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BEIJING (AP) — China’s capital Beijing has begun offering booster shots against COVID-19, four months before the city and surrounding regions are to host the Winter Olympics.
Anyone 18 or older who have received two-dose Chinese vaccines and belong to at-risk groups, including those participating, organizing or working on games facilities, would be eligible for the additional shot, state media reported Friday.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — A U.S. religious organization whose 17 members were kidnapped in Haiti asked supporters on Friday to pray and share stories with the victims' families of how their faith helped them through difficult times as efforts to recover them entered a sixth day.
TOKYO (AP) — Carlos Ghosn, the former auto industry superstar whose career screeched to a halt with his arrest three years ago, isn't about to settle into quiet retirement.
The former head of the Nissan-Renault alliance fled to Lebanon in late 2019, while out on bail facing financial misconduct charges in Japan.
NEW YORK (AP) — Two months after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, one of the country’s once-prominent female leaders — a former parliament member, candidate for president and a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize — is visiting the United Nations, not as a representative of her government but as a woman in exile.
LONDON (AP) — Britain's Queen Elizabeth II spent a night in a hospital for checks this week after canceling an official trip to Northern Ireland on medical advice, Buckingham Palace said Thursday.
The palace said the 95-year-old British monarch went to the private King Edward VII's Hospital in London on Wednesday for “preliminary investigations.” It said she returned to her Windsor Castle home at lunchtime on Thursday, "and remains in good spirits.”
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand's government on Friday set an ambitious target of fully vaccinating 90% of all eligible people to end coronavirus lockdowns.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had been under pressure to provide a pathway to freedom for people living in Auckland, who have been in lockdown for more than two months.
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syria has executed 24 people after convicting them on terrorism charges for igniting last year’s devastating wildfires, leaving three people dead and burning thousands of hectares (acres) of forests, the Justice Ministry said Thursday.
MAHBAS REGION, Western Sahara (AP) — As a glowing sun sank behind the sandy barrier that cuts across the disputed territory of Western Sahara, Sidati Ahmed's battalion launched two missiles that sizzled through the air and then followed with an artillery attack.
MOSCOW (AP) — Authorities in Moscow on Thursday announced plans to shut restaurants, cinemas and non-food stores and introduce other restrictions later this month, as Russia registered the highest daily numbers of new coronavirus infections and deaths since the start of the pandemic.
LONDON (AP) — British police charged a 25-year-old man Thursday with the murder of a Conservative lawmaker, alleging that the killing was an act of terrorism by a supporter of the Islamic State group.
BEIJING (AP) — China on Friday said there is “no room” for compromise or concessions over the issue of Taiwan, following a comment by U.S. President Joe Biden that the U.S. is committed to defending the island if it is attacked.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel on Friday effectively outlawed six prominent Palestinian human rights groups by declaring them terrorist organizations, a major escalation of its decades-long crackdown on political activism in the occupied territories.
LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — Violent clashes erupted between Pakistan's security forces and Islamists in the eastern city of Lahore on Friday, killing at least two policemen and two demonstrators, a police spokesman and witnesses said.
BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government benefited from variations in foreign currency exchange rates, boosting state coffers with at least $100 million in international aid money over the last two years, according to new research.
BERLIN (AP) — Environmental campaigners staged protests on several continents on Friday to press their demands for more government action to curb global warming ahead of the upcoming U.N. climate summit in Glasgow.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Ethiopian military airstrikes on Friday forced a United Nations humanitarian flight to abandon its landing in the capital of the country’s Tigray region, and a government spokesman said authorities were aware of the inbound flight.
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — It seems a strange place to pitch a tent.
Plump in the middle of the United Nations-patrolled buffer zone that has divided Cyprus along ethnic lines since 1974, in the heart of the island's medieval capital, two Cameroonian asylum-seekers have lived in a small blue tent for nearly five months.
MOSCOW (AP) — Falling scaffolding broke off one of the “teeth” on the top of the Kremlin wall on Friday, prompting Russian authorities to seal off Red Square.
A gust of wind brought down the scaffolding, which was being used to repair a section of the Kremlin wall near Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin's tomb on Red Square, breaking one of the 1,045 teeth, known as merlons, that have V-shaped notches in them.
BRUSSELS (AP) — Angela Merkel is still Germany's Chancellor, and might be still when European Union leaders meet again, yet they gave her a big farewell party at Friday's EU summit. Even Barack Obama made a cameo video appearance.
NIZHNY NOVGOROD, Russia (AP) — As she stood in the courtyard of the morgue holding the body of her grandmother who died of COVID-19, Ramilya Shigalturina had a message for anyone still resisting vaccinations.
BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand is accelerating plans to reopen the country to foreign tourists, slashing mandatory quarantines beginning Nov. 1 for fully vaccinated visitors arriving by air from 46 countries and territories, officials announced Friday.
LONDON (AP) — Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II was back at Windsor Castle on Friday and in good spirits after revelations that she spent the night in a London hospital earlier this week.
