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Pope Francis told Vatican bureaucrats on Saturday to stop speaking ill of one another, as he once again used his annual Christmas greetings to admonish the backstabbing and gossiping among his closest collaborators.

France's anti-terrorism court on Friday convicted eight people of involvement in the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty outside his school near Paris four years ago, a horrific death that shocked the country.

At least two people were killed and dozens were injured after a car plowed into a busy Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, on Friday. Authorities said it appeared to be a deliberate attack.

Swedish police said Friday a man had been shot dead in a parking garage in the city of Norrkoping, with media identifying the victim as the rapper Gaboro, who reportedly had links to criminal gangs.

Seven inmates were killed in a prison riot in southern Mexico, when inmates resisting transfers to other jails fought police with guns and knives, authorities said late Thursday.

A 7-year-old girl was killed and at least five other students and a teacher were wounded in a knife attack at a school in the Croatian capital, Zagreb, on Friday, police said. The local hospital said the wounded teacher had suffered life-threatening injuries, Reuters reported.

Southern Gaza Strip — In a rare moment of access to the war-ravaged Palestinian territory, CBS News visited a critical aid distribution center on Wednesday just inside the Gaza Strip, near the Karem Shalom border crossing from Israel. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza after more than a year of the Israel-Hamas war remains dire.

The Guinness World Records are known for highlighting the most interesting, unique and even strange occurrences of human nature across the globe.

Moscow — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday made a rare admission of failings by his powerful security agencies over the Ukraine-orchestrated killing of a senior general in Moscow. Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian military's chemical and biological weapons unit, was killed by a bomb planted in a scooter in Moscow on Tuesday, the boldest assassination claimed by Kyiv since the start of the conflict.

Two highway crashes in southeastern Afghanistan killed a combined total of 50 people and injured 76, a government spokesman said Thursday.

A judge in France on Thursday found the former husband of Gisèle Pelicot, who admitted to drugging and raping her repeatedly over the course of almost a decade and inviting dozens of other men to assault her as well, guilty of aggravated rape. He was given the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Moscow — Former Royal Ballet star Sergei Polunin, famous for his tattoos of Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday announced that he plans to leave Russia. The Ukrainian-Russian dancer was one of the most prominent stars who backed Russia's unilateral 2014 annexation of Crimea and its military assault on Ukraine. He was rewarded with prestigious state posts.

Moscow — Russia's security service said Wednesday that it has detained a suspect in the killing of a senior general in Moscow.

Moscow — The head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Forces, Lt. General Igor Kirillov, was killed along with his deputy early Tuesday in an explosion in Moscow, Russia's Investigative Committee said.

A U.S. Navy warship arrived Monday in Cambodia, the first such visit in eight years to a nation that is a close ally of China in Southeast Asia. Cambodia's government has suggested the port call reflects an upgrade in often-strained relations.

Damascus — A CBS News team drove through a Syrian military airbase on the outskirts of capital city Damascus Monday, and the devastation caused by Israeli air strikes was abundantly clear. Israel has said it's determined to destroy weapons and other military hardware that ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad and his father spent half of a century accumulating, before it can fall into the hands of extremists.

Johannesburg — Sudan's Rapid Support Forces, one side in a civil war that's torn the African nation apart for more than a year and created one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet, are accused of raping scores of women and girls and using some as sex slaves in a new report by Human Rights Watch. The New York-based rights group says the paramilitary forces' use of sexual violence in the country's South Kordofan state since September 2023 constitutes war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. 

The death toll in the French territory of Mayotte from Cyclone Chido is "several hundred" and may run into the thousands, the island's top government official told a local broadcaster Sunday.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was discharged from the hospital Sunday after undergoing surgery to stop a brain bleed.

 A U.N. envoy on Sunday called for a quick end to Western sanctions against Syria as the country's new leaders and regional and global powers begin to chart a path forward following the fall of President Bashar Assad.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Saturday that American officials have been in direct contact with the Syrian rebel group that spearheaded the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad's government but is designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States and others.

Isak Andic, the founder of Spanish clothing retailer Mango, one of Europe's largest fashion groups with nearly 2,800 stores worldwide, died Saturday in an accident, the company said.

Despite two weeks of U.N.-sponsored talks in Saudi Arabia's Riyadh, the participating 197 nations failed to agree early Saturday on a plan to deal with global droughts, made longer and more severe by a warming climate.

South Korea's parliament on Saturday impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol over his stunning and short-lived martial law decree, a move that ended days of political paralysis but set up an intense debate over Yoon's fate, as jubilant crowds roared to celebrate another defiant moment in the country's resilient democracy.

Eastern Syria — CBS News was among the first news outlets to speak on Thursday with Travis Timmerman, an American who was feared dead by family and friends, days after he was freed from a notorious prison in Syria. He said he had spent seven months jailed by the regime of now-ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad before rebels broke down his cell door.

