The Republic of Korean lawmakers voted overwhelmingly on December 9 to impeach President Park Geun-hye over an influence-peddling scandal, setting the stage for her to become the country's first elected leader to be expelled from office in disgrace.

The Syrian army pressed an offensive in Aleppo on December 9 with ground fighting and air strikes in an operation to retake all of the city's rebel-held east that would bring victory in the civil war closer for President Bashar al-Assad.

US President-elect Donald Trump will nominate Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a critic of federal environmental regulation, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, his transition team said on December 8.

Iraqi troops who briefly seized a Mosul hospital believed to be used as an Islamic State base were forced to withdraw from the site on December 8, but managed to establish a base for army tanks nearby after days of fierce back-and-forth fighting, residents said.

The Syrian army's advance in Aleppo slowed on December 8 but a victory was still firmly in sight after President Bashar al-Assad vowed that retaking the city would change the course of the six-year-old war.

President-elect Donald Trump on December 7 picked a fossil fuel industry defender as his top environmental official, another retired general as homeland security chief and Iowa's governor as US ambassador to China in choices at odds with some of his recent pronouncements.

Syrian rebels in besieged eastern Aleppo called on December 7 for an immediate five-day ceasefire and the evacuation of civilians and wounded, but gave no indication they were ready to withdraw as demanded by Damascus and Moscow.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi resigned on December 7 after a bruising referendum loss at the weekend, with most parliamentary factions pushing for an early election in a few months' time.

There were no survivors after a plane carrying 47 people crashed into a mountain in northern Pakistan on December 7, the airline's chairman said, as recovery operations continued late into the night at the remote crash site.

British lawmakers backed Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit timetable on December 7 after she headed off a rebellion in her Conservative Party over a lack of insight into the government's strategy to leave the European Union.