MIDEAST NEWS PLUS.

JEWISH KING JESUS IS COMING AT THE RAPTURE FOR US IN THE CLOUDS-DON'T MISS IT FOR THE WORLD.THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY- WHEN THE PLAIN SENSE MAKES GOOD SENSE-SEEK NO OTHER SENSE-LEST YOU END UP IN NONSENSE.GET SAVED NOW- CALL ON JESUS TODAY.THE ONLY SAVIOR OF THE WHOLE EARTH - NO OTHER. 1 COR 15:23-JESUS THE FIRST FRUITS-CHRISTIANS RAPTURED TO JESUS-FIRST FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT-23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.ROMANS 8:23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.(THE PRE-TRIB RAPTURE)

 MIDEAST NEWS PLUS.

HOARDING OF GOLD AND SILVER

JAMES 5:1-3
1 Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.
3 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

REVELATION 18:10,17,19
10 Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.(IN 1 HR THE STOCK MARKETS WORLDWIDE WILL CRASH)
17 For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off,
19 And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.

EZEKIEL 7:19
19 They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed:(CONFISCATED) their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the LORD: they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels: because it is the stumblingblock of their iniquity.

MARK OF THE BEAST (engraved microchip in your hand or forehead)

REVELATION 13:16-18
16 And he(FALSE POPE) causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, (SLAVE) to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:(CHIP IMPLANT)
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.(6-6-6) A NUMBER SYSTEM

REVELATION 16:1-2
1 And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.
2 And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image.

I KNOW THIS MARK WILL BE A MICROCHIP IMPLANT UNDER THE SKIN. LETS LOOK UP WHAT THE WORD MARK SAYS IN REVELATION 13:16-18, 14:9,11, 15:2, 16:2, 19:20, 20:4-ALL THESE VERSES FROM THE BOOK OF REVELATION SPEAK OF THIS DICTATORS MARK. NOW LETS SEE WHAT IT MEANS FROM STRONGS EXAUSTIVE CONCORDANCE OF THE BIBLE. UNDER MARK PAGE 684.MARK UNDER MARK. THE OLD TESTAMENT IS UNDER HEBREW AND THE NEW TESTAMENT IS UNDER GREEK. SO WHEN WE LOOK UNDER REVELATION 13:16-17 WE SEE IT IS UNDER GREEK, SO WE GO TO GREEK IN THE BACK SECTION AND GO TO 5480 TO SEE WHAT IT SAYS THIS MARK WOULD BE. SO LETS GET TO IT.MARK IN STRONGS GREEK 5480 XAPAYUA CHARAGMA, KHAR-AG-MAH: FROM THE SAME AS 5482: A SCRATCH OR ETCHING, I.E STAMP (AS A BADGE OF SERVITUDE), OR SCULPTURED FIGURE-(STATUE):-GRAVEN, MARK FROM 5482 XAPAE CHARAX, KHAR-AX; FROM XAPAOOW CHARASSO (TO SHARPEN TO A POINT; AKIN TO 1125 THROUGH THE IDEA OF SCRATCHING); A STAKE, I.E (BYIMPL.) A PALISADE OR RAMPART (MILITARY MOUND FOR CIRCUMVALLATION IN A SIEGE): - TRENCH FROM 1125 YPAPOE GRAPHO, GRAF-0; A PRIM. VERB; TO "GRAVE", ESPEC. TO WRITE; FIG. TO DESCRIBE:-DESCRIBE, WRITE (-ING, -TEN).G5516-GO TO G4742-666 - STRONGS NT 4742: στίγμα - στίγμα, στιγματος, τό (from στίζω to prick; (cf. Latinstimulus, etc.; German stechen, English stick, sting, etc.; Curtius, § 226)), a mark pricked in or branded upon the body. According to ancient oriental usage, slaves and soldiers bore the name or stamp of their master or commander branded or pricked (cut) into their bodies to indicate what master or general they belonged to, and there were even some devotees who stamped themselves in this way with the token of their gods (cf. Deyling, Observations, iii., p. 423ff); hence, τά στίγματα τοῦ (κυρίου so Rec.) Ἰησοῦ, the marks of (the Lord) Jesus, which Paul in Galatians 6:17 says he bears branded on his body, are the traces left there by the perils, hardships, imprisonments, scourgings, endured by him for the cause of Christ, and which mark him as Christ's faithful and approved votary, servant, soldier (see Lightfoots Commentary on Galatians, the passage cited). (Herodotus 7, 233; Aristotle, Aelian, Plutarch, Lcian, others.)

THE INVENTOR OF THE MICROCHIP IMPLANT-CARL SANDERS MICROCHIP ENGINEER LEADER
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgH9D6n4ZWo

THE MICROCHIP IMPLANT IN YOUR RIGHT HAND OR FOREHEAD.

LEVETICUS 19.28
Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD.

FAMINE

EZEKIEL 5:16
16  When I shall send upon them the evil arrows of famine, which shall be for their destruction, and which I will send to destroy you: and I will increase the famine upon you, and will break your staff of bread:

REVELATION 6:5-6
5 And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.(A DAYS WAGES FOR A LOAF OF BREAD)

MATTHEW 24:7-8
7For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

MARK 13:8
8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.

LUKE 21:11
11 And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.

DEUTORONOMY 28:24
24  The LORD shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed.

LOCUSTS (DEMONIC) TORTURES SINNERS 5 MONTHS
REVELATION 9:1-6
1 And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.
2 And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.
3 And there came out of the smoke (DEMONIC) locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.
4 And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.
5 And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.
6 And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.

Will Trump’s pick to lead the FTC halt privacy rulemaking, AI enforcement? Dec 13, 2024, 4:06 pm EST    | Anthony Kimery

Andrew N. Ferguson is President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to head the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). If approved by the Republican-controlled Senate, his selection could indicate an inclination by the incoming Trump administration to deprioritize FTC rulemaking and enforcement activities related to data privacy and AI. This also could indicate a broader regulatory philosophy that emphasizes legislative action over administrative rulemaking.Ferguson’s stated regulatory philosophy and strategic priorities, if implemented as FTC chair, would have profound implications for industry and consumers. Critics argue that this shift would mean that critical privacy issues will be given short shrift as technologies like AI and data analytics rapidly evolve and outpace regulatory schema.Meanwhile, Trump announced that he intends to nominate Mark Meador to be an FTC commissioner. Meador is a partner at Washington, D.C.-based Kressin Meador Powers. He also was an antitrust counsel to Republican U.S. Senator Mike Lee. While specific details about Meador’s positions on privacy and AI regulation are scant, given his antitrust expertise it is plausible that he would advocate for a more balanced approach to regulation, aiming to foster innovation while ensuring consumer protection, a perspective that aligns with the broader Republican emphasis on limited government intervention and market-driven solutions.Ferguson is the former solicitor general of Virginia, a former counsel to Republican Senator and Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, and he a clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. If confirmed, he will inherit a slew of regulatory actions against Big Tech and a half-dozen lawsuits by companies arguing that the FTC overstepped its authority. There’s also the FTC’s investigation – launched in July 2023 – of OpenAI for possible privacy issues.Ferguson has voted in favor of every privacy-related FTC enforcement action as an FTC commissioner, but he also has consistently emphasized the importance of congressional authority in crafting comprehensive data privacy laws.In a leaked memo he wrote to Trump reportedly advocating for the top FTC post, he said the FTC under his direction will “stop abusing FTC enforcement authorities as a substitute for comprehensive privacy legislation,” and that there will be “no more novel and legally dubious consumer protection cases.”One matter in particular that Ferguson will have to contend with, and which will have to be addressed, is the complaint and proposed Decision and Order that the agency has taken against two Virginia-based data brokers. The complaint alleges that they unlawfully tracked and sold sensitive consumer location data. Ferguson supported two of the counts that the commission brought against the firms, but dissented from the commission’s counts that accuses them of unfairly categorizing consumers based on sensitive characteristics and of selling those categorizations to third parties.In his dissent, Ferguson argued that the FTC Act explicitly prohibits the collection and subsequent sale of precise location data without the consumer’s consent. He emphasized that data brokers are required to take reasonable measures to verify that consumers initially consented to the collection of the data being utilized and sold.Ferguson agreed that if a company aggregates and categorizes data that were collected without proper consent and then sells those categorizations, it violates Section 5 of the FTC Act. But he also argued that the violation arises from the lack of consent for the original data collection, not from the specific categories into which the data are organized.Ferguson said the FTC Act imposes consent requirements in defined circumstances, but it does not restrict how legally acquired data may be analyzed, or the conclusions that may be drawn from such analysis. That line of thinking begins to walk a very fine line. Yes, data is acquired legally. But highly granularized analysis of an individual’s aggregated data, and the sorts of personal conclusions that can be inferred from it, begins to edge very close to raising legitimate privacy concerns. It also raises the incentive for bad actors to steal the information – in bulk.Ferguson said the FTC commissioners have an erroneous view of the FTC Act as being “a comprehensive privacy law,” adding that “comprehensive privacy regulation involves difficult choices and expensive tradeoffs. Congress alone can make those choices and tradeoffs. We must not stray from the bounds of the law.”Indeed. Ferguson believes broad regulatory initiatives on privacy should emerge from Congress, not an administrative federal agency, an approach that underscores his critique of what he views as regulatory overreach by administrative bodies. The FTC’s role, Ferguson has said, should focus on enforcing existing laws rather than expanding its mandate through rulemaking.Ferguson has been highly critical of what he perceives to have been regulatory overreach under previous FTC leadership. He’s argued that the FTC should focus on its core competencies – namely, enforcing existing laws – rather than creating new rules that could extend its mandate without clear legislative backing.“Commissioner Ferguson has made no secret of his preference for Congress, rather than the FTC, to set clear privacy guardrails,” said Cobun Zweifel-Keegan, managing director at the International Association of Privacy Professionals. “This means rulemaking activities at the commission are likely to be deprioritized.”Privacy advocates fear this deprioritization could kill a proposed rule on commercial surveillance and data security that the FTC announced in August 2022 that it is considering. The commission at that time published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking to request public comment – for the purpose of the rulemaking – on the prevalence of commercial surveillance and data security practices that harm consumers. The FTC said at the time that the new rule will focus on data security, data minimization, and algorithmic accountability.Under Ferguson’s leadership, the FTC would likely redirect resources toward enforcement of existing laws such as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and provisions under Section 5 of the FTC Act which targets unfair or deceptive practices. This strategy would suggest a preference for addressing specific harms through targeted actions rather than introducing broad, preemptive regulations. Indeed, rather than pursuing expansive, preemptive rulemaking initiatives, the focus is more likely to lean towards addressing specific, well-defined harms like deceptive practices by data brokers.And as for data brokers – which have come under withering criticism and congressional scrutiny in the wake of an unprecedented security breach this summer – they could face less systemic scrutiny under a Ferguson FTC. Enforcement actions may become more sporadic and narrowly defined. Rather than proposing rules to regulate the industry, the FTC might instead rely on case-by-case enforcement, potentially creating an inconsistent and less predictable regulatory environment. Ferguson’s stance aligns with Republicans’ broader emphasis on ensuring regulatory clarity and avoiding undue burdens on businesses.This approach diverges sharply from the path that was set by Ferguson’s predecessor, Lina Khan, who championed a more proactive regulatory approach. It was under Khan’s leadership that the FTC issued the impending rulemaking on commercial surveillance and data security practices, which seeks to address systemic issues in privacy and consumer protection.Ferguson’s position, on the other hand, represents a stark departure, potentially one that could pause or roll back such initiatives. Critics have argued that this could delay progress in protecting consumer data in an era of rapid technological change. Ferguson’s departure from this activism could signal a rollback of momentum in establishing comprehensive privacy standards.Ferguson’s strategy, while appealing to those who advocate for limited government intervention, poses certain risks. The absence of federal rulemaking could perpetuate a fragmented regulatory landscape where states enact their own privacy laws. This patchwork will only further complicate compliance for businesses, especially those operating across multiple jurisdictions. And consumers could see delayed protections against data misuse and breaches. And enforcement actions alone likely would not adequately address systemic vulnerabilities in data security.For the business community, especially Big Tech, Ferguson’s position offers a reprieve from the immediate pressures of adapting to new federal regulations. Established companies, especially in the tech and data brokering industries, would undoubtedly find this environment more favorable for their operations. Smaller firms and startups though would encounter challenges navigating the inconsistencies of state laws without clear federal guidelines. Such regulatory uncertainty could stifle innovation in some sectors while empowering larger entities to consolidate their influence.Ferguson’s overall approach to privacy regulation reflects a broader effort to balance enforcement with fostering innovation. He has expressed concerns that excessive regulatory measures could stifle technological advancement and impede competition, a position that’s been signaled by the incoming Republican dominated Congress. Republican lawmakers have favored a more market-driven and hands-off approach when it comes to regulating consumer data privacy than their Democratic counterparts. By focusing on enforcement of existing rules rather than expansive rulemaking, Ferguson would seek to maintain this balance, even if it means delaying the establishment of universal protections.Ferguson’s position on deprioritizing privacy rulemaking could also signal a shift in the FTC’s focus toward narrower enforcement and a reliance on Congress for broader legislative solutions. While this approach aligns with his regulatory philosophy, it raises concerns about the FTC’s ability to address emerging privacy challenges effectively in an increasingly complex digital environment.With the rise of AI technologies, Ferguson’s reluctance to engage in privacy-related rulemaking could hinder the FTC’s ability to establish clear guidelines on the use of consumer data in AI training and applications. Ferguson has said that he would “end the FTC’s attempt to become an AI regulator.” His unabashed approach to AI reflects a desire to foster innovation and competition while avoiding premature or overly burdensome regulations that could stifle technological advancement.Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a client note that: “We expect Ferguson to continue to have a keen eye on the tech world … he will clearly roll back Khan’s head-scratching anti-tech agenda, including ending efforts to regulate AI.”Such a restrained position though raises questions about the adequacy of existing legal frameworks to address the unique challenges and risks that increasingly are posed by AI technologies.Ferguson has expressed skepticism about the FTC’s attempts to position itself as a primary regulator of AI. He critiqued initiatives under Khan that sought to expand the FTC’s role in governing AI systems, arguing that such actions could exceed the agency’s statutory authority. He’s said that he favors a measured approach that focuses on enforcing existing laws against deceptive or unfair practices in the use of AI. This approach could possibly translate into investigating AI systems that mislead consumers, perpetuate fraud, or violate privacy laws.The impact of Ferguson’s stance on AI regulation is multifaceted. On the one hand, it could create a more innovation-friendly environment by giving developers and businesses greater latitude to experiment with AI technologies without immediate regulatory constraints, but it could also accelerate technological progress, particularly in areas where regulatory uncertainty has previously slowed investment and development. Businesses operating in AI would benefit from clearer, more predictable enforcement under existing laws rather than having to navigate a potentially ambiguous or stringent new regulatory landscape.On the other hand, though, this approach could leave critical gaps in oversight. AI technologies introduce unique risks, such as algorithmic bias, lack of transparency, and the potential for misuse in areas like surveillance or misinformation. Existing laws, which were not designed with AI’s complexities in mind, could prove insufficient to address these risks comprehensively. By refraining from proactive rulemaking, the FTC could miss opportunities to establish clear guidelines for responsible AI development and deployment, which could lead to inconsistent standards across industries.Another significant implication of Ferguson’s position is the likelihood of increased reliance on state or sector-specific regulations to fill the gap left by federal inaction. For example, states like California and New York may continue to advance their own AI-specific laws, creating a fragmented regulatory landscape. While larger companies may have the resources to navigate this complexity, smaller firms could struggle to comply, potentially disadvantaging startups and innovators.

Liminal, Microblink forecast 2025 trends in identity document verification-Harangued by GenAI-enabled fraud, IDV demands layered security approach-Dec 13, 2024, 3:46 pm EST    | Joel R. McConvey

Synthetic identities, deepfakes and other AI-driven attacks are prompting a surge in interest in custom fraud protection tools. In a recent webinar, executives from Liminal and Microblink offer insights into how fraud is driving change in the whirlwind world of document verification.Will Charnley, COO of Liminal, says that, both inside and outside identity document verification, the last 20-plus years have seen a physical-first consumer environment to one built primarily on digital experience – a digital transformation that was expedited by the Covid-19 pandemic. At present, the average online person interacts regularly with at least twenty digital accounts every year. Most importantly, people like digital interactions: Charnley says 83 percent of consumers express a preference for them exclusively.Identity document verification is, by necessity, changing in tandem with broader digital transformation. Charnley says its market is changing, too. “What we’re seeing is that buyers need better built solutions, depending on their pain points and use cases, to meet consumer demand when it comes to privacy, when it comes to security, when it comes to customer experience.”Many identity verification providers’ long-term focus on financial services is shifting. Charnley says the market is evolving outside of its historical roots in compliance to service buyers beyond the banking and financial services sectors.New digital identity cases are emerging in parts of the customer journey beyond account opening; Charnley cites age assurance as a prime example, noting Australia’s recent move to restrict users under 16 from creating social media accounts. Market options, likewise, are expanding. “There are different ways to verify age and finding the right size for your use case is incredibly important.”92% of businesses not equipped to fight GenAI fraud-New types of mobile digital transactions mean more entry points for fraud. Charnley says that it’s more challenging than ever to prevent rapidly accelerating fraud, losses from which are projected to crest 100 billion by 2030. Synthetic identities, Gen-AI created deepfakes and other hostile avatars make fraud prevention crucial across evolving use cases.“Things are clearly getting worse,” Charnley says. Financial services buyers expect AI-enabled fraud to grow substantially in the next two years. “Generative AI has made committing fraud incredibly easy and the quality has gone way up. So we have higher volumes of fraud, more sophisticated fraud attacks, and it’s more accessible to anyone.”It’s all forcing organizations to change their fraud assessment models from the ground up: 92 percent say they do not have adequate defenses against GenAI and deepfakes.Albert Roux, EVP of product for Microblink, says firms probably have more fraud than they think, and that deepfake detection is far more complicated than simply honing in on widely-used platforms like ChatGPT. Multimodal biometric protections and effective liveness detection are needed for a layered approach to defense against fraud.As with underwear, so with user experience: friction most unwelcome-Biometric authentication, in particular, is popular with buyers looking for a way to secure customer authentication and simplify account recovery. Roux discusses “device intelligence” that ties a device to an identity and can access behavioral biometrics, perform facial recognition, and so on.Trust is, as always, a major concern for customers using businesses outside of banking, with 31 percent expressing concern about data privacy. But so is the often-neglected UX factor. Friction applied long enough will eventually burn: 15 percent of customers still say there is too much friction in user experience, and 26 percent say account openings take too much time. Abandonment is common.Charnley says “now is the right time to act” on securing identity document verification using biometric security tools and other layered security measures, but that it’s key to implement tailored solutions that are optimized or designed for specific use cases.“You really need to, as a practitioner, make sure you’re buying a solution that fits your specific needs.” Find solutions with expertise outside of financial services, and the results are likely to be less tied to a compliance model and more attuned to new types of digital fraud.Many identity verification systems are still holdovers from the compliance days. But those are over now: identity verification is not just for banks anymore, and customers across the spectrum want smooth, secure experiences they can trust. In the prism of digital identity, new facets and colors continue to emerge.

