Gaming the Air Raids in Kyiv: A Night in a Capital at War
KYIV, Ukraine—It is a balmy Monday evening here, filled with the honeyed scent of linden trees, the bustle of outdoor cafes and no outward hint of the deadly war that has raged for more than three years.
Then comes a warning from social-media channels: A couple of Russian attack drones are closing in.
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News24
an hour ago
- News24
From NATO critic to cheerleader: Trump's summit transformation may not last
President Trump experienced a dramatic shift in attitude toward NATO during the summit. NATO leaders strategically managed the summit to appeal to Trump, providing him with royal treatment in the Netherlands, meeting defense spending commitments demands, showering him with praise. The summit raised questions about the alliance's priorities being guided by one person, with Ukraine appearing to be the 'biggest loser'. It will go down as the summit where US President Donald Trump learned to stop worrying and love NATO. Trump revelled in gushing praise from leaders in The Hague - including being called "daddy" by alliance chief Mark Rutte - and a pledge to boost defence spending as he had demanded. But it went further than just lapping up flattery. Trump also spoke of what sounded like an almost religious conversion to NATO after years of bashing other members as freeloaders and threatening to leave. "I came here because it was something I'm supposed to be doing, but I left here a little bit differently," Trump said at his closing press conference on Wednesday. "I watched the heads of these countries get up, and the love and the passion that they showed for their country was unbelievable. I've never seen quite anything like it. "It was really moving to see it." READ | Trump celebrates 'great victory' at NATO summit as allies promise spending increase A day after returning to the White House, Trump still sounded uncharacteristically touchy-feely about his time with his 31 NATO counterparts. "A wonderful day with incredible and caring Leaders," he posted on his Truth Social platform on Thursday. Turnaround It was a remarkable turnaround from the US president's first term. Trump repeatedly berated allies as not paying up and threatened to pull the US out of NATO as part of his wider disdain for international institutions and alliances. At his first summit in 2017 in Brussels, Trump memorably shoved aside Montenegro's Prime Minister Dusko Markovic as he made his way to the front of the stage. A year later, Trump publicly lambasted Germany and privately talked about wanting to quit. But this time, NATO leaders had carefully choreographed the trip. They massaged the numbers to give Trump the defence spending deal he while Trump headed to the summit dropping F-bombs in frustration at a shaky Iran-Israel ceasefire, NATO leaders love-bombed him from the moment he arrived. The Netherlands put him up overnight in the Dutch king's royal palace and gave him a royal dinner and breakfast - "beautiful", according to Trump - while NATO organisers deliberately kept the summit short. Frederick Kempe, the chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council, said Trump had "waxed poetic" about NATO in a way he had never done before. "Trump - the vilifier of European deadbeats on defence and crusader against allies for what he sees as unfair trade practices - sounded like an altered man," he said in a commentary. 'Daddy's Home' The question now is what it means for NATO when the alliance's priorities end up guided by one man. The final summit statement's language on Russia's invasion of Ukraine was watered down from previous years. It also made no mention of Ukraine's push to join NATO. Reporters were not allowed into Trump's meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The move was partly because of their Oval Office bust-up in February, but it also deprived Zelensky of the set-piece he had craved. "The biggest loser was Ukraine," said Ed Arnold of the Royal United Services Insitute in London. Trump also hinted at what lies in store for any backsliders on the defence spending pledge, threatening to make Spain "pay" on trade over its resistance to commit to the new target. As with any relationship, the pressure will now be on NATO to keep up the first flush of love over the three summits that are due to take place over the rest of Trump's second term. "The real worry is that NATO will be unable to keep up the hype," said Arnold. For now, though, Trump and his administration seem to be content. As he arrived back in Washington, the White House posted a video of summit highlights, with the caption: "Daddy's Home."
