Colombo, Apr 22: An improvised pipe bomb discovered close to Colombo’s main airport was successfully defused by the Sri Lanka airforce, police said.
A police source told news agency that a “homemade” pipe bomb had been found late Sunday on a road leading towards the main terminal, which remains open with heavy security after deadly attacks on churchs and hotels.
Airforce spokesperson Group Captain Gihan Seneviratne said the IED was believed to be locally manufactured.
London, Apr 22: The UK government on Tuesday announced a 20 million pounds funding for a University of Oxford project working on developing a vaccine against the novel coronavirus, which is now ready for acceleration as it begins human trials from Thursday.
UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the daily Downing Street briefing that the Department for Health was “throwing everything” at trying to find a vaccine because it is a critical aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic fight and lifting the strict lockdown measures in place to curb its spread.
Another 22.5 million pounds is being made available to Imperial College London to support its phase-two clinical trials for them to begin the work on a very large phase three trial.
"Normally it would take years to get to this point," said Hancock.
"The UK is at the forefront of the global effort – we've put in more money than any other into the global search for a vaccine. Nothing about this is inevitable. Vaccine production is a matter of trial and error. But the UK will throw everything it has at trying to find one,” he said.
The announcement came as Britain had another major daily leap in the hospital death toll from coronavirus, up by 823 to hit 17,337 on Tuesday.
But the Cabinet minister said the government's plan to control the rapid spread of the virus and prevent the state-funded National Health Service (NHS) from being overwhelmed is working as the number of hospitalisations with COVID-19 was showing a downward trajectory.
In reference to a major issue in the last few weeks of a critical shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) for doctors and nurses on the frontlines of COVID-19 treatment, the minister said the supply problems are being addressed by actively engaging with thousands of companies, including 159 UK manufacturers.
“We are determined to get people the PPE they need. This is a 24/7 operation, one of the biggest cross-government operation I have ever seen," said Hancock.
Paris, Mar 2: A global agency says the spreading new virus could make the world economy shrink this quarter, for the first time since the international financial crisis more than a decade ago.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says Monday in a special report on the impact of the virus that the world economy is still expected to grow overall this year and rebound next year.
But it lowered its forecasts for global growth in 2020 by half a percentage point, to 2.4 per cent, and said the figure could go as low as 1.5 per cent if the virus lasts long and spreads widely.
The last time world GDP shrank on a quarter-on-quarter basis was at the end of 2008, during the depths of the financial crisis. On a full-year basis, it last shrank in 2009.
The OECD said China's reduced production is hitting Asia particularly hard but also companies around the world that depend on its goods.
It urged governments to act fast to prevent contagion and restore consumer confidence.
The Paris-based OECD, which advises developed economies on policy, said the impact of this virus is much higher than past outbreaks because "the global economy has become substantially more interconnected, and China plays a far greater role in global output, trade, tourism and commodity markets."
New Delhi, Mar 5: A Delhi court Thursday issued fresh death warrants for execution of the four convicts in the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case for March 20 at 5.30 am.
Additional Sessions Judge Dharmendra Rana fixed March 20 as the new date of execution after it was told by the Delhi government that the convicts have exhausted all their legal remedies.
The lawyer for the four death row convicts also told the court that there was no legal impediment for the court to proceed in fixing the date of execution.
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