Новости за 08.04.2020

France will extend its nationwide lockdown put in place to contain the spread of the new coronavirus for a second time, meaning it will run beyond April 15, the French presidential palace said on Wednesday.

France’s coronavirus death toll rose to 10,869 after hospitals recorded 541 new fatalities in 24 hours, health officials said Wednesday, as the French presidency announced that a nationwide lockdown would be extended for a second time.

In an emotional interview with FRANCE 24's partner radio stations RFI and Radio France, Roland Marchal, the French academic released last month after more than nine months in an Iranian jail, spoke out about his time in detention. Marchal's partner, Fariba Adelkhah, who was arrested at the same time as him, remains in prison in Tehran.

Syrian Arab Air Force pilots flying Sukhoi Su-22 military planes and a helicopter dropped bombs containing poisonous chlorine and sarin nerve gas on a village in the country's western Hama region in March 2017, a new team at the global chemical weapons watchdog concluded in its first report.

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson was "responding to treatment", his spokesman said Wednesday, as the 55-year-old leader spent a third day in intensive care battling the coronavirus.

While most of France has been ordered to stay home amid a nationwide coronavirus lockdown, rubbish collectors are still out performing an indispensable task: keeping the streets clean. Paris authorities have provided them with masks, extra gloves and hand sanitizer — a welcome protection, though not enough to allay their concerns.  “This job is already risky because there's a lot of bacteria in trash,” says Fred Romil. “But we're doing our best.” For once, the essential nature of their work has not gone unnoticed... Читать дальше...

At airports, railway stations and on the roads, people in Wuhan, China flocked to leave the city on Wednesday as outbound travel restrictions were lifted, 76 days after the city was placed under lockdown amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Senator Bernie Sanders ended his presidential bid on Wednesday, his campaign said in a statement, paving the way for former vice president Joe Biden to challenge President Donald Trump as the Democratic nominee.

With governments around the world struggling to provide healthcare workers on the coronavirus front lines with protective equipment, governments are now advising members of the public to fashion their own face masks at home to help reduce the transmission of the coronavirus.

Despite "positive signs" from some countries, it is too early to scale back measures aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus, the World Health Organization's European office said Wednesday.

Spain recorded on Wednesday a second successive daily rise in coronavirus-related deaths with 757 fatalities, lifting the total toll in Europe's second-hardest-hit country after Italy by 5.5 percent to 14,555.

Indonesia’s annual mudik (exodus), which begins with Ramadan, risks undermining the country’s efforts to stem the spread of Covid-19 as tens of millions cross the densely populated archipelago to return home. Despite an already overburdened healthcare system and the second-highest death toll in Asia after China, Indonesia has yet to declare a nationwide quarantine.

Since the beginning of March and the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic in Europe, Chinese companies have sold nearly 4 billion face masks overseas, according to authorities. For Beijing, this is a perfect way to change the narrative: China is now offering its assistance to virus-hit countries while trying to leave the mistakes of the early outbreak in the past.

In its worst performance since 1945, the French economy shrank around six percent in the first quarter of this year as the coronavirus pandemic decimated business activity, the Bank of France said Wednesday.

European Union finance ministers failed to agree in all-night talks on more support for their coronavirus-hit economies and their chairman said on Wednesday morning he was suspending the discussions until Thursday.

Former Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison for corruption during his 10-year term in office, the attorney general's office said Tuesday.

Wisconsin held its presidential primary as planned Tuesday, contradicting a state-wide stay-at-home order and defying concern that the election could expose thousands of voters and poll workers to the coronavirus.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to cut US funding to the World Health Organization, accusing it of bias toward China during the coronavirus pandemic.

Grammy-winning singer John Prine, who wrote his early songs in his head while delivering mail and later emerged from Chicago's folk revival scene in the 1970s to become one of the most influential songwriters of his generation, died on Tuesday, the New York Times reported. He was 73.

Twitter co-founder and chief executive Jack Dorsey said Tuesday he was committing $1 billion of his personal fortune to coronavirus relief through his philanthropic fund.

Even as medical teams struggled to save an onslaught of gravely ill coronavirus patients and deaths hit new highs, the number of COVID-19 hospitalisations seemed to be leveling off in New York state, the U.S. epicentre of the pandemic, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Tuesday.