KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — On most mornings, Somaya Farooqi and four other teen-age girls pile into her dad’s car and head to a mechanic’s workshop. They use back roads to skirt police checkpoints set up to enforce a lockdown in their city of Herat, one of Afghanistan’s hot spots of the coronavirus pandemic. The members […]

BERLIN (AP) — Pressures mounted Sunday on governments to ease the economic pain of coronavirus lockdowns after protests from those fearing for their livelihoods, and authorities responded with a wide range of possible dates and solutions and a few emphatic “not yets.” Shutdowns that began in China in late January and spread to Europe, the […]

NEW YORK (VINnews) — Journalist Sivan Rahav-Meir told the story of Moshe Grunwald, a Holocaust survivor who survived Auschwitz and the death marches but passed away in Brooklyn a short while ago from the coronavirus. His family was told that the funeral would take place at ten in the morning and a few relatives came […]

TIBERIAS (VINnews) — In this bird’s eye view video of Lake Kinneret photographer Elad Nachmani demonstrates graphically the huge rise in the level of the lake between January 2018 and April 2020. On April 18th 2020, the Kinneret rose another centimeter to -208.945 meters which is just 14 centimeters from the tipping point which will […]

JERUSALEM (VINnews) On Saturday night, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced that the strict lockdown imposed in Israel to prevent the spread of coronavirus would begin to be lifted Sunday. Some economic restrictions have been lifted, with the number of employees allowed to return to work increasing from 15% to 30%. Netanyahu added that hi-tech […]

TORONTO (AP) — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday the U.S. and Canada have agreed to keep their border closed to nonessential travel for another 30 days and he said it will be undoubtedly longer before the restriction is removed. Trudeau said it will keep people on both sides of the border safe amid […]

BNEI BRAK (VINnews) — In this unusual clip taken this Shabbat by a Filipino working for a local resident, a motley group of people join together for a porch minyan, including a policeman and soldier responsible for maintaining public health regulations in Bnei Brak, the city with the highest rate of infection in Israel (2,250 […]

TEL AVIV (VINnews) — In the wake of the secular protest against prime minister Netanyahu in which a thousand people gathered in Tel Aviv Thursday night, Israeli secular journalist Guy Lehrer posted on his Twitter page a call for allowing religious people to conduct minyanim while maintaining social distance guidelines. Lehrer wrote that “originally we […]

NEW DELHI (AP) — Lavina D’Souza hasn’t been able to collect her government-supplied anti-HIV medication since the abrupt lockdown of India’s 1.3 billion people last month during the coronavirus outbreak. Marooned in a small city away from her home in Mumbai, the medicine she needs to manage her disease has run out. The 43-year-old is […]

NEW DELHI (AP) — With no approved drugs for the new coronavirus, some people are turning to alternative medicines, often with governments promoting them. This is most evident in India and China, densely populated countries with a deep history and tradition of touting such treatments, and where there’s sometimes limited access to conventional medicine. In […]