Israel's defence minister has for the first time acknowledged that Israel killed Hamas's political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July. Israel Katz made the comments in a speech vowing to target the heads of the Iran-backed Houthi movement in Yemen, which has been firing missiles and drones at Israel. Haniyeh was killed in a building where he was staying in the Iranian capital in an attack widely attributed to Israel. Separately, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said some progress had been made towards agreeing a ceasefire in Gaza with Hamas, but he could not give a timeline for when a deal would be reached. It comes after a senior Palestinian official told the BBC that talks between Hamas and Israel were 90% complete , but key issues remained. In his speech, Katz said Israel would "strike hard" at the Houthis and "decapitate" its leadership. "Just as we did with Haniyeh, [Yahya] Sinwar, and [Hassan] Nasrallah in Tehran, Gaza, and Lebanon, we will do so in Hodeida and Sanaa," he said, referring to Hezbollah and Hamas leaders who have all been killed this year. Haniyeh, 62, was widely considered Hamas's overall leader and played a key role in negotiations aimed at reaching a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. After his assassination, Hamas named Yahya Sinwar, its leader in Gaza and one of the chief architects of the 7 October attacks, as the group's overall leader. Sinwar was killed by the Israeli military in a chance encounter in Gaza in October and the group is still in the process of choosing a new leader. Hassan Nasrallah meanwhile was the leader of the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah - he was assassinated in Beirut in September as Israel dramatically escalated its military campaign against Hezbollah, with which it had been trading near daily cross-border fire since the day after the 7 October attacks. The Houthis, an Iran-backed rebel group that controls north-western Yemen, began attacking Israeli and international ships in the Red Sea shortly after Israel began targeting Hamas in Gaza last October. The group has vowed to continue until the war in Gaza ends. On Saturday, Israel's military said its attempts to shoot down a projectile launched from Yemen were unsuccessful and the missile struck a park in Tel Aviv. A Houthi spokesman said the group hit a military target using a hypersonic ballistic missile. Last week Israel launched strikes against what it said were Houthi military targets, hitting ports as well as energy infrastructure in the Yemeni capital Sanaa. The US and UK have also attacked Houthi targets as part of an operation to protect international shipping. Hamas attacked Israel in October last year, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage. In response, Israel launched a military campaign to destroy Hamas in Gaza which has continued for more than a year and has killed 45,317 people according to the Hamas-run health ministry in the Strip. That figure includes 58 people killed by Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours, Hamas officials said. Local medical officials said that at least 11 people were killed in three separate strikes on the al-Mawasi area, which had been designated a "safe zone" by the Israeli military. Israel said it was targeting a Hamas fighter. On Monday Israel said three of its soldiers had been killed in the northern Gaza Strip. Humanitarian and rights groups have warned of a catastrophic situation for civilians in Gaza. On Sunday Oxfam said just 12 trucks had distributed food and water in northern Gaza over the past two-and-a-half months and blamed the Israeli military for "deliberate delays and systematic obstructions". "For three of these, once the food and water had been delivered to the school where people were sheltering, it was then cleared and shelled within hours," Oxfam added. The Israeli authorities said the report was "deliberately and inaccurately" ignoring the "extensive humanitarian efforts made by Israel in the northern Gaza Strip". Israel insisted that specific shipments "including food, water, and medical supplies" had been sent to northern areas of Gaza, including Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia and Jabalia, where the Israeli military has for several months been carrying out a military operation that it says is targeting Hamas fighters who had regrouped there. The Oxfam report comes after rights groups Amnesty accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Israel of committing "acts of genocide" by deliberately depriving Palestinian civilians in Gaza of adequate access to water. Israel's foreign ministry described the Amnesty report as "entirely false and based on lies" while the Israeli foreign ministry's spokesman said Human Rights Watch was "once more spreading its blood libels... The truth is the complete opposite of HRW's lies".No. 7 Tennessee dispatches UT Martin to remain undefeated
