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LONDON -- Scotland's leader said Monday that she hopes to hold an independence referendum as soon as next year, setting up a political showdown with a U.K. government that refuses to countenance another secession vote. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she would campaign in the May 2021 Scottish Parliament election for a mandate to hold a vote on independence "in the early part of the new parliament," which will run from 2021 to 2025. Source

Lawmakers from French President Emmanuel Macron's party will rewrite the most criticized article of a proposed security law involving a measure aimed at banning the publication of images of police officers with intent to cause them harm. Source

TORONTO -- Police say they have charged an employee of a company in Markham, Ont. after he allegedly defrauded his employer of more than $5.4 million. York Regional Police say their Financial Crimes Unit began investigating in August after a forensic audit showed that the business, located on Gough Road near 14th Avenue and Warden Avenue, had millions of dollars paid out to an unknown company. Source

SASKATOON -- The union representing workers at Saskatoon Provincial Correctional Centre (SPCC) says staff are now undergoing daily temperature checks as the number of cases at the jail has risen to 131. As of Sunday afternoon, 107 inmates and 24 workers have now tested positive for coronavirus, according to the Saskatchewan Government and General Employees' union (SGEU). Source

PARIS, FRANCE -- Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris will echo with song on Christmas Eve as it holds its first choir concert since the massive fire that nearly destroyed the gothic masterpiece last year. An organ will be rented for the occasion, since Notre-Dame's majestic pipe organ is being carefully dismantled for cleaning and restoration after the devastating blaze that struck on April 15, 2019. Source

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA -- A British pathologist said Monday there was no positive evidence that a French-Irish teenager found dead last year near a Malaysian jungle resort was sexually assaulted, but he couldn't fully rule it out due to severe body decomposition. Source

ARGUINEGUIN, SPAIN -- Spanish authorities have dismantled the bulk of a makeshift camp for migrant processing that for over three months wasknown as the "dock of shame" for holding in unfit conditions thousands of Africans who arrived recently in the Canary Islands. Source

THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS -- Russia came under renewed pressure Monday to explain the nerve agent attack on opposition figure Alexei Navalny as the annual meeting of the global chemical weapons watchdog got underway amid measures aimed at reining in the spread of coronavirus. Source

CAIRO -- Artillery fire killed at least 11 civilians, including four children, near Yemen's strategic port city of Hodeida amid that country's grinding war, an international charity said Monday. Yemen's internationally recognized government blamed the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels for the attack. Source

MONTREAL -- Quebec health authorities reported 1,333 more cases of COVID-19 on Monday, bringing the total number of cases in the province since the start of the pandemic to 142,371. Of them, 12,138 are active. The province's seven-day average now stands at 1,309 new cases per day. Source