E.U. Starts Effort to Vaccinate 450 Million

  WASHINGTON — President Trump abruptly signed a measure on Sunday providing $900 billion in pandemic aid and funding the government through September, ending last-minute turmoil over a possible government shutdown and an economic lifeline for millions of Americans. The signing was a sudden reversal for the president, who last week appeared poised to derail the bill. But the move came after two critical unemployment programs lapsed, guaranteeing a delay in benefits for millions of unemployed people. His last-minute resistance last week to signing the $2.3 trillion package caught lawmakers and White House officials by surprise. It raised fears that such a delay would exacerbate the economic toll of the pandemic. The aid bill includes a revival of expanded and extended unemployment benefits, billions of dollars to help states with vaccine distribution, a replenished small-business loan program and relief money for airlines. It was passed along with a spending measure to keep the gove...

BERLIN — From nursing homes in France to hospitals in Poland, older Europeans and the workers who care for them rolled up their sleeves on Sunday to receive coronavirus vaccine shots in a campaign to inoculate more than 450 million people across the European Union. The inoculations offered a rare respite as the continent struggles with one of its most precarious moments since the pandemic began. Despite national lockdowns, restrictions on movement, shuttering of restaurants and cancellations of Christmas gatherings, the virus has stalked Europe into the dark winter months. The spread of a more contagious variant  of the virus in Britain has raised such alarm that much of continental Europe rushed to close its borders to travelers coming from the country, effectively plunging the nation  as a whole into quarantine. “Today, we start turning the page on a difficult year,” Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president wrote on Twitter. “The #COVID19 v...