North Korea North Korea's state media says Kim Yang-gon, a top aide to supreme leader Kim Jong-un and secretary of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), who was also in charge of ties with South Korea, dies in a car crash.
In 2016 Former Governor of New York, George Pataki, ends his campaign for the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States.
El Salvador El Salvador's murder rate surges by 70% in 2015, an increase that may lead to the Central American nation edging out Honduras as the world's most murderous nation.
Chicago Chicago, Illinois police officer, Jason Van Dyke, enters a not guilty plea regarding the charges of the 2014 shooting death of Laquan McDonald.
Lebanese Customs Administration Lebanese Customs seize five tonnes of Captagon amphetamine pills and Hashish, concealed in primary school desks that were to be shipped to Egypt, at Beirut–Rafic Hariri International Airport. Meanwhile, security forces in northern Lebanon found two workshops producing Captagon and other drugs during a series of raids. The drug is infamous as being used by Islamist militants in the Syrian civil war.
Ethan Couch Ethan Couch, the so-called "affluenza" teen who violated probation for killing four people when driving while intoxicated when he disappeared from Tarrant County, Texas, is taken into custody in Mexico. Mexican officials will remand Couch and his mother, with whom he fled, to the U.S. Marshals Service.
In Anchorage, Alaska pilot Doug Demarest flew a from the Civil Air Patrol without permission and crashed into building which housed his wife's law office and the Alaska Department of Law, killing himself. His family said that the crash was a suicide, while the FBI reiterated that "there is no indication this was a terrorist act"
Guinea For the first time since March 2014, Guinea is declared free from Ebola virus transmissions by the World Health Organization.
2015 Flood in Missouri Missouri Governor Jay Nixon warns residents that the state faces historic flooding that likely will rival Great Flood of 1993 levels. Swollen rivers are still rising and won't crest for days. The Mississippi River is expected to reach nearly 15 feet above flood stage on Thursday. Nixon pleaded with drivers to stay off inundated roadways. Twelve of the 13 people killed from these recent storms died after their vehicles were swept from flooded roadways.
2015–16 UK and Ireland windstorm season The 18th century Tadcaster Bridge, in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, partially collapses into the River Wharfe as a result of flooding. British Army soldiers evacuated people from nearby homes.
DuPont American chemical giant DuPont announces that, in early 2016, it will cut 1,700 jobs in Delaware, about 28 percent of its home state workforce, and thousands more globally in connection as a result of the Dow Chemical Company merger.
Le Monde The French newspaper "Le Monde" claims that the November 13, 2015 Paris attacks were coordinated from Belgium by a single unidentified suspect.
Syrian civil war The United States military announces that a key Islamic State leader with ties to the Paris attack terrorists was killed in a coalition airstrike on December 24, 2015. Charaffe al Mouadan is the tenth ISIL leader killed by an airstrike since December 7.
War in North-West Pakistan A suicide-bomb attack outside the regional office of the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) in the northwestern Pakistani city of Mardan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, leaves at least 26 people dead and 45 wounded. The militant Islamist group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan splinter group, claims responsibility for the attack.