South Korea’s intelligence agency foiled North Korean attempts to hack into South Korean companies developing coronavirus vaccines, lawmakers said yesterday.

An Iranian scientist long suspected by the West of masterminding a secret nuclear bomb programme was killed in an ambush near Tehran on Friday, likely to provoke confrontation between Iran and its foes in the last weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency.

The Israel-led blockade of the Gaza Strip cost the Palestinian enclave more than $16bn and pushed more than one million people below the poverty line in just more than 10 years, according to a new United Nations report.

Countries must do more to combat racial profiling, UN rights experts said yesterday, warning that artificial intelligence programmes like facial recognition and predictive policing risked reinforcing the harmful practice.

A Turkish court jailed 337 former pilots and other suspects for life in one of the largest trials stemming from the bloody 2016 coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

An Australian-British academic jailed for spying by Iran has been released after two “traumatic” years behind bars, in a swap for three Iranians linked to a botched Bangkok bomb plot.

An explosion rocked a Greek-operated oil tanker docked at Saudi Arabia’s port of Shuqaiq on Wednesday, Greek officials said, in an attack that a Riyadh-led military coalition blamed on Yemeni rebels.

Two Army soldiers have been killed in a terrorist attack near the HMT area on the outskirts of Jammu and Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar, police said yesterday.

Russia’s foreign minister accused the West of interfering in Belarus yesterday as he met strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko who has faced months of protests over his disputed re-election.

President-elect Joe Biden pleaded with Americans on Wednesday to take steps to remain safe over the Thanksgiving holiday as Covid-19 cases soar, while President Donald Trump pardoned a former aide who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed yesterday ordered Ethiopia’s army to launch a final offensive against Tigray’s dissident leaders in their regional capital Mekele, saying the deadline for surrender had expired.

Austria is stepping up security at churches in case of copycat attacks after an Islamist gunman killed four people in a rampage earlier this month in which he may have intended to target houses of worship, the interior minister has said.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic that has caused a slowdown of economies, the UK has announced a temporary reduction in overseas development aid from 0.7 percent of its gross national income to 0.5 percent.

France is leading a push for European Union sanctions on Turkey next month to follow through on a threat made by the bloc in October, but has yet to win support from EU governments beyond Greece and Cyprus, officials and diplomats said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday said Canada will have to wait for a vaccine because the very first ones that roll off assembly lines are likely to be given to citizens of the country they are made in.

The Ethiopian military will begin the "final phase" of an offensive in the rebellious northern Tigray region, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Thursday, hours after an ultimatum for Tigray forces to surrender expired.

All adults should do a minimum of 150 minutes of vigorous physical activity per week, even more vital for well-being and mental health in the COVID-19 era, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday in its first guidance in a decade.

President-elect Joe Biden said Wednesday that Americans "won't stand" for attempts to derail the US election outcome, as Donald Trump called for the results to be overturned.

Several thousand people in south-eastern India fled their homes yesterday, out of the path of a cyclone due to slam coastal areas after midnight, bringing with it heavy rain. Nivar, classified as a very severe cyclonic storm, was expected to pack winds of 120 kilometres per hour and gusts of up to 145 km/h when it makes landfall, forecasters said.

Almost 100 pilot whales have died in a mass stranding on New Zealand’s remote Chatham Islands, conservation officials said yesterday.