Wall Street stocks tumbled Friday on worries about slowing US growth, concluding the week on a downcast note following gains in Asia and a mixed session on European bourses.Major US indices spent the entire day in the red before closing about two percent lower after economic data added to worries about the outlook of the …
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the army to step up its operations in the occupied West Bank on Friday as he paid a rare visit to troops in the territory that drew Palestinian condemnation.Netanyahu’s visit to Tulkarem refugee camp in the north of the territory came after bombs that Israeli officials said resembled those used by militants in the West Bank exploded on multiple buses in central Israel on Thursday.The prime minister’s office said he ordered more “operational activity” in the northern West Bank in response to the bomb blasts.Days after a ceasefire took effect in Gaza on January 19, Israel launched a large-scale military operation in the northern West Bank dubbed “Iron Wall”, spanning multiple refugee camps near the cities of Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas.”We are entering terrorist strongholds, flattening entire streets that terrorists use, and their homes. We are eliminating terrorists, commanders,” Netanyahu said.At least 51 Palestinians, including seven children, and three Israeli soldiers have been killed since the assault began, according to the United Nations.On Friday, “live fire” from Israeli troops killed a 13-year-old girl in Jenin refugee camp, the Palestinian health ministry said.Israeli fire also killed a 13-year-old boy near the southern West Bank city of Hebron, the ministry said.On Thursday, a Palestinian was killed when his car was struck by an armoured vehicle just outside Tulkarem camp, provincial governor Abdallah Kamil told AFP.The Israeli offensive has displaced at least 40,000 people, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.The operation is now the longest in the West Bank since the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in the early 2000s.Netanyahu said the army was doing “very important work against Hamas and other terrorist organisations’ desire to harm us”.He said Israel had intensified its raids over the past year, fighting in camps it deems to harbour Palestinian militant groups.- ‘Storming’ -In both Tulkarem and Jenin, the army has demolished dozens of homes with explosives, opening up new access routes into the densely built camps.Armoured bulldozers have wreaked havoc in the camps, upturning tarmac, cutting water pipes and tearing down roadside facades.Palestinians on social media expressed shock at a photograph shared by Netanyahu’s office showing him meeting with army officers in a command centre that appeared to have been established inside a camp resident’s home.The Palestinian foreign ministry accused Netanyahu of “storming” the camp.Netanyahu’s visit came after three buses exploded in the central Israeli city of Bat Yam late Thursday without causing any casualties.A police commander from central Israel, Haim Sargarof, said in a televised briefing that the devices used to set off the blasts were similar to those found in the West Bank.Violence in the West Bank has surged since the war in Gaza broke out in October 2023.Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 900 Palestinians, including many militants, in the territory since the start of the war, according to the Palestinian health ministry.At least 32 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations in the territory over the same period, according to Israeli official figures.
Syria’s tiny Jewish community and Syrian Jews abroad are trying to build bridges after Bashar al-Assad’s ouster in the hope of reviving their ancient heritage before the community dies out. This week, a small number of Jews living in Damascus, along with others from abroad, held a group prayer for the first time in more than three decades, in the Faranj synagogue in Damascus’s Old City.”There were nine of us Jews (in Syria). Two died recently,” community leader Bakhour Chamntoub told AFP in his home in the Old City’s Jewish quarter.”I’m the youngest. The rest are elderly people who stay in their homes,” the tailor in his sixties added in a thick Damascus accent.After Islamist-led rebels finally toppled Assad in December last year after nearly 14 years of conflict, the country’s dwindling community has recently welcomed back several Syrian Jews who had emigrated.Syria’s millennia-old Jewish community was permitted to practise their faith under Assad’s father, Hafez, and had friendly relations with their fellow countrymen.But the strongman restricted their movement and prevented them from travelling abroad until 1992. After that, their numbers plummeted from around 5,000 to just a handful of individuals, headed by Chamntoub, who oversees their affairs.AFP correspondents met with Chamntoub, known to neighbours and friends as “Eid”, after he returned from burying an elderly Jewish woman.”Now there are seven of us,” he said, adding that a Palestinian neighbour had looked after the woman during her final days.