WORLD

FRANKFURT, GERMANY | Xinhua | As German companies are getting increasingly dissatisfied with their status quo, their scepticism over business prospects for the first half of 2024 has grown. The Ifo Business Climate Index, which measures entrepreneurs’ sentiments about the current business situation and their expectations for the next six …

COMMENT | SARAH NEWMAN | When the world leaders gathered in Dubai for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), the United Arab Emirates unveiled the world’s highest-capacity waste-to-energy (WTE) facility. The plant is designed to process two million metric tons of municipal waste annually, producing enough electricity to power 120,000 …

BEIJING | Xinhua |  Another Christmas has come and gone, replete with families and friends exchanging gifts beside a crackling hearth, sharing stories under a Christmas tree and enjoying traditional holiday meals. Others weren’t so fortunate, receiving church handouts, curling up in a subway station to avoid the cold or …

THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS | Xinhua | South Africa filed a case on Friday in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel for its “genocidal” acts in Gaza. The case claims “alleged violations by Israel of its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of …

KAMPALA | Xinhua | Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has said there will be no compulsory COVID-19 testing for delegates arriving in Uganda next month for the 19th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and Group of 77+China summits. In a brief message posted Thursday night on his social media handle on X, formerly …

BERLIN | Xinhua |  Drawing lessons from the riots and attacks on emergency services that occurred on New Year’s Eve 2023, Germany’s emergency services are preparing to be present in large numbers during the year-end festivities across the country, appealing to the public to be peaceful as the sale of …

KIEV, UKRAINE | Xinhua | At least seven people were injured in a missile attack on the Ukrainian capital here on Friday morning, the city’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram. The building of the Lukyanivska metro station in central Kiev was damaged by the explosion, Klitschko said, noting that …

  SAN FRANCISCO, USA | Xinhua | U.S. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows on Thursday decided that former President Donald Trump was disqualified from the state ballot in next year’s U.S. presidential primary election for his role in the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Trump campaign said …

COMMENT | ROBERT SKIDELSKY |   A little over a year ago, the San Francisco-based OpenAI released its chatbot, ChatGPT, triggering an artificial-intelligence gold rush and reigniting the age-old debate about the effects of automation on human welfare. The fear of displacement by machines can be traced back to the nineteenth-century Industrial …

TEHRAN | Xinhua | The funeral for senior Iranian commander Seyyed Razi Mousavi, who was recently assassinated in an Israeli attack in Syria, was held in Iran’s capital Tehran on Thursday. A number of people including Iranian officials took part in the ceremony to bid farewell to the veteran member …