New year will see mobile driver’s licenses come of age: Trinsic CEO-Remote identity verification standards seen as major driver of mDL adoption-Dec 13, 2024, 11:40 am EST    | Joel R. McConvey

A recent webinar from Trinsic takes stock of the eID sector in 2024 and looks ahead to upcoming launches and adoption trends for 2025.For Trinsic, eIDs are government-led identity schemes and credentials. (Versus reIDs, which are private sector reusable identities, and bankIDs, which are digital IDs specific to banks.) Across government initiatives globally, the coming year is set to bring rapid transformation in the areas of mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs), national digital identities, wallets, trust frameworks and decentralized identity.Half of U.S. states to have mDL programs running in 2025-Trinsic’s webinar zooms in on key advancements in mobile driver’s licenses in 2024 and what they mean for the future of identity verification. Company CEO Riley Hughes predicts that in 2025, 50 percent of U.S. states will have a live digital driver’s license – not a given, but not a radical prediction, given that 14 already have active mDL programs and another 15 are mDLs planning to launch soon.Still, after a long period of drag, recent growth has been swift, and more is coming. The recently published winter market snapshot from the Secure Technology Alliance’s Identity and Access Forum (IAF), nearly 70 percent of states are anticipated to adopt mDLs in the next two years.Hughes says that talking about mDLs a year ago, “everybody would have basically said, ‘we’re watching it and we’ll see.’ Now you talk to folks and the conversation is much more like, not only are we watching it but we are planning around this. We’re expecting this to be relevant soon and we’re planning for it.”eIDAS, verification standards driving mobile driver’s licenses uptake-The same goes for eIDAS 2.0, which has matured from a thing that’s going to happen into a thing that is happening now. Hughes notes the large-scale pilot program for the EUDI wallet scheme as a major shift in digital culture.Identity verification is increasingly common across platforms, as digital regulations finally catch up with technology. Hughes cites the publication of ISO/IEC TS 18013-7:2024 as an enabler of remote identity verification using mDLs as a major driver of uptake.National ID systems continue to grow globally, with Hughes pointing to Nigeria, the Philippines and India’s Aadhaar as notable examples. Private reusable IDs, such as those provided (in large numbers) by Clear and ID.me, are also on the rise, with new reusable ID launches from Shufti Pro and Ondato. And in 2024, more digital platforms, such as Uber and LinkedIn, embraced identity verification measures.Trust frameworks crucial in busy digital ID market-In 2025, it’s likely more of the same – which is to say, more transformation in the areas of mDLs, national digital identities, wallets, trust frameworks and decentralized identity.Mobile driver’s licenses will continue to expand in the States. Hughes says eight states will launch mDLs in 2025: Illinois, Montana, Tennessee, New Jersey, North Dakota, Wyoming, North Carolina and West Virginia.He believes more national IDs will come into being (in Jamaica and Papua New Guinea, for instance) and mDLs are likely to spread globally, as well, with Hong Kong, for one, preparing a launch in 2025. In terms of decentralized identity, protocols such as QuarkID are “expanding geographies.”Wallets will be big, as EU nations roll out their national digital ID wallets. Hughes gives special attention to trust frameworks as a key part of the equation. “Trust frameworks are really important,” he says, “especially in a world where consumers have a lot of choice with regard to digital ID. So we’re watching out for these schemes or trust frameworks and paying close attention to how these different ID networks are governed and accepted around the world.”More businesses to accept digital IDs in 2025-Hughes’ formal predictions for 2025 do not veer too far off script. More businesses will accept digital IDs. Government digital IDs will open up to identity verification from private sector third parties. Overall progress on eIDAS will be on the slow side but individual nations will launch early.One prediction comes from the pages of Biometric Update – specifically the Oct 17, 2024 report that Amazon is planning to start accepting digital IDs like mDLs in 2025. Hughes calls the move “totally reasonable,” given the present state of the industry, particularly advances in remote verification of mDLs.Reusable IDs will become the norm for identity verification vendors. “I think that by the end of 2025 it’s going to be rare to find document-based identity verification companies that don’t offer a reusable ID product,” Hughes says.Finally, he believes private sector reusable IDs will be “aggressive in building their networks,” pointing to Clear’s significant recent increase from 17 million identities to 25 million identities.

DIF Lab launches to propel decentralized digital ID projects-Dec 13, 2024, 11:39 am EST    | Chris Burt

The Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF) is launching a new initiative to help build, test and scale decentralized digital ID solutions.DIF Labs began operating with a beta cohort in November, and has identified three projects to start. The idea, according to an announcement by DIF, is to support project-based innovation to bridge the gap between the standards development process, which is slow due to consensus and governance requirements and the incubators and accelerators that can help get projects off the ground, but come with a cost in equity.The first three projects DIF Labs is taking on are a Bitcoin ordinals verifiable credentials framework, linked claims for disaster recovery validation and a protocol for anonymous personhood verification called “VerAnon.”The beta cohort is set to run until a show-and-tell event on February 18, 2025.DIF has named 10 mentors to help steer the cohort and projects, along with Andor Kesselman of Andor Labs, Ankur Banarjee of Creds.xyz and cheqd and Daniel Thompson-Yvetot or Tauri Apps and CrabNebula as DIF Labs chairs. The organization also invites decentralized identity developers to participate in the Labs initiative.DIF has been busy of late, between taking over TBD’s developer tools, announcing the winners of its 2024 Hackathon and the launch of the DID Traits and Trust DID Web initiatives in September.

Datasonic transforming into NexG with end-to-end digital ID plan, fundraise-Dec 13, 2024, 11:33 am EST    | Chris Burt

Datasonic’s acquisition of Innov8tif Holdings is just one part of a transformation plan that also includes a major capital exercise and a rebrand.The combined entity should be known as NexG Bhd, Datasonic has proposed, according to Business Today. The 40 million Malaysian ringgits (approximately US $9.1 million) deal to give Datasonic a 51 percent stake in Innov8tif was announced last month.The acquisition and transformation plan will be funded, at least in part, through a RM554.95 million ($124.7 million) capital exercise. Datasonic plans to issue up to 1.55 billion warrants, worth two shares each. More strategic investments are expected to follow.Datasonic Executive Deputy Chairman and CEO Datuk Hanifah Noordin says the acquisition of Innov8tif will give the company immediate access to new markets in banking, telecommunications and credit reporting.“It also positions the group to secure new projects related to integrated identity verification, biometric security and digital onboarding services for enterprises and governments,” Hanifah says.Independent Non-Executive Director Datuk Puvanesan Subenthiran has been redesignated as executive director.Company shareholders rejected a proposal to relax the conditions for adopting written resolutions from directors, however, at an extraordinary general meeting, The Edge Malaysia reports. The proposal would have required only a majority of entitled directors to vote for resolutions, rather than a majority of all directors. A regulatory filing noted that 70 shareholders representing 57.74 percent of voting shares voted against the proposal, which was supported by 25 shareholders making up the remaining 42.26 percent.Employee stock options (ESOs) were approved for Hanifah and executive director Erna Ismail, but rejected for non-executive director Tunku Datuk Nooruddin Tunku Shahabuddin, who was appointed to the role in August.That was one in a series of changes to Datasonic’s board, ahead of a new plan to provide end-to-end security solutions for physical and digital identity.Meanwhile, the company has confirmed that talks with Malaysia’s Ministry of Home Affairs for a contract related to the issuance of the country’s biometric passports are ongoing.Datasonic held contracts ending in 2021 to supply 12.5 million computer chips for passports, 13.42 million booklets, and 9.96 million polycarbonate biodata sheets, worth a combined RM812.83 million ($182.6 million), according to The Edge.More recently, the company’s biometric gates have been selected for installation at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

ROC brings on DoD, FBI biometrics veteran to strengthen US federal market position-Dec 13, 2024, 10:49 am EST    | Chris Burt

ROC is positioning itself to make inroads in the U.S. government biometrics market with the appointment of Sam Cava as an advisor. In his new role, Cava will be tasked with expanding the delivery of ROC biometrics at the federal, state and local government levels, but with a focus on national security.The company’s new principal strategist is the architect of the U.S. Department of Defenses (DoDs) automated biometric identification system (ABIS) and the FBI’s National Security biometrics systems, according to the company announcement.ROC CEO B. Scott Swan led the development of the FBI’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) capability, so the appointment of Cava adds to an extensive base of experience working with U.S. government biometrics.Cava brings more than 30 years of experience in developing enterprise biometrics for the FBI, DoD and intelligence community. That includes a stint as director of the DoD Biometrics Fusion Center, where he led the ABIS project. Cava was also responsible for the rapid prototyping and deployment of the DoD BISA (Biometric Identification System for Access) to protect U.S. military facilities and personnel stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has worked on mission-critical biometrics tools for special agents, soldiers and intelligence operatives and negotiating exchanges of biometric data from terrorist suspects with allies.In his most recent role as FBI Multimedia Exploitation Unit chief, Cava provided direct support for numerous high-profile investigations. His work has involved multimodal biometrics, facial recognition, iris and fingerprint biometrics.Cava is also a former U.S. Air Force officer, and like Swann, a native of West Virginia.Swann calls his experience “unparalleled.”“He has an exceptional ability to assemble and lead some of the most talented people who then turn around and deliver innovations that actually work in tactical environments,” Swann says. “I’m excited that Sam will be a key player as we begin rolling out ROC ABIS with disruptive capabilities such as the world’s fastest latent fingerprint matcher. ROC ABIS delivers innovation that our law enforcement partners have been demanding. Watch this space.”The company also recently appointed a special advisor for India and the Southeast Asia region.ROC recently emerged as the American developer with the best performance by mean absolute error in NIST’s evaluation of Age Estimation and Verification based on face biometrics.

Puerto Rico latest government in U.S. to launch its mDL for Apple Wallet-Digital license around since 2020 joins list of TSA-eligible digital IDs at SJU-Dec 13, 2024, 10:27 am EST    | Joel R. McConvey

Contrary to certain recent public opinions about Puerto Rico, the island is among U.S. leaders in adopting mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs). PR’s Department of Transportation and Public Works first rolled out a “virtual license” to its app in 2020. Now, in collaboration with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), it has enabled airline passengers to use state-issued mDLs or mobile ID cards stored in Apple Wallet to complete identity verification during airport security screening.A release says that means passengers at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport (SJU) can now add an mDL to Apple Wallet and use an iPhone or Apple Watch to verify their identity by holding the device up to a credential authentication technology (CAT-2) reader.Minimal necessary data will be shared with the reader, and only after authorization from the user. The device need never leave a traveler’s hand. To maximize efficiency, TSA recommends adding an mDL to Apple Wallet before arriving at the TSA checkpoint.Although the release does not specify who provides the Puerto Rico mDL, PR-based firm Innovato developed the government’s CESCO app and has made statements suggesting it is also behind the digital credential.Announcement of Apple support comes with the usual proviso informing passengers that they must still carry and have ready a physical driver’s license or identification card. However, TSA appears increasingly keen on mDLs: SJU is now one of 27 airports accepting digital identity credentials at TSA checkpoints. Apple saw five states or territories join its wallet fold in 2024. New Mexico just rolled out their mDL for Apple and Google Wallet. And more are in progress, with predictions saying more than half of U.S. states will have mDLs by the end of 2025.The digital wheels keep on turning in mDLs, and at this rate it seems highly likely that the next five years will see a full transition to mobile driver’s licenses, as digital natives become the majority.

Singapore expands passport-free biometric clearance-Malaysian border gates crash-Dec 13, 2024, 10:20 am EST    | Lu-Hai Liang

At Singapore’s bus halls of Woodlands and Tuas checkpoints, travellers will soon be able to enjoy passport-less clearance using face or iris biometrics, in addition to Marina Bay Cruise Centre Singapore (MBCCS).Passport-less clearance will be replaced by QR code clearance at land checkpoints, and token-less clearance at air and sea checkpoints. The implementation of passport-less clearance at these locations will start from December 16.Trials of the selected automated lanes and Special Assistance Lanes (SALs) commenced from November 21, at the arrival and departure bus halls of Tuas and Woodlands checkpoints. More than 48,000 travellers had participated in the trials as of December 1. Feedback from the trials allowed Singapore’s Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) to finetune and improve the QR code clearance experience for bus travellers, according to the authority.Tuas checkpoint will be the first to get QR code clearance from December 16, while ICA is aiming for completion of implementation at both land checkpoints by mid-January 2025. ICA is urging all travellers at land checkpoints to use the QR code for faster and more convenient immigration clearance. More information can be found on the ICA website here.Singapore Changi Airport went fully passport-free with biometric clearance in October.Meanwhile, on the Malaysian and Singapore border a mystery border control outage caused severe delays. The problem started around midday on Sunday, at a very busy checkpoint at Johor Bahru’s Sultan Iskander Building. The glitch shut down biometric border control gates and  caused travellers trying to cross between Johor Bahru and Singapore to wait up to four hours in line. Immigration officers were forced to clear travellers manually.Malaysia’s biometric e-gates are supplied by Datasonic.Extra lanes were opened to relieve the congestion, and ten hours after the delays began operations were declared back to normal. The border crossing is one of the busiest in the world, with around 350,000 people using the route each day, along with more than 100,000 vehicles. The outage mostly affected people travelling by bus, which is some 45 percent of people coming into Singapore, according ICA’s December 2023 statistics. The cause of the outage remains unknown. The border crossing system was recently revamped with the QR code-based system.The Johor Bahru checkpoint reportedly settled on using the MyBorderPass app in the bus lane entry the week before the outage, according to The Star, following a period trialling other apps. MyBorderPass currently supports QR codes but will add face biometrics at an unspecified later date.Malaysia, which shares land and maritime borders with Brunei, Indonesia and Thailand and maritime boundaries with the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam has been overhauling its border controls with an emphasis on biometrics. The QR codes and facial recognition systems are part of a larger border tech update.

Keyless, Digidentity, Ping Identity announce new integration partnerships-Dec 13, 2024, 9:24 am EST    | Masha Borak

While Keyless and Microblink join Microsoft and Google’s marketplaces, Digidentity finds its way to a UK government supplier list.Keyless joins Microsoft Azure Marketplace-Passwordless authentication startup Keyless is now available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, allowing Azure cloud users to access its multi-factor facial biometrics authentication.The UK-based company will integrate its product with Microsoft’s ecosystem including platforms such as Microsoft Azure Active Directory B2C and Microsoft Entra ID. The solution includes advanced passive liveness and authenticates users without storing biometric data, making compliance with data privacy regulations easier, according to the firm.“This collaboration will also enhance the procurement experience for our prospects while helping them reduce their Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment,” says Andrea Carmignani, Keyless co-founder and CEO.Keyless has previously integrated its zero-knowledge biometric technology with Entra ID.This year, the company was also selected to join Microsoft for Startups Pegasus Program, which provides access to AI tools, guidance and support to expand its market reach.The firm has been busy with striking other partnerships, including with European SaaS platform WithLess, specializing in software subscription and renewal management, and credit card issuing fintech Zorrz.Digidentity lands on UK govt supplier list-Identity verification firm Digidentity has been included in the UK government procurement platform for cloud-based services for the public sector.As a supplier for the supplier on the Crown Commercial Service’s G-Cloud 14 Framework, the Dutch firm will be able to offer its identity verification solutions, Right-to-Work (RtW) and Right-to-Rent (RtR) checks, e-Seals and qualified electronic signatures (QES). The G-Cloud 14 Framework focuses on central government departments, public sector organizations and charities.Digidentity is already working within the country’s public sector: The UK’s General Medical Council selected the digital ID vendor to create identity verification for doctors.Vidos integrates with Ping Identity-Decentralized identity company Vidos is integrating Ping Identity’s no-code platform for managing decentralized identities and credentials, PingOne DaVinci. The product makes it easier to manage decentralized identities and verifiable credentials, simplifies interoperability across systems, enhances digital ID verification, and supports wallet-based credentials.Dublin-headquartered Vidos develops infrastructure for scalable for digital ID verification. The company is joining a growing network of technology partners developing integrations with DaVinci through the Ping Identity Global Technology Partner Program, the two firms say in a release.Microblink now available on Google Marketplace-AI vision developer Microblink is making its identity document verification products available on the Google Cloud Marketplace.The new partnership means that businesses will be able to add the New York-based company’s document-checking software BlinkID and BlinkID Verify to their existing systems on Google Cloud.BlinkID extracts information from over 2,500 types of IDs around the world while BlinkID Verify can confirm the authenticity of IDs with more thorough checks and live detection. The tools are used in industries such as finance, banking, cryptocurrency, insurance, and travel.

