UKRAINE
Missile hits Reuters staff
A member of the Reuters team covering the war in Ukraine was missing and two others were hospitalized after a strike on a hotel in the eastern city of Kramatorsk on Saturday. In a statement, the news agency said that the Hotel Sapphire, where a six-person Reuters crew was staying, was hit “by an apparent missile strike.” Three other staff members have been accounted for, it said. “We are urgently seeking more information, working with the authorities in Kramatorsk, and supporting our colleagues and their families. We will give an update when we have more information,” it added. The General Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement on Telegram that it had opened a “pre-trial investigation” into the strike.
PAKISTAN
Bus crashes kill 34
At least 34 people were yesterday killed in two separate bus accidents, including 12 pilgrims who had been trying to reach Iran, rescue officials said. At least 22 people, including a child, were killed when the bus they were travelling in plunged into a ravine near the town of Azad Pattan on the border between Punjab province and Kashmir, said Farooq Ahmed, a spokesman for Rescue 1122 emergency services in Punjab. In a separate incident, 12 men died when their bus crashed into a ravine on the Makran Coastal Highway in Balochistan, after being prevented from crossing into Iran. On Saturday, the bodies of 28 pilgrims who died in a bus crash in Iran were returned to Pakistan.
FRANCE
Arson suspect arrested
Police on Saturday arrested a man suspected of setting fires and causing an explosion at a synagogue in what officials suspect was a terror attack, Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin said. “The suspected perpetrator of the criminal fires at the synagogue has been detained,” Darmanin wrote on X, adding that officers who made the arrest came under fire. Police earlier said they were hunting for a man who, draped in a Palestinian flag, was believed to have set fires at a synagogue and triggered an explosion that injured an officer in the seaside resort of La Grande Motte. Interim Prime Minister Gabriel Attal earlier visited the site of the attack along with Darmanin. “We narrowly avoided an absolute tragedy,” he said, adding that “if the synagogue had been filled with worshippers ... there probably would have been human victims.”
THAILAND
Authorities raid bitcoin mine
Authorities raided an illegal bitcoin mine west of Bangkok after residents complained of frequent blackouts in the area for more than a month, local authorities said yesterday. Police and officials from the Provincial Electricity Authorities raided the house in Ratchaburi town on Friday. “We found bitcoin mining rigs, pointing to people using this house to operate a mine and using power they didn’t fully pay for,” chief district security officer Jamnong Chanwong said. Records showed that electricity consumption in the house was large, but they had paid for very little of it, he said. Jamnong said his team tried to enter the house on Thursday, but a guard denied them entry. They then returned with a search warrant and found most of the equipment had been moved. The house had been rented by a company for about four months, but the power outages began last month when the mine likely became fully operational, he said.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
In the East Room of the White House on a particularly frigid Saturday afternoon, US President Joe Biden bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 of the most famous names in politics, sports, entertainment, civil rights, LGBTQ+ advocacy and science. Former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton aroused a standing ovation from the crowd as she received her medal. Clinton was accompanied to the event by her husband, former US president Bill Clinton, daughter, Chelsea Clinton, and grandchildren. Democratic philanthropist George Soros and actor-director Denzel Washington were also awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor in a White House
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