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Armed conflicts and attacks

• Persian Gulf crisis
  • The BW Group says the crew of one of their ships saw an oil tanker suffer an explosion after being hit by "an external source" off the coast of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. They also say that oil may have leaked from the site of the blast. (The Times of Israel)
• Tigray conflict
  • An International Rescue Committee staff member and three Danish Refugee Council aid workers are shot dead in Ethiopia's Tigray Region. (The Telegraph)

Arts and culture

• Italian intellectuals Corrado Augias and Giovanna Melandri hand back their medals of the Legion of Honour, France's highest order of merit, to France. They protest the news that President of Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion at the same time that prosecutors in Rome indicted four top security officials of the Sisi regime over the 2016 abduction and torture to death of Giulio Regeni, an Italian doctoral student, in Cairo. (AP)

Disasters and accidents

• 2020–21 South Pacific cyclone season
  • Cyclones Yasa and Zazu threaten several Pacific countries, especially Fiji. Yasa intensifies into a category 2 storm, remaining in the waters between Fiji and Vanuatu. It is expected to reach Fiji on Thursday as a category 4 storm. Zazu also brings heavy rains to Tonga. (RNZ)

Health and environment

• COVID-19 pandemic
  • COVID-19 pandemic in North America
    • COVID-19 pandemic in the United States
      • COVID-19 vaccine
        • COVID-19 pandemic in West Virginia
          • Governor Jim Justice becomes one of the first elected officials to receive the vaccine. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
        • The United States begins administering their first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Sandra Lindsay, a nurse at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York, becomes the first person in the country to receive the vaccine outside of a clinical trial. (ABC News)
      • COVID-19 pandemic in Massachusetts
        • Boston Mayor Marty Walsh announces that the city will rollback to phase 2 and tighten their restrictions as an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19. (AP) (WCVB-TV)
      • The death toll from COVID-19 in the United States exceeds 300,000. (CNN)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Canada
      • Canada begins administering the vaccine to healthcare workers and elderly nursing home residents. (Reuters)
  • COVID-19 pandemic in Europe
    • COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom
      • COVID-19 pandemic in England
        • Health Secretary Matt Hancock announces that London and parts of Essex and Hertfordshire will move into the highest level "Tier 3" restrictions on December 16 at 00:01 am GMT. (Sky News)
        • The United Kingdom discovers a new variant of COVID-19 which is growing faster in some parts of England. (BBC)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands
      • Prime Minister Mark Rutte imposes a tough five-week nationwide lockdown. Schools, museums, gyms and all non-essential shops, will be closed from midnight until January 19. (AP)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey
      • President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announces that the country will impose a five-day full lockdown from December 31 at 9:00 pm local time until January 4, as a record 229 deaths were reported in the past 24 hours. (Arab News)
  • COVID-19 pandemic in Asia
    • COVID-19 pandemic in India
      • COVID-19 pandemic in Delhi
        • Delhi surpasses 10,000 total deaths from COVID-19. (India Today)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Japan
      • Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announces that the Go To Travel campaign will be suspended nationwide from December 28 to January 11. He also says that Tokyo and Nagoya will be removed as eligible destinations for the campaign. (The Japan Times)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore, COVID-19 vaccine
      • Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong says that Singapore has approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The country expects to receive shipments of the vaccine by the end of the year and to vaccinate 5.7 million people for free by the third quarter of 2021. (CNBC)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea
      • South Korea orders schools in the Seoul Capital Area to close from tomorrow until the end of the month due to an increase in new COVID-19 cases, which has broken records not seen since the pandemic began. (CNA)
  • COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa
    • President Cyril Ramaphosa announces that public gatherings will be limited to no more than 100 people for indoor events and 250 people for outdoor events, and that the nationwide curfew will be extended from 11:00 pm to 4:00 am throughout the holiday season. He also said that alcohol will only be sold from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm local time, Monday to Thursday. (Independent Online)

International relations

• Sudan–United States relations, Global war on terrorism
  • Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announces that the United States has removed Sudan from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Sudan had been on the list since 1993 on the grounds of Omar al-Bashir's regime harboring militant groups including al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah. Prime Minister of Sudan Abdalla Hamdok welcomes the decision. (Reuters)
• Turkey–United States relations, CAATSA
  • Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announces that the United States has imposed sanctions on Turkey over its acquisition of the S-400 missile defense system from Russia. This move is the first time that the CAATSA has been used to penalize a U.S. ally. (AP)

Law and crime

• Capital punishment in Singapore
  • The judicial commissioner of Singapore sentences a Bangladeshi national to death after he was found guilty of murdering his Indonesian girlfriend two years ago. In Singapore, a charge of murder carries the mandatory death penalty. (The Straits Times)

Politics and elections

• 2020 United States presidential election
  • 2020 United States presidential election in Michigan
    • The Michigan State Capitol is closed to the public for the day and its legislative sessions are cancelled due to "credible threats of violence" in response to the election. (CNN)
  • The Electoral College meets in the state capitals to officially elect the next President. Joe Biden, the presumptive president-elect, is officially elected president after securing California's 55 electoral votes and will be inaugurated on January 20. Outgoing President Donald Trump continues to dispute the results of the election, claiming widespread electoral fraud, despite numerous failed lawsuits. (The Guardian)
• List of Trump administration dismissals and resignations
  • President Trump announces that William Barr will resign as United States Attorney General on December 23. (CNBC)

Science and technology

• Several Google services go down without warning around 11:50 UTC, including YouTube, Google Search, and the Google Play Store. The chatting app Discord and mobile video game Pokémon Go also go down. The cause was revealed to be an “authentication system outage” by the Google Cloud Twitter account. (IGN) (Newsweek)
• Amid controversy over alleged illegal content, Pornhub removes all non-verified user-uploaded videos, which make up the majority of the videos on the platform. Pornhub says that its new measures are now "more strict than any social media platform". (BBC)

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