Syrian jets bombard rebel positions in Damascus as a country-wide Internet and phone blackout enters a third day. Government officials announce the road to the airport in the capital has been secured, though rebels insist clashes are ongoing. (Reuters)
At least 8 people are killed and 36 injured when a passenger bus overturns on the highway between the cities of Sucre and Potosí in southern Bolivia. (RIA Novosti)
Israel Keyes, a 34-year-old man suspected of killing Samantha Koenig and possibly as many as 7 others throughout the U.S., apparently kills himself while in custody. (AP/CBS News)
The Sambafoot Association announces their list of 30 contenders nominated as the 2012 Samba Gold, a football award given to the best Brazilian footballer in Europe. (Sambafoot)
Spanishracing driverMaria de Villota is released from hospital following her latest operation at the end of November. She has had further surgery to rebuild her face after she lost an eye in a high-speed crash. (Autosport.com)
A mortar attack destroys a school in the small city of Bteeha, on the road to Homs north of the capital. According to the state news agency SANA at least 29 are killed, while activists report 9 deaths. (New York Times)
The cargo ship Volgo Balt 199 sinks in the Black Sea near Istanbul with a Ukrainian and Russian crew of 12. Four crew members are rescued and one is found dead, while the rest are missing. Two rescuers are killed and two others left missing after their boat hit rocks during the search operations. (Reuters)[permanent dead link]
American businessman John McAfee is arrested in Guatemala following an alleged illegal entry after leaving Belize where he is wanted for questioning over the death of fellow American Gregory Faull. (Reuters)
At least 5 people are shot dead on the third day of clashes between Alawites and Sunnis in Tripoli, Lebanon. The casualty toll of the three days is at least 10 killed and 73 injured. (Reuters)
NASA's twin GRAIL probes have revealed the surface of the Moon in unprecedented detail, showing unexpectedly-deep cracks, craters and tectonic structures. (Los Angeles Times)(BBC)
The United States Supreme Court grants review of California's ban on same-sex marriage (Proposition 8, which has been challenged), and also agrees to finally determine the constitutionality of the federal DOMA law, which the Obama administration has said it will not continue defending. This is the Court's most significant foray into the issue yet, though an overruling of the DOMA act would only mean the federal government would have to recognize such marriages in areas where they are already legal. (NBC News)
The grandmother of murdered teen Tia Sharp will not face charges in the UK. (Sky News)
Irish state broadcaster RTÉ is to provide staff training on what subjects are appropriate for discussion on social media sites such as Twitter following several controversies involving tweets from its employees. (Evening Herald)
The promoters of Formula Two decide not to run the series in 2013 after completing just four years of their five-year contract with the FIA. (ESPN)(Motorsport)
Bosses at Australian radio station 2Day FM suspend all advertising until Monday after several major advertisers withdrew their business in the wake of the death of Jacintha Saldanha. (BBC)
Violent clashes occur in Bangladesh as protesters stage a nationwide blockade of roads to press for an independent body to oversee the next general election. At least two people were killed and about 100 injured after police fire rubber bullets and tear gas. (Reuters)(BBC)
Rebel forces seize parts of the Sheikh Suleiman army base near Aleppo after weeks of heavy fighting. Ground clashes continue in the suburbs of Damascus as the government carries out further air raids against opposition forces. (Al Jazeera)
Unknown gunmen assassinate Nadia Sediqqi, head of the women's affairs department in Laghman Province, Afghanistan. She was shot as she was getting into her rickshaw on her way to work in the provincial capital Mehtar Lam, according to a provincial government spokesperson. (NBC News)
Michigan's state government passes right to work legislation, making Michigan the 24th state and the most highly unionized state in the US to have such laws. Thousands of union employees protest outside the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing. (CNN)
The Finucane family renew their call for a public inquiry and describe the report as a "sham" and a "whitewash", "a report into which we have had no input." Finucane's wife says, "The British government has engineered a suppression of the truth behind the murder of my husband." (The Guardian)(Irish Independent)
Speaking in the House of Commons, UK prime minister David Cameron says he is "deeply sorry" over British involvement in Finucane's murder but opposes a public inquiry into the killing. (Irish Independent)
Ecuador's National Court of Justice issues an international arrest warrant for former PresidentJamil Mahuad on embezzlement charges and orders that all of his assets in Ecuador be seized. (AAP via News Limited)
Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov confirms his country is working on mobilization plans to evacuate its citizens from Syria. In the statement, the Foreign Ministry acknowledges for the first time that the rebels might win as the Syrian government is losing control of more and more territory. (Reuters)
At least 16 people are killed and 25 others injured after a car bomb strikes the city of Qatana, 25 km southwest of the capital Damascus. The attack follows a similar blast in front of the Interior Ministry building a day earlier that killed at least five. (Reuters)
Millions of assets belonging to the former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak are located, including Marbella beach properties and luxury cars. (Al Jazeera)
A worker at the chief clerk's office (making reference to a will) at the Hugo Black U.S. Federal Courthouse in Birmingham, Alabama shoots himself in the head. (CNN)
The British government pays £2.23 million to the family of Sami al-Saadi, who with his wife and young children, was abducted with the help of MI-6, forced onto a plane and secretly flown to Tripoli, where he was tortured for years by the security police of the former dictator Muammar Gaddafi. (The Guardian)(Al Jazeera)
