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The Guardian;Critic wrongly jailed by former president of Philippines hopes to return to politics;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/01/critic-wrongly-jailed-by-former-president-of-philippines-hopes-to-return-to-politics;2025-01-01T14:00:16Z

Leila de Lima, one of fiercest critics of the former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody “war on drugs” who was jailed for more than six years on baseless charges, will try to return to politics in 2025. De Lima was one of the few politicians who criticised Duterte during his time in office, and enraged the former leader when she began investigating killings carried out during his anti-drugs crackdowns. She knew to expect retaliation, she said. “I thought it would just be regular vilification, the slut-shaming, the verbal attacks,” she said. She did not anticipate that she would spend more than six and a half years in prison. Finally free, and vindicated by the courts in the summer, she hopes to return to national politics next year and will run as the lead party list nominee of Mamamayang Liberal, a new party formed as a wing of the once-ruling Liberal party, in midterm elections in May 2025. The party promises to champion the rights of marginalised groups, including fishers, farmers, women, youth, the poorest communities in cities, and LGBTQ+ people. De Lima said she remained committed to ensuring justice for victims of the war on drugs. “It’s been more than seven years already, and justice for them has been so elusive,” she said of victims’ families. As many as 30,000 people, mostly men, are estimated to have been killed during the crackdowns. Duterte, who was succeeded as president by Ferdinand Marcos Jr in 2022, is facing growing scrutiny over his anti-drug campaigns. He is the subject of an investigation by the international criminal court and inquiries by the Philippines congress. The ICC investigation, into possible crimes against humanity, was “already at its advanced stage”, De Lima said, adding that an arrest warrant could be issued imminently. “I knew that eventually, truth would prevail, and that is what is happening now,” she said. “Witnesses are coming out, not any more scared, telling the people, telling their testimony, what they knew about Duterte’s war on drugs.” Duterte is not worried about domestic investigations, she added. “He feels that he could still influence them, pressure them, or even scare them.” He knows he cannot influence the ICC. De Lima, 65, was elected to the senate in 2016 – the same year Duterte won the presidential vote after promising a deadly crackdown to rid the streets of drugs. He promised to kill so many criminals that funeral parlours would be packed. When De Lima, who was then chair of the Senate committee on justice and human rights, began an inquiry into the killings, Duterte accused her of being an “immoral woman” who had a “very sordid personal and official life”. He accused her of facilitating the drugs trade and receiving payments from drug lords while she was justice secretary. He also accused her driver of collecting drug payoffs and to have a sex tape of the two of them. At a rally of his supporters, he said if he were her he would hang himself. De Lima was removed as chair of the committee investigating the drugs war and arrested in 2017. “They wanted to make an example out of me – so that the other politicians, other public figures, would be scared,” said De Lima. In prison she continued her senate work, handwriting notes for her staff who set up a mobile office in a car outside the prison. She kept a strict routine: prayers and bible reading, senate work, feeding stray prison cats (she adopted five upon her release), walking around the perimeter of the compound, reading and journal writing. De Lima’s siblings never told their 92-year-old mother that she had been imprisoned, and instead said she was studying abroad. “Every time my mom is watching the TV, if it’s already the news time, they would change channels,” she said. Witnesses that testified against her have since recanted their statements, with some saying they were pressured to falsely implicate her. The last of the three charges against her, which were all drugs-related and condemned by UN experts as politically motivated, was dropped in June. Whether or not Duterte is prosecuted by the ICC depends on Marcos. In 2022, Marcos ran on a joint ticket with the former leader’s daughter, vice-president Sara Duterte, and always said he would not cooperate with the ICC. But there is speculation he could change his mind, as the two families are now embroiled in a fierce political war. Over recent months, Sara Duterte has launched scathing attacks on Marcos, threatening to dig up the remains of his dictator father and throw them into the sea, and she claiming she had spoken to a hitman and instructed him to kill Marcos and his wife if she were to be killed. The violent language – typical of her father’s political brand – is understood as an attempt shore up support among their base before next year’s midterms. Rodrigo Duterte will run to become mayor of Davao, their family’s stronghold on the southern island of Mindanao. “They know that their influence is diminishing,” said De Lima. “They are struggling to survive politically and in the power play [with the Marcos camp]”. There is speculation she will run for president in 2028, though her approval ratings have fallen. De Lima called Sara Duterte “a dangerous leader” who is becoming increasingly like her father. She is backing one of three petitions calling for her impeachment over issues including allegations related to misuse of public funds and threats against public officials. Whether this progresses will depend on how much support it receives from the House of Representatives. Marcos has advised against impeachment. But De Lima is hopeful that he will comply with the ICC if it seeks Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest. Marcos is reluctant to openly commit to doing so now, given the popularity of his rivals, she said. But in time she expects this will change: “I think deep inside of him, that’s what they want. That’s the best way to get rid of Mr Duterte.”

The Guardian;Trump’s killing of Qassem Suleimani led to fall of Assad, says Tugendhat;https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/01/donald-trump-killing-of-qassem-suleimani-triggered-fall-of-assad-tom-tugendhat;2025-01-01T13:10:04Z

Donald Trump’s decision to sanction the assassination of an elite Iranian commander triggered a chain of events that has revealed Iran as a paper tiger and led to the overthrow of Basher al-Assad, a former UK security minister has said. Tom Tugendhat, now on the Conservative backbenches and intending to focus on foreign policy, also predicted the Iranian regime would collapse in a few years. He said that if handled properly, Syria could become the economic powerhouse of the Middle East within a decade. It is unusual for a former British cabinet minister to lavish praise on what is seen by some as such a controversial act bordering on an extrajudicial killing. His remarks were made shortly before the fifth anniversary of Qassem Suleimani’s killing in Baghdad, an anniversary that led the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, again to claim in a speech in Tehran that the Syrian leadership would be forced to withdraw as “youth rises up” to defeat the newly installed Sunni regime. Suleimani was instrumental in using Syria and Iraq as a base from which to drive back the Sunni Islamist group Islamic State and to entrench Iranian interests in both countries. Tugendhat argued on the Conflicted podcast that Suleimani’s death in a drone attack had proved to be a turning point. He said: “I’m always struck by how some people can be much more seminal, much more key, pivotal to an organisation than you realise at the time. The reality is when Qassem Suleimani was killed in January 2020, he held in his head all the relationships, all the deals for everybody around the region. “He was replaced, but he wasn’t really, because nobody could replace the personal 20-year relationships that he held. That’s really the unpicking. So I have to say, I know it’s not popular, but President Trump, effectively, was the trigger that began the fall of the Assad regime.” Tugendhat, a former chair of the foreign affairs select committee, also saw a crisis inside the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) due to the loss of Syria. He said: “Young members of the IRGC are saying two things. One, the old guard are corrupt and incompetent. That’s why Hezbollah has been hung out to dry and defeated. That’s why old allies like Assad have fallen. That’s one thing they’re saying. “The second thing they’re saying is that they’re hearing rumours, I don’t know how true they are, but they’re hearing rumours that the ayatollah and the government in Tehran wants to talk to the Americans to try and find a way out of this and perhaps hang on. And they’re saying that there’s absolutely no way that anybody can talk to the killers of Qassem Suleimani. “Now, this means that there is a really big problem within the regime itself, a really big challenge, because actually there’s no way through. These young people, the extremists in the IRGC, so the extremists of the extreme, are trying to hold the regime to a level of purity that is just now completely inconsistent with reality.” Tugendhat was reflecting on the growing consensus in the reformist government in Tehran that direct talks with Donald Trump over a new nuclear deal should be sought, a belief that is meeting resistance from hardliners. Tugendhat, an opponent of the initial nuclear deal in 2015 and as a security minister an advocate of proscribing the IRGC, sees the revolution in Syria as a wider turning point. He said: “Frankly, if we get Syria right in 10 years, Syria could be absolutely not just a pole of stability but a fantastic economic powerhouse in the region, exporting stability and civilisation, as it has done for quite literally tens of thousands of years, to the rest of the world again. “There are moments like now when the old era is dead, the old illusions are dead, and various things are killing it. And I suspect that the regime in Tehran will be gone in the next few years as well. So I think there’s a real opportunity for freedom to spread and for opportunity to spread.” At the same time, he said, there were significant dangers in Syria, with the country divided as Kurdish groups and the radical Sunni Islamist group Hayat al-Tahrir Sham (HTS) fight for influence. Tugendhat accused the west of having no long-term strategy in the Middle East, arguing that the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the failure of Barack Obama to act on his red lines when Assad used chemical weapons in 2013 had given an opportunity for Vladimir Putin to present himself as a reliable strongman. At various forks in the road, Tugendhat argued, the west “demonstrated weakness, advertised fickleness”. He said: “Putin is no more constant than we are, but he has the illusion of it. And this is the sort of complete fake strongman theory of life. It’s complete rubbish, of course, but the illusion of it appears real, and that’s enough to have brought certain decisions which have led to mass misery.”

The Guardian;Belgium becomes first EU country to ban sale of disposable vapes;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/01/belgium-becomes-first-eu-country-to-ban-sale-of-disposable-vapes;2025-01-01T12:48:15Z

Belgium has become the EU first country to ban the sale of disposable vapes in an effort to stop young people from becoming addicted to nicotine and to protect the environment. The sale of disposable electronic cigarettes is banned in Belgium on health and environmental grounds from 1 January. A ban on outdoor smoking in Milan came into force on the same day, as EU countries discuss tighter controls on tobacco. Announcing the ban last year, Belgium’s health minister, Frank Vandenbroucke, described electronic cigarettes as an “extremely harmful” product that damages society and the environment. “Disposable e-cigarettes is a new product simply designed to attract new consumers,” he told the Associated Press. “E-cigarettes often contain nicotine. Nicotine makes you addicted to nicotine. Nicotine is bad for your health.” The minister also cited the “hazardous waste chemicals” present in the cheap and widely available disposable vapes. Australia restricted the sale of all vapes to pharmacies last year as part of a series of anti-smoking measures described as world-leading. In the UK it will be illegal to sell single-use vapes from June 2025 in a move designed to combat their widespread use by children and prevent environmental damage. Vandenbroucke said Belgium was “playing a pioneering role in Europe to weaken the tobacco lobby” and called for an update of EU law. The country is seeking to reduce the number of new smokers to zero or near zero by 2040 and is taking other steps to “discourage and denormalise” smoking. Smoking is already banned in playgrounds, sports fields, zoos and theme parks, and tobacco products will not be able to be sold in supermarkets larger than 400 square metres or displayed at points of sale from 1 April. An official Belgian Health Interview survey in 2018 found that 15.3% of the population aged 15 and over smoked every day, down from 25.5% in 1997. The 2023 survey, due to be released in September, is expected to show a further decline in smoking, but the government said further action was needed to meet its tobacco-reduction targets. A ban on outdoor smoking in Milan, the northern Italian business and fashion hub long known for its smog, came into force on Wednesday. Smokers who light up on the city’s streets and in crowded public spaces will face fines of between €40 (£33) and €240. The ban is an extension of a measure imposed in 2021 which prohibited smoking in parks and playgrounds, and at bus stops and sports facilities. The city’s officials said the ban was intended to improve air quality and protect people’s health, especially against the effects of passive smoking. The ban does not, however, apply to e-cigarettes. Milan is located in the Po Valley, a huge geographical area straddling the regions of Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna. A Guardian investigation in 2023 found more than a third of the people living in the valley and surrounding areas breathed air four times above the World Health Organization’s guideline limit for the most dangerous airborne particulates. Although the number of smokers in Italy has gradually fallen over the past 15 years, 24% of the population still smokes, according to data last year from the Higher Health Institute. An estimated 93,000 deaths each year in Italy are attributed to smoking, according to the health ministry. Italy’s first national anti-smoking measure was introduced in 1975, when smoking was banned on public transport and in classrooms. The ban was extended in 1995 to include public administration areas, and in 2005 to all enclosed public areas.

The Guardian;Fate of endangered monkey hinges on Brazilian city’s planning policy;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/01/fate-of-endangered-monkey-hinges-on-brazilian-citys-planning-policy;2025-01-01T11:41:14Z

The fate of one of the world’s most threatened primates will be on the line in the coming months when Brazilian authorities decide whether to incorporate the pied tamarin into the urban planning policies of Manaus. Conservationists say the inclusion is crucial not just to protect the critically endangered monkey but as an indicator of the Amazonian city’s willingness to create green spaces that will benefit the lives of its people. The pied tamarin – which has a small, fluffy white upper body and a black, hairless face – has one of the narrowest ranges of any primate and is found only around the borders of the city. In recent decades it has been squeezed out of much of its home by the sprawl of Manaus, which is the most densely populated metropolis in the Brazilian rainforest with more 2.2 million residents. Unregulated growth has increased the area of the city by 60% since 1985. To feed its people, nearby farms have more than doubled in size, now covering 56,000km/s. Transport systems are also expanding, and roadkill is a major threat to wildlife in this biodiversity hotspot. The population of the pied tamarin has shrunk rapidly to an estimated 22,000 and they are predicted to lose 80% of the number in the next 20 years. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature rates it as critically endangered, which is the final category before extinction. Various efforts have been made to save the species, including a national action plan, the federal government’s establishment of a Pied Tamarin Wildlife Refuge and rescue centres, and the construction of wildlife bridges across roads. But with numbers continuing to decline, conservationists say a more comprehensive strategy is needed. On 21 November detailed proposals were submitted to city authorities during a public debate. Advocates of the pied tamarin are now awaiting a decision. “This monkey’s habitat has been steamrollered. Many live in fragments of forest, where they are effectively in captivity. This creates genetic bottlenecks” said Dominic Wormell, the founder of the Tamarin Trust. “We must integrate its conservation into urban planning by creating more green spaces. This can bring public health benefits. This tiny monkey needs the lungs of the city to survive and so do the residents’ children.” In early 2025, this will be a central topic of discussion at a series of meetings among city authorities, Manaus university biologists, conservation groups, local and state environment departments and the two main federal environment bodies – Ibama and ICMBio. Diogo Lagroteria, chair of ICMBio’s pied tamarin species committee, says it is crucial for politicians and local government to commit to policies that preserve, restore and protect green spaces: “Children and the elderly, in particular, would benefit from a cooler, more welcoming city with opportunities to connect to nature.” “We really need a joined-up plan,” Wormell said. “The fight to save the pied tamarin is a fight to save the Amazon rainforest itself. If we can secure a future for this tiny monkey by planting trees and showing that conservation of the forest creates a better future for us and the primates that live along side us, then maybe people will start to see how truly valuable the Amazon is to them and the whole world.”

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;2025-01-01T11:35:59Z

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. In others, however, there was celebration over a further step towards weaning Europe off Russian energy. Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, called the development “a new victory” for the continent. Russian gas has flowed through Ukraine for decades, mainly through 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. Gas continued to flow based on a 2019 agreement after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, providing revenue for both countries. Kyiv made hundreds of millions of euros a year in transit fees. Negotiations took place last year to extend the deal but came to nothing. “Russian gas has not been supplied for transit via Ukraine since 8:00 am [Moscow time, 06:00 GMT],” Russia’s Gazprom said in a statement on Wednesday. Ukraine’s energy minister, German Galushchenko, confirmed Ukraine had stopped transit flows, calling the move “historic” in a statement on Wednesday. “Russia is losing its markets, it will suffer financial losses,” he said. There were some swift effects, with the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria losing 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 (06:00 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. A company employee told Reuters by phone she did not know how long the situation would last. Transnistria, a pro-Russian entity that claims independence from the rest of Moldova, was receiving its gas via Ukraine. 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. Some countries, however, such as Slovakia, still relied heavily on Russian gas. The country’s Russia-friendly prime minister, Robert Fico, decried the failure to renew a transit deal, claiming the move would hurt Europe more than Russia. “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. The only Russian gas route to Europe still in operation is TurkStream, a Black Sea pipeline that sends gas to Hungary and Serbia.

The Guardian;Parrots, trees and dragons: test yourself with our quiz on national flag changes;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/01/parrots-trees-dragons-quiz-national-flag-changes;2025-01-01T10:00:11Z

The Guardian;Wednesday briefing: The people, policies, places and pop culture that could define 2025;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/01/first-edition-2025-predictions;2025-01-01T06:45:06Z

Good morning – and happy new year. Whether you are reading this on the way home from a very late night or feeling refreshed after tucking yourself in at precisely 00:01, welcome to 2025. While technically it may be just another day, it’s hard to avoid the feeling of renewal that comes with the new year – even if it’s accompanied by dark, gloomy days and an emptier-than-you’d-like bank account. As you contemplate your resolutions, I’ve compiled some key stories and themes that are likely to shape the year ahead. But first, the headlines. In depth: Expect the unexpected *** Donald Trump’s inauguration The returning president-elect was perhaps the single most dominating figure of 2024, and that will only intensify this year. In the run-up to inauguration day, various organisations including the Women’s March, the National Women’s Law Center and Planned Parenthood are hosting a day of action – a protest, in effect. It will almost certainly not be as big as the Women’s March demonstration held in January 2017, after Trump’s first inauguration. It brought an estimated 500,000 protesters to Washington DC while about 4 million took part in other events across the US. Unlike in 2016, this time around Trump won both the popular vote and a comfortable electoral college margin, and Republicans have secured a “trifecta” by also gaining control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. And so, crucially, Trump’s election can no longer be dismissed as an aberration, meaning there is less of a fight in the air. Much has been written about what to expect from a second Trump term. But to boil things down, over the next 12 months we can expect trade wars – Richard Partington’s useful primer on the global economic outlook for 2025 reflects on how important they might be – government shutdowns, sweeping executive orders to reduce immigration, nativist politics and isolationist geopolitical policies. *** The climate crisis In 2024, the world experienced another record-hottest year. Extreme weather events were more frequent and severe because of the climate emergency. This will not slow down in 2025. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says greenhouse gas emissions have to peak by 2025 and then drop sharply if the world is to limit global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, as per the Paris agreement. With Trump in office and a “greenlash” in Europe, 2025 could be a bad year for climate policy. In this piece looking at the approach Keir Starmer might take this year in the UK, Fiona Harvey notes that his response to the Climate Change Committee’s recommendations on future emissions cuts will be a key test of how seriously he takes the crisis. A good news story to keep an eye out for: more than 175 countries are expected to sign a UN treaty agreeing to reduce single-use plastics. Talks collapsed towards the end of 2024 but there are hopes that they will be revived in the coming year. *** Gaza, Ukraine and beyond The prospects for peace and ceasefire agreements remain elusive in the major conflicts that dominated last year’s international agenda. Russia continues to make incremental gains as the war of attrition grinds on in Ukraine. Despite President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s relentless entreaties, the incoming Trump administration may opt to curtail or halt funding for Ukraine, which would prove catastrophic for Kyiv. Though reports suggested ceasefire negotiations were gathering momentum towards the end of 2024, a breakthrough appears unlikely in Gaza as Israel persists with its offensive. The absence of a clear Israeli plan for the “day after” the war means the attacks on Gaza will continue and the Israeli military will probably lay the foundations for an indefinite period of military presence. Meanwhile, Sudan has been in the grip of disease, displacement and unconscionable violence for nearly two years. Armed groups, often supported by foreign powers – the United Arab Emirates, Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and others – vie for gold, influence and territorial control. As the conflict continues, the risk of an increasingly fragmented environment grows, with several armed groups positioning themselves to fill power vacuums and establish themselves as security providers across the country in 2025. *** A year of significant elections 2024 was billed as “democracy’s Super Bowl”, with more than 80 national elections taking place. This year there will be fewer elections, but they will be important. Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau is expected to be ousted. Ecuador’s president Daniel Noboa, the world’s youngest elected government leader, is seeking re-election despite only being in power for two years. Germany has been locked in political turmoil for some time and its forthcoming federal election will be the most consequential vote this year. *** Culture The crisis in live music and the unsustainable cost of touring were big talking points last year, and while less commercially successful artists continue to struggle, megastars and their stadium tours will dominate 2025. There’s Coldplay, Dua Lipa, AC/DC, Ed Sheeran, Shakira and, who could possibly forget, the Oasis reunion tour. Expect endless, tedious discourse about the state of Noel and Liam Gallagher’s relationship. There’s plenty to see in the cinema: the third instalment in the Avatar series is coming out, and yet another Bridget Jones. Personally, I still need to go and see Robbie Williams played by a CGI chimpanzee in Better Man. Here’s Peter Bradshaw’s pick of the year ahead, while this piece by Catherine Shoard looks at some of the auteurs back with new films this year. And if you prefer your culture with a final score attached, here’s a preview of the year’s unmissable sporting events. *** Who knows what else? Of course, we simply could not have predicted many of 2024’s most shocking headlines. There were assassination attempts, high-profile killings, collapsed bridges and floods in the desert. Maybe we should just expect the unexpected. Reading this online or on the Guardian app? Over the Christmas period the headlines and sport will not appear, so to get the First Edition experience in your inbox every morning, sign up here.

The Guardian;New Year’s Eve: ball drops in New York’s Times Square as celebrations take place across the globe – as it happened;https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/dec/31/new-years-eve-celebrations-2024-2025-live;2025-01-01T06:23:54Z

