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Ten people were killed in a shooting in western Johannesburg, South Africa.South African media reported that the incident occurred in a town west of Johannesburg. The injured were taken to nearby hospitals and are receiving medical treatment.Police remain at the scene and are investigating the cause of the shooting. Related Story Source link
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese Australian surf lifesavers lined the shore of Sydney’s Bondi Beach and fell silent Saturday to honour the 15 people shot and killed when gunmen fired into crowds at a Jewish festival by the sea.Scores of rescuers stood by the water’s edge along the entire length of the beach, six days after the two alleged assailants carried out one of the deadliest mass shootings in Australia’s history.The elder gunman, 50-year-old Sajid Akram, was shot and killed by police.His 24-year-old son Naveed survived and remains in hospital under police guard facing charges including terrorism and 15 murders.Facing the ocean while wearing their red-and-yellow uniforms, the lifeguards observed three minutes of silence.Some cried or hugged each other at the morning ceremony, with a surf lifesaving helicopter hovering overhead, television images showed.Volunteer surf lifesavers across the country, who number more than 200,000, were being asked to join the homage in solidarity with those affected by the Bondi attack before starting their morning patrols.Ocean rescuers wanted to recognise the “tragedy that has unfolded at Bondi while also reflecting on our respect and compassion for the Jewish community targeted by this attack”, Bondi’s two lifesaving clubs said in a message.”We pay respects to those who lost their lives, those who risked their lives, those who worked so hard to save lives, and all of us who will never forget.”Lifeguards at Bondi have been widely praised for their courage on the day of the December 14 attack, dragging people to safety, bandaging and resuscitating victims, and pulling panicked swimmers from the waves.A photo shared widely online showed lifeguard Jackson Doolan running barefoot down the road from a neighbouring beach towards the Bondi shooting, carrying a defibrillator to help victims.The local mayor described his actions as “remarkable”.Australia will hold today a national day of reflection with the theme “light over darkness” marking a week after the attack started with a minute’s silence at 6.47pm (0747 GMT).Flags will fly at half-mast, and Australians are being asked to light a candle in their windows to honour the victims and stand by the Jewish community, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.”Sixty seconds carved out from the noise of daily life, dedicated to 15 Australians who should be with us today,” he told reporters Saturday. “It will be a moment of pause to reflect and affirm that hatred and violence will never define us as Australians.”Federal and state authorities are talking with Jewish community leaders about establishing a permanent memorial at Bondi Beach, as well as holding a national day of mourning in the new year, Albanese said.The prime minister has announced a suite of national measures to crack down on gun ownership and hate speech, promising stricter federal laws and harsher penalties.Albanese is under pressure from critics who say his centre-left government has not done enough to curb a surge in antisemitism since the start of the Gaza war.New South Wales Premier Chris Minns outlined plans Saturday for his state to ban “hateful” slogans and symbols, such as Islamic State (IS) group flags, while giving police greater powers.”The displaying of these symbols can only be done by someone who’s either deranged or has an intention to insult and intimidate and scare,” Attorney-General Michael Daley said in a televised media conference in Sydney.A joint counter-terrorism team including police and intelligence services is pursuing a broad investigation into the alleged gunmen’s contacts and movements before the shooting.Authorities believe the pair drew inspiration from the IS group.Australian police are investigating whether they met with religious extremists during a visit to the Philippines weeks before the shooting.Detectives carried out raids with search warrants in Australia as recently as Friday, police said, without revealing the locations.”We are leaving no stone unturned in Australia and overseas,” Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett told a news conference Saturday.Police were gathering evidence to prosecute the surviving alleged gunman, she said. “We will identify the methods, capability and connections of these alleged offenders to determine who the alleged offenders communicated with leading up to the attack.” Related Story Source link
