The prime minister of Yemen’s Huthis was killed in an Israeli airstrike along with other officials earlier this week, the Iran-backed rebels announced on Saturday.
Ahmed Ghaleb Nasser Al-Rahawi, who was appointed last year, is the most senior official known to have been killed in a series of Israeli strikes during the war in Gaza.
“We announce the martyrdom of the fighter Ahmed Ghaleb Nasser Al-Rahawi… along with several of his ministerial colleagues, as they were targeted by the treacherous Israeli criminal enemy,” a Huthi statement said.
“Others among their companions were injured with moderate to serious wounds and are receiving medical care since Thursday afternoon,” it added.
The Israeli military struck in the area of Sanaa, the Huthi-held capital, on Thursday. The Huthis, claiming solidarity with the Palestinians, have frequently fired missiles and drones at Israel during the Gaza war.
Israeli forces “struck a Huthi terrorist regime military target”, the Israeli military said at the time.
The Huthis have also targeted shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, which they claim is linked to Israel during the Gaza war.
The rebel group controls large parts of Yemen, which has been gripped by war since 2014, and is part of Iran’s anti-Israel alliance alongside militant groups across much of the Middle East. (Punch)
A gunman opened fire Wednesday on school children attending church in Minneapolis, killing two pupils and wounding 17 people, police said, in the country’s latest violent tragedy.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told a media briefing that the shooter, in his early twenties, sprayed bullets into the Annunciation Church as dozens of students were at Mass to celebrate their first week back to school.
The church sits next to an affiliated school in the south of the city, the largest in the state of Minnesota.
“Two young children, ages eight and 10, were killed where they sat in the pews,” O’Hara said, adding that 17 others were injured, including 14 children.
Two were in critical condition, he said.
The gunman fired a rifle, shotgun and pistol before he took his own life in the parking lot, according to the police chief.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz wrote on X earlier that he was “praying for our kids and teachers whose first week of school was marred by this horrific act of violence.”
Live video footage showed panicked parents retrieving their young children and fleeing amid a major emergency response.
“This was a deliberate act of violence against innocent children and other people worshiping. The sheer cruelty and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is absolutely incomprehensible,” O’Hara said.
“Our hearts are broken for the families who have lost their children, for these young lives that are now fighting to recover, and for our entire community that has been so deeply traumatized by this senseless attack,” he added.
Wednesday’s violence is the latest in a long line of school shootings in the United States, where guns outnumber people and attempts to restrict access to firearms face perennial political deadlock.
“Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying. It was the first week of school. They were in a church. These are kids that should be learning with their friends,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told reporters.
“They should be playing on the playground. They should be able to go to school or church in peace without the fear or risk of violence.”
President Donald Trump said he had been briefed on the “tragic shooting” and that the FBI was responding.
“The White House will continue to monitor this terrible situation. Please join me in praying for everyone involved!” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The confirmed shooting comes after a wave of false reports of active shooters at US college campuses around the country as students return from summer break. (Channels)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he will give final approval for the seizure of Gaza City while also restarting negotiations with Hamas aimed at returning all the remaining captives and ending the nearly two-year-old war, but on “terms acceptable to Israel”.
Speaking to soldiers near Gaza on Thursday, Netanyahu said he was still set on approving plans for seizing Gaza City, the densely populated centre at the heart of the Palestinian enclave, forcibly displacing close to 1 million people and carrying out the systematic demolitions of Palestinian homes.
“At the same time I have issued instructions to begin immediate negotiations for the release of all our hostages and an end to the war on terms acceptable to Israel,” Netanyahu said, adding: “We are in the decision-making phase.”
The wide-scale operation in Gaza City could start within days after Netanyahu grants final approval at a meeting with senior security officials later on Thursday.
Israeli forces have already stepped up attacks there, and thousands of Palestinians have left their homes as Israeli tanks edged closer to Gaza City over the last 10 days.
