WORLD

Paris, France | AFP | The French government said Wednesday that doctors should no longer prescribe hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 patients, an unproven and potentially harmful treatment for the disease nonetheless promoted by US President Donald Trump. The move came after two French advisory bodies and the World Health Organization (WHO) warned …

United Nations, United States | AFP | UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday bemoaned the failure to heed his call for a ceasefire in conflicts around the world to aid the fight against COVID-19. “A global ceasefire would create conditions for a stronger response to the pandemic and the delivery of humanitarian aid to the …

Paris, France | AFP | As more governments turn to tracing apps in the fight against the coronavirus, a deep-rooted tension between the need for public health information and privacy rights has been thrust into the spotlight. Track-and-trace technology is being touted as a silver bullet that will allow economies to …

Brussels, Belgium | AFP | European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday proposed a 750-billion-euro post-virus recovery fund for Europe and urged sceptical member states to back it. The global coronavirus outbreak has already thrust the EU into its deepest ever recession, and Von der Leyen’s proposal would help …

Tokyo, Japan | AFP | Imagine the body’s instruction manual, the genome: here words are genes, letters are DNA, and the equivalent of typos can have disastrous consequences. In recent years, scientists have grown increasingly fluent in the language of genome, but much remains mysterious, including the function of many of …

Washington, United States | AFP | US President Donald Trump threatened Wednesday to shutter social media platforms after Twitter for the first time acted against his false tweets, prompting the enraged Republican to double down on unsubstantiated claims and conspiracy theories. Twitter tagged just two of Trump’s tweets in which he’d …

Washington, United States | AFP | The US Congress was set Wednesday to authorize sanctions against Chinese officials over the mass incarceration of Uighur Muslims, ramping up pressure in another front in the Pacific powers’ troubled relationship. The US House of Representatives will vote later Wednesday on a final version of …

Ottawa, Canada | AFP |  A Canadian judge will deliver a key decision Wednesday on the extradition of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou that could set her free and help repair Canada-China relations. Four days of legal arguments in January focused on whether US charges against the “Huawei Princess” would stand up …

Twitter calls Trump tweets ‘unsubstantiated’ for the first time San Francisco, United States | AFP | Twitter labelled two Donald Trump tweets “unsubstantiated” and accused him of making false claims Tuesday, a first for the social network which has long resisted calls to censure the US president over truth-defying posts. …

Minsk, Belarus | AFP |  Young men in dark hoodies and tracksuit bottoms form a human chain to pass down black sacks from a storeroom and pile them in the back of a car. These Belarusian volunteers have stepped in to rush free supplies of much-needed protective equipment to hospitals as authorities …