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The arrest warrant for the country’s former president comes amid a closely-fought election.

Honduras’s top prosecutor has issued an international arrest warrant for former President Juan Orlando Hernandez, intensifying legal and political turmoil just days after the ex-leader walked free from a United States prison.

Attorney General Johel Antonio Zelaya announced the move on Monday in a post on X, saying he instructed the Agencia Técnica de Investigación Criminal, the main investigative body of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and urged Interpol “to execute the international arrest warrant against former President Juan Orlando Hernández”.

Hemos sido lacerados por los tentáculos de la corrupción y por las redes criminales que han marcado profundamente la vida de nuestro país. Es por ello que en el marco del Día Internacional Contra la Corrupción que se conmemora mañana 9 de diciembre, informo al pueblo hondureño… pic.twitter.com/8V4cpyrKq2

— Johel Antonio Zelaya Alvarez (@jaza_hn) December 8, 2025

Zelaya’s announcement comes as Hernandez was released from a 45-year prison sentence in the US after President Donald Trump pardoned him.

Hernandez’s wife, who insists he is innocent, said he will not return to Honduras immediately due to safety concerns and that he is currently in a “safe place” in the US.

Hernandez was extradited to the US in 2022, where New York prosecutors had accused him of three drug- and weapons-related offences and alleged he used his presidency to transform Honduras into a “narco-state”.

US prosecutors later secured a conviction, saying Hernandez played a central role in moving cocaine through Honduras and onward to the United States. He was handed a 45-year prison sentence on the back of “one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world”, according to prosecutors.

At the same time, Hernandez has been at the centre of investigations in his country that have targeted current and former politicians suspected of diverting public money. In 2023, along with several former officials, he was charged with involvement in the alleged misappropriation of more than $12m in state funds for his political campaign.

Trump’s decision to pardon Hernandez came as he urged Hondurans to rally behind presidential candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura, a member of Hernandez’s right-wing National Party, in the country’s November 30 presidential election.

“I will be granting a Full and Complete Pardon to Former President Juan Orlando Hernandez who has been, according to many people that I greatly respect, treated very harshly and unfairly”, Trump wrote in a social media post last week.

With 97 percent of ballots counted, Asfura held 40.52 percent of the vote, remaining ahead of centrist rival Salvador Nasralla by roughly 42,100 votes.

The tally had already been halted temporarily on Friday with 88 percent of ballots processed. According to the National Electoral Council (CNE), about 16 percent of tally sheets contained irregularities requiring further review, an issue it attributed to the company managing the vote-counting system.

International observers have urged authorities to speed up the counting process and take steps to reassure voters of its integrity.

Dec. 8 (UPI) — Dr. Gabrielle Henry suffered an intracranial hemorrhage when she fell from the stage as Miss Jamaica during preliminary competition of the Miss Universe pageant last month.

The Miss Universe Organization gave an update Monday in a news release, saying she suffered loss of consciousness, a fracture, facial lacerations “and other significant injuries” on Nov. 19.

That day, Miss Universe Jamaica posted on Facebook she was “not suffering any life-threatening injuries; however they continue to conduct tests to ensure her full recovery.”

The 28-year-old physician was caught on video in the fall while wearing a long, flowing orange dress on Nov. 19. She was admitted in intensive care at a hospital Bangkok, according the the release.

“Certain media reports suggesting that Dr. Henry contributed in any way to the incident are entirely inaccurate,” the organization said. “The Miss Universe Organization has never attributed blame to Dr. Henry and confirms that those suggestions are unfounded and do not reflect the facts.”

Henry has remained in critical condition under neurological monitoring and requires 24-hour specialist supervision, the organization said.

“From the time the incident took place, the Miss Universe Organization has stood beside Gabrielle and her family as if she were their own, assuming full and immediate responsibility without hesitation,” the release read.

In a few days, Henry will return to Jamaica with a full medical escort team and transferred directly to a hospital in her home country for continued treatment and recovery, the organization said.

The organization has covered all hospital, medical and rehabilitation expenses in Thailand, as well as the accommodation and living costs for her mother and sister.

The organization also said it’s paying for Henry’s medically escorted flight home to Jamaica and has committed to covering all future medical expenses from this incident.

“The Henry family is deeply grateful to the Miss Universe Organization for their unwavering compassion, presence and love shown,” the release said. “Their response so far has gone beyond professional responsibility and reflected devotion and protection of the family.”

The release ended: “Dr. Henry and her family extend their heartfelt thanks to the people of Jamaica, the Miss Universe community, and supporters worldwide for the overwhelming outpouring of love, prayers, and encouragement.”

Miss Universe Jamaica posted an updated profile of her on Jan. 9, 10 days before her fall.

Miss Mexico Fatima Bosch was crowned Miss Universe on Nov. 21. It was broadcast live on Telemundo and streamed on Peacock.

In early November, Miss Universe Thailand director Nawat Itsaragrisil called her “stupid” during a livestreamed speech to contestants on Nov. 4. Several contestants walked out after the comments.

The pageant has been marred by other controversies: Jakkaphong “Anne” Jakrajutatip of Thailandout as CEO, financial instability, accusations of rigged judging and resignations by two of them, and protests by several contestants.

The co-owners of the Miss Universe Organization are facing charges: Jakkaphong with failing to appear at a hearing involving fraud and Rocha Cantu of Mexico on accusations that include drug and fuel trafficking.

Thai police investigated allegations that event publicity included illegal promotion of online casinos.

Brigitta Schaback, who represented Estonia, announced that she was stepping down from her title.

The next day, Olivia Yace, who was the pageant’s fourth runner-up as Miss African and Oceania, also resigned. She added that she was also removing herself from “any future affiliation with the Miss Universe Committee.”

Days before the pageant began on Nov. 2, Mario Bucaro of Guatemala succeeded Jakrajutatip, who resigned from the position on June 20.

Donald Trump owned the pagent from 1996-2015 when he sold it to WME/IMG. In 2022, Thai media conglomerate JKN Global Group, led by Jakrajutatip, purchased the organization. In early 2024, JKN sold a 50% stake to Cantu’s Legacy Holding Group USA.

Dec. 8 (UPI) — Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat and fierce Trump critic, announced Monday she was launching a high-stakes U.S. Senate campaign in Texas, the same day Democratic primary opponent Colin Allred dropped out.

Crockett, who filed just hours before the deadline, will face Democratic Rep. James Talarico of Austin in the March 3rd primary, as she tries to turn incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn‘s seat from red to blue.

“For too long, Texas has elected senators who have defended politics as usual and protected the status quo, while Texans have paid the price,” Crockett said on her website. “We’ve had senators who have pushed the American Dream further and further out of reach.”

“I’m running for the U.S. Senate because I believe Texas deserves a senator who will be an independent voice for all 30 million Texans — not a rubber stamp or party line vote for Donald Trump.”

Crockett’s primary opponent Talarico on Monday welcomed her to the race after Allred dropped out.

“We’re building a movement in Texas — fueled by record-breaking grassroots fundraising and 10,000 volunteers who are putting in the work to defeat the billionaire mega-donors and puppet politicians who have taken over our state,” Talarico said. “Our movement is rooted in unity over division — so we welcome Congresswoman Crockett into this race.”

Rep. Allred of Dallas decided Monday not to run in the U.S. Senate primary and opted instead to run for the newly-drawn 33rd Congressional District in Dallas County after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that the redrawn map, which favors Republicans, could be used in the 2026 election.

In a statement, Allred admitted Crockett played a part in his decision to drop out.

“In the past few days, I’ve come to believe that a bruising Senate Democratic primary and runoff would prevent the Democratic party from going into this critical election unified against the danger posed to our communities and our Constitution by Donald Trump and one of his Republican bootlickers Paxton, Cornyn or Hunt,” Allred said earlier Monday.

