Spain's prime minister appears before parliament on Wednesday to ask for its endorsement to extend the state of emergency that his government has used to rein in the country's coronavirus outbreak that has killed at least 27,000 people.
It would be the fifth two-week extension to the state of emergency, which is currently set to expire on Sunday. The government wants to extend it until June 7.
The path we are on is the only one that can possibly beat the virus, Prime Minister Pedro Snchez told a chamber with only a handful of members to limit contagion risks.
Thanks to all the parliament members who have supported the state of emergency because with their vote they have saved thousands of lives.
Since the start of the national lockdown on March 14, Spain has lowered a rampant COVID-19 virus contagion rate that was well over 20% to under 1% over the past week.
More than 230,000 infections have been confirmed by laboratory tests in Spain.
Snchez argues that Spain still needs to keep a ..

Spain's leader asks parliament for 2 more weeks of lockdown

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Rapidly rising water overtook dams and forced the evacuation of about 10,000 people in central Michigan, where flooding struck communities along rain-swollen waterways and the governor said one downtown could be "under approximately 9 feet of water" by Wednesday.
For the second time in less than 24 hours, families living along the Tittabawassee River and connected lakes in Midland County were ordered Tuesday evening to leave home.
By Wednesday morning, water that was several feet high covered some streets near the river in downtown Midland, including riverside parkland, and reaching a hotel and parking lots.
The National Weather Service urged anyone near the river to seek higher ground following "castastrophic dam failures" at the Edenville Dam, about 140 miles (225 kilometers) north of Detroit, and the Sanford Dam, about seven miles (11 kilometers) downriver.
Michigan Governor Gretchen said downtown Midland, a city of 42,000 about 8 miles (14 kilometers) downstream from the Sanford ..

Thousands evacuated as river dams break in central Michigan

Aerospace engine maker Rolls-Royce has announced plans to cut some 9,000 jobs globally as it grapples with the collapse in air travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company employs 52,000 people overall, and it is not immediately clear where the cuts will fall.
The reorganization will lead to cuts resulting in some 700 million pounds ($856 million) in savings with an overall aim of 1.3 billion pounds in annual savings.
Chief executive Warren East says the company must take difficult decisions to see our business through these unprecedented times.

Rolls-Royce to cut some 9,000 aerospace jobs due to virus, decline in air travel

As nations around the world loosen coronavirus restrictions, people are discovering that the new normal is anything but.
Yet some realities have emerged: schools, offices, public transport, bars and restaurants are now on the front lines of post-lockdown life.
How each of those key sectors manages social distancing and tamps down on expected new outbreaks will determine the shape of daily life for millions as researchers race to develop a vaccine that is still likely months, if not years, away from being available to all.
What a return to normal looks like varies widely. For hungry migrant workers in India, it was finally being able to catch trains back to their home villages to farm while city jobs dried up. For cruise ship workers stranded at sea for months, it was finally reaching shore in Croatia. For wealthy shoppers in Maseratis and Rolls-Royces, it was returning to the newly reopened boutiques of America's iconic Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.
In Italy, where good food is an ...

Nations reopen yet struggle to define 'a new normal'

Japan is investigating a possible leak of data including details of a prototype missile in a massive cyberattack earlier this year on Mitsubishi Electric Corp., officials said Wednesday.
The suspected leak involves sensitive information about a prototype of a cutting-edge high speed gliding missile intended for deployment for the defense of Japan's remote islands amid China's military assertiveness in the region.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters that the Defense Ministry is investigating the possible impact of the information leak on national security. Suga declined to give further details.
The Defense Ministry has been studying a prototype missile known as HGV, which flies at supersonic speeds and is also being developed by the U.S., China and Russia.
The ministry suspects the information might have been stolen from documents sent from several defense equipment makers as part of a bidding process for the project, Mitsubishi Electric did not win the bid, Japanese .

