Suspected bandits have killed a 53-year-old baker, Tijani Amedu, and abducted his 13 relatives, who are mainly children, travelling alongside him, in the Katari area of Kaduna State.

The Edo State-born businessman’s brother, Rasaq, in a telephone interview with our correspondent on Wednesday, said the incident happened on January 6, 2024, while the victims were returning to Kaduna after visiting Warri, Delta State.

Rasaq said, “They came to visit for the Christmas and New Year holidays. My siblings and their families came to visit. But they got attacked by bandits when they were going back to Kaduna, using two buses. I was told the bandits started shooting on seeing them. The first bus drove through them but the second bus stopped. My elder brother and 13 kids were on the second bus. The bandits took all of them.”

He said family members later got to know when the children started communicating from their captivity.

He said, according to the children, “My elder brother’s head was hit and he fell (leading to his death),” adding, “but the 13 kids are still with them. They started (ransom) negotiation from N200m, but now, we’re at N50m.”

Rasaq said he last communicated with the kidnappers on Tuesday.

“We found the body of my brother on Saturday and buried him the following day, January 7,” he added.

He said the family could not raise the N50m, noting, “That’s a lot of money.”

One of the mothers of the children who did not want to be named refused to make any update noting, “Not for now, what we are after is how our children will be out.”

But Zinab, the wife of Amedu, who confirmed her husband was killed, said the family was seeking help on the matter.

“They killed my husband and they went away with 13 children,” Zinab told our correspondent in a telephone interview on Wednesday, adding that the family was seeking “prayers and help from anybody who can help. We have 13 of our children with them.”

When contacted on Wednesday, the Kaduna State Police Public Relations Officer, Mansur Hassan, asked for details of the incident.

He then said, “I will get back to you.” He had yet to do so as of the filing this report.

Kidnappings have recently become a disturbing menace in the North, North-Central and some southern states of Nigeria including Ogun and Lagos.

Members of the Middle Belt Youth Forum led by its president, Brent Kane, had threatened to hold a protest on Wednesday in Abuja against the rising cases of kidnapping in the region and other parts of the country. The protest was later suspended and rescheduled.

The planned protest followed the trending news of scores of abductees who were taken away by bandits from the Sagwari Estate Layout in the Dutsen-Alhaji area in the Bwari Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, last week.

Punch

Medicine for hostages and Palestinians arrives in Gaza under first Israel-Hamas deal since November

A shipment of medicine for dozens of hostages held by Hamas arrived in Gaza on Wednesday, part of a France- and Qatar- mediated deal that marked the first agreement between Israel and the militant group since a weeklong cease-fire in November.

The deal could bring respite to some of the roughly 100 hostages who remain in captivity, as well as to Palestinians in Gaza in desperate need of aid. But fighting still rages in many parts of the beleaguered enclave, and an end to the war — or the release of the hostages — seems nowhere in sight.

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Majed al-Ansari, announced late Wednesday on X, formerly Twitter, that the shipment had crossed into Gaza, without saying when or how the medicine would be distributed.

“Over the past few hours, medicine & aid entered the Gaza Strip, in implementation of the agreement announced yesterday for the benefit of civilians in the Strip, including hostages,” he wrote.

A senior Hamas official said that for every box provided for the hostages, 1,000 boxes of medicine would be sent in for Palestinians. The deal also includes the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza residents.

The agreement came 100 days into the conflict and as Palestinian militants are still putting up resistance across Gaza in the face of one of the deadliest military campaigns in recent history. More than 24,000 Palestinians have been killed. Some 85% of the narrow coastal territory’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes, and the United Nations says a quarter of the population is starving.

Israel has vowed to dismantle Hamas to ensure it can never repeat an attack like the one on Oct. 7 that triggered the war. Militants burst through Israel’s border defenses and stormed through several communities that day, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and capturing around 250.

Israel also has promised to win the return of the hostages still held inside Gaza.

Hamas has said it will not release any more hostages until there is a permanent cease-fire, something Israel and the United States, its top ally, have ruled out.

AID BOUND FOR HOSTAGES AND PALESTINIAN CIVILIANS

The last deal in late November between Israel and Hamas brought a temporary truce in exchange for the release of more than 100 hostages, mostly women and children, as well as freedom for dozens of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

A Qatari official said the medicine would be delivered to the hostages by the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. It was not immediately clear when the drugs would be delivered, or how the handover would be verified. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing behind-the-scenes diplomatic efforts.

France said it took months to organize the shipment of the medicines. Qatar, which has long served as a mediator with Hamas, helped broker the deal that will provide three months’ worth of medication for chronic illnesses for 45 of the hostages, as well as other medicine and vitamins. Several older men are among the remaining hostages.

Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official, said in a post on X that the International Committee of the Red Cross will deliver all the medicines, including the ones destined for the hostages, to hospitals serving all parts of Gaza. The ICRC declined to comment.

