World News Update, What you need to know

The city of Los Angeles has shut down all public schools after receiving a "credible" electronic threat targeting the country's second-largest education district and its 640,000 students.

ELSEWHERE:

ISLAMABAD - A young Pakistani man has been killed after being hit by a fast-moving train as he tried to take a selfie with it.

BUCHAREST - Nearly 4000 shepherds have stormed Romania's parliament, furious over a new law that limits the number of dogs they can keep to protect their flocks.

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan - Tim Peake, the first British astronaut to travel to the International Space Station, has docked with the orbiting laboratory with two other spacemen, to cheers and excitement back home.

WALBRZYCH, Poland - No evidence supports the existence of a Nazi "gold train" loaded with treasures and buried in Poland at the end of World War II, researchers have announced.

ZURICH - The number of women among the world's billionaires has risen faster over the past two decades than that of men, mostly thanks to Asian female entrepreneurs.

MIAMI, Florida - The Arctic is heating up, with air temperatures the hottest in 115 years, and the melting ice destroying walrus habitat and forcing some fish northward, according to a global scientific report.

BERLIN - Germany says that Facebook, Google and Twitter have agreed to delete hate speech from their websites within 24 hours, in a new step in the fight against rising online racism following the refugee crisis.

LONDON, Dec 15 Reuters - Handbags, clothes and jewellery owned by the late British prime minister Margaret Thatcher are to go on sale, with some items expected to fetch up to STG180,000 ($A376,450).