ECU-Temple Gameday: Pirates face Temple in final game of regular season

Officials say shelling by Russian forces has hit several areas in eastern and southern Ukraine overnight as utility crews continue a scramble to restore power, water and heating from widespread strikes in recent weeks. With persistent snowfall blanketing the capital, Kyiv, Sunday, analysts predicted that wintry weather could have an increasing impact on the direction of the conflict that has been raging since Russian forces invaded Ukraine more than nine months ago. State power grid Ukrenergo said electricity producers are now supplying about 80% of demand. That’s an improvement from Saturday’s 75%, the company says.

The U.S. soccer federation is displaying Iran’s national flag on social media without the emblem of the Islamic Republic. The federation described the move as a show of support for protesters in Iran ahead of the two nations’ World Cup match Tuesday. The federation says in a statement Sunday that it decided to forego the official flag on social media accounts to show “support for the women in Iran fighting for basic human rights.” The move comes as nationwide protests challenging Tehran’s theocratic government continue in Iran.

Rescuers are digging through mud for a second day in the search for people believed missing following an enormous landslide on the Italian resort island of Ischia. One body was recovered on Saturday and the prefect said that 11 people remain missing in the port town of Casamicciola. They were feared buried under mud and debris that firefighters said was six meters (20 feet) deep in some places. Firefighter spokesman Luca Cari said the risks of new landslides remained, and that the quantity of mud complicated the search. The massive landslide before dawn on Saturday was triggered by exceptional rainfall.

There has been a surge in the number of Mexicans seeking asylum in Canada this year. The reasons for the big jump include the relative ease for Mexicans to obtain refugee status in Canada compared to the U.S., visa-free travel between Mexico and Canada, and the threat of violence back home. More than 8,000 Mexican nationals have applied for asylum in Canada since the start of the year. That is six times as many as last year and more than twice as many as in 2019, which was the last year before the COVID-19 pandemic and the travel restrictions that accompanied it. The majority of the asylum seekers are flying into Montreal. The city has many direct flights between the two countries.

Protests against China’s strict “zero-COVID” policies resurfaced in Shanghai and Beijing on Sunday afternoon, continuing a round of demonstrations that have spread across the country since a deady  apartment fire in the northwestern city of Urumqi. Crowds stood and filmed as police started shoving at people who had gathered in the street in Shanghai and shouted, “We don’t want PCR tests, we want freedom!” Since Friday people have held protests across China, where street demonstrations are extremely rare. But anger and frustration have flared over the deaths from a fire in an apartment building in Urumqi that the public believes was caused by excessive lockdown measures that delayed rescue. A list on social media showed that there were demonstrations in 50 universities.

Eyewitnesses and aid workers say that allies of Ethiopia’s federal military are looting property and carrying out mass detentions in Tigray. The accounts raise fresh concern about alleged atrocities after the warring parties signed a truce more than three weeks ago. Diplomats and others hoped the truce would bring an end to suffering in the embattled region that’s home to more than 5 million people. Tigray is still largely cut off from the rest of Ethiopia, although aid deliveries into the region have resumed after the Nov. 2 cease-fire agreement signed in South Africa.