Nine children were among at least 19 people killed and dozens injured when a fire tore through a high-rise apartment building in New York on Sunday in one of America's worst residential fires in recent memory. ....

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has directed his opposition PML-N party not to let incumbent premier Imran Khan off the hook on the basis of the Election Commissions damning report on the ruling PTIs foreign funding case, aggressively agitate the matter and not let both Houses of Parliament run smoothly till "justice" is done, Dawn reported. ....

Russian President Vladimir Putin held several phone calls on Thursday and Friday with leaders of the member states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), discussing the situation in Kazakhstan, the Kremlin has said. ....

The efficacy of boosters against Covid-19 will likely decline over time, and people may need a fourth shot to increase their protection, Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel has said. ....

Former US President Donald Trump's new social media app, Truth Social, will launch on the iOS platform on February 21, according to a listing on the App Store. ....

Women and girls without a close male relative accompanying them were banned from entering coffee shops in Afghanistan's Herat province, Raha Press reported. ....

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said he has not decided about the extension of Chief of the Army Staff Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa's tenure, Dawn news reported. ....

Security forces in Kazakhstan say they have killed dozens of anti-government rioters in an operation to restore order in the main city, Almaty. ....

With the US shattering a single-day record with over 1 million Covid-19 cases this week, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has estimated that the Omicron variant accounted for 95 per cent of new infections last week. ....

At least 30 people were injured after a 5.5-magnitude earthquake jolted Ninglang County in China's Yunnan province two days, local authorities said on Tuesday. ....