AFGHANISTAN
Blasts target Kabul police
A series of explosions yesterday morning hit the capital, Kabul, killing at least two police officers and wounding another two, plus a civilian, officials said. The officers died and the civilian was hurt when a magnetic bomb attached to a police vehicle detonated in western Kabul, Kabul police spokesman Ferdaws Faramarz said. Two other police were wounded when a bomb attached to their car exploded earlier yesterday in southern Kabul, Faramarz said, adding that a third magnetic bomb detonated in eastern Kabul, but caused no casualties. There were reports of at least two other blasts elsewhere in the city, but police had no immediate details. The latest attacks came as Taliban and Afghan government negotiators held talks in Qatar, trying to hammer out a peace deal that could put an end to decades of war.
ISRAEL
Gaza sites hit after strikes
The military has targeted a number of sites in Gaza after Palestinian militants fired rockets into the south of the country, the army said yesterday. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said that three Hamas targets — including a rocket manufacturing site, underground infrastructure and a military post — had been struck. “Hamas will bear the consequences for all terror emanating from Gaza,” the IDF wrote on Twitter. Sirens had sounded earlier in the southern port city of Ashkelon and the area surrounding the Gaza Strip, the army statement said. The latest fire from the Hamas-ruled Palestinian enclave came over a month after one rocket was fired from the coastal strip into Israel.
UGANDA
Boat capsizes, killing 26
At least 26 people died when their boat sank on Lake Albert, which marks the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), officials told reporters on Friday. On Wednesday, the boat was carrying passengers between two local destinations on the lake’s northeast when it “hit a strong wind” and “went under water,” local official Ashraf Oromo said. “The boat had more than 50 people on board, 26 bodies have been recovered, 21 people were rescued — a search is ongoing and no more survivors are expected,” Oromo added. Marine Police Officer Samuel Onyango confirmed the accident. “Because of failure to adhere to safety measures and fast changing weather patterns, Lake Albert has many accidents,” Onyango said. Eighteen people drowned when two boats capsized in separate incidents in northeastern DR Congo in June.
UNITED STATES
Stolen mini-plow rams store
A New York man has been arrested after a Christmas morning crime spree that gave new meaning to the term “doorbuster.” It happened shortly before 2am, the Suffolk County Police Department said, when Justin Shuffle stole a 2010 Bobcat skid loader, which is used to push snow, from a Bay Shore shopping center. He then crashed the mini-snow plow through the front doors of a nearby Target department store. Once inside, Shuffle swiped a coat and several gift cards before police caught him in the electronics section of the big-box retailer, authorities said. No one was injured, but the front doors of the store “suffered extensive damage,” police said in a news release. Shuffle, 33, of Long Island, on Friday pleaded not guilty to third-degree burglary and fourth-degree larceny. It was not immediately clear whether he had a defense attorney.
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees