A powerful cyclone headed for eastern India yesterday, forcing the evacuation of nearly two million people just a week after another huge storm claimed at least 155 lives on the west coast.

Belarus’s regime was increasingly isolated yesterday as Europe cut air links and calls grew for more action over its diversion of an airliner and arrest of a dissident on board.

Expanding its diplomatic footprints in the strategic Indian Ocean nation the Maldives, India is all set to open a new Consulate in Addu city, which is the second largest urban area after capital Male, in a country where China is increasingly assertive.

Iran’s election watchdog has approved the candidacy of hardline judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi in presidential elections, state television reported on Tuesday, while disqualifying some of his main potential rivals.

Messaging app WhatsApp has blocked the accounts of dozens of Palestinian journalists following this month’s fighting between Israel and Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas, reporters said. Shortly after a ceasefire went into effect at 2:00am on Friday (2300 GMT Thursday) ending 11 days of deadly conflict, two journalists in AFP’s Gaza City bureau received notices from WhatsApp in Arabic informing them their accounts had been blocked.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday vowed to rebuild US relations with Palestinians by reopening a consulate in Jerusalem and giving millions in aid to help the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.

Russia said on Tuesday it had the ability for the first time to operate long-range strategic nuclear-capable bombers from its air base in Syria, expanding its capabilities and allowing such planes to train in new regions.

President Joe Biden will hold a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin next month in Geneva, a face-to-face meeting between the two leaders that comes amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and Russia in the first months of the Biden administration.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson issued a qualified apology for offence caused by his past remarks about Islam, speaking in a critical report into his Conservative Party which looked at discrimination including complaints of Islamophobia.

Iraq’s president said $150 billion from oil had been smuggled out of the country since Saddam Hussein was ousted in 2003, as he introduced a law to fight endemic corruption.

Afghan forces clashed with Taliban fighters in a provincial capital about 120 kilometres (75 miles) from Kabul, officials and witnesses said, prompting the defence minister to take charge of a counteroffensive.

At least 115,000 health and care workers have died from Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, the WHO chief said yesterday, calling for a dramatic scale-up of vaccination in all countries.

Iran has informed the UN nuclear watchdog that it has decided to extend a monitoring deal with the agency for a month, Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency said yesterday, according to the Etemad website.

Indian authorities yesterday ordered the evacuation of nearly half a million people out of the path of a new cyclone heading towards eastern India just one week after another deadly storm smashed into the west coast.

India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) yesterday filed a Special Leave Petition (SLP) before the Supreme Court challenging the Calcutta High Court’s order allowing Narada case accused and senior leaders of TMC to be kept under house-arrest.

Belarus’ forced diversion of a plane and arrest of a journalist who was on board has widened a rift between Western powers and Minsk, prompting calls for further sanctions and an international probe over the incident.

For decades, it was the place to go for books in the blockaded Gaza Strip, from school texts to the Koran to Arabic translations of European literary classics.

Belarusian authorities scrambled a fighter jet and flagged what turned out to be a false bomb alert to force a Ryanair plane to land on Sunday and then detained an opposition-minded journalist who was on board, drawing criticism from across Europe.

More than 125,000 school teachers in Myanmar have been suspended by the military authorities for joining a civil disobedience movement to oppose the coup in February, an official of the Myanmar Teachers’ Federation said.

When an Israeli air strike targeted a security office near her home in Gaza this month, 10-year-old Zeina Dabous frantically scribbled a note and slipped it under her mother’s pillow.