Global News

South Korea holds muted New Year events after plane crashpublished New Year celebrations in South Korea have been cancelled or scaled back following Sunday’s plane crash at Muan International Airport. The country entered a seven-day period of mourning after 179 people were killed when a Jeju Air Boeing 737 crash landed on 29 December. The Seoul Metropolitan government said its annual bell-ringing show would be a quiet one without performances and with a moment of silence following the tragedy. Both South and North Korea enter 2025 at 15:00 GMT. Tokyo and Seoul ring in new year with tolling of bellspublished at 16:0016:00 Japan and South Korea are the latest countries to ring in the new year, marking the start of 2025 there. In Japan, crowds have gathered at Tokyo’s Tokudai-ji temple to take part in the ringing of bells to usher in the new year. As we reported a little earlier, South Korea’s new year celebrations will be muted this year after 179 people died when a Jeju Air Boei...

By Nidal Al-Mughrabi, Maytaal Angel and Ali Sawafta Reuters Once muscular and strong, Palestinian bodybuilder Moazaz Obaiyat’s nine-month spell in Israeli custody left him unable to walk unaided upon his release in July. Then, in an October pre-dawn raid on his home, soldiers detained him again. Before being re-arrested, the 37-year-old father of five was diagnosed with severe PTSD by Bethlehem Psychiatric Hospital, related to his time at Israel’s remote Ktz’iot prison, according to medical notes seen by Reuters from the hospital, a public clinic in the occupied West Bank. The notes said Obaiyat was subjected to “physical and psychological violence and torture” in prison and described symptoms including severe anxiety, withdrawal from his family and avoidance of discussion of traumatic events and current affairs. Alleged abuses and psychological harm to Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons and camps are in renewed focus amid  stepped-up efforts in December  by internat...

Trinidad and Tobago declared a state of emergency on Monday as the government braced for reprisal shootings after an attempt on a gang leader’s life, officials said. The dual-island Caribbean nation off the coast of Venezuela will use the emergency to launch an anti-gang crackdown, authorities said. Defense forces will become de facto police officers and both are allowed to conduct searches without a warrant, Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Stuart Young said at a press conference. Bail will be suspended and those suspected of committing a crime can be held for 48 hours without a charge. That could be extended another seven days by court approval, Young said. On Saturday, armed gunmen shot at a known gang leader who was leaving the police station, killing a member of his crew, according to Trinidad and Tobago Newsday. The report did not name the gang leader. On Sunday evening, five men were shot dead in what is believed to be an act of retaliation, Newsday reported. T...

 Finnish police said they had found tracks that drag on for dozens of kilometres along the bottom of the Baltic Sea where a tanker carrying Russian oil is suspected of breaking a power line and four telecoms cables with its anchor. The Cook Islands-registered Eagle S was boarded by Finnish police and coast guard officials on Thursday and sailed into Finnish waters where the crew of the  impounded  tanker is being questioned. Baltic Sea nations have been on  high alert  after a string of outages of power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. NATO said on Friday it would  boost its presence  in the region. A break in the 658 megawatt (MW) Estlink 2 power cable between Finland and Estonia occurred at midday on Wednesday, leaving only the 358 MW Estlink 1 linking the two countries, grid operators said. They said Estlink 2 might not be back in service before August. Finnish police suspect the Eagle S caused the da...

By Alex Wroblewski in Atlanta with Susan Stumme in Washington AFP Jimmy Carter, the 100-year-old former US president and Nobel peace laureate who rose from humble beginnings in rural Georgia to lead the nation from 1977 to 1981, has died, his nonprofit foundation said Sunday. Carter had been in hospice care since mid-February 2023 at his home in Plains, Georgia — the same small town where he was born and once ran a peanut farm before becoming governor of the Peach State and running for the White House. Carter died “peacefully” at his home in Plains, “surrounded by his family,” the Carter Center said in a statement. “My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights and unselfish love,” Chip Carter said in the statement. Carter was the longest-lived US president — an outcome that seemed unlikely back in 2015 when the Southern Democrat revealed he had brain cancer. But the US Navy veteran and fervent Christian repeatedly defied the odds to enj...

