Residents were urged Tuesday to evacuate a besieged Afghan city as the army prepared a major offensive against Taliban insurgents after three days of heavy fighting.

The head of the Japan Medical Association called on Tuesday for a nationwide state of emergency to contain a surge in COVID-19 cases in Olympics host city Tokyo and elsewhere, Kyodo news agency said, as worries grow about a strained healthcare system

Firefighters using planes and helicopters, and locals with buckets of water, battled wildfires raging for a sixth day near southern coastal resorts in drought-hit Turkey on Monday and the government faced fresh criticism of its handling the disaster.

Iran will respond promptly to any threat against its security, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Monday, after the United States, Israel and Britain blamed Tehran for an attack on an Israeli-managed tanker off the coast of Oman.

Taliban fighters pushed deeper into the southern Afghan provincial capital of Lashkargahon Monday and closed in on government buildings, a senior official said, as the insurgents pressed a rapid advance.

Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has claimed there is “proof” that Iran is behind the deadly ship attack off the coast of Oman, adding that the incident is a “reminder of Iranian aggression.”

Taliban fighters struck Kandahar airport in southern Afghanistan with at least three rockets overnight, the insurgent group’s spokesman said on Sunday, adding that the aim was to thwart air strikes conducted by Afghan government forces.

Thousands of people protested in Paris and other French cities on Saturday against a mandatory coronavirus health pass for entry to a wide array of public venues, introduced by the government as it battles a fourth wave of infections.

The main U.N. compound in the capital of the western Afghan province of Herat was attacked by “anti-government elements” on Friday and at least one security guard was killed, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said.

Japan said on Friday it will expand states of emergency to three prefectures near Olympic host Tokyo and the western prefecture of Osaka, as COVID-19 cases spike in the capital and around the country, overshadowing the Summer Games.

The United Nations children’s agency said on Friday that more than 100,000 children in Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray could suffer life-threatening malnutrition in the next 12 months, a 10-fold increase to normal numbers.

The United Nations warned Monday that Afghanistan could see the highest number of civilian deaths in more than a decade if the Taliban’s offensives across the country are not halted.

One person has died and at least 16 are injured after a blast occurred at a disposal centre in Leverkusen’s Chempark. Locals have been told to stay inside and close doors and windows as smoke billows above the city.

India’s Assam state said Tuesday it will deploy 4,000 commandos to guard its border with a rival state after six police officers were killed in a gun battle between the feuding neighbours.

Wildfires burned in regions across southern Europe on Monday, fuelled by hot weather and strong winds, as some northern countries cleaned up after a weekend of torrential rain and flooding.

Tensions spread on the streets and divisions dominated the political scene in Tunisia on Monday, after President Kais Saied’s decision to sack the prime minister and suspend parliament.

Nearly 2,400 Afghan civilians were killed or injured in May and June as fighting between Taliban insurgents and Afghan security forces escalated, the highest number for those two months since records started in 2009, the United Nations said on Monday

The Russian navy can detect any enemy and launch an “unpreventable strike” if needed, President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday, weeks after a UK warship angered Moscow by passing the Crimea peninsula.

Australia’s New South Wales logged its second-highest daily increase of the year in locally acquired COVID-19 cases on Sunday amid fears of a wave of new infections after thousands of people joined an anti-lockdown protest.

Around 161,000 people protested in Paris and several other cities in France on Saturday, objecting to new regulations introduced to contain the coronavirus pandemic, even as case numbers rise. Some 11,000 people demonstrated in Paris, according to

Reeling from a surge in battlefield losses, Afghanistan’s military is overhauling its war strategy against the Taliban to concentrate forces around the most critical areas like Kabul and other cities, border crossings and vital infrastructure, Afgh

Australia’s largest state of New South Wales on Friday urged the federal government to divert vaccine doses to Sydney, the epicentre of a flaring COVID-19 outbreak, raising objections from other states desperate for protection from the virus.

At least 112 people have died in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, authorities said on Friday, after torrential monsoon rains caused landslides and flooded low-lying areas, cutting off hundreds of villages.

The heaviest rains in decades have caused massive flooding in the central Chinese metropolis of Zhengzhou.

Describing Boris Johnson being PM as “terrible for the country,” Dominic Cummings has revealed that he and other Downing Street aides had plotted to oust him from office just weeks after their landslide December 2019 election win.

India reported its highest death toll in a month on Wednesday - at nearly 4,000 - after its richest state reconciled its death count with 3,509 previously unreported fatalities, the health ministry said.

Scientists are working on a benchmark for COVID-19 vaccine efficacy that would allow drugmakers to conduct smaller, speedier human trials to get them to market and address a huge global vaccine shortage.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson sought to avoid a second lockdown last autumn, arguing that most of those dying were over 80, according to his former aide-turned bitter foe Dominic Cummings.

The number of excess deaths in India during the coronavirus pandemic could be 10 times higher than the official toll from the disease, research published on Tuesday said.

The United States and a coalition of allies accused China on Monday of a global cyber hacking campaign that employed contract hackers, specifically attributing a large Microsoft attack disclosed earlier this year to actors working on Beijing’s beha