World News

DUBAI/RIYADH, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Yemen's Houthis warned airlines, travellers and airport workers on Sunday to stay away ‌from Saudi airports, a day after an attack on Riyadh's international airport killed 12 people and wounded more than 300 others.

It was the deadliest such attack in the kingdom in more than a decade and comes amid an escalation of fighting between the Iran-backed Houthis and Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces.

"We renew our warning to all airlines, experts, employees, workers and ​travellers against using Saudi airports and airspace, as they are vulnerable to attack and have become a theatre of operations for our ​forces, with the exception of the airports in (the holy cities of) Mecca and Medina," the Houthis said in a ⁠post on X.

Saudi Arabia on Sunday extended the closure of its main international airport as Houthi rebels threatened airstrikes across the kingdom, a day after a missile attack killed 12 people and wounded more than 300.

Saturday’s strike on the Riyadh airport marked a major escalation of the war between Yemen’s Iran’s-backed Houthis and the kingdom. President Donald Trump said he was considering whether to join Saudi strikes against the rebels, a scenario that could prompt the Houthis to halt shipping through a crucial waterway and further restrict the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11823430

The European Parliament adopted a recommendation on EU-China political relations that rejected China’s efforts to restrict Taiwan’s participation in international organizations and exchanges.

The recommendation, addressed to the European Council, the European Commission and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas, includes several references to EU-Taiwan relations and expresses support for closer ties, saying they would bring positive benefits and have strategic importance.

Describing Taiwan as a valuable partner in trade and technology, the European Parliament said it “rejects China’s attempts to coerce international organizations, third countries and other actors into restricting Taiwan’s international participation and contacts.”

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It mentions as an example Chinese pressure over Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) participation in the European Conference of Ventotene for Freedom and Democracy organized by the European Parliament last month.

It also expresses “the EU’s strong disapproval of China’s transnational repression activities,” such as its investigation into Legislator Puma Shen (沈伯洋) under a 2024 judiciary guideline accusing him of launching the “pro-independence separatist organization” Kuma Academy.

The Kuma Academy is a nonprofit dedicated to training civilians on the basics of civil defense.

The recommendation reaffirms that the EU’s “one China” policy guides its policy toward Taiwan and stresses that the EU has never endorsed China’s “one China” principle, the recommendation says.

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It also opposes any unilateral attempt to change the “status quo” by force or coercion, or any provocation or any change against the will of Taiwanese.

The recommendation calls for the EU and its member states to work with other democratic partners in the region on closer security coordination, including a continuous naval presence and joint exercises, to reinforce regional stability.

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Archived (removepaywall.com)

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11822318

Europe must strengthen its own defense, support the UK rejoining the European Union, and make immigration work amid aging societies as internal divisions and geopolitical tensions are threatening the continent's future, says Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies emeritus at the University of Oxford and a Senior Fellow of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

[Original in Spanish. This is a paraphrased automated translation with minimal edits.]

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"Jean Monnet wrote in his memoirs that [the European project] needed the British for two reasons: because they are very good at making the institutions work and because they have love for freedom. I think he was right, and that both arguments are still in place," says Garton Ash.

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"I was excited when I heard [British Prime Minister Andy Burnham] announce [defines the Brexit as a failure and does not rule out a possible re-entry of the United Kingdom into the EU], because in recent years public opinion has been far ahead of politicians. Finally someone dared to say: the Brexit has not worked, let's look at what options we have. That's just what to do. I have no doubt that the best option would be to re-enter the EU, if there are a majority of British people who want it, and if so the European Union also wants it," he explains.

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"Although it is clear that the policy needed to achieve that goal, here and across the channel, will be very difficult," he admits, without losing hope. "The pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will," will repeat over and over again the maximum of the Italian intellectual Antonio Gramsci throughout our talk to explain his hope for the European project, despite the very delicate moment that it is going through.

"Everything that has been achieved [in Europe] since 1945, which many young Europeans take for granted, ... could end up destroyed very quickly. ... If you think it is worth keeping this Europe we have, you must do something about it," Garton Ash passionately defends.

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[Garton Ash] is concerned about the situation the EU is living today: "China, from an economic point of view; Russia militarily, and the United States, politically. A triple challenge that Europe had never faced before. And at a time when we are internally divided and with problems; and we must also respond to so-called global challenges, such as climate change or artificial intelligence," he summarized.

The urgency is called Ukraine, whose future is unquestionably linked to that of the EU, according to Garton Ash. "I think we are right to give full military, political and economic support to Ukraine. Our own security depends on it, and this is not a rhetorical formulation. All this hybrid war Putin is deploying against Europe is seeking to break unity around Ukraine," he explains.

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"Much of the attention [in Eurpoe] is focused on irregular immigration. The most dramatic case, no doubt, was Ceuta's. Seeing all these people swim, people concluded that the state was not in control of the situation. It is no coincidence that the great success of the Eurosceptics slogan in the UK was' Take back control '," he explains.

"When people talk about immigration, they do not refer to the number of people who arrived last year, but to the cultural, social and demographic change that has occurred in the last 50 or 60 years. It is a difficult problem to address, but the reality is that we have an ageing population, a large welfare State and economies that are not growing too much. We need immigration, we have no choice but to make it a success," says Garton Ash.

