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CHINA is set to host the world’s first man vs robot half-marathon between two-legged robots and 12,000 human runners.

Dozens of bi-pedal bots from 20 different tech firms are expected behind the start line in Beijing in April for a technological test like no other.

The engineering exhibition comes as China ramps up its efforts to prove itself as front-runner in the artificial intelligence (AI) race with the US.

Alongside the mechanical contenders will be 12,000 people to allow a comparison between the tech and its human models.

Prizes will be awarded for first, second and third place as usual – but this time the medals could be hung around cold metal necks.

The competitors will run a a 21 kilometre (13 mile) route through the city.

The robots entered into the race are from different manufacturers in E-town – the state-level industrial area in Daxing district, with multiple industrial parks that support hi-tech industries.

And there are tight restrictions on the kind of bot that can enter.

The machines must be humanoid, meaning they bear a strong resemblance to human beings.

They must be able to perform bi-pedal (two-footed) walking or running, ruling out anything that uses wheels.

The bots must also be between 0.5 and 2 metres tall, and the maximum extension distance from their hip joint to the sole of the foot must be at least 0.45 metres.

Both remote-controlled and fully automatic humanoids are eligible to race and batteries can be replaced mid-dash.

One of the most anticipated participants is “Tiangong,” a humanoid robot developed by China’s Embodied Artificial Intelligence Robotics Innovation Centre.

Tiangong can run at an average speed of 10 km/h, and last year it made headlines by running alongside human competitors at the Yizhuang Half Marathon in Beijing.

However, the upcoming race will mark the first time that humanoid robots will compete in the entire marathon from start to finish.

Another of the robots said to be “training” for the race is called Tien Kung.

This two-legged grey bot can maintain a steady speed of 6 km/h – so is likely to be outpaced by Tiangong on the day.

The event comes amid the push for humanoid development across China, with cities mapping out plans for key breakthroughs in robotic intelligence and body movement.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/tech/13338721/worlds-first-humans-v-robots-marathon-china/

Billionaire wealth surged in 2024, as the world’s richest people increasingly benefited from inheritance and powerful connections, according to Oxfam’s latest annual inequality report.

The combined wealth of the world’s most wealthy rose from $13 trillion to $15 trillion in just 12 months, the global charity said Sunday. It marks the second largest annual increase in billionaire wealth since Oxfam records started.

Meanwhile, the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990, the charity said, citing World Bank Data. The richest 1% of people own nearly 45% of all wealth, while 44% of humanity are living below the World Bank poverty line of $6.85 per day, the data showed.

As the wealth of the world’s richest people accelerates at a faster pace than previously predicted, Oxfam now expects to see at least five trillionaires within a decade.

“The capture of our global economy by a privileged few has reached heights once considered unimaginable,” said Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar.

“The failure to stop billionaires is now spawning soon-to-be trillionaires. Not only has the rate of billionaire wealth accumulation accelerated—by three times—but so too has their power,” he said.

The report highlights an increase in “unmerited wealth,” showing that 60% of billionaire wealth now comes from inheritance, monopoly or the power of “crony connections.”

Oxfam’s “Takers Not Makers” report comes as billionaire Donald Trump returns to the White House and 3,000 leaders from more than 130 countries prepare to take part in the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla
and close ally of Trump, is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire by 2027, according to a report from Informa Connect Academy. He’s currently worth about around $440 billion, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index indicates.

Outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden this week warned of the rise of an “oligarchy taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence.”

“People should be able to make as much as they can, but pay — play by the same rules, pay their fair share in taxes,” Biden said in his farewell address.

Oxfam is urging on governments to commit to ensuring that the incomes of the top 10% are no higher than the bottom 40% worldwide. Global economic rules should be adjusted to allow for the break-up of monopolies, and more corporate regulation and global tax policies should be adapted to ensure that the rich pay their fair share, according to the charity.

Money that is flowing to the bank accounts of the super rich instead of much-needed investment in teachers and medicines is “not just bad for the economy — it’s bad for humanity,” said Oxfam’s Behar.

Source : https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/20/oxfam-inequality-report-billionaire-wealth-surges-by-2-trillion.html

American users opening TikTok on Sunday were greeted by a message saying they “can’t use” the Chinese-owned app “for now” after a law banning it came into effect.

From Saturday: TikTok to be banned in the USTikTok has begun restoring service to the app in the US after Donald Trump said he would sign an executive order pausing its ban.

A law signed by President Joe Biden last April required ByteDance, TikTok’s China-based parent company, to sell the app to a non-Chinese owner by Sunday or face a ban.

Some users reported that they lost access on Saturday night, and Americans opening the app on Sunday have been greeted with a message saying they “can’t use” TikTok “for now”.

But in a post on Truth Social ahead of his inauguration, Mr Trump said he would issue an executive order handing the app an extension to find a new owner.

“I’m asking companies not to let TikTok stay dark,” the president-elect wrote, adding the order will allow time “so that we can make a deal to protect our national security”.

He then confirmed that “there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order” and said: “Americans deserve to see our exciting Inauguration on Monday, as well as other events and conversations.”

TikTok later said it had started restoring service on Sunday, thanking the president for clarifying to service providers “that they will face no penalties providing TikTok”.

It added: “It’s a strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship. We will work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States.”

Ahead of the ban coming into effect, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called TikTok’s plans to shut down the app a “stunt” and said actions enforcing the ban would “fall to the next administration”.

Mr Trump also indicated on Truth Social what a possible deal could look like, saying he would prefer the US “to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture” with ByteDance or a new owner.

“Without US approval, there is no TikTok,” he said. “With our approval, it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars – maybe trillions.”

On Saturday, the president-elect told NBC News’ Meet The Press moderator Kristen Welker that TikTok would “most likely” be given a 90-day pause from the ban to find a new owner.

Under the bipartisan law on TikTok – signed by Mr Biden – the president can grant a one-time extension of 90 days under three conditions:

• There is a path to divestiture of the app

• There is “significant progress” toward executing a sale

• There are in place “the relevant binding legal agreements to enable execution of such qualified divestiture during the period of such extension”

No legal agreements on the sale of TikTok to a non-Chinese owner have been made public, and Mr Trump did not say on Saturday if he was aware of any recent progress toward a sale.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/tiktok-starts-restoring-service-as-trump-confirms-he-will-pause-us-ban-13292530

HAMAS terrorists have come out of hiding to celebrate the new ceasefire agreed with Israel.

Shock pictures show the shameless, gun-wielding fighters waving the green banner of the terror group and the crest of its armed militia.

Pictures show men in balaclavas and camo fatigues waving their guns as they travelled through various towns in the Gaza Strip.

It comes after a 15-month war which saw Israel attempting to destroy the terrorist group as they cowardly hunkered down.

And it has been warned the group has managed to retain much of its strength.

Slain terror boss Yahya Sinwar’s brother Mohammed is understood to be rebuilding the shattered remains of Hamas.

The long-anticipated ceasefire came into effect this morning just after 11.15am local time.

It came after last-minute wobbles as Hamas failed to hand over the list of hostages due to be released.

But after a brief delay of nearly two hours, it was cleared and the ceasefire was implemented.

Hamas has claimed British citizen Emily Damari, 28, will be one of the first released this afternoon.

Romi Gonen, 23, and Doron Steinbrecher, 30, are also to be released following a tense few hours.

Emily’s family’s lawyer Adam Rose told The Sun that whether the Brit is “alive or dead” is unknown “even on the day of her release”.

He said that this has “compounded the torture the family have been going through” since she was brutally taken on October 7.

Mr Rose told The Sun: “Every minute is just another layer of torture.

“Emily’s name appeared on the list of three hostages to be released at 8:10am but we just don’t know if she is alive or dead.

The initial group of freed hostages will be met by medical teams and psychological support staff at three designated points along Gaza’s border before being reunited with their families.

Four more hostages will be returned on the seventh day then every week for a period of four weeks.

Finally, 14 hostages will be returned in the sixth week from the group of 33 made up of 12 women and children, 10 men over the age of 50 and 11 younger men.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/13329898/hamas-terrorists-parade-gaza-hostage-ceasefire/

It’s 1000 CE – the heart of the Middle Ages.

Europe is in flux. The powerful nations we know today – like Norman-ruled England and the fragmented territories that will go on to become France – do not yet exist. Towering Gothic cathedrals have yet to rise. Aside from the distant and prosperous city of Constantinople, few great urban centres dominate the landscape.

Yet that year, on the other side of the globe, an emperor from southern India was preparing to build the world’s most colossal temple.

Completed just 10 years later, it was 216ft (66m) tall, assembled from 130,000 tonnes of granite: second only to Egypt’s pyramids in height. At its heart was a 12ft tall emblem of the Hindu god Shiva, sheathed in gold encrusted with rubies and pearls.

In its lamplit hall were 60 bronze sculptures, adorned with thousands of pearls gathered from the conquered island of Lanka. In its treasuries were several tonnes of gold and silver coins, as well as necklaces, jewels, trumpets and drums torn from defeated kings across India’s southern peninsula, making the emperor the richest man of the era.

He was called Raja-Raja, King of Kings, and he belonged to one of the most astonishing dynasties of the medieval world: the Cholas.

His family transformed how the medieval world worked – yet they are largely unknown outside India.

Prior to the 11th Century, the Cholas had been one of the many squabbling powers that dotted the Kaveri floodplain, the great body of silt that flows through India’s present-day state of Tamil Nadu.

But what set the Cholas apart was their endless capacity for innovation. By the standards of the medieval world, Chola queens were also remarkably prominent, serving as the dynasty’s public face.

Travelling to Tamil villages and rebuilding small, old mud-brick shrines in gleaming stone, the Chola dowager Sembiyan Mahadevi – Rajaraja’s great-aunt – effectively “rebranded” the family as the foremost devotees of Shiva, winning them a popular following.

Sembiyan prayed to Nataraja, a hitherto little-known form of Hindu god Shiva as the King of Dance, and all her temples featured him prominently.

The trend caught on. Today, Nataraja is one of the most recognisable symbols of Hinduism. But to the medieval Indian mind, Nataraja was really a symbol of the Cholas.

The emperor, Rajaraja Chola, shared his great-aunt’s taste for public relations and devotion – with one significant difference.

Rajaraja was also a conqueror. In the 990s, he led his armies over the Western Ghats, the range of hills that shelter India’s west coast, and burned the ships of his enemies while they were at port.

Next, exploiting internal turmoil on the island of Lanka, he established a Chola outpost there, becoming the first mainland Indian king to set up a lasting presence on the island. At last, he broke into the rugged Deccan Plateau – the Germany to the Tamil coast’s Italy – and seized a portion of it for himself.

The loot of conquest was lavished on his great imperial temple, known today as the Brihadishvara.

In addition to its precious treasures, the great temple received 5,000 tonnes of rice annually, from conquered territory across southern India (you’d need a fleet of twelve Airbus A380s to carry that much rice today).

This allowed the Brihadishvara to function as a mega-ministry of public works and welfare, an instrument of the Chola state, intended to channel Rajaraja’s vast fortunes into new irrigation systems, expanding cultivation, and vast new herds of sheep and buffalo. Few states in the world could have conceived of economic control at such scale and depth.

The Cholas were as important to the Indian Ocean as the Mongols were to inner Eurasia.

Rajaraja Chola’s successor, Rajendra, built alliances with Tamil merchant corporations: a partnership between traders and government power that foreshadowed the East India Company – a powerful British trading corporation that later ruled large parts of India – that was to come more than 700 years later.

In 1026, Rajendra put his troops on merchants’ ships and sacked Kedah, a Malay city that dominated the global trade in precious woods and spices.

While some Indian nationalists have proclaimed this to be a Chola “conquest” or “colonisation” in Southeast Asia, archaeology suggests a stranger picture: the Cholas didn’t seem to have a navy of their own, but under them, a wave of Tamil diaspora merchants spread across the Bay of Bengal.

By the late 11th Century, these merchants ran independent ports in northern Sumatra. A century later, they were deep in present-day Myanmar and Thailand, and worked as tax collectors in Java.

In the 13th Century, in Mongol-ruled China under the descendants of Kublai Khan, Tamil merchants ran successful businesses in the port of Quanzhou, and even erected a temple to Shiva on the coast of the East China Sea. It was no coincidence that, under the British Raj in the 19th Century, Tamils made up the largest chunk of Indian administrators and workers in Southeast Asia.

Conquests and global connections made Chola-ruled south India a cultural and economic behemoth, the nexus of planetary trade networks.

Chola aristocrats invested war-loot into a wave of new temples, which sourced fine goods from a truly global economy linking the farthest shores of Europe and Asia. Copper and tin for their bronzes came from Egypt, perhaps even Spain. Camphor and sandalwood for the gods were sourced from Sumatra and Borneo.

Tamil temples grew into vast complexes and public spaces, surrounded by markets and endowed with rice estates. In the Chola capital region on the Kaveri, corresponding to the present-day city of Kumbakonam, a constellation of a dozen temple-towns supported populations of tens of thousands, possibly outclassing most cities in Europe at the time.

These Chola cities were astonishingly multicultural and multireligious: Chinese Buddhists rubbed shoulders with Tunisian Jews, Bengali tantric masters traded with Lankan Muslims.

Today, the state of Tamil Nadu is one of India’s most urbanised. Many of the state’s towns grew around Chola-period shrines and markets.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm27zn0vl33o

Former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan has been sentenced to 14 years in prison over a corruption case, in the latest of a series of charges laid against him.

It is the longest valid jail sentence the cricket star-turned-politician, who has been detained since August 2023, has received.

He has faced charges in over 100 cases, ranging from leaking state secrets to selling state gifts – all of which he has decried as politically motivated.

The latest case has been described by Pakistani authorities as the largest the country has seen, though the country has seen huge financial scandals in the past, some of which involved former leaders.

Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi were accused of receiving a parcel of land as a bribe from a real estate tycoon through the Al-Qadir Trust, which the couple had set up while he was in office.

In exchange, investigators said, Khan used £190m ($232m) repatriated by the UK’s National Crime Agency to pay the tycoon’s court fines.

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party argued that the land was donated to the trust for a spiritual education centre and was not used for Khan’s personal gain.

In a post on X, PTI chairman Gohar Ali Khan said that the former prime minister “has done no wrong” and that this was a “politically motivated unfair trial”.

“But [Imran Khan] will not give in, he will not give up, he will not break,” he wrote.

Friday’s verdict comes after multiple delays as Khan’s party held talks with the government.

After his conviction on Friday, Khan told reporters in the courtroom that he would “neither make any deal nor seek any relief.”

Khan’s prison sentence of 14 years is the maximum that could be given in the case. He has also been fined more than £4,000.

His wife has been sentenced to seven years and fined more than £2,000. Bibi, who has been out on bail since last October, was taken into custody in court after her sentence was announced.

In 2023, Khan was sentenced to three years in prison for not declaring money earned from selling gifts he had received while in office.

Last year, Khan received a 14-year jail sentence over the selling of state gifts, and another 10 years for leaking state secrets. Both those sentences were suspended months later.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly77v0n8e9o

An investigation has been launched into Elon Musk’s explosive Starship test flight that forced dozens of planes to divert on Thursday.

The Space X rocket blew up in space over the Bahamas about eight minutes after take-off in Texas.

Blazing debris was sent miles across the sky over the Turks and Caicos, a British Overseas Territory.

Glowing orange shards from the explosion broke the sound barrier as they plummeted through the atmosphere, sending booms thundering across parts of the islands, according to seismic ground sensor data.

“Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity,” SpaceX owner Mr Musk posted on X after the launch.

The company said in a statement that a fire developed when the second stage of the rocket separated from its booster.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has said it will oversee an investigation by SpaceX into the dramatic rocket launch.

“There are no reports of public injury, and the FAA is working with SpaceX and appropriate authorities to confirm reports of public property damage on Turks and Caicos,” said the FAA.

Tracking app FlightRadar24 said its most-watched flights on Thursday evening after the “rapid unscheduled disassembly”, as SpaceX called it, were those holding or diverting over the Caribbean, trying to avoid the falling debris.

It appeared to show several planes flying circular holding patterns, including a Spirit jet heading to Puerto Rico and an Air Transat flight bound for the Dominican Republic.

A Boeing 767 transporting Amazon cargo diverted to Nassau in the Bahamas, while a JetBlue flight turned back to where it began in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

The FAA often closes airspace for space missions and can create a “debris response area” to protect aircraft if a rocket has a problem outside the original closed zone.

Video on social media showed the debris from the 400ft Starship rocket streaking across the sky, with another clip showing it from the cockpit of a small plane.

Despite the rocket blowing up, Mr Musk appeared to see the bright side, posting on X: “Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!”

SpaceX launched the rocket from Boca Chica, south Texas, on Thursday around 4.40pm local time (10.40pm in the UK).

The flight was the seventh test for the newly-upgraded Starship, which was due to make a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean about an hour after launch.

But the company said it lost contact about eight and half minutes into the flight, with the last data indicating an altitude of 90 miles and a velocity of 13,245mph.

There was some success though – the booster section returned to a launchpad and was caught between two giant mechanical arms, which SpaceX describes as chopsticks.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/investigation-into-explosive-starship-test-flight-that-forced-dozens-of-planes-to-divert-13290605

The World Health Organization launched its annual appeal for funding to respond to health emergencies on Thursday, days before the inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States – the agency’s biggest donor – puts a question mark over its long-term finances.
The WHO is seeking $1.5 billion,  to help more than 300 million people living in 42 emergency zones, from Gaza to Afghanistan.
“Without adequate and sustainable funding we face the impossible task of deciding who will receive care and who will not,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, deploring a growing gap between needs and available funding.

The United States has historically been a major contributor to both the WHO’s emergency appeal and its wider budget, fixed at $6.8 billion for 2024-2025. For the current two-year period, the United States provided about 34% of the funding available for health emergencies, and in the past its contribution has been as high as 50%, WHO data showed. It also contributes about a fifth of the WHO’s overall funding.

But that financing could be at risk when Trump takes office for his second term next week. In his first stint in the White House, he moved to cut funding to the WHO and announced the U.S. withdrawal from the agency after criticising it for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and closeness to China.
Sources close to the transition team have indicated that he could take similar steps again in his second term.

Asked by Reuters at the end of last month if the U.S. would leave the WHO, a source familiar with the talks in the transition team said: “The same WHO that we left in the first administration? It seems like we wouldn’t much care what they have to say.”
Documents released online by the WHO this week ahead of its executive board meeting at the start of February warned of the risks of losing any of its major donors.

The agency is funded in part by mandatory fees from member states, alongside voluntary contributions and an investment round. Just five donors, again led by the United States, represent a huge chunk of its voluntary funding, the WHO document said – up to two-thirds of the budget for some programmes.
“Withdrawal of any of these major donors would leave an immediate, substantial funding gap that cannot be bridged easily,” the document reads.
A spokesperson for the WHO said the new U.S. administration had not yet taken office and needed time to do so, in response to questions about the future of the partnership.
“WHO values greatly its relationship with the US and is committed to maintaining and strengthening it,” she added. “WHO will do everything to cooperate with the incoming US administration.”
Public health experts in the U.S. and globally said the WHO was hoping for the best but should be preparing for the worst.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/who-seeks-15-billion-global-health-emergencies-2025-01-16/

At least 78 dead bodies have been pulled from an illegal gold mine in South Africa where police cut off food and water supplies for months, in what trade unions called a “horrific” crackdown on desperate people trying to eke out a living.
A total of 246 survivors, some of them emaciated and disorientated, have been brought to the surface and immediately arrested for illegal mining and immigration since a court-ordered rescue operation began on Monday.

