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Dubai: Prominent Kannadiga businessman SM Syed Khalil passed away after brief illness in Dubai in the wee hours of Thursday.

Syed Khalil SM was also the Chairman of Madhyama Communications Ltd., Mangalore and was known across Coastal Karnataka for his social services and contributions in the fields of Kannada, Konkani languages and their culture.

Syed Khalil, affectionately known as ‘C A Khalil’ among the general public, hailed from the Nawayat community of Bhatkal. His journey to prominence and distinction had not only brought pride to the Nawayat community but also to Kannadigas and Indians at large. He was renowned for his remarkable achievements and dedication to international trade, social service, and the education of underprivileged children.

Having ventured to the Gulf in 1978, Khalil’s faith and dedication to the Galadari family propelled the Galadari Company to unparalleled success over three decades. He was serving as the Founder Chairman of K&K Enterprises General Trading Company in Sharjah. Khalil also held positions in numerous educational and social service organizations in Karnataka and beyond.

Syed Khalil stood as one of the town’s first chartered accountants, renowned for his financial expertise. He was also a respected leader in social service, religious, and educational circles. His leadership roles have included the presidency of prominent organizations such as Anjuman Hami-e-Muslimeen and Rabita Society. Khalil was an advocate for girls’ education and has played a pivotal role in establishing extensive educational institutions.

Melbourne (AP): Australia’s communications minister introduced a world-first law into Parliament on Thursday that would ban children younger than 16 from social media, saying online safety was one of parents’ toughest challenges.

Michelle Rowland said TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram were among the platforms that would face fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars (USD 33 million) for systemic failures to prevent young children from holding accounts.

“This bill seeks to set a new normative value in society that accessing social media is not the defining feature of growing up in Australia,” Rowland told Parliament.

“There is wide acknowledgement that something must be done in the immediate term to help prevent young teens and children from being exposed to streams of content unfiltered and infinite,” she added.

The bill has wide political support. After it becomes law, the platforms would have one year to work out how to implement the age restriction.

“For too many young Australians, social media can be harmful. Almost two-thirds of 14- to 17-years-old Australians have viewed extremely harmful content online including drug abuse, suicide or self-harm as well as violent material. One quarter have been exposed to content promoting unsafe eating habits,” Rowland said.

Government research found that “95 per cent of Australian care-givers find online safety to be one of their toughest parenting challenges,” she said.

Social media had a social responsibility and could do better in addressing harms on their platforms, she said.

“This is about protecting young people, not punishing or isolating them, and letting parents know that we’re in their corner when it comes to supporting their children’s health and wellbeing,” Rowland said.

Child welfare and internet experts have raised concerns about the ban, including isolating 14- and 15-year-olds from their already established online social networks.

Rowland said there would not be age restrictions placed on messaging services, online games or platforms that substantially support the health and education of users.

“We are not saying risks don’t exist on messaging apps or online gaming. While users can still be exposed to harmful content by other users, they do not face the same algorithmic curation of content and psychological manipulation to encourage near-endless engagement,” Rowland said.

The government announced last week that a consortium led by British company Age Check Certification Scheme has been contracted to examine various technologies to estimate and verify ages.

In addition to removing children under 16 from social media, Australia is also looking for ways to prevent children under 18 from accessing online pornography, a government statement said.

Age Check Certification Scheme’s chief executive Tony Allen said Monday the technologies being considered included age estimation and age inference. Inference involves establishing a series of facts about individuals that point to them being at least a certain age.

Rowland said the platforms would also face fines of up to AUD 50 million (USD 33 million) if they misused personal information of users gained for age-assurance purposes.

Information used for age assurances must be destroyed after serving that purpose unless the user consents to it being kept, she said.

Digital Industry Group Inc., an advocate for the digital industry in Australia, described the age limit as a “20th century response to 21st century challenges.”

New York: Gautam Adani, the billionaire chairman of the Adani Group, and his nephew Sagar Adani have been indicted in New York over their alleged involvement in a $265 million bribery scheme, according to US prosecutors.

Authorities allege that Adani and seven other defendants conspired to pay bribes to Indian government officials to secure contracts projected to generate $2 billion in profit over 20 years and to develop India’s largest solar power plant project.

A judge has issued arrest warrants for both Gautam and Sagar Adani, with prosecutors planning to forward these warrants to foreign law enforcement, court records reveal.

