World News

Qatar says it has mediated a deal between Israel and Hamas to allow the delivery of medications to the more than 100 Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza. Tuesday's announcement marks the first agreement between the warring sides since a weeklong cease-fire collapsed in late November. In Yemen, a U.S. official said the military has launched the third strike in recent days against the Houthi rebel group. The Houthis have attacked shipping in the crucial Red Sea corridor, saying they seek to halt Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas. The number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip has risen to over 24,285 people. In Israel, around 1,200 people were killed during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.

U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is facing rebellion from senior lawmakers in his Conservative Party over his stalled plan to send asylum-seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda. The party's liberal and authoritarian wings are at loggerheads over the plan. Moderates worry the policy is too extreme, while many on the party’s powerful right wing think it doesn’t go far enough. In a blow to Sunak, two deputy chairmen of the Conservative Party resigned from their positions in order to vote to toughen up the government’s flagship Safety of Rwanda bill in the House of Commons on Tuesday. Some say they will vote against the bill as a whole if it is not strengthened. That would be a serious blow to Sunak.

Palestinian militants have battled Israeli forces in devastated northern Gaza and launched a barrage of rockets from further south. Tuesday's show of force comes more that 100 days into Israel’s massive air and ground campaign in the tiny coastal enclave. The north was the first target of Israel’s offensive, and entire neighborhoods there have been pulverized. The fighting showed how far Israel remains from achieving its goals of dismantling Hamas and returning scores of hostages captured in the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war. Meanwhile, the conflict threatens to widen, with the U.S. and Israel trading strikes with Iranian-backed groups across the region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have hosted North Korea’s foreign minister for talks on expanding ties between the countries. There are international concerns over an alleged arms cooperation deal between Pyongyang and Moscow after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un traveled to Russia in September to meet Putin and visit several military sites. The U.S. and South Korea have accused North Korea of providing artillery munitions and missiles to Russia for its military action in Ukraine. Both Russia and North Korea have dismissed accusations of North Korean arms transfers to Russia.

Iraq's Foreign Ministry has recalled its ambassador to Iran for consultations and summoned Iran’s chargé d’affaires in Baghdad in protest over Iranian strikes on northern Iraq that killed several civilians. The ministry says the Iranian attack was “a blatant violation of Iraq's sovereignty, violates international law and threatens regional security. Iran fired missiles late Monday at what it said were Israeli “spy headquarters” in an upscale neighborhood near the sprawling U.S. Consulate compound in Irbil, the seat of Iraq’s northern semi-autonomous Kurdish region, and at targets linked to the extremist Islamic State group in northern Syria.

Kenya’s director of public prosecutions has ordered that 95 people from a doomsday cult be charged with murder, manslaughter, radicalization, cruelty and child torture, among other crimes, over the deaths of 429 people believed to be members of the church. The director was responding to pressure from a magistrate who told the prosecution to charge the suspects within two weeks or the court would release them. For months, prosecutors asked the court for permission to keep holding church leader Paul Mackenzie and 28 others while they looked into the case that has shocked Kenyans. Dozens of mass graves have been found.

Chinese state media says that rescuers are evacuating tourists from a remote skiing area in the country's northwest where dozens of avalanches triggered by heavy snow have trapped more than 1,000 people for a week. The avalanches have blocked roads, stranding both tourists and residents in a village in Altay prefecture in the Xinjiang region, close to China’s border with Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan. Those injured were being airlifted out on a military helicopter while supplies such as food and fuel were being flown in. State broadcaster CCTV said a snow-blocked road linking Hemu village to major roads was cleared on Tuesday, enabling vehicles to enter and tourists to drive themselves out.

Circling around and around high in the skies of eastern Europe, secretive surveillance flights for NATO closely watch Russian activity along the military alliance's eastern flank. NATO policing of its airspace has ramped up since the Russian invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago. The Associated Press obtained rare and exclusive access aboard a giant AWACS surveillance plane flown by NATO member France. With its powerful radar and bellyful of surveillance gear, the French plane peered with its electronic eyes across southern Ukraine and the Black Sea to Russian-occupied Crimea and beyond during a 10-hour reconnaissance mission. It fed intelligence in real time to ground-based commanders and essentially drew a do-not-cross line in European skies.