Internet restored in Gaza after three days, says Palestinian telecom official
Internet is back up in the Gaza Strip, the head of the Palestinian Telecommunications Regulatory Authority told AFP on Saturday, after a three-day blackout.
"The network is up now in all of the Gaza Strip," said the telecom agency's CEO Laith Daraghmeh, after the Palestinian Authority's telecommunications ministry had reported internet and fixed-line communications were down as Israeli forces on Thursday bombed Gaza's last remaining fibre optic cable.
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Middle East Eye
6 hours ago
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Iranian attacks on Israeli oil refineries in Haifa have destroyed pipelines and transmission lines, according to a regulatory filing to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. No injuries or casualties were reported at the sites. Refining facilities remain operational despite a shutdown of some downstream operations, Reuters reported.
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All is calm at Satoshi Yamazaki's rice farm, with its freshly planted rows of vivid-green seedlings, but a row over the cost of the staple in Japan is threatening to deal the government a blow at the ballot box. Shortages of the grain caused by a supply chain snarl-up have seen prices almost double in a year, fuelling frustration over inflation — and voters could let their anger be known in upper house elections due next month. To help ease the pain for consumers and restaurants, the government started tapping emergency stockpiles in March, having only previously done so during disasters. Yamazaki, who grows about 10 per cent of his rice organically using ducks to eat pests, said he understands high prices are 'troubling' for ordinary people. But he stressed that thin profits are a concern for many of those who produce it. 'There's a gap between shop prices and what farmers sell rice for to traders and the like,' he told AFP in the northern Niigata region. 'Not all the money paid at shops becomes our income,' said Yamazaki, a 42-year-old father of seven. A mosaic of factors lies behind the shortages, including an intensely hot and dry summer two years ago that damaged harvests nationwide. Since then some traders have been hoarding rice in a bid to boost their profits down the line, experts say. The issue was made worse by panic-buying last year prompted by a government warning about a potential 'megaquake' that did not strike. Meanwhile, the rising price of imported food has boosted the popularity of domestic rice, while record numbers of tourists are also blamed for a spike in consumption. Farm minister Shinjiro Koizumi has pledged to cut prices quicker by selling stockpiled rice directly to retailers — attracting long queues to some shops. It appears to be working: the average retail price has edged down for a second week to 4,223 yen ($29) for five kilograms (11 pounds), down from a high of 4,285 yen in May. That hasn't stopped opposition politicians — with an eye on the elections — and online critics branding the reserve rice 'old', with some likening it to animal feed. But analysts also blame Japan's decades-old policy of cutting rice-farming land. The policy was introduced to support prices that were being hit by falling demand brought about by changes in the Japanese diet. Under the 1971 policy, farmers were told to reduce the amount of space used to grow the grain in favour of other crops. That saw the amount of land used for rice paddies — not including for livestock feed — plunge below 1.4 million hectares (3.5 million acres) in 2024, from a peak of 3.3 million hectares in 1960. While the policy was officially abolished in 2018, it has continued in a form of incentives pushing farmers towards other commodities like soybeans. Adding to the crisis is Japan's ageing population. Many rice farmers are old and their children have no interest in taking over. Eighty percent of rice farmers are part-time with less than two hectares of fields but they account for only 20 percent of production, said agronomy expert Kazunuki Oizumi, professor emeritus of Miyagi University. Their main revenue comes from other jobs or pensions, he added. Toru Wakui, chairman of a large-scale farm in the northern Akita region who has for decades fought against the acreage reduction, said Japan should 'seek an increase in rice production and exports to foreign markets'. 'If you only think about the domestic market while increasing output, of course prices will fall,' he told AFP. 'We need to look for markets abroad.' 'The 55 years of acreage reduction destroyed Japan's agriculture,' said Wakui, 76, who urged Koizumi in a letter last month to 'declare an expansion in rice production'. He also said Japan should consider a scheme to help young people start agriculture businesses without the burden of initial investment in fields and machinery, by involving other sectors including banks and trading companies. Public support for Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's government has tumbled to its lowest level since he took office in October, which local media say was partly caused by the surge in inflation and soaring rice costs. He has told parliament that increasing production is 'an option' to temper prices, but said food security and the livelihood of producers was also important. For the farmer Yamazaki, 'wanting cheap rice with high quality' is a pipe dream. 'We farmers are a little baffled by the limelight that suddenly shifted to us,' he said. 'But I think it's a good opportunity for the public to think about how rice is produced.'
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16 hours ago
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VIDEO: Israel and Iran strike at each other in new wave of attacks
Israel and Iran launched fresh attacks on each other late on Saturday, stoking fears of a wider conflict after Israel expanded its surprise campaign against its main rival with a strike on the world's biggest gas field. Tehran called off nuclear talks that Washington had said were the only way to halt Israel's bombing, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacks were nothing compared with what Iran would see in the coming days. Israel's military said more missiles were launched from Iran towards Israel late on Saturday, and that it was working to intercept them. It also said it was attacking military targets in Tehran. Iranian state television said Iran had launched missiles and drones at Israel. Several projectiles were visible in the night sky over Jerusalem late on Saturday. Air raid sirens did not sound in the city, but were heard in the northern Israeli city of Haifa. Israel's ambulance service said a woman in her 20s was killed and 13 other people injured when a missile struck a two-story house in northern Israel. Iran said the Shahran oil depot in Tehran was targeted in an Israeli attack but that the situation was under control. US President Donald Trump had warned Iran of worse to come, but said it was not too late to halt the Israeli campaign if Tehran accepted a sharp downgrading of its nuclear programme. A round of US-Iran nuclear talks due to be held in Oman on Sunday was canceled, with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi saying the discussions could not take place while Iran was being subjected to Israel's "barbarous" attacks. In the first apparent attack to hit Iran's energy infrastructure, the semi-official Tasnim news agency said Iran partially suspended production at the world's biggest gas field after an Israeli strike caused a fire there on Saturday. The South Pars field, offshore in Iran's southern Bushehr province, is the source of most of the gas produced in Iran. Fears about potential disruption to the region's oil exports had already driven up oil prices 9% on Friday even though Israel spared Iran's oil and gas on the first day of its attacks. An Iranian general, Esmail Kosari, said on Saturday that Tehran was reviewing whether to close the Strait of Hormuz controlling access to the Gulf for tankers. Iran said 78 people were killed on the first day of Israel's campaign, and scores more on the second, including 60 when a missile brought down a 14-storey apartment block in Tehran, where 29 of the dead were children. Iran had launched its own retaliatory missile volley on Friday night, killing at least three people in Israel. With Israel saying its operation could last weeks, and Netanyahu urging Iran's people to rise up against their leadership, fears have grown of a regional conflagration dragging in outside powers. B'Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights organization, said on Saturday that instead of exhausting all possibilities for a diplomatic resolution, Israel's government had chosen to start a war that puts the entire region in danger. Tehran has warned Israel's allies that their military bases in the region would come under fire too if they helped shoot down Iranian missiles. However, 20 months of war in Gaza and a conflict in Lebanon last year have decimated Tehran's strongest regional proxies, Hamas in Gaza and Hizbollah in Lebanon, reducing its options for retaliation. Israel sees Iran's nuclear programme as a threat to its existence, and said the bombardment was designed to avert the last steps to production of a nuclear weapon. Tehran insists the programme is entirely civilian and that it does not seek an atomic bomb. However the U.N. nuclear watchdog reported it this week as violating obligations under the global non-proliferation treaty. Reuters
