Bashar al-Assad has been re-elected for a fourth term as president of war-ravaged Syria, official results showed on Thursday, despite Western accusations the polls were “neither free nor fair”.

Jailed Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai was among eight democracy activists handed new prison sentences yesterday for attending protests on the 70th anniversary of the founding of communist China that were followed by a sweeping crackdown.

Hong Kong mountaineer Tsang Yin-hung has recorded the world’s fastest ascent of Everest by a woman with a time of just under 26 hours, a Nepal official said Thursday.

Germany for the first time yesterday recognised it had committed genocide in Namibia during its colonial occupation, with Berlin promising financial support worth more than one billion euros to aid projects in the African nation.

Facing intensifying pressure for a new, more in-depth investigation of the Covid-19 pandemic origins, the World Health Organization yesterday said that it was still awaiting expert guidance.

A $20 billion plan to give Nato more flexibility in facing military threats, climate change and China’s rise has hit firm resistance from France, which fears the move could undermine its defence priorities, four diplomats and a French defence source said.

Nine Southeast Asian countries have urged the United Nations not to endorse a freeze on arms sales to Myanmar, according to a report from Benar News.

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen yesterday warned Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko “it is time to change course” as her executive held out the promise of a three-billion-euro support package if he leaves power.

Republicans in the US Senate on Friday derailed a bipartisan inquiry into the deadly assault on the Capitol by former President Donald Trump's supporters, despite a torrent of criticism they were playing down the violence.

Spain’s postal service is feeling a backlash from its attempt to highlight racial inequality.

Russia said on Friday a US decision not to rejoin the Open Skies arms control pact, which allows unarmed surveillance flights over member states, is a "political mistake" ahead of a summit between the countries' presidents.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was set on Friday to inaugurate a landmark mosque in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, fulfilling a long-time ambition to build a Muslim house of worship at the city’s main public space that has become an emblem of the modern Turkish Republic.

A bomb threat cited by Belarusian authorities as the reason for forcing a Ryanair jetliner carrying a dissident journalist to land in Minsk was sent after the plane was diverted, privacy-focused email provider Proton Technologies AG said on Thursday.

French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday recognised his country’s role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, as the two countries seek to turn the page on decades of diplomatic tensions over the bloodshed.

Hindu priests at an Indian temple are saying daily prayers to two coronavirus goddesses in an effort to tame the pandemic as the country battles a new infection surge.

Prevention is better than cure -- but when it comes to Covid, what happens when people can’t get the vaccine, don’t want it, or they’re immune suppressed and it fails to stop infection?

Thousands of people were homeless Thursday after a cyclone battered Covid-ravaged India, killing 4 people.

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.