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by Phil HAZLEWOOD Agence France Presse LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Princes William and Harry set aside their differences on Thursday to unveil a new statue of their mother, Princess Diana, on what would have been her 60th birthday. The brothers took the wraps off the bronze likeness in the sunken garden of Diana’s former London home at Kensington Palace, in a stripped-back ceremony due to the coronavirus pandemic. “Today, on what would have been […]
by Jalees ANDRABI Agence France Presse NEW DELHI, India (AFP) — Tens of millions of people in India were suffering Friday under a severe heatwave that has pushed the temperature to a nine-year high in Delhi as monsoon rains run behind schedule. Heatwaves have killed over 6,500 people in the world’s second-most populous nation since 2010, and scientists say climate change is making them harsher and more frequent. Daytime temperatures were above 40 degrees […]
YANGON, Myanmar (AFP) – Myanmar authorities imposed stay-at-home-measures on the country’s second city Friday as coronavirus cases in the coup-wracked country surge, with many health workers striking to protest against the junta. Inhabitants of Mandalay, as well as two townships in the southern Bago region woke up to new restrictions banning more than one person leaving home for non-medical reasons. There was no timeframe given for the new rules, announced by the health and […]
NEW DELHI, India (AFP) — India became the third country to pass 400,000 Covid-19 deaths, official data showed Friday, as the country’s vast vaccination drive slows. Total deaths are 400,312, according to the health ministry — behind only the United States and Brazil — with total cases almost 30.5 million. Many experts suspect India’s true death toll is more than a million, after a devastating spike in cases in April and May that overwhelmed […]
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Australia announced a dramatic cut in the number of people who will be allowed to enter the country Friday, as it struggles to contain coronavirus clusters that plunged major cities into lockdown. With almost half of the nation’s population under stay-at-home orders, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said quotas for overseas arrivals would be cut by around 50 percent to help prevent further outbreaks. Under the current “zero Covid” strategy, just 6,000 […]
BRASILIA, Brazil (AFP) — The Brazilian Amazon has suffered its worst June for forest fires since 2007, official data showed Thursday, indicating another devastating dry season for the world’s largest rainforest. The INPE research institute said its satellites detected 2,308 fires last month, an increase of 2.3 percent from June 2020. The previous record for the month of June was in 2007 with 3,519 fires. The grim statistic comes after May this year saw the […]
by Chris Stein with Sebastian Smith in Washington SURFSIDE, United States (AFP) — US President Joe Biden hailed the “resilience” Thursday of families of people killed or missing in a collapsed Florida beachfront apartment building, spending hours comforting grieving relatives as rescuers suspended their work for much of the day due to dangerous conditions. Biden said there was still hope that some survivors could be found in the rubble, and while “the families are very […]
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AFP) — Two doses of Covid vaccine appear to provide protection against the rapidly spreading Delta variant, the European Medicines Agency said Thursday. The upbeat assessment came as the World Health Organization warned that the coronavirus variant first spotted in India could fuel a new wave of cases in Europe. The EMA’s head of vaccine strategy, Marco Cavaleri, said the Amsterdam-based watchdog was “aware of concerns caused by the rapid spread […]
VANCOUVER, Canada (AFP) — About 1,000 people were evacuated in western Canada, authorities said Thursday, as fires raged amid an unprecedented heatwave, charring most of at least one town. The province of British Columbia has recorded 62 new fires in the past 24 hours, premier John Horgan told a press conference. “I cannot stress enough how extreme the fire risk is at this time in almost every part of British Columbia,” Horgan said. The town […]
by Robin MILLARD GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — The United Nations on Thursday recognized a new record high temperature for the Antarctic continent, confirming a reading of 18.3 degrees Celsius (64.9 degrees Fahrenheit) made last year. The record heat was reached at Argentina’s Esperanza research station on the Antarctic Peninsula on February 6, 2020, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization said. “Verification of this maximum temperature record is important because it helps us to build up a […]
KINSHASA, DR Congo (AFP) — The Delta variant of coronavirus is driving the pandemic forward in Africa at record speeds, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Thursday. Infection numbers have increased in Africa for six weeks running, rising by a quarter week-on-week to almost 202,000 in the week that ended Sunday, it said. The continent’s weekly record currently stands at 224,000 new cases. Deaths rose by 15 percent across 38 African countries to nearly […]
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AFP) — Indonesia will impose “emergency” coronavirus restrictions this week to battle an alarming surge in infections, President Joko Widodo said Thursday, as the country scrambles to avoid a collapse of its overwhelmed healthcare system. Widodo said the new restrictions, starting Friday, would last more than two weeks in the capital Jakarta and across hard-hit Java, as well as on the holiday island Bali, after infections surged to record levels. New daily […]
