Friday, Dec 27th
Last update05:57:07 AM GMT
International Glance
An American journalist from Arizona who attempted to self-immolate in Washington DC said he became overwhelmed by how the US media, and by extension himself, framed Israel's war on Gaza and the killings of innocent Palestinians.
Samuel Mena on Saturday attended a pro-Palestinian rally, where he gave a speech about objectivity and both-sideism and chided American newsrooms for their coverage of the war.
Joe Biden has called off a four-day trip to Germany this week that had been intended to culminate in a summit to discuss Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “victory plan” for Ukraine.
The White House said on Tuesday evening that the president would stay at home “to oversee preparations for and the response” to Hurricane Milton, which is expected to make landfall in Florida on Wednesday.
It was not clear how Biden’s absence would affect the planned summit, the first time world leaders were due to gather at the Ramstein US airbase, normally the location of a regular meeting of defence ministers to discuss military aid for Kyiv.
Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, promised that the Biden trip would be rescheduled and said he understood the president’s reasons for calling it off. “It would have been a very important meeting and we prepared it on all sides,” he said.
Former President Donald Trump kept in touch with Russian President Vladimir Putin after Trump left office, according to “War,” a new book by famed reporter Bob Woodward.
An aide to Trump told Woodward he was once asked to leave a room at Trump’s home in Florida so he could have a private phone call with Putin.
“According to Trump’s aide, there have been multiple phone calls between Trump and Putin, maybe as many as seven in the period since Trump left the White House in 2021,” Woodward wrote, according to CNN, which obtained a copy of the book ahead of its release later this month.
Trump has spoken fondly of Putin over the years; he used the words “genius” and “savvy” to describe Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, for instance. Trump claimed to have been the victim of a “witch hunt” when the Justice Department investigated his 2016 campaign’s contacts with Russian sources.
Relatives on Monday buried the mayor of a state capital in southern Mexico who was killed just one week after he took office.
Photos of the crime scene shared on social media showed Mayor Alejandro Arcos’ severed head had been left on the roof of a pickup truck. Authorities did not immediately confirm the authenticity of the images, but at his funeral, there were signs his head had been reattached by forensic examiners or mortuary staff.
Arcos was sworn in last Monday as mayor of Chilpancingo, a city so violent that a drug gang openly staged a demonstration, hijacked a government armored car and took police hostage in 2023 to win the release of arrested suspects.
A Russian hypersonic missile struck the area of Ukraine’s major Starokostiantyniv airbase on Monday morning, Kyiv said. The latest strike on Starokostiantyniv in the western Khmelnytskyi region came a day after the Dutch defence minister said the Netherlands would supply Ukraine with more F-16 jets in the coming months. There were no civilian casualties and no damage to critical infrastructure, said Serhiy Tyurin, governor of Khmelnytskyi.
Two Kinzhal missiles were shot down in the Kyiv region overnight into Monday, the air force said. Debris came down in three Kyiv districts, but no major damage or casualties were reported after air defences engaged incoming targets, city authorities said. Yurii Ihnat, a Ukrainian air force spokesperson, said: “Despite the fact that it’s getting harder, despite [Russia’s] improvements and the use of new tactics, today we have two shoot-downs … They are learning from their mistakes and from our mistakes. They are improving their technology so that we are able to shoot down fewer of them.” Ukrainian air defences also shot down 32 Russian drones and a further 37 were lost on military radars, suggesting they had been disabled by electronic warfare, the air force said.
Kyiv said Russian attacks had killed three civilians overnight into Monday: two brothers aged 35 and 38 in the eastern region of Sumy and a 61-year-old woman in the southern Kherson region. In the city of Kherson, the governor said a Russian strike had wounded 19 people and damaged an educational facility and various residential buildings. Ukraine also said a Russian attack had killed one person and wounded seven – including children aged two and 13 – in the city of Sloviansk in Donetsk oblast.
A year after the Hamas attack, Israel continues its military campaign in Gaza, while its operations in the occupied West Bank have expanded significantly.
For Palestinian civilians caught in the middle of the ongoing conflict between Israeli forces and the Hamas militant group, the consequences have been unremittingly difficult, and deadly.
The death toll from Israel's offensive in Gaza is now approaching 42,000 Palestinians, with another 39 deaths recorded Monday at local hospitals, according to Gaza's health authorities.
A Russian court sentenced American citizen Stephen Hubbard to almost seven years in prison after it convicted him in a closed-door trial of fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine.
Prosecutors accused Hubbard, 72, of receiving $1,000 per month in exchange for fighting with a territorial defense unit of Ukraine's military in the eastern city of Izyum since the war began with Russia's invasion of Ukraine in Feb. of 2022. Hubbard was captured less than two months later, according to Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti.
In a closed trial on Monday, Hubbard stood handcuffed inside a glass cell and removed a hat from his shaven head as a judge pronounced him guilty. He appeared emotionless, Reuters reported.
Hubbard pleaded guilty to the charges, the outlet reported. But his sister, Patricia Fox, and another relative told Reuters they doubted the truth of his confession.
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