Category: Світ

European leaders are establishing an international medical organization to mount a united battle against the coronavirus.In their announcement in The Independent, a British newspaper, they said they are following in the footsteps of “Louis Pasteur, one of the world’s greatest scientists and a mastermind behind vaccines and breakthroughs which have saved millions of lives spanning …

With the coronavirus having closed nightclubs across the world, comedians are still managing to get the laughs from people on a pandemic lockdowns all over the world.   VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports on Hollywood’s Laugh Factory and The Stand comedy club in Edinburgh. And she looks at a Japanese comedian who stormed the world with …

An earthquake struck the Greek island of Crete Saturday.   There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage from the afternoon temblor, centered in the Mediterranean Sea.   The European Mediterranean Seismological Center reported the quake was of a 6.0 magnitude at a depth of 10 kilometers.   The U.S. Geological Survey said the …

Spaniards spent time outside near their homes Saturday as Spain is starting to reopen after weeks of lockdown triggered by one of Europe’s most deadly coronavirus outbreaks.Parks and gardens are still closed in the capital Madrid, and law enforcement personnel are still keeping people from entering many open spaces for leisure or exercise.   Prime …

Former rebel fighter-turned-president Ramzan Kadyrov has made it clear that independent journalism will not be tolerated in Chechnya: a message that appears to come with the Kremlin’s blessing.Irritated at criticism of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kadyrov in mid-April threatened Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s few remaining independent media outlets that still covers Chechnya, …

A Pakistan journalist living in exile in Sweden who has been missing since March has been found dead, police said Friday.”His body was found on April 23 in the Fyris river outside Uppsala,” police spokesman Jonas Eronen told AFP.Sajid Hussain, from the troubled southwestern province of Baluchistan, was working part-time as a professor in Uppsala, …

Scotland First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Friday the country will have the capacity to test 12,000 people for COVID-19 by the middle of the month.Speaking at her regular coronavirus briefing in Edinburgh, Sturgeon said Scotland had exceeded its target for testing, and currently has the capacity to conduct 8,350 tests per day in its labs.Testing …

The establishment of one-man rule in the heart of Europe has enraged civil libertarians and Hungary’s opposition leaders, who accuse Viktor Orbán of manipulating the coronavirus pandemic to establish what’s effectively an elective dictatorship. Pressure is mounting on the European Union to take action against Hungary for passing sweeping emergency measures that will allow populist leader Orbán to rule by decree indefinitely. Orbán …

Christian Etchebest’s Parisian bistro is a shadow of its usual bustling self. Five lunch specials sit in neat paper bags on the bar awaiting takeout customers — a tiny fraction of his normal midday business before the coronavirus. A skeleton staff rotates in daily at La Cantine du Troquet near the banks of the Seine River, …

Russia’s top diplomat on Thursday angrily dismissed media reports alleging a Russian plot to poison the mayor of Prague and another official in the Czech capital. Prague’s mayor Zdenek Hrib and Zhanna Nemtsova, daughter of Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov smile after unveiling a sign renaming the square where the Russian Embassy is located in Prague, …

The world’s economic pain was on full display Thursday as Europe and the United States were releasing more evidence of the devastation wrought on jobs and economies by coronavirus lockdown measures.  In Europe, where over 132,000 people with the virus have died so far, fears about new infection spikes were tempering hopes that economies now …

Russia is warning that any U.S. attempt to use a low-yield nuclear weapon against a Russian target would set off a massive nuclear response.The Russian foreign ministry was reacting to a State Department paper released last week that says placing low-yield nuclear weapons on ballistic missiles launched from submarines would counter what it sees as …

British people love to talk about the weather. Never more so than when they’re locked in their houses, it seems. With perfect irony, the sun hasn’t stopped shining since the coronavirus lockdown began on March 23 – and everyone’s talking about it. It’s been unseasonably warm, with temperatures in London topping 25 degrees Celsius. For those …

Poland’s prime minister said Wednesday that the presidential election must be held in May despite the coronavirus pandemic to meet the requirements of the constitution. Mateusz Morawiecki said, however, that the May 10 election date may be pushed back by a week or two.  “Constitutional experts say that the election is also possible on successive dates: …

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his fiancee Carrie Symonds announced the birth of a son on Wednesday, just two days after Johnson returned to work following hospitalization for the coronavirus. Johnson’s office said Symonds gave birth to a “healthy baby boy at a London hospital” on Wednesday morning, and both mother and infant were …

The coronavirus crisis risks becoming an existential crisis for the European Union, say diplomats and analysts, as the EU struggles to coordinate a financial response to the pandemic.    Last week, the EU’s national leaders struck an interim agreement on a recovery deal with an emergency fund of about $581 million (a half-billion euros), which the hardest hit member states can …

The U.K. held a minute’s silence Tuesday for all front-line workers who have died from the coronavirus, as official figures showed a new weekly high in the total number of deaths in England and Wales. As clocks struck 11 a.m., senior political leaders, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson, joined hospital and nursing home staff in …

Ready or not, Greece is opening back up. But it is not happening all at once, as the government plans to lift coronavirus restrictions in phases, keeping a ban on religious services to contain new outbreaks of COVID. The plan has infuriated the Greek Orthodox Church and it is now demanding preference over businesses like …

Germany’s farmers, foresters, and firefighters are eagerly awaiting widespread rain forecast for later this week, as a warm, dry spring has raised fears of a third summer drought in as many years. Ahead of a virtual climate meeting Tuesday for officials from 30 countries, German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze said the previous two years of …

Scientists at Oxford University are racing to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus well ahead of the standard medical timeline. The scientists have expressed confidence in their ability to do it quickly, raising hopes around the world that a vaccine will not have to wait until next year.    The first injections of the vaccine being developed by the university’s Jenner Institute in …

Doctors in Britain, Italy, Portugal and Spain are exploring a possible link between a severe inflammatory disease in children and the coronavirus. A growing number of children of various ages in several European countries have been admitted to hospitals with high fever and heart issues. Some also have suffered from gastrointestinal problems, such as vomiting and diarrhea. The children appear to be suffering from Kawasaki disease, which is more common in parts of Asia where it afflicts children younger …

British Health Secretary Matt Hancock expressed cautious optimism Monday about the COVID-19 outbreak in that country, but said the government is sticking with its lockdown restrictions to continue “flattening the curve.” Speaking at a news briefing in London, Hancock said the nation is coming through a peak in the outbreak but said it would “count for nothing if we let things slip now and risk a second peak.” He urged …

Firefighters in Ukraine continue to battle a series of fires near the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant nearly a month after they broke out.The State Service for Emergency Situations said on April 27 that brigades were still working to extinguish fires in the Lubyanskiy, Paryshivskiy, Dytyatkivskiy, and Denysovytskiy forest districts in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.”The …

The holy month of Ramadan is underway, and the Central Jamia Mosque Ghamkol Sharif in Birmingham should be full of worshippers. But this year, the main arrivals are the dead. While the mosque in the central England city has been closed in response to the coronavirus pandemic, its parking lot has been transformed into a …

In Spain the confinement began on March 14.  Since then we have not been out on the street, except to buy food and throw away the garbage.  There are 45 apartments in the building where we live with our young son, 200 meters from the sea in the Poblenou neighborhood of Barcelona. It was built …

European markets are starting the trading week in positive territory as governments around the world begin to gradually lift restrictions imposed to fight the coronavirus epidemic.   London’s benchmark FTSE was trading 1.4% higher in Monday’s late-afternoon session, the CAC-40 in Paris had gained 1.9%, and Frankfurt’s DAX index was 2.8% higher.   All of Asia’s indexes made significant …