A search continues for 52 people missing from a South Korean fishing vessel, the Oriong-501, that sank early in the morning in bad weather in the Bering Sea off Russia's Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. Eight people have been rescued including one person who subsequently died. (Voice of America)
Russia launches a new national defense facility in Moscow meant to monitor threats to national security in peacetime but take control of the country in wartime. (RT)
A major Switzerland based commodities firm, Trafigura, played a "pivotal" role in the ability of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq to export oil, exports that the central government in Baghdad has prohibited. (Reuters)
Sierra Leone quarantines the Tonkolili district with more than half the country under lockdown and the official death toll in the country reaching 1,530 and roughly 7,109 infected. (Daily Mail)
Italian police arrest a mix of mafia gangsters, corrupt politicians, and one former terrorist in a corruption scandal exploiting migrants and gipsies. (Telegraph)
Islamic insurgents kill three state police at a traffic circle before taking an empty school and a "press house" in Grozny. Ten state forces die with 28 injured in gun battles ending with ten insurgents killed. (RT)
A judge in the Netherlands declares Dutch clothing company Mexxbankrupt. The bankruptcy ruling affects over 300 stores worldwide, including 95 locations in Canada. (CBC News)
Disasters and accidents
Italian rescue crews discover 17 bodies in the hull of a migrant ship off Libya. (FOX News)
Two raging fires in Los Angeles destroy a massive residential complex under construction, heavily damage a building undergoing renovations, and snarl rush hour traffic. (The Hollywood Reporter)
United States President Barack Obama unveils new limits on racial profiling. These new limits outlaw profiling based on race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexual orientation. (NPR)
Three Turkish Army soldiers die by gunfire in the town of Ceylanpinar. The local Turkish governor begins an investigation of whether the gunfire came from the Syrian side of the border. (BBC)
The US Supreme Court rules 9–0 (Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk) in favor of Amazon.com Inc. that employees are not entitled to be paid for the time they spend undergoing security checks after their shifts. (Reuters)
The Kurdish region’s military forces, the Peshmerga Ministry, states that over 700 IraqiKurds have died fighting ISIL forces since June. (AFP via Daily Star)
Arts and culture
Russian billionaire businessman Alisher Usmanov who bought the 1962 Nobel gold medal of scientist James Watson says that he is donating it back to Watson as a gift because the "discovery of DNA structure must belong to him". (BBC)
Nature publishes research by the University of Toronto announcing the discovery of a new class of stem cells called F-class stem cells that have the potential to be better and safer to use in medical research. (CBC)
A suicide bomber attacks a cultural center putting on a play critical of terrorist attacks, killing a German national and wounding 16 others. (Reuters/AFP via ABC News Australia)
Former British radio DJ Ray Teret is jailed for 25 years for a series of sexual assaults on 11 girls in the 1960s and 1970s conducted in association with Jimmy Savile. (Billboard)
Authorities start clearing the main protest site in Hong Kong following a recent court order for protesters to vacate the site in Admiralty area. (Wall Street Journal)
An unknown person shoots four people outside of Rosemary Anderson High School, an alternative high school in Portland, Oregon. Police later question a 22-year-old man. (CNN)(MSN)[permanent dead link], (AP)
Prosecutors at Sary-Arqa District Court in Astana charge 30-year-old Yevgeny Vdovenko, a Kazakh citizen, of intentional and illegal participation in a military conflict abroad because he had fought alongside pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. (Radio Free Europe)
A Palestinian man throws a chemical substance believed to be acid at an Israeli family that stopped to pick up a hitchhiker. No terrorist groups claim credit for the attack. (Reuters)
Science and technology
Torrent site isoHunt appears to have unofficially resurrected The Pirate Bay at a site which turns out serving new content. (VB News)
Archaeologists reconstruct two giant statues of Amenhotep III, toppled by an earthquake at the Nile River in 1200 BC. The team's restoration project re-erected surviving fragments at the northern gate of the king's funerary temple. (AFP via Daily Mail)
The United Nationsadopts a format for national pledges to tackle climate change after meetings extend into the weekend at the conference held in Lima, Peru. (BBC)
Laurent Lamothe resigns as Prime Minister of Haiti along with several ministers following violent protests and a commission's call for him to step down. The protesters have been demanding the holding of early elections. (TownHall)
Israeli military troops kill one Palestinian man in a West Bank refugee camp. Israeli sources claim the man threw an explosive device at an army patrol. (Reuters)
The Bank of Russia announces an increase of its key interest rate, the Russian weeklyrepo rate, from 10.5 to 17 percent as an emergency move to halt the collapse of the ruble's value and, thereby, stabilize the Russian economy. (Channel News Asia)
