Forces backing Libya's unity government seized two coastal cities west of Tripoli on Monday in a new blow to military commander Khalifa Haftar a year after he launched an offensive on the capital.
"Our forces took control of Sorman and Sabratha and are pursuing (Haftar's forces)," said a statement by Mohammed Gnunu, spokesman for the forces of the United Nations-recognised Government of National Accord.
An AFP video journalist saw pro-GNA forces in pick-up trucks mounted with machine guns celebrating in central Sabratha, around halfway between Tripoli and the border with Tunisia.
Control of war-torn Libya is largely divided between pro-GNA forces and those of eastern-based Haftar, who launched an offensive to try to capture the capital in the country's northwest on April 4 last year.
On their Facebook page, GNA forces published images of Grad rocket launchers, 10 tanks and armoured vehicles they said they had captured in the cities, which had been controlled by Salafist militias ...

Libya unity government recaptures two strategic cities

PTI Automatic

The US Supreme Court said Monday that it will hear arguments by teleconference in May over whether President Donald Trump can continue to shield his tax returns from Congress and New York prosecutors.
The nation's highest court had been scheduled to hear arguments in the cases on March 31 but they were delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.
The court said it would hear the consolidated cases by telephone conference in May, a move which could allow it to deliver a ruling before the November presidential election.
"In keeping with public health guidance in response to COVID-19, the Justices and counsel will all participate remotely," the court said in a statement.
Two of the justices -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer -- are over 80 years old and six of the nine are over 65, putting them at increased risk of becoming severely ill from coronavirus.
In a break with tradition, the court said it would provide a live audio feed of the May arguments to news organizations.
The court said .

US Supreme Court to hear Trump taxes case in May

Thousands of garment workers who produce items for top Western fast fashion brands protested against unpaid wages in Bangladesh's streets Monday, saying they were more afraid of starving than contracting coronavirus.
Bangladesh's apparel factories account for some 84 percent of the country's $40 billion export sector, which is facing its worst crisis in decades after retailers including H$@$#M, Walmart and Tesco cancelled orders because of the pandemic.
Protesting workers say many factories have not paid them after the orders were cut.
Workers shouted slogans such as "we want our wages" and "break the black hands of the owners" as they blocked roads despite a nationwide lockdown to combat the spread of the deadly disease.
"We are afraid of the coronavirus. We heard a lot of people are dying of this disease," protesting worker Sajedul Islam, 21, told AFP.
"But we don't have any choice. We are starving. If we stay at home, we may save ourselves from the virus. But who will save us from .

'Starving' Bangladesh garment workers protest for pay during lockdown

A sailor who was aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier died Monday of COVID-19, the first fatality from nearly 600 confirmed cases among its crew, the US Navy said Monday.
The sailor, who tested positive on March 30, was discovered unresponsive on April 9 and placed in the intensive care unit of the Navy's hospital in Guam, where the Roosevelt is docked.
The death came six days after Thomas Modly resigned as acting navy secretary over his mishandling of an outbreak on the Roosevelt, one of two US aircraft carriers in the western Pacific.
Modly had earlier fired the Roosevelt's captain, Brett Crozier, after the officer's warning that the shipboard outbreak could dangerously incapacitate much of the crew became public.
Crozier had sought to evacuate most of the ship's 4,800 crew after it stopped in Guam on March 27, to test all of them and sterilize the vessel, but the idea was rejected by his superiors.
With the number of proven cases approaching 100, on March 30 the ...

Sailor from US aircraft carrier dies of COVID-19

The World Health Organization said on Monday that a safe and effective vaccine would be needed to fully halt the spread of COVID-19, which has killed more than 114,000 people worldwide.
"Our global connectedness means the risk of re-introduction and resurgence of COVID19 will continue," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing from Geneva, stressing that "ultimately, the development and delivery of a safe and effective vaccine will be needed to fully interrupt transmission.

Vaccine needed to fully halt spread of COVID-19: WHO

Struggling Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group on Monday forecast a USD 7-billion net loss for the year ended March due to the negative impact of coronavirus and losses related to WeWork.
The telecoms and investment giant, led by flamboyant entrepreneur Masayoshi Son, said in a surprise press release it also expected to suffer an operating loss of 1.35 trillion yen or USD 12.5 billion.
The firm cited a 1.8- trillion yen loss at its SoftBank Vision Fund, blaming "the deteriorating market environment" in the wake of the global coronavirus pandemic.
As well as killing more than 100,000 people globally, the virus has tipped the world into what many predict will be a Great Depression, and markets have been in free-fall, battering the group's investments.
Under Son's leadership SoftBank Group has morphed into an investment and technology firm, and its $100-billion Vision Fund has taken stakes in some of Silicon Valley's hottest start-ups.
The company and its Vision Fund have been ...

