After watching Real Madrid lose its first match in three months, Carlo Ancelotti had one simple message for his players: The holidays are over.

Madrid's run of 15 consecutive games without a loss in all competitions came to an end Sunday when it slumped to a 1-0 defeat at modest Getafe in the Spanish league after a nearly two-week winter break.

President Joe Biden has gotten the same troubling questions from worried world leaders, ones that he never thought he would hear.

"Is America going to be all right?" they ask. "What about democracy in America?"

The political aide to Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, Ali Hassan Khalil, will hold today a press conference in response to Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil’s speech.

Bassil on Sunday pinned his frustration on the Amal Movement, saying that in recent months Hizbullah has backed Berri at the expense of their own alliance that is “no longer working.”

President Joe Biden has conferred with Ukraine's leader over the Russian troop buildup near its border, promising that the U.S. and allies will act "decisively" if Russia further invades the Eastern European nation.

Biden and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's call came as the U.S. and Western allies prepared for a series of diplomatic meetings to try to de-escalate a crisis that Moscow said could rupture ties with Washington.

Sudan's Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok has announced his resignation amid political deadlock and widespread pro-democracy protests following a military coup that derailed the country's fragile transition to democratic rule.

Hamdok, a former U.N. official seen as the civilian face of Sudan's transitional government, had been reinstated as prime minister in November as part of an agreement with the military following the October coup. In that time he had failed to name a Cabinet and his resignation throws Sudan into political uncertainty amid uphill security and economic challenges.

Hackers targeted the website of an Israeli newspaper on Monday, the anniversary of the 2020 killing of a top Iranian general, replacing its content with an image threatening a site associated with Israel's undeclared nuclear weapons program.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the hacking. The image posted on the Jerusalem Post's website depicts a missile coming down from a fist bearing a ring long associated with Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general killed by a U.S. drone strike in Iraq two years ago.

Firefighters battled a major blaze at South Africa's Parliament complex on Sunday that sent a dark plume of smoke and flames into the air above the center of Cape Town and caused some ceilings of the building that houses the national legislature to collapse.

The fire started on the third floor of an old building that houses offices and spread to the National Assembly building, where South Africa's Parliament now sits, Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure Patricia de Lille said.

A Syrian mother and her three children died in their sleep after inhaling toxic fumes from burning coal to heat their room in a village in southern Lebanon, a rescue group said Sunday.

Youssef al-Dor, an official with Resala Health Ambulance Association, said he transported the bodies to be buried from a hospital where the four were pronounced dead.

Egyptian officials Sunday pushed for Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip to rein in hostilities and adhere to a cease-fire in place since the war in May.

The Egyptian efforts came a day after Hamas militants launched rockets into the Mediterranean Sea off central Israel, prompting Israel to carry out airstrikes on militant positions in Gaza early Sunday. No casualties were reported.

Bahrain appointed on Thursday its first ambassador to Syria in more than a decade, the island nation's state news agency reported, the latest sign of a stepped-up outreach to Damascus by Gulf Arab countries.

The decree by Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa came as more Arab countries are improving relations with Damascus nearly 11 years since the outbreak of Syria's civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands and destroyed large parts of the country.