RUSSIA

Putin orders 36-hour holiday truce in Ukraine

President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered Russian armed forces to observe a unilateral 36-hour cease-fire with Ukraine this weekend for the Orthodox Christmas holiday, the first such sweeping truce move in the nearly 11-month-old conflict. He did not appear to make his cease-fire order conditional on Ukraine's acceptance. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Kyiv will agree on a cease-fire with Russia only after Russian troops are withdrawn from Ukraine. The Russian Federation must leave and only then will it have a "temporary truce", Podolyak said on social media.

MEXICO

'El Chapo' son nabbed before Biden visits

Security forces on Thursday captured a son of jailed drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, scoring a high-profile win in the fight against powerful cartels days before US President Joe Biden visits. Ovidio Guzman, nicknamed "El Raton" (The Mouse), was caught in the northwestern city of Culiacan and flown to Mexico City on a military plane, Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval told reporters. He said the arrest was the result of six months of intelligence work tracking down the 32-year-old, who has allegedly helped to run his father's operations since El Chapo was extradited to the United States in 2017.

EUROPEAN UNION

Inflation slows again amid high living costs

Europe ended a bad year for inflation with some relief as price gains eased again. While the cost of living is still painfully high, the slowdown is a sign that the worst might be over for weary consumers. The consumer price index for the 19 countries that use the euro currency rose 9.2 percent in December from a year earlier, the slowest pace since August, the bloc's statistics agency Eurostat said on Friday. It was the second-straight decline in inflation since June 2021. In November, the rate dipped to 10.1 percent after peaking at a record 10.6 percent in the previous month.

UNITED STATES

Nation's oldest person dies at 115 in Iowa

An Iowa woman who was believed to be the oldest living person in the US died this past week at the age of 115, media reported. Bessie Laurena Hendricks celebrated her 115th birthday at a care home in Lake City on Nov 7 and was listed last year as the country's oldest living person until her death. Born in 1907, Hendricks was alive to witness news of the sinking of the Titanic, World War I and II, the Great Depression and the COVID-19 pandemic. She was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse there and the mother of five children, according to the Des Moines Register. She is survived by three of her children.