[03/10, 18:27] null: An Israeli airstrike in Beirut’s Bachoura neighborhood killed at least nine people and injured 14 others overnight, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said Thursday. It was the second and deadliest airstrike inside the capital since Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah began.
The late-night strike hit the office of the Islamic Health Authority, a health-services institution run by Hezbollah, and paramedics were among the casualties, an IHA spokesperson said. The Israel Defense Forces said it conducted a “precise strike” in Beirut.
Israeli forces continued their incursion into southern Lebanon, and on Wednesday engaged in what appeared to be their first direct ground confrontations.
Live updates here: https://wapo.st/4eODuE5
[04/10, 01:29] null: On the morning of April 1, President Joe Biden’s top national security aides had a stern message to deliver to Israel as it prepared to launch a military operation in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah: Its northern Gaza offensive against Hamas militants had already killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. The same thing could not happen again.
As Israeli Ambassador Michael Herzog arrived at the White House Situation Room to attend a virtual meeting that Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken were about to hold with their counterparts in Tel Aviv, the Israeli diplomat pulled Blinken aides aside with startling news.
Read more here: https://wapo.st/3Y7z4Tm
[04/10, 18:30] null: The European Union’s top court ruled Friday that member states must recognize legal changes to gender identity processed elsewhere within the E.U., in a case with far-reaching implications for transgender people across Europe.
The European Court of Justice sided with Arian Mirzarafie-Ahi, a transgender man who sued his home country of Romania for refusing to accept the name and gender identity changes he initiated in Britain when it was still a member of the E.U.
The court agreed that Romania violated his rights to citizenship and free movement by refusing to update his Romanian identity documents.
Read more: https://wapo.st/3ZUl28P
[04/10, 19:42] null: At least two dozen long-range Iranian ballistic missiles broke through Israeli and allied air defenses on Tuesday night, striking or landing near at least three military and intelligence installations, according to a review of videos and photos of the attack and aftermath.
Videos verified by The Post showed 20 missiles striking the Nevatim air base, in the southern Negev desert, and three striking the Tel Nof base, in central Israel. Analysts told The Post the visuals were consistent with direct impacts on the bases rather than debris from intercepted missiles. Other videos showed that at least two missiles landed near Tel Aviv in Cinema City Glilot, Hod Hasharon, close to Israel’s Mossad spy agency headquarters, leaving at least two craters.
Read more: https://wapo.st/3NxHtcN
[04/10, 21:10] null: After a Category 5 hurricane barreled through seven years ago, dumping 23 inches of water, shearing the roofs from homes, this Caribbean nation vowed to rebuild. To fund that expensive mission, it has leaned on an unconventional gusher of cash: selling passports.
Now, Dominica aims to become the world’s most climate-resilient island nation, without taking on dangerous levels of debt or waiting for the money that wealthy nations have so far failed to deliver. Instead, it has turned to wealthy individuals — often in China or the Middle East — who will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privilege of obtaining Dominican citizenship, and in turn traveling more easily in the West.
Read more: https://wapo.st/3Y7MZZA
[04/10, 22:49] null: The day Oleksandr Ishchenko’s body returned to Ukraine, police warned the soldier’s family not to look.
The scene inside the morgue was gruesome: Ishchenko’s remains spent days in transit from the prison in Russia where he died. Russian medics hadn’t sewn him back up after performing an autopsy. His body was in decay, and a Ukrainian doctor concluded his ribs had been broken by blunt force trauma before his death.
Ishchenko’s mysterious death in Russian captivity in July represents the greatest worry of the many Ukrainian families who have little to no contact with their loved ones in Russian prisons and fear each day that they are being mistreated or may die.
Read more: https://wapo.st/3TWY2Cq
[05/10, 00:42] null: Over the past year, an Argentinian rock radio station has twice had its antenna wrecked. Short circuits have fried gear left and right, and relentless power outages — sometimes hitting twice a day — have plunged TAXI FM into sudden silence.
