How excitement turned into death and chaos at Maha Kumbh Mela

The pilgrims came, millions upon millions, in an unrelenting tide, forming one of the largest religious gatherings in history. Day after day, the crowd – drawn by faith – swelled and pressed closely together, seeking purification in the sacred waters of the Ganga. They made their way through a sea of people, treading carefully down the slope before reaching the riverbank. At times they leaned on bystanders to steady themselves, other times they threatened to trample those around them. And then, it happened.

In the small hours of Wednesday, tragedy struck the Maha Kumbh Mela in India’s Prayagraj. A stampede near the Sangam Ghat before dawn killed at least 30 people and left 60 injured, with the death toll expected to rise further.

The Maha Kumbh is a Hindu religious festival that is held once every 12 years at the confluence of the Ganga and Yamuna rivers in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

Its origin lies in the Hindu lore that the gods spilled four drops of the nectar of immortality on Earth and, when the Moon and Jupiter align, the Ganga and the Yamuna are joined by a mystical river called Saraswati, meeting at the points where the divine nectar fell.

Any Hindu who takes a dip in the conjoined waters during this time is cleansed of their sins and receives blessings that last for generations, pilgrims at the festival tell The Independent.

They make the trip not just for themselves but for their children and grandchildren.

On this occasion, though, dozens of pilgrims lost their lives as the festival descended into chaos on one of its busiest and holiest days – Mauni Amavasya, or the New Moon day.

For many who were there in the days leading up to this week, it feels like it was a disaster waiting to happen.

The seeds of Wednesday’s tragedy were planted days ago when the Uttar Pradesh police and the Kumbh administration blocked several pontoon bridges for the movement of VIP vehicles. Throughout the festival, politicians and celebrities are afforded opportunities to bathe privately – creating traffic jams and even more cramped conditions for millions of ordinary pilgrims who have to walk miles along narrow pathways.

On 25 January, The Independent came across multiple barricades on different routes to the Kumbh Mela, with seemingly overwhelmed police personnel working to reroute the one-way traffic jam on a narrow road.

“Yogi ji is here. So, we are rerouting,” a police officer explains, referring to Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath.

At pontoon bridge 17, close to Sangam, as the confluence of the rivers is known, several routes for vehicular movement were shut for hours on end. “It will open once Yogi ji leaves,” two police personnel manning the barricade confirm. “No vehicles are allowed on the bridge till then.”

To compound the chaos, roads were often suddenly closed without explanation. Serpentine queues of vehicles were everywhere, with even special commandos riding military-issue vehicles becoming stuck.

As dusk fell on Tuesday, loudspeakers announced the start of Mauni Amavasya, drawing even more devotees towards Sangam. Seasoned pilgrims knew the ideal time for the ritual bath was at dawn, so many of them chose to rest by the ghats, planning to take a dip at sunrise and leave quickly afterwards.

At around 1.30am, there was a massive influx of new pilgrims.

The police forcefully herded them down a narrow path leading to Sangam despite several pontoon bridges offering a better route to regulate this rush, eyewitnesses tell The Independent.

“It was so crowded I felt I would die of suffocation,” Somi Devi, 67, tells The Independent. “I didn’t understand what was happening.”

Chaos ensued as the crowd surged forward. In a desperate attempt to escape the crush, some people climbed poles, which reportedly collapsed.

“I survived this only because of the blessings of Goddess Ganga,” Devi says. The stampede did not deter her from going ahead with her pilgrimage and taking the “holy dip” herself.

The Kumbh has seen stampedes before, in 1840, 1906, 1954 and 1986, according to The New York Times. On the same day of the last Maha Kumbh, 12 years ago, a stampede at the local train station to the festival killed 36 people, and forced the resignation of the organising committee chief.

Measures are put in place to prevent such tragedies from occurring – yet they have been found wanting, time after time.

In the weeks before tragedy struck on Wednesday, the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi in Delhi and of Yogi Adityanath at the Uttar Pradesh state level had been touting the scale of the preparations for the festival, which serves as a powerful display of India’s religious soft power.

In the course of the 45-day festival, some 400 million people are expected to take part in the Maha Kumbh, a staggering number that dwarfs the two million pilgrims who journeyed to Saudi Arabia for the annual Hajj pilgrimage last year.

The festival has attracted several prominent figures this year, such as Indian federal ministers Rajnath Singh and Amit Shah, and Chris Martin of the band Coldplay.

