Editing

A federal appeals court on Saturday rejected a bid by a conservative lawyer to block President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia and left in place procedures that will make it easier for voters to cast absentee ballots in January when two Senate seats are up for grabs.

Moscow began distributing the Sputnik V COVID-19 shot via 70 clinics on Saturday, marking Russia’s first mass vaccination against the disease, the city’s coronavirus task force said.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Friday to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level, but the legislation is not expected to advance further as long as the Senate remains in Republican hands.

Israeli police on Friday arrested a man for trying to set fire to an east Jerusalem church by the Garden of Gethsemane, the site revered by Christians as the place where Jesus prayed before he was crucified.

A senior European Union official said on Friday that an agreement between relief organizations and the Ethiopian government for access to the war-hit Tigray region limits aid to federal-controlled areas only and requires too much bureaucracy.

Next year is shaping up to be a humanitarian catastrophe and rich countries must not trample poor countries in a “stampede for vaccines” to combat the coronavirus pandemic, top U.N. officials told the 193-member U.N. General Assembly on Friday.

Venezuela will hold parliamentary elections this Sunday in a vote that the United States, European Union and many citizens view as a fraudulent effort by the ruling socialist party to seize control of the last institution in opposition hands.

It took Luis Salgado years of manual labor to save enough money to open a small fresh produce store, so when torrential floods swept away $1,500 worth of apples, bananas and other fruits, he decided there was no longer a future for him in Honduras.

About a third of the Spanish population is ready to take the COVID-19 vaccine immediately, while 55.2% of them would rather wait for the effects to be known, a survey carried out by CIS pollster showed on Friday.

South Korea’s capital, Seoul, on Friday announced unprecedented restrictions shuttering most establishments and shops at 9 p.m. and cutting back public transportation operations by 30% in the evenings, as daily coronavirus cases hit a nine-month high.

Authorities in Moscow arrested a physicist on suspicion of state treason for allegedly passing classified information about Russia’s aviation industry abroad, news agencies reported late on Thursday.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn on Friday called for additional restrictions to stem the spread of the coronavirus in parts of Germany where infection numbers are very high.

More than 1,600 Rohingya refugees sailed on Friday from Bangladesh’s southern port of Chittagong for the remote island of Bhasan Char in the Bay of Bengal, a naval official said.

South Koreans were urged to cancel Christmas and New Year parties on Friday as daily coronavirus cases hit a nine-month high and the government considered imposing tighter social-distancing rules to halt a third wave of infections.

An Australian court on Friday dismissed eight out of 87 contempt of court charges against media on their reporting of ex-Vatican treasurer George Pell’s 2018 conviction for child sex assault.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who had little public profile in Iran but had been named by Israel as a prime player in what it says is Iran’s nuclear weapons quest, was killed on Friday when he was ambushed on a highway near Tehran and his car sprayed with bullets.

The top U.S. intelligence official stepped up President Donald Trump’s harsh attacks on Beijing on Thursday by labeling China the biggest threat to democracy and freedom worldwide since World War Two and saying it was bent on global domination.

Anthony Fauci, the U.S. infectious diseases expert, criticised UK regulators on Thursday for the swift approval of the Pfizer vaccine against COVID-19, a day after that approval was announced in London.