* There are no survivors after a plane carrying 28 people crashed in the far east of Russia on Tuesday, Russian news agencies cited rescue officials as saying.
* Indonesia has prepared backup medical facilities for a worst-case scenario where daily infections reach 40,000 to 50,000, a senior official said, as the country battles its fastest-spreading outbreak.
* Malaysia's e-commerce transactions income rose 30 percent year-on-year to MYR254.6 billion (US$61.34 billion) in the first quarter of 2021, as the new normal of COVID-19 gives huge boost to digital adoption among businesses, official data showed Tuesday.
* India's COVID-19 tally rose to 30,619,932 on Tuesday as 34,703 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours across the country, showed the federal health ministry's latest data.
* Brazil's government extended its emergency cash transfer program to poor families during the pandemic for another three months from August.
* Germany's public health institute said on Monday the United Kingdom, India, Nepal, Portugal and Russia were no longer "areas of variant concern", reducing travel restrictions for people arriving from those countries.
* Coronavirus infections in Spain have risen by 32,607 since Friday, official data showed on Monday, 85% more than the previous weekend's increase as the Delta variant drives a surge among unvaccinated young people.
* The premier of Australia's New South Wales state said she aims to decide within the next 24 hours whether to extend a COVID-19 lockdown in Sydney.
* Israel will deliver about 700,000 expiring doses of Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine to the Republic of Korea this month, and the ROK will give Israel back the same number, already on order from Pfizer, in September and October.
* Struggling to contain an outbreak of the highly-transmissible Delta variant, Fiji reported a record 636 infections and six deaths on Tuesday, with the mortuary at the Pacific island's main hospital filled to capacity.
* Turkey has identified three cases of the new Delta Plus variant in three provinces, its health minister said on Monday, adding that the separate Delta variant had also been identified in about 280 cases across 30 provinces.
* Germany should lift all remaining coronavirus-linked social and economic curbs as soon as everyone has been offered a vaccine, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas was quoted as saying on Tuesday, suggesting that point should be reached next month.
* Urgent actions were needed to increase COVID-19 vaccine supplies for Bangladesh as hospitals reached capacity and oxygen supplies ran short with a rapid surge in COVID-19 cases, a global humanitarian organization said Tuesday.
* Spain registered 32,607 new infections of COVID-19 during the past weekend, taking the total number of confirmed cases to 3,866,475 since the start of the pandemic, according to data released by the Spanish Ministry of Health on Monday.
* Delta variant of COVID-19 now accounts for over 70 percent of the confirmed cases in Ireland, said a senior public health official in Dublin on Monday.
* Chile on Monday said it will lift lockdown restrictions throughout the Santiago Metropolitan Region on Thursday, following the decrease in new cases of COVID-19.
* Japan's economy is set to recover to pre-pandemic levels by the end of this year, helped by solid exports as well as consumer spending supported by progress in vaccinations, the government said in revised estimates.
* Oil prices were heading towards three-year highs on Tuesday, towing petrocurrencies and bond yields with them, after the world's main oil producers failed to agree on production plans.
* Russia's military base in Tajikistan is fully equipped to help secure its border with Afghanistan, and Moscow will take extra measures to protect it if needed, Interfax quoted Russian deputy foreign minister Andrei Rudenko as saying on Tuesday.
* Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said he would discuss with his US counterpart Lloyd Austin on Wednesday a plan for Turkey to operate and guard Kabul's Hamid Karzai airport after the NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, adding there was no final decision yet.
* The world can no longer think only about COVID-19 and ignore the other critical health issues, economic problems and education challenges that have built up during the pandemic, Britain's health minister said.
* More than 20,000 residents have been evacuated after torrential rains led to swollen rivers in southwest China's megacity of Chongqing, local authorities said Tuesday.
* At least 40 villages have been struck by floods triggered by incessant rains since Monday afternoon in Aceh Jaya district, Indonesia's westernmost Aceh province, the local disaster mitigation agency said.
* At least 77 Taliban militants were killed as Afghan Air Force increases airstrikes across the militancy-hit Asian country, conducting multiple raids on militants positions, the country's Ministry of Defense confirmed on Tuesday.
