US President Donald Trump will leave Washington, D.C. Wednesday morning shortly before President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration, with a grandeur ceremony being planned for his departure, US media reported Friday.

The World Health Organization (WHO) Emergency Committee on COVID-19 on Friday advised countries not to require proof of vaccination or immunity for international travel as a condition of entry.

The Indian government Friday confirmed the outbreak of Avian Influenza (AI) or bird flu in 11 states.

Japan is preparing legislation making it possible to punish people who do not comply with the government's measures to combat COVID-19, with the penalties possibly including hefty fines and even prison sentences.

The US strategic framework for the Indo-Pacific, a secret document recently declassified by the US government, exposes the Trump administration's plot to smear and contain China and undermine regional peace and stability, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Friday.

Global death toll from COVID-19 reached 2,000,905, according to Johns Hopkins University on Friday.

At the very last moment of the Trump administration, officials like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and some diplomats in his Department of State have found that they were unwelcome abroad, whether in Taiwan or Europe, so they have lost their only remaining capability to make trouble for the incoming Biden administration, said Chinese experts.

Italy was plunged into political crisis on Wednesday after former premier Matteo Renzi withdrew his party from the ruling coalition, risking the collapse of the government in the middle of a raging coronavirus pandemic.

Already grounded by the coronavirus pandemic, airlines operating in the UK are facing post-Brexit obstacles to flying across the European Union, and their shareholders are paying the price.

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said it would be "very problematic" for Ankara to turn back on its purchase of Russian S-400 defense systems, but expressed hope that a dispute with the United States on the issue could be resolved through dialogue.

UN aid chief Mark Lowcock will on Thursday urge Washington to reverse a plan to designate Yemen's Houthis a foreign terrorist organization, warning the move would push the country into a "famine on a scale that we have not seen for nearly 40 years."

A Paris court was to hear a complaint brought by NGOs backed by 2 million citizens on Thursday accusing the French state of failing to act to halt climate change.

Just 100 companies account for most of the profits from the world's seas, researchers said on Wednesday, calling on them to help save the oceans from overfishing, rising temperatures and pollution.

South Korea's top court upheld a 20-year prison sentence for disgraced former president Park Geun-hye on Thursday, in the final ruling over the ­corruption scandal that brought her down.

a dated pig painting at Leang Tedongnge in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Archaeologists have discovered the world's oldest known cave painting: a life-sized picture of a wild pig that was made at least 45,500 years ago in Indonesia. The finding was described in the journal Science Advances on January 13, 2021, and also provides the earliest evidence of human settlement of the region. Photo: VCG

Growing up in a village in Burkina Faso, Georges Bazongo remembers his parents and neighbors cutting down trees each year to expand their farmland so they could "grow enough food for our families to eat."

At least three members of the US Congress have tested positive for COVID-19 following the storming of the Capitol by President Donald Trump's supporters last week.

Ecuador detected three more cases of the coronavirus variant first identified in the United Kingdom, bringing the total number of such cases in the South American country to four, Health Minister Juan Carlos Zevallos said on Wednesday.

Some 879 hospitals in Mexico on Wednesday simultaneously began vaccination against the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), giving priority to healthcare workers.

Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca on Wednesday received the Chinese COVID-19 Sinovac vaccine along with Turkey's advisory science council members, one day before the nationwide vaccination begins.

The US House voted 232 to 197 to impeach President Donald Trump on Wednesday afternoon, with 10 Republicans voting for the impeachment. Trump has become the only president to be impeached twice in the US history, after the Capitol riot.

China will commission its first maritime patrol ship with a displacement of more than 10,000 tons in mid-2021, and the vessel is expected to be used in the South China Sea for missions including patrol and emergency support, an official announced on Tuesday.

The US House of Representatives on Wednesday convened to debate a second impeachment resolution against President Donald Trump, charging him of inciting an insurrection against the American government.