BY HYUNG-JIN KIM and KIM TONG-HYUNG AP A passenger plane burst into flames Sunday after it skidded off a runway at a South Korean airport and slammed into a concrete fence when its front landing gear apparently failed to deploy. Most of the 181 people on board died in one of the country’s worst aviation disasters. The Jeju Air passenger plane crashed while landing in the town of Muan, about 290 kilometers (180 miles) south of Seoul. The Transport Ministry said the plane was a 15-year-old Boeing 737-800 jet that was returning from Bangkok and that the crash happened at 9:03 a.m. At least 176 people — 83 women, 82 men and 11 others whose genders weren’t immediately identifiable — died in the fire, the South Korean fire agency said. Emergency workers pulled two people, both crew members, to safety. Health officials said they are conscious and not in life-threatening condition. Three people remained missing about nine hours after the incident. The fire agency deployed 32 fire trucks a...

More than 2,000 Mozambican families have sought refuge in Malawi this week, Malawian authorities said, as dozens of people were reported killed in spreading unrest over a disputed election in October. Some businesses including banks were closed in Mozambique’s capital Maputo on Friday and patrols were set up in some areas following a deadly prison riot and breakout on Wednesday. Mozambique has been gripped by violent protests for about two months since the electoral commission  said  the ruling Frelimo party had retained power and its candidate won the presidency in the election. Frelimo denies opposition accusations of electoral fraud. A decision by Mozambique’s Constitutional Council to  validate  the election results on Monday triggered more demonstrations. Monitoring group Plataforma Decide put the death toll at 125 since the court’s decision and at 252 since late October. A senior Malawian official said that as of Wednesday, 2,182 Mozambican households flee...

Israeli air strikes pummelled Sanaa’s international airport and other targets in Yemen on Thursday, with Huthi rebel media reporting six deaths. World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on social media he was at the airport during the strike, adding that “one of our plane’s crew members was injured”. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether they were aware of his presence at the time. The strikes targeting the airport, military facilities and power stations in rebel areas follow rising hostilities between Israel and the Huthis, part of Iran’s “axis of resistance” alliance against Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel’s strikes would “continue until the job is done”. “We are determined to cut this branch of terrorism from the Iranian axis of evil,” he said in a video statement. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday denounced the “escalation” in hostilities between Israel and the H...

By Hyunsu Yim and Joyce Lee Reuters South Korea’s parliament impeached acting President Han Duck-soo on Friday, less than two weeks after suspending President Yoon Suk Yeol’s powers over his short-lived declaration of martial law, plunging the country deeper into political chaos. The impeachment of Han, the acting president since Yoon was impeached on Dec. 14 for declaring martial law on Dec. 3, has pushed South Korea’s once-vibrant democratic success story into uncharted territory. In a statement after the vote, Han said he was saddened by what the unfolding events meant for the next generation, but accepted the outcome. “I respect parliament’s decision and in order to avoid further chaos and uncertainty, I will suspend my duties in accordance with relevant laws,” he said. He added he would await the decision of the Constitutional Court to review the impeachment motion. The ruling People Power Party, which has objected to the opposition-led impeachment of Han, said it had filed a...

Fourteen members of the Syrian police were killed in an “ambush” by forces loyal to the ousted government in the Tartous countryside, the transitional administration said early on Thursday, as demonstrations and an overnight curfew elsewhere marked the most widespread unrest since Bashar al-Assad’s removal more than two weeks ago. Syria’s new interior minister said on Telegram that 10 police members were also wounded by what he called “remnants” of the Assad government in Tartous, vowing to crack down on “anyone who dares to undermine Syria’s security or endanger the lives of its citizens.” Earlier, Syrian police imposed an overnight curfew in the city of Homs, state media reported, after unrest there linked to demonstrations that residents said were led by members of the minority Alawite and Shi’ite Muslim religious communities. Reuters could not immediately confirm the demands of the demonstrators nor the degree of disturbance that took place. Some residents said the demonstratio...

A prison riot in Mozambique’s capital Maputo left 33 people dead and 15 injured, the country’s police general commander Bernardino Rafael said on Wednesday, as civil unrest linked to October’s disputed election continues. A decision on Monday by Mozambique’s top court confirming long-ruling party Frelimo’s victory in the election has sparked fresh nationwide protests by opposition groups and their supporters who say the vote was rigged. While Rafael blamed protests outside the prison for encouraging the riot, Justice Minister Helena Kida told local private broadcaster Miramar TV that the unrest was started inside the prison and had nothing to do with protests outside. “The confrontations after that resulted in 33 deaths and 15 injured in the vicinity of the jail,” Rafael told a media briefing. The identities of those killed and injured were unclear. About 1,534 people escaped from the prison in the incident but 150 have now been recaptured, Rafael said, adding that there were pris...