Russia popularizing biometric technologies in domestic universities-Dec 13, 2024, 9:19 am EST    | Eugene Gerden

The Russian government will start more active popularization of biometric technologies among young people by signing of a serious of cooperation agreements between the country’s biometrics operator Center for Biometric Technologies (CBT) and some leading universities of Russia.An example is an agreement, signed on December 5th, by the South Ural State University,  one of leading higher education institutions in Russia, based in the Urals region and CBT. The agreement is aimed at developing educational and scientific projects in the field of biometrics and information technology and involves training young specialists in biometric systems and information security.Under the terms of the agreement, the partners plans to organize practices, internships, joint research and competitive events that will be dedicated to biometrics and various technologies, based on it.According to  Vladislav Povolotsky, CEO of CBT, the Center already cooperate with more than 40 universities across the country, conducting various courses dedicated to the issues of biometrics.In September, the CBT already launched a course of educational lectures for students on biometrics. The project was presented at the Technoprom forum, one of Russia’s leading events in the field of technologies, held in Novosibirsk. It will cover more than 40 universities including MIPT, RANEPA, Polytechnic University, Tomsk Polytechnic University, Synergy University, Novosibirsk State University, MAI and others.Alexander Stepanov, Deputy General Director of JSC CBT, comments:“The development of biometric technologies requires highly qualified specialists, who are not yet being trained in Russian universities. We see the direction in which the industry is developing and are working ahead of the trend.  Together with universities, we are planning to start training specialists that will be in high demand in the domestic biometrics sector already in the short-term».Biometric technologies are already used by Russian universities. For example, earlier this year the Russian Ministry of Digital Development, the Ministry of Education and Science, and the Center for Biometric Technologies (CBT) completed the development of a roadmap for identifying students using biometrics to conduct distance exams.In fact, an experiment on using biometrics to identify students during exams was already conducted in Russian universities in 2022 and received positive feedback. As a result of this experiment, the Ministry of Digital Development proposed using biometrics in distance learning on a permanent basis.According to a spokesman of CBT, verification using biometrics for remote final and midterm assessment ensures clear identification, eliminating the possibility of falsifying the results of the exam. He expects that the service will be useful not only for out-of-town students, but also for students with disabilities. At the same time, the use of the service is completely voluntary.As a representative of Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), one of Russia’s leading higher education institutions in the field of physics, told in an interview with the Russian Vedomosti business paper, identification by biometric data is becoming more and more widespread in Russian universities,  as it is important when each examiner know and recognized their student.In the meantime, a similar position is shared by the head of the research center for systems of assessment and management of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy Boris Ilyukhin, according to which, many universities have already developed their own proctoring systems, also based on biometrics, which include not only identifying students, but also monitoring their computer screens, blocking the use of the Internet and much more.

Drone sightings spread beyond New Jersey as officials express outrage over federal response-Authorities in New York, Maryland and Connecticut have joined the chorus calling for a more urgency from the federal government to the mysterious unidentified flying objects.Dec. 13, 2024, 1:11 PM EST / Updated Dec. 13, 2024, 3:36 PM EST-By Kyla Guilfoil, Sophia Pargas and Jonathan Dienst

The hundreds of mysterious New Jersey drone sightings are sparking mounting demands for a more forceful federal response, calls that come as even more sightings are being reported in New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland. “What is happening is outrageous. Thousands of drones and unmanned aerial systems flying above us, and our government is not telling us who’s operating them and for what purpose,” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., said a press conference in Staten Island on Friday. “I don’t believe that the United States of America, with its military capabilities, does not know what these objects are. And what I’m asking, and what we’re all asking, is for you to be straight with us and just tell us what is going on,” Malliotakis said. Despite mounting concerns from a growing bipartisan chorus of elected officials, the White House said yesterday that the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and state and local law enforcement agencies “have not been able to corroborate any of the reported visual sightings.” In a statement to NBC News, the U.S. Secret Service confirmed it “does not currently have any unmanned aerial systems operating in or around New Jersey or New York.”New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a post on X Friday that while she knows New Yorkers have spotted drones this week, “at this time, there’s no evidence that these drones pose a public safety or national security threat.”The statements come as dozens of on-camera sightings have been captured in New Jersey and as concerns for safety and privacy continue to grow. Overnight, 79 sightings were reported across New Jersey alone, a senior official briefed on the drone sightings told NBC News.The sightings — which occur up to 180 times per night, according to several New Jersey officials — have remained consistent for nearly a month. 'Response is entirely unacceptable'Former Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said in a post on X Friday that he personally witnessed “dozens of large drones” above his home, adding that “neither the White House, the military, the FBI, or Homeland Security have any idea what they are, where they came from, or who has launched or is controlling them–and that they pose no threat.” “That response is entirely unacceptable,” Hogan wrote. “I join with the growing bipartisan chorus of leaders demanding that the federal government immediately address this issue. The American people deserve answers and action now.”In a statement to NBC News, “The U.S. Secret Service does not currently have any unmanned aerial systems operating in or around New Jersey or New York.”Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy wrote letters to President Joe Biden, Sens. Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, Rep. Mike Johnson and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries urging Congress to take action. Murphy said he wants to “encourage Congress to pass legislation empowering state and local law enforcement entities to use advanced detection and mitigation technologies to deal with UAS.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., wrote his own letter to DHS, FBI, FAA and the Department of Defense on Friday, requesting a briefing on drone activity no later than Dec. 18. “I am writing to express my deep concerns regarding the increased reporting of drone activity in the airspace near New England. As you are aware, these states are home to some of the busiest and most complex airspaces in the country,” Blumenthal wrote. Calls for flight restrictions, no-fly zones-Staten Island Borough President Vito Fosella and Malliotakis said that they reached out to the FAA last week after the first reported sighting on Staten Island. Malliotakis said that when she urged the FAA to impose flight restrictions, she “got a cookie cutter response,” adding that she was “not happy about it.” “The people of this city and state and region deserve answers of what the heck is going on,” Fossella said Friday.Malliotakis added that she’s concerned that drones were spotted overhead at a Coast Guard base on Staten Island, adding to reports of drone activity over military bases in New Jersey. An ongoing investigation leads officials to believe previously reported New Jersey sightings over the Picatinny Arsenal in Morris County and Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster were indeed drones, a senior official briefed on the drone sightings told NBC News.A spokesperson from the Naval Weapons Station Earle, in Colts Neck, New Jersey, said in a statement Friday that they were “aware of the recent reports of drone sightings across New Jersey” and coordinating with federal and state agencies. "While no direct threats to the installation have been identified, we can confirm several instances of unidentified drones entering the airspace above Naval Weapons Station Earle,” the statement said. Montvale, New Jersey Mayor Michael Ghassali said Friday that the response to the sightings is “now becoming a complete joke,” in a post on his Facebook account. Ghassali said that he is issuing an emergency declaration for Montvale for a no fly zone for drones due to a lack of federal response in the town. “The feds can’t control the air space, and yesterday my phone didn’t stop with drone sightings messages,” he said. 'Hobbyists' or 'weapons of war'?Sen. Andy Kim, D-NJ, wrote a letter Thursday alongside Sens. Gillibrand, Schumer and Booker to DHS, FBI and FAA urging the agencies to hold a briefing on how they are responding to the drones. He posted a thread on X Friday describing drones he witnessed in New Jersey.

Firefighters up containment of California wildfire that has burned over 4,000 acres-The fire erupted Monday night amid strong Santa Ana winds.ByBill Hutchinson-December 12, 2024, 4:51 PM

Franklin fire spreads throughout MalibuThe Santa Ana winds have fueled the flames, with the blaze burning over 3,000 acres.Firefighters battling a raging wildfire in Malibu, California, significantly increased containment on the blaze Thursday after it spread to over 4,000 acres, destroying homes and leaving more than 20,000 people under evacuation, including 98-year-old Dick Van Dyke and other celebrities in the oceanfront community.The Franklin Fire, which erupted Monday night near the campus of Pepperdine University, was 20% contained as of Thursday afternoon, up from 7% Wednesday night. More than 1,900 firefighters are battling the blaze in the rugged and hilly terrain of Malibu Canyon, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).Burning through thick dry vegetation, the fire has been fueled by Santa Ana winds that have topped 90 mph, officials said.The Franklin Fire burns next to powerlines at he Pacific Coast Highway in the morning on December 11, 2024 near Malibu, California."Firefighters are taking advantage of the cooler weather and higher humidities to gain containment and strengthen fire lines around the fire," Cal Fire said in an update Thursday.Red Flag warnings issued by the National Weather Service signaling the high risk of fire danger had all expired.In a message posted on his Facebook page, Van Dyke, who is set to turn 99 on Friday, said he and his wife, Arlene, were forced to evacuate as flames threatened their home in the secluded community of Serra Retreat in the hills of lower Malibu Canyon. He said all of his pets, except for his beloved cat Bobo, managed to escape.On Thursday, Van Dyke posted an update on Facebook saying his cat was found alive when he and his wife were allowed to return home."We found Bobo as soon as we arrived back home this morning," Van Dyke wrote. "There was so much interest in his disappearance that Animal Control was called in to assist. But, thankfully he was easy to find and not harmed."Dick Van Dyke and Arlene Silver poses at the 51st annual Daytime Emmys Awards at The Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites, Los Angeles on June 07, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.Other celebrities residing in the area were forced to flee the flames or stay on lockdown. Recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Cher also evacuated, according to her publicist."Star Wars" actor Mark Hamill said in an Instagram post that he has also been affected by the fire."We're in lockdown because of the Malibu fires," the 73-year-old Hamill said in the post. "Please stay safe everyone! I'm not allowed to leave the house, which fits in perfectly with my elderly-recluse lifestyle."The Franklin Fire erupted just before 11 p.m. Pacific time on Monday and quickly grew amid the blustery Santa Anna winds, which blow southwest toward the Pacific Ocean.At least seven homes have been destroyed by the fire and another eight have been damaged, according to Cal Fire.Power to about 40,000 customers was shut off by Monday night, including 11,000 in Los Angeles County, as Southern California Edison worked to mitigate the impacts of the Santa Ana winds, whose strong gusts can damage electrical equipment and spark more wildfires.There have been no reports of deaths or injuries. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.Pepperdine University canceled classes on Tuesday and Wednesday. When the fire erupted, officials put the campus on lockdown for about six hours before the order was lifted. As the fire grew on Tuesday, students were again ordered to seek shelter in the campus center and library, where students said they watched flames creep onto campus."The Franklin Fire continues to burn in the Santa Monica Mountains but is no longer near or threatening the Malibu campus. The weather has improved considerably from a fire perspective. Winds are relatively calm, and the red flag warning has ended," the university said on its website on Thursday.

DAMASCUS DESTROYED

ISAIAH 17:1,3,13-14
17 The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.
3 The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Syria: they shall be as the glory of the children of Israel, saith the Lord of hosts.
13 The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.
14 And behold at eveningtide trouble; and before the morning he is not. This is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that rob us.

JEREMIAH 49:23-27
23 Concerning Damascus. Hamath is confounded, and Arpad: for they have heard evil tidings: they are fainthearted; there is sorrow on the sea; it cannot be quiet.
24 Damascus is waxed feeble, and turneth herself to flee, and fear hath seized on her: anguish and sorrows have taken her, as a woman in travail.
25 How is the city of praise not left, the city of my joy!
26 Therefore her young men shall fall in her streets, and all the men of war shall be cut off in that day, saith the Lord of hosts.
27 And I will kindle a fire in the wall of Damascus, and it shall consume the palaces of Benhadad.

Macron names centrist ally Bayrou as France’s fourth prime minister of 2024-Amid months of political crisis, Bayrou becomes 6th prime minister under French president’s mandate; Macron had apparently been leaning toward naming defense minister to role
By Francesco FONTEMAGGI, Stuart Williams and Anna SMOLCHENKO Today, 9:54 pm

PARIS, France (AFP) — French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday named centrist François Bayrou as prime minister, handing him the daunting task of hauling France out of months of political crisis.The 73-year-old head of the MoDem group, which is allied with Macron’s party, was appointed nine days after parliament ousted Michel Barnier’s government in a historic no-confidence vote following a standoff over an austerity budget.“The president of the Republic has appointed Mr. François Bayrou as prime minister and tasked him with forming a government,” the presidency said.The announcement capped hours of drama that saw Bayrou summoned to a morning meeting at the Élysée palace — where he was reportedly told Macron would choose another figure — only for the presidency to finally announce he had the post.Bayrou is the sixth prime minister of Macron’s mandate, with his predecessor Barnier, France’s shortest-serving premier, having lasted only three months.He is also Macron’s fourth prime minister of 2024.Bayrou faces an immediate challenge to form a cabinet that can survive a no-confidence vote in a divided parliament and to thrash out a 2025 budget in a bid to limit economic turmoil.‘Himalayas loom ahead’At the traditional handover ceremony with Barnier, Bayrou declared: “No one knows better than me the difficulty of the situation,” with France facing a ballooning budget deficit coupled with political instability.“I am fully aware of the Himalayas that loom ahead of us,” he said of the budget deficit which is now 6.1 percent of GDP.He also vowed to fight what he described as the “glass wall that has risen up between citizens and the authorities.”Handing over, Barnier told his successor: “Our country is in an unprecedented and grave situation.”Several sources told AFP that the morning meeting between Macron and Bayrou, far from marking the anointment of the new prime minister, had been a stormy affair, with the president leaning toward naming his loyal Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu as premier.Losing his temper, Bayrou threatened to break the alliance with Macron, who decided it would be best to plump for Bayrou in the name of unity, the sources said.“Sebastien Lecornu should have been the one named,” a source close to the talks said. But Macron “did not have the choice.”Mujtaba Rahman, the Europe director at the risk analysis firm Eurasia Group, commented: “In the long history of the Fifth Republic (founded in 1958), this may have been the first time that a prime minister chose himself.”Bayrou will be tasked with holding dialogue with all political forces except the far-right National Rally (RN) and hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) parties “in order to find conditions for stability and action,” a member of Macron’s team said on Friday.“François Bayrou’s name emerged in recent days as the most consensual choice,” said the source, asking not to be named.Macron was first expected to name a new prime minister in an address to the nation last week.In a sign of the stalemate, Macron did not name Barnier’s successor then and also missed a 48-hour deadline he gave at a meeting of party leaders on Tuesday.No confidence a ‘lever’The president has been confronted with a complex political equation since snap parliamentary elections in July. He has needed to secure his government against a no-confidence vote in a bitterly divided lower house where no party or alliance has a majority.Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who teamed up with the left to topple the Barnier government, said her RN party would not automatically work to oust Bayrou but did not rule out exploiting such a “lever.”“I’m not threatening no-confidence motions morning, noon and night. I’m just saying that I’m not giving up on this tool,” she said.The LFI said it would table such a motion.Socialists quickly posed conditions for not supporting a no-confidence motion in an open letter to Bayrou.He must agree not to ram laws through without a parliamentary vote and not to rely on support from the far right, the party’s board said, adding that they would not accept ministerial posts.

Trump weighing options to stop Iran going nuclear, including preemptive strikes – report-Incoming US administration said to be planning ‘maximum pressure 2.0’ campaign against Tehran, may threaten military action or even back Israeli attack — but still seeks to avoid war-By ToI Staff Today, 10:03 am-DEC 13,24

US President-elect Donald Trump is weighing options to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, including preventative airstrikes, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.The report came as Israel reportedly draws up plans for a potential attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, amid growing concern that the Islamic Republic, poised to build a bomb, could rush to finally do so; Iran and its proxies are weakened right now, after more than a year of war against Israel that began when the Hamas terror group in Gaza attacked the Jewish state on October 7, 2023.Trump has told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent calls that he wants to avoid an Iranian breakout during his term in office, the report said — though he seeks a means of stopping the Islamic Republic from going nuclear that does not trigger a new war, especially one in which US troops would become involved, according to the report, which cited transition officials.The incoming administration is currently working on a “maximum pressure 2.0” plan, the report said, recreating the policy of aggressive sanctions on Iran that Trump pursued during his first term, having pulled out of the Obama-era agreement with the country meant to limit its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.Sources familiar with the plan told the Journal that there were several different ways military pressure could be used to deter Tehran.Firstly, they said, Washington could send more forces, ships, and warplanes to the region while also bolstering Israel’s offensive capabilities through the sale of bunker-busting bombs. If that fails, however, the US could take a more combative stance and threaten to use direct military force, the sources were quoted as saying.In an interview with Time Magazine published Thursday, Trump said of a potential war with Iran, “Anything can happen. It’s a very volatile situation.”Trump considered preventative strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites during the latter part of his first term but decided against it. This time, according to the WSJ report, his administration may be open to supporting an Israeli strike against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities.Among the reasons Trump may be more open to military action this time cited in the report were Iran’s alleged efforts to kill the president-elect.Israeli military officials said Thursday that they believe there is now an opportunity to strike Iran’s nuclear sites, and are continuing preparations for a potential attack, following the collapse last weekend of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, a close ally of Iran.The Israel Defense Forces believes that Iran — isolated after the fall of the Assad regime and the weakening of its main proxy group Hezbollah in Lebanon — may push ahead further with its nuclear program and develop a bomb as it scrambles to replace its deterrence.Iran has denied seeking nuclear weapons and says both its space program and nuclear activities are for purely civilian purposes. However, US intelligence agencies and the IAEA say Iran had an organized military nuclear program up until 2003 and continued to develop its nuclear program beyond civilian necessity. Israel contends that the Islamic Republic never truly abandoned its nuclear weapons program.Iran is committed to Israel’s destruction. Over the past year, it has twice fired massive barrages of missiles at Israel, which has vowed to prevent Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Israel has struck key Iranian military facilities in retaliation for both attacks, which came in the context of the multifront war opened by Iranian terror proxies on the Jewish state.The Israeli strikes did not include major attacks on the country’s nuclear sites — though they did target one research facility reportedly connected to efforts to build a nuclear weapon —  but crippled Iranian air defenses, which, together with newly-acquired air superiority over Syria, could pave the way for a future attack.On Thursday, Netanyahu published a video directed at citizens of Iran, telling them the regime in Tehran is “terrified of you, the people of Iran. And one day, I know that, one day this will change. One day Iran will be free.” It was his third such video in recent months.

