Le Pen, Orbán and Meloni rail against socialism and ‘massive illegal migration’ at ‘great patriotic convention’ in Madrid
International far-right leaders, including France’s Marine Le Pen, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Argentina’s Javier Milei, came together in Madrid to rail against socialism and “massive illegal migration” three weeks before hard-right parties are expected to see a surge in support in June’s European elections.
Sunday’s “great patriotic convention”, which was organised by Spain’s far-right Vox party, offered conservatives and far-right populists a chance to congregate and take aim at a variety of familiar targets, from the welfare state to “wokeness” and the agendas of Brussels-based bureaucrats.
The event was also attended by Amichai Chikli, Israel’s minister for diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism, André Ventura, the leader of Portugal’s far-right Chega party, and the Chilean far-right leader José Antonio Kast.
Rescue work is being hampered by thick fog.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi — often seen as a potential successor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei— is missing after his helicopter went down in the northwest of the country on Sunday, officials said.
Iran’s Vice President Mohsen Mansouri said contact has been made with one of the helicopter passengers and one of the flight crew, although the connection had frequently been interrupted.
A report by official Iranian news agency IRNA says that it seems the incident was not serious, but does not provide an update on Raisi’s wellbeing or that of any other passengers. Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was also reportedly on board the aircraft.
Update (NYT): > The head of Iran’s Red Crescent Society, Pirhossein Kolivand, told state TV that search and rescue teams have not located the site of the helicopter crash after more than 10 hours of looking, and have made no contact with anyone on board. Any rumors to the contrary were false, he said. Kolivand said rescuers were using their best guesses to set the search area and had no confirmation of the exact location of the missing helicopter.
“(Russian troops) attacked the area where local residents were resting” in Mala Danylivka, Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
Russian troops attacked a recreation center in a northern suburb of Kharkiv at around 11 a.m. local time, killing six civilians including a pregnant woman and wounding 27, the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor's Office said on May 19.
. . .
“(Russian troops) attacked the area where local residents were resting,” Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Syniehubov said in an earlier post on Telegram, condemning the attack. A paramedic was among the wounded, and an ambulance was damaged, he added.
In a later post on Telegram, Syniehubov said Russian forces had fired two Iskander ballistic missiles in a "double-tap" strike – a common Russian tactic in which a target is struck once and then again shortly after, the second strike deliberately targeting rescue workers.
Emergency relief coordinator says famine looming as Israel’s Rafah offensive blocks vital aid routes
The United Nations’ humanitarian chief has warned of “apocalyptic” consequences due to aid shortages in Gaza, where Israel’s military offensive in the southern city of Rafah has blocked desperately needed food.
“If fuel runs out, aid doesn’t get to the people where they need it. That famine, which we have talked about for so long, and which is looming, will not be looming any more. It will be present,” the UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, Martin Griffiths, told AFP on the sidelines of meetings with Qatari officials in Doha.
“And I think our worry, as citizens of the international community, is that the consequence is going to be really, really hard. Hard, difficult, and apocalyptic.”
Griffith said 50 trucks of aid a day could reach the hardest-hit people north of Gaza through the reopened Erez crossing on the northern frontier. However, he added, the battles near the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings in Gaza’s south meant the vital routes were effectively blocked.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said that he anticipates the upcoming peace summit in Switzerland will yield an action plan addressing three key areas: free navigation to protect port infrastructure, global food security, and Ukraine's economic development.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said that he anticipates the upcoming peace summit in Switzerland will yield an action plan addressing three key areas: free navigation to protect port infrastructure, global food security, and Ukraine's economic development.
Additional discussions will focus on nuclear and energy security to prevent attacks on critical infrastructure, and another key point will be about the exchange of captives and return of deported children.
The concern isn't about the consequences faced by Russia, but the impact on the rest of the world. Like, if Russia were to collapse, I think most would agree that Egyptians don't deserve to find out what suddenly not having $1.7 billion in wheat would mean, right? I don't think anyone has any idea what that would mean for, say, Tajikistan and other post-Soviet states with economies closely tied to Russia. Collapse would be chaos and it wouldn't stay confined within Russia's borders.
And, again, I don't think that justifies preventing Russia from losing. There are worse concerns for Russia winning. And the idea that Russia neither winning nor losing could be a sustainable final state is probably a fantasy.
