DUBAI: The UAE on Wednesday recorded 1,214 new coronavirus cases and two deaths.
The Ministry of Health and Prevention said the total number of cases since the pandemic began has reached 145,599, with the death toll now 520.
The ministry added that 741 people recovered over the previous 24 hours, bringing the total number of recoveries to 140,442.
Abu Dhabi’s Department of Health conducted a study of 1,038 people infected with COVID-19 who follow a healthy diet.
The study showed that there is a strong correlation between the individual’s lifestyle and the number of days they spend in hospital for treatment of symptoms associated with the virus.
Patients who follow a healthy diet spend less time in hospital compared with those who do not, the study found. 
“A healthy diet is important during the COVID-19 pandemic, because what the body consumes can affect its ability to fight and recover from diseases,” the department said in a statement on WAM.
Sumaya Al-Ameri, of the Abu Dhabi Department of Health, said: “The study confirmed that adopting a healthy lifestyle contributes to strengthening the body’s immunity against diseases in general and against the symptoms associated with infection with the COVID-19 virus in particular.”
Al-Ameri said proper exercise, adequate sleep and avoiding unhealthy habits such as smoking are also important.
Abu Dhabi’s Emergency, Crisis and Disaster Committee said the emirate continues to maintain a low percentage of confirmed coronavirus cases compared with the total number of tests conducted, due to its national screening program and other testing initiatives.

It is the first time an unconventional gas development in the Middle East has delivered gas to a pipeline so early in the project timeline. This marks an important step towards ADNOC’s target of producing 1bn standard cubic feet (scfd) of gas from the concession before 2030.

— مكتب أبوظبي الإعلامي (@admediaoffice) November 11, 2020

“The percentage of confirmed cases per total tests conducted in the emirate over the past three months remained low at 0.39 percent,” it added.
Meanwhile, Dubai Economy issued a fine to an electronic trading establishment for breaching anti-COVID-19 measures during daily inspection tours.
Elsewhere, Kuwait recorded 778 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total to 134,159. The death toll reached 826 after five new fatalities were registered.

تعلن #وزارة_الصحة⁩ عن تأكيد إصابة 778 حالة جديدة، وتسجيل 749 حالة شفاء، و 5 حالات وفاة جديدة بـ ⁧#فيروس_كورونا_المستجدّ⁩ COVID-19 ، ليصبح إجمالي عدد الحالات 134,159 حالة pic.twitter.com/OrsKxM85Ng

— وزارة الصحة – الكويت (@KUWAIT_MOH) November 11, 2020

Oman’s health ministry confirmed 302 new cases and five deaths, bringing the total to 119,186 and 1,321, respectively.

#Statement No. 224
November 11. 2020 pic.twitter.com/Y4SX8KMtI6

— وزارة الصحة – عُمان (@OmaniMOH) November 11, 2020

In Bahrain, one death was reported, bringing the death toll to 332, while 231 new infected cases were confirmed.

Out of 11299 COVID-19 tests carried out on 11 November 2020, 231 new cases have been detected among 78 expatriate workers, 148 new cases are contacts of active cases, and 5 are travel related. There were 244 recoveries from #COVID19, increasing total recoveries to 81658 pic.twitter.com/W9HBCIsTJL

— وزارة الصحة | مملكة البحرين (@MOH_Bahrain) November 11, 2020

AL-MUKALLA: Arab coalition warplanes killed two Hezbollah military experts in Yemen during airstrikes on a training camp outside Houthi-held Sanaa last week, Yemen’s defense ministry said.

Along with the two Lebanese experts, at least a dozen Houthi fighters who were undergoing military training in Sanaa’s Arhab district were killed in the same raid.

Yemeni military and political analysts, along with diplomats, say that the incident again lays bare Iran and its proxy Hezbollah’s continuing military interventions in the country.

Yemen President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has repeatedly accused the Iranian regime of deploying Iranian and Lebanese military officers in Yemen to support Houthi rebels who are coming under intense attacks from the Yemeni government forces backed by the Arab coalition.

Yemen military experts and officials believe that the influx of Hezbollah fighters began almost a decade ago and that the death of the latest two fighters is “the tip of the iceberg of the interventions.”

