North Korea

Egypt has banned Hollywood’s big screen biblical epic “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” a 20th Century Fox spokesman has said to Reuters. The studio owned by 21st Century Fox Inc. declined to give a reason for the ban, but films that depict biblical figures have been prohibited before in the Muslim country.

South Korea has proposed to resume high-level talks with North Korea on several issues, including preparation for "peaceful unification".

Controversial low-brow comedy "The Interview" scored more than $15 million in online rentals and purchases, entertainment giant Sony said, following an embarrassing cyberattack and threats that led the company to pull the film from theaters.
      

Sony's PlayStation reported that its network was back online and claimed that it had been attacked, three days after it and Microsoft's Xbox went down in an outage.
      
An allegedly coordinated Christmas day hack brought down the gaming consoles, both hot gifts for the holiday season, although Xbox has been working at near full capacity since Friday.
      

North Korea on Dec. 27 blasted U.S. President Barack Obama as a "monkey" inciting cinemas to screen a comedy featuring a fictional plot to kill its leader, and threatened "inescapable deadly blows" over the movie.
 

North Korea is unlikely to have any "physical reaction" to the release of The Interview, a controversially perceived comedy about a fictional plot to assassinate leader Kim Jong-un.

"The Interview," the provocative comedy that triggered a  devastating cyberattack on Sony Pictures, went straight to U.S. consumers on Dec. 24 in an unprecedented online debut after hacker threats prevented its wide release on Christmas day.
   

North Korea, at the center of a confrontation with the United  States over the hacking of Sony Pictures, experienced a complete Internet outage for hours before links were restored on Dec. 23, a U.S. company that monitors Internet infrastructure said.
   

The relationship between the US and North Korea has been strained in the past few weeks following the cancelled release of a controversial movie and a cyber attack on producers Sony Pictures.

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The United States said on Dec. 18 a cyber attack on Sony Pictures was a serious national security matter and the Obama administration was considering a proportional response, although the White House stopped short of blaming North Korea.