At least six people were killed and dozens injured as a crowd gathered in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, one of the country’s most visited Hindu holy sites.
When the crush occurred on Wednesday night, a sizable crowd gathered to collect free entrance tickets to the town’s Sri Venkateswara Swamy Temple.
Six devotees have died as a result of the unfortunate incident. I pray to God to give peace to the departed souls”, Prem Kumar Jain, spokesman of the state’s ruling Telugu Desam Party, told reporters.
Devotees from all over India have been gathering for the temple’s 10-day festival, which begins on Friday, since early on Wednesday.
According to the state’s chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu’s office, the crowd pushed and yelled at the authorities, who had set up counters to distribute free tokens starting on Thursday to visit the nearly 2, 000-year-old temple.
In a post on X, Naidu said the deaths “grieved me intensely”.
The families of the deceased were expressed condolences by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
His office wrote on social media platform X that “my thoughts are with those who have lost their close and dear ones.”
Due to poor crowd control and safety practices, fatal accidents occur frequently at places of worship in India during major religious holidays.
Up to 121 people were killed in Hathras, a town in northern Uttar Pradesh, in July of last year during a Hindu religious gathering.
In a temple in the state of southern Kerala, a fireworks display that was prohibited for the Hindu New Year caused a massive explosion that claimed 112 lives in 2016.
Authorities in the United States have reported that a Japanese crime boss has admitted to conspiring to sell nuclear weapons to Iran along with drug and weapons trafficking.
Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, a member of the yakuza, entered a guilty plea to six counts in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday, the US Department of Justice said in a statement.
On April 9, he will be sentenced.
In 2020, he claimed to have cleared a large amount of thorium and uranium from the DEA and a DEA agent, according to prosecutors.
According to the prosecution, the undercover agent agreed to assist Ebisawa in brokering the sale of the nuclear materials to an associate who posed as an Iranian general in response to his repeated inquiries.
Ebisawa then offered to supply the undercover associate with plutonium that would be even “better” and more “powerful” than uranium for making nuclear weapons, according to prosecutors.
The Justice Department said a powdery yellow substance that Ebisawa’s conspirators showed to covert agents was later discovered to have detected trace amounts of uranium, thorium, and plutonium in a laboratory analysis.
According to prosecutors, Ebisawa also plotted to arrange the purchase of US-made surface-to-air missiles and heavy-duty weapons in Myanmar in order to pay for the weapons, as well as to accept large quantities of heroin and methamphetamine as part of the arms.
According to US officials, law enforcement partners in Indonesia, Japan, and Thailand collaborated to carry out Ebisawa’s arrest and prosecution.
According to Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, “Today’s plea should serve as a stark reminder to those who violate the fullest extent of the law by trafficking weapons-grade plutonium and other dangerous materials on behalf of organized criminal syndicates.”
Security forces in Chad claimed to have stopped an armed fighters’ attempt to storm the presidential complex in the country’s capital, N’Djamena, killing at least 19 people.
According to the government, one member of the security forces also died in the gun battles, and at least 18 of a group of 24 armed men were killed in the failed assault on the president’s office on Wednesday evening.
“There were 18 dead and six injured” among the attackers “and we suffered one death and three injured, one of them seriously”, Chad’s foreign minister and government spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah said.
Koulamallah said in a video that “the destabilization attempt was put down,” surrounded by soldiers and wearing a gun to his belt.
Wang Yi, the foreign minister of China, made an official visit to China during the attack.
Hours before the shooting erupted, Wang Yi had met with Chad’s President Mahamat Idriss Deby and other senior officials. Deby was in the presidential complex at the time of the attack, according to Koulamallah.
Chad’s Foreign Minister Abderaman Koulamallah, right, meets with China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi, left, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in N’Djamena on January 8, 2025]Joris Bolomey/AFP]
Deby seized power after rebels killed his father, longstanding President Idriss Deby, in 2021. Deby had been in power since a coup in the early 1990s, which was more recent.
