India extends lockdown until end of May

Migrant workers from other states desperate to return to their homes wait for transportation to a train station in Ahmedabad, India, on Sunday. India on Sunday extended its COVID-19 lockdown until the end of May as it reported its biggest daily increase in new infections, but said some sectors would be allowed to resume operations as its economy takes a hammering.SD-Agencies

Long queues as Thai malls reopen after virus shutdown

Shoppers flocked to Thailand’s top-end malls on Sunday, eager for retail therapy as shopping centers reopened in a gradual easing of restrictions to revive the virus-ravaged economy.

Hundreds of masked customers passed through temperature checks, disinfection stations, and had their photos taken before they were allowed into plush malls in Bangkok. In the main downtown shopping district, Central World touted a “new normal” of doing business on posters, while screens on the mall’s exterior declared “We are open.”

Brazil passes Italy, Spain in confirmed cases

Brazil’s confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus rose on Saturday past those of Spain and Italy, which was once the epicenter of the pandemic, making Brazil’s outbreak the fourth-largest in the world, according to official figures.

Brazil’s Health Ministry registered 14,919 new confirmed cases in the prior 24 hours, taking the total to 233,142, behind the United States, Russia and the United Kingdom. Brazil has done just a fraction of the testing seen in those three countries.

The global distinction is likely to pile pressure on President Jair Bolsonaro, who lost his second health minister in a month on Friday as he defies public health experts and calls for widespread use of unproven drugs.

Firing of US State Department watchdog probed

Democrats in U.S. Congress on Saturday launched an investigation into President Donald Trump’s move to oust the State Department’s internal watchdog, accusing the president of escalating his fight against any oversight of his administration.

Trump announced the planned removal of Inspector General Steve Linick in a letter to House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi late Friday night, making Linick the latest government inspector general to be ousted in recent weeks under the Republican president.

The top Democrats on the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committees questioned the timing and motivation of what they called an “unprecedented removal.”

Pilot in Kobe Bryant crash had no alcohol, drugs

The pilot flying Kobe Bryant and seven others to a youth basketball tournament outside Los Angeles did not have alcohol or drugs in his system, and all sustained immediately fatal injuries when their helicopter slammed into a hillside, according to autopsies released on Friday.

The reports by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office provide a clinical but unvarnished look at just how brutal the crash was, describing broken bones, dismembered body parts and a stench of fuel on what remained of clothing that burned.

Health experts warn of mental health crisis

A mental illness crisis is looming as millions of people worldwide are surrounded by death and disease and forced into isolation, poverty and anxiety by the pandemic of COVID-19, United Nations health experts said last week.

“The isolation, the fear, the uncertainty, the economic turmoil — they all cause or could cause psychological distress,” said Devora Kestel, director of the World Health Organization’s mental health department.(SD-Agencies)