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Blinken arrives in Middle East seeking Gaza ceasefire

On his ninth trip to the region since the war began in October, Blinken will meet on Monday with senior Israeli leaders including Netanyahu, a senior State Department official said.

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv on Sunday on another Middle East tour to push for a ceasefire in Gaza but Hamas raised doubts about the mission just hours after he landed by accusing Israel of undermining his efforts.

The Palestinian militant group said it holds Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responsible for “thwarting the mediators’ efforts”, delaying an agreement and exposing Israeli hostages in Gaza to the same aggression faced by Palestinians.

On his ninth trip to the region since the war began in October, Blinken will meet on Monday with senior Israeli leaders including Netanyahu, a senior State Department official said.

After Israel, Blinken will continue onto Egypt.

The talks to strike a deal for a truce and return of hostages held in Gaza were now at an “inflection point”, a senior Biden administration official told reporters en route to Tel Aviv. “We think this is a critical time,” the official said.

The mediating countries – Qatar, the United States and Egypt – have so far failed to narrow enough differences to reach an agreement in months of on-off negotiations, and violence continued unabated in Gaza on Sunday.

Israeli strikes killed at least 21 people in Gaza on Sunday, Palestinian health authorities said, including six children and their mother in an airstrike on a house in the central city of Deir Al-Balah. The youngest was aged 18 months, their grandfather Mohammed Khattab told Reuters as relatives later gathered around the bodies, wrapped in white shrouds.

“What was their crime? … Did they kill a Jew? Did they shoot at the Jews? Did they launch rockets at the Jews? … What did they do to deserve this?” asked Khattab.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Israel has denied targeting civilians as it hunts down Hamas militants, accusing the group of operating from civilian facilities including schools and hospitals. Hamas denies this.

The Israeli military said it destroyed rocket launchers used to hit Israel from the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, the scene of intense fighting in recent weeks, and killed 20 Palestinian militants.

In the occupied West Bank, where violence has escalated since the war in Gaza broke out in October last year, an Israeli man died from wounds sustained in an attack, according to a hospital spokesperson.

The talks towards a ceasefire are set to continue this week in Cairo, following a two-day meeting in Doha last week. Blinken will try to secure a breakthrough after the U.S. put forward bridging proposals that the mediating countries believe would close gaps between the warring parties.

The war erupted on Oct. 7 when Hamas militants rampaged into Israel, killing around 1,200 people and seizing around 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s subsequent military campaign has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to Palestinian health authorities, and reduced much of Gaza to rubble. Israel says it has killed 17,000 Hamas combatants.

There has been increased urgency to reach a ceasefire deal amid fears of escalation across the wider region. Iran has threatened to retaliate against Israel after the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31.

Israel remained firmly committed to principles established for its security in the May 27 outline proposals, Netanyahu’s office said in a statement following a meeting of the cabinet.

“I would like to emphasise: We are conducting negotiations and not a scenario in which we just give and give,” Netanyahu told the meeting. “There are things we can be flexible on and… things that we cannot be flexible on, which we will insist on.”

Netanyahu’s office said he still insists Israeli forces remain on a border strip that runs between Gaza and Egypt known as the Philadelphi Corridor, in order to prevent weapons being smuggled into Gaza.

It said Netanyahu would continue to work towards advancing a deal that maximizes the number of living hostages released and allows for Israel’s war objectives to be achieved, including not allowing Hamas to retain control of Gaza.

Hamas said that optimistic U.S. comments were “deceptive” and accused Netanyahu of making new conditions in an attempt to “blow up” the negotiation.

Disagreements include whether Israeli troops should remain present in Gaza after the fighting ends, notably along the border with Egypt, and over checks on people going into northern Gaza from the south which Israel says is needed to stop armed militants.

Hamas has pushed for a ceasefire deal to end the war, while Israel has not been willing to agree to go beyond a temporary pause in the fighting. – Reuters

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Trump says Ukraine talks may be going OK, but there is a time ‘to put up or shut up’

Trump has shown signs of losing patience and has spoken of imposing secondary sanctions on countries that buy Russian oil if he feels Moscow is dragging its feet on a deal.

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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine may be going OK, but “there’s a point at which you just have to either put up or shut up.”

Trump made the comment to reporters a day after he showed frustration with Russia and told it to “get moving” on reaching a deal.

“I think Ukraine-Russia might be going OK, and you’re going to be finding out pretty soon,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One, while adding:

“There’s a point at which you just have to either put up or shut up and we’ll see what happens, but I think it’s going fine.”

On Friday, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the search for a peace deal.

The talks came at a time when U.S.-Russia dialogue aimed at agreeing a ceasefire ahead of a possible peace deal to end the war appeared to have stalled over disagreements around conditions for a full pause in hostilities.

Trump has shown signs of losing patience and has spoken of imposing secondary sanctions on countries that buy Russian oil if he feels Moscow is dragging its feet on a deal.