Hamas said earlier this week that it had agreed to a ceasefire proposal from mediators Qatar and Egypt, which, if accepted by Israel, could forestall the assault.
Israel’s army plans to call up 60,000 reservists and extend the service of 20,000 more.
The proposal on the table calls for a 60-day ceasefire and the release of 10 living captives held in Gaza by Hamas and of 18 bodies. In turn, Israel would release about 200 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Once the temporary ceasefire begins, the proposal is for Hamas and Israel to begin negotiations on a permanent ceasefire that would include the return of the remaining captives.
Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, has likened Netanyahu’s announcement about relaunching purported truce talks while the military escalates its assault on Gaza City to “negotiation under fire”.
“There will be no stoppage of the fighting. There will be no breaks in the genocide. Hamas is going to have to make up its mind as Israel kills dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Palestinians moving forward [and] as it transfers a million Palestinians southward in Gaza,” Bishara said.
“Israel is now dictating all the terms, and it’s not listening to anyone, and it has a green light from Washington.”
At least 48 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since dawn, including 16 aid seekers who were the latest victims of shootings at GHF aid distribution points.
Meanwhile, two more people have starved to death in Gaza in the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry said on Thursday. The new deaths raised the number of Palestinians who have died from Israeli-induced hunger to 271, including 112 children, since the war began.
A renewed Israeli offensive could bring even more casualties and displacement to the famine-struck territory. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) estimated that 90 percent of Gaza’s residents have been displaced, warning that shelters are deteriorating and any further displacement will worsen the catastrophic situation.
The Palestinian Ministry of Interior denounced Israel’s push to seize Gaza City as a “death sentence” for the more than one million people living there.
The Palestinian Health Ministry also released a statement responding to what it says is an Israeli push to transfer health system resources to the south of the enclave.
“The Ministry of Health expresses its rejection of any step that would undermine what remains of the health system following the systematic destruction carried out by the Israeli occupation authorities,” it said.
“This step would deprive more than one million people of their right to treatment and put the lives of residents, patients and the wounded at imminent risk.”
Some Palestinian families in Gaza City have left for shelters along the coast, while others have moved to central and southern parts of the enclave, according to residents there.
“We are facing a bitter, bitter situation, to die at home or leave and die somewhere else. As long as this war continues, survival is uncertain,” Rabah Abu Elias, 67, a father of seven, told the Reuters news agency.
“In the news, they speak about a possible truce, on the ground, we only hear explosions and see deaths. To leave Gaza City or not isn’t an easy decision to make,” he said.
Meanwhile, Israeli air attacks also destroyed a tent camp in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, where many people have sought refuge. Residents said the Israeli military warned them to flee shortly before the attacks set the camp ablaze.
Families, many with children, could later be seen sifting through the ashes for the belongings they had managed to take with them during earlier evacuations.
Mohammad Kahlout, who had been displaced from northern Gaza, told The Associated Press they were given just five minutes to gather what they could and flee.
“We are civilians, not terrorists. What did we do, and what did our children do, to be displaced again?” (AlJazeera)
The rise of TikTok trends and social media slang has prompted Cambridge Dictionary to update its online edition with 6,000 fresh entries in the past year, including buzzwords like “skibidi,” “delulu,” and “tradwife.”
For those less immersed in digital culture, some of the sample sentences the UK-based dictionary provides may sound baffling. The term skibidi was popularised through Skibidi Toilet, a surreal YouTube animation series featuring human heads popping out of toilets.
Phrases such as “that wasn’t very skibidi rizz of you” or “As Gen Z say, I’ve entered my ‘delulu era?’” can appear like another language entirely.
According to Cambridge, skibidi is defined as “a word that can have different meanings, such as ‘cool’ or ‘bad,’ or can be used with no real meaning as a joke.” (Punch)
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has indicated that Gaza ceasefire efforts are now focused on a comprehensive deal to release all the remaining hostages at once.
The plan previously being pushed was for an initial 60-day truce and partial release of living hostages.
