British prime minister, Boris Johnson, has announced the UK will close all travel corridors to protect against the risk of as yet unidentified new Covid-19 strains from next week.

The Dutch government will decide on Friday if it is going to step down over a scandal in which thousands of parents were wrongly accused of fraud, plunging many families into debt by ordering them to repay childcare allowances, the Guardian writes. The four ruling parties in prime minister Mark Rutte's coalition are divided and may prefer ending their alliance, rather than risk losing a no-confidence vote next Tuesday.

Prime Minister Conte's government is torpedoed by ex-PM Renzi pulling ministers from his party out.

Estonia's ruling coalition, including the far-right and anti-EU EKRE party, collapsed Wednesday after the Centre-party prime minister Juri Ratas resigned when senior staff were named as suspects in a corruption inquiry. The Estonian president asked the leader of the centre-right Reform party, Kaja Kallas, to form a new government instead, which is unlikely to include EKRE. The developments scrapped an EKRE-led plan for a referendum on gay marriage.

Highlights of Today in History:George Wallace is sworn in;United States ratifies a peace treaty with Britain;, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill meet; Joe DiMaggio and actress Marilyn Monroe get married;Today Show debuts.

(Bangkok) – The Malaysian coalition that took power in March 2020 halted the Pakatan Harapan government’s faltering human rights reform movement, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2021. The first nine months of Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s government featured an aggressive crackdown on freedom of speech and peaceful assembly, attacks on the media, and discrimination against migrants and refugees. There was also a wholesale retreat from genuine police accountability for abuses. “Malaysia has undergone an incredible reversal of...

The Yerushalayim District Court on Monday announced that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s next hearing in his public corruption trial has been rescheduled to Feb. 8. In an...

The prime minister warns there is a "very substantial" risk of intensive care being "overtopped".

ITALY is on the brink of a political crisis as former prime minister Matteo Renzi has withdrawn his support from the ruling coalition.