THE police chief in Webster, New York, says that four firefighters were shot while responding to a blaze in the town and that two are dead.
Chief Gerald Pickering says "one or more shooters" fired at the firefighters Monday morning. Officials say they had arrived at the scene of the blaze near the Lake Ontario shore around 6am.
Officials say a fire started in one home and spread to two others and a car. Officials say there is no active shooter at the scene.
SEVERAL hundred children remain separated from their parents a month after fighting over the key eastern Democratic Republic of Congo city of Goma displaced nearly a million people, aid agencies say.
Since the M23 rebels seized Goma on November 20 and withdrew 11 days later, 776 children including 429 girls, aged between six months and 14 years, remain in the care of foster families, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said.
The fighting in the mineral-rich region sparked "chaotic exoduses" during which five babies were found as people "scattered in every direction" UNICEF's Jean Metenier told AFP on Monday. "They were the hardest to place."
With the help of photographs circulating through displaced people's camps around Goma, UNICEF has managed to identify about 30 children, he said.
Another 103 children have already rejoined their families - those old enough to give their names and say where their parents lived.
"Finding the families is a challenge because of the ongoing insecurity and because people are still on the move," the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.
In mid-December an official of the UN refugee agency said about 914,000 people were listed as displaced in Goma's North Kivu region. Tens of thousands of them were thought to be returning home.
UNICEF said 80 per cent of the displaced have been staying with volunteer families.
TWO al-Qaeda members, including a Jordanian, have been killed in a suspected US drone strike in Yemen, government and tribal sources say.
"A drone strike targeted a vehicle killing two al-Qaeda members - a Yemeni and a Jordanian" in Manaseh of central Bayda province, around 170 kilometres southeast of Sanaa, a local government official said.
Tribal sources said three other militants were wounded in the attack on Monday.
Al-Qaeda had declared an Islamic emirate in nearby Radaa earlier this year, shortly before being driven out by tribal militiamen.
Tareq al-Dahab, who led the al-Qaeda fighters in the January raid on the town, was shot dead in February.
Dahab was a brother-in-law of slain US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi, who was killed in a suspected US drone strike in September.
US drones have backed Yemeni forces combating militants of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group's Yemen branch, considered by Washington to be the most active and deadliest franchise of the global jihadist network.
AQAP took advantage of the weakness of Yemen's central government during an uprising last year against now ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh, seizing large swathes of territory across the south.
But after a month-long offensive launched in May by Yemeni troops, most militants fled to the more lawless desert regions of the east.
OFFICIALS say a tent in a Syrian refugee camp in southern Turkey has caught fire, killing a two-year-old boy and injuring four siblings.
A government official said the fire, triggered by an electric heater, engulfed a tent in the Telhamut refugee camp near the town of Ceylapinar late Sunday.
The children were taken to a hospital and one of them died from severe burns. Three of the siblings were in serious condition.
In July, two refugees died in a similar fire at another refugee camp.
More than 145,000 refugees fleeing the violence in Syria have found refuge in 14 camps on the Turkish side of the border.
CHINESE police have rescued 89 children and arrested 355 suspects after busting a series of child trafficking rings, officials say.
Officers from nine regions, including Fujian, Yunnan, Sichuan, Anhui and Guangdong, took part in a joint drive beginning on December 18 against the networks, said Chen Shiqu, director of the anti-trafficking office in the public security ministry.
The children are being cared for in local nursing homes and police are searching for their parents, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Monday.
"We will collect the children's DNA and use it to find their parents within a national DNA database established for anti-trafficking purposes," it quoted Chen as saying.
Trafficking of children is a serious problem in China, blamed in part on the strict "one-child" policy that has put a premium on baby boys.
Wang Xizhang, a high-level law enforcement official in Fujian province, said potentially large profits have fuelled the trade.
A healthy male infant bought for 30,000 yuan ($A4650) in poor provinces such as Yunnan can be sold for 70,000 to 90,000 yuan in the comparatively wealthy provinces of Fujian and Guangdong, Wang was quoted as saying.
Since April 2009, when a ministry crackdown began, police have broken up 11,000 child trafficking rings and rescued 54,000 children, according to Chen.
US stocks have opened lower at the start of a shortened Christmas Eve session amid pessimism about prospects for a "fiscal cliff" deal by the end of the year.
In the first few minutes of trade on Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 35.94 points, or 0.27 per cent, at 13,154.90.
