British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday ordered an inquiry and said he was "furious" after a leaked video showed senior members of his staff joking about holding a lockdown-breaching Christmas party.

The video has poured fuel on allegations that government officials flouted coronavirus rules they imposed on everyone else.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he is open to improved relations with Israel, but the country must first display "more sensitive" policies toward Palestinians.

Erdogan told a group of journalists in Qatar late Tuesday that better ties with Israel would be "beneficial" for peace in the wider region.

The European diplomat chairing nuclear talks between Iran and world powers says negotiations in Vienna will resume Thursday.

Enrique Mora said Wednesday on Twitter that the parties to the 2015 Vienna accord will meet in the Austrian capital after consulting with their governments in recent days.

Saudi authorities have conducted their biggest-ever crackdown on camel beauty contestants that received Botox injections and other artificial touch-ups, the state-run Saudi Press Agency reported Wednesday, with over 40 camels disqualified from the annual pageant.

Saudi Arabia's popular King Abdulaziz Camel Festival, which kicked off earlier this month, invites the breeders of the most beautiful camels to compete for some $66 million in prize money. Botox injections, face lifts and other cosmetic alterations to make the camels more attractive are strictly prohibited. Jurors decide the winner based on the shape of the camels' heads, necks, humps, dress and postures.

Normally giving food to wild animals is considered off limits, but the dire situation in Florida with more than 1,000 manatees dying from starvation due to manmade pollution is leading officials to consider an unprecedented feeding plan.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and state environmental officials intend to unveil a limited proposal this week to feed the beloved marine mammals in one specific Florida location to test how it works. This is not usually done with any wild animal, but the situation has become such an emergency that it has to be considered, said Save The Manatee Club Executive Director Patrick Rose.

The bustling, cosmopolitan business hub of Hong Kong may be losing its shine among foreign companies and expatriates with its stringent anti-pandemic rules requiring up to 21 days of quarantine for new arrivals.

The restrictions are discouraging both visitors and business travelers and add to other challenges the semi-autonomous Chinese territory faces as Beijing exerts ever more control over the former British colony.

An Indian army helicopter carrying the country's military chief crashed Wednesday in southern Tamil Nadu state, the air force said.

It did not say whether Chief of Defense Staff Bipin Rawat was injured in the accident.

A major outage in Amazon's cloud computing network Tuesday severely disrupted services at a wide range of U.S. companies for more than five hours, the latest sign of just how concentrated the business of keeping the internet running has become.

The incident at Amazon Web Services mostly affected the eastern U.S., but still impacted everything from airline reservations and auto dealerships to payment apps and video streaming services to Amazon's own massive e-commerce operation. That included The Associated Press, whose publishing system was inoperable for much of the day, greatly limiting its ability to publish its news report..

A Japanese billionaire and his producer rocketed to space Wednesday as the first self-paying space tourists in more than a decade.

Fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa and producer Yozo Hirano, who plans to film his mission, blasted off for the International Space Station in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft along with Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin.

An Egyptian court has ordered the release pending trial of a rights activist who has been imprisoned for nearly two years in a case that has drawn significant international attention, a rights group said.

The court in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura postponed the trial of Patrick George Zaki until Feb. 1 to give prosecutors and defense lawyers time to prepare their arguments, said the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, which represents Zaki.