Police in Australia said Tuesday they charged the surviving suspected gunman who opened fire on a Jewish event on Sydney’s Bondi Beach with 59 offenses, including a terror charge.

Naveed A.* was shot by security forces during the attack and regained consciousness from a coma on Tuesday.

He and his father allegedly opened fire on crowds, killing 15 people and injuring dozens. Police killed his father during the attack.

Here are the charges the suspected guman will face:

• 15 counts of murder
• Committing a terrorist act
• 40 counts of causing wounding/grievous bodily harm to a person with the intent to murder
• Discharging a firearm, etc., to cause grievous bodily harm
• Public display of prohibited terrorist organization’s symbol
• Placing an explosive in/near a building with the intent cause harm

“Early indications point to a terrorist attack inspired by ISIS,” New South Wales state police said in a statement. 

The alleged attackers spent most of last month in the southern Philippines, an area known for Islamist extremism. The Philippines said on Wednesday there was no evidence that the country was being used for “terrorist training”.

According to authorities in Australia, the Philippines and India, the father was originally from India and held Australian residency, while the son was born in Australia

Bondi Beach shooters likely driven by ‘IS’ ideology

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First funerals for victims of attack

Australia held the first funerals for the 15 victims who were killed in the country’s worst mass shooting in almost three decades.

The first service was for Rabbi Eli Schlanger from the Chabad-Lubavitch of Bondi, who organized Sunday’s Chanukah by the Sea event, where the attack occurred.

“After what happened, my biggest regret was — apart from, obviously, the obvious — I could have done more to tell Eli more often how much we love him, how much I love him, how much we appreciate everything that he does and how proud we are of him,” said Schlanger’s father-in-law, Rabbi Yehoram Ulman.

Rabbi Eli Schlanger was the father of five children, including a newborn. Image: Mark Baker/AP Photo/dpa/picture alliance

Ulman urged Jewish people not to fear visiting Bondi Beach or celebrating their faith despite the shootings.

He said the attackers want them to be afraid.

“But that is not the answer … we can never ever allow them to not only succeed but any time they try something we become greater and stronger.”

New South Wales health authorities said 21 injured people were still being treated in hospitals, five of them in critical condition.

New South Wales state to pass emergency gun laws

The shooting shook Australia and intensified fears of rising antisemitism and extremism.

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns declared the attack a terrorist incident on Sunday evening. As a result, federal and state police launched a joint counterterrorism operation.

Minns said he will recall parliament next week to pass wide-ranging reforms of gun and protest laws.

“We’ve got a monumental task in front of us. It’s huge,” he said. “It’s a huge responsibility to pull the community together. I think we need a summer of calm and togetherness, not division.”

Australia’s prime minister vowed to take whatever government action was needed to stamp out antisemitism.

“We will work with the Jewish community, we want to stamp out and eradicate antisemitism from our society,” Albanese told reporters.

He agreed with the leaders of Australia’s states and territories “to strengthen gun laws across the nation.”

*Editor’s note: DW follows the German press code, which stresses the importance of protecting the privacy of suspected criminals or victims and obliges us to refrain from revealing full names in such cases.

Edited by: Elizabeth Schumacher

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A 24-year-old man accused of carrying out the Bondi Beach mass shooting has been charged with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder, as Sydney began holding the first funerals for victims of the attack that killed 15 people.

The charges against Naveed Akram include a terrorism offence, 15 counts of murder, and 40 counts relating to wound/grievous bodily harm to a person with intent to murder.

He has also been charged with the alleged firing of a weapon, displaying the symbol of a banned terrorist group, and placing an explosive device in or near a building.

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A woman consoles Valentyna (R), mother of 10-year-old Matilda, who was killed in the Bondi Beach attack (AFP via Getty)

According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, prosecutors will argue that Akram’s actions were intended to advance a religious motive and were carried out in a way that caused deaths, inflicted severe injuries, and put the wider public at risk.

The charges were laid even as families, faith leaders, and political figures gathered in Sydney on Wednesday to mourn the victims of the Bondi Beach attack.

The first funerals marked a sombre turning point for a nation still reeling from Sunday’s violence, which left 15 people dead after two gunmen – Sajid Akram, 50, and his son Naveed Akram, 24 – opened fire at a beachfront Hanukkah celebration attended by Jewish families.

One of the earliest services was held at the Chabad of Bondi synagogue for Rabbi Eli Schlanger, whose death has become emblematic of the scale of loss suffered by the local Jewish community. Outside the synagogue, mourners packed the streets in silence as Schlanger’s coffin – draped in black velour embroidered with the gold Star of David – was carried inside. Family members leaned over the coffin, weeping.

