* Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte signed into law a PHP165.5 billion (US$3.4 billion) emergency relief measure to expand healthcare and help businesses after the coronavirus pandemic plunged the economy into recession.
* India and China have made a useful decision on de-escalating tensions on their disputed Himalayan border, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday (September 11), speaking alongside his Chinese counterpart. Earlier on Friday, China and India said they had agreed to de-escalate renewed tensions and take steps to restore "peace and tranquillity" following a high-level diplomatic meeting in Moscow.
* Top government infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Friday he disagreed with President Donald Trump's assessment the United States has "rounded the corner" on the coronavirus pandemic, saying the statistics are disturbing.
* Britain's economy recovered half of its COVID-19 crash by the end of July, helped by pubs and restaurants reopening from lockdown, but the bounce-back is expected to slow as job losses mount and Brexit tensions rise.
* The Brazilian state of Bahia has signed an agreement to conduct Phase III clinical trials of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine and plans to buy 50 million doses, officials said.
* US drugmaker Merck & Co Inc has begun recruiting participants to its early-stage COVID-19 vaccine study, according to the government database clinicaltrials.gov.
* Chile has extended the country's state of catastrophe due to the COVID-19 pandemic for a further 90-day period, the government said, which would take it until almost the end of 2020.
* The first European pandemic "travel bubble", created in May by Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, burst on Friday, as Latvia said it was mandating a 14-day quarantine on everyone arriving from Estonia.
* US hospitals have turned down about a third of their allocated supplies of the COVID-19 drug remdesivir since July as need for the costly antiviral wanes.
* British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has accused the European Union of threatening to impose a trade border down the Irish Sea and a food blockade between Britain and Northern Ireland unless the bloc's terms for a future relationship were agreed. Johnson's government said this week it planned to break international law by breaching part of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement treaty signed in January when Britain left the bloc, saying it needed a new law to protect free trade between the four constituent nations of the United Kingdom.
* US President Donald Trump and his Democratic opponent Joe Biden separately commemorated the 19th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on Friday, taking a pause from campaigning to honor the almost 3,000 victims killed in the single-most deadliest assault on US soil. Biden participated in a solemn morning memorial ceremony in New York, where al Qaeda operatives destroyed the World Trade Center with two hijacked jets. Trump began the day in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where passengers crashed a hijacked plane believed to have been headed to the US Capitol or White House.
* The king of Bahrain reiterated the necessity of reaching a fair and lasting peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, based on the two state solution, in a call with US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Bahrain's state news agency BNA said on Friday. Bahrain joined the United Arab Emirates in striking an agreement to normalize relations with Israel on Friday.
* The agreement between Israel and Bahrain is a great betrayal to the Islamic cause and Palestinians, tweeted a special adviser on international affairs to the speaker of Iran’s parliament, in reaction to a Friday deal between the two states on establishing diplomatic relations.
* The Turkish Foreign Ministry on Saturday strongly condemned the decision by Bahrain to establish diplomatic ties with Israel, adding it will deal a fresh blow to efforts to defend the Palestinian cause.
* Jordan's foreign minister Ayman Safadi said in a statement on Friday, that the necessary steps to achieve a fair and comprehensive peace in the region should come from Israel. The minister added, after the announcement of a normalisation of ties between Israel and Bahrain, Israel should stop all its procedures to undermine the two-states solution, and end the illegal occupation of the Palestinian lands.
* The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday reported 6,381,013 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 37,451 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 1,091 to 191,353.
* Brazil registered 874 novel coronavirus deaths over the last 24 hours and 43,718 additional cases, the nation's health ministry said on Friday. The country has now registered 130,396 coronavirus deaths and 4,282,164 confirmed cases in total.
* The confirmed coronavirus death toll in Mexico on Friday topped 70,000 after the government reported more than 500 new deaths, a grim milestone for a country among those most affected by the pandemic. Health officials late on Friday reported 534 new deaths linked to the virus, bringing the total to 70,183. Another 5,935 cases bring the total to 658,299. The spread of the virus has ravaged an already ailing economy, which is now seen contracting by up to 13% this year, the deepest recession since the 1930s-era Great Depression.
