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The Russian interior ministry has placed six foreign journalists on its wanted list for illegally crossing the Russian frontier to report inside the Kursk region after a Ukrainian cross-border incursion, the TASS news agency reported on Thursday. Russia's FSB security service said last month it had opened criminal cases against several of the journalists, who include a British correspondent for CNN, a reporter for Deutsche Welle, a journalist for Italian state broadcaster RAI, and three Ukrainians working for the 1+1 TV channel. The journalists' employers have previously said their reporting trips into Kursk were legitimate. Italy's foreign ministry summoned the Russian ambassador in Rome to express "surprise at Moscow's singular decision" against RAI reporter Stefania Battistini, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani wrote on social media X. Ukrainian forces launched their incursion on August 6 and remain inside Russia despite a Russian counteroffensive which has p...

The US State Department on Thursday imposed sanctions on a Chinese research institute and several companies it said have been involved in supplying Pakistan’s ballistic missile programme. Washington similarly targeted three China-based companies with sanctions in October 2023 for supplying missile-applicable items to Pakistan. Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement that the Beijing Research Institute of Automation for Machine Building Industry had worked with Pakistan to procure equipment for testing rocket motors for the Shaheen-3 and Ababeel systems and potentially for larger systems. The sanctions also targeted China-based firms Hubei Huachangda Intelligent Equipment Co, Universal Enterprise, and Xi’an Longde Technology Development Co, alongside Pakistan-based Innovative Equipment and a Chinese national, for knowingly transferring equipment under missile technology restrictions, Miller said. “As todays actions demonstrate, the United States will continue...

The Biden administration is overriding human rights conditions on military aid to Egypt, a State Department spokesperson said on Wednesday, granting the US ally its full allocation of $1.3 billion this year for the first time during this administration, despite ongoing concerns over human rights in the country. The announcement comes as Washington has relied heavily on Cairo - a longstanding US ally - to mediate so far unsuccessful talks between Israel and Hamas on a ceasefire deal to end the war in Gaza. Of the $1.3 billion in US foreign military financing allocated to Egypt, $320 million is subject to conditions that have meant at least some of that sum has been withheld in recent years. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress on Wednesday that he would waive a certification requirement on $225 million related to Egypt's human rights record this year citing "the US national security interest," the spokesperson said by email. "This decision is important to a...

India’s cabinet has approved a scheme to spend 109 billion rupees ($1.3 billion) on incentives for the adoption of electric vehicles in its efforts to curb pollution and move towards cleaner fuels. The PM Electric Drive Revolution in Innovative Vehicle Enhancement, or PM E-DRIVE, scheme will give subsidies worth 36.79 billion rupees on e-two wheelers, e-three wheelers, e-ambulances and e-trucks, information minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said at a press briefing on Wednesday. Adoption of EVs is still low in India, but is on the rise as the government promotes clean energy, offering companies incentives to build vehicles and parts in the country. In a first, 5 billion rupees will be doled out to deploy e-ambulances under the scheme, according to a government statement. Replacement of trucks - a major source of air pollution in the country - will be incentivised with an outlay of 5 billion rupees for e-trucks. Additional subsidies will be given in return for scrapping old trucks. It was not i...

An Israeli air strike Wednesday hit a central Gaza school, with the Hamas-run territory’s civil defence agency reporting 14 killed in the facility-turned-displacement shelter and the military saying it had targeted. The vast majority of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once by the war, triggered by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, with many seeking safety in school buildings. Israeli forces have struck several such schools in recent months, saying Palestinian were operating there and hiding among displaced civilians, charges denied by Hamas. The Al-Jawni school in central Gaza’s Nuseirat, already hit several times during the war, was struck again on Wednesday, civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP. “The number of martyrs has risen to 14,” he said, updating an earlier toll of 10 killed in the “Israeli bombing of Al-Jawni school” which also wounded numerous people. AFP was unable to independently verify the toll, which the spokesman said...

Wall Street is anticipating a hit to corporate earnings and the stock market if Democratic presidential candidate and US Vice President Kamala Harris wins in November and enacts promised tax increases. Tax policy has emerged as a key focus for investors ahead of the November 5 election. Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump and Harris, who debate on Tuesday night, are in a statistical dead heat. Wealth advisers say they have been fielding questions from investors about how to prepare for potential changes. “Tax policy is a huge, huge concern for investors,” said chief investment officer Yung-Yu Ma of BMO US Wealth Management, which is hearing questions from clients across the country about potential tax hikes. "Tax policy is something that is front and center in this election." For Wall Street, the greatest attention is on corporate earnings and capital gains taxes. Trump cut the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35% during his presidency and ...

