Hong Kong began a five-day mourning period on Saturday, after at least 128 people were killed in fires at a high-rise apartment complex. Officials held a three-minute silence as residents laid flowers near the towers. Authorities say around 200 people are still missing.
Published On 29 Nov 202529 Nov 2025
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Amazon shows off its new logo at a logistic and distribution center in Werne, Germany, in 2017. On Tuesday, the company announced the rollout of its satellite-based Amazon Leo Internet service for select enterprise customers, with a wider rollout planned in 2026. File Photo by Friedemann Vogel/EPA-EFE
Nov. 25 (UPI) — Online retailer Amazon has begun to roll out its Leo Internet service that offers gigabyte speed via its satellite network for businesses and other organizations.
Amazon’s enterprise customers will be the first to use the Amazon Leo Internet service that includes a new “Ultra” antenna, and a wider rollout is planned for 2026, Amazon announced on Tuesday.
Amazon officials said Leo is designed to extend reliable, high-speed Internet to those beyond the reach of existing networks, including millions of businesses, government entities and organizations that are located in areas where Internet service is unreliable.
“Amazon Leo represents a massive opportunity for businesses operating in challenging environments,” said Chris Webber, vice president of consumer and enterprise business for Amazon Leo.
“We’ve designed Amazon Leo to meet the needs of some of the most complex business and government customers out there,” Webber added.
“We’re excited to provide them with the tools they need to transform their operations, no matter where they are in the world.”
The Amazon Leo Internet service uses an innovative network design, satellites and “high-performance phased-array antennas” to support download speeds of up to 1 gigabyte per second and upload speeds of up to 400 megabytes per second.
A new antenna dubbed Leo Ultra enables users to attain such downloading and uploading speeds, which exceed those of the competing Starlink Performance Kit, according to The Verge.
SpaceX officials said a new V3 satellite will support faster uploading and downloading speeds next year.
Amazon also has more than 150 satellites orbiting the Earth to provide digital communications that are undergoing initial network testing that involves a small group of enterprise customers.
Commercial airline JetBlue is among Amazon Leo’s enterprise customers participating in the service’s initial rollout.
“We knew Amazon Leo would share our passion for customer-first innovation,” JetBlue President Marty St. George said.
“Choosing Amazon Leo reflects our commitment to staying ahead of what customers want most when traveling, such as fast, reliable performance and flexibility in our free in-flight Wi-Fi.”
Amazon Leo also enables enterprise customers to connect directly to their cloud-based accounts and establish private network interconnects so that they can connect and communicate with remote locations using their respective data centers and core networks.
A MAJOR UK airport has officially closed part of a terminal after 60 years of operation.
Large sections of the departures and arrivals halls have shut, with only one airline remaining in the terminal.
Manchester Airport’s Terminal 1 has now closed to all passengers, except those travelling with Ryanair.
The terminal was opened by Prince Philip in 1962 and entered its final phase of closure last week.
Meanwhile, Terminal 2 has undergone a 10-year, £1.3 billion transformation which has more than doubled its size.
After an extension to the terminal opened in 2021, the airport is now in the final stages of overhauling the original Terminal 2.
In the meantime, Terminals 1 and 3 will operate as a temporary hybrid hub for Ryanair until the full closure of Terminal 1 in early 2026.
Airline passengers have described the Terminal closure as the “end of an era”.
A spokesperson for the airport told the BBC staff have been “really touched by all the lovely comments and by people sharing their memories”.
“Since the 1960s, T1 has been the starting point for millions of journeys,” Manchester Airport said in an official post.
The airport, which ranks as the UK’s busiest outside of London, has become well-known for the unique chandeliers in Terminal 1.
These iconic Venetian glass chandeliers were removed in 2003 and were placed on display in various museums.
However, these iconic features will now be on display in Terminal 2, where they are being resurrected to form a new piece of art.
