MAR 24, 2020 @ 1730 GMT | FILE – Members of a humanitarian aid agency disinfect Ibn Sina hospital as prevention against coronavirus in the city of Idlib, Syria, Thursday, March 19, 2020. (AP Photo)
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — The arrival of the coronavirus in the Gaza Strip, an impoverished enclave where the health care system has been gutted by years of conflict, and Syria, which has been devastated by nine years of civil war and sanctions, raised fears Sunday that the pandemic may soon prey on some of the most vulnerable populations in the world.
Authorities in Gaza, which has been under an Israeli and Egyptian blockade since the Islamic militant group Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces in 2007, confirmed its first two cases overnight, in returnees who had come from Pakistan.
MAR 19, 2020 @ 1730 GMT | Brescia, Italy | Medical personnel at work in the intensive care unit of the hospital of Brescia, Italy, Thursday, March 19, 2020. Italy has become the country with the most coronavirus-related deaths, surpassing China by registering 3,405 dead. Italy reached the gruesome milestone on the same day the epicenter of the pandemic, Wuhan, China, recorded no new infections. For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms. For some it can cause more severe illness. (LaPresse via AP)
ROME (AP) — Italy’s death toll from the coronavirus outbreak eclipsed China’s on Thursday as the scourge extended its march across the West, where the United States and other countries increasingly enlisted the military and improvised at every turn to get ready for the onslaught of patients.
In the U.S., the Army readied mobile military hospitals for deployment in major cities. In Madrid, a four-star hotel was turned into a hospital. Medical centers around the United States set up drive-thru testing sites that drew long lines of motorists waiting for nurses to swab their nostrils.
As the outbreak spread westward, it infected at least one European head of state: Monaco’s 62-year-old Prince Albert II, who continued to work from his office. And it appeared to be opening an alarming new front in Africa, where health care in many countries is already in sorry shape.
MAR 18, 2020 @ 1245 GMT | FILE – In this Feb. 12, 2020 photo, police stand guard behind a parapet of sandbags, at the entrance to Santa Rosa de Lima, birthplace of a local cartel that goes by the same name, in Guanajuato state, Mexico. Mexico’s fastest-rising cartel, the Jalisco New Generation gang, has a reputation for ruthlessness and violence unlike any since the fall of the old Zetas cartel. In places like Guanajuato state it is fighting medieval-style battles for control of the state. (AP Photo)
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s fastest-rising cartel, the Jalisco New Generation gang, has a reputation for ruthlessness and violence unlike any since the fall of the old Zetas cartel. In parts of the country it is fighting medieval-style battles, complete with fortified redoubts, to expand nationwide, from the outskirts of Mexico City, into the tourist resorts around Cancun, and along the northern border.
Jalisco so likes violence and heavy armament that U.S. prosecutors said its operatives tried to buy belt-fed M-60 machine guns in the United States, and once brought down a Mexican military helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade.
MAR 16, 2020 @ 1400 GMT | Seattle, USA | A pharmacist gives Jennifer Haller, left, the first shot in the first-stage safety study clinical trial of a potential vaccine for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, Monday, March 16, 2020, at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle. (AP Photo)
SEATTLE (AP) — U.S. researchers gave the first shots in a first test of an experimental coronavirus vaccine Monday, leading off a worldwide hunt for protection even as the pandemic surges.
With careful jabs in the arms of four healthy volunteers, scientists at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Research Institute in Seattle began an anxiously awaited first-stage study of a potential COVID-19 vaccine developed in record time after the new virus exploded out of China and fanned out across the globe.
“We’re team coronavirus now,” Kaiser Permanente study leader Dr. Lisa Jackson said on the eve of the experiment. “Everyone wants to do what they can in this emergency.”
MAR 13, 2020 @ 1900 GMT | New York, United States | Traders listen at the New York Stock Exchange to President Donald Trump’s televised speech from the White House, Friday, March 13, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo)
NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street roared back from its worst day in 30 years Friday with a broad rally that sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average nearly 2,000 points higher — its biggest point gain ever — after President Donald Trump declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency.
