WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department has approved the potential sale of Javelin anti-tank missiles to the government of Lithuania in a deal valued at up to $125 million, the Pentagon said. The sale comes as tensions are running high in Eastern Europe with Russia massing troops along its border with Ukraine. In October, the Biden administration sent Javelins to Ukraine, the U.S. embassy in Kyiv said on Twitter. The total package of Javelin anti-tank missiles would include 341 of the FGM-148F variant of the weapon and 30 command launch units, spares and technical support, the Pentagon said. The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress of the possible sale.

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PARIS (Telegraph) - Brigitte Macron is set to take legal action over an internet conspiracy theory that she is a transgender woman and was born male. The French first lady has been targeted on social media with the false claims, after they were published on a far-right website in September then circulated by conspiracy theorists. The rumors claim she was born male under the name Jean-Michel Trogneux. The name has trended on social media with tens of thousands of mentions. A lawyer for Mrs Macron - who is the mother of three adult children from her first marriage - confirmed she is taking action.“She has decided to initiate proceedings, it is in progress,” lawyer Jean Ennochi confirmed to the AFP news agency.

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ABUJA (Al-Jazeera) - Nigeria’s presidency says dozens of people have been killed in violence between farmers and herders in the country’s central Nasarawa state. In a statement late on Tuesday, the office of President Muhammadu Buhari said at least 45 farmers were killed in the violence that erupted. Dozens more were wounded, it said. Buhari “expressed grief over the heart-wrenching” killings and said his government would “leave no stone unturned in fishing out the perpetrators of this senseless and barbaric incident, and bring them to justice”.

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THE HAGUE (Al- Jazeera) - Dutch prosecutors have demanded life sentences for four suspects in the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014. Prosecutors said on Wednesday the four recklessly used a missile to bring down the passenger jet, killing all 298 passengers and crew. Public prosecutor Manon Ridderbeks made the sentence demand at the end of a three-day presentation of evidence. The suspects are being tried in absentia. “The downing of MH17 with a Buk missile brutally ended the lives of all 298 people on board. Incredibly deep and irreversible suffering has been caused to the next of kin,” Ridderbeks told the court.

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LONDON (Reuters) - At least one person was killed and scores were missing after a landslide of dirt and rubble ripped down the waste heap of a Myanmar jade mine, sweeping workers searching for fragments of the gems into a lake and burying them under the debris. Throngs of their families stood on bare, muddy banks on the shores of the lake, as rescue workers in hard hats and hi-vis jackets searched the water in boats after Wednesday’s accident, pictures posted on Facebook by the fire department showed. One body had been recovered from the scene before rescue operations were called off as night fell, and around 50 people still unaccounted for had likely also died, a fire department official at the scene told Reuters.