An Emirati-backed secessionist group in Yemen said its forces were marching to another province as part of the group's push to expand areas under its control in the country's south, at the expense of its allies in the internationally recognized government.

The Southern Transitional Council this month seized most of the provinces of Hadramout and Mahra, including crucial oil facilities and the border with Oman. The move raised fears that the relative calm in the country's stalemated civil war might be shattered.

The two Iowa National Guard members killed in a weekend attack in Syria that the U.S. military blamed on the Islamic State group were identified and remembered as dedicated soldiers.

The U.S. Army named them as Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, 25, of Des Moines, and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, 29, of Marshalltown.

France is throwing up a last-minute obstacle to a massive trans-Atlantic trade deal between the 27-country European Union and the five South American nations of the Mercosur bloc that's taken a quarter-century to negotiate.

Angry European farmers fearing new competition from the EU-Mercosur pact are marching on Brussels, and European negotiators who thought they would finally wrap up the deal this year are facing a tough week.

A stray comet from another star swings past Earth this week in one last hurrah before racing back toward interstellar space.

Discovered over the summer, the comet known as 3I/Atlas will pass within 167 million miles (269 million kilometers) of our planet on Friday, the closest it gets on its grand tour of the solar system.

Over the course of 2025, a new reality has sunk in for Europe. The United States, long its strongest ally, has chipped away at the European Union's unity, economies, security and even its democracies, setting the backdrop for an EU summit this week at the end of an exceptionally trying year.

After putting an indefinite freeze last week on Russian assets in Europe, EU leaders face a new test of strength at Thursday's summit. Ukraine is in dire financial straits, and they have promised to meet Kyiv's economic and military needs for the next two years, most probably through a new reparations loan.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says proposals negotiated with U.S. officials on a peace deal to end his country's nearly four-year war with Russia could be finalized within days, after which American envoys will present them to the Kremlin before further possible meetings in the United States next weekend.

Zelensky told reporters late Monday that a draft peace plan discussed with the U.S. during talks in Berlin earlier in the day is "very workable." He cautioned, however, that some key issues — notably what happens to Ukrainian territory occupied by invading Russian forces — remain unresolved.

Japan lifted a megaquake advisory for the country's northeastern coast Tuesday, one week after a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck off northern Japan that officials said had caused an increased risk of a subsequent major quake.

The lifting means residents in the designated area under the advisory are no longer asked to sleep in their day clothes, with helmets, shoes and grab bags at their bedside in case a magnitude 8 or larger quake hits the area.

The U.S. has agreed to provide unspecified security guarantees to Ukraine as part of a peace deal to end Russia's nearly four-year war, and more talks are likely this weekend, U.S. officials said following the latest discussions with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Berlin.

The officials said Monday talks with President Donald Trump's envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, led to narrowing differences on security guarantees that Kyiv said must be provided, as well as on Moscow's demand that Ukraine concede land in the Donbas region in the country's east.

Crews used sandbags to shore up an earthen levee south of Seattle on Monday after a small section of it failed following a week of heavy rains, prompting an evacuation order covering parts of three suburbs, officials said.

The evacuation order from King County in Washington state was sent to about 1,100 homes and businesses east of the Green River in parts of Kent, Renton and Tukwila, said Brendan McCluskey, the county's emergency management director. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning that initially covered nearly 47,000 people, but was reduced within a few hours to an area covering 7,000 people.

A mass shooting in which 15 people were killed during a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney's Bondi Beach was "a terrorist attack inspired by Islamic State," Australia's federal police commissioner Krissy Barrett said Tuesday.

The suspects were a father and son, aged 50 and 24, authorities have said. The older man, whom state officials named as Sajid Akram, was shot dead. His son was being treated at a hospital.