New Zealand and Australia sending planes to evacuate nationals from New Caledonia's unrest
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand and Australia sending planes to evacuate nationals from New Caledonia's unrest.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand and Australia sending planes to evacuate nationals from New Caledonia's unrest.
Osama Hamdan speaks with CNN about the militant group’s position on stalled ceasefire talks, whether Hamas regrets its decision to attack Israel given the mounting Palestinian death toll, and the leak earlier this week of messages from its chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar.
Fifty miles up the coast from Gaza, where an Israeli offensive continues to shatter the besieged strip, Israel’s former chief spy Tamir Pardo is a world away from the war without end, in his office in Israel’s tech hub in the manicured city of Herzliya. From 2011 to 2016 Pardo was the director of Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, Mossad. He says the seeds that led to this moment of dread were sown over the previous two decades.The bloody, unprecedented attack on Oct. 7, 2023, sparked widespr
Coalition blunders have left countries locked in ‘permanent contest’ over Pacific, minister says
Draft of summit’s final declaration calls for Ukraine’s territorial integrity to be respected
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi have met for the first time since Trudeau publicly accused Modi's government of involvement in the assassination of a Canadian Sikh activist.Modi posted a photo to his 98 million followers on X, formerly Twitter, of the two leaders shaking hands on Friday on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Italy."Met Canadian PM @JustinTrudeau at the G7 Summit," he wrote.No formal bilateral meeting between the two leaders was scheduled.A sp
The U.S.-built aid pier will be detached from Gaza’s coast for a second time due to rough seas, two U.S. officials said Friday, raising further questions about the viability of the sea route. U.N. agencies say over 1 million in Gaza could experience the highest level of starvation by mid-July. Although aid has been unloaded in a secure area onshore for several days, humanitarian agencies have stopped picking up and distributing it throughout Gaza.
Chinese Premier Li Qiang mixed a dash of "panda diplomacy" with a visit to a historic vineyard on Sunday to celebrate a thaw in once-icy trade ties with Australia.The highest ranking Chinese official to visit Australia in seven years, Li's four-day trip offers the prospect of greater trade after Beijing lifted punitive measures against a string of major Australian exports.
It has been another bad week for Vladimir Putin. In direct response to his unprovoked invasion, Ukraine has this week been able to sign a 10-year security pact with America - a bridge to its eventual membership of NATO, even if that is still a very, very long way away. EU accession talks for Ukraine will also begin before the end of the month.
Israel’s defence minister has rejected Emmanuel Macron’s initiative to work together on defusing an escalating conflict along the northern border with Lebanon.
Chinese Premier Li Qiang said Friday he supported "dialogue, not confrontation" during a visit to New Zealand where he stirred up hope of new trade avenues."We both emphasised that countries should live in harmony, engage in dialogue, not confrontation, and have cooperation, not conflict," Li said.
The Royal Canadian Navy now finds itself in the unusual position of both shadowing Russian warships as a threat in the Caribbean and sharing an anchorage with them as a guest in the port of Havana — because Canada accepted an invitation to send a patrol ship to Cuba while the Russian navy is in town.And it's not clear just who in government or the military knew about the invitation from Cuba. The Caribbean nation has been a full-throated supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin's war on Ukr
Chinese Premier Li Qiang's visit to Australia on Sunday focused on positive aspects of the bilateral relationship including shared giant pandas and a rebounding wine trade as he promised a new breeding pair of the rare bears and urged both countries to put aside their differences. China’s most powerful leader after President Xi Jinping arrived late Saturday in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia state, which has produced most of the Australian wine entering China since crippling tariffs were lifted in March that had effectively ended a 1.2 billion Australian dollar ($790 million) a year trade since 2020. Li visited Adelaide Zoo, which has been home to China-born giant pandas Wang Wang and Fu Ni since 2009, before he was to have lunch at a restaurant at Adelaide winery Penfolds Magill Estate.
Armenia's prime minister said this week that his country is leaving the CSTO after months of criticizing Russia. Putin won't like it, experts told BI.
China’s support for Russia is “enabling” its war in Ukraine, leaders of the world’s most advanced economies warned Friday in a hardening of tone against Beijing, threatening further sanctions against actors that materially support Moscow’s war machine.