Schlanger, 41, was an assistant rabbi at Chabad of Bondi and the organiser of the “Chanukah by the Sea” event at Bondi Beach. A father of five, his youngest child is just two months old.

Often referred to as the “Bondi Rabbi”, Schlanger was widely known for his work supporting Jewish life in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Chabad described him as a tireless community figure devoted to strengthening faith and connection.

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The community transformed the Bondi beachfront into a sprawling floral memorial (AFP via Getty)

During the funeral service, his father-in-law Rabbi Yehoram Ulman struggled to speak through tears.

“Whatever I say today will be an understatement to what you mean to everyone and to your family and to me personally,” he said. “You are my son, my friend, my confidant.”

He added: “A day without you is impossible.”

Prime minister Anthony Albanese, speaking earlier to reporters, said Schlanger’s loss was felt far beyond his immediate family.

“He was clearly much loved in the community, not just by his family as well,” Mr Albanese said.

“I think all Australians’ thoughts and hearts are with those families as they go through farewelling their loved ones.”

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Mourners attend the funeral of Rabbi Eli Schlanger (Reuters)

Funerals were also scheduled on Wednesday for Reuven Morrison, Peter Meagher, and Rabbi Yaakov Levitan.

As services continued, residents across Sydney gathered at Bondi Pavilion, laying flowers and lighting candles at the site of the attack, transforming the beachfront landmark into a sprawling memorial.

Meanwhile, the surviving gunman, Naveed Akram, is set to face court later on Wednesday via video conference. Another gunman, Sajid Akram, was shot by police at the site of the attack on Sunday.

Mr Albanese has said that the attack was driven by “Islamic State ideology” and investigators believe the suspected attackers had recently undergone “military-style training” in the southern Philippines, an area associated with Islamist extremist groups, according to public broadcaster ABC.

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Emergency legislation is being drafted for gun law changes in Australia (AFP via Getty)

New South Wales premier Chris Minns has confirmed that emergency legislation is being drafted and that parliament will be recalled ahead of the Christmas break. Proposed changes include caps on the number of firearms an individual may own, the reclassification of straight pull-up and pump-action shotguns, reductions in shotgun magazine capacity, and a ban on belt-fed shotgun magazines, local media reported.

The state is also seeking to eliminate appeal mechanisms once a gun license has been revoked.

Meanwhile, opposition leader Sussan Ley told reporters on Wednesday that over the past two years Jewish Australians had seen “a rising tide of antisemitism” in the country.

“They have looked to their leaders in Canberra, and they have looked to Prime Minister Albanese, and he has failed them. He has failed them every single day.”

“If none of the events of the last two years were a wake-up call, then surely this is the wake-up call the prime minister needs to step up,” she said.

Deputy prime minister Richard Marles told Channel Seven that Jewish Australians have not felt secure “for a long time”.

“Antisemitism is at the heart of this and we need to be doing everything in our country to stamp it out. We have been acting on that in terms of commissioning the Segal report,” Mr Marles said. It is a report by special envoy Jillian Segal on combating antisemitism.

“Not for a moment am I saying that everything has been done. We need to do so much more and we will do that. This won’t be a week or a month, it’s a long-term project but we must stamp antisemitism out. In this we must bring Australians together.”

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NEED TO KNOW

• Timothée Chalamet is continuing his bright orange trend for the Marty Supreme press tour
• Chalamet wore coordinating neon orange looks with his mother, Nicole Flender, at the premiere in N.Y.C. on Tuesday, Dec. 16
• Last week, he wore a twinning orange ensemble with girlfriend Kylie Jenner at the Los Angeles premiere

Timothée Chalamet is continuing to paint the town orange.

Just a week after wearing matching custom Chrome Hearts vibrant orange outfits with girlfriend Kylie Jenner at the Los Angeles premiere of his upcoming film Marty Supreme, Chalamet, 29, donned the same hue alongside his mother Nicole Flender at the New York City premiere of the film on Tuesday, Dec. 16.

Chalamet’s double-breasted neon orange suit, paired with a coordinating fringe scarf, was designed by Haider Ackermann for Tom Ford. He completed the look with a chain necklace, a watch, and wire-rimmed glasses.

Flender wore matching neon orange halter neck gown paired with coordinating shoes and a glittery gold purse. She wore her hair in an elegant updo.

At the Los Angeles premiere on Dec. 9, Chalamet wore a bright orange leather suit, with an orange silk shirt and orange boots. He also carried a Chrome Hearts black leather ping-pong paddle case draped over his shoulder.

