Winter winds brought extreme cold and ice-slicked roads to the mid-western and eastern United States yesterday, with the Martin Luther King Jr Day holiday and an ongoing government shutdown allowing many to heed official advice to stay indoors.

Former Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy has accused his successor Pinarayi Vijayan of misleading the people on the Sabarimala court rulings. The Supreme Court had on September 28 lifted an age-old bar on women of reproductive age from entering the temple.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley yesterday rejected claims of EVM (electronic voting machine) hacking in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls at a press conference in London by a self-proclaimed cyber expert as “absolutely rubbish” and a “big lie” and attacked the Congress for demanding a probe into the issue.

Minority Muslims in the Philippines cast votes yesterday in a long-awaited referendum on autonomy, the culmination of a peace process to end decades of conflict in a region plagued by poverty, banditry and militancy.

Senator Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aquino yesterday said the House of Representatives’ measure that lowers the age of criminal liability to nine would be rejected by the Senate.

Pakistani authorities have opened an investigation into the police killing of four people, including a woman and a child, in an encounter with a suspected militant leader that has drawn accusations from the public of police brutality.

British children born in Pakistan have to wait for six to 12 months to get their passports, when the children born to British parents in the US and Australia wait for just eight to 10 working days, data obtained under a Freedom of Information (FOI) request shows,

Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven named his cabinet yesterday, adding six new faces after securing a new term last week that ended four months of political stalemate.

Skywatchers howled at the moon at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles when the full lunar eclipse appeared shortly after 9pm Pacific time on Sunday, and our celestial neighbour was bathed reddish-orange during a “Super Blood Wolf Moon”.

Prime Minister Theresa May yesterday said she would try to break the deadlock over her Brexit deal by seeking further concessions from the European Union on a backup plan to avoid a hard border in Ireland.

The Indonesian government’s plan to release an elderly cleric convicted of terrorism is still being studied, the country’s security minister said yesterday.

Senator Kamala Harris announced Monday that she is seeking to become the first African American woman to hold the office of US president, joining an already-crowded field of Democrats lining up to take on Donald Trump.