Two Indian-origin men were arrested in New York on charges of visa fraud for allegedly staging armed robberies across the United States so that the victims could apply for immigration benefits under the U-visa, according to authorities. If found guilty, the duo can face a maximum sentence of five years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of $2,50,000.
US President Joe Biden on Friday reacted to Russia's largest aerial assault in Ukraine, calling it a "stark reminder" to the world that Russian President Vladimir Putin's objective remains unchanged after nearly two years of the devastating war and accused him of trying to "obliterate Ukraine and subjugate its people."Bolivia's Constitutional Court has disqualified former president Evo Morales from running for re-election in 2025, reversing a ruling that had let him seek a fourth term in 2019.
It said on its website that term limits provide "an ideal measure for ensuring that someone does not perpetuate themself in power."
Bolivia's first Indigenous president, Morales first took power in 2006 and was extremely popular until he tried to bypass the constitution and seek a fourth term in office in 2019.
He won that vote but was forced to resign amid deadly protests over alleged election fraud, and fled the country. He returned after his then ally Luis Arce won the presidency in October 2020.
Morales has since fallen out with Arce.
Saturday's announcement from the court reversed a ruling it had made in 2017 which effectively found that being able to run for re-election is a "human right."
The new ruling cannot be appealed.
Morales denounced the new ruling as evidence of what he called complicity against him among judges, the government and the right wing in Bolivia.
The court's decision means that people in Bolivia can serve no more than two terms as president -- either consecutively or not.
Morales has said he wanted to run for president in 2025, as he locks horns with Arce, who had been his ally and served as economy minister for most of Morales' time in power since 2006.
The about-face by the Constitutional Court is based on criteria of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which does not consider re-election to be a human right.
That court issued an amicus ruling in 2021, at the request of Colombia, on the idea of presidents seeking re-election in an open-ended fashion.
When Morales resigned and left the country he was replaced by lawmaker Jeanine Anez, who now faces trial on charges of staging a coup against him.
"The court has ended Morales' delirium of getting re-elected forever," Anez said on X, the former Twitter.
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The top election body in US state of Maine blocked former president Donald Trump from the state's presidential primary ballot after he was ruled ineligible due to his involvement in the January 2021 assault on the US Capitol. Following this action, Maine's Democratic secretary of state has become the first election official to take action unilaterally in a decision that has potential Electoral College consequences.Google has agreed to settle a consumer privacy lawsuit seeking at least $5 billion in damages over allegations it tracked the data of users who thought they were browsing the internet privately.
The object of the lawsuit was the "incognito" mode on Google's Chrome browser that the plaintiffs said gave users a false sense that what they were surfing online was not being tracked by the Silicon Valley tech firm.
But internal Google emails brought forward in the lawsuit demonstrated that users using incognito mode were being followed by the search and advertising behemoth for measuring web traffic and selling ads.
In a court filing, the judge confirmed that lawyers for Google reached a preliminary agreement to settle the class action lawsuit -- originally filed in 2020 -- which claimed that "millions of individuals" had likely been affected.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs were seeking at least $5,000 for each user it said had been tracked by the firm's Google Analytics or Ad Manager services even when in private browsing mode and not logged into their Google account.
This would have amounted to at least $5 billion, though the settlement amount will likely not reach that figure, and no amount was given for the preliminary settlement between the parties.
Google and lawyers for the consumers did not respond to an AFP request for comment.
The settlement came just weeks after Google was refused a request that the case be decided by a judge. A jury trial was set to begin next year.
The lawsuit, filed in a California court, claimed Google's practices had infringed on users' privacy by "intentionally" deceiving them with the incognito option.
The original complaint alleged that Google and its employees had been given the "power to learn intimate details about individuals' lives, interests, and internet usage."
"Google has made itself an unaccountable trove of information so detailed and expansive that George Orwell could never have dreamed it," it added.
A formal settlement is expected for court approval by February 24, 2024.
Class action lawsuits have become the main venue to challenge big tech companies on data privacy matters in the United States, which lacks a comprehensive law on the handling of personal data.
In August, Google paid $23 million to settle a long-running case over giving third-parties access to user search data.
In 2022, Facebook parent company Meta settled a similar case, agreeing to pay $725 million over the handling of user data.
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Two earthquakes of magnitudes 6.5 and 5.0 struck near Japan's coast in quick succession, according to the US Geological Survey and the National Center for Seismology (NCS). The first tremor of magnitude 6.5 struck near the Kuril Islands at 2:45 pm, followed by another 5.0 magnitude earthquake at 3:07 pm.The decision on whether to prosecute serious crimes such as sexual assaults in the US military has shifted from commanders to independent lawyers, the Pentagon said Thursday, implementing a congressionally-mandated reform.
The change followed years of pressure from victims' advocates to ensure better accountability in the military. Congress passed a law requiring the shift in 2021 and US President Joe Biden ordered its implementation in July.
"Prosecutorial discretion for 13 serious criminal offenses will be shifted away from commanders to specially trained and independent judge advocates who reside within the Offices of Special Trial Counsel and report directly to the secretaries of the military departments," Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement.
"This landmark change to the US military justice system will significantly strengthen the independent prosecution of sexual assault and other serious criminal offenses in the Department of Defense," he said.
Removing the investigation and prosecution of sexual assault cases from the chain of command was one of the main proposals made by an independent commission set up by Austin to look into the handling of sexual assault in the military.
Previously, commanders were responsible for making decisions about pursuing serious crimes allegedly committed by their subordinates -- a system critics said often presented conflicts of interest and other issues.
A senior US defense official said ahead of the change that it marks a "monumental improvement of the military justice system," and that victims can be assured their cases "will be handled professionally and consistently with the best practices and procedures of civilian prosecution offices."
According to the latest Pentagon data, there were 8,942 reports of sexual assault involving military personnel in 2022, slightly up on the previous year.
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Ten Indian labourers were injured on Wednesday when parts of an under-construction factory building collapsed in Western Nepal, police said.
According to Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Resham Bohara, they sustained injuries when the Kajaria Tiles Industry's building collapsed in Nawalparasi West.
The accident occurred when the building, which was undergoing construction, was hit by a crane.
All the injured labourers have been admitted to a local community hospital for treatment. However, the condition of one of the Indian labourers is said to be serious.
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Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been located at a prison colony above the Arctic Circle after three weeks of no contact with him, his associates said. Navalny, the most prominent foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism. He had been imprisoned in the Vladimir region of central Russia, about 230 kilometers (140 miles) east of Moscow, but his lawyers said they had not been able to reach him since Dec. 6.A couple in the US who sold everything they owned three years ago to live their dream of sailing around the world say that is cheaper than living on land. John and Melody Hennessee, a couple from Florida, sold their Florida home, business, and most of their belongings to embark on global travel in 2020, according to the New York Post.
The couple initially bought a motorhome to travel across the United States. However, when Mr Hennessee got tired of driving, they decided to take to the seas. The couple saw a Facebook ad for a Royal Caribbean cruise that lasted 274 days, and 9 months and jumped at the opportunity.
They quickly registered their names on the board and have since travelled all over the world. So far, they have journeyed to Australia, New Zealand, and various parts of the South Pacific and are presently navigating around the Dominican Republic. They say that it's cheaper than the landlocked life they led before.
''We now have a telephone bill, a shipping bill, and a few credit card bills for when we go ashore, but that's it. We no longer have a mortgage or the expense of homes. We no longer have vehicle insurance, property insurance, or utility bills. The list goes on. We are certain cruising is cheaper. Right now it is probably close to half of what it was when we lived on land," Mr Hennessee told Sky News.
The pair usually dock at their destination and explore for three to five days at a time. They are fully booked with trips until December 2024 and will soon be boarding a residential cruise ship.