A defiant Donald Trump rejected blame Tuesday for a deadly assault on Congress by his supporters, but cracks emerged in the president's Republican support with several now backing his removal on the eve of an all-but-certain historic second impeachment.

Iran's military launched a short-range naval missile drill on Wednesday, Iranian state TV reported, at a time of high tension between arch foes Tehran and Washington.

Global coronavirus infections have soared past 91 million, and the spikes have forced governments around the world to reimpose restrictions such as unpopular and economically painful lockdowns, including in Europe which is battling a devastating second wave.

Italian anti-mafia prosecutor Nicola Gratteri (center) is surrounded by media as he arrives on Wednesday for the opening of the “Rinascita-Scott” maxi-trial in which more than 350 alleged members of Calabria's 'Ndrangheta mafia group and their associates go on trial in Lamezia Terme, Calabria.

The elderly leader of a secretive religious sect at the center of South Korea's early ­novel ­coronavirus outbreak was not guilty of hindering the government's virus prevention efforts, a district court ruled on Wednesday.

Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas said on Wednesday he was stepping down after his Centre Party came under investigation for corruption linked to a ­property development company.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative CDU party will elect a new leader on Saturday, in a key vote kicking off the race for Germany's top job as a deadly pandemic roils Europe's biggest economy.

Indonesian divers believe they are close to finding the cockpit voice recorder of a Sriwijaya Air jet that plunged into the sea shortly after takeoff with 62 people onboard.

Biased language in some job adverts in Britain deters as many as one in two women from applying, a study said on Wednesday, amid a push to attract more women to male-dominated sectors.

More than 43 million hectares - an area bigger than Germany - of forest have been lost in a little over a decade in just a handful of deforestation hot spots, conservation organization WWF said on Wednesday.

Half a century since Egypt's ground-breaking Aswan dam was inaugurated with much fanfare, harnessing the Nile for hydropower and irrigation, the giant barrier is still criticized for its human and environmental toll.

The Department of Health (DOH) of the Philippines on Wednesday reported 1,453 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, bringing the country's total tally to 492,700.

Evidence that the coronavirus circulated in Italy months before its first formal detection has continued to mount, after researchers at the University of Milan revealed that a skin biopsy on a 25-year-old woman showed the presence of the coronavirus in Italy in November 2019.

Indonesia's President Joko Widodo received the first dose of Sinovac Biotech's coronavirus vaccine named CoronaVac on Wed, becoming the first person in the country to be vaccinated. Indonesia started its national immunization campaign on Wednesday.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Tuesday a new requirement for a negative COVID-19 test to all air passengers entering the United States.

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera and his wife Cecilia Morel are to begin "preventive quarantine" after coming into close contact with a person later diagnosed to have COVID-19, the president's press office said on Tuesday.

A resolution urging Vice President Mike Pence to start the US Constitution's 25th Amendment process of removing President Donald Trump from office advanced Tuesday on a procedural vote in the US House of Representatives.

US COVID-19 death toll hits new single day record of nearly 4,500: Johns Hopkins

US Vice President Mike Pence told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi he wouldn't invoke the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from office, as the House readied a resolution asking him to do just that: US media

Indonesian divers returned Tuesday to a wreckage-littered seabed off Jakarta in their hunt for the black boxes that will likely be key to unlocking the mystery of why a passenger jet carrying 62 people fell from the sky.

Scientists at the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that mass vaccinations would not bring about herd immunity to the coronavirus this year, even as one leading producer boosted its production forecast.

Tokyo Olympics organizers played down a poll showing plunging support for the Games on Tuesday and said a report claiming cancelation could be discussed next month was "fake news."

Democrats were giving President Donald Trump one last chance on Tuesday to leave office days before his term expires or face an unprecedented second impeachment over his supporters' deadly January 6 assault on the US Capitol.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres will run for a second five-year term as the organization's chief, his spokesperson said Monday.

The International Monetary Fund's executive board announced Monday it had approved the disbursement of $487.5 million to Angola, which is suffering from low oil prices due to the coronavirus pandemic.