Salome Zourabichvili says bill contradicts constitution but ruling party is expected to override her action in coming days
Georgia’s president has vetoed a “foreign agents” bill that has split the country and appealed to the government not to overrule her over a law she said was “Russian in sprit and essence”.
Salome Zourabichvil followed through on her stated intention to use her veto on Saturday although the governing Georgian Dream party has the votes to disregard her intervention.
“Today I vetoed a Russian law,” she said. “This law is Russian in its essence and spirit.
“It contradicts our constitution and all European standards, therefore it represents an obstacle to our European path.”
I think that's one of the meanings. If a Russian loss led to the sudden collapse of the Russian state or a radical retraction of the Russian economy, who knows what the consequences would be?
I don't think that's a justification for not letting Russia lose, but it is a big bag of who-the-fuck-knows.
Netanyahu doesn't need Gantz's party to remain in power. They'd lose a more moderate voice in the war cabinet. The Unity government would probably lose legitimacy in the eyes of most Israelis. It would be very bad for Netanyahu politically. It would also probably be good for Gantz politically, as recent polling suggests that he might be starting to get some of Netanyahu's stink on him.
It's complicated. They don't have the ability to bring down the government but both Gantz and Gallant are much more popular than Netanyahu. Netanyahu's choice (again) comes down to placating the far-right to keep his government in power in the short-term at the expense of further alienating the Israeli public. If he bows to this pressure, the far-right might topple his government immediately. All paths probably lead to electoral (then legal) doom for Netanyahu at some point.
President Volodymyr Zelensky believes that Ukraine's partners "are afraid of Russia losing the war" and would like Kyiv "to win in such a way that Russia does not lose," Zelensky said in a meeting with journalists attended by the Kyiv Independent.
President Volodymyr Zelensky believes that Ukraine's partners "are afraid of Russia losing the war" and would like Kyiv "to win in such a way that Russia does not lose," Zelensky said in a meeting with journalists attended by the Kyiv Independent.
Kyiv's allies "fear" Russia's loss in the war against Ukraine because it would involve "unpredictable geopolitics," according to Zelensky. "I don't think it works that way. For Ukraine to win, we need to be given everything with which one can win," he said.
His statement came on May 16 amid Russia's large-scale offensive in Kharkiv Oblast and ongoing heavy battles further east. In a week, Russian troops managed to advance as far as 10 kilometers in the northern part of Kharkiv Oblast, according to Zelensky.
Amid the destruction, a marketplace of survival has arisen focused on the basics: food, shelter and money.
In the seven months since Israel started bombarding Gaza and imposed a siege in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack, the enclave’s economy has been crushed. People have been forced to flee their homes and jobs. Markets, factories and infrastructure have been bombed and flattened. Farmland has been scorched by airstrikes or occupied by Israeli forces.
In its place, a war economy has arisen. It is a marketplace of survival focused on the basics: food, shelter and money.
Humanitarian aid labeled “Not for resale” and looted items end up in makeshift markets. People can earn a few dollars a day evacuating displaced people on the backs of trucks and donkey carts, while others dig toilets or make tents from plastic sheeting and salvaged wood.
. . .
“It’s not like any war we’ve seen before, where a certain area is targeted and other zones are less touched and they can quickly re-engage in economic conditions,” he said. “From Month 1, the economy was put out of commission.”
Benny Gantz’s threat to withdraw his opposition party from coalition calls into question future of government
The Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz has threatened to resign if Benjamin Netanyahu fails to adopt an agreed plan for Gaza, calling into question the future of the Israeli government.
During a press conference on Saturday, Gantz announced that if a plan for postwar governance of the territory is not consolidated and approved by 8 June, his opposition National Unity party will withdraw from the coalition government.
. . .
On Thursday, defence minister, Yoav Gallant, challenged Netanyahu over the same issue, saying he would not permit any solution where Israeli military or civil governance were in the territory. Gallant’s comments were immediately backed by his fellow minister Gantz, Netanyahu’s main political rival in the emergency coalition, plunging Israel’s leadership into a highly public row.
It was initially incorrectly reported that she was alive and unconscious. This isn't a new correction. She was declared dead in late October after investigators identified a piece of her skull:
A source involved with her identification told CNN Louk’s death was announced after forensic examiners found a bone fragment from her skull.