The Kylie Cosmetics founder, 28, wore a floor-length orange gown with triangular cutouts below her bust and across her waist. The base of her deep V-neckline was cinched with a cross embellishment, which was then replicated on her necklace with several more crosses varying in size. She paired the look with orange pointed-toe pumps.

The star of Marty Supreme previously selected the unique hue during a now-viral marketing meeting made public back in November. In the video, widely circulated by studio A24 on social media, Chalamet explains his desire to incorporate the bright orange shade into the film’s promotional materials.

Referring to the color as “Great Idea #1”, Chalamet said at the time, “Hardcore orange. Corroded orange. Falling apart orange. Rusted orange.” He cited the pink frenzy that surrounded Barbie in 2023 as his reason for selecting a color.

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Chalamet then showed the Zoom group the “mock-up” of the color orange his visual artist prepared that took him “six months” to create, before then pulling up a file of a tiny square of the shade. 

Timothée Chalamet and his mother Nicole Flender at the NYC premiere of ‘Marty Supreme’.

John Nacion/Variety via Getty

“It’s not totally ready yet, but this is like a working example of the very specific orange I want to be on every poster for this,” he said at the time, before pitching the idea to change the Statue of Liberty from green to orange to get onlookers to be “thinking Marty Supreme” upon first glance. 

Chalamet proposed the idea of turning the Eiffel Tower orange, too, in addition to the Egyptian Pyramids and the Taj Mahal. 

Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner at the LA premiere of ‘Marty Supreme’.

Frederic J. Brown / AFP via Getty

“When you guys think of the great vehicle of American greatness, what do you think? … the blimp,” he said on the Zoom call, dismissing the car (specifically, the “Model T”) and plane that were put forth by his coworkers. 

Since the brainstorm meeting, orange Marty Supreme blimps have been spotted floating through the sky. 

Marty Supreme hits theaters on Dec. 25.

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15 year old Ann-Louise has a rare life-limiting condition, but lights up when she sings. As our Mirror Christmas appeal for Lifelites continues, her mum Mary shares how the charity’s clever tech helps her daughter enjoy life

15:50, 16 Dec 2025Updated 06:46, 17 Dec 2025

As Ann-Louise Owens took to the stage to perform in her hospice’s Disney showcase, she took on an amazing transformation. The teenager, who has a rare life-limiting condition, which causes up to 200 absent seizures a day was beaming with happiness and confidence as she sang ‘Let It Go’ from Frozen. Her mum Mary, 56, watched with pride as her daughter’s angelic voice wowed the audience. She felt emotional as this moment was a real triumph for Ann-Louise.

Ann-Louise, who yesterday celebrated her 15th birthday, was diagnosed with rare Chromosome 22Q duplication genetic disorder at the age of three. The condition causes severe uncontrolled epilepsy but music is a way for her to connect and have fun. She regularly plays on a guitar gifted by East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices’ (EACH) ambassador, Ed Sheeran, and his hit song Castle on the Hill is her favourite.

READ MORE: Olly Murs ‘blown away’ in special video for schoolboy who plays music with his eyes

Two weeks ago we launched our Mirror Christmas appeal in aid of Lifelites to ‘Unwrap the Magic of Christmas’ for thousands of children and young people like Ann-Louise. The campaign aims to raise vital funds for them to experience the wonder of life-changing technology.

Ann-Louise plays with the Lifelites Cosmo Switch with musical therapist Ray(Image: PHIL HARRIS)

Lifelites currently reach 15,000 children with life-limiting conditions. The charity provides seriously ill and disabled children the chance to play, create and communicate, using the power of assistive and sensory technology. This includes the Soundbeam, a touch-free musical device that uses sensor technology to translate movement into sound, Magic Carpet, Magic Carpet, which projects moving images onto the floor (or any suitable surface) to enable children to interact and control their environment, the Eyegaze, which tracks eye movements and allows children to control a computer, and more.

However, there are still 85,000 children without access to Lifelites. By donating to our appeal, Mirror readers can help thousands more receive this life-changing technology, enhancing the life of a seriously ill or disabled child and help them make the most of the precious moments they have with their families.

Ann-Louise has attended The Treehouse, EACH’s hospice in Ipswich, Suffolk, for three years. Mary, said: “She loves her music and Ed Sheeran and she gets to play his guitar that he gifted to the hospice when she is here. She loves singing his hit Castle on the Hill and went to his concert in Ipswich in July.”

