Fourteen members of the Syrian police were killed in an "ambush" by forces loyal to the ousted Assad regime in the Tartous countryside, the transitional administration said early on Thursday. Elsewhere, demonstrations and an overnight curfew marked the most widespread unrest since Bashar al-Assad's removal more than two weeks ago.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday nominated Miami-Dade County Commissioner Kevin Marino Cabrera to serve as ambassador to Panama.

A passenger jet crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, with many feared dead. The Azerbaijan Airlines flight went off course and officials did not immediately explain why, but the crash came shortly after drone strikes hit southern Russia.

Top world leaders, including President Joe Biden, Pope Francis, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy shared their uplifting Christmas messages.

Biden signed 50 bills into law on Tuesday that include making the bald eagle the country's official bird and one that stops members of Congress from collecting their pensions if convicted of crimes.

American Airlines on Tuesday lifted an hour-long ground stop of all its flights in the United States due to an unspecified technical issue, a notice on the U.S. aviation regulator's website showed.

A U.S. NGO said that they believe the American journalist missing in Syria, Austin Tice, “is alive and we know that as a fact.” Meanwhile, protests broke out in the Christian community of the Syrian capital Damascus after a Christmas tree was set on fire in another town.

A U.S. judge on Monday delayed a trial for the suspect in the second assassination attempt of President-elect Donald Trump until September 2025, according to a court order.

Luigi Mangione, the man accused of fatally gunning down UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson on a Manhattan street, pleaded not guilty on Monday to state murder charges that describe him as a terrorist.

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) filed a lawsuit against the House Ethics Committee on Monday. The Committee subsequently released a report on its investigation into his alleged sexual misconduct and illegal drug use.

President Joe Biden has commuted the sentences for 37 out of the 40 federal inmates on death row, commuting them to life in prison without parole before he hands over power to President-elect Donald Trump in January.

The Congress was scrambling to avert a partial government shutdown on Friday, hours after more than three dozen Republicans rejected a demand by President-elect Donald Trump to use the measure to lift the nation's debt ceiling.

The White House is abandoning its plan to cancel student loans for more than 38 million Americans. This is the Biden administration's first step in scrapping pending regulations and unfinished rules across several agencies in its final days.

U.S. Central Command said that U.S. forces killed ISIS leader Abu Yusif. This happened in a precision airstrike on Thursday.

A state appeals court on Thursday removed Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the Georgia election case against Donald Trump and others. The new ruling means it will be up to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia to find another prosecutor to take over the case.

The suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO will return to New York to face murder charges after agreeing to be extradited during a court appearance in Pennsylvania where he was arrested last week after five days on the run.

Workers at seven Amazon facilities went on strike on Thursday in an effort by the Teamsters to pressure the e-commerce company for a labor agreement during a key shopping period.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided on Wednesday to hear a bid by TikTok and its China-based parent company ByteDance to block a law intended to force the sale of the app by Jan. 19 or face a ban on national security grounds.

Former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz (R) reaffirmed his innocence in a statement on social media Wednesday. He responded to earlier reports that the House Ethics Committee had voted to release the investigation into the former congressman.

President-elect Donald Trump is suing the Des Moines Register for alleged election interference, according to the court filing. The lawsuit names the register and top pollster J. Ann Selzer over the newspaper's final presidential election poll.

Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes told CNN that investigators are looking into online posts and a possible manifesto that the shooter may have left behind, trying to determine what prompted her to kill herself after shooting a classmate and a teacher in a school classroom.

Russia opened an investigation on Tuesday into the killing of Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, who was chief of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Protection Troops.

Together with President-elect Donald Trump, SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son announced a $100 billion investment in the United States over the next four years during a visit to Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on Monday.

Syria's former President Bashar al-Assad has issued his first statement since being toppled from power, saying he was evacuated to Russia from the Hmeimim air base on Dec. 8 as it came under drone attack after leaving Damascus that morning with rebel fighters closing in.

Former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi suffered an injury on a trip to Luxembourg and has been admitted to a hospital for evaluation, her office said in a statement on Friday.

Vice President-elect JD Vance has invited Daniel Penny to Saturday's Army-Navy game as a private guest. Penny was acquitted on Monday in a New York City subway death case. Vance and Penny will watch the game at Northwest Stadium in Maryland at 3 p.m. ET.

UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty mourned the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in a New York Times opinion piece on Friday. He said he understood public frustrations with what he called the "flawed" health care system in the United States.

President-elect Donald Trump has been named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for the second time. Time says that since he started running for president in 2015, it's likely that no single person has played a larger role in changing the course of politics and history than Trump.

President Joe Biden will commute the sentences of around 1,500 individuals, marking the biggest single-day act of clemency in modern history. 39 people who were convicted of non-violent crimes are also being pardoned.