Geneva: The risk posed by the Omicron variant is still “very high”, the World Health Organization said Wednesday, after Covid-19 case numbers shot up by 11 percent globally last week. Omicron is behind rapid virus spikes in several countries, including those where it has already overtaken the previously-dominant Delta variant, the WHO said in its […]
Geneva: The Omicron variant has been detected in 38 countries but no deaths have yet been reported, the WHO said on Friday, as authorities worldwide rushed to stem the heavily mutated Covid-19 strain’s spread amid warnings that it could damage the global economic recovery. The United States and Australia became the latest countries to confirm […]
Geneva: US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer on Tuesday announced a deal to make its prospective antiviral Covid-19 pill available more cheaply in the world’s least wealthy countries. Pfizer will sub-licence production of its promising Paxlovid pill to generic drug manufacturers for supply in 95 low- and middle-income nations covering around 53 percent of the world’s population. Under the deal […]
Malala Yousafzai, the campaigner for girls’ education and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who survived being shot aged 15 by a Taliban gunman in her native Pakistan in 2012, has got married, she said on social media on Tuesday.The 24-year-old, who lives in Britain, said she and her new husband, who she named only as Asser, […]
BAGHDAD: A drone laden with explosives targeted the residence of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi in Baghdad early on Sunday in what the Iraqi military called an attempted assassination, but said Kadhimi escaped unhurt. The attack, which security sources said injured several members of Kadhimi’s personal protection detail, came after protests in the Iraqi capital […]
LONDON: Britain on Thursday became the first country in the world to approve a potentially game-changing COVID-19 antiviral pill jointly developed by U.S.-based Merck (MRK.N) and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, in a boost to the fight against the pandemic. Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) recommended the drug, molnupiravir, for use in people with mild […]
New Delhi: Mahjubin Hakimi, a member of the Afghan women’s national volleyball team who played in the youth age group, was beheaded by the Taliban in Kabul. In an interview with the Persian Independent, Suraya Afzali (a pseudonym), one of the coaches of the Afghan women’s national volleyball team, confirmed that the athlete had been […]
Washington: Foreign travellers, who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, will be able to enter the US from November 8, the White House said on Friday. Kevin Munoz, White House Press Secretary, said that this announcement applies to both international air travel and land travel. “This policy is guided by public health, stringent, and consistent,” he further wrote in a tweet. […]
STOCKHOLM: The Nobel Prize for physics has been awarded to scientists from Japan, Germany and Italy.Syukuro Manabe, 90, and Klaus Hasselmann, 89, were cited for their work in “the physical modeling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming”.The second half of the prize was awarded to Giorgio Parisi, 73, for “the discovery of the […]
STOCKHOLM: US scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize for discoveries on receptors for temperature and touch, the jury said. “The groundbreaking discoveries… by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates have allowed us to understand how heat, cold and mechanical force can initiate the nerve impulses that allow us to […]