Despite rate hike, the ruble falls to 65 ₽ per US dollar and 80 ₽ per Euro. (Reuters)
A tunnel collapse traps twelve Vietnamese workers, including one woman, at a construction site of a hydropower plant located in the Central Highlands. (Thanh Nien)
Israel Police arrest ten members of Lehava, a right-wing organisation that opposes integration of Arabs and Jews, for last month's arson on an Arab–Jewish school. (Times of Israel)
India declares a ban on Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant after an engineer was detained for campaigning on behalf of the group on Twitter. Officials worry that such ban will endanger thirty-nine men, believed to be held hostage by the group. (Reuters)
The Montgomery County District Attorney reports that Bradley Stone, suspected in the killing of his ex-wife and five of her family members Monday, has been found dead in the woods near his home in Pennsburg, Pa.. (NBC), (Venturebeat)
News emerges, after survivors reach the city of Maiduguri, that suspected Boko Haram militants stormed the remote village of Gumsuri in north-eastern Nigeria on December 14, killing at least 33 people and kidnapping about 200. (BBC)
Business and economy
The price of Brent Crude oil rises to $61+ per barrel as companies cut upstream investments. (Reuters)
US clothing company Gap Inc. agrees to distribute their apparels to Chinese e-commerce company JD.com. (Reuters)
International relations
A former US intelligence officer identifies Rolando "Rollie" Sarraff Trujillo as the Cuban Interior Ministry spy for the US Central Intelligence Agency, who was swapped in exchange for members of the Cuban Five. (NBC News)
The European Union imposes sanctions on Russia-occupied Crimea by banning investments and tourism in the region and halting oil explorations. (Reuters)
Staples reports that 1.16 million customer payment cards may have been affected in a data breach under investigation since October. (Fortune)
Disasters and accidents
A Vietnam official states that twelve Vietnamese workers have been rescued three days after being trapped in a collapsed tunnel at a construction site of a hydropower plant located in Central Highlands. (AP via Salon)(Reuters)
US President Barack Obama imposes additional sanctions on Russian-controlled Crimea by an executive order forbidding exports of US goods and services to the region. (Channel NewsAsia)
Scientists withdraw the January 29, 2014 claim that there is a simple way to convert normal cells into stem cells, which can be used for any part of the body. Nature had in July retracted its two previous articles after the disgraced lead researcher, Japanese Haruko Obokata, was found to have plagiarized and fabricated parts of the papers. (Reuters via FOX News)
Following the December 17 announcement that it would lift its moratorium on terror-related death penalty cases, Pakistan announces that it will execute 500 militants in the coming weeks. (AFP)
The FDA says that in regards to the 31-year-old policy against gay men making blood donations it will recommend lifting the lifetime ban early next year, replacing it with a policy barring donations from men who have had sex with another man in the previous 12 months. (AP)
International relations
The Parliament of Ukraine removes the country’s legislative block on forming military alliances, allowing the government to push forward with plans to accede to NATO. (BBC)
Xinhua reports that on December 21 Chinese police in Guangxi shot dead one person and detained 21 others. China considers the group to be "religious extremists" who were trying to cross the border into Vietnam. (Reuters)
Al-Shabab militants attack AMISOM's headquarters in Mogadishu, leaving three peacekeeping soldiers and a civilian contractor dead. Five of the attackers are also killed. (Al Jazeera)
Russian Foreign Ministry’s official spokesman Alexander Lukashevich says that "the mere idea of the film is aggressively scandalous and that the reaction of the North Korean side is very understandable." (TASS)
A report says that even before the American Christmas Eve release of The Interview, thousands of Chinese citizens were downloading pirated versions of the movie on domestic video-sharing websites. By midday on December 26, more than 300,000 people had seen the film. (The New York Times)
The Interview grosses US$1 million on Christmas Day at the box office despite being released only to small theaters. (CNN)
The militant organisation Boko Haram attacks a village in Northern Cameroon, leaving an estimated 30 dead. (News24)Archived 2019-04-07 at the Wayback Machine
Traveling through thunderstorms over the Java Sea, Flight 8501 loses contact with air traffic control after the plane departed from the Indonesian city of Surabaya en route to Singapore with 162 people on board. (BBC)
The Italian-owned MS Norman Atlantic catches fire on a ferry run from Greece to Italy 44 nautical miles northwest of Corfu, with 222 vehicles, 411 passengers and 5 crew on board. Greek and Italian officials report at least one person is dead. (The Independent),(BBC)
Cameroon launches its first airstrikes against Boko Haram in a successful operation to reclaim several villages and a military base briefly seized by the militant group in the Far North Region. (BBC)
Disasters and accidents
The MS Norman Atlantic ferry fire death toll rises to at least ten as the evacuation ends. (BBC)