At the weekend images of Kim ribbon cutting at a fertiliser plant on the outskirts of Pyongyang were released by a state media broadcast. In the footage, Kim Jong appeared healthy and in good spirits after rumours spread last week claiming the dictator had died or was gravely unwell.
Now the pictures have been analysed by computer wizards, who have alleged that the man in the images was a political decoy.
Previously tyrants including Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Saddam Hussein had utilised the same strategy.
The focal point of scepticism comes from the eyes and teeth of the recently pictured Kim Jong, which has been compared with dated photos of a younger Kim to last week’s snapshots.
On closer inspection the images released by North Korean state media shows that that his teeth appear very different to published photos previously by newspapers.
Former Tory MP Louise Mensch tweeted: “Teeth, Cupid's bow, others. Totally different. Look at those gnashes, if you must.”
She added: “It's not the same person. But not going to argue it. Hairy moment when I thought my information was wrong. It wasn't wrong though.
“Not sure whether it suits us to go along with it or not, but these two are not the same.”
US President Donald Trump has confirmed the White House coronavirus task force will be winding down, with Vice-President Mike Pence suggesting it could be disbanded within weeks.
"We are bringing our country back," Mr Trump said during a visit to a mask-manufacturing factory in Arizona.
New confirmed infections per day in the US currently top 20,000, and daily deaths exceed 1,000.
US health officials warn the virus may spread as businesses begin to reopen.
The US currently has 1.2 million confirmed coronavirus infections and more than 70,000 related deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, which is tracking the pandemic.
What did President Trump say?
During a visit to the plant in Phoenix after weeks holed up at the White House, Mr Trump told journalists: "Mike Pence and the task force have done a great job, but we're now looking at a little bit of a different form, and that form is safety and opening. And we'll have a different group probably set up for that."
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The president - who wore safety goggles but no face mask during his tour of the facility - was asked if it was "mission accomplished", and he said: "No, not at all. The mission accomplished is when it's over."
Critics have accused the president of sacrificing Americans' public health in his eagerness to reopen the US economy ahead of his re-election battle in November.
In Arizona on Tuesday, Mr Trump said that Democrats were hoping his coronavirus policy would fail ""so they can win the election".
Acknowledging a human cost to the plans, Mr Trump told reporters: "I'm not saying anything is perfect, and yes, will some people be affected? Yes.
"Will some people be affected badly? Yes. But we have to get our country open and we have to get it open soon."
However, it will be up to individual states to determine how they reopen. Some Democratic governors in badly hit states have been cautious, calling for more testing and other safeguards before easing lockdowns. Other states, many led by Republicans in the south and mid-west, have already begun lifting restrictions.
The president was also asked if White House task force experts Dr Deborah Birx and Dr Anthony Fauci would still be involved in efforts to address the coronavirus.
"They will be and so will other doctors and so will other experts in the field," the president answered.
The once daily task force briefings have become increasingly scarce since Mr Trump was widely condemned by the medical community last month after he pondered at the podium whether injecting bleach into people might kill the virus.
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What did the vice-president say?
Mr Pence earlier on Tuesday told reporters in a briefing that the task force could soon be disbanded.
He said the Trump administration was "starting to look at the Memorial Day [late May] window, early June window as a time when we could begin to transition back to having our agencies begin to manage, begin to manage our national response in a more traditional manner".
He said it was "a reflection of the tremendous progress we've made as a country".
Mr Pence has led the task force, which reports to the president and co-ordinates with medical institutes, political staff and state governors. The group also consulted medical experts to formulate national guidelines on social distancing.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany later tweeted that the president "will continue his data-driven approach towards safely re-opening".
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Lives and livelihoods
The White House's shift in focus from the public health aspect of the coronavirus pandemic to its economic impact continues.
For more than a month, the task force had been the public face of the administration's response to the crisis, even though President Trump sometimes veered far from the topic at hand during its press briefings.
When the president wasn't talking, however, government public health officials led the conversation.
Now, it appears, the officials setting the agenda will be ones more concerned with jobs, businesses and the fiscal health of the nation - even though the number of cases of the virus throughout the US continues to increase.