The United States said on Tuesday that Iran has sent missiles to Russia for use within weeks in Ukraine and announced imminent new sanctions against Tehran after it defied warnings. "Russia has now received shipments of these ballistic missiles and will likely use them within weeks in Ukraine against Ukrainians," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in London. Blinken, on a visit to London, said the United States and its allies would impose new sanctions on Iran for defying warnings on sending the missiles, including on state carrier Iran Air. He said that dozens of Russian military personnel have trained in Iran using the Fath-360 missile, which has a range of 75 miles (120 kilometres). "We've warned Iran privately that taking this step would constitute a dramatic escalation," Blinken told a news conference in the British capital. "Russia has now received shipments of these ballistic missiles and will likely use them within weeks in Ukraine ...

Syrian state media said on Monday that overnight Israeli strikes killed 16 people in central Hama province, while a war monitor reported a higher death toll in the “intense” raids on military sites. The Israeli military, which has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since its civil war started in 2011, declined to comment on the latest reported attack. Syrian official news agency SANA, citing a medical source, said the number of dead “in the Israeli aggression on a number of sites on the outskirts of Masyaf” was “16 martyrs and 36 wounded, including six critically”, updating an earlier toll of 14. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor reported “intense Israeli strikes” overnight, providing an updated of toll of 25 dead including “five civilians, four soldiers and intelligence personnel and 13 Syrians working with pro-Iran groups”. Three more bodies were unidentified, the Observatory added. Israeli strikes on Syria since 2011 have mainly targeted army positions and Ir...

Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition agreed to temporarily extend frontier controls to all nine of Germany’s land borders as part of a crackdown on irregular immigration and an effort to strengthen domestic security. Germany already has temporary controls on its borders with Poland, the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Austria. Those will now be extended for six months from Sept. 16 to include Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Luxembourg, the interior ministry said Monday in a statement in Berlin. The move means that police can establish stationary and mobile checks and also have the power to turn people away, as long as their actions are in line with European and German law, the ministry added. “This serves to protect against the dangers of Islamist terror and serious cross-border crime,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser was quoted as saying in the statement. “It will continue to be very important to us to act in close coordination with our neighbors and to keep the impa...

The transfer of ballistic missiles from Iran to Russia would represent a “dramatic escalation” of Tehran’s support for Moscow, and the United States is prepared to respond with “signficiant consequences,” the State Department said on Monday. “Any transfer of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia would represent a dramatic escalation in Iran’s support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” spokesman Vedant Patel told journalists. “We have been clear… that we’re prepared to deliver significant consequences,” he said. A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander denied reports that Iran was transferring missiles to Russia, Iranian media said on Monday, amid concern in the West that they could be deployed in the war in Ukraine. CNN and the Wall Street Journal reported last week, citing unidentified sources, that Iran had transferred short-range ballistic missiles to Russia. Brigadier Fazlollah Nozari, deputy commander of the Khatam al-Anbia Central Headquarters, w...

ALLENBY BRIDGE CROSSING, West Bank: A Jordanian gunman shot and killed three Israeli civilians at the Allenby Bridge border crossing in the occupied West Bank on Sunday before being fatally shot by Israeli security forces, according to Israeli authorities. This marked the first such attack along the Jordan-Israel border since the Hamas assault on southern Israel on 7 October, which ignited the ongoing Gaza conflict. The incident occurred in a commercial cargo zone controlled by Israel, where Jordanian trucks offload goods into the West Bank. The Allenby Bridge, also known as the King Hussein Bridge, is situated between Amman and Jerusalem, just north of the Dead Sea. The attacker, identified as 39-year-old Maher Ziab Hussein Al-Jazi from southern Jordan’s Ma'an governorate, was a truck driver from the influential Huwaitat tribe, according to his family and the Jordanian interior ministry. The Israeli military reported that Al-Jazi approached the area in his truck, exited, and opene...

