World
1st April
Police fire tear gas at jobless workers defying coronavirus lockdown in Gujarat
NEW DELHI/AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) – Police in Gujarat fired tear gas to disperse a stone-pelting crowd of migrant workers defying a three-week lockdown against the coronavirus that has left hundreds of thousands of poor without...
Turkey’s coronavirus deaths up to 168, with 10,827 total cases – minister
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey’s deaths from the new coronavirus increased by 37 to 168 on Monday, as the number of confirmed cases rose by 1,610 to 10,827, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said. Some 162 patients have recovered so far. The minister added on Twitter that 11,535 tests had been conducted on Monday – the highest...
flydubai to reduce staff pay for three months due to coronavirus
DUBAI (Reuters) – United Arab Emirates carrier flydubai will reduce pay for its employees for three months from April due to the impact of the global coronavirus crisis on its business, a spokeswoman said on Monday. Airlines around the world have been hammered by the outbreak that has virtually halted international travel. Flydubai has suspended...
Cyprus imposes night-time curfew, extending coronavirus lockdown
NICOSIA (Reuters) – Cyprus imposed a curfew on Monday to contain the spread of coronavirus, extending a broad lockdown introduced two weeks ago after a weekend surge in recorded cases. From March 31, people with only some exceptions are banned from leaving their homes after 2100 local (1800 GMT) until 0600 the following morning, the...
Sweden expands jobless benefits to cushion coronavirus hit
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Sweden proposed on Monday to temporarily boost unemployment benefit to help cushion the economic hit from the coronavirus pandemic. “Even with the powerful measures taken to date to counter the economic consequences of the virus outbreak, unemployment is expected to rise sharply,” the Finance Ministry said. “This necessitates an adjustment to unemployment...
Spain overtakes China in coronavirus infections
MADRID (Reuters) – Spain overtook China in the number of those infected with coronavirus on Monday, as the government tightened restrictions on a population entering its third week under one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe. Business leaders criticised Spain’s actions over the weekend to ban all non-essential work until mid-April and to extend for...
31st March
Saudi king offers to pay for coronavirus patients’ treatment
RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia will finance treatment for anyone infected with the coronavirus in the country, the health minister said on Monday, while the agriculture ministry took steps to boost wheat and livestock supplies amid global fears of a food shortage. The kingdom has registered eight deaths among 1,453 infections, the highest among the...
Outrage in India as migrants sprayed with disinfectant to fight coronavirus
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Indian health workers caused outrage on Monday by spraying a group of migrants with disinfectant, amid fears that a large scale movement of people from cities to the countryside risked spreading the coronavirus. Footage showed a group of migrant workers sitting on a street in Bareilly, a district in the northern...
Italy may be on wrong path in fighting coronavirus contagion – scientist
ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s measures to halt coronavirus contagion do not seem to be working and it should change its strategy by setting up centers to separate people with suspected symptoms from their families, a prominent Italian scientist said on Monday. Italy, which has suffered the world’s highest death toll from coronavirus, has been in...
Africa’s megacity Lagos braces for two-week coronavirus lockdown
LAGOS (Reuters) – Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s announcement imposing a 14-day lockdown on sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest city triggered a last-minute rush on Monday as people hurried to stock up on food and other supplies. Traffic snarled the streets and touts made quick money taking cash to let people leave cars in no-parking zones. “Everything is...
Some ultra-Orthodox Israelis chafe at coronavirus restrictions
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli police have used a drone, helicopter and stun grenades in recent days to prevent people gathering in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Jerusalem in defiance of Health Ministry measures aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus. On Monday, police, some in riot gear and surgical masks, encountered occasional resistance and...
Tokyo governor calls for fewer outings, says state of coronavirus emergency up to PM
TOKYO (Reuters) – Tokyo’s governor on Monday called on residents to avoid outings in the evenings and at weekends as the coronavirus crisis deepened, but said it was up to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to declare a state of emergency to tackle it. As much of the rest of the world has gone into strict...
England coronavirus death toll rises 159 to 1,284
LONDON (Reuters) – A further 159 people who tested positive for coronavirus have died in England, the National Health Service said on Monday, taking the total number of confirmed deaths in the country to 1,284.
Garbage collectors brave coronavirus to keep Paris clean
PARIS (Reuters) – While most Parisians are indoors complying with a coronavirus lockdown now in its third week, Geffray Serbus and his fellow garbage collectors are out in their truck helping to keep the French capital running. Though Serbus, 30, and his crew wear masks and extra gloves to guard against the virus, they are...
Coronavirus lockdowns give Europe’s cities cleaner air
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Air pollution has decreased in urban areas across Europe during lockdowns to combat the coronavirus, new satellite images showed on Monday, but campaigners warned city-dwellers were still more vulnerable to the epidemic. Cities including Brussels, Paris, Madrid, Milan and Frankfurt showed a reduction in average levels of noxious nitrogen dioxide over March...