“Even though we love Terminal 1, we weren’t really prepared for just how many other people share our affection for it,” said an airport spokesperson.
“It may be the end of an era for Terminal 1 as we know it, but we wanted to take some time to really celebrate it because it’s truly a part of the history of the North and plays a key part in lots of people’s memories of international travel.”
The airport rep added that passengers will not need to worry about extra traffic in Terminal 2 as a result of the closure.
“There is absolutely nothing that anybody needs to worry about, we have invested in the terminal facility and the road network as well,” they said.
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Nearly 1.3 million members of the security forces and more than 26,500 internally displaced people are eligible to vote ahead of Tuesday’s polls.
Members of Iraq’s security forces and its internally displaced population have begun casting their ballots in the parliamentary elections – the sixth since a United States-led invasion toppled longtime ruler Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Polls opened at 7am (04:00 GMT) on Sunday for 1.3 million members of the security forces at 809 polling centres and will close at 6pm (15:00 GMT) before they are deployed for security purposes on the election day on Tuesday.
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More than 26,500 internally displaced people are also eligible for early voting on Sunday across 97 polling stations at 27 places in Iraq, the Iraqi News Agency (INA) said.
Interior Minister Abdul Amir al-Shammari told INA that the special voting process is advancing “smoothly and in an organised manner”.
Nearly 21 million Iraqis are eligible to vote on Tuesday across 4,501 polling stations nationwide, the INA said.
More than 7,750 candidates, nearly a third of them women, are running for the 329-seat parliament. Under the law, 25 percent of the seats are reserved for women, while nine are allocated for religious minorities.
The current parliament began its term on January 9, 2022, and will last four years, ending on January 8, 2026.
An old electoral law, revived in 2023, will apply to the ongoing elections, with many seeing it as favouring larger parties. While about 70 independents won in the 2021 vote, only 75 independents are contesting this year.
Observers also fear that turnout might dip below the record low of 41 percent in 2021, reflecting voters’ apathy and scepticism in a country marked by entrenched leadership and allegations of mismanagement and endemic corruption.
There were widespread accusations of corruption and vote-buying before the elections, and 848 candidates were disqualified by election officials, sometimes for obscure reasons, including insulting religious rituals or members of the armed forces.
Past elections in Iraq have been marred by violence, including assassinations of candidates, attacks on polling stations, and clashes between the supporters of different blocs. While overall levels of violence have subsided, a candidate was assassinated in the run-up to this year’s election.
Influential Shia leader Moqtada Sadr urged his followers to boycott what he described as a “flawed election”.
Al-Sadr’s bloc won the largest number of seats in 2021, but later withdrew after failed negotiations over forming the government amid a standoff with rival Shia parties. He has since boycotted the political system.
Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, elected in 2022 with the backing of pro-Iran parties, is seeking a second term and is expected to secure a sizeable bloc.
Among the other frontrunners are influential Shia figures, including former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Muslim scholar Ammar al-Hakim.
By convention in post-invasion Iraq, a Shia Muslim holds the powerful post of the prime minister and a Sunni of the parliament’s speaker, while the largely ceremonial presidency goes to a Kurd.
1 of 2 | Director of the Bazar de l’Hotel de Ville department store Karl-Stephane Cottendin cuts the ribbon at the opening of Chinese e-commerce giant Shein’s first physical store at the BHV department store in Paris on Wednesday. Photo by Dimitar Dilkoff/EPA/Pool
Nov. 5 (UPI) — The French government said it would begin action against online retailer Shein on Wednesday, just hours after the company opened its first brick-and-mortar store in Paris.
An outcry erupted last weekend after it was discovered that Shein was selling sex dolls that look like children, but on Tuesday, the company announced it was banning all sex dolls from the site.
On Wednesday, the government issued a statement saying: “On the instructions of the Prime Minister [Sébastien Lecornu], the government is initiating the procedure to suspend Shein for the time necessary for the platform to demonstrate to the public authorities that all of its content is finally in compliance with our laws and regulations.”
