The United Kingdom has become the first country to approve the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine. In a statement, the UK government said the country's regulator had authorized the vaccine after it met "strict standards of safety, quality and effectiveness." The approval comes weeks after the UK became the first country in the world to start inoculating its citizens with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
Australia's Minister of Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs has threatened to cancel the visas of any visitors caught breaking rules designed to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in the country, after hundreds of people attended a beach party in Sydney's Bronte Beach on Christmas Day.
A probe into hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate left at Beirut's port began just hours before a massive blast rocked the site, leaving more than 200 dead and devastating the Lebanese capital, caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab told CNN on Tuesday.
Croatia has been hit by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake, the government-owned Croatian News Agency HINA reported Tuesday, causing major damage to Petrinja, a town close to its epicenter.
The euphoria of Lebanon's October revolution evaporated in 2020. Economic collapse and the coronavirus pandemic mortally wounded hopes for change, and the final nail in the country's coffin seemed to come with the Beirut port blast. CNN's Ben Wedeman reports from Beirut.
Nearly half a million residents in the Chinese city where the novel coronavirus first emerged may have been infected with Covid-19 -- almost 10 times its official number of confirmed cases, according to a study by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
An army captain in the Indian territory of Jammu and Kashmir has been charged with murder, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy after the shooting deaths of three Kashmiri men.
Zhang Zhan, 37, an independent Chinese journalist who reported from Wuhan at the height of the initial coronavirus outbreak, has been jailed for four years by a Shanghai court, her lawyer said. She was found guilty of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble," according to one of her defense lawyers. The offense is commonly used by the Chinese government to target dissidents and human rights activists.
The food and drink industry has warned of "devastating" results for consumers and businesses if the UK government moves ahead with plans to restrict how supermarkets sell and advertise chocolate, soda and other foods high in sugar, salt and fat as part of a wider push to tackle obesity.
Trapped at home, isolated from the outside world, and prevented from returning to school -- this is life under lockdown for forced marriage victims in the United Kingdom. But with lockdown making it even harder for charities to identify victims there are concerns that hundreds of young people could be trapped at home with nowhere to escape. CNN's Nada Bashir reports.
As the number of countries that have authorized the use of a Covid-19 vaccine grows, many are sighing with anticipated relief. Yet now comes another challenge: how do we distribute vaccines safely and equitably to those most in need in our own countries and across the world?
