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PARIS, Dec 1, 2023 (AFP) – Eight Israeli hostages, including six women aged between 21 and 41, were released by Hamas on Thursday, according to accounts given by their relatives to AFP, information from the Israeli press and the Hostage Families Forum. The truce agreement between Israel and Hamas stipulates that a minimum of 10 Israeli hostages should be released alive each day. The release of two Russian-Israeli women in addition to 10 others a […]
WELLINGTON, Dec 1, 2023 (AFP) – Cellphones will be banned in schools across New Zealand, conservative Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said Friday, as his fledgling government looks to turn around the country’s plummeting literacy rates. New Zealand’s schools once boasted some of the world’s best literacy scores, but levels of reading and writing have declined to the point that some researchers fear there is a classroom “crisis”. Luxon declared he would ban phones at schools […]
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 1, 2023 (AFP) – A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked a ban on TikTok set to come into effect next year in Montana, saying the popular video sharing app was likely to win its pending legal challenge. US District Court Judge Donald Molloy placed the injunction on the ban until the case, originally filed by TikTok in May, has been ruled on its merits. Molloy deemed it likely TikTok and its […]
TOKYO, Dec 1, 2023 (AFP) – Japan’s coastguard on Friday scoured the seabed for the wreckage of an Osprey US military aircraft that crashed this week, with still no sign of seven missing airmen. Tokyo’s defence minister has called on the US military in Japan to ground its Ospreys pending safety checks, but the Pentagon said it was still operating the aircraft and had not received a suspension request. The tilt-rotor CV-22B Osprey went down […]
JERUSALEM, Nov 30, 2023 (AFP) – Hamas claimed responsibility for a shooting attack in Jerusalem that killed three people on Thursday, shortly after the extension of a truce between Israel and the Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip. Police said the two gunmen who carried out the attack were from annexed east Jerusalem and were shot dead at the scene, near a bus stop on the western side of the city, where there are […]
MOSCOW, Nov 30, 2023 (AFP) – Russia on Thursday banned the “international LGBT movement,” claiming it was an extremist group in a move that cements a long crackdown on the community as the Kremlin pushes ultra-conservative social values. The conservative turn promoted by President Vladimir Putin — often portrayed as an existential fight against Western liberal values — has accelerated since the offensive in Ukraine. The supreme court handed down the ruling in Moscow on […]
KAMPALA, Nov 30, 2023 (AFP) – At least 17 people have died in an anthrax outbreak in southern Uganda this month, a local official told AFP Thursday, saying the situation was “under control”. Anthrax is spread through a bacterium that is encased in a tough, rod-shaped shell. The spores exist naturally in the soil and commonly infect livestock which ingest or inhale them while grazing. Humans can become infected from contact through breathing in the […]
KAMPALA, Nov 30, 2023 (AFP) – A Ugandan woman aged 70 has given birth to twins, her doctor said Thursday, in what the mother hailed as a miracle. Safina Namukwaya described her joy at the arrival of the twins who were born on Wednesday at a medical facility in the capital Kampala, where she had received fertility treatment. “This is extraordinary achievement, delivering twins to Africa’s oldest mother at 70 years,” Doctor Edward Tamale Sali, […]
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 30, 2023 (AFP) – Microsoft, the tech titan that has invested billions of dollars in ChatGPT creator OpenAI, has been given a seat on the startup’s board. The nomination was shared in a memo to OpenAI staff on Wednesday that was later posted to the company’s blog and included a list of priorities from CEO Sam Altman about how the company would move forward. The boardroom addition comes after OpenAI was thrown […]
By Adel Zaanoun with Leon Bruneau in Tel Aviv GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories, Nov 30, 2023 (AFP) – Hamas is willing to further extend a truce for hostage and prisoner exchanges, a source close to the militant group said Thursday, and the United States urged Israel to set up safe zones for Gaza civilians as a pause in their deadly war neared expiry. International pressure has risen for a lasting halt to the war, sparked […]
By Catherine HOURS PARIS, Nov 30, 2023 (AFP) – Host United Arab Emirates wants nearly 200 nations attending the COP28 climate summit starting Thursday to commit to tripling installed renewable energy capacity worldwide by 2030, a goal experts say is “ambitious but achievable”. If the UN forum sets that target in stone, it could become a key marker of COP28’s success, especially if coupled with a pledge to drawn down fossil fuel use. – Why […]
JERUSALEM, Nov 30, 2023 (AFP) – Two people were killed and eight wounded, including five left in a serious condition, in a shooting in Jerusalem on Thursday, first responders said. Police said two suspects “implicated in the shootings were neutralised on the spot” after the attack near a bus stop on the western side of Jerusalem, where there are no checkpoints guarding entrance to the city. “Two terrorists arrived in a car, one of them […]
