The Chinese CoronaVac jab, a key tool in Brazil’s fight against Covid-19, is less effective against the Gamma variant first detected in the virus-ravaged South American country, a study said yesterday.

A Palestinian on hunger strike for more than two months while in Israeli detention claimed “victory” yesterday after his release and transfer to a hospital in the occupied West Bank.

The UN Security Council yesterday unanimously approved an extension of activity at the only border crossing through which humanitarian aid reaches a rebel-held part of Syria.

Vietnam yesterday jailed a former radio journalist on an anti-state charge, state media said, after several other reporters were taken into custody in recent weeks.

Finance ministers representing the G20 large economies back a deal setting a global floor for corporate tax rates and will push to resolve outstanding issues on it by October, the latest draft of a joint communique said. 

The United States yesterday announced sanctions against 34 companies and other entities involved with China’s military and policy towards the Uyghur Muslim minority, and for facilitating exports to Russia and Iran.

Hundreds of migrants rescued in the central Mediterranean disembarked on Friday in the southern Italian town of Augusta, in Sicily, after Rome-based maritime authorities agreed to give their ship a port.

Israeli settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank amount to a war crime, a U.N. human rights investigator said on Friday, calling on countries to inflict a cost on Israel for its "illegal occupation".

The Biden administration is set as early as Friday to add more than 10 Chinese companies to its economic blacklist over alleged human rights abuses and high-tech surveillance in Xinjiang, two sources told Reuters.

A heavily armed commando unit that assassinated Haitian President Jovenel Moise was composed of 26 Colombians and two Haitian Americans, authorities said on Thursday, as the hunt went on for the masterminds of the killing.

President Joe Biden on Thursday strongly defended his decision to pull U.S. military forces out of Afghanistan, saying the Afghan people must decide their own future, rather than sacrificing another generation of Americans in an unwinnable war.

1900 - Commonwealth of Australia founded.

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A British parliamentary standards committee yesterday cleared Prime Minister Boris Johnson of breaching a lawmakers’ code of conduct over a luxury Caribbean holiday, but criticised his handling of the matter. 

A group of British lawmakers yesterday urged the government to take tougher action against China over its treatment of minority groups, including a partial Winter Olympics boycott and cotton trade ban.

The Tokyo Olympics will take place without spectators, organisers said yesterday, as a resurgent pandemic forced Japan to declare a coronavirus state of emergency for the capital that will run throughout the event.

In the small seaside town of Blokhus in Denmark, the world’s tallest sandcastle has been completed, weighing nearly 5,000 tonnes and towering over 20 metres high, its designers said Wednesday.

An estimated 23,000 lives a year could be saved through improving weather forecasts, early warning systems and climate information, the United Nations said yesterday. 

Former US President Donald Trump on Wednesday filed lawsuits against Twitter Inc, Facebook Inc, and Alphabet Inc’s Google, as well as their chief executives, alleging they unlawfully silence conservative viewpoints. 

Three rockets were fired at the US embassy in Iraq early yesterday, the Iraqi army said, at the end of a day marked by rocket and drone attacks on bases hosting American forces in Iraq and Syria.