Planes grounded as smog chokes China for fifth day)

Heavy smog suffocated northeast China for a fifth day Tuesday, with hundreds of flights cancelled and road and rail transport grinding to a halt under the low visibility conditions.

More than 20 cities have entered a state of red alert since Friday evening, implementing emergency measures aimed at cutting emissions and protecting public health from the toxic miasma.

Across the region, construction sites closed and authorities reduced the number of vehicles allowed on the roads in hopes of reducing the thick haze.

In Shijiazhuang, the capital of northern Hebei province, planes could not take off or land, according to a post on a verified social media account of the city's international airport.

Levels of PM 2.5 -- microscopic particles harmful to human health -- climbed to 844 in the area, according to the web site aqicn.org.

The number is almost 34 times the World Health Organization's recommended maximum exposure level of 25 over a 24-hour period.

Russian ambassador to Turkey Andrey Karlov assassinated in Ankara (Assassination in Turkey: what we know)

The Russian ambassador to Ankara was shot dead in an attack at an art gallery in the Turkish capital on Monday by a gunman shouting “Don’t forget Aleppo”.

A Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman confirmed the death of envoy Andrey Karlov, which marked one of the most serious spillovers of the Syria conflict into Turkey.

Russia is a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and its air strikes were instrumental in helping Syrian forces end rebel resistance last week in the northern city of Aleppo.

The Anadolu news agency said the gunman had been “neutralized” soon after the attack, Relations between Moscow and Ankara have long been fraught over the conflict, with the two supporting opposing sides.

The attacker was smartly dressed in black suit and tie, and standing behind the ambassador as he made a speech at the art exhibition, a person at the scene told Reuters.

“He took out his gun and shot the ambassador from behind. We saw him lying on the floor and then we ran out,” said the witness, who asked not to be identified.

A Reuters cameraman at the scene said gunfire rang out for some time after the attack.

A video showed the attacker shouting: “Don’t forget Aleppo, don’t forget Syria!”

As screams rang out, the gunman could then be seen pacing about and shouting as he held the gun in one hand and waved the other in the air. 

44 years after conviction, Freedom Rider Sala Udin is pardoned by Obama

President Obama’s decision this week to issue 78 Christmas season pardons — the most of his presidency — should have special meaning for veterans of the civil rights movement.

Among the recipients was former Pittsburgh City Council member Sala Udin, a onetime Freedom Rider who was beaten up registering voters in 1960s Mississippi. But Udin had been haunted for decades by a criminal charge that grew out of his youthful activism: Driving fellow protesters home from the South, he was stopped for speeding in Kentucky and arrested after police found an unloaded shotgun and a jug of moonshine in the car.

“I’m ecstatic,” Udin emailed Yahoo News shortly after he got the call from his lawyer that his long-languishing bid for a pardon had finally been granted by Obama. After waiting patiently for years, Udin had all but given up hope. Only days earlier, amid reports that Obama was contemplating a final round of pardons, Udin had told a friend: “I refuse to allow myself to be optimistic because I don’t want to risk the disappointment. It’s not going to happen.”

Udin, 73, was the subject of a Yahoo News story last year that highlighted Obama’s relatively stingy record of using his constitutional powers to pardon criminal offenders; one critic even called him a pardon “Grinch.” At that point, Obama had issued fewer pardons than any president since James Garfield. (This is separate from Obama’s commutation of sentences, another of his broad clemency powers and one that he has used liberally to reduce the lengthy prison terms of nonviolent drug offenders — a key part of his administration’s initiative for criminal justice reform. Obama separately commuted the sentences of 153 such offenders Monday.)

Jihadi mum kisses tiny daughters, aged seven and nine, goodbye - then sends them off on suicide bomb mission

The harrowing moment a mother kisses her two young daughters goodbye before sending them off on a suicide mission has been captured on camera.

One of the two girls, believed to be aged seven and nine, died after detonating a suicide bomb at a police station shortly after.

The young children are pictured with a bearded male fanatic in one clip, while separate footage shows the cameraman lecturing the two young girls and instructing them how to carry out an attack.

A burka-clad woman, understood to be their mother, clutches the children and affectionately kisses their heads and hands as they stand in a sparse room decorated only by a black and white flag.

The footage shows the male fanatic brainwashing the girls, who are both dressed in woolly hats and scarves.

Berlin manhunt: Police tracking Tunisian suspect

The German police are looking for a Tunisian man after finding an identity document under the driver's seat of the truck that ploughed into a Christmas market on Monday, killing 12 people,according to Der Spiegel.

Der Spiegel, a German news magazine, said the document was in the name of Anis A, born in Tataouine in 1992. The suspect is also believed to go by two false names, it added.

The daily newspaper Bild reported that Anis A was known to the police as a possibly dangerous individual and part of a large Islamist network, according to Reuters.

Bild, which is owned by Business Insider's parent company Axel Springer, has published a photo of the suspect, who is said to be between 21 and 23 years old.

Michael Phelps releases photos of his super secret Mexico wedding to Nicole Johnson in October

Olympics legend Michael Phelps, 31, has finally released photos of his super secret October wedding to Nicole Johnson, 31, in October at Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

In the cute photos they both can be seen kissing, while another photo shows them carrying their young son Boomer as they prepare to wed.

 23-time Olympic Gold medalist, Phelps, who released the photos to Brides.com, revealed to the website that he cried 'tears of happiness' when he saw Nicole walking down the aisle and that he and Nicole partied with their guests until close to 3am after the ceremony. The pair got legally married in June in a ceremony that had only 5 people in attendance at their backyard.

 More photos from the wedding below...

'The internet will shut down for 24 hours next year

It’s December — that time of the year when many industry experts make all sorts of predictions for the year ahead. But one prophecy caught Business Insider’s eye: the whole internet will shut down for 24 hours.

The dire forecast comes from US technology security vendor LogRhythm. According to the company’s chief information security officer and vice president James Carder, it won’t just be a technical issue stopping people from uploading their selfies on Instagram.

"In 2017, we’re going to see it hit big sometime, somewhere. If the internet goes down, financial markets will tank," he said.

The security expert told Business Insider that all the signs were there this year, with criminals "testing missiles by shooting them into the ocean".