All eyes can be on West Africa as work is poised to start on a brand new freeway from Abidjan to Lagos.
The 689 miles (1,028km) motorway generally known as the Abidjan-Lagos hall freeway is about to hyperlink 5 main nations in Africa by 2030.
This colossal mission will grow to be a strong financial and industrial hub because of the Spatial Growth Initiative that’s been promoted by the African Growth Financial institution.
The freeway will span from Ivory Coast’s principal metropolis of Abidjan and can join by Ghana, Togo and Benin, all the best way to Nigeria’s largest metropolis, Lagos.
The Abidjan-Lagos hall freeway’s building is about to start in 2026 with complete pledges from quite a few buyers and funders totalling a staggering £12.3 billion ($15.6bn).
The Financial Group of West African States (ECOWAS) is a regional organisation that’s made up of 15 West African nations whose goal is to advertise commerce, self-reliance and financial cooperation.
The ECOWAS mission is to advertise Africa in areas together with trade, agriculture, telecommunications, and transport and is a key participant in the case of the event of the Abidjan-Lagos Hall.
The Abidjan-Lagos Hall is a part of the larger Dakar-Lagos Hall – a precedence mission that falls beneath the trans-African freeway of the ECOWAS area.
As soon as accomplished, the Abidjan-Lagos Hall is predicted to assist remodel West Africa into a serious hub for commerce and trade, whereas additionally making it extra engaging to buyers and additional boosting tourism.
Preparatory and feasibility research, led by the African Growth Financial institution, have been lately commissioned.
This included the financing choices for the hall and included institutional preparations for the Abidjan-Lagos Hall Administration Authority to formally be up-and-running.
The Director of the Financial institution’s Infrastructure and City Growth Division, Mike Salawou, stated: “This financial hall strategy additionally naturally overlaps with main city improvement.
“It would assist the expansion of main financial hubs and enhance hyperlinks between giant city centres, secondary cities and rural areas throughout the 5 nations.
He added how the Financial institution has already “launched the Spatial Growth Initiative” which is about to allow “transformative industrialisation proper alongside the freeway, to stimulate the expansion of main financial clusters”.
Plans for the hall have largely stalled on account of a wave of army coups and nationalism which swept throughout West Africa since 2020. Greater than 10 tried coups have been recorded for the reason that latest army takeovers in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
The army takeovers have been a serious thorn within the facet of the 15-strong ECOWAS, with the regimes threatening to go away the bloc slightly than adjust to its guidelines – which embrace organising elections and restoring civilian authorities.
Plans to construct this contemporary transport hall may now lastly grow to be a actuality with the hopes to show West Africa right into a powerhouse.
As we stare at a bullet-ridden wall, two younger Palestinian boys stand behind us on a stoop and look on in fearful awe.
“It is the navy,” one boy in a beige hoodie tells his good friend. His good friend stares on the wall with broad eyes and provides a little bit nod.
Balata camp in Nablus, the business centre of the West Financial institution, has simply come out of a two-day Israel Defence Forces (IDF) raid once we go to go to.
Mounds of dug-up dust line the tarmac of the principle street by means of the market. Store homeowners sullenly stare on the reminders of the violent alternate of gunfire that shook their neighbourhood hours earlier. On the wall are adorned portraits of killed armed militants from varied factions within the space.
A pile of shattered glass marks the place 80-year-old Halima Abuleil was shot useless. Her son says she “fell to her knees” after Israeli forces fired at her six occasions when she went to purchase groceries on Thursday morning.
The IDF says it’s conscious of the studies that “throughout the exchanges of fireplace with the terrorists, uninvolved civilians current within the space had been harmed”.
“My mum was aged and had most cancers, diabetes and hypertension. They might see she was an outdated girl – why would they hearth at her?” asks Halima’s son.
He is pleased to be filmed however will not share his first title – not an indication of irrational paranoia however a necessity for security in a local weather of accelerating IDF raids and surveillance. A reputation interprets into an ID quantity that may be tracked down.
Picture: Halima’s son is pleased to be filmed however will not share his first title
He takes his six-year-old son to the native mosque for Friday prayer. We movie males of all ages pouring into the lobby however aren’t permitted to movie the sermon that follows. The constructing pressure is felt in each nook of the camp – even within the rooms reserved for God.
