Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Egypt’s Abdelfattah Al Sisi via online video link poured foundation concrete of the fourth and final reactor of the NPP, developed by the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation (ROSATOM) in Egypt’s Mediterranean Dabaa city in Marsa Matrouh province, located about 320 kilometres northwest of the capital Cairo.

Putin said the joint project will contribute to the development of the Egyptian economy, provide it with additional energy resources and contribute to building new enterprises and employment generation.

First concrete has been poured for the foundation slab of Unit 4 at the El Dabaa nuclear power station in Egypt, marking the official start of construction, Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom said.

A ceremony to mark the pouring of first concrete was attended by videoconference by Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi. The event was attended by dignitaries including Egypt’s prime minister Mustafa Madbouly and Rosatom’s director-general Alexey Likhachev.

Rosatom said the four-unit El Dabaa nuclear station, west of Alexandria on Egypt’s northern coast, is the largest nuclear construction project on the African continent.

Likhachev told Tuesday’s ceremony that El Dabaa is the largest cooperation project between the two countries since the construction of the Aswan Dam. He called the project “a significant event in the history of nuclear energy in Egypt and Russian-Egyptian relations”.

Africa’s only other commercial nuclear power station is the two-unit Koeberg near Cape Town in South Africa.

Russia is supplying four Generation III+ VVER-1200 pressurised water reactors for El Dabaa. The first unit is expected to be online in 2026.

Egypt’s regulator the Egyptian Nuclear and Radiological Regulatory Authority granted permission for construction of El Dabaa-4 in August.

An initial agreement for the project – the first commercial nuclear station in the country – was signed in 2015.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, construction of Unit 1 began in July 2022, of Unit 2 in November 2022 and of Unit 3 in May 2023.

An Oklahoma judge has exonerated a man who spent 48 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, the longest known wrongful sentence in the US.

Glynn Simmons, 70, was freed in July after a district court found that crucial evidence in his case was not turned over to his defence lawyers.

On Monday, a county district attorney said there was not enough evidence to warrant a new trial.

In an order on Tuesday, Judge Amy Palumbo declared Mr Simmons innocent.

“This court finds by clear and convincing evidence that the offence for which Mr Simmons was convicted, sentenced and imprisoned… was not committed by Mr Simmons,” said Oklahoma County District Judge Palumbo in her ruling.

“It’s a lesson in resilience and tenacity,” Mr Simmons told reporters after the decision, according to the Associated Press. “Don’t let nobody tell you that it can’t happen, because it really can.”

Mr Simmons served 48 years, one month and 18 days in prison for the 1974 murder of Carolyn Sue Rogers during a liquor store robbery in an Oklahoma City suburb.

Mr Simmons was 22 years old when he and a co-defendant, Don Roberts, were convicted and sentenced to death in 1975.

The punishments were later reduced to life in prison because of US Supreme Court rulings on the death penalty.

Mr Simmons had maintained his innocence, saying he was in his home state of Louisiana at the time of the murder.

Mr Simmons smiled as the court declared his innocence on Tuesday. Dressed in a grey hooded sweater and fedora, a soft-spoken Mr Simmons later told reporters he had been waiting for this moment for a “long, long time”.

“What’s been done can’t be undone, but there can be accountability,” he said.

A district court vacated his sentence in July after finding that prosecutors had not turned over all evidence to defence lawyers, including that a witness had identified other suspects.

Mr Simmons and Mr Roberts were convicted in part because of testimony from a teenager who had been shot in the back of the head. The teenager pointed to several other men during police line-ups and later contradicted some of her own testimony, the National Registry of Exonerations said.

Mr Roberts was released on parole in 2008.

Wrongfully convicted people who serve time in Oklahoma are eligible for up to $175,000 (£138,000) in compensation.

Mr Simmons is currently battling liver cancer, according to his GoFundMe, which has raised thousands of dollars to help support his living costs and chemotherapy.

A gunman killed at least 15 people and wounded at least 24 others at a Prague university on Thursday before he was “eliminated”, according to police and Prague emergency services, marking the country’s worst-ever mass shooting.