The Villa Vie Odyssey is an all-inclusive cruise ship providing permanent residences, with approximately 30% of passengers becoming full-time inhabitants. It will set off from Southampton in May next year.
''We wanted to buy a cabin so we can design it how we want. It's going to be home for us, for probably a minimum of 15 years on the ship. We are just water people. We are both boaters. We love being on the ocean,'' Melody Hennessee said.
Not just the Hennessees, Angelyn, and Richard Burk, also from America, sold their home for a life at sea after a freak accident ten years ago. They told CNN that their cost of living before their retirement was 59,000 Pounds a year. They claimed after the move it dropped to just 27,000 Pounds.
A Hyderabad-bound flight has returned to its origin, Bengaluru due to bad weather. According to Vistara Airlines, flight UK897 has returned to Bangalore due to bad weather at Hyderabad airport and is expected to arrive in Bangalore at 9:40 hours.
An earthquake of magnitude 6.3 struck Taiwan region early today (December 24), the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) said.A sixty-year-old woman in the US has recalled the time when she woke up with no recollection of the last 30 years of her life after she visited the hospital because of a headache. The intriguing medical case unfolded in 2018 when the woman then 56, awoke with the belief that she was still a teenager in the 1980s, New York Post reported. Kim Denicola, a resident of Louisiana, is now cherishing this Christmas season as she reflects on the many holidays lost to her mysterious memory loss.
''I've lost a lot of Christmases, so it's a big deal,'' Mrs Denicola, now 60, told WAFB. ''It's unbelievable to me as it probably is to other people. Never in my wildest dreams did I get up and go to bible study and think I'm going to wake up in the hospital and I'm going to be 60 years old,'' she added.
According to her family, she developed a blinding headache and sudden blurry vision while at a bible study. When she woke up in the hospital emergency room, she had no recollection that she was married and had two children. The last thing Mrs Denicola remembered was her final day of school.
''I was leaving school and heading for my car. I had just taken an exam because I was graduating my senior year. 'The nurse asked me: "Do you know what year it is?" I said: "Yes, ma'am it is 1980". She asked me who the president was and I said: "Ronald Reagan''.
She was also heartbroken to learn that both her mother and father had died years earlier.
Though she was diagnosed with transient global amnesia (TGA), doctors can't tell her for sure what happened despite extensive tests and scans. Five years later in 2023, the 60-year-old grandmother has still not recovered memories.
Doctors say that if her memories haven't returned by now, they are unlikely to ever resurface.
The woman is still trying to make sense of her new life and is in the process of getting to know her family anew, including her husband, children, and four grandchildren. She has also been reading journal entries to remember her life but says it feels like reading about someone else.
''I may have lost my memories, but guess what? We can make new ones,'' she said.
''You can't be mad and bitter because the good Lord left me here for a reason. Whatever that may be, I'm sure he'll let me know one way or another. And maybe this is it maybe it's to tell people you don't have to give up,'' she added.
Despite the difficulties, she is now re-discovering things she loved and insists that she's moving forward. Mrs Denicola said her Christmas dream is to have her entire family back together celebrating under one roof.
According to the National Library of Medicine, TGA often occurs during periods of ''particularly strenuous activity, high-stress events, or coitus, but it can be seen with migraines.'' It mostly affects individuals middle-aged and older.
Most of the roughly 300 Indians travelling on a plane detained near Paris over suspicions of human trafficking will be free to resume their trip Monday, French judicial sources said Sunday.
The Nicaragua-bound Airbus A340 and its 303 Indian passengers have been held at Vatry airport, 150 kilometres (95 miles) east of Paris, since arriving Thursday from Dubai for refuelling after an anonymous tip-off that it was carrying potential victims of human trafficking.
Four French judges began questioning the passengers Sunday to verify the "conditions and purposes" of their travel, and have two days to complete speaking to the passengers.
The judges have the authority to extend the detention, but Paris prosecutors told AFP they expect the plane and its passengers to be cleared for departure late Monday morning "at the latest," without naming a destination.
The passengers of the flight operated by Romanian company Legend Airlines are holed up in the airport. They include 11 unaccompanied minors, according to Paris prosecutors.
Two passengers have been detained since Friday "to verify" whether their role "may have been different than the others in this transport, and under what conditions and with what objectives."
Ten of the passengers have requested asylum, a source close to the case said.
Tarpaulin covered the entrance hall's glass exterior and nearby administrative buildings, while police and gendarmes prevented access.
Individual beds, as well as toilets and showers, have been installed, the local prefecture said.
The Indian embassy in Paris Saturday posted on X that "embassy consular staff" are on site to working with French authorities "for the welfare" of detained passengers for an "early resolution of the situation."
The 30 crew members were not detained. Some handled the Dubai-Vatry leg and others were to take over for the flight to Managua. According to Flightradar24, Legend Airlines has just four planes.
A source close to the inquiry told AFP that some of the Indian passengers were likely workers in the United Arab Emirates who may be traveling to Nicaragua as a jumping off spot for the United States or Canada.
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California: A Hindu temple has been vandalised with anti-India and pro-Khalistan graffiti on its exterior walls in Newark, California, United States. The Newark Police has assured a thorough investigation into the incident.Thirteen unaccompanied minors are among the more than 300 Indian passengers of a Nicaragua-bound plane held in France over suspected human trafficking, authorities told AFP on Saturday.
The Airbus A340 has been held at Vatry airport, 150 kilometres (95 miles) east of Paris, since arriving from Dubai on Thursday following an anonymous tip-off that it was carrying potential victims of human trafficking.
The civilian protection unit of the Marne department said the plane was carrying 13 unaccompanied minors as well as accompanied minors, with their ages ranging from 21 months to 17 years.
The 303 passengers of the flight operated by Romanian company Legend Airlines were still in the airport's entrance hall on Saturday morning, an AFP reporter saw.
Tarpaulin covered the entrance hall's glass exterior and nearby administrative buildings, while police and gendarmes prevented access.
Two passengers were in custody on Friday as part of the investigation.
Liliana Bakayoko, a lawyer for the airline, said all crew members had been questioned and allowed to leave.
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More than 10 weeks after the bloody Hamas attack on Israel, accounts of sexual violence are on the rise.
But the scarcity of survivor testimonies and the lack of forensic evidence make it difficult to assess their scale.
"Hamas used rape and sexual violence as weapons of war," Israeli ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan said in early December, as Israel accused international bodies of an inadequate response.
In recent weeks, officials have reiterated allegations that the operatives who crossed over from the Gaza Strip on October 7 committed violent gang rape, genital mutilation, and engaged in sexual acts with children and corpses.
Witnesses and experts interviewed by AFP said a full picture of the atrocities or their systematic nature had still not been established after the chaos of the huge attack, which killed about 1,140 people in Israel, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
In the days after October 7, hundreds of bodies arrived at the Shura military base in central Israel, some so burnt and disfigured that delicate work was required for examination.
Police spokeswoman Mirit Ben Mayor said there have been no forensic reports of sexual violence, while Hamas has rejected the accusations, saying they were intended to "demonize" the group.
"The bodies were not checked for rape; they were checked for identification" before the swift burial Judaism traditionally requires, she said.
AFP spoke to one of the reservists tasked with identifying and washing the bodies of female soldiers after the attack.
"We were in such a state of shock," said Shari, whose full name is being withheld at the army's request.
"Many young women arrived in bloody shrouded rags with just their underwear, and the underwear was often very bloody.
"Our team commander saw several soldiers who were shot on the crotch, intimate parts, vagina or shot in the breasts," she said.
"It is very difficult to give you exact numbers," Shari said. An architect by trade, she said she was not trained to deal with atrocities on such a scale.
Chaotic
The Hamas attack was the deadliest in Israel's 75-year history.
Israel's relentless retaliatory bombardment and ground assault in Gaza has killed at least 20,057 people, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.
