THE INTENSIFIED REPORT

President Joe Biden called the US airlift of more than 120,000 people from Afghanistan an “extraordinary success” Tuesday, a day after the last US soldiers pulled out of the country. “We completed one of the biggest airlifts in history,” Biden said. “No nation has ever done anything like it in all of history; only the United States had the capacity and the will and ability to do it,” he said. AFP

 A top Lebanese security official has tested positive for COVID-19 in the United States, his department said on Monday, forcing him to delay his return from talks in Washington and to cancel scheduled meetings in Paris. Major-General Abbas Ibrahim is in good health, the directorate of General Security, which he heads, added in a tweet. Ibrahim met U.S. national security adviser Robert O'Brien at the White House last week to discuss American citizens held in Syria, the Wall Street Journal reported. A Trump administration official confirmed that a White House official traveled to Damascus earlier this year for secret meetings with the Syrian government seeking the release of two U.S. citizens thought to be held there. Last month Ibrahim held talks in Paris with French intelligence chief Bernard Emie about the formation of a new government to tackle Lebanon's grave economic crisis, a Lebanese official said. Reuters.

US Vice President Mike Pence's press secretary, Ivanka Trump's personal assistant and a number of Homeland Security agents have contracted Coronavirus, sparking fears the deadly bug could spread within the White House's top ranks. Katie Miller, who is also spokeswoman for the US Department of State's coronavirus task force and the wife of one of President Trump's senior advisers, received her diagnosis on Friday. It comes a day after it was revealed that Trump's personal valet has also been confirmed to have the highly contagious virus. The US President revealed that Miller, who is married to his immigration adviser and speech writer Stephen Miller, had fallen victim to the bug at a meeting with Republican members of Congress. "Katie, she tested very good for a long period of time and then all of a sudden today she tested positive," he said.