US President Joe Biden has appointed Kiran Ahuja, a civil rights lawyer and an advocate for Asians, to head the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). ....

It is "extremely unlikely" that SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19, escaped from a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan, a member of a World Health Organization (WHO) expert team sent to China on a Covid-19 origin-tracing mission said. ....

The US has reached the grim milestone of half a million coronavirus deaths, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. ....

Another 10,641 people in Britain have tested positive for Covid-19, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 4,126,150, according to official figures released on Monday. ....

At least three rockets have been fired at the US Embassy in the heavily fortified Green Zone in Iraq's capital Baghdad, the media reported citing security sources. ....

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday unveiled his four-stage roadmap that will "cautiously but irreversibly" ease restrictions in England by June end, even though he stressed that the threat of Covid-19 is still "substantial". ....

Seven persons were killed after a military plane crashed in Abuja, Nigeria's capital on Sunday, an official said. ....

Another 9,834 people in Britain have tested positive for Covid-19, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 4,115,509, according to official figures released on Sunday. ....

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has become one of the first Australians to receive a coronavirus vaccine. ....

Russia has confirmed the first case of human infection with the avian influenza A(H5N8) virus in the world, a Russian sanitary official announced on Saturday. ....