No Prisoner Exchange With Israel Until There Is Ceasefire In Gaza: Hamas

Deputy Hamas chief Saleh Al-Arouri told the pan-Arab Al Jazeera TV on Saturday that no more prisoners would be exchanged with Israel until there was a ceasefire in Gaza.

Arouri said the hostages still being held captive by Hamas were Israeli soldiers and civilian men who had previously served in the Israeli army.

He said they would not be freed unless there was a ceasefire and all Palestinian detainees were also released.

"Let the war take its course. This decision is final. We will not compromise on it," Arouri said.

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"Like Jealous Boyfriend...": US Teen's Mother On Neighbour Who Killed Her

After a gruelling six-month-long search, missing US teen Valerie Tindall's body was found buried in her 59-year-old neighbour's backyard in Indiana. 

17-year-old Valerie's body was found in a homemade wooden box buried in her neighbour Patrick Scott's yard less than a 100 metres away from her house. 

Following the discovery of the body on Tuesday, Scott was arrested on a murder charge, Rushville County Sheriff Allan Rice confirmed in a press conference. The body was identified as Valerie Tindall's by the coroner on Thursday but the cause of her death is yet to be confirmed. 

Patrick Scott had a lawn-mowing business and had employed Tindall over the summer. Scott, who had been the Tindalls' trusted neighbour, soon became 'a person of interest' in the investigation of Valerie's disappearance.  

On June 7, the teen informed her family that she was going for work, according to a police report retrieved by media agency HuffPost. This was the last time her family saw her. 

According to reports, the accused changed his story several times after his arrest and initially told the police that he hadn't met her on the day she went missing. 

After his arrest, Scott confessed to police that he strangled Valerie in the bedroom of his home that day. He also added that he continued to wear the belt he choked her with even after the murder. "I put it around her neck and I held onto it until she quit," Scott allegedly told police. 

Scott told police that the teen had tried to seduce and blackmail him into buying her a new car, according to court documents. 

The murder "just kind of happened," he told the cops. On being asked if he was troubled by the murder, the accused allegedly said that he "wasn't too crazy about it." 

On October 11, nearly half a year later, with the help of sniffer dogs, the  police made a major breakthrough and established that human remains were present in the compound. 

On November 28, they returned to further investigate their findings. The officers found a large pile of dirt on Scott's property. After digging up the ground, they found the box the teenager had been buried in all this while.

The remains in the box included fingernails painted with orange polish which matched a picture Tindall had shared on her social media profile on June 7, documents said.

After the brutal murder investigation was solved, her mother Shena Sandefur, told media agency WRTV-TV that Valerie and Scott "had a bond - they were friends." 

Tindall's mother said that, "She worked for him, but she also hung out with his family. His granddaughter was her friend."

However, Ms Sandefur told news agency FOX 59 that she had become uneasy about how Patrick Scott was treating her daughter. 

Ms Sandefur added that the accused acted like a "jealous boyfriend" and even tracked the teen's phone. However, Tindall did not see anything wrong with the relationship, she said, because Scott was her boss. 

Valerie Tindall, who had just finished her 11th grade in high school, loved animals and wanted to be a veterinarian, her parents told reporters following a news conference Wednesday announcing Scott's arrest.

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Residents In Panic After "Strongest Ever" Earthquake Hits Philippines

A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck the southern Philippines on Saturday, the US Geological Survey said, as local authorities warned of a "destructive tsunami" and urged people in coastal areas to flee.

The quake struck at a depth of 32 kilometres (20 miles) at 10:37 pm local time (1437 GMT) about 21 kilometres northeast of Hinatuan municipality in Surigao del Sur province on Mindanao island, the USGS said.

"Destructive tsunami is expected with life threatening wave heights," the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said on X, formerly Twitter.

It said waves of more than one metre above the normal tides were expected to hit the coast and advised people in Surigao del Sur and Davao Oriental provinces to "immediately evacuate" to higher ground or further inland.

Owners of boats were told to secure their vessels and move away from the shore.

