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BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary has banned the commercial export of hydroxychloroquine sulfate, an ingredient used in drugs for coronavirus treatment in several countries, the government said on Wednesday. The ban applies to hydroxychloroquine sulfate and drugs containing the ingredient. “As Hungary is one of the world’s largest exporters of this ingredient, the protection and medical supply of the Hungarian population is now a priority,” the government said in a statement on its website.

The number of people worldwide struggling with extreme heat and humidity by the end of the century could be more than four times as many as today if planet-warming emissions continue to rise, hiking economic losses and health costs, scientists have warned. Spending on mental health, in particular, could soar as more families have trouble sleeping and working, and heat aggravates existing mental health problems, one of two new studies found. "Heat and humidity extremes have real impacts on health and productivity," said Bob Kopp, director of the Institute of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences at Rutgers University, and an...

An image circulated on social media makes the claim that a vaccine for coronavirus (COVID-19) has been approved in Israel ( here ) The image, posted on Facebook on March 14, 2020, makes the further claim that the vaccine is already being mass produced and should soon be available in the U.S. for distribution. “A vaccine for CoronaVirus has just been approved in Israel. It is being produced in hundreds of thousands as we speak and expected to be in the US within 14 days!” It is true that scientists at Israel’s Institute for Biological Research—a civilian organization formerly under the Defense...

Several months before the coronavirus pandemic began, the Trump administration eliminated a key American public health position in Beijing intended to help detect disease outbreaks in China, Reuters has learned.

The coronavirus is not as bad as the seasonal flu. President Donald Trump is not worried about having had a direct exposure to the virus. The United States is in far better shape than other countries. Those are some of the messages from Trump to the American public in recent days. They are textbook examples of disastrous communication during disease outbreaks, according to some researchers into the psychology of pandemics and how leaders can most effectively communicate to keep the public safe during them. Trump is known for his informal style in attempts to, for instance, calm markets amid trade...

NEW YORK - As Republican President Donald Trump seeks a second term in November, Americans’ interest in voting is growing faster in large cities dominated by Democrats than in conservative rural areas, according to an analysis of Reuters/Ipsos national opinion polls. If the trend lasts until Election Day on Nov. 3, it would be a reversal from the 2016 election when rural turnout outpaced voting in urban areas, helping Trump narrowly win the White House. The finding, based on responses from more than 88,000 U.S. adults who took the online poll from August to December 2015 or from August to...

WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court on Friday threw out a lawsuit brought by Democratic lawmakers that accused Donald Trump of violating anti-corruption provisions in the U.S. Constitution with his business dealings, capping a week of political victories for the Republican president. A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the more than 210 House of Representatives and Senate Democrats lacked the required legal standing to bring the case, reversing a lower court judge’s decision that had allowed the case to proceed. The ruling came during a week of positives...

FRESNO, Calif. (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential contender Michael Bloomberg vowed on Monday he would not let President Donald Trump bully him as the war of words between the two New York business tycoons and political rivals became nastier.

MEXICO CITY - The United Nations said in a post on Twitter on Friday it is concerned about the impact Mexico’s migrant operation is having on children and vulnerable people, saying the country had a right to protect its borders but not to use excessive force. Mexican authorities have adopted tougher measures against Central American migrants, detaining 800 who had entered Mexico from Guatemala seeking to reach the border with the United States.

MEXICO CITY - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is facing a barrage of criticism at home that he is doing U.S. President Donald Trump’s bidding after erecting a “wall” of security forces near the Guatemala border to keep out Central Americans. Mexico has bowed to demands from Trump, under the threat of punitive tariffs, to contain mass movements of migrants, most of them from Central America, who have been crossing through Mexico on their way to the U.S. border. Lopez Obrador was questioned at his daily morning news conference for a second day in a row about how the...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders has been steadily climbing in popularity this year and is now tied with former Vice President Joe Biden for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination among registered voters, according to a Reuters/Ipsos national poll. The online poll, released Thursday, shows that 20% of registered Democrats and independents said they would back Sanders over 11 other candidates to run in the general election against President Donald Trump, an increase of 2 percentage points from a similar poll that ran last week. Another 19% supported Biden, 12% said they would vote for Senator Elizabeth Warren,...