Some Syrian Druze ask Israel, the ‘lesser evil,' to annex-Katz says IDF troops will stay atop Syrian side of Mount Hermon during winter months-As Syrians celebrate first Friday since Assad’s downfall, US and Turkey agree to keep ensuring Islamic State won’t ‘rear its head again,’ amid international gestures to rebel leader-By Emanuel Fabian,ToI Staff and Agencies Today, 2:46 pm-DEC 13,24

Defense Minister Israel Katz said Friday that he had ordered the military to prepare to stay atop the Syrian side of Mount Hermon during the coming winter months as Israel aims to prevent the border region from falling into the wrong hands following the ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad on Sunday.Katz’s announcement came as top diplomats of Turkey and the United States, which back warring rebel factions in Syria, met to discuss their joint effort to prevent Islamic State from resurging after Assad’s downfall, amid international efforts to gauge Syria’s new leadership.Meanwhile, Damascus celebrated its first Friday prayers since Assad’s ouster, with rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani calling on Syrians “to go to the streets to express their joy” at the “victory of the blessed revolution.” Thousands attended prayers at Damascus’s landmark Umayyad mosque.Al-Golani, whose Islamist Hayat Tahrir a-Sham originated in Al-Qaeda and has since broken with it, has remained largely mum as Israel struck what remained of Assad’s military equipment and entered the Syrian buffer zone delineated in a 1974 agreement.The area includes Syrian-controlled sections of the Golan Heights and Mount Hermon — Syria’s highest peak, which has long boasted a UN observation post at the summit.The Foreign Ministry on Thursday pushed back on international criticism of the takeover, saying the move was a temporary measure to prevent the border region from falling into extremists’ hands.In a statement Friday, Katz said that “due to what is happening in Syria, there is a huge security importance to our holding of the Hermon peak and everything must be done to ensure the IDF’s preparations in the area, to allow the troops to stay there in the difficult weather conditions.”Katz ordered the move during an assessment he held on Thursday with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and other top officers.Israel captured most of the Golan Heights from Syria during the Six Day War in 1967. It held onto the territory during the 1973 Yom Kippur War and in 1981 annexed the area in a move since recognized by the United States.An unverified video circulating on social media purported to show a man from the Druze village of Hader — in the Syrian buffer zone — asking to be annexed to the Israeli side of the Golan Heights.In front of a large crowd, the man said Israel was the “lesser evil” facing the community — with the greater evil apparently being the Islamist rebels led by al-Golani.The Druze of Mt. Hermon have officially requested to be annexed to Israel. pic.twitter.com/X6qTnZXhzP— Mira ⛥ (@MiraMedusa) December 13, 2024-Blinken and Fidan discuss Islamic State, rival allies in Syria-At a meeting in Ankara Friday, meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan the two countries’ “imperative” to continue yearslong work “to ensure the elimination of the territorial caliphate of ISIS [and] to ensure that threat doesn’t rear its head again,” according to a statement from Washington.ISIS, or Islamic State, controlled up to a third of Syria, mainly in the northeast, in a reign of terror that was defeated in 2019 by a coalition including the US and Turkey.Fidan said he discussed with Blinken Turkey’s aim “to prevent terrorism from gaining ground [in Syria] and to prevent Islamic State and the PKK from dominating there,” referring to the Kurdistan Workers Party, which is considered a terror group by both Ankara and Washington.NATO allies Washington and Ankara supported Syrian rebels during the 13-year civil war, but their interests clashed when it came to one of the rebel factions — the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.The SDF is the main ally in the international coalition against the Islamic State. It is spearheaded by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara sees as an extension of PKK, whose activists have fought for independence against Turkey for the past 40 years.Earlier this week, Turkish-backed forces seized the northern city of Manbij from the SDF, which then headed east of the Euphrates River.A Syrian opposition source told Reuters that the US and Turkey had reached an agreement on the withdrawal. Neither Blinken nor Fidan made any reference to any agreement between Turkey-backed Syrian forces and the SDF.Blinken, whose term will end in January, is in Turkey on his 12th trip to the Middle East since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza. As part of his meeting with Fidan on Friday, Blinken also discussed efforts to bring home the remaining 100 hostages.On Thursday, Blinken also met with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and said that there was broad agreement on what Turkey and the US would like to see in Syria after Assad’s fall.The meeting with Erdogan came amid news that Ankara would reopen its embassy in Damascus, as regional powers began to adapt to the new reality there.According to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency, Burhan Koroglu, the Turkish ambassador in Mauritania, was named as temporary charge d’affaires to lead the reopening.The embassy in Damascus had suspended operations in 2012 due to the escalating security problems during the Syrian civil war and embassy staff and their families were recalled to Turkey.On Thursday, Jordan’s foreign ministry said it would host a summit “to discuss developments in Syria,” with the foreign ministers of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Turkey, as well as their US and EU counterparts and the UN envoy for Syria.Bahrain’s King Hamad said in a letter to the rebel leader al-Golani — whom he addressed by his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa — that Bahrain was ready to “continue consultations and coordination with Syria,” Bahrain’s official BNA news agency reported Friday.

In Turkey, Blinken reports ‘encouraging signs’ Gaza hostage-truce deal is possible-Secretary of state says DC appreciates Ankara’s ‘voice with Hamas’ after terror group reportedly agrees to temporary IDF presence in Gaza, provided list of hostages to be released-By Agencies and ToI Staff Today, 2:15 pm-DEC 13,24

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that he had discussed the importance of achieving a hostage-ceasefire deal between Israel and the Hamas terror group in meetings with Turkey’s president and foreign minister, and expressed some optimism about the prospects.“We’ve seen in the last couple of weeks more encouraging signs that [a deal] is possible,” Blinken said in Ankara, on his twelfth trip to the Middle East since war broke out last October, when Hamas attacked Israel.The American diplomat’s comments came the morning after a report that Hamas had eased some of its demands and provided Israel with a list of hostages to be released in the first phase of an agreement. They also came as US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was in the midst of yet another Mideast trip to push for a deal.Sullivan, who is also set to travel to key mediator countries Egypt and Qatar during this trip, yesterday denied assertions that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was stalling to try to reach a deal after US President-elect Donald Trump enters office on January 20. Sullivan said his goal was to be able to close a deal by the end of December.The US president-elect has said repeatedly that he wants the war in Gaza to end by the time he returns to the White House, and threatened that there will be “hell to pay” for anyone in the region who is still holding hostages when he is inaugurated.Blinken said on Friday that he had spoken with both Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan about “the imperative of Hamas saying yes to the agreement that’s possible to finally help bring this to an end.”“We appreciate very much the role that Turkey can play in using its voice with Hamas, to try to bring this to a conclusion,” Blinken said.Turkey is an outspoken supporter of Hamas and has frequently praised the Iran-backed terror group’s October 7, 2023 attack which started the ongoing war, when thousands of terrorists invaded southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.The country hosts several Hamas officials, and was also expected to absorb more of them when Qatar expelled the terror group’s leadership last month, reportedly under pressure from the US.The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Hamas had given in to an Israeli demand that the IDF remain in Gaza temporarily, after demanding for long months that it would not agree to a deal unless it included a permanent end to the war and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the enclave. Hamas has also provided mediators with a list of hostages that it would release in the first phase of a new deal, the Journal reported.The report added that Israeli negotiators were pushing for more hostages to be released in the initial phase of the ceasefire. At the same time, it said they had agreed to a gradual withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor on the Gaza-Egypt border. Hamas has also reportedly agreed that it would not have any involvement in running the Palestinian side of the Rafah Crossing between Egypt and Gaza.A source familiar told The Times of Israel that Mossad chief David Barnea met with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani in Doha on Wednesday to discuss a potential hostage release and Gaza ceasefire deal, confirming an Axios report.According to the WSJ, the proposal being negotiated would see up to 30 hostages released in a 60-day ceasefire in exchange for which Israel would release Palestinian security prisoners from its prisons and up the amount of humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip.Numerous attempts to reach a new hostage deal have repeatedly failed over the last year or so as Israel and Hamas have accused each other of sabotaging efforts and have refused to budge on key issues.However, negotiators have hoped to use the momentum of a ceasefire deal between Israel and the Hezbollah terror group last month, as well as the recent fall of the Iran-backed regime in Syria last weekend, and Trump’s election win in the US, to reach an agreement.It is believed that 96 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7, 2023, remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 38 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.

Lebanon says 1 killed in Israeli strike on border town that IDF left amid ceasefire-Attack on Al Khiam also injured one, says Lebanese health ministry; troops find Hezbollah arms in scan of south Lebanon; Amnesty: 4 Israeli strikes in Lebanon could be war crimes-By Emanuel Fabian-and ToI Staff Today, 1:16 pm-DEC 13,24

Lebanon accused Israel on Thursday of killing one person in an airstrike on the border village of Al Khiam, from which the Israel Defense Forces recently withdrew as part of the ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah.The accusation came as the Israeli military said troops had located Hezbollah arms in southern Lebanon.In a statement, Lebanon’s health ministry said that “the Israeli enemy strike on the town of Al Khiam killed one person and injured another.”Israel had said earlier that it was targeting Hezbollah operatives violating the late November ceasefire agreement, which gives the IDF 60 days to withdraw from Lebanon.On Wednesday, the IDF confirmed it had withdrawn from Al Khaim — the first border town Israel ceded since the ceasefire — and the Lebanese army said it had deployed there in coordination with the international peacekeeping force UNIFIL.Meanwhile, the IDF said Friday that troops operating in southern Lebanon amid the ceasefire were still finding Hezbollah weaponry, with soldiers of the 769th “Hiram” Regional Brigade capturing anti-tank missiles, assault rifles, RPGs, mortars, and other weapons and equipment during a scan of the area.The soldiers also located an anti-tank missile launch site previously used by Hezbollah to attack Israeli border towns, the military added.Amnesty accuses IDF of violating laws of war in Lebanon-Amnesty International, which has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, said Thursday that four Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon “must be investigated as war crimes.”The strikes, carried out between September and October, were said to have killed at least 49 civilians. Amnesty said its report on the strikes was part of an ongoing investigation into violations of the laws of war in Lebanon.The rights group said it interviewed survivors and witnesses, examined evidence, and found no military targets near the sites of the four strikes. The IDF gave no warnings and did not respond to Amnesty’s inquiries, the group claimed.According to Amnesty, the first strike, on September 29, hit the village of al-Ain in northeast Lebanon’s Bekaa valley, killing nine members of the same family; the second strike, on October 14, hit the northern village of Aitou, killing 23 displaced people, including a 5-month-old baby; the third strike, on October 16, hit the municipal headquarters of south Lebanon’s Nabatieh, a Hezbollah stronghold, killing 11 people, including the mayor; the fourth strike, on October 21, hit eastern Lebanon’s Baalbek city, killing six members of the same family.“These four attacks are emblematic of Israel’s shocking disregard for civilian lives in Lebanon and their willingness to flout international law,” said Amnesty International’s Erika Guevara Rosas, Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns.A fragment from the attack site in Aitou — where Israel was reportedly targeting a senior Hezbollah official — was identified by an Amnesty weapons expert as likely part of an Mk-80 series aerial bomb, weighing at least 500 pounds. These munitions are primarily supplied to Israel by the United States, Amnesty said.The IDF has said its strikes are intelligence-based and target Hezbollah operatives, and that precautions are taken to keep civilians safe, including evacuation orders and prior warning. The military also stresses that the Iran-backed terror group embeds itself in civilian infrastructure, and has found ammunition belonging to the terror group in civilian homes in south Lebanon.Unprovoked, Hezbollah-led forces began attacking Israel on a near-daily basis on October 8, 2023, a day after its ally Hamas stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.Fearing a similar Hezbollah onslaught, Israel evacuated residents of border towns. Hezbollah’s persistent rocket fire prevented some 60,000 displaced northerners from returning home.In a bid to stop the rocket fire, Israel stepped up operations against Hezbollah in late September, all but decimating the terror group’s leadership.Agencies contributed to this report.

Profile-Asma al-Assad: From Syria’s ‘desert rose’ to international pariah-UK-born Syrian former first lady stood by in silence as her husband’s regime carried out appalling acts of violence; accused of being ‘one of Syria’s most notorious war profiteers’By Marie Heuclin Today, 6:14 pm-DEC 13,24

LONDON (AFP) — Once celebrated as an advocate of women’s rights in the Middle East, Syria’s British-born former first lady Asma al-Assad has fled into exile with her husband, with UK officials saying she is not welcome to return to London.Asma al-Assad, 49, her husband and three children have sought refuge in Moscow after rebels ousted Bashar al-Assad from power, according to Russian state news agencies, although the Kremlin has not confirmed the reports.It is just the latest blow to the shredded reputation of a woman whose glamour and charm had been seen in the past as a key asset to the Syrian government.Asma al-Assad was born in London in 1975 and has spent half her life in the UK, with her parents still living in the west of the capital city.She retains British citizenship, but foreign minister David Lammy said Monday that she was no longer welcome in the country, suggesting she may soon lose her UK passport.“I’ve seen mentioned in the last few days, Asma Assad [is] potentially someone with UK citizenship that might attempt to come into our country, and I want it confirmed that she’s a sanctioned individual and is not welcome here in the UK,” he told parliament.Asma al-Assad had her UK assets frozen in March 2012 amid growing protests against her husband’s rule, as part of a European sanction program that London maintained after Brexit.The UK has previously stripped citizens of their nationality for joining the Islamic State group, Bader Mousa Al-Saif, a researcher at the Chatham House think tank, told AFP.“If that could be happening to an unknown in an extremist camp, I think the same, if not more, warrants for the case of Asma al-Assad,” he added.Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday that it was “far too early” to discuss such a measure, while Minister Pat McFadden told the BBC that “we have had no contact” with the former first lady.Road to Damascus-Asma al-Assad was born to cardiologist father Fawaz al-Akhras and retired diplomat Sahar Otri, both from Syria.She grew up in the leafy west London neighborhood of Acton where the Akhras still live, although some UK media reported Monday that they were thought to have flown to Russia to be with their daughter.Asma al-Assad attended a local primary school, where she went by the name of Emma, before studying at the prestigious Queen’s College private school.She later graduated from London’s King’s College University with a degree in computer science and French literature before moving into finance, working at Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan.It was in this line of work that she met Bashar al-Assad in the late 1990s, and the couple married a few months after he succeeded his father, Hafez, as Syrian president in July 2000.The couple have two adult sons and a daughter, with the eldest recently graduating in mathematics from the University of Moscow.The Syrian presidency announced in May that Asma had leukemia, having already been treated for breast cancer between 2018 and 2019.‘War profiteer’Asma al-Assad is from a Sunni family whereas Bashar al-Assad belongs to the Shiite Alawite movement, which — along with her promotion of women’s rights — helped burnish her reputation as a transformative and modernizing first lady.Feted by the Western media for her looks and style, Asma became the toast of high society, hosting celebrities such as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie while enjoying a lavish reception overseas.Fashion bible Vogue called her the “Desert Rose.”But her reputation crumbled when she stood by her husband’s side as he cracked down on anti-government protests that erupted in 2011, turning into a full-scale civil war in June 2012.She was heavily criticized for remaining silent during the violence and was dubbed “Marie Antoinette” and “predator in chief.”Detractors also accused her of enriching herself through the Syria Trust for Development, a charity she founded that centralizes most of the funding coming from abroad.She and her husband also took charge of many parts of the Syrian economy using frontmen, according to news site Syria Report.In 2020 the United States imposed sanctions on Asma al-Assad, her parents and two brothers, with then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo describing her as “one of Syria’s most notorious war profiteers.”

Desperate Assad deceived those around him in last hours before stealthy flight from Syria-Former Syrian president kept officials and relatives, including brother, in the dark about his exit plan; hunted for outside help to maintain his rule, before eventually fleeing-By Samia Nakhoul, Maya Gebeily, Parisa Hafezi and Suleiman Al-Khalidi Today, 5:54 pm-DEC 13,24

DUBAI (Reuters) — Bashar al-Assad confided in almost no one about his plans to flee Syria as his reign collapsed. Instead, aides, officials and even relatives were deceived or kept in the dark, more than a dozen people with knowledge of the events told Reuters.Hours before he escaped for Moscow, Assad assured a meeting of about 30 army and security chiefs at the defense ministry on Saturday that Russian military support was on its way and urged ground forces to hold out, according to a commander who was present and requested anonymity to speak about the briefing.Civilian staff were none the wiser, too.Assad told his presidential office manager on Saturday when he finished work he was going home but instead headed to the airport, according to an aide in his inner circle.He also called his media adviser, Buthaina Shaaban, and asked her to come to his home to write him a speech, the aide said. She arrived to find no one was there.“Assad didn’t even make a last stand. He didn’t even rally his own troops,” said Nadim Houri, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative regional think tank. “He let his supporters face their own fate.”Reuters was unable to contact Assad in Moscow, where he has been granted political asylum. Interviews with 14 people familiar with his final days and hours in power paint a picture of a leader casting around for outside help to extend his 24-year rule before leaning on deception and stealth to plot his exit from Syria in the early hours of Sunday.Most of the sources, who include aides in the former president’s inner circle, regional diplomats and security sources and senior Iranian officials, asked for their names to be withheld to freely discuss sensitive matters.Assad didn’t even inform his younger brother, Maher, commander of the Army’s elite 4th Armored Division, about his exit plan, according to three aides. Maher flew a helicopter to Iraq and then to Russia, one of the people said.Assad’s maternal cousins, Ehab and Eyad Makhlouf, were similarly left behind as Damascus fell to the rebels, according to a Syrian aide and Lebanese security official. The pair tried to flee by car to Lebanon but were ambushed on the way by rebels who shot Ehab dead and wounded Eyad, they said. There was no official confirmation of the death and Reuters was unable to independently verify the incident.Assad himself fled Damascus by plane on Sunday, Dec. 8, flying under the radar with the aircraft’s transponder switched off, two regional diplomats said, escaping the clutches of rebels storming the capital. The dramatic exit ended his 24 years of rule and his family’s half a century of unbroken power, and brought the 13-year civil war to an abrupt halt.He flew to Russia’s Hmeimim airbase in the Syrian coastal city of Latakia, and from there on to Moscow.Syria’s first lady Asma Assad, second left, listens to her husband Assad’s immediate family, wife Asma and their three children, were already waiting for him in the Russian capital, according to three former close aides and a senior regional official.Videos of Assad’s home, taken by rebels and citizens who thronged the presidential complex following his flight and posted on social media, suggest he made a hasty exit, showing cooked food left on the stove and several personal belongings left behind, such as family photo albums.Russia and Iran: No military rescue-There would be no military rescue from Russia, whose intervention in 2015 had helped turn the tide of the civil war in favor of Assad, or from his other staunch ally Iran.This had been made clear to the Syrian leader in the days leading up to his exit, when he sought aid from various quarters in a desperate race to cling to power and secure his safety, according to the people interviewed by Reuters.A group of people take a family photo while sitting on a couch in a hall of Syrian President Basha.Assad visited Moscow on Nov. 28, a day after Syrian rebel forces attacked the northern province of Aleppo and in a lightning drive across the country, but his pleas for military intervention fell on deaf ears in the Kremlin which was unwilling to intervene, three regional diplomats said.Hadi al-Bahra, the head of Syria’s main opposition abroad, said that Assad didn’t convey the reality of the situation to aides back home, citing a source within Assad’s close circle and a regional official.“He told his commanders and associates after his Moscow trip that military support was coming,” Bahra added. “He was lying to them. The message he received from Moscow was negative.”Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday that Russia had spent a lot of effort in helping stabilize Syria in the past but its priority now was the conflict in Ukraine.Four days after that trip, on Dec. 2, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met with Assad in Damascus. By that time, the rebels from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Islamist group had taken control of Syria’s second-largest city Aleppo and were sweeping southwards as government forces crumbled.Assad was visibly distressed during the meeting, and conceded that his army was too weakened to mount an effective resistance, a senior Iranian diplomat told Reuters.Assad never requested that Tehran deploy forces in Syria though, according to two senior Iranian officials who said he understood that Israel could use any such intervention as a reason to target Iranian forces in Syria or even Iran itself.The Kremlin and Russian foreign ministry declined to comment for this article, while the Iranian foreign ministry was not immediately available to comment.Assad confronts own downfall-After exhausting his options, Assad finally accepted the inevitability of his downfall and resolved to leave the country, ending his family’s dynastic rule which dates back to 1971.Three members of Assad’s inner circle said he initially wanted to seek refuge in the United Arab Emirates, as rebels seized Aleppo and Homs and were advancing towards Damascus.They said he was rebuffed by the Emiratis who feared an international backlash for harboring a figure subject to US and European sanctions for allegedly using chemical weapons in a crackdown on insurgents, accusations that Assad has rejected as a fabrication.The UAE government didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.Yet Moscow, while unwilling to intervene militarily, was not prepared to abandon Assad, according to a Russian diplomatic source who spoke on condition of anonymity.Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, attending the Doha forum in Qatar on Saturday and Sunday, spearheaded the diplomatic effort to secure the safety of Assad, engaging Turkey and Qatar to leverage their connections to HTS to secure Assad’s safe exit to Russia, two regional officials said.One Western security source said that Lavrov did “whatever he could” to secure Assad’s safe departure.Qatar and Turkey made arrangements with HTS to facilitate Assad’s exit, three of the sources said, despite official claim by both countries that they had no contacts with HTS, which is designated by the US and the UN as a terrorist organization.Moscow also coordinated with neighboring states to ensure that a Russian plane leaving Syrian airspace with Assad on board would not be intercepted or targeted, three of the sources said.Qatar’s foreign ministry didn’t immediately respond to queries about Assad’s exit, while Reuters was unable to reach HTS for comment. A Turkish government official said there was no Russian request to use Turkish airspace for Assad’s flight, though didn’t address whether Ankara worked with HTS to facilitate the escape.Assad’s last prime minister, Mohammed Jalali, said he spoke to his then-president on the phone on Saturday at 10:30 p.m.“In our last call, I told him how difficult the situation was and that there was huge displacement (of people) from Homs toward Latakia … that there was panic and horror in the streets,” he told Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV this week.“He replied: ‘Tomorrow, we will see’,” Jalali added. “‘Tomorrow, tomorrow’, was the last thing he told me.”Jalali said he tried to call Assad again as dawn broke on Sunday, but there was no response.