Powerful aftershocks of up to magnitude 6.4 continued to shake the region into early Sunday after the first quake hit, USGS said. 

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage but Hinatuan police Sergeant Joseph Lambo said the quake was "very strong".

"Appliances fell off the shelves at the police office and two TV sets were broken. The motorcycles parked outside also tumbled down," Lambo told AFP.

"Right now we don't have reports of damage or casualties but people are evacuating because of the tsunami alert."

Lambo said the 45,000 residents in the municipality had been ordered to leave their homes and many were going on foot or in vehicles to higher ground.

Dyl Constantino, 25, was on Siargao Island, northeast of Mindanao, when the quake struck.  

"It was the longest and strongest earthquake I've ever experienced, probably lasted for about four minutes," Constantino told AFP.  

"We're used to earthquakes here but this one was different because the doors were really shaking and so we were all panicking." 

Anna Quinones, a disaster official in Davao City, said they were monitoring the coast for the tsunami.

"It is high tide still and we are not noticing anything unusual," she said.

Bethanie Valledor, 24, was asleep at a resort in Bislig city, about 20 kilometres southwest of Hinatuan, when the quake jolted her awake.

"I felt like the room we're staying in would be destroyed," Valledor told AFP.

"Our place is very near the sea. The resort owner asked us to evacuate immediately. Honestly, I was screaming. I panicked.

The quake comes nearly two weeks after a 6.7 magnitude quake shook Mindanao, killing at least nine people, shaking buildings and causing part of the ceiling of a shopping mall to collapse. 

Quakes are a daily occurrence in the Philippines, which sits along the Pacific "Ring of Fire", an arc of intense seismic as well as volcanic activity that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

Most are too weak to be felt by humans but strong and destructive quakes come at random with no technology available to predict when and where they will happen.

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"Mountains Crying For Help, COP28 Must Respond": UN Chief

Warning of a potential catastrophe in the Himalayas where the glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, UN chief Antonio Guterres on Saturday said the ongoing annual climate talks in Dubai must respond to the needs of the developing nations, especially the vulnerable mountain countries that need urgent help.

Almost 240 million people depend on the glaciers and 10 major rivers, such as Indus, Ganga, and Brahmaputra, originating in the Himalayas. Another billion people living downstream of these rivers across eight countries, including India, are also dependent on the glacier-fed rivers.

Addressing a meeting with mountain countries at this year's Conference of Parties (COP28), UN Secretary-General Guterres emphasised that nearly a third of Nepal's ice had vanished in just over 30 years, and it was directly linked to greenhouse gas pollution that heats the planet.

Mr Guterres, who visited Nepal, including the Everest region, in October last week, called for developed countries to clarify the delivery of USD 100 billion and produce a plan to double adaptation finance to USD 40 billion a year by 2025.

"But those sums are dwarfed by the scale of what's needed," he said and advocated for reform in International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) to better cater to the needs of developing countries like Nepal.

"So, we need the outcome of this COP to call for reform of the IFIs so that they reflect today's world and are far more responsive to the needs of developing countries and for reform of the business models of the MDBs so that they can leverage far more private finance at reasonable cost to the developing countries," he told the gathering.

He said unless there is a change in course, "a catastrophe can be unleashed." "The glaciers could disappear altogether. That means massively reduced flows for major Himalayan rivers such as the Indus, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra. Deltas decimated by saltwater," Guterres said.

The Secretary-General highlighted the alarming pace at which the glaciers were disappearing, causing devastating impacts on local communities. "The mountains are crying out for help, and COP28 must respond." Guterres attended the high-level roundtable with Nepal Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda', and other heads of state and delegations.

The roundtable followed the recognition given to the mountains in the COP28 President's Opening Plenary, which mandated the issue be taken up under the Nairobi work programme.

Addressing the G77 plus China session, which also includes India, the UN chief urged the bloc to make this year's conference a game changer with maximum ambition to reduce emissions and on climate justice to benefit developing countries and their populations.