Concerns set out over supply of materials with military applications, and impact of subsidies on global market
Israel bombed and shelled Gaza on Saturday, witnesses and first responders said, with fallout from the war bringing a resurgence of tensions to the Lebanon border and Yemen.In the ninth month of war between Palestinian Hamas militants and Israeli forces, the Civil Defence agency in Gaza City, in the territory's north, reported 10 bodies recovered from Israeli strikes on three separate homes.In Rafah, in Gaza's far south near Egypt, witnesses reported clashes between militants and Israeli troops in the city's west, and artillery fire towards a refugee camp in the city centre. AFPTV images showed streets largely deserted.The United Nations says about one million people have been displaced from Rafah since early May, when Israel began ground operations in pursuit of Hamas militants.Israel's military has also been operating in central Gaza, where on Friday at a hospital in Deir al-Balah city a middle-aged man wept over the body of a younger man. Blood soaked through a white cloth around his neck.The war began after Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.The militants also seized 251 hostages. Of these, 116 remain in Gaza, although the army says 41 are dead.Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,266 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.Fears of a broader Middle East conflict have surged again, with Lebanon-based Hezbollah fighters, who are backed by Iran and allied with Hamas, launching waves of rockets and drones against Israeli military targets.Hezbollah said intense strikes since Wednesday were retaliation for Israel's killing of one of its commanders.Israeli forces responded with shelling, the military said, also announcing air strikes on Hezbollah infrastructure across the border.Two women were killed in a strike on Jannata in southern Lebanon, village official Hassan Shur said, the latest deaths in near-daily exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and the Israeli military since the Gaza war began.On Friday plumes of smoke still billowed over the village.- Ceasefire plan -French President Emmanuel Macron said this week that his country and the United States would work separately with Israeli and Lebanese authorities to ease tensions.Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant rejected the initiative, decrying "hostile policies against Israel" by France, which last month had barred Israeli firms from an arms trade show.The Israeli prime minister's office and senior foreign ministry officials distanced themselves from Gallant's comments.During a Middle East trip this week to push a Gaza truce plan, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said "the best way" to help resolve the Hezbollah-Israel violence was "a resolution of the conflict in Gaza and getting a ceasefire".That has not happened.At a summit of the G7 group of advanced economies in Italy, US President Joe Biden called Hamas "the biggest hang-up so far" to reaching a Gaza truce and hostage release deal.Hamas has insisted on the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and a permanent ceasefire -- demands Israel has repeatedly rejected.Blinken has said Israel backs the latest plan, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose far-right coalition partners are strongly opposed, has not publicly endorsed it.The Gaza war's only truce, one week in November, saw hostages freed and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel released.- 'Close to impossible' -World Food Programme deputy executive director Carl Skau said that "with lawlessness inside the Strip... and active conflict", it has become "close to impossible to deliver the level of aid that meets the growing demands on the ground"."More than anything, people want this war to end," he said after a two-day visit to Gaza. The fallout from the Gaza war also escalated this week off Yemen.On Friday the US military said it destroyed two uncrewed surface vessels in the Red Sea belonging to Yemen's Iran-backed Huthi rebels, as well as one drone and seven radars that allowed the rebels to target ships.The latest reprisal strikes by American or British forces came as the rebels increase attacks against maritime traffic in waters vital to world trade.Earlier Friday a maritime security agency said the crew of the MV Tutor abandoned it, leaving it drifting in the Red Sea, after a sea drone strike.The rebels say they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinians.- US sanctions -The United States, Israel's close ally, imposed sanctions Friday on an Israeli group whose activists have blocked aid convoys bound for Gaza, where the UN has warned of famine."Individuals from Tzav 9 have repeatedly sought to thwart the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, including by blockading roads, sometimes violently," the US State Department said."They also have damaged aid trucks and dumped life-saving humanitarian aid onto the road."The US military said a pier it built to help bring aid into Gaza would be temporarily moved to an Israeli port to protect it from expected high seas.The platform had only been reattached to Gaza's shore a week before, after storm damage.G7 leaders called for the "rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief for civilians in need", and said the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, must be allowed to work in Gaza unhindered.Israel had accused 12 of the agency's 13,000 Gaza staff of involvement in the October 7 attack, prompting several donor governments to suspend their contributions.An independent review said Israel had not yet provided evidence that UNRWA employed "terrorists".As Muslims worldwide prepare to mark Eid al-Adha starting Sunday, Gazans lamented the shortages of essential goods and lack of an Eid spirit.burs-it/dv
Leaders from Italy and Germany called the Russian president's plan "propaganda" and "dictatorial".
The leaders of the G7 have condemned China for supplying Russia with components for its fight against Ukraine, the group’s strongest rebuke yet of Beijing since the conflict began.
China's Premier Li Qiang embarked on a four-day trip to Australia on Saturday, dangling the promise of expanded trade even as the two nations compete for influence in the Pacific.Australia has tightened its defence alliance with the United States as it seeks to parry Beijing's expanding diplomatic and military influence on island states scattered around the Pacific region.
World leaders were set to join Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday for a summit on peace in his country."What we need is not a dictated peace but a just and equitable peace which takes into account Ukraine's (territorial) integrity and sovereignty," German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told broadcaster ARD before heading to the summit. - 92 countries taking part - The conference, convening exactly 100 countries and global institutions, comes at a perilous moment for exhausted Ukrainians