By KATIE MARIE DAVIES and DASHA LITVINOVA AP An Azerbaijani airliner with 67 people onboard crashed Wednesday in the Kazakhstani city of Aktau, leaving at least 32 survivors, according to officials. More than 30 people are likely dead. Kazakhstan’s Emergency Ministry said in a Telegram statement that those on board included five crew. At least 29 have been hospitalized, the ministry told Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti. Russian news agency Interfax quoted medical workers as saying that four bodies have been recovered and emergency workers at the scene as saying that both pilots, according to a preliminary assessment, died in the crash. The Embraer 190 aircraft made an emergency landing 3 km from the city, Azerbaijan Airlines said earlier. Kazakhstan’s Emergency Ministry initially said 25 people survived the crash, later revising that number to 27, 28, and then 29 as the search and rescue operation continued at the site of the crash, bringing the supposed death toll down. P...

By Orhan Qereman Reuters  Thousands of women rallied in the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli on Monday to demand the  new Islamist rulers  in Damascus respect women’s rights and to condemn Turkish-backed military campaigns in Kurdish-led regions of the north. Many of the protesters waved the green flag of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), an affiliate of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units militia (YPG) that Turkey deems a national security threat and wants disbanded immediately. “We are demanding women’s rights from the new state … and women must not be excluded from rights in this system,” said Sawsan Hussein, a women’s rights activist. “We are (also) condemning the attacks of the Turkish occupation against the city of Kobani.” Kurdish groups have enjoyed autonomy across much of the north since Syria’s civil war began in 2011. The Kurdish YPG militia, which leads the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) armed group, is a major force in the area. ...

At least 207 people were  killed  by members of the Wharf Jeremie gang in Haiti’s portside neighborhood of Cite Soleil earlier this month, the United Nations said in a report on Monday, revising up a death toll it initially estimated at 187. In a new report on the massacre, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said at least 134 men and 73 women, most of them elderly residents accused of witchcraft, were killed in less than a week of mass executions, abductions, and raids by some 300 members of the Wharf Jeremie gang. Gang leader Monel “Mikano” Felix ordered the attacks after his child got sick, accusing local residents of causing the illness through Voudou. Many of the victims were abducted from Voudou temples and religious ceremonies, the U.N. said. The killings shocked the Caribbean nation, which has been engulfed in a worsening gang conflict, compounding devastating food shortages, while its neighbors lag on delivering long-promised security assistan...

Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to bring more “destruction” to Ukraine in retaliation for a drone attack on the central Russian city of Kazan a day earlier. Russia accused Ukraine of a “massive” drone attack that hit a luxury apartment block in the city, some 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the frontier. Videos on Russian social media networks showed drones hitting a high-rise glass building and setting off fireballs, though there were no reported casualties as a result of the strike. “Whoever, and however much they try to destroy, they will face many times more destruction themselves and will regret what they are trying to do in our country,” Putin said during a televised government meeting on Sunday. Putin was addressing the local leader of Tatarstan, the region where Kazan is located, in a road-opening ceremony via video link. The strike on Kazan was the latest in a series of escalating aerial attacks in the nearly three-year conflict. Ukraine has not commented on the...

Cyclone Chido killed at least 94 people in Mozambique in its deadly rampage through the Indian Ocean last week, the country’s disaster management agency said Sunday, raising a previous death toll of 76. The cyclone, which devastated the French island territory of Mayotte before hitting the African mainland, also destroyed 110,000 homes in Mozambique, officials said. It comes as the southern African nation reels from a deadly post-election crisis pitting the party in power since Mozambique’s independence from Portugal against an opposition crying foul over alleged electoral fraud. After making landfall the storm ravaged the northern province of Cabo Delgado with gusts of around 260 kilometres (160 miles) per hour, pelting it with 250 millimetres (10 inches) of rain in a day. That part of northern Mozambique is both regularly ravaged by tropical storms and wrestling with unrest from a long-running Islamist insurgency. More than 500,000 of the 620,000 Mozambicans affected by the stor...