With that, we are ending this live New Year’s coverage. A very very happy 2025 to all of you, and thank you as always for reading. May your year involve lots and lots more reading of all kinds – and more confetti: Good news for home buyers in the UK in 2025: experts have predicted a “buyer’s market” for house hunters in the year ahead, giving them greater negotiating power as the mood of the housing market shifts to “cautious optimism”. However, even the more hopeful expectations for 2025 were met with caution, as an important stamp duty relief for first-time buyers was scheduled to end in the spring, as well as potentially high interest rates and taxes bearing down on the market. Photographs from Brazil, Slovenia and the US: Next up are the central USA, Mexico City, Honduras, Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, and a small part of Ecuador. It is very newly the year 2025 on the US east coast – New York City, Washington DC, Detroit – as well as parts of Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Cuba, Acre in Brazil, Panama, a small part of Mexico, Haiti, the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos Islands, Jamaica, a small region of Chile, and the Cayman Islands. And – why not? – more! Here are some photographs from the celebrations in Times Square: The ball has dropped, it is 2025 in New York City and much of the rest of the world. Auld Lang Syne plays over the screams and cheers of the crowd, followed by Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York. The ball is sparkling purple, and the countdown has begun: 20 seconds to go. Five minutes to go until the ball drop in New York City. The organisation managing Times Square has tested the drop and inspected 2025 numerals, lights and thousands of crystals as part of a tradition going back to 1907. This year’s celebration includes musical performances by TLC, Jonas Brothers, Rita Ora and Sophie Ellis-Bextor. By Tuesday evening, people who had been in line for hours moved through a gauntlet of security checks, and then rested up for the night of performances and cheering ahead, with some even laying on the pavement. “It’s the biggest party in the world. There’s no other place to celebrate New Year’s than Times Square,” said Tommy Onolfo of Long Island, who started attending regularly eight years ago. Some different ways to ring in the new year across the globe: There’s a bit of rain in New York but that hasn’t dampened spirits for revellers in Times Square waiting for the ball to drop. The fireworks and ball drop in Times Square, New York, will take place in just over an hour. The clock has struck midnight in parts of the Americas, including some of Brazil, Argentina, part of Chila, French Guiana and Bermuda. Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada have also started the new year, and on the hour, so will Venezuela, Bolivia, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Aruba, Guyana. Here are pictures from celebrations in Germany, Brazil, India and Colombia: New Year’s Eve revellers in Australia have largely been praised for their behaviour at the country’s biggest fireworks shows, while officers were kept busy with outbursts of trouble around local fireworks. More than a million people swarmed the main vantage points around Sydney harbour and hundreds of thousands of Melbourne partygoers were treated to a fireworks and laser spectacular. Police in both cities said the vast majority of partygoers enjoyed the night safely, although officers were kept busy with violence away from the main celebration areas: “There are warnings of gales. Wintry showers, rain later, moderate or good. The familiar rhythms and cadences of these misty, magical phrases have now been familiar to British islanders for a whole century. They are communicated to us at strange, twilit times, every weekday at 12.48am and 5.20am, with an extra gust of early-evening drama at 5.54pm at weekends”. Here is our story on 100 years of the Shipping Forecast, by Jude Rogers: Rome’s traditional New Year’s Eve festivities have an additional draw: the start of Pope Francis’ Holy Year, the once-every-quarter-century celebration projected to bring some 32 million pilgrims to the Eternal City in 2025. On Tuesday, Francis will celebrate a vespers at St. Peter’s Basilica, followed by Mass on Wednesday, when he is expected to again appeal for peace in Ukraine and the Middle East. Jan. 1 is a day of obligation for Catholics, marking the Solemnity of Mary. The BBC is celebrating 100 years of a suprisingly soothing weather forecast for sailors in British waters that has inspired musicians and poets and become an immovable fixture on UK radio, AFP reports. The Shipping Forecast, providing predictions by the Met Office on expected wind speeds, sea state, weather and visibility, began as a vital service to sailors and sea captains who may be in peril at sea. Modern seafarers can now rely on sophisticated forecasting technology but the calm, rhythmic delivery of the forecast by one of BBC Radio 4’s silky-voiced continuity announcers has turned the forecast into something of a beloved British institution. Radio 4 controller Mohit Bakaya described the Shipping Forecast as a “cherished ritual” and “one of our national treasures”. He said the centenary would be marked with a day-long series of programmes on Wednesday. The service was set up in 1867 in response to a storm off north Wales eight years earlier that led to the death of 800 people and the loss of 133 ships, according to the Met Office. It was initially transmitted by telegraph before being first broadcast on radio on 1 January 1924 and taken over by the BBC in October 1925. Sea areas around the British Isles with mysterious names such as “Viking”, “Dogger”, “Sole”, “Lundy” and “Fastnet” are covered in the forecast which is peppered with phrases such as “rain at times, moderate or good”, “becoming cyclonic” and “falling slowly”. The poetic sounding names of coastal weather stations such as “Tiree”, “Ronaldsway and “Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic” also feature, adding to its appeal. Here are some more photographs of celebrations (and naps) from around the world – Brazil, China, Portugal and the US: NPR producer Martin Patience has posted a photograph of the fireworks in Damascus, Syria earlier this evening: The world’s largest time capsule is due to be opened this year. Put together in 1977, it contains 5,000 items, “ranging from small items such as books to large objects such as automobiles.” It was made by a small-town Nebraska store owner named Harold Keith Davisson, who chose the items with his grandchildren in mind. It will be opened on 4 July 2025. Here is a video of New Year’s celebrations around the world so far: Three women have given birth to baby boys at the stroke of midnight in Goyang, South Korea, the Chosun Daily reports. In South Korea, 2025 is the Year of the Snake. Their names: The first newborns of the year were nicknamed “Dingguli,” born to mother Koo Seul-ki, 35, and father Kang Woo-seok, 41; “Kkomuli,” born to mother Koo Ra-gyeom, 27, and father Lee Hyo-young, 38; and “Nikke,” born to mother Lee Seung-hyun, 33, and father Park Jun-soo, 36. The babies weighed 3.29 kilograms, 3.12 kilograms, and 3.1 kilograms, respectively. Here is Paddington in the London Eye, with what must be an especially large marmalade sandwich under his hat: London Mayor Sadiq Khan has posted his New Year’s message and a video of the fireworks, which says, “Greatest city in the world. Greatest fireworks in the world. Happy New Year, London!”: Here are more photographs from the procession: While elsewhere in the country, people took part in the 101st traditional “Achetringele” procession in Laupen. This photograph shows Young “Baesemanne” (broom men), who hold long-handled juniper brooms and wear wooden masks and air-filled pig bladders called “Soeiblaatere”: The festive procession, which starts from Laupen Castle, uses the pig bladders, as well as bells, brooms, and the masks to drive away demons and evil spirits. The leader of the procession announces New Year’s wishes, followed by a chase with the inflated Soeiblaatere. Originating a century ago, the parade features masks crafted in 1924, and its roots may date back to the Germanic Julfest. “Achetringele” means ‘ring down,’ symbolizing the banishment of the old year. In Switzerland, some brave souls farewelled 2024 with a swim in icy waters: Fireworks over the London Eye: Here is another view of the fireworks over the Arc de Triomphe in Paris: Hello from the other side of the world and 11 hours into the future, this is Helen Sullivan taking over our live coverage. It is 11.21 here in Sydney, sunny, and most of my colleagues on the international desk have already had a swim: 2025 is looking good so far. And with that I am handing over to my colleague Helen Sullivan on the other side of the world in Australia. It just leaves me to point out that my co-pilot Willow this evening has not been the most enthusiastic contributor to the live blog – and has basically slept through the whole thing, local fireworks and all. Which is probably a blessing. Please let me take this opportunity, on behalf of everybody at the Guardian and the Observer in the UK, to wish you a very happy new year, and one that is as peaceful as it can be. I will see you on the website somewhere again soon. Paddington Bear, voiced by Ben Whishaw, has wished everybody a happy new year at the London fireworks – the character seems ubiquitous at public events in the UK now – then there was a short burst of Auld Lang Syne, and we are done! Part of the fireworks display in London has celebrated that it is 25 years since the London Eye itself was formally opened by the-then prime minister Tony Blair on 31 December 1999. It was originally only given permission to be there for five years as a temporary attraction, but it is very difficult to imagine the central London skyline without it now. There is always a tiny bit of lag on the images of the London fireworks display arriving to us over the newswires, but we just got the first one, and it is a keeper. The London firework display has so far paid tribute to Team GB achievements in the Paris Olympics, and England’s men’s football team’s near-miss at Euro 2024. There was a section dedicated to Charli xcx’s signature brat green, and a rather more sombre reminder that it was the 80th anniversary of the D-day landings in 2024. Big Ben is chiming … The UK has greeted 2025 on a night when weather disrupted planned celebrations across Scotland and northern England, while crowds in London gathered for a firework display that went ahead despite the conditions. Crowds had gathered in central London for the traditional display that centres around the London Eye on the River Thames. London’s mayor Sadiq Khan, announcing that the event would go ahead as planned, said: “I’m really excited about the London New Year’s Eve fireworks, the biggest fireworks taking place anywhere across Europe. Hundreds of thousands of fireworks, great light display but also a great soundtrack tonight as well.” An amber warning for heavy rain was been put in place across parts of north-west England until 9am on New Year’s Day, PA Media reporter. The Met Office warning stretches from Settle in the Yorkshire Dales across to Preston and down to parts of the Peak District. The warning states that heavy rain is “likely to lead to disruption including flooding in some locations” with a chance some places could see more than 10cm of rain. Some celebrations in Edinburgh had already been disrupted after a decision on Monday to cancel outdoor event due to the risk of weather conditions. In a message ahead of the new year, UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, compared the task his government faces with that the Attlee government faced in 1945, and said there would be “a year of rebuilding”. Conservative opposition leader Kemi Badenoch told voters to “Watch this space” as she said the Conservative party faced “a long term project” of renewal and that “Things may be bumpy along the way.” Television coverage in the UK is switching to the fireworks in London … My colleagues in Australia have put together this gallery of great images from the new year celebrations there – where the weather looks significantly better than in the UK. By the way, if you think I am freewheeling a bit on the live blog here, Sophie Ellis-Bexter has just introduced on stage on BBC One a giant full-sized resin horse replica face-painted as David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane character, which she claimed she bought online during lockdown. I feel safe that I will not be doing anything as weird as that. As we build up to midnight in the UK, here are some more striking photographs of new year celebrations from different countries around the world. Do you fancy another round-up of the year before we hit midnight in the UK? Of course you do. The Tom Jenkins’ best sport photographs of 2024 gallery is well worth a couple minutes of your time. Here are a couple of images from London where crowds have gathered for the firework display. Robbie Williams has also been working hard this evening. He was the top billed interviewee on the Graham Norton Show on BBC One earlier tonight, and was also living it up headlining ABC’s celebrations in Sydney. I should have roped him in to help with the live blog too. While I know that there will be readers of this blog from all over the world at the moment – and I notice some of our Australian readers in the comments are already up and several hours into the new year – with it coming up to less than half hour to go until midnight in the UK and me being based in London, I’m going to put my focus there for a little while. I’ve just put the Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s New Year’s Eve Disco Party on BBC One on in the background. She is not entirely my personal cup of tea to be honest, but I actually saw her live the other week supporting the Human League at Wembley Arena, and I have to say I was left in awe at her ability as a support act to get a whole arena up and dancing and signing along. It was like being at a Joe Wicks’ workout, but with Abba cover versions. Here are some more pictures from around the world as cities see in the new year. Here is a view of the fireworks over the Quadriga sculpture on top of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. It has turned midnight across large swathes of western Europe, with crowds greeting the new year in the capitals and other many other cities of France, Italy, Germany, Belgium and Spain. PA Media has spoken to people in Edinburgh where weather warnings have forced the cancellation of outside celebrations for Hogmanay. David Liew, a 59-year-old lawyer from Singapore, told the news agency “We’ll just walk around, you know, we see a lot of lights, a lot of stores. We’ll just walk around, take some pictures and hopefully make the best use of our time.” Elisa Dorris, who is originally from Spain but now lives in Dublin, flew to Edinburgh with friends in order to see the fireworks. “We are very disappointed,” the 23-year-old said, “but we will try to have fun here in the Christmas market.” Kiran Stacey is a political correspondent based in Westminster for the Guardian Keir Starmer has promised to rebuild Britain as Labour did after the second world war as he enters a pivotal year for his premiership. The prime minister said in his prerecorded new year message that 2025 would be a year of rebuilding, with his government looking to turn the corner after a turbulent first six months in power. Starmer invoked the forthcoming 80th anniversary of VE Day in May as he compared the task his government faces with that the Attlee government faced in 1945. Starmer said: “That is what we will be focusing on: a year of rebuilding. But also, rediscovering the great nation that we are, a nation that gets things done no matter how hard or tough the circumstances. “We will have time to reflect on that this year, a chance, with the 80th anniversary of VE and VJ Day, to cherish the greatest victories of this country and the greatest generation that achieved it. “But that victory, and indeed the peace and the prosperity that followed, all rested on that same foundation we must rebuild today. The security of working people, that is the purpose of this government, the goal of our plan for change. And we will push it forward in 2025.” You can read more of Kiran Stacey’s report here: Keir Starmer vows to rebuild Britain as Labour did after second world war Met Éireann has also weather warnings in place, with Cork and Kerry told to expect “persistent rain”, potentially causing “localised flooding” and “hazardous travelling conditions”. There is an entire social media sub-genre suggesting “if you start” a particular song or movie or TV show at a precise time tonight, something that happens will coincide with midnight. My favourites so far being that if you start Ghostbusters 2 at exactly 10.27 Bill Murray will wish you Happy New Year at midnight, companion Graham will wish Happy New Year at midnight if you start Doctor Who episode Revolution of the Daleks at 23:47pm, and the drums come in on Phil Collins’ epic In The Air Tonight on the stroke of midnight if you start it 20 seconds after 11.56pm. I haven’t tested any of these – I just like the ideas. It is not midnight in Berlin yet, but crowds have already gathered and there have been some fireworks for them to enjoy. It has just passed midnight in Kyiv, where people have gathered to see in the new year. In a statement on his official Telegram channel president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he thanked “All who have been fighting for it [Ukraine] so steadfastly and so bravely for more than a thousand days. Our people. Ukrainians … who are going through all the difficulties with dignity. People for whom being citizens of Ukraine is a matter of pride. And for me, it is a matter of pride to be the president of such people. Ukrainians who prove: no cruise missiles can defeat a people who have wings!” Earlier people gathered in one of the Kyiv metro stations to sing carols. In the UK, PA Media reports that an amber warning for heavy rain has been put in place across parts of North West England until 9am on New Year’s Day. The Met Office warning stretches from Settle in the Yorkshire Dales across to Preston and down to parts of the Peak District. The warning states that heavy rain is “likely to lead to disruption including flooding in some locations” with a chance some places could see more than 10cm of rain. You can find the latest weather warnings for the UK here. If you’ve got a few minutes to spare while waiting for midnight to come along, can I tempt you with a picture news quiz? In Russia president Vladimir Putin has given his traditional New Year’s Eve address to the nation. Tass reports the address lasted 3 minutes 35 seconds and “was one of the shortest during his entire presidency”. It added “in his annual speech, the head of state recalled the main events of the outgoing year and spoke about the country’s upcoming prospects.” A simple joy of being a journalist on New Year’s Eve is every now and again you get sent over the newswires a photoset from some local tradition which you don’t recall coming across before. These pictures are from Laupen in Switzerland, where a procession to chase away bad spirits includes people carrying pigs’ bladders filled with air, as you do. It looks a little bit like this … One of the big choices in the UK – if you aren’t out partying – is what to watch on TV to see in the new year. BBC One has Sophie Ellis-Bexter hosting a disco party from 11.30pm, BBC Two has Jools’ Annual Hootenanny from the same time. ITV One has opted out of it all, with the news followed by a compilation of TikTok clips, while Channel 4 has gone for The Godfather: Part II, which starts just after 11pm. Cheery. My tip? Put on 60 Songs: BBC Two at 60 from earlier this year on iPlayer. I’ve had it on in the background for half-an-hour and I’ve already had Elton John, Kylie Minogue, Bob Marley, Pet Shop Boys, Beyoncé, the Kinks and more. That will tide you over for a couple of hours. Or want to watch something great from television in 2024 that you missed? Our top 50 best shows is here. (And also some ones to avoid here.) Can you have enough pictures of fireworks on New Year’s Eve? Probably not. My colleagues Elena Goodinson and Joe Plimmer on our picture desk have put together this gallery of some of the best views of the night so far … One of the things I do enjoy about doing the live blog on New Year’s Eve is it gives me a chance to point you to some of the great reviews of the year we have published over the last couple of weeks, and always one of my personal favourites is the alternative sports awards, this year featuring some brilliantly weird quotes, the greatest dropped catch in cricket you will ever see, and a few very enjoyable animal cameos. Here are some of the latest images of New Year’s Eve celebrations from around the world. Time for another quiz while we wait for midnight to creep across the globe? Why not. How about tackling Patrick Barkham’s environment quiz of the year? London’s New Year’s Eve fireworks event will go ahead at midnight despite weather concerns, PA Media reports. Much of the UK faces heavy rain and strong winds, and even snow in some parts, leading to widespread disruption. Many planned have been cancelled, including high-profile outdoor celebrations in Edinburgh. London mayor Sadiq Khan said: I’m really excited about the London New Year’s Eve fireworks, the biggest fireworks taking place anywhere across Europe. Hundreds of thousands of fireworks, great light display but also a great soundtrack tonight as well. You can find the latest weather warnings for the UK here. In the UK, recently installed Conservative opposition leader Kemi Badenoch has issued a new year message. In the short clip, she says: Happy new year. Like all of you, I am looking forward to a 2025 that is full of hope, security and prosperity. The Conservative party is also going through a period of change. This process of renewal will be a long term project. Things may be bumpy along the way, but the party I now lead is going to do things differently. Watch this space. The UK prime minister Keir Starmer is expected to issue a New Year’s Eve statement later tonight. The United Arab Emirates has just passed into 2025. In recent years the seven emirates have often competed to put on the most extravagant displays, with attempts to set world records for the number of drones used simultaneously. Earlier this evening the world’s tallest building, Burj Khalifa in Dubai, was lit up ahead of the celebrations. One of the main reasons for having a live blog on New Year’s Eve is we get lots of great pictures and video footage of firework displays, and here are some clips from Sydney, a city that always prides itself on putting together a tremendous show. Those of you outside the UK may not necessarily be familiar with Susie Dent, who is the absolute queen of the English language on popular quizshow Countdown, and on her social media often posts an obscure word of the day. SPOILERS: it is usually an obscure old word that nevertheless somehow manages to be incredibly relevant to the politics of today without her having to explicitly make her point. Anyway, she has just posted her word for New Year’s Eve, which is “respair”. Dent says: Word of the day is one I keep posting at the end of the year, hoping its time will come. “Respair”, from the 16th century, is fresh hope, and a recovery from despair. Here’s to a few drops of respair in 2025. If you are in the mood for a bit of political context in the UK as we count down towards midnight, let me point you towards our Politics Weekly review of the year, featuring my colleagues John Harris, Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey. France’s president Emmanuel Macron has given a traditional New Year’s Eve address to the nation on television. In it, Macron recalled that during 2024 France had hosted not only the Olympic and Paralympic Games, but also held events marking the 80th anniversary of the D-day landings, and the reopening of the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral. However, France’s president conceded that his decision to call early parliamentary elections in June 2024 created more political instability in the country. Macron said: “The dissolution caused more divisions in the Assembly than solutions for the French people. “If I decided to dissolve, it was to give you back your voice, to regain clarity and avoid the threat of immobility. But lucidity and humility demand we acknowledge that at this time this has produced more instability than serenity, and I take full responsibility for that.” I am not one to judge, after all I am the person working on New Year’s Eve doing the live blog, but if you are reading this then over the next couple of hours I was going to – as well as bring you lots of pictures of fireworks – make some suggestions of ways to help your evening pass with some fun and jollity. And quizzes are a great way. So here is my first quiz suggestion of the evening, why not try Séamas O’Reilly & Dara O’Reilly’s quiz on how much news you remember from 2024? It has just turned midnight in Pakistan. Earlier in Karachi, as is traditional, much was made of the final sunset of 2024 in the country, with people posing for photos against the background of the dipping sun. It always makes for a very photogenic scene. Nepal has also seen in the new year, but 15 minutes earlier than neighbouring India. Nepal is one of only three places in the world with a timezone offset from GMT by the rather distinctive figure of 45 minutes. The Chatham Islands and Eucla are the others. This is, I think, the fourth time I’ve done a New Year’s Eve live blog for the Guardian, and you inevitably find yourself interested in why that should be. It takes about half hour for the sun to cross the whole of Nepal, and the country effectively straddles two timezones. So since 1986 the country has used Nepal Standard Time, which centres a meridian around the mountain of Gaurishankar, and offsets it at UTC+05:45, which makes more sense with the sun’s position at noon than picking a timezone either side. It has just turned midnight in India, and here are some photos of the people celebrating the arrival of 2025 in Mumbai. If you are in the UK, then the Met Office has weather warnings in place across parts of Scotland, Wales and the north of England for snow, rain and wind. None of which suggests it would be a great night to go out to try to spot the northern lights, but the Met Office has suggested they might be visible. PA Media reports that people in the east of Scotland, north-east England and Northern Ireland could be treated to sightings of the natural phenomenon. It quotes Met Office spokesperson Grahame Madge saying: Although the solar conditions are set fair to see the northern lights, unfortunately the meteorological conditions are not that helpful. Scotland should provide the best chances but with unsettled conditions dominating it will be hard to get a guaranteed view. Perhaps the best areas may be those along the eastern coast of Scotland. Heavy rain and high winds are set to cause disruption in much of the country, with a widespread cancellation of New Year’s Eve events. You can find the latest weather warnings for the UK here. Public firework displays and celebrations in Edinburgh, Blackpool, Newcastle, the Isle of Wight, and Ripon have already been called off. Hello, it is Martin Belam here in London taking over the live blog. I will be with you for the next few hours. If you want to get in touch you can email me at [email protected]. I’d love to hear from people who have unusual plans for the evening, and to see pictures of your pets dressed up for new year. I also promise lots of still images of fireworks, and of course coverage of what world leaders have to say as the clock strikes midnight across the next few timezones. And it’s officially 2025 in Taiwan, as well as Beijing, Hong Kong and Singapore. Happy new year to our readers in the Philippines, where the clock has just struck midnight. I’m Tom Ambrose and I’ll be covering the blog for the next few hours. Here’s some photos of the celebrations in Manila … There will be more muted celebrations in Puerto Rico, as nearly all of the US territory is without power after an underground power line failed. A blackout hit early on Tuesday, leaving more than 1.3 million people in the dark. Officials said it could take up to two days to restore power. The outage hit at dawn, plunging the island into an eerie silence as electrical appliances and air conditioners shut down before those who could afford generators turned them on. “It had to be on the 31st of December!” exclaimed one man, who only gave his name as Manuel to Associated Press, as he stood outside a grocery store in the capital of San Juan, grumbling about the outage that coincided with his birthday. “There is no happiness.” Nearly 90% of 1.47 million clients across Puerto Rico were left in the dark, according to Luma Energy, a private company that oversees electricity transmission and distribution. Here’s some initial photographs of the new year being rung in, literally, in the Japanese capital Tokyo less than an hour ago. In the next 15 minutes Beijing, Hong Kong, Manila, and Singapore will be among those celebrating the new year. Celebrations are ongoing ahead of the next set of countries who will see in the new year. A fireworks display in Taiwan has been attended by thousands in Taipei. Meanwhile it may be several hours until Europe begins entering the new year, but there are already partygoers in the Spanish capital, Madrid. In an earlier post we said that all of Australia had entered 2025. That has now been corrected. Perth, WA, will celebrate the new year in just under 25 minutes A number of new years events across the United Kingdom have been cancelled because of bad weather. The most notable casualty is Hogmanay celebrations in Scotland’s capital, Edinburgh. A fireworks display from the city’s castle at the top of the Royal Mile has been cancelled, as has a gig nearby by Texas. A street party alongside Princes Street has also been scrapped. About 50,000 people were due to attend. Other events indoors are still scheduled to go ahead. Public firework displays in Blackpool, Newcastle, the Isle of Wight, and Ripon have also been called off. City Hall in London said it is monitoring the weather forecast “closely” ahead of the showpiece fireworks display over the River Thames. Transport, including ferries to the Isle of Man, has also been affected by the weather. As of half an hour ago, more cities in Australia are now in 2025, with Darwin, Adelaide and Brisbane among those to see the clock strike twelve. More than 1 million people watched Sydney’s fireworks, while hundreds of thousands took to the banks of the Yarra River in Melbourne to watch the midnight displays. Perth, capital of the Western Australia state, does not reach midnight for another 25 minutes. Tokyo is among the cities that will see in the new year in about 15 minutes’ time. The Japanese capital has had festivities under way all evening ahead of the clock striking midnight. South Korea will enter 2025 at the same time as their Japanese neighbours. On a day where protests continue after the impeachment of the country’s president Yoon Suk Yeol, some have already been celebrating the impending new year. There’s more new year’s messages from world leaders, as German chancellor Olaf Scholz has called for unity amid political pressure due to a poorly performing economy and the fall out from a deadly attack on a Christmas market. Scholz, who faces an election in February that could see him removed from power, said that Germany was a country should remain united. “Strength comes from solidarity. And we are a country that sticks together,” Scholz said in his New Year’s address, which will be broadcast Tuesday night. “We have it in our hands together: we can make 2025 a good year.” He acknowledged that Germany is still reeling from the Christmas market attack that killed five and injured more than 200 people in the eastern city of Magdeburg when a Saudi doctor drove his car into a crowd. He was arrested on murder charges. “We are stunned by this inhuman act. How can an insane assassin cause so much suffering?” Scholz said. “And it is not only in Magdeburg that many are asking themselves: Where can we find the strength to carry on after such a catastrophe?” Ahead of the election on 23 February, Scholz called on Germans to go vote and took a swipe at tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, who twice this month called on people to choose the far-right Alternative for Germany party. “You, the citizens, decide what happens in Germany. It’s not up to the owners of social media,” Scholz said. President Vladimir Putin used his new year address to tell Russians that the country would move forward with confidence in 2025. Putin‘s seasonal message was being broadcast at midnight in each of Russia’s 11 time zones, starting with Kamchatka and Chukotka in the far east, Reuters reports. His message comes 25 years since he was named acting president on New Year’s Eve in 1999, when predecessor Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned and apologised for the country’s post-Soviet turmoil in a speech that stunned Russians. In his message, Putin said Russia had strengthened its unity in the first quarter of the 21st century, achieving significant goals and overcoming trials. “And now, on the threshold of the new year, we are thinking about the future. We are confident that everything will be fine, we will only move forward. We know for sure that the absolute value for us was, is and will be the fate of Russia, the well-being of its citizens,” he said. Putin paid tribute to Russian soldiers fighting in the war in Ukraine, describing them as “true heroes”, but did not refer in detail to the state of the conflict or make predictions for how the battlefield situation would evolve in 2025. It’s now 2025 in Queensland – where they’re one hour behind the rest of the Australian east coast. There are round 80,000 individual fireworks going off across the city’s skyline at the minute. There are also big displays to the south of Brisbane on the Gold Coast and to the north on the Sunshine Coasts. And there’s this earlier pic from Newcastle, New South Wales… More pictures from the fireworks in Sydney. On a slightly different note, Chins’s president, Xi Jinping, has sent out a positive new year message about the country’s sluggish economy. Despite fears of growth well below the government’s targets, Xi claimed in a speech that the official growth targets of 5% for 2025 would be met. His message rebutted concerns that Donald Trump’s incoming US administration will harm Beijing’s prospects in the new year. “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. Here’s our full story: And there are many events are taking place around the world ahead of the midnight celebrations. There is already a massive crowd in Chongqing in western China ahead of midnight. Here are some nice countdown clips of the Sydney show. More than one million people are watching a spectacular fireworks display over Sydney Harbour Bridge to see in the new year. With clear skies and a balmy temperature of 22C, the famous celebrations got into full swing a few seconds ago as the clocks hit midnight in Australia’s two most populated states of New South Wales and Victoria. It’s not quite such a lovely picture in the UK where high winds and heavy rain are forcing the cancellation of some New Year’s Eve events. Edinburgh called off its official street parties yesterday because of the prospect of some nasty weather and the curse has spread further south today. Firework displays have been called off inBlackpool, Newcastle, the Isle of Wight and Ripon, North Yorkshire. Here’s the full story. Sydney is the self-appointed “world capital of new year’s eve” but there are also large crowds out in Melbourne to see in 2025. Families and groups gathered early along the banks of Melbourne’s Yarra River, to secure a good view of the city’s skyline in anticipation of the 14 tonnes of fireworks shot from 27 buildings along with 60 lasers. Domenic Adami and a group of friends picked their spot in Alexandra Gardens near the Yarra and set up a picnic before settling in for the midnight light show. “I heard, this year, they’re going to be bigger than Sydney, but usually they’re pretty good,” Adami told Australian Associated Press. “Even when I sit and watch it at home or from somewhere else on TV, it looks amazing. “Each year has just gotten better and better, and this year seems like it’s going to be the best.” The family-friendly fireworks went off over Sydney Harbour earlier before the main display at midnight (1pm GMT). Another visitor to Sydney is British tourist who used to watch the images of harbourside fireworks a sa child and vowed one day to visit the harbour city. The 28-year-old has found a vantage point in Balmain with friends and looking forward to the show. “It is a bit of a bucket list thing for me,” she told AAP. “At home the Sydney fireworks is always all over the news, it is one of the first places that brings in the New Year.” Auckland has become the first major city to welcome 2025 a short while ago, with thousands of people counting down to the new year and cheering at fireworks launched from New Zealand’s tallest structure, Sky Tower, and a spectacular light show. Thousands also thronged to downtown or climbed the city’s ring of volcanic peaks for a fireworks vantage point, and a light display recognizing Auckland’s Indigenous tribes. It follows a year marked by protests over Māori rights in the nation of 5 million. Countries in the South Pacific are the first to ring in the New Year, with midnight in New Zealand striking two hours before midnight in Sydney, 13 hours ahead of London and 18 hours before the ball drop in New York. The countdown is well and truly under way in Australia – at least in the country’s eastern cities where it is less than a hour to go before midnight. Hundreds of thousands of people have already packed themselves into the best vantage points around Sydney harbour to wait for the famous New Year’s Eve fireworks show. Many of those who will be bringing in the new year in Sydney are tourists such as Roman and Monica Gezernek from Germany who have been waiting for hours for the Sydney pyrotechnics. “They’re world famous apparently so we have to see them,” Roman Gezernek told Australian Associated Press. The pair will fly out to New Zealand on New Year’s Day to continue the trip of a lifetime. “We’re pensioners so we’re just taking our time around the world,” he said. Hello and welcome to our live coverage of New Year’s Eve celebrations from around the world as 2025 begins. We will bring you some of the best photos as people around the globe ring in the new year – well at least those parts of the world that use the Gregorian calendar. Other new years are available.

The Guardian;Top Venezuelan pianist urges music world to snub youth orchestra linked to Maduro;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/01/top-venezuelan-pianist-urges-music-world-to-snub-youth-orchestra-linked-to-maduro;2025-01-01T05:00:04Z

One of Venezuela’s most celebrated musicians, the pianist Gabriela Montero, has called on concert halls and music promoters to cut ties with her country’s world-renowned youth orchestra as a result of Nicolás Maduro’s alleged theft of last year’s presidential election. The Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela (SBSOV), which has close ties to Maduro’s administration, is scheduled to perform at some of Europe’s most prestigious classical music venues in January to mark the 50th anniversary of Venezuela’s world-famous music training programme, El Sistema. The tour, which includes concerts at London’s Barbican, the Philharmonie de Paris and the Berlin Philharmonic, will coincide with the expected start of Maduro’s third term, despite widespread suspicions that he stole July’s election. Even regional allies Brazil and Colombia – whose leaders have longstanding ties to Maduro’s political movement, Chavismo – have refused to recognise Maduro’s claim of victory. Their leftwing presidents, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Gustavo Petro, are not expected to attend the 10 January inauguration in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. Last month, Petro said it was clear that Venezuelans “no longer wanted” the Chavistas in power. The Venezuelan orchestra has been celebrated around the world for its effervescent performances and work training virtuoso musicians from poor backgrounds. But critics claim that in recent years – as Venezuela has slipped into authoritarian rule and economic turmoil – Maduro’s regime has turned the orchestra into an international propaganda tool. Maduro’s close allies the vice-president and oil minister, Delcy Rodríguez, and the president’s son, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, were appointed to El Sistema’s board in 2018. “El Sistema is essentially a political organisation … because it’s run out of the office of the president and its board of directors includes high-profile politicians including Nicolás Maduro’s son and Delcy Rodríguez,” said Geoffrey Baker, the author of a book called El Sistema: Orchestrating Venezuela’s Youth. Montero said the world should no longer tolerate such “music-washing” after Venezuela’s election on 28 July, for which voting tallies published by the opposition suggest Maduro lost to his now-exiled rival Edmundo González Urrutia. “The cultural sector must no longer facilitate the overt promotion of a manifestly failed ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ through the emotive optics of Venezuela’s youth orchestras,” the pianist, who was born in Caracas, told the Guardian. “Once we succeed in removing the regime by implementing the will of the Venezuelan people, we can restore moral independence to our musical and educational mission. Until such a time, regime-owned entities have no place in the world’s great concert halls,” said Montero, who recently received the Human Rights Foundation’s Václav Havel international prize for creative dissent. Montero urged fellow artists “to show solidarity with the Venezuelan people in this hour of dire crisis, by ceasing to do business with a Venezuelan regime that continues to hold our country hostage, that refuses to recognse the will of the vast majority”. She said: “It is morally incoherent to continue profiting from the superficially compelling, marketing-friendly message of social transformation through music, while partnering with an autocratic narco-state that condemns an entire society to abject misery, including our musicians and their families.” The pianist issued a particular plea to the London-based classical music promoter Askonas Holt, urging the company to stop working with the SBSOV, which performed at New York’s Carnegie Hall just days after July’s election. The arts management company’s website boasts of “a longstanding relationship” with the orchestra stretching back to its first European tour in 2007. In a statement, Donagh Collins, the company’s chief executive, said: “Askonas Holt has been arranging international tours for the orchestras and choirs of El Sistema for nearly 20 years, clearly predating Maduro, with each tour usually taking up to two years to plan and deliver. “The tour of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela in January 2025 started its journey long before any plans for an inauguration in Caracas and there is no link between the two events. We are working with concert halls across Europe who want to present El Sistema and who do not view their presentations as being a reflection on a government or party.” The superstar Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel declined to comment on calls for a boycott of the orchestra he leads. But a representative denied the orchestra was a propaganda tool for Maduro, claiming “the opposite is true”. “It is well documented how, after Gustavo spoke out against the Maduro government in 2017, the regime chose to cancel US and international tours with both the National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela,” said the representative, who declined to be named. “[El Sistema] receives state funding, and has since its inception, as do its orchestras, but just because an entity is funded by the state, that does not automatically make it a propaganda tool,” the conductor’s representative added. Montero argued that musicians and promoters should not shirk their responsibility to challenge the situation in Venezuela, where more than 1,600 people were detained as part of a post-election crackdown. “Musicians are not a privileged class of citizen, granted immunity from their common duty of care to reject tyrannical systems. Nor are they protected from the grim realities of state failure,” Montero said. “Classical music itself, however powerful an elixir, possesses no intrinsic immunity card by virtue of its beauty alone. On the contrary, the great composers have shown us that it is the role of music – and art in general – to reveal, confront and temper man’s darkest excesses, not to conceal them behind convenient marketing mantras.” Baker said that while the media often questioned how repressive and authoritarian states used Premier League football clubs to “sports-wash” their reputations, much less attention was paid to the use of music for the same purpose. “But … in many ways it’s exactly the same phenomenon and it requires exactly the same kind of analysis that people are willing to give to football these days,” Baker said. Collins said Askonas Holt considered its work with El Sistema “to be a partnership with a world-leading socio-educational programme for children and teenagers from deprived and challenging backgrounds”. “It has been recognised internationally as a beacon for education through the medium of classical music … We are proud to have played a fundamental role in determining its success and international influence, celebrating their excellent standard of musicianship and demonstrating to the world a visceral expression of the power and joy of music-making,” said Collins, adding that his company was “opening up opportunities on the international stage for young musicians”, such as the conductors Dudamel, Domingo Hindoyan and Rafael Payare. “Askonas Holt also works with orchestras that are similarly committed to transforming lives through music, as well as those on the frontline of international conflicts such as the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra,” Collins said. “We think our work is even more important in today’s world, where cultural exchange can be a powerful tool to keep borders open, to shine a light on oppressed communities and to build bridges between nations who have turned their backs on one another.”

The Guardian;Ecuador confirms incinerated bodies belong to missing ‘Guayaquil Four’ boys;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/31/ecuador-confirms-incinerated-bodies-belong-to-missing-guayaquil-four-boys;2024-12-31T22:07:54Z

Ecuador’s attorney general’s office has confirmed that incinerated bodies found on Christmas Eve belong to the four children missing since early December, in a case posing a severe challenge to President Daniel Noboa’s “war on drugs”. The four boys – all black, aged between 11 and 15, and residents of Las Malvinas, a poor area in the country’s largest city, Guayaquil – were returning from a football game on 8 December when they were apprehended by 16 air force soldiers. They have become known as the “Guayaquil Four”. The bodies were found on Christmas Eve in the Taura region, where the military allegedly released them near an air force base. DNA testing was required to identify the bodies. On Tuesday the attorney general’s office informed the families that the bodies belonged to the boys and later posted on social media: “The results of the forensic genetic tests confirm that the four bodies found in Taura correspond to the three teenagers and one child who went missing after a military operation on 8 December.” Antonio Arroyo, the uncle of two of the boys (who were brothers), received the news in tears. “They’re the children, the children are dead. My nephews are dead,” he said, according to Ecuadorian newspaper El Universo. The families were informed after a hearing in which a judge ordered that the 16 air force personnel involved in the operation be held in custody while the investigation continues. About 200 people, including relatives of the boys, gathered outside the court in Guayaquil, holding banners displaying photos of the boys and slogans such as “Where are the children?” and “They took them alive, we want them alive!”. After being apprehended by soldiers near their homes, the four were allegedly released 26 miles (42 km) away, late at night, in an unfamiliar rural area. They have not been seen since. The Ministry of Defence initially denied involvement, only later admitting that the military had apprehended the boys. The ministry alleged the teenagers were involved in robbing a woman, but the public prosecutor investigating the case stated that there was no evidence to support this. Before the confirmation of the deaths, the case was already considered the greatest popularity crisis for Noboa’s hardline security policy, imposed after he declared a state of “internal armed conflict” in January, with the armed forces at the centre of his project. Protests across the country have marked the last days, and some believe that the situation could intensify. “There is total sadness in the vulnerable communities of Guayaquil,” said Arturo Ramírez Morán, a professor at the Universidad Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil. “In an environment filled with impotence, violence against the state can flare up in the blink of an eye.” Public prosecutors are now investigating whether the military were responsible for the deaths. The Ministry of Defence had claimed that the boys could have become victims of organised crime after being released. The 16 soldiers are being investigated for “forced disappearance” – a crime with a sentence of 22 to 26 years in prison.

The Guardian;South Korea plane crash investigators turn to black boxes in search for vital clues;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/31/south-korea-plane-crash-investigators-turn-to-black-boxes-in-search-for-vital-clues;2024-12-31T16:09:49Z

As investigators set to work unpicking the cause of Sunday’s devastating plane crash in South Korea, the black boxes carried on the aircraft will be of prime importance, with retrieval of data from the cockpit voice recorder under way. All but two of the 181 people onboard died in the disaster, with the victims aged from three to 78. The Korean airline’s chief executive, Kim E-bae, said he wanted “to bow my head and apologise”, according to a statement on the company’s website, adding it was “difficult to determine the cause of the accident”. Experts will hope the flight recorders offer crucial insights. Often called black boxes despite being orange in colour, these shoebox-sized electronic devices are often found at the rear of an aircraft to minimise damage in the case of a crash. However, while the devices are built to withstand extreme temperatures and underwater immersion, they are not immune to the effects of a crash. The devices store flight data such as speed, altitude and fuel levels, as well as voice recordings from the cockpit and other sounds including engine noise and radio transmissions. In some aircraft, both types of data are stored in the same device, while in others the data is stored in two separate devices, as appears to be the case for Jeju Air’s flight 7C2216. With both devices having been reported as discovered, they could provide vital clues as to how the Boeing 737-800 aircraft ended up skidding along a runway and colliding with an antenna array. However, reports in South Korean media suggest the flight data recorder is partially damaged, potentially delaying its analysis, with officials saying that decoding it could take a month or more. According to the Yonhap news agency, the second black box containing the cockpit voice recorder was in better condition. Among key questions are why the plane stopped broadcasting automated tracking data shortly before it hit the runway, why the plane’s landing gear failed to deploy as it prepared to land, and whether the crash could have been down to a bird strike, given air traffic controllers had issued a warning about just such a hazard as the plane approached the runway. It has already emerged that the aircraft aborted its first attempt at landing and issued a distress call before its second, while video footage suggests flaps on the wings were not deployed to slow the aircraft. Flight recorders have proved crucial to solving such conundrums before: among other examples, it was the retrieval of the black boxes from deep beneath the waves that allowed experts to finally piece together what happened to Air France flight 447 – an Airbus A330 that crashed into the Atlantic in June 2009, killing all onboard. The final report concluded that the plane crashed after a catastrophic series of events that began with the failure of speed sensors and led to the pilots pulling the aircraft up to 37,500ft to slow it down, resulting in the aircraft stalling. According to the Korea Times, Joo Jong-wan, the director of aviation policy at the transport ministry, said at a briefing on Monday that the damaged flight data recorder would be transported to Gimpo airport the following day so that experts could assess the extent of the harm and determine how much data could be extracted. Frank E Turney, the chair of the aviation department for Capitol Technology University in the US, said that while the black boxes could be helpful in an investigation, they were only part of the puzzle. “The [black] box or the flight data recorder is not going to sit there and tell you this is what caused this accident. What it’s going to do, it’s going to give you all of the underlying factual data that you can use to try to assess how the accident occurred,” he said. “Sometimes the data that you’re getting from the flight data recorder will be very conclusive on what the cause of the accident was, but most of the time it is going to be a piece of the overall investigation, and not necessarily a slam dunk on ‘this is what caused this accident’.” One important point, he added, was that it was often not a single thing that caused an accident but a series of steps – known as the “accident chain” – that can include an initial problem, subsequent developments, and the response of the pilots. Turney said investigators would explore many other avenues to understand a crash, including the structure of the plane, whether there was a mechanical error, and factors relating to the pilots – such as whether they had had enough sleep or were adequately trained. “They’re going to go through all of that, and then at some point they’re going to sit down and go through all of this information to figure it out,” he said. “But the flight data recorder is usually a fairly sizeable piece of the puzzle that they use to determine the accident.” Aviation experts have already raised safety questions over the placement of a concrete embankment 250 metres beyond the end of the runway at Muan international airport, into which the plane crashed before bursting into a fireball. While the investigation continues, South Korea has launched an emergency safety inspection of the country’s entire airline operations, including a separate check of all Boeing 737-800s.

The Guardian;South Korea plane crash investigations focus on role of airport embankment;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/31/south-korea-plane-crash-cause-investigation-muan-airport-embankment;2024-12-31T16:00:50Z

South Korean authorities seeking answers to the country’s deadliest plane disaster are investigating the role of a hardened barrier at the end of a runway that was hit after the jet crash-landed on Sunday. The structure may only partly explain why Sunday’s Jeju Air flight ended in such a violent manner. All but two of the 181 people onboard died when the plane slid down the runway at Muan international airport and burst into flames after hitting the dirt-and-concrete embankment built to house navigation equipment. A report by the Chosun Ilbo newspaper on Tuesday said the airport’s operating manual, uploaded early in 2024, had noted that the raised ground was too close to the end of the runway, at 199 metres (652ft) away. Airport officials responded at the time by saying “adjustments would be considered” during future development, Chosun reported. The embankment was built to house a localiser, an antenna system that emits radio signals to guide aircraft toward the runway. It is essential for safe landings and needs to be placed relatively in line with the runway. The embankment has been a focus of attention but it is not unusual to have obstacles and hazards near the end of runways – not only navigation equipment but also major roads, warehouses, trees and often open water. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) recommends a 240-metre safety area at the end of runways but only mandates a 90-metre area. Several other key questions remain for investigators, including why the jet touched down late on the runway at such a high speed with no landing gear deployed and no apparent use of the wing flaps, which are used to slow a plane down. South Korea’s director general for airport policy, Kim Hong-rak, told a news briefing that officials would “conduct an additional review of our airport safety standards”. The US National Transportation Safety Board said on Tuesday that it had sent investigators to South Korea to assist with the investigation. Families of the dead remained at Muan international airport on Tuesday to demand more information from authorities. The national police agency said it had enlisted additional officials and would use rapid DNA analysers to speed up the identification of five bodies. All of the other victims have been identified, but most remain at a temporary morgue at the airport. Early theories about the cause of the crash centred on a bird strike, but some experts do not believe such an event – which is relatively common – would have been forceful enough to prevent the pilot from lowering the Boeing 737-800’s landing gear as it approached the runway. Investigators are trying to establish if any of the aircraft’s control systems were disabled, and why the pilot apparently attempted to land so soon after declaring an emergency. The plane, powered by two CFM International 56-7B26 engines, appeared to be travelling at great speed when the pilot attempted what is known as a belly landing. “I can’t think of any reason for being forced to make a landing like this,” said John Nance, an aviation safety expert and former military and commercial pilot who flew 737s for Alaska Airlines. Jeju Air’s chief executive, Kim Yi-bae, said maintenance staff had not flagged any problems with the aircraft when it was inspected before takeoff on Sunday. Speaking at a televised press conference, Kim said the airline would reduce its winter services by 10-15% and strive to win back the trust of the travelling public. The crash poses a serious challenge to South Korea’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, who has ordered an emergency safety inspection of the county’s entire airline operation, while the transport ministry will inspect all 101 Boeing 737-800s in operation in the country by the end of the week. Choi, who replaced the impeached former acting president Han Duck-soo at the weekend, said the priority was to identify the remaining victims and support the passengers’ families. “Even before the final results are out, we ask that officials transparently disclose the accident investigation process and promptly inform the bereaved families,” he said at a disaster management meeting. Choi had immediately declared a seven-day period of mourning and paid his respect at a memorial at the crash site. Similar memorials have been set up at other locations around the country, and flags were flying at half mast. Representatives from the US NTSB, the US Federal Aviation Administration and the aircraft manufacturer Boeing planned to meet in Muan on Tuesday. Establishing the cause of the accident could prove more complicated and time-consuming than usual, after the ministry said the plane’s damaged flight data recorder was missing key pieces, making it more difficult to extract its data. The second “black box” containing the cockpit voice recorder was in better condition, the Yonhap news agency said. Park Han-shin, whose brother died in the crash, said he had been told by authorities that his brother had been identified but said he had not been able to see his body. South Korean authorities will be under pressure to avoid a repeat of the aftermath of the Sewol ferry disaster in April 2014, in which more than 300 people died, mostly high school students. Many relatives of the victims complained it took authorities too long to identify the dead and to establish the cause of the accident. The bodies of four of the identified victims in Sunday’s crash have been handed over to their families, Yonhap said, citing local officials.

The Guardian;‘The forest will survive’: the volunteers saving Kharkiv’s war-charred woodland;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/31/ukraine-volunteers-saving-kharkiv-war-charred-woodland;2024-12-31T16:00:50Z

Yuriy Bengus, a biologist, surveyed a scene of destruction. The Zhuravli forest, on the northern edge of Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, was a blackened mess. Rooks cawed from burned pine trees and hopped between stumps. A dead bird lay in an abandoned military dugout. War was down the road. From somewhere to the north of Kharkiv came a muffled boom. Bengus plunged his spade into the sandy earth. “From an ecological point of view, oaks are most suitable,” he said. His assistant, Yulia Kucherevska, a 16-year-old volunteer, reached into a plastic bag, pulling out three acorns that she tossed into a shallow hole. The pair moved on to the next spot and threw in three more. Behind them a No 16 tram rattled past. In spring 2022 Russian troops had tried to seize Kharkiv, home to a million people. The city’s defenders dug trenches in the forest and blocked the road – now named Invincible Street and previously called Hero of Labour Alley – with concrete blocks and tank traps. Meeting fierce resistance, the Russians pulled back. Ever since, the Russian army has been bombing Kharkiv, using ballistic and other missiles. The forest is near the city’s most pummelled district – Saltivka, its high-rise blocks gutted shells – and a hydropark, a park based around a body of water. On 17 September a Russian warplane hit the green site with an aerial bomb. Four firefighters tackling an existing fire were injured, with one losing an arm. The blaze swallowed up four acres of woodland, killing animals and scaring away coots on the water nearby. Bengus, along with a group of volunteers, is now attempting to restore the forest. Why bother, given that Russian forces might come back and with fighting continuing a mere 12 miles away? “The oaks will take 25 years to reach maturity. But I’m certain the forest will survive. I’m more optimistic now than before. Where we are standing will be Ukraine,” he said. He added: “Russia has been trying to destroy us for hundreds of years, in particular our language and culture. But we always come back to life as a people and a nation. They can bomb us, of course, but I don’t think they can take over Kharkiv.” He continued: “We have a different mentality. Russians obey power. Our government listens to us.” The biologist’s ambitious plan is to replace the charred trees with English oaks, Quercus robur, which are native to Ukraine and Europe. A virulent root fungus has already wiped out many of Kharkiv’s Scots pines, causing them to shed their orange bark. “Oaks encourage biodiversity. They help mycelium growth and are good for insects and birds,” he said. After Bengus posted about the forest on his Facebook page, he was inundated with offers of help. Children from a neighbourhood school, lycee number 23, collected 50kg of acorns. A scientist in Kyiv sent a box belonging to a pyramid-shaped oak variety. The students put the acorns in water, rejecting any that floated to the top – healthy ones will sink. Kucherevska, who studies at the school, visits the forest three times a week after classes before it gets dark. “It’s fun. I come here with my friends,” she said, adding: “If there’s an air raid alert my parents won’t let me go.” So far, she had buried “around 40,000 acorns”. Not all would survive, but this meant many new trees, she said. She and her biology teacher, Anna Bozhko, joined a digging party earlier this week, along with Bengus and his wife, Lyudmila. Bozhko made a note of where saplings would sprout. What about the risk from bombs? “We’ve got used to it. We’ve adapted. I refuse to be terrified. Everyone is doing what they do. In our case that’s planting oaks. I believe Kharkiv has a future,” she said. Beyond the city, the situation is grim. Both sides build fortifications in wooded frontline areas, and use trees to conceal armoured vehicles and firing positions. In May the Russians launched a cross-border attack on the city of Vovchansk, now a wreck, in Kharkiv oblast. They are closing in on Kupiansk – seized by Russians at the start of the full-scale invasion, liberated, and in danger of being captured again. Russian airstrikes against Ukraine energy infrastructure and cities on Christmas Day left half a million people in the Kharkiv region without heating. Yevhen Vasylenko, the spokesperson for Kharkiv’s regional emergency department, said more than 300 forest fires had been recorded in 2024, the worst year ever. He said Russian shelling was often the cause, with the dense mining of forests adding to the problem. One fire in September ripped through the village of Studenok, near the city of Izium, burning down 236 houses and forcing 200 people to flee. It went on for a week. “We can’t use helicopters to extinguish fires from the air because of the war. It’s impossible. And you can’t walk in the forest because of mines. We use sappers to put the fire out,” Vasylenko said. He added: “I don’t think anyone has experience of working in a situation when you can be shelled and attacked by drones, or can step on a mine at any time. It’s very hard.” The Studenok fire destroyed 4,000 acres of forest, located between Kharkiv and the war-torn Donetsk region, he said. Smoke made it difficult for people to breathe. Firefighters saved residents and – where possible – rescued rabbits, hedgehogs and turtles. Ducks and many dogs died. “The problem is Russia wants to destroy our country. They are ruining our ecosystem as well,” he said. After seeding new oak trees, Begnus went back to his flat in Kharkiv and collected more acorns from the local park. He pointed to trees he had planted back in the 1980s next to his high-rise block: an exotic ginkgo and a towering white fir. “The neighbours on the first floor are not happy about the fir. They complain it blots out their light,” he said. “But when it comes to nature and biodiversity, we have to do something.”

