A group of women blocked the highway in the northern region of Minieh on Saturday, protesting the dire economic conditions, the National News Agency reported.

China National Nuclear Corp. said its first nuclear power unit that uses Hualong One, a third-generation nuclear reactor, started commercial operations on Saturday.

The reactor, located in the city of Fuqing city in China's southeastern Fujian province, was designed to have a 60-year lifespan, with its core equipment domestically produced. Each unit of the Hualong No. 1 has a capacity of 1.161 million kilowatts and can meet the annual domestic electricity demand of 1 million people in moderately developed countries, according to China National Nuclear Corp, or CNNC.

A tense calm prevailed in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Friday after rioters set fire to several government buildings, capping days of violent clashes as anger over growing poverty made worse by the coronavirus lockdown boiled over.

The authorities deployed more troops in the country's second-largest city in an effort to quell the rioting, which has led to repeated confrontations with security forces in which one person was killed and more than 250 others were injured.

After opening itself to New Year's revelers, Dubai is now being blamed by several countries for spreading the coronavirus abroad, even as questions swirl about the city-state's ability to handle reported record spikes in virus cases.

The government's Dubai Media Office says the sheikhdom is doing all it can to handle the pandemic, though it has repeatedly declined to answer questions from The Associated Press about its hospital capacity.

A U.S. judge on Thursday cleared the way for the extradition of an American father and son wanted by Japan for smuggling former Nissan Motor Co. Chairman Carlos Ghosn out of the country while he was awaiting trial.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani rejected a request to block the U.S. from handing Michael Taylor and his son, Peter Taylor, over to Japan. Her ruling comes three months after the U.S. State Department said it had approved their extradition.

Mourners in Tripoli on Thursday laid to rest a 30-year-old killed during violent confrontations the previous night between protesters and security forces, the latest unrest as the nation grapples with both the pandemic and the worst economic crisis in Lebanon's history.

More than 220 others were injured in the clashes in Tripoli as frustrations boiled over amid deteriorating living conditions and strict coronavirus lockdown measures. The violence marked a serious escalation in protests that began Monday and continued for three straight days into Wednesday night, denouncing the extended shutdown that exacerbated already dire conditions amid the unprecedented economic and financial crisis.

When Lebanon's financial meltdown began in late 2019, Hassan Shoumar was locked out of his dollar savings like everyone else in the country as banks clamped down with capital controls.

But the young engineer had an alternative. He could still pull out the dollars in his account at the al-Qard al-Hasan Association, the financial arm of the Hizbullah group.

Demonstrators blocked several roads across Lebanon on Tuesday in protest at the dire economic situations amid a lengthy anti-coronavirus lockdown.

Lebanon's caretaker foreign minister held talks Monday with the Swiss ambassador to Beirut after Switzerland started a probe into possible money laundering and embezzlement at the Lebanese central bank.

Caretaker FM Charbel Wehbe and ambassador Monika Schmutz Kirgoz did not offer comments following their meeting, saying only that the probe is a matter that judicial authorities are dealing with.

Russian police on Saturday arrested hundreds of protesters who took to the streets in temperatures as low as minus-50 C (minus-58 F) to demand the release of Alexei Navalny, the country's top opposition figure.

Navalny, who is President Vladimir Putin's most prominent and durable foe, was arrested on Jan. 17 when he returned to Moscow from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from a severe nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin.