NASA’s InSight lander which touched down on the Martian equator in November 2018, has revealed secrets about the Red Planet’s weather patterns, including details about its surface tornadoes, and the steady, rumble of low-frequency sounds on the planet, a new study says. The research, published in the journal ‘Nature Geoscience’, noted that Mars experiences strong daily pressure and temperature fluctuations, stronger than on the Earth...

THE death toll from the coronavirus epidemic in China has climbed to 2,118 with the death of 114 more people, while the overall confirmed cases increased to 74,576, Chinese officials said on Thursday. China’s National Health Commission (NHC) said the new confirmed cases declined to 394, registering the biggest drop since December when the first case was reported in Wuhan city in the central Hubei Province. The NHC said on Thursday that it received reports of 114 deaths on Wednesday from 31 provincial-level ..

UN CHIEF Antonio Guterres on Tuesday visited the revered Gurudwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur, the final resting place of Sikhism founder Guru Nanak Dev, in Pakistan’s Narowal town. The Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbhandhik Committee and Evacuee Trust Property Board officials received the UN Secretary General at Kartarpur Sahib, some 125 kms from Lahore...

LONDON, THE Indian High Commission in London confirmed on Tuesday that British lawmaker Debbie Abrahams, who was denied entry to India and deported to Dubai on Monday, did not hold a valid visa. Abrahams, who is an Opposition Labour Party MP and Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Kashmir, claimed she was travelling on a valid e-visa to India to visit family and friends but her visa was revoked without explanation. She questioned why her visa was suddenly revoked and also the possibility ..

TOP WHO experts, including from the US, have joined the fight against the novel coronavirus in China that has claimed 1,770 lives, as Beijing stepped up its efforts by deploying 30,000 more medical staff in the worst-affected Wuhan city to contain the spread of the epidemic. ..

AN Indian-origin restaurateur, who runs an Indian restaurant in northern England, has been inspired by his father’s decades’ old stainless steel tiffin box to launch a takeaway system not reliant on plastic. Harry Khinda, whose family hails from Punjab before settling in the UK in the 1960s, said he hit upon the concept of offering discounts on takeaways using the reusable tiffin boxes as his very own recycling mission to fight against unsustainable single-use plastic...

THE Indian Embassy in Japan on Saturday said it is making efforts to disembark all the Indians on board the cruise ship moored off the Japanese coast after the end of the quarantine period as authorities confirmed that 218 people, including three Indians, have been infected with the deadly disease on the ship. A total of 138 Indians, including 132 crew and 6 passengers, were among the 3,711 people on board the quarantined ship that arrived at the Japanese coast earlier this month. It was quarantined ..

LONDONCONSUMERS around the world may be wasting more than twice as much food as commonly believed, according to a study.   The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) estimated that in 2005, one third of all food available for human consumption was wasted, researchers from Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands noted. This figure has continued to serve as reference for the extent of global food waste, they said.However, the FAO methodology does not ..

THE death toll in China’s coronavirus outbreak has gone up to 908 with 97 new fatalities reported mostly in the worst-affected Hubei province and the confirmed cases of infection crossing 40,000, Chinese health officials said on Monday, as a team of international experts led by the WHO is set to arrive in Beijing to help contain the epidemic. According to China’s National Health Commission, 91 deaths were reported in Hubei province, the epicentre of the epidemic, two in Anhui, and one each in Heilongjiang, ..

AN INSPIRING story of an 8-year-old boy Keoni Ching from Washington is doing the rounds on the Internet who sold key chains to paid off $4,015 (Rs 2.87 lakh) of his school district lunch debt after he was inspired by former Seattle Seahawk cornerback Richard Sherman...

A ONE-YEAR-OLD Indian baby boy in the UAE, whose father purchased a lottery ticket in his name, won a jackpot of USD 1 million in a monthly raffle draw here, media reports said on Wednesday. Mohammad Salah’s father Ramees Rahman has been participating in the Dubai Duty Free promotions for a year now and bought the winning ticket number 1319 online in Series 323 under his son’s name, the Gulf News reported. The news of Rahman’s ticket’s lucky draw was announced on Tuesday...

