At least 11 hikers died over the weekend in the mountain range north of Tehran when a series of avalanches were triggered by blizzards and heavy snowfall, Iran’s Red Crescent rescue group said.

The rescue efforts, which began on Friday when the first two deaths were reported, intensified over the weekend as more were reported missing.

State television broadcast footage of the helicopter rescue mission searching for bodies and survivors on the Tochal and Kolakchal peaks; as well as Red Crescent personnel carrying a body on a stretcher along a snowy mountainside.

Ten people had been killed on the mountain and one died in hospital after being rescued, Mehdi Valipour, head of emergency operations at Iran’s Red Crescent, was quoted as saying by state broadcaster IRIB.

Tehran lies at the foot of the Alborz mountain range, a popular weekend attraction for hiking and climbing. According to state TV, the avalanches struck in four different areas.

The Iranian Red Crescent said the rescue efforts were complicated by the bad weather.

On Friday, Iranian media reported that more than 100 people were estimated to be stuck in the avalanche.

Shahin Fathi, the managing director of the Red Crescent, told BBC Persian that as of Saturday, families were still reporting seven people missing.

“We may still have injuries in the Kolakchal area, but there are no exact statistics," said Mr Fathi on Sunday.

The Mountaineering Meteorological channel on Telegram warned people in Tehran not to go to the mountains because of the possibility of an avalanche in Alborz.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The man believed to be responsible for the Christmas Day bombing that tore through downtown Nashville blew himself up in the explosion, and appears to have acted alone, federal officials said Sunday.

Investigators used DNA and other evidence to link the man, identified as Anthony Quinn Warner, to the mysterious explosion but said they have not determined a motive. Officials have received hundreds of tips and leads, but have concluded that no one other than Warner is believed to have been involved in the early morning explosion that damaged dozens of buildings and injured three people.

"Nashville is considered safe,” said Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake. “There are no known threats against this city.”

In publicly identifying the suspect and his fate, officials disclosed a major breakthrough in their investigation even as they acknowledged the lingering mystery behind the explosion, which took place on a holiday morning well before downtown streets were bustling with activity and was accompanied by a recorded announcement warning anyone nearby that a bomb would soon detonate.

Then, for reasons that may never be known, the audio switched to a recording of Petula Clark’s 1964 hit “Downtown” shortly before the blast.

Investigators have not uncovered a singular motive for the act nor was it revealed why Warner had selected the particular location for the bombing, which damaged an AT&T building and has continued to wreak havoc on cellphone service and police and hospital communications in several Southern states as the company worked to restore service.

Authorities said Warner, 63, was not known to law enforcement before the Christmas blast.

Warner, who public records show had experience with electronics and alarms and who had also worked as a computer consultant for a Nashville realtor, had been regarded as a person of interest in the bombing since at least Saturday when federal and local investigators converged on a home in suburban Nashville linked to him.

Federal agents could be seen looking around the property, searching the home and the backyard. A Google Maps image captured in May 2019 had shown a recreational vehicle similar to the one that exploded parked in the backyard, but it was not at the property on Saturday, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.

On Sunday morning, police formally named Warner as being under investigation.

Officials said their identification of Warner relied on several key pieces of evidence, including DNA found at the explosion site. Investigators had previously revealed that human remains had been found in the vicinity.

In addition, investigators from the Tennessee Highway Patrol recovered parts from the RV among the wreckage from the blast, and were able to link the vehicle identification number to an RV that was registered to Warner, officials said.

“We’re still following leads, but right now there is no indication that any other persons were involved,” said Douglas Korneski, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Memphis field office. “We’ve reviewed hours of security video surrounding the recreation vehicle. We saw no other people involved.”

Police were responding to a report of shots fired Friday when they encountered the RV blaring a recorded warning that a bomb would detonate in 15 minutes. Suddenly the warning stopped, and Clark’s hit, “Downtown,” started playing.

The RV exploded shortly afterward, sending black smoke and flames billowing from the heart of downtown Nashville’s tourist scene, an area packed with honky-tonks, restaurants and shops.

Buildings shook and windows shattered streets away from the explosion near a building owned by AT&T that lies one block from the company’s office tower, a landmark in downtown.

