GAZA, May 23, 2025 – The death toll arising from the ongoing Israeli genocidal aggression on the Gaza Strip surged to 53,822 people, medical sources said on Friday.
In the last 24 hours, the bodies of 60 slain Palestinians and 185 casualties were admitted to hospitals in the Strip.
Moreover, at least 10,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
WAFA
SYDNEY, May 23 – The body of a man was found in a car trapped in floodwaters in Australia’s southeast on Friday, raising the death toll to four, after three days of incessant rain cut off entire towns, swept away livestock and destroyed homes.
Police said the man was found near Coffs Harbour, around 550 km (342 miles) north of Sydney.
REUTERS
NANNING, May 23 – Three people have been confirmed dead and five remain missing after a mountain torrent and mudslide struck a village in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region early Friday morning, local authorities said.
Rescue efforts, which started immediately after the incident hit the village of Sanshe in Longsheng County, Guilin City, are underway, with more than 300 rescuers involved.
Ten houses sustained damage in the mudslide, according to local authorities.
XINHUA
VLADIVOSTOK, May 23 – A fire in a residential building in Anadyr, the capital of Russia’s Chukotka Autonomous Area, killed five people and injured four others, a local investigative committee said on Friday.
Preliminary investigations indicate that the fire was caused by faulty electric home appliances. The fire broke out at 3:10 a.m. local time (1710 GMT Thursday) in the kitchen of an apartment. Dense smoke and carbon monoxide then rapidly spread throughout the space.
The flames caused the deaths of three men and a woman at the scene, while a fifth man died while being transported to the hospital.
Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations reported that 17 people were safely evacuated from the building. The fire has been extinguished, and investigations are underway.
XINHUA
SAN DIEGO – The music agency Sound Talent Group said Thursday that three of its employees, including co-founder Dave Shapiro, died on the private plane that crashed into a San Diego neighborhood.
Shapiro is listed as the owner of the plane and has a pilot’s license, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Shapiro also owned a flight school called Velocity Aviation and a record label, Velocity Records, according to his LinkedIn page.
The agency didn’t share the names of the other two employees who died.
“We are devastated by the loss of our co-founder, colleagues and friends. Our hearts go out to their families and to everyone impacted by today’s tragedy,” the agency said in a statement.
Sound Talent Group has represented artists including Hanson, Sum 41 and Vanessa Carlton.
San Diego authorities earlier said two people had died. The National Transportation Safety Board now says the total number of fatalities is unknown, but the plane could hold as many as 10 people.
The private jet crashed early Thursday into a neighborhood of U.S. Navy-owned housing in San Diego during foggy weather, igniting at least one home and numerous vehicles parked on the street. The plane clipped power lines before slamming into the house, said Elliot Simpson with the NTSB.
Several people were injured while trying to flee as flames raced down a single street after the crash just before 4 a.m. in the Murphy Canyon, the largest neighborhood of Navy-owned housing in the country. Others were treated for smoke inhalation, authorities said.
AP
GAZA, May 22, 2025 – Two Palestinian civilians were killed and eight others wounded on Thursday after Israeli occupation forces targeted a tent sheltering displaced people in the Al-Mawasi area, east of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.
WAFA correspondent reported that the Israeli artillery strike hit the makeshift tent where a family had sought refuge after being displaced by the ongoing onslaught on Gaza.
The ongoing Israeli aggression on Gaza since October 2023 has so far resulted in at least 53,762 documented Palestinian fatalities, with over 122,197 others injured.
Thousands of victims are feared trapped under rubble, inaccessible to emergency and civil defense teams due to Israeli attacks.
WAFA
WASHINGTON, May 22, 2025 – Microsoft has banned the words “Palestine,” “Gaza,” and “genocide” from being sent to recipients inside and outside the US computer giant, according to the Verge website.
The website reported that Microsoft employees have discovered that any emails they send with the terms “Palestine” or “Gaza” are getting temporarily blocked from being sent to recipients inside and outside the company.
It added that the No Azure for Apartheid (NOAA) protest group reports that “dozens of Microsoft workers” have been unable to send emails with the words “Palestine,” “Gaza,” and “Genocide” in email subject lines or in the body of a message.