The pilgrimage site has been turned into a sprawling tent city, stretching over 40sq km along the riverbanks and divided into 25 sections to provide smoother management. There are over 3,000 kitchens, 150,000 toilets and 11 hospitals.

Indian Railways is running more than 90 special trains, making nearly 3,300 trips to transport the devotees, in addition to its regular services.

The state government of Adityanath has allocated over $765m for this year’s festival.

Prayagraj is filled with towering billboards and posters of Adityanath and Modi, underscoring the political aspect of the event as the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seeks to leverage the festival to strengthen its influence.

In spite of the money spent and the scale of preparations, the pilgrims don’t have much to sustain themselves apart from their faith. Earlier this week, prior to the tragic events of Wednesday, they sounded cheerful and accepting of the discomforts of the festival, and humbled by the chance to take their holy dip.

Shri Shivkumari, a 65-year-old with a heart ailment, had been living in a tent on the riverbank for more than two weeks since 10 January. When The Independent meets her she is yet to reach Sangam, despite having walked for over two hours from the other end of the festival site.

But that doesn’t dampen her spirits. “Mother Ganga blesses you with a lot of peace and happiness. Grants wisdom and intelligence. Children live happily,” she says.

As she walks across a pontoon bridge on the river with her son and daughter-in-law, tying garlands on the railing, Shivkumari sings in a regional dialect: “Help us cross the river on your boat. Take me to the other side, O ferryman! Take me to the Ganga, ferryman. I want to worship the holy Ganga.”

Ramlal Yadav, 52, has travelled nearly 300km from Gorakhpur in eastern Uttar Pradesh to be at the Kumbh. He’s still figuring out the practicalities of securing two tents for the 26 people accompanying him, at a cost of Rs 10,000 (about £93) for six days.

Two lines of blue tents stand on bare land, fluttering in the wind, held in place by a pole through the middle and nails at the four edges. There’s not much in terms of privacy, as the tent can’t be zipped or tied. Several pairs of slippers are scattered outside each tent, often occupied by 10 people. Seeing a tent assigned to his group, Yadav is elated.

“There is a toilet and a bathroom. And our mother Ganga is closer to us. There is water. What more do we want?” he says. “Having seen the goddess Ganga, I want nothing else.”

Anju Dikshit, 56, is equally ecstatic to be at the Kumbh Mela. She has travelled 600km from the central state of Chhattisgarh. “I am not here to take advantage of the facilities. We have come here to celebrate Kumbh.”

Sat at the festival are Meena Mishra and her husband. She is reading a prayer book while her husband makes a run to arrange food from the nearest free community kitchen. “What is wrong in this? Everything is here. Our Ganga is here, water and food is there. We don’t need much else,” she says.

The streets even after 8pm are far from quiet. Apart from the hustle and bustle of the crowd, announcements over speakers and street vendors screaming at the top of their voices and preachers giving sermons create a cacophony.

The sermons are delivered by preachers sitting on stages and accompanied by musicians and singers.

One preacher explains why the Lord was born, recounts the number of avatars the Lord has had, and then breaks into a religious song praising Lord Rama.

“Pick up the 18 Puranas, Upanishads and Vedas. And start asking, ‘Who is God? Why is He?’ You will spend your whole life trying to understand this. You will end but the stories of God will never end,” he says, as a musician plays the synthesiser, apparently seeking to complement the seriousness of the question.

Among the listeners is Trojan Hendrickson, 35, who has travelled from Australia after hearing so much about the highly publicised religious festival.

“I want to experience Kumbh for the feeling,” he tells The Independent, adding that he doesn’t quite know what drew him to the festival. “I want to meet all the babas and all the Indian locals. I heard it’s the biggest festival in the world, so I wanted to experience it.”

A popular attraction at the festival is the Kinnar Akhada, a congregation of transgender saints. Transgender people have had a place in religious and spiritual traditions of India going back centuries, explains Devyani Mukherjee, a trans woman, as she gives blessings to believers.

“It is believed that wherever we trans stand that place is filled with positivity. It is to seek for this positivity that people come to us,” says the former activist and model.

For many transgender people in the Akhada, the Kumbh is a spiritual calling as well as a platform to reclaim their religious identity.

Mukherjee says she has always been religious, having been guided into this path by her guru, who understood her struggles and took her under his wing.

