Heavy rains drenched parts of California on Wednesday, bringing the threat of flooding and mudslides as millions of people geared up for holiday travel, the National Weather Service said. The Pacific storm centered offshore was moving gradually southeastward, sending bands of rain ashore and hitting particularly hard on the central coast after sweeping through the San Francisco Bay Area. Flood watches were posted all the way south to San Diego.
Israel launched a ground offensive inside Gaza on October 27 after Hamas attacked Israel in a surprise attack on October 7 in which 1200 Israelis were killed and over 200 were taken hostage. Since the outbreak of hostilities between Hamas and Israel, over 19,667 Palestinians have been killed mostly being children and women.
Two Indian-origin men have been sentenced to prison in the UK for smuggling cocaine, cannabis and cigarettes into the country hidden in shipments of perishable goods. Anand Tripathi (61) and Varun Bhardwaj (39) were both sentenced to 19 years and 15 years in jail, respectively, after they were convicted in November, following a 71-day trial at Isleworth Crown Court, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.
A new Covid-19 virus, known in the medical community as, JN.1, close relative to BA.2.86, is the fastest growing variant in the US, according to estimates from the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). JN.1 was responsible for more than one in five new Coronavirus cases in recent weeks.
Human Rights Watch (HRW), a nongovernmental organisation (NGO) with global foot print, has attacked Israel stating that it is deliberately creating starvation in the Gaza Strip as a means of war. In a statement issued on Monday, the HRW said that Israel is deliberately depriving the people in Gaza access to food, water and other basic necessities, and described this denial of basic amenities to the civilian population as a war crime.
A 67-year-old Indian national, who assaulted three women on a beach in New Zealand on the pretext of taking photographs with them, was ordered to pay NZ$3,000 to his victims on Monday. Jawahar Singh had previously pleaded guilty to three charges of indecent assault and one charge of an indecent act, relating to three incidents at the Tahunanui beach in Nelson, news website Stuff.co.nz reported.
