Reuters World News Summary

Following is a summary of current world news briefs. Some Syrians prefer ruined homes to crowded camps

Taher al-Matar's home in northwest Syria is in ruins but he has gone back to live there anyway, driven by dire conditions in camps for displaced people, where he fears any outbreak of the coronavirus would be devastating. Even though he worries a fragile ceasefire in the Idlib region may not last, the Syrian father is clearing rubble from what's left of his house while looking out for any unexploded shells that could have fallen in the last government offensive. Exclusive: In Russia, a black market for HIV drug to try on coronavirus

A black market has developed in Russia for an antiviral HIV drug explored as a possible treatment for COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus, according to sellers, HIV activists and the head of the drug's main Russian producer. More than 20 trials around the world are testing Kaletra as a COVID-19 treatment or post-exposure prophylaxis. Spain's confirmed coronavirus cases surpass 200,000: health ministry

The number of people diagnosed with the new coronavirus in Spain has surpassed the 200,000 threshold, the country's health ministry said on Monday. The ministry said the number of cases rose to 200,210 from 195,944 cases on Sunday. Spain has the second highest number of diagnosed cases in the world after the United States, according to Reuters data. Prince Harry begged father-in-law to call him before wedding, document shows

Britain's Prince Harry appealed to the father of his wife Meghan to call him in the days before he decided to pull out of the couple's star-studded wedding two years ago, documents submitted to London's High Court on Monday showed. Meghan, Britain's Duchess of Sussex, is suing Associated Newspapers, the publisher of the Mail on Sunday tabloid, for breaching her privacy by printing a letter she sent to her father, Thomas Markle, to address the rift between them caused by events on the eve of the wedding. Empty resorts spell long crisis for Caribbean as coronavirus hits

No one is swimming in the turquoise Caribbean waters of Cuba's Varadero beach resort, nor lounging on its white, palm-fringed beaches. Its hundreds of hotels, shops and restaurants stand empty and eerily quiet. The nearby airport, the lifeblood of Varadero's economy, closed after Cuba shut its borders two weeks ago to protect against the spread of the new coronavirus. Now, undisturbed by tourists, lizards scamper around the grounds of the luxurious hotels, on the hunt. UK will review how it handled COVID-19 when time is right, minister says

Britain will review its approach to the coronavirus pandemic to learn what it could have done better, Culture Minister Oliver Dowden said on Monday, following criticism that the government was too slow to react. "When we're dealing with an unprecedented crisis like this we're not going to have perfect 20:20 hindsight vision on this," he told BBC TV. "Of course we will need to look back and see the things we could have done differently. Russia's Putin says peak of coronavirus crisis is ahead

President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Russia had managed to curb the coronavirus crisis but the peak of the outbreak still lay ahead. The number of Russian confirmed coronavirus cases surpassed 47,000 on Monday with a death toll of 405. China calls for stronger testing regime to detect coronavirus

China's health authority called for a stronger and more rigorous testing regime to ensure that the new coronavirus does not escape detection, whether in travellers arriving from abroad or from other parts of the country. All localities must improve their testing capabilities, including those at border crossings, and report any epidemic information in a timely manner, the National Health Commission cited its director Ma Xiaowei as saying. Ma made the comments on Saturday, but they were released by the ministry on Monday. Unrest flares in Paris suburb amid lockdown

Police and youths clashed for a second night in a low-income Paris suburb on Sunday as strict lockdown rules to curb the spread of the coronavirus threaten a fragile social peace in deprived areas. The trouble in Villeneuve-La-Garenne, north of Paris, first flared late Saturday after a motorcyclist collided with the open door of an unmarked police car during a pursuit. The skirmishes lasted into the early hours of Sunday before calm was restored. Gunman kills at least 16 in Nova Scotia in Canada's worst mass shooting

A gunman who at one point masqueraded as a policeman killed at least 16 people in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia during a 12-hour rampage, authorities said on Sunday, in what was the country's worst modern-era mass shooting. Among the victims of the shooting spree that spread across part of the Atlantic Canadian province was RCMP officer Heidi Stevenson, a 23-year veteran of the force with two children.