More than 90 countries have expressed their "deep concern" in a statement on Monday at Israel's punitive measures against the Palestinian people, following a UN request for an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

The UN General Assembly voted 87-26 with 53 abstentions on 30 December in favour of the resolution calling for the ICJ to give an opinion on the legality of Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

In a statement, the signatories called for a reversal of Israeli measures, saying regardless of their position on the General Assembly's resolution, "we reject punitive measures in response to a request for an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice".

In response to the successful Palestinian initiative at the UN, Israel's new far-right government seized $39m of tax revenues collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Dozens of extremist Israelis stormed occupied East Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Tuesday, escorted by Israeli forces, pan-Arab news website Arabi 21 reported.

The radicals worshipped at the site in breach of the longstanding status quo governing it, according to Palestinian sources.

Israeli forces reportedly began harassing Muslim worshippers at the site from early Tuesday to clear the way for the incursion.

Under the agreement, Muslims alone are permitted to pray at Al-Aqsa, the third-holiest place in Islam and the most-sacred Muslim site in Palestine. Non-Muslims are, however, able to visit.

Israeli forces held up Jordan’s ambassador to Israel at an entrance to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque on Tuesday, prompting condemnation from Amman. 

Ghassan Majali was stopped at Bab al-Asbat (Lions' Gate), leading to the mosque, and asked to present permission to visit the site. 

The envoy then left in protest, according to Palestinian media reports.

Israeli police said they didn't refuse Majali from entering, according to the Times of Israel. 

A small town in Hawaii that experiences an astonishing 600 earthquakes a week is being rocked by a concentrated pool of magma directly beneath it, a study has found.

The number of earthquakes recorded in Pahala, a town in the south of the Big Island of Hawaii, has increased 70-fold since 2015, and seismologists have used modern imaging techniques to attribute the sharp rise to a web of magma connected to a nearby volcano.

Pahala is a small town that had a population of around 1,500 at the time of the 2020 census and was once a home to a sugar plantation. According to the United States Geological Survey it is the 'most seismically active area' in Hawaii.

As the number of people experiencing homelessness increases across the country, more cities and states have passed laws making it illegal to live out of tents and cars or sleep in public spaces.

More than 100 jurisdictions have had such bans on the books for years, according to the National Homelessness Law Center. In recent months, high-profile measures have been approved targeting homelessness in many western U.S. cities and across entire states.

Federal data shows 582,462 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2022. Experts warn more people will enter homelessness as housing costs increase, as has been the case for decades in cities such as New York and in much of California.

A school board meeting in Greeley, Colo., kicked off this month with a newly restrictive public comment policy — the fourth iteration in a year marked by such vitriol over masks and books that one member suggested suspending comment altogether. Two opportunities for citizens to address the board for a total of four minutes had already been slimmed to one three-minute chance. Now speakers would have two minutes.

In Rochester, Minn., where public comment at city council meetings has featured personal attacks on the mayor and baseless accusations about the library promoting pedophilia, speakers since October have been permitted to comment just once a month — and the board is considering further restrictions.

And in Salem, Ore., the school board in September closed meetings to the public and began taking comments by Zoom or phone or in writing, following what the superintendent called an “escalation of disruptive behavior” that had turned in-person comment into a “public forum for political agendas.”

China’s population shrank for the first time in decades last year as its birthrate plunged, official figures showed Tuesday, adding to pressure on leaders to keep the economy growing despite an aging workforce and at a time of rising tension with the U.S.

Despite the official numbers, some experts believe China’s population has been in decline for a few years — a dramatic turn in a country that once sought to control such growth through a one-child policy.

Many wealthy countries are struggling with how to respond to aging populations, which can be a drag on economic growth as shrinking numbers of workers try to support growing numbers of elderly people.

Amid a nursing shortage that is worsening poor health outcomes in Mississippi, nursing programs at the state’s public universities are turning away hundreds of potential students every year because of insufficient faculty sizes.

Alfred Rankins Jr., Mississippi’s commissioner of higher education, said at a legislative hearing Tuesday that nursing programs have struggled to retain faculty members because of the state’s lower-than-average salaries for public university employees.

“Unfortunately, our nursing programs must turn away approximately 300 qualified nursing applicants each year because of limited faculty numbers,” Rankins said.

Federal prosecutors declined Tuesday to seek the death penalty for the alleged Walmart shooter who killed 23 shoppers in an El Paso branch of the store in 2019.

The decision is consistent with the Department of Justice’s practice of not pursuing capital punishment in federal cases since President Joe Biden took office, according to local reports.

Patrick Crusius is accused of driving 10 hours from Allen, Texas and casing the busy Walmart to make sure it was filled with Hispanic people before gunning down 23 shoppers with an AK-47 and injuring 22 others on Aug. 3, 2019.

Texas lawmakers are pushing for a bill to ban certain foreign entities from purchasing land in the state. The bill, SB 147, is sponsored by Republican Senator Lois Kolkhorst (Brenham) and has the support of Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

The bill would prohibit any future purchase of or otherwise acquiring title to real property in the state of Texas by governments or entities affiliated with countries such as Iran, Russia, North Korea, and China. Recent polling found 82 percent of Texas Republican voters want to see the Texas government prohibit the Chinese government or Chinese citizens from purchasing land in the state.

Microsoft is preparing to axe thousands of jobs in the latest move by one of the world's biggest technology companies to reduce its workforce in the face of a slowing global economy.

Sky News has learnt that the US software giant could announce plans to cull a significant number of posts around the world within a matter of days.

