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Several towns in southeastern Nepal remained under curfew yesterday as the region grappled with lingering tensions after days of sectarian violence that erupted on Sunday and left at least three people dead, authorities said. Twenty-five people were injured in a late-night clash on Sunday between Hindus and Muslims in Diwanganj, a town in Nepal's Sunsari district bordering India, with officials saying the violence was triggered by a dispute over loud music and religious flags during a Hindu event. Two men were shot and killed in Sunsari on Sunday and a third death was reported in neighbouring Siraha district on Thursday as sporadic clashes continued in the area. Police spokesperson Abi Narayan Kafle said the incidents were under investigation. There was no violence yesterday, police said, but an indefinite curfew was in place in several towns to prevent any recurrence.Nepal's Gen Z-backed Prime Minister Balendra Shah urged people on Thursday for calm and to remove the ‘cloud of turbulence’ from the Himalayan nation. ‘The government will conduct a fair and impartial investigation into the violence and punish those responsible for the trouble in a transparent way,’ Shah said in a rare, televised address to the nation.The country's Home Minister Sudan Gurung met the families of the two killed in Sunsari and agreed to provide about $6,660 in relief to each late on Thursday, the government said in a statement.Gurung was also expected to go to Siraha yesterday and meet the family of the third person who was killed. Source link
US President Donald Trump participates in a cabinet meeting at Camp David in Thurmont, Maryland, US, yesterday. (Reuters) Hamas said yesterday it had agreed to a deal that includes handing over its weapons to a Palestinian governing committee and the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip. The deal is aimed at implementing the long-stalled second phase of the Gaza ceasefire plan brokered by US President Donald Trump, who on Thursday hailed the agreement for Hamas’s “complete disarmament”, calling it a “major milestone” .Israel has yet to officially comment on the announcement, but a political source told AFP “that there will be no withdrawal whatsoever” from Israeli forces’ current lines “unless Hamas undergoes a genuine disarmament”. The Palestinian group’s weapons have been one of the key sticking points in fully implementing the ceasefire deal, which has been in place since October. The Israeli source said that “the issue of Gaza did not come up” in this week’s meeting between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington. But Trump maintained yesterday that Israel was pleased about the new deal. “We do have an understanding with Israel. Israel’s very happy about it,” Trump told journalists at Camp David.Hamas said it expected mediators and Trump’s Board of Peace to ensure Israel complied with the deal’s terms, which include Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.Israel has long insisted on Hamas’s full disarmament before its forces pull back, and prior to the announcement, the political source had listed “the removal of weapons from Gaza and full demilitarisation of the Strip as a precondition for any process” .Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’s negotiating team, said the movement was making “concessions for the sake of our people in the Gaza Strip”. “Israel will not intervene in the issue of disarmament. The National Committee is the body that will undertake this task,” he said, referring to the National Committee for Administration of Gaza (NCAG), which was established under Trump’s plan to handle day-to-day governance in Gaza. Despite the October ceasefire, violence has continued in Gaza, with Israeli strikes killing at least four people, including two children, on Thursday, according to health officials. The new agreement calls for all sides to immediately halt military operations, and for an International Stabilisation Force to separate Israeli troops from NCAG-controlled areas.The Board of Peace confirmed in a post on X that Hamas had “agreed to a detailed Roadmap for implementing the next phases of the Gaza ceasefire”. “Our focus now turns to implementation,” the organisation wrote, adding the NCAG will “soon begin a phased transition toward full authority” .Under the roadmap, the NCAG will be responsible for internal security. Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace’s high representative for Gaza, said yesterday the deal “took months of very difficult negotiations”. “What happens next matters even more. Implementation and verification have to be real,” Mladenov wrote on X. “ Withdrawal must move in lockstep with decommissioning.” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas welcomed the deal, but said “a lot needs to fall in place for this to work”. UN chief Antonio Guterres, alluding to the Middle East war and its regional spillover, said the agreement was a rare positive development. “The only good news in recent days is the announcement by the US president of an agreement for Hamas to relinquish their weapons and for Israel to withdraw its forces from Gaza,” he said.Egypt’s state-linked Al-Qahera News said Friday that Cairo will host a meeting soon of the truce’s mediators, which also include the US, Qatar and Turkey. Earlier, a diplomatic source told AFP that the roadmap “offers a balanced and pragmatic path forward, with all weapons decommissioned and a phased transition of responsibilities” to the new authorities.The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak publicly on the matter, said there would be “no exceptions for certain weapons or certain people”.The roadmap lays out a process to decommission and store Hamas’s heavy weapons, military production sites, weapons depots and tunnels, to be implemented by NCAG. A new verification mechanism would ensure compliance. Source link
Sniffer dogs in Japan helped rescuers yesterday make a final sweep of a shopping mall wrecked by an explosion after a big earthquake, as the death toll from the tremor three days earlier hit 35.”At the Aeon mall, 11 people were pulled out as of last night (Thursday), among them seven dead. To make sure that no one else is inside, we are finalising our confirmation with the assistance of professionally trained dogs,” government spokesman Minoru Kihara said. Local media quoted the operator of the mall, which was evacuated before being ripped apart by the suspected gas blast over an hour after Tuesday’s quake, as saying that all employees were now accounted for.At the other major disaster site, a paper factory, following the 7.1-magnitude jolt nine bodies have now been recovered and search and rescue operations were terminated, Kihara said. Two survivors were also extracted from the site where a smokestack collapsed, he said, putting the overall death toll from the quake in the southwestern region of Kumamoto at 35.Six others were in a critical condition, according to a local disaster management office. The quake caused widespread damage, flattening homes, damaging bridges, triggering fires and leaving many without electricity and water in temperatures forecast to approach 40C (104F) this weekend.”Only the electricity is working at home. The gas and water are cut off, so I’m wondering when they’ll be fixed,” Kosuke Iwasaki, a 27-year-old professional volleyball player, told AFP.”Drinking water is secured, but there’s very little water we can use freely” for example for laundry, said Iwasaki, who moved to Yatsushiro City just a month ago. Toilets also can’t be used if the water is cut off.As of yesterday, 79,000 households had no water, but power cuts were resolved across the whole Kumamoto region, according to the land ministry and the utility.More than 9,000, many of them elderly, evacuated to shelters.Although the military airlifted 300 air conditioners to the region, local media reported that many evacuation centers — mostly in school gymnasiums — lack air conditioning. One piece of good news was that 25 felines from a “cat cafe” inside the mall were rescued and transferred to Hiroshima, triggering widespread relief on social media.Japan is one of the world’s most seismically active countries, sitting on top of four major tectonic plates along the western edge of the Pacific “Ring of Fire”.Kumamoto itself was hit by two devastating earthquakes in 2016, which killed 273 people and injured more than 2,800 .The archipelago, home to around 125mn people, typically experiences hundreds of jolts every year and accounts for about 18% of the world’s earthquakes.The vast majority are mild, although the damage they cause varies according to their location and the depth below the Earth’s surface at which they strike.Japan is haunted by the memory of a massive 9.0-magnitude undersea quake in 2011, which triggered a tsunami that killed or left missing around 18,500 people and wrecked the Fukushima nuclear plant. Source link
US President Donald Trump on Friday told reporters at Camp David that he did not speak with FIFA President Gianni Infantino about the world soccer governing body offering stakes to external investors. Source link
US President Donald Trump announced that a historic agreement was reached for the disarmament of Hamas and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, expressing his gratitude to Qatar and the mediators for their efforts in reaching this agreement. In a post on his official Truth Social account, Trump said: “Today, the Board of Peace reached a historic agreement for the complete disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza. This is a monumental step toward lasting peace and security.” He added: “The agreement will be implemented through carefully structured phases; and upon completion of disarmament, Israeli forces will withdraw.” The US President expressed his gratitude to Qatar, saying: “I would like to thank the mediators Egypt, Qatar, and Turkiye for their important efforts, and especially my outstanding team who made this historic breakthrough possible.” Trump described the agreement as “a major historic achievement in the implementation of the Trump 20-point plan” to end the war, and announced that an international stabilization force will work with a new Palestinian police force to assume responsibility for Gaza Source link
