The White House clarified on Monday that no US government employees have been laid off “right now.” Stepping back from President Donald Trump’s earlier remarks suggesting that job losses were already underway due to the ongoing federal shutdown, officials, however, cautioned that layoffs could occur if Congress fails to restore government funding soon.

 John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis won the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for research into quantum mechanical tunnelling.

In one of her final recorded interviews, legendary primatologist Jane Goodall humorously suggested sending several world leaders and billionaires on a one-way trip into space, comparing their aggressive traits to those of alpha male chimpanzees.

The Vatican’s top diplomat, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, has strongly criticised Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, describing it as an “ongoing massacre” of a defenceless population. His remarks, published on Monday, mark one of the Catholic Church’s most severe condemnations of Israel’s actions since the war began.

Mary E Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.

France's new prime minister Sebastien Lecornu resigned on Monday, just a day after naming his government and after only two weeks in office.

The toll in the devastating landslides in West Bengal's Darjeeling district rose to 24, as disaster management personnel continued the rescue operation on Monday with several people still missing and thousands of tourists stranded in cut-off hill pockets, officials said.

Rescue efforts were underway on Sunday in the remote Tibetan slopes of Mount Everest where a blizzard has trapped nearly 1,000 people in campsites on the eastern side of the world's tallest mountain.