ANKARA: Turkey recorded 54,740 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, health ministry data showed on Wednesday, the highest daily level since the start of the pandemic.
Last week President Tayyip Erdogan announced a tightening of coronavirus restrictions, including the return of full nationwide weekend lockdowns during the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, which starts on April 13.
The latest daily death toll was 276, the highest number in a day since the start of the outbreak, bringing the cumulative toll to 32,943.
Turkey has carried out nearly 17.97 million vaccine inoculations, with some 10.55 million people receiving a first dose, since Jan. 14 when it began the nationwide rollout of COVID-19 shots, health ministry data showed.
Turkey administers China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd. and Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine shots.

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel would not be bound to a nuclear deal between world powers and Iran if that would enable the Islamic republic to develop nuclear weapons.
“An agreement with Iran that would pave the way to nuclear weapons — weapons that threaten our extinction — would not compel us in any way,” Netanyahu said in a speech, on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“There is one thing that compels us — to prevent those who seek our extermination from carrying out their plot,” he said at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
China, France, Germany, Russia, Britain and the European Union — acting as an intermediary for the US — met in Vienna Tuesday for talks with Iran, aimed at rescuing the 2015 international agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program.
US President Joe Biden has said he is ready to reverse the decision of his predecessor Donald Trump to withdraw from the agreement and reimpose unilateral sanctions, raising concern in Israel.
The nuclear talks were set to continue on Friday.
Iran and Israel have both recently attacked each other’s commercial vessels, according to reports.
Israel believes Iran was cheating on the deal and working toward a nuclear weapon, while Tehran denies such ambitions.
“During the Holocaust, we had neither the power to defend ourselves nor the sovereignty to do so,” Netanyahu said at the Wednesday ceremony.
“Today we have a state, we have a defense force, and we have the full and natural right as the Jewish people’s sovereign state to defend ourselves from our enemies,” he said.
As tensions with Iran remained high, Israel in recent months has forged ties with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, where Jewish communities were for the first time holding public Holocaust ceremonies.
“In these very moments, a museum in Dubai is holding a memorial event for Holocaust victims,” Netanyahu noted. “Who would have believed?“
“These are indications of a welcome change in the ties between Arabs and Jews, outside of Israel and inside the country too,” he said.
Ceremonies held by the Jewish communities in Dubai and Manama on Wednesday will be joined by Muslim neighbors, said Houda Nonoo, Bahrain’s former ambassador to the US, who is a board member of the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities.
Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies will continue on Thursday, when sirens will blare across the country for two minutes in the morning, followed by a series of events in memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

BEIRUT: Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said on Wednesday his country will “continue to exert all possible efforts alongside the Lebanese political parties to overcome the crisis facing the formation of the new government.”

Shoukry, who was visiting Lebanon for the first time since the explosion the destroyed Beirut’s Port eight months ago, denounced “the ongoing political deadlock preventing the formation of a government of specialists capable of meeting the needs of the brotherly Lebanese people and achieving stability, not only for Lebanon but for the region and Egypt.”

Shoukry passed on a message from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to his Lebanese counterpart, President Michel Aoun, that “stressed Egypt’s solidarity with Lebanon and its support of the efforts exerted to form a new government, as this would open the door for regional and international support and therefore serve the common interests of the region’s countries, but primarily those of the brotherly Lebanese people.”

Shoukry added: “The political framework of the upcoming government is ruled by the constitution, the Taif Agreement and the full commitment to those documents, considered the main pillars of stability.”

This latest attempt to encourage Lebanese politicians to make progress comes 167 days after Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri was instructed to form a new government to replace the one that resigned shortly after the Beirut explosion. Politicians have so far failed to reach a consensus as a result of Aoun’s reported determination to secure a blocking third — control over a third of cabinet portfolios for his allies, which would give them the power to veto any proposal that requires a two-thirds majority. Hariri refuses to grant this.

While the political deadlock continues, the financial crisis in the country deepens. A few days ago, Caretaker Finance Minister Ghazi Wazni warned that “the reserve dedicated to financing basic imports is depleting and may dry up completely by the end of May, unless we reduce subsidies by issuing ration cards to about 800,000 needy families.”

