Latest News Headlines for Monday February 12, 2024 – Israel’s neighbors and key mediators caution of disaster if its military launches a ground invasion in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, where Israel states remaining Hamas strongholds are located — along with over half the besieged territory’s population.

Israeli airstrikes killed at least 44 Palestinians — including more than a dozen children — in Rafah, hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he asked the military to plan for the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people ahead of an invasion. He gave no details or timeline.

The death toll from a massive landslide that hit a gold-mining village in the southern Philippines has risen to 54 with 63 people still missing, authorities said. The landslide hit the mountain village of Masara in Davao de Oro province on Tuesday night after weeks of torrential rains.

Davao de Oro’s provincial government said in a Facebook post that 54 bodies had been recovered. At least 32 residents survived with injuries but 63 remained missing, it said. Among those missing were gold miners who had been waiting in two buses to be driven home when the landslide struck and buried them.

Russian forces launched 45 drones over Ukraine Sunday in a five-and-a-half-hour barrage, officials said, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy continued the reshuffle of his war cabinet as the war enters its third year.

In a statement, the Ukrainian air force said it had shot down 40 of the Iranian-made Shahed drones over nine different regions, including on the outskirts of the country’s capital, Kyiv. The five-and-a-half-hour attack targeted agricultural facilities and coastal infrastructure, officials for Ukraine’s southern defense forces wrote on Telegram.

A Brazilian judge has determined that a warrant should be sent to Interpol for the arrest of a man accused of hiring another man to kill his ex-husband, the prominent New York gallerist Brent Sikkema.

Judge Tula Correa de Mello, the head of the third criminal court in Rio de Janeiro, officially ordered the arrest of Daniel Sikkema, the ex-husband of gallerist Brent Sikkema, the Folha de São Paulo newspaper reported. The news was confirmed by broadcaster Globo.

A mother in Kansas City, Missouri, has been arrested and charged in the death of her 1-month-old infant after allegedly mistakenly placing the baby in an oven instead of a crib, the prosecutor’s office said.

Mariah Thomas, 26, has been charged with a Class A felony, first-degree endangering the welfare of a child, in the death of her baby, Jackson County prosecutor Jean Peters Baker announced Saturday. Thomas alleged she was putting the child down for a nap and accidentally mistakenly placed the child in the oven instead of the crib, according to the court documents.

A man was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to killing four workers at an Oklahoma marijuana farm in 2022.

Chen Wu pleaded guilty at a court hearing Friday to four counts of first-degree murder and to one count of assault and battery with a deadly weapon in connection with the Nov. 20, 2022 killings, according to court records. Prosecutors say Wu, also known as Wu Chen in jail records, fatally shot three men and a woman in a garage at the farm west of Hennessey.

A man whose family’s gender reveal photo shoot sparked a Southern California wildfire that killed a firefighter in 2020 has pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, prosecutors said.

Angelina Jimenez pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of recklessly causing fire to property of another. She was sentenced to a year of summary probation and 400 hours of community service. The couple was also ordered to pay over one point 7 million dollars in restitution.

Off-duty officers responded as a woman began shooting inside pastor Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston on Sunday, killing the suspect.

Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said at a news conference that a child was left in critical condition following the incident and a 57-year-old man was also shot in the leg. Finner said the woman, between the ages of 30 and 35 years old, entered the Lakewood Church on the west side at approximately 1:53 p.m. local time. Finner says she was armed with a long rifle and was accompanied by a 5-year-old boy.

Guinness World Records reignited a French man’s dreams by reversing its decision and conferring upon him the title for the world’s tallest matchstick sculpture.

Richard Plaud invested eight years building a 23.6-foot model of the Eiffel Tower, crafted from 706,900 matchsticks. Despite initial disqualification for using matchsticks deemed not commercially available, the organization revisited the decision this week.

The director of central records services, revealed that Plaud has now been granted the title. McKinley explained that they corrected inconsistencies within the rules, allowing matchsticks to be snipped and shaped according to the modeler’s vision.

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