A screen shows a US government map of Africa with mislabeled countries during a State Department presentation at a global conference on Sunday in Rio de…
TokyoEmergency responders searched early today for people feared trapped in a shopping mall in Japan after a major earthquake reportedly killed one person and injured more than 100.Private broadcaster TBS reported that a “considerable number” of people were feared dead inside the mall in the town of Kashima.A 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit Japan’s southern Kumamoto prefecture yesterday, knocking out power to thousands of homes, rupturing roads and leaving some trapped and others presumed dead inside a partially collapsed shopping mall.Speaking to reporters from her office in Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said authorities were still assessing the full extent of the damage in the area, which was devastated by a deadly quake a decade ago.“We have already been informed that people have been injured. Power outages and fires have occurred in some areas, and there has also been damage to roads and bridges and the collapse of buildings,” Takaichi said.“I ask everyone to take action to protect themselves, including evacuating to a safe location.”Around 300,000 people have been instructed to go to evacuation centres, and hundreds of soldiers have been deployed to help with rescue operations as aftershocks continued to rumble in the area, on Japan’s southwestern island of Kyushu.Around 20-30 workers at the prefecture’s largest shopping mall were unaccounted for after it was rocked by an explosion in the aftermath of the quake, NHK said.Fire services earlier said multiple people were trapped inside. Local news outlets quoted police saying several had died or were presumed to have perished in the incident, although Reuters could not immediately confirm the reports.One side of the mall, which houses around 200 stores, was torn away, exposing steel beams and strewing debris across a vast parking lot, footage showed. Several ambulances and fire engines were parked outside, as rescue teams searched for survivors.A spokesperson for mall operator Aeon said customers and employees were evacuated right after the initial quake and that the exact cause of the ensuing explosion was unclear. Authorities are investigating a possible gas explosion, broadcaster NTV reported.Kazuya Tsurunaga told TBS he was stunned by the blast while cleaning up dishes broken by the earthquake inside a pub about 300m from the Aeon mall.“It was a huge impact,” he said. “A large cloud of smoke billowed up, and because the wind happened to be blowing and the wind direction was towards the shop, the area around us was in a state like volcanic ash was falling.”Multiple people were also unaccounted for after a chimney collapsed at a Nippon Paper Industries factory, broadcaster NHK reported, while two hospitals were each reported to be treating more than 50 people, some in serious condition. Several passengers aboard high-speed trains at the time of the quake were also injured, operators said.Authorities said they were responding to multiple incidents where buildings had partially collapsed or had caught fire. One person died in one such collapse in a town near the epicentre, TV Asahi reported.Some roads were also badly damaged, with large cracks splintering major highways, snarling traffic. Rail services were suspended and flights grounded.TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Sony and Fujifilm evacuated workers from their plants following the quake. TSMC said in a statement late Tuesday that its site was unaffected and operations were gradually resuming.However, Tokyo Electron, a semiconductor equipment maker, said it was suspending operations at its two factories in Kumamoto through Wednesday, while Honda said it would also temporarily idle its motorcycle factory there. The quake’s epicentre was about 20km (12 miles) south of Kumamoto city, central Kyushu’s largest city with a population of around 700,000.Residents in the areas that felt the biggest tremors must be on alert for further strong quakes for about a week, as well as for the risk of landslides, an official for the Japan Meteorological Agency said. About 100 small aftershocks have hit Kumamoto already since the initial jolt, JMA said.A tsunami warning was issued immediately after yesterday’s quake, but was later lifted.Kyushu Electric Power said 48,000 homes had lost power as a result of the latest quake, while railway company JR Kyushu said that it had suspended services, including its high-speed bullet trains. Kumamoto airport also shut its runway, as airlines diverted and cancelled flights.Telecoms operators KDDI and Docomo said there was disruption to their mobile phone services due to power shortages and transmission-line failures.There were no irregularities reported at the nuclear power stations in the area, Japan’s nuclear regulation authority said.With thousands of homes still without power as night fell, authorities warned residents about the risk of heatstroke as temperatures were set to hit 34C (93F) today. Source link
