THE World Health Organisation (WHO), on Friday, said that it is going to launch a second protocol for the Solidarity Trial soon. “WHO would soon be launching a second protocol for the Solidarity Trial that will help establish incidence and prevalence of infection and the future behaviour of the virus,” Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director of WHO South-East Asia said in a press statement. At least three South-East Asia member countries, including India, Indonesia and Thailand have already signed ..

STAYING six feet away from others may not work, an MIT researcher has warned - saying the coronavirus can rather travel 27 feet and can linger for hours. The study was conducted by MIT associate professor Lydia Bourouiba, who has researched the dynamics of coughs and sneezes for years. It was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Bourouiba warned that the current social-distancing guidelines to stay six feet from others are based on outdated models from the 1930s, reported ..

THE heads of three global agencies warned on Wednesday of the risk of a worldwide “food shortage” if authorities fail to manage the ongoing coronavirus crisis properly. Many Governments around the world have put their populations on lockdown causing severe slow-downs in international trade and food supply chains. Panic buying by people going into confinement has already demonstrated the fragility of supply chains as supermarket shelves emptied in many countries...

EVEN as researchers across the world work overtime to understand evolution of the virus that causes the disease COVID-19, scientists have identified at least eight strains of coronavirus doing the rounds globally. Over 2,000 genetic sequences of the virus submitted from laboratories across the world to the open-source project Nextstrain.org show how the virus is migrating into new subtypes...

UNITED NATIONS, THE world economy will go into recession this year with a predicted loss of trillions of dollars of global income due to the coronavirus pandemic, spelling serious trouble for developing countries with the likely exception of India and China, according to a latest UN trade report. With two-thirds of the world’s population..

THE worldwide number of officially confirmed fatalities from the novel coronavirus rose to 35,000 on Monday, according to a tally compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT from official sources. More than 35,000 people have died worldwide from the coronavirus pandemic since it emerged late last year in China, most of them in Europe, according to an AFP tally at 1615 GMT Monday using official figures. In total, 35,905 people have died, including 26,076 in Europe. Italy has the most deaths with 11,591, following ..

ITALY has logged a shocking spike in its already staggering coronavirus death toll, with officials warning the peak of the crisis was still days away, as global infection rate surges relentlessly upwards. More than 6,00,000 cases of the new coronavirus have been officially recorded around the world since the outbreak of the epidemic, according to an AFP tally at 1045 GMT on Saturday. There were 6,05,010 cases of infection with 27,982 deaths in 183 countries and territories...

SPAIN’S coronavirus death toll overtook that of China on Wednesday, rising to 3,434 after 738 people died over the past 24 hours, the Government said. Across the world, only Italy now has a higher death toll than that of Spain. In China, where the virus emerged late last year, 3,281 people have died. The spiralling number of deaths came as Spain entered the 11th day of an unprecedented lockdown to try and rein in the COVID-19 epidemic that has now infected 47,610 people, the Health Ministry said...

OVER 10,000 confirmed coronavirus cases were reported in a single day in the US, raising the number of COVID-19 patients to 43,700, as President Donald Trump signed an executive order to prevent hoarding of vital medical supplies and personal protective equipment. The US also for the first time registered over 130 deaths in a day due to coronavirus, taking the total number of fatalities to 550 by Monday night. Till Monday, more than 43,700 confirmed cases of coronavirus were reported in the United ..

THE number of novel coronavirus cases globally stood at 308,130 with 13,444 deaths, across 170 countries and territories at 1100 GMT on Sunday, according to a tally compiled by AFP from official sources. Since 1900 GMT on Saturday, there were 1,702 new deaths reported and 28,674 new cases globally. The tallies, using data collected by AFP offices from national authorities and information from the World Health Organisation (WHO), likely reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections, with ..

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover recently set a record for the steepest terrain it’s ever climbed and in the process, took a selfie, capturing the scene just below ‘Greenheugh pediment which is a broad sheet of rock that sits atop a hill. In front of the rover is a hole it drilled while sampling a bedrock target called “Hutton.” The entire selfie is a 360-degree panorama stitched together from 86 images relayed to Earth, NASA said in a statement on Saturday...