Volunteers who went down to the mine, located 2 km (1.5 miles) underground near Stilfontein, southwest of Johannesburg, told police late on Wednesday they could not see anyone left in the tunnels, a police spokesperson told reporters at the site.
Rescuers would keep working on Thursday to make sure all bodies and survivors had been recovered, the spokesperson said. Earlier, there were fears dozens or even hundreds more men could still be trapped.

The South African Federation of Trade Unions accused the state on Tuesday of allowing miners “to starve to death in the depths of the earth”.
“These miners, many of them undocumented and desperate workers from Mozambique and other Southern African countries, were left to die in one of the most horrific displays of state wilful negligence in recent history,” it said in a statement.
Mametlwe Sebei, a trade union leader who has been trying to help the miners, said police had begun attempting to force the miners up to the surface in August by removing a pulley system used to deliver food and water supplies to them.

Sebei said some miners had died crawling through flooded tunnels in an attempt to reach shafts that would have allowed them to climb out.
Police said 1,576 miners had got out by their own means between August and the start of the rescue operation. All were arrested and 121 of them have already been deported, they said.
“We’ve never blocked any shafts. We’ve never blocked anyone from coming out,” said Athlenda Mathe, national spokesperson for the South African police, speaking at the site earlier on Wednesday.

‘TAKING A CHANCE’

Police in Germany have launched a criminal investigation after around 30,000 fake “deportation” airplane tickets were distributed in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe by a local branch of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

The flyers, which are designed to resemble classic airplane boarding passes, advertise a one-way flight from “Germany” to a “safe country of origin” for a passenger by the name of “illegal immigrant” on February 23 – the date of Germany’s snap federal election.

A spokesperson for the AfD in Karlsruhe confirmed the initiative was part of the party’s local election campaign and said the flyers were being distributed to all eligible voters.

But local politicians from Germany’s Left Party said they had been found in the mailboxes of Karlsruhe residents with migration backgrounds. Left Party officials said they would press charges for incitement to hatred.

Sahra Mirow, regional Left Party chair for the state of Baden-Württemberg, where Karlsruhe is located, said the AfD was “showing its true colors” with the flyer campaign. “They are dividing our society and spreading hate,” she added.

The mayor of Karlsruhe, Frank Mentrup of the Social Democrats (SPD), also said the AfD had crossed a red line, telling local public broadcaster SWR that finding “such notes in the mailbox reinforces a feeling of insecurity and fear.”

In Berlin on Wednesday, a federal government spokesperson called the campaign “tasteless” but said any investigations were the responsibility of the relevant authorities.

AfD ‘remigration’ tickets

The “tickets,” which are also downloadable from the AfD Karlsruhe’s official website, featured slogans such as “It’s nice at home, too” and “Only remigration can save Germany.”

“Remigration” is a far-right concept popular in European ethno-nationalist circles that refers to the forced or encouraged deportation of immigrants — and even the descendants of immigrants who may have been born in Europe but aren’t deemed by far-right groups to be “ethnically” European — to the home countries of their forebears.

The concept was a topic of discussion presented by Austrian identitarian Martin Sellner at a secret meeting of right-wing extremists in Potsdam, near Berlin, in November 2023, attended by members of the AfD. News of the meeting set off nationwide protests against the far right and saw some moderate losses in support for the AfD — losses which the party has already largely made up.

Net migration to Germany down

“The fact that the AfD apparently wants to expel people en masse under the term ‘remigration’ shows not only its contempt for humanity, but also how much it would damage Germany as a business location and cost jobs,” Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told the Rheinische Post newspaper on Wednesday.

She noted that almost 25 million people in Germany — around 30% of the population — have a migration background.

“[Immigrants] have been an integral part of our society for a long time and keep our country running in many areas — in hospitals and care homes, in businesses and industry. What these people do deserves more respect,” said Faeser, a member of the SPD.

Meanwhile, the latest report from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) said net migration to Germany fell by nearly 55% in 2023, while asylum applications in 2024 were down just over 30% compared to 2023.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/german-police-investigate-afd-mock-plane-ticket-campaign/a-71302261

Elon Musk is being sued for failing to disclose his purchase of more than 5% of Twitter stock in a timely fashion.

The world’s richest man bought the stock in March 2022 and the complaint by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said the delay allowed him to continue buying Twitter stock at artificially low prices.

In papers filed in Washington DC federal court, the SEC said the move allowed Mr Musk to underpay by at least $150m (£123m).

The commission wants Mr Musk to pay a civil fine and give up profits he was not entitled to.

In response to the lawsuit a lawyer for the multi-billionaire said: “Mr Musk has done nothing wrong and everyone sees this sham for what it is.”

An SEC rule requires investors to disclose within 10 calendar days when they cross a 5% ownership threshold.

The SEC said Mr Musk did not disclose his state until 4 April 2022, 11 days after the deadline – by which point he owned more than 9% of Twitter’s shares.

Twitter’s share price rose by more than 27% following Mr Musk’s disclosure, the SEC added.

Mr Musk later purchased Twitter for $44bn (£36bn) in October 2022 and renamed the social media site X.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/musk-sued-over-buying-twitter-shares-at-artificially-low-prices-by-us-finance-regulator-13289168

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has been arrested, six weeks after his short-lived attempt to impose martial law.

A motorcade of black SUVs was seen leaving the gates of his hillside residence where he had been holed up for weeks behind barbed wire and a small army of personal security.

Mr Yoon said the “rule of law has completely collapsed” in a video message recorded before he was escorted to the headquarters of an anti-corruption agency.

He said he was complying with the detention warrant to prevent clashes between police and the presidential security service.

However his compliance has not extended as far as actually cooperating with officers, according to the Corruption Investigation Office, which said he was refusing to talk.

It added that he would be held at the Seoul Detention Centre for now.

Mr Yoon’s lawyers had tried to persuade investigators not to execute the arrest warrant, saying the president would voluntarily appear for questioning, but the agency declined.

Police had been trying to access the president’s official office to detain him but had become engaged in a standoff with Mr Yoon’s security service.

Hours later hundreds of officers made it onto the grounds of the property by using ladders to climb over barriers.

Earlier police said they had deployed 3,200 officers to execute the arrest warrant.

One person who collapsed amid the standoff has been transported away from the scene by the fire department, local media said.

The Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials and police are jointly investigating whether Mr Yoon’s martial law declaration on 3 December amounted to an attempted rebellion.

Spain is planning to impose a tax of up to 100% on properties bought by non-residents from countries outside the EU, such as the UK.

Announcing the move, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said the “unprecedented” measure was necessary to meet the country’s housing emergency.

“The West faces a decisive challenge: To not become a society divided into two classes, the rich landlords and poor tenants,” he said.

Non-EU residents bought 27,000 properties in Spain in 2023, he told an economic forum in Madrid, “not to live in” but “to make money from them”.

“Which, in the context of shortage that we are in, [we] obviously cannot allow,” he added.

The move was therefore designed to “priorit[ise] that the available homes are for residents”, he said.

Sánchez did not provide details on how the tax would work nor a timeline for presenting it to parliament for approval, where he has often struggled to gather sufficient votes to pass legislation.

But his government said the proposal would be finalised “after careful study”.

It is one of a dozen planned measures announced by the prime minister on Monday aimed at improving housing affordability in the country.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr7enzjrymxo

At least 100 people who were trapped in a South African mine have died, a group representing them has said.

They were illegally mining in an abandoned gold mine and have been engaged in a lengthy standoff with authorities who had cut off their food, water and supplies in an attempt to “smoke them out”.

Sabelo Mnguni, a spokesman for the Mining Affected Communities United in Action Group (MACUA), said a mobile phone sent to the surface with some of the rescued miners on Friday had videos showing dozens of bodies underground wrapped in plastic.

Mr Mnguni said “a minimum” of 100 men had died in the mine in the northwest town of Stilfontein, suspected to have died of starvation or dehydration.

Since Friday, 18 bodies have been brought out but hundreds of people remain underground.

Police spokesman Brigadier Sabata Mokgwabone said they were still verifying information on how many bodies had been recovered and how many survivors have been brought out after starting a new rescue operation on Monday.

The two videos are reported to show dozens of dead bodies, many wrapped in plastic, while emaciated, shirtless miners pleaded for help.

Standoff with police for months

The mine has been the scene of a standoff between police and miners since authorities first attempted to force the miners out and seal the mine in November.

Police said the miners were refusing to come out for fear of arrest, but Mr Mnguni said they had been left trapped underground after police removed the ropes they used to climb out of the mine.

Police also cut off the miners’ food supplies in an attempt to force them out for illegally entering the abandoned mine in search of gold.

Their efforts were part of a crackdown on illegal mining that has plagued the country for decades. The miners are often from neighbouring countries, and police have said the illegal operations involve larger syndicates that employ them.

Previously, cabinet minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said: “We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out.

“They will come out. Criminals are not to be helped; criminals are to be prosecuted. We didn’t send them there.”

MACUA spokesperson Magnificent Mndebele said more than 400 miners were still waiting to be rescued two months after the standoff with South African police.

Mr Mndebele said that a pulley system, used for lowering supplies to the miners and enabling them to get out, was destroyed before MACUA restored it on 9 January.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/at-least-100-dead-after-being-trapped-in-mine-for-months-13288351

The legal team of South Korea’s suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol on Sunday said their client would not be attending the opening of his impeachment trial because of security fears.

Since his suspension and an impeachment vote over his ill-fated and short-lived declaration of martial law, Yoon has been isolated in the presidential residence and protected by an elite guard.

Will Yoon have to appear in court?

Yoon’s own legal team was cited as saying that he would not attend until security concerns could be cleared up.

South Korea’s Constitutional Court is scheduled to formally begin the impeachment process for Yoon on Tuesday.

It has scheduled five trial dates between January 14 and February 4, which will go ahead in his absence if he does not attend.

“Concerns about safety and potential incidents have arisen. Therefore, the president will not be able to attend the trial on January 14,” Yoon’s lawyer Yoon Kab-keun said in a statement received by the AFP news agency.

“The president is willing to appear at any time once safety issues are resolved.”

The case has proved divisive with demonstrations planned by rival camps outside Yoon’s residence and on the streets of Seoul. Some protesters are calling for his impeachment to be declared invalid while others want the suspended president to be detained immediately.

The president’s guards remain on “high alert,” his legal team said.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/south-koreas-yoon-to-skip-impeachment-trial-opening/a-71276728

Chinese and Indian refiners will source more oil from the Middle East, Africa and the Americas, boosting prices and freight costs, as new U.S. sanctions on Russian producers and ships curb supplies to Moscow’s top customers, traders and analysts said.
The U.S. Treasury on Friday imposed sanctions on Russian oil producers Gazprom Neft (SIBN.MM), opens new tab and Surgutneftegas, as well as 183 vessels that have shipped Russian oil, targeting the revenues Moscow has used to fund its war with Ukraine.

Many of the tankers have been used to ship oil to India and China as Western sanctions and a price cap imposed by the Group of Seven countries in 2022 shifted trade in Russian oil from Europe to Asia. Some tankers have also shipped oil from Iran, which is also under sanctions.
Russian oil exports will be hurt severely by the new sanctions, which will force Chinese independent refiners to cut refining output going forward, two Chinese trade sources said. The sources declined to be named as they are not authorised to speak to media.

The expected disruption in Russian supply drove global oil prices to their highest in months on Monday, with Brent trading above $81 a barrel.
Among the newly sanctioned ships, 143 are oil tankers that handled more than 530 million barrels of Russian crude last year, about 42% of the country’s total seaborne crude exports, Kpler’s lead freight analyst Matt Wright said in a note.
Of these, about 300 million barrels were shipped to China while the bulk of the remainder went to India, he added.

“These sanctions will significantly reduce the fleet of ships available to deliver crude from Russia in the short term, pushing freight rates higher,” Wright said.
A Singapore-based trader said the designated tankers shipped close to 900,000 bpd of Russian crude to China over the past 12 months.
“It’s going to drop off a cliff,” he added.
For the first 11 months last year, India’s Russian crude imports rose 4.5% on year to 1.764 million bpd, or 36% of India’s total imports. China’s volume, including pipeline supply, was up 2% at 99.09 million metric tons (2.159 million bpd), or 20% of its total imports, over the same period.

China’s imports are mostly Russian ESPO Blend crude, sold above the price cap, while India buys mostly Urals oil.
Vortexa analyst Emma Li said Russian ESPO Blend crude exports would be halted if the sanctions were strictly enforced, but it would depend on whether U.S. President-elect Donald Trump lifted the embargo and also whether China acknowledged the sanctions.

ALTERNATIVES

The new sanctions will push China and India back into the compliant oil market to seek more supply from the Middle East, Africa and the Americas, the sources said.
Spot prices for Middle East, Africa and Brazilian grades have already risen in recent months on rising demand from China and India as supplies of Russian and Iranian oil tightened and became more expensive, they added.
“Already, prices are rising for Middle Eastern grades,” said an Indian oil refining official.
“There is no option than that we have to go for Middle Eastern oil. Perhaps we may have to go for U.S. oil as well.”
A second Indian refining source said the sanctions on Russian oil insurers will prompt Russia to price its crude below $60 a barrel so Moscow can continue to use Western insurance and tankers.
Harry Tchilinguirian, head of research at Onyx Capital Group said: “Indian refiners, the main takers of Russian crude, are unlikely to wait around to find out and will be scrambling to find alternatives in Middle Eastern and Dated-Brent-related Atlantic Basin crude.
“Strength in the Dubai benchmark can only rise from here as we are likely to see aggressive bidding for February loading cargoes of the likes of Oman or Murban, leading to a tighter Brent/Dubai spread,” he added.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/tougher-us-sanctions-curb-russian-oil-supply-china-india-2025-01-12/

What do NBA star LeBron James, iconic horror writer Stephen King and left-leaning British newspaper The Guardian have in common? They have all quit X, the social network previously known as Twitter, since Donald Trump’s election victory in November 2024. And they are far from the only ones. On Friday, more than 60 German-language universities announced that they would no longer be using X.

Helmed by the world’s richest Trump supporter, Elon Musk, the network seems to be falling out of favor with users outside of the MAGA political camp, and — despite the billionaire’s 2022 pledge to keep the platform “politically neutral” — many observers believe that he is actively working to turn X into an extremist megaphone.

Experts consulted by DW said there was no way to reliably tell if the system has been updated to boost right-wing posts since the start of the Musk era, as its algorithms are constantly being tweaked and responding to a changing user base. It is clear, however, that many banned accounts were restored under Musk despite previous violations, including hate speech, misinformation and antisemitism. Experts also point out that the overall discourse will keep shifting right as more liberal and left users leave the platform.

“The outcome for users is the same regardless of the cause: significantly more far-right content on the platform and in people’s recommended feeds,” social scientist and digital media researcher Colin Henry told DW.

Musk also leveraged his status as X’s most-followed account to amplify pro-Trump voices and narratives in the run-up to the US election, even referring to himself as Trump’s “first buddy.”

‘Don’t feed the troll’

Having now set his sights on politics with the European Union, Musk told his more than 211 million followers that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is a “fool,” and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier — a man whose office is mostly ceremonial — is a “tyrant.” Musk also publicly endorsed the nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD), saying it was the only party that could “save Germany.” On Thursday, Musk held a live chat on X with Alice Weidel, the AfD co-leader and candidate for chancellor in Germany’s upcoming elections.

Musk’s support for Trump and the ongoing meddling in EU politics have prompted outrage in Germany. However, Musk’s posts elicited little more than a finger wag from Scholz who said his approach was simple: “Don’t feed the troll.”

“It’s the will of the citizens that counts in Germany, not the erratic statements of a US billionaire,” Scholz told Stern magazine.

Worth the trouble?

Science fiction author and internet activist Cory Doctorow told DW that Musk already wields enough power to sway the vote in tight races. This influence is partly due to the media idolizing him as “a kind of hero” for many years, Doctorow said.

He said Musk could use X to make the case to his more than 211 million followers that “the AfD are swell fellows and their association with fascism and ethnic cleansing is overstated.”

“All it takes,” Doctorow said, “is for a very small number of people to show up for those delicate balances that have been calculated by party consultants to be disrupted.”

Doctorow said Musk’s rise was a foreseeable outcome of the decadeslong effort to dismantle monopoly laws in North America and Europe, making him “so rich that he is too big to jail, too big to fail and far too big to care what anybody thinks of him.”

And, though Scholz has attempted to avoid engaging with Musk, Doctorow said publicly fighting back against someone “who has a giant audience” could in fact be a great political strategy for the German chancellor.

“Musk is not very smart,” Doctorow said. “He’s got lots of followers. A lot of them don’t really know much about him: They’ve just absorbed the legend — and you can debunk the legend in real time if you are good at it.”

“If you suck at it, though, the last thing you want is to be humiliated in front of 200 million people. … So I think it really depends on the politician.”

A German X-odus?

On Wednesday, German Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Ferda Ataman urged the government to leave X, calling the network “an instrument of political influence by the richest man in the world.”

“X is not a serious platform,” Ataman said.

Several high-profile organizations and users in Germany have already quit X, including the country’s highest criminal court on Thursday. Fabian Mehring, the digitalization minister of Germany’s richest state, Bavaria, left X over Musk’s support for the AfD. Former Berlin state secretary Sawsan Chebli walked away from the network alongside federal lawmakers Jamila Schäfer und Misbah Khan and dozens of other prominent voices in early December, with the group saying that X has become a “place of censorship, racism, antisemitism, and rightwing agenda-setting.”

A center of documentation of Nazi crimes in Munich and the city’s Jewish Museum also decided to stop using the platform, along with dozens of other semiofficial and nongovernment bodies, including three Bundesliga football teams.

Government hasn’t quit

Responding to this week’s calls to abandon X, German officials have said the government has decided against doing so for now.

“We have to be there where people go for information,” government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit told reporters. “But, of course, you always have to ask yourself if the environment for it is still sustainable, and we are asking ourselves this question. So far, we have answered this by saying that the damage of withdrawing from this platform would be greater than the benefits.”

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/as-musk-pushes-afd-german-officials-consider-ditching-x/a-71257278

A flight operated by state-run Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) took off for Paris from Islamabad on Friday morning as the carrier resumed direct flights to Europe following the lifting of a European Union ban.

The EU blocked PIA in 2020 after one of its Airbus A-320s crashed in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, killing 97 people.

Concerns about the airline’s safety were heightened when the aviation minister at the time, Ghulam Sarwar Khan, said that nearly a third of Pakistani pilots had cheated on their exams.

