A rocket heading for the moon to bring back the first lunar samples in four decades blasted off from China on Tuesday in the latest milestone for Beijing's spacefaring ambitions.

A European space rocket failed minutes after taking off with the loss of both satellites it was carrying, its operator said Tuesday.

Data indicating that a vaccine being developed against Covid-19 is highly effective is the "best science news of the year", a pharmaceutical industry association chief said, voicing hope that other vaccine candidates would show equally good results.

Denmark's prime minister announced special restrictions for more than 280,000 people in the northwest of the country on Thursday after a mutated version of the new coronavirus linked to mink farms was found in humans.

Copenhagen warned that the mutation could threaten the effectiveness of any future vaccine.

Agricultural department workers wearing protective suits have eradicated the first nest of giant "murder hornets" discovered in the United States, vacuuming them out of a tree in Washington state.

Bending the curve of nature's rapid decline will require attacking the problem aggressively along several fronts at once, leading scientists warned Thursday.

An American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts touched down safely on the Kazakhstan steppe on Thursday, completing a 196-day mission that began with the first launch under lockdown conditions.

NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner landed around 150 kilometres (90 miles) southeast of the Kazakh city of Zhezkazgan at 0254 GMT, footage broadcast by the Russian space agency Roscosmos showed.

Brazil's health minister said Tuesday the country would add the Chinese-made CoronaVac vaccine against Covid-19 to its national immunization program, despite a political and diplomatic row over whether to use it.

The International Space Station is now working normally with no danger to its occupants after the crew managed to resolve a series of technical issues overnight, Russia's space agency said Tuesday.

With competition among Earth's telecoms providers as fierce as ever, equipment maker Nokia announced its expansion into a new market on Monday, winning a deal to install the first cellular network on the Moon.