BERLIN, May 23 – Eighteen people were injured in a knife attack in Hamburg station on Friday evening, Germany’s Bild newspaper reported, and local police confirmed they had arrested the suspected assailant.
Four victims are in critical condition and six others are seriously injured, Bild reported, saying the motive for the attack was unclear.
Police said the suspected assailant was a 39-year old woman who allowed herself to be arrested without resistance.
“So far we have no evidence that the woman could have acted with political motivation,” said Hamburg police spokesperson Florian Abbenseth.
“Rather, we have findings on the basis of which we are now investigating in particular whether she may have been in a state of mental distress.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in a post on social media platform X that the news from Hamburg was “shocking.”
“My thoughts are with the victims and their families,” he said.
GAZA, May 23, 2025 – The death toll arising from the ongoing Israeli genocidal aggression on the Gaza Strip surged to 53,822 people, medical sources said on Friday.
In the last 24 hours, the bodies of 60 slain Palestinians and 185 casualties were admitted to hospitals in the Strip.
Moreover, at least 10,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
SYDNEY, May 23 – The body of a man was found in a car trapped in floodwaters in Australia’s southeast on Friday, raising the death toll to four, after three days of incessant rain cut off entire towns, swept away livestock and destroyed homes.
Police said the man was found near Coffs Harbour, around 550 km (342 miles) north of Sydney.
An aerial drone photo shows the site of a mountain torrent and mudslide in Longsheng County in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, May 23, 2025.
NANNING, May 23 – Three people have been confirmed dead and five remain missing after a mountain torrent and mudslide struck a village in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region early Friday morning, local authorities said.
Rescue efforts, which started immediately after the incident hit the village of Sanshe in Longsheng County, Guilin City, are underway, with more than 300 rescuers involved.
Ten houses sustained damage in the mudslide, according to local authorities.
JOHANNESBURG, May 23 – South Africa’s Sibanye Stillwater said on Friday that efforts were under way to rescue 289 mine workers trapped underground at one of its shafts at the Kloof gold mine near Johannesburg.
The workers were safe and gathered at an assembly point in the underground gold mine, one of the company’s deepest located around 60 km (37 miles) west of Johannesburg, it said.
It did not provide details on the incident, though a Sibanye spokesperson confirmed it had occurred in the mine’s Kloof 7 shaft, adding that all the miners were accounted for and the company was providing them with food.
Safety procedures and an examination of the shaft were under way, the spokesperson added, after which the miners would be hoisted to the surface.
“We expect the situation to be resolved by about midday today,” the spokesperson said. Mining accidents are not uncommon in South Africa, which has some of the world’s deepest and oldest gold mines.
Earlier this year, at least 78 bodies were pulled from an illegal gold mine after police cut off food and water supplies for months in an attempt to crack down on illegal mining activity.
Johannesburg-based Sibanye is among only a few South African miners squeezing profits from the area’s gold deposits. The precious metals producer is mining at depths of about 3,200 meters (2 miles) at the Kloof 7 shaft.
The Kloof mine, which accounts for 14% of Sibanye’s total gold output, also operates two other shafts.
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) earlier said it had received reports of the incident, which it said happened at around 1000 pm (0800 pm GMT) on Thursday.
HEBRON, May 23, 2025 – Armed Israeli colonists stole more than 30 sheep early Friday from a Palestinian resident in Masafer Yatta region, located south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, in the latest incident of escalating settler violence aimed at displacing local communities.
Osama Makhmara, a local media activist, said that the colonists broke into the sheep pen of Ashraf Al-Amour in Khirbet al-Rakeez, a hamlet in Masafer Yatta, and carried out the theft late at night. Surveillance cameras in the area captured footage of the theft.
The colonists, armed and operating in groups, have intensified their attacks in the area, particularly since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza. Residents report an organized pattern of assaults involving livestock theft, property damage, and direct attacks on farmers and herders.
Multiple similar thefts have been reported recently in Masafer Yatta. In some cases, colonists have shot at or stoned livestock, damaged agricultural equipment, and destroyed property—all part of a broader strategy to force Palestinian residents off their land to make way for settlement expansion.
