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Underlining that she had discussed the war in Ukraine with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the “consequences of the horrible crimes committed against civilians”, Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Tuesday she “hoped” that “India will influence Russia” to end the war.

This is one of the most clear expectations enunciated and articulated by any European leader in the last two months since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.

Condemning Russia’s “unlawful and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine”, she said her message to Russian President Vladimir Putin was “very clear” that he has to “stop this war” and “end the killings”.

Just when we thought COVID was almost over and life could get back to normal after two years of pandemic, Microsoft co-founder issued a new warning to the world. Gates has warned that there could still be a variant "even more transmissive and even more fatal" than the Delta and Omicron variants.

"We haven't even seen the worst of it," Gates said in an interview with the Financial Times.

The Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist said that he doesn't want to be a "voice of doom and gloom" but the risk of a more virulent variant emerging is "way above 5 per cent".

PM Narendra Modi will “exchange perspectives” on the “Ukraine issue” and strengthen bilateral partnerships during his three-day, three-nation visit to Europe, newly appointed Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra said on Sunday.

Modi will leave for Germany on Sunday night, and will meet German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin on Monday. He will then head to Denmark, where he will meet Danish PM Mette Frederiksen in Copenhagen —and also participate in the Second India-Nordic Summit with the prime ministers of Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Sweden and Norway on Tuesday.

On the way back on Wednesday, Modi will make a brief stopover in Paris for a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.

New omicron sublineages, discovered by South African scientists this month, are likely able to evade vaccines and natural immunity from prior infections, the head of gene sequencing units that produced a study on the strains said.

The new strains are more likely to be capable of evading the body’s defenses rather than simply being more transmissible. The BA.4 and BA.5 sub-lineages appear to be more infectious than the earlier BA.2 lineage, which itself was more infectious than the original omicron variant, Tulio de Oliveira, the head of the institutes, said.

Russian strikes slammed into Kyiv on Thursday evening as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was visiting, in the first such bombardment of Ukraine's capital since mid-April, the mayor and AFP correspondents said.

There was no immediate information about casualties from the strikes, which hit a western part of the city centre, but a close aide to the UN chief sent a message to journalists confirming they were safe.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said there had been "two hits in the Shevchenkovsky district" in a post on Telegram and said they were clarifying details about casualties.