President Donald Trump has returned from an end-of year holiday to face fresh legislative challenges, midterm elections and threats abroad.

The president began the second year of his presidency with confrontational tweets targeting Iran and Pakistan. He slammed Islamabad on Monday for "lies & deceit," saying the country had played U.S. leaders for "fools," by not doing enough to control militants.

President Bashar Assad reshuffled his government Monday replacing the ministers of defense, information and industry, Syria's state news agency SANA reported.

SANA did not give a reason for the government reshuffle that comes at a time when Assad's forces have been gaining ground over the past two years under the cover of Russian airstrikes and with the help of Iran-backed fighters.

Saudi Arabia in 2017 laid the groundwork for momentous change next year, defying its conservative reputation for slow, cautious reforms by announcing plans to let women drive, allow movie theaters to return and to issue tourist visas. The kingdom could even get a new king.

King Salman and his ambitious 32-year-old son and heir, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have upended decades of royal family protocol, social norms and traditional ways of doing business. They bet instead on a young generation of Saudis hungry for change and a Saudi public fed up with corruption and government bureaucracy.

Iran's semi-official ILNA news agency reported Friday that authorities arrested a small number of demonstrators in Tehran protesting price hikes and the president's economic policy.

The report quoted the security deputy of Tehran's governor, Mohsen Hamedani, as saying that fewer than 50 people gathered at a public square in Tehran, and that most of them left after a police warning but a few decided to stay on.

The United Nations' budget is set to shrink by over $285 million next year — a 5 percent cut that the U.S. government says it negotiated.

The U.S. Treasury Department issued sanctions Tuesday against two officials it describes as "key leaders of North Korea's unlawful weapons programs."

The sanctions against Kim Jong Sik and Ri Pyong Chol block them from any property or interests in property within U.S. jurisdiction, and prohibit them from transactions with American citizens. Treasury said the men are senior officials in North Korea's Munitions Industry Department.

Saudi Arabia has accepted accreditation of Fawzi Kabbara as the new Lebanese Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said pan-Arab al-Hayat daily Wednesday, after months of delay over what was perceived as a diplomatic tussle between the two countries.

The daily quoted unnamed sources at the Lebanese Foreign Ministry who said they “received a letter from the Saudi Foreign Ministry accrediting ambassador Fawzi Kabbara as Lebanon's ambassador to Riyadh.”

The Kremlin on Tuesday rejected concerns that its decision to ban opposition leader Alexei Navalny from running against President Vladimir Putin in a March election could undermine the vote's legitimacy.

The good news for many in the Northeast and Midwest was that it has been a white Christmas. The bad news was that a blizzard swept into parts of New England and bitter cold enveloped much of the Midwest.

Even the usually rainy Pacific Northwest got the white stuff. The National Weather Service says it's only the sixth time since 1884 that downtown Portland had measurable snow — only an inch or two — on a Dec. 25.

Actress Heather Menzies-Urich, who played one of the singing von Trapp children in the hit 1965 film, "The Sound of Music," has died. She was 68.

Her son, actor Ryan Urich, told Variety that his mother died late Sunday in Frankford, Ontario. She recently had been diagnosed with brain cancer.