Government

The use of the Prime Ministry position by current President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the one-sided reports in the media gave him an unfair advantage compared to the other two candidates in the presidential election race in August, according to a new Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) report.

A parliamentary committee investigating possible British links to torture will request access to blacked out parts of a US Senate report on CIA treatment of Al-Qaeda suspects, its chairman said Dec. 14.
      

Three Christmas photos of a rosy-cheeked Prince George were released by Britain's royal family Dec. 13, offering a festive glimpse of the future king.
      
The pictures show 17-month-old George in a courtyard at Kensington Palace, where his parents, Prince William and Kate, have a London apartment.
      

The US Congress passed a $1.1-trillion spending bill for fiscal year 2015 Dec. 13, capping a week of acrimonious wrangling while averting a government shutdown and sending the measure to President Barack Obama.
      

UN members pressed ahead Sunday with a vision for a historic pact to defeat climate change by adopting a format for national pledges to cut Earth-warming greenhouse gases.
      
At a marathon conference in Lima, they also approved a blueprint to guide negotiations for the deal due to be sealed in Paris in December 2015.
      

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras called his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu in the wake of the attack on the Israeli Embassy in Athens, it emerged on Saturday.

Nobody was hurt in the predawn raid on Friday, when more than 50 shots were fired from Kalashnikov assault rifles at the building near central Athens.

A new regulation has dramatically increased the power of Justice Minister over Turkey's top judicial body, while a top court has overturned a previous change in another key regulation that the Turkish government amended to counter the massive graft probe late last year.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned Britain's prime minister David Cameron on the discrimination against workers from other EU countries.

Turkey has moved to revive broken ties with Middle Eastern countries, including Syria, Egypt and the Gulf states, according to Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç, who stressed the "friendship and brotherhood" amid the ongoing crises in bilateral relations.

More than 4600 people were killed since the beginning of the conflict in eastern Ukraine this spring, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

According to the OCHA report, released on Friday, as of December 7 at least 4634 people were killed and 10 243 were wounded.