At least 5 people have died while crossing the English Channel, according to French media, hours after the U.K. approved the migrant deportation bill.

The Voix du Nord newspaper said the bodies were discovered at the Wimereaux beach in northern France on Tuesday. The rescue operation is ongoing and helicopters and boats have been deployed, according to the regional newspaper.

About 100 migrants have been rescued and placed aboard a French navy ship. They will be taken to the port of Boulogne, the paper said.

This came only hours after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's latest effort to send some migrants on a one-way ticket to Rwanda finally won approval from Parliament. The U.K. government plans to deport some of those who enter the country illegally as a deterrent to migrants who risk their lives in leaky, inflatable boats in hopes that they will be able to claim asylum once they reach Britain.

Human rights groups have described the legislation as inhumane and cruel. Both the United Nations refugee agency and the Council of Europe called on the U.K. Tuesday to rethink its plans for fears they could damage international cooperation on tackling the global migrant crisis.

Migrants trying to cross the busy English Channel face drownings and sinking among other deadly incidents, often aboard crowded boats.

An estimated 30,000 people made the crossing in 2023, according to U.K. government figures.

Grindr, a popular dating app geared toward gay and bisexual men, is facing a lawsuit that alleges users’ private information, including HIV status, was shared with third parties without their consent. 

The law firm behind the claim, U.K.-based Austen Hays, said it is filing the class action lawsuit at London’s High Court on Monday because it believes Grindr violated the U.K.’s data protection laws. 

The lawsuit alleges Grindr, which is based in the United States, processed and shared data relating to users’ ethnicities, sex lives, sexual orientations and HIV test dates with advertising companies like Localytics and Apptimize for the third parties to use in creating targeted ads. 

Austen Hays also claims that those third parties potentially passed on the sensitive data to fourth parties.

Nearly 700 users have already signed on to the claim, but the law firm said thousands of others may join. The alleged breaches took place between 2018 and 2020, said Austen Hays. 

In a statement provided to Scripps News, a spokesperson for Grindr said the company is committed to protecting users' data and complying with privacy regulations. 

“Grindr has never shared user-reported health information for ‘commercial purposes’ and has never monetized such information,” the spokesperson continued. “We intend to respond vigorously to this claim, which appears to be based on a mischaracterization of practices from more than four years ago, prior to early 2020.”

SEE MORE: House passes bill that could lead to ban of TikTok

The head of Israeli military intelligence resigned on Monday over the failures surrounding Hamas' unprecedented Oct. 7 attack, the military said, becoming the first senior figure to step down over his role in the deadliest assault in Israel's history.

Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva's resignation could set the stage for more resignations among Israel's top security brass over Hamas' attack, when militants blasted through Israel's border defenses, rampaged through Israeli communities unchallenged for hours and killed 1,200 people, most civilians, while taking roughly 250 hostages into Gaza. That attack set off the war against Hamas in Gaza, now in its seventh month.

“The intelligence directorate under my command did not live up to the task we were entrusted with. I carry that black day with me ever since, day after day, night after night. I will carry the horrible pain of the war with me forever,” Haliva wrote in his resignation letter, which was provided by the military.

SEE MORE: Israel reportedly had knowledge of Hamas attack over a year ago

Haliva, as well as other military and security leaders, were widely expected to resign in response to the glaring failures that led up to Oct. 7 and the scale of its ferocity.

But the timing of the resignations has been unclear because Israel is still fighting Hamas in Gaza and battling the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in the north. Tensions with Iran are also at a high following attacks between the two enemies. Some military experts have said resignations at a time when Israel is engaged on multiple fronts is irresponsible and could be interpreted as a sign of weakness.

Shortly after the attack, Haliva had publicly said that he shouldered blame for not preventing the assault as the head of the military department responsible for providing the government and the military with intelligence warnings and daily alerts.

While Haliva and others have accepted blame for failing to stop the attack, others have stopped short, most notably Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said he will answer tough questions about his role but has not outright acknowledged direct responsibility for allowing the attack to unfold. He has also not indicated that he will step down, although a growing protest movement is demanding elections be held soon.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid welcomed the resignation, saying it was “justified and dignified.”

“It would be appropriate for Prime Minister Netanyahu to do the same,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

SEE MORE: What key recent events led to Iran's assault on Israel?

The Hamas attack, which came on a Jewish holiday, caught Israel and its vaunted security establishment entirely off guard. Israelis' sense of faith in their military — seen by most Jews as one of the country's most trustworthy institutions — was shattered in the face of Hamas' onslaught. The resignation could help restore some of that trust.

The attack set off the devastating war that has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the local health ministry. The ministry's count doesn't distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, but it says at least two-thirds of the dead are children and women.

The fighting has devastated Gaza’s two largest cities, and driven 80% of the territory’s population to flee to other parts of the besieged coastal enclave. The war has sparked a humanitarian catastrophe that has drawn warnings of imminent famine.

The attack also sent shock waves through the region. Beyond Hezbollah and Iran, tensions have rocked the Israeli-occupied West Bank, as well as cities and towns within Israel itself.

On Monday, Israeli police said that a car had slammed into pedestrians in Jerusalem, wounding three lightly, and security camera video showed two men exiting the car with a rifle before the fleeing the scene. Police later said they arrested the two men.

Israeli strikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah overnight killed 22 people, including 18 children, health officials said Sunday, as the United States was on track to approve billions of dollars of additional military aid to its close ally.

Israel has carried out near-daily air raids on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza's population of 2.3 million has sought refuge from fighting elsewhere. It has also vowed to expand its ground offensive to the city on the border with Egypt despite international calls for restraint, including from the U.S.

The House of Representatives approved a $26 billion aid package on Saturday that includes around $9 billion in humanitarian assistance for Gaza.

The first strike killed a man, his wife and their 3-year-old child, according to the nearby Kuwaiti Hospital, which received the bodies. The woman was pregnant and the doctors managed to save the baby, the hospital said.

The second strike killed 17 children and two women, all from the same extended family, according to hospital records. First responders were still searching the rubble. An airstrike in Rafah the night before killed nine people, including six children.

SEE MORE: House passes critical aid package for Ukraine, Israel, other US allies

The Israel-Hamas war has killed over 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, devastated Gaza's two largest cities and left a swath of destruction across the territory. Around 80% of the population have fled their homes to other parts of the besieged coastal enclave, which experts say is on the brink of famine.

The conflict, now in its seventh month, has sparked regional unrest pitting Israel and the U.S. against Iran and allied militant groups across the Middle East. Israel and Iran traded fire directly earlier this month, raising fears of all-out war between the longtime foes.

Tensions have also spiked in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israeli troops killed two Palestinians who the military says attacked a checkpoint with a knife and a gun near the southern West Bank town of Hebron early Sunday. The Palestinian Health Ministry said the two killed were 18 and 19 years old, from the same family. No Israeli forces were wounded, the army said.

The Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service meanwhile said it has recovered a total of 14 bodies from an Israeli raid in the Nur Shams urban refugee camp in the West Bank that began late Thursday. Those killed include three militants from the Islamic Jihad group and a 15-year-old boy. The military says it killed 10 militants in the camp and arrested eight suspects. Nine Israeli soldiers and officers were wounded.

In a separate incident in the West Bank, an Israeli man was wounded in an explosion Sunday, the Magen David Adom rescue service said. A video circulating online shows a man approaching a Palestinian flag that had been planted in a field. When he kicks it, it appears to trigger an explosive device.

At least 469 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Most have been killed during Israeli military arrest raids, which often trigger gunbattles, or in violent protests.

The war in Gaza was sparked by an unprecedented Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which Hamas and other militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. Israel says militants are still holding around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.

Thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to call for new elections to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a deal with Hamas to release the hostages. Netanyahu has vowed to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed and all the hostages are returned.

The war has killed at least 34,097 Palestinians and wounded another 76,980, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry does not differentiate between combatants and civilians in its count but says at least two-thirds have been children and women. It also says the real toll is likely higher as many bodies are stuck beneath the rubble left by airstrikes or are in areas that are unreachable for medics.

Israel blames Hamas for civilian casualties because the militants fight in dense, residential neighborhoods, but the military rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children. The military says it has killed over 13,000 Hamas fighters, without providing evidence.

Dutch authorities say the popular city Amsterdam is overrun with tourism. They want to curb it by halting new hotel construction and reducing annual hotel stay numbers there. 

New local council rules in Amsterdam would stop properties from raising the limits on numbers of beds and would only allow new hotels to be built if another property closes, Euronews reported.

Celebrations in the city like the recent one for King's Day can bring is big tourist numbers, but they can also bring in littering, increased pickpocketing, alcohol consumption in the streets and noise, Amsterdam's city council said. 

Efforts to control tourism numbers are meant to make residents of the city more comfortable. 

SEE MORE: Nordic countries top happiest places on Earth, while US drops on list

City authorities have also decided to cut the number of riverboat cruises allowed to enter the capital, from about 2,300 that were docked there in 2023 to about 1,150 by 2028, Euronews reported. 

Travel publications like Travel Pulse said certain seasons can bring in an overwhelming influx of visitors to the city, which is known for liberal drug policies and its Red-Light district.

In 2023 the World Economic Forum published a report looking at the problem of over-tourism around the globe. In it, leaders spoke about a spike in excessive tourism after the deep lull brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In cities like Barcelona, an energy of anti-tourism sentiment has permeated among residents. The WEF described the surge of tourism as "rapid" and "unyielding."

Governments have been encouraged to be decisive and firm about how they develop policies to response to issues of high tourist demand, the WEF said in the report. 

Staring down a decision so consequential it could alter the course of history — but also end his own career — House Speaker Mike Johnson prayed for guidance.

A conservative Christian, the speaker wrestled over whether to lead the House in approving $95 billion in desperately needed war-time aid for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies, which many in his own Republican majority opposed — some so strongly they would try to boot him from office.

Or, he could do nothing, halting the flow of U.S. aid and potentially saving his own job but ensuring his place as the House speaker who led America’s retreat from the global stage and left Ukraine to fend for itself as it loses ground against the Russian invasion.

As Johnson met with colleagues late into the night this week at the speaker's office, they prayed on it.

“And then he told me the next day: I want to be on the right side of history,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Not quite six months on the job, Johnson’s leadership will help determine if the U.S. is able to hold its standing as what the speaker has called a “beacon of light” for the world, or if the military and humanitarian aid is left to crumble at a pivotal moment for the country, its allies and the speaker’s own livelihood. Voting is expected this weekend.

“He's learning," said Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker.

Gingrich praised Johnson for not being cowed by the hard-right Republicans seeking to remove him from office, and instead reaching into his own deep well of beliefs as a Ronald Reagan-era Republican with an expansive view of the role of the U.S., its allies and his own speakership to make a decision.

“This is the U.S. House. This is not a political playground,” Gingrich said. "We’re talking about real history, we’re talking about whether Russia potentially occupies Ukraine.”

Johnson tumbled into the speaker's office last fall, a relative unknown who emerged only after a chaotic internal party search to replace Kevin McCarthy, who was the first speaker in U.S. history to be booted from office.

Almost an accidental speaker, Johnson had no training and little time to prepare. One of his main accomplishments was helping to lead Donald Trump’s failed legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election loss to Joe Biden in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

From the start, the question hanging over the fourth-term Louisiana lawmaker was apparent: Would Johnson become a speaker with a firm grasp of the gavel, utilizing the power of the office that is second in the line of succession to the president?

Or would the House speaker, who portrays himself as a “servant leader” in the Christian tradition, be beholden to the unruly, essentially ungovernable Republican majority, many aligned with former President Trump?

“This is a Churchill or Chamberlain moment,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, referring to British leaders from the World War II era.

SEE MORE: House's Ukraine, Israel aid package gains Biden's support

After months of dithering delays over the Ukraine aid, Johnson appeared this week determined to move past the populist far-right flank, and rely on Democrats to push the package forward, highly unusual in the deeply polarized House.

He had met recently with Trump, who objects to much overseas aid and has invited Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” in Ukraine, presenting his plan and avoiding public criticism from the former president.

Trump also gave Johnson a needed nod of support by panning the effort from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the presidential hopeful’s strongest allies in Congress, to evict the speaker.

In return, Johnson told Trump he could be the “most consequential president yet” if he is returned to the White House.

At the same time, Johnson has been speaking privately with President Biden, who gave Johnson a boost by quickly endorsing his foreign aid plan.

Still, what used to be considered the way Congress worked, the shared commitment to bipartisan compromise, has become such a political liability that more Republicans, including Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Paul Gosar of Arizona, said they would join Greene's effort to oust Johnson. Some others said he should simply resign.

“I don’t think he’s being courageous. I think he’s fallen right in line with the swamp," said Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., a hardliner who voted to oust McCarthy and is considering the same for Johnson.

During his short term as speaker, Johnson has made a practice of convening lawmakers behind closed doors at his Capitol office for what are often long meetings. What some view as maddening sessions of endless arguing, shrinking the power of the speakership, others appreciate as him listening to lawmakers.

As crowds of spring tourists ushered past his office this week, Johnson holed up with lawmakers. One meeting dragged until midnight. The next day he displayed an unusual resolve.

"History judges us for what we do," Johnson said during an impromptu press conference in Statuary Hall.

“I could make a selfish decision and do something that’s different, but I'm doing here what I believe to be the right thing,” he said.

Johnson disclosed that his son is headed to the Naval Academy this fall.

“To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys,” he said.

“This is a live-fire exercise for me, as it is for so many American families. This is not a game. This is not a joke.”

With the threat of his removal intensifying, Johnson said he would "let the chips fall where they may” on his own job.

On Friday, an overwhelming majority of the House, more than 300 lawmakers, more Democrats than Republicans, voted to push the package toward passage.

Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., said of Johnson: “I, for one, am just very proud of what we would all refer to as a profile in courage in the face of these kinds of threats.”

But Democrats said they were baffled and saddened it took Johnson so long to do what they see as the right thing.

“This is a profile in delay,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.

Some Democrats are saying that, unlike their refusal to help McCarthy stay in office, they would vote to save Johnson's job — if he wants it.

A growing list of Republican House speakers, starting with Gingrich, were chased from office or, like John Boehner and Paul Ryan, simply exited early.

Apple said it had removed Meta’s WhatsApp messaging app and its Threads social media app from the App Store in China to comply with orders from Chinese authorities.

The apps were removed from the store on Friday after Chinese officials cited unspecified national security concerns. Their removal comes amid elevated tensions between the U.S. and China over trade, technology and national security.

The U.S. has threatened to ban TikTok over national security concerns. But while TikTok, owned by Chinese technology firm ByteDance, is used by millions in the U.S., apps like WhatsApp and Threads are not commonly used in China.

Instead, the messaging app WeChat, owned by Chinese company Tencent, reigns supreme.

SEE MORE: New bill would force TikTok to divest from China, or face US ban

Other Meta apps, including Facebook, Instagram and Messenger remained available for download, although use of such foreign apps is blocked in China due to its “Great Firewall” network of filters that restrict use of foreign websites such as Google and Facebook.

“The Cyberspace Administration of China ordered the removal of these apps from the China storefront based on their national security concerns,” Apple said in a statement.

“We are obligated to follow the laws in the countries where we operate, even when we disagree,” Apple said.

A spokesman for Meta referred to “Apple for comment.”

Apple, previously the world’s top smartphone maker, recently lost the top spot to Korean rival Samsung Electronics. The U.S. firm has run into headwinds in China, one of its top three markets, with sales slumping after Chinese government agencies and employees of state-owned companies were ordered not to bring Apple devices to work.

Apple has been diversifying its manufacturing bases outside China.

SEE MORE: Most Americans think TikTok is a national security threat, poll finds

Its CEO Tim Cook has been visiting Southeast Asia this week, traveling to Hanoi and Jakarta before wrapping up his travels in Singapore. On Friday he met with Singapore’s deputy prime minister, Lawrence Wong, where they “discussed the partnership between Singapore and Apple, and Apple’s continued commitment to doing business in Singapore.”

Apple pledged to invest over $250 million to expand its campus in the city-state.

Earlier this week, Cook met with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in Hanoi, pledging to increase spending on Vietnamese suppliers.

He also met with Indonesian President Joko Widodo. Cook later told reporters that they talked about Widodo's desire to promote manufacturing in Indonesia, and said that this was something that Apple would “look at".

As Jews around the world prepare to celebrate Passover, the families of hostages held in Gaza are calling on the world to help rescue their loved ones. 

"This is not a monolithic, homogeneous group of people," said Rachel Goldberg, whose son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7. "These are people who are from 25 different nations. And I would like to ask, Where are the leaders of those specific 25 nations that have civilians, have citizens who are being held still in Gaza?"

Goldberg was one of several parents who were part of a virtual press conference on Friday, noting that it's been nearly 200 days since their loved ones were taken captive. 

More than 130 hostages are unaccounted for in Gaza; several of them are believed to be Americans. Israeli and U.S. officials have been unable to verify their conditions.

"We just don't have the ability to know the individual condition of any one hostage," White House national security spokesman John Kirby said this week. "So, we're obviously doing the best we can to try to gain as much information as we can."

SEE MORE: No deaths or injuries reported after Israel strike on Iran

Several of the families spoke highly of the Biden administration's continued communication about the progress to get the hostages released. 

Jonathan Dekel-Chen, whose son Sagui was taken from his kibbutz on Oct. 7, noted that the families have been critical of the Israeli government but added that there was a recent breakthrough when Israel proposed a deal to Hamas that would see the release of the hostages in exchange for Palestinians who have been incarcerated in Israel. 

Dekel-Chen said Hamas is the one that should be intensely scrutinized for not accepting the deal.

"I think the world's frustration has to be at this point not on the Netanyahu government as much as on Hamas," he said.

Dekel-Chen added that Hamas should be forced to answer why it keeps rejecting proposals for a cease-fire to return the hostages. 

"What is the world community willing to do to get Hamas to get to the answer that is not 'No'?" he said.

Hamas said it rejected the deal because it wants a permanent cease-fire and Israeli troops to leave Gaza. Netanyahu has refused to withdraw from Gaza until Hamas is eliminated.

The stalemate leaves the families in limbo, hoping for a resolution — for them and the people of Gaza.

"We're completely aware and feel the need for relief for the citizens of Gaza. They're our neighbors, and one day perhaps there can be peace," Dekel-Chen said. "What we also know is that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are the perpetrators of the massacre on October 7. They are the reason for us all having to gather here and for the immense suffering that our region has experienced. 

SEE MORE: US vetoes resolution backing full UN membership for Palestine

Shoppers and workers returned to a "really quiet" Sydney mall Friday, where six days earlier an assailant stabbed six people to death and wounded more than a dozen others in an attack that police believe targeted women.

Westfield Bondi Junction mall near world-famous Bondi Beach had opened Thursday, although shops inside were closed, for a "community reflection day." New South Wales state Premier Chris Minns described it as "the first step in healing" in what has been a traumatic week for Australia's largest city.

There was a large police and security presence, with guards wearing black stab-proof vests posted on each level of the mall. Visitors numbered in the hundreds, but were fewer than the usual expected on a Friday during school holidays.

One visitor, Anthony Simpson, shopping with his two children, described the atmosphere at the usually busy shopping center as "somber."

"It's got an eerie feeling, I guess you could say," Simpson said.

Another shopper, local Bondi resident Stephen Roy, simply said the mall was "really quiet."

Authorities said counseling services were available on site for retail workers and visitors.

Echoing similar calls made by the NSW government, the union that represents retail workers asked shoppers to be mindful and sensitive of how they interact with the shopping center's staff.

"It's going to be a pretty confronting day for many people," SDA NSW union secretary Bernie Smith said to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Friday. "If you are in those shops, sure, you should acknowledge what's happened, but don't retraumatize workers by asking them what happened on that day."

A large floral tribute outside the mall that began on Sunday has continued to grow since the attack, as Sydney residents try and come to terms with the shocking attack.

A condolence book and a floral tribute had also been set up inside the shopping mall for visitors to pay their respects.

A candlelight vigil at nearby Bondi Beach is planned on Sunday evening to honor the victims.

The assailant, Joel Cauchi, was shot and killed by a police officer during his knife attack in the mall. The reopening of shops Friday coincided with a teenager being charged by police with terrorism offenses for the attack Monday at a Sydney church that wounded two Christian clerics.

The teen spoke in Arabic about the Prophet Muhammad being insulted after he stabbed Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel and the Rev. Isaac Royel during the Assyrian Orthodox service. He was later overpowered by parishioners, sustaining severe hand injuries.

SEE MORE: Multiple people stabbed at church in Sydney, days after mall stabbing

Some have said the mall attack should be designated an act of terrorism if investigators found Cauchi's motivation was to target women. Five of the six people he killed were women, while the man who died was a mall security guard. The majority of those wounded were also women.

Police have ruled out terrorism, and Cauchi's family said he had a long history of schizophrenia.

Australia's Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus would not be drawn into the suggestion but said more needed to be done to prevent violence against women.

"I think we can talk about violence against women without blurring lines into something else," he told ABC Radio on Friday.

SEE MORE: Police probe why man who stabbed 6 to death in Sydney targeted women

An apparent Israeli airstrike on Iran did not result in any deaths or injuries, an Italian official said Friday. 

Israel struck targets in Iran with missiles on Thursday night, according to multiple reports citing anonymous U.S. officials.

Iran's semi-official FARS news agency reported at least one explosion in the vicinity of an airport in the city of Isfahan. The cause of the explosion was not immediately known.

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajan said at the meeting of G7 Foreign Ministers that there were Italians living in the area of the strike, but no one was hurt. 

“There were no deaths or injuries,” Tajani said, according to The Associated Press. “There is a group of Italians who live in the city where the drones arrived and they are all without problems. They say life has resumed regularly, and the Iranian airspace has reopened.”

Flights were diverted around western Iran early on Friday, without immediate explanation. Air defense batteries had activated across multiple provinces.

Speaking from the G7 Conference, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he would not comment on Friday's attacks other than to say that the U.S. was "not involved in offensive actions." 

The targets were not nuclear in nature, according to anonymous U.S. officials who spoke to CNN. Iran's state news agency IRNA said Thursday that the country's nuclear facilities were "secure."

Scripps News has not yet independently verified the developments.

Israel had promised to retaliate for Iran's Saturday attack, in which Iran launched hundreds of drones and additional volleys of cruise missiles from multiple locations in Iran and in other countries against targets in Israel.

Israel did not give additional details at the time about the nature of its potential response.

Just before Blinken's comments, G7 ministers issued a joint statement condemning Iran for last week's attack.

"Israel and its people have our full solidarity and support and we reaffirm our commitment towards Israel’s security," the statement read. "Iran’s actions mark an unacceptable step towards the destabilization of the region and a further escalation, which must be avoided. In light of reports of strikes on April 19th , we urge all parties to work to prevent further escalation. The G7 will continue to work to this end."

The U.S., the United Kingdom, France and other allied nations helped Israel defend itself against Iran's strike. Israel says nearly all the drones and missiles were intercepted. A 7-year-old girl was injured in the attack.

On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed recommendations from allies to use restraint in Israel's response to Iran's attack. 

“I want to be clear: We will make our decisions ourselves. The state of Israel will do whatever is necessary to defend itself,” Netanyahu said.

SEE MORE: Netanyahu says Israel will decide how to respond to Iran's attack

The United States vetoed a widely backed U.N. resolution on Thursday that would have paved the way for full United Nations membership for the state of Palestine.

The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 12 in favor, the United States opposed and two abstentions.

The resolution would have recommended that the 193-member General Assembly, where there are no vetoes, approve Palestine becoming the 194th member of the United Nations. Some 140 countries have already recognized the state of Palestine, so its admission would have been approved.

Before the vote, U.S. deputy State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said the United States has “been very clear consistently that premature actions in New York — even with the best intentions — will not achieve statehood for the Palestinian people.”

This is the second Palestinian attempt for full membership and it comes as the war in Gaza has put the more than 75-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict at center stage.

SEE MORE: UN appeals for $2.8 billion for new Palestinian aid

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas first delivered the Palestinian Authority’s application for U.N. membership to then-Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2011. That initial bid failed because the Palestinians didn’t get the required minimum support of nine of the Security Council’s 15 members.

Under the U.N. Charter, the Security Council must recommend membership to the 193-member General Assembly, where there are no vetoes, for a final vote.

After the Palestinians’ initial bid for full U.N. membership was rejected, they went to the General Assembly and by more than a two-thirds majority succeeded in having their status raised from a U.N. observer to a non-member observer state in November 2012. That opened the door for the Palestinian territories to join the U.N. and other international organizations, including the International Criminal Court.

Google has fired 28 employees in the aftermath of protests over technology that the internet company is supplying to the Israeli government amid the Gaza war, further escalating tensions surrounding a hot-button deal.

The firings confirmed by Google late Wednesday came a day after nine employees were arrested during sit-in protests at offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, after the company called police.

The dissent roiling Google centers on “Project Nimbus,” a $1.2 billion contract signed in 2021 that calls upon Google and Amazon to provide the Israeli government with cloud computing and artificial intelligence services.

The protests are being organized primarily by a group called No Tech For Apartheid. Google says Nimbus isn't being deployed in weaponry or intelligence gathering.

In a statement, Google attributed the firing of the 28 employees to “completely unacceptable behavior” that prevented some workers from doing their jobs and created a threatening atmosphere. The Mountain View, California, company added it is still investigating what happened during the protests, implying more workers could still be fired.

SEE MORE: Police detain pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Columbia University

In a blog post, No Tech For Apartheid accused Google of lying about what happened inside its offices during what it described as a “peaceful sit-in" that received overwhelming support from other workers who weren't participating in the protest.

“This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers,” No Tech For Apartheid asserted.

The contract raising the ire of some Google workers runs within the company's cloud computing division that is overseen by a former Oracle executive, Thomas Kurian.

Under Kurian's leadership, cloud computing has emerged as one of Google's fastest-growing divisions, with revenue of $33 billion last year, a 26% increase from 2022. A wide range of private-sector companies also buy Google's cloud computing services, in addition to governments around the world.

Google workers have periodically staged angry protests over other deals the company has been working on and have also raised ethical concerns about the way it is developing artificial intelligence.

One of the previous employee uprisings resulted in Google deciding in 2018 to end a contract with the U.S. defense department called “Project Maven” that involved helping the armed forces analyze military videos.

But Google has continued to thrive, despite the internal misgivings about the way it is making some of its money. Its revenue mostly comes through digital advertising sold through an internet empire that depends on its dominant search engine as its main pillar.

Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., posted a $74 billion profit last year and now employs about 182,000 workers worldwide — about 83,000 more people than in 2018 when it abandoned Project Maven.

SEE MORE: Pro-Palestinian demonstrators block traffic to Chicago O'Hare Airport

New York police began arresting pro-Palestinian protesters on Thursday after Columbia University said an encampment formed before dawn on Wednesday on the South Lawn of the university's Morningside Heights campus in Manhattan. 

Just before 4 p.m. ET on Thursday the university said facilities and operations crew members would ensure items left behind by people at the encampment would be "carefully stored" and not discarded." 

Reports said dozens were arrested and at least 50 tents were removed from the area. 

The New York Times said officers began detaining students just before 1:30 p.m. on Thursday afternoon, a day after university officials testified before Congress on antisemitism. 

Columbia University said the group of over 100 people were notified "numerous times," verbally and in writing, that they were not permitted by university security and leadership to be in the area they were occupying. 

SEE MORE: UN appeals for $2.8 billion for new Palestinian aid

The university said in a notice that "all university students participating in the encampment" were notified that they would be suspended, and said the participants were trespassing after the university's president ordered they be removed. 

Police officers were seen in riot gear putting individuals in the back of detention vehicles, with some protesters wearing keffiyehs in a show of solidarity with Palestinians. 

The protesters were demonstrating in opposition to the current Israel-Hamas war. They are urging the university to divest from financial interests in corporations tied to Israel. 

On Wednesday Columbia University's President Nemat Shafik stood firm in her testimony on Capitol Hill regarding the university's response to antisemitism and what phrases used by activists would be considered harassment. 

Republican Rep. Lisa McClain from Michigan asked if "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" or if "long live intifada" are considered antisemitic in Shafik's mind. 

"I hear them as such, some people don't," Shafik responded. 

A Polish man has been arrested on allegations of being ready to help Russia’s military intelligence in an alleged plot to assassinate Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Polish prosecutors said Thursday.

The office of Poland’s National Prosecutor said in a statement that the man, identified only as Pawel K., was accused of being prepared to pass airport security information to Russian agents and that he was arrested in Poland on Wednesday.

SEE MORE: Ukraine's Zelenskyy rules out a cease-fire with Russia

The man was seeking contact with Russians directly involved in the war in Ukraine and was expected to pass on detailed information about the Rzeszow-Jasionka airport in south-eastern Poland, near the border with Ukraine, which is the gateway for international military and humanitarian supplies for Ukraine. The airport is under the control of U.S. troops.

If convicted, the man could face up to eight years in prison, the statement said.

European Union member Poland has been a staunch supporter of neighboring Ukraine and Zelenskyy in fending off Russia’s aggression of more than two years.

The U.S. and U.K. on Thursday imposed a new round of sanctions on Iran as concern grows that Tehran’s unprecedented attack on Israel could fuel a wider war in the Middle East.

Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control targeted 16 people and two entities in Iran that produce engines that power the drones used in the April 13 attack on Israel. OFAC also sanctioned five firms involved in steel production and three subsidiaries of Iranian automaker Bahman Group — which is accused of materially supporting Iran's military and other sanctioned groups. A representative from Bahman was not immediately available for comment.

Additionally, the U.K. is targeting several Iranian military organizations, individuals and entities involved in Iran’s drone and ballistic missile industries.

President Joe Biden said in a statement that he had directed U.S. Treasury “to continue to impose sanctions that further degrade Iran’s military industries.”

SEE MORE: UN appeals for $2.8 billion for new Palestinian aid

“Let it be clear to all those who enable or support Iran’s attacks,” he said, “we will not hesitate to take all necessary action to hold you accountable.”

In addition to Treasury's sanctions, the U.S. Commerce Department is imposing new controls to restrict Iran’s access to basic commercial grade microelectronics, which apply to items manufactured outside the U.S. that are produced using U.S. technology.

The actions come after U.S. officials earlier this week warned that they were readying new sanctions in response to Iran’s activity in the region and to prevent future attacks. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill also have been quickly pushing forward legislation that would financially punish the Islamic Republic and its leaders.

Iran’s attack on Israel early Sunday came in response to what it says was an Israeli strike on Iran’s consulate in Syria earlier this month. Israel’s military chief said Monday that his country will respond to the Iranian attack, while world leaders caution against retaliation, trying to avoid a spiral of violence.