Dvora Bauman, a gynaecologist in Jerusalem who specialises in helping victims of sexual abuse, said the recognition of sexual violence in Hamas's attack came too late.
Most rescue workers, often Orthodox men, "didn't think of rape at all" as they rapidly responded to the crisis, she said.
Eli Hazen, 56, a volunteer with the Zaka organisation which recovers and identifies bodies in accordance with Jewish tradition, said "there was a tremendous amount of miscommunication" at the time.
There was a lack of coordination "between different aspects of the rescue mission, the army, the police", he said.
"It's hard to say exactly what happened in every particular square centimetre."
While he said "we obviously didn't see anything before or during" the events, he described finding the body of a woman shot in the back of the head in Kibbutz Beeri, naked from the waist down.
Hazen said her body was kneeling at the foot of a bed in a position suggesting she had been abused.
In another ruined house in the same kibbutz, the body of a young woman lay beneath the corpse of an operative, neither of them fully dressed, he told AFP.
The bodies were in bad condition, having begun to decay, and it is very difficult to be sure about what happened, Hazen said.
Another Zaka volunteer, Simcha Greeneman, said in one kibbutz he had discovered a dead woman with sharp objects in her vagina, including nails.
French legal expert Celine Bardet, founder of the We Are not Weapons of War NGO, which advocates against conflict-related sexual violence, said it was a clear example of sexual violence.
Another she cited was the treatment of Shani Louk, a young German-Israeli woman captured and killed by the operatives.
Images and footage on social media showed her stripped body in the back of a pick-up truck, battered and spat upon.
'Take off your clothes'
In cases of rape the situation is more complex.
Experts said the victims had been killed and exhumation, prohibited in Judaism, was unlikely.
Eyewitness accounts are mounting in the media, especially from survivors of the Supernova music festival where about 3,000 people had gathered in the desert near the Gaza border.
One of the event's organisers, Rami Shmuel, returned to the scene the day after the attack.
He described finding three young women, "naked from the waist down, legs spread".
"One had the face burnt," he said. Another was "shot in the face" while the last had been "shot all over the lower part of her body".
More than 360 people were killed at the festival, according to Israeli figures.
Shmuel found body after body, but said he never saw "a naked man, a man whose legs were spread".
On social media, there is a tide of images alongside condemnations of "mass femicide".
The Israeli army has shared documents it said were found on the bodies of Hamas fighters, including a phrasebook explaining how to say "take off your trousers" and "take off your clothes" in Hebrew.
In at least two unsourced videos of interrogations of alleged Hamas members, they are heard talking about instructions given to rape women.
Contacted by AFP, Israeli security agency Shin Bet, the police and the army said they had not released these videos.
'Piece by piece'
As it stands, "we can't establish the scale or the precise details of the abuses, the modus operandi, or how many people were involved," said Bardet.
She said she was disappointed Israeli authorities were "not cooperating", including by rejecting an independent international investigation.
Israeli diplomats contacted by AFP branded the UN Human Rights Council's commission of an inquiry "biased", accusing its members of being "anti-Semitic" and "anti-Israel".
The International Criminal Court, whose chief prosecutor Karim Khan has visited the region since the war began, could decide to investigate sexual violence.
But this will likely take years, according to law professor Cochav Elkayam-Levy, head of an inquiry commission on child and gender-based violence during the Hamas attacks.
She emphasised that women subjected to sexual violence often take years to come forward.
"We'll never know what happened to women. We'll never know the extent of the crime," she said. It's a "damaged puzzle that we are now building, piece by piece."
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
At his end-of-the-year press briefing, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday affirmed that America deepened its partnership with India this year and elevated cooperation through the Quad along with Japan and Australia. Notably, this year saw a historic visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the US to meet President Joe Biden.United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken has strongly called out nations of not demanding that the terrorist organisation Hamas stop hiding behind civilians, lay down its arms, and surrender.
In a press briefing at the US State Department on Wednesday, Blinken said that many countries are urging the end to the ongoing conflict, but how is it possible that there are no demands made of the aggressor?
"What is striking to me is that even as, again, we hear many countries urging the end to this conflict, which we would all like to see, I hear virtually no one saying--demanding of Hamas that it stop hiding behind civilians, that it lay down its arms, that it surrender. This is over tomorrow if Hamas does that. This would have been over a month ago, six weeks ago, if Hamas had done that," Blinken said.
"How can it be that there are no demands made of the aggressor and only demands made of the victim?" he added.
Blinken's remarks coincide with ongoing negotiations by the UN Security Council on a resolution that would suspend hostilities and encourage the delivery of greater humanitarian supplies to the devastated Gaza Strip, CNN reported.
"Understandably, everyone would like to see this conflict end as quickly as possible," said Blinken at the end-of-year press availability, adding, "if it ends with Hamas remaining in place and having the capacity and the stated intent to repeat October 7th again and again and again, that's not in the interests of Israel; it's not in the interests of the region; it's not in the interests of the world."
The US voted against a cease-fire request at the larger UN General Assembly earlier this month and has previously blocked proposals in the UNSC, CNN reported.
Israel's strongest ally, the US, has denounced the Hamas attack that claimed more than 1,200 lives on October 7.
Nonetheless, senior US officials, like President Joe Biden, have urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take more significant actions to preserve innocent lives while waging his campaign against Hamas in reaction to the growing number of civilian deaths in Gaza as a result of Israel's response.
The conflict in Gaza escalated after the October 7 attack by Hamas, where about 2,500 terrorists breached the border into Israel from the Gaza Strip, leading to casualties and the seizure of hostages.
Israel has characterized its Gaza offensive as targeting Hamas' infrastructure to eliminate the entire terror group while making efforts to minimize civilian casualties.
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Honda Motor Co's American unit is recalling about 106,030 CR-V hybrid vehicles due to the risk of fire or injury in a crash caused by an overheated battery cable or short circuit, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said on Wednesday.
To address the issue, dealers will replace the battery cable, NHTSA added.
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Pakistan's former prime minister Nawaz Sharif would contest elections from the Mansehra region of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, his son-in-law Captain (retd.) Muhammad Safdar said on Wednesday.
Mr Safdar, who hails from Mansehra and is married to Sharif's daughter Maryam Nawaz, told the media that the 73-year-old three-time former premier would submit his nomination papers for the National Assembly seat "NA 15 Mansehra-cum-Torghar constituency" by Thursday (December 21).
Mansehra is part of the Hazara division which is considered a stronghold of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). Mr Sharif is also expected to contest from Lahore in addition to Mansehra.
Mr Sharif, the only Pakistani politician who became the prime minister of the coup-prone country for a record three times, returned to Pakistan in October after a four-year self-imposed exile to lead his party in the general elections.
Mr Sharif, acquitted in the Avenfield and Al Azizia cases by the Islamabad High Court, eyes a record fourth term as premier in the next elections.
However, Mr Sharif faces a big hurdle as he remains disqualified from holding public office by the Supreme Court in the Panama Papers case, and in a later judgment interpreting a provision of the Constitution that involves honesty and trustworthiness - the top court ruled that the disqualification is for life.
Earlier this year amendments were made to the Elections Act, 2017 by the government led by Mr Sharif's younger brother and PML-N president Shehbaz Sharif, limiting the disqualification of lawmakers to five years with a retrospective effect.
The Supreme Court has decided to form a larger bench to determine once and for all whether aspirants disqualified can contest polls in light of the amendments in the Elections Act, 2017.
The case is expected to be decided before elections scheduled to be held on February 8.
Earlier, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-insaf announced that its incarcerated founder leader Imran Khan would contest the general elections from at least three seats.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday classified the JN.1 coronavirus strain as a "variant of interest", but said it did not pose much threat to public health.
"Based on the available evidence, the additional global public health risk posed by JN.1 is currently evaluated as low," WHO said.
