First Thing: FBI director Christopher Wray will resign before Trump takes office | US news

Good morning.

The FBI director, Christopher Wray, has announced he is leaving the top job after Donald Trump’s announcement that he would fire him and replace him with loyalist Kash Patel.

Trump himself had appointed Wray after firing his predecessor, James Comey, in 2017, before turning against Wray. Announcing his decision to staff at the bureau’s Washington headquarters, Wray said: “I’ve decided the right thing for the bureau is for me to serve until the end of the current administration in January and then step down. This is the best way to avoid dragging the bureau deeper into the fray, while reinforcing the values and principles that are so important to how we do our work.”

The FBI boss first fell foul of Trump after he refused to investigate his baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen. Trump further turned against him after FBI agents raided his Mar-a-Lago home in 2022 to retrieve classified documents that he had kept.

Iran must live with new ‘realities’ in Syria, Iran army head says, as Syrian rebel leaders vows retribution

The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the country must live with the new “realities” of Syria after rebels overthrew the Tehran-backed President Bashar al-Assad, state media has reported.

Iran “was really trying day and night to help in whatever way it could; we have to live with the realities of Syria; we look at them and act based on them,” Hossein Salami said. It came a day after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, claimed the US and Israel engineered Assad’s downfall, adding that Turkey also played a role.

In a signal that he will seek retribution, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel commander Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, also known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, said the rebels would not pardon those who torture and killed prisoners. He asked countries “to hand over” regime officials who have fled so “we can achieve justice”.

• What is the news from Gaza? Israeli airstrikes killed at least 28 people, including seven children and a woman, in overnight and early morning attacks, Palestinian medical officials said.

South Korea president defends martial law decree

South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, has said he will “fight until the end” against efforts to remove him from office following his brief imposition of martial law as he defended the shock move that last week made international headlines.

In a televised address to the nation, Yoon said: “I will fight to the end, to prevent the forces and criminal groups that have been responsible for paralysing the country’s government and disrupting the nation’s constitutional order from threatening the future of the Republic of Korea.” He claimed his martial law declaration was a legitimate “act of governance” and was meant to defend democracy and constitutional order against attacks from the liberal opposition.

Police had attempted to search Yoon’s office again, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported on Thursday, a day after presidential security guards blocked the first raid. It wasn’t immediately clear if they had managed the second time.

In other news …

• Montana’s supreme court temporarily blocked a ban on gender-affirming medical care for trans minors on grounds that it is likely to violate the state’s constitutional right to privacy.

• People in the US spend more of their lives sick than people from other countries, according to a study that found Americans spend an average of 12.4 years living with disease.

• Hannah Kobayashi has been found safe after going missing last month, the Los Angeles police department said.

Stat of the day: 96% of children in Gaza feel their death is imminent

An overwhelming majority of children living through the war in Gaza – 96% – say they feel their death is imminent, a study by a Gaza-based NGO, which is sponsored by the War Child Alliance charity, found. It found that almost half want to die as a result of the trauma they have experienced.

Don’t miss this: As the parent of a deaf baby, should I give her an implant to help her hear?

Like most hearing parents, Abi Stephenson’s first close relationship with a deaf person was with her baby. She writes about how the only context she had was an “almost entirely inaccurate patchwork of pop culture snippets” and the journey she went on as she found herself “adrift in a tempestuous cultural debate” about deafness. The battle for deaf children’s identities within the community is a fierce one, she writes in this fascinating deep dive – and hearing implants are part of it.

Climate check: US scientists grapple with a year of record heat and fears that crisis is accelerating

Scientists remain uncertain as to why 2023 and much of 2024 were so much hotter than expected, even allowing for global heating trends. The unexpected record – 2023 was 0.2C above the previous annual global record – has triggered fears that the climate emergency might be accelerating faster than scientists had expected.

Last Thing: The amateur theater group of bus drivers that staged Alien

Already done with schmaltzy Christmas movies? I’ve got just the thing for you – a documentary about an amateur theater group, made up of bus drivers and their pals, who decided that instead of their usual Christmas pantomime, they would stage … the cult horror movie Alien. Despite a technically questionable execution, the group’s performance reached London’s theaters. Alien on Stage is now available on streaming services in the US.

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