International news

At least 15 people have been killed in the south Indian state of Kerala after heavy rain triggered landslides in several districts. 

Wearing face masks in Saudi Arabia is no longer mandatory in open places from Sunday.

Melbourne, which has spent more time under COVID-19 lockdowns than any other city in the world, is set to lift its stay-at-home orders this week, officials said on Sunday.

British lawmaker David Amess was stabbed to death in an Essex church on Friday by an assailant who lunged at him as he met voters in what police said was a terrorist attack.

An earthquake of magnitude 4.8 struck Indonesia's Bali island on Saturday morning, killing at least three people, Indonesia's search and rescue agency said.

NASA is set to launch a first-of-its-kind mission, dubbed Lucy, to study Jupiter's Trojan asteroids on Saturday.

One man was killed as torrential rains flooded rivers, roads, homes and businesses across Greece, killing livestock and prompting hundreds of calls for help.

The place of worship in Kandahar was targeted during Friday prayers.

Russia and China held joint naval drills in the Sea of Japan on Friday.

South Africa will start vaccinating children between the ages of 12 and 17 next week using the Pfizer vaccine.

COVID-19 health passes became mandatory for all workers in Italy from Friday, with the measure being applied mostly peacefully across the country despite some scattered protests.

Qantas is restarting some of its international routes on November 1 after Australia announced a lifting of COVID-19 restrictions on vaccinated citizens and permanent residents.

Former US President Bill Clinton was in a California hospital on October 14 with an infection and responding well to two days of treatment, his doctors said.

Strict entry controls will be eased only for vaccinated citizens and permanent residents who are returning from overseas to Sydney.

At least six people were killed in Beirut on Thursday when heavy gunfire targeted supporters of Hezbollah, as they headed to a protest demanding the removal of the judge investigating last year's explosion at the city's port.

A fire in a residential building in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung has killed 46 people and injured another 41.

Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) suspended flights to the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Thursday after what it called "heavy handed" interference by Taliban authorities, including arbitrary rule changes and intimidation of staff.

China will send three astronauts to an unfinished space station early on Saturday, including the first female crew member to visit the station, where they are due to stay for six months.

A 37-year-old Danish citizen is suspected of killing five people in a bow-and-arrow attack in the Norwegian town of Kongsberg in a rare incident of mass killing in Norway, police said on Thursday.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said its newly formed advisory group on dangerous pathogens may be "our last chance" to determine the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and urged China to provide data from early cases.

Actor William Shatner soared aboard a Blue Origin rocketship on a suborbital trip and landed in the Texas desert on Wednesday to become at age 90 the oldest person ever in space.

A massive fire has ripped through a part of the El Gouna film festival's main plaza in Egypt, a day before the opening ceremony.

Gabby Petito, the young woman who vanished on a road trip with her boyfriend and later turned up dead in Wyoming, was killed by strangulation, a local coroner said on Tuesday.

New South Wales could ease more restrictions in Sydney a week earlier than planned on Oct. 18 as Australia's most populous state races towards its 80% double-dose vaccination target, the government said on Wednesday.

Growing tension over a judicial probe into last year's Beirut port blast threatens to push Lebanon into yet another political crisis, testing Prime Minister Najib Mikati's new government as it struggles to dig the country out of economic collapse.

Standing beside North Korea's largest missiles, leader Kim Jong Un said his country's weapons development is necessary in the face of hostile policies from the United States and a military buildup in South Korea.

Moderna and Johnson & Johnson on Tuesday said that US regulators should authorise booster shots of their COVID-19 vaccines, citing data that showed waning effectiveness of both over time.

India on Tuesday recommended emergency use of Bharat Biotech's COVID-19 shot in children below 12 years of age, making the vaccine maker the first in the country to get such an approval after a review of its trial data for the 2-18 age-group.

At least 9 people have been killed in the Philippines and 11 reported missing on Tuesday due to floods and landslides caused by heavy rain from tropical cyclone Kompasu.

The lead judge investigating the catastrophic Beirut port blast on August 4, 2020, issued an arrest warrant on Tuesday for former finance minister Ali Hassan Khalil after he failed to show up for questioning.

France will ban plastic packaging for nearly all fruit and vegetables from January 2022 in a bid to reduce plastic waste, the environment ministry said on Monday.

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday recommended that immunocompromised people be given an additional dose of COVID-19 vaccine, due to their higher risk of breakthrough infections after standard immunisation.

A fire broke out at an oil facility fuel storage tank in southern Lebanon on Monday, sending a column of smoke into the air as firefighters doused the flames and a security source said the army was cooling nearby tanks to stop the blaze spreading.

Sydney's cafes, gyms and restaurants welcomed back fully vaccinated customers on Monday after nearly four months of lockdown, as Australia aims to begin living with the coronavirus and gradually reopen with high rates of inoculation.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte's office on Monday congratulated journalist Maria Ressa for winning the Nobel Peace Prize, calling it "a victory for a Filipina" for which it was happy to see.

Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani nuclear scientist who acknowledged being part of a nuclear proliferation ring, died on Sunday. He was 85.

