Syrian President Bashar Assad was re-elected in a landslide, officials said Thursday, ushering in a fourth seven-year term in the war-torn country following an election described as illegitimate and a sham by the West and his opposition.

The B.1.617 COVID-19 variant, first detected in India, has now been found in 53 countries, according to the WHO, which noted that India recorded a 23 per cent decrease in the number of new cases in the last seven days but they were still the highest in the world.

New Delhi: Fugitive diamantaire Mehul Choksi, who had recently fled from Antigua and Barbuda, was captured in neighbouring Dominica after an Interpol Yellow Notice was issued against him, the local media reported on Wednesday.

Leesburg (US): A firefighting helicopter with four people on board crashed Tuesday near an airport in central Florida, killing at least one person, officials said.

Bamako (Mali): Mali's former coup leader Assimi Goita took control of the country again Tuesday after firing the president and prime minister of the transitional government following their announcement of a cabinet reshuffle without his permission.

London: Anti-Muslim sentiment remains a problem within the UK's ruling Conservative Party, an independent inquiry concluded on Tuesday around two years after it was set up by Prime Minister Boris Johnson into whether the party he leads has procedures in place to tackle discrimination, including allegations of Islamophobia.

Beijing/Washington: Three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology sought hospital care in November 2019, weeks before Beijing disclosed the COVID-19 pandemic, a US media report said, citing a previously undisclosed American intelligence document that could add weight to growing calls for a full scale probe of whether the coronavirus may have escaped from China's top bio lab.

All the 274 personnel who were on board barge P305 that sank and tugboat Varaprada that went adrift during Cyclone Tauktae fury have been accounted for with the recovery of 16 bodies along Maharashtra and Gujarat coasts, the Navy said on Monday.