TikTok has challenged a Canadian government order to shut down the Chinese video-sharing app's business operations in the country that was imposed over national security concerns.

The company said Tuesday that it filed an application for a judicial review with the Federal Court in Vancouver on Dec. 5, which seeks to set aside the order for TikTok to wind-up and cease its business in Canada.

South Korea's previous defense minister was stopped from attempting suicide while in detention over last week's martial law declaration, officials said Wednesday, as President Yoon Suk Yeol's office resisted a police attempt to search the compound.

The main liberal opposition Democratic Party is pushing for a new motion to impeach Yoon for his Dec. 3 decree that imposed martial law in South Korea for the first time in more than four decades. Its first impeachment attempt against Yoon last Saturday failed after ruling party lawmakers boycotted the vote. The party said it plans to submit the new motion on Thursday to set up a vote on Saturday.

Pep Guardiola has given a clear indication of his plans after Manchester City, saying he would not want to start again at another club.

The Catalan has just signed a two-year extension to his City contract through to 2027 and said international management is a possibility when he leaves the four-time defending Premier League champion.

Real Madrid's big stars turned on the style to revive the Spanish giant's faltering Champions League title defense on Tuesday.

Galacticos Kylian Mbappe, Vinicius Junior and Jude Bellingham all scored in a thrilling 3-2 win at Italian league leader Atalanta. But Madrid still had to ride its luck as Mateo Retegui fired over from in front of goal in stoppage time when handed a golden chance to level the game.

U.S. wildlife officials announced a decision Tuesday to extend federal protections to monarch butterflies after years of warnings from environmentalists that populations are shrinking and the beloved pollinator may not survive climate change.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to add the butterfly to the threatened species list by the end of next year following an extensive public comment period.

The hardest movie ticket to get this weekend was for a film audiences have been able to watch at home for years: Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar."

The science fiction epic starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway earned $4.5 million from only 166 screens in the U.S. and Canada. Its 70mm IMAX film presentations sold out in minutes, leaving theaters scrambling to add more and people paying up to $300 on the re-sale market. Those 10 film screens alone had a staggering $70,000 per theater average, one of the highest of the year and usually the bragging rights of acclaimed arthouse movies playing on only four screens.

Russia said Wednesday it has maintained contacts with the new authorities in Syria.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “we are monitoring most closely what is happening in Syria.”

Insurgents have set on fire the tomb of Syria’s former President Hafez Assad in his hometown in the northwest, a war monitor and a local journalist said Wednesday.

Hafez Assad had ruled Syria for 30 years until his death in 2000, when his son, Bashar, succeeded him. Both ruled Syria with an iron fist and were blamed for crackdowns that left tens of thousands dead, mainly in the central city of Hama in 1982, and in much of the country since the civil war in 2011.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is returning to the Middle East this week on his 12th visit since the Israel-Hamas war erupted last year but his first since the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad that has sparked new fears of instability in the region now wracked by three conflicts despite a ceasefire agreement in Lebanon.

Blinken will travel to Jordan and Turkey on Thursday and Friday for talks expected to focus largely on Syria but also touch on long-elusive hopes for a deal to end the fighting in Gaza that has devastated the territory since October 2023.

An Israeli bomb hangs suspended in air, caught in a split-second image of a suburb in Beirut before it slams into an apartment building, passersby already bracing for the explosion.

Across the Middle East this year, photographers froze moments in time, reflections of the wars and their horrors that have upended life across the region.