(BBC News) Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been sworn in as the new president of Brazil – the third time he has held the country's highest office.
The veteran left-wing politician, known widely as Lula, led the country between 2003 and 2010, and defeated Jair Bolsonaro in October's poll.
In his first speech, Lula vowed to rebuild a country in "terrible ruins."
He decried the policies of his predecessor, who went to the U.S. on Friday...
(AFP) Travellers from China now face restrictions when entering more than a dozen countries as concern grows over its surge in COVID-19 cases, with Australia the latest to require a negative test before arrival.
Last month, Beijing abruptly began dismantling its "zero-COVID" containment policy of lockdowns and mass testing, three years after the coronavirus first emerged in the city of Wuhan.
As COVID puts pressure on the Chinese health-care system, officials have insisted that the wave...
(BBC News) A criminology graduate has been arrested in the mysterious killings of four university students in the state of Idaho last month, police say.
Bryan Christopher Kohberger, 28, was detained in Pennsylvania, over 4,000 km from the crime scene.
The University of Idaho students were found stabbed to death in their beds in a rental home near the campus on Nov. 13.
Police say the suspect lived in a town near where the murders occurred.
Xana Kernodle, Ethan...
(AFP) The U.S. Justice Department sued leading drug distributor AmerisourceBergen today (Thursday), alleging that despite the country's addiction crisis the company has failed to report suspicious pharmacy orders for addictive opioids as required.
The Justice Department said that AmerisourceBergen, which has already agreed to pay $6.1 billion to states to settle claims it helped stoke the opioid crisis, continued to violate its reporting obligation from 2014 to the present, even participating in hiding suspicious orders.
For example,...
(BBC News) There will be a chance to see all the planets in the solar system in the night sky today (Thursday).
Five should be visible with the naked eye, while the two farthest away, Uranus and Neptune, will be better viewed with binoculars.
The best time to see the spectacle is shortly after sunset.
Those farther south, including southern Europe or closer to the equator, are more likely to be able to see all the planets...
(BBC News) Russian sausage tycoon Pavel Antov has been found dead at an Indian hotel, two days after a friend died during the same trip.
They were visiting the eastern state of Odisha and the millionaire, who was also a local politician, had just celebrated his birthday at the hotel.
Antov was a well known figure in the city of Vladimir, east of Moscow.
Last summer he denied criticizing Russia's war in Ukraine after a message appeared...
(University of Tsukuba) Commuting to work has long been part of the daily routine worldwide. This routine was interrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic when many employees were suddenly asked to work from home. Now, researchers from Japan have completed an investigation into the effects of this change in daily routines.
In a study published in Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, researchers from the University of Tsukuba revealed that workstyle changes in Japan during the pandemic affected employees' daily physical...
(New York Times) China sent a record number of military aircraft to menace self-ruled Taiwan in a large show of force to the Biden administration, signaling that Beijing wants to maintain pressure on Taiwan even as some tensions between the superpowers are easing.
The swarm of Chinese fighter jets, maritime patrol planes and drones that buzzed the airspace near Taiwan in the 24-hour period leading to Monday morning demonstrated Beijing’s appetite for confrontation with the...
(BBC News) China has announced that its requirement for travellers arriving in the country to go into quarantine will end on Jan. 8.
The measure is the latest in a series of restrictions to be lifted as China abandons its zero-COVID policy. China is seeing an explosion in COVID-related infections, and medical workers have said they are struggling to cope.
In his first comments on the changes, President Xi Jinping urged officials to do what was "feasible"...
(AFP) Half a million people in a single Chinese city are being infected with COVID-19 every day, a senior health official has said, in a rare and quickly censored acknowledgement that the country's wave of infections is not being reflected in official statistics.
China this month has rapidly dismantled key pillars of its zero-COVID strategy, doing away with snap lockdowns, lengthy quarantines, and travel curbs in a jarring reversal of its hallmark containment strategy.
Cities across...
