Finnish investigators probing the damage to a Baltic Sea power cable and several data cables said they found an anchor drag mark on the seabed, apparently from a Russia-linked vessel that has already been seized.

The discovery heightened concerns about suspected sabotage by Russia’s “shadow fleet” of fuel tankers – aging vessels with obscure ownership acquired to evade Western sanctions amid the war in Ukraine and operating without Western-regulated insurance.

The Estlink-2 power cable, which transmits energy from Finland to Estonia across the Baltic Sea, went down on Dec. 25 after a rupture. It had little impact on services but followed damage to two data cables and the Nord Stream gas pipelines, both of which have been termed sabotage.

Finnish police chief investigator Sami Paila said late Sunday the anchor drag trail continued for “dozens of kilometers (miles) … if not almost 100 kilometers (62 miles).”

Paila added to Finnish national TV broadcaster Yle: “Our current understanding is that the drag mark in question is that of the anchor of the (seized) Eagle S vessel. We have been able to clarify this matter through underwater research.”

Without giving further details, Paila said authorities have “a preliminary understanding of what happened at sea, how the anchor mark was created there,” and stressed that the “question of intent is a completely essential issue to be clarified in the preliminary investigation.”

On Saturday, the seized vessel was escorted to anchorage in the vicinity of the port of Porvoo to facilitate the investigation, officials said. It is being probed under criminal charges of aggravated interference with telecommunications, aggravated vandalism and aggravated regulatory offense.

The Eagle S is flagged in the Cook Islands but was described by Finnish customs officials and the European Union executive commission as part of Russia’s shadow fleet of fuel tankers. Russia’s use of the vessels has raised environmental concerns about accidents given their age and uncertain insurance coverage.

In the wake of the cable rupture, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said last week that the military alliance, which Finland joined last year, will step up patrols in the Baltic Sea region.

The Finnish Coast Guard said Monday that another tanker ship headed for a Russian port has engine failure and drifted, then anchored in the Gulf of Finland south of the Hanko Paninsula. The guard said it was notified Sunday night.

Registered in Panama, the M/T Jazz was en route to Primorsk, Russia, from Sudan, with apparently no oil cargo. Finnish authorities have dispatched a tugboat and a patrol ship to ensure that the vessel does not drift and to prevent any damage to the environment.

Regional director of the Coast Guard Janne Ryönänkoski said there was no immediate risk to the seabed infrastructure.

Earlier Monday, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said that “sabotage in Europe has increased” since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Kallas told the German newspaper Welt that the recent “sabotage attempts in the Baltic Sea are not isolated incidents” but “part of a pattern of deliberate and coordinated actions to damage our digital and energy infrastructure.”

She vowed that the EU would “take stronger measures to counter the risks posed” by vessels of Russia’s shadow fleet.

Finland, which shares a 1,340-kilometer (832-mile) border with Russia, abandoned its decades-long policy of neutrality and joined NATO in 2023, amid Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Three women have died after eating a Christmas cake in a suspected poisoning case in Brazil.

In Brazil, Christmas Eve is the main event of the holiday season. Since 54 percent of the population is Catholic, many Brazilians attend midnight mass, exchange gifts and celebrate with large family gatherings the night before Christmas.

The Taliban say they will close all national and foreign nongovernmental groups in Afghanistan employing women, the latest crackdown on women’s rights since they took power in August 2021.

The announcement comes two years after they told NGOs to suspend the employment of Afghan women, allegedly because they didn’t wear the Islamic headscarf correctly.

In a letter published on X Sunday night, the Economy Ministry warned that failure to comply with the latest order would lead to NGOs losing their license to operate in Afghanistan.

The United Nations said the space for women in Afghanistan has shrunk dramatically in the last two years and reiterated its call for the Taliban to reverse the restrictions.

“This really impacts how we can provide life saving humanitarian assistance to all the people in Afghanistan,” UN associate spokesperson Florencia Soto Nino-Martinez said. “And obviously we are very concerned by the fact that we are talking about a country where half the population’s rights are being denied and are living in poverty, and many of them, not just women, are facing a humanitarian crisis.”

The Economy Ministry said it was responsible for the registration, coordination, leadership and supervision of all activities carried out by national and foreign organizations.

The government was once again ordering the stoppage of all female work in institutions not controlled by the Taliban, according to the letter.

“In case of lack of cooperation, all activities of that institution will be canceled and the activity license of that institution, granted by the ministry, will also be canceled.”

It’s the Taliban’s latest attempt to control or intervene in NGO activity.

Earlier this month, the UN Security Council heard that an increasing proportion of female Afghan humanitarian workers were prevented from doing their work even though relief work remains essential.

