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JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is examining a plan to seal off humanitarian aid to northern Gaza in an attempt to starve out ~~Hamas militants~~, a plan that, if implemented, could trap without food or water hundreds of thousands of Palestinians unwilling or unable to leave their homes.

Those who remain would be considered combatants — meaning military regulations would allow troops to kill them — and denied food, water, medicine and fuel.

The plan calls for Israel to maintain control over the north for an indefinite period to attempt to create a new administration without Hamas, splitting the Gaza Strip in two.

Human rights groups say the plan would likely starve civilians and that it flies in the face of international law, which prohibits using food as a weapon and forcible transfers. Accusations that Israel is intentionally limiting food to Gaza are central to the genocide case brought against it at the International Court of Justice, charges Israel denies.

MADRID, Oct 13 (Reuters) - The 15th-century explorer Christopher Columbus was a Sephardic Jew from Western Europe, Spanish scientists said on Saturday, after using DNA analysis to tackle a centuries-old mystery.

Several countries have argued over the origins and the final burial place of the divisive figure who led Spanish-funded expeditions from the 1490s onward, opening the way for the European conquest of the Americas.

Many historians have questioned the traditional theory that Columbus came from Genoa, Italy. Other theories range from him being a Spanish Jew or a Greek, to Basque, Portuguese or British.

To solve the mystery researchers conducted a 22-year investigation, led by forensic expert Miguel Lorente, by testing tiny samples of remains buried in Seville Cathedral, long marked by authorities there as the last resting place of Columbus, though there had been rival claims.

They compared them with those of known relatives and descendants and their findings were announced in a documentary titled "Columbus DNA: The true origin" on Spain's national broadcaster TVE on Saturday. "We have DNA from Christopher Columbus, very partial, but sufficient. We have DNA from Hernando Colón, his son," Lorente said in the programme.

An international summit on Ukraine where Volodymyr Zelenskyy was going to present a “victory plan” to western leaders has been formally postponed – though the Ukrainian president will try to organise a tour of European capitals instead.

Organisers said that the Saturday meeting of about 20 world leaders at the US Ramstein airbase in Germany would be rescheduled, a day after Biden had said he had to stay at home to respond to Hurricane Milton’s landfall in Florida.

Ukrainian sources said that Zelenskyy would travel to meet the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in Berlin on Friday – and potentially go on to visit other leaders as part of what sources described as a “European tour”.

CBS News on Monday rebuked one of its star morning anchors, Tony Dokoupil, over an interview that he conducted last week with the author Ta-Nehisi Coates, in which Mr. Dokoupil challenged Mr. Coates’s views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The episode began last Monday when Mr. Coates visited “CBS Mornings” on a publicity tour for his book “The Message,” which in one section compares Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the Jim Crow laws of the American South. In describing what he witnessed on a 10-day trip to the region last year, Mr. Coates criticized other journalists for “the elevation of factual complexity over self-evident morality.”

From the start of the interview, Mr. Dokoupil directly challenged this framing, telling Mr. Coates that “the content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.” The anchor added, “What is it that so particularly offends you about the existence of a Jewish state that is a Jewish safe place?”

“There’s nothing that offends me about a Jewish state; I am offended by the idea of states built on ethnocracy, no matter where they are,” Mr. Coates replied. The men parried for several minutes in a tense but civil manner, with Mr. Coates at one point saying: “Either apartheid is right or wrong. It’s really, really simple.”

Depleted uranium is a form of uranium that has been stripped of most – but not all – of its radioactive matter. It was derived from the process used to prepare uranium for nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons.

During the strikes that killed the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, as well as 33 civilians, Israel used a type of bomb known as “bunker busters”.

Though Israel did not confirm what munitions it has used in Lebanon, the New York Times reported that the air force squadron used for the Nasrallah bombing were equipped with BLU-109 missiles, citing an Israeli army video. These missiles are known to contain explosives coated in depleted uranium.

