Over 3.9 billion people — more than half of humanity — are in confinement due to the coronavirus, according to Thursday tally conducted by French news agency AFP. Coronavirus prevention measures that include required or recommended confinement, curfews, and quarantines have been put in place in over 90 countries and territories. Thailand was the most recent country to enact a curfew, which will come into effect on Friday, pushing the tally over the halfway point.

Certain political groups in the West will not hesitate to use the difficulties brought on by the coronavirus pandemic to carry out their long-lasting plans to topple the Venezuelan government, Russia's Foreign Ministry has said.

"Unfortunately, we are seeing how certain countries - we should say, not the countries as a whole, but certain political forces there - are still being driven... by the desire to exploit the difficult situation in the world, the grave epidemiological situation in Venezuela to achieve their political goals," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told reporters on Thursday.

US President Donald Trump has said he expects that Russia and Saudi Arabia could drastically curtail their oil output after a conversation between the two nations' leaders. Moscow denies that any talks took place at all.

Trump took to Twitter on Thursday to relay some "great" news for the oil and gas industry, as he expressed his hopes for some supposedly upcoming cuts in crude oil production by Saudi Arabia and Russia which could reverse the current plunge in oil prices. According to the president, oil production could be scaled back by as many as 10 million barrels in total - or even "substantially more."

In his statement, Trump referred to his conversation with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who he said had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin. This statement seems somewhat bizarre, since Moscow has confirmed that the talks never occurred, nor are there any plans to cut production.

"No, there was no such conversation," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russia's Interfax news agency when asked about Putin's supposed talks with the Saudi crown prince. Moscow said earlier that no talks between the two nations have been held since the strife between Russia and the OPEC members earlier in March, which was described as an oil price war between Moscow and Riyadh.

The National Bureau for defending land and resisting settlements stated in its latest weekly report , that although, the entire world is working together to stop the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Israeli occupation and its extremist settlers step up their attacks against the Palestinians, storming their cities, towns, villages and camps, and launching arrest and confiscation campaigns against them and their properties, while they are staying at homes due to protect themselves from the coronavirus pandemic. Besides, the increasing demolition of Palestinian homes and facilities in the northern Jordan Valley and other areas in the West Bank, they have also isolated about 8000 citizens in the Barta'a Sharqeia town behind the Apartheid Wall.

For its part, B'Tselem organization for Human Rights condemned the continued Israeli occupation authorities' violations in the occupied territories without giving any attention for the situation in which the whole world including the Palestinian citizens suffer due to the Coronavirus epidemic. The organization said that the Israeli army exploited the current opportunity to expel the Palestinians in the Bedouin and the in the Jordan Valley, adding that Israel holds the responsibility of the safety of the five million Palestinians under its control. While the United Nations confirmed that the Israeli government bears legal responsibility for the benefit of Palestinians in the occupied territories from basic health services to combat the spread of the new Corona virus in the world.

President Donald Trump has warned Iran of a "heavy price" if it or its allies in Iraq attack U.S. troops or assets in Iraq.

"Upon information and belief, Iran or its proxies are planning a sneak attack on U.S. troops and/or assets in Iraq," Trump tweeted on April 1.

"If this happens, Iran will pay a very heavy price, indeed!" he added.

It was not immediately clear if Trump meant the United States actually has intelligence of such a plan.

Over the past year, the United States has accused Iranian-backed militias of attacks on Iraqi military bases hosting coalition forces and on foreign embassies, particularly the U.S. mission.

With India's 1.3 billion people now on Covid-19 lockdown, the country faces another urgent crisis; the sudden exodus of inter-state migrants, now out of work, desperately fleeing the capital to reach their countryside villages.

Thousands of poor migrants were seen crowding a bus station in Delhi on Saturday, with little choice but to completely ignore the rules on maintaining 'social distancing' — one of the necessary steps taken across the world to 'flatten the curve' of the novel coronavirus outbreak. Similar scenes were witnessed in other provinces, too, as migrants attempted to make their way out of cities and back home.

Health risks

It seems this mass movement has been sparked mostly by fear. These migrants, already poor, have been left with no money in their pockets — and with work no longer readily available, it's become even harder for them to feed themselves, let alone their families.

"Nancy Pelosi is a cancer on the body politic."