Floods from torrential rains killed at least 11 people in the provinces of Tata, Tiznit and Errachidia in south Morocco, authorities said in a preliminary death toll on Sunday. At least nine others were missing after floods swamped many villages in the area, authorities added. The floods destroyed 40 homes and damaged 93 roads, as well as electricity, water supply and phone networks. “Eight houses were washed away by floods in some valleys” near Tamanart, a rural area in the Tata region, said the official, who did not wish to be named. Usually arid areas in southern Morocco and Algeria have been drenched in floods caused by massive rainfall since Friday, officials told AFP on Sunday. Areas in southern Morocco have been affected “by an extremely unstable tropical air mass”, the spokesman for the Moroccan General Directorate of Meteorology, Lhoussaine Youabd, told AFP. This “led to the formation of unstable and violent clouds” that caused massive rainfall, he said. Youabd described the p...

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian will visit neighbouring Iraq on Wednesday, state media reported Sunday, in what will be his first trip abroad since he took office in July. Pezeshkian will head a high-ranking Iranians delegation to Baghdad to meet senior Iraqi officials. The visit comes at the invitation of Iraq’s premier, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, the official IRNA news agency quoted Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad Mohammad Kazem Al-Sadegh as saying. The two countries will sign memoranda of understanding on cooperation and security, Sadegh said, without elaborating. He said the agreements were to have been signed during a planned visit to Iraq by Iran’s late president, Ebrahim Raisi. But Raisi was killed in May along with the then foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, when their helicopter crashed on a fog-shrouded mountainside in northern Iran. Since taking office, Pezeshkian has vowed to “prioritise” strengthening ties with the Islamic republic’s neighbours. Relations between Ir...

At least 48 people were killed on Sunday in a fuel tanker truck explosion following a collision with another vehicle in north-central Nigeria, the state's disaster management agency said. The State Emergency Management Agency in north-central Niger state said the fuel truck collided with a truck carrying travellers and cattle. Several other vehicles were also caught up in the accident, it said. The agency's spokesperson Hussaini Ibrahim put the death toll at 48 and officials were still trying to clear the scene of the incident. Nigeria's state-owned firm NNPC Ltd last week hiked the price of gasoline by at least 39%, the second major increase in more than a year but shortages have continued, forcing motorists to queue for hours in the country's major cities and towns. from Latest World News, International News | Breaking World News https://ift.tt/TfOpIQg via IFTTT

 Three Lebanese paramedics were killed and two others wounded, one critically, in an Israeli attack while they were extinguishing fires in the southern town of Faroun, Lebanon's health ministry said on Saturday. "Israeli forces targeted a team from the Lebanese Civil Defence as they responded to fires sparked by recent Israeli airstrikes," a ministry statement said, specifying that the strike hit a fire truck. Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the Israeli attack as a violation of international law and announced an emergency meeting on Monday with Western ambassadors and international organisations to address the ongoing hostilities. "To date, because of Israel's aggression, 25 paramedics from various ambulance teams have been killed, along with two health workers, and 94 paramedics and health workers have been injured," the health ministry statement added. The health ministry also condemned the attack as a "blatant strike" on an offici...

 Three Lebanese paramedics were killed and two others wounded, one critically, in an Israeli attack while they were extinguishing fires in the southern town of Faroun, Lebanon's health ministry said on Saturday. "Israeli forces targeted a team from the Lebanese Civil Defence as they responded to fires sparked by recent Israeli airstrikes," a ministry statement said, specifying that the strike hit a fire truck. Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the Israeli attack as a violation of international law and announced an emergency meeting on Monday with Western ambassadors and international organisations to address the ongoing hostilities. "To date, because of Israel's aggression, 25 paramedics from various ambulance teams have been killed, along with two health workers, and 94 paramedics and health workers have been injured," the health ministry statement added. The health ministry also condemned the attack as a "blatant strike" on an offici...

 Three Lebanese paramedics were killed and two others wounded, one critically, in an Israeli attack while they were extinguishing fires in the southern town of Faroun, Lebanon's health ministry said on Saturday. "Israeli forces targeted a team from the Lebanese Civil Defence as they responded to fires sparked by recent Israeli airstrikes," a ministry statement said, specifying that the strike hit a fire truck. Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the Israeli attack as a violation of international law and announced an emergency meeting on Monday with Western ambassadors and international organisations to address the ongoing hostilities. "To date, because of Israel's aggression, 25 paramedics from various ambulance teams have been killed, along with two health workers, and 94 paramedics and health workers have been injured," the health ministry statement added. The health ministry also condemned the attack as a "blatant strike" on an offici...

