Category: World

Nigeria reported the first new coronavirus case in sub-Saharan Africa on Friday and a major global auto show was cancelled in a bid to stop contagion, as the deadly epidemic sent global stock markets and oil prices plunging. The virus has proliferated around the globe over the past week, emerging in every continent except Antarctica, […]

The speaker of Malaysia’s House rejected interim leader Mahathir Mohamad’s call for a vote next week to chose a new premier, deepening the country’s political turmoil after the ruling alliance collapsed this week. Malaysia’s nine ethnic Malay rulers are to meet on Friday to help resolve the wrangle. Mahathir said on Thursday that King Sultan […]

LONDON: A lawyer for Julian Assange on Tuesday accused the United States of “boldly and blatantly” misstating facts about the Wikileaks founder’s conduct, on the second day of his extradition hearing in Britain. Lead defence lawyer Edward Fitzgerald also complained that Assange had been stripped naked twice and handcuffed 11 times coming and going from […]

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged on Tuesday to build 3,500 new settler homes in a super-sensitive area of the occupied West Bank, just a week before a tight general election. Netanyahu’s vow, which drew immediate Palestinian condemnation, is the latest in a string of promises to expand settlements as the rightwing premier faces […]

UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations health agency, the World Health Organisation (WHO), urged the international community on Tuesday not to stigmatise people from the areas affected by the coronavirus epidemic. On Monday, the agency explained that while a sudden increase in new cases of the virus was of concern, “the spread of coronavirus is not […]

The death toll from deadly communal violence in New Delhi rose to 23 on Wednesday, Times of India reported. Protests against a contentious citizenship law began on a smaller scale on Sunday but escalated on Monday and Tuesday into running battles between Hindus and Muslims in New Delhi’s north-east, where rioters armed with stones, swords and even […]

There are now more new cases of the coronavirus reported each day outside China than inside the hardest-hit country, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Wednesday. “Yesterday, the number of new cases reported outside China exceeded the number of new cases in China for the first time,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told diplomats […]

Afghanistan has detected its first novel coronavirus case, the country’s health minister said Monday, involving a patient who had recently travelled to Iran, where 12 people have died from the outbreak. “I announce the first positive coronavirus (case) in Herat,” health minister Firozuddin Feroz told a press conference, calling on citizens to avoid travel to […]

China’s “incredibly difficult measures” in tackling the coronavirus that emerged late last year has probably prevented hundreds of thousands of cases in the country, the head of a visiting World Health Organisation (WHO) delegation said. Bruce Aylward, speaking at a joint press briefing with officials from China’s National Health Commission (NHC), said multiple data sources […]

The Iranian health ministry confirmed on Monday that 12 people from the city of Qom have died from the novel coronavirus — the highest number outside of China. According to the health ministry, total infections have risen to 61 while death toll rose to 12. Meanwhile a lawmaker, Qom representative Ahmad Amirabad Farahani, has refuted […]