ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The Alaska Federation of Natives annual convention, the largest gathering of Indigenous people in the state, will be all virtual this year, organizers announced Friday.

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — A central California county executive has pledged immediate changes after a news report revealed that vulnerable children removed from their families were living in deplorable conditions inside an office building — sleeping on conference tables, eating fast food and uri…

RENO, Nev. — Nevada health officials say rural areas with low vaccination rates remain the biggest concern, but overall COVID-19 trends continue to improve statewide, with a test positivity rate that’s dropped below 8% for the first time since early July.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A New Mexico judge on Friday denied a request by dozens of scientists and others at Los Alamos National Laboratory to block a vaccine mandate, meaning workers risk being fired if they don't comply with the lab's afternoon deadline.

ROME (AP) — Protests erupted in Italy as one of the most stringent anti-coronavirus measures in Europe went into effect Friday, requiring all workers, from magistrates to maids, to show a health pass to get into their place of employment.

LONDON (AP) — British health officials said Friday that 43,000 people may have been wrongly told they don’t have the coronavirus because of problems at a private laboratory.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's daily tolls of coronavirus infections and deaths surged to another record on Friday, a quickly mounting figure that has put a severe strain on the country's health care system.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Sydney will end hotel quarantine for vaccinated passengers when scheduled international flights restart in Australia within two weeks, officials said on Friday, while maintaining some restrictions on foreigners entering the country.

Transplant centres in Western Canada have stopped short of requiring organ recipients to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, but they say conversations about such a policy are ongoing.

NEW DELHI (AP) — As the first wave of the pandemic began to take hold in India, Sanchi Jawa and her 59-year-old father, Harish Jawa, realized that they had the symptoms of a COVID-19 infection. They decided to isolate and get tested — but this was no easy task during the spring of 2020.

CANBERRA — Australia’s capital Canberra has come out of lockdown with authorities reporting more than 99% of the population aged 12 and older having at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Thursday ordered a “whole-of-government” response to elevated levels of lead in tap water in the southwestern Michigan city of Benton Harbor and vowed to accelerate the replacement of its lead pipes.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Reproductive rights supporters have filed an appeal asking the Oklahoma Supreme Court to put three anti-abortion laws on hold, including restrictions on medication-induced abortions.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it will ask its outside experts to meet in late November to scrutinize Merck's pill to treat COVID-19.

GENEVA (AP) — A top U.S. trade official said Thursday the Biden administration remains committed to an easing of rules that protect the technology behind coronavirus vaccines so that they can be produced more widely.

SEATTLE (AP) — Seattle’s police department is sending detectives and non-patrol officers to respond to emergency calls because of a shortage of patrol officers that union leaders fear will become worse because of COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia on Thursday recorded the highest daily numbers of coronavirus infections and deaths since the start of the pandemic, a rapidly surging toll that has severely strained the nation's health care system.

LONDON (AP) — The number of people killed by tuberculosis has risen for the first time in more than a decade, largely because fewer people got tested and treated as resources were diverted to fight the coronavirus pandemic, the World Health Organization said.

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Since the coronavirus pandemic hit, a pair of politically conservative lawyers has become the go-to team for groups seeking to sue Connecticut over the school mask mandate, restrictions on bars and restaurants, and other aspects of the governor's emergency executive orders.

BEIJING (AP) — China's Foreign Ministry on Thursday warned against what it called possible “political manipulation” of a renewed probe by the World Health Organization into the origins of the coronavirus, while saying it would support the international body's efforts.

BERLIN (AP) — Germany's leading economic institutes on Thursday slashed their forecast for Europe's biggest economy, saying output is being held back by global supply bottlenecks and lingering restraints on personal contact amid the pandemic.

SARE GIBEL, Gambia (AP) — The health outreach workers who drove past Lama Mballow's village with a megaphone handed out T-shirts emblazoned with the words: “I GOT MY COVID-19 VACCINE!”

NEW YORK (AP) — What’s the latest advice on the type of mask I should wear?

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A California judge has partially blocked an order taking effect this week that requires state prison employees to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

CHICAGO (AP) — The head of the Chicago police officers union has called on its members to defy the city's requirement to report their COVID-19 vaccination status by Friday or be placed on unpaid leave.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The governing body of Alaska’s largest city has passed an emergency ordinance instituting a mask ordinance.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court decided Wednesday it will not review a nonprofit group's effort to open a supervised injection site in Philadelphia to try to reduce overdose deaths. The high court's decision in the widely watched test case is a setback for the two dozen U.S. state…

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration is wrestling with whether and when to offer a booster of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine — at six months or as early as two months. And a new study raises the prospect that using a different vaccine might give a better boost.

NEW YORK (AP) — Food companies are coming under renewed pressure to use less salt after U.S. regulators spelled out long-awaited guidelines aimed at reducing sodium levels in dozens of foods including condiments, cereals, french fries and potato chips.

MIAMI (AP) — Banned from the Florida hospital room where her mother lay dying of COVID-19, Jayden Arbelaez pitched an idea to construction employees working nearby.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia is ready to provide up to 300 million doses of its Sputnik V vaccine to the U.N.-backed COVAX initiative, a top Russian official promoting the shot says, even though the World Health Organization hasn’t yet signed off on it and production issues have fanned customers' co…

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — Romanian doctors sent an open letter Wednesday titled “a cry of despair” as the country's overwhelmed and deteriorated health care system copes with a record-setting surge of coronavirus infections and deaths.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Workers' compensation for injured employees doesn't cover medical marijuana because the drug remains illegal under federal law, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

GENEVA (AP) — The chief of the World Health Organization on Wednesday honored the late Henrietta Lacks, an American woman whose cancer cells were taken without her knowledge during the 1950s and ended up providing the foundation for vast scientific breakthroughs, including research about the…

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Russia-backed separatist authorities in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday reported the largest spike in new coronavirus infections since the start of the pandemic, saying the health care system has been overwhelmed.

LONDON (AP) — The World Health Organization said Wednesday that officials have begun vaccinating people in eastern Congo against Ebola, after it was confirmed last week that the disease killed a toddler.

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Two of Florida's largest cities have ended water emergencies now that COVID-19 hospitalizations have declined drastically in the state.

ROME (AP) — An extreme-right party's violent exploitation of anger over Italy's coronavirus restrictions is forcing authorities to wrestle with the country's fascist legacy and fueling fears there could be a replay of last week's mobs trying to force their way to Parliament.

MIAMI (AP) — A woman who told authorities she left her toddler with a stranger at a Miami hospital to keep her off the streets has been arrested on a child abandonment charge, police said Wednesday,

SEATTLE (AP) — The Boeing Co. has told employees they must be vaccinated against COVID-19 or possibly be fired.

OTTAWA - Public health advocates and environmental groups say the federal government needs to close a loophole allowing the sale of second-hand products containing asbestos.

Older adults without heart disease shouldn't take daily low-dose aspirin to prevent a first heart attack or stroke, an influential health guidelines group said in preliminary updated advice released Tuesday.

NEW YORK — NBA star Kyrie Irving can keep refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine, but he can’t play for the Brooklyn Nets.