“Nobody is with the Palestinians however God,” he instructed us at his mom’s funeral 20 minutes earlier.
“Each single Palestinian is focused, nobody is exempt. Not kids, not the aged, nobody.”
Sibling not new to sudden loss
He sits subsequent to his sister who shouldn’t be new to sudden loss. She says her two sons are gone – one was killed final 12 months and the opposite is in jail.
“What legislation is that this? Kids and pregnant ladies are killed. Our sons go away the home and do not come again,” says Halima’s daughter.
Picture: Halima’s daughter says certainly one of her sons was killed final 12 months and the opposite is in jail
“They will see she’s an aged woman however they shot her six occasions – in her legs, in her chest. When she was first shot in her legs, she knelt on the bottom,” she provides.
IDF assertion
We approached the IDF about Halima’s loss of life. This was their response:
“Early on Thursday, the IDF performed a counterterrorism exercise to apprehend a person suspected of terror exercise within the space of Balata in Nablus. Through the exercise, the IDF troopers engaged in exchanges of fireplace with terrorists who opened hearth and hurled explosives towards IDF troopers. Hits had been recognized. As well as, IDF troopers encircled a construction wherein terrorists barricaded themselves. No IDF accidents had been reported.”
Picture: The IDF say this footage reveals armed terrorists within the neighborhood of Israeli troopers. Pic: IDF
In Balata camp, adorned portraits of killed militants are plastered everywhere in the partitions. There aren’t any dominant armed factions however a medley of affiliated fighters.
“Once they see oppression like this – they need to combat,” says Halima’s daughter. Her sons had been loyal to the armed resistance rising of their neighbourhood.
Picture: Nablus within the West Financial institution
As males pour out of the mosque into the road the place Halima was killed, I ask an older man the place the fighters are right this moment.
“We do not see them anymore,” he says in a hushed tone. “They’re in hiding due to the elevated raids.”
“These are simply younger males with weapons – meagre safety within the face of Israeli navy {hardware}. What’s an M16 to a tank?”
As diplomats scramble to safe a ceasefire in Gaza, peace feels extra elusive than ever within the West Financial institution.
Picture: Chancellor Olaf Scholz (C) and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (R) on the memorial service. Pic: AP
Amongst these attending the service within the metropolis’s cathedral was Chancellor Olaf Scholz, inside minister Nancy Faeser and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
In a submit on X, Mr Scholz described it as a “shifting second of compassion and solidarity for a deeply affected metropolis”.
“The entire of Germany stands in these darkish hours with the individuals of Magdeburg,” he wrote.
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Magdeburg marked the tragedy on Saturday with the cathedral bells tolling at 7.04pm native time (6.04pm UK time), precisely 24 hours after the assault.
German soccer additionally paid tribute to the victims with silences earlier than Bundesliga video games on Saturday night.
Earlier, whereas visiting the scene of the atrocity, Mr Scholz mentioned: “There isn’t a extra peaceable and cheerful place than a Christmas market.
“What a horrible act it’s to injure and kill so many individuals there with such brutality.”
He has been named by German media as Taleb A, along with his surname being withheld according to privateness legal guidelines, though the identify has not been confirmed by German authorities.
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2:24
What can we find out about ‘Taleb A’?
Saudi suspect being held
The suspect is a 50-year-old Saudi citizen who labored as a health care provider and arrived in Germany in 2006, premier of Saxony-Anhalt state Reiner Haseloff mentioned.
Taleb A is being investigated for 5 counts of suspected homicide and 205 counts of suspected tried homicide, prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens mentioned.
The motive for the atrocity will not be but identified.
Investigators are trying into whether or not the assault might have been motivated by the suspect’s dissatisfaction with how Germany treats Saudi refugees, Mr Nopens added.
Inside minister Nancy Faeser instructed reporters it was “clear” the suspect was “Islamophobic”.
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1:46
German police detain suspect
Residents in Magdeburg instructed Sky’s Europe correspondent Siobhan Robbins they’re “shocked” and “traumatised” by the assault.