LONDONTHE Indian High Commission in London is offering assistance with organising accommodation for Indian nationals stranded in the UK in light of India’s ban on travellers from the UK and Europe over coronavirus pandemic.The mission had already set up an email system for Indian passport holders to get in touch with details of their situation and has continued to field hundreds of calls and social media messages from Indian professionals and students desperate to return home. “High Commission ..

US STOCKS rebounded on Tuesday following Wall Street’s sharpest daily drop in more than three decades, while equities elsewhere wobbled as Governments and Central Banks scramble to try and calm the coronavirus panic. Meanwhile oil prices drifted below USD 30 per barrel, and the dollar bounced back from heavy losses against the euro on Monday...

CAFES, shops and restaurants shut down across France and Spain on Sunday and travellers faced chaos at US airports as Governments stepped up their fight against the coronavirus pandemic which has now reportedly killed more than 6,000. France ordered the closure of all non-essential businesses, while Spain went a step further and banned people from leaving home except to go to work, get medical care or buy food. Cases also spiked in Germany and sources told AFP that the Government planned to shut its ..

AFGHANISTAN’S rival leaders were each sworn in as President in separate ceremonies on Monday, throwing plans for negotiations with the Taliban into chaos and creating a dilemma for the United States as it figures out how to move its peace deal with the Taliban forward. The US-Taliban deal signed just over a week ago was touted as Washington’s effort to end 18 years of war in Afghanistan and was seen by many Afghans as the best opportunity yet for bringing an end to relentless wars...

A GLOBAL agency says the spreading new virus could make the world economy shrink this quarter, for the first time since the international financial crisis more than a decade ago. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development says on Monday in a special report on the impact of the virus that the world economy is still expected to grow overall this year and rebound next year...

THE United States signed a landmark deal with the Taliban on Saturday, laying out a timetable for a full troop withdrawal from Afghanistan within 14 months as it seeks an exit from its longest-ever war. The agreement is expected to lead to a dialogue between the Taliban and the Kabul Government that, if successful, could ultimately see an end to the grinding 18-year conflict. Taliban fighter-turned-dealmaker Mullah Baradar signed the accord alongside Washington’s chief negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad, ..

FORTY four more people have died of the novel coronavirus in China, taking the death toll in the outbreak to 2,788, Chinese health officials said on Friday, amid growing criticism from experts and the public that the epidemic would have been less severe if the authorities acted when the first confirmed case was reported in December. Among the deaths reported on Thursday, 41 were from the epicentre Hubei province and its capital Wuhan, two in Beijing and one in Xinjiang, the National Health Commission ..

NASA’s InSight lander which touched down on the Martian equator in November 2018, has revealed secrets about the Red Planet’s weather patterns, including details about its surface tornadoes, and the steady, rumble of low-frequency sounds on the planet, a new study says. The research, published in the journal ‘Nature Geoscience’, noted that Mars experiences strong daily pressure and temperature fluctuations, stronger than on the Earth...

THE death toll from the coronavirus epidemic in China has climbed to 2,118 with the death of 114 more people, while the overall confirmed cases increased to 74,576, Chinese officials said on Thursday. China’s National Health Commission (NHC) said the new confirmed cases declined to 394, registering the biggest drop since December when the first case was reported in Wuhan city in the central Hubei Province. The NHC said on Thursday that it received reports of 114 deaths on Wednesday from 31 provincial-level ..

UN CHIEF Antonio Guterres on Tuesday visited the revered Gurudwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur, the final resting place of Sikhism founder Guru Nanak Dev, in Pakistan’s Narowal town. The Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbhandhik Committee and Evacuee Trust Property Board officials received the UN Secretary General at Kartarpur Sahib, some 125 kms from Lahore...

LONDON, THE Indian High Commission in London confirmed on Tuesday that British lawmaker Debbie Abrahams, who was denied entry to India and deported to Dubai on Monday, did not hold a valid visa. Abrahams, who is an Opposition Labour Party MP and Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Kashmir, claimed she was travelling on a valid e-visa to India to visit family and friends but her visa was revoked without explanation. She questioned why her visa was suddenly revoked and also the possibility ..

TOP WHO experts, including from the US, have joined the fight against the novel coronavirus in China that has claimed 1,770 lives, as Beijing stepped up its efforts by deploying 30,000 more medical staff in the worst-affected Wuhan city to contain the spread of the epidemic. ..

