French President Emmanuel Macron has tested positive for COVID-19, the French Presidency said on Thursday, although it was not clear at this stage where he had contracted the virus.
"The President of the Republic has been diagnosed positive for COVID-19 today," his office said in a statement. "This diagnosis was made following a PCR test performed at the onset of the first symptoms."
The presidency said he would isolate for the next seven days and would continue to run the country remotely.
A spokeswoman said that all his trips had been cancelled, including an upcoming visit to Lebanon on December 22.
They added he was trying to assess where he could have contracted the virus.
Macron was at a European Council heads of state meeting on December 10-11.
Prime Minister Jean Castex will also self isolate after coming into contact with Macron over the last few days, said Gerard Larcher, head of the Senate, the upper house of the French parliament.
An Israeli airstrike killed two Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday, the territory's health officials said, and the Israeli military said it killed a rebel who posed a threat to its forces in the south of the enclave.
Cuban forces have killed four exiles and wounded six others who sailed aboard a Florida-registered speedboat on Wednesday and opened fire on a patrol, the government said at a time of heightened tensions with the US.
Pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai's fraud conviction and prison sentence were overturned by a Hong Kong court on Thursday, in a surprise legal decision that comes soon after Lai was jailed for 20 years on a separate national security charge.
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due to testify behind closed doors on Thursday to a congressional committee investigating the late convicted financier Jeffrey Epstein, though it is not clear how much new information will come to light.
The death toll from the heavy rains in Brazil's southeastern state of Minas Gerais has risen to 46, according to figures released by the state fire department on Wednesday.
A nearly blind refugee from Myanmar missing since his release from a Buffalo jail into the custody of US Border Patrol has been found dead on a downtown street, city authorities said on Wednesday.
A record 129 journalists and media workers were killed in the course of their work last year, two-thirds of them killed by Israel, the Committee to Protect Journalists said on Wednesday.
Britain on Wednesday rowed back from saying it had paused ratification of a deal to cede sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago, which is home to a strategically important US-UK air base.
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