The store, which is the first Shein store in the world, also opened to chaos, as shoppers lined up to get in and protesters shouted at them, “Shame!”
Andreia Chavent, a worker at BHV Marais, said many employees were upset by the opening of Shein in Paris.
“We are directly concerned by how people work, what the conditions are like and how the clothes are made, even if it’s not in France,” Chavent, a member of the CFDT, France’s largest union, told The New York Times.
Shein has seen criticism over the way workers are treated in the Chinese factories that sell on the site.
The sex dolls controversy made things worse, Chavent added.
But not everyone is against the store.
“When I saw that Shein was coming to France, I said, ‘Yay!’ Because it still takes 20 weeks” for clothing from the site to arrive, Philippe Hamard, 27, told The Times.
He said that he doesn’t buy from Shein often because of “environmental issues and all that.” But said “I still buy from time to time for fun.”
On the sex doll controversy, he said, “I think there are a lot of controversies at the moment. But people will forget about it.”
Shein has plans to open seven stores in other cities in France.
Shein and AliExpress are also facing investigation in France over the dissemination of pornographic content to children, the prosecutor’s office told the BBC.
The Paris Office des Mineurs will handle the cases. The office oversees the protection of minors.
AliExpress said the adult listings violated its policies and were removed once the company learned of them.
“Sellers found to violate or trying to circumvent these requirements will be penalized in accordance with our rules,” AliExpress said in a statement, the BBC reported.
Residents say the powerful storm brought ‘raging’ flash floods that destroyed homes, overturned cars and blocked streets.
Published On 5 Nov 20255 Nov 2025
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Residents of the central Philippines have slowly begun cleanup efforts after powerful Typhoon Kalmaegi swept through the region, killing at least 85 people and leaving dozens missing.
Scenes of widescale destruction emerged in the hard-hit province of Cebu on Wednesday as the storm receded, revealing ravaged homes, overturned vehicles and streets blocked with piles of debris.
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Among the 85 deaths were six military personnel whose helicopter crashed in Agusan del Sur on the island of Mindanao during a humanitarian mission. The country’s disaster agency also reported 75 people missing, and 17 injured.
In Cebu City, Marlon Enriquez, 58, was trying to salvage what was left of his family’s belongings as he scraped off the thick mud coating his house.
“This was the first time that has happened to us,” he told the Reuters news agency. “I’ve been living here for almost 16 years, and it was the first time I’ve experienced flooding [like this].”
Another resident, 53-year-old Reynaldo Vergara, said his small shop in the city of Mandaue, also in Cebu province, had been lost when a nearby river overflowed.
“Around four or five in the morning, the water was so strong that you couldn’t even step outside,” he told the AFP news agency. “Nothing like this has ever happened. The water was raging.”
The storm hit as Cebu province was still recovering from a 6.9-magnitude earthquake last month that killed dozens of people and displaced thousands.
The area around Cebu City was deluged with 183mm (seven inches) of rain in the 24 hours before Kalmaegi’s landfall, well over its 131mm (five-inch) monthly average, according to weather specialist Charmagne Varilla.
The massive rainfall set off flash floods and caused a river and other waterways to swell. More than 200,000 people were evacuated across the wider Visayas region, which includes Cebu Island and parts of southern Luzon and northern Mindanao.
Before noon on Wednesday, Kalmaegi blew away from western Palawan province into the South China Sea with sustained winds of up to 130km per hour (81 miles per hour) and gusts of up to 180km/h (112mph), according to forecasters.
The storm is forecast to gain strength while over the South China Sea before making its way to Vietnam, where preparations are under way in advance of Kalmaegi’s expected landfall on Friday.
China has warned of a “catastrophic wave process” in the South China Sea and activated maritime disaster emergency response in its southernmost province of Hainan, state broadcaster CCTV said.
