South Africa's parliament is closed and all its meetings are currently held by video conference calls as the country remains under strict lockdown restrictions to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

The mosques and devotees have been asked to comply with a set of safety protocols to hold prayer congregations, the Religious Affairs Ministry said.

US Vice-President Mike Pence has also tested negative.

Trump and Putin spoke by phone, also discussing the global coronavirus pandemic, the White House said.

Coronavirus cases have been registered in all of Russia's 85 regions, with Moscow the worst affected by far with 92,676.

Giscard's French lawyer said Thursday that the 94-year-old former president retains 'no memory' of the incident. Giscard was president of France from 1974-1981.

COVID-19 is spread through respiratory droplets or contact and the virus has also been detected in feces, saliva and urine.

The decision by close Trump ally Attorney General Bill Barr effectively reversed 18 months of work by the department and FBI under Barr's predecessors.

Top Republican senators urged US President Donald Trump on Thursday to suspend all new guest worker visas for 60 days and certain categories of new guest worker visas, including H-1B, for at least a year or until unemployment figures return to normal levels.

Attorney Douglas Wigdor is well known for his work on prominent cases related to sexual harassment and assault. He represented six women who accused Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood producer, of sexual misconduct.

The major cruise lines are accused of failing to do enough to get their staff home, ostensibly to save money on pricey charter flights – a claim the companies deny.

During a meeting with the governor of Texas in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump told reporters he had little contact with the man and would be tested daily going forward. Neither Trump nor Pence wore masks during the meeting.

Kim sent Chinese leader Xi Jinping a diplomatic communication congratulating him for China's "success" in controlling the novel coronavirus epidemic.

The virus that causes COVID-19 can be found in semen, Chinese researchers report in a small study that doesn't address whether sexual transmission is possible. Doctors detected the virus in semen from six of 38 men hospitalized with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19. Four were still very sick with the disease while two were recovering.

The H-1B work visa for foreign technology professionals is highly popular among Indians and a large number of Indians also opt for the EB-5 investors visa.

The father of the deceased filed a complaint with the police alleging that his 19-year-old daughter was killed by her husband for failing to serve him a hot meal for Sehri in the ongoing month of Ramzan.

The findings indicated that a decreased sense of smell may be an indicator of patients early in the disease course as well as those who may go on to develop more severe symptoms.

On March 25, the COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan was launched, but with humanitarian needs continuing to rise, the updated plan is calling for $6.7 billion for the remainder of 2020.

Her son was apparently fed up with having to constantly take care of her, Chinese state media reported. Rescuers said the woman was faintly calling for help as she was freed.

In the third phase of its reopening plan, Denmark will also increase the maximum number of people allowed to meet in public to between 30 and 50, up from a 10-person limit.

On May 8, 1980, representatives of all World Health Organization (WHO) member states gathered in Geneva and officially declared that the smallpox-causing variola virus had been relegated to the history books, two centuries after the discovery of a vaccine.

As a consensus has emerged that masks, even homemade ones, do help -- though levels of protection vary -- political leaders have had to adjust their messaging.

Countries like France, Germany and Britain have urged greater transparency from China over its handling of coronavirus, while the US and Australia have called for international inquiry.

Experts and officials both in Iran and abroad have cast doubts over Covid-19 figures, saying the real number of cases could be much higher than reported.

It was not clear whether live animals or infected vendors or shoppers may have brought the virus into the market, a WHO expert said.

Senator Manka Dhingra is an Indian-American attorney and the first Sikh elected to any state legislature in the United States.

The job loss according to the US Labor Department destroyed nearly all the positions created in the prior decade

China has dismissed as groundless U.S. and Australian questioning of how it had handled the coronavirus pandemic, saying it had been open and transparent, despite growing scepticism about the accuracy of its official death toll.

The unprecedented collapse in April driven by the coronavirus fallout sent the unemployment rate to 14.7%, well beyond the peak hit in late 2009 during the global financial crisis.

WHO food safety and animal diseases expert Peter Ben Embarek said live animal markets are critical to providing food and livelihoods for millions of people globally and authorities should focus on improving them rather than outlawing them.

Most non-essential businesses have been shut since mid-March as officials urge people to stay at home to slow the spread of the coronavirus, but in recent weeks, some of the 10 Canadian provinces have started to gradually reopen their economies.

Trump, asked if those who serve him food would now cover their faces, told Fox News in an interview that such White House staff had already started wearing face masks.

The action on Thursday was a stunning reversal for one of the signature cases brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. It comes even though prosecutors for the past three years have maintained that Flynn lied to the FBI in a January 2017 interview about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

US is currently weighing punitive actions against China over its early handling of the global health emergency.

The number of fatalities in hospitals, care homes and the wider community rose by 626 on the previous day to reach 31,241.

Andre Cuomo said there have been 73 reported cases in NY state of children getting severely ill with symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease and toxic shock-like syndrome.

The annual meeting between Indus Commissioners was postponed after New Delhi proposed deferment of consultations due to the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown.

The text, under negotiation since March, called for a worldwide cessation of hostilities in conflict zones so governments can address the pandemic.

US President Donald Trump, critical of China's early handling of the coronavirus outbreak, said on Friday that he was "very torn" about whether to end the trade deal.

Italy's total death toll from COVID-19 since its outbreak came to light on February 21 now stands at 30,201. Only the United States and Britain have seen more deaths from the virus.

Turkey formally charged Turkish private jet operator MNG Jet's four pilots and a executive with 'migrant smuggling', a crime carrying a maximum sentence of eight years in jail.

The move by US to give gree cards to foreign nurses and doctors is likely to benefit a large number of Indian professionals.

The Global Engagement Center earlier said thousands of Russian-linked social media accounts were spreading conspiracies about the pandemic.

More than 145,000 cases of the novel coronavirus have been reported so far, with 10,222 added in the last 24 hours.

In issuing the new regulation on Friday, the Department of Homeland Security cited what it called China's "suppression of independent journalism."

A government tally showed 10,669 new cases over the last 24 hours, fewer than Thursday's record of 11,231 bringing the total number of confirmed infections to 187,859.

Both national and local governments have stopped crews from disembarking in order to prevent new cases of Covid-19 in their territories, stranding thousands of crew members.

The country, hardest hit by the pandemic in terms of the number of fatalities, has now confirmed a total of 12,83,829 coronavirus cases.

Roughly 65 per cent or 626 of the total 970 recoveries in the UK have been reported in its overseas territories or other dependent islands and territories, even as they account for a mere 0.6 per cent of the total recorded cases.

The H-1B is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers from countries like India and China in speciality occupations.