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UNESCO on Tuesday added Arabic calligraphy, a key tradition in the Arab and Islamic worlds, to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list. A total of 16 Muslim-majority countries, led by Saudi Arabia, presented the nomination to the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation, which announced the listing on Twitter. “Arabic calligraphy …

A yet-to-be-identified disease has killed at least 89 people in Fangak in the South Sudan’s state of Jonglei, a World Health Organization (WHO) official told the BBC. The mysterious deaths happened in an area recently hit by flooding. Local health officials have ruled out cholera as the cause, the British …

Pfizer said Tuesday that its experimental COVID-19 pill appears effective against the omicron variant. The company also said full results of its 2,250-person study confirmed the pill’s promising early results against the virus: The drug reduced combined hospitalizations and deaths by about 89 percent among high-risk adults when taken shortly …

Legendary Mexican singer Vicente Fernandez, an emblematic figure of ranchera music, died on Sunday at the age of 81, according to a message posted on his official Instagram account. Fernandez died at 6:15 a.m. local time, the post said. He had been suffering medical complications after a fall at his …

The United States on Sunday was approaching 800,000 coronavirus-related deaths, as the nation braces for a potential surge in infections due to more time spent indoors with colder weather and the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the virus. The milestone means the U.S. death toll from this one virus now …

La Liga has won the latest battle after 37 of the league’s 42 clubs approved a €2bn partnership with the private equity fund CVC Capital Partners, but the war at the heart of Spanish football has deepened with Real Madrid, Barcelona and Athletic Club set to take legal action in …

Omicron coronavirus cases have surged by as much as 400% in some parts of South Africa – although the country’s health ministry has said there is mounting evidence the variant causes milder infection. South Africa reported more than 22,000 new infections on Thursday, a record during the fourth wave but …

Brazil’s health ministry said its website was hit on Friday by a hacker attack that took several systems down, including one with information about the national immunization program and a second one used to issue digital vaccination certificates. “The health ministry reports that in the early hours of Friday it …

China’s drug authority has granted emergency approval for the country’s first specialized treatment against COVID-19, found in clinical trials to significantly reduce hospitalizations and deaths among high-risk patients. The move comes as regulators around the world give the green light to treatments – particularly for high-risk groups – amid worries …

Saudi Arabia has disqualified some 40 camels from its lucrative annual beauty contest for the animals on the grounds that they received Botox injections, facelifts, and other cosmetic touch-ups to become more attractive. Describing it as the biggest-ever crackdown on such “tampering and deception,” the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported …

A brand-new space telescope will soon reveal a hidden vision of the cosmos, potentially transforming our understanding of black holes, supernovas and even the nature of the universe itself. No, not that one. Much attention is being devoted this month to the James Webb Space Telescope, from NASA and the …

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended on Thursday that people who are immunocompromised or received an inactivated COVID-19 vaccine should receive a booster dose to protect against waning immunity. Many countries have been rolling out booster shots, targeting the elderly and people with underlying health issues, but worries about the …

A small clay tablet dating back 3,500 years and bearing a portion of the Epic of Gilgamesh that was looted from an Iraqi museum 30 years ago and recently recovered from the United States formally returned to Iraq on Tuesday. The $1.7 million cuneiform tablet, known as the Gilgamesh Dream …

EU health authorities have recommended a “mix-and-match” approach to Covid-19 vaccination, saying that using different jabs during the initial and booster inoculation phases produces “good levels of antibodies.” In a joint statement, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said that “the …

An outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) is causing cascading problems across the internet, with numerous websites displaying a “bad gateway” error. Downdetector shows problems started shortly after 8 am Pacific time. There have been over 20,000 outage reports for the main Amazon site and 11,000 for AWS. The Downdetector …

America’s diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Games, though practically a virtually pointless protest, will only inspire China to make the 2022 Winter Olympics an even bigger success. To the surprise of very few people, the United States on Monday evening announced a “diplomatic boycott” of the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympics …

As the 2021 Arab Cup in Qatar spotlights football in the Arab World, Iraqis are taking the opportunity to pressure FIFA into lifting a decades-long ban on international football in their stadiums. Iraqi football fans are campaigning for football’s governing body FIFA to lift its decades-long ban on Iraqi stadiums, …

India and Russia signed 28 investment pacts on Monday, including deals on steel, shipbuilding, coal, and energy, India’s Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. India has also begun to receive S-400 missiles from Russia this month, Shringla said, adding that supplies would continue.

The fossils obtained from across the globe have introduced us to countless types of creatures that once lived on the planet—from the giant birds of Antarctica to the largest dinosaurs of the Americas. Whenever paleontologists dig out such remarkable well-preserved fossils of these ancient creatures, they open new possibilities for …

South Africans took to their beaches on Sunday to protest against plans by Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) to do seismic oil exploration they say will threaten marine wildlife such as whales, dolphins, seals, and penguins on a pristine coastal stretch. A South African court on Friday struck down an application …