STRASBOURG, France - The EU budget chief said the bloc needs to invest dedicated funds to avert a “climate crash” as Brussels detailed how it planned to pay for a trillion euro push to cut net C02 emissions to zero by 2050 and protect member countries dependent on coal. “We need climate cash in order to avoid a climate crash,” European Budget Commissioner Johannes Hahn told Reuters on Tuesday. Of the 1 trillion euros of the EU’s 10-year investment plan, roughly half is to come from the EU long-term budget, the Commission said. This will trigger more than 100 billion...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday will discuss the strategy and timing for sending articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate as Republicans balk at a call to dismiss the charges without a trial. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will convene the meeting at 9 a.m. (1400 GMT) for a check-in session after saying on Sunday she planned to send the impeachment charges, which she has held since the House passed them in December, to the Senate this week. Pelosi could also unveil the names of the lawmakers who will be the...

U.S. coal-fired power plants shut down at the second-fastest pace on record in 2019, despite President Donald Trump’s efforts to prop up the industry, according to data from the federal government and Thomson Reuters. Power companies retired or converted roughly 15,100 megawatts (MW) of coal-fired electricity generation, enough to power about 15 million homes, according to the data, which included preliminary statistics from the Energy Information Administration and Reuters reporting. That was second only to the record 19,300 MW shut in 2015 during President Barack Obama’s administration. The replacement of coal with power generation from natural gas and renewables has...

Iranian General Qassem Soleimani arrived at the Damascus airport in a vehicle with dark-tinted glass. Four soldiers from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards rode with him. They parked near a staircase leading to a Cham Wings Airbus A320, destined for Baghdad. Neither Soleimani nor the soldiers were registered on the passenger manifesto, according to a Cham Wings airline employee who described the scene of their departure from the Syrian capital to Reuters. Soleimani avoided using his private plane because of rising concerns about his own security, said an Iraqi security source with knowledge of Soleimani’s security arrangements. The passenger flight would be...

The United States-led military coalition against Islamic State said on Monday that it was pulling out of Iraq and would be repositioning forces over the next few days and weeks, a letter seen by Reuters showed. "Sir, in deference to the sovereignty of the Republic of Iraq, and as requested by the Iraqi Parliament and the Prime Minister, CJTF-OIR will be repositioning forces over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement," read a letter from United States Marine Corps Brigadier General William H. Seely III, the commanding general of Task Force Iraq.

(Reuters) - U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House will introduce and vote on a war powers resolution this week to limit U.S. President Donald Trump’s military actions regarding Iran.

In mid-October, Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani met with his Iraqi Shi’ite militia allies at a villa on the banks of the Tigris River, looking across at the U.S. embassy complex in Baghdad. The Revolutionary Guards commander instructed his top ally in Iraq, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and other powerful Pro-Iran militia leaders to step up attacks on U.S. targets in the country using sophisticated new weapons provided by Iran, two militia commanders and two security sources briefed on the gathering told Reuters. The strategy session, which has not been previously reported, came as mass protests against Iran’s growing influence in Iraq...

ANKARA (Reuters) - The chief of Iran’s elite military Quds force on Thursday warned President Donald Trump not to take military action against Iran, saying if Washington started a war, Tehran would be the one to end it, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported. “We are near you, where you can’t even imagine ... Come. We are ready. If you begin the war, we will end the war,” Qassem Soleimani said in a speech in the central city of Hamedan, Tasnim reported.

As the media-deep state Russia Hoax unravels, two journalists deserve special attention: Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball. Isikoff, now chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News, was the first to break the story that the FBI was investigating Carter Page. Hosenball, now a correspondent with Reuters, was first to break the story that candidate Donald Trump was being advised, as the Reuters headline tells us, “By Ex-U.S. Lieutenant General Michael Flynn--Who Favors Closer Russia Ties.” The “closer ties” that worry me, however, are those between America’s intelligence community (IC) and reporters like these two. I first met Isikoff and Hosenball in...