Armed troops broke up Tamil memorials for Sri Lanka’s civil war dead and beat up journalists covering one ceremony in a former battle zone, residents and media organisations said yesterday.

Israel yesterday cautioned world powers to beware of what it described as Iranian “nuclear blackmail” as diplomats convened in Vienna to discuss resurrecting a 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran.

1939 - Twenty Russian divisions -- almost half a million men -- invaded Finland in the “Winter War”.

The world must study the wreckage of Covid-19 and say “never again” by striking a pandemic preparedness treaty, the WHO said yesterday as countries gathered to build a new accord.

Climate change is the “overwhelming factor” driving the country’s ever-more intense bushfires, Australian government scientists believe -- directly contradicting claims by the country’s political leaders.

The emergence of the highly mutated Omicron variant underlines just how perilous and precarious our situation is.”

With an expanded definition to reflect the times, Merriam-Webster has declared an omnipresent truth as its 2021 word of the year: vaccine.

Virgil Abloh, the American-born son of Ghanaian immigrants who became fashion's highest profile Black designer and the creative mind behind Louis Vuitton's menswear collections, died on Sunday at age 41, following a two-year battle with a rare form of cancer.

Canada said Sunday it has detected its first cases of the new Omicron strain of Covid, in two people who had traveled recently to Nigeria.

A team of experts has found a mummy estimated to be at least 800 years old on Peru’s central coast, one of the archaeologists who participated in the excavation said on Friday.

The US Navy has rescued two Iranian seamen who had been adrift for eight days on a fishing boat in Gulf waters, a statement said yesterday.

Two migrants died and another four went missing off the Canary Islands on Saturday as Spanish rescuers came across a boat in trouble while returning from an earlier rescue, the coastguard said.

Russia’s ambassador to the United States said that 27 more Russian diplomats and their families were expelled from the United States and would leave on January 30.

A rare joint opinion article by the ambassadors of China and Russia has sharply assailed President Joe Biden’s plans for a virtual summit of democratic countries -- from which they were pointedly excluded.

Australia’s government said yesterday it will introduce legislation to unmask online trolls, and hold social media giants like Facebook and Twitter responsible for identifying them.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has reaffirmed Bangladesh's position for the establishment of a sovereign, independent, and the viable state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital.

New Zealand Member of Parliament Julie Anne Genter got on her bicycle early on Sunday and headed to the hospital. She was already in labour and she gave birth an hour later.

The Argentinian judiciary has decided to open a court case against the Myanmar military -- including Min Aung Hlaing and much of the current junta’s senior leadership -- over the genocide against the Rohingya.

South Africa complained yesterday that it is being “punished” for detecting a new Covid-19 variant Omicron which the World Health Organization has termed a “variant of concern” and is more transmissible than the dominant Delta strain.

In all probability ...I am concerned. We support Ukraine’s territorial integrity. We support Ukraine’s ability to govern itself.”