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TASS;Russia bans mining in ten regions from January 1;https://tass.com/economy/1895675;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 08:09:36 +0300 | The ban was introduced in Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachai-Circassia, North Ossetia, Chechnya, Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions |
TASS;OPEC+ plans to continue voluntary oil output cuts of 2.2 mln bpd in Q1 2025;https://tass.com/economy/1894883;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 07:39:00 +0300 | According to the new oil output restoration schedule published on the OPEC website, the production increase is planned for the period from April 2025 to the end of September 2026 |
TASS;Monthly minimum wage in Russia to rise to $226.4 in 2025;https://tass.com/economy/1894881;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 07:05:01 +0300 | The statutory monthly minimum wage is the minimum salary of Russians before deducting personal income tax |
TASS;Trump to pay his last respects to Jimmy Carter;https://tass.com/world/1895669;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 07:03:36 +0300 | US President-elect told reporters that he had received an invitation to attend the funeral |
TASS;Over 1 mln members of Ukrainian armed forces killed or wounded since start of special op;https://tass.com/defense/1895667;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 07:00:29 +0300 | Data obtained from the Russian defense ministry’s daily bulletins and other open-access information from its officials indicates that Kiev lost some 595,000 troops as killed or wounded in action in 2024 |
TASS;FACTBOX: 2024’s biggest natural disasters;https://tass.com/society/1894873;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 06:28:00 +0300 | From February 1 to 5, wildfires killed at least 137 people in Chile's Valparaнso region, with 200 more reported missing |
TASS;Income tax for Russian oil pipeline operator Transneft to be 40% from 2025;https://tass.com/economy/1894877;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 05:52:01 +0300 | It is reported that the company will abide by the decision of the principal shareholder but expects an involuntary cut of the investment program due to money shortage |
TASS;Belarus’ presidential election enters first day of campaigning;https://tass.com/world/1894875;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 05:20:00 +0300 | Under the commission’s guidelines, candidates will have the opportunity to publish their election programs in national newspapers, including Respublika and Zviazda, and appear on national television and radio |
TASS;2025 to see four great celestial events, scientists say;https://tass.com/science/1894867;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 04:37:00 +0300 | In the spring of 2025, we will also witness a partial solar eclipse |
TASS;Kyrgyzstan takes the CSTO chairmanship from Kazakhstan;https://tass.com/defense/1894861;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 03:59:00 +0300 | It is reported that Kyrgyzstan plans to host an international conference on cybersecurity in 2025 |
TASS;FACTBOX: New Year’s key traditions reviewed;https://tass.com/society/1894857;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 03:17:00 +0300 | Russia has celebrated New Year and Christmas with decorated fir trees since Peter the Great’s reign |
TASS;Belarus assumes chairmanship of EAEU;https://tass.com/economy/1894847;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 02:25:00 +0300 | According to Belarusian Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko, digitalization should fully support the functioning of the EAEU's single domestic market |
TASS;FACTBOX: It’s all about the tree: How Russia celebrates New Year;https://tass.com/society/1895641;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 01:37:50 +0300 | TASS has prepared this factbox with background information on the history of Russia’s traditional New Year’s celebration |
TASS;FACTBOX: Celebrities who passed away in 2024;https://tass.com/society/1894865;Tue, 31 Dec 2024 23:36:00 +0300 | Many well-known politicians, statesmen, scientists and cultural figures passed away in 2024 |
TASS;Expert calculates Father Frost’s time per child in Russia on New Year’s Eve;https://tass.com/society/1894859;Tue, 31 Dec 2024 23:10:00 +0300 | There are approximately 9,073,878 children aged 5-9 in Russia who may still believe in Father Frost, researcher at the Institute of Computer Sciences and Telecommunications at RUDN University Artur Davtyan said |
TASS;Russian Standard Bank expert sees the average dollar-to-ruble rate at 110 rubles in 2025;https://tass.com/economy/1894849;Tue, 31 Dec 2024 22:35:01 +0300 | Geopolitical situation, the rhetoric of sanctions, the Bank of Russia’s monetary policy, as well as the situation with budget spending, will continue to have the greatest impact on the rate of the national currency in the coming year |
TASS;Houthis-controlled capital of Yemen subjected to airstrikes — TV;https://tass.com/world/1895629;Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:48:26 +0300 | According to Al Masirah, two strikes were carried out on the complex, where the rebels' defense ministry is located |
TASS;First requests for pumping Russian gas via Ukraine on January 1 equal zero;https://tass.com/economy/1895623;Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:16:44 +0300 | Deliveries through the Sokhranovka station were terminated in 2022 at the initiative of Kiev, allegedly due to force majeure |
TASS;US Department of Treasury sanctions 2 Russian citizens, Center for Geopolitical Expertise;https://tass.com/world/1895621;Tue, 31 Dec 2024 20:35:15 +0300 | The restrictions targeted the director of this analytical center, Valery Korovin and Judge Olesya Mendeleyeva |
TASS;Durov explains blocking of Russian media’s Telegram channels by EU laws;https://tass.com/economy/1895619;Tue, 31 Dec 2024 20:12:44 +0300 | He also noted that "all Western media Telegram channels remain freely accessible in Russia |
TASS;Russian human rights commissioner reports meeting with Ukrainian counterpart;https://tass.com/defense/1895617;Tue, 31 Dec 2024 19:07:44 +0300 | In exchange, 150 prisoners of war of the Ukrainian armed forces returned home |
The Sydney Morning Herald;United Cup Highlights: Galloway & Krawczyk (USA) v Zhang & Sun (CHN);https://www.smh.com.au/sport/tennis/united-cup-highlights-galloway-and-krawczyk-usa-v-zhang-and-sun-chn-20250102-p5l1m5.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed;Thu, 02 Jan 2025 01:48:23 +1100 | Watch the match highlights between Galloway & Krawczyk (USA) & Zhang & Sun (CHN) on Day 6 of the 2025 United Cup Tennis. |
The Sydney Morning Herald;Brisbane International Highlights: Jordan Thompson v Alex Michelsen;https://www.smh.com.au/sport/tennis/brisbane-international-highlights-jordan-thompson-v-alex-michelsen-20250102-p5l1m4.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed;Thu, 02 Jan 2025 01:47:55 +1100 | Watch the match highlights between Jordan Thompson & Alex Michelsen on Day 4 of the 2025 Brisbane International Tennis. |
The Sydney Morning Herald;Best of cartoons, January 2, 2025;https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/best-of-cartoons-january-2-2025-20250102-p5l1m3.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed;Thu, 02 Jan 2025 01:09:36 +1100 | The news of the day as interpreted by our talented artists, illustrators and cartoonists. |
The Sydney Morning Herald;Cartoons of the week;https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/cartoons-of-the-week-20241227-p5l0w6.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed;Thu, 02 Jan 2025 01:09:14 +1100 | The best Herald artworks of the week from across the board. |
The Sydney Morning Herald;Lithium’s rocky patch: Key building block of EV revolution faces uncertain future under Trump;https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/lithium-s-rocky-patch-key-building-block-of-ev-revolution-faces-uncertain-future-under-trump-20241118-p5krfp.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed;Thu, 02 Jan 2025 00:30:00 +1100 | While prices have started to pick up again, this major green energy metal’s fortunes in 2025 will hinge on whether electric vehicles sales can maintain their momentum. |
The Sydney Morning Herald;The good news for renters and the bad news for mortgagees;https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/the-good-news-for-renters-and-the-bad-news-for-mortgagees-20241231-p5l1dh.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed;Thu, 02 Jan 2025 00:01:00 +1100 | Australian property values crept up 4.9 per cent across 2024 but the year ended on a sour note. |
The Sydney Morning Herald;Forget the Louvre: Here is the one thing you must do in Paris;https://www.smh.com.au/traveller/inspiration/forget-the-louvre-here-is-the-one-thing-you-must-do-in-paris-20241204-p5kvvu.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed;Thu, 02 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +1100 | You’ll learn more about Paris culture from a cafe terrace than from a museum. |
The Sydney Morning Herald;The top-rated airlines of the year;https://www.smh.com.au/traveller/reviews-and-advice/the-top-rated-airlines-of-the-year-20241217-p5kz3b.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed;Thu, 02 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +1100 | From short-haul budget carriers to the longest route on the planet on a plane with no economy class, here are the airlines we rated the best in 2024. |
The Sydney Morning Herald;Florence Pugh had one startling demand before playing a dying woman;https://www.smh.com.au/culture/movies/florence-pugh-had-one-startling-demand-before-playing-a-dying-woman-20241219-p5kzt9.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed;Thu, 02 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +1100 | As a determined young mother facing a terminal diagnosis, the equally determined actress insisted that co-star Andrew Garfield shave her head. |
The Sydney Morning Herald;Mad about the movies? Here are 2025’s biggest new titles;https://www.smh.com.au/culture/movies/mad-about-the-movies-here-are-2025-s-biggest-new-titles-20241227-p5l0uc.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed;Thu, 02 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +1100 | A new Superman, a return to Bridget Jones and a reboot of The Fantastic Four are among the movies coming in 2025. |
The Sydney Morning Herald;Superquiz, Thursday, January 2;https://www.smh.com.au/national/superquiz-thursday-january-2-20250101-p5l1jv.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 23:59:00 +1100 | Trivia buffs: test your knowledge with today’s interactive superquiz. |
The Sydney Morning Herald;United Cup Highlights: Taylor Fritz (USA) v Zhang Zhizhen (CHN);https://www.smh.com.au/sport/tennis/united-cup-highlights-taylor-fritz-usa-v-zhang-zhizhen-chn-20250101-p5l1m2.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 23:47:51 +1100 | Watch the match highlights between Taylor Fritz (USA) & Zhang Zhizhen (CHN) on Day 6 of the 2025 United Cup Tennis. |
The Sydney Morning Herald;Maxwell takes one of the all-time catches to help Stars end BBL losing streak;https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/maxwell-takes-one-of-the-all-time-catches-to-help-stars-end-bbl-losing-streak-20250101-p5l1m0.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 23:32:50 +1100 | Glenn Maxwell took one of the greatest catches in the BBL’s 14-year history, leaping metres over the boundary to catch the ball in one hand before throwing it back into the field of play while in the air. |
The Sydney Morning Herald;United Cup Highlights: De Minaur & Gadecki (AUS) v Nicholls & Bloom (GBR);https://www.smh.com.au/sport/tennis/united-cup-highlights-de-minaur-and-gadecki-aus-v-nicholls-and-bloom-gbr-20250101-p5l1m1.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 23:25:19 +1100 | Watch the match highlights between De Minaur & Gadecki (AUS) & Nicholls & Bloom (GBR) on Day 6 of the 2025 United Cup Tennis. |
The Sydney Morning Herald;Champion’s compelling message to Aussie phenom as world put on notice;https://www.smh.com.au/sport/tennis/champion-s-compelling-message-to-aussie-phenom-as-world-put-on-notice-20250101-p5l1lw.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 23:23:37 +1100 | Maya Joint may have fallen in a heated battle, but Australia’s newest grand slam hope has received high praise from former world No.1 Victoria Azarenka. |
The Sydney Morning Herald;Tennis as it happened: Australia eliminated from United Cup, Kyrgios and Joint knocked out in Brisbane;https://www.smh.com.au/sport/tennis/tennis-live-updates-kyrgios-and-djokovic-return-to-the-court-australia-take-on-great-britain-in-must-win-tie-20250101-p5l1in.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 23:11:40 +1100 | Australia has been eliminated from the 2025 United Cup, despite wins in the mens singles and mixed doubles against Great Britain, led by Alex de Minaur. |
The Sydney Morning Herald;Multiple fatalities after vehicle ploughs into NYE crowd in New Orleans;https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/multiple-fatalities-after-vehicle-ploughs-into-crowd-in-new-orleans-20250101-p5l1ly.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 23:09:07 +1100 | Ten people were killed and 35 injured after a man drove a truck into a crowd on New Orleans’ famed Bourbon Street, authorities said. |
The Sydney Morning Herald;Brisbane International Highlights: Victoria Azarenka v Maya Joint;https://www.smh.com.au/sport/tennis/brisbane-international-highlights-victoria-azarenka-v-maya-joint-20250101-p5l1lx.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 22:33:26 +1100 | Watch the match highlights between Victoria Azarenka & Maya Joint on Day 4 of the 2025 Brisbane International Tennis. |
The Sydney Morning Herald;Wooroloo bushfire downgraded but still a possible threat to lives and homes;https://www.smh.com.au/national/western-australia/out-of-control-bushfire-threatening-homes-in-wooroloo-20250101-p5l1lq.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 22:17:54 +1100 | Over 120 firefighters are battling the blaze which started on the Great Eastern Highway near the intersection of Carter Road in The Lakes. |
The Sydney Morning Herald;United Cup Highlights: Coco Gauff (USA) v Zhang Shuai (CHN);https://www.smh.com.au/sport/tennis/united-cup-highlights-coco-gauff-usa-v-zhang-shuai-chn-20250101-p5l1lu.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 21:58:20 +1100 | Watch the match highlights between Coco Gauff (USA) & Zhang Shuai (CHN) on Day 6 of the 2025 United Cup Tennis. |
ABC News;Australia's property market enters downturn for first time in two years;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-02/corelogic-property-prices-national-drop-2024-wrap/104773908;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 14:02:09 +0000 | Yet there is still great price divergence between cities, and years of soaring prices have left home ownership out of reach for many. |
ABC News;Ten killed, 30 injured as truck crashes into New Orleans crowd;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/at-least-10-killed-as-truck-crashes-into-new-orleans-crowd/104778048;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 12:01:53 +0000 | The driver tried to "run over as many people as he possibly could", police said after the incident. |
ABC News;'Juicy' Pilbara storms wash away 2024 and replenish long-dry river;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/heavy-rainfall-makes-harding-river-flowin-pilbara/104777230;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 08:58:00 +0000 | The Harding River, known as the Ngurin to the land's traditional owners, flows for the first time in years in Western Australia's Pilbara region, after rain rings in the new year. |
ABC News;Richmond Tiger Noah Balta charged with assault;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/afl-richmond-tiger-noah-balta-charged-with-assault/104777480;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 08:12:43 +0000 | Richmond Tiger Noah Balta has been charged with assault by NSW Police following an alleged altercation on Monday, the club has said. |
ABC News;Fast-moving bushfire engulfs property, closes major highway east of Perth;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/bushfire-engulfs-property-near-acacia-prison-east-of-perth/104777410;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 07:31:05 +0000 | A fast-moving bushfire has destroyed property and is burning close to a prison in Perth's east. |
ABC News;Shark found dumped outside farm believed to be bronze whaler;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/bronze-whaler-shark-found-dumped-at-farm/104776940;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 06:31:35 +0000 | Vicki Matchett is all too familiar with rubbish being dumped outside her rural property south of Adelaide — but when she was passing her farm gate several days ago, she saw what "looked like a shark's fin poking up". |
ABC News;Carey says SCG Test will be 'Mitch's time' for under-pressure all-rounder;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/alex-carey-backs-mitch-marsh-big-test-match-scg/104777184;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 05:49:42 +0000 | Alex Carey has launched an impassioned defence of under-pressure all-rounder Mitch Marsh, declaring it will be "Mitch's time" at the SCG. |
ABC News;Brilliant Birrell's injury hell adds perspective to superb victory over Navarro;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/kim-birrell-brisbane-international-wildcard-injury-hell/104776816;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 05:39:34 +0000 | Kim Birrell missed out on a wild card for this year's Australian Open. Her second career win over a top 10 opponent, beating Emma Navarro, shows her that she can qualify outright. |
ABC News;Blake Lively files lawsuit, Justin Baldoni sues New York Times for $400 million;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/justin-baldoni-sues-with-nine-different-plaintiffs/104776694;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 05:24:03 +0000 | Three lawsuits have now been filed in relation to the alleged smear campaign against and sexual harassment of Blake Lively by It Ends with Us co-star Justin Baldoni. |
ABC News;Police arrest 19, including 13yo, after woman injured in SA bus fight;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/adelaide-public-bus-fight-leads-to-arrests/104769024;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 04:45:33 +0000 | Police say a fight between two groups on an Adelaide public bus led to three people including a woman with head injuries being taken to hospital, as well as 19 arrests. |
