A viper with scales that look like eyelashes and a leaf-nosed bat are among dozens of new species identified in Southeast Asia’s Mekong region last year, WWF said Monday.

The environmental group regularly publishes a list of newly discovered flora and fauna in the region to highlight the area’s biodiversity and the risks it faces.

“The region is still a fertile ground for scientific exploration,” WWF said, warning that “many species are likely to go extinct before they are even discovered” because of mostly human-linked pressures, including deforestation and the wildlife trade.

The Greater Mekong, which comprises Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, is a well-known biodiversity hotspot, home to tigers, elephants and dolphins.

In all, 234 new species of vertebrates and vascular plants — a category that excludes mosses, algae and fungus — were identified in the region in 2023.

Some were located in remote natural habitats, while others were identified from specimens preserved in natural history museums and botanical gardens across the world.

Among them is an Asian pit viper whose chocolate-brown and mint-green scales give it the appearance of eyelashes around its eyes, WWF said.

Found in limestone formations in a Thai national park, it has been named the limestone eyelash pit viper as a result of its distinctive habitat and markings.

Similarly striking is a bat that weighs in at between five and seven grams and features a distinctive leaf-shaped nose, used for echolocation. It was documented in Thailand, but is also found in Malaysia, WWF said.

Around half of all the new species were found in Vietnam, with 106 endemic to the country, the highest number of any nation in the Greater Mekong region.

Among them is a new species of gymnure — furry members of the hedgehog family — and a snake found at 2,600 metres on Mount Fansipan in northern Vietnam by two porters from the Hmong ethnic minority.

Scientists are concerned that the forest where the snake was found is being degraded by the collection of fuelwood for the tourism industry, and by livestock grazing.

“It may also be vulnerable to climate change, since species restricted to high elevations have little opportunity to move to higher ground as their habitat gets warmer,” the report warned.

Bangladesh’s interim leader, Muhammad Yunus, who heads the caretaker government installed after an August revolution, said Monday that general elections would be held late next year or in early 2026.

Pressure has been growing on Nobel Peace Prize winner Yunus — appointed the country’s “chief adviser” after the student-led uprising that toppled ex-premier Sheikh Hasina in August — to set a date.

Turkiye is set to reopen its embassy in Damascus on Saturday, nearly a week after President Bashar Assad was toppled by forces backed by Ankara and 12 years after the diplomatic outpost was shuttered early in Syria’s civil war.

The move came as Middle Eastern and Western diplomats gathered in Jordan for high-level talks on Syria, and a day after nationwide celebrations at Assad’s ouster.

Ankara has been a major player in Syria’s conflict, holding considerable sway in the northwest and financing armed groups there, and maintaining a working relationship with the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), which spearheaded the offensive that brought down Assad.

Turkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said the new charge d’affaires, Burhan Koroglu, left for Syria on Friday, with the embassy expected to be “operational” the following day.
Fidan also said Ankara had urged Assad backers Russia and Iran not to intervene as the Islamist-led militants mounted their lightning advance last week.

“The most important thing was to talk to the Russians and Iranians to ensure that they didn’t enter the equation militarily… They understood,” Fidan told private television network NTV.

Turkish diplomats joined counterparts from the European Union, the United States and the Arab world on Saturday for talks in the Jordanian city of Aqaba.

A day before the meetings in Jordan, Syrians had celebrated what they called the “Friday of victory,” with fireworks heralding the fall of the Assad dynasty.

Celebrations continued into the night on the first Friday — the Muslim day of rest and prayer — since Assad was ousted.

Umayyad Square in Damascus was jammed with vehicles, people and waving flags as fireworks shot into the air, AFPTV footage showed.

Crowds also gathered in the squares and streets of other Syrian cities, including Homs, Hama and Idlib.

UN envoy warns against Syria collapse at crisis talks

Meanwhile, a UN envoy urged foreign powers to work to avoid a collapse of vital Syrian institutions following the downfall of leader Bashar al-Assad, as diplomats gathered in Jordan for a conference on the crisis.

Geir Pedersen, the UN’s special envoy for Syria, also backed a “credible and inclusive” political process to form the next government as he met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“We need to make sure that state institutions do not collapse, and that we get in humanitarian assistance as quickly as possible,” Pedersen said. “If we can achieve that, perhaps there is a new opportunity for the Syrian people.”

Top Arab, Turkish, EU, and US diplomats are holding talks in the Jordanian Red Sea resort city of Aqaba less than a week after Syrian opposition forces toppled al-Assad.