Forensic analysts were reviewing evidence collected from the blast site to try to identify the components of the explosives as well as information from the U.S. Bomb Data Center for intelligence and investigative leads, according to a law enforcement official who said investigators were examining Warner’s digital footprint and financial history, as well as a recent deed transfer of the home they searched in suburban Nashville.

The official, who was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, said federal agents were examining a number of potential leads and pursuing several theories, including the possibility that the AT&T building was targeted.

Korneski said Sunday that officials were looking at any and all motives and were interviewing acquaintances of Warner’s to try to determine what may have motivated him.

Meanwhile, just blocks from where the bombing took place, tourists had already begun to fill the sidewalks Sunday on Lower Broadway, a central entertainment district. Some took selfies while others tried to get as close as possible to the explosion site, blocked by police barricades.

Earlier Sunday, the officers who responded provided harrowing details, at times getting choked up reliving the moments that led up to the blast.

“This is going to tie us together forever, for the rest of my life,” Officer James Wells, who suffered some hearing loss due to the explosion, told reporters at a news conference. “Christmas will never be the same.”

Officer Brenna Hosey said she and her colleagues knocked on six or seven doors in nearby apartments to warn people to evacuate. She particularly remembered a startled mother of four children.

“I don’t have kids but I have cousins and nieces, people who I love who are small,” Hosey said, adding she had to plead with the family to leave the building as quickly as possible.

When we think of Egypt we think of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Standing 455 feet tall, the largest of the Giza pyramids was built by the Pharaoh Khufu in the third millennium B.C., and has been a must-see tourist destination for the past 2,500 years. The popularity of this ancient tomb is matched only by the bafflement it inspires in its beholders. For hundreds of years, scientists and archaeologists have speculated about the ancient technologies used to build such a large structure. Some have even speculated it was built by aliens. But now, a chance discovery by a curatorial assistant at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland may help answer the question “How did they build the Pyramids?”

Towards the end of 2019, when curatorial assistant Abeer Eladany was reviewing objects in storage in the museum’s Asia Collection, she came across a small, unusually decorated cigar box. An Egyptian herself, Eladany immediately noticed her country’s former flag on the box’s exterior and knew that it had no business in the Asia Collection. “Once I looked into the numbers in our Egypt records,” she said in a university press release, “I instantly knew what it was, and that it had effectively been hidden in plain sight in the wrong collection.”

Inside the box Eladany found a 5-inch piece of cedar broken into three pieces. This (formerly intact) unassuming piece of wood was one of only three items—provocatively known as the ‘Dixon relics’—that were removed from the Queen’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid in the 19th century. The other two (a ball and hook), are housed in the British Museum. For the past 70 years, however, the wooden ‘relic’ was lost.

The Dixon relics were taken from the Queen’s Chamber by Waynman Dixon, an engineer who explored the Great Pyramid in 1872. Their “discovery” by Dixon was widely reported by British newspapers. At the time it was obvious that the items were of great significance: a December 1872 issue of The Graphic wrote that “the position in which [the relics] were left shows that they must have been left there whilst the work was going on, and at an early period of its construction.” The relics, the article optimistically speculated, could provide evidence “as to the correctness of the many theories formed by Sir Isaac Newton and others as to the weights and measures in use by the builders of the pyramids.”

Unfortunately, when the wood was donated to the University of Aberdeen by the family of one of Dixon’s associate’s, it was never properly classified, and it vanished into the archives. “The University’s collections are vast,” said Eladany, “running to hundreds of thousands of items—so looking for it has been like finding a needle in a haystack. I couldn’t believe it when I realized what was inside this innocuous-looking cigar tin.”

Carbon dating of the fragment, which was delayed due to restrictions introduced during the pandemic, reveals that wood dates to 3341-3094 B.C., roughly 500 years earlier than the Great Pyramid itself. The early date rules out the possibility that the wood had been left there by later visitors to the tomb. If anything, Neil Curtis, the Head of Museums and Special Collections, said “it is even older than we imagined.” This might be because of the scarcity of trees in ancient Egypt or it might suggest that wood was cut “from the center of a long-lived tree.” Alternatively, it might have been deliberately deposited there as a way for the pharaoh “to emphasize continuity with the past by having antiquities buried with [him].”

