World
Russia says it shot down Ukrainian drone near air base
The Russian military reported Monday that it shot down a Ukrainian drone approaching an air base deep inside Russia, the second time the facility has been targeted this month — again revealing weaknesses in Russia’s air defenses.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said debris killed three servicemen at the Engels air base, which houses Tu-95 and Tu-160 nuclear-capable strategic bomber planes that have struck Ukraine with missiles in the 10-month-old war.
Russia’s Baza news outlet reported that four people were wounded and said a fire had broken out, with explosions, sirens and flashes on a video it posted on its Telegram channel. The Defense Ministry claimed no Russian aircraft were damaged. It wasn’t clear whether the drone had been launched from Ukraine or Russian territory.
If the drone had been launched from Ukraine, it would have traveled more than 600 kilometers (370 miles) to reach Engels, located in Russia’s Saratov region on the Volga River. Shooting the drone down after such a long trip inside Russia again raises questions about the effectiveness of Russia’s air defenses, particularly those intended to protect its most strategic military assets such as warplanes capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
In keeping with the Kyiv government’s long-standing practice of not confirming cross-border attacks but welcoming their results, Ukrainian air force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat didn’t directly acknowledge his country’s involvement in Monday’s incident in an interview on Ukrainian television, but said: “These are the consequences of Russian aggression.”
He added: “If the Russians thought that the war wouldn’t affect them deep behind their lines, they were deeply mistaken.”
Read more: Ukraine FM aims for February peace summit
Russia has suffered numerous cross-border attacks during the war on its main territory, as well as on the Crimean Peninsula, which it illegally annexed in 2014. The incidents have outraged Russian military bloggers who say they show the country’s weak air defenses and security systems in general.
In another cross-border incident that couldn’t be independently confirmed, Russia’s Tass news agency reported Monday that the country’s security forces had killed four Ukrainian saboteurs attempting to enter the Bryansk region from Ukraine. The report claimed the infiltrators carried explosive materials when they were caught Sunday.
The cross-border attacks on Russian military and other strategic sites prompted Russian President Vladimir Putin to order almost weekly missile and weaponized drone attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, causing widespread blackouts that also knocked out heating and water supplies in increasingly frigid weather. The attacks, which began in October across much of the country, have been occurring as ground fighting focused on Ukraine’s southern and eastern regions.
In eastern Ukraine on Monday, Luhansk’s Ukrainian governor, Serhiy Haidai, said Russian forces have withdrawn from their military command operations post in the town of Kreminna as Ukrainian forces were approaching after months of intense fighting. Russia’s Defense Ministry didn’t comment on the withdrawal claim.
Russian forces relocated to Kreminna and several other areas in September after they pulled back from the Kharkiv region in eastern Ukraine. Kreminna is in the eastern Luhansk region, which is almost entirely under Moscow’s control, and is on an important supply route for Russian forces and serves as a gateway for movement into other strategic positions. Earlier, Haidai reported that Russia had withdrawn its occupying government administration from Svatove, 51 kilometers (31 miles) north of Kreminna. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address Monday that “the situation there is difficult, painful. The occupiers are expending all the resources available to them — and they are considerable resources — to squeeze out at least some advance.”
Haidai told Ukrainian television on Monday that Russian forces in the region are “suffering huge losses and medical facilities are overwhelmed with wounded soldiers.” The Russian army is redeploying paratroopers from the Kherson region to the area, he added.
Read more: Russia shoots down Ukrainian drone near its Engels airbase
In neighboring Donetsk region, partially occupied by Russia, fierce battles continue around the city of Bakhmut, which Russian forces have been trying to seize for weeks to consolidate their grip on Ukraine’s east. Zelenskyy said last week Bakhmut was the hottest spot on the war’s 1,300-kilometer (800-mile) front line.
Ukrainian officials have maintained ambiguity over previous high-profile attacks, including drone strikes on Russian military bases earlier this month.
On Dec. 5, unprecedented drone strikes on Engels and the Dyagilevo base in the Ryazan region in western Russia killed a total of three servicemen and wounded four others. In retaliation, Russia launched a massive missile barrage in Ukraine that struck homes and buildings and killed civilians.
