Thursday, Jul 18th
Last update06:35:59 AM GMT
International Glance
France's interior minister says a double blast in two huge fuel tanks at a petrochemical plant in southern France is of criminal origin.
Bernard Cazeneuve told lawmakers on Wednesday that "the motive has not been established" to explain the explosions Tuesday at the plant near the Marseille Provence Airport.
The double blasts in two tanks 500 meters apart threw plumes of black smoke into the sky visible for miles. No one was injured.
The U.S. has authorized the first cruise service to Cuba in half a century.
Cruise giant Carnival Corp. announced Tuesday that it has received U.S. government licenses to offer "purposeful" cruises from the U.S. to Cuba for people-to-people, humanitarian and other exchanges.
Pending approval from Cuban authorities, Carnival aims to offer seven-day trips from Miami to several Cuban ports starting in May on its new "fathom" brand, which offers travel for social causes such as volunteer work and cultural immersion.
The fall of Srebrenica in Bosnia 20 years ago, prompting the worst massacre in Europe since the Third Reich, was a key element of the strategy pursued by the three key western powers –Britain, the US and France – and was not a shocking and unheralded event, as has long been maintained.
Eight thousand Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed over four days in July 1995 by Bosnian Serb death squads after they took the besieged town, which had been designated a “safe area” under the protection of UN troops. The act has been declared a genocide by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, and the Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadžic and General Ratko Mladic await verdicts in trials for directing genocide.
Israel's navy intercepted a Swedish vessel attempting to breach a naval blockade of the Gaza Strip early Monday and was redirecting it to an Israeli port, the military and the activists said.
The military said that after exhausting all diplomatic efforts, the government ordered it to block the vessel. Israeli naval forces boarded the Marianne ship and searched it in international waters without needing to use any force, the military said.
European warships and coast guard vessels have rescued more than 2,000 migrants off the coast of Libya.
The Malta-based, Migrant Offshore Aid Station, said it coordinated the operation along with Italian, Irish and German ships. Italy's coastguard could not confirm the numbers, but said it was trying to help around a dozen other vessels.
At least 42 members of Iraq's security forces have been killed in a suicide attack targeting an army base north of Fallujah, in Iraq's Anbar province.
The bombing was carried out with an armored Humvee vehicle laden with explosives, military sources told Al Jazeera. Witnesses said ammunition stored in the base's depot continued to explode several hours after the initial attack, which occurred at 3 a.m. local time Monday.
Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, slain in 1980 by a paramilitary death squad while celebrating mass in San Salvador, died as a martyr and thus deserves beatification, Pope Francis decreed on Tuesday.
Francis approved a decree that Romero had been killed “in hatred of the faith,” supporting recommendations by theological experts and a commission of cardinals. Francis unblocked Romero’s sainthood process shortly after his election in March 2013. Romero’s beatification will take place in El Salvador, but the Vatican did not provide a date.
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