GAZA, May 23, 2025 – Eleven Palestinians were killed and others injured on Friday in an Israeli airstrike targeting a residential home in the town of Abasan al-Jadida, east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
According to WAFA correspondent, the home belonged to the Dughma family. The majority of those killed in the strike were children, marking yet another massacre amid Israel’s ongoing genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip.
Several of the wounded were reported to be in critical condition. Emergency medical teams have so far been unable to evacuate all the injured to hospitals due to the intensity of the bombardment and the destruction caused by the strike.
GAZA, May 23, 2025 – At least 16 Palestinians were killed and dozens more injured in a series of Israeli airstrikes across different areas of the Gaza Strip early Friday morning, according to local sources and medical officials.
Ten people were reported killed and several others wounded in over five drone strikes that targeted the entrance to the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. Eyewitnesses said that some of the victims were civilians attempting to assist the wounded when they themselves were struck.
In Gaza City, three more people, including a young girl, were killed when an Israeli warplane bombed an apartment near Abdel Aal junction on al-Jalaa Street.
In Khan Younis, two siblings were killed and their father seriously injured when an Israeli strike hit the Abu Akar family home in the western refugee camp area of the city.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces detonated a robot near al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza, causing significant damage to hospital infrastructure and igniting a fire in the facility’s medicine storage area. Civil defense teams were prevented by Israeli forces from extinguishing the blaze.
Additional strikes in the town of Abasan al-Jadida, east of Khan Younis, targeted the Dughma family home, resulting in more casualties, though the exact toll remains unconfirmed. Meanwhile, 32-year-old Antar Mahmoud Al-Raqab died from injuries sustained in an earlier Israeli strike on the town of Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis.
The escalation followed an earlier deadly airstrike late Thursday night in Jabalia, north of Gaza. Four members of the Dardouna family were killed and many others wounded or reported missing after Israeli aircraft bombed their four-story home, which also housed displaced people.
Rescue teams recovered the bodies of four victims and managed to save six people from the rubble. However, more than 50 individuals remain unaccounted for. Emergency crews warned that a severe lack of heavy equipment has brought search operations to a halt, leaving those trapped beneath the debris without hope of immediate rescue.
VLADIVOSTOK, May 23 – A fire in a residential building in Anadyr, the capital of Russia’s Chukotka Autonomous Area, killed five people and injured four others, a local investigative committee said on Friday.
Preliminary investigations indicate that the fire was caused by faulty electric home appliances. The fire broke out at 3:10 a.m. local time (1710 GMT Thursday) in the kitchen of an apartment. Dense smoke and carbon monoxide then rapidly spread throughout the space.
The flames caused the deaths of three men and a woman at the scene, while a fifth man died while being transported to the hospital.
Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations reported that 17 people were safely evacuated from the building. The fire has been extinguished, and investigations are underway.
Russian service members walk past a destroyed building in the town of Sudzha, which was recently retaken by Russia’s armed forces in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in the Kursk region, Russia, in this still image from video released March 15, 2025. Russian Defence Ministry/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
MOSCOW, May 22 – Russian forces are working on establishing a security buffer zone along the country’s border with Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.
“The enemy’s firing positions are being actively suppressed, and work is ongoing,” Putin said at a government meeting, referring to the buffer zone.
The Russian president noted the necessity to begin restoration work in the border regions of Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk and demine the areas where fighting previously took place.
Putin visited the Kursk region on Tuesday, where the Ukrainian army launched an offensive in August 2024. On April 26, Putin announced that Russia had regained full control of the region.
The WHO said Gazans were suffering acute shortages of food, water, medical supplies, fuel and shelter. AN-AP
GENEVA – Fighting back tears, the head of the World Health Organization on Thursday urged Israel to have “mercy” in the Gaza war and insisted peace would be in Israel’s own interests.
In an emotional intervention at the WHO annual assembly, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the war was hurting Israel and would not bring a lasting solution.
“I can feel how people in Gaza would feel at the moment. I can smell it. I can visualize it. I can hear even the sounds. And this is because of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder),” said Tedros, 60, who has often recalled his own wartime upbringing in Ethiopia.
“You can imagine how people are suffering. It’s really wrong to weaponize food. It’s very wrong to weaponize medical supplies.”
The United Nations on Thursday began distributing around 90 truckloads of aid which are the first deliveries into Gaza since Israel imposed a total blockade on March 2. Tedros said only a political solution could bring a meaningful peace.