European Union leaders also vowed on Wednesday to ramp up sanctions on Iran, targeting its drone and missile deliveries to proxies in Gaza, Yemen and Lebanon.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the existing EU sanctions regime would be strengthened and expanded to punish Tehran and help prevent future attacks on Israel. At the same time, he said, Israel needed to exercise restraint.

“I don’t want to exaggerate, but we are on the edge of a war, a regional war in the Middle East, which will be sending shockwaves to the rest of the world, and in particular to Europe,” he warned. “So stop it.”

SEE MORE: Congress moving on bipartisan action to punish Iran for Israel attack

Indonesian authorities closed an airport and residents left homes near an erupting volcano Thursday due to the dangers of spreading ash, falling rocks, hot volcanic clouds and the possibility of a tsunami.

Mount Ruang on the northern side of Sulawesi Island had at least five large eruptions Wednesday, causing the Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation to issue its highest-level alert, indicating an active eruption.

The crater emitted white-gray smoke continuously during the day Thursday, reaching more than 1,600 feet above the peak. People have been ordered to stay miles away from the 2,378-foot mountain and more than 11,000 people living in the affected area were told to leave. So far, at least 800 have done so.

An international airport in Manado city was temporarily closed Thursday as volcanic ash was spewed into the air.

“We have to close flight operations at Sam Ratulangi Airport due to the spread of volcanic ash, which could endanger flight safety,” said Ambar Suryoko, head of the regional airport authority.

Eruptions Wednesday evening spewed volcanic ash approximately 70,000 feet into the atmosphere, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre. The bureau said in a statement Thursday it was tracking and forecasting the ash dispersion.

Indonesia's volcanology center noted the risks from the volcanic eruption include the possibility that part of the volcano could collapse into the sea and cause a tsunami. In December 2018, Indonesia’s Anak Krakatau volcano island erupted and collapsed, losing around 3/4 its volume and triggering a powerful tsunami that killed more than 400 people. An 1871 eruption at Mount Ruang also triggered a tsunami.

SEE MORE: More bodies found after surprise eruption of Indonesia's Mount Marapi

Tagulandang Island, east of the Ruang volcano, could be at risk if a collapse occurred. Its residents were among those being told to evacuate.

“People who live in the Tagulandang Island area and are within a 6-kilometer radius must be immediately evacuated to a safe place outside the 6-kilometer radius," Abdul Muhari, spokesperson of the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, said Thursday. “And especially those who live near the coast should be aware of the potential for incandescent rocks to erupt, hot clouds and tsunami waves that could be triggered by the collapse of a volcanic body into the sea.”

The agency said residents will be relocated to Manado, the nearest city, on Sulawesi island — a six-hour journey by boat.

Indonesia, an archipelago of 270 million people, has 120 active volcanoes. It is prone to volcanic activity because it sits along the “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines around the Pacific Ocean.

Iran's attack against Israel over the weekend has spurred a flurry of bipartisan legislative action in Congress, uniting lawmakers against the country even as the risk of a larger regional war looms.

Several measures introduced and passed in the House and Senate seek to both publicly condemn Iran and punish the Islamic Republic financially. Lawmakers have denounced Iran's actions, which came in response to a suspected Israeli strike weeks earlier on an Iranian consular building in Syria that killed two Iranian generals.

“The world is on fire, and history will judge us for our action,” said Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, during a news conference Tuesday.

The swift, bipartisan condemnation of Iran has put on sharp display the durability of American support for Israel, even amid growing partisan division over how the country is handling its more than six-month war with Hamas.

The House passed nearly a dozen bills by Wednesday that would, among other things, issue a slate of new sanctions and other financial restrictions against Iran and its leaders. Other legislation looks to prevent current Iranian officials sanctioned from evading those penalties and urge the European Union to “expeditiously” designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization as the U.S. has already done.

On the other side of the Capitol, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday advanced five bills, including ones that targeted Iran for its human rights record and would require sanctions on ports and refineries that receive and process Iranian oil.

“Iran’s direct attack on Israel this week underscores the need to further cut off the Iranian regime’s key revenue streams,” Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire said in a statement. "I urge my colleagues in the Senate to support this bill — which has already passed the House — so that we can send it to President Biden’s desk immediately.”

SEE MORE: What key recent events led to Iran's assault on Israel?

A number of the bills had passed the House weeks before Hamas' deadly attack on Israel in October but have been stalled in the Senate committee. An Israeli offensive in Gaza has since caused widespread devastation and killed over 33,000 people, according to local health officials. Israel's conduct of the war has revealed the depth of unease among U.S. lawmakers as concerns over the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza have caused even some of President Joe Biden's closest allies to threaten conditioning future aid to Israel.

Congressional Democrats have been reluctant to challenge President Biden's handling of the ongoing conflict and related regional tensions that have taken shape, mindful that criticism could further weaken President Biden in his reelection campaign against former President Donald Trump.

But the attack on Saturday has proven to consolidate public support for the Biden administration's quick response as it ordered U.S. forces to help Israel down “nearly all” the 300 drones and missiles that were headed its way.

It also comes as House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., released legislation Wednesday that would provide $95 billion in aid collectively to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. The aid package had been held up for months over Republican opposition to continuing wartime funding for Ukraine as it battles Russia. Iran's attack on Israel added urgency to Johnson's plans to bring the issue to the floor for a vote.

While the measures targeting Iran have received overwhelming support — with the series of House bills mostly passing with at least 300 votes — there has been a quiet but growing dissent among progressive Democratic lawmakers in both chambers, who warn that legislative efforts could risk further escalation in the Middle East.

“Following last weekend’s unprecedented response by Iran to Israel’s attack on its consulate, the Republican Majority is explicitly leveraging a series of bills to further escalate tensions in the Middle East," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said in a statement Tuesday. “This is a blatant attempt to distract from their own incompetence.”

The strike on Saturday marked the first time Iran has launched a direct military assault on Israel despite decades of enmity dating back to the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Israel has vowed to retaliate against Iran, risking further expanding the shadow war between the two foes into a direct conflict.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, condemned Iran's attack in a statement but called on his colleagues to respond cautiously. He warned that further U.S. action against Iran could lead to a dangerous escalation that could drag America into a war in the Middle East.

“Cooler heads must now prevail to ensure peace in the region and security for Israel,” Sanders said.

SEE MORE: Netanyahu says Israel will decide how to respond to Iran's attack

The United Nations appealed for $2.8 billion on Tuesday to provide desperately needed aid to 3 million Palestinians, stressing that tackling looming famine in war-torn Gaza requires not only food but sanitation, water and health facilities.

Andrea De Domenico, the head of the U.N. humanitarian office for Gaza and the West Bank, told reporters that “massive operations” are required to restore those services and meet minimum standards — and this can’t be done during military operations.

He pointed to the destruction of hospitals, water and sanitation facilities, homes, roads and schools, adding that “there is not a single university that is standing in Gaza.”

De Domenico said Israel's recently-ended second major military operation at Shifa Hospital, Gaza's largest medical facility, was so destructive the facility has been forced to shut down. As an example, he questioned what the military objective was in shooting an MRI scanner that examines parts of the body and can detect cancers.

He said his team has been dealing with “a scene of terror” at the hospital, with U.N. and Palestinian colleagues helping people try to recognize family members from shoes or clothes on “the remnants of corpses.”

Israel promised to open more border crossings into Gaza and increase the flow of aid into Gaza after its drone strikes killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen who were delivering food into the territory on April 1.

SEE MORE: Israel dismisses 2 officers over deadly strikes on aid workers in Gaza

The killings were condemned by Israel’s closest allies and heightened criticism of Israel’s conduct in the 6-month-old war with Hamas, sparked by the extremist group's surprise attack in southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and led some 250 others to be taken hostage. The Israeli offensive in Gaza aimed at destroying Hamas has caused widespread devastation and killed over 33,800 people, according to local health officials.

De Domenico said there are signs of Israel’s “good intention” to get more humanitarian assistance into Gaza, citing the opening of a crossing to the north, which faces the most serious threat of famine, and the opening of bakeries there.

But the U.N. keeps pushing Israel to do more, he said.

De Domenico pointed to Israeli denials and delays on U.N. requests for aid convoys to enter Gaza.

He said 41% of U.N. requests that required going through Israeli checkpoints were denied during the week from April 6-12, and last week a convoy from the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF and the U.N. World Food Program was caught in crossfire in an area that was supposed to be safe.

De Domenico said convoys often spend hours at checkpoints and are only cleared in the afternoon, too late to make deliveries and return safely in daylight hours. He said the Israelis know this is how the U.N. operates, and delays allow them to say “we’re not blindly denying you” while controlling what happens.

“We continue to engage with them and our objective is really to solve the issue and deliver aid,” he said.

According to the international community’s authority on determining the severity of hunger crises, famine is imminent in northern Gaza where 70% of people are experiencing catastrophic hunger. And its recent report warned that escalating the war could push half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people to the brink of starvation.

De Domenico said the U.N. appeal was scaled back from $4 billion because of difficulties in getting aid into Gaza — and most importantly getting it to the people who need it most.

He said 90% of the $2.8 billion being sought for the rest of the year is for Gaza and 10% is for the West Bank, which has seen an upsurge in violence and settler attacks.

Police in Brazil say a woman attempted to fraudulently complete a loan approval process by bringing her dead uncle into a bank branch in a wheelchair and trying to make it appear that he was signing documents. 

Authorities in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro said the woman — 42-year-old Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes — was seen on security camera footage wheeling 68-year-old Paulo Roberto Braga into the bank from a parking structure to try and use his identity to finalize documents in person for the loan, CNN Brazil reported. 

According to police accounts reported on by Reuters, Nunes told a bank worker that her uncle wanted to take out a loan for the equivalent of about $3,250.

She was seen in video holding a pen and moving the man's hand around with no response from the man. 

According to reports, Nunes was witnessed saying, "Uncle are you listening? You need to sign." She reportedly told bank workers that he doesn't speak much, and was heard saying she might take him to a hospital. 

Agencia Brasil reported that the incident happened in Bangu, a city just over three hours by car from the popular tourist areas of the city of Rio de Janeiro. Bank workers became suspicious when the woman began talking into the ear of the pale limp man's body. 

The corpse was later taken to a morgue. 

The woman's lawyer argued that Braga died while at the bank, but police say he died before he arrived. 

SEE MORE: California woman dies after falling down cliff while hiking in Arizona

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday his country would be the one to decide whether and how to respond to Iran’s major air assault earlier this week, brushing off calls for restraint from close allies.

Israel has vowed to respond to Iran’s unprecedented attack without saying when or how, leaving the region bracing for further escalation after months of unrest linked to the ongoing war in Gaza.

Israel’s allies have been urging Israel since the attack to hold back on any response that could spiral. These calls were repeated on Wednesday during visits by the British and German foreign ministers.

The diplomatic pressures came as Iran’s president warned that even the “tiniest” invasion of its territory would bring a “massive and harsh” response. Violence meanwhile surged on Wednesday between Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese militant Hezbollah group, which fired a volley of rockets and drones on northern Israel. The attack wounded at least 14 Israeli soldiers, six seriously, the army said. The military said it struck Hezbollah targets deep inside Lebanon in response.

Speaking to a meeting of his Cabinet, Netanyahu said he met Wednesday with both visiting foreign ministers and thanked them for their countries’ support. But he said Israel would make the call on its own on how to respond despite “all sorts of suggestions and advice” coming from Israel’s allies, some of whom — including the United States, the United Kingdom and France — helped Israel repel Iran’s drone and missile assault.

“I want to be clear: we will make our decisions ourselves. The state of Israel will do whatever is necessary to defend itself,” Netanyahu said.

Despite the tough rhetoric, Israel appears unlikely to attack Iran directly without at least the support of its top ally, the U.S. But it could resort to more covert methods such as targeting senior Iranian commanders or Iran-backed groups in other countries, or launching a cyber attack.

SEE MORE: What key recent events led to Iran's assault on Israel?

It’s unclear how Iran would then respond, given the heightened tensions — any miscalculation by either side risks setting off a regional war.

President Joe Biden’s administration on Tuesday announced new sanctions on Iran and has worked to coordinate a global rebuke of the attack while urging all sides to de-escalate. U.S. officials said earlier this week that Biden told Netanyahu that Washington would not participate in any offensive action against Iran.

Over the weekend, Iran launched hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel in response to an apparent Israeli strike on Iran’s Embassy compound in Syria on April 1 that killed 12 people, including two Iranian generals.

Israel says it and its partners successfully intercepted nearly all the missiles and drones. A 7-year-old girl was wounded in the attack, which did not cause any deaths or major damage.

Israel and Iran have waged a shadow war for decades, but the strike over the weekend was the first direct Iranian military attack on Israel.

With tensions surging, Israel’s allies have reinforced a message of restraint. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock each appealed for calm while on separate visits to the region.

Cameron said “it’s clear the Israelis are making a decision to act” against Iran, but he hoped they would do so “in a way that is smart as well as tough and also does as little as possible to escalate this conflict.” He spoke after meeting with Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, whose office is mainly ceremonial.

Baerbock said Germany stands “in full solidarity with Israel” but called on it to exercise restraint.

“Everyone must now act prudently and responsibly. I’m not talking about giving in. I’m talking about prudent restraint, which is nothing less than strength,” she told reporters. “Because Israel has already shown strength with its defensive victory at the weekend.”

The ministers said they would push for further international sanctions on Iran.

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi warned Israel against any retaliation as he addressed an annual army parade, which had been relocated to a barracks from its usual route and was not carried live on state TV — possibly because of fears that it could be targeted.

In remarks carried by Iran’s official IRNA news agency, Raisi said the weekend attack was limited, and that if Iran had wanted to carry out a bigger attack, “nothing would remain from the Zionist regime.”

Regional tensions have soared since the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel launched by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Palestinian militant groups supported by Iran. The attack killed some 1,200 Israelis, and the militants took around 250 hostages. Israel responded with one of the deadliest and most destructive military onslaughts in recent history, killing nearly 34,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, who do not distinguish between combatants and civilians in their count but say most of the dead are women and children.

Israel has withdrawn most of its forces from Gaza after major offensives that left its two biggest cities — Gaza City and Khan Younis — in ruins. But Israeli officials say the war is not over and that they plan to send ground forces into the southernmost Gaza city of Rafah, where more than half the territory’s population of 2.3 million people have sought refuge from fighting elsewhere.

Hamas is still holding around 130 hostages, a quarter of whom are believed to be dead, and international efforts to broker a cease-fire and hostage release have made little progress.

Hezbollah, another close Iran ally, has traded fire with Israel along the border on a near-daily basis since the war began, in a low-intensity conflict that risks igniting all-out war. Iran-backed groups in Iraq and Syria have also launched attacks, and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have targeted international shipping in the Red Sea, portraying it as a blockade of Israel.

A restaurant in northern Italy is offering a free bottle of wine to diners who agree to do a digital detox while enjoying their dinner. 

Al Condominio, located in Verona, said each couple who comes in and allows staff to lock their phones in a drawer for the duration of their meal will get a free bottle of Maia Pinot Noir. The couple will have to show their server the key to the lockbox as proof to receive the special deal. 

If it’s a larger group of guests, the offer will apply to one bottle per four people, the restaurant said on its website. 

Restaurant owner Angelo Lella told The Guardian the purpose of the digital detox promotion is to encourage diners to spark more conversation instead of glancing at their phones. 

“Technology is becoming a problem — there is no need to look at your phone every five seconds, but for many people it is like a drug … This way they have an opportunity to put it aside and drink some good wine,” he said to The Guardian. 

Customers will also have a chance to win a free meal at the restaurant, which just opened in March, if they leave a good review. 

Lella told The Guardian the response has been very positive and most of their customers opt to lock up their phones and enjoy the free wine. 

SEE MORE: 2024 could be the year to travel as airfare prices are declining

The British government's plan for a landmark smoking ban that aims to stop young people from ever smoking cleared its first hurdle in Parliament on Tuesday despite vocal opposition from within Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party.

The bill, a key policy announced by Sunak last year, would make it illegal to sell tobacco products to anyone born after Jan. 1, 2009. If passed, the bill will give Britain some of the toughest anti-smoking measures in the world. Authorities say it will create modern Britain’s “first smoke-free generation.”

Under the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, children turning 15 this year or younger will never be legally sold tobacco. Once implemented — officials are aiming for 2027 — the legal age of sale that people in England can buy cigarettes will be raised by one year, every year until it is eventually illegal for the whole population.

The bill also includes measures to crack down on youth vaping, such as banning the sale of cheap disposable vapes and restricting their flavors to prevent children from becoming addicted to nicotine.

SEE MORE: Will the Biden administration approve a ban on menthol cigarettes?

It is currently illegal for anyone to sell cigarettes or tobacco products and vapes to people under 18 years old throughout the U.K.

During the bill’s second reading late Tuesday, 383 lawmakers voted in favor while 67 opposed it after an afternoon of debate. Although the bill was widely praised by health experts and had the support of the opposition Labour Party, Sunak faced rebellion from more libertarian-minded members of his party, who criticized the proposals as “unconservative.”

Opponents, such as the smokers' rights lobbying group FOREST, said the move risks creating a black market and will “treat future generations of adults like kids.” Prominent voices within the Conservative Party, including two of Sunak's predecessors Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, said the plans went against conservative values by limiting people's personal freedoms.

The bill was a “virtue-signaling piece of legislation about protecting adults from themselves in the future," Truss told Parliament during Tuesday's debate.

Other high-profile Tories, including business secretary Kemi Badenoch, a Cabinet minister, also opposed the bill or abstained.

Conservative lawmakers were granted a free vote, meaning they could vote with their personal conscience rather than follow the official party line.

The plans were believed to have been inspired by similar policies proposed by New Zealand under former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, but the country's new coalition government repealed the bill earlier this year.

The government said that smoking won’t be criminalized, and the phased changes mean that anyone who can legally buy cigarettes now won’t be prevented from doing so in the future.

The number of people who smoke in the U.K. has declined by two-thirds since the 1970s, but some 6.4 million people in the country — or about 13% of the population — still smoke, according to official figures.

The desert nation of the United Arab Emirates attempted to dry out Wednesday from the heaviest rain ever recorded there after a deluge flooded out Dubai International Airport, disrupting flights through the world's busiest airfield for international travel.

The state-run WAM news agency called the rain Tuesday "a historic weather event" that surpassed "anything documented since the start of data collection in 1949." That's before the discovery of crude oil in this energy-rich nation then part of a British protectorate known as the Trucial States.

Rain also fell in Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. However, the rains were acute across the UAE.

One possible contributor may have been "cloud seeding," in which small planes operated by the government fly through clouds burning special salt flares. Those flares can increase precipitation.

Several reports quoted meteorologists at the National Center for Meteorology as saying they flew six or seven cloud-seeding flights before the rains. Flight-tracking data analyzed by The Associated Press showed one aircraft affiliated with the UAE's cloud-seeding efforts flew around the country Monday.

The National, an English-language, state-linked newspaper in Abu Dhabi, quoted an anonymous official at the center on Wednesday as saying no cloud seeding took place on Tuesday, without acknowledging any earlier flights.

The center did not respond to questions Wednesday from the AP.

The UAE, which heavily relies on energy-hungry desalination plants to provide water, conducts cloud seeding in part to increase its dwindling, limited groundwater.

Scientists also say climate change in general is responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme storms, droughts, floods and wildfires around the world. Dubai hosted the United Nations' COP28 climate talks just last year. Rising temperatures and other effects of global warming long have been viewed as a threat to life in the already-baking region.

SEE MORE: 2023 poised to become hottest year on record

The rains began late Monday, soaking the sands and roadways of Dubai with some 0.79 inches of rain, according to meteorological data collected at Dubai International Airport. The storms intensified around 9 a.m. local Tuesday and continued throughout the day, dumping more rain and hail onto the overwhelmed city.

By the end of Tuesday, more than 5.59 inches of rainfall had soaked Dubai over 24 hours. An average year sees 3.73 inches of rain at Dubai International Airport, a hub for the long-haul carrier Emirates.

At the airport, standing water lapped on taxiways as aircraft landed. Arrivals were halted Tuesday night, and passengers struggled to reach terminals through the floodwater covering surrounding roads.

One couple, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to speak freely in a country with strict laws that criminalize critical speech, called the situation at the airport "absolute carnage."

"You cannot get a taxi. There's people sleeping in the Metro station. There's people sleeping in the airport," the man said Wednesday.

They ended up getting a taxi to near their home some 18 miles away, but floodwater on the road stopped them. A bystander helped them over a highway barrier with their carry-on luggage, the bottles of gin they picked up from duty-free clinking away.

Dubai International Airport acknowledged Wednesday morning that the flooding had left "limited transportation options" and affected flights as aircraft crews couldn't reach the airfield.

"Recovery will take some time," the airport said on the social platform X.

Emirates said the airline had halted check-in for passengers departing from Dubai itself from 8 a.m. until midnight Wednesday as it tried to clear the airport of transit passengers — many of whom had been sleeping where they could in its cavernous terminals.

Passengers on FlyDubai, Emirates' low-cost sister airline, also faced disruptions.

Paul Griffiths, the airport's CEO, acknowledged continued issues with flooding Wednesday morning, saying every place an aircraft could be safely parked was taken. Some aircraft had been diverted to Al Maktoum International Airport at Dubai World Central, the city-state's second airfield.

"It remains an incredibly challenging time. In living memory, I don't think anyone has ever seen conditions like it," Griffiths told the state-owned talk radio station Dubai Eye. "We are in uncharted territory, but I can assure everyone we are working as hard as we possibly can to make sure our customers and staff are looked after."

Egypt's national carrier, EgyptAir, also temporarily suspended flights between Cairo and Dubai due to the bad weather.

Schools across the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms, largely shut ahead of the storm and government employees were largely working remotely if able. Many workers stayed home as well, though some ventured out, with the unfortunate stalling out their vehicles in deeper-than-expected water covering spots on some roads. That included parts of the Sheikh Zayed Road, a 12-lane highway through downtown Dubai.

Authorities sent tanker trucks out into the streets and highways to pump away the water. Water poured into some homes, forcing people to bail out their houses.

The country's hereditary rulers offered no overall damage or injury information for the nation, as some slept in their flooded vehicles Tuesday night. In Ras al-Khaimah, the country's northernmost emirate, police said one 70-year-old man died when his vehicle was swept away by floodwater.

Khatm al-Shakla, an area near Al Ain in Abu Dhabi, saw 10 inches of rain Tuesday, the most anywhere in the country, officials said.

Authorities canceled school and the government instituted remote work again for Wednesday. Dubai later closed schools for the rest of the week.

Rain is unusual in the UAE, an arid, Arabian Peninsula nation, but occurs periodically during the cooler winter months. Many roads and other areas lack drainage given the lack of regular rainfall, causing flooding.

Meanwhile in neighboring Oman, a sultanate that rests on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, at least 19 people were killed in heavy rains in recent days, according to a statement Wednesday from the country's National Committee for Emergency Management. That includes some 10 schoolchildren swept away in a vehicle with an adult, which saw condolences come into the country from rulers across the region.

Worldwide wind power capacity surged a record 50% over the last calendar year, according to a new report that tracks global generation capacity.

The Global Wind Energy Council reports that 2023 saw 117 gigawatts of new wind power brought online, the highest annual rate of growth on record.

Fifty-four countries contributed to the new expansion, with China alone accounting for 65% of the total. The U.S., Brazil and Germany were the countries with the next-highest shares of the total, with 5%, 4% and 3% respectively.

Total global power generated through wind now stands at 1,021 gigawatts.

GWEC expects new wind power to grow at more than 9% over the next four years. Growth will also continue through 2030, the group says, thanks to wind-friendly national policies and increased momentum for offshore wind projects.

But the rate of new projects will have to grow further still to meet power goals set out at COP28, where delegates made a pledge to triple renewable power capacity worldwide by 2030.

"It’s great to see wind industry growth picking up, and we are proud of reaching a new annual record," said GWEC CEO Ben Backwell. "However much more needs to be done to unlock growth."

SEE MORE: New York's first offshore wind farm may be the future of energy

In 2023, wind power accounted for a little over 10% of the overall U.S. energy mix, or roughly 425,000 gigawatts. In January, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that wind would grow by about 11% through 2025. 

Its growth is expected to be steady compared to the sharp climb of new solar installation, which provides less than 4% of U.S. energy now but is expected to jump by 75% through 2025.

Even without the help of Apollo, the flame that is to burn at the Paris Olympics was kindled Tuesday at the site of the ancient games in southern Greece.

Cloudy skies prevented the traditional lighting, when an actress dressed as an ancient Greek priestess uses the sun to ignite a silver torch — after offering up a symbolic prayer to Apollo, the ancient Greek sun god.

Instead, a backup flame was used that had been lit on the same spot Monday, during the final rehearsal.

Normally, the foremost of a group of priestesses in long, pleated dresses dips the fuel-filled torch into a parabolic mirror which focuses the sun's rays on it, and fire spurts forth.

But this time she didn't even try, going straight for the backup, kept in a copy of an ancient Greek pot. Ironically, a few minutes later the sun shone forth.

From the ancient stadium in Olympia, a relay of torchbearers will carry the flame more than 3,100 miles through Greece until the handover to Paris Games organizers in Athens on April 26.

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said the flame lighting combined “a pilgrimage to our past in ancient Olympia, and an act of faith in our future.”

“In these difficult times ... with wars and conflicts on the rise, people are fed up with all the hate, the aggression and negative news,” he said. “We are longing for something which brings us together; something that is unifying; something that gives us hope.”

Thousands of spectators from all over the world packed Olympia for Tuesday's event amid the ruined temples and sports grounds where the ancient games were held from 776 B.C.-393 A.D.

The sprawling site, in a lush valley by the confluence of two rivers, is at its prettiest in the spring, teeming with pink-flowering Judas trees, small blue irises and the occasional red anemone.

The first torchbearer was Greek rower Stefanos Douskos, a gold medalist in 2021 in Tokyo. He ran to a nearby monument that contains the heart of French Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the driving force behind the modern revival of the games.

The next runner was Laure Manaudou, a French swimmer who won three medals at Athens in 2004. She handed over to senior European Union official Margaritis Schinas, a Greek.

The flame will travel from Athens' port of Piraeus on the Belem, a French three-masted sailing ship built in 1896 — the year of the first modern games in Athens.

According to Captain Aymeric Gibet, it's due on May 8 in the southern French port of Marseille, a city founded by Greek colonists some 2,600 years ago.

The Belem arrived in Katakolo, near Olympia, on Monday. Lookers-on included a small, enthusiastic group of tourists from the northwestern French region of Brittany, where the ship's homeport of Nantes is, waving French and Breton flags.

“We thought it would be a unique opportunity to see the flame lighting at the historic site of Olympia,” said Jean-Michel Pasquet from Lorient, near Nantes. “And when we also learnt the Belem would carry the flame ... we said we must do this.”

But Pasquet said he'd have to watch the Paris Games from home.

“For us, it would be really very expensive, unaffordable,” to go to the venues, he said. “So we'll watch them on television ... from our armchairs.”

More than 250 survivors of the bombing that killed 22 people at a 2017 Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, are taking legal action against Britain's domestic intelligence agency, lawyers said.

Lawyers from three law firms said Sunday they have submitted a group claim on behalf of more than 250 clients to the U.K.'s investigatory powers tribunal. They said they could not provide further details because it was an ongoing legal matter.

Suicide bomber Salman Abedi set up a knapsack bomb in Manchester Arena at the end of Grande's concert on May 22, 2017, as thousands of young fans were leaving. More than 100 people were injured, many of them children and teenagers. Abedi died in the explosion.

SEE MORE: Ariana Grande's Manchester Benefit Concert Raises Millions

An official inquiry reported last year that Britain's domestic intelligence agency, MI5, didn't act swiftly enough on key information and missed a significant opportunity to prevent the bombing, the deadliest extremist attack in the U.K. in recent years.

Abedi had been a "subject of interest" to MI5 officials in 2014, but his case was closed shortly after because he was deemed to be low risk.

The report also found that one MI5 officer admitted they considered intelligence about Abedi to be a possible national security concern, but didn't discuss it with colleagues quickly enough.

Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, said in a rare televised statement that he was "profoundly sorry" his agency was unable to prevent the attack.

In a photo taken several years ago, the Corbett family can be seen in happier times: Ryan and his wife, Anna, along with their three children.

"He's someone who cares deeply about other people and bettering their careers, their lives," Anna Corbett said, "and he's been an amazing dad and husband."

For more than 600 days now, though, the only way they've seen Ryan is in a photo of him taken while in Taliban captivity. They are pushing for his release and have set up a website so others can learn about Ryan's situation. 

"We've been concerned, as we've heard about his health, it's been declining and deteriorating," Anna said.

For 12 years, the upstate New York family lived off-and-on in Afghanistan, as Ryan worked to help Afghans set up small businesses of their own.

When the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban took over, the family evacuated.

"It was really a difficult thing to just leave and quit because people were depending on his work, his staff and those who were starting their own businesses," Anna said. "So, that's why he kept it going, even when we moved back to the States."

The following year, Ryan secured a one-year visa to Afghanistan and returned in January 2022 for a short trip, with no issues.

He returned to the country a second time seven months later, in August of 2022 — and that's when the family's nightmare began.

"They saw an opportunity. They saw his blue passport and decided that they could try to get something out of this," Anna said. "He is being held by the general directorate of intelligence in Kabul."

She said no charges have been filed against her husband. The U.S. State Department considers Corbett to be "wrongfully detained," which is a special designation that gets more government personnel involved in their case.

In a statement to Scripps News, State Department officials wouldn't specifically address Corbett's case, but in a recent media briefing, a spokesperson did.

"We are working every day to try and bring Ryan Corbett home. We have continually pressed, including in our meetings with Taliban representatives, for the immediate and unconditional release of Ryan Corbett and other Americans detained in Afghanistan," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on March 28. "We have made clear to the Taliban that these detentions are a significant obstacle to positive engagement, and we will continue to do that."

Ryan Corbett's case is now attracting Congressional attention. Bipartisan resolutions — one introduced in the U.S. House and one passed in the U.S. Senate — are calling for his release and renewing efforts to get him home.

SEE MORE: Taliban leader urges officials to set aside differences

This past week during her 10th trip to the nation's capital, Anna Corbett and her family met with both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. On the Senate floor, both leaders addressed Corbett's wrongful detention by the Taliban.

"As long as Ryan is held by the Taliban, I will never stop fighting to bring him back home and reunite him with Anna, his children, his family as quickly as possible," said Sen. Schumer, who represents the Corbetts' home state of New York.

Sen. McConnell represents Kentucky, where Corbett's parents live.

