Two inmates who escaped from a prison in Rome last week left guards a courtesy note, saying they had business to take care of but would be back shortly, a newspaper reported yesterday.

North Korea is severing all official communication links with the South, it announced yesterday in a move analysts said was aimed at manufacturing a crisis on the divided peninsula.

Hong Kong retains its place atop the rankings for a third straight year as the world’s most expensive city for expats, according to the latest Mercer annual report yesterday.

Several thousand demonstrators marched in Hong Kong yesterday evening -- defying authorities a year after huge pro-democracy protests erupted -- as the movement struggles in the face of arrests, coronavirus bans on crowds and a looming national security law.

In a virtual launch of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s campaign for next year’s assembly elections in West Bengal, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah yesterday raised the issue of amended Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and attacked Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for her opposition to the law.

The coronavirus pandemic inflicted a “swift and massive shock” that has caused the broadest collapse of the global economy since 1870 despite unprecedented government support, the World Bank said Monday.

Energised by the toppling of a monument to a slave trader in the English city of Bristol, protesters demanded on Tuesday the removal of a statue of 19th century British colonialist Cecil Rhodes from a college at Oxford University.

Tens of millions of children in the Philippines will not be allowed back to school until a coronavirus vaccine is available, officials announced yesterday, saying they may have to broadcast lessons on TV.

Anti-India protests have continued for a second day yesterday in Indian-administered Kashmir after the Indian forces killed at least nine rebels in the disputed region.

As massive crowds take over streets across the United States in support of black lives, “white silence is violence” has become a recurring theme, a push to spread awareness that discrimination in a country built on racism extends far beyond police brutality.

Malls and temples opened across India yesterday after a 10-week lockdown, despite a record daily rise in new cases and predictions that the epidemic will worsen for weeks to come.

A tiger blamed for killing three people will spend the rest of its life in captivity, Indian officials said Sunday, saying the big cat was “too dangerous” to

Wide-scale lockdowns including shop and school closures have reduced COVID-19 transmission rates in Europe enough to control its spread and may have averted more than three million deaths, researchers said yesterday.

Seeking to facilitate availability of experimental drugs for severely-ill Covid-19 patients, the Indian Health Ministry has issued a draft notification for manufacture, import and "compassionate use" of any unapproved drug that is in the phase-III (human) of clinical trial globally.

New Zealand has eliminated transmission of the coronavirus domestically and will lift all containment measures except for border controls, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says, making it one of the first countries to do so.

Iranian scientist Majid Taheri returned home Monday after his release from jail in the United States as part of a prisoner exchange, semi-official news agency ISNA reports.

The council of the US city of Minneapolis voted late Sunday to dismantle and rebuild the police department, after the death in custody of George Floyd sparked nationwide protests about racism in law enforcement, pushing the issue onto the national political agenda.

Ten people were killed in an attack Saturday on a drug rehabilitation center in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, local authorities said. An armed

Germany’s relationship with the United States is “complicated”, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in a newspaper interview, regretting the planned withdrawal of US soldiers from Germany. President

Former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell yesterday endorsed Democratic former US Vice President Joe Biden, becoming the first major Republican to publicly back Donald Trump’s rival ahead of November’s election.