Ann-Louise with mum Mary(Image: PHIL HARRIS)

As a result of her condition, Ann-Louise has two holes in her heart, has asthma, hypermobility and digestive problems that means she is fed via a gastric tube. Mary said: “Ann-Louise’s condition means she has two copies of the 22Q chromosome, which makes everything go wrong. She can walk but not very far as she has daily seizures – around 200 absent and tonic clonic seizures a day, which is why she’s in a wheelchair as it makes it difficult to get around.

“Because it’s such a rare condition doctors don’t know much about it so it’s tough. She’s now on experimental drugs for her epilepsy as everything else has failed.” Sadly Mary was given news last week about Ann-Louise that every parent dreads. She said: “We found out that her gut is failing. There will be more trouble when her stomach gives up. We have just been told to make memories.

“Her needs have changed drastically and her condition has worsened as she’s gotten older. It’s been a long road and we now have to think about what we want for her going forward when it comes to medical intervention. It’s hard when you get bad news but you have to work through it, we need to do what’s best for her and if that’s filling the house with lights and music that’s what we will do.”

Ann-Louise plays with the Cosmo Switch(Image: PHIL HARRIS)

Mary says she can’t thank The Treehouse enough for helping fill Ann-Louise’s life with joy. “She gets so much from coming to The Treehouse and has found her love of music. She sang ‘Let It Go’ from Frozen in front of everybody and wore a princess dress. It was amazing and she makes me very proud.

“When she plays music and sings she is a different person, she doesn’t say anything at all hardly to anyone until she’s got a microphone and music and then she comes alive and is so happy. She totally changes, you wouldn’t think it was the same person when you see her singing, it gives her so much confidence.

“We get so much from coming to the hospice, they support me as well and Ann-Louise, who comes to stay two nights a month. She loves the Lifelites technology – she enjoys the Sensory Room and the Magic Carpet and the Cosmo Switches – she likes pressing them and hearing music.

“This Christmas we will make it extra special, Ann-Louise wants a karaoke machine for Christmas and all the family will be coming over to share it with us. It will be loud but full of joy. Having access to the Lifelites technology and the music is extremely important for Ann-Louise as it turns her into a totally different child, she can express all her emotions through play and music. It’s one of the only times you see her truly happy, laughing and having fun.”

Ann-Louise(Image: PHIL HARRIS)

Ray Travasso, 52, music therapist at The Treehouse, said: “Ann-Louise is like another person and she fully comes alive when she makes music, she’s just happy sitting at the piano and playing and listening to songs and singing along. In our music therapy sessions we sing but I’ve noticed she can be a quiet girl sometimes, a little bit anxious, and have her head down. But when we play music her head is up, her eyes are open and she’s fully engaged and she’s totally in the moment.

“That’s one of the wonderful things about music, it can really unlock things for people and someone like Ann-Louise is a brilliant example of that. She was able to sing in front of other people at our Disney night. She was great and fully alive.

“It’s really rewarding seeing people change through music, I get such a buzz from seeing the transformation. For people like Ann-Louise, who feel they haven’t got a place in this world, music can make them be somebody and engage. I use the Lifelites Soundbeam in my classes which is amazing – it works through movement and movement makes the sounds which makes music accessible for everyone.”

Rob Lightfoot, CEO of Lifelites, said: “Lifelites technology is truly life-changing. Seeing the transformation in Ann-Louise as she uses the technology to make music is incredible. With thousands of children still unable to access this kind of support, we are so grateful to Mirror readers for supporting our Appeal.”

Unwrap the magic of Christmas

Donate today and unwrap the Magic of Christmas for seriously ill children. Donations from Mirror readers will be used to provide seriously ill children access to life-changing technology that will enable them to play, communicate and have fun in ways that would otherwise be impossible.

• Donate online HERE
• Text MIRROR to 70085 to give £10. To donate without receiving further updates, text MIRRORNOINFO. Texts will cost the donation amount plus one standard network rate message, and you’ll be opting into hearing more from Lifelites.
• Donate by post: Send cheques made payable to Lifelites to Lifelites, 60 Great Queen Street, London WC2B 5AZ

READ MORE: ‘Our children’s hospice creates magical Christmas memories for families to treasure’



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Donald Trump has said the quiet stuff out loud. His Tuesday evening social media post on Venezuela feels like an offload, a dump of thoughts. But it is nonetheless very revealing.

“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” the US president says.

“It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before…”

That’s a reference to the massive US naval and Air Force presence in the Caribbean off Venezuela. It is indeed an armada, and it’s been there for months now.