Hamas says a delegation of its leaders is in Cairo for “preliminary talks” with Egyptian officials.
Reports say that mediators see a window of opportunity in the coming weeks to try to push a deal through.
After indirect talks between Israel and Hamas broke down last month, Israel announced a controversial plan to widen its military offensive and conquer all the Gaza Strip – including the areas where most of its two million Palestinian residents have sought refuge.
However, Israeli media do not expect the new operation to begin until October – allowing time for military preparations, including a mass call-up of reservists.
Meanwhile, intense Israeli strikes have continued in Gaza, and the Hamas-run health ministry said at least 123 Palestinians have been killed in the past day.
Witnesses say that Israel has stepped up its attacks on Gaza City in particular with air strikes destroying homes.
Footage shows large explosions caused by the strikes and demolitions in the Zaytoun area, to the east of Gaza City.
Early on Wednesday, al-Shifa Hospital said seven members of one family, five of them children, were killed when tents were targeted in Tel al-Hawa, in the south of the city. Al-Ahli Hospital said 10 people were killed in a strike on a house in the Zaytoun area, to the city’s east.
The Israeli army said it had begun new operations in Zaytoun.
Israeli military chief Lt Gen Eyal Zamir also “approved the main framework for the IDF’s operational plan in the Gaza Strip”, a statement released by the army said.
In an interview with the i24News Israeli TV Channel shown on Tuesday, Netanyahu was asked if a partial ceasefire was still possible.
“I think it’s behind us,” he replied. “We tried, we made all kinds of attempts, we went through a lot, but it turned out that they were just misleading us.”
“I want all of them,” he said of the hostages.”The release of all the hostages, both alive and dead – that’s the stage we’re at.”
Palestinian armed groups still hold 50 hostages taken in the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023 that triggered the war. Israel believes that around 20 of them are still alive.
Netanyahu is under mounting domestic pressure to secure their release as well as over his plans to expand the war.
Last week, unnamed Arab officials were quoted as saying that regional mediators, Egypt and Qatar, were preparing a new framework for a deal that would involve releasing all remaining hostages at the same time in return for an end to the war and the withdrawal of Israeli troops.
However, this will be difficult to do in a short time frame as Israel is demanding that Hamas give up control of Gaza as well as its weapons.
This is likely to be why, at a news conference on Tuesday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty told journalists that Cairo was still “making great efforts” with Qatar and the US – the other mediators – to revive the earlier phased plan.
“The main goal is to return to the original proposal – a 60-day ceasefire – along with the release of some hostages and some Palestinian prisoners, and the flow of humanitarian and medical aid into Gaza without obstacles or conditions,” Abdelatty said.
The Israeli prime minister says Israel’s goals have not changed. He says that the war will end only when all hostages are returned and Hamas surrenders.
Netanyahu has said that, ultimately, Israel must keep open-ended security control over Gaza. (BBC)
Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past.
The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman.
Despite signs of progress in recent weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had suffered a new brain hemorrhage.
“To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that can be committed,” his widow, Maria Claudia Tarazona, said at his wake Monday, where she thanked her husband’s medical team for their efforts.
She attended the state ceremony at Congress in Bogota, where Uribe’s body will remain for public viewing until Wednesday.
Authorities have arrested six suspects linked to the attack, including the alleged shooter, who was captured at the scene by Uribe’s bodyguards.
Following a nationwide manhunt, police announced the arrest of an alleged mastermind behind the attack, Elder Jose Arteaga Hernandez, alias “El Costeno.”
Police have also pointed to a dissident wing of the defunct FARC guerrilla group as being behind the assassination.
The attack on Uribe, a leading candidate ahead of the 2026 presidential election, has reopened old wounds in a country wracked by violence.
His mother, journalist Diana Turbay, was killed in a botched 1991 police operation to free her from cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel.
