North Korea has displayed what appeared to be a new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) at a military parade in Pyongyang, state media reported on Friday.

The show of military might have capped more than a week of rare political meetings.

Clad in a leather coat and fur hat, leader Kim Jong Un smiled and waved as he oversaw the parade in Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Square, photos by state media showed.

The parade featured rows of marching soldiers, as well as a range of military hardware including tanks and rocket launchers.

At the end, a number of what analysts said appeared to be new variants of short-range ballistic missiles and SLBMs rolled into the square on trucks.

“The world’s most powerful weapon, submarine-launch ballistic missiles, entered the square one after another, powerfully demonstrating the might of the revolutionary armed forces,” news agency KCNA reported.

North Korea has test-fired several SLBMs from underwater, and analysts say it is seeking to develop an operational submarine to carry the missiles.

Photos released by state media showed the SLBM was labelled Pukguksong-5, potentially marking an upgrade over the Pukguksong-4 that was unveiled at a larger military parade in October.

“The new missile definitely looks longer,” Michael Duitsman, a researcher at the California-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), said on Twitter.

Unlike that October parade, the latest event did not showcase North Korea’s largest intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which are believed to be able to deliver a nuclear warhead to anywhere in the United States.

The parade in itself was not intended to be a provocation but was a worrying sign of Pyongyang’s priorities, said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.

“The economy is severely strained from pandemic border closures, policy mismanagement and international sanctions.

“Despite or perhaps because of this, Kim Jong Un feels the need to devote scarce resources to another political-military display,” he said.

On Wednesday, Kim Yo Jong, the sister of Kim Jong Un and a member of the ruling party’s Central Committee, criticised South Korea’s military for saying it had detected signs of a parade in Pyongyang on Sunday.

North Korean officials have been meeting in Pyongyang for the first party congress since 2016. (Reuters/NAN)

King Abdullah II of Jordan received the COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday, according to a statement by the Royal Court.

Jordan’s Prince El Hassan bin Talal and Crown Prince Al Hussein also received the vaccine, the statement noted.

Jordan commenced a COVID-19 vaccination campaign on Wednesday, with priority on vulnerable groups and frontline health workers. (Xinhua/NAN)

People previously infected with COVID-19 can have immunity for up to five months afterwards, but could still pass it on to others, England’s health agency has said.

Public Health England said it had been testing tens of thousands of health workers across Britain since June for antibodies.

Its researchers found that people can be up to 83 per cent protected against the virus after being previously infected with Covid-19. The protection then appears to last for five months.

Between June 18 and Nov. 24, scientists detected 44 potential re-infections, two “probable’’ and 42 “possible’’ reinfections  out of 6,614 participants who had tested positive for antibodies.

But early evidence from the next stage of the study suggests some people carry high levels of the virus and could transmit it to others.

Prof. Susan Hopkins, senior medical advisor at Public Health England and leader of the study, said: “We now know that most of those who have had the virus, and developed antibodies, are protected from reinfection, but this is not total and we do not yet know how long protection lasts. Crucially, we believe people may still be able to pass the virus on.’’

The team has not yet investigated immune responses from the COVID-19 vaccines, which Britain began rolling out in November.

They will investigate people’s bodily reactions to vaccines later in the year.

According to the latest figures from the British government, more than 3.2 million people have tested positive for COVID-19 in the four nations since the outbreak began. (dpa/NAN)

By Mark Longyen

Zambian High Commissioner to Nigeria, Solomon Jere, has refuted media reports that the country’s founding president, Kenneth Kaunda, is dead.

The High Commissioner, who made the clarification, on Wednesday, in Abuja, at a media briefing, urged people to ignore the reports which, he described, as ‘’contemptuous rumours.’’

The High Commissioner said, ‘’the office of the High Commissioner wishes to refute social media reports that Dr Kenneth Kaunda has died.

‘’We will like to inform all Zambians resident in West Africa, and the international community at large, that Zambia’s founding president is alive, fine and in good spirit”, he said.

Kaunda, one of the leaders of the front-line states, comprising Nigeria, Tanzania and Zambia, that helped in the liberation of most of southern Africa from colonialism, is 96 and will turn 97 on April 28.

The High Commissioner also refuted media reports that Zambia had lost its sovereignty to China over bad debts, stressing that such reports were ‘’despicable.’’’

He explained that it was not true that China intended to repossess some Zambian state-owned enterprises because of the government’s failure to settle its outstanding debt obligations to China.

‘’Zambia has not offered any of its assets as collateral security, for any of its bilateral or multilateral loans, and, therefore, there are no state enterprises at risk of being repossessed.

‘’I want to assure the international community that the government of the Republic of Zambia is working very hard to revitalize the country’s economy, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic,’’ Jere said.

According to the High Commissioner, Zambia is revitalizing her economy by diversifying away from mining to agriculture, tourism and renewable energy.

By Ifeanyi Nwoko
The ECOWAS Court of Justice has invested 345,126 U.S. dollars in  digitization of its processes and the conduct of virtual court sessions, the President of the Court has said.