The broad-market S&P 500 shed 3.46 points, or 0.24 per cent, to 1,426.69.
The tech-rich Nasdaq Composite lost 6.91 points, or 0.23 per cent, at 3,041.09.
The White House and lawmakers have until the end of the year to reach a deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, a combination of steep tax hikes and spending cuts due to take effect in January.
Experts warn that going over the "cliff" could take the world's biggest economy back into recession.
President Barack Obama and Congress are currently on Christmas break, but are expected to return to Washington later this week.
"The looming unresolved US fiscal cliff continues to hamstring conviction, robbing the Street of holiday cheer," said analysts with Charles Schwab & Co.
On Friday, the Dow ended the session down 0.91 per cent, while the S&P 500 fell 0.94 per cent and the Nasdaq dipped 0.96 per cent.
RUSSIAN investigators have opened their third criminal case in five months against an opposition leader who poses one of the main challenges to President Vladimir Putin in opinion polls.
The Investigative Committee said it had charged anti-corruption blogger and lawyer Alexei Navalny with "swindling committed by an organised group or on an especially large scale".
The charge - which relates to allegations over a case dating back five years - carries a jail sentence of up to 10 years.
Navalny spearheaded the opposition movement that emerged last year in the wake of disputed parliamentary elections that the ruling party won despite suspicions of fraud.
The 36-year-old - often ranked as the most popular opposition campaigner and an emerging politician who has not ruled out running for president - denies all the charges and views the probes against him as political.
"Lord, they have opened another criminal case against me," Navalny tweeted moments after the news was announced. "The Investigative Committee - what are you doing... Enough."
He later told Russian media that investigators were simply trying to intimidate him "by showing that they could next arrest me for crossing the street in the wrong place".
Navalny is already the focus of an embezzlement probe linked to a murky business deal conducted by a small regional timber company in which he was involved. That offence also risks a 10-year sentence.
Investigators last week also launched a money laundering investigation against Navalny and his brother related to a little-known trading firm.
The latest case concerns 100 million roubles ($A3 million at current exchange rates) allegedly stolen from a liberal political party called the Union of Rightist Forces (SPS) in 2007.
The charges say a company involving Navalny secured an SPS advertising contract that was never fulfilled.
SPS disbanded in 2008 after badly losing a series of elections and Navalny continued with other projects.
But the group's former members expressed amazement at charges that emerged five years after the alleged theft.
"If there was something dirty going on, I would have known about it," said top former party member Leonid Gozman.
An aide to current regional governor and former SPS leader Nikita Belykh also told Moscow Echo radio that no money had been stolen from the party.
AILING icon Nelson Mandela is spending Christmas Day in hospital, the South African government says, dashing hopes for a festive end to his longest stay in care since being released from prison in 1990.
"Former president Nelson Mandela will spend Christmas Day in hospital, his doctors have confirmed today, on 24 December 2012," the presidency said in a statement.
The 94-year-old Nobel Peace laureate and South Africa's first black post-apartheid president, was admitted to a Pretoria hospital on December 8. He has been treated there for a recurrent lung infection and had surgery to remove gallstones.
In a statement President Jacob Zuma said his predecessor "continues to respond to treatment".
"Knowledge of the love and support of his people keeps him strong," Zuma said.
"We urge all South Africans to keep Tata (father) uppermost in their thoughts at every place of worship or entertainment tomorrow on Christmas Day, and throughout the festive season.
"We also humbly invite all freedom loving people around the world to pray for him. He is an ardent fighter and will recover from this episode with all our support," Zuma said.
There was no indication of when he might be discharged.
"He remains in hospital, recovering," presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj told AFP on Monday. "I can't say when he will be discharged, doctors will make that decision."
Mandela, who became South Africa's first black president after the country's first all-race elections in 1994, has a long history of lung problems.
He contracted tuberculosis - a disease which killed his father - while in jail as a political prisoner.
He was later hospitalised for an acute respiratory infection in January 2011, when he was held for two nights.
Mandela was last seen in public in 2010, clad in a scarf during the closing ceremony of the FIFA World Cup, when he was wheeled into the stadium in a golf cart.
In May, footage of a smiling, grey-haired Madiba seated on a couch, was shown on television when he was visited by ruling ANC leaders to present him with a symbolic flame to mark the party's 100 years.
