WORLD

Milton Keynes, United Kingdom | AFP | Can dogs detect COVID-19? A British charity believes so, and has begun training canines to sniff out the coronavirus following previous screening success with various illnesses. Medical Detection Dogs, set up in 2008 to harness dogs’ sharp sense of smell to detect human diseases, …

Kiev, Ukraine | AFP |  The headquarters of Dmytro Voloshyn’s startup in the historic centre of Kiev is eerily quiet. But online, his business is busier than ever. Despite a crippling global economic crisis brought about by the coronavirus pandemic, Voloshyn believes a worldwide lockdown to slow infections was just what …

Paris, France | AFP |  As the coronavirus pandemic bears down on vulnerable nations in Africa and South Asia, experts say there are only weeks to help fill chronic shortages of what medics need to help people breathe. Not ventilators, but oxygen itself. Medical oxygen is a core component of the …

Hong Kong, China | AFP |  Oil resumed its painful retreat Wednesday, extending a rout that has torn through energy markets, though stock exchanges in Asia and Europe were mixed following a two-day sell-off. With demand virtually non-existent owing to virus lockdowns, and production still high despite storage at bursting point, …

Beijing, China | AFP | After Wuhan was sealed off from the world, acclaimed Chinese writer Fang Fang started an online diary about the coronavirus tragedy unfolding in her hometown. Her journal drew tens of millions of readers — but now that it is about to be published abroad in several …

Frankfurt am Main, Germany | AFP |  Fears that cash-rich corporate raiders could use the coronavirus crisis to swoop on weakened European firms were perhaps best exemplified by Donald Trump’s alleged bid for a German biotech firm working on a vaccine. The outrage that followed has spurred fresh action by European …

London, United Kingdom | AFP |  Ten years after an oil spill that BP’s new boss Bernard Looney admits tested the company “to the core”, the firm is facing two existential challenges: the collapse of prices and climate change. It was a decade ago this week that an explosion on the …

Washington, United States | AFP |  President Donald Trump partially blocked immigration to the United States “to protect American workers” from the economic shock of the coronavirus, as the United Nations warned the world was facing “a humanitarian catastrophe”. The UN alarm bell came as nations scrambled to not only fight …

Washington, United States | AFP | A malaria drug widely touted as a potential cure for COVID-19 showed no benefit against the disease over standard care — and was in fact associated with more deaths, the biggest study of its kind showed Tuesday. The US government funded analysis of how American …

  New York, United States | AFP | An unprecedented crash in oil prices is adding pressure to already stressed US producers, threatening key shale regions and putting vulnerable companies at risk of going under. A day after US oil futures closed in negative territory for the first time ever, US …