While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, May 21

A municipal worker drives a coronavirus-themed auto-rickshaw in Chennai, India, on May 20, 2020. PHOTO: AFP

WHO reports most coronavirus cases in a day, as cases near five million

The World Health Organisation (WHO) expressed concern on Wednesday about the rising number of new coronavirus cases in poor countries, even as many rich nations have begun emerging from lockdown.

The global health body said 106,000 new cases of infections of the novel coronavirus had been recorded in the past 24 hours, the most in a single day since the outbreak began.

"We still have a long way to go in this pandemic," WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference.

"We are very concerned about rising cases in low and middle income countries."

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Trump blames China for 'mass Worldwide killing'

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday again lashed out at China over the coronavirus pandemic, blaming Beijing for "mass Worldwide killing".

His early morning tweet, which also referred to an unidentified "wacko in China," was the latest heated rhetoric from the White House, where Trump is making attacks on Beijing a centrepiece of his November re-election bid.

"It was the 'incompetence of China', and nothing else, that did this mass Worldwide killing," the president tweeted.

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For first time, scientists spot an alien planet as it is being formed

Astronomers have gazed into what appears to be a planetary maternity ward, observing for the first time within a huge disk of dense gas and dust surrounding a newly formed star a planet in the process of being born.

This large young planet is forming around a star called AB Aurigae that is about 2.4 times the mass of the sun and located in our Milky Way galaxy 520 light years from Earth, researchers said on Wednesday. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

The scientists used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile to spot a spiral structure within the swirling disk around AB Aurigae generated by the presence of a planet.

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Italian woman wins Picasso painting in French charity raffle

An Italian woman on Wednesday won a Pablo Picasso painting worth €1 million (S$1.5 million) in a French charity raffle that raised money for African water projects.

The winner - who received her lottery ticket as a gift - will acquire the Spanish master's 1921 oil-on-canvas still life "Nature morte", a small abstract representing a table, newspapers and a glass of absinth.

The raffle raised €5.1 million, of which €900,000 will go to Monaco billionaire collector David Nahmad who provided the painting.

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Football: Klopp says no Liverpool player will be forced to train

No Liverpool player will be forced to train if he does not feel safe to do so, manager Juergen Klopp said on Wednesday after the Premier League leaders' first training session for more than nine weeks.

The league has been halted since March 13 due to the Covid-19 pandemic but clubs can now train in small groups.

Klopp told Sky Sports television after a first session with 10 players on a sunny day at Melwood that he expected all his players to show up but they were under no pressure.

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