ABC News;Driver runs down two New Zealand police officers, killing one;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/new-zealand-police-officer-killed-by-car-in-nelson/104777004;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 04:33:31 +0000 | New Zealand Police Senior Sergeant Lyn Fleming, who has been remembered as a 'widely respected officer with 38 years frontline service', has died in hospital from her injuries. |
ABC News;Woolworths says it will 'do more' to celebrate Australia Day;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/australia-day-merchandise-woolworths-coles-aldi/104776504;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 04:27:59 +0000 | Woolworths says it will “do more” to celebrate Australia Day this year by running in-store promotions focusing on food and produce after calls to boycott the store last year. |
ABC News;Kate Beckinsale says she was assaulted and harmed on movie sets;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/kate-beckinsale-says-she-was-assaulted-on-set/104776608;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 04:08:24 +0000 | In light of Blake Lively's legal filing against Justin Baldoni, British actor Kate Beckinsale has detailed her experiences of being mistreated in Hollywood. |
ABC News;Olympian warns Aussie star Jakara Anthony against rushing surgery recovery;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/olympian-warns-star-jakara-anthony-against-rushing-recovery/104776852;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 03:48:12 +0000 | Matt Graham has warned against fellow Olympic mogul medallist Jakara Anthony rushing her return from a broken collarbone, which has put her World Cup season in major doubt. |
ABC News;FBI says it has made 'largest seizure of explosives' in its history;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/fbi-makes-largest-seizure-of-explosives-in-its-history/104776696;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 03:35:50 +0000 | FBI alleges more than 150 homemade bombs, a jar of highly-explosive material and a notebook filled with 'recipes' for making explosives were found in a raid on a farm in Virginia. |
ABC News;Mooloolaba New Year's Eve fireworks pilloried as 'pure disappointment';https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/sunshine-coast-mooloolaba-fireworks-show-slammed/104776352;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 03:08:42 +0000 | One of Queensland's biggest New Year's Eve events has been branded a "total flop" after the traditional midnight fireworks display was scrapped in favour of an earlier show. |
ABC News;Beijing issues warning on 'serious violent crimes' after spate of mass attacks;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/beijing-to-crack-down-on-violence/104679910;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 02:47:02 +0000 | Chinese authorities seek to stop a spate of indiscriminate mass attacks after videos were widely shared on Chinese social media. |
ABC News;Why your digital EFTPOS card may have stopped working from January 1;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/some-digital-eftpos-cards-stop-working/104776452;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 02:19:56 +0000 | A technology update may cause some debit cards saved to digital wallets to stop functioning in the new year. But there is a simple fix. |
ABC News;Drone warfare boomed in 2024 — some developments were 'scary as hell';https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/year-of-drones-2024-warfare-ukraine-russia-middle-east-conflict/104736648;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 02:11:57 +0000 | Throughout the year, global conflicts illustrated the growing impact of drones in warfare, with jam-proof fibre optics, AI capabilities, and robot dogs among the new developments in 2024. |
ABC News;Australia mints world's first coins for the year after ballot;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/first-coin-year-2025-royal-australian-mint-canberra/104773970;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 02:05:10 +0000 | Hundreds of coin collectors forwent the late night revelry of New Year's Eve in favour of an early morning visit to the Royal Australian Mint in Canberra, hoping to get their hands on the highly-sought-after first coin of the year. |
ABC News;Australian dollar inching toward levels where RBA may step in;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/australian-dollar-at-risk-of-falling-to-pandemic-lows/104776470;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 01:08:02 +0000 | The Australian dollar has fallen sharply, hitting a multi-year low not seen since October, 2022. |
ABC News;Aussies miss United Cup quarterfinals despite beating Brits;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/brisbane-international-united-cup-day-six-live-novak-nick/104776494;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:52:51 +0000 | With Alex de Minaur playing a starring role, Australia defeats Great Britain 2-1 in its final group tie but the tournament hosts are eliminated from the United Cup in Sydney. |
ABC News;End of an era as last train from WA iron ore mine arrives at port;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/yilgarn-closure-last-iron-ore-train-koolyanobbing-to-esperance/104752938;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:15:09 +0000 | WA's Yilgarn region has been home to iron ore mining on and off since the 1950s, but the final trainload of the steel-making ingredient has arrived at Esperance Port. |
ABC News;Big divide remains in timber towns, a year after native logging ban;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/one-year-since-wa-banned-logging-native-forests-timber/104759186;Tue, 31 Dec 2024 23:41:17 +0000 | The WA government insists its native timber logging ban was well planned and timber towns are now thriving, but others say they are falling through the cracks. |
ABC News;Magnus Carlsen returns to championship after rule change allows him to wear jeans;https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/magnus-carlsen-returns-to-chess-championship/104776214;Tue, 31 Dec 2024 23:34:45 +0000 | The world's top-ranked chess player has returned to the World Blitz Championship after its governing body agreed to loosen its dress code. |
The Guardian;Middle East crisis: at least 37 killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza including in al-Mawasi ‘safe zone’ – as it happened;https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/jan/02/middle-east-crisis-live-israeli-strikes-al-mawasi-safe-zone-gaza-latest-updates;2025-01-02T15:27:01Z | It is coming up to 5.30pm in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. This blog will be closing shortly but you can keep follow the Guardian’s Middle East coverage here. Peter Beaumont has the latest on today’s headline: Here is a summary of today’s key updates: Israeli airstrikes killed at least 43 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, including 11 people in a tent encampment sheltering displaced families, medics said. They said the 11 included women and children in the al-Mawasi district, which was designated as a humanitarian zone for civilians earlier in the war between Israel and Hamas. Among those killed in the al-Mawasi strike was the director general of Gaza’s police department, Mahmoud Salah, and his deputy, Hussam Shahwan, according to the Hamas-run Gaza interior ministry. “By committing the crime of assassinating the director general of police in the Gaza Strip, the occupation is insisting on spreading chaos … and deepening the human suffering of citizens,” Hamas added in a statement. The Israeli military said it had conducted an intelligence-based strike in al-Mawasi, just west of the city of Khan Younis, and eliminated Shahwan, calling him the head of Hamas security forces in southern Gaza. It made no mention of Salah’s death. Other Israeli airstrikes killed at least 26 Palestinians, including six in the interior ministry headquarters in Khan Younis and others in north Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, the al-Shati beach camp and central Gaza’s Maghazi camp. Israel’s military said it had targeted Hamas militants who intelligence indicated were operating in a command and control centre “embedded inside the Khan Younis municipality building in the humanitarian area”. The military has accused Gaza militants of using built-up residential areas for cover. Hamas denies this. Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of Unrwa, the UN’s refugee agency for Plaestinians, said today’s Israeli strikes were “another reminder that there is no humanitarian zone let alone a ‘safe zone’” in Gaza. He added: “Enough misleading and killing of civilians. Every day without a ceasefire will bring more tragedy.” Later on Thursday, separate Israeli airstrikes killed at least four people in central Gaza City and two in its Zeitoun district, medics said. The latest deaths in Gaza came as the Palestinian Authority on the occupied West Bank ordered the suspension of broadcasts by the Qatar-based Al Jazeera across the Palestinian territories, accusing the network of incitement, official media reported. Al Jazeera is already banned from broadcasting from Israel amid a long-running feud with the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. The Al Jazeera news network issued a statement denouncing the Palestinian Authority for its decision to close the network’s office. It said: “The decision to freeze Al Jazeera’s work and prevent its journalists from conducting their duties is an attempt to hide the truth about events in the occupied territories, especially what is happening in Jenin and its camps.” An Israeli hostage held by Gaza’s Islamic Jihad militant group has tried to take his own life, the spokesperson for the movement’s armed wing said in a video posted on Telegram on Thursday. One of the group’s medical teams intervened and prevented him from dying, the Al Quds Brigades spokesperson added, without going into any more detail on the hostage’s identity or current condition. Israeli authorities did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Israel’s defense minister Israel Katz defended plans for a new conscription law in Israel after his predecessor Yoav Gallant announced yesterday he would resign from the Knesset over the issue. In a post to social media on Thursday morning Katz said: “There is no place for cynical political use of a moral issue like conscription into the IDF.” Hebrew media outlet Ynet, citing Syrian media, on Thursday reported of an Israeli strike in the Syrian countryside west of Damascus. The claims have not been independently verified. Lebanon’s National News Agency reports that Israeli forces fired two shells “targeting a house in the town of Beit Lif”, which is in the south of the country. Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of Unrwa, the UN’s refugee agency for Plaestinians, has issued a statement on today’s Israeli strikes. He said: Gaza: No place has been safe. No one has been safe since the war started in October 2023. As the year begins, we got reports of yet another attack on al-Mawasi with dozens of people killed and injured. Another reminder that there is no humanitarian zone let alone a “safe zone”. Enough misleading and killing of civilians. Every day without a ceasefire will bring more tragedy.” Reporting for Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, journalist Hani Mahmoud writes after the al-Mawasi strike that “not even a designated evacuation zone is safe for people”. He continues: Attacks are everywhere. Over the past few hours, there have been an average of two attacks per hour. Many people are missing and trapped under piles of rubble. Victims are arriving at the hospital with severe burns and bleeding. Some made it to the emergency room and died moments later. There doesn’t seem to be an end to this bloodshed. Hebrew media outlet Ynet, citing Syrian media, is carrying reports of an Israeli strike in the Syrian countryside west of Damascus. The claims have not been independently verified. Al Jazeera has spoken to a Gaza ambulance driver about the scene after an Israeli airstrike hit a camp for displaced people in al-Mawasi. It quoted Saleem Abu Subha saying: We immediately went to the place and found the injured lying on the ground, most of them children, as well as two female martyrs. About ten tents were damaged and scattered fires were visible. Al Jazeera has been banned from operating inside Israel by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, and from operating in the Israeli-occupied West Bank by the Palestinian Authority. Israeli airstrikes killed at least 37 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, including 11 people in a tent encampment sheltering displaced families, medics said. They said the 11 included women and children in the Al-Mawasi district, which was designated as a humanitarian zone for civilians earlier in the war between Israel and Gaza’s ruling Hamas militant group, now in its 15th month. The director general of Gaza’s police department, Mahmoud Salah, and his aide, Hussam Shahwan, were killed in the strike, according to the Gaza interior ministry. “By committing the crime of assassinating the director general of police in the Gaza Strip, the occupation is insisting on spreading chaos in the (enclave) and deepening the human suffering of citizens,” it added in a statement. The Israeli military said it had conducted an intelligence-based strike in Al-Mawasi, just west of the city of Khan Younis, and eliminated Shahwan, calling him the head of Hamas security forces in southern Gaza. It made no mention of Salah’s death. Other Israeli airstrikes killed at least 26 Palestinians, including six in the interior ministry headquarters in Khan Younis and others in north Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, the Shati (Beach) camp and central Gaza’s Maghazi camp. Israel’s military said it had targeted Hamas militants who intelligence indicated were operating in a command and control centre “embedded inside the Khan Younis municipality building in the Humanitarian Area”. Asked about the reported 37 deaths, a spokesperson for the Israeli military said it followed international law in waging the war in Gaza and that it took “feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm”. The military has accused Gaza militants of using built-up residential areas for cover. Hamas denies this. Here are the latest images from Gaza: In a statement Israel’s military has claimed that it launched a strike against a building being used by Hamas in Khan Younis. On its official Telegram channel, the IDF said the operation was “an intelligence-based strike on Hamas terrorists who were operating in a control and command centre that was embedded inside the Khan Yunis municipality building in the humanitarian area.” Palestinian media sources are reporting that six people were killed. The claims have not been independently verified, and it has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict. Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of utilising “civilian infrastructure” in the Gaza Strip, which is one of the most densely populated territories in the world. Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri has met with French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot in Beirut. An Israeli hostage held by Gaza’s Islamic Jihad militant group has tried to take his own life, the spokesperson for the movement’s armed wing said in a video posted on Telegram on Thursday, Reuters reports. One of the group’s medical teams intervened and prevented him from dying, the Al Quds Brigades spokesperson added, without going into any more detail on the hostage’s identity or current condition. Israeli authorities did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Palestinian and hospital officials say Israeli airstrikes killed at least 18 people in the Gaza Strip, including three children and two high-ranking officers in the Hamas-run police force, Associated Press reports. One strike early Thursday hit a tent in an Israeli-declared “humanitarian zone” known as al-Mawasi, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people are sheltering in tents during the cold and rainy winter. In a statement Israel’s military said it had carried out what it described as “an intelligence-based strike” which had killed Hussam Shahwan, who it described as a terrorist. A statement from the Hamas-led interior ministry inside the Gaza Strip confirmed the death of the man who worked for the police. Associated Press reports that Israel has repeatedly targeted the police inside Gaza, contributing to a breakdown of law and order in the territory that has made it difficult for humanitarian groups to deliver the limited amount of aid being allowed to pass into the territory by Israel. In a separate Israeli strike at least eight Palestinian men were killed. They were reported to be members of local committees that help secure aid convoys. An Associated Press reporter at al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, which received the bodies, confirmed the toll. The Hamas-led health authority in the Gaza Strip has raised the total death toll from Israel’s military campaign to at least 45,581 Palestinians, with 108,438 wounded since 7 October 2023. It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict. Israel’s military has issued a statement claiming to have killed Hussam Shahwan, who it described as a terrorist. It accused Hamas-led internal security forces inside the Gaza Strip of “conducting violent interrogations of the Gazan population, violating human rights and suppressing dissent within the organisation.” Al Jazeera reported that the Hamas-led interior ministry earlier issued a statement saying Shahwan had been killed. Al Jazeera reports that the Hamas-led interior ministry in Gaza has confirmed the deaths of the chief of Gaza’s police force Mahmoud Salah, and his deputy Hussam Shahwan after an Israeli strike. It cites a statement from the ministry which claims “they were performing their humanitarian and national duty in serving our people.” The statement continued: By committing the assassination, the occupation continues to spread chaos in the Strip and deepen the human suffering of citizens. The police force is a civil protection force that works to provide services to citizens. Israel’s military reports warning sirens sounding in kibbutz Holit, which is in the west of Israel, close to Rafah in the Gaza Strip and to Israel’s border with Egypt. A statement on the IDF’s official Telegram channel said that the Israeli air defence “intercepted one projectile that crossed from the southern Gaza Strip.” Local media reports that an Israeli drone has struck an area in southern Lebanon between Beit Lif and Yater. Here is an image from the Gaza Strip this morning showing smoke rising from an Israeli strike on the territory. Lebanon’s National News Agency reports that Israeli forces fired two shells “targeting a house in the town of Beit Lif”, which is in the south of the country. The Al Jazeera news network has issued a statement denouncing the Palestinian Authority for its decision to close the network’s office. Al Jazeera has previously been banned from operating inside Israel by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. In the statement Al Jazeera said: Al Jazeera Media Network denounces the Palestinian Authority’s decision to freeze its work and coverage in the West Bank and considers this decision nothing but an attempt to dissuade the channel from covering the rapidly escalating events taking place in the occupied territories. This decision comes following the ongoing campaign of incitement and intimidation by parties associated with the Palestinian Authority against Al Jazeera’s journalists and correspondents. The decision to freeze Al Jazeera’s work and prevent its journalists from conducting their duties is an attempt to hide the truth about events in the occupied territories, especially what is happening in Jenin and its camps. And - unfortunately – such decision comes align with the previous action taken by the Israeli government, which closed Al Jazeera’s office in Ramallah. Al Jazeera is shocked by this decision, which comes at a time when the war on the Gaza Strip is still on going, and the systematic targeting and killing of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation forces. As of 31 December 2024, preliminary investigations by the Commitee to Protect Journalists claimed at least 146 journalists and media workers had been killed in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, and Lebanon since 7 October 2023. It said the figures make it the deadliest period for journalists since it began gathering data in 1992. Here are some of the latest images sent from Gaza over the newswires. At least 15 people have been reported killed by Israeli strikes in the last few hours. Palestinian news agency reports four Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli strike on the al-Shati refugee camp, which is to the west of Gaza City in the north of the Gaza Strip. It reports “Since dawn today, 15 citizens have been killed and dozens injured in the occupation’s bombing of various parts of the Gaza Strip, 11 of them in Khan Younis.” It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict. Israel’s military has issued statistics on the number of its troops killed in the past two years. The number for 2023 is given as 558 soldiers killed, with 512 killed during “operational activity”. Writing for the Times of Israel, military correspondent Emanuel Fabian writes that this number “apparently including the hundreds who were killed during Hamas’s 7 October onslaught — and three in terror attacks”. 