GERMANY: Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier strongly denounced a rise in anti-semitism amid the Israel-Hamas war today, speaking separately but stressing the same idea that it is unacceptable for such hatred to flourish in the nation that perpetrated the Holocaust.

In Berlin, thousands of people gathered at a demonstration called to show opposition to a rising tide of anti-semitism.

PANAMA: The Teachers Association of Panama called today for a general strike to start tomorrow in protest at a contract signed by the government and the Minera Panama company.

Teaching union leader Fernando Abrego said that his organisation rejected the pact because the Canadian transnational First Quantum steals Panama’s natural resources and damages human health and the environment. 

SOMALIA: An explosives-packed car exploded at a military facility on the outskirts of the capital Mogadishu on Saturday, killing at least six people, four of them soldiers.

Police spokesman Sadik Dodishe said nine others, including five soldiers, had been wounded in the suicide bombing in the Elasha Biyaha area of the Lower Shabelle region.

 Islamist extremist group al-Shabab claimed responsibility. 

UNITED STATES: Musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra Association have ratified a collective bargaining agreement calling for minimum salaries to increase by 15.8 per cent over three years.

Announced on Saturday night, the deal with the American Federation of Musicians local 77 runs for two years and is backdated to September 11. 

Increases in the agreement include 6 per cent in the first year, 4.5 per cent in the second and 4.5 per cent in the third.