Japan suspects missile data leak in Mitsubishi cyberattack

Israel bade farewell on Wednesday to China's ambassador to the country who died earlier this week.
Diplomats held a short ceremony at Ben-Gurion Airport in honor of Du Wei before his body was flown back to China.
The 58-year-old ambassador, who was appointed envoy to Israel in February in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, was found dead in his home north of the city of Tel Aviv on Sunday. He is believed to have died of natural causes.
Who could have imagined that we would have to bid our farewell to ambassador Du in such tragic circumstances, said Yuval Rotem, director general of Israel's foreign ministry, as a wooden casket draped in a Chinese flag lay nearby. China and the world has lost a true diplomat.
The ambassador previously served as China's envoy to Ukraine. He was found dead at the ambassador's official residence in Herzliya. He is survived by a wife and son, both of whom were not in Israel.
Israel enjoys good relations with China. Bilateral trade has grown in recent ...

Body of Chinese ambassador who died in Israel returns home

Cambridge has become the first university in Britain to cancel all face-to-face lectures for the 2020-21 academic year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The university says all lectures will be held virtually and streamed online until summer 2021. Cambridge says it may be possible to hold tutorials and other teaching in small groups - a key part of the university's system - when the new academic year starts in October, as long as social distancing can be followed.
The pandemic has already upended student life. Cambridge moved all its teaching online in March, and exams are being held remotely.
British universities are warning they will face a financial crisis if students decide they don't want to pay tuition fees - currently 9,250 a year (USD 11,300) in England - for a virtual experience.
Lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed because of the pandemic have also cut off the flow of international students, who pay higher fees and form a major source of income for UK universities.

University of Cambridge cancels all face-to-face lectures for 2020-2021 school year

Engine maker Rolls-Royce said Wednesday it plans to cut some 9,000 jobs globally as it grapples with the collapse in air travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company based in Derby, England, employs 52,000 people overall, and didn't specify which regions would take the hardest blow. CEO Warren East said most of the cuts will take place in the civil aerospace business, where two-thirds of UK employees work. Negotiations are set to begin with unions.
Being told that there is no longer a job for you is a terrible prospect and it is especially hard when all of us take so much pride in working for Rolls-Royce,'' East said. But we must take difficult decisions to see our business through these unprecedented times.
The company immediately came under criticism, however, since it has furloughed some 4,000 workers under a government programme to pay some of the wages of people affected by the crisis. The unions insisted taxpayers deserved a more responsible approach to a national ...

Engine maker Rolls-Royce cuts 9,000 jobs as aviation reels

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Snchez is appearing before Spain's Parliament to ask for their endorsement to extend the nation's state of emergency that his government has used to rein in a coronavirus outbreak that has killed at least 27,000 Spaniards.
It would be the fifth two-week extension to the state of emergency, which is currently set to expire on Sunday. The government wants to extend it until June 7.
The vote is expected to be close, although Snchez's minority government composed of his Socialists and an anti-austerity party has secured the important backing of the center-right Citizens party.
Snchez's support has been waning with every vote to extend the state of emergency, which gives the government the power to restrict Constitutional rights such as free movement and assembly key to its sanitary lockdown.
The main opposition party, the conservative Popular Party, has said it will vote No. Also, the governmental gazette published the order that will require everyone over six 

Spain PM asks to extend state of emergency again

Virtual safaris are helping to distract people under coronavirus lockdowns while attracting badly needed support for African wildlife parks hit hard by the disappearance of tourists.
Wildlife tourism is a major source of revenue for countries like Kenya. Some operators are now sharing live broadcasts of safaris on social media in the hope that attention to endangered and other species doesn't fade.
In the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, workers have created what they call Sofa Safari, driving around filming with a smartphone from an open-top vehicle.
One of the ways we are trying to be innovative is looking at virtual ways of bringing wildlife to people's homes, to their television sets and to their telephones, said the conservancy's managing director, Richard Vigne.
Among the animals featured are the world's last two surviving northern white rhinos. Researchers have been trying to use in-vitro fertilization to save the species, using eggs taken from the two females and frozen sperm from dead .

Virtual safaris keep wildlife in sight for absent tourists

Singapore has sentenced a drug suspect to death on the popular video chat app Zoom because of the city-state's coronavirus lockdown, a move slammed by a human rights group as callous and inhumane.
Defence lawyer Peter Fernando said the Supreme Court announced the penalty to his client, Punithan Genasan, in a virtual hearing Friday.
Genasan was in jail, while Fernando and prosecutors participated in the hearing from different locations.
It is believed to be the first time the death sentence was delivered remotely in Singapore, which has imposed social distancing measures it calls a circuit breaker.
The court ruled that the 37-year-old Malaysian was the mastermind of drug trafficking activity in 2011.
This has been the arrangement made by the court under Singapore's 'circuit breaker' measures, with essential hearings conducted via Zoom. We have no complaints, Fernando said Wednesday.
He said he will meet Genasan on Friday to discuss an appeal.  Singapore imposed a lockdown in early ...

