News Today

[celeste]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/


US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is making another visit to the Middle East - his fifth trip to the region since 7 October

His visit comes after the US said it carried out more strikes against Houthi missiles in Yemen on Sunday

The military said it had struck a land-attack cruise missile and four anti-ship missiles that "were prepared to launch against ships in the Red Sea"

That development followed joint US-UK strikes on Houthi targets - which the UK says were intended to stop the Houthis' attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea

It follows continued attacks by the Iran-backed group in the Red Sea on military and commercial ships which it says are linked to Israel

The US also says it is planning more strikes on Iran-linked targets, in response to the drone attack in Jordan which killed three US troops more than a week ago

But Iran says the accusations it was involved are "baseless". The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an Iran-backed militia, claimed

responsibility.

[celeste]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-  UNRWALet's head back to the Gaza Strip itself now. An aid lorry waiting to carry food into north of the enclave has been "hit by Israeli naval gunfire", according to the UN's relief agency for Palestinians.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), UNRWA director Thomas White says "thankfully no one was injured" in the alleged attack.
Photos accompanying the post show a lorry with a gaping hole in the canvas side of its trailer, with damaged boxes and other items spilling out onto the pavement. White does not provide any further details of where the truck was hit

A separate post from the UNRWA account on the same platform says the agency "cannot deliver humanitarian aid under fire".
The BBC has approached the Israeli military for comment, but hasn't received a response yet.

[St Chads Lad]

The UN is corrupt.

On the day of the October 7 massacre, Sara A-Dirawi, an UNRWA teacher in Gaza, took to Facebook to publish a video clip of Hamas fighters shooting up Israeli cars. She added a verse from the Quran, suggesting the terrorists were on a mission from God: “For we will surely come to them with soldiers that they will be powerless to encounter, and we will surely expel them therefrom in humiliation, and they will be debased.”


This is not an isolated example. Ever since Hamas was elected to power in Gaza in 2006, the UN agency has been forced to work cheek by jowl with the terrorist group. As such, says Israel, a “mutual dependence” has grown up between them.
The rule of the terrorist organisation over the Gaza Strip forces UNRWA to act under the authorization and supervision of Hamas in a way that extends Hamas’s influence over the agency,” an Israeli official told The Telegraph.


This dynamic is evident in Hamas’s most senior appointments. For example, Suhail al-Hindi, who was elected to the Hamas Politburo in 2017 to sit alongside Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza and the author of the October 7 attack, was a headmaster at an UNRWA school and chairman of the UNRWA Gaza workers’ union. 
 Hamas’ economy minister Jawad Abu Shamala, killed just three days after the October 7 massacre in an Israeli airstrike, had a similar pedigree. He “earmarked the funds for financing and directing terrorism inside and outside the Gaza Strip”, says the IDF, but previously worked as a teacher at an UNRWA school in Khan Yunis.


Political support is one thing, direct involvement in terrorism another.


 

[celeste]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk

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King Charles III's cancer was "caught early" and normal communications between the monarch and No 10 are continuing, Rishi Sunak told the BBC.

The prime minister said he was left "shocked and sad" by the news but is in "regular contact" with the monarch.

The King, 75, has postponed all public duties and began "regular treatments" for his condition on Monday.

The Palace confirmed he does not have prostate cancer but few further details have been disclosed.

Mr Sunak told BBC Radio 5 Live: "He'll just be in our thoughts and our prayers - many families around the country listening to this will have been touched by the same thing and they know what it means to everyone."

It is understood the King's weekly audiences with Mr Sunak will continue in person, unless doctors advise he limits such contact.

The Palace has stressed the King will continue with his constitutional role as head of state, including completing paperwork and holding private meetings.

On Monday, the Palace said the monarch "remains wholly positive" about his treatment and "looks forward" to returning to his normal schedule

The King returned to London for outpatient cancer care from his home in Sandringham, where he was seen waving to crowds[/size] during a 10-minute walk to church the previous day.

[celeste]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-68219222


Prince William resumes Royal duties as King rests.

[celeste]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68232883


Gaza -  Ceasefire.


Netanyahu rejects Hamas terms.

[celeste]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news

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This is a U-turn where every degree of the twist has played out in plain sight.
A policy number - £28bn - in 2021, diluted in its intended delivery in 2023, and binned in 2024.
Why? Because, in the end, the party felt shackled to a number they believed could only be a political negative: they were never likely to achieve that level of spending anyway, given their self imposed economic rules.

And the party's critics said it was a number that would lead to vast borrowing or tax rises.
But attempting to articulate that nothing will change in practical outcomes - as Sir Keir does - while junking the headline figure, isn’t an easy argument to make.
And while the Labour leader tries to claim U-turns are pragmatic shifts to acknowledge changing circumstances, the breadth of his changes of mind - his political opponents hope - is a vulnerability they want to expose – and they see this as the latest case study.

