World

Norway must for the time being maintain its most recent restrictions on society to contain the spread of the coronavirus, and needs at least another three weeks to make an assessment, Prime Minister Erna Solberg said on Wednesday.

Bars and restaurants in Japan's capital of Tokyo will be asked to close early in a bid to halt coronavirus infections, Governor Yuriko Koike said on Wednesday.

Winter sport resorts will not be able to reopen before the end of the year, French President Emmanuel Macron said in a televised address to the nation on Tuesday.

A British lawmaker demanded answers from Prime Minister Boris Johnson after an elderly female protestor was carried into the back of a police van outside parliament, in what he called an unconstitutional and undignified arrest.

A Swiss woman grabbed a woman by the neck and stabbed another in a department store in the southern Swiss city of Lugano on Tuesday, police said.

Stocks, oil and risk currencies, including bitcoin, gained on Tuesday as U.S. Presidentelect Joe Biden got the formal goahead to begin his transition to the White House.

Dutch medical experts have advised the government against easing social distancing measures in the runup to Christmas as a decline of coronavirus infections in the Netherlands has slowed over the past week, broadcaster RTL reported on Tuesday.

Polish scientists have identified the first cases of COVID19 in mink at a farm in the north of the country, the Medical University of Gdansk said on Tuesday.

Japan and China agreed on Tuesday to continue communications on issues around the East China Sea where the two countries are in dispute, Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said.

Researchers have reached a sobering calculation: the closures beginning at the pandemic's onset in March through May saved 29,000 lives -- at a cost of $169 billion, or around $6 million per person.

The Latest on Presidentelect Joe Biden (all times local):

More than 100 former Republican national security officials demanded on Monday that party leaders denounce President Donald Trump's refusal to concede the presidential election, calling it a dangerous and antidemocratic assault on U.S. institutions.

Britain is on track to make COVID19 vaccines widely available by next spring after the shot developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca was up to 90% effective in trials, the head of the university's Jenner Institute said on Monday.

An ambitious timeline makes COVID19 vaccine widely available in Britain by next spring is on track after Oxford/AstraZeneca's candidate proved up to 90% effective in latestage trials, the head of the university's Jenner Institute said on Monday.

U.S. President Donald Trump's election campaign on Sunday distanced itself from Sidney Powell, a lawyer who claimed at a news conference last week that electronic voting systems had switched millions of ballots to Presidentelect Joe Biden.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed gave Tigrayan regional forces 72 hours to surrender before the military begins an offensive on the regional capital of Mekelle.