Sherman arrived in the city of Tianjin on Sunday, aiming to seek "guardrails" as ties between the world's top two economies continue to deteriorate on a range of issues from cybersecurity to human rights.

New South Wales, which has had more than 5 million people in Sydney city under lockdown for a month, reported 145 new cases of the virus, from 141 a day earlier, as it struggles to contain an outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents to the July 23-25 Nikkei business daily survey said that the country's rollout of coronavirus vaccinations was not going well.

Javid, who replaced Matt Hancock as health minister last month after his predecessor stepped down for breaking COVID rules by kissing an aide in his office, had been criticised for using the word "cower" when tens of thousands in Britain have died from the virus and many are trying to keep safe.

While in the South Pacific territory, he plans to discuss its strategic role, the legacy of nuclear tests and the existential risk of rising seas posed by global warming.

The typhoon is set to hit the east coast province of Zhejiang even as central China is still reeling from record flooding that killed at least 58, cut off power and forced the relocation of more than 1 million people.

Paris will host the next edition of the summer Games in 2024, and Macron's meetings in Tokyo will include talks with International Olympic Committee chief Thomas Bach.

It was the first time the emperor met with the first lady, who is leading the US delegation to the ceremony in the capital. The event is to be held at the National Stadium without spectators from the general public as Tokyo is under a COVID-19 state of emergency.

Australia is battling a supply shortfall of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine as its COVID-19 inoculation strategy had focussed on AstraZeneca which was subsequently deemed unsafe for those under 60 years by the country's drug regulator.

Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly said on Wednesday that his ministry had issued an update on restrictions for foreigners wishing to travel to Indonesia. The update includes banning foreign workers of national strategic projects until the COVID-19 situation has changed.

Tibet has alternated over the centuries between independence and control by China, which says it "peacefully liberated" the rugged plateau in 1951 and brought infrastructure and education to the previously underdeveloped region.

Admitting a month-long lockdown had so far failed to stop a Delta-variant outbreak, the state of New South Wales pleaded for Canberra to urgently send more vaccines and resources.

"The defence establishment appointed a review commission made up of a number of groups," lawmaker Ram Ben Barak told Army Radio.

Scott Morrison is under fierce public pressure to improve a vaccination rate currently languishing around 11 percent, among the lowest rate of any rich nation.  

The World Health Organization on Friday said a second stage of the international probe should include audits of Chinese labs, amid increasing pressure from the United States for an investigation of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and ahead of a weekend visit to China by US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.

"We certainly have to look anew at this whole subject of licenses granted by DECA," Ram Ben-Barak, head of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, told Israel's Army Radio, referring to the government-run Defence Export Controls Agency.

* Vietnam has produced the first test batch of Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19, Russia's RDIF sovereign wealth fund and Vietnamese pharmaceutical firm Vabiotech said, as the Southeast Asian country battles its worst outbreak so far.

Sherman's two-day trip to Tianjin, which comes as part of her ongoing Asia tour, may lay the groundwork for a potential face-to-face summit between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping amid increasing rivalry between the two countries. If realized, it would be the first in-person meeting of the two leaders since Biden took office in January.

"Look, it's real simple. We have a pandemic for those who haven't gotten a vaccination. It's that basic, that simple," Biden said at a town-hall event in Ohio that was broadcast on CNN.

The comments came as Reporters Without Borders (RSF) urged Israel to suspend exports of the spying technology after heads of state -- including Macron -- and scores of journalists and rights activists featured on a list of alleged targets selected for potential surveillance.

Private Israeli firm NSO Group has denied media reports its Pegasus software is linked to the mass surveillance of journalists and rights defenders, and insisted that all sales of its technology are approved by Israel's defence ministry.

The blood serum survey of about 29,000 people in June and July showed 67.6 percent of those tested had antibodies.

"We found these numbers but we obviously couldn't do a technical analysis of Emmanuel Macron's phone" to determine if it had been infected with the malware, the head of Forbidden Stories, Laurent Richard, told LCI television.

The experts advising the Tokyo metropolitan government said the seven-day moving average of new infections in the capital could reach 2,600 per day as of Aug. 3 if the virus continues to spread at the current pace, a worse scenario than in the third wave that swept across Tokyo in the winter. The Olympics will be held between Friday and Aug. 8.

Japan's women's softball team got the Tokyo 2020 Olympics off to a winning start for the hosts on Wednesday, a boost for the pandemic-postponed Games that the World Health Organization sees as "a celebration of hope" even as COVID-19 cases surge.

The Justice Department unsealed an indictment in New York federal court accusing three suspects, including wealthy 74-year-old businessman Barrack, of failing to register as agents of the United Arab Emirates as they attempted to influence Trump on foreign policy during the presidential campaign and beyond.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato told a press conference about 70 Cabinet-level officials are also set to visit Japan, while adding that the number of foreign VIPs attending the ceremony at the National Stadium on Friday night could remain in flux until the last minute.

At least twelve died and five others were injured in the subway flood, according to city authorities, as water coursed below ground on Tuesday evening in Zhengzhou in central China's Henan province.

Maharashtra, home to the financial capital of Mumbai, has reported 130,753 of the country's 418,480 coronavirus deaths, and added 3,509 earlier deaths to its tally, the federal health ministry said on Wednesday.

The Center for Global Development study's estimate is the highest yet for the carnage in the South Asian nation of 1.3 billion people, which is emerging from a devastating surge partly fuelled by the Delta variant in April and May.