According to Tom Fletcher, a senior UN official, the proportion of humanitarian organizations reporting that their female or male staff were stopped by the Taliban’s morality police has also increased.

The Taliban deny they are stopping aid agencies from carrying out their work or interfering with their activities.

They have already barred women from many jobs and most public spaces, and also excluded them from education beyond sixth grade.

In another development, the Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada has ordered that buildings should not have windows looking into places where a woman might sit or stand.

According to a four-clause decree posted on X late Saturday, the order applies to new buildings as well as existing ones.

The United Nations also called for a reversal of this restriction, Soto Nino-Martinez said.

The decree said windows should not overlook or look into areas like yards or kitchens. Where a window looks into such a space then the person responsible for that property must find a way to obscure this view to “remove harm,” by installing a wall, fence or screen.

Municipalities and other authorities must supervise the construction of new buildings to avoid installing windows that look into or over residential properties, the decree added.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing was not immediately available for comment on Akhundzada’s instructions.

A South Korean court on Tuesday approved an arrest warrant for President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was stripped of his presidential powers just weeks ago over his short-lived martial law decree that threw the country into political chaos.

This is the first time a sitting South Korean president has faced an arrest warrant granted by a court.

South Korea’s parliament voted to impeach Yoon on December 14 in an extraordinary rebuke that came about after his own ruling party turned on him following his refusal to resign.

South Korea’s anti-corruption agency said the Seoul Western District Court granted the warrant for Yoon, who is facing a probe on charges of abuse of authority and orchestrating a rebellion after he announced martial law on December 3.

The arrest warrant was issued after Yoon, a former prosecutor, had refused to answer three summonses by investigators in recent weeks asking for his cooperation, according to the Corruption Investigation Office (CIO).

The CIO said an arrest warrant must usually be executed within seven days but can be extended.

This is a developing story.

India launched its first space docking mission on Monday, on an Indian-made rocket, in an attempt to become the fourth country to achieve the advanced technological feat.

The mission, called Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX), lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh state at 1630 GMT aboard the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) “workhorse” PSLV rocket. After around 15 minutes, the mission director called the launch successful after the spacecraft reached an altitude of around 470 kilometers (292 miles).

The mission is seen as pivotal for future space endeavours, including satellite servicing and the operation of the country’s planned space station.

In-space docking technology is crucial when multiple rocket launches are required to achieve shared mission objectives.

The Indian mission involves deploying two small spacecraft, each weighing about 220 kilograms, into a 470-km circular orbit. It will also demonstrate the transfer of electric power between the docked spacecraft, a capability vital for applications such as in-space robotics, composite spacecraft control and payload operations following undocking.

Each satellite carries advanced payloads, including an imaging system and a radiation-monitoring device designed to measure electron and proton radiation levels in space, providing critical data for future human spaceflight missions.

ISRO Chairman S. Somanath said the actual testing of the docking technology could take place in about a week’s time and indicated a nominal date of around January 7.

“The rocket has placed the satellites in the right orbit,” he said.

A successful demonstration would place India alongside the United States, Russia and China as the only countries to have developed and tested this capability.

In a first for India, the rocket and the satellites were integrated and tested at a private company called Ananth Technologies, rather than at a government body.

“Display of this technology is not just about being able to join a rare group of countries who own it, it also opens up the market for ISRO to be the launch partner for various global missions that need docking facilities or assembly in space,” said astrophysicist Somak Raychaudhary of Ashoka University.

The fourth stage of the PSLV, which usually turns into space debris, has been converted into an active un-crewed space laboratory. The last stage of the rocket has been repurposed to become an orbital laboratory and will be used for various experiments.

“The PSLV Orbital Experiment Module (POEM) is a practical solution deployed by ISRO that allows Indian start-ups, academic institutions, and research organizations to test their space technologies without the need to launch entire satellites. By making this platform accessible, we are reducing entry barriers and enabling a wider range of entities to contribute to the space sector,” said Pawan Goenka, chairman of India’s space regulatory body.

Trinidad and Tobago has declared a state of emergency after a spate of killings over the weekend added to what was already an exceptionally deadly year for the Caribbean nation.

Under emergency powers announced Monday by the office of the Prime Minister Keith Rowley, the police will be able to search people and premises without warrants, and detain suspects for up to 48 hours, in an effort to bring down what the leader has called an “unacceptable high level of violent crime.”

However, there will be no curfew.

The authorization came after gun violence claimed several lives over the weekend, bringing the country’s murder toll for 2024 to 623 – the highest level in police records dating back to 2013.

