China and Iran led a group of countries in a joint push Thursday for the UN to pressure Washington to lift sanctions, which they charged are hindering the global fight against COVID-19.
"We urge you to request the complete and immediate lifting of such illegal, coercive and arbitrary measures of economic pressure (...) in order to ensure the full, effective and efficient response of all members of the international community to the coronavirus," they said in a letter addressed to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Dated Wednesday, the letter was published on Twitter by the Iranian mission to the UN.
The letter does not specifically mention Washington but all eight signatories currently face US sanctions.
The signatories said they want to "reject the politicization of such a pandemic." In addition to Iran and China, two of the countries most affected by the coronavirus, the signatories include Russia, Venezuela, North Korea, Nicaragua, Cuba and Syria.

China, Iran lead UN push for US sanctions relief during pandemic

PTI Automatic

The novel coronavirus pandemic that has forced billions of people across the globe to stay home is making parents skip routine immunisations for their kids, the United Nations children's agency UNICEF warned Thursday.
The phenomenon is being aggravated by overburdened health services where medical workers are being diverted from giving vaccines to focus on the COVID-19 response.
Some governments might even have to postpone mass immunisation campaigns as a way of slowing the disease's spread, UNICEF said.
The agency's executive director Henrietta Fore said the requirement for people to stay home and observe social distancing was leading parents to "make the difficult decision to defer routine immunisation".
Of particular concern are impoverished and war-torn countries battling measles, cholera or polio outbreaks, such as Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, the Philippines, Syria and South Sudan.
"At a time like this, these countries can ill-afford to face additional 

Coronavirus forcing parents to skip kids' vaccinations: UNICEF

Ireland's preparations for a potential no-deal Brexit have left the country better placed to face the coronavirus crisis, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said Thursday.
"Because of the work our ministers did to ensure that we would be able to withstand the worst effects of a no-deal Brexit, we are now in a better position than if we were starting to think about some of these issues for the first time," he said.
Britain's 2016 vote to leave the EU caused unprecedented turmoil in Ireland and left it facing the prospect of a "no-deal" split between London and Brussels.
Forecasters suggested such a scenario would have caused huge economic damage and the likely emergence of a hard border with Northern Ireland.
That would have severed vital Irish supply routes and potentially reignited the sectarian conflict known as "The Troubles" which killed 3,500.
"The work spent thinking about supply lines, about the impact of a shock to the economy, the money we set aside through prudent management of our 

Brexit trauma helps Ireland face COVID-19 crisis: PM

The EU will launch its new naval mission to enforce an arms embargo on Libya by the end of the month, after member states agreed its terms on Thursday.
Diplomatic sources told AFP that ambassadors from the 27 EU countries approved the mission, dubbed Operation Irini after the Greek word for peace, after clearing last-minute objections.
Greece has agreed to be the landing point for any migrants rescued in the course of the mission, though its primary purpose is to enforce the embargo.
An effective arms embargo is seen as crucial to stabilising Libya, where the UN-recognised Tripoli government is under attack from the forces of strongman Khalifa Haftar, who controls much of the country's south and east.
The new mission replaces Operation Sophia, set up in 2015 to fight people-smuggling across the Mediterranean at the height of Europe's migrant crisis.
What to do with any migrants picked up during Irini's operations was the last major sticking point, with Italy earlier this week ...

EU agrees Libya arms embargo mission

Almost all of Africa's airlines are currently grounded because of the coronavirus pandemic and several could go bankrupt, the African Airlines Association (AFRAA) warned Thursday.
"Today, 95 percent of African planes are grounded owing to the pandemic, save for cargo flights," AFRAA secretary general Abderrahmane Berthe told AFP.
A large number of African states have closed their airports and borders because of the virus, forcing carriers to scrap inter-African as well as inter-continental flights.
"If the African carriers do not receive support they will find themselves insolvent come the end of June," warned Berthe, who calculated that the sector would require a bailout of between $2.5 to 3 billion (2.3 to 2.8 billion euros) in emergency aid or tax concessions.
"African carriers were already in a precarious state well before the COVID-19 pandemic. They have been making losses for a decade while other companies elsewhere were making money," Berthe said.
"The past fortnight has been ..

Virus restrictions ground most of Africa's airlines: association

The United Nations said Thursday it has received its first positive responses to its call for warring parties around the world to observe a ceasefire so as to allow for a better response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Specifically, rebels groups in Cameroon and the Philippines have heeded the appeal, the UN said.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres issued the call Monday in a bid to protect civilians, the idea being that in war-ravaged countries like Yemen and Syria -- largely spared so far by the virus -- the health care systems are already in ruins and spread of the pathogen would be catastrophic.
In Cameroon, two mainly English-speaking separatist regions of the Central African country have been fighting the government in the also French-speaking country for three years in a war that has left more than 3,000 people dead, many of them civilians.
The UN also said the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, which is fighting to overthrow the Manila government, announced .