The winner of the Democratic Senate primary will face one of three Republican primary opponents in the midterm elections, Republican incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, Attorney General Ken Paxton or U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.

On Monday, Paxton commented in a post on X saying, “everyone knows Crockett will be soundly defeated,” as he also focused on Cornyn’s campaign spending and lower standing in the polls.

Paxton has been vocal about Texas’ redrawn district map and the order’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Last month, he predicted the Supreme Court would “uphold Texas’s sovereign right to engage in partisan redistricting,” after he criticized partisan gerrymandering in Democratic-led states, including California, Illinois and New York.

Texas Republicans have not lost a statewide office in more than three decades. Crockett’s decision to run for the Senate also opens up the 30th Congressional District seat she has held since 2023.

Surat, India – In 2018, Alpesh Bhai enrolled his three-year-old daughter in an English-language private school in Surat. This was something he never imagined possible while growing up in his village in the Indian state of Gujarat, where his family survived on small fields of fennel, castor and cumin, with their earnings barely enough to cover basic needs.

He had studied in a public school, where, he recalled, “teachers were a rarity, and English almost didn’t exist”.

“Maybe if I knew English, I would have been some government worker. Who knows?”, he said, referring to the dream of a majority of Indians, as government jobs come with tenure and benefits.

His finances improved once he joined the diamond cutting industry in Surat, a city perched along India’s Arabian Sea coast, where nearly 80 percent of the world’s diamonds are cut and polished. Monthly earnings of 35,000 rupees ($390) for the first time brought Alpesh a sense of stability, and with it, the means to give his children the education he never had.

“I was determined that at least my children would get the kind of private education I was deprived of,” he said.

But that dream did not last. The first disruption to business came with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The sanctions on Russia hurt supply chains, as India sourced at least a third of its raw diamonds from Russia, leading to layoffs.

Alpesh’s earnings fell to 18,000 rupees ($200) a month, then to 20,000 rupees ($222). Soon, the 25,000 rupees ($280) annual school fee became unmanageable. By the time his older daughter reached grade three, just as his younger child started school, the pressure became impossible.

Earlier this year, he pulled both children out of private school and enrolled them in a nearby public one. A few months later, when new United States tariffs deepened the crisis as demand slumped further, his polishing unit laid off 60 percent of its workers, Alpesh among them.

“Seems like I’ve come back to where I started,” he said.

Surat, India’s diamond hub, employs more than 600,000 workers, and hosts 15 large polishing units with annual sales exceeding $100m. For decades, Surat’s diamond‑polishing industry has offered migrant workers from rural Gujarat, many with little or no education, higher incomes, in some cases up to 100,000 rupees ($1,112) a month, and a path out of agrarian hardship.

But recent shocks have exposed the fragility of that ladder, with close to 400,000 workers having faced layoffs, pay cuts, or reduced hours.

Even before Russia’s war on Ukraine began in February 2022, Surat’s diamond industry faced multiple challenges: disrupted supplies from African mines, weakening demand in key Western markets, and inconsistent exports to China, the second-largest customer. With the onset of the war, India’s exports of cut and polished diamonds in the financial year ending on March 31, 2024, fell by 27.6 percent, with sharp declines in its top markets – the US, China, and the United Arab Emirates.

The 50 percent tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump have worsened the downturn.

Alpesh now works loading and unloading textile consignments for about 12,000 rupees ($133) a month, barely enough to cover food and rent.

“If I had kept them in the private school, I don’t know how I would have survived,” Alpesh said. “People here have killed themselves over debts and school fees. When you don’t have enough to eat, how will you think of teaching your children well?”

His daughters are still adjusting. “They sometimes tell me, ‘Pupa, the studies aren’t as good now’. I tell them we’ll put them back in the private school soon, but I don’t know when that will happen.”

‘An exodus’

Some workers have returned to their villages, as many migrant families in Surat can no longer afford rent or find alternative work.

Shyam Patel, 35, was among them. When exports slowed and US tariffs hit in August, the polishing unit where he worked shut down. With no other work available, he returned to his village in the Banaskantha district the following month.

“What other option was there?” he said. “In the city, there’s rent to pay even when there’s no work.”

He now works as a daily-wage labourer in cotton fields in his village. His son, who was in the final year of high school, dropped out after four months of the new academic session.

“We’ll put him back in school next year,” Shyam said. “The government school said they can’t take new students in the middle of the term. Till then, he helps me in the fields.”

Across the city, the disruption is evident in government data. More than 600 students left school mid-session last year as their parents lost work or returned to their villages, mostly in Saurashtra and north Gujarat.

“Most migrants come to Surat to settle – the city has entire [neighbourhoods] and housing clusters built for diamond workers,” said Bhavesh Tank, vice president of the Diamond Workers Union Gujarat. “An exodus in the middle of the year is unprecedented, and the drop in school enrolment suggests many are not coming back soon.”

The union estimates that about 50,000 workers have left Surat over the past 12 to 14 months.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a Hindu nationalist group allied with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has been closely observing the diamond industry crisis in Surat.

“The number of dropouts has reached a point where even government schools are struggling to take in new students, said Purvesh Togadia, a VHP representative in the city. “The poor quality of education is making the transition even more disheartening for families.”

The poor quality of education in public schools is well established. In 2024, only 23.4 percent of grade three students could read at a grade two level, compared with 35.5 percent in private schools. By grade 5, the gap persisted – 44.8 percent in government schools versus 59.3 percent in private ones.

Kishor Bhamre, director at Pratham, an organisation working on children’s rights across education and labour, said the setback is not just academic but psychological.

“Children moving from private to government schools lose the environment they grew up in – their friends, familiar teachers, and a sense of community. For many, it also means shifting from an urban to a rural setting, which makes the adjustment even harder and affects their learning,” he said.

Al Jazeera reached out to the Surat Municipal Corporation and the state’s education minister for comment, but did not receive a response.

Limited help

The Diamond Workers Union has repeatedly appealed to the state government to provide an economic relief package and revise salaries in line with inflation. The union has also urged authorities to address the equally pressing situation of the growing number of school dropouts among workers’ children.

The Gujarat government in May introduced a special assistance package for affected diamond workers – a rare move in the industry.

Under the scheme, the state government committed to paying for one year of school fees for diamond polishers’ children, up to 13,500 rupees ($150) annually. To qualify, workers must have been unemployed for the past year and have at least three years of experience in a diamond factory. The fees will be paid directly to the schools.

The government received nearly 90,000 requests from diamond workers across Gujarat, including about 74,000 from Surat alone.  After a slow start – it had provided assistance to only 170 children by July – officials reported disbursing 82.8 million rupees ($921,000) towards school fees for 6,368 children of jobless diamond workers in Surat by mid-September.

But about 26,000 applicants were rejected, reportedly due to “improper details mentioned” in the forms, leading to frustration and anger among workers. In the past few days, nearly 1,000 diamond polishers have filed applications with the local government, demanding to know who rejected their forms and on what grounds, and alleging opacity in the process.

The scheme’s rigid eligibility criteria have also excluded workers.

“The scheme only covers those who have completely lost their jobs, but it leaves out many who are facing partial cuts or reduced work,” said Tank. “They’re struggling just as much and need support equally.”

Tank added that education remains one of the most common concerns among workers reaching out to the union’s suicide prevention helpline, which was set up by the Diamond Workers Union after Surat had already recorded at least 71 suicides among diamond workers by November 2024. It has received more than 5,000 calls so far.

Divyaben Makwana, 40, lost her 22-year-old son, Kewalbhai, who had been working as a diamond polisher for three years. On June 14, he died by suicide.

Kewalbhai had been under immense mental stress after losing his job in the diamond market, his mother told Al Jazeera.