Boeing’s problem-plagued Starliner landed uncrewed at White Sands Space Harbour in New Mexico late on Friday, capping a three-month test mission hobbled by technical issues that forced the astronauts it had flown to the International Space Station (ISS) to remain there until next year. The spacecraft left the ISS earlier on Friday, bound for Earth without astronauts after Nasa deemed the risk too great. The century-old aerospace giant’s reputation has taken a hammering over thruster malfunctions and helium leaks its spaceship encountered on its way up to the orbital outpost in June, and the US space agency’s subsequent decision to fly its crew back on a rival SpaceX Crew Dragon next year. “It is time to bring Calypso home,” astronaut Suni Williams told mission control, using the spaceship’s nickname. “We have your back and you’ve got this, bring her back to Earth. Good luck.” Starliner returned to Earth seemingly without a hitch, a Nasa live stream showed, nailing the critical final ph...

The International Criminal Court (ICC) said on Friday it had terminated proceedings against late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh following his death in July. The ICC is currently weighing a request for arrest warrants against Israeli and Hamas leaders made earlier this year. In May ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan asked for arrest warrants for Hamas leaders, saying there were reasonable grounds to suspect that Yahya Sinwar, military chief Mohammed Al-Masri and Haniyeh, bore criminal responsibility for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. In the same statement the prosecutor announced he was also seeking warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defence minister Yoav Gallant. There has been no word of further developments on those requests. Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran on July 31. Israel has also said it killed Al-Masri, also known as Mohammed Deif, in another airstrike, although Hamas would neither confirm or deny that. Judges said their dec...

The New York judge who presided over Donald Trump’s hush money trial on Friday delayed sentencing until after November’s US presidential election. The Republican White House candidate had been scheduled to be sentenced on September 18 for falsifying business records during a scheme to silence a porn star. Instead, Judge Juan Merchan postponed it to November 26 — well past the November 5 election in which Trump faces Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump’s lawyers had sought the delay. Trump was convicted in May of 34 counts of doctoring business records to cover up hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels to stop her from publishing her account of an alleged sexual encounter on the eve of the 2016 election. He was originally scheduled to be sentenced on July 11 but that was delayed after the Supreme Court ruled that a former US president has broad immunity from criminal prosecution. Trump’s lawyers had asked that his New York conviction be dismissed following th...

Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden, offered on Thursday to plead guilty to federal tax charges but avoid admitting any wrongdoing, in an unusual legal maneuver that federal prosecutors quickly opposed. It was not immediately clear whether the judge overseeing the case would accept the offer or move ahead with a trial that could air embarrassing details of the younger Biden's life shortly before the November 5 presidential election. He had previously pleaded not guilty in the criminal case, which accuses him of failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes while spending lavishly on drugs, sex workers and luxury items. He was charged in December as part of a wide-ranging probe of his finances and business dealings, becoming the first child of a sitting president to face criminal charges. In the Los Angeles federal court where his trial was due to take place, Biden sought to enter what is known as an "Alford plea," an usual type of guilty plea where a defendant do...

Coca-Cola and rival PepsiCo. spent hundreds of millions of dollars over decades building demand for their soft drinks in Muslim-majority countries including Egypt to Pakistan. Now, both face a challenge from local sodas in those countries due to consumer boycotts that target the globe-straddling brands as symbols of America, and by extension Israel, at a time of war in Gaza. In Egypt, sales of Coke have cratered this year, while local brand V7 exported three times as many bottles of its own cola in the Middle East and the wider region than last year. In Bangladesh, an outcry forced Coca-Cola to cancel an ad campaign against the boycott. And across the Middle East, Pepsi’s rapid growth evaporated after the Gaza war started in October. Pakistani corporate executive Sunbal Hassan kept Coke and Pepsi off her wedding menu in Karachi in April. She said she didn’t want to feel her money had reached the tax coffers of the United States, Israel’s staunchest ally. “With the boycott, one can play...