UN reports first positive responses to call for ceasefires

A British newspaper said Thursday its correspondent in Egypt was forced to leave the country after authorities revoked her credentials over a report on coronavirus infections there.
"Ruth Michaelson, who has lived in and reported from Egypt since 2014, was advised last week by western diplomats that the country's security services wanted her to leave immediately," The Guardian newspaper said.
Earlier this month, the journalist published an article citing Canadian epidemiologists who estimated Egypt's COVID-19 infections could have surpassed 19,000.
Egypt's health ministry has declared 495 coronavirus cases. Speculation has circulated on social media that the real figures are higher.  Egyptian authorities accused Michaelson of "intentional bad faith to harm Egyptian interests".
The Guardian said the authorities demanded a retraction or an official apology.
It said it offered to publish a written response from Egypt to the article or the epidemiologists' study but received no reply to ..

British daily says Egypt forced out correspondent over virus report

The Democratic Republic of Congo capital Kinshasa will go into "total confinement" for four days from Saturday to help contain the spread of coronavirus, authorities said on Thursday.
Governor Gentiny Ngobila on Thursday decreed intermittent four-day confinements over three weeks, according to a speech seen by AFP. The city will be on lockdown for four days followed by two days to allow residents to shop followed by another four-day lockdown, in a rotation continued for the three-week period.

DR Congo capital to go into lockdown from Saturday: official

France on Thursday reported that 365 people, including a 16-year-old girl, had died from the coronavirus over the last 24 hours, the country's highest daily toll.
Top French health official Jerome Salomon told reporters that a total of 1,696 people had died in hospital in France from the virus, emphasising that the toll does not include those who died at home or at retirement homes.
He said that 29,155 people had tested positive for the virus so far in France, adding that the real number of cases was likely far higher as testing was reserved for high-risk patients.

France reports 365 more coronavirus deaths, including 16-year-old

Israel's ex-military chief Benny Gantz called for an emergency unity government after being elected parliament speaker Thursday, likely leading to an alliance with his rival Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to tackle coronavirus.
"These are unusual times and they call for unusual decisions," Gantz told the Knesset, Israel's parliament, after his speakership election.
"That is why I intend to explore the formation of an emergency unity government," he added.

Israel's Gantz calls for 'emergency unity government'

Two rockets slammed into the Iraqi capital's high-security Green Zone early Thursday, hours before US-led forces were set to pull out of a second base in the country.
Some 7,500 foreign troops are in Iraq as part of the US-led coalition helping local troops fight jihadist remnants, but those numbers are being significantly drawn down this month.
The alliance is temporarily bringing some trainers home as a precautionary measure against the coronavirus pandemic and is also leaving some Iraqi bases altogether.
Those bases and foreign embassies, particularly the American mission, have been targeted in more than two dozen rocket strikes since late October.
The attacks, which the US has blamed on an Iran-backed armed group, have prompted fears of a proxy war on Iraqi soil.
Before dawn on Thursday, two rockets punched into an empty square near an Iraqi security headquarters in the Green Zone, where government buildings and foreign embassies are based, Iraqi security forces said in a ...

Rockets hit Iraq's Green Zone, US-led coalition leaves base

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

Apart from $15 million reward for Maduro, US also announced a $10 million for information leading to the arrest of his associates in the drug trafficking case.

US offers $15 mn reward for arrest of Venezuelan President Maduro: Pompeo

Business Standard

World leaders on Thursday promised $5 trillion to stave off global economic collapse from the coronavirus pandemic that has killed 21,000 people and shut down huge swathes of the globe.
From New York to Paris to New Delhi life has ground to standstill with some three billion people confined to their homes as governments scramble to halt the disease's deadly march across the world.
The death toll spiralled upward again in Europe, as fatalities in the United Stated shot past 1,000 and cases in Africa continued to multiply, and already-stretched healthcare systems readied for the worst.
Fears are mounting the virus could cause an even greater shock than the Great Depression, with the latest unemployment figures out of the US breaking records as businesses across the world's biggest economy are pinched by the pandemic.
Leaders from the G20 most industrialised nations held crisis talks by video link Thursday, pledging a "united front" to fight the outbreak -- along with an enormous ...

World powers vow united front on virus as death toll mounts

Congolese troops killed 10 members of a rebel group accused of ethnic massacres in the restive east of the country and seriously wounded its commander, the military said on Thursday.
The fighters belonged to a local militia called the CODECO, based in Ituri province -- one of scores of armed groups operating in the region.
Troops came under attack in the district of Djugu, the armed forces' regional spokesman, Jules Ngongo, told AFP.
"During the combat, the rebel chief... was badly wounded," he said.
"At present our troops are scouring the area until we find him dead or alive." Seven of the 10 killed were the commander's bodyguards, he said, adding that a soldier had been wounded.
CODECO -- whose official name is Cooperative for the Development of Congo -- is an armed political-religious sect in Ituri drawn from the Lendu ethnic group.
Conflict erupted between the Lendu, mainly farmers, and the Hema, herders and traders, in the gold-mining and oil-rich province between 1999 to 2003, ..

DR Congo forces kill 10 rebels in restive east

Britain recorded more than 100 coronavirus deaths in a 24-hour period for the first time on Thursday, with 115 people who tested positive for the virus dying.
"As of 5pm (1700 GMT) on 25 March 2020, 578 patients in the UK who tested positive for coronavirus (COVID-19) have died," said the official government website, up from 463 on Wednesday.