SoftBank Group forecasts USD 7-bn full-year net loss

Berlin's art galleries are closed, but the art scene is rising to the occasion as around 50 artists join a community exhibition from their balconies.
"At a time when our freedom of movement is suspended, (balconies) have become unique performance sites," organisers said as they launched the project in the trendy Prenzlauer Berg district of east Berlin.
Balconies are "for getting a breath of fresh air, spending some time in the sun or smoking", said Ovul Durmusoglu and Joanna Warsza, whose project "Balconies, Life, Art, Pandemic and Proximity" gives artists a 48-hour showcase for their work.
The rules of isolation in the face of the coronavirus pandemic are less strict in Berlin than elsewhere in Germany, allowing people a chance to admire the works while out for a stroll.
One installation presents ribbons of toilet paper cascading down a building's facade, a reference to Germans' rush to stock up on the must-have commodity as soon as the coronavirus pandemic arrived in Europe.
One ...

'Balconies, life, art': Berlin's shut-in artists show their work

Italy's death toll from the novel coronavirus topped 20,000 on Monday but its number of critically ill patients dropped for the tenth successive day as its rate of infections slowed.
The 566 new deaths reported by the civil protection service takes Italy's fatalities total to 20,465 -- officially second in the world behind the United States.

Italy's virus death toll tops 20,000

A Luxembourg court has blocked a long-running US request to transfer USD 1.6 billion of dollars in Iranian assets to victims of the September 11 attacks, an official statement said on Monday.
The decision confirmed a claim by Iran's President Hassan Rouhani who on Sunday said the country had won a legal victory over the assets that had long been frozen on a US request in Luxembourg.
The official statement in Luxembourg said that an appeals court on April 1 found the US seizure demand "inadmissible" since the type of account in question is "unseizable" according to national law.
The money is held in the Clearstream clearing house, a financial company owned by Deutsche Boerse based in Luxembourg.
However, the statement added that the ruling was not final and could be appealed at Luxembourg's highest court.
In a separate decision, the statement said a Luxembourg district judge on April 3 blocked the transfer of funds and said Clearstream would be subject to a daily fine of 1 million ...

Luxembourg blocks transfer of Iranian assets to US

Cleaners moved into the parliament of the Democratic Republic of Congo to disinfect it on Monday, under a scheme to stamp out coronavirus in central Kinshasa, the epicentre of the country's outbreak of the disease.
Cleaners clad in white suits deployed sprays and fumigators to deep-clean the Palace of the People, which is the seat of the National Assembly and Senate, AFP reporters saw.
Legislators are to gather in congress in the coming days.
The operation is part of a campaign to disinfect the institutional and commercial centre of Kinshasa, where almost all of the DRC's known cases of coronavirus have occurred.
Gombe, a district of embassies, corporate offices and upmarket homes next to Lingwala where the parliament is located, has been in lockdown since April 6.
Cleaners have "disinfected the building (in Gombe) where several ministerial cabinets are housed," said Blaise Zahinda, a communications adviser for the environment ministry.
On Sunday, firemen hosed down the main streets ..

DR Congo disinfects parliament in anti-virus campaign

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared Monday that the "worst is over" in the state's coronavirus pandemic, telling reporters he was working on a plan to gradually reopen the economy.
"I believe we can now start on the path to normalcy," Cuomo told reporters, after announcing that the death toll in the state, America's COVID-19 epicenter, had passed 10,000.

New York governor says worst of pandemic 'is over'

The novel coronavirus is 10 times more deadly than swine flu, also called H1N1, which caused a global pandemic in 2009, the World Health Organization said Monday, calling for control measures to be lifted "slowly".
"We know that COVID-19 spreads fast, and we know that it is deadly, 10 times more deadly than the 2009 flu pandemic," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing from Geneva.

COVID-19 is 10 times more deadly than swine flu: WHO

Swarms of locusts in Ethiopia have damaged 200,000 hectares (half a million acres) of cropland and driven around a million people to require emergency food aid, the United Nations said Monday.
The findings from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which recently concluded a joint assessment with the Ethiopian government, come as the region is bracing for new swarms that could be even more destructive.
Billions of desert locusts, some in swarms the size of Moscow, have already chomped their way through much of East Africa, including Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti, Eritrea, Tanzania, Sudan, South Sudan and Uganda.
Their breeding has been spurred by one of the wettest rainy seasons in the region in four decades.
In Ethiopia, the locusts have caused widespread losses of sorghum, wheat and maize, also known as corn, and vastly reduced the amount of available land for cattle grazing, FAO said.
Some 75 percent of Ethiopians requiring emergency food assistance live in the ...

Locust invasion creates food crisis for 1 million Ethiopians: UN

South African authorities on Monday reported that close to 200 schools have being broken into in the first 17 days of a five-week anti-coronavirus lockdown.
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said she was "horrified" after it emerged that 183 schools had been burgled since the lockdown came into effect on March 27.
"It is extremely disappointing for criminals, ... to randomly destroy the same infrastructure meant to provide decent spaces of learning and teaching," said the minister in a statement.
With 73 break-ins, eastern Mpumalanga province recorded the most incidents followed by Gauteng -- seat of the capital Pretoria and the economic hub Johannesburg -- with 55 robberies.
The attacks have ranged from arson, to theft of computers, printers and even classroom chairs, according to local media reports.
The rash of school attacks come just days after police minister Bheki Cele reported a dramatic fall in crime since South Africa imposed the coronavirus lockdown, crediting a ban .

