The US has carried out a commando raid on an al-Qaeda stronghold in central Yemen, killing 14 militants, the military says.
One US soldier died and three were injured.
Several Apache helicopters were reported to have taken part in the operation in al-Baida province.
Three al-Qaeda leaders were among those killed in a battle lasting 45 minutes in a village in Yakla district. Earlier reports suggested a higher death toll.
US drones have carried out periodic attacks on al-Qaeda in Yemen.
Local sources earlier said 41 militants and 16 civilians were killed.
Twenty-three Chinese tourists and two crew members have survived after their boat sank in rough seas off eastern Malaysia, officials said.
Shahidan Kassim, a minister in charge of national security, told reporters that six people were still missing,
The catamaran sank on Saturday - the first day of the Chinese New Year holiday.
It sparked a major air and sea search covering 400 nautical square miles.
"We will deploy search assets that can operate at night, and continue our rescue operations to locate those who are still missing," Mr Shahidan told a press conference in Malaysia's eastern state of Sabah.
The catamaran left Kota Kinabalu in Sabah on Saturday at 09:00 local time (01:00 GMT) and was heading towards Pulau Mengalum, a popular tourist island 60km (37 miles) west of the city.
Local note: We were on a similar smaller boat on the same trip, but to a smaller island. Our tourist boat was stopped by armed harbor police ; very scary.
Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has extended his war on drugs to the end of his term in 2022, as he promised to overhaul the "corrupt" police force.
Mr Duterte had previously said his controversial campaign would only last several months into his presidency.
Thousands of alleged drug suspects have died in state-sanctioned extra-judicial killings, mostly by police.
Several officers were also involved in a shocking kidnap and murder of a South Korean expatriate last year.Mr Duterte had initially promised to eradicate the country's drug problem by December, then extended the deadline to March this year.
But he told reporters at a press conference late Sunday night: "I will extend it to the last day of my term... March no longer applies
Five people have reportedly been killed and several injured in a gun attack at a mosque in Québec City.
Witnesses said the shooting was carried out by three attackers and happened during evening prayers at about 8pm on Sunday.
Two arrests have been made, a police spokesman said, but did not release details of the death toll. The mosque’s president, Mohamed Yangui, said five people were killed.
About 40 people were thought to be in the building – the Québec City Islamic cultural center on Sainte-Foy Street – at the time.
Yangui, who was not inside the mosque when the shooting occurred, said he got frantic calls from people at evening prayers. He did not know how many were injured, saying they had been taken to different hospitals across Quebec City.
Within minutes of Donald Trump signing his executive order banning the entry of nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries, the horror stories started coming through. Sudanese friends and relatives, some of whom had lived their entire lives in the United States, some who were in the air as the order was signed, found themselves prevented from entering the country.
Some were turned back from boarding their flights, others were handcuffed in airports, patted down and interrogated on their political beliefs. Mothers, fathers, children, students, employees suddenly found that the unthinkable had happened. They had been banned from returning to their jobs and studies, to their families and homes because they were Muslims.
The thought was almost too evil, too grotesque, to countenance. The hours after the ban felt like living through a chapter of history that we’d left behind. Events unfolded the likes of which we had only ever seen in documentaries, in fragments of newsreels from the archives. Travellers in tears, stern officers “just following orders”, refugees on the cusp of safe harbour wild with despair at the uncertain fate to which they must return, confused children huddled behind their parents as they plead with authorities, their faces speaking of fear, confusion and the sense that something is about to change for ever.
And something has. The Islamophobia that we have witnessed rise over the past decade has finally burst its banks. The first thought was that surely common sense would prevail, surely there would be some grace period, surely there would eventually be a challenge from some sensible authority that would stop the madness. None of these things came to pass.
A Texas community has rallied behind its Muslim residents after their mosque burnt to the ground shortly after President Donald Trump signed into effect a "Muslim ban" on refugees and others from seven Muslim-majority countries.
Following the news that their house of worship in southeast Texas was completely destroyed early on Saturday, the Islamic Centre of Victoria set up an online donation drive via GoFundMe to rebuild. It has raised more than $600,000 of its $850,000 goal in 24 hours.
"We were very shocked Saturday morning when we saw the mosque burning," Shahid Hashmi, president of the Islamic Centre, told Al Jazeera.
According to local reports, the building caught fire shortly after 2 am local time.
Now, the outpouring of monetary and moral support has shocked Hashmi again: "It's incredible. We are very grateful.”
Al Jazeera
Madagascar: Truck crash kills 47, including newly-weds
At least 47 people, including 10 children and a newly-wed couple, have been killed in a traffic accident north of Madagascar's capital, Antananarivo, according to police.
The incident took place early on Saturday when a truck carrying wedding guests deviated off the road and plunged into a river outside the town of Anjozorobe.
Police spokesperson Herilala Andrianatisaona told AFP news agency on Sunday that at least 22 people were also injured in the accident.
The police have blamed the driver for carrying too many passengers on a truck that is only meant to transport goods.
"According to our hypothesis, the truck driver, cognisant of the offence he was committing, which was transporting too many passengers in a vehicle meant for carrying goods, drove fast to escape traffic police checks," Andrianatisaona said.
