Hong Kong – China is adding yet another superlative to its aviation roster: the world’s largest airport on a man-made island. Currently under construction off the country’s northeast coast, the Dalian Jinzhou Bay International Airport will eventually cover a 20-square-kilometer (7.7-square-mile) island with four runways and a 900,000-square-meter (969,000 sq ft) passenger terminal, according to an airport statement. Its operators aim to handle 80 million passengers per year across 540,000 flights, with the first phase due to open in 2035. “The country’s largest offshore airport is rising slowly from the sea level like the sunrise in the east,” reads a post by Dalian Jinzhou Bay International on Chinese social media platform ‘’WeChat’’. Once completed, it will become the world’s largest airport on an artificial island, surpassing both Hong Kong International Airport (HKG) and Japan’s Kansai Airport (KIX).

“There have been great challenges to the construction,” Li Xiang, chief engineer of Dalian Airport Construction and Development Co., Ltd., told state-run local media in October, “as the project has complex geological conditions, high drilling difficulty and high demand in quality with a tight construction schedule.” (CNN)

Photo: An artist’s rendering of the Dalian Jinzhou Bay International Airport. Dalian International Airport.

GAZA – Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of committing “acts of genocide” in Gaza by deliberately depriving Palestinian civilians there of adequate access to water. It says Israel’s actions include intentionally damaging water and sanitation infrastructure. The campaign group says this has probably caused thousands of deaths, which it says is also tantamount to “committing the crime against humanity of extermination”. Israel rejected HRW’s report as “propaganda”.

In a post on X, the Israeli foreign ministry’s spokesman said the group was “once more spreading its blood libels… The truth is the complete opposite of HRW’s lies”. The 179-page report says that “since October 2023, Israeli authorities have deliberately obstructed Palestinians’ access to the adequate amount of water required for survival in the Gaza Strip”. It says Israel intentionally damaged infrastructure, including solar panels powering treatment plants, a reservoir, and a spare parts warehouse, while also blocking fuel for generators. It says Israel also cut electricity supplies, attacked repair workers and blocked the entry into Gaza of repair materials.

“This isn’t just negligence,” said HRW executive director Tirana Hassan. “It is a calculated policy of deprivation that has led to the deaths of thousands from dehydration and disease that is nothing short of the crime against humanity of extermination, and an act of genocide.” The report is based on interviews with dozens of Palestinians from Gaza, including water authority officials, sanitation experts and healthcare workers, as well as satellite imagery and data from October 2023 to September 2024. (BBC)

Photo: HRW accused Israel of deliberately damaging water infrastructure. (EPA)

BANGLADESH – A Labour minister has been named in an investigation into claims her family embezzled up to £3.9bn (Tk 590 billion) from infrastructure projects in Bangladesh. Tulip Siddiq, 42, who as the Treasury’s Economic Secretary is responsible for tackling corruption in UK financial markets, is alleged to have brokered a deal with Russia in 2013 that overinflated the price of a new nuclear power plant in Bangladesh. The allegation is part of a wider investigation by Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) into Siddiq’s aunt, Sheikh Hasina, who was deposed as prime minister of the country in August. A source close to Siddiq said these were “trumped up charges”. The source also said the allegations were “completely politically motivated” and designed to damage her aunt. Conservative shadow home office minister Matt Vickers said: “The fact Labour’s anti-corruption minister is reportedly embroiled in a corruption case is the latest stain on Keir Starmer’s judgement. “It is high time she came clean. The British public deserve a government that is focused on their priorities, not distracted by yet another scandal.” (BBC)

BRUSSELS – Ukraine could consider continued transit of Russian gas on the condition that Moscow does not receive money for the fuel until after the war, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday. Ukraine has previously ruled out extending a contract to transit Russian gas, via Ukraine to Europe, which is due to expire at the end of the year. Slovakia, one of the recipients of the gas, has been racing to prolong the deal. (Reuters)

Photo: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy looks on as he attends a European Union leaders summit in Brussels, Belgium. (Reuters)

IBADAN  –  At least 32 people have been killed in a stampede at a religious festival in Nigeria attended by thousands of young people, a local official said. The incident occurred last Wednesday at an Islamic high school in Ibadan, the capital of Nigeria’s southwest Oyo State, where up to 5,000 young people and children had reportedly gathered for the event. Oyo State Commissioner for Information and Civic Orientation, Dotun Oyelade, told journalists that at least 32 people were dead. Video footage that appeared to be from the scene showed a large crowd of mostly children looking on as some were carried off the site to local hospitals, according to news agency The Associated Press.

