Lightning strikes killed 27 people and four passengers on a flight were hospitalised after severe turbulence during monsoon storms in West Bengal, officials said yesterday.

Despite a massive reduction in commuting and in many commercial activities during the early months of the pandemic, the amount of carbon in Earth’s atmosphere in May reached its highest level in modern history, a global indicator released on Monday showed.

Police arrested more than 800 people from 18 countries in a huge global sting involving encrypted phones that were secretly planted by the FBI, law enforcement agencies said Tuesday.

War crimes judges yesterday upheld the genocide conviction of former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, Europe’s worst act of bloodshed since World War II.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday labeled the killing of four members of a Muslim family, who were run down by a man driving a pick-up truck, as a "terrorist attack," which he said was carried out with "Islamophobic" intensions.

A man accused of killing four members of a Canadian Muslim family after running them over in his pickup truck, targeted them in an attack motivated by hate, police said on Monday.

Chinese birth control policies could cut between 2.6 to 4.5 million births of the Uyghur and other ethnic minorities in southern Xinjiang within 20 years, up to a third of the region’s projected minority population, according to a new analysis by a German researcher.

President Vladimir Putin yesterday signed legislation formalising Russia’s withdrawal from the Open Skies security treaty after Washington quit the key post-Cold War defence accord last year.

One hundred former presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers have urged the Group of Seven (G7) rich nations to pay for global coronavirus vaccinations to help stop the virus mutating and returning as a worldwide threat.

The Taliban said yesterday that Afghans who worked with foreign forces in the past have nothing to fear once international troops leave, as long as they “show remorse”.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday a newly formed Israeli coalition that is poised to unseat him was the result of “the greatest election fraud” in the history of democracy.

Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has been transferred from a prison hospital back to his penal colony after receiving treatment following a hunger strike, his allies said yesterday.

Even as the pandemic raged and economies around the world were devastated, nuclear-armed countries last year increased spending on atomic weapon arsenals by 1.4 billion dollars, campaigners said yesterday.

Envoys from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) called on Myanmar’s junta to free all political prisoners and discussed implementing a regional “consensus” to end turmoil since the February 1 coup, the regional bloc said.

Hungary appeared to backtrack on plans to build a Chinese university in the capital Budapest after thousands took to the streets at the weekend accusing the government of cosying up to Beijing, provoking an angry Chinese response.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law on Monday that formalises Russia's exit from the Open Skies arms control treaty, a pact that allows unarmed surveillance flights over member countries.

Taiwan will extend its Covid-19 restrictions for another two weeks until June 28 and schools will remain shut until the summer vacation, the government said.

The United States’ reputation as the leading global power has suffered in France and Germany because of Washington’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic that has killed nearly 600,000 Americans, while China’s reputation rose slightly, a poll showed.

Two express trains collided in southern Pakistan killing at least 35 passengers, authorities said, as rescuers and villagers worked to pull injured people and more bodies from the wreckage.

One hundred former presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers have urged the Group of Seven (G7) rich nations to pay for global coronavirus vaccinations to help stop the virus mutating and returning as a worldwide threat.