killed

May 27 (UPI) — The Israeli Defense Force said Wednesday that it has killed Mohammed Odeh, a senior commander in Hamas‘ military, during a strike in northern Gaza.

An airstrike in Gaza City hit a residential building Tuesday and also killed at least three Palestinians while injuring dozens more. It struck the upper three floors of the al-Kayali building above a busy shopping area in the center of the city.

The IDF claims the residential building was used by Odeh as a hideout.

The area of the strike was busy as shoppers prepared for Eid al-Adha, a Muslim holiday that began on Wednesday.

The IDF said Odeh was responsible for planning Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack in Israel.

“The commander of Hamas terror [organization’s] military arm number 4 in Gaza was eliminated yesterday and sent to meet his partners in the depths of hell,” Israel Katz, Israeli Defense Minister, posted on social media.

The IDF said it had been tracking Odeh for months leading to the airstrike.

More than 900 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel and Palestine reached a ceasefire agreement enacted on Oct. 11. The Gaza Ministry of Health reports that 72,803 Palestinians have been killed in the war since Oct. 7, 2023.

The minibus, carrying nine people, drove through closed crossing barriers during the morning rush hour near the town of Buggenhout.

At least four people have been killed, including two children, after a train travelling at high speed hit a minibus carrying special needs children crossing a railway in Belgium.

According to Belgian authorities on Tuesday, the minibus, carrying nine people, drove through the closed crossing barriers during the morning rush hour near the town of Buggenhout, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) northwest of the capital, Brussels.

Moreover, a spokesperson for the Belgian rail operator Infra-Bel told the RTBF public broadcaster that the train was travelling at an estimated 120 kph (75 mph) as it approached the crossing and had “no time to brake”.

“The impact was extremely violent,” Frederic Sacre said.

Spokesperson for the East Flanders public prosecutor’s office, Lisa De Wilde, said the bus driver, 49, and an escort, 27, were killed along with two children aged 12 and 15.

Five children were injured and were hospitalised in a serious condition, she said, adding that the cause of the crash had not yet been established.

“What we do know is that the barrier was closed and the red light was on,” she said.

Federal Police spokesperson An Berger also said that the minibus driver appeared to have ploughed through the barrier.

“The van came from Kerkhofstraat, a road running parallel to the railway line, and turned left toward Vierhuizen, crossing the railway at a point that was closed at the time. The van was hit by an oncoming train,” Berger said.

Prime Minister Bart De Wever said on X that he was “deeply moved by the horrific accident in Buggenhout”.

“My thoughts go out to the affected families,” De Wever added.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also said she was “heartbroken” about the “tragic accident”.

“My deepest condolences go out to the victims’ families and their loved ones,” von der Leyen wrote on X.

It is believed that about 100 passengers were aboard the train and that none were hurt. Rail traffic in the area was also stopped.

May 24 (UPI) — The second fatal shark attack in less than two weeks in Australia has claimed the life of a 39-year-old man who was out spearfishing with friends at the Great Barrier Reef, authorities said Sunday.

Queensland Police identified the victim as a resident of Mount Sheridan, Australia, a suburb of Cairns, who died from a critical head injury inflicted by a bull shark while boating with three companions at Kennedy Shoal along the Barrier Reef on Saturday.

The fisherman was killed only eight days after a Perth man was fatally attacked by a shark while spearfishing in the water at a tourism hotspot in Western Australia.

Queensland Police Inspector Elaine Burns told reporters during a briefing Sunday the victim was hauled back onto his 23-foot boat by his friends, who then raced to shore in an attempt to save his life.

They were met by first responders at the Hull River boat ramp but it was too late.

“This is a tragic incident for everyone involved, and we will continue to provide support to the family and those who were on board with him,” Burns said, adding that the witnesses were deeply shaken by what they had seen.

“That’s quite a terrifying thing to see happen right in front of you,” she said.

Bob Katter, who represents the far northern Queensland district in Australia’s Parliament, took to social media to decry the latest shark fatality and called for the seaborne predators to be culled.