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‘They’ve treated us badly’

On the face of it, it’s all part of an anti-drug mission, to counter the drug trade from Venezuela into America. At least that’s the public messaging. And the missile and drone attacks on suspected drug boats in the region are all part of the play.

And that’s why the second part of his post is particularly interesting, because he now appears to be saying out loud what plenty have suspected all along – that this is actually about regime change, and it is about oil far more than it is about drugs.

He says that the military will remain in place “until such time as they [Venezuela] return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us”.

He continues: “The illegitimate Maduro Regime is using Oil from these stolen Oil Fields to finance themselves, Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping.”

This is a reference to the fact that the US was once a huge importer of Venezuelan oil. American companies based in the country extracted the oil and refineries on the Texan coast processed it. The refineries were adapted over decades to refine the thick, heavy crude that is typical of Venezuela.

The process was big business for American firms until Venezuela, under Hugo Chavez in the 2000s, nationalised the foreign oil assets.

Read more:
The US-Venezuela crisis explained

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Is America about to invade Venezuela?

Trump wants all that back – the oil, the revenue, the influence. So all this, it seems clear now, is about oil, and it is about spheres of influence – hemispheres. Trump is determined to assert American control over the western hemisphere.

The ultimate ambition it seems is threefold:

• To remove the Maduro regime and support a friendly, compliant government;
• To seize control of the oil, through commercial partnerships, not force;
• And to stop any drug and people smuggling into the US.

With this latest social post, Trump has now said all that out loud. Interesting days ahead are certain.

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Lucknow, India – Harshit Verma believes his 50-year-old father, Vijay Kumar Verma, died because he was handling an “inhuman task”.

Vijay, a contractual government teacher in Lucknow, the capital of India’s Uttar Pradesh state, was hired as a booth-level officer (BLO) to conduct a revision of the voter list in his constituency, as part of an enormous electoral exercise involving millions of BLOs across the world’s most populous country.

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The exercise, called the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), was launched by the Election Commission of India (ECI) on November 4, across 12 states and federally governed territories, to update the electoral rolls by adding eligible voters through house-to-house enumeration and removing ineligible people. The exercise will be repeated in the remaining states in phases.

According to a handbook for BLOs on the ECI’s website, their responsibilities range from doing house visits to identifying existing and dead voters, collecting their photos and other relevant documents, and uploading them on a designated portal. The BLOs, who are mostly government teachers or junior officials, have complained of their immense work pressure. A single mistake means the entire process of filling out the forms and uploading them has to be done again.

A report last week by the Spect Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank, said at least 33 BLOs have died across India since November 4, at least nine of whom took their own lives and left desperate accounts of their work pressure in their suicide notes.

Vijay did not die by suicide. He collapsed on November 14 while completing SIR work late at night at his home in Lucknow’s Sarava village, and was rushed to hospital. He died of a brain haemorrhage 10 days later.

“Since he had joined the BLO duty, his phone continuously rang. We saw him working from morning till late night,” Vijay’s sister-in-law, Shashi Verma, told Al Jazeera.

A photo of Vijay Kumar Verma, a booth-level officer who died of a brain haemorrhage, at his home near Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh [Sumaiya Ali/Al Jazeera]

Harshit, 20, said he had read text messages sent by district officials to his father, repeatedly telling him to do more work or “face consequences”.

“Quickly complete 200 forms. If it’s less than that, you will be charged,” he recalled one of the messages as saying.

“We have received no support from the government,” Harshit told Al Jazeera, as he stood with his mother, Sangeeta Rawat, outside the Lucknow offices of the Samajwadi Party, an opposition party supporting their protest.

“The senior district magistrate visited us after my father’s death, but only paid condolences and told me to focus on my studies,” he said.

‘Barely two hours of sleep every day’

Al Jazeera spoke to two other BLOs in Lucknow who refused to reveal their identities over fears it could invite the wrath of the government and jeopardise their jobs.

“I have been functioning with barely two hours of sleep every day. On many days, I didn’t even sleep at all,” said a 45-year-old BLO who works as a teacher at a government school in Lucknow.

Another BLO, also a teacher at a village school in the same district, said her phone numbers have been made public and her devices now ring at odd hours. “People call me late at night and ask me to correct their details or find if their name is in another list,” she said.

The BLO said that most people in villages do not keep an electronic version of their documents, unlike residents in cities. “Quite often, when we visit these villagers to collect their details, they would take a long time going through their trunks or cupboards to find their papers. It is a common problem.”

She said BLOs return to their homes in the evening after a long day of work and continue to upload forms online until late into the night. “Quite often, the server does not work, and I upload forms at 4 in the morning to avoid this issue,” the 35-year-old said.