16 deaths were recorded as due to accidents. The figure for 2024 is lower. Fabian writes “In 2024, the IDF recorded a total of 363 deaths in the military, including 295 in operational activity amid the war and 11 in terror attacks.” It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict. Lebanon’s National News Media reported on Thursday morning that “enemy drones are currently flying over the skies of the capital Beirut and the southern suburbs, at a low altitude.” Israel’s military announced overnight that a warning siren regarding possible “hostile aircraft infiltration” in Israel’s southern port city of Eilat had been due to “a false identification”. Israel’s defense minister Israel Katz has defended plans for a new conscription law in Israel after his predecessor Yoav Gallant announced yesterday he would resign from the Knesset over the issue. In a post to social media on Thursday morning Katz said “There is no place for cynical political use of a moral issue like conscription into the IDF.” He continued: The new conscription law, upon its completion, will bring about a historic turning point and the recruitment of tens of thousands of additional ultra-Orthodox members for significant service in the IDF for the first time. Yesterday Gallant said the bill, which will allow some exemptions from military service for Orthodox men “contradicts the needs of the Israeli army and the security of the state of Israel.” Judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Gallant in November 2024. An Israeli airstrike killed at least 10 Palestinians in a tent encampment sheltering displaced families in the southern Gaza Strip early on Thursday, medics said, Reuters reports. The director-general of Gaza’s police department Mahmoud Salah, and his aide Hussam Shahwan were killed in the airstrike, Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV reported. Israel has not commented directly on the strike. 15 Palestinians were reported wounded in the attack. Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Israeli quadcopters were firing in Gaza City, and that Israel’s military “continues to blow up residential buildings west of Jabalia camp.” It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict. Welcome to the Guardian’s ongoing live coverage of conflict in the Middle East. Here are the headlines … Israeli strikes killed at least 12 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on New Year’s Day. Reports suggest at least 10 more people have been killed on Thursday, after tents in al-Mawasi were bombed overnight. It is an area that has been designated a “safe zone”. Palestinian media reports that the director-general of Gaza’s police force was killed in the strike. On Wednesday, Israeli defense minister Israel Katz threatened that Israel would intensify its strikes on Gaza if Hamas continued to fire rockets into Israel The Palestinian Authority in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has banned broadcasts by the Al Jazeera news network. The network has previously been banned from operating inside Israel by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government Israel’s former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, has resigned from the Knesset, citing the government’s policy on the exemption of Orthodox men from military service. Judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Gallant in November 2024 |
The Guardian;‘Safe zone’ among areas targeted as Israeli airstrikes kill at least 43 in Gaza;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/02/israeli-airstrikes-gaza-safe-zone;2025-01-02T15:13:40Z | Israeli airstrikes killed at least 43 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, including 11 people in the sprawling al-Mawasi tent encampment designated as a humanitarian safe zone for civilians. Among those killed in the al-Mawasi strike was the director general of Gaza’s police department, Mahmoud Salah, and his deputy, Hussam Shahwan, according to the Hamas-run Gaza interior ministry. “By committing the crime of assassinating the director general of police in the Gaza Strip, the occupation is insisting on spreading chaos … and deepening the human suffering of citizens,” Hamas added in a statement. The Israeli military said it had conducted the strike on the al-Mawasi encampment, just west of the city of Khan Younis, and eliminated Shahwan, calling him the head of Hamas security forces in southern Gaza, but made no mention of Salah’s death. Medics said the 11 people killed included women and children. The latest strikes in Israel’s 15-month war in Gaza, which has led to more than 45,500 Palestinian deaths, came as negotiations for a ceasefire-for-hostages deal appeared to have stalled again, despite pressure to conclude an agreement before Donald Trump is sworn in as US president on 20 January. The war was triggered by Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and another 251 taken hostage. Palestinian Islamic Jihad said in a video message on Thursday that an Israeli hostage had tried to take his own life, without giving further details on the hostage’s identity or current condition. In a statement by the group on the Telegram messaging service, a spokesperson for al-Quds Brigades, the group’s armed wing, said one of the group’s medical teams had intervened and prevented him from dying. Other Israeli airstrikes killed at least 26 Palestinians, including six in the interior ministry headquarters in Khan Younis and others in north Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp, the al-Shati beach camp and central Gaza’s Maghazi camp. “As the year begins, we got reports of yet another attack on Al-Mawasi with dozens of people killed, another reminder that there is no humanitarian zone let alone a safe zone,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, said in a post on X. “Every day without a ceasefire will bring more tragedy.” Later on Thursday, separate Israeli airstrikes killed at least four people in central Gaza City and two in its Zeitoun district, medics said. The latest deaths in Gaza came as the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the occupied West Bank ordered the suspension of broadcasts by the Qatar-based Al Jazeera across the Palestinian territories, accusing the network of incitement, official media reported. Al Jazeera is already banned from broadcasting from Israel amid a long-running feud with the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. In September, armed and masked Israeli forces raided the Al Jazeera office in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, saying it was “used to incite terror”. The military issued an initial 45-day closure order, prompting the Palestinian foreign ministry to condemn “a flagrant violation” of press freedom. On Wednesday, however, the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, said Al Jazeera’s “insistence on broadcasting inciting content and reports characterised by misinformation, incitement, sedition and interference in Palestinian internal affairs” had led to its suspension. An Al Jazeera employee contacted by Agence France-Presse confirmed the network’s office in Ramallah had received a suspension order on Wednesday. Wafa said: “The specialised ministerial committee, comprising the ministries of culture, interior and communications, has decided to suspend broadcasts and freeze all activities of Al Jazeera satellite channel and its office in Palestine. “The decision also includes temporarily freezing the work of all journalists, employees, crews and affiliated channels until their legal status is rectified due to Al Jazeera’s violations of the laws and regulations in force in Palestine.” Al Jazeera condemned the decision in a statement, saying it “aligns with Israeli occupation practices targeting its media teams”. It accused the PA, which has partial administrative control in the West Bank, of “attempting to deter Al Jazeera from covering escalating events in the occupied Palestinian territories” including in Jenin and its refugee camp. The PA’s security forces have been engaged in weeks of deadly clashes with armed militants in Jenin, in the northern West Bank. Analysts have suggested the PA’s security clampdown in Jenin is being driven by a desire to reassert its frayed authority on the West Bank and also to send a signal to western countries, not least the incoming Trump administration. Agencies contributed to this article |
The Guardian;Italy presses Iran for immediate release of journalist held in Tehran;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/02/italy-presses-iran-for-immediate-release-of-journalist-cecilia-sala;2025-01-02T15:08:09Z | Italy’s foreign ministry summoned the Iranian ambassador on Wednesday and urged the immediate release of an Italian journalist held in solitary confinement in Tehran. Cecilia Sala, a 29-year-old freelance journalist for Il Foglio newspaper and a podcaster, reportedly spoke of the harsh conditions of her detainment in the notorious Evin prison, including having to sleep on the floor of her cell without a mattress. Sala, who was in Iran on a journalistic visa, was arrested on 19 December on charges of breaching Islamic law. The foreign ministry said that during the meeting with Mohammad-Reza Sabouri, Iran’s ambassador in Rome, it reiterated its requests for Sala to receive “dignified detention conditions that respect human rights” and for a guarantee that full consular assistance is permitted, including allowing Italy’s ambassador in Iran to visit her and “provide her with the types of comfort that have so far been denied”. During a phone call to her parents on Wednesday, Sala said she only had two blankets, one to sleep on and one to fend off the biting cold, according to reports in the Italian press. She said food was being given to her through a crack in the door, that her reading glasses had been confiscated and that a neon light was on in her cell all day and night. On Sunday in an interview with La Repubblica, a US state department spokesperson said Sala’s detention was allegedly a reprisal for the arrest of Mohammad Abedini Najafabadi, a Swiss-Iranian businessman and alleged arms trafficker with ties to the Iranian regime, on a US warrant at Milan’s Malpensa airport on 16 December. “Unfortunately, the Iranian regime continues to unjustly detain citizens of many other countries, often using them as political leverage,’’ the spokesperson said. Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, said the government was “working with great discretion to solve this extremely intricate problem”. Sala has nearly half a million followers on Instagram and is a regular guest on Italian talkshows. She has covered among other topics the fall of Kabul and the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the crisis in Venezuela, the war in Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Evin prison is known for the detainment of opponents of the Iranian regime, journalists and foreign citizens. Among the prisoners is Narges Mohammadi, the Iranian 2023 Nobel peace prize laureate, who said in an interview published on Thursday that she would publish her autobiography and was working on a book on women held like her on political charges. Mohammadi spoke to the French magazine Elle in Farsi by text and voice message during a three-week provisional release from the prison on medical grounds after undergoing bone surgery. “I’ve finished my autobiography and I plan to publish it. I’m writing another book on assaults and sexual harassment against women detained in Iran. I hope it will appear soon,” she said. Mohammadi, 52, has been jailed repeatedly over the past 25 years, most recently since November 2021 on convictions relating to her advocacy against the compulsory wearing of the hijab for women and capital punishment in Iran. She said the imprisonment had left a physical toll. “My body is weakened, it is true, after three years of intermittent detention … and repeated refusals of care that have seriously tested me, but my mind is of steel,” Mohammadi said. She said there were 70 prisoners in the women’s ward at Evin “from all walks of life, of all ages and of all political persuasions”, including journalists, writers, women’s rights activists and people persecuted for their religion. One of the most commonly used “instruments of torture” was isolation, said Mohammadi, who shares a cell with 13 other prisoners. “It is a place where political prisoners die,” she said of Evin. “I have personally documented cases of torture and serious sexual violence against my fellow prisoners.” |
The Guardian;Removal of waste from site of 1984 Bhopal disaster dismissed as ‘farce’;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/02/india-toxic-waste-removal-bhopal-disaster-site-dismissed-as-farce;2025-01-02T14:05:19Z | Forty years after one of world’s deadliest industrial disasters struck the Indian city of Bhopal, a cleanup operation has finally begun to remove hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste from the site. However, local campaigners have accused the Indian government of greenwashing, arguing that the 337 tonnes of waste removed this week represents less than 1% of the more than 1m tonnes of hazardous materials left after the disaster and that the cleanup has done nothing to tackle chemical contamination of the area. There have also been protests over fears that the incineration of the waste will only lead to further contamination and toxic exposure in other areas. At about midnight on 2 December 1984, the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal exploded, releasing 40 tonnes of toxic methyl isocyanate and other lethal gases into the air. More than 3,000 people were killed in the immediate aftermath and at least 25,000 are estimated to have died overall. Local groups have claimed the true number is probably even higher due to the long-term effects of the poisonous gas, which include high rates of cancers, kidney and lung diseases. High numbers of babies have been stillborn or born with severe disabilities to gas-affected mothers in recent years. Despite the scale of the industrial disaster, a proper operation to remove all the toxic waste from Bhopal has never been carried out, either by the US company Union Carbide, now owned by Dow Chemicals, which was the majority owner of the factory at the time, or by the Indian government, which took back control of the land where the factory stood. Rights groups have accused the US corporations and the Indian government of attempting to play down the lasting impact of Bhopal’s untouched chemical debris. Official surveys submitted to the courts have shown that the contamination, which includes highly poisonous heavy metals and UN-banned organic pollutants, has spread to at least 42 areas in Bhopal. Testing near the site revealed levels of cancer-causing chemicals in the groundwater were 50 times higher than what is accepted as safe by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Lethal levels of toxic waste have also been found in factory pits and festering open ponds where the waste was being dumped by the Union Carbide factory prior to the explosion. For years, campaigners have been fighting for Union Carbide and Dow Chemicals to be held liable for the cost of the cleanup and safe removal of the waste, a process which is expected to cost upwards of hundreds of millions of dollars, but the US corporation has always denied liability, citing a 1989 settlement with the Indian government. In what was initially taken as progress, last month the Madhya Pradesh high court ordered authorities to finally take responsibility for the chemical waste, criticising the inertia of the past four decades and asking whether the government was “waiting for another tragedy”. However, the government has now removed 337 tonnes of overground waste that had already been put into containers and moved to a warehouse in 2005, which campaigners claim no longer posed any significant threat and was not contributing to the groundwater contamination. Rachna Dhingra, a coordinator of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, called the move a “farce and greenwashing publicity stunt to remove a tiny fraction of the least harmful waste” and questioned why Union Carbide and Dow Chemicals were not being held accountable. She said: “There’s still 1.1m tonnes of poisonous waste leaching into the ground every day that they refuse to deal with. We can see for ourselves the birth defects and chronic health conditions. All this does is take the heat off the government and lets the US corporations off the hook. It does nothing to help the people in Bhopal who for decades have been seen as expendable.” Dhingra was also highly critical of the government’s decision to take the removed waste to be incinerated at a plant 150 miles away in Pithampur that has previously failed tests on conducting such operations safely and exposed local people to high levels of toxins. The incineration, which is likely to take about six months, will create 900 tonnes of toxic residue, which will then be buried in landfills. The move has provoked large protests by people in Pithampur who are fearful of further toxic exposure and leakages into their groundwater from the waste. Swatantra Kumar Singh, the director of the state government’s Bhopal gas tragedy relief and rehabilitation department, denied there was any contamination risk to the local ecosystem and said the waste would be disposed of in an environmentally safe manner. Many local people and human right groups consider the Bhopal disaster to be a continuing miscarriage of justice. The 1989 settlement led to most victims being given 25,000 rupees (about $500 at the time), while most of those who developed related conditions or died years later got nothing at all. None of the nine Indian officials who were convicted in 2010 over their roles in the disaster served any time in prison, and Dow Chemicals has maintained in the courts that it is not criminally liable for the actions of Union Carbide’s Indian subsidiary before it bought the parent company. Campaigners have accused the US government of blocking attempts to extradite Union Carbide and Dow Chemicals officials to face justice in India over failures that led to the explosion. |
