Indian naval warship INS Chennai on Friday reached the harbour of the hijacked vessel MV Lila Norfolk off Somalia coast, news agency ANI reported citing Military officials .
Further, the Indian warship has launched its helicopter and also issued warning to pirates to abandon the hijacked vessel.
At least 15 Indian crew members are on board a Liberian-flagged vessel which was hijacked near Somalia’ ..
Indian Navy is closely monitoring a hijacked ship ‘MV LILA NORFOLK’ ship about which information was received last evening. There are 15 Indian crew on board the Liberian-flagged vessel which was hijacked near Somalia’s coast. Indian Navy aircraft have been keeping a watch on the ship and communication has been established with the crew,” officials said.
The Indian Navy received a message on the UKMTO portal which indicated boarding by around five or six unknown armed personnel on Thursda ..
The live firing follows repeated warnings from Kim Jong Un’s regime in Pyongyang that it is prepared for war against South Korea and its US ally.
“The North Korean military conducted over 200 rounds of firing today from around 09:00 to 11:00 (1200 to 0200 GMT) in the areas of Jangsan-got in the northern part of Baengnyeong Island and the northern areas… of Yeonpyeong Island,” a defence ministry official said at a briefing.
Yeonpyeong local officials told AFP that civilians had been told to evacuate, describing the order as a “preventative measure”.
South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island is situated in the Yellow Sea. It is located approximately 80 kilometres west of Incheon and 12 kilometres south of the coastline of Hwanghae Province, North Korea.
Authorities on Baengnyeong Island also reported an evacuation order there.
“We are making the evacuation announcements at the moment,” a local district official at the Baengnyeong Island told AFP, adding that he had been told the South Korean military would conduct a naval drill shortly.
Pyongyang fired a barrage of 170 artillery shells onto Yeonpyeong island in November 2010, killing four people including two civilians in the first North Korean attack on a civilian area since the 1950-53 Korean War.
Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in decades, after Kim enshrined the country’s status as a nuclear power into the constitution while test-firing several advanced ICBMs.
At Pyongyang’s key year-end policy meetings, Kim warned of a nuclear attack on the South and called for a build-up of the country’s military arsenal ahead of armed conflict that he warned could “break out any time”.
Kim accused the United States of posing “various forms of military threat” and ordered his armed forces to maintain the “overwhelming war response capability”, according to KCNA’s account of the meeting that ended on Saturday.
The meeting concluded that it is a “fait accompli that a war may break out on the Korean peninsula any time due to the enemies’ reckless moves for invading the DPRK”, KCNA said, using the acronym of the North’s official name.
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In an effort to deter Pyongyang, Washington deployed a nuclear-powered submarine in the South Korean port city of Busan this month and flew its long-range bombers in drills with Seoul and Tokyo.
The North has described the deployment of Washington’s strategic weapons, such as B-52 bombers, in joint drills on the Korean peninsula as “intentional nuclear war provocative moves”.
The military “should rapidly respond to any possible nuclear crisis and put continuous spurs to the preparations for a great event to suppress the whole territory of South Korea by mobilizing all physical means and forces including nuclear forces in contingency”, Kim said.
In 2023, the North successfully launched a reconnaissance satellite, after receiving what Seoul claimed was help from Russia in exchange for arms transfers for Ukraine.
The third round of documents from a lawsuit connected to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted pedophile who died in jail before he could face trial on federal sex-trafficking charges, was publicly released Friday.
Friday’s release included over thirteen hundredpages as of mid-afternoon, and it follows hundreds of pages of documents already unsealed on Wednesday and Thursday, with more expected.
The unsealed documents are part of a 2015 civil defamation suit brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, an American woman who claimed Epstein sexually abused her as a minor and that Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend, aided in the abuse. The unsealing this week stems from a December 18 court order from the judge overseeing the lawsuit, a response to media’s legal efforts to publicly release the documents.
The documents in total, including material yet to be unsealed, are expected to include nearly 200 names, including some of Epstein’s accusers, prominent businesspeople, politicians and potentially more.
CNN is reviewing the documents.
Famous friends and acquaintances
A former Jeffrey Epstein employee recounted a litany of famous and influential people, including two former presidents, in Epstein’s orbit during a 2009 deposition unsealed on Friday.
