- Armed conflicts and attacks
- Arts and culture
- Disasters and accidents
- An Antonov An-72 plane carrying senior Kazakh border officials crashes close to the city of Shymkent, killing all 27 on board. (BBC)
- An Air Bagan plane carrying more than 60 passengers, including many foreigners, from the city of Yangon to Heho Airport in Shan State, Burma, makes an emergency landing, killing a passenger and a motorcyclist and injuring 11 others. (BBC) (Al Jazeera)
- An alert is issued after the Copahue stratovolcano, located on the border between Argentina and Chile, begins spewing ash. (Al Jazeera)
- Five people are killed when a Mi-8 helicopter of Ukraine's internal troops crashes in Oleksandriia, Kirovohrad Oblast, Ukraine. (RIA Novosti)
- Two young brothers and a woman are killed motor car accident on the northbound carriageway of the M6 motorway in Staffordshire, England. (BBC) (The Guardian)
- At least eight people have died and thousands been left homeless in the Philippines after two fires struck Manila on Christmas Day. A fire has sparked violent clashes between residents and firefighters. (SkyNews) (AFP/Reuters via ABC Australia) (BBC)
- International relations
- Law and crime
- Politics and elections
- Egypt announces the ratification of a new Constitution adopted in constitutional referendum. (The Washington Post)
- Recently re-elected Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez starts walking and exercising again following a recent cancer operation. (BBC)
- Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, criticises the UK government's plans for gay marriage as a "shambles", saying they do not have a mandate to introduce the policy. (BBC) (The Guardian)
- Israel greenlights the fast-track development of another 1,200 housing units around Jerusalem, including East 1. This week's total now stands at 5,500, the largest in some time. (The Guardian) (The Jerusalem Post)
- In his Christmas Day message, Seán Brady, the controversial head of Ireland's Catholic hierarchy, calls upon his flock to continue their opposition to abortion. In the wake of the death of Savita Halappanavar, the Indian dentist recently denied an abortion of her dying foetus by Ireland's conservative laws, the country's government is once again to attempt to legislate for the 1992 X Case in the coming year, with Ireland the only remaining EU state to outlaw the procedure. (Daily Mail) (RTÉ News) (The Irish Times)
- Sport
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