Following is a summary of current world news briefs.
Ukraine says its forces hold out against Russia in battle for Soledar
Ukraine said on Thursday its troops were holding out against a massive onslaught of Russian artillery in the salt mining town of Soledar in the east, with drone footage showing utter devastation there and buildings reduced to smouldering husks. In a video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy thanked two Ukrainian units in Soledar which he said “are holding their positions and inflicting significant losses on the enemy.” He did not give more details.
Lula to purge Bolsonaro loyalists from Brazilian security forces after rampage
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Thursday that security force members were complicit in letting an anti-government mob ransack the seat of power in Brasilia, and promised to weed out hardcore supporters of his predecessor.
The task of screening out those actors will be complex, his senior aides said, but investigations have begun to see who was responsible for letting backers of former President Jair Bolsonaro storm and vandalize the presidential palace.
Salvadoran girls found on Rio Grande at U.S.-Mexico border
Mexican immigration agents found three unaccompanied Salvadoran children stranded on an islet on the Rio Grande, which straddles the U.S.-Mexico border, Mexico’s immigration institute said. The three sisters are 9, 6 and 1 year old, the institute said in a statement on Wednesday.
Australia’s natural disasters bill hits $3.5 billion in 2022, billions more to come
Floods and natural disasters that hit all but one Australian state and territory in 2022 cost the economy A$5 billion ($3.48 billion) and stoked inflation according to Treasury estimates which forecast billions more spending in 2023. Australia suffered four major bouts of flooding last year, with global reinsurer Munich Re estimating that February and March flooding across northern New South Wales state that killed more than 20 was the fourth most costly global disaster in 2022.
Scale of alleged torture, detentions by Russian forces in Kherson emerges
Oksana Minenko, a 44-year-old accountant who lives in the Ukrainian city of Kherson, said she was repeatedly detained and tortured by occupying Russian forces. Her husband, a Ukrainian soldier, died defending Kherson’s Antonivskyi bridge on the first day of full-scale war, she said. During several interrogations in the spring, Russian forces submerged her hands in boiling water, pulled out her fingernails and beat her in the face with rifle butts so badly she needed plastic surgery, according to Minenko.
Chinese fret over elderly as WHO warns of holiday COVID surge
People in China worried on Thursday about spreading COVID-19 to aged relatives as they planned returns to their home towns for holidays that the World Health Organization warns could inflame a raging outbreak. The Lunar New Year holiday, which officially starts on Jan. 21, comes after China last month abandoned a strict anti-virus regime of mass lockdowns that prompted widespread frustration and boiled over into historic protests.
Airlines’ U.S. operations return to normal as FAA investigates outage
U.S. airline operations returned to normal on Thursday even as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigates the cause of a computer outage that grounded flights nationally and seeks to prevent it from happening again. More than 11,300 flights were delayed or canceled on Wednesday in the first national grounding of domestic traffic in about two decades. As of noon EST on Thursday, 1,400 U.S. flights were delayed and 117 were canceled, according to FlightAware, a typical aviation day given current weather issues.
Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis, rushed to hospital
Lisa Marie Presley, a musician and the only daughter of rock ‘n’ roll legend Elvis Presley, was undergoing treatment after being rushed to a Los Angeles-area hospital on Thursday, her mother said. Presley, 54, suffered cardiac arrest in her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Calabasas, according to website TMZ. The outlet said paramedics performed CPR and administered the drug epinephrine to restart her pulse.
Russia criticises Reuters story on Russian hackers targeting U.S. nuclear scientists
Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday criticised Reuters for spreading what it said was poorly sourced anti-Russian propaganda with a story about a Russian hacking team which targeted three nuclear research laboratories. Reuters on Jan. 6 reported the Russian hacking team, known as Cold River, had targeted three nuclear research laboratories in the United States this past summer, according to internet records reviewed by Reuters and five cyber security experts.
U.N. chief says onus on North Korea to return to talks
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday that the onus is on North Korea to return to talks aimed at getting Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons program, a rebuttal of China’s demand that the United States needs to show flexibility. North Korea has been subject to U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. So-called six-party denuclearization talks – between North Korea, South Korea, China, the United States, Russia and Japan – stalled in 2009.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