JN.1 was previously classified as a variant of interest as a part of its parent lineage BA.2.86.
The United Nations agency said current vaccines continue to protect against severe disease and death from JN.1 and other circulating variants of the COVID-19 virus.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) earlier this month said that the subvariant JN.1 makes up about an estimated 15% to 29% of cases in the United States as of Dec. 8, according to the agency's latest projections.
It added that currently there is no evidence that JN.1 presents an increased risk to public health relative to other currently circulating variants and an updated shot could keep Americans protected against the variant.
JN.1 was first detected in the US in September, according to the CDC.
Last week, China detected seven infections of the COVID subvariant.
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Pictures and videos of huge lines of ambulances outside Russian hospitals have sparked rumours of a mystery virus outbreak in the country. Videos circulating online show huge lines of ambulances waiting outside infectious disease hospitals in Moscow, Newsweek reported.
Russian-language Telegram channel Baza, which claims to be linked to the country's security services, shared the videos, claiming, ''Most of the sick people have pneumonia.'' Baza claimed that about 30 ambulances gathered at the first hospital, and more than 10 at the second. T
However, the Kremlin's health department in Moscow has denied reports of the outbreak, as per Express.co.uk.
It said in a statement: "The situation when several ambulances arrive for hospitalisation in an infectious diseases hospital is standard. The growth in the incidence of ARVI and COVID-19 in Moscow has slowed down; the figures for the last week do not exceed the data of the previous period.
"And COVID-19 incidence rates have been declining for two weeks. Over the next one to two weeks, the incidence rate is predicted to reach a plateau."
The department further said there is "no significant increase in hospitalizations in the city" and that the "morbidity situation is normal and corresponds to the epidemic season.
The statement continued: "Having up to 24 cars on-site at the same time is standard practice during peak hours and is not a queue or an emergency situation. The hospital regularly monitors the arrival of patients; the situation, when there were about 23 cars on the territory, was resolved within half an hour. In [hospital] Number Two, similarly...the presence of 10 cars on the territory is the absolute norm.''
It comes after the World Health Organization published a news release on December 15 that respiratory infectious diseases are on the rise across the WHO's European Region.
''Seasonal cold weather has set in across the WHO European Region, leading to circulation of respiratory pathogens and more people becoming sick. Many of these pathogens affect young children, especially those under 5 years, alongside other at-risk groups, such as people with comorbidities and people aged over 65 years,'' the release read.
''A similar increase in hospitalizations was seen at this time last year, driven by an early seasonal increase in the circulation of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which is a leading cause of acute lower respiratory tract infections in infants and young children. RSV is a seasonal virus that recurs each year in Europe, with peaks mainly during the autumn, winter, and spring months (October to April),'' it further noted.
Last month, a sudden spike in respiratory illnesses was also witnessed across China. Most of the cases were reported in children and the surge sparked a rush to hospitals by anxious parents, putting top pediatric medical centers under strain. Pictures of overcrowded hallways and children on intravenous infusions have gone viral on Chinese social media.
Two Indian nationals were arrested with 380 kg of drugs in Nepal's Bharatpur city on Tuesday, police said.
The two, identified as 45-year-old Anil Giri and 30-year-old Rajpal, were arrested by a team of Chitawan district police during a routine security checking of trucks, they said.
Police recovered 380 kg of hashish from their possession.
Anil is the truck driver, while Rajpal is the helper. Both are residents of Sambhal in Uttar Pradesh.
The drug, kept in 28 cartoons, was hidden under a false bottom in the front side of the truck, police in a statement.
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Canada witnessed a record-high population fuelled by "international migration" over the first nine months of the year that has surpassed the total growth in any other full year, including the record set in 2022, according to official data released on Tuesday.
Canada's population was estimated at 40,528,396 on October 1, an increase of 430,635 people ( 1.1%) from July 1, Statistics Canada said.
"This was the highest population growth rate in any quarter since the second quarter of 1957 ( 1.2%) when Canada's population grew by 198,000 people," it said.
The country's total population growth for the first nine months of 2023 ( 1,030,378 people) had already exceeded the total growth for any other full-year period since Confederation in 1867, including 2022, when there was record growth, it said.
The population grew in all provinces and territories, except in the Northwest Territories (-0.5%).
The data attribute the vast majority (96.0%) of the population growth to "international migration".
"The rest of this gain (4.0%) was the result of natural increase, or the difference between the number of births and deaths," it said.
Canada welcomed 107,972 immigrants in the third quarter. The country-wise figures were not provided.
The contribution of natural increase to population growth is expected to remain low in the coming years because of population ageing, lower fertility levels, and the high number of immigrants and non-permanent residents coming to the country, Statistics Canada said.
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China vowed on Monday to "take countermeasures" against companies involved in arms sales to Taiwan after the United States approved a $300-million deal to beef up the self-ruled island's defences.
China views Taiwan as part of its territory and has pledged to seize it one day, while the US Congress requires the supply of weapons to the self-governing democracy for its defence.
The US State Department last week approved an arms package that both sides said would strengthen Taipei's joint battle command and control system.
Beijing hit back on Monday, saying it would take "resolute and strong measures to defend its national sovereignty and territorial integrity".
"We will take countermeasures against relevant enterprises involved in arms sales to Taiwan," foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular news briefing, without giving details.
The United States "should stop the dangerous trend of arming Taiwan, stop creating tensions in the Taiwan Strait, and stop indulging and supporting the separatist forces of Taiwan independence in their quest for achieving independence by force," he added.
"China will eventually reunify, and indeed must reunify."
Beijing has ratcheted up the pressure on Taiwan since independence-leaning President Tsai Ing-wen took power there in 2016.
It regularly sends warplanes and vessels near the island, whose defence ministry recently also reported several sightings of balloons from the mainland.
Both Washington and Taipei have warned Beijing not to seek to influence presidential elections in Taiwan next month.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
The mother of a six-year-old child who shot his teacher in a school in the US State of Virginia has been sentenced to two years of imprisonment for felony child neglect, nearly a year after the incident that shocked American citizens. The incident took place earlier this year when her son used her 9mm handgun and shot his teacher Abby Zwerner in front of her first-grade class.
A UN report published on Thursday made an astounding claim that women in Afghanistan were sent to prison by Taliban officials in order to 'protect' them from gender-based violence. The report said that although the protection of women is claimed, it harms the physical and mental health of survivors.The government has announced a one-day state mourning on Sunday following the demise of the Emir of Kuwait Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah.
The ruling emir died on Saturday at the age of 86. In a communication to all states, the Union home ministry said during the period of state mourning on December 17, the national flag will fly half-mast where it is flown regularly throughout India and there will be no official entertainment.
"His Highness Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, the Amir of the State of Kuwait, passed away on December 16, 2023. As a mark of respect to the departed dignitary, the government of India has decided that there will be one day's state mourning on December 17," the communication said.
"On the day of mourning, the national flag will be flown at half-mast throughout India on all buildings where the national flag is flown regularly and there will be no official entertainment on the day," it said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan's Supreme Court late on Friday suspended an order by the Lahore High Court on the appointment of bureaucrats as Returning Officers, a ruling that led to uncertainty over the much-awaited February 8 general elections.
The top court also ordered the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to issue the poll schedule tonight to hold the general election on February 8, as already committed by the election body before the Supreme Court.
The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Wednesday suspended the decision of the ECP to appoint bureaucrats as Returning Officers (ROs) and district returning officers (DROs) for the February 8 elections, prompting the poll body to pause a training session for ROs and DROs on Thursday.
On Wednesday, the LHC reserved the verdict while hearing a plea by jailed former prime minister Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party. On Friday, alleging that Khan's party is trying to delay the polls, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), and Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) decided to jump in the fray.