“I would get worried that my mobile phone’s battery will run out, so I would always keep plugging it in to charge whenever possible,” she added.

The BLOs’ biggest concern, she said, was to complete their work within the one-month deadline given by the ECI, a process for which she said they were not given proper training.

“It was just a two- [to] three-hour briefing in which we were told how to collect and upload data. That’s it,” the BLO in rural Lucknow said.

In Uttar Pradesh, the deadline to finish the SIR process has been extended twice: first to December 11, and then to December 26. The exercise ended in Tamil Nadu and Gujarat states on December 14, and will end in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Kerala, and Andaman and Nicobar on December 18.

Controversial exercise

The eastern state of Bihar was the first to go through a revision of its electoral rolls this year, after a gap of more than two decades. In July, the SIR was launched in Bihar before its legislative assembly elections in November, in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged for the first time as the single largest party.

In the run-up to the polls, Bihar’s opposition parties had demanded a rollback of the SIR, accusing the ECI of rushing through a mammoth electoral exercise that could render vast numbers of citizens unable to vote. In September, the ECI published its final voter list for Bihar, removing 4.7 million names from the rolls.

In Seemanchal, a Muslim-majority region in Bihar’s northeast, voter removals exceeded the state average, prompting allegations by opposition parties and Muslim groups that the ECI was especially targeting Muslim voters, who generally do not vote for the BJP, for removal.

The BJP’s thumping win in Bihar triggered accusations by the losing coalition of a “vote chori” (“chori” means stealing in Hindi). Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Indian National Congress party, last month called the SIR “a sinister plan of the Election Commission to destroy democracy”.

In response, Union Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah said in a speech in parliament that the real “vote chori” happened under Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi’s great-grandfather and grandmother who were also former Indian prime ministers.

As the political debate over the electoral exercise ramped up, it continued to destroy lives. In Bihar, at least two BLOs died during the revision of the electoral rolls.

On November 9, five days after the SIR was announced in a dozen other Indian states and federal territories, Namita Handa, a 50-year-old rural health worker, died of a stroke while she was on duty in West Bengal’s East Burdwan district. Her husband, Madhab Hansda, blamed the SIR workload for her sudden death.

On November 22, Rinku Tarafdar, a 53-year-old biology teacher recruited as a BLO, was found dead at her residence in Nadia district of West Bengal.

In her two-page suicide note, Tarafdar blamed the ECI. “I do not support any political party, but I cannot handle this inhumane pressure anymore”, she wrote, adding that she was threatened with an “administrative process” if she failed to do the required work.

At least four BLOs died during the SIR in West Bengal. On Monday, the ECI published a draft voter list for the state, which removed about 5.8 million people. The deleted names were marked as absent, shifted, dead or duplicate voters.

Sangeeta Rawat, the wife of Vijay Kumar Verma, talks to reporters in Lucknow after her husband’s death while he was working on the SIR [Sumaiya Ali/Al Jazeera]

‘Barely ate or slept’

Anuj Garg worked as a teacher in a government school in Dholpur city in the western state of Rajasthan. On the night of November 30, he fell to the ground while working at his laptop at his home and died of cardiac arrest. He was 44 and had two children.

“He asked for tea at around 1am, but by the time it came, we had lost him,” his sister, Anjana Garg, told Al Jazeera. “In the last month, he barely ate or slept. We only saw him working without a break.”

Anuj had previously worked as a BLO. But Anjana said the pressure this year was extraordinary. Despite working around the clock, he had received notices from his supervisors warning him to meet his targets, she said, adding that the death by suicide of another BLO in the state had added to his stress.

On the night of December 1, Sarvesh Singh, a 46-year-old BLO in Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad district, died by suicide while his wife and four daughters were sleeping in another room. Singh left a note and a final video, purportedly recorded by his wife.

“I failed in this election,” he said in the video, adding that he was losing his mental stability due to a lack of sleep and excessive pressure. In the note, he wrote: “I used to work day and night, but still could not finish my target.”

The ECI has rejected accusations of workloads leading to the deaths of dozens of BLOs across the country.

“The SIR work is very normal. It is not that the BLOs are doing it for the first time,” ECI spokesman Apurva Kumar Singh told Al Jazeera, calling the deaths unfortunate. He said the work was “not overburdening at all”, adding that the ECI was taking required action, without specifying what that action is.

The commission recently doubled the compensation for BLOs to 1,000 rupees ($11) in addition to their salaries, and announced an incentive of 6,000 rupees ($66) upon the completion of an election cycle.

