A vast and contentious network of facial recognition cameras keeping watch over Moscow is now playing a key role in the battle against the spread of the coronavirus in Russia.

From a mother unable to smell her baby’s nappy to a lawmaker who suddenly could not taste food, some coronavirus patients have described a loss of olfactory senses -- and experts say this might be a new way to detect the virus.

‘FRIEND OF CORONAVIRUS’

G7 finance ministers and central bank chiefs yesterday vowed to “do whatever is necessary” to safeguard jobs and the economy from disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Britain awoke to a virtual lockdown yesterday after Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered people to stay at home, shops to close and an end to all social gatherings to halt the spread of coronavirus.

An estimated 2.6 billion people are now confined to their homes, according to an AFP tally. The majority are hemmed in by obligatory government lockdown orders while others are under curfew, in quarantine or heeding advice not to leave their homes.

Four hundred years after the Mayflower crossed the Atlantic from Britain to the United States, a group of engineers plan to have a crewless-ship also named the Mayflower, navigate itself along the same route.

Global airlines urge governments to speed up bailouts to rescue the air transport industry as they doubled their estimate of 2020 revenue losses from the coronavirus crisis to more than $250 billion.

The number of new coronavirus cases in Spain jumped on Tuesday to 39,673 from 33,089 cases registered on Monday, the health ministry reports.

A loss of smell or taste might be an early sign of infection with the pandemic virus, say medical experts who cite reports from several countries.

The death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in Italy rose by 602 on Monday, the smallest increase for four days, while the number of new cases also slowed, raising hope that the most aggressive phase of the epidemic may be passing.

A clearly unhappy Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says people defying advice to isolate themselves to fight a coronavirus outbreak should “go home and stay home” or face sanctions.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in the Afghan capital yesterday to help break a poisonous political deadlock that has further

Chancellor Angela Merkel was on Sunday in quarantine after meeting a doctor who tested positive for the novel coronavirus, as Germany

Filipino teacher Raven Kate De Leon is in demand, spending up to 10 hours a day at her home computer surrounded by mini cars and stuffed toys that she uses as props to inject fun into her English classes for students far away in China.

Panic over the spread of the coronavirus sparked a prison riot in Colombia that killed 23 inmates on Sunday, as Chile became the latest Latin American country to announce restrictions on movement.

UK scientists are to track the spread of the new coronavirus and watch for emerging mutations by using gene sequencing to analyse the strains causing thousands of Covid-19 infections across the country, Britain said yesterday.

People in central China where the coronavirus was first detected are allowed to go back to work and public transport is restarting, as some normality slowly returns after a two-month lockdown.

US President Donald Trump ordered thousands of emergency hospital beds set up at American coronavirus hotspots but a trillion-dollar economic rescue package crashed, as pandemic deaths soared across the globe.

Southeast Asian countries considered more emergency powers yesterday to tackle the threat of the coronavirus as Singapore Airlines said it was grounding almost all of fleet in the face of the “greatest challenge” it has ever faced.