One of Barcelona's largest parks, named after Spanish painter Joan Miro, is just a stone's throw away from the busy crossroads between Consell de Cent and Rocafort streets, but here you could be mistaken for thinking nature is a million miles away.

An Irish inquiry into alarming death rates among newborns at church-run homes for unwed mothers will hand down its final report on Tuesday, laying bare one of the Catholic Church's darkest chapters and leading to demands for state compensation.

Save the Children on Tuesday called for urgent action to help kids in the world's poorest countries to return to schools closed as part of coronavirus restrictions.

A global emergency stockpile of 500,000 Ebola vaccine doses will be created to respond quickly to future outbreaks, the vaccine alliance Gavi said on Tuesday.

Cuba condemns its inclusion in a US list of countries that sponsor terrorism, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said Monday.

As COVID-19 incidences and death rates remain on a high level in Germany, stricter contact restrictions would take effect nationwide as of Monday until at least the end of January, the government announced.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will serve a second five-year term, if that's what member states want, his spokesman said on Monday.

Facebook, Google and Microsoft announced Monday that they're freezing political contributions from their political action committees (PAC) in the wake of last week's riot in the US Capitol by President Donald Trump's supporters.

California Governor Gavin Newsom declared Monday that the state would open mass vaccination sites in major cities to step up its coronavirus vaccination efforts this week.

Cambodia reopened public schools across the kingdom on Monday after the first community outbreak of COVID-19 was over late last year.

Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa tested positive for COVID-19, said a statement posted on the official website of the Portuguese Presidency on Monday night.

US House Democrats on Monday formally introduced the article of impeachment against President Donald Trump, taking the first step to impeach the president the second time during his presidency.

Congressional Democrats on Monday began their drive to force President Donald Trump from office, kicking off a week of action that could end with a vote that would make him the only president in US history to be impeached twice.

Italian President Sergio Mattarella has called on ruling parties to approve a European Union recovery plan before dealing with a looming political crisis, Italian newspapers reported on Monday.

Air travel between Qatar and Saudi Arabia was expected to resume on Monday, according to the countries' airlines, a major landmark as Doha's former rivals normalize ties under a landmark agreement.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Monday he remains committed to engaging with North Korea, and that cooperation on issues such as anti-­epidemic work could help lead to a breakthrough in stalled talks in the last years of his term.

India aims to begin vaccinating its 1.3 billion people against coronavirus from Saturday, a colossal and complex task compounded by safety worries, shaky infrastructure and public skepticism.

Indonesian divers searched waters off Jakarta Monday for black boxes from a passenger jet that crashed at the weekend with 62 people aboard, as investigators took up the grim task of identifying victims' remains.

Hundreds of suspected members of the 'Ndrangheta, Italy's most powerful mafia group, will face a judge this week as the country's biggest "maxi-trial" of the past three decades gets underway.

Saudi Arabia, the world's top crude exporter, announced on Sunday the launch of an eco-city "with zero cars, zero streets and zero carbon emissions" at its futuristic NEOM mega development.

The student, Fan Yiran, was a 30-year-old PhD student in a joint program of the Booth School of Business and the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics of the University of Chicago, the university confirmed in a notice released on its website on Sunday.

Digital healthcare is in the spotlight at the tech industry's big event this week amid a pandemic that has highlighted the importance of remote services, with a potentially lasting impact on medical delivery.

He looked Hermann Goering and Rudolf Hess in the eyes and saw them plead "not guilty," without so much as blinking.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of the US House of Representatives said on Sunday that Democrats are ready to start proceedings to impeach outgoing President Donald Trump for a second time in just over a year.

Cuba reported three more deaths and a record 388 new cases of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), the Ministry of Public Health (Minsap) reported on Sunday.

