USA

WASHINGTON, Aug 4 (NNN-XINHUA) – The Pentagon lifted the lockdown roughly an hour and a half after multiple gunshots were fired near the Metro bus platform, outside the building yesterday.

The Pentagon Force Protection Agency, which sent out a lockdown alert, following the “shooting event,” said that, the facility reopened and the “scene of the incident is secure” though remains an active crime scene.

The gunman was shot by a Pentagon police, and did not get inside the Pentagon building, the agency’s official said. One other officer was injured and sent to hospital.

Aug 4 (Reuters) - Coronavirus cases worldwide surpassed 200 million on Wednesday, according to a Reuters tally, as the Delta variant threatens areas with low vaccination rates.

Cases are rising in at least 83 out of 240 countries, according to the tally, and straining healthcare systems.

"While we desperately want to be done with this pandemic, COVID-19 is clearly not done with us. And so our battle must last a little longer," Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said this week.

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Starting from Tuesday, U.S. San Francisco Bay Area residents are once again required to wear masks for all in public indoor settings, regardless of vaccination status, to help stem transmission of the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus.

Health officers for seven of the nine counties in the region -- Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Sonoma, and the city of Berkeley announced the restriction on Monday.

Washington, Aug 3 (AP-PTI) The governing body of the International Monetary Fund has approved a USD 650 billion expansion in the agency's resources to support economically vulnerable countries battling the coronavirus pandemic and the economic downturn it has caused.

The 190-nation lending institution said Monday that its board of governors approved the expansion of its reserves known as Special Drawing Rights, the largest increase in the institution's history.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Pentagon police officer died after being stabbed Tuesday during a burst of violence at a transit center outside the building, and a suspect was shot by law enforcement and died at the scene.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says in a new report that the threat to international peace and security from the Islamic State extremist group is rising, pointing to an “alarming” expansion of its affiliates in Africa and its focus on a comeback in its former self-declared “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq.

The report to the U.N. Security Council, which was circulated Tuesday, said IS and other terrorist groups have taken advantage of “the disruption, grievances and development setbacks” caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, both on the ground and online.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Tuesday called on resistant Republican governors to “get out of the way” of vaccine rules aimed at containing the more transmissible and dangerous COVID-19 variant. He backed city and private mandates requiring people to be vaccinated to go about some daily activities.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A federal judge Tuesday blocked Texas from allowing state troopers to stop vehicles carrying migrants on the grounds that they may spread COVID-19 as worries and new cases are rising along the U.S.-Mexico border.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a new eviction moratorium that would last until October 3, as the Biden administration sought to quell intensifying criticism from progressives that it was allowing vulnerable renters to lose their homes during a pandemic.

NEW YORK (AP) — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo faced mounting pressure Tuesday to resign, including from President Joe Biden and other onetime Democratic allies, after an investigation found he sexually harassed nearly a dozen women and worked to retaliate against one of his accusers.

“I think he should resign,” Biden told reporters Tuesday, echoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and New York’s U.S. Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, all Democrats.