Militants linked to the Islamic State (IS) terror group have increased their attacks in recent weeks against military forces and civilians in the desert region of Syria.  
 
Experts believe the militant group now presents a major insurgent threat throughout the desert, known as the Badiya, a year after U.S.-backed forces declared the territorial defeat of the group in eastern Syria.   
 
Last month, IS announced via its Amaq News Agency that IS fighters would begin a new operation dubbed as “the saga of exhaustion 2” against Syrian government forces and allied militias. It reportedly is a second phase of a previous campaign started by the group’s former leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed last August in a U.S. operation in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib.  
 
Local news outlets have reported several attacks carried out by IS militants against forces loyal to the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the sprawling desert area, including the Deir al-Zour province in eastern Syria, where U.S.-backed forces also control some strategic parts.  
 
In those attacks, at least 15 Syrian government soldiers and allied Iranian-backed militia fighters were killed and dozens more were wounded.  Smoke rises from buildings behind a mosque in the central Syrian town of Al-Sukhnah, situated in the county’s large desert area called the Badiya, Aug. 13, 2017. Incomplete victoryThe recent uptick of IS violence in this area is largely because military advances made by Syrian troops and their allies against IS, also known as ISIS, in previous years were incomplete, experts say.   
 
“Assad’s forces and his allies made swift gains in the Badiya campaign against ISIS in 2017 because ISIS tactically withdrew from many areas of the Badiya before pro-regime forces moved in to take them from the would-be caliphate,” said Nicholas Heras, a Syria expert at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).  
 
The desert region is a scarcely populated area, which allows IS to hide its fighters and military hardware, he said.  
 
“ISIS went to ground in the Badiya, which allows the organization to maintain the ability to use small groups of heavily armed fighters to strike at will at isolated Assad regime outposts in this large region, or use sleeper cell operatives to assassinate local regime officials,” Heras told VOA, noting that IS’s so-called “caliphate has become the vengeful ghost of the Syrian Desert.” 
 Proving relevanceClaiming such attacks could be a major military achievement for IS militants now that they no longer hold territory in Syria. For them, it is more about how to demonstrate relevance in the Syrian conflict, some experts charge.  
 
IS “attacks against Syrian regime troops and others come after long and precise planning with whatever resources they still have in Syria,” said Sadradeen Kinno, a Syrian researcher who closely follows Islamist insurgency in the country. Kinno said carrying out coordinated attacks once or twice a month “is a big win for IS, because this is not about holding territory anymore, it’s about proving that the group still exists.” 
 Sleeper cells 
 
IS militants also have resorted to extortion and kidnapping for ransom as a way to fund their terrorist activities. Such trends are particularly rampant in areas under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a U.S.-backed military alliance that has been an effective force in the fight against IS.  
 
“There is a growing lawlessness in many parts of Deir al-Zour that are under SDF control,” said Omar Abu Layla, director of Deir Ezzor 24, a news and research group focused on developments in eastern Syria. 
 
Abu Layla claimed that IS “operatives are roaming almost freely and SDF’s local fighters don’t seem to be alarmed about this dangerous phenomenon.”  
 
For example, he said, on Monday several IS militants carried out an assassination attempt “in broad daylight” against a civilian in the town of al-Shuhail in Deir al-Zour “without even wearing masks as they usually do.”  
 
This shows that local SDF fighters are not capable of bringing stability to the area, Abu Layla told VOA.  
 
On Sunday, suspected IS gunmen killed an SDF commander in an attack on the town of al-Sabha in eastern Deir al-Zour.  
 
SDF officials admit that IS sleeper cells continue to pose a threat to their stabilization efforts in areas freed in recent years from the terror group.U.S. support  
 
U.S. military officials say they will continue to support the SDF in their counterterrorism efforts in eastern Syria.  
 
“The Syrian Democratic Forces have the backing of the international military coalition as they hunt for ISIS sleeper cells in the Middle Euphrates River Valley and Badiya Desert,” the U.S.-led coalition spokesman Col. Myles Caggins said. 
 
“The ISIS remnants are a threat and we have seen them assassinate tribal leaders, ordinary shepherds, steal, and make attacks on SDF troops in some areas,” he told VOA, noting, “Local councils and tribes are working closely with the SDF to keep pressure on ISIS outlaws.”  
 
