Doubts were growing on Thursday over whether ambitious plans by European governments to use contact-tracing apps to fight the spread of the coronavirus will be able to be implemented with any real effectiveness soon.
In contrast, there appeared to be some movement forward in the sprint to find a vaccine against COVID-19, bolstered by a USD 1 billion investment from the U.S. vaccine agency.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged Wednesday to have a test, track and trace program for COVID-19 in place by June 1 as part of a strategy to persuade the country that it's safe to move on to the next stage of easing the lockdown and restarting the economy.
But the government also appeared to backtrack on an earlier pledge to make a smart phone app a pillar of that program.
Security minister James Brokenshire told the BBC on Thursday that he remains confident that the tracing system will be in place by June 1, but acknowledged that an app intended to help track the virus was not ready. He .

European plans to use apps in virus tracking face setbacks

PTI Automatic

The number of Americans thrown out of work since the coronavirus crisis struck two months ago has climbed to nearly 39 million, the government said Thursday.
More than 2.4 million people applied for unemployment benefits last week in the latest wave of layoffs from the outbreak that has triggered nationwide business shutdowns and brought the economy to its knees, the Labor Department reported. That brings the
running total to a staggering 38.6 million.
An additional 2.2 million sought aid under a new federal program for self-employed, contractor and gig workers, who are now eligible for unemployment benefits for the first time. Those figures aren't adjusted for seasonal variations, so they are not included in the overall number of applications.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the unemployment rate could peak in May or June at 20% to 25%  a level unseen since the depths of the Great Depression in the 1930s.
As of April, unemployment stood at 14.7%, a figure also unmatched ..

Coronavirus-triggered layoffs in US hit nearly 39 million

A day after threatening to withhold funds over Michigan's mail-in ballot effort, President Donald Trump was set to visit the electoral battleground Thursday to learn how the medical breathing machines governors begged for during the height of the coronavirus pandemic are made.
But hovering over his visit to a repurposed Ford Motor Co. factory in Ypsilanti, outside of Detroit, is whether he will wear a face covering.
Trump has refused to wear a face mask in public, a practice that federal health authorities say all Americans should adopt to help slow the spread of the virus.
Ford says everyone in its factories must wear personal protective equipment, including masks, and that its policy has been communicated to the White House. Trump wouldn't commit to wearing a mask at the plant when he was asked about the matter earlier this week.  Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said that mask-wearing isn't
just Ford's policy but it's also the law in a state that's among those hardest hit by ..

Trump to tour Ford's ventilator assembly plant near Detroit

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will not face a criminal investigation into whether he offered special favors to an American businesswoman during his time as mayor of London.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct ruled Thursday against a criminal investigation into Johnson's ties to tech entrepreneur Jennifer Arcuri.
The office, which oversees police complaints in England, was asked to consider if there were grounds to investigate him for misconduct in public office. Johnson has vociferously denied wrongdoing.
It said that while its review established that there may have been an intimate relationship between Johnson and Arcuri, we found no evidence to indicate that Mr Johnson influenced the payment of any sponsorship monies to Ms. Arcuri, or that he influenced or played an active part in securing her participation in trade missions.
The office added that it would have been wise for Johnson to declare the relationship as a conflict of interest.
A spokesman for Johnson welcomed 

UK watchdog clears Johnson of criminal wrongdoing

Cape Town has become the center of the COVID-19 outbreak in South Africa and one of Africa's hot spots.
The popular tourist destination at the southern tip of Africa had more than 12,000 confirmed cases as of Thursday, representing 63% of South Africa's 19,000 cases and about 10% of Africa's 95,000 cases.
Gauteng province containing Johannesburg, South Africa's largest city, and the capital, Pretoria, had been expected to be the country's epicenter with its population density and poverty levels, but Cape Town defied predictions with high levels of community transmission.
No model upfront predicted what we see in Western Cape (province), Health Minister Zwelini Mkhize told journalists Thursday.
The explosion of cases in Western Cape is out of the expected range and it may be that we need to have additional interventions to try and contain those numbers. Cape Town's mountains and beaches may have contributed to its high number of COVID-19 cases. With direct flights to several European ..

