Gulfnews

Australia, Britain, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore have agreed to stage more complex military drills in the region this year involving drones, fifth-generation fighter planes and surveillance aircraft.The announcement yesterday by defence ministers from members of the 53-year old Five Power Defence Arrangement (FPDA) on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue defence meeting in Singapore comes as the tempo of military exercises in Asia increases along with tensions between global powers.“We are increasing the assets that we are bringing to bear in exercises so (at) Bersama Lima later this year, for the first time, Australia will be contributing F-35 Joint Strike Fighters,” said Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles.Bersama Lima, “Five Together” in the Malay language, is an annual military exercise held by the five powers. It was held last year in Malaysia.Marles said running more complicated exercises were an example of increasing ambition in the ag...

Soaring temperatures in India’s capital have proven to be too much for some courts and are putting to the test a law in place since 1961 that requires lawyers to wear heavy black robes and coats.At least three High Courts have permitted lawyers to discard the robes and coats for the summer, although the Supreme Court is being urged to make it a general rule for all lawyers in the country.Judges at one New Delhi court postponed a case this week until later in the year, complaining about a lack of air conditioning and water supply.While India’s Supreme Court and most high courts have air conditioning, many lower courts and consumer forums depend on fans and have poor ventilation.New Delhi recorded temperatures of around 50C for the first time this week, forcing authorities to restrict water supply, shut schools and set up heatstroke units at hospitals.They have also deployed paramedics to polling stations for the final day of India’s massive general election today in case any voters fall...

A third US dairy worker tested positive for bird flu after exposure to infected cows, and was the first to suffer respiratory problems, US officials said yesterday. The infection was the second human case in Michigan, which has confirmed more cases of bird flu in cattle than any other state. It also expands the symptoms for human cases, after the two workers who previously tested positive experienced only conjunctivitis, or pink eye, and recovered. source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/683704/international/bird-flu-infects-3rd-us-dairy-worker

Teams of robots jostled on a miniature artificial soccer pitch as androids answered trivia questions and took jabs at human ignorance yesterday at an artificial intelligence (AI) summit on the technology’s wide-ranging uses.Organisers said the AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva showed the ways the technology could improve and even transform lives.“Sometimes we think about AI as just something big,” said Tomas Lamanauskas, deputy secretary-general of the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) which staged the event. “At the same time AI can be embedded in so many more things in everyday life ... whether it’s for flood forecasting, disaster management and early-warning systems, in agriculture, in health. It’s across the board.”Displays showed off prosthetic limbs that could learn from a user’s behaviour and adapt to muscle activity, devices to help visually impaired people avoid obstacles in the street and bionic cats and dogs built to act as companions.The football-playing ro...

More than two months of gruelling and acrimonious campaigning in India’s general election that played out in sweltering heat ended yesterday, two days before the final phase of polling, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency will cast its votes.India began voting in seven phases in the world’s largest election on April 19 and it is set to conclude on June 1. Votes will be counted on June 4 although television channels conduct exit polls and project results after voting ends.Modi, who is seeking a record-equalling third straight term and is widely expected to win, began his re-election campaign by focusing on his achievements over the last 10 years but soon switched to mostly targeting the opposition by accusing them of favouring India’s minority Muslims.This change of tack, analysts said, was likely aimed at firing up his Hindu nationalist base after a low turnout in the first phase sparked concerns that supporters of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were not voting.India’s e...

The UK Parliament was formally dissolved on Thursday ahead of the July 4 general election.Five weeks of campaigning officially began as 650 seats of members of parliament (MPs) became vacant in line with the electoral schedule.UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made surprise decision last week calling for a snap general election.Some 129 MPs have so far announced that they will not be standing for re-election. Among them are 77 Conservatives, an unprecedented exodus for a governing party. source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/683656/international/uk-parliament-dissolved-ahead-of-election

South African voters queued — many of them for hours — to cast their ballots yesterday in a landmark general election that leaves the ruling ANC fighting to protect its three-decade-long exclusive grip on power.More than 27mn voters are registered for the most uncertain poll since the African National Congress (ANC) led the nation out of apartheid rule, but with voting delayed in many districts, some were forced to wait.With opposition challenges from both the left and right, unemployment and crime at near record levels and a new generation growing up with no memory of the struggle against white-minority rule, the ruling party may lose its absolute majority and be forced to share power.The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) said it projected turnout to go “well beyond” the 66 percent recorded in the last election in 2019.“We are experiencing a late surge and are processing a large number of voters” in big cities, IEC’s head Sy Mamabolo told a press conference.Thousands of South Afr...