One lady mentioned she “cannot discover phrases to explain how traumatised we’re”.
“We’d like loads of time to course of what occurred,” she mentioned.
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Magdeburg assault: A timeline of what occurred
‘Present solidarity’
She added she wished to attend the memorial service to “present solidarity” with others within the metropolis and “really feel collective help”.
“In such a tragedy the one factor that may assist us to soak up and to course of every part is to be round one another and to indicate our solidarity, not simply with phrases however actions.”
Slender escape
Andrea Reis, 57, and her daughter Julia, 34, had been on the market on Friday night and had a slim escape.
They might have been within the path of the automobile however Julia had wished to maintain strolling across the market moderately than cease to eat.
Andrea mentioned: “It was the horrible sounds, kids calling ‘mama, papa’, ‘assist me’ – they are going spherical in my head now.”
Though many individuals went to the location on Saturday with candles to mourn the victims, a number of hundred far-right protesters gathered in a central sq. in Magdeburg with a banner that learn “remigration”, reported information company dpa.
Archaeologists have reportedly pinpointed the situation of a pivotal battle led by Alexander the Nice over 2,300 years in the past.
The traditional battlefield was found close to the Biga River, beforehand referred to as the Granicus, in Canakkale Province, northwestern Turkey, based on native information supply Turkiye Right now.
The Battle of the Granicus, which passed off in 334 BC, marked Alexander’s first main triumph in his marketing campaign in opposition to the Persian Achaemenid Empire.
This conflict holds historic significance because it signalled the beginning of Alexander’s conquest of Asia Minor, an space largely equivalent to present-day Turkey.
His victory at Granicus set the stage for additional successes that finally led to the collapse of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. It additionally laid the groundwork for the Hellenization of huge areas of Asia, leaving an enduring imprint on the territories Alexander seized.
Alexander the Nice reigned over the traditional kingdom of Macedon, situated within the northeastern a part of the Greek peninsula, from 336 BC till his demise in 323 BC on the age of 32.
All through his rule, he launched into intensive army campaigns, forging one of many largest empires ever seen, stretching from Greece to northwestern India. Undefeated in fight, he’s extensively thought to be certainly one of historical past’s most completed army leaders.
Reyhan Korpe, an archaeologist from Canakkale Onsekiz Mart College (COMU), informed Turkiye Right now: “[The Battle of the Granicus] is taken into account one of the pivotal moments in world historical past.
“Following his victory right here, Alexander went on to overcome Western Anatolia and far of Asia, extending his empire into India.”
Twenty years in the past, Korpe took the lead on a mission to unearth the exact spot the place this vital conflict unfolded, a quest that has just lately reached a profitable decision.
Korpe added: “Our analysis, mixed with a cautious studying of historic sources, has led us to pinpoint the precise location of the battle, the villages concerned, and its place inside the plains.”
The workforce has additionally charted the course that Alexander’s military took on their method to their historic encounter.
Korpe defined: “We mapped out the precise route Alexander traveled, starting in Ozbek village, crossing by way of Umurbey, Lapseki, and finally descending into the Biga Plain.”
With these discoveries in place, there is a buzz of pleasure as plans are set in movement to remodel the battlefield right into a famed vacationer vacation spot, marking its inclusion within the bold “Alexander the Nice Cultural Route” undertaking.
Unexplained ‘metallic orbs’ as soon as buzzed previous a former NASA astronaut’s aircraft as he was flying at round 9,000 ft, he mentioned.
American Leroy Chiao, who was the 196th NASA astronaut to fly in house and the 311th human in house, served on a number of missions throughout an illustrious profession after qualifying in 1991.
Mr Chiao, who can also be a eager mild plane pilot, mentioned he was flying his aircraft again to Houston in Texas when one thing odd abruptly whizzed previous.
He added: “It is simply kinda dumb luck that they did not hit me. It might’ve been a foul end result, if that they had really hit me. It occurred so fast, there wasn’t even an opportunity to get scared.
“It wasn’t on radar, air site visitors management definitely did not alert me.