"It's time to show our enemies that the United States will not let American citizens be used as bargaining chips," Sen. McConnell said. "It's time to bring Ryan Corbett home."

For the Corbett family, time is of the essence.

In the handful of phone calls that the Taliban has allowed Ryan to have since 2022, Anna Corbett said she's noticed a change.

"He's losing hope. He doesn't understand why he's still being held, what's taking so long to resolve this — and that's really scary for us. Very scary," she said, before becoming teary-eyed. "People get scared when they lose contact with their loved one for an hour. For us, it's been over 600 days that we don't know what's going on and. That's really tough for the kids and I."

While in Washington, Anna Corbett went to the White House to meet with staff members there. She's now hoping President Biden will intervene, so the family can be reunited soon.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators blocked a freeway leading to three Chicago O'Hare International Airport terminals Monday morning, temporarily stopping vehicle traffic into one of the nation's busiest airports and causing headaches for travelers.

Protesters linked arms and blocked lanes of Interstate 190 at around 7 a.m., a demonstration they said was part of a global “economic blockade to free Palestine,” according to Rifqa Falaneh, one of the organizers. Traffic in the San Francisco Bay Area was also snarled for hours Monday morning as pro-Palestinian demonstrators shut down both directions of the Golden Gate Bridge and stalled a 17-mile stretch of Interstate 880 in Oakland.

O'Hare warned travelers on the social platform X to take alternative forms of transportation with car travel “substantially delayed this morning due to protest activity.”

Some travelers stuck in standstill traffic left their cars and walked the final leg to the airport along the freeway, trailing their luggage behind them.

Among them was Madeline Hannan from suburban Chicago. She was headed to O'Hare for a work trip to Florida when her and her husband's car ended up stalled for 20 minutes. She got out and “both ran and speed-walked” more than 1 mile. She said she made it to the gate on time, but barely.

“This was an inconvenience,” she said in a telephone interview from Florida. “But in the grand scheme of things going on overseas, it’s a minor inconvenience.”

While individual travelers may have been affected, operations at the airport appeared near normal with delays of under 15 minutes, according to the Chicago Department of Aviation.

Inbound traffic toward O’Hare resumed around 9 a.m.

SEE MORE: Parents of hostage still fighting to bring their son home from Gaza

On the Golden Gate Bridge in California, a small number of demonstrators stood by, as did police. Some protesters held a black banner that read “Stop the world for Gaza.” The iconic bridge was closed off to all auto traffic, bicyclists and pedestrians.

In Chicago, dozens of protesters were arrested, according to Falaneh. Chicago police said Monday that “multiple people” were taken into custody after a protest where people obstructed traffic, but did not have a detailed count.

Protesters say they chose the location, in part, because O’Hare is one of the largest airports. Among other things, they’ve called for an immediate cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas.

Antiwar protesters have demonstrated in Chicago nearly daily since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that killed around 1,200 people. Israeli warplanes and ground troops have conducted a scorched-earth campaign on the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli offensive has killed more than 33,700 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count but says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead.

Multiple people have been stabbed at a church service in Western Sydney, including the bishop leading the service, Australian media reports.

This comes just days after a separate attack when a man went on a stabbing spree at Sydney’s Westfield Bondi Junction mall, killing 6 and wounding more than a dozen others. 

The incident at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley Monday night happened while the bishop was giving a church service that was being livestreamed online, according to Nine News Sydney.

Video of the incident circulating on social media shows a man dressed in black approach the bishop leading the service. The assailant raises his arm and begins stabbing the religious leader repeatedly as he falls over. Attendees of the service yell in horror as many rush to stop the attack.

Local reports say four men in their 20s, 30s, 50s and 60s are among the injured. Emergency crews, including police and an ambulance, are on scene. 

The church’s website shows Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was leading bible study beginning at 7 p.m.

Nine News Sydney reports that the religious leader was a popular bishop who often streamed his services. The outlet says he gained attention in June 2021 for his criticism of vaccine and mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Police said a suspect is in custody.

"Officers arrested a male and he is assisting police with inquiries," NSW police said in a statement obtained by Sky News Australia.

"The injured people suffered non-life threatening injuries and are being treated by NSW Ambulance paramedics,” the statement said.

Police urged people to avoid the area.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

SEE MORE: Police probe why man who stabbed 6 to death in Sydney targeted women

Australian police are examining why a lone assailant who stabbed six people to death in a busy Sydney shopping mall and injured more than a dozen others targeted women while avoiding men, a police commissioner said on Monday. The killer's father blamed his son's frustration at not having a girlfriend.

Police shot and killed the homeless assailant, Joel Cauchi, during his knife attack in the Westfield Bondi Junction mall on Saturday near world-famous Bondi Beach.

Police have ruled out terrorism and said the 40-year-old had a history of mental illness.

New South Wales state Police Commissioner Karen Webb said detectives would question Cauchi’s family in a bid to determine his motive. CCTV footage from the mall showed Cauchi targeted women with the 12-inch knife.

“The videos speak for themselves, don’t they? And that’s certainly a line of inquiry for us,” Webb said.

“It’s obvious to me, it’s obvious to detectives that that seems to be an area of interest: that the offender had focused on women and avoided the men,” Webb added.

The attacker's father, Andrew Cauchi, said he knew why his son, who suffered from schizophrenia, had targeted women.

“Because he wanted a girlfriend and he’s got no social skills and he was frustrated out of his brain,” the visibly distraught 76-year-old told reporters outside his home in Toowoomba in Queensland state, a 540-mile drive across the New South Wales border from Sydney.

“He’s my son, and I’m loving a monster. To you, he’s a monster. To me, he was a very sick boy. Believe me, he was a very sick boy,” the father added.

The only male killed was Faraz Tahir, a Pakistani refugee who worked at the mall as a security guard. Tahir had not been armed.

Webb said most of the 12 victims who survived their wounds were also women.

SEE MORE: Man fatally stabs 6 people at Sydney mall before being shot by police

The evidence will be provided to a coroner to report on the circumstances of the deaths.

Webb expected the coroner would also address the question of whether security guards at the mall, which is one of Australia’s largest, should be armed.

The families of two victims based overseas had been advised of their deaths, police said. Those victims are Tahir, 30, from Pakistan, and Yixuan Cheng, 27, from China. Also killed were Jade Young, 47; Dawn Singleton, 25; Pikria Darchia, 55; and Ashlee Good, 38.

Eight victims who survived their injuries remained in hospitals on Monday, including Good’s 9-month-old daughter. The baby’s condition improved overnight Sunday from critical to serious, health authorities said.

The conditions of the other seven ranged from critical to stable.

Andrew Cauchi said his son had a “fascination with knives.” The father took five U.S. military combat knives from his son while they were both living in the Toowoomba family home last year for fear they would be used for violence.

The father said his son had become angry and called police, accusing the father of theft. The knives were given to a friend for safekeeping.

“I told the police my son had schizophrenia and I’m worried for myself,” Andrew Cauchi said.

“I said to my mate, ‘Why do I feel I’m going to be killed in my own house by my own son with a U.S. combat knife?’" he added.

The killer's mother, Michele Cauchi, said his rampage was the “absolute worst nightmare” of any parent of a mentally ill child.

Flags on government buildings around Australia flew at half-staff on Monday as a day of national mourning was declared to honor the victims. A black ribbon appeared on the sails of the Sydney Opera House on Monday night as part of a light display.

Police had given control of the seven-story crime scene back to the mall operators on Sunday night, but a decision has yet to be announced on when it will reopen for business.

The police officer who has been credited with saving many lives by shooting Cauchi dead, Insp. Amy Scott, will be interviewed by detectives on Tuesday.

 Iran's dramatic aerial attack on Israel follows years of enmity between the countries and marks the first time Iran has launched a direct military assault on Israel. The hostility between the countries has only worsened in the six months since Hamas launched its attack on Israel, which set off a war that continues to threaten to drag the entire region toward a broader conflict.

Here is a look at the key events leading up to Iran's assault:

Hamas attacks Israel

Oct. 7 - Thousands of Hamas-led militants storm across the border into Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking roughly 250 captive, according to Israeli authorities. The assault triggers a devastating war that has killed more than 33,700 people, mostly women and children, according to local health officials. In launching the assault, Hamas hopes other regional enemies of Israel's will join. U.S. President Joe Biden warns Israel's regional foes not to get involved and sends military support to the Middle East.

Hezbollah joins the war, at a low level

Oct. 8 - A day after Hamas' attack, the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah begins firing toward Israel, setting off months of low intensity but deadly cross-border fighting that displaced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border.

Houthis stage attacks

November - The Yemeni rebels, who are supported by Iran, launch a campaign of drone and missile attacks on shipping assets in the Red Sea beginning in November, describing their efforts as a way to pressure Israel to end the war against Hamas. They also fire missiles toward Israel, although those largely fall short or are intercepted.

Israel widely blamed for Damascus strike

Apr. 1 - Two Iranian generals with the country's paramilitary Revolutionary Guards are killed in the Syrian capital in a strike on an Iranian consular building that is widely blamed on Israel, although it does not publicly acknowledge it. Iran promises revenge.

Iran launches major aerial assault on Israel

April 14 - Israel says more than 300 drones, cruise and ballistic missiles are launched by Iran, an extraordinary assault that is thwarted almost entirely by Israel's aerial defense array and a coalition of countries repelling the onslaught. While no major damage is caused, the world braces for Israel's response.

SEE MORE: US will not participate in any potential Israeli counterattack on Iran

U.S. President Joe Biden called a virtual meeting of the G-7 nations on Sunday, to coordinate, "a united diplomatic response" to Iran's attack on Israel.

As the attacks appeared imminent on Saturday, President Biden met with senior advisers in the situation room and returned to the White House after cutting his weekend trip to Delaware short.

In a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the attacks, President Biden said the U.S. would not be participating in any potential Israeli counterattack on Iran and administration officials reiterated that point on Sunday.

"The President has been clear, we don't want to see this escalate," said National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby on NBC's Meet the Press. "We don't want a wider war with Iran. The coming hours and days will tell us a lot."

In a statement after the attacks began, President Biden said, "I condemn these attacks in the strongest possible terms... Thanks to these deployments and the extraordinary skill of our servicemembers, we helped Israel take down nearly all of the incoming drones and missiles."

SEE MORE: Israel hails 'success' in blocking Iran's unprecedented attack

It wasn't just the U.S. military that helped Israel take down some of the incoming attack drones and missiles. On a call with reporters on Sunday, administration officials said it was a coalition effort involving other countries, including the U.K., France and Jordan.

As for American soldiers who are currently in the region, in a statement after the attacks, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said, "Our forces remain postured to protect U.S. troops and partners in the region, provide further support for Israel's defense, and enhance regional stability…. We do not seek conflict with Iran, but we will not hesitate to act to protect our forces and support the defense of Israel."

Addressing Israelis on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said they are prepared for whatever comes next

"Our defensive systems are deployed; we are ready for any scenario, both defensively and offensively," Prime Minister Netanyahu said. "The state of Israel is strong. The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is strong. The public is strong."

All of it, though, stems from the wider issue of the Israel-Gaza war and an attack by Israel earlier this month on an Iranian consulate in Syria, which killed a dozen people – including commanders in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

So far, damage from Iran's retaliation appears to be minor, with one person injured.

On Sunday afternoon, the United Nations Security Council convened an emergency meeting at Israel's request. The UN's Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is calling for an immediate end to the hostilities, and reminded all member states that the UN Charter forbids the use of force against any state's territorial integrity or political independence.

"The Middle East is on the brink. The people of the region are confronting a real danger of a devastating full-scale conflict. Now is the time to defuse and de-escalate. Now is the time for maximum restraint," said Guterres.

Meanwhile, U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood reaffirmed Biden's administration's support for Israel's defense.

"In the coming days, and in consultation with other Member States, the United States will explore additional measures to hold Iran accountable here at the United Nations,” said Wood. "Let me be clear – if Iran or its proxies take actions against the United States or further action against Israel, Iran will be held responsible."

Israel on Sunday hailed its air defenses in the face of an unprecedented attack by Iran, saying the systems thwarted 99% of the more than 300 drones and missiles launched toward its territory. Regional tensions were high amid fears of an Israeli counter-strike that could fuel further escalation.

U.S. President Joe Biden convened a meeting of the Group of Seven advanced democracies "to coordinate a united diplomatic response." The participants unanimously condemned the attack and said they "stand ready to take further measures now and in response to further destabilizing initiatives."

The U.S. made clear it would not participate in any offensive action against Iran. "We don't seek a war with Iran. We're not looking for escalation here," White House national security spokesman John Kirby told NBC.

Iran launched the attack in response to a strike widely blamed on Israel that hit an Iranian consular building in Syria earlier this month and killed two Iranian generals. Israel said Iran launched 170 drones, more than 30 cruise missiles and more than 120 ballistic missiles.

By Sunday morning, Iran said the attack was over, and Israel reopened its airspace. Israel's War Cabinet held a meeting.

"We will build a regional coalition and collect the price from Iran, in the way and at the time that suits us," said a key War Cabinet member, Benny Gantz.

The two foes have for years been engaged in a shadow war marked by attacks such as the Damascus strike. But Sunday's assault, which set off air-raid sirens across Israel, was the first time Iran has launched a direct military assault on Israel, despite decades of enmity dating back to the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Israel has over the years established — often with the help of the United States — a multilayered air-defense network that includes systems capable of intercepting a variety of threats, including long-range missiles, cruise missiles, drones and short-range rockets.

That system, along with collaboration with the U.S. and others, helped thwart what could have been a far more devastating assault at a time when Israel is already bogged down in its war against Hamas in Gaza and engaged in low-level fighting on its northern border with Lebanon's Hezbollah militia. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran.

Israeli and U.S. officials praised the response to the aerial assault.

"Iran launched more than 300 threats and 99% were intercepted," said Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman. "That is a success." Asked if Israel would respond, Hagari said the country would do what was needed to protect its citizens.

Hagari said none of the drones and cruise missiles reached Israel and that only a few ballistic missiles got through. Of the cruise missiles, 25 were shot down by the Israeli air force, he said.

Hagari said minor damage was caused to an Israeli airbase, but he said it was still functioning. Rescuers said a 7-year-old girl was seriously wounded in southern Israel, apparently in a missile strike, though police were still investigating the circumstances.

SEE MORE: Biden to convene G7 leaders after Iran's 'brazen' attack on Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted a message on X: "We intercepted. We blocked. Together, we will win." Defense Minister Yoav Gallant thanked the U.S. and other countries for their assistance.

Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, said the operation was over, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. "We have no intention of continuing the operation against Israel," he was quoted as saying.

Iran said it targeted Israeli facilities involved in the Damascus strike, and that it told the White House early Sunday that the operation would be "minimalistic." Turkey said it acted as an intermediary for the messages.

Iran's president, Ebrahim Raisi, claimed Iran had taught Israel a lesson and warned that "any new adventures against the interests of the Iranian nation would be met with a heavier and regretful response from the Islamic Republic of Iran."

Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard issued a new threat against the U.S., saying "any support or participation in harming Iran's interests" will be followed by a decisive response by Iran's armed forces.

The success of Israel's defense stands in sharp contrast to the failures it endured during Hamas' attack on Oct. 7. Facing a far less powerful enemy in Hamas, Israel's border defenses collapsed, and the military took days to repel the militants — an embarrassing defeat for the Middle East's strongest and best-equipped army.

While thwarting the Iranian onslaught could help restore Israel's image, what it does next will be closely watched in the region and in Western capitals.

In Washington, Biden said U.S. forces helped Israel down "nearly all" the drones and missiles and pledged to convene allies to develop a unified response. U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Britain's air force shot down a number of Iranian drones. Jordan, which sits between Israel and Iran, indicated that its military also assisted.

Biden later spoke with Netanyahu. "I told him that Israel demonstrated a remarkable capacity to defend against and defeat even unprecedented attacks — sending a clear message to its foes that they cannot effectively threaten the security of Israel," Biden said.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. would hold talks with allies in the coming days.

Israel and Iran have been on a collision course throughout Israel's six-month war against Hamas militants in Gaza. In the Oct. 7 attack, militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, also backed by Iran, killed 1,200 people in Israel and kidnapped 250 others. An Israeli offensive in Gaza has caused widespread devastation and killed over 33,000 people, according to local health officials.

In other developments, negotiations meant to bring about a cease-fire in exchange for the release of the hostages appeared to hit a setback. Netanyahu's office said Hamas rejected the latest proposal for a deal, which had been presented to Hamas a week ago by mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States.

A Hamas official said the group wants a "clear written commitment" that Israel will withdraw from Gaza during the second of a three-phase cease-fire deal. The deal presented calls for a six-week cease-fire in Gaza, during which Hamas would release 40 of the more than 100 hostages the group is holding in the enclave in exchange for 900 Palestinian prisoners from Israel's jails, including 100 serving long sentences for serious crimes.

Hamas welcomed Iran's attack, saying it was "a natural right and a deserved response" to the strike in Syria. It urged the Iran-backed groups in the region to continue to support Hamas in the war.

Almost immediately after the war erupted, Hezbollah began attacking Israel's northern border. The two sides have been involved in daily exchanges of fire, while Iranian-backed groups in Iraq, Syria and Yemen have launched rockets and missiles toward Israel.

President Joe Biden convened the Group of Seven advanced democracies on Sunday to coordinate a rebuke to Iran for its unprecedented and largely unsuccessful aerial attack on Israel and to prevent a wider regional escalation.

The United States assisted Israel in shooting down dozens of drones and missiles fired by Tehran in what was the first time that Iran has launched a direct military assault on Israel. Israeli authorities said 99% of the inbound weapons were shot down without causing any significant damage.

"At my direction, to support the defense of Israel, the U.S. military moved aircraft and ballistic missile defense destroyers to the region over the course of the past week," Biden said in a statement late Saturday. "Thanks to these deployments and the extraordinary skill of our servicemembers, we helped Israel take down nearly all of the incoming drones and missiles."

SEE MORE: US shoots down Iran-launched attack drones, Biden pledges 'support'

Read President Joe Biden's full statement:

Biden, in a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that night, urged that Israel claim victory for its defense prowess as the president aimed to dissuade America's closest Mideast ally from a larger retaliatory strike against Iran. Biden, according to a senior administration official, told Netanyahu that the U.S. would not participate in any offensive action against Iran. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss the private conversation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

"I told him that Israel demonstrated a remarkable capacity to defend against and defeat even unprecedented attacks -– sending a clear message to its foes that they cannot effectively threaten the security of Israel," Biden said in his statement.

The G7 meeting, Biden said, is intended "to coordinate a united diplomatic response to Iran's brazen attack."

The effort to encourage Israel to show restraint mirrored ongoing American efforts to curtail Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, which is now in its seventh month, and to do more to protect civilian lives in the territory.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, criticized the White House for "leaking it to the press" that Biden told Netanyahu to take the win and not retaliate.

Rubio told CNN's "State of the Union" that it was "part of the White House's efforts to appease" people calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.

President Joe Biden and his national security team monitored Iran’s aerial attack against Israel on Saturday as U.S. forces joined efforts to down explosive-laden drones launched by Tehran.

With tensions at their highest since the Israel-Hamas war began six months ago, Biden pledged that American support for Israel's defense against attacks by Iran and its proxies is “ironclad.”

U.S. forces shot down some Iran-launched attack drones flying toward Israel, according to a U.S. defense official and two other U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter.

The defense official said the effort to intercept the attack was continuing.

Biden had cut short a weekend stay at his Delaware beach house to meet with his national security team at the White House on Saturday afternoon, returning to Washington minutes before Israeli officials confirmed that they had detected drones being launched toward their territory from Iran.

He convened a principals meeting of the National Security Council in the White House Situation Room to discuss the unfolding situation, the White House said, before speaking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu late Saturday.

The attack marked the first time Iran has launched a direct military assault on Israel, risking a wider regional conflict.

For days, the U.S. and Israel had braced for an attack — claimed by Iran as retaliation for a suspected Israeli strike this month on an Iranian consular building in Syria that killed 12 people, including two senior Iranian generals in the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force.

The Pentagon reported that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had spoken with his Israeli counterpart “to discuss urgent regional threats ... and made clear that Israel could count on full U.S. support to defend Israel against any attacks by Iran and its regional proxies." National security adviser Jake Sullivan also spoke with his counterpart to reinforce Washington's “ironclad commitment to the security of Israel.”

National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a Saturday statement that “Iran has begun an airborne attack against Israel.” She added: “The United States will stand with the people of Israel and support their defense against these threats from Iran.”

Biden on Friday said the United States was "devoted” to defending Israel and that “Iran will not succeed.” Asked by reporters what his message was for Iran, the president’s only reply was: “Don’t.”

He ignored a question about what would trigger a direct U.S. military response, and when asked how imminent an Iranian attack on Israel was, Biden said he did not want to get into secure information, “but my expectation is sooner than later.”

The U.S., along with its allies, have sent direct messages to Tehran to warn against further escalating the conflict.

SEE MORE: Iran continues to threaten Israel, Biden returns to Washington

During the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, there have been near-daily exchanges of fire between Israeli forces and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group along the Israel-Lebanon border. U.S. officials have recorded more than 150 attacks by Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria on U.S. forces at bases in those countries since war started on Oct. 7.

One attack in late January killed three U.S. service members in Jordan. In retaliation, the U.S. launched a massive air assault, hitting more than 85 targets at seven locations in Iraq and Syria.

Meantime, on Saturday, commandos from Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard rappelled from a helicopter onto an Israeli-affiliated container ship near the Strait of Hormuz and seized the vessel.

Watson, the NSC spokesperson, said the U.S. strongly condemned the seizure and urged Iran to release the ship and crew immediately.

“We will work with our partners to hold Iran to account for its actions,” she said.

Also Saturday, the Israeli-occupied West Bank also saw some of the worst violence since Hamas' attack on Israel.

A man stabbed six people to death at a busy Sydney shopping center Saturday before he was fatally shot, police said. Multiple people, including a small child, were also injured in the attack.

The suspect stabbed nine people at the Westfield Shopping Centre in Bondi Junction, which is in the city's eastern suburbs before a police inspector shot him after he turned and raised a knife, New South Wales Assistant Police Commissioner Anthony Cooke told reporters. Six of the victims and the suspect died. Police had no specific details on the condition of the injured.

Cooke said he believed that the suspect acted alone, and he was "content that there is no continuing threat." He said officials didn't know who the offender was. "This is quite raw," he said, and a "lengthy and precise" investigation was just beginning.

He said there was "nothing that we are aware of at the scene that would indicate any motive or any ideology." When asked whether officials were ruling out terrorism, he said: "We're not ruling anything out."

Cooke said the police inspector, a senior officer, was alone when she confronted the suspect and engaged him soon after her arrival on the scene, "saving a range of people's lives."

Video showed many ambulances and police cars around the shopping center, and people streaming out.

Paramedics were treating patients at the scene.

Witness Roi Huberman, a sound engineer at ABC TV in Australia, told the network that he sheltered in a store during the incident.

"And suddenly we heard a shot or maybe two shots and we didn't know what to do," he said. "Then the very capable person in the store took us to the back where it can be locked. She then locked the store and then she then let us through the back and now we are out."

Designer Roberto Cavalli, "loved and respected by all" and celebrated for his choices of excess and glamor in the world of fashion, has died. He was 83. 

His company wrote on social media final goodbyes were said with "great sadness" after the founder's death. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Cavalli was thought to have been in poor health for a significant period of time. 

Cavalli was known for a signature style that utilized animal prints and "molto Italiano" aesthetics to portray a look of opulence for his clients. 

Starting out with "humble beginnings" in Florence, his brand writes, he "succeeded in becoming a globally recognized name."

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Cavalli began his career designing jackets in the 1970s, the New York Times reported. His famously haute hippie frocks are displayed in museums now, but were a part of his product line for elegant event and street wear in the vein of St. Tropez's French Riviera elegance, worn by the likes of entertainers including Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot.

He was called "naturally talented and creative," and was known to believe "that everyone can discover and nurture the artist within themselves."

The Business of Fashion called Cavalli's brand flamboyant and intricate, as he later went on to design gowns with an "unapologetic glamour" and with "fluidity." Stars new and old would don his designs. 

In 2007 he appeared with American pop singer Jessica Simpson and kissed her on the red carpet at that year's Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala in New York.

Born in the historic Italian city of Florence in the Tuscany region, Cavalli enrolled at a local art institute to learn textile printing. He would later go on to invent and patent a leather-printing procedure in the early 1970s and began creating patchworks. 

He was able to take those innovations to Paris where he caught the attention of brands like Pierre Cardin and Hermès. It was in Paris where Cavalli, at 30, presented his first collection using his name at the Salon for Prêt-á-Porter, according to the Business of Fashion.

His career in the years to come would face obstacles, including a near closing of one of his factories. In the 1990s he was credited with a reinvention of high-end denim, adding Lycra to jeans to make them fit tighter and move with more stretch. After the mid-1990s he was seen as one of the most recognizable names in fashion, the New York Times reported.

Cavalli is survived by his longtime partner Sandra Bergman Nilsonn and his six children, according to the Hollywood Reporter. 

Kenyan wildlife officials said Friday that at least eight wild buffaloes came into contact with low-lying power lines as they were walking in Lake Nakuru National Park and were electrocuted. 

According to reports, including in Kenyan media, the Kenya Wildlife Service confirmed that broken cross-arms or support poles caused the high-voltage lines to hang low enough that the wild animals came in contact with them. 

At least 33 lines were involved after the poles fell because of heavy rainfall. 

SEE MORE: 'Elusive creature' captured on camera by wildlife officials

In a statement from the country's wildlife service, reported on by Kenya's Standard Media, officials said the eight buffaloes "were electrocuted near Wildlife Clubs of Kenya" in the park, "killing them on the spot."

Officials with Kenya's power operator were able to replace the support poles with another material that would help prevent a similar issue, Standard Media reported. 

As the Associated Press reported, the issue of the danger posed by power lines to wildlife has been brought up by conservationists in the past. Giraffes in Kenya were electrocuted by power lines in 2021. 

Kenya's President William Ruto announced on Friday that the government would put forth a new initiative to address "human-wildlife conflict."

In the announcement he said the Kenyan government plans to construct nearly 218 miles of electric fencing around game reserves and national parks across six counties in the country. 

Mali’s junta on Thursday banned the media from reporting on activities of political parties and associations, according to a copy of the notice distributed on social media in the latest restrictive step by the country's rulers.

The order applied to all forms of the media, including television, radio, online and print newspapers. It followed a decision on Wednesday that banned all political party activities until further notice.

Mali has experienced two coups since 2020, leading a wave of political instability that has swept across West and Central Africa in recent years. Along with its political troubles, the country is also in the grip of a worsening insurgency by militants linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.

Thursday's order was issued by the high authority for communication.

The scope of the ban — or how it would be applied in practice — was not immediately clear. It was also not known if journalists would still be allowed to report on issues such as the economy, which are closely tied to politics, and who would monitor their work.

The umbrella organization that represents journalists in Mali responded with an unusually stern rebuttal.

The group, known as Maison de la Presse, or Press House, said it rejects the order and called on journalists to continue to report on politics in the country. It also urged them to “stand tall, remain unified and to mobilize to defend the right of citizens to have access to information.”

Mali’s national commission for human rights also expressed regret and profound concern over the decision in a statement published late Thursday. It warned the junta the decision could prove harmful.

“Instead of calming the social climate, these restrictions on fundamental rights and freedoms could potentially stir up trouble and tension, which the country does not need,” it said.

SEE MORE: Young people are increasingly getting their news online

The clampdown on the media followed similar action on Wednesday, when the junta ordered the suspension of all activities by political parties until further notice, citing a need to preserve public order. The news was broadcast on state television as the population was celebrating Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan in which observant Muslims fast from dawn until dusk.

Analysts said the move was likely a backlash against political figures, civil society and students who have expressed frustration with the junta’s failure to return the country to democratic rule as promised.

“Recent weeks saw mounting pressure by political parties and figures,” Rida Lyammouri of the Policy Center for the New South, a Morocco-based think tank, told The Associated Press. “For the first time, the public and politicians have publicly criticized junta leaders and accused them of a lack of seriousness.”

Col. Assimi Goita, who took charge after a second coup in 2021, promised to return the country to democracy in early 2024. But in September, the junta canceled elections scheduled for February 2024 indefinitely, citing the need for further technical preparations.

The junta has vowed to end the insurgency that emerged in 2012 after deposing the elected government. It cut military ties with France amid growing frustration with the lack of progress after a decade of assistance, and turned to Russian contractors, mercenaries from the Wagner group, for security support instead. But analysts say the violence has only grown worse.

The United States said it was “deeply concerned” by the ban on political activities. “Freedom of expression and freedom of association are critical to an open society,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters in Washington.

Three men stranded on a remote Pacific island for more than a week were finally rescued thanks to the makeshift "HELP" sign they created from palm leaves.

The U.S. Coast Guard and Navy were in the middle of scouring an initial search area of 78,000 square nautical miles when an aircraft located the castaways and their distress signal on Pikelot Atoll, part of the Federated States of Micronesia, 100 miles northwest of where the trio had departed a week earlier. 

Lt. Chelsea Garcia, who coordinated the search and rescue mission the day the men were found, said the "HELP" sign in the sand was "crucial in their discovery" and a "remarkable testament to their will to be found."

"This act of ingenuity was pivotal in guiding rescue efforts directly to their location," Garcia said.

Crews began looking for the men on April 6 after a relative reported her three uncles, who are all in their 40s, hadn't returned from their March 31 voyage to Pikelot from Polowat Atoll, which is also part of the Federated States of Micronesia. 

The experienced mariners planned the 100-mile journey with hopes of fishing around the uninhabited Pikelot, but the outboard motor on their 20-foot open skiff became damaged, the Coast Guard said. Once stuck on Pikelot, their battery ran out of power before they could send a real distress signal, resulting in the palm leaf arrangement.

Officials told CNN and Stars and Stripes the men lived off coconut meat and water from a well until the U.S. Navy P-8 aircraft discovered them on April 7. The crew dropped "survival packages" to sustain the trio until more help could arrive, and the next day, a Coast Guard aircraft dropped them a radio to establish communication. 

The men confirmed they were healthy but wanted to return to Polowat, according to the Coast Guard. Then April 9, they were successfully rescued by Coast Guard cutter Oliver Henry and taken back to Polowat.

But it wasn't just any rescue mission; it was a reunion, too, per CNN. The outlet states one of the first rescuers on the Pikelot beach discovered the three men were his relatives. One man was a third cousin, the others fourth cousins, CNN reports.

