Israel Financial News

By Dr Mukesh Aghi

Israel and Hamas that would potentially free dozens of women and children held hostage in Gaza in exchange for a five-day pause in fighting. “We have not reached a deal yet, but we continue to work hard to get to a deal," the White House National Security Council spokesperson said.

Indian Air Force (IAF) C17 aircraft, carrying 32 tonnes of aid for civilians in Gaza caught up in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, on Sunday departed for the El-Arish Airport in Egypt. Taking to his official handle on X, External Affairs Minister S Jaishanker reaffirmed New Delhi's commitment to extend humanitarian assistance to Gazans, posting, «We continue to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Palestine. Second @IAF_MCC C17 aircraft carrying 32 tonnes of aid departs for the El-Arish Airport in Egypt.» Earlier, India sent 38 tonnes of humanitarian relief for civilians caught up in the ongoing ground offensive by the Israeli forces in the Strip. The aid package comprised fluids and painkillers.

Defence Minister Bill Blair says Canada needs to invest more in military capabilities amid “evolving” global security threats, and as the federal government attempts to pare down government spending across the board.Blair told an international crowd of military personnel, politicians and civil society leaders at the Halifax International Security Forum Friday that Canada needs to put “resources … behind our aspirations.”“We must step up to address these challenges, and to preserve peace and prosperity for our peoples,” Blair said, referencing Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict as well as heightened tensions with China.“We have a lot of work to do.”Blair’s comment could be read as an understatement.The Liberal government has yet to deliver a promised update to its 2017 defence policy – an update that was thought to be imminent at the last Halifax forum in 2022.The federal government is also looking for as much as $1 billion in savings from the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), as Treasury Board President Anita Anand – the former defence minister – attempts to rein in spending.At the same time, the CAF has been stretched thin both by domestic deployments in the wake of natural disasters and by Canada shipping equipment to Ukrainian forces trying to push back Russia’s invasion.Speaking to an aerospace industry conference earlier this month, Blair said he told officials that the long-awaited defence policy update needed more clarity in terms of where the Canadian government plans to spend money.Until that update is released, defence experts told Global News, it will be difficult for allies to take the Canadian government at its word when it comes to stepping up.“(Canada) has to show that it can

The team was able to tour Shifa Hospital for an hour after about 2,500 displaced people, mobile patients and medical staff left the sprawling compound Saturday morning, said the World Health Organization, which led the mission. «Patients and health staff with whom they spoke were terrified for their safety and health, and pleaded for evacuation,» the agency said, describing Shifa as a death zone. It said more teams will attempt to reach Shifa in coming days to try to evacuate the patients to southern Gaza, where hospitals are also overwhelmed.

The Washington Post. "As long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a cease-fire is not peace.

Hamas' October 7 attack at the Nova Music Festival was raised from 260 to 350, with officials stressing the number could rise more as new information surfaces. The increase was based on data from Israel's National Insurance Institute, which found that the number of victims who were shot and then burned in their cars while attempting to flee is higher than previously thought. Another 40 attendees of the all-night rave were taken to Gaza as hostages. Some 1,200 people were killed during Hamas' October 7 attack on Jewish communities near the Gaza Strip and around 240 people are confirmed to be held hostage in Gaza. Authorities have identified 870 of the victims, while others still remain unaccounted for. Archaeologists have been enlisted to help find the remains of massacred Israelis while search teams continue looking for bodies in open areas.

Israel prepared on Sunday to expand its offensive against Hamas militants to southern Gaza after air strikes killed dozens of Palestinians, including civilians reported to be sheltering at two schools. After earlier in the week dropping leaflets, Israel on Saturday again warned civilians in parts of southern Gaza to relocate as it girds for an onslaught in that part of the small coastal enclave, after subduing the north. Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini of UNRWA, the U.N. aid organization for Palestinian refugees, said on social media platform X that Israel bombarded two agency schools in the north.

World Health Organization said Sunday it had led an assessment mission to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City and determined it was a «death zone», urging a full evacuation. "WHO and partners are urgently developing plans for the immediate evacuation of the remaining patients, staff and their families," the United Nations health agency said in a statement, adding that 291 patients and 25 health workers remained inside the hospital. WHO said it had headed a joint UN team, including public health experts, logistics officers and security staff from a range of agencies on a short and «very high-risk» mission into the hospital on Saturday. The assessment team had gone into Al-Shifa after the Israeli military had earlier ordered the evacuation of some 2,500 displaced people sheltering on the hospital grounds, WHO said. «They, along with a number of mobile patients and hospital staff, had already vacated the facility by the time of the team's arrival,» the statement said. Columns of sick and injured — some of them amputees — were seen making their way out of Al-Shifa hospital Saturday towards the seafront without ambulances along with displaced people, doctors and nurses, as loud explosions were heard around the complex. The UN assessment team was meanwhile only able to spend an hour inside the hospital due to the security situation. The team, WHO said, described the hospital as a «death zone» and the situation as «desperate». — 'Mass grave' - «Signs of shelling and gunfire were evident.

