Mexico

Countries among the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic unveiled further measures on Aug. 14 to battle rising infections, as the number of cases worldwide passed 21 million.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it was extending a ban on non-essential travel through border crossings with Canada and Mexico throughout most of September "to slow the spread" of the disease.

Romania's Minister of the Interior, Marcel Vela, on Friday announced the arrest and extradition to the US of an alleged human trafficking kingpin wanted by the US for eight immigration-related charges.

The total number of people killed by the novel coronavirus around the world passed 750,000 on Aug. 13, with some countries toughening control measures as caseloads once again creep up.    

Latin America and the Caribbean region remains the global epicenter, accounting for almost one-third of all deaths and housing two of the worst-affected countries - Mexico and Brazil.    

It took six months for the world to reach 10 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus. It took just over six weeks for that number to double.

The worldwide count of known COVID-19 infections climbed past 20 million on Aug. 10, with more than half of them from just three countries: the U.S., India and Brazil, according to the tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.

If you thought COVID-19, civil unrest, locusts, volcanic eruptions and hurricanes signaled Armageddon — you may be right!

The reading of the Mayan calendar was wrong, according to a conspiracy theory on Twitter, and while the world didn't end on Dec. 21, 2012, as originally prophesied by calendar readers, Mayan doomsday is sometime this week or next.

A Turkish national athlete who went to Mexico in March has been stranded in the country for months initially because of flight suspensions due to the coronavirus pandemic and then Tropical Storm Cristobal.

Authorities have allowed foreign parents into Ukraine to collect babies who were born to surrogate mothers and stranded in the eastern European country due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Ukraine's human rights ombudswoman, Lyudmila Denisova, said Wednesday that 31 couples had arrived and been united with their children.

Surging fatalities in Latin America helped push the global coronavirus death toll above 400,000 on June 7, even as Europe emerged from its virus lockdown with infections increasingly under control there.

Brazil and Mexico reported record daily coronavirus death tolls as governments in Latin America battled to fortify defenses against the accelerating pandemic with fresh lockdown orders and curfews.

- Kira, the tiger -

Kira, a two and a half year-old tiger, arrived at a zoo in Mexico's northeast in April after her owner could no longer feed her due to the coronavirus-induced economic collapse.

The imposing 130-kilogram tigress was sedated and transported in a cage by truck to her new home in Culiacan zoo in Sinaloa state.