The indictment has had an immediate fallout for the Adani empire. Adani Green Energy cancelled plans to raise $600 million through US dollar-denominated bonds. The bond issue had already been priced but was withdrawn following the news, according to sources.

In early Asian trading on Thursday, Adani dollar bonds experienced a significant drop, with prices for Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone bonds falling by 3-5c. This marks the most substantial decline since the group faced a short-seller attack in February 2023.

Prosecutors also stated that the Adanis and another executive, former Adani Green Energy CEO Vneet Jaain, concealed corruption while raising over $3 billion in loans and bonds. Court documents reveal that conspirators used code names such as “Numero Uno” and “The Big Man” for Gautam Adani, while Sagar Adani allegedly monitored bribe-related details on his cellphone.

Shares of GQG Partners, an Australian investment firm and a key Adani backer, plunged by 20%, marking the steepest one-day decline since the firm’s listing three years ago. GQG Partners, which holds stakes in various Adani companies, has stated that it is monitoring the situation closely.

The Adani Group has not yet commented on the allegations or the indictment.

Tel Aviv,: Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip overnight killed 12 people, Palestinian medical officials said on Sunday.

Israeli police meanwhile arrested three suspects after flares were fired at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private residence in the coastal city of Caesarea.

In Lebanon, Israeli warplanes pounded the southern suburbs of Beirut after the military warned people to evacuate from several buildings.

The Hezbollah group has a strong presence in the area, known as the Dahiyeh, and the strikes came as Lebanese officials are considering a United States-brokered cease-fire proposal. One of the strikes hit central Beirut for the first time in weeks.

Netanyahu and his family were not at the residence when two flares were fired at it overnight, and there were no injuries, authorities said. A drone launched by Hezbollah struck the residence last month, also when Netanyahu and his family were away.

The police did not provide details about the suspects behind the flares, but officials pointed to domestic political critics of Netanyahu. Israel’s largely ceremonial president, Isaac Herzog, condemned the incident and warned against “an escalation of the violence in the public sphere”.

Netanyahu has faced months of mass protests over his handling of the hostage crisis unleashed by Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack into Israel, which ignited the ongoing war in Gaza.

Critics blame Netanyahu for the security and intelligence failures that allowed the attack to happen and for not reaching a deal with Hamas to release scores of hostages still held inside Gaza. Israelis rallied again in the city of Tel Aviv on Saturday night to demand a cease-fire deal to return them.

Overnight strikes in central Gaza kill 12

Israeli strikes killed six people in Nuseirat and another four in Bureij, two built-up refugee camps in central Gaza dating back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation.

Another two people were killed in a strike on Gaza’s main north-south highway, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah, which received all 12 bodies.

The war between Israel and Hamas began after Palestinian Hamas group stormed into Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 250 others. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, about a third of them believed to be dead.

The Health Ministry in Gaza says around 43,800 Palestinians have been killed in the war. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but has said women and children make up more than half the fatalities. Around 90 per cent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians have been displaced, and large areas of the territory have been flattened by Israeli bombardment and ground operations.

Jerusalem: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the first time admitted that Israel was behind the pager and walkie-talkie attacks on Hezbollah in September that left at least 39 people dead and more than 3,000 injured, local media reports have said.

“The pager operation and the elimination of (Hezbollah leader Hassan) Nasrallah were carried out despite the opposition of senior officials in the defence establishment and those responsible for them in the political echelon,” The Times of Israel newspaper quoted Netanyahu as saying.

Netanyahu’s remarks came during Sunday’s weekly Cabinet meeting, according to Hebrew media reports.

Israel had so far not taken responsibility publicly for the attacks, but it was widely speculated that it was behind the complex successfully orchestrated attacks that took the world by surprise.

Thousands of pagers containing explosives exploded on their Hezbollah owners across Lebanon and parts of Syria on September 16

Netanyahu’s statement is being interpreted in the context of his firing of Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and efforts to shore up personal popularity by taking credit for war successes.

Gallant was fired from the defence minister’s position on November 5. Netanyahu and Gallant have clashed repeatedly over the course of their time in government together.

Netanyahu also tried to get rid of him in March 2023 as well, a day after Gallant called for pausing the legislation process of the government’s contentious judicial overhaul plan arguing that it caused divisions that posed a threat to national security, but had to reinstate him due to massive public protests.

