The World

The coronavirus continues to spread, eroding a sense of safety that comes with distance from China. Europe is confronting its first major eruption of cases in Italy. And, despite a growing chorus of troubling reports of human rights abuses in the disputed region of Kashmir, US President Donald Trump praised Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday during a visit to India...

We speak with the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to find out about international cooperation with scientists in China on the coronavirus outbreak, America's preparedness for infections here and some experimental treatments being tested. South Sudan's political rivals President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar have announced they will agree to share power and form a unity government by Saturday...

Federal prosecutors are treating the mass shooting in Hanau, Germany as an act of terrorism. Far-right extremism is thought to have motivated the shooter, who opened fire in two hookah bars in the western German town and killed at least nine people. We also look at the appointment of Ambassador Richard Grenell as acting director of national intelligence, and ask what impact it might have on US intelligence-gathering capabilities...

The humanitarian crisis in northwestern Syria is massive. Since December, an estimated 900,000 civilians have fled from their homes as Syrian government forces — with Russian military help — have continued their offensive in Idlib province. Now, Turkey's president says it's "only a matter of time" before Turkish troops launch an operation of their own. And, as COVID-19 spreads, online platforms like Airbnb are telling users and hosts to take cautionary measures...

From The World and PRX, this is The Number in the News. Today’s number: 10,000. Zaatari, a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan, has quickly turned into a city of 80,000 people since opening in 2012. Water can be scarce and the desert soil is too poor to cultivate anything, making nutritious food a hard resource to come by. But scientists from the University of Sheffield in England have a solution. They're teaching refugees how to grow food by using old foam mattresses instead of soil...

We're due for another coronavirus reality check on what we know and how we know it. Dr. Michael Mina, an infectious disease specialist at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, speaks with The World's host Marco Werman about the latest understanding of how the virus spreads, how it incubates and how deadly COVID-19 is compared to other respiratory diseases. And, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos says he’ll start handing out $10 billion worth of grants to fight climate change...

The biggest cluster of coronavirus cases outside of China is on a cruise ship called the Diamond Princess. The World's host Marco Werman speaks with one of the passengers on board and with an infectious disease specialist at the University of Toronto. Also, meet a Chinese American family that's now on lockdown in northwest China. Plus, climate change may get some attention in Tuesday's Democratic presidential candidate debate in Nevada...

In China, health officials reported more than 5,000 new cases of the COVID-19 coronavirus and 121 deaths on Friday. Those numbers are just from the last 24 hours. So, how do you contain an outbreak like this? And, officials in Egypt on Friday announced the first case of coronavirus in the country. It’s also the first confirmed case in the whole of Africa. Also, the legend of Selena Quintanilla-Pérez is the focus of a new college course at San Diego State University.

Officials in China's Hubei province are using a new methodology to diagnose people with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. That new methodology increased the estimated number of infected people to nearly 60,000, the vast majority of them in China. And, more than 700,000 Syrians have tried to flee fighting in Syria's north-west province since December...

From The World and PRX, this is The Number in the News, Today’s number: 28. Researchers in Italy are listening more closely to penguins in an effort to understand how the flightless birds communicate. The study analyzed nearly 600 penguin “songs” from 28 adult African penguins and found that the structure of the songs closely imitates the structure of human language...