Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is taking the lead in pressing a hard line against Beijing over the coronavirus pandemic, AFP reports.
Pompeo, in an interview Sunday on ABC, said there was “enormous evidence” that the new coronavirus came out of a Wuhan lab - not a wet market, as most scientists suggest.
It is a mystery that has left doctors questioning the basic tenets of biology: Covid-19 patients who are talking and apparently not in distress, but who have oxygen levels low enough to typically cause unconsciousness or even death.
The phenomenon, known by some as “happy hypoxia” (some prefer the term “silent”) is raising questions about exactly how the virus attacks the lungs and whether there could be more effective ways of treating such patients.
Since the sudden easing of a three-week lockdown in Ghana’s two major cities, Accra and Kumasi, daily life is gradually returning to normal.
Markets and commercial districts that had ground to an eerie halt have buzzed back to life. Stores and banks have slowly reopened. Modest traffic jams have emerged as many people who had escaped the lockdown return to the cities. But schools, places of worship, restaurants and bars remain shut.
As more and more state and local officials announce the release of thousands of at-risk inmates from the nations adult jails and prisons, parents along with children rights groups and criminal justice experts say vulnerable youths should be allowed to serve their time at home, AP reports.
But they say demands for large-scale releases have been largely ignored. Decisions are often not made at the state level, but instead carried out county by county, with individual judges reviewing juvenile cases one by one.
Such legal hurdles have resulted in some kids with symptoms being thrown into isolation for 23 hours a day, in what amounts to solitary confinement, according to relatives and youth advocates. They say many have been cut off from programs, counsellors and school. Some have not been issued masks, social distancing is nearly impossible and they have been given limited access to phone calls home.
The Bolshoi ballet held its first online classes only this week, more than a month after lockdown began, AFP reports.
In the middle of their bedroom, Bolshoi ballet dancers Margarita Shrainer and Igor Tsvirko have placed a linoleum mat and a barre. Since the start of the lockdown, the couple, both soloists in the legendary troupe, have largely used their own initiative to keep up their dance skills at home.
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Fewer than one in five of the British public believe the time is right to consider reopening schools, restaurants, pubs and stadiums. The findings, in a new poll for the Observer, suggest Boris Johnson will struggle to convince people to return their lives to normal if he tries to ease the lockdown soon.
The poll by Opinium, taken between Wednesday and Friday last week, found 17% of people think the conditions have been met to consider reopening schools, against 67% who say they have not been, and that they should stay closed.
Donald Trump disputed warnings from the US Capitol physician and said it is safe for the Senate to return to the Washington DC building next week in a tweet which, as usual, needs a bit of explanation.
There is tremendous CoronaVirus testing capacity in Washington for the Senators returning to Capital Hill on Monday. Likewise the House, which should return but isn’t because of Crazy Nancy P. The 5 minute Abbott Test will be used. Please inform Dr. Brian P. Monahan. @MarkMeadows
The White House said it would be “counterproductive” for Dr Anthony Fauci to testify before Congress next week and is blocking him from speaking about the government’s response to the pandemic ina House committee hearing.
Fauci, who has worked at the National Institute of Health since 1968, has been a source of measured, expert analysis on the Covid-19 outbreak in press briefings and interviews. This has put him at odds with the president, who has downplayed the pandemic and disputed facts about the crisis.
Donald Trump has appeared to confirm that Kim Jong Un is “alive and well” after weeks of speculation over the North Korean leader’s health.
“I, for one, am glad to see he is back, and well!” Trump wrote, quote-tweeting North Korean state media photos of Kim attending a ribbon cutting ceremony at the Sunchon Phosphatic Fertilizer Factory.
Japan will fast-track a review of the antiviral drug remdesivir so that it can hopefully be approved for domestic COVID-19 patients a week after Gilead Sciences filing for such approval, the health minister said on Saturday, according to a report by Reuters.
Health Minister Katsunobu Kato’s comment comes after remdesivir was granted emergency use authorization by the US Food and Drug Administration for COVID-19 on Friday.
