December 29, 2022

*) Thousands of flights cancelled as US digs out from deadly superstorm Thousands of travellers are still stranded at airports across the US due to flight cancellations and delays caused by the deadly winter storm. Around 28-hundred flights were cancelled on Wednesday while almost half that number were delayed. Most of those cancellations were from Southwest Airlines. The number of deaths attributed to the storm, dubbed the “blizzard of the century”, has risen to at least 56. *) Live blog: Ukraine sees 'difficult year ahead' as Russia rejects peace plan Moscow says that no “peace plan” can exist for Ukraine if it does not accept its annexation of Luhansk and Donetsk in the east, and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south. Ukraine has been pushing a 10-point peace plan that envisages Russia fully respecting Ukraine's territorial integrity and pulling out all its troops. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address that he saw “a difficult year ahead”. *) Global alarm grows as Covid infections surge in China The United States has become the latest country to impose restrictions on visitors from China, requiring negative Covid tests for all travellers from the mainland. The decision was a response to Beijing’s decision to end mandatory quarantine on arrival, prompting many Chinese citizens to make plans to travel abroad. Hospitals across China have been overwhelmed by an explosion of Covid cases following Beijing's decision to lift strict rules that had largely kept the virus at bay but tanked its economy and sparked widespread protests. *) Turkish, Russian, Syrian defence ministers discuss Syria crisis in Moscow Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar has met the Syrian regime’s defence minister in Moscow for the first time in more than a decade, in a meeting mediated by Russia’s Defence Ministry. They discussed the war in Syria, the refugee crisis and efforts to fight all terrorist groups in the country. The Turkish Defence Ministry said the meeting, the first in a seri