The ban, which was lifted in November, caused the airline, which employs almost 7,000 people, to lose nearly €146 million ($150 million) a year in revenue, officials have said.

‘Irresponsible statement’

Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif inaugurated the twice-a-week flights to Paris.

He said that PIA would soon extend its flights to take in other European countries.

In a speech, he said the European Union Aviation Safety Agency had imposed the ban because of what he called an “irresponsible statement” by the former aviation minister.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/pakistani-airline-resumes-europe-flights-after-eu-ban-lifted/a-71262589

The man who killed 14 people in a deadly New Year’s attack in New Orleans fired at police from inside his truck before officers shot him dead, new bodycam footage reveals.

US Army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove a rented truck into people celebrating on the city’s famous Bourbon Street.

The FBI previously said Jabbar was “100% inspired” by the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group.

New footage released by New Orleans Police shows him shooting from behind an airbag as several officers surround his truck after it crashed.

Bodycam video from Officer Luis Robles shows two other officers standing next to the open door of Jabbar’s truck – one has his gun raised.

A muzzle flash is then seen from inside the truck and several shots ring out. Officers dive to the ground as Jabbar fires at them from close range.

In total, three officers discharged their weapons. Police have not revealed how many shots Jabbar fired.

An ISIS flag and what appeared to be an improvised explosive device (IED) were found in the vehicle used in the attack, the FBI said.

The suspect posted five videos on social media before the rampage in support of ISIS, the agency added.

British man Edward Pettifer, a stepson of an ex-royal nanny, was among those killed in the attack in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

The 31-year-old’s stepmother, Alexandra Pettifer – also known as Tiggy Legge-Bourke – was a nanny to Prince William and Prince Harry.

Prince William said after Mr Pettifer’s death was confirmed: “Catherine and I have been shocked and saddened by the tragic death of Ed Pettifer.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/bodycam-footage-shows-new-orleans-attacker-firing-at-police-before-officers-shot-him-dead-13286402

A surge in cases of the flu-like human metapneumovirus (HMPV) in China has raised fears of another Covid-style pandemic.

Images of hospitals overrun with masked patients have circulated widely on social media, but health experts say HMPV is not like Covid, and point out it has been around for many years.

They say China and other countries are simply experiencing the seasonal increase in HMPV typically seen in winter.

US aviation giant Boeing has told BBC News it is donating $1m (£812,600) to an inauguration fund for President-elect Donald Trump.

Google has also confirmed that it has made a similar donation as the two firms join a growing list of major American companies contributing to the fund.

The list also includes oil producer Chevron and technology giants Meta, Amazon and Uber.

Trump’s inauguration, marking the start of his second term in the White House, is set to take place on 20 January.

“We are pleased to continue Boeing’s bipartisan tradition of supporting US Presidential Inaugural Committees,” Boeing said.

The company added that it has made similar donations to each of the past three presidential inauguration funds.

Boeing is working to recover from a safety and quality control crisis, as well as dealing with the losses from a strike last year.

The company is also building the next presidential aircraft, known as Air Force One. The two jets are expected to come into service as early as next year.

During his first term as president, Trump forced the plane maker to renegotiate its contract, calling the initial deal too expensive.

Google became the latest big tech firm to donate to the fund, following similar announcements by Meta and Amazon. It also said it will stream the event around the world.

“Google is pleased to support the 2025 inauguration, with a livestream on YouTube and a direct link on our homepage,” said Karan Bhatia, Google’s global head of government affairs and public policy.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgly2krddwgo

The renewed interest by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in Greenland has been greeted enthusiastically by some Greenlanders, although others say the semi-autonomous territory of Denmark is not for sale.
Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, said on Monday that U.S. control of the strategically important Arctic island was an “absolute necessity” and at a press conference on Tuesday did not rule out using military or economic action to make it happen.

The same day, Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., made a private visit to the country.
Mikael Ludvidsen, a resident of capital Nuuk, was skeptical about the president-elect’s intentions, telling Reuters: “I think he’s talking too loudly. I don’t think you can take him seriously when he says he’s going to take us over by force.”
“I think it’s too much,” said local Niels Nielsen. Greenland “can’t be bought,” he added.

But others said aligning with a superpower might be helpful for Greenland, which has a population of just 57,000 people.
Resident Jens Ostermann, carrying a small child bundled up against the winter cold, said: “We should partner with a great power because Greenland is a rich country, we have everything here.”
Greenland Prime Minister Mute Egede has urged residents to remain calm and united. But he has also emphasized his desire for Greenland to become fully independent from Denmark, its former colonial ruler.

Some locals sported Make America Great Again caps to greet Trump Jr., with Greenlandic daily Sermitsiaq headlining its report: “Warm but reserved welcome for Donald Trump Jr.”
Opinions among Greenlanders about the future of their country are divided, according to Aki-Matilda Hoegh-Dam, a member of Greenland’s social-democratic Siumut party in the Danish parliament.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/greenland-greets-trump-interest-with-maga-caps-mixed-feelings-2025-01-08/

SpaceX to provide free Starlink terminals to LA

Elon Musk said on Thursday that his company SpaceX will provide free Starlink terminals to affected areas in Los Angeles in the morning.

California Governor Newsom says more than 7,500 firefighters battling fires

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More than 7,500 firefighting personnel are on the ground working with local and federal partners to respond to California’s ongoing historic wildfires.

Southern California residents — please remain vigilant tonight. Listen to local officials and be ready to evacuate if you’re…

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) January 9, 2025

Biden approves California governor’s request for federal assistance

Biden also canceled an upcoming trip to Italy, the White House said, adding that he wanted to focus on directing the full federal response to the fires.

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I’ve approved Governor Newsom’s request for a major disaster declaration and ordered Federal assistance to supplement response efforts in areas affected by wildfires, ensuring impacted communities and survivors have immediate access to funds and resources to begin their recovery.

— President Biden (@POTUS) January 9, 2025

In case you just joined our Live

With a fresh brush fire breaking out in the Hollywood Hills, multiple wildfires have raged uncontrollably around Los Angeles area, killing at least five people. The Palisades, Eaton and Hurst fires are still burning in Southern California, forcing more than 100,000 people to evacuate.

The number of California homes and businesses without electricity ballooned to more than 400,000 on Wednesday.

The out-of-control fires are leaving firefighters and water supply overwhelmed.

“This is an absolutely unprecedented event. We have another fire that just broke out. Any fire department, even our size is stressed thin,” said LA Fire Department’s Jacob Raabe.

“Southern California is continuing to endure some of the most historic fire conditions on record,” LA City Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said. “The incident is very very dynamic as we speak.”

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/palisades-fire-live-tens-thousands-flee-wildfires-rage-los-angeles-2025-01-08/

Bird feathers have been found in the engine of a South Korean passenger jet that crashed, killing 179 people.

Jeju Air 7C2216, a Boeing 737-800 jet, was flying from the Thai capital of Bangkok to Muan, South Korea, on 29 December when it crash-landed, skidding off the runway into a wall and exploding into flames.

Of the 175 passengers and six crew members on board, only two crew survived and were pulled from the wreckage.

Park Sang-woo, South Korea’s transport minister, plans to resign, saying: “I feel heavy responsibility for this disaster.”

He added he would try to find the right time to resign after addressing the current situation.

Eyewitness: Stillness and shock after jet crash tragedy

Lead investigator Lee Seung-yeol said feathers were found in one of the engines recovered from the crash scene.

He added that video footage showed there was a bird strike on one of the engines.

Police are also investigating how the airfield wall the plane hit was constructed.

Last week officers raided Jeju Air and the operator of Muan International Airport.

On Monday, two investigators left for the US to recover and analyse a flight data recorder which was damaged during the crash.

The device, and a cockpit voice recorder, are the two black boxes that contain key information about the crash.

Mr Lee said it would take three days to extract the data and another two to conduct a preliminary analysis.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/bird-feathers-found-in-south-korea-passenger-jet-engine-after-crash-which-killed-179-13285066

A rapidly growing wildfire raged across an upscale section of Los Angeles on Tuesday, destroying homes and creating traffic jams as 30,000 people evacuated beneath huge plumes of smoke that covered much of the metropolitan area.
At least 2,921 acres (1,182 hectares) of the Pacific Palisades area between the coastal settlements of Santa Monica and Malibu had burned, officials said, after they had already warned of extreme fire danger from powerful winds that arrived following extended dry weather.

The fire spread as officials warned the worst wind conditions were expected to come overnight, leading to concerns that more neighborhoods could be forced to flee. The city of Santa Monica later ordered evacuations in the northern fringe of town.
Witnesses reported a number homes on fire with flames nearly scorching their cars when people fled the hills of Topanga Canyon, as the fire spread from there down to the Pacific Ocean.

“We feel very blessed at this point that there’s no injuries that are reported,” Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley told a press conference, adding that more than 25,000 people in 10,000 homes were threatened.
Firefighters in aircraft scooped water from the sea to drop it on the nearby flames. Flames engulfed homes and bulldozers cleared abandoned vehicles from roads so emergency vehicles could pass, television images showed.

As the sun set over Los Angeles, towering orange flames illuminated the hills leading to Topanga Canyon.
The fire singed some trees on the grounds of the Getty Villa, a museum loaded with priceless works of art, but the collection remained safe largely because of preventive efforts to trim brush surrounding the buildings, the museum said.
With only one major road leading from the canyon to the coast, and only one coastal highway leading to safety, traffic crawled to a halt, leading people to flee on foot.
Cindy Festa, a Pacific Palisades resident, said that as she evacuated out of the canyon, fires were “this close to the cars,” demonstrating with her thumb and forefinger.

“People left their cars on Palisades Drive. Burning up the hillside. The palm trees – everything is going,” Festa said from her car.
Before the fire started, the National Weather Service had issued its highest alert for extreme fire conditions for much of Los Angeles County from Tuesday through Thursday, predicting wind gusts of 50 to 80 mph (80 to 130 kph).
With low humidity and dry vegetation due to a lack of rain, the conditions were “about as bad as it gets in terms of fire weather,” the Los Angeles office of the National Weather Service said on X.
Governor Gavin Newsom, who declared a state of emergency, said the state positioned personnel, firetrucks and aircraft elsewhere in Southern California because of the fire danger to the wider region, he added.
“Hopefully, we’re wrong, but we’re anticipating other fires happening concurrently,” Newsom told the press conference.
A second blaze dubbed the Eaton Fire later broke out some 30 miles (50 km) inland in the foothills above Pasadena, consuming 200 acres (80 hectares), Cal Fire said.
The powerful winds changed President Joe Biden’s travel plans, grounding Air Force One in Los Angeles. He had planned to make a short flight inland to the Coachella Valley for a ceremony to create two new national monuments in California but the event was rescheduled for a later date at the White House.
“I have offered any federal assistance that is needed to help suppress the terrible Pacific Palisades fire,” Biden said in statement. A federal grant had already been approved to help reimburse the state of California for its fire response, Biden said.
Pacific Palisades is home to several Hollywood stars. Actor James Woods said on X he was able to evacuate but added, “I do not know at this moment if our home is still standing.”

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/los-angeles-wildfire-prompts-evacuations-amid-extreme-winds-2025-01-07/

A magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck the northern foothills of the Himalayas near one of Tibet’s Xigaze city on Tuesday. The quake resulted in at least 53 fatalities and injured 62 people causing buildings to shake across neighbouring countries, including Nepal, Bhutan, and India.

According to regional disaster relief headquarters, the quake jolted Dingri County in Xigaze in Tibet Autonomous Region in China at 9:05 am Tuesday (Beijing Time). The quake had a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles), as reported by the China Earthquake Networks Centre, Reuters reported.

National television broadcaster CCTV reported that at least 53 people were killed on the Tibetan side.

Tremors were felt in Delhi-NCR and several North Indian areas, including parts of Bihar as well.

Here are the top updates on earthquake:

• A 7.1 magnitude earthquake in Nepal sent tremors through Delhi-NCR and various parts of North India.
• According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the earthquake occurred at 6.35 am, 93 km northeast of Lobuche, near the Nepal-Tibet border.
• The epicentre was located where the India and Eurasia plates clash and cause uplifts in the Himalayan mountains strong enough to change the heights of some of the world’s tallest peaks.
• The quake struck Dingri County with a magnitude of 6.8 near the border with Nepal at 9:05 am (0105 GMT), according to the China Earthquake Networks Center (CENC).
• China said at least 53 people were killed in a strong earthquake that struck the Tibet region near the Nepal border.
• According to AP, CCTV said there were a handful of communities within 5 kilometres (3 miles) of the epicentre, which was 380 kilometres (240 miles) from Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.

Source : https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/dozens-killed-as-earthquake-hits-tibet-many-buildings-collapsed-report-101736223494925.html

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Japan on Tuesday for talks expected to address North Korean missile launches, but President Joe Biden’s blocking of a steel deal is straining the allies’ warm ties.

Business groups say Biden’s decision could have a chilling effect on investment in the world’s largest economy, where leaders across the political divide have called for closer ties with Japan to counter a rising China.

With two weeks left before president-elect Donald Trump takes over, the top US diplomat arrived in Tokyo from Seoul late Monday on what is likely his final tour.

Biden has called nurturing US alliances a top priority — but days before Blinken’s trip, he blocked Nippon Steel’s $14.9-billion takeover of long-struggling US Steel, citing national security concerns.

In response, the two companies filed a lawsuit on Monday against the Biden administration’s “illegal interference” in the transaction.

Nippon Steel chair Eiji Hashimoto on Tuesday slammed “Biden’s unjust decision” and said the companies were committed to fight for their merger.

“We’re certain the lawsuit will reveal a set of facts that clearly violate the constitution and the law, so I believe we have a chance of winning,” he told reporters.

Trump, who takes office on January 20, “wants to make manufacturing strong again, and once again enrich the lives and future of manufacturing workers”, Hashimoto added.

“This is exactly in line with what we’re doing.”

Nippon Steel had touted the takeover as a lifeline for a US company long past its heyday, but opponents warned that the Japanese owners would slash jobs.

Biden had criticised the deal for months, while holding off on a move that could hurt ties with Tokyo.

In their suit, US and Nippon Steel argued that Biden had blocked the deal for purely political reasons by ignoring the rule of law to gain favour with workers’ unions.

Blinken had a sushi breakfast at a famous fish market on Tuesday and will later meet Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who said Monday that the United States should “explain clearly” the security concerns cited by Biden.

“There are concerns being raised within Japan’s industrial world over future Japan-US investment,” Ishiba warned.

Protectionist measures are expected to intensify under Trump, who in his last term exited a nascent Pacific-wide trade pact and has vowed to use tariffs to protect US industry.

Separately, Blinken is expected to discuss a flare-up in tensions on North Korea, which on Monday test-fired a missile into the sea just as the US politician was visiting fellow ally South Korea.

Blinken had been in Seoul in part to push to preserve three-way cooperation by the United States, Japan and South Korea.

Conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol has pushed to turn the page on historical tension with Japan, but he was impeached after he stunned South Korea last month with a failed attempt to impose martial law.

Source : https://www.ibtimes.com/blinken-japan-after-rift-steel-deal-3758070

US president-elect Donald Trump has had his victory certified by his defeated rival, Kamala Harris.

Under the tightest national security level, Ms Harris, who lost to Mr Trump following November’s election, presided over the certification of the 78-year-old Republican’s victory in Congress.

After Congress went through all the certificates for the 50 US states and Washington DC, it certified the election of Mr Trump and his running mate JD Vance.

Cheers broke out in the chamber as Ms Harris announced the tally of the electoral votes, with Mr Trump receiving 312, while her candidacy, launched following outgoing President Joe Biden’s decision in July to withdraw from the race, got 226.

It stood in stark contrast to the shocking scenes from the certification of Mr Trump’s defeat against Mr Biden four years ago, when the Republican’s supporters tried to block the democratic process by violently storming Capitol Hill.

Ms Harris smiled tightly as she announced her rival’s victory – and as Republicans gave a standing ovation.

She ended the process, which lasted less than 30 minutes, saying: “The chair declares this joint session dissolved.”

Ahead of senators and representatives gathering for the event, the outgoing vice president described her role in the certification as a “sacred obligation” to ensure the peaceful transfer of power.

Five people died in the hours and days following the riots on 6 January 2021, including a Trump supporter who was shot by Capitol police and one officer, Brian Sicknick, who was attacked as he responded.

His death was later attributed to the natural causes.

A further four police officers who responded to the riots took their own lives in the following months.

Ms Harris joined a short list of other vice presidents to oversee the ceremonial confirmation of their election loss as part of their role of presiding over the Senate.

In a video message earlier today, Ms Harris said: “As we have seen, our democracy can be fragile.

“And it is up to each of us to stand up for our most cherished principles.”

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trumps-victory-certified-by-defeated-rival-kamala-harris-13284675

The New Orleans terrorist attacker visited the city twice in the weeks before the attack and recorded video of the area using Meta smart glasses, the FBI revealed Sunday.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, stayed at a rental home in New Orleans at the end of October and again in November, just weeks before his attack on Bourbon Street, which killed 14 people. He wore the smart glasses to record video as he rode a bicycle through the French Quarter, Lyonel Myrthil, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s New Orleans field office, said Sunday.

“Meta glasses appear to look like regular glasses, but they allow a user to record videos and photos hand-free,” Myrthil said. “They also allow the user to potentially livestream through their video.”

Jabbar wore the glasses during his New Year’s Day attack, but they were not activated for a livestream, Myrthil said. There was no indication Jabbar was recording the attack at all, though the glasses were found on him.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told NBC News that the company is “in touch with law enforcement on this matter.”

The FBI posted a compilation of the clips online, one of which includes Jabbar testing the glasses in a mirror and security clips of him in the area before the truck attack. The FBI blurred images of bystanders.

Jabbar, 42, was killed in a firefight with officers after he plowed through the busy strip with a rented truck early New Year’s Day. Investigators also found that he placed two homemade bombs in the area before the attack, neither of which detonated.

Authorities also believe Jabbar set fire to a short-term rental house on Mandeville Street in New Orleans, where bomb-making materials were found.

Video showed Jabbar placing one improvised explosive device in a cooler at Bourbon and St. Peter streets at 1:53 a.m., which was moved later by unidentified people.

“From what we’ve observed so far — what we’ve gathered through our investigation — is that they were unwitting individuals who move the cooler from location to location without knowledge of what is in the cooler,” Myrthil said.

Jabbar placed another explosive roughly 30 minutes later in a different “bucket-type cooler,” authorities said.

Two firearms were also recovered, a semiautomatic pistol and a rifle. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives found the .308-caliber rifle was purchased in a private sale in Arlington, Texas, on Nov. 19.

The explosive material recovered at Jabbar’s home in Houston resembles common explosives such as RDX, which are widely available in the United States, Joshua Jackson, the special agent in charge of the ATF’s New Orleans field division, said at Sunday’s news conference.

Federal authorities initially said Friday that field tests detected a rare explosive compound, R-Salt, in the two homemade bombs in New Orleans and in the home where Jabbar stayed. R-Salt is a very rare compound that has not been used before in terrorist attacks in the United States or Europe.