The Guardian;Israel’s hospital attacks have put Gaza healthcare on brink of collapse, says UN;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/31/israel-hospital-attacks-gaza-healthcare-on-brink-of-collapse-says-un;2024-12-31T15:39:08Z

Israel’s pattern of sustained attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and medical workers has brought the coastal strip’s healthcare system to the brink of “total collapse”, according to a report by the UN’s human rights office. The report, which catalogues the besieging and targeting of hospitals and their immediate grounds with explosive weapons, the killing of hundreds of medical workers, and the destruction of critical life-saving equipment, said that in certain circumstances the attacks could “amount to war crimes”. Israel has consistently denied committing war crimes in Gaza. The UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, said the report’s findings pointed to “blatant disregard for international humanitarian and human rights law”. “As if the relentless bombing and the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza were not enough, the one sanctuary where Palestinians should have felt safe in fact became a death trap,” Türk said in a statement. While the Israeli military has repeatedly sought to justify its attacks on Gaza’s hospitals, accusing armed groups including Hamas of using medical facilities as command posts, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) said the evidence provided by Israel to back up its assertions had been “vague”. This week Israel ordered the closure of the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, which has been attacked repeatedly in recent weeks, and detained its injured director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, who has reportedly been interned in the notorious Sde Teiman detention camp. Israel’s campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians, was triggered by the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and 250 taken hostage. Covering the period from 12 October 2023 to 30 June 2024, the rights office said: “The situation has deteriorated to a catastrophic level since October 2023, as this already damaged health system has been targeted, resulting in the killing of hundreds of health and medical professionals. “The attacks on hospitals often followed a similar pattern, involving missile strikes on hospital buildings, the destruction of hospital facilities, shooting of civilians, sieges, as well as temporarily taking over hospital buildings.” It added: “A fundamental rule of international humanitarian law is that the wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for. All wounded and sick persons, including civilians and persons hors de combat, are afforded protection. Furthermore, IHL [international humanitarian law] provides specific protections to medical personnel and medical units where the wounded and sick are cared for, including hospitals.” It concluded: “The destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza, and the extent of killing of patients, staff and other civilians in these attacks, is a direct consequence of the disregard of international humanitarian and human rights law.” Noting that about 80% of Gaza’s healthcare system had been destroyed, the report said this had led to preventable deaths, including of mothers, and to newborn babies being denied care. Responding to claims that Israeli forces had directed sniper fire at hospitals, the report said: “Another feature of attacks on hospitals has been the apparent precision targeting, by long-barrel weapons, of people inside hospitals, including medical staff. “In most cases it has been difficult to determine attribution, particularly where there were reports of armed clashes in the vicinity.” The Israeli military did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the report. The UN said that, responding to its report, the Israeli government had said its military took extensive measures to mitigate civilian harm and minimise disruption, including the provision of aid and evacuation routes, and the setting up of field hospitals. Israel has in the past few days conducted operations against hospitals in Gaza that drew criticism from the head of the World Health Organization. The report said deliberately directing attacks against hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are would, provided they are not military objectives, be war crimes. “In each operation on a hospital documented by OHCHR, after multiple strikes on structures in the vicinity, the Israeli military besieged the premises. The siege cut off access and isolated those inside, including patients, medical staff and IDPs [internally displaced people], while preventing the entry of medical supplies and other necessities of life, negatively impacting individuals’ rights to health and life,” the report said. “The siege of Kamal Adwan hospital in north of Gaza and al-Amal hospital in south of Gaza are two of six emblematic cases monitored and documented by OHCHR.” “If any of the strikes on at least 27 hospitals and 12 other medical facilities, totalling 136 strikes between 7 October 2023 and 30 June 2024, were deliberately targeting civilians including doctors, nurses and medics not taking a direct part in hostilities, or civilian objects not being used to commit acts harmful to the enemy, rather than military objectives, these would amount to war crimes,” the report concluded. Israel has consistently rejected such claims from multiple organisations, including human rights groups. The report was released as Gaza health authorities said 45 patients and wounded people, accompanied by more than 100 relatives, were evacuated to receive treatment in the United Arab Emirates.

The Guardian;France carried out bombing raid on Islamic State targets in Syria, defence minister says – as it happened;https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/dec/31/middle-east-crisis-live-israel-houthis-rocket-attacks-yemen-latest-updates;2024-12-31T12:55:37Z

As the time approaches 3pm in Tel Aviv, Israel, here’s a roundup of today’s news in the Middle East. A UN report has said Israel’s attacks on hospitals in and around Gaza have led the area’s healthcare system to the brink of “total collapse”. The UN Human Rights Office says its report raises concerns about how much Israel is complying with international law. Meanwhile The head of Unrwa – the UN agency for aid in Gaza – Philippe Lazzarini says “horrors continue unabated” 15 months since the war broke out between Israel and Gaza, triggered by the Hamas terror attack. More than 250 members of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (Unrwa) had been killed since the start of the conflict, and more than two-thirds of Unrwa buildings have been damaged or destroyed, he said. The president of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Ola Awad, said the Gaza Strip’s economy crumbled this year during the continued Israeli operations in the territory. Palestinian news agency Wafa reported: “By the end of 2024, estimates indicate that the unprecedented sharp contraction in the GDP in the Gaza Strip will continue by more than 82%, accompanied by an increase in the unemployment rate to 80%.” The Palestinian Civil Defence agency said it has received hundreds of distress calls from displaced people whose tents and shelters have been flooded by rainwater after heavy rain. Palestinian health authorities say 45 people have been evacuated from the Gaza Strip for general hospital treatment in the United Arab Emirates. They include a 10-year-old boy suffering from kidney failure. French aircraft have bombed Islamic State positions in Syria, the country’s defence minister Sebastien Lecornu has announced. The strikes are the first on Syria since the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Syria’s new rulers have confirmed the appointment of Murhaf Abu Qasra as defence minister in the new interim government, according to a statement released on Tuesday. The new Syrian government has reportedly appointed former foreign fighters to its armed forces, Reuters has reported. The new figures include Uyghurs, a Jordanian and a Turk as Damascus tries to shape a patchwork of rebel groups into a professional military, two Syrian sources told the news agency. Israel has warned Yemen’s Houthi rebels that they face the same “miserable fate” as Hamas and Hezbollah if they continue with rocket attacks. A UN report has said Israel’s attacks on hospitals in and around Gaza have led the area’s healthcare system to the brink of “total collapse”. The report by the UN Human Rights Office, titled Attacks on hospitals during the escalation of hostilities in Gaza, examines attacks between October 2023 and June 2024 and said successive attacks raise “serious concerns” about the extent to which Israel is complying with international law. It says there had been 136 strikes on 27 hospitals and 12 other medical facilities, leading to “significant” casualties among doctors, nurses, medics and other civilians. It warns that under international law, the “deliberate” destruction of healthcare facilities may constitute a war crime. The UN high commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said it had led to hospitals becoming a “death trap”. He said: “As if the relentless bombing and the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza were not enough, the one sanctuary where Palestinians should have felt safe in fact became a death trap. The protection of hospitals during warfare is paramount and must be respected by all sides, at all times. “This report graphically details the destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza, and the extent of killing of patients, staff, and other civilians in these attacks in blatant disregard for international humanitarian and human rights law.” French aircraft have bombed Islamic State positions in Syria, the country’s defence minister Sebastien Lecornu has announced. The strikes are the first on Syria since the fall of Bashar al-Assad. “Our armed forces remain engaged in battling terrorism in the Levant,” Lecornu posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, while on a New Year visit to French UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. “On Sunday, French air assets carried out targeted strikes against Daesh on Syrian soil,” he added, using the Arabic name for IS. The defence ministry told AFP that France’s Rafale fighter jets and US-made Reaper drones “dropped a total of seven bombs on two military targets belonging to Daesh in central Syria”. France has belonged to the Inherent Resolve international coalition against IS since 2014 for Iraq and 2015 for Syria. French troops involved in the operations are based in the region, including in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). As Assad’s fall to a shock offensive by Syrian rebels led by a radical Sunni group rapidly reshapes the country, observers fear space could be left for IS to regather its strength. The group has survived in both Iraq and Syria despite the destruction of its so-called caliphate that lasted from 2014-19. Washington said in mid-December that it had doubled American troop numbers fighting jihadists in Syria, to about 2,000. Its Central Command – responsible for the Middle East – said it wanted to ensure that IS “does not seek to take advantage of the current situation to reconstitute in central Syria”. The president of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Ola Awad, said the Gaza Strip’s economy crumbled this year during the continued Israeli operations in the territory. According to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, Awad said there had also been a sharp decline in the productivity in the West Bank. Wafa reported: “By the end of 2024, estimates indicate that the unprecedented sharp contraction in the GDP in the Gaza Strip will continue by more than 82%, accompanied by an increase in the unemployment rate to 80%.” The West Bank’s economy shrunk by more than 19%, with unemployment now standing at more than 35%. Among the sectors affected were external trade, construction and industry. Palestinian health authorities say 45 people have been evacuated from the Gaza Strip for hospital treatment in the United Arab Emirates. They left the European hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis early on Tuesday, Associated Press reports, and travelled through the Kerem Shalom Crossing into Israel. The patients are accompanied by over 100 of their relatives, according to the hospital. Among them was a 10-year-old boy, Abdullah Abu Yousef, suffering from kidney failure. The child was accompanied by his sister after the Israeli authorities rejected his mother’s application to join him. Israel says it screens escorts for security. “The boy is sick,” said his mother, Abeer Abu Yousef. “He requires hemodialysis three to four days a week.” The Health Ministry says several thousand Palestinians in Gaza need medical treatment abroad. Israel has controlled all entry and exit points since capturing the southern city of Rafah in May. Israel’s offensive, launched after Hamas’ attack in October 2023 has gutted the territory’s health care system and forced most of its hospitals to close. Those that remain open are only partially functioning. Syria’s new rulers have confirmed the appointment of Murhaf Abu Qasra as defence minister in the new interim government, according to a statement released on Tuesday. Reuters had initially reported the appointment of Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency which toppled Bashar al-Assad, on 21 December after speaking to an official source. The head of the UN aid agency for Gaza said “horrors continue unabated” 15 months since the war broke out between Israel and Gaza, triggered by the Hamas terror attack. Philippe Lazzarini said more than 250 members of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (Unrwa) had been killed since the start of the conflict, and that more than two-thirds of Unrwa buildings have been damaged or destroyed. Lazzarini, in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, said at least 20 Unrwa staff are in Israeli prisons. Those who have been released have reported “mistreatment, humiliation and torture”, he said. He added: “I reiterate my call for independent investigations into the systematic disregard for the protection of humanitarian workers, premises and operations. This cannot become the new standard and impunity cannot become the new norm.” He called for the release of all detained humanitarian staff, and hostages, and for Israel to facilitate humanitarian access and lift the “siege” on Gaza. The Palestinian Civil Defence agency said it has received hundreds of distress calls from displaced people whose tents and shelters have been flooded by rainwater after heavy rain. “Our crews can only evacuate citizens from their damaged shelters to other places that are mostly unsuitable to shelter, and they remain in the open – under the rain and bitter cold,” it said on Telegram, Al Jazeera reports. “We appeal to people of conscience to rush to save these families and help them move to suitable shelters that protect them from rainwater,” it added. The statement added that displaced people in the refugee camps in central Gaza City, al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, Rafah and western Deir el-Balah, in particular, need help. UN agencies estimate that some 1.6 million people in Gaza are living in makeshift shelters that do not protect them from the cold of winter, with nearly half a million in flood-prone areas. On Monday Reuters reported a baby had died in a tent amid freezing temperatures and heavy rain. His brother was being treated in intensive care. The new Syrian government has reportedly appointed former foreign fighters to its armed forces, Reuters has reported. The new figures include Uyghurs, a Jordanian and a Turk as Damascus tries to shape a patchwork of rebel groups into a professional military, two Syrian sources told the news agency. The move to give official roles, including senior ones, to jihadists may alarm some foreign governments and Syrian citizens fearful about the new Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) administration’s intentions, despite its pledges not to export Islamic revolution and to rule with tolerance towards Syria’s large minority groups. Syria’s new rulers, drawn mainly from HTS, have indicated that foreign fighters and their families may be given Syrian citizenship and be allowed to stay in the country because of their contributions to the fight against Assad. A Syrian government spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment on the thinking behind the appointments. The sources said that out of a total of almost 50 military roles announced by the Defence Ministry on Sunday, at least six had gone to foreigners. Reuters and the Guardian have not been able to independently verify the nationalities of the individuals appointed. Ahmed al-Sharaa, the HTS-leader-turned de facto ruler of Syria, has purged dozens of foreign jihadi fighters as part of a campaign to Syrianise and moderate his group. In remarks broadcast on Sunday, Sharaa said the new Syria “cannot be run by the mentality of groups and militias” Israel has warned Yemen’s Houthi rebels that they face the same “miserable fate” as Hamas and Hezbollah if they continue with rocket attacks. Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said the Iran-backed group would be targeted by Israeli military after recent attacks by the Houthis on Israel. Hours after the warning by Danon, Israel’s military said it had intercepted a missile fired from Yemen, as air raid alarms were sounded. The Houthis targeted Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv and a power station south of Jerusalem using a hypersonic ballistic missile and a Zulfiqar ballistic missile, respectively, the group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said. Danon told the United Nations: “To the Houthis, perhaps you have not been paying attention to what has happened to the Middle East over the past year. “Well, allow me to remind you what has happened to Hamas, to Hezbollah, to Assad, to all those who have attempted to destroy us. Let this be your final warning. This is not a threat. It is a promise. You will share the same miserable fate,” Danon said. Before the meeting, Danon told reporters: “Israel will defend its people. If 2,000 kilometres is not enough to separate our children from the terror, let me assure you, it will not be enough to protect their terror from our strengths.”

The Guardian;‘I just ran a lot’: the Strava user whose runs became a viral art phenomenon;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/31/i-just-ran-a-lot-the-strava-user-whose-runs-became-a-viral-art-phenomenon;2024-12-31T11:41:11Z

Paused on a busy Toronto street, eyes glued to a map on his phone, Duncan McCabe could easily be mistaken for a lost tourist. Within moments, however, he’s on the move again. “I think, at this point, we’re along the belly of the whale,” he says. “The fin is coming up soon.” McCabe is midway through his latest work, using the outline of his running route as shown on the fitness app Strava to create a cartoonish whale. The cetacean, spout and all, comes as he enjoys online fame from his previous work of running art, a dancing stick figure that has accrued nearly 100m views. It all started for the 32-year-old accountant after he posted a 27-second video to TikTok. Virtually all art on Strava, the popular app used by athletes to record the details of their workouts, comprises a single, at times immensely detailed, frame. McCabe’s contribution to the genre was in making something that moved – or in this case, danced. The video, set to the beat of Purple Hat by Sofi Tukker, has the stick figure dancing and shuffling along the streets of Toronto’s West End – a feat that involved 1,100km of running. Every second of the video is a marathon and a half. The idea, which plays out like a flip book, came from his wife, Andrea Morales. “I love working with video. And over the years I’ve come to appreciate that one of the most powerful and underused tools is the passage of time,” he said. “And motion is just time unfolding.” The stick figure wasn’t McCabe’s first attempt at Strava art. Last year, he made a collection of blocky animals by running through the city’s streets. He admits they were amateurish, but served as a useful exercise in learning both the quirks of Strava and the level of fastidiousness needed to execute a grander vision. Initially, the now-famous TikTok post went unnoticed, racking up dozens of views in the first few days. “The reality is you have to go into these things assuming that they’ll fall flat, that they’ll fail.” It was only after Ben Steiner, a Toronto-based sports journalist, reposted McCabe’s video that a broader audience took notice. In the weeks since, he’s appeared on daytime talkshows, waded through a frenzy of media interviews and emerged with a level of virality that has exceeded anything he imagined would be possible. With that level of internet fame, he now occupies a rare space few creatives ever attain: a chance to build on success and to address the ever-lingering question of what comes next. The whale, run on a recent December morning before sunrise, is part of that answer. Holding a detailed map on his phone in one hand and a 360-degree camera in another, he jogs up and down the quiet pre-dawn streets, past the clatter of road construction and at times, dodging incoming traffic. “If I let Strava plan this route out for me, it would put me at crosswalks. That doesn’t work for something like a whale.” Occasionally, he abruptly stops and begins walking, the secret for the most controversial element of his famed dancing stick figure: the diagonal lines. It’s the question he’s asked most online: how did he pull off this impossible feat, in a city laid out on a grid, without cutting through yards or even through entire buildings? McCabe uses a quirk of Strava whereby if a user pauses the run, and then moves to another location, the program smooths out the route using a straight line. But his explanation isn’t enough to satisfy a minority of armchair internet contrarians. “They say that instead of running four times a week, I flew a drone, lied to my friends and family in the hopes that a novel idea takes off,” he said. “Because that’s oddly more satisfying than accepting I just ran a lot for a long time.” Instead, he wishes viewers had noted the deliberate subtleties of the animation, including when the stick figure struts along the screen – a feat that required shifting the whole piece further and further away from his home. When it came to assembling the video, McCabe had to fiddle with the smallest details, including dozens of stray lines and frame rates. The resulting art, in a way, comes in spite of – not because of – the programs used to create it. Art and running both require propulsive internal force to complete. For McCabe, it was a vision in his head – of a dancing stick figure – he couldn’t shake. “It’s simple, I know it sounds silly, but I got goosebumps thinking about what it could be.” There were days he was soaked through from torrential downpours. When he needed to access his phone to see the route, he realised wet fingers can’t operate a touch screen. “You find yourself praying you can find a bit of dry sock to maybe clear a bit of the screen,” he says. “Or else you just spent the last hour for nothing.” For 10 months, he toiled alone. “I was doing this with no feedback. All I had was my wife. I’d come home and she’d ask how my stick man was, and I’d tell her: ‘Oh, tonight was a great stick man.’” His online fame, however, has not brought him many tangible rewards. “I thought brands would want to reach out and maybe want to be a part of this,” he said. “All I’ve got is a pair of shoes and a few protein bars.” Even with all the miles logged, McCabe doesn’t think of himself as a runner. “I don’t have a fancy kit. I don’t go fast. If anything, running is just a way of making the art.” The sun has risen, the streets are growing busier and McCabe is nearly done with the whale. He’s working through the lower pectoral fin. When he can, he edges towards patches of greenery. “I like to avoid the sharp turns when I can. I love the lazy, meandering angles, especially on something like a whale. Not everyone will notice it. Most won’t,” he said. “But, I do.”

The Guardian;Netherlands to open archive on people accused of wartime Nazi collaboration;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/31/netherlands-to-open-archive-on-people-accused-of-wartime-nazi-collaboration;2024-12-31T10:28:54Z

For 80 years, details of their ancestors’ collaboration with the Nazis have been buried in spotless rows of filing cabinets in The Hague. But thousands of Dutch families face having their relatives’ history laid bare later this week when an archive opens on 425,000 people accused of siding with the occupier during the second world war. On Thursday, the central archives of the special jurisdiction courts (CABR), established after the allies liberated the Netherlands to bring collaborators to justice, will open under national archive rules. Until now, the most visited war archive in the Netherlands has been accessible only to researchers, those involved and direct descendants. But from Thursday the physical archive will open to general visitors. For the first three months of 2025, researchers and descendants of victims and alleged perpetrators will also have digital access to a quarter of this extraordinary database – on site at the national archive in The Hague – for the first time. Relatives have mixed feelings about the move. “It’s a bit uncomfortable,” said Connie, 74, one of three sisters whose family history is contained in the archive. “I don’t know what could come out of it eventually, if people Google our surname.” But some in the Netherlands believe that openness about the country’s wartime past, including its economic and bureaucratic collaboration, is crucial. Three-quarters of the Dutch Jewish population – more than 102,000 people – were murdered by the Nazis, with antisemitic collaboration from the state, police and some of the Dutch population. It is a past that the country is only now coming to terms with, opening a national Holocaust museum, making a public apology and funding research into the role of institutions and transport firms. “This is part of the repression by the Dutch of their memories of collaboration, after we had punished our military and political collaborators,” said Johannes Houwink ten Cate, an emeritus professor of Holocaust studies at Amsterdam University. “I can understand the children and grandchildren of collaborators now fear possible consequences, but my personal experience is that their feelings come to rest once they have seen the files. Making this open is an important step.” Initially, the intention had been to put the archive online at the website Oorlog voor de Rechter (“war before the judges”) on Thursday. But the prospect sparked public disquiet and the Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) issued a warning that putting the archive of suspected collaborators online would breach privacy laws. “In the spring of 2024, the AP had a signal from a surviving relative that the planned publication of the CABR was possibly not being organised in a lawful way,” it announced. “The national archives must now start working on an alternative method.” Online publication is delayed and the culture minister, Eppo Bruins, says the archive should not be indexable by search engines such as Google. But eventually it is hoped that 30m pages of witness reports, diaries, membership cards for the Dutch fascist party, medical records, court judgments, pardon pleas and pictures will all be searchable. At a recent event at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, the director, Martijn Eickhoff, said the special court archive from 1944 and 1952 was a valuable historical resource. But it was also a period of wild accusation, he said: fewer than 15% of suspects were punished by tribunals and extraordinary courts, and two-thirds not at all. “It is important to look at this archive carefully,” he told the Guardian. “If a text is misleading, people become critical about the source, and this is what you learn to do as a historian … But because it contains so many personal documents, this affects people enormously.” He compared the Dutch archive with modern-day Syria, where global experts are working to preserve evidence of crimes under the toppled dictator Bashar al-Assad. “We hope to lead this experiment [opening the archive] on the right tracks. Not to open the door again to collective hatred,” he told a room of descendants, including Connie and her sisters Jolanda and Mieke. The sisters, who asked for their surname not to be published, have different feelings about the opening of the archive. While Connie is concerned, Jolanda, 70, said she did not mind and Mieke, 68, said she was keen to see her grandfather’s dossier. He had a building company that carried out work for the Nazis, and in the reckoning after the war he was punished for it. The sisters’ father worked there too. “But he was 18,” said Jolanda. “I don’t know what other things my grandfather believed, but Dad believed in a better world, not in Nazi ideology … But you can make choices, like my father’s family. Sometimes it’s a bad choice.”

The Guardian;Tuesday briefing: How public celebrations like New Year’s Eve became private events;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/31/first-edition-crowds-dan-hancox;2024-12-31T06:45:00Z

Good morning. If you’re planning to go out in a big city on New Year’s Eve, it is more likely than ever that your festivities will be sponsored, guarded, overpriced and restricted. In London, Edinburgh – although not this year, as Hogmanay celebrations have been cancelled because of forecast storms – and many other cities in the UK and around the world, public squares that were once understood to be a shared space for anyone who cared to use them are now often under the control of private companies, contracted by the authorities to keep people safe, keep them spending money – and even keep them away. This change is predicated on the idea that an unmanaged crowd is a dangerous, mindless thing that can lead even the most upstanding citizen into some sort of barbarism. In his superb new book, Multitudes: How Crowds Made The Modern World, Dan Hancox argues that this isn’t true – and that, instead, being part of a free-roaming festive crowd is among the best things about being a human being. For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Dan about the fascinating, bleak changes to how new year crowds are allowed to assemble, and what those changes reveal about modern society. I hope you find an unbranded celebration that lets you roam wherever you want tonight, and here are the headlines. In depth: ‘There is something instinctive about congregating with strangers when something exciting happens’ Thanks so much for doing this, Dan. One thing that might be a useful way to begin is by explaining the distinction you make in the book between “closed” and “open” crowds. What’s the difference? And which kind is a New Year’s crowd? A closed crowd is something like a concert hall or a football stadium – somewhere with secure perimeter fencing with paid-for tickets nearly always as a condition of entry, and with a bunch of other conditions of entry as well. You’re entering into, usually, a private space, and you’re paying for the privilege to do so, and your behaviour sort of responds accordingly. You’re more likely to sit still in the seat that has been assigned to you and to comport yourself according to the social norms of that particular space. Open crowds in the modern city are increasingly rare. And New Year’s Eve crowds are a very good example – a rare example – of a substantial urban open crowd in which there is theoretically no boundary, that people freely leave and join and move around in without any kind of authority. You get this at Notting Hill carnival [in west London]. You might get it when, say, the Lionesses win the Euros and people spontaneously gravitate towards the city centre to celebrate, but nobody has particularly summoned them there to do so. Most protests are open crowds too, even if they have stewards in yellow jackets, marshalling the edges. It’s about your freedom of movement to join and leave. In recent years, as part of a wider change in the way people in cities are policed, new year celebrations have become more likely to be closed crowds with particular areas that you’re allowed to be in, and ticketing and more heavy-handed security. What does that change about the experience? That is absolutely the trend of the last decade, to turn those open crowds into closed crowds, and New Year’s Eve is a prime example of that. In cities like London and New York and Sydney, you have what was hitherto an assembly of up to a million people, sprawled quite messily across the city in an attempt to join the throng, being quite heavily securitised. In London, it was Boris Johnson in 2014 who introduced ticketing for the fireworks for the first time. And with the ticketing, you get a cavalcade of other conditions – fencing, stewarding, security guards, closer surveillance, and now also stratified ticketing, where you can pay more for a “better” service. It has the effect of compartmentalising the crowd, because an open crowd is viewed as dangerous and suspicious by people in power. It’s a very clear hierarchy of wealth and class that revives the way cities were constructed in the 18th and 19th centuries. The current mayor, Sadiq Khan, was critical of it at the time, saying that this was purportedly about safety but was really about monetising people’s good time – but then when he was elected, he kept it. Ticket prices start at £20 and go up to £50 for a better view. They’re already sold out for this year. There’s also a company offering new year packages where you get a boat for 12 people to float down the Thames for £5,775. One of the big consequences of this, which I think is a real demerit, is that you just get many fewer people coming – in London, it’s down from a million to 100,000. The same thing is true in Sydney and in other places where the same thing has happened. It works quite consciously as a dispersal method, which should be antithetical to what they want, which is a thriving, buzzing city. You quote Elias Canetti, who wrote a book called Crowds and Power in 1960, and says that what people want in a crowd is a “blessed moment, when no one is greater or better than another”. I would say that it cuts against the spirit and the fun of joining the crowd. The new year’s crowd is essentially the carnival crowd, by which I don’t mean Notting Hill or Rio but this ancient spirit of carnival – the moment where the pauper is the king and vice versa, and everyone in the village is allowed to escape the bonds of the usual hierarchy in the name of a good party. If you’re being compartmentalised according to taste, wealth, mobility that goes against something innate in us. There’s this brilliant Finnish expression, torilla tavataan, which literally means “to the town square”, but is used figuratively as an expression of joy, say when your team has just won the ice hockey. It reveals something really important: the crowd belongs in the public square and the public square belongs to the crowd, and there is something instinctive about congregating with strangers when something exciting happens. A thread through a lot of what you’re talking about is the growth of the events industry. One of the most memorable examples of how they have changed things was the story in 2019 about festival organisers Underbelly making people in Edinburgh apply for access to their own homes if they lived within the “street party area”, and restricting whether they could have their own New Year’s Eve parties. That’s like a hyperbolic example of the kind of thing we see more generally – where a very heavily commercialised events industry traps something free and organic. There have always been events, and there have always been people organising them, and often monetising them. But the growth of the urban events industry in the past two decades is extremely striking, and it’s now a key part of the post-industrial city’s economic mix – both in attracting tourism, but also just encouraging people who live there to spend their disposable income. It’s also important to say that this isn’t just about the organisation – it’s also about how the city is constructed. Most cities in the west have more and more fences, metaphorically and literally, and there are more and more spaces that appear to be public and are actually owned by private developers. They’re known as privately owned public spaces, or POPs for short. And that has had a huge impact on how crowds behave and where they are able to assemble. But although it’s accelerated significantly, it’s also not a new phenomenon. Trafalgar Square is a great example: when it was first laid out in the early 19th century, the Chartists were on the rise, and there was real clamour and public protest about the extension of the electoral franchise. And because of the concern of the vast amount of space Trafalgar Square offered, after a year or so they added the vast fountains – they take up almost half the entire space, and the only reason they are so big is because it reduces the space available for the crowd by half. So the authorities have always been concerned about large crowds, and will try to mitigatethat by designing them out. Is there any truth to the idea that the only way to make a crowd safe is to make it smaller – or that you need this level of oversight to look after people? It is a genuine and important concern – over 150 people died in Seoul in South Korea only a couple of years ago in a horrendous Halloween tragedy on very narrow streets. But the leading crowd safety experts say that all crowd crushes are avoidable with the right preparations. And I wonder if, with New Year’s Eve, safety is being used as a bit of an excuse. The best counter example is Notting Hill carnival, where about a million people a day throng, generally safely, in a tiny little web of streets where 40,000 people normally live. I spoke to the CEO of the carnival trust, Matthew Phillip, and he told me that the first thing he did when he took over was remove a lot of the barriers. That may sound counterintuitive, but the evidence is that the best way to ensure safety is to give them freedom of movement. Bottling people up just makes crushes more likely. You cite Barbara Ehrenreich, who argued that in the 20th century “a truly participatory, popular, cultural and festive life was transformed into pure rock’n’roll spectacle”, and that you could view that as the conclusion of a centuries-long effort to tame audiences. Do you see the new year crowd as an extension of that phenomenon? The trend of the past 50 years is of the capture and containment of public festivities. They are just too unruly to make enough money from to be allowed to continue. But that attempt to bring the festive crowd to heel should be pushed back against. Yes, what’s happened in cities like London has made the crowd smaller, perhaps made it better behaved, but also made it less free. That’s a shame, because we have an evolutionary imperative to get together with strangers for a good time, and it’s what we should all be doing on New Year’s Eve, whether or not we can afford a ticket. Reading this online or on the Guardian app? Over Christmas period the headlines and sport will not appear, so to get the First Edition experience in your inbox every morning, sign up here

The Guardian;South Korean court issues arrest warrant for President Yoon Suk Yeol;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/31/arrest-warrant-south-korea-president-yoon-suk-yeol-martial-law-ntwnfb;2024-12-31T02:06:10Z

A court in South Korea has approved an arrest warrant for the country’s suspended president, Yoon Suk Yeol, who was impeached over his ill-fated decision to impose martial law early this month, investigators said. Yoon’s decision to declare martial law late on 3 December plunged Asia’s fourth-biggest economy into its worst political crisis for decades and caused concern in Washington. Yoon was forced to lift the order just six hours later after MPs forced their way into parliament to vote it down. The corruption investigation office confirmed that a court in Seoul had approved the warrant, but it was not clear if police would be able to execute it. “The arrest warrant and search warrant for President Yoon Suk Yeol … were issued this morning,” the Joint Investigation Headquarters said in a statement. Yoon Kab-keun, a lawyer for Yoon, condemned the move. “The arrest warrant and search and seizure warrant issued at the request of an agency without investigative authority are illegal and invalid,” he said in a statement. Soon after investigators said they had raided the army’s counterintelligence offices as part of the growing martial law probe. “The emergency martial law investigation team of the Corruption Investigation Office is conducting a search and seizure operation at the Counterintelligence Command this afternoon,” investigators said in a statement. Yoon has so far refused to cooperate with the investigation into his martial law order. He has failed to report to investigators for questioning over allegations of abuse of authority and orchestrating a rebellion, and his presidential security service has prevented court-ordered searches of his office and residence. Yoon also faces charges of insurrection – a crime that can carry life imprisonment or the death penalty and one of the few charges from which a South Korean president does not have immunity. An official from the corruption investigation office said Yoon’s refusal to be questioned had prompted the warrant request. “The reason for the warrant is that there is a concern that the individual may refuse to comply with summons without justifiable reasons, and there is sufficient probable cause to suspect the commission of a crime,” the official said. The warrant is valid until 6 January, he said, adding that Yoon could be held at a police station or the Seoul detention centre. Media reports said an imminent arrest or search of the presidential residence was unlikely, as investigators would seek to coordinate with the presidential security service. Technically, anyone obstructing the execution of an arrest warrant could be arrested. But under South Korean law, locations potentially linked to military secrets cannot be seized or searched without the consent of the person in charge, and it is unlikely that Yoon will voluntarily leave his residence if he faces arrest. It is the first time an arrest warrant has been issued for an incumbent president in South Korea, according to local media. Police were deployed early on Tuesday outside Yoon’s residence in central Seoul in an attempt to prevent unrest. Yoon’s supporters and protesters calling for his removal have staked out his residence, with local media showing images of altercations between the two camps overnight. “Unless Yoon voluntarily lets them detain him, there is no way to detain him,” said Choi Jin, director of the Seoul-based Institute of Presidential Leadership. “Should investigators have hand-to-hand fights with the security service?” Choi said that investigators were still likely to visit Yoon’s residence to show they were doing their work diligently and fairly. Park Sung-min, president of the Seoul-based political consulting firm MIN Consulting, said the push for an arrest warrant was probably an attempt to pressure Yoon to cooperate with the investigation. The acting leader of South Korea’s ruling People Power party, Kweon Seong-dong, said on Tuesday that attempting to detain a sitting president was inappropriate, according to Yonhap news agency. Yoon’s presidential powers were suspended after the national assembly voted to impeach him on 14 December over his imposition of martial law. The constitutional court has 180 days from that date to decide whether to confirm the impeachment or reinstate Yoon, whose two-and-a-half years in office have been marred by scandal and policy deadlock. The martial law order triggered weeks of political and market turmoil. Yoon’s replacement, Han Duck-soo, was also impeached last week for refusing to approve bills to facilitate the investigation into his predecessor. Han’s successor as interim president, Choi Sang-mok, had been in office for just two days when he was confronted with the fatal plane crash at Muan international airport, the worst aviation disaster on South Korean soil. On Tuesday Choi called for national harmony and unity and for trust in the government in a New Year’s address. “The Republic of Korea is in an unprecedentedly serious situation,” Choi said in a written statement, citing changes around global trade, diplomacy and security, as well as domestic political uncertainty. “The government will do its best to run state affairs stably in all areas of defence, diplomacy, economy and society for the people to feel relieved,” he added. Agencies contributed reporting

The Guardian;Ukraine war briefing: US grants $6bn in aid to Ukraine before Trump inauguration;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/31/ukraine-war-briefing-us-grants-6bn-in-aid-to-ukraine-before-trump-inauguration;2024-12-31T01:36:14Z

The US has unveiled almost $6bn in military and budget aid for Ukraine, as the Biden administration works quickly to spend all the money it has available to help Kyiv fight off Russia before president-elect Donald Trump takes office next month. “I’ve directed my administration to continue surging as much assistance to Ukraine as quickly as possible,” Biden said in a statement. “At my direction, the United States will continue to work relentlessly to strengthen Ukraine’s position in this war over the remainder of my time in office.” The package includes nearly $2.5bn more in weapons, as well as $3.4bn in economic assistance to help pay for critical government services, including salaries for civilian government and school employees, healthcare workers and first responders. Ukrainian forces have staged a new attack on the town of Lgov in southern Russia’s Kursk region, badly damaging a two-storey apartment building, the region’s acting governor said on Monday, a week after four people were killed in another strike. Alexander Khinshtein, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said one person was injured in the latest attack in the region, where Ukrainian forces have seized a chunk of territory after launching an incursion in August. “Their purpose is to frighten people, sow confusion, panic and chaos,” Khinshtein said of the Ukrainian attack. “And to deny children the chance to enjoy the forthcoming New Year.” Russia and Ukraine have carried out a major prisoner exchange, with at least 150 people from each side returning home before New Year’s Eve, in a swap partly brokered by the United Arab Emirates. “The return of our people from Russian captivity is always very good news for each of us,” the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in a message posted on Telegram on Monday. “My son is 5 years old now, the last time I saw him he was 2 years old,” said Serhii, who was captured by Russian forces at the Azovstal steel mill in the southern port Mariupol, which withstood a siege for nearly three months in 2022. Ukraine is pledging support for the new authorities in Syria, which was once a key Russian ally in the Mideast. Ukraine’s foreign minister met with Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus on Monday, days after Kyiv announced the delivery of a large shipment of wheat flour to the country after the ouster of Bashar al-Assad, who has been granted asylum in Moscow. Foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said he hopes “that a new Syria would become a country that respects international law”. “The Russian and Assad regimes supported each other because their foundation is violence and torture,” he added. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has vowed to step up bilateral relations with Russia in a letter to President Vladimir Putin on Monday, state media KCNA reported on Tuesday. In the message, Kim sent New Year greetings to Putin and all Russians, including their troops and “wished that the New Year 2025 would be recorded as the first year of victory in the 21st century when the Russian army and people would defeat neo-nazism and achieve a great victory,” KCNA said. Kim and Putin signed a mutual defence treaty at a summit in June, which calls for each side to come to the other’s aid in the event of an armed attack, and Pyongyang has since dispatched tens of thousands of troops to Russia to support its war effort, according to Ukraine, the US and South Korea.

