Lebanon
Lebanon returns two stolen 18th-century icons to Greece
The paintings were stolen from an exhibition in Athens in 2016, and Greece put out an international notice calling for their return.
The lockdown, ordered after some hospitals started to run out of intensive care beds, includes a 24-hour curfew until January 25.
The country of six million people has recorded 83,697 cases of COVID-19 including 652 deaths since February.
Lebanon and Israel, which are still technically at war, last week said they had agreed to begin UN-brokered negotiations over the shared frontier, in what Washington hailed a "historic" agreement.
Lebanon had already been mired in its worst economic crisis in decades and battling the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The compensation will go to owners of homes and businesses damaged in the explosion that left more than 190 dead and devastated swathes of the capital, a source at the presidency said.
"Since 2012, Hezbollah has established caches of ammonium nitrate throughout Europe by transporting first aid kits whose cold packs contain the substance," US counterterrorism coordinator Nathan Sales said.
It was not immediately clear what caused the blaze just over a month after the August 4 blast which killed more than 190 people, wounded thousands and ravaged much of the capital.
A specialist sensor device on Thursday had detected a pulse beneath a levelled building between the hard-hit Gemmayzeh and Mar Mikhail districts, raising hopes that a survivor could be found more than four weeks after the disaster that killed at least 191 people.
In his first oublic appearance in six months, the leader of the Catholic Church focused on the disaster-hit country almost a month after the huge blast in the Beirut harbour ripped through the city, killing more than 180 people.
With the economy on its knees, a swathe of Beirut in tatters and sectarian tensions rising, the former French protectorate is facing the biggest threat to its stability since a 1975-90 civil war.
The official added it was time for Lebanese political parties to temporarily step aside and ensure a government of change was put into place.
In central Beirut, Hariri family members and loyalists stood at his grave waiting for his son, Saad, also a former premier, to speak from outside the tribunal in The Hague.
There was insufficient evidence against three other men charged as accomplices in the bombing and they were acquitted, the tribunal found.
Customs director-general Badri Daher has been in detention for more than ten days over the 4 August explosion that killed 177 people, wounded at least 6,500 others, and devastated swathes of the capital.
Lebanon registered a record 439 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours on Sunday.
The explosion revived a street protest movement that had first erupted in October last year against government corruption and a lingering economic crisis.
The state of emergency formally approved by the parliament allows the army to close down assembly points and prohibit gatherings deemed threats to national security.
Reuters reported that the president and prime minister were warned in July about the warehoused ammonium nitrate, according to documents and senior security sources.