The Guardian;German officials call for clampdown on illegal ‘firework bombs’ after five deaths;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/02/german-officials-clampdown-firework-bombs-after-five-deaths;2025-01-02T13:28:38Z | German officials have called for a clampdown on illegally imported and homemade “firework bombs” after pyrotechnics for personal use killed at least five people across the country on New Year’s Eve. The use of personal firecrackers is widespread and only lightly regulated in Germany, leading to hundreds of injuries and massive deployments of police and first responders in cities at the end of every year. In Berlin alone, police and hospital officials said 17 people had been hurt by Kugelbomben, spherical explosives that are legally restricted to professional firework displays. Five victims including small children suffered serious injuries to their hands, faces and eyes while others sought help for burns and hearing damage. “The number of patients treated compared to previous years was average or a little below average,” a spokesperson for the UKB hospital in Berlin told local media. “But the severity of the injuries is unusual.” Most of the fatalities were young men killed in separate accidents while trying to ignite pyrotechnics, in some cases using illicit firework bombs that they had jerry-rigged for more spectacular effect. The Kugelbomben had been mainly brought in from Poland or the Czech Republic and combined with components such as aerosol cans and plastic pipes for a bigger bang and a higher trajectory, authorities said. The spherical or ball bombs come in various sizes and are reserved in Germany for professional fireworks displays. Before New Year’s Eve, however, they could be seen on offer illegally on social media channels. Berlin’s regional head of the GdP police union, Stephan Weh, demanded a crackdown on outlawed pyrotechnic imports and a general ban on private fireworks. “Rockets, firecrackers and compound fireworks are used to attack people and the number of Kugelbomben is growing,” he said in a statement. “Fireworks belong in the hands of professionals.” A spherical explosive set off in Berlin’s central Schöneberg district, where young revellers have frequently clashed with police in previous years, severely damaged several buildings, leaving 36 residences uninhabitable and sending two people to hospital. A fire brigade spokesperson compared the scene of destruction to a “battlefield”. Another of the firework bombs went off in a crowd in the northern district of Tegel, injuring eight people, two of them critically including a young boy. The interior affairs spokesperson of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union in Berlin, Burkard Dregger, demanded tougher measures to prevent the spread of Kugelbomben in German cities during the December holidays. “The import of banned fireworks – Kugelbomben – from eastern neighbouring countries has got to be stopped with even stricter border checks,” he told the local public broadcaster RBB, calling for talks with the governments of Poland and the Czech Republic to reach a regional consensus. The opposition Greens called for a total ban on private firework sales. “The question is why we as a society are prepared to have a night of setting off firecrackers with immeasurable collateral damage for people, animals and the environment,” the party’s interior affairs spokesperson, Vasili Franco, said. In the Netherlands, a 46-year-old man who was severely injured in a firework accident in the town of Tiel died in hospital on Wednesday, authorities said, bringing the number of New Year’s Eve fireworks-related fatalities across the country to two. A 14-year-old boy was killed in Rotterdam while trying to relight a “cobra”, a particularly explosive – and illegal – firework on Tuesday evening. Dozens more people suffered serious eye and other injuries despite sales of consumer fireworks being supposedly outlawed in 19 Dutch cities, including Rotterdam and Amsterdam, whose mayors have demanded a national ban. And in France, 984 cars were set on fire and 420 people arrested in an annual ritual described by the hardline interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, as “gratuitous and endemic violence” by “thugs attacking the property of often modest, ordinary people”. |
The Guardian;Helsinki arena to reopen in spring after being left in limbo by Russian sanctions;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/02/helsinki-arena-russian-sanctions-reopen-spring-finnish;2025-01-02T11:10:42Z | Helsinki’s main sports and entertainment arena is expected to reopen in the spring after getting caught in a Russian sanctions drama that left it disused, without power and starting to smell. Helsinki arena, also known as Helsinki Ice Hall, has been closed since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, when its Russian oligarch owners were subjected to sanctions from the EU and US, which meant they were boycotted by the entertainment industry, and banks and insurance companies refused to provide essential services. The last events to be held at the 14,000-capacity venue were an ice hockey game and the televised Finnish sport gala in January 2022. The closure nearly three years ago left the professional ice hockey club Jokerit without a home and Helsinki without a large-scale arena for hosting big cultural events and international music acts. Last year, the city of Helsinki threatened the Russian-Finnish businessmen Gennady Timchenko and Roman Rotenberg, who control the company that owns Helsinki arena, with expropriation unless they volunteered to sell it. Under the sanctions, they are allowed to sell their shares, but they are subject to approval by the EU and local authority. If they get final approval and the transaction is completed, any profits will be frozen by Finnish authorities until sanctions are lifted. Timchenko, who amassed a fortune through oil trading, has been named by the US as a member of president Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. Timchenko has frequently been photographed playing ice hockey alongside Putin and other members of the Russian elite, including the Rotenberg family. In September, the arena’s electricity, heating and water were cut off because of unpaid bills as the owners struggled to operate the business while under sanctions. In November, the city said it would start a forced takeover of the venue, which after years of disuse had reportedly been left with a “bad, musty smell”. At the time, the city said the process could take several years. But now the arena’s future appears to have been saved after a Finnish real estate and asset management company, Trevian, said it had concluded an agreement with the owners of its controlling stake that would “return the hall to its former glory”. “We have found a solution that suited us as buyers, that suited the Russian sellers, and a solution that was also potentially acceptable to the authorities,” said Trevian’s chief executive, Reima Södervall, who described the venue as Helsinki’s Madison Square Garden. “Now we have to remember that the deal needs final approval from the authorities both in Finland an in the EU. And that is the only thing that is still open.” He added: “The building will become a versatile cultural, event and sports arena for international use. More information on the plans will be provided when they are finalised. But we want to return the hall to its former glory, as a centre for major events. The best time for the arena is ahead.” The terms of the deal, he said, were largely agreed on with the lawyers and representatives of the sellers, and there has been close cooperation with Finland’s ministry of foreign affairs (MFA). The arena, he added, was in good technical condition, and there is a team of technicians working long hours to get it ready to be returned to use. If it gets the required licence from the MFA, which is the national competent authority under EU sanctions law, and the national enforcement agency, which is in charge of asset freeze implementation under EU sanctions law, the deal is expected to be completed within months. The completion of the sale also requires an amendment to EU sanctions regulations, the MFA said. Pia Sarivaara, sanctions coordinator at the MFA, said the venue had been in “standby mode” since spring 2022 when the owners of the controlling stake were listed under the Ukraine Territorial Integrity sanctions scheme. “Given its central location and function, a number of parties have since the spring of 2022 expressed interest in seeking a way to purchase that controlling stake and take over the operation of the arena,” Sarivaara, who said the transaction could be completed in the spring, added. “On 12 November 2024, Trevian made public that it had concluded an agreement with the owners of the controlling stake in question for the purchase of said stake”. An estimated €400m of annual income have been lost from hotels, restaurants and other businesses as a result of the arena standing empty. Helsinki city manager, Jukka-Pekka Ujula, said the financial impact of the loss of the arena to the city, businesses and the travel industry, had been “significant” and that the lack of utilities in the building had threatened to “compromise the building’s condition”. “The lack of a modern and large event arena is competitive disadvantage for the city of Helsinki, but also for the whole of Finland,” he said in November. “The current situation significantly affects the ability of international sport events, for example ice hockey, and major artists’ tours to come to Finland.” After news of the deal, he said the city’s priority was “to get the hall open as quickly as possible”. The Guardian has contacted the Russian Ice Hockey Federation, of which Rotenberg is vice-president, and the Volga Group, which is controlled by Timchenko, for comment. Additional reporting by Pjotr Sauer |
The Guardian;Agnes Keleti, oldest living Olympic gold medallist, dies at 103;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/02/agnes-keleti-hungarian-gymnast-olympic-gold-medallist-dies;2025-01-02T11:09:37Z | The world’s oldest living Olympic gold medallist, the Hungarian gymnast Agnes Keleti, who escaped the Holocaust with false identity papers and the Soviet Union’s brutal clampdown on her home country by emigrating to Israel, has died aged 103. Keleti, who did not compete in an Olympics until she was 31 but won more medals than anyone else at the Melbourne Games, died on Thursday in Budapest, where she had returned to live in 2015, the Hungarian Olympic Committee (HOC) said. “Agnes Keleti is the greatest gymnast produced by Hungary, but one whose life and career were intertwined with the politics of her country and her religion,” the International Olympic Committee said. Besides being the oldest female gymnast to win Olympic gold, Keleti’s 10 medals, including five golds, rank her as the second most successful Hungarian athlete of all time. She was also one of the three most successful Jewish Olympians. Born into a Jewish family as Agnes Klein on 9 January 1921, Keleti took up music and gymnastics as a child, becoming an accomplished – and later a professional – cello player and winning her first national gymnastics championship aged 16. She was considered a medal hope for the 1940 Tokyo Olympics but the games were cancelled because of the second world war and, with Hungary under Nazi occupation, Keleti was expelled from her Budapest club with all other “non-Aryans” in 1941. Forced to go into hiding, she survived the war in a village in the Hungarian countryside. Her mother, Rosza, and sister, Vera, also survived, but her father, Ferenc Klein, and several other relatives died in Auschwitz. “I managed to buy the identification papers of a Christian girl, she was around the same age as me,” she said in a 2020 interview. “With my false papers I managed to escape to the country. I stayed in a remote village and found work as a maid.” With the 1944 Olympics also cancelled, Keleti, who returned to gymnastics while working as a professional cellist after the war, qualified for the 1948 London Games but was unable to compete because of a torn ankle ligament. That meant her first Olympics was in Helsinki in 1952, by which time she was well past the retirement age of most gymnasts. Keleti won gold in the floor exercise, a silver in the team competition and two bronzes. At the Melbourne Games in 1956 – competing against the legendary Larisa Latynina of the USSR, who went on to become the most decorated female gymnast in Olympic history – Keleti won four golds and two silvers. Her victories, for the beam, floor exercise, uneven bars and the team portable apparatus, and second places in the individual all-around and team competitions, made her, aged 35, the Melbourne Games’s most successful competitor. Astonishingly, her performance came after conflict had once more irrupted into her life. In November 1956, as she was training in Australia, Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary. Along with 44 other Hungarian athletes, Keleti did not go home. After briefly coaching Australian gymnasts, she emigrated to Israel in 1957 where she eventually settled, building a national gymnastics programme, coaching the Israeli team and winning the country’s highest civilian honour, the Israel Prize, in 2017. She was still doing the splits in her 90s. Keleti died in hospital after reportedly being admitted with pneumonia on Christmas Day. She is survived by two sons, Daniel and Rafael, from her marriage to Robert Biro, a Hungarian sports instructor whom she met in Israel. “I live well, and I love life,” she said, explaining her longevity shortly before her 100th birthday three years ago, adding: “It was worth doing something well in life. I get the shivers when I see all the articles written about me.” |
The Guardian;Twelve people including two children killed in Montenegro shootings;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/01/at-least-four-killed-and-four-more-wounded-in-montenegro-shooting;2025-01-02T10:22:11Z | Twelve people, including two children, have been killed and four others seriously injured in southern Montenegro, authorities have said, in shootings that began in a restaurant and ended when the gunman shot himself in the head. The shooter, identified as Aleksandar Martinović, 45, turned his weapon on himself after being cornered by police near his home in Cetinje, a small town about 40km (25 miles) west of the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica, the interior minister, Danilo Šaranović, said. “When he saw that he was in a hopeless situation, he attempted suicide. He did not succumb to his injuries on the spot but during the transport to hospital,” Šaranović told the public broadcaster, RTCG. The public prosecutor, Andrijana Nastic, told reporters that 12 people had died in the shootings, which began at about 5.30pm on Wednesday in the village of Bajice near Cetinje. The victims were killed at five different locations, with the first four in the restaurant, Nastic said. “Each location has been inspected and evidence was taken. Prosecutor and police actions are ongoing to determine the circumstances,” she added. Four people were being treated for serious injuries in a hospital in Podgorica, the health minister, Vojislav Šimun, said, with the lives of three of them still in danger. The government has declared three days of national mourning. Police have said the shooting was not believed to be connected to organised crime. Šaranović said the bar owner, his children and members of the shooter’s own family were among the dead. “The level of rage and brutality shows sometimes such people … are even more dangerous than members of organised criminal gangs,” he said. The police commissioner Lazar Šćepanović said Martinović had spent much of New Year’s Day at the bar and was thought to have been drinking heavily before the shooting. He went home, brought back a weapon and opened fire, Šćepanović said. The gunman had been given a suspended sentence in 2005 for violent behaviour and had appealed against a more recent conviction for possession of illegal weapons. Local media have said he was known for his violent and erratic behaviour. The country’s president, Jakov Milatović, said he was “shocked and stunned” by the killings. “Instead of holiday joy … we have been gripped by sadness over the loss of innocent lives,” Milatović said in a social media post. The prime minister, Milojko Spajić, said there had been a brawl before shots were fired. He describing the shootings as a “terrible tragedy” and said authorities would consider tighter firearms laws, including a complete ban. Montenegro, which has a population of just over 600,000, is known for its deep-rooted gun culture, but mass shootings are comparatively rare. In 2022, also in Cetinje, a gunman killed 10 people including two children before being shot and killed. Despite generally strict gun laws, the western Balkans – Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo and North Macedonia – still have many weapons, most dating from the region’s bloody wars of the 1990s, but some more than a century old. Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Associated Press contributed to this report |
