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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Greece general strike brings thousands onto streets, halts shipping, transport

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BY ELENA BECATOROS and DEREK GATOPOULOS AP

Thousands of workers marched through the Greek capital Athens on Wednesday as part of a 24-hour general strike called by labor unions to protest the rising cost of living and timed to coincide with the government submitting the 2025 budget to Parliament.

Public and private sector workers walked off the job as part of the labor action that disrupted public transport and left ferries connecting the Greek islands with the mainland tied up in port.

Medical staff at state-run hospitals and teachers were among those who joined the strike, which was called by labor unions to protest the high cost of living and demand collective wage agreements that were scaled back during Greece’s nearly decade-long financial crisis that began in 2010.

Around 12,000 protesters marched through central Athens, while another 5,000 demonstrated in the northern city of Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city.

“We want to showcase the rage and resentment of salaried employees for what is happening to their income,” said Yannis Panagopoulos, head of the General Confederation of Workers of Greece, the umbrella union representing private sector workers.

“We have no other way to be able to cope with the high cost of living other than with an increase to our income. But our incomes remain frozen in the bailout era,” he said.

Greece’s financial crisis saw a quarter of the country’s economy wiped out after decades of profligate spending left it locked out of international bond markets. Successive international bailouts came on condition the country implement deeply unpopular reforms that included pension and wage cuts and saw poverty and unemployment rates spiral.

Greece has since returned to healthy growth and recently achieved investment-grade status again, but it still retains the highest debt-to-GDP ratio in the European Union.

“Greece needs a pay rise,” Esther Lynch, General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, said Tuesday ahead of the strike. She said she was in Athens “to bring the solidarity greetings from 45 million workers and their trade unions from around Europe.”

The European confederation supports “all workers in Greece who are going to come out to demand that pay rise and to demand the genuinely binding collecting agreement to guarantee a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work,” she said.

Unions have criticized the center-right government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for failing to tackle inflation and housing policies, which have eroded workers’ living standards.

Journalists at Greek media outlets held their own 24-hour strike in support on Tuesday, pulling all news broadcasts off the air for the day so they could cover Wednesday’s general strike.



from The Times Of Earth https://ift.tt/iq1etRP

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