UK records over 100 daily COVID-19 deaths for first time

Stocks shot higher Thursday as investors brushed aside a record surge in US unemployment benefit claims, instead focusing on progress towards a massive stimulus plan and a pledge by world leaders for a "united front" in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the US central bank would continue to "aggressively" pump liquidity into the economy and added that "we're not going to run out of ammunition" to support lending.
The dollar fell sharply against its main rivals on the developments.  Powell acknowledged there would be a sharp downturn as more and more countries confine people at home and close non-essential businesses to slow the spread of the respiratory ailment COVID-19.
In one of the latest indications of that impact, the US Labor Department said first time unemployment claims soared to 3.3 million last week -- the highest number ever recorded.
That compares to 281,000 first-time filers in the prior week and blows away the ...

Stocks brush aside record US unemployment surge

The global COVID-19 pandemic is now expected to take a far worse toll on foreign direct investments worldwide than feared just a few weeks ago, UN economists said Thursday.
A fresh report from the UN Conference on Trade, Investment and Development (UNCTAD) warned that the rapid spread of the coronavirus would cause a "dramatic drop" in global foreign direct investment, which is a measure of cross-border private sector investment.
The agency said it now believed that global FDI could be as much as 40 percent lower than its projections in January, when it had expected to see up to five percent growth this year and next.
That compares to a forecast it issued just two weeks ago, in which it said that FDI would be up to 15 percent lower than its January projections, in a worst-case scenario.
Efforts to halt the spread of the new coronavirus, which has killed nearly 22,000 people worldwide and infected more than 500,000, have wreaked havoc on international business and are rapidly pushing ..

Pandemic will cut global investment flows more than feared: UN

Switzerland on Thursday joined the small group of countries to declare more than 10,000 officially-recorded cases of COVID-19, as it launched plans to start tracking crowd build-ups through mobile phone data.
The health ministry said 10,661 people in the Alpine country have tested positive for the new coronavirus -- nearly 1,000 more than a day earlier -- while 161 people have died.
Switzerland, which is among the countries that have conducted most COVID-19 tests per capita, is the fifth country in Europe to pass 10,000 officially-recorded cases.
It follows neighbours Italy, Germany and France, and Spain -- all of which have far bigger populations.
Elsewhere, China, Iran and the United States have also passed the five-figure mark, according to the latest World Health Organization situation report on the global pandemic.
Switzerland's Italian-speaking southern region of Ticino, which borders hard-hit northern Italy, is the worst-affected of its 26 cantons, with 393 cases per 100,000 ...

Switzerland virus cases top 10,000

The Red Cross appealed Thursday for nearly $825 million to help the world's most vulnerable communities face the challenges posed by the new coronavirus pandemic.
It came a day after the United Nations launched its own COVID-19 humanitarian response plan calling for $2 billion to help the world's poorest and most vulnerable people.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said that "while COVID-19 is already a global pandemic, it is still possible to reduce its spread and the number of lives lost by improving access to critical resources."
The Geneva-based organisations launched their joint appeal for 800 million Swiss francs ($823 million dollars, 752 million euros) as the death toll in the global COVID-19 outbreak climbed towards 22,000.
"This pandemic is putting at risk entire health systems, and the situation will worsen in places where those are weak or inexistent," IFRC president Francesco 

Red Cross seeks $825 mn to fight coronavirus pandemic

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday called for sanctions relief during the coronavirus pandemic, telling G20 leaders it was a matter "of life and death".
The leader did not specify which countries should be earmarked for sanctions relief, speaking instead more broadly.
"Ideally we should introduce a... joint moratorium on restrictions on essential goods as well as on financial transactions for their purchase," Putin said at a virtual meeting of G20 leaders on Thursday.
"I am talking about the countries that are suffering the most from this pandemic. At the end of the day, it's a question of life and death, this is a purely humanitarian issue."
"These matters should be freed of any politics," Putin added.
Russia has been chafing under numerous rounds of Western sanctions following the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its role in the Ukraine crisis.  It is also an ally of a number other countries sanctioned by the West, namely Iran and North Korea.
The Kremlin chief said it was 

Putin calls for sanctions 'moratorium' at G20 summit

New York's governor Andrew Cuomo said on Thursday that the populous US state's coronavirus death tally has jumped to 385, with 100 fatalities in the past day.
New York is at the epicenter of America's coronavirus battle and the state has now counted 37,258 positive cases, as it scrambles to prepare hospitals and create overflow capacity for an influx of new patients.
The grim announcement comes hours after the total US death toll surpassed 1,000, with more than 69,200 cases, according to Johns Hopkins University's tally.
Cuomo emphasized that 25 per cent of all tests have been conducted in New York state, and expressed disappointment that the federal government had not allocated more resources for it in its USD 2 trillion virus relief bill.
The governor also told journalists the state has received approval to "split" ventilators between two patients, and convert anesthesia machines to ventilators for intensive care patients, if necessary.
He said medical personnel were finding that ...

AFP

AFP

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