China on Wednesday enforced a lockdown in Xian, home to 13 million people after the city reported the first cases of a new Omicron subvariant. The lockdown was implemented after Xian reported 18 COVID-19 infections from Saturday to Monday, all of which are of the Omicron BA.5.2 subvariant, according to local disease control officials, reported CNN. BA.5.2 is a sub-lineage of BA.5, which is already dominant in the US and appears to escape antibody responses among both people previously infected with COVID-19 and those who have been fully vaccinated and boosted, according to researchers. It is

Free tickets for the Pope's mass in Edmonton are up for grabs starting this morning. Pope Francis is to speak at Commonwealth Stadium on July 26th. A second block of tickets is to be released on July 11th and a final block on July 18th. Priority seating is being given to former residential school survivors, elders and knowledge keepers. All tickets are free and will be available at papalvisit.ca. Only six tickets can be ordered at a time. Commonwealth Stadium has a capacity of 60,000. The pope will be in the Edmonton area between Sunday, July 24 and Wednesday, July 27. Pope Francis will go to

Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi resigned from the Union Cabinet on Wednesday. This development comes as the Rajya Sabha term of Naqvi will end on Thursday. Further, Union Steel Minister RCP Singh's Rajya Sabha term will also end on Thursday. Recently, several BJP leaders were elected to Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan. However, the party did not give a Rajya Sabha ticket to Naqvi. Pertinent to mention here, RCP Singh, who comes from an ally party in Bihar, JD(U), had sworn in as a minister in the Modi government a year ago on July 7, 20

EDMONTON - The Alberta government says it will extend its electricity rebates until the end of the year as the cost of living continues to rise. Dale Nally, who's the associate minister of natural gas and electricity, says the United Conservative government is doubling the rebate to help reduce the financial burden on Albertans. The government says the electricity rebate program will now offer about $600 million in relief through 2022. It says the program will provide nearly two million homes, farms and small businesses with a monthly $50 bill credit each month from July until December. The go

Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann will get married to Dr Gurpreet Kaur in a private ceremony at his residence in Chandigarh tomorrow. Mann was divorced from his first wife almost six years back. According to sources, Mann (48) will marry Dr Gurpreet Kaur, a physician by profession who hails from Haryana's Kurukshetra. The wedding ceremony will be attended by Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convenor Arvind Kejriwal and his family. However, no minister or other big leaders are invited to the ceremony. Sources said it was Mann's mother's wish that he should get married

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he plans to stay in power despite the resignations of two top Cabinet ministers and a slew of more junior officials. Johnson told lawmakers Wednesday that “the job of a prime minister in difficult circumstances when you’ve been handed a colossal mandate is to keep going.” Johnson’s hold on power has been shaken by the resignations of Treasury chief Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid. They quit Tuesday saying they could no longer support Johnson because of his handling of ethics scandals including the case of a senior official accused

The man charged with killing seven people when he unleashed a hail of bullets on an Independence Day parade from a rooftop in suburban Chicago legally bought the high-powered rifle used in the shooting and four other weapons, despite threatening violence, police said. Robert E. Crimo III was charged with seven counts of murder Tuesday in the shooting that sent hundreds of marchers, parents and children fleeing in fear and set off an hourslong manhunt in and around Highland Park, an affluent community on the shores of Lake Michigan. Investigators have yet to identify a motive. Prosecutors have

The Alberta government is set to announce that electricity rebates will run until December. The are reports that government will extend the 50-dollar per month rebates until the end of the year. In late June, the province confirmed Albertans would see the rebates on their bills in July, August and September. In May, the province said the first three months would give two-million homes, farms and small businesses approximately 300-million dollars in relief.

The BC Highway patrol says a motorcyclist was killed on the weekend after being hit by a flying trailer tire on the Trans-Canada Highway. Police say the 55 year old man from Sooke died at the scene of the incident about 34 kilometres west of Revelstoke on Sunday afternoon. They say the initial investigation determined that a pickup truck from Alberta was pulling a utility trailer that suddenly lost one of its tires -- which bounced into oncoming traffic and narrowly missed one motorcycle before hitting a second. A passenger on the second bike was injured and was taken to Royal Inland Hospital