Juan Alessi told attorneys that he had dinner with former president Donald Trump in the kitchen of Epstein’s Palm Beach home and met former president Bill Clinton on Epstein’s plane. He also said he met Prince Andrew and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, at the Palm Beach home, according to the deposition.
Alessi also said he met foreign beauty queens and an unnamed winner of a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, according to the document.
When asked on Wednesday about the appearance of Clinton’s name in an earlier batch of unsealed documents, a Clinton spokesman reiterated a 2019 statement that Clinton had flown on Epstein’s private plane but said Clinton knew nothing of the financier’s “terrible crimes.”
The spokesman said that it has now “been nearly 20 years since President Clinton last had contact with Epstein.” Clinton has not been accused of any crimes or wrongdoing related to Epstein.
Trump has also not been accused of any crimes or wrongdoing with regard to Epstein. When asked earlier this week about Trump’s name appearing in the newly unsealed documents, a Trump spokesman reacted by attacking the media.
Alessi also spoke about the young women who came to the house to give Epstein massages.
Alessi answered questions about one female whom he understood to be under the age of 18. Her name was still redacted from the unsealed documents. Alessi said her mother would occasionally accompany her to Epstein’s home.
In terms of payment, “everybody got $100 an hour,” Alessi said.
Famed magician and illusionist David Copperfield is also among the high-profile men identified as a friend to Epstein.
Copperfield’s name is mentioned during deposition testimony released Friday of one of Epstein’s then-employees, Sarah Kellen. A lawyer for the plaintiffs asked about Epstein’s relationship with the illusionist and whether they recruit girls for each other. The lawyer questioned if Copperfield gives tickets to Epstein for young women when he is performing shows and if the girls are invited backstage after the shows.
To all questions, Kellen asserts her Fifth Amendment right and refuses to answer the question.
Copperfield is also named in a 2016 deposition released Wednesday by a woman who massaged Epstein for years in the early 2000s. She said she met the illusionist at a dinner at Epstein’s Palm Beach residence and testified it was her observation the two were friends.
Johanna Sjoberg testified in the deposition that Copperfield performed magic tricks while he was at the Palm Beach House and asked her what she knew about Epstein’s methods for procuring girls to work for him.
“He questioned me if I was aware that girls were getting paid to find other girls,” Sjoberg said.
Copperfield didn’t elaborate at the time, Sjoberg said.
She also said there was another girl at the house that “seemed young” at a dinner that included Copperfield. She recalled thinking at the time that the girl could have been in high school.
CNN has reached out to representatives for Copperfield for comment.
The name of disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein appears in a 2005 handwritten note left for Epstein as well.
The handwritten note, dated March 1, 2005, appears to be a telephone message left for Epstein that Weinstein attempted to call Epstein that morning. “She had on the phone Mr. Harvey Weinstein,” the message reads. It was included among nearly 200 written phone messages.
An unsealed legal document in a civil case related to Jeffrey Epstein shows a handwritten phone message saying Harvey Weinstein called. A close-up of that message is seen here.From Exhibit in Epstein-related litigation
Brad Edwards, Giuffre’s lawyer at one point, wrote a book titled “Relentless Pursuit: My Fight for the Victims of Jeffrey Epstein,” released in 2020, in which he discusses Weinstein’s involvement in Epstein’s world. Edwards wrote that Epstein told a victim he would introduce her to Weinstein. In another excerpt, Edwards wrote Epstein ended his relationship with Weinstein after he acted too aggressively with one of his “favorite girls.”
There is no implication of wrongdoing by Weinstein in connection to Epstein in the documents.
CNN has reached out to an attorney for Weinstein.
Weinstein, 71, remains in prison after being convicted on sex crimes charges in New York and California linked to allegations that he used his influence to lure women into private meetings, assault them and then silence any accusations.
Almost half of the police department in the village of Big Bend, Wisconsin, walked off the job this week.
A few months ago, the village board voted to disband the police department until backlash from the public caused them to reverse course. Sadly, the chief then died by his own hands.
Now the police are incredibly frustrated and there are reportedly more resignations on the way.
