A group of British lawmakers yesterday urged the government to take tougher action against China over its treatment of minority groups, including a partial Winter Olympics boycott and cotton trade ban.

The Tokyo Olympics will take place without spectators, organisers said yesterday, as a resurgent pandemic forced Japan to declare a coronavirus state of emergency for the capital that will run throughout the event.

In the small seaside town of Blokhus in Denmark, the world’s tallest sandcastle has been completed, weighing nearly 5,000 tonnes and towering over 20 metres high, its designers said Wednesday.

An estimated 23,000 lives a year could be saved through improving weather forecasts, early warning systems and climate information, the United Nations said yesterday. 

Former US President Donald Trump on Wednesday filed lawsuits against Twitter Inc, Facebook Inc, and Alphabet Inc’s Google, as well as their chief executives, alleging they unlawfully silence conservative viewpoints. 

A small training aircraft with three people onboard crashed on Thursday in Lebanon's mountainous Keserwan district, north of the capital Beirut, aviation sources said.

Haiti's security forces were locked in a fierce gun battle on Wednesday with assailants who assassinated President Jovenel Moise at his home overnight, plunging the already impoverished, violence-wracked nation deeper into chaos.

South Africa's ex-president Jacob Zuma turned himself in late Wednesday to begin serving a 15-month sentence for contempt of court, his foundation and the police said.

Former US President Donald Trump on Wednesday filed lawsuits against Twitter Inc, Facebook Inc, and Alphabet Inc's Google, as well as their chief executives, alleging they unlawfully silence conservative viewpoints.

Haiti President Jovenel Moise was assassinated and his wife wounded early yesterday in a gun attack at their private residence, tipping the impoverished and crisis-hit Caribbean nation into a renewed state of political uncertainty. 

The search for victims of the collapse of a Miami-area high-rise condominium reached its 14th day on Wednesday, with the death toll at 46, scores still unaccounted for and authorities sounding more and more grim.

A group of unidentified individuals attacked the private residence of Haitian President Jovenel Moise overnight and shot him dead, Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph said in a statement released Wednesday. 

The Ever Given, one of the world's largest container ships, resumed its journey to leave the Suez Canal on Wednesday, 106 days after becoming wedged across a southern section of the waterway for nearly a week and disrupting global trade.

The US pullout from the Pentagon's once-mighty Bagram Air Base in the dead of night, while Taleban fighters pour across the country, looks a lot like a military defeat. Back home, President Joe Biden sees a political win.

A prominent Dutch crime reporter was rushed to hospital after being shot on the street in central Amsterdam on Tuesday evening, and remains in a serious condition, police said.

Saudi Arabia's deputy defense minister on Tuesday became the highest-ranking Saudi envoy to visit Washington since Joe Biden became president in January, and held talks with senior officials on the Yemen war and threats from Iran.

A court in Belarus jailed former presidential contender Viktor Babariko for 14 years on Tuesday after convicting him on corruption charges he denied, sparking condemnation from the West and the embattled opposition-in-exile.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was involved in a scheme to skim salaries of his aides while he was a federal deputy, website UOL reported on Monday, citing what it said were audios of his former sister-in-law explaining his role in the alleged racket.

British royal Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, is self-isolating and has cancelled her engagements after someone she came into contact with subsequently tested positive for COVID-19, her office said on Monday.

India’s digital platform, which is powering the “world’s largest Covid-19 vaccination drive” in the country, will soon be made available to all countries, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said today.