The Chinese virologist whose work has been at the centre of the controversial claim that coronavirus came from a laboratory has dismissed rumours that she has defected from China, South China Morning Post reports.
Shi Zhengli, a researcher of bat coronaviruses, wrote on WeChat on Saturday that she and her family had not fled the country, despite coming under heavy scrutiny amid conspiracy theories that the virus responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic had originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in central China where she works.
A broad coalition of US health systems has mobilized to ramp up coronavirus testing in a national effort on a scale not seen since the second world war. But declarations of false victory by the Trump administration and a vacuum of federal leadership have undermined the endeavor, leading experts to warn that reopening the US could result in a disaster.
Twelve friends fill hundreds of carefully arranged aid packages into four cars, then trail through Oniru’s empty streets, past sky-coloured luxury apartment blocks.
In what is notionally an affluent suburb along Lagos’s coastline, the cars stop outside the shells of abandoned, part-constructed buildings, and the friends file into the informal housing compounds that sprawl within.
More countries across Europe are preparing to reopen schools in the coming weeks despite conflicting advice from scientifist, some of whom caution against underestimating children’s potential to spread the coronavirus.
Some schools and nurseries in Denmark and Norway have already reopened, and grandparents in Switzerland are allowed to hug grandchildren under 10, following a ruling by the health ministry’s head of infectious diseases that it is safe to do so.
Scientists working for the US military have designed a new Covid-19 test that could potentially identify carriers before they become infectious and spread the disease, the Guardian has learned.
In what could be a significant breakthrough, project coordinators hope the blood-based test will be able to detect the virus’s presence as early as 24 hours after infection – before people show symptoms and several days before a carrier is considered capable of spreading it to other people. That is also around four days before current tests can detect the virus.
Six weeks after first feeling unwell, Jenny* is still recovering from what she believes was Covid-19.
On 17 March she, like many others, began preparing for an expected lockdown in the UK, stocking up on supermarket essentials. She was feeling a little flushed – something she put down to a reemergence of cold-like symptoms from a few weeks before.
In times of fear, rules go out of the window and the default position is often one of force. A recent doorstep tribute in a Johannesburg suburb to applaud the efforts of essential workers was dubbed an “illegal gathering” by police summoned to break up the event. A resident remarked that it was an eerie reminder of South Africa’s past – a throwback to the times of apartheid.
“The rules keep changing,” admitted one officer when it was suggested that the response was heavy-handed. No harm was done but the incident highlights the potential shifts in power dynamics that fear brings, as well as the disconnect between good intentions and how they are implemented.
Conspiracy theories linking 5G technology to coronavirus have resulted in dozens of phone masts across the UK being vandalised in recent weeks. Theories about the dangers of 5G had already been circulating, despite regulators confirming that the radiation levels of the new technology are well within safe boundaries. So how did the conspiracy incorrectly linking it to 5G start? And is 5G really dangerous? We explain why 5G has nothing to do with Covid-19
Sweden has persisted with the strategy of coronavirus mitigation that the UK government eventually abandoned in March. The policy is widely supported by the public, even though the Swedish Covid-19 mortality rate is among the 10 highest in the world, at 240 per million population and steadily rising, and many of the nursing homes in Stockholm are now affected.
The typical explanation for this continued public support is that Swedes are trusting and unflappable. The country’s chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, the public face of the Swedish response to the pandemic, is after all a dry scientist-turned-bureaucrat, not some populist politician trying to whip up nationalist go-it-alone emotion.
Sydney aged care home reports 13th coronavirus-related death as three more residents test positive, while Tasmania to lift north-west lockdown. Follow live
North Korean leader had not been seen for three weeks; Ireland and India both extend lockdowns, while global markets fall due to threat of US-China trade war
President calls for resumption of football despite crisis
Brazil has more than 5,900 deaths due to the coronavirus
Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro wants to see football competitions restart soon despite the country’s high number of coronavirus cases, arguing that players are less likely to die from Covid-19 because of their physical fitness.
Bolsonaro is one of the few world leaders that still downplays the risks brought by the coronavirus, which he has likened to “a little flu”.