Czech police responded to the shooting at Charles University’s faculty of arts building in Jan Palach Square shortly after 3 p.m. (1400 GMT). Police said the father of the shooter – a student at the faculty – was found dead earlier on Thursday.

“We always thought that this was a thing that did not concern us. Now it turns out that, unfortunately, our world is also changing and the problem of the individual shooter is emerging here as well,” Prague Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda told Czech Television.

Petr Nedoma, director of the Rudolfinum Gallery at a concert hall across Palach Square, told Czech TV he saw the shooter.

“I saw a young person on the gallery who had some weapon in his hand, like and automatic weapon, and shooting toward the Manes Bridge. Repeatedly, with some interruptions, then I saw as he shot, put hands up and threw the weapon down on the street, it lay there on the pedestrian crossing,” he said.

Police sealed off the square and the area adjacent to the building, located in a busy part of town with a popular street leading tourists to Old Town Square.

Czech TV live broadcast showed several ambulances and police cars with flashing lights lined up alongside the building accompanied by the sound of sirens.

One witness told news website iDnes.cz that they got off at the tram stop by the school and “suddenly I heard shooting”.

Klara, a student, told the news website she was among those who police evacuated from the building.

“It was terribly scary, there were a lot of policemen everywhere, who were shouting at us with submachine guns, telling us to run outside,” she said.

An email sent to staff and students had said the shooter was in one of the buildings.

“Don’t go anywhere, if you’re in the offices, lock them and place furniture in front of the door, turn off the lights,” the email said.

One X user posted a photo of a group of students, hiding crouched on a ledge of the building.

Prime Minister Petr Fiala cancelled his trip to the east of the country and was en route to Prague, he said on X.

Gun crime is relatively rare in the Czech Republic. In December 2019, a 42-year-old gunman killed six people at a hospital waiting room in the eastern Czech city of Ostrava before fleeing and fatally shooting himself, police said.

In 2015, a man fatally shot eight people and then killed himself at a restaurant in Uhersky Brod.

The strategic tunnel network in Hamas’s “Senior Quarter” in the Gaza Strip was destroyed.

Soldiers for the Yahalom special operations unit of the IDF’s Combat Engineering Corps, along with troops from the 401st Brigade combat team, destroyed the secret underground web of tunnels seized on Wednesday by Israeli forces, the IDF said on Thursday.

The demolition of the subterranean structure followed the revelation that the IDF had taken control of Hamas’s Gaza City “senior quarter,” the IDF noted.

The network of tunnel branches reportedly contained apartments, offices, and living quarters of senior Hamas officials

The tunnels led to above-ground sites in the Shejaia neighborhood’s Palestine Square.

The Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday that Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar, and Muhammad Deif had used this network to manage the organization’s operation and movement through the center of Gaza City, which has nicknamed the area “Commander’s Square.”

Colonel Beni Aharon noted that the tunnels were used to store equipment taken from civilians that could enable Hamas leadership to shelter there for an extended period of time.

Further, the location of the tunnels was apparently strategically constructed in an area between a high-class residential area that includes a college, a hotel, a school for the deaf, and a fancy bridal shop.

The demolition of the tunnel network was carried out in a controlled manner, the IDF reported.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi secured a commanding majority of 89.6% of the vote to secure a second six-year term, as declared by Egypt’s electoral commission.

The head of the authority, Hazem Badawy, said that the election saw “unprecedented” voter turnout of 66.8%.

President Sisi, a former army chief who has ruled Egypt for 10 years, received the votes of over 39 million Egyptians.
Between December 10 and 12, there was an election in which President Sisi faced off against three relatively unknown candidates.

The head of the Republican People’s Party, Hazem Omar, received 4.5% of the vote to finish in second place.

Abdel-Sanad Yamama of the Wafd Party and Farid Zahran, the leader of the left-leaning Egyptian Social Democratic Party, came after him.

Right now, the president is set to embark on his third term, which, according to the constitution, will be his final term, starting in April.

Egypt’s economic challenges have been considerable, with the Egyptian pound plummeting and yearly inflation reaching 36.4%.

Due to these circumstances, the cost of necessities has gone up, which has an effect on household budgets in the country, where almost two thirds of the people were already living on or below the poverty line.