US and UK navies repel largest Houthi attack on Red Sea shipping
By David Gritten
BBC News
UK and US naval forces have repelled the largest attack yet by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on Red Sea shipping, UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps says.
Carrier-based jets and warships shot down 21 drones and missiles launched by the Iran-backed group overnight.
The Houthis said they targeted a US ship in retaliation for the killing of rebels who tried to attack a container ship by using speed boats last month.
Mr Shapps said he had “no doubt” that Iran was heavily behind such attacks.
‘I was crying with panic’: the workers targeted in Ecuador TV station attack
Armed gang stormed station and held journalists and other workers as horrified viewers watched
A little after 2pm on Tuesday, Jorge Rendón and a colleague were reading the news live on Ecuador’s TC Televisión network when they learned that the scuffle they could hear in the corridor outside the studio wasn’t a scuffle.
“We get the producer in our earpieces and he says: ‘Please be careful. They’re forcing their way in. They’re robbing us. They’re attacking us.’” Seconds later, Rendón, a broadcast journalist based in Ecuador’s biggest city, Guayaquil, heard the assailants breaking through the studio’s thick, reinforced doors.
The 13 masked attackers, however, hadn’t come to rob the station. As the subsequent screams and gunshots made clear, their aim was to deliver a message that could not be ignored.
Poland: Jailed ex-minister says starting hunger strike
Poland’s former Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski has announced he’s going on hunger strike, a day after his dramatic arrest inside the presidential palace. He says the case against him is politically motivated.
Polish former Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski said on Wednesday that he would be starting a hunger strike in prison, a day after he was arrested despite having taken refuge with political ally and President Andrzej Duda in the presidential palace in Warsaw.
Kaminski is a senior politician with Poland’s largest political party, PiS, which lost control of government in recent elections but still holds the presidency.
“I declare that I treat my conviction… as an act of political revenge,” Kaminski said in the statement, read by his former deputy, Blazej Pobozy, at a press conference.
Work to shore up soft seabed for base relocation to Henoko starts
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
January 10, 2024 at 17:44 JST
Ahead of schedule, land reclamation work in Okinawa Prefecture for the relocation of a U.S. military base restarted after the central government approved plan changes over the prefecture’s objection.
The Defense Ministry on Jan. 10 began construction in Oura Bay where soft seabed was found for the relocation of U.S. Futenma Air Station in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, to the Henoko district of Nago, also in the prefecture.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi announced the ministry’s decision at a news conference.
The ministry on Jan. 9 started preparations and workers installed anti-pollution membranes to prevent fine sand and other substances from leaking out to sea.
As West condemns Bangladesh election, China and Russia embrace Dhaka
The nation of 170 million people is moving closer to Beijing and Moscow amid tensions with the West, say analysts.
Hours after Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League was declared the landslide winner in Sunday’s election, which the opposition had boycotted, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina hosted a queue of foreign diplomats, each coming to congratulate her.
The envoys of India, the Philippines, Singapore and other nations were there. Also visiting the prime minister were the ambassadors of Russia and China.
In Washington and London, meanwhile, the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States criticised the election as illegitimate. US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, in a statement, said that Washington believed the voting process was “not free and fair, and we regret that not all parties participated”. The UK criticised what it described as “acts of intimidation and violence” during the election.
Snow is disappearing as the planet warms. A new study shows who’s losing the most
Vast swaths of the US have been hit with powerful storms, including blizzards that have blanketed parts of the Midwest and Northeast in snow. But something’s amiss: many states accustomed to white winters are now getting more rain than snow.
A new study published on Wednesday shows that the human-caused climate crisis has reduced snowpack in most parts of the Northern Hemisphere in the last 40 years, threatening crucial water resources for millions of peopl
It might seem logical that a warmer world would be less hospitable to snow, but the relationship between snow and climate change is complex, and scientists have for many years struggled to make a clear connection between the two.
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