WORLD BRIEFING: November 29, 2023
Israel-Hamas War
There are hopes the current truce between Israel and Hamas could be extended - talks are being held in Qatar. Israel says it's received a list of hostages held in Gaza who could be released later on Wednesday. On Tuesday, 12 more hostages were released by Hamas and Israel freed 30 more Palestinian prisoners - BBC
The director of the pediatrics department at Dana Children’s Hospital, Prof. Ronit Lubetzky, said that children who were kidnapped by Hamas and returned to Israel lost 10-17% of their body weight during captivity. According to her, the prolonged stay in a place without light brought them to a state of vitamin deficiency - Haaretz
Ukraine War
With Republicans in Congress stalling on granting Ukraine more military aid, NATO’s top diplomat warned on Tuesday that it would be “dangerous” to curtail support to the war, as member countries tried to pin down the United States on its commitments to Kyiv and as the conflict in Gaza sapped Washington’s attention. As foreign ministers gathered Tuesday at the military alliance’s headquarters, the NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, insisted that Ukraine would remain a top priority. He predicted that U.S. assistance would continue — not only to protect American security interests but also because it’s “what we have agreed…It’s our obligation to ensure that we provide Ukraine with the weapons they need, because it will be a tragedy for Ukrainians if President Putin wins,” Mr. Stoltenberg told journalists in Brussels at the start of two days of meetings of the military alliance. “It will also be dangerous for us…The challenge now is that we need to sustain the support,” Mr. Stoltenberg said. He added: “We just have to stay the course.”
Ukrainian troops downed all 21 Shahed-136/131 drones launched by Russia overnight, the Air Force reported in the morning of Nov. 29. The drones were launched from around Russia's port city of Primorsko-Akhtarsk in southern Krasnodar Krai. Two out of three Kh-59 cruise missiles launched from the occupied part of Kherson Oblast were destroyed as well, according to the Ukrainian military. Fighter aircraft, anti-aircraft missile units, and units of mobile fire groups were used to down the weapons, according to the post. The attack was mainly targeted against western Ukraine's Khmelnytskyi Oblast as well as southern regions. The attack drones were downed over Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Khmelnytskyi obalsts - Kyiv Independent
The wife of Ukraine’s military intelligence chief has been poisoned and is recovering in a hospital, Ukrainian intelligence officials said on Tuesday, an incident that has led to widespread speculation that Russia was stepping up efforts to target Ukraine’s senior leadership. Andriy Chernyak, an official from the Ukrainian military intelligence agency, said that Marianna Budanova had been poisoned and was receiving treatment. Her husband, Kyrylo Budanov, is the head of the agency known as G.U.R. and is one of the country’s most senior military leaders. Mr. Chernyak declined to speculate on the perpetrator or the type of poison used and provided no further details, citing the ongoing investigation. The agency’s spokesman, Andriy Yusov, later issued a statement with a similar account of the incident and said more information would be released as the investigation proceeds - NYT
Elsewhere
U.S. military aircraft carrying six people crashed into the sea in western Japan on Wednesday, killing at least one crew member with the condition of at least two hauled from waters unclear. Japan's coast guard said it found what appeared to be wreckage from the tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey and one person who was later confirmed to have died some 3 km (2 miles) from Yakushima island. Fishing boats in the area found three people in the surrounding waters, a representative of a local fisheries cooperative said, adding their condition was unknown - Reuters
France will ban smoking on beaches and public parks with an aim to create a "tobacco-free generation by 2032," the country's health minister Aurélien Rousseau said Tuesday. Smoking in forests and some other public spaces, including close to schools, will also be banned in the country. The minister did not give an exact timeline but hinted that people could face fines as early as next year. "The fun, leisure aspect of smoking has to go," Rousseau said, adding that "200 preventable tobacco-related deaths per day… is a number we should not get used to." The move comes after France announced in September it would ban disposable e-cigarettes - CNN