The capture of Shusha would be a major victory for Azerbaijan six weeks after new fighting erupted over Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave that broke away from Azerbaijan's control in the 1990s.
The fortress town sits on cliffs around 15 kilometres (nine miles) from Nagorno-Karabakh's largest city Stepanakert and on the main road through the region to the territory of Armenia, which backs the separatists.
Both sides have reported fierce clashes around the town in recent days, after Azerbaijani forces swept across the southern flank of Nagorno-Karabakh and pushed through its mountain passes.
In a televised address to the nation on Sunday, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced that the town had been captured.
"With great pride and joy, I inform you that the town of Shusha has been liberated," said Aliyev, dressed in military fatigues and standing in front of an Azerbaijani flag.
"Our liberation march continues. We will go to the end, until the complete liberation of the occupied territories," Aliyev said.
Flag-waving Azerbaijanis celebrated in the capital Baku after Aliyev's announcement, with cars honking their horns as residents crowded along city streets despite coronavirus restrictions.
"I did not leave the house for a week, but today I came out to say that Shusha has been liberated. We are happy, congratulations to all my people," 32-year-old Baku resident Shargiya Dadashova said.
Armenian officials said the battle was far from over.
"The fighting continues in Shushi, wait and believe in our army," Armenian defence ministry official Artsrun Hovhannisyan said, using the Armenian name for the town.
Armenian defence ministry spokeswoman Shushan Stepanyan said there was "the most ferocious combat" for the town, while the Armenian government said taking Shusha was an "unattainable pipe dream for Azerbaijan".
"Despite heavy destruction, the fortress city withstands the blows of the adversary," it said.
In the streets of the Armenian capital Yerevan, residents said they did not believe the town had been taken.
"To know who controls Shushi we will listen to the commanders of our army, not Aliyev," 50-year-old Arman said on the city's central Abovyan Street.
"In any case I can assure you that the war will not be finished if the Azerbaijanis take Shushi."
Shusha had been a majority Azerbaijani city before the 1990s conflict and has been a rallying cry for authorities in Baku promising to retake Nagorno-Karabakh.
New clashes broke out in late September between Azerbaijan and the Armenia-backed separatists over control of Karabakh, which declared its independence nearly 30 years ago.
That declaration has not been recognised internationally, even by Armenia, and it remains a part of Azerbaijan under international law.
The recent flare-up has been the worst in decades, with more than 1,000 people confirmed dead including dozens of civilians, although the death toll is believed to be much higher.
Europe’s number of coronavirus-linked deaths has surged past 300,000 and its number of infections surpassed 12 million, according to an AFP tally from official sources.
The region’s 300,688 recorded deaths is second only to the 408,841 in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The New York Times described Harris's assault on Biden as "perhaps the toughest attack he faced throughout the primary campaign".
That was then. Harris dropped out of contention before the first of the party's selection votes, running out of money.
When Joe Biden secured the Democrat nomination, he took the woman who had savaged him as his running-mate, and Kamala Harris was rocketing towards the glass ceiling with a clenched fist.
A long career of being first
Harris was born 56 years ago in Oakland, California, across the Bay from San Francisco.
In an interview last year with The New Yorker magazine, she summed up her career quite simply: “Here’s the thing: every office I’ve run for I was the first to win. First person of colour. First woman. First woman of colour. Every time.”
She has been, successively, San Francisco district attorney in 2003, attorney general of California in 2010, senator in 2016, vice-president-elect in 2020, seconding the oldest man ever elected to the White House.
She has played several crucial roles in the Biden campaign, becoming a forceful voice for racial justice, meeting black activists nationwide and showing up at Black Lives Matter protests. She also clearly helped to boost voter participation by black women in places like Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia.
Harris often framed her candidacy as part of the legacy of pioneering Black women who came before her, including educator Mary McLeod Bethune, civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the first Black candidate to seek a major party's presidential nomination, in 1972.
She paid tribute to Black women “who are too often overlooked but so often prove they are the backbone of our democracy”.
Despite the excitement surrounding Harris, she and Biden face steep challenges, including a pandemic that has taken a disproportionate toll on people of colour, and a series of police killings of Black Americans that have deepened racial tensions. Harris's past work as a prosecutor has prompted scepticism among progressives and young voters who are looking to her to back sweeping institutional change over incremental reforms in policing, drug policy and more.
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president on Friday declared a state of health emergency that will come into force next week to allow the government to impose further coronavirus restrictions.
