World Briefing: October 12, 2024
An Israeli airstrike has killed two Lebanese soldiers and wounded three others, hours after the Israeli military fired on the headquarters of a UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon for the second time in as many days. The two incidents on Friday prompted further concern over Israel’s escalating campaign, amid waves of heavy airstrikes across Lebanon. Lebanon’s army has not been involved in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, and it withdrew its forces from the border between the countries when Israel launched its invasion last month. The Lebanese army said its soldiers died in an Israeli airstrike near a military checkpoint in the southern Bint Jbeil province. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that it had been targeting Hezbollah positions and was “unaware of any Lebanese army facilities found in the area of the strike” - Guardian
A US-made munition was used in a strike on central Beirut that killed 22 people and wounded 117, according to an analysis of shrapnel found by the Guardian at the scene of the attack. The strike on Thursday night hit an apartment complex in the densely populated neighbourhood of Basta, levelling the apartment building and destroying cars and the interiors of nearby residences. It was the deadliest strike on Lebanon’s capital city since fighting between Hezbollah and Israel started a year ago. - Guardian
Russia has confirmed that Donald Trump sent the Kremlin sample Covid-19 tests in the early days of the pandemic, after revelations in veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s new book raised further questions about the former US president’s relationship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The Trump administration “sent us several samples of test kits,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday, broadly supporting Woodward’s claim. His intervention comes after Trump denied the claims, telling ABC News they were “false.” Legendary reporter Woodward wrote in “War” that Trump “secretly sent Putin a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his personal use.” - CNN
After two attempted assassinations and an ongoing threat from Iran, Donald Trump’s campaign has ramped up requests for security, including transport by military aircraft and additional security measures on the ground at the former president’s campaign stops, three sources familiar with the discussions told CNN. Trump’s campaign wants to use these resources – including access to military aircraft with deterrent systems to protect against surface-to-air missiles – as the former president crisscrosses the US during the final weeks of the presidential campaign. The requests from Trump’s campaign also include access to Camp David vehicles for Trump’s primary motorcade as well as access to other military assets, such as drones with thermal monitoring - CNN
The government is carrying out 37 investigations into UK-linked businesses for potentially breaking Russian oil sanctions - but no fines have been handed out so far, the BBC can reveal. The identities of the businesses are unknown but it is understood some are likely to be maritime insurance firms. The Treasury said it would take action where appropriate, but pointed to the complexity of the cases as a reason they take considerable time. But Sir William Browder, a longstanding critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said it was an "embarrassment" that there had not been a single prosecution or fine for companies investigated for potentially breaching oil sanctions. - BBC
The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a grass-roots movement of atomic bomb survivors, “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.” Nihon Hidankyo has for decades represented hundreds of thousands of survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. These survivors, known as the hibakusha, are living memorials to the horror of the attacks and have used their testimony to raise awareness of the human consequences of nuclear warfare - NYT
At the current pace, it could take 90 years for all the Ukrainian children officially listed as forcibly deported to Russia to return home - Anastasia Stepula of Ukrainian Child Rights Network. So far, out of 19,546 Ukrainian children abducted, only 736 have been returned. Independent media sources have documented many cases where the abducted Ukrainian children had their identities involuntarily changed and adopted by Russian families under false means
A former, widely-respected Ukrainian diplomat has publicly slammed the administration of President Volodymyr Zelensky for silencing and sidelining “public initiatives and organisations they consider disloyal.” In a Facebook post, Olena Zerkal details a range of tactics allegedly used by officials. “Disagreeable experts are deprived of platforms for discussion. They are not allowed to expert forums, threatening the organizers that ‘if they are represented, no one from the government will be there.’” She adds: “Representatives of ministries and ambassadors are directly prohibited from attending events organized by ‘disloyal public organizations.’ Zerkal added that unsavoury people and entities are smeared through the spreading of “outright lies among donors and international partners.” Zerkal is a former deputy minister of foreign affairs and a lawyer who has held several positions within the Ministry of Justice. She had represented Ukraine at high-profile international court hearings. Zerkals criticism of the Zelensky team came around the same time as the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a public statement slamming Kyiv for cracking down on the independent online journal, Ukrainska Pravda. CPJ said some officials were instructed not to talk to UP and was “pressuring private companies to pull advertising from the outlet and some advertisers had withdrawn following calls from the office.”
A municipal official in Zhytomyr Ukraine has been found to have hidden almost $1-million in unexplained real estate assets in the UAE. Olena Rosenblatt, deputy of the Zhytomyr City Council from the "Batkivshchyna" party told reporters that she knew nothing about this property. The story was first reported by RFE/RL’s award-winning investigative program, Schemes