Military experts said that it shows Hezbollah is actively propping up the Houthis despite rebel denials.

“Since Arhab is not a battlefield, the incident shows that the two Hezbollah members were equipping the Houthis with military know-how, rather than taking part in the fighting,” Abdul Basit Al-Baher, a Yemeni army spokesperson in the southern city of Taiz, told Arab News.

Hezbollah experts have helped boost Houthi military capacity with explosive devices, drones and missiles, he said.

Without military expertise from Iran and Hezbollah, Houthi weapons could not have hit Saudi and Yemeni cities and military sites during the war, Al-Baher said.

In January, a drone and a ballistic missile struck a military camp in Marib, killing more than 110 soldiers. Improved land mines disguised as rocks have also claimed the lives of hundreds of soldiers and civilians.

Techniques for making land mines and directing missiles originated in Iran and was brought to Yemen by Hezbollah and Iran Revolutionary Guards military experts, Al-Baher said.

“Iran and its Revolutionary Guards are controlling the battles in Yemen. It controls the Yemenis and Lebanese,” he said.

In 2016, a video clip circulated on social media showing a Hezbollah military expert lecturing Houthi fighters. Based on intelligence information, Yemeni officers believe that up to 1,000 Hezbollah experts are stationed inside command rooms and military camps in Sanaa, Hodeidah and Saada, the rebels’ heartland.

At the same time, political analysts believe the Houthis are in desperate need of military and logistic support from Iran and Hezbollah amid an international arms embargo on Yemen.

“The Houthi group has been isolated by all countries,” Najeeb Ghallab, undersecretary at Yemen’s information ministry, told Arab News.

“Due to Yemen’s strategic location, Iran sees the Houthis as its most important camp in the region and the world. Iran and Hezbollah are using the Houthis as a tool to pressure Saudi Arabia and international marine traffic in the Red Sea,” Ghallab said.

Ahmed Awadh bin Mubarak, Yemen’s ambassador to the US and a former Yemeni president’s chief of staff, told Arab News that there is increasing evidence of Hezbollah military involvement in Yemen.

“Hezbollah is executing Iran’s agendas in the region. Hezbollah has always been the training, military, media and political incubator of the Houthis,” he said.
 

BEIRUT: As he met with a delegation from the Association of Depositors in Lebanon on Tuesday, the country’s central bank governor, Riad Salameh, stressed: “Lebanon is not bankrupt.”

The governor continued: “However, the financial sector is suffering due to the repercussions of the regional crisis that Lebanon has not been able to break free from, organized smear campaigns that were used as instruments of pressure over the past 3 years, and the public losses due to the increasing current account and budget deficits over the past 5 years. These factors had an impact on the national exchange rate.”

Salameh’s statement coincided with the decision of the Supreme Defense Council, which convened under the chairmanship of President Michel Aoun, to reinstate a two-week lockdown starting next Saturday, with a curfew from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. every day in an attempt to reduce the country’s rate of coronavirus disease infections.

“Despite the under-performance and stagnation caused by the coronavirus and the country’s decision to not honor its external obligations (Eurobonds), which directly affected the flow of foreign capital and hard currencies, the central bank has proven that it has done its job in a professional way,” Salameh added.

“Lebanese banks still control 90 percent of the circulation, which helps the country avoid additional increases in inflation rates. Since the beginning of the crisis, the central bank granted banks loans in US dollars and Lebanese Pounds (LBP), allowing them to meet the demand on liquidity.

Estimates show that $10 billion is stored in Lebanese houses, which requires a new organizational mechanism to restore the trust in banks. This includes the setting up of a Lebanese digital currency project in 2021 to help implement a cashless system that allows the movement of the money market locally and abroad.

“Lebanon does not have any natural resources. That is why we need to preserve the gold we have because it is an asset that can be liquified in foreign markets if we are ever to face an inevitable fateful crisis,” Salameh pointed out.

The formation of the new Lebanese government is still facing hurdles due to the conditions imposed by the political parties on Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri, especially by the head of the Free Patriotic Movement, Gebran Bassil, who was sanctioned by the US a few days ago.