For generations, support for Israel united Washington. Now Israel’s attacks on Gaza, the Iran war and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s close ties to US Republicans are eroding Democratic backing, threatening to turn one of America’s closest alliances into a partisan divide.Support for Israel among Democratic voters has plummeted, candidates critical of Israel are winning Democratic primaries and even moderate lawmakers are increasingly willing to challenge decades of US support for Israel.The shift is evident in Congress. This month, nearly half of House Democrats voted for a failed amendment to cut off aid to Israel, legislation that once likely would have been defeated by an overwhelming bipartisan majority. Israel receives $3.8bn annually in US military aid and received billions more in emergency funds in recent years.House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and some of his lieutenants opposed the measure, calling it overly broad. But former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark were among those voting yes.Democrats are increasingly divided over whether military aid should continue unchanged, be restricted to defensive weapons or be halted altogether.US Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, the leading Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he hopes Israeli elections in October help restore bipartisan US support while opening a new chapter beyond Netanyahu’s leadership. “New governments get to change direction,” Coons told Reuters, adding, “Netanyahu has kept Israel at war for years now, partly to avoid the political consequences of his choices.” Overall sentiment towards Israel is declining. A June Quinnipiac University poll found 48% of voters and 66% of Democrats believe the US is too supportive of Israel, up from 16% and 20% when the question was first asked in 2017.“Yes, there is a vigorous debate, but across broad segments of the parties, support for Israel remains firmly in the mainstream,” said Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, in an interview. The shift faces a major test in Tuesday’s Democratic US Senate primary in Michigan where voters will weigh competing visions of US support with growing numbers of congressional Democrats questioning longstanding US military aid. The race between progressive Abdul El-Sayed and US Representative Haley Stevens will determine who faces Republican Mike Rogers in November and reflects the wider Democratic debate over Israel and longstanding US military support.Stevens made a video with AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a major donor to her campaign, arguing that a close relationship with Israel “yields trade, that yields economic growth and that keeps our freedoms safe.” By contrast, El-Sayed, a former public health official, told Fox News: “The question is whether we want a politics where our money is sent over to Israel to fund genocide and apartheid instead of investing in our own kids.” A UN inquiry and several human rights groups have accused Israel of committing genocide in its military’s devastation of Gaza, an allegation Israel rejects, saying it is fighting Hamas and taking steps to reduce civilian harm. Israeli policy has been a factor in other battleground congressional races, including New York, Florida and Colorado. Strains with Democrats deepened 11 years ago, when in a speech to Congress at the request of the Republican majority Netanyahu attacked a deal crafted by then-President Barack Obama, a Democrat, on controlling Iran’s nuclear programme. Sentiment critical of Israel grew after Israel launched its war in Gaza.Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has reshaped Democratic politics, fueling a backlash among younger voters and deepening a generational divide within the party. Campus protests in 2024 intensified pressure on Democrats to reassess support for Israel. Some analysts say President Joe Biden’s refusal to do so contributed to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ loss to Trump later that year.This primary election cycle, some establishment candidates have been defeated by more progressive challengers who have questioned support for Israel, mostly in congressional districts dominated by Democrats. Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, a progressive pro-Israel rival to AIPAC, said the debate within the Democratic Party reflected a backlash against the right-wing Netanyahu and AIPAC, calling it “a toxic brew that really has helped to make Israel. Unfortunately, a real wedge issue in the Democratic Party.” AIPAC did not respond to requests for comment.Shibley Telhami, a University of Maryland professor of government and politics and senior non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution, called it a “paradigm shift that sees Israel now as a villain, even a genocidal villain, in a way that was never the case before. ” While some conservative influencers have joined the attack, the Republican Party will support Israel as long as evangelical Christians and Trump stand firm, Telhami said in an interview. The