The attackers were identified as Boko Haram members, according to a security source who later claimed they were “probably not” rebels, referring instead to drunken “Pieds Nickeles,” a phrase used in a French comic featuring hapless crooks. Koulamallah later later said they were “probably not” rebels.
A security official added that the incident was likely an “attempted terrorist attack” and that a security official was aware of it.
“Individuals in three vehicles attacked the military camps around the president’s office, but the army neutralised them”, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Residents of the area reported hearing loud gunfire volleys.
The government praised the contested general election as a crucial step toward ending military rule, but which was marred by low turnout and fraud allegations in opposition.
The field was open for candidates who supported the president after the opposition called for voters to boycott the polls.
The former French colony, which is rich in oil resources but one of the poorest countries in Africa, hosted France’s last military bases in the region known as the Sahel, but at the end of November, ended defence and security agreements with Paris, calling them “obsolete”.
Around 1,500 French military personnel were stationed in the nation right now, with some of them reserving. After France was expelled from three Sahelian nations, Mali, Burkinabe, and Niger, military-held nations were ruled by hostile regimes.
At least 13 civilians were killed and about 30 others were hurt in a bombing carried out by Russia in Zaporizhzhia, according to governor Ivan Fedorov’s statement on social media.
Two people were killed in a separate Russian attack near the front line in the Stepnogirsk village, south of Zaporizhzhia, according to Fedorov.
Roman Busagrin, governor of the Russian city of Saratov, said two firefighters were killed while battling a blaze which erupted after Ukrainian forces hit an oil depot in the region, which is located some 500km (310 miles) from the border with Ukraine.
The United States claimed to the UN Security Council that North Korea’s troops “significantly benefit” from their engagement with Russia and Ukraine, and that Pyongyang is “more able to wage war against its neighbors.”
Nada Al-Nashif, the deputy UN rights chief, has told a UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva that she is “deeply concerned” by a significant increase in “credible allegations of executions” of captured Ukrainian troops by the Russian armed forces.
Military aid
Two US officials claimed that the US is prepared to give Ukraine an additional $500 million in weapons as soon as Donald Trump becomes president.
A day before the anticipated announcement of the new military aid package, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stated that continued support for Kyiv is crucial and that US leadership on Ukraine is “critical.”
Politics and diplomacy
Membership in NATO is the only “credible” security guarantee Ukraine can receive against any future Russian aggression, Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said.
Valtonen, on a visit to Kyiv, met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and visited the country’s largest children’s hospital in the capital, which was badly damaged by a Russian attack in July 2024.
According to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, any future agreement to end the Ukrainian conflict must include “the necessary deterrence” to stop Russia from once more attacking Ukraine.
Burning cars at the site of a Russian air strike in Zaporizhzhia, southeastern Ukraine, on January 8, 2025]Handout/Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration via EPA]
Zelenskyy announced in a video message posted on social media that he would attend a US-hosted defense meeting of Kyiv’s allies.
When illegal immigration and support for Ukraine are likely to be the topics of conversation between UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron,
Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, attended a memorial service held in honor of the fifth anniversary of a Ukrainian Airlines flight that had passengers from Iran, Canada, Sweden, Ukraine, the UK, Afghanistan, and Iran when it was shot down by Iran in 2020.
Regional tension
Hungary’s foreign minister Peter Szijjarto criticized Ukraine’s refusal to renew a five-year transit gas deal with Russia, prompting the country’s ministry of foreign affairs to declare that it is ready to step up to the plate in the European Union and NATO.
Next week, Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal and Finnish President Alexander Stubb will hold a summit of the NATO countries that border the Baltic Sea in Helsinki.
In response to the possibility of sabotage, Lithuania announced that it would increase the security of a crucial electricity cable connecting Poland to its neighbors. The EU and NATO member will decouple from Russia’s power grid next month, the culmination of decades-long efforts to reduce reliance on Moscow, along with its Baltic neighbors Latvia and Estonia.
