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Tehran launched fresh missiles strikes against Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed further strikes on Iran in a military operation that has targeted the nuclear and military facilities of his country's arch enemy.

Shortly after midnight on June 14, Israel said its military had intercepted a new round of Iranian surface-to-surface missiles in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem on the second consecutive day of Iranian air strikes that followed a damaging Israeli air assault on sites linked to Tehran's nuclear program.

Survivors of a people-smuggling operation in the Red Sea have recounted how they were forced off their boat far from the coast of Djibouti and left to swim for their lives.

At least eight people are feared dead and 22 others are missing after smugglers stopped a boat carrying around 150 passengers likely bound for Yemen on 5 June.

“These young people were forced into impossible choices by smugglers who show no regard for human life,” said Celestine Frantz, the UN migration agency’s Regional Director for the East, Horn and Southern Africa. “We are doing everything we can to support the survivors and prevent further loss along this deadly route.”

Thousands of migrants from the Horn of Africa risk their lives every year to reach the Gulf States via Yemen where they hope to find work.

So far this year, 272 people have been confirmed dead on the Eastern Mediterranean migrant route which includes the Djibouti to Yemen leg. This includes both land and sea routes, according to IOM data.

Albanese said the incident had been brought to the attention of the US administration, but shied away from confirming whether he would personally hold discussions with Trump.

"We have already raised these issues with the US administration. We don't find it acceptable that it occurred, and we think that the role of the media is particularly important," he said at his first National Press Club since his re-election in May.

"Discussions I have with the president are discussions between myself and the president. That's the way that I deal with people; diplomatically, appropriately and with respect," he added.

The prime minister condemned the "horrific" attack, adding that footage showed police had clearly targeted Tomasi.

Israel’s government is issuing “clearly illegal” orders that must not be obeyed, a group of Israeli military intelligence officers have said, announcing they will no longer participate in combat operations in Gaza.

The intelligence officers said Netanyahu’s government had given a “death sentence” to the Israeli hostages held by Hamas militants in Gaza when it “chose to collapse” the ceasefire deal in March.

The group, which is understood to include members of the elite military surveillance division Unit 8200, claimed that “many hostages have already been killed by IDF bombings” and accused the government of continuing to “abandon their lives”.

Organised by the anti-war group Soldiers for the Hostages, the letter comes amid growing dissent within certain parts of the military over the continuation of the war in Gaza and an apparent increase in the numbers of soldiers who are refusing to fight.

The very real risk of famine continues to stalk Sudan’s communities impacted by war, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday, in an appeal for more funding to support immediate needs and boost longer-term recovery across the country.

“Over the past six months, WFP scaled up assistance and we are now reaching nearly one million Sudanese in Khartoum with food and nutrition support,” said Laurent Bukera, WFP Country Director in Sudan. “This momentum must continue; several areas in the south are at risk of famine.”

More than two years of fighting have smashed infrastructure and left communities without basic services, such as clean water.

This – and weeks of heavy rains – have contributed to a deadly cholera outbreak and reports of corpses rotting in the Nile in Omdurman, one of the capital’s three cities.

In an update last week, the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, said that war-related displacement and the spread of cholera have continued to add to needs across Sudan.

“We are deeply concerned and meeting the basic needs, especially food, will be critical and is urgent,” said WFP’s Mr. Bukera. “Urgent action is needed to restore basic services and accelerate recovery through coordinated efforts with local authorities, national NGOs, UN agencies and humanitarian partners.”

This vital work has been prevented by a lack of international support, forcing WFP to reduce the amount and range of relief it can distribute.

“Funding shortfalls are already disrupting some of the assistance we are providing in Khartoum, Blue Nile, Al Jazeera and Sennar states,” the WFP senior official continued. “Our rations and the oil and the pulses in the food basket had to be removed due to lack of resources.”

Since arriving in Mali in 2021, Russian Wagner mercenaries have abducted and detained hundreds of civilians in former UN bases and military camps shared with the Malian army. Our investigation, as part of the Viktoriia project, reveals secret prisons where abuse and torture are carried out with total impunity.

Police in northwestern China are cracking down on writers of online erotic fiction across the country, including many college students, according to RFA sources and media reports, amid concern that officers are punishing people outside their jurisdiction.

Police in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province, have been summoning writers who don’t even live there. A report from Caixin media group said some have been referred to police for prosecution, and anecdotal evidence indicates writers are facing substantial fines.