"This COP can win with a double objective: maximum ambition on mitigation and maximum ambition in relation to climate justice, namely taking into full account the interests of developing countries. What we must avoid at all costs is a compromise based on minimum ambition on mitigation and minimum ambition on climate justice," he said.

"Because developing countries would be losing twice, would be losing because there is no climate justice and be losing because without effective mitigation the dramatic impacts of climate change will be [suffered] essentially by vulnerable populations in the global South," he added.

The roundtable followed the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development's (ICIMOD) submission to Friday evening's high-level event on the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage convened by the UNFCCC Adaptation Division.

Izabella Koziell, ICIMOD Deputy Director General, stated the urgent imperative to prioritise the Hindu Kush Himalaya for Loss and Damage compensation.

Koziell called for rapid scaling up of funding to understand rapid and slow onset events to help the vast population sizes exposed to these events (240 million in the mountains and a billion downstream) adapt, and to compensate communities for losses and damages.

A 2017 study by ICIMOD has established that even when the world manages to maintain the global temperature rise average at 1.5 degrees Celsius, there will be a rise of 2 degrees Celsius or more in the Himalayan region by the end of the century.

Nearly 1,00,000 delegates from 198 countries are participating in the global conference, which commenced on Thursday and will run through December 12.

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Russia Says Army Progressing In All Areas Of Ukraine Front As War Rages

Russia on Friday said its troops were progressing in all areas of the Ukrainian front, despite observers seeing little movement more a year and a half after Moscow launched a full-scale assault on Ukraine.

"Our servicemen are acting competently and decisively, occupying a more favourable position and expanding their zones of control in all directions," Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said, as his troops intensify assaults on the eastern front.

Despite the frontlines having barely shifted in 2023, fighting has remained intense, with the nearly encircled industrial town of Avdiivka the latest major flashpoint.

Russia launched a renewed bid to capture the war-battered town in October, and analysts suggest Moscow's forces have made incremental gains, though at an enormous human cost.

"Russian troops are effectively and firmly inflicting fire damage on the Ukrainian armed forces, significantly reducing their combat capabilities," Shoigu said.

His ministry announced Wednesday it had taken control of Khromove, a small village on the outskirts of Bakhmut in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region.

Ukraine has said Russian troops had "considerably increased" their operations in the east, but that its forces were holding on.

Kyiv launched a counteroffensive in June after stocking up on Western weapons.

But it is contending with well-entrenched Russian positions and has made only modest progress.

Two weeks ago it said it pushed Russian forces back a few kilometres from the banks of Dnipro river, which if confirmed would be the first meaningful advance in the counteroffensive.

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NDTV Sports-Cricket

Left-arm spinner Saika Ishque, who impressed one and all during inaugural edition of Women's Premier League, received her maiden call-up for India as she was named in the three-match WT20I series against England starting December 6 in Mumbai. The T20 squad comprised mostly of those who were part of the Asian Games gold-winning squad in Hangzhou, which is a nice blend of seniors and juniors. At one end there are seasoned campaigners like skipper Harmanpreet Kaur and her deputy Smriti Mandhana, Deepti Sharma, Jemimah Rodrigues, Shafali Verma and Puja Vastrakar, on the other, the selectors have also included rookies like spinner Mannat Kashyap, batters Kanika Ahuja, Shreyanka Patil, talented pacer Titas Sadhu to name a few.

The Test team doesn't have too many surprises as Sadhu, an heir apparent to Jhulan Goswami, has been included along with Karnataka left-hander Shubha Satheesh, who was rewarded for her gritty batting in National One Dayers.

India's squad for 3 T20Is against England: Harmanpreet Kaur (C), Smriti Mandhana (VC), Jemimah Rodrigues, Shafali Verma, Deepti Sharma, Yastika Bhatia (wk), Richa Ghosh (wk), Amanjot Kaur, Shreyanka Patil, Mannat Kashyap, Saika Ishaque, Renuka Singh Thakur, Titas Sadhu, Pooja Vastrakar, Kanika Ahuja, Minnu Mani.

