India celebrates Navy Day every 4 December to mark the force’s operation “Trident” during the India-Pakistan war in 1971. Source link
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A massive explosion has hit the Engen Oil Refinery in Durban, South Africa, local police said. Source link
With the transition period set to expire on 31 December, the time is almost up for negotiating the final clauses of a post-withdrawal trade and governance deal. Yet, the latest developments from London suggest the prospect of a deal that would be acceptable to all of the parties involved might be slim to none. Source link
Since 1972, North Sea oil has gained Denmark over DKK 541 billion ($88 billion), earning the Nordic country the title of the EU’s largest oil producer. Source link
The presentation comes amidst this year’s first manned space launch performed by a private company, SpaceX, which successfully delivered human crew to the International Space Station. CEO Elon Musk later stated that his company may send the first people to Mars by 2026, if not earlier. Source link
Earlier this week, following the sudden disappearance of a 7-foot phallic sculpture from a Bavarian mountainside, German law enforcement officials launched an investigation in an effort to solve the mystery. Local lore suggests that the wooden sculpture originally arrived at the Grünten mountain as a result of a prank gone awry. Source link
TORONTO (Sputnik) – The Russian Embassy in Ottawa rubbished a Canadian intelligence report that claimed Russia, China and Iran actively spread COVID-19 disinformation. Source link
According to statistics, China has, since 1992, been importing an estimated 45% of the developed world’s waste. Beijing began using solid waste as a source of raw material for its developing manufacturing industry in the early 1980s. Source link
Every year, TIME magazine releases a Person of the Year issue that features and profiles a person, group or idea that has influenced the events of that year. The tradition began in 1927 and was called Man of the Year or Woman of the Year, depending on the winner, until 1999. Source link
The Israeli National Security Council is Israel’s main body for the monitoring and analysis of national security. The council operates according to instructions from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Source link
President Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, testified as witness in the offices of the Washington DC Attorney General and was deposed in a lawsuit over allegations of the misuse of funds originally designated for the presidential inauguration of her father in 2016. Source link
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – US drug giant Pfizer expects to ship about half of the COVID-19 vaccines it originally planned for this year because of supply-chain problems, although it still expects to roll out over a billion doses in 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported. Source link
BELGRADE (Sputnik) – Serbia has received the first batch of Russian Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus that will be studied by the national health bodies, President Aleksandar Vucic said. Source link
Facebook’s latest effort to combat COVID-19 vaccine “misinformation” comes days before an advisory committee of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is scheduled to meet and consider granting an emergency use authorization for Pfizer’s vaccine candidate. Source link
The latest data compiled by Johns Hopkins University indicates that as of Thursday, some 13.9 million Americans have contracted COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic; however, on Wednesday, the Land of the Free marked both hospitalization and single-day death toll records. Source link
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pleaded with Britons to not “relax their guard” following next week’s first deployment of COVID-19 coronavirus vaccinations. Britain is the first nation to authorise the new Pfizer/BioNTech inoculation and has suffered nine months of lockdowns and over 60,000 coronavirus deaths. Source link
The country, which has the largest Muslim minority population in Europe, has suffered from gruesome terrorist attacks in recent years and recently saw a fresh wave of violence following the decapitation of a schoolteacher in a Paris suburb. Source link
The self-styled “guerrilla journalism” group Project Veritas has recently started to release leaked tapes of recorded morning briefings involving top CNN executives, promising to unveil over 50 conference calls by Christmas, revealing “more evidence of Jeffrey Adam Zucker’s manipulation of the news to fit his own world view”. Source link
MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Employees of the Baltnews and Sputnik Latvia news websites have been charged with violating the EU sanctions regime. They were searched and a written undertaking not to leave the country was taken from them. Source link
In the 1980s and 1990s Britain exported around two million sheep and half a million heads of cattle a year to Europe. That figure has fallen significantly and now live animal exports are to be banned altogether. Source link
United States Imposes Sanctions on Shahid Meisami Group in Iran, Treasury Department Says Source link
The Biden administration attaches particular importance to its future Asia policy, say international scholars, expecting a new round of Sino-American trade talks, an upgraded version of the Obama-era “Pivot to Asia” strategy, and a continuing dispute over the South China Sea between the US and the People’s Republic. Source link
Recent comments online by the San Francisco Republican Party’s Executive Director, Clint Griess, who serves concurrently as Secretary as well, are bizarre – a denial of reality, a poor excuse for a failed March Primary candidate, and expose the critical lack of innovative and technological thought. Source link
Australia’s High Commissioner to India Barry O’Farrell’s last month meeting with Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat, a close ally of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has raised eyebrows in his home country. The visit has been described as running contrary to “Australian values”. Source link
Earlier this week, speculation appeared on the Internet alleging that the emergency cooling system for the first reactor at the Astravets Nuclear Power Plant in Belarus was damaged. A spokesman for the Belarussian Ministry of Energy later denied the allegations. Source link
Recordings released by an undercover news outlet have revealed CNN’s boss Jeff Zucker telling his staff to downplay a bombshell story, which implicated Joe Biden in foreign-meddling schemes. Source link
The annual meeting is being held in a virtual format this year for the first time due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Source link
With farmers continuing their protest on the outskirts of the national capital against recently passed laws related to agriculture by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government, many roads in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh states connecting Delhi have been closed. Source link
David Collenette, who served as Canada’s defence minister in the 1990s, believes the wide-ranging allegations against Australian troops in Afghanistan are reminiscent of the Somalia crisis his nation faced at the time he assumed office. Source link
Donald Trump has once again taken to social media to double down on alleged voting irregularities in the 3 November presidential election. In his latest video, uploaded on Twitter and Facebook and touted by the president as “the most important speech”, Trump claimed that the entire US election system was “under coordinated assault and siege”. Source link
As the 11 December deadline before the end of government funding nears, it’s still unclear whether lawmakers will be able to pass a spending bill to avert another shutdown. Source link
There are currently about 40 ongoing preliminary investigations against Daesh* returnees over war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. So far, almost none of the Swedish jihadists has faced trial. Source link
Territorial demarcations have always been a sensitive issue for all nations. At a time when India and China have been in a face-off at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) since April, a map, displayed on popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia, has misrepresented parts of Indian territory, drawing the government’s attention. Source link