Israel-Hamas ceasefire enters Day 2, Palestinians search Gaza debris
- The grisly search for an estimated 10,000 bodies buried under the concrete wasteland in Gaza is now under way, the civil defence agency says, with at least 62 of the dead recovered after the ceasefire halted fighting.
- Celebrations in the occupied West Bank as 90 Palestinian prisoners are freed from Israeli jails as part of a ceasefire deal in Gaza.
- Palestinians in Gaza are returning to their ruined homes and awaiting the delivery of much-needed food and medical assistance after Israeli forces finally ended their 15-month-long bombardment of the besieged territory.
- An estimated 600 desperately needed aid trucks will enter Gaza each day as part of the first phase of the ceasefire.
- Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 47,035 Palestinians and wounded 111,091 since October 7, 2023. At least 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks that day and more than 200 were taken captive.
‘It was almost a relief when someone died’: former prisoners on the torture and terror of Eritrea’s secret prisons
Those who have escaped one of the world’s most repressive states give a rare glimpse into their horrific ordeal in the country’s vast gulag system
Mon 20 Jan 2025 08.00 GMT
In the darkened office of his church, the preacher recalls how he was tortured. His guards would put a wooden pole behind his bent knees, suspend him upside down from the ceiling and beat the soles of his feet with rubber pipes.
In the two decades before he fled Eritrea with his family in 2020, he spent eight years in detention. Some of it was in airless, underground cells so cramped there was no room to lie down. At other times he was made to break stones and harvest crops. Then there were the torture chambers.
“Whenever you go into prison, they don’t tell you how long you will stay,” he says.
German TikTokers more approving of China, Russia – survey
A poll suggests that Germans who get their news from TikTok, rather than traditional media, are less critical of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It comes amid a debate over shutting down the Chinese platform in the US.
Germans who get their news via the social media giant TikTok, especially those of a younger age, are more likely to hold sympathetic opinions of Russia and China, a poll has concluded.
The poll, conducted by Allensbach Institute for Germany's business-focused Free Democrats (FDP), asked some 2,000 people at the end of 2024 about their views on matters ranging from whether they see China as a dictatorship to how they see Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Respondents were also asked about their opinion on the Covid-19 pandemic and its vaccines.
Oxfam report finds billionaires' wealth soared in 2024 as global elite prepare for Davos
Oxfam International reported that billionaires' wealth increased three times faster in 2024 than in 2023, outpacing the previous year's growth. Ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the group also forecasts the emergence of five trillionaires within a decade, intensifying concerns over global inequality.
Billionaires' wealth grew three times faster in 2024 than the year before, a top anti-poverty group reported on Monday as some of the world's political and financial elite prepared for an annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland.
Oxfam International, in its latest assessment of global inequality timed to the opening of the World Economic Forum meeting, also predicts at least five trillionaires will crop up over the next decade. A year ago, the group forecast that only one trillionaire would appear during that time.
OxFam's research adds weight to a warning by outgoing President Joe Biden last week of a “dangerous concentration of power in the hands of very few ultra-wealthy people.” The group's sharp-edged report, titled “Takers Not Makers,” also says the number of people in poverty has barely budged since 1990.
Johnny’s victims seek lifting of civil statute on child sex abuse
By AMANE SHIMAZAKI/ Staff Writer
January 20, 2025 at 16:42 JST
Former teen idols victimized by the predatory founder of the talent agency Johnny & Associates Inc. started a petition to abolish the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse in civil lawsuits.
Kazuya Nakamura, a former Johnny & Associates member, and others asked passers-by to sign the petition outside JR Ochanomizu Station in Tokyo on Jan. 19.
Under the Civil Code, victims of sexual abuse lose the right to seek compensation three or five years after they learn the identity of the perpetrator.
Missing US journalist's mother visits Syria to renew search
Hugo Bachega
The mother of US journalist Austin Tice, abducted in Syria while on a reporting trip in 2012 and one of the longest-held American hostages, has returned to the country for the first time in a decade to renew the search for her son.
Debra Tice's visit comes in the wake of the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in a lighting rebel offensive last month. Her son, a freelance journalist who is now 43, was taken captive as he travelled through the Damascus suburb of Darayya covering the Syrian civil war.
"We had information, but the whole world changed," she said in an interview in the Syrian capital, Damascus, referring to Assad's removal from power.
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