Author: ALJAZEERA

Prime Minister Netanyahu says Israel would ‘fight with our fingernails’ to achieve war objectives despite mounting US pressure.Israeli officials have struck a defiant tone after US President Joe Biden warned that the United States would not provide weapons for a full-scale ground assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are hemmed in with no safe way to leave. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in televised remarks on Thursday that Israel, which is heavily reliant on US weapons shipments, would “fight with our fingernails” if necessary. “Hamas [hearts] Biden,” Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s…

Islamabad, Pakistan – When Aamir Dhedhi took his mother to India in 2014 to get treatment for Parkinson’s disease, the doctors there advised him to procure cannabidiol (CBD) oil to help her manage her pain. It was the first time that Dhedhi, a Karachi-based entrepreneur, learned about the medicinal use of the cannabis derivative. On returning to Pakistan, the businessman ordered a small quantity of the oil from the United States. Almost instantly, it helped calm his mother’s nerves and reduce tremors, he said. Dhedhi became a firm believer in CBD’s benefits. “Seeing the oil’s impact on my mother’s wellbeing,…

Dr Zouhair Lahna has worked in conflict zones across the globe – Syria, Libya, Yemen, Uganda and Ethiopia – but he has never seen anything like the Israeli war on Gaza. In those life-threatening situations, the Moroccan French pelvic surgeon and obstetrician said, there was a route to safety for civilians. But on Tuesday, Israeli forces seized and closed Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt – the only escape for Palestinians from the war and the most important entry point for humanitarian aid. “This is another injustice. … It’s not human,” Lahna said, shaking his head as he spoke to…

Air India was once so renowned for its service that Singapore’s founding statesman Lee Kuan Yew used the airline as a blueprint for launching the city-state’s own flag carrier in the early 1970s. In recent decades, India’s national airline came to be seen as a cautionary tale of decline as it racked up billions of dollars in losses and battled a reputation for tardiness and poor service. When the Tata Group bought the company in October 2021, returning control to the wealthy Tata family after decades of state ownership, CEO Natarajan Chandrasekaran laid out a clear objective: “To build a…

Accidents involving Air Senegal, Corendon Airlines come as aircraft manufacturer in crisis over its poor safety record.Two Boeing 737 passenger planes have been involved in accidents in Senegal and Turkey on takeoff and landing, raising further questions about the aircraft manufacturer’s safety record. In Senegal, a chartered Air Senegal Boeing B737-300 plane skidded off a runway before takeoff early on Thursday at Blaise Diagne International Airport in the capital, Dakar. Eight-five people – including two pilots and four cabin crew – were on board the flight operated by TransAir and bound for the Malian capital Bamako. At least 10 people…

The United States has halted the shipment of some types of heavy bombs to Israel and US President Joe Biden has also pledged to halt the supply of some offensive weapons and artillery shells to the country if it goes ahead with its assault on Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah. Here’s what we know so far. What is the US saying? Biden issued this warning, possibly his starkest yet against Israel, during an interview with CNN on Wednesday. In the same interview, he also said that the US would continue to supply defensive arms such as Iron Dome interceptors, underlining…

Sarah Aljamal dreamed of doing voiceovers for the animated films Tangled or Ratatouille. She had started taking voice acting classes with Fouad Shams, one of the best-known voice actors in the Middle East. Her dream, like many young women, was to be independent. Despite being born with a hole in her heart and undergoing more than 20 surgeries in her short life for congenital defects in her bones and joints, the 23-year-old from Gaza City was determined. Besides learning voice acting, Aljamal was doing translations and helping an international charity on disability issues. But all that disappeared when her family’s…

Adviser to Khamenei says Iran will have ‘no choice’ if nuclear facilities targeted by Israel.Iran could be pushed into building a nuclear weapon if Israel threatens its existence, an adviser to the country’s supreme leader has warned. “We have no decision to build a nuclear bomb but should Iran’s existence be threatened, there will be no choice but to change our military doctrine,” said Kamal Kharrazi, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Thursday. “In the case of an attack on our nuclear facilities by the Zionist regime, our deterrence will change,” he was reported as saying by Iran’s…

On May 10, all member states should vote to admit the State of Palestine as the 194th member of the United Nations.On May 10, the United Nations’ 193 member states can end the Gaza war and the longstanding suffering of the Palestinian people by voting to admit Palestine as the 194th UN member state. The Arab world has repeatedly declared its readiness to establish relations with Israel within the context of the two-state solution. This goes back to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative and has been reiterated in the 2023 Arab-Islamic Extraordinary Summit. On May 16, leaders of the region…

Police say arrests made in Washington, DC, as US-wide crackdown continues on student-led demonstrations in support of Palestinians in Gaza.Police in the United States capital have broken up a student protest encampment at George Washington University, one of dozens of tent camps set up on campuses across the country in support of Palestinians in Gaza. The Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC, said in a statement that it “moved to disperse” demonstrators on Wednesday morning after “a gradual escalation in the volatility of the protest”. It did not elaborate on what exactly that means. “During the course of the operation,…