Indu Nandgiri, another Kinnar Akhada member, emphasises that their blessings are sought for health, prosperity and long life as she partakes in a unique tradition of giving a one-rupee coin.

“It represents goddess Lakshmi and symbolises abundance,” explains Nandgiri, a former IT professional. “The coin, when received as a blessing, is believed to ensure that food and wealth never leave a devotee’s home.”

This is the tragic irony of Wednesday’s disaster – that it affected so many pilgrims who had travelled seeking nothing more than a blessing for a long life, and the washing away of sins.

Jaiprakash Singh, 64, from Ayodhya is sitting on a plastic sheet in the open, covering himself with a blanket, near the confluence. “I eat sparingly to avoid frequent trips to the public toilets,” he says. “What is more important than God’s blessing? It is enough for us.” Having already spent a night in the open, he plans to stay another. A couple of days later, pilgrims like him who were resting along the riverbanks were among those trampled during the crush.

Despite Wednesday’s events, the festival will continue, with another particularly auspicious day in the celestial calendar falling on Monday 3 February. The authorities at Kumbh have promised to learn from the events of this week, and say there will be no VIP access in the coming days. Changes have already been made to how the flows of crowds are managed.

Adityanath has ordered a judicial inquiry – though he also played down the severity of the disaster on Wednesday, and it took officials more than 16 hours to admit there had been any fatalities at all.

For families mourning the loss of loved ones, excitement at the trip of a lifetime has turned into demands for accountability. Saroja, a pilgrim from the southern city of Belagavi who lost four family members in the stampede, must now accompany them home on a repatriation flight to Karnataka. “Police didn’t make proper arrangements,” she tells Reuters. “They are responsible for this.”

Hamas releases three Israeli hostages under Gaza ceasefire deal

Three more hostages have been released by Hamas as part of a ceasefire deal aimed at ending the war in Gaza.

Yarden Bibas and Ofer Kalderon have arrived back in Israel after they were released to the Red Cross by militants in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday morning.

Another hostage, American-Israeli Keith Siegel, 65, was handed over to the Red Cross at a different location – Gaza City to the north – later on Saturday.

Hours later, 183 Palestinian prisoners and detainees were released in the exchange. Among them, 150 arrived in Gaza while 32 got off a bus in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Out of these, 72 prisoners were held before the 7 October attack, with 18 serving life sentences. The remaining 111 were detained in Gaza after the 7 October attack.

“I feel joy despite the journey of pain and hardship that we lived,” said Ali Al-Barghouti, who was serving two life sentences in an Israeli jail.

The truce, which began on 19 January, is aimed at winding down the deadliest and most destructive war ever fought between Israel and the Hamas militant group.

The fragile deal has held for nearly two weeks, halting the fighting and allowing for increased aid to flow into the tiny coastal territory.

A total of 33 Israeli hostages are expected to be freed in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners during the truce’s initial six weeks.

Next week Israel and Hamas are due to begin negotiating a second phase of the ceasefire, which calls for releasing the remaining hostages and extending the truce indefinitely. The war could resume in early March if an agreement is not reached.

Earlier on Saturday, militants released Mr Bibas, 35, and French-Israeli Mr Kalderon, 54, to the Red Cross in Khan Younis after each climbed on a stage and waved to onlookers.

Both had been abducted during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 that sparked the war.

Armed Hamas militants formed a line leading to the stage after chaotic crowds surrounded hostages during a handover on Thursday, angering Israel.

The family of Mr Kalderon said they were “overwhelmed with joy, relief and emotion” after his release by Hamas.

Mr Kalderon was kidnapped by Hamas from the Nir Oz kibbutz on 7 October, along with his daughter Sahar and son Erez. The children were released in November 2023 during a temporary ceasefire.

“Today, we finally embrace Ofer, seeing and truly comprehending that he is here with us,” his family said in a statement released by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum Headquarters.

“We have witnessed how, through extraordinary mental strength, he survived this hell. Ofer endured months in a nightmare, and we are proud of his ability to survive and hold onto the hope of embracing his children again.”

The family added a note of support for the remaining hostages still being held by Hamas, saying: “In the midst of this emotional moment, we must remember all the hostages who remain behind. We have no right to stop until all 79 hostages return home – whether for rehabilitation or for burial.”