Elsewhere on the battlefield, at least four civilians were wounded in Russian shelling of five Ukrainian southeast regions over the past 24 hours, according to the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko. Overall, the intensity of the shelling from Sunday night into Monday was significantly lower.
For the first time in weeks, Russian forces didn’t shell the Dnipropetrovsk region, which borders the partially occupied southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, its governor, Valentyn Reznichenko, reported on Telegram.
“This is the third quiet night in 5.5 months since the Russians started shelling” the areas around the city of Nikopol, Reznichenko wrote. Nikopol is located across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is under the control of Russian forces and whose six reactors are shut down.
Ukrainian-controlled areas of the neighboring Kherson region were shelled 33 times over the past 24 hours, according to Kherson’s Ukrainian Gov. Yaroslav Yanushevich. No casualties were reported.
On Sunday, Russian forces attacked the city of Kramatorsk, where Ukrainian forces are headquartered. Three missiles hit an industrial facility and damaged residential buildings, but no casualties were reported, according to local officials.
On Saturday, a deadly attack on the city of Kherson, which Kyiv’s forces recaptured last month, killed and wounded scores of people. Local residents are lining up to donate blood for the wounded, Yanushevich said Monday.
Western NY death toll rises to 28 from cold, storm chaos
Buffalo residents hovered around space heaters, hunted for cars buried in snow drifts and looked for more victims Monday, after 28 people died in one of the worst weather-related disasters ever to hit western New York.
The rest of the United States also was reeling from the ferocious winter storm, with at least another two dozen deaths reported in other parts of the country.
Up to 9 more inches of snow (23 centimeters) could fall in some areas of western New York through Tuesday, the National Weather Service said.
“This is not the end yet,” said Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, calling the blizzard “the worst storm probably in our lifetime,” even for an area accustomed to punishing snow.
Some people, he noted, were stranded in their cars for more than two days.
President Joe Biden said his prayers were with the victims’ families, and offered federal assistance Monday to the hard-hit state.
Those who lost their lives around Buffalo were found in cars, homes and snowbanks. Some died while shoveling snow, others when emergency crews could not respond in time to medical crises.
Melissa Carrick, a doula, said the blizzard forced her to coach a pregnant client through childbirth by telephone. An ambulance crew transported the woman to a hospital about 45 minutes south of Buffalo because none of the closer hospitals were reachable.
“In any other normal Buffalo storm? I would just go because that’s what you do – just drive through the snow,” she said. “But you knew this was different.”
Scientists say the climate change crisis may have contributed to the intensity of the storm. That’s because the atmosphere can carry more water vapor, which acts as fuel, said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Read more: 48 deaths reported in US from massive storm
Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University, likened a single weather event to an “at-bat” — and the climate as your “batting average.”
“It’s hard to say,” Serreze said. “But are the dice a little bit loaded now? Absolutely.”
The blizzard roared across western New York Friday and Saturday. With many grocery stores in the Buffalo area closed and driving bans in place, some people pleaded on social media for donations of food and diapers.
“It was like looking at a white wall for 14 to 18 hours straight,” Poloncarz, the county official, said.
Relief is coming later this week, as forecasts call for temperatures to slowly rise, said Ashton Robinson Cook, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
Cook said the bomb cyclone — when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm — has weakened. It developed near the Great Lakes, stirring up blizzard conditions including heavy winds and snow.
Some 3,410 domestic and international flights were canceled Monday as of about 3 p.m. EDT, according to the tracking site FlightAware. The site said Southwest Airlines had 2,497 cancellations — about 60% of its scheduled flights and about 10 times as many as any other major U.S. carrier.
Southwest said the weather was improving, which would “stabilize and improve our situation.”
Based on FlightAware data, airports all across the U.S. were suffering from cancellations and delays, including Denver, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Seattle, Baltimore and Chicago.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul toured the aftermath in Buffalo — her hometown — on Monday, calling the blizzard “one for the ages.” Almost every fire truck in the city became stranded Saturday, she said.