“This is a completely unnecessary heartbreaking tragedy, and all North Queensland mourns with this family tonight,” he wrote. “We understand there be more clarity over the coming days about what eventuated, but locals have been raising concerns about the exploding shark populations, particularly bull sharks, which are completely out of control, for years.”

Katter cited a local charter boat operator who told him that as they were reeling in a Spanish mackerel, six bull sharks began fighting over it.

“So much for them being a so-called endangered species,” he said, adding, “Another North Queenslander is dead. Another family is shattered. And still the people sitting in cushy air conditioned offices in Brisbane and Canberra think they know better than the people who live and work in these waters.”

But Richard Fitzpatrick, a marine biologist with James Cook University in Cairns, cautioned that the true size of the bull shark population remains unknown.

“We don’t know the population structure for these sharks at all,” he told 7News Australia. “We simply do not know how many are out there,” he added, noting that the school and government partners are only just now about to launch the first comprehensive bull shark population study covering Australia’s entire East Coast.

The pooled data sets will allow researchers to “finally work out what that population structure is.”

Funerals were held for paramedics killed by two Israeli air strikes in southern Lebanon on Friday. The Israeli military has repeatedly attacked health facilities and medical teams in Lebanon, accusing Hezbollah of using them to conceal weapons and fighters.

Israeli attacks on Lebanon continue despite the ‘ceasefire’ that was recently extended until the beginning of July.

At least eight people have been killed in Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon, in the latest violation of an ongoing “ceasefire” agreement, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA).

Israeli fighter jets struck in the village of Doueir on Wednesday, killing five people and injuring two others, NNA reported. Several homes were flattened in the attack, the agency said.

Another Israeli attack killed two people near a hospital in the village of Tibnin, while one person riding a motorcycle was killed in a drone attack on the village of Burj Shemali in the Tyre district, NNA said.

The Red Cross said it recovered the body of one person on the outskirts of the town of Shebaa in the Nabatieh governorate.

Israeli attacks across Lebanon continue despite the United States-mediated “ceasefire” that was recently extended until the beginning of July.

The fresh wave of Israeli attacks came hours after at least 16 people were killed in Israeli air attacks across southern Lebanon on Tuesday. The Health Ministry said three women and three children were among the victims.

Moreover, the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah said its forces clashed with Israeli troops trying to advance to the centre of the village of Haddatha late last night.

The group also reported clashes with Israeli forces in the town of Biyyada and the municipality of Rashaf.

Attacks on eastern Lebanon ongoing

Israeli forces continue to expand their military campaign beyond the country’s south into the western Bekaa Valley.

“For weeks, the Israeli army has been targeting Muslim Shia majority villages in the western Bekaa Valley where Hezbollah has support,” Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr reported. “They lie on the road that links the southern front-line villages to the east of the country.”

Yousef Hasan, displaced from the town of Yuhmor, called Israel “an expansionist state that kills women and children”.

“They don’t believe in borders. For them, the border is as far as Israeli soldiers can reach. It is a state that occupies others’ lands,” Hasan told Al Jazeera.

Since March 2, Israel has killed 3,073 people in Lebanon and injured 9,362 others, and displaced more than 1.6 million, about one-fifth of the country’s population, according to Lebanese authorities.

Israeli forces have also destroyed entire villages in southern Lebanon, prompting comparisons with the devastation caused by Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians in Gaza.

The daughter of mosque security guard Amin Abdullah is remembering him as the “absolute best dad in the world.” Family and community members gathered Tuesday to honour Abdullah, who was killed while confronting gunmen during the attack on a San Diego mosque.

Ali Bastian played Becca Hayton in Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks for six years before the character was brutally murdered in a heartbreaking storyline

A Hollyoaks legend has opened up on being killed off unexpectedly by Channel 4 bosses.

Ali Bastian joined the cast of the popular soap opera back in 2001 as Becca Hayton. At the time, the show was attracting millions of viewers and she found herself at the centre of some of its biggest storylines.

After deciding to leave the show in 2007, the actress admits she initially worried she’d made a huge mistake by walking away at the height of its success. However, she was soon rewarded with a regular role in ITV crime drama The Bill.

