Christmas blackouts in Ukraine after ‘massive’ Russian strike

(CAIRO) — More than a dozen tourists were feared missing after a diving boat sank off Egypt’s Red Sea coast, authorities said on Monday.

The boat, The Sea Story, sank off the southeastern Egyptian town of Marsa Alam, near the Shaab Satayah area, which is popular for its coral reefs, the Red Sea Governorate said in a statement.

Sixteen of the 44 people on board were still missing Monday afternoon, officials said. The other 28 had been rescued, officials said.

The boat had 31 tourists of various nationalities and at least a dozen crew members on board when it sank, officials said. Two Americans were on board, a local council source told ABC News on Monday.

The U.S. Embassy in Cairo told ABC News it was not aware of any U.S. citizen fatalities in the incident.

“We are aware of the incident that occurred and are in touch with the authorities to provide assistance as necessary. At this time, we are not aware of any U.S. citizen fatalities or unaccounted for U.S. citizens,” spokesperson Gina Cabrera told ABC News.

Some passengers were trapped inside cabins on the tourist boat and were unable to escape, the Red Sea Governate said.

The search-and-rescue operations have stopped for the day, the governate added.

Gov. Amr Hanafy had said earlier that some tourists were rescued, without revealing how many remained missing. A search-and-rescue helicopter airlifted some survivors from the Wadi el Gemal reserve area to receive treatment, and a frigate was dispatched to assist with the ongoing rescue efforts.

The Sea Story set sail from the port of Ghalib in Marsa Alam on Sunday for a diving trip and was scheduled to arrive at Hurghada Marina on Friday.

A crew member sent a distress signal at 5.30 a.m. on Monday before the ship dropped off the radar, officials said.

Egypt’s Red Sea resorts are popular with tourists for their beaches and diving spots.

ABC News’ Joe Simonetti contributed to this report.

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(LONDON) — Residents of Delhi woke up to a thick blanket of toxic smog, prompting the city to cancel in-person classes, halt construction and limit traffic, as the Indian capital city’s air-pollution levels surged past 60 times the World Health Organization’s recommended daily maximum.

Government officials warned the 33 million residents of Delhi to stay inside and use air purifiers as the smog increased in severity. The city implemented GRAP 4, the highest stage of pollution-related emergency measures, which kick into effect during “severe” air pollution.

GRAP 4 forbids trucks — except those carrying essential goods — from entering the city and bans construction and demolition projects. The government may also consider programs where only vehicles with license plates ending in odd or even numbers may drive on a given day.

Last week, Delhi’s environment minister announced the addition of over 100 more buses to the city’s fleet in response to the worsening pollution. The Delhi metro also announced it will run 60 extra trips as the city tries to minimize the number of cars on the road.

Most students will attend remote classes, and only half of employees will go into offices. Children and those with respiratory illnesses were advised to minimize any time outdoors.

Delhi’s air-quality index, or AQI, shot up past 1,000 on Monday, more than five times higher than Sarajevo, the second most-polluted major city, according to the Swiss air monitoring company IQAir.

The WHO estimates that air pollution kills 7 million people annually. IQAir has consistently ranked Delhi amongst the world’s most-polluted cities.

Toxic smog in the region gets worse every year as winter sets in and smog from crop-burning, brick kilns and heavy traffic settles for extended periods due to the cold, dense air.

Atishi Marlena Singh, the chief minister of Delhi, blamed the deadly pollution on the national government’s insufficient measures.

“The Central Government is sitting idle. Today, all of north India has been pushed into a medical emergency,” she said at a press conference.

Forecasts predict the air pollution will continue throughout this week.

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(LONDON) — Scientists have pinpointed a time frame in which Neanderthals began “mixing” with modern humans, based on the DNA of early inhabitants of Europe.

Analysis of the oldest-known genomes from early modern humans who lived in Europe indicates that the mixing occurred more recently than previous estimates, according to a paper published in Nature on Thursday.

The mixing likely occurred between 45,000 and 49,000 years ago — meaning the two genetically distinct groups overlapped on the European continent for at least 5,000 years, according to the paper.

Radiocarbon dating of bone fragments from Ranis, Germany, were shown to have 2.9% Neanderthal ancestry, which the authors believe occurred from a single mixing event common among all non-African individuals.

The mixing event likely occurred about 80 generations before those individuals lived, the researchers said.

The group from Ranis also represents the oldest-known family units, Arev Sumer, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and co-author of the paper, said during a news conference on Wednesday. Six individuals from the group were found to have a close kinship, including a mother and daughter.

The findings imply that the ancestors of all currently sequenced non-African early humans lived in a common population during this time, stretching from modern Great Britain to Poland, Johannes Krause, a biochemist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and co-author of the study, said during the news conference.

“This was rather surprising, because modern humans had just left Africa a few thousand years earlier and had reached this northern part of Europe where climatic conditions were rather cold — much colder than today,” Krause said. “It was the middle of the Ice Age.”

Groups of early humans previously studied in Europe showed very few cases of mixing between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, according to the paper.

The groups were represented by individuals from the Bacho Kiro region in Bulgaria and a woman named Zlaty kun from Czechia — believed to be part of the earliest population to diverge from the “Out-of-Africa” lineage, a small group of Homo sapiens that left the African continent about 80,000 years ago.

Within those two groups, the individuals from Bulgaria only suggest two mixing events with Neanderthals, while Zlaty kun’s lineage only suggests one mixing event, according to the paper.

Zlaty kun was found to have a fifth- or sixth-degree genetic relationship with two Ranis individuals, Sumer said, adding that the Ranis group was part of a small population that left no descendants among present-day people.

Neanderthals are believed to have become extinct about 40,000 years ago, Krause said.

The findings offer researchers a much more precise window of time in which the mixing occurred, as well as more insights into the demographics of early modern humans and the earliest Out-of-Africa migrations, according to the paper.

More research is needed to explore the events following the Out-of-Africa migration and the earliest movements of modern humans across Europe and Asia, Sumer said.

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