Hochul noted the storm came a little over a month after the region was inundated with another “historic” snowfall. Between the two storms, snowfall totals are not far off from the 95.4 inches (242 centimeters) the area normally sees in an entire winter season.
Read more: Millions in US hunker down from frigid, deadly monster storm
The National Weather Service said the snow total at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport stood at 49.2 inches (1.25 meters) at 10 a.m. Monday. Officials say the airport will be shut through Wednesday morning.
Shahida Muhammad told WKBW that an outage knocked out power to her 1-year-old son’s ventilator. She and the child’s father manually administered breaths from Friday until Sunday when rescuers saw her desperate social media posts and came to their aid. She said her son was doing well despite the ordeal and described him as “a fighter.”
In a makeshift hut in her living room, Trisha LoGrasso was still huddled around a space heater Monday with three of her children and her eldest daughter’s boyfriend. The temperature inside her Buffalo home was 42 degrees (5.5 C). She was without heat because of a gas leak, and burst pipes left her with no running water.
“I’ve lived here my whole life, and this is the worst storm I’ve ever seen,” the 48-year-old said.
Melissa Osmon and her husband James were without power for more than 72 hours in the Buffalo suburb of Williamsville, and would retreat to their car to stay warm for hours at a time.
“We even watched the Buffalo Bills game on our phone,” Osmon said, speaking by phone from her GMC Acadia.
“You can see your breath inside the house,” she said. “That’s how cold it is.”
The storm knocked out power in communities from Maine to Seattle.
Storm-related deaths were reported practically nationwide, including at least eight killed in crashes in Missouri, Kansas and Kentucky. A woman fell through Wisconsin river ice, and there was a fatal fire at a Kansas homeless persons camp.
In Jackson, Mississippi, crews struggled Monday to get water through the capital city’s beleaguered water system, authorities said. Many areas had no water or low water pressure. On Christmas Day, residents were told to boil their drinking water due to water lines bursting in the frigid temperatures.
“The issue has to be significant leaks in the system that we have yet to identify,” the city said in a statement Monday.
S. Korea to pardon former leader Lee for corruption crimes
The South Korean government of President Yoon Suk Yeol said Tuesday it will grant a special pardon to ex-President Lee Myung-bak, who was sentenced to a 17-year prison term for a range of corruption crimes.
The Justice Ministry said in a statement that Lee is among 1,373 convicts who will be pardoned Wednesday. It said it has decided to include some politicians, such as Lee, as part of efforts to promote a national unity.
Lee, 81, was released from prison temporarily in June over health concerns.
Read: Kim claims N. Korean successes, wants to overcome challenges
The CEO-turned-conservative hero had been convicted of taking bribes from big businesses including Samsung, embezzling funds from a company that he owned, and other corruption-related crimes before and during his presidency from 2008 to 2013.
He was South Korea’s first president with a business background and once symbolized the country’s economic rise. He began his business career with an entry-level job at Hyundai Group’s construction arm in the mid-1960s, before he rose to CEO of 10 companies under Hyundai Group and led the group’s rapid rise at a time when South Korea’s economy grew explosively from the rubble of the 1950-53 Korean War.
Read: S. Korea fires warning shots after North drones cross border
Lee’s corruption case erupted after his successor and fellow conservative Park Geun-hye was ousted and sent to jail over a separate 2016-17 corruption scandal. The back-to-back scandals deeply hurt conservatives in South Korea and deepened a national divide.
Park, who was serving a lengthy prison term, was pardoned in December 2021, when South Korea was governed by Yoon’s liberal predecessor, Moon Jae-in.
Ukraine FM aims for February peace summit
Ukraine’s foreign minister said Monday that his nation wants a summit to end the war but he doesn’t anticipate Russia taking part, a statement making it hard to foresee the devastating invasion ending soon.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told The Associated Press that his government wants a “peace” summit within two months at the United Nations with Secretary-General António Guterres as mediator.
The U.N. gave a very cautious response.
“As the secretary-general has said many times in the past, he can only mediate if all parties want him to mediate,” U.N. associate spokesperson Florencia Soto Nino-Martinez said Monday.
Kuleba said Russia must face a war-crimes tribunal before his country directly talks with Moscow. He said, however, that other nations should feel free to engage with Russians, as happened before a grain agreement between Turkey and Russia.
The AP interview offered a glimpse at Ukraine’s vision of how the war with Russia could one day end, although any peace talks would be months away and highly contingent on complex international negotiations.
Read: Russia shoots down Ukrainian drone near its Engels airbase
Kuleba also said he was “absolutely satisfied” with the results of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the U.S. last week, and he revealed that the U.S. government had made a special plan to get the Patriot missile battery ready to be operational in the country in less than six months. Usually, the training takes up to a year.
Kuleba said during the interview at the Foreign Ministry that Ukraine will do whatever it can to win the war in 2023.
“Every war ends in a diplomatic way,” he said. “Every war ends as a result of the actions taken on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.”
Commenting on Kuleba’s proposal, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the state RIA Novosti news agency that Russia “never followed conditions set by others. Only our own and common sense.”
A Kremlin spokesman said last week that no Ukrainian peace plan can succeed without taking into account “the realities of today that can’t be ignored” — a reference to Moscow’s demand that Ukraine recognize Russia’s sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed in 2014, as well as other territorial gains.
Kuleba said the Ukrainian government would like to have the “peace” summit by the end of February.
“The United Nations could be the best venue for holding this summit, because this is not about making a favor to a certain country,” he said. “This is really about bringing everyone on board.”
At the Group of 20 summit in Bali in November, Zelenskyy made a long-distance presentation of a 10-point peace formula that includes the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the withdrawal of Russian troops, the release of all prisoners, a tribunal for those responsible for the aggression and security guarantees for Ukraine.
Asked about whether Ukraine would invite Russia to the summit, he said that Moscow would first need to face prosecution for war crimes at an international court.
“They can only be invited to this step in this way,” Kuleba said.
About the U.N. Secretary-General’s role, Kuleba said: “He has proven himself to be an efficient mediator and an efficient negotiator, and most importantly, as a man of principle and integrity. So we would welcome his active participation.”
Read: Putin claims Moscow ready for Ukraine talks as attacks go on
The U.N. spokesman’s office had no immediate comment.
Other world leaders have also offered to mediate, such as those in Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
The foreign minister again downplayed comments by Russian authorities that they are ready for talks.
“They (Russians) regularly say that they are ready for negotiations, which is not true, because everything they do on the battlefield proves the opposite,” he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed few days ago that his country is ready for talks to end the war in Ukraine, but suggested that the Ukrainians are the ones refusing to take that step. Despite Putin’s comments, Moscow’s forces have kept attacking Ukraine — a sign that peace isn’t imminent.
Zelenskyy’s visit to the U.S. was his first foreign trip since the war started on Feb. 24. Kuleba praised Washington’s efforts and underlined the significance of the visit.
Ukraine secured a new $1.8 billion military aid package, including a Patriot missile battery, during the trip.
Kuleba said that the move “opens the door for other countries to do the same.”
He said that the U.S. government developed a program for Ukrainian troops to complete training faster than usual “without any damage to the quality of the use of this weapon on the battlefield.”
While Kuleba didn’t mention a specific time frame, he said only that it will be “very much less than six months.” And he added that the training will be done “outside” Ukraine.
During Russia’s ground and air war in Ukraine, Kuleba has been second only to Zelenskyy in carrying Ukraine’s message and needs to an international audience, whether through Twitter posts or meetings with friendly foreign officials.
On Monday, Ukraine called on U.N. member states to deprive Russia of its status as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council and to exclude it from the world body. Kuleba said they have long “prepared for this step to uncover the fraud and deprive Russia of its status.”
The Foreign Ministry says that Russia never went through the legal procedure for acquiring membership and taking the place of the USSR at the U.N. Security Council after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“This is the beginning of an uphill battle, but we will fight, because nothing is impossible,” he told the AP.
