A team of French investigators will come to Beirut next month to participate in interrogating former Renault-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn, a Lebanese justice ministry official said.

The official gave no specific date or details of what information the investigators would seek from Ghosn.

A series of explosions hit the Afghan capital on Saturday morning, killing at least two police officers and wounding another two plus a civilian, officials said.

The officers died and a civilian was hurt when a magnetic bomb attached to a police vehicle detonated in western Kabul, said police spokesman Ferdaws Faramarz.

Israeli warplanes violated Lebanon's airspace late Thursday to carry out a strike in neighboring Syria, sparking panic among residents on Christmas Eve.

The jets were heard flying at low altitude over Beirut and Sidon shortly before the strikes. Social media reports also said that blasts were heard in the northern regions of Akkar and Tripoli. It was not immediately clear whether those were bombardment sounds or the sounds of jets breaking the sound barrier.

While many places around the globe were keeping or increasing restrictions for Christmas, Lebanon was an exception. With its economy in tatters and parts of its capital destroyed by a massive Aug. 4 port explosion, Lebanon has lifted most virus measures ahead of the holidays, hoping to encourage spending. Tens of thousands of Lebanese expatriates have arrived home for the holidays, leading to fears of an inevitable surge in cases during the festive season.

Two new studies give encouraging evidence that having COVID-19 may offer some protection against future infections. Researchers found that people who made antibodies to the coronavirus were much less likely to test positive again for up to six months and maybe longer.

President Donald Trump pardoned more than two dozen people, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law, in the latest wave of clemency to benefit longtime associates and supporters.

The actions, in Trump's waning time at the White House, bring to nearly 50 the number of people whom the president has granted clemency in the last week. The list from the last two days includes not only multiple people convicted in the investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia but also allies from Congress and other felons whose causes were championed by friends.

In Peru, you can't drive your car on Christmas. In Lebanon, you can go to a nightclub, but you can't dance. In South Africa, roadblocks instead of beach parties will mark this year's festive season.

The United Arab Emirates' top diplomat has publicly acknowledged a so-far unexplained ban on visitors from Pakistan, which travel agents say also targets tourists and laborers from a dozen Muslim-majority countries amid the pandemic and the UAE's normalization of ties with Israel.

Following a meeting with his Pakistani counterpart, Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan stressed "the temporary nature of recent restrictions imposed on the issuance of visas due to the outbreak of COVID-19," the UAE's state-run WAM news agency reported Sunday.

As countries across the Middle East grappled with the coronavirus pandemic, many also had to contend with long-running conflicts, economic crises and mass protests in another chaotic year for the volatile region.

The most devastating single event in the region was neither war-related, nor a claimed terrorist attack, but an explosion in Beirut's port caused by the detonation of a stockpile of explosive chemicals that had been improperly stored there for years.

Several European Union nations on Sunday banned flights from the U.K. and Germany was considering limiting such flights to make sure that a new strain of coronavirus sweeping across southern England does not establish a strong foothold on the continent.

The Netherlands banned flights from the U.K. for at least the rest of the year while Belgium issued a flight ban for 24 hours starting at midnight and also halted train links to Britain, including the Eurostar. Austria and Italy said they would halt flights from the U.K. but did not give details on any timing of the ban.