THE death toll in China’s coronavirus outbreak rose to 490 on Wednesday while the total number of confirmed cases mounted to 24,324, Chinese health officials announced on Wednesday. A total of 490 people had died after being infected and 24,324 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infection had been reported in 31 provincial-level regions, China’s National Health Commission reported. It said 65 deaths were reported on Tuesday, all from Hubei province and its capital Wuhan...

THE death toll in China’s coronavirus epidemic soared to 361 with 57 deaths on Sunday alone while the number of confirmed cases climbed to 17,205, Chinese health officials announced on Monday. China’s National Health Commission in its daily report on Monday said that 2,829 new cases of coronavirus were reported nationwide on February 2, taking the total number of infection to 17,205...

SEVERAL countries, including India, scrambled to evacuate their nationals from the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, as the death toll in China soared to 259 and nearly 12,000 people infected with the deadly virus...

THE European Parliament has postponed until March a vote on a joint motion, combining five different resolutions tabled by its members against India’s Citizenship Amendment Act, which was debated at its Plenary session in Brussels. The debate opened on Wednesday with a statement by Helena Dalli, the Vice-President of the European Commission and High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, who spoke strongly in favour of the “rich, frank and open” relationship the European ..

THE Indian Railways will acquire rest of the 53 per cent of land required for the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious Ahmedabad-Mumbai High Speed Train project, which is also called Bullet train project, in next six months, an official said on Wednesday. Railway Board Chairman V.K. Yadav said, “Till date 47 per cent of the land has been acquired for the 508-km long Ahmedabad-Mumbai high speed rail project, and rest of the 53 per cent will be acquired in next six months.”..

THE Union Health Ministry on Wednesday asked Indians to refrain from travelling to China where the novel coronavirus has claimed over 100 lives. The Ministry issued a fresh travel advisory and also urged people travelling to China to monitor their health closely. It asked people to use 24x7 helpline (011-23978046) for queries related to respiratory infection...

CHINA has reported 24 more deaths from coronavirus epidemic, taking the number of fatalities to 106 as confirmed cases of pneumonia caused by outbreak stand at 4,515, the health authorities announced on Tuesday. Barring Tibet, all Chinese provinces have reported the virus cases, posing a major challenge for the health authorities to contain it. Overseas confirmed cases have been reported in Thailand (7), Japan (3), South Korea (3), the United States (3), Vietnam (2), Singapore (4), Malaysia (3), Nepal ..

INDIA and Brazil on Saturday inked 15 agreements to ramp up cooperation in a wide range of areas, including oil and gas, and unveiled an action plan to further broadbase their strategic ties after talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Brazilian President Jair Messias Bolsonaro. The two leaders also vowed to work closely at the global anti-terror watchdog FATF to effectively confront challenges of terror financing and state-sponsored terrorism. Modi and Bolsonaro pitched for united global ..

DAVOS, GOOGLE chief Sundar Pichai on Wednesday said the world needs a free and open Internet for everyone and hoped that all countries will come together for a common regulatory framework for Artificial Intelligence (AI). Speaking here at WEF 2020, Pichai also said privacy cannot be a luxury good and it has to be safeguarded for everyone...

AN INDIAN storekeeper in the UAE has won a luxury car and a whopping 200,000 dirhams in a Dubai raffle, ending a decade-long wait to hit the jackpot, according to a media report on Tuesday. Sreejith has been buying raffle tickets every year for the last 10 years, ‘Khaleej Times’ reported...

DAVOS, THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Monday lowered growth estimate for the world economy to 2.9 per cent for 2019, citing “negative surprises” in few emerging market economies, especially India. Providing an update to the World Economic Outlook (WEO) ahead of the inauguration of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual summit here, the fund also revised downwards its forecast for India to 4.8 per cent for 2019...

FLAGGING huge risks to the economy from dangers of biodiversity loss and climate change, a new WEF study on Sunday said businesses are more than dependent on nature with an estimated exposure of USD 44 trillion or half of the world GDP. Releasing the Nature Risk Rising Report ahead of its 50th Annual Meeting, the World Economic Forum said about 25 per cent of our assessed plant and animal species are threatened by human actions, with a million species facing extinction, many within decades. China, ..