Jackson said the FBI will conduct additional testing of the explosive compound found in New Orleans. He said officials believe additional tests in an FBI lab will show that the explosive compound is, in fact, pure RDX.

The device itself was not unique in design, and Jabbar’s use of an electric match instead of a proper detonator indicated his inexperience with explosives, Jackson said.

Jabbar, a Texas-born U.S. citizen and an Army veteran, said in videos posted online that he “joined ISIS earlier this year.” He acted alone during the New Year’s Day attack, the FBI said, and does not appear to have any U.S.-based accomplices.

Source : https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-orleans-attacker-meta-glasses-prior-visits-rcna186293

Elon Musk has called for Nigel Farage to be replaced as leader of Reform UK, just weeks after reports the multi-billionaire was in talks to donate to the party.

In a post on his social media site X, Musk said Farage “doesn’t have what it takes” to lead the party – but did not explain his reasoning.

Farage suggested this was due to a disagreement over Musk’s support for far-right activist Tommy Robinson.

He said Musk’s comment was “a surprise”, but that he would “never sell out my principles”.

The comment from the tech entrepreneur comes hours after Farage described Musk as a “friend” in an interview on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme.

Musk has been a vocal supporter of Farage and his party, posting on X in December that Britain “absolutely” needs Reform UK.

But this week a rift emerged over Musk’s support for Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who is currently serving an 18-month prison sentence for contempt of court.

Robinson admitted in court to breaching an injunction against repeating claims about a Syrian refugee schoolboy after losing a 2021 libel case.

In a social media post on Sunday in response to Musk’s comment, Farage said: “Elon is a remarkable individual but on this I am afraid I disagree”.

“My view remains that Tommy Robinson is not right for Reform and I never sell out my principles.”

Minutes after Farage made his statement, Musk posted on X: “Free Tommy Robinson now.”

In the interview broadcast earlier on Sunday, Farage called Musk a “hero” who makes Reform UK “look cool”.

But he added that Musk’s support “doesn’t mean I have to agree with every single statement he makes on X”.

Farage said he planned to “have a conversation with (Musk) on a variety of things” – including Robinson – at the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.

Farage has maintained close ties to Trump, who has given Musk a role in his administration.

The question now is whether Farage’s friendship with the president-elect is affected.

Farage founded Reform UK in 2018, then called the Brexit Party, and returned as the party’s leader before being elected as an MP in 2024.

In December, Farage, along with Reform’s new party treasurer Nick Candy, met Musk at Mar-a-Lago for an hour-long meeting, and began “open negotiations” about a donation to the party.

Musk’s father Errol has suggested the SpaceX and Tesla mogul might even be prepared to become a UK citizen to make a $100m (£80.5 m) donation to Reform UK. Farage later said speculation about the figure was “for the birds”.

As a US citizen, Musk cannot make personal political donations in the UK – but could make one through the British branch of his company X.

For now, at least it seems the rumours of a large donation from Musk to Reform are on ice.

Since his meeting with Farage, Musk has increasingly taken an interest in UK politics – focusing on criticism of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

Musk has spent the week amplifying calls by Reform UK and the Conservative Party for a national inquiry into grooming gangs.

The calls came after the government turned down a request to conduct an inquiry into historical cases of sexual abuse in Oldham, saying the council should lead it instead.

This prompted Musk to accuse Sir Keir of failing to properly prosecute “rape gangs” while he was director of public prosecutions.

Musk also said Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips “deserves to be in prison” and called her a “rape genocide apologist”.

Asked about Musk’s comments on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Farage said the CEO had used “very tough terms, but that “free speech was back” on X under his ownership.

In 2022, an independent inquiry by Greater Manchester Combined Authority found that vulnerable children were left exposed to sexual exploitation in Oldham because of “serious failings” by the police and council.

The government has rejected the calls for a national inquiry, instead asking Oldham Council to set up its own. The previous Conservative government turned down a similar request in 2022.

Phillips and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said in a letter to the Conservatives that the local authority had already started setting up an inquiry.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70ep8lp4jjo

A fire that broke out at a shopping center in Dallas on Friday morning killed more than 500 animals, most of which were small birds, authorities said.

The 579 animals in the pet shop at Plaza Latina in Northwest Dallas died from smoke inhalation, Dallas Fire-Rescue spokesperson Jason Evans said in a statement.

The flames from the fire never reached the animals. Chickens, hamsters, two dogs and two cats also died, Evans said.

The two-alarm fire took about two hours and as many as 45 firefighters to extinguish around 11 a.m., Evans said.

“While DFR personnel did search and attempt rescue, all animals in the shop unfortunately perished due to smoke inhalation,” Evans said.

No people were injured in the fire. The structure of the large, one-story shopping center was severely damaged, including a partially collapsed roof, Evans said.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/dallas-texas-pet-shop-fire-animals-dead-2a6b1be8daf2d42065927fbea4030b95

A highly decorated Army soldier who fatally shot himself in a Tesla Cybertruck just before it blew up outside the Trump hotel in Las Vegas left notes saying the New Year’s Day explosion was a stunt to serve as a “wake up call” for the country’s ills, investigators said Friday.

Matthew Livelsberger, a 37-year-old Green Beret from Colorado Springs, Colorado, also wrote in notes he left on his cellphone that he needed to “cleanse” his mind “of the brothers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took.” Livelsberger served in the Army since 2006 and deployed twice to Afghanistan.

“This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wake up call. Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence. What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives,” Livelsberger wrote in one letter found by authorities and released Friday.

The explosion caused minor injuries to seven people but virtually no damage to the Trump International Hotel. Authorities said that Livelsberger acted alone.

Livelsberger’s letters covered a range of topics including political grievances, societal problems and both domestic and international issues, including the war in Ukraine. He said in one letter that the U.S. was “terminally ill and headed toward collapse.”

Tesla engineers, meanwhile, helped extract data from the Cybertruck for investigators, including Livelsberger’s path between charging stations from Colorado through New Mexico and Arizona and on to Las Vegas, according to Assistant Sheriff Dori Koren.

“We still have a large volume of data to go through,” Koren said Friday. “There’s thousands if not millions of videos and photos and documents and web history and all of those things that need to be analyzed.”

The new details came as investigators were still trying to determine whether Livelsberger sought to make a political point with the Tesla and the hotel bearing the president-elect’s name.

Livelsberger harbored no ill will toward President-elect Donald Trump, law enforcement officials said. In one of the notes he left, he said the country needed to “rally around” Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Musk has recently become a member of Trump’s inner circle. Neither Trump nor Musk was in Las Vegas on Wednesday, the day of the explosion. Both had attended Trump’s New Year’s Eve party at his South Florida estate.

“Although this incident is more public and more sensational than usual, it ultimately appears to be a tragic case of suicide involving a heavily decorated combat veteran who was struggling with PTSD and other issues,” Spencer Evans, the FBI special agent in charge in Las Vegas, said Friday.

Livelsberger died of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. Investigators have not yet explained how Livelsberger shot himself inside the Cybertruck while simultaneously igniting fireworks and camp fuel packed inside, causing the explosion.

Among the charred items found inside were a handgun at Livelsberger’s feet, another firearm, fireworks, a passport, a military ID, credit cards, an iPhone and a smartwatch. Authorities said both guns were purchased legally.

In recent years Livelsberger confided to Alicia Arritt, a former girlfriend who had served as an Army nurse, that he faced significant pain and exhaustion she attributed to traumatic brain injury.

He opened up to Arritt, 39, whom he met and began dating in Colorado in 2018, about exhaustion, pain that kept him up at night, and reliving violence from his deployment in Afghanistan, Arritt said.

“My life has been a personal hell for the last year,” he told Arritt in text messages during their early days of dating that she shared with The Associated Press.

The Green Berets are highly trained U.S. Army special forces who specialize in guerrilla warfare and unconventional fighting tactics. Livelsberger rose through the ranks and deployed twice to Afghanistan and served in Ukraine, Tajikistan, Georgia and Congo, according to the Army. He recently returned from an overseas assignment in Germany and was on approved leave when he died.

He was awarded five Bronze Stars, including one with a valor device for courage under fire, a combat infantry badge and an Army Commendation Medal with valor.

Authorities searched a townhouse in Livelsberger’s hometown of Colorado Springs Thursday as part of the investigation. Neighbors said the man who lived there had a wife and a baby.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/cybertruck-explosion-trump-hotel-las-vegas-6c85af85255753db497f2cd344fb2ace

U.S. President Joe Biden blocked Nippon Steel’s (5401.T), proposed $14.9 billion purchase of U.S. Steel (X.N), on Friday, citing national security concerns, dealing a potentially fatal blow to the contentious plan after a year of review.
The deal was announced in December 2023 and almost immediately ran into opposition across the political spectrum ahead of the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election. Both then-candidate Donald Trump and Biden vowed to block the purchase of the storied American company, the first to be valued at more than $1 billion. U.S. Steel once controlled most of the country’s steel output but is now the third-largest U.S. steelmaker and 24th biggest worldwide.

“A strong domestically owned and operated steel industry represents an essential national security priority and is critical for resilient supply chains,” Biden said. “Without domestic steel production and domestic steel workers, our nation is less strong and less secure.”
Nippon, the world’s fourth-largest steelmaker, paid a hefty premium to clinch the deal and made several concessions, including a last-ditch gambit to give the U.S. government veto power over changes to output, but to no avail.

In a statement, Nippon and U.S. Steel blasted Biden’s decision, calling it a “clear violation of due process” and a political move, and saying they would “take all appropriate action” to protect their legal rights.
Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel had warned that thousands of jobs would be at risk without the deal.
U.S. Steel CEO David Burritt said late on Friday the company planned to fight Biden’s decision, which he termed “shameful and corrupt.” He added that the president had insulted Japan and also refused to meet with the U.S. company to learn its point of view.

“The Chinese Communist Party leaders in Beijing are dancing in the streets,” Burritt added.
The United Steelworkers union, which opposed the merger from the outset, praised Biden’s decision, with USW President David McCall saying the union has “no doubt that it’s the right move for our members and our national security.”
White House spokesperson John Kirby defended the decision.
“This isn’t about Japan. This is about U.S. steelmaking and keeping one of the largest steel producers in the United States an American-owned company,” Kirby said, rejecting suggestions the decision could raise questions about the reliability of the U.S. as a partner.
Nippon Steel has previously threatened legal action if the deal was blocked. Lawyers have said Nippon Steel’s vow to mount a legal challenge against the U.S. government would be tough.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States spent months reviewing the deal for national security risks but referred the decision to Biden in December, after failing to reach consensus.

It is unclear whether another buyer will emerge. U.S. Steel has reported nine consecutive quarters of falling profits amid a global downturn in the steel industry. U.S.-based Cleveland-Cliffs, which previously bid for the company, has seen its share price fall to the point where its market value is lower than that of U.S. Steel.
Shares of U.S. Steel closed down 6.5% at $30.47 on the New York Stock Exchange.
A spokesperson for President-elect Trump, who also vowed to block the deal, did not immediately comment on Friday.

KEY ASIA ALLY

Japanese industry and trade minister Yoji Muto expressed disappointment over Biden’s decision, saying it was both difficult to understand and regrettable.
“There are strong concerns from the economic circles of both Japan and the U.S., and especially from Japanese industry regarding future investments between Japan and the U.S., and the Japanese government has no choice but to take this matter seriously,” he said in a statement.
Japan is a key U.S. ally in the Indo-Pacific region, where China’s economic and military rise and threats from North Korea have raised concerns in Washington. In November, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba urged Biden to approve the merger to avoid marring efforts to improve economic ties, Reuters exclusively reported.
U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel had sought to assuage concerns over the merger. Nippon Steel offered to move its U.S. headquarters to Pittsburgh and promised to honor all agreements in place between U.S. Steel and the USW.
A source familiar with the matter said this week that Nippon Steel had also proposed giving the U.S. government veto power over any potential cuts to U.S. Steel’s production capacity, as part of its efforts to secure Biden’s approval.
Nippon Steel faces a $565 million penalty payment to U.S. Steel following the deal’s collapse, which is set to prompt a major rethink of the Japanese company’s overseas-focused growth strategy.
With the acquisition of U.S. Steel, Nippon Steel aimed to raise its global output capacity to 85 million metric tons a year from the current 65 million, nearing its long-term goal of taking capacity to 100 million tons.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/biden-reveal-decision-us-steel-acquisition-early-friday-cbs-news-reports-2025-01-03/

INCREDIBLE plans have been revealed for the world’s fastest “bullet” train that comes with a restaurant-style dining car and has a plush business-class section.

China has successfully tested a prototype of its next-generation high-speed rail that can reach a top speed of 281mph – breaking its own record.

The latest CR450 prototype has been hailed for high speed, excellent design and innovative features.

Breakthrough technologies including safe high-speed operation, reduced drag and consumption, vibration and noise control, comprehensive lightweight construction, and integrated intelligent systems have been introduced.

Clever designers from China designed what looked like a train from the future, with a striking angular design and a bullet-shaped front.

Incredible pictures show what the train looks like from the inside including the highly sophisticated business class carriage and dining car.

Meanwhile, the CR450 is equipped with intelligent monitoring and diagnostic systems, which allow the train to collect data such as axle temperature and pressure from over 4,000 monitoring stations in real-time.

This advanced technology has enabled the train to recognize, assess and determine its actions by itself.

The train is also designed with adaptive lighting that can adjust brightness according to the outdoor environment, touchless restrooms with “airborne buttons,” and additional options like family compartments and multi-functional spaces.

Ren Guangqiang, an executive with the Locomotive & Car Department of China Railway, said: “We are committed to providing passengers with diverse, convenient, and personalized services to enhance their travel experience.”

It’s understood the prototype has gone through more than 5,000 tests including simulations and real-life platform tests.

But designers say further refinements are required before it is launched for the passengers.

China’s rail network spans over 100,000 miles, including more than 30,000 miles of high-speed rail lines.

Over the years, the country has focused on developing high-speed rail coaches with futuristic designs in a bid to stay at the top of the train race in the world.

Meanwhile, a floating that is faster than a plane has begun construction, marking a huge step forward for the 621mph lighting locomotive.

China Railway will use magnetic levitation (maglev) technology to zip passengers through vacuum tubes faster than they have ever gone.

The magnets on the train are able to interact with the metal on the sides of the pipe to levitate the train and propel it forward.

China’s high-speed trains operate currently at 217mph and support 5G connectivity, even in long tunnels.

This new design will allow passengers to travel over 400mph faster than they are currently able to.

The average cruising speed for a long-haul commercial passenger aircraft ranges from approximately 547 to 575mph.

According to China Railway, their aim is to quicken the development of trains that are faster, smarter, more environmentally friendly, and more energy-efficient.

Magnetic levitation, otherwise known as maglev, uses superconducting magnets in a low-vacuum pipe to strengthen the magnetic field.

These latest trains eliminate friction, to zoom by, effectively floating on thin air.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/tech/13209711/worlds-fastest-bullet-train-china/

The names of around 425,000 people suspected of collaborating with the Nazis during the German occupation of the Netherlands have been published online for the first time.

The names represent individuals who were investigated through a special legal system established towards the end of World War 2. Of them, more than 150,000 faced some form of punishment.

The full records of these investigations were previously only accessible by visiting the Dutch National Archives in The Hague.

The Huygens Institute, which helped digitise the archive, says this is a major barrier for people wishing to research the Netherlands’ occupation, which lasted from its invasion in 1940 to 1945.

“This archive contains important stories for both present and future generations,” the Huygens Institute says.

“From children who want to know what their father did in the war, to historians researching the grey areas of collaboration.”

The archive contains files on war criminals, the approximately 20,000 Dutch people who enlisted in the German armed forces, and alleged members of the National Socialist Movement (NSB) – the Dutch Nazi party.

But it also contains the names of people who were found to be innocent.

This is because the archive is comprised of files from the Special Jurisdiction, which from 1944 investigated suspected collaborators.

The online database only contains the names of suspects – as well as the date and place of their birth – which are only searchable using specific personal details.

It does not specify whether a particular person was found guilty, or what form of collaboration they were suspected of.

But it will tell users what file to request to see this information if they visit the National Archives. People accessing the physical files must declare a legitimate interest in viewing them.

There has been some concern in the Netherlands about personal information pertaining to a sensitive period of history being made freely available – prompting the information published online to be initially limited.

“I am afraid that there will be very nasty reactions,” Rinke Smedinga, whose father was an NSB member and worked at Camp Westerbork, from which people were deported to concentration camps, told Dutch online publication DIT.

“You have to anticipate that. You should not just let it happen, as a kind of social experiment.”

Tom De Smet, the director of the National Archives, told DIT that relatives of both collaborators and victims of the occupation had to be taken into account.

But he added: “Collaboration is still a major trauma. It is not talked about. We hope that when the archives are opened, the taboo will be broken.”

In a letter to parliament on 19 December, Culture Minister Eppo Bruins wrote: “Openness of archives is crucial for facing the effects of [the Netherlands’] difficult shared past and to process it as a society.”

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj6z3g0d3x3o

The man who authorities believe died in the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside one of Donald Trump’s hotels was an active-duty army soldier who served in the special forces, US officials have said.

Speaking at a news conference, Las Vegas sheriffs and FBI officials said the identity of the driver had not yet been officially confirmed through DNA, but evidence pointed towards it being Matthew Livelsberger, 37, of Colorado Springs in Colorado.

The man who died had suffered a gunshot wound to the head prior to the rented Tesla vehicle bursting into flames outside the Trump International Hotel on New Year’s Day, said Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill.

Officials believe the wound was self-inflicted and said a firearm was found at the driver’s feet.

A second gun was also discovered inside the truck, along with a passport, military identification, an iPhone and a smartwatch, Mr McMahill said. The identification and two tattoos on the driver’s body “give a strong indication” that Livelsberger was driving, he added.

Damage from the blast was mostly limited to the interior of the truck, the officials told reporters.

The level of sophistication of the explosive “is not what we would expect from an individual with this type of military experience”, said Kenny Cooper, a special agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The vehicle was first rented in Denver, Colorado, on 28 December and was driven through New Mexico and Arizona before reaching Las Vegas, in Nevada, the officials said.

After tracking the vehicle’s journey, Livelsberger is the only person officers have seen in the vehicle, the news conference was told.

Who is Matthew Livelsberger?

Livelsberger was a decorated officer who served in the Green Berets, highly trained special forces who work to counter terrorism abroad and train partners, the US army said in a statement.

He had served in the army since 2006 and spent some time at a base formerly known as Fort Bragg, a centre in North Carolina that is home to special forces command. He also had a long career of overseas assignments, deploying twice to Afghanistan and serving in Ukraine, Tajikistan, Georgia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

He was awarded two Bronze Stars, including one with a valour device for courage under fire, a combat infantry badge and an Army Commendation Medal with valour.

He was still on active duty and on approved leave at the time of the explosion. Seven other people suffered minor injuries when the vehicle caught fire.

The explosion is being looked at as a possible terror attack, officers previously said. As yet, no cause for the blast has been given, but fireworks mortars, cannisters and other explosive devices were found in the back of the truck.

A possible motive is yet to be uncovered.

