World

The head of the Tokyo Olympics has announced his resignation over sexist comments. Yoshiro Mori had said women talk too much during an online meeting of the committee’s board of trustees earlier this month, where he also said women are driven by a “strong sense of rivalry”. The former Japanese prime minister, 83, had previously

A five-day lockdown is being imposed in Australia’s Victoria state, barring spectators from the first few days of the Australian Open tennis tournament.  A new COVID-19 cluster has been linked to a quarantine hotel in the state capital Melbourne, reaching 13 cases on Thursday and prompting authorities to take action. Around 6.5 million people went

In 2012, the Eurozone was facing an existential crisis, with the future of the euro itself in doubt. Investors were seeking an ever-greater premium to lend to countries like Spain and Italy and there was real concern in European capitals that at least one country might have to be ejected from the single currency zone.

A team of Mossad officers spent months learning the minute-by-minute routine of a top Iranian nuclear scientist – before killing him with a remote-controlled machine gun. Some of the 20-strong Israeli team smuggled the gun – which weighed a tonne – piece by piece into the country, while others watched every move Mohsen Fakhrizadeh made.

Prominent Saudi women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul has been released from prison after spending more than 1,000 days behind bars. Her sister Lina posted the news on Twitter with a screenshot of a smiling Loujian speaking to her via video call but warned that while she was out of jail she was still not fully

The president of the European Commission has admitted the EU underestimated the rolling out of vaccines and that “we are not where we want to be” in the fight against the coronavirus. Ursula von der Leyen said the 27-nation bloc had been “too optimistic” about vaccine mass production and that lessons had been learned. The

There is a continuous sound of heavy machinery at the mouth of the main tunnel of the Tapovan power station in India’s Uttarakhand state. Rescuers are desperately trying to reach about 35 workers trapped inside a tunnel after a glacier collapse. It has now been more than 60 hours since a Himalayan glacier broke off

It is “extremely unlikely” coronavirus came from a laboratory incident in China, according to a joint mission investigating the origins of the pandemic. Investigators believe the most likely cause of the initial outbreak was the virus jumping from an “intermediary host species” to humans. It means future investigations will not focus on a laboratory incident

The impoverished country of Haiti – already an economic disaster zone with organised crime and kidnapping for ransom out of control – now finds itself in the midst of a constitutional crisis with violent confrontations between anti-government protesters and the police a daily occurrence. The country’s leading opposition parties, the judiciary and activist groups say

South Africa is suspending its rollout of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine after finding it offers limited protection against mild disease caused by the COVID-19 variant discovered there. It follows disappointing results in a trial conducted by the University of the Witwatersrand, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said. The government had been intending to give the AstraZeneca

At least 150 people are feared dead in northern India after part of a Himalayan glacier broke off, sending a flood of water and debris into two hydroelectric dams. A portion of Nanda Devi glacier broke off in the Tapovan area of Uttarakhand state on Sunday, with the subsequent flooding damaging the Rishiganga and Dhauliganga

*Warning – this story contains descriptions of a child who has suffered extensive burns* The vicious conflict in Syria has been raging for 10 years. One of the worst humanitarian disasters in history, more than 6.5 million people have been displaced, forced to escape the violence. Many of them live in camps in the Idlib

You can see the boats sail into Pakaquiteta beach every morning, carrying people and possessions from an area in Mozambique that is known as “the land of fear”. More than half a million people have fled from northern parts of the country’s most northerly province, Cabo Delgado, and thousands of evacuees have sought sanctuary on

A politician who has called for civil disobedience against the military coup in Myanmar has become the latest senior figure to be arrested. Win Htein, 79, was held at his home in Yangon and taken to the capital Naypyitaw, according to a spokesman for Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party. Mr

There was no accidental leakage of disease from a Chinese laboratory with a history of studying coronaviruses, an international team investigating the origins of COVID-19 has been told. The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was on Wednesday visited by World Health Organisation (WHO) experts who are looking for clues as to how the COVID-19 pandemic

People may be able to catch COVID-19 twice and suffer two completely separate bouts of the disease within just four months, doctors have said. The warning comes after evidence emerged of a man whose infections were separated by four months of no symptoms and serial negative tests for the virus. But although dwindling immunity could