Argentine president Alberto Fernandez should be back in Buenos Aires on Friday following a European weeklong tour where he met the Pope and several leaders as part of his strategy to address the rescheduling of the country's foreign debt, which has the Argentine economy prostrated and with minimum chances of recovery if it has to meet capital and interest commitments.
Over fifty delegates from British territories and dependencies participated in the Red Ensign Group annual conference in the Falklands this week. The Red Ensign Group (*) brings together 13 shipping registers whose vessels are entitled to fly British merchant navy flag or Red Ensign. The group aims to ensure that quality standards in shipping are upheld across the territories whose ships fly the Red Ensign.
China said on Thursday it will halve punitive tariffs on US$75 billion in US imports from Feb 14, a month after Beijing and Washington signed a truce in their long-running trade war.
The British government is hiring additional ships for the Royal Navy amid growing Brexit tensions - with reports as many as 24 extra boats could be drafted into service. The Times reports that “Ministers are getting ready to triple the number of boats in Britain’s fisheries protection squadron to police territorial waters in the event of a no-trade-deal Brexit”.
When scientist Peter Soroye first saw the figures showing estimated bumblebee populations in North America had fallen by nearly 50% in a single generation, he thought it must be a typo. He checked the numbers - the result of a long-term analysis of bumblebee populations published in the journal Science on Thursday, seven times to be sure they were accurate.
Brazil's lower house of Congress late approved a bill laying out rules for the quarantine of Brazilian nationals returning from China who may be infected with coronavirus, as well as other measures to combat the disease. The measures will be in force as long as the public health emergency declared by the World Health Organization is in place.
NASA's Christina Koch returned to Earth safely on Thursday after shattering the spaceflight record for female astronauts with a stay of almost 11 months aboard the International Space Station. Koch touched down at 0912 GMT on the Kazakh steppe after 328 days in space, along with Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency and Alexander Skvortsov of the Russian space agency.
A Chinese doctor who was among the first to warn publicly about the new coronavirus outbreak - and was reprimanded by authorities for “spreading rumours” - died of the infection early on Friday, his hospital announced.
The death toll from a new coronavirus in mainland China jumped by 73 to 563 on Thursday, its third consecutive record daily rise, as experts intensified efforts to find a vaccine for a disease that has shut down Chinese cities and forced thousands more into quarantine around the world.
Argentina on Wednesday told the International Monetary Fund that Buenos Aires cannot continue servicing unsustainable debt, as the IMF encouraged it to enact efficient restructuring policies.