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The speaker of Kazakhstan's lower house of parliament has self-isolated after contracting the new coronavirus, authorities said on Wednesday as they raised the alarm about a fresh surge in COVID-19 cases in the capital Nur-Sultan.

Facebook Inc said on Tuesday it would affix labels to political ads shared by users on their own feeds, closing what critics have said for years was a glaring loophole in the company's election transparency measures.

Scores of domestic flights in and out of Beijing were cancelled on Wednesday as officials ramped up attempts to contain a coronavirus outbreak in the Chinese capital over the past week that has sparked fears of renewed wider contagion.

Alphabet Inc's Google on Wednesday introduced new advertising features intended to help local businesses get more customers and recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

Britain has increased the amount of dexamethasone it has in stock and on order to 240,000 doses, health minister Matt Hancock said on Wednesday, after a preliminary trial result showed it reduced mortality in the most severe COVID-19 cases.

Shares of Chembio Diagnostics Inc slumped more than 60% on Wednesday after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revoked the emergency use authorization for its COVID-19 antibody test kit on concerns about its accuracy.

There is no reason to stockpile the generic steroid drug dexamethasone, a German health ministry spokesman said on Wednesday, after British trial data showed it reduced death rates among patients with the most severe COVID-19 infections.

Mink at a farm in Denmark were found to be infected with the new coronavirus and all 11,000 of the animals there will have to be culled, Danish authorities said on Wednesday.

Environmental campaigners delivered a 12-foot (3.6-metre) tall mock-up of an Amazon parcel to the French finance ministry on Wednesday to demand that the government rein in the e-commerce giant's expansion in France.

Germany is not currently planning to take any further stakes in biotech firms, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said on Wednesday after Berlin announced it would take a stake in German vaccine developer CureVac.

A new U.S. rule regarding China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd is a needed "clarification" to help develop standards, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Wednesday, adding that security concerns remain over the telecoms equipment maker.

Contentful, a startup based in Berlin and San Francisco, said on Wednesday it had raised $80 million from investors led by Sapphire Ventures to scale up its content management systems for commercial websites.

Indonesia reported 1,031 new coronavirus infections on Wednesday taking the total to 41,431 and overtaking Singapore with the highest number of COVID-19 cases in Southeast Asia.

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Russia already uses dexamethasone to treat patients with the novel coronavirus, but does not view it as a panacea against COVID-19, the RIA news agency cited Russian health ministry official Sergei Avdeev as saying on Wednesday.

For the past seven years, a Munich-based firm called riskmethods has tried to interest companies in buying software that allows them to track all their suppliers in a way that minimizes risks in operating globally spread supply chains.

Beijing cannot rule out the possibility that the number of COVID-19 cases in the city will stay at current levels for some time, a city official said on Wednesday.

The situation in China, where a second wave of coronavirus infection is feared, is "worrying" but trends in France remain positive, Labour Minister Muriel Penicaud said on Wednesday.

A vaccine against the coronavirus pandemic by CureVac could be on the market in mid-2021, the unlisted German company said on Wednesday.

Russia said on Wednesday that differences between other nations over the role of the World Health Organization have delayed a video conference being organized between the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, the RIA news agency reported.