“He was earning around 20,000 rupees ($220) a month, and when even that collapsed,” he took his life, she said. “We took him to the hospital and did everything we could. I borrowed 500,000 rupees ($5,560) from relatives and friends, but we couldn’t save him. Now, I don’t have a son – only a loan.”

She lives in Surat with her husband, who has been unable to work due to prolonged illness, and their younger son, Karmdeep, 18. With no means to return to their village in Saurashtra, Divyaben has begun working as a domestic worker to make ends meet. Karmdeep dropped out after grade 11, and now attends a local coaching centre, where he is learning diamond faceting while looking for work.

“Education has become so expensive,” Divyaben said. “At least with coaching, he’ll learn a skill. By the time the market recovers, if he’s trained as a craftsman, maybe we’ll be able to repay some of our debts.”

She paused, her voice low. “I don’t know if education, whether taken on loan or given free, can really change our fate. Our only hope is still the diamond.”

If you or someone you know is at risk of suicide, these organisations may be able to help.

You can access the Diamond Workers Union helpline at +91-92395 00009.

Dec. 8 (UPI) — U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Monday it seized a case of Tramadol pain pills with an estimated street value at $150,000.

On Thursday, Cincinnati CBP officers seized a shipment that contained some 30,000 Tramadol tablets, officials said.

The Tramadol pain killer a schedule IV substance under the Controlled Substance Act due to its potential for abuse.

“Most people hear about CBP seizing narcotics shipments,” said Director of Field Operations LaFonda D. Sutton-Burke, Chicago Field Office.

“However, shipments of illegal prescription pills are very dangerous too,” Sutton-Burked said in a statement.

CBP agents routinely screen international passengers and cargo at ports of entry nationwide for narcotics, weapons and other U.S.-prohibited items.

A shipment from Barbados bound for St. Kitts-Nevis was intercepted and inspected for clearance in the United States.

Officers discovered small boxes inside containing 30 push pill tabs each totaling 30,000 tablets of 50mg Tramadol.

CBP’s Chicago field director confirmed the pills were “not regulated by the FDA.”

Tramadol is a prescribed medication to relieve moderate to nearly severe pain and, similar to opioid analgesics, it works by altering the brain’s perception of pain.

It’s frequently abused in narcotic addiction, chronic pain patients and healthcare professionals.

Federal officials urged international buyers to verify purchases and ensure imports comply with all state and U.S. regulations.

Dec. 8 (UPI) — U.S. President Donald Trump announced Monday a $12 billion dollar aid package to help American farmers hit hard by inflation, tariffs and China’s trade war to “provide much needed certainty” for next year’s crops.

Trump unveiled the aid package with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins at a White House roundtable, where they were joined by farmers in soybean, corn, rice, cattle, potatoes, sorghum and the cotton industry.

“I’m delighted to announce this afternoon that the United States will be taking a small portion of the hundreds of billions of dollars we receive in tariffs … We’re going to use that money to provide $12 billion in economic assistance to American Farmers,” Trump said.

“This relief will provide much needed certainty to farmers as they get this year’s harvest to market and look ahead to next year’s crops, and it’ll help them continue their efforts to lower food prices for American families,” Trump added.

Rollins said farmers can begin applying for the one-time funding within the next few weeks. The money will be distributed before Feb. 28.

A White House spokesperson said Monday’s rollout reflected Trump’s “commitment to helping our farmers, who will have the support they need.”

“We are going to create this bridge because, again, agriculture is all about the future, you’ve got to start financing for planting next year, when things will be very good,” Bessent said Sunday.

Monday’s aid announcement is the latest effort to help U.S. farmers negatively affected by the president’s tariff policies and other factors, such as a drop in crop prices. Farmers lost billions of dollars in sales after China stopped buying U.S. soybeans in May to retaliate against Trump’s tariffs.

The White House said last month that China plans to buy at least 12 million metric tons of soybeans, sorghum and “other farm products” before the end of the year, after Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping reached a preliminary trade agreement in October.

“Since my successful meeting in South Korea with President Xi, purchases have been made, and soybeans are being exported out of the United States to China as we speak,” Trump told Monday’s roundtable.

The Agriculture Department confirmed last week a half million more metric tons of soybeans, sorghum and wheat were being shipped to Chinese shores.

Last month, the American Farm Bureau Federation issued a warning that aid was “urgently needed” as the money needed to grow crops exceeded farming revenues and farm bankruptcies were starting to rise.

Monday’s package sets aside $11 billion in one-off checks for crop producers under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farmer Bridge Assistance initiative, while another $1 billion is reserved for commodities that fall outside that program’s coverage.

“President Trump is helping our agriculture industry by negotiating new trade deals to open new export markets for our farmers and boosting the farm safety net for the first time in a decade,” stated White House spokesperson Anna Kelly.

Rollins revealed last week that the federal government was planning to issue the bridge payments to farmers.

“What you’ve been able to do is open those markets up and again, move toward an era where our farmers are not so reliant on government checks, but have the markets to sell their product,” Rollins said. “Having said that, we do have a bridge payment we’ll be announcing with you next week, as we’re still trying to recover from the Biden years.”

On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, accused Trump of taking credit for fixing his own mess.

“Trump’s tariffs are hammering our farmers, making it more expensive to grow food and pushing farmers into bankruptcy,” Schumer said. “Farmers need markets to sell to — not a consolation prize for the ones he wrecked.”

On Monday, Iowa cattle and soybean farmer Cordt Holub told Trump he appreciated the bridge payments, saying, “it’s Christmas early for farmers.”

Farmers have been dogged by trade wars that have seen reduced purchases and increased prices on seeds and fertiliser.

United States President Donald Trump has announced a $12bn aid package to help farmers harmed by his hardline tariff policies.

Trump announced the package at a White House event on Monday, saying the money would come from funds raised by tariffs.

“What we’re doing is we’re is taking a relatively small portion of that, and we’re going to be giving and providing it to the farmers in economic assistance,” Trump said.

Since taking office, Trump has used emergency powers to pursue a sweeping tariff agenda, including imposing reciprocal tariffs on nearly all US trade and escalating a trade war with China.

While Washington and Beijing have since begun to de-escalate some of their tensions, the tit-for-tat has spelt a challenging year for farmers.

Despite record harvests in the US, China has increasingly turned to South America for agricultural products, notably soya beans and sorghum. They have also faced higher seed and fertiliser prices as a knock-on effect of the tariffs.

The Trump administration has been acutely aware of the impact, given Trump’s staunch support among many farmers during the 2024 election.

Trump referenced that support on Monday, saying, “We love our farmers.”

“And as you know, the farmers like me … because based on, based on voting trends, you could call it voting trends or anything else,” he said.

Before the White House event, a Trump administration official said up to $11bn in the new aid would go to the newly created Farmer Bridge Assistance, a programme for row crop farmers hurt by trade disputes and higher costs.

It was still being determined where the other $1bn would be allocated, the official said.

The Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri has estimated that net farm income could fall by more than $30bn in 2026 due to a decline in government payments and low crop prices.

Soya bean farmers, meanwhile, are expected to see their third consecutive year of losses in 2025, according to the American Soybean Association, a decline that preceded Trump’s tariffs.

The Trump administration has sought to paint a rosier picture, pointing to an agreement between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping for Beijing to buy 12 million metric tonnes of US soya beans by the end of the calendar year. Beijing also agreed to buy 25 million metric tonnes per year for the next three years.

While China has since purchased only a fraction of its promised total in 2025, White House officials have said it is on track to meet the target.

US farmers typically receive billions of dollars in federal subsidies each year.

All told, farmers were set to receive a near-record $40bn in government payments this year, fuelled by an array of disaster relief funding and economic aid.