The Secretary of the ECP approached the Supreme Court to challenge the LHC ruling, and late on Friday evening, a three-judge bench, led by Chief Justice of Pakistan Qazi Faez Isa, heard the appeal.
After arguments by the ECP lawyer Sajeel Swati, the bench declared the order of the LHC as of "no legal effect". "The impugned orders (of LHC) is hereby suspended," the bench stated in its order.
The court also ordered Umair Naizi, who had challenged the appointment in the LHC, to be asked to explain why the contempt of court proceedings may not be started against him as he violated the earlier orders of the Supreme Court to not interfere in the process to hold the elections on February 8.
The court also ordered the LHC to stop any further proceedings on the petition against the appointment of ROs and DROs.
In its order, the bench also announced that the ECP would issue a detailed schedule for the general election on Friday. Earlier, the court grilled the ECP for failing to announce the election schedule.
The court also announced that no one would be allowed to derail democracy or delay elections.
Dawn.com described pausing the training session for ROs and DROs as "an exercise without which polls on February 8 could be in trouble." "The high court order seemingly brought the electoral process to a standstill, causing widespread concern among political parties - including the petitioner PTI - regarding general elections," it added.
LHC's Justice Ali Baqar Najafi had said that on factual grounds, "the apparent absence of a level playing field" for the political party of the petitioner is visible to all and has also been seriously noted by many independent groups.
PML-N Central Information Secretary Marriyum Aurangzeb posted on social media platform X: "The PML-N will be a party against the LHC's decision regarding ROs.
The party's legal team had begun preparing a petition in this regard." The PPP also announced that it would file a plea in the LHC seeking to become a party in the case, while BAP's Khalid Magsi, in a statement, said he had directed his party to prepare a petition seeking to become a party in the case, Dawn.com added.
Leaders from both PPP and PML-N blamed Khan and his PTI for delaying the polls.
"The PTI has once again tried to derail the electoral process," Dawn.com quoted the PPP leader, who also claimed, "This reflects their undemocratic and apolitical mindset. It is clear that the PTI does not want elections to be held in the country." PML-N leader Ahsan Iqbal was quoted as accusing the PTI of "conspiring to sabotage elections" in the country and saying, "This proves that they can see their future, they can see defeat in polls and to save themselves from this defeat, they are trying to delay the elections." Meanwhile, an ECP official told Dawn that the announcement of the election schedule depended on the final verdict in the case related to the appointment of DROs and ROs.
"The ROs are the ones who issue public notices inviting nominations and also receive and scrutinise nomination papers. An election schedule cannot be issued in the absence of ROs, they are the ones to implement the schedule," he had said.
The unnamed ECP official also drew attention to another hurdle, which Dawn said was "the delimitation cases being remanded to the election watchdog by the high courts for reconsideration." "The official claimed that the judiciary, not the ECP, would be responsible in case elections were delayed," the official said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
Around 2.35 lakh pilgrims visited the Gurudwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan through the Kartarpur corridor since its inauguration in November 2019, the government informed the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.
In November 2019, India and Pakistan threw open the Kartarpur corridor linking Dera Baba Sahib in Gurdaspur in India with the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur, in a historic people-to-people initiative.
"Since its inauguration on November 9, 2019, the Sri Kartarpur Sahib Corridor has been used by around 2,35,000 pilgrims to visit Gurudwara Sri Darbar Sahib Kartarpur," Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan said, replying to a question.
"The Sri Kartarpur Sahib corridor remains functional on all seven days of the week," he said.
According to details provided by the minister, 1,002 applications seeking to visit the Sikh shrine through the Kartarpur Sahib corridor were rejected in 2021, while the number was 8,309 in 2022.
In 2023 (till December 4), a total of 7,332 applications were rejected, he added.
Mr Muraleedharan said representations have been received to make the visit to the Gurudwara through the Kartarpur corridor passport-free.
"However, the bilateral agreement signed between India and Pakistan on October 24, 2019 mandates that pilgrims shall travel on valid passport," he added.
"The government of India has consistently urged the government of Pakistan that in deference to the wishes of the pilgrims, it should not levy any fee or charge on the pilgrims who visit Gurudwara Sri Darbar Sahib Kartarpur through the corridor," he said.
The minister said Pakistan, however, continues to levy USD 20 on every pilgrim for each visit.
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A 20-year-old man was critically injured by a lion while trying to take a selfie with the big cat in the Punjab province of Pakistan, a week after four lions mauled a man at a zoo in the province. The incident occurred on Tuesday at a Lok Mela (fair) organised by the government's Parks and Horticulture Authority (PHA) in Sargodha city, some 200 from Lahore, police said on Wednesday.
The man, identified as Muhammad Amin, was grabbed by his arm by the lion and clawed when he got closer to the big cat's cage. Mr Amin was seriously injured and was shifted to hospital, where his condition is stated to be critical. The local administration cancelled the fair after the incident.
This comes a week after four lions mauled a man at a Safari Zoo in Bahawalpur, over 400 km from Lahore. The zoo staff member found the man's dead body when he went to feed the animals. Later, police said the man was a drug addict who sneaked into the lions' den without being detected by zoo officials.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
COP28 Summit: While the top leaders and officials were attending the annual climate summit in Dubai, a 12-year-old Indian activist stormed the stage by rushing to the dias and holding a sign above her head that read, "End fossil fuels. Save our planet and our future." Licypriya Kangujam, who hails from the Manipur district, was at the United Nations Climate Conference 2023 (COP28), where she emphasised that the world needs to end the usage of fossil fuels immediately in order to safeguard the future.The world's second-oldest woman and Japan's oldest living person has died at the age of 116 at a nursing home in Kashiwara, Metro reported. Fusa Tatsumi died from old age on Tuesday, December 12 at the care facility after eating bean-paste jelly, which is her favourite meal.
''Tatsumi died on Tuesday at the age of 116 at a healthcare facility in Osaka,'' an official said in Osaka's Kashiwara city.
Tatsumi, who lived through two world wars and multiple pandemics, was recognised as Japan's oldest person after Kane Tanaka passed away last year at 119. Guinness World Records officially acknowledged Tanaka's status as the world's oldest person in April 2022.
She became only the 27th person in history to reach the age of 116 and was only the seventh Japanese person to do so.
Born in 1907, Tatsumi raised three children with her husband, a farmer, in Osaka, local broadcaster MBS reported. Notably, she had recently spent most of her days in bed at the nursing home and regularly greeted the employees working there. As per reports, Fusa Tatsumi suffered no prior health problems and had never been seriously ill or injured except when she broke her thigh bone in a fall in her 70s.
She also enjoyed gardening and practised the art of Japanese tea ceremony and flower arrangement after she graduated from elementary school. The 116-year-old woman's love for gardening continued until she entered a nursing home at the age of 106.
'''I think she did great to get to this age,'' Tatsumi's eldest son, Kanji, 76, told local media after the supercentenarian's death.
Osaka governor Hirofumi Yoshimura offered condolences on the social media site X, recalling a party he attended to celebrate Tatsumi's longevity in September.
"I still remember how healthy Ms Fusa Tatsumi was," Yoshimura said. "I sincerely pray for her soul."
Japan has one of the world's highest life expectancies and has been home to several people recognised as among the oldest humans to have ever lived.
COP28: Just two days before the UN climate talks here are scheduled to end, negotiators on Sunday released a draft document to guide countries' efforts to adapt to climate change and monitor collective progress. However, it falls short of expectations.A Sikh family from India who was targeted last month in a shooting spree in the Canadian province of Ontario that killed one person was possibly a case of mistaken identity, provincial police have said.
Jagtar Singh, 57, was killed while his wife Harbhajan Kaur, 55, and their daughter were critically injured during a shooting on Mayfield Road near Airport Road, along the Caledon-Brampton border, on November 21.
