The U.S. government will pay drug maker Pfizer $5.29 billion for 10 million treatment courses of its potential COVID-19 treatment if regulators approve it.

Pfizer asked the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday to authorize the experimental pill, which has been shown to significantly cut the rate of hospitalizations and deaths among people with coronavirus infections.

Authorities have been investigating the death of a pilot who crashed while fighting a wildfire near Rocky Mountain National Park at night, the second person to die amid wind-driven, late season wildfires in the Rockies this week.

The pilot of the single-engine air tanker was found dead Tuesday night south of Estes Park about three hours after authorities received reports of a crash, the Larimer County Sheriff's Office said. The pilot was the only person on board, it said.

The Canadian Pacific coast province of British Columbia has declared a state of emergency following floods and mudslides caused by extremely heavy rainfall, and officials said they expected to find more dead.

Every major route between the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, where Canada's third largest city of Vancouver is, and the interior of the province has been cut by washouts, flooding or landslides following record-breaking rain across southern British Columbia between Saturday and Monday. The body of a woman was recovered from one of the mudslides late Monday.

Taiwan has deployed the most advanced version of the F-16 fighter jet in its air force, as the self-ruled island steps up its defense capabilities in the face of continuing threats from China, which claims it as part of its territory.

Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen commissioned into service 64 upgraded F-16V fighter jets at an air force base in Chiayi on Thursday. The aircraft represent part of Taiwan's total 141 F-16 A/B jets, an older model from the 1990s that will be completely retrofitted by the end of 2023.

Chinese coast guard ships blocked and sprayed a powerful stream of water at two Philippine boats carrying supplies to troops at a disputed South China Sea shoal, prompting Manila to order Beijing's ships to back off and warn that its supply vessels are covered by a mutual defense treaty with the United States, Manila's top diplomat said Thursday.

Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said no one was hurt in the incident on Tuesday, but the two supply ships had to abort their mission to provide food to Filipino forces occupying Second Thomas Shoal, which lies off western Palawan province in the Philippines' internationally recognized exclusive economic zone.

Loss of habitat and poaching have made African forest elephants a critically endangered species. Yet the dense forests of sparsely populated Gabon in the Congo River Basin remain a "last stronghold" of the magnificent creatures, according to new research that concluded the population is much higher than previous estimates.

Counting forest elephants is a far bigger challenge than surveying plains-dwelling savanna elephants from the air. It takes difficult and dirty scientific work that doesn't involve laying eyes on the elusive animals that flee at the slightest whiff of human scent.

Air pollution remained extremely high in the Indian capital on Thursday, a day after authorities closed schools indefinitely and shut some power stations to reduce smog that has blanketed the city for much of the month.

New Delhi's air quality remained "very poor," according to SAFAR, India's main environmental monitoring agency. The concentration of tiny airborne particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter — known as PM 2.5 — neared 300 micrograms per cubic meter in some parts of the city, it said.

A video has emerged showing an Israeli soldier lining up school-aged Palestinian children and photographing them in a nighttime raid on their home. The video shines a light on the military's tactics in the occupied West Bank, which activists say violate Palestinian rights.

The video was released Wednesday by the Israeli rights group B'tselem and shows soldiers in a Palestinian home after dark. The Palestinian adults are seen gathering up the children from the home — some of them appearing to have been roused from sleep — and ushering them onto a balcony. A girl is seen crying, and a woman comforts her by saying "it's just routine."

Israel has charged a domestic worker employed by the country's defense minister with espionage for allegedly offering to use his proximity to the minister to relay information to Iran, Israel's domestic security agency Shin Bet said Thursday.

The man, identified as Omri Goren, worked at Defense Minister Benny Gantz' home as a cleaner and caretaker. The Shin Bet said he initiated contact with an unnamed "Iranian entity" though social media, sending photos of different items around the house including pictures of the minister's computer.

More than 400 Iraqis sought to fly home from Belarus on Thursday, abandoning their hopes of reaching the European Union following more than a week of tensions at the bloc's eastern border where hundreds of migrants remain stuck.

A plane carrying an unknown number is expected to depart from Minsk in the early afternoon and make two stops — one in the city of Erbil and another in the capital, Baghdad. A total of 430 Iraqis have registered for flights home, and most of those were already at the airport, according to Iraq's consul in Russia Majid al-Kilani.