Israeli forces conducted a raid on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem's Old City, attacking Palestinian worshippers and sparking fears of wider tensions as Islamic and Jewish holidays overlap. The mosque is the third holiest shrine in Islam and the most sacred site in Judaism, known as the Temple Mount. Israeli police officers were seen beating Palestinians with batons and rifle butts, and the Palestinian Red Crescent reported that Israeli forces were preventing its medics from reaching the mosque. The violence has triggered protests and condemnations from Palestinians, with Hamas calling for large protests and people gathering in the streets.
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That was faster than the "weeks" the WHO had predicted last week that it would take to assess the data available on the variant after designating it a "variant of concern," its highest rating.
Whether the variant is more transmissible or evades vaccines are some of the major questions that still need answering.
Vaccine developers have said it will take about two weeks to assess whether their shots are effective against it.
Britain, Germany and Italy detected cases of the new Omicron coronavirus variant on Saturday and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced new steps to contain the virus, while more nations imposed restrictions on travel from southern Africa.
The discovery of the variant has sparked global concern, a wave of travel bans or curbs and a sell-off on financial markets on Friday as investors worried that Omicron could stall a global recovery from the nearly two-year pandemic.
The two linked cases of the new variant detected in Britain were connected to travel to southern Africa, British health minister Sajid Javid said.
Speaking later, Johnson laid out measures that included stricter testing rules for people arriving in the country but that stopped short of curbs on social activity other than requiring mask wearing in some settings.
"We will require anyone who enters the UK to take a PCR test by the end of the second day after their arrival and to self-isolate until they have a negative result," Johnson told a news conference.
Hundreds of Central American and Haitian migrants formed a new caravan on Friday in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, near the Guatemala border, and began walking north toward the United States.
The migrants said they wanted to leave Chiapas as they had not been given humanitarian visas promised by Mexico or transferred to other parts of the country where they would have better living conditions.
About 1,000 migrants, many carrying children, early on Friday began walking from Tapachula, a city bordering Guatemala, to Mapastepec, about 100 km away (62.1 miles), where they plan to join another group of migrants, caravan organizers said.
A day earlier, Mexico's National Migration Institute (INM) began transferring hundreds of migrants to other parts of the country after they had spent months waiting in Tapachula for a response to requests for refuge or humanitarian visas.
The discovery of a new coronavirus variant named Omicron triggered global alarm on Friday as countries rushed to suspend travel from southern Africa and stock markets on both sides of the Atlantic suffered their biggest falls in more than a year.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said Omicron may spread more quickly than other forms, and preliminary evidence suggested there is an increased risk of reinfection.
Epidemiologists warned travel curbs may be too late to stop Omicron from circulating globally. The new mutations were first discovered in South Africa and have since been detected in Belgium, Botswana, Israel and Hong Kong.
France says it is working hard to prevent migrants from attempting the dangerous crossing in freezing temperatures through one of the world's busiest shipping corridors to England, over 18 miles across the Channel.
But there was no stopping the group of more than 40 migrants, including six children, who cast off from the beach near Wimereux in northern France early on Wednesday (November 24).
About 15 men carried the grey dinghy, walking towards the sea. Families trailed after with their children, and men lugged an outboard motor at the rear.
The migrants scrambled over the sand to the shore, loaded the children onto the dinghy and pushed it out to sea. As a woman waded out in the freezing water, she confirmed they were headed to Britain: "Go UK," she shouted back to Reuters, before swinging a garbage bag of belongings on her head to keep it dry.
Broken windows and charred debris - these were just some of the scenes from the aftermath of violent protests which rocked the Dutch city of Rotterdam over the weekend.
Three people were being treated for serious injuries in a hospital after protests against COVID-19 measures saw rioters torching cars, setting off fireworks and throwing rocks at police.
The mayor of Rotterdam on Saturday condemned "an orgy of violence" at protests against COVID-19 measures in the Dutch port city, in which seven people were wounded and more than 20 arrested.
A week of government speeches and pledges at the two-week gathering in Glasgow brought promises to phase out coal, slash emissions of methane and cut deforestation.
Australia, however, has rejected the global methane pledge and campaigners and pressure groups have not been impressed by the commitments of other world leaders.
A few days after Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for an independent international probe into the origins of the coronavirus, Chinese bots swarmed on to Australian government networks. It was April 2020.
The bots ran hundreds of thousands of scans, apparently looking for vulnerabilities that could later be exploited. It was a massive and noisy attack with little effort made to hide the botsâ presence, said Robert Potter, chief executive officer of Internet 2.0, an Australian cybersecurity firm that works extensively with the federal government.