The U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Schenker and a US delegation are set to arrive in Lebanon in the “coming hours” before a historic U.S.-mediated sea border talks between Lebanon and Israel, al-Joumhouria daily reported Monday.

At the quest of President Michel Aoun, Army chief General Joseph Aoun held a meeting on Saturday with the Lebanese delegation tasked with “indirect” negotiations with Israel on delineating the maritime border, the Army Command-Orientation Directorate reported.

Army helicopters began early on Saturday to suppress wildfires that have been raging for more than 36 hours in the outskirts of Akkar, the state-run National News Agency reported.

Even before COVID-19 became an issue, World Food Program chief David Beasley was warning global leaders that the world would face the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II in 2020.

He said that was because of wars in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, locust swarms in Africa, frequent natural disasters, and economic crises including in Lebanon, Congo, Sudan and Ethiopia. Then came COVID-19 which quickly became a pandemic that has swept the world, escalating the need for food — and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says it is still not under control.

For the past two weeks, Raffi Ghazarian has been glued to the TV at home and at work watching news about the fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces. If it goes on, the 50-year-old Lebanese of Armenian descent says he's ready to leave everything and volunteer to defend his ancestral land.

Some from Lebanon's large ethnic Armenian population have already travelled to join the fight, according to members of the community, although they say the numbers are small.

Over the course of a single overnight shift this week, three new COVID-19 patients were rushed into Dr. Karim Debbat's small intensive care ward in the southern French city of Arles. His service now has more virus patients than during the pandemic's first wave, and is scrambling to create new ICU beds elsewhere in the hospital to accommodate the sick.

Similar scenes are playing out across France. COVID-19 patients now occupy 40% of ICU beds in the Paris region, and nearly a quarter in ICUs nationwide, as several weeks of growing infections among young people spread to vulnerable populations.

The Nobel Prize for Literature is set to be awarded Thursday after several years of controversy and scandal for the world's pre-eminent literary accolade.

In 2018 the award was postponed after sex abuse allegations rocked the Swedish Academy, the secretive body that chooses the winners, and sparked a mass exodus of members.

India has registered 78,524 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, driving the country's total since the pandemic began to 6.8 million.

The Health Ministry on Thursday also reported 971 deaths in the past 24 hours, taking the death toll to 1,05,526.

Cyprus and Lebanon on Tuesday reaffirmed an agreement for Lebanese authorities to take back migrants aboard boats trying to reach Cypriot shores.

Cypriot Interior Minister Nicos Nouris said Lebanese and Cypriot police and naval forces will intercept migrant boats departing from Lebanon. He said European Union member Cyprus and Lebanon would also seek assistance from the bloc's border agency Frontex in coastal surveillance.

Two Israeli Merkava tanks trespassed the technical fence in the town of Adaisseh without crossing the Blue Line, the National News Agency reported on Tuesday.