The first U.S. bird flu death has been reported — a person in Louisiana who had been hospitalized with severe respiratory symptoms.

State health officials announced the death on Monday, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed it was the nation’s first due to bird flu.

Health officials have said the person was older than 65, had underlying medical problems and had been in contact with sick and dead birds in a backyard flock. They also said a genetic analysis had suggested the bird flu virus had mutated inside the patient, which could have led to the more severe illness.

Few other details about the person have been disclosed.

Since March, 66 confirmed bird flu infections have been reported in the U.S., but previous illnesses have been mild and most have been detected among farmworkers exposed to sick poultry or dairy cows.

A bird flu death was not unexpected, virus experts said. There have been more than 950 confirmed bird flu infections globally since 2003, and more than 460 of those people died, according to the World Health Organization.

The bird flu virus “is a serious threat and it has historically been a deadly virus,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. “This is just a tragic reminder of that.”

Biden to ban almost all new offshore oil drilling

President Joe Biden is moving to ban new offshore oil and gas drilling in most U.S. coastal waters, a last-minute effort to block possible action by the incoming Trump administration to expand offshore drilling.

Biden, whose term expires in two weeks, said he is using authority under the federal Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect offshore areas along the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea from future oil and natural gas leasing.

Biden’s orders would not affect large swaths of the Gulf of Mexico, where most U.S. offshore drilling occurs, but it would protect coastlines along California, Florida and other states from future drilling.

Biden’s actions, which protect more than 625 million acres of federal waters, could be difficult for President-elect Donald Trump to unwind, since they would likely require an act of Congress to repeal. The 72-year-old law that Biden cited allows the president to withdraw portions of the outer continental shelf from mineral leasing, including leasing to drill for oil and gas, if the areas are deemed too sensitive to drill.

Trump Jr. to pay private visit to Greenland

Donald Trump Jr. will travel to Greenland this week in a surprise visit to the Arctic territory, just weeks after his father, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, rekindled the idea of the U.S. buying the island from Denmark.

A delegation arrived in the capital Nuuk on Monday, and Trump Jr. himself will land on Tuesday, the head of Greenland’s Department of Foreign Affairs, Mininnguaq Kleist, told Bloomberg News.

The visit is “private” and Trump has scheduled no official meetings, Kleist said. Trump Jr. does not have an official role within his father’s incoming administration.

Trump Jr.’s trip to Nuuk coincides with Greenland Premier Múte B. Egede postponing a planned meeting with Denmark’s King Frederik X on Wednesday in Copenhagen. Kleist said the timing of the canceled meeting with the king and Trump Jr.’s visit is “pure coincidence.”

Court date in CEO’s fatal shooting delayed

The man accused of fatally shooing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a New York City hotel is unlikely to appear in Manhattan federal court again before mid-February after prosecutors and defense lawyers on Monday requested more time to prepare the case for trial.

The lawyers agreed in a letter to the court that the deadline to bring an indictment against Luigi Mangione can be extended from Jan. 18 to Feb. 17.

Mangione, 26, is now charged in a criminal complaint, a document that is lodged against individuals prior to the return of an indictment.

Prosecutors said they consulted with the defense and agreed that extending the deadline was necessary “to permit both parties adequate preparation for pretrial proceedings and the trial itself.”

Lawyers for Mangione and federal prosecutors declined to comment.

U.S. eases some sanctions on Syria

The U.S. on Monday eased some restrictions on Syria’s transitional government to allow the entry of humanitarian aid after Islamist insurgents ousted Syrian leader Bashar Assad last month.

The U.S. Treasury issued a general license, lasting six months, that authorizes certain transactions with the Syrian government, including some energy sales and incidental transactions.

The move does not lift sanctions on the nation, but indicates a limited show of U.S. support for the new transitional government.

The general license underscores America’s commitment to ensuring its sanctions “do not impede activities to meet basic human needs, including the provision of public services or humanitarian assistance,” a Treasury Department statement reads.

Nine killed in strong Nepal earthquake

A strong earthquake shook a mountainous region in western China near Nepal on Tuesday morning, killing at least nine people.

State broadcaster CCTV cited the Ministry of Emergency Management for the toll but did not say what caused the deaths.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the magnitude 7.1 earthquake was centered in the Tibet region at a depth of about 6 miles. China recorded the magnitude as 6.8.

The epicenter was located where the India and Eurasia plates clash and cause uplifts in the Himalayan mountains strong enough to change the heights of some of the world’s tallest peaks.

The average altitude in the area around the epicenter is about 13,800 feet, according to CCTV.

California cardinal to head D.C. diocese

Pope Francis on Monday named Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego as the archbishop of Washington, tapping one of his most progressively like-minded allies to head the Catholic Church in the U.S. capital at the start of Donald Trump’s second administration.

At a press conference, McElroy said he prayed the incoming administration would work to make America a better place. But he also identified Trump’s threats of mass deportations of immigrants as a point of potential conflict, saying such policies were “incompatible with Catholic doctrine.”

McElroy, 70, replaces the retiring Cardinal Wilton Gregory, who steps down after having navigated the archdiocese through the fallout of the 2018 eruption of the clergy sexual abuse crisis.

The Vatican announced McElroy’s new job on Monday, the Catholic feast of the Epiphany, in a bulletin that flagged another important appointment in Francis’ reform agenda: The pope named Italian Sister Simona Brambilla the first-ever woman to head a Vatican dicastery, in this case the one responsible for religious orders.

11 Gitmo detainees released to Oman

The U.S. military sent 11 Yemeni prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to Oman to restart their lives, the Pentagon said Monday, leaving just 15 men in the prison in a bold push at end of the Biden administration that has left the prison population smaller than at any time in its more than 20-year history.

None of the released men had been charged with crimes during their two decades of detention. Now, all but six of the remaining prisoners have been charged with or convicted of war crimes.

There were 40 detainees when President Joe Biden took office and resurrected an Obama administration effort to close the prison.

The Pentagon carried out the secret operation in the early hours of Monday.

The handoff had been in the works for about three years. An initial plan to conduct the transfer in October 2023 was derailed by opposition from Congress.

— From news services