Blinken, on a trip in which he has met the leaders of Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq, has repeatedly called for an “inclusive” process that reflects all the diverse ethnic and religious communities in Syria.

Meeting Pedersen, Blinken said that the United Nations “plays a critical role” in humanitarian assistance and protecting minorities in Syria.

South Korean lawmakers on Saturday voted to remove President Yoon Suk Yeol from office for his failed attempt to impose martial law last week.

Out of 300 lawmakers, 204 voted to impeach the president on allegations of insurrection while 85 voted against.

Three abstained, with eight votes nullified.

Suchir Balaji, an Indian-American researcher and former OpenAI employee, has died in San Francisco.

He was found dead on November 26, and according to the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, his death has been ruled a suicide. However, officials found no evidence of foul play at the scene.

The 26-year-old had been vocal about the risks associated with artificial intelligence and accused OpenAI of violating copyright laws. He raised these concerns in an interview with The New York Times in October.

Balaji had worked as a researcher at OpenAI but left the company earlier this year. After his resignation, he became a vocal critic, frequently accusing OpenAI of using online data in ways that breached copyright laws.

In his last social media post, Balaji stated, “I initially didn’t know much about copyright, fair use, etc., but became curious after seeing all the lawsuits filed against GenAI companies. When I tried to understand the issue better, I eventually concluded that fair use seems like a pretty implausible defence for a lot of generative AI products, for the basic reason that they can create substitutes that compete with the data they’re trained on.” 

Suchir Balaji graduated in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and started his career as a software engineer at Quora in August 2016. Over the years, he interned at several organizations, including OpenAI, ScaleAI, and Helia, where he focused on machine learning. He joined OpenAI in November 2020 as a member of the technical staff, working on data-related projects and research.

Balaji decided to leave the company in August this year, after concluding that OpenAI’s practices, particularly regarding copyright, could have serious long-term consequences.

Elon Musk has reacted to Balaji’s death, sharing a post about the news and commenting with a simple “hmm,” which sparked further discussion.

An 11-year-old girl has survived three days in the stormy Mediterranean Sea by clinging on to two tyre tubes after the shipwreck.

According to reports, the girl was discovered by a non-governmental organisation, Compass Collective, as they were on their way to another emergency. It was then that the rescue team heard the minor’s cries for help.

According to the organisation, the girl is most likely the only survivor among 45 people on board a vessel that sank off the coast of Italy.

“It was an incredible coincidence that we heard the child’s voice despite the engine running,” said Matthias Wiedenlübbert, the rescue organisation’s chief.

The team heard the child’s call for help at 3:20 am local time and immediately launched a rescue mission in the dark. They also alerted the rescue control centre in Rome.

While the little girl is originally from Sierra Leone, the boat had originally departed from Sfax, a port city on Tunisia’s coast. Her boat had hit the dayslong storm that prevented many rescue boats from setting sail and that was why she remained stranded.

The girl told the rescue team that she had been in contact with two other people from the boat for a while but had not heard from them in two days.

An official statement by Campus Collective said that even though the girl was suffering from hypothermia, she was actually saved by the two tubes and a life vest.

“The girl had no drinking water or food with her, and although she was suffering from hypothermia, she was responsive and alert,” the statement read.

Notably, the central Mediterranean route between Tunisia, Libya, Italy and Malta is one of the most dangerous migration routes in the world, with over 24,300 deaths or disappearances since 2014.

Missing Migrants Project of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), on the other hand, reported over 30,000 deaths during the same period.

The IOM says it is likely that several other deaths remain unrecorded.

Compass Collective alone has saved 1,653 people in distress at sea since it began its operation in August 2023.

A bill to ban first-cousin marriages in the UK will be presented in the British Parliament today.

The Independent talked to Conservative former minister Richard Holden, who has called for the ban because such marriages have been linked to a higher birth-related defect in children and can also “reinforce negative structures and control women.”

He is seeking to introduce the  Marriage (Prohibited Degrees of Relationship) Bill to the House of Commons today for further consideration.

Mr Holden, explaining the move, said cousin marriages could be “cultural rather than religious” in “some of the communities where it is more prevalent”.

Elaborating on the core idea behind the proposition, he asserted, “Marriage and relationships should be about individual choice in modern Britain; it shouldn’t be about anything else.”

Quoting the social and scientific relevance, he said, “Studies show that it is associated with approximately double the rate of birth defects compared to the general population and can reinforce negative structures and control women.