A 36-year-old man identified as Min Yingjun attacks an elderly woman with her own knife at her home, then stabs 22 children outside the nearby Chenpeng Village Primary School in Xinyang, Guangshan County, Henan, China. The attack on the children occurred as they were arriving for classes, and most of the victims are thought to be 6–11 years old. (Xinhua)(CBC News)(Sky News)(The Indian Express)
Two incidents of shootings happened in the U.S. state of Alabama. A 38-year-old man opens fire at a hospital in Birmingham, wounding a police officer and two employees before he is fatally shot by police. In another unrelated incident, a man suspected of the fatal shooting of three people in a mobile home in Cleburne County, is shot to death near Birmingham by police after brandishing an AK-47. (CBC)
A man stood in the parking lot of the Fashion Island mall in Newport Beach, California, and fired 50 gunshots in the air, inducing a mass of panic from the shoppers and employees. No one was hit by the bullets, but one person was injured while trying to flee. A 42-year-old man was arrested for the shooting, and additional ammunition was found in his car. (CNN)
Philippine authorities announce the death toll from Typhoon Bopha has reached 1,020. Another 844 are still missing, most of them fishermen lost on boats out at sea. More than two weeks after the passage of the storm, nearly 27,000 people remain in emergency shelters. (AFP via Yahoo News)
Cyclone Evan hits Fiji with winds as high as 230 km/h, amid reports of flooding and structural damage at resorts and private homes. More than 8,000 people spend the storm in emergency shelters, including many foreign tourists. (Reuters)(AAP via SBS)
At least 18 people drown after an overloaded boat sinks north of Benin's commercial capital Cotonou. (Reuters)
The Parliament of Libya orders the closure of Libya's southern borders with Chad, Sudan, Algeria and Niger while declaring seven southern regions restricted military areas to stop the flow of illegal immigrants and goods. (BBC)
NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel and his production team are freed after 5 days of captivity in northern Syria. They were captured by what Engel claims were members of the shabiha, a plainclothes militia loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. Rebel forces at a checkpoint freed the men after a firefight that killed 2 of the captors. (NBC News)
A coalition of rebel groups called Séléka take over the Central African Republic mining town of Bria, killing at least 15 government soldiers. The group is spearheaded by UFDR forces and has already taken five towns in its two-week offensive, which it claims is because of a lack of progress after a peace deal ended the 2004–2007 Bush War. Following an appeal for help from President]] François Bozizé, the President of ChadIdriss Déby sends 20 vehicles of heavily armed troops to help quell the rebellion. (ABC News)(AFP)(Reuters)
Two people are injured in two blasts outside al-Amin mosque in the Somali-dominated Eastleigh district of Nairobi during the evening rush hour. (Al Jazeera)
Banking giant UBS is fined $1.5 billion for attempting to manipulate the Libor interbank lending rate, becoming the second international bank, after Barclays, to be fined over the Libor scandal. (Al Jazeera)
The Pollard report into practices at the BBC is published, and finds there was a “complete inability” to deal with the Jimmy Savile crisis. (The Independent)
The South Korean electoral commission declares Park Geun-hye the winner of the presidential election with 84% of the votes counted and will become South Korea's first female president. Moon Jae-in has conceded. (Yonhap)(BBC)
Julian Assange issues a statement to supporters from a balcony of London's Ecuadorean embassy, in which he refers to the U.S.Pentagon's recent description of the existence of WikiLeaks as an "ongoing crime" and suggests it is the intention of WikiLeaks to release a million more documents in 2013. (BBC)
A U.S. soldier who urinated on the corpse of a dead Afghan combatant is sentenced to 30 days in jail after admitting his action at a court martial. Reports suggest he will not be sent to jail because of a plea deal reached with military prosecutors. (BBC)
Laos denies knowledge as to the fate of missing activist Sombath Somphone, who disappeared last week in the capital Vientiane. (AFP via Google News)
A British court rejects an attempt by the son of a man killed in U.S. drone strike in Pakistan to force the UK government to reveal if it provided intelligence to assist US action. (BBC)
Further details emerge on the suicide yesterday of Irish government minister Shane McEntee; he breakfasted with his family, took his dogs for a walk and was later found dead. Friends blame the pressure he was put under by his party to vote in favour of the country's latest austeritybudget. (The Irish Times)(Irish Independent)
A NATO adviser is shot dead by a woman in police uniform in Kabul, and at least five Afghan policemen are killed by another officer in northern Afghanistan. (BBC)
Six AQAP militants and two Yemeni soldiers are killed after clashes near a damaged oil pipeline in Ma'rib Governorate. Separately, gunmen target military officials and the home of the transport minister in the capital Sana'a, killing a brigadier general and injuring four others. (Reuters)
CBB International, a financial analytics concern, releases a survey of executives indicating that China's retail sector is growing, leading a broader upswing in that nation's economy. (Reuters)
Catholic figurehead Seán Brady's intervention in Ireland's abortiondebate draws harsh criticism from legislators and more calls for the Church to transfer the rest of the compensation it promised for those abused by priests, but has not yet paid. (Irish Independent)
A bus has veers off a mountain road and plunges into a river near Dasarathpur village in western Nepal, killing at least 13 people and leaving 19 others critically injured. (AP via The Washington Post)
The LCC report that up to 400 people have been killed across Syria on Saturday, including about 200 reported executed by the Syrian Army in the Deir Ballba neighborhood of Homs. (CNN)
