Protesters in Pakistan's restive northwest chanted anti-government slogans Friday as funeral prayers were held for 42 Shiite Muslims who were ambushed and killed by gunmen a day earlier in one of the region's deadliest such assaults in recent years. The victims were traveling in a convoy of several vehicles from the northwestern city of Parachinar to Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, when the attack took place Thursday. Thursday’s attack took place in Kurram, an area where Shiite Muslims dominate.
Delta and United have become the most profitable U.S. airlines by targeting premium customers while also winning back a significant share of travelers on a tight budget. Other discount airlines are on much better financial footing than Spirit, but they too are lagging far behind the full-service airlines when it comes to recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. Most industry experts think Frontier Airlines and other so-called ultra-low-cost carriers will fill the vacuum if Spirit shrinks, and that there is still plenty of competition to prevent prices from spiking.
Cristian Fernando Gutierrez-Ochoa — the son-in-law of Jalisco New Generation cartel leader "El Mencho" — was arrested in Riverside, California, officials said.
Trump nominated a Christian Zionist to Israel ambassador. What it says about pro-Israel evangelical influence in politics and success with organizing.
Nearly all of the U.S. is facing drought, with Kentucky becoming the 49th state to enter drought in November, due to a historically dry autumn
Astronomers have spotted orbiting around a young star a newborn planet that took only 3 million years to form - quite swift in cosmic terms - in a discovery that challenges the current understanding of the speed of planetary formation. This infant world, estimated at around 10 to 20 times the mass of Earth, is one of the youngest planets beyond our solar system - called exoplanets - ever discovered. It resides alongside the remnants of the disk of dense gas and dust circling the host star - called a protoplanetary disk - that provided the ingredients for the planet to form.
Bitcoin has continued its massive gains, rising around the $100,000 mark in the weeks since the election based on expectations of improved regulatory treatment. But for the cryptocurrency, this rise just might be its own catalyst.
Seniors awaiting bigger Social Security checks next year may be shocked to discover higher Medicare premiums will eat up a chunk of their cost-of-living adjustment.
More aid workers, health care staffers, delivery personnel and other humanitarians have been killed in 2024 than in any other single year, the United Nations reported Friday. Bloodshed in the Middle East has been the single-biggest cause of the 281 deaths among humanitarians globally this year, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “Before the year is even over, 2024 has become the deadliest on record for humanitarian personnel worldwide,” OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said.
Recent events show that there is a real risk of a global conflict breaking out, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Friday, after Russia fired a hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile at a Ukrainian city. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the strike was a response to the U.S. and UK allowing Kyiv to strike Russian territory with advanced Western weapons, a move he said had given the conflict "elements of a global character". Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the Russian missile strike another escalation after deployment of North Korean troops on Russian soil.
Chinese President Xi Jinping pitched his country as a font of stability at the G20 summit this week as a second Trump term looms, but analysts say wary Western nations are likely to hold Beijing at bay."We're seeing countries' governments trying not to put all their eggs in one basket," Hameiri told AFP. - Stranger no more - Chinese state media has recently portrayed their country as a beacon of true multilateralism and globalisation while criticising what Beijing views as US meddling in global
More aid workers have been killed this year than in any year since tallies began, the U.N. humanitarian office said on Friday, with most of them killed in the Gaza conflict. So far this year there have been 281 aid worker victims, according to the Aid Worker Security database which has recorded incidents dating back to 1997, versus 280 in 2023 which held the previous record. It showed 178 had been killed in the occupied Palestinian territories including Gaza this year which has been the deadliest conflict for the United Nations.
South Sudan security forces were investigating Friday a shootout at the home of the troubled nation's powerful former spy chief Akol Koor, who was sacked almost two months ago amid rumours of a coup plot.Koor became head of the feared National Security Services (NSS) after South Sudan's independence in 2011 but was sacked in October leading to widespread speculation he had been planning to overthrow Kiir.
Pope Francis will visit Corsica on Dec. 15, the local diocese said on its website on Thursday, in the first recorded trip of a pope to the French island in the Mediterranean. The short visit to the island's capital city Ajaccio, where Francis is expected to speak at a conference on popular religiosity across the Mediterranean region, will mark his 47th foreign trip since becoming pope in 2013. Corsica, noted for its steep, mountainous terrain and as the birthplace of Napoleon, is the fourth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.
Ukraine's parliament canceled a session on Friday as security was tightened after Russia deployed a new ballistic missile that threatens to escalate the nearly three-year war. Russian troops also struck Sumy with Shahed drones overnight killing two people and injuring 12 more, the regional administration said Friday morning. Ukraine’s Suspilne media, quoting Sumy regional head Volodymyr Artiukh, said the Russians used Shaheds stuffed with shrapnel elements for the first time in the region.
Jailed Hong Kong tycoon Jimmy Lai on Friday said he had advocated for "peaceful resistance" against China's erosion of the city's freedoms and tried to "reduce violence" during huge democracy protests in 2019."I always advocate peaceful resistance," he said, adding that the purpose of the articles was to "resist the encroachment of China on our freedom".
Rowdy cheers spilled from a Hong Kong banquet hall hosting a mass wedding party, as one of the 20 elderly couples renewing their vows coquettishly shared a strawberry marshmallow mouth-to-mouth.After the banquet, the couples piled into two brightly coloured Hong Kong trams and set off along the tracks, waving to passers-by who stopped to watch delightedly.
Japan approved a 39 trillion yen ($250 billion) economic stimulus package Friday centered around initiatives it said were aimed at boosting individual incomes. The broad plan passed by the Cabinet is the centerpiece of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s recently installed administration. It provides support for digital innovation in the world’s fourth largest economy, subsidies to defray for rising energy costs and help for low-income households.
The Kremlin said on Friday that a strike on Ukraine using a newly developed hypersonic ballistic missile was designed as a message to the West that Moscow will respond to their "reckless" decisions and actions in support of Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was speaking a day after President Vladimir Putin said Moscow had fired the new missile - the Oreshnik or Hazel Tree - at a Ukrainian military facility. "The main message is that the reckless decisions and actions of Western countries that produce missiles, supply them to Ukraine and subsequently participate in strikes on Russian territory cannot remain without a reaction from the Russian side," Peskov told reporters.
Russian Defence Minister Andrei Belousov said on Friday that Russian forces had accelerated their advance in the north-east of Ukraine and had ground down the Ukrainian army's best units there. Belousov was shown in a Defence Ministry video visiting a Russian command post in Ukraine manned by the Russian army grouping "North" where he handed out medals for bravery. Russian forces, who hold a little less than 20% of Ukraine's territory, have made advances on the logistics town of Kupiansk in the northeastern Kharkiv region and have been advancing in the last two months at various frontline points at their fastest rate since March 2022, according to open source data.