"This recent operation near Pikelot Atoll hits home the kind of difference we can make," said Lt. Ray Cerrato, commanding officer of USCGC Oliver Henry. "It's about more than just performing a duty; it's about the real human connections we forge and the lives we touch."

And even though Pikelot is extremely remote and only 31 acres, this isn't the first time a story like this has occurred on its beaches. CNN and Stars and Stripes report an almost identical rescue occurred there four years ago after three stranded sailors wrote out "SOS" in palm leaves.

The Coast Guard said it recommends all mariners equip their vessels with an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon to reduce these events and make time on the water more safe.

Despite flunking his police drug-sniffing duties, this pup still managed to become a hero by sniffing out the last victim trapped after a 7.4-magnitude earthquake in Taiwan last week.

Meet Roger, the 8-year-old Labrador retriever who, like any dog, loves a good sniff. As a puppy, he was trained by the Customs Administration's Detector Dog Breeding & Training Center in Taichung to sniff out drugs for customs, according to Taiwan’s official Central News Agency. But he completely failed that mission due to being too much of a social butterfly, so he was scouted by the Kaohsiung Fire Bureau team to help them instead. 

“He was very agile, his movements were very bold, and he didn’t let anything fence him in,” his handler Lee Hsin Hung told The New York Times.  “He thought he could overcome any difficulties.” 

Earlier this month, Taiwan was rocked by a powerful earthquake, claiming 13 lives and leaving hundreds stranded and mass destruction. That's when four dogs, including Roger, were called to help.

While Roger was trained to find survivors, he caught a whiff of something interesting during the search. He passed it at first, but then doubled back, showing he found something important, his handler told the Times. Unfortunately, it was not a survivor this time, it was the body of the 13th victim of the earthquake, a 21-year-old woman in the rubble. 

Roger has been working since the tender age of 1. His first rescue mission was in 2018  following a 6.0-magnitude earthquake, and since then, he has worked in seven rescue missions, and passed the International Search and Rescue Dog Organization's advanced rubble search certification with flying colors. But his career may soon come to an end, according to CNA, as by law, he must retire at the age of 9. 

But this pup's playful spirit and unwavering determination will always be working in our hearts.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida addressed U.S. lawmakers at the Capitol on Thursday, urging them to consider the importance of global commitments at a time of tension in the Asia-Pacific and deep skepticism in Congress about U.S. involvement abroad.

Kishida is in Washington this week visiting President Joe Biden as the White House completes hosting each leader of the Quad — an informal partnership between the U.S., Japan, Australia and India that is seen as important to countering China's growing military strength in the region. Kishida highlighted the value of the U.S. commitment to global security and offered reassurances that Japan is a strong partner.

On Capitol Hill, his audience included many Republicans who have pushed for the U.S. to take a less active role in global affairs as they follow the “America First" ethos of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. The Republican-controlled House has sat for months on a $95 billion package that would send wartime funding to Ukraine and Israel, as well as aid to allies in the Indo-Pacific like Taiwan and humanitarian help to civilians in Gaza and Ukraine.

“As we meet here today, I detect an undercurrent of self-doubt among some Americans about what your role in the world should be,” Kishida told Congress.

He sought to remind lawmakers of the leading role the U.S. has played globally since World War II. After dropping two nuclear weapons on Japan to end the war, the U.S. helped rebuild Japan, and the nations transformed from bitter enemies to close allies.

“When necessary, it made noble sacrifices to fulfill its commitment to a better world,” Kishida said of the U.S.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said earlier this week that he hoped Kishida's visit would underscore “that we’re in a worldwide situation here against the enemies of democracy — led by China, Russia and Iran.”

Japan has taken a strong role in supporting Ukraine's defense against Moscow as well as helping humanitarian aid get to Gaza. It is also seen as a key U.S. partner in a fraught region where China is asserting its strength and North Korea is developing a nuclear program.

“Japan is a close ally — critical to both our national and economic security,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a statement. "This visit will continue to deepen the diplomatic and security relationship between our two countries and build on the strength of decades of cooperation.”

Kishida offered reassurances that Japan is also committed to global security and human rights. He said that since recovering from the “devastation of World War II,” Japan has transformed from a reticent ally to a strong partner “standing shoulder-to-shoulder” with the U.S.

The prime minister called China’s stance “unprecedented” and “the greatest strategic challenge, not only to the peace and security of Japan but to the peace and stability of the international community at large.”

Kishida was also attending a U.S.-Japan-Philippines summit on Thursday in another effort to bolster regional cooperation in the face of China’s aggression. The United Kingdom also announced Thursday that it would hold joint military exercises with Japan and the U.S. in the Indo-Pacific next year.

Beijing has pushed back strongly on those actions during Kishida's visit.

Mao Ning, the Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, said, “Despite China’s serious concerns, the U.S. and Japan attacked and smeared China on the Taiwan question and maritime issues, grossly interfered in China’s domestic affairs and violated the basic norms in international relations.”

Meanwhile, Kishida cast the future of the conflict in Ukraine as having far-reaching consequences. He emphasized that Japan has committed to providing Kyiv with $12 billion in wartime aid, including anti-drone detection systems.

“Ukraine of today may be East Asia of tomorrow,” Kishida told lawmakers, and later added: “Japan will continue to stand with Ukraine.”

SEE MORE: Japan is giving Washington 250 new cherry trees

The statements drew standing ovations from much of the chamber but a group of hardline conservatives remained seated. Other lawmakers skipped the speech and Capitol staff filled empty chairs with congressional aides.

Those moments encapsulated the pressure that House Speaker Mike Johnson is facing as he searches for a way forward for the foreign security package. It will be a difficult task to navigate the deep divides among Republicans. Making matters worse for the Republican speaker, he is already facing the threat of being ousted from the speaker's office.

Kishida, who was elected in 2021, arrived in Washington while facing political problems of his own in Japan. Polls show his support has plunged as he deals with a political funds corruption scandal within his ruling Liberal Democratic Party. The nation's economy has also slipped to the world's fourth-largest last year, falling behind Germany.

This is the first time a Japanese prime minister addresses Congress since Shinzo Abe traveled to Capitol Hill in 2015. Kishida is the sixth foreign leader to address Congress during Biden's presidency.

He relished the moment and highlighted his ties to the U.S. He told lawmakers how he spent his first three years of elementary school in New York City while his father worked there as a trade official. Lawmakers applauded and laughed as he recalled American pastimes like attending baseball games and watching the Flintstones.

“I still miss that show,” Kishida told them. “Although I could never translate, ‘Yabba dabba doo.’”

A Vietnamese real estate tycoon was sentenced to death Thursday in the country's biggest ever financial fraud case, a shocking development in an intensifying anti-corruption drive in the Southeast Asian nation.

Truong My Lan, a high-profile businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022. The 67-year-old was formally charged with fraud amounting to $12.5 billion — nearly 3% of the country’s 2022 GDP.

Death sentences are not uncommon in Vietnam, but it is a rare sentence in financial crime cases and for someone this well known.

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Lan was born in 1956 and started out helping sell cosmetics with her mother, a Chinese businesswoman, in Ho Chi Minh city's oldest market, according to state media outlet Tien Phong.

She and her family established the Van Thinh Phat company in 1992, when Vietnam shed its state-run economy in favor of a more market-oriented one that was open to foreigners. Over the years VTP grew to become one of Vietnam's richest real estate firms.

Today the company is linked to some of Ho Chi Minh's most valuable downtown properties including the glittering 39-story Times Square Saigon, the five-star Windsor Plaza Hotel, the 37-story Capital Place office building and the five-star Sherwood Residence hotel where Lan lived until her arrest.

Lan met her husband, Hong Kong investor Eric Chu Nap-kee, in 1992. They have two daughters.

Lan was involved in the 2011 merger of the beleaguered Saigon Joint Commercial Bank, or SCB, with two other lenders in a plan coordinated by Vietnam’s central bank.

She is accused of using the bank as her cash cow, illegally controlling it between 2012 to 2022, and using thousands of "ghost companies" in Vietnam and abroad to give loans to herself and her allies, according to government documents.

The loans resulted in losses of $27 billion, state media VN Express reported Thursday.

She was accused of paying bribes to government officials — including a former central official who has been sentenced to life in prison for taking $5.2 million in bribes — and violating banking regulations, government documents said.

The court sentenced her to death, saying her actions "not only violate the property management rights of individuals but also pushed SCB into a state of special control, eroding people's trust in the leadership of the [Communist] party and state."

Lan's arrest in October 2022 is among the most high-profile in an ongoing anti-corruption drive in Vietnam that has ramped up since 2022.

Weeks after her trial started in early March, former President Vo Van Thuong resigned after being implicated in the so-called "Blazing Furnace" campaign that has been the hallmark of Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, the country's most powerful politician.

While Lan's arrest and the scale of the scam shocked the nation, the case also raised questions about whether other banks or businesses had similarly erred, dampening Vietnam's economic outlook and making foreign investors jittery.

This is happening as Vietnam tries to argue its case for being the ideal home for businesses trying to move away from neighboring China.

Israeli aircraft killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate cease-fire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader's grandchildren were also killed.

Ismail Haniyeh ’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.”

The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated cease-fire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far apart on key issues.

The slayings also come as Israel is under intensifying pressure — increasingly from its top ally, the U.S. — to change tack in the war, especially when it comes to humanitarian aid for desperate people in Gaza.

Haniyeh said Hamas would not cave to the pressure leveled by the strike on his family.

“The enemy believes that by targeting the families of the leaders, it will push them to give up the demands of our people,” Haniyeh told the Al Jazeera satellite channel. “Anyone who believes that targeting my sons will push Hamas to change its position is delusional.”

SEE MORE: Report: Hamas doesn't have 40 living hostages for cease-fire deal

Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV station aired footage of Haniyeh receiving the news of the deaths through the phone of an aide while visiting wounded Palestinians who have been transported to a hospital in Qatar, where he lives in exile. Haniyeh nodded, looked down at the ground and slowly walked out of the room.

Hamas said Hazem, Amir and Mohammed Haniyeh were killed in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, where Ismail Haniyeh is originally from. The militant group said three of Haniyeh's granddaughters and a grandson were also killed, without disclosing their ages.

Al-Aqsa TV said the brothers were traveling with family members in a single vehicle targeted by an Israeli drone.

The Israeli military said Mohammed and Hazem were Hamas military operatives and that Amir was a cell commander. It said they had conducted militant activity in the central Gaza Strip, without elaborating. It did not comment about the grandchildren killed.

The strike on Haniyeh’s family is the latest bloodshed in a war with no end in sight.

SEE MORE: Tracking airstrikes: Inside the Israel-Hamas war

Earlier, Israeli War Cabinet minister Benny Gantz claimed Hamas has been defeated militarily, although he also said Israel will fight it for years to come.

“From a military point of view, Hamas is defeated. Its fighters are eliminated or in hiding” and its capabilities “crippled,” Gantz said in a statement to the media in the southern Israeli city of Sderot.

But he added: “Fighting against Hamas will take time. Boys who are now in middle school will still fight in the Gaza Strip.”

Gantz reiterated the Israeli government’s commitment to go into Rafah, the city at the far southern tip of the Gaza Strip where more than half the territory’s 2.3 million people are now sheltering.

For Palestinians, the strike on Haniyeh’s family darkened an already grim Eid al-Fitr holiday, which ends the holy fasting month of Ramadan. Palestinians marked the holiday by visiting the graves of loved ones killed in the war. In the Jabaliya refugee camp near Gaza City, people sat quietly by graves surrounded by buildings destroyed in Israel’s offensive, which was launched in response to the deadly Hamas attack on Oct. 7.

As misery in Gaza lingers, Israel has faced increasing pressure, including from its own top ally, the U.S., to change tack in the war, especially with regard to the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Hamas has reportedly told negotiators during cease-fire talks in Egypt that it does not have 40 living hostages to meet Israel's criteria to exchange for Palestinian prisoners, according to CNN.

The militant group took roughly 250 people into the Gaza Strip as hostages, many of whom were women and children, during the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war with Israel. In November, during the temporary cease-fire, about 120 of them were released. However, CNN reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office confirmed on Wednesday that Hamas had 129 hostages, but unfortunately, 33 of them have died. There is new concern that if Hamas' claim about not having 40 living hostages is true, the death toll would be significantly higher.

On Tuesday, Egyptian officials said that the new cease-fire proposal includes a six-week halt in hostilities and the exchange of 40 hostages held by Hamas for a minimum of 700 Palestinians detained by Israel, The Associated Press reported. The proposal also states that Hamas must provide a list of the hostages and their conditions, but Hamas has argued that it can not gather this information while fighting is still ongoing.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden is stepping up his criticism of Israel's handling of the war against Hamas. 

In an interview with Univision on Tuesday, President Biden called for a cease-fire and said Netanyahu's approach to the war is "a mistake." He also brought up the deadly airstrike earlier this month that killed seven workers from the U.S.-based charity World Central Kitchen and called it "outrageous" while noting that Israel needs to provide aid as soon as possible.

"What I'm calling for is for the Israelis to just call for a cease-fire, allow for the next six, eight weeks total access to all food and medicine going into the country. I've spoken with everyone from the Saudis to the Jordanians to the Egyptians. They're prepared to move in. They're prepared to move this food in. And I think there's no excuse to not provide for the medical and the food needs of those people. It should be done now," said President Biden. 

President Joe Biden is welcoming Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to the White House on Wednesday for an official visit and state dinner. The leaders want to showcase the partnership between the United States and Japan as concerns over China come to the forefront before a trilateral summit with the Philippines on Thursday.

U.S. officials view the visit as marking a new chapter in the alliance and more broadly as an affirmation of President Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy.

“In the last 60 years, you would define this relationship between the United States and Japan, since it got formalized in 1960, as one of alliance protection. I think this state visit kind of ends that era and defines the next period of time,” a senior administration official said.

The visit signals the importance of the Indo-Pacific strategy, marking official visits with India, South Korea, Australia and now Japan under the Biden administration.

“What I really think is happening here is the president's theory of the case for his Indo-Pacific strategy is being borne out. When he came into office, the president theorized that if we invested in our alliances and our partnerships, those allies would step up alongside us so we could do much more together collectively in the Indo-Pacific, which would in turn leave us much more strongly positioned,” said Mira Rapp-Hooper, special assistant to the president and National Security Council senior director for East Asia and Oceania.

SEE MORE: Biden and Xi hold talks, discussing Taiwan, AI and fentanyl

The visit is expected to bring a large set of agreements on technology, economic investment, global diplomacy and defense.

As Japan has increased its defense spending and sought a joint operations center, officials said the U.S. is expected to give its intent to update its command and control in Japan for closer integration. AUKUS, the partnership between the U.S., U.K. and Australia, also indicated an intent to start consultation with Japan to consider its inclusion in a pillar of the agreement focused on advanced capabilities.

“Until very recently, Japan had an extremely restrained and self-imposed defense policy that sort of did not allow it to act as many other countries do on the global stage. So while there has been an incredible shift, it really should be thought of bringing Japan to a baseline that is more closely in line with what many other U.S. allies around the world do to support their own defense,” said Rapp-Hooper.

Officials also expect a focus on cooperation amid the defense industrial base, including forming a defense industrial council, the start of a pilot program to allow Japanese to repair U.S. ships in the region and a focus on intelligence and cyber efforts.

Officials previewing the visit also expected a major space agreement, expanded ties on AI research and on the economic front through commercial deals.

One topic officials have indicated is not expected to be broached is Nippon Steel’s efforts to acquire U.S. Steel, as President Biden has supported domestic ownership.

“I think people in Japan understand that this is a domestic political issue. And the Kishida government, to its credit, has not really commented on it, and probably will not comment much during the visit. But I do think it raises broader questions in Japan and Asia, about whether the United States is open to foreign direct investment from allies and partners,” said Nicholas Szechenyi, a senior fellow with the Japan chair and deputy director for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies

The official visit paves the way to a trilateral summit with the Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos on Thursday.

Regional experts said it sends a signal to China about the strength of the alliances in the region. 

“And I think it sends a really strong signal to China, that the alliance network in Asia led by the United States is only going to get stronger if China maintains this assertive posture in the region,” said Szechenyi.

It comes as the Philippines has faced aggression from China in the South China Sea over disputed territory, as the U.S. has a mutual defense treaty with the Philippines. Leading up to the meeting, the countries and Australia conducted joint exercises.

“Well, there's no question that the United States and Japan are both very concerned about the PRC’s aggressive tactics in many areas of its foreign policy, one that we will certainly be speaking to this week as the PRC’s use of aggressive tactics in the South China Sea. And that's part of why it's important that President Marcos will also be here this week so that Prime Minister Kishida and President Biden can show their resolve and support,” Rapp-Hooper said.

SEE MORE: Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin creating group to buy TikTok

The U.S. and Japan are expected to announce work together on infrastructure in the Philippines, cooperation on digital connectivity and maritime cooperation, according to Rapp-Hooper.

“They're going to talk about how to strengthen supply chains, perhaps Philippines providing nickel, and in that way reduce over dependence on China. Might also hear, as well, cooperation on cybersecurity, is important. And this comes at a time when the Philippines and Japan have also deepened their bilateral security cooperation,” said Mireya Solís, director at the Center for Asia Policy Studies.

Beyond the Indo-Pacific, at a time of conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East, Kishida will also address Congress as U.S. funding for Ukraine defense has hung in the balance. Kishida indicated the address would be focused on the future.

“Japan has really stepped up in the last 15 years or so. Japan used to be a far more passive player, but now it has become very proactive. It brings to the table very important assets in terms of its economic and security diplomacy in the region. And at a time when quite frankly, there's a lot of uncertainty about where the US may be heading. And after the presidential election, Tokyo has decided to double down in its investment of the U.S. alliance, and that's very much what's captured in this summit,” said Solís.

Europe's highest human rights court ruled Tuesday that countries must better protect their people from the consequences of climate change, siding with a group of older Swiss women against their government in a landmark ruling that could have implications across the continent.

The European Court of Human Rights rejected two other, similar cases on procedural grounds — a high-profile one brought by Portuguese young people and another by a French mayor that sought to force governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But the Swiss case, nonetheless, sets a legal precedent in the Council of Europe's 46 member states against which future lawsuits will be judged.

"This is a turning point," said Corina Heri, an expert in climate change litigation at the University of Zurich.

Although activists have had success with lawsuits in domestic proceedings, this was the first time an international court ruled on climate change — and the first decision confirming that countries have an obligation to protect people from its effects, according to Heri.

She said it would open the door to more legal challenges in the countries that are members of the Council of Europe, which includes the 27 EU nations as well as many others from Britain to Turkey.

The Swiss ruling softened the blow for those who lost Tuesday.

"The most important thing is that the court has said in the Swiss women's case that governments must cut their emissions more to protect human rights," said 19-year-od Sofia Oliveira, one of the Portuguese plaintiffs. "Their win is a win for us, too, and a win for everyone!"

The court — which is unrelated to the European Union — ruled that Switzerland "had failed to comply with its duties" to combat climate change and meet emissions targets.

That, the court said, was a violation of the women's rights, noting that the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees people "effective protection by the state authorities from the serious adverse effects of climate change on their lives, health, well-being and quality of life."

SEE MORE: Study shows climate change is affecting some Native American tribes

A group called Senior Women for Climate Protection, whose average age is 74, had argued that they were particularly affected because older women are most vulnerable to the extreme heat that is becoming more frequent.

"The court recognized our fundamental right to a healthy climate and to have our country do what it failed to do until now: that is to say taking ambitious measures to protect our health and protect the future of all," said Anne Mahrer, a member of the group.

Switzerland said it would study the decision to see what steps would be needed. "We have to, in good faith, implement and execute the judgment," Alain Chablais, who represented the country at last year's hearings, told The Associated Press.

Judge Siofra O'Leary, the court's president, stressed that it would be up to governments to decide how to approach climate change obligations — and experts noted that was a limit of the ruling.

"The European Court of Human Rights stopped short of ordering the Swiss government to take any specific action, underscoring that relief from the Swiss government 'necessarily depends on democratic decision-making' to enact the laws necessary to impose such a remedy," said Richard Lazarus, a professor at Harvard Law School who specializes in environmental and natural resources law.

Activists have argued that many governments have not grasped the gravity of the climate change — and are increasingly looking to the courts to force them to do more to ensure global warming is held to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, in line with the goals of the Paris climate agreement.

A judge in Montana ruled last year that state agencies were violating the constitutional right to a clean environment by allowing fossil fuel development — a first-of-its-kind trial in the U.S. that added to a small number of similar legal decisions around the world.

As part of trying to meet climate goals, the European Union, which doesn't include Switzerland, currently has a target to be climate-neutral by 2050. Despite those efforts, the Earth shattered global annual heat records in 2023 and flirted with the world's agreed-upon warming threshold, Copernicus, a European climate agency, said in January.

Celebrity climate activist Greta Thunberg was in the courtroom as the decision was announced. "These rulings are a call to action. They underscore the importance of taking our national governments to court," the 21-year-old Swede told the AP.

"The first ruling by an international human rights court on the inadequacy of states' climate action leaves no doubt," said Joie Chowdhury, senior attorney with the Center for International Environmental Law, "the climate crisis is a human rights crisis."

Track and field is set to become the first sport to introduce prize money at the Olympics, with World Athletics saying Wednesday it will pay $50,000 to gold medalists in Paris.

The governing body of athletics said it was setting aside $2.4 million to pay the gold medalists across the 48 events on the track and field program for this year's Paris Olympics. Relay teams will split the $50,000 between their members. Payments for silver and bronze medalists are planned to start from the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

"While it is impossible to put a marketable value on winning an Olympic medal, or on the commitment and focus it takes to even represent your country at an Olympic Games, I think it is important we start somewhere and make sure some of the revenues generated by our athletes at the Olympic Games are directly returned to those who make the Games the global spectacle that it is," World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said in a statement.

The prize money will come out of the share of Olympic revenue that that the IOC distributes to World Athletics and other governing bodies of individual sports.

Athletes will have to pass "the usual anti-doping procedures" at the event before they receive the money, World Athletics added.

The modern Olympics originated as an amateur sports event and the International Olympic Committee does not award prize money. However, many medalists receive payments from their countries' governments, national sports bodies or from sponsors.

The United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee awarded $37,500 to gold medalists at the last Summer Games in Tokyo in 2021. Singapore's National Olympic Council promises $1 million for Olympic gold, a feat only achieved once so far by a Singaporean competitor.

The move by World Athletics could be seen as an indicator of Coe's intentions for the Olympics as a whole if he makes a run for the IOC presidency.

"I haven't ruled it in, and I certainly haven't ruled it out," Coe said last year when asked whether he would consider running for the IOC's top post when Thomas Bach's term ends in 2025. The IOC typically disapproves of any public campaigning for the presidency.

Israel's foreign minister threatened Wednesday that his country's forces would strike Iran directly if the Islamic Republic launched an attack from its territory against Israel, as tensions between the rival powers flare following the killings of Iranian generals in a blast at the Iranian consulate in Syria.

“If Iran attacks from its territory, Israel will respond and attack in Iran,” Israel Katz said in a post on X in both Farsi and Hebrew.

The remarks came after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterated early Wednesday a promise to retaliate against Israel over the attack on its consulate in Damascus earlier this month.

SEE MORE: Iran vows retaliation for Israeli strike that killed top generals

Tehran holds Israel responsible for the strike that leveled the building, killing 12 people. Israel has not acknowledged its involvement, though it has been bracing for an Iranian response to the attack, a significant escalation in their long-running shadow war.

Khamenei spoke at a prayer ceremony celebrating the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, saying the airstrike was “wrongdoing" and akin to an attack on Iranian territory.

“When they attacked our consulate area, it was like they attacked our territory,” Khamenei said, in remarks broadcast by Iranian state TV. “The evil regime must be punished, and it will be punished.”

Neither Katz nor the Ayatollah elaborated on the way they would retaliate.

SEE MORE: Iran-backed militia groups continue to attack US troops in Middle East

Among 12 killed in the blast on Apr. 1 were seven Iranian Revolutionary Guard members, four Syrians and a Hezbollah militia member.

Khamenei also criticized the West, particularly the U.S. and Britain, for supporting Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza.

“It was expected they (would) prevent (Israel) in this disaster. They did not. They did not fulfill their duties, the Western governments,” he said.

Iran supports anti-Israeli militant groups like Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah. It does not recognize Israel.

The Vatican on Monday declared gender-affirming surgery and surrogacy as grave violations of human dignity, putting them on par with abortion and euthanasia as practices that reject God’s plan for human life.

The Vatican’s doctrine office issued “Infinite Dignity,” a 20-page declaration that has been in the works for five years. After substantial revision in recent months, it was approved March 25 by Pope Francis, who ordered its publication.

In its most eagerly anticipated section, the Vatican repeated its rejection of “gender theory,” or the idea that one’s gender can be changed. It said God created man and woman as biologically different, separate beings, and said people must not tinker with that plan or try to "make oneself God.”

“It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception,” the document said.

It distinguished between gender-affirming surgeries, which it rejected, and “genital abnormalities” that are present at birth or that develop later. Those abnormalities can be “resolved” with the help of health care professionals, it said.

SEE MORE: What really is gender-affirming care?

Advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics immediately criticized the document as outdated, harmful and contrary to the stated goal of recognizing the “infinite dignity” of all of God's children. They warned it could have real-world effects on trans people, fueling anti-trans violence and discrimination.

“While it lays out a wonderful rationale for why each human being, regardless of condition in life, must be respected, honored, and loved, it does not apply this principle to gender-diverse people,” said Francis DeBernardo of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics.

The document’s existence, rumored since 2019, was confirmed in recent weeks by the new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Argentine Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, a close Francis confidant.

He had cast it as something of a nod to conservatives after he authored a more explosive document approving blessings for same-sex couples that sparked criticism from conservative bishops around the world, especially in Africa.

And yet, the document takes pointed aim at countries — including many in Africa — that criminalize homosexuality. It echoed Francis' assertion in a 2023 interview with The Associated Press that “being homosexual is not a crime,” making the assertion now part of the Vatican's doctrinal teaching.

The new document denounces “as contrary to human dignity the fact that, in some places, not a few people are imprisoned, tortured, and even deprived of the good of life solely because of their sexual orientation.”

The document is something of a repackaging of previously articulated Vatican positions, read now through the prism of human dignity. It restates well-known Catholic doctrine opposing abortion and euthanasia, and adds to the list some of Francis’ main concerns as pope: the threats to human dignity posed by poverty, war, human trafficking and forced migration.

SEE MORE: Inclusion in Catholicism: Pope Francis' efforts into LGBTQ+ acceptance

In a newly articulated position, it says surrogacy violates both the dignity of the surrogate mother and the child.

While much attention about surrogacy has focused on possible exploitation of poor women as surrogates, the Vatican document asserts that the child "has the right to have a fully human (and not artificially induced) origin and to receive the gift of a life that manifests both the dignity of the giver and that of the receiver.”

“Considering this, the legitimate desire to have a child cannot be transformed into a ‘right to a child’ that fails to respect the dignity of that child as the recipient of the gift of life.”

The Vatican had previously published its most articulated position on gender in 2019, when the Congregation for Catholic Education rejected the idea that people can choose or change their genders and insisted on the complementarity of biologically male and female sex organs to create new life.

The new document from the more authoritative Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith quotes from that 2019 education document, but tempers the tone. Significantly, it doesn’t repeat the 1986 language of a previous doctrinal document that said homosexual people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect but that homosexual actions are “intrinsically disordered.”

In a news conference to introduce the document, Fernandez acknowledged that the “intrinsically disordered” language was very strong and that there might be a better way, "with other words," to express the church's vision of sex as being a perfect union between husband and wife to create new life.

“It's true, the expression could find other words to express this mystery,” he said.

The Rev. James Martin, who has called for the Catholic Church to extend greater outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics, said the gender terminology was similar to past declarations. But he welcomed the condemnation of legislation and violence against LGBTQ+ people.

"That cannot be repeated too often as an offense against human dignity. The LGBTQ person, like everyone else, has infinite dignity,” he said in an email.

SEE MORE: Catholic priests can now bless same-sex unions, Pope Francis says

Francis has made reaching out to LGBTQ+ people a hallmark of his papacy, ministering to trans Catholics and insisting that the Catholic Church must welcome all children of God.

But he has also denounced “gender theory” as the “worst danger” facing humanity today, an “ugly ideology” that threatens to cancel out God-given differences between man and woman. He has blasted in particular what he calls the “ideological colonization” of the West in the developing world, where development aid is sometimes conditioned on adopting Western ideas about gender and reproductive health.

Transgender activists immediately called the document “hurtful” and devoid of the voices and experiences of real trans people, especially in its distinction between transgender people and intersex people.

“The suggestion that gender-affirming health care — which has saved the lives of so many wonderful trans people and enabled them to live in harmony with their bodies, their communities and (God) — might risk or diminish trans people's dignity is not only hurtful but dangerously ignorant,” said Mara Klein, a nonbinary, transgender activist who has participated in Germany’s church reform project.

“Seeing that, in contrast, surgical interventions on intersex people — which if performed without consent especially on minors often cause immense physical and psychological harm for many intersex people to date — are assessed positively just seems to expose the underlying hypocrisy further," Klein said.

The document comes at a time of some backlash against transgender people, including in the United States where Republican-led state legislatures are considering a new round of bills restricting medical care for transgender youths — and in some cases, adults. In addition, bills to govern youths’ pronouns, sports teams and bathrooms at school are also under consideration, as well as some books and school curriculums.

“On top of the rising hostility towards our communities, we are faced with a church that does not listen and refuses to see the beauty of creation that can be found in our biographies,” Klein said in an email.

The global condemnation of Ecuador's government for its decision to break into the Mexican Embassy snowballed Sunday with more presidents and other leaders expressing disapproval, shock and dismay.

The criticism came as Mexico's ambassador and other personnel arrived in Mexico City on Sunday afternoon after departing Ecuador's capital, Quito, on a commercial flight. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador severed diplomatic ties with Ecuador immediately after Friday's raid, which international law experts, presidents and diplomats have deemed a violation of long-established international accords.

Police broke through the external doors of the Mexican Embassy in Quito to arrest Jorge Glas, who had been residing there since December. He had sought asylum after being indicted on corruption charges.

Mexico plans to challenge the raid at the World Court in The Hague.

The Spanish foreign ministry in a statement Sunday said, "The entry by force into the Embassy of Mexico in Quito constitutes a violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. We call for respect for international law and harmony between Mexico and Ecuador, brotherly countries to Spain and members of the Ibero-American community."

A day earlier, the Organization of American States in a statement reminded its members, which include Ecuador and Mexico, of their obligation not to "invoke norms of domestic law to justify non-compliance with their international obligations."