Singapore sentences drug suspect to death on Zoom

The Lebanese military has arrested two soldiers caught on camera slapping and pushing a doctor in an emergency ward at a hospital in the northern city of Tripoli, the army said Wednesday.
The video, widely circulated online, caused an uproar  particularly as the nation's health sector struggles to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
The closed-circuit TV footage from the hospital shows a group of armed soldiers cornering a doctor in scrubs in the corridors of an emergency ward.
The soldiers, who appear angry, are seen slapping the doctor, then pushing him and following him into a room where they continue to slap him on the head.
In a statement to a local radio station, Selim Abi Saleh, who heads Tripoli's physicians union, said the hospital's medical staff were trying to keep the soldiers from interrogating a patient bleeding from a gun wound while he was getting urgent medical care.
We denounce this, specially at this time when doctors are doing their utmost to defend the ...

Lebanese soldiers detained for slapping, pushing doctor

Princess Elisabeth, the heir to the Belgian throne, is signing up to do a year in military school to help her prepare for her royal duties.
The palace announced Wednesday that the princess, 18, will enter the Royal Military School in central Brussels for a one-year course in social and military sciences. Her father, King Philippe, also attended the school.
She joins a long tradition within the royal family, the statement said.
She is set to graduate from the United World College of the Atlantic in Wales at the end of the month.

Elisabeth, heir to Belgian throne, to join military school

Gunmen killed 14 people in two separate attacks in Afghanistan while the Taliban targeted pro-government checkpoints in the northeast, killing nine militiamen, officials said on Wednesday, the latest in relentless violence that continues to plague the war-torn nation.
The attacks came against the backdrop of renewed UN calls for an end to violence and as Washington's special peace envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, embarked on another round of talks with the Taliban to press them to start negotiating with the newly reconciled Afghan political leadership in Kabul.
In Parwan province, north of the capital, Kabul, an unknown number of gunmen stormed a mosque late on Tuesday, killing 11 worshipers and wounding several others, said Wahida Shahkar, spokeswoman for the provincial governor. Reports earlier in the day had eight killed.
Also late on Tuesday, gunmen in eastern Khost province attacked a family returning home from a nearby mosque, killing three brothers, according to Adil Haidari, spokesman 

Afghan officials: Attacks kill 14 civilians, 9 militiamen

They see themselves as public health detectives, working 24/7 to track the coronavirus' insidious spread through a country of 83 million, blending door-to-door hoof work with mobile apps, CCTV footage and, if needed, police backup.
Instead of global coronavirus testing, Turkey has based its pandemic response on partial lockdowns and work by armies of contact tracers, who identify people possibly infected by a COVID-19 patient and seek to stamp out the fire before it consumes a neighbourhood, town or region.
Officials from both the Turkish government and the local World Health Organisation say the tactic has paid off.
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca says it's brought the pandemic under control, with virus deaths and confirmed infections falling.
The health ministry has recorded 151,615 confirmed cases  which places Turkey in the global top 10 for infections according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University  and 4,199 deaths.
We brought the sickness' spread under control by monitoring the 

Turkey's pandemic strategy hinges on hazmat-suited gumshoes

Philippine police raided a clandestine hospital and drugstore that was secretly treating Chinese nationals suspected of being infected with the coronavirus, police officials said Wednesday.
Two people were arrested and one patient was found during Tuesday's raid at the residential villa that had been illegally turned into a seven-bed hospital and drug store, Police Brig. Gen. Rhoderick Armamento said.
More than 200 suspected coronavirus rapid test kits and syringes were recovered in trash cans at the villa, which has a small canteen with stacks of beer cases at the lobby entrance where a red sign welcomed visitors with well wishes in Chinese.
The hospital and drugstore are in a large room by the swimming pool at the back of the compound, according to Armamento and a police video.
The Chinese male patient was moved to a Philippine hospital. Those arrested were the Chinese administrator of the hospital, which may have been operating secretly for about three months, and a compatriot who .