Justice Edward Amoako Asante made this known in a goodwill message at the opening of the 2020 virtual session of the ECOWAS Parliament on Wednesday.

He said that the deployment of the virtual technology has enabled the court to function optimally in safety in spite of the raging COVID-19 pandemic.

He said that the expenditure was committed for the procurement of video conference equipment and related materials after the initial disruptions to the Court’s judicial functions which affected 60 cases scheduled for both hearing and judgment during the first quarter of 2020.

“The Court realised that in a post COVID-19 world, it was imperative to migrate to the virtual technology infrastructure in order to continue to discharge its role,” the President told regional parliamentarians.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports the the 2020 Second Ordinary Session of Parliament was postponed to January 2021 due to COVID-19 disruptions, and it is being held via virtual conference.

The session is specifically dedicated to the consideration of the community budget for 2021 among other things.

Asante also said the Court had to align its practice direction to the reality of the virtual technology, which along with the deployment of the technology, resulted in the efficient and uninterrupted disposal of cases.

He said that it also resulted in improvement in turnaround time for Court hearings and a general improvement in the management of case files.

Its other benefits, he added, include savings on legal costs consisting of travel air tickets of Litigants, Agents, Lawyers and Witnesses as well as logistics and hotel costs.

He added that it also eliminated the personal contacts between the Bench and the Lawyers, Agents, Litigants and witnesses with the attendant risks of infection.

The President urged the Parliamentarians, who are considering the budget of the Community, to support the proposal by the Court to strengthen its Information Technology capacity.

“In doing so, they will be making an important contribution to the survival and functioning of the Court while protecting the huge community funds that have been invested in the virtual technological  infrastructure that has become the livewire of its operations,” he said.

Sri Lanka has detected the new strain of the COVID-19 virus after a British national who recently arrived in the capital Colombo tested positive for the new variant.

Chief Epidemiologist of the Health Ministry’s Epidemiology Unit, Dr. Sudath Samaraweera, told local reporters on Wednesday.

This is the first case of the new variant to be reported in the island country.

Samaraweera said the infected patient had arrived in the country a week or two ago and further investigations were underway.

Sri Lanka has to date detected over 49,000 positive COVID-19 patients as the country is in the midst of a second wave of the pandemic.

According to Health Ministry figures, out of 49,537 patients detected since March, 42,621 patients have recovered and been discharged from hospitals bringing down the active patient count to 6,627.

It said 244 patients have died from the virus.

The Island country has conducted over 1.3 million PCR tests, figures showed. (Xinhua/NAN)

Security forces in the Central African Republic have repelled an attack by armed groups seeking to seize the capital Bangui early on Wednesday, Prime Minister Firmin Ngrebada, said.

The assault represents a marked escalation in fighting with rebel groups that erupted around a disputed Dec. 27 election.

The groups attacked towns close to Bangui last month but did not reach the capital as intended.

A Reuters witness in Bangui heard explosions and later saw helicopters circling over the city.

“The attackers, who came in large numbers to take Bangui, have been vigorously pushed back,” Ngrebada said in a post on Facebook, urging citizens to remain calm.

The gold- and diamond-rich country of 4.7 million has been hit by violence since former president Francois Bozize was ousted by a rebellion in 2013.

Thousands have been killed and more than a million forced from their homes. (Reuters/NAN)

The number of COVID-19 cases worldwide has surpassed 90 million, reaching 90,054,813 as of Wednesday, according to the latest numbers from the World Health Organisation (WHO)

Globally, as of 9:47 am CET (0847 GMT) on Wednesday, there have been 90,054,813 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 1,945,610 deaths, reported to WHO.

The U.S. has remained at the top in both infection cases and fatalities, with 22,428,591 confirmed cases and 373,329 deaths reported to WHO.

It’s followed by India with 10,495,147 cases and 151,529 deaths, and then Brazil, with 8,131,612 cases and 203,580 deaths.

Also severely affected were Russia with 3,448,203 cases, Britain with 3,118,522 cases, France with 2,740,656 cases, Italy with 2,289,021 cases, and Spain with 2,111,782 cases.

On the list of death tolls after the top three were Mexico with 134,368 cases, Britain with 81,960 cases, Italy with 79,203 cases, France with 67,368 cases, Russia with 62,804 cases, Iran with 56,360 cases, and Spain with 52,275 cases.

According to WHO regional offices, the Americas remained the most affected area by COVID-19, with a total of 39,835,210 confirmed cases and 925,289 death cases, followed by Europe where 29,251,917 confirmed cases and 634,670 death cases have been reported.

As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, vaccination is underway in some countries with the already-authorised coronavirus vaccines.

Meanwhile, 236 candidate vaccines are still being developed worldwide, 63 of them in clinical trials  in countries including Germany, China, Russia, Britain and the United States, according to information released by WHO on Jan. 12.(Xinhua/NAN)