[celeste]

I'm not taking sides but a new government doesn't know until they get in how much money is in the Treasury,  or how much money they have to 'play with'.

[celeste]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news


The US has warned Israel that staging a military offensive into Gaza's southern city of Rafah without proper planning would be a "disaster".

Some 1.5 million Palestinians are surviving in the city bordering Egypt in dire humanitarian conditions.

The White House said it would not support major operations without due consideration for the refugees there.

The comments come days after Israel's leader said the military had been told to prepare to operate in Rafah.

Speaking on Thursday evening, and without referring to Rafah, US President Joe Biden said Israel's actions in Gaza had been "over the top".

[celeste]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68250071


The Green Party loses 'gender critical case'.

[celeste]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news

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People living in the isolated north of Gaza have told the BBC that children are going without food for days, as aid convoys are increasingly denied permits to enter. Some residents have resorted to grinding animal feed into flour to survive, but even stocks of those grains are now dwindling, they say.

People have also described digging down into the soil to access water pipes, for drinking and washing.

The UN has warned that acute malnutrition among young children in the north has risen sharply, and is now above the critical threshold of 15%.

The UN's humanitarian coordination agency, Ocha, says more than half the aid missions to the north of Gaza were denied access last month, and that there is increasing interference from Israeli forces in how and where aid is delivered.

It says 300,000 people estimated to be living in northern areas are largely cut off from assistance, and face a growing risk of famine.

A spokesman for the Israeli military agency tasked with coordinating aid access in Gaza said in a briefing last month that there was "no starvation in Gaza. Period." The agency, Cogat, has repeatedly said it does not limit the amount of humanitarian aid sent to Gaza.


Netanyahu orders military to plan evacuations from southern Gazan city

Israeli soldier videos from Gaza could breach international law, experts say

[celeste]

Totally uacceptable,  beyond the pale - Netanyahu and Biden if he doesn't help enable food supplies to get through to Gaza should go.


Israel won't dare shoot down U.S. emergency food planes if the planes airlifted and dropped supplies into Gaza.  Never was humanitarian aid needed this century,  maybe for the people in Yemen,


The World shouldn't strand by and let this inhuman suffering of peoples continue.

[ExileSteve]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news

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People living in the isolated north of Gaza have told the BBC that children are going without food for days, as aid convoys are increasingly denied permits to enter. Some residents have resorted to grinding animal feed into flour to survive, but even stocks of those grains are now dwindling, they say.

People have also described digging down into the soil to access water pipes, for drinking and washing.

The UN has warned that acute malnutrition among young children in the north has risen sharply, and is now above the critical threshold of 15%.

The UN's humanitarian coordination agency, Ocha, says more than half the aid missions to the north of Gaza were denied access last month, and that there is increasing interference from Israeli forces in how and where aid is delivered.

It says 300,000 people estimated to be living in northern areas are largely cut off from assistance, and face a growing risk of famine.

A spokesman for the Israeli military agency tasked with coordinating aid access in Gaza said in a briefing last month that there was "no starvation in Gaza. Period." The agency, Cogat, has repeatedly said it does not limit the amount of humanitarian aid sent to Gaza.


Netanyahu orders military to plan evacuations from southern Gazan city

Israeli soldier videos from Gaza could breach international law, experts say

[/l]

Gosh! Did the BBC say that? Well it must be true, then!


This absolute joke of a “news” report is revealing in a great many ways. At the moment there is a huge amount of manufactured outrage over the fact that an American journalist (Tucker Carlson) has travelled to Moscow to interview President Putin, the freely elected leader of the only major country to stand in opposition to the billionaires of Davos and their New World Order; the NWO, its aims and ambitions, and its consequences for all of us Little People is openly publicised on the website of the World Economic Forum, for anybody who cares to look it up.


On the other hand these very same people who claim to be outraged by Mr Carlson’s professionalism are perfectly happy to regurgitate press handouts from Hamas, a collection of sub-human psychopaths who invaded Israel and slaughtered thousands of innocent civilians, including infants and babies in their cribs. Indeed, they will give fawning interviews to these mass murdering savages at the drop of a hat.


We are living through a very strange era indeed. So many seemingly normal people appear to have lost their moral compass and are no longer able to tell the difference between right and wrong, or between those who would protect them and those who would gleefully cause them harm.
[/list]

[celeste]

Quote:  We are living through a very strange era indeed. So many seemingly normal people appear to have lost their moral compass and are no longer able to tell the difference between right and wrong, or between those who would protect them and those who would gleefully cause them harm.

Truth

[Parky]

I agree with Steve on his last paragraph , but the interview with Putin was as Stalin once said “ a useful idiot moment “ , one view of it was “ it’s like interviewing Hitler and not mentioning Jews and the consentracion camps “.,