10/07/2025

THURSDAY | JULY 10, 2025

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THREE DEAD IN NORTH LEBANON STRIKE BEIRUT: Lebanon said three people were killed on Tuesday in a strike near Tripoli that the Israeli military said targeted a Hamas gunman, the first on the north since a November ceasefire with Hezbollah. Israel has kept up its strikes on Lebanon despite the November truce, mainly hitting what it says are Hezbollah targets but also occasionally targeting Hamas. The Israeli military said it “struck and eliminated Mehran Mustafa Ba’jur” in an intelligence led strike, calling him “a key Hamas commander in Lebanon”. It released six seconds of video footage of what appeared to be an airstrike on a moving car. AFP cannot independently verify the footage. ‘BOMB MOSCOW’ REPORT UNVERIFIABLE MOSCOW: The Kremlin said yesterday it was not sure of the veracity of a CNN article that reported President Donald Trump had once threatened to bomb Moscow to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from attacking Ukraine. CNN’s report cited audio recordings of Trump telling a private gathering of donors amid his pre-election campaign last year that he had once warned Putin that he would “bomb the sh*t out of Moscow” if Russia attacked Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there were “many fakes” and he was unsure if the report was true. CNN said Trump also said he had delivered a similar warning to President Xi Jinping. – Reuters RUSSIA REOPENS EMBASSY IN TEHRAN MOSCOW: Russia said yesterday its embassy in Tehran had reopened to the public, adding that the security situation in Iran has stabilised after a two-week conflict with Israel. The mission had stopped providing consular services on June 15 after Israel launched an unprecedented bombing campaign targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities, military infrastructure and residential areas. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said there was “some stabilisation” of the situation, adding that “the consular service of the Russian embassy in Tehran is already operating as usual”. However, she has also urged Russians to exercise caution and remain vigilant while visiting the country. – AFP FRENCH POLICE RAID FAR-RIGHT PARTY HQ PARIS: French police raided Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) headquarters yesterday over alleged campaign finance violations and fraud, prompting its president Jordan Bardella to decry a “new harassment campaign” against the far-right party. The raid represents a fresh blow for the RN after Le Pen was convicted in March of embezzling EU funds and barred from running in the 2027 election. The RN has become France’s largest single parliamentary party. The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed the searches, which it said related to an investigation into an unnamed person opened last week following several reports from institutional sources. – Reuters

BR I E F S

Two women fleeing after an airstrike hit a tent in Gaza City, on Tuesday. – AFPPIC

Netanyahu insists on hostages release, Hamas defeat o Israel wants to expand Abraham Accords news website Axios said, citing a source.

Palestinian enclave was done, negotiators are “certainly working” on a ceasefire. “We have still to finish the job in Gaza, release all our hostages, eliminate and destroy Hamas’ military and government capabilities,” Netanyahu said. The Gaza conflict began with an attack on southern Israel in October 2023. Israel’s retaliatory war has killed over 57,000 Palestinians. Hamas has long demanded an end to the war before it would free the remaining hostages. Netanyahu expressed hope that Israel could expand the Abraham Accords, normalisation deals reached between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco in 2020 under US mediation. “We are working on this,” Netanyahu said. – Reuters/AFP from countries and companies. The office has since released a trial version of TraCSS. But the Trump administration in a budget document last month explained it wants to terminate TraCSS because it did not complete the system during the earlier administration and that private companies “have the capability and the business model” to do space traffic coordination on their own. The two largest space industry organisations – the Commercial Space Federation and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics – wrote in another letter to senators on Monday that “industry believes that maintaining a basic SSA service at no cost to the end user is inherently a government function”. – Reuters

Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, said the number of issues preventing Israel and Hamas from reaching an agreement had decreased from four to one, expressing optimism for a temporary ceasefire deal by the end of the week. Witkoff said the anticipated agreement would involve a 60-day ceasefire, with the release of 10 live hostages and nine dead individuals. Netanyahu met Vice-President J.D. Vance and then visited the US Capitol on Tuesday, and was due back in Congress.

WASHINGTON: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday that his meeting with US President Donald Trump focused on freeing hostages held in Gaza, and stressed his determination to “eliminate” the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas. Netanyahu said on X that the leaders also discussed the consequences and possibilities of “the great victory we achieved over Iran”, following an aerial war last month in which the United States joined Israeli attacks on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites. Netanyahu is making his third US visit since Trump took office on Jan 20 and had earlier told WASHINGTON: Hundreds of US companies have urged Congress to back off a plan to shut a small federal office tasked with managing satellite traffic in space. The White House 2026 budget proposal seeks US$10 million (RM42.5 million) for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Space Commerce, an 84% cut from the 2025 funding that would terminate Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS), a civilian system to help prevent satellite collisions. Four-hundred and fifty companies from seven industry groups wrote in a joint letter on Tuesday to the Senate committee overseeing NOAA that without funding TraCSS, “ US commercial and

reporters that while he did not think Israel’s campaign in the Palestinian enclave was done, negotiators are “certainly working” on a ceasefire. Trump met Netanyahu on Tuesday for the second time in two days to discuss the situation in Gaza, with the president’s Middle East envoy indicating that Israel and Hamas were nearing an agreement on a ceasefire deal after nearly two years of war. Netanyahu also said ceasefire efforts were underway.

A delegation from Qatar, the host of indirect talks between Israeli negotiators and Hamas, met senior White House officials before Netanyahu’s arrival on Tuesday, Keep satellite traffic system, Congress urged He told reporters after a meeting with Republican House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson that while he did not think Israel’s campaign in the

“It’s really important that there be coordination, so we don’t have this fragmented system. If the US doesn’t have a system that it brings to the table, I’m not really sure how the US exercises any leadership in the establishment of international space traffic management,” Schaffer said The Pentagon has long managed a space traffic database called Space-Track, but defence and industry officials argue that responsibility detracts from its national security mission and risks conflating an essential safety service with military interests. The space industry in 2020 praised Trump’s first administration for directing the NOAA office to absorb the Pentagon’s space tracking function and improve efforts to fuse satellite position data

government satellite operators would face greater risks – putting critical missions in harm’s way, raising the cost of doing business, and potentially driving US industry to relocate overseas.” The rise of satellite constellations such as the SpaceX Starlink and heightened military and commercial activities in Earth’s orbit have driven up risks of collisions between the roughly 12,000 active satellites and thousands of junk items, prompting efforts to create a civil air traffic control system for space. Audrey Schaffer, vice-president of strategy and policy at space-tracking firm Slingshot Aerospace, said the cuts would forfeit an opportunity to shape space traffic control as the US did decades ago for air traffic control standards.