cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/21204912

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16789723

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16792140

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/10758148

In the past several weeks, I have watched dozens of sleek U.S. military planes descend over Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where I live. They were the first flights to land since gangs blockaded and halted commercial air traffic in March. U.S. news reports suggest that the aircraft contained civilian contractors and supplies to pave the way for the deployment of a Kenyan-led security mission to Haiti, which is expected to begin any day now.

But no one has informed Haitians who or what was on board. Even the members of Haiti’s new transitional government told me that they did not know precisely what the United States was flying into the country. Although the Haitian members of the presidential council have met with Kenyan and Haitian officials to discuss the force, they said they have not provided input to U.S. officials. Aides to newly installed Prime Minister Garry Conille confirmed that he has had no say on decisions related to the mission. It remains unclear what the force’s specific goals are or how it can contribute to rebuilding the Haitian state.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16766634

Russian president delivered the warning after Seoul announced it would consider arming Kyiv.

Russian President Vladimir Putin Thursday warned South Korea that sending lethal weapons to Ukraine would be a “big mistake.”

His comments come after Seoul announced it would consider arming Ukraine in response to Russia and North Korea signing a mutual defense pact on Wednesday.

“If South Korea supplies weapons to Ukraine, it will not like the answer. I hope they won’t do it, it would be a big mistake,” Putin said at a press conference in Vietnam, where he is conducting a two-day state visit aimed at deepening strategic cooperation.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/21204855

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/10742936

The Israeli military says its Northern Command has approved operational plans for war with Lebanon.

Israel is ready for an “all-out war” in Lebanon and has plans approved for an offensive targeting Hezbollah, officials have said.

Israel and Hezbollah have been engaged in border fighting since shortly after the start of the war on Gaza, following the October 7 attacks on Israel. The confrontation is increasingly expanding, with both sides saying they are ready to go to war.

More than 400 people have been killed in Lebanon, including journalists and paramedics, over the past eight months, with 25 deaths in Israel. At least 90,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon, and more than 60,000 have been forced from their homes in northern Israel.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/17093990

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16649219

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16641620

Former Israeli Knesset member Moshe Feiglin quoted Adolf Hitler as he called for Israel to resettle the Gaza Strip and create a "Hebrew Gaza."

Feiglin, who quit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party to found the right-wing Zehut Party and plans to challenge Likud in Israel's next elections, made the comments during a panel discussion on Israel's Channel 12 that was shared on social media on Sunday, as Middle East Eye reported.

"We are not guests in our country, this is our country, all of it..." Feiglin said, adding, "As Hitler said, 'I cannot live if one Jew is left.' We can't live here if one 'Islamo-Nazi' remains in Gaza."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16627397

Russia’s northern offensive isn’t going well.

Ukrainian forces have captured dozens of Russian troops in the embattled town of Vovchansk, just south of the Russia-Ukraine border, dealing a major setback to Russia’s faltering northern offensive.

In heavy fighting over the weekend, Ukrainian troops surrounded as many as 400 Russians in and around a chemical plant in central Vovchansk. Thirty Russians surrendered after repeated attempts to rescue them failed, the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies reported.

On May 10, a force of tens of thousands of Russian troops opened a new front in Russia’s 28-month wider war on Ukraine. Attacking south across the Russia-Ukraine border, Russian battalions quickly captured a chain of lightly defended border villages—and then advanced on Vovchansk, the first big town between the border and the city of Kharkiv, 25 miles to the south.

It was there in Vovchansk that the Ukrainians chose to stand fight. Elements of several Ukrainian brigades—including the elite 82nd Air Assault Brigade—rushed north and, in several weeks of hard fighting, blocked the Russian advance just north of the Vovcha River, which threads from east to west through central Vovchansk.

The Russians rallied. The equivalent of at least two battalions with hundreds of infantry stormed the PJSC Volchansky chemical plant, on the Vovcha River’s right bank. Factories and other industrial facilities are often the locus of the fighting in Ukraine, as their big sturdy buildings can shelter troops and protect them from artillery and drones.

The Russians’ plan was apparently to capture the chemical plant and then, from there, launch a river-crossing operation in order to force their way into southern Vovchansk.

The plan failed when Ukrainian troops—perhaps from the 9th Rifle Battalion, Russian Volunteer Corps or 36th Marine Brigade—attacked west of the chemical plant and advanced several blocks to the north, cutting off the Russians in the plant from their comrades to the west.

“The Russians are surrounded here with zero chances of evacuation or reinforcements,” one Ukrainian drone operator crowed. “A bunch of dead and wounded orcs,” they added, using a slang term for Russian soldiers.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16577490

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16562328

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) reported on Saturday that over 50,000 children in the Gaza Strip are in urgent need of treatment for acute malnutrition, Anadolu Agency reports.

In a statement, the agency said that “with continued restrictions to humanitarian access, people in Gaza continue to face desperate levels of hunger.”

“Over 50,000 children require treatment for acute malnutrition,” it added.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/20875967

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16522447

"Dozens of tons of cocaine have been taken out of circulation," German authorities said. The drugs were first uncovered in Hamburg last year.

Investigators in Germany have discovered a record amount of cocaine worth several billion euros, authorities reported on Friday.

"Dozens of tons of cocaine worth several billion euros have been taken out of circulation," the Baden-Württemberg State Office of Criminal Investigation and the Customs Investigation Office in Stuttgart, as well as the Düsseldorf public prosecutor's office announced.

The huge quantity of drugs was first discovered in the port of Hamburg last year, and, according to the German news agency DPA, originated in South America.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16522427

The French political class is tearing itself apart with feuding and backbiting ahead of this month’s vote.

We’re only four days into France’s election campaign and the vendettas are already boiling over in a melodramatic flurry of grab-your-popcorn vaudeville acts. 

Humiliated in the EU election, President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday called a national parliamentary election, hoping to stem the tidal advances of the far right. 

His rivals tried to seize on the historic moment to set enmities aside and unite — but things haven’t gone as planned, to put it mildly. 

In the country’s main center-right party, the besieged leader barricaded himself in party headquarters claiming he was still in command, until a rival turned up with a spare key to demonstrate that was no longer the case. 

On the far right, two prominent figures descended into open warfare, with one accusing the other of setting “the world record for betrayal.” 

Meanwhile, on the left, a co-operation agreement has been struck and parties seem intent on putting their differences behind them — but tensions still crackle between two star figures, in terms of both personality and issues including Ukraine and Gaza.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/23194544

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16523136

Germans under 25 gave the AfD 16% of their vote in the European elections, with particular support in the east

Paul Friedrich, 16, could not wait to cast his first ballot and had no doubt which German party had earned his support in the watershed European elections.

“Correct, I voted AfD,” he said proudly in the bustle of the commuter railway station in Brandenburg an der Havel, an hour from central Berlin.

The far-right Alternative für Deutschland made particularly stunning gains on Sunday among young voters. For the first time in a national poll, 16- and 17-year-olds could cast their ballots – a reform that had been strongly backed by left-leaning parties.

After overwhelmingly supporting the Greens five years ago, Germans under 25 gave the AfD 16% of their vote – an 11-point rise – helping place the party second behind the opposition CDU-CSU conservatives and well ahead of the Social Democrats of the chancellor, Olaf Scholz.

The AfD tapped deep wells of support in the former communist east, winning in every state including Brandenburg, where it claimed 27.5% of the vote.

…

And his concerns echo those of many teenagers and twentysomethings in town: fears of war spreading in Europe, inflation, economic decline, “unchecked” immigration and, above all, violent crime, which they say is rampant when they use public transport or hang out in public spaces at night.