Palestine Financial News

Norfolk Southern's board has confirmed that the railroad's CEO Alan Shaw is under investigation for potential ethical lapses

West Bank on Sunday, the first such incident since the Gaza war began in October, straining ties between the Jewish state and the Hashemite kingdom. Israel's army said that the gunman accessed the Allenby Bridge crossing, also known as the King Hussein Bridge, from the Jordanian side in a truck and fired shots before he was killed by Israeli guards. The victims were identified as forklift operators above the age of 50. The crossing, which is used mainly by Palestinians and foreigners, was closed while Israeli security forces conducted searches given suspicions that the truck might have been rigged with explosives, the army said. Al Arabiya TV showed a backlog of trucks on the Jordanian side after the closing.

Asian Games to be staged in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan, will not have a Games Village and the athletes will be accommodated in hotels and cruise ships instead. In his address during the 44th General Assembly of Olympic Council of Asiada here on Sunday, former Japan Olympic Committee president Tsunekazu Takeda, informed that continental showpiece to be co-hosted by the Aichi Prefecture and the city of Nagoya will have no Olympic village. «We will not have the Games Village as the Games will be held in two prefectures. Instead we are trying our best to accommodate athletes and dignitaries in hotels and cruise ships,» Takeda said while briefing about the Games preparations. «We have arranged for cruise ships for 4,000 athletes and officials besides hotel rooms,» added Takeda, the vice president of 2026 Asian Games.

Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and Israeli forces traded cross-border attacks, both sides said early Sunday, a day after the Lebanese health ministry reported three rescuers killed in an Israeli attack. The Iran-backed Lebanese movement has exchanged near-daily fire with Israeli forces in support of ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group's October 7 attack on Israel triggered the war in the Gaza Strip, with repeated escalations during 11 months of the cross-border violence. Hezbollah said it had bombarded the northern Israeli town of «Kiryat Shmona with a volley of Falaq rockets» early Sunday «in response to the enemy attacks… and particularly the attack» that killed the emergency workers in the Lebanese village of Froun.

Gaza war and release of hostages held by Hamas, said a more detailed ceasefire proposal would be made in the next several days. After 11 months of conflict in Gaza, CIA Director William Burns said he was working very hard on «texts and creative formulas» with mediators Qatar and Egypt to secure a ceasefire, by finding a proposal which satisfies both parties. «We will make this more detailed proposal, I hope in the next several days, and then we'll see,» said Burns, speaking at a Financial Times event in London alongside Richard Moore, head of Britain's MI6 foreign spy agency, in an unprecedented joint public appearance.

Iran launched perhaps the largest drone and missile strike in history against Israel, which was blunted by unprecedented cooperation from countries in the region and beyond. Yet the biggest surprise is also the most ominous for global order. A radical, quasi-state actor most Americans had never heard of, the Houthis of Yemen, have mounted the gravest challenge to freedom of the seas in decades — and arguably beaten a weary superpower along the way. The Houthis began their campaign against shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb, which connects the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, in late 2023. They are nominally attacking out of sympathy for the Palestinian people, but also to gain stature within the so-called Axis of Resistance, a group of Middle Eastern proxies cultivated by Iran.

right to food accused Israel of carrying out a "starvation campaign" against Palestinians during the war in Gaza, an allegation that Israel vehemently denies. In a report this week, investigator Michael Fakhri claimed it began two days after Hamas' surprise attack in southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people, when Israel's military offensive in response blocked all food, water, fuel and other supplies into Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said accusations of Israel limiting humanitarian aid were «outrageously false».

Israeli troops shot and killed a Turkish-American woman who had been taking part in a protest against settlement expansion in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Friday, Palestinian and Turkish officials said. The White House said it was deeply disturbed by the death of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi and called on Israel to investigate. Turkey's foreign ministry said she was shot in the head, and placed blame on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government for her death. Palestinian officials described her as a 26-year-old activist from Seattle who held both U.S. and Turkish citizenship.

Israeli strikes on a school sheltering refugees and a residential building in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority's official news agency WAFA reported early on Saturday. At least eight of the dead were in refugee tents at Halima al-Sa'diyya School in Jabalia in northern Gaza, WAFA said. The Israeli army said in a statement it had «conducted a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command and control centre… embedded inside a compound that previously served as the 'Halima al-Sa'diyya' School in the northern Gaza Strip.»

Blinken said on Thursday it was incumbent on both Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas to say yes on remaining issues to reach a Gaza ceasefire deal, which has faced obstacles in negotiations across months. «Based on what I have seen, 90% is agreed but there are a few critical issues that remain,» including the so-called Philadelphi corridor on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip bordering Egypt, Blinken said at a press briefing in Haiti. He said there were also some gaps in the agreement in how Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners are exchanged.

Gold prices held steady on Wednesday as investors braced for a monthly U.S. payrolls report that could influence the size of a likely interest rate cut this month.

The U.K. government says it's suspending exports of some weapons to Israel because they could be used to break international law

Israel because there is a risk such equipment might be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law, foreign minister David Lammy said on Monday. Lammy said the decision to suspend the licences did not amount to a blanket ban or an arms embargo, but only involved those that could be used in the conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza. Soon after the Labour Party won an election in July, Lammy said he would update a review on arms sales to Britain's ally Israel to ensure these complied with international law.

Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk isn’t just a brash bid to upend Russia’s invasion. It also marks the first time that a declared nuclear power has faced invasion and occupation by another country. For decades, nuclear-escalation theory has presumed that countries with atomic weapons were largely immune from attack because an aggressor risked triggering armageddon.

Israel recovered the bodies of six hostages in Gaza, including that of Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, U.S. President Joe Biden said late on Saturday. «Earlier today, in a tunnel under the city of Rafah, Israeli forces recovered six bodies of hostages held by Hamas,» Biden said in a statement issued by the White House. «I am devastated and outraged.» The Israeli military said in a statement early on Sunday that the bodies of Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino had been brought to Israel.

Kamala Harris vowed a tougher approach to migration along the U.S. southern border and said she would not withhold weapons to Israel, in her first interview with a major news organization since becoming the Democratic nominee for president. Harris' interview with CNN anchor Dana Bash reflected an effort to show she is in command of the issues and give Americans a sense of her policy positions with little more than two months until Election Day on Nov. 5. Harris said she would renew a push for comprehensive border legislation that would tighten migration into the United States and vowed to «enforce our laws» against border crossings.

European Union must rethink its relations with Israel and impose sanctions on some Israeli government ministers, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Thursday. At a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Borrell urged the ministers to consider imposing sanctions on certain members of PM Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet.

interest rate cut in September and a weaker dollar, as traders awaited jobs data and a key inflation print from the world's top economy for signals on the Federal Reserve's policy path.

Israeli military said on Wednesday it had «failed» in its response to a settler attack in the occupied West Bank earlier this month that Palestinian officials said killed one man. The August 15 raid on the northern West Bank village of Jit came amid soaring violence in the Palestinian territory during the Gaza war and growing international concern over an uptick in attacks by Jewish settlers. Major General Avi Bluth, head of the military's Central Command which operates in the West Bank, was quoted in a statement as saying the attack was «a very serious terror incident in which Israelis set out to deliberately harm the residents of the town of Jit, and we failed by not succeeding to arrive earlier to protect them».

Hamas have been waging war since gunmen from the Palestinian militant group in the Gaza Strip stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing 253 hostages, by Israeli tallies. Israel responded with a military offensive in Gaza in which more than 40,400 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza health authorities. The conflict is the bloodiest in a protracted conflict between Israelis and Palestinians that has rumbled on for seven decades and destabilised the Middle East.