Cape Town is virus hot spot for South Africa and continent

Drug maker AstraZeneca said Thursday it had secured its first agreements for 400 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine it is testing, bolstered by an investment from the US vaccine agency.
The Anglo-Swedish company reported it had received more than $1 billion from the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority for the development, production and delivery of the vaccine, starting this fall.
The investment will accelerate the development and production of the vaccine, AstraZeneca Chief Executive Pascal Soriot said. It had already joined forces with the British government and is in discussions with the Serum Institute of India and other potential partners to increase production and distribution.
We will do everything in our power to make this vaccine quickly and widely available, Soriot said.
Pharmaceutical companies including also Moderna and Sanofi are racing to develop and produce a vaccine against the new coronavirus as experts say it will be crucial to allowing ...

AstraZeneca secures orders for virus vaccine under testing

A naval air station in Texas went on lockdown Thursday morning after an active shooter was reported near one of the facility's gates.
Naval Air Station-Corpus Christi said the shooter was neutralized and all gates remained closed. There were no immediate reports of what happened to the shooter or other injuries.
The station had a similar lockdown last December.
In another incident at the base last year, a man pleaded guilty to destruction of US government property and possession of a stolen firearm for ramming his truck into a barricade at the Corpus Christi station.

Texas base put on lockdown after reports of shooter

Alongside discussions of her own national political ambitions, former Georgia gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams is wading into elections outside her home state, endorsing the campaigns of seven Democrats vying for US Senate seats.
On Thursday, Abrams announced that she was backing Democratic candidates in Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina.
In statements provided ahead of her official endorsement, Abrams called Jaime Harrison, the associate chair of the Democratic National Committee who is seeking to block Sen Lindsey Graham from a fourth term, a strong leader for the people of South Carolina who will work hard to address inequalities" such as in rural health care and infrastructure.
For Arizona, Abrams said former astronaut Mark Kelly has a proven record of service to our country.
John Hickenlooper, the former Colorado governor and 2020 presidential candidate, is the one to help us cross the finish line for a Democratic Senate majority, 

Stacey Abrams endorses candidates in 7 US Senate contests

Oxfam International, one of the world's leading aid agencies, is to severely curtail its work because of the financial strain caused by the coronavirus pandemic, including the closure of operations in 18 countries at the potential cost of more than 2,000 jobs.
The organization, which currently operates in 66 countries and whose global work is coordinated via 20 affiliate offices around the world, said in a statement late Wednesday that it has had to accelerate changes as a result of the pandemic.
Countries it will be exiting include Afghanistan, Egypt, Rwanda, Sudan and Tanzania. It said the changes will affect around 1,450 out of nearly 5,000 program staff and 700 out of nearly 1,900 partner organizations.
Following the changes, it will retain a physical presence in 48 countries, six of which it will explore as new independent affiliate members, including Indonesia and Kenya.
The organization had started a 10-year strategic review in late 2018 in the wake of a sex scandal in Haiti ...

Oxfam to close 18 offices worldwide as virus drains finances

The coronavirus has infected more than 10,000 health care workers in hard-hit Iran, news outlets reported Thursday.
The report carried by semiofficial news agencies, including ISNA, cited Deputy Health Minister Qassem Janbabaei, who did not elaborate.
However, reports earlier in the week put the number of infected health care workers at only 800. Iran says more than 100 of those workers have died.
Iran on Thursday put the number of dead from the virus at 7,249, or 66 more than Wednesday. Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said there were more than 129,000 confirmed cases of the virus, including 2,392 more than Wednesday.
Iran has the highest number of casualties from the disease in the region.

Iran: More than 10k health care workers infected with virus

Hungary's government said Thursday that it is shutting down the transit zones on its southern border with Serbia where asylum-seekers are being kept while their asylum requests are decided.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff said that, as a result, some 280 asylum-seekers will be moved Thursday to reception centers in the country.
Gergely Gulyas also said that, in the future, those seeking to apply for asylum in Hungary will have to present their claims at Hungarian diplomatic missions.
The government decision comes after the European Union's top court last week ruled that holding asylum-seekers in Hungary's transit zones amounted to detention and said it was allowed for a maximum period of four weeks.
Hungary built fences protected by razor wire on its southern borders with Serbia and Croatia and later a pair of transit zones on its border with Serbia in the wake of the 2015 migrant crisis, when some 400,000 people passed through Hungary on their way to Western Europe.
The .