“[And] it wasn’t on my show that reveals different airplanes which might be taking part with the [Federal Aviation Administration] FAA-required transponders. I do not know what it was.”
Mr Chiao, who has acquired the NASA Distinguished Service Medal and two NASA Distinctive Service Awards, defined to the US broadcaster that he solely noticed the objects for “a second”.
Discussing what he thought the objects is likely to be, Mr Chiao contemplated: “My first guess is that it is some type of navy program, a drone of some form, however it is laborious to say, proper?’
“Frankly, I feel whoever was working the drone wasn’t conscious that I used to be there.”
In accordance with NASA, a number of phenomena could be mistaken for UFOs, from planets to navy package, and even toys.
Dave Prosper, of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, explains on the NASA web site: “Venus is likely one of the most confused objects within the sky, particularly when it’s low to the horizon.
“Sirius and Jupiter are additionally typically reported as UFOs, in addition to Mercury. When brilliant planets are in alignment close to the horizon they will look like a formation of “unusual lights”!
“Different ‘UFOs’ could be rocket launches, comets, navy jets, climate balloons, sounding rockets, satellites, meteors and fireballs, experimental craft (if you’re fortunate) and odd clouds (equivalent to lenticular clouds) and be confused, in addition to artifacts from pictures which might be really lens flare or aberration.
“Distant management plane may also be confused for a UFO; actually some fashions explicitly seem like ‘alien craft’ simply to make issues difficult.”
A 2,000-year-old bone field etched with the title of Jesus Christ’s brother, found in Israel, is now on show within the US.
The limestone field has the phrases ‘James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,’ inscribed on it in historical Aramaic.
And with the names on the field being those of Jesus of Nazareth’s brother and father, many individuals imagine that the field as soon as held the stays of James the Simply, who was the primary chief of the Jerusalem Church of the Apostolic Age.
The field, now empty, is on show as a part of the Discovering the World of Jesus exhibit at Pullman Yards in Atlanta.
The exhibit options 350 historic gadgets from the time of Jesus, however in keeping with the exhibit, the traditional field is described as “probably the most important merchandise from the time of Christ.”
The proprietor of the ossuary, Oded Golan, advised Crosswalk Headlines: “We proved that your complete inscription is genuine – it was engraved a number of thousand years in the past”. In that case, the field can be the oldest bodily proof of Jesus.
The ossuary’s discovery was first made in 1976 and revealed to the general public in 2002 however shortly was met with some backlash.
Oded Golan, who purchased the burial field whereas finding out engineering in Israel, was accused of forging the inscription, with specialists claiming that he added the phrases ‘brother of Jesus’ to the limestone.
Following a ten-year trial throughout which he fought to clear his title and was acquitted, the thriller across the field remained.
Regardless of the collecter being cleared of all expenses, the decide said that the decision “doesn’t imply the inscription on the ossuary is genuine or that it was written 2,000 years in the past.”
Some theologians who imagine Mary remained a virgin her complete life additionally query the field’s authenticity and imagine it may very well be a forgery.
With all of the questions surrounding the James Ossuary, in 2015 a research was carried out to seek out out whether or not the field might have come from a tomb believed to belong to Jesus’ household.
The Talipot tomb was found south of the Previous Metropolis in East Jerusalem in 1980. It comprises six burial bins with the names of Jesus’ brother, father and mom and after chemical evaluation carried out by researchers on the James Ossuary, they discovered it contained signatures from bins discovered within the household tomb.
The suspect within the assault on the Christmas market in Magdeburg gave the impression to be dissatisfied with the therapy of Saudi refugees in Germany, a prosecutor has stated.
5 individuals have died up to now – together with a nine-year-old youngster and 4 adults – with no less than 200 extra injured, in keeping with authorities. Of these injured, 41 are stated to be severely harm.
The suspect – who was arrested on the scene – was a 50-year-old Saudi citizen who labored as a health care provider and arrived in Germany in 2006, premier of Saxony-Anhalt state Reiner Haseloff stated.
He has been named as Taleb A in German media.
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Magdeburg assault: A timeline of what occurred
Police director Tom-Oliver Langhans instructed a information convention on Saturday the assault had left the town “very alarmed”.