“Building on my previous work to ban hymenoplasty and so-called virginity testing in the last Parliament, I will urge the Government to reconsider the legality of first-cousin marriage in the UK.

“Many nations and states have taken action on this issue in recent years, and it is time for us to do the same.”

Holden will seek to introduce his private member’s bill (PMB) to the lower house of the parliament that is House of Commons today (on Tuesday) using the 10-minute rule process.

Justice Minister Alex Davies-Jones, representing the government, said that the government will take time to “properly consider our marriage law” before stating its position publicly.

“Placing restrictions on first-cousin marriage would require changes to the Marriage Act 1949 and potentially the Sexual Offences Act 2003,” he acknowledged.

Medical experts also state that there is a high rate of cousin marriages worldwide, which is the reason behind genetic diseases caused by gene mutation. Thus increasing the risk of many diseases, including sudden death after childbirth, infertility, pre-term delivery, thalassemia, epilepsy, muteness, deafness, and bipolar disorder.

It is illegal to marry a sibling, parent or child in the United Kingdom, but not first cousins.

Notably, if the proposed bill to be presented in the House of Commons is passed, marriage between first cousins in the UK will be banned.

The leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis,  inaugurated the seasonal nativity scene presented by Palestinian officials, featuring baby Jesus wrapped in a keffiyeh- the traditional scarf worn by Palestinians as a national symbol- in Vatican City on Saturday.

It is a widely held historical belief that Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, Palestine, making him a Palestinian. 

While speaking at the ceremony, Pope Francis criticised Israeli aggression in Gaza, “Enough wars, enough violence!.”

This declaration by the wheelchair-bound Pope was preceded by his address to the people suffering around the world. “Remember the brothers and sisters, who, right there [in Bethlehem] and in other parts of the world, are suffering from the tragedy of war,” the Pope lamented.

Vatican News reported that the Pope also warmly received a delegation of representatives from the Palestinians who organized the project by Bethlehem-based artists Johny Andonia and Faten Nastas Mitwasi.

A poignant picture of the Pontiff deep in prayer while observing the Baby Jesus wrapped in a keffiyeh went viral on social media. 

The collection of the series was titled as “Nativity of Bethlehem 2024”. The biblical tableau that was showcased in the ceremony featured figures of the holy family as described in the Christian scriptures carved from olive wood, also a national Palestinian treasury, while baby Jesus was placed atop a keffiyeh- a white scarf with a black pattern worn across the Middle East which has become a symbol of Palestinians’ resistance to the ongoing Israeli occupation. 

The unveiling of the nativity scene comes after a series of statements by the religious leader about the ongoing Israeli offensive in Gaza. 

The Catholic leader has also previously called the public to support a ceasefire between Palestine and Israel as well as the safe release of hostages taken in the October 7 events.

The head of the holy city of the Vatican has also directly questioned Israel’s aggressive military response in interviews from a new book published last month in which he called for an investigation into Israel’s actions in Palestine “fits into the technical definition” of genocide.

Palestinian Liberation Organization executive committee member Ramzi Khouri joined the pope on Sunday in presiding over the scene’s dedication on Sunday and conveyed “warm greetings” from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Khouri expressed “deep gratitude for the pope’s unwavering support for the Palestinian cause and his tireless efforts to end the war on Gaza and promote justice,” according to a PLO press release.

Crew members of Swiss International Airline are being investigated after a video of two passengers engaging in intimate acts was leaked on social media.

The airline’s spokesperson informed media that during a November 29 flight from Bangkok to Zurich, crew members in the cockpit observed two passengers “engaging in intimate acts.”

The couple was in the front galley near the flight deck. 

Notably, the airplanes typically have cameras throughout, while pilots and crew members have access to video footage from the cockpit.

However, on the Zurich-bound flight, crew members apparently recorded the couple from a monitor on the flight deck using a phone.

Later it was leaked and began circulating on WhatsApp.

The news was first reported by the Swiss newspaper 20 Minuten.

The airline’s spokesperson emphasised that it expected crew members to intervene immediately because it was “intolerable” whereas they filmed it instead. 

Resultantly, the airline is considering disciplinary action against the ones who recorded it.

“Filming people without their clear consent and sharing these recordings is contrary to our guidelines and values,” the spokesperson asserted.

“The behavior of the passengers in question was inappropriate — therefore, our employees should have acted in line with our protocols and intervened immediately,” the official said while adding “Why the crew did not act accordingly is the subject of the ongoing investigation.”

The airline said it intends to increase employee education and training to avoid such incidents in the future.