Pakistan troops search for attackers after 6 soldiers killed
Pakistani forces on Monday expanded their search for the perpetrators behind multiple attacks that killed six troops and wounded 17 civilians in a restive southwestern province the previous day.
The top government official in the southwestern Baluchistan province, Abdul Aziz Uqaili, said there were a total of nine attacks in the province on Sunday. No civilians were killed in the attacks, he tweeted. Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif condemned the violence in Baluchistan.
Earlier, the military in a statement said five soldiers, including an army captain, were killed when a roadside bomb exploded near a security forces’ vehicle during a clearance operation in Kahan, a remote area in Baluchistan bordering Afghanistan. No militant group has claimed responsibility for the bombing.
The sixth soldier was killed in a shootout with the Pakistani Taliban in the Sambaza area of Zhob district, according to Azfar Mohesar, a senior police official. A militant was also killed in the shootout, he said.
READ: US warns of possible attack in Islamabad amid security fears
In the provincial capital of Quetta, 12 people were wounded when assailants threw a hand grenade in a bazaar near a residential area, Mohesar added. Elsewhere in Baluchistan, five people were wounded in attacks in the towns of Kalat, Khuzdar, and Hub.
On Monday, Pakistan’s army chief Gen. Asim Munir and other officials attended the funeral of army Capt. Mohammad Fahad Khan, who was among the soldiers killed in Baluchistan the previous day.
The Pakistani Taliban — known also as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP — have stepped up attacks across Pakistan since November, when they unilaterally ended a cease-fire after accusing the military of violating the truce.
The militant group is an ally of the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in neighboring Afghanistan last year as U.S. and NATO troops were in the final stages of their pullout. The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan has emboldened the Pakistani Taliban.
Also, unrelated to TTP, separatists in Baluchistan have long waged a low-level insurgency seeking independence from the central government in Islamabad.
Meanwhile, the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Islamabad on Monday issued a security alert for the kingdom’s citizens, advising them to remain careful as there was a threat of attacks in Pakistan. The development came a day after the U.S. Embassy issued a similar warning for its citizens in the capital.
Kim claims N. Korean successes, wants to overcome challenges
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for stronger effort to overcome hardships and challenges facing his country as he opened a key political meeting after carrying out a record number of missile tests this year.
A plenary meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party was convened in Pyongyang on Monday to review past projects and discuss next year’s work plans, the official Korean Central News Agency said Tuesday.
Kim will likely use the meeting to reaffirm his resolve to expand his nuclear arsenal and introduce high-tech weapons targeting the U.S. and South Korea while laying out projects to revive pandemic-battered public livelihoods, some experts say.
Read: S. Korea fires warning shots after North drones cross border
In his opening comments, Kim compared hardships and challenges since a bigger party meeting in early 2021 to “the ten-year struggle of the revolution.” But he claimed North Korea has reported some successes “in the arduous course” and that his country’s power has “remarkably” increased in political, military, economic and cultural areas.
“He stressed the need to lay out strategies to launch more exciting and confident struggles based on valuable facts that the country has achieved practical advance after enduring all difficulties,” the official Korean Central News Agency said. It said Kim reviewed the “splendid” achievement made this year and clarified “the strategic and tactical” tasks to achieve North Korean-style socialism.
KCNA didn’t elaborate on the achievement Kim claimed and the tasks he set, and his claims of achievement couldn’t be independently confirmed.
Kim may need such propaganda-driven claims to draw greater public loyalty to push difficult projects to bolster his weapons arsenal and address economic woes while facing U.S.-led sanctions and pressure campaigns to curb his nuclear ambitions, some observers say.
Read: China sends 71 warplanes, 7 ships toward Taiwan in 24 hours
The Workers’ Party meeting is expected to last several days, and Kim will likely address issues such as his arms buildup, relations with the United States and the economy in later sessions.
This year, Kim’s military test-launched a record number of missiles, many of them nuclear-capable weapons capable of reaching the U.S. mainland and its allies South Korea and Japan. He’s said he won’t return to talks with the United States unless it withdraws its hostile policies, in an apparent reference to U.S.-led sanctions and its regular military drills with South Korea.On Monday, animosities on the Korean Peninsula rose further after South Korea accused North Korea of flying drones across their tense border for the first time in five years and responded by firing warning shots and scrambling warplanes.