State Governor Seyi Makinde said in a statement on X that security forces had been deployed to get the situation under control and evacuate attendees from the site. “This is a very sad day,” Makinde said. “We sympathise with the parents whose joy has suddenly been turned to mourning due to these deaths.” “While investigations are ongoing, the primary organisers of the event that led to this stampede have been taken into custody,” he said. He promised that “anyone directly or remotely involved in this disaster” would be held accountable.

Local media identified the event organisers as the Women In Need Of Guidance and Support Foundation, which held a similar festival last year. The group was preparing to host up to 5,000 young people at this year’s event, according to the Oyo-based Agidigbo FM radio station. The festival organisers had promised participants would “win exciting prizes like scholarships and other bountiful gifts”. Nigeria’s national emergency services said a team had been deployed to provide assistance to the victims. (Al  Jazeera)

Photo: The aftermath of the stampede. (AP)

NIGERIA – Thirty-five children have been killed in a crush at a Christmas funfair in the south-west Nigerian city of Ibadan, with six others hospitalised, the police say. The organisers had promised to give cash handouts and also food but so many people turned up that there was a crush as they struggled to gain entry.

Residents said that over 5,000 children had gathered at the venue and the crush occurred when the main organisers arrived to start the event. The sequence of events leading to the crush has not been disclosed. The police say they have arrested eight people who were behind the event, including the main organiser, Naomi Silekunola, a well-known figure in the city. The Oyo state government said victims had been taken to hospitals across Ibadan for treatment after the crush at the Islamic High School in the city’s Bashorun district.

Authorities have urged parents who are concerned about the whereabouts of their children to check at the city’s hospitals. Medics in one hospital told the BBC that six children had been admitted but only two survived – four had died. At another hospital, a doctor who declined to be named said he had counted three dead bodies. Some affected parents told journalists that they had accompanied their children to converge at the venue of the “End of the Year Christmas funfair” as early as 05:00 on Wednesday – five hours before the event was due to start. (BBC)

Photo: Some 10,000 people reportedly turned up to the event.

CHONBURI   –  As night falls, a team of wildlife officers and veterinarians springs into action. In a carefully rehearsed routine, they enter the lemur enclosure, nets in hand. One by one, the lemurs – whose big eyes, foxlike faces and long, bushy tails set them apart from their primate relatives – are captured, given quick health checks, and secured in travel crates. Nearby, tortoises are also being readied for transport in long, narrow cases lined with grass and straw. Each tortoise is labelled before being placed inside.

Later, at Suvarnabhumi Airport in the Thai capital, Bangkok, the officers – many of whom have cared for the animals since their rescue seven months ago – refill water dispensers and peer through the crates’ ventilation holes, checking on the animals one last time before departure. Bright amber lemur eyes stare back, wide with confusion. This routine is repeated three times over two weeks, preparing a total of 16 ring-tailed lemurs, 31 brown lemurs, 155 radiated tortoises, and 758 spider tortoises  – all ranging from vulnerable to critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List – for their long-haul flight back home to Madagascar. It marks the culmination of the largest-ever wildlife repatriation for both Thailand and Madagascar.

