Russia laid out its demands for security guarantees in Europe to Nato’s 30 allies yesterday but insisted they were not ultimatums following intense talks with the United States in Geneva that failed to break the deadlock.

Sixteen people were burnt to death on Tuesday when a minibus taxi and an SUV collided on a highway in South Africa’s northeastern Limpopo province, a local official said. The SUV driver lost control after a tyre burst and collided head-on with a 22-seater Mercedes-Benz bus, provincial transport ministry spokesman Mike Maringa told AFP yesterday.

The spread of the Omicron variant is pushing Covid towards being an endemic disease that humanity can live with, although it remains a pandemic for now, the EU’s drug watchdog said.

A US judge has rejected a bid by Britain's Prince Andrew to dismiss Virginia Giuffre's lawsuit accusing the Duke of York of sexually abusing her when she was 17 and being trafficked by the late financier Jeffrey Epstein.

A car bomb exploded on a road leading to the airport in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Wednesday, killing at least eight people, the head of the city's ambulance services said.

A group of independent human rights experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council has recently condemned the continued operation of the Guantánamo Bay detention facility in Cuba.

More than half of people in Europe are projected to catch Omicron in the next two months, the WHO said yesterday, as millions in China faced fresh lockdowns on the two-year anniversary of the world’s first Covid death.

Fourteen people including six journalists were killed yesterday in a road crash near Lake Victoria in Tanzania, officials said.

The UN mission in Yemen’s rebel-held port of Hodeida yesterday expressed “great concern” over claims it was being used for military purposes and demanded access for an inspection.

The president of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, died early yesterday in hospital in Italy, his spokesman said on Twitter. 

US surgeons have successfully implanted a heart from a genetically modified pig in a 57-year-old man, a medical first that could one day help solve the chronic shortage of organ donations. 

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was under fire yesterday after it emerged his private secretary had invited over 100 people to a “bring your own booze” party in the garden of Downing Street during the first coronavirus lockdown.

Russia yesterday said it was not optimistic after a first round of talks with the United States on the Ukraine crisis and would not allow its demands for security guarantees from the West to become mired in tortuous negotiations. 

The United Nations said Tuesday it needed $5 billion in aid for Afghanistan in 2022 to avert a humanitarian catastrophe and offer the ravaged country a future after 40 years of suffering.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was under fire on Tuesday after it emerged his private secretary had invited over 100 people to a "bring your own booze" party in the garden of Downing Street during the first coronavirus lockdown.

Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said yesterday that his country had defeated an attempted coup d’etat during violence last week, and insisted that Russian-led troops called in to help quell the unrest would go home “soon”.

With diplomats publicly pessimistic, the United States and Russia began difficult negotiations in Geneva yesterday that Washington hopes can avert the danger of a new Russian invasion of Ukraine without conceding to the Kremlin’s far-reaching security demands.

Britain yesterday put the biggest private health companies on high alert to deliver crucial treatments should Omicron overwhelm National Health Service hospitals in England.

Washington said Sunday it refused to be threatened by Iran’s weekend sanctioning of some 50 Americans including senior officials, warning that Tehran would face “severe consequences” if it attacked any US nationals.

A Myanmar junta court yesterday convicted Aung San Suu Kyi of three criminal charges, sentencing her to four years in prison in the latest in a slew of cases against the ousted civilian leader, a source familiar with the proceedings said.