Buckingham Palace said the 95-year-old British monarch went to the private King Edward VII’s Hospital in London on Wednesday for “preliminary investigations.” She returned to her Windsor Castle home at lunchtime on Thursday and was understood to be back at her desk by afternoon, undertaking light duties.
MOSCOW (AP) — An explosion and fire at a gunpowder factory in Russia on Friday killed 16 people, officials said.
The Emergency Situations Ministry said the explosion hit the Elastik factory in the Ryazan region, about 270 kilometers (about 167 miles) southeast of Moscow.
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Authorities are investigating after confirming that a prop firearm discharged by actor Alec Baldwin, while producing and starring in a Western movie, killed the cinematographer and wounded the director.
MALUALKON, South Sudan (AP) — He feels like a man who has drowned.
The worst flooding that parts of South Sudan have seen in 60 years now surrounds his home of mud and grass. His field of sorghum, which fed his family, is under water.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. special envoy for Myanmar has warned that February's military takeover has led to armed conflict and if power isn’t returned to the people in a democratic way the country “will go in the direction of a failed state.”
TOKYO (AP) — Japan adopted a new energy policy on Friday that promotes nuclear and renewables as sources of clean energy to achieve the country’s pledge of reaching carbon neutrality in 2050.
The new basic energy plan, adopted by the Cabinet just in time for the climate summit in early November, calls for drastically increasing use of renewable energy to cut fossil fuel consumption over the next decade as Japan pushes to meet its ambitious emissions reduction target.
BEIJING (AP) — Police in China’s capital Beijing say famed international pianist Li Yundi is a suspect in a prostitution case.
A message on the force’s microblog said a suspect had been placed in administrative detention and an investigation opened on Thursday involving a woman identified by her surname Chen and a man named as “Li di," with the first part of his personal name deleted as is standard in police cases.
KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Floods and landslides triggered by days of torrential rains have killed at least 99 people in Nepal since Monday, officials said.
In neighboring India, heavy downpours this week have also wreaked havoc, killing at least 88 people, while flooding roads, destroying bridges and causing landslides that washed away several homes.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — The video shows more than 30 men lined up in front of a crumbling structure in silence. Their heads are bowed as a man walks between them and swigs from a small bottle. Someone exclaims, “There will be trouble in Port-au-Prince!”
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — The leader of the 400 Mawozo gang that police say is holding 17 members of a kidnapped missionary group is seen in a video released Thursday saying he will kill them if he doesn’t get what he’s demanding.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A police superintendent in Jamaica told The Associated Press on Thursday that authorities have arrested a Colombian man they believe is a suspect in the July 7 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse.
MIAMI (AP) — Federal prosecutors have unveiled criminal charges against an alleged corruption ring accused of paying millions of dollars in bribes to a top ally of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to profit from lucrative contracts to import food and medicine at a time of widespread hardship in the South American country.
CAIRO (AP) — Thousands of people rallied in the streets of Sudan’s capital city Thursday, demanding a fully civilian government as the relationship between military generals and pro-democracy groups deteriorated over the country’s future.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli leaders on Thursday recommended reopening the country to fully vaccinated tourists beginning on Nov. 1, a year and a half after closing its borders to most foreign visitors due to the global coronavirus pandemic.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A powerful autumn storm blasted across parts of Europe on Thursday, killing four people in Poland and causing damage and disruption across a large swath of the continent.
According to reports in Polish media, the hardest-hit area was around the western city of Wroclaw, where powerful gusts topped a delivery truck, killing its driver.
PARIS (AP) — The world’s biggest triceratops skeleton, known as “Big John,” was sold for 6.6 million euros ($7.7 million) Thursday to a private collector at a Paris auction house.
The enormous skeleton, estimated to be over 66 million years old, was found in 2014 in South Dakota.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — United Nations human rights experts urged Pakistan on Thursday to release a Christian man who was detained two years ago for insulting Islam's Prophet Muhammad and is believed to be mentally ill.
NEW DELHI (AP) — India celebrated giving its billionth COVID-19 vaccine dose on Thursday, a hopeful milestone for the South Asian country where the delta variant fueled a crushing surge earlier this year and missteps initially held back its inoculation campaign.
MADRID (AP) — Hundreds of people were evacuated during the night on the Spanish island of La Palma as a river of molten rock crept deeper into a coastal town during a protracted volcanic eruption, authorities said Thursday.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The Australian Outback town of Quilpie hoped its offer of free residential land to anyone who would make it their home might attract five new families to the remote community of 800.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — The United States is at a turning point in deciding how to handle the crisis in military-ruled Myanmar, weighing further political and economic steps to pressure the government to change its behavior, a senior U.S.
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Joshua Samuel painfully recalls the day, one year ago, when Nigerian soldiers opened fire in Lagos while he and thousands of others were protesting police brutality.
“People were running and some were falling,” the 23-year-old said of the Oct.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s new environmental protection minister has set some ambitious goals: She believes she can use her office to play an important role in the global battle against climate change while also promoting peace in the volatile Middle East.