International

INDONESIA: Indonesia said Tuesday it was importing emergency oxygen from neighbouring Singapore as hospitals crumbled under the weight of COVID-19, while the Delta variant wrought havoc around the globe. On Tuesday, the United…

UK: Britain’s Government is facing growing criticism over how it awarded contracts for virus-related goods and services during the pandemic, its detractors alleging a “chumocracy” in which politically connected companies got priority.…

PERU: Classified as a “variant of interest” by the World Health Organization (WHO) on June 17, the lambda, or C.37, variant of the coronavirus has already been detected in 29 nations — seven of them in Latin America. In Peru, where it…

UN: The COVID-19 pandemic has rolled back years, or even decades, of progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a UN report shows. The effects of the pandemic have reversed much of the progress made in reducing…

Dilip Kumar, one of India's earliest and most famous actors, has died in Mumbai at the age of 98. A veritable legend, Kumar acted in more than 65 films over nearly five decades, playing roles that ranged from the iconic to the…

The British government says it’s time to try to return to normal. Prime Minister Boris Johnson outlined plans on Monday to end pretty much all social and economic restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic in two weeks.…

UK: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will on Monday unveil a plan to lift coronavirus restrictions from July 19, while urging the population to "learn to live with" the virus. Johnson had initially aimed for a full reopening…

US: US President Joe Biden celebrated US Independence Day on Sunday with an upbeat assessment of a country he said is roaring back to post-pandemic life, even if COVID-19 has yet to be fully "vanquished." Speaking before a…

SWITZERLAND: The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the Delta variant of the novel coronavirus will become the dominant variant globally in the coming months. The global health agency said the highly transmissible strain…

CYPRUS: A huge forest blaze raging in Cyprus has killed four people, destroyed homes and forced evacuations of villages as Greece, Israel and other countries deployed fire-fighting aircraft to the Mediterranean island. The fire…