Portal:Current events/2021 December 4

Arts and culture

• COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, List of events affected by the COVID-19 pandemic
  • Rio de Janeiro mayor Eduardo Paes cancels the city's New Year's Eve celebrations on Copacabana Beach due to the worldwide spread of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant. (Sky News)

Disasters and accidents

• 2021 Semeru eruption
  • One person is killed and 41 others are injured as the Semeru volcano erupts in East Java, Indonesia. (BBC News)
• Twenty-three people drown after the bus they are travelling in plunges into the Enziu River in Mwingi, Kenya. (BBC News)

Health and environment

• COVID-19 pandemic
  • COVID-19 pandemic in Europe
    • COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands
      • Former queen Beatrix of the Netherlands tests positive for COVID-19. (AP)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Romania
      • Romania reports its first cases of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant in two citizens who travelled from South Africa on November 30. (Reuters)
  • COVID-19 pandemic in Chile
    • Chile reports its first case of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant in a fully vaccinated foreigner who travelled from Ghana on November 25. (ABC News)
  • COVID-19 pandemic in the Cook Islands
    • The Cook Islands reports its first case of COVID-19 in a 10-year-old boy who travelled on a repatriation flight from New Zealand with his family on December 1 and is in quarantine. (ABC News Australia)
  • COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea
    • South Korea reports a record 5,352 new cases and 70 deaths from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, thereby bringing the nationwide total of confirmed cases to 467,907 and the nationwide death toll to 3,809. (Yonhap News Agency)
  • COVID-19 pandemic in Zambia
    • Zambia reports its first three cases of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant in two citizens who travelled internationally and another citizen who had no travel history. (Khaleej Times)

International relations

• Pakistan–Saudi Arabia relations
  • The Pakistani Minister of Finance announces that the country has received a $3 billion (11.3B SAR, ₨.530B) one-year loan from Saudi Arabia. (Reuters)

Law and crime

• An improvised explosive device is discovered in the personal vehicle of a Turkish police officer who was to be part of the security detail for a rally in Siirt featuring Turkish President Recep Erdoğan. The bomb was discovered before the officer had left for the rally, and was defused by bomb squads. (Bloomberg)

Politics and elections

• 2021 Gambian presidential election
  • Gambians go to the polls to elect their president. Approximately 960,000 people are eligible to vote. (BBC News)