It is certainly true that the cedar fragments once formed part of a larger piece of wood that remains inside the Great Pyramid. That larger wooden piece was captured on camera in 1993, when the interior of the pyramid was explored using a robotic camera. As for what the wood can tell us about the construction of the pyramid, scholarship inches ever closer to the truth. We already know that the stones used to construct the Great Pyramid were mined from a nearby quarry and transported across the desert on large sledges. In order to reduce friction and ease the passage of the blocks, workers slightly dampened the sand in front of the sledges. The precise alignment of the Great Pyramid to true north has led one engineer to suggest that the Egyptians used ropes and star gazing to construct their pyramids.

As for the Dixon relics, they may help scientists answer the big question: how was the pyramid itself constructed? In the 1680s Sir Isaac Newton spent considerable time trying to deduce the unit of measure used to make Pyramids. His unpublished notes on the subject were recently auctioned at Sotheby’s. Given that the Dixon relics have long been presented as construction tools, it’s possible that the wood pieces once formed part of a measuring stick or a leveraging system. This does not, of course, prove Newton’s theory that the measurements of the Pyramids could help him predict the end of the world.

What is clear is that no matter what Ancient Aliens or misinformed Israeli politicians have said: the pyramids weren’t built either by aliens or by the enslaved Israelites mentioned in Exodus. These theories merely reflect the fact that when confronted with what is, arguably, the greatest wonder of the world it is difficult to imagine how human beings could possibly have built such a thing.

Daily Beast.

With the rollout of vaccines, the COVID-19 cloud over the economy should lift sometime around summer.

Ideally, between now and then, the foundation for sustainable private sector growth would be put in place. Unfortunately, the instincts of President-elect Joe Biden and his team of economic advisers are in different directions.

Here is what such a foundation would consist of.

What the post-COVID economy needs

Liquid capital investment markets. Flexible labor markets. Reasonable and consistent tax policies. Reasonable and consistent regulatory policies. Sound money. And stable government finances.

Biden’s announced policy preferences are contrary to each and every one of these foundational pillars. And he has assembled a team of economic tinkerers, not foundation builders.

Front-line health care workers: If COVID-19 kills me, take care of my dog

In the view of Biden and his team, the role of government isn’t to establish the foundation for sustained private sector economic growth and then allow markets to find their own paths. Instead, the role of government is to drive, direct and manage the private economy through macroeconomic policies, both fiscal and monetary.

What Biden will do instead

Biden wants to increase taxes on corporations. He also wants to increase taxes on the wealthy, both income and capital gains. All of which reduces the pool of investment capital, as well as its potential returns. Investment capital is what fuels private sector economic growth.

His platform included a blizzard of new regulatory initiatives, covering the gambit from energy to labor. A closely divided Senate will make it difficult to pass legislation implementing much of this, so the Biden administration is likely to push the edges of its executive authority.

Which will invite litigation and create regulatory uncertainty, which was a major reason economic growth was so sluggish during Barack Obama’s second term.

It's a bipartisan budget blowout

In response to COVID-19, there has been a bipartisan blowout of the federal budget. Deficits have been at eye-watering levels not seen in peacetime.

Now that there will be a Democrat in the White House, congressional Republicans will undoubtedly redeploy their feigned alarm over debt and deficits. But, even if they retain marginal control of the Senate, they won’t be calling the shots.

Biden has a big spending agenda. There’s no chance that there will be movement toward putting federal government finances on a more responsible and sustainable footing by summer. If anything, the uncertainty inherent in a federal government spending trillions more than it collects in revenue, with no plans to bring them into better alignment, will hang even more heavily over the private sector economy.

Biden’s tinkerers don’t think the job is to establish a solid foundation and then get out of the way. They believe that the job of the federal government is to continuously finetune the economy, smoothing out market fluctuations.

That, however, is beyond government’s ken. And the effort means a steady overhang of uncertainty, while predictability and consistency are what foster private sector economic growth.

The Fed is compounding the problem

Unfortunately, the Fed is also in the hands of tinkerers these days. And enablers.

The Fed is largely financing the debt the federal government is racking up. It is continuing its buying spree of treasury and mortgage debt. It promises low interest rates into perpetuity. That creates froth in asset prices.

