World

The US Treasury placed sanctions Monday on four Ukrainians who aided President Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani in an election campaign effort to smear Democrat Joe Biden.

Former Ukrainian government officials Konstantin Kulyk, Oleksandr Onyshchenko, Andriy Telizhenko, and current Ukraine lawmaker Oleksandr Dubinsky were called part of an effort led by "Russian agent" Andrii Derkach to undermine Biden's presidential run, the Treasury said.

At least 23 people were killed in a police operation that took place Friday to Saturday in a poor neighborhood in Venezuela's capital Caracas, a human rights organization and local press said.

The special forces operation occurred in the western La Vega neighborhood, according to Marino Alvarado, director of the PROVEA human rights NGO, in a post on Twitter Sunday that cited family members of the deceased, police sources and local press reports.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to appear in court on February 8 after his trial for corruption was delayed due to a novel coronavirus lockdown, judges said on Monday.

Netanyahu's trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust began last May, with the premier being excused from subsequent hearings as his lawyers argued for more time to review prosecution evidence.

Paris's famed Champs-Elysees avenue is to be given a green makeover to transform it into what the mayor says will be an "extraordinary garden".

The French often call it "the most beautiful avenue in the world" but the decision follows years of campaigning by activists who complain that traffic and mass retail have turned it into a noisy and bland district shunned by Parisians.

The pope and Britain's Queen Elizabeth became the latest high-profile figures to join the global vaccination campaign against the coronavirus as Germany on Sunday reported 40,000 fatalities since the pandemic began a year ago.

And German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that the worst was still to come.

A Sriwijaya Air plane with 62 people on board lost contact after taking off from Indonesia's capital Jakarta on a domestic flight on Saturday and rescuers said suspected debris had been found in the sea off the city.

The Boeing 737-500, en route to Pontianak in West Kalimantan, disappeared from radar screens after taking off just after 2.30 p.m. (0730 GMT).

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the United States is his nuclear-armed nation's "biggest enemy", state media reported Saturday.

The declaration comes less than two weeks before the inauguration of Joe Biden as US president, and after a tumultuous relationship between Kim and the outgoing Donald Trump.

The United States logged a record new daily virus caseload as Joe Biden slammed the Trump administration's vaccine roll-out as a "travesty" and millions in Asia woke up to new lockdowns.

Almost 1.9 million people have now died from the virus, with new variants sending cases soaring and prompting the re-introduction of curbs on movement even as some countries begin mass inoculation campaigns.

The United States reported a daily record of Covid-19 deaths and Brazil's toll passed the bleak milestone of 200,000 Thursday as new surges of the coronavirus dimmed hopes for respite from the pandemic anytime soon.

Sharp rises in cases around the world have led authorities to impose a slew of new lockdowns and other restrictions, even as dozens of countries roll out the first stages of the vaccination campaigns hailed as the light at the end of the tunnel.