Four presidential candidates were assassinated during the worst phase of violence in the 1980s and 1990s under Escobar, who terrorized citizens of Bogota, Medellin, and elsewhere with a campaign of bombings.
Writing on X, left-wing President Gustavo Petro, of whom Uribe was a fierce critic, said the government’s role was to “repudiate crime… regardless of ideology” and assured the safety of Colombians was his top priority.
“Today is a sad day for the country,” Vice President Francia Marquez said on social media
“Violence cannot continue to mark our destiny. Democracy is not built with bullets or blood; it is built with respect, with dialogue.”
Uribe had fiercely criticized Petro’s strategy of “total peace,” based on engaging all of Colombia’s remaining armed groups, including drug traffickers, in dialogue.
He announced in October that he would seek to succeed the term-limited Petro in the May 2026 election.
Uribe was elected to Bogota’s city council at age 26, later becoming its youngest-ever chairperson and then the mayor’s right-hand man.
In 2019, he unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Bogota, but three years later, he was elected a senator — receiving the most votes of any candidate in the country.
He took a seat with the conservative Democratic Center party, founded by former president Alvaro Uribe, no relation.
“Evil destroys everything, they killed hope. May Miguel’s struggle be a light that illuminates Colombia’s rightful path,” former president Uribe wrote on X.
In recent months, Petro, a former left-wing guerrilla, has been accused of dialing up the political temperature by labelling his right-wing opponents “Nazis.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a frequent critic of the leftist Petro government, demanded justice following the announcement of Uribe’s death.
“The United States stands in solidarity with his family, the Colombian people, both in mourning and demanding justice for those responsible,” Rubio said.
Uribe leaves behind a young son and three teenage daughters of his wife, whom he had taken in as his own. (Punch)
The death of the prominent Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif, killed along with four colleagues in an Israeli airstrike on Sunday, prompted condemnation from around the world, as hundreds of mourners carried their bodies through the streets of Gaza City.
Sharif, one of Al Jazeera’s most recognisable faces in Gaza, was killed while inside a tent for journalists outside al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Sunday night. Seven people were killed in the attack, including the Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and the camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa, according to the Qatar-based broadcaster.
On Monday, the Guardian visited the site where the journalists were killed. Wadi Abu al-Saud, a Palestinian journalist who was near the tent when the Israeli strike occurred on Sunday, said the attack happened at 11.22pm, just after he had finished filming his latest news bulletin.
“I entered the tent opposite theirs, raised my phone to make a call, and then the explosion occurred, Saud said. “A piece of shrapnel hit my phone. I looked back and saw people burning in flames. I tried to extinguish them. Anas and the others had died instantly from the strike.”
In two videos of the aftermath of the strike, Saud can be seen carrying the bodies of those killed. “From now on, I will not continue the coverage,” he said. “I will return to my life as a citizen. The truth has died and the coverage has ended.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) admitted carrying out the attack, claiming Sharif was the leader of a Hamas cell responsible for rocket attacks against Israel – an allegation that Al Jazeera and Sharif had previously dismissed as baseless.
It was the first time during the war that Israel’s military has swiftly claimed responsibility after a journalist was killed in a strike.
Pro-Israel advocates on social media hailed the killing of Sharif and posted photos handed out by the IDF of photos the journalist took with the former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, taken before Hamas’s attack on 7 October.
Sara Qudah, the Middle East and north Africa director at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), said: “Israel’s pattern of labelling journalists as militants without providing credible evidence raises serious questions about its intent and respect for press freedom.”
In July, Sharif told CPJ that he lived with the “feeling that I could be bombed and martyred at any moment”.
In July, Sharif told CPJ that he lived with the “feeling that I could be bombed and martyred at any moment”.
Reporters Without Borders condemned the “acknowledged murder by the Israeli army” of Sharif in Gaza and called on the international community to intervene.
Keir Starmer’s spokesperson said: “We are gravely concerned by the repeated targeting of journalists in Gaza. Reporters covering conflicts are afforded protection under international humanitarian law and journalists must be able to report independently without fear, and Israel must ensure journalists can carry out their work safely.”