India's squad for Tests against England & Australia: Harmanpreet Kaur (C), Smriti Mandhana (VC), Jemimah Rodrigues, Shafali Verma, Deepti Sharma, Yastika Bhatia (wk), Richa Ghosh (wk), Sneh Rana, Shubha Satheesh, Harleen Deol, Saika Ishaque, Renuka Singh Thakur, Titas Sadhu, Meghna Singh, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Pooja Vastrakar. 

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80 Gaza Hostages Released In Truce Week. Who Are The Remaining 137?

Over the course of the past week Hamas released 80 Israeli women, children and teenagers as part of a truce agreement in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

The Palestinian militants also freed 25 others outside the scope of the truce deal, most of them Thai farm workers, bringing to 105 the number of captives released during the pause in hostilities.

With five hostages having already been freed before the truce, a total of 110 captives have returned home alive -- 33 children, 49 women and 28 men -- out of an initial group of around 240.

As Israel resumes its offensive in Gaza, we look at who is still believed to be in captivity.

The Israeli government said Friday that 137 people were still being held -- 126 Israelis, eight Thais, one Nepali, one Tanzanian and a French-Mexican identified as Orion Hernandez-Radoux, 32, by his family.

- Baby boy -

AFP has managed to identify 110 of the remaining hostages, mainly through interviews with their relatives or Israeli media reports.

It is far from certain that all are alive.

Hamas claims the youngest hostage, 10-month-old Kfir Bibas, was killed in an Israeli air strike on Gaza along with his mother Shiri Bibas, 32, and brother Ariel, four.

Israel has yet to confirm the fate of the family, which has come to symbolise the brutality of the hostage-taking.

The Israeli government on Friday confirmed the deaths of two hostages: Noa Marciano, a 19-year-old soldier, and Yehudit Weiss, a 65-year-old woman from Beeri kibbutz.

- At least 17 women -

Besides the Bibas boys there are no child hostages known to be left in Gaza.

The last minor to be released was 17-year-old Aisha al-Zayadna, a Bedouin girl who was freed on the last day of the truce on Thursday along with her 18-year-old brother.

At least 17 women are still being held in Gaza, including Shiri Bibas.

The oldest are Ofra Keidar and Judith Weinstein Haggai, both aged 70.

The women also include Noa Argamani, a 26-year-old who was filmed screaming "Don't kill me!" as she was whisked away on a motorbike from the Tribe of Nova desert rave. Argamani appeared in a video from Gaza shortly afterwards, drinking a bottle of water on a couch.

Five women aged 18-19 were performing their military service when they were snatched.

As soldiers they were excluded from the prisoner swap.

- Men in their 80s -

At least 91 men are still being held, including 10 aged between 18 and 22, most of whom were on military service at the time of the October 7 attack.

Some of the men are fathers of children who were freed with their mothers, relatives or other families in the past week.

They include David Cunio, whose wife Sharon and twin three-year-old daughters Emma and Yuli were released on Monday as well as Tal Shoham, whose wife Adina, son Naveh, eight, and daughter Yahel, three, were released on Saturday.

The father of a French-Israeli boy, 12-year-old Eitan Yahalomi, who was released on Monday into the arms of his mother, is also still being held.

Some of the men are in their 70s and 80s.

Over a month after Hamas released two elderly women, Yocheved Lifshitz and Nurit Kuper, their husbands Oded Lifshitz, 83, and Amiram Kuper, 85, are still being held.

Oded Lifshitz has been described by his family as a passionate human rights defender from Nir Oz kibbutz, who used to drive people from Gaza to hospital.

- Dozens of ravers -

At least 33 people abducted during the Hamas massacre at the Tribe of Nova festival are still being held. Only five were released during the truce, including 21-year-old French-Israeli Mia Shem.

Of the others, at least 28 come from Nir Oz kibbutz near the Gaza border, which had at least 71 of its roughly 400 residents abducted.

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