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London, Jun 25: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called on India and China to engage in dialogue to sort out their border issues as he described the escalation in eastern Ladakh as "a very serious and worrying situation" which the UK is closely monitoring.

The first official statement of Mr Johnson came during his weekly Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) in the House of Commons on Wednesday.

Responding to Conservative Party MP Flick Drummond on the implications for British interests of a dispute between a "Commonwealth member and the world's largest democracy on the one side, and a state that challenges our notion of democracy on the other," he described the escalation in eastern Ladakh as "a very serious and worrying situation", which the UK is "monitoring closely".

"Perhaps the best thing I can say... is that we are encouraging both parties to engage in dialogue on the issues on the border and sort it out between them," the Prime Minister said.

In a statement in New Delhi on Wednesday, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said India and China have agreed that expeditious implementation of the previously agreed understanding on disengagement of troops from standoff points in eastern Ladakh would help ensure peace and tranquillity in the border areas.

During the diplomatic talks between India and China, the situation in the region was discussed in detail and the Indian side conveyed its concerns over the violent face-off in Galwan Valley on June 15. Twenty Indian Army personnel were killed in the clash. There were reports of several casualties for the Chinese army too, but China hasn't declared any official number yet.

The talks were held in the midst of escalating tension between the two countries following the violent clashes in Galwan Valley on June 15.

The Indian and Chinese armies are engaged in the standoff in Pangong Tso, Galwan Valley, Demchok and Daulat Beg Oldie in eastern Ladakh. A sizable number of Chinese Army personnel even transgressed into the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control in several areas including Pangong Tso.

May 5: Global coronavirus deaths reached 250,000 on Monday after recorded infections topped 3.5 million, a news agency tally of official government data showed, although the rate of fatalities has slowed.

North America and European countries accounted for most of the new deaths and cases reported in recent days, but numbers were rising from smaller bases in Latin America, Africa and Russia.

Globally, there were 3,062 new deaths and 61,923 new cases over the past 24 hours, taking total cases to 3.58 million.

That easily exceeds the estimated 140,000 deaths worldwide in 2018 caused by measles, and compares with around 3 million to 5 million cases of severe illness caused annually by seasonal influenza, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

While the current trajectory of COVID-19 falls far short of the 1918 Spanish flu, which infected an estimated 500 million people, killing at least 10% of patients, experts worry the available data is underplaying the true impact of the pandemic.

The concerns come as several countries begin to ease strict lockdowns that have been credited with helping contain the spread of the virus.

"We could easily have a second or a third wave because a lot of places aren't immune," Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases physician and microbiologist at Canberra Hospital, told Reuters. He noted the world was well short of herd immunity, which requires around 60% of the population to have recovered from the disease.

The first death linked to COVID-19 was reported on Jan. 10 in Wuhan, China after the coronavirus first emerged there in December. Global fatalities grew at a rate of 1-2% in recent days, down from 14% on March 21, according to the Reuters data.

DEATH RATE ANOMALIES

Mortality rates from recorded infections vary greatly from country to country.

Collignon said any country with a mortality rate of more than 2% almost certainly had underreported case numbers. Health experts fear those ratios could worsen in regions and countries less prepared to deal with the health crisis.

"If your mortality rate is higher than 2%, you've missed a lot of cases," he said, noting that countries overwhelmed by the outbreak were less likely to conduct testing in the community and record deaths outside of hospitals.

In the United States, around half the country's state governors partially reopened their economies over the weekend, while others, including New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, declared the move was premature.

In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who battled COVID-19 last month, has said the country was over the peak but it was still too early to relax lockdown measures.

Even in countries where the suppression of the disease has been considered successful, such as Australia and New Zealand which have recorded low daily rates of new infections for weeks, officials have been cautious.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has predicated a full lifting of curbs on widespread public adoption of a mobile phone tracking app and increased testing levels.

Washington, May 18: US President Donald Trump on Sunday called his predecessor Barak Obama a ‘grossly incompetent president’.

The Trump’s reaction came after Obama on Saturday criticised the US authorities' response to the coronavirus outbreak.

“He (Obama) was an incompetent president. That’s all I can say. Grossly incompetent,” Trump told reporters at the White House on his arrival from Camp David.

Trump was responding to a question on the virtual commencement address by Obama a day earlier.

In his address to college graduates, Obama had said that the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the American leadership.

“More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing,” Obama said without naming officials.

“A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge,” he added.

There was no immediate response from the office of the former president on the remarks made by Trump.