World

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis said yesterday that Christmas had been “taken hostage” by dazzling materialism that puts God in the shadows and blinds many to the needs of the hungry, the migrants and the war weary.

MILWAUKEE (Reuters) – A winter storm was taking aim yesterday at the US West and Midwest where it was expected to dump heavy snow and freezing rain, causing headaches for millions of holiday travellers who were hitting the road over the weekend, forecasters said.

KINSHASA (Reuters) – Political rivals in Democratic Republic of Congo neared a deal yesterday for President Joseph Kabila to leave power in 2017 after dozens of people were killed during protests this week at the end of his mandate.

UNITED NATIONS, (Reuters) – The United States yesterday allowed the U.N.

KINSHASA,  (Reuters) – Congolese politicians have agreed in principle to a deal under which President Joseph Kabila leaves office by the end of 2017, opposition leaders said yesterday, an unexpected breakthrough after dozens were killed in anti-government protests this week.

VALLETTA,  (Reuters) – Hijackers armed with what were probably replica weapons forced an airliner to land in Malta yesterday before freeing all their hostages unharmed and surrendering, having declared loyalty to Libya’s late leader Muammar Gaddafi.

MILAN,  (Reuters) – Italian police shot dead the man believed responsible for this week’s Berlin Christmas market truck attack, killing him after he pulled a gun on them during a routine check in the early hours yesterday.

RIO DE JANEIRO,  (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Companies that want to buy Brazilian timber without contributing to illegal deforestation have a new tool to help them ensure stolen wood does not appear in their supply chains – a digital platform tracing the origins of wood, environmentalists said.

LONDON,  (Reuters) – A vaccine developed by Merck is the first shown to be highly effective in preventing human infection with Ebola, according to final results from a clinical trial.

(Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump is suspending the operations of his charitable foundation over concerns that donors could be seen as buying access to the Trump family, The Washington Post reported yesterday.

PALM BEACH, Fla./WASHINGTON,  (Reuters) -President-elect Donald Trump called for an expansion of the United States’ nuclear capabilities yesterday, in a tweet that alarmed nonproliferation experts who said that a boost to the U.S.

UNITED NATIONS/ WASHINGTON,  (Reu-ters) – The United States intended to allow the U.N.

NEW DELHI, (Reuters) – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s crackdown on the cash economy has shattered the consensus needed for a new national sales tax, plunging his boldest reform into limbo and threatening to entrench an economic slowdown.

RALEIGH, N.C., (Reuters) – North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature yesterday defeated a bipartisan bid to repeal a controversial law restricting bathroom access in the state for transgender people, which has seen months of protests and boycotts by opponents decrying the measure as discriminatory.

LIMA,  (Reuters) – The government of Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said it was helping the attorney general’s office obtain information from prosecutors abroad after Brazil-based Odebrecht said in a global plea deal that it doled out $29 million in bribes to local officials over three presidencies.

NEW YORK,  (Reuters) – A Florida construction equipment exporter’s owners were arrested yesterday on charges they illegally transferred over $100 million from businesses largely in Venezuela to U.S.

NEW YORK, (Reuters) – Delta Air Lines Inc removed two men from a plane at London’s Heathrow Airport before takeoff yesterday, and one of the men accused the airline of acting on passenger complaints that he had been speaking on a phone in Arabic.

(Reuters) – Dutch scientists have developed an artificial leaf that can act as a mini-factory for producing drugs, an advance that could allow medicines to be produced anywhere there is sunlight.

NEW YORK, (Reuters) – Brazil-based construction colossus Odebrecht SA and affiliated petrochemical company Braskem SA agreed yesterday to pay at least $3.5 billion, the largest penalty ever in a foreign bribery case, to resolve international charges involving payoffs to Brazil’s state oil company and others.

(Reuters) – The U.S. government spent more than a decade preparing responses to malicious hacking by a foreign power but had no clear strategy when Russia launched a disinformation campaign over the internet during the U.S.