The bone fragment was from the petrous part of the temporal bone, which is at the base of the skull, normally near the carotid artery, a major blood vessel that provides blood to the brain. A DNA test concluded the fragment belonged to Louk.
. . .
The bone fragment, combined with the circumstances surrounding the October 7 attack and video that appeared to show Louk unconscious on the back of a Hamas truck, led investigators to conclude these were her remains.
Vladimir Putin’s visit to China was a show of strength, but in reality he needs Beijing's support for his war in Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin’s state visit to China this week was a show of strength. It was a chance for the Russian president to prove to the world that he has a powerful ally in his corner.
The Russian leader is widely regarded as a pariah after ordering the invasion of Ukraine. But to China’s President Xi Jinping, he is a key partner in seeking a new world order that is not led by the US.
And Mr Xi made his guest welcome. He rolled out the red carpet, the band played old Red Army songs, and cheering children greeted both leaders as they strolled through Tiananmen Square. There was even a brief hug for the cameras.
Russian and Chinese state media focused heavily on the camaraderie between the two leaders. But in truth, this is no longer a partnership of equals.
It marks the opening of a new route for humanitarian aid to reach the stricken Gaza Strip.
The first shipment of humanitarian aid has arrived in Gaza via a temporary floating pier, the US military has confirmed.
US Central Command said aid trucks had begun moving ashore at about 09:00 local time (07:00 BST) on Friday.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said 8,400 plastic shelters had been delivered. About 500 tonnes of British aid including tents, hygiene kits and forklift trucks is expected to reach Gaza via the pier, built by US armed forces, in the coming weeks.
However, Mr Sunak said the maritime route was "not the only answer" to the humanitarian crisis in the enclave.
"We need to see more land routes open, including via the Rafah crossing, to ensure much more aid gets safely to civilians in desperate need of help."
On top of knowing who you are, where you are, whether you're single or married, whether or not you have children, where you work, when you work, what your interests are, what your embarrassing interests are, etc. etc. etc.
People are weirdly blase about this but, if you use TikTok regularly, they have such a wealth of information about you that an intelligence agency would find it trivial to compromise you. You're just gambling that you're not worth compromising.
Citing rapid advances by China and Russia, the United States is building an extensive capacity to fight battles in space.
The Pentagon is rushing to expand its capacity to wage war in space, convinced that rapid advances by China and Russia in space-based operations pose a growing threat to U.S. troops and other military assets on the ground and American satellites in orbit.
. . .
No longer will the United States simply rely on military satellites to communicate, navigate and track and target terrestrial threats, tools that for decades have given the Pentagon a major advantage in conflicts.
Instead, the Defense Department is looking to acquire a new generation of ground- and space-based tools that will allow it to defend its satellite network from attack and, if necessary, to disrupt or disable enemy spacecraft in orbit, Pentagon officials have said in a series of interviews, speeches and recent statements.
President Biden is pushing for a broad deal that would get Israel to approve a Palestinian nation in return for Saudi recognition of Israel. But officials need to overcome Israeli opposition.
Two years into President Biden’s term, his aides began negotiating with Saudi leaders to have the kingdom establish diplomatic relations with Israel. But when the Israel-Hamas war began last October, the talks withered.
American and Saudi officials have tried to revive prospects for a deal by demanding more from Israel — a cease-fire in Gaza and irreversible steps toward the founding of a Palestinian nation. Now those officials say they are close to a final agreement on the main elements of what the Saudis want from the deal: a U.S.-Saudi mutual defense pact and cooperation on a civilian nuclear program in the kingdom.
. . .
But there are no signs that Israeli leaders are moving to join them, despite the symbolic importance for Israel of establishing ties with Saudi Arabia, the most powerful Arab nation.
That resistance, along with a potential full-scale assault by the Israeli military on the Palestinian city of Rafah, puts in jeopardy a potential three-way grand bargain that Mr. Biden envisions as the foundation to a long-term solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Bodies of Amit Buskila and Itzhak Gelerenter also recovered from Gaza as Israel says 129 hostages remain in captivity
The bodies of three hostages kidnapped by Hamas, including the German-Israeli Shani Louk, have been retrieved from Gaza by the Israeli military, it announced.
The other two hostages were identified as Amit Buskila, 28, and Itzhak Gelerenter, 56, according to the military spokesperson Rear Adm Daniel Hagari, who said the three victims were taken to Gaza after being killed by Hamas at the Nova music festival.