Yahoo
an hour ago
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FACT FOCUS: Posts misrepresent report to falsely claim nearly 400,000 Palestinians are missing
As the number of Palestinians killed in the Israel-Hamas war continues to rise, social media users are falsely claiming that a Harvard University study has determined that hundreds of thousands in the Gaza Strip are also missing. 'Israel has 'disappeared' nearly 400,000 Palestinians in Gaza since 2023,' reads one X post that had been shared and liked more than 35,700 times as of Thursday. 'Harvard has now confirmed what we've been screaming into a deaf world: This is a holocaust — and it's still happening.' But Harvard did not publish the report in question. Moreover, these claims misrepresent data from the report that was intended to address an entirely unrelated topic. Here's a closer look at the facts. CLAIM: A Harvard University study found that nearly 400,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are missing as a result of the Israel-Hamas war. THE FACTS: Harvard published no such study. This estimate misrepresents a map included in a report by a professor at Israel's Ben Gurion University that shows the distance between new aid distribution compounds in Gaza and three main populations centers. Using spatial analysis, the report determined that these compounds are inadequate and also does not address how many people in Gaza are missing. It was published on the Harvard Dataverse, a repository managed by the university where researchers can share their work. Contributors do not need to be affiliated with Harvard and publish directly to the repository without approval from the university. 'If anyone had asked me about these numbers I would have set things straight right away,' said the Yaakov Garb, a professor of environmental studies who authored the report. 'Instead the number was circulated and recirculated by people who had not read the report or stopped to think about it for a moment.' The inaccurate estimate comes from a post on the blogging site Medium. In the post, the author uses a map from Garb's report showing how many people live in what are currently Gaza's three main population centers — Gaza City, central refugee camps and the Muwasi area — according to estimates from the Israeli Defense Forces, to determine how many Palestinians are allegedly unaccounted for. The author subtracts the former number — 1.85 million — from the population in Gaza before the Israel-Hamas war began — 2.227 million — for a total of 377,00 missing people. But the numbers on the map are not comprehensive. 'These IDF numbers were not intended to sum to 100% of the Gaza population,' Garb said. 'There may be Gazans in other locations outside these areas of concentration.' Many Palestinians also have left Gaza since the war began in October 2023, a fact the Medium post does not take into account. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said in January that about 100,000 had left. According to Garb, the map was meant to show how difficult it would be for people in these areas to reach new aid distribution compounds. He also noted that it had a typo, which he intends to fix. There are approximately 700,000 people in the Muwasi area, not 500,000. The author of the Medium post did not respond to a request for comment. Other estimates have put the number of missing people, typically defined as those who are dead under the rubble of Gaza, much lower than what the Medium post alleges. A June 2024 study published in The Lancet, for example, found that between about 15,000 to 38,000 people could have been missing at that time. 'Clearly time has passed, and more have died and been buried under rubble. But it is unlikely that numbers of people buried under rubble could increase to 400,000 since then," said Shelly Culbertson, a senior policy researcher at RAND who studies disaster and post-conflict recovery. She added that even if missing people included those who had completely lost communication with their families, it is unlikely that the number would reach 400,000. Garb lamented the negative impact this type of misinformation could have for Palestinians and those trying to help them. 'If somebody like me who's doing serious work thinks twice next time about, oh my god, do I even want to put out something about Gaza if I have to sully myself with this stuff, they've done a disservice — done a disservice to the Palestinian cause, which they are ostensibly trying to further. I mean, they need to realize that," he said. ___ Find AP Fact Checks here:
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
How Israel launched attacks from inside Iran to sow chaos during war
Gilan, Iran – The Israeli military used hundreds of fighter jets, armed drones and refuelling planes to attack Iran during its 12-day war backed by the United States, but it was also heavily assisted by operations launched from deep within Iranian soil. Just hours after the Israeli army and Mossad spy agency started their attacks before dawn on June 13, they released footage that appeared to have been recorded at night from undisclosed locations inside Iran. One grainy video showed Mossad operatives, camouflaged and wearing tactical gear including night-vision goggles, crouched in what looked like desert terrain, deploying weapons that aimed to destroy Iran's air defence systems to help pave the way for incoming attack aircraft. Others showed projectiles, with mounted cameras, descending to slam into Iranian missile defence batteries, as well as ballistic missile platforms. The projectiles appeared to be Spike missiles – relatively small, precision-guided anti-armour missiles that can be programmed to fly to targets that are out of their line of sight. Iranian authorities also confirmed the use of the weapons, with state media showing images of remnants of customised Spike missile launchers that were discovered in one open area. They said the weapons were equipped with 'internet-based automation and remote-controlled