DolphinMath

SHAMBHU, India, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Thousands of protesting Indian farmers facing off with security forces have come under the protection of the Nihang Sikhs, a warrior sect dating back to the 1600s distinguished by their ink-blue robes and ancient weapons such as swords and spears.

The farmers, who are also mainly Sikhs and who hail from the northern state of Punjab, are demanding higher prices for their crops, and began marching to the capital Delhi earlier this month to press their demands to the government.

SYDNEY, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Chinese police are working in the remote atoll nation of Kiribati, a Pacific Ocean neighbour of Hawaii, with uniformed officers involved in community policing and a crime database program, Kiribati officials told Reuters.

Kiribati has not publicly announced the policing deal with China, which comes as Beijing renews a push to expand security ties in the Pacific Islands in an intensifying rivalry with the United States.

Police arrested three men accused of selling thousands of pills of meth-laced “Adderall” on various darknet marketplaces and mailing them through the United States Postal Service through a fictitious business called “Professional Paper Filing Inc.” that listed a real return address of an uninvolved business. That business then told police that it was repeatedly getting packages of pills in the mail as "return to sender."

The men face a maximum possible penalty of life imprisonment.

Reddit said in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission that its users’ posts are “a valuable source of conversation data and knowledge” that has been and will continue to be an important mechanism for training AI and large language models. The filing also states that the company believes “we are in the early stages of monetizing our user base,” and proceeds to say that it will continue to sell users’ content to companies that want to train LLMs and that it will also begin “increased use of artificial intelligence in our advertising solutions.”

On Wednesday, Reuters reported that Reddit has entered a contract with Google, which will license its content for $60 million a year in order to train Google’s AI models.

A U.N. relief worker alleged by Israel to have participated in the Oct. 7 attacks was captured on video that day removing the limp body of an Israeli man who had been shot at Kibbutz Beeri and driving off with it, according to information released Friday by Israeli authorities.

Israel told the United Nations Relief and Works Agency last month that Faisal Ali Musalam Naami, 45, and 11 other UNRWA employees participated in or lent support to the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel that precipitated Israel’s war in the besieged Palestinian territory. Israeli authorities have said Hamas and allied gunmen killed 1,200 Israelis and took some 253 people hostage back in Gaza.

Two people were killed and four were wounded in a shooting attack in southern Israel on Friday.

According to the police, the attacker emerged from a car carrying Israeli license plates at the Re'em-Masmyyia junction and fired a gun at a nearby bus station.

The police's Central District Commander Avi Bitton says the attacker was shot to death by a civilian armed with a gun who drove by the site of the attack.

The agency has 72 hours to leave the country, marking a “drastic hardening” of conditions inside the South American nation.

A United Nations agency that monitors and defends human rights was ordered on Thursday to leave Venezuela by the government of President Nicolás Maduro, an extraordinary move that will further strip the country of foreign oversight at a time when its government stands accused of intensifying repression.

The announcement by Yván Gil, the foreign minister, comes just days after the detention and disappearance of Rocío San Miguel, a prominent security expert and human rights advocate.

Summary:

• Egypt setting up area as contingency measure sources

• Cairo has repeatedly rejected any transfer of Palestinians

• Egypt denies making any such contingency preparations

• Israel plans to attack Rafah, where over 1 mln people shelter

• Israel says it plans to evacuate people to other parts of Strip

Gaza’s hospitals have emerged as a focal point in Israel’s war with Hamas, with each side citing how the other has pulled the facilities into the conflict as proof of the enemy’s disregard for the safety of civilians.

In four months of war, Israeli troops have entered several hospitals, including the Qatari Hospital, Kamal Adwan Hospital and Al-Rantisi Specialized Hospital for Children, to search for weapons and fighters. But Al-Shifa Hospital has taken on particular significance because it is Gaza’s largest medical facility, and because of Israel’s high-profile claims that Hamas leaders operated a command-and-control center beneath it. Hamas and the hospital’s staff, meanwhile, insisted it was only a medical center.

DOHA/JERUSALEM, Feb 12 (Reuters) - Israel launched a special forces operation that freed two Israeli hostages in Rafah amid air strikes early on Monday, which local health officials said killed 37 people and wounded dozens in the southern Gaza city.

A joint operation by the Israel Defence Force (IDF), Israel's domestic Shin Bet security service and the Special Police Unit in Rafah freed Fernando Simon Marman, 60, and Louis Hare, 70, the Israeli military said.

The two men were kidnapped by Hamas from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak on Oct. 7, the military said.

NEW DELHI, Feb 12 (Reuters) - Shayara Bano heaved a sigh of relief on Wednesday at the enactment of a law banning polygamy in her small Indian state, the culmination of a years-long effort including her own case before the nation's Supreme Court.

"I can now say that my battle against age-old Islamic rules on marriage and divorce has been won," said Bano, a Muslim woman whose husband chose to have two wives and divorced her by uttering "talaq" three times.

"Islam's allowance for men to have two or more wives at the same time had to end," she told Reuters.

ISLAMABAD, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Two explosions near electoral candidates' offices in Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan killed 26 people and wounded dozens on Wednesday, officials said, raising concerns over security on the eve of a general election.

Pakistan goes to the polls on Thursday amid rising militant attacks and the jailing of Imran Khan, the winner of the last national election, who has been dominating the headlines despite an economic crisis and other woes threatening the nuclear-armed country.