France and Germany’s leaders said on Tuesday Ukraine should be allowed to hit military sites inside Russia from which missiles were being fired at Ukrainian territory, but not other targets.Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the West earlier in the day that Nato members in Europe were playing with fire by proposing to let Ukraine use Western-supplied weapons to strike inside Russia, which he said could trigger a global conflict.“We support Ukraine and we don’t want escalation, that hasn’t changed,” French President Emmanuel Macron said at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Meseberg, Germany.“We think we should allow them to neutralise military sites from which missiles are fired, military sites from which Ukraine is attacked, but we shouldn’t allow them to hit other targets in Russia and civilian or other military sites in Russia.”Scholz said he agreed with Macron and that as long as Ukraine respected the conditions given by countries that supplied the w...

Thousands of Georgians rallied on Tuesday outside parliament after ruling party MPs adopted a divisive “foreign influence” law, overcoming a presidential veto on the bill despite Western warnings the move could jeopardise the country’s path to the European Union.The law, which critics have compared to repressive Russian legislation used to silence dissent, forces groups receiving at least 20% of funding from abroad to register as “organisations pursuing the interests of a foreign power.”The proposal has drawn fierce opposition from Western governments including the United States, which said the measure risked “stifling” freedom of expression in the Black Sea Caucasus nation.Brussels warned the measure was “incompatible” with the ex-Soviet republic’s longstanding bid for EU membership, which is enshrined in the country’s constitution and supported — according to opinion polls — by more than 80% of the population. Lawmakers voted 84 to 4 to pass the bill on Tuesday, after overriding pro-...

Torrential rains brought by cyclone Remal caused a stone quarry to collapse in India’s northeastern state of Mizoram, killing 12 people and trapping seven, while 11 more died in landslides and other accidents elsewhere in the remote region, officials said.Rescue workers on the outskirts of Mizoram’s state capital of Aizawl used heavy-duty excavators to cut through stone slabs while battling heavy rain and loose soil at the site, said the state’s Chief Minister Lalduhoma.“There is a continuous flow of soil and mud making matters more difficult,” he said, adding that rescue operations were hampered by the onset of the night.The powerful cyclone had weakened into a depression after devastating regional coastlines the previous day, when it killed at least 16 and cut power to millions in parts of eastern India and neighbouring Bangladesh.“There have been incessant rains in the wake of cyclone Remal, which led to the quarry collapse,” a state disaster management official in Mizoram said, spe...

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced the destruction of a drone over the Red Sea.US forces destroyed a drone over the Red Sea that had been launched from an area in Yemen controlled by the Houthis, CENTCOM said in a statement, stressing that these drones represent an imminent threat to both coalition forces and commercial ships in the region.Washington leads an international maritime coalition with the aim of 'protecting' maritime navigation in this strategic region, through which 12 percent of global trade passes. source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/683497/international/us-central-command-destroys-drone-over-red-sea

Temperatures rose above 52 degrees Celsius (125.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in Pakistan’s southern province of Sindh, the highest reading of the summer and close to the country’s record high amid an ongoing heatwave, the met office said on Monday.Extreme temperatures throughout Asia over the past month were made worse most likely as a result of human-driven climate change, a team of international scientists have said.In Mohenjo Daro, a town in Sindh known for archaeological sites that date back to the Indus Valley Civilisation built in 2500 BC, temperatures rose as high as 52.2C (126F) over the last 24 hours, a senior official of the Pakistan Meteorological Department, Shahid Abbas told Reuters.The reading is the highest of the summer so far, and approached the town’s and country’s record highs of 53.5C (128.3F) and 54C (129.2F) respectively.Mohenjo Daro is a small town that experiences extremely hot summers and mild winters, and low rainfall, but its limited markets, including bakeries, tea...