The UN human rights office condemned the targeting of the journalists’ tent, saying it was “in grave breach of international humanitarian law”.
Al Jazeera said the attack was “a desperate attempt to silence voices in anticipation of the occupation of Gaza” and called Sharif “one of Gaza’s bravest journalists”.
People gathered at Sheikh Radwan cemetery in the heart of the Gaza Strip to mourn the journalists, whose bodies lay wrapped in white sheets at al-Shifa hospital before their burial. Friends, colleagues and relatives embraced and consoled one another.
The area where the attack took place was crowded with media workers on Monday, some speaking to cameras or mobile phones, others taking photos.
Islam al-Za’anoun, a news correspondent for Palestine TV and several Arab channels who participated in the funeral, said Sunday’s attack was “a turning point in the world of journalism”.
She said: “Despite all the threats he received and the Israeli media’s incitement against him, al-Sharif continued reporting. Now one question haunts me: Who will be next on the list? Will it be me?”
Bilal Abu Khalifa, a presenter at Al Jazeera, said he had met Sharif four days ago. “He told me he was in danger,” Abu Khalifa said. “I asked him not to go out or appear publicly too often. He gave me a very simple answer: Bilal, I will not leave Gaza except to the sky! I will not leave Gaza even if I am killed. I know I am on the assassination list, but I will continue to expose the crimes of the Israeli army against my people and show the world, and everyone who stands by them, the truth.”
In a final message, which Al Jazeera said had been written on 6 April and which was posted to Sharif’s X account after his death, the reporter said he had “lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification.”
He continued: “Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who choked our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half.”
After the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023, Israel barred international journalists from entering Gaza – one of the rare moments when international reporters have been denied access to an active war zone. Since then, the task of documenting the war has fallen heavily on Palestinian journalists, often at the cost of their lives – themselves caught in its devastation, displaced multiple times, their homes reduced to rubble, friends and relatives killed, and at times queueing for food at perilous distribution points.
According to Gaza’s government media office, 238 journalists have been killed by Israel since the war started. CPJ said at least 186 journalists had been killed in the Gaza conflict. Israel denies deliberately targeting journalists.
In a report released this year, the Watson School of International and Public Affairs’ costs of war project said more journalists had been killed in Gaza than in both world wars, the Vietnam war, the wars in Yugoslavia and the US war in Afghanistan combined. (Guardian)
A British backpacker has pleaded guilty to killing a man in Australia after hitting him while riding an e-scooter with an alcohol level more than three times the legal limit.
Alicia Kemp, 25, from Redditch, Worcestershire, had been drinking with a friend on a Saturday afternoon in May when she was kicked out of a bar because the two of them were drunk, the court heard earlier.
The pair hired an e-scooter in the evening, and Kemp was driving at speeds of 20 to 25km/h (12 to 15mph) when she hit 51-year-old Thanh Phan from behind on a pavement in Perth’s city centre.
The father-of-two hit his head on the pavement and died in hospital from a brain bleed two days later.
Kemp’s passenger was also hurt in the crash – sustaining a fractured skull and broken nose – but her injuries were not life-threatening.
In Perth’s Magistrates Court on Monday, Kemp – appearing via video link – pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death while intoxicated. The charge carries a maximum 20-year prison term.
Prosecutors dropped a second charge of dangerous driving causing bodily harm to her passenger.
Earlier, the court heard that Kemp’s blood alcohol content level was 0.158 after the crash, more than three times the legal limit of 0.05 in Australia.
Prosecutors said CCTV footage showed Kemp’s “inexplicably dangerous” riding before she struck Mr Phan, who was waiting to cross the road.
In a statement from Mr Phan’s family earlier this year, the structural engineer was described as a beloved husband, father, brother and dear friend.
Kemp’s lawyer Michael Tudori said she was relieved after pleading guilty and hoped to be sentenced before Christmas, according to local media.