Trinidad and Tobago, population 1.5 million, already has one of the highest murder rates in the Caribbean, along with Jamaica and Haiti, according to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), while violent deaths in the region are nearly three times the global average.

And police warn they expect the amount of gang-related violent crime involving powerful assault weapons to increase.

Acting Attorney General Stuart Young told a briefing Monday there had been 61 homicides so far in the month of December alone. These included a shooting Saturday involving a high caliber automatic weapon outside a police station that killed one person and an incident less than 24 hours later that left five dead and one injured in the Port of Spain area.

Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds told the same briefing a further two people had been killed on Friday – one in a gang-related incident, another in a “domestic situation” – and 15 others killed in gun-related incidents since last Monday.

Police were viewing the latest wave of incidents as an “outbreak of gang violence,” Hinds said, adding that the military would assist in enforcing the state of emergency.

Attorney General Young added that the use of high-caliber firearms by criminal gangs had made the recent violence particularly concerning, leading to the state of emergency declaration.

“There is very little chance of survival due to the velocity and the caliber of these weapons. This has been a major concern not only for us here in Trinidad and Tobago, but throughout the whole CARICOM region,” he said, referring to the regional Caribbean Community group of nations.

A significant amount of the country’s violent crime – such as murder, assault and kidnapping – is related to criminal gang activity and narcotics trafficking, according to the US State Department.

In July, the US State Department set its travel advisory for Trinidad and Tobago to Level 3, advising US citizens to reconsider travel due to crime.

“Exercise increased caution in Trinidad and Tobago due to terrorism and kidnapping,” the travel advisory said.

The attorney general said the government was in contact with the US, where many of the high-powered weapons come from, to discuss how to control the situation.

While Caribbean countries do not manufacture firearms, more than 7,000 firearms were recovered from them between 2018 and 2022. Nearly three-quarters of those came from the US, according to GAO.

When the ball drops in New York City’s Times Square to herald the start of 2025, it’ll actually be late to the party as dozens of countries around the world will already have welcomed the new year.

Kiribati is an island country in the central Pacific Ocean, and its largest island, Kiritimati, will be the first place to kick off 2025 when it is just 5 a.m. on December 31 on the East Coast of the United States and 11 a.m. UTC (Coordinated Universal Time, the global standard).

The Pacific Island nation will be followed by Chatham Islands in New Zealand at 5:15 a.m. ET and then most of New Zealand at 6 a.m., along with Tokelau, Samoa, Tonga, Kiribati’s Phoenix Islands and some regions of Antarctica.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the international date line, Hawaii, American Samoa, and many of the US outlying islands will be among the last places to pop Champagne corks. They’ll have to wait until Wednesday morning (Eastern Time) to toast 2025.

In all, there are 39 different local time zones in use across the globe – some differing by 15 or 30 minutes compared to nearby zones – including two which are more than 12 hours ahead of UTC, which means it takes 26 hours for the entire world to welcome the New Year.

So, if you really, really, really love to hum “Auld Lang Syne,” the list below will get you in the spirit over and over and over again as the day rolls around.

Here’s when places around the world will be ringing in the New Year, relative to East Coast time.

Tuesday, December 31, 2024

5 a.m. ET Kiritimati, which is also known as Christmas Island and forms part of the Micronesian island nation of Kiribati

5:15 a.m. ET Chatham Islands, off the eastern coast of New Zealand

6 a.m. ET Most of New Zealand (with a few exceptions) and Tokelau, Samoa, Tonga, Kiribati’s Phoenix Islands and some regions of Antarctica

7 a.m. ET Fiji, a small part of eastern Russia, and several more Pacific islands, including the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu

8 a.m. ET Much of Australia including Melbourne and Sydney and seven more locations, including Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, and New Caledonia

8:30 a.m. ET A small region of Australia including Adelaide

9 a.m. ET Australia’s state of Queensland and six more locations, including parts of Micronesia, the Northern Mariana Islands, a small part of Antarctica, and Guam

9:30 a.m. ET Australia’s Northern Territory

10 a.m. ET Japan, South Korea, a small part of Russia, North Korea, a small part of Indonesia, Timor-Leste, and Palau

10:15 a.m. ET Western Australia

11 a.m. ET China, Philippines, Malaysia, parts of Indonesia, most of Mongolia, Taiwan, Brunei, Russia’s Irkutsk region, some parts of Antarctica, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Macao

Noon ET Much of Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, some parts of Russia, some parts of Mongolia, a small region of Antarctica, and Australia’s Christmas Island

12:30 p.m. ET Myanmar and the Cocos Islands, an Australian territory

1 p.m. ET Bangladesh, parts of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Bhutan, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the city of Omsk in Russia, and a small part of Antarctica

