World

PARIS Aug 11 (Online): The number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80 percent in the last month, the World Health Organization said on Friday, days after designating a new “variant of interest.” The WHO declared in May that COVID-19 is no longer […]

TOKYO Aug 11 (Online): As Japan moves ahead in its controversial plans to release treated nuclear waste into the sea, authorities have detected “higher-than-usual levels” of radioactive material in rainwater around a storage tank, local media reported. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said the […]

BEIJING Aug 10 (Online): Seven people were killed in flash floods in south-western China on Wednesday, as authorities in Beijing tripled the death toll from the capital’s heaviest-ever rains. China has been hit by record downpours in recent weeks, damaging infrastructure and deluging swaths of […]

ISLAMABAD Aug 10 (Online): Ecuador presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, a vocal critic of corruption and organised crime, was killed at a campaign event on Wednesday, authorities said, amid an upsurge in violence in the Andean nation blamed on drug traffickers. Local media reported some 30 […]

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 10 (APP): UN Secretary-General António Guterres has expressed concern about the reported “deplorable living conditions” of the President of Niger in arbitrary detention, his spokesperson said on Thursday. President Mohamed Bazoum and his family are believed to be living without electricity, water, […]

Marseille, Aug 10 (AFP/APP): Three French police were charged on Thursday over a 27-year-old man’s death during nationwide rioting earlier this summer, prosecutors said, an uncommon instance of officers facing a criminal case over on-duty violence. An autopsy of the man who died in Marseille […]

Warsaw, Aug 9 (AFP/APP):Poland will send an additional 2,000 troops to reinforce its eastern border with neighbouring Belarus, a deputy interior minister said Wednesday, as a record number of migrants try to cross. “This will not be a reinforcement of 1,000 but of 2,000 soldiers,” […]

Paris, Aug 7 (AFP/APP): French police on Monday said they had arrested a 55-year-old German national after his wife was discovered naked and with broken bones following 12 years in captivity at the couple’s home. A police source said the woman, also German, was found […]

Lisbon, Aug 6 (AFP/APP): Pope Francis celebrated an open-air Mass before a huge crowd on Sunday at a waterside park near Lisbon to wrap up an international jamboree of Catholic youth. Around 1.5 million people attended the service at the Parque Tejo park on the […]