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Pope Leo XIV has issued a heartfelt plea for peace amid escalating U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, warning that continuing violence risks plunging the Middle East into an “irreparable abyss.”
The U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Saturday in what President Donald Trump said was a massive operation to destroy the country’s military capabilities and eliminate the threat of it creating a nuclear weapon.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry said it would defend its homeland as the Revolutionary Guard launched counterattacks, firing drones and missiles at Israel. Further strikes were launched at U.S. military installations in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar.
The strikes follow weeks of pressure from Trump on Tehran to make a deal to constrain its nuclear program. In the lead up to the strikes, Washington built up a significant fleet of American warships in the region.
The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and three guided-missile destroyers arrived in January to bolster the number of warships in the region. The world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, and four accompanying destroyers later were also dispatched from the Caribbean.
At least 165 people were reported killed at a gi..
Over 60 South African nationals, including nine children, have been deported from Ireland following an operation by the Garda National Immigration Bureau. The deportations, which took place on Saturday, were carried out under orders issued by Minister for Justice, Jim O’Callaghan. The group removed comprised 28 men, 26 women, and nine children, all part of family units.
They left Dublin on a chartered flight on Saturday and arrived in South Africa on Sunday.
The group were accompanied on the flight by gardai members, medical staff, an interpreter and a human rights observer.
Gardai said 10 of the individuals had been convicted of offences in Ireland.
open image in galleryA United Airlines Boeing 757-224 comes in to land at Dublin Airport (PA Archive)Mr O’Callaghan said: “Charter flights are now a routine and essential part of immigration enforcement for the state.
“Without effective enforcement measures, our immigration laws would be undermined, and I want to ensure that there is publi..
The United States and Israel have launched a wide-scale military attack on Iran, plunging the Middle Eastern region into turmoil as Tehran retaliates.
Several nations, including Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Jordan, have since been targeted following the attacks ordered by Donald Trump and Israel on Saturday morning.
It has prompted the closure of airspaces within the region, with global airlines cancelling flights throughout the Middle East and Dubai International Airport, the biggest global aviation hub, suspending all travel.
Confirming the attacks, Donald Trump said the US had launched “major combat operations”, aimed at “eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime”, including to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
The US President called the regime “a vicious group of very hard, terrible people”, adding that “its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world..
Smoke seen rising from area of southern Tehran following Israeli attackThe US and Israel have launched co-ordinated strikes across Iran, including Tehran, on Saturday, in a “preventative attack”.
Iran have retaliated with the Israel Defence Forces confirming that they had identified missiles launched towards them, and were intercepting the threat. Reports of explosions have also been made in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, which house US military bases.
President Donald Trump confirmed a “major combat operation” in an eight-minute speech, stating Iran could never have a nuclear weapon and adding: “It's been mass terror, and we're not going to take it any longer.”
Witnesses said they heard the blasts in the Iranian capital, while footage appears to show columns of smoke rising above the city.
Iran and Israel have closed their airspace, while officials in Tehran said their supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been transferred to a secure location.
The development comes amid hei..
Flights between Western Europe and the Middle East have been severely disrupted after the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran. British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and many other airlines are cancelling flights.
The “major combat operation” confirmed by Donald Trump on Saturday morning has had a major impact on flights in the region, as Iran and Iraq’s airspaces were closed due to the escalating action.
With missiles being launched from Israel against Iran, and retaliatory strikes from Iran, flights that would normally cross those countries are being forced to divert.
A video from the flight tracking service Flightradar24 shows the overnight stream of aircraft from the Gulf crossing northeast Iraq. But from around 6 am GMT, the pattern ends with aircraft instead flying west over Saudi Arabia.
British Airways has cancelled its flights linking London Heathrow with Bahrain and Tel Aviv until 3 March. Saturday’s link to Amman is also grounded.
A spokesperson told The Independent: “We are c..
The death of Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, the leader of the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), on February 22, was immediately framed as the fall of a narco kingpin.
Images of gun battles, torched vehicles and retaliatory violence dominated headlines. Commentators spoke of a power vacuum, of fragmentation, of the possible weakening of one of Mexico’s biggest cartels.
It was presented as the removal of a singular, hyper-violent male figure at the apex of a criminal empire. But this framing tells us more about how we imagine organised crime than about how it actually works.
The obsession with kingpins rests on a dramatic understanding of cartel power: a gun in one hand, territory in the other, masculinity performed through brutality. El Mencho embodied that image.
Yet cartels are not sustained by spectacle alone. They endure because someone moves the money, launders the profits, manages the assets, cultivates legitimate fronts and binds networks of loyalty through family..
Melania Trump is poised to make history by presiding over a United Nations Security Council meeting, a significant first for a US first lady.
The event, scheduled for Monday afternoon, will see her take the president’s chair, marking the inaugural instance of a first lady or first gentleman leading such a session, according to UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
With the United States assuming the rotating presidency of the 15-member council for March, Mrs Trump’s office confirmed the meeting would “emphasise education’s role in advancing tolerance and world peace.”
Children in conflict has been a signature issue for Melania Trump, who previously wrote to Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of a summit with Donald Trump, an effort that reportedly led to children displaced by the Russia-Ukraine war reuniting with their families.
open image in galleryMelania previously wrote to Putin about children displaced by the Russia-Ukraine war (AP)This engagement comes amidst ongoing criticizm of..
Four people were killed and six wounded when their Florida-registered speedboat entered Cuban waters on Wednesday, prompting a deadly exchange of gunfire with a patrol boat, the country’s government said, accusing the men of plotting an “armed infiltration.”
The vessel came within one nautical mile of the El Pino channel on Falcones Cay in Villa Clara province on the north coast of Cuba, about 120 miles east of Havana, when it was approached by a vessel carrying five Border Guard Troops, according to the official account.
When the patrol unit asked the occupants to identify themselves, they allegedly opened fire, wounding the commander of the Cuban vessel, prompting the troops to retaliate in kind.
The wounded were evacuated and received medical attention and were subsequently found to be “Cuban residents of the United States” with criminal records.
“Assault rifles, handguns, improvised explosive devices (Molotov cocktails), bulletproof vests, telescopic sights, and camouflage uniforms..
Russia launched a barrage of 420 drones and 39 missiles at Ukraine overnight, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday, as U.S. and Ukrainian envoys prepared to hold more talks in Geneva on ending the war that is now in its fifth year.
The nighttime bombardment, which included 11 ballistic missiles, targeted critical infrastructure and residential areas across eight regions of Ukraine, Zelenskyy said. Dozens of people, including children, were injured, officials said, though authorities did not immediately publish a confirmed total.
Zelenskyy said late Wednesday he had spoken by phone with U.S. President Donald Trump and thanked him for his “efforts and engagement” in pursuing peace negotiations.
The U.S.-brokered talks between Moscow and Kyiv are continuing but are deadlocked on the issue of the future of Ukrainian territory that Russia claims as its own.
Trump representatives Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who were also discussing nuclear negotiations with Iran in Geneva before..
