President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden will return to the campaign trail with visits to three battleground states a day after the two contenders clashed from afar during duelling televised town halls.

Armenian and Azeri forces have fought new clashes, defying hopes of ending nearly three weeks of fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh which US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said was “a powder keg of a situation”.

Millions of garment workers could lose their jobs as global brands are demanding price cuts and delaying payments to suppliers who are desperate for orders to survive the new coronavirus pandemic, US researchers say.

President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, said on Wednesday it was an “open question” whether Trump could pardon himself and added that the top US judicial body “can’t control” whether a president obeys its decisions.

China yesterday accused the United States of seeking to destabilise Tibet, after the Trump administration appointed a senior human rights official as special coordinator for Tibetan issues.

Kyrgyz President Sooronbai Jeenbekov resigned yesterday after days of unrest following a disputed election, saying he wanted to prevent clashes between security forces and protesters who have demanded his removal from office.

At least 30 people have been killed because of sudden torrential rains and flooding in southern India, officials said yesterday. In Hyderabad city, home to top IT companies, nine people were killed when a wall collapsed on them and 10 others died from electrocution and drowning, a local official told AFP.

Scientists from Britain’s University of Oxford have developed a rapid Covid-19 test able to identify the coronavirus in less than five minutes, researchers said yesterday, adding it could be used in mass testing at airports and businesses.

Malaysian police have summoned opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim to assist investigations into a viral list of federal lawmakers allegedly backing his bid to claim the premiership, a senior police official said yesterday.

Proponents of allowing the new coronavirus to circulate among populations in the hope of achieving herd immunity are promoting a “dangerous fallacy” devoid of scientific proof, dozens of health experts said Thursday.

The protesters are rallying against the government of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha. The former army chief led a coup in 2014 and kept the kingdom under military rule for five years.

European leaders meet yesterday seemingly determined to resist pressure from Prime Minister Boris Johnson to give ground in post-Brexit trade negotiations.

Democratic leaders have been urging Joe Biden supporters to show up in huge numbers and vote early amid concerns that nothing short of a decisive victory will prevent Republican President Donald Trump from contesting the results, potentially opening the way for state legislatures, the courts or Congress to decide the outcome.

London, the world’s international financial capital, will enter a tighter Covid-19 lockdown from midnight on Friday as Prime Minister Boris Johnson seeks to tackle a swiftly accelerating second coronavirus wave.

The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for Covid-19, the illness caused by the virus.

A summit of European Union leaders in Brussels continued as planned today after Ursula von der Leyen, the chief of the bloc’s executive, left to go into quarantine because she had been in contact with someone who tested positive for Covid-19.

New Delhi today said Beijing has no right to comment on India’s internal affairs, two days after China said that it did not recognise the Indian government-controlled territory of Ladakh and the state of Arunachal Pradesh.

Italy has withdrawn the flight embargo for Bangladeshis who have valid stay permits.

A Japanese supercomputer has shown that humidity can have a large effect on the dispersion of virus particles, pointing to heightened coronavirus contagion risks in dry, indoor conditions during the winter months.

Top officials in Chinese-administered Tibet have defended a vocational training programme that some critics have called coercive, and urged Tibetans not to “overdo” religion, during a briefing with foreign journalists on a rare visit to the region.