Opening up about her time on the soap to new online bingo brand Zingo Bingo, Ali recalled: “I was 19 when I started Hollyoaks, and it was a huge break for me. I’d always really wanted to be an actress. It was something that was just kind of in me.

“Becca went through loads of highs and lows in those six years and as an actor, I got to try loads of different things: comedy and heartbreak! My character, in the end, went through a lot of heartache, but it really challenged me as an actor and the speed as well that soap works at is insane.”

Fans will remember Becca was brutally murdered by her prison cellmate, Fran Hathaway in 2007. She had been sentenced to two years imprisonment for sexual activity with a minor, but the claimant, Justin Burton (Chris Fountain), admitted to lying.

Becca was stabbed shortly after being released, and died in hospital. She was officially exonerated posthumously in July 2007. Opening up on a storyline fans didn’t get to see before her emotinal exit, Ali explained: “If I hadn’t left at that point, I think that the plan was for Becca to return [to Hollyoaks village] and end up with Jake.

“This was a plan that was floated by me, but it was never sort of officially down on paper. By that point, I was also just really ready to go home as well. I’d been in Liverpool for six years and I felt that I was ready for a new start. At that point, I made the decision to leave. That is why that storyline ended how it ended [with Becca being killed off].

“I went home and I had about a month of thinking, ‘Oh my God have I made the biggest mistake here? What’s going to happen?’ Then I got an audition for The Bill. I went in as a guest and actually managed to get a regular role. I got a phone call that night saying, ‘You didn’t get the job, but they want you to come back tomorrow because they’re casting for a new regular’.

“I was like, ‘oh my God!’ I went back to that audition and I got the job and then I started as a regular on that and was there for three years. Our industry is so bonkers. You never know what’s around the corner. One door closes, another opens.”

Over the years, Hollyoaks bosses have brought back several iconic characters from the dead and Ali isn’t ruling out a return as Becca, saying: “I was ready [to leave], but I don’t think I would have chosen to die. I remember when I heard that I was like, ‘Oh, great. That is really the end of that. I’m never coming back’. I was a bit gutted, because I had that sense of knowing there was no way back.

“At the same time, it gave such a strong ending to that storyline and to her journey. I am quite glad I didn’t just disappear into a cupboard and never come out again. I did get a cracking final story. You hope for that, of course, but it did make it feel final!

“I mean, If they wanted me to go back as a ghost, I would definitely consider it. I feel like [Becca’s son] Charlie Dean (Charlie Behan) could do with some guidance. I’d be right in there to be like, ‘what’s going on here?’ That phone call never came. In some ways it’s like it kept me moving forward and kept me doing new things and different things and I’m glad for that too.”

Hollyoaks airs Monday to Wednesday on E4 at 7pm and first look episodes can be streamed Channel 4 from 7am

May 17 (UPI) — Three people were killed and five others were hurt late Saturday when a vehicle struck and killed pedestrians and cars in Oakland, Calif., authorities said.

Three of those injured were hospitalized in critical condition as a result of the 11:45 p.m. incident, the Oakland Fire Department said in a social media post.

Two others, including the suspected juvenile driver, sustained minor injuries, police told local media.

Surveillance video footage from the corner in East Oakland obtained by KGO-TV showed what appears to be a pickup truck driving onto a sidewalk at high speeds and hitting multiple pedestrians.

One witness told the station the driver first hit several vehicles in the street, then sped up and jumped the curb, where they plowed into a group of pedestrians.

The suspected driver then allegedly ran from the truck.

As of Sunday afternoon the Oakland Police Department had yet to issue an official statement on the incident, but Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee sent condolences to the victims’ families and voiced praise for the first responders.

“Oakland is mourning the lives lost in last night’s tragic crash at International Boulevard and 85th Avenue in East Oakland,” she said in a statement issued to media outlets. “Our hearts are with the victims, their families, loved ones, and all of those impacted.

“Thank you to the Oakland Police Department, Oakland Fire Department, and our first responders.”

Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed at least 871 Palestinians since the so-called ceasefire began last year.

Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip have killed at least five Palestinians, including three in Deir el-Balah, and others in Khan Younis and Beit Lahiya.

Sunday’s attack on the central city of Deir el-Balah targeted a community kitchen and all three victims were charity workers, according to Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Gaza City.

“This shows that Israel is not only targeting people, but also organisations serving the community across Gaza,” Khoudary added.

Reacting to the same attack, Hamas said it was “a deliberate war crime and a renewed scene of the ongoing genocide against our people in the Gaza Strip”.

“This occurs amid an unjustified international silence and inaction that emboldens the occupation to continue its massacres, in blatant disregard for all international values, norms, and laws,” said the armed group’s statement.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry’s statistics published on Sunday, Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has killed at least 72,760 Palestinians since October 7, 2023, including at least 871 since the so-called ceasefire started last October.

Israel’s military occupies about 60 percent of Gaza’s territory, demarcated by a so-called “yellow line” buffer zone.

In that zone on Sunday, the Israeli army said its forces killed a person saying, without providing evidence, that the victim was armed and posed an imminent threat to soldiers.

The army statement also said a Hamas commander was killed, identifying the man as Bahaa Baroud. There was no immediate confirmation from the group.

May 15 (UPI) — The Democratic Republic of Congo declared an Ebola outbreak on Friday as 65 people have died from the disease in the country’s eastern region.

There have been about 246 cases reported, many of them in the Ituri province’s small mining towns of Mongbwalu and Rwampara. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement Friday that it is meeting with DRC, Ugandan and South Sudanese leaders to prepare a response to the outbreak.

Uganda and South Sudan border the Ituri province.

Africa CDC said that the DRC’s national research laboratory has detected Ebola in 13 of 20 samples it has tested.

There have been 16 prior Ebola outbreaks in the DRC since 1976 when it first identified the virus within its borders. Vaccines are available for the Zaire strain. Africa CDC said that early testing indicates the current strain is not the Zaire strain.

“Africa CDC stands in solidarity with the government and people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo as they respond to this outbreak,” Dr. Jean Kaseya, director general of Africa CDC, said in a statement. “Given the high population movement between affected areas and neighboring countries, rapid regional coordination is essential.”

The mining towns where the outbreak is centered experience a lot of inbound and outbound traffic, raising concerns about the disease spreading further.

Ebola is a severe illness with a high fatality rate in humans, reaching as high as 90% in some cases, the World Health Organization says.

Infection can be spread by direct contact with a person who is infected or object surfaces that are contaminated with bodily fluids from a person who is sick or has died from the disease.

The Ebola virus can incubate between two and 21 days. Symptoms include fever, fatigue, malaise, muscle pain, headache and sore throat, before progressing to vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, rash and symptoms related to impaired kidney and liver functions.

There were 64 cases of Ebola reported in the DRC last year, with 45 deaths, a 70% rate of fatality, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That outbreak occurred from September to December in the remote Bulape health zone in the Kasai province, which has a relatively low population density.

Lebanon’s National News Agency reported that Israeli warplanes targeted the Ezzedine residential project in Srifa on Thursday morning.

Israel has ramped up its attacks on southern Lebanon, killing two people and issuing several forced displacement orders as the two sides prepare for United States-brokered talks on extending a ceasefire.

Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported on Thursday morning that Israeli warplanes targeted the Ezzedine residential project in the town of Srifa, killing two people.

The Israeli army announced in a post on Telegram that it had begun targeting alleged Hezbollah infrastructure sites in several areas in southern Lebanon.

Earlier, the Israeli army’s Arabic language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, announced on X the forced evacuation orders for the towns and villages of Libbaya, Sahmar, Taffahata, Kafr Malek, Yohmor (Bekaa), Ain Tineh, Houmin al-Fawqa and Mazraat Sina.

NNA reported that one person was injured following a raid by an Israeli drone near the vocational school between the towns of Breqa and Zrarieh.

An air strike was also reported on the town of Ain al-Tineh in the Western Bekaa.

Reporting from Beirut, Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands said in the past few days Israel has launched one of its “most intense periods of aerial bombardment in weeks”.

