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

Israeli air strikes in Syria overnight killed at least eight fighters operating in pro-Iran militias, a war monitoring group said yesterday.

Scotland on Tuesday voted to offer free universal access to period products, becoming the first country in the world to do so.

Incoming US climate envoy John Kerry called Tuesday for a UN conference in Glasgow next year to raise global ambitions on environmental protection, warning that the Paris accord that he helped negotiate was insufficient.

The number of people killed in terror attacks worldwide fell for the fifth consecutive year in 2019, with conflict still the main driver of terror but an increase of “far-right terrorism” seen in the West, a leading think tank said yesterday.

The Covid-19-causing coronavirus is mutating as it spreads around the world in the pandemic, but none of the mutations currently documented appears to be making it able to spread more rapidly, scientists said yesterday.

Donors demanded an immediate ceasefire in Afghanistan as they pledged around $12 billion in aid over four years -- but tied their money to civil rights being upheld in peace talks with the Taliban.

India’s ruling Hindu nationalist party approved a decree in the country’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday laying out prison terms up to five years for anyone compelling others to convert their faith or luring them into these conversions through marriage, officials said.

US President Donald Trump plans to pardon his former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI over his Russian contacts, US media reported Tuesday.

Iran’s supreme leader has cautioned against hopes of an “opening” with the West, after President Hassan Rouhani’s government signalled a readiness to engage with US President-elect Joe Biden. Biden, who defeated Donald Trump at the ballot box on November 3, has promised a return to diplomacy with Iran after four tense years under the hawkish outgoing US president.

About 100 pilot whales and bottlenose dolphins have died in a mass stranding on the remote Chatham Islands, about 800 km (497 miles) off New Zealand’s east coast, officials said on Wednesday.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has joined a growing list of public figures targeted by pranksters posing as climate activist Greta Thunberg, reports BBC.

Bangladesh has established diplomatic relationship with the Caribbean island state of Dominica, expecting cooperation in trade and commerce with the country that’s witnessing rapid industrialisation.

The United Arab Emirates has stopped issuing new visas to citizens of 13 mostly Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, Syria and Somalia, according to a document issued by a state-owned business park.

President-Elect Joe Biden faces a challenging task fulfilling his foreign policy vision of the United States reclaiming its global leadership role after years in which the country stepped back and rival powers like China stepped in.

The aviation industry has taken a historic hit from the coronavirus and pending an effective vaccine, can only bounce back with systematic testing, sector association IATA said Tuesday.

Australia has hit out at “needlessly” worsening relations with China, with the country’s prime minister appealing for smaller nations not to be caught in the crossfire of Sino-US rivalry.

Evidence suggesting an initial half dose of the vaccine being developed by drugs firm AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford is more effective than a full dose is counterintuitive, and even took the researchers by surprise.

Two of Charles Darwin’s notebooks containing his pioneering ideas on evolution and his famous “Tree of Life” sketch are missing, believed stolen, the Cambridge University Library said yesterday.

In a new book, Pope Francis for the first time calls China’s Muslim Uighurs a “persecuted” people, something human rights activists have been urging him to do for years.