“You could see she was ready to say those words, you know, she’s obviously done something stupid,” Mr Tudori told the ABC.
Kemp, who was in Western Australia on a working holiday visa, will remain in custody until her sentencing. (BBC)
Australia will recognise a Palestinian state in September, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced, drawing condemnation from Israel.
Albanese said on Monday that his government would formally announce the move when the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) meets in New York.
“A two-state solution is humanity’s best hope to break the cycle of violence in the Middle East and to bring an end to the conflict, suffering and starvation in Gaza,” Albanese said at a news conference in Canberra.
Australia’s announcement comes as Canada, France and the United Kingdom are also preparing to formally recognise Palestine at the meeting next month, joining the vast majority of UN member states that already do so.
Israeli Ambassador to Australia Amir Maimon said recognition of a Palestinian state will do nothing to end the war in Gaza, telling the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC): “We reject the recognition, unilateral recognition.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog also slammed the Australian announcement as a reward for Hamas for its October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, repeating the Israeli government’s stance on all recognition announcements thus far.
This latest recognition comes about a week after hundreds of thousands of Australians marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to protest Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip.
Speaking a day after the protest, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong told ABC that “there is a risk there will be no Palestine left to recognise.”
“In relation to recognition, I’ve said for over a year now, it’s a matter of when, not if,” Wong added.
The opposition Liberal Party criticised the move, saying it put Australia at odds with the United States, its closest ally, and reversed a bipartisan consensus that there should be no recognition while Hamas remains in control of Gaza.
“Despite his words today, the reality is Anthony Albanese has committed Australia to recognising Palestine while hostages remain in tunnels under Gaza and with Hamas still in control of the population of Gaza. Nothing he has said today changes that fact,” Liberal Party leader Sussan Ley said in a statement.
“Recognising a Palestinian state prior to a return of the hostages and defeat of Hamas, as the Government has today, risks delivering Hamas one of its strategic objectives of the horrific terrorism of October 7.”
The Australian Greens, the fourth largest party in parliament, welcomed the move to recognise Palestine but said the announcement did not meet the “overwhelming calls from the Australian public for the government to take material action”.
“Millions of Australians have taken to the streets, including 300,000 last weekend in Sydney alone, calling for sanctions and an end to the arms trade with Israel. The Albanese Government is still ignoring this call,” Senator David Shoebridge, the party’s spokesperson on foreign affairs, said in a statement.
The Australian Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) also criticised the announcement, describing it as a “political fig leaf, letting Israel’s genocide and apartheid continue unchallenged, and distracting from Australia’s complicity in Israeli war crimes via ongoing weapons and components trade”.
“Palestinian rights are not a gift to be granted by Western states. They are not dependent on negotiation with, or the behaviour or approval of their colonial oppressors,” APAN said in a statement.
According to Albanese, Australia’s decision to recognise Palestinians’ right to their own state will be “predicated on the commitments Australia has received from the Palestinian Authority (PA)”.
These “detailed and significant commitments” include the PA reaffirming it “recognises Israel’s right to exist in peace and security” and committing to “demilitarise and to hold general elections”, Albanese said while announcing the decision.
The PA is a governing body that has overseen parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank since the mid-1990s.
It has not held parliamentary elections since 2006 and has been criticised by some Palestinians for helping Israel to keep tight control over residents in the occupied West Bank.
Albanese said the commitments secured by Australia were “an opportunity to deliver self-determination for the people of Palestine in a way that isolates Hamas, disarms it and drives it out of the region once and for all”.
Hamas has been in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007 when it fought a brief war against forces loyal to PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
Meanwhile, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said on Monday that his country’s cabinet will make a formal decision on Palestinian statehood in September.
“Some of New Zealand’s close partners have opted to recognise a Palestinian state, and some have not,” Peters said in a statement.
“Ultimately, New Zealand has an independent foreign policy, and on this issue, we intend to weigh up the issue carefully and then act according to New Zealand’s principles, values and national interest.”
