Court orders Samoa parliament to sit to end vote impasse

 APIA (Samoa), June 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Samoa’s Supreme Court ordered parliament to sit within seven days, effectively setting a deadline to end a power struggle that has gripped the Pacific island nation for months.   In the latest legal twist arising from Samoa’s disputed April 9 general election, the court…

Covid-19: Guam launches vacation-and-vax tourism drive

  HAGATNA (Guam), June 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The US Pacific territory of Guam will offer visitors a Covid-19 vaccination with their tropical holiday, in a bid to restart its struggling tourism industry. Dubbed ‘Air V&V’ — vacation and vaccination — the programme is primarily aimed at US expatriates in the…

Russia, China extend friendship treaty, hail ties

  MOSCOW, June 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The leaders of China and Russia on Monday announced the extension of a 20-year-old friendship treaty, hailing increasingly close ties and the “stabilising role” of their relationship.    The Kremlin published a joint statement from Russia and China to mark two decades since the treaty…

UN Security Council confronts growing threat of cyber attacks

 UNITED NATIONS, June 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The UN Security Council on Tuesday will hold its first formal public meeting on cybersecurity, addressing the growing threat of hacks to countries’ key infrastructure, an issue Joe Biden recently raised with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. At their summit earlier this month in…

World’s second-largest hydropower dam goes online in China

BEIJING, June 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — China began operating the world’s second-largest hydropower station on Monday in what officials hailed as a milestone towards Beijing’s carbon neutrality goals, despite warnings of environmental damage. The 289-metre high Baihetan Hydropower Station in southwest China, second in the world only to the country’s Three…

Covid-19: India’s holy Ganges river gives up its coronavirus dead

 ALLAHABAD (India), June 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Partly hidden between long reeds of grass, bodies shrouded in saffron cloth float silently down the holy Ganges river, a reminder of how India’s ferocious coronavirus wave overwhelmed hospitals and crematoriums. Families in India’s north and east gave up the bodies of their loved…

Nepal introduces digital visa system

  KATHMANDU, June 29 (NNN-XINHUA) — Nepal on Monday launched a digital visa system to replace its 45-year-old hand-written visa regime.    Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Bishnu Prasad Paudel inaugurated the new system under which visas are produced digitally from the integrated information system of the Department of…

No deal on UN peacekeeping budget, risk of mission freeze: diplomats

  UNITED NATIONS, June 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The 193 member states of the United Nations have thus far failed to agree on a peacekeeping budget for the year beginning July 1, which could lead to “a freeze on all missions” should a deal not soon materialize, diplomats said.    The…

Covid-19: Fourth major Australian city ordered into lockdown

  BRISBANE (Australia), June 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Brisbane on Tuesday became the fourth major Australian city ordered into lockdown, as officials told residents to stay at home for three days over concerns about the rapid spread of Covid-19.    About 10 million Australians will be in lockdown once the latest…

Pres Biden assures Israeli president the United States will not permit Iran to develop nuclear weapons

 WASHINGTON, June 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — President Joe Biden reassured Israel’s president, ahead of a visit by new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, that the United States will not permit Iran to develop nuclear weapons.    “Iran will never get a nuclear weapon on my watch,” Biden told President Reuven Rivlin in…
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