Muslims across Indonesia marked a grim Eid al-Adha festival for a second year Tuesday as the country struggles to cope with a devastating new wave of coronavirus cases and the government has banned large gatherings and toughened travel restrictions.Indonesia is now Asia’s Covid-19 hot spot with the most confirmed daily cases, as infections and deaths have surged over the past three weeks and India’s massive outbreak has waned.Most of Indonesia’s cases are on the densely populated island of Java, where more than half of the country’s 270 million people live. Authorities in... Read More

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Friday criticized social media platforms like Facebook for spreading misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines, as his administration has blamed them for stalling U.S. vaccine rates.”They’re killing people,” Biden said when asked what his message was to social media platforms like Facebook on the spread of false and misleading claims about the virus and the safety of vaccines that prevent it.”The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and that’s — they’re killing people,” he continued.Facebook took issue with... Read More

The delta variant now accounts for half of the Covid-19 cases in many areas of the U.S., President Joe Biden said Tuesday, urging unvaccinated Americans to get the Covid-19 shots as the U.S. faces a dramatic rise in the “hypertransmissible” variant of the coronavirus. His plea included reassurances about the strength of the Covid-19 vaccines available in the U.S.Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak”Fully vaccinated Americans have a high degree of protection, including against this delta variant,” Biden said at a news briefing, pointing out that virtually all Covid-19... Read More

In the United Kingdom, children are driving the surge in delta cases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a White House Covid-19 briefing Tuesday. The delta variant accounts for more than 95 percent of cases in the U.K., he said.Vaccine clinical trials for young children are ongoing in the U.S., but currently only people 12 and up are eligible to receive the shots. Though healthy kids are at much lower risk of serious illness and death from Covid-19, they can spread the virus.“With children, the concern is transmission to others,”... Read More

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration said Thursday that it would extend the temporary bans on evictions and foreclosures for another month as the country continues to rebound from the coronavirus pandemic.The announcement comes as some states have struggled to spend the $21.5 billion in emergency rental aid included in the American Rescue Plan earlier this year, allowing states an additional month to work through a crush of applications and distribute the money before the funds expire.The pause on evictions and foreclosures for federally backed mortgages were set to expire at the end of June,... Read More

WASHINGTON — Democrats on Capitol Hill are urging President Joe Biden to extend the federal student loan payment moratorium by at least six months as the economy continues to rebound from the coronavirus pandemic.In a letter to Biden obtained by NBC News, a group of Democratic lawmakers asked him to take action before the Sept. 30 deadline when loan forbearance is set to expire, requesting he extend the pause until March 31, 2022, or until the economy bounces back to pre-pandemic employment levels, whichever period is longer.The effort is led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts; Senate... Read More

MOSCOW — Moscow’s mayor on Saturday ordered a week off for some workplaces and imposed restrictions on many businesses to fight coronavirus infections that have more than doubled in the past week.The national coronavirus task force reported 6,701 new confirmed cases in Moscow, compared with 2,936 on June 6. Nationally, the daily tally has spiked by nearly half over the past week, to 13,510.After several weeks of lockdown as the pandemic spread in the spring of 2020, the Russian capital eased restrictions and did not reimpose any during subsequent case increases. But because of the recent... Read More

LOS ANGELES, June 3 – Filming in Britain on the latest “Mission: Impossible” movie has been shut down for two weeks after some people working on the movie tested positive for the coronavirus, Paramount Pictures said on Thursday.The movie studio did not say who or how many people had tested positive but Britain’s Sun newspaper said star Tom Cruise was not among them.”We have temporarily halted production on Mission: Impossible 7 until June 14th, due to positive coronavirus test results during routine testing. We are following all safety protocols and will continue to... Read More

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma state agencies will be barred from requiring a mask or coronavirus vaccination as a condition of being allowed to enter a state building or office under an executive order signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt.“It is time to return to normal,” Stitt said in a statement after signing the order Friday. “Every Oklahoman must have access to all government services whether or not they choose to be vaccinated or wear a mask.”The order, does not apply in medical settings with patients, was announced after Stitt signed into law a bill prohibiting schools and colleges from adopting... Read More

China on Thursday hit back at President Joe Biden’s call to redouble efforts to determine the origins of the coronavirus, and dismissed a theory that it may have leaked from a laboratory in its city of Wuhan as a “conspiracy.”Chinese officials accused the U.S. of politicizing the pandemic and said that international experts had “repeatedly praised China’s open and transparent attitude” to Covid-19’s origins.”Some people in the United States completely ignore facts and science,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters Thursday.”The... Read More