Geneva, Switzerland | AFP | Sofiane Rahmani can hardly believe his luck. After several years of living on the street and bouncing between shelters, he now has his own hotel room, personal bathroom and all meals provided. “It’s true luxury,” the 16-year-old Algerian illegal migrant told AFP at the three-star Bel …
Read More »Families mourn as police seek motive for Canada gun rampage
Montreal, Canada | AFP | Investigators on Monday scoured crime scenes from the worst mass shooting in Canadian history to try to understand why a dental worker with no criminal past killed at least 18 people. The gunman, identified by police as 51-year-old Gabriel Wortman, began his rampage late Saturday in …
Read More »US Treasury sends first airline aid payments
Washington, United States | AFP | The Trump administration on Monday sent out the first payments meant to help save airline jobs as the industry is ravaged by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. The US Treasury sent the first $2.9 billion of the plan — agreed upon last week after …
Read More »What we know about the ‘devious’ coronavirus
Paris, France | AFP | Will the novel coronavirus leave you short of breath or make you lose your sense of smell? And if you have had it once, can you be confident you are immune? So far, the research on COVID-19 has raised as many questions as it has answered. …
Read More »WHO insists it hid nothing, sounded virus alarm from start
Geneva, Switzerland | AFP | The World Health Organization insisted Monday that it sounded the alarm on the novel coronavirus right from the very start and had hidden nothing from Washington about the deadly pandemic. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there were no secrets at the UN agency after being …
Read More »Harry and Meghan blacklist UK tabloids over ‘distorted’ stories
London, United Kingdom | AFP | Prince Harry and his wife Meghan have blacklisted four major British tabloid newspapers because of their reporting, in the latest escalation of their public battle with the media. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex accused The Sun, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail and Daily Express of …
Read More »Supply glut, virus push oil to lowest ever-level
New York, United States | AFP | Oil prices ended New York trading in the negative on Monday for the first time ever, as a supply glut forced traders to pay others to take the commodity. With space to store oil scarce, US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for May delivery ended …
Read More »Pandemic has ‘destroyed’ rights of dying: Israeli academic
Jerusalem, Undefined | AFP | The coronavirus pandemic has “destroyed” the rights of dying people, renowned Franco-Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz told AFP, lamenting the absence of meaningful human contact in many patients’ final days. “Think of a patient on a hospital bed: what do they see? They have no contact with …
Read More »Hungry, jobless Americans turning to food banks to survive pandemic
New York, United States | AFP | American families slammed by the coronavirus pandemic are turning more and more to food banks to get by, waiting hours for donations in lines of cars stretching as far as the eye can see. And with 22 million people out of work seemingly overnight …
Read More »Cuba’s private sector suffering from a lack of tourists
Havana, Cuba | AFP | Havana is a ghost town. The American convertibles swooned over by tourists are back in the garage, while most restaurants and cafes are closed. Cuba’s private sector has been suffering since the island nation closed its borders over the coronavirus pandemic. In the charming old building …
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