World

Angela Merkel said in her last New Year's address to the nation as German chancellor that 2020 was by far the most difficult of her 15year leadership, yet the start of vaccinations against COVID19 made 2021 a year of hope.

Australia will ring in the new year with harsher restrictions on movement, gatherings and internal borders as the country's two largest states battle to quash fresh COVID19 cases in their capital cities.

Pfizer “will review all available information on this case and all reports of any confirmed diagnosis following vaccination,” the drug maker said in a statement to Reuters.

A tenured professor at the University of Mississippi filed a lawsuit Wednesday saying that state auditor defamed him by saying the professor should be fired for participating in a twoday scholar strike."

The Girl Scouts of the USA said Wednesday that child labor has no place in its iconic cookies and called on the two companies that bake them to act quickly to address any potential abuses linked to the palm oil in their supply chains.

Swiss police said on Wednesday they are investigating 12 cases in which British tourists ignored quarantine orders aimed at containing new COVID19 virus variants after hundreds of fellow nationals are believed to have fled the country.

Russia said on Wednesday it had summoned Britain's ambassador to tell her it was expanding the number of British citizens banned from entry in response to London sanctioning Russian officials over the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

The Louisville police officer who fired the shot that killed Breonna Taylor, a Black emergency medical technician, was told on Tuesday that the department was moving to fire him, U.S. media reported.

Chinese tourists, millions of whom have shunned overseas travel this year because of the global pandemic, are further narrowing the scope of their journeys, visiting nearby cities and avoiding trips out of their provinces.

A care home worker in Germany is still in hospital after being among a group that received the first known overdoses of the BioNTechPfizer vaccine against COVID19, local authorities said on Tuesday.

Gilles Simon, Marcus Daniell and Pablo Andujar were voted as the new members on the 202122 ATP Players Council, the governing body for men's tennis said on Tuesday, days after world number one Novak Djokovic pulled out of the elections.

Ireland's most liberal Roman Catholic prelate, the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, is to step aside having reached the normal retirement age for bishops of 75, the Vatican said on Tuesday.

Police said it was investigating what appeared to be an act of vandalism after a statue of Breonna Taylor erected to honour her memory was smashed in Oakland, California.

The announcement comes after Hungary started vaccinations on Saturday ahead of most European Union countries after receiving its first delivery of the Belgian-made Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus jabs.

Cuba announced on Monday it would allow fewer flights from the United States and several other countries beginning Jan. 1, due to a surge in coronavirus cases since opening its airports in November.

At least two people were being treated for injuries at hospitals in southwest Missouri after a fire destroyed a grocery store and an adjacent mosque that were gathering spots for immigrants in the small town of Noel, authorities said on Monday.