There is growing frustration among the president's core supporters, however, with government shelter-in-place orders. Several states, encouraged by the president, have already begun to ease restrictions, even though they have not met White House guidelines for when to do so.
Those recommendations were set by the current coronavirus task force, of course. And the "different group" in a "different form" that replaces it, as the president describes, may have other ideas.
Not yet. Besides New York, which is still the US epicentre despite an ongoing drop in new cases, the level of infection continues to climb across much of the country.
Many states that have allowed some business to resume - including Texas, Iowa, Minnesota, Tennessee, Kansas, Nebraska and Indiana - are seeing more new cases reported daily.
While some cities such as New York, New Orleans and Detroit have shown improvement, others like Los Angeles, Washington DC and Chicago are seeing the caseload rise every day.
According to a report from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), more than 3,000 people may be killed by the virus each day by next month.
The White House has dismissed the report as inaccurate, with Mr Trump saying it describes a scenario in which Americans make no effort to mitigate the spread of the infection.
On Sunday, the president increased his forecast for the number of US pandemic deaths to 100,000, after saying two weeks earlier that it would be fewer than 60,000.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, a public forecast model that has been frequently cited by the White House, now estimates that Covid-19 will account for 135,000 American deaths by 4 August. This more than doubles its 17 April forecast.
India is preparing one of the largest evacuation exercises in recent years.
It plans to operate 64 flights from 7 to 13 May to bring home thousands of its citizens stranded abroad due to Covid-19 lockdowns.
In the first week of this mammoth exercise, dubbed the Vande Bharat Mission, the flights will be sent to 12 countries and bring back nearly 15,000 Indians, civil aviation minister Hardeep Puri said in a press conference on Tuesday.
The countries include the US, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Qatar and Malaysia, reported local media.
But Indians wanting to return will be expected to pay for their tickets (the prices will vary based on the port of departure) and will only be able to board if they're not showing any symptoms for the virus. They will also be subject to extensive screening when they return as well as be quarantined.
The country's naval fleet of warships is also taking part. Earlier this week, three ships went to the Maldives and the UAE to rescue stranded Indians.
Eventually, about 200,000 Indians will be brought back, reported local media. If successful, this would become one of the world's largest evacuation exercises since 1990, when India rescued 170,000 civilians from Kuwait during the Gulf War.
Coronavirus appears to have infected people in France weeks before the disease was detected in Europe and possibly before the first cases of pneumonia of unknown origin were announced in China in December, according to scientists and doctors who have analysed virus samples.
Retesting of samples from patients with influenza-like symptoms at a hospital north of Paris found one that tested positive for coronavirus from the end of last year, a finding described in a paper for the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents published this week.
“We had a positive Covid-19 case on December 27 who was hospitalised with us at Jean-Verdier [hospital],” Yves Cohen, head of intensive care for two hospitals in Seine-Saint-Denis, north of Paris, told France’s BFMTV. He was one of the contributors to the paper.
“It’s not surprising when you consider that the World Health Organization has announced that it was circulating in China from December 8 at least. Given the amount of travel, it’s normal that the virus appeared quickly in France.”
France reported the first Covid-19 death in western Europe on February 15, when a Chinese tourist from Hubei died in a Paris hospital after arriving in the country on January 25.
Meanwhile, Sweden potentially had its first case of coronavirus in November, according to the country’s chief epidemiologist. Travellers from the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the disease is thought to have originated, were probably visiting the country in November or December, Anders Tegnell, told local media. “It doesn’t sound at all strange,” he said.
Sweden’s first official case, a 20-year-old woman returning from a trip to Wuhan, came in January.
The French Covid-19 patient, whose infection was confirmed with two separate types of genetic test, was a 42-year-old man born in Algeria who had not travelled abroad since July 2019 but one of whose children had earlier reported influenza-like symptoms. The father recovered.
“Identifying the first infected patient is of great epidemiological interest as it changes dramatically our knowledge regarding Sars-Cov-2 and its spreading in the country,” the paper said. “Moreover, the absence of a link [from the patient] with China and the lack of recent travel suggest that the disease was already spreading among the French population at the end of December 2019.”
More than 25,000 people have died from Covid-19 in French hospitals and old people’s homes since March 1, although the spread of the virus has slowed sharply since the imposition of a lockdown from March 17. Seine-Saint-Denis and Paris have been among the worst-hit areas.