It reported NOAA organizer Hossam Nasr saying: “NOAA believes this is an attempt by Microsoft to silence worker free speech and is a censorship enacted by Microsoft leadership to discriminate against Palestinian workers and their allies.”
Microsoft claimed that it has implemented some form of email changes to reduce “politically focused emails” inside the company.
The block was revealed by NOAA, a group of pro-Palestinian Microsoft workers, who say the company quietly activated the filter on its Exchange servers shortly after a protest at Microsoft Build 2025. Microsoft is facing internal backlash over its provision of cloud services and AI tools to the Israeli occupation forces.
On Tuesday, activists, including a former Google employee and members of the “No Tech for Apartheid” movement, interrupted Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during the opening of this year’s Microsoft Build Conference. They were protesting Microsoft’s involvement in supplying technology, including AI systems, for supporting Israel’s ongoing genocidal aggression on Gaza, which resulted in the killing of 53,762 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring 122,197 others.
WAFA
BEIRUT – Lebanese state media said an Israeli air strike hit a building in southern Lebanon on Thursday after Israel’s military issued an evacuation call warning of imminent action against Hezbollah militants.
Israel has kept up its air strikes in neighboring Lebanon despite a November truce aimed at halting more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah that included two months of full-blown war.
Without confirming the reported attack on the southern town of Toul, the Israeli military said its forces had carried out several strikes targeting Hezbollah sites and killed one militant.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said that “the Israeli enemy” struck a building in Toul, where the army had warned residents to evacuate the area around a building it said was used by Hezbollah militants.
The “urgent warning” was accompanied by a map showing a structure and the 500-meter (0.3-mile) radius around it marked in red.
“You are located near facilities belonging to the terrorist (group) Hezbollah,” the statement said in Arabic, urging people “to evacuate these buildings immediately and move away from them.”
There were no immediate reports of casualties in Toul.
In a separate statement, the military said it had “struck and eliminated a Hezbollah Radwan Force terrorist in the area of Rab El Thalathine,” about 17 kilometers (10 miles) to the southeast.
The NNA reported a “martyr” in an air strike in the same area, without identifying them.
The Israeli military said its forces also “struck a Hezbollah military site containing rocket launchers and weapons” in the Bekaa Valley as well as “terrorist infrastructure sites and rocket launchers belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization… in southern Lebanon.”
A military statement said that “the presence of weapons in the area and Hezbollah activities at the site constitute blatant violations of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon” under the November ceasefire agreement.
Israel will “continue to operate to remove any threat… and will prevent any attempt by Hezbollah to re-establish its terror capabilities,” it said.
Under the ceasefire, Hezbollah fighters were to pull back north of the Litani River and dismantle military infrastructure south of it.
Israel was to withdraw all forces from Lebanon, but it has kept troops in five areas that it deems “strategic.”
The Lebanese army has deployed in the south and has been dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure.
The truce was based on a UN Security Council resolution that says Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers should be the only people to bear arms in south Lebanon, and calls for the disarmament of all non-state groups.
AN-AFP
JAKARTA, May 22 – Rescuers discovered on Thursday five more bodies of flash floods victims in Indonesia’s West Papua province, bringing the total death toll to 15, with five others still missing, an official said.
An additional piece of heavy machinery was deployed to the scene to assist search and rescue operations in Gunung Arfak Regency, increasing the total to two units, according to Agus Bashori, spokesperson for Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Office.
Heavy rains triggered flash floods and landslides in Gunung Arfak Regency on May 15, but extremely poor communication access delayed the dissemination of information to rescuers, said Yefri Sabaruddin, head of the provincial Search and Rescue Office.
XINHUA
JERUSALEM, May 22 – Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar accused unnamed European officials on Thursday of “toxic antisemitic incitement” he blamed for a hostile climate in which the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington took place.
Israel has faced a blizzard of criticism from Europe of late as it has intensified its military campaign in Gaza, where humanitarian groups have warned that an 11-week Israeli blockade on aid supplies has left the Palestinian enclave on the brink of famine.
Saar did not name any countries or officials but said the climate of hostility towards Israel was behind the shooting of the embassy staffers Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim outside a Jewish museum in Washington on Wednesday.