With support from the coalition, SDF recently arrested a senior IS operative in Hasaka province, who was a high-ranking health official when the terror group was ruling the area.     
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У березні середня номінальна заробітна плата зросла на 599 гривень, свідчать дані на сайті Державної служби статистики України.

Середня зарплата становила 11 446 гривень, що на 11,8% більше порівняно з березнем 2019 року.

Водночас заборгованість по зарплаті станом на 1 квітня становила понад 2,9 мільярда гривень. Це на 1,8 відсоткового пункта менше порівняно з 1 березня.
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Долар втратив п’ять копійок, свідчать дані на сайті Національного банку України.

На 29 квітня офіційна вартість долара встановлена на рівні 27 гривень 5 копійок.

Євро зміцнився на одну копійку – до 29 гривень 43 копійок.
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He winds up and throws the apple core, aiming for the woods where he hopes a tree will grow. He overshoots his mark. It bounces across the hill of the next-door neighbors’ yard. “I’ll get it,” he says. But in these days of isolation and distance, that is a dicey proposition.Almost furtively, he scurries across the property line. He does not find it. I tell him that he must email the neighbors.For his email, he chooses the subject “Apple Issue.” He writes: “In this time of crisis, it is understandable that you wouldn’t want to touch a saliva-covered fruit. Therefore, if/when you find the apple core, if you would let me know, I would take it back.”He is 13. His name is Wyatt. He is my younger son. Other than his immediate family, he has not come within 20 yards of anyone he knows for nearly two months.My father was a naturalist. Much more, sadly, than I’ve ever been. He planted on our family property well into his mid-80s, when his knees could no longer take it.When I was little, he took me around the land that my wife and I now own, pointing out trees and identifying them as we walked through the backyard woods down to the rushing creek and back.He’d hand me sassafras leaves to chew and show me wild blackberry bushes to pick from. Today, on the property I inherited from my parents, a ginkgo tree — his favorite — looms over the front walk.After he died, I opened one of his reference books, “The Book of Trees.” Tucked carefully into the appropriate pages were dried leaves from his woods excursions.On his side, we come from a long line of cultivators — Ohio farmers, New York farmers, yankee farmers. My sister followed in their footsteps, to a fashion, becoming a molecular biologist after a thesis entitled “Dwarf Plants Produced from Treated Seeds.”Not me. I’m not a lawn-and-garden guy. The closest I’ve ever come to planting something was when I buried a crock of kimchi in the back yard in 1981, hoping it would ferment. That was the last we saw of it.An apple core-related email arrives from next door.”I suspect the deer will find and eat it before I find it. If I do come across it, I will let you know.”And: “If you want an apple tree to grow, I would suggest digging a small hole (2” deep) for each core and covering it with dirt. This is a good time of year to plant.”My son promptly eats another apple. Then he requests a shovel. He darts outside, ponders, picks a spot. He digs a tiny hole. He comes back in. Part of him seems 70. Part of him seems 7. “Dad, want to see me drop the apple core into the hole?”We trudge across the soaked lawn. Silently, I chastise myself for not being better at this stuff. I look over my shoulder at the south side of the house, at the narrow strip where my father grew peas in the 1980s and lost his wedding ring while attempting to cultivate cilantro in the 1990s. His green plastic wheelbarrow is still there. I’ve never moved it.The sassafras tree died during Reagan’s first term. The blackberry bushes disappeared while I was in college. The creek is still there, now usually dry.But now we have an apple core in the ground. Now we wait. Now, in this season of stagnation, there is growth to contemplate.I see myself coming back decades from now. Walking slowly across a better-kept lawn. Reaching up. Picking an apple. Taking a bite. Saying to a man now taller than me: “Hey, Wyatt. Remember the virus?”
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YouTube, the video service of Alphabet Inc’s Google, said on Tuesday it would start showing text and links from third-party fact checkers to U.S. viewers, part of efforts to curb misinformation on the site during the COVID-19 pandemic. The information panels, launched in Brazil and India last year, will highlight third-party, fact-checked articles above search results for specific topics such as “covid and ibuprofen.” Social media sites including Facebook are under pressure to combat misinformation relating to the pandemic caused by the new coronavirus, from false cures to conspiracy theories. YouTube said in a blog post that more than a dozen U.S. publishers are participating in its fact-checking network.
 