Hungary closing border transit zones for asylum-seekers

Drug maker AstraZeneca secured its first agreement on Thursday for 400 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, bolstered by an investment from the US vaccine agency.
The Anglo-Swedish company reported it had received more than USD 1 billion from the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority for the development, production and delivery of the vaccine, starting this fall.
The investment will accelerate the development and production of the vaccine, AstraZeneca Chief Executive Pascal Soriot said. It had already joined forces with the British government.
"We will do everything in our power to make this vaccine quickly and widely available," he said.
Pharmaceutical companies including also Moderna and Sanofi are racing to develop and produce a vaccine against the new coronavirus as experts say it will be crucial to allowing countries to ease their lockdowns and restrictions on public life.
In a statement as markets opened, AstraZeneca said it has now secured manufacturing ...

AstraZeneca secures orders for COVID-19 vaccine

The African continent needs to test about 10 times the number of people it has already tested for the coronavirus. That's according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Director John Nkengasong says Africa should strive to test at least 1% of the population of 1.3 billion people, or 13 million people, but so far 1.3 million to 1.4 million tests have been conducted.
Africa's number of virus cases is above 95,000 and could surpass 100,000 by the weekend. The continent has seen roughly the same number of new cases in the past week as the week before, and Nkengasong says that we hope that trend continues.
While early lockdowns delayed the pandemic, he says that doesn't mean Africa has been spared. But he says health officials are not seeing a lot of community deaths or massive flooding of our hospitals because of COVID-19.
Countries with fragile health systems and a recent history of conflict like Somalia and South Sudan, however, remain very concerning as cases rise .

African countries urged to up testing tenfold

The governing body of swimming has postponed the short course world championships for a year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
FINA says the championships scheduled for December in Abu Dhabi will now be staged Dec. 13-18, 2021, in the United Arab Emirates because of "the uncertainty related with the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide."
FINA president Julio C. Maglione says swimming organizers have worked closely with the United Arab Emirates' authorities and "we believe this is the most suitable solution for all those taking part in this competition."
A general congress to elect the FINA Bureau for the years 2021-25 will be staged in Doha, Qatar, on June 5, 2021.
The new members of the bureau will start their terms immediately after the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
The short course world championships are held in a 25-meter pool. The FINA world championships and the Olympics are staged in 50-meter pools.

FINA pushes world short-course meet back a year

The first visit to Kabul by Washington's peace envoy since Afghanistan's squabbling political leadership reached a power-sharing agreement comes amid increased violence blamed mostly on an Islamic State affiliate that has been targeted in stepped-up US bombing.
Zalmay Khalilzad, in a flurry of tweets Thursday, told of his meetings in Doha earlier in the week with Taliban representatives and on Wednesday with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and fellow leader Abdullah Abdullah. All were aimed at resuscitating a US-Taliban peace deal signed in February.
Khalilzad called for a reduction in violence by all sides in Afghanistan's protracted conflict that has kept America militarily engaged for 19 years.
He also said too much time has been wasted getting to the second and critical phase of the peace deal, which calls for talks between the Taliban and Afghanistan's political leadership.
Abdullah will head those efforts as part of the deal he signed with Ghani to end their monthslong dispute ...

US envoy working to resuscitate flagging Afghan peace deal

The Philippines has emerged as a global hot spot for online child sexual exploitation, and coronavirus lockdowns that restrict millions to their homes may be worsening the abuses, a U.S. official said Thursday.
A new study released by the Washington-based International Justice Mission on Thursday said Philippine cases of online child sexual exploitation have increased sharply in recent years with parents conniving to have their own children victimized for the money. The nongovernmental group has helped track down and prosecute offenders in the Philippines.
The global shutdown with the COVID-19 pandemic seems to only be increasing these phenomena, U.S. State Department official John Richmond, who oversees U.S. efforts to combat human trafficking, said in an online launch of the study.
In most cases the traffickers are actually parents or close family members of the kids they are exploiting, Richmond said.
And so lockdown orders mean that children are being locked down with their ...