The second released hostage, Mr Bibas, is the father of baby Kfir – the youngest hostage at only nine months old when he was kidnapped on 7 October – and Ariel, who was four at the time of the cross-border attack. Mr Bibas’s wife, Shiri, the mother of the two children, was also taken at the same time.

Shiri, Ariel and Kfir remain unaccounted for amid concerns over their wellbeing, with the release of Mr Bibas marking a painful moment for the large numbers of Israelis and other supporters around the world who have long campaigned for the whole family’s release.

Video footage of Shiri holding on to her children as she was kidnapped by Hamas gunmen from the Nir Oz kibbutz became an enduring image of the Hamas attack.

Under the latest ceasefire agreement, living women and children were supposed to be freed first, but Ariel and Kfir were the only children being held who were not released in a previous week-long truce in November 2023. Hamas says that Shiri and her two children were killed in an Israeli airstrike early in the conflict.

Israel has not confirmed that claim, but last week the military said there were “grave concerns” about what has happened to them.

Israel says it has received information from Hamas that eight of those hostages were either killed during Hamas’s 7 October attack or have since died in captivity.

There were sighs of relief and cheers in the living room where members of Kibbutz Kfar Aza watched Hamas militants hand over hostage Keith Siegel to the Red Cross.

Mr Siegel, an American-Israeli from North Carolina, was captured from the communal farming village by Hamas militants on 7 October 2023.

His neighbours gathered anxiously in front of the television as they watched footage of Mr Siegel, looking thin, emerging from a vehicle and walking through a crowd in Gaza city, flanked by Hamas militants.

Many of those in the room were family friends. They applauded upon seeing Mr Siegel’s face. Some teared up.

He is one of the highest-profile hostages, now a household name in Israel after his wife Aviva Siegel, also captured in the Hamas attack, mounted a public campaign to bring him home after her own release from captivity in November 2023.

Also on Saturday, wounded Palestinians are expected to be allowed to leave Gaza for Egypt through the Rafah crossing. It had been the only exit point for Palestinians during the war before Israel closed it in May.

A European Union civilian mission was deployed on Friday to prepare for the reopening of the crossing.

The reopening would mark another key step in the first phase of the ceasefire, which alongside the exchange of detainees calls for the return of Palestinians to northern Gaza and an increase in humanitarian aid to the devastated territory.

Additional reporting by agencies

Philadelphia plane crash latest: No survivors on board medical jet

A mid-size air ambulance plane carrying a sick child and five others crashed on Friday night shortly after taking off from Northeast Philadelphia Airport, plowing into a residential area and setting off at least six house fires.

The crash occurred in the Northeast part of the city around 6:10 p.m, a city statement read. A medical transportation jet carrying a mother, daughter and four crew members were killed. Another person who was inside a car near the crash also died, Mayor Cherelle Parker said Sunday.

Nineteen people were also injured.

On Saturday night the six people on board – all Mexican nationals – were identified. The young girl was named as Valentina Guzman Murillo, and had been traveling with her mother, Lizeth Murillo Ozuna.

The plane was piloted by Captain Alan Montoya Perales, along with his copilot Josue Juarez. Also onboard was Dr Raul Meza Arredon, and Rodrigo Lopez Padilla, a paramedic.

The Learjet 55 aircraft was operated by Mexico-based air ambulance company Jet Rescue Air Ambulance. It had ascended to 16,000 feet when it suddenly fell.

President Donald Trump wrote on social media that it was “so sad to see the plane go down in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.”

Trump renews threat to impose 100% tariff on Brics nations

President Donald Trump attempted to renew his threat against a bloc of nine nations in case they tried to undermine the US dollar.

He threatened economic retaliation if these “seemingly hostile countries” moved away from the dollar, Mr Trump said on Truth Social in a statement nearly identical to one he posted on 30 November.

The US president wrote on the social media platform: “The idea that the Brics countries are trying to move away from the dollar, while we stand by and watch, is over.”

Brics alliance consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have applied to become members and several other countries have expressed interest in joining.

Mr Trump, who has already kicked off the imposition of tariffs on Canada and Mexico, demanded a firm commitment from Brics nations to cease any attempts to create a new currency or back existing currencies in competition with the US dollar.

Failure to comply, he warned, would result in severe consequences, including the imposition of 100 per cent tariffs on goods imported from these countries and the end of their access to the US market.

