Author: ALJAZEERA

On June 19, Hassan Nasrallah, the powerful leader of the Lebanese group Hezbollah, warned Cyprus that if it helped Israel attack Lebanon, it would become a target. Israel’s army says it has approved an offensive on Lebanon targeting Hezbollah, and its foreign minister has said an announcement on whether Israel will go to war is imminent. This came after Hezbollah released footage it said was taken by one of its drones over the Israeli city of Haifa, showcasing its ability to infiltrate deep into Israeli territory, and sending an implicit threat. So, if Israel declares war on Lebanon, what does…

As the war enters its 845th day, these are the main developments.Here is the situation on Wednesday, June 19, 2024. Fighting Ukrainian forces launched an overnight drone attack that set several oil storage tanks ablaze in southern Russia’s Rostov region, defence sources in Kyiv told the AFP and Associated Press news agencies. The local governor, Vasily Golubev, said there had been a fire at a storage facility, while a video from Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations showed thick smoke and flames billowing out of what appeared to be multiple oil storage tanks in an undisclosed location. Ukraine’s national grid operator…

NewsFeed“Means and methods of warfare to minimise civilian casualties appears to have been consistently violated.” A report from the UN Office of Human Rights found a pattern of “indiscriminate and disproportionate” Israeli strikes harming civilians in Gaza.Published On 20 Jun 202420 Jun 2024 Source link

The European Union is considering controversial proposals to mass scan private communications on encrypted messaging apps for child sex abuse material. Under the proposed legislation, photos, videos, and URLs sent on popular apps such as WhatsApp and Signal would be scanned by an artificial intelligence-powered algorithm against a government database of known abuse material. The Council of the EU, one of the bloc’s two legislative bodies, is due to vote on the legislation, popularly known as Chat Control 2.0, on Thursday. If passed by the council, which represents the governments of the bloc’s 27 member states, the proposals will move…

NewsFeed‘Goodbye Mom.’ These are the last moments between a young Palestinian girl and her mother, who was killed in an Israeli attack in Gaza.Published On 20 Jun 202420 Jun 2024 Source link

The death toll is expected to rise as many of the 46 injured are in an ‘extremely serious’ condition, official warns.At least nine people have been killed and 46 injured after a fire triggered a series of blasts at a military ammunition depot in Chad’s capital N’Djamena. Health Minister Abdelmadjid Abderahim told journalists on Wednesday that the toll was in danger of rising as many of the injured were in an “extremely serious” condition. The fire began in N’Djamena’s Goudji district late on Tuesday and there had been “huge explosions”, Foreign Affairs Minister Koulamallah Abderaman wrote in a statement on…

Can technology “solve” climate change? The concept of techno-optimism was created by Marc Andreessen – an American billionaire who made his fortune by co-founding the web browser ‘Netscape Navigator’ in the 1990s. Andreessen, defining his own concept, wrote, “We believe that there is no material problem – whether created by nature or by technology – that cannot be solved with more technology.” Techno-optimism is espoused by many other billionaires like Andreessen, many of them are tech billionaires themselves. While a lot of money is made available for many different causes, billionaire climate philanthropy is controversial for a number of reasons.…

Renewables’ share of global energy consumption reaches nearly 15 percent, an all-time high.Global fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions hit record highs last year, even as renewables generated more energy than ever before, an industry report has found. Fossil fuel consumption rose 1.5 percent compared with 2022, while emissions increased 2.1 percent, the Statistical Review of World Energy report showed on Thursday. At the same time, renewables’ share of energy consumption hit 14.6 percent, up 0.4 percent from the previous year. Nick Wayth, CEO of the Energy Institute, said that while demand for fossil fuels is peaking in advanced…

Daniel Hagari goes against Netanyahu by saying that identifying the impossible task of defeating Hamas as Israel’s end goal in Gaza means ‘throwing sand in people’s eyes’.Al Jazeera is reporting from outside Israel because it has been banned by the Israeli government. Israel’s military spokesman has exposed a widening rift between the country’s political and army leadership, questioning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stated goal of destroying Hamas in the Gaza Strip for the war to end. After nine months of war in which more than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed in the name of eliminating the armed group that governs…

GDP grows 0.2 percent in first quarter, buoyed by record immigration.New Zealand’s economy has crawled out of recession after back-to-back downturns in the span of 18 months. Gross domestic product (GDP) grew 0.2 percent in the first three months of the year, official figures showed on Thursday, after a 0.1 percent contraction during the previous quarter. While better than expected, the uptick was greeted with little fanfare, being largely driven by population growth due to record-high immigration. On a per capita basis, GDP fell 0.3 percent during the first quarter, the sixth consecutive decline. “The growth figure is camouflaging weakness,”…