No one knows what the consequences will be or when they will manifest themselves. But that’s not establishing sound money as a foundational pillar for private sector economic growth.

As vaccinations roll out, there will undoubtedly be a surge in economic activity, as people feel safer engaging in interactions of all kinds.

Don't expect a rapid economic recovery

I doubt, however, that there will be a V-shaped recovery, with a quick return to a pre-COVID economy.

The finances of many small businesses, and not a few large ones, have been devastated. Many sectors of the economy will have to be recapitalized.

And chances are there will need to be at least a modest redeployment of labor. Post-COVID, there will be fewer jobs in some sectors and more in others. And a residual increase in remote working means that even the location of some quantity of jobs will change.

These transitions would occur quicker and more productively if the foundation for sustainable private sector economic growth were established by summer.

Biden and his tinkerers, however, will be trying other things.

A Chinese coronavirus vaccine delivery to Turkey was postponed Sunday for "one or two days," the Turkish health minister announced.

The latest snag was caused by an emergency in Beijing customs due to the discovery of a novel coronavirus case there, Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter.

As a result of the incident, customs mobility has been temporarily suspended, Koca explained. 

The first batch of 3 million doses of the Chinese SinoVac vaccine had been expected to arrive in Turkey on Dec. 28.

State of emergency

China declared a state of emergency across all districts of its capital Beijing amid surging COVID-19 cases.

Travel was halted in and out of areas where the virus was detected, while inspections and controls were tightened at all points, according to local media. 

The state of emergency continues in the capital due to the successive detection of cases in Shunyi district, which is located in the northeast of the capital and near Beijing Capital International Airport.

Also, some airport employees reportedly reside in Shunyi./aa

The Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights (IHCHR) said on Sunday that extreme weather is threatening the lives of displaced children in camps. 

"The lives of thousands of displaced people, especially women and children, are under threat," Fadel al-Gharrawi, a member of the IHCHR, said.

He added that most of the displaced Iraqis are living in camps with no access to heating, which is causing illnesses.

The Middle East country is experiencing below zero degree temapartures, mainly during the nights.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are unable to return to their homes, which were destroyed during the war against Daesh/ISIS that began in 2014.

The terror group captured large swathes of territories including Mosul, Salahuddin and Anbar provinces, and parts of Diyala and Kirkuk provinces. Government forces took back control of the areas in 2017./aa

Police in Turkey's northwestern province of Sakarya detained on Sunday 23 irregular migrants, officials said.

On a tip-off, teams stopped a minibus at the Anatolian Highway toll plaza in which Afghans and Pakistanis who had entered the country illegally were travelling.

They were brought to the public security branch office, and will be handed over to the provincial immigration administration after the necessary paperwork.

Turkey has been a key transit point for asylum seekers who want to cross into Europe to start new lives, especially those fleeing war and persecution.

It hosts nearly 4 million refugees, including over 3.6 million Syrians, more than any other country in the world./aa

Vaccinations against the novel coronavirus pandemic started in many European countries on Sunday.

France

The first vaccines in France were applied to a woman and a doctor -- both 78 -- in Rene-Muret Hospital near the capital Paris on Saturday. On Sunday, nearly 20 more people in the Sevran and Dijon provinces will also get vaccinated.

On Saturday, 19,500 doses of the vaccine developed by German firm BioNTech in partnership with the US company Pfizer reached the country.

French President Emmanuel Macron referred to the vaccine as a "new weapon" on Twitter, though adding that they would not be obligatory.

Austria

In Austria, five pre-determined people were administered the COVID-19 vaccine at the Medical University of Vienna on Sunday.

Speaking at a press conference, Prime Minister Sebastian Kurz said the vaccinations were the starting point of the victory against COVID-19 after meeting the five citizens that were vaccinated.

The country received 10,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Italy

After declaring Dec. 27 as European Vaccine Day, Italy became one of the countries to start administering COVID-19 vaccines. The first shots were applied to healthcare professionals at Lazzaro Spallanzani Hospital in Rome on Sunday.

Italy bought a total of 202,5 million doses of vaccines from different firms.

Spain

The first COVID-19 vaccine in Spain was applied to a 96-year-old woman in a nursing home Sunday.

