US President Joe Biden unveiled his administration's plans Tuesday to build a national network of electric vehicle (EV) chargers.

"It is going to help ensure that America leads the world in electric vehicles. China has been leading that race up to now, but this is about to change, because America is building convenient, reliable, equitable national public charging networks," he said at a White House news conference.

"Wherever you live, charging an electric vehicle would be quick and easy, and this foundation will help American automakers set the pace for electric vehicles, which means even more good paying jobs, producing materials, batteries and parts," he said.

Biden added that the move will also help save billions of gallons of gasoline, tackle the climate crisis and could save an average driver who chooses an EV up to $1,000 per year.

He noted that nearly 600,000 federal government vehicles across the US will end up being electric.

The White House said major US companies, including Intel, General Motors and Boeing have announced more than $200 billion investments in domestic manufacturing of semiconductors, electric vehicles, aircraft and batteries since 2021.

The Biden administration's move comes as Australian fast charger manufacturer, Tritium, broke ground on its first US manufacturing facility in Tennessee.

The facility will have six production lines to produce more than 10,000 DC fast charger units per year, with the potential to produce approximately 30,000 units per year at peak capacity, and create 500 local jobs in the next five years, the company said in a statement.

Tritium was listed Jan. 14 on the Nasdaq. Its stock price gained more than 40% as of 2.50 p.m. EDT./aa

The US arrested a couple in New York City on Tuesday for laundering cryptocurrency worth approximately $4.5 billion that was allegedly stolen from an exchange in 2016.

The Justice Department said in a statement that law enforcement seized more than $3.6 billion in cryptocurrency linked to that hack from the Bitfinex exchange.

"Today’s arrests, and the department’s largest financial seizure ever, show that cryptocurrency is not a safe haven for criminals,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco in the same statement.

Monaco said the couple laundered stolen funds through a labyrinth of cryptocurrency transactions.

"Thanks to the meticulous work of law enforcement, the department once again showed how it can and will follow the money, no matter what form it takes," she said.

Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife, Heather Morgan, 31, allegedly conspired to launder the proceeds of 119,754 bitcoin that were stolen from Bitfinex’s platform after a hacker breached Bitfinex’s systems and initiated more than 2,000 unauthorized transactions.

"Over the last five years, approximately 25,000 of those stolen bitcoin were transferred out of Lichtenstein’s wallet via a complicated money laundering process that ended with some of the stolen funds being deposited into financial accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan," according to the statement.

The couple is scheduled to make their initial appearances in federal court at 3 p.m. ET Tuesday in Manhattan./aa

The World Health Organization said Tuesday it plans to continue supporting hospitals and healthcare facilities in opposition-held northwest Syria and bring relief to the over 4 million people living in the conflict zone.

The WHO was asked by Anadolu Agency about civilians in Syria forcibly displaced by the Bashar al-Assad regime and its supporters deprived of hospital services after international aid groups cut their assistance to 18 hospitals in and around the northwestern province of Idlib.

"The Health Cluster for northwest Syria, led by WHO, received reports about some hospitals which will cease functioning due to a lack of financial resources," said the WHO in a written statement.

"WHO plans to continue to support hospitals and health care facilities inside northwest Syria and to bring relief to the over 4 million people that are living in the ongoing conflict-zone."

The world health group said it and its partners are actively seeking funds to counteract the recent closing down of several hospitals it supports in northwest Syria.

Hospitals attacked

As the Syrian civil war continues to rage in its 11th year, the regime and its backers have attacked hundreds of hospitals.

Hundreds of health workers lost their lives in these attacks, while many health centers became inoperable after international support for healthcare organizations was cut off.

In Idlib, tens of thousands of civilians are now deprived of hospital services, as the province suffers from a shortage of healthcare facilities and drugs.

Healthcare workers and locals stress the need for international assistance to resume for hospitals to reopen and treatment to continue.

Ahmet Abu Hussein, who was displaced by regime attacks on the district of Maarat al-Numan in southern Idlib, told Anadolu Agency that many people are suffering in poverty,

He said they did not have money to seek private medical care or even purchase needed medicine.