The Guardian;South Korea plane crash: police raid Muan airport and Jeju Air office;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/02/police-raid-muan-airport-in-wake-of-south-korea-plane-crash;2025-01-02T10:05:20Z | Police in South Korea have raided Muan international airport, the scene of Sunday’s plane crash, in which 179 people died, as well as the office of the airline that operated the flight, media reports said. Jeju Air flight 2216 was carrying 181 people from Thailand to South Korea when it issued a mayday call and belly-landed on the runaway, before crashing into a barrier and bursting into flames. Two flight attendants survived the crash, the worst aviation disaster on the country’s soil. The aftermath of the crash now appears to include police involvement, with media reporting that officers had also raided a third location, the office of a regional aviation office, on suspicion of professional negligence resulting in death. “In relation to the plane accident that occurred on December 29, a search and seizure operation is being conducted from 9am on January 2 at three locations,” including Muan airport, the Jeju Air office in Seoul, plus a regional aviation office, police said in a statement. “The police plan to swiftly and rigorously determine the cause and responsibility for this accident in accordance with the law and principles.” Investigators planned to seize documents and materials related to the operation and maintenance of the aircraft as well as the operation of airport facilities, a police official told Reuters. An official said police had banned the Jeju Air chief executive, Kim E-bae, and another unidentified official from leaving the country, calling them key witnesses who potentially face charges of causing deaths by negligence, which is punishable by up to five years in prison or a fine of up to 20 million won (£10,950). Pressure is building on authorities to establish the cause of the crash, which occurred after the Boeing 737-800’s landing gear apparently failed to deploy as it came in to land at Muan, in the country’s south-west, on Sunday morning. Inspectors have retrieved both black boxes from the charred remains of the aircraft and are working to decode data from the cockpit voice recorder. The plane’s flight data recorder, however, is to be transferred to the US for analysis after local officials said they were unable to extract data from the device, which had been damaged in the crash. The government ordered an emergency safety inspection of South Korea’s entire aviation operations, while separate checks, focusing on the landing gear, are being carried out on all 101 Boeing 737-800s used by six of the country’s airlines. The interim president, Choi Sang-mok, said “immediate action” must be taken if the inspections uncovered any irregularities with the aircraft. “As there is great public concern about the same aircraft model involved in the accident, the transport ministry and relevant agencies must conduct a thorough inspection of operation maintenance, education and training,” Choi said on Thursday. If any issues are found during the inspection, please take immediate corrective action.” The investigation has yet to determine why the landing gear appeared to fail, with a bird strike and mechanical failure among the possible causes. It is also focusing on a concrete barrier near the end of the runway, the location of which has drawn criticism from aviation experts. The passengers are thought to have died when the plane smashed into the barrier at high speed, burst into flames and broke apart. Relatives of the victims, who include five children aged under 10 and nine members of the same family, were allowed to visit the site on Wednesday for the first time since the crash. They placed tteokguk – rice-cake soup traditionally eaten on New Year’s Day – and cried as they said goodbye to their loved ones. Hundreds of people waited patiently to pay their respects at a nearby memorial altar set up to honour the victims, forming a queue that stretched for several hundred metres. Other altars have been set up across the country. |
The Guardian;Thursday briefing: Why Kemi Badenoch’s rough start as Tory leader shouldn’t be a surprise;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/02/thursday-briefing-why-kemi-badenochs-rough-start-as-tory-leader-shouldnt-be-a-surprise;2025-01-02T06:27:21Z | Good morning. I hope you had a restful Christmas and New Year, spent in a spirit of calm and conviviality. Kemi Badenoch, the already embattled new leader of the Conservative party, spent hers on the front pages after picking an extravagantly unnecessary fight with Nigel Farage over the reliability of the code on Reform’s website. On earth peace, goodwill to all men! Arguing the toss with a man whose greatest joy in life is winding up Tories probably wasn’t the right seasonal strategy for Badenoch. But it is only one of the problems facing her leadership. With her party in the doldrums and many of its big beasts hunted down in last year’s election defeat, Badenoch pitched herself as the right candidate to take the fight to Keir Starmer and revive the Tories at the next election. Today’s newsletter, with the Guardian’s deputy political editor Jessica Elgot, is about why that is proving so difficult. Here are the headlines. Five big stories New Orleans attack | At least 15 people have been killed after a vehicle flying an Islamic State (IS) flag drove into a crowd in New Orleans’ tourist district in the early hours of New Year’s Day. Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a US citizen from Texas, was killed in an exchange of gunfire with police and had a “potential” improvised explosive device, the FBI said. US news | One person died and seven more were injured when a Tesla Cybertruck packed with fireworks exploded outside Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel. Joe Biden said that law enforcement was investigating whether there were any links with the New Orleans attack. Energy | Russian gas has ceased flowing to Europe via Ukraine, causing power cuts in parts of Moldova and concern in some EU capitals about making up the deficit. Ukraine cut off the route after a 2019 agreement expired yesterday. Weather | The Met Office has issued a three-day heavy snow warning after torrential new year rain led to flooded properties, travel chaos and power cuts. Temperatures could drop to well below freezing at the weekend with up to 30cm of snow across England, Scotland and Wales. UK politics | UK elections are close to losing legitimacy because of plummeting turnout among renters and non-graduates, an influential thinktank has said. Analysis by the Institute for Public Policy Research found that the gap in turnout between those with and without university degrees grew to 11 percentage points in the 2024 election – double that of 2019. In depth: ‘It always takes an opposition leader a while to find a rhythm’ When Reform claimed that they now have more members than the Tories (via a digital counter projected on to Conservative headquarters) on Boxing Day, they probably hoped for a quick round of coverage during a political interlude. But they got a much better Christmas present from Kemi Badenoch. The Conservative leader – who has form for weird data fights – claimed the numbers had been faked, and that the code on Reform’s website proved it. Thanks to her intervention, the story led the rightwing press for several days. Membership isn’t really a proxy for national popularity, but at least some readers would have come away thinking of the two parties as, at best, neck and neck. This is not a terminal error – but it is emblematic of the tough start that Badenoch is having. “The big picture is that the Conservative party is in a bad place – decimated at the election and divided over her leadership,” Jessica said. “Badenoch’s not boring, but there was a concern among a lot of people that she is a loose cannon. She finds it very difficult to let things go, and that’s not a great asset in a leader.” *** Why did she get into it with Farage? To Badenoch’s critics, it was an indefensible mistake. “Badenoch doesn’t so much keep falling into [Farage’s] traps as leaping into them head-first,” journalist and former Ukip MEP Patrick O’Flynn wrote in the Spectator. “It is a disaster. Her perceived hostility towards Farage is likely to upset voters who once backed the Tories yet have recently transferred their allegiance to Reform.” But there are factors that make it at least comprehensible, Jessica said. “In general, she’s probably doing the right thing by deciding that it’s too early to set out a policy platform – even if she’s already deviated from that approach on a couple of issues – the farmers’ inheritance tax row and VAT on private schools, which are expensive policies to say you’re going to reverse this early.” For now, she added, the right focus is probably the rehabilitation of her own party. “That is what worked for Starmer: win a hearing from the public and get into specifics later.” But that is hard to square with the view among some senior Conservatives who disagree with O’Flynn and say that they have to take Farage on as an “existential threat to the party,” Jessica said. “It’s difficult in their current position to win a policy argument with Reform. Whereas if she attacks them as charlatans and stunt artists, that is an argument she can make.” *** How is she doing more generally? One claim made by Badenoch’s supporters was that she would run rings around Starmer at PMQs – crucial for an opposition leader as one of the few consistent opportunities for media attention. But most observers suggest that there hasn’t been much evidence of that yet: in the Spectator, for example, Isabel Hardman wrote that Badenoch has “become fixated on accusing Keir Starmer of not telling the truth at prime minister’s questions, to the extent that she is neglecting to push him on individual issues”. And in the New Statesman, Rachel Cunliffe wrote that “Week after week at PMQs, Badenoch is presented with open goals (and fails to score)”. There is a danger of overdoing the significance of all that, Jessica noted. “It always takes an opposition leader a while to find a rhythm at PMQs,” she said. “And it’s harder when the government has a thumping majority behind it roaring the prime minister on while your own benches are so depleted.” On the other hand, she added, “I’ve been surprised by the subjects she’s chosen to focus on a few times. She has often gone for things that Starmer can fairly easily blame on the last government, and she hasn’t done much on the winter fuel allowance or the impact of the rise in employers’ national insurance contributions on hospitality. Those are much more unpopular than adding VAT to private school fees.” She has meanwhile got a fair bit of media attention – but the Farage saga suggests that she is not all that adept at turning it to her advantage yet. “Kemi hates journalists, and hates being interviewed, and just isn’t prepared to do short clips and all the sort of stuff that opposition leaders have to do to keep from being forgotten,” Jessica said. “And because she hates journalists, she often comes across as irritated. So that’s something she will need to address.” *** What do the polls say? The best news for Badenoch is that Labour and Starmer had an incredibly short honeymoon. (This column by Anthony Seldon is a useful guide to why the prime minister is having just as rough a time as his opponent.) With very little good economic news as yet, the lead in the polls has changed hands several times since the election. Much less comforting is the fact that Reform has been doing very well, with some polls suggesting that it could come third ahead of the Liberal Democrats if nothing changes before the next election. But things will, of course, change a lot before the next election – which means that the more useful gauge at this point may be what you can find in the underlying figures. Here, the news looks pretty bad for Badenoch. A recent YouGov poll found she is much less likely to be seen as a PM in waiting than Starmer was when he became party leader. Some of that may be to do with a bias towards a white man as a plausible premier, and it is possible that as people get to know her those numbers will tick up a bit. But that relies on her finding a plausible lane of her own. “People don’t tend to vote for Diet Coke,” Jess said. “They want the real thing. So she has to carve out her own identity and set of policies, and show why she’s just as interesting a leader as Farage.” *** Isn’t it a bit early to judge her leadership? Definitely. As conservative commentator Iain Dale wrote in the Daily Telegraph, two months is not enough time to assess her performance, especially when “no one is particularly interested in what the Conservatives have at the moment. As Labour’s failures mount up, the time will come.” The trouble is that some of her own backbenchers are among those who are making rapid judgments. “Two-thirds of the parliamentary party weren’t convinced by her as leader,” Jess said. “That’s a tough base to start from. The big thing for her this year is going to be keeping control of her parliamentary party.” The worst case scenario is if poor results in May’s local elections, and a strong showing for Reform, lead to some backbenchers jumping ship to their rivals on the right – and leave a mood of alarm among those who remain. Tories will not be that moved by Suella Braverman ejecting, since her alienation from the leadership and appetite for attention are priced in. But MPs from the new intake or old hands with less interest in personal publicity would be another story. Badenoch will certainly get a bit of time to prove herself, and she may well find her feet. But if she does fail, there are alternatives. “It’s interesting that James Cleverly took a step back from the frontbench after he was eliminated from the leadership contest,” Jess said. “You would get pretty short odds on him being the leader by the next election. It’s much too early for predictions, but it’s certainly plausible.” What else we’ve been reading As we slowly drag ourselves back into work mode, the Guardian has asked the experts for 15 tips to avoid “overwhelm” in all its forms, from “constructive worrying” to, yes, putting down your phone. Charlie Rachel Aroesti reviews the return of The Traitors – and it’s a five star rave: “As perhaps the best example of social experiment-style reality TV, it has cemented its place in the cultural firmament.” (If you’re a fan, watch it first!) Archie As a child, British-Iranian photographer Bea Doro couldn’t wait to change her prominent Persian nose. As she writes in this opinion piece, she has not only come to accept it as a part of her identity, but committed herself to “photograph people with non-western features, and pay homage to our profiles and the history in our faces”. Charlie Our critics Alexis Petridis and Andrew Clements have a must-read list of 2025’s most anticipated music, from Billie Eilish and Fontaines DC to Sam Fender and FKA twigs. Personally, I’m in desperate need of new Haim. Charlie My personal Christmas highlight (with apologies to my loved ones) was catching up on this magnificent feature by David Pierce for the Verge, published in June, on the Excel World Championship. It’s tremendously fun, but more than a curiosity piece: “If you can reduce the world down to a bunch of rows and columns, you can control it,” Pierce writes. Archie Sport Football | Arsenal came back from 1-0 down to beat Brentford 3-1 thanks to goals from Gabriel Jesus, Mikel Merino, and Gabriel Martinelli (above). The result puts them six points behind Liverpool having played one game more. Darts | Luke Littler secured a place in the semi-finals of the PDC World Darts Championship with a 5-2 win over Nathan Aspinall. Chris Dobey, Michael van Gerwen and Stephen Bunting also progressed to the last four. 2025 in sport | Can Sarina Wiegman’s Lionesses overcome their manager’s Dutch compatriots at the Women’s Euros? Will we finally get a competitive Ashes series in Australia? And how will Lewis Hamilton do at Ferrari? Guardian writers preview the biggest sporting storylines of the year ahead. The front pages Today’s front pages are dominated by the New Orleans attack. The Guardian reports “Ten dead after truck flying IS flag drives into crowd in New Orleans”. The Times has “‘Terrorist’ truck attacker kills 10 in New Orleans”. The Telegraph reports “IS cell behind New Orleans terror”. The Mail leads with “New Orleans killer had Isis flag on truck”. The Mirror goes with “America under attack”. i splashes with “Covid courts to stay open – as backlog delays trials to 2028”. The Financial Times leads with “Nvidia pumps $1bn into AI start-ups riding on revolution its chips started”. And the Sun leads with news of bad weather across the UK with the headline “So much for dry January”. Today in Focus How to have a perfectly imperfect 2025 Instead of making grand new year’s resolutions, the smallest steps could lead to a more joyful life, says Oliver Burkeman Cartoon of the day | Nicola Jennings The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Looking for some quick, life-friendly ways to change your life? Guardian writers and readers have teamed up for this bumper list of 101 tiny things you can do to improve your life … in under five minutes. Ever tried “alternate nostril breathing”? Us neither, but now’s the time. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply |
The Guardian;How Italy’s Carabinieri cultural heritage protection squad foiled tomb-raiders;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/02/how-italys-carabinieri-cultural-heritage-protection-squad-foiled-tomb-raiders;2025-01-02T05:00:34Z | Looking towards the semicircular apse with a frescoed image of a partially identifiable Christ on a throne staring back at them, the archaeologists crouching in the small space deep beneath a residential building in Naples were left speechless. They were amid the remains of an 11th-century church. The archaeologists, however, could not take the credit: the historic jewel, which had just been seized by police, was dug up by tombaroli, or tomb-raiders, illicit gangs who for decades have been plundering Italian cultural sites, in turn fuelling the global market for stolen art and antiquities. Investigators believe the group’s leader was a local entrepreneur, currently under investigation, who owns two apartments in the building above. His cellar was turned into a well-organised excavation site, from where the tomb-raiders dug a warren of tunnels leading them about 8 metres down into ancient Naples, where they unearthed medieval art from under the heart of the southern Italian city. But impressive though their workmanship was – they even installed concrete pillars to prevent the structure from collapsing – officers from the Naples unit of Italy’s Carabinieri cultural heritage protection squad unmasked the gang and confiscated the church after a covert investigation. The force also recovered 10,000 fragments of Roman and medieval pottery from the alleged gangmasters’ homes and 453 intact artefacts, including vases, terracotta lamps and coins. Experts are assessing whether the relics came from the church or other plundered sites. So-called tomb-raiders are a key part of the illicit trade in antiquities, with their loot usually smuggled overseas to traffickers. The gangs commonly work by marking out clandestine excavation spots close to known archaeological sites, which in the Campania region surrounding Naples can include Pompeii, Herculaneum, Paestum or areas where there were Roman settlements. So uncovering a clandestine dig in the middle of the city took the specialist squad by surprise. “When you think of Pompeii, for example, you know a dig can lead to a wealthy domus where prestigious objects can be found,” says Massimo Esposito, the chief of the squad’s unit in Naples. “But it’s rare to find one in the heart of Naples.” The group’s alleged leader is believed to have had an inkling that there might be something beneath his home when construction works nearby on the city’s metro were interrupted and the site cordoned off after a small part of the remains of another, albeit less historically interesting, church emerged. The group worked for several months, carrying out their noisiest activity during the day, but not loud enough to attract complaints from the building’s residents. Little did the gang know that their comings and goings were being observed by Esposito’s team, with the squad staking out the building and wiretapping its alleged leader’s phone. Suspicions were especially aroused after seeing him carrying boxes filled with materials. “Keeping an ear to the ground is essential,” says Esposito. “We were informed about anomalous construction activity, and intuited that it could be an illegal excavation after records showed there were no public or private works happening in or near that building to justify such activity.” It is not yet clear if the intention was to sell the loot or amass a private collection. The Carabinieri’s cultural heritage protection squad was established in 1969 with the task of protecting Italy’s priceless cultural assets. Since then, more than 3m stolen artworks and relics have been retrieved, including those that ended up on display in some of the world’s biggest museums, such as the Getty in Los Angeles. Art and relics thieves in Campania especially thrived in the 1980s, taking advantage of a devastating earthquake at the beginning of that decade to ransack churches of paintings. The long-lost La Desposizione, a 2-metre high masterpiece painted by Angelo Solimena in 1664 depicting the crucifixion, was recently returned to Campania only after it was spotted on display in a museum in the Marche region. Esposito met the Guardian in his unit’s office located in Castel Sant’Elmo, a medieval fortress overlooking Naples. He was surrounded by relics recuperated by the force in Campania, including a wine amphora and a house-shaped sarcophagus, believed to have contained the remains of a child, and various other funerary objects dating back to the fourth century AD. The artefacts are usually kept there pending the conclusion of judicial cases, before being either returned to their origin or entrusted to museums. The tomb-raiders still ply a decent trade, but with the police consistently on their tail, their loot is not as fruitful as it used to be. Data in recent years indicates a gradual decrease in crimes against cultural heritage. Laws for crimes against cultural heritage have been tightened, and work intensified to return stolen assets from abroad. The unit has a database listing more than 1.3m stolen assets, which can be consulted by police forces overseas. Use of social media, especially over the past decade, has also made it easier for the squad to identify thieves. A trove of funerary treasures, believed to have belonged to Etruscan princesses and illegally excavated from an underground tomb in Umbria, was retrieved in November after police came across a photo of the bungling thieves posing on Facebook as they attempted to sell it online. “Despite the risk, there is sometimes this egotistical element: they want to boast about the beautiful items they’ve found,” says Esposito. As with other returned relics, the long-term plan for the medieval church in Naples is to make it accessible to the public. “This is always the ultimate goal,” says Esposito. “Italy is an open-air museum, so rich in cultural heritage. This makes our job very arduous, but we are also driven by a passion to ensure that Italy’s property is returned.” |
The Guardian;‘I was very lucky’: activist and blogger Lu Yuyu on escaping China;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/02/i-was-very-lucky-activist-and-blogger-lu-yuyu-on-escaping-china;2025-01-02T04:00:32Z | As he trekked up the lush mountain range on China’s border with Laos, Lu Yuyu felt exhausted. He had been travelling for days, dodging his official minders to slip out of China. His travelling companions were smugglers who he’d paid 15,000 yuan (£1,622) to help him escape, and forced him to keep going until he could be delivered to two men and a scooter for the final few hours of his journey to freedom. But leaving China was only the first step. Lu had thousands more miles before he would truly feel safe. His daring escape from China in May last year involved a great deal of luck. Other dissidents have tried and failed on a similar route; some have made it to Laos but been sent back to China. From Laos, Lu headed to a UN refugee agency office in Thailand where he claimed asylum in Canada, and has since been reunited with his wife and his cat, a white and ginger tabby called Anthony. “I was very lucky to get out of China,” Lu says in a phone interview from his new home in Calgary. Lu is part of a relatively new breed of Chinese activists who use social media to document and publicise unrest in China – a task that the Chinese authorities used to do themselves. Statistics published by the Ministry of Public Security showed that the number of such “mass incidents” increased every year between 1993 and 2005, when the tally hit 87,000 – the same year in which the government stopped publishing the data. In its place, civil society groups and activists have tried to keep track of flashpoints of mass dissatisfaction. China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong based NGO, monitors strikes and protests in mainland China while China Dissent Monitor, a project run by Freedom House, tallied more than 3,000 events in 2024. Another blogger, Li Ying, a Chinese artist based in Italy, started sharing news and videos from anti-lockdown protests in China in November 2022. His X account, Teacher Li is Not Your Teacher, has nearly 2m followers and is a widely watched source of information about events in China. Lu had started blogging a decade before. In 2012, he noticed a few different protestsin the twilight of an era in which China’s internet was relatively open and started searching the social media platforms WeChat and Weibo for details of more. He published the details on his own blog, Not the News, that became a popular resource for researchers in China and abroad. He was arrested in 2016 and sentenced to four years in jail for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, a charge often used to imprison dissidents. “I know the true colours of the CCP [Chinese Communist party] regime. So I anticipated they would come for me,” he says. On his release in 2020, he wanted to resume his work. “But it was hard for me to do that,” he says, “because I was monitored every single day”. He hopped between provinces in an effort to lose his minders, but travel restrictions related to the pandemic that had begun that year made it difficult. By April 2022, he was living in Dandong, north-east China. One day, he was dragged by the police to a quarantine centre during a Covid outbreak in his apartment building. He was kept there for a fortnight. “It made me feel very useless, because I couldn’t even take care of my cat,” he says. He became desperate to leave China. But there were many obstacles in the way. China’s borders were effectively sealed under the “zero-Covid” regime, and in any case, he’d never owned a passport. He had attempted to apply for one in 2021 but his application was blocked. The lifting of pandemic restrictions in early 2023 providing Lu with a glimmer of hope. First, he travelled 2,000 miles from Dandong to Guangxi, a province in southern China, on the premise of being a tourist. Then he travelled to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, on the long weekend for the May Day holiday. It was there he realised that his minders were less vigilant on the weekends. So he booked a Saturday flight to Yunnan, a province on China’s south-west border. He left his sim card behind so that it would take the authorities longer to realise that he had slipped away. After arriving in Thailand, he requested asylum in any English-speaking country, and was offered Canada. He is slowly rebuilding his life in Calgary and trying to continue with his activism, but China’s increasingly sophisticated internet censorship makes that difficult. “Nowadays, it’s much easier for the police to find information about protests, and people will be intimidated into deleting their posts. Or the platforms will filter sensitive information so that it can’t be collected,” he says. Lu says a decade ago he could count nearly 100 protests a day in China, now he estimates it is more like 70, although it is unclear if that is because protests are becoming less common or because the censorship is more effective. Certainly, though, large-scale protests have declined, Lu says. He notes, though, that: “There is still dissatisfaction in society. The CCP can only stop mass protests, but on a smaller scale, the CCP can’t eradicate them. It’s a balance.” Additional research by Jason Tzu Kuan Lu |
The Guardian;Ukraine war briefing: New Year’s Day drone strike kills two in Kyiv;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/02/ukraine-war-briefing-new-years-day-drone-strike-kills-two-in-kyiv;2025-01-02T00:57:08Z | Russia launched a New Year’s Day drone strike on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv early on Wednesday, killing two people, wounding at least six others and damaging buildings in two districts, authorities said. Explosions boomed across the morning sky as Ukraine’s air force warned of incoming drones and mayor Vitali Klitschko said air defences were repelling an enemy attack. Two floors of a residential building in central Kyiv were partially destroyed in the strike, according to the State Emergency Service. Photos posted by the agency showed firefighters dousing a gutted corner of a building and rescuers helping elderly victims. “Even on New Year’s Eve, Russia was only concerned about how to hurt Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media in response to the strike. The breakaway Moldovan region of Transdniestria cut heating and hot water supplies to households on Wednesday after Russia stopped supplying gas to central and eastern Europe via Ukraine. The severing of the gas flow was felt immediately in the mainly Russian-speaking territory of about 450,000 people, which split from Moldova in the early 1990s as the Soviet Union collapsed. “There is no heating or hot water,” an employee of local energy company Tirasteploenergo told Reuters by phone. The gas supply was cut in the early hours of Wednesday after the expiry of a gas transit agreement between warring neighbours Russia and Ukraine. Transdniestria’s leader, Vadim Krasnoselsky, said the situation was “not an easy one, but on the whole, we were prepared”. The flow of Russian gas through Ukraine stopped when Kyiv refused to extend a transit agreement amid the 34-month-old war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday described the end of gas transit as “one of Moscow’s biggest defeats”. He said it was now Europe’s “joint task” to support Moldova “in this period of energy transformation”. Russia had been pumping about 2bn cubic metres of gas a year to Transdniestria, including a power plant that provided energy for the whole of Moldova, a country of 2.5 million people that wants to join the European Union. Moldova says it is taking measures to cut its energy consumption by at least a third. It plans to meet 38% of its needs by domestic production, including 10% from renewable energy, and import the remaining 62% from neighbouring Romania. Ukraine has attacked countries that still buy Russian energy as helping fuel Moscow’s war machine, but the decision has caused mixed reactions in Europe. Slovakia, reliant on Russian gas, slammed the move. “Halting gas transit via Ukraine will have a drastic impact on us all in the EU but not on the Russian Federation,” said Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico, who has pushed Bratislava closer to Moscow since returning to power in 2023. President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russia’s government and the country’s biggest bank, Sberbank, to build cooperation with China in artificial intelligence. Putin’s instructions were published on the Kremlin’s website on Wednesday, three weeks after he announced that Russia would team up with BRICS partners and other countries to develop AI. Western sanctions intended to restrict Moscow’s access to the technologies it needs to sustain its war against Ukraine have resulted in the world’s major producers of microchips halting exports to Russia, severely limiting its AI ambitions. |
The Guardian;Jocelyne Wildenstein, socialite known for extreme cat-like plastic surgery, dies at 84;https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/01/jocelyne-wildenstein-dies-swiss-socialite-cosmetic-surgery;2025-01-01T21:35:23Z | The Swiss socialite and cosmetic surgery aficionado Jocelyne Wildenstein, sometimes known as “Catwoman” due to her extensive plastic surgery, has died, her partner said on Wednesday. “It is with heavy heart and with great sadness that Mr Lloyd Klein announces the unexpected death of his beloved fiancée and longtime companion, Jocelyne Wildenstein,” the fashion designer said in an English-language statement sent to the Agence France-Presse news agency. Klein said that “Mrs Wildenstein died peacefully in her sleep in the late afternoon of December 31st, 2024 in her … suite in Paris where the couple had taken temporary residence.” Wildenstein, nee Jocelynnys Dayannys da Silva Bezerra Périsset, became a New York socialite after marrying the art dealer Alec Wildenstein, of the French art dealing and thoroughbred racing dynasty, with whom she had two children. She was referred to variously as Jocelyne and Jocelyn in the English-language media. She was born in 1940 in Lausanne, Switzerland, and died on 31 December at the age of 84. It was Wildenstein’s extensive self-remodeling to make herself look more “feline”, inspired by wild big cats – along with a reported $2.5bn divorce settlement and $100m each year for 13 years afterward – that caught the public’s attention. She had spent time in Africa with the European film-maker Sergio Gobbi , telling New York magazine: “Africa is a paradise. You meet people who look at life differently. They love the adventure.” She had met her husband, Alec Wildenstein, while on safari in Kenya and married him a year later in Las Vegas. Then Wildenstein embarked on a cosmetic adventure to look more like a big cat. According to the Daily Mail, she spent £2m on surgeries, apparently to please her husband, who loved the big cats. She kept a lynx as a pet, telling Vanity Fair “the lynx has perfect eyes”. But her husband told Vanity Fair: “She was crazy. I would always find out last. She was thinking that she could fix her face like a piece of furniture. Skin does not work that way. But she wouldn’t listen.” But a messy divorce came with rumours spread by her ex-husband that she had been a courtesan with Madame Claude, the Parisian bordello owner. During the divorce, he was reported to have cut her monthly allowance from $150,000 to $50,000. A judge overseeing her divorce settlement reportedly stipulated that she could not use any of the settlement for further surgery. “I never wanted to change my face,” she told the French television news channel C8 this autumn, though admitting she might have wanted her lips to be a little thicker. She denied rumours she embarked on cosmetic surgery to keep her ex-husband. Interview magazine last remarked that Wildenstein had “been one of the jet set’s most outrageous characters for nearly five decades”. In a conversation with the outlet, Wildenstein estimated that she spent more than $700,000 a year on food, wine, flowers, pills and more, adding “and that was just the beginning”. Where some saw extremism, others saw beauty. “I remember seeing you once at Beige [a legendary Tuesday-night party at the Bowery Bar and Grill in New York City]. It was burned into my brain forever because the glamour was turned up so high,” wrote the editor and interviewer Mel Ottenberg. Ottenberg asked Wildenstein about her love of big cats. She explained there were 2,000 animals at Ol Jogi [the Wildenstein family ranch in Kenya] under protection. “We have everything except lions, because they would kill what we are trying to protect,” she said. Asked for her favourite animal, she said she liked all animals, but settled on the leopard, saying it was because they become attached to only one person. “Leopards are jealous,” she said. Wildenstein said that huge press attention based on her appearance had usefully kept her in the public eye during her divorce. “Journalists can say whatever they like … it’s really not my problem.” AFP contributed reporting |