He wrote: “We are going to require a commitment from these seemingly hostile countries that they will neither create a new Brics currency, nor back any other currency to replace the mighty US dollar or, they will face 100 per cent tariffs, and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful US economy.”

He continued: “They can go find another sucker Nation. There is no chance that Brics will replace the US dollar in international trade, or anywhere else, and any country that tries should say hello to tariffs, and goodbye to America!”

While the US dollar remains the dominant currency in global trade and has withstood previous challenges to its supremacy, members of the alliance and other developing nations argue they are increasingly frustrated with America’s control over the global financial system.

At a summit of Brics nations in October, Russian president Vladimir Putin accused the US of “weaponising” the dollar and described it as a “big mistake”.

“It’s not us who refuse to use the dollar,” Mr Putin said at the time. “But if they don’t let us work, what can we do? We are forced to search for alternatives.”

Brics, established in 2009, is the only major international bloc that does not include the US.

Earlier in his inaugural speech, Mr Trump stated that his administration would establish an “External Revenue Service to collect all tariffs, duties and revenues” to “tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens”.

In December, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Shaktikanta Das told reporters at a press briefing that “so far as India was concerned, there are no steps that India has taken which specifically wants to de-dollarise”.

Chinese state media blames US for cyberattack that disrupted DeepSeek

A massive cyberattack that forced DeepSeek to close its groundbreaking AI model for new registrations on Tuesday originated in the US, Chinese state media has claimed.

The Chinese startup released its new AI system, called R1, last week and the development immediately rocked the Western tech industry and stock markets.

DeepSeek claims its AI model cost a fraction of the money and computing power to train compared to its rivals like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which employs more expensive Nvidia chips.

R1 quickly gained popularity, climbing to the top of the list of free apps downloaded from Apple Store, surpassing ChatGPT.

As news spread over the weekend that the DeepSeek system matched the most advanced AI models of American tech giants such as Google, OpenAI and Meta despite being far more cost-effective and open-source, investors in companies such as Nvidia and Oracle began selling their stocks, wiping off nearly a trillion dollars in value from the American stock market on Monday.

Nvidia is the leading supplier of chips used to train advanced AI models.

On Tuesday, DeepSeek said that it came under a brute-force cyberattack.

The company limited R1 signups with phone numbers in China and prohibited registrations from international users.

A banner on its app notified users that it faced “malicious attacks” without revealing where they were coming from.

“Due to large-scale malicious attacks on DeepSeek’s services, we are temporarily limiting registrations to ensure continued service,” the notification said. “Existing users can log in as usual. Thanks for your understanding and support.”

On Wednesday, DeepSeek notified users that the issue had been identified, and a fix was being implemented.

Not long after, Yuyuan Tantian, a social media account affiliated with Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, claimed the attacks originated from IP addresses in the US.

While initial attacks disrupted DeepSeek by overwhelming its servers and bandwidth with a flood of internet traffic, according to the Chinese cybersecurity company QAX Technology Group, the more recent ones attempted to crack user credentials by checking all possible password combinations to understand how the AI model worked.

“All the attack IPs were recorded, all are from the US,” QAX cybersecurity expert Wang Hui told CCTV.

The cyberattack on DeepSeek has raised concerns about the security of AI platforms and the risks they pose to users.

Bill Conner, former security adviser to American and British governments, said DeepSeek “represents a clear risk to any enterprise whose leadership values data privacy, security and transparency”.

US president Donald Trump warned that DeepSeek’s emergence was a “wake-up call” for American AI giants.

Some AI experts have also raised concerns about DeepSeek’s ties to the Chinese government.

The controlling shareholder of the startup based in Hangzhou is Liang Wenfeng, co-founder of a quantitative hedge fund called High-Flyer. Mr Liang attended a symposium for businessmen and experts hosted by Chinese premier Li Qiang the day the new DeepSeek model was released, according to state news agency Xinhua.

When is a mountain a person?

A mountain in New Zealand is now officially recognised as a human.

Considered an ancestor by Indigenous people, the mountain was recognised as a legal person on Thursday after a new law granted it all the rights and responsibilities of a human being.

Mount Taranaki — now known as Taranaki Maunga, its Māori name — is considered an ancestor by Indigenous people.

The snow-capped dormant volcano is the second highest on New Zealand’s North Island at 2,518 meters (8,261 feet) and a popular spot for tourism, hiking and snow sports.

