Blog

The Israeli military said on Sunday it had conducted "operational raids" in recent weeks on Syria's Mount Hermon, continuing a military campaign on Syrian soil that is drawing growing international condemnation.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based Syrian war watchdog, also reported airstrikes around the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Sunday, attributing them to the Israeli army. The attacks targeted an ammunition depot used by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, ousted last month in a rebel offensive, the observatory said. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the airstrikes.Israel's continued military operations in Syria, which it said on Sunday were intended to "strengthen the defense of Israeli citizens," have drawn accusations from the United Nation...

The Catholic priest stood at the altar of the hilltop church for the mass baptism, dipping dozens of heads into water and tracing a cross with his finger on each forehead.Then he rejoiced in Christianity's recovery of souls in a land where the vast majority of people are Muslim – as had been the men, women and children who stood before him.The ceremony was one of many held in recent months in Kosovo, a former Serbian territory inhabited largely by ethnic Albanians that declared itself an independent state in 2008. In a census last spring, 93% of the population said they were Muslim and only 1.75% Roman Catholic. .A small number of ethnic Albanian Christian activists, all converts from Islam, are urging their ethnic relatives to see the Church as an expression of their identity. They call i...

The Treasury Department imposed sanctions on a Beijing-based cybersecurity firm on Friday, accusing it of helping Chinese hackers infiltrate U.S. communications systems and conduct surveillance on four continents.In an announcement, the department said the company, Integrity Technology Group, had supported a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group known as Flax Typhoon in a campaign to break into foreign networks between the summer of 2022 and 2023, saying it having discovered that the group had "information sent to and received regularly by Integrity Tech infrastructure".The action came after the Treasury Department revealed in a letter to lawmakers this week that a Chinese intelligence agency had breached its systems in what appeared to be a spy operation, gaining access to government empl...

The day was sultry. The 61-year-old woman pushed her donkey into a trot. He loved riding around the ring on the beautiful white beast: at a walk, then a trot, then a gallop. Suddenly he noticed a tingling in his hands and feet that spread towards his torso. He recognized the feeling but forced himself to ignore it. It didn't work. His strength seemed to fade, and before he could say or do anything, he felt himself slump forward. As the world turned grey, the donkey stopped. His arms, and then his body, slid down the animal's sweaty neck and fell to the ground. Then everything went black.He woke up looking at the snow-white belly of his donkey. He bent down and neighed softly, then brayed at the approaching instructor. Are you OK? The instructor shouted in alarm. Should I call an ambulance?...

Hamas' military wing on Saturday released a video of Liri Albag, one of around 250 people taken hostage by the group during the attack on Israel, as Israeli and Hamas officials held further indirect ceasefire talks through mediators in Qatar .Around 100 hostages are still held in Gaza nearly 15 months after Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023 sparked Israel's war on Gaza. Talks to free them stalled after a week-long truce in November 2023 that allowed the release of 105 Israeli and foreign prisoners.Ms. Albag, 19, served in a lookout unit tasked with monitoring possible threats along the Gaza border. During the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, Palestinian fighters overran the military base where she served, killing more than 60 soldiers and kidnapping Ms. Albag and six other female so...

When mysterious drones began appearing on oil rigs and wind farms off the coast of Norway about three years ago, officials weren't sure where they came from.But “we knew what they were doing,” said Stale Ulriksen, a researcher at the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy, in a recent interview. “Part of it was espionage, where they are tracking a lot of things. Partly, I think, it was about positioning oneself in the event of war or deep crisis."The drones were suspected to have been launched from Russian-controlled ships in the North Sea, Ulriksen said, including some ships that were near underwater energy pipelines. Norway could not do much to stop them, he added, as they were flying over international waters.In recent weeks, reports of drone swarms on the US East Coast have brought fears of hyb...

The two sides involved in a high-profile Supreme Court fight over a measure that could shut down TikTok submitted their closing written arguments Friday, sharply contesting China's influence on the site and the role the First Amendment should play in evaluating the law .Their briefs, filed under an exceptionally shortened schedule set last month by the justices, were part of a high-stakes fight over the government's insistence that ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, sell the app's U.S. operations or the would close. The Supreme Court, seeking to resolve the case before the statutory deadline of January 19, will consider the arguments in a special session next Friday.The court's ruling, which could come this month, will decide the fate of a powerful and pervasive cultural phenomenon that u...

Alcohol is a leading preventable cause of cancer and alcoholic beverages should carry a warning label like cigarette packs do, the U.S. surgeon general said Friday.It's the latest salvo in a heated debate over the risks and benefits of moderate drinking as the influential U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans are about to be updated. For decades it was said that drinking moderately helped prevent heart attacks and strokes. This perception has been incorporated into the dietary advice given to Americans. But growing research has linked alcohol consumption, sometimes even within recommended limits, to various types of cancer. Labels currently on bottles and cans of alcoholic beverages warn of drinking during pregnancy or before driving or operating other machinery, and of "health risks" in g...

Syria's new leaders met with French and German foreign ministers in the capital Damascus on Friday, in one of the highest-level Western diplomatic visits since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad last month.German Annalena Baerbock and her French counterpart, Jean-Noël Barrot, arrived in Damascus on the first such trip in years on behalf of the European Union, as world powers began building ties with Hayat Tahrir al- Sham, the Islamic group that leads the new Syrian government.Ms Baerbock and Mr Barrot met Ahmad al-Shara, the group's leader, after visiting the infamous Sednaya prison, where the al-Assad regime had tortured and killed thousands of inmates.“We travel to Damascus today to offer our support, but also with clear expectations of the new rulers,” Ms. Baerbock said in a statemen...