The Guardian;Twenty missing after falling from boat in rough seas off Libya’s coast;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/01/twenty-missing-after-falling-from-boat-in-rough-seas-off-libyas-coast;2025-01-01T18:26:36Z | Twenty people are missing after falling into the sea from a tilting boat after it started to take in water in rough seas about 20 miles off the coast of Libya, according to survivors. Carrying 27 passengers, the six-metre boat had left Zuwara in Libya at 10pm on Monday. Despite the waves, seven people managed to continue the journey on the rickety vessel before being found by an Italian police patrol boat on Tuesday night close to the southern island of Lampedusa. It was initially believed that the vessel had capsized close to Lampedusa, and so an overnight search and rescue operation was carried out by the Italian police and coastguard in the area of sea south-west of the island. But according to witness statements from six adult survivors reported by the Italian press, the boat started to take in water about five hours after its departure from Libya and tilted, creating panic and causing 20 passengers to fall overboard. The witnesses, who included two people from Syria, two from Egypt and two from Sudan, said five women and three children were among those who fell overboard. They said the sea was rough and the winds strong. The seventh survivor was an eight-year-old boy from Syria. All have been taken to Porto Empedocle in Sicily. According to the news agency Ansa, Italian authorities have ceased the search and reported the incident to their Libyan and Maltese counterparts. In a separate incident on Monday, two people including a five-year-old child died and 17 survived after the vessel they were on broke down off the northern Tunisian coastline during an attempt to reach Europe. According to Alarm Phone, an organisation that runs a hotline for people in distress at sea, three boats have capsized off Tunisia since Tuesday. “So many people have needlessly died and disappeared,” the organisation wrote on X. “What a horrible way to start the new year. Our condolences to the relatives and friends of the dead.” |
The Guardian;Russian gas flows to Europe via Ukraine cease as transit agreement expires;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/01/breakaway-moldovan-region-cuts-heating-and-hot-water-as-russia-stops-gas-flow;2025-01-01T17:54:34Z | Russian gas has stopped flowing to Europe via Ukraine, ending a major energy route that goes back to Soviet times and had even survived three years of full-scale war between the two states. Ukraine cut off the transit route after an agreement signed in 2019 expired in the early hours of New Year’s Day, marking a new milestone in Europe weaning itself off Russian gas supplies over the past few years, and prompting immediate power cuts for hundreds of thousand of people in a breakaway region of Moldova. Russia’s Gazprom said in a statement that it had stopped sending gas via Ukraine as of 8am Moscow time (5am GMT) on Wednesday. Ukraine’s energy minister, German Galushchenko, called the move “historic”, while the president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, described it in a post on social media as “one of Moscow’s biggest defeats”. Zelenskyy wrote: “When [Vladimir] Putin was given power in Russia more than 25 years ago, the annual gas pumping through Ukraine to Europe was 130+ billion cubic metres. Today, the transit of Russian gas is 0.” The move prompted angry words from Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, who had lobbied against the decision in recent months. “Halting gas transit via Ukraine will have a drastic impact on us all in the EU but not on the Russian Federation,” he wrote on Facebook. Elsewhere, however, there was celebration over a further step away from Russian energy dependency. Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, called the development “a new victory” for Europe. The most immediate effect of the move came in the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria, which lost heating and hot water on Wednesday morning. A statement on the website of Tirasteploenergo, the local energy company, said the heating cuts took effect at 7am local time (5am GMT) on Wednesday. It urged residents to dress warmly, gather family members together in a single room, hang blankets or thick curtains over windows and balcony doors, and use electric heaters. “It is forbidden to use gas or electric stoves to heat the apartment. This can lead to tragedy,” the company said. One of its employees told Reuters by phone she did not know how long the situation would last. Russian gas has flowed through Ukraine for decades, mainly via a Soviet-built pipeline that begins in Sudzha, a town in Russia’s Kursk region currently under the control of Ukrainian forces, and ends near Uzhhorod, on Ukraine’s western border with Slovakia. The route was often fraught, with Russia accused of using gas flow for political blackmail over the years as its relations with Ukraine went through various crises. A report published last month by the Center for European Policy Analysis (Cepa) claimed: “Russia has abused Ukraine and Europe’s dependence on gas supplies and transit revenues to extort political concessions, spread corruption and exert malign influence.” Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the share of Russian gas on the European market has dropped from about 35% to about 8%, as European countries sought to diversify supplies. The Nord Stream undersea pipeline, which linked Russia and Germany without the need for transit countries, was destroyed in September 2022, with reports suggesting a Ukrainian team was behind the attack. But Slovakia, Hungary and Austria still rely on Russian gas, and even as war has raged in Ukraine over the past three years, the transit continued. The gas provided revenue for both Russia and Ukraine, including hundreds of millions of euros a year in transit fees for Kyiv. Negotiations took place last year to extend the deal, with various options suggested including a scheme for Russia and Azerbaijan to sell each other gas and brand the transit gas as Azerbaijani gas. These options were rejected by Ukraine, however, as the government decided the benefits of ending transit would outweigh the costs. “We won’t allow them to earn additional billions off our blood,” said Zelenskyy last month. He said the only option Ukraine would consider would be if consumers deferred payment to Russia until after the end of the war, but this was never likely to be an acceptable solution for Gazprom or the Kremlin. The only Russian gas route to Europe still in operation is TurkStream, a Black Sea pipeline that sends gas to Hungary and Serbia. According to analysts, as the Ukraine transit gas only accounted for about 5% of Europe’s gas needs, it is likely that alternative sources can be found for EU countries to make up the deficit without a significant impact on prices. Nonetheless, the Russia-friendly leaders of Slovakia and Hungary, Fico and Viktor Orbán, have criticised the move. Slovakia has estimated that the loss of supplies through Ukraine could cost about €150m (£125m) in increased fees. Fico travelled to Moscow last month for discussions with Putin, a rare visit for an EU leader since the start of the war. On his return, he threatened that if Ukraine did cut off Russian gas flows, Slovakia would consider cutting electricity supplies to Ukraine, which has had to resort to imports as Russia continues a targeted bombing campaign against the country’s energy infrastructure. “We are fighting for lives; Fico is fighting for money,” said a furious Zelenskyy in response to the threat. “To be honest, during war it’s a bit shameful to talk about money, because we’re losing people,” he added. Moldova faces perhaps the most difficult consequences of any European country from the end of Ukraine’s gas transit. In December, it declared a state of emergency, fearing the cut-off would affect its main electricity source, a gas-powered generating plant in Transnistria. A referendum on EU accession in Moldova passed last year with a razor-thin majority and Russia has been accused of meddling in the electoral system. Gazprom had threatened to stop deliveries to Moldova even if a deal was done to keep the Ukraine transit going, citing a dispute over unpaid bills. On Wednesday the Moldovan government accused Moscow of “blackmail”. However, most of Moldova’s population of 2.5 million are able to make up for the loss of Russian gas by using reserves and importing from Romania, while Transnistria, the pro-Russia breakaway region that is home to about 450,000 people, is likely to be hit hardest. The Moldovan government spokesperson Daniel Vodă said on Wednesday that the central authorities were “looking for alternative solutions to provide [Transnistria residents] with heat and energy”. |
The Guardian;The battle of Cable Street remains a call to arms | Letters;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/01/the-battle-of-cable-street-remains-a-call-to-arms;2025-01-01T17:32:51Z | Tracy-Ann Oberman is right to highlight the importance of the battle of Cable Street in the history of the working-class movement (The battle of Cable Street is entwined in my family’s history – and its message of hope still resonates, 28 December). One lesson the left appears to neglect is that Cable Street was, indeed, a battle, not a passive demonstration. Anti-fascists engaged in hand-to-hand fighting with both Blackshirts and their police escorts throughout the day. Fascists were attacked by local people from the moment they began to assemble at Tower Hill, and fighting continued until the British Union of Fascists’ march was called off. We have become too accustomed to seeing the fight for a more just society as being primarily a battle of ideas. Fascism, though, seeks to build a new physical force in the name of creating “order” at the expense of all those who do not fit in the society it seeks to bring about. As the battle of Cable Street shows, it has to be physically challenged, not simply demonstrated against. The same should apply to the country-casual neo-Mosleyites of today. Faced with a threat to “people from every minority and working-class background”, we do not need to adhere to liberal pieties about fascism’s right to free speech when we have to drive it off the streets in order to defend ourselves. As well as resisting fascism, we must also challenge the everyday racism and violence of the status quo. We should see 13 May 2021 as part of the same tradition as the battle of Cable Street – a day when hundreds of people in Glasgow, shouting “these are our neighbours, let them go”, surrounded an Immigration Enforcement van until the two men detained in it were freed. As Tracy-Ann’s article shows, we have to fight constantly for each other against forces which recognise that the development of working-class solidarity is a threat to a society rooted in sustained inequality. Nick Moss London • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section. |
The Guardian;Chunky European snails may be coming to Australia, with their crazy sexual practices – but all in good time;https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jan/02/chunky-european-snails-may-be-coming-to-australia-with-their-crazy-sexual-practices-but-all-in-good-time;2025-01-01T14:00:17Z | Frankly, the process has been going at a snail’s pace. In 2019 the Australian government began a risk analysis on bringing European molluscs into the country for breeding and, eventually, eating. Now farmers hope that early next year they will finally learn whether importing live garden snails – Cornu aspersum – will be permitted. C aspersum is the common garden snail found all over Australia, probably brought here on boats more than a century ago. The farmers want to bring over the bigger European version to start breeding programs here. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email They would then provide snail meat (the escargot) and snail eggs (caviar) to restaurants. C aspersum is a pest, a destroyer of crops, a muncher of gardens. In its draft plan, the agriculture department says the breed-stock must come from approved snail farms in approved countries and have the relevant government certification. They would be imported into a quarantine facility then individually examined. The department would demand the “sacrifice” of some via dissection. They would then be bred for the next generation to ensure they are free of pathogens, after which they would be released to farmers. Victoria and Nick Howe founded South West Snails in Western Australia during the pandemic. She says they are already breeding bigger local snails to supply restaurants by mating the larger ones of those they pluck from vineyards. “We don’t have enough to fill demand,” she says. The snails are put on breeding tables with soil, where they lay their eggs. Howe says once they know which snails they are selling they “purge” them. That can mean feeding the gastropods herbs such as dill or thyme, greens, cornmeal or oatmeal. The chef Gordon Ramsay recommends carrots. “I’ve created my own snail mix using local WA grains,” Howe says. “They have that for a couple of days, then just water for a couple of days, then they go into refrigeration which puts them into hibernation. We ship them live.” Then, in restaurant kitchens, the snails are cooked in boiling water, trussed up and served. Both sexes at once Breeding snails is not always as easy as that sounds. They are hermaphrodites and in some cases can fertilise themselves but generally prefer a partner. In 2016 University of the Sunshine Coast researchers uncovered more details of the molluscs’ sex lives. Their use of “love darts” or “Cupid’s arrows” had been known for some time – the snails stab each other as they mate. The research found that dart injects a pheromone into the other snail, increasing its ability to reproduce. The genital orifice – containing both the male and female genitals – is behind the head on the right hand side. The snails act as both sexes at once when they mate. Tarryn Williams Clow is a senior zookeeper and leads Taronga Zoo’s Norfolk Island land snail conservation program. Her team has revived the population of Advena campbellii, Campbell’s keeled glass snail, which was thought to be extinct until its rediscovery in 2020. Unlike C aspersum, the Norfolk Island snails do not lay eggs. “Ours actually give birth,” Clow says. “A whole entire baby snail comes out of their neck. It’s pretty wild to see.” She says their birth tract looks a bit like a conveyor belt. “There’d be a fully formed snail. Behind that a less developed one, and behind that an even less developed one.” The team needed to figure out how the molluscs reproduced, so they studied other snails. Although she says they are all “very, very different”, there are some similarities. “They are hermaphrodites, so they have both male and female genitalia – some species can self-fertilise,” she says. “We don’t know if ours [can], and we haven’t actually observed them mate because they’re nocturnal. “They both have a penis that comes out of their genital pore on their neck.” One result of the way snails mate is that rare goofyfooters, whose shells coil to the left instead of the right, have trouble finding partners. Their genitals are on the opposite side to normal. One researcher made global news searching for a mate for Jeremy, a snail whose shell coiled to the left. He found a similar left-coiled snail, and found that two lefties can make a right. Once the government releases the final report it will develop guidelines for importation, clearing the way for the European escargot to grace Australian tables. |
The Guardian;South Korea plane crash investigators extract data from Jeju Air black box;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/01/south-korea-plane-crash-investigators-extract-data-from-jeju-air-black-box;2025-01-01T06:15:53Z | Investigators in South Korea have extracted data from one of two black boxes retrieved from a Jeju Air plane that crashed shortly after landing on Sunday, killing all but two of the 181 people onboard. The country’s deputy minister for civil aviation, Joo Jong-wan, said initial data had been retrieved from the Boeing 737-800’s cockpit voice recorder, and that the contents were being converted into audio format. South Korea’s transport ministry said on Wednesday that it would send the plane’s other black box, the flight data recorder, to the US for analysis. The recorder reportedly sustained external damage – a missing connector that links its data storage unit to the power supply, the Yonhap news agency said. Authorities in South Korea and the US are hoping the devices will provide crucial clues about events leading up to the pilot’s attempt to land after the aircraft’s landing gear apparently failed to deploy. “The damaged flight data recorder has been deemed unrecoverable for data extraction domestically,” Joo said. “It was agreed today to transport it to the United States for analysis in collaboration with the US National Transportation Safety Board.” The plane, on a return flight from Thailand, was carrying 175 passengers and six crew when the cockpit issued a mayday call and belly-landed on the runway at Muan international airport in South Korea’s south-west. The aircraft careered along the runway before hitting a barrier and bursting into flames, killing everyone onboard except two flight attendants who were pulled from the burning wreckage at the rear of the aircraft. An “initial extraction [of the cockpit voice recorder] has already been completed,” Joo said. “Based on this preliminary data, we plan to start converting it into audio format,” which will enable investigators to hear the pilots’ final communications. It could take about two days for investigators to convert the data to audio files, the transport ministry said. Transferring the damaged flight data recorder to the US could prolong efforts to get to the bottom of the worst aviation disaster on South Korean soil. Black boxes are typically located in the tail of an aircraft – which experience suggests sustains the least damage in an accident – and are designed to survive high-speed impact and fires. They are not failsafe, however, and can sometimes be damaged or destroyed. Several theories have been put forward as the possible cause of the crash, including a bird strike and possible mechanical failures, with local media reporting that the landing gear had deployed successfully during the plane’s first attempted landing, but failed on a second attempt moments later. A government-ordered emergency inspection of all Boeing 737-800 models operated by South Korean carriers was examining the landing gear. The ongoing inspections were “focusing mainly on the landing gear, which failed to deploy properly in this case”, the director general for aviation safety policy, Yoo Kyung-soo, said. Officials said the bodies were very badly damaged by the crash, which had made the work of identifying remains slow and difficult to the frustration of grieving relatives, who have spent four days at the airport. The country’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, called for a fair and objective investigation, adding that funeral procedures had begun after all 179 victims were formally identified. “The most urgent matter at present is to return the victims to their families,” Choi told a meeting. The initial onsite investigation has centred on a barrier located near the end of the runway that supported a navigation system used to help aircraft land called a localiser. Most of the victims are thought to have died when the plane, which had been carrying mostly people back from year-end holidays in Thailand, smashed into the concrete barrier at speed, the impact causing the fuselage to break up and burst into flames. Airport authorities set up a makeshift altar on Tuesday, and organised buses on Wednesday to take victims’ relatives to pay their respects at the crash site. Park Han-shin, who has been liaising with airport and government authorities on behalf of the bereaved families, said about 700 family members had visited the site, where they laid chrysanthemums and bowls of rice-cake soup. Park said 43 bodies had been listed as ready for release to their families, and asked relatives of those not on the list to be patient. Many New Year’s Eve celebrations across South Korea were cancelled or toned down as the country marked the third of seven days of official mourning. |
