By Chris Lau, Samra Zulfaqar, Kristie Lu Stout, CNN

Hong Kong (CNN) — The white wreaths were piled high on the doorsteps of a funeral house in Hong Kong, a stark reminder of a city still laying its dead to rest more than four weeks after a devastating fire.

Outside Universal Funeral Parlour were thousands of mourners waiting for their turn to pay their respects to a fireman who died battling an inferno that burned for almost two days and killed at least 160 people on a government-subsidized housing estate.

Friends, colleagues and members of the public bowed and laid incense offerings in tribute to Ho Wai-ho, 37, who was killed while trying to put out the blaze that engulfed seven high-rise residential blocks in the Tai Po neighborhood last month.

“He was so young, but he sacrificed himself,” Claris Lam, 58, said, her voice shaking. “I came to pay tribute.”

As mourners left Ho’s funeral on Thursday they were given pieces of Kinder chocolate – Ho’s favorite – prepared by his fiancée.

“Despite his muscular appearance he was like a child and here is a bit of sweetness for everyone,” she wrote on social medial

The mood at Ho’s funeral was generally somber, though emotions also broke through.

Ho’s friend Angel Chan, 38, fought back tears as she told CNN how she remembered him as a “good brother.”

“He’s very gentle and friendly,” said Chan, a policewoman, who met Ho through work.

On Friday his body was laid to rest at Gallant Garden, a cemetery reserved for civil servants who have died while carrying out their duty.

High-ranking officials, including Hong Kong leader John Lee, and some of Beijing’s officials in the city also attended the memorial.

Final shift

Ho’s funeral was one of dozens that have taken place across Hong Kong over the past weeks, as the city reels from the fire that killed, among others, toddlers, elderly citizens and foreign domestic helpers hired from Indonesia and the Philippines to look after them.

The blaze – the cause of which remains under investigation – has stunned Hong Kong, which has a strong safety record and is unused to disasters on this scale.

The housing complex, which was undergoing renovations, was home to more than 4,000 people. City officials and police have pointed the finger of blame at construction companies for allegedly using substandard mesh netting to wrap scaffolding on the buildings and multiple arrests have been made.

Those who survived saw the homes they saved up for many years to buy burned to the ground, and are now left in government-allocated temporary accommodation, grappling to re-establish their lives in a densely-packed city with a notorious housing shortage.

Firefighters in the city of 7.5 million found themselves battling one of the largest infernos they had ever encountered. More than 2,300 firefighters and first-aiders were deployed alongside nearly 400 fire trucks and 200 ambulances.

Ho was found collapsed at the scene shortly after the fire broke out on the first day. He died at a hospital later that day.

Twelve other firefighters suffered injuries ranging from bone fractures to respiratory ailments.

Fire services officials previously said their work was hindered by unforgiving heat that shot up to 932 °F and narrow hallways laden with fallen objects.

The inability to fully extend aerial ladder platforms – due to the lack of road space in the space-starved city – further complicated rescue efforts, capping firefighting efficiency on higher floors, they said.

Last week, on Ho’s birthday, the Fire Services Department posthumously conferred upon him the honorary title of S

Por Joseph Ataman y Ross Adkin, CNN

Los líderes de la Unión Europea anunciaron este viernes un plan de financiamiento multimillonario para la economía y las Fuerzas Armadas de Ucrania durante los próximos dos años.

El paquete, por ahora, se financiará mediante préstamos y no recurrirá a los miles de millones de dólares en activos rusos congelados que posee el bloque.

En parte debido al recorte de fondos por parte de Estados Unidos, Ucrania enfrentará un déficit de financiamiento de US$ 160.000 millones (137.000 millones de euros) en los próximos dos años, según estimaciones del Fondo Monetario Internacional.

La UE buscaba cubrir dos tercios de esa suma, es decir, unos US$ 105.000 millones (90.000 millones de euros).

