Hong Kong’s opposition-devoid legislature yesterday approved Beijing’s radical overhaul of the finance hub’s political system which reduces the number of directly elected seats and will freeze out most China critics.

The European Union will look at hitting Belarus’s big potash exports as well as its oil and financial sectors with new sanctions, as punishment for forcing down a Ryanair flight to arrest a journalist, foreign ministers from the bloc said.

Teenagers suing to block expansion of an Australian coal mine scored a “landmark” victory yesterday, with a judge agreeing the project would cause them climate-related harm.

The world may temporarily breach the 1.5-Celsius warming mark within the next five years, according to an updated assessment of global climate trends released yesterday.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson yesterday brushed aside allegations from his former chief aide that his failings had caused tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths from Covid-19, saying “some of the commentary” bore no relation to reality.

A public transit worker shot dead eight people at a California rail yard Wednesday before turning his gun on himself as police arrived, officials said after the latest mass shooting to hit the United States.

The Indian government’s battle with social media giants escalated yesterday with Twitter accusing the police of “intimidation” and slamming new IT rules that have also alarmed its peers and privacy campaigners.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei yesterday urged Iranians to ignore calls to boycott next month’s presidential election, after several hopefuls were barred from running against ultraconservative candidates.

The UN General Assembly adopted Wednesday by consensus a resolution proposed by Russia to draft a treaty against cybercrime by 2023, an initiative viewed with suspicion by Western nations who fear it could restrict free expression.

Global air travel will bounce back strongly by 2023 as countries roll out Covid-19 vaccines and learn to manage the pandemic, noted the International Air Transport Association (Iata).

Turkey pushed NATO allies into watering down an official reaction to the forced landing by Belarus of a passenger plane and the detention of a dissident journalist on Sunday, two diplomats familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Mali's ousted interim president and prime minister have been freed after they were detained by the military and later resigned, an aide to the vice president said on Thursday.

India today termed a recent report in the New York Times (NYT) on the estimated Covid-19 death count in India as “completely baseless and false.”

India’s capital Delhi reported its first case of white fungus, which causes multiple perforations in the intestine of a Covid-19 patient, doctors in a leading private hospital said today.

Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) said on Thursday it was worried about the safety of its staff in India, days after police visited its office as part of a probe related to the social media firm’s tagging of some ruling party posts as manipulated.

UN General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir on Wednesday has expressed determination to ensure a better future for the Rohingyas.

French oil and gas group Total and U.S. energy company Chevron have suspended some payments from a gas joint venture that would have reached Myanmar's junta, earning praise from pro-democracy activists for taking an important first step.

Delhi police arrested a local YouTuber who in one of his videos tied his pet dog to several helium gas balloons in a bid to make it “fly”.

In a supposed goof-up by Indian health workers, 20 people were given a mix of Covid-19 vaccines Covaxin and Covishield at a village in Siddharthnagar district of Uttar Pradesh.

People around the world stayed up Wednesday to watch a cosmic event called a super blood moon, a combination of a total lunar eclipse and a brighter-than-usual supermoon.