Possible links with New Orleans attack

The incident occurred just hours after a man drove a truck into crowds celebrating the New Year in New Orleans, Louisiana, killing 14 people before he was shot dead by police.

The suspect in that attack has been identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, who was a US army veteran. An Islamic State flag was flown from the truck.

Officials are investigating a possible connection between the attacks.

During the Las Vegas news conference, Mr McMahill said his force was not ruling anything out – despite the FBI earlier appearing to play down a potential connection, saying there was “no definitive link” at this stage during a separate news conference in New Orleans.

“It’s an interesting thing in these kind of investigations that, if these turn out to be simply similarities, (they are) very strange similarities to have,” Mr McMahill said.

Like Livelsberger, Jabbar also spent time at Fort Bragg. However, no overlap in their assignments there has been found so far.

Law enforcement officers are also looking into the fact both men used the Turo car app to rent the vehicles involved in both incidents.

The truck involved in the explosion in Vegas arrived in the city at 7.30am local time (3.30pm UK time).

“It went immediately up and down Las Vegas Boulevard before immediately pulling into the Trump Towers,” Mr McMahill said at an earlier news conference.

The 64-storey hotel is just behind the famous Las Vegas Strip and opposite the Fashion Show Las Vegas shopping mall.

Tesla video helped track journey

Tesla is owned by tech billionaire Elon Musk who has been a close ally of Mr Trump – donating millions to his successful 2024 US election campaign. He has also been tasked with leading Mr Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Video captured at Telsa charging stations provided by Mr Musk helped authorities track the vehicle’s journey prior to the explosion.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/man-who-died-in-tesla-in-las-vegas-suffered-gunshot-wound-before-explosion-13282853

The FBI now believes that the suspect responsible for the terror attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on New Year’s Day was a lone wolf terrorist with no other accomplices.

The suspect, identified as a 42-year-old US Army veteran, Shamshud-Din Jabbar, drove the truck into revelers at around 3:15 a.m. in New Orleans’ French Quarter, at the intersection of Canal and Bourbon Streets on New Year’s Day at high speed before crashing.

The FBI have deemed the attack an act of terrorism during a press conference on Thursday, stating that Jabber was likely operating solo.

Investigators were trying to determine if there were other people responsible for placing the IEDs separate from the truck that Jabbar rammed into the crowds.

“We do not assess at this point that anyone else is involved in this attack except for Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the subject you’ve already been briefed on,” said Deputy Assistant Christopher Raia, associated with the bureau’s Counterterrorism Division.

This is in contrast to their previous statement less than 24 hours earlier, when Assistant Special Agent in Charge Alethea Duncan said: “We do not believe that Jabbar was solely responsible. We are aggressively running down every lead, including those of his known associates.”

Police were trying to investigate a possible connection between Jabbar and the Cybertruck driver in Las Vegas that caused an explosion outside the Trump Tower after it emerged that both had a military connection.

Raid added: “As you know, there’s also an FBI investigation in Las Vegas. We are following up on all potential leads and not ruling everything out. However, at this point, there is no definitive link between the attack here in New Orleans and the one in Las Vegas.

“And again, I’ll preface as I close, I’ll preface everything with what I started with in the beginning, which was this is very early in an investigation like this.”

According to New Orleans police superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick, the driver was “hell-bent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did.”

After the truck stopped, the driver opened fire on police. Officers returned fire, killing the driver. Two officers were wounded and are in stable condition.

The FBI said that an ISIS flag was found in the car and investigators are working to determine his affiliations with terrorist organizations.

Source : https://www.the-express.com/news/world-news/159212/fbi-new-orleans-terror-attack-truck-driver

Forty years after the Bhopal gas tragedy, 377 tons of hazardous waste has been shifted from the defunct Union Carbide factory for its disposal, an official said.

The toxic waste was transported on Wednesday night in 12 sealed container trucks from Madhya Pradesh capital Bhopal to Pithampur industrial area in Dhar district, 250 km away from here.

“The 12 container trucks carrying the waste set off on a non-stop journey around 9 pm. A green corridor was created for the nearly-seven journey of the vehicles to the Pithampur industrial area in Dhar district,” said Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation Department Director Swatantra Kumar Singh.

Nearly 100 persons worked in 30-minute shifts since Sunday to pack and load the waste in trucks, he said.

“They underwent health check-ups and were given rest every 30 minutes,” Singh added.

The highly toxic methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the Union Carbide pesticide factory on the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984, killing at least 5,479 persons and leaving thousands with serious and long-lasting health issues.

It is considered to be among the worst industrial disasters in the world.

The Madhya Pradesh High Court on December 3 rebuked authorities for not clearing the Union Carbide site in Bhopal despite directions from even the Supreme Court.

The HC set a four-week deadline to shift the waste, observing that even 40 years after the gas tragedy, authorities were in a “state of inertia”.

The high court bench had warned the government of contempt proceedings if its directive was not followed.

“If everything is found to be fine, the waste will be incinerated within three months. Otherwise, it might take up to nine months,” Singh told PTI on Wednesday morning.

Initially, some of the waste will be burnt at the disposal unit in Pithampur and the residue (ash) will be examined to find whether any harmful elements are left, he said.

The smoke from the incinerator will pass through special four-layer filters so that the surrounding air is not polluted, he added.

Once it is confirmed that no traces of toxic elements are left, the ash will be covered by a two-layer membrane and buried to ensure it does not come in contact with soil and water in any way.

A team of experts under the supervision of officials of the Central Pollution Control Board and State Pollution Control Board will carry out the process, Singh said.

Some local activists have claimed that 10 tons of Union Carbide waste was incinerated on a trial basis in Pithampur in 2015, after which the soil, underground water and water sources in surrounding villages became polluted.

Source : https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/India/40-years-after-bhopal-gas-disaster-toxic-waste-leaves-union-carbide-factory-for-disposal/ar-AA1wPbWw?ocid=sapphireappshare

THIS is the dramatic moment a Tesla Cybertruck explodes outside one of Donald Trump’s hotels killing one – and leading tech tycoon Elon Musk to speak out about the blast himself.

Cops are probing whether the deadly explosion was an “act of terror” after the truck pulled up to the hotel in Nevada and blew up – killing the driver and injuring seven bystanders.

Shocking footage caught the moment the blast occurred outside the glass entrance of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas just before 9am on Wednesday.

The Cybertruck was ripped apart by the huge explosion that sent its’ metal paneling flying.

Shattered glass was thrown across the entrance of the hotel with seven others injured.

Inside the truck were fireworks, gas tanks, and camping fuel connected to a detonation system controlled by the driver, CNN reports.

The truck was then left as a blazing wreck that continued to burn for some time.

In a post on his social networking site X, Tesla founder Musk said the explosion was caused by “very large fireworks and/or a bomb.”

He added the explosion was “unrelated to the vehicle itself.”

Billionaire Musk said in an earlier post his team was looking into the cause of the blast, which left him stunned.

He said: “Will post more information as soon as we learn anything.

“We’ve never seen anything like this.”

Investigators haven’t been able to determine what caused the explosion and they’re looking into if it was an intentional act of terror, ABC News reported.

The Cybertruck was reportedly carrying fireworks at the time of the blast.

A hotel guest shared video of the Tesla Cybertruck engulfed in flames just beyond the hotel’s doors.

The explosion came just hours after a suspected terrorist rammed a truck into a crowd celebrating New Year in New Orleans, killing ten and wounding more than 30.

The suspect was killed by cops after he got out of his truck and started shooting at them,

Police found an ISIS flag on the back of his truck and they’re searching for associates of the suspect who may have helped him in the terror plot.

It’s believed he may have had help from four or five others.

Both the Cybertruck that exploded and the pickup truck used in the New Orleans terror attack were rented through the Turo car-sharing app.

Investigations are looking into any potential links between the two disasters.

There is no suggestion yet that the attacks were linked.

“Cybertruck blew up in front of Trump hotel in Las Vegas. Those are our luggage by the door and that’s where we were when it happened,” the guest wrote on X.

Another person wrote, “Some sort of explosion at Trump tower in Las Vegas.

“Heard what sounded like a dumpster being dropped on the ground and dragged across the ground for 10 seconds,” another person wrote on X.

Loud bangs can be heard throughout the short video as the fire rages.

Stranded luggage sits just beside the sprawling entrance’s revolving doors.

The video also shows fire alarms going off inside the hotel as the blaze spread throughout the vehicle.

An ambulance and multiple cop cars were seen racing to the hotel, located just off the main world-famous Las Vegas Strip.

Footage shared on X showed people standing in a parking lot near the hotel after being evacuated.

Fashion Show Drive has been shut down while officials tend to the scene.

The Trump Hotel released a statement on social media acknowledging the incident that was also shared by Eric Trump, the Executive Vice President of the Trump Organization.

“Earlier today a reported electric vehicle fire occurred in the porte cochère of Trump Las Vegas. The safety & well-being of our guests and staff remain our top priority. We extend our gratitude to the Las Vegas Fire Department and local law enforcement for their swift response,” the statement read.

The U.S. Sun has reached out to Tesla and the hotel for comment.

MUSK & TRUMP TOGETHER

News of the blaze comes hours after President-elect Donald Trump – whose name adorns two other hotels in addition to the Las Vegas one – and Musk celebrated the New Year together in Florida.

Musk was one of hundreds of attendees at Trump’s star-studded Mar-a-Lago bash.

The Space X boss’ four-year-old son, X, was also in attendance.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/13196348/explosion-trump-international-hotel-las-vegas/

Russian gas supplies to EU states via Ukraine have ended after a five-year deal between Ukraine’s gas transit operator Naftogaz and Russia’s Gazprom expired.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier that his country would not allow Russia to “earn additional billions on our blood” and had given the EU a year to prepare.

The European Commission said the continent’s gas system was “resilient and flexible” and that it had sufficient capacity to cope with the end of transit via Ukraine.

Russia can still send gas to Hungary, as well as Turkey and Serbia, through the TurkStream pipeline across the Black Sea.

The stopping of the flow through Ukraine marks the end of an era of cheap Russian gas in the EU.

Slovakia is the most affected, while the European Commission says the impact will be limited, thanks to careful planning and alternative supplies.

However, the strategic and symbolic impact for the whole of Europe is enormous.

Russia has lost an important market but its president, Vladimir Putin, says EU countries will suffer most.

The EU has significantly reduced imports of gas from Russia since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but a number of eastern member states still depend largely on the supplies, making Russia about €5bn ($5.2bn; £4.2bn) a year.

Russian gas was less than 10% of the EU’s gas imports in 2023, according to the bloc. That figure was 40% in 2021.

But several EU members, including Slovakia and Austria, continue to import significant amounts of gas from Russia.

Austria’s energy regulator said it did not forecast any disruption as it had diversified sources and built up reserves.

But Ukraine’s decision has already caused serious tensions with Slovakia, which is now the main entry point of Russian gas into the EU and earned transit fees from piping the gas on to Austria, Hungary and Italy.

On Friday, Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico – who had just made a surprise visit to Moscow for talks with Putin – threatened to stop supplying electricity to Ukraine.

This prompted Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, to accuse Fico of helping Putin “fund the war and weaken Ukraine”.

“Fico is dragging Slovakia into Russia’s attempts to cause more suffering for Ukrainians,” the Ukrainian president said.

Poland has offered to support Kyiv in case Slovakia cuts off its electricity exports – supplies that are crucial to Ukraine, whose power plants come under regular attack from Russia.

Moldova – which is not part of the EU – could be seriously affected by the end of the transit agreement. It generates much of its electricity at a power station fuelled by Russian gas. It also supplied the Russia-backed breakaway region of Transnistria, a small sliver of land sandwiched between Moldova and Ukraine.

Moldova’s energy minister, Constantin Borosan, said his government had taken steps to ensure stable power supplies but called on citizens to save energy.

A 60-day state of emergency in the energy sector has been in place since mid-December.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4glyjx9m71o

At least 71 people died in Ethiopia when a truck packed with passengers plunged into a river, according to the spokesperson for the southern Sidama regional government and a statement.
The accident occurred in the Bona district, the regional communication bureau said in a statement issued late on Sunday.
Wosenyeleh Simion, spokesperson for the Sidama regional government, told Reuters on Monday at least 71 people had died, including 68 males and 3 females.

“Five are in a critical condition and taking treatment at Bona General Hospital,” he said.
In a statement late on Sunday the regional communication bureau had given the death toll as 60.

Wosenyeleh said the truck had missed a bridge and fell into a river and that the road had many bends.
Some of the passengers were returning from a wedding ceremony and some families had lost multiple members, he said, adding traffic police in the region had reported the truck was overloaded, which likely caused the accident.

No one can stop China’s “reunification” with Taiwan, Chinese President Xi Jinping said in his New Year’s speech on Dec 31, 2024, laying down a clear warning to what Beijing regards as pro-independence forces within and outside of the island of 23 million people.

In the past year, Beijing has stepped up military pressure near Taiwan, sending warships and planes almost daily into the waters and airspace around the island in what Taiwanese officials view as a creeping effort to “normalise” China’s military presence.

China regards democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory. But Taiwan’s government rejects Beijing’s claims and says only its people can decide their future and Beijing ought to respect the choice of the Taiwanese people.

“The people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family. No one can sever our family bonds, and no one can stop the historical trend of national reunification,” Mr Xi said, in a speech televised on China’s state broadcaster CCTV.

In his New Year’s speech in 2023, Mr Xi said China’s “reunification” with Taiwan is inevitable, and that people on both sides “should be bound by a common sense of purpose and share in the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”.

Tensions have remained high throughout the year in the sensitive Taiwan Strait, especially after Mr Lai Ching-te, deemed a “separatist” by Beijing, became the island’s latest president in May.

Earlier in December, China staged a large massing of naval forces around Taiwan and in the East and South China Seas after Mr Lai stopped over in Hawaii and the US territory of Guam on a Pacific trip criticised by Beijing.

Source: https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/xi-says-no-one-can-stop-chinas-reunification-with-taiwan

Ukraine’s leading mobile operator Kyivstar has signed an agreement with Elon Musk’s Starlink to introduce direct-to-cell satellite connectivity, Kyivstar’s parent company VEON said on Monday.
Direct-to-cell devices are connected to satellites equipped with modems that function like a cellphone tower, beaming phone signals from space directly to smartphones.
Kyivstar expects direct-to-cell services with messaging functionality to be operational in the fourth quarter of 2025, the telecoms group said in a joint statement. The operator will expand voice and data services in later stages.

Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.
SpaceX-owned Starlink, which also provides critical internet connectivity to war-torn Ukraine and its military, launched its first set of satellites with direct-to-cell capabilities earlier this year.

The satellite broadband firm has struck deals with local providers for direct-to-cell services in the U.S. and seven other countries, including Japan and New Zealand.

Ukraine will be one of the first countries in the world with direct-to-cell connectivity and the first conflict zone where Starlink will roll out this technology, according to its website.
Russia has ramped up its efforts to jam signals between Starlink satellites and ground terminals in Ukraine since 2022.
The agreement comes as Musk, Starlink’s owner, grows more engaged with the incoming Trump administration in the U.S. and its Ukraine strategy.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/starlink-roll-out-direct-to-cell-services-ukraine-2024-12-30/

A South Korean court gave authorities approval on Tuesday to arrest President Yoon Suk Yeol after he was impeached and suspended from power for imposing martial law, marking the first time that a sitting president of the country has faced arrest.
The Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) confirmed the Seoul Western District Court approved an arrest warrant requested by investigators examining Yoon’s short-lived imposition of martial law.

Yoon is facing investigation on allegations that he was the leader of an insurrection, one of the few criminal charges from which a South Korean president does not have immunity. Separately, his trial on impeachment is being heard at the Constitutional Court.
The arrest warrant for an incumbent president is unprecedented, and deepens the political crisis that has engulfed South Korea, Asia’s fourth-largest economy and a key U.S. ally.

Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who took over from Yoon as acting president, has also been impeached by parliament, which is dominated by the opposition.
Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok, who took over as acting president after Han’s impeachment, has been dealing with Sunday’s crash of Jeju Air flight 7C2216, which killed 179 people in the deadliest air disaster on South Korean soil.
The current arrest warrant is viable until Jan. 6, and once it is exercised, Yoon is expected to be held at the Seoul Detention Center, Yonhap news agency said, citing the CIO.

Yoon Kab-keun, a lawyer for the impeached president, said the arrest warrant was illegal and invalid because the CIO did not have the authority under South Korean law to request a warrant.
He said the president’s legal team will file for an injunction at the Constitutional Court to stop the warrant.
The district court issued the warrant due to the likelihood that Yoon will not respond to summons without a justifiable reason, and there being a substantial reason to suspect Yoon of a crime, Yonhap said. The court declined to comment.

It was unclear when or how the arrest warrant for Yoon will be carried out. South Korea’s presidential security service said in a statement on Tuesday that it will treat the arrest warrant according to due process.
The court also approved a search warrant for Yoon’s residence, the CIO said.
Previously, police tried but failed to successfully raid the presidential office as part of the investigation, due to the presidential security service blocking access.

SHORT-LIVED MARTIAL LAW

Yoon has failed to respond to investigators’ summons for questioning multiple times since the Dec. 3 martial law declaration. The announcement, an attempt to ban political activity and censor the media, was the first such order in South Korea since the 1980s.
That night, troops forced their way into the National Assembly building in Seoul but stood back when parliamentary aides sprayed them with fire extinguishers. Lawmakers rejected the martial law decision while protesters scuffled with police outside, and Yoon rescinded the order within hours.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korea-court-issues-arrest-warrant-president-yoon-yonhap-reports-2024-12-31/

On the table, unconscious and stretched out on a pillow, Joe Mangy looks deceptively peaceful. The koala’s watery, red-rimmed eyes are the only sign of the disease at war with his body.

Tubes snarl out of a mask covering his face as a vet tech listens to his chest with a stethoscope. He is not healing as well as they had hoped.

Eight days earlier, Joe Mangy – who is about two years old – was found wandering in the middle of a suburban road. Dazed and confused, eyes nearly glued shut with mucus, he was rushed here, to the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary’s hospital.

Enveloped by rainforest on Queensland’s Gold Coast, the park is full of koalas like this.

Outside the clinic, in a “Koala Rehab Centre” faintly perfumed by eucalyptus leaves, is a three-year-old recovering from a hysterectomy. “It saved her life… but she can’t reproduce,” the head vet Michael Pyne says.

Another male koala stares blankly through narrowed slits. His left tear duct is so inflamed his eyeball is barely visible.

This hospital is ground zero of a grim chlamydia epidemic which is killing thousands of koalas and making even more sterile, pushing the national icons to the brink of extinction.

But it’s also at the core of desperate bid to save them with a vaccine – frustrated efforts which, after over a decade, are still tied up in regulation and running out of both time and money.

Jimmy Carter, the earnest Georgia peanut farmer who as U.S. president struggled with a bad economy and the Iran hostage crisis but brokered peace between Israel and Egypt and later received the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, died at his home in Plains, Georgia, on Sunday. He was 100.
U.S. President Joe Biden directed that Jan. 9 will be a national day of mourning throughout the United States for Carter, the White House said in a statement.