Footage of what appeared to be the body of Louk, 22, on the back of a pickup truck on the streets of Gaza was one of the first images to surface after 7 October, as the scale of the horror of the attacks became clear.
The young woman was initially believed to have been kidnapped alive during Hamas’s assault in Re’im. However, on 30 October, Louk’s sister Adi confirmed Shani had died, probably during the attack, after the discovery of human remains that suggested fatal injuries.
Fighting in Rafah has closed off a vital border crossing in southern Gaza, forced hundreds of thousands to flee and cut off humanitarian aid.
Israel said on Thursday that it would send more troops to Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, which has become the focal point in the war between Israel and Hamas.
The announcement signaled that Israel intends to press deeper into Rafah despite international concerns about the threat to civilians from a full-scale invasion of the city, where more than a million displaced people had been sheltering.
“Hundreds of targets have already been attacked,” Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, said after meeting with commanders in the Rafah area. “This operation will continue.”
For the past week Israel has described its offensive as a limited military operation, but satellite imagery and Mr. Gallant’s comments on Thursday suggested that a more significant incursion was already underway.
They haven't been training Ukrainian troops in-country since the start of the full-scale invasion. The US in particular pulled all their troops out about 10 days before Russia invaded.
A group of billionaires and business titans working to shape U.S. public opinion of the war in Gaza privately pressed New York City’s mayor last month to send police to disperse pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, according to communications obtained by The Washington Post and people familiar with the group.
Business executives including Kind snack company founder Daniel Lubetzky, hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, billionaire Len Blavatnik and real estate investor Joseph Sitt held a Zoom video call on April 26 with Mayor Eric Adams (D), about a week after the mayor first sent New York police to Columbia’s campus, a log of chat messages shows. During the call, some attendees discussed making political donations to Adams, as well as how the chat group’s members could pressure Columbia’s president and trustees to permit the mayor to send police to the campus to handle protesters, according to chat messages summarizing the conversation.
One member of the WhatsApp chat group told The Post he donated $2,100, the maximum legal limit, to Adams that month. Some members also offered to pay for private investigators to assist New York police in handling the protests, the chat log shows — an offer a member of the group reported in the chat that Adams accepted. The New York Police Department is not using and has not used private investigators to help manage protests, a spokeswoman for City Hall said.
Lawyers urge international court of justice to issue urgent measures over assault on Gaza’s southernmost city
South Africa has asked the international court of justice (ICJ) to urgently order Israel to end its assault on Rafah, halt its military campaign across Gaza, and allow international investigators and journalists into the territory.
In a court hearing, lawyers for South Africa expanded a written request for judges to issue an emergency order to stop the offensive into Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city.
They argued that seven months into the war, which has killed more than 35,000 people and reduced much of Gaza to rubble, the scale of suffering was now so intense that a total ceasefire was needed to get food, medicine and other aid to its desperate population.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's appointment of a new defense minister, Andrey Belousov, is seen as an attempt to streamline Russia's economy and mobilize it for the war effort. Russia's military has faced numerous supply and logistics problems that thwarted its all-out war against Ukraine from t...
Russian President Vladimir Putin's appointment of a new defense minister, Andrey Belousov, is seen as an attempt to streamline Russia's economy and mobilize it for the war effort.
Russia's military has faced numerous supply and logistics problems that thwarted its all-out war against Ukraine from the get-go. Two years later, the problems of poor logistics and lack of strategic planning persist.
The apparent task of Belousov, an outsider with no links to the military, is to solve these problems and make Russia's war machine in Ukraine more effective, a dangerous new development.
. . .
Russian columnist Sergei Parkhomenko called Belousov the "prime minister of a military government."
The move could draw the United States and Europe more directly into the war. The Biden administration continues to say there will be no American troops on the ground.
NATO allies are inching closer to sending troops into Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces, a move that would be another blurring of a previous red line and could draw the United States and Europe more directly into the war.
Ukraine’s manpower shortage has reached a critical point, and its position on the battlefield in recent weeks has seriously worsened as Russia has accelerated its advances to take advantage of delays in shipments of American weapons. As a result, Ukrainian officials have asked their American and NATO counterparts to help train 150,000 new recruits closer to the front line for faster deployment.
