AFP news

South Korea fell in a political crisis when President Yoon Suk Yeol, currently suspended, declared martial law on December 3.

Absent from the meeting were representatives of the US-backed, Kurdish-led forces that control swathes of Syria's northeast.

Meanwhile, France's interior ministry updated the number of wounded to 4,136, of which 124 were serious cases.

Dozens of demonstrators gathered outside the US embassy chanting "Trump, animal, leave the canal alone" and "Get out invading gringo," as about 20 police officers guarded the compound.

The Global Engagement Center, a State Department unit established in 2016, shuttered on Monday at a time when officials and experts tracking propaganda have been warning of the risk of disinformation campaigns from US adversaries such as Russia and China.

General Gregory Guillot's reassurances came as the joint US-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) reported that Santa and his reindeer were making stops in Russia and Iran after visiting countries further east including Japan, North Korea and Indonesia.

Fans of Japanese manga and anime cartoons have often criticized foreign adaptations that are unfaithful to the original material.

He met with Chinese counterpart Wang at Beijing's opulent Diaoyutai State Guesthouse on Wednesday, footage from state broadcaster CCTV showed.

At Saint Peter's Basilica, Francis used his Christmas Eve mass to urge Christians to think "of the wars, of the machine-gunned children, of the bombs on schools or hospitals" as this year's Christmas once again takes place under the shadow of Israel's war on Hamas and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Under "Decree 147", all tech giants operating in Vietnam must verify users' accounts via their phone numbers or Vietnamese identification numbers and store that information alongside their full name and date of birth.

Footage showed shards of glass and metal scattered outside the plant, where ambulances stood by.

His comments in parliament came two days after Palestinian militant groups also talked of progress towards a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

Macron named former prime minister Elisabeth Borne, 63, education minister in a new cabinet under centrist Bayrou.

Sharaa, whose Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) spearheaded the offensive that toppled Assad on December 8, has welcomed envoys from the Middle East and beyond in recent days, including Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Sunday.

The prevalence of fentanyl in Canada has drawn additional attention after incoming US president Donald Trump cited the drug as part of his justification to impose sweeping tariffs on Canadian imports.

Trump, who credits the wildly popular platform with delivering him a large young user base, opposes banning TikTok partly because he believes it would primarily benefit Meta, the Mark Zuckerberg-led company behind Instagram and Facebook.

The victims were suspected of involvement in voodoo and accused by a gang leader of poisoning his child, with the suspects taken to a "training center" where many were dismembered or burned after being killed.

When a 9.1-magnitude quake caused a tsunami that smashed into coastal areas on December 26, 2004, killing more than 220,000 people, broadcasters, newspapers and wire agencies were the main media bringing news of the calamity to the world.

This month sees the release of the second season of "Squid Game", a dystopian vision of South Korea where desperate people compete in deadly versions of traditional children's games for a massive cash prize.

The deadlock by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) means the controversial $14.9 billion transaction will now be referred to President Joe Biden, who is legally required to act within a 15-day deadline.

Overnight, European stocks bounced around while US equities shook off early weakness to push higher as investors waited to see if a so-called Santa Claus rally would materialize.

The USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said the eruption began just after 2:00 am local time (1200 GMT) in the southwestern section of the caldera.

The main opposition Democratic Party had set Christmas Eve as the deadline for Han to promulgate two special bills investigating suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol's short-lived imposition of martial law, as well as graft allegations surrounding his wife, Kim Keon Hee.

Authorities also said they would cancel the passports of seven others for whom bounties have already been issued, including ex-lawmakers Ted Hui and Dennis Kwok, local media said.

The US president-elect on Saturday had slammed what he called unfair fees for US ships passing through the Panama Canal and threatened to demand control of the waterway be returned to Washington.

Sections of two telecom cables were cut on November 17 and 18 in Swedish territorial waters of the Baltic. Suspicions have been directed at a Chinese ship -- the Yi Peng 3 -- which according to ship tracking sites had sailed over the cables around the time they were cut.

The man "calmly walked up to the victim" on the F train in Brooklyn and set her ablaze on Sunday morning, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch told a press conference.

Imposing the limit, which might later be modified, will "allow everyone to better enjoy the fountain, without crowds or confusion", Roberto Gualtieri told journalists in front of the famous landmark.

Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels said later on Sunday they had "targeted" the aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman a day earlier in an operation that led to "shooting down an F-18 aircraft" and thwarting "American-British aggression" against Yemen.