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Poll Finds Nearly 80% of Palestinians Want Abbas to Resign

A new poll has found that nearly 80% of Palestinians want President Mahmoud Abbas to resign, reflecting widespread anger over the death of an activist in security forces' custody and a crackdown on protests over the summer.

The survey released Tuesday found support for Abbas' Hamas rivals remained high months after the 11-day Gaza war in May, when the Islamic militant group was widely seen by Palestinians as having scored a victory against a far more powerful Israel while the Western-backed Abbas was sidelined.

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Twitter to Pay $809.5 Million to Settle Shareholder Lawsuit

Twitter said Monday it will pay $809.5 million to settle a consolidated class action lawsuit alleging that the company misled investors about how much its user base was growing and how much users interacted with its platform.

The San Francisco company said the proposed settlement, which must still be signed off by a judge, resolves all claims against it without Twitter admitting any wrongdoing. The original lawsuit filed in 2016 by Twitter investor Doris Shenwick claimed that Twitter executives "knowingly made inaccurate public statements regarding these metrics, and failed to disclose internal information about them, resulting in an inflated share price that fell when the truth about user engagement became known."

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Chinese Builder's Debt Struggle Rattles Investors

Global investors are watching nervously as one of China's biggest real estate developers struggles to avoid defaulting on tens of billions of dollars of debt, fueling fears of possible wider shock waves for the financial system.

Chinese regulators have yet to say what they might do about Evergrande Group. Economists expect Beijing to intervene if Evergrande and lenders can't agree on how to handle its debts. But any official resolution is expected to involve losses for banks and bondholders.

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McDonald's Begins Phasing Out Plastic Toys in Happy Meals

McDonald's plans to "drastically" reduce the plastic in its Happy Meal toys worldwide by 2025.

The burger giant said Tuesday it's working with toy companies to develop new ideas, such as three-dimensional cardboard superheroes kids can build or board games with plant-based or recycled game pieces. McDonald's said it's also exploring using recycled plastic toys to make new restaurant trays.

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European Court: Russia Responsible for Litvinenko Killing

The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday backed the conclusion of a British inquiry that Russia was responsible for the killing of Alexander Litvinenko, who died in London in 2006 after drinking tea laced with a radioactive material.

A former agent for the KGB and the post-Soviet successor agency FSB, Litvinenko defected from Russia in 2000 and fled to London. While in Britain, Litvinenko became involved in exposing corruption and links to organized crime in the Russian intelligence service.

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France Rallies EU as Trust in U.S., UK and Australia Wanes

France on Tuesday urged its European Union partners to consider whether to delay negotiations on the bloc's future trade agreement with Australia over what Paris says is a lack of trust sparked by a major defense deal between the U.S., Australia and Britain.

French European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune said he would raise the trade pact and the security implications of the deal, known as AUKUS, at a meeting with his counterparts in Brussels, and that France would ensure that it is discussed at EU summits and ministerial meetings next month.

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UK Energy Crisis: Government Races to Avert Food Shortages

The British government is racing to avert shortages of meat, poultry and packaged foods amid a crisis in the food processing industry triggered by soaring energy costs.

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said Tuesday that he hopes to reach a deal with the U.K.'s primary supplier of food-grade carbon dioxide to restore supplies of the gas that is used to stun animals before slaughter, preserve fruits and vegetables before packaging and put the fizz into carbonated beverages. Kwarteng is in talks with CF Industries, which halted operations at its U.K. plants last week due to high natural gas prices.

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UAE Welcomes Regional Rivals at Major Natural Gas Conference

Energy officials from Qatar and Turkey, long-standing foes of the United Arab Emirates, descended on Dubai along with hundreds of other executives on Tuesday, flocking to the world's largest gas expo and the industry's first in-person conference since the pandemic began.

In a scene that would have been unthinkable just a year ago, the Emirati oil minister held forth from a crowded conference room beside the Qatari minister of state for energy, the first such visit since the UAE and three other Arab states imposed an embargo on Qatar in 2017.

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Nerves on Edge on Spanish Island as Quakes, Lava Threaten

Several small earthquakes shook the Spanish island of La Palma off northwest Africa in the early hours of Tuesday, keeping nerves on edge as rivers of lava continued to flow toward the sea and a new vent blew open on the mountainside.

The new vent is 900 meters (3,000 feet) north of the Cumbre Vieja ridge, where the volcano first erupted on Sunday after a week of thousands of small earthquakes.

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Tunisian President Vows New Electoral Code, Transition Team

Tunisia's president has announced plans to draft a new electoral code and appoint a transitional leadership — and to hang on to the exceptional powers that he seized in July, throwing the country's young democracy into question.

In a speech Monday night, President Kais Saied promised that the new initiatives would respect Tunisians' hard-fought rights and freedoms and democratic constitution.

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