Dec. 8 (UPI) — After a water leak damaged hundreds of books this morning at the Louvre in Paris, labor unions voted to strike against the iconic art museum.

Rolling walk-outs are set to begin Dec. 15. If all 2,100 employees join, it could cause closures during a peak season.

The strike notice said the unions no longer want to negotiate with museum Director Laurence des Cars.

It said “every day, museum spaces are closed well beyond the provisions of the guaranteed opening plan, due to insufficient staffing, technical failures and the building’s aging condition.”

“Staff are struggling with ever-increasing workloads, an increasingly harsh approach to human resources and contradictory directives that prevent a calm public service,” the notice said. Le Monde reported that the number of visits to the occupational psychologist rose from 37 in 2022 to 146 in 2024.

The museum suffered a water leak in its libraries that damaged hundreds of books, it announced earlier Monday.

The leak was discovered in late November and announced Sunday by Francis Steinbock, deputy administrator of the Louvre. Steinbock said up to 400 documents were damaged by the leak from one of the three library rooms in the museum’s Egyptian antiquities department. But no works of art were damaged, he said.

The pieces that were damaged were archaeology journals, mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries, that researchers consulted. Steinbock said dehumidifiers are in the room and the items are being dried one page at a time.

“No ancient works were affected,” said Hélène Guichard, director of the Egyptian antiquities department. “And the Louvre’s rapid and efficient response to the incident greatly limited the damage.”

The French Democratic Confederation of Labor, a union that represents some of the museum’s workers, posted on LinkedIn: “This new incident confirms a situation that has been deteriorating for too long, as the trade unions have been constantly alerting, including the CFDT-CULTURE.”

“Fragile infrastructure, a lack of strategic visibility on the work being carried out, and poor working conditions mean that the protection of the collections and the safety of staff and visitors remain insufficiently guaranteed,” it said. Union leaders would meet Monday morning to “decide on the next steps to be taken,” it added.

An October report by France’s Cour des Comptes, a public audit agency, was critical of the museum’s excessive spending on art “to the detriment of the maintenance and renovation of buildings.”

The Louvre is in a former palace, originally built as a fortress in the 12th century. The building’s deterioration has become an ongoing issue. A show was canceled in 2023 because pipes in the walls burst. In November, weak beams caused a gallery to close.

A major renovation was announced in January by President Emmanuel Macron and the Louvre’s director Laurence des Cars. Its goal is to ease overcrowding with a new entrance and a new room specifically for the Mona Lisa. Included are infrastructure repair and the outdated security system, which recently contributed to the jewel heist.

Steinbock said in a TV interview that the ventilation and heating network, which operates with water pipes, is scheduled to be replaced in September 2026.

Dec. 8 (UPI) — Pet retailer Petco says a massive data breach hit an unspecified number of its U.S. customer base.

Petco stated it located the problem internally and “immediately took steps to correct the issue and to remove the files from further online access.”

On Friday, Petco filed a legally mandated report with the Texas attorney general’s office that revealed compromised data encompassed names, dates of birth, Social Security and driver’s license numbers, and other financial details, including account and credit or debit card numbers.

A company spokesperson told TechCrunch that Petco had provided “further information to individuals whose information was involved.”

It added that new digital alterations included “additional security measures and technical controls to enhance the security of our applications.”

Petco officials wrote in a notification letter filed with California’s attorney general they discovered a “setting within one of our software applications that inadvertently allowed certain files to be accessible online.”

California law requires breach disclosures when 500 or more state residents are affected, indicating Petco’s cyber incident met or exceeded that threshold.

In addition, the pet company has also informed customers in Massachusetts and Montana and has provided free credit and identity theft monitoring to those affected.

Petco has conducted business with more than 24 million customers, the company said in 2022.

Meanwhile, every year massive data breaches harm the public with bad actors targeting email service providers, retailers and government agencies that store private information on citizens.

Hamnet, Sinners and One Battle After Another seen as top contenders, alongside films from Norway, France and South Korea.

The Hollywood award season in the United States is hitting high gear, with nominations unveiled for one of the biggest contests of 2026: the 83rd annual Golden Globes.

Often seen as a bellwether for the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes honour achievements in both television and filmmaking — a distinction that, with the advent of streaming over the last two decades, has become all the murkier.

Limping post-pandemic box office numbers and high-stakes mergers have also complicated the future of the motion picture industry, with streaming giants like Netflix making a play for the century-old studio Warner Bros.

Still, several big-name blockbusters and critical darlings topped this year’s Golden Globe nominations.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s political thriller One Battle After Another was a standout, making good on its star-studded cast to sweep five acting nods, plus nominations for Best Comedy, Best Director and Best Screenplay. It leads the field with nine nominations overall.

Anderson was not the only cinematic “auteur” to receive laurels from the Golden Globe Foundation.

Chloe Zhao’s historical tear-jerker Hamnet — based on the relationship between writer William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes — nabbed six nominations in drama categories.

And Ryan Coogler’s springtime crowd-pleaser Sinners — a vampire film and cultural commentary, wrapped in one — scored seven nods, including Best Drama, Best Director and Best Cinematic Achievement.

While the Golden Globes is often seen as a cozy, champagne-clacking affair for Hollywood titans, this year’s nominations also suggest an ever-more international scope for its honourees.

The meditative Norwegian drama Sentimental Value scooped up eight nominations, and the French nominee It Was Just an Accident, by Iranian director Jafar Panahi, earned four.

South Korea and Brazil also broke free from the Non-English Language Film category, scoring nominations in the acting, songwriting and animation competitions for films like KPop Demon Hunters, No Other Choice and The Secret Agent.

Some pieces of award bait, meanwhile, failed to deliver on their potential, including director Luca Guadagnino’s slippery, post-MeToo drama After the Hunt, which scored a single nomination for star Julia Roberts.

Likewise, the musical film Wicked: For Good — the sequel to last year’s award-season juggernaut — disappointed its expectations. While it scored nods in acting and song categories, it failed to land in contention for some of the biggest prizes, including Best Motion Picture: Comedy or Musical.

The 83rd annual Golden Globes are scheduled to air on January 11, 2026. Here is the full list of nominees:

Best Motion Picture: Drama

• Frankenstein
• Hamnet
• It Was Just an Accident
• Sentimental Value
• Sinners
• The Secret Agent

Best Motion Picture: Musical or Comedy

• Blue Moon
• Bugonia
• Marty Supreme
• No Other Choice
• Nouvelle Vague
• One Battle After Another

Best Motion Picture: Animated

• Arco
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba — Infinity Castle
• Elio
• KPop Demon Hunters
• Little Amelie or the Character of Rain
• Zootopia 2

Best Motion Picture: Non-English Language

• It Was Just an Accident, France
• No Other Choice, South Korea
• Sentimental Value, Norway
• Sirat, Spain
• The Secret Agent, Brazil
• The Voice of Hind Rajab, Tunisia

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture: Drama

• Eva Victor for Sorry, Baby
• Jennifer Lawrence for Die My Love
• Jessie Buckley for Hamnet
• Julia Roberts for After the Hunt
• Renate Reinsve for Sentimental Value
• Tessa Thompson for Hedda

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture: Drama

• Dwayne Johnson for The Smashing Machine
• Jeremy Allen White for Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
• Joel Edgerton for Train Dreams
• Michael B Jordan for Sinners
• Oscar Isaac for Frankenstein
• Wagner Moura for The Secret Agent

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture: Musical or Comedy

• Amanda Seyfried for The Testament of Anne Lee
• Chase Infiniti for One Battle After Another
• Cynthia Erivo for Wicked: For Good
• Emma Stone for Bugonia
• Kate Hudson for Song Sung Blue
• Rose Byrne for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture: Musical or Comedy

