International

PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron has tested positive for COVID-19, the presidential Elysee Palace announced on Thursday.

BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese lunar capsule returned to Earth on Thursday with the first fresh rock samples from the moon in more than 40 years, offering the possibility of new insights into the history of the solar system and marking a new landmark for China’s rapidly advancing space program.

Interviews with voters, along with fresh surveys of Republicans, suggest their unfounded doubts about the integrity of the vote remain.

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than a month after the election, top Republicans finally acknowledged Joe Biden as the next U.S. president on Tuesday, a collapse in GOP resistance to the millions of voters who decisively chose the Democrat. Foreign leaders joined the parade, too, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

TOKYO (Kyodo) — A Japanese court on Tuesday sentenced a man dubbed Japan's "Twitter killer" to death for the 2017 serial murders of nine people who posted suicidal thoughts on social media.

NEW DELHI (AP) — With Americans, Britons and Canadians rolling up their sleeves to receive coronavirus vaccines, the route out of the pandemic now seems clear to many in the West, even if the rollout will take many months. But for poorer countries, the road will be far longer and rougher.

LONDON (AP) — UK regulators say people who have a “significant history” of allergic reactions shouldn’t receive the new Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine while they investigate two adverse reactions that occurred on the first day of the country’s mass vaccination program.

Olympia, WASHINGTON (AP) — Deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. have soared to more than 2,200 a day on average, matching the frightening peak reached last April, and cases per day have eclipsed 200,000 on average for the first time on record, with the crisis all but certain to get worse because of the fallout from Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s.

SYDNEY (Xinhua) — After months of treatments and recoveries, koalas severely injured in Australia's devastating bushfires last summer have finally returned home.

LONDON (AP) — U.K. health authorities are rolling out the first doses of a widely tested and independently reviewed COVID-19 vaccine, starting a global immunization program that is expected to gain momentum as more serums win approval.