The World Health Organization's emergency committee on Covid-19 was meeting Friday to discuss whether the pandemic still merits the highest level of global alert.. Last time the committee met in October it concluded that the pandemic still constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) -- the WHO's highest level of alert. rjm/nl/ea
The Philippines said Friday it intended to appeal an International Criminal Court decision to reopen an inquiry into Manila's brutal anti-drug campaign, which left thousands dead.. The ICC prosecutor later asked to reopen the inquiry in June 2022.
Ukraine said Friday its troops were locked in "fierce" fighting with Russian troops for control of the town of Vugledar in the region of Donetsk on the eastern front.. Vugledar is about 150 kilometres (93 miles) south of Bakhmut, where Russian troops have been fighting for control longer than for any other city since the invasion.
A gunman stormed Azerbaijan's embassy in Tehran on Friday, killing the mission's head of security in an attack Iran said was motivated by personal reasons but Baku labelled an act of "terrorism".. Following the attack, Azerbaijan's foreign ministry said the diplomatic mission's head of security was killed and that two guards were wounded but in a "satisfactory" condition, adding that an investigation had been launched.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday repeated a claim that neo-Nazis were committing crimes in Ukraine -- an allegation Moscow has used to justify its military intervention -- as the world marked Holocaust Remembrance Day.. Friday is the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp built by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland -- a date that has become Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The global chemical weapons watchdog blamed Syria on Friday for a 2018 chlorine attack that killed 43 people, in a long-awaited report on a case that sparked tensions between Damascus and the West. . But thanks to new rules, which Syria and Russia have opposed, the watchdog is now able to point the finger of blame, and in this case has done so at Damascus.
At the Stalingrad Battle Museum in Russia's southern city of Volgograd, dozens of teenagers stand in a circle, waiting to take oath as they join the patriotic Youth Army movement.. The oath-taking ceremony in Volgograd came ahead of the 80th anniversary of the battle of Stalingrad, the name of the city at the time.
The IMF will send a team to Pakistan next week to discuss reviving a desperately needed bailout programme, with a foreign exchange crisis bringing imports almost to a standstill. . But Khan reneged on his promise to cut subsidies and market interventions that had cushioned the cost-of-living crisis, causing the programme to stall.
Teacher Oleksandr Pogoryelov occasionally strolls up the sloping road to the school in his village in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine where he taught for more than two decades.. Parents have been supportive, he said, but the village is emblematic of tensions in many communities in the Donetsk region, where pro-Russian separatists had been fighting Ukrainian forces for years.
Retired NATO general Petr Pavel looks a clear favourite to beat billionaire former prime minister Andrej Babis in the Czech presidential election run-off on Friday and Saturday.. Pavel won the endorsement of several parties in the governing centre-right coalition of Prime Minister Petr Fiala, while Babis secured backing from long-time ally Zeman, whose last term expires in March.