“A call for peace is actually in the best interests of Israel itself. I feel that the war is hurting Israel itself and it will not bring a lasting solution,” he said.
“I ask if you can have mercy. It’s good for you and good for the Palestinians. It’s good for humanity.”
WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said that 2.1 million people in Gaza were “in imminent danger of death.”
“We need to end the starvation, we need to release all hostages and we need to resupply and bring the health system back online,” he said.
“As an ex-hostage, I can say that all hostages should be released. Their families are suffering. Their families are in pain,” he added.
The WHO said Gazans were suffering acute shortages of food, water, medical supplies, fuel and shelter.
Four major hospitals have had to suspend medical services in the past week, due to their proximity to hostilities or evacuation zones, and attacks.
Only 19 of the Gaza Strip’s 36 hospitals remain operational, with staff working in “impossible conditions,” the UN health agency said in a statement.
“At least 94 percent of all hospitals in the Gaza Strip are damaged or destroyed,” it said, while north Gaza “has been stripped of nearly all health care.”
It said that across the Palestinian territory, only 2,000 hospital beds remained available — a figure “grossly insufficient to meet the current needs.”
“The destruction is systematic. Hospitals are rehabilitated and resupplied, only to be exposed to hostilities or attacked again. This destructive cycle must end.”
SAN DIEGO – The music agency Sound Talent Group said Thursday that three of its employees, including co-founder Dave Shapiro, died on the private plane that crashed into a San Diego neighborhood.
Shapiro is listed as the owner of the plane and has a pilot’s license, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Shapiro also owned a flight school called Velocity Aviation and a record label, Velocity Records, according to his LinkedIn page.
The agency didn’t share the names of the other two employees who died.
“We are devastated by the loss of our co-founder, colleagues and friends. Our hearts go out to their families and to everyone impacted by today’s tragedy,” the agency said in a statement.
Sound Talent Group has represented artists including Hanson, Sum 41 and Vanessa Carlton.
San Diego authorities earlier said two people had died. The National Transportation Safety Board now says the total number of fatalities is unknown, but the plane could hold as many as 10 people.
The private jet crashed early Thursday into a neighborhood of U.S. Navy-owned housing in San Diego during foggy weather, igniting at least one home and numerous vehicles parked on the street. The plane clipped power lines before slamming into the house, said Elliot Simpson with the NTSB.
Several people were injured while trying to flee as flames raced down a single street after the crash just before 4 a.m. in the Murphy Canyon, the largest neighborhood of Navy-owned housing in the country. Others were treated for smoke inhalation, authorities said.
GAZA, May 22, 2025 – Two Palestinian civilians were killed and eight others wounded on Thursday after Israeli occupation forces targeted a tent sheltering displaced people in the Al-Mawasi area, east of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.
WAFA correspondent reported that the Israeli artillery strike hit the makeshift tent where a family had sought refuge after being displaced by the ongoing onslaught on Gaza.
The ongoing Israeli aggression on Gaza since October 2023 has so far resulted in at least 53,762 documented Palestinian fatalities, with over 122,197 others injured.
Thousands of victims are feared trapped under rubble, inaccessible to emergency and civil defense teams due to Israeli attacks.
WASHINGTON, May 22, 2025 – Microsoft has banned the words “Palestine,” “Gaza,” and “genocide” from being sent to recipients inside and outside the US computer giant, according to the Verge website.
The website reported that Microsoft employees have discovered that any emails they send with the terms “Palestine” or “Gaza” are getting temporarily blocked from being sent to recipients inside and outside the company.
It added that the No Azure for Apartheid (NOAA) protest group reports that “dozens of Microsoft workers” have been unable to send emails with the words “Palestine,” “Gaza,” and “Genocide” in email subject lines or in the body of a message.
It reported NOAA organizer Hossam Nasr saying: “NOAA believes this is an attempt by Microsoft to silence worker free speech and is a censorship enacted by Microsoft leadership to discriminate against Palestinian workers and their allies.”
Microsoft claimed that it has implemented some form of email changes to reduce “politically focused emails” inside the company.
The block was revealed by NOAA, a group of pro-Palestinian Microsoft workers, who say the company quietly activated the filter on its Exchange servers shortly after a protest at Microsoft Build 2025. Microsoft is facing internal backlash over its provision of cloud services and AI tools to the Israeli occupation forces.
