Global News

By Francois Murphy Reuters  Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPO) must on Monday seek to clear a path to power after its first ever parliamentary election victory left the anti-establishment outfit needing a partner to form a governing coalition. The triumph of the Eurosceptic, Russia-friendly FPO on Sunday was another milestone in the recent rise of Europe’s hard right. But the party immediately suffered a stiff reality check. Facing FPO party leader Herbert Kickl in a television studio after results came in, leaders of the other parties in parliament  dismissed his overtures  on forming a coalition. The FPO finished around 2.5 percentage points ahead of Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s conservative People’s Party (OVP) to capture some 29% of the vote – its best result ever – and Kickl accused his rivals of opposing the will of the people. “Tomorrow there will be a blue Monday and then we will set about turning that 29% into a political reality in this country,” Kickl t...

By Gopal Sharma Reuters Nepal has shut schools for three days after landslides and floods triggered by two days of heavy rain across the Himalayan nation killed 129 people, with 62 missing, officials said on Sunday. The floods brought traffic and normal activity to a standstill in the Kathmandu valley, where 37 deaths were recorded in a region home to 4 million people and the capital. Authorities said students and their parents faced difficulties as university and school buildings damaged by the rains needed repair. “We have urged the concerned authorities to close schools in the affected areas for three days,” Lakshmi Bhattarai, a spokesperson for the education ministry, told Reuters. Some parts of the capital reported rain of up to 322.2 mm (12.7 inches), pushing the level of its main Bagmati river up 2.2 m (7 ft) past the danger mark, experts said. But there were some signs of respite on Sunday morning, with the rains easing in many places, said Govinda Jha, a weather forecast...

By Ari Rabinovitch and Maya Gebeily Reuters  Israel said on Saturday it had killed Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in an airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburbs a day earlier, in what would be a devastating blow to the group as it reels from an escalating campaign of Israeli attacks. Reuters could not immediately reach Hezbollah officials for comment. The  Iran-backed Hezbollah  has yet to issue any statement on the status of Nasrallah, its leader for 32 years. If confirmed, Nasrallah’s death would mark a major blow not only to Hezbollah but also its backers in Iran. He has long been a leading figure in the Tehran-backed “Axis of Resistance”, helping to project Iranian influence across the Middle East. The Israeli military said in a statement that Nasrallah was eliminated in a “targeted strike” on the group’s underground headquarters under a residential building in Dahiyeh – a Hezbollah-controlled southern suburb of Beirut. It said he was killed along with an...

Seventeen people were killed in mass shootings at two homes in a village in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province and police said on Saturday they had launched a manhunt for the suspects. South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world, with about 20,000 murders recorded every year out of a population of over 60 million. Police said in a statement that the shootings occurred in two separate homes in the village of Lusikisiki and that in total, 15 women and two men had been killed. Advertisement · Scroll to continueReport this ad “In one house 13 people were killed, which included 12 women and one man. In another homestead, four people were also killed,” the South African Police Service said. The motive for the attacks was not known but police said they had begun a manhunt for the shooters. SOURCE: REUTERS, AGENCIES from The Times Of Earth https://ift.tt/BwM03cn

By Timour Azhari and James Mackenzie Reuters  Israel rejected global calls on Thursday for a ceasefire with the Hezbollah movement, defying its biggest ally in Washington and pressing ahead with strikes that have killed hundreds in Lebanon and heightened fears of an all-out regional war. Despite Israel’s stance, the U.S. and France sought to keep prospects alive for an  immediate 21-day  truce they proposed on Wednesday, and said negotiations continued, including on the sidelines of a United Nations meeting in New York. An Israeli warplane struck the edges of the capital Beirut, killing two people and wounding 15, including a woman in critical condition, Lebanon’s health ministry said. That took deaths overnight and on Thursday to 28 and over 600 since Monday. The strike killed the head of one of Hezbollah’s air force units, Mohammad Surur, Hezbollah said, the latest senior Hezbollah commander to be targeted in days of assassinations among the group’s top ranks. On t...

By Mark Trevelyan and Andrew Osborn Reuters President Vladimir Putin has drawn a “red line” for the United States and its allies by signalling that Moscow will consider responding with nuclear weapons if they allow Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia with long-range Western missiles. But some in the West are asking: does he actually mean it? The question is critical to the course of the war. If Putin is bluffing, as Ukraine and some of its supporters believe, then the West may feel ready to deepen its military support for Kyiv regardless of Moscow’s threats. If he is serious, there is a risk – repeatedly stated by Moscow and acknowledged by Washington – that the conflict could turn into World War Three. In the latest in a long series of warning signals, Putin  on Wednesday  extended the list of scenarios that could lead to Russia using  nuclear weapons . It could do this, he said, in response to a major cross-border conventional attack involving aircraft, missiles ...

 Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Thursday rejected proposals from the United States and France calling for a  21-day ceasefire  in Lebanon, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had not responded but told the army to keep up its operation. “There will be no ceasefire in the north,” Katz said on the social media platform X. “We will continue to fight against the Hezbollah terrorist organization with all our strength until victory and the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes.” Netanyahu, who left Israel on Thursday to address the United Nations, issued a statement that said he had ordered the military to keep fighting with full force, in accordance with operational plans. “This is an American-French proposal that the Prime Minister has not even responded to,” his office said in a statement. Shortly after the statement was published, the Israeli military said it had launched a new wave of airstrikes against Hezbollah targets in Leban...

Sudan’s army launched artillery and air strikes in Sudan’s capital on Thursday in its biggest operation to regain ground there since early in its 17-month war with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), witnesses and military sources said. The push by the army, which lost control of most of the capital at the start of  the conflict , came ahead of an address by its commander, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, at the United Nations General Assembly in New York later in the day. Witnesses reported heavy bombardments and clashes as army troops tried to cross bridges across the Nile connecting the three adjoining cities that make up the greater capital, Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri. Though the army retook some ground in Omdurman early this year, it depends mostly on artillery and airstrikes and has been unable to dislodge more effective RSF ground forces embedded in other parts of the capital. The RSF has also continued to make advances in other parts of Sudan in recent months in a conflict...

By Maya Gebeily and Ari Rabinovitch Reuters Israel widened its airstrikes in Lebanon on Wednesday and shot down a missile that the armed group Hezbollah said it had fired at the Mossad spy service near Tel Aviv, ratcheting up the conflict between the two arch-foes. Hezbollah claimed to have targeted the Mossad headquarters with what it described as a ballistic missile. Reuters could not independently confirm the type of rocket fired. World leaders meanwhile expressed concern that the conflict – running in parallel to Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas – was rapidly intensifying as the death toll in Lebanon rose and thousands of people fled their homes. Israeli airstrikes this week have targeted Hezbollah leaders and hit hundreds of sites deep inside Lebanon while Hezbollah has fired barrages of rockets into Israel. Wednesday morning’s Hezbollah strike was the first time since the start of the war that one of its missiles had been sighted above Tel Aviv – Israel’s economic capital ...

Lebanon’s Hezbollah said its fighters had fired a rocket targeting the Mossad spy agency headquarters near Tel Aviv on Wednesday, an escalation in the conflict with Israel that moved the arch-foes closer to full-fledged war. The Israeli military said a single surface-to-surface missile was intercepted by air defence systems after it was detected crossing from Lebanon. Warning sirens sounded in Tel Aviv, Israel’s economic capital. There were no reports of damage or casualties and the military said there was no change to civil defence instructions for central Israel. Israeli military spokesman Nadav Shoshani said he could not confirm what Hezbollah’s target was when it fired the missile from a village in Lebanon. “The result was a heavy missile, going towards Tel Aviv, towards civilian areas in Tel Aviv. The Mossad headquarters is not in that area,” he said. Warning sirens also sounded in other areas of central Israel, including the city of Netanya. The Israeli military has been ca...

 A raging wildfire filled Ecuador’s capital of Quito with smoke and threatened homes on Tuesday as authorities rushed to control the blaze at a time when a historic drought has stretched resources and patience. President Daniel Noboa said the armed forces had been deployed to fight the fire, which started around midday in the bohemian Guapulo neighborhood and gradually spread to nearby residences and forested areas. Some tearful residents worked desperately to put out flames, according to a Reuters witness. “We couldn’t rescue anything. We just arrived, we didn’t know what to do … I don’t know why this is happening to us,” said Guapulo resident Rosana Cepeda. No deaths or serious injuries have been reported. Quito’s firefighting force said its contingents were fully deployed and that its units would be fighting fires throughout the night. “The fire will not end in the next few hours. It will surely continue into the night,” Mayor Pabel Munoz told the press, adding that fallin...

By Fredy Garcia Reuters  Hurricane John hit Mexico’s southern Pacific coast late on Monday as a major category 3 storm, with authorities warning residents to protect themselves against potentially deadly storm surges and torrential rain. The storm, packing maximum sustained winds of 120 mph (193 kph) made landfall south-southwest of Marquelia in the state of Guerrero, at about 9:15 p.m. Central Standard Time, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in a statement. Although slow-moving it had strengthened rapidly during the day, and President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador urged coastal dwellers to seek higher ground as the top disaster agency called a red alert in parts of Guerrero and neighboring Oaxaca state. “Don’t forget that life is the most important thing – material things can be replaced,” the president wrote on social media. The storm could bring “extraordinary” rainfall to parts of Guerrero and Oaxaca, in excess of 250 mm (10 inches), said national water commissio...

