Israeli strikes kill 11 overnight in Gaza, including a family of 3 at a refugee camp
GAZA (AP) – Palestinian health officials in the Gaza Strip said Israeli strikes killed at least 11 people overnight into Tuesday, including a family of three in the built-up Bureij refugee camp and eight police officers.
A spokesman for Gaza’s civil defence said Tuesday that first responders have recovered the bodies of 360 people, mostly women and children, killed in the northern refugee camp of Jabaliya during a recent three-week Israeli offensive there.
The ongoing Israeli strikes and ground offensives across Gaza come as a cease-fire proposal, announced by U.S. President Joe Biden, has placed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a crossroads.
The proposal offers the possibility of ending Israel’s war against Hamas, returning scores of hostages held by the militant group and quieting fighting on the northern border with Lebanon. Although Biden said the proposal was Israeli, the Israeli leadership has appeared to distance itself from the plan, vowing to keep conducting military operations against Hamas until the group is destroyed.
Israeli bombardments and ground operations in Gaza have killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Israel’s expanding offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah has largely cut off the flow of food, medicine and other supplies to Palestinians facing widespread hunger.
Israel launched the war in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250. Israel’s military confirmed the deaths Monday of four more hostages held by Hamas. Around 80 hostages captured on Oct. 7 are believed to still be alive in Gaza, alongside the remains of 43 others.
35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square; silence and heavy security in China and Hong Kong
By: Ken Moritsugu And Kanis Leung
BEIJING (AP) — Beijing’s Tiananmen Square had checkpoints and police vehicles on Tuesday as China tried to silence the 35th anniversary of a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests. Hong Kong police swarmed a handful of people who tried to protest or commemorate as the effort extended beyond the mainland.
China has long quashed any public memory of the military crackdown on months-long protests at the heart of its capital. An estimated 180,000 troops and police rolled in with tanks and armoured vehicles and fired into crowds trying to block them from advancing on the student-led demonstration in the square.
Hundreds, if not thousands, are believed to have been killed in an overnight operation that ended on the morning of June 4, 1989.
It was a turning point in modern Chinese history as Communist Party hardliners embraced control instead of political reforms.
The economy boomed in the ensuing decades, turning a once impoverished country into the world’s second largest economy, but societal controls have been tightened since party leader Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.
Across China, the anniversary remains a taboo subject that is heavily censored. Any mention on social media is quickly erased.
Life appeared as normal in Beijing on Tuesday, with tourists lining the streets leading to gates to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, the former imperial palace across from it. The closest subway exit was closed, as was a viewing point atop Tiananmen Gate, according to a visitor registration website.Headline:
Volcano erupts on a central Philippine island, sending hundreds into evacuation centres
By: Jim Gomez
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A volcano belched a plume of ash and steam into the night sky in the central Philippines in a powerful explosion that sent more than 700 people fleeing to evacuation camps.
The explosion of Mount Kanlaon Monday night on Negros Island triggered sirens across Canlaon, a city of nearly 60,000 people south of the volcano.
Hundreds fled in government trucks to safety, Canlaon Mayor Jose Chubasco Cardenas said, adding more than 150 people were in two evacuation centers while others moved to relatives’ homes away from the volcano. No casualties were reported.
The eruption prompted authorities to raise an alert level to two in a five-step warning system, indicating a “moderate level of volcanic unrest.” Kanlaon is one of the country’s 24 most-active volcanoes.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said at least 796 people from 170 families were moved to evacuation centres in Canlaon and other cities and towns around the volcano and gave assurances that government aircraft were on standby if needed.
He said police will strictly enforce a no-entry regulation in a four kilometre (2.4-mile) permanent danger zone around the 2,435-metre (7,988-foot) Kanlaon, the highest peak in the central Philippines.
Teresito Bacolcol, who heads the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, told AP that Monday night’s eruption scattered ash as far as 10 kilometres (6.2 miles). It was difficult to say if Kanlaon’s restiveness would worsen or the volcano, which has erupted several times in recent decades, would settle down, he said.
Located in the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a region prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the Philippines is also lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms a year, making the Southeast Asian nation one of the world’s most disaster-prone.
Indonesia’s Mount Ibu erupts, spewing red lava, thick ash and dark clouds into the sky
By: Edna Tarigan
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia’s Mount Ibu spewed red lava and thick grey ash clouds that towered 5,000 metres (16,400 feet) into the sky during a two-minute eruption Tuesday morning.
The eruption spewed thick ash toward the volcano’s west and northwest sides, said Muhammad Wafid, chief of Indonesia’s Geology Agency.
A timelapse video distributed by Indonesia’s Geological agency shows red sparks at the top of the volcano followed by a thick column of ash.
The video was recorded from an observation post located next to an evacuation site in a field at Gam Ici village. Several evacuation tents were erected nearby.
Mount Ibu has been continually erupting almost every day since early May. Indonesian authorities raised an eruption alert to the highest level following a series of eruptions, as thousands of deep volcanic earthquakes and visual activities from Mount Ibu have significantly increased.
Authorities urged people to stay at least seven kilometres (4.4 miles) from the 1,325-metre (4,347-foot) volcano.
Indonesia, an archipelago of 270 million people, has 120 active volcanoes. It is prone to volcanic activity because it sits along the “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines around the Pacific Ocean.
Amanda Knox to defend herself in Italian court against 16-year-old slander charge
By: Colleen Barry
MILAN (AP) — Amanda Knox will be back in an Italian courtroom this week to defend herself against a 16-year-old slander conviction that she hopes to beat once and for all.
Her chance was made possible when a European court ruled that Italy violated her human rights during a long night of questioning after the murder of her British roommate in November 2007.
The slander conviction for accusing a Congolese bar owner in the murder is the only charge against Knox that withstood five court rulings that ultimately cleared her in the brutal murder of her roommate, 21-year-old Meredith Kercher, in the apartment they shared in the idyllic central Italian university town of Perugia.
A verdict in the slander case retrial ordered by Italy’s highest court is expected on Wednesday, with Knox appearing in an Italian court for the first time in more than 12 1/2 years.
The slander charge was largely based on two statements typed by police that Knox signed during the early hours of Nov. 6, 2007, under extended questioning in Italian from police without a lawyer or a competent translator. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the conditions violated her human rights.
Kercher’s brutal murder grabbed worldwide attention as suspicion fell on Knox, then 20, and her then-Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, with whom she had been involved for just about a week.
Knox and Sollecito were convicted in their first trial, but after a series of flip-flop verdicts, they were ultimately exonerated by Italy’s highest court in 2015.
U.S. Southwest to bake in first heat wave of season
By: Scott Sonner And Anita Snow
PHOENIX (AP) — Parts of California, Nevada and Arizona are expected to bake this week as the first heat wave of the season arrives with triple-digit temperatures forecast for areas including Phoenix, which last summer saw a record 31 straight days of at least 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius).
By Wednesday, most of an area stretching from southeast California to central Arizona will see “easily their hottest” weather since last September, and record daily highs will be in jeopardy from Las Vegas to Phoenix, the National Weather Service said late Monday.
Excessive heat warnings have been issued from 10 a.m. Wednesday to 8 p.m. Friday due to the “dangerously hot conditions,” the weather service said.
Fire crews will be on high alert especially in Arizona, where fire restrictions went into effect before Memorial Day in some areas and will be ordered by Thursday across most of the western and south-central parts of the state, authorities said.
Fire forecasters at the Southwest Coordination Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, said weather in the region doesn’t typically become so hot until mid- or late June.