The adviser to the French President Emmanuel Macron for the affairs of the Middle East and North Africa, Patrick Durel, is expected to arrive in Beirut on Wednesday night to try and assess the possibility of reviving the French initiative concerning the formation of a government whose mission is to implement reforms.

The US sanctions turned into a dispute between Bassil and the US Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea, who, on Monday, said Bassil “has a misunderstanding about how sanctions work and a lack of understanding about US policy.” This came in response to the press conference Bassil held last Sunday to defend himself.

Shea affirmed that the sanctions targeting Bassil were “against the individual not the party.”

She also welcomed Bassil’s decision to challenge the sanctions in a US court of law, adding that “Mr. Bassil complained that I did not forewarn him that he would be sanctioned on grounds of corruption, as if that was my responsibility to reveal prior to the designation. It was not. There are various authorities under US law for sanctions. The fact that Mr. Bassil has been designated at this time under the Global Magnitsky Act, does not mean that he or any others, for that matter, could not be sanctioned under a different authority at some later date.”

“During our exchanges, he expressed willingness to break with Hezbollah on certain conditions. He actually expressed gratitude that the US had got him to see how this relationship is disadvantageous to the party. Key advisors even informed me that they had encouraged Mr. Bassil to take this historic decision,” Shea revealed.

Bassil responded to Shea by asking her about “the evidence on the basis of which he was accused of being involved in corruption,” after she had said that such evidence could not be published. He also expressed his commitment to the alliance with Hezbollah.

BAQIRHA, Syria: Abdelaziz Al-Hassan did not want to live in an overcrowded camp after fleeing war in northwestern Syria, so instead his family pitched a tent in the ruins of a Roman temple.

He, his wife and three children are among almost 1 million Syrians who fled their homes last winter during a Russia-backed offensive on Syria’s last rebel stronghold of Idlib.

In the UNESCO-listed site of Baqirha, near the Turkish border, they are now among dozens of Syrians uprooted by war who have settled among centuries-old Roman and Byzantine ruins.

Hassan and his family have set up a tunnel-shaped tent between the three surviving walls of a second-century Greek temple, on a site strewn with broken columns and a plinth.

Behind their tent, laundry hung on a rope strung between the ancient walls. Propped up over the centuries-old stones, solar panels soaked in the sun near a blackened pot on a small wood-burning stove.

Hassan says the site is a far better option than living in one of the numerous informal displacement camps that have sprouted up along the frontier, especially amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“I chose this place because it provides peace of mind, far from overcrowded places and those riddled with disease,” said the middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper beard.

Syria is filled with archaeological sites, from Roman temples and Crusader castles to Ottoman-era caravanserais.

Many have been damaged, bombarded or plundered throughout a nine-year-old conflict that has killed more than 380,000 people and displaced millions.

Northwest Syria is home to 40 UNESCO-listed villages from the first to the seventh centuries that, the UN cultural body says, provide insight into “rural life in late Antiquity and during the Byzantine period.”

Dotted with the remains of temples and churches, the sites illustrate “the transition from the ancient pagan world of the Roman Empire to Byzantine Christianity,” it says.

In Baqirha, Zeus Bomos, or Zeus of the Altar, was built almost two millennia ago, historians say, in a wider area that later prospered from olive oil production.

Maamoun Abdel Karim, the head of Syria’s antiquities authority, said Baqirha was exceptional for its well-preserved buildings, also including two churches from the sixth century.

But for all the grand architecture, Hassan admitted there were a few inconveniences to living where he does, including a long walk for his children to the village school.

He also said the area is crawling with poisonous snakes and insects.

“Two days ago, near the tent’s opening, I killed a viper,” he told AFP. And “every other day, we have to kill a scorpion.”

“But we haven’t found anywhere better than here yet.”

Hassan’s brother-in-law, Saleh Jaour, and his dozen children have also made the ancient ruins of Baqirha their new home, after fleeing bombardment last winter that killed his wife and a son.

“I chose this region because it’s close to the Turkish border. If anything happens, we can flee to Turkey on foot,” said the portly 64-year-old wearing a long dark robe.