The Guardian;Live Aid campaigner Bob Geldof was ‘scathing about African leaders’, files reveal;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/31/live-aid-campaigner-bob-geldof-was-scathing-about-african-leaders-files-reveal;2024-12-31T00:01:51Z

The Live Aid campaigner Bob Geldof urged Tony Blair not to appoint an African co-chair to the UK-led organisation working to overhaul international aid to the continent because he thought African leadership was “very weak” on the issue, newly released government documents suggest. The singer was “scathing about the ability and worthiness of virtually all African leaders” before the establishment in 2004 of Blair’s Commission for Africa, which would produce a report, Our Common Interest, and prompt a landmark pledge by rich nations to boost aid and write off debt. Geldof was instrumental in persuading the then prime minister to set up a “Brandt II” report, similar to the 1980 Brandt report on international economic development, which would lead to a “Marshall plan” for Africa, a reference to the US plan to rebuild Europe after the second world war. It would coincide with the UK’s presidency of the G8 nations group and the 20th anniversary of Live Aid. But behind the scenes, Geldof and the government had different ideas on how it should be set up, official papers released to the National Archives show. Geldof stressed in one letter to the prime minister that Blair’s personal leadership was vital if it was to succeed. “I do think this needs to be a direct commission from you personally – your vision, your authority, your weight,” he wrote. He also called for speed so it could report back in time for the G8 summit that Blair was hosting at Gleneagles in July 2005. “I know I’m pushy, and I know you’re up to your neck, but something short of the normal seven-week delay response would be welcome (do you use Royal Mail?). Seriously though, this must be implemented almost immediately,” Geldof wrote. A No 10 letter from October 2003, reporting on a telephone conversation between Blair and Geldof, said: “The PM spoke with Bob Geldof today. Geldof argued that unless we found a way to allow Africans to make livelihoods at home they would come to our shores, resulting in massive social upheaval. African leadership had been very weak.” Other Downing Street officials urged caution. One said they could face “opprobrium” from Geldof and his fellow Live Aid campaigner Bono if they were unable to deliver on the plan. Liz Lloyd, a senior adviser on international development, expressed concern over Geldof’s desire that the commission, while being chaired by Blair, should also be independent, and she stressed the government must have oversight. “If this document is going to have your name and be sold by you, [Geldof] must accept that we have the final editing role,” she wrote to Blair. The fact Geldof was opposed to a chair from Africa was particularly “tricky”, she added. “He is scathing about the ability and worthiness of virtually all African leaders and sees the audience as primarily the US,” she noted. “He therefore does not want an African co-chair, content to ride with your name to give it credibility.” She continued that they would need “prominent African involvement” and suggested Blair “talk carefully” to the then South African president, Thabo Mbeki, to secure his support. The ensuing pledge at Gleneagles to double aid and extend debt relief was hailed by Geldof as “mission accomplished”, although some anti-poverty campaigners complained that he had got too close to the government and that it did not go far enough.

The Guardian;Olaf Scholz: German election ‘will not be decided by social media owners’;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/olaf-scholz-german-election-will-not-be-decided-by-social-media-owners;2024-12-30T23:01:48Z

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has urged voters not to let the “owners of social media channels” decide next year’s snap election, after Elon Musk repeatedly endorsed the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). In a New Year’s Eve address recorded for television and made available before its broadcast on Tuesday, Scholz said German citizens alone had the power to decide “where Germany goes from here” after the general election on 23 February. “It will not be decided by the owners of social media channels,” Scholz said of the country’s future. “In our debates, one can be forgiven for sometimes thinking the more extreme an opinion is, the more attention it will garner.” Rather, Scholz said, the fate of German society “will be up to the vast majority of reasonable and decent people”. Without mentioning Musk or his platform, X, explicitly, Scholz urged Germans to resist manipulation and to stand up for their democracy. “After all, it’s customary to make wishes on New Year’s Eve. What I wish for is that we will not let ourselves be played off each other,” he said. Scholz noted there had been a surge of disinformation on social media after the Christmas market attack in Magdeburg on 20 December in which five people were killed and more than 200 injured. The car ramming was allegedly committed by a Saudi-born assailant with far-right sympathies. “No small number of these rumours and conjectures, though, have meanwhile been debunked. These things divide and weaken us,” he said. “This is not good for our country.” On Monday, a spokesperson for Scholz, Christiane Hoffmann, accused Musk of trying to meddle in the country’s election campaign with a series of declarations backing the anti-Muslim, anti-migration AfD party. “It is indeed the case that Elon Musk is trying to influence the federal election,” Hoffmann said at a regular media briefing. Musk had the right to free speech, she said, adding: “After all, freedom of opinion also covers the greatest nonsense.” Musk has often weighed in on German politics, even calling Scholz a “fool” on X last month. However, his more recent open calls for German voters to support the AfD, which federal authorities classify as a suspected extremist party, have sparked outrage and accusations of troubling interference in Europe’s top economy. The South African-born entrepreneur, a close adviser to Donald Trump who has been named by the incoming president to co-lead a commission aimed at reducing the size of the US federal government, wrote on X earlier this month: “Only the AfD can save Germany.” In the post, Musk shared a video by a German rightwing influencer, Naomi Seibt, who criticised Friedrich Merz, the conservative frontrunner in the German election, and praised Javier Milei, Argentina’s self-styled “anarcho-capitalist” president. He followed up at the weekend with a guest editorial in the broadsheet Welt am Sonntag arguing that Germany was teetering on the brink of economic and cultural collapse, defending the AfD against accusations of radicalism and praising the party’s approach to the economy, including regulation and tax policy. The editor of the centre-right newspaper’s opinion section, Eva Marie Kogel, posted on X that she had submitted her resignation in protest at the decision to run the article. Politicians from across the political spectrum criticised Musk’s attempts to put his thumb on the scales of German democracy, with the health minister, Karl Lauterbach, of Scholz’s Social Democratic party (SPD), calling his intervention “undignified and highly problematic” and Merz saying it was “intrusive and presumptuous”. Merz told the Funke media group: “I cannot recall in the history of western democracies a comparable case of interference in the election campaign of a friendly country.” Scholz’s centre-left-led coalition collapsed last month, prompting him to call a confidence vote in order to trigger a general election in February, seven months ahead of schedule. His SPD is widely expected to lose to Merz’s CDU/CSU bloc amid voter anger over the cost of living and meagre economic growth. AfD members have been working for months to make inroads with the Trump camp, seeking to harness his electoral momentum for the German campaign. Alice Weidel, the party’s co-leader, was one of the first foreign politicians to welcome Trump’s victory. A small group of AfD activists posed for pictures with Trump at his private club Mar-a-Lago on US election day last month, chanting “Fight! Fight! Fight!” in English and German. Musk’s endorsement in Die Welt cited Weidel’s “same-sex partner from Sri Lanka” as evidence that the portrayal of the AfD “as rightwing extremist is clearly false”. “Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please!” he wrote. The AfD is polling second on about 19%, behind the CDU/CSU on 31%. A strong showing for the party could complicate coalition building, requiring the election winner to seek up to two partners to build a ruling majority. All mainstream parties have ruled out collaborating with the AfD at state or federal level.

The Guardian;Israel sets out case to UN security council for full assault on Yemen’s Houthis;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/israel-sets-out-case-to-un-security-council-for-full-assault-on-yemens-houthis;2024-12-30T18:45:05Z

Israel has set out its case to the UN security council for a full assault on Houthi forces in Yemen, claiming the Iranian-backed group now represents a well-armed terrorist army that threatens not just the regional economy but the entire global order. The Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, also called for the Houthis to be designated as a foreign terrorist organisation, a step that may make it more difficult for Iran to provide material support without facing further economic sanctions. Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the UN – who had called for the UN security council meeting to discuss the recent escalation in Houthi attacks on Israel – said the Houthis “were nothing more than part of Iran’s war against peace”. The group, he said, had an annual budget of $1.2bn (£0.95bn) and came dangerously close to strangling the Suez canal by its attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen. He added that “millions of Israelis are waking up every night to the sound of sirens across the country”, accusing the Houthis of launching 300 attacks on Israel this year. He said: “Let me make one thing absolutely clear; we have had enough. Israel will not stand by and wait for the world to react. We will defend our citizens.” The Houthis were no longer a regional threat but a threat to the world order, he said. While almost all security council members at Monday’s meeting condemned the Houthi attacks on Israel mounted a week ago, many also condemned the Israeli threat to Yemeni civilians represented by the air raids on key power stations, the air traffic control tower at the airport in the capital of Sana’a, and ports which are critical to the delivery of aid. Nine Yemeni civilians were killed in the attacks that Israel said were retaliation for what Danon described as “a relentless Houthi bombardment of Israeli population centres”. Barbara Woodward, the UK envoy to the UN, reiterated Israel’s right to self-defence but warned: “Israel’s action must be consistent with their obligations under international law including protection of civilians.” She said she was “concerned by the attack on Sana’a airport that endangered Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus”. The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) was at Sana’a airport when Israeli warplanes struck on Thursday. A crew member from Tedros’s plane was injured in the strike and Tedros said he and his colleagues “escaped death narrowly”. “Humanitarian aid workers must be able to carry out their important work safely and securely,” said Woodward, adding the director general had been in Yemen to seek the release of a group of UN staff held hostage by the Houthis. Israel’s latest remarks appear to be part of a strategic decision to launch further decisive attacks on the Houthis, a strategy it hopes will be endorsed by the incoming Trump administration. Danon portrayed the UN as morally compromised and unwilling to take the steps necessary to enforce an arms embargo on Yemen. Israel wants the UN to interdict ships carrying Iranian weapons to the Houthis though ports such as Hodeidah. The US and the UK governments think the current weak mandate of the UN verification and inspection mechanism needs review. Referring to the narrow escape of the WHO director general and his delegation, Danon said: “We have no control over who is where. We have no intention to bomb to harm NGO or the UN, on the contrary, but if they are in areas where Houthis are, they should be careful because we will not sit idly by.” Vasily Nebenzya, the Russian ambassador to the UN, went further in criticising Israel, saying the attacks were not owing to self-defence, but “are part of military aggression against a sovereign state by the collective west”. He said it was irrelevant if the attack was regarded as retaliation since the scope of destruction was a deliberate escalation, and disproportionate. He accused the US and the UK of being involved in the attacks on civilian infrastructure. The Houthi leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, and the group’s spokesperson, Yahya Qasim Sare’e, have made it clear that as long as the war in Gaza continues, the Houthis will continue to attack shipping and Israel. Some Houthi activists have said on social media that recent attacks on Jaffa are a prelude to an attack on Israeli nuclear sites.

The Guardian;Russia and Ukraine swap at least 300 prisoners in exchange deal;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/russia-ukraine-swap-prisoners-exchange-deal;2024-12-30T18:43:35Z

Russia and Ukraine have carried out a major prisoner exchange, with at least 150 people from each side returning home before New Year’s Eve, in a swap partly brokered by the United Arab Emirates. “The return of our people from Russian captivity is always very good news for each of us. And today is one of such days: our team managed to bring 189 Ukrainians home,” the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in a message posted on Telegram on Monday. The Russian defence ministry said 150 prisoners from each side had returned home, and there was no immediate explanation for the difference in numbers. Ukraine’s coordinating centre on exchanges said those returning to Ukraine included 87 soldiers from the army, 43 from the national guard, 33 border guards, 24 from the navy and two civilians. It said 14 officers were among the group. The centre said those Ukraine sent back to Russia were prisoners captured during Ukraine’s offensive in the Kursk region, which began in late summer and resulted in Kyiv occupying a small chunk of Russian territory. Among the stated goals of the Kursk operation were having a bargaining chip to play at potential future negotiations, and seizing prisoners to trade for Ukrainians held by Russia. Some of those who Russia returned on Monday had been held since the early months of the war, which began when Russia invaded in February 2022. The exchange, the 11th this year, brought the total number of Ukrainian prisoners returned by Russia this year to 1,358, the coordination centre said, but added there were many more remaining in Russia. “We are working to free everyone from Russian captivity. This is our goal. We do not forget anyone,” Zelenskyy said. Returning prisoners have told the Guardian of physical and psychological brutality while in captivity, including repeated beatings, humiliating strip-searches, threatening interrogations and orders to sing the Russian national anthem or recite Russian poetry. Maria Klymyk, of the Media Initiative for Human Rights in Kyiv, whose organisation has conducted interviews with more than 100 returning prisoners, said many came home with injuries caused by malnourishment, neglect or abuse and some even needed amputations. “Almost everyone we have spoken to was tortured,” she said last year. Zelenskyy shared photographs of some of those exchanged on Monday, who were sitting on a coach and holding up Ukrainian flags. Russia’s human rights commissioner, Tatyana Moskalkova, published video of Russian soldiers gathered outside buses. “Very soon our guys will embrace their relatives and friends and celebrate the new year in their native land,” she wrote in a Telegram message accompanying the video. The exchange is a rare piece of good news for Ukraine as the country heads towards New Year’s Eve, when traditionally families gather together in one of the biggest holidays of the year in Ukraine and Russia. Kyiv is warily awaiting the return of Donald Trump to the White House, and to see what his stated goal to bring a quick peace to the conflict will look like in practice. Some hope Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, may soon realise that Vladimir Putin has little interest in a deal and push for further military backing for Ukraine. Others fear Trump, given his longstanding admiration for the Russian president, may throw Ukraine under the bus. On Monday, Joe Biden’s administration announced nearly $6bn (£4.8bn) in military and budget aid for Ukraine, part of a rush to increase assistance before Trump takes over as president. “Today, I am proud to announce nearly $2.5bn in security assistance for Ukraine, as the Ukrainian people continue to defend their independence and freedom from Russian aggression,” Biden said in a statement. The package will allow the Pentagon to take weapons from US stocks and send them quickly to Ukraine. At the same time, the US Treasury announced $3.4bn in direct budgetary support for Ukraine.

The Guardian;Church of England must open up its governance to scrutiny | Letters;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/church-of-england-must-open-up-its-governance-to-scrutiny;2024-12-30T17:53:49Z

It is difficult to comprehend why the Anglican Church allowed known abusers into positions of trust, and continued to tolerate situations that should have been impossible (C of E must ‘kneel in penitence’ after difficult year, says archbishop of York, 25 December). A church has no knees but those of its members, most of whom, in this case, were surely oblivious of the situation. That the archbishop of York chose to use figurative language at such a portentous moment offers a small clue to the problem. Why did Stephen Cottrell need an adviser to tell him that a known abuser should not hold any office in the church? What is the point of high office in the church if its holders cannot act in favour of victims and against perpetrators? The Anglican church into which I was baptised as a helpless baby and confirmed as an ignorant teenager has had much to commend it over the centuries. The Church in Wales was “separated and disestablished” in 1914, and I wish that the Church of England had taken a corresponding decision later in the 20th century. Arguably, this would have been better for the church. It would certainly be better for the UK constitution now to separate itself, the electorate and the public from an organisation that is so pitiably unable to manage its affairs. I doubt that a great hierarchical institution can really “demonstrate the power of love”. But such an organisation can, and surely should, demonstrate the significance of timely, appropriate action. Janet Dubé Peebles, Scottish Borders • It’s taken me a lifetime to realise that the physical invasion and abuse I received as a teenager by a priest of the Church of England, and the rapes by his friends, and the acceptance of such behaviour by this unaccountable priest, was exactly that – rape and abuse. Nothing protected you in the 1960s. I doubt if the bishops at the time could imagine what went on, though such ignorance or naivety didn’t prevent others in the town being suspicious. My mother challenged this priest on account of the rumours, but who else could she turn to? Turn a blind eye, was the attitude of many in the church. The religious nonsense of this priest and his nomenclature, “Father”, protected him. His outburst in a sermon that “we were all drains and came to mass for divine disinfectant” went unchallenged, projecting his unresolved guilt on to young minds. It just seems laughable today; at the time it was dangerous. The bishop of Newcastle made it plain: “there was a “generation of bishops in the C of E” who were “very much in the mould of it being an old boys’ club”. My priest died unchallenged, unrepentant, full of pride in his religious gobbledegook, his shield from shame at invading young vulnerable lives, their minds and bodies. Name and address supplied • About 15 years ago, I attended a safeguarding symposium where the emphasis was on sharing best practice when working with vulnerable children and adults, and how best to have effective safeguarding policies and structures within organisations. Several Church of England parish groups were present. During the day, members of these groups talked about the church “reaching out” to support other organisations. At the plenary meeting I referenced these comments, and wondered to the audience if the C of E ever allowed other organisations to “reach in” to see how it operated and offer appropriate feedback. This was met with blank incomprehension by church members, although one approached me afterwards to say I’d given him something to think about. The Church of England has resisted any meaningful examination of how it operates, and is an example that it’s not enough to have policies and procedures – there have to be effective actions. Name and address supplied • Do you have a photograph you’d like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers’ best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.

The Guardian;South Korea launches safety inspection of all airline operations after Jeju Air crash;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/south-korea-emergency-safety-inspection-airline-operations-jeju-air-crash;2024-12-30T15:52:42Z

South Korea has launched an emergency safety inspection of the country’s entire airline operations, and a separate check of all Boeing 737-800s, after 179 people died in a Jeju Air crash involving the aircraft on Sunday. As shocked citizens began a second day of official mourning and flags flew at half-mast, the government said it would carry out the audit of all 101 of the aircraft in domestic operation, with US investigators, possibly including Boeing, joining the inspection. Choi Sang-mok, who was appointed South Korea’s president two days before the disaster, said an exhaustive inspection was essential to overhaul the aviation safety system and “move toward a safer Republic of Korea”. He was speaking as reports emerged that another passenger jet belonging to Jeju Air was forced to return to Gimpo airport in Seoul shortly after taking off on Monday, after an unspecified problem with its landing gear. Landing gear malfunction is among the issues being targeted by the investigation into Sunday’s crash, in which the plane skidded along the runway in what the aviation industry describes as a “belly landing”. Officials said the crash could have also been caused by a bird strike and weather conditions – or a combination of those and other factors – but the exact cause was not yet known. It was the worst civil aviation disaster on South Korean soil. With identification of the dead proceeding slowly, Park Han-shin, a representative of the bereaved families, said they were told the bodies were so “badly damaged” that officials needed time before returning them to their families. “I demand that the government mobilise more personnel to return our brothers and family members as intact as possible more swiftly,” he said. Among questions that have emerged in the immediate aftermath of the accident is whether an almost 2-metre-high structure, a concrete wall located unusually close to the end of the runway, which the jet hit before exploding, exacerbated the catastrophe. The wall, used to support a “localiser” antenna that provides landing alignment information to aircraft, is understood to be much taller than those used at other South Korean airports. Transport ministry officials said on Monday they would look into whether the Muan airport’s localiser should have been made with lighter materials that would have broken up more easily. Two flight attendants – a man and a woman – were rescued from the tail of the aircraft, which broke apart on impact with the wall. They were being treated at a hospital in Seoul after being transferred from hospitals near the airport, the Yonhap news agency said. The male survivor was being treated for fractures to his ribs, shoulder blade and upper spine, said Ju Woong, the director of the Ewha Womans University Seoul Hospital. Ju said the man, whose name has not been released, told doctors he “woke up to find [himself] rescued”. Details of the female survivor were not immediately available. The Boeing 737-800 plane operated by the South Korean budget airline Jeju Air aborted its first landing attempt and later smashed down on the runway at speed after issuing a distress call. Video of the crash indicated that the pilots did not deploy flaps or slats on the wings to slow the aircraft, suggesting a possible hydraulic failure, and did not manage to manually lower the landing gear, possibly as they did not have time. The plane’s flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder have been retrieved from the wreckage, but media reports said it could take longer than usual to determine the cause as the flight data recorder had been damaged in the crash. Establishing the cause of a major air disaster typically takes months, and damage to the recorder was expected to cause further delays, Yonhap said, citing a land ministry official. Choi declared a seven-day mourning period starting from Sunday, as he attempted to coordinate a response to a major disaster only days after he replaced his impeached predecessor, Han Duck-soo. Han, too, had been made interim leader after the impeachment in mid-December of Yoon Suk Yeol over his disastrous, and short-lived, declaration of martial law earlier in the month. The animosity of the past month appeared to have been put to one side as senior politicians from the ruling and opposition parties attempted to console a country in mourning. While the accident investigation will focus on the model of aircraft, there will inevitably be questions for the flight’s operator, Jeju Air. The low-cost carrier said that about 68,000 flight reservations – over 33,000 for domestic flights and 34,000 for international routes – had been cancelled, the majority after the crash took place. The airline said it would do all it could to support the families of the victims, including with financial aid. Its chief executive, Kim E-bae, told a televised news conference he took “full responsibility” for the crash, irrespective of the cause, and bowed deeply in apology with other senior company officials. He said the company had not identified any mechanical problems with the aircraft after regular checkups, and that he would wait for the results of government investigations. Local travel agencies also reported a rise in cancellations of tour packages after the crash. “We had about 40 inquiries regarding travel cancellations on Sunday alone,” one travel agent told Yonhap. “We saw about double the usual amount of cancellations and a 50% decrease in bookings.”

The Guardian;What we know about Boeing 737-800 model that crashed in South Korea;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/what-we-know-about-boeing-737-800-model-that-crashed-in-south-korea-jeju-air;2024-12-30T15:24:10Z

Jeju Air’s flight 7C2216 crashed on Sunday, killing 179 of the 181 people onboard. What model was the plane that crashed? The 737-800 is one of the “next generation” models of Boeing’s bestselling 737 series, which was first launched in 1993. The 800 variant first flew in 1997, and was the biggest seller of that generation. It has a maximum capacity of 189 passengers. The 800 and its next-generation siblings were replaced by the 737-Max, which was closely related but had bigger engines and other upgrades. Design flaws in the Max were at fault in two crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. Those crashes began the biggest crisis in Boeing’s history, with the entire 737-Max fleet grounded until the design faults were rectified. How many are in use? The 737-800 will be familiar to many flyers. About 15% of the global passenger aircraft fleet (4,400 planes) are Boeing 737-800s, according to data from the aviation analytics firm Cirium. More than 180 airlines around the world use the 737-800 as the workhorse of their fleets, according to theSeatMaps website. They include the big three US carriers – American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta – Europe’s largest airline, Ryanair, and many others including Qantas, Singapore Airlines and the Netherlands’ KLM, according to SeatMaps. What happened on the flight? Flight 7C2216 was filled with holidaymakers travelling from Bangkok to Muan in South Korea. It may be some weeks before investigators make public any findings of what caused the crash. Air traffic controllers had issued a bird strike warning as the plane approached the runway, but some experts have questioned whether that could have caused the crash. The aircraft stopped broadcasting automated tracking data shortly before it landed without its landing gear extended. The plane then slid along the runway before colliding with an antenna array and bursting into flames. Officials confirmed 179 deaths, with two injured crew members found in the tail section. The victims were aged from three to 78. What has Jeju Air said? The Korean airline’s chief executive, Kim E-bae, has said he wanted “to bow my head and apologise”, according to a statement on the company’s website. He expressed his condolences to the families of those killed and said Jeju Air would do whatever it could to support them. In the statement, Kim said it was “difficult to determine the cause of the accident”, adding: “Regardless of the cause of the accident, I feel responsible as the CEO.” The company has removed booking tools from its website homepage. What has Boeing said? A company spokesperson said: “We are in contact with Jeju Air regarding flight 2216 and stand ready to support them. We extend our deepest condolences to the families who lost loved ones, and our thoughts remain with the passengers and crew.” The manufacturer said it was legally obliged to refer all queries about the accident to South Korea’s Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board (ARAIB). What will happen now? The crash happened while South Korea was in political turmoil following the impeachment of Yoon Suk Yeol, the president, after he decreed and then cancelled martial law. However, the acting president, Choi Sang-mok, has ordered an emergency safety inspection of the country’s entire airline operations, as well as a seven-day period of national mourning. South Korea’s transport ministry has ordered an inspection of every Boeing 737-800 operating in the country. In the meantime, Jeju Air has disclosed it has experienced a surge in booking cancellations, saying about 68,000 flight reservations had been cancelled, according to the Yonhap news agency.

The Guardian;New Taiwanese boardgame offers chance to battle Chinese invasion;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/new-taiwanese-boardgame-offers-chance-to-battle-chinese-invasion;2024-12-30T14:38:49Z

As families in Taiwan prepare to gather for lunar new year celebrations in January, a game that will be released that month promises to offer some war-themed fun over the festive period. The board game 2045, developed by the Taiwanese company Mizo Games, invites players to participate in an imaginary Chinese invasion 20 years in the future. Players are given roles that include Taiwanese army officers, Chinese sleeper agents and volunteer citizen fighters. “We can’t predict the future, but if a conflict is unavoidable I hope this game gives people a chance to experience war on the tabletop before it reaches us,” KJ Chang, the founder of Mizo Games, told the Wall Street Journal. The game is being released at a time when China has increased its military pressure around the self-governing island. Taiwan has never been ruled by the People’s Republic of China but Beijing regards it as part of its territory and has promised to “unify” it with China, using force if necessary. Observers do not know when, if ever, China will launch a military operation against Taiwan. But some analysts have pointed to the years around 2050 as a possible risk period. Xi Jinping, China’s leader and military commander-in-chief, has pledged to build a “world-class army” by the middle of the century, and 2049, the centenary of the People’s Republic of China, is the date by which Beijing wants to achieve “national rejuvenation”. Mizo Games launched a crowdfunding campaign for their new product in August. Within months, it had raised NTD$4.1m (£99,468), surpassing its original target by more than 4,000%. 2045 is the latest in a series of entertainment products in Taiwan that focus on the threat of an attempted Chinese annexation. This year also saw the release of Zero Day, a Taiwanese government-funded television series that depicts a Chinese invasion. It also received support from Robert Tsao, a Taiwanese tech billionaire and supporter of Taiwan’s civil defence efforts. As well as receiving the first copies of the game, VIP backers of the crowdfunding campaign will receive extra Taiwan-themed products. They include a leather passport cover embossed with the words: “Let my fly as a Taiwanese”, a nod to Taiwan’s lack of international recognition. Most countries in the world only have formal diplomatic relations with China. Beijing insists that countries should not recognise Taiwan as a separate country from China and puts pressure on governments to cut ties with Taipei.

The Guardian;Sixty-mile drag mark found near damaged Baltic Sea cable, says Finland;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/finnish-investigators-into-suspected-sabotage-find-100km-trail-on-baltic-sea-bed;2024-12-30T14:34:22Z

Finnish investigators say they have found a seabed trail stretching almost 100km (about 60 miles) around the site of an underwater electricity cable that was damaged on Christmas Day in a suspected act of Russian sabotage. The ship under suspicion of causing the damage, a vessel called the Eagle S flying the flag of the Cook Islands, is believed to be part of Russia’s so-called shadow fleet, used for transporting Russian oil products subject to embargos after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. “Our current understanding is that the drag mark in question is that of the anchor of the Eagle S,” the police chief investigator, Sami Paila, said on Sunday. “We have been able to clarify this matter through underwater research,” he told the Finnish national broadcaster Yle. The apparent act of sabotage damaged the Estlink 2 electricity cable connecting Finland and Estonia. The cable will take months to repair, which could lead to increased electricity prices in Estonia over the winter. It is the latest in a series of suspicious incidents involving damage to underwater power and communications cables. Paila said the “question of intent is a completely essential issue” and would be clarified during the investigation. However, a senior Estonian official said there was little doubt that the two countries were dealing with a deliberate attack. “If you’re dragging an anchor, it can’t be that you don’t notice it, because the ship would go off course. It’s clearly not possible,” the official told the Guardian. The Estonian official admitted it was “not easy to prove” who was behind the attack, though suspicion naturally falls on Russia, which has been conducting a campaign of sabotage against Nato countries over the past two years. The crew of the Eagle S was made up of Georgian and Indian nationals, Finnish media reported, but the ship had recently docked in Russia and was believed to be carrying Russian oil products. The Estonian official said that when the alarm came on Christmas Day, Finland and Estonia sent ships to the area but the Estonian vessel could not cope with the stormy seas, so the Finns took the lead. “It took a couple of hours to clarify exactly which ship was to blame, and during that time [the Eagle S] cut two communication lines as well,” said the official. However, the ship was stopped before there was any damage to Estlink 1, a second electricity cable linking Finland and Estonia. Tallinn has launched a naval and special forces operation to protect the remaining pipeline. The apparent sabotage comes as Estonia plans to decouple its power grid from the old Soviet network this coming spring and unite with a central European network instead. The official said these plans would go ahead but the damage to the cable would probably prove costly, citing incurred losses when the same cable was put out of action a year ago in an act not linked to sabotage. “It was a 10% increase in cost during the months it took to repair. Altogether, Estonians paid €90m more due to that. So it’s not peanuts,” the official said. Last month two fibre-optic cables were damaged in waters between Sweden and Denmark in an apparent act of sabotage by a Chinese ship. Repeated incidents in the Baltic Sea led the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, to announce on Friday that the alliance would increase its military presence in the sea. The Estonian official said Tallinn’s own military operation would focus on monitoring the heavy traffic in the Baltic and providing a speedy response to threats. “We try to identify suspicious ships, or if we see that the anchor is in the water we will do everything to stop this ship before it reaches the cable,” the official said.

The Guardian;Berlin accuses Elon Musk of trying to influence German election;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/german-official-elon-musk-trying-to-influence-election-afd;2024-12-30T14:21:23Z

The German government has accused Elon Musk of trying to meddle in the country’s election campaign with repeated endorsements of the far-right party AfD. “It is indeed the case that Elon Musk is trying to influence the federal election,” said the government spokesperson Christiane Hoffmann after Musk’s X posts and an opinion piece published at the weekend backing the anti-Muslim, anti-migration Alternative für Deutschland. She said at a regular media briefing that Musk had the right to free speech, adding: “After all, freedom of opinion also covers the greatest nonsense.” Musk has often weighed in on German politics, even calling the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, a “fool” on his social media platform X last month. However, his more recent open calls for German voters to back the AfD, which federal authorities classify as a suspected extremist party, have sparked outrage and accusations of troubling interference in Europe’s top economy. The South African-born entrepreneur, who has been named by Donald Trump to co-lead a commission aimed at reducing the size of the US federal government, wrote on X earlier this month: “Only the AfD can save Germany.” In the post, he shared a video by a German rightwing influencer, Naomi Seibt, who criticised Friedrich Merz, the conservative frontrunner in the German election, and praised Javier Milei, Argentina’s self-styled “anarcho-capitalist” president. He followed up at the weekend with a guest editorial in the broadsheet Welt am Sonntag arguing that Germany was teetering on the brink of economic and cultural collapse, defending the AfD against accusations of radicalism and praising the party’s approach to the economy, including regulation and tax policy. The editor of the centre-right newspaper’s opinion section, Eva Marie Kogel, posted on X that she had submitted her resignation in protest at the decision to run the article. Politicians from across the political spectrum criticised Musk’s attempts to put his thumb on the scales of German democracy, with the health minister, Karl Lauterbach, of Scholz’s Social Democratic party (SPD) calling his intervention “undignified and highly problematic” and Merz saying it was “intrusive and presumptuous”. Merz told the Funke media group: “I cannot recall in the history of western democracies a comparable case of interference in the election campaign of a friendly country.” Scholz’s centre-left-led coalition collapsed last month, prompting him to call a confidence vote in order to trigger a general election in February, seven months ahead of schedule. His SPD is widely expected to lose to Merz’s CDU/CSU bloc amid voter anger over the cost of living and meagre economic growth. Last week, Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, criticised X explicitly and Musk indirectly in a short speech announcing his formal decision to dissolve parliament and call the election on 23 February. Steinmeier, whose role is largely ceremonial, warned of “outside influence” in the campaign, specifically citing recent “open and blatant” attempts on X to sway the vote. The remarks were widely interpreted as an admonishment of Musk. Members of the AfD have been working for months to make inroads with the Trump camp. Alice Weidel, the party’s co-leader, was one of the first politicians abroad to welcome Trump’s election victory. A small group of AfD activists posed for pictures with Trump at his private club Mar-a-Lago on US election day last month, chanting “Fight! Fight! Fight!” in English and German for the cameras. In Musk’s endorsement in Die Welt, he cited Weidel’s “same-sex partner from Sri Lanka” as evidence that the portrayal of the AfD “as rightwing extremist is clearly false”. “Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please!” he wrote. The AfD is polling second on about 19%, behind the CDU/CSU on 31%. A strong showing for the party could complicate coalition building after the election, requiring the winner to seek up to two partners to build a ruling majority. All mainstream parties have ruled out collaborating with the AfD at state or federal level.