“There have been many individual strikes – usually by drones – on cars and motorbikes. Several of these have happened on the main coastal highway that leads south from Beirut,” he said.

According to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health on Wednesday, at least 2,896 people have been killed in Israeli attacks since the conflict resumed in early March.

At the same time, the Israeli army announced on Telegram that a drone launched by Hezbollah had fallen in Israeli territory near the shared border, injuring several people who were evacuated to hospital for treatment.

Israel-Lebanon talks

Representatives from both sides are expected to meet in Washington, DC, on Thursday for a new round of talks aimed at extending the ceasefire, which is scheduled to expire on Sunday.

“The discussions are controversial here in Lebanon. One of the reasons is that Hezbollah is not at the table. Hezbollah doesn’t want these talks to go ahead at all,” Challands explained.

“It says any direct discussions between Lebanon and Israel are basically capitulation. It wants first a full-on ceasefire, for Israel to have withdrawn from the country, for hundreds of thousands of displaced people to return to their homes, and for reconstruction to have started,” he said, adding that the Lebanese government, however, believes these points can be discussed during the talks with Israel.

Protests were held after three church leaders were killed and three others injured in a deadly ambush in India’s Manipur state, the latest incident of ethnic violence that has killed more than 260 people since 2023.

A preliminary hearing the murder case against David Anthony Burke, the 21-year-old singer better known as D4vd, will go forward at the end of June, setting a timeline for when more detailed evidence about the gruesome murder and dismemberment of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez will become public.

Burke — who prosecutors say sexually abused the teen for a year before stabbing her to death and mutilating her corpse last year — will face the hearing on June 29, attorneys said during a brief hearing Tuesday morning.

After the singer’s arrest in April, his legal team pushed for an immediate preliminary hearing — where a judge determines if prosecutors have enough evidence to bring a case to trial — but they backed off after prosecutors began turning over what they have described as a massive amount of digital evidence linking Burke to the teenager’s brutal slaying. Burke has pleaded not guilty in the case.

The hearing is expected to last at least five days. A status conference hearing will take place on June 17.

Questions about the singer’s connection to Hernandez’s grisly end have circled since last summer, ever since her badly decomposed and dismembered body was found in the trunk of a Tesla linked to Burke. Late last month, prosecutors filed a nine-page brief laying out what they believe to be Hernandez’s final moments and Burke’s alleged horrific actions after her death.

In the filing, prosecutors said Burke stabbed Hernandez to death inside a Hollywood Hills residence after she threatened to go public about the ascendant singer’s continual sexual abuse. After killing her, Burke ordered a chainsaw, a “burn cage,” a shovel and other implements he used to dismember her remains in his garage, prosecutors alleged last week.

The motion also laid out the dramatic steps Burke went to in order to continue his relationship with the teen. In February 2024, Hernandez was reported missing to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department by her parents, who were concerned about her involvement with Burke, according to the filing. Hernandez went home and had her phone taken away, but Burke allegedly paid a junior high school student $1,000 to give her a new device so they could stay in touch.

Prosecutors also said they found images of Hernandez naked and performing sex acts on Burke’s phone, according to the document. Deputy Dist. Atty. Beth Silverman said in court last month that search warrants turned up “a significant amount of child pornography” on Burke’s devices.

Burke’s lawyers have not commented on their defense strategy.

At least nine people were killed and some 30 injured in a blast at a market in the Pakistani town of Sarai Naurang.

The explosion was caused by a bomb-laden rickshaw. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

Photograph by Maxwell Briceño for Reuters, 2024.

Human beings invented States to protect themselves from catastrophe. You understand this in Lewis Mumford’s books on the first cities or in Jared Diamond’s on civilizational collapse: we went from nomadic tribal groups to organized societies of thousands of people because we learned to organize governments that, besides making some richer and more powerful than others, reduced the chances of dying from hunger, cold, disease, or enemy attack.

Until the mid-20th century, Venezuela did not have a State that significantly reduced the primitive precarity of its population, that defended it from catastrophe. As in so many other places on Earth, it was then that Venezuelans began to benefit from technology and institutions that saved them from dying of starvation or influenza. There had been previous efforts, from Páez’s first economic reconstruction programs and Guzmán Blanco’s compulsory education to Gómez’s road construction.