On an all-staff call at Schwartz Media last week, employees were given a management update. It lasted five minutes. Then came an hour’s discussion about how the publishers of The Monthly and The Saturday Paper were covering the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

The Washington Post on Saturday, US President Joe Biden dismissed increasing ceasefire calls for Gaza, asserting that it won't bring about peace. He wrote, "As long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a cease-fire is not peace.

India's G20 sherpa, Amitabh Kant, has said the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) will be a resounding success, despite the Israel-Hamas conflict casting a shadow over its viability. «India will continue to play a central role, balancing interests and aligning incentives to ensure IMEC reshapes global trade,» Kant told ET, adding that the project is resilient enough to withstand the current turbulence in the Middle East. Minted in New Delhi on the sidelines of the G20 summit in September, this ambitious geo-economic and geo-strategic project is designed with two components — an eastern corridor connecting India to the Gulf region, and a northern corridor that will link the Gulf to Europe through a ship-rail transit network and road transport routes. «Despite the ongoing geopolitical tensions, on which India's position has been made clear at the United Nations, we should focus on the long-term significance of projects such as IMEC,» said Kant.

Bill Maher recently discussed the dissemination of information among the youth via social media, with a focus on TikTok. During the latest episode of Real Time, he highlighted a recently removed viral video on the platform.

Suha Ma’ayeh and Menna Farouk contributed to this article. Write to Stephen Kalin at [email protected] and Omar Abdel-Baqui at [email protected]

Hamas in the besieged Gaza Strip, in the wake of the October 7 terror attacks, Congress MP Rajmohan Unnithan came up with a shocker on Saturday, saying that Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu «should be shot and killed without a trial». Speaking at a rally to demonstrate solidarity with Palestine in Kasargod, Kerala, amid the ongoing conflict in West Asia, the Congress leader openly advocated the "Nuremberg model" (invoking the trial of Nazis in Nuremberg for the holocaust) against the Israeli PM. «You can ask what should be done to those who break all agreements under the Geneva Convention. After the Second World War, there was something called the Nuremberg trials for bringing those (Nazis) guilty of war crimes to justice.

Gaza Strip on Saturday, ending a telecommunications blackout that forced the United Nations to shut down critical humanitarian aid deliveries because it was unable to coordinate its convoys. Meantime, an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken. Early in the war, the Israeli military told civilians to flee northern Gaza, the target of its ground offensive, but also kept up its bombardment in the southern evacuation zone where Khan Younis is located. Israel has signalled plans to expand its offensive south while continuing operations in the north, including Gaza City, where troops were still searching the territory's biggest hospital, Shifa, for traces of a Hamas command centre that Israel alleges was located under the building — a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny. In Khan Younis, the attack early Saturday hit Hamad City, a middle-class housing development built in recent years with funding from Qatar. In addition to the 26 people killed, another 20 were wounded, said Dr.

Radhika Gupta posted late on October 17. Track: Israel-Hamas War LIVE Updates "Spread over 100 acres with a wide variety of species - jaguars, white tigers, black bucks, ostriches, and many others - and now electric cars to take you around, this place is stunning. Among the best on many metrics, even when compared to global peers.," she added.

Al-Shifa hospital «in the next hour» over loudspeakers on Saturday, an AFP journalist at the scene reported. They called the hospital's director, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, to instruct him to ensure «the evacuation of patients, wounded, the displaced and medical staff, and that they should move on foot towards the seafront», he told AFP. (More to come)

Write to Andrew Restuccia at [email protected], Charles Hutzler at [email protected] and Andrew Duehren at [email protected]

militants in Iraq and Syria have long battled with U.S. and coalition forces, launching sporadic attacks against bases in the region where troops are deployed to fight Islamic State group insurgents. But since Oct. 17, as civilian deaths in Israel's war against Hamas began to skyrocket, there has been a dramatic spike in attacks by Iran's proxies, operating under the umbrella name of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. While most of the more than five dozen attacks have been largely ineffective, at least 60 U.S. personnel have reported minor injuries. Most often those have been traumatic brain injuries from the explosions, and all troops have returned to duty, according to the Pentagon. In response to the attacks, the U.S. has walked a delicate line. The U.S. military has struck back just three times as the Biden administration balances efforts to deter the militants without triggering a broader Middle East conflict. A look at the attacks and the U.S. response:

White House on Friday condemned Elon Musk's endorsement of what it called a «hideous» antisemitic conspiracy theory on X, while major U.S. companies including Walt Disney Co, Warner Bros Discovery and NBCUniversal parent Comcast paused their advertisements on his social media site. Musk on Wednesday agreed with a post on X that falsely claimed Jewish people were stoking hatred against white people, saying the user who referenced the «Great Replacement» conspiracy theory was speaking «the actual truth.» That conspiracy theory holds that Jewish people and leftists are engineering the ethnic and cultural replacement of white populations with non-white immigrants that will lead to a «white genocide.» The White House accused Musk of an «abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate» that «runs against our core values as Americans.» «It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie… one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust,» White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said, referring to the Oct.