Wall Street inched slightly lower early Tuesday ahead of the release of U.S. employment and inflation reports that could drive the direction of interest rates.

Futures for the S&P 500 fell 0.2% before the bell Tuesday, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average were unchanged. Nasdaq futures lost 0.2%.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and 34 other countries formally approved plans Tuesday to create a compensation body to pay for damages to Ukraine caused by the Russian invasion, but questions remain about where the money will come from.

Zelenskyy told leaders gathered in the Dutch city of The Hague that he hopes for strong international support so "any damage caused by the war can be compensated."

France's first lady has defended her use of a sexist slur to denounce feminist protesters, saying the comments were "clumsy" but made in private when "I didn't see that someone behind me was filming."

Speaking to online media outlet Brut, Brigitte Macron acknowledged in a video interview published Monday evening that her language had been "very direct." But she said she'd been trying to reassure French actor Ary Abittan when she described feminist protesters who disrupted one of his shows as "dirty b - - - - - s."

President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit Monday seeking $10 billion in damages from the BBC, accusing the British broadcaster of defamation as well as deceptive and unfair trade practices.

The 33-page lawsuit accuses the BBC of broadcasting a "false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump," calling it "a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence" the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

A Paris labor court ruled on Tuesday that Paris Saint-Germain must pay more than 60 million euros to Kylian Mbappé in a dispute over unpaid wages and bonuses linked to the end of his contract before his 2024 move to Real Madrid.

Lawyers argued last month before the Conseil de prud'hommes de Paris. The court sided with the player amid accusations of betrayal and harassment surrounding the breakdown of their relationship.

An Emirati-backed secessionist group in Yemen said its forces were marching to another province as part of the group's push to expand areas under its control in the country's south, at the expense of its allies in the internationally recognized government.

The Southern Transitional Council this month seized most of the provinces of Hadramout and Mahra, including crucial oil facilities and the border with Oman. The move raised fears that the relative calm in the country's stalemated civil war might be shattered.

The two Iowa National Guard members killed in a weekend attack in Syria that the U.S. military blamed on the Islamic State group were identified and remembered as dedicated soldiers.

The U.S. Army named them as Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, 25, of Des Moines, and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, 29, of Marshalltown.

France is throwing up a last-minute obstacle to a massive trans-Atlantic trade deal between the 27-country European Union and the five South American nations of the Mercosur bloc that's taken a quarter-century to negotiate.

Angry European farmers fearing new competition from the EU-Mercosur pact are marching on Brussels, and European negotiators who thought they would finally wrap up the deal this year are facing a tough week.

A stray comet from another star swings past Earth this week in one last hurrah before racing back toward interstellar space.

Discovered over the summer, the comet known as 3I/Atlas will pass within 167 million miles (269 million kilometers) of our planet on Friday, the closest it gets on its grand tour of the solar system.

Over the course of 2025, a new reality has sunk in for Europe. The United States, long its strongest ally, has chipped away at the European Union's unity, economies, security and even its democracies, setting the backdrop for an EU summit this week at the end of an exceptionally trying year.

After putting an indefinite freeze last week on Russian assets in Europe, EU leaders face a new test of strength at Thursday's summit. Ukraine is in dire financial straits, and they have promised to meet Kyiv's economic and military needs for the next two years, most probably through a new reparations loan.