systems' and were operated by 'terrorist Mossad agents'. The move partly echoed an Israeli operation in November 2020 that killed Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a senior figure in Iran's nuclear programme, who was gunned down in a city near Tehran while moving in a vehicle with his wife and bodyguards. Iranian authorities at the time confirmed that the assassination was carried out using remote-controlled and artificial intelligence-guided equipment, with Israeli media reporting that a one-tonne gun was smuggled into Iran in pieces by Mossad and mounted on the back of a pick-up truck, which exploded after Fakhrizadeh was killed. Iran executed three men on Wednesday morning in the northwestern province of West Azerbaijan, accused of being involved in Fakhrizadeh's death and other assassinations. Israel also appears to have used a large number of explosives-laden small drones and quadcopters during the 12-day war to overwhelm Iranian defences as part of its multipronged assault operations. Iranian media reported throughout the war that air defences across the country were activated to counter the small drones, as well as larger military-grade counterparts like the Hermes 900, several of which Iran claimed to have shot down. However, the exact number of drones launched and how successful they were in hitting their targets cannot be corroborated by Al Jazeera. The smaller drones attracted a lot of attention and forced authorities to muster large-scale search operations to neutralise them, as Israeli warplanes dropped more bombs across the country and US President Donald Trump briefly rhetorically backed the possibility of regime change. Soon, authorities found pick-up trucks with customised cargo beds that were made to accommodate small, pre-programmed drones that they said could be driven close to their intended targets before launching. Such a strategy has been used successfully elsewhere as well, including at the start of June when Ukraine managed to destroy as much as a third of Russia's strategic bomber fleet on the tarmac of four airfields deep inside Russian territory. Iranian authorities organised search parties, particularly at night, consisting of security forces who patrolled the streets on motorcycles or vehicles to look for any suspicious trucks or movement. Armed and masked security forces also set up countless roadblocks and checkpoints in sprawling Tehran and across the country, including in northern provinces where millions travelled after fleeing the capital, which typically stopped and searched pick-up trucks with covered cargo beds. After what the Israelis said were years of preparations, their operatives appear to have been able to set up small production lines of the unmanned vehicles inside Iran. One such operation was discovered in Shahr-e Rey in southern Tehran, where state media said a three-storey building was dedicated to churning out drones, homemade bombs and a large volume of explosives. State television also showed another similar operation, in which six Iranian 'Mossad agents' were assembling quadcopters with small bombs attached under them, as well as bombs with timers, grenades and other weapons. There were also reports of vehicles planted with explosives, but there was no official confirmation by Iranian authorities. Some of the arrested suspects were shown confessing on state television with their hands bound and their eyes covered. Judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohsen-Ejei and Tehran's public prosecutor Ali Salehi personally interrogated one unnamed suspect on state television, who said he tried to film air defences for the Mossad from rooftops. The Israeli military's chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, confirmed in a video statement on Wednesday that commando forces 'operated covertly deep in enemy territory and carried out operations that granted us operational freedom of action'. He did not say whether he was referring to the commandos shown at the start of the operation on the first night or other potential operations. Iranian officials have not directly commented on claimed Israeli commando operations from inside Iranian territory. But authorities continue to announce dozens of arrests across Iran in relation to collaboration with Israel and the US, and have so far executed at least six people accused of collaborating since the start of the war. Israeli intelligence operations inside Iran are believed to have been a major contributor to the success of the June 13 surprise attacks that started the war, which killed a large number of top military commanders and nuclear scientists while also incapacitating some air defences and hitting missile launch sites in an effort to limit Iran's retaliation. Huge cyberattacks launched by pro-Israel hacking groups also temporarily took down two of the country's biggest banks, as well as the country's largest cryptocurrency exchange. An undated video circulated by state-linked media this week showed Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the assassinated head of the critical aerospace division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), saying during a speech that 'we are all under surveillance' by Mossad through mobile phones and other communications devices. Hajizadeh, who was killed while holding a meeting with a host of other top aerospace commanders in an underground bunker in or around Tehran, urged others to exercise caution and turn off and periodically replace their mobile phones during the speech. As part of their response to the Israeli offensive, Iranian authorities also cut off internet access, at one point choking off 97 percent of the massive country's connectivity, according to NetBlocks internet observatory. It was one of the most comprehensive internet blackouts ever imposed in Iran – and likely anywhere else in the world. The restrictions imposed during the war were mostly lifted by Thursday, two days after a ceasefire announced by Trump took effect.
