German airline giant Lufthansa said Friday it would slash capacity by half in the coming weeks, as the group battles "drastic declines in bookings and numerous flight cancellations" prompted by the novel coronavirus.
"Based on further demand development, capacity will be reduced by up to 50 per cent in the coming weeks," Lufthansa said in a statement, after announcing Monday it would cut its flight plan by 25 per cent.
The carrier's shares were down slightly in afternoon trading in Frankfurt, shedding 0.8 per cent to trade at 11.41 euros (USD 12.90), but still outperforming the overall blue-chip DAX index, which was down 3.1 per cent.
Lufthansa with subsidiaries like Eurowings, Swiss and Austrian Airlines has announced deep cuts in its timetable this week as the effect of the COVID-19 disease began to bite.
It will not fly routes to China and Iran until late April, while Israeli restrictions on non-resident arrivals from some EU countries prompted it to cut flights to the Jewish state 

Lufthansa says to slash 50% of flight capacity over virus

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A ghostly atmosphere awaits the biggest game of the Serie A season on Sunday as Juventus and Inter Milan prepare for a title tussle behind closed doors while Italy grapples with the deadly coronavirus outbreak.
Just 500 people will witness Antonio Conte return to Juve, where he won three Serie A titles as a coach and the Champions League as a player.
The loudest noise at a game that would have attracted a raucous sell-out 40,000 crowd at the Allianz Stadium in Turin will be the voices of screaming players as the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Romelu Lukaku battle it out for Italy's two best-supported clubs.
The coronavirus has now killed 148 people in Italy, the highest number of deaths in any European country.
Serie A on Friday listed a host of new rules that clubs must abide by, including the installation of scanners to check the temperature of the restricted number of authorised people entering the stadium.
Journalists at games will have to keep at least two metres apart, while on .

Coronavirus leaves Serie A's big two facing off in empty stadium

Oil prices dived more than seven per cent Friday on reports that talks between OPEC and Russia over a possible cut in output in response to a coronavirus-fulled slump in demand ended without a deal.
Brent North Sea crude tumbled to USD 46.12 per barrel and WTI to USD 42.30, down around 7.5 percent compared with Thursday's closing levels.

World oil prices plunge over 7.5%

The World Athletics Half Marathon Championships in the Polish city of Gdynia was postponed until October 17 because of the coronavirus.
"The current international situation would have seriously compromised the event at this time as many countries are now restricting international travel, invoking quarantines and advising citizens and event organisers to avoid mass gatherings," track and field's governing body World Athletics (WA) said in a statement.
"The advice from our medical team, who are in contact with the World Health Organisation, is that the spread of the coronavirus is at a concerning level in many countries and all major gatherings should be reviewed."
The half-marathon championships had been slated for March 29 and was to include a mass race of more than 25,000 participants.
"We hope that the great majority of these recreational runners will still be able to participate alongside our elite competitors on the new date," WA said.
The championships are the latest in a number .

World Athletics postpone half-marathon champs until October

Bill Clinton said he had an affair with Monica Lewinsky to help him deal with the stress of being president as he opened up in a documentary released Friday about the scandal that led to his impeachment.
In the four-part Hulu series, Clinton describes his sexual relationship in the 1990s with the then 22-year-old White House intern as something he did "to manage my anxieties for years."
He said it had been motivated by life's "pressure and disappointments and terrors, fears of whatever" and said he felt "terrible" that the affair had defined Lewinsky's life.
"We all bring our baggage to life and sometimes we do things we shouldn't do," Clinton says.
"It was awful what I did," the 73-year-old added.
Bill and Hillary Clinton were interviewed separately about what they recall from that time for the series entitled "Hillary," focused on the life of the former first lady.
Clinton's sexual relationship with Lewinsky and subsequent denial about it under oath led to his impeachment in ...

Bill Clinton says Lewinsky affair was to 'manage anxieties'

From Jerusalem to Mecca, Muslims across the Middle East held Friday prayers under the shadow of the new coronavirus, with some gatherings cancelled and others subdued because of the deadly outbreak.
The highly contagious disease is believed to be transmitted through close contact and authorities globally have moved to restrict large gatherings, including public prayers.
In Mecca, Islam's holiest site was uncrowded after reopening on Friday following disinfection.
"The fact that it is empty is very scary," an Egyptian worshipper who has lived in Mecca for more than 20 years told AFP.
"I had a very strange and difficult feeling as I was headed to the mosque. I felt deprived of the Kaaba," he said.
The area around the Kaaba -- a large black cube structure inside Mecca's Grand Mosque -- was closed Thursday for sterilisation.
Friday prayers at the Grand Mosque normally attract hundreds of thousands of worshippers, while this week only tens of thousands attended.
The mosque's imam prayed ...