The Guardian;Ukraine war briefing: Zelenskyy vows his country will do everything in 2025 to stop Russia;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/01/ukraine-war-briefing-zelenskyy-vows-his-country-will-do-everything-in-2025-to-stop-russia;2025-01-01T01:44:41Z | Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed that his country would use 2025 to fight for an end to Russia’s nearly three-year-long invasion. The Ukrainian leader’s address caps a difficult year for the war-battered country which has been fending off a better-resourced Russian army for nearly three years. “May 2025 be our year,” Zelenskyy said in an address to the nation just before the clock struck midnight in Kyiv. “We know that peace will not be given to us as a gift but we will do everything to stop Russia and end the war.” Zelenskyy said that no one would give peace to his country as a gift, but he believed the US would stand alongside Kyiv in its fight. He recalled conversations with outgoing US President Joe Biden, president-elect Donald Trump and “everyone who supports us in the United States”. “I have no doubt that the new American president wants and will be able to bring peace and end (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s aggression,” he said. Russian gas is not scheduled to flow via Ukraine to Europe on 1 January, data from Ukraine’s gas pipeline operator showed Tuesday, as a key transit deal between Moscow and Kyiv nears its end. Ukraine has been allowing Russia to pipe gas to Europe via its territory under a five-year deal signed in 2019, but Zelenskyy has ruled out extending it amid Russia’s invasion. Data from Ukrainian operator OGTSU showed deliveries via the only entry point for Russian gas into Ukraine dropping to zero as of 1 January 2025. Russia launched a drone strike on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv early on Wednesday, causing damage in at least two districts, city officials said. Kyiv’s air force warned of drones approaching the city as an air-raid alert was declared. Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said air-defences were repelling an enemy attack, and that debris had sparked fires in private buildings. Russia advanced by almost 4,000 square kilometres (1,500 miles) in Ukraine in 2024, seven times more than in 2023, an AFP analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War showed on Tuesday. The data highlights the pressure Ukraine faces as it enters 2025, with Moscow pouring resources into its invasion and uncertainty hanging over future US aid for Kyiv under a Donald Trump presidency. Much of the Russian gains came in the autumn, as they took 610 square kilometres in October and 725 square kilometres in November. Those two months saw the Russians capture the most territory since March 2022, in the early weeks of the conflict. Russia’s advance slowed in December, coming to 465 square kilometres in the first 30 days of the month. The Ukrainian military said on Tuesday its forces had hit a Russian oil depot in the western Smolensk region, setting fire to tanks storing oil products. Ukraine’s general staff said on the Telegram app that the depot was used for military purposes. It did not specify the weapon used for the strike but said it was carried out in cooperation with drone forces. Smolensk region governor Vasily Anokhin said that the attack caused a fuel spill and fire. He said 10 Ukrainian drones were shot down by Russian air defences but the wreckage of one of them fell on the oil facility. Ukraine has staged numerous attacks on Russian oil storage facilities and refineries. |
The Guardian;Xi says China’s economy on course to expand by 5% despite Trump concerns;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/31/xi-china-economy-trump-tariffs;2024-12-31T15:52:21Z | China’s economy is on course to expand by 5% in 2025, according to its president, Xi Jinping, meeting official growth targets and rebutting concerns that Donald Trump’s incoming US administration will harm Beijing’s prospects in the new year. Using his annual address to the nation, Xi sought to allay fears that the world’s second-largest economy would falter over the next 12 months after the government battled to prevent a slide towards recession during 2024. Xi said China’s economy was “overall stable and progressing”, in a speech published by the official Xinhua news agency. He said risks in key areas were effectively addressed, while employment and prices remained steady. The speech followed the December meeting of the Communist party politburo, which was widely viewed as signalling the strongest commitment to economic stimulus in a decade, marking a shift towards more aggressive subsidies and cuts to the cost of borrowing. “The current economic operation faces some new situations, challenges from the uncertainty of the external environment and pressure of transformation from old drivers of growth into new ones, but these can be overcome through hard work,” Xi said. Trump is preparing to impose high tariffs on Chinese imports to punish what the incoming US president believes are unfair subsidies for Chinese industrial products. China is expected to respond with restrictions on US companies operating inside China, including Elon Musk’s Tesla car company. Musk became a key adviser to Trump during his presidential campaign. Xi, ratcheting up tensions between the world’s two largest economies, said “no one can stop” unification with Taiwan and that he would not rule out the use of force to bring the island under Beijing’s control. Taiwan, which exports many of the most sophisticated computer chips used by US manufacturers, is a key point of contention between Beijing and Washington. The US does not officially recognise Taiwan diplomatically but is its strategic ally and largest supplier of weapons. China has staged three rounds of large-scale military drills since Taiwan’s leader, Lai Ching-te, came to power in May. “Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan strait are one family. No one can sever our blood ties, and no one can stop the historical trend of the reunification of the motherland,” said Xi. China’s economic policymakers have yet to announce a precise growth target for 2025, but officials have flagged that 5% will be the outcome when they meet later in January. A series of stimulus measures since September 2024 are likely to have kept growth from falling below 4.8% in the last year. However, economists at Bloomberg have estimated a growth rate of only 4.5% for 2025, well below the 5% expected level and significantly lower than the 6% average reached before the pandemic. Growth rates could be even lower than official figures suggest. The Chinese authorities have faced persistent accusations of massaging economic data to suit official forecasts, especially during the pandemic, when Beijing ordered one of the most severe lockdowns of any major economy. Many analysts said the move depressed consumer spending and business activity by more than was shown in official data. Senior policymakers are known to want China’s stock markets to grow at a stronger pace and more consistently to support wealth creation and private sector investment. Share prices improved in 2024 despite a dip on the last day, but the modest rise over the last year followed an unprecedented three-year decline. Among the stimulus measures is a boost to public sector pay. It is understood the first significant pay rise for civil servants in several years was awarded before Christmas, as policymakers try to boost morale and spur spending. According to a Bloomberg report, the basic salaries of many government employees were bolstered by at least 500 yuan ($68.51) a month, backdated to July. China’s central bank is expected to make it easier for households and businesses to borrow after a slump in the housing market caused many property firms to go bust. Xi also praised Russia and said the two countries would move forward “hand in hand” on the right path, months after the two countries struck a “new era strategic partnership” on key issues. Xi and Vladimir Putin agreed in May to deepen bilateral ties and cooperate on areas of mutual interest such as Taiwan, Ukraine and with respect to mutual rival the US. Russia’s state-run RIA news agency also quoted Moscow’s ambassador to Beijing as saying last Friday that Xi would visit Russia in 2025. |
The Guardian;‘Moving to the mountaintops’: rising seas displace tens of thousands in Papua New Guinea;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/31/moving-to-the-mountaintops-rising-seas-displace-tens-of-thousands-in-papua-new-guinea;2024-12-31T02:48:04Z | Two years ago fisher Siri James lived on the southern coast of Papua New Guinea, in a small village near Pariva beach. But as the tides continued to rise, James was forced to move further in from the shore. “It’s not easy moving inland, I was born and raised by the seas, I am a fisherman. I know the flow of tides and currents, I know when the wind will come strongly and when it will rain – but now I don’t understand why everything is changing,” says James, who is in his early 40s. He says the tides “seem to be growing every day”. “I heard them say it’s global warming. I left school and ran away to go fishing, so now I don’t know what’s global warming, but the rains don’t come when it’s supposed to, the winds have changed,” James says. “Maybe we offended the sea gods, I don’t know, but now I have to move my family inland,” he says. Pariva beach is part of Kerema in Papua New Guinea’s Gulf province. In that area, rising sea levels and sand erosion have forced about 40,000 people to move inland over the past decade, a local councillor says, in what a leading climate change activist describes as a “humanitarian crisis”. The Kerema councillor Mai Trevor says 80,000 people lived in the local area, however, since 2015, almost half of the population has moved inland due to high tides and sand erosion. Trevor says residents first began moving in 2015, but over the last four years the number of people leaving has grown. As well as fishing, many in the province earn a living from coconut and betel nut farming. In recent years, residents say the tides have been rising and weather patterns have shifted, making it harder to grow crops or fish in the oceans, and affecting their livelihoods. “Many are moving to the mountaintops in Kerema town, while those who have land [further inland in nearby] Murua have moved there,” Trevor says. “We need a proper count of the population in the area to come up with a way to address it, all land are customarily owned so authorities can’t just relocate people,” she adds. Papua New Guinea is in the process of conducting its first census in many years, which experts say may reveal the population of the Pacific country to be far higher than current estimates of about 10 million people. The leading Papua New Guinea climate change activist Duncan Gabi also estimates tens of thousands of people have been displaced from the area around Pariva beach. “The sand erosion at Pariva beach [is] displacing 30,000 to 40,000 people, [it is] a humanitarian crisis that highlights PNG’s vulnerability to climate change,” Gabi says. He warns that a controversial proposal to begin sand mining in the western part of the Gulf province is fuelling fears the situation will get worse and argues authorities must act to help communities. ‘Nothing is being done’ Kerry Anne Henry lives in a village of about 500 people near Pariva beach. She says people living in her village have begun to move inland due to the threat of rising seas and sand erosion. “Some people have land inland, on top of the mountains, and have started moving there,” she says. “Those who have no land elsewhere are just stranded at the coast, watching as the sand is slowly eroding and the tides come in. Our coconuts and betel nut are being washed away by the sea,” the 36-year-old says. “The authorities have turned a blind eye to the situation, and nothing is being done yet,” she says. A few kilometres away from Henry’s family home is Kerema airport. Tides now reach closer into the airport than they did in the past, and recently washed away the airport back fence. The environment, conservation and climate change minister, Simon Kilepa, says the rising sea levels and the impact on communities is a concerning issue that underscores the vulnerabilities faced by coastal communities across the country. Kilepa says the climate change and development authority (CCDA) is “working with various government departments and partners to best address the issue”. The CCDA acting managing director, Debra Sungi, says the agency is “deeply concerned about the challenges posed by rising sea levels”, which have already affected livelihoods, homes and the cultural heritage of thousands of Papua New Guineans. She says the agency is working on “resilience-building measures to mitigate these impacts” and conducting vulnerability assessments in affected provinces, including the Gulf province, to make decisions on resources allocation. “We are committed to ensuring that no one is left behind as we navigate these unprecedented challenges,” she says. Still, Gabi says not enough is being done to support communities. He also fears the impact of a plan being considered by authorities to begin sand mining in Orokolo Bay, on the western side of the Gulf province. “What’s frustrating is that while people are being displaced, proposed sand mining projects at Orokolo Bay in the same area threatens to worsen the crisis,” Gabi says. “Our government should have prioritised climate adaptation and disaster preparedness long ago,” he adds. |
NPR;Biden to honor Liz Cheney, Bennie Thompson with top civilian award;https://www.npr.org/2025/01/02/g-s1-40817/biden-liz-cheney-presidential-citizens-medal;Thu, 02 Jan 2025 08:15:02 -0500 | The pair led the congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6 , 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.<br /> |
NPR;Details on the deadly attack in New Orleans. And, Amazon workers return to the office;https://www.npr.org/2025/01/02/g-s1-40810/up-first-newsletter-new-orleans-bourbon-street-deadly-attack-tesla-cybertruck-explosion-amazon-workers;Thu, 02 Jan 2025 08:14:32 -0500 | The attack in New Orleans left at least 15 people dead and dozens more injured. Here's what we know so far about the driver who plowed through the crowd. And, Amazon workers return to the office. |
NPR;Dress codes for high-end restaurants may not be as strict as you think they are;https://www.npr.org/2025/01/02/nx-s1-5245017/dress-codes-for-high-end-restaurants-may-not-be-as-strict-as-you-think-they-are;Thu, 02 Jan 2025 07:17:31 -0500 | Many restaurants -- even the high-end ones -- are ditching dress codes for diners. |
NPR;The Dartmouth men's basketball team ends its attempt to unionize;https://www.npr.org/2025/01/02/nx-s1-5245000/the-dartmouth-mens-basketball-team-ends-its-attempt-to-unionize;Thu, 02 Jan 2025 05:12:31 -0500 | NPR's Leila Fadel asks the president of the local chapter of the Service Employees International Union about why the team is dropping an effort to unionize. |
NPR;DNA reveals secrets of Australia's elusive marsupial mole;https://www.npr.org/2025/01/01/nx-s1-5243367/dna-reveals-secrets-of-australias-elusive-marsupial-mole;Thu, 02 Jan 2025 04:49:03 -0500 | Researchers have probed the genetics of one of Australia's most elusory animals, the marsupial mole. |
NPR;In the Country with the World's Worst Displacement Crisis: Sudan (Encore);https://www.npr.org/2025/01/02/1222474635/in-the-country-with-the-worlds-worst-displacement-crisis-sudan-encore;Thu, 02 Jan 2025 03:00:59 -0500 | Fighting between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary group have displaced some 12 million people in one of Africa's biggest countries. In a story we first brought you in October, our correspondent travels to Sudan and gives us a glimpse of the devastation the war has caused. |
NPR;A man who killed at least 12 people in a shooting spree in Montenegro dies by suicide;https://www.npr.org/2025/01/02/g-s1-40807/armed-man-deadly-shooting-montenegro;Thu, 02 Jan 2025 02:23:49 -0500 | A gunman who fatally shot at least 12 people, including two children, in Montenegro has killed himself while surrounded by police, officials said Thursday. |
NPR;Power is restored to nearly all of Puerto Rico after a major blackout;https://www.npr.org/2025/01/02/g-s1-40803/power-is-restored-to-nearly-all-of-puerto-rico-after-a-major-blackout;Thu, 02 Jan 2025 01:21:19 -0500 | Lights returned to households as well as to Puerto Rico's hospitals, water plants and sewage facilities after the massive outage that exposed the persistent electricity problems plaguing the island. |
NPR;Here's what we know so far about the deadly attack in New Orleans;https://www.npr.org/2025/01/01/nx-s1-5245211/new-orleans-attack-bourbon-street-shamsud-din-jabbar;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 22:16:59 -0500 | In the early hours of New Year's Day, a truck rammed into crowds on the French Quarter's heavily foot-trafficked street. Police are looking into whether the suspect had ties to any terror groups. |
NPR;Firework mortars, gas canisters inside Tesla that exploded by Trump's Las Vegas hotel;https://www.npr.org/2025/01/01/nx-s1-5245215/tesla-truck-explosion-trump-las-vegas-hotel;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 16:32:34 -0500 | The items were found in the Cybertruck that exploded outside President-elect Donald Trump's hotel on Wednesday, killing a suspect in the vehicle and sparking an investigation into possible terrorism. |
Al Jazeera;Musk calls for jailed UK far-right activist Tommy Robinson to be released;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/2/musk-calls-for-jailed-uk-far-right-activist-tommy-robinson-to-be-released?traffic_source=rss;Thu, 02 Jan 2025 16:17:02 +0000 | US technology billionaire says Tommy Robinson, who is serving in 18-month prison sentence, 'should be freed'. |
Al Jazeera;‘Crime against journalism’: Gaza Journalists decry PA’s Al Jazeera ban;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/2/crime-against-journalism-gaza-journalists-decry-pas-al-jazeera-ban?traffic_source=rss;Thu, 02 Jan 2025 15:36:38 +0000 | Journalists in Gaza say the Palestinian Authority must reverse decision to ban Al Jazeera in the occupied territory. |