* Britain on Tuesday reported its highest number of deaths and people in hospital with the coronavirus since March, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson urging caution despite a week of lower reported numbers of infection.

* Ireland became the latest European Union member state to commit to offering COVID-19 vaccines to children aged 12-15 as it opened its strongly subscribed program to 16 and 17-year olds on Tuesday.

ASIA-PACIFIC

* The Indian government expects to have around 150 million vaccine doses in August, Vinod Kumar Paul, who heads a federal government panel on vaccines, told a news conference on Tuesday.

* Victoria. Australia will lift a strict lockdown, while New South Wales faces an extension of restrictions after daily new cases spiked to a 16-month peak.

* The Czech Republic is donating 30,000 vaccine doses to Taiwan, the island's president said.

AMERICAS

* US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday his administration is considering whether to require US federal employees to be vaccinated.

* Argentina's government has signed a deal with US pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc to acquire 20 million doses of vaccines to be delivered this year, Health Minister Carla Vizzotti told reporters on Tuesday.

* Moderna said its vaccine manufacturing partners outside the United States are facing delays due to laboratory testing operations that have occurred in the past few days, slowing the supply of the shot to these markets.

MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

* Israel is considering giving a third shot of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to its elderly population even before FDA approval to help fend off the Delta variant.

* Libya's government imposed a two-week curfew in some local councils.

* Iran's cases hit a record high for the second time in as many days on Tuesday, rising to almost 35,000, as the health minister warned there was little hope of improvement unless the public followed health precautions, state TV reported.

MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS

* The International Monetary Fund cut this year's economic growth forecast for emerging Asia, as a spike in coronavirus cases from new variants and slow vaccinations cloud the region's recovery prospects.

* Antibodies triggered by Sinovac Biotech's SVA.O COVID-19 vaccine declined below a key threshold from around six months after a second dose for most recipients, but a third shot had a strong booster effect, a lab study showed.

* Russia has given the green light for clinical trials combining a British shot from AstraZeneca and Oxford University with Russia's Sputnik V vaccine to go ahead.

ECONOMIC IMPACT

* Asia's stock markets fell to fresh troughs on Tuesday led by a third straight session of heavy selling in Chinese internet giants, while bond and currency markets traded on edge ahead of the Federal Reserve policy meeting.

* Profit growth at China's industrial firms slowed for the fourth straight month in June, as high raw material prices weighed on factories' margins.

* Japan saw the prices companies charge each other for services rise for the fourth straight month in June.

GLOBAL

CASES 195,903,787

DEATHS 4,192,040

RECOVERED 177,547,380

Australian Associated Press