SEE MORE: Mexico discusses ending diplomacy with Ecuador after embassy raid

U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said "the United States condemns any violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, and takes very seriously the obligation of host countries under international law to respect the inviolability of diplomatic missions." He called on both countries to resolve their difference.

Honduran President Xiomara Castro, writing on X, characterized the raid as "an intolerable act for the international community" and a "violation of the sovereignty of the Mexican State and international law" because "it ignores the historical and fundamental right to asylum."

Diplomatic premises are considered foreign soil and "inviolable" under the Vienna treaties and host country law enforcement agencies are not allowed to enter without the permission of the ambassador. People seeking asylum have lived anywhere from days to years at embassies around the world, including at Ecuador's in London, which housed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for seven years as British police could not enter to arrest him.

Alicia Bárcena, Mexico's secretary of foreign relations, on Friday posted on the social media platform X that a number of diplomats suffered injuries during the break-in.

Bárcena said Mexico would take the case to the International Court of Justice "to denounce Ecuador's responsibility for violations of international law." She also recalled Mexican diplomats.

Glas is taken to prison

On Saturday, Glas was taken from the attorney general’s office in Quito to the port city of Guayaquil, where he will remain in custody at a maximum-security prison. People who had gathered outside the prosecutor’s office yelled “strength” as he left with a convoy of police and military vehicles.

Glas’ attorney, Sonia Vera, told The Associated Press that officers broke into his room and he resisted when they attempted to put his hands behind his back. She said the officers then “knocked him to the floor, kicked him in the head, in the spine, in the legs, the hands,” and when he “couldn’t walk, they dragged him out.”

Vera said the defense team was not allowed to speak with Glas while he was at the prosecutor’s office, and it is now working to file a habeas corpus petition.

Authorities are investigating Glas over alleged irregularities during his management of reconstruction efforts following a powerful earthquake in 2016 that killed hundreds of people. He was convicted on bribery and corruption charges in other cases.

Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Gabriela Sommerfeld on Saturday told reporters that the decision to enter the embassy was made by President Daniel Noboa after considering Glas’ “imminent flight risk” and exhausting all possibilities for diplomatic dialogue with Mexico.

Mexico granted Glas asylum hours before the raid. Sommerfeld said “it is not legal to grant asylum to people convicted of common crimes and by competent courts.”

Ecuador's president faces reelection next year

Noboa became Ecuador’s president last year as the nation battled unprecedented crime tied to drug trafficking. He declared the country in an “internal armed conflict” in January and designated 20 drug-trafficking gangs as terrorist groups that the military had authorization to “neutralize” within the bounds of international humanitarian law.

Will Freeman, a fellow of Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the decision to send police to Mexico’s embassy raises concerns over the steps Noboa is willing to take to get reelected. His tenure ends in 2025 as he was only elected to finish the term of former President Guillermo Lasso.

“I really hope Noboa is not turning more in a Bukele direction,” Freeman said, referring to El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, whose tough-on-crime policies have been heavily criticized by human rights organizations. “That’s to say, less respectful of rule of law in order to get a boost to his popularity ahead of the elections.”

Freeman added that whether Glas was abusing diplomatic protection is a “separate issue” from the decision to send police to the embassy.

“We see a pattern of that in Latin America with politicians abusing embassies and foreign jurisdictions, not to flee prosecution but to flee accountability,” he said.

The Mexican Embassy in Quito remained under heavy police guard after the raid — the boiling point of recent tensions between Mexico and Ecuador.

Vera, Glas’ attorney, said she fears “something could happen” to him while in custody considering the track record of the country’s detention facilities, where hundreds of people have died during violent riots over the past few years. Those killed while in custody include some suspects in last year’s assassination of a presidential candidate.

“In Ecuador, going to jail is practically a death sentence,” Vera said. “We consider that the international political and legal person responsible for the life of Jorge Glas is President Daniel Noboa Azín."

Israel's military announced Sunday it was drawing back some forces from a Hamas stronghold in southern Gaza following a major phase of its offensive, bringing troop presence in the territory to one of the lowest levels since the six-month war began.

The forces will recuperate and prepare for future operations while a significant number remain elsewhere in Gaza, said Israeli military officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak to the media. The 98th paratroopers division operated around Khan Younis, Israel's main focus in recent months.

Israel has vowed a ground offensive on the southernmost Gaza city of Rafah, considered Hamas' last stronghold, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday told his Cabinet that victory means "elimination of Hamas in the entire Gaza Strip, including Rafah."

But Rafah shelters some 1.4 million people — more than half of Gaza's population. The prospect of an offensive has raised global alarm, including from top ally the U.S., which has demanded to see a credible plan to protect civilians.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby told ABC the U.S. believes that the partial Israeli withdrawal "is really just about rest and refit for these troops that have been on the ground for four months and not necessarily, that we can tell, indicative of some coming new operation for these troops."

Israel's military quietly drew down troops in devastated northern Gaza earlier in the war.

SEE MORE: Parents of hostage still fighting to bring their son home from Gaza

The six-month mark has been met with growing frustration in Israel, where anti-government protests have swelled and anger is mounting over what some see as government inaction to help free about 130 remaining hostages, about a quarter of whom Israel says are dead. Hamas-led militants took about 250 captives when they crossed from Gaza into Israel on Oct. 7 and killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

Negotiations in pursuit of a cease-fire in exchange for the hostages' release were expected to resume in Cairo on Sunday. An Israeli delegation led by the head of the Mossad intelligence agency was due to depart for Cairo, according to an Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

"Israel is prepared for a deal; Israel is not prepared to surrender," Netanyahu said, and asserted that international pressure on Israel "is only causing Hamas to harden its positions."

Pressure rose for action now.

"This doesn't seem a war against terror. This doesn't seem anymore a war about defending Israel. This really, at this point, seems it's a war against humanity itself," Chef Jose Andres told ABC, days after an Israeli airstrike killed seven of his World Central Kitchen colleagues in Gaza. Aid deliveries on a crucial new sea route to the territory were suspended.

"Humanity has been all but abandoned" in Gaza, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said in a statement marking six months of war.

The U.N. and partners now warn of "imminent famine" for more than 1 million people in Gaza as humanitarian workers urge Israel to loosen restrictions on the delivery of aid overland, the only way to meet soaring needs as some Palestinians forage for weeds to eat.

Mothers who have given birth in Gaza since the war began are especially vulnerable.

The Health Ministry in Gaza said the bodies of 38 people killed in Israel's bombardment had been brought to the territory's remaining functional hospitals in the past 24 hours. It said 33,175 have been killed since the war began. It doesn't differentiate between civilians and combatants but says two-thirds of the dead are children and women.

Israel's military continued to suffer losses, including in Khan Younis, where the military said four soldiers were killed. Over 600 Israeli soldiers have been killed since Oct. 7, including 260 in the Gaza ground operation, according to Israel's government.

Concerns about a wider regional conflict continued as a top Iranian military adviser warned Israel that none of its embassies were safe following last week's strike in Damascus — blamed on Israel — that killed two elite Iranian generals and flattened an Iranian consular building.

"None of the embassies of the (Israeli) regime are safe anymore," Gen. Rahim Safavi, a military adviser to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Tasnim agency.

Israel has not directly acknowledged its involvement. Netanyahu said Israel was prepared for any response. "Whoever harms us or plans to harm us, we will harm them," he said.

The Taliban's reclusive supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada urged his officials to set aside their differences and serve Afghanistan properly, according to a written statement released Saturday ahead of the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan.

Public dissent within the Taliban is rare, but some senior figures have expressed their disagreement with the leadership's decision making, especially the bans on female education.

Akhundzada, an Islamic scholar who almost never appears in public, rarely leaves the Taliban heartland in southern Kandahar province. He and his circle have been instrumental in imposing restrictions on women and girls that have sparked an international outcry and isolated the Taliban on the global stage.

His message was distributed in seven languages including Uzbek and Turkmen — the Taliban are courting cash-rich Central Asian countries for investment and legitimacy — and it touched on diplomatic relations, the economy, justice, charity, and the virtues of meritocracy.

Akhundzada said Taliban officials should "live a brotherly life among themselves, avoid disagreements and selfishness."

SEE MORE: US airdrops thousands of meals into Gaza in emergency aid operation

He said the war against the Soviet invasion and communism failed due to disagreements within the Taliban and that they could not implement Shariah in Afghanistan as a result of these divisions.

While he mentioned education, he said nothing about reopening schools and universities for girls and women.

Nor did he refer to recent unconfirmed reports about him saying there would be a resumption of stoning Afghan women to death for adultery, a punishment previously carried out during the Taliban's first period of rule in the late 1990s.

Akhundzada in Saturday's message said security did not come from "being tough and killing more; rather, security is aligned with Shariah and justice."

Hassan Abbas, a professor at the National Defense University in Washington D.C. and author of the "Return of the Taliban," said Akhundzada's message sounded "largely reasonable" and was focused on governance and anti-corruption matters.

"I believe this message is carefully crafted to dispel the negative impression created by a recently released audio of his that gives a very dogmatic and regressive message, especially about public punishments and women rights," Abbas told The Associated Press. "I think this new message is also intended as damage control."

Also on Saturday, the Taliban-controlled Supreme Court said six people, including a woman, were publicly flogged on adultery charges in eastern Logar province.

Guinness World Records has verified that the oldest living man in the world is now 111-year-old John Alfred Tinniswood of England. 

Tinniswood was born in Liverpool the year the infamous "Titanic" ship sank in 1912. 

Born on August 26 of that year, he turned exactly 111 years and 224 days old on April 6 of this year. 

A Guinness World Records official traveled to the town of Southport, where Tinniswood lives, to present him with a certificate and ask him more about his storied life. 

SEE MORE: World's oldest living man has died at 114. Here's his longevity secret

Tinniswood says he is still able to perform most of his daily tasks on his own and can get out of bed without assistance. 

He enjoys managing his own finances and listening to the news. 

After the death of Juan Vicente Pérez of Venezuela, the previous record holder in the same age category, Tinniswood is now the world's oldest living man. Pérez died this month at 114. 

Tinniswood said, "If you drink too much or you eat too much, or you walk too much — if you do too much of anything — you're going to suffer eventually."

He says he doesn't follow a special diet, but said he does enjoy a portion of battered fish and chips every Friday. He said, "You either live long or you live short, and you can't do much about it."

The Mexican president has quickly moved to break off diplomatic ties with Ecuador after police broke into the Mexican Embassy to arrest a former Ecuadorian vice president who had sought political asylum there after being indicted on corruption charges.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador made the announcement Friday evening after Ecuadorian police forced their way into the embassy in the capital, Quito, to arrest Jorge Glas who has been residing there since December. Glas, arguably the most wanted man in Ecuador, has been convicted on bribery and corruption charges and Ecuadorian authorities are still investigating more allegations against him.

Police broke through the external doors of the Mexican diplomatic headquarters in the Ecuadorian capital and entered the main patio to get Glas.

"This is not possible. It cannot be. This is crazy," Roberto Canseco, head of the Mexican consular section in Quito, told local press while standing outside the embassy. "I am very worried because they could kill him. There is no basis to do this. This is totally outside the norm."

Defending its decision, Ecuador's presidency said in a statement: "Ecuador is a sovereign nation and we are not going to allow any criminal to stay free."

López Obrador fired back, calling Glas' detention an "authoritarian act" and "a flagrant violation of international law and the sovereignty of Mexico."

Alicia Bárcena, Mexico's secretary of foreign relations, posted on the social platform X that a number of diplomats suffered injuries during the break-in, adding that it violated the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

Diplomatic premises are considered "inviolable" under the Vienna treaties and local law enforcement agencies are not allowed to enter without the permission of the ambassador. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange lived inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for seven years because British police could not enter to arrest him.

Bárcena said that Mexico would take the case to the International Court of Justice "to denounce Ecuador's responsibility for violations of international law." She also said Mexican diplomats were only waiting for the Ecuadorian government to offer the necessary guarantees for their return home.

Ecuador's Foreign Ministry and Ecuador's Ministry of the Interior did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Mexican Embassy in Quito remained under heavy police guard late Friday.

A day earlier, tensions between the two countries escalated after Mexico's president made statements that Ecuador considered "very unfortunate" about last year's elections, won by Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa.

In reaction, the Ecuadorian government declared the Mexican ambassador persona non grata.

“Right now I’m speaking to you. It’s like there’s a branding iron on my back,” Rachel Goldberg told Scripps News.

It’s been nearly six months since she and her husband, Jon Polin, became some of the most prominent voices of hostage families.

It’s been six months since their son Hersh Goldberg-Polin was brutally kidnapped from the Nova Music Festival in Israel.

They are not counting in months. They are counting in days, displayed across their chests. They are counting in the moments and in the the breaths they’ve taken since their 23-year-old son was stolen as the sun rose.

“We put on these costumes to look like people so that we can go out in the world and try to save our son,” Goldberg said.

They still know almost nothing about where Goldberg-Polin is or what his condition is like. They say the Red Cross has done nothing to find out. Part of Goldberg-Polin’s left arm was blown off during the initial attack and they have pleaded for medical attention.

“I speak to Hersh all day long saying I love you, stay strong, survive,” Goldberg said. “Sometimes I turn it on myself and I say stay strong, survive, stay strong, survive.”

For Goldberg, surviving means getting her son’s story out. She told Scripps News of his kind, curious nature, his love of family and travel. She’s traveled the world, too, speaking to every leader imaginable about Goldberg-Polin. It’s not just her son’s story she tells us about, it’s the collective story of the roughly 100 hostages remaining still in Gaza. They’re made up of different religions, nationalities, and viewpoints. For so many held from the music festival, and those who lived on the kibbutzim, it’s the desire for peace that put them in those places that day.

“He grew up in an environment that really promoted those values,” Goldberg told Scripps News.

They posted a video on their Instagram page Bring Hersh Home, showing his bedroom. It’s full of art he made, preaching coexistence. 

SEE MORE: Families of US hostages in Gaza hold out hope for imminent release

“He’s someone who has Palestinian friends who had been in touch with us since October 7, you know, these are the things that kind of get lost in this very bifurcated kind of attempt of the world to make this a black and white issue,” Goldberg said. “And I think it does an injustice to the hostages, and to the whole region and to the population that was so active in trying to create an alternative to what, what was happening.”

But tensions in and out of Israel are rising. Earlier this week, Israel’s Knesset recessed until late May.

“It just feels like such a slap in the face for hostage families,” Polin explained.

Israelis, including some family members of the hostages, are protesting in the streets and begging their government to bring their loved ones home.

“We understand the torment that every family goes through. And we would not point a finger at any family for the path that they choose after 181 days of inaction, and no results. Our personal view is we don’t want to make this anything political, it should not be political,” Polin added. “We want a result. If Prime Minister Netanyahu can bring us that result today, amazing. Please do it. If it requires a different direction and a different leader, then that’s what has to be. We just want a result.”

There’s only one result that will do, and for these families, they’re not stopping until they get it.

“In the last 181 days, we could count on one hand the number of times that we’ve smiled. Each one of those times was on a day when hostages came back home,” Polin said.

“We say every day hope is mandatory. Hope is mandatory,” Goldberg added.

She suggests including women in the negotiations. Until now, the main faces during this process, she says, have been men.

The parents say they don’t know anything about where Hersh is right now, but they believe he is alive. 

“Our point person has explained that no news is good news. And so we just try to stay as optimistic and hopeful,” she said.

President Joe Biden on Friday wrote to the leaders of Egypt and Qatar, calling on them to press Hamas for a hostage deal with Israel, according to a senior administration official, one day after President Biden called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to redouble efforts to reach a cease-fire in the six-month-old war in Gaza.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private letters, said President Biden's national security adviser will meet Monday with family members of some of the estimated 100 hostages who are believed to still be in Gaza.

The letters to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, come as President Biden has deployed CIA Director Bill Burns to Cairo for talks this weekend about the hostage crisis.

SEE MORE: White House: 'We'll be watching' if Israel makes changes

White House officials say negotiating a pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas to facilitate the exchange of hostages held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel is the only way to put a temporary cease-fire into effect and boost the flow of badly needed humanitarian aid into the territory.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said earlier Friday that President Biden underscored the need to get a hostage deal done during a Thursday conversation with Netanyahu that largely focused on Israeli airstrikes that killed seven aid workers with World Central Kitchen.

"We are coming up on six months — six months that these people have been held hostage. And what we have to consider is just the abhorrent conditions" the hostages are being held in, Kirby said. "They need to be home with their families."

Iran's commander of the powerful Revolutionary Guard General Hossein Salami said Friday “no threat will go unanswered” in retaliation for the airstrike widely attributed to Israel that destroyed the Iranian Consulate in Syria's capital and killed seven of the guard's members, including two top generals.

This came after thousands marched chanting “death to Israel” and “death to America” during the slain officers' funeral procession in the capital.

The marches in the capital, Tehran, along with protests in other Iranian cities, took place at a time of heightened concerns about possible retribution by Iran for Monday’s strike that killed 12 people, including four Syrian citizens and a member of the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group, according to officials.

The protesters in the capital headed to Tehran University where Salami gave his speech before the weekly Friday prayers.

“We warn you, no enemy act against our holy system will go unanswered,” he said speaking on a podium showing a big placard with the Arabic phrase “Flood of the Free” emblazoned on it.

SEE MORE: As famine looms, aid groups halt work in Gaza after Israeli attack

“The collapse of (the Zionist regime) is very possible and close with God’s grace,” Salami said, adding that the U.S. has become “wildly hated by the world, especially in Muslim-dominated countries" for supporting Israel.

He said that Israel's current survival depended on U.S. support.

Salami also said that “resistance groups in Gaza are surrounded by Israel.. and weapons can't be sent to them,” referring to the Israel-Hamas war that broke out on Oct.7.

He claimed that “messages sent from inside Gaza show that they have no problem to continue enduring (the war)."

The public funeral coincided with Iran's annual rally Quds Day, or Jerusalem Day, a traditional show of support for the Palestinians that has been held on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Iranian leaders have reiterated promises of revenge. On Wednesday Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi said the attack “will not remain without answer.”

By attacking an Iranian diplomatic station, Israel’s apparent escalation has raised fears that the devastating six-month war against Hamas could spill over into the entire Mideast region and beyond.

Israel faces increasing isolation as international criticism mounts over its killing of six foreign aid workers this week who were trying to deliver desperately needed food in Gaza.

Iran does not recognize Israel and views it as its archenemy. It also supports militant groups, Hamas and Hezbollah.

Clashes between Israel and Hezbollah along the Israeli-Lebanese border have increased since the war in Gaza began nearly six months ago.

Days after Israel carried out an attack on relief workers in Gaza, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told Scripps News that the White House would be watching to see if Israel lives up to its promise to open relief efforts in Gaza. 

On Thursday, President Joe Biden spoke with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The White House said that during the call, Netanyahu vowed to open the Ashdod port for the direct delivery of assistance into Gaza, open the Erez crossing for a new route for assistance to reach north Gaza, and increase deliveries from Jordan directly into Gaza.

Many international groups have said Gazans are starving, but the latest attack has hampered efforts to feed displaced residents. World Central Kitchen said it was suspending operations in Gaza and has demanded an independent investigation. 

Kirby said only time will tell whether Israel will live up to its promise. The White House has long vowed to support Israel in its fight against Hamas, but the attack that left seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen dead appeared to cause a reset in U.S.-Israel relations. 

"The president was very direct with Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday that we need to see some changes in the way they're prosecuting these operations and going after Hamas," Kirby told Scripps News. "Changes that preserve civilian, innocent civilian life, that preserve the ability of humanitarian aid workers to get the distribution of goods, food, water, medicine to the people of Gaza, and frankly, a movement forward on a hostage deal so we can get a cease-fire in place so we can get hostages home.

"We need to see more practical movement on it or, as the president said, we'll have to make some policy changes about our support for what they're doing in Gaza."

SEE MORE: Israel dismisses 2 officers over deadly strikes on aid workers in Gaza

Kirby would not say what those policy changes might look like if Israel fails to live up to its promises. Kirby's comments came just as the Israel Defense Forces released a report highlighting failures made in misidentifying World Central Kitchen staff as Hamas militants. 

"Opening up a couple of extra crossings, committing to more trucks going in and taking some accountability for some of the people involved in that strike, all that's welcome," Kirby said. "Prime Minister Netanyahu assured the president, at the president's request, that he would take those kinds of actions. These are welcome developments, but they're fresh, they're brand new.

"We want to see them fully implemented, fully acted on, not just today but over time."

The Israeli military said Friday that it has dismissed two officers and reprimanded three others for their roles in drone strikes in Gaza that killed seven aid workers on a food-delivery mission, saying they had mishandled critical information and violated the army's rules of engagement.

The findings of a retired general's investigation into the Monday killings marked an embarrassing admission by Israel, which faces growing accusations from key allies, including the U.S., of not doing enough to protect Gaza's civilians from its war with Hamas.

The findings are likely to renew skepticism over the Israeli military's decision-making. Palestinians, aid groups and human rights organizations have repeatedly accused Israeli forces of firing recklessly at civilians throughout the conflict — a charge Israel denies.

"It's a tragedy," the military's spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, told reporters. "It's a serious event that we are responsible for and it shouldn't have happened and we will make sure that it won't happen again."

With pressure mounting on Israel to hold itself accountable, Hagari and other officials late Thursday shared with reporters the results of the military's uncommonly speedy and detailed investigation.

It was unclear whether the punishments and the apology would calm an international outcry over the deaths of the World Central Kitchen workers or reassure international aid groups that it was safe to resume operations in Gaza, where nearly a third of the population is on the brink of starvation.

According to what spokespeople said were the Israeli army's rules, targets must be visually identified as threats for multiple reasons before they can be hit. But the investigation determined that a colonel had authorized the series of deadly drone strikes on the convoy based on one major's observation — from grainy drone-camera footage — that someone in the convoy was armed. That observation turned out to be untrue, military officials said.

The army said the colonel and the major were dismissed, while three other officers were reprimanded. It said the results of its investigation were turned over to the military's advocate general, who will decide whether the officers or anyone else involved in the killings should receive further punishment or be prosecuted.

The killings were condemned by Israel's closest allies and renewed criticism of Israel's conduct in the nearly 6-month-old war with Hamas.

The aid workers were three British citizens, a Polish citizen, an Australian and a Canadian American dual citizen, all of whom worked for World Central Kitchen, the international charity founded by celebrity chef José Andrés. Their Palestinian driver also was killed.

The investigation found two major areas of wrongdoing.

It faulted officers for failing to read messages alerting troops that cars, not aid trucks, would carry workers from the charity away from the warehouse where aid was distributed. As a result, the cars that were targeted were misidentified as transporting militants.

The army also faulted a major who identified the strike target and a colonel who approved the strike for acting with insufficient information.

The army said the order was given after one of the passengers inside a car was identified as a gunman. It said troops became suspicious because a gunman had been seen on the roof of one of the delivery trucks on the way to the warehouse. The army showed reporters footage of the gunman firing his weapon while riding atop one of the trucks.

After the aid was dropped off at a warehouse, an officer believed he had spotted a gunman in one of the cars. The passenger, it turned out, was not carrying a weapon — the military said it's possible he was just carrying a bag.

The army said it initially hit one car. As people scrambled away into a second car, it hit that vehicle as well. It did the same thing when survivors scrambled into a third car. Army officials claimed that drone operators could not see that the cars were marked with the words "World Central Kitchen" because it was nighttime.

SEE MORE: World Central Kitchen demands independent investigation after strike

The army could not say exactly where the communication about the convoy's plans had broken down.

The army declined to answer questions about whether similar violations of rules of engagement have taken place during the war — in which Palestinians, aid workers and international rights groups have repeatedly accused the army of recklessly striking civilians.

The investigation was headed by Yoav Har-Even, a retired general.

The seven who were killed were distributing food that had been brought into Gaza through a newly established maritime corridor. World Central Kitchen said it had coordinated its movements with the military, and that the vehicles were marked with the organization's logo.

"It was a direct attack on clearly marked vehicles whose movements were known by" the Israeli military, Andrés said on Wednesday.

More than 220 humanitarian workers have been killed in the conflict, according to the U.N.

"Let's be very clear. This is tragic, but it is not an anomaly," Scott Paul, of the humanitarian group Oxfam, said Thursday in a briefing with other relief organizations before the results of Israel's investigation were released. "The killing of aid workers in Gaza has been systemic."

Tonight Scripps News Reports unpacks the state of threats the world faces and explores what it will take to prevent another world war.

Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine, now more than two years old, is the most serious conflict Europe has seen since World War II. War between Israel and Hamas has spilled over to include Iran and its proxies. And U.S. President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping held recent talks concerning Taiwan, which may yet become another global flashpoint.

We discuss divisions on the U.N. Security Council, Israel's conflict with Iranian proxies and the 75th anniversary of NATO, which was created after World War II to improve the collective security of member nations.

And we speak with retired Gen. Philip Breedlove, the former NATO supreme allied commander, about the history of the alliance and the new challenges it faces in today's conflicts.

SEE MORE: Over a dozen hurt after Russia bombards Kyiv for first time in 44 days

President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that future U.S. support for the Gaza war depends on new steps to protect civilians and aid workers.

Biden and Netanyahu spoke by phone days after Israeli airstrikes killed seven food aid workers in Gaza and added a new layer of complication in the leaders’ increasingly strained relationship.

“He made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers,” the White House said in a statement following the leaders call. “He made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps.”

Biden, a Democrat, also told Netanyahu that an “immediate cease-fire is essential” and urged Israel to reach deal "without delay," according to the White House.

The leaders conversation comes as the World Central Kitchen, founded by restauranteur José Andrés to provide immediate food relief to disaster-stricken areas, called for an independent investigation into the Israeli strikes that killed the group’s staff members, including an American citizen.

The White House has said the U.S. has no plans to conduct its own investigation even as they called on Israel to do more to prevent the killing and wounding innocent civilians and aid workers as it carries out its operations in Gaza.

SEE MORE: World Central Kitchen demands independent investigation after strike

Separately, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Brussels that U.S. support would be curtailed if Israel doesn’t make significant adjustments to how it's carrying out the war. “If we don’t see the changes that we need to see, there will be changes in our policy,” he said.

Biden was also expected to reiterate his concerns about Netanyahu’s plan to carry out an operation in the southern city of Rafah, where about 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering, as Israel looks to eliminate Hamas following the militant group’s deadly Oct. 7 attack. Vice President Kamala Harris also joined the call.

Despite the growing divisions, the Biden administration has proceeded apace with arms transfers and deliveries to Israel, many of which were approved years ago but had only been partially or not at all fulfilled. Just this week, on Monday, the Democratic administration’s “Daily List” of munitions transfers included the sale to Israel of more than 1,000 500-pound (225-kilograms) bombs and more than 1,000 1,000-pound (450-kilogram) bombs.

Officials said those transfers had been approved before the publication of the list on Monday — the day Israeli airstrikes hit a World Central Kitchen aid convoy in Gaza, killing seven of the group’s employees — and that they fell below the threshold for new congressional notification. Also, they noted that the bombs are not for delivery to Israel until 2025.

Israel has acknowledged responsibility for the strikes but said the convoy was not targeted and the workers’ deaths were not intentional. The country continues to investigate the circumstances surrounding the killings.

Andrés harshly criticized the Israeli military for the strike, and his organization has paused its work in Gaza.

“The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon,” he wrote on X. “No more innocent lives lost.”

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 people hostage.

The Israeli military campaign in Gaza, experts say, sits among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history. Within two months, researchers say, the offensive already had wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. It has killed more civilians than the U.S.-led coalition did in its three-year campaign against the Islamic State group.

Rescuers searched Thursday for dozens of people still missing a day after Taiwan's strongest earthquake in a quarter century damaged buildings, killed 10 people and left others stranded in remote areas.

In the eastern coastal city of Hualien near the epicenter, workers used an excavator to stabilize the base of a damaged building with construction materials as officials took samples of its exterior and chickens pecked among potted plants on its slanted roof.

Mayor Hsu Chen-wei said 48 residential buildings were damaged in Wednesday's quake, some of which were tilting at precarious angles with their ground floors crushed.

Some Hualien residents were staying in tents, and the main road linking the county to the capital, Taipei, was still closed Thursday afternoon, but much of Taiwan's day-to-day life was returning to normal. Some local rail service to Hualien resumed, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., one of the world's most important manufacturers of computer chips, restarted most operations, the Central News Agency reported.

Taiwan is regularly jolted by earthquakes and its population is well-prepared for them. It also has stringent construction requirements to ensure buildings are quake resistant.

Hendri Sutrisno, a 30-year-old professor at Hualien Dong Hwa University, spent Wednesday night in a tent with his wife and baby, fearing aftershocks.

“We ran out of the apartment and waited for four to five hours before we went up again to grab some important stuff such as our wallet. And then we’re staying here ever since to assess the situation,” he said.

Others also said they didn't dare to go home because the walls of their apartments were cracked or they lived on higher floors. Taiwanese Premier Chen Chien-jen visited some earthquake evacuees in the morning at a temporary shelter.

Nearly 1,070 people were injured in the quake. Of the 10 dead, at least four were killed inside Taroko National Park, a Hualien county tourist attraction famous for canyons and cliffs about 90 miles from Taipei. One person was found dead in a damaged building and another was found in the Ho Ren Quarry. Authorities on Thursday afternoon retrieved a body from a trail.

About 700 people were either still missing or stranded Thursday, including over 600 who were stranded inside a hotel called Silks Place Taroko, the National Fire Agency said. Authorities said the employees and guests were safe and had food and water, and that work to repair the roads to the hotel was close to completion.

Others who were reported to be stranded, including two dozen tourists, about 20 campers and six university students, were also safe, they said.

SEE MORE: Earthquake in Taiwan collapses buildings, trapping dozens in quarries

Authorities also said about 60 workers who had been unable to leave a quarry because of blocked and damaged roads were freed. Central News Agency said all were able to leave the mountain safely around noon. Six workers from another quarry were airlifted out.

Authorities have not been able to contact about 40 people, mostly hotel employees earlier reported to be in the national park.

After the quake, local television showed neighbors and rescue workers lifting residents through windows and onto the street from damaged buildings where the shaking had jammed doors shut. It wasn’t clear Thursday if any people were still trapped in buildings.

The quake and its aftershocks caused landslides and damaged roads, bridges and tunnels. The national legislature and sections of Taipei's main airport suffered minor damage.

The earthquake was the strongest to hit Taiwan in 25 years. Local authorities measured the initial quake's strength as magnitude 7.2, while the U.S. Geological Survey put it at 7.4.

Huang Shiao-en was in her apartment when the quake struck. “At first the building was swinging side to side, and then it shook up and down,” Huang said.