It wasn’t known if any of the North Korean drones were shot down.
South Korea said it also sent its own surveillance assets, in an apparent reference to unmanned drones, across the border.
More Rohingya refugees reach Indonesia after weeks at sea
A second group in two days of weak and exhausted Rohingya Muslims landed on a beach in Indonesia’s northernmost province of Aceh on Monday after weeks at sea, officials said.
At least 185 men, women and children disembarked from a rickety wooden boat at dusk on Ujong Pie beach at Muara Tiga, a coastal village in Aceh’s Pidie district, said local police chief Fauzi, who goes by a single name.
“They are very weak because of dehydration and exhaustion after weeks at sea,” Fauzi said.
A distressing video circulated widely in social media showed the 185 dehydrated and exhausted Rohingya, crumpled weakly and emaciated, many crying for help.
READ: Urgently rescue boat carrying upto 200 Rohingyas: ASEAN parliamentarians urge member states, others
The 83 men, 70 women and 32 children were transferred by military trucks to a school just before midnight on Monday from a village hall where they previously received help from residents, health workers and others.
One of the refugees who spoke some Malay and identified himself as Rosyid, told The Associated Press that they left a camp in Bangladesh at the end of November and drifted on the open sea. He said at least “20 of us died aboard due to high waves and sick, and their bodies were thrown into the sea.”
Chris Lewa, the director of the Arakan Project, which works in support of Myanmar’s Rohingya, confirmed on Tuesday that the boat that landed on Ujong Pie beach on Monday was from the group of 190 Rohingya who were reported by United Nations to be drifting in a small boat in the Andaman Sea for a month.
She told AP by email that the arrivals were among four groups of Rohingya refugees that had left Cox’s Bazar district in Bangladesh late November by smaller boats to avoid detection by local coast guards before they were transferred onto four larger boats for their respective journeys.
A Vietnamese oil ship rescued one of the boats with more than 150 people onboard off the coast of Myanmar on Dec. 8, but then towed it to shore after provide them with food and water, Lewa said.
In Dec. 18, the second boat, carrying 104 people, was rescued by the Sri Lankan navy. Lewa said the captain of that boat last week sent a message to his relative who lives at one of the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar that the third boat may have sunk because he had received an “SOS call” from the third boat’s captain which was about to sink and asking him to transfer the passengers on his boat, but he refused as his overcrowded boat already had an engine problem and he feared that to transfer them would result in everyone sinking.
READ: Vulnerable Rohingyas: US to consider resettlement recommendations from UNHCR
The fourth boat “finally landed in northern part of Aceh, Indonesia, in late afternoon on Monday,” Lewa said, after weeks of her organization pleading with south and southeast Asian countries to help.
The UNHCR on Friday urged countries to rescue the refugees, saying reports indicated they were in dire condition with insufficient food or water.
“Many are women and children, with reports of up to 20 people dying on the unseaworthy vessel during the journey,” the agency said.
Also in Christmas Day, another group of 58 Rohingya — all male, including 13 minors — arrived in Ladong village in Aceh Besar district.
Azharul Husna, who heads the Aceh branch of KontraS, an Indonesian rights group, said Monday that the men in the group all carried UNHCR cards from refugee camps in Bangladesh and had left in search of a better life in Malaysia.
Citing one of them, Husna said the 58 refugees left Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, where more than 700,000 Rohingya from Myanmar had fled in 2017, to work on plantations in Malaysia. Their boat was damaged and the engine failed, leaving them drifting at sea until they came ashore in Aceh.
Myanmar security forces have been accused of mass rapes, killings and burning of thousands of homes belonging to Rohingya, sending them fleeing to Bangladesh and onward.
Malaysia has been a common destination for many of the refugees arriving by boat, but they also have been detained in the country.
Although neighboring Indonesia is not a signatory to the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention, the UNHCR said that a 2016 presidential regulation provides a legal framework governing the treatment of refugees on boats in distress near Indonesia and helps them disembark.
