BEIJING (AFP) – The fifth anniversary of the first known death from Covid-19 passed seemingly unnoticed in China Saturday, with no official remembrances in a country where the pandemic is a taboo subject. On January 11, 2020, health officials in the central Chinese city of Wuhan announced that a 61-year-old man had died from complications of pneumonia caused by a previously unknown virus. The disclosure came after authorities had reported dozens of infections over several weeks by the pathogen later named SARS-CoV-2 and understood as the cause of Covid-19. It went on to spark a global pandemic that has so far killed over seven million people and profoundly altered ways of life around the world, including in China.

 

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SEOUL (Reuters) – The two black boxes on the Boeing jet involved in the worst aviation disaster on South Korean soil stopped recording about four minutes before the accident, the transport ministry said on Saturday. South Korean investigators previously said the flight data and cockpit voice recorders were key to finding out the cause of last month’s crash that killed 179 people. It happened about four minutes after the pilot of the airliner operated by Jeju Air reported a bird strike. Authorities investigating the crash plan to analyze what caused the black boxes to stop recording, the ministry said in a statement. The voice recorder was initially analyzed in South Korea, and, when data was found to be missing, sent to a U.S. National Transportation Safety Board laboratory, the ministry said.

 

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MOSCOW (AFP/Reuters) – Ukraine launched drone attacks across several regions of Russia, striking two residential houses in the Tambov region and injuring at least three people, Russia said on Saturday. The regional head, Evgeny Pervyshov, said on the Telegram messaging app people were treated for injuries resulting from shattered windows as drones hit two houses in the town of Kotovsk, about 480 kilometers (300 miles) southeast of Moscow. Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday that Ukraine has captured two North Korean soldiers in Russia’s Kursk region, the first time Ukraine has announced the capture of North Korean soldiers alive since their entry into the war last autumn. In a post on X, Zelenskiy said that the soldiers had been brought to Kyiv and were communicating with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the country’s domestic intelligence agency.

 

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WASHINGTON (RT) – Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that U.S. authorities, including the CIA, can access WhatsApp messages by remotely logging into users’ devices, effectively bypassing the platform’s end-to-end encryption. Speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Zuckerberg explained that while WhatsApp’s encryption prevents Meta from viewing message content, it does not protect against physical access to a user’s phone. His comments came in the context of a question by Rogan about Tucker Carlson’s quest to set up an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In February last year, while speaking about finally succeeding in talking to Putin after three years of failed attempts, Carlson blamed the U.S. authorities, namely the NSA and the CIA, for stalling his efforts. According to Carlson, the agencies spied on him by tapping his messages and emails, and leaked his intentions to the media, which “spooked” Moscow from talking to him. Rogan asked Zuckerberg to explain how this could have happened given encryption safeguards that are supposed to protect messages.

 

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ABUJA (AFP) – At least 21 government-backed fighters have been killed in an ambush by bandits in Nigeria’s northwest Katsina State, according to authorities. Katsina police spokesman Abubakar Sadiq Aliyu told the AFP news agency on Saturday that a convoy of pro-government fighters was returning from paying condolences to the family of a dead colleague when it came under fire from bandits in the village of Baure, in the Safana district. “Sadly, 21 persons were fatally shot as a result of the attack,” Aliyu said, adding police were seeking to “ensure the arrest of the perpetrators” of the attack, which happened on Tuesday. Witnesses, however, told Nigeria’s Premium Times that as many as 25 people were killed in the attack, while many more villagers remain missing. Nigeria’s The Guardian said the fighters were members of the state-backed Katsina Community Watch Corps (KCWC).

 

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JAKARTA (AFP) – A volcano in eastern Indonesia erupted on Saturday, spewing hot lava and releasing a column of smoke and ash four kilometers (3.1 miles) into the air, an official said. Mount Ibu, on Halmahera island in North Maluku province, erupted at 7:45 pm central Indonesia time (1145 GMT), sending a tall flaming column soaring into the sky. “The lava was spotted two kilometers away from the eruption centre,” Geological Agency head Muhammad Wafid said in a statement. Images from the volcano monitoring post showed a bright red column of flame and thick, dark smoke billowing high above the volcano crater. The volcano is currently still on the second highest alert level.