Green, spiky and with a strong, sweet smell, the bulky jackfruit has morphed from a backyard nuisance in India's south coast into the meat-substitute darling of vegans and vegetarians in the West.

Restaurants and cafes began reopening in parts of Europe and Central Asia on Monday after weeks of closures, eager to again welcome hungry patrons albeit under strict regulations, as schools also reopened in some countries.

U.S. biotech firm Moderna on Monday reported "positive interim" results in the first clinical tests of its vaccine against the new coronavirus performed on a small number of volunteers.

Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said Monday the growth in new coronavirus cases had been stopped as Russia reported under 9,000 infections for the first time since the beginning of the month.

China supports a "comprehensive evaluation" of the global response to the coronavirus pandemic after it "has been brought under control," President Xi Jinping told the World Health Assembly on Monday.

Xi told the virtual meeting via video that China has "always had an open, transparent and responsible attitude," and had shared information on the virus in a timely manner.

Restaurants and churches will reopen in Italy on Monday as part of a fresh wave of lockdown easing in Europe, but rising coronavirus death tolls in Brazil, South Africa and other parts of the world showed the worst is still to come in many countries.

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will discuss a joint initiative to spur the EU's recovery from the coronavirus crisis on Monday, which will be presented during a joint press conference afterwards, the French presidency said.

German football champions Bayern Munich were set to play their first match in more than two months on Sunday as coronavirus restrictions ease in parts of Europe, but the devastating pandemic remains on the march elsewhere with deaths soaring in Brazil.

Italy will reopen to European tourists from early June and scrap a 14-day mandatory quarantine period, the government said, as it quickened the exit from the coronavirus lockdown.

The United States recorded 1,237 coronavirus deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing its grim total to 88,730, according to the latest real-time tally Saturday reported by Johns Hopkins University.

The country -- hardest hit by the pandemic in terms of the number of fatalities -- has now confirmed a total of 1,466,682 cases, the Baltimore-based school reported.