Suspected jihadists killed more than 20 people in a string of attacks on villages in central Mali’s  insurgency-hit Mopti region  on Friday, two local sources said. The unidentified assailants struck during the day and into the evening, ransacking and burning six villages in the Bandiagara area, the sources said on Saturday, speaking on condition of anonymity. One of the sources said the assailants had come in large numbers on motorcycles and attacked a first village, where they killed everyone and destroyed everything. There was no immediate comment from the ruling military junta. The West African nation is battling  armed groups  with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State, which took root in its arid north following a Tuareg separatist rebellion in 2012. Militants have since spread to other countries in the Sahel region south of the Sahara, seizing territory, killing thousands of people and uprooting millions in the process. SOURCE: REUTERS AND AGENCIES from...

Sixteen security personnel were killed in northwest Pakistan in an attack by Islamist militants early on Saturday, a senior police official in the South Waziristan region said, as Islamist fighters step up their assaults on the security forces. Another eight personnel were injured in the attack on a security forces post, which took place at 2 a.m. (2100 GMT on Friday), police deputy superintendent Hidayat Ullah told Reuters. “A search operation is under way in the area,” he added, saying the attackers had used light and heavy weapons. Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the  Pakistan Taliban , claimed responsibility for the attack, giving a higher figure for the number of security personnel killed. “At least 35 security personnel were killed and 15 injured in the attack,” the group said in a WhatsApp channel broadcast. It did not say whether any of its fighters had been killed. The TTP has  carried out more frequent attacks  in recent months, mostly targe...

By Marion PAYET AFP German police arrested a Saudi Arabian man after a deadly car-ramming attack on a Christmas market Friday in which an SUV barrelled through a crowd of revellers at high speed, leaving a trail of bloody carnage. At least two people were killed, one of them a young child, and 68 injured, said authorities in the city of Magdeburg, located about 130 kilometres (80 miles) southwest of Berlin. The suspect was a 50-year-old medical doctor from Saudi Arabia living in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, said regional premier Reiner Haseloff, speaking at a scene cordoned off and guarded by police commandos. “We have arrested the perpetrator, a man from Saudi Arabia, a doctor who has been in Germany since 2006,” he told reporters, calling the attack a “catastrophe” for the city and the country. “From what we currently know he was a lone attacker so we don’t think there is any further danger.” German media partially named the suspect as Taleb A. and said he was a doctor o...

By Tassilo Hummel Reuters Angry residents of a Mayotte neighbourhood damaged by Cyclone Chido heckled French President Emmanuel Macron when he toured it on Friday, complaining that food and water had not reached them nearly a week after the storm hit the Indian Ocean archipelago. Officials in France’s  poorest overseas territory, opens new tab  have only been able to confirm 31 fatalities from Chido but some have said they fear thousands could have been killed. Some of the islands’ worst-affected neighbourhoods, hillside shantytowns comprised of flimsy huts that are home to undocumented migrants, have not yet been accessed by rescue workers. As Macron walked through the neighbourhood of Tsingoni, residents sweating in the 31-degrees Celsius (88-degree Farenheit) heat, decried a lack of water. “Seven days and you’re not able to give water to the population!” one man shouted at Macron. Macron, who had extended his visit to Mayotte to spend more time surveying the damage fr...

By Jack Kim Reuters At least 100 North Korean troops deployed to Russia have been killed with another 1,000 injured in combat against Ukrainian forces in intense fighting in the Kursk region, a South Korean lawmaker said on Thursday citing the country’s spy agency. The heavy losses are attributed to the lack of experience by North Korean troops in drone warfare and unfamiliarity with the open terrain where they are taking part in the battle, a member of parliament Lee Seong-kweun told reporters. Lee was speaking after a closed-door briefing by the National Intelligence Service (NIS) to parliament. The discrepancy in the estimate of the troops killed from that made by a U.S. military official who cited several hundred casualties is because of the relatively conservative analysis by the NIS, Lee said. “There was a report that there have been at least 100 deaths and the injured are approaching 1,000,” he said. There are indications that the North is preparing for additional deployme...

