International

RUSSIA: The Kremlin said Thursday that Moscow had no immediate plans to allow foreign coronavirus vaccines into Russia, despite the country’s sluggish vaccination rates and rising death count in a third wave of the pandemic.…

AUSTRALIA: Melbourne’s streets returned to the eerie quiet of lockdown for the fifth time Friday, as Australia battled to contain an outbreak of the Delta variant of COVID-19 in its two largest cities. More than 12 million…

GERMANY: At least 60 people have died and as many as 1,300 remain unaccounted as a result of freak flooding in western Germany and Belgium where some areas saw the highest rainfall in more than 100 years. Two firefighters sent to…

Politicians and medical experts in Australia are trading blame for a slow vaccine rollout as the country struggles to contain a coronavirus outbreak in Sydney, its biggest city. Only about 9.5 percent of Australia’s population of…

A shipment of 500,000 Covid vaccine doses from the United States arrived in Haiti on Wednesday, the first shots to reach a nation thrown into turmoil after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. The donation is part of the…

A Korean palm oil giant has been rejected from the world’s leading green certification body in the wake of a BBC investigation. The BBC had earlier found evidence that the Korindo group had been buying up swathes of Asia’s largest…

SOUTH AFRICA: Stores and warehouses in South Africa were hit by looters Tuesday for a fifth day running despite the troops President Cyril Ramaphosa deployed to try to quell unrest that has claimed 72 lives. As pillaging erupted…

IRAQ: Grief and anger gripped the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah on Tuesday after fire swept through a Covid isolation unit killing 92 people and wounding dozens more. The devastating Monday evening blaze in the city's Al-Hussein…

US: The COVID-19 curve in the United States is rising again after months of decline, with the number of new cases per day doubling over the past three weeks. This is driven by the fast-spreading delta variant, lagging vaccination rates…

At least 52 people have been killed in a fire at the coronavirus isolation ward of a hospital in Iraq, the second such deadly blaze in a COVID-19 unit in three months. The fire broke out at the Al-Hussein hospital in the southern…