A Houthi supporter looks on as he carries a weapon during a gathering in Sanaa, Yemen on April 2, 2020. (REUTERS File Photo)   DUBAI/RIYADH, April 9 (Reuters): The Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis said on Wednesday it was halting military operations nationwide in support of U.N. efforts to end a five-year war that has killed over 100,000 people and spread hunger and disease.   The move aims to facilitate talks sponsored by U.N. specia

Parked school buses are seen after California issued a stay-at-home order as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Los Angeles, California, US on April 3, 2020. (REUTERS Photo)   Reuters  "I feel like 20 years from now, we'll be a history project."   Children around the world are living through a moment that no generation has really experienced before. Many in the United States are approaching a month in lockdown, unable to se

Judy Boifuana hikes in the jungle near Igwa village on the island of Malaita, Solomon Islands on September 18, 2019. (Thomson Reuters Foundation File Photo)   IGWA, Solomon Islands, April 9 (Thomson Reuters Foundation): Jessica Jacinta was just a child when loggers first arrived in the forest a few miles from her Solomon Islands village of Igwa.   Soon, they had cleared large stretches of land so aggressively that it would take decades for trees to recov

United Nations, April 9 (IANS) UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged support for the World Health Organization (WHO) after US President Donald Trump threatened to freeze American funding. "It is my belief that the World Health Organization must be supported, as it is absolutely critical to the world's efforts to win the war against COVID-19," Xinhua news agency quoted Guterres as saying in a statement on Wednesday. "This virus is unprecedented in our lifetime and r

 A healthcare worker in protective suits helps an elderly person to get off an ambulance at the Southeast Nursing and Rehabilitation Center nursing home during the coronavirus epidemic. San Antonio, Texas, U.S. April 4, 2020. REUTERS/Go Nakamura/File Photo   April 9 (Reuters) - U.S. deaths due to coronavirus topped 14,600 on Wednesday, the second highest reported number in the world behind Italy, according to a Reuters tally.   Italy has the most reported dea

Geneva, April 9 (IANS) "Please quarantine politicizing COVID. If we want to win, we shouldn't waste time pointing fingers," World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged here, saying "Unity is the only option to defeat this virus." Answering a question from the press about US President Donald Trump's threat to freeze US funding to the WHO, Tedros on Wednesday said his message for the world at this moment is unity and solidarity, instead of po

Washington, April 9 (IANS) US President Donald Trump renewed his attack on the World Health Organization (WHO) as he said that the US will make a determination on WHO funding. On Wednesday, Trump while addressing the daily briefing claimed that the WHO has gotten the pandemic "wrong". The WHO must "get its priorities right", he says, adding that the US is going to do "a study, investigation" to determine if it will continue to fund the agency, the BBC reported. "Everybody ha

New York, April 9 (IANS) New York's "battle on the mountaintop" against coronavirus is raging, its death toll rose by a record number for a second consecutive day, hospitalisations are slowing and its curve is flattening as a result of social distancing efforts but 40 per cent of tests are still coming out positive in this US hotspot that has been hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic. New York reported 779 deaths, a record number for the second consecutive day as the state expe

Beijing, April 9 (IANS) The first batch of 866 people stranded in virus-hit Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province, has arrived in Beijing by a train after Wuhan lifted its outbound travel restrictions on the same day. Beijing residents who were stranded in Wuhan are required to apply for a return through a mini-program on instant messaging app WeChat. Statistics showed that more than 11,000 people asked for a return to the national capital, said Chen Bei, deputy secr

New York, April 9 (IANS) Global confirmed COVID-19 cases surpassed 1.5 million on Wednesday afternoon local time, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. The fresh figure reached 1,500,830 as of 5.15 p.m. (2115 GMT) with 87,706 deaths, the CSSE said, reported Xinhua news agency. The United States led the world with 423,135 cases. Spain and Italy followed with 146,690 and 139,422 cases, respectively. Countries with over

Healthcare workers push a stretcher holding a deceased persons on it at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID19) in the Brooklyn borough of New York, U.S., April 8, 2020.  REUTERS/Lucas Jackson   April 9(Reuters) - A New York couple has seen the cityscape outside their Brooklyn apartment change dramatically in recent weeks, as refrigerated trucks line up in the lot below to receive the remains of COVID-19 victims as they

Police officers are seen outside St Thomas' Hospital after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson spent a second night in intensive care after his coronavirus (COVID-19) symptoms worsened on Monday. London, Britain, April 8, 2020. REUTERS/Simon Dawson   WASHINGTON, April 9 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is in intensive care battling the COVID-19 disease, seems to be doing better, U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday after saying he had spoken wi

Nurses of a designated COVID-19 intensive care unit at Mass General Hospital send a public message in concern of the disease outbreak, in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., March 27, 2020, in this still image taken from a social media video. Sara Jane Hall/via REUTERS   NEW YORK, April 9 (Reuters) - In New York City, an intensive care nurse treated patients for three days after she started displaying symptoms of COVID-19 - but couldn't get a test from her hospital. In Georgia, a n

 French President Emmanuel Macron talks with social workers and volunteers in charge of assisting the elderly in the area during a visit at a communal center for social action (CCAS) in La Courneuve near Paris as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues in France, April 7, 2020. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/Pool/File Photo   PARIS, April 9 (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron offered his full support to the World Health Organization (WHO) in a call

Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus speaks during a news conference on the situation of the coronavirus (COVID-2019), in Geneva, Switzerland, February 28, 2020. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse   GENEVA, April 9 (Reuters) - The head of the World Health Organization gave a strident defence of his agency's handling of the coronavirus pandemic on Wednesday, in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's criticism and suggestions that Washingt

New Delhi, April 9 (IANS) Tablighi Jamaat, the super spreader of the coronavirus in India seems to have caused a spike in the coronavirus positive cases in Pakistan also. Congress leader Manish Tewari said in a tweet, "Interesting: it seems the Tabalegi Jamat has created problems in Pakistan too with regard to COVID-19. Seems to be a sect issue. Do listen in". Tewari attached a video from a Pakistan new channel which featured an interview with Yasmin Rashid, Health of Punjab

Forest guards chase away a rhino that strayed into a residential area after floods forced animals to escape the Kaziranga National park in Nagaon district, in the northeastern state of Assam on August 15, 2017. (REUTERS File Photo)   LONDON, April 8 (Reuters): Climate change could trigger sudden, potentially catastrophic losses of wildlife in regions around the world over the coming decades, and the first waves could already be unfolding, according to a study published

Pope Francis delivers the weekly Angelus prayer as it is streamed via video over the internet from inside the Vatican on March 29, 2020. (REUTERS File Photo)   VATICAN CITY, April 8 (Reuters): Pope Francis on Wednesday condemned people he said were exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to turn a quick profit and decried the "hypocrisy" of how some politicians are dealing with the crisis.   At the start of his morning Mass, the pope asked for a change of he

A general view of a street, after Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly ordered all restaurants, cafes, cafeterias, night clubs, shopping malls and shops to shut their doors from 0700 p.m. due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Cairo, Egypt on March 24, 2020. (REUTERS File Photo)   CAIRO, April 8 (Reuters): Egypt will extend a nationwide night-time curfew by 15 days until April 23 to counter the spread of the coronavirus, Prime Minister Mostafa Madboul

IANS Photo   SEOUL, APRIL 8 (IANS): Both surgical and cotton masks were found to be ineffective for preventing the dissemination of SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) from the coughs of patients with COVID-19, according to a new study.   The study, published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, conducted at two hospitals in Seoul, South Korea, found that when COVID-19 patients coughed into either type of mask, droplets of virus were released to the environment a