By Timour Azhari and Miro Maman Reuters Israel and Hezbollah exchanged heavy fire into Sunday, with Israeli warplanes carrying out the most intense bombardment in almost a year of conflict across Lebanon’s south and Hezbollah firing rockets deep into northern Israel. The Israeli military said it struck around 290 targets on Saturday, including thousands of  Hezbollah  rocket launcher barrels, and said it would continue to hit more targets. Israel closed schools and restricted gatherings in many northern areas and ordered hospitals there to transfer their operations to facilities with extra protection from rocket and missile fire. There were no government directives from Lebanon on Sunday morning. The conflict – which sharply escalated over the past week – has raged since Hezbollah opened a second front against Israel after Israel went to  war with Hamas  in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, triggered by the Hamas-led rampage in southern Israel on Oct. 7. Sirens ...

By Lizbeth Diaz Reuters Some 53 people have been killed and 51 others are missing in Mexico’s western Sinaloa state since rival factions of the Sinaloa Cartel began clashing on Sept 9, local authorities said on Friday, with gruesome violence showing no signs of abating. The trigger for the conflict between the two most powerful factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, a drug gang, dates back to July, when legendary trafficker and leader of one of those groupings, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, was arrested in the United States. Zambada, 74, alleges that a senior member of the Los Chapitos, another faction of the cartel,  kidnapped him and then flew him to the United States  against his will. Since fighting broke out on Sept 9, shootouts have disrupted daily life in the capital, Culiacan, where schools have had to close on some days while restaurants and shops shuttered early. Sinaloa governor Rubén Rocha Moya on Friday said more than 40 people have been arrested in recent days, while m...

By Dawoud Abu Alkas and Nidal Al-Mughrabi Reuters Palestinians said an Israeli strike killed at least 22 people in a school sheltering displaced people in southern Gaza City on Saturday, while the Israeli military said the attack targeted a command centre of militant group Hamas. The Gaza health ministry said most of those killed were women and children. The Hamas-run government media office said 13 children and six women were among the dead. The military said it hit a Hamas command centre embedded in the compound that previously served as a school, repeating an accusation that the group uses civilian facilities for military purposes. Hamas denies that. Reuters footage from the site showed blasted walls, wrecked and burnt furniture, and holes in the ceiling of one room as people tried to salvage what they could of belongings. “The women and their children were sitting in the playground of the school, the kids were playing, and suddenly two rockets hit them,” said one witness Said ...

Peruvian authorities scrambled to roll out a plan to fight fires raging out of control across the nation, razing crops, damaging archaeological treasures and leaving several regions in a state of disaster on Thursday. Firefighters said battling the blazes has grown increasingly difficult. “We’re tired,” said a volunteer firefighter in the forests of the northern Amazonas region who declined to give his name. “We put the fire out, it lights back up. We put it out, the fire breaks out again.” Firefighters in the area retreated from the flames on Thursday. “They’re out of control,” said Arturo Morales, another volunteer firefighter. “We need help.” President Dina Boluarte on Wednesday declared a 60-day state of emergency in the San Martin, Amazonas and Ucayali regions, allocating extra resources to stop the fires from spreading. “We’re rolling out everything we have,” Boluarte said in a speech. She called on farmers to stop burning grasslands, which she said caused flames to spread ...

By Laila Bassam and Maayan Lubell Reuters  Israel killed a top Hezbollah commander in an airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday, the Israeli military and two security sources in Lebanon said, sharply escalating the year-long conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed group. Israeli military said that Aqil, who served on Hezbollah’s top military body, was the acting commander of the group’s elite Radwan force and that he was killed along with other senior commanders of the unit. One of the security sources in Lebanon said he was killed with members of the Radwan unit as they held a meeting. The strike killed nine people and wounded 59 others, Lebanon’s health ministry said, in a preliminary toll. The strike inflicted another blow on Hezbollah after the group suffered an unprecedented attack earlier this week in which  pagers and walkie talkies  used by its members exploded, killing 37 people and wounding thousands. That attack was widely believed to have be...

Israeli fighter jets pounded Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon late on Thursday, striking hundreds of rocket launcher barrels that were set to be used to immediately fire toward Israeli territory, the military said. It said that since the afternoon, fighter jets struck some 100 rocket launchers consisting of about 1,000 barrels. “The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) will continue to operate to degrade the Hezbollah terrorist organization’s infrastructure and capabilities in order to defend the State of Israel,” the IDF said. The intense barrage followed attacks earlier in the week attributed by Lebanon and Hezbollah to Israel that blew up Hezbollah radios and pagers, killing 37 people and wounding about 3,000 in Lebanon. In Thursday’s late operation, Israel launched dozens of bombs across southern Lebanon, three Lebanese security sources said. There were no immediate reports of casualties. Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said that Israel will keep up military action against H...