Senior U.N. officials have warned that Gaza faces widespread famine and disease if more aid is not allowed in.

Israel completely sealed off Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and only relented under U.S. pressure. It says there are now no limits on the entry of humanitarian aid and that U.N. agencies could reduce the delays by providing more workers and trucks.

But U.N. officials say aid delivery is hobbled by the opening of too few border crossings, a slow vetting process and fighting throughout the territory — all of which is largely under Israel’s control.

HEAVY FIGHTING IN GAZA

Israel said at the start of the year that it had largely defeated Hamas in northern Gaza and would scale back operations there, focusing on dense urban areas in the center and south of the territory. Additional Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza on Monday, but there has been little apparent letup in strikes, with scores of Palestinians killed every day.

A strike on a home killed a woman and two children in the southernmost town of Rafah. An Associated Press reporter saw the bodies arrive at a nearby hospital. Tens of thousands of people who heeded Israeli evacuation orders have sought shelter in the town, which is home to the border crossing with Egypt.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said Wednesday that 163 bodies were brought to the territory’s remaining functioning hospitals in the past 24 hours, as well as 350 wounded people. The update brought the war’s overall death toll in Gaza to 24,448, with over 60,000 wounded. The ministry said many other dead and wounded are trapped under rubble or unreachable because of the fighting.

The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths but says around two-thirds of those killed were women and children.

Israel blames the high civilian death toll on Hamas because it fights in dense residential areas. Israel says its forces have killed roughly 9,000 militants, without providing evidence, and that 192 of its own soldiers have been killed since the Gaza ground offensive began.

Militants are still fighting in all parts of the territory, and Israel appears no closer to freeing the remaining hostages. The deaths of two more hostages were confirmed Tuesday after Hamas said they were killed in Israeli airstrikes.

TENSIONS ACROSS THE REGION

Tensions are soaring in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces have conducted near-daily arrest raids that often trigger shootouts with Palestinian militants.

Israeli forces killed at least 10 Palestinians Wednesday in the territory, including five in the urban Balata refugee camp in the north, the military said. Among that group was a senior militant whom the military said was responsible for militant infrastructure and was allegedly involved in recent attacks against Israelis.

Five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike in Tulkarem, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. The military said it targeted a group of militants who had opened fire and were throwing explosives at Israeli soldiers.

Over 360 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7.

The Middle East has seen a dizzying array of strikes and counterstrikes from northern Iraq to the Red Sea and from southern Lebanon to Pakistan.

In recent days, a U.S.-led coalition has carried out strikes against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. The U.S. military launched more strikes on 14 Houthi missiles deemed an “imminent threat” by U.S. Central Command as the Houthis continue attacks on commercial and military ships. A bomb-carrying drone launched from a Houthi-controlled area hit a U.S.-owned ship in the Gulf of Aden Wednesday.

Iran has struck what it described as an Israeli spy headquarters in northern Iraq and anti-Iran militants in Pakistan and Syria. Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah have escalated the intensity of their fighting across the border, raising fears of another war.

AP

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russian forces hit over 40 Ukrainian artillery units in Krasny Liman area

Russia’s Battlegroup Center has hit more than 40 Ukrainian artillery units in the Krasny Liman area, the battlegroup’s spokesman Alexander Savchuk told TASS.

"In the course of counterbattery activities, more than 40 enemy artillery units were spotted and hit. Air defense systems destroyed an unmanned aerial vehicle of the Ukrainian army. Ukraine’s losses amounted up to 210 troops, a tank, two armored combat vehicles, two cars, and a D-30 howitzer," he said.

** Russian forces hit Ukrainian stronghold with over 20 soldiers in southern Donetsk area

Artillery units of Russia’s Southern Military District hit a Ukrainian stronghold in the southern Donetsk area, killing more than 20 Ukrainian soldiers, the Russian defense ministry said.

"Crews of 2S1 Gvozdika self-propelled howitzers of the artillery unit of the 49th army neutralized more than 20 Ukrainian soldiers inside a stronghold in the southern Donetsk area in the zone of the special military operation," it said.

According to the ministry, the stronghold was used for attempting another attack. "Reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles of the Battlegroup South detected a throng of servicemen of Ukrainian nationalist units in a forest, which indicated that they were forming an assault group for another attack attempt," the ministry said, adding that Russian artillery crews hit several dugouts with troops. "Artillery fire was adjusted in real time from unmanned aerial vehicles," it noted.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russian attack outside Ukraine's Kharkiv kills one, regional governor says

Russian missiles on Wednesday struck a town outside Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkiv, killing one person and damaging an educational institution, the regional governor and the military said.

Governor Oleh Synehubov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said there were two strikes on the town of Chuhuiv, southeast of Kharkiv.

A woman employee of a heating and power plant was killed. Another person was injured.

Another Telegram channel overseen by the commander of the Kharkiv military garrison said the attack was carried out using S-300 missiles.