As the crow flies, the Turkish border lies just four kilometers (2.5 miles) away.

“This place is far from the crowds and the noise,” he added, saying he too was taken aback by how many people were living at close proximity in the camps.

Both Hassan and Jaour’s families escaped their homes further south during a government-led offensive between December last year and March on the jihadist-dominated stronghold of Idlib.

A cease-fire deal reached by rebel backer Turkey and regime ally Russia has since largely stemmed the fighting, but less than a quarter have returned.

Local officials have asked families living on the archaeological site in Baqirha to leave, but they have refused until they are provided with alternative shelter.

“We’ve gotten used to this place,” said Jaour, reluctant to uproot the family again at the start of the rainy winter season.

“Where else can we go?”

NAIROBI: At least 30 armed Ethiopian troops and “large numbers” of refugees fleeing the fighting in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region have crossed the border into Sudan, the state-run SUNA news agency reported, while one diplomat on Tuesday said hundreds of people have been reported killed on both sides of Ethiopia’s week-long conflict.

Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed again vowed that his military will bring a speedy end to the fighting in the heavily armed Tigray region and the removal of its leadership, which his government regards as illegal. With the region almost completely cut off, it remained difficult to confirm either side’s claims. Each blames the other for sparking the conflict.

Sudan, which has sent more than 6,000 troops to the border, has been under pressure from the international community to help make peace and from the Ethiopian government, which seeks to cut Tigray off from the outside world.

The troops from Ethiopia’s Amhara region neighboring Tigray fled into Sudan’s Qadarif province Monday evening, the SUNA report said, citing witnesses. Local authorities have started to prepare a refugee camp for the fleeing Ethiopians, it said, while aid groups warn of a brewing humanitarian crisis affecting millions of people at the heart of the Horn of Africa region.

The Ethiopian troops turned themselves and their weapons in, and appealed for protection as fighting raged over the border, said a Sudanese military official on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters.

Abiy described his government’s military campaign in the Tigray region as “law enforcement operations” that he said will end as soon “as the criminal junta is disarmed, legitimate administration in the region restored, and fugitives apprehended and brought to justice — all of them rapidly coming within reach.” On Monday a military official said the air force was “pounding targets with precision.”

The African Union Commission chairman, Moussa Faki Mahamat, has called for the “immediate cessation of hostilities.” 

In a statement Monday, he said the AU, based in Ethiopia, is ready to support an “inter-Ethiopian effort in the pursuit of peace and stability.”

Abiy has shown no sign of opening talks with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which once dominated Ethiopia’s ruling coalition. Feeling marginalized by Abiy’s political reforms after he took office in 2018, it broke away last year as the prime minister sought to transform the coalition into a single Prosperity Party. The TPLF defied the federal government by holding a local election in September.

Diplomats and others assert that the conflict in Tigray could destabilize the region and other parts of Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous country with 110 million people. Ethiopia has scores of ethnic groups and other regions that have sought more autonomy even as Abiy, who won the Nobel just last year, tries to hold the country together with exhortations of national unity.

Several hundred people reportedly have been killed on both the Ethiopian government side and the Tigray regional government side, a diplomat in the capital, Addis Ababa, told The Associated Press.

More than 150 citizens of European Union countries alone are thought to be in the Tigray region, which is increasingly cut off with airports and roads closed and communications largely severed, and governments are trying to ensure their consular protection, the diplomat added, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“There are so many uncertainties,” the diplomat said. “How far can Abiy go with this operation while keeping the possibility of, in the end, having a more or less peaceful solution? You need the support of the people.”

Experts worry that the longer the conflict lasts, the more difficult it will be for the federal government to bring the Tigray region back to Ethiopia’s federation of regional states.

And aid groups warn the humanitarian needs will grow. A United Nations spokesman told reporters on Monday that discussions were underway on the relocation of all non-essential UN staff and on gaining humanitarian access.

Ethiopia’s state television on Monday showed scenes of federal government troops arriving in the border town of Dansha, to cheers, and of what the report said were Tigrayan militia members after surrendering to federal forces.