from #AssociatedPress #AP #APNews Updated 5:30 PM EDT, May 18, 2025

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel announced Sunday it will allow a limited amount of humanitarian aid into Gaza after a nearly three-month blockade, days after global experts on food security warned of famine. ... It was not immediately clear when aid would enter Gaza, or how. The Israeli military body in charge of overseeing aid did not comment. Israel has been trying to impose a new aid system, despite objections by aid workers. Netanyahu said Israel would work to ensure that aid does not reach militants.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/30318507

By Nidal Al-Mughrabi and Maayan Lubell
May 18, 20255:26 PM EDT

Summary

ꞏ Israel says it aims for 'operational control' in parts of Gaza

ꞏ Latest airstrikes killed at least 130 Palestinians, medics say

ꞏ No progress reported in indirect ceasefire talks in Qatar

According to new reporting from the New York Times, a Houthi surface-to-air (SAM) missile barely missed an American F-35 fifth-generation fighter, the crown jewel of the U.S. fighter inventory. The F-35, participating in Operation Rough Rider against the Houthis, was forced to take evasive action to avoid the missile.

The incident raises questions about the survivability of one of America’s most advanced fighters, and raises concerns over how effective the relatively unsophisticated Houthi air defense system has been at hampering U.S. action.

Israel decided on Sunday to resume the entry of “basic quantity” of food into Gaza, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said, Reuters reports.

Separately, Axios reporter Barak Ravid cited two senior Israeli officials on Sunday saying that the resumption of aid flow will come through existing channels until a new mechanism is implemented.

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The Israeli army has continued to raid the town of Bruqin in the occupied West Bank in search of a gunman who killed a settler on Wednesday, even as other settlers carry out attacks in towns and cities across the territory.

For the third consecutive day on Friday, Bruqin faced a massive incursion by the Israeli army, which occupied four buildings and converted them into military barracks.

Mayor Fayed Sabra told Middle East Eye that the Israeli army brought 13 bulldozers to the town on Thursday morning and was continuing to level open areas adjacent to homes, claiming they were being converted into military zones.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/30291990

Published On 18 May 202518 May 2025

"Tens of thousands [actually, hundreds of thousands - PL] of people have rallied across the world in solidarity with Palestinians amid Israel’s brutal war on Gaza and to mark the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Jewish militias, remembered as the Nakba, or catastrophe.

The Nakba resulted in the permanent mass displacement of Palestinians after the creation of Israel in 1948. Activists say that history is repeating itself today in Gaza and the occupied West Bank."

DAMASCUS, May 18 (Reuters) - Syria's defence minister has called on small armed groups that have yet to merge with the security apparatus to do so within 10 days or face unspecified measures, in a bid to consolidate state authority six months after Bashar al-Assad was toppled.

A plethora of weapons outside government control has posed a challenge to interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa's efforts to establish control, as groups that both back him and oppose him remain armed.

The statement did not seem aimed at the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a large Kurdish-led force in the northeast that signed an agreement with Sharaa earlier this year aimed at integration with state institutions.

KYIV, May 18 (Reuters) - The largest known Russian drone attack since full-scale war began in 2022 killed a woman in the Kyiv region and injured at least three people, Ukrainian authorities said early on Sunday, as Moscow stepped up strikes following peace talks on Friday.

Russia launched 273 drones by 8 a.m. local time (0500 GMT), targeting chiefly the central Kyiv region and the Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions in the country's east, Ukraine's air force said.

Based on data provided by the air force, this was Russia's largest drone attack on Ukraine of the war. On the eve of the third anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 23, Moscow launched a then-record 267 drones.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/30276408

By Imran Mulla
Published date: 17 May 2025 17:59 BST

"It was organised by the Palestine Solidarity Compaign, Friends of Al-Aqsa, the Muslim Association of Britain, Stop the War, the Palestinian Forum in Britain and other pro-Palestine groups.

Protesters came from around the country, including from Wales and northern England. Stop the War said the demonstration was attended by an estimated 600,000 people, making it the biggest since November 2023."

The new analysis for Carbon Brief shows that China's emissions were down 1.6% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025 and by 1% in the latest 12 months. Electricity supply from new wind, solar and nuclear capacity was enough to cut coal-power output even as demand surged, whereas previous falls were due to weak growth.

