Author: News Desk

France: The French President Mr. Emmanuel Macron and United Kingdom Prime Minister Mr. Rishi Sunak have agreed on a multiyear financial package to stop migration across the Channel, days after the UK passed a bill barring unauthorised arrivals. According to the deal, the UK will help fund a detention centre in France while French authorities will deploy a new dedicated permanent policing unit and enhanced technology to patrol the country’s beaches, including drones and aircraft. The UK stated that it would contribute roughly $581 million over the next three years to help pay for the new measures, adding that it…

United States: According to NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, it has been monitoring the new asteroid 2023 DW, which has “a very modest possibility” of colliding with Earth on February 14th, 2046. The European Space Agency predicts that the asteroid will collide with Earth one in 625 times, whereas the Sentry system of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory predicts a collision once in 560 times. The only object that scientists are monitoring and that has a ranking on the Torino scale, which NASA uses to classify potential Earth-impact scenarios, is an asteroid. The chances of the space rock hitting the globe,…

Malaysia: The granting of government contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic has been linked to allegations of abuse of authority and money laundering against Mr. Muhyiddin Yassin, the former Prime Minister of Malaysia. Mr. Muhyiddin, who oversaw the nation from March 2020 until the worst of the pandemic, entered a not-guilty plea to the six accusations in a Kuala Lumpur court. After Mr. Muhyiddin was questioned by Malaysia’s anti-corruption office for a number of hours over a government support scheme that his government devised to aid building contractors during the coronavirus lockdown, accusations were brought against him. Four accusations of abuse…

North Korea: According to state media, Mr. Kim Jong Un instructed the military of North Korea to step up preparations for a “real war” as he oversaw a fire assault rehearsal with his daughter by his side. Photographs showed Mr. Kim and his daughter, both wearing matching black jackets, accompanied by uniformed officers as they watched an artillery unit fire a volley of missiles, as per the statement. The South Korean military claimed to have discovered one ballistic missile launch and to be investigating the likelihood of other launches from the same location. The exercise was conducted as South Korea…

Indonesia: A court in Indonesia sentenced two football match officials to prison terms after being found guilty of carelessness in the instance of a stadium crush that resulted in the death of 135 people and is now one of the deadliest sporting disasters in history. The incident happened in October 2022 during a tense match between bitter rivals Arema FC and Persebaya Surabaya in Malang, East Java. After a pitch invasion, police fired volleys of tear gas at the crowd, choking spectators and forcing them to flee through some locked exits, which led to the deadly crush. Mr. Abdul Haris, who…

Ukraine: After another missile strike that forced the Zaporizhzhia power plant in Ukraine to operate on diesel generators, the head of the UN nuclear agency warned of the threat of ongoing power disruptions at the facility. Pumps that move water to cool nuclear fuel pools and reactors must be powered by electricity. IAEA chief Mr. Rafael Grossi stated to the board of governors of the agency, “Each time we are rolling a dice and if we allow this to continue time after time then one day our luck will run out.” The discussions between Mr. Grossi and Moscow as well…

Thailand: According to officials, this week’s air pollution in Thailand caused nearly 200,000 hospital admissions, with Bangkok blanketed in a dangerous haze. The Thai city, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world and home to an estimated 11 million people, has been covered for days by an ugly yellow-grey mixture of exhaust from vehicles, industrial pollution, and smoke from burning agricultural land. The public health ministry stated that, air pollution had caused more than 1.3 million illnesses in the country since the beginning of the year, with roughly 200,000 people being admitted to hospitals this week alone.…

Georgia: The ruling party of Georgia has announced that it is withdrawing a draft law from parliament that has been criticised as potentially stifling media freedom and civil society after days of protests against it in the capital. The Georgian Dream Party noted in a statement that it would “unconditionally withdraw the bill we supported without any reservations.” The statement cited the importance of reducing “confrontation” in society. The bill would have required Georgian organisations receiving more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad to register as “foreign agents” or face fines. Earlier, Georgian Dream stated that the law…

Ukraine: The Ukrainian President Mr. Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the UN Secretary General Mr. Antonio Guterres have called for the extension of a vital deal allowing Russian and Ukrainian wheat and fertilisers to be exported through the Black Sea, amidst reports that Moscow does not intend to renew its participation. The UN-backed deal was signed by Ukraine and Russia for an initial 120 days in July 2022, allowing the export of millions of tonnes of grain from blockaded Black Sea ports, an agreement that was meant to tackle the threat of a global food crisis. A subsequent extension in November to…

United Kingdom: A new study has found that COVID-19 may not have as great an impact on the mental health of most people as earlier research has indicated. According to a review of 137 studies from around the world led by researchers at McGill University in Canada and published in the British Medical Journal, the pandemic resulted in “minimal” changes in mental health symptoms among the general population. Mr. Brett Thombs, a psychiatry professor at McGill University and senior author, remarked that some of the public narrative around COVID-19’s impacts on mental health was based on “poor-quality studies and anecdotes,”…