The U.S. has classified Yemen’s Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization following a series of attacks on oil tankers in the Red Sea and as Washington seeks to increase pressure on Iran in the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency.
The powerful interior minister of Libya’s United Nations-recognised government, seen as a contender for the post of prime minister, has expressed hope that bringing stability to his war-torn country would become a top priority for the incoming Biden administration.
He also announced an upcoming major offensive by his Turkey-backed Libyan government forces in the country’s west to go after armed groups and human smugglers, and invited the United States to assist.
“Our hopes were greatly lifted” by Joe Biden’s US election victory, Fathi Bashagha told The Associated Press earlier this week. “We hope that the new administration has a major role in Libya’s stability and reconciliation.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus a global pandemic more than nine months ago and since then, the illness it causes, known as COVID-19, has spread to nearly every country in the world.
The disease has killed more than 1.8 million people and infected more than 82.8 million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. More than 46 million people have recovered.
Below is a timeline:
On
December 31 China confirmed its first case of a new coronavirus variant that was recently detected in the UK.
The US reported a record number of deaths from COVID-19 on
December 30, with more than 3,900 people dead, bringing the toll since the pandemic began to more than 19.7 million infections and 341,000 lives lost.