Friday prayers across Middle East overshadowed by coronavirus fears

A quarter of all lawmakers serving in national parliaments worldwide are women, the International Parliamentary Union said Friday, warning though that progress towards gender parity was slowing amid significant "pushback".
In 2019, women accounted for 24.9 per cent of parliamentarians worldwide, the IPU, which was founded in 1889 and is one of the world's oldest international organisations, said in a fresh report.
"There has been considerable progress" in recent years, IPU Secretary-General Martin Chungong told reporters in Geneva, pointing out that the percentage back in 1995 stood at just 11.3 per cent.
"There has been a shift in the way people think," he said, pointing out that a quarter century ago the ambition was to get women to the 30-per cent mark, while today "the idea of having 50-50 in parliament is the norm."
Four countries have reached full gender parity: Rwanda, Cuba, Bolivia and the United Arab Emirates.
Today, the Americas has the best gender balance in parliament, ...

Women account for quarter of world's MPs, but progress slowing: study

Stock markets collapsed on Friday as world health officials warned that countries were failing to take the coronavirus crisis seriously enough.
A rash of European countries as well as Cameroon and Togo confirmed their first cases of the virus while the Netherlands announced its first death.
In the United States, medical workers warned over a "disturbing" lack of hospital preparedness, echoing World Health Organisation concerns over the lack of commitment from countries to tackle the virus threat.
The Chinese government, meanwhile, said it may soon lift the quarantine imposed on Hubei province, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, which has been under lockdown for more than a month.
"The day everyone is waiting for will not be too far away," Ding Xiangyang, deputy secretary-general of China's State Council, told journalists.
Coronavirus has now killed more than 3,300 people and infected more than 100,000 in about 90 nations since the outbreak first emerged in China in ...

Markets slide as WHO warns coronavirus 'is not a drill'

Liton Das and Tamim Iqbal became the first Bangladeshi opening pair to score a hundred each as Bangladesh posted 322-2 against Zimbabwe in the rain-hit third one-day international of a three-match series in Sylhet on Friday.
Liton hit 176 off 143 balls, the highest ever ODI innings for Bangladesh, while Tamim stayed unbeaten on 128 off 109 balls as the duo put on a 292-run display in Bangladesh's highest partnership for any wicket.
Striking 16 fours and eight sixes in his third ODI century and second in the series, Liton overtook the record from his opening partner Tamim, who scored 158 runs only in the previous match of the series.
The match was reduced to 43-over-a-side when rain halted play after 32.2 overs of Bangladesh's innings, and the opening duo, who were batting on 182 runs during the interruption, added 110 runs before being finally separated.
Liton had his luck to thank for his record innings as he was reprieved in a no-ball on 107 runs and was also dropped on 122 and 144 .

Liton, Tamim score hundred for Bangladesh in record match

An eerie emptiness enveloped the sacred Kaaba in Mecca's Grand Mosque, Islam's holiest site, where attendance at Friday prayers was hit by measures to protect against the deadly new coronavirus.
An imam said during his sermon he hoped for an end to the epidemic and backed a decision by Saudi Arabia's government to halt the year-round umrah pilgrimage.
"God, I seek refuge in you from the calamity and the epidemic," said Sheikh Abdullah Awad al-Juhani, without mentioning coronavirus by name.
"The measures by the kingdom to suspend umrah to limit the spread of this epidemic are in line with texts of the Sharia," he told worshippers.
While thousands of people attended the sermon, Friday prayers usually attract hundreds of thousands of worshippers.
"I had a very strange and difficult feeling as I was headed to the mosque," an Egyptian worshipper, who has lived in Mecca for six years but did not want to give his name, told AFP.
"I felt deprived of the Kaaba," he said, referring to the cube .

