WORLD

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 …

Vancouver, Canada | AFP |  Vancouver resident Trixie Ling recalls her disgust and anger after a passing stranger taunted her with racial and sexual slurs in early May. Then he spat on her face. “I was feeling a mixture of shock, disgust and sadness that it happened to me,” Ling said …

Brussels, Belgium | AFP |  European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen will on Wednesday propose a roughly one-trillion-euro post-virus recovery fund for Europe, but will have to win over sceptical member states. The global coronavirus outbreak has thrust the EU into its deepest ever recession, and Von der Leyen’s proposal …

New York, United States | AFP |  New York pastor Fabian Arias has been in constant mourning these past two months — the coronavirus has killed 44 of his mostly Hispanic parishioners, highlighting inequalities he says are being worsened by Donald Trump’s government. Amid the tragedies, the Argentine priest is providing a …

Washington, United States | AFP |  Gone are the lively meetings, the distribution of flyers on busy campuses. The coronavirus pandemic has put an abrupt stop to traditional US political means of courting young voters — forcing presidential candidates to turn to Snapchat instead. The photo-sending app that boasts 229 million …