- ‘Tree uprooted’ -The 1967 Arab-Israeli war cast a heavy cloud over the Jewish communities in several Arab countries. Syria lost most of the strategic Golan Heights to Israel, which later annexed them in a move never recognised by the international community as a whole.Chamntoub said the community did not experience any “harassment” under Bashar al-Assad’s rule.He said an official from the new Islamist-led administration had visited him and assured him the community and its properties would not be harmed.Chamntoub expressed hope of expanding ties between the remaining Jews in Syria and the thousands living abroad to revive their shared heritage and restore places of worship and other properties.On his Facebook page, he publishes news about the community — usually death notices — as well as images of the Jewish quarter and synagogues in Damascus.He says nostalgic Syrian Jews abroad often make comments, recalling the district and its surroundings. At the Faranj synagogue, Syrian-American Rabbi Yusuf Hamra, 77, led what he said was the first group prayer in decades.”I was the last rabbi to leave Syria,” he said, adding that he had lived in the United States for more than 30 years.”We love this country,” said Hamra, who arrived days earlier on his first visit since emigrating.”The day I left Syria with my family, I felt I was a tree that had been uprooted,” he said.- ‘Family ties’ abroad -His son Henry, travelling with him, said he was happy to be in the synagogue.”This synagogue was the home for all Jews — it was the first stop for Jews abroad when they would visit Syria,” the 47-year-old said.When war erupted in Syria in 2011 with Assad’s brutal suppression of anti-government protests, synagogues shuttered and the number of Jews visiting plummeted.In the now devastated Damascus suburb of Jobar, a historic synagogue that once drew pilgrims from around the world was ransacked and looted, with a Torah scroll believed to be one of the world’s oldest among the items stolen.Chamntoub said his joy at publicly worshipping in the Faranj synagogue again was “indescribable”.He expressed hope that “Jews will return to their neighbourhood and their people” in Syria, saying: “I need Jews with me in the neighbourhood.”Hamra said that like many emigrants, he was hesitant about returning permanently.”My freedom is one thing, my family ties are another,” he said, noting that many in the 100,000-strong diaspora were long established in the West and reluctant to give up their lives and lifestyles there.Chamntoub said many Jews had told him they regretted leaving Syria but that he doesn’t expect “a full return”. “Maybe they will come for trips or to do business” but not to stay, he said.He expressed hope of establishing a museum in Syria to commemorate its Jewish community.”If they don’t return or get married and have children here, we will end soon,” he said.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and his Chinese counterpart He Lifeng raised mutual concerns on trade and economic issues in their introductory call Friday, as tensions between the world’s two biggest economies simmer under President Donald Trump’s second term.The talks came shortly after Trump imposed additional tariffs on imports from China over its alleged role …
US, China economic leaders raise ‘serious concerns’ in first call Read More »
After steel and aluminium, US President Donald Trump has set his sights on slapping 25 percent tariffs on semiconductors, cars and pharmaceuticals. Trump has already slapped additional 10 percent tariffs on goods from China and has also threatened tariffs on Canada and Mexico, plus ordered a study into putting into place reciprocal tariffs.Here’s a look who …
Tech, auto, medicines: who will pay Donald Trump’s tariffs? Read More »
The daughter of murdered British aid worker this week at the Paris trial of two of his presumed Islamic State group jailers recounted her anguish after her father went missing in war-torn Syria in 2013.In a Paris court on Thursday, Bethany Haines, 27, read out the last text message she would ever receive from her father, David Haines, before he was abducted by IS in north Syria aged 42.Sitting in the dock as she read were Frenchmen Mehdi Nemmouche, 39, and Abdelmalek Tanem, 35, on trial for holding four French journalists hostage for IS in Syria between 2013 and 2014.They have also been accused of being among those who held Haines hostage, before IS beheaded him in a gruesome video released in September 2014.”Hey there darling, hope you are okay. I’m fine and working away in Turkey. Hope you are feeling better now, love Dad,” Haines wrote to his daughter on March 12, 2013, she said.”Over the next three weeks, my dad would receive a barrage of texts and voicemails that he would never see or hear,” she told the court.She then read out messages she sent her father, their tone growing increasingly desperate.”Hey Dad, hope you are enjoying Turkey. I’m busy studying for my exams.”Hey Dad, call me when you can. Love you.”Hey Dad, are you out in the field? My first exam went okay I think. Stay safe.”Hey Dad, have I annoyed you? If I have, I’m sorry. Call me. Love you.”Daddy, I need you. I’ve had an awful day. Miss you.”Dad, I’m sorry. Phone me.”Daddy, I need you.”Daddy, are you there?”Daddy, you’re scaring me.”Where are you Daddy?”She paused, clutching her notes.”But he wasn’t there. He was being held, being interrogated, waterboarded, beaten, electrocuted, mocked, starved and being mentally tortured,” she said.Governments have said hundreds of Westerners joined extremist groups including IS in Syria after civil war broke out in 2011.Haines and the French journalists were also at several points held captive by another IS cell they dubbed the “Beatles” because of their British accents.It was a “Beatles” member, killed in a 2015 drone strike, who beheaded Haines.The French trial of Nemmouche and Tanem, as well as a Syrian defendant and two others in absentia because they are presumed dead, is to continue until March 21.