The Central Weather Administration recorded more than 300 aftershocks from Wednesday morning into Thursday.

The economic losses caused by the quake are still unclear. The self-governed island is the leading manufacturer of the world’s most sophisticated computer chips and other high-technology items that are sensitive to seismic events.

Hualien was last struck by a deadly quake in 2018 which killed 17 people and brought down a historic hotel. Taiwan’s worst recent earthquake struck on Sept. 21, 1999, a magnitude 7.7 temblor that caused 2,400 deaths, injured around 100,000 and destroyed thousands of buildings.

Some of Israel's closest allies, including the United States, on Tuesday condemned the deaths of seven aid workers who were killed by airstrikes in Gaza — a loss that prompted multiple charities to suspend food deliveries to Palestinians on the brink of starvation.

The deaths of the World Central Kitchen workers threatened to set back efforts by the U.S. and other countries to open a maritime corridor for aid from Cyprus to help ease the desperate conditions in northern Gaza.

President Joe Biden issued an unusually blunt criticism of Israel by its closest ally, suggesting that the incident demonstrated that Israel was not doing enough to protect civilians.

“Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians,” he said, adding he was “outraged and heartbroken" by their killings.

“Incidents like yesterday’s simply should not happen,” he added. "The United States has repeatedly urged Israel to deconflict their military operations against Hamas with humanitarian operations, in order to avoid civilian casualties.”

SEE MORE: World Central Kitchen demands independent investigation after strike

Ships still laden with some 240 tons of aid from the charitable group turned back from Gaza just a day after arriving, according to Cyprus. Other humanitarian aid organizations also suspended operations in Gaza, saying it was too dangerous to offer help. Israel has allowed only a trickle of food and supplies into Gaza's devastated north, where experts say famine is imminent.

The dead from Monday night's strikes included three British citizens, Polish and Australia nationals, a Canadian-American dual national and a Palestinian. Those countries have been key backers of Israel's nearly six-month-old offensive in Gaza, and several of them denounced the killings.

Israel already faces growing isolation as international criticism of the Gaza assault has mounted. On the same day as the deadly airstrikes, Israel stirred more fears by apparently striking Iran’s consulate in Damascus and killing two Iranian generals. The government also moved to shut down a foreign media outlet — Qatari-owned Al Jazeera television.

The hit on the charity’s convoy also highlighted what critics have called Israel’s indiscriminate bombing and lack of regard for civilian casualties in Gaza.

Israel's military chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, announced the results of a preliminary investigation early Wednesday.

“It was a mistake that followed a misidentification — at night during a war in very complex conditions. It shouldn’t have happened,” he said. He gave no further details. He said an independent body would conduct a “thorough investigation” that would be completed in the coming days.

SEE MORE: Israel opts out of cease-fire talks with Hamas as US pushes for a deal

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier acknowledged the “unintended strike ... on innocent people” and said officials would work to ensure it does not happen again.

World Central Kitchen said it had coordinated with the Israeli military over the movement of its cars. Three vehicles moving at large distances apart were hit in succession. They were left incinerated and mangled, indicating multiple targeted strikes.

At least one of the vehicles had the charity’s logo printed across its roof to make it identifiable from the air, and the ordnance punched a large hole through the roof. Footage showed the bodies at a hospital in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah, several of them wearing protective gear with the charity’s logo.

Israeli TV said the initial military investigation found that the army identified the cars carrying World Central Kitchen’s workers arriving at its warehouse in Deir al-Balah and observed suspected militants nearby. Half an hour later, the vehicles were struck by the air force as they headed south. The reports said it was not clear who ordered the strikes or why.

Throughout the war, Israel has said it seeks to avoid civilian casualties and uses sophisticated intelligence to target Hamas and other militants. Israeli authorities blame them for civilian deaths because they operate in populated areas.

SEE MORE: Desperate need for food aid growing in Gaza

At the same time, Israel has also insisted that no target is off-limits. Israeli forces have repeatedly struck ambulances and vehicles carrying aid, as well as relief organization offices and U.N. shelters, claiming that armed fighters were in them.

Israeli forces have also shown a readiness to inflict widespread destruction on suspicion of a militant presence or out of tactical need. Homes with Palestinian families sheltering inside are leveled by strikes almost daily with no explanation of the intended target. Videos of strikes released by the military often show them hitting individuals without visible weapons, while identifying them as militants.

More than 32,900 Palestinians have been killed in the war, around two-thirds of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.

Celebrity chef José Andrés, who founded the World Central Kitchen charity, said he was “heartbroken” by the deaths of the staffers.

“The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon,” he wrote on X.

The U.S., Britain, Poland, Australia and Canada all called on Israel to give answers on the deaths. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant launched an investigation and ordered the opening of a joint situation room enabling coordination between the military and aid groups.

But anger among its allies could put new pressure on Israel.

World Central Kitchen is demanding an independent investigation after seven of its relief workers were killed in a strike by Israeli forces on Monday while providing aid to displaced Gazans. 

The organization said that the relief workers were nationals of Australia, Canada/U.S. (dual citizen), Gaza, Poland, and the United Kingdom. World Central Kitchen said it has asked the governments of Australia, Canada, the U.S., Poland, and the U.K. to join it in demanding an independent investigation. 

"This was a military attack that involved multiple strikes and targeted three WCK vehicles. All three vehicles were carrying civilians; they were marked as WCK vehicles; and their movements were in full compliance with Israeli authorities, who were aware of their itinerary, route, and humanitarian mission," said World Central Kitchen executives Erin Gore and Javier Garcia in a joint statement. 

Gore and Garcia also called on Israel to "immediately preserve all documents, communications, video and/or audio recordings, and any other materials potentially relevant to the April 1 strikes."

World Central Kitchen has said that it is suspending relief work in Gaza.

SEE MORE: As famine looms, aid groups halt work in Gaza after Israeli attack

For its part, the Israel Defense Forces said it is investigating the incident.

"We have been reviewing the incident in the highest levels to understand the circumstances of what happened and how it happened," said IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari. "We will be opening a probe to examine this serious incident further. This will help us reduce the risk of such an event from occurring again."

U.S. officials said that there have been "too many civilian casualties," but will continue to stand by Israel in its fight against Hamas. That fight has caused most Gaza residents to be displaced. 

Israel has been engaged in a fight against Hamas since last October's terror attack on Israel. 

"We're going to continue to support them.  No country should have to live like that.  No country should have to be attacked, like they were on the 7th of October, with 1,200 people slaughtered," said John Kirby, U.S. national security communications adviser. "At the same time, as a modern military and a democracy, they have obligations to the innocent people of Gaza.  And they have not always met those obligations."

SEE MORE: World Central Kitchen saves lives with food but paid a price in blood

Ever wanted to stand on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, waving to crowds of onlookers as the royals do? Well this summer, you'll get your closest shot — though no promises you'll see as big of a crowd as, say, an agitated Prince Louis.

On Wednesday, the Royal Collection Trust announced the palace's East Wing, which encompasses the famous balcony, will be open for guided public tours in July and August.

And although visitors won't be able to stand on the balcony itself — where members of the Royal Family have for most big moments since 1851, including King Charles' 2023 coronation — they'll visit never-before-seen rooms on the Principal Floor, garnished by lavish art from the Royal Collection, and learn the history of the wing, which Queen Victoria and her family first occupied. The tour ends in the Centre Room, which leads onto the famous balcony. 

Though now used by the Royal Family for "official meetings and events," from 1847 to 1849, Queen Victoria commissioned a plan to turn what was once a horseshoe-shaped courtyard into the current East Wing because she needed more space for her "growing family," the Trust says.

The historic wing has been closed to the public since, but the decision to open it now comes after more than five years of "improvement works," completed by Buckingham Palace's Reservicing Program. The Trust says the work was an effort to update the building's infrastructure, "improve access and preserve it for future generations."

But it's not the only royal structure the public can see for the first time this summer: Balmoral Castle, the Royal Family's Scotland estate, is also kicking off guided indoor tours — a first since the castle was completed in 1855, according to its website.

Visitors will be taken through several rooms to learn more about the building's origins, "how it has been loved by generations of the Royal Family" and how they use it today, the castle's website states. 

Balmoral Castle is respected as one of Queen Elizabeth's favorite places. She had been summer vacationing there in 2022 when she died in September, becoming the first monarch to die at the estate.

Tours of Balmoral Castle will run July 1 through Aug. 4, with many dates already sold out. But general admission tickets, including a tour of the grounds and exhibitions, are still available. 

Meanwhile, tickets to see the East Wing must be purchased in addition to a standard State Room ticket. The Palace will be open for tours seven days a week — a first since 2019 — from July until September, when it will go back to five days a week.

SEE MORE: King Charles returns to public outings with Easter Sunday service

The 8-year-old lone survivor of a bus crash that killed at least 45 people in South Africa before Easter weekend will be discharged from the hospital on Wednesday, health officials said.

Atlang Siako is expected to travel to her home in neighboring Botswana, from where the bus was traveling last Thursday on its way to an annual Easter pilgrimage that attracts hundreds of thousands of followers of the Zion Christian Church.

The bus careened off a bridge near Mokopane village in the northern province of Limpopo, fell more than 150 feet and caught fire as it hit the rocks below, killing the driver and all passengers except Siako.

Health officials are still working to identify the burnt remains of those who died in the accident. At least eight bodies have been identified, officials said, as they continue to perform tests to identify the others.

Limpopo provincial Health Minister Phophi Ramathuba told reporters on Wednesday that doctors were happy with Siako's condition and that she could return home to Botswana.

"She is in a position where we can now release her to her home because at the same time the psychological impact of being away from home does have an impact on the total, complete healing," Ramathuba said.

SEE MORE: Bus plunges off a bridge in South Africa, killing 45 people

"We want her to heal completely, but she is fine. She is still in a lot of pain but we are satisfied with her condition," she said.

Ramathuba confirmed that at least 35 bodies had been retrieved from the scene and officials were trying to identify them so they could be repatriated to Botswana.

The government of Botswana has announced it will hold national memorial services around the country for the victims.

"The decision to hold a nationwide memorial service was taken in recognition of the fact that the tragedy of losing 45 lives all at once in a single incident would have affected not only the families and relatives of the victims but the entire nation," the office of Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi said in a statement.

"It is a national tragedy," the statement added.

More than 53,000 people have fled Port-au-Prince in Haiti over the last three weeks, according to a new United Nations report.

According to the report, most of them are trying to escape gang violence that has paralyzed the country, where gangs have seized control of the airport and police stations and released thousands of prisoners.

More than 60% of the thousands that have newly fled are expected to go to southern regions of the country, where more than 100,000 people have already arrived after fleeing the capital.

U.N. officials worry the region doesn't have the resources or infrastructure to provide for that many people.

The U.N. says there have been over 1,500 deaths and some 17,000 people rendered homeless in Haiti since the outbreak of violence.

SEE MORE: Haiti's deep humanitarian, security crisis: US takes urgent action

Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry said in March he would resign once a group of stakeholders were able to appoint a temporary successor. U.S. and Caribbean nation officials planned to establish this transitional group, but a timeline for the effort has still not been given.

Many of the gangs have connections to political and economic interests in the country. Jimmy Chérizier, the leader of one of the major gang coalitions in the capital, has said the groups will reject international solutions.

“It’s the Haitian people who know what they’re going through," Chérizier said. "It’s the Haitian people who are going to take destiny into their own hands. Haitian people will choose who will govern them.”

In the meantime, the exodus from Port-au-Prince is expected to continue.

The bodies of the foreign aid workers killed this week in a deadly Israeli airstrike were taken on Wednesday to Gaza's Rafah Crossing, which borders Egypt, so their remains could be transported back to their home countries.

The seven aid workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike as they traveled in vehicles prominently showing the name and logo of their aid organization, World Central Kitchen. The nonprofit said the group had communicated their location to Israel Defense Forces prior to heading out on a well-known road used by aid groups to carry food aid up and down the Gaza strip. 

Among those killed were citizens of Australia, Poland, the U.K. and one Palestinian, along with 33-year-old Jacob Flickinger, who was a dual American-Canadian citizen.

Wednesday's edition of The New York Times published an opinion column by World Central Kitchen founder Chef Jose Andres, who was critical of how Israel has handled the war in Gaza. 

"Israel is better than the way this war is being waged. It is better than blocking food and medicine to civilians. It is better than killing aid workers who had coordinated their movements with the Israel Defense Forces," Andres wrote in The New York Times. "The Israeli government needs to open more land routes for food and medicine today. It needs to stop killing civilians and aid workers today. It needs to start the long journey to peace today."

The Israeli military said it is investigating the incident, but also added that their preliminary findings indicate the air strike was "a mistake."

"I want to be very clear. The strike was not carried out with the intention of harming WCK aid workers," said Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, chief of staff of the Israeli military. "It was a mistake that followed a misidentification at night during the war, in very complex conditions. It shouldn't have happened."

Following the airstrike, World Central Kitchen and other aid groups suspended operations in the Gaza strip.

It comes at a dire time, when the United Nations warns Palestinians there are facing starvation.

"I think this appalling tragedy is proof, as if we needed it, of the incredible dangers that exist involved in delivery of humanitarian aid inside Gaza — a point that we've been making for months, after six months of this conflict," said U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths.

On Wednesday, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said that the U.S. has no plans to conduct its own investigation into the Israeli air strike that killed the aid workers. Kirby also said he was not sure if the weapon used in the attack had been provided to Israel by the U.S.

SEE MORE: World Central Kitchen saves lives with food but paid a price in blood

When lawmakers return to Capitol Hill next week, House Speaker Mike Johnson has indicated he's willing to bring a Ukraine aid package to the floor. But the embattled Republican leader has to balance differing priorities, while also trying to hang onto his job.

One option to break the logjam: Give Ukraine a loan.

Some members oppose sending aid to Ukraine while the national debt is ballooning and the southern border is overwhelmed. Making the aid a loan could help get them on board, even if it's a 0%-interest, waivable loan.

Another pathway: Use procedural tools to force an aid bill to the floor. A discharge petition allows House members to do just that.

A petition by Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern has 191 signatures, and that would force a vote on the bipartisan deal that's already passed the Senate. That bill includes $95 billion for Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific.

A competing effort from Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick has just 16 signatures. That petition would push forward a bill to provide over $66 billion in defense-only aid for our international allies. But the legislation also adds increased restrictions on people who cross the border illegally.

Any discharge petition needs 218 signatures to force a vote. 

Option No. 3: Use frozen Russian assets.

"If we could use the seized assets of Russian oligarchs to allow the Ukrainians to fight them, that's just pure poetry," Speaker Johnson said on Fox News Sunday.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul proposed a bill to allow the president to confiscate Russia's frozen assets in the U.S., and send those funds to Ukraine. That bill has 80 bipartisan co-sponsors in the House, and there's a companion version that's been introduced in the Senate.

Whatever path Speaker Johnson chooses, he has a potential motion to vacate the speakership hanging over his head. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced the move in March, but hasn't yet taken the steps to force a vote on the House floor.

SEE MORE: Marjorie Taylor Greene files motion to oust Speaker Mike Johnson

The German soccer federation and Adidas have stopped the sale of Germany jerseys with the number 44 because of a resemblance to the logo of the Nazi Party's notorious SS paramilitary units.

Adidas on Monday stopped offering the personalization of jerseys with names and numbers, and the federation halted the delivery of jerseys with the number 44 from its own online shop.

The federation said it was looking for an alternative design for the number 4 with its partner, 11teamsports.

"None of the parties involved saw any proximity to Nazi symbolism in the development process of the jersey design," the federation said on X, formerly Twitter.

The moves to withdraw jerseys with number 44 came after it was pointed out that the two fours together resembled the stylized SS used by the Nazi Party's Schutzstaffel group. Commonly known as the SS, it included police units, combat forces and others who ran the concentration camps that carried out the mass killings of civilians during World War II.

The stylized SS symbol is banned in Germany today.

Adidas spokesman Oliver Brüggen told news agency dpa that the federation and 11teamsports were responsible for the design of the names and numbers on the shirts.

"People from around 100 countries work at Adidas. Our company stands for the promotion of diversity and inclusion, and as a company we actively campaign against xenophobia, antisemitism, violence and hatred in all forms," Brüggen said. "Any attempts to promote divisive or exclusionary views are not part of our values as a brand."

Brüggen said Adidas "strongly rejects any suggestions that this was our intention."

Germany is hosting the European Championship from June 14 to July 14.

SEE MORE: USWNT's Korbin Albert apologizes after Megan Rapinoe decries 'hate'

The deaths of seven World Central Kitchen workers in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza was a tragic turn for an American homegrown charity that, in less than 15 years, has mushroomed from the grassroots brainchild of a celebrity chef into one of the world’s most recognized food relief organizations.

The killings also interrupted a crucial flow of desperately needed food into the besieged coastal strip, as international organizations and charities warn of a looming famine. World Central Kitchen, in partnership with the United Arab Emirates, had just delivered a cargo ship with 400 tons of canned goods from Cyprus to Gaza. Around 100 tons were unloaded before the charity suspended operations, in the wake of the attack; the rest was being taken back to Cyprus, Cypriot Foreign Ministry spokesman Theodoros Gotsis said.

It's an unprecedented crisis for José Andrés, the restaurateur who founded the charity to provide immediate food relief to disaster-stricken areas and has grown it into a global operation working in multiple war zones. Founded in 2010, the organization achieved international prominence for its work in Puerto Rico in 2017 feeding victims of Hurricane Maria. It also operates in Ukraine, providing more than 100 million meals to refugees, according to the group's website, and earning Andrés a medal from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

World Central Kitchen has quickly become a mainstay of American philanthropy, with contributions on par with much older organizations. The charity in 2022 reported $518 million in total contributions and Andrés himself received $100 million from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2021.

Andrés rose to prominence with a string of successful restaurants in Washington, D.C., just as the celebrity chef phenomenon was taking off. He developed close ties with former President Barack Obama at a time when current President Joe Biden served as vice president. Andrés prepared meals at the White House, and Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama were frequent guests at his restaurants. The Spanish-born Andrés became a naturalized citizen during the Obama administration in a ceremony at the White House.

He remains connected to the Biden administration, serving as co-chair of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition. In February, he spoke at a conference on hunger hosted by second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

Andrés publicly feuded with former President Donald Trump over a planned restaurant in what was then the Trump International Hotel in Washington. The chef tried to pull out of a contract in protest over Trump's incendiary comments about Mexican and Latin American immigrants crossing the U.S. border. The pair sued each other and then settled out of court. When the hotel was sold and reopened as a Waldorf-Astoria; Andrés almost immediately announced new plans to launch a restaurant there.

In a statement Tuesday night, President Biden said he had spoken with Andrés “to convey my deepest condolences for the deaths of these courageous aid workers and to express my continued support for his and his team’s relentless and heroic efforts to get food to hungry people around the globe.”

President Biden said bluntly that Israel was not doing enough to protect aid workers. “This conflict has been one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed,” he said.

SEE MORE: World Central Kitchen identifies 7 aid workers killed in Gaza strike

When fighters from Hamas — the militant group that controls Gaza — breached the border on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 Israelis and taking hundreds of hostages, Andrés quickly moved to organize support for Gazan civilians sure to be caught up in the Israeli military response. With funding from the Emirati government, his group organized an initial food shipment from Cyprus and set up more than 60 kitchens in Gaza producing thousands of meals a day. The latest food shipment was meant to expand upon that model.

In a March telephone interview with The Associated Press shortly before the most recent shipment launched from Cyprus, Andrés credited his campaign with sparking governments into action and helping inspire the U.S. government plan to build a temporary port in Gaza to receive aid shipments.

"We have awakened the international community to do more for the people of Gaza,” he told the AP. “Everybody should have food and water, it’s a universal right.”

The loss of World Central Kitchen's efforts will be a serious blow to overall humanitarian efforts in Gaza.

“WCK is a key player in efforts to address food insecurity in Gaza and has provided essential food aid to thousands of families, contributing significantly to combating the catastrophic hunger there,” said a statement from the U.N.'s World Food Program.

The killings may also represent a turning point in Andrés' public perspective on the Israeli government. The chef was a vocal critic of Hamas in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks. He spoke on the X social media platform of Israel's right to defend its citizens and called for the ouster of a Spanish government minister who accused Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza.

But on Tuesday, Andrés harshly criticized the Israeli military.

“The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon,” he wrote on X. “No more innocent lives lost.”

His organization laid the blame squarely on the Israel Defense Forces, saying the IDF had coordinated over the movement of the cars carrying the workers as they left northern Gaza late Monday.

Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, Israel’s military chief, said Tuesday that the strike was "a mistake that followed a misidentification — at night during a war in very complex conditions. It shouldn’t have happened.”

Footage of the aftermath showed a vehicle with the charity’s logo printed across its roof to make it identifiable from the air. A projectile had blasted a large hole through the roof. Two other vehicles in the convoy were incinerated and mangled, indicating multiple hits.

Other footage showed the bodies, several wearing protective gear with the charity’s logo, at a hospital in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah. Those killed included three British nationals, an Australian, a Polish national, an American-Canadian dual citizen and a Palestinian, according to hospital records.

The strongest earthquake in a quarter-century rocked Taiwan during the morning rush hour Wednesday, killing nine people, trapping dozens in quarries and sending some residents scrambling out the windows of damaged buildings. A tsunami warning was triggered but later lifted.

The quake, which also injured hundreds, was centered off the coast of rural, mountainous Hualien County, where some buildings leaned at severe angles, their ground floors crushed. Just over 93 miles away in the capital of Taipei, tiles fell from older buildings, and schools evacuated their students to sports fields, equipping them with yellow safety helmets. Some children covered themselves with textbooks to guard against falling objects as aftershocks continued.

Television images showed neighbors and rescue workers lifting residents, including a toddler, through windows and onto the street, after doors fused shut in the shaking. All appeared mobile, in shock but without serious injuries.

Taiwan is regularly jolted by quakes and its population is among the best prepared for them, but authorities said they had expected a relatively mild earthquake and accordingly did not send out alerts. The eventual temblor was strong enough to scare even people who are used to such shaking.

"I've grown accustomed to [earthquakes]. But today was the first time I was scared to tears by an earthquake," said Hsien-hsuen Keng, a resident who lives in a fifth-floor apartment in Taipei. "I was awakened by the earthquake. I had never felt such intense shaking before."

Nine people died in the quake, which struck just before 8 a.m., according to Taiwan's national fire agency. The local United Daily News reported that three were hikers killed in rockslides in Taroko National Park, which is in Hualien, and that a van driver died in the same area when boulders hit the vehicle.

SEE MORE: 75% of US at risk for damaging earthquake, new data shows

Another 934 people were injured. Meanwhile, authorities said they had lost contact with 50 people in minibuses in the national park after the quake downed phone networks.

In addition, 64 people were trapped in one rock quarry, and six in another, the fire agency said.

The quake and aftershocks also caused 24 landslides and damage to 35 roads, bridges and tunnels.

Taiwan's earthquake monitoring agency said the quake was 7.2 magnitude while the U.S. Geological Survey put it at 7.4. It struck about 11 miles off of Hualien, on Taiwan's east coast, and was about 21 miles deep. Multiple aftershocks followed.

The national legislature, a converted school built before World War II, and sections of the main airport in Taoyuan, just south of Taipei, also saw minor damage.

Traffic along the east coast was at a virtual standstill after the earthquake, with landslides and falling debris hitting tunnels and highways. Train service was suspended across the island of 23 million people, with some tracks twisted by the stress of the quake, as was subway service in Taipei, where sections of a newly constructed elevated line split apart but did not collapse.

The initial panic after the earthquake quickly faded on the island, which prepares for such events with drills at schools and notices issued via public media and mobile phones. Stephen Gao, a seismologist and professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology, said Taiwan's readiness is among the most advanced in the world, also featuring strict building codes and a world-class seismological network.

By noon, the metro station in the busy northern Taipei suburb of Beitou was again buzzing with people commuting to jobs and people arriving to visit the hot springs or travel the mountain paths at the base of an extinct volcano.

The earthquake was felt in Shanghai and several provinces along China's southeastern coast, according to Chinese media. China and Taiwan are about 100 miles apart.

The Japan Meteorological Agency said a tsunami of about 1 foot was detected on the coast of Yonaguni island about 15 minutes after the quake struck. Smaller waves were measured in Ishigaki and Miyako islands. All alerts in the region had been lifted by Wednesday afternoon.

Taiwan lies along the Pacific "Ring of Fire," the line of seismic faults encircling the Pacific Ocean where most of the world's earthquakes occur.

Hualien was last struck by a deadly quake in 2018 that killed 17 people and brought down a historic hotel. Taiwan's worst quake in recent years struck on Sept. 21, 1999, with a magnitude of 7.7, causing 2,400 deaths, injuring around 100,000 and destroying thousands of buildings.

The economic fallout from the quake has yet to be calculated, but Taiwan is the leading manufacturer of the world's most sophisticated computer chips and other high-technology items that are highly sensitive to seismic events. Parts of the electricity grid were shut down, possibly leading to disruptions in the supply chain and financial losses.

Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC, which supplies semiconductors to companies such as Apple, said it evacuated employees from some of its factories in Hsinchu, southwest of Taipei. Hsinchu authorities said water and electricity supplies for all the factories in the city's science park were functioning as normal.

The Taiwan stock exchange opened as usual on Wednesday, with the index wavering between losses and gains.

Seven aid workers with the nonprofit World Central Kitchen were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza late Monday.

The disaster relief nonprofit identified the victims Tuesday evening as 25-year-old Palestinian Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, 35-year-old Damian Sobol from Poland, 33-year-old Jacob Flinkinger, a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen, and three men from the U.K — 57-year-old John Chapman, 33-year-old James (Jim) Henderson and 47-year-old James Kirby. Also among the identified victims was 43-year-old Australian Zomi Frankcom, notable for her prior social media posts documenting her humanitarian efforts in Gaza.

The charred wreckage of one of the vehicles still shows the World Central Kitchen logo prominently displayed on its roof, along with the hole left behind by an Israeli strike — a strike that Israel admits it is responsible for launching.

World Central Kitchen founder and celebrity Chef Jose Andres said on the social media platform X, "I am heartbroken and grieving for their families and friends and our whole WCK family," and added, "They are not faceless — they are not nameless. The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing."

For its part, the Israel Defense Forces said it is investigating the incident.

"We have been reviewing the incident in the highest levels to understand the circumstances of what happened and how it happened," said IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari. "We will be opening a probe to examine this serious incident further. This will help us reduce the risk of such an event from occurring again."

Israel's defense ministry quickly released a list of steps it said it is taking since the airstrike, including:

1. Establishing a team to investigate the incident

2. Opening a joint situation room to coordinate between the IDF and international organizations

3. Supporting distribution mechanisms by allocating appropriate resources

4. Briefing international organizations and partners on the details of the incident and actions being taken

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, traveling in France on Tuesday, said this about the deaths of the World Central Kitchen aid workers:

SEE MORE: World Central Kitchen charity halts Gaza ops after Israeli strike

"We've spoken directly to the Israeli government about this particular incident. We've urged a swift, a thorough and impartial investigation to understand exactly what happened," Blinken said. "And as we have throughout this conflict, we've impressed upon the Israelis the absolute imperative of doing more to protect innocent civilian lives."

President Joe Biden released a statement on the deaths of the seven World Central Kitchen workers in Gaza, saying in part: "I am outraged and heartbroken by the deaths of seven humanitarian workers from World Central Kitchen, including one American, in Gaza yesterday. They were providing food to hungry civilians in the middle of a war. They were brave and selfless. Their deaths are a tragedy."

Questions remain about the circumstances around the WCK incident. The aid convoy had reportedly been in touch with Israeli forces about their location, prior to the strike.

Bellingcat, an investigative journalism group which partners with Scripps News on some reporting, said its visual investigation into the incident shows that multiple munitions hit the convoy.

"I would call it a single airstrike, but there are multiple munitions fired, which hit multiple vehicles over — almost kind of two kilometer distance," said Bellingcat's Nick Waters.

Bellingcat also said the road where the convoy airstrike occurred is a well-known one used by aid groups to ferry supplies up and down the Gaza Strip.

"They would have been surveilling that convoy before they struck it ... So, they would have had eyes on that convoy, and I find it very difficult to believe they would not have seen that logo on the roof of that vehicle," Waters said. "You know, there are lots of questions about this strike that the IDF need to answer, and Israel as a state needs to answer."

In the meantime, World Central Kitchen has suspended its operations in Gaza.

A second shipment of food from the nonprofit had been on its way to Gaza when the airstrike happened. That ship has now been turned around and is heading back to a port in Cyprus.

Taylor Swift has a new title she can add to her name: billionaire. 

Amassing an estimated $1.1 billion fortune, the music superstar is among the 263 newcomers on Forbes' annual World's Billionaires List. 

The publication notes the success of Swift's Eras Tour, which has reportedly earned more than $1 billion in revenue. 

Swift is not the only household name making their first appearance on the list. Former NBA star Earvin "Magic" Johnson is now among the richest people in the world. After life on the court, Johnson has built a business empire that includes being part-owner of the NFL's Washington Commanders, investments in inner-city movie theaters and Starbucks locations. Forbes estimates Johnson's net worth to be $1.2 billion. 

SEE MORE: Powerball jackpot climbs to $1.09 billion after no winner

Other newcomers on the list include the co-founders of discount clothing retailer Shein: Maggie Gu, Molly Miao and Ren Xiaoqing. They reportedly each have a net worth of $4.2 billion. 

The top of the World's Billionaires list is largely unchanged. French businessman Bernard Arnault remains the world's richest person with a reported $195 billion net worth. 

Tesla CEO Elon Musk edged out Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for the second spot. Musk reportedly has a net worth of $195 billion, while Bezos' fortune is estimated at $194 billion. 

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison rounded out the top 5. 

Forbes notes that there are now 2,781 billionaires in the world, surpassing a record set in 2021. 

President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed Taiwan, artificial intelligence and security issues Tuesday in a call meant to demonstrate a return to regular leader-to-leader dialogue between the two powers.

The call was the leaders’ first conversation since their November summit in California produced renewed ties between the two nations’ militaries and a promise of enhanced cooperation on stemming the flow of deadly fentanyl and its precursors from China.

The call also kicks off several weeks of high-level engagements between the two countries, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen set to travel to China on Thursday and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to follow in the weeks ahead.

President Biden has pressed for sustained interactions at all levels of government, believing it is key to keeping competition between the two massive economies and nuclear-armed powers from escalating to direct conflict. While in-person summits take place perhaps once a year, officials said, both Washington and Beijing recognize the value of more frequent engagements between the leaders.

