Hamas releases video of 3 women hostages

 

A screengrab from a video released on Oct. 30, 2023 by the Hamas militant group shows three women among the roughly 220 people held hostage by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Taken from a video released by Hamas.

Jacarandas bloom in Sydney

 

Sydney, Australia

Sydney is famous for its jacaranda trees that bloom in October and November.

Photograph:  Xinhua/Shutterstock

 

Hadas Kalderon breaks down

 

Kibbutz Nir Oz resident Hadas Kalderon, whose children have been taken hostage, and mother and niece killed breaks down in tears while looking through the burnt out home of her late mother Rina Sutzkever on October 30, 2023 in Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel.  Dan Kitwood, Getty Images

Afghan refugees wait for assistance

 

October 30, 2023: Afghan refugee women wait near the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Azakhel Voluntary Repatriation Centre in Nowshera. Islamabad has issued an order to 1.7 million Afghans it says are living in the country illegally to leave by November 1, or be deported.

ABDUL MAJEED, AFP Via Getty Images

 

 

 

 

Gaza City

 

Palestinian civilians evacuate after Israeli airstrikes hit the neighbourhood of Ridwan.  27 October 2023

Photograph:  Ali Jadallah/Anadolu/Getty Images.

Kharkiv, Ukraine

 

Andriy from the combined sapper unit of the police department de-mines territory near the city of Kharkiv.  The unit is involved in the most complex mine clearance work. 

Photograph:  Sergey Kozlov/EPA

Rocket hits apartment building in Tel Aviv

 

27 October 2023

A woman shouts as smoke rises from a residential apartment building where a rocket hit that was fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel in Tel Aviv, Reuters

 

Afghan refugees must leave Pakistan

 

Afghan refugees arrive in trucks to cross the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Torkham.

Islamabad has given Afghans living illegally in Pakistan until 1 November to leave voluntarily or face deportation, an order the Taliban say amounts to harassment.  AFP

 

Australian Jewish community in Sydney

 

October 27, 2023: Members of the Australian Jewish community participate in a gathering called 'Balloons of Hope,' which represents Israeli hostages currently being held by the Palestinian group Hamas in Sydney.

Thousands of civilians, both Palestinians and Israelis, have died since Oct. 7, 2023, after Palestinian Hamas militants based in the Gaza Strip entered southern Israel in an unprecedented attack, triggering a war declared by Israel on Hamas with retaliatory bombings on Gaza.

 

 

 

Scotland ready to take Gaza refugees

 

Humza Yousaf, the First Minister of Scotland, has offered to welcome refugees from Gaza and treat wounded civilians in Scottish hospitals to help those fleeing the war. He said his brother-in-law, who is a doctor in Gaza, has witnessed scenes of horror and carnage.

Water shortage in Gaza Strip

 

People collect water in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis on 26 October 2023. Supplies of water, electricity, fuel and other necessities are running low.

Photograph: Xinhua/Shutterstock

Matildas 2, Iran 0

 

 

Ellie Carpenter and Sam Kerr on target to reach Paris games. 

Set to play Philippines on Sunday.

 

Flying vehicle at Japanese Show

 

 

A flying vehicle of Joby Aviation on show at the Japan Mobility Show 2023 at Tokyo Big Sight in Tokyo 25 October 2023.  Reuters

Israel mourns another Hamas victim

 

Friends and family take cover as rocket sirens sound during the funeral of Sagiv Ben Zvi 24, who was killed by Hamas gunmen in Holon, Israel.  Reuters.

Chinese astronauts' send-off ceremony

 

Chinese astronauts for the Shenzhou-17 mission, from left Jiang Xinlin, Tang Hongbo and Tang Shengjie wave as they attend a send-off ceremony for their manned space mission at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwestern China.  AP

Mass shooting in Maine

 

Lewiston, US

Police are looking for Robert Card, a firearms instructor at a US army service training facility in connection with a mass shooting in which 18 people died and 13 wounded.  

Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Khan Younis, Gaza Strip

 

A woman weeps as she looks on from behind a gate to mourn Palestinians killed by Israeli strikes.  

Photograph: Mohammed Salem/Reuters

This is what the Voice was all about

 

OTTAWA, 6 April 2023 Canada's federal government and a group of Indigenous people have reached a revised C$23.34 billion ($17.35 billion) agreement to compensate First Nations children and families for the decades of harm caused by a discriminatory welfare system.  https://tinyurl.com/3rju2txd

$50m to boost 77 religious facilities

 

The Albanese government has announced $50 million in grants to boost security at religious schools, places of worship and community facilities. 

The grants, allocated to 77 facilities across all faiths Australia-wide, would help ensure “people of all faiths can live in Australia free of violence and discrimination”.

Mike Johnson new House Speaker

 

Washington, DC

Mike Johnson is applauded after being nominated as Republican speaker of the US House of Reps at Capital Hill. 

After the election Johnson said he supports Trump’s conspiracy theory that voting machines were rigged.

Photograph:  Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Israeli strikes in Khan Younis

 

Palestinians search for casualties at the site of Israel strikes on houses in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.  

Reuters/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

 

Deir al-Balah, Gaza

 

Members of the Palestine Red Crescent Society distribute aid to people in the central Gaza Strip.  Photograph:  Palestine Red Crescent Society/Reuters

Tokyo, Japan

 

Lawyers for a claimant, Kazuyuki Minami left and Masafumi Yoshida speak to media after Japan’s supreme court ruled yesterday that a law requiring transgender people to have sterilisation surgery in order to officially change their gender was unconstitutional. 

Photograph: Eugene Hoshiko/AP

 

President Erdogan cancels trip to Israel

 

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan attends a meeting with members of parliament from his ruling AK Party (AKP) at the Turkish parliament in Ankara, 25 October 2023. 

Yesterday he said that Hamas is not a terrorist organisation and cancels trip to Israel.

Michael Cohen in court

 

Michael Cohen looks towards Donald Trump as he is questioned by a lawyer for the attorney general’s office during the Trump Organization civil fraud trial in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan, 24 October, 2023.

Reuters/Jane Rosenberg

Carnage continues in Gaza Strip

 

Palestinians carry a child at the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.  Reuters

Tel Aviv, Israel

 

Yocheved Lifshitz speaks to the media outside Ichilov hospital after Hamas released her from captivity. 

Photograph:  Alexi J Rosenfeld/Getty Images

Palestinians are not to blame

 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said "Palestinian civilians are not to blame for the carnage committed by Hamas…..they must be protected. 

That means Hamas must cease using them as human shields and that Israel must take all possible precautions to avoid harm to civilians."

Funeral for Sgt Goldstein and her father

 

October 23, 2023: 

Israeli soldiers mourn during the funeral of Sgt. Yam Goldstein and her father, Nadav, in Kibbutz Shefayim, Israel. 

Yam and her father were killed by Hamas militants on Oct. 7 at their house in Kibbutz Kfar Azza near the border with the Gaza Strip. The rest of the family are believed to be held hostage in Gaza.

Photograph: Ariel Schalit, AP

Food for children in southern Gaza Strip

 

Palestinian children receive food at an UN-run school in Rafah on the southern Gaza Strip amid ongoing battles between Israel and Hamas.  AFP

Gaza's human catastrophe

 

A Palestinian woman holds her children who were wounded along with her in an Israeli strike at Shifa hospital in Gaza City. 

Photograph: Mohammed Al-Masri/Reuters

Brechin, Scotland

 

Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, speaks to staff from a local manufacturer, Matrix International, during a visit to Brechin to thank members of the emergency services and Angus council for their response to Storm Babet.  

Photograph:  Andrew Milligan/PA

 

Trucks finally enter Gaza Strip

 

An aerial view of the convoy of trucks carrying humanitarian aid enter the Gaza Strip from Egypt via the Rafah border crossing on 21 October, 2023. 

Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images

Cape Canaveral, US

 

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off in Florida, carrying 23 Starlink satellites.  

Photograph:  Malcolm Denemark/AP

New York City

 

A thousand drones take off over Central Park lake during an aerial performance exploring the relationship between man, nature and technology.  

Photograph: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images

Gaza

 

A man weeps as he carries the shrouded body of his child in front of the morgue of the Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir Balah in the central Gaza Strip, following an Israeli strike, as battles continue between Israel and Hamas.  

Photograph:  Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images

Tel Aviv, Israel

 

Pictures of over 1000 people abducted, missing or killed in the Hamas attack are displayed in the Smolarz Auditorium at Tel Aviv University.  

As Israel prepares to invade the Gaza Strip, worries are growing of a wider war with multiple fronts, including at the country’s northern border with Lebanon.  

Photograph:  Leon Neal/Getty Images

 

Australian Youth Gambling Crisis

 

.......“He’d been out with his mates, had a few drinks, got her phone, got into her savings account, and gambled $2,800 into two bets,” she says ‘I never … thought he would steal from me.’”........

https://tinyurl.com/y2swx9at

 

The war has forced Israel’s Arab citizens to explain that no, they are not Hamas

 

Arab citizens and permanent residents in Israel make up just over 20% of the country’s population. 

The roughly 2 million people are distinct from Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and Gaza – but they are far from a uniform group…… https://tinyurl.com/37rx6vpx

Long-range ATACMS missiles arrive in Ukraine

 

The long-range ATACMS missiles Ukraine has been asking for have arrived. 

The secret US delivery pounded airfields in occupied Berdiansk and in Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.

It’s still unclear when the weapons were delivered or when the decision to supply them was made.

Why Egypt and Jordan won't take Palestinian refugees

 

….Egypt and Jordan refuse to take refugees into their countries.  After fighting stopped in the 1948 war, Israel refused to allow refugees to return to their homes. Egypt fears history will repeat itself and a large Palestinian refugee population from Gaza will end up staying for good…

https://tinyurl.com/mm37n58y

Rolling Stones in New York

 

New York, US

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards perform after the release of the Rolling Stones new album Hackney Diamonds.  

Photograph:  Even Agostini/Invision/AP

East Jerusalem

 

Muslim Palestinians take part in Friday Noon prayers in East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Ras al-Amud, following age restrictions by Israeli security to above 50 years old for worshippers wanting to access to Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, top background, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and Hamas.

Salman Rushdie in Germany

 

A member of the audience gestures as British-US author Salman Rushdie addresses a press conference at The Frankfurt Book Fair in Frankfurt, Germany.

Banda Aceh, Indonesia

 

Students at an Islamic junior high school take part in a Qur’an recitation and special prayers in support of the Palestinian cause. 

Photograph:  Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP/Getty Images

Labor wins huge Tory majority

 

Shefford, UK

Labour supporters react after the party’s candidate for Mid Bedfordshire, Alistair Strathern, overturns a huge Tory majority to win a bi-election triggered by the resignation of the former culture secretary Nadine Dorries.  

Photograph:  Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

 

Two hostages released by Hamas

First image of two American hostages released by Hamas - Judith and Natalie Raanan. Image released by IDF.

Fish tested near Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant

 

UN inspectors took samples from a fish market near the Fukushima nuclear power plant on October 19 following the release of wastewater from the wrecked facility in August.

Eugene Hoshiko/Pool/AFP/Getty Images

Amazon's robots "Delivering the Future"

 

Bipedal robots in testing phase move containers during a mobile-manipulation demonstration at Amazon’s “Delivering the Future” event at the company’s BFI1 Fulfillment Centre, Robotics Research and Development Hub in Summer, Washington, 18 October 2023.  AFP

French protest against imported Spanish wine

 

Winegrowers unload wine from a truck during a road blocking demonstration to protest against imports of Spanish wine, on the motorway at the toll booth of Le Boulou, close to the Spanish border in southern France.  AFP