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by Thomas URBAIN Agence France Presse NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — American families slammed by the coronavirus pandemic are turning more and more to food banks to get by, waiting hours for donations in lines of cars stretching as far as the eye can see. And with 22 million people out of work seemingly overnight as business after business closes under the Great Lockdown, these charities feeding hungry and scared people fear the […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — The director of a maximum-security laboratory in China’s coronavirus ground-zero city of Wuhan has rejected claims that it could be the source of the outbreak, calling it “impossible”. Beijing has come under increasing pressure over transparency in its handling of the pandemic, with the US probing whether the virus actually originated in a virology institute with a high-security biosafety laboratory. Chinese scientists have said the virus likely jumped from an animal […]
by Joseph Prezioso with Catherine Triomphe in New York Agence France Presse Hundreds protested Saturday in cities across America against coronavirus-related lockdowns — with encouragement from President Donald Trump — as resentment grows against the crippling economic cost of confinement. An estimated 400 people gathered under a cold rain in Concord, New Hampshire — many on foot while others remained in their cars — to send a message that extended quarantines were not necessary […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) US President Donald Trump warned on Saturday that China could face consequences if it was “knowingly responsible” for the coronavirus pandemic. “It could have been stopped in China before it started and it wasn’t,” Trump told reporters at a White House briefing. “And now the whole world is suffering because of it.” Trump was asked whether China should suffer consequences over the pandemic which began in the Chinese city of […]
by Xavier LETAMENDI Agence France Presse GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (AFP) — Darwin Castillo’s father died in Guayaquil during the coronavirus pandemic that has caused the Ecuadoran city’s health system to collapse. But when Castillo went to the overwhelmed morgue to recover him, he opened a body bag to find the person inside wasn’t his father. Two weeks have passed and he still hasn’t found the body. Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, is the capital of Guayas […]
PORT VILA, Vanuatu (AFP) — Vanuatu’s rigid coronavirus lockdown is hindering critical relief efforts to rebuild the island country after it was pummelled by Tropical Cyclone Harold, aid agencies said Saturday. Nearly two weeks after the deadly monster storm barrelled through the South Pacific, local media reported that newly homeless families were still sleeping in the open. Australia, New Zealand and China have rushed in emergency aid but distribution has been hampered by strict quarantine […]
by Paul HANDLEY / with AFP bureaus Agence France Presse Coronavirus deaths have surged past 150,000 worldwide with nearly a quarter of them in the United States, where President Donald Trump lent his support to protesters rallying against lockdown orders. Evidence is mounting that social distancing successfully slowed the pandemic after more than half of humanity — 4.5 billion people — were confined to their homes. Governments around the world are now grappling with […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The true number of COVID-19 cases in California’s Silicon Valley is at least 50 times higher than the official figure, according to a preliminary study that took blood samples from a group of residents and tested them for viral antibodies. Stanford researchers used Facebook to recruit 3,300 volunteers from Santa Clara County and estimated that between 2.5 to 4.1 percent of the population had been infected, which is 50 […]
by Jing Xuan TENG Agence France Presse WUHAN, China (AFP) — China’s coronavirus ground-zero city of Wuhan on Friday admitted missteps in tallying its death toll as it abruptly raised the count by 50 percent following growing world doubts about Chinese transparency. The United States has led the charge in questioning China’s handling of the pandemic and how much information it has really shared with the international community since the virus emerged late last […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — French President Emmanuel Macron said there were grey areas in China’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak and that things “happened that we don’t know about”, speaking in an interview with the Financial Times published Thursday. “Let’s not be so naive as to say it’s been much better at handling this,” he said of China’s management of the outbreak. “We don’t know. There are clearly things that have happened that we […]
by Susan STUMME Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON DC, United States (AFP) — For many Americans, checking the mailbox is a daily ritual, a constant in a quickly changing world that can yield anything from wedding invitations to tax audits to new clothes. But as with many ordinary things as the coronavirus crisis unfolds, the US Postal Service — already compromised by a mountain of debt — has a most uncertain future. “The Postal Service is holding on […]
by Chris STEIN Agence France Presse WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — US job losses from the coronavirus pandemic reached 22 million in the past month, according to new data Thursday, as President Donald Trump is expected to unveil plans to re-open the world’s largest economy. Amid business shutdowns and restrictions ordered to stop the spread of COVID-19, government data continue to show the growing economic damage. Another 5.2 million workers filed for unemployment benefits […]