Sapan Mondal, the general secretary of the Kolkata-based Election Staff and Booth Level Officer Forum, said the Election Commission provided no training to the BLOs before pushing them into the enormous exercise.

“When the BLO duty was assigned, nothing was provided, not even devices or data entry operators to help those who don’t know how to work online,” he told Al Jazeera.

As criticism mounted, the ECI on December 1 posted a video on its X account showing a group of BLOs dancing to “relieve their stress”.

The video added to the outrage. Social media users called the commission’s move insensitive. The ECI has not officially responded to the criticism.

Meanwhile, petitions have been filed in several courts against the SIR by opposition politicians, victims’ families and the Association for Democratic Reforms, a prominent watchdog on India’s election processes.

Many affected families said they have been waiting for government support after losing their loved ones, who were often their sole breadwinners.

“We want the money we spent on our father’s untimely death, and a government job for me. Are we asking for a lot?” Harshit asked as he held a 200,000-rupee ($2,200) cheque given to his family by the opposition Samajwadi Party.

If you or someone you know is at risk of suicide, these organisations may be able to help. In India, New Delhi-based Sumaitri (+91-11-23389090) and Chennai-based Sneha Foundation (+91-44-24640050) are important helplines.

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Naveed Akram, the surviving suspect in Sunday’s mass shooting at Bondi Beach in Sydney, has been charged with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder and one of committing a terrorist act, according to the New South Wales local court.

The other gunman, his father Sajid Akram, 50, was killed in an exchange of fire with police at the scene.

Fifteen people were killed and dozens of others were injured in the attack, which targeted Australia’s Jewish community at an event celebrating the first night of Hanukkah.

It was the country’s deadliest shooting since 1996.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated shortly.

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US President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a “blockade” of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela, increasing the pressure on Nicolas Maduro’s government.

Trump has not disclosed how his administration would block the sanctioned oil vessels, nor whether he will ask the Coast Guard to intercept vessels like last week.

The US has already deployed thousands of troops, nearly a dozen warships and an aircraft carrier in the Carribean.

“For the theft of our Assets, and many other reasons, including Terrorism, Drug Smuggling, and Human Trafficking, the Venezuelan Regime has been designated a FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“Therefore, today, I am ordering A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela.”

How has Venezuela reacted to Trump’s announcement?

Venezuela registered its protest to Trump’s move, which will have serious consequences for the country’s economy, and called the decision a “grotesque threat” in a statement.

Venezuelans in US want Maduro out but fear military action

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Caracas accused Trump of “violating international law, free trade, and the principle of free navigation” with “a reckless and grave threat” against the South American country.

“On his social media, he assumes that Venezuela’s oil, land, and mineral wealth are his property,” the government statement said of Trump’s post.

“Consequently, he demands that Venezuela immediately hand over all its riches. The President of the United States intends to impose, in an utterly irrational manner, a supposed naval blockade on Venezuela with the aim of stealing the wealth that belongs to our nation.”

Maduro’s government, according to the statement, plans to denounce Trump’s decision before the United Nations.

Rising tensions between the US and Venezuela

In the past few months, the US has launched more than two dozen military strikes on boats in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea near Venezuela, which have killed at least 90 people.

Target Venezuela: Drug war or US power grab?

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Trump has relentlessly threatened Venezuela and recently said that the US will soon start conducting land strikes on its territory.

While Trump has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stymie the flow of drugs into the US, Maduro has alleged that the US military build-up is aimed at overthrowing him and gaining control of the OPEC nation’s oil resources, which are the world’s largest crude reserves.

The US government has formally designated Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization, and said Maduro and other high-ranking Venezuelan officials have links to it.

The Trump administration has not provided any evidence for this claim.

Edited by: Elizabeth Schumacher

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Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has said revised US-brokered peace plans could be presented to Russia within days, following successful talks in Berlin.

The Ukrainian president left Germany confident that proposals negotiated with the US would soon be finalised after receiving crucial security guarantees from his European allies and Washington.

He said that American envoys were set to present the outcomes of this week’s talks to the Kremlin – but not before Russia could pour cold water on the plans.

Deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov reiterated that Moscow would not give back land to end the war, and would not accept any Nato peacekeepers stationed in a post-war Ukraine.

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Speaking in the Netherlands on Tuesday, Volodymyr Zelensky insisted that peace must not ‘become a reward for Russia’s aggression’ (ANP/AFP/Getty)

As Russia was accused of stalling efforts to end the conflict, hundreds of thousands of people were left without power in Ukraine following heavy bombardment nationwide.

