International

IRAQ: Grief and anger gripped the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah on Tuesday after fire swept through a Covid isolation unit killing 92 people and wounding dozens more. The devastating Monday evening blaze in the city's Al-Hussein…

At least 52 people have been killed in a fire at the coronavirus isolation ward of a hospital in Iraq, the second such deadly blaze in a COVID-19 unit in three months. The fire broke out at the Al-Hussein hospital in the southern…

CHINA, NORTH KOREA: General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee Xi Jinping, also Chinese president and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, exchanged congratulatory messages on Sunday with Kim Jong…

RUSSIA: A day after scientists announced that mRNA vaccines are effective against the Delta variant of Covid-19, a single dose variant of Russia's Sputnik-V vaccine has shown 94 per cent efficacy among those recovered Covid-19…

SWITZERLAND: Two Chinese vaccine makers, Sinovac and Sinopharm, have agreed to immediately begin making more than 100 million Covid vaccine doses available to the Covax distribution facility, Gavi said Monday. "The agreements,…

INDIA: A total of 68 people died in separate lightning incidents across Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan on Sunday. While the death toll due to heavy lightning in Uttar Pradesh mounted to 41 on Monday, seven people…

US: British billionaire Richard Branson flew into space Sunday aboard a Virgin Galactic vessel, a voyage he described as the “experience of a lifetime” -- and one he hopes will usher in an era of lucrative space tourism. The…

AFGHANISTAN: Afghanistan’s Kabul airport has been fitted with an air defence system to counter incoming rockets, officials said Sunday, as the Taliban pressed on with a blistering offensive across the country. Washington and its…

CHILE, URUGUAY, TURKEY, THAILAND: China is the world’s largest vaccine supplier, having supplied more than 480 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to the international community, provided vaccine assistance to nearly 100 countries, and…

BELGIUM: A 90-year-old woman died after becoming infected with two different strains of Covid-19, revealing another risk in the fight against the disease, Belgian researchers found. In the first peer-reviewed analysis of an…