“Tenemos un acuerdo”, escribió el presidente del Consejo Europeo, Antonio Costa, en X. “Se aprobó la decisión de proporcionar 90.000 millones de euros de apoyo a Ucrania para 2026-2027. Nos comprometimos, cumplimos”.

El canciller de Alemania, Friedrich Merz, confirmó el acuerdo, alcanzado tras negociaciones que se extendieron hasta la noche del jueves.

“Esto atenderá las necesidades financieras urgentes de Ucrania. Ucrania solo devolverá este préstamo una vez que Rusia pague las reparaciones”, indicó Costa a periodistas este viernes.

Agregó que la Comisión Europea recibió el mandato de explorar cómo utilizar los activos rusos congelados y que el bloque se reserva el derecho de emplear esos fondos para pagar el préstamo.

El bloque posee unos 210.000 millones de euros (US$ 246.000 millones) en activos rusos congelados.

Euroclear, un depositario de valores en Bélgica, custodia la mayor parte de estos activos inmovilizados en la UE, y el Gobierno belga ha expresado varias preocupaciones sobre su uso. Una de las principales es que Rusia lo consideraría una apropiación ilegal de sus activos soberanos.

El primer ministro de Bélgica, Bart De Wever, exigió “garantías vinculantes” de todos los Estados miembros de la UE a cambio de la aprobación belga del préstamo para reparaciones.

Hasta ahora, la UE ha utilizado los intereses generados por estos activos, en su mayoría bonos, para financiar parte de su apoyo a Kyiv. Pero a medida que los bonos vencen, se convierten en efectivo, y es ese dinero el que la UE ha acordado ahora pedir prestado y dar a Ucrania hasta que Rusia pague las reparaciones.

Las negociaciones continuaron “día y noche” antes de la cumbre del jueves, dijo un diplomático europeo a CNN.

Noticia en desarrollo…

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By Niamh Kennedy, Saskya Vandoorne, Caroline Baum, CNN

(CNN) — A German man is on trial for allegedly drugging, raping and filming his unconscious wife for nearly 15 years in a case that has been called the “German Pelicot.”

On Friday, a verdict is expected in the case of a 61-year-old school janitor, who, prosecutors say, raped his wife from 2009 to 2024. The alleged abuse took place inside the couple’s home and was filmed and then shared online without the victim’s knowledge, according to prosecutors.

The verdict at the Regional Court of Aachen in western Germany comes exactly a year after Frenchman Dominique Pelicot – who solicited dozens of strangers from a chatroom for a near 10-year period to rape and abuse his then-wife Gisèle – was found guilty of aggravated rape. Forty-nine other men were all found guilty of rape or sexual assault.

The case, which unfolded over months in southeast France, shocked the country and brought global attention to the way that France approaches gender-based violence amid a culture of pervasive misogyny. It sparked a cultural reckoning on violence against women that the country is continuing to grapple with.

‘A very significant case’

The Aachen case is the first of its kind to be heard by the German courts, according to the campaign group Nur Ja Heisst Ja, whose name – translated to “Only Yes Means Yes” – highlights its mission to change how rape is legally defined.

Last year, Hamburg-based investigative journalists unearthed evidence of a man who, for 14 years, had shared videos on an adult website allegedly showing the drugging and raping of his wife. But that man was never charged; he passed away in 2024.

The Aachen case is ” very significant,” said Jill S., an activist from Nur Ja Heisst Ja who asked CNN not to use her last name to avoid online abuse, because “It’s a case that kind of shows where there are gaps in our legal system.”

In Germany, consent has traditionally been defined through the “no means no’” principle, which campaigners say deprives victims of sexual abuse – particularly those who have been drugged, as is alleged in the Aachen case – the ability to give explicit consent for sexual acts.

Nur Ja Heisst Ja are campaigning for the German government to change the definition of rape to include a “yes means yes’’ standard, arguing that the current law still places the burden on victims to verbally resist rape and other sexual violence.