Calling on aid organizations that have halted financial support to hospitals in Idlib, Abu Hussein underlined the need to speak out and to consider the situation of forcibly displaced civilians.

"The weather is cold. Hospitals are closing, as if the suffering of people living in tents amid the difficult winter conditions is not enough," he said.

Fatma Hariri, also displaced from Maarat al-Numan, said she had no means to go to a private hospital and did not know what to do.

"We lost everything we had ... I hope the hospitals start receiving support again," she said.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency on Saturday, Salem Abdane, Idlib's health director, said that international aid organizations had cut their financial and logistics support for 18 hospitals in the province and warned that health care is at risk of collapse./aa

US-based international pharmaceutical company Pfizer estimates a total of $54 billion revenue from its COVID-19 vaccine and oral pill sales this year, according to its financial results statement released Tuesday.

The company said it expects approximately $32 billion from vaccine doses to be delivered under its contracts signed as of late January.

An additional $22 billion revenue is expected from the company's antiviral coronavirus oral treatment pill Paxlovid.

Pfizer saw its revenue rise to $23.8 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021, soaring 105% from $11.6 billion in the same period of the previous year.

For the full year of 2021, revenue almost doubled to $81.3 billion from $41.6 billion in 2020, the financial results statement showed./aa

The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday is hearing the petitions filed by five girls studying in a Government Pre-university College in Udupi, questioning hijab restriction in college.

Hatred for Muslims has been “normalised” in the country which “no longer celebrates its diversity”, alleged National Conference leader Omar Abdullah on Tuesday as protests for and against ‘hijab’ intensified at colleges in parts of Karnataka.

He was commenting on a video that has surfaced on social media showing some men sporting saffron scarves heckling a woman in ‘hijab’ and raising slogans at a college in Karnataka.

“How brave these men are and how macho they must feel while targeting a lone young lady! Hatred for Muslims has been completely mainstreamed and normalised in India today,” Abdullah said in a tweet tagging the video with it.

Tension prevailed at some educational institutions in Karnataka’s Udupi, Shivamogga, Bagalkote and other parts over the ‘Hijab’ issue, forcing the police and authorities to intervene.

The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday is hearing the petitions filed by five girls studying in a Government Pre-university College in Udupi, questioning hijab restriction in college.

The issue began in January at a government PU College in Udupi where six students who attended classes wearing headscarves were asked to leave the campus.

The matter has now spread to different parts of the state, with Hindu youngsters, backed by right-wing outfits, responding by wearing saffron scarves.

Students wearing saffron scarves are also being barred from classes.

The row has also taken a political colour, as the ruling BJP stood in support of uniform-related rules being enforced by educational institutions while the opposition Congress alleged the ‘hijab’ controversy is part of a conspiracy to poison the minds of the young people./ Indian express 

Muslim girls wearing hijab are being barred from attending classes at some schools in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, triggering weeks of protests by students

 When the students were barred last month from entering their classrooms and told not to wear hijab, a headscarf used by Muslim women, they began camping outside the all-girls high school.

The story cascaded across the internet, drawing news crews to the front of the government-run school in Udupi district, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka.

Battle lines were swiftly drawn. The students began protesting outside the school gate and sat huddled in a group, reading their lessons. The school staff, which said the students were defying uniform rules, remained unmoved.

A month on, more schools have begun implementing a similar ban on hijabs, forcing the state’s top court to step in. It will hear petitions filed by the protesting students on Tuesday and rule on whether to overturn the ban.

But the uneasy standoff has raised fears among the state's Muslim students who say they are being deprived of their religious rights. On Monday, hundreds of them, including their parents, took to the streets against the restrictions, demanding that students should be allowed to attend classes even if they are wearing hijab.

“What we are witnessing is a form of religious apartheid. The decree is discriminatory and it disproportionately affects Muslim women," said A. H. Almas, an 18-year-old student who has been part of the weeks-long protests.