Argentina announced two days of national mourning on Thursday after the bodies of two Israeli Argentine children who had been taken hostage by Hamas were handed over by the group.Hamas delivered the bodies of four hostages on Thursday, three of which it said were members of the Bibas family — Shiri Bibas and her two young sons.While the identities of the Bibas boys, Kfir and Ariel were confirmed by Israeli forensics, they said Shiri was not among them, as the militants had claimed.Argentina’s president Javier Milei will call for two-days of national mourning, his office said in an official statement.”The President’s office expresses its strongest condemnation of the terrorist group Hamas, following confirmation of the murder of the children of the Israeli Argentine Bibas family,” it said.According to the assessment by Israel’s National Center of Forensic Medicine, the children were brutally murdered in captivity by Hamas terrorists in November 2023.”It is monstrous that such events occurred in this century, and that their deaths were motivated by a single motive: being Jewish,” the statement read.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas of committing a “cruel and evil” violation of the Gaza ceasefire deal by failing to return the mother.A Hamas official told AFP on Friday that it was likely the body of captive Shiri Bibas had been “mistakenly mixed” with others who were killed and buried under the rubble in Gaza.They also said the group had informed the mediators in November 2023 that it was ready to hand over the bodies of the three Bibas family members.”Mediators were informed at the time and it was also announced in a statement when the Bibas family was killed along with their captors in an Israeli air strike,” the official said.The two Bibas boys had become symbols of the hostage crisis along with their mother Shiri Bibas.During their attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, that triggered the Gaza war, Hamas filmed and later broadcast footage showing the Bibas family’s abduction from their home near the Gaza border.Ariel was then aged four, while Kfir was the youngest hostage at just nine months old.Their father Yarden Bibas, who was also seized during the attack, was released earlier this month but had been separated from the rest of his family.”The Argentine republic demands the immediate release of all hostages and trusts that the terrorist group will be reduced to ashes and will become nothing more than a horrible memory in world history,” added the Argentine government in its statement.Milei also extended his “condolences to the family, especially to Yarden Bibas, the children’s father, who after suffering the torment of being kidnapped for 484 days is now facing his worst nightmare.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday said he would ensure “Hamas pays the full price” for failing to hand over Israeli mother Shiri Bibas after the militant group released a body Israel said was not hers. A Hamas official told AFP the group was investigating the matter and Bibas was likely “mistakenly mixed” with others killed and buried under the rubble in Gaza.On Thursday militants in Gaza handed back the bodies of four people they said were Israeli hostages.The transfer occurred under a fragile ceasefire which is on Saturday to see the latest swap of live Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners. Hamas’s armed wing confirmed on Friday that it will release six Israelis.Hamas had said the remains returned on Thursday included those of Bibas and her two young sons, whose father the Palestinian group released earlier this month.On Friday, however, Israel said the body purported to be of Shiri Bibas was instead that of a Gazan. Netanyahu accused Hamas of violating the Gaza ceasefire deal by failing to return the mother and instead placing “the body of a Gazan woman in a coffin.””We will act with determination to bring Shiri home, along with all of our captives –- both the living and the fallen -– and ensure that Hamas pays the full price for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement,” Netanyahu said.Military spokesman Avichay Adraee said on Telegram that Israel had identified the remains of the Bibas boys Ariel and Kfir, accusing “Palestinian terrorists” of killing them in November 2023. Hamas has long maintained an Israeli air strike killed the boys and their mother early in the war.Israel’s Hostages and Missing Families Forum said it was “horrified” that Shiri Bibas was not among those returned.Hamas on Friday asked Israel to return the body of the Gazan woman handed over a day earlier.- Black coffins -Via the Red Cross, Hamas also handed over a fourth body, that of Oded Lifshitz, a veteran journalist and long-time defender of Palestinian rights who was aged 83 at the time of his capture.The bodies’ repatriation is part of the six-week initial phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which took effect on January 19. The deal has so far led to the release of 19 living Israeli hostages in exchange for more than 1,100 Palestinian prisoners.Ahead of the handover, Hamas and members of other armed Palestinian groups displayed four black coffins with small photos of the purported deceased, on a stage in the southern city of Khan Yunis.”It is probably one of the saddest days Israel has known, one of the saddest days I can remember,” said Elisheva Flamm Oren, a 66-year-old social worker in Jerusalem. She called Shiri Bibas “a symbol for all of us.” During their October 7, 2023 attack that triggered the Gaza war, Hamas filmed and later broadcast footage showing the Bibas family’s abduction from their home near the Gaza border.Ariel was then aged four, while Kfir was the youngest hostage at just nine months old. Yarden Bibas, the boys’ father and Shiri’s husband, was abducted separately and released in a previous hostage-prisoner swap.Hamas said in a statement on Thursday that it and its armed wing had done “everything in their power to protect the prisoners (hostages) and preserve their lives”.Netanyahu on Friday ordered an “intensive operation against centers of terrorism” in the occupied West Bank, his office said, after three buses exploded in central Israel without causing any reported injuries. – Next phase -Israel and Hamas announced a deal earlier this week for the return of eight hostages’ remains in two groups this week and next, as well as the release of the six living Israeli captives on Saturday.Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum has published the names of the six Israelis as Eliya Cohen, Tal Shoham, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert, Hisham al-Sayed and Avera Mengistu.Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has said talks will begin this week on the truce’s second phase, aiming to lay out a more permanent end to the war.A Hamas spokesman on Thursday accused Netanyahu of “procrastinating regarding the second phase”, saying the group was “ready to engage”.Senior Hamas official Taher al-Nunu told AFP on Wednesday that Hamas was ready to free all remaining hostages held in Gaza in a single swap during phase two.Hamas and its allies took 251 people hostage during the October 7 attack. Prior to Thursday’s handover, there were 70 hostages still in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military has said are dead.That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,211 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,319 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.
