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PARIS (AP) — The global initiative to share coronavirus vaccines fairly already scaled back its pledge to the world's poor once. Now, to meet even that limited promise, COVAX would have to deliver more than a million doses every hour until the end of the year in some of the world's most challenging places.
BERLIN (AP) — Unvaccinated people across Germany will soon be excluded from nonessential stores, restaurants and sports and cultural venues, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced Thursday, and parliament will consider a general vaccine mandate as part of efforts to curb coronavirus infections.
PARIS (AP) — Greeks over 60 who refuse coronavirus vaccinations could be hit with monthly fines of more than one-quarter of their minimum pensions — a get-tough policy that the country's politicians say will cost votes but save lives.
BEIJING (AP) — China and the United States are tussling over President Joe Biden’s upcoming democracy summit, which the ruling Communist Party sees as a challenge to its authoritarian ways.
RANYA, Iraq (AP) — Shoes pile up outside the Mamand home in northern Iraq from relatives and friends who have streamed inside to offer solace as they anxiously await news of the family's young son, who was lost at sea somewhere between France and Britain.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia would set a more ambitious target of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 43% by the end of the decade if the government changes hands in elections early next year, the opposition leader said on Friday.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa has accelerated its vaccination campaign by giving jabs at pop-up sites in shopping centers and transportation hubs to combat a rapid rise in new COVID-19 cases a week after the discovery of the omicron variant of the coronavirus.
LOS ANGELES — California is reporting its second confirmed case of the omicron COVID variant in as many days.
The Los Angeles County public health department says a county resident is self-isolating after apparently contracting the infection during a trip to South Africa last month.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea is tightening recently relaxed restrictions on social gatherings as it grapples with its worst wave of the virus since the start of the pandemic.
Starting next week, private social gatherings of seven or more people will be banned in the densely populated capital Seoul and nearby metropolitan areas, which have been hit hardest by a delta-driven spread that threatens to overwhelm hospital capacities.
NEW YORK (AP) — The United Nations headquarters in New York City was locked down for several hours Thursday after a man was seen pacing outside one of its main gates with a loaded shotgun, holding it under his chin at times, police said.
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Migrants seeking to enter the United States will again have to stay in Mexico as they await immigration hearings, as the Biden administration reluctantly announced plans Thursday to reinstate the Trump-era policy and agreed to Mexico’s conditions for resuming it.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — More than 60 organizations urged the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday to establish an investigative body to gather and preserve evidence of serious human rights violations during Yemen’s seven-year conflict, including possible war crimes and crimes against humanity.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met face-to-face with his Russian counterpart on Thursday to demand Russia pull back troops from the border with Ukraine, as tensions and suspicions grow in a confrontation over Ukraine's increasingly close ties with NATO and the West.
NEW YORK (AP) — OPEC and allied oil-producing countries decided Thursday to stick to their plans to boost oil production even as the new omicron variant cast a shadow of uncertainty over the global economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
BERLIN (AP) — Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg announced Thursday he is stepping down just two months after taking over from predecessor Sebastian Kurz, who stumbled over corruption allegations.
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Pope Francis on Thursday urged Greek Cypriots and the breakaway Turkish Cypriots to resume talks on reunifying the Mediterranean island nation, saying threats and shows of force were only prolonging the “terrible laceration” its people have endured for nearly a half-century.
LONDON (AP) — The Duchess of Sussex won the latest stage in her privacy lawsuit against a British newspaper on Thursday, when three senior judges ruled its publisher breached her privacy by reproducing parts of a letter she wrote to her estranged father.
Egypt on Thursday concluded its second international weapons fair, as one of the Middle East’s largest armies looks to grow its arsenal while moving away from U.S. suppliers.
The four-day expo featuring hundreds of exhibitors comes as the country climbs the ranks of the world’s top arms importers.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan is being hit by multiple crises that are “progressively getting worse,” with drought, economic collapse and displacement all pushing the population into catastrophic hunger, a senior international aid official said Thursday.
PARIS (AP) — The sister of a man who was sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia is asking seven-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton to help save her brother's life.
