Saturday,  Aug 29th, 2020

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe announces his intention to resign due to his deteriorating health. (CNN)

50,000 people gather in Washington, D.C. to commemorate the 1963 civil rights march and in protest against police violence. The event is called the “Commitment March: Get Your Knee Off Our Necks”, a reference to George Floyd’s death. The relatives of Jacob Blake, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Eric Garner deliver speeches at the march alongside civil rights leaders Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III. (BBC)

The International Monetary Fund reaches an agreement with the government of Ecuador to lend $6.5 billion to help fund the country’s economy amid the pandemic and the subsequent fall in oil prices and finalize a debt restructuring deal with its international investors. (Financial Times)

The death toll of dolphins in Mauritius rises to 38, according to a government official. The dolphins showed signs of wounds but no trace of hydrocarbons in their bodies. Greenpeace urged yesterday the government to launch an “urgent investigation to determine the cause of the deaths and any ties to the Wakashio oil spill”. (Reuters)

A polar bear kills a 38-year-old Dutch man at campsite near Longyearbyen, on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. The bear was then shot dead near Svalbard Airport. It is the first fatal bear attack on Svalbard since a British student was attacked and killed in 2011. (BBC)

Canada extends emergency orders that place restrictions on international travel and make mandatory two-week quarantines for anyone entering the country until September 30. (Global News)

Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun announces that the country’s level 2 restrictions, set to expire on August 30, would be extended for at least another week until September 6 as the Ministry of Health and Welfare reports over 370 new infections over the past 24 hours. (Anadolu Agency)

The health ministry says that France is seeing an “exponential” rise in cases as the country records its second-highest record of reported cases since March, with 7,379 new cases in the last 24 hours, raising the possibility of another nationwide lockdown. (BBC)

The Ministry of Citizen Protection announces changes to Greece’s travel restrictions, effective August 31 until at least September 19, due to a rise in cases in recent weeks. Changes include requiring visitors from a list of countries to show a negative test result to enter and a suspension of flights to and from Catalonia, Spain, but lifting restrictions on the Netherlands. (Reuters via CNA)

Hungary announces that it will close its borders to foreigners on September 1 in an attempt to curb a rise in infections, and Hungarians returning from abroad will have to go into two-week quarantine. Hungarians can only leave if they have provided two negative tests. (Reuters)

The Russian foreign ministry announces the expulsion of a senior diplomat at the Norwegian embassy in Moscow and declared him persona non grata as a “retaliatory measure” after the Norwegian foreign ministry had expelled the deputy trade representative of the Russian embassy in Oslo on August 19 for alleged espionage. (AFP via The Moscow Times)

Top EU diplomat Josep Borrell threatens Turkey with sanctions unless it and Greece reconcile their differences over maritime borders and gas drilling rights near Cyprus. (Al Jazeera)

An administrative court in Berlin overturns the city government’s ban on protests and demonstrations, citing “no indication” that the government’s rationale for the ban of protesters breaching social distancing measures would occur. (AFP via Bangkok Post)

A 40-year-old haulier from County Armagh, Northern Ireland, pleads guilty in the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales to the manslaughter of 39 Vietnamese people, as well as conspiring to assist unlawful immigration. (AAP via Wellington Times)

Rioting erupts in Malmö, Sweden, following a Quran book burning event by far-right Danish politician Rasmus Paludan in the city. Police say as many as 300 people gathered to protest the anti-Islam activities, which then became violent as protesters set fires and attacked police. (Reuters)

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Friday, Aug 28th, 2020

Kurdish human rights lawyer Ebru Timtik dies in hospital after spending 238-days on hunger strike in protest of her imprisonment after being found guilty of being a member of the outlawed Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front. At the time of her death, she was reported to only weigh 65 pounds. (New York Post)

The Bank of Korea cuts its growth forecast and expects the country’s GDP to shrink 1.3% this year. It would be South Korea’s worst performance since the height of the Asian financial crisis in 1998. (Marketwatch)

American retailer Walmart announces its partnership with Microsoft for a bid to acquire the Chinese-based video sharing service TikTok, which faces a ban in the United States through President Donald Trump’s executive order if its parent company ByteDance fails to sell the app’s operations to an American corporation. (AFP via Bangkok Post)

Prime Minister Jean Castex announces the mandatory wearing of face masks throughout Paris after officials released statistics indicating a resurgence of cases throughout the country. (AFP via RTL Today)

France records its highest number of new daily infections since the end of the lockdown in early May, with an additional 6,111 cases reported over the past 24 hours, making it the second highest ever, after 7,578 new cases set on March 30. (BBC)

Italy records its highest number of new cases since early May, when the country was still in lockdown, with 1,411 new cases reported in the last 24 hours. (The Telegraph)

The British government removes Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and Jamaica from the travel corridor list due to rising COVID-19 infection rates. It means that arrivals from those countries will have to self-quarantine for two weeks, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps confirmed. The change will come into effect on Saturday at 4:00 am BST. (The Guardian)

Abdullah Abdullah, chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation, says that peace talks between the Taliban and the government will start in September with the support of the Trump administration, which pushes both sides to set differences aside. (Al Arabiya)

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Thursday,  Aug 27th, 2020

California Governor Gavin Newsom confirms that the state has signed a deal with Massachusetts-based PerkinElmer to provide faster testing results. (The Hill)

Moderna announces that their potential COVID-19 vaccine produced promising results in elderly patients during an early stage clinical trial. (CNBC)

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin invites residents to join COVID-19 vaccine trials. (ABC News)

Ohio State University suspends more than 200 students for breaking some COVID-19 guidelines even before the school year starts. (NPR)

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said he was in surgery for vocal cord polyp removal and was not part of the discussion during the August 20 task force meeting when updated guidelines were discussed. He also expressed concerns over how people would interpret the new recommendations. (CNN)

A 17-year-old is arrested for the killing of two people during riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The teenager, who is originally from Antioch, Illinois, was charged with first-degree intentional homicide. (AP)

A mass grave with more than 1,500 bodies is discovered in Osaka, Japan, that dates from the 1600s to the mid-1800s. (News AU)

Marieke Lucas Rijneveld of the Netherlands is awarded the 2020 International Booker Prize for their novel The Discomfort of Evening. (The Guardian)

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