The agenda for Shoukry’s visit did not include meetings with Caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab, head of the Free Patriotic Movement Gebran Bassil, Caretaker Foreign Minister Charbel Wehbe or any Hezbollah officials.

Instead he met Hariri, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, Maronite Patriarch Bechara Al-Rahi, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, Kataeb Party leader Sami Gemayel, and Marada Party leader Suleiman Frangieh. A scheduled meeting with Samir Geagea, head of the Lebanese Forces, was canceled after Geagea tested positive for COVID-19.

Shoukry praised Berri for his “role and his initiative aimed at putting an end to this crisis, while preserving the solid political and legal foundation by abiding by the constitution and the Taif Agreement.”

And after his meeting with the Maronite patriarch, he said: “We have agreed with Al-Rahi on the importance of rapidly forming a government to implement the required reforms, paving the way for regional and international support.”

Egypt has backed an economic-reform initiative launched by French President Emmanuel Macron during a visit to Beirut soon after the explosion, and indicated that it is ready to work with Paris to ensure it is successfully implemented by a new government formed by a political consensus.

Aoun’s office said the president “commended the role undertaken by Egypt, under the leadership of El-Sisi, to help Lebanon address the various crises it is facing, particularly the governmental crisis.” He also expressed the hope that “the efforts will bear positive results through committing to the constitutional and distribution rules upon which the Lebanese system is built, and including all of the Lebanese parties without exclusion or discrimination.”

During a televised speech on Wednesday, Aoun stressed “his commitment to a forensic audit in order to hold accountable those who have stolen the money of the Lebanese people and state.”

In January, Mount Lebanon’s prosecutor, Ghada Aoun, charged the Governor of Lebanon’s central bank Riad Salameh over allegations relating to the use of foreign currency reserves.

Also on Wednesday, ministers gathered at the Ministry of Defense to discuss the demarcation of northern maritime borders, after a Syrian-Russian gas-exploration agreement ignored more than 750 kilometers of Lebanese borders.

“The parties agreed on the importance of the Lebanese authorities acquiring the official documents in order to set up a communication mechanism with the Syrian authorities,” the ministry said. “This stresses the position Lebanon has conveyed to the Syrian authorities repeatedly since 2010 and deposited at the UN.”

Foreign Minister Wehbe said on Tuesday: “President Aoun held a phone call with Syrian President Bashar Assad, during which he discussed the demarcation of the northern maritime borders with Syria and stressed that Lebanon will not accept the undermining of its maritime sovereignty.”

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun on Wednesday held the Central Bank responsibility for the financial collapse and stalling an audit, which’s a key condition for foreign aid the country badly needs.
In a national address, Aoun accused Lebanese banks of squandering people’s savings and the Central Bank’s governor of giving excuses for refusing to answer 73 out of 133 questions that consultancy Alvarez & Marsal had sent for the audit.
“To the central bank I say: the main responsibility befalls you,” he said, in his strongest criticism yet. “You should have taken measures to protect people’s money in the banks.”
Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The paralyzed banking sector is at the heart of Lebanon’s financial collapse, which came to a head in 2019 when dollar inflows dried up and protests swept the country.
The heavily indebted state and the banking sector, its biggest creditor, have since traded blame for the crisis, Lebanon’s worst in decades.
Banks have frozen savers out of their dollar deposits, as the Lebanese currency lost most of its value, plunging many into poverty.
Leaders have failed to launch a rescue plan, instead wrangling over the make-up of a new government, with Aoun and veteran politician Saad Al-Hariri, who was designated premier in October, locked in a standoff.
Foreign donors have warned they will not give any aid without reforms to tackle crushing debt and entrenched graft, root causes of the crisis. An audit of the Central Bank is a key demand.
Aoun said in Wednesday’s speech politicians shared the blame for providing the Central Bank with cover, without naming individuals.

JEDDAH: An Iranian ship linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been attacked in the Red Sea.

The Saviz was hit by limpet mines, Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported on Tuesday.

The attack took place off the coast of Eritrea and led to several injuries, according to Al Arabiya TV.

A US official told Reuters that the United States did not carry out the attack.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Israel has targeted at least 12 Iranian ships heading for Syria since late 2019.

The vessels have mostly been carrying oil in breach of US sanctions. However, the report said cargo and military ships have also been hit with weapons, that include water mines.