BEIJING: Ahead of Quad Foreign Ministers’ meeting on Friday, China said on Wednesday that it was opposed to “exclusive blocs” to create bloc confrontation and the four-nation alliance should stop driving wedges between regional countries. In November 2017, the US, Australia, India and Japan gave shape to the long-pending proposal of setting up the Quad […]
GENEVA: The World Health Organization says coronavirus case counts fell 17% worldwide over the last week compared to the previous week, including a 50% drop in the United States, while deaths globally declined 7%. The weekly epidemiological report from the U.N. health agency, released late Tuesday, shows that the omicron variant is increasingly dominant — […]
United Nations: The United States and its allies clashed with Russia and China in the UN Security Council on Monday over the usefulness and impact of UN sanctions, which are currently imposed on countries from North Korea to Yemen and Congo as well the al-Qaida and Islamic State extremist groups and their affiliates and supporters. […]
The vaccine-induced protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection wanes within a few months, but protection against severe COVID-19 appears to be better maintained, according to a study published in The Lancet journal. Researchers noted that the protection wanes at different speeds depending on the type of vaccine used. “The bad news is that the protection against infection […]
UNITED NATIONS: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has told the Chinese leadership that he expects Beijing to allow the world body’s human rights chief to make a “credible visit” to China, including Xinjiang where the country is facing serious rights violations against Uygur Muslims. Guterres, who was in Beijing to attend the opening ceremony of the […]
United Nations: The situation in Afghanistan remains precarious and uncertain nearly six months after the Taliban takeover, as the multiple political, socio-economic and humanitarian shocks reverberate across the war-ravaged country, the UN Secretary-General said in a report. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in his report Thursday on ‘The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international […]
MOSCOW: The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund) announces that the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against coronavirus has been granted full permanent approval by Russia’s Health Ministry. It had previously held temporary emergency use authorization (EUA) from the Russian regulator. Sputnik V was authorized on August 11, 2020, becoming the world’s first […]
WASHINGTON: America’s relationship with India stands on its own merits and has not been impacted by the ongoing tension with Russia, a top State Department official has said, days after India abstained from a procedural vote in the UN Security Council to discuss the situation on the Ukraine border. For the second time this week, […]
Islamabad: The International Monetary Fund has approved the completion of the sixth review of its stalled USD 6 billion programme for Pakistan, paving the way for an immediate disbursement of about USD 1 billion loan tranche for the cash-strapped country. The IMF’s Executive Board held a meeting in Washington DC on Wednesday to consider Pakistan’s […]
Pfizer on Tuesday asked the US to authorize extra-low doses of its Covid-19 vaccine for children under 5, potentially opening the way for the very youngest Americans to start receiving shots as early as March. In an extraordinary move, the Food and Drug Administration had urged Pfizer and its partner BioNTech to apply earlier than […]