A separate paper by scientists from France’s Institut Pasteur also concluded that the coronavirus appeared to be circulating in the country in February before the appearance of a series of well-publicised outbreaks that were subsequently controlled by testing and quarantine measures.
The authors said their genomic data “implies local circulation of the virus in undocumented infections prior to the wave of Covid-19 cases”.
Their analyses of different Covid-19 clades, or variants, led them to infer “that the virus was silently circulating in France in February, a scenario compatible with the large proportion of mild or asymptomatic diseases . . . and observations in other European countries”.
Coronavirus appears to have infected people in France weeks before the disease was detected in Europe and possibly before the first cases of pneumonia of unknown origin were announced in China in December, according to scientists and doctors who have analysed virus samples.
Retesting of samples from patients with influenza-like symptoms at a hospital north of Paris found one that tested positive for coronavirus from the end of last year, a finding described in a paper for the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents published this week.
“We had a positive Covid-19 case on December 27 who was hospitalised with us at Jean-Verdier [hospital],” Yves Cohen, head of intensive care for two hospitals in Seine-Saint-Denis, north of Paris, told France’s BFMTV. He was one of the contributors to the paper.
“It’s not surprising when you consider that the World Health Organization has announced that it was circulating in China from December 8 at least. Given the amount of travel, it’s normal that the virus appeared quickly in France.”
France reported the first Covid-19 death in western Europe on February 15, when a Chinese tourist from Hubei died in a Paris hospital after arriving in the country on January 25.
Meanwhile, Sweden potentially had its first case of coronavirus in November, according to the country’s chief epidemiologist. Travellers from the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the disease is thought to have originated, were probably visiting the country in November or December, Anders Tegnell, told local media. “It doesn’t sound at all strange,” he said.
Sweden’s first official case, a 20-year-old woman returning from a trip to Wuhan, came in January.
The French Covid-19 patient, whose infection was confirmed with two separate types of genetic test, was a 42-year-old man born in Algeria who had not travelled abroad since July 2019 but one of whose children had earlier reported influenza-like symptoms. The father recovered.
“Identifying the first infected patient is of great epidemiological interest as it changes dramatically our knowledge regarding Sars-Cov-2 and its spreading in the country,” the paper said. “Moreover, the absence of a link [from the patient] with China and the lack of recent travel suggest that the disease was already spreading among the French population at the end of December 2019.”
More than 25,000 people have died from Covid-19 in French hospitals and old people’s homes since March 1, although the spread of the virus has slowed sharply since the imposition of a lockdown from March 17. Seine-Saint-Denis and Paris have been among the worst-hit areas.
A separate paper by scientists from France’s Institut Pasteur also concluded that the coronavirus appeared to be circulating in the country in February before the appearance of a series of well-publicised outbreaks that were subsequently controlled by testing and quarantine measures.
The authors said their genomic data “implies local circulation of the virus in undocumented infections prior to the wave of Covid-19 cases”.
Their analyses of different Covid-19 clades, or variants, led them to infer “that the virus was silently circulating in France in February, a scenario compatible with the large proportion of mild or asymptomatic diseases . . . and observations in other European countries”.
Coronavirus appears to have infected people in France weeks before the disease was detected in Europe and possibly before the first cases of pneumonia of unknown origin were announced in China in December, according to scientists and doctors who have analysed virus samples.
Retesting of samples from patients with influenza-like symptoms at a hospital north of Paris found one that tested positive for coronavirus from the end of last year, a finding described in a paper for the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents published this week.
“We had a positive Covid-19 case on December 27 who was hospitalised with us at Jean-Verdier [hospital],” Yves Cohen, head of intensive care for two hospitals in Seine-Saint-Denis, north of Paris, told France’s BFMTV. He was one of the contributors to the paper.
“It’s not surprising when you consider that the World Health Organization has announced that it was circulating in China from December 8 at least. Given the amount of travel, it’s normal that the virus appeared quickly in France.”
France reported the first Covid-19 death in western Europe on February 15, when a Chinese tourist from Hubei died in a Paris hospital after arriving in the country on January 25.