So far the United States has said no, but Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday that a NATO deployment of trainers appeared inevitable. “We’ll get there eventually, over time,” he said.
After 50 years of failure to stop violence and terrorism against Palestinians by Jewish ultranationalists, lawlessness has become the law.
This story is told in three parts. The first documents the unequal system of justice that grew around Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. The second shows how extremists targeted not only Palestinians but also Israeli officials trying to make peace. The third explores how this movement gained control of the state itself. Taken together, they tell the story of how a radical ideology moved from the fringes to the heart of Israeli political power.
By the end of October, it was clear that no one was going to help the villagers of Khirbet Zanuta. A tiny Palestinian community, some 150 people perched on a windswept hill in the West Bank near Hebron, it had long faced threats from the Jewish settlers who had steadily encircled it. But occasional harassment and vandalism, in the days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, escalated into beatings and murder threats. The villagers made appeal after appeal to the Israeli police and to the ever-present Israeli military, but their calls for protection went largely unheeded, and the attacks continued with no consequences. So one day the villagers packed what they could, loaded their families into trucks and disappeared.
. . .
Such violence over the decades in places like Khirbet Zanuta is well documented. But protecting the people who carry out that violence is the dark secret of Israeli justice. The long arc of harassment, assault and murder of Palestinians by Jewish settlers is twinned with a shadow history, one of silence, avoidance and abetment by Israeli officials. For many of those officials, it is Palestinian terrorism that most threatens Israel. But in interviews with more than 100 people — current and former officers of the Israeli military, the National Israeli Police and the Shin Bet domestic security service; high-ranking Israeli political officials, including four former prime ministers; Palestinian leaders and activists; Israeli human rights lawyers; American officials charged with supporting the Israeli-Palestinian partnership — we found a different and perhaps even more destabilizing threat. A long history of crime without punishment, many of those officials now say, threatens not only Palestinians living in the occupied territories but also the State of Israel itself.
The NYT coverage says:
The change came because the United Nations switched to citing a more conservative source for its numbers — the Gazan Ministry of Health — rather than using Gaza’s Government Media Office, as it had in recent weeks.
. . .
That Gaza media office has consistently provided an overall death toll similar to the one given by the ministry of health, but different and often higher figures for the number of women and children killed.
Ismail Al Thawabateh, the office’s director general, said in an interview that the health ministry listed and categorized an individual as dead only when all of their details had been documented and verified by a next of kin. He did not explain why his office used a breakdown of women and children based on the overall death toll.
Most of the coverage, including this Guardian piece, makes it sound like they switched to a different dataset but this sounds like a switch to a different source. The HM numbers have generally been regarded as accurate -- historically, at least. I don't think that the media office has that same reputation. It seems like the previous numbers were calculated from the HM's total death toll figure, and not from observed data. I'm not really sure what that means for interpreting the numbers.
People say the same thing literally any time there's a negative story about Hamas. That isn't how this story is framed. Israeli policy (blockade) and military are not portrayed as a relative good at all. It also speaks directly against a narrative by some Israelis that Palestinians bear collective responsibility for the actions of Hamas.
The idea that we must help Hamas cover up their crimes is a bad one, however well-intentioned. If they don't want their crimes and misdeeds reported by the world, they should consider not committing any.
A U.S. State Department spokesperson would not say if the United States was monitoring any particular site in Belarus, but said the department is keeping a close eye on the situation in order “to ensure Russia maintains control of its weapons in the event of any deployment to Belarus and upholds its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.” An April 2024 State Department report said that the U.S. would not change its nuclear posture in response to the developments in Belarus.
What in the article makes you think that governments don't know about this? I'd gamble that there's about a 0% chance that this is news to military intelligence.
Probably but hopefully not. May have actually been his best year as coach. Without good coaching, I doubt this year's team is even a playoff team and they really did a lot with little. Here's hoping Trevliing can admit his mistakes and commit to fixing them.
YESSSSSSSSS
🚨 WILLY 🚨 from a beautiful pass from Matthews!
Definitely hoping for 5-on-5. That Leafs powerplay had like 5 shots though. I'd describe it as "not embarassing", which is a huge improvement! ;)
breakfastmtn @lemmy.ca He/Him
Sneaking all around the fediverse.
Also at breakfastmtm@fedia.social breakfastmtn@pixelfed.social