• Ethan Hawke for Blue Moon
• George Clooney for Jay Kelly
• Jesse Plemons for Bugonia
• Lee Byung-hun for No Other Choice
• Leonardo DiCaprio for One Battle After Another
• Timothee Chalamet for Marty Supreme

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture

• Amy Madigan for Weapons
• Ariana Grande for Wicked: For Good
• Elle Fanning for Sentimental Value
• Emily Blunt for The Smashing Machine
• Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas for Sentimental Value
• Teyana Taylor for One Battle After Another

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture

• Adam Sandler for Jay Kelly
• Benicio del Toro for One Battle After Another
• Jacob Elordi for Frankenstein
• Paul Mescal for Hamnet
• Sean Penn for One Battle After Another
• Stellan Skarsgard for Sentimental Value

Best Director for a Motion Picture

• Chloe Zhao for Hamnet
• Guillermo del Toro for Frankenstein
• Jafar Panahi for It Was Just an Accident
• Joachim Trier for Sentimental Value
• Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another
• Ryan Coogler for Sinners

Best Screenplay for a Motion Picture

• Chloe Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell for Hamnet
• Jafar Panahi for It Was Just an Accident
• Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt for Sentimental Value
• Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another
• Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie for Marty Supreme
• Ryan Coogler for Sinners

Best Original Score for a Motion Picture

• Alexandre Desplat for Frankenstein
• Hans Zimmer for F1
• Jonny Greenwood for One Battle After Another
• Kangding Ray for Sirat
• Ludwig Goransson for Sinners
• Max Richter for Hamnet

Best Original Song for a Motion Picture

• Dream As One for Avatar: Fire and Ash
  • By Miley Cyrus, Andrew Wyatt, Mark Ronson and Simon Franglen
• Golden for KPop Demon Hunters
  • By Joong Gyu Kwak, Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Jeong Hoon Seo, Park Hong Jun, Kim Eun-jae (EJAE) and Mark Sonnenblick
• I Lied to You for Sinners
  • By Raphael Saadiq and Ludwig Goransson
• No Place Like Home for Wicked: For Good
• The Girl in the Bubble for Wicked: For Good
• Train Dreams for Train Dreams
  • By Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner

Cinematic and Box Office Achievement

• Avatar: Fire and Ash
• F1
• KPop Demon Hunters
• Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning
• Sinners
• Weapons
• Wicked: For Good
• Zootopia 2

Best Television Series: Drama

• The Diplomat
• Pluribus
• Severance
• Slow Horses
• The Pitt
• The White Lotus

Best Television Series: Musical or Comedy

• Abbott Elementary
• The Bear
• Hacks
• Nobody Wants This
• Only Murders in the Building
• The Studio

Best Limited Series, Anthology or TV Movie

• Adolescence
• All Her Fault
• Black Mirror
• Dying for Sex
• The Beast in Me
• The Girlfriend

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Series: Drama

• Bella Ramsey for The Last of Us
• Britt Lower for Severance
• Helen Mirren for MobLand
• Kathy Bates for Matlock
• Keri Russell for The Diplomat
• Rhea Seehorn for Pluribus

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Series: Drama

• Adam Scott for Severance
• Diego Luna for Andor
• Gary Oldman for Slow Horses
• Mark Ruffalo for Task
• Noah Wyle for The Pitt
• Sterling K Brown for Paradise

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Series: Musical or Comedy

• Ayo Edebiri for The Bear
• Jean Smart for Hacks
• Jenna Ortega for Wednesday
• Kristen Bell for Nobody Wants This
• Natasha Lyonne for Poker Face
• Selena Gomez for Only Murders in the Building

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Limited Series, Anthology or TV Movie

• Amanda Seyfried for Long Bright River
• Claire Danes for The Beast in Me
• Michelle Williams for Dying for Sex
• Rashida Jones for Black Mirror
• Robin Wright for The Girlfriend
• Sarah Snook for All Her Fault

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Series: Musical or Comedy

• Adam Brody for Nobody Wants This
• Glen Powell for Chad Powers
• Jeremy Allen White for The Bear
• Martin Short for Only Murders in the Building
• Seth Rogen for The Studio
• Steve Martin for Only Murders in the Building

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role on Television

• Aimee Lou Wood for The White Lotus
• Carrie Coon for The White Lotus
• Catherine O’Hara for The Studio
• Erin Doherty for Adolescence
• Hannah Einbinder for Hacks
• Parker Posey for The White Lotus

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Limited Series, Anthology or TV Movie

• Charlie Hunnam for Monster: The Ed Gein Story
• Jacob Elordi for The Narrow Road to the Deep North
• Jude Law for Black Rabbit
• Matthew Rhys for The Beast in Me
• Paul Giamatti for Black Mirror
• Stephen Graham for Adolescence

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role on Television

• Ashley Walters for Adolescence
• Billy Crudup for The Morning Show
• Jason Isaacs for The White Lotus
• Owen Cooper for Adolescence
• Tramell Tillman for Severance
• Walton Goggins for The White Lotus

Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy on Television

• Bill Maher: Is Anyone Else Seeing This?
• Brett Goldstein: The Second Best Night of Your Life
• Kevin Hart: Acting My Age
• Kumail Ali Nanjiani: Night Thoughts
• Ricky Gervais: Mortality
• Sarah Silverman: Postmortem

Best Podcast

• Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
• Call Her Daddy with Alex Cooper
• Good Hang with Amy Poehler
• Smartless with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett
• The Mel Robbins Podcast
• Up First

Dec. 8 (UPI) — Former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred announced Monday he’s dropping his U.S. Senate campaign and will instead run for a newly redrawn district on the U.S. House of Representatives.

In a statement posted to X, Allred said he wants to avoid a “bruising” Democratic primary for the Senate.

“In the past few days, I’ve come to believe that a bruising Senate Democratic primary and runoff would prevent the Democratic Party from going into this critical election unified against the danger posed to our communities and our Constitution by [President] Donald Trump and one of his Republican bootlickers,” he said, referring to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.

“That’s why I’ve made the difficult decision to end my campaign for the U.S. Senate.”

Allred is instead running for the 33rd Congressional District, which is currently represented in the House by Rep. Marc Veasey, a Democrat. But after Texas redrew its congressional map this year, Veasey’s base was no longer in the 33rd District; he plans to run for the 30th District next year, an unnamed source told The Texas Tribune.

Both the old and new boundaries of the 33rd District is a meandering region including parts of Dallas and Tarrant Counties, and the eastern half of Fort Worth. The new map, reaches farther north and changes some of the boundaries in western Dallas County.

Allred was elected in 2018 to the U.S. House to represent the 32nd District, which encompassed a swath of eastern Dallas County. He flipped the district from red to blue.

“The 33rd District was racially gerrymandered by Trump in an effort to further rig our democracy, but it’s also the community where I grew up attending public schools and watching my mom struggle to pay for our groceries,” Allred said in his Monday statement.

Voting rights advocates and Democrats took the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature to the Supreme Court over the redrawn congressional map, accusing the Republicans of gerrymandering based on racial population. The high court last week gave Texas permission to use the new map in the next midterm elections.

“On January 6th, I was prepared to physically fight to defend our democracy,” Allred said. “Today, the danger we face from Donald Trump is even greater and has added a level of corruption and rigging of our economy that has made it harder than ever for Texans.”

EU leader Costa and the German government have hit back at a US security strategy harshly critical of Europe.

European Council President Antonio Costa and the German government have lambasted a new US national security strategy that paints Europe as a troubled, declining power that may one day lose its usefulness as an ally to Washington.

The remarks on Monday from the European Union’s leading economy and one of its top officials delivered a stinging rebuke to the National Security Strategy released on Friday by the administration of US President Donald Trump.

The 33-page document contains scathing criticism of the continent, claiming it is facing the “prospect of civilisational erasure” due to migration, scorning it for “censorship of free speech” and suppression of anti-immigration movements, and suggesting that the US may withdraw the security umbrella it has long held over it.

