​ Three Lebanese journalists killed in Israeli strike, say broadcasters. 2 hours ago. Lina Sinjab,Middle East correspondent, in Beirut,and. Maia Davies. Reuters. Three Lebanese journalists were killed in a targeted Israeli strike in southern Lebanon on Saturday, their employers have said.. Ali Shoeib, a reporter for the Hezbollah-affiliated Al Manar TV, was killed in the town of Jezzine alongside reporter Fatima Ftouni and her brother, cameraman Mohamed Ftouni, both from the channel Al Mayadeen, according to the stations.. The strike reportedly hit the journalists’ car just before noon local time (10:00 GMT).. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed it had killed Shoeib, describing him as a “terrorist” from Iranian-backed Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force who had “operated for years under the guise of a journalist”.. It said he had worked to “expose the locations of IDF soldiers operating in southern Lebanon and along the border”, including during the current fighting, and had used his position “to disseminate Hezbollah propaganda materials”.. The IDF provided no evidence to support its claim that Shoeib had a military role. It did not comment on the deaths of Fatima or Mohamed Ftouni.. Hezbollah denounced the strike as the “deliberate criminal targeting of journalists”.. “The enemy’s false claims are nothing but an expression of its weakness and fragility, and a desperate attempt to evade responsibility for this crime,” the group said in a statement on Telegram.. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun described it as a “brazen crime” that broke the “most basic rules” of international law by targeting reporters, “who are ultimately civilians performing a professional duty”.. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam likewise condemned the attack in a statement on X, branding it a “flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and a clear breach of the rules that guarantee the protection of journalists in times of war”.. Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said the strike was “clearly a targeted assassination” and an attempt to “silence the voices of truth-tellers”.. EPA. This is the second time Israel has been accused of targeting journalists in Lebanon since the US-Israel war against Iran began a month ago.. On 18 March, Al Manar reported its presenter Mohammad Sherri and his wife had been killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut while they were sleeping.. Responding to Saturday’s strike, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Lebanon had become “an increasingly deadly zone for journalists”.. “We have seen a disturbing pattern in this war and in the decades prior of Israel accusing journalists of being active combatants and terrorists without providing credible evidence,” the US-based organisation’s regional director Sara Qudah said.. “Journalists are not legitimate targets, regardless of the outlet they work for.”. Reuters. More than 1,100 civilians, including 120 children and 42 paramedics, have been killed in Lebanon during the conflict so far, according to  

​ No Kings protests across the US rally against Donald Trump. 3 hours ago. Sakshi Venkatraman. Large protests against the Trump administration are taking place in cities across the US, marking the third iteration of No Kings rallies that have previously drawn crowds into the millions.. Organisers say they are protesting against policies imposed by US President Donald Trump, including the war in Iran, federal immigration enforcement and the rising cost of living.. “Trump wants to rule over us as a tyrant. But this is America, and power belongs to the people – not to wannabe kings or their billionaire cronies,” organisers said.. A White House spokesperson called the protests “Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions” and said the only people who care “are the reporters who are paid to cover them”.. Getty Images. Throughout the day on Saturday, demonstrations took place in nearly every major US city, including New York, Washington DC, and Los Angeles.. Rallies took over the streets of downtown Washington DC throughout the afternoon, with throngs of people marching through the nation’s capital. Protestors lined the steps of the the Lincoln Memorial and packed the National Mall.. Like in previous iterations of No Kings, protesters held up effigies of Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other officials in the administration, calling for their ousting and arrest.. Getty Images. Getty Images. One of the flagship No Kings protests on Saturday took place in Minnesota, where two American citizens – Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti – were killed by federal immigration agents in January. Their deaths sparked outrage and nationwide protests against the Trump administration’s immigration tactics.. Thousands on Saturday filled the streets with signs and a plethora of high-profile Democrats also took a stage outside the State Capitol building in St Paul.. Bruce Springsteen also took the stage and performed