Al Jazeera
MV Aquarius rescues refugees on Mediterranean Sea
The waves become higher and the weather rougher. The winter months are tough on the many rescue missions launching from all around Europe to help save refugees crossing the Mediterranean Sea at risk of drowning. It is perilous work where the rewards are counted in lives saved. Many of these rescue vessels are not fit for purpose in the harsh conditions of the sea. The organisations often interrupt their work for lack of operating funds - all of them rely on donations.
The 40-year-old MV Aquarius is one such rescue ship. But the former fishery protection vessel built in Bremen, Germany, is robust enough to face the torrid waves. It is jointly operated by SOS Mediterranee and Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), and in the beginning of the winter months was the only civic rescue mission operating. In late December 2016, Proactiva Open Arms joined them with their new ship, the Golfo Azzurro. So far, these two are the only civic rescue vessels in the Search-and-Rescue Zone (SAR-Zone) off the Libyan coast.
With more than 5,000 deaths, 2016 had the worst annual death toll on the Mediterranean. An average of 14 people have died every day attempting to cross this Sea.
Raw Story
Starbucks CEO Schultz plans to hire 10,000 refugees after Trump ban
Starbucks Corp Chief Executive Officer Howard Schultz said on Sunday that the company planned to hire 10,000 refugees over five years in 75 countries, two days after U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order banning refugees from certain countries.
Trump on Friday put a four-month hold on allowing refugees into the United States and temporarily barred travelers from Syria and six other Muslim-majority countries, saying the moves would help protect Americans from terrorist attacks.
The order sparked widespread international criticism, outrage from civil rights activists and legal challenges.
Starbucks in a letter from Schultz told employees it would do everything possible to support affected workers. (http://bit.ly/2kIFjLE)
The hiring efforts announced on Sunday would start in the United States by initially focusing on individuals who have served with U.S. troops as interpreters and support personnel in the various countries where the military has asked for such support, Schultz said.
Raw Story
Canadian tech firms ask Trudeau to give immediate visas after US immigration ban
A group of Canadian technology company founders, executives and investors on Sunday called in a letter for Ottawa to immediately give temporary residency to those displaced by a U.S. order banning the entry of people from seven Muslim-majority countries.
The open letter said U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order, which temporarily bars travelers from Syria and six other countries and also puts a four-month hold on allowing refugees into the United States, had already “impacted several in our community.”
“Canadian tech companies understand the power of inclusion and diversity of thought, and that talent and skill know no borders,” said the letter, signed by more than 200 industry players.
“Many Canadian tech entrepreneurs are immigrants, are the children of immigrants, employ and have been employed by immigrants.”
Signatories included John Ruffolo, head of the venture arm of one of Canada’s biggest pension funds, and Tobias Lutke, chief executive officer of e-commerce software company Shopify, which went public in 2015 and is valued at around $4.6 billion.
N Y Times
Travelers Stranded and Protests Swell Over Trump Order
WASHINGTON — Travelers were stranded around the world, protests escalated in the United States and anxiety rose within President Trump’s party on Sunday as his order closing the nation to refugees and people from certain predominantly Muslim countries provoked a crisis just days into his administration.
The White House pulled back on part of Mr. Trump’s temporary ban on visitors from seven countries by saying that it would not apply to those with green cards granting them permanent residence in the United States. By the end of the day, the Department of Homeland Security formally issued an order declaring legal residents exempt from the order.
But the recalibration did little to reassure critics at home or abroad who saw the president’s order as a retreat from traditional American values. European leaders denounced the order, and some Republican lawmakers called on Mr. Trump to back down. It was not clear how many were still being detained at American airports or how many others were now blocked from getting on airplanes in the first place.
More than any of the myriad moves Mr. Trump has made in his frenetic opening days in office, the immigration order has quickly come to define his emerging presidency as one driven by a desire for decisive action even at the expense of deliberate process or coalition building. It has thrust the nine-day-old administration into its first constitutional conflict, as multiple courts have intervened to block aspects of the order, and into its broadest diplomatic incident, with overseas allies objecting.
L A Times
2017 Awards season: 'Stranger Things' and 'Hidden Figures' take top SAG Awards prizes
"Hidden Figures," "Stranger Things" and "Orange Is the New Black" took home the top ensemble prizes at the 23rd Screen Actors Guild Awards. While the event was a celebration of actors and their craft, the current political climate was not far from the minds of many stars on the red carpet and on the stage. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Mahershala Ali, Bryan Cranston, David Harbour and others used their time at the podium to address recent events and the policies of President Donald Trump.
C/Net (autoplay)
Asteroid whizzing by Earth 6 times closer than the moon
The problem with asteroids passing near Earth is that they're often difficult to spot. Fortunately the hardest ones to see in our neighborhood also tend to be the smaller ones. Such is the case with 2017 BH30, which was discovered Sunday by the Catalina Sky Survey just hours before passing by us at the creepy-close distance of only 40,563 miles (65,280 kilometres).
This asteroid is estimated to be between 15-32.8 feet (4.6-10 metres) in length, making it somewhere between the size of a truck and a... big truck. That's pretty small by asteroid standards, but it's also the closest spotted asteroid to pass us since September when asteroid 2016 RB1 passed within 24,000 miles (about 39,000 kilometres) of our planet's surface, putting it almost as close as satellites in geosynchronous orbit.