The country’s deputy energy minister said early on Tuesday that the entire Donetsk region had been cut off following a Russian attack.

Nearly 290,000 people in Odesa were left in the dark, even after workers restored power to 330,000 homes.

Maxim Timchenko, head of Ukraine’s biggest energy provider, told the BBC that Russian strikes were now so frequent that “we just don’t have time to recover”.

President Zelensky told the Dutch parliament during his visit to The Hague that Russia was cynically and deliberately targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as winter set in.

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Russia continues to bombard Ukraine, including in Zaporizhzhia, leaving hundreds of thousands of homes without power (Reuters)

“They know that in our region, the winter cold can become one of the most dangerous weapons,” he said.

“They try to use it against Ukrainians, against just ordinary people, against normal life, and that’s why it’s so important not to relax or rely on diplomacy alone.”

Britain on Tuesday unveiled £600m in air defences to support Ukraine through the coming winter.

Defence minister John Healey said the air defence investment was “critical help to Ukrainians as they defend their towns, cities and energy infrastructure from Russia’s barbaric attacks”.

Returning from “productive” talks in Berlin, Sir Keir Starmer cautioned that the path to peace in Ukraine was still “not an entirely straight line”.

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Vladimir Putin has stuck firm to his demands for Ukrainian land, and rubbished European plans for peacekeepers (Sputnik)

The prime minister told his cabinet that there had been progress on Ukraine’s plea for clear security guarantees as European allies worked on a multinational force to be stationed in Ukraine after the war.

European officials also came together to set up an International Claims Commission tasked with ensuring Kyiv is compensated for damages from Russian attacks and alleged war crimes.

Details on how any damages awarded by the commission, to be based in the Netherlands, would be paid still need to be worked out.

Early discussions have touched on using Russian assets frozen by the EU, supplemented by member contributions.

Frozen assets remain a point of contention in the build-up to a major vote on Thursday, however.

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Zelenskyy and US special envoy Steve Witkoff held talks in Berlin on Monday (AP)

While many of Ukraine’s backers are pushing to unlock some €210bn (£184bn) in assets to help fund Kyiv, the plan faces opposition from the countries most at risk of Russian reprisals.

Four EU diplomats told Politico that new assurances to dilute legal liability had not been enough to sway Belgium, where most of the assets are held, during a meeting of EU ambassadors on Monday.

Mr Zelensky told reporters in the Netherlands that Ukraine could not stay strong without the package, adding that it could offset the reduction in support from some countries.

Allies on the continent turned their attention to securing Europe’s eastern flank during a summit in Helsinki, where they called on the EU to take a bigger role in enhancing defence and security.

The EU “eastern flank” meeting, bringing together leaders from Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, said the region’s defences must be prioritised to counter what they called a long-term threat posed by Russia.

Polish prime minister Donald Tusk stressed the need for defences, saying leaders were considering spending billions on an “anti-drone wall” in eastern Europe.

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NEED TO KNOW

• A driver crashed a car into a Kroger in Athens, Ga., near the University of Georgia on Tuesday, Dec. 16
• Four people were injured in the incident, though they are all expected to survive the crash
• The cause of the crash is unknown at this time

A driver crashed a car into a Kroger in Athens, Ga., mere miles from the University of Georgia, on the morning of Tuesday, Dec. 16.

Photos from the store, located on Alps Road, show a silver Toyota driven through the self-checkout area with various items scattered on the floor, though the vehicle does not appear to be severely damaged, according to CBS Atlanta.

Four people were injured in the crash, per the outlet.

“It is an active investigation, and the individuals who were injured are being treated for non-life-threatening injuries,” the Athens-Clarke County Police Department said in a statement to CBS Atlanta.

PEOPLE has reached out to the ACCPD for comment. The cause of the crash remains unconfirmed at this time.

“The safety and security of our associates and customers is our top priority,” a Kroger spokesperson said in a statement to the outlet. “Our thoughts are with those impacted and their families, and we are grateful to the first responders for their swift response.”

PEOPLE has reached out to Kroger for comment.

“I was down close to the pharmacy area where it all happened. I think I was on aisle 23. So, car came to a stop about 25 to 30 feet from where I was at,” Kroger customer Cody Johnson told local outlet 11 Alive. “I couldn’t tell what was going on and I turned the corner and I saw where the vehicle had entered through that glass window there next to the pharmacy. It kind of took out all of the self-checkout aisles.”

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Johnson told 11 Alive that a Kroger employee was pinned between the car, a self-checkout register and a kiosk.

Police have not identified the driver, CBS Atlanta reports.

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