Twenty pilgrims were killed Monday in a head-on bus collision while travelling to Christmas Day mass in the northern Philippines, police said.

 Pope Francis in his Christmas eve mass Sunday urged the world's 1.3 billion Catholics not to ignore the plight of migrants who are "driven from their land" because of leaders willing to shed "innocent blood".

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Friday will hold talks in Moscow with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on the first official visit by a minister from London in five years.

The Republican-controlled US Congress on Thursday passed a short-term funding bill to keep the federal government running for four more weeks, averting a looming shutdown.

Defying President Donald Trump's threat to cut off funding, the United Nations approved by a resounding vote on Thursday a motion rejecting the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Rescuers were scrambling to save scores of people after a ferry capsized on Thursday in stormy weather off the Philippines, with local television networks reporting at least four people were already dead.

A car ploughed into a crowd in Australia's second-largest city on Thursday, injuring at least a dozen people, some of them seriously, officials said.

British Prime Minister Theresa May gave her backing to a legislative compromise on Wednesday allowing Brexit to be delayed, avoiding another parliamentary defeat while promising that pushing back the departure date would only happen in “exceptional circumstances”.