It was recognised as a legal person on Thursday after a new law granted it all the rights and responsibilities of a human being.

It is the latest natural feature to be granted personhood in New Zealand, which has ruled that a river and a stretch of sacred land are people before.

The legal recognition acknowledges the mountain’s theft from the Māori of the Taranaki region after New Zealand was colonized. It fulfills an agreement of redress from the country’s government to Indigenous people for harms perpetrated against the land since.

The law passed on Thursday gives Taranaki Maunga all the rights, powers, duties, responsibilities and liabilities of a person. Its legal personality has a name: Te Kāhui Tupua, which the law views as “a living and indivisible whole.” It includes Taranaki and its surrounding peaks and land, “incorporating all their physical and metaphysical elements.”

A newly created entity will be “the face and voice” of the mountain, the law says, with four members from local Māori iwi, or tribes, and four members appointed by the country’s Conservation Minister.

“The mountain has long been an honored ancestor, a source of physical, cultural and spiritual sustenance and a final resting place,” Paul Goldsmith, the lawmaker responsible for the settlements between the government and Māori tribes, told Parliament in a speech on Thursday.

But colonizers of New Zealand in the 18th and 19th centuries took first the name of Taranaki and then the mountain itself. In 1770, the British explorer Captain James Cook spotted the peak from his ship and named it Mount Egmont.

Mount Taranaki — now known as Taranaki Maunga:

In 1840, Māori tribes and representatives of the British crown signed the Treaty of Waitangi — New Zealand’s founding document — in which the Crown promised Māori would retain rights to their land and resources. But the Māori and English versions of the treaty differed — and Crown breaches of both began immediately.

In 1865, a vast swathe of Taranaki land, including the mountain, was confiscated to punish Māori for rebeling against the Crown. Over the next century hunting and sports groups had a say in the mountain’s management — but Māori did not.

“Traditional Māori practices associated with the mountain were banned while tourism was promoted,” Goldsmith said. But a Māori protest movement of the 1970s and ’80s has led to a surge of recognition for the Māori language, culture and rights in New Zealand law.

Redress has included billions of dollars in Treaty of Waitangi settlements — such as the agreement with the eight tribes of Taranaki, signed in 2023.

“Today, Taranaki, our maunga, our maunga tupuna, is released from the shackles, the shackles of injustice, of ignorance, of hate,” said Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, a co-leader of the political party Te Pāti Māori and a descendant of the Taranaki tribes, using a phrase that means ancestral mountain.

“We grew up knowing there was nothing anyone could do to make us any less connected,” she added.

The mountain’s legal rights are intended to uphold its health and wellbeing. They will be employed to stop forced sales, restore its traditional uses and allow conservation work to protect the native wildlife that flourishes there. Public access will remain.

New Zealand was the first country in the world to recognise natural features as people when a law passed in 2014 granted personhood to Te Urewera, a vast native forest on the North Island. Government ownership ceased and the tribe Tūhoe became its guardian.

“Te Urewera is ancient and enduring, a fortress of nature, alive with history; its scenery is abundant with mystery, adventure, and remote beauty,” the law begins, before describing its spiritual significance to Māori. In 2017, New Zealand recognised the Whanganui River as human, as part of a settlement with its local iwi.

The bill recognizing the mountain’s personhood was affirmed unanimously by Parliament’s 123 lawmakers. The vote was greeted by a ringing waiata — a Māori song — from the public gallery, packed with dozens who had traveled to the capital, Wellington, from Taranaki.

The unity provided brief respite in a tense period for race relations in New Zealand. In November, tens of thousands of people marched to Parliament to protest a law that would reshape the Treaty of Waitangi by setting rigid legal definitions for each clause. Detractors say the law — which is not expected to pass — would strip Māori of legal rights and dramatically reverse progress from the past five decades.

Japanese city told to use less water to help sinkhole rescue

Efforts to rescue a 74-year-old driver continued on Thursday, days after a massive sinkhole in the Japanese city of Yashio swallowed up his truck.

Japanese authorities have asked 1.2 million people across 12 cities and towns in the eastern part of Saitama prefecture to limit showers and laundry use and thereby ease the pressure on the sewer system.

“Putting our first priority on saving the person’s life, we are asking residents to refrain from non-essential use of water such as taking a bath or doing laundry,” a Saitama prefecture official told AFP on Thursday.

