Lebanon says it was struck by shelling from Syria, after three Syrians were killed in Lebanon, escalating tensions between Beirut and Syria’s new Islamist-led government.

Lebanese villages on the border with Syria were subjected to shelling after three Syrians died in the northern Lebanese town of Qasr, the Lebanese military said on Monday, adding that its forces responded to the attack.

“Contacts continue between the army command and the Syrian authorities to maintain security and stability in the border area,” it said. The Syrian shelling also targeted Qasr, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said.

On Sunday, Syria’s defense ministry accused the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah of kidnapping three Syrian troops from Syrian territory in an ambush, the state news agency SANA reported, saying they were “taken to Lebanese territory and executed on the spot.”

It also said that a photographer and reporter were injured on the Syria-Lebanon border after being struck by a “Hezbollah missile.”

The Syrian defense ministry will take “all necessary measures following this dangerous escalation by Hezbollah,” SANA said.

The Lebanese army said that two Syrians were killed at the border and another died in hospital, and that the three bodies were handed over to Syria.

Hezbollah denied involvement in the border clashes, the Lebanese state news agency NNA reported, saying it “has no connection to any events taking place within Syrian territory.”

In response, Lebanon’s presidency said Monday that tensions on the country’s frontier with Syria “cannot go on.”

“What is happening on the eastern and northeastern borders cannot go on, and we will not accept its continuation,” the presidency said on X, adding that President Joseph Aoun has instructed the military to respond “to the source of fire.”

If confirmed to have been conducted by Syria, the attack on Lebanon would mark rare action by Syria’s new government on one of its neighbors. The country’s leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has repeatedly said he wants to maintain stability with Syria’s neighbors and has so far refrained from responding to repeated Israeli strikes on his country.

The clashes are a sign of growing tensions at the Lebanon-Syria border, northeast of the Beqaa valley, where predominantly Shiite Lebanese villages have seen skirmishes with Syrian soldiers in recent weeks.

Syria’s new government is led by former Sunni-Islamist militants who ousted the regime of Iran-allied Bashar al-Assad late last year. Shiite Hezbollah had intervened in Syria during the country’s civil war to help Assad fight the Sunni militants.

Hungary’s ruling coalition continued its crackdown on the country’s LBGTQ+ community on Monday, as members submitted a bill to parliament that would ban the popular Budapest Pride event and allow authorities to use facial recognition software to identify attendees.

The bill is almost certain to pass, as the ruling coalition has a two-thirds majority in parliament.

The bill would make it an offense to hold or attend events that violate Hungary’s contentious “child protection” legislation, which prohibits the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality to minors under 18.

Attending a prohibited event would carry fines up to 200,000 Hungarian forints ($546), which the state would forward to “child protection.”

The proposal is the latest step against LGBTQ+ people taken by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose government has passed legislation that rights groups and other European politicians have decried as repressive against sexual minorities.

The government portrays itself as a champion of traditional family values and a defender of Christian civilization from what it calls “gender madness,” and argues its policies are designed to protect children from “sexual propaganda.”

Hungary’s “child protection” law was passed in 2021. Aside from banning the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality in content available to minors – including in television, films, advertisements and literature – it also prohibits the mention of LGBTQ+ issues in school education programs, and forbids the public depiction of “gender deviating from sex at birth.”

In a speech in February, Orbán hinted that his government would take steps to ban the Budapest Pride event, which attracts thousands and celebrates the history of the LGBTQ+ movement while asserting the equal rights of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

Budapest Pride is marking its 30th anniversary.

Organizers have called Orbán’s drive to ban the event a restriction of fundamental freedoms of speech and assembly.

Calls were mounting in Serbia on Monday for an independent investigation into reports that security forces used a prohibited sonic weapon on crowds at a huge peaceful anti-corruption rally last weekend, even though authorities vehemently denied it.

Serbian rights groups and opposition officials allege that such a weapon that emits a targeted beam to temporarily incapacitate people was used at the protest Saturday, even though it is banned in Serbia. They said they will file charges with international and domestic courts against those who ordered the attack.

Serbia’s authoritarian and pro-Russian President Aleksandar Vucic again on Monday denied that the crowd-control device was deployed, calling it a “wicked lie” aimed at “destroying Serbia.”

He said he will soon invite the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and also Russia’s Federal Security Service, FSB, to investigate the claims.

“It is important for history to see how they lied,” he said, referring to those who claim the sonic weapon was used.

Serbian officials have indirectly admitted that the police had about two years ago added the crowd control weapon to their arsenal, but insist that it was not used during Saturday’s rally.