48 deaths reported in US from massive storm
Millions of people hunkered down against a deep freeze Monday to ride out the winter storm that has killed at least 48 people across the US and is expected to claim more lives after trapping some residents inside houses with heaping snow drifts and knocking out power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses.
"Twenty-seven storm-related deaths were reported in western New York. And 20 of those deaths occurred in Buffalo, New York," a city spokesperson announced Monday morning.
The deep freeze from a deadly winter storm that walloped much of the United States will continue into the week as people in western New York deal with massive snow drifts that snarled emergency vehicles and travelers across the country see canceled flights and dangerous roads.
The extreme weather stretched from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico. About 60% of the U.S. population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning, and temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians.
The National Weather Service said Sunday the frigid arctic air “enveloping much of the eastern half of the U.S. will be slow to moderate.”
Read: Wild winter storm envelops US, snarling Christmas travel
That’s especially unwelcome news for Buffalo, which saw hurricane-force winds and snow causing whiteout conditions that paralyzed emergency response efforts.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said almost every fire truck in the city was stranded Saturday and implored people Sunday to respect an ongoing driving ban in the region. Officials said the airport would be shut through Tuesday morning. The National Weather Service said the snow total at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport stood at 43 inches (1.1 meters) at 7 a.m. Sunday.
Huge snowdrifts nearly covered cars and there were thousands of houses, some adorned in unlit holiday displays, dark from a lack of power.
With snow swirling down untouched and impassable streets, forecasters warned an additional 1 to 2 feet (30 to 60 centimeters) of snow was possible in some areas through early Monday morning amid wind gusts of 40 mph (64 kph). Police said Sunday evening that there were two “isolated” instances of looting during the storm.
Two people died in their suburban Cheektowaga, New York, homes Friday when emergency crews could not reach them in time to treat their medical conditions. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said 10 more people died there during the storm, including six in Buffalo, and warned there may be more dead.
“Some were found in cars, some were found on the street in snowbanks,” Poloncarz said. “We know there are people who have been stuck in cars for more than two days.”
Freezing conditions and power outages had Buffalonians scrambling to get to anywhere with heat amid what Hochul called the longest sustained blizzard conditions ever in the city. But with streets under a thick blanket of white, that wasn’t an option for people like Jeremy Manahan, who charged his phone in his parked car after almost 29 hours without electricity.
“There’s one warming shelter, but that would be too far for me to get to. I can’t drive, obviously, because I’m stuck,” Manahan said. “And you can’t be outside for more than 10 minutes without getting frostbit.”
Read: US braces for dangerous blast of cold, wind and snow
Ditjak Ilunga of Gaithersburg, Maryland, was on his way to visit relatives in Hamilton, Ontario, for Christmas with his daughters Friday when their SUV was trapped in Buffalo. Unable to get help, they spent hours with the engine running, buffeted by wind and nearly buried in snow.
By 4 a.m. Saturday, their fuel nearly gone, Ilunga made a desperate choice to risk the howling storm to reach a nearby shelter. He carried 6-year-old Destiny on his back while 16-year-old Cindy clutched their Pomeranian puppy, following his footprints through drifts.
“If I stay in this car I’m going to die here with my kids,” Ilunga recalled thinking. He cried when the family walked through the shelter doors. “It’s something I will never forget in my life.”
Travelers’ weather woes continued, with hundreds of flight cancellations already and more expected after a bomb cyclone — when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm — developed near the Great Lakes, stirring up blizzard conditions, including heavy winds and snow.
The storm knocked out power in communities from Maine to Seattle. But heat and lights were steadily being restored across the U.S. According to poweroutage.us, fewer than 100,000 customers were without power Monday at 7 a.m. EDT — down from a peak of 1.7 million.
Concerns about rolling blackouts across eastern states subsided Sunday after PJM Interconnection said its utilities could meet the day’s peak electricity demand. The mid-Atlantic grid operator had called for its 65 million consumers to conserve energy amid the freeze Saturday.