Dutch coronavirus cases rise by 884 to 11,750: authorities
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the Netherlands rose to 11,750 on Monday from a day earlier, with 884 new cases and 93 new deaths, health authorities said. The Netherlands’ National Institute for Health (RIVM) confirmed the numbers, an 8.1 percent increase in cases, on its official Twitter account. The total...
Thailand earmarks further $15 billion for coronavirus crisis
BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thailand’s new stimulus package to alleviate the impact of the coronavirus crisis will be worth more than 500 billion baht ($15.3 billion), its finance minister said on Monday, It has already introduced two packages, the first to inject 400 billion baht into the economy and the second, worth 117 billion baht, to...
UK’s Prince Charles, 71, out of self-isolation and in good health
LONDON (Reuters) – British heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles, who had tested positive for coronavirus, is out of self-isolation after seven days and is in good health, his spokesman said on Monday. Last week, his Clarence House office revealed that Charles, 71, had been tested after displaying mild symptoms of the virus and had been in self-isolation...
Australia pledges $80 billion wages subsidy to protect jobs from coronavirus
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia will spend A$130 billion ($79.85 billion) to subsidise the wages of an estimated 6 million people, marking a third tranche of stimulus designed to limit the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic on the country’s economy. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the six months of funding was necessary to ensure businesses were...
Britain names new MI5 chief: the spy who investigated 2018 Novichok attack
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain on Monday named Ken McCallum, a career spy who led the response to the attempted murder of Russian former double agent Sergei Skripal, as the new head of its MI5 domestic intelligence agency. McCallum, who has worked in MI5 for 25 years, rose through the ranks working across the agency’s main...
Gunmen kill New Zealand man at Freeport mine office in Indonesia’s Papua
JAKARTA (Reuters) – Attackers shot dead a New Zealand man and wounded six other people at an office of the Indonesian arm of mining company Freeport-McMoRan Inc on Monday, police said. The gunmen opened fire at around 2 p.m. (0300 GMT) at the office in the city of Timika in Indonesia’s Papua province, the company...
Indonesia confirms 130 new coronavirus infections, taking total to 1,285
JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia confirmed 130 new coronavirus infections on Sunday, taking the total in the Southeast Asian country to 1,285, a health ministry official said on Sunday. Twelve more people had died from the virus, bringing the death toll to 114, Achmad Yurianto, the official, said. Sixty-four people had recovered, he added. Yurianto added...
Prince Harry, wife Meghan, do not need U.S. help for security costs, spokeswoman says
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Britain’s Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, have no plans to ask the U.S. government for help with security costs, the couple said in a statement on Sunday in response to a tweet from President Donald Trump that the United States would not pay for their protection. In January, the couple said...
Australia limits public movement to capitalize on slowing coronavirus rates
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian officials will use fines and the threat of jail to enforce a new rule limiting public gatherings to two people, as the country’s coronavirus infection rate slowed but the death toll crept higher. New South Wales and Victoria, the country’s two most populous states, will introduce the penalties from midnight on...
‘No farewells, no ceremonies’: China’s Hubei cremates coronavirus dead
JINGZHOU, China (Reuters) – Ten unclaimed urns sit in the crematorium in Jingzhou, a city in central China’s Hubei province hard-hit by coronavirus. Not only are funerals banned across China, in places like Jingzhou bereaved relatives who are stuck in their homes must wait even to retrieve the remains of their loved ones. The ashes...
China sees drop in new coronavirus cases; none in Hubei for sixth day
BEIJING (Reuters) – Mainland China reported a drop in new coronavirus cases for the fourth consecutive day on Sunday, as Beijing seeks to stamp out the risk of a second wave of infections by shutting its borders to foreign travellers and cutting international flights. The National Health Commission said in a statement on Monday that...
Trump backs off plan to reopen businesses by mid-April amid coronavirus warnings
WASHINGTON/ LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Sunday extended his stay-at-home guidelines until the end of April, dropping a hotly criticized plan to get the economy up and running by mid-April after a top medical adviser said more than 100,000 Americans could die from the coronavirus outbreak. The reversal by Trump, which he...
Italian minister to propose extending sports ban to whole of April
ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s sports minister said he will propose extending the ban on all competitions to the whole of April in an effort to contain the coronavirus. The death toll from the coronavirus rose past 10,000 in Italy on Saturday, a figure that made an extension of a national lockdown almost certain. “Re-starting matches...
Manchester City’s Gundogan says Liverpool deserve title if season cancelled
(Reuters) – Manchester City midfielder Ilkay Gundogan says it would only be “fair” for rivals Liverpool to be awarded the English Premier League trophy if the season cannot be completed due to the coronavirus outbreak. Gundogan told German broadcaster ZDF that Liverpool deserved to be crowned champions given their massive 25-point lead over second-placed City,...
Saudi Arabia expands lockdown as coronavirus death toll doubles
DUBAI (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia halted entry and exit into Jeddah governorate on Sunday, expanding lockdown rules as it reported four new deaths from a coronavirus outbreak that continues to spread in the region despite drastic measures to contain it. The Saudi health ministry said four more foreign residents, in Jeddah and Medina, had died...