The Guardian;South Korea plane crash: bereaved families demand more support from government – as it happened;https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/dec/30/south-korea-plane-crash-news-jeju-air-flight-2216-airlines-muan-airport-live-updates;2024-12-30T12:59:18Z

South Korea’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, has ordered an emergency safety inspection of the country’s entire airline operations, while authorities plan a separate check of all Boeing 737-800s, after 179 people died in a Jeju Air crash involving the aircraft on Sunday. 141 of the 179 victims have now been identified using DNA analysis or fingerprint collection. Officials are continuing to examine the debris at the scene at Muan international airport in South Korea. Many families are still gathered at the airport, waiting for their loved ones to be officially identified and for the bodies of their relatives to be released. Some families are reportedly frustrated at the lack of regular updates from Jeju Air and are upset about how long the identification process is taking. They are calling for more support from the government. The Jeju Air plane that crash-landed was found to have operated 13 flights in 48 hours prior to the incident, Yonhap news agency reported. Jeju Air passengers have reportedly been cancelling tickets for future flights en masse. Officials said the crash could have been caused by a bird strike and weather conditions – or a combination of those and other factors – but the exact cause is not yet known. Experts say many questions remain, including why the plane appeared to be travelling so fast and why its landing gear did not appear to be down when it skidded down the runway and into a concrete embankment. South Korea has begun seven days of national mourning, with flags flown at half-mast. We are now closing this blog. Thanks for following along. Raphael Rashid, who has been reporting on the Jeju Air crash from Seoul, has written a piece about how the tragedy unfolded yesterday and how bereaved families are struggling to come to terms with the the deadliest air accident ever in South Korea. Here is an extract from his story, which you can read in full here. As evening fell, a man in his 60s kept returning to the family support desk, his son by his side. His wife had been travelling with her sisters-in-law on the flight. While the sisters-in-law’s bodies had been identified, his wife’s name was still not on the list. Again and again, they checked the registry of names, his son repeatedly collapsing in tears. The following morning, after spending the night in makeshift tents at the airport lounge, relatives of passengers not yet identified waited for news. A middle-aged man and woman kept their gaze fixed through the fence, where remnants of the plane – seats, gates and twisted metal parts – were still scattered across the field. Police superintendent general Na Won-o, who is leading the investigation into the plane crash, has said the DNA sampling of victims will not be immediate. He said: The National Forensic Service (NFS) is focusing its full efforts on this. But DNA analysis is not as immediate as taking a fingerprint and getting an instant result. Samples need to be collected, cultured, and then analysed to produce results. This means that each step requires physical time to complete. Many families are still gathered at Muan airport, waiting for their loved ones to be officially identified and for the bodies of their relatives to be released. Some families are reportedly frustrated at the lack of regular updates from Jeju Air and are upset about how long the identification process is taking. Authorities have so far identified 141 bodies. To help identify the bodies of victims officials have been collecting saliva samples from relatives at the airport, while others have been identified by their fingerprints. Shares of Jeju Air hit their lowest level on record on Monday, trading as much as 15.7% lower, while Boeing’s US-listed shares were down 4.3% in pre-market trading, Reuters reports. (The Boeing 737-800, which was the aircraft involved in the deadly crash, was operated by the discount airline Jeju Air and manufactured by Boeing). Park Han Shin, whose brother died in the crash, is representing the families of the other 178 who were killed in the accident – and is demanding more support from the government. Speaking to the media, he said: We have to demand the government bring in more experts. We want them to recover our families, 100% of them. Or at least 80%, as soon as possible. The only way bereaved families will feel Jeju Air has done everything it can is if they help bereaved families financially. Why? A head of a family has passed away, parents of a family passed away. There are only children left, and how can they live on their own? This is something neither the province officials, nor the government can help with. Jeju Air has said it would do all it could to support the families of the victims, including with financial aid, as my colleague Justin McCurry notes in this story. Its chief executive, Kim E-bae, told a televised news conference he took “full responsibility” for the crash, irrespective of the cause, and bowed deeply in apology with other senior company officials. He said the company had not identified any mechanical problems with the aircraft following regular checkups and that he would wait for the results of government investigations. Jeju Air said that about 68,000 flight reservations (over 33,000 for domestic flights and 34,000 for international routes) have been cancelled, as of 13:00 local time (04:00 GMT), with the majority of the cancellations occurring after 9am yesterday morning when flight 7C2216 crashed at Muan international airport, killing all but two of the 181 people onboard. This disclosure has been reported by Yonhap news agency, which also said that local travel agencies reported a spike in cancellations of tour packages in the wake of the worst aviation accident on South Korean soil. “We had about 40 inquiries regarding travel cancellations on Sunday alone,” one travel agent told Yonhap news agency. “We saw about double the usual amount of cancellations and a 50% decrease in bookings.” The Jeju Air plane that crash-landed at Muan international airport and skidded into a barrier early on Sunday, killing 179 people, was found to have operated 13 flights in 48 hours prior to the incident, Yonhap News Agency reports, citing industry sources. Here is an extract from the media report: The Boeing B737-800, which is believed to have experienced a landing gear malfunction during its descent at Muan International Airport on Sunday, was found to have traveled between Muan, Jeju Island and Incheon, west of Seoul, in the prior 48-hour time window. It was also found to have traveled to international destinations, including Beijing, Bangkok, Kota Kinabalu, Nagasaki and Taipei. The aircraft served as a charter flight for group tours mostly organized by a Gwangju-based travel agency, which offered a 5-day package trip to Bangkok for the Christmas season. Charter flights are specially scheduled based on demand and are typically filled exclusively with passengers recruited by travel agencies. Industry observers have raised concerns about whether Jeju Air may have overextended itself by scheduling excessive charter flights during the year-end peak season. Air safety experts have questioned why the plane had not been able to lower its undercarriage after being hit by an apparent bird strike despite having multiple redundancy systems onboard. Video of the crash indicated that the pilots did not deploy flaps or slats to slow the aircraft, suggesting a possible hydraulic failure, and did not manually lower the landing gear, suggesting they did not have time, said John Cox, a retired airline pilot and CEO of Safety Operating Systems in St. Petersburg, Florida. Despite that, the jetliner was under control and traveling in a straight line, and damage and injuries likely would have been minimised if not for the barrier being so close to the runway, Cox said. The following are the final minutes of Flight 7C2216 as provided by South Korea’s transport ministry and fire authorities. All times are Korea Standard Time (GMT+9). 8:54 am. Muan airport air traffic control authorises the aircraft to land on runway 01, which is orientated at 10 degrees east of north. 8:57 am. Air traffic control gives “caution - bird activity” advisory. 8:59 am. Flight 7C2216 pilot reports bird strike, declares emergency “Mayday Mayday Mayday” and “Bird strike, bird strike, go-around.” 9:00 am. Flight 7C2216 initiates a go-around and requests authorisation to land on runway 19, which is by approach from the opposite end of the airport’s single runway. 9:01 am. Air traffic control authorises landing on runway 19. 9:02 am. Flight 7C2216 makes contact with runway at about 1,200m (1,312 yard) point of the 2,800m (3,062 yard) runway. 9:02:34 am. Air traffic control alerts “crash bell” at airport fire rescue unit. 9:02:55 am. Airport fire rescue unit completes deploying fire rescue equipment. 9:03 am. Flight 7C2216 crashes into embankment after over-shooting the runway. 9:10 am. The transport ministry receives an accident report from airport authorities. 9:23 am. One male rescued and transported to a temporary medical facility. 9:38 am. Muan airport is closed. 9:50 am. Rescue completed of a second person from inside tail section of the plane. South Korea’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, has been at a terminal in the Muan international airport shaking hands and consoling grieving families, the BBC is reporting The plane crash – South Korea’s worst domestic civil aviation disaster - is the first major test for Choi, who assumed office on Friday after the country’s parliament voted to impeach the previous acting president, Han Duck-soo. As we mentioned in a previous post, he has ordered an emergency safety inspection of the country’s entire airline operation system “to prevent recurrence of aircraft accidents”. South Korea’s acting president has ordered an emergency safety inspection of the country’s entire airline operations, while authorities plan a separate check of all Boeing 737-800s, after 179 people died in a Jeju Air crash involving the aircraft on Sunday. As shocked citizens began a second day of official mourning and flags flew at half-mast, the government said it would carry out the audit of all 101 of the aircraft in domestic operation, with US investigators, possibly including Boeing, joining the probe. Choi Sang-mok, who was appointed president two days before the disaster, said an exhaustive inspection was essential to overhaul the aviation safety system and “move toward a safer Republic of Korea”. He was speaking as reports emerged that a passenger jet belonging to Jeju Air was forced to return to Gimpo airport in Seoul soon after taking off on Monday, following an unspecified problem with its landing gear. Landing gear malfunction is among the issues being targeted by the investigation into Sunday’s crash, which occurred after the plane skidded along the runway in what the aviation industry describes as a “belly landing”. Officials have confirmed that 179 of the 181 passengers and crew died when the Jeju Air plane crashed into a wall at Muan international airport shortly after attempting to land without its landing gear deployed. It is the country’s worst domestic civil aviation disaster. South Korea’s acting president Choi Sang-mok has ordered an emergency safety inspection of the country’s entire airline operation system, while Seoul was also reviewing plans to conduct a “special inspection” of all Boeing 737-800s in operation in the country, following Sunday’s crash, the country’s worst domestic civil aviation disaster. South Korea has begun seven days of national mourning, with flags flown at half-mast and acting President Choi flying to the crash site in southwestern Muan for a memorial. 141 of the 179 victims have now been identified using DNA analysis or fingerprint collection. Victims’ families camped out at the airport overnight in special tents set up in the airport lounge. Teams of investigators, including from the US and South Korea, are now trying to establish what caused Sunday’s disaster. Officials initially cited a bird strike as a likely cause of the crash, though questions remain over exactly what happened. Both black boxes – the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder – have been found. Another Jeju Airlines flight using a B737-800 aircraft experienced a malfunction linked to the landing gear and was forced to return to Seoul’s Gimpo airport shortly after takeoff, Yonhap News Agency reported. A Jeju Air representative said they were “aware of the return incident” and “looking into the cause.” Experts who have reviewed footage of the disaster – showing the plane making an emergency landing but then hitting a wall – have also raised questions over the airport’s design, criticising a decision to build a wall, a solid structure, at the end of the airfield. Messages of condolence continued to flow from across the world. US President Joe Biden said the United States was ready to offer “any necessary assistance”, while Chinese president Xi Jinping, and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen expressed sympathy. Pope Francis, told worshippers at the Vatican that he joined “in prayer for the survivors and the dead”. South Korea’s ministry of land has said 141 of the 179 victims have now been identified using DNA analysis or fingerprint collection. South Korea has started seven days of national mourning, with acting president Choi Sang-mok flying to the crash site in southwestern Muan for a memorial. Flags flew at half-mast on Monday and memorial altars are to be set up nationwide. The cause of Sunday’s crash is still unclear. Officials have pointed to a bird strike as a likely reason for the tragedy. A warning of a bird strike was issued by the control tower minutes before the crash. However, experts who have reviewed footage of the disaster – showing the plane making an emergency landing but then hitting a wall – have questioned whether airport construction could have played a part. AFP has spoken to Kim Kwang-il, Professor of Aeronautical Science at Silla University and a former pilot, who said there shouldn’t have “a solid structure” in that area at all. “Normally, at the end of a runway, there’s no such solid obstruction - it’s against international aviation safety standards,” he said. “The structure in question caused the aircraft to crash and catch fire. “Outside the airport, there are usually just fences, which are soft and wouldn’t cause significant damage. The plane could have skidded further and stopped naturally. The unnecessary structure is highly regrettable.” Reuters has spoken to Jeon Je-young, 71, whose daughter Mi-sook was among the 179 people killed in Sunday’s crash. He keeps playing the video of the disaster, unable to believe what has happened, he says. “When I saw the accident video, the plane seemed out of control,” said Jeon. “The pilots probably had no choice but to do it. My daughter, who is only in her mid-40s, ended up like this. This is unbelievable.” Mi-sook was a warm-hearted child, he said. She brought some food and next year’s calendar to his house on 21 December, his last brief moment with her. Authorities called out the names of some of those killed in the crash on Sunday, triggering an explosion of grief and rage among the passengers’ families gathered in the airport’s arrival area. They screamed, wept and collapsed on the floor of the terminal where their loved ones had been due to return home. Crime scene investigators have collected saliva swaps from families to run DNA tests to identify the victims. Jeon’s daughter had been on her way home after travelling with friends to Bangkok for the Christmas holiday. She leaves behind a devastated family, including a husband and teenage daughter. “The water near the airport is not deep. Here are softer fields than this cement runway. Why couldn’t the pilot land there instead?” Jeon said. Mi-sook was identified by her fingerprints, and her family is looking for a funeral home near her town of Gwangju to transport her body there. “She was almost home, so [she saw] no need to call the family [to leave any final message]. She thought she was coming home,” Jeon said. South Korea is reviewing plans to conduct a “special inspection” of all Boeing 737-800s in operation in the country, following Sunday’s crash, AFP has reported. “101 B737-800 series aircraft are currently in operation in South Korea. Consequently, we are reviewing plans to conduct a special inspection on B737-800 aircraft,” said Joo Jong-wan, head of the aviation policy bureau at the South Korean transport ministry. Inspections will last until 3 January, he added. The Jeju Air jet pilot told air traffic control the aircraft had suffered a bird strike and declared mayday shortly before the plane crashed on Sunday, a transport ministry official said on Monday in a media briefing, according to Reuters. More details to follow. South Korea’s aviation safety record As AFP reports, South Korea’s aviation industry has a solid safety record and the crash was the first fatal accident for Jeju Air. On August 12, 2007, strong winds caused a Jeju Air-operated Bombardier Q400 carrying 74 passengers to veer off the runway at another southern airport, Busan-Gimhae. A dozen people were injured. Before Sunday, the deadliest plane crash on South Korean soil took place on April 15, 2002, when an Air China Boeing 767 traveling from Beijing hit a hill near Busan-Gimhae, resulting in 129 deaths. The most recent fatal crash of a South Korean airline happened in San Francisco, California on July 6, 2013. Asiana Airlines’ Boeing 777 aircraft missed its landing, leaving three dead and 182 hurt. The deadliest disaster to hit a South Korean airline goes back to September 1, 1983, when a Soviet fighter jet shot down a Boeing 747, which Moscow claimed was mistaken for a spy plane. All 23 crew and 246 passengers aboard the Korean Air flight - a New York-to-Seoul flight via Anchorage, Alaska - were killed. I’ll hand the blog over to Rebecca Ratcliffe, who will continue taking you through our rolling coverage. Take care. Choi orders transport ministry to conduct emergency safety inspection of country’s entire airline system Circling back to earlier remarks from acting president Choi Sang-mok: He has also ordered the transport ministry to conduct an emergency safety inspection of the country’s entire airline operation system, Yonhap News Agency reports. Recovery teams return to site of the crash: photos Firefighters and recovery teams returned to the site of the crash earlier this morning. Here are some photos that have been filtering through from wire agencies: As Yonhap News Agency reports, the remains of 140 of the 179 people killed in the Jeju Air plane crash have tentatively been identified, according to the land ministry. During a briefing for victims’ families at Muan International Airport this morning, the ministry said 165 bodies have been moved to a temporary morgue. An official said: Once we are ready to transfer the bodies following autopsies by investigation agencies, we will contact the families. The victims’ belongings are being gathered from the runway where the plane belly-landed and crashed into a barrier yesterday, killing 179 of the 181 people onboard. The site will be preserved pending authorities’ investigation into the cause of the accident. South Korean government declares seven-day national mourning period Continuing from our last post, via Yonhap: The South Korean government has declared a seven-day national mourning period until midnight Saturday, amid the crash. Memorial altars will be established at the crash site and in 17 cities and provinces, including Seoul and the southwestern city of Gwangju. Acting president Choi Sang-mok said: We hope the public will visit the joint memorial altars to mourn the victims and offer their condolences to the bereaved families. Choi is leading the centralized disaster control team instead of the prime minister, who would typically be in charge based on a manual prepared after the 2014 sinking of the Sewol ferry, which killed 304 people. Acting president Choi expresses grief over deadly plane crash Acting South Korean president Choi Sang-mok has said he is “heartbroken” by the tragic plane crash, acknowledging the additional strain it places on a public already grappling with economic challenges. As Yonhap News Agency reports, Choi made the remarks while presiding over a disaster control meeting in Seoul. During the meeting he said: To the honorable citizens of our nation, as an acting president, my heart aches as we face this unforeseen tragedy amid recent economic hardships. During the meeting Choi, who also serves as deputy prime minister for economic affairs and finance minister, reaffirmed the government’s commitment to deploying all available resources to support the bereaved families and injured survivors. He further pledged to thoroughly investigate the cause of the accident and promptly disclose the findings to the bereaved families and the public with full transparency. We will transparently disclose the progress of the investigation into the accident, even before the final results are released, and keep the bereaved families informed. As the Yonhap News Agency reports, a Jeju Air flight that took off in South Korea today has returned to the airport of departure due to the same landing gear issue found in the deadly crash yesterday, according to industry sources. Jeju Air Flight 7C101, which departed from Gimpo International Airport for Jeju at 6.37am local time, detected an issue with its landing gear shortly after takeoff. The airline informed the 161 passengers about the mechanical defect caused by the landing gear issue and subsequently returned the flight to Gimpo at 7.25am. Jeju Air plans to resume operations after switching to a replacement aircraft. Landing gear is an essential device directly related to flight safety, ensuring safe takeoffs and landings while mitigating impact during emergency landings. In Sunday’s Jeju Air crash that claimed 179 lives in the southwestern county of Muan, it is believed that all three landing gears had failed to operate properly. The aircraft involved in the return flight was a Boeing B737-800, the same model as the one involved in the disaster the previous day. Jeju Air operates 39 of this model out of its fleet of 41 aircraft. US transportation authorities to assist South Korea’s probe into Jeju Air crash Yonhap News Agency reports that transportation safety authorities in the United States will help with a probe into the cause of the deadly Jeju Air plane crash. In an email statement sent to Yonhap, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it has formed a team with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to support South Korean authorities with the investigation. Donnell Evans, a communications official at the FAA, said: The NTSB is leading a team of U.S. investigators, that includes the FAA and Boeing, to assist the Republic of Korea’s Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board (ARAIB) with their investigation into the Dec. 29 Jeju Air crash. An official at South Korea’s ARAIB, operated under the country’s transport ministry, said earlier the flight data recorder recovered from the aircraft has been damaged. If we have difficulty decoding it here, then we may have to send it to the NTSB. They have cases from all over the world to analyze, so it could take quite a bit of time. More condolences from world leaders Continuing from our previous post, via AFP: German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the crash is “yet another blow to the nation’s heart” after “a difficult period” – alluding to weeks of political turmoil in Seoul. This is an incredible loss and pain” for the friends and families of those killed. Tehran expressed its “condolences and sympathy to the government and people of the Republic of Korea and Thailand”, the departure point of the plane which had two Thai nationals on board. Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei addressed “the families of the victims, and wished a speedy recovery for the injured of this tragic incident”. Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic wrote on X that “as we watch with disbelief the horrific scenes from the crash site, our thoughts are with the families of those who lost their lives,” adding that he was “deeply shaken”. Spain’s foreign ministry said that Madrid was “profoundly shocked by the terrible accident”, sending condolences and “all our solidarity” to those affected. And Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a post on X that “we are deeply saddened by the tragic plane crash that occurred at Muan International Airport in our friend, the Republic of Korea.” Global condolences flow following deadly air disaster Condolences are flowing from across the world following South Korea’s deadliest plane crash. As AFP reports, world leaders have expressed their sympathy as relatives of those on board gathered at the airport in grief. Chinese president Xi Jinping said he was “shocked” to learn of the crash, in a message to South Korea’s acting president Choi Sang-mok. He was quoted by China’s state broadcaster CCTV saying: I express our deep condolences to the victims, sincere sympathy for the victims’ families, and wish those injured a speedy recovery. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said she was “heartbroken to see images of the plane crash in Muan”. As your partner, Europe stands with you in this time of grief. Pope Francis, who visited South Korea a decade ago, told worshippers at the Vatican that he joins “in prayer for the survivors and the dead”. My thoughts are with the many families in South Korea who are mourning today following the dramatic plane crash. Hello and welcome to our coverage of the aftermath of the Jeju Air plane crash in South Korea. My name is Emily Wind, and I’ll be taking you through our rolling updates for the next few hours. The country is reeling from the loss of 179 people after the plane crash-landed and burst into flames on Sunday morning. A team of US investigators will join local authorities to look at possible causes of the crash. The Boeing 737-800 was carrying 181 people from Thailand to South Korea when it crashed on arrival Sunday, killing everyone aboard except two flight attendants pulled from the twisted wreckage. It is the worst aviation disaster on South Korean soil. Officials have cited a bird strike as a likely cause of the crash, which flung passengers from the plane and left it “almost completely destroyed”, according to fire officials. But while families of the dead start to mourn, questions remain over exactly what happened. Both black boxes – the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder – have been found. Stay with us as we cover the day’s events.

The Guardian;UK teenager begins Dubai jail term for relationship with 17-year-old girl;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/uk-teenager-marcus-fakana-begins-dubai-jail-term-for-relationship-with-17-year-old-girl;2024-12-30T11:11:21Z

A British teenager has handed himself in to the authorities in Dubai to begin a one-year prison sentence for having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl, a campaign group has said. Marcus Fakana, 18, was on holiday with his family in the United Arab Emirates when he met the girl, who is also from London and turned 18 the following month. He was arrested at his hotel and charged after the girl’s mother found their chats and pictures after the family’s return to London and called the Dubai police. Radha Stirling, the head of campaign group Detained in Dubai, said Fakana had handed himself in to authorities and intended to serve his year-long sentence in Dubai’s al-Awir prison. She wrote on X that the teenager was still hoping for a pardon from Dubai’s ruler, Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, and help from the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy – the family’s MP in Tottenham – and the British embassy. She said: “I worry about the impact of Dubai prison on an 18-year-old’s life. It wasn’t easy to find the words to say to him as he surrendered his freedom.” When asked previously about the case, Lammy said Fakana would have “all the support available” from UK officials but that people should “follow the rules” of other countries. Stirling said previously that the sentence was an “utter disgrace” and “an embarrassment to Britain”, and claimed “the UK has prioritised trade deals over people’s lives”. Stirling shared a message from Fakana that said: “Thank you to everyone who has supported me throughout my fight. It’s been a long fight, but nothing is hard with my Lord and saviour Jesus Christ guiding me. “I’m grateful for all the people who have helped by donating to me and my family of faith for supporting me.” Fakana said previously the pair kept their “holiday romance” secret from the girl’s family “because they were strict” and had hoped to continue seeing each other back in the UK. Dubai has strict laws and enforcement on drugs, alcohol and sex, for which the age of consent is 18. If an adult has a sexual relationship with a person under 18 they can be prosecuted for having a sexual relationship with a minor. In a previous statement, prosecutors said: “Under UAE law, the girl is legally classified as a minor, and in accordance with procedures recognised internationally, her mother – being the legal guardian – filed the complaint. “Dubai’s legal system is committed to protecting the rights of all individuals and ensuring impartial judicial proceedings.”

The Guardian;Dominique Pelicot will not appeal against conviction for drugging and raping ex-wife;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/dominique-pelicot-will-not-appeal-against-conviction-for-drugging-and-raping-ex-wife;2024-12-30T10:44:00Z

Dominique Pelicot will not appeal against his conviction for drugging and raping his wife and inviting strangers to rape her, his lawyer has said. Béatrice Zavarro said the former electrician, 72, who was jailed for the maximum 20 years this month, wished to spare his now ex-wife, Gisèle Pelicot, a new ordeal but admitted there was also the risk a new trial in front of a public jury could mean a longer prison sentence. Pelicot and the 50 others who were all found guilty of rape or sexual assault after a three-and-a-half-month trial have until midnight on Monday to lodge an appeal. A statement from public prosecutor confirmed that 17 people had so far appealed against their convictions, adding that a new trial would be held in Nîmes towards the end of next year. Gisèle Pelicot, 72, a retired logistics manager, believes she may have been raped more than 200 times by her husband and other men between 2011 and 2020, when Dominique Pelicot was finally caught after filming up the skirts of female shoppers in a supermarket near the couple’s home in the Provençal town of Mazan. Detectives subsequently found tens of thousands of videos of the abuse on his phone and a hard drive. On Monday, Zavarro said Dominique Pelicot had decided not to appeal against his conviction because to do so would “force Gisèle into a new ordeal and new confrontations, which [he] rejects”. Appealing against the guilty judgment, when Pelicot admitted the charges, would involve “running an unnecessary risk”, she added, as the accusations could be made more serious in the appeal court, where the case would be held in front of a public jury, potentially leading to a longer prison term. “It is time to put an end to this judicially,” Zavarro said on Monday. The marathon rape trial in Avignon was heard by a panel of five professional magistrates. The appeal court, which sits in the southern city of Nîmes, will require a new full trial within the next year. Gisèle Pelicot is not required to attend the appeal hearing but her lawyer, Stéphane Babonneau, indicated she was ready to do so. “She has told us she will be there. Maybe not every day but she says she will go,” he said. She became an international feminist figurehead after insisting the trial be held in open court and the videos of her abuse shown in order that “shame changes sides”. The trial has caused much soul-searcing in France and calls to tighten French rape laws, including introducing the concept of “consent”, which is absent. The trial also threw a spotlight on attitudes towards the rape and sexual abuse of women in France, where 94% of reported rape cases are dropped without any action. “From Gisèle Pelicot’s point of view, there is no sentence that will give her back what she has lost,” Babonneau said. “All Gisèle Pelicot wanted is to have the accused convicted for what they did to her. As for the personal sentences, she respects the decision of the court and finds no solace in them.”

The Guardian;Bird strike unlikely to be sole cause of fatal South Korean plane crash, experts say;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/bird-strike-unlikely-sole-cause-of-fatal-south-korean-plane-crash-experts-say;2024-12-30T06:53:33Z

One day after the fatal airline disaster in South Korea, the answer as to what went wrong with Jeju Air 2216 remains elusive. Even as experts remain puzzled by what caused the crash that killed 179 people, experts say that a bird striking the engine is unlikely to be the sole factor. The air traffic control tower at Muan reportedly issued a bird strike warning shortly before the incident, with a South Korean transport department official telling media the pilot had told controllers the plane had suffered a bird strike before declaring mayday. The early theory was that the bird strike led to the failure of the engine that powered the landing gear, which in turn caused the fatal belly landing. However, Dr Sonya Brown, a senior lecturer in aerospace design at the University of New South Wales, is sceptical. “A bird strike should be a survivable event … It should not lead to what we eventually saw, particularly because in any situation where one engine is non-functioning (as the footage suggests), there’s still plenty of power,” she says, adding that bird strikes are so common that they are factored into the design of modern planes. On a Boeing 737 and any commercial airliner there are layers of redundancy, especially for the landing gear, which is hydraulically operated, she says. “Even if that were to fail, it has redundancy in that it can still extend without the hydraulics system [which is] basically gravity operated, so the landing gear should still be able to extend.” There are also dual redundancies in place for other flight control systems such as the flaps and slats – the latter of which Brown describes as a bit like a spoiler on a car – that mean these tools, which are dropped ahead of landing to increase drag and slow the aircraft down, should have been able to be activated. “They’re running off two independent hydraulics systems, and it’s very unlikely that a bird strike would take out those two independent hydraulic systems. “It does seem like there’s more to this incident,” she says. Prof Doug Drury, of Central Queensland University, agrees the bird strike alone is unlikely the sole cause. “A bird strike on one engine would not cause the complete failure of all the systems, you can fly a 737 on one engine,” says Drury, a veteran pilot who has flown commercial, military and private charter during his career. As investigators begin to examine black box flight data and cockpit voice recordings, it may be some time before there are definitive answers. For his part, Drury is baffled by the speed at which the plane approached the runway. “If you were going to do a belly landing you would slow it down to just stall speed,” he says. “But this thing was scooting down the runway with a lot of energy.” The plane also landed in the opposite direction than the runway usually operates, he says, meaning it may have landed with a tail wind. Planes normally land against such winds to help them slow down. “Why were they going so fast,” he asks. “There are a lot more questions than answers at this point.” Elias Visontay is Guardian Australia’s transport and urban affairs reporter

The Guardian;Monday briefing: Law, order and what the future might hold for Palestine;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/first-edition-wadie-said-gaza-israel;2024-12-30T06:45:28Z

Good morning. Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, and the regional conflicts surrounding it, has continued to be the most significant global story of this year. Fourteen months in, reports of Israeli airstrikes that leave the streets littered with bodies keep coming. According to official estimates from the Gaza health ministry, more than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed since Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel last year. The actual death toll is likely significantly higher. Schools, hospitals, roads, places of worship, homes – nothing has been spared in Israel’s intense bombing of the Gaza Strip. Israel faces serious allegations of war crimes, ranging from collective punishment to genocide. The international criminal court’s unprecedented move to issue arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and former defence minister Yoav Gallant underscores the gravity of these accusations. And the violence has metastasised beyond Gaza’s borders, spilling into Lebanon, the West Bank and Syria. Diplomatic efforts have yielded little respite, with peace appearing an increasingly remote prospect. A senior Israeli minister recently said the country’s military will remain in Gaza for many years, confirming fears that the fateful “day after” will not come any time soon. For today’s newsletter I have interviewed Wadie Said, a professor of law and dean’s faculty fellow at the University of Colorado school of law and son of eminent Palestinian-American academic Edward Said, about the past 14 months in Gaza. In depth: ‘Palestinians are desperate to have a say in their future’ Hi Wadie – when you look back, what are your primary reflections on the past 14 months of this conflict? I would have never imagined that we would still be talking about this. It would not have been something that I could wrap my head around last November. On the one hand, worldwide support for Palestinians and their national rights has never been higher, especially in the so-called west. On the other hand, the violence is not stopping. No one is hiding the statistics – no one is hiding the number of mosques, churches, electricity generators and medical facilities that have been targeted and destroyed. And the Israeli military and government provide the thinnest justification. This does not correspond in any way to a belligerent power’s obligations under international law. But it just doesn’t matter. Has international law been effective? There’s a real concern about genocide being committed and there’s also an obligation that was imposed on the Israelis to stop doing things that could be interpreted as part of a genocidal campaign. The international court of justice issued an opinion back in January about the plausibility of what is happening in Gaza being genocide. But the situation we’ve been in for the past 14 months or so is that [Israel] refuses to be bound by any standards and any accusation or claim backed up by evidence. They just deny it or say that it is an outrage, absurd or meritless. This discussion about the law and its obligations means a lot to people the world over. The vast majority would like to think that we’re all bound by certain standards and those standards protect us. So there’s a dissonance between that and what the people in Gaza specifically, and the West Bank and displaced Palestinians, are experiencing. The utility of the law in situations like this is to insist on some sort of minimal universal standard. It’s easy to get caught up in the idea that there’s no binding enforcement mechanism for the world court but it’s about changing our understanding and popular perception so that at some point a change can happen, because the pressure will become too much. It’s been frustrating that it’s taken so long but people are going to insist on that to the extent that they’re still moved by these horrors, which they seem to be. Has the inability of the court to stop the violence affected the credibility of international law? I remember many times when accountability for powerful actors in the context of international tribunals for war crimes and other similar issues gets thwarted. I could really go on about this, about the number of disappointments. Look at the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who was set free by Jack Straw in 2000. The Israelis don’t recognise any attempts to rein them in or any attempts to hold them accountable – they reject all of them. But, nevertheless, these international institutions on which the whole western-backed international order rests are willing to take the stand. It is quite remarkable, and it provides a record and a basis for people to rally around. It’s not just a question about whether Benjamin Netanyahu or Yoav Gallant are going to be arrested and taken to The Hague. For the first time, we are asking: can Israeli officials visit this country or that country? They can visit the United States, but what happens if their flight is diverted and they have to make an emergency landing in a place that’s a signatory to the ICC [international criminal court]? Who would have thought that this is the type of discussion we would be having? What we’re seeing is a kind of a universal struggle to insist on basic standards. What’s next for Gaza? How do I answer that? Obviously, the first thing that has to happen is the violence has to stop. The Israelis have to stop shooting and I say that very deliberately – it’s the Israelis who are doing the most deadly shooting. Foreign journalists have not been allowed into Gaza. We see Palestinian journalists engaging in the most heroic work, along with their rescue workers and medical staff. We’re witnessing some of the most amazing aspects of humanity on display every day, but we don’t really know what’s going on fully in Gaza, so it’s hard to envision what comes next. Some Israeli officials and some in the west are talking about settling Gaza and annexing the West Bank as if all of these things are inevitable. The whole discussion completely obviates, glosses over and ignores the idea that Palestinians will have a say in their own future. Palestinians are desperate for their rights, desperate to have a say in their future and desperate for their own sense of freedom. That’s not going away despite the unbelievably destructive levels of violence that the Israelis have employed to try to crush that sentiment among Palestinians. I would say the overwhelming number of people who grapple with this issue are very critical of what the Israelis have done, but translating that into tangible change has flummoxed us. Reading this online or on the Guardian app? Over Christmas period the headlines and sport will not appear, so to get the First Edition experience in your inbox every morning, sign up here Jimmy Carter dies aged 100 Jimmy Carter, the 39th and longest-lived American president, has died at the age of 100. “My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and unselfish love,” said Chip Carter, the former president’s son, in a statement. Harold Jackson’s obituary presents a comprehensive portrait of the Georgia Democrat and humanitarian, whose diplomatic endeavours beyond the presidency earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. This picture essay weaves together some of the most significant moments of his remarkable journey: “Carter essentially lived in three centuries,” writes his biographer Jonathan Alter. For deeper insight into his post-White House achievements, John S Gardner’s piece illuminates how Carter transformed the very notion of a post-presidency. “Carter’s passing comes at a hinge moment when division, rancour and uncertainty prevail,” writes David Smith. “Biden, a fellow one-term president felled by inflation, is heading for the door. Trump, a chaos agent promising to wreak new havoc in the US and beyond, returns to power on 20 January”.