Amid rolling blackouts in Iran, some blame power-intensive cryptocurrency mining-Government won’t publicly connect bitcoin mining to energy problems, but cheap electricity, plus possible IRGC involvement to fund terror groups, makes country hotbed for cryptoBy AP Today, 1:03 pm-DEC 13,24

TEHRAN — Iran’s capital and outlying provinces faced rolling power blackouts for weeks in October and November, with electricity cuts disrupting people’s lives and businesses. And while several factors are likely involved, some suspect cryptocurrency mining has played a role in the outages.Iran’s economy has been hobbled for years by international sanctions over its advancing nuclear program. The country’s fuel reserves have plummeted, with the government selling off more to cover budget shortfalls as wars rage in the Middle East and Tehran grapples with mismanagement.The demand on the grid has not let up, however — even as Iranians stopped using air conditioners as the weather cooled in the fall and before winter months set in when people fire up their gas heaters.Heavy government subsidies on electricity in Iran — the state invests almost a fifth of its GDP in that sector — have made it home to the world’s cheapest electricity, at just $0.002/kilowatt in August 2024, as reported by the Pakistan-based Express Tribune — making it among the cheapest countries in which to mine bitcoin, a project whose main expense is electricity.According to crypto site NFT Evening, the cost to mine one bitcoin in Iran was just $1,324 as of November 2024, compared to more than $100,000 in the US, or more than $300,000 in Ireland, for example — both higher than the price of bitcoin today.In recent months, however, electricity has become more expensive, jumping as much as 83 percent since September for high consumers, according to the Iran Focus website, amid what the UK-based Iran International reports is about a 40% spike in the cost of living generally.Meanwhile, bitcoin’s value rocketed to all-time highs after the US election was clinched by Donald Trump. It hit the $100,000 mark for the first time last week, just hours after the president-elect said he intends to nominate cryptocurrency advocate Paul Atkins to be the next chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission.The surge has led some to suspect that organized cryptocurrency mining — sucking away huge amounts of power — has played a part in the outages in Iran.“Unfortunately, some opportunistic and exploitative individuals use subsidized electricity, public networks and other resources for cryptocurrency mining without authorization,” Mostafa Rajabi, the CEO of Iran’s government-owned power company, said back in August.Iran’s state energy company did not respond to a request for comment.Power outages have come and gone in the past in Iran, which struggles with aging equipment at many of its plants. Over the summer, sustained blackouts struck industrial parks near Tehran and other cities. Then in October and November, rolling power cuts across Tehran’s neighborhoods became the norm in daylight hours.Climate change has been blamed in part, with persisting droughts and less water running through Iranian hydroelectric dams.Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian ordered several power plants to stop burning mazut, a high-polluting heavy fuel common in the former Soviet Union countries. Tehran has used it in the past to make up the difference in electricity generation.Fuel reserves, both in diesel and natural gas, also remain low even though Iran is an OPEC member and home to one of the world’s second-largest reserves of natural gas, behind only Russia. There’s been no explanation for the decision to keep those reserves low, though critics have suggested Iran likely sold the fuel to cover budget shortfalls.For his part, Pezeshkian has said that he must “honestly tell the public about the energy situation.”“We have no choice but to consume energy economically, especially gas, in the current conditions and the cold weather,” he said in mid-November. “I myself use warm clothes at home; others can do the same.”Still, winter heating isn’t in full swing quite yet in Tehran — raising questions about where the power is going.In many poor and densely populated neighborhoods across the country, people have access to free, unmetered electricity. Mosques, schools, hospitals, and other sites also receive free power.And with electricity in general sold at subsidized rates, bitcoin processing centers have boomed. They require immense amounts of electricity to power specialized computers and to keep them cool.Determining how much power is used up by cryptomining is difficult, particularly as miners now use virtual private networks that mask their location, said Masih Alavi, the CEO of an Iranian-government-licensed mining company called Viraminer.Also, miners have been renting apartments to hide their rigs inside empty homes. “They distribute their machines across several apartments to avoid being detected,” Alavi said.In 2021, one estimate suggested Iran processed as much as $1 billion in bitcoin transactions. That value likely has spiked, given the rise of bitcoin. Meanwhile, Iran’s blackouts began in earnest as bitcoin spiked from around $67,000 to over $100,000 in its historic rally.Rajabi, the state electricity company CEO, said his firm would offer rewards of $725 for people to report unlicensed bitcoin farms.The farms have caused “an abnormal increase in consumption, disruptions, and problems in power networks,” Rajabi said.The amount of power used by some 230,000 unlicensed devices is equivalent, he said, to the entire power needs of Iran’s Markazi province — one of the country’s chief manufacturing sites.Iranian officials and media have not linked bitcoin’s surge and the ongoing blackouts but the public has, with social media users resharing a video showing a massive bitcoin farm earlier this year uncovered in Iran. A voice off-camera asks how it was possible the electrical company did not discover the farm sooner.The US Treasury and Israel have targeted bitcoin wallets that they’ve alleged are affiliated with operations run by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard to finance allied terror groups in Mideast war zones.That suggests the Guard itself — one of the most powerful forces within Iran — may be involved in the mining.In contrast, Iranian media reports nearly every day on individual mining operations being raided by police.Iran may see bitcoin as a hedge against increased pressure from the incoming Trump administration and as regional allies are engulfed in turmoil, said Richard Nephew, an adjunct fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.“The question for the economists inside Iran is do we trust this enough to fund the government,” said Nephew, who has long worked on Iran issues and sanction strategies in the US government.However, he cautioned against thinking of bitcoin as a magic bullet for Iran, particularly as bitcoin wallets can be targeted in sanctions.“A pattern of behavior screams out to intelligence services,” Nephew said. “It screams out to bank compliance departments.”Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.

PA admits its own forces shot man in West Bank, after falsely blaming ‘lawbreakers’Rahbi Shalabi, 19, was killed in Jenin amid clashes between PA and Hamas, Islamic Jihad groups; video of incident shows victim shot after approaching PA vehicle on scooter-By Agencies and ToI Staff Today, 11:38 am-DEC 13,24

The Palestinian Authority on Thursday admitted that its forces were responsible for the death of a 19-year-old Palestinian man during unrest this week in the West Bank city of Jenin.Rahbi Shalabi was killed on Monday amid rare clashes between local terror groups and PA security forces, who exercise limited authority in the West Bank.The security forces had initially claimed Shalabi was beaten to death by “lawbreakers.”But on Thursday, the PA said in a statement that “after a diligent follow-up and reviewing all the details… the Palestinian National Authority bears full responsibility for his martyrdom.”The PA added that it was “committed to dealing with the repercussions” of the deadly incident “in a manner that ensures justice and respect for rights.”After the clashes that killed Shalabi and wounded a 16-year-old relative of his, the Hamas terror group condemned the security forces of the PA, which is dominated by its political rival Fatah.Yesterday, the Ramallah Authority’s forces opened fire on the unarmed Palestinian youth Rabhi Shalabi, killing him on the spot in the West Bank. pic.twitter.com/sGJfmJFKpp— Warfare Analysis (@warfareanalysis) December 11, 2024-A video circulating on social media, which AFP was unable to independently verify, appeared to show Shalabi and his younger relative stopping their scooter near an armored vehicle belonging to the PA security forces before being shot.Tensions have been running high in the West Bank after the PA arrested several terror operatives earlier this month.On Thursday last week, armed men seized two official PA vehicles and paraded through the Jenin refugee camp waving flags of the Islamic Jihad group, which is allied with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.There were then gunfights in the area which continued into Monday, despite efforts to calm the situation.There was significant damage from the gun battles, with AFPTV footage showing smashed windows and fire damage at the local hospital on Saturday night.The clashes between local terror operatives and PA forces have added to the already soaring violence in the West Bank, with Israeli military raids and settler attacks increasing since the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre in southern Israel triggered the ongoing war.Since then, Israeli troops have arrested some 5,250 wanted Palestinians across the West Bank, including more than 2,050 affiliated with Hamas.According to the PA health ministry, more than 716 West Bank Palestinians have been killed in that time. The IDF says the vast majority of them were gunmen killed in exchanges of fire, rioters who clashed with troops, or terrorists carrying out attacks.During the same period, 42 people, including Israeli security personnel, have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank. Another six members of the security forces were killed in clashes with terror operatives in the West Bank.

Hezbollah said to have helped Assad officials flee to Lebanon, sparking furor in Beirut-Newspaper opposed to terror group bemoans cost to Lebanon, risk of Israeli strikes; analyst says Israel apparently refrained from shooting down 4,000 evacuating Iranian troops-By ToI Staff Today, 11:38 am-DEC 13,24

An anti-Hezbollah Lebanese newspaper reported that the terror group helped hundreds of Syrian intelligence officers flee to Lebanon in the days before forces opposed to Syria’s strongman Bashar al-Assad captured Damascus on Sunday.The Nidaa al-Watan newspaper this week seethed at the price Lebanon was paying to keep some of the top officials safe, and expressed fears that the presence of Assad’s allies in Lebanon could draw Israeli strikes.Some Lebanese leaders also expressed concern over the report, which followed the discovery of a large secret tunnel in Syria’s Qalamoun Mountains, a Hezbollah stronghold near Damascus and the border with Lebanon, apparently used to store and transfer arms. However, the officers who escaped to Lebanon were said to travel via overland border crossings.Citing two security officials — whose nationality was unclear — Nidaa al-Watan on Monday reported that Hezbollah had given Lebanese license plates to Assad officials who entered Lebanon via the Masnaa border crossing. The newspaper also said that thousands of Syrian security officials were estimated to have crossed into Lebanon illegally via the Hermel crossing, farther north.According to the officials cited in the report, the smuggling of Syrian officers was facilitated by bribes to members of Lebanon’s General Security Directorate. Among the latter, the newspaper singled out Hezbollah ally Ahmed Nakad, a senior Directorate border patrol officer said to have close ties with Ali Mamlouk, head of the National Security Bureau of Assad’s Ba’ath party.Nidaa al-Watan said Mamlouk, whom Lebanon has accused of carrying out “terrorist acts” against two mosques in the country, was in hiding in Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern Dahiyeh suburb. Video circulating on social media, which could not be independently verified, purported to show Mamlouk fleeing Syria on a rubber boat.WATCH⚡️The dramatic escape of Ali Mamlouk, head of Syria’s secret service and security advisor to President Assad. Just a rubber boat, a suitcase, and a getaway…Via @inside_IL_intel pic.twitter.com/7bQdbnrj5T — Open Source Intel (@Osint613) December 12, 2024-Also said to be in Beirut — reportedly at the five-star Phonecia Hotel — was Ghada Adib Mhanna, Assad’s aunt by marriage and mother of his close ally, telecom magnate Rami Makhlouf; and — in the Movenpick, another luxury hotel — Firas Issa Shaleesh, nephew of Dhu al-Himma Shalish, Assad’s late cousin and presidential security chief who had been implicated in massacres carried out under Assad’s father and predecessor, Hafez.Khaled Qaddour, a Syrian businessman under US sanctions for his ties to Maher al-Assad, the dictator’s brother, was also reportedly staying at the Movenpick Hotel.According to Nidaa al-Watan, both luxury hotels were being patrolled by Lebanese state security.The newspaper editorialized that Lebanon, which Hafez and Basher al-Assad’s forces occupied for some three decades until 2005, would end up “bearing the cost of facilitating the hiding of those wanted by the Lebanese state.”“Also, the presence of Assad’s lackeys in the suburbs and Beirut exposes the capital to the risk of Israeli strikes,” the newspaper said.A similar warning was voiced by Lebanon’s Progressive Socialist Party, which is led by the Jumblatt family, a prominent Druze clan that is generally aligned with Hezbollah. Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said Tuesday that he was working with the judiciary and the General Security Directorate to address the issue in a manner that would “serve Lebanon’s interests and maintain relations with the Syrian people.”Israel and Hezbollah had concluded a ceasefire deal in late November after a two-month, intense Israeli bombing campaign against the terror group. The campaign came after a year of the Iran-backed terror group’s persistent rocket fire, which had prevented some 60,000 residents of the north from returning home.Fearing a Hezbollah onslaught in the north, Israel evacuated the residents shortly after Hamas attacked the south on October 7, 2023, when thousands of terrorists invaded to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.Soon after the ceasefire came into effect, Syrian rebels launched an offensive in northern Syria, upending the 13-year stalemate in the country’s civil war, and ultimately toppling the decades-long Assad regime, which was propped up by Iran and its proxies.Iran said this week that it had evacuated some 4,000 of its own troops from Syria following Assad’s ouster.Channel 12 Arab affairs analyst Ehud Yaari, who on Thursday cited the Assad officials’ reported escape to Lebanon, noted that Israel had apparently refrained from shooting down the Iranian air convoy.

What Matters Now to Ksenia Svetlova: Women are the canary in the Mideast coal mine-As the rebel factions in Syria continue to fight to wrest control, the world looks at their treatment of women. Middle East analyst, a former MK, ranks Israel and its neighbors.With:Amanda Borschel-Dan-Ksenia Svetlova-Today, 8:50 am-DEC 13,24

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with Middle East expert Ksenia Svetlova.As the rebel factions in Syria continue to fight to wrest control — from the fallen Assad regime as well as from each other — one of the ways to measure how the country will emerge is to look at the factions’ treatment of women: On Tuesday, for example, the Biden administration said it will recognize and support a new Syrian government that renounces terrorism, destroys chemical weapons stocks and protects the rights of minorities and women.In 2020, Svetlova published a Hebrew-language book, “On Heels in the Middle East,” depicting her travels throughout the Middle East as a female (and sometimes overtly Jewish) journalist.Born in Moscow, Svetlova immigrated to Israel at the age of 14. She is a journalist and analyst and was a member of the 20th Knesset for the Zionist Union party. Today she is the executive director of ROPES, which works to connect “forward-thinking Israeli and Palestinian emerging leaders with like-minded peers from across the Middle East and North Africa.”In our conversation, she draws on her experiences reporting from inside the region’s Islamic countries to evaluate and rank their women’s rights and freedoms. We discuss which country most supports women’s rights — Tunisia — and the many countries that vie for the least free.Later, we hear Svetlova’s thoughts on future Russian influence in Syria and the region.So this week, as all eyes are on Syria and the rebels that hope to rule it, we ask Ksenia Svetlova, what matters now.

