World Health Organisation (WHO) says it still ‘not clear’ whether Omicron COVID variant is more transmissible or more severe than Delta variant. WHO, in a statement on Sunday, said that its experts, researchers in South Africa and around the world are currently conducting studies to better understand Omicron. The...
WORLD
Czech President Milos Zeman has appointed opposition leader Petr Fiala as the country’s new prime minister. Mr Zeman – who tested positive for coronavirus last week – made the appointment from inside a plexiglass box in a state room at his residence. The president was wheeled in by hospital...
A five-year-old child was shot and killed in Minnesota by a teen who was filming a social-media video with friends, police said. The shooting happened Thursday on what normally is a festive Thanksgiving Day, but which also saw another five-year-old die in a gun incident near Atlanta, while a...
Protesters burned tyres and pillaged a government building in Burkina Faso’s capital on Saturday after police fired tear gas to disperse a march against the state’s failure to stop a wave of violence by Islamist militants. Activist groups called for renewed protests in response to a recent surge of...
Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok said on Saturday he dismissed the chief of police, Lieutenant-General Khaled Mahdi Ibrahim Al-Emam, and his deputy. Lt.-Gen. Anan Hamed Mohammed Omar was appointed as the new police chief and Maj.-Gen. Muddathir Abd al-Rahman Nasr al-Din as his deputy, Hamdok added in a post...
Ghana’s parliament on Friday rejected the government’s 2022 budget proposal due to concerns over an electronic banking levy. It was the first time the national budget has been rejected since 1981 in the West African country. Ghana’s parliament is split between the two main parties following an election a...
Namibia is set to increase fuel prices by 70 Namibia cents (0.04 U.S. dollar) per liter from Dec. 1 due to a hike of global oil prices, the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME) announced Friday. The price of gasoline at the pump in Walvis Bay will become 16.65...
Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed vowed Friday to “bury the enemy” in his first message from the battlefront, state media said, after he announced plans to lead a counter-offensive against Tigrayan rebels. As the rebels report major territorial gains, claiming this week to have seized a town just 220...
Libya’s government has condemned an attack on a court ahead of an appeal by the son of slain dictator Moamer Gaddafi against the rejection of his presidential election candidacy. The December 24 polls come as Libya seeks to turn a page on a decade of violence that has rocked...
Former Brazilian Olympic Committee (COB) President Carlos Arthur Nuzman has been sentenced to 30 years and 11 months in prison for alleged corruption, money laundering and tax evasion. Judge Marcelo Bretas said the 79-year-old played a leading role in a scheme to buy votes for Rio de Janeiro to...
At least 43 people were killed and 46 villages were burned and looted in Sudan’s West Darfur State, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Sudan said on Thursday. “On Nov. 17, conflict broke out between Arab nomads and farmers from the Misseriya Jebel tribe...
An Egyptian court on Thursday sentenced to death by hanging 22 Islamist militants for 54 attacks including the attempted assassination of a former interior minister, a judicial source told AFP. The men were found guilty of committing 54 “terrorist operations” across Egypt, including the murder of a senior police...
The Governor of the Kemerovo region, Sergei Tsivilev, on Thursday announced the death of nine miners after a serious accident in a Russian coal mine in Siberia. Tsivilev said that 49 people were still underground and that there was no communication with them. The TASS news agency reported that...
French Interior Ministry on Thursday confirmed the death of 27 migrants who died after their boat capsized in the English Channel. A spokesperson for the ministry said that the death toll of the tragedy, which was revised down from 31, was still preliminary. On Wednesday, French Interior Minister Gerald...
Sweden’s Prime Minister-elect Magdalena Andersson on Wednesday handed in her resignation hours after being appointed by parliament after her budget failed to pass and the junior Green Party quit the coalition government. While her stint was unexpectedly brief, Andersson made history by becoming the first woman elected to the...
A Junior High School boy, who fatally stabbed a fellow student in central Japan, said he had troubles with the victim and held grudges against him, local media reported Thursday. The alleged attacker, whose name had been withheld as he is a minor, told investigators that he bought a...
An Indian man mistakenly declared dead after a road accident has been found still breathing in a hospital morgue freezer. Srikesh Kumar suffered critical injuries after a speeding motorbike hit him last week and was declared dead on arrival at a hospital in Moradabad, east of the capital New...
No fewer than 2.6 million people (that is nearly 22 percent of the population), in 66 out of 74 districts across Somalia are affected by worsening drought, the United Nations humanitarian agency said on Wednesday. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) said nearly 113,000 people...
A total of 703 projects, with total investment of 582.18 billion yuan (91.1 billion U.S. dollars), was inked at the fourth World Manufacturing Convention held in Hefei, east China’s Anhui Province. According to the organising committee, the four-day event, was themed “innovation-driven, digitally empowered: global manufacturing industry aligned for...
Sweden‘s parliament has confirmed Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson as the country’s first female prime minister. The 54-year-old, who took over as leader of the governing Social Democrat party earlier this month, was elected as outgoing leader Stefan Lofven’s successor during a confirmation vote in parliament on Wednesday. A...