Asked when US President Joe Biden plans to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in person for the first time since the former was sworn in on Jan. 20, Campbell, speaking at an online think tank event, said, "My expectation will be that we'll have some sort of engagement before too long."

New South Wales (NSW) reported 38 new local cases, up from 27 a day earlier, as its capital Sydney prepares for a third week of a lockdown.

Thirty-eight new local cases were reported in NSW, compared with 27 a day earlier. Of Thursday's cases, 26 were either in isolation throughout or for part of their infectious period, while 11 spent time in the community while they were infectious.

He said the police and army had the security situation under control but gunshots could be heard throughout the capital after the attack, which occurred amid a rising wave of politically linked violence in the impoverished Caribbean nation.

EU chief Charles Michel on Wednesday condemned the shooting of Dutch crime reporter Peter R. de Vries, who was fighting for his life after the attack in central Amsterdam. 

But while other developed nations have pressed ahead with vaccinating a large portion of their population, fewer than 10 percent of Australians have been fully vaccinated so far and Sydney is fighting its worst outbreak of the year.

Sydney, home to a fifth of Australia's 25 million people, was plunged into lockdown on June 26 as a Delta variant outbreak persuaded officials to tighten restrictions in a country that has been slow to vaccinate. Strict stay-at-home orders were due to end on Friday, but now remain in place until July 16.

Kim said social distancing measures will be extended for the next few days and officials will consider whether to toughen existing rules as the country battles a fourth wave of the pandemic, fuelled by the highly contagious Delta variant.

Russian top diplomat Sergey Lavrov met Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi for a bilateral meeting in Jakarta, where they discussed cooperation in the health, economic, education and security sectors, as well as touching on broader issues such as the Myanmar coup and contestations in the Indo-Pacific region.

A statement from Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's office said the deal, the first of its kind for Israel, would allow more effective use of the vaccine stocks of both countries.

The Moderna vaccine shipment -- part of a first 80 million doses that President Joe Biden has pledged to allocate worldwide -- should arrive in Vietnam this weekend, a White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

The World Bank has called Lebanon's crisis one of the worst depressions of modern history. The currency has lost more than 90% of its value and more than half of the population has been propelled into poverty.

The An-26 was flying from Kamchatka's main city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to the coastal town of Palana when it disappeared at 2:40 pm (0240 GMT), Valentina Glazova, a spokeswoman for the local transport prosecutor's office, told AFP. 

Xi's remarks during an online summit on Monday with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, carried by the official Xinhua News Agency, came after Biden visited European nations and agreed to increase cooperation with them.

Daily temperatures averaged 10.6 Celsius (51.1 Fahrenheit) -- 1.9C above average despite a cold snap late in the month, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) said.

"Under your leadership and in coalition with civil society leaders you are preserving those ideals of freedom democracy and sovereignty," Biden wrote in a letter addressed to Guaido and sent through the Office of Venezuelan Affairs in neighboring Colombia, an official in that office told AFP.

The July 2 blaze, caught on video apparently from a nearby helicopter, showed bright orange flames jumping out of the water as the fire raged a short distance from the oil platform. Pemex has previously said it took more than five hours to fully extinguish the fire.

A vaccine shortage has led to panicked efforts by people looking to get jabbed, said Brad Hazzard, health minister for the country's most populous state New South Wales.

It is the second time in four months that Ruili, home to more than 210,000 people, has been locked down after the discovery of cases imported from Myanmar.

The formal settlement was reached between the Suez Canal Authority and Japanese ship-leasing company Shoei Kisen Kaisha Ltd. after the seizure of the 220,000-ton Ever Given.

Johnson had initially aimed for a full reopening on June 21 but was forced to push back the date because of a surge in the highly contagious Delta variant. That variant now accounts for nearly all new  Covid cases in Britain.

With more than five million Sydney residents under strict stay-at-home orders, total infections in the latest outbreak have topped 300. NSW reported 35 locally acquired cases on Monday, matching the biggest daily rise in infections so far this year, recorded two days ago.

Speaking before a festive crowd of 1,000 guests on the White House South Lawn, Biden drew a comparison between the declaration of independence from the British Empire in 1776 and today's rapid recovery from the coronavirus.

Speaking in a forum on global security issues discussed under China's initiative, held at Tsinghua University in Beijing, Wang warned the strategy adopted by the United States, Japan and other countries is forming a siege against Beijing.

Two people have been confirmed dead after the disaster at the hot-spring resort of Atami in central Japan, with 10 others rescued and around 20 still missing, a local government official said.

Violence has been raging throughout Afghanistan in the weeks since President Joe Biden announced troops would withdraw unconditionally by Sept. 11.

Sydney, the New South Wales state capital and home to a fifth of Australia's 25 million population, has been hit hardest in a flurry of outbreaks of the highly contagious Delta variant around the country over the past two weeks.

The further restrictions on passenger arrivals from overseas come as Australia battles with simultaneous outbreaks of the variant in Sydney and two other major cities, placing nearly half of the country's population under strict lockdowns.

"On behalf of the city, I issue an apology for the Amsterdam city council's active involvement in the commercial system of colonial slavery and global trade of people reduced to slavery," Mayor Femke Halsema said.