1:15 p.m. ET Nepal

1:30 p.m. ET India and Sri Lanka

2 p.m. ET Pakistan, some parts of Russia, much of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, the Maldives, Tajikistan, French Southern territories, France’s Kerguelen islands, and a small region of Antarctica

2:30 p.m. ET Afghanistan

3 p.m. ET Azerbaijan, the United Arab Emirates, Armenia, a small region of Russia, Oman, much of Georgia, Frances’ Réunion Island, Mauritius, and the Seychelles

3:30 p.m. ET Iran

4 p.m. ET Moscow in Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya, in addition to 17 other locations

5 p.m. ET Greece, Egypt, Lebanon, Rwanda, Romania, and 26 other locations

6 p.m. ET Germany, Nigeria, Algeria, Italy, Belgium, Morocco, Albania, France and 38 other locations

7 p.m. ET United Kingdom, Portugal, Iceland, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and 18 other locations

8 p.m. ET Cabo Verde, the Azores – which are made up of nine enchanting islands in the Atlantic but are part of Portugal – and a small region of Greenland

9 p.m. ET Most of Greenland, the Brazilian state of Pernambuco, and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands

10 p.m. ET Most of Brazil, Argentina, Chile with exceptions, Uruguay, parts of Antarctica, Paraguay, French Guiana, Suriname, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, and the Falkland Islands

10:30 p.m. ET Canada’s Newfoundland and Labrador province

11 p.m. ET Some regions of Canada, Venezuela, Bolivia, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Aruba, Guyana, and 23 other locations

Wednesday, January 1, 2025

Midnight The East Coast of the USA (including New York City, Washington, D.C., and Detroit), parts of Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Cuba, Acre in Brazil, Panama, a small part of Mexico, Haiti, Bahamas, Turks and Caicos Islands, Jamaica, a small region of Chile, and the Cayman Islands

1 a.m. ET Central USA (including Chicago), much of Mexico (including Mexico City), parts of Canada, Honduras, Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, and a small part of Ecuador

2 a.m. ET US (Mountain time zone, including Denver and Phoenix), parts of Canada (including Edmonton and Calgary), and parts of Mexico

3 a.m. ET US (Pacific time zone, including Los Angeles and San Francisco), British Columbia in Canada, Baja California in Mexico, Pitcairn Islands, and Clipperton Island

4 a.m. ET Alaska in the US and regions of French Polynesia

4:30 a.m. ET Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia

5 a.m. ET Hawaii in the US, Tahiti in French Polynesia, and the Cook Islands

6 a.m. ET American Samoa, parts of the US minor outlying islands (including the Midway Atoll), and Niue, an island nation in the South Pacific Ocean

7 a.m. ET Much of US minor outlying islands (unincorporated US territories in the Pacific), including Baker Island and Howland Island

The World Health Organization has urged China to share data to help understand the origins of Covid-19, five years on from the start of the pandemic in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

On December 31, 2019, the WHO’s China office noted a cluster of “pneumonia” cases in a statement from health authorities in Wuhan. More than three weeks later, Chinese authorities locked down the city of 11 million.

Fears of a rapidly spreading virus gripped the nation, but – as authorities would later learn – the coronavirus had already spread far beyond China.

While much of the world has moved on from the pandemic lockdowns and restrictions, many questions remain about the source of a virus that killed at least seven million people, crippled health care systems and upended the global economy. And many experts say China’s opacity has made finding answers to the pandemic’s origins harder.

“We continue to call on China to share data and access so we can understand the origins of COVID-19. This is a moral and scientific imperative,” the WHO said in a statement on Monday.

“Without transparency, sharing, and cooperation among countries, the world cannot adequately prevent and prepare for future epidemics and pandemics.”

How the pandemic started has been a subject of intense scientific scrutiny as well as heated political debates, with opinions divided primarily over whether it originated from a natural animal spillover or a lab leak.

Many scientists believe the virus originated in the wild, before it jumped from infected animals to humans and spread through a wet market in Wuhan, though they haven’t been able to identify the intermediate host.

Suspicions that the coronavirus was leaked from a laboratory near the market, which was first dismissed as a conspiracy theory, have persisted and been endorsed by some researchers.

The search for the origins of the virus has been hugely controversial from the onset and a key source of political tension. The United States and other Western countries have repeatedly accused China of withholding access to original and complete data – which Beijing has vehemently denied.

WHO officials have also criticized China’s tight control of data access, with one official calling its lack of data disclosure “simply inexcusable” in 2023.

