The U.N. human rights office on Tuesday called for an independent investigation into allegations of sexual violence including rape and gang rape during mass anti-coup protests in Sudan earlier this week, a spokeswoman said.

Liz Throssell, a spokeswoman for the U.N. human rights office in Geneva, said they received "disturbing" reports alleging that 13 women and girls were raped or gang raped in the demonstrations on Sunday in the capital, Khartoum.

President Joe Biden on Monday introduced the newest member of his family, a purebred German shepherd puppy named Commander, while the first lady's office said the cat she promised more than a year ago to bring to the White House will finally join them in January.

But the news wasn't as "paws-itive" for another member of the Biden animal family. The family decided it was best for their other German shepherd, Major, to live in a quieter environment with friends after some biting incidents.

With a touch of Barbara Stanwyck, a sumptuous Art Deco office and a deadly shade of crimson lipstick, Cate Blanchett plays a femme fatale in Guillermo del Toro's "Nightmare Alley" with cunning embrace and subversion of the film noir archetype.

If "Nightmare Alley" is del Toro's lushly composed love letter to noir, the movie's pulpy heart is in Blanchett's conniving psychiatrist Lilith Ritter. She doesn't enter the film until halfway through, when Bradley Cooper's carnival huckster, Stan, catches her eye in his nightclub mind-reading act, and the two begin scheming together. But when she does turn up, Blanchett shifts the film's fable-like frequency, conjuring deeper shades of mystery from the movie's rich tapestry of shadow and fate.

Preparing to direct "A Journal for Jordan," a bittersweet love story opening on Christmas Day, Denzel Washington says he took a "master class."

That master class consisted of starring in a movie directed by Joel Coen, "The Tragedy of Macbeth," which opens the same day. "I steal from the best," Washington says with a smile.

Premier League clubs decided against pausing the season on Monday despite 10 fixtures being postponed in the previous week due to the most widespread coronavirus outbreaks to date across squads.

While more than 90% of players in the Italian and Spanish leagues have been fully vaccinated, the Premier League disclosed that only 77% of its players had received two doses. In its first update on vaccine take-up in two months, the league also said 16% of players had not received even a single dose.

This season is turning into a nightmare for French club Lyon.

On and off the field.

A look at what's happening in European soccer on Tuesday:

ENGLAND

Tradition dictates that Venezuelans, children and adults alike, wear brand new clothes on Christmas and New Year's. Shirts, pants, dresses, stilettos and sneakers — all with that new smell and perfect, first-time fit. No wrinkles, stains or scratches allowed.

But the dollar bills circulating all across the country might as well show the Grinch instead of Washington this year. The government's loosening of controls on dollars may have made them easier to get, but it has also made them less valuable in Venezuelan shops, with dollar prices overall about 40% above those last year.

The Hubble Space Telescope's successor is a time-traveling wonder capable of peering back to within a hair's breadth of the dawn of the universe. And it's finally on the brink of flight.

It will be the biggest and most powerful astronomical observatory ever to leave the planet, elaborate in its design and ambitious in its scope. At a budget-busting $10 billion, it is the most expensive and also the trickiest, by far, to pull off.

In a major step to fight climate change, the Biden administration is raising vehicle mileage standards to significantly reduce emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases, reversing a Trump-era rollback that loosened fuel efficiency standards.

A final rule issued Monday would raise mileage standards starting in the 2023 model year, reaching a projected industry-wide target of 40 miles per gallon by 2026. The new standard is 25% higher than a rule finalized by the Trump administration last year and 5% higher than a proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency in August.