On Tuesday, activists, including a former Google employee and members of the “No Tech for Apartheid” movement, interrupted Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during the opening of this year’s Microsoft Build Conference. They were protesting Microsoft’s involvement in supplying technology, including AI systems, for supporting Israel’s ongoing genocidal aggression on Gaza, which resulted in the killing of 53,762 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring 122,197 others.
BEIRUT – Lebanese state media said an Israeli air strike hit a building in southern Lebanon on Thursday after Israel’s military issued an evacuation call warning of imminent action against Hezbollah militants.
Israel has kept up its air strikes in neighboring Lebanon despite a November truce aimed at halting more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah that included two months of full-blown war.
Without confirming the reported attack on the southern town of Toul, the Israeli military said its forces had carried out several strikes targeting Hezbollah sites and killed one militant.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said that “the Israeli enemy” struck a building in Toul, where the army had warned residents to evacuate the area around a building it said was used by Hezbollah militants.
The “urgent warning” was accompanied by a map showing a structure and the 500-meter (0.3-mile) radius around it marked in red.
“You are located near facilities belonging to the terrorist (group) Hezbollah,” the statement said in Arabic, urging people “to evacuate these buildings immediately and move away from them.”
There were no immediate reports of casualties in Toul.
In a separate statement, the military said it had “struck and eliminated a Hezbollah Radwan Force terrorist in the area of Rab El Thalathine,” about 17 kilometers (10 miles) to the southeast.
The NNA reported a “martyr” in an air strike in the same area, without identifying them.
The Israeli military said its forces also “struck a Hezbollah military site containing rocket launchers and weapons” in the Bekaa Valley as well as “terrorist infrastructure sites and rocket launchers belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization… in southern Lebanon.”
A military statement said that “the presence of weapons in the area and Hezbollah activities at the site constitute blatant violations of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon” under the November ceasefire agreement.
Israel will “continue to operate to remove any threat… and will prevent any attempt by Hezbollah to re-establish its terror capabilities,” it said.
Under the ceasefire, Hezbollah fighters were to pull back north of the Litani River and dismantle military infrastructure south of it.
Israel was to withdraw all forces from Lebanon, but it has kept troops in five areas that it deems “strategic.”
The Lebanese army has deployed in the south and has been dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure.
The truce was based on a UN Security Council resolution that says Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers should be the only people to bear arms in south Lebanon, and calls for the disarmament of all non-state groups.
Vehicles and houses are damages after a small plane crashed into a San Diego neighborhood, setting several homes on fire and forcing evacuations along several blocks early Thursday, May 22, 2025. AP
SAN DIEGO – Multiple people on board a private plane that crashed into a San Diego military housing neighborhood during foggy weather early Thursday are dead but no one on the ground was injured, authorities said.
The plane could hold eight to 10 people but it’s not yet known how many were on board, Assistant San Diego Fire Chief Dan Eddy said at a news conference. Authorities will be investigating whether the plane hit a power line, he said.
The aircraft crashed just before 4 a.m. into the U.S. military’s largest housing neighborhood, appearing to strike at least one home that had a charred and collapsed roof and smashing through half a dozen vehicles. About 10 homes suffered damage but no one inside the homes needed transport to the hospital, authorities said.
San Diego officials haven’t released details about the plane but said it was a flight coming in from the Midwest. The flight tracking site FlightAware lists a Cessna Citation II jet that was scheduled to arrive at the Montgomery-Gibbs Executive airport in San Diego at 3:47 a.m. from the small Colonel James Jabara Airport in Wichita, Kansas. Officials at the airport said it just made a fueling stop in Wichita. The flight originated Wednesday night in Teterboro, New Jersey, according to FlightAware.
The airport in Teterboro is about 6 miles (10 kilometers) from Manhattan and is frequently used by private and corporate jets.
In the San Diego neighborhood, smell of jet fuel lingered in the air hours after the crash while authorities worked to put out one stubborn car fire. They described a frightening scene in the aftermath of the crash.
“I can’t quite put words to describe what the scene looks like, but with the jet fuel going down the street, and everything on fire all at once, it was pretty horrific to see,” San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said.
Half a dozen fully charred cars sat on the street and tree limbs, glass and pieces of white and blue metal were scattered on the road. At the end of the street black smoke billowed as the site continued to burn.
