JAKARTA, JANUARY 17 (IANS): The death toll due to the landslides in Indonesia's West Java province has risen to 31, the National Search and Rescue Agency said on Sunday. Currently, the search and rescue (SAR) team is still looking for nine others who are still missing in Cihanjuang village, Sumedang district, reports Xinhua news. "The search is constrained by rains and the SAR team needs to be aware of subsequent landslides," the agency said. According to th

Kabul, January 17 (AP): Gunmen fired on a car in northern Kabul on Sunday, killing two women judges who worked for Afghanistan's high court and wounding the driver, a court official said. It was the latest attack in the Afghan capital during peace talks between Taliban and Afghan government officials in Qatar. Supreme Court of Afghanistan spokesman Ahmad Fahim Qawim, said the women were judges who worked for the high court but he did not identify them by name. No one claim

Washington, January 17 (AP) President-elect Joe Biden on Saturday filled out his State Department team with a group of former career diplomats and veterans of the Obama administration, signaling his desire to return to a more traditional foreign policy after four years of uncertainty and unpredictability under President Donald Trump. Biden will nominate Wendy Sherman as deputy secretary of state and Victoria Nuland as undersecretary of state for political affairs the second- and thi

Kampala, January 17 (AP): Ugandas electoral commission said Saturday that President Yoweri Museveni won a sixth five-year term, extending his rule to four decades, while top opposition challenger Bobi Wine dismissed cooked-up, fraudulent results and officials struggled to explain how polling results were compiled amid an internet blackout. In a generational clash watched across the African continent with a booming young population and a host of aging leaders, the 38-year-old singer-

Washington, January 17 (IANS): The overall global coronavirus caseload has topped 94.4 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 2.02 million, according to the Johns Hopkins University. In its latest update on Sunday morning, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed that the current global caseload and death toll stood at 94,417,649 and 2,020,103, respectively. The US is the worst-hit country with the world's highest number of c

San Francisco, January 17 (IANS): Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates owns the largest chunk of private farmland in the US across 18 states, a new report has revealed. Bill and Melinda Gates amassed 242,000 acres of land in the US, with the largest holdings in Louisiana (69,071 acres), Arkansas (47,927 acres) and Nebraska (20,588 acres), according to The Land report. Bill Gates also owns a stake in more than 24,800 acres of transitional land outside of Phoenix. Res

Milan, January 16 (AP): Five elderly residents of a nursing home near Rome have died of suspected carbon monoxide poisoning and another five residents and two workers have been hospitalised in serious condition, Italian media reported Saturday. Firefighters confirmed the deadly incident in the town of Lanuvio, with the hypothesis of a gas leak. A worker in the home found the residents and workers unconscious early Saturday, the news agency ANSA reported. All residents and empl

Terre Haute (US), January 16 (AP): The Trump administration has carried out its 13th federal execution since July, an unprecedented run that concluded just five days before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden an opponent of the federal death penalty. Dustin Higgs, convicted in the killings of three women in a Maryland wildlife refuge in 1996, was the third to receive a lethal injection this week at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. President Donald Trump's

Washington, January 16 (IANS): Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, has suggested that any lawmaker found to have assisted in the January 6 storming of the Capitol in Washington D.C. should face criminal charges. "We must trust each other, respect the people who sent us here. We must also have the truth, and that will be looked into," The Hill news website quoted Pelosi as saying to reporters on Friday in the Capitol. "If, in fact, it is found

Geneva, January 16 (IANS): World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has urged fairness to the access of COovid-19 vaccines, saying he wants to "see vaccination underway in every country in the next 100 days". Speaking at a virtual press conference from Geneva on Friday, Tedros stressed that efforts should be made to ensure that middle and low-income countries are equally protected, reports Xinhua news agency. High-income countries are

New York, January 16 (IANS): Sameera Fazili, who traces her family's roots to Kashmir, is among the latest wave of Indian American nominees to be named to US president Joe Biden's A-team. Fazili has been appointed as Deputy Director, National Economic Council. Days before the new administration takes over, Fazili's profile made it to the landing page of the White House Senior Staff on the Biden transition website. She joins more than a dozen Indian Americans nominated or

Washington, January 16 (IANS): The overall global coronavirus caseload has topped 93.7 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 2 million, according to the Johns Hopkins University. In its latest update on Saturday morning, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed that the current global caseload and death toll stood at 93,787,372 and 2,006,987, respectively. The US is the worst-hit country with the world's highest number of ca

United Nations, January 16 (IANS): UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged "far greater solidarity" as the number of global coronavirus deaths has surpassed the 2 million mark. In its latest update on Saturday morning, the he Johns Hopkins University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed that the current global caseload and death toll stood at 93,787,372 and 2,006,987, respectively. "In the memory of those two million souls, the w

Beijing, January 16 (IANS): Despite reductions in global carbon emissions due to the Covid-19 lockdown, the world's oceans in 2020 were the warmest in recorded history, according to a new study. Published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences earlier this week, the study was conducted by 20 scientists from 13 institutes in China, the US and Italy, Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday. Compared with 2019, the upper 2,000 metres of the Earth's oceans have absor

Geneva, January 16 (IANS): The International Labour Organization (ILO), a Geneva-based UN agency, announced that child labour has decreased by 38 per cent in the last decade but warned that the raging Covid-19 pandemic has considerably worsened the situation with 152 million children still affected. In a statement issued on Friday, the ILO said that the Covid-19 crisis has brought additional poverty to these already vulnerable populations and may reverse years of progress in the fig

London, January 16 (IANS): After the news broke that 23 elderly patients died in Norway following their immunization with the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine against Covid-19, the country has launched a detailed investigation into the reported fatalities that has shocked the world. Doctors in Norway have been asked to conduct more thorough evaluations of very frail elderly patients in line to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, following the reported deaths, the prestigious British Me

Taipei (Taiwan), January 15 (AP): A Chinese lawyer who represented a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist was stripped of his law license on Friday amid efforts by Beijing to crush opposition to its tighter control over the territory. Lu Siwei, who represented one of 12 Hong Kong activists who tried to flee to Taiwan, had his license revoked by the Sichuan Provincial Justice Department in a formal notice given Friday. Ten of the 12 activists caught at sea in August were sentenced by

London, January 15 (AP): The British economy looks set to fall back into recession after official figures on Friday showed that it shrank by 2.6% month-on-month in November, when much of the country was in a second coronavirus lockdown. The Office for National Statistics said that as a result of the fall, the economy is 8.5% smaller than its pre-pandemic peak. When the pandemic struck last spring, the economy contracted by up to a fifth over the first half of the year, before a summ

Washington, January 15 (PTI): US security agencies have arrested more than 100 individuals for their criminal activities in last week's siege of the Capitol and are monitoring an extensive amount of concerning online chatter ahead of President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20, FBI Director Christopher Wray said. The violence on January 6 by outgoing President Donald Trump's supporters temporarily halted the counting of Electoral College votes and resulte

Jakarta, January 15 (IANS): At least 35 people were killed after a 6.2-magnitude earthquake rocked Indonesia's West Sulawesi province on Friday, the National Disaster Management Agency said. "Nine people died in Majene district, and 26 others in Mamuju district, bringing the total death toll to 35," said the West Sulawesi Provincial Disaster Management Agency's head Darno Majid. In addition, 637 people were injured and around 15,000 others were displaced at 10 e