BBC team reaches Aleppo to see scale of quake destruction
Syrian state media say the government has now given permission for international aid destined to earthquake victims to be sent into rebel-held territory across government lines, Reuters news agency reports.
They said aid distribution would be supervised by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Red Crescent with UN help.
If it goes ahead, the move would be a highly welcome step for those living in areas under the control of rebel groups in northern Syria, who have so far only received limited assistance in the form of UN aid trucks that have travelled across the border with Turkey.
Meanwhile, the UN’s human rights office has called for an immediate ceasefire to be reached in Syria in the wake of the earthquake.
Summary
- More than 22,000 people are now known to have died after Monday's earthquakes in southern Turkey and northern Syria
- Officials say UN lorries carrying aid have crossed the border from Turkey into Syria today, the second convoy this week
- But aid workers in northern Syria are desperate for more help, with one doctor saying there's not enough medical supplies for even 20% of those in need
- The situation on the ground in northern Syria has been described as "absolutely catastrophic" by Syria's civil defence group, the White Helmets
- A BBC reporter has reached Aleppo in northern Syria - one of the first international journalists to report from the city
- Assaf Abboud finds flattened buildings and hundreds still missing, with rescue efforts ongoing
- Meanwhile rescuers elsewhere in Syria and Turkey are continuing their painstaking work, but hopes are fading for the many still trapped under the rubble
‘The darkness of not knowing disappears’
How a China data leak is giving Uyghurs answers about missing family members
By Rebecca Wright, Ivan Watson and the Visuals Team, CNN
A smaller subset of this data — known as the Xinjiang Police Files — was published last May. Further examination of the files then revealed their full extent, uncovering approximately 830,000 individuals across 11,477 documents and thousands of photographs.
The police files were hacked and leaked by an anonymous individual, then obtained by Adrian Zenz, a director of China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a US-based non-profit. Zenz and his team spent months developing the search tool, which they hope will empower the Uyghur diaspora with concrete information about their relatives, after years of separation and silence.
Using the new online search tool, CNN tracked down the records for 22 individuals after trialing it among the Uyghur diaspora across three continents.
Child among two people killed in Jerusalem bus stop attack
Palestinian driver rams car into people on outskirts of city, in incident described by PM as terrorist attack
Reuters in Jerusalem
Two people including a child have been killed and several injured after a Palestinian driver rammed his car into a group of people at a bus stop on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
A police spokesperson said the driver, who was shot at the scene, was dead. An Israeli security official identified him as Hussain Qraqaa, 31, a resident of Issawiya in East Jerusalem.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, described the incident on Friday as a terrorist attack and ordered security forces to be reinforced.
India: E-waste provides poor children a dangerous living
Discarded laptops and smartphones contain valuable metals. However, extraction, usually performed by children, is a crude and hazardous process that goes unregulated.
Seelampur on the outskirts of New Delhi is home to India's largest electronic waste (e-waste) dismantling market where nearly 50,000 people scrape out a living extracting metals. Many of them are children who earn a living by dismantling, extracting and recycling e-waste.
Thirteen-year-old Arbaz Ahmad and his friend Salman comb through the e-waste carrying a big plastic bag and breaking apart circuit boards and other parts of devices with their bare hands. They burn the material on the roadside to extract metals without wearing any protective gear. The duo sells the valuable metals they've managed to extract for around €5 ($5.4).
"There are days when we work for more than 10 hours and earn more money. My earning depends on how fast I reach the dumping ground and what I get my hands on. There are days when I find useful metals," Ahmad said.
'World forgot about Syria,' says WHO as aid trickles in
A senior World Health Organization official bemoaned Syria's "forgotten crisis" on Friday, as aid began trickling into rebel-held areas, days after a devastating earthquake.
As the WHO prepared to fly medical supplies to Syria from Dubai, Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, said a huge backlog of aid was waiting to reach Syria's rebel-held northwest.
The single aid corridor bypassing government-controlled areas and servicing the war-shattered region, which is home to four million people, was temporarily cut off by Monday's massive quake.
Cabinet adopts policy of using nuclear reactors beyond 60 years
Japan's cabinet formally adopted a policy on Friday that will allow for the operation of nuclear reactors beyond their current 60-year limit alongside the building of new units to replace aging ones as part of efforts to cut carbon emissions while ensuring adequate national energy supply.
The government's "green transformation" policy features extensive use of nuclear power along with renewable energy and marks a major policy shift for the country, which suffered a devastating nuclear disaster in 2011. The cabinet decision follows a meeting in late December where the policy was agreed upon.
The government also plans to raise about 20 trillion yen through the issuance of green transformation bonds to boost investment in decarbonization projects, as it estimates public and private investment of over 150 trillion yen will be necessary over the next 10 years.
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