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau encountered an unexpected setback on Wednesday when the New Democratic Party (NDP), a minor political group supporting his minority Liberal government, withdrew its automatic backing. This development now compels Trudeau to seek new alliances in order to govern effectively. Despite speculation about early elections following the NDP’s decision, Trudeau dismissed the idea and committed to continuing governance and promoting social programmes. He will now rely on other opposition members to pass budgets and survive confidence votes. Speaking from Newfoundland and Labrador, where he had been scheduled to discuss school meal programmes, Trudeau expressed hope that the NDP would remain focused on helping Canadians, as they have done previously, rather than getting caught up in political manoeuvring. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, in a video statement, declared he was ending the 2022 agreement between his party and Trudeau, accusing the Prime Minister of fai...

The UK’s Grenfell Tower fire disaster that killed 72 people was the result of “decades of failure” by government and construction industry bodies and the “systematic dishonesty” of building material firms, a final report said Wednesday. Unveiling the damning findings of an independent probe into the 2017 tragedy, inquiry chair Martin Moore-Bick said the deaths were “all avoidable” and the victims had been “badly failed”. Some of those who played a part in sowing the seeds of the disaster had shown “incompetence”, as well as “dishonesty and greed”, he said. The fire in the early hours of June 14, 2017, spread rapidly through the 24-storey block in west London due to highly combustible cladding fixed to the exterior. Starting in a faulty freezer on the fourth floor, the blaze took barely half an hour to climb to the building’s top floor with catastrophic consequences. The report marks the end of the long-running inquiry into Britain’s worst residential fire since World War II. It makes s...

Around 8,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh in recent months, escaping escalating violence in Myanmar's western Rakhine state, according to Bangladeshi officials. The violence has intensified as fighting between Myanmar's ruling junta and the Arakan Army, a powerful ethnic militia drawn from the Buddhist majority, continues to worsen. "We have information that around 8,000 Rohingya crossed into Bangladesh recently, mostly over the last two months," said Mohammad Shamsud Douza, a senior official in charge of refugees for the Bangladeshi government. "Bangladesh is already over-burdened and unable to accommodate any more Rohingya," he told Reuters on Wednesday. The Bangladesh government has not previously provided any estimate of how many Rohingya have crossed over in the last few months. The government will hold a "serious discussion at the cabinet" within the next two to three days to address the crisis, Bangladesh’s de-facto foreign minis...

Netflix said on Tuesday it will add new disclaimers to an Indian series about a plane hijack after social media outrage and government anger over what they said was Muslim hijackers being shown as Hindus. The series, called "IC-814: The Kandahar Hijack," a fictionalised version of the 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines flight 814 from Kathmandu, was released on Netflix last week. It was immediately criticised for what social media users said was a wrong portrayal of the hijackers as Hindus with Hindu names when they were Muslims. Netflix officials were summoned to India's information and broadcasting ministry on Tuesday, local media reported, and the streaming platform said soon after that it will update the disclaimer. There was no comment from the government. "For the benefit of audiences unfamiliar with the 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814, the opening disclaimer has been updated to include the real and code names of the hijackers," Monika Shergill...

Donald Trump said on Tuesday he has plans that are "guaranteed" to end the deadly war in Ukraine, but will only reveal them if he wins the US presidential election in November. The former US president and current Republican nominee is locked in a neck-and-neck race with his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris. "If I win, as president elect, I'll have a deal made, guaranteed. That's a war that shouldn't have happened," Trump said on the Lex Fridman Podcast released on Tuesday. "I have a very exacting plan how to stop Ukraine and Russia, And I have a certain idea -- maybe not a plan, but an idea -- for China," he added. "But I can't give you those plans, because if I give you those plans, I'm not going to be able to use them, they'll be very unsuccessful. You know, part of it's surprise, right?" The comments echo the move by Trump loyalists in Congress earlier this year, when they tanked a bipartisan immigrati...

During a recent appearance on the highly-popular Lex Fridman Podcast, US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was asked about the potential declassification of the controversial 'Epstein Files.' Clarifying his stance on the matter, the former president said he would be "inclined" to consider making the files available to the public. Trump acknowledged that many powerful figures were associated with Jeffrey Epstein but asserted that he himself was not friends with him.         View this post on Instagram                       A post shared by Grant Godwin (@the_typical_liberal)   During a June 2024 interview on Fox & Friends, Trump was asked whether he would declassify various federal files, including those related to 9/11, the JFK assassination, and Epstein. While Trump quickly agreed to release files on 9/11 and JFK, he hesitated when it came to Epstein. “I think [Epstein] less so because you ...