Fueled by a late-day surge while Trump was speaking, the Dow saw its largest percentage gain since 2008. The rally recouped many of the losses from a day earlier, when the index experienced its worst slide since the Black Monday crash of 1987 and European indexes had one of the worst drops on record. The major indexes each closed with gains of more than 9%.
MAR 13, 2020 @ 1400 GMT | Caracas, Venezuela | A woman covers her mouth and nose with a wash cloth on a subway platform in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, March 13, 2020. Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez confirmed Friday the first two cases of the new coronavirus in the South American country. The vast majority of people recover from the new virus. (AP Photo)
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela confirmed its first two cases of the coronavirus Friday, deepening anxiety in a crisis-stricken nation where many hospitals lack basics such as water and soap and struggle to treat even basic ailments.
The announcement prompted President Iván Duque of neighboring Colombia to order his nation’s border with Venezuela closed as a coronavirus containment measure.
“God help us,” hospital patient Carlos Chacón said after hearing the news that the pandemic had arrived in his native Venezuela.
MAR 10, 2020 @ 1400 GMT | Naples, Italy | A worker sprays disinfectant as sanitization operations against Coronavirus are carried out in the museum hosted by the Maschio Angioino medieval castle, in Naples, Italy, Tuesday, March 10, 2020. (LaPresse via AP)
ROME (AP) — Italy spent the first day under a nationwide lockdown after the government extended restrictions on movement in the north to the rest of the country to contain the new coronavirus. As Italians awoke to a new reality and virus cases continued to climb, Chinese President Xi Jinping’ made his first trip to the city where the global epidemic first emerged. The contrast illustrated the global east-to-west spread of the virus.
MAR 9, 2020 @ 2100 GMT | Orbiting lab, ISS | In this image taken from NASA video, NASA astronauts Andrew Morgan and Jessica Meir use the International Space Station’s robot arm to capture the Dragon capsule Monday, March 9, 2020. The Dragon capsule reached the orbiting lab on Monday after launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida, late Friday night. It is SpaceX’s 20th shipment to the space station. (NASA via AP Photo)
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A SpaceX cargo ship arrived at the International Space Station on Monday, delivering the company’s 20th batch of gear and treats.
The Dragon capsule reached the orbiting lab after launching late Friday night. NASA astronauts Andrew Morgan and Jessica Meir used the station’s robot arm to capture the spacecraft.
The 4,300-pound (1,950-kilogram) shipment contains science experiments and equipment, as well as special goodies for the three-person crew aloft for months: grapefruit, tomatoes, Skittles, Reese’s Pieces and Hot Tamales.
MAR 6, 2020 @ 1800 GMT | Cocoa Beach, FLA, United States | In a time exposure, a SpaceX Falcon is launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday night, March 6, 2020, with a load of supplies for the International Space Station. Cocoa Beach, Fla., is in the foreground. (AP Photo)
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — SpaceX successfully launched another load of station supplies for NASA late Friday night and nailed its 50th rocket landing.
The Falcon rocket blasted off with 4,300 pounds (1,950 kilograms) of equipment and experiments for the International Space Station. Just minutes later, the spent first-stage booster made a dramatic midnight landing back at Cape Canaveral, its return accompanied by sonic booms.
MAR 5, 2020 @ 1145 GMT | FILE – In this frame grab from video taken on Dec. 20, 2019, militants of the al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham try to disperse people who have gathered at the Bab al-Hawa border gate to protest the ongoing bombing campaign in Syria’s rebel-controlled Idlib province by the government and its Russian ally. Intermingled among 3 million civilians under siege in the Syrian government’s assault on the last opposition stronghold are tens of thousands of al-Qaida-linked fighters and other militants who came from around the world to take part in the country’s civil war. (AP Photo)
BEIRUT (AP) — Intermingled among 3 million civilians under siege in the Syrian government’s assault on the last opposition stronghold are tens of thousands of al-Qaida-linked fighters and other militants who came from around the world to take part in the country’s civil war.
These hardened fighters have nowhere left to go as the war reaches an endgame in Syria’s northwest province of Idlib on the Turkish border. Like the civilians they terrorized for years, they are trapped in an ever-shrinking territory under constant bombardment by the Russian-backed offensive by the government of President Bashar Assad.
