International

NEW DELHI: More than 100 Jews from India’s Manipur state have had to delay plans to emigrate to Israel as family members fell ill with Covid and were placed in quarantine in New Delhi. Soizagin, 40, who will soon renounce his Indian citizenship, calls his permanent move to Israel a “golden opportunity”. “We have been very excited,” said Soizagin, who …

China has set a new world record after scientists managed to run their nuclear-powered ‘artificial sun’ at a very high temperature for more than 100 seconds. According to state media reports, China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) has set a new record in the latest experiment, where it achieved a plasma temperature of 216 million Fahrenheit (120 million C) for …

ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said late on Tuesday he would announce “good news” regarding natural gas reserves in the Black Sea on Friday. In one of the world’s biggest finds last year, Turkey said it discovered 405 billion cubic metres of natural gas in the Black Sea’s Sakarya field, about 100 nautical miles north of the Turkish coast. Speaking …

A herd of 15 wild elephants was approaching the city of Kunming, the capital of southwest China’s Yunnan province, on Wednesday, defying attempts to redirect them after a journey of several hundred kilometres from forests to the south. The group of Asian elephants, which includes three calves, originally lived in a nature reserve, according to the official Xinhua, and has …

VILNIUS: Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said on Tuesday she had asked the United States for further sanctions on individuals and companies supporting the Belarus government. The Biden administration said on Friday it was drawing up a list of targeted sanctions against key members of the Belarusian government following the former Soviet republic’s forced landing of a passenger jet and …

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis updated the Catholic Church’s criminal code on Tuesday, reinforcing penalties for priests who sexually abuse minors, measures long sought by activists against paedophilia. The most comprehensive revision of the Code of Canon Law in nearly 40 years followed a years-long process that was begun under Francis’s predecessor, Benedict XVI, and involved input from canonist and criminal …

GENEVA: Coronavirus variants with clunky, alphanumeric names have now been assigned the letters of the Greek alphabet to simplify discussion and pronunciation while avoiding stigma. The World Health Organisation revealed the new names on Monday amid criticism that those given by scientists to strains such as the South African variant — which goes by multiple names including B.1.351, 501Y.V2 and …

The highly infectious Covid-19 variant first detected in India threatens to rapidly spread in the Asia Pacific region, including areas inhabited by refugees, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said, as it warns of vaccine shortages in the region. UNHCR spokesperson Andrej Mahecic, at a press briefing in Geneva, said fragile health systems in many countries in the Asia …

KABUL: The US military will hand over its main Bagram Air Base to Afghan forces in about 20 days, an official said on Tuesday, as Washington presses on with withdrawing the last of its troops from the country. The vast base, built by the Soviets in the 1980s, is the biggest military facility used by US and Nato forces in …

JERUSALEM: Israeli politicians battling to unseat veteran Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were racing against the clock on Tuesday in talks to build a “change” coalition spanning the political spectrum. They have until a minute before midnight Wednesday to cobble together an alternative governing alliance that would bring down the right-wing leader known as Bibi, who has ruled Israel for the …