We start right away with a point on the news:
• #UKRAINE The Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, said during his first trip to kyiv yesterday that he wanted to work to meet Ukrainian military needs. “for the weeks to come”. Volodymyr Zelensky and Emmanuel Macron asked “to make them proposals for the month of January to redefine an agenda” on French military support, he said during a press conference with his Ukrainian counterpart, Oleksiï Reznikov.
• Pope Francis announced that his predecessor Benedict XVI, aged 95, was “seriously ill” and that he was praying for the one whose resignation in 2013, for health reasons, had taken the world by surprise.
• #COVID_19 The abrupt end this month of China’s “zero Covid” policy as the country experiences an explosion in cases is raising concern from several countries, including the United States, which will require negative tests for Chinese travelers . Emmanuel Macron has “requested appropriate protective measures“of the French in the government, which ensures “follow the development of the situation in China very carefully“.
• #UNITED STATES The United States is slowly emerging from a historic storm that has claimed at least 59 lives, but its impact continues to be felt in the Buffalo area and at airports, with hundreds of thousands of passengers having their flights canceled.