The stoush over the strategy, playing out as Washington ramps up pressure on Ukraine to agree to a plan to end the war with Russia, reflects what EU leader Costa said was a “changed” relationship between the US and Europe.

“We need to focus on building a Europe that must understand that the relationships between allies and the post-World War II alliances have changed,” Costa said at the Jacques Delors Institute, a think tank in Paris.

In response to the strategy document’s comments on free speech, Costa warned, “There will never be free speech if the freedom of information of citizens is sacrificed for the aims of the tech oligarchs in the United States.”

Costa strongly criticised allegations that free speech is being censored in Europe and said only European citizens can decide which parties should govern them.

“What we cannot accept is this threat of interference in Europe’s political life. The United States cannot replace European citizens in deciding which are the right parties and the wrong parties,” Costa said.

“The United States cannot replace Europe in its vision of freedom of speech,” he noted, adding, “Our history has taught us that there is no freedom of speech without freedom of information.”

‘Ideology, not strategy’

In Berlin, Sebastian Hille, a deputy spokesperson for the German government, said some of the criticisms in the document were “ideology rather than strategy”.

“Political freedoms, including the right to freedom of expression, are among the fundamental values of the EU,” he said.

He said Berlin also disagreed with the document’s failure to classify Russia, which in February 2022 launched a full-scale invasion of neighbouring Ukraine, as a threat.

“We stand by NATO’s joint analysis, according to which Russia is a danger and a threat to trans-Atlantic security,” he added.

Divisions over Russia

The US strategy document makes clear that Washington wants to improve its relationship with Moscow, saying that it has a “core interest” in ending the conflict with Ukraine to “reestablish strategic stability with Russia”, while hitting out at European officials’ “unrealistic expectations” for a solution to the war.

An initial US plan for ending the war, which would have allowed Russia to hold on to large territories in eastern Ukraine, sparked criticism from European leaders amid concerns that Washington is trying to force Kyiv to accept unfavourable terms.

The plan has since been altered, first with input from Ukraine alongside its European allies and then in meetings between Ukrainian and US officials. The full details of the proposal as it stands have not been disclosed.

By contrast, Moscow has welcomed Trump’s strategy document.

Costa said that given the strategy document’s position on Ukraine, “we can understand why Moscow shares [its] vision.”

“The objective in this strategy is not a fair and durable peace. It’s only [about] the end of hostilities, and the stability of relations with Russia,” he said.

“Everyone wants stable relations with Russia,” Costa said, but “we can’t have stable relations with Russia when Russia remains a threat to our security”.

Dec. 8 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments Monday about President Donald Trump‘s firing of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter in a case that could upend 90 years of precedent.

The high court’s decision, which is expected in the summer, could allow presidents to remove independent regulators without just cause. If the Supreme Court sides with Trump, it would go directly against the court’s 1935 ruling in Humphrey’s Executor vs. United States, which upheld the FTC’s protections from removal as constitutional.

According to the 1935 Supreme Court decision, FTC commissioners may only be dismissed from their jobs “by the president for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”

In March, Trump fired Democratic FTC commissioners Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, both of whom claimed the terminations were illegal.

The FTC is a bipartisan, independent federal agency that works to protect consumers from questionable business practices. Slaughter said preventing the president from being able to terminate commissioners without just cause allows the FTC to remain independent.

“Independence allows the decision-making that is done by these boards and commissions to be on the merits, about the facts and about protecting the interests of the American people,” she said, according to NPR. “That is what Americans deserve from their government.”

Trump, meanwhile, insisted his executive power gives him the ability to fire workers at independent agencies. In September, the Supreme Court agreed with Trump, allowing him to fire Slaughter through a brief administrative stay on a lower court’s order blocking the termination.

Trump appointed Slaughter, a Democrat, to the FTC in 2018. Former President Joe Biden then appointed her to be acting chair of the agency before nominating her for a new term. The Senate confirmed that nomination, giving her a second seven-year term starting in 2024.

The Hill reported that U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer will represent the U.S. government in Monday’s Supreme Court hearing.

“The court should repudiate anything that remains of Humphrey’s Executor and ensure that the president, not multimember agency heads, controls the executive power that Article II vests in him alone,” Sauer said in court filings.

The moment a deadly fire broke out at a nightclub in Goa, India, was caught on camera. The blaze killed at least 25 people, including four tourists. Authorities are investigating safety violations and the venue’s operators.

Damascus, Syria – In the basement of a nondescript building in Damascus is the Syrian Identification Centre’s forensic laboratory with storage units full of human bones.

One cabinet is entirely dedicated to ribs. Another contains skulls.

These are only some of Syria’s missing; their disappearances remain an unresolved legacy of the dictatorship under Bashar al-Assad.

A year on from the fall of the regime in December 2024, the Identification Centre’s head, Dr Anas Hourani, has examined the only mass grave that has been fully exhumed so far.

It could take his team up to four years to identify victims from that site alone, he said.

A long, painstaking process

It’s a daunting timeline. Across Syria, there may be as many as 66 mass graves, according to the International Commission on Missing Persons.

“These missing people may be our relatives, our neighbours, our families,” Hourani said. “We must hold accountable the person who did these things.”

Forced disappearances were a hallmark of the al-Assad regime, which operated a vast prison network where detainees were tortured, killed, and many were buried in mass graves.

When the regime collapsed, many Syrians were relieved, hoping to finally get answers about their disappeared loved ones.

Prisons were swiftly opened, and about 30,000 detainees were freed.

But for people who didn’t see their loved ones emerge, a devastating realisation set in: They’re most likely dead.

Mohammad Reda Jalkhi, the head of the National Commission on Missing Persons, believes the figure may be as high as 300,000, while the UN estimates it at about 100,000.

“According to some documents, noting that they vary in authenticity, the number is between 120,000 missing persons and 300,000,” he said.

“However, I expect that in reality the number is much higher, and the number of people affected by this loss exceeds millions of Syrians.”

Waiting for a DNA lab

As a forensic odontologist, Dr Hourani studies teeth to help identify victims.

“The teeth are one of the universal indicators,” he said.

He also looks at a victim’s bone structure and the clothes they were buried in to ascertain as much information about when and how a person died.

A winter jacket, for example, suggests the person was killed in the winter.

While these techniques can narrow down clues, real forensic work is hamstrung until Syria has a DNA centre with a functioning DNA bank.

“We hope to open several centres for DNA analysis, which will help us identify individuals,” Dr Hourani said, adding that they struggle to find specialised staff.

Jalkhi acknowledges these shortcomings.

“We are trying to do everything we can regarding this file,” he told Al Jazeera.

But dealing properly with crimes of this scale “does not happen overnight”, he said.

“If we look at Bosnia and Herzegovina, after more than 30 years – and up until now – they are still looking for missing people, and the same goes for Mexico and Argentina,” Jalkhi said.

Despite this, he says he is committed to delivering results.

“Failure in the file of missing people,” he said, “means failure to maintain civil peace and therefore disaster. We do not want to return to disaster again in Syria.”

Chinese exports climb as exporters reroute shipments to other markets amid slump in shipments to the US.

China’s annual trade surplus in goods has topped $1 trillion for the first time, with plunging exports to the United States amid a tariff war more than compensated for by shipments to other markets, new data shows.

Figures released by China’s General Administration of Customs on Monday showed the trade surplus for the first 11 months of the year hit $1.08 trillion in November, as exports climbed 5.9 percent year-on-year that month, reversing a 1.1 percent decline the month prior.

The leap came despite a continued slump in exports to the US, which fell 28.6 percent to $33.8bn last month, the data showed.