Study: Philippines a global hot spot for online child abuse

Japan's top government spokesman on Thursday said the country is considering attending the Group of Seven summit meeting, if the US reschedules the cancelled gathering.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga was responding to a question about President Donald Trump's tweet Wednesday that he is considering rescheduling the cancelled G-7 meeting with world leaders in the US, because it would be a "great sign to all" of things returning to normal during the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump had scheduled the G-7 summit for June 10-12 at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.
The summit was cancelled in March because of the pandemic, and Trump said the leaders would confer by video conference.
Suga on Thursday said he interpreted Trump's tweet as an expression of the President's intention to normalize the global economy quickly.
He said his understanding is that details such as the dates and format of the meeting are still being studied by the US as host nation.
Suga said Tokyo and ..

Japan weighs attending G-7 if rescheduled in US

The World Health Organisation, which has come under repeated fire from US President Donald Trump, says the science is still unclear on an old malaria drug he's taking to try to defend against the novel coronavirus.
It says it recommends the drug's use for COVID-19 only in controlled clinical trials for now.
Dr Michael Ryan, the WHO's emergencies chief, notes the drug hydroxychloroquine  which Trump said Monday that he's taking  is just one of many possible therapies being now tested internationally to see if they are effective against the novel coronavirus.
His comments late Wednesday suggested WHO remains unbowed by Trump's repeated criticism over its response to the coronavirus pandemic  including most recently his threat to end all funding for the UN health agency from its biggest donor, the United States, if it doesn't reform.
Ryan nonetheless emphasized countries can make their own choices.
Every sovereign nation, particularly those with effective regulatory authorities, is in a .

WHO: Drug Trump taking to fight COVID-19 best left to tests

There are no daily public displays of gratitude for Russian doctors and nurses during the coronavirus crisis like there are in the West.
Instead of applause, they face mistrust, low pay and even open hostility.
Residents near the National Medical Research Center for Endocrinology, a Moscow hospital now treating virus patients, complained when they saw medical workers walking out of the building in full protective gear, fearing the workers would spread contagion.
Maybe once the disease knocks on the door of every family, then the attitude to medics will change, said Dr. Alexander Gadzyra, a surgeon who works exhausting shifts.
The outbreak has put enormous pressure on Russia's medical community.
While state media hails some of them as heroes, doctors and nurses interviewed by The Associated Press say they are fighting both the virus and a system that fails to support them.
They have decried shortages of protective equipment, and many say they have been threatened with dismissal or even 

'We're expendable': Russian doctors face hostility, mistrust

It was clear he was in charge when he entered the wedding hall-turned-slave pen in the Iraqi city of Mosul, where dozens of Yazidi women and girls huddled on the floor, newly abducted by Islamic State militants.
He beat them at the slightest sign of resistance. At one point, he dragged a girl away, picking her for himself, a Yazidi woman  who was 14 when the incident occurred in 2014  recounted to The Associated Press.
This was Hajji Abdullah, a religious judge and a key architect of the IS slave system.
He later became deputy to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Many believe he is the late al-Baghdadi's successor, identified by the pseudonym Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. The U.S has a $5 million bounty on his head.
Investigators with the Commission for International Justice and Accountability are amassing evidence, hoping to prosecute IS figures for crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide  including Hajji Abdullah.
Bill Wiley, executive director and founder of CIJA, said 

Building a genocide case for IS crimes against Yazidis

A tornado ripped through several villages on Indonesia's Sumatra island, killing at least two people, damaging hundreds of homes, and fatally knocking over a cow, a disaster official said Thursday.
Another six people, most with serious injuries, were taken to a hospital after the tornado touched down late Wednesday in Lampung province's Tulang Bawang district, aid Raditya Jati, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman.
The powerful winds damaged 245 homes in three villages and knocked out power to most of the area, Jati said. The storm also threw a cow to its death, he said.
Officials were still evacuating villagers from affected areas on Thursday so they could clear debris.
A video released by the agency showed people run in panic when the wind started moving through their village accompanied by occasional flashes of lightning. People could be heard crying as the dark funnel cloud turned homes to rubble.
Indonesia's meteorological agency is predicting rain and strong wind ...

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