goods and transportation "increasingly outside of the grasp of many Syrians," Pedersen said, noting basic services like water and power are also "compromised in many areas."

"We see the same suffering and the same patterns of events and dynamics month-on-month, a pattern which I fear is slowly inching Syrians towards an even deeper abyss," he said.

The envoy continued to place emphasis on a UN-facilitated political solution to the conflict to remedy the country's woes./aa

Spain’s national postal service has come under fire for what many are calling racism after it issued a new stamp collection intended to highlight racial discrimination on Wednesday. 

The new collection includes four stamps that reflect different shades of skin colors.

It features a peach shade worth €1.60 ($1.90), a medium-brown at €1.50 ($1.78), while a darker brown one is €0.80 ($0.95) and a jet black stamp is €0.70 ($0.83).

“At Correos we believe that the value of a person shouldn’t have color, and that’s why we’ve launched #EqualityStamps,” the post office said on Twitter. “We’re reflecting an unjust and painful reality that shouldn’t exist.”

The stamps were launched to coincide with European Diversity Month and the first anniversary of the murder of George Floyd -- a Black man killed by a white police officer in the US last year that sparked worldwide protests, according to the post office’s website,

But the campaign has received a flurry of criticism on social networks, as users underscored the price differences between the stamps.

“How much is this group of people worth, according to Correos?,” asked Twitter user Undosytess, who posted a picture of a group of young women with varying black and brown skin tones.

“Since this racist reality shouldn’t exist, we’re going to make it even more real with stamps,” said Albercocs.

“This is exactly what happens when you want to launch a publicity campaign in solidarity, but everyone who is organizing it is white,” said another user.

“Their anti-racist campaign consists in giving less value to blackness? If it's anti-racist shouldn’t all the colors be worth the same?” asked Seba_NqN.

Correos has yet to reply to the 2,300 comments left under its Twitter post. Many recognized the good intentions of the postal service but thought the execution was off the mark.

But it did have just a few supporters, like Fernando de Cordoba, who said he liked the campaign,

“I think it’s daring and will provoke outrage. And that’s what they want. They want people to get mad about the inequalities of the stamps because it reflects and a real-world reality that’s sometimes not so obvious,” he said./aa

Six villages in Somalia’s Middle Shabelle region have been taken back from al-Shabaab terrorists, the country’s military said on Wednesday. 

The liberated villages are War Dhagah, War Isse, Gaal Leef, Qoordheere, Jilable, and Ali Fooldheere, located just outside the town of Jowhar, the administrative capital of Somalia’s Hirshabelle state.

Jowhar is a strategic agricultural town that is some 90 kilometers (55 miles) from Somalia’s capital Mogadishu.

The army made “significant gains in today's offensive against al-Shabaab terrorist strongholds … [and] also inflicted al-Shabaab huge casualties,” the Somali National Armed Forces said on Twitter.

The army will continue its operations against the terror group in the region, spokesperson Col. Ali Hashi told Somali military radio.

The military offensive against al-Shabaab comes as Somalia’s prepares for elections this year, with the federal government and regional leaders currently engaged in talks to resolve a deadlock over the polls./aa