Washington: US President Joe Biden has nominated a prominent Indian-American physician and a surgeon to serve in key roles in his administration.

A bus carrying Chinese and Pakistani construction workers on a slippery mountainous road in northwest Pakistan fell into a ravine Wednesday, killing at least 13 people, including nine Chinese nationals, officials said.

Saudi Arabia says an explosion has struck an unused ammunition dump in an area southeast of the kingdom's capital, Riyadh. Saudi state television made the announcement Wednesday after social media video circulated of a plume of smoke near Kharj.

The increased transmissibility associated with the COVID-19's Delta variant is likely to substantially increase cases and put a greater pressure on healthcare systems, particularly in the contexts of low vaccine coverage, the WHO has warned.

 The United States on Tuesday said that it is ready to ship its COVID-19 vaccines expeditiously when it has the green light from the Indian government which has told the Americans that it needs further time to review legal provisions related to accepting vaccine donations.

Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba on Tuesday became the country's Prime Minister for the fifth time, media reports said.

The Delta variant is ripping around the world at a scorching pace, driving a new spike in cases and deaths, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said, warning that the variant, now in over 104 countries, is expected to soon be the dominant COVID-19 strain circulating worldwide.

A fire swept through a coronavirus ward in southern Iraq, killing at least 50 people and injuring dozens more, Iraqi medical officials said late Monday.