The Guardian;Text messages, a mayday and then tragedy: the day flight 7C2216 was lost;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/jeju-air-flight-7c2216-text-messages-mayday;2024-12-30T05:59:00Z

“A bird is stuck in the wing. We can’t land,” one passenger on board the ill-fated Jeju Air flight 7C2216 sent out in a panicked text just before 9am on Sunday morning. “Should I write my final words?” Minutes later, the Boeing 737-800 carrying 181 people veered off the runway and burst into flames, resulting in South Korea’s deadliest aviation disaster. The flight from Bangkok, full of holidaymakers on a Christmas package tour, had been routine until 8.57am, when air traffic controllers at Muan international airport, in the south-west of the country, spotted something concerning and radioed a bird strike warning to the cockpit. Seconds later, the pilots declared “mayday, mayday, mayday”. A man fishing on a nearby beach witnessed the aircraft’s final moments. He reported seeing a flock of birds collide with the plane’s right-side engine, followed by two or three loud “bangs” and then flames. At 9.03am, with its landing gear failing to deploy, the aircraft skidded along the runway before crashing into a navigation aid structure made of concrete and a perimeter wall in an explosion of flames and debris. The official cause of the accident has yet to be determined. Within 13 minutes, authorities had declared a level 3 emergency, mobilising 80 firefighters, 32 fire engines, and rescue teams from across the region. For 43 agonising minutes, firefighters battled the inferno before the flames were contained at 9.46am. In the terminal, families who had gathered for joyful reunions watched in horror as news footage showed their loved ones’ aircraft swallowed by flames. Among them was Suthinee, waiting to collect her daughter, 22-year-old Sirithon Cha-ue. The young Thai woman, known as Mei to her family, had won a scholarship to study airline business management and dreamed of becoming a flight attendant. This was only her second visit to see her mother, who had lived in South Korea for a decade. Her uncle, Thiraphat Cha-ue, recalled how she had been the pride of their family in northern Thailand’s Chiang Rai province. “There were only three months left before she graduated,” he said, adding the family had been discussing attending her upcoming graduation ceremony in Bangkok. At 12.55pm, South Korea’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, arrived at the airport, where he was immediately surrounded by desperate families demanding answers. “Tell us the situation in real time,” they pleaded. “Think of the families first.” Choi could only bow his head in response, promising that “no effort would be spared” in supporting the bereaved. When the Muan fire chief, Lee Jeong-hyun, delivered the devastating news that “most of the 181 passengers are presumed dead”, the briefing room erupted in wails of grief. “Is there absolutely no chance of survival?” one family member asked. Lee could only bow his head and respond: “I’m so sorry, but that’s what it’s looking like.” Some collapsed to the ground, others repeatedly cried out: “How could this happen?” One woman raised her hand, pleading through tears: “Let us go to the crash site. Family members can find their loved ones faster.” As the day wore on, the death toll mounted in brutal increments: 28, then 47, then 62. By evening, officials confirmed 179 deaths, with only two crew members found in the tail section surviving. The victims were aged from three to 78. “Through collision twice and explosion, most of the passengers were thrown off the plane”, said Yeom Dong-bu, a Muan firefighter at the scene. “I used to work on ambulances so I’ve seen this kind of terrible stuff like car crashes, but not on this scale.” For Jeon Je-young, 71, whose daughter Mi-sook was on board, the tragedy was incomprehensible. “When I saw the accident video, the plane seemed out of control,” he said, still watching the footage of the aircraft’s final moments. His daughter, in her mid-40s, had brought him food and next year’s calendar just days earlier. “She is much nicer than my son, sometimes asking me to go out for a meal,” he recalled, showing their final text exchanges on his mobile phone. A temporary mortuary was established at the airport, where 169 forensic officers and 579 police officers worked to identify victims. Military personnel joined the grim task of searching the wreckage, much of which was burnt beyond recognition. As evening fell, a man in his 60s kept returning to the family support desk, his son by his side. His wife had been travelling with her sisters-in-law on the flight. While the sisters-in-law’s bodies had been identified, his wife’s name was still not on the list. Again and again, they checked the registry of names, his son repeatedly collapsing in tears. The following morning, after spending the night in makeshift tents at the airport lounge, relatives of passengers not yet identified waited for news. A middle-aged man and woman kept their gaze fixed through the fence, where remnants of the plane – seats, gates and twisted metal parts – were still scattered across the field.

The Guardian;Testament to Spain’s golden age to open up its secret spaces after €6m revamp;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/san-lorenzo-de-el-escorial-monastery-spain-open-up-secret-spaces-after-revamp;2024-12-30T05:00:29Z

Despite perching imperiously on a mountainside near Madrid for the better part of five centuries, the royal monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial has yet to give up all its treasures – or all its secrets. Forty years after it was included on Unesco’s World Heritage list, Philip II’s austere monument to power, piety and patronage is undergoing a major reorganisation that will allow visitors to enjoy the peace of a previously off-limits monastic patio and to look at paintings once reserved for the royal gaze. The two-year project, made possible by €6.5m (£5.4m) of EU funds, aims to reintroduce visitors to the 33,327 sq metre site, a hulking testament to the imperial and cultural might of Spain’s golden age. El Escorial, 35 miles north-west of Madrid, was the fulfilment of Philip II’s dream of raising a monastery in a “desert”, far from people and other buildings. His vision, which took 21 years to complete, involved the genius of two architects: Juan Bautista de Toledo, who had worked with Michelangelo in Rome, and, later, Juan de Herrera, who made the most of the logistical knowledge he had acquired while fighting in Flanders for Philip’s father, Charles V. “This place was far away from everywhere else when it was founded; it wasn’t a literal desert, but it was a kind of desert,” says Luis Pérez de Prada, head of buildings and environment at Spain’s national heritage institution, Patrimonio Nacional. “It was an incredible feat of work and it shows humanity’s ability to create something in the middle of nowhere.” Although El Escorial is hardly an unknown destination – it received more than 450,000 visitors last year – Pérez de Prada and his colleagues are keen to offer people a fresh perspective, literally and metaphorically. “It’s a reopening with a much deeper understanding of what one of Spain’s most important monuments is about architecturally and artistically, and of all the symbolism implicit in this place,” he says. The most immediate change is the point of entry: instead of going in through the side, visitors will enter through the Patio of Kings, an imposing courtyard that immediately gives a sense of the immense scale and strength of the complex. “You’re going to get a much greater understanding of the monastery’s architecture now that you’re able to come in through the Patio of Kings,” says Pérez de Prada. “We really want people to understand what they’re visiting when they come to a place like this; it’s not just about saying: ‘Yeah, I’ve done the tour and I can say I’ve visited El Escorial.’ You need to understand how it was created and how it’s been modified.” For the first time, visitors will also be able to wander around the monastery’s Patio of the Evangelists, a tranquil garden of fountains and statues with a cupola at its centre that echoes the great dome of the basilica. The other significant elements of the rethink are to be found in the dormant painting and architecture galleries, which are being reopened, reorganised and revitalised at a cost of €2.4m. The painting gallery, which closed seven years ago, will be arranged across nine rooms to show and explore the tastes, commissions and acquisitions of four monarchs: Philip II, Philip IV, Charles II and Isabel II. Among its 99 Italian, Spanish, Flemish, French and German pictures – many of them not previously on public display – are works by Titian, El Greco, Velázquez, Tintoretto, Zurbarán and Juan Fernández de Navarrete. Almost half the rooms will be given over to Philip II to reflect his cultural clout. “Philip II is the person who lays the foundation of the Spanish royal collections,” says Carmen García Frías, a paintings curator at Patrimonio Nacional. “Few monarchs had a brand new palace like this one in which to set out their decorative ideas and collect together such fine works of religious art.” Pride of place will go to Calvary, a painstakingly restored work by Rogier van der Weyden painted between 1457 and 1464 for the Carthusian order in Scheut, on the outskirts of Brussels, and bought by Philip II in the 1550s. García Frías describes it as “one of the most important works of universal painting”. Not far away is the architecture gallery, which will displays nails and tools used in the building’s construction, as well as sketches and models of a singular piece of design and engineering. There are also more mundane matters to attend to. Almost a third of the EU money – €2m – will go on updating the building and making it more sustainable by putting in LED lighting, installing four electric vehicle charging points, and using solar panels to help power Patrimonio Nacional’s workshops. In 18 months, once the paving in the Patio of the Evangelists has been levelled, the lighting sorted, the paintings hung and the architectural exhibits arranged, visitors will finally be able to explore a little more of Philip II’s desert dream. For Pérez de Prada, however, the monastery’s importance transcends the vision of one man. “The most powerful monarch of the time is driving all this forward in his name,” he says. “But it’s also a place where you can see the evolution of art and architecture making an important leap during the Renaissance. It also shows us what society – and the world – was like at the time: the religious wars; the counter-reformation. All of that is reflected here.”

The Guardian;Control, censorship and ‘penalties’: inside the Assad regime’s propaganda arm;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/assad-regime-propaganda-arm-syria-control-censorship-penalties;2024-12-30T05:00:27Z

After 21 years, the day Farouk feared had finally come. An envelope sealed with red wax made its way through the faded hallways of Syria’s national news agency, Sana, and landed on his desk. Inside was what employees called a penalty, the contents of which could range from a reprimand from the editors to a summons to one of Syria’s brutal security branches. “I found a mistake before the article was published and I brought it to the editors’ attention. I thought this would be a good thing but they punished me,” Farouk, a journalist on Sana’s foreign news desk, said under a pseudonym. Farouk was lucky: he faced only an administrative consequence. Other co-workers had not been so fortunate. One day in 2014, Mohanned Abdelrahman was in the break room chatting with other colleagues as he prepared tea. During the conversation, it dawned on him that all of the employees in the group were from the same religious sect, something that could arouse the suspicion of authorities who were paranoid about any forms of community organising. Quickly, the group disbanded and headed back to their offices. A week later, he and the other employees found an envelope with the feared red seal on their desks. Inside was a summons to Branch 235, AKA the Palestinian branch, one of the country’s most infamous detention centres, where Abdelrahman and other employees would be kept and interrogated for the next 15 days. Abdelrahman and his colleagues recounted their respective arrests while seated around a desk in Sana’s foreign news department 10 days after the fall of the Assad regime, seemingly still dazed that they could speak freely. For the past 13 years, journalists had not been allowed to report freely as their news agency was on the frontline of the Assad regime’s propaganda effort. The Sana homepage, not updated since Assad’s ousting on 8 December, still bore the last headline issued by the Assad regime. “President al-Assad assumes his work, national and constitutional duties”, the news ticker read, despite the dictator’s flight to Moscow a few hours earlier. The news agency’s coverage in the days before the toppling of the Assad regime claimed all was well within Syria. As rebels advanced on Damascus, Sana said they were merely staging photo ops. It spoke of “strategic redeployments” while Syrian government forces abandoned their posts en masse. Sana journalists were not brainwashed; they knew that the opposition was making inroads against regime forces. But years of Orwellian control and censorship within the newsroom had left them unable to write the truth. Abdelrahman said: “They would tell you that the yoghurt was black and you were not allowed to say it’s white. They made you feel scared that you would be punished, so you wouldn’t try to add anything new to articles.” Throughout the civil war, Sana parroted regime lines, making itself key to the Syrian and Russian disinformation campaign. Its articles called the Syrian Civil Defence, known as the White Helmets, organ-harvesting agents of al-Qaida. While more than 90% of Syrians were living below the poverty line, the news agency reported on the installation of eco-buses in Damascus. To ensure journalists did not write anything that contradicted the regime’s line, Syrian intelligence agents planted informants in the office to observe reporters. “You didn’t know who was the one among us writing reports on their fellow employees. They reported when you got into work, when you left, how long you spent in the bathroom,” Abdelrahman said. Journalists’ social media profiles were monitored. A status that expressed any dissenting view, or even a “like” on a suspicious comment, would attract the attention of authorities. The consequences for journalists who dared to deviate from the state’s line could be deadly. Reporters recalled a colleague who was detained for three months and tortured daily, suspended from a pipe in a grotesque stress position. Another was severely tortured after it was discovered he had been sending footage of opposition protests in south Syria to Al Jazeera. Almost all Sana journalists had stories about being detained. Alleged offences included tarnishing the reputation of Syria, organising revolutionary activities, working on behalf of Israel and working on behalf of Iran. Under the threat of bodily harm, journalists were asked to deny the reality they saw with their eyes and instead believe the press releases sent to them by the regime’s PR teams. As economic conditions deteriorated, the Syrian regime would plant more and more egregious statistics and figures in their articles. The Assad regime was most sensitive towards the economic stories, acutely aware of growing discontent. “There was a blackout on any real information. The numbers coming from the ministry of industry and economy were pulled out of thin air,” said Adnan al-Akhras, a home news reporter. Journalists also had to contend with the organisation’s fearsome bureaucracy and onerous editorial standards. If a journalist was dispatched to cover a story abroad, they would first have to seek the permission of their editor, who would need to get the permission of the managing editor, who would report to the editor-in-chief, who would have to ask the minister of information. By the time all the permissions had been secured, the story was long over. Foreign news journalists relied on wire agencies such as Sputnik and Xinhua for their copy. However, there were strict editorial policies in place that sometimes even exceeded those of the Assad regime’s foreign patrons. Journalists were obliged to change copy from Russia’s Sputnik news agency to make it stricter. For example, Russian media’s mention of “Ukraine’s army” would be changed to “neo-Nazi forces” in Sana’s stories. “We would joke that we were the real Moscow, not them,” Abdelrahman said, adding that in recent years journalists on the foreign desk could only write about Cuba, Iran, Russia and Venezuela. As journalists researched their stories, they were asked to collect any negative articles about the Assad regime that appeared in the foreign press. They would copy and paste these stories into an email, sign their names and send it off to a special account given to them by the palace. Where those emails went, the journalists had no idea – they never received a reply. As life in Syria grew harsher, so did the work at Sana. Monthly salaries at the news agency hovered at about 150,000 Syrian pounds (£9). The stories grew more outrageous in contrast to the country’s growing poverty, absurd even to their authors. “We had a phrase: ‘Let the owner of the donkey tie it where he would like’,” said Ibrahim, a Sana journalist who asked to be identified only by his first name. Journalists were not allowed to quit. They could present their resignation to a special committee, which invariably would deny the request. They were not allowed to travel. If they tried, their name would flash across the border guard’s screens and they would be sent back home. Sana journalists were considered as having access to sensitive information and so would have to apply for special security permissions to leave Syria – “which we never got”, Abdelrahman said. Despite the years of repression, journalists at Sana returned to work two days after the fall of the Assad regime. Home news reporters gathered and began to excitedly pitch ideas for future articles: the new marketplaces springing up in the post-Assad era; the rise of the dollar; tracing the disappearance of camera footage from regime prisons. Still, after years of strict control, journalists seemed unsure how to proceed. “We hope we will have freedom as journalists and that none of us will be arrested any more,” Abdelrahman said, glancing at a media officer from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group that led the ousting of Assad, who had been given the task of helping reorganise the state news agency.

The Guardian;Donald Tusk’s Polish revival masks deeper divisions with German neighbours;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/donald-tusk-polish-revival-masks-deeper-divisions-with-german-neighbours;2024-12-30T05:00:26Z

Germany’s chancellor appears to be heading for defeat; France’s president is mired in crisis. But while Europe’s traditional power duo are in the doldrums, there is a strong, stable and pro-EU leader east of Paris and Berlin – Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk. For European officials, it’s a helpful gift of the calendar that Poland takes charge of the Council of the EU rotating presidency from 1 January. Tusk, a former European Council president, returned as Poland’s prime minister in 2023, leading a broad coalition that defeated the rightwing populist party Law and Justice (PiS). One of his first acts was to end a long-festering dispute with Brussels with a pledge to restore constitutional norms, which unlocked billions of frozen EU funds. Tusk later showed his influence inside the European Council of EU leaders, helping to orchestrate the return of his centre-right ally Ursula von der Leyen as European Commission president. An EU presidency is a technical business: chairing hundreds of meetings, setting agendas. Tusk has no formal role. But symbolism matters. The presidency logo, a Polish flag entwined with the letters “E” and “U”, is intended to project Poland’s return to the European mainstream. Tusk’s government, which has pledged to prioritise security during its six-month stint, is an especially welcome contrast after the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s rogue diplomacy during his country’s presidency. Michał Wawrykiewicz, a centre-right MEP, affiliated to the governing Civic Coalition, said: “We are just after the presidency of Hungary, which is the biggest violator of all of the fundamentals of the European Union. So it is a good time slot for my country to prove that we are one of the leaders of the European Union.” But the image of harmony regained is not quite what it seems. First, Poland’s democratic restoration is incomplete. As many as a third of Poland’s 10,000 judges are so-called “neo judges”, according to the Council of Europe – ie politicised appointees who took office through processes introduced by PiS that were widely deemed to violate the rule of law. Tusk’s government faces a legal minefield in restoring independent judges, while the PiS-aligned President Andrzej Duda is blocking many reforms. “It shows how difficult it is to reverse the country on the democratic path after such a huge devastation,” said Wawrykiewicz, a lawyer who campaigned to restore the rule of law before he was elected as an MEP in 2024. Duda is nearing the end of his term limit, so presidential elections likely in May will be critical in determining whether Tusk’s government can fulfil its promise to restore the rule of law in Poland. That could affect how Poland runs its presidency. Some EU insiders contend that Poland’s government is playing it safe by avoiding putting controversial topics on the EU agenda, such as 2040 carbon reduction targets. Before Duda stands down, he could be a helpful bridge to Donald Trump’s White House. Anna Wójcik, of Kozminski University in Warsaw, said Tusk’s government could use the “surprising card of President Duda, who has good relations with the president-elect of the United States”. More broadly, Warsaw has a good story to tell Trump, who has fiercely criticised Nato allies for “not paying their bills”. Poland, already the biggest defence spender in GDP terms in Nato, is expected to spend 4.7% of its economic output on defence in 2025. This will be an advantage in Washington and “a way of proving that Europe can well commit and even over-commit” to Nato goals, Wójcik said. During its presidency of the Council of the EU, Poland is expected to make the case for more European defence spending, including via EU financing, which could entail joint borrowing. The European Commission has put the cost of boosting EU defences at a minimum of €500bn and has promised an options paper on how to raise these funds early in 2025. Any agreement on European defence spending will have to go through Europe’s largest contributor to the EU budget, Germany, where political opposition and legal constraints make common borrowing deeply problematic. More broadly, despite the return of a pro-EU government in Warsaw and the epoch-making “turning point”, the Zeitenwende, in Germany, German-Polish relations are weighed down by mistrust and recrimination. Under the previous PiS government, Poland waged a long-running campaign for reparations for damage caused by the Nazi invasion and occupation. Germany, meanwhile, was one of Warsaw’s toughest critics on the politicisation of its courts, helping to broker an agreement in 2020 that meant EU funds could be frozen over rule-of-law violations. In theory, Tusk’s election should have improved relations, but the mood remains sour. Berlin was exasperated when in May Tusk joined forces with the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, to call for a European air defence shield to protect EU airspace against all incoming threats, described as “a bold initiative that will send a clear and strong message to our friends and foes”. Germany dismissed the plan as a nonstarter, objecting to its vast cost and apparent emphasis on it being made in Europe. For Tusk, facing smears from his PiS rivals of being pro-German, that refusal closed down a positive, future-looking project that could have put relations on a better path. “There is no agreement on how to solve this conundrum in the Polish-German relations,” said Piotr Buras, the head of the European Council on Foreign Relations’ office in Warsaw. “This is a major problem for Tusk because he is the one who faces accusations that he is too pro-German, so he needs to make himself more credible to the Polish public opinion by being tough on Germany.” Buras thinks the rest of the EU underestimates how far PiS “redefined the parameters of the Polish European debate”. Polish support for the EU remains high but has fallen back from the stratospheric enthusiasm of the recent past: a survey for the Warsaw-based pollster CBOS showed 77% of respondents in favour of the EU in April 2024, down from 92% less than two years earlier. Opposition to Ukrainian refugees in Poland is growing. “Tusk is very much under pressure from the opposition, from the PiS, and he needs to be very, very cautious and he is very cautious,” Buras said. “That sets limits for some major pro-European, courageous initiatives.”

The Guardian;Authorities in South Korea seek arrest warrant for impeached president Yoon;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/south-korea-seek-arrest-warrant-yoon-suk-yeol-ntwnfb;2024-12-30T03:38:19Z

South Korean law enforcement officials have requested a court warrant to arrest impeached president, Yoon Suk Yeol, as they investigate whether his short-lived martial law decree amounted to rebellion. The Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials, which is leading a joint investigation with police and military authorities into the power grab that lasted only a few hours on 3 December, confirmed it requested the warrant from a Seoul court. They plan to question Yoon on allegations of abuse of authority and orchestrating a rebellion. Yoon has dodged several requests by the joint investigation team and public prosecutors to appear for questioning and has also blocked searches of his offices. It was not clear whether the court will grant the warrant or whether Yoon can be compelled to appear for questioning. The application by investigators marks the first attempt in the country’s history to forcibly detain a president before the impeachment procedure is complete. Under the country’s laws, locations potentially linked to military secrets cannot be seized or searched without the consent of the person in charge, and it’s unlikely that Yoon will voluntarily leave his residence if he faces detainment. Yoon’s presidential powers were suspended after the National Assembly voted to impeach him on 14 December over his imposition of martial law that lasted only hours but has triggered weeks of political turmoil, halted high-level diplomacy and rattled financial markets. Yoon’s fate now lies with the Constitutional Court, which has begun deliberations on whether to uphold the impeachment and formally remove him from office or reinstate him. Yoon has defended the martial law decree as a necessary act of governance, describing it as a warning against the liberal opposition Democratic Party, which has been bogging down his agenda with its majority in the parliament. Parliament voted last week to also impeach prime minister Han Duck-soo, who had assumed the role of acting president after Yoon’s powers were suspended, over his reluctance to fill three Constitutional Court vacancies ahead of the court’s review of Yoon’s case. The country’s new interim leader is deputy prime minister Choi Sang-mok, who is also finance minister.

The Guardian;Ukraine war briefing: Russia vows to retaliate after state media reportedly blocked on Telegram in EU;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/russia-vows-to-retaliate-after-state-media-reportedly-blocked-on-telegram-in-eu;2024-12-30T00:39:21Z

Russia has vowed to retaliate after the channels of its state media were apparently blocked on the popular Telegram social media platform in the EU. On Sunday the channels of Ria Novosti news agency, Rossiya 1, Pervyi Kanal and NTV television, and Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspapers were not accessible in several countries, including France, Belgium, Poland, Greece, the Netherlands and Italy, according to media reports. Neither Telegram nor EU sources have yet commented on the disruption. Moscow called the move “an act of censorship”. “The systematic cleansing of all undesirable sources of information from the information space continues,” foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, said. The EU had previously banned Russian state media such as Ria Novosti, Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta from being distributed in the bloc, accusing them with disseminating propaganda. Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, said on Sunday that the Azerbaijani airliner that crashed last week was shot down by Russia, albeit unintentionally, as he criticised Moscow for trying to “hush up” the issue. “We can say with complete clarity that the plane was shot down by Russia … We are not saying that it was done intentionally, but it was done,” he told Azerbaijani state television. Aliyev said that the airliner, which crashed in Kazakhstan on Wednesday and killed 38 of the 67 on board, was hit by fire from the ground over Russia and “rendered uncontrollable by electronic warfare.” Aliyev accused Russia of trying to “hush up” the issue for several days, saying he was “upset and surprised” by versions of events put forward by Russian officials. The Kremlin said that air defence systems were firing near Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, where the plane attempted to land, to deflect a Ukrainian drone strike. Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Monday that Jimmy Carter, who died aged 100, served as US president when Ukraine was not yet independent but “his heart stood firmly with us in our ongoing fight for freedom”. “We deeply appreciate his steadfast commitment to Christian faith and democratic values, as well as his unwavering support for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s unprovoked aggression,” Zelenskyy said on X. “Today, let us remember: peace matters, and the world must remain united in standing against those who threaten these values.” A probe of the sabotaged Baltic Sea power cable has uncovered a drag trail stretching dozens of kilometres on the seabed, Finnish police said on Sunday. On Christmas Day, the Estlink 2 submarine cable that carries electricity from Finland to Estonia was disconnected from the grid, just over a month after two telecommunications cables were severed in Swedish territorial waters in the Baltic. Finnish authorities have been investigating the Eagle S oil tanker that sailed from a Russian port over suspected “sabotage”. The investigation has revealed a “dragging track” on the seabed, police said on Sunday, adding the trail had been identified “from the beginning to the end”. The cable’s disconnection was the latest in a spate of incidents western officials believe are acts of sabotage linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Aleksei Bugayev, a former member of Russia’s national soccer team who played at Euro 2004, has been killed in the 34-month-old war in Ukraine, Russian media quoted his father and agent as saying on Sunday. “Unfortunately, the news about Aleksei’s death is true. It happened today,” TASS news agency quoted the player’s father Ivan Bugayev as telling the Sport24 news outlet. RIA news agency quoted Bugayev’s agent, Anton Smirnov, as saying intense fighting had made it impossible to retrieve Bugayev’s body for burial. In September, Bugayev was sentenced by a court in southern Russia to nine and a half years in prison on drug trafficking charges. He later declared his intention to sign up to fight in the Ukraine war. Russian authorities actively recruit in prisons for the conflict. Georgia inaugurated a far-right governing party loyalist, Mikhail Kavelashvili, as president on Sunday, ratcheting up a months-long political crisis that has seen huge pro-European Union demonstrations. Kavelashvili, a former professional footballer, is backed by the Georgian Dream party, which has accused the West of trying to drag Tbilisi into the Ukraine conflict.

The Guardian;Disgruntled police in Northern Ireland responsible for IRA leaks after Good Friday agreement;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/disgruntled-police-in-northern-ireland-responsible-for-ira-leaks-after-good-friday-agreement;2024-12-30T00:01:23Z

Parts of the British government and disgruntled members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary were responsible for a series of major leaks during and after the establishment of the 1998 Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland, according to claims in newly released Irish government archives. An Irish department of foreign Affairs official focusing on justice and security created a report and list of the leaks in October 2002. They included attempts to undermine Sinn Féin, the republican political party linked to the IRA, and expose the position of the then Northern Ireland secretary, Mo Mowlam. In a reminder of the fragile situation in the wake of the historic peace deal, the report described how “disgruntled Special Branch officers in Northern Ireland” were blamed by the British government for a series of releases about the IRA that were designed to damage Sinn Féin in the 2001 general election in Northern Ireland. Details of an IRA intelligence database containing the names of leading Conservative politicians – described at the time as a “hit list” – was also passed to the BBC in April 2002 and, the briefing note continued, this was followed “days later by a leak to the Sunday Telegraph which alleged that senior IRA commanders bought Russian special forces rifles in Moscow last year”. Special Branch leaks were also said to be associated with the 2002 IRA break-in at the RUC headquarters in Castlereagh in east Belfast. Other leaks included the disclosure in February 1998 of papers related to preparations for the Drumcree Orange Order march on 6 July 1997, which had been plagued by standoffs and clashes as nationalists opposed the procession down Garvaghy Road in Portadown. The gameplan document showed that Mowlam, who was publicly expressing a desire for a negotiated solution to the 1997 parade, advocated “finding the lowest common denominator for getting some Orange feet on the Garvaghy Road”. In 1997, a large number of security forces were sent to the area to allow the march to proceed. The incident sparked heightened tension and a wave of rioting. Elsewhere in the newly released Irish archives, papers emerged showing how the UK government was lobbied to do more to assist former paramilitaries to get jobs and integrate back into society months after being released from prison in 1998 after the Good Friday agreement. The Northern Ireland office minister, Adam Ingram, resisted the pressure by stating society was “not yet at the stage where all of the shutters could go up”, expressing concerns that ex-prisoners could end up teaching the children of their victims. There were details of an embarrassing affair when a piece of moon rock gifted to the Irish president by Nasa after an Apollo mission and kept at the Dunsink Observatory was destroyed in a fire in 1977. And in 2002, when the queen was celebrating her golden jubilee, a unionist minister in the Stormont government rebuffed a suggestion that there could be an extension of pub opening hours. Correspondence showed that lord lieutenants in Northern Ireland – representatives of the queen – were not pushing for the more celebratory licensing hours either. “Lady Carswell in particular believes that it would be difficult for Lord Lieutenants to encourage such activities without appearing political,” one newly released email showed.

The Guardian;Dense fog expected to cause flight delays at Gatwick till end of Sunday;https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2024/dec/29/dense-fog-expected-to-cause-flight-disruption-at-gatwick-till-end-of-sunday;2024-12-29T22:15:29Z

Disruption caused by dense fog was expected to continue at Gatwick airport until the end of Sunday – its busiest day of the holiday period. Nats, the UK’s main air traffic control provider, said temporary air restrictions were in place for the remainder of the day because of low visibility in airfields affected by fog. Earlier easyJet said a number of flights had been delayed or cancelled due to the knock-on impact of delays caused by the weather. It follows two days of disruption at the UK’s busiest airports, with Saturday’s flights at Stansted affected by the murky conditions while live departure boards showed delays at Heathrow, Luton, Gatwick and Manchester airports. On Sunday morning, a spokesperson for Gatwick said temporary air traffic restrictions remained in place because of poor visibility caused by fog and warned that some flights could be delayed throughout the day. A total of 769 flights were planned at the West Sussex airport on Sunday, making it the busiest day of the Christmas holiday period. Passengers were urged to contact their airlines for updated information. A Nats spokesperson said: “While the weather conditions have improved, fog continues to affect some airports in London today. “Temporary air traffic restrictions are therefore in place at airfields with low visibility to maintain safety. “Our teams are working closely with the airports and airlines to minimise disruption but passengers should check the status of their flight with their airline.” Patches of thick fog could reduce visibility to just 100 metres in some areas, the Met Office said. Heathrow, Luton and Stansted airports said flights had not been affected by the weather. A spokesperson for easyJet said: “We are doing all we can to minimise the impact of the weather for our customers, providing options to rebook or a refund for cancelled flights, as well as hotel accommodation and meals where required. “We advise customers due to travel to and from London Gatwick today to check our flight tracker for the latest information on their flight. “The safety and wellbeing of our customers and crew is our highest priority and, while this is outside of our control, we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused by the weather.” Passengers on flights delayed for more than two hours may be entitled to assistance, including food and drink or overnight accommodation if necessary. Kiera Quayle, from Colchester, Essex, was due to fly from Isle of Man airport to Gatwick on Friday evening with her husband after visiting his family. But their flight was delayed by three hours before finally being cancelled at around 10pm, with the next one not available until Sunday. “Our five days has turned to seven, it looks like,” Quayle, 30, told the PA news agency. “It’s frustrating and stressful but I overheard a few families who are now missing holidays and work who have it worse at this point.”

The Guardian;Air traffic controllers warned of bird strike minutes before Muan airport accident – as it happened;https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/dec/29/south-korea-plane-crash-casualties-reported-after-jeju-air-flight-veers-off-runway-at-muan-airport-live-updates;2024-12-29T21:39:44Z

