World

WASHINGTON,  (Reuters) – U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat who is key to President Joe Biden’s hopes of passing a $1.75 trillion domestic investment bill, said yesterday he would not support the package, drawing a sharp rebuke from the White House.

MOSCOW,  (Reuters) – The Kremlin is convinced that the World Health Organization (WHO) will recognise Russia’s flagship Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine within a few months, the Interfax news agency cited Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying today.

MADRID, (Reuters) – Spain’s Catholic Church is to open an investigation into alleged sex abuse of hundreds of children by members of the clergy dating back 80 years that the newspaper El Pais has uncovered, the daily said today.

LONDON, (Reuters) – British Brexit minister David Frost resigned yesterday over disillusionment with the direction of Boris Johnson’s government, dealing a major blow to the embattled prime minister as the Omicron variant sweeps the country.

NAIROBI, (Reuters) – Deep in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley, members of the National Youth Service tirelessly swing machetes to clear dense shrubs obscuring railway tracks more than a century old.

TEGUCIGALPA, (Reuters) – The leftist party of Honduras’ president-elect Xiomara Castro is in negotiations with the opposition, party leaders told Reuters, after it failed to win a congressional majority needed to pass Castro’s sweeping agenda.

LONDON, (Reuters) – Britain reported a surge in cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant yesterday which government advisors said could be just the tip of the iceberg, and London’s mayor declared a “major incident” to help the city’s hospitals cope.

SANTIAGO, (Reuters) – Chilean leftist Gabriel Boric has widened his lead in the final polls ahead of the Andean country’s presidential election today, though the polarized race remains tight against ultra-conservative rival Jose Antonio Kast.

(Reuters) – Two years into the coronavirus pandemic, the United States is confronting another dark winter, with the red-hot Omicron variant threatening to worsen an already dangerous surge of cases.

MOSCOW,  (Reuters) – Russia said yesterday it wanted a legally binding guarantee that NATO would give up any military activity in Eastern Europe and Ukraine, part of a wish list of security guarantees it wants to negotiate with the West. 

LONDON,  (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc was marketing a collection of President Xi Jinping’s speeches and writings on its Chinese website about two years ago, when Beijing delivered an edict, according to two people familiar with the incident.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – A federal judge sentenced a U.S. Capitol rioter to more than five years in prison yesterday on charges that he threw a wooden plank and a fire extinguisher at police during the Jan.

(Reuters) – Two years into the coronavirus pandemic, the United States is confronting another dark winter, with the red-hot Omicron variant threatening to worsen an already dangerous surge of cases.

 (Reuters) – Myanmar’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi appeared in court today wearing a white top and a brown wraparound longyi that is the typical uniform for prisoners in the Southeast Asian country, a source with knowledge of the court proceedings said.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Democrats in the U.S. Congress suffered a major setback yesterday in their effort to grant work permits to millions of immigrants who have been living in the United States illegally for a decade or longer.

CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti,  (Reuters) – Haitians yesterday celebrated U.N. cultural agency UNESCO’S declaration that the country’s traditional pumpkin soup known as “soup joumou” is of intangible cultural value to humanity, a rare bright spot for a country battered by tragedy this year.

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention yesterday recommended Americans choose to receive one of two other authorised COVID-19 vaccines over Johnson & Johnson’s shot, due to rare but sometimes fatal cases of blood-clotting.

KINGSTOWN,  (Reuters) – The Caribbean nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines will not be able to manage the growing impact of climate change without the assistance of multilateral lenders, the prime minister said in an interview.

PEDEKIK, Indonesia,  (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – In a rural office on Bengkalis island, off the northeast coast of Sumatra, 30-year-old Mayasari runs a face mask dyed with tree sap through an antique sewing machine.

OTTAWA,  (Reuters) – The Omicron variant of COVID-19 is spreading rapidly in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, and could overwhelm intensive care units early next month without prompt intervention, a panel of experts said yesterday.