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Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak (second right) leaves after his verdict in the 1MDB trial at the Palace of Justice, which houses the Malaysian Court…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will discuss territorial issues, the main stumbling block in talks to end the war, with US President Donald Trump in Florida tomorrow, as a 20-point peace framework and a security guarantee deal near completion. Announcing the meeting, Zelensky said “a lot can be decided before the New Year,” as Washington drives efforts to end Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War Two. “As for the sensitive issues: We will discuss both Donbas and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. We will certainly discuss other issues as well,” he told reporters in a WhatsApp chat. Source link
Nearly 5,000 flights were disrupted in the US due to winter storm warnings. The flight tracking website FlightAware reported that US airlines cancelled and delayed thousands of flights during the peak travel season yesterday due to warnings of a severe winter storm. The website reported 1,139 cancellations and 3,808 delays due to the winter storm warnings. The National Weather Service issued winter storm warnings yesterday, saying they would cause hazardous travel conditions in the Great Lakes region, extending to the North Mid-Atlantic and Southern New England, from Friday until Saturday morning. Source link
The United States has carried out air strikes against Islamic State (ISIS) targets in north-west Nigeria, following a request from the Nigerian government, President Donald Trump has said.In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said he had ordered a strong and lethal strike against ISIS fighters accused of killing civilians, including Christians. He warned that further action would follow if the violence continued. US Africa Command (Africom) said the operation, conducted in Sokoto state, killed a number of ISIS militants. Nigerian authorities confirmed the strikes, describing them as precision attacks on terrorist targets. Nigeria’s foreign ministry said the operation reflected ongoing security cooperation with Washington as the country battles multiple armed groups. Source link
Authorities in Tajikistan announced the deaths of five people during armed clashes on the border with Afghanistan. The Tajik news agency Khovar quoted the country’s National Security Committee as saying in a statement Thursday that five people were killed, including two Tajik border guards, during clashes with an armed group in Khatlon province, which borders Afghanistan. The committee added in its statement that three members of a terrorist organization had illegally crossed the border and were killed during the clash with Tajik border guards.Tajikistan shares a mountainous border with Afghanistan that stretches for approximately 1,350 kilometers. Source link
People are seen on the roof of a building while floodwaters partially submerge the surrounding area in the aftermath of torrential rains, in San Bernardino County,…
A great idea in theory, recycling is a pain in practice – a dirty job that relies on people to sift plastics from glass, sort soggy paper from rotten vegetables and root out hazardous items before they get tipped into fast-filling dumps.Now artificial intelligence (AI) is here promising help, bringing potentially the biggest shakeup of the trash industry in decades.”I’ve been working on increasing recycling rates my whole career and nothing seems to move the needle. People are typically lazy,” said Dennis Bagley, who runs garbage collection for eight cities and counties across the state of Virginia.”This takes that responsibility off (the public). We can do it with AI and robotics, and increase the amount of recyclables,” Bagley told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.Bagley’s Southeastern Public Service Authority processes tens of thousands of tonnes of rubbish a year, burning the garbage of more than a million Virginia residents before transferring the resulting ash to landfill.But the regional landfill is just decades away from capacity – and as Bagley said: “In my industry, that’s just around the corner.” Now he has a solution – and one that is sparking plenty of interest in local governments across the country: an AI-driven sorting system that should halve the waste going to landfill.Over the past two years, piloting the AI process has already almost tripled recycling rates from 6.8% – where Bagley says they have been stuck for years – to 20%. The project should start operating early next year, following an agreement signed in November between Bagley’s waste handling firm and an affiliate of AMP, which is building and will operate the operation.The plant, in Portsmouth, Virginia, will be the largest such operation in the country and will be a trailblazer, Bagley said. “This is a big deal,” he said. “This will catch on across the country.”Modern recycling in the United States began in the 1960s amid the growing environmental movement, but more recent efficiencies have been hard to come by.Under the new AI system, residents should be able to throw all their garbage, recycling and even organics in one big bin, to be separated later, said Tim Stuart, CEO of AMP. He said the system should be able to pull out an additional 15% to 20% of plastics, for instance, and 40% more organics, all with a system that will keep learning over time.This could not only lower costs for municipalities, but bring in new revenue as more materials are recovered, and could make recycling affordable for rural areas that may not yet offer the service. “The industry has tried this over many years, but the downfall was the technology wasn’t there – it was very prohibitive, very dirty, with lots of manual labor,” Stuart said.”The AI allows us to be extremely efficient and then pull out additional recycling and organics that is today making its way to landfill. That is a huge opportunity.”