By Tassilo Hummel Reuters France ramped up its relief operations to its cyclone-devastated overseas territory of Mayotte, with 120 tonnes of food due to be distributed on Wednesday to a population at risk of hunger and disease. The Indian Ocean archipelago, France’s  poorest overseas territory , spent a first night under a curfew decreed in response to reported looting and lawlessness after Cyclone Chido struck over the weekend. On Wednesday morning, residents of the capital Mamoudzou whose houses survived the storm hammered metal sheets to cover damaged roofs. Thousands of flimsier huts across the city’s shantytowns were razed entirely, leaving fields of dirt and debris. Hundreds or even thousands could be dead from the cyclone, the strongest storm to hit Mayotte in 90 years, French officials have said. Chido also killed  at least 34 people  in Mozambique and another seven in Malawi after reaching continental Africa. But only 22 fatalities recorded in hospital have ...

The head of the Russian army’s chemical weapons division died on Tuesday when an explosive device attached to a scooter went off outside an apartment building in Moscow, officials said. Igor Kirillov, the head of the military’s chemical, biological and radiological weapons unit, was killed along with his assistant when the blast went off as the two men left a building in a residential area in southeastern Moscow early in the morning on Tuesday. Kirillov, who was in October sanctioned by Britain over the alleged use of chemical weapons in Ukraine, is the most senior Russian military official to be killed in such a blast in Moscow since the start of Kremlin’s offensive in Ukraine nearly three years ago. “An unprecedented crime committed in Moscow”, the Kommersant daily said on its website. Russia’s Investigative Committee said that Kirillov was killed after “an explosive device planted in a scooter parked near the entrance of a residential building was activated on the morning of Dec...

A meeting between the presidents of Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo will not take place as planned on Sunday, both countries said, dashing hopes of a deal to curb Congo’s M23 rebel conflict that has displaced more than 1.9 million people. The event was meant to see a rare face-to-face meeting between the central African leaders in Angola, where  long-running negotiations  have sought to  ease tensions  between the neighbours linked to the almost three-year M23 insurgency. Expectations that a deal would be signed had raised hopes of an end to a standoff that has further destabilised eastern Congo and  fanned fears  of a broader conflict in Africa’s Great Lakes region akin to two devastating wars between 1996 and 2003 that cost millions of lives. “The cancellation of this tripartite is caused by the refusal of the Rwandan delegation to take part,” Congo’s presidency said in a statement. It said on Saturday Rwanda had made the signing of a peace ag...

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes on the territory killed 17 people on Saturday, including seven at a UN school housing displaced people that the Israeli military said was used as a Hamas command centre. Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP there were seven people killed, including women and children, and at least 10 wounded “when Israeli warplanes targeted the Al-Majida Wasila school west of Gaza City”. The school was run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees but like many such facilities it has been turned into a makeshift shelter for those displaced by the war in Gaza. The vast majority of Gaza’s population has been displaced by the war, often multiple times. The Israeli military said it struck “Hamas terrorists who were operating in a command and control centre embedded” within the school. Bassal said an Israeli strike on the town hall in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza killed mayor Deiab al-Jaro, and nine other people. The Israeli military said it ...

BY HYUNG-JIN KIM and KIM TONG-HYUNG, Associated Press  South Korea’s parliament voted Saturday to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol over his short-lived martial law decree, a historic rebuke that was cheered by jubilant crowds who described the outcome as another defiant moment in the nation’s resilient democratic journey. The National Assembly passed the motion 204-85 in a floor vote. Yoon’s presidential powers and duties will be suspended and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, the country’s No. 2 official, will take over his authority once copies of a document on the impeachment are delivered to Yoon and to the Constitutional Court. The court has up to 180 days to determine whether to dismiss Yoon as president or restore his powers. If he’s thrown out of office, a national election to choose his successor must be held within 60 days. It was the second National Assembly vote on Yoon’s impeachment motion. Last Saturday, Yoon survived an impeachment vote after most ruling party lawmaker...

By Reade Levinson and David Lewis Reuters Since civil war erupted in Sudan last year, dozens of cargo planes from the United Arab Emirates have landed at a small airstrip in Chad that some U.N. experts and diplomats suspect is being used to funnel arms across the border into the conflict, flight data and satellite images show. At least  86  flights from the UAE have headed for an airstrip at Amdjarass in eastern Chad since the war began in April 2023, three-quarters of them operated by carriers accused by the U.N. of ferrying Emirati weapons to a warlord in Libya, according to the flight data and corporate documents reviewed by Reuters. The UAE, a key Western ally in the Middle East, says it has been sending aid for Sudan via Chad, not arms. The country rejected a report by a U.N. panel of experts in January that cited “credible” allegations the UAE was providing military supplies via the Chad airstrip to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group fighting the Sudanes...