He added that officers arrested the suspect three minutes after the primary emergency calls have been made out of the market.
Prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens stated the motive behind the assault gave the impression to be “dissatisfaction with the therapy of refugees from Saudi Arabia and the way they’re being handled in Germany”.
German inside minister Nancy Faeser has stated the suspect was Islamophobic.
The suspect has described himself as an “ex-Muslim” who sought asylum after receiving dying threats for denouncing his religion.
His social media pages, which he posted on within the hours main as much as the assault, promote anti-Islam views – and declare Germany is permitting the “Islamisation of Europe”.
The suspect, who says he works as a psychiatrist at a authorities hospital, has appeared in varied media stories about his efforts to assist different former Muslims flee Saudi Arabia and different Gulf nations.
Tamara Zieschang, the state’s inside minister, instructed reporters the suspect had been practising drugs in Bernburg, round 25 miles south of Magdeburg.
He has a web site that he instructed the BBC in 2019 has helped “a whole bunch of individuals” search asylum abroad.
The homepage reads: “My recommendation: don’t search asylum in Germany.”
In movies with voiceovers in English, he claims he’s being pursued by German police, who “despatched somebody carrying a knife to steal a USB stick from my mailbox”.
Picture: Particular police forces on the incident.
Pic: AP
Tweets supporting Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson
One other tweet criticises a commentator for saying X proprietor Elon Musk and far-right activist Tommy Robinson needs to be arrested.
He claims they “cited Germany as a shining instance of media censorship”, and provides: “My expertise in Germany leaves little doubt – they really censor victims.”
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German terrorist skilled Professor Peter Neumann described the suspect’s profile as uncommon.
He says he “loves the AfD [Alternative for Germany] and needs to punish Germany for tolerance in the direction of Islamists”, the director of King’s School London’s Worldwide Centre for the Examine of Radicalisation wrote on X.
Professor Neumann stated: “After 25 years on this ‘enterprise’ you assume nothing might shock you anymore… that basically wasn’t on my radar.”
Syrian and Russian forces unleashed all they may on jap Aleppo. For 4 years they battled to convey Syria’s second metropolis beneath Bashar al Assad’s full management.
By December 2016 when the regime lastly ceased fireplace after a devastating siege and bombardment, civilian life there was all however extinguished.
Dr Obeid Diab needs to point out us what it appears to be like like when a barrel bomb hits.
We stumble upon him on the road, coming, as he typically does, to verify on what’s left of his condominium.
At 84 years outdated and well wearing a protracted, darkish overcoat, he cuts an incongruous determine towards the desolate, ruined shards of destroyed buildings and the cascades of rubble.
“A barrel bomb fell right here,” he says, gesturing to the wasteland. “We weren’t right here thank god. We had been out visiting mates.”
Picture: Dr Obeid Diab
‘We buried youngsters with our naked fingers’
Barrel bombs are just about what they sound like – barrel-shaped cylinders crammed with explosives, shrapnel, chemical compounds, no matter is at hand, dropped from a aircraft or helicopter.
The regime would improvise. Indiscriminate injury, minimal value. Assad denied their use, however it was ubiquitous in Syria.
This one killed Dr Diab’s nine-year-old niece. He stated he needed to bury her and different youngsters within the neighbourhood together with his naked fingers.
“They’d hit indiscriminately. The jets would fly over and the bombs would drop. Whether or not or not the wind blows it right here or there, you do not know. Is there a selected goal in thoughts? No, I do not assume so. They simply hit and go.”
The horrors did not finish when the bombardment stopped, although he stopped working as a paediatrician for concern the regime would come after docs who had been working within the east.
They got here for him anyway, as a result of he refused to behave as an informer, he says. He was imprisoned for 50 days, a person in his 80s, then stored beneath home arrest.
“The jail was so soiled and so crowded. We must sleep on our sides, stacked up subsequent to 1 one other in a tiny room. And the lice and the scabies… I can not even start to explain it,” he says.
“I bear in mind as soon as seeing a buddy and saying I needed to be in the identical room as him. And the officer says, ‘you need to be in the identical room as him? He’ll be locked up perpetually. Is that what you need?’ Detainees had been simply numbers to them.”
