World News Roundup: Ukraine weighs heavy on minds in Moscow as New Year holiday nears; Taiwan to extend conscription to one year, citing rising China threat and more

In street interviews in the centre of the capital, some also said they were noticing the scarcity of Western goods this year as they shopped for food and gifts. North Korea's weapons programme defies COVID outbreak, reaches 'uncharted territory' North Korea forged ahead with its missile programme in 2022 and took steps toward resuming testing of nuclear bombs, as world events including the COVID pandemic and war fractured the already tenuous international pressure against it.

Following is a summary of current world news briefs.

Ukraine weighs heavy on minds in Moscow as New Year holiday nears

The Christmas markets are in full swing and gleaming ice sculptures greet visitors to Gorky Park, but some Muscovites admit they are struggling to feel festive ahead of traditional New Year celebrations. In street interviews in the centre of the capital, some also said they were noticing the scarcity of Western goods this year as they shopped for food and gifts.

Taiwan to extend conscription to one year, citing rising China threat

Taiwan will extend compulsory military service to one year from four months from 2024 due to the rising threat the democratically governed island faces from its giant neighbour China, President Tsai Ing-wen said on Tuesday. The move, which had been well-flagged, comes as China ramps up military, diplomatic and economic pressure on Taiwan to assert its sovereignty claims, including almost daily Chinese air force missions near the island over the past three years.

North Korea's weapons programme defies COVID outbreak, reaches 'uncharted territory'

North Korea forged ahead with its missile programme in 2022 and took steps toward resuming testing of nuclear bombs, as world events including the COVID pandemic and war fractured the already tenuous international pressure against it. The country acknowledged its first COVID-19 outbreak in May, prolonging already stringent border closures and other anti-pandemic measures, blocking international engagement and causing economic woes, but doing little to slow its weapons tests.

Fighting rages in east Ukraine as Russia reaffirms demands for ending war

Russian forces shelled and bombed towns and cities in eastern and southern Ukraine on Tuesday, a day after Russia's foreign minister said Kyiv must accept Moscow's demands for ending the war or else suffer defeat on the battlefield. Those demands include Ukraine recognising Russia's conquest of a fifth of its territory. Kyiv, armed and supported by the United States and its NATO allies, has vowed to recover all occupied territory and to drive out all Russian soldiers.

Chinese make travel plans as Beijing dismantles zero-COVID rules

Chinese people, cut off from the rest of the world for three years by stringent COVID-19 curbs, flocked to travel sites on Tuesday ahead of borders reopening next month, even as rising infections strained the health system and roiled the economy. Zero-COVID measures in place since early 2020 - from shuttered borders to frequent lockdowns - last month fuelled the Chinese mainland's biggest show of public discontent since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012.

India makes inroads into Sri Lanka under China's long shadow

When Sri Lanka slid into its worst economic crisis in seven decades leading to deadly riots and alarming shortages of fuel, food and medicines earlier this year, its giant northern neighbour stepped into the breach. India provided about $4 billion in rapid assistance between January and July, including credit lines, a currency swap arrangement and deferred import payments, and sent a warship carrying essential drugs for the island's 22 million people.

South African tanker blast death toll climbs to 18

The death toll from a gas tanker explosion in Johannesburg on Christmas Eve has climbed to 18, officials said on Tuesday, as South African President Cyril Ramaphosa promised to support people affected by the blast. The explosion tore the roof off the emergency department at the Tambo Memorial hospital, destroyed two houses, several cars and injured bystanders up to 500 metres from the scene in the city's Boksburg suburb.

U.N. urges countries to help Rohingya at sea as hundreds land in Indonesia

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) urged countries on Tuesday to help Rohingya Muslims stranded at sea as at least 20 reportedly died and hundreds more landed in Indonesia after weeks adrift in the Indian Ocean. Nearly 500 Rohingya have reached Indonesia in the past six weeks while "many others did not act despite numerous pleas and appeals for help", the UNHCR said in a statement.

Tensions rise in northern Kosovo as local Serbs block roads, Serbia puts army on alert

Protesting Serbs in the ethnically divided city of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo erected new barricades on Tuesday, hours after Serbia said it had put its army on the highest combat alert following weeks of escalating tensions between Belgrade and Pristina. Serbia's defence ministry said in a statement late on Monday that in response to the latest events in the region and its belief that Kosovo was preparing to attack Serbs and forcefully remove the barricades, President Aleksandar Vucic had ordered Serbia's army and police to be put on the highest alert.

Caught in the crossfire, Peru protest deaths keep anger burning

Edgar Prado, 51, a mechanic and driver from the city of Ayacucho in southern Peru, spent most of the day on Dec. 15 in his garage tinkering on his white Toyota Hilux pickup, even as protests began to build in the airport just a block away. At 5.56 p.m. that day he would suffer a fatal gunshot wound to the chest and by 6.00 a.m. the next morning he would be dead, according to security camera footage reviewed by Reuters and his autopsy, one of ten people killed in the city in the most bloody violence that has roiled Peru in recent weeks.