Saar, at a news conference in Jerusalem, said the attack was a direct outcome of “toxic antisemitic incitement against Israel and Jews around the world” since Hamas militants’ cross-border attack on Israel in October 2023.
“There is a direct line connecting antisemitic and anti-Israel incitement to this murder,” he said. “This incitement is also done by leaders and officials of many countries and organisations, especially from Europe.”
Saar declined to identify which leader or officials he had in mind. But his remarks came after increasingly tough words from Western allies of Israel including France and Britain, which joined Canada this week in warning of possible “concrete action” against Israel over its war in Gaza.
U.S. officials said a suspect who chanted pro-Palestinian slogans was in custody. President Donald Trump and a wide range of European and other foreign leaders condemned the attack.
Saar said the “global atmosphere” against Israel had worsened sharply since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people and saw 251 taken as hostage back into Gaza.
Since then, Israel’s air and ground campaign has killed over 53,000 Palestinians and laid waste to the densely populated territory, drawing mass protests across the world ranging from U.S. university campuses to the streets of European cities.
Last year, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take action to prevent alleged acts of genocide in Gaza after a case brought by South Africa that stirred deep anger in Israel.
Saar said: “These libels about genocide, crimes against humanity and murdering babies pave the way exactly for such murders.”
REUTERS
GUIYANG, May 22 – The death toll from the landslides in southwest China’s Guizhou Province on Thursday has risen to four while 17 people remain trapped, the provincial government said.
Two separate landslides struck Changshi and Guowa townships in Dafang County under the city of Bijie on the same day, trapping two and 19, respectively.
As of 9 p.m. Thursday, the bodies of two trapped people in Changshi and another two in Guowa had been retrieved.
XINHUA
SYDNEY, May 22 – Flash flooding on Australia’s southeast coast has killed three people and cut off towns, isolating tens of thousands of residents, as officials on Thursday warned more downpours were expected over the next 24 hours.
Major flooding hit several rural towns in the Hunter and Mid North Coast regions of New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, with most of the Mid North Coast region facing further heavy rainfall through Thursday.
REUTERS
JERUSALEM – The Israeli army issued an evacuation warning on Thursday for 14 neighborhoods in the northern Gaza Strip, including parts of Beit Lahia and Jabalia.
The army told residents in an Arabic-language statement that it was “operating with intense force in your areas, as terrorist organizations continue their activities and operations” there.
A similar warning for parts of northern Gaza was issued on Wednesday evening in what the army said was a response to rocket fire.
It said that one “projectile that was identified crossing into Israel from the northern Gaza Strip was intercepted” by the air force.
It later announced three more launches from northern Gaza, but said the projectiles had fallen inside the Palestinian territory.
Israel has ramped up its Gaza operations in recent days in what it says is a renewed push to destroy Hamas.
The territory’s civil defense agency said Israeli attacks had killed at least 19 people on Thursday.
AN-AFP
MOSCOW – Russian forces have captured the settlement of Nova Poltavka in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, the Russian defense ministry said on Thursday.
Russian news agencies, citing the defense ministry, separately reported that air defenses had shot down 317 Ukrainian drones over the territory of Russia in the past 24 hours and 485 drones in total since the evening of May 20.
AN-REUTERS
GENEVA, May 22 – The Palestinian health minister said on Thursday that 29 children and elderly people had died from starvation-related deaths in Gaza in recent days and that many thousands more were at risk.
Food aid is expected to start reaching Gazans on Thursday after Israel let the first trucks through following an 11-week blockade, but Palestinian and aid officials say it is just a fraction of what is needed.
“In the last couple of days we lost 29 children,” Palestinian Health Minister Majed Abu Ramadan told reporters, describing them as “starvation-related deaths”. He later clarified that the total included elderly people as well as children.
Asked to react to earlier comments by the U.N. aid chief to the BBC that 14,000 babies could die without aid, he said: “The number 14,000 is very realistic may be even underestimating (the scale).”
Israel imposed the blockade on all supplies in March, saying Hamas was seizing deliveries for its fighters – a charge the group denies. Earlier this month, a global hunger monitor said that half a million people in the Gaza Strip face starvation.
Abu Ramadan said that only seven or eight hospitals out of Gaza’s 36 were partially functioning, and that more than 90% of medical stocks were now at zero due to the blockade.