Like “any kind of topic around sexual violence, it’s not taken very serious by the government,” Jill S. said.

The Aachen case also highlights another key problem, according to the campaigners: The possession of rape content is currently legal in Germany.

Nur Ja Heisst Ja is hopeful that this might soon change, as Kathrin Wahlmann, a justice minister in the state of Lower Saxony, has launched a statewide campaign to have that possession criminalized.

‘Online university of violence’

Across the border in France, lawmaker Sandrine Josso also believes that laws need to be adapted to protect women from this kind of abuse.

For Josso, the issue is personal.

In November 2023, Josso alleges she was drugged by then 66-year-old French senator Joël Guerriau at a party.

She filed a criminal complaint, with a trial beginning in January.

Guerriau has denied all allegations.

“I think that today’s laws are not sufficiently grounded in reality,” Josso told CNN, saying that she believes that current laws do not factor into account how the online world fuels unique eco-systems of abuse.

“Social media has enabled it (sexual abuse) because communities form and s

By Sarah Ferris, Manu Raju, Alison Main, Aileen Graef, Ted Barrett, CNN

(CNN) — Congressional Republicans have sent lawmakers home for the holidays without voting to address the Obamacare subsidies cliff that will hit millions of Americans on New Year’s Day — infuriating some of their own rank and file.

“Here we are without a deal enacted, with the subsidies about to expire. I think it’s totally unacceptable. It’s a failure of leadership, honestly, on both sides,” GOP Rep. Kevin Kiley of California said of the enhanced premium subsidies, moments after the House’s final votes Thursday afternoon.

Kiley is among dozens of GOP centrists in the House and Senate who have begged for weeks for their leaders to allow a bipartisan compromise to avert massive financial hardship for people across the country. Starting January 1, as many as 22 million people will see skyrocketing monthly premiums and some will be forced to forgo coverage altogether.

These members have insisted that a GOP-Congress can’t simply let the Covid-era subsidies expire without helping to blunt the impact in some way. But plenty more Republicans argue that it is a Democratic health care program that has failed – and should not be bailed out with more taxpayer dollars.

Internally, Republicans have been consumed by that battle for weeks, ending in no solution ahead of the deadline.

Some House centrists have been particularly vocal — even agreeing to buck Johnson by signing onto a Democratic effort to force a vote on extending the subsidies.

That dramatic move to defy GOP leadership has now set up a showdown when Congress returns from the holidays. By then, the issue may be even more contentious as millions of Americans feel the pain of higher premiums.

That vote is expected to take place the first week of January. Across the Capitol, a group of Senate centrists have been quietly strategizing about how to use that House-passed bill to pass their own compromise measure early next year.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a fierce critic of the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire in two weeks, did not rule out that option, saying that “there could be a path forward” in the new year to extend them if Democrats are “willing to accept reforms” to that program and embrace other GOP health care policies they have been demanding for years.

Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican who has called for the subsidies to be extended, said that House bill “could be an opportunity to work on something.”

“I won’t pass the Senate as it is, but it could be a vehicle that you get on to do something,” Hawley said.

Pressed again about his decision on Thursday, Johnson defended the move even as he faces enormous pressure from within the ranks of his conference.

Asked by CNN if he was concerned about the potential of swing-district Republicans losing their seats in the midterms, Johnson said “absolutely not.”

Johnson also defended his decision not to delay recess and vote on the extension of the enhanced ACA subsidies rather than dealing with the issue when they return in January.

“The only way to do that is to go through the rules process and fast forward it. Everybody knows those rules. Everybody knew it all along, and they made the decisions that they made,” he said, rolling his eyes when asked about canceling recess.

The House departed Washington a day earlier than expected, after Republicans successfully passed a narrow health care proposal — which involves reducing costs over coming years but does not address the subsidies cliff — as well as a major energy permitting bill.

“They’re playing a political game,” Johnson added, speaking