“I call on the American people to assemble on that day in their respective places of worship, there to pay homage to the memory of President James Earl Carter,” Biden said.
Carter, a Democrat, became president in January 1977 after defeating incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford in the 1976 election. His one-term presidency was marked by the highs of the 1978 Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt, bringing some stability to the Middle East.

But it was also dogged by an economic recession, persistent unpopularity and the Iran hostage crisis that consumed his final 444 days in office. Carter ran for re-election in 1980 but was swept from office in a landslide as voters embraced Republican challenger Ronald Reagan, the former actor and California governor.
Carter lived longer than any U.S. president and, after leaving the White House, earned a reputation as a committed humanitarian. He was widely seen as a better former president than he was a president – a status he readily acknowledged.

World leaders and former U.S. presidents paid tribute to a man they praised as compassionate, humble and committed to peace in the Middle East.
“His significant role in achieving the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel will remain etched in the annals of history,” said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in a post on X.
The Carter Center said there will be public observances in Atlanta and Washington. These events will be followed by a private interment in Plains, it said.
Final arrangements for the former president’s state funeral are still pending, according to the center.
In recent years, Carter had experienced several health issues including melanoma that spread to his liver and brain. Carter decided to receive hospice care in February 2023 instead of undergoing additional medical intervention. His wife, Rosalynn Carter, died on Nov. 19, 2023, at age 96. He looked frail when he attended her memorial service and funeral in a wheelchair.
Carter left office profoundly unpopular but worked energetically for decades on humanitarian causes. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 in recognition of his “untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”
Carter had been a centrist as governor of Georgia with populist tendencies when he moved into the White House as the 39th U.S. president. He was a Washington outsider at a time when America was still reeling from the Watergate scandal that led Republican Richard Nixon to resign as president in 1974 and elevated Ford from vice president.
“I’m Jimmy Carter and I’m running for president. I will never lie to you,” Carter promised with an ear-to-ear smile.
Asked to assess his presidency, Carter said in a 1991 documentary: “The biggest failure we had was a political failure. I never was able to convince the American people that I was a forceful and strong leader.”
Despite his difficulties in office, Carter had few rivals for accomplishments as a former president. He gained global acclaim as a tireless human rights advocate, a voice for the disenfranchised and a leader in the fight against hunger and poverty, winning the respect that eluded him in the White House.
Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his efforts to promote human rights and resolve conflicts around the world, from Ethiopia and Eritrea to Bosnia and Haiti. His Carter Center in Atlanta sent international election-monitoring delegations to polls around the world.
A Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher since his teens, Carter brought a strong sense of morality to the presidency, speaking openly about his religious faith. He also sought to take some pomp out of an increasingly imperial presidency – walking, rather than riding in a limousine, in his 1977 inauguration parade.
The Middle East was the focus of Carter’s foreign policy. The 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, based on the 1978 Camp David accords, ended a state of war between the two neighbors.
Carter brought Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland for talks. Later, as the accords seemed to be unraveling, Carter saved the day by flying to Cairo and Jerusalem for personal shuttle diplomacy.
The treaty provided for Israeli withdrawal from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and establishment of diplomatic relations. Begin and Sadat each won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1978.
By the 1980 election, the overriding issues were double-digit inflation, interest rates that exceeded 20% and soaring gas prices, as well as the Iran hostage crisis that brought humiliation to America. These issues marred Carter’s presidency and undermined his chances of winning a second term.

HOSTAGE CRISIS

On Nov. 4, 1979, revolutionaries devoted to Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seized the Americans present and demanded the return of the ousted shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was backed by the United States and was being treated in a U.S. hospital.
The American public initially rallied behind Carter. But his support faded in April 1980 when a commando raid failed to rescue the hostages, with eight U.S. soldiers killed in an aircraft accident in the Iranian desert.

Carter’s final ignominy was that Iran held the 52 hostages until minutes after Reagan took his oath of office on Jan. 20, 1981, to replace Carter, then released the planes carrying them to freedom.
In another crisis, Carter protested the former Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by boycotting the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. He also asked the U.S. Senate to defer consideration of a major nuclear arms accord with Moscow.
Unswayed, the Soviets remained in Afghanistan for a decade.
Carter won narrow Senate approval in 1978 of a treaty to transfer the Panama Canal to the control of Panama despite critics who argued the waterway was vital to American security. He also completed negotiations on full U.S. ties with China.
Carter created two new U.S. Cabinet departments – education and energy. Amid high gas prices, he said America’s “energy crisis” was “the moral equivalent of war” and urged the country to embrace conservation. “Ours is the most wasteful nation on earth,” he told Americans in 1977.
In 1979, Carter delivered what became known as his “malaise” speech to the nation, although he never used that word.
“After listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can’t fix what’s wrong with America,” he said in his televised address.
“The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.”
As president, the strait-laced Carter was embarrassed by the behavior of his hard-drinking younger brother, Billy Carter, who had boasted: “I got a red neck, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.”

‘THERE YOU GO AGAIN’

Jimmy Carter withstood a challenge from Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination but was politically diminished heading into his general election battle against a vigorous Republican adversary.
Reagan, the conservative who projected an image of strength, kept Carter off balance during their debates before the November 1980 election.
Reagan dismissively told Carter, “There you go again,” when the Republican challenger felt the president had misrepresented Reagan’s views during one debate.
Carter lost the 1980 election to Reagan, who won 44 of the 50 states and amassed an Electoral College landslide.
James Earl Carter Jr. was born on Oct. 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, one of four children of a farmer and shopkeeper. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946, served in the nuclear submarine program and left to manage the family peanut farming business.
He married his wife, Rosalynn, in 1946, a union he called “the most important thing in my life.” They had three sons and a daughter.
Carter became a millionaire, a Georgia state legislator and Georgia’s governor from 1971 to 1975. He mounted an underdog bid for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination, and out-hustled his rivals for the right to face Ford in the general election.
With Walter Mondale as his vice presidential running mate, Carter was given a boost by a major Ford gaffe during one of their debates. Ford said that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration,” despite decades of just such domination.
Carter edged Ford in the election, even though Ford actually won more states – 27 to Carter’s 23.
Not all of Carter’s post-presidential work was appreciated. Former President George W. Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush, both Republicans, were said to have been displeased by Carter’s freelance diplomacy in Iraq and elsewhere.
In 2004, Carter called the Iraq war launched in 2003 by the younger Bush one of the most “gross and damaging mistakes our nation ever made.” He called George W. Bush’s administration “the worst in history” and said Vice President Dick Cheney was “a disaster for our country.”

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/jimmy-carter-former-us-president-nobel-peace-prize-recipient-dead-100-atlanta-2024-12-29/

Elon Musk has backed Germany’s right-wing Alternative for Germany party (AfD) in a guest opinion piece the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

The article, published online, prompted the commentary editor to resign in protest.

In the article, Musk expanded on his post on his social media platform X last week claiming that “only the AfD can save Germany”.

“The portrayal of the AfD as right-wing extremist is clearly false, considering that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka!

“Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please!”

He added: “The Alternative for Germany is the last spark of hope for this country.”

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has classified the AfD at the national level as a suspected extremism case since 2021.

Shortly after the piece was published online, the editor of the opinion section, Eva Marie Kogel, wrote on X that she had submitted her resignation, with a link to the commentary.

However, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief designate Jan Philipp Burgard and Ulf Poschardt, who takes over as publisher on 1 January, told Reuters: “Democracy and journalism thrive on freedom of expression.

“This includes dealing with polarising positions and classifying them journalistically.”

Underneath Musk’s commentary, the newspaper published a response by Burgard.

“Musk’s diagnosis is correct, but his therapeutic approach, that only the AfD can save Germany, is fatally false,” he wrote.

Burgard was referring to the AfD’s desire to leave the European Union and improving relations with Russia and China.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/musk-says-right-wing-afd-party-is-germanys-last-spark-of-hope-13280882

At least 96 people have been killed as a plane crash-landed at an airport in South Korea.

Rescuers are attempting to pull people from the wreckage of the plane after it veered off a runway at Muan International Airport and crashed into a wall, bursting into flames.

The plane, which was carrying 175 passengers and six crew members, was making a second attempt at a crash landing after its landing gear failed to open, local media reports.

Dozens of people remain missing as a local fire chief said that two crew members had been rescued.

Officials say a collision with a bird may have caused the malfunction, reports Yonhap News Agency.

A passenger texted a relative to say a bird was stuck in the wing of the plane, News1 reports.

Their final message was said to have been: “Should I say my last words?”

Weather conditions were also being looked into as a suspected cause of the crash.

Footage aired by YTN television showed the moment the plane slammed into the wall at the airport and burst into flames, after skidding off the runway without its landing gear deployed.

Further photos shared by local media showed smoke and flames engulfing much of the plane.

Lee Jeong-hyeon, chief of the Muan fire station, said rescue teams were searching for bodies scattered by the impact of the crash.

The plane was completely destroyed with only the tail recognisable among the wreckage, he added.

Officials said the fire has been extinguished and South Korea’s transport ministry said the incident happened at 9.03am local time on Sunday (shortly after midnight in the UK).

Jeju Air flight 7C2216, a Boeing 737-800 jet, was on its way back from Bangkok, Thailand, at the time of the crash.

Among those on board were 173 South Koreans and two Thai people, local media reports.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/at-least-62-killed-as-plane-crash-lands-at-south-korea-airport-13281013

“On Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu underwent an examination at Hadassah Hospital, where a urinary tract infection caused by benign prostatic hyperplasia was detected. Over the past few days, the prime minister has received antibiotic treatment, which successfully eradicated the infection,” the Prime Minister’s office announced on Saturday.

“Consequently, the prime minister will undergo a procedure tomorrow to remove the prostate. Full details will be provided later,” the statement said. “Despite this, Sunday’s cabinet meeting will take place as planned.”

Although Netanyahu’s health issues began on Wednesday, no notifications of the Prime Minister’s health have been issued until now.

Source : https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-835202

At least 62 people were killed when an airliner veered off the runway and erupted into a fireball as it slammed into a wall at South Korea’s Muan International Airport on Sunday, the national fire agency said.
Two people were rescued, the agency said.
The crash occurred as Jeju Air flight 7C2216, carrying 175 passengers and six crew on a flight from the Thai capital Bangkok, was landing shortly after 9 a.m. (0000 GMT) at the airport in the south of the country, South Korea’s transport ministry said.

The ministry did not confirm the reports of casualties.
At least 58 bodies have been recovered but that number is not final, another fire official told Reuters.
Two people were found alive and rescue operations were under way, a Muan fire official said. Yonhap news agency said three people had been rescued.
Authorities were working to rescue people in the tail section, an airport official told Reuters shortly after the crash.

Video shared by local media showed the twin-engine aircraft skidding down the runway with no apparent landing gear before slamming into a wall in an explosion of flame and debris. Other photos showed smoke and fire engulfing parts of the plane.
Yonhap cited airport authorities as saying the landing gear may have malfunctioned due to a bird strike.
A passenger texted a relative to say a bird was stuck in the wing, agency News1 reported. The person’s final message was, “Should I say my last words?”

Bird strike is among several theories that have not been verified, an official from the transport ministry’s aviation department said, adding that the investigation was ongoing.
The passengers included two Thai nationals and the rest are believed to be South Koreans, according to the transportation ministry.
The plane was a Boeing 737-800 jet operated by Jeju Air, which was seeking details of the accident, including its casualties and cause, an airline spokesperson said.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/plane-drives-off-runway-crashes-airport-south-korea-yonhap-reports-2024-12-29/

Azerbaijan says its initial findings are that an “external impact” caused the crash in Kazakhstan, with “the type of weapon used” being investigated further.

Russian air defences may have shot down an Azerbaijan Airlines flight after misidentifying it, according to US military sources.

Two unnamed officials who spoke to Sky News’ US partner NBC News said America had intelligence indicating Russia may have believed the flight was a drone and engaged its air defences.

It added that this was down, in part, due to the plane’s irregular flight pattern and altitude.

The report comes after US national security spokesperson John Kirby said on Friday that Washington had “seen some early indications that would certainly point to the possibility that this jet was brought down by Russian air defence systems”.

He refused to elaborate, citing an ongoing investigation.

The plane had been flying from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, on Christmas Day.

During its flight, it turned toward Kazakhstan and later crashed around two miles from Aktau while making an attempt to land after flying east across the Caspian Sea.

The crash killed 38 people and left all of the 29 survivors injured.

Azerbaijan observed a national day of mourning after the incident – as footage from inside the aircraft emerged.

Azerbaijan’s transport minister Rashad Nabiyev told the country’s media that “preliminary conclusions by experts point at external impact” and witness testimony did as well.

He added: “The type of weapon used in the impact will be determined during the probe.”

Azerbaijan Airlines has since suspended flights to a number of Russian cities.

A spokesperson for the Kremlin declined to comment on the crash, saying it would be up to investigators to determine the cause.

Dmitry Peskov said: “The air incident is being investigated, and we don’t believe we have the right to make any assessments until the conclusions are made as a result of the investigation.”

The crash was said to have taken place during a Ukrainian drone attack.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blamed Russia in a post on social media.

‘As if someone hit me with an axe’

Passengers and crew who survived the crash told Azerbaijani media that they heard loud noises as the aircraft was circling over Grozny.

Aydan Rahimli, a flight attendant, said that after one noise oxygen masks were automatically released and she went to perform first aid on a colleague, Zulfugar Asadov, and then heard another bang.

Mr Asadov said the noises sounded like something hitting the plane from outside.

Shortly afterwards, he sustained a sudden injury like a “deep wound, the arm was lacerated as if someone hit me in the arm with an axe,” he said.

Two other survivors described their experiences on the flight.

Jerova Salihat told Azerbaijani television that “something exploded” near her leg and Vafa Shabanova said there had been “two explosions in the sky, and an hour and a half later the plane crashed to the ground.”

If proven the plane crashed after being hit by Russian air defences, it would be the second deadly aviation incident linked to the Kremlin’s conflict with Ukraine.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/russia-may-have-shot-down-passenger-jet-after-misidentifying-it-us-intelligence-suggests-13280690

Finland has seized an oil tanker on suspicion it carried out the sabotage of undersea cables.

Two Finnish border guard officials stand on the deck of Eagle S after taking control of it. Pic: AP/Finnish Border GuardNATO has said it will enhance its military presence in the Baltic Sea after undersea power and internet cables were cut between Estonia and Finland.

The bloc’s secretary general Mark Rutte said he had spoken to Finland’s President Alexander Stubb about the “possible sabotage”, adding: “NATO will enhance its military presence in the Baltic Sea”.

An undersea power cable and four internet cables were cut or damaged this week.

On Thursday, Finland seized a ship, Eagle S, carrying Russian oil on suspicion of causing an outage of the Estlink 2 undersea power cable and of disrupting fibreoptic lines.

Meanwhile, Estonia has launched a naval operation to protect another electricity link, Estlink 1.

The country’s foreign minister Margus Tsahkna said: “If there is a threat to the critical undersea infrastructure in our region, there will also be a response”.

He added that such incidents had become so frequent it was hard to believe they were all caused by accidents.

The 658 megawatt (MW) Estlink 2 outage began at midday on Wednesday, leaving just the 358MW Estlink 1 connecting Finland and Estonia, grid operators said.

Fingrid said that Estlink 2 might not be operational again for “several months”.

There have been a string of outages of power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The Kremlin said Finland’s seizure of the ship was of little concern to it and it has denied involvement in similar incidents in the past.

‘Grave sabotage’

Police in Finland are investigating what they have called “grave sabotage” to the undersea power and internet cables.

The Eagle S oil tanker is alleged to belong to a so-called shadow fleet of ageing tankers that seek to evade sanctions against Russia.

Coastguard crew boarded the ship, registered in the Cook Islands, and sailed it to Finnish waters.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/nato-to-boost-baltic-sea-presence-after-suspected-undersea-cable-sabotage-13280694

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday its analysis of samples from the first severe case of bird flu in the country last week showed mutations not seen in samples from an infected backyard flock on the patient’s property.
The CDC said the patient’s sample showed mutations in the hemagglutinin (HA) gene, the part of the virus that plays a key role in it attaching to host cells.

The health body said the risk to the general public from the outbreak has not changed and remains low.

Last week, the United States reported its first severe case of the virus, in a Louisiana resident above the age of 65, who was suffering from severe respiratory illness.
The patient was infected with the D1.1 genotype of the virus that was recently detected in wild birds and poultry in the United States, and not the B3.13 genotype detected in dairy cows, human cases and some poultry in multiple states.

The mutations seen in the patient are rare but have been reported in some cases in other countries and most often during severe infections. One of the mutations was also seen in another severe case from British Columbia, Canada.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/bird-flu-virus-shows-mutations-first-severe-human-case-us-cdc-says-2024-12-26/

Mark Zuckerberg dismissed reports that he is building a 5,000-square-foot “Doomsday bunker” underneath a $270 million compound in Hawaii — insisting instead that it’s just a “little shelter.”

The 40-year-old tech tycoon was asked during a Dec. 19 interview with Bloomberg about rumors that he is constructing an underground facility beneath his 1,400-acre home on the island of Kauai, one of the most northern islands in the Northern Pacific archipelago.

“No, I think that’s just like a little shelter. It’s like a basement,” Zuckerberg, the third wealthiest person in the world behind Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, told Bloomberg’s Emily Chang.

Several wealthy individuals have been rumored to have constructed vast tunnels and underground networks in preparation for potential disaster, including PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Tesla CEO Musk and disgraced rapper Kanye “Ye” West.

Zuckerberg, who as of Thursday boasted a net worth valued by Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $215 billion, has insisted that the aim of the ranch is to raise “world-class” cattle on beer and macadamia nuts in order to “create some of the highest quality beef in the world.”

In December of last year, Wired reported that Zuckerberg was in the process of constructing Koolau Ranch, a 1,400-acre compound that includes a 5,000-square-foot underground shelter as well as more than a dozen buildings with at least 30 bedrooms and 30 bathrooms in total.

The shelter alone is about the size of an NBA basketball court and more than twice the size of the average private family home in the US, according to the report.

The ranch will have it own energy and food supplies, according to the Wired report, which noted that the locals on the island with a population of about 73,000 people were speculating about what the project will entail.

The centerpiece of the project is two mansions that boast total floor area that is about the size of a football field — 57,000 square feet, according to the report.

The two mansions will reportedly be linked together by a tunnel that branches off into the underground facility.

Each of the dozen or so buildings that include guest houses and operations facilities will be connected by rope bridges that allow visitors to cross from one building to the next while making stops at 11 disk-shaped treehouses.

One of the buildings is reportedly going to be equipped with a full-size gym, pools, sauna, a hot tub, a cold plunge and a tennis court, according to WIRED and Hawaii News Now.

The property, which is likely to be one of the most expensive in the world, is also said to include several elevators, offices, conference rooms and an industrial-sized kitchen.

Unconfirmed reports indicate that the shelter will have a “blast-resistant door” made of metal and filled in with concrete as well as a living space, a mechanical room and an escape hatch that can be accessed via a ladder.