Beijing and Washington have been locked in a bitter trade war involving hefty tariffs during the second administration of US President Donald Trump, forcing Chinese exporters to pivot to other markets – although the leaders of the world’s two largest economies agreed to pause the hostilities during a meeting in South Korea in October.

“China’s trade surplus this year has already surpassed last year’s level, and we expect it to widen further next year,” Zichun Huang of Capital Economics wrote in a note.

Huang said the weakness in exports to the US was “more than offset by shipments to other markets”.

Exports were “likely to remain resilient”, Huang added, due to trade rerouting and rising price competitiveness for Chinese goods, as deflation pushed down its real effective exchange rate.

French warnings over surplus

Exports have proven critical to China’s economy as it grapples with a debt crisis in the property sector and sluggish domestic spending, impacting its growth.

But China’s towering trade surplus has rankled leading Western trading partners, with French President Emmanuel Macron the latest to threaten action if the imbalance is not addressed.

Macron, fresh from a state visit to China, in an interview with the French newspaper Les Echos on Sunday, warned that Europe could follow the US in imposing tariffs on Beijing if the surplus were not reduced in the coming months.

Exports to the European Union grew by an annual 14.8 percent last month, while shipments to Australia rose 35.8 percent. Meanwhile, the fast-growing Southeast Asian economies took in 8.2 percent more goods over the same period.

That boosted China’s trade surplus to $111.68bn in November, the highest since June, from $90.07bn recorded the previous month, and above a forecast of $100.2bn.

Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, wrote in a note that November’s rebound of export growth had helped to “mitigate the weak domestic demand”, amid a slowdown in economic momentum being partly driven by weakness in the property sector.

In an indication of China’s weak domestic consumption, new customs data showed that imports rose 1.9 percent on-year in November, less than had been predicted.

Thousands of Syrians have gathered in the capital Damascus to celebrate one year since the fall of Bashar al-Assad. A military parade will mark the end of a dynasty that brought decades of oppression and war to the Syrian people.

SEOUL, Dec. 8 (UPI) — Adjusting U.S.-South Korea joint military drills could be considered under certain conditions, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said Monday, as the administration of President Lee Jae Myung seeks ways to reopen dialogue with North Korea.

“I believe these issues can be discussed in the future, as conditions and circumstances allow,” ministry spokesman Yoon Min-ho said at a press briefing when asked about scaling back the allies’ exercises, an idea that has been floated as a potential bargaining chip to restart talks with Pyongyang.

President Lee said last week that Seoul was prepared to help Washington create “strategic leverage” for new negotiations, including the possibility of downsizing joint drills, which North Korea routinely denounces as rehearsals for invasion.

“We will do our best to create objective conditions so that we can communicate and cooperate at any time,” Lee said during a press conference with foreign media. “The issue of the joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises is one of them.”

Unification Minister Chung Dong-young has also argued that reducing the drills could become “inevitable” if Washington and Pyongyang are to hold a summit in the first half of next year.

Seoul and Washington have taken similar steps before, scaling back or suspending major drills during a period of detente with the North in 2018-19 and shifting large field maneuvers to command-post exercises.

The current administration has sent mixed signals, however, as national security adviser Wi Sung-lac said Sunday that the option was not currently under active review.

“While there are many possible options, we are not directly considering using the Korea-U.S. joint exercises as a card,” Wi said at a press briefing.

Yoon declined to respond directly to Wi’s comments Monday, but highlighted the broader geopolitical significance of the drills. “South Korea-U.S. joint exercises have important implications not only in military terms, but also in inter-Korean relations and the situation on the Korean Peninsula,” he said.

Seoul has rolled out several conciliatory steps since Lee took office in June, including dismantling border loudspeakers and tightening restrictions on activist balloon launches in an effort to lower tensions. North Korea has so far dismissed the overtures, continuing to advance its nuclear and missile programs while deepening military cooperation with Russia.

December 8 marks one year since the al-Assad dynasty, which lasted 54 years, was removed from power by a rebel offensive.

The 14-year-long war led to one of the world’s largest migration crises, with some 6.8 million Syrians, about a third of the population, fleeing the country at the war’s peak in 2021, seeking refuge wherever they could find it.

More than half of these refugees, about 3.74 million, settled in neighbouring Turkiye, while 840,000 found refuge in Lebanon and 672,000 in Jordan.

The animation below shows the number of Syrian refugees who fled from 2011 to 2025, highlighting the top 10 countries that hosted them.

Now, as Syria is entering a new chapter, millions of refugees and members of the diaspora are weighing the decision to return home and rebuild their lives.

‘The feeling of belonging’

Khalid al-Shatta, a 41-year-old management administration professional from Damascus, decided to return to Syria after fleeing the country in September 2012.

Al-Shatta, along with his wife and one-year-old son, first fled to Jordan by car before flying to Turkiye, which became their temporary home.

Al-Shatta recalls the anticipation surrounding al-Assad’s fall. On the night it happened, he said, everyone stayed up to watch the news.

“The moment Syria was liberated, we made our decision,” he told Al Jazeera. “My family and I came to the conclusion that we have to return to Syria, and be part of its future,” he explained.

Al-Shatta describes returning to Syria for the first time in 13 years and feeling “like I have never left Syria before, with one difference, the feeling of belonging to this country, to this nation, this land”.

How many Syrians have returned from abroad?

Al-Shatta and his family are among the more than 782,000 Syrians documented by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) who have returned to Syria from other countries over the past year.

Of those who have arrived from abroad, 170,000 have returned to Aleppo, 134,000 to Homs and 124,000 to rural Damascus.

Since returning to Damascus, al-Shatta has opened his own business, focused on power solutions. However, he says many returnees are struggling to find work with suitable salaries.

“Syria is not cheap [to live] compared with the average salaries; there are job opportunities, yet the salaries are challenging,” he says.

He explains how the quality of life varies greatly for Syria’s population, which now stands at 26.9 million. “Some families are living on $150 to $200 per month, while others live on $1,500 to $2,000, and some earn even more,” he explains.

Despite the rise in returns, limited job opportunities and high living costs continue to undermine long-term resettling. Housing remains unaffordable for many, leaving returnees in damaged homes or expensive rental units.

According to the IOM, while 69 percent of Syrians still own their property, 19 percent are renting, 11 percent are being hosted for free, and 1 percent are squatting.

New EU asylum guidelines

In the days following the fall of al-Assad, several European countries – including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom – announced plans to pause asylum applications from Syrians.

The freeze applied to both new applications and those already in process, leaving many Syrians in limbo about whether they would be accepted, rejected or deported.

As of mid-2025, total asylum applications across the EU+ – European Union countries plus Norway and Switzerland – fell by 23 percent compared with the first half of 2024.

The decline was driven mainly by a steep drop in Syrian applications. Syrians lodged about 25,000 applications in the first half of 2025, a two-thirds decrease from a year earlier.

For the first time in more than a decade, Syrians are no longer the largest nationality group seeking asylum in Europe.

On December 3, the EU issued updated guidance for Syrian asylum applicants, saying opponents of al-Assad and military service evaders “are no longer at risk of persecution”.

Between 2012 and June 2025, EU+ states granted refugee status to approximately 705,000 Syrian applicants, according to the European asylum agency.

Returning to ‘destroyed and demolished’ homes

In addition to the 782,000 Syrians returning from abroad, the IOM has documented nearly 1.8 million internally displaced Syrians returning to their towns over the past year.

This brings the total number of Syrian refugees and IDPs who have returned home over the past year to 2.6 million. Of those internally displaced, 471,000 have returned to Aleppo, nearly 460,000 to Idlib, and 314,000 to Hama.

Talal Nader al-Abdo, 42, from Maaret al-Numan in southern Idlib, was one of the internally displaced Syrians who returned home from a tent where he and his family had been living.