“Using toilets is difficult to refrain from, but we are asking to use less water as much as possible.”

The massive sinkhole appeared in Yashio at around 10am local time on Tuesday, Saitama prefecture governor Motohiro Ono said. The crater measured about 32ft wide and 16ft deep.

“It is thought to have been caused by a crack in the Nakagawa River Basin sewer pipe,” Mr Ono said on Tuesday. “As a result of this collapse, a passing truck fell in.”

Efforts to save the 74-year-old driver have since been complicated by unstable ground, a second, larger sinkhole, and seeping water, local media reported. The second sinkhole in Yashio appeared on Thursday after wastewater from a ruptured sewage pipe flooded the original sinkhole.

This then caused further collapses, bringing down a utility pole and a restaurant signboard.

Eventually the two sinkholes merged, creating a 20m-wide crater, which has complicated the rescue of the 74-year-old truck driver.

Authorities have attempted to rescue the driver by using cranes to lift his truck, but they were only able to recover the loading platform, leaving the cabin – where the driver is believed to be trapped – behind.

Efforts to remove sediment and dig him out have so far been unsuccessful. Officials also deployed a drone into the hole to assess whether rescue workers could climb down, but no progress has been made.

The expanded sinkhole also contains a gas pipeline, raising concerns about a potential leak, leading to evacuations of 200 households.

Rescue workers were pumping air into the hole to supply oxygen to the 74-year-old driver on Tuesday. The driver was initially conscious but by the evening of the same day became unresponsive, according to local media reports.

In the past decade, several sinkholes have appeared across Japan. In September 2024, a sinkhole in Hiroshima was caused by a burst underground water pipe.

In 2016, Fukuoka experienced a massive sinkhole, about 98ft wide and 50ft deep, that swallowed five road lanes.

Additional reporting by agencies

Man who moved family to Pakistan kills daughter over TikTok content

A man who had recently brought his family back to Pakistan from the United States has confessed to shooting dead his teenage daughter, motivated by his disapproval of her TikTok content, police said.

The shooting happened on a street in the southwestern city of Quetta on Tuesday. The suspect, Anwar ul-Haq, initially said that unidentified gunmen shot and killed his American-born, 15-year-old daughter before he confessed to the crime, police official Babar Baloch said.

“Our investigation so far has found that the family had an objection to her dressing, lifestyle, and social gathering,” another police investigator, Zohaib Mohsin, said. “We have her phone. It is locked,” he told Reuters. “We are probing all aspects, including honour killing.”

The family had recently returned to Balochistan province in predominantly Muslim Pakistan, a nation with conservative social norms, having lived in the United States for about 25 years, Baloch said.

The southwestern city of Quetta:

The suspect has U.S. citizenship, the officer said. He said Haq had told him his daughter began creating “objectionable” content on the social media platform TikTok when she lived in the United States.

He told police that she continued to share videos on the platform after returning to Pakistan. Baloch said the main suspect’s brother-in-law had also been arrested in connection with the killing.

Police said they had charged Haq with the murder. They did not offer proof of Haq’s U.S. citizenship except for the suspect’s own testimony and declined to say whether the U.S. embassy had been informed of the incident.

His family declined to respond to a Reuters’ request for comment.

More than 54 million people use TikTok in Pakistan, a nation of 241 million. The government has blocked the video-sharing app several times in recent years over content moderation.

This week hundreds of Pakistani journalists rallied against a proposed law to regulate social media content that they say is aimed at curbing press freedom and controlling the digital landscape.

The law would establish a regulatory authority that would have its own investigation agency and tribunals. Those found to have disseminated false or fake information face prison sentences of up to three years and fines of 2 million rupees ($7,200)

Digital media in Pakistan has already been muffled with measures by telecom authorities to slow down internet speeds, and social media platform X has been blocked for more than a year.

TikTok, which has about 170 million U.S users, was briefly taken offline in America just before a law requiring its Chinese owner ByteDance to either sell it on national security grounds or face a ban took effect on January 19.

Islamabad often takes issue with what it terms “obscene content” with the social media platform, which has lately started complying with requests from Pakistan to remove certain content.

Over 1,000 women are killed each year in Pakistan at the hands of community or family members over perceived damage to “honour”, according to independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

That could involve eloping, posting social media content, fraternising with men, or any other infraction against conservative values relating to women.