A former Australian school principal accused of sexually assaulting students was extradited to Australia on Monday under an order from Israel's Supreme Court, her lawyer said. Malka Leifer had fought her return to Australia, including with a submission of mental illness, and the case has been in Israeli courts since 2014. Leifer, who was principal of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish school in Melbourne, has denied the allegations against her.
Nepal's caretaker Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli was ejected from the country's ruling Communist party on Monday, his opponents said, in protest at his abrupt move in December to dissolve parliament and call for an early general election. The ruling Nepal Communist Party has split over Oli's call for a new parliament to be elected more than a year ahead of schedule on the basis that his colleagues were not cooperating with the government on policy interventions.
Instagram Stories suggest they took a trip together over the weekend 👀
Ukraine reopens schools, restaurants and gyms on Monday, ending a tough lockdown introduced on Jan. 8 to prevent a new wave of coronavirus infections, Ukrainian authorities said. The number of new cases of coronavirus infection in Ukraine has significantly decreased from 6,000 to 9,000 cases a day at the beginning of January to 2,516 new cases on January 25, the fewest since early September. "Such statistics, which indicate the stabilisation of the situation, the improvement of the situation could be obtained only thanks to you, Ukrainians," health minister Maksym Stepanov told a televised briefing.
Every team in the series, which aims to raise awareness about climate change by racing in some of the world's most remote and harsh environments, must have a male and a female driver. Rivals will include teams owned by Formula One champions Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.
Cricket's lawmakers, the MCC, have begun a consultation process to discuss whether changes are needed for the short ball or bouncer, which rears up from the pitch towards the batsman's head. Discussions on player safety gathered steam after former Australia batsman Phillip Hughes died in 2014 having been hit on the head by a bouncer. "You want to avoid concussing the adolescent brain while it's still evolving," Turner, medical director of the International Concussion and Head Injury Research Foundation, told the newspaper.
The United States often sends ships and aircraft into the South China Sea to "flex its muscles" and this is not good for peace, China's Foreign Ministry said on Monday, after a U.S. aircraft carrier group sailed into the disputed waterway. The strategic South China Sea, through which trillions of dollars in trade flows each year, has long been a focus of contention between Beijing and Washington, with China particularly angered by U.S. military activity there. The U.S. carrier group led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt and accompanied by three warships, entered the waterway on Saturday to promote "freedom of the seas", the U.S. military said, just days after Joe Biden became U.S. president..
China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd is in early-stage talks to sell its premium smartphone brands P and Mate, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said, a move that could see the company eventually exit from the high-end smartphone-making business. Huawei started to internally explore the possibility of selling the brands as early as last September, according to one of the sources. Shipments of Mate and P Series phones were worth $39.7 billion between Q3 2019 and Q3 2020, according to consultancy IDC.
It was always the engine of profits at BP. But now the UK oil major has drastically scaled back the team that looks for new reserves of crude. Company sources have told Reuters that the unit has been cut to fewer than 100 people. That's down from a peak of more than 700 a few years ago. The firm wouldn't comment on the report. But it's all part of a big upheaval triggered by chief executive Bernard Looney. "The world does have a carbon budget. It is finite and it is running out fast and we need a rapid transition to net zero. Society has got to deliver on the Paris goals." Over the next decade, he wants to cut BP's oil output by a million barrels per day - or about 40%. At the same time, its output of renewable energy is supposed to rise twenty-fold. Looney is driving the exploration budget down to around $400 million per year. That's less than a tenth of what it was in 2010. Investment is flowing into new sources of revenue instead. Last year BP said it had bought a majority stake in Finite Carbon. The U.S. firm pays landowners to manage forests, generating so-called carbon offset credits that can be sold to polluters. For all that, oil and gas will remain BP's main source of income until at least 2030. Beyond that date though, it could start to look like a very different company.
A Ugandan court has ordered the military and police to cease surrounding the home of opposition leader Bobi Wine, who has been held under house arrest since presidential elections held on Jan. 14, Wine's lawyer told Reuters. "The judge ordered that the that the state and its agencies should immediately vacate his property and his right to personal liberty should immediately be reinstated," lawyer George Musisi said.
The COVID-19 situation in France is worrying, the head of the country's Haute Autorite de Sante (HAS) health regulator told France Inter radio on Monday, as President Emmanuel Macron's government considers a new lockdown. France has the world's seventh-highest COVID-19 death toll, with more than 73,000 deaths. Jean-François Delfraissy, head of the scientific council that advises the government on COVID-19, had said on Sunday that France probably needed a third national lockdown, perhaps as early as the February school holidays, because of the circulation of new variants of the virus.
Indian and Chinese troops were involved in a face-off last week in a disputed stretch of their shared border in the eastern Himalayas, the Indian army said on Monday. The two sides have been locked in a tense standoff since April in the western Himalayas and since then have bolstered forces all along the border. "It is clarified that there was a minor face-off at Nakula area of North Sikkim on 20 January 2021 and the same was resolved by local commanders as per established protocols," the Indian army said in a statement.
The Taguig City Mayor slams establishments and influencers who do not follow COVID protocols
The government has not yet decided whether France will move into a third lockdown to curb the coronavirus epidemic and notably the circulation of new variants of the virus, French European Affairs minister Clement Beaune said on Monday. France probably needs to move into a third lockdown, perhaps as early as the February school holidays, because of the circulation of the new variants, the government's top medical adviser Jean-Francois Delfraissy on COVID-19 policy had said on Sunday.
Spanish Health Minister Salvador Illa will leave his job on Tuesday to run for the regional Catalan elections scheduled on Feb. 14, the Prime Minister's office said on Monday in a statement. "Salvador Illa starts today his last 24 hours at the helm of the ministry," the statement said. Illa, who has overseen Spain's response to the coronavirus pandemic, had said he would run for the regional elections in Catalonia, his home region, and would step down when campaign started in earnest.
All bicycles must have at least one functioning brake installed when used on public paths and roads, the Ministry of Transport said.
If there was any question about the original content ambitions of Comcast-backed pay-TV operator Sky under its new leadership, a 125-title film and TV slate for 2021 reflects a company poised to build a distinct, autonomous service that can compete with its deep-pocketed SVOD rivals. Sky in late 2019 renewed its output deal with HBO […]
North Korea's acting ambassador to Kuwait has defected to South Korea, the latest in a recent string of high-profile escapes from the isolated country, a South Korean lawmaker said on Monday. Ryu Hyun Woo had led North Korea's embassy in Kuwait since former Ambassador So Chang Sik was expelled after a 2017 U.N. resolution sought to scale back the country's overseas diplomatic missions. Ryu defected to South Korea last September, according to Tae Yong Ho, who was North Korea's deputy ambassador to Britain before settling in the South in 2016 and being elected as a lawmaker last year.
A Pakistani dissident and woman rights activist who died in exile in Canada last month was brought home and laid to rest in her home village in the southwestern Baluchistan province under tight security, activists said Monday. Only the immediate family of 37-year-old Karima Baloch were allowed to attend her funeral on Sunday in the village of Tump in Baluchistan. Baloch’s body was found on Dec. 22 near Toronto’s downtown waterfront, a place that she liked and often visited, a day after she was reported missing.
Senior government ministers are considering the proposal this week.