Monica Tapias, a professional at the nursing home who was also vaccinated, said: "We want the majority to get vaccinated to end this pandemic. So many people lost their lives since the beginning of the pandemic. They couldn't make it until the vaccines."

The Spanish government is expected to receive 4.5 million vaccine doses over three months and to vaccinate 20 million people by the summer.

Sweden

In Sweden, the first person to get vaccinated for COVID-19 was a 91-year-old nursing home resident in the Mjolby province.

On Sunday, 4,000 Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses arrived in Sweden.

Germany

Germany also received the Pfizer-BioNTech jab, primarily administering them to residents of elderly care centers and health personnel.

The first vaccination in Germany on Saturday was administered to Edith Kwoizalla, who was staying at an elderly care center in the town of Halberstadt in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.

Vaccines are the means out of the crisis and towards progress against the pandemic, Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Twitter, adding that they were striving to deliver vaccines to all citizens.

Croatia

The first vaccine in Croatia was administered to retired health worker Branka Anicic, at a nursing home in the capital Zagreb on Sunday.

Twenty more people staying in the same nursing home in Zagreb were also in line to be vaccinated.

Slovenia

In Slovenia, the vaccines were first given to the residents of three elderly nursing homes across the country.

Mass vaccinations will be possible at the end of March, said Health Minister State Secretary Marija Magajne, adding that 9,750 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine had reached the country Saturday, while 16,575 doses are planned to arrive by the end of the year.

Romania, Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland

Romania distributed its vaccines to hospitals, with the first jab given to a healthcare worker in the capital Bucharest.

Meanwhile, the first COVID-19 vaccines also started to be administered in the Visegrad Group, which includes Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary and Poland.

Slovakian President Zuzana Caputova became the first person to get the shot in Slovakia.

In Czechia, Prime Minister Andrej Babis was also among the first recipients, while Poland administered their first vaccines to health workers.

In Hungary, intensive care unit workers will be the first to to be vaccinated at the initial stage.

Greece, Greek Cypriot administration

The first vaccinations in Greece were carried out in five hospitals in the capital Athens.

President Katerina Sakellaropoulou, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Parliament Speaker Konstantinos Tasoulas, a health worker in a COVID-19 intensive care unit, and an elderly resident of a nursing home were first to be vaccinated.

Also, the first shots in the Greek Cypriot administration were given to Dr. Anastasios Tsiftsis in a nursing home in Limassol, according to local media.

Vaccines will be given during the day in other nursing homes in Limassol./aa

Two road accidents Sunday in western and southern Cameroon left nearly 40 people dead and about 20 injured.

The first accident occurred in the early morning on the Nemale bridge near the town of Makenene in the Center region, claiming at least 37 lives, state media CRTV reported.

Three others were killed in a separate accident on the Mengong-Sangmelima roadway, in the Southern region.

A public bus that left Bafoussam in the Western region for the capital Yaounde, Center region "violently hit a truck" and lost control before ending up in a ravine, according to Minister of Transport Jean Ernest Massena Ngalle Bibehe.

Some Cameroonian media outlets have reported at least 52 dead, including online newspaper Camer.be which cited Securoute, a driving safety awareness group.

The victims were transported to nearby health facilities, with locals fearing the toll could rise.

The minister of transport, as well as other members of the government, were dispatched to the scene by Prime Minister Joseph Ngute on Sunday "to assess the damage caused by this serious road traffic accident."/aa

Turkey's Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities (YBT) has published a book about the oral history of Bulgarian Turks.

Titled, Belene Olum Icin Yer Sert Ucmak Icın Gok Uzak (Belene Ground is Tough to Die Sky is Far to Fly), the book recounts the assimilation, disidentification policies and torture that Turkish people suffered at the hands of the communist regime in Bulgaria between 1984 and 1989, focusing on the Belene Camp.

The YBT said in a statement that the study on the community's oral history was carried out to inform future generations about the Bulgarian Turks and help their legal struggle.

It said the study, edited by historian Tufan Gunduz, mirrored the experiences of actual eyewitnesses and their struggle against ethnic cleansing. It added that the book would also be an important source for academic research.

The book was published on the 30th anniversary of their forced migration from Bulgaria to Turkey, it noted./aa