So far several meetings between the staff, government representatives and the protesting students have failed to resolve the issue. The state’s education minister, B. C. Nagesh, has also refused to lift the ban. He told reporters Sunday that “those unwilling to follow uniform dress code can explore other options.”

For many Muslim women, the hijab is part of their Islamic faith. It has for decades been a source of controversy in some western countries, particularly in France, which in 2004 banned it from being worn in public schools. But in India, where Muslims make up almost 14% of the country’s near 1.4 billion people, it is neither banned nor is its use restricted in public places.

In fact, women wearing hijab are a common sight in India, and for many of them, it symbolizes religious identity and is a matter of personal choice.

Because the debate involves alleged bias over a religious item worn to cover hair and maintain modesty, some rights activists have voiced concerns that the decree risks raising Islamophobia. Violence and hate speech against Muslims have increased under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist party, which also governs the Karnataka state.

“Singling out hijab for criticism is unfair and discriminatory. Those opposing it are on record decrying secularism and for openly espousing majoritarianism,” said Zakia Soman, founder of a Muslim women’s group, the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan.

Others contend it underscores the potential isolation and marginalization of Muslims who feel Modi and his Hindu nationalist party are slowly isolating them, compounding an already growing unease felt by the minority community, in a multicultural country that has guarantees of religious freedom enshrined in its constitution.

“What we are seeing is an attempt to invisibilize Muslim women and push them out of public spaces,” said Afreen Fatima, a New Delhi-based student activist. She said the ban is the culmination of a growing climate of hate against Muslims “which has now manifested itself in the physical realm.”

The protests have drawn public condemnation, with the hashtag #HijabIsOurRight circulating widely on social media, but also led to a rather unexpected pushback.

For the last week, some Hindu students in the state have started wearing Saffron-coloured shawls, a symbol of Hindu nationalist groups. They have also chanted praises to Hindu gods, while protesting against the Muslim girls’ choice of headgear, signifying India's growing religious faultlines and bitter tensions between the country’s Hindu majority and its large Muslim minority.

The events have prompted the state government to ban clothes it said “disturb equality, integrity and public order" and some high schools to declare a holiday to avoid communal trouble.

On Monday one of the schools yielded partially and allowed its Muslim students to attend class with a hijab but made them sit in separate classrooms. The move was heavily criticized, with Muslim students alleging the staff of segregating them on the basis of faith.

“It is humiliating," said Almas. “How long are we going to accept that citizens can be stigmatized because of their religion?”/AP

Hindu worshippers from across India gather each morning to pray in Ayodhya, near where a historic mosque was torn down three decades ago by religious zealots -- triggering inter-faith riots that killed thousands of people.

The demolition of the centuries-old Babri Masjid shook the country's secular foundations and paved the way for the rise of Hindu nationalism as its dominant political force.

Workers are now erecting a Hindu shrine where the mosque once stood, and Muslims fear a coming election in India's most populous state could see such endeavours repeated elsewhere.

"This is no ordinary temple," Anil Mishra, a member of the trust overseeing the construction project, told AFP.

"This is a national temple that carries the emotions and feelings of the masses."

In a cordoned off area nearby, a crowd of devotees chant mantras to Ram, one of the most worshipped deities in the Hindu pantheon, who is said to have been born at the site thousands of years ago.

Prime minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party was instrumental in campaigning against the mosque, built by the Muslim Mughal dynasty which ruled much of the Indian subcontinent centuries ago.

Since its 1992 destruction, the party has enthusiastically backed the construction of a temple to Ram in its stead and the rejuvenation of several other religious sites.

It is now banking on efforts to style itself as the custodian of India's majority faith to secure re-election in Uttar Pradesh when the state of more than 200 million people votes in marathon seven-week polls starting Thursday.

'They have jailed young Muslims'

Political analysts say Uttar Pradesh is a petri dish for hardline Hindu governance and the blunt edge of the BJP's efforts to refashion secular India into a Hindu nation.

Its chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, has been accused of encouraging vigilante violence against the state's Muslim population and introducing discriminatory laws to marginalise the community.