Over the past week, Chile has recorded the highest numbers of new daily cases of COVID-19 in the last six months, with more than 4,000 cases registered for the third consecutive day, bringing the total number of cases to 641,923, the Ministry of Health announced on Sunday.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea has endorsed its top leader Kim Jong Un as the general secretary of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea at its eighth party congress, the official Korean Central News Agency reported on Monday.

Global COVID-19 cases surpassed 90 million on Sunday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

Pope Francis and Britain's Queen Elizabeth II became the latest high-profile figures to join the global vaccination campaign against the coronavirus, as the UK reported it had surpassed more than 3 million cases since the pandemic began more than a year ago.

Power was gradually being restored to major cities across Pakistan Sunday after it was hit by a massive electricity blackout, officials said.

Voters headed to parliamentary polls in Kazakhstan on Sunday, with the ruling party expected to score a big win.

Indonesian authorities on Sunday located the black boxes of the Sriwijaya Air jet that crashed into the sea soon after taking off from the capital Jakarta, as human body parts and suspected pieces of the plane were retrieved. The Boeing 737-500 with 62 passengers and crew members was headed to Pontianak in West Kalimantan on Saturday before it disappeared from radar screens four minutes after takeoff.

The year 2020 tied with 2016 as the world's warmest on record, rounding off the hottest decade globally as the impacts of climate change intensified, the European Union's Copernicus Earth observation service said on Friday.

Deforestation destroyed the equivalent of more than two soccer pitches each minute in the Brazilian Amazon in 2020, another devastating year for a resource seen as vital to curbing climate change, according to government data released on Friday.

Austrian minister Christine Aschbacher resigned on Saturday from her cabinet post in charge of labor, families and youth following allegations that some of her university work was plagiarized.

Many British businesses are swiftly discovering that they must now pay duties on exports bound for the EU, despite the breakthrough Brexit free trade deal clinched over Christmas.

Democratic-led efforts to impeach US President Donald Trump for a historic second time gained momentum over the weekend, although it looked far from certain whether enough Republicans would back the move with just days left in his term.

Democratic control of the Senate offers President-elect Joe Biden an opportunity to advance parts of his climate agenda, but the paper-thin majority likely puts sweeping global warming legislation beyond reach.

Divers on Sunday found a tire and more debris of Indonesia's Sriwijaya Air passenger plane that crashed into the Java Sea off Jakarta, a rescuer and an official said.

Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the United States, reported on Friday 318 coronavirus-related deaths in the past 24 hours, the first time that more than 300 daily new deaths were counted.

The confirmed COVID-19 cases in Japan increased by 7,109 to reach 281,992 as of Saturday evening, according to the latest figures from the health ministry and local authorities.

The total number of COVID-19 cases in the United States topped 22 million on Saturday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

Indonesia's Sriwijaya Air passanger plane loses contact after taking off from Jakarta

Social media's permanent silencing of US President Donald Trump again exposed the country's double standards, and stripped Washington's "moral high ground" in lecturing other nations about "freedom of speech," Chinese observers said, adding that the recent development on the presidential transition, including the storming of Capitol hill, has taught the US a lesson: freedom of speech has boundaries.

The social media platform Twitter has permanently suspended US President Donald Trump's account.

Mike Pompeo, dubbed the “worst secretary of state in history” by US media, is allegedly planning to distance himself from President Donald Trump following the US Capitol riot, which shows the treacherous and opportunistic nature of this former fervent “Trumpist,” said Chinese scholars.

After the unprecedented storming of the Capitol by pro-Trump rioters, the US has been busy dealing with the fallout. Cabinet members and other officials are resigning or breaking off from Trump, and the Democrats are thinking of impeaching President Trump a second time.

Brazil has signed an agreement with the Butantan Institute of Sao Paulo to purchase 100 million doses of CoronaVac COVID-19 vaccines, developed by Chinese company Sinovac, Brazilian Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello said on Thursday.

The United States has decided to suspend proposed tariffs on about 1.3 billion US dollars worth of French products amid a dispute over digital service taxes (DSTs), the US Trade Representative's (USTR's) Office said Thursday.