his anti-immigration enforcement song titled, “Streets of Minneapolis”.. Getty Images. Getty Images. Thousands also crowded New York City’s Times Square, marching through Manhattan’s Midtown neighbourhood. Police had to shut down the normally busy streets to make way for crowds. In October, the New York Police Department said more than 100,000 people had gathered across all five of the city’s boroughs.. The protests weren’t without incident. In Los Angeles, two people were arrested for assaulting federal law enforcement, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).. In a statement to X, it said that two officers had been hit with the cement blocks and were receiving medical care, after a group of what it described as “1,000 rioters” surrounded the Roybal Federal Building and began throwing things at DHS agents.. Elsewhere in the city, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) said “multiple arrests” had been made after protestors did not obey dispersal orders in an area near a federal prison.. Police confirmed that federal authorities has used “non-lethal mea  

​ Trump is waging war based on instinct and it isn’t working. 6 hours ago. Jeremy BowenInternational Editor. BBC. Some old truths about warfare have been knocking on the door of the Oval Office in the month since US President Donald Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent US and Israeli warplanes to bomb Iran.. The failure to learn from the past means that Donald Trump now faces a stark choice. If he can not get a deal with Iran, he can either try to declare a victory that will fool no-one, or escalate the war.. The oldest of the old truths comes from the Prussian military strategist Helmuth von Moltke the Elder: “no plan survives first contact with the enemy.” He was writing in 1871, the year Germany was unified as an empire, a moment that was as consequential for the security of Europe as this war might be for the security of the Middle East.. Maybe Trump prefers the boxer Mike Tyson’s modern version: “everyone has a plan until they get hit.” Even more relevant for Trump are the words of one of his predecessors, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the American general who commanded the D-Day landings in 1944 and went on to serve two terms as a Republican president of the United States in the 1950s.. Eisenhower’s version was “plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” He meant that the discipline and process of making plans to fight a war make it possible to change course when the unexpected happens.. For Trump, the unexpected item has been the resilience of the regime in Iran. It seems that he was hoping for a repeat of the US military’s lightning-fast kidnap in January of the President of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. They are now in prison in New York, facing trial. Maduro’s deputy Delcy Rodríguez replaced him as president and is taking orders from Washington.. Hoping for a repeat of the victory over Maduro suggests a yawning lack of comprehension of the differences between Venezuela and Iran.. Anadolu via Getty Images. Eisenhower’s adage on thinking ahead came in a speech in 1957. He had been the man in charge of planning and commanding the largest amphibious military operation in history, the invasion of western Europe on D-Day, so he knew what he was talking about.. He went on to explain that when an unexpected emergency arises “the first thing you do is to take all the plans off the top shelf and throw them out the window and start once more. But if you haven’t been planning you can’t start to work, intelligently at least.”. “That is the reason it is so important to plan, to keep yourselves steeped in the character of the problem that you may one day be called upon to solve – or to help to solve.”. Far from capitulating or collapsing after Israel and the US killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first air strike of the war, the regime in Tehran is functioning and fighting back. It is playing a weak hand well.. In contrast, Trump has given the impression that he is making it up as he  

​ Prison phone call recordings raise questions over ex-Abercrombie boss’ fitness for trial. 7 hours ago. Rianna CroxfordInvestigations correspondent. Reuters. Former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries was recorded telling his British partner “we’re screwed” and in “big trouble” if he was found fit to stand trial on sex trafficking charges later this year, a New York federal court has heard.. The audio was part of more than 100 phone calls between the ex-fashion boss and Matthew Smith referred to during a four-day mental competency hearing this week on Long Island.. Jeffries’ lawyers argue that he is suffering with dementia and late onset of Alzheimer’s disease and is unfit to face trial alongside his partner and their alleged middleman in October.. However, prosecutors say their medical experts found his condition has improved and that the calls reveal he is “incredibly focused” on being found incompetent.. In further recordings, Jeffries says