A Pakistani court sentenced former prime minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi to 17 years Saturday for corruption involving gifts the jailed leader received while in office.The former prime minister faces dozens of cases filed since he was ousted from office in 2022, ranging from corruption to anti-terrorism and state secrets charges.Khan has denied wrongdoing in all the cases, which his party says are politically motivated.’The court announced the sentence without hearing the defence and sentenced 17 years imprisonment to Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi with heavy fines,’ Khan's family lawyer Rana Mudassar Umer told Reuters.They were handed 10 years' rigorous imprisonment under Pakistan's penal code for criminal breach of trust and a further seven years under anti-corruption laws, the special court of Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency said in its verdict.Khan's jail term from Saturday's ruling would begin after he has served the 14 years from the land graft case, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said.Under Pakistani law, government officials must declare all gifts, but are allowed to keep those below a certain value or buy them back at a discount.Saturday's sentencing came on charges of undervaluing a jewellery set made by the Italian luxury brand Bulgari that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman presented to Khan and his wife in May 2021.The case is separate from an earlier case, linked to luxury watches also presented by Prince Mohammed, in which Khan was sentenced to 14 years and Bibi seven.In a post on X, the former prime minister's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party said that the latest conviction by a ‘kangaroo court is just to prolong Imran Khan's illegal, unjust incarceration’.’The entire world knows these cases are politically motivated,’ it added.Party spokesman Syed Zulfikhar Bukhari told AFP that the ruling ‘ignores basic principles of justice’.’Criminal liability has been imposed without proof of intent, gain or loss, relying on a retrospective reinterpretation of the rules,’ he said.Khan has told his legal team to appeal the decision at the Islamabad High Court, Salman Safdar, another one of his lawyers, told reporters outside the jail where the trials were being held, Geo News reported.Khan's family have ratcheted up their efforts to draw attention of his prison conditions.In a recent interview with Sky News, the former leader's son Kasim Khan said that his father was in ‘complete isolation’ and not even allowed to communicate with guards.’It's all kind of psychological torture tactics. No contact with family, no contact with personal physician or anything like that. They use these tactics to try and completely isolate him,’ he said.Pakistan's government has repeatedly rejected such allegations.Following Saturday’s verdict, the PTI announced plans for protests across Punjab today.Khan, a former cricket star turned politician, remains one of Pakistan's most polarising figures, with his legal battles unfolding as the PTI remains sidelined from power. Source link
People watch a broadcast of Putin’s annual end-of-year press conference and phone-in, at an underground passage in Simferopol, Crimea. – Reuters Vladimir Putin said yesterday that the ball was in the court of the West and Kyiv in talks to end the war in Ukraine, while hailing Moscow’s recent battlefield gains and threatening more.“President (Donald) Trump is making serious efforts to end this conflict. He is doing so with complete sincerity,” he said. “The ball is entirely in the court of our Western opponents, primarily the leaders of the Kyiv regime, and in this case, first and foremost, their European sponsors. We are ready for both negotiations and a peaceful resolution to the conflict.” Putin spoke during his annual end-of-year press conference – a staple of his 25-year rule – in which he told Russians Moscow was intent on pressing on in Ukraine, striking a confident tone.The 73-year-old has repeatedly said in recent weeks that Moscow will seize the rest of Ukrainian land he has proclaimed as Russian by force if talks were to fail. Putin was speaking hours after European Union leaders set aside a plan to use frozen Russian assets as backing for a loan to Ukraine, deciding instead to borrow cash to help fund Kyiv’s defence against Russia for the next two years. The EU leaders said they reserved the right to use Russian assets to repay the loan if Moscow fails to pay war reparations to Ukraine.Putin said the bloc had backed away from the original scheme because it would have faced serious repercussions, and it had damaged its status as a safe place to store assets.“Theft is not the appropriate term… It’s daylight robbery. Why can’t this robbery be carried out? Because the consequences could be grave for the robbers,” he said. Putin also said he did not feel personally responsible for the tens of thousands of people killed since Moscow launched its 2022 offensive, which has become Europe’s worst conflict since World War II.