The International Monetary Fund projected Tuesday that Lebanon's economy will shrink 12% in 2020 amid the country's worst economic and financial crisis in decades.

The announcement came as the local currency hit its highest pound-to-dollar exchange rate ever on the parallel market.

An Iraqi citizen suspected of being a "high-ranking" member of the Islamic State group has been indicted for allegedly violating a Swiss ban on extremist groups and accused of plotting attacks in Switzerland and Lebanon, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday urged the faithful to abide by coronavirus lockdown measures even as Lebanon endures its worst economic crisis in decades.

"We are praying so that Lebanese officials work together in the spirit of collaboration to revive Lebanon economically, financially and socially," a-Rahi said in an almost empty church in Bkirki, as Christians celebrated a solitary Easter Sunday.

More than half of a group of severely ill coronavirus patients improved after receiving an experimental antiviral drug, although there's no way to know the odds of that happening without the drug because there was no comparison group, doctors reported Friday.

The results published by the New England Journal of Medicine are the first in COVID-19 patients for remdesivir. The Gilead Sciences drug has shown promise against other coronaviruses in the past and in lab tests against the one causing the current pandemic, which now has claimed more than 100,000 lives.

After 11 weeks of lockdown, people went outdoors and by the thousands boarded the first trains and planes leaving Wuhan as the last restrictions on movement were lifted Wednesday in the Chinese city where the coronavirus pandemic began.

Wuhan's unprecedented lockdown was a model for countries trying to stop the coronavirus. With the restrictions ending, Hubei's provincial capital begins another experiment: resuming business and ordinary life while preventing more illnesses.

The new coronavirus made Dr. Jag Singh a patient at his own hospital. His alarm grew as he saw an X-ray of his pneumonia-choked lungs and colleagues asked his wishes about life support while wheeling him into Massachusetts General's intensive care unit.

When they offered him a chance to help test remdesivir, an experimental drug that's shown promise against some other coronaviruses, "it did not even cross my mind once to say 'no,'" said Singh, a heart specialist.

A small group of Franciscan monks and Roman Catholic faithful took to the streets of Jerusalem's Christian Quarter in the Old City Sunday to distribute olive branches after the traditional Palm Sunday procession was cancelled due to restrictions imposed to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Palm Sunday celebrations start the Holy Week leading up to Easter. Worshipers traditionally carry palm fronds and olive branches and march from the top of the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem's Old City.

Unknown gunmen shot and stabbed to death a member of Hizbullah in southern Lebanon and an investigation has been launched, Lebanese security officials said Sunday.

The body of Ali Mohammed Younes was found next to his car Saturday evening near the southern town of Nabatiyeh, said two security officials. One of them said Younes was shot with four bullets in the chest and had at least two stab wounds.

At least 15 medics in Egypt's main cancer hospital have been quarantined after testing positive for the coronavirus, officials said Saturday, raising fears the pandemic could prey on health facilities in the Arab world's most populous country.

Egypt has reported around 1,000 confirmed cases and 66 fatalities from the global pandemic. Authorities have closed schools and mosques, banned public gatherings and imposed a nighttime curfew to prevent the virus from spreading among the population of 100 million, a fifth of whom live in the densely-populated capital, Cairo.

President Donald Trump announced new federal guidelines Friday recommending that Americans wear face coverings when in public to help fight the spread of the new coronavirus. The president immediately said he had no intention of following that advice himself, saying, "I'm choosing not to do it."

The new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention encourages people, especially in areas hit hard by the spread of the coronavirus, to use rudimentary coverings like T-shirts, bandannas and non-medical masks to cover their faces while outdoors.