Biden grants clemency to 1,500 people, pardons 39: ‘The most ever in a single day’All had been placed on home confinement during pandemic, White House says; move comes after outgoing president was excoriated on both sides of the aisle for pardoning son Hunter-By Danny Kemp Today, 8:49 am-DEC 13,24

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Outgoing US President Joe Biden said Thursday that he had commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people and pardoned 39 others, in what the White House called the largest single-day act of clemency in US history.The move comes just over a week after the 82-year-old Biden pardoned his troubled son Hunter, something he had previously promised not to do, prompting anger from both sides of the political divide.“America was built on the promise of possibility and second chances,” Biden said in a statement announcing the action. “As president, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation.”Democrat Biden — who hands over power to Republican Donald Trump on January 20 — is following in the footsteps of many lame-duck presidents who have issued a flurry of acts of clemency in their final days in the Oval Office.All of the 1,499 people — “the most ever in a single day” — whose sentences were commuted were placed on home confinement during the Covid-19 pandemic, the White House said.Biden said they had all “successfully reintegrated into their families and communities and have shown that they deserve a second chance.”The 39 pardons were all for what the White House called a “non-violent offense” or a “non-violent drug offense.”Those getting relief from the president on Thursday included a “decorated military veteran and pilot who spends much of his time helping his fellow church members.”A nurse “who has led emergency response for several natural disasters” and an addiction counselor “who volunteers his time” were also singled out for relief.“I will take more steps in the weeks ahead,” Biden said.‘Retribution’But Biden has already sparked outrage among both Republican rivals and Democratic allies alike with the pardon of his son Hunter, 54, on December 1.Hunter Biden pleaded guilty in a tax evasion trial in September and was facing up to 17 years in prison, and had separately been convicted of federal gun charges, for which he was facing 25 years in prison.When pardoning him, Biden said that Hunter had been “singled out” because of his surname and that “raw politics” had infected the process of justice — a nod to his Republican foes.Biden has meanwhile reportedly been debating whether to issue blanket pardons for some allies and former officials amid fears they could be targeted for what Trump has previously called “retribution.”“I’m not going to get into the President’s thinking,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told a briefing when asked about the possibility of such preemptive pardons.“He’s going to have conversations with his team, he’s going to review clemency petitions, he’s going to review options on the table, and so that’s where I’m going to leave it.”The spokeswoman also refused to comment on calls for clemency for people on the US federal death row.Biden’s controversial pardon of his son followed in the footsteps of his predecessors, who also gave reprieves on their way out the door to family and well-connected allies.Bill Clinton, for example, granted a pardon on his last day in office to his half-brother Roger, who had served time in prison on drug charges.Trump pardoned his son-in-law’s wealthy father, Charles Kushner — whom he has now nominated as US ambassador to France.Meanwhile, Trump has vowed to pardon at least some if not all of the rioters jailed for storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, to protest his defeat by Biden in the 2020 election.In an interview with Time magazine marking the second time he has received its “Person of the Year” award, Trump said he would start “in the first hour that I get into office.”“A vast majority of them should not be in jail, and they’ve suffered gravely,” he said, adding that he would look at each case individually.

Blinken says US working to bring home citizen found in Syrian regime prison-Missouri native Travis Timmerman, who traveled to Syria on Christian pilgrimage in June, says he wasn’t beaten during time in prison, but could hear guards hitting other inmates-By Agencies Today, 8:36 am-DEC 13,24

The United States is working to bring home an American citizen found on Thursday in Syria, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that day in Jordan, where he held meetings to discuss the political transition in Syria.In media reports, the man was identified as Travis Timmerman, 29.“In terms of [the] American citizen who was found just today, I can’t give you any details on exactly what’s going to happen, except to say that we’re working to bring him home, to bring him out of Syria,” Blinken told reporters in Aqaba.“But for privacy reasons, I can’t share any more details about this,” Blinken added.CBS News reported Timmerman identified himself as an American from Missouri and that he was freed from prison earlier in the week after Syrian rebel groups ousted the country’s longtime President Bashar al-Assad over the weekend.Timmerman’s mother, Stacey Collins, told Reuters she thought her son was dead after being missing for seven months.A man identifying himself as an American from Missouri, Travis Timmerman, has been found in Syria after he said he was freed from a prison earlier in the week, when dictator Bashar al-Assad was forced from power.Timmerman told @CBSLizpalmer that he had been trying to make his… pic.twitter.com/P9ybbxuwGg— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) December 12, 2024“I really truly did. But I didn’t want to give up. I didn’t want to give up on my son,” Collins said.Collins said she was excited to hear about her son, particularly since his father had taken ill.Timmerman told CBS he had been detained in prison after entering Syria without permission seven months ago for Christian “spiritual purposes.”White House spokesperson John Kirby said in a briefing that the US had no prior indication that the man was in Syria. “We are just getting word of this, and we’re trying to confirm his identity at this point, so the State Department is working hard on that right now.”Assad fled to Russia after a 13-year civil war and more than five decades of his family’s autocratic rule, during which Syria ran one of the most oppressive police states in the Middle East.Following his ouster, Syrians flocked to the infamous prisons where the Assad regime is estimated to have held tens of thousands of detainees-Speaking to AP on Thursday, Timmerman said he was released Monday morning alongside a young Syrian man and 70 female prisoners, some of whom had their children with them.He had been held separately from Syrian and other Arab prisoners and said he didn’t know of any other Americans held in the facility.“I was there seven months. There were women there up above me,” Timmerman said. He heard the women singing and teaching their children and could hear some of the men being beaten regularly. “I was never beaten,” he said.He was detained after he crossed into Syria from a mountain along the eastern Lebanese town of Zahle in June. He was questioned for three and a half hours by interrogators who thought he must be a spy. In a brief second interview, they searched his mobile phone, and in the last interview, he started discussing his dreams with his captors.He said their threat of using violence against him was “implicit” because he could hear daily beatings next door. But his captors let him use his mobile to call his family three weeks ago. At the time, Timmerman didn’t tell his family he was in Damascus, only that he was fine.He said later in his detention, he could hear explosions — at a time when Israel was intensifying its strikes in Syria. Israel’s war with the Hezbollah militant group had intensified in September before a ceasefire was reached last month.“I heard some explosives that shook the building,” he said.In his prison cell, Timmerman said he had a mattress, a plastic drinking container, and two others for waste. He had three bathroom breaks and exercise breaks in the first half of his stay.He said the Friday calls to prayers helped him keep track of days.He said he gained weight at first because he ate unleavened bread, rice, and oats. Sometimes he would get a potato or a tomato — a treatment clearly reserved for non-Syrian prisoners, who often ended up emaciated or sick.“It is a time of solace and you can meditate on your life,” he told AP. “It was good for me.”Timmerman was disheveled, with a scraggly beard and long hair and nails. He said he had a good sleep and a meal on Thursday.He said he planned to return to Damascus.In describing his release from prison, Timmerman said the action outside his cell woke him up. Those who came to release him spoke to him in Arabic. “It was an excited scene. It was not clear if the guards who were there were still there,” Timmerman said. “I didn’t know if they were taking us out in the midst of a war zone … in hindsight, this shooting was not actual clashes.”He said he was panicked for a moment. But he realized some of the gunfire was celebratory from blanks. One man was shooting from an AK-47. At one point, he went running back into the prison with two other prisoners. A fellow prisoner helped him out, holding his arm, and speaking Arabic to those around. They both accompanied a female prisoner to her home.He spent two nights in Damascus, one in an abandoned apartment in the old town and another at a new friend’s house.He then started walking toward Jordan, when a Syrian family found him barefoot on a main road in the countryside of Damascus early Thursday.The Syrian family told AP that Timmerman appeared cold and hungry so they brought him back to their home.“I fed him and called a doctor,” said Mosaed al-Rifai, the 68-year-old waste collector who first found Timmerman.A few hours after al-Rifai discovered him, rebels arrived at the family’s house to pick him up, he said.Mouaz Mostafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a US-based nonprofit group, who was in Damascus learned of Timmerman’s location, reached him, and contacted US authorities about him.Timmerman is now recovering until the rebels can figure out how to hand him to US authorities, Moustafa said.In Aqaba, Blinken added that efforts to locate Austin Tice, another US citizen who was abducted in Syria over a decade ago were continuing.“No update on Austin Tice, except to say that every single day, we are working to find him and to bring him home, making sure that the word is out to everyone that this is a priority for the United States,” Blinken said.Tice, a former US Marine and a freelance journalist, was 31 when he was kidnapped in August 2012 while reporting in Damascus.US President Joe Biden said on Sunday that Washington believes Tice is alive.When asked about reports Tice might be in Iran, Kirby said Washington has ways of being in touch with interlocutors around the world. “It’s a full-court press to see what we can do to find out more about Austin Tice, and that includes having a lot of conversations with a lot of different folks,” he added.

Syrian rebels find heaps of illicit stimulant trafficked by Assad regime-Islamist-led fighters vow to destroy the vast quantities of captagon, the lucrative trade which helped keep the now-deposed strongman in power amid Syria’s civil war-By Dave Clark Today, 2:44 am-DEC 13,24

DAMASCUS, Syria (AFP) — The dramatic collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime has thrown light into the dark corners of his rule, including the industrial-scale export of the banned drug captagon.Victorious Islamist-led fighters have seized military bases and distribution hubs for the amphetamine-type stimulant, which has flooded the black market across the Middle East.Led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, the rebels say they found a vast haul of drugs and vowed to destroy them.On Wednesday, HTS fighters allowed AFP journalists into a warehouse at a quarry on the outskirts of Damascus, where captagon pills were concealed inside electrical components for export.“After we entered and did a sweep, and we found that this is a factory for Maher al-Assad and his partner Amer Khiti,” said black-masked fighter Abu Malek al-Shami.Household appliances-Maher al-Assad was a military commander and the deposed strongman’s brother, now presumed on the run. He is widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative captagon trade.Syrian politician Khiti was placed under sanction in 2023 by the British government, which said he “controls multiple businesses in Syria which facilitate the production and smuggling of drugs.”In a cavernous garage beneath the warehouse and loading bays, thousands of dusty beige captagon pills were packed into the copper coils of brand new household voltage stabilizers.“We found a large number of devices that were stuffed with packages of captagon pills meant to be smuggled out of the country. It’s a huge quantity. It’s impossible to tell,” Shami said.Above, in the warehouse, crates of cardboard boxes stood ready to allow the traffickers to disguise their cargo as pallet-loads of standard goods, alongside sacks and sacks of caustic soda.Caustic soda, or sodium hydroxide, is a key ingredient in the production of methamphetamine, another stimulant.Assad fell at the weekend to a lightning HTS offensive, but the revenue from selling captagon propped up Assad’s government throughout Syria’s 13 years of civil war.Captagon turned Syria into the world’s largest narco state. It became by far Syria’s biggest export, dwarfing all its legal exports put together, according to estimates drawn from official data by AFP during a 2022 investigation.Experts — like the author of a July report from the Carnegie Middle East Center — also believe that Assad used the threat of drug-fueled unrest to put pressure on Arab governments.Captagon fuelled an epidemic of drug abuse in wealthy Gulf states, even as Assad sought ways to end his diplomatic isolation among his peers, wrote Carnegie scholar Hesham Alghannam.‘Huge amount, brother’Assad, he wrote, “leveraged captagon trafficking as a means of exerting pressure on the Gulf states, notably Saudi Arabia, to reintegrate Syria into the Arab world,” which it did in 2023 when it rejoined the Arab League bloc.The caustic soda at the warehouse, in the Damascus suburbs, was supplied from Saudi Arabia, according to labelling on the sacks.The warehouse haul was massive, but smaller and still impressive stashes of captagon have also turned up in military facilities associated with units under Maher Assad’s command.Journalists from AFP this week found a bonfire of captagon pills on the grounds of the Mazzeh air base, now in the hands of HTS fighters who descended on the capital Damascus from the north.Behind the smoldering heap, in a ransacked air force building, more captagon lay alongside other illicit exports, including off-brand Viagra impotence remedies and poorly-forged $100 bills.“As we entered the area we found a huge quantity of captagon. So we destroyed it and burned it. It’s a huge amount, brother,” said an HTS fighter using the nom de guerre “Khattab.”“We destroyed and burned it because it’s harmful to people. It harms nature and people and humans.”Khattab also stressed that HTS, which has formed a transitional government to replace the collapsed administration, does not want to harm its neighbors by exporting the drug — a trade worth billions of dollars.

In video appeal to Iranian citizens, Netanyahu says ‘one day Iran will be free’In 3rd such message in recent months, PM says Iranian axis is falling apart due to a ‘chain reaction’ set off by Israel, calls to transform Mideast ‘into a beacon of prosperity’By ToI Staff 12 December 2024, 11:51 pm

Issuing a video message aimed at the people of Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday said the Iranian axis was crumbling due to a “chain reaction” set off by Israel, and expressed his hope that Iran can “be free” and make peace globally.Speaking in English with Persian subtitles, Netanyahu pointed out that Iranian leaders “spent over 30 billion dollars supporting [Bashar] Assad in Syria” before his regime “collapsed into dust.”“Your oppressors spent billions supporting Hamas in Gaza. Today their regime lies in ruins,” he added. “Your oppressors spent over 20 billion dollars supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon. In a matter of weeks, most of Hezbollah’s leaders, its rockets and thousands of its terrorists went up in smoke.”Netanyahu — in his third video message addressing Iranians in recent months — said that the new reality in the Middle East today is due to “a chain reaction — a chain reaction to the pounding of Hamas, the decimation of Hezbollah, the targeting of [Hezbollah chief Hassan] Nasrallah, the blows we delivered to the Iran regime’s axis of terror. And all this came, as President Trump pointed out this week, ‘because of Israel and its fighting success.'”He said that while Iran’s leaders “seek to conquer other nations, to impose fundamentalist tyranny on the Middle East,” Israel is seeking only to “defend our state. But in so doing, we’re defending civilization against barbarism.”Addressing Iranian citizens, the prime minister said he believes that “just as we want peace with you, you want peace with us.”“But you suffer under the rule of a regime that subjugates you and threatens us,” he said. “You know what this regime is truly terrified of? It’s terrified of you, the people of Iran. And one day, I know that, one day this will change. One day Iran will be free.”Netanyahu cited the chant “Women, Life, Freedom,” which became the rallying cry of mass anti-government protests in Iran in 2022 after the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran’s so-called morality police after she was detained for not fully covering her hair.“That is the future of Iran,” he added. “That is the future of peace. And I have no doubt that we will realize that future together – a lot sooner than people think. I know and I believe we will transform the Middle East into a beacon of prosperity, progress and peace.”In a similar video message issued last month, Netanyahu said that the money the Iranian government spent on attacking Israel in October “could have added billions to your transportation budget. It could have added billions to your education budget. But instead, [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei exposed the regime’s brutality and turned the world against your country. He robbed you of money that should have been yours.”And in late September — just days after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut assassinated Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime head of Iranian proxy Hezbollah, Netanyahu issued a video saying that Iran’s “puppets” were being eliminated, and that there was “nowhere in the Middle East Israel cannot reach. There is nowhere we will not go to protect our people.” He called on Iranians not to “let a small group of fanatic theocrats crush your hopes and your dreams.”Lazar Berman contributed to this report.

'I support whatever gets us to peace'Trump says Netanyahu knows he wants Gaza war to end; won’t commit to 2-state solution-Speaking to Time magazine after being again named ‘Person of the Year,’ president-elect avoids backing his own ‘deal of the century,’ doesn’t come out against West Bank annexation-By Jacob Magid-12 December 2024, 10:55 pm

US President-elect Donald Trump, again named Time’s “Person of the Year,” told the magazine on Thursday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows he wants the Gaza war to end, hinted a war with Iran could be in the cards and refrained from endorsing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even though his “deal of the century” proposed a version of Palestinian statehood in 2020.“The Middle East is going to get solved. I think it’s more complicated than the Russia-Ukraine, but I think it’s easier to solve,” Trump said, according to a transcript of the interview.Asked about the chances of war with Iran, Trump paused before replying, “Anything can happen,” in a shift from his messaging during the campaign, when he pledged that he wouldn’t start any new wars.The wide-ranging interview appears in the upcoming issue of Time, which named Trump as “Person of the Year” for the second time, the first being after he first won the White House in 2016. Netanyahu was also shortlisted for the accolade.Time said Trump was chosen “For marshaling a comeback of historic proportions, for driving a once-in-a-generation political realignment, for reshaping the American presidency and altering America’s role in the world.”The magazine’s title cover features Trump sporting his distinctive red tie and striking a commanding pose.Trump rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange to applause from traders on Thursday, flanked by his wife Melania Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance, with his Time Magazine cover displayed prominently behind him.Calls for end to Gaza war, appears to repeat claim most hostages dead-Speaking about the war in Gaza, Trump said Netanyahu “knows I want it to end.”According to Time, Trump informed Netanyahu of his stance during phone calls the two held during the US election campaign.Asked if Netanyahu has given him assurances about ending the Gaza war, Trump declined to respond directly, saying, “I don’t want people from either side killed… whether it’s the Palestinians and the Israelis and all of the different entities that we have in the Middle East.”When Time asked if he trusted Netanyahu going into the second term, Trump took a second before answering: “I don’t trust anybody.”The Times of Israel revealed in October that Trump told Netanyahu during a meeting at his Mar-a-Lago resort that he wants the war wrapped up by the time he enters office.In the past, Israel has bristled at such public calls from world leaders, arguing that they unfairly direct the pressure at Israel instead of Hamas. Trump did publish a post on social media earlier this month in which he warned of “all hell to pay” if hostages in Gaza weren’t released by his January 20 inauguration. The president-elect didn’t mention Hamas or Israel in that statement, though.Speaking to Time, Trump also appeared to reiterate his assessment that most of the hostages were no longer alive.“The other thing that’s happening are the hostages. Where are the hostages? Why aren’t they back? Well, they could be gone… I think Hamas is probably saying, Wow, the hostages are gone. That’s what they want,” Trump said.President Isaac Herzog reportedly tried to sway Trump away from that belief last month, sharing with him Israeli intelligence assessments that roughly half of the 100 remaining hostages are alive.Netanyahu has thus far balked at ending the Gaza war in exchange for the release of the hostages, arguing that this would allow Hamas to revive. His coalition also leans on far-right partners who have threatened to topple the government should the premier agree to such a deal.Israel’s security establishment has been more open to the trade-off, arguing that Israel can return its troops to Gaza if need be after withdrawing and warning that there won’t be many hostages alive if Israel waits much longer to strike a deal.In recent days, Israeli officials have been sounding increasingly optimistic about the chances of a deal.An Arab diplomat familiar with the talks told The Times of Israel that both sides have indicated a willingness to compromise regarding the terms of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, but no agreement has been reached regarding the longstanding obstacle in the talks — whether the ceasefire will be permanent or temporary.The mediators are still pushing a three-phase deal, similar to the one submitted by Israel and publicly backed by US President Joe Biden in May, the Arab diplomat said.Israel is more focused on the first 40- to 60-day phase of the deal, with the Arab official saying Hamas again fears that Israel will subsequently resume fighting after Trump enters office.President-elect won’t commit to two-state solution — even his own-Asked if he still supports his 2020 “deal of the century,” Trump responded: “I support a plan of peace, and it can take different forms.”“I support whatever solution we can do to get peace. There are other ideas other than two-state, but I support whatever is necessary to get not just peace, [but] a lasting peace. It can’t go on where every five years you end up in tragedy. There are other alternatives,” he said.This is the latest of several shifts Trump has taken on the issue over the past decade. At the beginning of his first term, Trump declared, “I’m looking at two states and one state, and I like the one that both parties like.”Several days later, Trump appeared to backtrack, saying, “I like the two-state solution,” while again insisting that he’d “ultimately like what both parties like.”The next year, Trump said, “I like the two-state solution… That’s what I think works best,” but the next day, he declared: “If the Israelis and Palestinians want one state, that’s okay with me… If they want two states, that’s okay with me.”Two years later — in 2020 — Trump unveiled a peace plan that he framed as a “realistic” two-state solution. The “deal of the century,” formally entitled “Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People,” offered the Palestinians a state on roughly 70% of the West Bank that wouldn’t include Israel’s settlements, as well as a chunk of the Negev desert and a hefty economic aid package.The Palestinian Authority rejected the offer outright. After his first term, Trump also accused Netanyahu of being non-committal to Israeli-Palestinian rapprochement.As Trump’s second term approaches, some of his prospective officials have voiced support for a two-state solution.Massad Boulos, Trump’s newly appointed senior adviser on Mideast and Arab affairs — and father-in-law of his daughter Tiffany — told Le Monde last week that “a road map that would lead to a Palestinian state” would be an important part of US-Saudi talks about a normalization agreement between Riyadh and Jerusalem during the next administration.Boulos highlighted the “deal of the century” as a frame of reference, indicating that Trump still endorses the plan.Trump’s former Iran envoy Brian Hook, in an interview with CNN last month, also said the 2020 deal would likely be back on the table in a second Trump presidency. Hook noted that Israel’s appetite for a two-state solution has diminished after October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people, sparking the war in Gaza.Doesn’t rule out Israeli annexation of West Bank-In the Time interview, Trump also would not come out against a possible Israeli annexation of the West Bank.Israel captured the territory from Jordan in the 1967 war and maintains security control there. As part of the 2020 Abraham Accords that Trump brokered between Israel and four Arab nations, Israel backed down from its bid to annex part of the territory.Asked whether he still stands behind his “deal of the century,” or if he would let Israel proceed with the annexation, Trump responded: “What I want is a deal where there’s going to be peace and where the killing stops.”Asked again if he would prevent Netanyahu from annexing the West Bank, Trump avoided responding directly. Instead, he acknowledged having stopped Netanyahu from taking the step, and then changed the subject to Hamas’s October 7 attack.When his interviewers pushed him on the question, Trump responded: “I want a long-lasting peace. I’m not saying that’s a very likely scenario, but I want a long-lasting peace, a peace where we don’t have an October 7 in another three years.”“There are numerous ways you can do it. You can do it two-state, but there are numerous ways it can be done,” Trump reiterated. “I’d like to see everybody be happy. Everybody go about their lives, and people stop from dying. That includes on many different fronts.”At least two former Trump officials have warned senior Israeli ministers not to assume that the president-elect will support Israel annexing the West Bank in his second term. The warning came after far-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich hailed Trump’s reelection as an opportunity for Israel to declare sovereignty in the territory.Times of Israel staff and AFP contributed to this report.