The United States has seized a plane used by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and flown it from the Dominican Republic to Florida after determining that its purchase violated US sanctions, the US Justice Department said on Monday. The seizure of the aircraft came amid continuing pressure on Maduro at home and abroad over a contested July 28 election that he claimed to have won, while the opposition said its vote tallies showed its candidate to have soundly defeated him. Maduro, his associates and the OPEC member-state's vital oil sector are under heavy U.S. sanctions, and his handling of the election has raised the prospects that further measures could be imposed. US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that the Dassault Falcon 900EX aircraft was illegally purchased for $13 million through a shell company and smuggled out of the US "for use by Nicolás Maduro and his cronies." "Let this seizure send a clear message: aircraft illegally acquired from ...

Britain will immediately suspend 30 of its 350 arms export licences with Israel because there was a risk such equipment might be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law, foreign minister David Lammy said on Monday. Lammy said the decision to suspend the licences did not amount to a blanket ban or an arms embargo, but only involved those that could be used in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza. "We recognise, of course, Israel's need to defend itself against security threats, but we are deeply worried by the methods that Israel's employed, and by reports of civilian casualties and the destruction of civilian infrastructure particularly," Lammy told parliament. Soon after the Labour Party won an election in July, Lammy said he would update a review on arms sales to Britain's ally Israel to ensure these complied with international law. "It is with regret that I inform the House (of Commons...

South Korean police said Monday they had launched an investigation into encrypted messaging platform Telegram for allegedly "abetting" the distribution of so-called deepfake porn, including explicit AI generated images of teenagers. Deepfake porn includes explicit content where the faces of individuals are digitally superimposed onto other pornographic images or videos using artificial intelligence technology. A South Korean broadcaster reported last month that university students were running an illegal Telegram chatroom, sharing deepfake pornographic material of female classmates, one of a slew of high-profile cases that have stoked public anger. "In light of these (deepfake) crimes, the Seoul National Police Agency launched their probe last week... for abetting the crimes," said Woo Jong-soo, head of the investigation bureau at the National Police Agency, according to a transcript of a press briefing. "Telegram has been non-responsive to our previous request...

Massive protests erupted across Israel on Sunday following the deaths of six hostages in Gaza, as public frustration grew over the government's inability to secure a ceasefire deal that could ensure the release of more Israeli captives. Approximately 500,000 demonstrators, according to Israeli media estimates, gathered in cities such as Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. They urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to intensify efforts to bring home the remaining 101 hostages, of whom a third are believed to have died, based on Israeli officials' assessments. In Jerusalem, protesters blocked streets and gathered outside Netanyahu's residence, while in Tel Aviv, aerial footage captured the city’s main highway packed with demonstrators holding flags bearing images of the slain hostages. Israeli television broadcast images of police using water cannons against protestors who obstructed roads, and local media reported 29 arrests. Labour leaders declared a one-day general strike for Monday...

At least 47 people, including five children, were injured on Sunday after Russian missiles struck a shopping mall and events complex in Ukraine's northeastern city of Kharkiv, officials said. Earlier in the day, Russia said Kyiv had launched one of the biggest drone attacks against it since the full-scale war began, targeting power plants and an oil refinery, while Moscow's forces made further gains towards a key town in eastern Ukraine. The Kharkiv attack prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to renew calls on allies to allow Kyiv to fire Western-supplied missiles deeper into enemy territory and reduce the military threat posed by Russia. The fighting comes at a critical juncture in the two-and-a-half-year conflict. Russia is pressing an offensive in eastern Ukraine while trying to expel Ukrainian forces that broke through its western border in a surprise incursion on Aug. 6. Last week, Russia pounded Ukraine with its heaviest airstrikes of the war, hitting targets ...

The helicopter crash in which Iran's late President Ebrahim Raisi was killed was primarily caused by weather conditions that included thick fog, Iran's state TV said on Sunday, citing the final investigation report on the incident. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, a hardliner who was seen as a potential successor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, died when his helicopter crashed in May in a mountainous region near the Azerbaijan border. "The main reason for the helicopter crash was complicated weather conditions in the region," the final report concluded, according to Iran's state TV. Read also: Raisi helicopter crash caused by weather A thick mass of fog caused the helicopter that was carrying Raisi and his companions to crash into the mountain, the report issued by a high committee charged by Iran's military with investigating the incident said. A preliminary report by Iran's military had said in May that no evidence of foul play or an attack had...