“We did not start this war,” he said, repeating a frequent narrative pushed by Moscow throughout the conflict. “We do not consider ourselves responsible for the loss of life.” Putin ordered the all-out assault in Ukraine in February 2022, sending troops and tanks towards Kyiv in a bid to topple Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.Listing a string of cities and towns in eastern Ukraine now eyed by the Russian army, the Kremlin chief said he was certain that Moscow will take more settlements before the end of the year. “Our troops are advancing along the entire line of contact,” Putin said. “I’m sure that before the end of this year we will still witness new success.”The Russian army made its biggest advance in Ukraine in a year in November, AFP analysis of data from the US-based Institute for the Study of War showed. In a message to the West, Putin said that Russia would not attack other countries – as long as it was treated “with respect” – without clarifying what he meant.The hours-long televised event – a mix of questions from the press and call-ins from Russia’s 12 time zones – is a fixture of the Russian political calendar, garnering frenzied media coverage in the weeks leading up to it. The Kremlin said almost 3mn people had sent questions to Putin and security was heavy in Moscow during the event.Putin mused on everything from geopolitics to regional development issues, pledging to intervene to fix the problems of citizens caught up in local bureaucracy.Speaking on the economy, Putin downplayed the costs of the war for Moscow. Russia has lived under massive Western sanctions for almost four years, while ramped up military spending had strained the public finances and price stability.He admitted that the purchasing power of Russian families have taken a hit, promising to “do everything possible to ensure that the Russian economy, the macroeconomy, is healthy and strong, and that the country’ economy has such a solid foundation”. Russia’s central bank said yesterday that it was cutting its benchmark interest rate to 16% amid slowing growth.Putin also claimed Russians were still lining up in droves to register to fight in Ukraine, with around 400,000 new sign-ups this year. In 2022, hundreds of thousands of Russians fled the country as Putin had announced a mobilisation drive to prop up the Ukraine offensive.Criticism of the Ukraine offensive is banned in Russia under wartime censorship, and Moscow has punished thousands of its citizens for speaking out against it – either with fines or prison sentences in a crackdown unseen since Soviet times. However, Putin rejected the argument that voicing an alternative point of view to the Kremlin has become dangerous in Russia.“We have no repression,” he said.All of Putin’s political opponents are in exile, prison or dead. Source link
This picture taken in March shows Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway through a window in a door during her visit to the Ulleval Hospital in Oslo.…
US President Donald Trump has ordered a temporary suspension of the Diversity Visa Program — commonly known as the green card lottery — a move that could face immediate legal challenges. The diversity visa program, created by Congress, makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year through a lottery system for applicants from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States, many of them in Africa. Winners, their spouses, and dependents are eligible to apply for US permanent residence after undergoing standard consular vetting and interviews. The suspension was directed by Trump and announced by US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who said the program “allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the U.S.”In a post on the social platform X, Noem said she had instructed the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to pause the lottery, calling it a loophole that jeopardized national safety. The action follows the deadly shootings at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Claudio Neves Valente, a Portuguese national, is suspected of killing two students and wounding nine others at Brown before fatally shooting an MIT professor. Valente entered the United States on a student visa in 2000 and later became a permanent resident in 2017, according to Oscar Perez, police chief in Providence, Rhode Island. Valente was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. “This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” Noem said of Valente, describing the suspected gunman as “a clear example’ of the program’s risks. Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 diversity visa lottery, with more than 131,000 applicants selected, including spouses of primary entrants. Winners are invited to apply for a green card and are subject to stringent security and immigration vetting. Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery, arguing that it undermines border security and admits immigrants without sufficient criteria. The suspension — framed by administration officials as a public safety measure — comes amid broader efforts to tighten US immigration policies. Source link