The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken will be hosting Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, for discussions next week.

A Colombian nun who was kidnapped in 2017 by militants in Mali has been freed.

Lebanon's two biggest power stations shut down due to a fuel shortage on Friday, and the country has no centrally generated electricity.

The Nobel Peace Prize for Philippine journalist Maria Ressa was hailed by many at home as a rebuke on official attacks on the media.

Buildings near the volcano on the Spanish island of La Palma were engulfed by rivers of lava early on Saturday, as the red-hot eruption intensified by the spectacle of flashes of lightning.

Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed on Saturday to realise peaceful "reunification" with Taiwan, though did not directly mention the use of force with the island.

Two journalists whose work has angered the authorities in Russia and the Philippines were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, honouring the right to free speech.

A bomb tore through a mosque in Afghanistan's northeastern Kunduz province on Friday, killing and wounding more than 100 people, a UN agency said.

Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE have asked US regulators to authorise emergency use of their COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, a group for whom no shot is currently allowed, Pfizer said on Thursday.

Tokyo area commuters faced packed trains on Friday on some lines due to delays, but there was little other impact after a strong quake rocked the Japanese capital the night before, although authorities warned of aftershocks for up to a week.

Britain will scrap tough COVID-19 quarantine requirements for 47 destinations on Monday.

A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.1 jolted Tokyo and surrounding areas late on Thursday, stopping train lines and causing sporadic power cuts.

The Indian government has decided to allow foreign tourists into the country.

Pfizer and BioNTech have asked US regulators to authorise emergency use of their COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11.

Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, the award-giving body said on Thursday.

At least 20 people were killed and about 300 injured on Thursday when a 5.7 magnitude earthquake struck southern Pakistan in the early hours as many of the victims were asleep, the Disaster Management Authority said.

Two-year-old Adrian James is one of more than 840,000 children under the age of four to contract COVID-19 in the United States since the beginning of the pandemic.

Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo said on Thursday she will run for the presidency in a 2022 election.

COVID-19 restrictions will be eased further in Sydney from Monday, authorities said, as Australia's largest city looks set to exit a nearly four-month lockdown after hitting its 70 per cent full vaccination target.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Wednesday said the only approved vaccine against malaria should be widely used on African children.

Pfizer will study the effectiveness of its vaccine against COVID-19 by inoculating the whole population over the age of 12 in a town in southern Brazil, the company said on Wednesday.

German Benjamin List and Scottish-born David MacMillan won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their development of asymmetric organocatalysis, a "new and ingenious tool for molecule building".

Sweden will pause the use of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine for people born 1991 and later after reports of possible rare side effects, such as myocarditis, the Swedish health agency said on Wednesday.

US lawmakers pounded Facebook, accusing CEO Mark Zuckerberg of pushing for higher profits while being cavalier about user safety, and they demanded regulators investigate whistleblower accusations that the social media company harms children's mental health and stokes divisions.

Hong Kong is at a new start for development under a national security law imposed last year, leader Carrie Lam said on Wednesday as she unveiled plans for tackling a long-standing housing shortage in the Chinese-ruled city.

Scientists Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi won the 2021 Nobel Prize for Physics for their "groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems," the award-giving body said on Tuesday.

The Czech prime minister and the chairman of a well-known Indian conglomerate were among global figures denying wrongdoing on Monday after the leak of what major news outlets called a secret trove of documents about offshore finance.

The son and namesake of late Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos will file his candidacy for president in next year's elections, local media reported on Tuesday, but his lawyer said a final decision had not yet been made.

The effectiveness of the Pfizer Inc-BioNTech SE vaccine in preventing infection by the coronavirus dropped to 47 per cent from 88 per cent six months after the second dose, according to data published on Monday that US health agencies considered when deciding on the need for booster shots.

American scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian won the 2021 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch, the award-giving body said on Monday.

Seven more people were killed in Oman as heavy winds and rain swept through the country after tropical storm Shaheen made landfall, the national emergency committee said on Monday.

Nearly 12 million documents have been leaked showing the confidential financial arrangements of some of the most powerful people in the world.

Farmers in India vowed on Monday to intensify their months-long protest against laws aimed at liberalising agriculture as tension flared a day after eight people were killed in clashes between growers and ruling party supporters.

Japan's new prime minister, Fumio Kishida, exchanged fist bumps with lawmakers after he was formally elected by parliament on Monday, as public broadcaster NHK said he was set to dissolve the body next week and call an election for October 31.

The two Koreas on Monday restored their hotlines that the North severed months ago, with Pyongyang urging Seoul to step up efforts to improve relations after criticising what it called double standards over weapons development.

Tropical Cyclone Shaheen hit land in Oman on Sunday having already killed at least three people.

A small private plane crashed into an empty building on the outskirts of Milan, northern Italy, on Sunday, killing all eight people on board.

Sir Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group, will be boarding Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity and blasting off to space on Sunday.

Singapore is reviewing penalties for violent offences following an outcry over a 12-day prison sentence for a student who strangled his girlfriend until she blacked out.