Chinese disease control officials responded at the time, saying China had provided the WHO’s expert group with all information it had on the origins of the virus “without withholding any cases, samples, or their testing and analysis results.”

For years, the global health agency has sought access to test results from workers at the market, as well as other raw data that China collected early on in the pandemic.

It was only in 2023, three years after the start of the pandemic, that WHO got access to certain data that Chinese scientists had gathered in early 2020 at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. The raw genetic sequences from the samples had been uploaded to the data-sharing site GISAID. They were soon removed, but quick-thinking researchers had already noticed them and downloaded them for further study.

An analysis of that material, published in the peer-reviewed journal Cell in September, showed that coronavirus-susceptible animals and the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 were present at a specific section of the market, although the study did not confirm whether the animals themselves were infected with the virus.

In its statement on Monday, the WHO recounted how on December 31, 2019, its country office in China picked up a statement from the Wuhan municipal health commission’s website on cases of “viral pneumonia” in the city.

“In the weeks, months and years that unfolded after that, COVID-19 came to shape our lives and our world,” it said.

“As we mark this milestone, let’s take a moment to honour the lives changed and lost, recognize those who are suffering from COVID-19 and long COVID, express gratitude to the health workers who sacrificed so much to care for us, and commit to learning from COVID-19 to build a healthier tomorrow.”

Jimmy Carter redefined what a post-presidency could be after he lost re-election in 1980. From the Carolina Lowcountry to the Ethiopian highlands, Carter’s humanitarian work eventually eclipsed his White House accomplishments and continues to enrich the world today.

In 1982, the former president and his wife Rosalynn founded the Carter Center, committed to human rights and alleviating suffering around the world. The Carter Center quickly became a force for peace. It strengthened democracies by observing more than 100 elections across 39 countries. It also gained renown for groundbreaking work tackling neglected tropical diseases and providing health education.

From leading the charge at the Carter Center to building Habitat for Humanity homes, Impact Your World featured President Carter three times. Each story showcased an endeavor that, alone, could be a lifetime’s worth of good works. Jimmy Carter’s commitment to all three is a testament to just how much a difference one person can make.

Quest to wipe out the ‘fiery serpent’

Carter made it a mission to eradicate Guinea worm, a parasite that has plagued society since ancient times. The worms have been pulled from Egyptian mummies and are believed to be the “fiery serpents” described in the Bible. The brutal disease involves larva ingested from stagnant drinking water eventually bursting through victims’ skin.

There was an audacity to President Carter’s plan to eliminate the pest.

So far, science has only wiped out one human disease worldwide – smallpox, eradicated with a vaccine. And there is no such silver bullet for Guinea worm.

But there is the Carter Center’s massive campaign, determined to change the behavior of people across 20 countries and distribute millions of water filters.

When the program started in 1986, Guinea worm disease infected 3.5 million people. By 2022, only 13 cases were reported worldwide.

“I would like the Guinea worm to die before I do,” Carter said in 2015.

You can support his dream to cure the world of Guinea worm disease here: The Carter Center Guinea Worm Eradication Program.

Fighting river blindness

Impact Your World’s second interview with Jimmy Carter focused on another health initiative.

River blindness is a parasitic infection spread by black flies in Africa, Latin America and Yemen. About 20 million people suffer from the disease which causes skin discoloration, rashes and can lead to blindness.

The Carter Center helped tackle river blindness with health education and more than 500 million doses of Mectizan, a medicine that kills larvae inside the human body.

“By giving you the two to four doses a year, we could actually get rid of a disease from a particular community,” Carter explained.

Together with the respective ministries of health, the Carter Center has eliminated river blindness transmission from Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Guatemala.

The center continues to work in Brazil, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Sudan, Uganda, and Venezuela.

“To go back later and to see the disease is gone, and that the people have a totally transformed life, those are some great dividends to be derived from a small investment,” Carter said.

Go here to help the Carter Center’s River Blindness Elimination Program.

Building homes for the needy

Our final Impact Your World interview with Jimmy Carter was in 2016, on the construction site of a Habitat for Humanity home in Memphis, Tennessee.

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter first volunteered with Habitat for Humanity in 1984. The Carter Work Project soon became an annual event led by the former first couple for more than 35 years.

“This has been the main thing we do outside of Carter Center and outside of my political jobs,” the then-91-year-old said during a momentary break from swinging his hammer.

The volunteers on location said it was hard to keep pace with the former president.

And the difference he made is awe-inspiring. According to Habitat for Humanity, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter have worked with 104,000 volunteers in 14 countries to build, renovate and repair 4,390 homes.

You can find ways to support and volunteer with Habitat for Humanity here: Carter Work Project.