INDIA’S LEADER DECREES 21-DAY LOCKDOWN

DELHI» India will begin N EW the world’s largest lockdown on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in a TV address, warning citizens to stay inside or risk inviting the pandemic into their homes, and pledging $2 billion to bolster the country’s beleaguered health care system.

“To save India and every Indian, there will be a total ban on venturing out,” Modi said Tuesday night, acknowledging that the 21-day lockdown would be a major blow to the economy, but insisting that the alternative could set the country back 21 years.

Indian health officials have reported 469 active cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and 10 deaths. Officials have repeatedly insisted there is no evidence yet of localized spread but have conducted relatively scant testing for the disease. In a country where tens of millions live in dense urban areas with irregular access to clean water, experts have said local spreading is inevitable.

More than 400,000 people worldwide have been infected and more than 18,500 have died, according to a running count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

• In Italy, a jump in the number of new deaths and cases over the last 24 hours dashed hopes fed by two days of declines. The 743 deaths reported Tuesday pushed Italy’s toll past 6,800, by far the highest of any country.

• Spain registered a record one-day increase of nearly 6,600 new infections and a leap of more than 500 in the death toll to almost 2,700.

The country started storing bodies in an ice rink converted to a morgue until they could be buried or cremated. Also, army troops disinfecting nursing homes discovered elderly people living amid the corpses of suspected coronavirus victims. Prosecutors opened an investigation.

• In France, authorities said the virus had claimed 240 more victims, raising the country’s death toll to 1,100.

• Germany offered some hope that it has flattened the exponential spread of the virus, which has infected about 30,000 people. The death toll was relatively low at about

130, and Germany has even taken in patients from France and Italy for treatment.

• The Middle East’s most populous country, Egypt, as well as Syria, a country ravaged by nine years of war, will impose nightly curfews starting this week. There are more 31,000 confirmed cases of the virus across the Mideast, the vast majority in the hard-hit nation of

Iran.

China lift lockdown in most of virus-hit Hubei province. G»

B EIJI N

Chinese authorities ended a two-month lockdown of most of the coronavirushit Hubei province, as domestic cases of what has become a global pandemic subside.

People with a clean bill of health will be allowed to leave, the provincial government said, easing restrictions on movement that were unprecedented in scale.

The city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in December, is to remain locked down until April 8.

More than 2,500 people have died in Wuhan out of 3,270 nationwide.

China barred people from leaving or entering Wuhan beginning Jan. 23 in a middle-of-the-night announcement and expanded that to most of the province in succeeding days. Trains and flights were canceled and checkpoints set up on roads into the central province.

50 Nigerian soldiers killed in Boko Haram ambush. Boko

M A IDGU R I

Haram extremists killed at least 50 soldiers during an ambush in northern Yobe state, one of the deadliest recent attacks on troops in Nigeria, according to military sources.

The ambush happened as the military tried to launch an offensive against the Boko Haram militants, according to a military official with knowledge of the operation that started over the weekend. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media about the matter.

The soldiers initially were able to fight back and escape, the official said. They launched another offensive a day or so later and were then attacked from the rear at a place near the village of Goneri called the Gorge, he said.

Likud members urge speaker to defy Israeli high court order.

JE R U SALEM» Israel appeared on the verge of a constitutional crisis Tuesday as top members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud urged their party colleague and parliament speaker to defy a Supreme Court order to let lawmakers hold a vote for his successor.

After suspending parliamentary activities last week, citing procedural issues and restrictions on large gatherings due to the spread of the coronavirus, Yuli Edelstein on Monday dismissed the court’s call to explain his delay in convening the Israeli Knesset, or parliament.

It sparked an unprecedented judicial rebuttal, with Supreme Court

Chief Justice Esther

Hayut ordering him to hold a vote by Wednesday and ruling that “the continued refusal to allow the vote in the Knesset plenum on the election of a permanent speaker is undermining the foundations of the democratic process.”

Jazz great Dibango dies of virus. Manu

P AR I S

Dibango, who fused African rhythms with funk to become one of the most influential musicians in world dance music, died Tuesday with the coronavirus, according to his music publisher. He was 86.

The Cameroon-born saxophonist, who gained international fame with his 1972 song “Soul Makossa,” died in a hospital in the Paris region, Thierry Durepaire said.

Uderzo, a creator of Asterix, dies. » Albert

P AR I S

Uderzo, one of the two creators of the beloved comic book character Asterix, who captured the spirit of the Gauls of yore and grew a reputation worldwide, died Tuesday. Hewas92.