WORLD

China on Thursday renamed 15 places — including residential areas, mountains, rivers and a mountain pass — situated in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, which it claims as its own territory called ‘South Tibet’.

The move comes two days before Beijing’s new border law, initially passed earlier this year and titled the ‘Land Border Law of the People’s Republic of China’, is to come into effect on 1 January 2022. 

A "tsunami" of Omicron and Delta Covid-19 cases will pile pressure on health systems already being stretched to their limits, the World Health Organization warned on Wednesday.

The WHO said the Delta and Omicron variants of concern were "twin threats" that were driving new case numbers to record highs, leading to spikes in hospitalisations and deaths.

The WHO said new global cases had risen by 11 percent last week, while the United States and France both registered record daily case numbers on Wednesday.

Around 11,500 flights have been cancelled worldwide since Friday as Omicron variant forced several countries to impose travel restrictions amid concerns over virus spread.

According to Flight tracker FlightAware, about 3,000 flights have been cancelled on Monday and 1,725 cancelled on Tuesday.

A total of 471 flights have been cancelled either into or out of the United States, the website data shows.

US airlines said the cancellations have been due to crew members testing positive for the coronavirus, reported BBC.

According to flight tracker data, the majority of the flights cancelled on Monday are those by Chinese companies. This includes 420 flights cancelled by China Eastern, and over 190 cancellations by Air China.

The hardest-hit US airlines on the other hand are United and JetBlue.

The UK reported 98,515 COVID-19 fresh cases and 143 deaths in the past 24 hours on Monday (local time). The country in the past seven days has recorded 763,295 infections and 742 deaths, according to the official data released by the UK government.

For some days, the UK has been reporting the highest single-day COVID-19 infections across the world following the emergence of the new variant.

The Omicron variant is continuously increasing the transmission among people in the country. In the wake of the rising cases, the National Health Service in the UK has said that all adults are now eligible to book a COVID-19 booster dose.

Top US pandemic advisor Anthony Fauci on Sunday acknowledged a Covid "testing problem" as the Omicron strain overwhelms the nation, and he vowed to make more tests available to Americans next month.

"One of the problems is that that's not going to be totally available to everyone until we get to January, and there are still some issues now of people having trouble getting tested," Fauci told ABC talk show "This Week."

"But we're addressing the testing problem," he added, saying it should be corrected "very soon."