Spain on Monday pledged €1bn in military aid to Ukraine as Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a security deal here.The deal “includes a commitment for €1bn in military aid for 2024,” Sanchez told a joint news conference “It will allow Ukraine to boost its capabilities including its essential air defence systems to protect its civilians, cities and infrastructure which are still suffering indiscriminate attacks as seen this weekend in Kharkiv,” he said, referring to a Russian strike on the northeastern city that killed at least 16 people.Zelensky’s visit comes as Ukraine has been battling a Russian ground offensive in the Kharkiv region which began on May 10 in Moscow’s biggest territorial advance in 18 months. With the Russian assault now in its third year, Ukraine has been pleading for more weapons for its outgunned and outnumbered troops, notably seeking help to address its lack of air defence systems. Sanchez said Spain had already pledged...

An intense cyclone smashed into the low-lying coast of Bangladesh yesterday, with nearly a million people fleeing inland for concrete storm shelters away from howling gales and crashing waves.“The severe Cyclone Remal has started crossing the Bangladesh coast,” Bangladesh Meteorological Department director Azizur Rahman said, adding the raging storm could continue hammering the coast until at least the early hours of today morning.“We have so far recorded maximum wind speeds of 90kms per hour, but the wind speed may pick up more pace.”Forecasters predicted gusts of up to 130kms per hour, with heavy rain and winds also lashing neighbouring India.Authorities have raised the danger signal to its highest level. Cyclones have killed hundreds of thousands of people in Bangladesh in recent decades, but the number of superstorms hitting its densely populated coast has increased sharply, from one a year to as many as three, due to the impact of climate change.“The cyclone could unleash a storm ...

Indian voters braved temperatures of nearly 45° Celsius (113° Fahrenheit) in parts of the country as they headed on Saturday to polling stations in the penultimate phase of the world’s largest election.More than 111mn people in 58 constituencies across eight states and federal territories are eligible to vote in the general election’s sixth phase, which recorded turnout of 49.2% at 3pm, with three hours of polling left.The overall turnout in the same phase of the last election in 2019 was about 63%.Among those casting their ballots early on Saturday in the capital New Delhi was Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition Congress party and the main rival of Prime Minister Narendra Modi – whose Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is expected to win a third consecutive term.Gandhi was accompanied by his mother, Sonia Gandhi, and sister, Priyanka Vadra.A son, grandson and great-grandson of former prime ministers, Gandhi paused after voting to take a selfie with his mother Sonia but ...

Russia on Saturday bombed a hardware superstore in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, killing four people and wounding 38, Ukraine officials said, in an attack condemned as “vile” by President Volodymyr Zelensky. Kharkiv regional governor Oleg Synegubov said “unfortunately there are already four dead” and “38 wounded” after two guided Russian bombs hit the store. Two of those killed “were men who worked in the hypermarket,” Synegubov said earlier in a video posted on Telegram. “The number of wounded has gone up to 35 people,” Kharkiv’s mayor, Igor Terekhov, posted on Telegram. Thick black smoke billowed from the gutted building of the Epitsentr DIY superstore in the northeastern outskirts of the city, as firefighters sprayed water on a blaze sparked by the strikes, an AFP journalist saw. The Epitsentr chain sells household and DIY goods. “As of now, we know that more than 200 people could have been inside the hypermarket,” Zelensky said on Telegram, condemning the daylight attack o...

G7 finance ministers cited “progress” in finding ways to use profits from frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine as they wrapped up a meeting on Saturday, envisioning a concrete proposal to present to a leaders’ summit next month. A search for creative yet legally sound solutions was top of the agenda at the two-day Group of Seven meeting in Stresa, northern Italy, as Kyiv continues its urgent appeals for more funds from Western allies in its third year of war with Russia. “We are making progress in our discussions on potential avenues to bring forward the extraordinary profits stemming from immobilised Russian sovereign assets to the benefit of Ukraine, consistent with international law and our respective legal systems,” the ministers said in a final statement. They hope to present a proposal that is “defined in all its dimensions” to G7 leaders ahead of a summit in Puglia, southern Italy, on June 13-15, Italian Finance Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti said during a press conference on Sat...

At least nine people have died of suspected heat stroke in India’s western state of Rajasthan, media said on Friday, with temperatures expected to soar further amid predictions of a severe heat wave.Searing heat in the country’s north has been a cause of concern during a mammoth general election, and the capital, New Delhi, is set to vote today in temperatures forecast to be around 45 degrees C.India’s summer temperatures often peak in May, but scientists have predicted more heatwave days than usual this year, largely caused by fewer non-monsoon thundershowers and an active but weakening El Nino weather phenomenon.At least nine deaths in Rajasthan were suspected to have resulted from people falling sick in the sweltering heat, local media said.The state’s disaster management officials said they had yet to ascertain the cause, as medical examinations were not complete.The news comes after the city of Barmer in Rajasthan topped temperature charts this week with a record 48.8C on Thursday...