In its online petition signed by over half a million people, the opposition Move-Change movement asked the United Nations, Council of Europe as well as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe for an independent investigation “into the use of a sound cannon on March 15 against peaceful protesters in Belgrade.”

The petition demands that the investigation “includes the medical, legal and technical aspects of its impact on health and human rights.”

Former Serbian President Boris Tadic also said that he “will ask for international help to determine the truth about the events that caused grave violation of public safety and endangered health and lives of the Serbian citizens at the protest on Saturday.”

Hundreds of thousands of people descended on Serbia’s capital on Saturday to protest the deaths of 15 people at a railway station canopy collapse on November 1. Almost daily demonstrations that started in response to the tragedy have shaken Vucic’s decade-long firm grip on power, with many blaming the crash on rampant government corruption.

Footage from the rally shows people standing during a 15-minute silence for the rail station victims when a sudden piercing sound triggers panic and a brief stampede. An Associated Press photographer at the scene said people started scrambling for cover, leaving the middle of the downtown street almost empty as they fell over each other.

Those exposed to the weapon experience sharp ear pain, disorientation and panic, security experts say. Prolonged exposure can cause eardrum ruptures and irreversible hearing damage.

Many who say they were in the epicenter of the alleged attack complained on social media about strong headache, nausea and disorientation.

Some security experts have alleged that US-made Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) — a specialized sound-emitting tool capable of delivering high-frequency sound waves over significant distances — was used at the protest. Their claims cannot be independently verified.

Vucic, who says that the university students-led protests are part of a Western ploy to topple him from power, has warned that all those who spread disinformation will be held accountable in courts.

El Salvador’s Cecot mega-prison was notorious long before the Trump administration’s recent decision to deport hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members there.

The Center for Terrorism Confinement, to give it its full name, is considered the largest prison in the Americas – with a capacity of 40,000 inmates – and has been the biggest symbol in the Latin American country’s controversial crackdown on domestic crime.

It is now home to some of the country’s most hardened criminals, including mass murderers and gang members billed as the “worst of the worst” and is notorious for the spartan conditions in which they are kept.

Some 10,000 to 20,000 prisoners are currently thought to be housed there, with the most recent arrivals being the 261 people the Trump administration deported from the US over the weekend – 238 of whom it accused of belonging to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and 23 alleged members of the MS-13 gang.

El Salvador’s leader Nayib Bukele – a strongman president and self-styled “world’s coolest dictator” – offered to house the US deportees in Cecot as part of an unprecedented deal in which the US will pay $6 million dollars in return. The money will help sustain El Salvador’s penitentiary system, which currently costs $200 million a year.

Harsh conditions

Those deported by the US got a taste of the prison’s uncompromising policies as soon as they arrived Sunday morning.

Officers held their heads down to waist-level as they escorted them to the facility in shackles. The new inmates were then forced to kneel while prison guards shaved their hair and shouted commands.

“We are executing to the letter a regiment to which you will submit from this moment on, where prison security personnel will be treated with absolute respect! Is that clear?” one officer shouts at the visibly disturbed inmates in a video shared by the Salvadoran government.

Such brutal introductions have been a hallmark of the prison since it started housing inmates a few years ago.

Images published by the government in 2023 showed some of the first prisoners being transferred to the facility, stripped down to white boxer shorts, with their heads shaved, as they were forced to run into their cells.

Inmates are not allowed visits from family or friends and some of them must face the possibility that they will never be released.

Civil liberties suspended

Cecot houses both convicted criminals and those still going through El Salvador’s court system. Some people have even been locked up without any due process, critics say.

The incarcerations have been part of Bukele’s controversial efforts to stem the high crime rates and gang violence that have plagued the country for years.

In 2022, Bukele, with the support of lawmakers, declared a state of emergency which allowed the government to temporarily suspend constitutional rights, including the right to legal defense provided by the state. The measure was intended to last 30 days but has been extended dozens of times and continues to this day.

In the three years since it was declared, security forces have arrested nearly 87,000 people nationwide, or more than 1% of the Salvadoran population, according to authorities.

The government insists the crackdown has made the country safer, but critics say it has violated people’s rights and resulted in countless cases of wrongful detentions.

Bukele has admitted that some innocent people have been detained by mistake but says several thousand of them have already been released. He argues that the tough measures have been necessary to transform the country from being dubbed the “murder capital of the world” to what he now considers one of the safest on Earth.

Mexican authorities say they have arrested Francisco Javier Román-Bardales, an alleged leader of the MS-13 gang who is on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.

Román-Bardales was arrested on the Teocelo-Baxtla highway in Veracruz, according to a joint statement from the Attorney General, the Ministry of National Defense, and the National Guard.