Summary of developments: One hundred and seventy-nine people are confirmed to have died in the catastrophic plane crash, which occurred on Sunday when a Jeju Air flight crash landed at Muan international airport. The plane appeared to land without landing gear before colliding with a concrete embankment and exploding. The cause of the crash is under investigation. Two members of the flight’s crew have survived, including a man who was awake and speaking to doctors today. Joe Biden offered his condolences and said the US was ready to provide “any necessary assistance”. The Korean government is offering funeral services and temporary housing to families of the victims of the crash. The country is in a seven-day national mourning period. The passenger plane crash that killed 179 in South Korea comes at a time of political upheaval in the country, testing the government’s ability to administer a rapid disaster response, report the Guardian’s Raphael Rashid and Justin McCurry: The incident has highlighted the potential risks that instability at the highest level of government poses to disaster response. There were encouraging signs in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. South Korea’s rival political parties launched separate initiatives in response to the disaster, apparently setting aside the animosity of recent weeks. The opposition Democratic party leader, Lee Jae-myung, left for Muan, where he plans to stay indefinitely to support rescue efforts, the Hankyoreh newspaper said, although he will stay away from the crash site while recovery operations continue. The ruling People Power party, meanwhile, formed a taskforce focused on investigating the crash and supporting victims’ families. The party’s acting leader, Kweon Seong-dong, will visit Muan on Monday with taskforce members to “review accident response measures and prevention strategies” and meet bereaved families. Joe Biden said in a statement on Sunday that he was “deeply saddened” to learn of the South Korea plane crash that killed all but two of the 181 passengers onboard. “As close allies, the American people share deep bonds of friendship with the South Korean people and our thoughts and prayers are with those impacted by this tragedy,” the statement said. “The United States stands ready to provide any necessary assistance.” The father of a passenger who died in the Jeju Air crash in South Korea called the disaster “unbelievable”. Reuters reports: Jeon Je-young keeps playing the video of the plane with his daughter and another 180 people on board slamming into a wall and bursting into flames at a South Korean airport. His daughter Mi-sook died on board. He still can’t believe it. ‘When I saw the accident video, the plane seemed out of control,’ said 71-year-old Jeon. ‘The pilots probably had no choice but to do it. My daughter, who is only in her mid-40s, ended up like this. This is unbelievable.’ Mi-sook was a warm-hearted child, he said. She brought some food and next year’s calendar to his house on Dec. 21, which became his last brief moment with her. ‘She is much nicer than my son, sometimes asking me to go out for a meal,’ Jeon recalled, showing his last exchanges with his daughter on his mobile phone. The Korean health ministry is reportedly providing counseling services to the families of the passengers who died in the catastrophic plane crash in Muan. The government has also offered temporary housing and help with funeral services to those families. The National Transportation Safety Board is leading a team of US investigators to help South Korea’s aviation authority in its investigation of the Jeju Air crash in Muan, Reuters reports. Boeing, the maker of the plane, and the Federal Aviation Administration are participating, NTSB said on Sunday. A survivor of the deadly crash is awake and speaking with doctors, according to Yonhap News Agency. The 33-year-old flight attendant is one of two passengers who reportedly survived the Jeju Air crash that killed nearly all 181 people on board on Sunday. The director of the Seoul hospital where the survivor is being treated told reporters that the patient is able to communicate and is not displaying memory loss or other cognitive symptoms. The other survivor, also a flight attendant, is reportedly in stable condition at a separate hospital. Aviation experts question the theory that a bird strike caused the Jeju Air crash in South Korea that killed almost all of the 181 passengers on board, Reuters reports: Uncertainty surrounds the deadliest plane crash on South Korean soil, aviation experts said on Sunday, questioning how much impact a potential bird strike cited by authorities could have had in bringing down the Jeju Air flight. The apparent absence of landing gear, the timing of the twin-engine Boeing 737-800’s belly landing at Muan International Airport and the reports of a possible bird strike all raised questions that could not yet be answered. The single-aisle aircraft was seen in video broadcast on local media skidding down the runway with no landing gear deployed before hitting a wall in an explosion of flame and debris. “At this point there are a lot more questions than we have answers. Why was the plane going so fast? Why were the flaps not open? Why was the landing gear not down?” said Gregory Alegi, an aviation expert and former teacher at Italy’s air force academy. South Korean officials are investigating the crash of Jeju Air Flight 7C2216, including the impact of a potential bird strike and the weather. 179 of 181 people on board died. Deputy Transport Minister Joo Jong-wan said the runway’s 2,800-metre length was not a contributing factor, and that walls at the ends were built to industry standards. A spokesperson for Jeju Air was not immediately available for comment. Jeju Air declined to comment on the cause during news conferences, saying an investigation is under way. Christian Beckert, a flight safety expert and Lufthansa pilot, said the video footage suggested that aside from the reversers, most of the plane’s braking systems were not activated, creating a “big problem” and a fast landing. Beckert said a bird strike was unlikely to have damaged the landing gear while it was still up, and that if it had happened when it was down, it would have been hard to raise again. “It’s really, really very rare and very unusual not to lower the gear, because there are independent systems where we can lower the gear with an alternate system,” he said. The probe should paint a clearer picture, he added. 179 people were killed in South Korea’s worst domestic civil aviation disaster on Sunday after a plane – flying from Bangkok - crashed while landing at Muan international airport shortly after 09:00 local time (00:00 GMT). Four crew members and all 175 passengers, including five children under the age of 10, were killed. Two people, both crew members, were rescued from the wreckage and taken to hospital. They suffered “mid to severe” injuries, authorities said. Most passengers were South Koreans, apart from two Thai nationals, thought to be aged 22 and 45. According to authorities, the youngest passenger was a three-year-old boy and the oldest was a 78-year-old. Investigators are examining bird strikes and weather conditions as possible factors behind the crash. Yonhap news agency cited airport authorities as saying a bird strike may have caused the landing gear to malfunction. The plane involved in the crash was a Boeing 737-800 flown by Korean budget airline Jeju Air. The runway at the airport is expected to be closed until 1 January. Jeju Air said it “sincerely” apologised - with top officials shown bowing deeply at a press conference in Seoul - and vowed to do all it could to help. South Korea’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, named interim leader of the country on Friday amid an ongoing political crisis, arrived at the scene of the accident and said the government was putting all its resources into dealing with the crash. A transport ministry official said workers had retrieved the flight data and cockpit voice recorders of the plane’s black box. They will be examined by government experts, but it could take up to a month to decode the flight data as it was damaged in the crash. The country declared a seven day national mourning period effective from Sunday, with memorial altars to be set up nationwide. Rebecca Ratcliffe is the Guardian’s south-east Asia correspondent Thai media outlet Khaosod has spoken to Thiraphat Cha-ue, the uncle of Sirithon Cha-ue, 22, who is one of two Thai women killed in the crash. Sirithon, known by the nickname Mei, had been travelling to visit her mother, Suthinee, who has lived in South Korea for 10 years, Thiraphat said. Sirithon’s mother had been waiting to collect her at the airport. When Thiraphat saw the news on social media, he was too afraid to call her, he said. Thiraphat described Sirithon as the pride of the family. She had won a scholarship to study airline business management at Bangkok University and was in the fourth year of her course, he said. She dreamed of being an air hostess. “There were only three months left before she graduated,” he said, adding the family, from Chiang Rai province in northern Thailand, had been discussing going to her upcoming graduation ceremony in Bangkok. Tomorrow he would travel with Sirithon’s two younger brothers to South Korea, he said, to bring back her remains. Thailand’s ministry of foreign affairs said in a statement that South Korean authorities had confirmed two Thai passengers were among the fatalities. In the statement, the ministry said: The ministry of foreign affairs has already contacted the relatives of the deceased Thai nationals, while the Royal Thai Embassy has coordinated with the South Korean authorities and Jeju Airlines who are now facilitating the relatives’ travel from Thailand to South Korea. The ministry of foreign affairs would like to express its deepest condolences to all of the families of the deceased for their immense loss, particularly during this holiday season when families are traveling to reunite with loved ones. Among the 177 bodies so far found, officials have so far identified 88 of them, the fire agency said. The passengers were predominantly South Korean, as well as two Thai nationals. Many of the passengers were reportedly returning from a Christmas spent in Thailand. Raphael Rashid is reporting for the Guardian from Seoul South Korea’s suspended president, Yoon Suk Yeol, whose impeachment trial is pending following his failed martial law declaration earlier this month, wrote on Facebook a message expressing “deep condolences to those who lost their precious lives and to the bereaved families who lost their loved ones”. “I am devastated and heartbroken,” Yoon said. “I believe the government will do its best to manage the accident and support the victims. I will stand with the people to overcome this difficult situation as soon as possible.” Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba has said he was “deeply saddened by the loss of many precious lives” in a message released through Tokyo’s foreign ministry. It follows similar messages of condolences, including from China, the UK and Ukraine. One of the two survivors of a plane crash that killed 179 others Sunday has told doctors he had “already been rescued” when he awoke in hospital reports the Yonhap News Agency. The 33-year-old survivor, known as Lee was working as a flight attendant on the Jeju Air plane that crashed Sunday morning. Emergency services initially took Lee to a hospital in the nearby city of Mokpo, south of Seoul, but later transferred him to Ewha Womans University Seoul Hospital in the capital city. “When I woke up, I had already been rescued,” he told doctors at the hospital, according to its director Ju Woong. “He’s fully able to communicate,” Ju said. “There’s no indication yet of memory loss or such.” Lee is currently in intensive care after doctors diagnosed him with multiple fractures and risk of paralysis. One of the two black boxes retrieved from the Jeju Air plane that crashed in South Korea on Sunday had sustained partial damage, reports the Yonhap news agency in South Korea. The damage will likely delay analysis to identify the cause of the accident, land ministry officials said. “Decoding the FDR alone could take about a month,” the official added. “If we have difficulty decoding it here, then we may have to send it to the NTSB,” the second official said. “They have cases from all over the world to analyze, so it could take quite a bit of time.” The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, says he is “deeply saddened” by the fatal Jeju Air plane crash in South Korea. In a post on X, Lammy wrote: “My heartfelt condolences go out to the people of South Korea and Thailand, and all those that have lost loved ones.” The cousin of a Thai passenger, 49-year-old Jongluk Doungmanee, who flew on the fatal Jeju Air plane says she is “saddened” and “shocked”. Pornphichaya chalermsin, from Nong Wua So District, Udon Thani, told the BBC that her cousin Jongluk was residing in South Korea for five years with her two children, aged 7 and 15. She worked in agriculture with her Korean husband, whom she married three years ago. In an interview with BBC Thai, she said she had “only ever seen such news from other countries and never thought it would involve Thai people”, adding that “watching the video footage made me feel even more distressed. “I was shocked, I had goosebumps. I couldn’t believe it… when the news said one of the victims was from Udon Thani, I was even more surprised.” Before her flight on Jeju Air Flight 7C2216, Joungluk was in Thailand visiting her family and traveling in Chiang Mai with her husband. Her husband returned to South Korea before she departed. Jeju Air has declined to comment on the cause of the accident during news conferences, saying an investigation is under way. Under global aviation rules, South Korea will lead a civil investigation into the crash and automatically involve the National Transportation Safety Board in the US where the plane was designed and built. Here are some of the latest images being sent over to us from the newswires: 179 people have died and two people were rescued from the plane carrying 181 people that crashed at the Muan international airport this morning, the Yonhap news agency reported, citing rescue authorities. This means that officials have now confirmed that all of the plane’s 175 passengers were killed in the crash, along with four flight staff. “Of the 179 dead, 65 have been identified,” South Korea’s fire agency said. The two surviving crew members were rescued from the tail of the aircraft and had suffered “mid to severe” injuries, authorities said. It is the deadliest air crash to occur in South Korea, surpassing the 1993 Asiana Airlines crash in Mokpo that killed over 60 people. Chinese President Xi Jinping has sent his condolences to South Korea’s acting president Choi Sang-mok, regarding the deadly Jeju Air crash. Xi expressed shocked regarding the significant number of casualties and expressed deep mourning for the victims, condolences to the bereaved families, and wishes to the injured for a speedy recovery. South Korea’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, has declared a period of national mourning until 4 January over the plane crash at Muan international airport that killed at 1east 177 people. “We extend our deepest condolences and sympathy to the bereaved families of those who lost their lives in this unexpected tragedy,” he was quoted as saying. Flags at government offices will be lowered and civil servants will wear black ribbons, the BBC reports. The incident is the first major test for Choi, who assumed office on Friday after South Korea’s parliament voted to impeach the previous acting president, Han Duck-soo. At least 177 people were killed in South Korea’s worst domestic civil aviation disaster on Sunday after a plane – flying from Bangkok - crashed while landing at Muan international airport shortly after 09:00 local time (00:00 GMT). 181 people were on board the plane at the time of the crash - including six crew members. Two people, both crew members, were rescued from the wreckage and taken to hospital. They suffered “mid to severe” injuries, authorities said. Officials have suggested the rest on board are presumed dead. 84 women, 82 men and 11 others whose genders weren’t immediately identifiable died in the fire, the South Korean fire agency reported. Two people remained missing nine hours after the incident. According to authorities, the youngest passenger was a three-year-old boy and the oldest was a 78-year-old. Five of the people who were killed in the crash were children under the age of 10. A local fire official said the crash could have been caused by a bird strike and weather conditions, but the exact cause is not yet known. The plane involved in the crash was a Boeing 737-800 flown by Korean budget airline Jeju Air. A transport ministry official said workers had retrieved the flight data and cockpit voice recorders of the plane’s black box. They will be examined by government experts. The runway is expected to be closed until 1 January. Jeju Air CEO Kim E-bae apologised for the accident, bowing deeply during a televised briefing. He said the aircraft had no record of accidents and there were no early signs of malfunction. Over 1,500 emergency personnel have been deployed to the site and a special disaster zone has been enforced. You can read more of the latest developments here. Raphael Rashid is reporting for the Guardian from Seoul Airport staff have revealed that an unusually large flock of birds was spotted over Muan International Airport’s runway on Sunday morning, hours before the crash. “Staff members all said they had never seen so many birds before. They suddenly flew in from outside the airport,” an anonymous airport official told OhmyNews, adding that such a concentration of birds was never seen before. The sighting raises questions about the adequacy of the airport’s bird control measures. While South Korean law requires airports to maintain year-round bird deterrent activities with dedicated personnel and equipment, it remains unclear what specific actions were taken in response to Sunday morning’s bird activity. The transport ministry has previously confirmed that air traffic controllers warned the Jeju Air flight about bird strike risks at 08:57, with the pilot declaring a mayday one minute later. Footage taken as the aircraft approached the airport appears to show unusual flames coming from its right engine. The Jeju Air flight 7C2216 from Bangkok had 175 passengers, including two Thai nationals, and six crew onboard. According to authorities, the youngest passenger was a three-year-old boy and the oldest was a 78-year-old. Five of the people who were killed in the crash were children under the age of 10, authorities said, citing the passenger manifest. Most of the passengers were in their 40s, 50s and 60s, South Korean Yonhap news agency reports. Here is a video of the moment the Boeing 737-800 skidded along the runway before hitting what appeared to be a concrete barrier and bursting into flames at South Korea’s Muan airport (this video may be distressing to some people): At least 177 people - 84 women, 82 men and 11 others whose genders weren’t immediately identifiable – died in the fire, the South Korean fire agency has said in its latest update. Emergency workers pulled two people, both crew members, to safety. Health officials said they are conscious and not in life-threatening condition. Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has sent condolences to the families of those killed in the deadly plane crash. “We have received terrible news of a plane crash in South Korea with many fatalities. Our condolences go out to the families of those killed in the crash and we wish the injured a speedy recovery,” he wrote in a post on X. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said: On behalf of the Ukrainian people and myself, I extend heartfelt condolences to the bereaved families, the people of Korea, and Acting President Choi Sang-mok. We share your sorrow and stand with the Korean people in this time of grief. The death toll from Sunday’s Jeju Air crash has climbed to 176, with three people still missing, South Korea’s fire agency has announced. Search teams will continue working through the night to locate the remaining three missing persons. Only two crew members are understood to have survived. According to the transport ministry, investigators have recovered both black boxes from the wreckage: the cockpit voice recorder at 11:30 and the flight data recorder at 14:24. Eight aircraft accident investigators and nine aviation safety inspectors are conducting initial investigations at the scene. More than 1,500 personnel have been mobilised for the rescue and recovery operation, including 490 firefighters, 455 police officers, and 340 military personnel. The airport’s runway will remain closed until 05:00 on 1 January 2025, though this timeframe may be adjusted. A temporary morgue has been set up at the airport, with authorities working with families to arrange transfers of identified victims to external facilities. Raphael Rashid is reporting for the Guardian from Seoul A bird strike has emerged as a possible factor in Sunday’s crash, after officials revealed that air traffic controllers warned the aircraft about bird strike risks minutes before the accident and one of the surviving crew members reportedly mentioned a bird strike after being rescued. While the exact cause remains under investigation, the incident has drawn attention to Muan International Airport’s history with such incidents, reports Yonhap News. The airport has recorded the highest rate of bird strikes among South Korea’s 14 regional airports, with 10 incidents reported between 2019 and August this year, according to data submitted to parliament by the Korea Airports Corporation. Though the absolute number is small, making it difficult to generalise into meaningful statistics, the strike rate of 0.09% of flights is significantly higher than other major airports like Gimpo (0.018%) and Jeju (0.013%). Aviation experts say bird strikes can be catastrophic. The risk is particularly high at Muan due to its location near fields and coastal areas. Nationwide bird strike incidents have been steadily increasing, from 108 in 2019 to 152 last year. Some suggest this rise could be linked to climate change, with migratory birds becoming permanent residents and shifts occurring in both the timing and species of birds appearing at airports. Airports employ various countermeasures including sound deterrents and monitoring systems, while some are now exploring AI and radar technology to track bird movements. All flights arriving at South Korea’s Muan international airport have been cancelled on Sunday, the Korea Airports Corporation said this morning. Hours after the crash (the plane was attempting to land shortly after 9am local time/00.00 GMT)), family members gathered in the airport’s arrival area. They could be heard screaming and crying as medics announced the names of 22 victims so far identified by their fingerprints, according to Reuters. Papers were circulated for families to write down their contact details. Two flight staff (one male and one female) were found alive and transported to hospital, the fire agency said. The rest of the 181 people aboard are presumed to have died, though this has not been officially confirmed yet. As we have mentioned in previous posts, fire authorities have reportedly said all but two of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 that veered off a runway and hit a wall at South Korea’s Muan international airport are presumed to have died. More than 1,500 emergency personnel have been deployed for the huge recovery effort, including 490 fire employees and 455 police officers, according to the BBC. Emergency rescue workers are trying to locate the remains of those who remain unaccounted for, while the bodies of those recovered so far are being housed in a temporary mortuary close to the crash site, the Korea JoongAng Daily newspaper is reporting. Authorities are searching nearby areas for bodies possibly thrown from the plane, Muan fire chief Lee Jung-hyun has told journalists in a media briefing. “Only the tail part retains a little bit of shape, and the rest of (the plane) looks almost impossible to recognise,” he said. As a reminder, no cause for the plane crash has been officially confirmed yet, but the fire service has suggested it could have been because of a collision with birds and poor weather conditions (see post at 07.00 for more details). Transport ministry officials have said their early assessment of communication records show the airport control tower issued a bird strike warning to the plane shortly before it intended to land and gave its pilot permission to land in a different area. The pilot sent out a distress signal shortly before the plane went past the runway and skidded across a buffer zone before hitting the wall, the officials said. Senior transport ministry official Joo Jong-wan said workers have retrieved the flight data recorder from the plane’s black box and are still looking for the cockpit voice recording device. He said government investigators arrived at the site to investigate the cause of the crash and fire. South Korea’s rival political parties have each launched separate initiatives to respond to the disaster, apparently shifting focus from their ongoing political animosity. The opposition Democratic party leader, Lee Jae-myung, has departed for Muan where he plans to remain indefinitely to support rescue efforts, reports Hankyoreh, though he plans to stay at the party’s provincial office rather than visit the crash site while recovery operations continue. The party has established an emergency response committee led by Joo Cheol-hyeon, who chairs their South Jeolla provincial chapter. Meanwhile, the ruling People Power party has formed a task force focused on investigating the crash and supporting victims’ families. The party’s acting leader, Kweon Seong-dong, announced he would visit Muan on Monday with task force members to “review accident response measures and prevention strategies” and meet with bereaved families. Both party initiatives come amid unprecedented political turmoil in South Korea. The country’s president was suspended earlier this month after declaring martial law, and his acting replacement was then impeached by the opposition-controlled parliament last week, leaving the finance minister as the current acting president. The rapid-fire impeachments reflect the bitter political battle between the ruling and opposition parties that has paralysed much of the country’s governance. A Jeju Air flight from Bangkok carrying 181 passengers and crew crashed shortly after 9am local time (00:00 GMT) while attempting a landing at Muan international airport in south-western South Korea on Sunday morning. All but two of the people onboard Flight 7C2216 are presumed dead, according to local fire authorities. Two survivors, both reportedly crew members, were pulled from the tail section and are receiving treatment for “moderate to severe” injuries at a nearby hospital. Rescue workers have retrieved 120 bodies; a further 59 are missing. Among the 175 passengers aboard the flight, 173 were Korean nationals and two were Thai nationals, officials have said. The Boeing 737-800 attempted a belly landing at about 9.03am local time after its landing gear reportedly failed to deploy. The aircraft was seen skidding along the runway before hitting the airport’s perimeter wall, breaking into two pieces at the front and tail sections and bursting into flames. The cause of the crash is yet to be confirmed, though a bird strike and weather conditions have been pointed to as possibilities. Local broadcaster MBC aired footage that appears to show a bird strike incident as the plane was descending, and one of the two survivors reportedly told rescue workers that the aircraft had experienced a bird strike. Witnesses reported hearing loud “bang” noises before the aircraft struck the wall. Officials have also said weather conditions may have played a role. Investigators have recovered the flight data recorder, while the cockpit voice recorder is still being sought. If the death toll is confirmed, it would be South Korea’s worst domestic civil aviation disaster and marks the first major casualty incident involving a low-cost carrier in the country’s history. South Korea’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, has arrived at the scene approximately 300km south-west of Seoul and has ordered “all available equipment and personnel to be mobilised” for the rescue operations at the airport. ‘“No words of consolation will be enough for the families who have suffered such a tragedy,” he said at the scene. Jeju Air chief executive, Kim E-bae, has issued official apology saying: “Above all, we express our deepest condolences and apologies to the families of the passengers who lost their lives in this accident. At present, the cause of the accident is difficult to determine, and we must await the official investigation results from the relevant government agencies. Regardless of the cause, as CEO, I feel profound responsibility for this incident.” A spokesperson for Boeing told the Guardian: “We are in contact with Jeju Air regarding flight 2216 and stand ready to support them. We extend our deepest condolences to the families who lost loved ones, and our thoughts remain with the passengers and crew.” Kerati Kijmanawat, president of Airports of Thailand, the country’s main airport operator, said in a statement he expressed deepest condolences for this incident. He said there were no reports of any abnormal conditions, either in relation to the aircraft and the runway, when the flight departed from Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok. At that time, relevant agencies made no reports of bird strikes or obstacles on the runway, he said. "AOT places the highest importance on the safety of its aircraft and passengers by continuously inspecting the runway, lighting systems, bird repellent systems, and maintaining them, while complying with international safety standards,” said Kerati. Heartbreaking scenes unfolded at Muan International Airport as more than 100 family members gathered in a meeting room to receive updates about their loved ones, reports Yonhap News. When Lee Jeong-hyeon, the chief of Muan fire station, told families that most passengers were presumed dead, the room erupted in wails of grief. “Is there absolutely no chance of survival?” one family member asked, to which the fire chief could only bow his head and reply, “I’m so sorry, but that’s what it’s looking like”. Some families expressed anger at what they saw as delayed responses from authorities and the airline. They had pleaded to be allowed near the crash site since this morning, but were denied access due to the restricted nature of the airport zone. When the acting president, Choi Sang-mok, visited the airport, families reportedly surrounded him demanding real-time updates and pleading: “Please think of the families first”. Choi could only bow repeatedly while saying, “I understand”. Transport ministry officials have revealed a critical six-minute sequence before the crash, reports Yonhap News. At 08:57, air traffic controllers warned the approaching aircraft about bird strike risks. One minute later, at 08:58, the pilot declared a “mayday”. The plane attempted to land at 09:00 and crashed at 09:03. One of the two surviving crew members has reportedly corroborated initial theories about the cause, telling rescue workers immediately after being pulled from the wreckage that the aircraft had experienced a bird strike, according to fire officials. The transport ministry has confirmed that investigators have recovered the flight data recorder, while the cockpit voice recorder is still being sought. The National Police Agency has deployed 169 forensic investigators to help identify victims. Separately, 579 officers have been deployed to assist with search operations and escort emergency vehicles at the crash site. Witnesses who have spoken to Yonhap News have described seeing flames in the jet’s engine and hearing explosions before the crash. Yoo Jae-yong, 41, who was staying near to the airport, said he saw a spark on the plane’s right wing before the incident. “I was telling my family there was a problem with the plane when I heard a loud explosion,” Yoo said. One witness said he saw the plane descending and thought it was about to land when he noticed “a flash of light”. “Then there was a loud bang followed by smoke in the air, and then I heard a series of explosions,” he said. Another witness, Kim Yong-cheol, 70, said the plane failed to land in the first attempt and had circled back for another attempt. Kim said he heard the sound of “metallic scraping” twice about five minutes before the crash. He saw the plane rising after failing to make a landing, before he heard a “loud explosion” and saw “black smoke billowing into the sky.” Fire authorities have recovered 120 bodies from the Jeju Air crash site at Muan International Airport, with 59 people still missing, according to South Korea’s national fire agency. Officials say the death toll so far includes 54 men, 57 women, and nine victims whose gender could not be immediately determined. Rescue teams have divided the crash site into three zones as they continue to search for the remaining victims. However, fire officials told families at a briefing in the airport terminal that survival chances for the missing passengers are “virtually none” due to the severity of the crash and subsequent fire. Only two people have reportedly survived the crash after being rescued from the aircraft’s tail section. They were rushed to a nearby hospital with “moderate to severe” injuries. The aircraft, a Boeing 737-800 operating as flight 7C2216 from Bangkok, was attempting what officials described as a “belly landing” after experiencing landing gear problems. The plane struck airport perimeter structures and broke apart, with most of the fuselage being consumed by fire. According to local media reports, many of the passengers were families returning from Christmas package holidays in Thailand. The flight was carrying 175 passengers (173 South Koreans and two Thai nationals), along with six crew members. Ambassadors from around the world have offered messages of condolence. Philip Goldberg, the US ambassador to South Korea, said on social media: “I was heartbroken to hear about the tragedy at Muan Airport this morning. My sincerest condolences go out to the victims and their loved ones, and my thoughts are with the people of Korea during this difficult time.” German ambassador to South Korea Georg Schmidt also offered condolences, writing: “Very best wishes for the injured and all involved in the rescue efforts. Our thoughts and prayers are with South Korea.” British Ambassador to South Korea Colin Crooks wrote: “Deepest condolences to the families of those who perished in this morning’s dreadful air accident at Muan.” Acting president Choi Sang-mok has designated Muan as a special disaster zone, reports Yonhap News. This declaration triggers a range of emergency relief measures and special administrative, fiscal, and financial support from the government to assist regions and residents affected by large-scale natural or man-made disasters. South Korea’s national rail operator has announced a special train service to help families reach Muan, reports News1. A KTX bullet train will depart Seoul Station at 3pm local time and arrive at Mokpo. The railway company says bereaved families can use these services free of charge and additional trains will be arranged if needed. Mokpo station is the closest rail terminal to Muan International Airport. South Korea’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, arrived at Muan International Airport at 12:55 PM local time to oversee the response to the disaster. Choi said at the crash site: No words of consolation will be enough for the families who have suffered such a tragedy He promised full government support for bereaved families. Choi, who became acting president just days ago amid South Korea’s ongoing political crisis, activated the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters earlier in the day. His visit to the crash site marks the government’s highest-level response to what is becoming one of South Korea’s worst aviation disasters, and the worst to have occurred on South Korean soil. The aircraft involved in the crash was a Boeing 737-800, operated by Jeju Air. A spokesperson for Boeing told the Guardian: We are in contact with Jeju Air regarding flight 2216 and stand ready to support them. We extend our deepest condolences to the families who lost loved ones, and our thoughts remain with the passengers and crew. Jeju Air chief executive, Kim E-bae, has issued official apology (unofficial translation): First, we bow our heads in apology to everyone who has trusted Jeju Air. At approximately 9:03 AM on 29 December, flight 7C2216 from Bangkok to Muan caught fire while landing at Muan International Airport. Above all, we express our deepest condolences and apologies to the families of the passengers who lost their lives in this accident. At present, the cause of the accident is difficult to determine, and we must await the official investigation results from the relevant government agencies. Regardless of the cause, as CEO, I feel profound responsibility for this incident. Jeju Air will do everything possible to promtly manage this accident and support the families of those aboard. We will also do our utmost to determine the cause of the accident in cooperation with the government. Once again, we pray for those who lost their lives in this accident and offer our deepest apologies to their bereaved families. Thailand’s prime minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra has expressed her condolences to the families of the deceased and injured on social media platform, x. Shinawatra has asked the ministry of foreign affairs to investigate whether there were any Thai passengers on this plane and what the current situation is, according to the post. Earlier reports from Yonhap news agency indicated two passengers onboard the Jeju Air flight were Thai nationals. According to Newsis, the Jeju Air aircraft was carrying many holidaymakers returning from a five-day Christmas package tour to Bangkok. The Muan-Bangkok route has only been operating four times per week since 8 December, as part of a seasonal schedule set to run until 23 March next year. Authorities are working to confirm the identities of victims by cross-referencing the passenger manifest with seating positions on the aircraft. Fire officials have now shifted from rescue operations to recovery, saying the aircraft’s fuselage is damaged beyond recognition except for the tail section, reports News1. Some victims were reportedly ejected from the aircraft during impact. Jeju Air has updated the message on the landing page of its website: Jeju Air deeply bows in apology to all those affected by the Muan Airport accident. Our first priority is to do everything possible to manage this incident. We sincerely apologise for causing concern. Fire authorities say that among the 181 people aboard the Jeju Air flight from Bangkok, all but two are presumed dead after the aircraft crashed during an emergency landing at Muan International Airport in South Korea on Sunday morning, according to Yonhap News. Rescue teams continue to search the wreckage where more bodies remain inside the fuselage. Two survivors, one passenger and one crew member, were pulled from the tail section and are receiving treatment at a nearby hospital. The Boeing 737-800 attempted a belly landing at around 9:03am local time after its landing gear reportedly failed to deploy. Witnesses reported hearing loud “bang” noises before the aircraft struck the airport’s perimeter wall, breaking into two pieces and bursting into flames. Local broadcaster MBC aired footage that appears to show a bird strike incident as the plane was descending. An investigation into the cause of the crash is ongoing. If the death toll is confirmed, this would be South Korea’s worst domestic civil aviation disaster and marks the first major casualty incident involving a low-cost carrier in the country’s history, reports the JoongAng Ilbo. Previous major accidents on Korean soil include the 1993 Asiana Airlines crash in Mokpo that killed 68 people, and a 2002 Air China crash near Gimhae Airport that killed 129 of 166 passengers. South Korea’s land, infrastructure and transport ministry has issued a statement on social media site, X, which said (unofficial translation): The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport is dedicating all efforts to managing the Jeju Air flight 2216 incident. At approximately 09:03 on Sunday, 29 December, Jeju Air Flight 2216 (Bangkok-Muan) was involved in an accident during landing at Muan International Airport. The Ministry has activated its Central Accident Management Headquarters (09:30) and is concentrating all efforts on managing the aircraft accident at Muan Airport. The aircraft was carrying 175 passengers (including 2 Thai nationals) and 6 crew members. The exact number of casualties is currently being determined. Investigators from the Aviation Accident Investigation Committee arrived (10:10) and are currently investigating the cause. Safety operation directives have been issued to all airlines and airports. The Ministry’s Central Accident Management Headquarters remains operational and plans to respond with full organisational capacity to minimise loss of life. Transport Minister Park Sang-woo has urged all parties to do their utmost in rescue operations and accident management. Jeju Air has switched its website to a minimalist, black background layout in response to the crash. In its official notice, the airline confirmed flight 7C2216 from Bangkok to Muan was carrying 175 passengers and 6 crew members when it collided with structures at the end of the runway. The company says it has “activated company-wide emergency protocols” and established a dedicated team to support bereaved families. The website provides emergency contact numbers and states: “Jeju Air will do everything possible regarding this accident. We deeply apologise for causing concern”. A least 62 people have died after an airliner carrying 175 passengers and six crew veered off a runway and smashed into a wall at an airport in South Korea. Footage of the incident showed the Boeing 737-800 skid along the runway on Sunday morning before striking what appeared to be a concrete barrier at high speed and bursting into flames as parts of the fuselage flew into the air. The accident occurred at around 9am local time, shortly after the plane, Jeju Air flight 7C2216, landed at Muan international airport about 300km south-west of Seoul, at the end of a flight from Bangkok, the Yonhap news agency reported. Read more on this story from our reporters Justin McCurry and Raphael Rashid: Fire authorities have identified 62 deaths from the Muan airport crash, according to Yonhap news agency and News1, with officials warning the death toll could rise as bodies remain inside the aircraft’s fuselage. Two survivors, one passenger and one crew member, have reportedly been rescued and are receiving treatment at a nearby hospital. The crash occurred when the Jeju Air flight from Bangkok, carrying 181 passengers and crew, attempted an emergency landing at around 9:03 am local time after reporting problems with its landing gear. Rescue teams continue to search the wreckage. Fire authorities have identified 47 deaths from the Muan airport crash as of 11:40am local time, according to Newsis and Yonhap news agency, with officials warning the death toll could rise as bodies remain inside the aircraft’s fuselage. Two survivors, one passenger and one crew member, have reportedly been rescued and are receiving treatment at a nearby hospital. The crash occurred when the Jeju Air flight from Bangkok, carrying 181 passengers and crew, attempted an emergency landing at around 9:03 am local time after reporting problems with its landing gear. Rescue teams continue to search the wreckage. Further images from Muan airport show firefighters and rescue workers responding. The Muan-Bangkok route was part of the airport’s first international services in 17 years, launched just three weeks ago on 8 December. The expansion was part of a broader revival that would see the regional airport operate routes to 18 international destinations across nine countries this winter season, according to Yonhap News. According to Newsis, witnesses reported hearing loud “bang” sounds during the failed landing attempts, with the aircraft’s landing gear reportedly failing to deploy properly. The plane then veered off the runway and struck the airport’s perimeter wall, breaking into two pieces at the front and tail sections and bursting into flames. Emergency services have set up a temporary morgue at the site. Yonhap News reports that three people have been rescued so far, with the search underway for additional casualties, while News1 reports that among those rescued are one passenger and one crew member. Local authorities say they are coordinating with major hospitals in Gwangju to handle potential casualties. The crash presents the first major test for the acting president, Choi Sang-mok, who assumed office on Friday after South Korea’s parliament voted to impeach the previous acting president, Han Duck-soo. Han had been serving as interim leader following the impeachment of then president Yoon Suk Yeol earlier this month over his controversial martial law declaration. The short-lived declaration has roiled the country, with mass protests on Saturday calling for Yoon’s removal. Among the 175 passengers aboard the flight from Bangkok, officials say 173 were Korean nationals and two were Thai nationals. There were six crew members. The National Fire Agency sayst the initial fire was brought under control at 9.46am, 43 minutes after the first emergency call was received at 9.03am. Dozens are feared dead after a plane skidded off the runway while attempting a landing without landing gear at Muan international airport in South Korea on Sunday morning The exact casualty figures have not yet been tallied, though authorities are provisionally reporting that 28 people are believed to have died, according to news agency Newsis. Fire officials have warned that given the severe damage to the aircraft, the number of casualties could rise. Jeju Air flight 2216 from Bangkok to Muan was carrying 181 people – 175 passengers and six crew – when it came down, skidded along the runway and hit fencing and a wall around the perimeter before catching fire. Rescues are underway, with two people brought out of the wreckage so far. Emergency services are continuing their search operation. The Boeing 737-800 may have suffered a bird strike that caused the landing gear to fail, according news agency Yonhap. The flight had reportedly attempted one landing before being forced to “go-around” when the landing gear failed to lower normally. South Korea’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, has ordered “all available equipment and personnel to be mobilised” for the rescue operations at Muan international airport in the country’s south-west and is heading to the crash site, about 300km from the capital, Seoul. The pilot of Jeju Air flight 2216 from Bangkok appeared to be attempting a belly landing after the plane’s landing gear failed to deploy properly, Yonhap is reporting. During the emergency landing attempt, the plane was unable to reduce its speed sufficiently as it approached the end of the runway, according to officials at the scene. The aircraft then struck airport structures at the runway’s end, resulting in severe damage to the fuselage and triggering a fire. The Jeju Air flight had reportedly attempted one landing before being forced to “go-around” when the landing gear failed to lower normally. A go-around is a standard aviation manoeuvre where pilots abort a landing attempt and circle around for another try. A bird strike is suspected to have caused the landing gear malfunction, though this remains under investigation. The plane came down at Muan international airport, in south-western South Korea: Some images are now coming in from the site at Muan international airport, where a Boeing 737 has crashed on landing. The acting president, Choi Sang-mok, arrived at the Central Disaster Management Headquarters in Seoul at 9.50am and ordered all available equipment and personnel to be mobilised for rescue operations, reports Yonhap. Choi, who is also finance minister and deputy prime minister, emphasised the need to ensure the safety of firefighters during rescue operations. After issuing the orders, Choi departed for the crash site at the airport in south-west of the country, approximately 300km from the capital, Seoul. Local fire authorities say they have brought the initial fire under control, and rescue operations are focusing on passengers in the tail section of the aircraft. Emergency services were dispatched to the scene after the Jeju Air flight 2216 from Bangkok crashed at 9.03am. Fire officials warned that given the severe damage to the aircraft, the number of casualties could rise. South Korean news agency Yonhap is reporting that a bird strike may have affected the plane’s landing gear. Footage circulating online appears to show a Jeju Air plane attempting to land without its landing gear down. The footage has not yet been verified. Rescue authorities are now evacuating passengers from the rear section of the jet, Yonhap said, citing the fire department. A photo showed the tail section of the jet engulfed in flames on what appeared to be the side of the runway, with firefighters and emergency vehicles nearby. The acting president, Choi Sang-mok, has ordered “all available equipment and personnel to be mobilised” for rescue operations at Muan international airport. South Korean news agency News1 reports that approximately 28 people are feared dead in the crash, according to fire authorities. Two people have been rescued, with emergency services continuing their search operations. The aircraft, a Boeing 737-800, was carrying 175 passengers and six crew members when it struck a perimeter wall during landing, breaking apart and catching fire. Fire services have issued their highest level-3 emergency response. Casualties are being reported after an aircraft carrying 175 passengers and six flight attendants veered off the runway and crashed into a fence in South Korea, the Yonhap news agency reported on Sunday. The agency said 23 casualties had been reported so far and that rescues were under way from Jeju Air flight 2216 from Bangkok. Large plumes of smoke could be seen rising into the sky in early unverified images emerging on social media. Emergency services received the call at Muan international airport in South Jeolla province at around 9am. We will bring you more news as it emerges.

The Guardian;US sends investigators to help establish cause of South Korea plane crash;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/29/south-korea-plane-crash-us-investigation;2024-12-29T21:03:00Z

The US is sending air accident investigators to South Korea to help determine what went wrong with the Jeju Air plane that crash-landed at Muan airport and skidded into a barrier early on Sunday, killing 179. The team of investigators includes the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Boeing, which manufactured the 17-year-old aircraft. “The NTSB is leading a team of U.S. investigators (NTSB, Boeing and FAA) to assist the Republic of Korea’s Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board (ARAIB) with their investigation of the Dec. 29 Jeju Air accident at Muan International Airport in Muan, Republic of Korea,” the NTSB Newsroom account posted on X. The Boeing 737-800, operated by the discount airline Jeju Air, had departed from Bangkok, Thailand and arrived in Muan, South Korea, at approximately 9am local time. Air safety experts have questioned why the plane had not been able to lower its undercarriage after being hit by an apparent bird strike despite having multiple redundancy systems onboard. As of Sunday evening, local time, 179 of 181 people onboard the plane were confirmed dead. The two survivors were both crew members who were rescued from the back of the plane during the initial search, according to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency. In a briefing on Sunday, South Korea’s ministry of land, infrastructure and transport reported that the control tower had warned of birds in the area just before the plane landed, Yonhap reported. The pilot then sent out a “mayday” signal and made one attempt to land. On the second attempt, the plane landed on its belly, and skidded before hitting a barrier and and going up in flames. “It is presumed to have been a bird strike. Smoke came out of one of the engines and then it exploded,” a surviving crew member said in a witness report, Yonhap reported. Joe Biden issued a statement while on vacation in St Croix in the Virgin Islands. “Jill and I are deeply saddened to learn of the loss of life that occurred as a result of the Jeju Airlines accident in Muan, Republic of Korea,” the US president said. “As close allies, the American people share deep bonds of friendship with the South Korean people and our thoughts and prayers are with those impacted by this tragedy. The United States stands ready to provide any necessary assistance.” Jeju Air flight 2216 had 181 people onboard, including 175 passengers, four flight attendants and two pilots.

