A court in military-ruled Myanmar on Wednesday jailed two journalists for incitement and spreading false news, their organisations said, part of an ongoing crackdown that a top US official called an attack on freedom of expression.

The coronavirus pandemic has severely affected children’s rights worldwide, with young people risking a “generational catastrophe” if governments do not act, a rights group said in an annual survey yesterday.

The head of a Pakistani province yesterday ordered that government employees who refuse to be vaccinated against Covid-19 would not be paid from next month.

The US military on Wednesday took responsibility for unintentionally killing 23 civilians in foreign war zones in 2020, a death toll far below figures compiled by NGOs.

Prosecutors on Wednesday asked a US judge to sentence the white former police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd, an unarmed Black man whose death last year sparked nationwide protests, to 30 years in prison.

Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller will be his own subject when he teaches a course on his eponymous investigation of president Donald Trump, the University of Virginia Law School announced Wednesday.

Israel's opposition leader moved closer to unseating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday when he completed coalition deals with political allies to form a new government, Israel's Army Radio reported.

Gunmen abducted 136 students from an Islamic school in the north-central Nigerian state of Niger on Sunday, a state official said on Wednesday, lower than the estimate of 200 previously offered by the federal government.

China President Xi Jinping said the country must improve the way it tells its “stories” to a global audience as it seeks to develop an international voice that reflects its status on the world stage, official news agency Xinhua reported.

A herd of 15 wild elephants was approaching the city of Kunming, the capital of southwest China’s Yunnan province, yesterday, defying attempts to redirect them after a journey of several hundred kilometres from forests to the south.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting of Pakistan has constituted a committee to liaise and discuss the Pakistan Media Development Authority (PMDA) — a proposed media regulatory body — with relevant stakeholders defying an outcry.

The remaining parties to the Iran nuclear deal were scheduled to meet in Vienna yesterday, the European Union announced, as diplomats said the meeting will wrap up the latest round of talks on reviving the deal and adjourn discussions for at least a week.

The pandemic has pushed over 100 million more workers into poverty, the UN said yesterday, after working hours plummeted and access to good quality jobs evaporated.

Britain recorded no new deaths from Covid-19 on Tuesday, a big sign of improvement in one of the worst-hit countries, as the World Health Organization voiced deep concern at the situation in South America, warning that outbreaks in the already hard-hit region were once again worsening.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned that the United States risked “losing a precious friend” if it tries to corner his country, speaking two weeks before his first meeting with US counterpart Joe Biden.

President Joe Biden led emotional commemorations on Tuesday to honor victims of the 1921 race massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, saying the United States must learn from one of the worst episodes of racist violence in the country’s history.

Israel’s opposition leader yesterday moved closer to unseating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and forming a new government after agreeing terms with several parties including one led by Defence Minister Benny Gantz, a spokesman said.

Two separate bomb blasts on two public transport buses killed at least 12 civilians in the Afghan capital Kabul, security officials said yesterday, the latest in a series of such attacks in recent weeks as foreign forces withdraw.

No more than a quarter of Myanmar’s more than 12 million pupils enrolled for the new school year amid a protest boycott against military rule and in the wake of a series of bombings, an official of a teachers’ group said.

A Russian court on Wednesday ruled to keep opposition activist Andrei Pivovarov, who was seized off a flight that was about to take off for Poland, in custody for two months pending a trial.