‘Revolutionising’ wasteLocal government has long grappled with the ever-shifting demands of recycling: juggling a constant evolution in packaging and markets, as well as the vagaries of public habits, said Kristyn Oldendorf, senior director of public policy and communications with the Solid Waste Association of North America.While the association has no statistics on AI adoption, it says the tech is “revolutionizing” the solid waste industry.And AI’s potential goes well beyond waste sorting, she said. “It’s a revolution in different ways – marketing, workforce needs, everything”.Cities such as Centerville, Ohio, for instance, are experimenting with AI-assisted cameras mounted on collection trucks. The cameras scan refuse in real time, detect any “contamination” – items unsuitable for recycling – then send educational notices to the offending households.”For the city, it costs us more to recycle if we have a higher percentage of contamination. These are things the sort centre has to throw away — pay to dispose and truck it,” said Pat Turnbull, Centerville’s public works director.Centerville has tried public education on recycling, but found efforts – while effective – were labor-intensive.The truck-mounted cameras, which the city is currently piloting, promise easier, more widespread results, Turnbull said. “We want a higher percentage of recyclables for the ‘double green’ reason: We want to do the right thing for the environment, and we want to save ourselves money.”E-WasteAI might also help solve more modern trash problems, such as electronic waste, which can pose a risk to humans if mishandled, said researcher David Park.Every American makes an average of 47 pounds of e-waste a year, according to non-profit Environment America.Among this new e-waste are lithium ion batteries – used to power e-scooters, among other products – which can explode if compressed, for instance in a processing facility.AI could pinpoint a particular type of battery’s shelf life, help waste workers identify potential hazards and even suggest safe and efficient disposal instructions, said Park, a visiting fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.Elements of the recovered materials could also be of great value, he said, suggesting a future of “urban mining leases” to extract more value from trash.”In the US, just 20 to 30% gets processed, so the rest ends up in landfills or incinerators – a missed opportunity,” Park said. “The raw materials we might need to build our future are in our trash.” Related Story Source link
Nasry Asfura, a conservative businessman backed by US President Donald Trump, was declared winner of the Honduran presidential vote on Wednesday, weeks after a razor-thin election marred by delays and allegations of fraud.The national electoral council CNE said the 67-year-old son of Palestinian immigrants defeated fellow conservative TV personality Salvador Nasralla by less than one percentage pointAsfura's victory marks the return of the right-wing to power in one of Latin America's poorest countries after four years of leftist Xiomara Castro's presidency.It also aligns Honduras with a rise of conservative governments in the region following shifts in Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Argentina.’Honduras: I'm ready to govern. I won't let you down,’ Asfura posted to X after the win was declared, thanking election officials for validating his victory.Asfura, who takes office on January 27, prevailed with 40.1% of the vote, narrowly beating Nasralla at 39.5%, according to the official results.Rixi Moncada, a lawyer from the leftist Libre Party, which currently runs the government, trailed in third with 19.2%.Within minutes of the result declaration, the United States welcomed the election of Asfura, saying that it would help stop illegal immigration.’We look forward to working with his incoming administration to advance our bilateral and regional security cooperation, end illegal immigration to the United States, and strengthen the economic ties between our two countries,’ Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.Following the lengthy counting process in the Central American country's election, Rubio called on all sides to ‘respect the confirmed results so that Honduran authorities may swiftly ensure a peaceful transition of authority”.Argentina's President Javier Milei, a Trump ally, said on X that the Honduras vote amounted to ‘a resounding defeat of narco-socialism”.The result was announced more than three weeks after the November 30 election.The wait for the outcome has caused tensions among Hondurans, and the sluggish count has been accompanied by claims of irregularities and voter fraud.Nasralla had demanded a full recount due to alleged irregularities, and has not recognised Asfura's victory.’I will not accept a result based on omissions. Democracy does not shut down because of exhaustion, nor because today is the 24th – this is the saddest Christmas for the Honduran people,’ Nasralla said at a press conference in the capital Tegucigalpa on Tuesday afternoon.This is his third unsuccessful bid for the Honduran presidency.The head of the Honduran Congress also rejected the results.’This is completely outside the law. It has no value,’ Congress President Luis Redondo, of the ruling LIBRE party, wrote on X.The recount of