Storm-related deaths were reported in recent days all over the country: 12 in Erie County, New York, ranging in age from 26 to 93 years old, and another in Niagara County where a 27-year-old man was overcome by carbon monoxide after snow blocked his furnace; 10 in Ohio, including an electrocuted utility worker and those killed in multiple car crashes; six motorists killed in crashes in Missouri, Kansas and Kentucky; a Vermont woman struck by a falling branch; an apparently homeless man found amid Colorado’s subzero temperatures; and a woman who fell through Wisconsin river ice.
In Jackson, Mississippi, city officials on Christmas Day announced residents must now boil their drinking water due to water lines bursting in the frigid temperatures
S. Korea fires warning shots after North drones cross border
South Korea’s military fired warning shots and scrambled aircraft after North Korean drones entered the South’s airspace on Monday, South Korean officials said, days after the North launched two ballistic missiles in its latest testing activities.
Several North Korean drones crossed the inter-Korean border and were detected in the South’s territory on Monday morning, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said.
South Korea’s military broadcast warnings and fired warning shots before it launched fighter jets and attack helicopters to shoot down the North Korean drones, the Defense Ministry said. It wasn’t immediately known if the drones were shot down.
Read: North Korea says rocket launch was test of 1st spy satellite
It’s the first time for North Korean drones to enter South Korean airspace since 2017, when a suspected North Korean drone was found crashed in South Korea. South Korean military officials said at the time that the drone photographed a U.S. missile defense system in South Korea.
North Korea has previously touted its drone program, and South Korean officials said the North has about 300 drones. In 2014, several suspected North Korean drones were found south of the border. Experts said they were low-tech but could be considered a potential security threat.
Read: Missile tests practiced to attack South, US: North Korea
Last Friday, North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles toward its eastern waters, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. The launch was seen as a protest of the South Korean-U.S. joint air drills that North Korea views as an invasion rehearsal.
This year, North Korea has conducted an unprecedented number of missile tests in what some experts call an attempt to improve its weapons and pressure rivals to make concessions such as lifting sanctions in future negotiations. Recently, the North also claimed to have performed major tests needed to acquire its first spy satellite and a more mobile intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.
Russia shoots down Ukrainian drone near its Engels airbase
The Russian military reported on Monday that it shot down a Ukrainian drone approaching an airbase deep inside Russia, the second time the airbase has been targeted this month, raising questions about the effectiveness of Russia’s air defenses if drones can fly that far into the country.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the incident took place in the early hours of Monday, and three servicemen were killed by debris at the Engels airbase that houses the Tu-95 and Tu-160 nuclear-capable strategic bombers that have been involved in launching strikes on Ukraine.
Engels is located in Russia’s Saratov region on the Volga river, more than 600 kilometers (more than 370 miles) east of the border with Ukraine.
No damage was inflicted on Russian aircraft, the ministry said.
Read: Some Ukrainians move Christmas to detach again from Russia
It is the second time Engels has been targeted by Ukrainian drones; on Dec. 5, unprecedented drone strikes on Engels and the Dyagilevo base in the Ryazan region in western Russia killed a total of three servicemen and wounded four more. The strikes on the airbases were followed by a massive retaliatory missile barrage in Ukraine that struck homes and buildings and killed civilians.
In Ukraine, the night from Sunday into Monday appeared unusually quiet. For the first time in weeks, the Russian forces didn’t shell the Dnipropetrovsk region, which borders the partially occupied southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, its Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko reported on Telegram.
“This is the third quiet night in 5.5 months since the Russians started shelling” the areas around the city of Nikopol, Reznichenko wrote. Nikopol is located across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is under control of the Russian forces.
Read: Russia scrubs Mariupol's Ukraine identity, builds on death
Ukrainian-controlled areas of the neighbouring Kherson region were shelled 33 times over the past 24 hours, according to Kherson’s Ukrainian Gov. Yaroslav Yanushevich. There were no casualties.
On Saturday, a deadly attack on the city of Kherson, which was retaken by Kyiv’s forces last month, killed and wounded scores.