Microsoft, which employs more than 220,000 people, including 6,000 in the UK, is said to be contemplating cutting roughly 5% of its workforce, which if accurate would equate to approximately 11,000 jobs.

Human lifespans could be lengthened by an anti-ageing jab within five years, say researchers.

A 'breakthrough' study showed that the experimental therapy rejuvenated cells in mice, helping them live longer, while reducing frailty and boosting heart and lung health.

Harvard-backed anti-ageing scientists hope the 'exciting' findings will open up the door to treating humans in the same way, boosting their resilience against diseases like cancer and dementia by making them biologically younger.

Marine activists and many others are calling for a stop to offshore wind farms while they are investigating the idea that they might be killing marine life.

According to Fox News, a host of whales and other marine life began to wash up on New York and New Jersey shores in recent weeks.

Seafreeze fisheries liaison Meghan Lapp spoke with Fox News. It said that the Biden Administration’s ambition to have more wind farms built offshore has potentially caused many forms of marine life to become endangered.

Webmaster addition: When Claire and I were living in Hawaii there was an incident where whales were beaching themselves in large numbers. Eventually it came out that the Navy was testing a new and very powerful sonar intended to penetrate the thermocline and locate deep targets. The sound from the sonar was literally scaring the whales out of the water.

Former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo wrote in his new memoir that his secret meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un in 2018 began with a “joke about assassination.”

“This small, sweating, evil man tried to break the ice with all the charm you would expect from a mass murderer. ‘Mr. Director,’ he opened, ‘I didn’t think you’d show up. I know you’ve been trying to kill me,’” Pompeo’s memoir, which Fox News obtained a copy of, reads.  

When the attorney pressed Trump on page 134 if he had to discuss the statement with anyone, Trump stated, “No. I didn’t need to. I’m not Joe Biden.”

Yes, this thing – the scam, not the viwuss – is not going away.

Boston and California are ordering compulsory masking again for children.

Oxford, UK has created a system that permanently locks down its residents in their neighborhoods in order to “stop global warming”

Here are some other highlights you may have missed.

When his 6 a.m. flight from Palm Springs, California, to Pittsburgh, was delayed last week Chris Goranson got worried. “I thought something pretty bad must have happened,” says the professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College and former federal employee working on modernizing computer systems.

There were no reasons given for the Jan. 11 delay. And the trouble seemed to be spreading nationwide. Although Mr. Goranson experienced only a 90-minute delay in California and another half-hour delay on his connecting flight in Dallas, some 1,300 flights were canceled and another 10,000 were delayed.

The culprit: a computer glitch at the Federal Aviation Administration, which caused a decision to temporarily ground all flights.

Tel Aviv-based newspaper Haaretz has revealed how Toka, a company founded by the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and the Israeli military's cyber chief Yaron Rosen, has mastered terrifying technology capable of locating security cameras or webcams, hacking into them, monitoring their live feeds, and altering them without a trace.

Regulated by the Israeli ministry for military affairs, Toka has offices in Tel Aviv and Washington and works - currently at least - purely with state-level clients, including law enforcement and intelligence agencies. 

The company has contracts with Tel Aviv alone valued at $6 million and is seeking to expand its operations further.

According to a company pitch deck obtained by Haaretz, Toka offers what it calls “previously out-of-reach capabilities” that “transform untapped IoT [Internet-of-Things] sensors into intelligence sources,” and can be used “for intelligence and operational needs.”

UK government cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt has called on the Church of England to wed same-sex couples in an unprecedented act of interference in church matters by a sitting UK government official.

Mordaunt, who serves as Leader of the House of Commons, urged the Church of England — which is headed by King Charles III — to recognise same-sex marriages ahead of a vote on the issue among the bishops of the church.

Ms Mordaunt addressed her demands to the Bishop of Portsmouth, the Rt Rev Dr Jonathan Frost, posting a letter to the bishop on Twitter on Sunday, the Telegraph reports.

The only way of preventing global warming is “money, money, money”, former failed presidential contender John Kerry said at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos on Tuesday.

US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry said that the world is not acting with enough urgency to “save the world” and prevent what he calls a climate crisis from occurring. The 79-year-old Democrat opened his remarks by questioning how “allegedly wise adult human” such as CEOs and Senators could, as he put it, “ignore our science and want to ignore mathematics and want to ignore physics and somehow cannot bring themselves to do what we need to do.”

The billionaire politician, who married into the wealthy Heinz family, heaped praise on those who attended the meeting in the Swiss ski resort town, saying how “extraordinary that we select human beings… are able to sit in a room and come together and actually talk about saving the planet.”

“I mean it’s so almost extraterrestrial to think about quote ‘saving the planet’. If you said that to most people, they think you’re just a crazy tree-hugging Lefty liberal do-good… but really that’s where we are.”

The House Republican Steering Committee on Tuesday selected several conservative firebrands to serve on the Oversight Committee during the 118th Congress, including multiple members who previously had their committee assignments stripped by House Democrats during the previous Congress.

The GOP-led House Oversight Committee will be composed of Reps. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Tim Burchett (R-TN), Eric Burlison (R-MO), Byron Donalds (R-FL), Chuck Edwards (R-NC), Russell Fry (R-SC), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Nick Langworthy (R-NY), Jake LaTurner (R-KS), Gary Palmer (R-AL), Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), Scott Perry (R-PA), Lisa McClain (R-MI), Pete Sessions (R-TX), and William Timmons (R-SC).