Half of Pakistan’s pupils will be shut out of schools for a week as the nation takes crisis measures to lessen the effect of a series of heatwaves, officials said yesterday.Some 26mn students will be out of lessons from tomorrow (Saturday) in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, which has ordered schools to close for the summer break one week early because of the soaring temperatures.The early closure was confirmed by a spokesperson for Punjab’s Education Department.Pakistan’s meteorological office has forecast three heatwaves – one already underway and two more set to hit in early and late June.Temperatures in Punjab are currently 6-8° Celsius above normal, the disaster management agency said, with the provincial capital Lahore due for 46C (111° Fahrenheit) at the weekend.The government’s Co-ordinator on Climate Change and Environment told journalists in Islamabad yesterday that “global warming is causing a sudden change in weather patterns”.Parts of Pakistan are facing power cu...

Kenyan President William Ruto vowed yesterday that his country’s upcoming deployment to Haiti will seek to crush gangs that have ravaged the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country.Ruto was speaking on a state visit to Washington alongside President Joe Biden, who saluted Kenya’s willingness to assist and promised that the United States would provide intelligence and equipment in hopes of stabilising its troubled southern neighbour.“Gangs and criminals do not have status. They have no religion,” Ruto told a White House news conference.He vowed that the international mission would “deal with them firmly, decisively, within the perimeters of the law”.Kenya and the other nations set to deploy to Haiti aim to “secure that country and to break the back of the gangs and the criminals that have visited untold suffering in that country”, Ruto said.Asked if the Kenyan deployment can succeed in defeating gangs that have plunged Haiti into near anarchy, Biden said: “Yes.”“This is a crisis. It’s able...

At least 17 Palestinians, including more than ten children, were martyred, and dozens were injured at dawn Thursday, after the Israeli occupation forces targeted two homes in the cities of Gaza and Rafah.Palestinian news agency (WAFA) reported that 16 Palestinians, including ten children, were martyred, and a number of citizens were injured following the occupation bombing of a house in Al-Daraj neighborhood in central Gaza City.A person was killed after the occupation forces targeted a house belonging to Al-Shaer family in Rafah, WAFA added.The occupation forces targeted, Thursday dawn, a house in Nuseirat Camp in the central Gaza Strip, leading to eight martyrs.The unprecedented Israeli occupation aggression against the Gaza Strip by sea, land and air has been continuing for 230 days, causing a complete humanitarian catastrophe embodied by tens of thousands of martyrs, wounded and missing persons, along with massive destruction of vital infrastructure and facilities. source https:/...

Norway, Ireland and Spain announced Wednesday they will recognise a Palestinian state from next week, highlighting the deep split over the issue within the EU as the Israel-Hamas war rages.The three nations hope other countries will follow, but France said that now was not the right moment for it to take that step -- yet Paris noted recognition was not 'taboo'.This announcement by prime ministers Jonas Gahr Store of Norway, Pedro Sanchez of Spain and Simon Harris of Ireland comes days after the International Criminal Court prosecutor said he would seek arrest warrants for Israel's prime minister and Hamas leaders.Sanchez, who has visited several nations to drum up support for recognition, said the move would reinforce efforts to revive a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict, which he said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was jeopardising with the Gaza offensive.Israel reacted with fury again, immediately recalling its envoys to the three nations....

The UN maritime court on Tuesday ruled in favour of nine small island states that brought a case to seek increased protection of the world’s oceans from catastrophic climate change.Finding that carbon emissions can be considered a sea pollutant, the court said countries had an obligation to take measures to mitigate their effects on oceans.The countries that brought the case called the court decision “historic”, and experts said it could be influential in shaping the scope of future climate litigation involving greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.“Anthropogenic GHG emissions into the atmosphere constitute pollution of the marine environment” under the international UNCLOS treaty, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) ruled in an expert opinion.Polluting countries therefore have “the specific obligation to take all measures necessary to ensure that...emissions under their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage by pollution to other states and their environment”, the ...