Ola Electric Layoff: Ola Electric may lay off 500 employees, this is the reasonTORONTO — Everything changed for Kia Nurse when she tore her anterior cruciate ligament in the 2021 WNBA playoffs. The basketball star from Hamilton was locked in as starter for a team in the semifinals. She’d been selected as an all-star just two years prior. But in one awkward fall three years ago, she was plunged into the depths of surgery and rehab. Nurse would miss the entire 2022 season due to the injury. She signed with the Seattle Storm for the 2023 campaign before a trade landed her with the Los Angeles Sparks last season. Meanwhile, Nurse represented Canada at the Paris Olympics in August, but she struggled as the team failed to reach the knockout round for the second straight time. The common thread throughout Nurse’s recent basketball journey? She just hasn’t quite felt like herself. “I still love basketball with all of my heart, and it's my favourite thing that I get to do. And I'm so privileged to be able to say that I get to do it as a job,” Nurse said. "But the last two years for me have been just really rocky, up and down.” Nurse, 28, will become a WNBA free agent as of Feb. 1. For now, she’s continuing her Raptors broadcast work with TSN and, on Monday, announced a new playing gig. In February, Nurse will join fellow WNBAers Alysha Clark and Sydney Colson among 37 others for Athletes Unlimited’s third basketball season in Nashville. Athletes Unlimited was founded as a women’s professional softball league in 2020 before expanding to basketball, volleyball and lacrosse. Its 24-game hoops campaign switches teams weekly and concludes by crowning a season-long individual champion. Players earn points through a fantasy-style system that rewards team successes like wins as well as individual accomplishments from made three-pointers to steals to drawn fouls. Outside of the unique scoring system, the game looks like traditional basketball — a major appeal to Nurse as she attempts to tap back into her roots. “I am not proud of my performance at the Olympics and not necessarily proud of how I’ve been playing over the last two years. I just have goals of finding my true love of the game and kind of coming back and being stronger physically, being more fit and just ultimately having a good year,” Nurse said. When Nurse’s career began in 2018, many WNBA players would ply their trade overseas during the off-season as a way of staying in shape and making additional money. But over the past half-decade — and perhaps expedited by Brittney Griner’s 2022 detainment in Russia — more options have emerged stateside, including Athletes Unlimited. “The (WNBA) now has a lot of the teams that have practice facilities, so they have full-time player development, practice-facility access and that's a big piece as well. But now ultimately we have these leagues at home like AU,” Nurse said. Athletes Unlimited will not be the only professional women’s basketball operation in North America this winter. A three-on-three league called Unrivaled, founded by WNBA stars Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart, will tip off in January in Miami. Nurse said Unrivaled was an option for her, but she preferred Athletes Unlimited. “I wanted a place where I'm happy with basketball again, really happy with myself and how I'm playing and a having a little more confidence boost from what I've had over these last two years. And I feel like AU, for me, that five-on-five setting was a big piece of it,” Nurse said. The timing of the Athletes Unlimited schedule — deep enough into the WNBA off-season but with enough leeway to fine tune things before the 2025 campaign begins — also stood out to Nurse. Ahead of AU, Nurse said she moved her training from Toronto to Hamilton, where she could stay closer to home and avoid the long highway drives. And following two seasons in which Nurse’s WNBA teams suffered a combined 61 losses, she’s hoping to find a landing spot in free agency with a winning franchise. “I want to ... have an opportunity make a deep playoff run, be kind of like an X-Factor player, somebody who can go out there, be a three-and-D player, can help make winning plays,” she said. Nurse said she and fellow WNBA veteran Bridget Carleton have discussed what went wrong in Paris and how it can be fixed ahead of Los Angeles 2028. Management changes have already occurred with the retirement of GM Denise Dignard and a mutual parting with head coach Victor Lapena. The national team recently met up in Toronto for an informal training camp where Nurse and Carleton aimed to lay the groundwork for the culture they hope to create over the next four years. “Getting back to the basics and just enjoying playing for Canada Basketball, but also creating a really strong, bonded culture where everybody does what they need to do for our team to win," she said. "We understand our roles (and) we understand the commitment piece of it because now there's so much going on and people are all over the place." This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 22, 2024. Myles Dichter, The Canadian Press
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( MENAFN - EIN Presswire) Global Solar Panel Recycling market to Breach $478.6 million by 2030 David Correa Allied Market Research +1 800-792-5285 email us here Visit us on social media: Facebook X Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above. MENAFN23122024003118003196ID1109025633 Legal Disclaimer: MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.Hoops star Nurse joins Athletes Unlimited aiming to rebound from ‘rocky’ two years
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