Those are the words of Mark Levin, and he is profoundly correct. It is actually an understatement. This woman has dedicated her entire recent term to impeaching President Trump over a phone call. She stupidly bought into Adam Schiff's lunacy that they had the evidence that the president had threatened the president of Ukraine with a quid pro quo -- either investigate the Clinton campaign's meddling in the 2016 election or else. None of that was true, any more than the Russia collusion hoax, but Pelosi still gambled that she could take out Trump with that phony ploy. It was Biden who threatened Ukraine with an actual quid pro quo -- either fire the man investigating my son or lose a billions dollars in U.S. aid.

Then came the Wuhan virus. Oh my, were the Democrats thrilled. This would be the crisis they could use, manipulate to their desired end. This is how utterly stupid these Democrats are! This is how malicious they are; they are ready and willing to destroy the United States economy to take down a president they abhor. Why do the loathe him so? Because he is effective and successful. The American people, those not members of the political/academic class, love this man. They love him for a myriad of good reasons. Chief among them is that he recognizes and respects them, unlike the partisans of the left who view most Americans as nothing more than flotsam and jetsam, inconveniences they must tolerate. So superior to the worth of most citizens do the likes of those who inhabit Pelosi's circle of pals see themselves, they suffer no unease over dismissing us as invalid. That so many of us love and revere President Trump makes us all the more worthy of their dripping disdain.

Nancy Pelosi is a blight upon her district. San Francisco is a disaster about which she cares nothing. It is a city ravaged by drug abuse, homelessness, rampant crime and all the other scourges of leftism. She lives extravagantly in her gated mansion. She lives a life of wealth and privilege in city suffering a civilizational collapse created and orchestrated by her own party. She revels in it. She has become a near-billionairess by way of politics of the most corrupt variety. She is indeed a cancer on the body politic.

Efforts to mediate the crisis in Yemen, which marked its fifth anniversary last week, have been complicated by repeated back-and-forth strikes by the Saudi-led military coalition and Yemen's Houthi rebels.

Houthi Information Minister Dhaifullah Al-Shami has urged civilians not to use facemasks and any other medical equipment dropped from Saudi-coalition aircraft in recent days, claiming that they may be contaminated with the coronavirus, Almasirah, a Yemeni television channel has reported.

Al-Shami voiced his "surprise" at seeing coalition aircraft dropping facemasks in Sana'a and other provinces, given that "US-Saudi aggression had caused the worst humanitarian catastrophe" in his country. According to the minister, there were no confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Yemen. Al-Shami urged media and activists to spread the word about the alleged danger posed by the air-dropped masks.

The threat of COVID-19 in Israel/Palestine has created unprecedented cooperation between the Israeli and Palestinian authorities, including the Hamas-led government in the Gaza Strip, to limit travel.

Israel has a genuine interest in preventing the coronavirus from spreading among Palestinians, too. But the newly imposed travel restrictions serve an additional goal: furthering Israeli annexation of the West Bank, as outlined by the Trump administration's Mideast peace plan.

In contrast to federal, state, and local governments in the U.S., the Israeli and Palestinian authorities began cooperating relatively early to contain COVID-19. They required travelers from at least some countries to self-quarantine in early February, they closed Palestinian schools on March 5 and Israeli schools on March 12, and as of last week, they mostly closed external borders and ordered residents of Israel and the West Bank to stay home.

The United States and much of the western world, by utilizing the most draconian of tactics, is plunging many nations into potential economic and societal chaos as they attempt to stem the tide of the Chinese Coronavirus. Relying on dubious and error-prone projections, politicians and bureaucrats constitutionally or statutorily limited in their power, are now exercising near-dictatorial authority in their edicts, which are effectively suspending or terminating numerous freedoms under the guise of protecting their respective nations.

All Americans, not be just those with first-hand experience dealing with World War II and its aftermath or living in Eastern Europe under iron boot of the Soviet Union or escaping the Communist/socialist hellholes of Cuba, Southeast Asia or Venezuela, should view these actions with considerable trepidation.

When societies lose their freedom, it is not ordinarily because autocrats or tyrants have forcibly taken it away. It is usually the result of the population willingly surrendering their freedom in return for protection against an external threat. While the threat is oftentimes real, it is invariably exaggerated.