Tighter COVID-19 restrictions, including a ban on dining in restaurants after 6 p.m., mean many Hong Kong families are eating their reunion dinner on Lunar New Year's eve at home this year.

The traditional dish known as "poon choi," or "basin food," is a large dish filled with lotus root, radish, taro and more expensive delicacies such as prawns, abalones and meat layered on top. Each food is symbolic and enjoying the dish with family is a way of sharing hope for a good year.

North Korea confirmed Monday it test-launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. territory of Guam, the North's most significant weapon launch in years, as Washington plans steps to show its commitment to its Asian allies.

Sunday's launch could be a prelude to bigger provocations by North Korea such as nuclear and long-range missile tests that pose a direct threat to the U.S. mainland, as the North tries to further pressure the Biden administration to win sanction relief or international recognition as a legitimate nuclear state.

Ski racers settling into the start gate for Alpine World Cup events in the Rocky Mountains in early December squinted through sunshine that carried the temperature toward 50 degrees and glanced down at a course covered with pristine — and manufactured — snow.

If they looked up and across the way, beyond the finish line, they saw adjacent hills that were brown and barren as can be, with nary a trace of powder or any indication that this was a setting for athletes who would be heading to the Beijing Olympics that begin Feb. 4.

President Joe Biden is hosting the ruling leader of Qatar at the White House on Monday as he looks for the gas-rich nation to step up once again to help the West as it faces the prospect of a European energy crunch if Russia further invades Ukraine.

Qatar played a central role in aiding last summer's U.S. military evacuations of Afghan helpers and U.S. citizen in Afghanistan, hosts the biggest American air base in the Middle East, and served as a go-between with the Taliban for the last three U.S. administrations as they tried to wind down America's longest war.

The United Arab Emirates intercepted a ballistic missile fired by Yemen's Houthi rebels early Monday as the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, was visiting the country, authorities said, the third such attack in recent weeks.

The attack only fuels ongoing tensions affecting the wider Persian Gulf, which has seen a series of attacks as Iran's nuclear deal with world powers collapsed and Yemen's yearslong war rages on.

The U.N. Security Council is scheduled to meet Monday for the first time on Russia's troop buildup and threatening actions against Ukraine at the request of the United States, and all key players are expected to square off in public over the possibility of a Russian invasion and its global impact.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Russia's actions pose "a clear threat to international peace and security and the U.N. Charter." Council members "must squarely examine the facts and consider what is at stake for Ukraine, for Russia, for Europe, and for the core obligations and principles of the international order should Russia further invade Ukraine," she said Thursday in announcing the meeting.

Iraqi airstrikes killed nine suspected Islamic State fighters, including four Lebanese, in retaliation for an IS attack on Iraqi army barracks earlier this month, officials said Sunday.

IS gunmen in Iraq broke into a barracks in the mountainous al-Azim district outside the town of Baqouba on Jan. 21, killed a guard and shot dead 11 soldiers as they slept. It was one of the boldest attacks by the militants in recent weeks and came amid an uptick in violence that stoked fears the group has been re-energized.

Russia's foreign minister claims that NATO wants to pull Ukraine into the alliance, amid escalating tensions over NATO expansion and fears that Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine.

In comments on state television Sunday, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also challenged NATO's claim to be a purely defensive structure.

Israel's figurehead president arrived in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday in the first official visit by the country's head of state, the latest sign of deepening ties between the two nations as tensions rise in the region.

The UAE and Israel normalized relations in the fall of 2020, part of a series of U.S.-brokered diplomatic deals between Israel and Arab states that had long avoided formal relations with Israel over its decades-old conflict with the Palestinians.

Lebanon's foreign minister headed to Kuwait Saturday to deliver answers to a list of policy suggestions made to the country by Arab Gulf nations in an attempt to end an impasse between both sides.

Ahead of his departure, Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib made it clear that Lebanon will not disarm Hizbullah group, one of 10 confidence-building measures requested from Beirut.