The full story on Scott Atlas’s resignation now: Australia has welcomed its first group of international students to arrive since the coronavirus pandemic began, with more due to follow, AP reports. A charter flight carrying 63 students from mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Vietnam and Indonesia landed Monday in the northern city of Darwin. The students will all attend Charles Darwin University, with some new to the campus and others previously enrolled. They are part of a pilot program aimed at boosting the local economy and providing a template for international students to arrive in other parts of Australia. The arrival comes amid growing tensions between Australia and China after a Chinese official this week posted a fake image on Twitter of an Australian soldier appearing to slit a child’s throat. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called the image “repugnant” and demanded an apology from the Chinese government, but China has not backed down. The post took aim at alleged abuses by Australian soldiers during the conflict in Afghanistan. The arriving students were required to undertake a pre-departure health screening and have been placed in a quarantine facility for two weeks before they can begin attending classes. Scott Atlas resigns as special adviser to Trump on coronavirus Dr. Scott Atlas has resigned as special adviser to President Donald Trump, a White House official said on Monday, after a controversial four months during which he clashed repeatedly with other members of the coronavirus task force. “I am writing to resign from my position as Special Advisor to the President of the United States,” Atlas said in a letter to Trump dated 1 December, according to Fox News, which first reported his resignation. Atlas, a neuroradiologist, apologised on Twitter this month for giving an interview to Russia’s Kremlin-backed television station RT, saying he was unaware it was a registered foreign agent in the United States. Atlas has been sharply criticised by public health experts, including Anthony Fauci, the leading US infectious disease expert, for providing Trump with misleading or incorrect information on the virus pandemic. He has repeatedly downplayed the importance of face masks and this month said lockdowns had been “an epic failure” in stopping its spread. His views on the handling the pandemic have been denounced by his peers at Stanford University’s medical school and elsewhere. China gave Covid-19 vaccine candidate to Kim Jong Un China has provided North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his family with an experimental coronavirus vaccine, a US analyst said on Tuesday, citing two unidentified Japanese intelligence sources. Reuters: Harry Kazianis, a North Korea expert at the Center for the National Interest think tank in Washington, said the Kims and several senior North Korean officials had been vaccinated. It was unclear which company had supplied its drug candidate to the Kims and whether it had proven to be safe, he added. North Korea has not confirmed any coronavirus infections, but South Korea’s National Intelligence Service has said an outbreak there cannot be ruled out as the country had trade and people-to-people exchanges with China - the source of the pandemic - before shutting the border in late January. Microsoft said last month that two North Korean hacking groups had tried to break into the network of vaccine developers in multiple countries, without specifying the companies targeted. Sources told Reuters they included British drugmaker AstraZeneca. The NIS said last week it had foiled North Korea’s attempts to hack into South Korean Covid-19 vaccine makers. In these extraordinary times, the Guardian’s editorial independence has never been more important. Because no one sets our agenda, or edits our editor, we can keep delivering quality, trustworthy, fact-checked journalism each and every day. Free from commercial or political influence, we can report fearlessly on world events and challenge those in power. Your support protects the Guardian’s independence. We believe every one of us deserves equal access to accurate news and calm explanation. No matter how unpredictable the future feels, we will remain with you, delivering high quality news so we can all make critical decisions about our lives, health and security – based on fact, not fiction. Support the Guardian from as little as $1 – and it only takes a minute. Thank you. UN tourism body urges uniformity in virus travel rules The World Tourism Organization called Monday for the standardisation of traveller health checks and the establishment of air corridors to ease international travel during the pandemic, AFP reports. The call came at a conference in Spain’s Canary Islands as the global tourism industry reels from a year in which travel restrictions to slow the coronavirus pandemic have decimated the sector. “We call for the adoption of international protocols for Covid-19 tests before departure and the acceptance of the results upon arrival,” the UN body said in joint statement with the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and the Spanish tourism ministry. The statement came at the end of a one-day conference grouping representatives of more than 95 countries and more than 100 companies that was held in Las Palmas on Gran Canaria. It also called for agreements to develop “international travel corridors to facilitate tourism and business travel between countries and cities with similar epidemiological situations”. The text also warned that until a vaccine or treatment for Covid-19 was widely available, “tens of millions of jobs (in tourism) would likely be lost”. And it called for “an international standard for contact tracing”. Just over a month ago, the WTO said international tourists arrivals plunged by an annualised 70 percent during the first eight months of 2020 because of the pandemic. US may begin vaccinations before Christmas After a Thanksgiving weekend when the number of people traveling through US airports reached its highest since mid-March, a top government official said on Monday some Americans could begin receiving coronavirus vaccinations before Christmas, Reuters reports. US Health Secretary Alex Azar said Pfizer Inc’s Covid-19 vaccine could be authorised and shipped within days of a Dec. 10 meeting of outside advisers to the Food and Drug Administration tasked with reviewing trial data and recommending whether it warrants approval. A vaccine from Moderna Inc could follow a week later, he said, after the company announced on Monday it would apply for US and European emergency