World News in Brief: October 6

* Two Americans and a Briton won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday (October 5) for identifying the hepatitis C virus, in work spanning decades that has helped to limit the spread of the fatal disease and develop drugs to cure it.

* UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday condemned the continuing escalation of violence in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone between Armenia and Azerbaijan despite repeated international appeals for them to immediately stop the fighting, said his spokesman.

* Kim Jong Un, the Chairman of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Monday presided over a Political Bureau meeting to discuss preparation for celebrating the founding anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) on Saturday and for the 8th Party congress in January.

* Participants welcomed the planned resumption of intra-Libyan talks and asked parties involved in the Libyan conflict to find common ground at a ministerial meeting co-chaired by the United Nations (UN) and Germany on Monday.

* Thailand’s cabinet on Tuesday approved a THAB10.6 billion (US$339 million) project to create jobs to support its rural economy and reduce poverty.

* With 61,267 new cases in the past 24 hours, India’s COVID-19 tally reached 6,685,082, said the latest data released by the federal health ministry on Tuesday. As many as 884 deaths were registered across the country since Monday morning, taking the total death toll to 103,569. A consistent decrease both in the number of new COVID-19 cases and deaths registered per day has been recorded in the country this month.

* The Philippines reported 2,093 new daily COVID-19 infections on Tuesday, pushing the number of confirmed coronavirus disease cases in the country to 326,833. The Philippines’ Department of Health (DOH) said that the number of recoveries also rose to 273,313 after 209 more patients recovered. Meanwhile, 25 more patients died from the viral disease, bringing the death toll to 5,865.

* COVID-19 cases in Indonesia rose by 4,056 within one day to 311,176, with the death toll adding by 121 to 11,374, the health ministry said on Tuesday. According to the ministry, 3,844 more people were discharged from hospitals, bringing the total number of recovered patients to 236,437. The virus has spread to all the country’s 34 provinces.

* Brunei reported no new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday with the national tally of cases standing at 146. It marked the 12th consecutive day without new cases since Sept. 24. According to Brunei’s Ministry of Health, there is no active case being treated at the National Isolation Center and the total number of recovered cases remains at 143. There have been three deaths that resulted from COVID-19 in Brunei.

* Japan plans to conduct stress tests on its five major financial institutions this year that look into how the pandemic could affect their earnings and capital, the central bank said.

* World stock markets neared a more than two-week high on Tuesday after US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House from hospital, and expectations of a new US stimulus package being agreed rose.

* Europe’s health regulator said it has started a rolling review of the experimental vaccine being developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.

* Australia will spend AUD4 billion over the next year to pay businesses that hire those under the age of 35 as part of an ambitious plan to boost jobs and growth.

* Britain has rationed its supplies of the antiviral drug remdesivir and is prioritising COVID-19 patients who need it most in the face of rising demand, Britain’s health ministry said.

* The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday said COVID-19 can spread through virus lingering in the air, sometimes for hours.

* Mexico on Monday reported a record jump of 2,789 deaths and 28,115 cases due to what the government said was a change in methodology.

* Argentina has the world’s highest rate of positive tests, according to Oxford-linked tracker Our World In Data, with nearly six out of 10 yielding an infection.

* Spain became the first Western European nation to surpass 800,000 total cases.

* Ireland’s government is set to reject a surprise recommendation by its health chiefs to go into lockdown and will instead propose a tightening of current restrictions, two government sources said.

* A second wave of the pandemic risks delaying the euro zone’s economic recovery, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said.

* The performance of manufacturing production in the Philippines further contracted in August, the sixth consecutive month, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said Tuesday. Based on the preliminary results, the PSA said the year-on-year value of production index (VaPI) and the volume of production index (VoPI) remain at a downward trend, declining 13.8 percent and 9.9 percent in August, respectively.

* The International Monetary Fund (IMF) lifted its economic forecast for Brazil on Monday, while warning the country still faces “exceptionally high and multifaceted” risks. “The economy is projected to shrink by 5.8 percent in 2020, followed by a partial recovery to 2.8 percent in 2021,” the IMF said in its annual report on Latin America’s largest economy, in a big contrast with the 9.1-percent contraction forecast it made in June.

* More than 270 Taliban fighters have given up fighting and laid down arms in the northern Balkh and the neighboring Sari Pul provinces over the past 24 hours amid the ongoing peace efforts in Doha and the prevailing skirmishes in Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday.

* Iran’s Health Ministry said on Monday nearly the whole country was on a red alert as cases and deaths rose to record levels, with a member of the state task force warning field hospitals might be needed if people flout the rules.

* A drastic rise in infections has pushed Lebanon’s hospitals to the edge, and experts warn they will soon be unable to cope.

Source: Nhan Dan Online