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appointed a new treasury and finance minister Thursday after the previous one stepped down as the country's currency has tumbled to record lows.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea broke its daily record for coronavirus infections for a second straight day on Thursday with more than 5,200 new cases, as pressure mounted on a health care system grappling with rising hospitalizations and deaths.
BEIJING (AP) — Laos, a nation of 7 million people wedged between China, Vietnam and Thailand, is opening a $5.9 billion Chinese-built railway that links China's poor southwest to foreign markets but piles on potentially risky debt.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — America's defense chief rebuked China on Thursday, vowing to confront its potential military threats in Asia and warning that its pursuit of hypersonic weapons intended to evade U.S.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — After a monthslong hiatus, Iran has returned to negotiations in Vienna aimed at reviving its cratered nuclear deal with world powers. But Tehran isn't slowing down the advances in its atomic program, further raising the stakes in talks crucial to cooling years of tensions boiling in the wider Mideast.
LAS MANCHAS, Canary Islands (AP) — They come with eagle-eyed drones and high-precision instruments. Aided by satellites, they analyze gas emissions and the flows of molten rock. On the ground, they collect everything from the tiniest particles to “lava bombs” the size of watermelons that one of nature's most powerful forces hurl as incandescent projectiles.
BANGKOK (AP) — The killing of at least 65 protesters in Myanmar’s biggest city on March 14 this year was planned and premeditated, and the perpetrators must be brought to justice, a rights watchdog said in a report released Thursday.
TOKYO (AP) — Japan says it has retracted a ban on new incoming international flight bookings to defend against the new variant of the coronavirus only a day after the policy was announced, following criticisms that it was an overreaction.
LONDON (AP) — An 11-person collective from Belfast that aims to transcend Northern Ireland’s political and religious divides won the U.K.’s prestigious Turner Prize for art on Wednesday.
The Array Collective took the 25,000 pound ($33,000) prize for “The Druithaib’s Ball,” a recreation of a traditional Irish shebeen, or speakeasy, that is full of references to 100 years of Northern Ireland history.
ATHENS, Greece -- Greek lawmakers have approved legislation making vaccination for COVID-19 mandatory for all people aged over 60 living in the country on pain of a monthly fine, to deal with an infection surge and the emergence of the omicron variant.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The U.S. recorded its first confirmed case of the omicron variant Wednesday — in a vaccinated traveler who returned to California after a trip to South Africa — as scientists around the world race to establish whether the new, mutant version of the coronavirus is more dangerous than previous ones.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa's new cases of COVID-19 nearly doubled in a day, authorities reported Wednesday, signaling a dramatic surge in the country where scientists detected the omicron variant last week.
PRAGUE (AP) — Petr Uhl, a Czech journalist who was one of the country's leading communist-era dissidents and human rights activists, has died at 80.
His wife, former Czech ombudsman Anna Sabatova, told the CTK agency he died Wednesday.
MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Moscow would seek Western guarantees precluding any further NATO expansion and deployment of its weapons near his country's borders, a stern demand that comes amid fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
LONDON (AP) — A U.K. parliamentary committee on Wednesday criticized government plans to deter migrants and refugees from trying to reach Britain in small boats, saying the measures would endanger lives without stopping dangerous journeys across the English Channel like the one that killed 27 people last week.
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) — If insecurity in Burkina Faso keeps up, the West African nation could spiral into a humanitarian and human rights “catastrophe,” the U.N. human rights chief said Wednesday.
A pandemic-weary world faces weeks of confusing uncertainty as countries restrict travel and take other steps to halt the newest potentially risky coronavirus mutant before anyone knows just how dangerous omicron really is.
BRUSSELS (AP) — Top European Union migration officials offered Wednesday to ease the asylum-evaluation rules for Poland, Lithuania and Latvia in response to what the EU has called a “hybrid attack” by Belarus to destabilize the bloc using migrants and refugees.
GENEVA (AP) — The head of the World Health Organization hailing a key step by its member states on Wednesday to launch work toward an international agreement to help prevent, prepare for and respond to future pandemics in the wake of COVID-19.
RIGA, Latvia (AP) — NATO became a victim of mission creep in Afghanistan as the international community upped its aims from fighting extremists to rebuilding the conflict-torn country over two decades, the military organization’s civilian leader said Wednesday.