Netanyahu defends planned military offensive in Gaza and lashes out at ‘global campaign of lies'
He spoke to foreign media minutes before an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Gaza. Notably, Netanyahu said he has directed Israel's military in recent days to 'bring in more foreign journalists' — which would be a striking development, as they haven't been allowed into Gaza beyond military embeds during 22 months of war.
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Toronto Star
3 hours ago
- Toronto Star
Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno pushes Trump's agenda on drugs and trade in Colombia homecoming
MIAMI (AP) — When Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno visits Colombia this week as part of a three-nation tour of Latin America, it'll be something of a homecoming. Ohio's first Latino senator was born in the Colombian capital of Bogota, and even as he was chasing the American dream in the Buckeye state, he kept close tabs on the country through older brothers who are heavyweights in politics and business back home.
Winnipeg Free Press
3 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
On the front lines in eastern Ukraine, peace feels far away
DONETSK REGION, Ukraine (AP) — In a dugout where each nearby blast sends dirt raining from the ceiling and the black plastic lining the walls slipping down, Ukrainian soldiers say peace talks feel distant and unlikely to end the war. Explosions from Russian weapons — from glide bombs to artillery shells — thunder regularly overhead, keeping them underground except when they fire the M777 howitzer buried near their trench. Nothing on the Eastern Front suggests the war could end soon. Diplomatic peace efforts feel so far removed from the battlefield that many soldiers doubt they can bring results. Their skepticism is rooted in months of what they see as broken U.S. promises to end the war quickly. Recent suggestions by U.S. President Donald Trump that there will be some ' swapping of territories' — as well as media reports that it would involve Ukrainian troops leaving the Donetsk region where they have fought for years defending every inch of land — have stirred confusion and rejection among the soldiers. Few believe the current talks can end the war. More likely, they say, is a brief pause in hostilities before Russia resumes the assault with greater force. 'At minimum, the result would be to stop active fighting — that would be the first sign of some kind of settlement,' said soldier Dmytro Loviniukov of the 148th Brigade. 'Right now, that's not happening. And while these talks are taking place, they (the Russians) are only strengthening their positions on the front line.' Long war, no relief On one artillery position, talk often turns to home. Many Ukrainian soldiers joined the army in the first days of the full-scale invasion, leaving behind civilian jobs. Some thought they would serve only briefly. Others didn't think about the future at all — because at that moment, it didn't exist. In the years since, many have been killed. Those who survived are in their fourth year of a grueling war, far removed from the civilian lives they once knew. With mobilization faltering and the war dragging on far longer than expected, there is no one to replace them as the Ukrainian army struggles with recruiting new people. The army cannot also demobilize those who serve without risking the collapse of the front. That is why soldiers wait for even the possibility of a pause in hostilities. When direct talks between Russia and Ukraine were held in Istanbul in May, the soldiers from 148th brigade read the news with cautious hope, said a soldier with the call sign Bronson, who once worked as a tattoo artist. Months later, hope has been replaced with dark humor. On the eve of a deadline that U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly gave Russia's Vladimir Putin — one that has since vanished from the agenda amid talk of a meeting in Alaska — the Russian fire roared every minute for hours. Soldiers joked that the shelling was because the deadline was 'running out.' 'We are on our land. We have no way back,' said the commander of the artillery group, Dmytro Loviniukov. 'We stand here because there is no choice. No one else will come here to defend us.' Training for what's ahead Dozens of kilometers from Zaporizhzhia region, north to the Donetsk area, heavy fighting grinds on toward Pokrovsk — now the epicenter of fighting. Once home to about 60,000 people, the city has been under sustained Russian assault for months. The Russians have formed a pocket around Pokrovsk, though Ukrainian troops still hold the city and street fighting has yet to begin. Reports of Russian saboteurs entering the city started to appear almost daily, but the military says those groups have been neutralized. Ukrainian soldiers of the Spartan brigade push through drills with full intensity, honing their skills for the battlefield in the Pokrovsk area. Everything at the training range, only 45 kilometers (28 miles) from the front, is designed to mirror real combat conditions — even the terrain. A thin strip of forest breaks up the vast fields of blooming sunflowers stretching into the distance until the next tree line appears. One of the soldiers training there is a 35-year-old with the call sign Komrad, who joined the military only recently. He says he has no illusions that the war will end soon. 'My motivation is that there is simply no way back,' he said. 'If you are in the military, you have to fight. If we're here, we need to cover our brothers in arms.' Truce doesn't mean peace For Serhii Filimonov, commander of the 'Da Vinci Wolves' battalion of the 59th brigade, the war's end is nowhere in sight, and current news doesn't influence the ongoing struggle to find enough resources to equip the unit that is fighting around Pokrovsk. 'We are preparing for a long war. We have no illusions that Russia will stop,' he said, speaking at his field command post. 'There may be a ceasefire, but there will be no peace.' Filimonov dismisses recent talk of exchanging territory or signing agreements as temporary fixes at best. 'Russia will not abandon its goal of capturing all of Ukraine,' he said. 'They will attack again. The big question is what security guarantees we get — and how we hit pause.' A soldier with the call sign Mirche from the 68th brigade said that whenever there is a new round of talks, the hostilities intensify around Pokrovsk — Russia's key priority during this summer's campaign. Whenever peace talks begin, 'things on the front get terrifying,' he said. ___ Associated Press reporters Vasilisa Stepanenko, Evgeniy Maloletka and Dmytro Zhyhinas in the Donetsk Region and Volodymyr Yurchuk in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.
