December 26, 2023

*)Families of hostages boo Israel's Netanyahu during parliament address Families of hostages taken by Hamas booed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he addressed parliament, vowing to bring the captives home but saying "more time" was needed. "Now! Now!" the families chanted from the gallery when Netanyahu said Israeli forces first needed to increase military pressure on Palestinian resistance group Hamas. Netanyahu said he spoke to Israeli field commanders who said they needed "more time" to finish the mission. *) Nicaragua-bound plane carrying 300 'trafficked' Indians lands in Mumbai A plane that had been grounded in France for days over concerns its nearly 300 mostly Indian passengers were part of a human trafficking scheme has landed in Mumbai, flight tracking data showed. The Airbus A340 initially had been bound for Nicaragua when it was detained last Thursday at Vatry airport, east of Paris, where it had stopped for refuelling. It had arrived from Dubai, and there was an anonymous tip-off that it was carrying potential victims of human trafficking. Of the original 303 people on the passenger list, 276 were on the plane that took off just before 3:00 pm on Monday. Among the passengers staying behind were two people questioned by French police over suspected people trafficking, but a judicial source said police released them after establishing that the 303 passengers had boarded the plane of their own free will. *) Ukraine destroys Russian fleet ship in Crimea: air force Ukraine's air force said it had destroyed a Russian fleet ship off the Crimean peninsula suspected of carrying drones for use in Moscow's war against Kiev. "Around 2:30 am (0030 GMT) on December 26, tactical aviation of the Air Force attacked with cruise missiles the Novocherkassk large landing ship of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation in the area of Feodosia," it said in a post on messaging platform Telegram. Feodosia is home to a major Russian naval base on the Moscow-annexed Crimean peninsula. *) Indian navy to deploy guided missile destroyer ships after strike off its coast India's navy will deploy guided missile destroyer ships in the Arabian Sea after an Israel-affiliated merchant vessel was struck off the Indian coast over the weekend. The Indian navy was investigating the nature of the attack on the vessel, MV Chem Pluto, which docked in Mumbai, and initial reports pointed to a drone attack, the statement said. A spokesperson for Iran's foreign ministry on Monday called a US claim that Iran had attacked the ship near India "baseless". And finally… *)Archaeologists in Türkiye unearth remnants providing clues to religious beliefs of ancient Medes Archaeologists in northern Türkiye have unearthed structures and religious artefacts linked to the Medes, an ancient Iranian people, marking their first appearance in Anatolian archaeology. Excavations were unearthed in the previous years at Oluz Hoyuk in Amasya province, where pottery fragments and ceramics were identified as belonging to the Medes. This year’s findings from the region revealed altars and architectural structures which were also determined to belong to the Medes. The Medes were an ancient Iranian tribe from the Iron Age living mostly between today’s western and northern Iran.