A French court on Thursday sentenced a doctor to life in jail for poisoning 30 child and adult patients, 12 of whom died, reportedly in an attempt to discredit co-workers. Frederic Pechier, 53, worked as an anaesthetist in two clinics in the eastern city of Besancon, when patients went into cardiac arrest in suspicious circumstances between 2008 and 2017. Twelve could not be resuscitated. Pechier’s youngest victim, four-year-old Teddy, survived two cardiac arrests during a routine tonsil surgery in 2016. The oldest victim was 89.”You will be incarcerated immediately,” presiding judge Delphine Thibierge said. An investigation was launched in 2017, after suspicious cardiac arrests were recorded during operations on patients considered low-risk. During the more than three-month trial, prosecutors called for Pechier to be jailed for life, saying he “used medicine to kill”.They say he contaminated IV bags with potassium, local anaesthetics, adrenaline, and even an anticoagulant to trigger cardiac arrest or haemorrhaging in patients being treated by colleagues. His goal, prosecutors said, was to “psychologically hurt” caregivers with whom he was in conflict and to “feed his thirst for power”.Pechier had argued during the probe that the majority of poisonings were the result of “medical errors” made by his colleagues. He admitted during the trial that there had been a person poisoning patients in one of the two clinics where he worked, but said it was not him. “I am not a poisoner,” he said.One colleague described Pechier as a very good doctor with an “oversized ego”.In tears during the trial earlier this month, Pechier recounted trying to kill himself in 2021. The verdict comes after a court in May sentenced retired doctor Joel Le Scouarnec to 20 years in prison after he confessed to sexually abusing or raping 298 patients, most of them children, between 1989 and 2014. That case raised questions about how he was allowed to continue practising until retirement despite at least one colleague sounding the alarm Source link
-The Oscars will be available to watch exclusively on YouTube from 2029, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Wednesday.The new multi-year deal means Hollywood’s most prestigious awards ceremony will be viewable only on streaming for the first time, ending a decades-long relationship with US broadcaster ABC Source link
Warner Bros Discovery’s board spurned Paramount Skydance’s $108.4 billion hostile takeover bid on Wednesday, calling the offer “illusory” as it accused the studio giant of misleading shareholders about its financing.Paramount and Netflix have been in a race to win control of Warner Bros, and with it, its prized film and television studios, HBO Max streaming service and franchises like “Harry Potter.” After Warner Bros accepted the streaming giant’s offer, Paramount launched a hostile offer to outdo that bid.In a letter to shareholders on Wednesday, the Warner Bros board wrote that Paramount had “consistently misled” them by saying its $30-per-share cash offer was fully guaranteed, or “backstopped,” by the Ellison family, led by billionaire and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.”It does not, and never has,” the board wrote of the guarantee of Paramount’s offer, noting that the offer posed “numerous, significant risks.” The board said it found Paramount’s offer “inferior” to the merger agreement with Netflix. Netflix’s $27.75 per share cash-and-stock offer for Warner Bros’ unit is a binding agreement that requires no equity financing and has robust debt commitments, the board wrote.The offer could be terminated or amended at any time prior to the deal’s completion, which is not the same as a binding merger agreement, the board said. Warner Bros has not yet set a date for a shareholder vote on the deal but it is expected to happen sometime in spring or early summer, its Chairman Samuel Di Piazza said in an interview with CNBC.The Ellisons have cited their relationship with US President Donald Trump as a reason why the deal would face an easier regulatory path. Source link
Netflix is set to release a FIFA football simulation game exclusively on its gaming platform in summer 2026, timed to coincide with the World Cup, the streaming giant said Wednesday. The game, developed and published by Delphi Interactive, will be available to Netflix subscribers and can be played solo or online with friends using only a smartphone, the company said.Los Angeles-based Delphi Interactive is also working on a premium James Bond game in cooperation with Amazon and Danish gaming publisher IO Interactive. The upcoming game from FIFA, world football’s governing body, does not yet have a title or release date, with more details to arrive in 2026, the company said.”The FIFA World Cup is going to be the cultural event of 2026, and now fans will be able to celebrate their fandom by bringing the game right into their living rooms,” said Alain Tascan, president of games at Netflix. FIFA President Gianni Infantino said the game aspires “to reach billions of football fans of all ages everywhere in the world,” calling it “a great historic step for FIFA.”Earlier this year, FIFA launched FIFA Rivals, a free-to-use cartoon-style mobile game.Netflix began offering video games in 2021 to extend its entertainment ecosystem beyond films and TV series. The service offers a catalog of mostly mobile and, more recently, TV-playable games that are included with a standard Netflix subscription. Source link