Becky Sullivan

Samoa will be led by a female prime minister for the first time in its history after an appeals court ruling ended a months-long constitutional crisis in the Pacific island nation.

In a major escalation of pressure on NFL teams to vaccinate as many players as possible before the start of this fall's season, the NFL says that teams will forfeit and be slapped with a loss if a game is cancelled because of a COVID-19 outbreak among their unvaccinated players — and neither team's players will be paid.

CIA Director William Burns says he has redoubled the agency's efforts to uncover the cause of Havana syndrome — the mysterious set of ailments that has afflicted more than 200 U.S. officials and family members around the world.

There is broad agreement that the restaurant industry is rife with sexual harassment.

The University of North Carolina has become the first college athletics program to organize group licensing deals for its current student athletes, in the latest development of the sea change transforming college athletics.

The death rate from COVID-19 in the U.S. is rising steadily for the first time in months as the nation grapples with a renewed burst of cases in what's become "a pandemic of the unvaccinated," the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.

The seven-day average of new cases has increased by nearly 70% to almost 30,000 per day; hospitalizations are up 36%. And deaths from the virus have risen steadily in recent days, reversing a months-long downward trend that began in mid-January.

With Euro 2020 and the Stanley Cup in the books, the NBA Finals nearing an end, baseball past the All-Star break, and the Olympics a week away — sports are running full steam ahead, even as cases of COVID-19 tick up across the U.S.

Many stadiums and arenas in the U.S. have allowed fans to return at full capacity with many dropping mask requirements following a year of pandemic restrictions that prevented spectators and travel.

Plans for the Tokyo Olympics, which bring together athletes from around the world, are going ahead as scheduled next week.

A new Minnesota executive order sets out to protect minors in the state from so-called "conversion therapy," circumventing multiple defeats of statewide proposals in the Minnesota state legislature.

The new order, signed Thursday by Gov. Tim Walz, seeks to limit minors' access to the practice, which aims to convert a person's sexual orientation or gender identity to heterosexual or cisgender. The therapy is widely discredited by medical experts.

The U.S. will begin flying Afghan nationals who supported U.S. and coalition operations in Afghanistan, according to a senior Biden administration official. Evacuation flights will begin in the last week of July.

During the 20-year war in Afghanistan, thousands of Afghan citizens served as interpreters, provided intelligence and assisted the U.S. and its coalition partners as drivers, security guards and in other roles.

With just nine days left until this year's Summer Olympics begin in Tokyo, the coronavirus pandemic has forced a change to yet another longstanding tradition of the Games.

Out is the traditional, familiar medal presentation, where athletes, standing atop a podium, dip their heads as dignitaries drape gold, silver or bronze medals over their necks.

In: a contactless medal ceremony.

In Springfield, Mo., firefighters are giving vaccine shots. Churches are scrambling to schedule vaccine clinics. Students and staff at summer school at the public schools are back to wearing masks.

Dozens of traveling nurses are due to arrive at one of the city's two biggest hospitals over the coming weeks; extra ventilators from around Missouri and Arkansas were transported to the other major hospital after it ran short over the July Fourth weekend.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Prince William are denouncing the racist harassment of Black players for England's national soccer team following the team's loss Sunday in the Euro 2020 championship.

England's highest-profile soccer organizations are now urging consequences for the torrent of harassment, which began almost instantly after England's loss to Italy, 3-2 on penalty kicks. The game marked England's first international finals appearance in more than 50 years.

As baseball's All-Star festivities begin Monday night in Denver, a new political attack ad is hoping to remind viewers that the game was once supposed to be held in Georgia.

Lawyers representing 10 Sandy Hook families in a lawsuit against Remington Arms Co. have accused the gun-maker of deliberately slowing the discovery process by filing tens of thousands of seemingly unrelated images and videos.

Two dramatic trends that for years have defined the shifting landscape of religion in America — a shrinking white Christian majority, alongside the rise of religiously unaffiliated Americans — have stabilized, according to a new, massive survey of American religious practice.