he is “hoping for a good outcome”, describing being found fit as a “disaster”, and tells a doctor: “you better find me incompetent”, Central Islip court heard.. The calls were recorded last year while he was being treated for four months in a mental health unit at a federal prison in North Carolina to see if he could regain competency.. The 81-year-old had previously been found mentally incompetent last May but prison officials then declared in December that he was fit for trial following his hospital stay.. Prosecutors told the court Jeffries frequently complained about prison conditions and was caught on tape describing to Smith how “horrible jail was”, adding: “that’s why we got to pull this off”.. Ex-Abercrombie boss now facing abuse claims from 40 men. Jeffries, his partner Smith, 62, and their alleged middleman James Jacobson, 73, were charged with running a global sex trafficking and prostitution business in October 2024.. They have pleaded not guilty to the charges, which carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.. Their arrests followed an October 2023 BBC investigation and ongoing podcast series that revealed the trio had been at the centre of a sophisticated operation scouting young men for sex around the world while Jeffries was CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch.. Judge Nusrat J. Choudhury will decide in May whether Jeffries will stand trial after considering the testimony of six experts – forensic psychologists, psychiatrists and neurologists, including prison doctors – who were cross-examined in court this week.. ‘Disinhibited’ behaviour. Three defence experts, Dr Jacqueline C. Valdes, Dr Alexander Bardey and Dr Miranda Rosenberg, maintain that Jeffries is mentally incompetent due to the residual effects of a traumatic brain injury, probable Lewy body dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.. They testified that Jeffries demonstrates “disinhibited” and socially “inappropriate” behaviour, which is part of a range of dementia symptoms, the court heard.. Examples include Jeffries calling the prosecutor’s pro  

​ One ant for $220: the new frontier of wildlife trafficking. 8 hours ago. Wycliffe MuiaNairobi. Dino Martins. The ants are flying in Kenya at the moment.. During this rainy season, swarms can be seen leaving the thousands of anthills in and around Gilgil, a quiet agricultural town in Kenya’s Rift Valley that has emerged as the centre of a booming illegal trade.. The mating ritual sees winged males leave the nest to impregnate queens, who also take flight at this time. This makes it the perfect time to chase down queen ants to sell on to smugglers who are at the heart of a growing global black market, that taps into the pet craze for keeping ants in transparent enclosures designed to observe the insects as they busily build a colony.. It is the giant African harvester ant queens, which are large and coloured red, that are most prized by international ant collectors – one can fetch up to £170 ($220) on the black market, which tends to operate online.. A single fertilised queen is able to create a whole colony and can live for decades – and can be easily posted as scanners do not tend to detect organic material.. “At first, I did not even know it was illegal,” a man, who asked not to be named, told the BBC about how he had once acted as a broker, linking foreign buyers with local collection networks.. Also known as Messor cephalotes, these ants are native to East Africa and known for their distinctive seed-gathering behaviour making them popular with ant collectors.. “A friend told me a foreigner was paying good money for queen ants – the big red ones which are easily seen around here,” the former broker said.. “You look for the mounds near open fields, usually early morning before the heat. The foreigners never came to the fields themselves – they would wait in town, in a guest house or a car, and we would bring the ants to them packed in small tubes or syringes they supplied us with.”. Getty Images. The scale of the illicit trade in Kenya became apparent last year when 5,000 giant harvester ant queens – mainly collected around Gilgil – were found alive at a guest house in Naivasha, a nearby lakeside town popular with tourists.. The suspects – from Belgium, Vietnam and Kenya – had packed the test tubes and syringes with moist cotton wool, which would enable each ant to survive for two months, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS).. The plan was to take them to Europe and Asia and put them up for sale.. This trade in ants has caught scientists and the authorities by surprise.. The East African nation is more accustomed to high-profile wildlife crimes involving elephant tusks and rhino horns.. UK-based retailer Ants R Us describes the giant African harvester ant as “many people’s dream species” – though the queens are currently out of stock, with the site explaining that it is very hard for retailers to source them.. “Even I, as an entomologist, have been surprised at the extent of the apparent trade,” Dino Martins, a biologist based in K