Israel News

Freetown Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr said she was “deeply saddened to hear” about the blast and said that the City Council’s Disaster Response Team would meet on Saturday with the National Disaster Management Agency to conduct a needs assessment.

The port city of Freetown, which is home to just over a million people, has faced several serious disasters in recent years.

In March, more than 80 people were injured after a major fire in one of the city’s slums left more than 5,000 people displaced. In 2017, over 1,000 people were killed after heavy rains led to a mudslide that swept through the city, leaving around 3,000 people homeless.

Chinese Carcinogenic Coats Serbian Town

Residents in the Serbian town of Radinac have been breathing in thick red dust for years. The dust that emanates from the Chinese-owned Smedrevo steel mill has been coating the town. Cancer rates in the area have quadrupled in under a decade. Now, residents are demanding that the plant be shut down or cleaned for pollutants.

According to data from the Smederevo public health body, which a watchdog called Tvrdjava obtained through a freedom of information request, the municipality of around 100,000 people reported 6,866 cancer cases in 2019, up from 1,738 in 2011.

The plant has said that it has invested 300 million euros in technology and pollution reduction since China’s biggest steelmaker, Hesteel, bought it from the Serbian state for 46 million euros ($53 million) five years ago.

“We are all citizens of Smederevo.... Would we be working despite pollution, against ourselves and our children?” the plant’s manager for environmental protection, Ljubica Drake, asked in a statement.

Drake says that the soaring cancer rates can be a result of NATO’s bombing of Serbia in 1999 during a war in Kosovo.

Nikola Krstic, the head of Tvrdjava, an environmental group whose name means The Fort, noted that an analysis of the red dust in September showed high concentration of heavy metals.

“The air in the town is far below European standards for 120 days per year,” he said. “Red dust is greasy, it sticks to lungs, makes breathing difficult.”

China has invested billions of euros in Serbia, which is a candidate to join the EU but has an uneasy relationship with the West more than two decades after the wars that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia, and has pursued close ties with Beijing.

Authorities in Serbia say that they are willing to pressure China to comply with pollution standards. For now, residents of Radinac are waiting with bated breath for their town to be cleaned up so they can breathe freely again.

Thomas Nides New U.S. Amb. to Israel

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday confirmed Thomas Nides as U.S. President Joe Biden’s ambassador to Israel.

Nides is a former deputy assistant secretary of state and a longtime Democrat.

He was confirmed in a voice vote on the Senate floor, after the Republicans lifted their objections to the nomination. It was not immediately clear what had caused the Republicans to remove their objections.

The United States has not had an ambassador to Israel since Amb. David Friedman resigned the position in January following Biden’s entry into office. Biden tapped Nides in June, but the confirmation process had been drawn out due to disagreements between the two U.S. parties.

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Gilad Erdan was among the first to congratulate Nides, tweeting, “Amb. Nides, I wish you much success in your role and a fruitful tenure at the U.S. Embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem. I’m sure that you will further strengthen the special bond between Israel and the U.S.”

Libyan Warlord Wants Israel’s Approval

Saddam Haftar, son of Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar, arrived last Monday at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport.

Saddam is reportedly eyeing the Libyan presidency and stopped over in Israel on his way from Dubai back to Libya, according to Haaretz. He is reported to have held secret meetings with Israeli officials in which he offered to establish diplomatic relations between the two countries in exchange for Israel’s support in the December 23 elections.

It is not known which officials the younger Haftar met with, but he had been in contact with the Mossad’s “Tevel” department and carried a message from his father requesting Israel’s “military and diplomatic assistance” in exchange for a promise of normalizing relations.

Israel has no official ties with Libya and has not been taking a stance on the country’s civil war in 2011.

Saddam’s father, General Khalifa Haftar, is backed by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Russia, while the Tripoli-based militias rivaling him are aided by Qatar, Italy, and Turkey.

IDF Blacklists “Palestinian” Rights Groups

The IDF on Sunday blacklisted five Palestinian Authority “rights groups” in Judea and Samaria, following a decision by Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz (Blue and White) last month, defying international criticism.

The sixth group declared last month by Gantz to be a terrorist organization was banned by the IDF last year.

The designations offer the IDF the power to, among other moves, close the organizations’ offices and arrest their members.

According to Israel, the six newly-blacklisted organizations serve as fronts for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group. The groups have repeatedly denied the charges.

The six groups that have been blacklisted are Al-Haq, Addameer, Defense for Children International-Palestine, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees. The first five were declared by the IDF’s Central Command on Sunday to be “unauthorized organizations,” while the Union of Agricultural Work Committees had been outlawed last January.

In a statement, the IDF said Central Command Commander Major General Yehuda Fuchs had decided to ban the groups “after he was presented with copious, varied and reliable information that indicates that these organizations represented a wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group.”

A 2022 Budget – One Day After a 2021 Budget

Israel’s Knesset on Friday morning passed the 2022 budget, scoring

a win for the current “unity” government.

The 2021 budget had passed early on Thursday, eliminating the chance of a fifth round of elections. It included a spending plan for 609 billion NIS ($194 billion).

Israel had not had a budget in over three years. The 2022 state budget included plans for 573 billion shekel ($183 billion) and passed 59-56.

“Tonight, we got Israel back on track,” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett tweeted Friday morning, following the passage of the 2022 budget.

The new budget includes a tax on disposables, a reform to the kosher certification system, a plan to gradually raise both minimum wage and the retirement age for women, and a reform for the agricultural sector, as well as other legislation.

Mossad Foils Iranian Plot

Five people have been arrested in Africa on suspicion that they were planning on carrying out attacks against Israeli tourists or businesspeople on behalf of Iran, Israel’s Channel 12 News reported on Sunday.

The five suspects were arrested in Senegal, Ghana, and Tanzania and were reportedly recruited by Iran’s Quds Force. They were arrested by local intelligence working off information obtained from “Western” spies.

The five were provided with special training and unspecified materials in Lebanon prior to being sent back to Africa to find Jewish and Israeli targets, while claiming to be religious students.

All five were arrested before they could take any action. Among the top targets were Israeli tourists on a Tanzania safari.

The Mossad has been credited with foiling the plot, but its role was not specified.

Neither Israel nor the African governments immediately confirmed the report. Channel 12 said Iran denied all of the allegations, claiming them to be “baseless.”

Israel’s Biggest Gun Bust

Scores of guns were pulled from illegal owners on Monday night into Tuesday morning, as part of what the Israel Police described as the biggest sweep of contraband arms in the country’s history. At least 78 of the biggest illegal arms dealers in the country were arrested.

The arrests followed a year-long operation in which a former criminal turned undercover agent penetrated the illegal arms trade in the Arab community.

In Monday’s raids, 1,600 officers, including Border Police forces, arrested 64 suspects in 25 Arab communities, in the north and central regions of the country. Among those detained were a father and his three sons in the northern town of Kabul, who were arrested for running “a family business that traded in illegal weapons.”

The undercover operative, a former criminal who switched sides, spent his time as a member of an organized crime group that provides weapons for “the big bosses” in the criminal underworld. Nicknamed “Ocean” after a popular movie, he had spent time in prison before working for authorities. During the sting, starting in August 2020, he purchased 53 weapons in 48 deals, including two explosive devices that could be set off using a cellphone. He had spent more than NIS 4 million ($1,289,000) in buying the weapons.

Most of the weapons in this week’s bust came from the West

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