London, May 23: British Prime Minister Theresa May is expected on Friday to announce her departure from office, The Times reported, without citing a source.
May will remain as prime minister while her successor is elected in a two-stage process under which two final candidates face a ballot of 125,000 Conservative Party members, the newspaper said.
Sydney, Jul 28: Nearly 3 billion koalas, kangaroos and other native Australian animals were killed or displaced by bushfires in 2019 and 2020, a study by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said on Tuesday, triple the group's earlier estimates.
Some 143 million mammals, 2.46 billion reptiles, 180 million birds and 51 million frogs were impacted by the country's worst bushfires in decades, the WWF said.
When the fires were still blazing, the WWF estimated the number of affected animals at 1.25 billion. The fires destroyed more than 11 million hectares (37 million acres) across the Australian southeast, equal to about half the area of the United Kingdom.
"This ranks as one of the worst wildlife disasters in modern history," said WWF-Australia Chief Executive Officer Dermot O'Gorman in a statement.
The project leader Lily Van Eeden, from the University of Sydney, said the research was the first continent-wide analysis of animals impacted by the bushfires, and "other nations can build upon this research to improve understanding of bushfire impacts everywhere".
The total number included animals which were displaced because of destroyed habitats and now faced lack of food and shelter or the prospect of moving to habitat that was already occupied.
The main reason for raising the number of animal casualties was that researchers had now assessed the total affected area, rather than focusing on the most affected states, they said.
After years of drought made the Australian bush unusually dry, the country battled one of its worst bushfire seasons ever from September 2019 to March 2020, resulting in 34 human deaths and nearly 3,000 homes lost.
Washington, May 19: As the scientists across the world are struggling to develop a vaccine for combating coronavirus, US drugmaker Moderna announced on Monday (local time) that the phase I trial of its Covid-19 vaccine has shown positive early results.
The company is hopeful that it's vaccine could be available to the public as early as January next year. Several firms across the world are in the race to develop a vaccine for the deadly virus which has claimed over 3 lakh lives worldwide.
CNN citing Dr. Tal Zaks, Moderna's chief medical officer reported that "if future studies go well, the company's vaccine could be available to the public as early as January".
"This is absolutely good news and news that we think many have been waiting for for quite some time," Zaks was quoted as saying.
Moderna, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts announced that the vaccine developed neutralising antibodies to the virus at levels reaching or exceeding the levels seen in people who have naturally recovered from Covid-19, reported CNN.
These will be followed by phase 2 trials and phase 3 trials, which Moderna plans to start in July.
President Donald Trump had on Friday said that that the United States will be able to deliver a few hundred million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, under 'Operation Warp Speed', by the end of this year.
"I have very recently seen early data from a clinical trial with a coronavirus vaccine and this data made me feel even more confident that we'll be able to deliver a few hundred million doses of vaccine by the end of 2020 and we will do the best we can," Trump had said at a press conference at the White House on Friday.
Ottawa, Jun 25: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took his son out for ice cream on Wednesday in his first family outing since Canada started easing out of its pandemic lockdown.
It was also Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day in Quebec province.
Wearing masks, the Canadian leader and his six-year-old son Hadrien were cheered at Chocolats Favoris in Gatineau, Quebec.
According to a pool report, Trudeau said the shop tapped into a federal emergency wage subsidy and business loan in order to weather the pandemic, and "avoid being frozen out of the frozen treat market."
Hadrien is said to have bounced with excitement, settling on a vanilla cone with a cookie topping while dad bought a vanilla cone dipped in chocolate for himself.
Father and son then headed out to the patio, where they doffed their masks to eat their cones.
Canada's provinces and territories declared states of emergency mid-March, closing schools and non-essential businesses in response to the pandemic.
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