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Colombo: Sri Lanka’s newly-appointed President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Monday congratulated India’s new President Droupadi Murmu, recalling the close ties between the two nations and underlining that her leadership offers “fresh impetus” to the joint endeavours to nurture and strengthen the cordial ties it enjoys. Murmu, 64, took over as India’s 15th president on Monday, the […]
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Islamabad: Pakistan has announced telescopic monitoring of Indian passengers arriving in the country through air or land routes amid a surge in Covid-19 cases caused by the Omicron sub-variant BA-275. The Directorate of Health Sciences issued a circular in this regard on the instructions of Health Minister Qadir Patel, The Express Tribune reported. Lahore’s Allama […]
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Los Angeles: As many as two people were killed and five others were injured in a shooting that occurred between two groups at a park in Los Angeles on Sunday evening. The shooting occurred inside Peck Park in San Pedro during an ongoing car show at 4 pm (local time), the Newyork Post reported. Investigators […]
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Colombo: Sri Lanka’s Presidential Secretariat, which was stormed by a sea of anti-government protesters in early July, is set to return to functioning from Monday under a tight security cover, according to a media report. Cleaning and repair work was underway to ready the Presidential Secretariat over the weekend as security forces opened Galle Road […]
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San Francisco: Authorities have declared a state of emergency in part of California as a wildfire continued to rage near the Yosemite National Park. The state of emergency has been declared in Mariposa County and in a statement, California Governor Gavin Newsom said the flames were being “driven by hot, dry weather and drought conditions”. The […]
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Kiev: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of “barbarism” over a missile attack on the Odesa port which took place just hours after a landmark grain export deal was signed between Kiev and Moscow. Under Friday’s deal signed in Istanbul, Russia agreed not to target Ukrainian ports while grain shipments were in transit, the […]
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New Delhi: The World Health Organisation on Saturday declared the monkeypox as public health emergency of international concern. The global health body said the expanding monkeypox outbreak in more than 70 countries is an “extraordinary” situation that now qualifies as a global emergency. “WHO’s assessment is that the risk of monkeypox is moderate globally and […]
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Washington: Three people were killed in a shooting at a park in the US state of Iowa and the suspected gunman is also dead, police said in a statement. Police were notified of a triple homicide at the Maquoketa Caves State Park campground in Jackson County at about 6.23 a.m. on Friday, Xinhua news agency […]
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Kiev: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that about 30 soldiers were dying on the frontline everyday now, a significant reduction since the peak of the ongoing war in May and June when 100-200 troops were killed on a daily basis. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the President said that at the height of […]
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Washington: Health officials in the US have confirmed a case of polio, the first in nearly a decade in the country, in an unvaccinated man. The last known case was in 2013. Results of lab tests have confirmed revertant polio Sabin type 2 virus in the 20-year-old man, a resident of Rockland County, according to a […]
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Colombo: Dinesh Gunawardena was sworn in as the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka by President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Friday. Gunawardena, parliamentarian of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party, took his oath in the capital Colombo in the presence of other senior legislators, Xinhua news agency reported. Wickremesinghe was elected as the new President of the […]
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Geneva: The World Health Organization (WHO) has reconvened the Monkeypox Emergency Committee to assess the public health implications of the evolving multi-country outbreak. This comes as global cases passed 14,000, with six countries reporting their first cases last week. The committee first met last month but decided against declaring it a public health emergency of […]
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New York: Two Indian brothers and their Indian-American friend have been charged in the US in the first-ever cryptocurrency insider trading scheme in which they made illicit profits totalling over a million dollars. Ishan Wahi, 32, and his brother Nikhil Wahi, 26, are citizens of India and were residing in Seattle while Sameer Ramani, 33, […]
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Sydney: Researchers from Australian universities developed a spray that can stop the spread of bacteria and viruses, including the Covid-19 virus. Published in the journal Advanced Science, the long-lasting spray coats common surfaces and repels viruses and bacteria through an air-filled barrier as well as killing pathogens, Xinhua news agency reported. One of its inventors, biomedical […]
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New York: US President Joe Biden has tested positive for the coronavirus and is experiencing “very mild symptoms”, the White House said on Thursday. Biden, 79, who is fully vaccinated and twice boosted, has begun taking the Covid-19 pill Paxlovid. In line with CDC guidelines, he will isolate at the White House and will continue […]
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Colombo: Ranil Wickremesinghe was sworn in as the eighth President of Sri Lanka at the Parliament premises on Thursday. He was sworn in before Chief Justice Jayantha Jayasuriya, Daily Mirror reported. In the election held in Parliament on Wednesday, 73-year-old Wickremesinghe secured 134 votes from parliamentarians. Out of 225 parliamentarians, 223 voted in the ballot of […]
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Ottawa: The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) confirmed a total of 604 cases of monkeypox in the country as of Wednesday. The cases included 320 from Quebec, 230 from Ontario, 40 from British Columbia, 12 from Alberta and two from Saskatchewan, Xinhua news agency reported. The Canadian federal government said on Wednesday that it […]
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Paris: Two massive wildfires raging in southwestern France over the past week have evacuated at least 36,000 people from home and burned 20,600 hectares of land, French media reported. During a visit to the fire zones in Gironde, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a major national project to replant trees and regrow the damaged forests, […]
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Colombo: India on Wednesday categorically denied media reports that New Delhi is making efforts at the political level to influence leaders in Sri Lanka regarding elections in the Parliament for the post of the Sri Lankan President. “We have seen baseless and purely speculative media reports about efforts at the political level from India to […]
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Hyderabad: The Police in southeastern China caught a burglar by using DNA testing technology. The DNA test was done on two blood stains of mosquitoes, which were killed by the burglar. According to the South China Morning Post, On June 11, in Fuzhou, Fujian province, southeastern China, a thief broke into a residential compound late […]
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London: The record-breaking heat in the UK has led to cooling-related outages at the Google Cloud and Oracle servers, leaving the customers flummoxed as they never experience such outages. Google Cloud said in an update that there was a cooling-related failure in one of its buildings in the UK-based data centres, which has now been […]
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Colombo: Acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe was on Wednesday elected as Sri Lanka’s new President by Parliament, following a high-voltage political drama which saw his predecessor Gotabaya Rajapaksa fleeing the country and resigning after a popular uprising against his government for mismanaging the economy. The 73-year-old six-time prime minister secured 134 votes in the 225-member House […]
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Washington: The US House of Representatives on Tuesday (local time) passed a bill to protect marriage equality amid fears that the Supreme Court could roll back recognition of same-sex marriage, The Hill reported. The legislation, titled the Respect for Marriage Act, passed in a 267-157 vote, with 47 Republicans joining all Democrats in supporting the […]
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London: Britain shattered its record for highest temperature ever registered Tuesday amid a heat wave that has seared swaths of Europe, as the U.K.’s national weather forecaster said such highs are now a fact of life in a country ill-prepared for such extremes. The typically temperate nation was just the latest to be walloped by […]