Tamil Nadu on Thursday reported 580 Covid-19 cases, taking the state’s tally past 5,000 to 5,409. As the number of cases soared in the state capital and its neighbouring districts, all linked to the Koyambedu cluster, epidemiologists and public health experts warned that the crowds at liquor shops that opened on Thursday could result in another cluster and another surge in infections.

The first special train, carrying as many as 1,140 guest workers stranded in the district, left for Bihar from the Coimbatore Railway Junction on Friday. It is expected to reach Saharsa district on Sunday.

Many millions of dollars of the devices were sold to the Thai army and other security forces around the world. A court in Thailand has convicted a local businessman of fraud for selling fake bomb detectors to the Thai government, five years after a court in the United Kingdom sentenced the British head of the company that supplied them to seven years in prison in a scandal that was worldwide in scale

Nuh district gave a sigh of relief for health authorities who were continued to be disappointed as 22 new more cases were found in Haryana which took state total tally to 647. Besides Gurugram, other districts from where fresh cases were reported include Faridabad, Sonipat, Jhajjar, Panipat, Jind and Fatehabad.

While the city teeters on the edge of becoming a red zone with increasing number of novel coronavirus cases every day, Gurugram has only one functioning Covid hospital at the moment.

Officials of the district administration had to face the ire of DLF-2 residents on Friday as several of them defied lockdown orders and protested against the proposed takeover of two guest houses in the area for setting up Covid quarantine centres. The authorities were finally forced to shelve the plan.

Sixty four people who flew from Singapore to Delhi on Friday were sent to various quarantine centres in the city. Of them, 16 have been sent to Lemon Tree, three are staying in Sky City Western Hotel, four in an Oyo room while 41 people are in community centres located in Shukhrali and Dundahera.

In the wake of increasing complaints against several private schools violating education department guidelines on school fees, the state government on Friday ordered all divisional commissioners to redress the grievances of parents and submit action taken reports at the earliest.

To keep an eye on alcohol production, flow chart metres will be installed in liquor factories of the district, Ambala district excise and taxation controller (DETC) N K Grewal said. He said this will help officials in headquarters and field officers monitor extra neutral alcohol (ENA) production.

Five days after three doctors working in the Covid hospital of BPS Khanpur Medical College, Sonipat, were found positive of coronavirus, 11 junior doctors who were their contacts have been sent in 14-day quarantine.

Even after a month of unveiling plan to turn its trauma center of PGIMS Rohtak into exclusive Covid-19 hospital to provide testing and treatment under one roof, there has hardly been any move in the direction.

Mumbai is set to get the highest grant of Rs 488 crore from the Centre’s Rs 4,400 crore fund which is earmarked exclusively for cities with more than one million population in states to improve air quality during 2020-21. Delhi may miss this assistance despite figuring among the most polluted cities in the country as the fund would only be meant for ‘million plus’ population cities in states.

As the coronavirus infects more people around the world, Congo’s Virunga National Park, home to about a third of the world’s mountain gorillas, is barring visitors until June 1, citing “advice from scientific experts indicating that primates, including mountain gorillas, are likely susceptible to complications arising from the Covid-19 virus”.

The COVID-19 spread has forced the UN body to postpone its flagship annual climate change conference which was scheduled to be held at Glasgow in United Kingdom (UK) in November. This crucial meet will now be held in 2021 -- the first year of the operationalisation of the the Paris Agreement.

Drone video footage released by the department of national parks shows a 30-strong herd of dugongs on Wednesday off Libong island in Trang province. They were feeding on sea grass and occasionally surfaced to breathe.

Britain should use economic stimulus measures to speed a shift away from fossil fuels and take advantage of low oil prices to raise revenues from carbon taxes without hurting consumers, state-appointed climate advisers said on Wednesday. Their proposals reinforce global pressure on governments to consider the environment as they pour money into their economies at levels unseen since World War Two to counter the impact of coronavirus lockdowns which threaten millions of jobs.

Australia has called for an inquiry into the origin of the coronavirus. Germany and Britain are hesitating anew about inviting in Chinese tech giant Huawei. President Trump has blamed China for the contagion and is seeking to punish it. Some govts want to sue Beijing. Across the globe, a backlash is building against China for its initial mishandling of the crisis.

Chinese authorities are clamping down as grieving relatives, along with activists, press the ruling Communist Party for an accounting of what went wrong in Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus killed thousands before spreading to the rest of China and the world. Lawyers have been warned not to file suit against the government.

China reported one new case of coronavirus on Tuesday and no deaths, marking three weeks since it recorded a Covid-19 fatality. The National Health Commission said 395 people remained under treatment in the hospital, while 949 were under isolation and observation for suspected cases or after testing positive despite showing no symptoms.

China's Hong Kong affairs office on Wednesday condemned Hong Kong protesters as a "political virus" who seek independence, warning that the city will never be calm unless what it said were violent black-clad protesters were all removed.

Senior school students in 121 institutions were back in front of chalk boards and digital displays for the first time since their city -- the ground zero of the coronavirus pandemic -- shut down in January.

China on Wednesday dared US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to show "enormous evidence" he claimed to have to prove Covid-19 originated from a lab in Wuhan. "Pompeo cannot present any evidence because he does not have any," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said. "This matter should be handled by scientists..instead of politicians," Hua said.

North Korea says leader Kim Jong Un sent a personal message to Chinese President Xi Jinping praising what he described as China's success in getting its coronavirus epidemic under control. The report by North Korea's state media followed an assessment by South Korea's spy agency that the pandemic is hurting the North's economy.