The analysis, based on official figures and commercial data, shows that China's CO2 emissions have now been stable, or falling, for more than a year. However, they remain only 1% below the latest peak, implying that any short-term jump could cause China's CO2 emissions to rise to a new record.

China cut its stockpile of US Treasuries in March, before its trade war with US President Donald Trump escalated, stepping aside from its position as the No 2 overseas holder.

As foreign holdings rose for a third straight month to an all-time peak of US$9.05 trillion in March, China’s stockpile slid to US$765.4 billion, down US$18.9 billion from the previous month and ending an upswing in holdings in the January-February period, according to data released by the US Department of the Treasury on Friday.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29820217

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4946432

On a sweltering January day in 2018, Pope Francis addressed 100,000 of the faithful in Puerto Maldonado, Peru, not far from where gold mining had ravaged an expanse of Amazon rainforest about the size of Colorado. “The native Amazonian peoples have probably never been so threatened on their own lands as they are at present,” he told the crowd. He simultaneously condemned extractive industries and conservation efforts that “under the guise of preserving the forest, hoard great expanses of woodland and negotiate with them, leading to situations of oppression for the Native peoples.”

Francis denounced the insatiable consumerism that drives the destruction of the Amazon, supported those who say Indigenous peoples’ guardianship of their own territories should be respected, and urged everyone to defend isolated tribes. “Their cosmic vision and their wisdom have much to teach those of us who are not part of their culture,” he said.

During his 12 years as pontiff, Francis radically reshaped how the world’s most powerful religious institution approached the moral and ethical call to protect the planet. Beyond his invocations for Indigenous rights, Francis acknowledged the Church’s role in colonization, and considered climate change a moral issue born of rampant consumption and materialism. As the Trump administration dismantles climate action and cuts funding to Indigenous peoples around the world — and far-right politics continues to rise globally — experts see the conclave’s selection of Robert Francis Prevost, or Pope Leo XIV, as he is now known, as a clear beacon that the faith-based climate justice movement his predecessor led isn’t going anywhere.

Full Article

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29815858

... while many have speculated that the Qataris have offered Trump the luxurious plane to curry favor with the famously transactional president, there may be a simpler rationale: they just don’t want it anymore.

The royals have failed to sell the plane, which was put on the market in 2020, according to an archived cop listing. Giving it away could save Qatar’s rulers a big chunk of change on maintenance and storage costs, aviation experts told Forbes. Making Trump happy would be an added bonus.

Qatar, which has given away another blinged-out 747 and may have mothballed two more, epitomizes the fading demand for these huge, fuel-guzzling, highly personalised airplanes. There aren’t many who want to buy them, and many of the governments and royal families who own them have been trying to ditch them over the past decade.

“Qatar, like many modern states, is shifting toward leaner, more versatile aircraft, which offer better economics and more discreet presence for official travel,” Linus Bauer, managing director of Dubai-based Bauer Aviation Advisory, told Forbes. Giving the plane to Trump would be “a creative disposal strategy” that marks “a farewell to a bygone model of geopolitical theater in the skies.”

Unicef has called for an end to violence in Gaza following the killing of at least 45 children in the past two days.

“The reported killing of at least 45 children in the Gaza Strip in the last two days is yet another devastating reminder that children in Gaza are suffering first and foremost, having to starve day after day only to be victims of indiscriminate attacks," the agency said in a statement.

It added that over 950 children were killed in Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip in just the past two months and stressed that the "daily suffering and killing of children must end immediately”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called for tougher sanctions on Moscow after a Russian drone killed nine bus passengers, just hours after the two countries held their first direct peace talks in years.

Seven others were injured in the attack in Bilopillia in Ukraine’s northeastern region of Sumy, Zelenskyy said in a post on X on Saturday.

“All the deceased were civilians,” Zelenskyy said, adding that preliminary reports indicated a father, mother and daughter had been killed. “And the Russians could not have failed to understand what kind of vehicle they were targeting. This was a deliberate killing of civilians.”

Moody’s Ratings has stripped the United States government of its top credit rating, citing successive governments’ failure to stop a rising tide of debt, a surprise move that could complicate President Donald Trump’s efforts to cut taxes and send ripples through global markets.

On Friday, Moody’s lowered the rating from a gold-standard Aaa to Aa1. “Successive US administrations and Congress have failed to agree on measures to reverse the trend of large annual fiscal deficits and growing interest costs,” it said as it changed its outlook on the US to “stable” from “negative”.