Winnipeg Free Press
3 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno pushes Trump's agenda on drugs and trade in Colombia homecoming
MIAMI (AP) — When Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno visits Colombia this week as part of a three-nation tour of Latin America, it'll be something of a homecoming. Ohio's first Latino senator was born in the Colombian capital of Bogota, and even as he was chasing the American dream in the Buckeye state, he kept close tabs on the country through older brothers who are heavyweights in politics and business back home. In an interview with The Associated Press ahead of the trip, Moreno expressed deep concern about the country's direction under left-wing President Gustavo Petro and suggested U.S. sanctions, higher tariffs or other retaliatory action might be needed to steer it straight. The recent criminal conviction of former President Alvaro Uribe, a conservative icon, was an attempt to 'silence' the man who saved Colombia from guerrilla violence, Moreno said. Meanwhile, record cocaine production has left the United States less secure — and Colombia vulnerable to being decertified by the White House for failing to cooperate in the war on drugs. 'The purpose of the trip is to understand all the dynamics before any decision is made,' said Moreno, who will meet with both Petro and Uribe, as well as business leaders and local officials, during the visit. 'But there's nothing that's taken off the table at this point and there's nothing that's directly being contemplated.' Elected with Trump's support Moreno, a luxury car dealer from Cleveland, defeated incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown last year with the help of Donald Trump's endorsement and $441 million in political ad spending — the most in U.S. Senate race history. He became Ohio's senior senator on practically his first day in office after his close friend JD Vance resigned the Senate to become vice president. In Congress, he's mimicked Trump's rhetoric to attack top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer as a 'miserable old man out of a Dickens novel,' called on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates and threatened to subpoena California officials over their response to anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. On Latin America, he's been similarly outspoken, slamming Petro on social media as a 'socialist dictator' and accusing Mexico of being on the path to becoming a 'narco state.' Such comments barely register in blue-collar Ohio, but they've garnered attention in Latin America, where Moreno has emerged as an interlocutor for conservatives in the region seeking favor with the Trump administration. That despite the fact he hasn't lived in the region for decades, speaks Spanish with an American accent and doesn't sit on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 'He's somebody to watch,' said Michael Shifter, the former president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. 'He's one of the most loyal Trump supporters in the senate and given his background in Latin America he could be influential on policy.' Moreno, 58, starts his first congressional delegation to Latin America on Monday for two days of meetings in Mexico City with officials including President Claudia Sheinbaum. He'll be accompanied by Terrance Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, who is making his first overseas trip since being confirmed by the Senate last month to head the premier federal narcotics agency. Seeking cooperation with Mexico on fentanyl Moreno, in the pre-trip interview, said that Sheinbaum has done more to combat the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. than her predecessor and mentor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who he described as a 'total disaster.' But he said more cooperation is needed, and he'd like to see Mexico allow the DEA to participate in judicial wiretaps like it has for decades in Colombia and allow it to bring back a plane used in bilateral investigations that López Obrador grounded. 'The corruption becomes so pervasive, that if it's left unchecked, it's kind of like treating cancer,' said Moreno. 'Mexico has to just come to the realization that it does not have the resources to completely wipe out the drug cartels. And it's only going to be by asking the U.S. for help that we can actually accomplish that.' Plans to tour the Panama Canal From Mexico, Moreno heads to Panama, where he'll tour the Panama Canal with Trump's new ambassador to the country, Kevin Marino Cabrera. In March, a Hong Kong-based conglomerate struck a deal that would've handed control of two ports on either end of the U.S.-built canal to American investment firm BlackRock Inc. The deal was heralded by Trump, who had threatened to take back the canal to curb Chinese influence. However, the deal has since drawn scrutiny from antitrust authorities in Beijing and last month the seller said it was seeking to add a strategic partner from mainland China — reportedly state-owned shipping company Cosco — to the deal. 'Cosco you might as well say is the actual communist party,' said Moreno. 'There's no scenario in which Cosco can be part of the Panamanian ports.' 'We want Colombia to be strong' On the final leg of the tour in Colombia, Moreno will be joined by another Colombian American senator: Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona. In contrast to Moreno, who was born into privilege and counts among his siblings a former ambassador to the U.S., Gallego and his three sisters were raised by an immigrant single mother on a secretary's paycheck. Despite their different upbringings, the two have made common cause in seeking to uphold the tradition of bilateral U.S. support for Colombia, for decades Washington's staunchest ally in the region. It's a task made harder by deepening polarization in both countries. The recent sentencing of Uribe to 12 years of house arrest in a long-running witness tampering case has jolted the nation's politics with nine months to go before decisive presidential elections. The former president is barred from running but remains a powerful leader, and Moreno said his absence from the campaign trail could alter the playing field. He also worries that surging cocaine production could once again lead to a 'narcotization' of a bilateral relationship that should be about trade, investment and mutual prosperity. 'We want Colombia to be strong, we want Colombia to be healthy, we want Colombia to be prosperous and secure, and I think the people of Colombia want the exact same thing,' he added. 'So, the question is, how do we get there?' ___ Smyth reported from Columbus, Ohio.