Philippine police raid illicit hospital for virus patients

Republican political operatives are recruiting extremely pro-Trump doctors to go on television to prescribe reviving the US economy as quickly as possible, without waiting to meet safety benchmarks proposed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to slow the spread of the new coronavirus.
The plan was discussed in a May 11 conference call with a senior staffer for the Trump reelection campaign organised by CNP Action, an affiliate of the GOP-aligned Council for National Policy.
A leaked recording of the hourlong call was provided to The Associated Press by the Center for Media and Democracy, a progressive watchdog group.
CNP Action is part of the Save Our Country Coalition, an alliance of conservative think tanks and political committees formed in late April to end state lockdowns implemented in response to the pandemic.
Other members of the coalition include the FreedomWorks Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council and Tea Party Patriots.
A resurgent ...

Trump allies lining up doctors to prescribe rapid reopening

A Canadian pastor charged in Myanmar with violating a ban on large gatherings made his first court appearance after being released from a quarantine reportedly because he had contracted COVID-19.
David Lah was charged in mid-April and faces possible punishment of up to three years in prison, a fine, or both. The law was invoked in mid-March to combat the spread of the coronavirus, and the charge involves a religion gathering Lah held on April 7 in Yangon.
The judge at Wednesday's hearing ordered Lah's detention for 15 days pending a possible trial while police continue their investigations. Lah made no public comment.
The evidence against Lah comes from videos he posted online of his own sermons. One video purportedly showed him making false claims that Christians were immune from contracting the coronavirus. Another clip that caused outrage in the predominantly Buddhist country had him saying that the teachings of Buddhist monks are responsible for making people sinful. Lah has ...

Canadian pastor held in Myanmar for flouting gathering rule

In troubled times, people have been known to hoard currency at home  a financial security blanket against deep uncertainty.
But in this crisis, things are different.
This time cash itself, passed from hand to hand across neighbourhoods, cities and societies just like the coronavirus, is a source of suspicion rather than reassurance.
No longer a thing to be shoved mindlessly into a pocket, tucked into a worn wallet or thrown casually on a kitchen counter, money's status has changed during the virus era  perhaps irrevocably.
The pandemic has also reawakened debate about the continued viability of what has been the physical lifeblood of global economies: paper money and coins.
From the supermarkets of the United States and Japan to the shantytowns of Africa to the gas stations of Tehran, a growing number of businesses and individuals worldwide have stopped using banknotes in fear that physical currency, handled by tens of thousands of people over their useful life, could be a vector for .

Cash, long a refuge in uncertain times, now under suspicion

New Jersey's top homeland security official received nearly nonstop calls in early March from grocery chains, trucking companies and other logistics firms wanting to know if rumours of an impending national lockdown were true.
They weren't, and Jared Maples soon learned the companies were reacting to misinformation stemming from text messages shared widely across the country.
Federal officials debunked the messages, but Maples said the whole episode was a whoa moment for him and other state officials. Weeks later, New Jersey launched a website aimed at debunking misinformation and rumours about COVID-19.
Misinformation is out there. You can't take everything at face value, Maples, director of the state's homeland security and preparedness office, told The Associated Press in an interview. If you hear a rumour, we want people to realize that there's a place to go (to check it out.)
New Jersey's effort mirrors a rumour-control site set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and .

New Jersey, other states, work to fight virus misinformation

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says the Palestinian Authority will no longer be committed to any signed agreements with Israel or the United States, following Israel's pledge to annex large parts of the occupied West Bank.
It was not immediately clear how the announcement, which was made at a Palestinian leadership meeting late on Tuesday, would be implemented.
The Oslo accords and other agreements in the 1990s created the Palestinian Authority and govern its political, economic and security relations with Israel.
The Palestinian Liberation Organization and the State of Palestine are no longer committed to all signed agreements and understandings with the Israeli government and the American government, including the security commitments," Abbas said.
He said Israel would now have to uphold responsibilities before the international community as the occupying power.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to annex the Jordan Valley and Jewish settlements in the West ...

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