ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The mayor of the Florida city of Orlando asked residents on Friday to stop watering their lawns and washing their cars immediately, saying water usage needed to be cut back because of the recent surge of COVID-19 hospitalizations. The Orlando Utility Commission treats the city’s water with liquid oxygen and supplies […]

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas’ lieutenant governor blamed rising hospitalization and death rates from COVID-19 on unvaccinated Black people — comments that were quickly denounced as racist. Republican Lt. Governor Dan Patrick made the remarks Thursday night on a Fox News segment in response to question about the latest coronavirus surge in Texas. The state […]

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — A Border Police undercover soldier was critically injured during riots by Palestinians on the Gaza border on Saturday afternoon. The soldier was transferred by helicopter to Soroka hospital where he is being treated for gunshot wounds. Hundreds of Palestinians rioted near the Gaza border, throwing explosive devices and gasoline bombs at IDF […]

GENEVA (AP) — The World Health Organization has issued a call for experts to join a new advisory group it’s forming, in part to address the agency’s fraught attempts to investigate how the coronavirus pandemic started. In a statement on Friday, the U.N. health agency said the new scientific group would provide the WHO with […]

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — As quickly as one COVID patient is discharged, another waits for a bed in northeast Florida, the hot zone of the state’s latest surge. But the patients at Baptist Health’s five hospitals across Jacksonville are younger and getting sick from the virus faster than people did last summer. Baptist has over […]

 The Argentines who placed stones in front of the Casa Rosada government building this week were marking a grim milestone in their country’s COVID-19 experience: crossing the 100,000-death threshold. They were also echoing a Jewish ritual whose telltale signs — small rocks perched atop gravestones — can be seen in any Jewish cemetery around the […]

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Millions of students in Florida, Texas and Arizona are now required to wear masks in class as school boards in mostly Democratic areas have defied their Republican governors and made face coverings mandatory. The three states are all hot spots in the nation’s recent COVID-19 surge, and defiant boards in […]

WASHINGTON — Amid the chaos and confusion at the airport, the United States said it had taken at least one step to ease requirements for those seeking to leave: COVID-19 tests. Although Afghanistan had been a hotspot for the coronavirus pandemic, the State Department said Thursday that evacuees are not required to get a negative […]

NEW YORK (AP) – The day before he was supposed to start fourth grade, Francisco Rosales was admitted to a Dallas hospital with COVID-19, struggling to breathe, with dangerously low oxygen levels and an uncertain outcome. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, thought his frightened mother, Yessica Gonzalez. Francisco was normally healthy and rambunctious. […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Three senators said Thursday they have tested positive for COVID-19 despite being vaccinated, a high-profile collection of breakthrough cases that comes as the highly infectious delta variant spreads rapidly across the United States. Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., all said they have tested positive for the […]