World

QUITO (Reuters) – Ecuador’s health and labor ministers resigned yesterday, just hours after officials announced the number of confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus had shot up to over 500 in the country.

NAIROBI/JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Angola, Eritrea and Uganda confirmed their first cases of coronavirus, while Mauritius recorded its first death as the virus spreads across Africa despite measures by governments to hold it back.

(Reuters) – Grammy-winning country singer Kenny Rogers died late on Friday night at the age of 81, his family said yesterday.

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – As cities go into lockdown to stop the spread of coronavirus, officials from the United States to France are scrambling to protect homeowners and renters from homelessness.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The movie musical “Cats” on Monday dominated the Razzie Awards for the worst movies of 2019, winning six trophies including worst film, screenplay and director.

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – As Extinction Rebellion climate activists began preparing for a fresh year of protests in 2020, their chief concerns ranged from potential new police and legal restrictions on street protests, to how to boost their own numbers, diversity and effectiveness.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Inside the stout fins of a fish that prowled the shallow waters of an estuary in what is now eastern Canada about 380 million years ago, scientists have found what they call the evolutionary origins of the human hand.

JOHANNESBURG (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Whenever people walked by the overgrown bowling green in Johannesburg’s working-class Bertrams neighborhood, they saw an eyesore.

SÃO PAULO, (SCIDev.Net) – Babies exposed to malaria in the womb can suffer low birth weight and miscarriages, but a new study has found a common arthritis drug could put an end to the scourge of placental malaria.

BEIJING (Reuters) – A new Chinese medium-lift rocket, part of a family of launch vehicles meant to support most of China’s launch missions in future, failed on its debut flight, the official news agency Xinhua reported.

(SciDev.Net) – Analysing how coronavirus impacts genders differently could be key in fighting the disease, say public health experts.

TBILISI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – As coronavirus closes churches, synagogues and mosques worldwide, religious leaders are taking faith online to ensure God’s word gets to the millions marooned by the pandemic.

ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Catastrophic crop failures caused by extreme weather in just one country could disrupt global food supplies and drive price spikes in an interconnected world, exposing how climate change threatens global stability, researchers said on Friday.

DUBAI, (Reuters) – Iran’s death toll from the coronavirus outbreak rose by more than 100 to 1,556 today and the total number of people infected now exceeds 20,000, a health ministry official said.

LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK  (Reuters) – New York state, Illinois and Connecticut yesterday followed California in directing tens of millions of people to stay at home in the most sweeping U.S.

WASHINGTON,  (Reuters) – Two Republican senators defended themselves yesterday against heavy criticism, including calls that they resign, for selling substantial amounts of stocks before the coronavirus-induced market meltdown and after closed-door briefings on the outbreak.

JOHANNESBURG/MILAN,  (Reuters) – Exxon Mobil is likely to delay the greenlighting of its $30 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Mozambique as the coronavirus disrupts early works and a depressed gas market makes investors wary, six sources told Reuters.

(Reuters) – Curacao state-owned oil refinery Refineria di Korsou (RdK) yesterday seized an oil storage terminal on the Dutch Caribbean island of Bonaire over a payment dispute with Venezuela’s state-run PDVSA oil firm, a RdK official said.

(Reuters) – Panama’s Copa Airlines yesterday said it will suspend all operations from March 22 until April 21, making it the first Latin American carrier to take such a drastic measure in order to weather the coronavirus crisis.

BRASILIA/SAO PAULO,  (Reuters) – Brazil declared a state of emergency today, freeing up funds for the federal government to fight a coronavirus crisis that has hurt the popularity of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s government.