Officers from the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) and paramedics upon arrival found Jagtar Singh dead on the scene, and rushed Kaur and their daughter to hospital with life-threatening injuries, the Toronto Star newspaper reported on Monday.
Officers are investigating “all aspects of this homicide, including whether or not the victims of this crime were intended targets or not”, OPP Detective Inspector Brian McDermott said.
“It is still too early to make any firm determinations on that aspect.” According to a source close to the victims who spoke on condition of anonymity, the family wants to make clear that they were not involved in anything that might have led to the November 20 shooting in the home they were renting.
Describing them as "innocent" and ordinary people, the source said the victims did not have any ties to criminal activity and had no connection to an illegal trucking operation at the same address, which had recently been shut down by the Town of Caledon.
The source said the man and his wife were visiting family from India when they were shot.
The source said the family believes the attackers who stormed into the home that night were looking for someone else. “They mistakenly shot this family thinking it was (that person's) family,” they said.
Investigators have not said whether the shooting was linked to the business.
The source said the family was not connected to the business and was simply renting the upper part of the house. The basement unit was also being rented out.
“This was a normal family,” a representative of Gurudwara Jot Parkash Sahib, a Sikh place of worship in Brampton, said days after the shooting.
“Everyone is shocked," the Gurudwara representative added.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
Liz Magill, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, has resigned in the wake of backlash and pressure from donors following her testimony at a congressional hearing on antisemitism. Magill faced criticism for her inability to explicitly state, under repeated questioning, that calls for the genocide of Jews on campus would violate the school's conduct policy. The university announced Magill's departure on Saturday, mentioning that she would continue as a tenured faculty member at the Carey Law School. She has agreed to serve as Penn's leader until the appointment of an interim president.Russia on Sunday called for an international monitoring mission to go to Gaza to assess the humanitarian situation, and said it was unacceptable for Israel to use Hamas' Oct. 7 attack as justification for punishing the Palestinian people.
Israel invaded Gaza in retaliation for Hamas attack that Israel says killed 1,200 people. Israel's assault on Gaza has killed at least 17,000 people, Gaza health authorities say.
The United States on Friday vetoed a proposed U.N. Security Council demand for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the war between Israel and Palestinian group Hamas.
"We strongly condemned the terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Al Jazeera in an interview aired on Sunday at the Doha Forum conference.
"At the same time, we do not believe it is acceptable to use this event for the collective punishment of the millions of Palestinian people with indiscriminate shelling."
Mr Lavrov said that for there to be "humanitarian pauses" in Gaza "some kind of monitoring on the ground" was needed.
"We addressed the [UN] Secretary General [Antonio Guterres] suggesting that he use his authority to consider some kind of monitoring - but so far to no avail," Mr Lavrov said.
President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly accused the United States and the West of ignoring the need for an independent Palestinian state within 1967 borders. Putin on Sunday spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about Gaza.
"This happened not in a vacuum," Mr Lavrov said, pointing to decades of blockade and unfulfilled promises about a Palestinian state.
The UN's Guterres has previously said that the Hamas attack did not happen in a vacuum. Israel said Guterres had justified the Hamas attacks with such words. Guterres rejected the Israeli accusations.
UKRAINE
Asked in the Al Jazeera interview if Russia was being hypocritical with its criticism about that fate of the Palestinians while Russia fights a war in Ukraine, Mr Lavrov said neither he nor Russia were hypocritical.
Mr Lavrov said that the West was trying to exhaust Russia in Ukraine by supplying weapons and that if peace talks were to take place then Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy would have to annul his own presidential decree.
"It is up to the Ukrainians to recognise how deep they are in the hole where the Americans put them," Mr Lavrov said when asked if the war was at a stalemate.
When asked by Al Jazeera what the chances were of diplomacy to bring about a ceasefire or peace in Ukraine, he said: "You'll have to call Mr Zelenskiy because a year and half ago he signed a decree prohibiting any negotiations with Putin."
Mr Lavrov said that a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia was almost reached in Istanbul in March and April 2022 based on the idea of Ukrainian neutrality.
"This deal was aborted - it was cancelled because the Americans and the Brits decided that if Putin is ready to sign it then lets exhaust him more. That's what they are doing now. Stalemate or no stalemate - that is the fact," Mr Lavrov said.
Asked in the interview about the August plane crash which killed Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, Mr Lavrov said investigators had probed the crash.
"As regards the soldiers from Wagner group... quite a number of them went to Belarus and started to serve there," Mr Lavrov said "Others joined the regular structures of the Russian army - and they continue to serve."
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
Six teenagers were convicted by a French juvenile court on Friday (December 8) for their roles in the beheading of a teacher by an Islamic extremist that rocked the country. Teacher Samuel Paty was killed outside his school in 2020 after showing the cartoons of the prophet of Islam in his class during a debate on free expression. The attacker who had radicalised was killed by the police. The court observed that five of the defendants, who were 14 and 15 during the time of the attack, were guilty of staking out the teacher and identifying him for the attacker.Italian environmentalists used a dye to turn Venice's Grand Canal green on Saturday in protest at what they said was a lack of progress at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai.
People ride in a boat as waters of Grand Canal turned green after a protest by 'Extinction Rebellion' climate activists in Venice, Italy.
The protesters from the Extinction Rebellion group, dangling from the Rialto Bridge over the canal with the aid of climbing ropes, also displayed a banner that read: "COP28: While the government talks, we are hanging by a thread."
The protesters from the Extinction Rebellion group displaying banner, that read "COP28: While the government talks, we are hanging by a thread."
Small stretches of rivers and canals in Italian cities, from the Po in Turin in the north to Rome's Tiber in the south, were also turned green in similar protests.
"In a few hours, these waters will be back to what they were before," Extinction Rebellion said.
Italian environmentalists used a dye to turn Venice's Grand Canal green.
"In the meantime, while governments talk, we count the damage and the victims from constant floods and fires," it added in a statement.
The group said that the visual effect was created by a fluorescein dye that was harmless and used in industry to trace items in water.
However, Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro denounced what he called "eco-vandals" and called on the Italian authorities to punish them.
Boat traffic on the Grand Canal was halted on Saturday during the protest, and the canal water and the recently restored columns on the Rialto Bridge had to be checked on safety grounds, the mayor said.
"Venice is a fragile city, one that is to be loved and respected! Enough is enough," he added.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
The United States widened a trade blacklist Friday taking aim at forced labor concerns involving Uyghurs and other minorities in China.
Three Chinese companies -- COFCO Sugar Holding, Sichuan Jingweida Technology Group and Anhui Xinya New Materials -- were the latest additions to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act entity list, the government said.
From December 11, goods produced by the three firms will be barred from entering the United States, bringing the number of designated companies to 30.
This comes "as a result of the companies' participation in business practices that target members of persecuted groups, including Uyghur minorities in the PRC," said the Department of Homeland Security, referring to the People's Republic of China.
COFCO Sugar Holding refines and produces sugar, Jingweida Technology makes devices like network transformers and radio frequency filters, while Xinya New Materials manufactures textile materials.
The US government and lawmakers in a number of other Western countries have labeled China's treatment of the Uyghur minority in the northwestern Xinjiang region as "genocide," although Beijing vehemently denies this.
According to rights groups, at least one million people, mostly members of Muslim minorities, have been incarcerated in the region and face widespread abuses, including forced sterilization of women and coerced labour.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act bans the import of all goods from the Xinjiang region unless companies offer verifiable proof that production did not involve forced labor.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
A 14-year-old girl attacked her classmates with a firearm in a school on Thursday, killing one and injuring five others before turning the gun on herself, according to state news agencies and classmates. Russia's Investigative Committee said that the incident occurred in Bryansk which borders the war-torn Ukraine.Displaced Gazans sheltering in a school courtyard in Rafah were resorting to desperate measures such as diluting baby milk powder in too much water or giving children one meal a day because there was not enough food to go around.