In fact, these animals began their journey months ago. In May, Thai authorities seized a cargo of 1,109 endangered lemurs and tortoises originating from Madagascar in one of the country’s largest wildlife trafficking busts to date. The raid was the result of an ongoing international investigation aimed at dismantling transnational criminal networks, involving the Royal Thai Police, United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the Wildlife Justice Commission, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and Interpol. Acting on a tip-off, Thai authorities tracked the convoluted route of an illegal wildlife shipment as it moved from Madagascar through Indonesia and Malaysia before entering Thailand. Thai police moved in as the smugglers passed through Chumphon province, successfully intercepting the shipment. Had they not been rescued, the animals would almost certainly have been sold into the multibillion-dollar global exotic pet market. “There are criminal networks capable of supplying any type of exotic pet, from reptiles and primates to birds and tortoises, to a black market with global demand,” said Giovanni Broussard, Africa coordinator of the environment team at UNODC. “There are buyers in every corner of the planet, and the modus operandi of the traffickers change continuously,” he said. Thailand has long been a hub for the wildlife trade – both legal and illegal. While the illegal trade in wildlife violates national or international laws, such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites), the legal trade operates within the framework of law. A report in 2023 identified Thailand as Southeast Asia’s top importer of legally traded wildlife from Madagascar. Between 2001 and 2021, Thailand also recorded the highest number of illegal wildlife seizures from Madagascar, second only to Madagascar itself. The report warned that the extent of the illegal trade is likely to be greater than official seizure records suggest. “The seizures we make represent only a portion of trafficking activities,” said Apinya Chaitae, director of Cites implementation at Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation. It’s difficult to estimate the true scale of the problem, she says, but “as long as demand exists, smuggling will continue”.

Madagascar’s unique biodiversity – 90 percent of its species are found nowhere else on Earth – makes it a prime target for poachers and traffickers. (Al Jazeera)

Photo: Wildlife officers and veterinarians scan each lemur’s microchip and conduct quick health checks before moving them to their travel crates. (Al Jazeera)

FRANCE – Gisèle Pelicot spoke of her “very difficult ordeal” after 51 men were all found guilty Thursday in the drugging-and-rape trial that turned her into a feminist hero, expressing support for other victims of sexual violence whose cases don’t get such attention and “whose stories remain untold.” “I want you to know that we share the same fight,” she said in her first words after the court in the southern French city of Avignon handed down prison sentences ranging from three to 20 years in the shocking case that stunned France and spurred a national reckoning about the blight of rape culture.

As campaigners against sexual violence protested outside the courthouse, the 72-year-old expressed “my profound gratitude towards the people who supported me.” “Your messages moved me deeply, and they gave me the strength to come back, every day, and survive through these long daily hearings,” she said. “This trial was a very difficult ordeal.” Pelicot — now an icon for many women in France and beyond after her courageous demand that all the evidence be heard in open court — also said she was thinking of her grandchildren after enduring the more than three months of hearings that prosecuted the rapes and other abuse inflicted on her by her now ex-husband and his more than four dozen accomplices over nearly a decade. (Jamaica Gleaner)

Foto: Gisele Pelicot speaks to the press as she leaves the courtroom, in the Avignon courthouse, southern France. (AP)

RUSSIA – Russia said on Wednesday it had detained a man from Uzbekistan over the killing of a senior Russian general and his assistant in Moscow a day earlier. Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, who headed Russia’s radiological, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed by a remotely detonated bomb planted in an electric scooter outside his apartment building. The blast came a day after Ukrainian prosecutors indicted Kirillov in absentia for Russia’s use of banned chemical weapons during its invasion of Ukraine. A source with knowledge of the operation later told CNN that Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, was behind the attack.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said the 29-year-old Uzbek suspect was recruited by the SBU and acting on its instructions. It claimed that the suspect had been offered a reward of $100,000 in cash and the chance to flee and live in a European country. “The detainee received a homemade explosive device and placed it on an electric scooter which he parked at the entrance to the residential building where Igor Kirillov lived,” the committee said. The suspect had rented a car and fitted it with a surveillance camera to monitor Kirillov’s residence, it added. The footage was monitored by the attack’s organizers in Ukraine’s eastern city of Dnipro, it said, who remotely detonated the bomb when they saw Kirillov and his assistant leave the building on Ryazansky Street early Tuesday morning. (CNN)

AMSTERDAM – The Netherlands, in coordination with Finland and Sweden, has intercepted Russian aircraft carrying supersonic missiles over the Baltic Sea on Tuesday, Dutch Defence Minister Ruben Brekelmans said on X on Wednesday. No further details were provided on the engagement or the aircraft’s intentions. Since December, Dutch F-35s have been patrolling NATO’s eastern border. (Reuters)

Photo: Semiconductor chips are seen on a circuit board of a computer in this illustration picture. (Reuters)

CANADA – Canada has pledged 1.3 billion Canadian dollars (910 million U.S. dollars) to bolster border security, even as its deficit swelled nearly 50 percent beyond target. The Canadian federal government’s recently released 2024 Fall Economic Statement announced the security spending promise, although it also showed that the country’s deficit stood at 61.9 billion Canadian dollars (43.5 billion U.S. dollars) in 2023-2024, way above the target of 40.1 billion Canadian dollars (28.2 billion U.S. dollars).