Men carry a resident injured during Russian air and missile strikes in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on Wednesday]Handout/Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration via Reuters]
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the principle of inviolability of borders applies to every country, however powerful, and suggested that expansionist comments by US President-elect Trump regarding Greenland, Panama and Canada are being met with “incomprehension” among European leaders.
Trump’s comments that he claimed he understood why Russia did not want Ukraine to join NATO sparked Zelenskyy’s disapproval. “Don’t draw conclusions about the policy of the US right away”, Zelenskyy said.
Robert Fico, the prime minister of Slovakia, stated that he had secured a gas supply for the country while on a trip to Moscow last month to meet with Vladimir Putin, the country’s president, just before Ukraine halted its gas exports from Russia at the beginning of 2025.
Zelenskyy and Maia Sandu, the president of Moldova, discussed using Ukrainian coal to combat the energy crisis that has caused blackouts and a heating shortage in the separatist Transdniestria region of Moldova. Russian gas supplies are a key component of Transdniestria, a pro-Russian organization. However, after Ukraine refused to renew an agreement that would allow the passage of gas through its territory, flows to the region stopped on January 1.
The plaza where the violence took place, hosted by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, marked the second anniversary of the attack on government buildings with a celebration.
Lula, who underwent surgery last month to treat brain bleeding, made an appearance at the Three Powers Plaza in the capital Brasilia on Wednesday to denounce the riots from January 8, 2023, which he has described as a coup against his presidency.
In response to the attack, which saw thousands of protesters break into the presidential residence, Supreme Court building, and Congress, he also used the occasion to demonstrate defiance.
“Today is the day to say loud and clear: We’re still here”, Lula told his supporters.
“We’re here to say that we are alive and that democracy is alive, contrary to what the January 8, 2023, coup plotters had planned”.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva takes part in a ceremony marking the second anniversary of the January 8 attack in Brasilia, Brazil, on Wednesday]Andressa Anholete/Reuters]
The attack on January 8 came just seven days after Lula, a left-wing leader, had been inaugurated for a non-consecutive third term.
Lula was not in the presidential palace at the time, nor was Brazil’s Congress in session. However, the attack damaged dozens of law enforcement personnel and protesters, who were also hurt.
Many of the rioters were attempting to erect a military front against Lula’s presidency.
Lula won the run-off election by one of the fewest margins in Brazilian history against current president Jair Bolsonaro in October 2022. Just over 2.1 million votes separated the two candidates.
However, the far-right Bolsonaro refused to publicly acknowledge his defeat following the election because he had been making false accusations long before the election that Brazil’s electronic voting system was vulnerable to fraud.
Bolsonaro supporters squatted through Brazilian police headquarters and blocked highways, which led to widespread protest. A bomb threat in the capital was even reported in the lead-up to the inauguration.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva attends a ceremony marking the second anniversary of the January 8 attack in Brasilia, which saw government property ravaged]Andressa Anholete/Reuters]
Before Lula took office, Bolsonaro fled the country to Florida. He has since returned to the country, where he faces numerous legal cases and investigations.
Some of his actions relate to the election’s dissemination of false information, as well as his involvement in the 2023 attack.
As retribution for using government resources to stoke distrust in the voting process, Brazil’s electoral court ruled in June 2023 that Bolsonaro could not run for office until 2030.
Federal police also formally charged Bolsonaro and 36 of his allies with conspiring to overturn the election results of 2022 in November 2024. Prosecutor-general Paulo Gonet has yet to decide whether to formally charge the former president.
Other investigations have examined whether Bolsonaro knowingly hid inconsequential information while working or spreading false information during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Still, on Wednesday, Bolsonaro asserted on social media that United States President-elect Donald Trump had invited him to Washington, DC, for his inauguration on January 20.
According to Bolsonaro, “My lawyer, Dr. Paulo Bueno, has already sent a request to Minister Alexandre de Moraes for me to obtain my passport back so that I can attend this honorable and significant historical event.”
