The government of Spain's Catalonia region on Sunday ordered residents in and around the northeastern town of Lerida to go back into home confinement as cases of coronavirus spiked. "The people must stay at home," regional health official Alba Verges told a news conference. The area,...

Recoveries from the novel coronavirus in Russia crossed half a million on Sunday. Over the last 24 hours, 3,615 people were discharged from hospitals, bringing the number of cured patients to 501,061, the country’s emergency task force said in a daily report. Over the same period, 6,615...

Voters in Poland headed to the polls on Sunday for the second round of presidential election after no candidate achieved the 50% needed for an all-out victory in the first round. Poland's President Andrzej Duda topped the first round of voting with 43.5% while his rival Rafal Trzaskowski,...

Russia's forest service said there were nearly 300 wildfires blazing across the vast country's northern wilderness on Saturday, as it attempted to contain them with methods including explosives and cloud seeding. Freakishly warm weather across large swathes of Siberia since January,...

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic accused "criminal hooligans" Thursday of driving the violence in protests that have erupted in Belgrade and other cities over the government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Clouds of tear gas and smoke filled central Belgrade Wednesday evening for...

With a new cabinet full of rightwing stalwarts, French President Emmanuel Macron is betting that his 2022 re-election hopes are best built on a conservative base that wants economic recovery to be the priority, analysts say. After his centrist party's rout in municipal elections last month...

The Louvre, the world's most visited museum, reopens after its coronavirus closure Monday, but with nearly a third of its galleries still shut. The vast former palace of France's kings has lost more than 40 million euros ($45 million) in ticket sales during the near-four-month lockdown, and...

Britain will spend nearly $2 billion to help theatres, art galleries and other cultural institutions survive the coronavirus crisis, the government has said. The British arts and culture sector has been hit hard by the pandemic, with live performances still off the cards for now and venues...

Croatians went to polls Sunday to choose a government to navigate the ongoing coronavirus pandemic in a general election campaign that has been dominated by the health crisis. The pandemic has put the European Union country's tourism-dependent economy on course for a contraction of nearly...

French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday named Jean Castex, who coordinated France’s virus reopening strategy, as the country’s new prime minister. The relatively low-profile Castex replaces Edouard Philippe, who resigned earlier in the day. Macron is reshuffling the government to focus...

A new French prime minister will be named in the next few hours, the Elysee Palace said on Friday, as President Emmanuel Macron readies a reshuffle. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe resigned earlier on Friday, a formal first step in any cabinet revamp. It was not immediately clear whether he...

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez encouraged residents to leave their homes, as the Health Ministry reported 444 more COVID-19 infections on Thursday. The number of new cases has been rising every day since Tuesday, hitting 2,016 over the last seven days, the highest since June 11. A...

Russians looked set Wednesday to overwhelmingly approve constitutional changes that will allow President Vladimir Putin to extend his two-decade rule until 2036. Early results from six days of national voting that ends Wednesday showed more than 70 percent of voters backing the reforms,...

Russians are set to approve constitutional reforms on Wednesday denounced by critics as a manoeuvre to allow President Vladimir Putin to stay in the Kremlin for life. The changes were passed weeks ago by Russia's parliament and copies of the new constitution are already on sale in...

Germany takes over the European Union's six-month presidency Wednesday, with outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel staking her legacy on a massive economic recovery plan to help the bloc cope with the coronavirus fallout. Merkel's last major role on the international stage comes as the...

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday urged Russians to take part in a nationwide vote on constitutional reforms to ensure "stability, security and prosperity". In a televised address before the week-long ballot ends on Wednesday, Putin said Russians should vote for the country "we want to...

The wife of one of two Canadians imprisoned in China said Sunday she is "disappointed" by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's refusal to consider a swap for a detained Huawei executive facing extradition to the United States. Trudeau firmly rejected appeals that he intervene in the extradition...

Iceland's President Gudni Johannesson has been re-elected with a whopping 92 percent of the vote, according to final results released on Sunday. The former history professor won his second four-year term in the largely symbolic position in Saturday's vote, the second election held by a...

Prime Minister Boris Johnson will this week pledge to spend billions on infrastructure to revive the British economy in the face of the coronavirus crisis, media reports and ministers said Sunday. In an interview with the Mail on Sunday newspaper, Johnson said there would be no return to...

France's ruling party is expected Sunday to be handed a stinging rebuke by voters in the final round of local elections, the first big political test for President Emmanuel Macron since the coronavirus crisis began to ease. The first round controversially went ahead on March 15 just as the...