Peters said that while New Zealand has for some time considered the recognition of a Palestinian state a “matter of when, not if”, the issue is not “straightforward” or “clear-cut”.
“There are a broad range of strongly held views within our Government, Parliament and indeed New Zealand society over the question of recognition of a Palestinian state,” he said.
“It is only right that this complicated issue be approached calmly, cautiously and judiciously. Over the next month, we look forward to canvassing this broad range of views before taking a proposal to Cabinet.”
Of the UN’s 193 member states, 147 already recognise Palestinian statehood, representing three-quarters of the world’s countries and the vast majority of its population.
Under its 1947 plan to partition Palestine, the UNGA said it would grant 45 percent of the land to an Arab state although this never eventuated.
The announcements by Australia and New Zealand on Monday came hours after an Israeli attack killed five Al Jazeera staff members in Gaza City and as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to threaten a full-scale invasion of the city in the north of the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 61,430 people, according to Gaza’s health authorities.
More than 200 people, including 100 children, have died from starvation under Israel’s punishing siege, according to health authorities. (Aljazeera)
The Bank of England on Thursday cut its key interest rate by a quarter point to four percent, the lowest level in 2.5 years, as it bids to boost a UK economy threatened by US tariffs.
Alongside the expected decision, the BoE forecast British economic growth to hit 1.25 percent this year, slightly better than the central bank’s previous estimate of one percent.
“The direct impact of US tariffs is milder than feared, but more general tariff-related uncertainty still weighs on sentiment,” the BoE said in a statement after studying data gathered by UK businesses.
London and Washington reached an agreement in May to cut levies of more than 10 percent imposed by US President Donald Trump on certain UK-made items imported by the United States, notably vehicles.
The quarter-point cut on Thursday was the BoE’s fifth such reduction since starting a trimming cycle in August 2024.
“Interest rates are still on a downward path, but any future rate cuts will need to be made gradually and carefully,” its governor, Andrew Bailey, said following Thursday’s decision.
The BoE voted 5-4 for the reduction, but not before an unprecedented second vote owing to a three-way split among its nine policymakers that prevented a necessary majority result.
Initially, four members voted for the reduction and four for no change. One member called for a larger cut of 0.50 percent, before switching in favour of a quarter-point drop, as voted for by Bailey.
It was the first time since the BoE became independent of the UK government in 1997 that a second vote had to be held.
“Looking ahead, interest rates are expected to be 3.5 percent in a year, which is slightly higher than before the (latest) meeting,” noted Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB trading group.
Expectations that the rate will remain at four percent for longer boosted the British pound.
The BoE’s main task is to keep Britain’s annual inflation rate at 2.0 percent, but the latest official data showed it had jumped unexpectedly to an 18-month high in June.
The Consumer Prices Index increased to 3.6 percent as motor fuel and food prices stayed high.
The BoE on Thursday predicted that the annual inflation rate would peak at four percent next month.
Latest official figures show that Britain’s economy unexpectedly contracted for a second month running in May, and UK unemployment is at a near four-year high of 4.7 percent.
This is largely down to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government increasing a UK business tax from April, the same month that the country became subject to Trump’s 10-percent baseline tariff on most goods.
Finance minister Rachel Reeves welcomed the latest rate cut, saying in a statement that it helps to “bring down the cost of mortgages and loans for families and businesses”.
The US Federal Reserve last week kept interest rates unchanged, defying strong political pressure from Trump to slash borrowing costs in a bid to boost the world’s biggest economy.
Asked about US tariffs following the decision, Fed Chair Jerome Powell told a press conference: “We’re still a ways away from seeing where things settle down.”
The European Central Bank is meanwhile widely expected to keep rates unchanged at its next meeting, with eurozone inflation around the ECB’s two-percent target.
But that could change, according to some economists, based on how Trump’s tariffs affect the single-currency bloc. (Punch)
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