An Israeli air strike hit an apartment building in central Beirut on Monday in the first attack on the Lebanese capital outside the Hezbollah-stronghold southern suburbs since the 2006 war. The strike in Beirut’s Cola district killed three leaders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), according to the leftist Palestinian militant group, as Israel escalated hostilities against Iran’s allies in the region - France 24
European, Arab and Islamic nations have launched an initiative to strengthen support for a Palestinian state and its institutions, and prepare for a future after the war in Gaza and escalating conflict in Lebanon, Norway’s foreign minister has said. Espen Barth Eide told The Associated Press that “there is a growing consensus in the international community from Western countries, from Arab countries, from the Global South, that we need to establish a Palestinian Authority, a Palestinian government, a Palestinian state — and the Palestinian state has to be recognized.” Eide said many issues need to be addressed, including the security interests of Israel and the Palestinians, recognition and normalization of relations after decades of conflict and the demobilization of Hamas as a military group. “These are pieces of a bigger puzzle,” Norway’s chief diplomat said. “And you can’t just come in there with one of these pieces, because it only works if all the pieces are laid in place.” - AP
Eurotopics: Who Can Ukraine Count on in 2025?
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Ukraine's military said its air defenses had shot down 15 of 22 Russian attack drones detected in at least four regions of the country overnight, and said five more of those drones were thwarted by other "countermeasures." The head of the Ukrainian military administration in the southern region of Zaporizhzhya, Ivan Fedorov, said high-rise buildings and private homes had been struck overnight and "there may be people under the rubble…Fourteen people were wounded in Zaporizhzhya today after a Russian strike. Debris removal has been continuing all day and two people were rescued from the rubble,” he wrote on Telegram. - RFE/RL
Pope Francis has pledged to root out the “scourge” of clerical sexual abuse after Belgium’s prime minster urged him in unusually frank terms to take concrete action. Francis was addressing political leaders on Friday at the official residence of the King of Belgium, a country where devastating clerical abuse scandals have erupted in recent years. In his remarks, Francis compared the church’s abuse crisis to the biblical story of King Herod’s order that all male children aged two and under be executed. “This is the shame, the shame that we must all take in hand today and ask for forgiveness and solve the problem, the shame of abuse, of child abuse,” the pope said. “We think of the time of the ‘Holy Innocents’ and say ‘what a tragedy. What did King Herod do?’ But today, in the Church itself there is this crime.” - CNN
Thousands of people in Portugal have protested against 'uncontrolled immigration' in a rally called by the far-right CHEGA party. The demonstrators marched through the capital Lisbon with the Portuguese national flag and carried banners bearing slogans like, 'Expulsion of immigrants who commit crimes'. We emigrated legally. That's how it should happen in a developed country," said Cecilia Guimaraes, who arrived in Portugal from Canada. She complained of a feeling of insecurity she says could be linked to foreign arrivals. - Euronews
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