An infected blood scandal in Britain was no accident but the fault of doctors and a succession of governments that led to 3,000 deaths and thousands more contracting hepatitis or HIV, a public inquiry reported on Monday.Inquiry chair Brian Langstaff said more than 30,000 people received infected blood and blood products in the 1970s and 1980s from Britain’s state-funded National Health Service, destroying lives, dreams and families.The government hid the truth to “save face and to save expense”, he said, adding that the cover-up was “more subtle, more pervasive and more chilling in its implications” than any orchestrated conspiracy plot.Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said it was “a day of shame for the British state”.“The result of this inquiry should shake our nation to its core,” he said, adding that ministers and institutions had failed in the most “harrowing and devastating way”.“I want to make a wholehearted unequivocal apology for this terrible injustice,” he told parliament and prom...

The Apprentice, Iran-born director Ali Abbasi’s much-anticipated drama of a young Donald Trump’s ascendancy as a New York real estate mogul, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday.Part of the pull of the film is its timing, as Trump, now 77, looks to win another term as US president in November.The film shares its title with the reality show that helped turn Trump into a household name.Sebastian Stan, who made his name in the Captain America trilogy as the Winter Soldier, morphs into Trump, from his early stages as an upstart working for his father’s business to a brazen, self-centred tycoon.The story focuses on Trump’s time under the tutelage of Roy Cohn, a political fixer best known for his involvement in Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist scare campaigns of the 1950s and portrayed by Succession’s Jeremy Strong.His three rules for success, which Trump later takes credit for while speaking with the writer of his business advice book The Art of the Deal, are prescient of...

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico’s life was no longer in danger following an assassination attempt, Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kalinak said on Sunday.The suspected gunman appeared in court on Saturday after Fico was shot four times last Wednesday, leaving him fighting for his life at one stage.“He has emerged from the immediate threat to his life, but his condition remains serious and he requires intensive care,” Kalinak, Fico’s closest political ally, told reporters.The Slovak premier was shot as he was greeting supporters after a government meeting in the central town of Handlova. He underwent a five-hour operation on Wednesday and another on Friday at a hospital in the central city of Banska Bystrica.“We can consider his condition stable with a positive prognosis,” Kalinak said outside the hospital, adding that “we all feel a bit more relaxed now.”Kalinak added that Fico would stay at Banska Bystrica for the moment.The suspected gunman, identified by Slovak media as 71-year-old p...

After a nearly two year hiatus, Blue Origin flew adventurers to space yesterday, including a former Air Force pilot who was denied the chance to be the United States’ first black astronaut decades ago.It was the first crewed launch for the enterprise owned and founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos since a rocket mishap in 2022 left rival Virgin Galactic as the sole operator in the fledgling suborbital tourism market.Six people, including the sculptor Ed Dwight, who was on track to become the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa)’s first astronaut of colour in the 1960s before being controversially spurned, launched around 9.36am local time (1436 GMT) from the Launch Site One base in west Texas, a live feed showed.The passengers, also including a venture capitalist, were paying customers of Blue Origin’s space tourism business, though Dwight’s seat was sponsored by a space-focused nonprofit and a private foundation.Blue Origin has not disclosed how much it charges cust...

South Africa’s graft-tainted former president Jacob Zuma today will learn whether he can legally be barred from standing as a candidate in the country’s May 29 general election.The decision by the Constitutional Court could have deep implications on the result of the imminent vote, and observers fear violent unrest if the decision goes against Zuma.Zuma left office in 2018, dogged by corruption allegations, and was briefly jailed for contempt. He has since founded a party to challenge his successor Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC.The ANC has won every South African election since the country became a democracy in 1994, and Zuma served as the party’s fourth president between 2009 and 2018.But his era has come to symbolise the corruption allegations haunting the former anti-apartheid movement, and electoral authorities argue that Zuma’s 2021 conviction bars him from the ballot. Zuma and his new party, named uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK) after the ANC’s former armed wing, challenged that ruling, but their ...

Graft-tainted former South African president Jacob Zuma staged a huge election rally on Saturday, vowing to return to power despite a legal challenge to his candidacy.More than 30,000 supporters packed the Orlando Stadium in Soweto to hear their champion promise black South Africans more jobs and better wages.“When we reach the final destination nobody will be poor, or unemployed, we are going to be doing things for all of us,” the 82-year-old declared to cheers.The elderly party leader appeared tired as he arrived in the stadium, escorted by MK fighters in military fatigues and traditional Zulu warriors with spears and leopard skins.But he rallied as he stepped forward to speak, leading the crowd in revolutionary song and speaking for more than an hour before launching into another chorus.Between 2009 and 2018 Zuma served as a South Africa’s fourth president in the post-apartheid era and leader of the ruling African National Congress (ANC).But he left office under the shadow of a corr...