* Russia reported 5,488 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, bringing the tally to 1,057,362, the fourth largest in the world. Authorities said 119 people had died in the past 24 hours, pushing official total fatalities to 18,484.
* French Prime Minister Jean Castex said his government was not planning a new, nationwide lockdown to contain a resurgence in COVID-19 cases, but would instead implement a raft of less radical measures. France reported 9,406 new COVID cases on Friday, which followed 9,843 new cases recorded on Thursday. The government also revised its earlier COVID statistics to show that French COVID deaths had risen by 80 over the last 24 hours to stand at 30,893 casualties.
* The United Kingdom reported 3,539 confirmed new cases of COVID-19, according to government data published on Friday, compared with 2,919 a day earlier. Six new deaths were also recorded. Figures on Friday showed the spread of the coronavirus was accelerating across all parts of England with one study suggesting cases were doubling each week. A new ban on social gatherings comes into effect on Monday in a bid to curb the rise.
* Spain reported 4,708 new coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours on Friday, bringing its cumulative total to 566,326 -- the highest in western Europe. Spain has been regularly revising up its daily tallies and while Friday's figure was a new record for initial infection reports since the end of its strict lockdown in June, it was below recent peaks seen in those revised tallies. A week ago, for example, the initially reported figure was 4,500 but that was later revised up to more than 11,000. Spain also registered six new deaths on Friday, bringing its total COVID-19 death toll to 29,747.
* The Philippines' health ministry on Saturday reported 186 more deaths related to the novel coronavirus, a new daily record and the highest single-day fatality rate recorded so far in Southeast Asia. In a bulletin, the ministry said total deaths have increased to 4,292, while confirmed cases rose by 4,935 to 257,863. The Philippines has the most COVID-19 infections in the region.
* Canada reported no COVID-19 deaths in the past 24 hours for the first time since March 15, according to public health agency data released late on Friday.
* Coronavirus cases in Colombia, which ended more than five months of lockdown at the start of the month, surpassed 700,000 on Friday as deaths from the virus climbed toward 23,000. The Andean country has 702,088 confirmed cases of the virus according to the health ministry, with 22,518 reported deaths. Active cases number 95,398. Colombia began its months-long lockdown in March. It is now in a much-looser "selective" quarantine phase and making plans to restart international flights.
* At least 50 people are thought to have died when an artisanal gold mine collapsed near Kamituga in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday afternoon, a local mining NGO said. The cave-in occurred on the "Detroit" mine site at around 3 p.m. local (1300 GMT) following heavy rains, said Emiliane Itongwa, president of the Initiative of Support and Social Supervision of Women.
* President Donald Trump's administration has expelled about 8,800 unaccompanied migrant children intercepted at the US-Mexico border since March 20 under rules seeking to limit the coronavirus spread in the United States, according to court documents filed Friday by the Justice Department.
* Maersk Tankers said on Friday the 27 migrants that were stuck onboard the Maersk Etienne tanker for more than a month have safely disembarked to a ship operated by the NGO Mediterranea. The tanker's crew rescued the migrants, including a pregnant woman, on Aug. 4 near Malta from a wooden dinghy that had been at sea for days and sank immediately after the rescue operation.
* Armenia's government lifted a state of emergency on Friday, saying the coronavirus was spreading less quickly than before, but said some restrictions would stay in place until January. The state of emergency had been declared in mid-March and extended several times since then. It will now be replaced by a state of quarantine, a declaration which allows some restrictions but is less severe. Armenia has registered 45,503 confirmed coronavirus cases and 909 deaths as of Friday from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.
* The Czech Republic on Saturday reported its largest one-day rise so far of new coronavirus infections, recording 1,447 cases, according to Health Ministry data. The country has seen one of the biggest spikes in cases among European countries in recent weeks. It tightened restrictions on mask wearing this week although it aims to avoid bringing back measures that would hurt businesses.
* Nearly 100 Senegalese soldiers tested positive this week after returning home from a deployment in neighbouring Gambia, a source said.
* Kenya's economy is expected to grow by less than 2.5% this year, the finance minister said, as more evidence of the economic damage emerges.
* A first official visit to Israel by United Arab Emirates delegates may be postponed or conducted under restrictions as a lockdown looms.