But it was with the López Contreras administration in 1936 that we began to see institutions functioning on a truly national scale, vaccination and literacy campaigns, a systematic effort to transform a dispersed, sparsely populated society with a very low life expectancy, where the vast majority of people were sick and malnourished, into a functional and productive one. During those decades, the governments of López Contreras, Medina Angarita, the 1945-1948 junta, Gallegos, and Pérez Jiménez took advantage of oil revenues to implement measures that benefited the people. With democracy, in 1958, came more public works and institutional innovations, such as the expansion of political rights.

With Chávez, the decadent welfare state we had not only ceased to protect society from catastrophe, but became the cause of the catastrophe. It was like teaching a loyal guard dog to kill the children in the house.

Until that promise of development for all was broken, inequality began to grow, vulnerability began to regain ground, and a frustrated and confused society chose Hugo Chávez as its answer, precisely in the year, 1998, that marked five centuries since the first contact with Spain. It had taken us half a millennium to have a State that provided health, education, justice, and order. That year, that history of progress halted, and the long road traveled began to unravel.

Reversal and investment

As Paula Vásquez Lezama described it, since the Vargas tragedy in 1999, when chavismo appropriated the bodies of the survivors, everything the State gave demanded in return helping that State grow and maintain itself. As Mirtha Rivero recounts in La oscuridad no llegó sola, chavismo used every crisis to seize control of the entire State. Once it had it in its hands, it turned it upside down. The State that should have served society now only had to serve power, against society. 

With Chávez, the decadent welfare state we had not only ceased to protect society from catastrophe, but became the cause of the catastrophe. It was like teaching a loyal guard dog to kill the children in the house.

Chavismo deepened all the vices of those previous governments to reverse the complicated history of our development and invert the role of the State. The long-standing culture of police and military violence expanded to turn the entire country into a checkpoint, where the armed forces behave like an army of occupation that treats all natives as enemies, on a scale that covers the entire territory, not just the slums riddled with bullets during the Caracazo. The perennial culture of corruption among civil servants was perfected to privatize the public administration, which does nothing unless its staff is paid personally, and to transform the bureaucracy into an industry for extracting wealth from citizens and the land, far more voracious than under any dictatorial or democratic government prior to 1999.

As long as this perpetrator State exists, we will not have any transition to democracy in Venezuela.

The elephantine State erected by Chávez had lost much of its muscle mass by 2020, but it remained, and remains, capable of subjugating a nation diminished by the miniaturization of its economy and mass migration. Maduro redesigned repression to maximize the yield of his limited resources. And so he reached the point where he discovered, especially after the 2024 electoral fraud, the efficiency of kidnapping a minor, because that means imprisoning an entire family and the community network to which the family turns to.

The method of subjugating society by harming entire families is evident in the Víctor Quero case. It wasn’t administrative chaos that prevented his family from knowing whether he was alive or dead, nor was it that the clerks couldn’t find the file with his name on it. It was terror, a set of practices that a regime, illegitimate and rejected by the majority of the population, implemented to minimize the chances of losing power. That State, which for decades attempted to be a welfare state, providing public goods to millions of citizens, now focuses on managing harm to those millions in order to provide private goods to the few thousand who control it.

Beyond the anger we feel over the story of Carmen Navas asking about her son from the cruel giant who killed him, the Víctor Quero case is causing such a stir because of how it exposes the way the Venezuelan State has become the very opposite of what it should be. Instead of saving people from misfortune, it inflicts misfortune to govern through fear. Instead of being accountable, it lies and sows confusion for months as a form of torture. Instead of being the state of law and justice promised by the Constitution that frames it, it is a criminal State where justice does not exist.

The great work of chavismo

This is the State that killed Víctor Quero and that forced an elderly woman, for more than nine months, to undertake the economic and logistical challenge of visiting courts and prisons, even outside Caracas, driven by the hope of seeing her son again before he died.