authorization. Final trial data showed the vaccine to be 94.1% effective at preventing Covid-19, comparable with Pfizer’s results. “So we could be seeing both of these vaccines out and getting into people’s arms before Christmas,” Azar said on CBS’ “This Morning.” The federal government will ship the vaccines. State governors will decide how they are distributed within their states. The United States has reported 4.2 million new Covid-19 cases so far in November and more than 36,000 coronavirus-related deaths, according to a Reuters tally. Hospitalizations are at a pandemic high and deaths the most in six months. Samoa’s two positive Covid-19 cases have been declared historical cases and not infectious. Samoa’s two positive Covid-19 cases have been declared historical cases and not infectious. The cases were detected in a 70-year-old who had travelled from Melbourne in Australia, and a sailor repatriated from Italy. Both Samoan citizens arrived in Apia on a repatriation flight on November 13, and subsequently tested positive for the novel coronavirus. But further examination of their cases has found they were both historical: the sailor had the virus in May and the Australian-based man in August. Blood samples from the two cases were sent to New Zealand: results showed low viral counts for both, and the cases were deemed not to be infectious. Samoa’s director-general of health, Leausa Dr Take Naseri, said the two positive cases, and the rest of the 274 passengers who arrived in Samoa on the same flight, will have to remain in quarantine for an additional seven days as a precaution. Leausa said all front-line workers at the airport, including health staff, police, and airport crew had been tested and cleared of the coronavirus. Samoa has recorded no other cases of the coronavirus. Elsewhere in the Pacific, the Mariana Islands has recorded 106 cases, 80 of which have been imported to the islands, mainly from the US mainland and the US territory of Guam. Fiji has recorded four more cases, all in border quarantine. But French Polynesia, one of the worst affected territories in the Pacific, has surpassed 14,000 cases, and 73 deaths. 82 people remain in hospital, including 21 in intensive care. France has flown out additional medical personnel to assist with the surge in cases. All but 62 of the 14,096 confirmed cases across French Polynesia came after the archipelago re-opened its borders in July and abolished mandatory quarantine. Vietnam reports first community virus in almost three months Vietnam reported its first local transmission of Covid-19 in nearly three months on Monday, with officials scrambling to prevent a wider outbreak in the country’s most populous city. Vietnam was applauded earlier this year for controlling the pandemic with strict restrictions on movement, extensive quarantine measures and a robust track-and-trace regime. But late on Monday the health ministry announced that that it had detected coronavirus in a 32-year-old man in Ho Chi Minh City, a relative of a Vietnam Airlines flight attendant who tested positive on the weekend. “A temporary lockdown has been made on locations (in the city) where the patient had visited,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that dozens of people in contact with the latest case had been put under quarantine. Vietnam has recorded just 1,347 coronavirus cases and 35 deaths across a country of 95 million. Life has almost returned to normal in the country over the past almost three months, despite a summer outbreak centred on the beach resort city of Danang that put health authorities back on high alert. Summary Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan. You can find me (and a picture of my dog) on Twitter @helenrsullivan. After a Thanksgiving weekend when the number of people traveling through US airports reached its highest since mid-March, a top government official said on Monday some Americans could begin receiving coronavirus vaccinations before Christmas. US Health Secretary Alex Azar said Pfizer Inc’s Covid-19 vaccine could be authorized and shipped within days of a Dec. 10 meeting of outside advisers to the Food and Drug Administration tasked with reviewing trial data and recommending whether it warrants approval. Meanwhile Vietnam reported its first local transmission of Covid-19 in nearly three months on Monday, with officials scrambling to prevent a wider outbreak in the country’s most populous city. Here are the other key developments from the last few hours: The director general of the World Health Organization has warned that spending time with friends and family at Christmas is “not worth putting them or yourself at risk”. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the body’s director general, said people should consider whether travelling during the festive period is necessary. France has seen its death toll rise by 406 to 52,731. Its health ministry said there were 4,005 new cases, fewer than on Sunday. It has also seen a fall in people in intensive care, and in the numbers admitted to hospital due to the virus. The country’s seven-day average of daily new infections stands at 11,118, an almost two-month low. Brazil’s health ministry has confirmed 21,138 new cases of Covid-19 and 287 deaths. Earlier on Monday, the WHO urged its government to be “very, very serious” about its rising coronavirus infection numbers, as more than 170,000 have now been killed. Opec will hold a second day of talks on Tuesday, as the oil producers’ club hopes to reach an agreement over cuts to production. Demand has been affected by the pandemic, with the current Opec president, Abdelmadjid Attar, saying it had caused “immense challenges”. Rating agency Moody’s has said that most countries still face a “significant negative shock” from the pandemic, and vaccine trials have not caused it to change its forecasts. Labour will abstain in a vote on England’s new coronavirus tier system on Tuesday over a disagreement on support for the hospitality sector. Colombia will keep its land and river borders closed until 16 January in an attempt to stem Covid’s spread. Serbia is to start tests of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, as it continues talks with Pfizer about purchasing the jab. Laboratories will get 20 doses this week for testing, according to a statement from the country’s prime minister, Ana Brnabić. Mexico is in a “bad shape” as coronavirus cases and deaths surge, according to the WHO. The country’s death rally is now more than 105,500 and confirmed cases have passed 1.1 million. Public health experts believe it is likely to be significantly higher.