divide over Israel is spilling into congressional campaigns elsewhere. Republican Representative Mike Lawler, who represents a district outside New York City with a large Jewish population, has used the Democratic shift on Israel to attack challenger Cait Conley in a battleground fight for control of the House. In southern Florida, moderate Representative Jared Moskowitz, a consistent supporter of Israel aid, is being challenged in the August 18 Democratic primary by democratic socialist Oliver Larkin, who campaigns on his belief that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza and supports an suspension of US military aid. Longtime US Representative Diana DeGette was defeated in the Colorado Democratic primary by Ethiopian-born Melat Kiros. Kiros has called for ending wars, including by stopping military aid to Israel, while DeGette said she supported sending only defensive weapons to Israel.US Senator Mazie Hirono, who has advocated for a two-state solution, said, “I think the support for Israel’s right to exist, all of that is there. It’s just the (Israeli) leadership we seriously question.” Source link
US President Donald Trump voiced irritation with Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of their White House meeting yesterday, complaining that details of the Israeli prime minister’s planned talking points on Iran had surfaced publicly, in a fresh sign of strain between the two leaders.Asked about reports that Netanyahu wanted to talk to him about Pickaxe Mountain, a fortified facility buried deep underground near one of Iran’s main nuclear sites, Trump said, using Netanyahu’s nickname, “I don’t need Bibi to tell me that. Bibi’s telling me that because he wants me to stay involved.” “Why don’t you just tell it to me? Why do you have to announce it to the world?” Trump said in an interview with “Fox & Friends.” The New York Post reported on Monday, citing a source in Jerusalem, that Netanyahu was expected to provide intelligence to Trump that Iran is building up its nuclear facilities at Pickaxe Mountain and is lying about wanting a peace deal.But photos posted by Netanyahu’s office on X showed the two leaders sitting beside each other in the Oval Office with wide smiles. They were joined by Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.Trump met Netanyahu after first having brief closed-door talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt described both meetings as “positive and productive.” Relations with Zelensky have warmed as Ukraine has blunted Russian advances in their more than four-year-old war, while Netanyahu faces growing White House frustration over the lack of progress toward a broader settlement in the Iran conflict and criticism from some of Trump’s supporters who oppose deeper US involvement in the Middle East. The Israeli and Ukrainian leaders were in Washington to attend a memorial service for Senator Lindsey Graham, a hawkish Republican who was an influential advocate for both Israel and Ukraine in Washington.Both the Ukraine war and the widening Middle East conflict are at critical junctures. After the collapse of a ceasefire in the Iran war, Trump says he has paused US airstrikes to give diplomacy another chance. Netanyahu has run hot and cold with Trump, who at times has had to rein in the Israeli leader from attacking targets in Lebanon to try to weaken Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters.An acrimonious phone call in June in which the president called the prime minister “crazy”, first leaked to the media and later publicly confirmed by Trump himself, laid bare the strains between the two leaders.Sources familiar with the matter said Netanyahu aims to get Trump’s support for his reelection campaign ahead of an October 27 vote. A meeting with Trump that showcases what has traditionally been a close relationship between the two leaders could help Netanyahu at home where he is struggling in the opinion polls.They are also expected to discuss the Abraham Accords, the series of agreements Trump brokered to normalise diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.Trump wants to add Saudi Arabia to the accords and conditioned a civilian nuclear co-operation deal with the kingdom last week on Riyadh signing up. Riyadh has so far rejected joining the accords without a path toward Palestinian statehood. Source link
Japan’s government announced Thursday that the death toll from the Kumamoto earthquake has risen to 28. Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said that the latest figure includes those suspected to be quake-related, adding that the ongoing search and rescue operations are a race against time. The search efforts encompass several sites, including a collapsed shopping mall and a damaged paper mill. As of Wednesday evening, thousands of households were experiencing power or water outages, while the number of people residing in evacuation centers in Kumamoto Prefecture exceeded 10,000 by Thursday morning. The earthquake, which struck Kumamoto Prefecture on Tuesday, measured 7.1 on the Richter scale and was followed by tsunami warnings for the Ariake and Yatsushiro Seas. Source link