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In a Dubai industrial park, workers weld, drill and build what one entrepreneur sees as key to the near future of this desert city-state amid the coronavirus pandemic: disinfection gates.Husam Zammar’s company builds such gates for government and commercial clients. He believes the new safety measures will find wide acceptance, just as metal detectors did after the 9/11 terror attacks. “If we consider two people, one has a knife and one has coronavirus, the second one is a hundred times dangerous than the first one,” he said.Fear of the virus is palpable in Dubai and elsewhere in the the United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven sheikhdoms where foreigners make up 90% of the population. Yet even as confirmed coronavirus cases spike, the UAE is opening up its cavernous malls and restaurants in a gamble to stimulate its economy while still trying to fight off the pandemic.That’s led to a new normal here of temperature checks, social distancing monitors at supermarkets and marked-off empty seats on the city’s driverless Metro. But crowds already have come to the malls and others are leaving their homes after weeks of a lockdown, eager to party in a city known for its nightlife and increasing the risk of the virus spreading.In lifting more stringent restrictions, the UAE cited the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which began late last week. Dubai also lifted a weekslong quarantine order on a neighborhood along the Dubai Creek that’s home to many low-wage workers late Sunday, saying it had detected no new coronavirus cases there for two days.But the detection rate for cases continues to spike due to mass testing. Authorities say more than 1 million tests have been administered — a number expected to rise. On Monday, Abu Dhabi’s Department of Economic Development ordered companies outside of free zones to test all their employees.On Tuesday, UAE reported it had seen over 11,300 confirmed cases of the virus with 89 deaths. Recent days have seen numbers rise around 500 daily, in part as the testing reaches the UAE’s population of low-paid laborers, who remain particularly at risk as they can live with up to 10 people in a single room like in other Gulf Arab countries.The UAE isn’t yet like Wuhan, China, from which the first cases of the virus emerged. There, biosecurity checkpoints are everywhere that spray people with disinfectant or have them walk through a box of grey decontaminant gas like an airlock. Similar gates or tunnels have been constructed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Turkey, Kenya and elsewhere, aimed at killing traces of the virus on people’s clothes or their body.Hoping to fill an anticipated demand in the UAE, Zammar’s firm Guard ME constructs the gates out of metal frames, galvanized steel and temperature-checking equipment from China. Someone trying to enter a business or office with such a gate first must undergo a temperature check, then walk through a fog of disinfectant created ultrasonically.While that won’t detect an asymptomatic carrier of the coronavirus, it still will offer people peace of mind, said Zammar, a Syrian entrepreneur based in Dubai.”In the next two or three months, we will (feel) that if they didn’t check your temperature, there is some problem in this building,” he said.In all of China, each person also has a “health code” that uses geolocation and other mobile phone data to assign an infection risk by color, with red resulting in a 14-day, closely monitored quarantine. In the UAE, such mobile phone apps remain voluntary.However, images from Zammar’s gate or a helmet-based temperature checker now used by Dubai police could be fed into a facial-recognition database. The UAE already has such a database from its national ID card system, which residents use for fast immigration clearance at Dubai International Airport. That fuels worries about privacy and surveillance in the UAE, which has been internationally criticized for targeting journalists and human rights activists  and was linked to a suspected spying app.Still, the country is slowly opening up as people in masks and gloves now go to the mall. Barber shops have also reopened, with scissors and hair clipper attachments individually sterilized and wrapped like surgical tools.What this all means for Dubai’s nightlife and bar scene, a crucial economic driver, remains in question. A famed Irish bar chain in the city-state called McGettigan’s quietly opened its main location in Dubai’s Jumeirah Lakes Towers neighborhood on Friday, but soon saw a line of people queuing up to enter. The bar closed early, before a 10 p.m. nightly curfew.And like other bars in Dubai, it hasn’t been serving alcohol since the 24-hour, police-enforced lockdown lifted. Signs out front tell customers that masks “must be appropriately worn at all times.”The company told The Associated Press in a statement that it’s complying with the guidance from local authorities.”The health and safety of our customers is the priority – from temperature checks to social distancing of tables, sanitization of the venue and all other regulations,” it said. 
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