Bolivia's former anti-narcotics chief was extradited to the United States on Thursday to face federal drug trafficking charges in a New York court.

A Canadian woman was arrested after trying to smuggle over 20 pounds of methamphetamine through a New Zealand airport, authorities said. The illicit drugs were disguised as Christmas presents, New Zealand's customs agency said earlier this week on social media.

The United Kingdom indefinitely extended a ban on puberty blockers for people younger than 18, barring medication prescriptions used to treat gender dysphoria, the government announced this week. There will be exemptions for people who choose to participate in a clinical trial aiming to study the safety and effectiveness of puberty suppression, which is set to begin next year. Young people already prescribed puberty blockers are allowed to continue taking them, the government said.

A judge was shot dead Wednesday in Mexico's once-thriving beach city of Acapulco, local media and the state prosecutor's office said.

A male humpback whale made one of the longest and most unusual migrations on record for the species, an anomaly scientists say might be linked to climate change.

More than 40 migrants are feared dead off Italy's Lampedusa after a lone 11-year-old survivor said the boat she was on capsized, a rescue group said Wednesday.

Italy's mafias make more than three billion euros a year from the tourism sector and are primed to pocket even more from large-scale upcoming events, a research institute warned on Tuesday.

Foreboding environmental milestones abounded again this year in the Arctic, where experts say dramatic climate shifts are fundamentally altering the ecosystem and how it operates. One recent turning point for the region involves its carbon footprint: Where conditions in the Arctic historically worked to reduce global emissions, they're now actively contributing to them.

Damascus – Syria's capital city was on auto-pilot Tuesday, with no new government in place in the wake of the dramatic rebel offensive that toppled longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad on Sunday. But as the former al-Qaeda offshoot that led that charge put some of its senior figures in charge of a self-declared transitional administration, many Syrians appeared determined to try to get on with business as usual. 

Australian former world champion cyclist Rohan Dennis admitted Tuesday to a charge of creating a risk of harm in relation to the December 2023 road death of his Olympian wife Melissa Hoskins.

A Ukrainian man who embarked on a perilous journey fleeing his war-torn country into Romania was rescued from a deep mountain ravine in subzero temperatures with an unlikely companion: his months-old kitten named Peach.

An alleged drug trafficker wanted in connection with an international drug smuggling operation through the Belgian port of Antwerp has been arrested, Dubai police said Monday.

Melbourne — Australian police said Monday they are hunting for three suspects over an arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue, designating it a terrorist act. Mask-wearing attackers set the Adass Israel Synagogue ablaze before dawn on Friday, police said, gutting much of the building. Some congregants were inside the single-story building at the time but no serious injuries were reported.

MIAMI – American Airlines is no longer resuming its daily service out of Miami into Port-au-Prince's Toussaint Louverture International Airport. American had initially suspended flights through February 12. The suspension is now indefinite.

A passenger on a domestic flight in Mexico attempted to divert the plane into the United States before he was stopped by the crew, the airline said on social media on Sunday.

Washington — President Biden on Sunday called the fall of Syrian leader Bashar Assad a "moment of historic opportunity," and he pledged to support the country and its neighbors against any threats.

"September 5" is a new movie from our sister company, Paramount, about television coverage of the notorious Palestinian terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics. We have thoughts about that day from Sean McManus, who, until recently, led CBS Sports and, before that, CBS News. But back in 1972, he was just a teenager, in Munich, watching his famous father, ABC sportscaster Jim McKay, relay the terrible news to the world ...

South Korean prosecutors on Sunday detained a former defense minister who allegedly recommended last week's brief but stunning martial law imposition to President Yoon Suk Yeol, making him the first figure detained over the case, news reports said.

Bob Fernandez thought he'd go dancing and see the world when he joined the U.S. Navy as a 17-year-old high school student in August 1941.

Syrian insurgents have reached the suburbs of Damascus as part of a rapidly moving offensive that has seen them take over some of Syria's largest cities, opposition activists and a rebel commander said Saturday.

Most ruling party lawmakers were boycotting a parliamentary vote Saturday to deny a two-thirds majority sought by the opposition to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol over his short-lived imposition of martial law, as protests grew nationwide calling for his removal.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol apologized Saturday for the public anxiety caused by his short-lived attempt to impose martial law earlier this week, hours ahead of a parliamentary vote on impeaching him.

Washington — The family of Austin Tice, the freelance journalist who was kidnapped in Syria more than 12 years ago, said they have been told that he is alive and well, and they're frustrated with the U.S. government's inability to bring him home. 

Thirteen children under the age of 14 died in central Mexico and authorities said they suspect contaminated IV feeding bags as the culprit.

A crocodile attacked and killed a woman as she worked on a palm oil plantation in central Indonesia, local police said, with her body later recovered from the animal's clutches.