Wahl said more than 50 police officers were on the scene within minutes and began evacuating homes. At least 100 residents were displaced to an evacuation center at a nearby elementary school.
Christopher Moore, who lives one street over from the crash site, said he and his wife were awakened by a loud bang and saw smoke when they looked out the window.
They grabbed their two young children and ran out of the house. On their way out of the neighborhood they saw a car engulfed in flames.
“It was definitely horrifying for sure, but sometimes you’ve just got to drop your head and get to safety,” he said.
Police rescued three husky puppies from one of the homes and rolled them away from the crash scene in a wagon. A few blocks away, families including Moore’s stood in their pajamas in a parking lot waiting for word of when they can return to their homes.
The neighborhood is made up of single family homes and townhomes. Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport and Gillespie Field are nearby.
Eddy said it was very foggy at the time the private plane crashed. “You could barely see in front of you,” he said.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the National Transportation Safety Board will lead the investigation.
In October 2021, a twin-engine plane plowed into a San Diego suburb, killing the pilot and a UPS delivery driver on the ground and burning homes. It was preparing to land at the airport.
In December 2008, a Marine Corps fighter jet slammed into a house in San Diego’s University City neighborhood, causing an explosion that killed four people inside. The Marine Corps blamed the crash on mechanical failure and human error.
GAZA, May 22, 2025 – An Israeli strike on Thursday evening killed three Palestinian civilians and injured others in the city of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, according to WAFA correspondent.
He said that Israeli fighter jets targeted the house of the Abu Sabt family in the al-Birkeh area in the city, claiming the lives of three civilians and injuring others.
Demonstrators clash with Argentina’s gendarmerie officers during the weekly protest of pensioners against Argentine President Javier Milei’s austerity policies, outside the National Congress, in Buenos Aires, Argentina May 21, 2025. REUTERS
BUENOS AIRES, May 21 – Dozens of people were injured during a protest outside Argentina’s Congress on Wednesday where activists and retired Argentines demanded higher pensions, according to Reuters witnesses.
TV footage showed elderly protesters and activists singing and chanting as security forces pushed through the crowd in Buenos Aires with riot shields and batons.
The protest took place outside Congress as deputies failed to reach quorum for several bills, including proposals for pension increases and continuity of benefits for retirees.
The government of libertarian President Javier Milei, which has sought to improve the economy and tackle painfully high inflation by slashing public spending, opposed both proposals.
Milei’s austerity drive has triggered weekly protests in the capital, with workers’ unions and soccer fans joining retirees to protest pension cuts amid stubborn inflation and reduced public spending.
“This place, the home of democracy, cannot remain indifferent when a pensioner is earning 379,000 pesos (about $331 a month),” lawmaker Paula Oliveto of the center Civic Coalition party said during the Congress session.
Some 124 lawmakers were present for voting while 133 were absent.
Esteban Paulon, a Socialist Party representative, accused lawmakers who supported the government’s policies of laughing when the session failed due to lack of quorum.
“The government’s plan is evidently to kill millions of people collecting minimum wage through hunger,” he said.
The government argues that its resources are limited and to increase pensions, the country must first see more investment and economic growth.
Around 38% of people in South America’s No. 2 economy were in poverty – 11.3 million people – in the second half of last year, according to government data. This was down from 53% recorded in the first half.
NEW DELHI, May 22 – An Indian army trooper was killed Thursday in an ongoing fierce gunfight with militants in restive Indian-controlled Kashmir, officials said.
The gunfight broke out in the Singhpora-Chatroo forest area of Kishtwar district, about 200 km southeast of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir.
Last week, six militants were killed in two separate gunfights with government forces in the region.
JAKARTA, May 22 – Rescuers discovered on Thursday five more bodies of flash floods victims in Indonesia’s West Papua province, bringing the total death toll to 15, with five others still missing, an official said.
An additional piece of heavy machinery was deployed to the scene to assist search and rescue operations in Gunung Arfak Regency, increasing the total to two units, according to Agus Bashori, spokesperson for Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Office.
Heavy rains triggered flash floods and landslides in Gunung Arfak Regency on May 15, but extremely poor communication access delayed the dissemination of information to rescuers, said Yefri Sabaruddin, head of the provincial Search and Rescue Office.