Earlier on Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov praised Trump for what he said was a better understanding of the Ukraine conflict than any other Western leader.

“When we speak about eliminating root causes of any conflict, including the Ukrainian conflict, this is the only way to resolve the problem and to establish long-lasting peace. Remove root causes,” Lavrov said at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in southern Turkey.

“President Trump was the first and so far, I think, almost the only one among the Western leaders who repeatedly, with conviction, several times stated that it was a huge mistake to pull Ukraine into NATO. And this is one of the root causes which we quoted so many times.”

Putin, who launched Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, has long cast Ukraine’s tilt to the West, including its desire to join NATO, as a threat to Russia.

Commenting on an agreement between Ukraine and Russia to pause strikes on each other’s energy facilities, Lavrov said that Moscow has been keeping its word and accused Kyiv of striking Russian energy infrastructure almost every day.

“I gave to our colleagues from Turkey, to (Foreign) Minister (Hakan) Fidan, what we gave to the Americans, to the U.N., to the OSCE – the list of facts listing the attacks by Ukraine during the last three weeks against Russian energy infrastructure.”

Ukraine has made similar accusations against Russia since the U.S.-backed moratorium was approved.

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White House says ‘all hell to pay’ should Iran develop nuclear weapon

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President Donald Trump wants Iran to know that there will be “all hell to pay” if it does not abandon its nuclear program, his press secretary told reporters on Friday ahead of talks on Saturday between U.S. and Iranian delegations.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump’s “ultimate objective is to ensure that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon” and that Trump believes in diplomacy, but that “all options are on the table” if diplomatic efforts fail, Reuters reported.

“But he’s made it very clear to the Iranians, and his national security team will as well, that all options are on the table, and Iran has a choice to make. You can agree to President Trump’s demand, or there will be all hell to pay, and that’s how the president feels. He feels very strongly about it,” Leavitt said.

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff is set for talks on Saturday with an Iranian delegation in Oman. Iranian state media said Iran would be represented by Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, with Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi as intermediary.

Trump in February restored his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran, which includes efforts to drive its oil exports down to zero, in order to stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. He said earlier this week that if the talks are unsuccessful, “Iran is going to be in great danger.”

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Tourist helicopter crashes into New York’s Hudson River, killing all six aboard

Agustin Escobar, an executive at Germany-based technology company Siemens was among those killed according to the New York Times, which cited unnamed law enforcement sources, Reuters reported.

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A tourist helicopter plummeted upside down into New York City’s Hudson River on Thursday killing all six people on board, including a Spanish family with three children and the pilot, Mayor Eric Adams said.

Agustin Escobar, an executive at Germany-based technology company Siemens was among those killed according to the New York Times, which cited unnamed law enforcement sources, Reuters reported.

New York City police referred requests for confirmation that Escobar was aboard the helicopter to the U.S. Coast Guard. The Coast Guard said in a statement that it did not yet have the names of the victims. Siemens did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside normal business hours.

Video of the crash showed what appeared to be a large object plunging into the river, followed seconds later by what appeared to be a helicopter blade. Afterwards, emergency and police boats were seen circling around a patch of river where the helicopter was submerged, with only what appeared to be the aircraft’s landing gear poking above the water’s surface.

The Bell 206 chopper, operated by New York Helicopter Tours, departed at about 3 p.m. ET (1900 GMT) from a downtown helicopter pad and flew north over the Hudson River, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.

It turned south when it reached the George Washington Bridge and crashed minutes later, hitting the water upside down and getting submerged near Lower Manhattan at around 3:15 p.m., just off Hoboken, New Jersey, Tisch added.

Divers helped remove the victims from the water. Four were pronounced dead at the scene, while two others were taken to area hospitals where they died.

The airspace around Manhattan is crowded with helicopters offering tourists a bird’s-eye view of the sights, with at least two dozen operators listed on tour website Viator. Many of the operators also offer helicopter shuttle services to the area airports.

New York Helicopter Tours, which offers sightseeing flights for as little as $114 per person on its website, did not respond immediately to a request for comment about the crash.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the tour helicopter was in Special Flight Rules Area established in New York that means no air traffic control services were being provided when it crashed.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate, with the NTSB leading the investigation.

Duffy said the FAA was also launching a Safety Review Team on Thursday evening. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy and a team from the board will arrive in New York later on Thursday and plan to hold a press briefing on Friday.

New York City has a history of accidents involving helicopters. In 2018, five passengers aboard a helicopter died when it crashed into the East River, while the pilot survived. The helicopter was on a charter flight that featured an open door to allow passengers to take photographs of the skyline.

A New York City Police spokesperson said that police boats had assisted in Thursday’s rescue efforts.

Helicopter safety has been a topic of discussion in the U.S. Congress after 67 people were killed in a crash between an American Airlines regional jet and Army helicopter on Jan. 29 near Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. The FAA has since permanently restricted helicopter traffic near that airport and is reviewing helicopter operations near other major airports.

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