World

A group of scholars and nonprofit organizations have asked web platforms to keep track of the content they’re removing during the coronavirus pandemic so they can make it available to researchers studying how online information affects public health. The signatories — including the Committee to Protect Journalists, sent an open letter to social media and content sharing services, urging them to preserve data even as they remove misinformation.

“Sri Lankan authorities have a responsibility to prosecute those responsible for the horrific Easter Sunday attacks last year, but the arrests should be lawful, and not used to vilify an entire community,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director. “The recent arrests of well-known Muslims, combined with biased government actions and rising anti-Muslim hate speech, raise concerns for the broader safety of the Muslim community.”

Italy will start reopening its manufacturing industry on May 4 as part of plans to ease its coronavirus lockdown, and schools will reopen in September, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has said in an Italian newspaper interview.

Some 500 Rohingya refugees stranded on board two fishing trawlers in the Bay of Bengal after being rejected by Malaysia, which has imposed restrictions on all boats in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

The coronavirus pandemic is not only a critical public health danger, it is also a human, economic and social emergency that is “fast becoming a human rights crisis”, the UN chief said on Thursday, releasing a new policy brief on shaping an effective, inclusive response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The United States suffered one of the deadliest days of the coronavirus pandemic with 3,332 fatalities in 24 hours.

World Health Organization chief Tedros said that there were "worrying upward trends" in early epidemics in parts of Africa and central and South America, while also warning that "the coronavirus will be with us for a long time".

Half of the total number of learners – some 826 million students – kept out of the classroom by the COVID-19 pandemic, do not have access to a household computer and 43% (706 million) have no internet at home, at a time when digitally-based distance learning is used to ensure educational continuity in the vast majority of countries.

Muslim groups have condemned President Trump’s promotion of a notorious anti-Muslim bigot’s tweet questioning whether U.S. mosques will be treated differently during the upcoming month of Ramadan than churches were treated during Easter amid the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

The number of people facing acute food insecurity could jump to 265 million, according to a new report by the World Food Programme, a UN branch.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said that all available evidence suggests that the novel coronavirus originated in bats in China late last year and it was not manipulated or constructed in a lab.

The General Secretariat of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) expresses deep concern following recent media accounts of rising anti-Muslim sentiments and Islamophobia within political and media circles and on mainstream and social media platforms, where Indian Muslim minority is blamed of spreading the coronavirus in the country.