Ukraine war: Deadly explosions hit Kyiv on New Year's Eve
By Hugo Bachega in Kyiv and Robert Greenall in London
A wave of Russian missiles have hit cities across Ukraine, officials say.
Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko said there had been several blasts in the capital, causing at least one death. A hotel has also been damaged.
The attacks happened two days after Russia carried out one of the largest air strikes since the start of the war.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky had warned Russia could launch more attacks to make Ukrainians "celebrate the New Year in darkness".
Iran’s supreme court accepts protester’s appeal against death sentence
Iran’s supreme court has accepted a protester’s appeal against his death sentence for allegedly damaging public property during anti-government demonstrations, and sent his case back for review, the judiciary said on Saturday.
Sahand Noor Mohammadzadeh, 25, was arrested on 4 October and sentenced to death two months later on the charge of “waging war against God” for allegedly trying to break a highway guardrail in Tehran and setting a rubbish bin on fire.
He rejected the accusations, saying he was forced to confess to his guilt and went on a hunger strike two weeks ago.
How China's rise is reshaping Indo-Pacific security order
"Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world," a quote often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, neatly summarizes the current geopolitical situation. China has awakened and is staking its claim to be a global superpower.
President Xi Jinping said at the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in October that the country aims to lead the world in national strength and international influence by 2049, a year that marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CCP.
China's new claim to global leadership is the first "real challenge" to Asia's existing security architecture, which has been in place since the end of the Korean War in 1953, Felix Heiduk, a political researcher at the Berlin-based German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), wrote in a recent study.
UN vote on Israel's occupation 'a victory,' say Palestinians
The Palestinians on Saturday welcomed a vote by the United Nations General Assembly requesting that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) provide an opinion on the legal consequences of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.
The Hague-based ICJ, also known as the World Court, is the top U.N. court dealing with disputes between states. Its rulings are binding, though the ICJ has no power to enforce them.
The vote on Friday nonetheless presents a challenge for Israel's incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who took office on Thursday at the head of a hard-right government that includes parties who advocate for occupied West Bank lands to be annexed.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem - areas the Palestinians want for a state - in a 1967 war. Peace talks broke down in 2014.
The Death of a Forced FriendshipRussian Invasion of Ukraine Ends an Era in Finland
Russia and Finland once maintained close relations that were partly imposed by Moscow. Since Putin's invasion of Ukraine, though, the Finns are strengthening their defenses and striving to join NATO. For many, it marks the end of an era.
By Nadia Pantel
All that remains of Lenin is a bit of red glue on a marble pedestal. For 43 years, it stood in a small park in the southern Finnish coastal town of Kotka. At times, people smeared it with paint, and the local council regularly argued over whether its presence trivialized Stalinism. But Lenin remained. In 1995, a Polish artist gave him a left arm, which the statue had been lacking. And from then on, Lenin held a bronze cigarette in his hand.
Recent months, though, have seen movement on the issue. First, the city of Turku took down a Lenin statue, followed by a Soviet monument in Helsinki. In October, the Kotka City Council finally sent a demolition squad to Finland's last remaining Lenin.
The Alt-Right Manipulated My Comic. Then A.I. Claimed It.
Ms. Andersen is a cartoonist and the illustrator of a semiautobiographical comic strip, “Sarah’s Scribbles.”
At 19, when I began drafting my webcomic, I had just been flung into adulthood. I felt a little awkward, a little displaced. The glittering veneer of social media, which back then was mostly Facebook, told me that everyone around me had their lives together while I felt like a withering ball of mediocrity. But surely, I believed, I could not be the only one who felt that life was mostly an uphill battle of difficult moments and missed social cues.
I started my webcomic back in 2011, before “relatable” humor was as ubiquitous online as it is today. At the time, the comics were overtly simple, often drawn shakily in Microsoft Paint or poorly scanned sketchbook pages. The jokes were less punchline-oriented and more of a question: Do you feel this way too? I wrote about the small daily struggles of missed clock alarms, ill-fitting clothes and cringe-worthy moments.
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