At the southern tip of Gaza, on the border with Egypt, the Rafah area was the only one in the whole of the Palestinian enclave to have received limited aid deliveries over the past four days, the U.N. humanitarian office said on Thursday.
But there was still not enough food for everyone and parents said their children were getting sick and losing weight.
Sitting on a mat in front of his family's tent in a makeshift displacement camp, Zakaria Rehan held his baby boy, Yazan, and a feeding bottle with a small amount of liquid.
"This is basically water with a spoonful of powder, even less than a spoonful, anything so it just smells like milk, just so I can trick him into thinking it is milk so he can drink it," said Rehan. "But it isn't healthy, it doesn't give him any nutrition."
Rehan said all the families in the camp were facing a daily struggle to find food and a means to cook it. He said he had eaten raw beans from a can that came in an aid delivery because there was no fuel for a fire.
"Yes, there is aid that comes in, but it isn't enough at all. It isn't enough for all the families. You get a can of beans, or a can of meat, for 10 people. Even if one person was to eat this alone, it wouldn't satiate him."
Food shortages have been a problem throughout the two-month-old war between Israel and Hamas, but have worsened since the end of a week-long truce on Dec. 1 as the number of aid trucks entering from Egypt has fallen and distribution has been hindered by intense combat, including in southern Gaza.
ONLY MEAL OF THE DAY
In the mouth of another tent at the Rafah school camp, three children were eating rice out of a single pan. Their mother, Yosra al-Deeb, said they would have nothing else for the rest of the day.
"The children sleep hungry and wake up hungry. I made them a meal, and that's the only meal they eat in a day, the rest of the day they don't eat," she said, her anger and exhaustion showing in her face.
"At home, I used to feed them a nutritious meal, they never got sick. But here, they're always sick, every day they have stomach flu," she said.
In another part of the camp, Naji Shallah had chopped some tomatoes and a green pepper and was preparing to cook them in a small pan. He too said this would be his children's only meal of the day.
"If I could find bread for my children, it would be like having a pound of gold," he said, adding they were dehydrated from lack of food and water and that one of his sons had lost a lot of weight.
"And if I secure bread, I can only give my child half a loaf, because if he were to eat the whole loaf, he won't eat the next day."
The war began on Oct. 7 when Hamas militants rampaged through southern Israel, killing 1,200 people including babies and children and kidnapping 240 hostages of all ages, according to Israeli figures.
Vowing to destroy Hamas and free the hostages, Israel launched a military assault on Gaza that has killed more than 17,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
U.N. humanitarian chief Volker Turk has described living conditions in the bombarded strip as "apocalyptic".
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
US State Secretary Antony Blinken on Wednesday held a telephonic conversation with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and reiterated the need for all parties to work together to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from spreading.
According to US State Department, the secretary discussed "his recent travel in the Middle East and US diplomatic efforts in the region. The Secretary reiterated the imperative of all parties working to prevent the conflict from spreading."
Underscoring the Houthi attacks on commercial vessels, Secretary Antony Blinken further underscored that the recent Houthi attacks against commercial vessels in the Red Sea pose an "unacceptable threat to maritime security and international law that all nations have an obligation to uphold."
Meanwhile, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed the need to cease fire and end the war soon.
"The top priority is to cease fire and end the war as soon as possible," he said.
"Major countries must adhere to fairness and justice, uphold objectivity and impartiality, demonstrate calm and rationality, and make every effort to cool down the situation and prevent larger-scale humanitarian disasters," Wang said, according to the foreign ministry.
He further reiterated Beijing's calls for a two-state solution to the conflict and said, "any arrangement involving the future of Palestine must reflect the will of the Palestinian people."
"China is willing to work with all parties to make efforts to this end," he added.
Moreover, the US and China emphasised the importance of building upon the progress made on key issues at the summit held in November in Woodside, California, between US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
According to the latest update, the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, in a letter to the war cabinet, emphasised that the lives of some of those held in Gaza are in immediate danger, as reported by The Times of Israel.
"We received solid intelligence that there are abductees whose condition has deteriorated and there is now immediate danger to their lives," the letter said, adding, "We demand that you act urgently, with initiative and creativity, to reach a deal for the immediate release of all the hostages."
The letter, which included expert testimony from Prof Hagai Levine, head of the medical team at the forum, said that at least a third of those held in Gaza have preexisting conditions that require regular medical treatment.
It further said that, without care, some of them may be in life-threatening danger, or have irreversible damage.
Adding to this, many of the hostages were injured and suffered gunshot wounds, lost limbs and shrapnel wounds, which, if left untreated, could lead to risk of life, complications, disabilities and suffering.
Moreover, these hostages were also being tortured, physically and mentally, and deprived of adequate food, according to The Times of Israel.
A meeting was held on Tuesday between a group of recently released hostages and family members of those still held in Gaza, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the other members of the war cabinet.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
US Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer, who is currently on a crucial visit to India, held a series of bilateral meetings with his Indian counterpart and External Affairs Ministers on Monday. According to the statement released by the White House, the officials discussed the "foiled" assassination attempt of Khalistani terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on American soil. Although the statement claimed that Finer acknowledged India’s establishment of a Committee of Enquiry to investigate lethal plotting in the United States and the importance of holding accountable anyone found responsible, it did not elaborate further.Music streaming giant Spotify announced on Monday that it would reduce the number of its employees by around 17 per cent in a bid to cut costs amid "dramatically" slower economic growth. Around 1,500 people will leave the company, the company stated. Amid this, an engineer who was laid off by the company shared his heartbreaking story on X, formerly Twitter. Freddie Carthy had joined the music streaming giant after Elon Musk took over Twitter and conducted mass layoffs. Now, he finds himself unemployed again just before the holiday season.
"Shocked to find out I've been impacted by the Spotify layoffs.. Don't even know what to feel right now. 1 year ago, Twitter shit the bed and I quit, right before the holidays. 1 year later, I find myself unemployed before the holidays yet again...," he wrote on the microblogging platform.
Shocked to find out I've been impacted by the Spotify layoffs.. Don't even know what to feel right now.
— Freddie Carthy ?? (@FreddieCarthy) December 4, 2023
1 year ago, Twitter shit the bed and I quit, right before the holidays.
1 year later, I find myself unemployed before the holidays yet again...
Since being shared, his post has amassed a lot of reaction from social media users.
"Man I'm sorry. This is heavy, especially right before the holidays. I hope you'll find something soon," said a user.
"Same. 7 months pregnant and laid off before the holidays, without my guaranteed maternity leave. Devastated," commented a person.
Another added, "Freddie I am SO sorry. You're such an amazing human and engineer. Going to do my best to help however I can!"
"Hopefully something comes your way, and hopefully that something is you taking your skills and creating something you have ownership in, instead of the corporate whims. Best of luck to you," said a fourth person.
"You will find a better job. The market is much better than a year ago," commented a user.
Meanwhile, the company was the latest in a series of layoffs announced in the tech industry cutting tens of thousands of jobs following a boom during Covid pandemic lockdowns. "I realise that for many, a reduction of this size will feel surprisingly large given the recent positive earnings report and our performance," Spotify CEO Daniel Ek wrote in a letter to employees, which was seen by AFP. He said that in 2020 and 2021, the Swedish company "took advantage of the opportunity presented by lower-cost capital and invested significantly in team expansion, content enhancement, marketing and new verticals."
"However, we now find ourselves in a very different environment," noting that "economic growth has slowed dramatically and capital has become more expensive." "Despite our efforts to reduce costs this past year, our cost structure for where we need to be is still too big," he added
Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia this week, Russian news outlet Shot reported on Monday, citing Putin's aide Yury Ushakov.
