“Where are you shooting? I have no words”: A resident of a house in Donetsk where a Ukrainian shell struck speaks about attack

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FTX Founder to Stop Defying Extradition as US Presses Fraud Charges, Reports Suggest

Sam Bankman-Fried, the co-founder of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, will drop his fight against extradition to the United States where he faces charges of fraud and other financial crimes, media reported Sunday.

Bankman-Fried's lawyer said that his client would resist being sent to the United States during his first court appearance, but US media cited people familiar with the matter as saying on Sunday that he would no longer fight it and would make an announcement in court next week.

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"Let him burn in hell": Residents of a building in Donetsk where apartments were hit by Ukrainian shelling

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KFOR Reportedly Tightens Security at Checkpoint in Northern Kosovo Over Rallying Serbs

The NATO-led peacekeeping mission Kosovo Forces (KFOR) has stepped up security at the closed Jarinje border crossing between Serbia and the breakaway Kosovo due to mass gatherings of local Serbs on the Serbian side, local media reported on Sunday.

At around 13:00 local time, several hundred people with flags, supported by Serbian youth groups, gathered near a non-functioning checkpoint in the Serbian border town of Raska. The organizers used social media to invite participants from Serbia, Montenegro and the Republika Srpska of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The rally was held under the slogan "There will never be a border, Kosovo is Serbia."

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ET Want Big Apple: NYC Sees Surge in UFO 'Sightings' This Year

UFO sightings around the world have spawned numerous conspiracy theories with witnesses trying to provide photo or video "evidence" - usually of questionable quality - to support their claims that aliens are real.

Twenty-eight UFO sightings were reported in 2022 in New York, one more than in 2021, according to the National UFO Reporting Center. For the first time, people accompanied their claims with photographs (although their authenticity is yet to be verified).

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A flagship Royal Thai Navy warship, the HTMS Sukhothai, has sunk and dozens of sailors are missing, the Navy's spokesman Pokkrong Monthatphalin said in a statement, adding that 78 sailors have been rescued.

According to Monthatphalin, water flowed into the ship through a pipe amid strong waves and high winds, cutting off the Sukhothai's power and causing the crew to lose control. Water then rushed into the hull and the boat started to capsize

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🔥 A large fire broke out in a restaurant at the top of a residential building in Batumi, Georgia. Residents were all evacuated safely and emergency services have contained the fire. The cause of the blaze is still unknown

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Tom Cruise has shared a clip on Twitter of him skydiving as part of his new Mission Impossible movie. He also thanked his fans for supporting his latest film 'Top Gun: Maverick'.

In the clip, Cruise flies in an aircraft over South Africa with collaborator Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote the noscript for 'Top Gun: Maverick' and is directing Parts One and Two of the Mission: Impossible series

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Elon Musk has published a poll on Twitter asking whether he "should step down as head of Twitter"

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📹 🇨🇦 “This is OK for children? No, it’s not!” – shouts an activist rallying against all ages drag queen brunch at “The Vegan Hippie Chick” restaurant in Canada’s Welland, Ontario on Sunday.

The video was shared by an independent journalist Leigh Stewart who wrote that besides those who opposed the event there were also “a few that are here to protest the protesters”.

Canadian mainstream media generally sees drag queens addressing children as “a simple, timeless idea”:

"Children gather around a storyteller to hear a tale, maybe join a singalong. In this scenario, the storyteller just happens to be in drag — so the stories are delivered with a bit more glitz, glamour and maybe some sparkly platform boots." - writes CBC journo

The US and Canada have moved towards normalizing LGBTQ topics at schools. The book in the video has a foreword by Marti Cummings – a US drag queen who was recently invited by Joe Biden to the White House.

Russia has banned LGBTQ lifestyles promotion.

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The New York Times has published a crossword that to some people looks suspiciously like a swastika.

Twitter users note that it wasn't the first time the NYT used such a design, it having previously appeared in 2014 and 2017. The last time this happened, the New York Times Games Twitter account dismissed the criticism of the crossword saying: "It's NOT a swastika. Honest to God."

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Greece, Turkey Hold Secret Talks in Brussels to Normalize Relations, Reports Say

Greece's Anna-Maria Bura met with Turkey's Ibrahim Kalin on December 16 in the presence of German Chancellor's foreign policy adviser Jens Ploetner, Germany's former ambassador to Greece, Greek media reported on Monday.

Turkey and Greece have been at odds for decades, with the risk of an armed conflict arising several times since 2020. The disputed issues include competing territorial claims in the Eastern Mediterranean, in particular in the region of the Aegean Sea, the Greek-Turkish divide in Cyprus, and the delimitation of maritime borders. Turkey has repeatedly accused Greece of deploying weapons on Aegean islands in violation of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.

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❗️Russian MoD’s briefing on the progress of the special military operation in Ukraine:

▪️The Russian Army eliminated more than 20 Ukrainian servicemen, an infantry fighting vehicle, and two cars in the Kupyansk direction.

▪️Russian troops eliminated up to 70 militants, two armored combat vehicles, and two pickup trucks in the Krasny Liman direction

▪️Russian forces eliminated more than 130 Ukrainian servicemen, two tanks, three armored combat vehicles, and three cars in the Donetsk direction.

▪️The Russian Army hit Ukrainian 72nd Mechanized Brigade and 108th Territorial Defense Brigade groups in the South Donetsk direction.

▪️Russian troops eliminated two Ukrainian sabotage groups in the DPR, with Ukrainian Army losses amounting to 80 servicemen killed and wounded, as well as two armored combat vehicles and three pickup trucks destroyed.

▪️Russian air defenses shot down eight Ukrainian UAVs in the LPR, DPR, and the Kherson region, six HIMARS and Uragan rockets were intercepted in the DPR, LPR, and in the Zaporozhye region.

▪️Russian troops shot down four US-made HARM anti-radar missiles in the Belgorod region.

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Vox populi, vox Dei? Twitter users vote to oust Elon Musk in his own poll

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❗️Greece's plans to transfer S-300 air defense systems to Ukraine are provocative, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday, adding that all military equipment sent to Kiev would be destroyed by the Russian Armed Forces.

The spokeswoman added that such move would be a flagrant violation of the provisions of the Russian-Greek intergovernmental agreements on military-technical cooperation of October 30, 1995 and on the supply of military products of December 3, 2013, which unambiguously prohibit Greece from re-exporting military equipment supplied by Moscow to a third party without Russia's consent.

On Sunday, Greek Defense Minister Nikolaos Panagiotopoulos said that the country's government is ready to send S-300 air defense systems from Crete to Ukraine if the US "installs the Patriot system in their place."

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❄️🐻‍❄️ Moscow Zoo has shared another load of cuteness!

This time the zoo has been focusing on those bundles of fun which are pandas who have been taking their morning run and are clearly oblivious to the snow!

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