US Vice President Kamala Harris's late entry into the White House race has galvanized young Democrats, a group whose participation will be crucial if the party hopes to defeat Donald Trump in November.

The Kremlin yesterday confirmed that Vadim Krasikov, freed by Germany in Thursday’s prisoner swap deal with the West, is an operative with Russia’s FSB security service.

Heat kills over 175,000 people a year in Europe, where temperatures are rising quicker than the rest of the globe, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) European branch said Thursday.

Venezuela’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado called Thursday for protests “in every city” in the nation today to denounce the disputed reelection of President Nicolas Maduro.

Kamala Harris will be confirmed as the Democratic US presidential nominee in an electronic vote that started Thursday, replacing the fanfare of in-person balloting that usually kicks off the party’s national convention.

Floods brought by torrential rains in Pakistan caused damage that killed at least 30 people this week, authorities said yesterday, as the second-largest city of Lahore was drenched in the most rainfall it has received in more than four decades.

Airlines are avoiding Iranian and Lebanese airspace and cancelling flights to Israel and Lebanon, as concerns grow over a possible conflict in the region after the killing of senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah this week.

Hezbollah forces yesterday resumed rocket and artillery attacks against Israel, ending the lull along the border following Israel’s killing of the Lebanese group’s military commander in Beirut.

A fast-moving wildfire has killed at least one person in the Rocky Mountain foothills of Colorado, one of a handful of blazes burning across the state, while thousands of firefighters in California struggled to contain the largest fire in the country.

Former US president Donald Trump said yesterday the prisoner swap between the United States and Russia was a “win” for President Vladimir Putin as he continued to offer baseless speculation over the details of the agreement.

Nearly two-thirds of the buildings in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed since the Gaza offensive began in October, the United Nations said yesterday.

Hamas’ top leader Ismail Haniyeh was buried in Qatar yesterday following his assassination in the Iranian capital Tehran as senior officials of Hamas and other mourners said their fight against Israel would intensify.

A French strategy to boost its medal count after years of sporting underachievement has begun to pay dividends at the Paris Olympics as rapturous home crowds propel its athletes up the medals table, although keeping up the pace may prove hard.

A fire ripped through a building in the Philippine capital’s Chinatown early yesterday killing 11 people, authorities said.

Myanmar military airstrikes hit a hospital in a city controlled by an ethnic minority armed group close to the China border killing 10 people, local media reported yesterday.

The Philippine and Japanese navies held their first joint exercise yesterday in the South China Sea, as the two US allies boost security ties in the face of China’s growing pressure.

Turkey has blocked access to social media platform Instagram, the infotech regulator said on Friday, without stating a reason or duration for the ban, which also left the platform's mobile app inaccessible

US President Joe Biden said Thursday that he was concerned about soaring tensions in the Middle East and had urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to quickly reach a Gaza ceasefire deal

Japan sweltered through its hottest July since records began 126 years ago, the weather agency said, as extreme heatwaves fuelled by climate change engulfed many parts of the globe

The Kremlin said yesterday that any F-16s delivered to Ukraine would be shot down and have little impact on the battlefield, in response to reports that the first fighter jets have arrived.