A source who spoke to Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity for safety reasons said the crackdown could involve 200-300 writers.

Their cases have also sparked a legal debate over the definition of “obscene materials” and renewed public discussion on the boundaries of creative freedom. Known as “Danmei,” the genre features romantic relationships between male characters. It originated in Japan and has become popular in China.

Amid tightened restrictions in China, many writers have turned to Haitang Culture, a Taiwanese-based adult fiction website established in 2015 to publish their work. The website on the democratic island doesn’t force censorship and allows explicit written content. Most readers are females.

Authorities in China have reacted. Last year, two China-based distributors affiliated with Haitang Culture were arrested for “assisting in information network criminal activities,” according to Shuiping Jiyuan, a news portal on the WeChat social media platform.

The recent police crackdown in Lanzhou followed similar moves in the eastern province of Anhui in June 2024, where authorities began arresting writers of online erotic fiction under the charge of “producing and distributing obscene materials for profit,” resulting in heavy fines and even prison sentences.

Police are seeking out writers even when they leave outside their jurisdiction - a practice that critics call “offshore fishing,” implying the motive of police is financial or political, rather than strictly legal.

“I don’t understand what they’re trying to do—are they pushing political correctness, or are they just desperate for money?” said Liu Yang, a veteran media professional in Lanzhou, told Radio Free Asia. “The police are short on funds, and now even arrests have become a way to make money.”

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Sam Altman’s eyeball-scanning digital ID project is rolling out in the UK, giving Brits access to verification services the entrepreneur claims are essential to distinguish between human and artificial intelligence.

World has developed an orb “that confirms humanness” by scanning people’s eyes, generating a digital credential that can be used to access goods and services online, as well as the group’s own cryptocurrency, Worldcoin. This week, World is opening a number of locations in London where people can scan their irises to receive a World ID.

The single explosion destroyed more than 4,000 embryos and over 1,000 vials of sperm and unfertilized eggs. Dr Bahaeldeen Ghalayini, the obstetrician who established the clinic, summed up the implications of the attack in an interview with Reuters: “5,000 lives in one shell.”

The strike was an act of reprocide: the systematic targeting of a community’s reproductive health with the intention of eliminating their future. In the context of Israel’s ongoing genocidal war in Gaza, reprocide serves as a tactic. Indeed, genocide includes its definition, “imposing measures intended to prevent births” within a particular national, ethnic or religious group.

The bombing of the IVF clinic was one spectacular example, but as a Palestinian women’s rights activist from Gaza, I have lived and witnessed how Israel uses reprocide within a settler colonial framework that seeks not only territorial domination but demographic erasure—a process that began long before October 7, 2023.

When I was 15 years old, following the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2008–2009, Israeli soldiers began wearing and distributing t-shirts that depicted a pregnant woman in crosshairs above the slogan “1 Shot 2 Kills.” I recall the fear felt by the pregnant women I knew. The t-shirts prompted people around me to recount stories of pregnant women being killed or wounded during other moments of extreme violence in Palestinian history, from the start of the Nakba in 1948 to the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982. Underscoring the eliminationist nature of this violence, Israel remains among the world’s leaders in assisted reproduction technology, actively encouraging birth rates among Jewish citizens.

In an effort to trace the effects of reprocide amid Israel’s ongoing genocidal war, between October 2023 and October 2024, I collected ethnographic evidence—voice notes, text messages, emails and phone calls—from those enduring or witnessing reproductive violence. Analyzing their accounts alongside official reports from Gaza reveals the many ways Israel has weaponized reproduction, some more obvious than others: from the direct assaults on reproductive health and infrastructure to the conditions it forces women and men to reproduce under to sexual violence and its role in reproductive erasure.

Silence from governments ‘beyond words’

Mouin Rabbani, a non-resident fellow at the Qatar-based Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, says the “absolute silence” from the Madleen crew members’ governments reflects Israeli impunity.

“If any other state had sent its military forces to seize a small civilian boat carrying 12 unarmed civilians to deliver food, baby formula and crutches to a besieged population, it would immediately be recognised for the act of state piracy that it indisputably is,” Rabbani told Al Jazeera.

“But for Israel, there’s always an exception.”

FIFA’s ongoing failure to enforce sanctions against the Israeli Football Association (IFA) despite long-standing and irrefutable evidence that the IFA is in violation of FIFA Statutes is further evidence of the organisation’s ad hoc and selective enforcement of its rules.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29974786