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WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The US death toll from the Covid-19 pandemic surpassed 600,000 on Tuesday, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University, with President Joe Biden mourning the latest “sad milestone” and urging Americans to press on with vaccinations. The United States has racked up by far the largest death toll of the pandemic, ahead of Brazil and India. “There’s still too many lives being lost,” Biden said, noting that the daily number […]
CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico (AFP) — At least 12 people were killed and 10 injured when a bus overturned on Tuesday on a highway in northeastern Mexico, the authorities said. Nine people died at the scene of the accident in Tamaulipas state and three more died in hospital, civil protection coordinator Pedro Granados told reporters. The bus was traveling between the border city of Reynosa and Monterrey in neighboring Nuevo Leon state. Tamaulipas’s highways are considered […]
by Claire DOYEN KWALHATHI, South Africa (AFP) — Single mother Lihle Magudulela spat out a mouthful of dirt as she sucked on a stone dug up from a hillside in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province, convinced she might have found a diamond. Thousands have flocked to the outskirts of KwaHlathi village, more than 300 kilometres (186 miles) southeast of Johannesburg, after a cattle herder last week unearthed a handful of unidentified crystal-like stones. News of the […]
LOS ANGELES, United States (AFP) — California — the first US state to enact a stay-at-home order just under 15 months ago — celebrated its “reopening day” Tuesday by lifting almost all pandemic-related social distancing and capacity limits. Vaccinated people will be free to ditch their masks in nearly all of the nation’s richest and most populous state, though exceptions will remain for locations including public transport, schools and hospitals. “Finally we are here, June […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — A huge red banner welcomed nearly 9,000 students in Wuhan for a massive graduation ceremony over a year after the city was battered by the first global outbreak of Covid-19. Students in navy gowns and mortarboards sat in crowded rows, without social distancing or face masks, beneath the sign that read: “Welcoming the graduates of 2020 back home. We wish you all a great future.” Covid-19 first emerged in late 2019 […]
by Martín SILVA COCHABAMBA, Bolivia (AFP) — The alarm in the Bolivian hospital pierced through the din of beeping life support machines and hissing ventilators — a patient lay unconscious, oblivious to the warning that his life hung by a thread. The monitor was flashing red. “Low oxygen pressure” it alerted, showing a reading of 25. “It should be 75!” doctor Daniel Quispia said as he jumps to the patient’s aid, adjusting the controls in […]
by Ludovic EHRET and Poornima WEERASEKARA BEIJING, China (AFP) — The first crew for China’s new space station prepared to blast off this week for the latest step in Beijing’s ambitious programme to establish itself as a space power. The mission is China’s first crewed spaceflight in nearly five years, and a matter of prestige for the government as it prepares to mark the 100th birthday of the ruling Communist Party on July 1 with […]
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AFP) — Cyprus on Monday dropped its prosecution of police officers for alleged negligence and racism over the disappearance of seven foreign women and children who were victims of a serial killer. Prosecutors could not prove “beyond reasonable doubt” that the 15 officers had been criminally negligent, the office of attorney general George Savvides said in a statement. “It is clear from case law that ‘error, however serious, negligence, stupidity, inadequacy or incompetence’, […]
MINNEAPOLIS, United States (AFP) — A woman was killed and three other people injured when a man drove into a crowd of demonstrators who were protesting the shooting death by US Marshals of a Black man in Minneapolis, police said Monday. Police said the man, who may have been under the influence of drugs or alcohol, drove his vehicle into a group of protestors shortly before midnight. “Protesters pulled the suspect from the vehicle and, […]
LONAVLA, India (AFP) — Indian start-up Mylab Discovery Solutions hopes that its inexpensive Covid-19 home test kit — the country’s first — will help the massive South Asian nation better track the pandemic’s spread among its 1.3-billion people. CoviSelf was launched earlier this month and is the first home testing kit to be approved in India, which is slowly emerging from a brutal second wave that overwhelmed its hospitals and crematoriums, with almost 30 million […]
by Agnès PEDRERO GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — The WHO warned Monday that Covid-19 was moving faster than the vaccines, and said the G7’s vow to share a billion doses with poorer nations was simply not enough. Global health leaders also warned the pledge was too little, too late, with more than 11 billion shots needed. Faced with outrage over disparities in jab access, the Group of Seven industrialised powers pledged during a weekend summit in […]
JERUSALEM (AFP) — Naftali Bennett, a multi-millionaire former tech entrepreneur who made his political name with hardline religious-nationalist rhetoric, will be Israel’s new prime minister after parliament approved a new government on Sunday. The 120-member Knesset voted in favour of an improbable coalition put together by centrist Yair Lapid, with a razor-thin majority but enough to end veteran Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12 unbroken years at the helm. The coalition deal sees Bennett, an […]