And this State is the main achievement of chavismo.

Previous governments, whose main task was to govern for better or for worse, left behind a legacy of buildings and institutions, from banks and State-owned enterprises to schools, museums, and universities, which were a mix of successes and failures. Chavismo will leave some buildings and infrastructure projects, far too few considering the revenue it received during almost three decades in power. But the main creation of chavismo is this gigantic state that serves only to subjugate society.

And as long as this perpetrator State exists, we will not have any transition to democracy in Venezuela. We will not be able to return to the path of democracy and development from which chavismo diverted us.

Bomber and several fighters detonate explosives-laden vehicle near security post in Bannu, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, near Afghanistan.

A car bombing at ⁠a police post followed by an intense firefight has killed at least three officers ⁠in northwestern Pakistan, according to police and security sources.

The attack took place in Bannu, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, late on Saturday.

Police official Zahid Khan told The Associated Press that a suicide bomber and several fighters detonated an explosives-laden vehicle near a security post. Shortly after, multiple explosions were heard and the security post collapsed from the impact of the blast, he said.

Pakistan’s Dawn reported that nearby civilian areas also suffered severe damage due to the blasts, and two civilians were injured.

The Reuters news agency, citing security officials, reported that after the bombing, there was an ambush on police personnel rushing ⁠to the scene to provide backup.

Police official Sajjad Khan told Reuters that more casualties were feared. He added that fighting was ongoing and the extent of the damage would only be known once ‌the operation was over.

Police sources told Reuters ⁠the aggressors also used drones in the attack.

Ambulances from ⁠rescue agencies and civil hospitals were dispatched to the scene, with officials saying a state of emergency has been declared in government hospitals in Bannu.

No group immediately claimed responsibility. However, such attacks have the potential to reignite fighting along Pakistan’s border ⁠with Afghanistan.

The worst fighting in years erupted ⁠between the allies-turned-foes in February, with Pakistani air strikes inside Afghanistan that Islamabad said targeted fighters’ strongholds.

Fighting has since eased, with occasional skirmishes breaking out along the border, but no official ceasefire ‌has been brokered.

Islamabad blames Kabul for harbouring armed groups who use Afghan soil to plot attacks in Pakistan. The Taliban has denied the allegations and ‌said ‌militancy in Pakistan is an internal problem.

The Pakistan Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and allied fighter groups have carried out similar attacks in the past. The Pakistan Taliban is a separate group but is often aligned with the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.

A Palestinian boy mourns his father, one of three people killed in an Israeli strike on a security post in Gaza. The attack is part of ongoing Israeli violence, despite a fragile ceasefire, which has killed at least 846 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

May 6 (UPI) — Dominican journalist Yolaine Díaz, a former fashion and beauty editor for People en Español magazine, and her mother died in a fire at a residential building in New York City that also left a third person dead, 14 injured and more than 100 displaced.

The fire began shortly after 12:30 a.m. Saturday in a six-story building on Dyckman Street near Broadway in the Inwood section of Manhattan, according to the Fire Department of New York and the New York City Police Department.

Díaz, 49, had emigrated from the Dominican Republic to New York City as a teenager and studied journalism at Lehman College in the Bronx. She joined People en Español as an intern and later worked as a fashion and beauty writer and digital editor. During her career, she interviewed celebrities including Eva Longoria, Shakira and Jennifer Lopez.

Former editor-in-chief Armando Correa remembered Díaz, who continued to contribute to the magazine, in a statement that read “Yolaine had a unique authenticity and intensity. I want to remember her always camera-ready, with her style and her smile.”

According to People en Español, Díaz and her mother, Ana Mirtha Lantigua, attempted to escape through the building’s interior stairwell, but smoke blocked the exit and both became trapped. The journalist’s stepfather managed to flee through the exterior fire escape.

Authorities said the flames started on the lower levels of the building and quickly spread through the interior stairwell to the roof. More than 200 firefighters were deployed to contain the blaze.

The fire left scenes of chaos among residents, many of them members of Latino families living in the mixed residential and commercial building, which was constructed in 1910.