“I was one of the victims of [Bashar al-Assad’s] brutality,” al-Abdo told Al Jazeera.

His family had been internally displaced multiple times, first from Maaret al-Numan, then to Ariha, then to Idlib, and finally to the border camps Kafr Jalis and Harbanoush of northern Syria, where al-Abdo recalls the harsh days they spent in the extreme cold and intense heat.

“When the regime fell, I knew that relief had come, the bombing had ended, and the time was near for us to return to our homes, even though they were destroyed and demolished. We would return and rebuild them,” al-Abdo added.

Throughout the war, al-Abdo, together with his wife, three sons, daughter, and elderly mother, stayed in northwestern Syria “because we had great faith that one day God would grant us relief and we would return home”.

Despite many returning home, there are still more than six million Syrians who remain internally displaced, according to the IOM.

The largest share of those are living in rural Damascus (1.99 million), followed by Aleppo (1.33 million) and Idlib (993,000).

People with a migration background accounted for more than 5 percent of South Korea’s total population in 2024, marking a slight increase from the previous year, government data showed Monday.

As of Nov. 1, 2024, there were 2.72 million people with a migration background in Korea, taking up 5.2 percent of the country’s total population, according to the Ministry of Statistics and Data.

The figure marked a 0.3 percentage point increase from the corresponding tally for 2023.

This marks the first time the statistics ministry released a registration-based census survey on the population with a migration background.

South Korean nationals accounted for 24.8 percent, or 672,000, of the total population with a migration background in 2024, while foreigners took up the remaining 75.2 percent, or 2.04 million.

Of the Korean nationals with such background, 381,000 were second-generation immigrants, while 245,000 were naturalized or acknowledged citizens.

By gender, 52.5 percent of the migratory population were male, and 47.5 percent were female.

By age, those in their 30s accounted for 24.3 percent of the migratory population, followed by those in their 20s at 21 percent, those in their 40s at 15.4 percent and those in their 50s at 11.6 percent.

The working age population, aged between 15 and 64, accounted for 81.9 percent of the total, while those aged 14 or below took up 12.7 percent and the elderly population aged 65 or above stood at 5.5 percent.

Meanwhile, there were 738,000 children and adolescents aged 24 or below with a migration background last year, up 7.9 percent from 2023.

Of the 738,000 children and adolescents, 27.2 percent had Vietnamese parents, while 16.5 percent had Chinese parents and 12 percent had Chinese citizens of Korean descent as their parents.

Data also showed that nearly 57 percent of those who migrated to Korea resided in the greater Seoul area, comprising the capital city, Gyeonggi Province and the city of Incheon.

Some 10.6 percent lived in the central Chungcheong provinces, another 9.3 percent in the southeastern Gyeongsang provinces and 6.3 percent in the southeastern Jeolla provinces.

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German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has affirmed support for the creation of a Palestinian state, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has again rejected such a move, during the German leader’s inaugural visit to the country.

At a joint press conference on Sunday following a meeting in Jerusalem, the two leaders spoke of their respective priorities for Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Merz’s trip is playing out under the shadow of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza – although Merz, leader of one of Israel’s staunchest supporters, does not consider it a genocide.

Merz told the news conference that Germany, one of Israel’s most unwavering allies, wanted a new Middle East that recognised a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel.

“Our conviction is that the prospective establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel presumably offers the best prospect for this future,” the German chancellor said.

But he said his government had no intention of recognising a Palestinian state “in the foreseeable future”.

“The German federal government remains of the opinion that recognition of a Palestinian state should come at the end – not the beginning – of such a process (peace negotiations),” he said, putting Germany at odds with several other key European nations, including France, Spain and the Untied Kingdom, who have all confirmed formal recognition.

But Netanyahu said that the Israeli public was opposed to any two-state solution, and that the political annexation of the occupied West Bank – a concern raised by Merz and also rejected by the administration of United States President Donald Trump – remained a subject of discussion, although the status quo was expected to remain for the foreseeable future.

“The purpose of a Palestinian state is to destroy the Jewish state,” Netanyahu claimed without expanding.

The Israeli premier added that the first phase of Trump’s Gaza plan was nearly completed, and that he would be having “very important conversations” at the end of December on how to ensure the second phase would be achieved.

He would also meet Trump later this month, he added.

Relationship strained over Gaza

The war on Gaza has tested the traditionally strong ties between Israel and Germany, for whom support for Israel is a core tenet of its foreign policy, built in during decades of historical guilt over the Third Reich’s Holocaust.

In August, Israel’s actions in Gaza drove Germany – Israel’s second-largest arms supplier after the US – to restrict sales of weapons for use in Gaza. At the time, Merz said – in a public criticism of Israel that was rare for a German leader – that his government could no longer ignore the worsening toll on civilians in the besieged and bombarded enclave.

Netanyahu expressed his anger at the restrictions, which were lifted two weeks ago.

Speaking at the news conference, Merz said the decision to restrict weapons sales had changed nothing “in our very basic attitude towards Israel and Israel’s security, in our support of Israel, in our military support of Israel as well.”

No reciprocal visit on cards

Merz’s visit – coming seven months since he assumed power – has come relatively late in his tenure as chancellor compared to his predecessors, with Olaf Scholz having visited Israel after three months and Angela Merkel after two.

Speaking at the press conference in Jerusalem, Merz said the leaders did not discuss a visit by Netanyahu – who faces an arrest warrant for alleged war crimes in Gaza from the International Criminal Court (ICC) – to Berlin.

“We did not discuss the possibility of Prime Minister Netanyahu travelling to Germany. There is no reason to discuss this at the moment,” Merz told reporters.

“If time permits, I would issue such an invitation if appropriate. But this is not an issue for either of us at the present time.”

Earlier this year, Merz vowed to invite the Israeli leader and assured him he would not be arrested on German soil.

In the meantime, back in Germany, activists in the capital Berlin held a demonstration to condemn Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza, to demand a halt to arms exports to Israel, and to express their support for Palestine.

There has also been criticism from the political opposition in Germany to Merz making the trip at all to meet a leader with an ICC arrest warrant hanging over him.

Germany ‘must stand up’ for Israel

Prior to meeting Netanyahu, Merz had visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, where he reiterated Berlin’s enduring support.

During the visit, he said “Germany must stand up for the existence and security of Israel,” after acknowledging his country’s “enduring historical responsibility” for the mass extermination of Jews during World War II.

On his arrival in Israel on Saturday, Merz was met at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, who called Merz “a friend of Israel”. He then met Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Jerusalem later that evening.

German support resolute despite criticism

Reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh said the relationship between Germany and Israel remained “very strong”, despite recent strains over Gaza.

Not only had Germany resumed arms exports to Israel following a short-lived partial suspension, but it had recently signed a $4.5bn deal for an Israeli-made missile defence shield, reportedly the largest arms export agreement in Israeli history.

Speaking at Sunday’s news conference, Netanyahu said the deal reflected a “historical change” in Israel’s relationship with Germany.

“Not only does Germany work in the defence of Israel, but Israel, the Jewish state, 80 years after the Holocaust, works for the defence of Germany,” he said.

Odeh said Germany’s support had proven controversial at home and abroad, and had seen Germany being accused of complicity in genocide for its military support to Israel, before judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled against issuing emergency orders to stop German arms exports.

“The visit itself is quite controversial given that Germany is a member of the International Criminal Court and is obliged to hand over Netanyahu to the court, not meet with him,” Odeh noted.

She said Israel had little tolerance for criticism from Germany, but understood that its occasional comments taking issue with its actions had little bearing on Berlin’s policy response.

“The Israeli political system … understands that even that criticism … doesn’t really amount to much in terms of policy,” she said, describing Berlin as acting as “a brick wall at the European Union against any criticism, any action, any sanctions against Israel”.