ISRAEL
One dead, 14 hurt in blasts
Two blasts yesterday went off near bus stops in Jerusalem, killing one person and injuring at least 14, in what police said were suspected attacks by Palestinians. The first explosion occurred near a bus stop on the edge of the city, where commuters usually crowd. The second went off in Ramot, a neighborhood in the city’s north. Police said one person died from their injuries and rescue service Magen David Adom said four people were seriously wounded. Police said their initial findings showed that explosive devices were placed at the two sites. The twin blasts occurred amid the buzz of rush-hour traffic and police closed part of a main highway leading out of the city where the fist explosion went off. Video footage from shortly after the first blast showed debris strewn along the sidewalk as the wail of ambulance sirens blared. “It was a crazy explosion. There is damage everywhere here,” Yosef Haim Gabay, a medic who was at the scene when the first blast went off, told Israeli Army Radio. “I saw people with wounds bleeding all over the place.” Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, praised the perpetrators, calling it a heroic operation, but stopped short of claiming responsibility. “The occupation is reaping the price of its crimes and aggression against our people,” Hamas spokesman Abd al-Latif al-Qanua said.
TURKEY
Earthquake sparks panic
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake hit a town in the northwest of the country early yesterday, causing damage to some buildings and widespread panic. About 35 people were injured, mostly while trying to flee homes. The earthquake was centered in the town of Golkaya in Duzce Province, about 200km east of Istanbul, the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency said. It struck at 04:08am and was felt in Istanbul, in the capital, Ankara, and other parts of the region. Dozens of aftershocks were reported, including one magnitude 4.3 aftershock. The quake woke people from their sleep and many rushed out of buildings in panic. At least 35 people were treated in hospitals for injuries, mostly sustained during the panic, including from jumping from balconies or windows. One of them was in a serious condition, Minister of the Interior Suleyman Soylu told NTV television. Power was cut in the region as a safety measure, the minister said. The quake demolished the exterior cladding and parts of the roof of a courthouse in Duzce, HaberTurk television reported. Among other damage, a two-story shop collapsed on a narrow street, it said.
CHINA
‘Avatar’ release allowed
The long-awaited sequel to director James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar is to be released in Chinese cinemas on Dec. 16, 20th Century Studios said yesterday. Avatar: The Way of Water would be released on the same day as its global release, the studio wrote on social media. It is one of the few foreign films to gain access to the market in the past few months, with others including the latest film in the Minions franchise and Sony Pictures’ Where the Crawdads Sing. Foreign movies have long struggled to gain release dates in the country due to strict quotas on the number of international films allowed to show, while many are blocked due to content regulators deem unseemly. Hollywood blockbusters have recently had a particularly hard time getting clearance. The six latest Marvel movies did not make an appearance earlier this year, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was also denied a release.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
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