On Tuesday, two Russian missiles struck a residential district of Kharkiv, injuring 17 people.

The city is a frequent target of Russian attacks, but has not fallen into Russian hands over the course of Russia's 22-month-old invasion of Ukraine.

Synehubov also reported a woman had died in the shelling of a village near Kupiansk -- scene of months of battles further east in Kharkiv region. Two children were injured.

Authorities in the southern region of Kherson said a man died in his car in near-constant shelling of the region's largest town, also called Kherson.

Russia's Defence Ministry said its forces had carried out a precision strike a day earlier on a building which housed "foreign fighters", most of them French, in the city of Kharkiv. It said more than 60 people were killed.

The Russian ministry provided no evidence.

Reuters could not verify battlefield claims from either side.

Tass/Reuters

Business leaders in Davos this week discussed a new Fast Company survey in which some participants said they reacted negatively to the word capitalism.

People under the age of 40 are more negative about capitalism than their older counterparts, according to a recent survey from Fast Company. But these younger generations aren’t defined simply by a story of “just complete anti-capitalism,” argues Megan Holston-Alexander, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Rather, they’ll be more excited about the future if they feel like they’re included and have ownership in the companies they help to build and grow.

“We think participation in a capitalist culture as a consumer, an investor, or as talent is really important,” Holston-Alexander said Tuesday during a panel discussion hosted by Fast Company at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

She heads up the firm’s cultural leadership fund, which is dedicated to creating Black wealth generation. Including different voices and points of view—and reimagining educational requirements to get in the door—will offer a competitive edge, she added.

But before a new group of leaders can transform the future of capitalism, today’s corporate leaders need to do a better job of building trust.

“There may be this fear of capitalism or distrust of capitalism, but I think part of that distrust and how we alleviate some of that distrust is by creating trust and creating credibility and creating openness,” said Rima Qureshi, the chief strategy officer of Verizon and the deputy chair of the Edison Alliance.

Communicating how companies are effective at solving problems also helps to engender trust, said Anthony Tan, the cofounder of Grab, a Singapore-based superapp that encompasses delivery and ride-hailing, along with financial services and mapping. That’s especially important in reaching younger generations—be it employees or customers—who are “high truth-seekers” and want information that’s clear, upfront, and honest, he added.

Finally, the future of capitalism depends on disruption—and both big business and entrepreneurs need to embrace change, noted Florian Hoffman, founder and CEO of The DO School.

“I think what really will change and needs to change is the question of what’s a valuable company? How do we talk about value when we talk about a company?” he asked. “We have to acknowledge that there isn’t a joint story and narrative anymore of what good looks like in the future and what capitalism means.”

Fast Company

The world’s five richest men have more than doubled their vast wealth since 2020, according to an Oxfam report, as the charity calls for curbs on “corporate power.”

The report found that the combined fortune of the world’s wealthiest people — Tesla CEO Elon Musk, LVMH boss Bernard Arnault and family, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, and veteran investor Warren Buffett — has jumped from $405 billion in March 2020 to $869 billion in November 2023. Oxfam used data from Forbes and Wealth X which has not been independently verified by CNBC.

Oxfam’s report was published Monday to coincide with the start of the latest World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, which sees the so-called global elite of top business and political leaders meet in Davos, Switzerland, although the five billionaires named in the report are not due to attend.

Seven of the world’s ten biggest companies have a billionaire as their CEO or main shareholder, the report found. Meanwhile, the world’s richest 1% of people own 43% of global financial assets, according to the research, such as publicly listed instruments like stocks and bonds, along with stakes in privately-held businesses.

“If current trends continue, the world will have its first trillionaire within a decade but poverty won’t be eradicated for another 229 years,” Oxfam said.

The charity also highlighted that net profit among 148 of the world’s biggest companies jumped 52% in the year to June 2023, versus their average profits between 2018 and 2021.

“Extreme poverty in the poorest countries is still higher than it was pre-pandemic, yet a small number of super-rich men are racing to become the world’s first trillionaire within the next ten years,” Aleema Shivji, Oxfam’s interim chief executive, said.

The charity called on governments to reduce the gap between the ultra-rich and the rest of society by “reining in corporate power,” including by breaking up monopolies, capping CEO pay and adding new taxes on permanent wealth and excess profits.

CNBC

Shell is set to conclude nearly a century of operations in Nigerian onshore oil and gas after agreeing to sell its subsidiary there to a consortium of five mostly local companies for up to $2.4 billion.

The British energy giant pioneered Nigeria's oil and gas business beginning in the 1930s. It has struggled for years with hundreds of onshore oil spills as a result of theft, sabotage and operational issues that led to costly repairs and high-profile lawsuits.

Since 2021, Shell has sought to sell its Nigerian oil and gas business, but will remain active in Nigeria's more lucrative and less problematic offshore sector.

