uttoned up against a biting wind, Khalil Tufakji, a 65-year-old Palestinian cartographer, points down from the Mount of Olives in the east of Jerusalem towards a huge wasteland – the last remaining space in the ring of Jewish settlements that surround the city.
This 35 sq km plot of West Bank land was confiscated several years ago and the settlement of Maale Adumim, now home to 40,000 people, was built on the south-eastern corner. But most of the plot still remains empty.
It's too late to stop the senseless capture of Palestinian land
DuPont settles lawsuits over leak of chemical used to make Teflon
DuPont and Chemours Co have agreed to pay $671 million in cash to settle thousands of lawsuits involving a leak of a toxic chemical used to make Teflon, the companies said on Monday.
Shares of Chemours jumped 13 percent. The company said it would pay half of the settlement, although liability for litigation connected with the chemical was passed onto it when DuPont spun it off in 2015.
In addition, Jefferies analyst Alexander Laurence said the liability was $300 million below Wall Street estimates, and DuPont shares rose 1 percent.
Pakistan: Deadly bomb blast rips through Lahore rally
A powerful bomb blast on Monday ripped through a protest in the Pakistani city of Lahore, killing at least 11 people and wounding dozens, according to officials.
The explosion went off in Lahore's busy Mall Road during a rally attended by hundreds of pharmacists protesting against a new government law outside the provincial assembly building.
Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, a Pakistani Taliban-linked armed group, claimed responsibility for the attack, which also wounded at least 30 people, including media personnel covering the protest.
Meryl Streep says Trump provokes 'brownshirts and bots and worse'
In an emotional speech that was by turns tearful, defiant and humorous, Meryl Streep doubled down on her harsh criticism of Donald Trump, and spoke of having become a target since she first took him on in her Golden Globes speech in January.
Addressing a cheering audience at a fundraising gala for the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBT group, on Saturday night, Streep referred to Trump’s tweet after her Globes speech, in which he called the celebrated actress “overrated”.
Michael Flynn might have violated law when he had call about Russian sanctions
President Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, privately discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with its ambassador to the U.S. before the president took office last month even though officials claimed he didn’t, The Washington Post reported late Thursday night.
Current and former U.S. officials told the Post about the conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. When asked in an interview with the Post Wednesday if he had discussed sanctions with the ambassador, Flynn repeatedly said, “No,”
Trump's 3 a.m. Phone Call Raises Questions of Competency
The president’s 3 a.m. phone call is typically a metaphor. It’s a symbol of the president’s ability to handle a crisis. But in the case of President Donald Trump, it appears to be a revealing reality.
According to the Huffington Post, Donald Trump recently placed a late-night phone call to Mike Flynn, his national security adviser, to ask if a strong dollar or a weak dollar is better for the U.S. economy. In the early rounds of commentary on television and Twitter, several people have mocked the president for staying up late, pondering questions that might appear on an Econ 101 exam.
But this conversation, if it’s true, is concerning for completely different reasons.
TVNL Comment: Strange question, despite the hour, from this 'fabulous' business success.
"The facts around climate change are undeniable. It’s happening."
There's a glacier in Antarctica so immense that, if it melted, would raise sea levels globally by 3.5 metres.
It's melting. Right now.
"The facts around climate change are undeniable. It's happening," Australian glaciologist Ben Galton-Fenzi told The Huffington Post Australia. "The research we do now isn't about trying to convince ourselves it's real, because it's irrefutable. What we're trying to do is understand what the response time of the system is going to be into the future, so we can adapt to it."
The Totten glacier is the biggest in east Antarctica. The glacier itself is around 120 kilometres long, 30 kilometres wide and drains some 538,000 square kilometres of the continent. That's an area bigger than California. The ice is kilometres thick, but it's melting at 70 metres a year in some spots. A study released in December reported warmer water was melting the Totten ice from below.
Israel not paying to de-mine Christian holy site
Nearly half a million tourists annually walk past two fenced-in minefields to visit Qasr al-Yahud, meaning Castle of the Jews in Arabic - the site where Jesus was believed to have been baptised in the River Jordan.
A $4m project launched last year by the de-mining charity Halo Trust is hoping to make the site safer, after the group struck an agreement with Israeli authorities, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and local churches that own plots in Qasr al-Yahud. The deal allows Halo Trust to work on de-mining the site, located several kilometres from Jericho.
But Israel, whose army peppered the site with mines after the 1967 war, is not paying for these de-mining efforts, observers note.
At least 14 killed by avalanche in Pakistan
At least 14 people were killed in an avalanche that buried several houses in the village of Sher Shall, part of the town of Chintral, located in the Hindu Kush mountains in northwestern Pakistan.
According to CNN, six women, six children and two men were among the dead. Officials fear more people are trapped beneath the thick wall of snow.
The Pakistani state media said rescue personnel are doing their best to search for bodies and deliver recovery supplies, like blankets, stoves and food. Inclement winter weather has made search and rescue efforts difficult. Many of the local roads are blocked by snow and ice.
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