A former close aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that immediately following the October 2023 Hamas attack that triggered Israel's two-year war in Gaza, the Israeli leader instructed him to figure out how the premier could evade responsibility for the security breach.

Former Netanyahu spokesperson Eli Feldstein, who faces trial for allegedly leaking classified information to the press, made the explosive accusation during an extensive interview with Israel's Kan news channel Monday night.

France's fractured parliament is debating an emergency bill Tuesday designed to prevent a U.S.-style government shutdown next week, after negotiations on a 2026 budget collapsed.

With just days left before the new year, President Emmanuel Macron and his Cabinet met Monday night to present the brief draft law. It aims "to ensure the continuity of national life and the functioning of public services," including collecting taxes and disbursing them to local authorities based on tax and spending levels in the 2025 budget, the Cabinet said.

Initial drafts of U.S. proposals for a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia meet many of Kyiv's demands, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, although he suggested that neither side in the almost four-year war is likely to get everything it wants in talks on reaching a settlement.

"Overall, it looks quite solid at this stage," the Ukrainian leader said Monday of recent talks with U.S. officials who are trying to steer the neighboring countries toward compromises.

Heavy rain and flash flooding soaked roads in northern California, leading to water rescues from vehicles and homes and at least one confirmed death, authorities said Monday.

In Redding, a city at the northern end of California's Central Valley, one motorist died after calling 911 while trapped in their vehicle as it filled up with water, Mayor Mike Littau posted online Monday. Police said they received numerous calls for drivers stranded in flooded areas.

The U.S. military said it had conducted another strike against a boat it said was smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing one person.

In a social media post, U.S. Southern Command said, "Intelligence confirmed the low-profile vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations." Southern Command provided no evidence that the vessel was engaged in drug smuggling.

Attallah Tarazi recently received Christmas presents that included socks and a scarf to shield him against the Gaza winter, and he joined some fellow Palestinian Christians in a round of hymns.

"Christ is born," the group sang in Arabic. "Hallelujah."

Russia fired more than 650 drones and three dozen missiles at Ukraine in a large-scale attack that began during the night and stretched into daylight hours Tuesday, officials said. At least three people were killed, including a 4-year-old child.

The barrage struck homes and the power grid in 13 regions of Ukraine, causing widespread outages in bitter temperatures, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, a day after he described recent progress on finding a peace deal "quite solid."

Moscow on Monday said there was "slow progress" in talks with the United States over a plan to end the war in Ukraine, following weekend talks in Miami that failed to break the deadlock.

"Slow progress is being observed," state media reported Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying, after both Russia and Ukraine sent negotiators to the Florida city for separate talks with U.S. President Donald Trump's envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

A suspected cyberattack knocked France's national postal service and its banking arm offline Monday, blocking and delaying package deliveries and online payments at the height of the busy Christmas season.

The postal service, called La Poste, said in a statement that a distributed denial of service incident, or DDoS, "rendered its online services inaccessible." It said the incident had no impact on customer data, but disrupted package and mail delivery.

When Dickson Ngome first leased his farm at Lake Naivasha in Kenya's Rift Valley in 2008, it was over 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from shore. The farm was on 1.5 acres (0.6 hectares) of fertile land where he grew vegetables to sell at local markets.

At the time, the lake was receding and people were worried that it might dry up altogether. But since 2011, the shore has crept ever closer. The rains started early this year, in September, and didn't let up for months.