Nearly 200 schools burgled during S.Africa's virus lockdown

Germany is moving towards a progressive lifting of restrictions linked to the coronavirus outbreak as new infections fall and the number of deaths remains far below its European neighbours.
The nation's Academy of Sciences Leopoldina recommended Monday a gradual relaxing of restrictions in stages if new infections stabilise at a low level and personal hygiene measures to avoid spread of the coronavirus are maintained.
The Academy's findings are to form the basis for a decision Wednesday by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the heads of Germany's 16 regions about whether to extend restrictions imposed in mid-March that are set to expire on Sunday.
The latest figures by the Robert Koch public health institute indicate new infections are indeed slowing, dropping to 2,537 on Monday, taking the total to 123,016.
With 2,799 deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, Germany is far behind other big European nations.
Over the weekend, Germany's Health Minister Jens ...

Germany moving towards gradual reopening as virus cases drops

The Tour de France is not only a French monument, but also the economic heartbeat of professional cycling itself and analysts fear heavy consequences if the coronavirus crisis forces its cancellation.
An announcement is expected this week on either a postponement or an outright cancellation of the 21-day extravaganza that is currently scheduled to start in Nice on June 27.
The "Grande Boucle", as the Tour is known in France, is the central economic pillar which supports the 22 professional teams on the roster for 2020.
"Cancellation opens the door to a possible economic meltdown in the cycling sector," says Jean-Francois Mignot of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, who has written the book "A History of the Tour de France".
Maintaining the original dates looks unlikely with France under lockdown since March 17. More than 14,000 people have died from coronavirus in France.
Usually, up to 12 million fans line the roads as the Tour makes its way through the French ...

Cycling faces economic 'meltdown' if Tour de France cancelled B

The death toll in Britain from coronavirus has risen to 11,329, according to health ministry figures published Monday -- an increase of 717 on the previous day's figures.
The daily increase is the lowest for several days, although it is not unusual for numbers to drop after a weekend due to delays in collating data. The numbers only refer to deaths in hospital.

UK coronavirus death toll rises by 717, to 11,329

Chelsea manager Frank Lampard believes the Blues can be proud of their response to the coronavirus crisis.
The London club quickly offered the use of a hotel at their Stamford Bridge stadium to health workers once Premier League matches were suspended last month and have promised to match all donations made to domestic abuse charity Refuge during a six-week fundraising campaign.
Unlike a number of other Premier League clubs who have attracted criticism for using the UK government's furlough scheme to pay non-playing staff, Chelsea have so far decided against using public money.
"I'm very proud to be the manager of this club with the way Chelsea have handled it," Lampard told Sky Sports.
"They were very quick to respond with the help of the hotel and there's a lot more work going on with the foundation, with link-ups and with getting in touch with fans.
"There are a lot of people at Chelsea who have really stood up." Premier League players had been in the firing from prominent ...

Lampard proud of Chelsea response to coronavirus crisis

Former Manchester United captain Gary Neville believes the Premier League may force clubs who are looking to cut player wages during the coronavirus crisis to accept transfer embargoes.
Clubs in England's top-flight have requested players take up to a 30 percent pay hit in cuts and deferrals to help soften the estimated ?1 billion ($1.2 billion) blow of potentially failing to complete the season.
A number of Premier League clubs, including Tottenham, have also been fiercely criticised for using public money to shore up the wages of non-playing staff before cutting the salaries of players.
Liverpool quickly reversed their decision to use the UK government's furlough scheme, which guarantees 80 percent of wages up to a maximum of ?2,500 a month, after a backlash from supporters and the media last week.
Neville said Tottenham striker Harry Kane would be the "perfect" signing for his old club Manchester United, but dismissed speculation over the England captain's future in the current ...

Premier League transfer embargo could follow wage cuts: Neville

Top global oil producers are considering cutting production by 20 million barrels per day under the terms of a deal to boost prices, US President Donald Trump said on Monday.
Trump, who took credit for brokering the deal, said the agreement was bigger than expected and will help the energy industry recovery from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
"Having been involved in the negotiations, to put it mildly, the number that OPEC+ is looking to cut is 20 Million Barrels a day, not the 10 Million that is generally being reported," Trump tweeted.

Trump says OPEC+ planning to cut production 20 mn bpd

Beijing denied Monday that it was soliciting praise for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic following a report that Chinese representatives tried to earn kudos from German officials.
China has faced criticism abroad -- notably in the United States -- over the outbreak that first emerged in the central city of Wuhan late last year.
It has sent aid to European countries in recent weeks, a move seen as a charm offensive to deflect blame for the pandemic.
Citing a confidential foreign ministry document, Germany's Die Welt newspaper reported Sunday that senior officials and staff at German government ministries were invited "to speak in positive terms about China's management of the coronavirus".
The German foreign ministry recommended that all governmental departments reject such approaches, the newspaper added.
A German intelligence source told Die Welt that "Chinese officials are pursuing an intensified information and propaganda policy with regard to the coronavirus".
Asked about .

AFP

AFP

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