AN Indian-origin restaurateur, who runs an Indian restaurant in northern England, has been inspired by his father’s decades’ old stainless steel tiffin box to launch a takeaway system not reliant on plastic. Harry Khinda, whose family hails from Punjab before settling in the UK in the 1960s, said he hit upon the concept of offering discounts on takeaways using the reusable tiffin boxes as his very own recycling mission to fight against unsustainable single-use plastic...

THE Indian Embassy in Japan on Saturday said it is making efforts to disembark all the Indians on board the cruise ship moored off the Japanese coast after the end of the quarantine period as authorities confirmed that 218 people, including three Indians, have been infected with the deadly disease on the ship. A total of 138 Indians, including 132 crew and 6 passengers, were among the 3,711 people on board the quarantined ship that arrived at the Japanese coast earlier this month. It was quarantined ..

LONDONCONSUMERS around the world may be wasting more than twice as much food as commonly believed, according to a study.   The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) estimated that in 2005, one third of all food available for human consumption was wasted, researchers from Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands noted. This figure has continued to serve as reference for the extent of global food waste, they said.However, the FAO methodology does not ..

THE death toll in China’s coronavirus outbreak has gone up to 908 with 97 new fatalities reported mostly in the worst-affected Hubei province and the confirmed cases of infection crossing 40,000, Chinese health officials said on Monday, as a team of international experts led by the WHO is set to arrive in Beijing to help contain the epidemic. According to China’s National Health Commission, 91 deaths were reported in Hubei province, the epicentre of the epidemic, two in Anhui, and one each in Heilongjiang, ..

AN INSPIRING story of an 8-year-old boy Keoni Ching from Washington is doing the rounds on the Internet who sold key chains to paid off $4,015 (Rs 2.87 lakh) of his school district lunch debt after he was inspired by former Seattle Seahawk cornerback Richard Sherman...

A ONE-YEAR-OLD Indian baby boy in the UAE, whose father purchased a lottery ticket in his name, won a jackpot of USD 1 million in a monthly raffle draw here, media reports said on Wednesday. Mohammad Salah’s father Ramees Rahman has been participating in the Dubai Duty Free promotions for a year now and bought the winning ticket number 1319 online in Series 323 under his son’s name, the Gulf News reported. The news of Rahman’s ticket’s lucky draw was announced on Tuesday...

THE death toll in China’s coronavirus outbreak rose to 490 on Wednesday while the total number of confirmed cases mounted to 24,324, Chinese health officials announced on Wednesday. A total of 490 people had died after being infected and 24,324 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infection had been reported in 31 provincial-level regions, China’s National Health Commission reported. It said 65 deaths were reported on Tuesday, all from Hubei province and its capital Wuhan...

THE death toll in China’s coronavirus epidemic soared to 361 with 57 deaths on Sunday alone while the number of confirmed cases climbed to 17,205, Chinese health officials announced on Monday. China’s National Health Commission in its daily report on Monday said that 2,829 new cases of coronavirus were reported nationwide on February 2, taking the total number of infection to 17,205...

SEVERAL countries, including India, scrambled to evacuate their nationals from the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, as the death toll in China soared to 259 and nearly 12,000 people infected with the deadly virus...

THE European Parliament has postponed until March a vote on a joint motion, combining five different resolutions tabled by its members against India’s Citizenship Amendment Act, which was debated at its Plenary session in Brussels. The debate opened on Wednesday with a statement by Helena Dalli, the Vice-President of the European Commission and High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, who spoke strongly in favour of the “rich, frank and open” relationship the European ..

THE Indian Railways will acquire rest of the 53 per cent of land required for the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious Ahmedabad-Mumbai High Speed Train project, which is also called Bullet train project, in next six months, an official said on Wednesday. Railway Board Chairman V.K. Yadav said, “Till date 47 per cent of the land has been acquired for the 508-km long Ahmedabad-Mumbai high speed rail project, and rest of the 53 per cent will be acquired in next six months.”..

THE Union Health Ministry on Wednesday asked Indians to refrain from travelling to China where the novel coronavirus has claimed over 100 lives. The Ministry issued a fresh travel advisory and also urged people travelling to China to monitor their health closely. It asked people to use 24x7 helpline (011-23978046) for queries related to respiratory infection...