Category: WORLD NEWS

China has reported 51 new coronavirus cases including 40 asymptomatic infections, majority of them in the contagion’s first epicentre Wuhan, where over six million tests have been conducted in the last 10 days, health officials said on Monday. The country’s National Health Commission (NHC) said that 11 new imported cases were reported on Sunday. While no new domestically-transmitted COVID-19 cases were reported in China on Sunday, 11 imported cases including 10 in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and one in Sichuan province were reported, the NHC said in its daily…

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The Trump administration is pressing Islamabad to take “credible steps” to dismantle the terror groups operating from its soil, a top US diplomat has said, describing Islamabad’s recent counter-terrorism mesaures like the prosecution and conviction of JuD chief Hafiz Saeed as important but not irreversible. Speaking at an Atlantic Council-organised virtual discussion, Alice Wells, the outgoing Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, also said the US encourages practical steps that India and Pakistan can take to reduce bilateral tensions. She said the recent counter-terrorism…

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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is encouraged by the agreement between Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, saying it will help find a way to enable progress towards intra-Afghan negotiations and a comprehensive peace agreement. As per the deal, Ghani will stay as the president while Abdullah will helm the High Council of National Reconciliation (HCNR) with executive authority and his team will have a 50 per cent share in the Cabinet, according to reports. The HCNR has been mandated to lead future peace talks including with the Taliban. Abdullah…

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Japan’s economic growth plunged into recession in the first quarter as the coronavirus pandemic squelched production, exports and spending, and fears are growing that worse times may lie ahead.   The Cabinet Office reported Monday a 3.4 per cent drop in the annual pace of seasonally adjusted real gross domestic product, or GDP, for the January-March period. The annual pace gives what the rate would be when continued for a year. For just the quarter, the drop was 0.9 per cent. Exports dived 21.8 per cent. Private residential investments slipped…

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A Bangladeshi medical team led by a senior doctor has claimed that their research on the combination of two widely used drugs has yielded astounding results in curing the patients with acute symptoms of the coronavirus that has created havoc worldwide and claimed the lives of over 312,000 people globally. The claim by the Bangladeshi medical team, which includes prominent physicians from the country, comes amidst the desperate global attempts for a remedy to the deadly coronavirus. We have got astounding results. Out of 60 COVID-19 patients, all recovered as…

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President Donald Trump has announced that the US will donate a lot of ventilators to India to help it fight the “invisible enemy”, moments after he underlined the close partnership between the two countries and called Prime Minister Narendra Modi his “good friend”. Trump also said the US and India were cooperating to develop a vaccine for the deadly coronavirus that has claimed 307,666 lives and infected more than 4.5 million people globally since it emerged in China in December last year. India’s tally of confirmed COVID-19 cases crossed 85,000…

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President Donald Trump rarely holds his fire, hurling accusations true and false.   But when it comes to the sexual assault allegation leveled against Joe Biden, his Democratic rival, the president has been unusually reticent. Trump didn’t publicly address the issue until April 30, more than a month after former Senate staffer Tara Reade alleged on a podcast that Biden sexually assaulted her in a Capitol Hill basement in 1993. Biden has vehemently denied the allegation, saying it never happened. When Trump has talked about the accusation, he’s been tepid.…

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US regulators have approved a new type of coronavirus test that administration officials have promoted as a key to opening up the country.   The Food and Drug Administration on Saturday announced emergency authorization for antigen tests developed by Quidel Corporation of San Diego. The test can rapidly detect fragments of virus proteins in samples collected from swabs swiped inside the nasal cavity, the FDA said in a statement. The antigen test is the third type of test to be authorized by the FDA. Currently, the only way to diagnose…

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President Donald Trump, who’s taken to calling the US the king of ventilators, is making plans to ship 8,000 of the breathing machines to foreign countries by the end of July to help in their fight against the coronavirus.   That’s a long way from the early days of the virus when US medical workers were wondering if a shortage of ventilators would force them to make painful decisions about which patients would get them. Now, the US has a surplus and the president is sharing them with other countries…

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A 57-year-old man in immigration custody died Wednesday from complications related to the coronavirus, authorities said, marking the first reported death from the virus among about 30,000 people in immigration custody.   The detainee had been held at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego and hospitalised since late April, said Craig Sturak, a spokesman for the San Diego County Health & Human Services Agency. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would neither confirm nor deny the death. CoreCivic Inc., the private company that operates the detention center, didn’t respond…

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