Picture: Dr Obeid Diab walks to verify on his condominium
We climb the steps in the direction of what’s left of his condominium, previous sacks of chickpeas and packing containers of rice from the World Meals Programme gathering mud. A pair of slippers are positioned neatly beside a big carpet with UNHCR (United Nations Excessive Fee for Refugees) written on it.
The remaining is pale magnificence, a touch of outdated Aleppo. Dr Diab has been making an attempt to restore what he can within the again room which was most closely broken.
Generally he nonetheless sleeps in his mattress although the flat is just too harmful to dwell in full-time. “Who of their proper thoughts would depart their dwelling behind?” he says.
Picture: A person pushes his items alongside an empty road in jap Aleppo
Fears of ISIS – however hope HTS will convey stability
Everybody we meet has a narrative, every as horrifying because the final. Ali on the road outdoors is carrying a woollen beret knitted within the colors of the revolutionary flag.
He’s youthful, of combating age. He appears to be like haunted, as do the gaggle of kids round him who’ve been enjoying within the rubble. He’s their uncle.
He says he stayed in his dwelling on that road in jap Aleppo all over the siege in 2016 and for so long as he may after that, when regime militias had been in charge of the realm.
“We did not dare even stroll down that highway. If we did, they’d rob us, they’d take our belongings. They’d cease you, take your cash and accuse you of being armed.”
Picture: A bit of woman waves Syria’s revolutionary flag in jap Aleppo
He was then jailed for 3 years, first on the air pressure intelligence base in Aleppo after which with army intelligence in Damascus. When he was launched they made him serve within the military. Now he’s lastly dwelling.
I ask him if he thinks the combating will cease and if he fears a resurgence of Islamic State (IS), which the US says is gathering itself for a resurgence in Syria’s north east.
“We actually hope that extra stability comes and that Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) has authority over all of Syria, particularly over these guys. We do not need extra issues.”
Picture: Buildings destroyed by barrel bombs
Bombed-out streets bustling once more
The commerce that made Aleppo one of many world’s nice historic buying and selling cities is trickling again to the east.
Main roads are as full of life and chaotic as they’re in western Aleppo, bustling with site visitors and stalls and folks hawking all method of products.
However search for and the shopkeepers have wedged their awnings and their shawarma grills into damaged, bombed-out buildings. Rubble and garbage line the streets. For some purpose, the beggars we see are all ladies.
This struggle claimed ladies and kids too, however it was predominantly males who fought throughout the myriad of factions or who had been misplaced to the regime’s dungeons. Maybe that’s the reason.
Picture: Native youngsters play among the many rubble
Picture: Kids on the road in jap Aleppo
Noah, who runs a fragrance store, says enterprise has been sluggish since HTS took over.
The alternate fee has seen huge fluctuations. Folks have been specializing in primary wants, on meals and water.
The Kurdish districts in northern Aleppo are nonetheless harmful, sniper fireplace from Kurdish militia who really feel themselves surrounded and besieged has killed round 100 individuals over the previous two weeks.
“It isn’t tremendous steady, persons are nonetheless fairly fearful particularly when it is darkish at evening,” Noah says. “Folks go dwelling as quickly because the solar units.”
However there’s hope. Exterior Aleppo’s historic citadel, the place HTS posed two weeks in the past after they took the town earlier than marching south on the capital, youngsters wave the revolutionary flag and marvel at a camel and pony introduced out for the vacationers.
Aleppo has witnessed brutal chapters earlier than by means of its lengthy historical past. Hopefully the following can be much less sadistic than the final.
“We had been dwelling in a grave earlier than. It was like a rebirth.” Dr Diab informed me. “Now we are able to odor the contemporary air. It is an indescribable feeling.”
Russian commanders are reportedly refusing to ship their troops to hitch a deliberate offensive to storm the Dnipro river.
Putin’s military is increase its forces on the left financial institution of the Dnipro river, because it prepares to drive a crossing.
Intelligence studies recommend 2,000 assault troops have been assembled within the Kherson area, together with some 300 speedboats.