Coronavirus measures hit Friday turnout at Mecca's Grand Mosque

Spain registered its fifth victim from the deadly coronavirus epidemic on Friday as the number of people infected with the virus jumped to 365, health officials said.
So far, all of the victims have been people in high-risk categories, elderly or suffering from a pre-existing condition, said Fernando Simon, the health ministry's chief coordinator for emergencies.
Since Thursday evening, 102 new cases have been confirmed in the biggest single-day jump since the start of the epidemic.
The highest concentration of cases - 137 - is in Madrid and the surrounding area, where health officials have discovered a flurry of cases at two elderly care centres.
Over the past 24 hours, two pensioners have died -- a 99-year-old woman and a 76-year-old man -- with Simon warning that a rise in cases among such fragile communities "could result in a greater mortality rate than expected".
Although both centres have been closed down, Simon ruled out plans for a wider closure.
Spain reported its first ...

Spain virus toll hits 5 as infections jump

Representatives of Iraq's top Shiite cleric did not deliver his weekly sermon in Karbala on Friday, a first since the fall of Saddam Hussein, due to fears of spreading the novel coronavirus.
Religious authorities had already closed the shrine of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, where the sermon is  usually delivered, to mitigate the risk of contagion.
On Friday, representatives who usually read Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani's address, broadcast live on state television, did not appear.
The 89-year-old Sistani is based in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, south of Karbala, and never appears in public.
An official at the site in the holy city of Karbala told AFP that "the cancellation of Friday prayers at the Imam Hussein shrine is a first since 2003", the year an American-led invasion toppled veteran dictator Saddam Hussein.
Sources close to Sistani's office confirmed the unprecedented nature of the decision.
Iraq has reported three coronavirus deaths and 38 ...

Top Iraq cleric's sermon cancelled over virus, a first since 2003

President Donald Trump on Friday said the Taliban could "possibly" overrun the Afghan government after the United States withdraws from the country.
"Countries have to take care of themselves," Trump told reporters at the White House. "You can only hold someone's hand for so long." Asked if the Taliban could eventually seize power, Trump said it's "not supposed to happen that way but it possibly will.

Trump says Taliban could 'possibly' seize power after US leaves

Togo on Friday confirmed its first case of the novel coronavirus after a 42-year-old woman tested positive following her return from a trip to Benin, Germany, France and Turkey.
The presidency in the West African nation of eight million people said the patient, who lives in the capital Lome with her family, was "currently isolated in a treatment centre for infectious diseases" after testing positive on Thursday.
"From February 22 to March 2, 2020 she visited Benin, Germany, France and Turkey before returning to Togo via the land border with Benin," the presidency said in a statement.
It said all people who had contact with the patient in the country "have been identified and put in quarantine".
In sub-Saharan Africa, Senegal has registered four cases, all foreign nationals, and South Africa, Nigeria and Cameroon have one case each since the outbreak emerged in December in China.

Togo confirms first coronavirus case

The ambassadors to the European Union from the 27 members cancelled their Friday meeting after their chairwoman, Croatia's envoy, chose to isolate herself after working alongside a novel coronavirus victim.
Croatia holds the rotating EU presidency and Ambassador Irena Andrassy was working earlier this week with a European Council official who has since tested positive for the virus, diplomats told AFP.
She has shown no symptoms herself, but chose to quarantine herself on Tuesday as a precaution and will undergo a test.
"If she is not there next week, Germany would head the next meeting, because they are next in the round of presidencies," one diplomat said.
Another said all diplomats and staff that spent more than 15 minutes working within two metres (six feet) of the infected official have been asked to isolate themselves and get tested.
There have now been at least three cases of novel coronavirus among staff at the various EU institutions in Brussels, disrupting but not halting ...

EU ambassadors cancel meeting after new virus cases

Suicide attackers struck outside the US embassy in the Tunisian capital on Friday, killing a police officer, wounding five other people and shaking a city repeatedly hit by jihadist violence.
The latest attack comes despite a state of emergency imposed in the North African nation in 2015 following a string of bloody assaults claimed by the Islamic State group.
An explosion rocked the Berges du Lac district where the highly fortified embassy is located at around midday Friday, causing panic among pedestrians and motorists in the area.
"Two individuals targeted a security patrol... in the street leading to the American embassy," the interior ministry said in a statement.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Police at the scene said the assailants drove to the area on a motorcycle and detonated their explosive devices as officers deployed at a roundabout leading to the embassy approached them.
"The operation led to the death of two assailants, wounded five police and lightly ..

