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European Union leaders Friday signed an $814-billion package of grants and low-interest loans intended to help the bloc’s member nations recover from the record recession brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Almost 2.3 million of Yemen’s children under the age of five are projected to fall victim to acute malnutrition in 2021, United Nations agencies warned Friday.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that he would revoke designations of Yemen’s Houthi movement as a terrorist group.
Blinken said in a statement the group would no longer be designated a foreign terrorist organization or a specially designated international terrorist group effective February 16.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Friday he approves of U.S. President Joe Biden's decision to stop new construction of the border wall between the two countries.

China said Friday it will not recognize the British National Overseas passport for Hong Kong residents after Jan. 31, as Britain is planning to admit millions of people from its former colony to take residency and eventually British citizenship.

Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, said Friday the United States has cut troops in Iraq to 2,500, meeting a goal set by the Trump administration late last year.

An estimated 371,504 babies will be born around the world on New Year’s Day, according to UNICEF.

As the calendar turns to 2021, UNICEF is again celebrating the new lives being brought into the world on January 1. Fiji in the Pacific will welcome 2021’s first baby. The United States will welcome its last. Globally, over half of these births are estimated to take place in 10 countries: India (59,995), China (35,615), Nigeria (21,439), Pakistan (14,161), Indonesia (12,336), Ethiopia (12,006), the United States (10,312), Egypt (9,455), Bangladesh (9,236) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (8,640).

In the northwest of the country, the nutrition situation is even more dire. Kebbi State is experiencing a chronic malnutrition rate of 66 per cent, more than 20 per cent higher than Borno State in the northeast. In Sokoto State, also in Nigeria’s northwest, close to 18 per cent of children suffer from wasting and 6.5 per cent suffer from severe wasting.

Bangladesh is going ahead Monday with plans to move a second group of Rohingya refugees to an island in the Bay of Bengal, although rights activists have voiced strong opposition about the transfer.

Seventeen people are missing and presumed dead after a Russian fishing boat sank in the northern Barents Sea Monday morning, authorities said in a statement carried by local media.