Shell's exit is part of a broader retreat by western energy companies from Nigeria as they focus on newer, more profitable operations. Exxon Mobil(XOM.N), Italy's Eni and Norway's Equinor (EQNR.OL) have struck deals to sell assets in the country in recent years.

The British major will sell The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC) for a consideration of $1.3 billion, it said in a statement, while the buyers will make an additional payment of up to $1.1 billion relating to prior receivables at completion.

"This agreement marks an important milestone for Shell in Nigeria, aligning with our previously announced intent to exit onshore oil production in the Niger Delta, simplifying our portfolio and focusing future disciplined investment in Nigeria on our Deepwater and Integrated Gas positions," Shell head of upstream Zoë Yujnovich said.

The buyer, the Renaissance consortium comprises ND Western, Aradel Energy, First E&P, Waltersmith, all local oil exploration and production companies, and Petrolin, a Swiss-based trading and investment company.

The sale, which Renaissance confirmed, requires the approval of the federal government.

SPILLS AND LAWSUITS

Renaissance will take over the responsibility for dealing with spills, theft and sabotage, said Shell, which has faced in recent years multiple lawsuits for compensation over damage caused as a result of spills in the Niger delta.

Nnimmo Bassey, Executive Director of Nigerian advocacy group Health of Mother Earth Foundation said: "Shell must own up to its responsibility."

"This means full payment for the remediation and restoration of the polluted areas as well as reparations to the host communities. They cannot walk away from the virtually irreparable harm they have caused," Bassey said in a statement.

Shell's SPDC Limited operates and has a 30% stake in the SPDC joint venture that holds 18 onshore and shallow water mining leases. Shell's resources in SPDC reached around 458 million barrels of oil equivalent by the end of 2022.

Other partners in the joint venture are the state's Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), which holds 55%, TotalEnergies, with 10% and Italy's Eni with 5%.

Apart from its operations and stakes in several fields deep offshore, Shell still has a liquefied natural gas plant and other assets in Nigeria.

SPDC, which remains the operator, was formed in 1979, incorporating assets of the older Shell-BP consortium, with its current partners entering at later stages.

Reuters

No fewer than 10 persons were feared killed and 15 others hospitalised on Tuesday at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, Oyo State, following an explosion that rocked the Ibadan metropolis.

There was serious panic in the ancient city around 8 pm over the explosion, whose cause could not be confirmed on Tuesday night.

Among the affected areas were a section of the Governor’s Office, Secretariat, Oyo State House of Assembly, the residence of the former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Bola Ige, some buildings at Ologuneru, Apete, New Garage, Bashorun, Akobo, Sango and Eleyele.

One of our correspondents, who was at the scene of the explosion that occurred at Adeyi Avenue, Bodija Estate, Ibadan, Oyo State capital on Tuesday,  reported that no fewer than 10 bodies were recovered from the site and taken away in ambulances.

As of press time, rescue workers believed that some persons were still trapped under the rubble and efforts were ongoing to rescue them.

A social worker at UCH, who did not want his name in print because he had no authority to speak on the matter, told one of our correspondents that the hospital had received no fewer than 15 victims.

“The victims will not be less than 15,” he said.

Glass windows, doors and ceilings were shattered in the affected areas.

Major roads were deserted while residents were forced indoors by security operatives, including the police, Western Security Network, code-named Amotekun, and local vigilantes, who took over the affected areas.

The cause of the blast could not be confirmed. Some residents of the affected areas claimed it was caused by earth movement while others described it as a blast of an Improvised Explosive Device.

Thick smoke rented the air in the affected areas which resulted in the hospitalisation of the victims in various hospitals.

Security vehicles were sighted conveying the victims to some selected hospitals in the state capital for medical attention.

Also, it was gathered that at least three buildings collapsed as a result of the explosion.

In videos shared on social media, a white pickup van with the inscription Bodija Patrol van was seen conveying what was suspected to be the dead bodies of some of the victims, though the state police command told our correspondent via a WhatsApp message that casualties could not be ascertained.

Another short video also showed some of the places affected by the explosion, with an accompanying male voice calling for help.

“Please, we need help here. These are the people. We need help. Police, Army, and everybody else should come and rescue people here,” the male voice pleaded.

In a video currently in circulation, a yet-to-identified lady said the apartment her mother lived in collapsed as a result of the impact of the loud bang.

The distraught lady said, “I was not there, but my mum stays in Adeyi with my sister and my son. They are badly injured. The house collapsed on them. They are stitching their legs and arms. They are in the hospital beside Ace Mall.”

Another person, who claimed he escaped with his wife and two daughters, recounted how the house they were in practically caved in due to the explosion.

Also seen at the supposed site of the explosion was a mangled body as the sympathisers around the victim lamented the absence of police and emergency responders.

In a statement, the state government, through the Commissioner for Information, Dotun Oyelade, confirmed the explosion.

He said, “There are various interpretations of the incident but it is important for us to state categorically that the state government has taken over and is in full control of the unfortunate occurrence in order to mitigate the incident.

“All security service chiefs, including paramilitary chiefs and fire service operatives, have been deployed by the governor to reign in the spillover from the explosion.

“The Governor, Seyi Makinde, therefore, implores citizens to calm down and rest assured that their interests are being looked after.”

Also, on its verified X handle, the Oyo State Government urged residents to remain calm, noting that an investigation was underway to unravel the cause of the explosion.

“The Oyo State Government is aware of reports of an explosion in Ibadan. Residents are urged to remain calm as security agencies are investigating this to determine the source and cause of the incident,” the X post read.

The police also confirmed the explosion.

The police spokesman, Adewale Oyefeso, said the explosion happened around Dejo Oyelese Street Bodija Ibadan around 7:44 pm.

He said the cause of the explosion was unknown, and no casualty could be confirmed as the search continued on Tuesday night.

“The Commissioner of Police Oyo State Command, in the company with some senior officers and other responders, is on the ground for on-the-spot assessment and rescue operation.

“The Oyo State Police Command has also deployed armed and plainclothes officers to forestall any breakdown of law and order,” the police spokesman said.

A University of Ibadan student, who spoke with our correspondent on the telephone said, “It is true. We all heard the sound, and it was very loud. The cloud is cloudy with smoke. It happened at Bodija, and we in the UI area could see the smoke. Even those at Sango and Ojo heard the sound. In fact, we are all in a room, scared for our lives.”

Motunrayo Adegboro, another resident of Barika, about 15 minutes away from the site of the blast in Ibadan, confirmed the incident to one of our correspondents on Tuesday night.

An X user, @WillieWinehouse, tweeted, “A f***ing bomb just exploded in Ibadan! My entire house and street are in ruins!! What is going on?”

Another X user, @the_beardedsina, said that there were serious casualties and medical personnel were needed.

He tweeted, “Please retweet if you see this. If you are a medical professional in Ibadan and close by, please; our help and assistance are needed at Adeyi Avenue, Bodija. There are serious casualties there. Please help share.”

Survivors recount incident

Survivors of the explosion claimed that dynamite used by miners triggered the explosion which led to loss of lives and property in the community.

One of the survivors identified only as Mohammed said, “When the spark started, it was from the electricals and I brought out my fire extinguisher trying to help. My neighbour told me that it had passed an extinguisher and we needed to call the fire service. I told my son to bring my phone for me to call the fire service before the fire touched dynamite brought home by some miners in the building.

“The explosion threw me away and I thought I was dead. My children and wife are currently at the hospital receiving treatment.”

Another survivor who identified himself as Olaide, noted that they were called out to help douse a fire when the dynamite exploded.

He said, “We didn’t know that they brought anything home. We were only trying to help when we fell. I didn’t know when I woke up. I just found myself lying on the floor. It was scary.”

Lives, property lost

Our correspondent who was at the scene of the explosion saw no fewer than 20 victims being rescued while some were dead.

However, the total number of casualties remained unknown as of reason time.

Not less than 20 houses were affected in the explosion and at least 10 houses were completely damaged.

Our correspondent counted at least 15 vehicles that were completely damaged and more than five cars partly destroyed.

Search and rescue operations ongoing

As of press time, a rescue operation was still ongoing at the site of the explosion.

Rescue workers believed that some persons were still trapped under the rubble and efforts were ongoing to rescue them.

Officials of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal team are investigating to confirm the type of explosive that triggered the explosion.

Still on the explosion, Special Adviser to Makinde on Security Matters, retired CP Fatai Owoseni, gave the following update:

1. No one could authoritatively say what the nature of the explosion is

2. The impact is felt at about 500m radius

3. The explosion happened around Dejo Oyelese Close, Off Adeyi Avenue, Old Bodija

4. There's no need for anyone to go there to see what's happening. Security operatives are there and rescue workers. It's good that they should have clear access to rescue people as some may be buried under rubbles

5. Oyo State governor has instructed hospitals to admit anyone that's brought in from the explosion site and start attending to them immediately

6. All residents in the affected areas are advised to leave their house this evening, just in case of secondary explosion.

7. All hotels are to allow people who come in from the explosion site and around it. The state government will settle them.

Punch/NewsScroll

Palestinians fight in hard-hit areas of Gaza while deal emerges to deliver medicine to hostages

Palestinian militants battled Israeli forces in devastated northern Gaza and launched a barrage of rockets from farther south on Tuesday in a show of force more than 100 days into Israel’s massive air and ground campaign against the tiny coastal enclave.

The fighting in the north, which was the first target of Israel’s offensive and where entire neighborhoods have been pulverized, showed how far Israel remains from achieving its goals of dismantling Hamas and returning scores of hostages captured in the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war.

In other developments, France and Qatar, the Persian Gulf nation that helped mediate a previous cease-fire, said late Tuesday that they had brokered a deal between Israel and Hamas to deliver medicine to Israeli hostages in Gaza, as well as additional aid to Palestinians in the besieged territory.

France said it had been working since October on the deal, which will provide three months’ worth of medication for 45 hostages with chronic illnesses, as well as other medicines and vitamins. The medicines are expected to enter Gaza from Egypt on Wednesday.

It was the first known agreement between the warring sides since a weeklong truce in November.

Meanwhile, Gaza’s humanitarian crisis is worsening, with 85% of the territory’s 2.3 million Palestinians having fled their homes and U.N. agencies warning of mass starvation and disease. The conflict threatens to widen after the U.S. and Israel traded strikes with Iranian-backed groups across the region.

Israel has vowed to crush Hamas’ military and governing capabilities to ensure that the Oct. 7 attack is never repeated. Militants stormed into Israel from Gaza that day, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and capturing around 250 people. With strong diplomatic and military support from the United States, Israel has resisted international calls for a cease-fire.

Nearly half of the hostages were released during the truce, but more than 100 remain in captivity. Hamas has said it will not release any others until Israel ends the war.

STRIKES AND COUNTERSTRIKES ACROSS THE REGION

The longer the war goes on, the more it threatens to ignite other fronts across the region.

Iran fired missiles late Monday at what it said were Israeli “spy headquarters” in an upscale neighborhood near the sprawling U.S. Consulate in Irbil, the seat of Iraq’s northern semi-autonomous Kurdish region. Iraq and the U.S. condemned the strikes, which killed several civilians, and Baghdad recalled its ambassador to Iran in protest.

Iranian-backed groups in Iraq and Syria have carried out dozens of attacks on bases housing U.S. forces, and a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad killed an Iranian-backed militia leader earlier this month.

Elsewhere, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have resumed their attacks on container ships in the Red Sea following a wave of U.S.-led strikes last week. The U.S. military carried out another strike Tuesday. Separately, it said two Navy SEALS are missing after a raid last week on a ship carrying Iranian-made missile parts and weapons bound for Yemen.

Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group have exchanged fire along the border nearly every day since the war in Gaza began. The strikes and counterstrikes have grown more severe since an Israeli strike killed Hamas’ deputy political leader in Beirut this month, raising fears of a repeat of the 2006 war.

MILITANTS KEEP FIGHTING IN GAZA’S HARD-HIT NORTH

In Gaza, the Israeli military said its forces located some 100 rocket installations and 60 ready-to-use rockets in the area of Beit Lahiya, a town on the territory’s northern edge. Israeli forces killed dozens of militants during the operation, the military said, without providing evidence.

Mahmoud Abdel-Ghani, who lives in Beit Lahiya, said Israeli airstrikes hit several buildings on the eastern side of the town.

Hundreds of thousands of people fled northern Gaza, including Gaza City, following Israeli evacuation orders in October. Israel shut off water to the north in the opening days of the war, and hardly any aid has been allowed into the area, even as tens of thousands of people have remained there.

Residents reached by phone Tuesday described the heaviest fighting in weeks in Gaza City.

“The bombing never stopped,” said Faris Abu Abbas, who lives in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood. “The resistance is here and didn’t leave.”

Ayoub Saad, who lives near Shifa Hospital downtown, said he heard gunfire and shelling overnight and into Tuesday and saw dead and wounded people being brought to the hospital on carts.

After weeks of heavy fighting across northern Gaza, Israeli officials said at the start of the year that they were scaling back operations there. The focus shifted to the southern city of Khan Younis and built-up refugee camps in central Gaza dating back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation.

But there too, they have encountered heavy resistance. The military said at least 25 rockets were fired into Israel on Tuesday, damaging a store in one of the strongest bombardments in more than a week. Israel’s Channel 12 television said the rockets were launched from the Bureij camp in central Gaza.

A SPIRALING HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

Gaza’s Health Ministry said Tuesday that the bodies of 158 people killed in Israeli strikes have been brought to hospitals in the past 24 hours, bringing the war’s overall death toll to 24,285. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths but says around two-thirds of those killed were women and children.

Senior U.N. officials warned Monday that Gaza faces widespread famine and disease if more aid is not allowed in. While they did not directly blame Israel, they said aid delivery is hobbled by the opening of too few border crossings, a slow vetting process, and continuing fighting throughout the territory — all of which is largely under Israel’s control.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said U.N. agencies and their partners “cannot effectively deliver humanitarian aid while Gaza is under such heavy, widespread and unrelenting bombardment.” At least 152 U.N. staffers have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war.

Israeli officials say they have placed no limits on humanitarian aid and have called on the U.N. to provide more workers and trucks to accelerate delivery.

Israel completely sealed off Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and only relented under U.S. pressure. The U.S., as well as the U.N., have continued to push Israel to ease the flow of aid.

Israel blames the high civilian death toll on Hamas because it fights in dense residential areas. Israel says its forces have killed roughly 8,000 militants, without providing evidence, and that 190 of its own soldiers have been killed in the Gaza offensive.

AP

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine conflict began in 2008 – Putin

The West provoked the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine by luring Kiev with the prospect of NATO membership. This move drastically changed the security situation on the continent, President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday. The current standoff began not in 2022 but in 2008, he added, speaking to local community leaders from across Russia.

Putin then cited a former Czech president, who, according to Putin, has “recently” admitted that the “war” between Kiev and Moscow started in summer 2008 when the US-led bloc decided to “open its doors to Ukraine and Georgia.” It is unclear whether Putin was speaking about Milos Zeman, who had enjoyed close relations with Moscow for many years but sharply condemned Russia in February 2022 following the start of its military campaign against Kiev. It is also unclear which exact statement the Russian president was referring to.

Speaking to local community heads, the president stated that the 2008 NATO decision “drastically changed the situation in Eastern Europe.” Putin also noted that when Ukraine became an independent state in the early 1990s, it proclaimed its neutrality.

The Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, adopted in July 1990, announced that the then-Soviet Socialist Republic declared “its intention to become … a permanently neutral state that does not take part in any military blocs and sticks to the non-nuclear principles: not to accept, produce or acquire nuclear weapons.”

The situation started to change rapidly after the Western-backed 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev. Later the same year, the Ukrainian parliament – the Verkhovnaya Rada – adopted amendments to its laws, in which its neutral status was abandoned. The amendments were introduced by then-president Petr Poroshenko.

In 2017, accession to NATO was declared Ukraine’s foreign policy priority under new legislation. Two years later, Ukrainian lawmakers amended the nation’s constitution to declare “the strategic course on acquiring full membership in the EU and NATO” the “basis of internal and foreign policy.”

Russia has repeatedly expressed its concerns over NATO encroachment towards its borders and called it a national security threat. Prior to the outbreak of the current conflict, Moscow came forward with a comprehensive plan for security guarantees in Europe.

Submitted in December 2021, the proposal included demands that NATO officially bar Ukraine from ever becoming a member of the military bloc and for NATO to withdraw its forces to where they were before the alliance expanded eastward in 1997. The plan, aimed at defusing tensions in Europe, also called on the US-led bloc to pledge not to expand further East.

Moscow also demanded that the US withdraw nuclear weapons it had deployed to the territory of its non-nuclear allies in Europe, as well as all the relevant rapid deployment infrastructure. The overture was largely rejected by the US and its allies.

** NATO chief describes battlefield situation in Ukraine as difficult

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has described the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine as extremely difficult for the Ukrainian army and called for not underestimating Russia.

"The situation on the battlefield is extremely difficult. The Russians are now pushing on many frontlines. And of course, the big offensive that the Ukrainians launched last summer didn't give all the results we all hoped for. And we see how Russia is now building up," he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. "Russia is pushing hard. And this is serious and we should never underestimate Russia."

The World Economic Forum is a Swiss non-governmental organization that meets annually to discuss topical issues related to politics, economics and public life.

The 54th annual meeting of the WEF is taking place in Davos from January 15 to 19 under the theme "Rebuilding Trust." It brings together business executives, political leaders and experts from more than 120 countries (a total of 2,800 participants). The Russian side is not represented at the current meeting in Davos, as the organizers did not send it an invitation, just like in 2023.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russian missiles hit Ukraine's Kharkiv, 17 injured

Two Russian missiles struck a residential area in the centre of Ukraine's second city Kharkiv on Tuesday, injuring 17 people, two of them seriously, and badly damaging homes, local officials said.

Rescue teams were sifting through piles of rubble to establish whether others were hurt. The city's mayor described two "powerful explosions" and said at least 10 dwellings had been damaged.

Ukraine's Emergency Services, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said one of the missiles had hit a three-storey building that had previously housed a medical centre.

Fires were extinguished in two buildings and residential and other buildings sustained damage.

Regional Police Chief Volodymyr Tymoshko told public broadcaster Suspilne that one of the missiles had hit a roadway.

Emergency services posted online photos showing rescue teams poring over piles of smashed building materials, tackling fires, scrambling up ladders to damaged upper storeys and helping evacuees board minibuses.

Kharkiv Regional Governor Oleh Synehubov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said 17 people had been injured. Fourteen were in hospital, including two women who were seriously hurt.

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov, also writing on Telegram, said the missiles struck "precisely where there is no military infrastructure and precisely where there are in fact residences."

"There are at least 10 damaged buildings. Rescue teams are continuing to go through the rubble. And there is plenty of rubble."

Kharkiv, in Ukraine's northeast, has been a frequent target of attacks, but in the space of the nearly two-year-old conflict, the city has not fallen into Russian hands. Russian missiles hit a hotel in the city last week, injuring 11 people.

RT/Tass/Reuters

“Do you think that every fingerprint is actually unique?”

It’s a question that a professor asked Gabe Guo during a casual chat while he was stuck at home during the Covid-19 lockdowns, waiting to start his freshman year at Columbia University. “Little did I know that conversation would set the stage for the focus of my life for the next three years,” Guo said.

Guo, now an undergraduate senior in Columbia’s department of computer science, led a team that did a study on the subject, with the professor, Wenyao Xu of the University of Buffalo, as one of his coauthors. Published this week in the journal Science Advances, the paper seemingly upends a long-accepted truth about fingerprints: They are not, Guo and his colleagues argue, all unique.

In fact, journals rejected the work multiple times before the team appealed and eventually got it accepted at Science Advances. “There was a lot of pushback from the forensics community initially,” recalled Guo, who had no background in forensics before the study.

“For the first iteration or two of our paper, they said it’s a well-known fact that no two fingerprints are alike. I guess that really helped to improve our study, because we just kept putting more data into it, (increasing accuracy) until eventually the evidence was incontrovertible,” he said.

A new look at old prints

T o get to its surprising results, the team employed an artificial intelligence model called a deep contrastive network, which is commonly used for tasks such as facial recognition. The researchers added their own twist to it and then fed it a US government database of 60,000 fingerprints in pairs that sometimes belonged to the same person (but from different fingers) and sometimes belonged to different people.

As it worked, the AI-based system found that fingerprints from different fingers of the same person shared strong similarities and was therefore able to tell when the fingerprints belonged to the same individual and when they didn’t, with an accuracy for a single pair peaking at 77% — seemingly disproving that each fingerprint is “unique.”

“We found a rigorous explanation for why this is the case: the angles and curvatures at the center of the fingerprint,” Guo said.

For hundreds of years of forensic analysis, he added, people have been looking at different features called “minutiae,” the branchings and endpoints in fingerprint ridges that are used as the traditional markers for fingerprint identification. “They are great for fingerprint matching, but not reliable for finding correlations among fingerprints from the same person,” Guo said. “And that’s the insight we had.”

The authors said they are aware of potential biases in the data. Although they believe the AI system operates in much the same way across genders and races, for the system to be usable in actual forensics, more careful validation is required through the analysis of a larger and broader database of fingerprints, according to the study.

However, Guo said he’s confident that the discovery can improve criminal investigations.:

“The most immediate application is it can help generate new leads for cold cases, where the fingerprints left at the crime scene are from different fingers than those on file,” he said. “But on the flip side, this won’t just help catch more criminals. This will also actually help innocent people who might not have to be unnecessarily investigated anymore. And I think that’s a win for society.”

‘A tempest in a teacup’?

Using deep learning techniques on fingerprint images is an interesting topic, according to Christophe Champod, a professor of forensic science at the School of Criminal Justice of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. However, Champod, who wasn’t involved in the study, said he doesn’t believe the work has uncovered anything new.

“Their argument that these shapes are somewhat correlated between fingers has been known from the early start of fingerprinting, when it was done manually, and it has been documented for years,” he said. “I think they have oversold their paper, by lack of knowledge, in my view. I’m happy that they have rediscovered something known, but essentially, it’s a tempest in a teacup.”

In response, Guo said that nobody had ever systematically quantified or used the similarities between fingerprints from different fingers of the same person to the degree that the new study has.

“We are the first to explicitly point out that the similarity is due to the ridge orientation at the center of the fingerprint,” Guo said. “Furthermore, we are the first to attempt to match fingerprints from different fingers of the same person, at least with an automated system.”

Simon Cole, a professor in the department of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine, agreed that the paper is interesting but said its practical utility is overstated. Cole was also not involved in the study.

“We were not ‘wrong’ about fingerprints,” he said of forensic experts. “The unproven but intuitively true claim that no two fingerprints are ‘exactly alike’ is not rebutted by finding that fingerprints are similar. Fingerprints from different people, as well as from the same person have always been known to be similar.”

The paper said the system could be useful in crime scenes in which the fingerprints found are from different fingers than those in the police record, but Cole said that this can only occur in rare cases, because when prints are taken, all 10 fingers and often palms are routinely recorded. “It’s not clear to me when they think law enforcement will have only some, but not all, of an individual’s fingerprints on record,” he said.

The team behind the study says it’s confident in the results and has open-sourced the AI code for others to check, a decision both Champod and Cole praised. But Guo said the importance of the study goes beyond fingerprints.

“This isn’t just about forensics, it’s about AI. Humans have been looking at fingerprints since we existed, but nobody ever noticed this similarity until we had our AI analyze it. That just speaks to the power of AI to automatically recognize and extract relevant features,” he said.

“I think this study is just the first domino in a huge sequence of these things. We’re going to see people using AI to discover things that were literally hiding in plain sight, right in front of our eyes, like our fingers.”

CNN