'The equation has changed'
Lyse Doucet
Chief international correspondent
“Iran has taught Israel a lesson.” That’s how Professor Syed Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran put it when I asked him what Iran achieved in its first direct strike on Israel – an unprecedented attack Israel says failed.
He referred to what has long been seen as the byword for Iran’s security doctrine – “strategic patience.” Time and again, when its assets or individuals were attacked in what were widely known to be covert Israeli operations, Iran held back or retaliated through its regional proxies.
“The equation has changed,” Professor Marandi warned. “Whenever the Israeli regime touches any Iranian, the Iranians will hit back at the regime and the US and Britain who come to their aid.”
He insisted the Nevatim air force base in southern Israel was badly damaged by Iran’s precision missiles. Israel’s account was the direct hit caused light damage and the base was still functioning.
His stark warnings underline the heightened risk in this new chapter in the long-running shadow war between regional archrivals.
An energy war is being waged’: former oil boss warns of price rises after Ukraine infrastructure attacks
Andriy Kobolyev calls for more weapons after Russia destroys one of Ukraine’s largest power plants
A dramatic rise in European energy prices is inevitable if the Russian destruction of Ukrainian energy infrastructure continues unabated, the former chief executive of Ukraine’s state-owned oil company has warned.
Andriy Kobolyev, a former head of Naftogaz, said in an interview with the Guardian: “Russia is trying to wage a global energy war and Ukraine is part of that war and if the markets perceive that Russia is winning that war the consequences will be very serious. You will see a spike in prices all round the globe”.
A decade after Chibok kidnappings, Nigeria struggles to halt child abductions
Jihadist group Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls on the night of April 14, 2014, from a school in Chibok, some 80 of whom have never been freed. Hundreds more children have since been abducted, with the Nigerian government seemingly powerless to stop the militants and criminal gangs behind the kidnappings.
Ten years ago, Solomon Maina's daughter, Debora, was one of 276 schoolgirls kidnapped from their dormitory in the middle of the night by Nigeria's Boko Haram Islamist militants.
Global outrage was swift. A ubiquitous "Bring Back Our Girls" campaign, drawing support from the likes of Michelle Obama and Sylvester Stallone, shined a spotlight on the abductions. Then, in 2016 and 2017, negotiations led to the highly publicised liberation of around 100 of the captives.
Debora was not one of them.
A decade after that fateful night in April 2014, the world has largely forgotten the plight of the so-called Chibok girls.
Southern island worries it will host long-range missiles
By TAKASHI WATANABE/ Staff Writer
April 14, 2024 at 07:00 JST
Residents’ fears are growing on Ishigakijima island in southwestern Japan that the government’s widening defense plan to protect the nation will put them in the line of fire.
It has been one year since the Ground Self-Defense Force opened a new outpost on the island in Okinawa Prefecture to fend off a possible military advance by China.
Local opposition to the camp had eased somewhat. But residents now feel that developments in Japan-U.S. security arrangements are pointing to the island as a site for deployment of long-range missiles that can reach overseas targets.
The GSDF camp is part of Japan’s strategy of positioning troops to the Nansei chain of outlying islands in Kagoshima and Okinawa prefectures.
‘Grownup’ leaders are pushing us towards catastrophe, says former US climate chief
Paris agreement negotiator Todd Stern attacks premiers who say that decarbonisation programmes are unrealistic and should be slowed down
Political leaders who present themselves as “grownups” while slowing the pace of climate action are pushing the world towards deeper catastrophe, a former US climate chief has warned.
“We are slowed down by those who think of themselves as grownups and believe decarbonisation at the speed the climate community calls for is unrealistic,” said Todd Stern, who served as a special envoy for climate change under Barack Obama, and helped negotiate the 2015 Paris agreement.
‘Bullet in my head’: The Indian man who crawled to escape Russia’s Ukraine war
Prince Sebastian had not signed up to fight for Vladimir Putin’s army. All he wanted was to escape poverty in India. Now he’s back home – and back where he started.
By
A tangled gun strap almost cost Prince Sebastian his life.
It was 6pm local time on February 4. Prince and his contingent of soldiers fighting for the Russian army were advancing towards a battlefield in Luhansk in occupied Ukraine. It wasn’t what Prince – a fisherman from the southern Indian state of Kerala 5,470km (3,400 miles) away – had signed up for, but at that moment, he felt he had no option but to keep moving, a Russian soldier by his side, the frantic symphony of gunfire their unwelcome soundtrack.
Suddenly, there was chaos as they came under attack, a hail of bullets fired in their direction. A superior barked out orders, asking the soldiers to fire back. But in the split second that Prince lost because of the tangled strap, a bullet ricocheted off their Russian tank with a sickening thud and pierced his left ear, flooding his mouth with blood.
“I crumpled onto a dead Russian soldier,” Prince recalls. “I was hit, but there was no pain, it was numbness for a few seconds.”
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