According to studies of the effects of depleted uranium used by the US in Iraq in 2003, it has been implicated in sharp rises in congenital birth defects, cancer cases and other illnesses. During the Iraq war, the US dropped 24 bunker buster munitions containing depleted uranium, while Israel, in the single one-minute-long attack that killed Nasrallah, dropped nearly double that amount.

WASHINGTON, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Donald Trump, who is the Republican presidential candidate, said on Friday he will seek the prosecution of Google if he wins the Nov. 5 election, claiming that the company only displays "bad stories" about him.

Trump, in his post on Truth Social, gave no evidence for his assertion about Google.

"It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J. Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about" Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, Trump said.

According to The Atlantic, Blinken enquired whether the Saudis could tolerate Israel periodically re-entering the territory to strike the besieged Gaza Strip.

“They can come back in six months, a year, but not on the back end of my signing something like this,” Mohammed bin Salman responded.

“Seventy percent of my population is younger than me,” the crown prince explained to Blinken.

“For most of them, they never really knew much about the Palestinian issue. And so they’re being introduced to it for the first time through this conflict. It’s a huge problem. Do I care personally about the Palestinian issue? I don’t, but my people do, so I need to make sure this is meaningful.”

Lebanon’s health minister has said what is happening in his country is “carnage”, as hospitals struggle to cope with the number of casualties from two days of widespread Israeli air strikes targeting the armed group Hezbollah.

Dr Firass Abiad told the BBC it was “clear” that many of the 550 people killed in Monday’s attacks were civilians, including children and women.

Governor Gavin Newsom has signed California's "click to cancel" Assembly Bill 286 into law to make it easier for consumers to opt out of subscriptions. The bill, introduced in April 2024, forces companies that permit online or in-app sign-ups to allow for online or in-app unsubscribing as well.

"AB 2863 is the most comprehensive ‘Click to Cancel’ legislation in the nation, ensuring Californians can cancel unwanted automatic subscription renewals just as easily as they signed up — with just a click or two,” said California Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo.

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Lebanon's Hezbollah said its fighters had fired a rocket targeting the Mossad spy agency headquarters near Tel Aviv on Wednesday, an escalation in the conflict with Israel that moved the arch-foes closer to full-fledged war.

The Israeli military said a single surface-to-surface missile was intercepted by air defence systems after it was detected crossing from Lebanon. Warning sirens sounded in Tel Aviv, Israel's economic capital.

There were no reports of damage or casualties and the military said there was no change to civil defence instructions for central Israel. Israeli military spokesman Nadav Shoshani said he could not confirm what Hezbollah's target was when it fired the missile from a village in Lebanon.

Since the start of the war, Israel's Channel 14 has given a platform to more than 50 statements calling for genocide or supporting genocide against the Palestinians, and to more than 150 statements calling for the commission of war crimes and of crimes against humanity (or supporting the commission of such crimes).

Dozens more statements included calls for max expulsion of the population in Gaza and the use of starvation as a method of combat. In addition, dozens of statements of racist incitement against Gazans and Palestinians have also been documented. These figures were compiled by three organizations – Zulat for Equality and Human Rights, Hatzlacha: Movement for the Promotion of a Fair Society, and the Democratic Bloc.

More than 50 rights organisations from across Europe have expressed their “shock and dismay” at Ursula von der Leyen’s decision to do away with the standalone EU position of equality commissioner, describing it as a “downgrading” of the fight against discrimination.

Von der Leyen presented her lineup for the new commission in Brussels earlier this month. Her 27 commissioner designates – senior EU officials who hold positions akin to government ministers – included Hadja Lahbib, currently Belgium’s foreign minister, who was tasked with a portfolio that spans preparedness and crisis management as well as equality.

The announcement, which marked a stark change in tone from 2019 when von der Leyen announced the EU’s first ever commissioner for equality, was swiftly criticised. “This is unacceptable,” the European Women’s Lobby said on social media. “Equality deserves its own commissioner, not just a footnote in an overloaded portfolio.”