International

The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded for discoveries about black holes, with one half going to Roger Penrose and the other half jointly to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez. Göran K. Hansson, secretary for the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said at Tuesday’s ceremony in Stockholm that this year’s prize was about “the darkest secrets of universe.” ...

Still Covid-19 infectious, US President Donald Trump staged a dramatic return to the White House on Monday night after leaving the military hospital, reports AP. He immediately ignited a new controversy by declaring that despite his illness the nation should not fear the virus that has killed more than 210,000 Americans. Besides, the president entered the White House without a ...

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has tested positive for Covid-19, she tweeted in a statement Monday morning. McEnany emphasized that she had previously tested negatively “consistently” and is experiencing no symptoms, CNN reported. McEnany is the latest White House staffer to test positive for the virus, adding to questions about how widespread the West Wing outbreak will become. McEnany’s ...

Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said Monday he will self-quarantine after a Cabinet minister he was in contact with tested positive for the coronavirus, as cases in the country hit a record high. Muhyiddin had chaired an Oct. 3 meeting attended by Religious Affairs Minister Zulkifli Mohamad Al-Bakri, who confirmed Monday he has been hospitalised for treatment. The health ministry ...

Americans Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice, and British scientist Michael Houghton were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology on Monday for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus. Announcing the prize in Stockholm on Monday, the Nobel Committee noted that the trio’s work helped explain a major source of blood-borne hepatitis that couldn’t be explained by ...

US President Donald Trump, who is in hospital with COVID-19, was driven outside the facility on Sunday so he could wave to a group of supporters on the street in a move critics derided as a dangerous political stunt. Video showed Trump, wearing a black mask, waving from the back seat of a black four-wheel drive with two men – ...

Saudi Arabia will reopen the Muslim holy places for the year-round umrah pilgrimage on Sunday with extensive health precautions, seven months after coronavirus disease (Covid-19) prompted its suspension. The umrah usually attracts millions of Muslims from across the world each year. It will be revived in three stages, with the initial phase seeing just 6,000 citizens and residents already within ...

Saudi Arabia will open Masjid al-Haram, i.e. Ka’ba the holy sites of Mecca and Masjid an-Nawabi of Medina from Sunday (September 4th) to perform the holy Umrah. These places had been closed for seven months due to the pandemic coronavirus outbreak. Millions of Muslims around the world perform Umrah every year. But it was shut down because of the coronavirus ...

Donald Trump has been transported to a military hospital on the advice of his doctors out of an “abundance of caution” after testing positive for COVID-19, the White House said. The US president will work from Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Bethesda, Maryland “for the next few days,” the White House said. Trump is “fatigued but in good spirits”, ...

A Russian news editor has died after setting herself on fire in front of an interior ministry office in the city of Nizhniy Novgorod. Irina Slavina earlier wrote on Facebook: “I ask you to blame the Russian Federation for my death.” Authorities confirmed her body had been found with severe burns. Slavina said on Thursday police had searched her flat ...