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TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — Japanese medics are warning more must be done to prevent the coronavirus from overwhelming the country’s healthcare system as confirmed cases passed 10,000, despite a nationwide state of emergency. Experts have been alarmed by a recent spike in COVID-19 infections, with hundreds detected daily. Japan’s outbreak remains less severe than in hard-hit European countries, but its caseload is one of Asia’s highest after China and India, and is roughly on par […]
ROME, Italy (AFP) — Italy’s official daily toll from the novel coronavirus edged down to 433 on Sunday, the lowest figure in one week. The total number of deaths reported by the civil protection services since the start of Italy’s health crisis in February now stands at 23,660 — second only to the United States. Sunday’s fatalities figure was the second-lowest in one month. The 3,047 new virus infections represented a rise of just 1.7 […]
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AFP) — New Zealand will ease a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown next week after claiming success in stopping “an uncontrolled explosion” of the virus, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Monday. “We have done what very few countries have been able to do,” Ardern said. “We have stopped a wave of devastation.” She said New Zealand would move its maximum Level Four alert to Level Three from late evening on Monday, April 27, and […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — USThe number of coronavirus deaths in the United States rose by almost 2,000 in the past 24 hours to reach 40,661 on Sunday, a tally from Johns Hopkins University showed. The rise in deaths, by 1,997, is marginally above the 1,891 which Johns Hopkins data showed a day earlier for the previous 24-hour period to Saturday. Sunday’s figure came on the same day that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said […]
MONTREAL, Canada (AFP) — A gunman who drove a mock-up police car killed at least 16 people in an Atlantic Canada shooting rampage, federal police said Sunday, the worst case of its kind in Canadian history. The shooter, identified as Gabriel Wortman, 51, was shot dead by officers after a 12-hour manhunt in Nova Scotia province ended Sunday morning. Among the victims was a veteran female constable with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which also handles […]
by Catherine TRIOMPHE with Mariette LE ROUX in Paris and AFP bureaus Agence France Presse NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — Hard-hit European nations and the US epicenter New York reported headway Sunday in their battle against the deadly pandemic. Governments across the world are now debating how and when to ease lockdowns that have kept more than half of humanity — 4.5 billion people — confined to their homes and crippled the global […]
by Peter HUTCHISON Agence France Presse New York, United States (AFP) — Gone are the softball games, horse-drawn carriages and hordes of tourists. In their place are pronounced birdsong, solitary walks and renewed appreciation for Central Park’s beauty during New York’s coronavirus lockdown. The 843-acre (340-hectare) park — arguably the world’s most famous urban green space — normally bustles with human activity as winter turns to spring But this year due to COVID-19, it’s the […]
Paris, France (AFP) — More than 30 studies are under way in France — of a world total of 860 — in search of drugs to treat the COVID-19 disease sweeping the world, infectologist Florence Ader said Sunday. The research is “extremely active” in France involving some 1,600 patients, Ader told a news conference. Ader heads up a study dubbed Discovery in collaboration with several other European countries, with researchers conducting clinical trials of four […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — A 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck off the east coast of Japan early Monday, according to the US Geological Survey, but no tsunami warning was issued. The epicenter of the earthquake was 41.7 kilometers (26 miles) beneath the Pacific seabed, less than 50 kilometers off the coast of Miyagi prefecture, the USGS said on its website, rating the risk of casualties and damage as low. The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) put the […]
(Eagle News) — The UK government has launched a “new Vaccine Taskforce” meant to “drive forward, expedite and co-ordinate efforts to research and then produce a coronavirus vaccine.” In a statement, the UK government revealed that “21 new research projects combating coronavirus will receive government funding from a £14 million pot investment to rapidly progress treatments and vaccines.” “This follows the government’s £250 million pledge to develop a vaccine, putting the UK at the […]
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 […]
