Portal:Current events/2020 December 11

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Insurgency in the North Caucasus, Terrorism in Russia
  • Six law enforcement officers are wounded when a man they were trying to arrest blew himself up in the village of Uchkeken, Karachay-Cherkessia. The Federal Security Service says no civilians were hurt and authorities were trying to establish his identity. (Reuters)
• Crime in Nigeria
  • Kankara kidnapping
    • Pupils are kidnapped from a boys' boarding secondary school by an armed gang in Kankara, Katsina State, Nigeria. (BBC News)

Health and environment

• Climate change mitigation
  • The European Council agrees to lower greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union, compared to levels in 1990, by at least 55% before 2030. (AP)
• COVID-19 pandemic
  • COVID-19 pandemic in Europe
    • COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom
      • COVID-19 pandemic in Northern Ireland
        • Restaurants, cafés, non-essential shops, and other venues that serve food, reopen in Northern Ireland after two weeks of lockdown. However, pubs that do not serve food will remain closed. (BBC News)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Germany
      • Germany reports a record 29,875 new cases and 598 deaths in the past 24 hours, according to data from the Robert Koch Institute, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 1.27 million and the death toll to 20,970. (DW)
      • Due to an increasing number of new cases and deaths, Chancellor Angela Merkel and the leaders of 16 states are expected to discuss new restrictions at a meeting on December 13. (Bloomberg)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Belarus
      • Belarus reports 1,967 cases, a new single-day record. (Xinhua News Agency)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Portugal
      • Portugal reports a record 95 new deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing the nationwide death toll to 5,373. (Yahoo! News)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Russia
      • Russia reports a record 613 new deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing the nationwide death toll to 48,593. (The Moscow Times)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland
      • Switzerland orders restaurants, bars and shops in most parts of the country to close at 7pm, as the country faces a persistently high level of new cases and deaths. (Reuters)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Ukraine
      • Ukraine reports a record 285 new deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing the nationwide death toll to 14,755. (Kyiv Post)
  • COVID-19 pandemic in Asia
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia
      • Indonesia reports a record 175 new deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing the nationwide death toll to 18,511. (Kompas)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia
      • Malaysia surpasses 80,000 total cases of COVID-19. (The Edge Markets MY)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea
      • The number of confirmed cases in South Korea increases by 689, the highest single-day increase reported in the country since late February, bringing the nationwide total to 40,786 cases. (Yonhap News Agency)
  • COVID-19 pandemic in the United States
    • COVID-19 pandemic in California
      • California reports 35,468 new cases in the past 24 hours, a new single-day record since the pandemic began. It also reports a record number of hospitalized patients: 2,013, and record number of 2,669 intensive care patients. (KABC-TV)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Nebraska
      • Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts announces that the state will lift their restrictions on indoor gatherings after hospitalizations in the state dropped to 20%. However, he also urges people to stay vigilant to prevent the spread of COVID-19. (Omaha World-Herald) (KETV)
    • The U.S. reports 3,309 deaths from COVID-19, a new one-day record. (Market Watch)
  • COVID-19 vaccine
    • Tozinameran
      • The Food and Drug Administration announces that they have formally approved Tozinameran, the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. (CNBC)
      • Mexico approves the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. (AP)
    • Egypt receives its first shipment of 50,000 of Sinopharm's vaccine, making it the first African country to receive COVID-19 vaccines. The shipment was provided as a gift from the United Arab Emirates, which recently announced that the vaccine had an 86% efficacy based on Phase III testing results. (Egyptian Streets)
    • Australia stops a clinical trial of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate made by CSL Limited and the University of Queensland after trial participants returned false positive HIV results. (ABC Australia)
    • Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline announce that their COVID-19 vaccine candidate will not be ready until the end of 2021. (France 24)
    • The Trump administration announces that they will purchase an additional 100 million doses of Moderna's vaccine. (CBS News)
  • COVID-19 pandemic in Namibia
    • Namibia reports a new single-day record of 324 cases, bringing the total number of confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic to 16,097. (Xinhua)
  • COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand, Travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic
    • New Zealand creates its first "travel bubble" with the Cook Islands, citing low COVID-19 infection rates and their "special ties". The travel bubble will allow citizens to travel between both countries without having to quarantine in early 2021. (Reuters)

Law and crime

• Face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, COVID-19 pandemic in Pennsylvania
  • John E. Jones III, a federal judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, announces that he has rejected a bid to temporarily block Governor Tom Wolf's statewide mask mandate and contact tracking system. (The Patriot-News)
• Hong Kong national security law
  • Pro-democracy tycoon Jimmy Lai is charged under the new national security law. Lai faces a lengthy prison sentence for allegedly "conspiring with foreign forces" to endanger national security. (BBC News)
• Assassination of Rafic Hariri
  • The United Nations-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon sentences a Hezbollah operative to five concurrent life terms in absentia for his role in the 2005 assassination of Rafic Hariri. (Al Jazeera)
• Kyoto Animation arson attack
  • Shinji Aoba, who is accused of killing 36 people by setting them on fire in last year's attack, is to be indicted on charges of murder after being found mentally competent to stand trial following a mental health evaluation. (The Japan Times)
• Islam in Austria
  • Austria's Constitutional Court overturns a government ban on school children wearing specific religious head coverings, ruling it discriminatory, and saying that the ban could lead to the "marginalisation of Muslim girls". (BBC News)
• After 51 years, a team of volunteer codebreakers solved a cipher by the infamous Zodiac Killer, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The cipher says "I hope you are having lots of fun trying to catch me", and "I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradice [sic] all the sooner because I now have enough slaves to work for me". (Reuters)

Politics and elections

• Post-election lawsuits related to the 2020 U.S. presidential election
  • The United States Supreme Court denies Texas v. Pennsylvania, a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to invalidate President-elect Joe Biden's victories in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. (BBC News)
• 2020 Armenian protests
  • Anti-government protesters block streets in the Armenian capital Yerevan, continuing calls for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to resign over the Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement with Azerbaijan. Riot police detain more than 40 protesters. (RFERL)
• The United States Senate approves the $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 (NDAA) by 84 votes to 13, which would be sufficient to override a possible presidential veto. President Donald Trump objects to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that currently provides legal immunity to social media companies, and also to a provision in the NDAA that will prohibit military bases to be named for Confederate generals. (Reuters)