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TAIPEI, Taiwan (AFP) — Taiwan began construction on a fleet of indigenous submarines on Tuesday, the latest move by the out-gunned island to bolster its defences against increasingly bellicose threats from Beijing. Democratic Taiwan lives under the constant threat of invasion by communist China, which views the self-ruled island as part of its territory and has vowed to one day seize it, by force if necessary. Beijing has piled on military, economic and diplomatic pressure […]
ROME, Italy (AFP) — Italy, the first European country to be hit by the global coronavirus pandemic, on Monday passed the threshold of 50,000 deaths from Covid-19. Most took place earlier this year, but around 15,000 deaths have been reported since the beginning of September. The health ministry recorded 630 new deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 50,453. There were 22,930 new cases, to total more than 1.4 million. Italy joins […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — China on Tuesday launched an unmanned spacecraft to bring back lunar rocks — the first attempt by any nation to retrieve samples from the Moon in four decades. A Long March 5 rocket carrying the Chang’e-5 probe, named after the mythical Chinese moon goddess, blasted off from the Wenchang Space Center on the southern island province of Hainan at 4:30 am (2030 GMT Monday), the official Xinhua news agency reported. Beijing […]
by Robin MILLARD GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — With Covid-19 vaccines on the horizon, the planet’s poorest must not be trampled as countries scramble to get their hands on them, the World Health Organization said Monday. WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the latest batch of promising results from final-phase candidate vaccine trials showed there was light at the end of the “long dark tunnel” of the coronavirus pandemic. But he said the world had to […]
by Issam AHMED WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Former secretary of state John Kerry signed the 2015 Paris Agreement on behalf of the United States, a decision subsequently reversed by President Donald Trump. Now, he is set to be President-elect Joe Biden’s climate envoy, in a clear sign of the upcoming administration’s renewed commitment to fighting climate change. “I’m returning to government to get America back on track to address the biggest challenge of this […]
by Jessica Lopez with AFP bureaus Agence France Presse No country has been spared the coronavirus epidemic, nor the scourge of domestic violence, which has surged during lockdowns as the day marking such violence approaches on Wednesday. From a spike in rapes in Nigeria and South Africa, increased numbers of women missing in Peru, higher rates of women being killed in Brazil and Mexico and overwhelmed associations in Europe: the pandemic has aggravated the plague […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — Staff at Shanghai’s biggest international airport are facing mass testing after a small outbreak of Covid-19 in the city was linked to several cargo handlers, with plans underway to vaccinate high-risk workers. Life in China — where the virus first emerged late last year — has largely returned to normal following strict testing and harsh lockdowns, but there has been a series of sporadic local outbreaks over recent months. Shanghai has […]
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — British drugs group AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford on Monday said their jointly-developed vaccine against Covid-19 has shown “an average efficacy of 70 percent” in trials. “This vaccine’s efficacy and safety confirm that it will be highly effective against Covid-19 and will have an immediate impact on this public health emergency,” AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot said in a statement. The results ranged between 62 and 90 percent efficacy […]
by AFP Bureaus TORONTO, Canada (AFP) — Canada’s biggest city entered lockdown on Monday in the latest bid to curb coronavirus infections, with case numbers surging across North America even as US officials said vaccinations could be available within weeks. Encouraging results from several vaccine trials have raised hopes of a decisive shift in the battle against a disease that has claimed around 1.4 million lives worldwide in the last year. But seesawing restrictions and […]
by Anuj Chopra Agence France Presse RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AFP) — G20 leaders said Sunday they will “spare no effort” to ensure fair distribution of coronavirus vaccines, but the united front was punctured by Germany’s Angela Merkel who voiced concern about slow progress. At a virtual summit hosted by Saudi Arabia, the world’s richest nations pledged resources to shore up the pandemic response, and to support poor countries whose economies have been ravaged by the […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — President-elect Joe Biden plans to nominate veteran diplomat Antony Blinken as his secretary of state, a decision likely to signal a return to multilateralism after Donald Trump’s shunning of traditional allies, US media reported Sunday. The 58-year-old Blinken, a former deputy secretary of state under Barack Obama, is also a longtime aide to Biden. Bloomberg and The New York Times reported the plan to nominate him. Biden is expected […]
MADRID, Spain (AFP) — Spain’s strategy to curb a rise in coronavirus infections “is working”, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Sunday as he unveiled details of plans to vaccinate much of the population next year. The country has recorded less than 400 Covid-19 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the last 14 days, compared to nearly 530 cases at the start of the month, he told a news conference after a two-day online summit of G20 […]
