China's President Xi Jinping will attend United States (US) President Joe Biden's virtual climate summit this week, Beijing said Wednesday, as the world's top polluting nations seek rare common ground despite wider political tensions. Biden has invited 40 world leaders including Xi and Russia's Vladimir Putin to the meet starting on Earth Day, meant to mark Washington's return to the front lines of the fight against climate change after former president Donald Trump disengaged from the process. The virtual summit will be the first meeting between the two leaders since Biden became president

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said he is willing to deploy military ships to the South China Sea to assert the country's claim over oil deposits in a contested part of the waterway. Duterte, who has embraced China since taking power in 2016, has faced growing domestic criticism for his reluctance to confront Beijing over its activities in Philippine-claimed waters.  Tensions spiked last month after hundreds of Chinese vessels were detected at Whitsun Reef in the Spratly Islands, which are contested by several countries, including the Philippines and China. Beijing has refused

With India’s daily tally of COVID-19 infections surging by records, public health experts worry that a new – possibly more virulent – coronavirus variant could be racing through the crowded nation of more than 1.3 billion people. The new variant, which has a so-called double mutation, is thought to be fuelling India’s deadlier new wave of cases that has made it the world’s second worst-hit country, surpassing Brazil again, and has already begun to overwhelm its hospitals and crematoriums. India has reported more than 14.5 million COVID cases so far and more than 175,600 fatalities. “This is