Israel green-lights 3,000 new settler homes in West Bank

A surge of lava destroyed around 100 homes on Spain's Canary Islands a day after the Cumbre Vieja volcano erupted, forcing 5,500 people to leave the area, local authorities said. The volcano erupted on Sunday afternoon, sending vast plumes of thick black smoke into the sky and belching molten lava that oozed down the mountainside on the island of La Palma.

Five Palestinian gunmen were killed in an arrest operation targeting a Hamas cell in West Bank, Israel's military said. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said the Hamas operatives were planning an imminent attack on Israel.

In northern Senegal, a sea barrier is being thrown up in the hopes of holding back coastal erosion. Also, we meet Richard Odjrado, an emerging star of the African tech world whose company is priming Benin's rise as an entrepreneurial hub. And adventure sports in South Africa are becoming more inclusive as the country's first paragliding wheelchair goes into use.

Palestinian residents will now be able to move freely through checkpoints in the territory. Israel took control of the West Bank in 1967.

Images show partially submerged houses, evacuated residents, and a flooded airport in Nepal where 31 people were reported dead after days of heavy rains across the country. Swelling rivers flooded homes in several districts, damaging roads and bridges and reportedly destroying crops. Landslides are a regular danger in the Himalayan region, but experts say they are becoming more common as rains become increasingly erratic and glaciers melt.

Israel is planning to build more than 1,300 more homes in the occupied West Bank. The number adds to some 2,000 approved in August and increases fears for an already elusive peace process.

The Biden administration has said it "opposes" the advancement of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The move is a shift from the open support of settlements from ex-President Trump.

Dwayne Johnson, the action star whose films pull in big bucks at global box offices, is aiming to entertain viewers in their living rooms with his next movie spectacle, the globe-trotting Netflix heist caper "Red Notice." Johnson stars in the movie with Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds about a race to locate and steal three valuable artifacts. The movie will stream on Netflix starting Friday after playing for a week in a limited number of movie theaters. The film ranks among the most expensive ever made by Netflix with a pricetag of roughly $200 million.

Despite criticism from US President Joe Biden's administration, Israel has given the go-ahead for the construction of 3,000 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank. They are the first to be approved by the new Israeli coalition.

Tensions escalate between Palestinians in the West Bank village of Burqa and Israeli settlers after Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli man in the area on December 16, and settlers were accused of attacking Arab villages in the aftermath.

At least 100 homes were burned down and 400 people were left homeless on Monday after fire broke out in a slum in the city of Iquique in northern Chile, local authorities reported.

Despite criticism from US President Joe Biden's administration, Israel has given the go-ahead for the construction of 3,000 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank. They are the first to be approved by the new Israeli coalition.