Reuters World News Summary

Brexit trade deal marathon heads to the finish line Britain and the European Union appeared close to clinching a long-elusive trade agreement on Wednesday, raising hopes that they were now set to avoid a turbulent economic rupture on New Year's Day. A senior British government source said Prime Minister Boris Johnson was poised to do a trade deal with the EU, after media reports said the agreement had already been done, just over a week before Britain completes its journey out of the bloc.

Following is a summary of current world news briefs. Right-wing challenge to Netanyahu builds ahead of Israeli election

A right-wing challenge to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a March Israeli election gained momentum on Wednesday with the defection of a long-time ally to an upstart rival party. In a letter announcing his resignation from Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party and parliament, Zeev Elkin, a minister in successive Netanyahu governments, accused Israel's longest-serving prime minister of putting his own interests ahead of those of the country. Gunmen kill more than 100 in attack in Ethiopia's Benishangul-Gumuz region

Gunmen killed more than 100 people in a dawn attack in the western Benishangul-Gumuz region of Ethiopia on Wednesday, the human rights commission said, as residents described fleeing the latest deadly assault in an area bedevilled by ethnic violence. The attack occurred in the village of Bekoji in Bulen county in the Metekel zone, the state-run Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said in a statement, an area where multiple ethnic groups are living. HK court grants tycoon Jimmy Lai bail in national security, fraud case

A Hong Kong court granted HK$10 million ($1.3 million) bail on Wednesday to media tycoon Jimmy Lai, the highest profile pro-democracy activist charged under the city's new national security law on suspicion of colluding with foreign forces. An immediate appeal by the prosecution was then denied on the same day. Mexican president offers defiance to major opposition alliance

Mexico's president responded defiantly on Wednesday to a major opposition alliance that aims to wrest control of the lower house of Congress in legislative elections next year. Late on Tuesday, the center-right National Action Party (PAN), the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) said they would form coalitions for 180 of 300 lower house seats up for grabs via majority vote in the June 6, 2021 elections. Brexit trade deal marathon heads to the finish line

Britain and the European Union appeared close to clinching a long-elusive trade agreement on Wednesday, raising hopes that they were now set to avoid a turbulent economic rupture on New Year's Day. A senior British government source said Prime Minister Boris Johnson was poised to do a trade deal with the EU, after media reports said the agreement had already been done, just over a week before Britain completes its journey out of the bloc. Top U.S. officials agree options to give Trump for any attacks on Americans in Iraq

Top U.S. national security officials agreed on Wednesday on a proposed range of options to present to President Donald Trump aimed at deterring any attack on U.S. military or diplomatic personnel in Iraq, a senior administration official told Reuters. The meeting was spurred by an attack on Sunday in which rockets landed in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone compound targeting the U.S. Embassy and causing some minor damage, the Iraqi military and the embassy said. Stranded truckers fume as they wait to leave UK after COVID blockade

Furious truck drivers stranded at the English port of Dover scuffled with police as Britain sought to get cross-Channel traffic moving after a partial blockade by France to contain a highly infectious coronavirus variant. Paris and London agreed late on Tuesday that drivers carrying a negative test result could board ferries for Calais from Wednesday after much of the world shut its borders to Britain to contain the new mutated variant. Turkish journalist gets 27 years in absentia for espionage

Turkish journalist Can Dundar was sentenced in absentia to 27 years and six months in prison for espionage and aiding an armed terrorist organisation, his lawyers said on Wednesday, calling the verdict politically motivated. Dundar, the former editor-in-chief of Turkish daily newspaper Cumhuriyet, and a colleague, Erdem Gul, were both sentenced in 2016 to five years in prison for publishing a video purporting to show Turkish intelligence trucking weapons into Syria. They were later released pending appeal. A record 22 candidates to square off in Peru's April presidential election

Peruvians will choose their next president from a record 22 candidates vying for the country's top job in the April 2021 election, with a soccer goalkeeper leading the race over an ex president and the daughter of former strongman Alberto Fujimori. The national elections authority said on Wednesday that applications to be included on the ballot were submitted electronically due to coronavirus restrictions.

U.S. suspects Iranians created website threatening U.S. election officials U.S. security agencies said on Wednesday they had highly credible information indicating that Iranian cyber actors were responsible for creating a website earlier this month featuring death threats aimed at U.S. election officials. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Homeland Security Department's Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a statement that the Enemies of the People website, which surfaced after the U.S. election but now appears dormant, demonstrated "an ongoing Iranian intent to create divisions and mistrust in the United States and undermine public confidence in the U.S. electoral process."