Author: ALJAZEERA

Iran’s air defences brought down three small drones over the central city of Isfahan, state media reported, hours after US broadcasters, quoting senior United States officials, said Israeli missiles had hit an Iranian site. Iranian state television reported explosions in Isfahan as air defences were activated and flights across several areas, including the capital Tehran and Isfahan, were suspended. Airspace was reopened about four and a half hours after the incident and there were no reports of casualties. Second Brigadier General Siavash Mihandoust, the top military official in Isfahan, told state media that air defence batteries hit “a suspicious object”…

Tech giant says employees engaged in ‘completely unacceptable behaviour’ during sit-in at company offices.Google has fired 28 employees following a sit-down protest over the tech giant’s contract to provide cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government The terminations come after the group No Tech for Apartheid on Tuesday occupied Google offices in California and New York to protest the $1.2bn contract known as Project Nimbus. Video of the demonstrations shared on social media showed police arresting employees in the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian. In a statement on Thursday, Google said that physically impeding employees…

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Boeing has been the subject of 32 whistleblower complaints with the workplace safety regulator in the United States during the past three years, newly obtained documents reveal, amid mounting scrutiny of standards at the beleaguered aircraft maker. The figures shed light on the extent of alleged retaliation by Boeing against whistleblowers as the Virginia-based company is facing mounting questions over its safety record and standards. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which handles claims of retaliation against workers who blow the whistle on their employer, received the complaints of retaliation between December 2020 and March of this year, according…

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Palestinians have witnessed devastation as they returned to the northern part of the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza after the Israeli army withdrew. Palestinians inspected damaged homes and salvaged usable items from the rubble of demolished houses. Israel’s war on Gaza has displaced 85 percent of the territory’s population amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while most of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the United Nations. The health ministry in Gaza said on Thursday that at least 33,970 people have been killed in the territory during more than six months of war.…

The United States has vetoed a widely supported resolution at the UN Security Council that would have paved the way for the State of Palestine to gain full membership at the United Nations. Twelve countries voted in favour of the resolution, which was brought for a vote following an hours-long Security Council session in New York on Thursday, while two others — Britain and Switzerland — abstained. After vetoing the measure, the US deputy envoy to the UN, Robert Wood, said Washington believes there is no other path to Palestinian statehood than through negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. “We also…

Gangtok, India — When a glacial lake burst through a major dam in India’s northeastern state of Sikkim last October, it destroyed the region’s largest hydro-electric project, the Teesta III. It also unleashed a torrent of political criticism around the 1200-megawatt (MW) power plant that its proponents had insisted would transform Sikkim’s economy, but for many has instead become emblematic of opacity and alleged corruption around the state’s infrastructure development. As India’s smallest state — with a population of less than 700,000 people — prepares to vote in national elections on April 19, the now-defunct Teesta III is at the…

The medical crisis in Gaza’s hospitals, or what remains of them, is catastrophic. Hospitals can barely treat patients, and staff don’t have the equipment, medicine or even beds necessary to take care of Palestinians in the enclave, who are struggling to survive under relentless Israeli bombing. The hospitals themselves have come under repeated attack, with several being partially or totally destroyed. A medical team sent to Gaza by three aid groups described the situation in the hospitals as having reached “unimaginable” levels. To understand the scale of the physical damage to the hospitals in the Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera’s Sanad…

Sanctions against Iran’s missile and drone programmes come as fears mount over the possibility of greater regional escalation.The administration of United States President Joe Biden has imposed new sanctions on Iran in response to its missile and drone attack on Israel, as tensions mount over the possibility of further escalation in the Middle East. In a statement on Thursday, Biden said the sanctions targeted “leaders and entities connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s Defense Ministry, and the Iranian government’s missile and drone program that enabled” the April 13 attack on Israel. “As I discussed with my fellow G7…