One resource expected to be swept up in the conflict is the rare earth minerals, which are essential to the production of electronics, vehicles, and weapons, as President-elect Donald Trump prepares for a second trade war with China once he takes office on January 20.
Despite what their name suggests, rare earths are abundant everywhere on earth, with estimates from the US Geological Survey and the International Energy Agency indicating that China accounts for 70% of their production and 90% of processing.
The 17 elements, which include scandium, promethium and yttrium, are used to make everything from smartphones, semiconductors, and EV batteries, to F-35 fighter jets, drones, wind turbines, radar systems and nuclear reactors.
In a time of increased geopolitical tensions, governments around the world are increasingly concerned about the vulnerability of rare earth supply chains.
After President Joe Biden’s administration announced its most recent restrictions on the sale of advanced chips and machinery to the nation, China banned exports of gallium, germanium, and antimony from the US last month.
Given that the US has additional sources of gallium and germanium, the move was widely considered symbolic.
After declaring rare earths to be property of the state in October and outlawing the export of tools for extracting and separating the materials late last year, Beijing’s use of them as a tool for geopolitical advantage escalated.
In response to a dispute over the maritime border between the parties, the Chinese government’s decision to briefly ban the exports of these minerals to Japan was also brought up.
US President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, the United States, on January 7, 2025]Evan Vucci/AP]
With Trump promising to impose a number of new trade restrictions on China, which range from a 10% tariff on Chinese goods over Beijing’s failure to halt fentanyl exports to a 60% tariff for unfair trade practices, Beijing may also have to impose additional restrictions on rare earths.
Trump’s tariffs could increase the cost of the minerals, even if the Chinese government didn’t retaliate by imposing export bans.
“Looking ahead 12–18 months, the global geopolitical landscape is rife with wildcards that could in an instant materially impact the outlook for supply chains and the economies they serve”, Ryan Castilloux, a rare earths expert at Canada-based research and advisory firm Adamas Intelligence, told Al Jazeera.
Washington is particularly concerned about rare earths such as neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium, Castilloux said, which are used to make powerful neodymium magnets – also known as NdFeB magnets.
Due to the lack of an alternative source of minerals for the US and its allies to develop, Castilloux said, projects to produce the minerals are being pursued elsewhere, including three US states and Estonia, rare earth magnets, which are multiple times stronger than standard magnets.
Washington has made the establishment of a “sustainable mine-to-magnet supply chain” a top priority.
The work being done to build a pipeline that can meet all US defense requirements by 2027, according to Danielle Miller, acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for industrial base resilience, in March, was “on track.”
Despite plentiful reserves of rare earths in numerous countries, from Angola and Australia to Brazil, Canada and South Africa, expanding the supply chain beyond China is a challenging undertaking.
According to Neha Mukherjee, a senior analyst for critical minerals at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, China has been able to maintain its dominance of the industry due to its economies of scale, government subsidies, and accumulation of massive stockpiles that have allowed it to compete against rivals at “irrationally low prices.”
Samples of rare earth minerals on display at the Mountain Pass Rare Earth facility in Mountain Pass, California, the United States, on June 29, 2015]David Becker/Reuters]
Rare earths are produced in small quantities as a result of the mining of other minerals, such as iron ore. Due to this, the 17 minerals’ quantities and consequently prices of various rare earths can vary significantly.
Mukherjee claimed that China is determined to maintain stable rare earth prices in order to support its domestic electric vehicle (EV) industry, even if doing so would devastate the mining industry.
Operating rare earth mines and processing facilities is traditionally a difficult proposition for many investors due to China’s near-monopoly and unbeatable prices.
“They’re discouraging anyone from becoming a competitor. It just doesn’t make viable economics to develop a mine when you can buy the semi-processed materials at a competitive rate”, Mike Walden, senior director of TechCet, a consulting firm specialising in electronics supply chains, told Al Jazeera.
The timeline is also long, taking 10-20 years from exploration to construction, Walden added.
