By Olivia Le Poidevin
GENEVA (Reuters) -Members of the European Broadcasting Union will vote in November on Israel's participation in the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna next year, according to media reports.
Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung and the Guardian reported on Thursday that EBU members were informed of the vote in a letter from the organisation's president.
By Ahmad Al Kerdi and Laila Bassam
BEIRUT (Reuters) -This time last year, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was consumed by rage over Israel's detonation of pagers worn by members of his group throughout Lebanon, according to his son. Days later, Nasrallah himself was assassinated by Israel.
The pager explosions and Nasrallah's killing in an Israeli air attack on the southern suburbs of Beirut in September 2024 turned out to be the opening salvos of an Israeli assault that killed more than 4,000 people across Lebanon and destroyed swathes of the country's south.
ATHENS (Reuters) -An international aid flotilla was set to leave Greek waters and head towards Gaza on Friday, organisers said, defying warnings from Israel that it would use any means to block the boats' access to the war-torn enclave.
The Global Sumud Flotilla is using about 50 civilian boats to try to break Israel's naval blockade of Gaza, an initiative Israel strongly opposes.Many lawyers, parliamentarians, and activists, including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, are on board.
DUBAI (Reuters) -Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Friday that Tehran would scrap an agreement to let the U.N. watchdog inspect its nuclear sites if Western powers reinstated U.N. sanctions.
A set of U.N. sanctions on Iran are due to be reimposed at 0000 GMT on Saturday after Britain, France and Germany accused Tehran of violatinga 2015 deal with major powers aimed at preventing it from developing a nuclear weapon.
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) -Pakistan's Prime MinisterShehbaz Sharif invited American companies to invest in the country during a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House that also focused on how to end to the war in Gaza, his office said on Friday.
Sharif, along with army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, met Trump on Thursday, in a further sign of warming relations with the United States, which had been frozen under the previous U.S. administration.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Friday in an angry UN address to block a Palestinian state, accusing European leaders of pushing his country into "national suicide" and rewarding Hamas.
Netanyahu, who said his speech was being partially broadcast on Israeli military loudspeakers in Gaza, vowed to "finish the job" against Hamas even as President Donald Trump said he thought he had sealed a deal on a ceasefire.
Deep sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program look set to go into force once again, even as a UN watchdog confirmed Friday inspections of its atomic sites had resumed.
Russia failed in an effort with Beijing Friday to delay the reimposition of the measures on Tehran, with Moscow raising the prospect that it may not enforce the sanctions -- despite being required to under international law.
OSLO (Reuters) -A group of nations providing financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority has agreed to an emergency package increasing the support, Norway's foreign ministry said on Friday.
Saudi Arabia, Spain, Britain, Japan and France were among the nations supporting the initiative dubbed the Emergency Coalition for the Financial Sustainability of the Palestinian Authority.
It was not immediately clear how much funding the initiative would raise.
The Norwegian government said its contribution was for 40 million Norwegian crowns ($4.0 million).
(Reuters) -Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair seeks a senior role in running postwar Gaza under a peace plan being developed by the Trump administration, the Financial Times said on Thursday, citing people briefed on the proposal.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
Blair had been proposed to chair a supevisory board called the “Gaza International Transitional Authority,” the paper added.
Blair was part of a late August meeting Trump presided over to tackle Israel's war in Gaza and post-war plans for the Palestinian territory.
International doctors and nurses who treated Palestinians in Gazan hospitals described wounds more severe than civilians had suffered in other modern conflicts, according to a peer-reviewed study published Friday.
For the research in the leading medical journal BMJ, 78 humanitarian healthcare workers mostly from Europe and North America answered survey questions describing the severity, location and cause of the wounds they saw during their stints in the Gaza Strip.
