Pope quietly reduces sanctions for priests convicted of sex abuse

Beijing, Jun 17: Beijing's airports cancelled more than 1,200 flights and schools in the Chinese capital were closed again on Wednesday as authorities rushed to contain a new coronavirus outbreak linked to a wholesale food market.

The city reported 31 new cases on Wednesday while officials urged residents not to leave Beijing, with fears growing about a second wave of infections in China, which had largely brought its outbreak under control.

Tens of thousands of people linked to the new Beijing virus cluster -- believed to have started in the sprawling Xinfadi wholesale food market -- are being tested, with almost 30 residential compounds in the city now under lockdown.

At least 1,255 scheduled flights were cancelled Wednesday morning, state-run People's Daily reported, nearly 70 percent of all trips to and from Beijing's main airports.

The outbreak had already forced authorities to announce a travel ban for residents of "medium- or high-risk" areas of the city, while requiring other residents to take nucleic acid tests in order to leave Beijing.

Meanwhile, several provinces were quarantining travellers from Beijing, where all schools -- which had mostly reopened -- have been ordered to close again and return to online classes.

"The epidemic situation in the capital is extremely severe," Beijing city spokesman Xu Hejian warned Tuesday.

Mass testing under way

Officials have closed 11 markets and disinfected thousands of food and beverage businesses in Beijing after the outbreak was detected.

The city has now reported 137 infections over the last six days, with six new asymptomatic cases and three suspected cases on Wednesday, according to the municipal health commission.

An additional two domestic cases, one in neighbouring Hebei province and another in Zhejiang, were reported by national authorities on Wednesday, while there were 11 imported cases.

Authorities have so far banned group sports, ordered people to wear masks in crowded enclosed spaces, and suspended inter-provincial group tours in response to the outbreak.

Officials said that since May 30, more than 200,000 people had visited Xinfadi market, which supplies more than 70 percent of Beijing's fruit and vegetables.

More than 8,000 workers there were tested and quarantined.

Until the new outbreak, most of China's recent cases were nationals returning from abroad as COVID-19 spread globally, and the government had all but declared victory against the disease.

China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that the virus type found in the Beijing outbreak was a "major epidemic strain" in Europe.

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.

Beijing, Jun 11: Floods and mudslides in south China have uprooted hundreds of thousands of people and left dozens dead or missing, state media reported Thursday.

The bad weather has wreaked havoc on popular tourist areas that had already been battered by months of travel restrictions during the coronavirus outbreak.

Torrential downpours unleashed floods and mudslides that caused nearly 230,000 people to be relocated and destroyed more than 1,300 houses, official state news agency Xinhua reported, citing the Ministry of Emergency Management.

In southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, six people were reported dead and one missing, Xinhua said.

Streets were waterlogged in popular tourist destination Yangshuo, forcing residents and visitors to evacuate on bamboo rafts.

The local government said more than 1,000 hotels had been flooded and more than 30 tourist sites damaged.

One owner of a family-run hotel told Xinhua that the guest rooms were submerged in one metre (three feet) of rainwater.

The extreme weather has dealt a hefty blow to the region's tourism sector, which is still reeling from the COVID-19 epidemic.

The emergency management ministry said there were direct economic losses of over 4 billion yuan (more than $550 million) from the flooding, Xinhua reported.

In Hunan Province, at least 13 people were killed in rain-triggered disasters, and another eight people are missing or killed in southwestern Guizhou province, according to the local emergency response departments, Xinhua said.

The heavy downpours began at the beginning of June and have led to "dangerously high water levels" in 110 rivers, Xinhua reported.

Further rainstorms are expected in the next few days across the south.