National Police chief Gen. Idham Azis has issued an edict announcing that the police will take strict action against people who conduct mass gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the edict, dated March 19, Idham urged the public to refrain from organizing mass gatherings in public places or private properties. Several examples of mass gatherings prohibited by the edict include social meetings, workshops, music festivals, carnivals, sports events, fairs, mass protests and family receptions.  Topics : Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan declared a 14-day state of emergency in the capital city on Saturday in an effort to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.He urged all stakeholders – including corporations, social organizations and religious groups – to take drastic action to prevent the spread of the disease during the state of emergency.”Officers from the Jakarta Police, the Jakarta Military Command and provincial administrations will be out in the field on Monday to make sure everybody obeys the policy.”Indonesia reported 514 confirmed COVID-19 cases nationwide with 48 deaths as of Sunday afternoon. “If the situation is pressing and cannot be avoided, mass gatherings should be conducted with participants maintaining a safe distance from each other and they must follow the government’s COVID-19 prevention procedures,” he said. He also warned the public to refrain from stockpiling food and other basic necessities. “Police officers are required to take the necessary police action according to prevailing laws and regulations should they find any party violating this edict,” Idham said.President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo recently called on the public to work, study and worship from home to prevent a nationwide outbreak, but he stressed that the government was “not leaning toward issuing a lockdown policy”.

On Monday, there were four roadside blasts in the capital which wounded four civilians, including a child, according to Kabul’s police. No group immediately claimed responsibility.Clashes in eastern Laghman province between security forces and the Taliban killed six security force members and wounded five, according to Haroon Yousufzai, a local military spokesman. The ministry of defense said the Taliban also suffered heavy casualties.The Afghan government and foreign powers including the United States have been calling on the group to reduce violence, saying it is hindering progress on moving towards formal peace talks. Afghan security forces arrested three senior South Asia Islamic State members including the group’s regional leader, the government said on Monday.The militant group’s head of South Asia, Abu Omar Khorasani, was arrested in Kabul alongside the group’s spy chief and public relations officer, the General Directorate of National Security (NDS) and Interior Ministry said in a statement.”NDS will continue its comprehensive and targeted operations to hunt down senior leaders of regional terrorist groups and destroy the joint hubs of these terrorist networks,” the statement said. South Asia Islamic State is mainly focused on a small presence in Afghanistan, largely in the north, though it has waged high profile attacks further south in the capital.Afghan security forces arrested eight members of a network grouping Islamic State and Haqqani militants responsible for bloody attacks in the capital including on Sikh worshippers, the country’s security agency said last Wednesday.The ongoing violence underscored the challenges to securing lasting peace in Afghanistan even after the United States signed a troop withdrawal agreement with the militant Taliban in February.The Taliban, which says it opposes the Islamic State and has fought the group, has since held off on large-scale attacks on foreign forces or in major centers, though it has continued attacking Afghan security forces throughout the provinces. Topics :

The Chinese capital is capable of screening almost 1 million people a day for the coronavirus, an official said on Sunday, as testing continued across the city to try to contain the spread of a fresh outbreak.Beijing has been expanding testing in the city of 20 million since a cluster of infections linked to a food wholesale market erupted over a week ago.The outbreak, the first in Beijing in months, has now surpassed previous peak numbers in the city in early February. Testing was initially focused on people who worked or shopped at the Xinfadi market or lived nearby but it has been expanded to include residents in many other parts of the city as well as food and parcel delivery workers.Since the new outbreak, capacity has more than doubled to more than 230,000 tests daily at 124 institutions, Gao Xiaojun, spokesman for the Beijing Health Commission, told a press briefing.The tests are done on samples collected from multiple people in one test tube, meaning the city can get results from almost 1 million people daily, he added.The same pooling of samples was also carried out in Wuhan last month to quickly ramp up daily testing capacity after a cluster of new cases there raised worries about a second wave of infections.Gao also said that provinces including Hubei and Liaoning had sent about 200 people to Beijing to boost staff in laboratories, further helping to increase testing capacity. Topics :