It sounds like the board is made up of woke people who wanted to defund the police and then found out that the community at large didn’t agree. What a mess.
Nearly HALF of Wisconsin police force resigns in one day after village board tried to ELIMINATE the entire department before ‘devastated’ chief died by suicide
Five members of a Wisconsin police force resigned on the same day – an exodus that represents nearly half of the department.
The Village of Big Bend announced the resignations this past week, after officers told brass they were fed-up with a ‘toxic’ work environment created by the village board.
The same board decided to disband the department back in September, a decision that was reversed last month following pressure from locals.
However, within that span, the town’s longtime police chief, Don Gaglione, suddenly died – and local coroners recently confirmed it was a suicide.
The revelation likely added to outrage seen from one of the now-resigned officers at a village meeting last month. He was escorted out after airing his distaste toward another ordinance that would get rid of the town’s Police and Fire Commission.
In this short video report, there’s one point where they show a town meeting and one of the police officers throws up his hands in frustration, blaming the problems on the village board. Watch:
Communities which elect far left activist types are going to continue to have problems like this. They need to elect leaders who have the back of the police department.
Flooding misery spread across Britain today as hundreds of people were evacuated, cows drowned, rail lines were blocked and roads turned to rivers amid torrential rain.
Police were called to the village of Sawley in Derbyshire after drivers on the nearby M1 saw cows stranded in floodwater – with four of the animals later confirmed dead.
While officers and firefighters rescued four other cows, more animals are thought to be missing – and the incident prompted a multi-agency animal welfare investigation.
Major rivers including the Thames and Trent broke their banks in places while the Environment Agency issued more than 600 flood alerts or warnings in England.
Trains on Great Western Railway, Southern, South Western Railway and Southeastern were blocked today due to a mixture of flooding, landslips and trees on the line. And some schools were closed due to flooding – including in Wiltshire and Berkshire.
In East London, 50 people were evacuated after streets turned into rivers in Hackney Wick with ten fire engines and 70 firefighters called to the scene when water started racing down the banks of the canal into residential streets and ground floor flats.
And Nottinghamshire County Council declared a major incident ‘due to rising levels along the River Trent’, telling residents in flood-risk areas to prepare to evacuate.
Environment Agency data revealed every river in England is now exceptionally high with some rivers reaching their highest flow on record, such as the River Itchen in Southampton which saw a flow double its previous record in December.
Today, there were 302 flood warnings and 332 alerts in England plus 13 alerts and two warnings from Natural Resources Wales – giving a UK total of 649. It comes as:
1,000 properties have been flooded this week, including hundreds overnight;
Peaks along the River Trent could near the highest levels on record from 2000;
A party boat which acts as a floating bar and nightclub sank in the River Thames;
Sandown’s £100,000 racing meeting tomorrow is off due to waterlogged track.
Following 40 days of continuous rain, showers continued into this morning affecting parts of south-western and eastern areas as well as parts of Wales and Scotland.
But the weather is set to improve this weekend – with more settled, colder conditions moving in and bringing an increased chance of sunshine and frosty nights.
The UK Health Security Agency has issued a cold weather alert covering the whole of England valid from 9am tomorrow until 12pm next Tuesday, with temperatures likely to be below average especially overnight with ice forming on the very wet ground.
The mercury could drop to -4C (25F) in rural south west England tomorrow night and -6C (21F) in rural areas along the Welsh border in Shropshire on Sunday night.
A woman pushes a child through a flooded street at Longford near Gloucester this morning
Flooding around Tewkesbury Abbey and the Gloucestershire town this morning
A man carries a child through floodwater next to the River Thames in Henley this morning
Radcliffe Residential Park in Nottinghamshire has been deluged by floodwater
Sue and Hans Oosthuizen, residents trapped by floodwater at Radcliffe Residential Park after the River Trent burst its banks following Storm Henk
Vehicles are driven through a flooded road at Aldingbourne in west Sussex this morning
Doreen Cole surveys the damage to her property this morning after heavy rain and sewer system overflows caused the River Cherwell to break its banks in Islip, Oxfordshire
A narrowboat next to a road bridge over the river in Barrow-on-Soar in Leicestershire today
Cars make it through a flooded road in Essex this morning as the severe weather continues