Suicide attackers hit outside US embassy in Tunis

President Emmanuel Macron on Friday urged the French to limit visits to elderly people who are most vulnerable to the spread of the coronavirus that has already left nine dead in the country and made hundreds ill.
Macron, who shook up his agenda this week to focus on efforts to contain the outbreak, said on a visit to an old people's home that they were by far the most vulnerable to its effects.
"Our absolute priority is to protect the people who are the most fragile in the face of this virus," Macron said.
"The nation is behind our old... during this epidemic and we need to limit our visits as much as we can," he said.
He admitted this could prove "heartbreaking" at times but said the measure was simply one of common sense.
He emphasised that young people should not be visiting the old because "as we know, they (the young) transmit the virus a lot".
The French health ministry said Friday that the number of cases of coronavirus infection had jumped by a further 154 to 577, with two ...

Macron urges France to restrict visits to the old over coronavirus

Stock markets collapsed Friday and oil tumbled on heightened panic over coronavirus and its predicted devastating damage to global economic growth, dealers said.
Haven investments gold and the yen surged as the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that the epidemic must be taken seriously.
In midday deals, the Paris stock market tanked 4.1 percent, Frankfurt dived 3.9 percent, London shed 3.4 percent, Madrid lost 3.6 percent and Milan tumbled 3.8 percent in a fierce global markets selloff that began about two weeks ago.
With no end in sight to the spreading COVID-19 disease, Tokyo stocks shipped 2.7 percent by the close, Shanghai fell 1.2 percent and Hong Kong erased 2.3 percent on heightened investor panic.
Oil, already slumping on virus-linked demand fears, extended losses to more than 5.0 percent on reports Russia wants to delay deeper output cuts recommended by its OPEC allies.
"Stocks are on the back foot once again, with markets tumbling amid continued growth in the ...

Global markets extend slump as coronavirus crisis deepens

With new tolls and key developments, here is the latest in the coronavirus crisis.
- 3,404 dead -  ==============  Across the world, 3,404 people have died from the virus. There have been 99,464 infections in 89 countries and territories, according to AFP's latest toll based on official sources at 1130 GMT Friday.
The main countries affected after mainland China are South Korea (6,284 cases, of which 196 new and 42 deaths), Italy (3,858 cases, none new, and 148 deaths), Iran, (4,747 cases, none new, 124 deaths) and France (423 cases, of which 46 new, and seven deaths).  Bhutan, Cameroon, the occupied West Bank, Serbia, and the Vatican have announced their first cases.
Out of 80,552 diagnosed cases in mainland China, 53,726 people have been cured, while 3,042 people have died.
- Quarantine concerns -  =======================  The United Nations says lockdowns, quarantines and other such measures "should always be carried out in strict accordance with human rights standards".  In the ...

Coronavirus: latest developments worldwide

European health ministers launched crisis talks Friday on how to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, as the EU scrambles to gather protective medical supplies.
"The virus is in Europe, the challenge is to slow down and contain it," Germany's Jens Spahn said as colleagues from the 27 EU member states arrived at the meeting.
"The new epidemic is here," he said, emphasising the key task now was to slow the spread while treatments are developed.
Spahn said that Germany did not yet see a need to limit free movement across borders within the union.
Czech health minister Adam Vojtech said supplies of protective suits and masks were limited and that European health workers should be first in line as production is ramped up.
"We're trying to negotiate with producers to supply the market, but production is limited. The demand is much higher than the supply worldwide. It is not easy," he said.
The novel coronavirus strain that erupted in China this year and causes the COVID-19 disease has .

EU health ministers seek way to slow virus spread

The Netherlands has recorded its first death in the novel coronavirus outbreak, health officials said on Friday.
"An 86-year-old man with COVID-19 who was admitted to the Ikazia hospital in Rotterdam has died," the National Institute for Public Health (RIVM) said.
"This is the first patient in the Netherlands to die of the coronavirus," the RIVM said, adding that the source of the patient's contamination was unknown.
The number of novel coronavirus cases in the world is approaching 100,000 and more than 3,400 have proved fatal.
The Netherlands has seen a jump in cases from 82 to 128 over the last two days.  "The man was isolated as soon as it became clear that he had COVID-19," the RIVM said.
Everyone who had contact with the patient -- including visitors and health workers -- is being questioned about their health, the institute said.
"All those in contact with the patient who are suffering from a cold or have a fever have been asked to remain at home. If necessary, they will be ...

AFP

AFP

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