— Trump in Conway, South Carolina,: "One of the presidents of a big country stood up [at NATO] and said, 'Well sir, if we don't pay and we're attacked by Russia, will you protect us?' I said, 'You didn't pay? You're delinquent?' He said, 'Yes, let's say that happened.' No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want."
— Toxicology results confirmed traces of benzodiazepines in their systems. Resort: Security camera footage doesn't match their claims
— The Fortinet company issued a statement saying "To clarify, the topic of toothbrushes being used for DDoS attacks was presented during an interview as an illustration of a given type of attack, and it is not based on research from Fortinet or FortiGuard Labs. It appears that due to translations the narrative on this topic has been stretched to the point where hypothetical and actual scenarios are blurred."
— Travelers will want to be alert to their surroundings and stay safe in their explorations, however, in light of the elevated travel advisory for Nassau due to increased levels of crime and other safety concerns. The Level 2 Travel Advisory specifically noted water activities as needing additional caution.
— The memo says Grammarly grew its team from 200 to 1,000 employees over the past five years.
— Late last year, Seabound installed a prototype of its device on a huge cargo vessel owned by British shipping giant Lomar. The pilot was funded by a £1.2mn grant under the UK government's £60mn Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition. Over the course of two months on a route between Turkey and the Persian Gulf, the device captured 78% of carbon emissions and 90% of sulphur dioxide from one of the ship's auxiliary engines.
— The Review Group begins its work on February 14, and "is expected to submit an interim report to the Secretary-General late March 2024, with a final report expected to be completed by late April 2024".
— The accusations against a handful of staff in an agency of 13,000 employees operating in Gaza alone have already had a devastating effect on civilians. UNRWA provides essential government services in Gaza, including running 278 schools for 280,000 children and 22 primary healthcare centres, while also providing food to the approximately 2 million people who have been under siege by Israel since early October.
At least 16 donor countries, including the top two contributors — the US and Germany — have frozen funding to UNRWA over the allegations and have been dubbed the "suspenders" in the corridors of UN headquarters in New York. About $440 million in funding is at risk. UNRWA will run out of money by the end of February if donors continue to withhold money.
The UN announced on Monday that it had appointed Catherine Colonna, France's former minister of foreign affairs, to lead the Independent Review Group to "assess whether the Agency is doing everything within its power to ensure neutrality and to respond to allegations of serious breaches when they are made." The group will begin work on February 14 and submit an interim report to the secretary general in late March with a final report — which will be made public — expected by late April 2024.
— France, UNRWA's fourth-biggest donor, has not suspended its voluntary contributions to the agency. Israel has not yet shared its full intelligence dossier with either UNRWA or the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), the UN legal body tasked with carrying out the internal investigation.
A six-page summary of the Israeli dossier leaked to a handful of media outlets and seen by FRANCE 24 provides the names of the 12 UNRWA staff members accused of participating in the Hamas attacks, ranging from kidnapping Israelis to helping to carry out the massacre at the Be'eri kibbutz. Two of the accused are dead and another is unaccounted for.
The dossier alleges that the first man on the list of the accused, an UNRWA school counselor, entered Israeli territory to kidnap an Israeli woman with the help of his son. The accusations say they are drawn, in part, from "intelligence information, documents and identity cards seized during the course of the fighting." The dossier estimates that there are around 190 Hamas or Palestine Islamic Jihad terrorist operatives working for UNRWA.
Donor nation Norway has refused to cut aid to UNRWA. The country's Minister of Foreign Affairs Espen Barth Eide urged other donors not to turn their backs on UNRWA, saying: "We should not collectively punish millions of people. We must distinguish between what individuals may have done and what UNRWA stands for."
Matthias Schmale, UNRWA director in Gaza from 2017 to 2021; "It can be legitimately asked why these allegations surfaced around the time of the ICJ judgment that, amongst other things, articulated the need for immediate and massive delivery of humanitarian aid, which cannot be done without UNRWA." — This article was produced in collaboration with France 24 and PassBlue.
— Organized by the ITC Ethical Fashion Initiative, UNECE, UNEP, ICLEI and the University of Geneva.
— They came up with the solution — small sandbags to hold the keys down. The group decided the piece would be played for 639 years to mark the time between the construction of the world's first 12-tone gothic organ in Halberstadt in 1361 and the new millennium. The city donated an abandoned 11th century convent for the performance. And on September 5, 2001, what would have been Cage's 89th birthday, the performance began.
In the beginning of the first part, for 17 months, you came in and hear only the bellows. That's because Cage's piece starts with a short pause, a pause that, when calibrated to fit 639 years, meant the first 17 months of the piece was just the sound of air whooshing through the bellows. But years later, the team realized, with shock, that it had miscalculated this pause. It should have lasted 28 months.