Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Six In The Morning Tuesday 4 February 2025
At least six people injured in Swedish school campus shooting, one critically
Summary
At least six people have been injured after a shooting on a school campus in central Sweden - five have gunshot wounds, local officials say, four have undergone surgery and one is critically injured
One of the people in hospital is thought to be the perpetrator, police say, warning more may be injured
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson says this is "a very painful day" for the country
Students and staff were kept inside buildings when police thought the attacker was still at large - they are now being evacuated
The shooting happened at a school for adults, although there are children's schools on the site
Police first warned people to stay away from the area at 13:20 local time (12:20 GMT)
Soon after, they confirmed four people had been shot, before the number increased to five
No children among those hospitalised, authorities say
More now from the Orebro regional authority, which says no children are among those who are currently at the Orebro University Hospital following the shooting.
The authority had previously said that the number of people hospitalised there had gone up to six.
Spain men’s coach says he was unaware of efforts to downplay Rubiales kiss
Luis de la Fuente appears at trial of ex-federation chief Luis Rubiales who kissed Jenni Hermoso after she had just helped Spain win 2023 World Cup
The coach of Spain’s men’s football team, Luis de la Fuente, has told the forced kiss trial of ex-federation chief Luis Rubiales that he initially knew nothing of the scandal’s scale or efforts to silence it.
Rubiales provoked worldwide outrage for the kiss on Jenni Hermoso after she helped Spain beat England in the 2023 World Cup final in Australia.
The scandal forced Rubiales to resign in disgrace that year and has made Hermoso an icon of the fight against macho culture and sexism in sport.
West Bank: 2 Israeli soldiers killed in checkpoint shooting
Two Israeli soldiers have been killed and several others injured in a shooting at the Tayasir checkpoint in the occupied West Bank.
Two Israeli soldiers have been killed and several others injured in a shooting at the Tayasir checkpoint in the occupied West Bank,Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement.
The IDF said that its troops killed a gunman who opened fire at a military post next to the Tayasir checkpoint.
At least eight soldiers were injured in the attack, two of them seriously, Israeli media say.
The militant group Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group praised the attack, but neither claimed responsibility for it.
M23 rebels declare unilateral ceasefire in DR Congo’s war-torn east
The Rwandan-backed armed group M23 announced a unilateral humanitarian "ceasefire" from Tuesday in the DR Congo's (DRC) perennially explosive east, following calls for a safe corridor for aid and hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
The M23 rebels said the ceasefire would start Tuesday. The announcement on Monday came shortly after the UN health agency said at least 900 people were killed in last week’s fighting in the DRC's eastern city of Goma between the rebels and Congolese forces.
Fighting has stopped in the city of more than a million, which M23 forces claimed to have captured last week, but clashes have spread to the neighbouring province of South Kivu, raising fears of an M23 advance to its capital Bukavu.
This snowy Japanese town represents love. But overtourism is turning the sweetness sour
Tue 4 Feb 2025 12.55 GMT
European and US shipowners have sold at least 230 ageing tankers into the “shadow fleet” used by Russia to evade western sanctions on its oil exports and help fund its war against Ukraine, an international investigation reveals.
The shipowners have made more than $6bn (£4.8bn) since Russia’s 2022 invasion by selling the vessels to buyers in countries such as India, Hong Kong, Vietnam or Seychelles that are not participating in the economic sanctions against Moscow, the investigation found.
It said Greek owners had sold the largest number of tankers, offloading 127 vessels, with UK companies selling 22 and German and Norwegian owners 11 and eight. Most would otherwise have been sold for scrap at a fraction of the price, it said.
Monday, February 3, 2025
Six In The Morning Monday 3 February 2025
Israeli army operation in West Bank’s Tulkarm ‘like a smaller-scale Gaza’
The Israeli military has expanded its operation, dubbed “Iron Wall”, from the West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp to Tulkram, further north in the occupied Palestinian territory. The IDF says it has found what it calls terrorist infrastructure in Tulkarm. But residents of the neighbourhood say only families live there, who are being unfairly targeted and inhumanely treated.