The Guardian;Israel orders remaining residents of Beit Hanoun to leave;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/29/israel-orders-remaining-residents-of-beit-hanoun-to-leave;2024-12-29T19:01:37Z

Israel has issued new evacuation orders for all remaining civilians to leave Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza as part of a blistering three-month-old campaign that Israel denies is aimed at depopulating a third of the Palestinian territory, amid reports Israeli attacks have damaged two more struggling hospitals in Gaza City. The Israeli army forcibly evacuated Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia on Friday, leaving the northern third of the strip, which is cut off from the rest of Gaza, with just one small functioning medical centre, al-Awda, in nearby Jabalia. On Sunday, everyone remaining in Beit Lahia was ordered to leave after Palestinian militants launched five rockets from the area that targeted Israeli territory. Some patients were taken to the nearby Indonesian hospital, which is without water or electricity and is not in service. Medics were prevented by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from joining them there, the local health ministry said. The World Health Organization said it would send an emergency mission to the Indonesian hospital on Sunday “to safely move patients to southern Gaza for continued care”. Israel’s military said Kamal Adwan was being used as a base for Hamas operations, and that it would not allow services to resume there. The Palestinian militant group denies using medical infrastructure as cover for its activities. The IDF said it interrogated 950 people during the Friday raid on the hospital and claimed that 240 were found to be militants. Thirteen had pretended to be patients and attempted to flee on stretchers or in ambulances, it added. Most of the medical staff detained have since been released but the hospital’s director, Hussam Abu Safiya, was still unaccounted for. Nurses and doctors told local media they had been beaten, stripped and then forced to walk towards southern Gaza, reports that were corroborated by the WHO. Sunday’s evacuation order for Beit Hanoun triggered a new wave of displacement for the relative safety of areas below the Israeli-enforced Netzarim corridor, which has cut off Gaza City and satellite towns to the north from the rest of the strip. The WHO estimates that 75,000 people remain in Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia; approximately 325,000 people have fled since Israel began a new offensive and tightened sieges on the area in early October, cutting off almost all aid. The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said it had lost communication with people still trapped in Beit Lahia and it was unable to send teams into the area because of Israeli forces on the ground. Later on Sunday, an Israeli airstrike killed seven people in a house in the town, said a relative, Said al-Zaaneen. There was no immediate Israeli comment. Israel denies carrying out a deliberate “surrender or starve” campaign, saying the new offensive is necessary to stop Hamas fighters regrouping, although Israeli media reports suggest that the government aims to annex the area as a military buffer zone. Palestinian health officials said Israeli military strikes across the territory killed at least 23 people on Sunday, including a direct hit on Gaza City’s al-Wafa hospital that killed seven. The Israeli military said the strike was aimed at members of Hamas’s aerial defence unit, which it said operated from the compound. The top floor of a building at al-Ahli, another hospital in Gaza City, was destroyed by Israeli tank fire on Sunday, residents said. There were no reported injuries. In Deir al-Balah, a central town, a fourth infant died of hypothermia, as almost all of the strip’s population of 2.3 million struggles to survive in squalid makeshift accommodation and tents amid the onset of freezing and wet winter weather. Twenty-day-old Jomaa al-Batran was found with his head as “cold as ice” when his parents woke up on Sunday, his father, Yehia, told the Associated Press. The baby’s twin brother, Ali, was moved to the intensive care unit of Deir al-Balah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, which like the rest of Gaza’s medical infrastructure is suffering from a lack of medicine and supplies and overwhelmed by people in need of care. Israel’s 15-month-old war on Gaza has killed at least 45,300 people and caused a devastating humanitarian crisis, amid accusations from the international court of justice and aid organisations that Israel has deliberately strangled food and aid supplies to the Palestinian territory. Israel says humanitarian agencies are to blame for slow deliveries, and that Hamas is siphoning off aid. About 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken captive in Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the conflict. An estimated 100 hostages remain in Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead. A new Israeli government report expected to be delivered next week to the UN special rapporteur on torture has compiled grim testimonies from freed hostages, including of physical, sexual and psychological abuse of adults and minors. On Sunday, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had his prostate removed in a routine operation after a urinary tract infection stemming from the benign enlargement of the prostrate. The procedure raises fresh questions about the 75-year-old premier’s health: he was taken to hospital in July 2023 for an emergency operation to fit a pacemaker, at which time it emerged he had a chronic heart condition that had not been disclosed to the public. He underwent hernia surgery earlier this year. The justice minister, Yariv Levin, a close Netanyahu ally, is serving as acting prime minister while Netanyahu is incapacitated. The premier’s hospital visit comes as Israel faces fronts in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Syria, and a new escalation with the Iran-allied Houthi movement in Yemen. Netanyahu is also facing a personal battle in the form of an ongoing corruption trial.

The Guardian;South Korea in mourning after plane crash kills all but two onboard;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/29/south-korea-jeju-air-plane-crash-mourning;2024-12-29T18:04:05Z

Distraught family members gathered at Muan international airport in South Korea on Sunday after a plane carrying 181 people from Bangkok crashed, killing all but two people onboard, in the country’s worst domestic civil aviation disaster. Officials said all 175 passengers and four of the six crew members were killed when the Boeing 737-800 attempted an emergency landing, smashed into a wall and burst into flames at 9am local time at the airport, about 185 miles south-west of Seoul. Two flight attendants who survived are being treated in hospital. One was in an intensive care unit with fractures to his ribs, shoulder blade and upper spine, said Ju Woong, the director of the Ewha Womans University Seoul hospital. The man told doctors he “woke up to find [himself] rescued”. A stench of kerosene hung over the airport on Sunday night and scattered plane seats, suitcases and twisted bits of metal were visible close to the wrecked fuselage of Jeju Air flight 2216, which had been carrying mainly Korean passengers returning from winter holidays, as well as two Thai passengers. Joe Biden said in a statement that he and First Lady Jill Biden were “deeply saddened to learn of the loss of life” and noted that “as close allies” of South Korea whose people “share deep bonds of friendship” with Americans, “our thoughts and prayers are with those impacted”. A team of US team air accident investigators led by the NTSB, FAA and Boeing, makers of the 737-800 that crashed, would be assisting Korean air investigators, the NTSB said Sunday, as air safety experts questioned why the plane had not been able to lower its undercarriage after one engine was hit by what appeared to be a bird strike. Footage of the crash showed the aircraft skidding along the runway and veering off across a buffer zone before striking a concrete barrier at high speed and bursting into flames as parts of the fuselage flew into the air. A local fire official said the crash could have been caused by a bird strike and weather conditions, but the exact cause was not yet known. By late Sunday afternoon, floodlights illuminated the twisted wreckage as a huge yellow crane lifted the fuselage and officials continued the search and rescue mission. AFP reported that behind police cordon tape stretched across the wire fence at the edge of the runway there were plane seats and other chunks of metal, offering a glimpse of the catastrophic impact of the crash. Inside the airport terminal, more than 100 family members gathered to receive updates about their loved ones, many looking stunned and tearful. When a fire chief told families that most passengers were presumed dead, the room erupted in wails of grief. “Is there absolutely no chance of survival?” one family member asked. The fire chief could only bow his head and reply: “I’m so sorry, but that’s what it’s looking like.” One woman was carried away on a stretcher, apparently having passed out from shock. Later in the day, boards typically used for arrival and departure information were instead displaying the names, dates of birth and nationalities of the victims. “I had a son onboard that plane … he has yet to be identified,” one elderly man waiting in the airport lounge told AFP. The sounds of people wailing and screaming echoed through the two-story airport building as the names and identities of victims were confirmed. “My younger sister went to heaven today,” a 65-year-old woman who gave only her surname, Jo, told AFP. Her sister had been on holiday with friends in Bangkok, the woman said. “My husband is now trying to check whether she’s been identified.” Authorities said the youngest passenger was a three-year-old boy and the oldest was 78. Five of the dead were children under the age of 10. The only sounds near the crash site were the whirring of cameras and the murmur of reporters broadcasting live, as relatives lost for words awaited news of their loved ones. In the area around the runway, AFP reporters could see duty-free booklets and sanitary gloves worn by the flight crew scattered across the field, not far from the charred tail of the aircraft. Heartbreaking stories of family members were shared online, with one person saying his mother and his five aunts were on the plane. “I was told they would arrive around 8.50am today, so I came to the airport to pick up my mother and aunts, but I’ve heard no word from them,” he told local media. A screenshot of a final KakaoTalk message exchange between a passenger and their family was widely reported in local media. The message from the parent onboard the plane said: “Wait, a bird is stuck in the wing. Unable to land now … should I leave a will?” It was the last message, sent at 9.01am. Their child replied: “Why can’t I make a call with you?” It was delivered at 9.37am and has remained unread. A moment of silence was held at sporting events including volleyball and basketball games on Sunday. All major South Korean broadcasters changed their schedules to emergency news programming. End-of-year entertainment awards shows and comedy shows were cancelled. Transport ministry officials said an early assessment of communication records showed that the airport control tower issued a bird strike warning to the plane shortly before it intended to land and gave its pilot permission to land in a different area. The pilot sent out a distress signal shortly before the plane went past the runway and skidded across a buffer zone before hitting the wall, the officials said. “The cause of the accident is presumed to be a bird strike combined with adverse weather conditions,” Lee Jeong-hyun, the chief of Muan fire station, told a media briefing. “However, the exact cause will be announced following a joint investigation.” Lee later said the tail section was the only part of the plane to have retained “a little bit of its shape. The rest is almost impossible to recognise.” Joo Jong-wan, a transport ministry official, said workers had retrieved the plane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders. They would be examined by government experts, Joo said, adding that the runway would be closed until 1 January. US investigators are to help with the inquiry into the crash. The accident comes as South Korea is in the midst of political chaos after the suspended president, Yoon Suk Yeol, was impeached earlier this month over an attempt to declare martial law. South Korea’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, arrived at the crash scene on Sunday and said the government was putting all its resources into dealing with the incident. It is the first major test for Choi, who assumed office on Friday. Some families voiced anger at what they saw as a delayed response from authorities and the airline. They had pleaded to be allowed near the crash site since the morning but were denied access because of the restricted nature of the airport zone. One relative used a microphone to plead for more information. “My older brother died and I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “I don’t know.” Thick plumes of smoke could be seen rising into the sky after the crash at 9am on Sunday. Some photographs showed fire engulfing parts of the aircraft. Yoo Jae-yong, 41, who was staying near the airport, told the Yonhap news agency he saw a spark on the plane’s right wing before the incident. “I was telling my family there was a problem with the plane when I heard a loud explosion,” Yoo said. Another witness, Kim Yong-cheol, 70, said the plane failed to land on the first attempt and circled back for another attempt. Kim said he heard the sound of “metallic scraping” twice about five minutes before the crash. He saw the plane rising after failing to make a landing, before he heard a loud explosion and saw black smoke billowing into the sky. The national fire agency said the initial fire in the wreckage of the plane was brought under control at 9.46am, 43 minutes after the first emergency call was received at 9.03am. The country declared a seven-day national mourning period effective from Sunday, with memorial altars to be set up nationwide.

The Guardian;Manmohan Singh obituary;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/29/manmohan-singh-obituary;2024-12-29T16:37:51Z

The distinguished economist Manmohan Singh, who has died aged 92, was one of India’s longest serving prime ministers (and the first Sikh to hold the office), yet he never won a direct parliamentary election. After nearly two decades as an economic bureaucrat, Singh was often seen as more of a civil servant than a politician. Unlike India’s more charismatic leaders, he humbly admitted to being a poor public speaker. Yet, as India’s finance minister (1991-96) this unlikely politician played a crucial role in the economic reforms that led to the rapid growth of India’s GDP. Then, as prime minister from 2004, he forged a new relationship with the US, ended India’s nuclear isolation and passed groundbreaking social legislation. In all this, he was bolstered by his reputation for absolute honesty, a considerable asset in the world of Indian politics. The son of Amrit Kaur and Murmuk Singh, and one of 10 children, he was born in the village of Gah, in the North West Province of what is now Pakistan. His father dealt in dried fruit imported from Afghanistan. At partition, the family made the perilous journey through the Muslim-dominated West Punjab to the Sikh holy city of Amritsar. Singh graduated from Punjab University and went on to study in the UK, at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he received a first in economics – the only student to achieve this distinction in his final year. Later he would return to Britain for a DPhil at Nuffield College, Oxford. At Cambridge, he was influenced by two renowned economists and socialists, Joan Robinson and Nicholas Kaldor. Both held Singh in high regard. Robinson, his supervisor, described him as “very quiet and gentle in manner ... [with] a determined resistance to bunkum of all kinds”. Kaldor, similarly impressed, recommended Singh to India’s finance minister for a position. Singh had other ideas: becoming first an academic before working for the UN. Eventually he ended up in India’s finance ministry. During his civil service career, including a tenure as governor of the Reserve Bank of India (1982-85), Singh implemented the Congress party’s leftwing economic policies. While civil servants are expected to remain impartial, Singh agreed with some government decisions, later telling his daughter Daman, a journalist and author, that nationalising India’s banks was “a good idea at the time”. Yet his own thinking – articulated decades earlier in his Oxford thesis – was essentially liberal, emphasising the importance of foreign trade and greater openness to the world economy for India’s development. Such an analysis became a virtue in 1991 when the then prime minister, Narasimha Rao, in the midst of an economic crisis, decided to accept IMF conditions for a massive loan in order to prevent India defaulting on its payments. The conditions included the end of India’s infamous web of bureaucratic controls and an across-the-board reduction of import tariffs as well as severe cuts in welfare spending and subsidies. Rao appointed the apolitical Singh as finance minister, thinking no politician would risk his future by implementing the unpopular IMF conditions. The reforms that followed were one reason for the defeat of the Congress party in 1996. While Congress was out of power, Singh was leader of the opposition in the upper house of parliament. In the 2004 election Congress, under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi, widow of the assassinated prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, won enough seats to form a coalition government and she, instead of taking the role herself, nominated Singh to be prime minister. It was clear that ultimate power rested with Gandhi. However, Singh did defy her when he insisted on ratifying an agreement with the US intended to end the international ban on selling civilian nuclear equipment and technology to India. Gandhi feared opposition to the agreement would split the coalition and the government would fall. But Singh pressed ahead, pushing it through parliament by a narrow majority. His reputation for honesty was a factor in Congress’s improved performance in the 2009 general election. However, during his second term, corruption in the preparations for hosting the 2010 Commonwealth Games and in the allocation of licences to run mobile phone networks (the “2G spectrum scam”) led to questions about whether Singh was tolerating dishonesty in his government. Throughout his two terms in office, Singh’s position was weakened by his dependence on the support of smaller parties in the coalition. As prime minister he made his disapproval of the plan to allocate the phone network licences clear, but the telecommunications minister was allowed to go ahead because his party threatened to pull out of the coalition. Pressure from coalition parties delayed economic reforms that Singh favoured, which would have introduced more foreign competition in banking, insurance, retail, and other businesses. He had to go slower than he wanted on privatising nationalised industries. He also had reservations about Gandhi’s pro-poor policies, which she insisted were necessary to combat the impression that the economic reforms only benefited the prosperous. In particular, he was concerned about the cost and effectiveness of a scheme guaranteeing employment to the jobless in rural India. But he did not oppose it. His former press adviser wrote of the Gandhi-Singh diarchy that “while power was delegated, authority was not”. For 20 years as a bureaucrat and more than 30 years as a politician, Singh played a vital role in India’s economic history. As a bureaucrat he was never an out-and-out socialist; as a politician he did not fall head over heels for the market. His partnership with Gandhi, and it was more of a partnership than was generally realised, kept two fractious coalition governments in power, governments that passed important social and economic legislation. But Singh did not acquire his own power base and remained a Congress party loyalist. Although he announced he would not remain India’s PM after the 2014 election, in opposition he continued to serve as a member of the upper house of the Indian parliament until April this year. Indian politics is a rough trade, and Singh was known more as a thinker than a brawler. The last decade, however, was marked by acrimonious exchanges between Singh and his successor Narendra Modi. Modi, a Hindu nationalist strongman, questioned his predecessor’s honesty in a “corrupt government” and even claimed that he had “colluded” with India’s arch-rival Pakistan. Both allegations were met by blistering denials. In return Singh was critical of his successor’s economic policies, describing Modi’s 2016 overnight decision to render worthless 86% of Indian banknotes “a case of organised loot, legalised plunder of the common people”. He also attacked Modi’s silence in 2018 when one of his party’s elected representatives was accused of raping a teenager. Singh, who came from a religious minority, was aware of the need for mutual respect in India and was appalled by Modi’s rhetoric. During this year’s Indian elections, Singh said of Modi that “no [Indian] prime minister in the past has uttered such hateful, unparliamentary and coarse terms, meant to target either a specific section of the society or the opposition”. Singh was a transformative figure in Indian history. Not only was he the architect of India’s economic reforms, but in 2009 he became the first sitting prime minister in almost half a century to have completed a full term and seen his party re-elected with a bigger majority. He is survived by his wife, Gursharan Kaur, whom he married in 1958, and their daughters, Upinder, Daman and Amrit. • Manmohan Singh, economist and politician, born 26 September 1932; died 26 December 2024

The Guardian;Cause of South Korea plane crash unclear as officials focus on bird strikes;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/29/cause-of-south-korea-plane-crash-unclear-bird-strikes-landing-gear;2024-12-29T16:37:04Z

No one knows for certain what caused Jeju Air flight 2216 to crash, killing all but two of its 181 passengers and crew. As darkness fell at Muan international airport in South Korea and officials fielded questions from distraught relatives of the dead, the most likely explanation was that the plane had been struck by one or more birds, triggering a sequence of events that prevented the pilot from deploying the landing gear. Aviation officials focused on bird strikes – and, to a lesser extent, the weather – as the most probable cause, even as some experts said the relatively common phenomenon would not have been enough to cause a catastrophic failure of the landing gear. It has been reported that the control tower at Muan issued a bird strike warning shortly before the pilot made a mayday call. “Staff members all said they had never seen so many birds before. They suddenly flew in from outside the airport,” an anonymous airport official told the South Korean news site OhmyNews. More will be known once officials have inspected flight data retrieved from the debris of the Boeing 737-800, but aviation experts said a bird strike alone probably would not have carried the impact needed to disable the landing gear. “A bird strike is not unusual, problems with an undercarriage are not unusual,” said Geoffrey Thomas, the editor of Airline News. “Bird strikes happen far more often, but typically they don’t cause the loss of an airplane by themselves.” Other experts echoed Thomas’s scepticism. “I’ve never seen a bird strike prevent the landing gear from being extended,” said Geoffrey Dell, an Australian airline safety expert. Trevor Jensen, an Australian aviation consultant, said fire and emergency services would normally be ready for a belly landing, “so this appears to be unplanned”. Marco Chan, a senior lecturer in aviation operations at Buckinghamshire New University in England, said: “Bird strikes are a significant risk to aircraft, and the danger depends on factors like the bird’s size, the aircraft’s speed, the location of the strike and the engine design.” Birds weighing up to 1kg “rarely cause catastrophic failures but can damage engine blades or other critical parts”, Chan said, adding that the Boeing 737-800, equipped with CFM56-7B26 engines manufactured by CFM International, was designed to handle many bird strike scenarios. Birds weighing more than 3kg, such as geese or swans, posed the highest risk, especially if ingested into an engine, he said. “Even smaller birds can cause significant problems at high speeds, particularly if they strike multiple systems. While engines and airframes undergo extensive testing to manage these risks, rare and extreme scenarios remain a challenge in aviation safety.” Dell said that if a flock of birds had been sucked into the engines, that would not have shut the engines down immediately, giving the pilots time to react. Footage of Sunday’s crash shows the plane travelling at speed when it made contact with the tarmac. It did not appear to slow down as it careered along the runway and across a buffer zone directly in front of the perimeter wall. In a typical belly landing, Thomas said, “you are going to land on your engines and you’re going to have a bumpy ride. You come in with minimum fuel, you have fire tenders in attendance, covering the runway with foam, and you land at the furthest end of the runway and usually it ends up being an OK situation.” Bird strikes typically occur during landing and takeoff and are one of the most common threats to aircraft. A recent study by the US Federal Aviation Administration and the US Department of Agriculture found that 296,613 “wildlife strikes” were reported worldwide between 1990 and 2023, 98.3% of them in the US and mostly birds. The study found that the number of incidents had risen almost every year. Over the 33-year period, 83 bird strikes had resulted in the destruction of an aircraft, the report said. About 70% of the incidents occurred at or below 500ft above ground level, while those occurring above 500ft were more likely to cause damage. The location of Muan international airport, where Sunday’s crash occurred, could turn out to be significant. It sits near three major bird sanctuaries that serve as wintering grounds for migratory birds. A survey this month by South Korea’s National Institute of Ecology recorded nearly 19,000 migratory birds in these sanctuaries. The airport has recorded the highest rate of bird strikes among South Korea’s 14 regional airports, with 10 incidents reported between 2019 and August this year, according to data submitted to parliament by the Korea Airports Corporation. A 2020 environmental impact assessment for the airport’s planned runway expansion specifically warned of the risks, noting that “the outer airport area has wide farmland and tidal flats” and that the nearby area was “particularly rich in bird food sources and rest areas”. Transport ministry regulations require airports with one runway to maintain four dedicated bird control staff, or two staff for airports with fewer than 5,000 flights annually, like Muan. Nationwide, bird strike incidents have been increasing, from 108 in 2019 to 152 last year. Some suggest the rise could be linked to climate change, with migratory birds becoming permanent residents and shifts occurring in the timing and species of birds appearing at airports. Airports employ various countermeasures including sound deterrents and monitoring systems, and some exploring the use of AI and radar technology to track bird movements.

The Guardian;Letter: the Rev Donald Reeves obituary;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/29/letter-the-rev-donald-reeves-obituary;2024-12-29T16:00:18Z

While he was vicar of St Peter’s, St Helier, Morden, in south London, the Rev Donald Reeves collaborated with Ripon Hall theological college in Oxford in establishing the Urban Ministry Project (UMP). This sought to reinvigorate the Church of England’s understanding of “left behind” places and to encourage clergy working in the inner city and outer estates in their commitment. Students on UMP certainly found “the Plunge” – 48 hours in London with only 15 shillings – tested their personal resourcefulness.

NPR;21 states are getting minimum wage bumps in 2025;https://www.npr.org/2025/01/01/nx-s1-5244050/states-minimum-wage-increase-2025;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 10:21:47 -0500

Increases in Delaware, Illinois and Rhode Island will bring those states' minimums to $15 an hour, meaning 10 states and Washington, D.C., will now have $15 or higher minimum wage.

NPR;New Orleans mayor says New Year's Day incident was a 'terrorist attack';https://www.npr.org/2025/01/01/nx-s1-5244945/new-orleans-mass-casualties;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 08:05:38 -0500

A vehicle drove into a crowd on New Orleans' famed Canal and Bourbon Street in the first hours of New Year's Day. The FBI is investigating the incident.

NPR;Norovirus outbreaks are on the rise around the country and on cruise ships;https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/01/01/nx-s1-5244061/norovirus-outbreak-spreads-symptoms-cruise-ships;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 08:00:00 -0500

Outbreaks of the gastrointestinal illness are surging both at sea and on land. Here's what to know.

NPR;Life Kit's guide to a successful Dry January;https://www.npr.org/2025/01/01/g-s1-40605/up-first-newsletter-life-kit-dry-january-resolution;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 07:00:00 -0500

It is officially 2025 and 'Life Kit' is kicking the year off with a series to help people complete Dry January successfully. And, a look ahead for this year from pop culture to politics.

NPR;Ukraine halts transit of Russian gas to Europe after a prewar deal expired;https://www.npr.org/2025/01/01/nx-s1-5244936/ukraine-russia-natural-gas-pipeline;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 06:31:13 -0500

Among the hardest-hit will be Moldova, which has brought in emergency measures as residents brace for a harsh winter and looming power cuts.

NPR;Aztec Rebels: La travesía de un club de motociclistas Latinos encontrando un hogar en el Bronx;https://www.npr.org/sections/the-picture-show/2025/01/01/g-s1-38628/aztec-rebels-bronx-ny-club-de-motociclistas-mexicanos;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 05:00:00 -0500

Los Aztec Rebels son un club de motociclistas con sede en el sur del Bronx, donde Eddie Lucero, el presidente del club, dice que puedes ser un hombre de familia y un líder en tu comunidad.

NPR;Look up! Here's what's to watch for in space in 2025;https://www.npr.org/2025/01/01/nx-s1-5237427/space-celestial-events-2025;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 05:00:00 -0500

In the New Year, there will be supermoons, meteor showers and other exciting celestial events.

NPR;New Year's resolution ideas: 25 fun and practical goals to reach for in 2025;https://www.npr.org/2025/01/01/g-s1-38433/new-years-resolution;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 05:00:00 -0500

Can't think of a good New Year's resolution? We've got suggestions. Whether it's to stay out of debt or get your first tattoo, our expert guides can help make your goals a reality.

NPR;A look at the Aztec Rebels, a family-oriented motorcycle club based in the Bronx;https://www.npr.org/sections/the-picture-show/2025/01/01/g-s1-27089/aztec-rebels-south-bronx-mexican-motorcycle-club;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 05:00:00 -0500

The Aztec Rebels are a motorcycle club based out of the South Bronx where Eddie Lucero, the club's president, says you can be a family man and a leader in your community.

NPR;Blake Lively sues 'It Ends With Us' director Justin Baldoni alleging harassment;https://www.npr.org/2025/01/01/g-s1-40731/blake-lively-sues-it-ends-with-us-director-justin-baldoni;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 03:41:22 -0500

Blake Lively sued "It Ends With Us" director Justin Baldoni and several others tied to the romantic drama, alleging harassment and a coordinated campaign to attack her reputation.<br />

Al Jazeera;Al-Shifa was a dream and a nightmare;https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/1/1/al-shifa-was-a-dream-and-a-nightmare?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 15:26:03 +0000

The hospital was my dream workplace, but it turned into a place of death and despair.

Al Jazeera;Russian gas flow to Europe via Ukraine stopped: Who does it hurt?;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/1/russian-gas-flow-to-europe-via-ukraine-stopped-who-does-it-hurt?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 14:41:32 +0000

Russia’s dominance of the EU energy market ends but it will likely cause energy crisis in several EU countries.

Al Jazeera;‘We are waging an existential war’: M23’s Bertrand Bisimwa on DRC conflict;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/1/we-are-waging-an-existential-war-m23s-bertrand-bisimwa-on-drc-conflict?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 14:14:40 +0000

Leader of the M23 group says its rebellion in eastern DR Congo is a ‘defensive’ one, hopes for dialogue with Kinshasa.

Al Jazeera;Truck ramming attack kills at least 10 people in New Orleans;https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2025/1/1/truck-ramming-attack-kills-at-least-10-people-in-new-orleans?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 14:13:55 +0000

An armed man in a truck has ploughed through a crowd in the US city of New Orleans, killing at least 10 people.

Al Jazeera;Israeli attacks kill at least 20 Palestinians across Gaza on New Year’s Day;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/1/israel-kills-at-least-22-palestinians-across-gaza-on-new-year-day?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 14:13:03 +0000

Attacks reported from Jabalia in the north, Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza and the southern city of Khan Younis.

Al Jazeera;Israelis celebrate the new year while their army kills Palestinians in Gaza;https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2025/1/1/israelis-celebrate-the-new-year-while-their-army-kills-palestinians-in-gaza?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 13:13:25 +0000

While Israeli revelers partied in Tel Aviv, Palestinians in Gaza spent New Year’s Eve fleeing Israeli bombardment.

Al Jazeera;Iran to hold nuclear talks with France, UK, Germany on January 13: Report;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/1/iran-to-hold-nuclear-talks-with-france-uk-germany-on-january-13-report?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 11:44:23 +0000

The next round of talks with European powers will take place one week before Trump&#039;s return to the White House.

Al Jazeera;At least 10 killed in New Orleans vehicle ramming attack;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/1/several-feared-dead-as-truck-crashes-into-new-orleans-crowd-report?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 11:37:07 +0000

A suspect, who initially fled after exchanging gunfire with police, has been killed, US media reported.

Al Jazeera;Video: Ivory Coast becomes latest African country to expel French troops;https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2025/1/1/video-ivory-coast-becomes-latest-african-country-to-expel-french-troops?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 11:10:24 +0000

Ivory Coast has become the latest African country to expel France’s military from its nation.

Al Jazeera;Doctor in Gaza was detained as “warning to other physicians”;https://www.aljazeera.com/program/quotable/2025/1/1/doctor-in-gaza-was-detained-as-warning-to-other?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 11:07:11 +0000

Dr Ali Elaydi says the arrest of the Dr Hussam Abu Safia in Gaza is meant as a warning to other doctors

Al Jazeera;‘Ready to engage’: Syria’s foreign minister calls for lifting of sanctions;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/1/ready-to-engage-syrias-foreign-minister-calls-for-lifting-of-sanctions?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 11:01:58 +0000

In exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, Hassan al-Shaibani details the new administration&#039;s goals and challenges ahead.

Al Jazeera;In New Year speech, Putin tells Russians ‘everything will be fine’;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/1/in-new-year-speech-putin-tells-russians-everything-will-be-fine?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 10:54:13 +0000

&#039;Upbeat&#039; address was delivered exactly 25 years since the Russian president took over from predecessor Boris Yeltsin.

Al Jazeera;Five sport events to watch in 2025: From Champions Trophy to AFCON;https://www.aljazeera.com/sports/2025/1/1/five-sport-events-to-watch-in-2025-from-champions-trophy-to-afcon?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 10:41:30 +0000

In a year packed with top international tournaments, Al Jazeera picks the top five must-watch events of 2025.

Al Jazeera;Romania, Bulgaria join borderless Schengen zone after 13-year wait;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/1/romania-bulgaria-join-borderless-schengen-zone-after-13-year-wait?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 10:02:37 +0000

Identification checks at Bulgaria and Romania&#039;s land borders have ceased, opening free travel to the rest of the EU.

Al Jazeera;Ivory Coast says French troops to leave country after decades;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/1/ivory-coast-says-french-troops-to-leave-country-after-decades?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 09:14:01 +0000

Ivory Coast is latest West African nation to expel troops of former colonial power after Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

Al Jazeera;Heavy rains continue to compound misery of displaced Palestinians in Gaza;https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2025/1/1/heavy-rains-continue-to-compound-misery-of-displaced-palestinians-in-gaza?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 09:03:24 +0000

Forcibly displaced families struggle to keep their children warm as cold weather kills infants amid Israeli genocide.

Al Jazeera;Video: US launches wave of air strikes on Yemen’s capital;https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2025/1/1/video-us-launches-wave-of-air-strikes-on-yemens-capital?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 08:35:02 +0000

US Central Command has released video saying it struck &#039;Houthi targets&#039; in Sanaa and other locations in Yemen.

Al Jazeera;US Treasury hacked: Are China and the US stepping up their cyberwar?;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/1/us-treasury-hacked-are-china-and-the-us-stepping-up-their-cyberwar?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 08:23:09 +0000

Department of the Treasury calls cyberattack a &#039;major incident&#039;, accuses China-backed hackers.

Al Jazeera;Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,042;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/1/russia-ukraine-war-list-of-key-events-day-1042?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 07:42:56 +0000

Here are the key developments on the 1,042nd day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Al Jazeera;International community has left Gaza’s children to freeze and starve;https://www.aljazeera.com/program/quotable/2025/1/1/international-community-has-left-gazas-children-to-freeze-and-starve?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 07:38:24 +0000

Amjad Shawa, the head of the Palestinian NGOs Network in Gaza, says that the international community has failed Gaza

Al Jazeera;Why is hypothermia killing Gaza’s children?;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/1/why-is-hypothermia-killing-gazas-children?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 07:31:24 +0000

Babies are at higher risk of dying from severe cold as they generate less heat than adults. Hunger compounds the risks.

Al Jazeera;‘Treat us like humans’: Fishing wars trap Indians in Sri Lankan waters;https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/1/1/treat-us-like-humans-fishing-wars-trap-indians-in-sri-lankan-waters?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 07:19:33 +0000

A record number of Indian fisherfolk were arrested by Sri Lanka in 2024 amid depleting catch in Indian waters.

Al Jazeera;Panama says canal ‘forever’ theirs, despite Trump’s threat of retaking it;https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2025/1/1/panama-says-canal-forever-theirs-despite-trumps-threat-of-retaking-it?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 07:18:25 +0000

Panama&#039;s President Jose Raul Mulino has vowed the canal will forever stay under Panama&#039;s control.

Al Jazeera;Russian gas supply to Europe via Ukraine halted after transit deal expires;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/1/russian-gas-supply-to-europe-via-ukraine-halted-after-transit-deal-expires?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 07:13:12 +0000

Five-year gas transit deal between Russia and Ukraine expired on Wednesday as Kyiv refuses to extend the deal amid war.

Al Jazeera;South Korea says initial data extracted from Jeju Air cockpit recorder;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/1/south-korea-says-initial-data-extracted-from-jeju-air-cockpit-recorder?traffic_source=rss;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 06:52:29 +0000

Officials say all 179 victims from deadliest crash on South Korean soil have been identified.

BBC News;Watch: BBC visits scene of deadly New Orleans attack;https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c2ldqdq98xgo;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 15:34:35 GMT

The BBC's Anna Adams had been celebrating New Year in the city, just a few hours before the attack.

BBC News;Homes flooded and weather warnings as parts of UK battered by wind and rain;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgm5rkrp25o;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 14:27:35 GMT

A major incident is declared in Greater Manchester after flooding left people trapped in their homes.

BBC News;CCTV shows how burglar carried out £10m jewellery heist;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1d31pdzg04o;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 15:45:44 GMT

The BBC has obtained exclusive footage of a burglary targeting a socialite's north London mansion.

BBC News;Era of cheap Russian gas to EU ends as transit across Ukraine stops;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4glyjx9m71o;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 09:17:51 GMT

The EU says most states will not be affected but other European countries, including Moldova, are facing shortages.

BBC News;Watch: How the world celebrated the arrival of 2025;https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cql51k3rgzpo;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 07:34:17 GMT

The UK followed other European countries with spectacular firework displays, after New Zealand and Australia were the first to celebrate.

BBC News;30 years ago Tomorrow's World predicted 2025 - how did it do?;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjdn10yk0k1o;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:42:58 GMT

From space junk gel to hologram surgery, the team had lots of intriguing predictions. Which, if any, came true?

BBC News;Energy prices rise with warnings of more pain to come;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2612npy61o;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:53:45 GMT

The new year starts with a 1% increase in domestic gas and electricity prices under Ofgem's price cap.

BBC News;Lively and Baldoni both file new lawsuits in harassment row;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2w3zkxneeo;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 10:51:54 GMT

The two actors starred together in It Ends With Us, which was released last summer.

BBC News;Number of migrants crossing Channel in small boats rises to 36,816;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y45dmg2pjo;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 12:42:59 GMT

2024 was the deadliest year in the Channel, with 77 people known to have drowned trying to cross.

BBC News;Data extracted from first Jeju Air black box, South Korea says;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9g40v898do;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 09:16:40 GMT

A second black box, which was damaged in the crash, will be sent to the US for analysis.

BBC News;Gavin and Stacey star Ruth Jones reads Shipping Forecast as Nessa for centenary;https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c0ewj85nj8wo;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 09:48:31 GMT

Actress Ruth Jones reprised her role on a special day for the Shipping Forecast on BBC Radio 4 to celebrate 100 years of the weather report.

BBC News;'The scene was just horrific' - witnesses tell of New Orleans carnage;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crl378x8nnjo;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 15:20:01 GMT

One man who was near where the attack happened told the BBC he "walked past dead and injured bodies" in the street.

BBC News;What we know about the New Orleans attack;https://www.bbc.com/articles/cvg9lerq98po;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 15:25:03 GMT

Ten people are dead and at least 35 injured after a man drove into a large crowd in the city's French Quarter.

BBC News;New Orleans police brief media on Bourbon Street attack;https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cj0r3rjy15zo;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 14:23:00 GMT

Police say attacker was trying to "run over as many people as he could".

BBC News;The wars of 2024 brought together rivals - but created new enemies;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2ewemgjw1o;Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:30:16 GMT

What the conflict in 2024 means for 2025...