Sunday, Jun 15th
Last update07:14:22 AM GMT
Arab leaders at an annual summit in Baghdad called Saturday for an immediate end to Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip and to allow aid into the Palestinian territories without conditions. They promised to contribute to the reconstruction of the territory once the war stops.
In March, an emergency Arab League summit in Cairo endorsed a plan for Gaza’s reconstruction without displacing its roughly 2 million residents.
An explosion at a fertility clinic in the upscale California city of Palm Springs appears to have been intentional, local authorities said. One person was found dead, and the FBI said it was sending investigators, including bomb technicians, to the scene.
Palm Springs Police Chief Andy Mills said in a statement Saturday that the blast “appears to be an intentional act of violence” and that several buildings damaged, some severely.
“There has been one fatality, the person’s identity is not known,” Mills’ statement said.
The act was being investigated as a possible car explosion, said two law enforcement officials briefed on the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss preliminary information from an ongoing investigation. One of the officials told AP that investigators believe the person who died is likely the person who set off the explosion, but cautioned the investigation is still in its early stages. Authorities have not disclosed a motive.
At least 32 people were killed in Kentucky, Missouri and Virginia after storms and tornadoes tore through the region as part of an extreme weather outbreak on May 16, "leaving behind a trail of destruction," authorities said.
The toll includes at least 23 dead in Kentucky and seven in Missouri, authorities there said. The number of fatalities was expected to continue increasing, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said.
The Kentucky deaths were concentrated in Laurel County in the southeastern part of the state, where a tornado tore through the city of London. A Laurel County firefighter died while responding. Randall Weddle, mayor of the city of London, told the Louisville Courier Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network, that at least 23 people there died. Beshear confirmed at least 18 deaths: 17 in Laurel County and one in Pulaski County. The youngest victim is a 25-year-old Laurel County man.
Beshear said during a 5 p.m. press conference on May 17 that he expected the Kentucky death toll to "potentially rise."
“This was a devastatingly strong tornado that tore through a subdivision in the middle of the night and that is the worst type of natural disaster," he said.
The Trump administration is working on a plan to permanently relocate up to 1 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya, five people with knowledge of the effort told NBC News.
The plan is under serious enough consideration that the administration has discussed it with Libya’s leadership, two people with direct knowledge of the plans and a former U.S. official said.
In exchange for the resettling of Palestinians, the administration would potentially release to Libya billions of dollars of funds that the U.S. froze more than a decade ago, those three people said.
No final agreement has been reached, and Israel has been kept informed of the administration’s discussions, the same three sources said.
A recent United States ambassador to Ukraine has published an opinion column explaining her decision to resign her post, and criticising President Donald Trump for siding with Russia over Ukraine.
On Friday, former diplomat Bridget Brink published an article in the Detroit Free Press, a newspaper in her home state of Michigan, expressing concern about current US foreign policy.
The US has long been an ally of Ukraine, and since 2014, it has provided the war-torn country with military assistance, as it fends off Russia’s attempts at invasion and annexation.
Israel has announced a major new offensive in Gaza after launching a wave of airstrikes on the territory that killed more than 100 people, in what it said was a fresh effort to force Hamas to release hostages.
In a statement late on Friday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they had “launched extensive attacks and mobilized forces to seize strategic areas in the Gaza Strip, as part of the opening moves of Operation Gideon’s Chariots and the expansion of the campaign in Gaza, to achieve all the goals of the war in Gaza”.
The announcement came as Donald Trump finished a visit to the region that included stops in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates but not Israel.
At least four people died and others were hurt after severe storms including a possible tornado swept through St Louis on Friday, as tens of millions of Americans in multiple states braced for possible damage from expected high winds and severe weather this weekend.
St Louis mayor Cara Spencer confirmed the deaths after storms tore roofs off some buildings, ripped away brick facades and downed trees and power lines as residents were urged to take cover.
Ten people in custody at the New Orleans jail, including a man convicted of four killings, escaped early on Friday morning.
While at least two were apprehended within hours, the escapes prompted local, state and federal officials to launch a “full-scale search operation” for eight who remained at large Friday night – and to warn community members to be on the lookout for “armed and dangerous” individuals.
“Folks, take it seriously,” the New Orleans police superintendent, Anne Kirkpatrick, said at a news conference late on Friday morning. Sheriff Susan Hutson, whose agency operates the jail, said: “We are urging the public to remain alert.”
At first, officials said 11 people had escaped. But during a press conference on Friday afternoon, the New Orleans sheriff clarified that one man, who authorities thought had escaped, was in a different cell.
An original copy of the Magna Carta has been found in a Harvard University library, stunning British academics who hailed the school’s previously perceived imitation as “one of the world’s most valuable documents.”
The historic charter, which dates back to England’s King Edward I in 1300, was declared an original by eagle-eyed historians in the U.K. who launched an investigation into its authenticity after coming upon it online, Harvard University said in a release Thursday.
Nicholas Vincent, a professor of medieval history at the University of East Anglia, said it took “all of 30 milliseconds” for him to recognize the document’s authenticity after it was flagged to him by David Carpenter, a fellow professor of medieval history at King’s College London.
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