IDF strikes targeting Hamas fighters trying to loot aid reportedly kill 13-Military says strikes intended to allow aid convoy to reach civilians; IDF also orders evacuation of Gaza City neighborhood after Hamas launched rockets from there on Wednesday-By Agencies and ToI Staff 12 December 2024, 10:17 pmUpdated at 12:54 am

The Israel Defense Forces said it carried out strikes on two groups of terrorists trying to loot humanitarian aid in Gaza on Thursday morning. Hamas officials said 13 people were killed in the strikes.“All of the terrorists who were eliminated were Hamas terrorists who planned to violently take control of humanitarian aid trucks and transfer them to the Hamas terrorist organization,” the IDF said in a statement. “The strike was intended to allow the humanitarian aid to reach the residents of the Gaza Strip safely.”“We emphasize that the IDF did not attack humanitarian aid trucks and that the aid truck transit route remained open and active,” the military said.The statement said the Hamas members aimed to hijack the aid “in support of continuing terrorist activity.”The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said that 13 Palestinians were killed in the pair of airstrikes. The 13 were among the 58 Palestinians that the ministry reported were killed in Israeli strikes across the Strip on Thursday, a dozen of whom it described as guards securing aid trucks.The Hamas figures cannot be verified and do not differentiate between terror operatives and civilians.According to a report in Reuters, citing sources close to Hamas, “many of those killed” in the strikes had links to the terror group.Also on Thursday, the IDF and Shin Bet announced that, earlier this week, an airstrike in Gaza eliminated a top commander in Hamas’s weapons manufacturing division.According to the military, the strike against a Hamas commander center embedded within the al-Hurriya school in Gaza City, killed the commander, Ammar Daloul, and several other operatives including one who participated in the October 7 onslaught.Daloul served as a department head in Hamas’s manufacturing division and a company commander in the terror group’s Zeitoun Battalion, according to the IDF.The military said the strike also killed Hamas terrorists Jihad Yassin, a company commander in the Zeitoun Battalion; Yahya Masoud Muhammad Ashqar, who infiltrated Israeli territory and participated in the October 7 massacre; Kamal Saber Salim Arafat; Muhammad Akram Aaraj; Loay Farid Faiz Hussein Ali, a platoon commander; Imad Aouni Ibrahim Rayan; and Raed Samir Masoud Harazayn, a member of Hamas’s internal security forces.Before carrying out the strike, the IDF said it took steps to mitigate civilian harm.Later on Thursday, the IDF issued an evacuation warning to several neighborhoods in Gaza City, following rocket fire from the area at Israeli troops operating in the Strip.“Terror organizations are once again firing rockets from this area. The specified area has been warned several times in the past,” Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman said, publishing a map of the zones that are to be evacuated-Civilians in the area were called to move to shelters in the center of Gaza City.Palestinian officials and residents accuse Israel of depopulating the areas on the northern edge of the enclave to create a buffer zone, something Israel denies.The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas led a devastating cross-border attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The thousands of terrorists who burst into the country also abducted 251 people who were taken as hostages.The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said Thursday that at least 44,835 people have been killed in the fighting, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.Some 1.9 million Palestinians of the 2.3 million Gazan population are residing in the Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone,” according to IDF assessments.The zone is located in the al-Mawasi area on the southern Strip’s coast, western neighborhoods of Khan Younis, and central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah.The size of the zone has changed multiple times, amid evolving IDF operations against the Hamas terror group. As of late August, the zone is just over 46 square kilometers (17.7 square miles), or nearly 13 percent of the total size of the Gaza Strip.

Khamenei says US, Israel were behind fall of Syrian regime, also alludes to Turkey-Iranian leader, in first remarks about Syria since sudden ouster of ally Assad, says Iran itself not weakened by rebel takeover, seeks to keep ‘friendly relations’ with country-By ToI Staff Today, 1:16 pm-DEC 11,24

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Wednesday blamed Israel and the United States for the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, accusing the countries of planning the dictator’s collapse, and vowing that the so-called Axis of Resistance, of which Assad’s government was a part, will only grow stronger moving forward.“There should be no doubt that what happened in Syria was plotted in the command rooms of the United States and Israel. We have evidence for this,” the Shiite cleric said, in remarks quoted by state media.The remarks, delivered to a crowd of supporters, were Khamenei’s first public comments on Syria since the dramatic toppling of the Assad regime on Sunday by a jihadist-led coalition of rebel groups, following a two-week lightning offensive that broke a years-long stalemate after over a decade of civil war.“One of the neighboring countries of Syria also played a role,” he added, in an apparent reference to Turkey, “but the primary planners are the US and the Zionist regime.”Turkish officials have strongly rejected claims of involvement in the anti-government offensive. Analysts say, however, that the rebel offensive would have been impossible without a green light from Turkey.Prior to Khamenei’s remarks, Iran’s Vice President for Strategic Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif was more explicit, saying Tuesday that “Turkey’s role in this matter is very clear,” in remarks quoted by Iran International.According to Khamenei, different “invaders” in Syria are pursuing different aims.“Their goals are different. Some of them are seeking to seize the lands of northern or southern Syria. America is seeking to strengthen its position in the region,” he said.Turkey has forces in northern Syria, while in the south the Israeli army has sent troops into a buffer zone east of the Golan Heights. Khamenei said the US, which also has some troops in Syria aiding Kurdish forces, will ultimately be driven out by the so-called Axis of Resistance.In video of his speech posted to social media, audience members in the sex-segregated crowd could be seen raising their fists and shouting, “Death to America! Death to Israel!”#Iran's Leader: Some are attempting to seize territory in #Syria from north or south. US is seeking to strengthen its foothold in the region. The occupied areas of Syria will be liberated by Syrian youth. US will also be expelled from the region by the Resistance Front. pic.twitter.com/KyyLPqM449— Iran Nuances (@IranNuances) December 11, 2024-The toppled Assad, who has since fled to Moscow, was a crucial ally of Iran, and Syria was a central throughway for the Iranian supply of weapons to its proxy forces throughout the region.One of those proxies is Hezbollah in Lebanon, with which Israel entered a shaky ceasefire last month following more than a year of daily attacks by the terror group, in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza, also backed by Iran, which launched a deadly cross-border onslaught in Israel last year, starting the ongoing war.In his speech, Khamenei claimed Hezbollah had delivered a “harsh slap” to Israel, forcing the Jewish state into the ceasefire.The agreement, reached about two months into an Israeli ground operation and some three months into a larger Israeli offensive against the group, came after thousands of Hezbollah’s fighters were killed, along with almost all of its senior leadership, and most of its weapons were destroyed.Hezbollah’s weakness amid its fight against Israel has been cited as one of the reasons for the success of the Syrian rebels, a coalition of groups led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a Sunni jihadist group that began as an offshoot of al-Qaeda.In addition to fighting the Assad regime, HTS has also fought with US-backed, Kurdish-led forces elsewhere in Syria.Despite the factional differences between Iran and the rebel groups, Khamenei said in a statement prior to his remarks that Iran expects to continue “friendly” relations with Syria, saying, “Iran and Syria have a long history, and we expect our friendly relationship to continue.”Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned the new government in Syria that “if this regime allows Iran to reestablish itself in Syria, or allows the transfer of Iranian weapons or any other weapons to Hezbollah, or attacks us, we will respond forcefully and we will exact a heavy price from it.”Khamenei said Wednesday it was “ignorant” to believe that “when the resistance becomes weak, Islamic Iran will also become weak,” saying that with the help of God, “Iran is strong and powerful and will only grow more powerful.”He denied, however, that any real damage could be done to the “resistance” anyway, saying, “the more you push, the stronger it becomes,” and vowing, “the domain of resistance will cover the entire region, more than before.”AP contributed to this report.

After fall of dynasty, tomb of Assad’s father set on fire in Syria hometown-Ordinary citizens wander through home of ousted president, loot luxury goods; Syrian refugees stream back home through Turkish border, hope for better life-By Agencies Today, 5:34 pm-DEC 11,24

The tomb of ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s father Hafez was torched in his hometown of Qardaha, AFP footage taken Wednesday showed, with rebel fighters in fatigues and young men watching it burn.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor told AFP the rebels had set fire to the mausoleum, located in the Latakia heartland of Assad’s Alawite community.AFP footage showed parts of the mausoleum ablaze and damaged, with the tomb of Hafez torched and destroyed.The vast elevated structure atop a hill has an intricate architectural design with several arches, its exterior embellished with ornamentation etched in stone.It also houses the tombs of other Assad family members, including Bashar’s brother Bassel, who was being groomed to inherit power before he was killed in a road accident in 1994.Hafez al-Assad, then-defense minister, seized power in Syria on November 13, 1970, in a bloodless coup. He was elected president in a vote asking citizens to either approve or reject his candidacy months later.Rebels in #Syria have set on fire the mausoleum of Hafez al-Assad, founder of the #Assad dynasty who ascended to power in a 1970 coup, establishing a brutal regime that ruled Syria with an iron grip for over five decades, killing hundreds of thousands of Syrians and Lebanese. pic.twitter.com/GXfu7b9x0O— War_Room_ME (@WarRoomME) December 11, 2024-He consolidated power by bringing into key positions members of his Alawite sect, a minority in Sunni-majority Syria, and established a Soviet-style single-party police state with the help of omnipresent intelligence officers — the feared Mukhabarat.Assad was particularly hated for a vicious crackdown on an armed uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood in the city of Hama in February 1982. Between 10,000 and 40,000 people died at the hands of the Syrian army.On Sunday, a lightning offensive by Islamist-led rebels seized key cities before reaching Damascus and forcing his son Bashar to flee, ending more than 50 years of his family’s rule.The end of Assad’s reign came 13 years after his crackdown on anti-government protests ignited Syria’s civil war, which has drawn in foreign powers, and jihadists and claimed more than half a million lives.Syrians wonder around Assad’s home-Roaming the opulent Damascus home of the ousted Syrian president, Abu Omar said he felt a sense of giddy defiance being in the residence of the man he felt had long oppressed him.“I am taking pictures because I am so happy to be here in the middle of his house,” said the 44-year-old, showing photographs he took on his mobile phone.He was among the dozens an AFP correspondent saw Sunday entering Assad’s home after Assad fled the country.“I came for revenge. They oppressed us in incredible ways,” Abu Omar added from the compound of three six-story buildings in the upscale al-Maliki neighborhood.Jubilant men, women and children wandered the home and its sprawling garden in a daze, the rooms stripped bare except for some furniture and a portrait of Assad discarded on the floor.Residents in the Syrian capital were seen cheering in the streets, as the rebel factions heralded the departure of “tyrant” Assad.‘Sale! Sale!’On Sunday, video circulating online showed crowds peeking into the bedrooms in the Assad residence, which was previously off-limits to ordinary citizens.They could be seen snatching clothes, plates and whatever belongings they could find including a Louis Vuitton cardboard shopping bag.In one video, a man could be heard yelling that everything was on “Sale! Sale!”Umm Nader, 35, came with her husband from a nearby district to tour the residence that once inspired fear and awe, and which one visitor now described as a “museum.”“I came to see this place that we were banned from, because they wanted us to live in poverty and deprivation,” she told AFP.Nader said the former inhabitants of the residence had left without cutting off the heating and electricity, “meanwhile our children are getting sick from the cold.”Daily power outages that last for hours have been a fact of life in Syria, reeling from successive economic crises after more than a decade of war and Western sanctions.Most of the population has been pushed into poverty, according to the United Nations.An AFP correspondent also saw a charred reception hall at the Damascus presidential palace a couple of kilometers away.As he moved from room to room, Abu Omar said he felt overjoyed.“I no longer feel afraid. My only concern is that we unite (as Syrians) and build this country together,” he said, full of emotion.Syrians stream back home through Turkish border-Syrians continued to flow back into the country after the longtime dictator had fled, speaking of their expectations for a better life following what was for many a decade of hardship in Turkey.“We have no one here. We are going back to Latakia, where we have family,” said Mustafa as he prepared to enter Syria with his wife and three sons at the Cilvegozu border gate in southern Turkey. Dozens more Syrians were waiting to cross.Mustafa fled Syria in 2012, a year after the conflict there began, to escape conscription into Assad’s army. For years he did unregistered jobs in Turkey earning less than the minimum wage, he said.“Now there’s a better Syria. God willing, we will have a better life there,” he said, expressing confidence in the new leadership in Syria as he watched over the family’s belongings, clothes packed into sacks and a television set.Turkey, which hosts three million Syrians, has extended the opening hours of the Cilvegozu border gate near the Syrian city of Aleppo seized by rebels at the end of November.A second border gate was opened at nearby Yayladagi in Hatay on Tuesday.Around 350-400 Syrians a day were already crossing back to rebel-held areas of Syria this year before the opposition rebellion began two weeks ago. The numbers have almost doubled since, Ankara says, anticipating a surge now Assad has gone.Turkey has backed Syrian opposition forces for years but has said it had no involvement in the rebel offensive which succeeded at the weekend in unseating Assad.Around 100 trucks were waiting to cross the border, carrying goods including dozens of used cars. Security forces helped manage the flow of people, while aid groups offered snacks to children and tea and soup to adults.‘Our own people’ are now in charge-Haya was waiting to enter Syria with her husband and three children. They have lived in a nearby container camp since devastating earthquakes in February 2023 killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey and Syria.“We had good neighbors and good relations, but a container is not a home,” Haya said as she comforted her six-month-old baby and her daughter translated her comments from Arabic.“We are going back to Aleppo. Iman has a school here, but we have nothing else. We are going back home, to our family,” Haya said, adding that her brother had been released after years in prison following Assad’s ouster.Syria’s new interim prime minister has said he aimed to bring back millions of Syrian refugees, protect all citizens and provide basic services but acknowledged it would be difficult because the country, long under sanctions, lacks foreign currency.Mustafa voiced confidence in the new leadership after Assad was ousted by rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former al Qaeda affiliate that has since downplayed its jihadist roots.“Those who have taken power are no strangers. They didn’t come from the United States or Russia. They are our own people. We know them,” he said.

