China has ordered inhabitants of the southern city of Baise to stay home and suspended transportation links amid a surge in COVID-19 cases at least partly linked to the omicron variant.

Classes have been suspended, non-essential businesses closed and mass testing of residents ordered. Restaurants are only permitted to serve take-out. Traffic lights have been switched to red only to remind drivers to stay home.

Thailand on Tuesday moved one step closer toward being the first Asian nation to decriminalize marijuana, after its health minister signed a measure officially dropping cannabis from a list of controlled drugs.

The delisting will mean all parts of cannabis, including flowers and seeds, are allowed to be used in Thailand. However, extracted content will remain illegal if it contains more than 0.2% of the psychoactive ingredient that produces a "high" — tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC.

COVID-19 vaccine sales boosted Pfizer earnings well past expectations in the fourth quarter, but the drugmaker is setting a lower-than-expected bar for 2022.

Pfizer debuted on Tuesday annual forecasts for both earnings and revenue that fell short of analyst expectations even as the drugmaker expects another robust year of sales from its vaccine, Comirnaty, and its new coronavirus treatment, Paxlovid.

The World Health Organization and the Commonwealth of Nations issued a joint plea Monday for vulnerable small states to get better access to Covid jabs to help revive their economies.

The head of the World Health Organization has met Chinese Premier Li Keqiang for talks on Covid-19, including on the stalled investigation into the pandemic's origins.

Spain will end the mandatory use of face masks outdoors on February 8, a minister said Friday, ending a measure reimposed in late December to tackle a surge in Omicron cases.

A Winter Olympics overshadowed by rights concerns and taking place inside a strict Covid-secure bubble will officially begin in Beijing on Friday with an opening ceremony at the "Bird's Nest" stadium.

The director of the World Health Organization's Europe office said Thursday the continent is now entering a "plausible endgame" to the pandemic and that the number of coronavirus deaths is starting to plateau.

Dr. Hans Kluge said at a media briefing that there is a "singular opportunity" for countries across Europe to take control of COVID-19 transmission due to three factors: high levels of immunization due to vaccination and natural infection, the virus's tendency to spread less in warmer weather and the lower severity of the omicron variant.

Not too long ago, Ehud Olmert was trying to lead Israel to a historic peace agreement. These days, the former Israeli prime minister is pushing a different message: legalize marijuana.

Olmert is among a group of former Israeli leaders and security chiefs who have found new careers in the country's tightly controlled medical cannabis industry. They hope not only to cash in on the local market, but also to clear the way for the country's major marijuana producers to export.

Portugal's center-left Socialist Party won a third straight general election, returning it to power as the country prepares to deploy billions of euros (dollars) of European Union aid for the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a ballot that took place amid a surge of coronavirus cases blamed on the omicron variant, and with around 1 million infected voters allowed to leave home to cast their ballots, the Socialists elected at least 112 lawmakers in the 230-seat parliament.