🇮🇱🇵🇸 Israel and Palestinian movement Hamas have agreed to extend a temporary humanitarian pause for an eighth day, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing Egyptian officials.

Egyptian officials said Thursday that the deal is expected to involve the release of 10 more hostages, mostly women and children, the report said.

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🇰🇵 In a statement carried by state media, Kim Yo Jong, vice department director of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, decried the hysteria over the DPRK recent launch of a reconnaissance satellite.

“I deplore the fact that the UNSC [United Nations Security Council], at which the purpose and principle of the UN Charter have to be strictly respected, is being turned into a land of lawlessness where the sovereignty of independent states is wantonly violated, extreme double standards are imprudently applied and injustice and high-handed practices are rampant due to the US and some forces following it, and strongly denounce and reject it,” she said.

“The whole course of the open meeting of the UNSC over the DPRK's reconnaissance satellite launch, convened at the gangster-like demand of the US and its followers, clearly proves how weak, false and absurd are the unreasonable arguments of some UN member states denying the DPRK's sovereign rights,” Kim added.

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❗️The IDF announced that it had resumed hostilities in the Gaza Strip.

The military said Hamas broke a pause in hostilities and opened fire on Israeli territory.

📹 Russian volunteers of motorized rifle battalion from Ulyanovsk repel Ukrainian attacks

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Eyewitnesses share footage of airstrikes in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip

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❗️Netanyahu's office said Hamas has not fulfilled its obligations to release more women from captivity; Israel intends to achieve its goals through military means

🇷🇺 The Russian Aerospace Forces will begin mass training of pilots to use "smart bombs" in the special operation zone in Ukraine

▪️ Guided bombs, also known as precision-guided munitions, are weapons that combine the accuracy of a missile with the destructive power of a bomb.

▪️ A special module is attached to a conventional free-fall bomb, transforming it into a guided bomb.

▪️ The module has a folding wing and rudders, as well as a control system that automatically guides the munition to the target.

▪️ With the help of such a device, an ordinary FAB-500 aerial bomb, for example, becomes highly accurate.

▪️ At present, 250-, 500-, and 1,500-kilogram bombs equipped with such modules are used in the special operation zone and are dropped from Su-34 fighter-bombers.

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🇯🇵 Japan has suspended operations of the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft in the wake of a crash off the coast earlier this week. The notoriously unstable aircraft has had dozens of crashes, often triggering similar temporary groundings.

The suspension announcement was made on Thursday by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s chief cabinet secretary, Hirokazu Matsuno, who said Tokyo had asked the US to temporarily halt non-emergency flights of Ospreys.

On Wednesday, an Osprey carrying six US service members (the US Coast Guard initially told the press it was eight) crashed off the coast of Japan’s Kagoshima Prefecture, one of whom died in the accident.

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❗️Hungary proposes not to put the issue of Ukraine’s accession to the EU on the agenda of the summit in December; it is clear in advance that there will be no agreement among the countries, Prime Minister Viktor Orban says

❗️ A Ukrainian special services agent who used drones to attack the Dyagilevo military airfield in Ryazan in July has been detained, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Investigative Committee of Russia have reported.

In November, he also blew up a railway track in the Ryazan district, causing 19 carriages to derail and 15 to overturn.

The man, who has Russian and Italian citizenship, was recruited back in February 2023 in Istanbul, and sabotage training was carried out in Jekabpils, Latvia with the direct participation of the Latvian special services, the FSB said.

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🇵🇸🇮🇱 Latest updates on Palestinian-Israeli conflict:

▪️ Israeli Army resumes hostilities in Gaza, claims Hamas broke pause by opening fire on Israel.

▪️ Israel released seventh group of 30 Palestinian prisoners as part of humanitarian pause agreement with Palestine’s Hamas movement, Al Jazeera reports.

▪️ Netanyahu's office has confirmed return of six more hostages to Israel, bringing total number of freed people to 110.

▪️ US exploring possibility of extending the humanitarian pause in Middle East to rescue more hostages, Blinken says.

▪️ United States does not support idea of permanent ceasefire in Gaza, only temporary pauses, White House says.

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Paraguay gov’t official sacked for signing doc with fake ‘nation’

A gullible government official in Paraguay was sacked after he signed a “memorandum of understanding” with a delegation from a fictional country.

Arnaldo Chamorro, who was chief of staff in the South American country’s Agriculture Ministry, put his signature under a “proclamation” with representatives of the “United States of Kailasa,” set up by an infamous “guru” claiming to have supernatural powers.

The “state” brands itself as the "revival of the ancient enlightened Hindu civilizational nation which is being revived by displaced Hindus from around the world."

Paraguayan officials are not the first to be duped by the flock of followers of self-styled “godman” Nithyanand, who is wanted in India on several charges, including sexual assault.

Earlier in the year, local officials in Newark, New Jersey, were conned into signing a “sister city” deal with the fake nation, with Mayor Ras Baraka later apologizing for the "regrettable incident."

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"Look, we are not backing down, I am satisfied," Volodymyr Zelensky said when commenting on the counteroffensive in an interview with AP.

He also touched on the fact that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has already reduced aid supplies to Ukraine.

“We already can see the consequences of the international community shifting [its attention] because of the tragedy in the Middle East,” he said. “Only the blind don’t recognize this.”

Ukrainians understand “that we also need to fight for attention for the full-scale war,” he said. “We must not allow people to forget about the war here.”

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📹 Yuula Benivolski, a Toronto-based Jewish filmmaker, says she is renouncing her Israeli citizenship because of the war on Gaza

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❗️WATCH LIVE: Lavrov holds press conference following OSCE Ministerial Council meeting

👉 Watch the live stream here or follow the link to the Sputnik's website

The top Russian diplomat arrived in Skopje on Wednesday evening. This is Lavrov's first trip to Europe since the onset of the conflict in Ukraine, not counting his visits to Belarus and Turkiye. The minister's previous visit to Europe took place in January 2022, when he traveled to Geneva to meet with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

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⚡️The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost over 125 thousand people and 16 thousand units of various weapons in six months of the so-called counter-offensive, the Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu said.

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