December 23, 2013 (Monday)
Armed conflicts and attacks
- War in North-West Pakistan:
- Iraqi insurgency (post-U.S. withdrawal):
- A mortar attack kills four Iraq army officers and two soldiers in an army base west of Baghdad. (Al Arabiya)
- A terrorist attack on a news complex in Tikrit, Iraq kills 5 people. (CNN)
- Syrian Civil War:
- Palestinian militants fire a Kassam rocket from Gaza which lands next to a bus stop used by schoolchildren in the Ashkelon area in southern Israel; no injuries are reported. (The Times of Israel)
Arts and culture
- The Russian designer of the AK-47 assault rifle, Mikhail Kalashnikov, dies at the age of 94. (The Irish Times)
Law and crime
- Political activists Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, of the Russian band Pussy Riot, are given amnesty less than three months before the end of their sentences. They had been convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred". (The Guardian) (BBC) (The New York Times)
- Former UK MP Denis MacShane is sentenced to six months in jail for expenses fraud after he admitted to submitting 19 false receipts totaling £12,900. (BBC)
- In Tupelo, Mississippi two or three armed bank robbery suspects, fleeing police following a holdup at a Bancorp South, shoot dead one policeman and injure another. (NBC)
- British World War II computer pioneer and codebreaker Alan Turing, who had been chemically castrated in 1952 following his conviction for homosexuality, is given a posthumous royal pardon. (The Guardian)
Politics and elections
- Former Philippine President Joseph Estrada visits former President Gloria Arroyo in the hospital where she is currently detained. (The Philippine Star)