The culprits? A flock of burrowing parrots that overran two neighboring, rural towns in Argentina’s Buenos Aires province as the birds’ habitat shrank over the years, while human settlements grew. And residents, now outnumbered by parrots, are fed up.
Read more: https://wapo.st/4eRKu2Y
[05/10, 02:11] null: At least 70 people, including 10 women and three infants, were killed and 16 were injured after gangs armed with automatic rifles launched a series of attacks on a town in Haiti’s breadbasket, torching homes and vehicles and sending residents fleeing, the U.N. human rights office said Friday.
Read more: https://wapo.st/4eQ9Yhd
[05/10, 03:18] null: Amid Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon and invasion of the country’s south, more than 235,000 people have crossed from Lebanon to Syria by land — at least 82,000 Lebanese and 152,000 Syrians, according to the International Organization For Migration (IOM).
Follow our live coverage: https://wapo.st/4eU8p21
[05/10, 20:28] null: AMMAN, Jordan — Six months before the Oct. 7 attack, Hamas’s top leader in the Gaza Strip was meeting with visiting Palestinian businessmen in the enclave when he made a shocking disclosure. Hamas was planning something big, Yahya Sinwar told his guests.
“There’s going to be a surprise,” he said, according to one of the participants in the meeting, which has not been previously reported. While offering no details, he intimated that preparations had long been underway in Gaza itself, within Hamas’s network of underground fortresses. Of the allies and partners assisting the effort, he mentioned only one.
Read more here: https://wapo.st/4eSE7MQ
[05/10, 22:03] null: THANE, India — In this tropical city, where humidity levels oscillate between muggy and oppressive for most of the year, Santosh Naykar’s only defense against the stickiness is a 14-year-old window air-conditioning unit.
“We don’t even want to think about going back to life without an air conditioner,” Naykar, 60, said as he directed the flimsy vents toward his face.
That cold air comes at a cost. Each time Naykar and his family turn on their basic window unit — which can be among the least energy-efficient air conditioners available — it guzzles electricity and spews planet-warming emissions.
Read more here: https://wapo.st/3YcT4Eb
[05/10, 23:38] null: BEIRUT — It has been one setback after another for Iran — the loss of its own and allied military commanders in Israeli strikes, death and disarray in the ranks of Hezbollah and, in response, a ballistic missile attack on Israel whose destruction appeared limited.
Former U.S. officials and analysts worry that Iran’s conventional losses are exactly the kind of development that could trigger a final dash to the bomb. Iran has spent years moving ever closer to acquiring a capability for nuclear weapons since then-President Donald Trump scuttled the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, according to U.S. and U.N. assessments.
Read more here: https://wapo.st/3BB5a0X
[06/10, 00:28] null: Nearly a year ago, these four Americans were among hundreds of hostages taken into the Gaza Strip. As the months have passed, their families have clung to glimpses of their loved ones, fragments of hope in an ocean of fear.
As the anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel approaches, a deal to implement a cease-fire in Gaza and release the remaining hostages — dozens of whom are believed to be alive — appears remote.
The families of the four American hostages are painfully aware that months of desperate advocacy around the world, including at the highest levels of the Biden administration, have failed to free their relatives or end the bloodshed.
Read more here: https://wapo.st/3NiGT24
[06/10, 01:16] null: Israel’s offensive continued with strikes across Lebanon on Saturday morning as the United Nations said hundreds of thousands had been forced to flee the country. Photos showed damaged buildings in central Beirut and smoke rising from the suburbs while the Israel Defense Forces said it was continuing ground raids in the south. An Israeli strike on a camp near Tripoli in northern Lebanon killed a Hamas military commander, officials from both sides said.
Follow more live updates here: https://wapo.st/3ZNBcko
[06/10, 02:29] null: Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Israel this week, only the second time Iran has attacked Israel directly, stood out for its large scope and limited impact, analysts say.
Iran gave little warning before launching at Israel at least 180 fast-moving ballistic missiles. A Washington Post analysis shows that at least two dozen made it through Israeli defenses on Tuesday, far more than in the preceding attack in April, some causing damage at or near Israeli military and intelligence sites. But so far, reports of critical damage on the ground have been limited.