Op-ed: Day 432 of the war-Israel pulls itself together; Iran’s axis falls apart-The jihadists’ lightning takeover of Syria was followed by the IAF’s vital lightning destruction of Assad’s military infrastructure. Now Iran may think it has only one option left-By David Horovitz-Today, 5:09 pm-DEC 11,24

This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.One hundred hostages are still held in Gaza. Tens of thousands of Israelis are only just beginning to hope that stability has been restored to the north. Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis are still capable of launching rockets and drones. Soldiers are still losing their lives in Gaza and in south Lebanon.But 14 months after Hamas invaded, on the worst day in modern Israeli history, it is the Iranian “Axis of Resistance” that is falling apart, and the State of Israel that is pulling itself together.After the unfathomable failure to defend against Hamas’s overt preparations for invasion and slaughter in the south, and a subsequent slow and protracted military campaign in Gaza, Israeli intel, ground and air forces over the past three months devastated Hezbollah — Hamas’s far more powerful terrorist army across the northern border — and in so doing rendered Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria vulnerable to a jihadist overthrow.This would not have happened if Netanyahu had been prepared to end the war in Gaza in order to secure a deal for the hostages. It could have happened earlier if the Gaza war had been less ponderous and the IDF had been freed up more quickly to effectively tackle Hezbollah.Deeply wary about assurances from Syria’s new jihadi leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani that Syria is “exhausted” by war and won’t be embarking on new ones, Israel reacted to the Islamist rebels’ lightning takeover in Damascus with a lightning strategic assault of its own: destroying not Bashar Al-Assad’s Syrian Army per se — its troops had melted away — but Assad’s Syrian armaments.Al-Golani’s very name underlines his roots in the Golan Heights; his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group’s name translates as “Organization for the Liberation of the Levant” — historically seen as the area covering today’s Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and, yes, Israel. He has been wanted for terrorism by the United States since 2017, with a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture.On Sunday, the very day he hailed victory in an address at Damascus’s Umayyad Mosque, a knot of unidentified rebels, also in a mosque in Syria’s capital, proclaimed that they would, in time, be heading to Israel’s capital: “This is the land of Islam, this is Damascus, the Muslim stronghold. From here to Jerusalem. We’re coming for Jerusalem. Patience, people of Gaza, patience,” declared one of them, a promise endorsed by the gunmen around him with cries of “Allahu akbar!” (“God is greatest” in Arabic.)-Deep Israeli wariness, and taking measures to prevent worst-case scenarios, are thus precisely what was needed. If only Israel had done the same before October 7.Syria had been a potent threat to Israel in the past — a ferocious, deadly enemy in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and a would-be nuclear power until Israel intervened to destroy its North Korean-built nuclear reactor in 2007. As of last week, it boasted the largest concentration of air defense systems in the world, according to former Israel Air Force chief Ido Nehoshtan.It also had vast arrays of weaponry, chemical weapons infrastructure and substantial arms-production facilities.An estimated 80 percent of that Syrian military capacity has now been eliminated by the Israel Air Force — giving Israel air supremacy along the very corridor where the ayatollahs had sought to hold sway — from the Mediterranean, through Lebanon and Syria to Iraq and Iran.Necessarily, too, Israel has taken over the buffer zone on the Syrian border, including the Syrian side of the strategic Mount Hermon. Iran-backed Assad was a potentially potent threat but not an immediate one. The border was stable.That is no longer reliably the case, and thus Israel moved quickly to ensure that its citizenry is protected.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described this as a temporary measure, and indeed it is, in theory. It’s just hard to foresee how and when Israel wil deem it safe to withdraw.Israel is doubtless also watching with concern the potential for violent insurrection in Jordan, the state with which it shares its longest border, and that constitutes a crucial bulwark against Iran. Jordan is led by a domestically unpopular monarchy that is publicly and relentlessly critical of Israel even as bilateral security coordination is strategically vital. The two leaderships dislike and mistrust each other; it is in both countries’ core interest to work to improve that relationship.But the key strategic concern in an era where almost all bets are off in this region, and when staggeringly dramatic events are playing out on a weekly basis, is, of course, Iran.The Islamic Republic’s two main proxies in the bid to destroy Israel have been massively degraded, Bashar al-Assad’s regime briskly despatched, and its own vulnerabilities exposed and magnified by the relative failure of its two strikes on Israel and the potency of what was a relatively limited Israeli response.The fear is that the ayatollahs, running out of options, may conclude that Assad in Syria, like Muammar Qaddafi in Libya and Saddam Hussein in Iraq before him, proved vulnerable because he never got to the bomb, and that they will expedite their nuclear weapons drive. They are already openly discussing the issue. They are already accelerating uranium enrichment. They already have potent long-range missile capabilities. They are already deeply alarming US intelligence and the UN’s nuclear watchdog.We must hope that US and Israeli intelligence know everything they need to know about how far the regime has already progressed on the road to weaponization, and how urgent is the imperative to thwart it.Incidentally, while Netanyahu’s legal tactics have been a central factor in the inordinate length of his corruption trial, and while Netanyahu routinely spends a great deal of his time on ceremonial and self-promotional activity, it is plainly not good for Israel to have its prime minister testifying in court three days a week right now and doubtless spending many more hours working on his testimony.A less onerous court schedule would seem more appropriate, since Israeli law enabled him to refuse to step down when he was indicted, since the legal authorities reached an agreement with him under which he continues to serve as prime minister even when testifying in his own defense, and since these are radically atypical and fateful times for Israel.

Biden okays memo that may guide Trump policy on China, Iran, North Korea and Russia-As cooperation between US rivals intensifies, current White House suggests next administration boosts interagency ties, intel sharing between allies, sanctions effectiveness-By AAMER MADHANI Today, 4:15 pm-DEC 11,24

WASHINGTON (AP) — US President Joe Biden has approved a new national security memorandum ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House that could serve as a road map for the incoming administration as it looks to counter growing cooperation among China, Iran, North Korea and Russia, the White House said Wednesday.Biden administration officials began developing the guidance this summer. It was shaped to be a document that could help the next administration build its approach from day one on how it deals with the tightening relationships involving America’s most prominent adversaries and competitors, according to two senior administration officials.The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House, said the classified memorandum would not be made public because of the sensitivity of some of its findings.The document includes four broad recommendations: improving US government interagency cooperation, speeding up the sharing of information with allies about the four adversaries, calibrating the US government’s use of sanctions and other economic tools for maximum effectiveness, and bolstering preparation to manage simultaneous crises involving the adversaries.The US for many years has been concerned about cooperation among the four countries. Coordination has accelerated between the countries in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.The officials noted that as Russia has become more isolated by much of the world, Moscow has turned to Iran for drones and missiles. From North Korea, the Russians have received artillery, missiles, and even thousands of troops that have traveled to help the Russians try to repel Ukrainian forces from the Kursk region. China, meanwhile, has supported Russia with dual-use components that help keep its military-industrial base afloat.In return, Russia has sent fighter jets to Iran and assisted Tehran as it looks to bolster its missile defense and space technology.North Korea has received from Russia much-needed fuel and funding to help build out its manufacturing and military capabilities. The officials added that Russia has “de facto accepted North Korea as a nuclear weapon state.”China, meanwhile, is benefiting from Russian know-how, with the two countries working together to deepen their military technical cooperation. The two nations are also conducting joint patrols in the Arctic region.Biden and Trump have sharply different worldviews, but officials in both the incoming and outgoing administrations said they have sought to coordinate on national security issues during the transition.One of the officials said that the Biden White House memo “isn’t trying to box (the Trump administration) in or tilt them toward one policy option or another.”The official said the document is intended to help the next administration build “capacity” as it shapes its policies on some of the most difficult foreign policies it will face.
 
Rare four rockets launched at Israel from Gaza, causing no damage-Two missiles intercepted, rest fall in open areas; IDF issues evacuation orders for launch site areas; Hamas authorities say dozens killed in Israeli strikes-By ToI Staff and Agencies Today, 2:22 pm-DEC 11,24

Four rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip at Israel on Wednesday, causing no damage and prompting the military to issue evacuation orders to Gazans in the area from which they were launched.Pairs of rockets from Gaza were fired in two volleys, the first pair hitting open areas and the second intercepted by air defense systems, the Israel Defense Forces said.After 14 months of war that began when Palestinian terror group Hamas led a massive attack on southern Israel — which included a barrage of thousands of rockets at many other areas of the country — rocket fire from Gaza has become a rarity. Airstrikes and IDF troops, operating on the ground in Gaza, have greatly depleted Hamas’s arsenal. The last rocket fired from the coastal enclave was over a week ago on December 2.Following the rocket attack, the IDF issued evacuation orders for specific areas in the Maghazi refugee camp in Gaza. The IDF’s Arabic language account on social media platform X published details and a list of blocks to be evacuated.It urged residents to head toward a humanitarian-designated zone near the Mediterranean coast.“Terrorist organizations are once again firing rockets from your area,” the post read. “This particular area has been warned several times before. For your own safety, you must evacuate this area immediately and move to the humanitarian zone.”The IDF has laid out a safe zone for non-combatants to stay in during the fighting.Evacuation orders usually come before airstrikes on the areas.Meanwhile, Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip overnight and during the day killed at least 33 Palestinians, most of them in an airstrike on a house in Beit Lahiya in the north of the enclave, according to medics in the Hamas-controlled Strip.The Beit Lahiya strike killed at least 22 people, including women and children, Hamas-run health officials said, without differentiating between fighters and non-combatants. Relatives listed the names of the dead on social media.More than 30 people were living in the multi-story building before it was struck, and several family members remained missing as rescue operations continued through the morning, the Palestinian WAFA news agency said.The military said it was checking the report.Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.In nearby Beit Hanoun, where the IDF has operated since October, medics said an Israeli airstrike killed and wounded several people, without giving an exact toll. Rescue workers said several people were trapped under rubble.Earlier on Wednesday, at least seven Palestinians were killed and several others wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a house in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, medics told Reuters.The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service and medics said four other people were killed in separate Israeli airstrikes on two houses in Gaza City.Israeli forces have been operating in Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and the nearby Jabalia refugee camp since October 5, fighting Hamas members waging attacks from those areas and preventing them from regrouping the Israeli military says.Earlier this week, three Israeli soldiers were killed in a Hamas attack in Jabalia. The next day the IDF said an airstrike killed 10 Hamas members involved in the attack.Palestinian officials and residents accuse Israel of depopulating the areas on the northern edge of the enclave to create a buffer zone, something Israel denies.The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas led a devastating cross-border attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The thousands of terrorists who burst into the country also abducted 251 people who were taken as hostages.The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said Wednesday that at least 44,805 people have been killed in the fighting, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.Some 1.9 million Palestinians of the 2.3 million Gazan population are residing in the Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone,” according to IDF assessments in July.The zone is located in the al-Mawasi area on the southern Strip’s coast, western neighborhoods of Khan Younis, and central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah.The size of the zone has changed multiple times, amid evolving IDF operations against the Hamas terror group. As of late August, the zone is just over 46 square kilometers (17.7 square miles), or nearly 13% of the total size of the Gaza Strip.

Russia spirited Assad out of Syria in ‘secure manner,’ Moscow’s deputy FM reveals-Speaking to NBC News, Sergei Ryabkov says Russia acted as required ‘in such an extraordinary situation,’ indicates Syrian strongman won’t be handed to ICC for trial-By Reuters and ToI Staff Today, 11:48 am-DEC 11,24

Russia transported Bashar al-Assad, who was ousted as Syria’s president by a lightning rebel offensive, very securely to its territory, the country’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, told NBC News in an interview aired on Tuesday.The Kremlin said on Monday that President Vladimir Putin made the decision to grant asylum to Assad. His fall is a big blow to Iran and Russia, which had intervened in Syria’s 13-year civil war to try to shore up his rule, despite Western demands that he leave power.“He is secured, and it shows that Russia acts as required in such an extraordinary situation,” Ryabkov said, according to a transcript on NBC’s website. He added that he would not elaborate “on what happened and how it was resolved.”Asked whether Russia would hand over Assad for trial, Ryabkov said: “Russia is not a party to the convention that established the International Criminal Court.”He also advised Israel “to seriously consider what is going on in the Golan Heights,” and “not to infringe” on Syrian territory.Israel sent troops into a buffer zone with Syria established in the 1974 Agreement on Disengagement between the two countries, which concluded the Yom Kippur War.Israel said it would not become involved in the conflict in Syria and that its seizure of the buffer zone, which is Syrian territory, was a defensive move.Israel also launched a massive bombing campaign in the country, with the IDF saying on Tuesday that it had destroyed most of the former Assad regime’s strategic military capabilities, in an effort to prevent advanced weaponry from falling into the hands of hostile elements.The Kremlin on Wednesday played down the damage to Russian influence in the Middle East from the fall of Assad’s regime, saying that its focus was Ukraine and that Moscow was in contact with the new rulers of Syria.When Russia intervened in the Syrian Civil War in 2015, it helped tip the balance in Assad’s favor, so his fall from power dealt a serious setback to both Russia, which is fighting a major land war in Ukraine, and to Iran, which is battling US-backed Israel across the Middle East.“You know, of course, that we are in contact with those who are currently in control of the situation in Syria,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.Asked how much the fall of Assad had weakened Russia’s influence in the region, Peskov said that Moscow maintained contacts with all countries in the region and would continue to do so.Moscow’s priority, Peskov said, was the war in Ukraine, which President Vladimir Putin calls a “special military operation.” Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.Moscow has supported Syria since the early days of the Cold War, recognizing its independence in 1944 as Damascus sought to throw off French colonial rule. The West saw Syria as a Soviet satellite.On Tuesday, Syria’s new interim leader announced that he was taking charge of the country as caretaker prime minister, with the backing of the former rebels who toppled Assad.Separately, Ryabkov, the Russian deputy foreign minister, said his country would “definitely be prepared to consider” another prisoner swap, similar to the August exchange that involved Wall Street Journal reporter journalist Evan Gershkovich and ex-US Marine Paul Whelan.A new deal would be “a healthy step forward, especially at the beginning of the next administration,” Ryabkov told NBC, adding he would not want to “pre-empt anything.”

3 Israelis lightly hurt as gunmen open fire during uncoordinated visit to Nablus tomb-IDF says ultra-Orthodox pilgrims held for questioning by police; men said to be members of Shuvu Bonim cult-By ToI Staff Today, 10:56 am-DEC 11,24

Three Israelis who visited Joseph’s Tomb in the Palestinian city of Nablus overnight without coordination with the military were lightly injured when gunmen opened fire at their vehicle, Hebrew-language media reported Wednesday.The three fled and received medical treatment at a Jerusalem hospital, reports said.The Israel Defense Forces said the men “breached a checkpoint” and were being held for questioning by police. There was no comment on whether the gunmen had been detained.According to the Kan public broadcaster, the Israeli men are members of the ultra-Orthodox Shuvu Bonim cult led by convicted sex offender Rabbi Eliezer Berland.In June, a number of members of the sect entered Nablus in an attempt to visit the tomb on an uncoordinated visit, leading the army to send a large number of forces into the area to retrieve them.Before the war, busloads of Orthodox Jews visited Joseph’s Tomb under IDF protection on a nearly monthly basis, and the pilgrimages almost always sparked violent clashes with Palestinian locals.The IDF bars Israeli citizens from entering Palestinian cities without prior authorization and protection, and some criticize the monthly incursions as an unnecessary provocation that additionally places Israeli soldiers at risk.The shrine, regarded by some as the final resting place of the biblical patriarch Joseph, is located inside Area A of the West Bank, which is officially under complete Palestinian Authority control, though the Israeli military regularly enters, despite Palestinian opposition.Berland, 86, has served separate prison sentences in the past for sex offenses and fraud. He had previously spent years on the lam from Israeli authorities and was also detained in connection with murders allegedly carried out by members of his cult, before being released.

American hostages' daughter issues rare critique of Biden-1st hostage to return from Gaza meets Trump, urges him to do all he can to free captives-Judith Raanan, taken with teen daughter while visiting Nahal Oz and released two weeks later, gives US president-elect a painting and tells him about her time in captivity-By ToI Staff and Jacob Magid-Today, 12:08 pm-DEC 11,24

An Israel-American former hostage met US President-elect Donald Trump in Florida and urged him to do everything he can to free the remaining 100 captives held by terrorists in Gaza, according to a Tuesday statement by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.Judith Raanan was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nahal Oz during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, along with her 18-year-old daughter, Natalie. Less than two weeks later, on October 20, the pair became the first to be released by Hamas.Raanan gave Trump a painting of hers and told him about the kidnapping and her time in captivity in Gaza, according to the Families Forum statement.The statement noted that Raanan’s main message was that she trusts Trump and asked him to do everything in his power to secure the return of all the hostages, both the living and the dead.Judith and Natalie, residents of Evanston, Illinois, outside of Chicago, had been in Israel to celebrate a relative’s 85th birthday and the Jewish holiday season when they were kidnapped from the Gaza border community.The mother and daughter were set free unilaterally by the terror group. The exact mechanism behind the transfer was not clear — Hamas said that the release was made “for humanitarian reasons.”For more than a year, several waves of negotiations have stalled and failed to reach a sequel to an agreement reached in late November 2023, in which 105 hostages were released in a weeklong truce.Israel believes that 96 of the 251 hostages kidnapped on October 7 are still in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the Israel Defense Forces. Over the past 14 months, IDF troops have rescued eight hostages and recovered the bodies of 38.Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Gaza Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.The outgoing Biden administration is still working to secure a deal before leaving the White House.Talks for a potential deal were recently renewed following the ceasefire in Lebanon, and recent regional developments, along with Trump’s threat that there will be “hell to pay” if the hostages are not released by the time he enters office on January 20, 2025.Three hostages with US citizenship — Edan Alexander, Sagui Dekel-Chen and Keith Siegel — are believed to still be alive. The bodies of four other Americans — Omer Neutra, Judith Weinstein, Gadi Haggai and Itay Chen — are still being held in Gaza.A rare critique of Biden from a hostage family-Relatives of those seven hostages met with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan later Tuesday to receive an update on the Biden administration’s efforts to secure a hostage deal before Sullivan himself headed to the region to advance that aim.One of the participants in the White House meeting with Iris Weinstein Haggai, daughter of slain hostages Judi and Gadi.Speaking to The Times of Israel after the meeting, Weinstein Haggai said US President Joe Biden should have issued the kind of statement released last week by President-elect Donald Trump, who warned of “all hell to pay” if captives in the Middle East were not immediately released.“All world leaders should have done on October 8, 2023, what Trump did in his tweet,” Weinstein Haggai said. “Our situation would have been a lot different. We would have saved many lives — not only Israelis, not only hostages’ but also Palestinians — if only world leaders took a stand for the unconditional release of all these hostages.”Asked specifically whether her critique of world leaders extended to Biden, Weinstein Haggai responded, “definitely,” taking ownership of a rare critique of the outgoing president who has repeatedly been heralded by the American hostage families for his efforts to secure their loved ones’ release.She recognized that Biden has several times throughout the war called for the unconditional release of the hostages, and she expressed appreciation for the president’s decision to visit Israel days after October 7. “But the demand for them to be released ‘or else,’ is what I’m looking for,” said Weinstein Haggai, whose parents’ bodies have been held in Gaza since they were murdered during the Hamas onslaught.Weinstein Haggai clarified that she doesn’t expect Hamas to immediately comply with such demands, but stated they would lead the terror group to understand the international community is not accepting its narrative and that it therefore doesn’t have legitimacy to raise demands in negotiations or refuse to engage in talks at all.“When these Hamas terrorists… see that world leaders don’t pressure them… it sends a message to them that they can execute six beautiful young people and there are no consequences, that they can release these propaganda videos and nobody’s going to do anything,” she said.While many world leaders have demanded the immediate release of the hostages, they have done so as part of calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, which the hostages’ daughter laments is something they haven’t done when addressing other conflicts.“It hurts my soul to see what’s happening in Gaza. My family lived a mile from Gaza for a reason. We were the first in line to advocate for peace and for a two-state solution, but the hostages can’t be used to solve the Middle East crisis,” Weinstein Haggai argued.Regardless, she said it was “never too late” for world leaders to issue the kind of statement Trump did.