In a move that pours cold water on the dreams of a few billionaire space explorers including Jeff Bezos and Sir Richard Branson, the US has tightened its definition of the word "astronaut".

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has been named the new chairperson of the parliamentary party of Trinamool Congress in a move aimed at giving her a higher national profile ahead of next parliamentary elections in 2024. 

Myanmar has appointed a new temporary head of its embassy in London, Britain's foreign ministry said on Friday, replacing the previous ambassador who was ousted after breaking ranks with the military government over its February 1 coup.

Pakistan called on the United Nations on Friday to investigate whether India used Israeli-made Pegasus spyware to spy on public figures including Prime Minister Imran Khan.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel next week to India, an important partner in US efforts to counter China and in vaccine diplomacy that is hobbled by its own Covid-19 crisis.

An earthquake of magnitude 6.7 struck south of the Philippine capital early on Saturday, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said.

About 100 of the 613 US athletes descending on Tokyo for the Olympics are unvaccinated, the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s medical chief said hours before Friday night’s opening ceremony.

Thirty-seven people have been rescued from a migrant boat with 45 people on board that sank south of Turkey, and Turkish naval ships and an aircraft are continuing search and rescue operations, the defence ministry said on Friday.

At least 67 people have died in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, authorities said on Friday, after torrential monsoon rains caused landslides and flooded low-lying areas, cutting off hundreds of villages.

Russia is going ahead with plans to supply Myanmar with Su-30 fighter jets and Yak-130 training aircraft, Interfax news agency quoted Dmitry Shugayev, head of Russia's military cooperation agency, as saying on Friday.

A Trinamool Congress member of the Rajya Sabha, Shantanu Sen, was today suspended for the remaining period of the month-long monsoon session.

French President Emmanuel Macron has changed his phone and phone number in light of the Pegasus spyware case, a presidency official said on Thursday, in one of the first concrete actions announced in relation to the scandal.

China rejected on Thursday a World Health Organization (WHO) plan for a second phase of an investigation into the origin of the coronavirus, which includes the hypothesis it could have escaped from a Chinese laboratory, a top health official said.

Indonesia has converted nearly its entire oxygen production to medical use just to meet the demand from COVID-19 patients struggling to breathe. Overflowing hospitals in Malaysia had to resort to treating patients on the floor. And in Myanmar’s largest city, graveyard workers have been laboring day and night to keep up with the grim demand for new cremations and burials.

At least 17 Bangladeshi migrants drowned in a shipwreck off Tunisia as they tried to cross the Mediterranean to Italy from Libya, while more than 380 were rescued by the coastguard, the Tunisian Red Crescent said on Wednesday.

Inspired by her late father's career, Mona decided to join the military and the first group of Saudi women soldiers to work in Islam's holiest sites, where they are helping secure the haj annual pilgrimage.

Tunisia’s government stumbled deeper into crisis over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, after premier Hichem Mechichi fired the health minister amid skyrocketing cases in the North African country.

If ‘Khela Hobe’ slogan by Trinamul Congress set the ball rolling for the 2021 Bengal assembly polls, then this time it will set the pitch for 2024 parliamentary elections to oust the BJP from Centre, declared the Bengal chief minister and Trinamul supremo Mamata Banerjee as she announced that the state will observe ‘Khela Hobe Diwas’ on August 16.

Germany’s Cabinet approved a roughly 400 million-euro ($472 million) package of immediate aid for victims of last week’s floods and vowed to get started quickly on rebuilding the devastated areas — a task whose cost isn’t yet clear but is expected to run well into the billions.

Two shootings in downtown Milwaukee as crowds celebrated the Milwaukee Bucks first NBA championship in 50 years left three people wounded, police said.