WORLD

New York, United States | AFP | Beaten-down US oil prices rallied Wednesday following dramatic declines earlier this week, lifting global equities, even as American crude inventories surged closer to capacity levels. Futures for the benchmark West Texas Intermediate for June delivery jumped 19 percent to $13.78 a barrel in New …

Geneva, Switzerland | AFP | The world should fight climate change with the same determination it is showing in the battle against the new coronavirus, the United Nations said on Wednesday. The UN’s World Meteorological Organization said it was time to flatten the curve on climate change as well, with its …

Washington, United States | AFP | Developing countries are losing a key source of revenue as the coronavirus pandemic causes worldwide shutdowns, sharply reducing payments from workers living abroad, the World Bank said Wednesday. Remittances are expected to plunge by about 20 percent globally this year, the biggest decline in recent …

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 …