Read more here: https://wapo.st/48bZuXD
[06/10, 03:29] null: BEIRUT — Israel expanded airstrikes to the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Saturday, underscoring the scale of Israel’s military campaign as ground troops move through the south and air raids pound towns and cities across the country.
Hamas said that the strike in Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city, had killed one of its field commanders, Saeed Atallah Ali, alongside his wife and two daughters. The Israeli military confirmed the strike but did not mention any civilian dead. In eastern Lebanon, another strike killed Muhammed Hussein al-Lawis, described by the Israeli army as Hamas’s “executive authority” in Lebanon, while in the capital, Beirut, bombing raids echoed from the southern suburbs as the city braced for another sleepless night.
Read more here: https://wapo.st/4gQuTTh
[06/10, 21:15] null: Israeli airstrikes pummeled Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight, as the Israel Defense Forces said it was striking Hezbollah targets.
The bombardment was the heaviest on the densely populated area since tensions escalated last October; photos showed large fires and smoke columns. Israel expanded its attacks to Tripoli in Lebanon’s north, where Hamas said one of its field commanders was killed.
French President Emmanuel Macron urged countries to “stop delivering weapons” to Israel for the war in Gaza.
Stay tuned for live updates: https://wapo.st/3U1FCQT
[07/10, 00:09] null: Gaza is a tableau of ruin. Nearly 2 million Palestinians remain displaced, tormented by hunger and disease. Rebuilding Gaza, whenever calm returns, will be a monumental task that could take decades.
Gaza has faced war’s devastation before. Swaths of the Strip were damaged by Israeli bombings during conflicts with Hamas in 2008, 2014 and 2021. But the length and intensity of Israel’s latest operation has resulted in what the United Nations calls an unprecedented scale of destruction.
Cease-fire talks have come and gone without an agreement, leaving any reconstruction plans purely hypothetical. Yet experts say any proposal should involve three phases: addressing immediate humanitarian needs, clearing the rubble and, finally, rebuilding.
Read more: https://wapo.st/47XRitH
[07/10, 01:03] null: In the initial sales pitch to Hezbollah two years ago, the new line of Apollo pagers seemed precisely suited to the needs of a militia group with a sprawling network of fighters and a hard-earned reputation for paranoia. None of the users suspected they were wearing an ingeniously crafted Israeli bomb.
As many as 3,000 Hezbollah officers and members — most of them rear-echelon figures — were killed or maimed, along with an unknown number of civilians, according to Israeli, U.S. and Middle Eastern officials, when Israel’s Mossad intelligence service triggered the devices remotely on Sept. 17.
As an act of spy craft, it is without parallel, one of the most successful and inventive penetrations of an enemy by an intelligence service in recent history. But key details of the operation — including how it was planned and carried out, and the controversy it engendered within Israel’s security establishment and among allies — are only now coming to light.
Read more: https://wapo.st/4dB5MRi
[07/10, 02:48] null: Last week, Israel escalated again, sending ground troops into southern Lebanon in its effort to push Hezbollah away from the border. Analysts credit Israel with a notable run of military wins, one that has boosted the mood of despondent Israelis and lifted the political fortunes of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at least for now.
But experts in Israel and Washington are also asking: Now what? They say it is unclear how Israel’s surge of success against Hezbollah will bring meaningful changes — much less an end — to its fights against Iranian-backed forces in Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Yemen and, now, perhaps with Iran itself.
Read more: https://wapo.st/4gRMuds
[07/10, 03:41] null: They all come to the mountain — the soldier and the civilian, the grandmother and the toddler, the tour group and the lone hiker, residents of the war-torn east and the quieter west — if only to experience one precious moment where they are not afraid.
Here, atop Ukraine’s tallest peak, the war fades away.
Tens of thousands of people climb Mount Hoverla annually, but the 6,762-foot peak has taken on new significance since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Now, the mountain has become a pilgrimage for hikers to lay down their grief and sorrow, if only for a few hours.
Read more: https://wapo.st/3XXdHms
