China's leaders effectively acknowledged the struggling economy won't hit its official 5.5% growth target this year and said Thursday they will try to prop up sagging consumer demand but will stick to strict anti-COVID-19 tactics that disrupted manufacturing and trade.

The announcement after a Communist Party planning meeting reflected the high cost President Xi Jinping's government has been willing to incur to stop the virus in a politically sensitive year when Xi is widely expected to try to extend his term in power.

New research by a team of international experts has found that people playing contact sports such as American football, rugby and soccer face a dramatically elevated risk of developing degenerative brain diseases, a statement said Tuesday.

Japan on Monday confirmed its first case of monkeypox, detected in a man in his 30s who had travelled overseas, Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike announced.

The expanding monkeypox outbreak in more than 70 countries is an "extraordinary" situation that qualifies as a global emergency, the World Health Organization chief said, a declaration that could spur further investment in treating the once-rare disease and worsen the scramble for scarce vaccines.

A global emergency is WHO's highest level of alert but the designation does not necessarily mean a disease is particularly transmissible or lethal. Similar declarations were made for the Zika virus in 2016 in Latin America and the ongoing effort to eradicate polio, in addition to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

As the World Health Organization's emergency committee convenes Thursday to consider for the second time within weeks whether to declare monkeypox a global crisis, some scientists say the striking differences between the outbreaks in Africa and in developed countries will complicate any coordinated response.

African officials say they are already treating the continent's epidemic as an emergency. But experts elsewhere say the mild version of monkeypox in Europe, North America and beyond makes an emergency declaration unnecessary even if the virus can't be stopped. British officials recently downgraded their assessment of the disease, given its lack of severity.

Freddy Fernandez almost wasn't here, on his couch in his Missouri home, his baby on his lap, gnawing on the pulse oximeter that he uses to check his oxygen levels after a months-long bout with COVID-19.

China's economy contracted in the three months ending in June compared with the previous quarter after Shanghai and other cities shut down to fight coronavirus outbreaks, but the government said a "stable recovery" is under way after businesses reopened.

The world's second-largest economy shrank by 2.6%, down from the January-March period's already weak 1.4%, official data showed Friday. Compared with a year earlier, which can hide recent fluctuations, growth slid to 0.4% from the earlier quarter's 4.8%.

Fresh waves of Covid-19 cases show that the pandemic is "nowhere near over," the World Health Organization's chief warned Tuesday.

The quickly changing coronavirus has spawned yet another super contagious omicron mutant that's worrying scientists as it gains ground in India and pops up in numerous other countries, including the United States.

Scientists say the variant – called BA.2.75 – may be able to spread rapidly and get around immunity from vaccines and previous infection. It's unclear whether it could cause more serious disease than other omicron variants, including the globally prominent BA.5.

Hong Kong announced Thursday it is shelving a COVID-19 measure that has resulted in dozens of canceled flights in recent months and thwarted travel plans for thousands.

Starting Thursday, the city will no longer ban arriving airline flights just because they'd brought in passengers infected with COVID-19, the government announced.