The Zuckerbergs are also reported to have installed some 20 security cameras just for one of the buildings on the ranch alone, according to WIRED.

The compound’s doors are said to be keypad-operated or soundproofed while doors to the library are so-called “blind doors” which are designed to imitate the design of the surrounding walls, according to WIRED.

Planning documents obtained by WIRED showed that the compound will be self-sufficient as it will include its own water tank that measures 55 feet in diameter and 18 feet tall and is powered by a pump system.

The ranch already produces its own food thanks to cattle and horses as well as a nursery, an organic ginger farm and a turmeric farm nearby.

Source : https://nypost.com/2024/12/26/business/mark-zuckerberg-denies-doomsday-bunker-under-270m-hawaii-mansion/

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia made a “conscious choice” by launching a major overnight attack on his country’s energy infrastructure on Christmas Day.

Ukraine’s air force said it had detected 184 missiles and drones, but many were shot down or missed their targets.

It said there were casualties from the strikes but gave no figures.

Moscow confirmed the attack and claimed that its goal had been achieved.

The attack led to power cuts across the country, including in the capital Kyiv, where some residents sheltered in metro stations.

Russia’s defence confirmed its forces had carried out a “massive strike” on “critical” energy facilities in Ukraine.

It added that the strike had been a success and all targets were hit.

This was the 13th major attack on Ukraine’s energy sector this year, the country’s largest private energy company, DTEK, said.

Responding to the latest Russian strikes, US President Joe Biden said: “The purpose of this outrageous attack was to cut off the Ukrainian people’s access to heat and electricity during winter and to jeopardise the safety of its grid.”

Biden – who will be succeeded by Donald Trump on 20 January – also asked the US defence department to continue delivering weapons to Ukraine.

In September, President Zelensky said 80% of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure had been destroyed by Russian bombs.

Responding to Wednesday’s attacks, Zelensky said the timing had been a “conscious choice”.

He called them “inhumane” and said work was being done to restore power as soon as possible.

“Russian evil will not break Ukraine and will not distort Christmas”, he added.

This is the second time Ukraine has celebrated Christmas Day on 25 December. It traditionally followed the Julian calendar, like Russia, where Christmas falls on 7 January.

Still, a sizeable number of Orthodox believers in the country will be celebrating Christmas as before.

In the north-eastern city of Kharkiv – Ukraine’s second largest – the attack left half a million people without water, electricity or heating in bitterly cold temperatures, the regional head said.

Ukrainians across the country woke up to the sound of air raid alarms, and were told to shelter as the attacks unfolded in the morning.

Kyiv residents sheltered in metro stations, with one local telling Reuters news agency that she felt angry and frightened.

“Of course, I want to be at home and celebrate, but we had to shelter because it’s scary to stay at home,” Sofiia Lytvynenko said.

Another Kyiv resident, Oleksandra, said that despite the attack, “Christmas is not cancelled”.

She told Reuters that she planned to enjoy traditional Ukrainian food and drink with family and friends after it is safe to leave the shelter.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgrn2xxqeno

An international investigation has begun into how an Embraer 190 passenger jet with 67 people onboard crashed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people but leaving 29 survivors

Azerbaijan Airlines flight J28243, which had been flying from Baku to Grozny, the capital of Russia‘s Chechnya, crash-landed instead at Aktau airport.

Unverified video footage of the crash showed the aircraft descending – apparently with control problems – and hitting the ground where it burst into flames.

Children were among the survivors being treated at a nearby hospital, authorities said in a statement.

Some of the videos posted on social media showed survivors dragging fellow passengers away from the wreckage.

Russia’s aviation watchdog a preliminary investigation indicated the pilot decided to change landing site after “a collision with birds”.

But Reuters news agency noted that the plane had diverted from an area of Russia that Moscow has recently defended against Ukrainian drone attacks.

The news agency quoted Richard Aboulafia, an analyst at consultancy AeroDynamic Advisory, who also raised doubt over a bird strike.

“You can lose control of the plane, but you don’t fly wildly off course as a consequence,” he said.

However, Azeri president Ilham Aliyev said that it was too soon to speculate on the reasons behind the crash, and said bad weather in Grozny had forced the flight to divert.

Mr Aliyev said: “The information provided to me is that the plane changed its course between Baku and Grozny due to worsening weather conditions and headed to Aktau airport, where it crashed upon landing.”

Commercial aviation-tracking websites monitored the flight as it flew north on its scheduled route along the west coast before it disappeared. It then reappeared on the east coast, where it circled near Aktau airport before crashing into the beach.

Kazakh officials said those aboard the plane included 42 Azerbaijani citizens, 16 Russian nationals, six Kazakhs and three Kyrgyzstan nationals. Five of the 67 were crew.

Transport prosecutor, Timur Suleimenov, told a briefing that the plane’s black box, which contains flight data to help determine the cause of a crash, had been found, Interfax reported.

When the astronauts stranded at the International Space Station were pictured wearing Santa hats next to a tiny Christmas tree this week, internet commenters had questions.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, after all, launched in June on what was supposed to be an eight-day mission to space — but they’ve been stranded ever since thanks to problems with the Boeing Starliner capsule that was meant to be their ride home.

“Did they take Santa hats with them before they launched,” one commenter blithely asked on X. “Or did they knit them while they are there?”

Another commenter chimed in: “These the same guys who went up for an 8-day mission in June?” A third commenter joked “The Gilligan’s Island tune is playing.”

Still others seemed to think that the presence of Christmas decorations were a sign of a grand conspiracy, and that the astronauts aren’t really stuck in space. “It’s all one big show,” writes one commenter. Another X user claimed that the astronauts floating in space were actually in a film studio somewhere.

However, the explanation is pretty simple — and, in fact, rather festive.

The Post has confirmed with NASA that the Santa hats — as well as other decorations, special presents for the ISS crew members and Christmas meals — were part of a 3-ton SpaceX delivery in late November.

The International Space Station is replenished with supplies several times each year.

The food delivery included ham, turkey, potatoes, vegetables, and even pies and cookies. Other mission-specific and scientific items were part of the delivery. And with some of the extra space, NASA sent a few festive items for the astronauts, including the hats and Christmas tree.

In a video posted online, Williams wished everyone on Earth a happy holiday season.

“It’s a great time up here, we get to spend it with all of our ‘family’ on the International Space Station,” she said. “There are seven of us up here and so we’re going to get to enjoy company together.”

“One of the best things that I like about Christmas is the preparation and just getting ready, the anticipation, everybody getting together and preparing stuff and just getting ready for the holiday,” she continued.

It’s not Williams’ first Christmas in space: she was part of a planned mission in 2006 that was scheduled during the yuletide.

But this Christmas, Williams and fellow astronaut Butch Wilmore are supposed to be home with their families by now.

The two astronauts blasted off on June 5 on a Boeing Starliner capsule destined for the ISS. They were initially expected to be in orbit for about a week.

Source : https://nypost.com/2024/12/24/us-news/how-astronauts-stranded-on-the-international-space-station-got-santa-hats/

It’s a simple but brutal equation: The number of people going hungry or otherwise struggling around the world is rising, while the amount of money the world’s wealthiest nations are contributing toward helping them is dropping.
The result: The United Nations says that, at best, it will be able to raise enough money to help about 60% of the 307 million people it predicts will need humanitarian aid next year. That means at least 117 million people won’t get food or other assistance in 2025.

The U.N. also will end 2024 having raised about 46% of the $49.6 billion it sought for humanitarian aid across the globe, its own data shows. It’s the second year in a row the world body has raised less than half of what it sought. The shortfall has forced humanitarian agencies to make agonizing decisions, such as slashing rations for the hungry and cutting the number of people eligible for aid.
The consequences are being felt in places like Syria, where the World Food Program (WFP), the U.N.’s main food distributor, used to feed 6 million people. Eyeing its projections for aid donations earlier this year, the WFP cut the number it hoped to help there to about 1 million people, said Rania Dagash-Kamara, the organization’s assistant executive director for partnerships and resource mobilization.

Dagash-Kamara visited the WFP’s Syria staff in March. “Their line was, ‘We are at this point taking from the hungry to feed the starving,’” she said in an interview.
U.N. officials see few reasons for optimism at a time of widespread conflict, political unrest and extreme weather, all factors that stoke famine. “We have been forced to scale back appeals to those in most dire need,” Tom Fletcher, U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, told Reuters.

The funding gap

Conflict, extreme weather and soaring inflation have left growing numbers of people in need of humanitarian aid. Also increasing is the gap between the funding the U.N. seeks for humanitarian relief and the amount donors actually provide.

Financial pressures and shifting domestic politics are reshaping some wealthy nations’ decisions about where and how much to give. One of the U.N.’s largest donors – Germany – already shaved $500 million in funding from 2023 to 2024 as part of general belt tightening. The country’s cabinet has recommended another $1 billion reduction in humanitarian aid for 2025. A new parliament will decide next year’s spending plan after the federal election in February.

Humanitarian organizations also are watching to see what U.S. President-elect Donald Trump proposes after he begins his second term in January.
Trump advisers have not said how he will approach humanitarian aid, but he sought to slash U.S. funding in his first term. And he has hired advisers who say there is room for cuts in foreign aid.
The U.S. plays the leading role in preventing and combating starvation across the world. It provided $64.5 billion in humanitarian aid over the last five years. That was at least 38% of the total such contributions recorded by the U.N.

SHARING THE WEALTH

The majority of humanitarian funding comes from just three wealthy donors: the U.S., Germany and the European Commission. They provided 58% of the $170 billion recorded by the U.N. in response to crises from 2020 to 2024.
Three other powers – China, Russia and India – collectively contributed less than 1% of U.N.-tracked humanitarian funding over the same period, according to a Reuters review of U.N. contributions data.
The inability to close the funding gap is one of the major reasons the global system for tackling hunger and preventing famine is under enormous strain. The lack of adequate funding – coupled with the logistical hurdles of assessing need and delivering food aid in conflict zones, where many of the worst hunger crises exist – is taxing efforts to get enough aid to the starving. Almost 282 million people in 59 countries and territories were facing high levels of acute food insecurity in 2023. Reuters is documenting the global hunger-relief crisis in a series of reports, including from hard-hit Sudan, Myanmar and Afghanistan.
The failure of major nations to pull their weight in funding for global initiatives has been a persistent Trump complaint. Project 2025, a set of policy proposals drawn up by Trump backers for his second term, calls on humanitarian agencies to work harder to collect more funding from other donors and says this should be a condition for additional U.S. aid.
On the campaign trail, Trump tried to distance himself from the controversial Project 2025 blueprint. But after winning the election, he chose one of its key architects, Russell Vought, to run the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, a powerful body that helps decide presidential priorities and how to pay for them. For secretary of state, the top U.S. diplomat, he tapped Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who has a record of supporting foreign aid.

Project 2025 makes particular note of conflict – the very factor driving most of today’s worst hunger crises.
“Humanitarian aid is sustaining war economies, creating financial incentives for warring parties to continue fighting, discouraging governments from reforming, and propping up malign regimes,” the blueprint says. It calls for deep cuts in international disaster aid by ending programs in places controlled by “malign actors.”
Billionaire Elon Musk has been tapped by Trump to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a new body that will examine waste in government spending. Musk said this month on his social media platform, X, that DOGE would look at foreign aid.
The aid cuts Trump sought in his first term didn’t pass Congress, which controls such spending. Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and close Trump ally on many issues, will chair the Senate committee that oversees the budget. In 2019, he called “insane” and “short-sighted” a Trump proposal to cut the budget for foreign aid and diplomacy by 23%.
Graham, Vought, Rubio and Musk did not respond to questions for this report.

OLYMPICS AND SPACESHIPS

So many people have been hungry in so many places for so long that humanitarian agencies say fatigue has set in among donors. Donors receive appeal after appeal for help, yet have limits on what they can give. This has led to growing frustration with major countries they view as not doing their share to help.
Jan Egeland was U.N. humanitarian chief from 2003 to 2006 and now heads the Norwegian Refugee Council, a nongovernmental relief group. Egeland said it is “crazy” that a tiny country like Norway is among the top funders of humanitarian aid. With a 2023 gross national income (GNI) less than 2% the size of America’s, Norway ranked seventh among governments who gave to the U.N. that year, according to a Reuters review of U.N. aid data. It provided more than $1 billion.
Two of the five biggest economies – China and India – gave a tiny fraction as much.
China ranked 32nd among governments in 2023, contributing $11.5 million in humanitarian aid. It has the world’s second-largest GNI.
India ranked 35th that year, with $6.4 million in humanitarian aid. It has the fifth-largest GNI.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/global-hunger-crisis-deepens-major-nations-skimp-aid-2024-12-24/

South Korean researchers have developed a lightweight wearable robot that can walk up to paraplegic users and lock itself onto them, enabling them to walk, manoeuvre obstacles and climb staircases.
The Exoskeleton Laboratory team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) said their goal is to create a robot that seamlessly integrates into the daily lives of individuals with disabilities.

Kim Seung-hwan, who is himself a paraplegic and part of the KAIST team, demonstrated the prototype which helped him walk at a speed of 3.2 kph (2 mph), climb a flight of stairs and take sideways steps to slide into a bench.
“It can approach me wherever I am, even when I’m sitting in a wheelchair, and be worn to help me stand up, which is one of its most distinct features,” Kim said.
The powered exoskeleton, named WalkON Suit F1, features aluminium and titanium composition to weigh in at 50 kg (110 lb), and is powered by 12 electronic motors that simulate the movements of human joints while walking.

Park Jeong-su, another member of the KAIST team, said he was inspired by the movie “Iron Man”. “After watching Iron Man, I thought it would be great if I can help people with a robot in real life.”
To ensure the user’s balance while walking, the robot is equipped with sensors on its soles and in the upper body that monitor 1,000 signals per second and anticipate the user’s intended movements.
Lenses on the front of the robot work as eyes which analyse its surroundings, identify the height of stairs and detect obstacles to compensate for the lack of sensory ability of users with complete paraplegia, Park said.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/technology/south-korean-team-develops-iron-man-robot-that-helps-paraplegics-walk-2024-12-23/

FORMER President Bill Clinton has been rushed to the hospital, it has been confirmed.

Clinton, 78, is undergoing medical tests at Georgetown University Medical Centre in Washington DC, his former deputy chief of staff has said.

It is understood he has developed a fever, but the situation is “not an emergency”.

A spokesperson for Clinton wrote on social media: “President Clinton was admitted to Georgetown University Medical Center this afternoon for testing and observation.

“He remains in good spirits and deeply appreciates the excellent care he is receiving.”

Clinton, a Democrat who served two terms as president from January 1993 until January 2001, addressed the party’s National Convention (DNC) in Chicago this summer.

He campaigned ahead of November’s election for the unsuccessful White House bid of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

Clinton shocked his supporters during his speech with his older appearance and hoarse voice on day three of the DNC.

He spoke into the microphone with a dominant tone, reverberating throughout the stadium.

But despite the power in his voice, there was a hoarse, scratchy quality that was hard to ignore for some viewers.

Some wondered if Clinton was sick — when President Joe Biden had displayed a raspy voice at June’s presidential debate against Trump, it turned out he had Covid.

“Does Bill Clinton have Covid?” an X user asked. “Why tf does he sound like that?”

Another person called it “jarring” to see Clinton, 78, in old age “with his voice weakened.”

“Bill Clinton does not sound good,” a third person wrote.

“Hasn’t for a while, sounding older than he is, and he’s not exactly young these days.”

The 42nd president addressed the convention to cast his support for Vice President Kamala Harris but his supporters were focused on the sound of his voice rather than his words.

In the years since Clinton left the White House, he’s faced some health scares.

In 2004, he underwent quadruple bypass surgery after experiencing prolonged chest pains and shortness of breath.

Clinton returned to the hospital for surgery for a partially collapsed lung in 2005, and in 2010 he had a pair of stents implanted in a coronary artery.

Clinton responded by embracing a largely vegan diet that saw him lose weight and report improved health.

In 2021, the former president was hospitalized for six days in California while being treated for an infection that was unrelated to COVID-19, when the pandemic was still near its height.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/13151644/bill-clinton-hospitalized-undergoing-testing/

ANGRY mobs of protesters have clashed with cops in Germany in the wake of the Magdeburg Christmas market massacre.

People stormed through the city following the arrest of a refugee Saudi doctor who is suspected of killing four women and a nine-year-old boy in the rampage.

The protest groups quickly formed late last night with around 1,000 demonstrators marching through the capital of Saxony-Anhalt.

A giant banner with the word “remigration” scrawled across it led the march as participants demanded mass deportations.

Many of them could be heard shouting: “Anyone who doesn’t love Germany should leave Germany.”

Others made demands to “take back” their “homeland”.

Across the evening’s protests, a few minor fights broke out as people brawled with cops.

One image showed a man being detained by riot police who had kept a close eye on those roaming the streets.

The people involved were described as right-wing extremists and hooligans, by German outlet Bild.

Nine-year-old André Gleißner and four women aged 45, 52, 67 and 75 all died in the fatal car attack.

Over 205 are said to be still injured with dozens of them in a serious condition, according to officials.

There were premature claims that suspect Taleb al-Abdulmohsen was an Islamist terrorist before it was later revealed that he had anti-Islamic views.

Cops are yet to release a possible motive but have revealed the man is a 50-year-old Saudi doctor.

The driver fled the Middle East to Germany in 2006 and was granted refugee status some years later, officials added.

It was then discovered by local media that al-Abdulmohsen was actually an ex-Muslim, according to his own social media posts.

Other troubling posts uncovered appeared to show how he disliked how Germany was leading the “Islamisation of Europe”.

He is also believed to be a supporter of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) movement.

German interior minister Nancy Faeser later labelled the suspect Islamophobic.

As prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens believes the motive for the attack may be “dissatisfaction with the treatment of refugees from Saudi Arabia and how they are being treated in Germany”.

The AfD have called for a major rally to be held soon with co-leader Tino Chrupalla telling Interior Minister Nancy Faeser they demand to feel safe in public places.

She told media at the makeshift memorial site for the victims: “I am now demanding answers from the interior minister.

“What is actually going on here in this country? We put up with it week after week, we put up with attacks, we put up with murders of our own people.”

Germany has been rocked by the surging far-right support in recent months.

Many of the groups claim the issues revolve around ex-chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 “open door” policy.

This saw over a million asylum seekers cross into Germany and stay in the country.

Social media posts by al-Abdulmohsen even reference Merkel and the plan as he wished she would be jailed for life over it.

Despite the protests, thousands more came together to celebrate the lives of the victims and pay their respects.

Mourners, government officials and emergency service workers all joined up at a moving memorial service at Magdeburg Cathedral.

Candles were lit in solidarity as hundreds of flowers and cuddly toys were laid outside in a makeshift mural.

The touching moments came hours before the first victim was named.

Nine-year-old André Gleißner was pictured as his mum led the tributes for her “little teddy bear”.

More than £41,000 has been raised in just two days in a GoFundMe for the little boy.

Four other women aged 45, 52, 67 and 75 were also killed.

Officials are still fearing the number of deaths could rise with 41 of those injured still in serious condition.

