Israel orders evacuations in northern Gaza as Trump calls for war to end

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By Nidal Al-Mughrabi Reuters  The Israeli military ordered Palestinians to evacuate areas in northern Gaza on Sunday before intensified fighting against  Hamas , as U.S. President Donald Trump called for an end to the  war  amid renewed efforts to broker a ceasefire. “Make the deal in Gaza, get the hostages back,”  Trump  posted on his Truth Social platform early on Sunday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due to hold talks later in the day on the progress of Israel’s offensive. A senior security official said the military will tell him the campaign is close to reaching its objectives, and warn that expanding fighting to new areas in Gaza may endanger the remaining Israeli hostages. But in a statement posted on X and text messages sent to many residents, the military urged people in northern parts of the enclave to head south towards the Al-Mawasi area in Khan Younis, which Israel designated as a humanitarian area. Palestinian and U.N. offi...
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Cuba keeps schools closed, workers home during recovery from power failure, hurricane

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Cuba said on Wednesday it would keep schools closed and non-essential workers home through Sunday as the crisis-racked Caribbean island nation struggled to recover from the collapse of its power grid last Friday and Hurricane Oscar this week.

The island’s far eastern province of Guantanamo was particularly hard hit by Oscar, which made landfall as a category one hurricane and unleashed more than 15 inches of rain in some areas. The cyclone was downgraded to a tropical storm before veering north to the Bahamas earlier this week.

The storm, combined with a nearly unprecedented electrical grid collapse on Friday, created a nightmare scenario in a country already suffering dramatic food, fuel and medicine shortages.

The crisis prompted scattered protests throughout Havana and elsewhere in the country.

Officials said late on Tuesday seven people had died as a result of the storm. Cuba’s armed forces had rescued nearly 500 people from remote areas isolated by floodwaters or landslides, with upwards of 4,000 residents still housed in shelters.

Flash floods destroyed homes, roads, agricultural lands and already decrepit infrastructure throughout the major coffee-producing region. Wind and rain had damaged at least 2,280 homes, state-run media reported.

Communications were still spotty in rural areas, and most of the eastern province remained without power as emergency workers cleaned up tangles of downed power lines.

The United Nations said on Wednesday it would support Cuba in recovery efforts following Oscar.The video player is currently playing an ad.00:03Mexico’s Acapulco still reeling from Hurricane Otis one year on

The storm had also complicated the recovery of Cuba’s already precarious electrical grid. Cuba stabilized its electrical service on Tuesday, but warned that outages would continue as before the grid collapse.

Cuba’s outdated power plants, struggling to keep the lights on, reached a full crisis this year as oil imports from Venezuela, Russia and Mexico dwindled, culminating in last Friday’s grid collapse.

A generation deficit of about one-third total demand was expected on Wednesday, the national electric company said, leaving many Cubans still in the dark.

SOURCE: REUTERS, AP AGENCIES



from The Times Of Earth https://ift.tt/0Do9ly2

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