A powerful New York politician arrested for corruption, a Chicago couple faces murder charges in Indonesia, and an innocent man released after almost 40 years. Justin Mitchell reports.
The Biden administration on Friday took steps to limit both oil and gas drilling and mining in Alaska, angering state officials who said the restrictions will cost jobs and make the U.S. reliant on foreign resources. The measures are aligned with President Joe Biden's efforts to rein in oil and gas activities on public lands and conserve 30% of U.S. lands and waters to combat climate change. The Interior Department finalized a regulation to block oil and gas development on 40% of Alaska's National Petroleum Preserve to protect habitats for polar bears, caribou and other wildlife and the way of life of indigenous communities.
An important ally of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif demanded the government lift a two-month-old ban on the social media platform X, saying on Friday that it violates citizens' right to speech and expression. The ban on X has been in place since February, when the party of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan announced a nationwide protest against alleged election rigging ahead of the Feb. 8 vote that allowed Sharif to come to power. “We demand that the ban on X, which is known as Twitter, should immediately be lifted by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to stop any further violation of human rights,” said Farhatullah Babar, a senior leader of the Pakistan People's Party.
The rights of LGBTQ+ students will be protected by federal law and victims of campus sexual assault will gain new safeguards under rules finalized Friday by the Biden administration. The new provisions are part of a revised Title IX regulation issued by the Education Department, fulfilling a campaign pledge by President Joe Biden.
More people living near an erupting volcano on Indonesia's Sulawesi Island were evacuated on Friday due to the dangers of spreading ash, falling rocks, hot volcanic clouds and the possibility of a tsunami. An international airport in Manado city, which is located less than 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the erupting Mount Ruang, is still temporarily closed as volcanic ash was spewed into the air. Satellite imagery from the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency showed that the ash has spread to the west, northwest, northeast and southeast, covering Manado and North Minahasa, according to a statement from Indonesia’s Transportation Ministry.
Sitting around a fire in the hills of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Ibrahim Abu Alyah and some friends stood watch over his herd in the aftermath of a settler attack on their village.People watched powerless as settlers rampaged through the village.
Desperate to end a weeks-long strike by thousands of doctors, South Korea’s government said Friday it will slow down a plan to admit more students to the country's medical schools from next year. More than 90% of the country’s 13,000 medical interns and residents have been on strike since late February, when the government announced a plan to recruit 2,000 more students next year. The government adopted a compromise proposal put forward by the presidents of six state-run universities on Thursday, under which medical schools will increase admissions over several years.
Ukraine’s air force claimed Friday it shot down a Russian strategic bomber, but Moscow officials said the plane crashed in a sparsely populated area due to a malfunction after a combat mission. Previous Ukrainian claims of shooting down Russian warplanes during their more than two-year war have met with silence or denials from Moscow. Russia’s air force is vastly more powerful than Ukraine’s, but sophisticated missile systems provided by Kyiv’s Western partners are a major threat to Russian aviation as the Kremlin’s forces slowly push forward along the around 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line in what has become a grinding war of attrition.
A group of Japanese doctors has filed a civil lawsuit against U.S. search giant Google, demanding damages for what they claim are unpoliced derogatory and often false comments. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Tokyo District Court, demands 1.4 million yen ($9,400) in damages for 63 medical professionals. Google said in an emailed statement Friday that it is working “24 hours a day” to reduce misleading or false information on its platform, combining human and technological resources “to delete fraudulent reviews.”
Oil prices rallied and equities fell Friday as reports said explosions had been heard in Iran and Syria, fuelling fears of an escalation of the Middle East crisis after last weekend's missile attack on Israel by Tehran."It is now clear that the escalating shadow warfare between Israel and Iran... has finally ignited the powder keg in the Middle East, and we have moved decisively out of the shadows and into the glaring light of open conflict," said Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management.
Two people have been detained in Poland on suspicion of attacking Leonid Volkov, an exiled top aide to the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda told reporters on Friday. Volkov suffered injuries from hammer blows in the attack on March 12 outside his home in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. Nauseda said the suspects would be transferred to Lithuania.
Israel has carried out a strike inside Iran, a US official told CNN Friday, a move that threatens to push the region deeper into conflict. The target is not nuclear, the official added.
The New York Police Department arrested more than 100 people Thursday on suspicion of criminal trespass during a pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia University that began with an encampment a day earlier, according to a law enforcement official.
An unclaimed aerial attack in central Iran on Friday comes fresh on the heels of tit-for-tat Iranian and Israeli strikes earlier this month, marking a potentially dangerous escalation of the Middle East conflict.
The Fed chair this week doused any hope homebuyers still had that mortgage rates would soften anytime soon.
Wall Street strategists are becoming less confident in small cap stocks as Fed rate cut hopes diminish.
Two people have been detained in Poland on suspicion of attacking Russian opposition activist Leonid Volkov, an ally of the late activist Alexei Navalny, the Lithuanian president announced on Friday. Volkov was attacked in March outside his home in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, where he lives in exile. President Gitanas Nausėda announced the arrests to reporters in Vilnius and thanked Poland for its work.
Three workers from the Philippines have died in heavy flooding in the United Arab Emirates, Filipino officials announced, as the desert country struggled on Friday to recover from record rains.Middle East financial centre Dubai was particularly badly hit by the rain fall, the heaviest since records began 75 years ago.
An attack on pro-government fighters by suspected members of the Islamic State group in central Syria killed 22 pro-government fighters, an opposition war monitor and pro-government media reported Friday. Gunmen attacked a bus carrying members of the Quds Brigade, a government and Russian-backed faction of mostly Palestinian fighters in Syria, near the town of Sukhna late Thursday night. There was no immediate claim of responsibility but both the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based opposition war monitor, and the pro-government radio station Sham FM said IS was behind the attack.
San Francisco is the latest U.S. city preparing to receive a pair of pandas from China, in a continuation of Beijing’s famed “panda diplomacy.” San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced the panda loan in Beijing on Friday, alongside officials from China Wildlife Conservation Association, or CWCA.
Apple has removed Meta's WhatsApp and Threads from its App Store in China on orders from the country's internet regulator, US media reported Friday."The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) ordered the removal of these apps from the China storefront based on their national security concerns," it added, referring to China's internet regulator.
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