In a televised appearance, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said he had just signed a decree “relating to a second state of emergency” since the start of the pandemic that will last at least two weeks.
It will be “very limited and largely preventative” but “paves the way for new measures such as restricting traffic to certain times and certain days, in highest risk municipalities,” he said.
The government will hold an extraordinary cabinet meeting on Saturday to decide what type of measures to introduce.
These could include a nighttime curfew similar to what has been implemented in other European nations, or taking people’s temperature at some locations.
During the first wave of the pandemic in the spring, Portuguese authorities decreed a six-week state of emergency.
Some 7.1 million people are currently living under new restrictions and have been asked to stay home and work remotely as far as possible.
But unlike the first spring lockdown, schools remain open, along with shops and restaurants, though they have to close earlier.
Since the start of the pandemic, Portugal has reported close to 167,000 cases and more than 2,700 deaths.
Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan, the Brahman daughter of a diplomat from Chennai, India, graduated from the University of Delhi at age 19, avoided an arranged marriage, and went to the University of California at Berkeley to study nutrition and endocrinology.
“She was one of the very few women of colour in science,” Harris told The New Yorker about her mother. “When I decided to run, she said, ‘Honey, you watch out for what’s going to happen, because there are still certain myths about what women can do and cannot do, in spite of the fact of what women actually do in life.’
"And she said, ‘Two of those myths are that women can do certain things but not necessarily be in charge of your security or your money.’ In spite of the fact that, who is the lioness protecting those cubs at all costs? Who is it who is invariably sitting at that kitchen table in the middle of the night trying to figure out how to get those bills paid?”
A huge weight of hope
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Kamala Harris has already left a few myths in smithereens. She knows she carries a huge weight of hope for a better, more united, less racist America. But she won't be alone.
“She brought the names of black women in history to the stage when she accepted her nomination,” says Glynda Carr, co-founder of the advocacy group Higher Heights, which recruits and supports black women in politics.
“Maya Angelou used to say, ‘I come as one, but stand as 10,000’. That is what Kamala Harris is going to do when she steps into the Oval Office with Joe Biden.”
Donald Trump may not have conceded defeat yet, but messages of congratulations and warm wishes were on Saturday pouring in for President-Elect Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris.
French President Emmanuel Macron was among the first to react to the pair's historic election victory.
"We have a lot to do to overcome today's challenges. Let's work together!," Macron tweeted after major US media networks announced the Democrats had won Pennsylvania and therefore the White House.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, meanwhile, congratulated Biden on his "election to the presidency" and on Harris for her "historic achievement".
Macron and Chancellor Sebastian Kurz will be joined in a phone call by the leaders of Germany and the European Commission among others, the French presidency said.
The meeting comes a week after a gunman killed four people in a shooting rampage in the heart of Vienna, an attack claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.
The bloodshed in the Austrian capital followed last month's attack on a church in Nice and the beheading of a teacher near Paris.
Some of the participants in Tuesday's video call will take questions during an online news conference afterwards, Macron's office said.
Last week, the French president called for a rethink of Europe's open-border Schengen area, including a more robust protection of the zone's external frontiers.
Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump to claim the White House
Michael D. Higgins, the president of Ireland also tweeted a statement congratulating the new president and vice president, saying: "On behalf of the people of Ireland, I wish President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Harris every success in the years ahead."
Officials in Moscow and Beijing have declined to comment on the outcome of the US presidential election, saying they will wait for official results before congratulating the winner.
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The two-term Republican, in a statement issued by his presidential centre in Dallas, also congratulated Donald Trump for his "extraordinary political achievement" in winning 70 million votes.
Bush's statement made him one of the country's most prominent Republicans to acknowledge Biden's victory, declared Saturday, and offer him congratulations.
His brother Jeb Bush -- the former Florida governor who had himself aspired to the presidency until Trump grabbed the party's nomination in 2016 -- earlier sent Biden his own congrats.
"I will be praying for you and your success. Now is the time to heal deep wounds. Many are counting on you to lead the way,"
Republican senators Mitt Romney of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have also extended congratulations to Biden, while many other Republican officials are calling that premature, saying not all votes have yet been counted and not all challenges resolved.
Former president Bush agreed that Trump had "the right to request recounts and pursue legal challenges."
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But he added: "The American people can have confidence that this election was fundamentally fair, its integrity will be upheld, and its outcome is clear."
Sounding a message of unity that echoed Biden's own words, Bush added: "We must come together for the sake of our families and neighbors, and for our nation and its future.
"There is no problem that will not yield to the gathered will of a free people."
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