The two leaders discussed Taiwan ahead of next month’s inauguration of Lai Ching-te, the island’s president-elect, who has vowed to safeguard its de facto independence from China and further align it with other democracies. President Biden reaffirmed the United States’ longstanding “One China” policy and reiterated that the U.S. opposes any coercive means to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s control. China considers Taiwan a domestic matter and has vigorously protested U.S. support for the island.

President Biden also raised concerns about China’s operations in the South China Sea, including efforts last month to impede the Philippines, which the U.S. is treaty-obligated to defend, from resupplying its forces on the disputed Second Thomas Shoal.

Next week, the president will host Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the White House for a joint summit where China’s influence in the region was set to be top of the agenda.

SEE MORE: House passes bill that could lead to ban of TikTok

President Biden, in the call with Xi, pressed China to do more to meet its commitments to halt the flow of illegal narcotics and to schedule additional precursor chemicals to prevent their export. The pledge was made at the leaders’ summit held in Woodside, California, last year on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting.

At the November summit, Biden and Xi also agreed that their governments would hold formal talks on the promises and risks of advanced artificial intelligence, which are set to take place in the coming weeks. The pair touched on the issue on Tuesday just two weeks after China and the U.S. joined more than 120 other nations in backing a resolution at the United Nations calling for global safeguards around the emerging technology.

President Biden, in the call, reinforced warnings to Xi against interfering in the 2024 elections in the U.S. as well as against continued malicious cyberattacks against critical American infrastructure, according to a senior U.S. administration official who previewed the call on the condition of anonymity.

He also raised concerns about human rights in China, including Hong Kong’s new restrictive national security law and its treatment of minority groups, and he raised the plight of Americans detained in or barred from leaving China.

The Democratic president also pressed China over its defense relationship with Russia, which is seeking to rebuild its industrial base as it presses forward with its invasion of Ukraine. And he called on Beijing to wield its influence over North Korea to rein in the isolated and erratic nuclear power.

As the leaders of the world’s two largest economies, President Biden also raised concerns with Xi over China’s “unfair economic practices,” the official said, and reasserted that the U.S. would take steps to preserve its security and economic interests, including by continuing to limit the transfer of some advanced technology to China.

The call came ahead of Yellen’s visit to Guangzhou and Beijing for a week of bilateral meetings on the subject with finance leaders from the world’s second largest economy — including Vice Premier He Lifeng, Chinese Central Bank Gov. Pan Gongsheng, former Vice Premier Liu He, American businesses and local leaders.

SEE MORE: UN passes resolution to protect against malicious AI

An advisory for the upcoming trip states that Yellen “will advocate for American workers and businesses to ensure they are treated fairly, including by pressing Chinese counterparts on unfair trade practices.”

It follows Xi’s meeting in Beijing with U.S. business leaders last week, when he emphasized the mutually beneficial economic ties between the two countries and urged people-to-people exchange to maintain the relationship.

Xi told the Americans that the two countries have stayed communicative and “made progress” on issues such as trade, anti-narcotics and climate change since he met with President Biden in November. Last week’s high-profile meeting was seen as Beijing’s effort to stabilize bilateral relations.

Ahead of her trip to China, Yellen last week said that Beijing is flooding the market with green energy that “distorts global prices.” She said she intends to share her beliefs with her counterparts that Beijing’s increased production of solar energy, electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries poses risks to productivity and growth to the global economy.

U.S. lawmakers’ renewed angst over Chinese ownership of the popular social media app TikTok has generated new legislation that would ban TikTok if its China-based owner ByteDance doesn’t sell its stakes in the platform within six months of the bill’s enactment.

As chair of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which reviews foreign ownership of firms in the U.S., Yellen has ample leeway to determine how the company could remain operating in the U.S.

Meanwhile, China’s leaders have set a goal of 5% economic growth this year despite a slowdown exacerbated by troubles in the property sector and the lingering effects of strict anti-virus measures during the COVID-19 pandemic that disrupted travel, logistics, manufacturing and other industries.

China is the dominant player in batteries for electric vehicles and has a rapidly expanding auto industry that could challenge the world’s established carmakers as it goes global.

The U.S. last year outlined plans to limit EV buyers from claiming tax credits if they purchase cars containing battery materials from China and other countries that are considered hostile to the United States. Separately, the Department of Commerce launched an investigation into the potential national security risks posed by Chinese car exports to the U.S.

An international charity suspended delivery of food to starving Palestinians on Tuesday, a day after an Israeli airstrike killed seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen who were trying to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Ships still laden with some 240 tons of aid from the charity that arrived Monday turned back from Gaza, according to Cyprus, which has played a key role in trying to establish a sea route to bring food to the territory. Israel has allowed only a trickle of aid into devastated northern Gaza, where experts say famine is imminent.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged that the country’s forces had carried out the “unintended strike ... on innocent people.” He said officials were looking into the strike and would work to ensure it did not happen again.

World Central Kitchen said it had coordinated with the Israeli military over the movement of the cars carrying the workers as they left northern Gaza late Monday. Footage of the aftermath showed a vehicle with the charity’s logo printed across its roof to make it identifiable from the air. The projectile punched a large hole through the roof. Two other vehicles in the convoy were incinerated and mangled, indicating multiple hits.

Other footage showed the bodies, several wearing protective gear with the charity’s logo, at a hospital in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah. Those killed include three British nationals, an Australian, a Polish national, an American-Canadian dual citizen and a Palestinian, according to hospital records.

The killings threatened to bring repercussions on multiple levels. The dead were citizens of some of Israel’s closest allies, which could antagonize them at a time when the country has few friends amid mounting international criticism of its nearly 6-month-old offensive in Gaza.

The strike could also set back efforts by the U.S. and other countries to open a maritime corridor for aid from Cyprus. World Central Kitchen, a food charity founded by celebrity chef José Andrés, was key to the new route.

Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides said Tuesday that ship deliveries would continue. Israel has barred UNRWA, the main U.N. agency in Gaza, from making deliveries to the north, and other aid groups say sending truck convoys north has been extremely difficult because of the military’s failure to either grant permission or ensure safe passage.

SEE MORE: Israeli airstrike on Iran's consulate in Syria kills 2 generals

The strike also underscored what critics have called the Israeli military's disregard for civilian casualties in its Gaza campaign, which it says is aimed at destroying Hamas after its Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.

Throughout the war, Israeli forces have shown readiness to inflict widespread destruction when they believe a suspected militant is present or when ground troops see a tactical need to strike.

Homes with families sheltering inside are leveled by strikes almost daily. The military has struck ambulances and aid vehicles, saying that armed fighters were in them.

In February, troops and a tank opened fire when they felt threatened as thousands of Palestinians crowded to take aid off trucks, and more than 100 people were killed. The military said it did not fire at the convoy and that some victims died in stampeding.

More than 32,900 Palestinians have been killed in the war, around two-thirds of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. Israel blames Hamas for civilian deaths, saying it operates in populated areas.

The U.S., Britain, Poland and Australia called for an investigation or an explanation from Israel over the aid workers’ deaths. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered the forming of a “profession team” to investigate the strike and the opening of a joint situation room enabling coordination between the military and aid groups.

Andrés — whose charity operates in several countries wracked by wars or natural disasters — said he was “heartbroken” by the deaths of the staffers.

“The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon,” he wrote on X.

Anera, a Washington-based aid group that has been operating in the Palestinian territories for decades, said that in the wake of the strike it was taking the “unprecedented” step of pausing its own operations in Gaza, where it had been helping to provide around 150,000 meals daily.

“The escalating risks associated with aid delivery leave us with no choice,” it said in a statement.

SEE MORE: Israeli airstrike on Iran's consulate in Syria kills 2 generals

Jamie McGoldrick, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, said the strike was “not an isolated incident,” noting that around 200 humanitarian workers have been killed in the war.

“This is nearly three times the death toll recorded in any single conflict in a year,” he said.

The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel in a surprise attack on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostage. Israel responded with one of the deadliest and most destructive offensives in recent history.

Tensions have soared across the Middle East, and an apparent Israeli strike on Iran’s consulate in the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Monday has ratcheted them up even further. Iran and its allies have vowed to respond to the strike, which killed two Iranian generals.

Monday’s strike on the aid workers came hours after a new delivery with some 400 tons of food and supplies organized by World Central Kitchen and the United Arab Emirates arrived in three ships from Cyprus, following a pilot run last month.

Around 100 tons were unloaded before the charity suspended operations, and the rest was being taken back to Cyprus, Cypriot Foreign Ministry spokesman Theodoros Gotsis said.

The dead in the strike included Zomi Frankcom, 44, of Melbourne, Australia, and Damian Soból of Poland, the two countries' governments confirmed.

Two other Israeli strikes late Monday killed at least 16 Palestinians, including eight children, in Rafah, where Israel has vowed to expand its ground operation despite the presence of some 1.4 million Palestinians, most of whom have sought refuge from fighting elsewhere.

One strike hit a family home, killing 10 people, including five children, according to hospital records. Another hit a gathering near a mosque, killing at least six people, including three children.

Aid groups have repeatedly called for a humanitarian cease-fire, saying it’s the only way to reach people in need. The United States, Qatar and Egypt have spent months trying to broker such a pause and a hostage release, but the indirect talks between Israel and Hamas remain bogged down.

Hamas is believed to be holding some 100 hostages and the remains of 30 others after freeing most of the rest during a cease-fire in November in exchange for the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

A 12-year-old student opened fire at a secondary school in southern Finland on Tuesday morning, killing one and seriously wounding two other students, police said. The suspect was later arrested.

Heavily armed police cordoned off the lower secondary school, with some 800 students, in the city of Vantaa, just outside the capital, Helsinki, after receiving a call about a shooting incident at 9:08 a.m.

Police said both the suspect and the victims were 12 years old. The suspect was arrested in the Helsinki area later Tuesday with a handgun in his possession, police said.

Police told a news conference that one of the wounded students had died. The other two were seriously wounded, said Chief of Police Ilka Koskimaki from the Eastern Uusima Police Department.

Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo posted on X that he was “deeply shocked” over the shooting.

In the past decades, Finland has witnessed two major deadly school shootings.

In November 2007, a 18-year-old student armed with a semi-automatic pistol opened fire at the premises of the Jokela high school in Tuusula, southern Finland, killing nine people. He was found dead with self-inflicted wounds.

Less than a year later, in September 2008, a 22-year-old student shot and killed 10 people with a semi-automatic pistol at a vocational college in Kauhajoki, southwestern Finland, before fatally shooting himself.

In the Nordic nation of 5.6 million, there are more than 1.5 million licensed firearms and about 430,000 license holders, according to the Finnish Interior Ministry. Hunting and gun-ownership have long traditions in the sparsely-populated northern European country.

Responsibility for granting permits for ordinary firearms rests with local police departments.

Following the school shootings in 2007 and 2008, Finland tightened its gun laws by raising the minimum age for firearms ownership and giving police greater powers to make background checks on individuals applying for a gun license.

Gaza medical officials say an apparent Israeli airstrike killed four international aid workers with the World Central Kitchen charity and their Palestinian driver after they helped deliver food and other supplies to northern Gaza that had arrived hours early by ship.

Footage showed the bodies of the five dead at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah. Several of them wore protective gear with the charity's logo. Staff showed the passports of three of the dead — British, Australian and Polish. The nationality of the fourth aid worker was not immediately known.

The workers' car was hit by an Israeli strike just after crossing from northern Gaza after helping deliver aid that had arrived hours earlier on a ship from Cyprus, Mahmoud Thabet, a paramedic from the Palestinian Red Crescent who was on the team that brought the bodies to the hospital, told The Associated Press. The source of fire could not be independently confirmed and the Israeli military did not respond to requests for comment.

The aid ships that arrived Monday carried some 400 tons of food and supplies in a shipment organized by the United Arab Emirates and the World Central Kitchen, the charity founded by celebrity chef José Andrés. Last month a ship delivered 200 tons of aid in a pilot run. The Israeli military was involved in coordinating both deliveries.

The U.S. has touted the sea route as a new way to deliver desperately needed aid to northern Gaza, where several hundred Palestinians face imminent famine, largely cut off from the rest of the territory by Israeli forces. Israel has barred UNRWA, the main U.N. agency in Gaza, from making deliveries to the north, and other aid groups say sending truck convoys north has been too dangerous because of the military's failure to ensure safe passage.

In a statement posted to X, World Central Kitchen founder Chef José Andrés confirmed the deaths of the workers. 

"The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing," Andrés wrote. "It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon. No more innocent lives lost. Peace starts with our shared humanity. It needs to start now."

SEE MORE: Tracking airstrikes: Inside the Israel-Hamas war

An Israeli airstrike that demolished Iran’s consulate in Syria killed two Iranian generals and five officers, Syrian and Iranian officials said Monday.

The strike appeared to signify an escalation of Israel's targeting of Iranian military officials and their allies in Syria, which had already intensified following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas militants, who receive money and weapons from Iran.

Clashes have also increased since then between Israel and Hezbollah — another militant group supported by Iran — along Israel's northern border with Lebanon.

Israel, which rarely acknowledges such strikes, said it had no comment on the latest attack in Syria.

The attack in Syria killed Gen. Ali Reza Zahdi, who led the elite Quds Force in Lebanon and Syria until 2016, according to Iran's Revolutionary Guard. It also killed Zahdi's deputy, Gen Mohammad Hadi Hajriahimi, and five other officers.

While Iran's consular building was leveled in the attack, according to Syria's state news agency, SANA, its main embassy building remained intact.

Iran's ambassador, Hossein Akbari, condemned Israel and said as many as seven people were killed. First responders were still searching for bodies under the rubble. Akbari said two police officers who guard the building were wounded.

He vowed revenge for the strike “at the same magnitude and harshness.”

SEE MORE: Israelis stage large protests to increase pressure on Netanyahu

The chief spokesman for Israel’s army, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said late Monday that a drone attack on a naval base in southern Israel early Monday was “directed by Iran.” There were no injuries and only minor damage to a building, the army said.

The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which is also backed by Iran, accused Israel of seeking to widen the conflict in Gaza.

Charles Lister, director of the Syria program of the Washington-based Middle East Institute think tank, called the strike a “major escalation.” The attack is sure to draw retaliation, he wrote on the social media platform X.

Syria's foreign minister, Faisal Mekdad, said “several” people were killed, and in a phone call with his counterpart in Iran, he condemned Israel.

A spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry, Nasser Kanaani, called on other countries to condemn the strike. Iranian state television said the Iranian ambassador’s residence was inside the consular building, which stood next to the embassy. The main embassy remained intact.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets in government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years.

Such airstrikes have escalated in recent months against the backdrop of Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and ongoing clashes between Israel’s military and Hezbollah on the Lebanon-Israel border.

Though it rarely acknowledges its actions in Syria, Israel has said it targets bases of Iran-allied militant groups such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.

An Israeli airstrike in a Damascus neighborhood in December killed a longtime adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria, Seyed Razi Mousavi.

A similar strike on a building in Damascus in January killed at least five Iranian advisers. Last week, airstrikes over the strategic eastern Syrian province of Deir el-Zour near the Iraqi border killed an Iranian adviser.

SEE MORE: Tracking airstrikes: Inside the Israel-Hamas war

Tens of thousands of Israelis gathered outside the parliament building in Jerusalem on Sunday in the largest anti-government demonstration since the country went to war in October. They urged the government to reach a cease-fire deal to free dozens of hostages held by the Hamas militant group in Gaza and to hold early elections.

Israeli society was broadly united immediately after Oct. 7, when Hamas killed some 1,200 people during a cross-border attack and took 250 others hostage. Nearly six months of conflict have renewed divisions over the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, though the country remains largely in favor of the war.

Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas and bring all the hostages home, yet those goals have been elusive. While Hamas has suffered heavy losses, it remains intact.

Roughly half the hostages in Gaza were released during a weeklong cease-fire in November. But attempts by international mediators to bring home the remaining hostages have failed. Talks resumed on Sunday with little expectation of a breakthrough.

Hostages' families believe time is running out.

“We believe that no hostages will come back with this government because they’re busy putting sticks in the wheels of negotiations for the hostages,” said Boaz Atzili, whose cousin, Aviv Atlizi and his wife, Liat, were kidnapped on Oct. 7. Lait was released but Aviv was killed, and his body is in Gaza. “Netanyahu is only working in his private interests.”

SEE MORE: Pope overcomes health concerns to preside over Easter Sunday mass

Protesters have many grievances

Protesters blame Netanyahu for the failures of Oct. 7 and say the deep political divisions over his attempted judicial overhaul last year weakened Israel ahead of the attack. Some accuse him of damaging relations with the United States, Israel’s most important ally.

Netanyahu is also facing a litany of corruption charges which are slowly making their way through the courts, and critics say his decisions appear to be focused on political survival over the national interest. Opinion polls show Netanyahu and his coalition trailing far behind their rivals if elections were held today.

Unless his governing coalition falls apart sooner, Netanyahu won't face elections until spring of 2026.

Many families of hostages had refrained from publicly denouncing Netanyahu to avoid antagonizing the leadership and making the hostages' plight a political issue. But as their anger grows, some now want to change course — and they played a major role in Sunday’s anti-government protest.

The crowd on Sunday stretched for blocks around the Knesset, or parliament building, and organizers vowed to continue the demonstration for several days. They urged the government to hold new elections nearly two years ahead of schedule. Thousands also demonstrated Sunday in Tel Aviv, where there was a large protest the night before.

Netanyahu, in a nationally televised speech before undergoing hernia surgery later Sunday, said he understood families' pain. But he said calling new elections — in what he described as a moment before victory — would paralyze Israel for six to eight months and stall the hostage talks. For now, Netanyahu’s governing coalition appears to remain firmly intact.

Some hostage families agree that now is not the time for elections.

“I don’t think that changing the prime minister now is what will advance and help my son to come home,” Sheli Shem Tov, whose son Omer was kidnapped from a music festival, told Israel’s Channel 12. “To go to elections now will just push to the side the most burning issue, which is to return the hostages home.”

In his Sunday address, Netanyahu also repeated his vow for a military ground offensive in Rafah, the southern Gaza city where more than half of territory's population of 2.3 million now shelters after fleeing fighting elsewhere. “There is no victory without going into Rafah," he said, adding that U.S. pressure would not deter him. Israel's military says Hamas battalions remain there.

In another reminder of Israel's divisions, a group of reservists and retired officers demonstrated in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood.

Ultra-Orthodox men for generations have received exemptions from military service, which is compulsory for most Jewish men and women. Resentment over that has deepened during the war. Netanyahu’s government has been ordered to present a new plan for a more equitable draft law by Monday.

Netanyahu, who relies heavily on the support of ultra-Orthodox parties, last week asked for an extension.

The Bank of Israel said in its annual report on Sunday that there could be economic damage if large numbers of ultra-Orthodox men continue not to serve in Israel’s military.

Israeli airstrike hits tent camp at hospital

Also Sunday, an Israeli airstrike hit a tent camp in the courtyard of a crowded hospital in central Gaza, killing two Palestinians and wounding another 15, including journalists working nearby.

An Associated Press reporter filmed the strike and aftermath at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, where thousands of people have sheltered. The Israeli military said it struck a command center of the Islamic Jihad militant group.

Tens of thousands of people have sought shelter in Gaza's hospitals, viewing them as relatively safe from airstrikes. Israel accuses Hamas and other militants of operating in and around medical facilities, which Gaza's health officials deny.

Israeli troops have been raiding Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, for nearly two weeks and say they have killed scores of fighters, including senior Hamas operatives. Gaza's Health Ministry said more than 100 patients remain with no potable water and septic wounds, while doctors use plastic bags for gloves.

Not far from Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, dozens of members of Gaza's tiny Palestinian Christian community gathered at the Holy Family Church to celebrate Easter, with incense wafting through the rare building that appeared untouched by war.

“We are here with sadness,” attendee Winnie Tarazi said. About 600 people shelter in the compound.

Gaza’s death toll nears 33,000 as hunger grows

The United Nations and partners warn that famine could occur in devastated, largely isolated northern Gaza. Humanitarian officials say deliveries by sea and air are not enough and that Israel must allow far more aid by road. Egypt has said thousands of trucks are waiting.

Israel says it places no limits on deliveries of humanitarian aid. It has blamed the U.N. and other international agencies for the failure to distribute more aid.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said Sunday that at least 32,782 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war. The ministry's count does not differentiate between civilians and fighters, but it has said that women and children make up around two-thirds of those killed.

Israel says over one-third of the dead are militants, though it has not provided evidence, and it blames Hamas for civilian casualties because the group operates in residential areas.

Amid concerns about a wider conflict in the region, Lebanese state media reported that an Israeli drone struck a car in the southern Lebanese town of Konin.

A Lebanese security official told The Associated Press that Hezbollah militant Ismail al-Zain was killed, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. Israel's military called al-Zain a “significant commander.” Hezbollah confirmed the death.

Late Sunday, a Palestinian attacker stabbed three people in southern Israel, seriously wounding them, said the Hatzalah rescue service. Police said the attacker was shot, but gave no further details on his condition.

It has always been a marvel of architecture and art, whether you want to classify it as religious or not. 

The basilica was built in 1882, and over the next 142 years it would be perpetually under construction, with pauses during the Spanish Civil War in in the 1930s, and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Saturday, the basilica held an Easter vigil led by Javier Vilanova, who is the auxiliary bishop of Barcelona, the organization behind the basilica said on X, sharing a link to a live stream for the service and photos of the awe-inspiring interior. 

The project has seen war and financial difficulties over the decades. This month, an announcement was made signaling a completion date that was cemented in place for 2026 that would coincide with the 100-year mark after Gaudi's death in 1926. He died in a Spanish hospital of trauma after being hit by a tram. 

After the 2026 official completion date, more work on sculptures, adornments and a staircase is expected, Arch Daily reported. 

The basilica has been widely expected to become the world's tallest church when its sky-scraping spires are finalized, with other European church officials raising their eyebrows in anticipation. 

Around 1,000 homes and businesses could be relocated for the work to proceed, reports said. 

As Euro News reported, residents have sought legal action amid planned evictions. 

Salvador Barroso, a lawyer working with the Association for those Affected by the Sagrada Familia, told the outlet, "This was not the work of Gaudí but it is going to affect the lives of about 3,000 people who live near the basilica. That means people like me who have lived next to the place for over 30 years or more." 

He said, "This is a sword but no one knows where it is going to fall. In cases of expropriation, the only one who can make the decision is the local council. They should do so quickly and not look the other way."

Euro News reported that Barcelona's Mayor Ada Colau has advocated to stop any evictions. 

Arch Daily reported that when the basilica was first constructed, the area was a vast agricultural area that grew into a dense urban center over the decades. 

SEE MORE: Chocolate prices hit record highs in time for Easter

The Gothic Revival-Art Nouveau-Modernism blend of work that makes up the structure's many columns and features spanning at least an entire city block, or bloc de la ciutat in Catalan (one of Barcelona's official languages apart from Spanish).

Legendary Spanish designer and architect Antoni Gaudi designed the Roman Catholic minor basilica known for it's organic form. Gaudi took over in 1883 as its chief architect, and he worked on the project for the rest of his career. 

Arch Daily said almost 5 million visitors come to admire the project and provide it with what is considered a stable contribution of money to keep it going. 

Dutch police detained a man Saturday after he left a nightclub where four people had been held hostage for hours, bringing a peaceful end to a tense standoff.

"We are exceptionally happy that it ended this way. That the victims came out safely and that we were able to arrest this suspect without using violence," said Marthyne Kunst, head of the regional public prosecutor's office.

There was no immediate word on a motive, but police and prosecutors said they did not believe it was a terrorist incident. Police said the hostage-taker was armed with knives, and a backpack he carried was being examined to establish if it contained explosives.

The hostage-taking in the central Dutch market town of Ede 53 miles southeast of Amsterdam, ended around midday when a man walked out of the Cafe Petticoat club and was ordered by armed police to kneel with his hands on his head. He was then handcuffed before being led into a waiting police car.

Kunst told reporters that the man was known to law enforcement authorities and had previously been convicted of threatening behavior. She gave no further details, citing privacy and the ongoing investigation.

The suspect's identity was not released. Ede Mayor René Verhulst said he was a Dutch citizen.

Authorities also released no details about the four hostages.

Verhulst said that after an emotionally charged morning, "everything is fine. The hostage-taker is arrested by the police and they are now speaking to him. And the hostages are free, they are very emotional."

Earlier, three young hostages walked out of the club with their hands above their heads. A fourth person was released shortly before the suspect was arrested. The hostages were all workers at the club.

Heavily armed police and special arrest teams, some wearing masks, had gathered outside the popular club. Some 150 nearby homes were evacuated and trains did not stop at the town's station.

A bus carrying worshippers on a long-distance trip from Botswana to an Easter weekend church gathering in South Africa plunged off a bridge on a mountain pass Thursday and burst into flames as it hit the rocky ground below, killing at least 45 people, authorities said. The only survivor was an 8-year-old child who was receiving medical attention for serious injuries.

The Limpopo provincial government said the bus veered off the Mmamatlakala bridge in northern South Africa and plunged 164 feet into a ravine before busting into flames.

Search operations were ongoing, the provincial government said, but many bodies were burned beyond recognition and trapped inside the vehicle, while others had been thrown from the bus.

The crash happened near the town of Mokopane, which is about 125 miles north of the South African capital, Pretoria.

Hours after the crash, smoke seeped from the mangled, burned wreck underneath the concrete bridge. Authorities said it appeared that the driver lost control and the bus ploughed into the barriers along the side of the bridge and then over the edge. The driver was one of the dead.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the victims appeared to be all from Botswana and had been on their way to the town of Moria in Limpopo for a popular Easter weekend pilgrimage that attracts hundreds of thousands of worshippers from South Africa and neighboring countries who follow the Zion Christian Church.

Ramaphosa had phoned Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi to offer his condolences and said the South African government would do all it can to help, according to a statement from Ramaphosa's office.

Provincial authorities said the bus had a Botswana license plate.

South African Minister of Transport Sindisiwe Chikunga was in Limpopo province for a road safety campaign and changed plans to visit the crash scene after hearing the "devastating news," the national Department of Transport said. She said there was an investigation underway into the cause of the crash and offered her condolences to the families of the victims.

The South African government often warns motorists to be cautious during the Easter holidays, which is a particularly busy and dangerous time for road travel. More than 200 people died in road crashes during the Easter weekend last year.

Just a day before the bus crash, the South African government called on people to be extra careful on Thursday and Friday because of the expected high volumes traveling by road to Moria.

The Zion Christian Church has its headquarters in Moria and this year is the first time its Easter pilgrimage is set to go ahead since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, there have been over 300 verified incidents that Scripps News has tracked coordinates for where civilians were killed in airstrikes in Gaza.

The airstrikes are being tracked by a group called Airwars, a nonprofit transparency watchdog based in the United Kingdom that tracks, assesses and archives cases of civilian harm during conflicts. It draws on everything from news reports to Facebook and YouTube to verify its reports.

Airwars said those 300-plus incidents are just the first confirmations of what are likely many more deaths. So far, it's only investigated about 10% of the reports it's received.

"So if you're just talking about intensity in terms of volume, what we've seen in Gaza within that first month was already multiple times over more intense than what we've seen in other places," said Airwars director Emily Tripp.

Tripp said Israel's air campaign is one of the most intense campaigns Airwars has covered.

"No matter what metric of civilian harm you want to use, this is worse. This is a conflict where we've had, I think, multiple times over cases with the highest number of child fatalities. And we've been documenting for 10 years."

SEE MORE: US sanctions Gaza Now site, founder over Hamas support allegations

More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the conflict, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. As the death toll continues to rise, Israel's been under increasing criticism over its operations in Gaza, most notably its plans to conduct an invasion of Rafah, which it says is the final stronghold of Hamas.

Just this week, the U.S. allowed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza to pass in a United Nations Security Council vote. Despite abstaining on the vote, the U.S. is still one of Israel's biggest arms suppliers.

In December, Airwars and a host of other human rights groups sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin urging him to withhold arms transfers to Israel.

"Supply of weapons is the greatest leverage that the U.S. can have when it comes to looking to influence the way that the IDF behaves," Tripp said.

Of course, the United States isn't conducting strikes in Gaza. Though it's closest ally in the region, Israel, is--as can be seen in this airstrike footage released by the Israel Defense Forces. That's something groups like Airwars argue should be taken into account when providing arms.

"What message does it send if you're sending these weapons?" Tripp asked. "And what message does that send to the civilians on the ground who have been killed?"

The U.S. State Department has recently said Israel is not in violation of international humanitarian law when it comes to use of U.S.-provided weapons or providing aid.

For two years, a teenager named Denys has been a focal point of our reporting on Russia’s forced deportation of Ukrainian orphans.

Our Scripps News Investigates special report in December sparked a new sense of urgency to rescue Denys. He managed to escape into Poland in early February. We were there for his first interview — during what was supposed to be a one-night stopover in Warsaw.   

His journey was supposed to take him to a new life with relatives in Germany. But there was a problem. 

“I didn't have a foreign passport and they took me off the bus,” Denys says. “I was taken to a police station. They filed a criminal case against me on charges of illegal border crossing, and then I was deported to the Polish border.” 

He's now been waiting in Warsaw for the documents he needs to continue his journey for more than a month. 

In this video, we visit Denys again to see how he is coping with his dreams of a new life with his brother and grandmother being deferred. We also ask him about the concerns expressed back in Ukraine (since we last spoke with him in February) that he might still be brainwashed and acting on behalf of Russian intelligence services. 

SEE MORE: Scripps News Investigates: A race to rescue Ukraine's abducted orphans

The world wasted an estimated 19% of the food produced globally in 2022, or about 1.05 billion metric tons, according to a new United Nations report.

The U.N. Environment Programme's Food Waste Index Report, published Wednesday, tracks the progress of countries to halve food waste by 2030.

The U.N. said the number of countries reporting for the index nearly doubled from the first report in 2021. The 2021 report estimated that 17% of the food produced globally in 2019, or 1.03 billion tons, was wasted, but authors warned against direct comparisons because of the lack of sufficient data from many countries.

The report is co-authored by UNEP and Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), an international charity.

Researchers analyzed country data on households, food service and retailers. They found that each person wastes about 174 pounds of food annually, equal to at least 1 billion meals wasted worldwide daily.

Most of the waste — 60% — came from households. About 28% came from food service, or restaurants, with about 12% coming from retailers.

"It is a travesty," said co-author Clementine O'Connor, the focal point for food waste at UNEP. "It doesn't make any sense, and it is a complicated problem, but through collaboration and systemic action, it is one that can be tackled."