Washington : US President-elect Donald Trump spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin over the phone and discussed ending the war in Ukraine amongst many other important topics, a media report said Sunday.

After winning the recent presidential elections, Trump has spoken to over 70 world leaders. Among the firsts were Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

“The two men discussed the goal of peace on the European continent and Trump expressed an interest in follow-up conversations to discuss ‘the resolution of Ukraine’s war soon,” one of the people said,” The Washington Post said in an exclusive report.

“One former U.S official who was familiar with the Putin call said that Trump likely does not want to enter office with a fresh crisis in Ukraine prompted by Russian escalation, “giving him the incentive to want to keep the war from worsening,” the daily said.

Trump is scheduled to be sworn in as the 47th President of the United States on January 20, 2025. Ukraine has been informed about the Trump-Putin call.

“During the call, which Trump took from his resort in Florida, he advised the Russian president not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe, said a person familiar with the call, who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter,” The Washington Post reported.

Meanwhile, Steven Cheung, Trump communications director told PTI that they would not comment on the private calls between President-elect Trump and other world leaders.

“President Trump won a historic election decisively and leaders from around the world know America will return to prominence on the world stage. That is why leaders have begun the process of developing stronger relationships with the 45th and 47th President because he represents global peace and stability,” Cheung said.

Maumere (Indonesia): Indonesia’s Disaster Management Agency said Monday that at least nine people have died as a series of volcanic eruptions widens on the remote island of Flores.

Authorities raised the danger level and widened the danger zone for Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki on Monday, following a series of eruption that last week.

The country’s volcanology agency increased the volcano’s alert status to the highest level and more than doubled the exclusion zone to a 7-kilometer (4.3-mile) radius after midnight on Monday as eruptions became more frequent. It has been spewing thick brownish ash up to 2,000 meters (6,500 feet) into the air every day since Thursday.

The eruption just after midnight on Monday spewed thick brownish ash as high as 2,000 meters (6,500 feet) into the air and hot ashes hit a nearby village, burning down several houses including a convent of Catholic nuns, said Firman Yosef, an official at the Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki monitoring post.

Valencia (Spain) (AP): A crowd of angry survivors of Spain’s floods tossed mud and shouted insults at Spain’s King Felipe VI and government officials when they made their first visit to one of the hardest hit towns on Sunday.

Government officials accompanied the monarch who tried to talk to locals while others shouted at him in Paiporta, an outskirt of Valencia city that has been devastated.

Police had to step in with some officers on horseback to keep back the crowd of several dozens.

“Get out! Get out!” and “Killers!” the crowd shouted among other insults. Bodyguards opened umbrellas to protect the royals and officials as protestors launched mud their way.

After being forced to seek protection, the king remained calm and made several efforts to speak to individual residents. One person appeared to have wept on his shoulder. He shook the hand of a man.

It was an unprecedented incident for a Royal House that takes great care to craft an image of a monarch who is liked by the nation.

But the public rage over for the haphazard management of the crisis came to a boil on Sunday.

Queen Letizia and regional Valencia President Carlo Mazón were also in the contingent. The queen also spoke to women with small glops of mud on her hands and arms.

Over 200 people have died from Tuesday’s floods and thousands have had their homes destroyed by the wall of water and mud. At least 60 of the dead were in Paiporta, an epicentre of suffering.

Indignation of the management of Spain’s worst natural disaster in living memory started after the initial shock wore off.

The floods had started filling Paiporta with crushing waves when the regional officials issued an alert to mobile phones that sounded two hours too late.

And more anger has been fuelled by the inability of officials to respond quickly to aftermath. Most of the cleanup of the layers and layers of mud and debris that has invaded countless homes has been done by residents and thousands of volunteers.

“We have lost everything!” someone shouted.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was scheduled to accompany the king on the visit. But it is not clear if Sánchez was there at the moment the contingent was pelted with mud.

Felipe insisted on trying to dialogue with people as he tried to continue his visit. He spoke to several people, patting two young mean on their backs and sharing a quick embrace, with mud stains on his black rain coat.

According to a journalist for Spanish broadcaster RTVE near Felipe, one woman wept and told him she didn’t have food and diapers while another person said “don’t abandon us”.

But after approximately half an hour of tension, the monarchs got in officials cars and left with a mounted police escort.