The Mountain Pass Mine in California’s Mojave Desert, which was first discovered in the 1870s, was reopened by MP Materials in 2018 and marked a turning point for US efforts to secure rare earth supplies.
Since then, the business has set up a Texas magnet factory.
Other rare earth-related facilities outside China include a mine in Yellowknife, Canada, a magnet recycler in the US state of Texas, and a rare earth magnet factory in the US state of South Carolina, with more projects in development across North America.
The US Department of Defense and the Department of Energy have awarded rare earth companies more than $ 440 million since 2022, along with additional tax credits provided by the Inflation Reduction Act.
If China stopped its exports of rare earths, such projects might help the US, Walden warned. However, the nation may still struggle to become completely self-sufficient, according to Walden.
There are operational facilities in North America, the king of this is said. Does it have to be sufficient to meet all the demand in North America? That is not the answer. Does it satisfy North America’s strategic demand? The answer to that appears to be yes”, he said, referring to Washington’s priority areas such as defence and energy.
A mining machine at the Bayan Obo mine containing rare earth minerals in Inner Mongolia, China on July 16, 2011]Reuters/Stringer]
Rare earth minerals are still frequently sent there for processing even as mines have been opened or reopened outside of China, according to analysts.
The processing of heavy rare earths, a subset of rare earths that are less abundant but crucial to the production of EVs, wind turbines, and fiber optic cables, is dominated by China, which accounts for 99 percent of the country’s production of these substances.
Not just the North Atlantic is attempting to catch up, either. In January, Brazil’s first rare earth mine at Serra Verde opened for commercial production after 15 years in development.
Europe has rare earth processing facilities in France, Estonia, and Germany, but has yet to open any mines despite holding massive rare earth deposits in Sweden, Finland, Norway and Spain.
The government is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into expanding these facilities, which include significant mining and processing facilities.
According to Mukherjee of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, these initiatives are still insufficient to lessen China’s dependence.
“There’s a dire need for a circular economy. There’s a dire need for recycling facilities. There should be a lot of funding directed in that direction because there is a dire need for US-developed processed midstream and upstream facilities,” she said.
Some of the reservations, especially in Europe, are related to the environmental costs associated with the separation and removal of radioactive materials, such as uranium and thorium.
Mining and processing produce large quantities of waste rock and can unleash residual concentrations of rare earths, radionuclides, heavy metals, and acids into the surrounding air, soil and groundwater, according to a 2021 Canadian study.
In Malaysia in 2019, Lynas Rare Earths, Australia’s largest rare earth processing company outside of China, was the target of significant protests due to the toxic waste that their there produces.
A truck carrying rare earths travels towards Lynas Rare Earths ‘ Mount Weld processing plant, northeast of Perth, in Western Australia, Australia, on August 23, 2019. ]Melanie Burton/Reuters]
To meet the higher environmental standards demanded by many governments, according to analysts, some of these concerns could be addressed with new technology and automation, but this would require both money and time.
The industry could, ironically, get a further boost if Beijing were to block its exports, said Adamas Intelligence’s Castilloux.
According to him, “the last time China restricted rare earth exports, it caused years of demand destruction as many end-users looked to reduce their consumption or turn to alternatives in the years to come” .
“A restriction on magnet exports, even if short-lived, would likely hypercharge government investments into alternative supply chains at home and abroad”.
There is a lot of uncertainty about how Trump might approach the rare earth industry now that he is only a few days away from re-emerging in the White House.
Due to the US’s dependence on a “foreign adversary” to acquire rare earths, he issued an executive order declaring them to be a national emergency during his first term in office.
Trump has also voiced opposition to important funding initiatives like the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which are widely anticipated to reduce environmental laws that prevent the establishment and operation of mines.
Despite their significant impact on the economy, some analysts worry that Trump might impose tariffs on imported minerals like rare earths or ask the secretary of commerce to launch a Section 232 investigation into the risks to national security as he did with aluminium in 2018.
In the meantime, the industry is preparing for a bumpy road ahead, said Walden, and stockpiling resources accordingly.
