World

In the United States last week, someone died from Covid-19 every 33 seconds. The disease claimed more than 18,000 lives in the seven days ended Dec. 20, up 6.7% from the prior week to hit another record high, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county reports. Despite pleas […]

Bhutan will go on lockdown for seven days starting from Tuesday amid rising case of Covid-19 cases, announced Bhutan Prime Minister Lotay Tshering. In a statement, Tshering announced that a nationwide lockdown will be enforced for seven days, starting December 23, adding that the lockdown will enable the government to […]

All international flights, including those of Air India’s, to and from Saudi Arabia were suspended for a week on Monday owing to fears over a new strain of coronavirus that put London and all of southern England on a Christmas lockdown last week. The General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) […]

Singapore received Asia’s first delivery of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine on Monday, capping what the city-state’s premier said had been a “long and arduous” year spent fighting the pandemic. The trade and finance hub last week joined a handful of other countries around the world, including Britain and the United […]

Ontario on Monday announced a province-wide shutdown because of a second wave of Covid-19 in Canada’s most populous province. The lockdown will be put in place for southern Ontario from December 26 until January 23, but will lift for northern Ontario on January 9. Health officials criticized the delay, with […]

US President-elect Joe Biden received his first injected dose of the Covid-19 vaccine live on television on Monday in an effort to boost confidence in its safety ahead of its wide distribution next year. Biden has said he would make the fight against the coronavirus, which has killed more than […]

Tech giants including Microsoft and Google on Monday joined Facebook’s legal battle against hacking company NSO, filing an amicus brief in federal court that warned that the Israeli firm’s tools were “powerful, and dangerous.” The brief, filed before the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, opens up a […]

The new strain of the coronavirus that was discovered in the UK has forced Prime Minister Boris Johnson to announce another lockdown despite plans to ease restrictions during the Christmas period. The new strain can reportedly be transmitted from one person to another much faster than the previous one and it […]

The United Arab Emirates’ top diplomat has publicly acknowledged a so-far unexplained ban on visitors from Pakistan, which travel agents say also targets tourists and laborers from a dozen Muslim-majority countries amid the pandemic and the UAE’s normalization of ties with Israel. Following a meeting with his Pakistani counterpart, Emirati […]

Tesla Inc and Wall Street made 2020 the year that the US auto industry decided to go electric. Tesla’s market capitalization surged above $600 billion, making the once wobbly startup founded by billionaire Elon Musk worth more than the five top-selling global vehicle making groups combined. The exclamation point came […]

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said his government’s plans to ease coronavirus restrictions over Christmas would have to be dropped because of a rise in cases fuelled by a new variant of Covid-19. “Given the early evidence we have on this new variant of the virus, the potential risk it poses, it […]

European Union experts believe existing vaccines against coronavirus are effective against the new fast-spreading strain identified in Britain, Germany’s health minister said Sunday. “According to everything we know so far” the new strain “has no impact on the vaccines”, which remain “just as effective”, Jens Spahn told public broadcaster ZDF, […]