The saffron-robed hardliner, 49, is known for his inflammatory religious rhetoric and is considered a possible successor to Modi, more than two decades his senior.

His administration has introduced a law to make interfaith marriages more difficult and closed Muslim-run slaughterhouses to protect cows -- a sacred animal in Hinduism -- while critics say it has turned a blind eye to mob violence directed at those accused of eating beef.

The city of Mathura, near the capital New Delhi, is popularly held to be the birthplace of Krishna -- another senior god -- and Hindu hardliners claim another Mughal-era mosque there was partially built over a temple to the deity.

Comments from senior BJP figures have foreshadowed another looming religious confrontation in the city.

"Grand temple construction ongoing in Ayodhya...(now) getting ready for Mathura," Yogi's deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya said last month.

Muslims in the city are already angry after years of discrimination under the BJP and fearful of what another election victory could bring.

"They have jailed young Muslims for treason, are stopping us from eating what we want and have compounded our job losses by shutting meat shops and restaurants," said resident Mohammad Yameen.

'National pride and self-respect'

Uttar Pradesh has struggled through India's recent economic downturn, with widespread unemployment in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

But the BJP has managed to galvanise support from legions of the Hindu faithful who have praised the party for delivering on its promise to build the Ayodhya temple.

"We are really happy and hope that it is a grand structure," said Kusum Gupta, 59, a pilgrim who travelled more than 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) to visit the site.

Champat Rai, another member of the trust managing the temple work, said its construction was the culmination of "500 years of struggle" and rivalled India's independence from the British in national significance.

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The temple will be "a symbol of national pride and self-respect", Rai told AFP, adding that the mosque's demolition had symbolically cast off the historical shackles of Muslim rule during the Mughal dynasty.

"No other country in the world keeps the symbols of its slavery alive," he said.

An army of construction workers have toiled around the clock since Modi laid the foundation stone at a ceremony 18 months ago.

One of them, 23-year-old Manikandan, told AFP it was the "luckiest day" of his life when he was asked to help build the temple.

"What else could you ask for as a Hindu?"/ AFP

Facebook and Instagram's parent firm may shut them down in Europe unless data sharing is approved by regulators, US-based global social networking service Meta warned Monday.

"We are subject to evolving laws and regulations that dictate whether, how, and under what circumstances we can transfer, process and/or receive certain data that is critical to our operations, including data shared between countries or regions in which we operate and data shared among our products and services," it said in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

"If we are unable to transfer data between and among countries and regions in which we operate, or if we are restricted from sharing data among our products and services, it could affect our ability to provide our services, the manner in which we provide our services or our ability to target ads, which could adversely affect our financial results," it added.

EU law requires that European citizens’ data should be processed on servers located in Europe only, and not elsewhere.

In 2020 Ireland’s Data Protection Commission sent Facebook an order to stop transferring user data from the EU to the US. The national authority responsible for data privacy is expected to make a final decision on the issue during the first half of this year.

The European Court of Justice, in addition, also ruled that year that data transfer between the EU and US fails to protect European citizens’ privacy. The EU’s highest legal authority also restricted how American firms can send European users' data to the US.

"If a new transatlantic data transfer framework is not adopted and we are unable to continue to rely on SCCs (standard contractual clauses) or rely upon other alternative means of data transfers from Europe to the United States, we will likely be unable to offer a number of our most significant products and services, including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe, which would materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations," Meta said in its filing./aa

Thousands of Moroccans on Monday paid farewell to a 5-year-old child, who died in a well in northern Morocco last week.

Rayan Awram fell and died in a 32-meter-deep well last week in the village of Ighran after being trapped for five days. Rescuers managed to retrieve his body on Saturday in a tragedy that brought wide sympathy around the world.

Mourners gathered in the house of Rayan’s grandfather in the village before marching to the cemetery to bury the boy according to Muslim rituals.

Security forces were deployed in the area in an effort to maintain calm during the funeral procession.

Activists across the Arab world flooded social media platforms with messages of support and solidarity with Rayan's family and rescuers, who spent days digging to save him from the well./aa