Bishops call for 3-day fasting after Duterte says God stupid

New Delhi, Jul 6: India's COVID-19 tally neared the 7 lakh mark with 6,97,413 cases after 24,248 new cases were reported in the last 24 hours, said the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

As per the Health Ministry, there are 2,53,287 active cases in the country while 4,24,432 patients have been cured or discharged. While one patient has migrated.

425 new deaths were reported in the last 24 hours in the country due to COVID-19, taking the number of patients succumbing to the deadly virus to 19,693.

As per the Health Ministry, Maharashtra continues to be the most impacted state from the infection with 2,06,619 cases and 8,822 fatalities due to the virus. Tamil Nadu in second place has a total of 1,11,151 cases and 1,510 fatalities.

The national capital's COVID-19 cases are also nearing the 1-lakh mark with 99,444 coronavirus cases and 3,067 deaths.

The total number of samples tested up to July 5 is 99,69,662 of which 1,80,596 samples were tested yesterday, informed the Indian Council of Medical Research on Monday. 

New Delhi, May 28: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey today reinforced his stance on pointing out "incorrect or disputed information about elections globally", a day after US President Donald Trump threatened to shutter social media over Twitter's actions on his posts.

Mr Dorsey appealed to "leave our employees out of this" as the face-off with Mr Trump is likely to escalate.

"Fact check: there is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that's me. Please leave our employees out of this. We'll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally. And we will admit to and own any mistakes we make," Mr Dorsey tweeted.

"This does not make us an 'arbiter of truth.' Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves. More transparency from us is critical so folks can clearly see the why behind our actions," said the Twitter CEO.

Fact check: there is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that's me. Please leave our employees out of this. We'll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally. And we will admit to and own any mistakes we make.

— jack (@jack) May 28, 2020

"Per our Civic Integrity policy (https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/election-integrity-policy), the tweets yesterday may mislead people into thinking they don't need to register to get a ballot (only registered voters receive ballots). We're updating the link on

@realDonaldTrump tweet to make this more clear," Mr Dorsey tweeted.

Twitter had tagged two of Mr Trump's tweets in which he claimed that more mail-in voting would lead to what he called a "rigged election" this November. There is no evidence that attempts are being made to rig the election, and under the tweets Twitter posted a link which read: "Get the facts about mail-in ballots."

Five states in the US already conduct elections primarily by mail-in vote: Utah, Colorado, Hawaii, Washington and Oregon.

For years, Twitter has been accused of ignoring the US President's violation of platform rules with his daily, often hourly barrages of personal insults and inaccurate information sent to more than 80 million followers, news agency AFP reported.

But Twitter's slap on the wrist was enough to drive Mr Trump into a tirade - on Twitter - in which "Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen," Mr Trump said.

He said that an increase in mail-in ballots - seen in some states as vital for allowing people to avoid crowds during the COVID-19 pandemic - will undermine the election.

"It would be a free for all on cheating, forgery and the theft of Ballots," wrote Mr Trump, whose re-election campaign has been knocked off track by the coronavirus crisis. His torrent of angry tweets earned a top-10 trending hashtag: #TrumpMeltdown.

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg also waded in to the row, telling Fox News that his social network - still the biggest in the world - has a different policy. "I just believe strongly that Facebook should not be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online," Mr Zuckerberg said in a snippet of the interview posted online Wednesday by Fox.

"I think, in general, private companies, especially these platform companies, shouldn't be in the position of doing that," he said.

 he claimed that the political right in the US is being censored.

"Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen," Mr Trump said.

He said that an increase in mail-in ballots - seen in some states as vital for allowing people to avoid crowds during the COVID-19 pandemic - will undermine the election.

"It would be a free for all on cheating, forgery and the theft of Ballots," wrote Mr Trump, whose re-election campaign has been knocked off track by the coronavirus crisis. His torrent of angry tweets earned a top-10 trending hashtag: #TrumpMeltdown.

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg also waded in to the row, telling Fox News that his social network - still the biggest in the world - has a different policy. "I just believe strongly that Facebook should not be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online," Mr Zuckerberg said in a snippet of the interview posted online Wednesday by Fox.

"I think, in general, private companies, especially these platform companies, shouldn't be in the position of doing that," he said.

Washington, Mar 28: The world is in the face of a devastating impact due to the coronavirus pandemic and has clearly entered a recession, the International Monetary Fund said on Friday, but projected a recovery next year.

"We have reassessed the prospects for growth for 2020 and 2021. It is now clear that we have entered a recession as bad or worse than in 2009. We do project recovery in 2021," IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told reporters at a news conference.

Georgieva was addressing the press after a meeting of governing body of the IMF, the International Monetary and Financial Committee. Representing 189 members, the body met virtually to discuss the unprecedented challenge posed to the world by COVID-19.

The key to recovery in 2021, she said, is only if the international community succeeds in containing the virus everywhere and prevent liquidity problems from becoming a solvency issue.

"The US is in recession, as is the rest of the advanced economies of the world. And in a big chunk of developed and emerging markets in developing economies. How severe? We are working now on our projections for 2020, Georgieva said in response to a question.

The new projections are expected in the next few weeks.

Stressing that while containment is the main reason for the economy to stand still and get into a recession, she said containment is very necessary to come out of this period and step in to recovery. "Until the virus is not contained, it would be very difficult to go to the lives we love."

"A key concern about a long-lasting impact of the sudden stop of the world economy is the risk of a wave of bankruptcies and layoffs that not only can undermine the recovery. But can erode the fabric of our societies," the IMF chief said.

To avoid this from happening, many countries have taken far-reaching measures to address the health crisis and to cushion its impact on the economy, both on the monetary and on the fiscal side, she said.

The IMF chief said 81 emergency financing requests, including 50 from lower-income countries, have been received. She said current estimate for the overall financial needs of emerging markets is 2.5 trillion dollars.

"We believe this is on the lower end. We do know that their own reserves and domestic resources will not be sufficient," she added.

The G-20, a day earlier, reported fiscal measures totalling some 5 trillion dollars or over 6 per cent of the global GDP.

Responding to another question, Georgieva said the IMF is projecting recession for 2020.

"We do expect it to be quite deep and we are very much urging countries to step up containment measures aggressively so we can shorten the duration of this period of time when the economy is in standstill," she said.

"And also to apply well-targeted measures, primarily focusing on the health system to absorb that enormous stress that comes from coronavirus. And on people, businesses and the financial system, I am very pleased to say that when we went through countries' responses, that sense of targeted fiscal measures is there and are also very impressive to see the size of these measures," she added.

"Countries are doing all they can on the fiscal and on the monetary front. We have heard from our members' very impressive decisions taken over the last days," the IMF chief said.

"We also want to caution that as we are responding now, we want to make the recession as possibly short and not too deep. We also want to think about what is going to follow the recovery and make sure that we are putting forward measures that can be supportive in this regard," she said.