An elaborate attack by an Al Qaeda affiliate in Mali’s capital this week killed some 70 people, diplomatic and security sources said on Thursday, while the government offered no figures on casualties. Militants attacked an elite police training academy and the airport on Tuesday, demonstrating their ability to strike at the heart of Mali’s capital. The country is fighting an insurgency that took root over a decade ago in its arid north. The scale and complexity of the attacks further undermines the ruling junta’s claims that security has improved since it booted out French and U.S. forces, and turned to Russia instead for security. Two diplomats serving in the region, including one based in Bamako, said the death toll was believed to be in the 70s. Reuters could not independently verify the numbers. A third diplomat based in the region said hundreds were believed dead and wounded, and hospitals had run out of beds to treat survivors. Since the conflict in Mali erupted, violence ha...

By Laila Bassam and Maya Gebeily Reuters Israeli warplanes carried out late on Thursday their most intense strikes on south Lebanon in nearly a year of war, Lebanese security sources said, heightening the conflict between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah amid calls for restraint. The White House said a diplomatic solution was achievable and urgent, and Britain called for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. The U.S. is “afraid and concerned about potential escalation,” spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told a briefing. The intense barrage followed attacks earlier in the week attributed by Lebanon and Hezbollah to Israel that blew up Hezbollah radios and pagers, killing 37 people and wounding about 3,000 in Lebanon. In Thursday’s late operation, Israel launched dozens of bombs across southern Lebanon, three Lebanese security sources said. There were no immediate reports of casualties. Israeli radio stations reported that dozens of fighter jets struck Hezbolla...

Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) said they are open for peaceful solutions to a war that has been ongoing for more than 17 months, in response to U.S. President Joe Biden’s  call on  warring parties to re-engage in talks. Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said on Wednesday the Sudanese government remains open to all constructive efforts aimed at ending the war, before RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo followed suit with a similar sentiment early on Thursday. “We reaffirm our commitment to ceasefire negotiations. We believe that the path to peace lies in dialogue, not random violence, and we will continue to engage in peace processes to secure a future free from fear and suffering for all Sudanese civilians,” Dagalo said on X. However, both men traded blame for a failure to bring an end to a conflict that has killed more than 12,000 people since it started in April 2023, accusing each other of committing abuses. They have not outlined specific step...

By Laila Bassam and Maya Gebeily Reuters Hand-held radios used by armed group Hezbollah detonated on Wednesday across Lebanon’s south in the country’s deadliest day since cross-border fighting erupted between the militants and Israel nearly a year ago, stoking tensions after similar explosions of the group’s pagers the day before. Lebanon’s health ministry said 20 people were killed and more than 450 injured on Wednesday in Beirut’s suburbs and the Bekaa Valley, while the death toll from Tuesday’s explosions rose to 12, including two children, with nearly 3,000 injured. Israeli officials have not commented on the blasts, but security sources said Israel’s spy agency Mossad was responsible. One Hezbollah official said the episode was the biggest security breach in the group’s history. The operations, which appeared to throw  Hezbollah into disarray , played out alongside Israel’s  11-month-old war in Gaza  and heightened fears of an escalation on its Lebanese border an...

An attack with explosives by Colombian leftist rebel group the National Liberation Army (ELN), which left more than two dozen troops injured and two dead, has “practically” ended peace talks, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro said on Tuesday. The attack, which took place on Tuesday and is the most serious since a bilateral ceasefire between the government and the ELN ended in August, occurred in a rural area of Colombia’s Arauca province, which sits on the border with Venezuela. “A truck, loaded with explosives which wounded 27 young people and killed two, planted by the ELN with who we were talking about peace (…) well, that’s practically an action that ends the peace process with blood,” Petro said during an event in Bogota. Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president, restarted peace talks with the ELN at the end of 2022 as part of his efforts to deliver total peace and end the country’s six-decade conflict which has left more than 450,000 dead. The talks have faced a crisis for ...

By Laila Bassam Reuters Militant group Hezbollah promised to retaliate against Israel after accusing it of detonating pagers across Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least eight people and wounding nearly 3,000 others who included fighters and Iran’s envoy to Beirut. Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makary condemned the late afternoon detonation of the pagers – handheld devices that Hezbollah and others in Lebanon use to send messages – as an “Israeli aggression”. Hezbollah said Israel would receive “its fair punishment” for the blasts. The Israeli military, which has been engaged in cross-border fighting with Iran-backed  Hezbollah  since the start of the  Gaza war  in October, declined to respond to questions about the detonations. Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said on Tuesday that eight people were killed and 2,750 wounded in the pager explosions, 200 of them critically. Hezbollah in an earlier statement confirmed the deaths included at least two of it...