World News

Israel hits back at Moody’s downgrade over Gaza war impact

Hamas's armed wing, al-Qassam Brigades, said Israeli air strikes across Gaza in the past 96 hours killed two Israeli captives and seriously wounded eight others.

"Their conditions are becoming more dangerous in light of the inability to provide them with appropriate treatment. The enemy (Israel) bears full responsibility for the lives of those injured in light of their continued bombing," the statement said.

A White House spokesperson put it the best, I think:

The White House spokesperson Andrew Bates, when asked about Trump’s comments, said: “Encouraging invasions of our closest allies by murderous regimes is appalling and unhinged – and it endangers American national security, global stability and our economy at home.”

What's so insane about all this is that Trump saying something like that out loud means it's now practically gospel to the vast majority of GOP voters, and might as well be official party policy.

The threat to suspend the Camp David Accords came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said sending troops into Rafah was necessary to win the war against Hamas.

• A 63-year-old man died on a Lufthansa flight on Thursday, according to Swiss-German outlet Blick.
• Witnesses told the outlet the man had blood gushing from his nose and mouth.
• The witnesses said passengers were screaming at the sight.

Nineteen priests kicked out of the country, dozens of incidents of harassment and church desecrations, rural areas lacking worship and social services: the situation for Catholic clergy and faithful in Nicaragua is only worsening in 2024, according to exiled priests, laypeople in the Central American country and human rights advocates.

The fear of the ongoing crackdown by President Daniel Ortega – on the Catholic Church in particular but not sparing evangelicals – has become so pervasive that it is silencing criticism of the authoritarian government and even mentions of the repression from the pulpit.

“All the time the silence gets deeper,” said Martha Patricia Molina, a Nicaraguan lawyer who fled to the United States. Her work recording hundreds of instances of church persecution recently won her an International Religious Freedom Award from the U.S. State Department.

“If it’s dangerous to pray the rosary in the street, it is exceedingly so to report attacks,” Molina said.

MEP Charlie Weimers says his party has had to consider ‘other options’ in light of Orbán’s stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The mere specter of Viktor Orbán is causing ructions on the right wing of the European Parliament.

Leading Sweden Democrats lawmaker Charlie Weimers suggested in written comments to POLITICO’s EU Election Playbook on Friday that he could pull his MEPs out of the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group if Orbán’s Fidesz MEPs join up.

Orbán himself has openly expressed a desire to join the ECR — dominated by Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and Poland’s Law & Justice party. The former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has also said he’s open to bringing in Fidesz. Meloni and Orbán have developed close ties at the European Council, with the Italian prime minister increasingly seen as a bridge between Budapest and Brussels.

Finland, despite its status as the newest NATO member, is in a better condition than most of the other 28 European alliance members. Empty stockpiles and slow armaments production are causing concern elsewhere in Europe, but not so in Finland.

The Finnish Defense Forces (FDF) received extra funding for procurement and immediately issued new contracts in the spring of 2022, not long after Russia’s full-scale invasion and before other countries woke up to the issue. As a result, the country’s stockpiles have been filling to such an extent that more warehouse capacity is needed.

This year, the FDF will also conduct logistics exercises and activate so-called production reserve agreements with civilian companies that keep extra capacity in place for the defense forces’ needs in crisis and war — akin to a war economy lite. In this pre-conflict period, sufficient availability and production capacity of everything from food supplies to machinery is tested with sustained warfighting in mind, as seen in Ukraine.

Finland’s efforts to maintain an efficient national defense capability are motivated by sheer proximity to Russia and a history of aggression from the east. Similar reasoning explains other countries in the Nordic-Baltic region likewise increased their preparedness levels over the past two years.

"Former Pakistani prime ministers and bitter rivals Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan both declared victory in elections marred by delayed results and militant attacks, throwing the country into further political turmoil,” 

“Sharif’s party won the most seats by a single party in Thursday’s election, but supporters of imprisoned Khan, who ran as independents instead of as a single bloc after his party was barred from the polls, won the most seats overall.”

The intelligence assessment, which has been seen by the FT, provides no evidence for the claims, which it says are based on smartphone intercepts and captured identity cards.

“The Israeli intelligence documents make several claims that Sky News has not seen proof of and many of the claims, even if true, do not directly implicate UNRWA,” Middle East correspondent Alistair Bunkall wrote Thursday.

Channel 4 News reports that it found “no evidence to support its explosive new claim” by Israel that employees of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) participated with Hamas in the October 7th attacks.