nearly 2,800 tally sheets with suspected inconsistencies was pored over by hundreds of electoral staff and political delegates to decide the race.The CNE had until December 30 to declare a winner.Last week, thousands of supporters of the outgoing president's leftist Libre Party staged a demonstration in the capital Tegucigalpa to protest what they consider ‘fraud’ in the vote.On the eve of the election, Trump in a surprise move pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, a member of Asfura's party who was serving a 45-year prison sentence in the United States for drug trafficking.Extradited by Honduras to face justice in the United States, Hernandez insists that he had been set up by the previous administration of US president Joe Biden because of his conservative policies.The pardon was widely seen as contradicting Trump's crackdown on alleged drug traffickers in Latin America.Trump also endorsed Asfura, suggesting they could ‘work together to fight the narcocommunists’ and warned ‘there will be hell to pay’ if the conservative candidate's razor-thin lead was overturned in the count.On Wednesday Hernandez took to X to congratulate Honduran voters, saying that the country ‘closes a cycle and opens a new era with hope, commitment and responsibility”.Asfura faces major challenges.He has pledged to attract foreign investment to the nation of 11mn people and re-establish ties with Taiwan – after his predecessor warmed to China in 2023.Asfura ran on a broad pro-business platform saying private investment was necessary to move the country forward, while his political agenda focused on jobs, education and security.He will govern a more polarised country amid lingering doubts about the elections, which Castro said was under ‘serious question’ due to a lack of transparency, coercion of voters by gang members, and ‘threats’ from Trump.Honduras is also plagued by violence and the crime of drug traffickers and major gangs, which Castro has struggled to combat despite declaring a state of emergency.Although murders have declined, Honduras remains one of the region's most violent countries, with some 27 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2024. Source link
People queue to vote in the municipal elections meant to pave the way for the east African country’s first direct national polls in more than half…
The White House has ordered US military forces to focus almost exclusively on enforcing a ‘quarantine’ of Venezuelan oil for at least the next two months, a US official told Reuters, indicating that Washington is currently more interested in using economic rather than military means to pressure Caracas.’While military options still exist, the focus is to first use economic pressure by enforcing sanctions to reach the outcome the White House is looking (for),’ the official said on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.While President Donald Trump has been publicly coy about his precise aims regarding Venezuela, he has privately pressured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to flee the nation, Reuters has reported.Trump said on Monday that it would be smart for Maduro to leave power.’The efforts so far have put tremendous pressure on Maduro, and the belief is that by late January, Venezuela will be facing an economic calamity unless it agrees to make significant concessions to the US,’ the official said.Trump has accused the South American country of flooding the US with drugs, and his administration has for months been bombing boats originating in South America that it alleges were carrying drugs.Many nations have condemned the attacks as extrajudicial killings.Trump has also frequently threatened to start bombing drug infrastructure on land, and has authorised covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) activity directed at Caracas.So far this month, the US Coast Guard has intercepted two tankers in the Caribbean Sea, both fully loaded with Venezuelan crude.The comments by the White House official on Wednesday come after Reuters reported that the Coast Guard was waiting for additional forces to carry out a third seizure, first attempted on Sunday, against an empty sanctioned vessel known as the Bella-1.Venezuela's UN ambassador Samuel Moncada said on Tuesday: ‘The threat is not Venezuela. The threat is the US government.’The White House official did not elaborate on precisely what it meant for the military to focus ‘almost exclusively’ on interdicting Venezuelan oil.The US military's footprint sprawls across the globe, and most missions and capabilities are unrelated to maritime interdiction.The Pentagon has amassed a huge military presence in the Caribbean with more than 15,000 troops.That includes an aircraft carrier, 11 other warships and more than a dozen F-35 aircraft.While many assets can be used to help with enforcing sanctions, many others, like fighter jets, are not well-suited for that task.On Tuesday, the United States told the United Nations that it will impose and enforce sanctions ‘to the maximum extent’ to deprive Maduro of resources.Earlier this month, Trump ordered a ‘blockade’ of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela, but the White House official's use instead of the word ‘quarantine’ appears to echo language used during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the administration of US president John F Kennedy wanted to avoid an escalation.Robert McNamara, Kennedy's defence secretary at the time, said in 2002: ‘We called it a quarantine because blockade is a word of war.’On Wednesday UN experts condemned the blockade, saying that such a use of force is recognised ‘as illegal armed aggression’. Source link