The report comes at a time when 783 million people around the world face chronic hunger, and many places are facing deepening food crises. The Israel-Hamas war and violence in Haiti have worsened the crisis, with experts saying that famine is imminent in northern Gaza and approaching in Haiti.

Food waste is also a global concern because of the environmental toll of production, including the land and water required to raise crops and animals and the greenhouse gas emissions it produces, including methane, a powerful gas that has accounted for about 30% of global warming since pre-industrial times.

Food loss and waste generates 8% to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. If it were a country, it would rank third after China and the U.S.

Fadila Jumare, a Nigeria-based project associate at Busara Center for Behavioral Economics who has studied prevention of food waste in Kenya and Nigeria, said the problem further disadvantages many people who are already food insecure and cannot afford healthy diets.

SEE MORE: This app can save money on food that's about to be thrown out

"For humanity, food waste means that less food is available to the poorest population," said Jumare, who wasn't involved in the report.

Brian Roe, a food waste researcher at Ohio State University who wasn't involved with the report, said the index is important to tackling food waste.

"The key takeaway is that reducing the amount of food that is wasted is an avenue that can lead to many desirable outcomes — resource conservation, fewer environmental damages, greater food security, and more land for uses other than as landfills and food production," said Roe.

The report showed notable growth in coverage of food waste in low- and middle-income countries, the authors said. But it may fall to wealthier nations to lead in international cooperation and policy development to reduce food waste, they said.

The report said many governments, regional and industry groups are using public-private partnerships to reduce food waste and its contributions to climate and water stress. Governments and municipalities collaborate with businesses in the food supply chain, whereby businesses commit to measure food waste.

The report said food redistribution — including donating surplus food to food banks and charities — is significant in tackling food waste among retailers.

One group doing that is Food Banking Kenya, a nonprofit that gets surplus food from farms, markets, supermarkets and packing houses and redistributes it to schoolchildren and vulnerable populations. Food waste is an increasing concern in Kenya, where an estimated 4.45 million metric tons (about 4.9 million tons) of food is wasted every year.

"We positively impact the society by providing nutritious food and also positively impact the environment by reducing the emission of harmful gases," said John Gathungu, the group's co-founder and executive director.

The report's authors said they found that the differences in per capita household food waste between high-income and lower-income countries were surprisingly small.

Richard Swannel, a co-author and director of Impact Growth at WRAP, said that shows food waste "is not a rich world problem. It's a global problem."

"The data is really clear on this point: That here is a problem right around the world and one that we could all tackle tomorrow to save ourselves money and reduce environmental impact," he said.

The U.S. on Wednesday imposed sanctions on online media site Gaza Now and its founder Mustafa Ayash for allegedly supporting Hamas.

The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control says that after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas against Israel, the online entity began a fundraising effort in support of the militant organization.

Gaza Now's Arabic channel has more than 300,000 followers on social media app X, formerly known as Twitter, and a large following on the encrypted chat platform Telegram.

Included in the sanctions are firms Al-Qureshi Executives and Aakhirah Ltd., and their director Aozma Sultana, who are alleged to have partnered on multiple fundraising efforts alongside Gaza Now.

SEE MORE: US, Israeli officials meet over contentious plan to invade Rafah

The sanctions were imposed in collaboration with the U.K.'s Office of Foreign Sanctions Implementation.

Treasury Under Secretary Brian Nelson said in a statement that the U.S. and its partners "will continue to leverage our tools to disrupt Hamas' ability to facilitate further attacks."

A representative for Gaza Now and Ayash were not immediately available. The sanctions block access to U.S. property and bank accounts and prevent those designated from doing business with Americans.

As the closest U.S. state to Haiti, Florida's coast lies about 800 miles from that Caribbean nation, which is now gripped by gang violence.

Citing concerns about a potential migrant exodus, Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis launched additional patrols from state agencies, like the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

It's a journey by sea that would take migrants across the treacherous waters of the Florida Straits.

"I think the voyage is extremely dangerous," said Florida Fish and Wildlife's Lt. Col. Alfredo Escanio.

Scripps News headed out on a patrol boat on Biscayne Bay, with Lt. Col. Escanio and Capt. Rafael Almagro. The duties assigned to Florida Fish and Wildlife are usually varied.

"Our officers are normally patrolling on, not only on offshore boats, but we also have inshore boats, airboats, buggies," Lt. Col. Escanio said. "We enforce all of the boating laws of the state, fish and wildlife laws, and we do general public safety."

That also includes intercepting migrants. Florida Fish and Wildlife found a boat several weeks ago in the Atlantic waters near Brevard County, Florida. 

"We had two officers patrolling at night," Lt. Col. Escanio said, "and they stopped a vessel coming in with two smugglers and 25 Haitian migrants."

They are migrants who are fleeing a desperate situation, say Haitian-American activists.

"People are terrified. People are literally living their life not knowing if they're going to make it to the next day," said Paul Christian Namphy, political director with the Family Action Network Movement, a nonprofit organization helping Haitian migrants settle in Miami, which is home to the Little Haiti neighborhood. 

He lived in Haiti for many years; his family members live just north of Port-au-Prince.

"Haiti is part of who we are," he said.

Namphy said he disagrees with Florida increasing the number of offshore patrols for Haitian migrants.

"The people coming are our sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters who are fleeing for their lives, who are fleeing the killing, the kidnapping, the rape, the armed robbery that's happening on a daily basis in Port-au-Prince," Namphy said, "and we should be showing compassion and solution-finding, rather than militarization and scapegoating."

Out on the water, Lt. Col. Escanio told us his work boarding vessels is about safety and helping migrants, once they are spotted out at sea.

"They need medical aid. So, we'll get them to a medical facility or call for medical, get them transported to a medical facility. When that's not the situation, then we turn the migrants over to either Coast Guard or air marine operations of CPB, which is Customs and Border Protection," Lt. Col. Escanio said. "We are kind of the last line of defense for the state of Florida."

It is work that will continue out on the water, until Haiti's downward spiral comes to an end.

SEE MORE: Haiti's deep humanitarian, security crisis: US takes urgent action

Lawmakers in Thailand's lower house of Parliament overwhelmingly approved a marriage equality bill on Wednesday that would make the country the first in Southeast Asia to legalize equal rights for marriage partners of any gender.

The bill passed its final reading with the approval of 400 of the 415 members of the House of Representatives who were in attendance, with 10 voting against it, two abstaining and three not voting.

The bill amends the Civil and Commercial Code to change the words "men and women" and "husband and wife" to "individuals" and "marriage partners." It would open up access to full legal, financial and medical rights for LGBTQ+ couples.

The bill now goes to the Senate, which rarely rejects any legislation that passes the lower house, and then to the king for royal endorsement. This would make Thailand the first country or region in Southeast Asia to pass such a law and the third in Asia, after Taiwan and Nepal.

Danuphorn Punnakanta, a spokesperson of the governing Pheu Thai party and president of a committee overseeing the marriage equality bill, said in Parliament that the amendment is for "everyone in Thailand" regardless of their gender, and would not deprive heterosexual couples of any rights.

"For this law, we would like to return rights to the (LGBTQ+ group). We are not giving them rights. These are the fundamental rights that this group of people … has lost," he said.

Lawmakers, however, did not approve inclusion of the word "parent" in addition to "father and mother" in the law, which activists said would limit the rights of some LGBTQ+ couples to form a family and raise children.

Thailand has a reputation for acceptance and inclusivity but has struggled for decades to pass a marriage equality law.

The new government led by Pheu Thai, which took office last year, has made marriage equality one of its main goals.

 A TikTok video portraying a father and daughter, luxury cars and glamorous homes doesn’t seem out of the norm for the social media platform. But when that father is a former defense minister of Ukraine, and an AI voice-over falsely claims he misused Western funds to fund a lavish lifestyle, the TikTok is a “breadcrumb” to a massive Russian disinformation investigation, experts say.  

 “What started as a following some breadcrumbs on a handful of TikTok accounts, ended up becoming this massive investigation into what must have been a very sizable information operation,” Andy Carvin, senior fellow and managing editor of the Atlantic Council Digital Forensic Research Lab, told Scripps News.   

Ultimately, the false TikTok video was disseminated across thousands of fake TikTok accounts, according to a new report by the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRL) on Russia’s disinformation campaigns. In many cases, it was the only post on these accounts. It included old photos of former Ukraine defense minister Oleksii Reznikov and his daughter, Anastasiia Shteingauz. The fake video also used images traced back to real estate listings of, at the time, unpurchased property, according to the DFRL.  

 “It's one thing to see a bunch of people talking about a politician and accusing them of corruption. Partisan conversations happen all the time online. But once you start seeing a similar narrative popping up again and again,” Carvin said, “well, our Spidey sense goes off when those things happen.”  

 That suspicion led to what Carvin called a “network” of TikTok accounts attempting to send a clear message.  

“The whole lot of them, when combined, clearly had a shared message of trying to convince the public that the Ukrainian government is corrupt, and they can't be trusted,” Carvin told Scripps News.

That “lot” amounted to nearly 13,000 TikTok accounts, which had a combined total of over 800,000 followers. The videos gained hundreds of thousands of views.  

A TikTok spokesperson told Scripps News the company was aware of these fake accounts before the DFRL investigation and removed them from the platform.    

“It was the largest information operation that they had ever seen on the platform. And their investigation concluded it was coming from Russia,” Carvin said. 

With over a billion users, 13,000 accounts on TikTok are a drop in the bucket. But in the realm of disinformation, this network is valuable. 

"The fact that Russia has determined that the network is valuable enough as a mass medium platform that they invested all of this time, quite probably a lot of money as well to create these accounts.”

TikTok isn’t the only battlefield in Russia’s disinformation war, Carvin said. Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube and Telegram are all parts of Russia’s ever-expanding information war which seeks to discourage support for Ukraine — especially from Western countries like the United States. 

SEE MORE: Russian intelligence controls warlord's disinformation empire with AI

“Battles are no longer purely won on physical battlefields. There are cultural and informational battlefields taking place, constantly. And they're taking place everywhere, even in places where there's no war going on,” Carvin said. 

This information attack on Ukraine isn’t new, according to the DFRL’s report. What’s different is that these campaigns are no longer just targeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky but also government officials, military figures, and local authorities.  

And the battle strategies have evolved. 

Russia’s disinformation campaign has gone a step further since the war in Ukraine: cloning legitimate and trusted news websites.   

“You just copy and paste the website, from the original version, make some adjustments to it, and drop in whatever messaging you want, that you're trying to convince the public,” Carvin said. 

In what is commonly referred to as Operation Doppelganger or the Doppelganger Campaign, which began in 2022, bad actors use this technique “to just add that extra layer of credibility to their messages,” Carvin said.   

"All it takes is people to start sharing a link without thinking very hard,” he added. 

Another technique combines these strategies, using fake social media videos and impersonating news websites. Through videos shared on X pretending to be from the BBC, pro-Russian social media sources amplified false allegations that Ukraine re-sold weapons to drug cartels and terrorist groups like Hamas. The BBC denied any involvement with the falsified video.  

“Russia has a fascinating strategy when it comes to posting propaganda disinformation and the like,” Carvin said. “They don't embrace quality. Their goal isn't to make the perfect deep fake or the perfect lie. They would rather throw as much spaghetti as possible at the wall and see what sticks.” 

“Because part of the role of these campaigns is to confuse the public to the point where they truly believe nothing anymore,” he added.   

Russia's information war against Ukraine remained in full swing this week after Russian President Vladimir Putin recently claimed without proof Ukraine was involved in the terror attack outside Moscow last week.  

Carvin said Russia is in the anti-Ukraine disinformation war “for a long haul.” That long game is currently playing out in the US where there is growing partisan dividing line over continuing aid to Ukraine.    

“From Russia's perspective, all they have to do is wear down enough of the public and enough policymakers around the world that things shift away from some countries and individuals supporting Ukraine.”

U.S. and Israeli defense officials are meeting at the Pentagon on Tuesday for tense talks over how Israel is responding to Hamas in Gaza.

The U.S. continues to advocate against an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza, where Israel says defeating Hamas would require going into the city. International concerns are growing over humanitarian conditions in the region, and U.S. officials say they are still concerned that fighting could endanger civilians.

“There are ways to go about addressing the threat of Hamas, while also taking into account civilian safety. A lot of those are from lessons, our own lessons, conducting operations in urban environments,” said Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said before the Tuesday meeting officials would discuss alternate options to fighting Hamas in Rafah, reducing civilian casualties and increasing aid deliveries.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel would discuss ways to defeat Hamas and return the remaining hostages held in Gaza.

Gallant said Israel and the U.S. would highlight cooperation to "ensure Israel's military edge and capabilities."

SEE MORE: Netanyahu cancels diplomats' visit to US over UN cease-fire vote

The meeting comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled a planned delegation to the U.S. in response to a U.N. Security Council vote that called for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza during Ramadan. The U.S. abstained from the vote rather than directly vetoing the resolution.

Local health officials say more than 32,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza since Israel launched its offensive, which was in response to terrorist attacks by Hamas in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 that killed more than 1,200.

Hamas still holds around 100 hostages taken during the attacks and the remains of 30 more who have died in captivity.

Next time you're complaining about the snail's pace of a construction project in your neighborhood, just think about the Barcelonians who have been waiting over 140 years for the completion of a church. 

But the wait may soon come to an end as officials of the Sagrada Família basilica have announced that its construction, which started in 1882, will reach completion by 2026. 

“So, the beginning of the final stage of construction kicked off with the completion of the towers of the Evangelists (November 2023), and work is currently under way on the Chapel of the Assumption and the tower of Jesus Christ. The Chapel of the Assumption is expected to be finished in 2025, and the tower of Jesus Christ in 2026,” Catholic Church officials said in a press release. 

Nestled in Barcelona's Eixample Right district, the Sagrada Família captivates tourists worldwide. In 2023, it saw 4,707,367 visitors, with 85% coming from outside the city, and nearly 20% were Americans, Church officials stated. 

Five generations have walked by this construction that was originally designed by renowned Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi. When the construction finally comes to an end, the Sagrada Família will become the world's tallest cathedral and will have a total of 18 towers, symbolizing the 12 Apostles, the Virgin Mary, the four Evangelists, and Jesus Christ, with the Jesus Christ tower being the tallest at 172.5 meters (about 565 feet), the Church states.

All that to say ... makes your wait feel like a breeze, doesn't it?

 A British court ruled Tuesday that Julian Assange can’t immediately be extradited to the United States on espionage charges, in a partial victory for the WikiLeaks founder.

Two High Court judges said they would grant Assange a new appeal unless U.S. authorities give further assurances about what will happen to him. The ruling means the legal saga, which has dragged on for more than a decade, will continue.

The case has been adjourned until May 20.

Judges Victoria Sharp and Jeremy Johnson said that if no assurances are filed by the U.S., they will grant Assange permission to appeal extradition on grounds including breach of freedom of expression, and because he might receive the death penalty.

“If assurances are not given then we will grant leave to appeal without a further hearing," they said. "If assurances are given then we will give the parties an opportunity to make further submissions before we make a final decision on the application for leave to appeal.”

SEE MORE: Ex-CIA employee sentenced 40 years for sharing secrets with Wikileaks

During a two-day hearing in the High Court in February, Assange’s lawyer Edward Fitzgerald said American authorities were seeking to punish him for WikiLeaks’ “exposure of criminality on the part of the U.S. government on an unprecedented scale,” including torture and killings.

Assange’s supporters have argued he is a journalist protected by the First Amendment who exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan that was in the public interest. They have argued his prosecution is politically motivated and he can’t get a fair trial in the U.S.

The U.S. government said Assange’s actions went beyond journalism by soliciting, stealing and indiscriminately publishing classified government documents that endangered innocent lives.

The judges rejected six of Assange's nine grounds of appeal, but said they would grant appeal on three issues: freedom of speech, Assange's claim that he faces disadvantage because he is not a U.S. citizen, and the risk he could receive the death penalty.

U.S. authorities have promised Assange would not receive capital punishment, but the judges said it is “conceivable that the assurance might be interpreted narrowly by the respondent, so as not to preclude the imposition of the death penalty.”

SEE MORE: Wikileaks' Assange may be a suicide risk if sent to US

Assange, 52, an Australian computer expert, has been indicted in the U.S. on charges over Wikileaks’ publication in 2010 of hundreds of thousands of classified documents.

Prosecutors say he conspired with U.S. army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a Pentagon computer and release secret diplomatic cables and military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Assange faces 17 espionage counts and one charge of computer misuse. If convicted, his lawyers say he could receive a prison term of up to 175 years, though American authorities have said any sentence is likely to be much lower.

Assange’s wife and supporters say his physical and mental health have suffered during more than a decade of legal battles, including seven years in self-exile in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and the last five years in a high-security prison on the outskirts of the British capital.

False posts of bed bugs infesting Europe, false reports about abduction and a false investigation into President Joe Biden all bare the trademarks of Russian disinformation.

Disinformation expert Darren Linvill is closely monitoring one Russian operation slyly named FBI. 

"The FBI stands for the Foundation for Battling Injustice," says Linvill, the co-director of the Watt Family Innovation Center Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University. "And it's a front organization operating out of Russia that works to launder stories and launder narratives into Western conversations in France, Germany. And the United States."

Archived pages of the fake Russian site show its founder was Vladimir Putin's so-called chef, Yevgeny Prigozhin. He rose from selling hot dogs to catering for the Kremlin to leading mercenaries around the world with the Wagner Group, before leading a mutiny against Russian authority last year. He died when the plane he was on exploded in mid-air. Putin said fragments of hand grenades were found in the bodies of the dead.

Prigozhin also founded an infamous Russian troll farm that generated fake personas on social media in a mission to influence American elections.

SEE MORE: Suspects charged in Russia concert hall attack that killed over 130

After his death, the U.S. thought his disinformation network was shut down. But Scripps News has learned his sprawling disinformation empire never stopped. Russian intelligence services have taken control, a State Department official told Scripps News. And now, the official says Russians are using Artificial Intelligence to amplify their reach.

"Mostly what this AI is doing is creating camouflage for these operations. It's taking real stories and rewriting them into just a different version of that real story that you didn't know came from Fox News or CNN or any of the pages that they might be stealing from," says Linvill. 

That work is evident through notes left in the text. 

"You'll find these mistakes," Linvill said. "There will be a note. It says, 'Note: This AI has done x, y, and z.' ... They've actually told the AI to be cynical, to be cynical regarding American politics, to undermine U.S. institutions, and to support Putin." 

The Russians have also begun using AI-driven Chat GPT to generate fake reader comments on fake articles in Latin America, a U.S. official tells Scripps News. The goal, in these early stages, has been to amplify content.

Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab researcher Roman Osadchuk has been digging deep into yet another Russian use of AI. 

"What I am seeing is that AI is actually narrating the messages," he told Scripps News. "A regular AI, a robo-voice that allows Russians to avoid detection." 

Recently, mainstream Russian media outlets and social media accounts promoted a false report that King Charles had died including a fake press release from Buckingham Palace. Scripps News has learned the disinformation network founded by the late mercenary Prigozhin has a long-standing fixation with the royal family.

"The Prigozhin network has for years loved to talk about the royal family," Linvill says. "I think that they see the royal family as a tool, a tool to get people's attention, a tool to insert their own ideas into ongoing conversations."

That's how Russian disinformation can continue to sow confusion.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has canceled a high-level delegation's planned visit to Washington after the U.S. decided not to use its veto power and instead abstained from Monday’s U.N. Security Council demand for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.

The U.S. has previously vetoed three resolutions calling for a Gaza cease-fire.

The resolution, which passed 14-0, calls for a cease-fire during the ongoing Muslim holy month of Ramadan. It also demands the release of all hostages taken captive during Hamas’ Oct. 7 surprise attack in southern Israel. However, the measure does not link that demand to its call for a cease-fire.

International aid officials say the entire population of the Gaza Strip — 2.3 million people — is suffering from food insecurity and that famine is imminent in the hard-hit north.

More than 32,000 people have been killed in the territory, and more than 74,000 wounded, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its counts. It says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead.

Some 1,200 people were killed on Oct. 7 when Palestinian militants launched a surprise attack out of Gaza, triggering the war, and abducted another 250 people. Hamas is still believed to be holding some 100 Israelis hostage, as well as the remains of 30 others.

SEE MORE: UN demands cease-fire in Gaza during Muslim holy month of Ramadan

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the response by Israel to the U.N. resolution was surprising. “We’re kind of perplexed by this,” he said.

He said the Israelis were “choosing to create a perception of daylight here when they don’t need to do that.”

According to a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the talks, American officials were in touch with Israel throughout the weekend to make the U.S. position known on the Security Council resolution, and to articulate that it was not a change in policy or in support for Israel. The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive discussions.

Netanyahu did not talk to President Biden before he canceled the delegation’s trip, and President Biden doesn’t have any immediate plans to phone Netanyahu, the official said.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was set to meet with U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and others Monday in Washington where discussions would continue. The U.S. official said the plan by Israel to enter Rafah was not imminent and there would still be time for ongoing talks — despite the canceled trip.

Eytan Gilboa, an expert on U.S.-Israel relations at Bar Ilan University, said Netanyahu’s decision to cancel the diplomatic delegation to the United States was a mistake and demonstrates the tension between the U.S. and Israel at this moment.

Gilboa said President Biden is trying to placate voices within the Democratic party that oppose his support of Israel, while Netanyahu is trying to show his ability to stand up to American policies he considers anti-Israel.

“If domestic considerations are dominating decision making in the war, you have very harsh exchanges of rhetoric,” he said.

The United Nations Security Council on Monday demanded a cease-fire in Gaza during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, its first demand to halt fighting.

The United States abstained on the resolution, which also demanded the release of all hostages taken captive during Hamas’ Oct. 7 surprise attack in southern Israel. But the measure does not link that demand to the cease-fire during Ramadan, which ends April 9.

The vote comes after Russia and China vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution Friday that would have supported “an immediate and sustained cease-fire” in the Israeli-Hamas conflict.

The United States warned that the resolution approved on Monday could hurt negotiations to halt hostilities by the U.S., Egypt and Qatar, raising the possibility of another veto, this time by the Americans.

The resolution, put forward by the 10 elected council members, is backed by Russia and China and the 22-nation Arab Group at the United Nations.

A statement issued Friday night by the Arab Group appealed to all 15 council members “to act with unity and urgency” and vote for the resolution “to halt the bloodshed, preserve human lives and avert further human suffering and destruction.”

“It is long past time for a cease-fire,” the Arab Group said.

Because Ramadan ends next month, the cease-fire demand would last for just two weeks, though the draft says the pause in fighting should lead “to a permanent sustainable cease-fire.”

SEE MORE: Palestinians describe Israel's ongoing raid at Gaza's main hospital

Since the start of the war, the Security Council has adopted two resolutions on the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza, but none has called for a cease-fire.

More than 32,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed during the fighting, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The agency does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count, but says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead.

Gaza also faces a dire humanitarian emergency, with a report from an international authority on hunger warning March 18 that “famine is imminent” in northern Gaza and that escalation of the war could push half of the territory’s 2.3 million people to the brink of starvation.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the council Friday that the resolution’s text “fails to support sensitive diplomacy in the region. Worse, it could actually give Hamas an excuse to walk away from the deal on the table.”

“We should not move forward with any resolution that jeopardizes the ongoing negotiations,” she said, warning that if the diplomacy isn’t supported, “we may once again find this council deadlocked.”

“I truly hope that that does not come about,” Thomas-Greenfield said.

SEE MORE: US doctor recounts 'heartbreaking' mission for kids in northern Gaza

The United States has vetoed three resolutions demanding a cease-fire in Gaza, the most recent an Arab-backed measure on Feb. 20. That resolution was supported by 13 council members with one abstention, reflecting the overwhelming support for a cease-fire.

Russia and China vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution in late October calling for pauses in the fighting to deliver aid, the protection of civilians and a halt to arming Hamas. They said it did not reflect global calls for a cease-fire.

They again vetoed the U.S. resolution Friday, calling it ambiguous and saying it was not the direct demand to end the fighting that much of the world seeks.

The vote became another showdown involving world powers that are locked in tense disputes elsewhere, with the United States taking criticism for not being tough enough against its ally Israel, even as tensions between the two countries rise.

A key issue was the unusual language in the U.S. draft. It said the Security Council “determines the imperative of an immediate and sustained cease-fire.” The phrasing was not a straightforward “demand” or “call” to halt hostilities.

Before the vote, Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said Moscow supports an immediate cease-fire, but he criticized the diluted language, which he called philosophical wording that does not belong in a U.N. resolution.

He accused U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield of “deliberately misleading the international community” about calling for a cease-fire.

“This was some kind of an empty rhetorical exercise,” Nebenzia said. “The American product is exceedingly politicized, the sole purpose of which is to help to play to the voters, to throw them a bone in the form of some kind of a mention of a cease-fire in Gaza … and to ensure the impunity of Israel, whose crimes in the draft are not even assessed.”

SEE MORE: UN report says 'famine is imminent' in northern Gaza

China’s U.N. ambassador, Zhang Jun, said the U.S. proposal set preconditions and fell far short of expectations of council members and the broader international community.

“If the U.S. was serious about a cease-fire, it wouldn’t have vetoed time and again multiple council resolutions,” he said. “It wouldn’t have taken such a detour and played a game of words while being ambiguous and evasive on critical issues.”

Friday’s vote in the 15-member council was 11 members in favor and three against, including Algeria, the Arab representative on the council. There was one abstention, from Guyana.

After the vote, Thomas-Greenfield accused Russia and China of vetoing the resolution for “deeply cynical reasons,” saying they could not bring themselves to condemn Hamas’ terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, which the resolution would have done for the first time.

A second “petty” reason, she said, is that “Russia and China simply did not want to vote for a resolution that was penned by the United States, because it would rather see us fail than to see this council succeed.” She accused Russia of again putting “politics over progress” and having “the audacity and hypocrisy to throw stones” after launching an unwarranted invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The resolution did reflect a shift by the United States, which has found itself at odds with much of the world as even allies of Israel push for an unconditional end to fighting.

In previous resolutions, the U.S. has closely intertwined calls for a cease-fire with demands for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza. This resolution, using wording that’s open to interpretation, continued to link the two issues, but not as firmly.

Space weather forecasters have issued a geomagnetic storm watch through Monday, saying an ouburst of plasma from a solar flare could interfere with radio transmissions on Earth. It could also make for great aurora viewing.

There's no reason for the public to be concerned, according to the alert issued Saturday by NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.

The storm could interrupt high-frequency radio transmissions, such as by aircraft trying to communicate with distant traffic control towers. Most commercial aircraft can use satellite transmission as backup, said Jonathan Lash, a forecaster at the center.

SEE MORE: 40 mice will be sent to space to help with macular degeneration study

Satellite operators might have trouble tracking their spacecraft, and power grids could also see some “induced current” in their lines, though nothing they can't handle, he said.

“For the general public, if you have clear skies at night and you are at higher latitudes, this would be a great opportunity to see the skies light up,” Lash said.

Every 11 years, the sun's magnetic field flips, meaning its north and south poles switch positions. Solar activity changes during that cycle, and it's now near its most active, called the solar maximum.

During such times, geomagnetic storms of the type that arrived Sunday can hit Earth a few times a year, Lash said. During solar minimum, a few years may pass between storms.

In December, the biggest solar flare in years disrupted radio communications.

European Union regulators opened investigations into Apple, Google and Meta on Monday, in the first cases under a sweeping new law designed to stop Big Tech companies from cornering digital markets that took effect earlier this month.

The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc's executive arm, said it was investigating the companies for "non-compliance" with the Digital Markets Act.

The Digital Markets Act is a broad rulebook that targets Big Tech "gatekeeper" companies providing "core platform services" by forcing them to comply with a set of do's and don'ts, under threat of hefty financial penalties or even breaking up businesses. The rules have the broad but vague goal of making digital markets "fairer" and "more contestable" by breaking up closed tech ecosystems that lock consumers into a single company's products or services.

The commission said in a press release that it "suspects that the measures put in place by these gatekeepers fall short of effective compliance of their obligations under the DMA."

It's looking into whether Google and Apple are fully complying with the DMA's rules requiring tech companies to allow app developers to direct users to offers available outside their app stores. The commission said it's concerned the two companies are imposing "various restrictions and limitations" including charging fees that prevent apps from freely promoting offers.

Google is also facing scrutiny for not complying with DMA provisions that prevent tech giants from giving preference to their own services over rivals. The commission said it is concerned Google's measures will result in third-party services listed on Google's search results page not being treated "in a fair and non-discriminatory manner."

The commission is also investigating whether Apple is doing enough to allow iPhone users to easily change web browsers. It's also looking into Meta's option for users to pay a monthly fee for ad-free versions of Facebook or Instagram so they can avoid having their personal data used to target them with online ads.

"The Commission is concerned that the binary choice imposed by Meta's 'pay or consent' model may not provide a real alternative in case users do not consent, thereby not achieving the objective of preventing the accumulation of personal data by gatekeepers," it said.

SEE MORE: DOJ sues Apple in sweeping antitrust suit over iPhone monopoly in US

Three of the four suspects charged with carrying out the concert hall attack in Moscow that killed more than 130 people admitted guilt for the incident in a Russian court Sunday.

Moscow's Basmanny District Court formally charged Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, 32; Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, 30; Mukhammadsobir Faizov, 19; and Shamsidin Fariduni, 25, with committing a group terrorist attack resulting in the death of others. The offense carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

The court ordered that the men, all of whom are citizens of Tajikistan, be held in pre-trial custody until May 22.

Mirzoyev, Rachabalizoda and Shamsidin Fariduni all admitted guilt after being charged. The fourth, Faizov, was brought to court directly from a hospital in a wheelchair and sat with his eyes closed throughout the proceedings. He was attended by medics while in court, where he wore a hospital gown and trousers and was seen with multiple cuts.

The other three suspects appeared in court heavily bruised with swollen faces amid reports in Russian media that they were tortured during interrogation by the security services.

One suspect, Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, had a heavily bandaged ear. Russian media reported Saturday that one of the suspects had his ear cut off during interrogation. The Associated Press couldn't verify the report or the videos which purported to show this.

The hearing came as Russia observed a national day of mourning, following the attack Friday on the suburban Crocus City Hall concert venue that killed at least 137 people.

The attack, which has been claimed by an affiliate of the Islamic State group, is the deadliest on Russian soil in years.

Russian authorities arrested the four suspected attackers Saturday, with seven more people detained on suspicion of involvement in the attack, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an address to the nation Saturday night. He claimed they were captured while fleeing to Ukraine, something that Kyiv firmly denied.

SEE MORE: Russia detains suspects in concert hall attack that killed over 115