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World in brief: March 30, 2020

GERMANY: Finance Minister for the state of Hesse Thomas Schaefer committed suicide after becoming “deeply worried” about the economic fallout from the coronavirus, state premier Volker Bouffier confirmed yesterday.

“We are in shock, we are in disbelief and above all we are immensely sad,” Mr Bouffier said.

Mr Schaefer’s body was found near a railway track on Saturday. He served as finance minister for 10 years as a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union.

VATICAN: Pope Francis backed UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres’s call for a global ceasefire during the global coronavirus pandemic during his weekly blessing delivered from the papal library yesterday.

Warning that the virus does not respect borders, the Pope urged the international community to “stop every form of bellicose hostility and to favour the creation of corridors for humanitarian help, diplomatic efforts and attention to those who find themselves in situations of great vulnerability.”

MALI: Polling took place in the country’s long-delayed parliamentary elections yesterday despite the announcement of the first coronavirus death and growing security concerns, including the kidnapping of the main opposition leader Soumalia Cisse.

Some 200,000 displaced people in the west African nation were unable to vote in the first election since 2013, when President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita’s Rally for Mali party won a substantial majority in the 147-seat national assembly.

INDIA: Far-right Prime Minister Narendra Modi begged for forgiveness after imposing a lockdown he said had hurt millions of poor people left homeless and hungry due to a lack of planning.

Tens of thousands of migrant workers were forced to walk hundreds of miles to return to their villages when India’s 1.3 billion people were told to stay at home with just four hours’ notice.

He insisted that there was “no other way” to stop the spread of the virus, seeking forgiveness from “my poor brothers and sisters.”

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