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  India starts jumbo-sized COVID-19 vaccination programme

  Agence France-Presse . New Delhi | Updated at 09:49am on January 16, 2021

  India begins one of the world’s biggest coronavirus vaccination programmes on Saturday, hoping to end a pandemic that has killed 150,000 people in the country and torpedoed the economy...

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  Taliban kill 12 pro-govt militiamen in Afghanistan

  Agence France-Presse . Herat | Updated at 10:21pm on January 16, 2021

  Two Taliban fighters who had infiltrated a base of pro-government Afghan militiamen killed 12 of them, officials and the insurgent group said Saturday. The night-time attack at a post manned by the militiamen occurred in the...

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  Thai students mark Teachers’ Day with paint-soaked protest

  Agence France-Presse . Bangkok | Updated at 10:19pm on January 16, 2021

  Students piled bamboo canes and stationery in front of Thailand’s Ministry of Education and splashed crimson paint on it to protest corporal punishment, one of several protests that took place across...

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  India starts COVID-19 vaccine drive

  Agence France-Presse . New Delhi | Updated at 09:25pm on January 16, 2021

  India kicked off one of the world’s largest COVID-19 vaccination drives on Saturday as the pandemic spread at a record pace and global COVID-19 deaths...

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  Iran test-fires ballistic missiles

  Agence France-Presse . Tehran | Updated at 09:30pm on January 16, 2021

  Iran’s Revolutionary Guards test-fired ballistic missiles against targets in the Indian Ocean as they wrapped up a two-day exercise, their official website reported Saturday. The...

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  Solidarity failing in global response to coronavirus: Guterres

  Agence France-Presse . United Nations, United States | Updated at 03:12pm on January 16, 2021

  United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres on Friday deplored the ‘heart-wrenching milestone’ of the global death toll from COVID-19 topping two million, and lamented the fact that ‘solidarity is failing’ in the world’s response to the virus...

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  Member of UN peacekeeping mission killed in Mali bomb blast

  Agence France-Presse . Bamako | Updated at 09:59am on January 16, 2021

  The United Nations said one of its peacekeepers died when a convoy travelling through northern Mali hit a makeshift roadside bomb on Friday, the fifth UN troop killed in just three days in the jihadist-hit West African country...

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  Taliban kill 9 Afghan security personnel

  Agence France-Presse . Kunduz | Updated at 12:35am on January 16, 2021

  At least nine Afghan security personnel were killed when Taliban extremists attacked two police checkpoints overnight in restive northern Kunduz province, officials said Friday. The...

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  US troop levels cut to 2,500 each in Afghanistan, Iraq

  Agence France-Presse . Washington | Updated at 12:34am on January 16, 2021

  The US military has cut troop levels in Afghanistan and Iraq to 2,500 each, their lowest levels in the nearly two decades since the wars...

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  US rioters sought to capture, assassinate lawmakers at Capitol

  Agence France-Presse . Washington | Updated at 12:32am on January 16, 2021

  US prosecutors now believe supporters of president Donald Trump planned to ‘capture and assassinate elected officials’ in their siege of the Capitol building last week,...