Month: January 2022

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Sweden’s prime minister has ordered cafes, bars and restaurants to close at 11 p.m., urged people to work from home when possible and said distance learning is an option in higher education to try to tackle high levels of COVID-19. She says it is necessary to curb the spread of infection

By DAVID PORTER, BOBBY CAINA CALVAN and MICHELLE L. PRICE Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Doctors are working to save the lives of several people gravely injured when smoke from a fire knocked them out or trapped them in their apartments in a New York City high-rise building. Nineteen people, including nine children, died

By JOSEPH KRAUSS Associated Press JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel is considering whether to extend the detention of a 17-year-old Palestinian with a rare neuromuscular disorder. He has been held without charge for nearly a year in what Israel refers to as “administrative detention.” The use of administrative detention has galvanized demonstrations across the occupied West

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The office of a Taliban-appointed governor in eastern Afghanistan says that an explosion near the border with Pakistan killed nine children and wounded four. A statement from the governor’s office says the blast happened on Monday when a cart selling food items struck an old, unexploded mortar shell in the district

By ROD McGUIRK and MARK D. BAKER Associated Press MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Novak Djokovic has returned to the tennis court for training, having won a legal battle to stay in Australia and play in the Australian Open after his exemption from strict coronavirus vaccine rules was questioned. But the government is still threatening to

MADRID (AP) — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez says it’s time to consider whether to move away from the detailed tracking that the pandemic has required until now to a flu-like monitoring system. The change would mean treating COVID-19 as an “endemic illness” rather than a pandemic, Sánchez said Monday, adding that deaths as a

By RODNEY MUHUMUZA Associated Press KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Uganda’s schools reopened their gates to students on Monday, ending the longest school disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic anywhere in the world. There’s traffic congestion in some areas of the capital, Kampala, and students can be seen carrying their mattresses in the streets, a back-to-school

BEIJING (AP) — Beijing has accused Washington of inciting Lithuania to “contain China” in a feud over the status of self-ruled Taiwan after U.S. officials expressed support for the European Union-member country in the face of Chinese economic pressure. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman on Monday complained Washington “instigated the Lithuanian authorities.”  Lithuania is the

By MIKE CORDER Associated Press THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Dutch King Willem-Alexander has sworn in a new ruling coalition, led for the fourth time by Mark Rutte. The ceremony Monday came amid a nationwide coronavirus lockdown and policy challenges ranging from climate change to housing shortages to the future of agriculture. It follows a

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press ROME (AP) — Pope Francis is now speaking about getting the coronavirus vaccination as a “moral obligation.” Francis used some of his strongest words yet calling for people to get vaccinated in a speech to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See on Monday. He denounced how people had been swayed by