Blogroll

Spain will allow children to go outside for walks from next weekend in a loosening of the country's strict coronavirus lockdown, Health Minister Salvador Illa said late on Tuesday, amid mounting criticism that the government's restrictions unfairly penalise the very young.

The top official in Britain's foreign ministry said on Tuesday he had been mistaken when he told a committee of lawmakers the government had made a political decision not to participate in a European scheme to buy ventilators to fight the coronavirus.

A total of 17,337 people who tested positive for coronavirus have died in hospitals in Britain, an increase of 828 on the figure published 24 hours earlier, health ministry data showed on Tuesday.

Global coronavirus infections surpassed 2.5 million on Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally, with U.S. cases surpassing 800,000.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday it has replaced Rick Bright as director of a key U.S. agency charged with developing drugs and vaccines for COVID-19.

Reported cases of the coronavirus have crossed 2.5 million globally and 172,927 people have died, according to a Reuters tally as of 1600 GMT on Tuesday.

Videogame sales in March hit their highest in over a decade, as Americans turned to games like "Animal Crossing: New Horizons" and "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" because of lockdowns to stem the spread of the coronavrius.

Britain's House of Commons, where lawmakers notoriously jeer at rivals seated two sword-lengths away, is about to find out whether it can make ministers sweat over Zoom.

Lawmakers and former officials are making a last-ditch push to persuade the Trump administration to halt plans to invest billions of federal employee retirement dollars in Chinese companies that Washington suspects of human rights abuses or threatening U.S. security, according to sources and documents seen by Reuters.

New York state brought civil charges on Tuesday accusing Mallinckrodt Plc of insurance fraud for misrepresenting the safety and efficacy of its opioid drugs, leading to medically unnecessary prescriptions.

Coronavirus fatalities in France increased steadily on Tuesday to nearly 21,000, but the number of patients in intensive care registered its sharpest decline since the beginning of the outbreak.

Resuscitation nurse Aline Lheureux feared there would be trouble in the impoverished Paris suburb where she works when she heard youngsters playing sport in the streets outside even though France was under tough lockdown rules.

The Netherlands on Tuesday extended by three months a ban on major public events, including professional sports and music festivals, until Sept. 1 to prevent a resurgence of coronavirus infections, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said.

Britain's health minister sought to downplay news on Tuesday that the true extent of the country's COVID-19 death toll was more than 40% higher than the government's daily figures indicated as of April 10.

Dozens of migrants in a hostel in southern Greece tested positive for the coronavirus on Tuesday as the government set a date to start a gradual easing of a lockdown.

Amazon made its case on Tuesday in a French court of appeal to keep deliveries on track in the country, rejecting unions' allegations that it was not doing its best to protect employees from COVID-19.

Juanita Zarate says she has helped deliver hundreds of babies in 45 years working as a midwife in an indigenous community in southern Mexico.

Spain's cabinet approved measures on Tuesday to support workers and businesses struggling under stringent coronavirus restrictions as officials cheered a slowing infection rate.

Ireland on Tuesday banned large-scale public events until the end of August at the earliest in a bid to rein in the coronavirus outbreak.

President Donald Trump's response to the coronavirus outbreak took on a sharper political tone with his pledge to suspend immigration into the country, while Georgia and other U.S. states began lifting restrictions that stalled their economies.