Nonetheless, many senior officers consider the deliberate assault to be a suicidal mission and are reluctant to commit their troops and gear to the struggle, in keeping with the ATESH partisan group.
In a publish to their Telegram channel, they wrote: “Russian navy commanders refuse to ship their subordinates to assaults within the Kherson area.
“ATESH brokers report rising stress in Russian items situated within the occupied territory of the Kherson area.
“The scenario is changing into more and more alarming: navy personnel observe intensified preparations for the offensive.
“Commanders are always known as to pressing conferences, after which they return late at night time – pale and clearly alarmed.
“This will increase nervousness in items the place nobody actually understands what is going on.
“In the meantime, the command continues to set suicidal targets, additional undermining the morale of the personnel.”
The partisans famous that Russian items in Crimea had been destroying their boats in a determined bid to not be despatched to Kherson to hitch the assault.
ATESH is a navy partisan motion working within the occupied territories of Ukraine, in addition to in Russia.
It was created by Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars in September 2022 on account of the Russian navy invasion.
The partisans mentioned that the speed of suicides in Russian items primarily based in Kherson was additionally growing, previous to the deliberate assault.
In a single day on December 20, Russian forces launched heavy artillery strikes on Kherson and its outskirts, concentrating on residential areas and significant infrastructure,
In accordance with a number of monitoring Telegram channels, the strikes had been supposed to cowl advancing assault teams trying to achieve the Antonivsky Bridge.
“Kherson is below heavy artillery hearth. They’re putting indiscriminately, with out correction,” wrote the Telegram channel Mykolaivskyi Vanek.
“There are preliminary studies of fires in residential buildings. All of this shelling is related to the occupiers’ try to seize the world across the Antonivsky Bridge.
“Two assault teams didn’t make it—they by no means even reached the river. The battle ended earlier than it actually started. The scenario stays secure for now.”
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Hanukkah — additionally spelled Chanukah or different transliterations from Hebrew — is Judaism’s “competition of lights.” On eight consecutive nightfalls, Jews collect with household and mates to mild one extra candle within the menorah — a multibranched candelabra.
In Hebrew, Hanukkah means “dedication,” and the vacation marks the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem within the 2nd century BC, after a small group of Jewish fighters liberated it from occupying overseas forces.
With the tiny provide of ritually pure oil that they discovered within the temple, they lit the menorah — and it stayed lit for eight days. The ritual of lighting a nightly candle, in addition to the emphasis on cooking meals in oil akin to potato pancakes known as latkes, memorialize this miraculously long-lasting oil.
When is Hanukkah 2024?
The dates of the vacation are based mostly on Hebrew month of Kislev, which often coincides with November-December within the Gregorian calendar.
This 12 months, Hanukkah can be celebrated from Dec. 25, 2024, by Jan. 2, 2025.
Does Hanukkah observance fluctuate?
Jews throughout the spiritual observance spectrum — from Reform to Conservative to Orthodox — give attention to the identical theme of bringing mild into the darkness and emphasizing that even a small, against-the-odds effort can have a reworking impact.
For that reason, despite the fact that the Talmud displays a dispute over the order of lighting, most begin with one candle and enhance the lighting by another candle every evening whereas reciting or chanting particular blessings.
The candles are added from proper to left, however lit from left to proper on the menorah, thus all the time beginning with the most recent mild. The particular menorah used for Hanukkah has eight branches, with a ninth place for the candle known as shamash from which all others are lit.
The custom requires candles with an actual flame, although some additionally use electrical ones in public shows, akin to in hospitals, for security causes.
How is Hanukkah celebrated?
A menorah is lit in every family and historically is positioned the place it may be seen from the skin, akin to a doorway or windowsill, to represent the spreading of God’s mild to all nations.
The lighting of menorahs in metropolis streets and parks has turn out to be extra distinguished lately in international locations around the globe, together with in entrance of public landmarks.
Along with menorah lightings, giving to charity and social works are additionally a part of the celebration for a lot of, reflecting the idea that the Jewish individuals are known as by God to assist make the world higher for all.
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Related Press faith protection receives help by the AP’s collaboration with The Dialog US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely chargeable for this content material.
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The Related Press , 2024-12-21 13:35:00
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