Érico Andrei

KLM announced on Friday it would begin offering Covid-19 tested flights between Amsterdam and Atlanta. The Dutch airline is the latest example of a European company adopting a testing strategy to increase passenger confidence in flying amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Under the KLM plan, travellers receive one test five days before their flight, another shortly before the flight, and a third after landing.

"Until an approved working vaccine is available worldwide, this testing program represents the first step towards the international travel industry's recovery," KLM CEO Pieter Elbers said in a statement.

Hungary will still reject any attempt to link the rule of law the European Union's budget and its coronavirus recovery fund, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Friday.

The Hungarian and the Polish governments are under EU investigations for undermining the independence of courts, media and non-governmental organisations, so they risk losing tens of billions in funds. Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Paweł Jabłoński told DW that his government will never accept any proposal that "would effectively leave us at the mercy of the European Commission."

The US President-elect Joe Biden has said he will ask Americans to wear masks for his first 100 days in office to curtail the spread of coronavirus.

Constitutional experts say a US president has no legal authority to order Americans to wear masks. Still, Mr Biden said during the interview he and his Vice-President Kamala Harris would set an example by donning face coverings.

A new security breach in the Ministry of Health's covid-19 notification system left personal data of over 200 million Brazilians exposed on the internet for at least six months. It was not only patients diagnosed with Covid-19 who had their privacy violated, as occurred in another exposure case reported last week. This time, the personal information of any Brazilian registered with SUS or beneficiary of a health plan was open for consultation.

"Each time you stop and go through the Ministry of Health's information security and data management policy, you find a more serious vulnerability. At the time of our complaint, we asked for an audit and received no response. Clearly, they have not taken and are not yet taking the treatment of data from millions of Brazilians seriously," says Fernanda Campagnucci, executive director of the NGO Open Knowledge Brasil (OKBR).

The UK will be the first country in the West to offer a Covid-19 vaccine to the public after the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) approved the vaccine in record time. The vaccine is expected to be rolled out from next week.

"The Government has today accepted the recommendation from the Independent Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to approve Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine for use," the government said.

The UK has already ordered 40m doses - enough to vaccinate 20m people, and 10m doses should be available soon, with the first 800,000 arriving in the UK in the coming days.

The Republican-led Texas' Board of Education voted Friday that students will be taught about "the central role of the expansion of slavery in causing sectionalism, disagreements over states' rights and the Civil War." University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley historian David Fisher was part of a work group that gave the board suggested revisions. Lawrence Paska, executive director of the National Council for the Social Studies, says what those students learn in school has a big impact on how they understand history and current events.

Elliot Page, who earned Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for his starring role in "Juno" after breaking out in the 2005 film "Hard Candy," came out as transgender on Tuesday, sharing the news in a long social media post.

Page, who has been credited in film and TV roles as Ellen Page, currently stars in Netflix’s hit superhero series "The Umbrella Academy".

Shortly after Page's announcement, GLAAD (the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) posted a tweet noting that the actor "has given us fantastic characters on-screen, and has been an outspoken advocate for all LGBTQ people".

President-elect Joe Biden on Sunday tapped Jen Psaki, a former White House communications director in the Obama administration, to be the new White House Press Secretary. In addition, deputy Biden campaign manager Kate Bedingfield will serve as communications director as the head of an all-female communications team when Biden takes office on Jan. 20, 2021

"I am proud to announce today the first senior White House communications team comprised entirely of women," Mr Biden said in a statement. "These qualified, experienced communicators bring diverse perspectives to their work and a shared commitment to building this country back better."

Hamilton, who celebrated his seventh title two weeks ago, had a comfortable 0.289 seconds lead to Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas and collected the 98th pole of his Formula 1 career.

Red Bull's Max Verstappen and Alexander Albon were third and fourth, with Sergio Perez in the fifth position.

Renault's Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon were sixth and seventh, separated by just 0.002secs, ahead of Alpha Tauri's Pierre Gasly and McLaren's Lando Norris.

Police fired tear gas in the French capital after thousands of critics of a proposed security law that would restrict sharing images of police officers in France joined a demonstration in Paris.

The crowd included journalists, journalism students, left-wing activists, migrants rights groups and citizens of varied political stripes expressing anger over what they perceive as a hardening police tactics in recent years, especially since France's Yellow Vest protests against economic hardship in 2018.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday said images of police beating a Black music producer in Paris put "shame" on the country, with top politicians and sportsmen expressing outrage over the incident.