Meanwhile, Sweden potentially had its first case of coronavirus in November, according to the country’s chief epidemiologist. Travellers from the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the disease is thought to have originated, were probably visiting the country in November or December, Anders Tegnell, told local media. “It doesn’t sound at all strange,” he said.
Sweden’s first official case, a 20-year-old woman returning from a trip to Wuhan, came in January.
The French Covid-19 patient, whose infection was confirmed with two separate types of genetic test, was a 42-year-old man born in Algeria who had not travelled abroad since July 2019 but one of whose children had earlier reported influenza-like symptoms. The father recovered.
“Identifying the first infected patient is of great epidemiological interest as it changes dramatically our knowledge regarding Sars-Cov-2 and its spreading in the country,” the paper said. “Moreover, the absence of a link [from the patient] with China and the lack of recent travel suggest that the disease was already spreading among the French population at the end of December 2019.”
More than 25,000 people have died from Covid-19 in French hospitals and old people’s homes since March 1, although the spread of the virus has slowed sharply since the imposition of a lockdown from March 17. Seine-Saint-Denis and Paris have been among the worst-hit areas.
A separate paper by scientists from France’s Institut Pasteur also concluded that the coronavirus appeared to be circulating in the country in February before the appearance of a series of well-publicised outbreaks that were subsequently controlled by testing and quarantine measures.
The authors said their genomic data “implies local circulation of the virus in undocumented infections prior to the wave of Covid-19 cases”.
Their analyses of different Covid-19 clades, or variants, led them to infer “that the virus was silently circulating in France in February, a scenario compatible with the large proportion of mild or asymptomatic diseases . . . and observations in other European countries”.
Coronavirus appears to have infected people in France weeks before the disease was detected in Europe and possibly before the first cases of pneumonia of unknown origin were announced in China in December, according to scientists and doctors who have analysed virus samples.
Retesting of samples from patients with influenza-like symptoms at a hospital north of Paris found one that tested positive for coronavirus from the end of last year, a finding described in a paper for the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents published this week.
“We had a positive Covid-19 case on December 27 who was hospitalised with us at Jean-Verdier [hospital],” Yves Cohen, head of intensive care for two hospitals in Seine-Saint-Denis, north of Paris, told France’s BFMTV. He was one of the contributors to the paper.
“It’s not surprising when you consider that the World Health Organization has announced that it was circulating in China from December 8 at least. Given the amount of travel, it’s normal that the virus appeared quickly in France.”
France reported the first Covid-19 death in western Europe on February 15, when a Chinese tourist from Hubei died in a Paris hospital after arriving in the country on January 25.
Meanwhile, Sweden potentially had its first case of coronavirus in November, according to the country’s chief epidemiologist. Travellers from the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the disease is thought to have originated, were probably visiting the country in November or December, Anders Tegnell, told local media. “It doesn’t sound at all strange,” he said.
Sweden’s first official case, a 20-year-old woman returning from a trip to Wuhan, came in January.
The French Covid-19 patient, whose infection was confirmed with two separate types of genetic test, was a 42-year-old man born in Algeria who had not travelled abroad since July 2019 but one of whose children had earlier reported influenza-like symptoms. The father recovered.
“Identifying the first infected patient is of great epidemiological interest as it changes dramatically our knowledge regarding Sars-Cov-2 and its spreading in the country,” the paper said. “Moreover, the absence of a link [from the patient] with China and the lack of recent travel suggest that the disease was already spreading among the French population at the end of December 2019.”
More than 25,000 people have died from Covid-19 in French hospitals and old people’s homes since March 1, although the spread of the virus has slowed sharply since the imposition of a lockdown from March 17. Seine-Saint-Denis and Paris have been among the worst-hit areas.
A separate paper by scientists from France’s Institut Pasteur also concluded that the coronavirus appeared to be circulating in the country in February before the appearance of a series of well-publicised outbreaks that were subsequently controlled by testing and quarantine measures.
The authors said their genomic data “implies local circulation of the virus in undocumented infections prior to the wave of Covid-19 cases”.
Their analyses of different Covid-19 clades, or variants, led them to infer “that the virus was silently circulating in France in February, a scenario compatible with the large proportion of mild or asymptomatic diseases . . . and observations in other European countries”.
