Tensions in the Middle East have escalated in recent hours with a new wave of cross-attacks between Iran and the United States, which launched a series of bombings on the Persian country after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard attacked a container ship sailing through the Strait of Hormuz. Later, Tehran responded with missiles and drones targeted at Persian Gulf countries hosting US bases, such as Jordan, Kuwait, and Qatar.
Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have raised the number of confirmed cases in the Ebola outbreak declared in the east of the country on May 15 to 488, including 86 deaths, and warned of “rapid and continued community transmission.”
At least eleven people have died after a drone airstrike on a market in central Sudan, where the escalation of airstrikes raises the death toll in one of the planet’s worst humanitarian crises.
In the Roussillon plain, 50 kilometers north of the Franco-Spanish border, the Rivesaltes camp stands on dry and windy land. Converted into a Memorial in 2015 and recently renovated, the barracks of the former internment camp that operated here between 1941 and 1964 are still visible. Spanish refugees who fled Franco’s troops in 1939 were the first to be confined in Rivesaltes, a supposed “reception center” that was very similar to a concentration camp, surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by the French army. Conditions were precarious, but in the improvised camps on the beaches of Argelès, it was even worse. Although the policy of interning “undesirable foreigners” began in the 1930s, it was the authoritarian and pro-Nazi Vichy regime that truly boosted it from 1940 onwards.
The United States Central Command (Centcom) reported late this Friday that its forces shot down four Iranian drones launched towards the Strait of Hormuz, considering they represented an immediate threat to commercial navigation in the area.
The Republican Party is increasingly resembling a hornet’s nest.
The Israeli military deployment during the war with Iran was not limited to its own borders. According to a CNN exclusive, Tel Aviv covertly deployed troops and intelligence equipment in southern Azerbaijan. According to sources cited by the American media, the soldiers were mobilized near the Iranian border, less than 100 kilometers from the Persian city of Tabriz, which was heavily bombed during the month and a half of conflict.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy insisted on Thursday night on holding a meeting between him and Vladimir Putin to negotiate peace between Ukraine and Russia and end a war that has lasted more than four years. The Ukrainian president’s proposal is not new, but it is the first time he has done so with an open letter to the head of the Kremlin. On previous occasions, Moscow has refused, indicating that such a meeting would only be possible when there is already a firm agreement that both leaders would only have to ratify.
The U.S. House of Representatives approved on Thursday a bill to provide aid to Ukraine and impose new sanctions on Russia, demonstrating that some Republicans are willing to defy their party’s leaders and oppose President Donald Trump.
Donald Trump’s other international obsession is Cuba, a country he defined this Thursday as “a beautiful territory” that “could have beautiful resorts.”