“I was sleeping and what woke me up was the smell and the alarms,” resident Michael Jimenez told local media. “When I went to open the hallway door, everything was on fire. There wasn’t time to grab the extinguisher or anything.”

Another resident told WNYW-Ch. 5 she had to flee via the fire escape after a neighbor opened the hallway door and found “black smoke as far as the eye could see.”

Marty Mejia, of the New York Fire Foundation, said one of the main mistakes during the evacuation was leaving doors open, which allowed the fire and smoke to spread rapidly throughout the building, according to reports by NBC New York.

Firefighters said apartments whose doors remained closed sustained minimal damage, in line with public safety campaigns begun after another deadly fire in the Bronx days earlier.

The American Red Cross assisted evacuees with blankets and logistical support, while dozens of families remained at hospitals awaiting news about injured relatives, some suffering from burns.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation. According to The New York Times, the city’s housing department database listed more than 100 violations at the building.

Iranian commander says US military attacked two passenger boats, not IRGC vessels, in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday.

Iran has accused the United States of killing five civilians in the Strait of Hormuz, saying its forces attacked passenger vessels in the waterway rather than boats belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as claimed.

The claim on Tuesday contradicted a statement by US Admiral Brad Cooper, who said Central Command forces had sunk six IRGC vessels that had attempted to interfere with a US mission to escort stranded ships out of the Strait of Hormuz.

US President Donald Trump later put the number at seven boats.

The US operation, dubbed “Project Freedom”, has shaken a fragile ceasefire reached between Iran and the US on April 8 and renewed fears of a return to war.

Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB quoted an unnamed Iranian military commander as saying that Tehran launched an investigation following the US claim of attacks on IRGC vessels.

It said while none of the IRGC vessels was hit, the investigation found that US forces had “attacked two small boats carrying people on their way from Khasab on the coast of Oman to the coast of Iran on Monday”.

The attacks destroyed the boats and killed five civilian passengers, the commander said. The US “must be held accountable for their crime”, the commander added.

There was no immediate comment from the US military.

The violence comes as Trump seeks to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively blockaded following the US and Israeli attacks on the country on February 28.

The closure of the vital maritime corridor – through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s energy supplies flow – has sent oil and fertiliser prices surging around the world and prompted fears of a global recession and food emergency.

Iran is now insisting on maintaining control over the Strait of Hormuz and collecting transit fees as reparations for the destruction caused by the US and Israel.

Attacks on UAE, ships in Hormuz

The Iranian military on Monday warned commercial vessels they would “jeopardise their safety” if they attempted to cross the waterway without permission. The military also warned US forces would face attacks if they approached or entered the chokepoint.

Amid the tensions, the United Arab Emirates said Iran launched a drone attack on one of its oil tankers that attempted to transit the strait and said Iranian forces launched 15 ballistic missiles and four drones at its territory.

UAE authorities said the attacks set off a large fire at a major oil refinery in the eastern emirate of Fujairah and wounded three Indian nationals.

A South Korean vessel in the Strait of Hormuz, the HMM Namu, also reported an attack, saying an explosion had caused a fire in its engine room.

Nonetheless, the US military said two US-flagged ships made it through the strait on Monday with the support of navy guided-missile destroyers.

The IRGC denied the claim as “baseless and completely false”, but the global shipping firm Maersk said the US-flagged Alliance Fairfax exited the Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz accompanied by the US military on Monday.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the events in Hormuz on Monday “make clear there’s no military solution to a political crisis”.

He said in a post on X that peace talks with the US were “making progress” with Pakistan’s mediation and that Washington “should be wary of being dragged back into quagmire by ill-wishers”.

“So should the UAE,” he added. “Project Freedom is Project Deadlock.”

Meanwhile, Trump has renewed his threats against Iran.

He told Fox News Iran would be “blown off the face of the Earth” if they attacked US vessels carrying out Project Freedom.

“We have more weapons and ammunition at a much higher grade than we had before,” he said.

“We have the best equipment. We have stuff all over the world. We have these bases worldwide. They’re all stocked up with equipment. We can use all of that stuff, and we will, if we need it.”