* French police banned demonstrations planned outside the US Embassy and on the lawns near the Eiffel Tower in Paris on Saturday as protests mount around the world over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The Paris police department said on Friday (June 5) it had decided to ban the demonstrations because of the risks of social disorder and health dangers from large gatherings due to the coronavirus pandemic.
* China on Friday advised the public to avoid travelling to Australia, citing racial discrimination and violence in connection with the novel coronavirus pandemic. Australia rejected the accusations saying they had no basis in fact.
* British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is willing to accept European Union tariffs on some UK goods in an attempt to win a trade deal and break the deadlock in talks with the EU, the Daily Mail reported. Britain's chief negotiator, David Frost, had made a new offer, the newspaper said, citing sources.
* The United States will permit Chinese passenger air carriers to operate two flights per week after Beijing said it would ease coronavirus-related restrictions to allow in more foreign carriers, the US Transportation Department said on Friday. On June 3, President Donald Trump's administration said it planned to bar all Chinese passenger airlines from flying to the United States by June 16 due to Beijing's curbs on US carriers amid the pandemic.
* Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Saturday he hoped that some of the US troops that are set to be removed from Germany will be reassigned to Poland. US President Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to cut the number of US troops stationed in Germany, a senior US official said on Friday. The move would reduce the US troop presence in Germany by 9,500 troops from the 34,500 troops that are currently permanently assigned there.
* Former US Vice President Joe Biden secured enough delegates to formally clinch the Democratic presidential nomination on Friday, setting the stage for a challenge to President Donald Trump in the November election.
* President Jair Bolsonaro threatened on Friday to pull Brazil out of the World Health Organization after the U.N. agency warned Latin American governments about the risk of lifting lockdowns before slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus throughout the region. Latin America's most populous nations, Brazil and Mexico, are seeing the highest rates of new infections, though the pandemic is also gathering pace in countries such as Peru, Colombia, Chile and Bolivia.
* Brazil reported an additional 1,005 novel coronavirus deaths and 30,830 new cases over the last 24 hours, data released by the health ministry showed on Friday night. The Latin American nation has now registered 35,026 total coronavirus deaths and 645,771 confirmed cases.
* Mexico's health ministry reported on Friday an additional 4,346 cases of the novel coronavirus in the country as well as 625 new deaths, bringing the country's confirmed total to 110,026 cases and 13,170 deaths.
* China recorded three new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus as of the end of Friday, down from five the day before, the national health authority reported. All of the cases were imported, involving travellers arriving from abroad, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on its website. The total number of infections in China, where the virus first emerged late last year, stands at 83,030. With no new deaths reported, the death toll remained 4,634.
* The Philippines' health ministry on Saturday reported seven new coronavirus deaths and 714 additional infections. In a bulletin, the ministry said total deaths had increased to 994, while confirmed cases had reached 21,340.
* Russia reported 8,855 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Saturday, pushing the total number of infections to 458,689. Officials said 197 people had died in the last 24 hours, bringing the official nationwide death toll to 5,725.
* India reported a record 9,887 new coronavirus cases in one day on Saturday and overtook Italy as the world's sixth-biggest outbreak, two days before the relaxing of a lockdown with the reopening of malls, restaurants and places of worship. With its total number of cases rising to more than 236,000, India now has fewer infections than only the United States, Brazil, Russia, Britain and Spain, according to a Reuters tally.However, India's toll of deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, is 6,642, small compared with those other countries.
* Thailand on Saturday reported two new coronavirus cases and no new deaths, taking its total confirmed cases to 3,104 infections and 58 deaths since the outbreak began in January. There are 2,971 patients who have recovered.
* The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 407 to 183,678, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Friday. The reported death toll rose by 33 to 8,646, the tally showed.
* Poland plans to extend a ban on international flights until June 16 due to the coronavirus pandemic, state-run news agency PAP said late on Friday, citing a government decree. State-controlled Polish airlines LOT restarted flights between the country's biggest cities, including Warsaw, Gdansk, Krakow, and Wroclaw, from June 1. As of Friday, Poland had reported 25,410 coronavirus cases, including 1,137 deaths.
* Ireland is hopeful that it will be able to resume air travel to other European countries later in the summer, acting prime minister Leo Varadkar said on Friday.
* The door remains open for a wider negotiation with Iran about its nuclear program and other issues, but so far talks have been limited to prisoner releases, US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook said on Friday.
* France said on Friday its military forces had killed al Qaeda's North Africa chief Abdelmalek Droukdel, a key Islamist fighter that its forces had been hunting for more than seven years, during an operation in Mali.
* Forces loyal to Libya's internationally recognised government took the last stronghold of eastern commander Khalifa Haftar near Tripoli on Friday and advanced further south, capping the sudden collapse of his 14-month offensive on the capital. Military sources in Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) said their forces had withdrawn from the town of Tarhouna towards Sirte, far to the east, and al-Jufra airbase in central Libya.