North Korea has test-fired a tactical ballistic missile equipped with a “new autonomous navigation system”, state media said on Saturday, with leader Kim Jong-un vowing to boost the country’s nuclear force.Kim oversaw the Friday test-launch into the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan, on a mission to evaluate the “accuracy and reliability of the autonomous navigation system”, Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.The launch was the latest in a string of ever more sophisticated tests by North Korea, which has fired off cruise missiles, tactical rockets and hypersonic weapons in recent months, in what the nuclear-armed, UN-sanctioned country says is a drive to upgrade its defences.The Friday launch came hours after leader Kim’s powerful sister Kim Yo Jong denied allegations by Seoul and Washington that Pyongyang is shipping weapons to Russia for use in its war in Ukraine.Seoul’s military on Friday described the test as “several flying objects presumed to be sh...

Two Palestinians were martyred in an Israeli airstrike on Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, early Saturday morning.According to the Palestinian news agency WAFA, Israeli aircraft targeted a house in central Rafah, resulting in the deaths of two Palestinians. Additionally, Israeli artillery targeted areas in the east and center of the city.The airstrikes extended to the Al Farahin area, east of Abasan Al Kabira town in Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Strip.Israeli forces continue their ground invasion of wide neighborhoods in Rafah, defying international warnings against attacking this densely populated city.The Israeli occupation persists in committing genocide in the Gaza Strip for the 225th consecutive day. This ongoing aggression includes dozens of air raids and artillery shelling across Gaza, resulting in the martyrdom of 35,303 Palestinians, the majority of whom are children and women. Additionally, 79,261 others have been injured. These numbers are not final, as thousands of v...

French marines patrolled on Friday the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia, which local authorities said was “calmer” after days of riots over voting reform that have left five dead and hundreds injured.Military and police “reinforcements will control areas that have got out of our hands in recent days”, said French high commissioner Louis Le Franc, the top state official in New Caledonia.Anger over France’s plan to impose new voting rules has spiralled into the deadliest violence in four decades in the archipelago of 270,000 people, which lies between Australia and Fiji – 17,000km from Paris.French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said on Thursday that about 1,000 extra security forces were being sent to New Caledonia – adding to the 1,700 already present.They began landing on Thursday at the French army-controlled La Tontouta International Airport and could be seen moving through the capital Noumea in red berets, toting rifles, gas masks and riot shields.France’s EFS blood supply a...

President Joe Biden launched a fresh bid on Friday to bolster support from African American voters, looking to seal up cracks in the Democratic coalition that carried him to victory over Republican Donald Trump in 2020.Biden visited the popular National Museum of African American History and Culture in downtown Washington and greeted his audience by declaring: “Black history is American history.”He and Vice-President Kamala Harris later will meet privately at the White House with the Divine Nine, a group of historically black sororities and fraternities.Harris joined one of those sororities, Alpha Kappa Alpha, when she attended Howard University.On Thursday, Biden met families who had relatives involved in the Supreme Court’s landmark May 17, 1954, Brown v. Board of Education ruling 70 years ago that led to the desegregation of schools.“We learn better when we learn together,” Biden said at the museum.This leads up to Biden’s commencement speech tomorrow at Morehouse College in Atlanta...

Four Palestinians were martyred and several others were injured at dawn Friday in an Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering refugees in the Nuseirat Camp in central Gaza Strip.Since Thursday evening, the occupation warplanes have launched a series of airstrikes targeting various parts across the Gaza Strip, simultaneously with artillery bombardment.Local sources reported that the occupation warplanes bombed a house in the Shatea Camp, west of Gaza City, and launched airstrikes on the central of Gaza City.Earlier, one Palestinians was martyred and two others were injured in Israeli shelling near Al-Awda Roundabout in the center of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip. The east of the city was also subjected to artillery shelling.Meanwhile, a number of Palestinians were injured in violent air raids launched by the occupation warplanes on the Jabalia Camp. The occupation artillery also bombed various areas in the northern Gaza Strip, and the forces blew up residential squares in the Jabalia C...