International

• Thursday, April 2nd 2020 - 09:43 UTC

  Trump orders sanitary evacuation of Zaandam and Rotterdam passengers

  

  US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that US authorities will evacuate passengers from a stranded cruise ship due to dock in Florida after being barred from several South American countries because of a coronavirus outbreak aboard.

• Thursday, April 2nd 2020 - 08:55 UTC

  Wild animals are slipping to explore empty streets of lock-downed cities

  

  With humans retreating into their homes as more and more countries go under coronavirus lockdown, wild animals are slipping cover to explore the empty streets of some of the biggest cities. Wild boar have descended from the hills around Barcelona in Spain while sika deer are nosing their way around the deserted metro stations of Nara in Japan.

• Thursday, April 2nd 2020 - 08:50 UTC

  One million Brits claimed “universal credit” welfare payments in two weeks

  

  Almost one million people have claimed “universal credit” welfare payments in the UK in the past two weeks, exposing the massive economic hit from Boris Johnson's coronavirus lockdown.

• Thursday, April 2nd 2020 - 08:39 UTC

  With lockdown, Spain's helpline for victims of gender violence shoots up

  

  Calls to Spain's governmental helpline for victims of gender violence shot up in the first two weeks of a state of emergency lockdown imposed to combat the spread of coronavirus, the government said on Wednesday.

• Thursday, April 2nd 2020 - 07:58 UTC

  Growing opinion in US that China's coronavirus figures are a “major cover-up operation”

  

  President Donald Trump cast doubt on Wednesday on the accuracy of official Chinese figures on its coronavirus outbreak after US lawmakers, citing an intelligence report, accused Beijing of a cover-up.

• Thursday, April 2nd 2020 - 07:55 UTC

  Antarctica some 90 million years ago was a temperate, swampy rainforest

  

  Antarctica is now a harsh land of ice and snow but has not always been that way. Earth's southernmost continent long ago was home to temperate, swampy rainforests teeming with life, scientists said on Wednesday based on pristinely preserved forest soil they retrieved by drilling under the seafloor off Antarctica's coast.

• Thursday, April 2nd 2020 - 07:51 UTC

  Carnival Cruises raises US$ 6,25bn in new debt and equity but at very high cost

  

  Carnival Corp, the world's largest cruise operator, said it has raised US$6.25 billion by issuing new debt and equity on Wednesday, borrowing at a high cost to weather the economic storm of the coronavirus pandemic.

• Thursday, April 2nd 2020 - 07:49 UTC

  Two US babies coronavirus deaths surprise the medical community

  

  A six-week-old infant has died of complications relating to COVID-19, the governor of the US state of Connecticut said on Wednesday, in one of the youngest recorded deaths from the virus. Governor Ned Lamont tweeted that the newborn was “brought unresponsive to a hospital late last week and could not be revived”.

• Thursday, April 2nd 2020 - 07:36 UTC

  Mitigating impacts of Covid-19 on food trade and markets

  

  The following is the statement by FAO's chief Qu Donguy, WHO's Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyseus and WTO's director-general Roberto Azevedo.

• Thursday, April 2nd 2020 - 07:16 UTC

  Australia to check some 9.000 crew in cruise ships stranded near Sydney

  

  Australian police and military will soon begin flying doctors to several cruise ships stranded near Sydney to assess nearly 9,000 crew for COVID-19, officials said on Thursday.