Under drone and sniper threat, Hussein Cheik Ali walks cautiously on a deserted dirt street, sticking close to house walls, to reach a spot where he can see the remains of his home in the West Bank town of Tulkarm.
“I want to go further, but I’m scared. They can see us, there are drones, we can hear them,” said the Tulkarm community leader.
The Tulkarm refugee camp is being targeted in the Israeli army’s ongoing operation, dubbed “Iron Wall”, in the West Bank.
Levels of microplastics in human brains may be rapidly rising, study suggests
Research looking at tissue from postmortems between 1997 and 2024 finds upward trend in contamination
The exponential rise in microplastic pollution over the past 50 years may be reflected in increasing contamination in human brains, according to a new study.
It found a rising trend in micro- and nanoplastics in brain tissue from dozens of postmortems carried out between 1997 and 2024. The researchers also found the tiny particles in liver and kidney samples.
The human body is widely contaminated by microplastics. They have also been found in blood, semen, breast milk, placentas and bone marrow. The impact on human health is largely unknown, but they have been linked to strokes and heart attacks.
Sweden court finds Quran burner guilty of hate crimes
Salwan Najem was fined and given a suspended sentence over staging public burnings of the Quran. The court dropped the case against fellow campaigner Salwan Momika, who was shot and killed last week.
A Swedish court gave an anti-Islam campaigner on Monday a suspended sentence and fined him, after he was found guilty of hate crimes.
Swedish citizen Salwan Najem was convicted for "having expressed contempt for the Muslim ethnic group because of their religious beliefs on four occasions," the Stockholm district court said.
Najem's fellow campaigner Salwan Momika, who was also involved in Quran-burning incidents, was shot dead last week. His shooting coincided with his scheduled verdict in a parallel case.
Ex-NPA official regrets allowing Aum cult to ‘go on the offensive’
By SHIMPACHI YOSHIDA/ Senior Staff Writer
February 3, 2025 at 15:45 JST
A bureau chief who oversaw police investigations into Aum Shinrikyo said he feels responsible for the “indecision” on a crackdown that allowed the cult to commit its deadly gas attack in Tokyo in 1995.
According to Takashi Kakimi, who was at the time director-general of the Criminal Affairs Bureau of the National Police Agency, police were planning to search Aum Shinrikyo facilities in Tokyo and the village of Kamikuisshiki in Yamanashi Prefecture as early as March 22, 1995.
But on the morning of March 20 that year, Aum Shinrikyo members released sarin nerve gas on five trains on the Hibiya, Marunouchi and Chiyoda subway lines.
As Sudan’s RSF surrounds Darfur’s el-Fasher, ethnic killings feared
Sudan’s army could lose the last major city it controls in the western region of Darfur within days to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), according to analysts, local monitors and RSF sources.
Observers fear this could lead to crimes against humanity by the RSF and a humanitarian catastrophe in el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state.
Ali Musabel, an RSF adviser, told Al Jazeera: “The RSF will free el-Fasher … in about 10 days.”
Pro-Russia paramilitary leader killed in Moscow blast
Laura Gozzi
The leader of a pro-Russian paramilitary group in eastern Ukraine has died in hospital after being injured in an explosion in Moscow on Monday morning, Russian media have said.
Armen Sargsyan, the leader of the "Arbat" battalion, was severely injured following a blast in the entrance hall of a residential building in north-west Moscow, 12km (7 miles) from the Kremlin.
He was evacuated to a hospital by helicopter and placed in intensive care after the explosion, but eventually succumbed to his injuries, according to usually reliable Telegram sources.
Sunday, February 2, 2025
Palestinians made history when they returned to north Gaza
Few images hold as much symbolism as those of Palestinians returning. Plus, Trumpian White House media briefings, and Black Myth: Wukong.