The doctor was hauled into court by armed cops last night and now faces five murder charges.

Along with the five counts of murder, al-Abdulmohsen is also being investigated over 205 counts of suspected attempted murder and inflicting grievous bodily harm, prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens said.

Source : https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/32433108/right-wing-protesters-clash-german-cops-saudi-doctor/

Winter is hitting the Gaza Strip and many of the nearly 2 million Palestinians displaced by the devastating 14-month war with Israel are struggling to protect themselves from the wind, cold and rain.

There is a shortage of blankets and warm clothing, little wood for fires, and the tents and patched-together tarps families are living in have grown increasingly threadbare after months of heavy use, according to aid workers and residents.

Shadia Aiyada, who was displaced from the southern city of Rafah to the coastal area of Muwasi, has only one blanket and a hot water bottle to keep her eight children from shivering inside their fragile tent.

“We get scared every time we learn from the weather forecast that rainy and windy days are coming up because our tents are lifted with the wind. We fear that strong windy weather would knock out our tents one day while we’re inside,” she said.

With nighttime temperatures that can drop into the 40s (the mid-to-high single digits Celsius), Aiyada fears that her kids will get sick without warm clothing.

When they fled their home, her children only had their summer clothes, she said. They have been forced to borrow some from relatives and friends to keep warm.

The United Nations warns of people living in precarious makeshift shelters that might not survive the winter. At least 945,000 people need winterization supplies, which have become prohibitively expensive in Gaza, the U.N. said in an update Tuesday. The U.N. also fears infectious disease, which spiked last winter, will climb again amid rising malnutrition.

The U.N. Agency for Palestinian Refugees, known as UNRWA, has been planning all year for winter in Gaza, but the aid it was able to get into the territory is “not even close to being enough for people,” said Louise Wateridge, an agency spokeswoman.

UNRWA distributed 6,000 tents over the past four weeks in northern Gaza but was unable to get them to other parts of the Strip, including areas where there has been fighting. About 22,000 tents have been stuck in Jordan and 600,000 blankets and 33 truckloads of mattresses have been sitting in Egypt since the summer because the agency doesn’t have Israeli approval or a safe route to bring them into Gaza and because it had to prioritize desperately needed food aid, Wateridge said.

Many of the mattresses and blankets have since been looted or destroyed by the weather and rodents, she said.

The International Rescue Committee is struggling to bring in children’s winter clothing because there “are a lot of approvals to get from relevant authorities,” said Dionne Wong, the organization’s deputy director of programs for the occupied Palestinian territories.

The ability for Palestinians to prepare for winter is essentially very limited

“The ability for Palestinians to prepare for winter is essentially very limited,” Wong said.

The Israeli government agency responsible for coordinating aid shipments into Gaza said in a statement that Israel has worked for months with international organizations to prepare Gaza for the winter, including facilitating the shipment of heaters, warm clothing, tents and blankets into the territory. The agency also said Israel does not prevent the transfer of aid from Jordan.

More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry’s count doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants, but it has said more than half of the fatalities are women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The war was sparked by Hamas’ October 2023 attack on southern Israel, where the militant group killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages in Gaza.

Negotiators say Israel and Hamas are inching toward a ceasefire deal, which would include a surge in aid into the territory.

For now, the winter clothing for sale in Gaza’s markets is far too expensive for most people to afford, residents and aid workers said.

Reda Abu Zarada, 50, who was displaced from northern Gaza with her family, said the adults sleep with the children in their arms to keep them warm inside their tent.

I’m scared of waking up one day to find one of the children frozen to death.

“Rats walk on us at night because we don’t have doors and tents are torn. The blankets don’t keep us warm. We feel frost coming out from the ground. We wake up freezing in the morning,” she said. “I’m scared of waking up one day to find one of the children frozen to death.”

On Thursday night, she fought through knee pain exacerbated by cold weather to fry zucchini over a fire made of paper and cardboard scraps outside their tent. She hoped the small meal would warm the children before bed.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/gaza-winter-palestinians-aid-israel-24fe23c8ae2743294c169cff4a1431d3

It has been an extraordinary year for America’s richest billionaires. The US economy has grown by around 3 per cent in 2024, but their fortunes have shot up by far more than that.

Here, in reverse order, is a rundown of who has made the most from a rally in public (and private) markets that may soon unwind.

Together these ten entrants made almost as much as the US government spends on defense each year ($850bn), which puts that astronomical yearly budget into perspective.

Marginal gains
10. Michael Dell—founder, Dell: $14 billion
Dell’s eponymous company, best known as a maker of PCs, slid out of relevance after an early tech heyday.

It has been reborn as an infrastructural giant of the AI age. Its machines are part of the world’s most powerful supercomputer, built by Elon Musk earlier this year.

The stock has popped by 55 percent year. That’s only a jump of $29 billion, but Dell owns around half the company. Cue a recent Christopher Mims feature in The Journal.

9. Larry Page and Sergei Brin—founders, Alphabet: $19-20 billion
Google’s founders stepped back five years ago from running Alphabet, the successor company to Google.

But they retain material stakes in the company they founded in the late 1990s (with early funding from Jeff Bezos). Page owns a fraction over 3 percent, Brin a fraction less.

That’s useful when the company you own increases in value by $650 billion, as Alphabet has so far this year.

The pair retain control of Google through super-voting shares that give them 51 percent of the company.

8. Steve Ballmer—former CEO, Microsoft: $20 billion
Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates’ former number two at Microsoft, became the company’s CEO in 2000, serving until 2014.

His tenure was a masterclass in failure. The company’s stock fell by a third over those 14 years as other tech companies—Apple, Amazon, Google, and later Facebook—displaced the biggest name in tech from the 1990s.

The company’s slide into irrelevance was arrested by a new CEO, Satya Nadella, who made Microsoft the most valuable company in the world. (It’s now third.)

That was fortunate for Ballmer, who retains 4.5 percent of the company. That stock just funded a new stadium for the LA Clippers, where Ballmer can always be found.

7. Warren Buffett—chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathway: $29 billion
The world’s most famous investor is currently famed in markets for holding record amounts of cash after recent stock sales.

He sold two-thirds of a major position in Apple, the world’s most valuable company, which he started buying in 2016.

He is now sitting on $325 million in cash, which is almost 30 per cent of the value of Berkshire Hathway, the investment vehicle Buffett runs (he owns 15 percent of its stock).

Berkshire continues to far well against the market, unlike the vast majority of investors. It is up 28 percent this year, slightly more than the S&P 500, which is up by a quarter. (The tech-focused Nasdaq is up 29 percent. The Dow, which is only up 14 percent, is not an index anyone benchmarks against.)

Major gains
6. Jeff Bezos—founder, Amazon: $63 billion
It’s been a torrid year for Jeff Bezos on a front that matters to him: his space company, Blue Origin, continues to be wholly eclipsed by Elon Musk’s Space X, as it has been for two decades now.

It has also been a disastrous, or tumultuous, year for the Washington Post, the paper Bezos bought in 2013 and to which he pays periodic attention.

His moments of attention sparked blowback this year. But he was making money all the while, with his net worth rising by more than $1 billion a week as stock in Amazon—the company he founded in 1994, where he still serves as executive chairman—recovered and rose.

He owns almost 9 percent of the company, and funds Blue Origin by periodically selling Amazon stock.

5. Jensen Huang—founder, Nvidia: $72 billion
Huang—the three-decade founder behind Nvidia, the AI chip designer darling—benefitted from this year’s most explosive spike in corporate value.

He owns 3.8 percent of the company, the value of which has increased by $1.9 billion in 2024: more than twice as much as any other company.

4. Larry Ellison—founder, Oracle: $73 billion
Ellison—long a forgotten name from an earlier tech age, like Dell—is newly ascendent after also making a major bet on the AI boom.

His company, Oracle, is a major provider of cloud computing (along with Amazon, Microsoft and Google).

That’s proven profitable for Ellison, who owns 43 percent of the company—and whose wealth has helped fund the late career of former British PM Tony Blair.

Source: https://www.thedailybeast.com/these-ten-people-made-796b-in-this-years-tech-stock-surge/

At least two people – including a young child – have been killed and dozens of others injured after a car was driven into a crowd at a Christmas market in Germany.

Police said the suspected driver – a 50-year-old Saudi doctor – has been arrested following the incident in the eastern city of Magdeburg, while the local government confirmed 68 people have been injured – 15 seriously.

A city spokesman said the initial assessment is that this was a deliberate attack, with all hospitals in the nearby city of Halle preparing for a mass casualty event, according to a security official.

Broadcaster MDR said police blocked off the area as there was a suspicion of explosives in the car of the suspect.

Officials said the suspect is believed to have moved to Germany in 2006 and had been practising medicine in Bernburg, about 25 miles south of Magdeburg.

Authorities believe he acted alone and used a rental car.

Saxony-Anhalt’s governor, Reiner Haseloff, said: “As things stand, he is a lone perpetrator, so that as far as we know there is no further danger to the city.

“Every human life that has fallen victim to this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many.”

Meanwhile, the city of Magdeburg was in mourning after the attack, with mayor Simone Borris announcing that cultural institutions like theatres and museums would remain closed in the coming days.

Germany latest updates as child among dead in attack

German newspaper Bild first reported at least 11 people had been killed, but Mr Haseloff later said two people were known to have died, including a young child.

Magdeburg’s University Hospital said it was treating 10-20 patients, news agency dpa reported.

City spokesman Michael Reif said he suspects it was a deliberate act, adding there are “numerous injured” and that the “pictures are terrible”.

One eyewitness told Bild she was holding her boyfriend’s hand when the car hit the crowd.

“He was caught and ripped from my side. It was terrible. Nobody screamed. You couldn’t hear the car either,” Nadine, 32, said, adding her partner suffered leg and head injuries.

“We don’t know which hospital he has been taken to. The uncertainty is unbearable.”

They had travelled especially to Magdeburg to visit the market, she said.

Resident Dorin Steffen told dpa she was at a concert in a nearby church when she heard the sirens, which were so loud “you had to assume that something terrible had happened”.

“We are shaking,” she added. “Full of sympathy for the relatives, also in the hope that nothing has happened to our relatives, friends and acquaintances.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said “the news suggests something bad” and that his thoughts are with “the victims and their families”.

Police said on X that “extensive operations” were taking place at the market, which has been closed.

Weihnachtsmarkt Magdeburg has posted on Instagram warning people to leave the market and allow emergency services to do their work.

A market in the city of Erfurt, roughly a two-hour drive away, closed after the incident, though police said there is no specific risk.

The UK Foreign Office said it is “closely monitoring the situation”.

President-elect Donald Trump’s team has dismissed criticism regarding the influence of billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk amid spending bill negotiations.

Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s incoming White House press secretary, told Business Insider: “As soon as President Trump released his official stance on the CR [continuing resolution], Republicans on Capitol Hill echoed his point of view. President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. Full stop.”

Newsweek has contacted Trump’s transition team and Musk’s press team for comment via email outside regular working hours.

Why It Matters

A number of Democratic figures have condemned what they say is the power Musk wields over the president-elect and Congress ahead of a looming government shutdown. Some Democrats have suggested Musk is the actual “president” and that Trump is following his lead in the negotiations.

What to Know

Musk urged lawmakers to vote down an original bipartisan spending bill and said any lawmaker who supported it should be voted out of office. Trump later echoed Musk’s opposition, calling for a rise in the debt limit to be added and warning that any Republican who backs the bill should face a primary challenge.

Musk and Trump’s opposition helped tank the legislation, which would have prevented a shutdown just before the Christmas period, leaving House Speaker Mike Johnson scrambling for an alternative.

Some hardline Republicans have praised Musk, touting him as a potential replacement for Johnson as House speaker.

A second spending bill, which would have extended government funding by three months, was voted down by the House on Thursday evening. The proposal included a two-year suspension of the debt limit—called for by Trump—and add-ons pushed by Democrats, such as more than $100 billion in natural disaster aid.

The bill failed in a 174-235-1 vote in the House, with 38 Republicans joining nearly every Democrat in rejecting the deal.

Ahead of the vote, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters at the Capitol: “The Musk-Johnson proposal is not serious. It’s laughable. Extreme MAGA Republicans are driving us to a government shutdown.”

In response, Musk denied authorship of the second bill and credited Trump, Johnson, and Vice President-elect JD Vance for the alternative proposal.

“This is a MUCH better bill that is closer to being a real continuing resolution (not an omnibus masquerading as a CR), but with support for hurricane victims and farmers, as well as a reasonable extension to the debt ceiling,” Musk posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which he owns. “If Dems reject this & government shuts down, they deserve to lose bigtime in the midterms.”

Texas GOP Representative Chip Roy was among the Republicans who voted against the second spending bill. Speaking on the House floor, Roy said the bill would increase the national debt by trillions without cutting spending.

“Yes, I think this bill was better than it was yesterday in certain respects. But to take this bill and congratulate yourself because it’s shorter in pages but increases the debt by $5 trillion is asinine, and that’s precisely what Republicans are doing,” Roy said.

“I’m absolutely sickened by a party that campaigns on fiscal responsibility and has the temerity to go before the American people and say you think this is fiscally responsible. It is absolutely ridiculous.”

What People Are Saying

Elon Musk posted on X: “A super fair & simple bill was put to a vote and only 2 Democrats in Congress were in favor. Therefore, responsibility for the shutdown rests squarely on the shoulders of Jeffries.”

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on X: “Elon Musk ordered his puppet President-elect and House Republicans to break the bipartisan agreement reached to keep the government open. House Republicans are abdicating their responsibility to the American people and siding with billionaires and special interests.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) on X: “We had a deal to avert a shutdown. Musk et al blew it up because it didn’t help billionaires enough. They wrote a new bill to cut cancer treatment for kids and grease a new tax cut for the rich. That failed too—and now they’re panicking because everyone is seeing the grift.”

Source : https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-president-elon-musk-spending-government-shutdown-2004010

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he was ready to compromise over Ukraine in possible talks with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on ending the war and had no conditions for starting talks with the Ukrainian authorities.
Trump, a self-styled master of brokering agreements and author of the 1987 book “Trump: the Art of the Deal”, has vowed to swiftly end the conflict, but has not yet given any details on how he might achieve that.

Putin, fielding questions on state TV during his annual question and answer session with Russians, told a reporter for a U.S. news channel that he was ready to meet Trump, whom he said he had not spoken to for years.
Asked what he might be able to offer Trump, Putin dismissed an assertion that Russia was in a weak position, saying that Russia had got much stronger since he ordered troops into Ukraine in 2022.

“We have always said that we are ready for negotiations and compromises,” Putin said, after saying that Russian forces, advancing across the entire front, were moving towards achieving their primary goals in Ukraine.
“Soon, those Ukrainians who want to fight will run out, in my opinion, soon there will be no one left who wants to fight. We are ready, but the other side needs to be ready for both negotiations and compromises.”

Reuters reported last month that Putin was open to discussing a Ukraine ceasefire deal with Trump, but ruled out making any major territorial concessions and insisted Kyiv abandon its ambitions to join NATO.
Putin said on Thursday that Russia had no conditions to start talks with Ukraine and was ready to negotiate with anyone, including President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
But he said any deal could only be signed with Ukraine’s legitimate authorities, which for now the Kremlin considered to be only the Ukrainian parliament.
Zelenskiy, whose term was due to expire earlier this year but has been extended due to martial law, would need to be re-elected for Moscow to consider him a legitimate signatory to any deal to ensure it was legally watertight, said Putin.
Putin dismissed the idea of agreeing a temporary truce with Kyiv, saying only a long-lasting peace deal with Ukraine would suffice.
Any talks should take as their starting point a preliminary agreement reached between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in the early weeks of the war at talks in Istanbul, which was never implemented, he added.
Some Ukrainian politicians regard that draft deal as akin to a capitulation which would have neutered Ukraine’s military and political ambitions.

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has left tens of thousands of dead, displaced millions and triggered the biggest crisis in relations between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Russia, which casts the conflict as a defensive special military operation designed to stop dangerous NATO expansion to the east, controls around a fifth of Ukraine and has taken several thousand square kilometres of territory this year.
Determined to incorporate four Ukrainian regions into Russia, Moscow’s forces have taken village after village in the east and are now threatening strategically important cities such as Pokrovsk, a major road and rail hub.
Putin said the fighting was complex, so it was “difficult and pointless to guess what lies ahead… (but) we are moving, as you said, towards solving our primary tasks, which we outlined at the beginning of the special military operation.”
Discussing the continued presence of Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region, Putin said Kyiv’s troops would be forced out, but declined to say exactly when that would happen.
The war has transformed the Russian economy and Putin said it was showing signs of overheating which was stoking worryingly high inflation. But he said growth was higher than many other economies such as Britain.
Asked if he’d do anything differently, he said he should have sent troops into Ukraine sooner than 2022 and that Russia should have been better prepared for the conflict.
Asked by a BBC reporter if he’d looked after Russia, something that Boris Yeltsin had asked him to do before handing over the presidency at the end of 1999, Putin said he had.
“We have moved back from the edge of the abyss,” Putin said.
“I have done everything to ensure that Russia is an independent and sovereign power that is able to make decisions in its own interests.”

Russia, Putin said, had made proposals to Syria’s new rulers about Russia’s military bases there and most people that Moscow had spoken to on the issue favoured them staying.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-says-russia-is-getting-closer-achieving-primary-goals-ukraine-2024-12-19/

CHINA is vying to take on the ‘Son of Concorde’ with an even faster supersonic jet that could blast from London to New York City in less than two hours.

Beijing-based Space Transportation – also known as Lingkong Tianxing Technology – has been carrying out test flights and recently reached a speed of 3,106 mph which is four times the speed of sound, according to Chinese media.

The so-called Jindouyun engine, or JinDou400, could enable travel twice as fast as the iconic Concorde.

In the latest test it was able to reach altitudes over 65,600 feet, the company claims.

It achieved this by doing away with compressors and turbine parts you find in most rocket engines, relying on detonation combustion technology instead.

This tech uses a detonation ramjet to create essential thrust.

Shock waves created from the process compress the incoming air.

Not only does the change reduce weight but it cuts down on costs too.

“This engine has significant commercial potential in the field of high-speed flight within near-space environments,” told firm told SCMP.

“This test flight provided key performance data on the engine, validating critical systems including the fuel supply, electrical and control systems.

“It also confirmed the engine’s stability and reliability, marking a major milestone in its development from a prototype to a fully functional product.”

Space Transportation is racing to develop the kit for a Yunxing passenger aircraft that could take off as soon as 2027.

In October, the company said that it had successfully completed the first test flight for the prototype model.

The aircraft is also designed for vertical take-off and landing.

Their development comes as a rival jet in the US dubbed the “Son of Concorde” makes progress having recently completed its ninth test flight.

Boom Technology’s XB-1 could eventually cut journey times from London to New York City to 3.5 hours, down from the eight or so hours it currently takes.

A new maximum speed of Mach 0.87 – the equivalent to 667mph – was hit earlier this month, as well as a height of 27,716 ft.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/tech/13126344/china-supersonic-jet-son-of-concorde-london-nyc/