"And should the EU respond to all these challenges? Are our current leaders up to it?" I ask you, before we say goodbye.

"The problem is that very few of [European politiicans] are systematically defending the need for a stronger Europe in the area of their domestic policy. Because the policies we need today, in areas such as defence, capital markets or IA, must be European. But we also need Europeanism to start at home. Our politicians must defend the need for Europe on their national level. But not all responsibility lies with the leaders. It must also be demanded of the citizens."

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Archived (removepaywall.com)

In the 25-minute address, Lai also described Taiwan as the “salt” and “light” of the world. Both images come from the same biblical passage as “city upon a hill”: Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

The messages invoked the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler and Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel. 

In one message Ha wrote, “The end of American jews is close. Let’s start with the jews in Lower Merion,” the Philadelphia township where Haverford is located. In another he said, “If jews are so special then they should also be placed in special camps and receive special treatments,” court documents show. 

The US House of Representatives on Wednesday passed legislation giving Donald Trump broad powers to impose sanctions on Russia and tariffs of up to 100% on countries that buy Russian oil and gas. It will now go to Trump to be signed into law.

Dana Joudeh was in shackles when she found out she was pregnant.

The 35-year-old from the West Bank city of Nablus was newly married and had just spent her first night in an Israeli prison. Israeli forces had ~~arrested her without charges and put her under administrative detention, an arbitrary condition for holding Palestinians hostage~~ abducted her.

She lost consciousness in front of Israeli soldiers at Sharon Prison, a ~~temporary detention facility~~ torture dungeon in the city of Netanya, and they took her to a hospital blindfolded. There, with her hands and feet bound in chains, she was given a pregnancy test that came back positive.

Israeli forces used sound grenades inside the prison, according to Joudeh’s family and her lawyer, Hassan Abbadi, who provides volunteer legal support for detained Palestinians. They said soldiers would force the women to lie face down on the floor.

On September 12, Joudeh gave birth by C-section under local anesthesia, watching the operation as it was happening. Maram said that Joudeh’s hands and feet were shackled while she was cut open, and female Israeli soldiers surrounded her with guns in the operating room, standing guard.

Joudeh’s doctor was Israeli, and she recalled him speaking to her in cruel, degrading terms, according to Maram. “The terrorist has arrived,” she remembered him saying about the fragile newborn. Joudeh named her Lia.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11806379

[Original in German. This is a paraphrased automated translation with minimal edits.]

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"I think the Russians saw me through the drone camera. When I heard the drone, I hid in the stairwell for ten minutes. When I came back into the yard, the drone hit right next to me. My legs folded away and then I only saw a blood fountain, says the boy, who is now home after the operation. Andrij's mother, 43-year-old Yuliia Spitsa, is convinced that the Russian drone pilot knew that he had hunted a child. But that did not stop him.

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Andrij has injury of drone shards on his leg. He was rescued by Ukrainian soldiers who were passing by. They put on a pressure bandage and took the boy first to his mother, later to the hospital. Now the 11-year-old can walk again. His family says that compared to other victims of Russian drone strikes in Cherson, Andrij was quite lucky.

The 11-year-old can recognize different types of Russian weapons by their sounds, his playground is surrounded by air defenses.

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According to Human Rights Watch, 30 civilians were killed by Russian drones in Cherson between May and December 2024, and at least 500 were injured. In January 2025, short-range drones, particularly FPV drones, accounted for 70 percent of all civilian casualties in the Ukraine-controlled part of the Cherson area, according to the United Nations.

The port city of Cherson is shelled almost daily. The city on the right bank of the river Dnipro was liberated by Ukrainian troops in November 2022. According to local authorities, about 60,000 people still live here today, compared to 279,000 in January 2022.

“Santa”, the Ukrainian soldier, watched this video [showing the drone attack on the 1-year old Andrij] several times and tried to analyze the action of the Russian drone pilot.

"This was not a practice or a mistake. The man was not a beginner – he simply cold-bloodedly chased a civilian. The Russians know that they can no longer take Cherson. And they simply try to destroy what they are not entitled to, what they cannot get, says the man who has been defending his hometown since the first days of the great war."

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In one of many related report, France24 published ‘Not an isolated incident’: Russian drones stalk Ukraine’s civilians in ‘human safaris',

The video of a Ukrainian cyclist being targeted and killed by a short-range drone posted – and later deleted – by the Russian military Friday left viewers outraged and shaken. But it’s not the first time that Russian drone operators have been accused of terrorising Ukrainian civilians by deliberately targeting them in “human safaris” denounced as a war crime by an independent UN commission.

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Archived

Thieves stole about 30,000 bottles of some of Italy’s most prized wines worth an estimated 5 million euros ($5.8 million) from a winery in Tuscany, in what the producer described Friday as the country’s largest wine theft on record.

The theft targeted Marchesi Antinori’s facility near Cortona, in the province of Arezzo, where a group of at least seven thieves on Saturday night made off with bottles of some of Italy’s most sought-after wines, including Solaia, Tignanello and Guado al Tasso. The theft was discovered Monday, but the company made it public on Friday to avoid interfering with the investigation.

Chief Executive Renzo Cotarella said the thieves disabled the winery’s alarm system and surveillance cameras before entering with two large trucks. Using the company’s forklifts, they loaded the vehicles with wine and fled during the night.