The reported visit comes after the OPEC+ group of oil producers, which includes all three countries, agreed last Thursday to voluntary output cuts totalling about 2.2 million barrels a day.
Markets reacted with scepticism to the deal because of doubts about whether the voluntary cuts would be fully implemented. Oil prices fell 2% last week after the announcement, and declined further on Monday. Brent crude was down nearly 0.6% at $78.45 as of 1709 GMT.
The figure of 2.2 million bpd included an extension of existing Saudi and Russian voluntary cuts of 1.3 million bpd.
Shot quoted Ushakov as saying Putin would go first to UAE and then to Saudi Arabia, where negotiations would take place mainly with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
"I hope that these will be very useful negotiations, which we consider extremely important," Ushakov said.
Putin has rarely travelled abroad in recent years, and mostly to states of the former Soviet Union. His last trip beyond those countries was to China in October.
Apart from cooperation in OPEC+, Putin is keen to cultivate the Gulf states as part of his drive to build global alliances with non-Western countries in order to demonstrate what he says is the failure of the United States and its allies to isolate Russia with sanctions over the war in Ukraine.
Putin's scope to travel abroad was limited in March when the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against him for the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia, a war crime. Russia denied the charge and called the move outrageous, but said it was legally void in any case because Russia is not a member of the ICC.
Neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE is a member of the court either, so Putin can travel to both countries without fear of being arrested under the ICC warrant.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
At least 11 people were killed after unidentified gunmen staged an attack with guns and explosives in eastern Iraq's Diyala province, said officials on Friday. No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
In an unusual circumstance, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was left waiting on his plane for nearly 30 minutes in Doha after he arrived on an official visit on Wednesday. Steinmeier had arrived with the German envoy to Qatar Lothar Freischlader and a military guard of honour was readied for him, but he soon found that there were no Qatari officials to welcome him.A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck the southern Philippines on Saturday, the US Geological Survey said, as local authorities warned of a "destructive tsunami" and urged people in coastal areas to flee.
The quake struck at a depth of 32 kilometres (20 miles) at 10:37 pm local time (1437 GMT) about 21 kilometres northeast of Hinatuan municipality in Surigao del Sur province on Mindanao island, the USGS said.
"Destructive tsunami is expected with life threatening wave heights," the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said on X, formerly Twitter.
It said waves of more than one metre above the normal tides were expected to hit the coast and advised people in Surigao del Sur and Davao Oriental provinces to "immediately evacuate" to higher ground or further inland.
Owners of boats were told to secure their vessels and move away from the shore.
Powerful aftershocks of up to magnitude 6.4 continued to shake the region into early Sunday after the first quake hit, USGS said.
There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage but Hinatuan police Sergeant Joseph Lambo said the quake was "very strong".
"Appliances fell off the shelves at the police office and two TV sets were broken. The motorcycles parked outside also tumbled down," Lambo told AFP.
"Right now we don't have reports of damage or casualties but people are evacuating because of the tsunami alert."
Lambo said the 45,000 residents in the municipality had been ordered to leave their homes and many were going on foot or in vehicles to higher ground.
Dyl Constantino, 25, was on Siargao Island, northeast of Mindanao, when the quake struck.
"It was the longest and strongest earthquake I've ever experienced, probably lasted for about four minutes," Constantino told AFP.
"We're used to earthquakes here but this one was different because the doors were really shaking and so we were all panicking."
Anna Quinones, a disaster official in Davao City, said they were monitoring the coast for the tsunami.
"It is high tide still and we are not noticing anything unusual," she said.
Bethanie Valledor, 24, was asleep at a resort in Bislig city, about 20 kilometres southwest of Hinatuan, when the quake jolted her awake.
"I felt like the room we're staying in would be destroyed," Valledor told AFP.
"Our place is very near the sea. The resort owner asked us to evacuate immediately. Honestly, I was screaming. I panicked.
The quake comes nearly two weeks after a 6.7 magnitude quake shook Mindanao, killing at least nine people, shaking buildings and causing part of the ceiling of a shopping mall to collapse.
Quakes are a daily occurrence in the Philippines, which sits along the Pacific "Ring of Fire", an arc of intense seismic as well as volcanic activity that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
Most are too weak to be felt by humans but strong and destructive quakes come at random with no technology available to predict when and where they will happen.
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Warning of a potential catastrophe in the Himalayas where the glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, UN chief Antonio Guterres on Saturday said the ongoing annual climate talks in Dubai must respond to the needs of the developing nations, especially the vulnerable mountain countries that need urgent help.
Almost 240 million people depend on the glaciers and 10 major rivers, such as Indus, Ganga, and Brahmaputra, originating in the Himalayas. Another billion people living downstream of these rivers across eight countries, including India, are also dependent on the glacier-fed rivers.
Addressing a meeting with mountain countries at this year's Conference of Parties (COP28), UN Secretary-General Guterres emphasised that nearly a third of Nepal's ice had vanished in just over 30 years, and it was directly linked to greenhouse gas pollution that heats the planet.
Mr Guterres, who visited Nepal, including the Everest region, in October last week, called for developed countries to clarify the delivery of USD 100 billion and produce a plan to double adaptation finance to USD 40 billion a year by 2025.
"But those sums are dwarfed by the scale of what's needed," he said and advocated for reform in International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) to better cater to the needs of developing countries like Nepal.
"So, we need the outcome of this COP to call for reform of the IFIs so that they reflect today's world and are far more responsive to the needs of developing countries and for reform of the business models of the MDBs so that they can leverage far more private finance at reasonable cost to the developing countries," he told the gathering.
He said unless there is a change in course, "a catastrophe can be unleashed." "The glaciers could disappear altogether. That means massively reduced flows for major Himalayan rivers such as the Indus, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra. Deltas decimated by saltwater," Guterres said.
The Secretary-General highlighted the alarming pace at which the glaciers were disappearing, causing devastating impacts on local communities. "The mountains are crying out for help, and COP28 must respond." Guterres attended the high-level roundtable with Nepal Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda', and other heads of state and delegations.
The roundtable followed the recognition given to the mountains in the COP28 President's Opening Plenary, which mandated the issue be taken up under the Nairobi work programme.
Addressing the G77 plus China session, which also includes India, the UN chief urged the bloc to make this year's conference a game changer with maximum ambition to reduce emissions and on climate justice to benefit developing countries and their populations.
"This COP can win with a double objective: maximum ambition on mitigation and maximum ambition in relation to climate justice, namely taking into full account the interests of developing countries. What we must avoid at all costs is a compromise based on minimum ambition on mitigation and minimum ambition on climate justice," he said.
"Because developing countries would be losing twice, would be losing because there is no climate justice and be losing because without effective mitigation the dramatic impacts of climate change will be [suffered] essentially by vulnerable populations in the global South," he added.
The roundtable followed the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development's (ICIMOD) submission to Friday evening's high-level event on the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage convened by the UNFCCC Adaptation Division.
Izabella Koziell, ICIMOD Deputy Director General, stated the urgent imperative to prioritise the Hindu Kush Himalaya for Loss and Damage compensation.
Koziell called for rapid scaling up of funding to understand rapid and slow onset events to help the vast population sizes exposed to these events (240 million in the mountains and a billion downstream) adapt, and to compensate communities for losses and damages.
A 2017 study by ICIMOD has established that even when the world manages to maintain the global temperature rise average at 1.5 degrees Celsius, there will be a rise of 2 degrees Celsius or more in the Himalayan region by the end of the century.
Nearly 1,00,000 delegates from 198 countries are participating in the global conference, which commenced on Thursday and will run through December 12.
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday welcomed India's decision to set up a high-level committee to probe the involvement of an Indian national involved in the failed assassination plot of designated Khalistani terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. Blinken, who is currently in Israel, declined to provide details on the matter as it was an ongoing legal matter.