THE flag-draped coffins of the 11 Ukrainians who died in a plane mistakenly shot down by Iran during a spike in tensions with Washington arrived in Kiev on Sunday. President Volodymyr Zelensky, Prime Minister Oleksiy Goncharuk and other officials attended the solemn ceremony at Kiev’s Boryspil airport to see caskets with the remains of the downed plane’s nine Ukrainian flight crew and two passengers being removed from the aircraft...

WASHINGTONTHE US Senate opened impeachment trial of President Donald Trump with quiet ceremony on Thursday — senators standing at their desks to swear an oath of “impartial justice” as jurors, House prosecutors formally reciting the charges and Chief Justice John Roberts presiding.   The trial, only the third such undertaking in American history, is unfolding at the start of the election year, a time of deep political division in the nation. Four of the senators sitting ..

EXTERNAL Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif on Thursday held extensive talks on the fast-evolving situation in the Gulf region in the wake of frayed Iran-US ties over the killing of Commander Qasem Soleimani. Zarif apprised Jaishankar about the overall situation and Tehran’s position on it in the meeting held over breakfast, officials said. In a statement, the External Affairs Ministry said the two sides exchanged views on regional and global issues of mutual interest, ..

MAKING major investment announcements for small and medium businesses (SMB), Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Wednesday said that the 21st century will be the century of India. Speaking at the Amazon SMBhav event here, Bezos announced that Amazon would invest $1 billion in digitising SMBs in the country. He further said that the e-commerce major would use its global footprint to export Made in India goods worth $10 billion by 2025...

INDIA can play a role in de-escalating tensions in the Gulf region as New Delhi is an important player, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who was on India visit for the Raisina Dialogue, said on Wednesday. His remarks come amid tensions between the US and Iran over the killing of Iranian General Major General Qasem Soleimani. India has been maintaining that it would like the situation to de-escalate as soon as possible and the country has been in touch with key players, including Iran, United ..

THE United States has removed the currency manipulator label it imposed on China last summer, in a sign of easing tensions between the two economic powers after nearly two years of conflict. Just two days before President Donald Trump is set to sign a “phase one” trade agreement with China, the US Treasury said in its semi-annual report to Congress that the yuan has strengthened and Beijing is no longer considered a currency manipulator...

IN A major relief for Pakistan’s self-exiled former military dictator, a top court here on Monday declared his “complaint and trial” in the high treason case as “unconstitutional” leading to the annulment of his death penalty by a special tribunal...

QATAR’S Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani met Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei and other senior leaders on Sunday and agreed that de-escalation and dialogue were the only solutions to rising tensions in the Middle East between the United States and Tehran. Qatar and Iran agreed that de-escalation was the “only solution” to regional tensions, ‘Al Jazeera’ quoted Sheikh Tamim as saying after the meeting with Rouhani...

A VOLLEY of rockets slammed into an Iraqi airbase north of Baghdad where US forces have been based, wounding four local troops, the Iraqi military said on Sunday. Its statement said eight Katyusha-type rockets landed on Al-Balad airbase, wounding two Iraqi officers and two airmen. Al-Balad is the main airbase for Iraq’s F-16s, which it bought from the US to upgrade its air capacities...

IRAN on Saturday said it unintentionally shot down the Ukrainian airliner that crashed this week killing 176 people, calling it an “unforgivable mistake”. The Ukraine International Airlines plane came down on Wednesday shortly after Iran launched missiles at bases hosting American forces in Iraq in response to the killing of Qasem Soleimani, one of Iran’s top Generals, in a US drone strike. “The Islamic Republic of Iran deeply regrets this disastrous mistake,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani tweeted...

THE US and Iran stepped back from the brink of possible war on Wednesday as President Donald Trump signalled that he would not retaliate militarily for Iran’s missile strikes on Iraqi bases housing US troops. No one was harmed in the strikes, but US forces in the region remained on high alert. Speaking from the White House, Trump seemed intent on deescalating the crisis, which spiralled after he authorised the targeted killing last week of Iran’s top General, Qassem Soleimani...

IRAN launched over a dozen of ballistic missiles targeting at least two bases where US military and coalition forces’ are stationed in Iraq, which Tehran said was a “slap in the face” of America. According to Iranian State TV, the attacks were in revenge for the killing of the commander of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards, General Qasem Soleimani, in a US drone strike on Friday, which was ordered by President Donald Trump. While the Iranian State television claimed that “at least 80 terrorist ..