“My information is that very few shipments went inside Gaza – 90-100 truck loads and in the south and mid zones.” Asked if there are any medical supplies among them, he said: “As far as I know …it’s only flour for bakeries.”
REUTERS
SYDNEY, May 22 – Flash flooding on Australia’s southeast coast has killed two people and cut off towns, isolating tens of thousands of residents, as officials on Thursday warned more downpours were expected over the next 24 hours.
Major flooding hit several rural towns in the Hunter and Mid North Coast regions of New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, with most of the Mid North Coast region facing further heavy rainfall through Thursday.
Police said the body of a 63-year-old man was found in a flooded home near Taree, more than 300 km (186 miles) north of Sydney, while another body believed to be that of a missing man aged in his 30s had been discovered in flood waters on the Mid North Coast.
“We’re bracing for more bad news in the next 24 hours. This natural disaster has been terrible for this community,” New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said during a media briefing.
“There’s 140 flood warnings, 50,000 people are in the range where they have been asked to prepare to evacuate and could be isolated, and there’s been 9,500 properties in the direct vicinity. So, we’re far from out of the woods here.”
Two men and one woman have been reported missing in separate incidents, authorities said earlier.
More than 100 schools were closed on Thursday, while thousands of properties remained without power.
Cundletown in the Mid North Coast has been entirely cut off by floods, said Nicole Sammut, a nurse caring for 67 elderly residents at an aged care home, which is also being used as a shelter by emergency teams.
“I came to work on Tuesday and haven’t left,” Sammut told Reuters.
“We are up on a hill but behind us is all water. We are isolated. I’ve never seen the water this high.”
The Manning River in nearby Taree had exceeded a 100-year-old flood record, emergency authorities said.
Sherinah Peck was evacuated at 2 a.m. on Wednesday from her farmhouse on the river, but her belongings were swept away, with some furniture later washing up on the coast.
As she searched Old Bar beach on Thursday, strewn with debris and dead and lost livestock, for a treasured bicycle that belonged to her late mother, Peck was knocked over by a cow and injured, she said.
“The cow was distressed – a wave came. I had to scramble up the sand,” she told Reuters.
REUTERS
WASHINGTON, May 21 – Two Israeli embassy employees were killed late Wednesday near a Jewish museum in Washington, D.C., U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said.
“Two Israeli Embassy staff were senselessly killed tonight near the Jewish Museum in Washington D.C.,” she said in a post on the social platform X.
Media reports said the two were shot dead. Noem added that they are “investigating and working to get more information to share.”
Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), confirmed that the AJC was hosting an event at the museum that evening.
At least one of the victims was transported to a nearby hospital in critical condition before succumbing to their injuries.
Police are currently questioning a person of interest in connection with the incident.
XINHUA
BEIJING, May 22 – An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.5 jolted Crete, Greece at 0319 GMT on Thursday, the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences said.
The epicenter, with a depth of 102.8 km, was initially determined to be at 35.46 degrees north latitude and 25.82 degrees east longitude.
XINHUA
CHENGDU, May 22 – Four people have been confirmed dead after a roof collapsed in a coal mine in southwest China’s Sichuan Province last Saturday, local authorities said Thursday.
The accident occurred at around 11 a.m. last Saturday in the Changshi’er coal mine in the city of Wanyuan, initially leaving four miners unaccounted for.
After days of search and rescue efforts, all four missing miners were found by 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, but none showed signs of life, rescue officials told Xinhua.
Rescue teams from various levels responded swiftly, but efforts were hindered by high gas concentrations, weak structural supports, damaged tunnel roofs and floors, and large, unstable coal gangue prone to sliding within the mine shaft. To prevent secondary disasters, rescuers had to carry out search operations in a more scientific and cautious manner.
The coal mine owner has been detained by police and an investigation is underway.
XINHUA
GUIYANG, May 22 – Two separate landslides struck Changshi and Guowa townships in Dafang County, southwest China’s Guizhou Province on Thursday, trapping individuals.
The two landslides struck at around 3 a.m. and 9 a.m. Thursday. Two people were trapped in Changshi, and several others were trapped in Qingyang Village of Guowa.
Rescue efforts are underway.
XINHUA