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PARIS, France (AFP) — The weekly number of coronavirus deaths worldwide has fallen to levels unseen for almost a year, according to an AFP count on Monday based on official national figures. The 53,245 deaths recorded worldwide between September 27 and October 3, an average of 7,606 each day, showed that the global pandemic continues the downward trend that began at the end of August, after a peak of around 10,000 deaths per day. […]
by Julie Jammot with Joshua Melvin in Washington Agence France Presse SAN FRANCISCO, United States (AFP) — Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms were hit by a massive outage Monday, impacting potentially tens of millions of users as the social media giant faces fallout over its effect on teens and misinformation. Tracker Downdetector was showing outages in heavily populated areas like Washington and Paris, with problems being reported from around 1545 GMT. “We’re […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — US President Joe Biden offered his congratulations Monday to Japan’s new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, saying the “historic partnership” between the two nations will help them face the world’s ongoing challenges. “The US-Japan Alliance is the cornerstone of peace, security, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific and the world, and I look forward to working closely with Prime Minister Kishida to strengthen our cooperation in the months and years ahead,” Biden […]
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AFP) — Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern admitted Monday that New Zealand’s widely praised “Covid zero” strategy had failed to halt a stubborn outbreak in Auckland and said a new approach was needed. The hardline elimination policy had largely protected the country from the pandemic, with residents enjoying a near-normal domestic life alongside tight restrictions on international borders. But an August outbreak prompted a seven-week lockdown in its main population centre that has […]
by Shingo ITO / Sara HUSSEIN TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — Japan’s new prime minister Fumio Kishida unveiled his government on Monday, mixing holdovers with newcomers, after lawmakers voted him the new leader of the world’s third-largest economy. The soft-spoken scion of a Hiroshima political family, 64-year-old Kishida beat popular vaccine chief Taro Kono to win the leadership of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) last week. He easily won Monday’s vote in parliament approving him […]
MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — Russia said on Monday it had launched a new hypersonic cruise missile from a submarine, the latest test of emerging weapons President Vladimir Putin has dubbed “invincible”. Moscow has in recent years touted the development of weapons that it hopes will give it the edge in any arms race with the United States at a time of growing tensions with the West. Hypersonics can travel more than five times the speed […]
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AFP) — Authorities managed to bring a major fire on a tiny Honduran resort island under control Saturday, after the blaze consumed dozens of homes and forced 400 people to evacuate. “The fire is 100 percent controlled,” said the head of the government’s Permanent Intervention Commission (COPECO), Max Gonzales, at a mid-afternoon press conference. A huge cloud of black smoke rose in the early morning from the island of Guanaja, located in the […]
Some 3,000 paedophiles have operated inside the French Catholic Church since 1950, the head of an independent commission investigating the scandal told AFP days ahead of the release of its report. The commission’s research uncovered between 2,900 and 3,200 paedophile priests or other members of the church, said Jean-Marc Sauve, adding that it was “a minimum estimate”. The commission’s report is due to be released on Tuesday after two and a half years of research […]
Authorities in California’s beachfront Orange County cities scrambled Sunday to mitigate the fallout from a major oil spill off the coast that caused “substantial ecological impacts.” As of Sunday, the oil plume from the 126,000-gallon (480,000 liters) spill of post-production crude was an estimated 5.8 nautical miles (6.7 miles, 10 kilometers) long and stretched along the popular shorelines of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach, Huntington Beach city authorities said in a statement. “The spill has […]
More than a dozen heads of state and government, from Jordan to Azerbaijan, Kenya and the Czech Republic, have used offshore tax havens to hide assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a far-reaching new investigation by the ICIJ media consortium. The so-called “Pandora Papers” investigation — involving some 600 journalists from media including The Washington Post, the BBC and The Guardian — is based on the leak of some 11.9 million documents […]
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AFP) — New Zealand announced Sunday tighter border restrictions, as new cases of Covid-19 emerged in areas previously free of the coronavirus. “We are introducing the requirement for air travellers aged 17 and over, who are not New Zealand citizens, to be fully vaccinated to enter New Zealand,” Covid-19 response minister Christ Hipkins said. The national flag carrier Air New Zealand also announced it was introducing a “no jab, no fly” policy […]
LUCKNOW, India (AFP) — At least eight people were killed in northern India Sunday after clashes broke out at a farmers’ protest, officials told local media, in a deadly escalation of their year-long campaign against controversial agriculture laws. The farmers had gathered for a demonstration in Uttar Pradesh state’s Lakhimpur Kheri district, where the junior home affairs minister Ajay Mishra and the state’s deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya had been due to visit. Chaotic […]