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has previously threatened to impose 25-percent tariffs on all Canadian and Mexican imports unless both countries take measures on irregular migration and drug trafficking. Canada’s newly sworn-in Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc promised his top priority will be lowering the cost of living for Canadians and strengthening ties with the United States. Most of the deficit overshoot was because of one-time costs tied to booking contingent liabilities for settling various Indigenous legal claims, local media reported. The statement projects the debt-to-GDP (gross domestic product) ratio to decline in the coming years, from 41.9 percent in 2024-25 to 38.6 percent in 2029-30, and keeps the deficit under 1 percent of GDP in 2026-27 and future years.

It also announced investments in research and development, support for Canada’s innovators and start-ups, and incentives for businesses to invest in the country. Monday morning hours before tabling the statement, Chrystia Freeland abruptly resigned from the post of finance minister in a letter to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, saying they were at odds about the best path forward for the country. (Xinhua)

CHINA – Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Tuesday that China’s diplomacy in 2024 had created a sound external environment for China’s high-quality development and injected valuable stability into a volatile world. Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remarks when addressing a symposium on the international situation and China’s foreign relations in 2024.

Over the past year, China’s head-of-state diplomacy has written a magnificent new chapter and led the trend of the times for peace, development and win-win cooperation, Wang said. Noting that this year President Xi Jinping attended the Conference Marking the 70th Anniversary of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum, and the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), carried out four important overseas trips and attended a series of multilateral summits, Wang said President Xi has had in-depth strategic communication with leaders of other countries and advocated greater solidarity and cooperation among the international community.

President Xi focuses on peace and development, sticks to multilateralism, fairness, justice, openness and cooperation, and encourages the international community to jointly respond to various global challenges, Wang said, adding that it is widely believed that this will have a positive and far-reaching impact on the progress and development of human civilization. “President Xi has also personally carried out friendly work with people around the world through meetings, letters and other forms, laying a solid foundation of public support for the sound development of state-to-state relations,” he added. (China.org)

Photo: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, addresses a symposium on the international situation and China’s foreign relations.

JAMAICA – For more than five decades Barbara Gayle reported matters — some of them the most gruesome murders — from the island’s courts. On Monday afternoon, in a cruel twist of irony, the veteran journalist became a victim of murder, plunging the nation into shock at what has been described as a senseless and brutal act.

Gayle’s murder was made even more painful for her family, as her cousin, Michael Daubon, told the Jamaica Observer that her son, who lives overseas, was marking his birthday on Tuesday, the day her body was found with stab wounds inside her house in the gated community of Caymanas Country Club Estate, Phase One, in St Catherine. “I still think I am dreaming. I wasn’t thinking something like this would happen in a gated community. This is the last place I would expect anything like this to happen to her,” Daubon said. “She is well loved by everybody around here. She has some great neighbours. Sunday was the last time I spoke to her and she prayed for me and everything. I told her if she needed anything just call me and I would take care of it,” he added. “She is not even around to celebrate her son’s birthday today. For him to get a sad news like this on his birthday is wicked, wicked,” said Daubon.

“I feel it was somebody she knows who did this to her. It doesn’t make sense to me. It nuh add up. I am still trying to put the pieces together,” he said, adding that he tried calling Gayle about 9:40 am on Tuesday. “For somebody to come and take her life it doesn’t sit well with me. I am just hoping that cameras will show something,” he said. Daubon’s reference was to camera footage obtained from the late journalist’s house that showed her sitting on her veranda and speaking with someone Monday afternoon. In the clip, Gayle is heard offering to place a phone call to a woman apparently known to her and the person with whom she was speaking. (Jamaicaobserver)

Photo: Donna Bennett holds her head in disbelief outside the house of her best friend, veteran journalist Barbara Gayle.