Europe

London, Apr 17 (AFP/PTI) London's transport authorities on Friday announced new measures to protect bus drivers from coronavirus, as colleagues held a minute's silence for 20 who have already died.

Mayor Sadiq Khan, whose father was a bus driver, led tributes to the victims as authorities said passengers would no longer be able to use the front door near the driver.

MOSCOW, April 17 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday rejected as counterproductive attempts to blame Beijing for delaying informing the world about the coronavirus, the Kremlin said.

Putin and Xi spoke after US President Donald Trump’s administration berated China for not sharing data more quickly.

Washington is also investigating the origins of the coronavirus – which has killed more than 140,000 people worldwide – saying it doesn’t rule out that the disease came from a laboratory researching bats in Wuhan, China.

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron rejected the idea that China had handled the coronavirus outbreak better than Western democracies in an interview published in Friday’s Financial Times.

The FT quoted him as saying that there was no comparison between countries where information flowed freely and citizens could criticise their governments and those where the truth was suppressed.

MADRID (Reuters) - The number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Spain rose to 188,068 on Friday, the country’s head of health emergencies Fernando Simon said at a news conference.

Health authorities identified 5,252 new cases of the virus between Thursday and Friday, which represents a 2.9% increase.

GENEVA (Reuters) - The Myanmar army is carrying out “almost daily airstrikes and shelling” in the restive Rakhine and Chin states, where at least 32 civilians have been killed since March 23, the United Nations human rights office said on Friday.

“It is very difficult to get precise information from Rakhine on whether the reported casualties are the result of targeting or were caught in the crossfire between the Arakan army and Myanmar army,” spokesman Rupert Colville told a Geneva news briefing in response to a question.

TALLINN (Reuters) - Estonia’s far-right EKRE, part of the ruling coalition, has ousted the EU-member state’s third trade minister since last year’s elections amid political infighting as it battles the coronavirus outbreak.

Kaimar Karu was one of five ministers chosen by the Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE), whose anti-immigration message helped the party more than double its support in the 2019 elections, winning broad support in poorer areas.

He was not a member of the party.

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland may have to bring in more stringent checks at its airports to ensure the coronavirus remains contained whenever the country eases stay-home restrictions, Health Minister Simon Harris said on Friday.

“I would not rule out the fact that we may need to be more stringent in relation to our airports, particularly as we move out of the very, very, very serious restrictions that are in place,” Harris told the Newstalk radio station in an interview.

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices were mixed on Friday as news of President Donald Trump’s plans to ease the U.S. coronavirus lockdown to get the American economy moving again were quickly overshadowed by China’s worst quarterly economic contraction on record.

Brent rose by 50 cents, or 1.8%, to $28.32 a barrel by 0954 GMT. However, U.S. crude CLc1 for May delivery tumbled by $1.27, or 6.4%, to $18.60 and below the level required for many producers to cover their costs.

GENEVA, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The global total of confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) has exceeded the 2 million mark as of Friday.

According to the latest figures of the WHO Health Emergency Dashboard, updated at 10:00 a.m. CET (0800 GMT), there have been 2,034,477 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 133,873 deaths worldwide reported to the global health watchdog.

The United States has reported 632,781 confirmed cases with 28,221 deaths to the United Nations specialized agency, being the hardest hit country.

LONDON, April 16 (Xinhua) -- The British government announced on Thursday that the current restrictive measures that aim to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus will remain in place for "at least three weeks".

Asserting that relaxing lockdown measures would lead to a resurgence of the virus, Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary and first secretary of state, told reporters that the government has decided relaxing the measures would make the economic impact worse, not better.