“He was informed of the reason for his arrest, his legal rights were read to him, and he will be transferred to Mexico City, before the corresponding authority, and subsequently deported to the United States, where he is wanted,” the statement added.

According to the FBI, Román-Bardales was allegedly involved in directing the criminal group’s activities in the United States, Mexico and El Salvador, where he is originally from.

He is also accused of having ordered “numerous acts of violence against civilians and rival gang members, as well as his role in drug distribution and extortion schemes in the United States and El Salvador.”

Román-Bardales has been charged in the US with “conspiracy to provide and conceal material support and resources to terrorists, narco-terrorist conspiracy, racketeering conspiracy and conspiracy to traffic aliens.”

A $250,000 reward had been offered for information leading to his arrest, according to the FBI.

The Trump administration has designated MS-13, which originated in Los Angeles, as a terrorist organization, along with other criminal groups.

Some current and former officials say designating cartels as terrorist groups could potentially lay the groundwork for direct US strikes against the cartels and their drug labs in Mexico.

Gaza’s fragile ceasefire shattered early Tuesday night as Israel carried out deadly strikes across the enclave and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to use “increasing military strength” against Hamas.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli Security Agency said early Tuesday they were “currently conducting extensive strikes” on Hamas targets in Gaza.

“Tonight we returned to fighting in Gaza,” said Defense Minister Israel Katz in a statement.

Hamas official Basem Naim said more than 34 people had been killed by the strikes, and accused Israel of “ending the ceasefire agreement unilaterally.”

In a separate statement, Hamas declared: “Netanyahu and his extremist government have decided to overturn the ceasefire agreement, putting the captives in Gaza at risk of an unknown fate.”

In Gaza City, more than 15 people, including five children, were killed and more than 20 people inured, according to the civil defense’s spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal.

In central Gaza, more than 70 injured people have arrived at the Al-Awda Hospital following strikes on homes in Nuseirat refugee camp, the hospital said.

Netanyahu and Defense Minister Katz ordered the operation, accusing Hamas of “repeatedly” refusing to release hostages and rejecting all offers from United States presidential envoy Steve Witkoff and mediators.

“The IDF is currently attacking targets of the Hamas terrorist organization throughout the Gaza Strip, with the aim of achieving the war goals as determined by the political echelon, including the release of all our hostages — living and dead,” said a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office.

“From now on, Israel will act against Hamas with increasing military strength.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Britain’s King Charles and Queen Camilla are set to visit Pope Francis during their trip to Italy and the Vatican in April despite the pontiff’s ill-health following his hospitalization around a month ago.

The announcement of the royal visit is likely to be read as an indication that the Vatican believes the pope will be out of hospital in the coming weeks.

As part of the four-day state visit, Charles and Camilla are expected to visit the Holy See to join Pope Francis in celebrating Jubilee year – or Holy Year – which takes place every quarter of a century and is focused on forgiveness and reconciliation.

Francis has been in Rome’s Gemelli hospital since mid-February with no timeline for his release.

The royal trip, from April 7 to 10, would be a “historic visit” and a “significant step forward in relations between the Catholic Church and Church of England,” Buckingham Palace said Tuesday.

Despite the turbulent past of the Reformation and King Henry VIII’s break with Rome almost 500 years ago, relations between the Vatican and the British monarchy are today marked by warmth and mutual respect.

The UK and the Holy See have had full diplomatic relations since 1982. As Prince of Wales, Charles visited Vatican City on five occasions.

The King and Queen are expected to attend a service at the Sistine Chapel “focused on the theme of ‘care for creation,’ reflecting Pope Francis’ and His Majesty’s long-standing commitment to nature,” the palace said.

Charles and Francis are both passionate defenders of the environment and champion the importance of interfaith dialogue.

The royal visit was first announced on February 7, just one week before Francis was admitted to hospital with a “respiratory tract infection,” which was later diagnosed as pneumonia.

He has remained in hospital since then, in what is his longest stay since his election as pope 12 years ago.

The pontiff remains in a stable condition but still requires medical treatment, the Vatican press office said Monday, adding that Francis was able to pray and carry out a small amount of work duties.

On Sunday, the Vatican released the first photo of Francis since his hospitalization, showing him at the chapel in Gemelli hospital.

Charles and Camilla’s visit will also be an opportunity to shore up the relationship between Italy and the United Kingdom, with the royal couple carrying out engagements in Rome and Ravenna in the northern Emilia-Romagna region.

Footage of four, rarely-seen snow leopards clambering up snowy cliffs in northern Pakistan has created a frenzy of excitement among conservationists.

Snow leopards are among the world’s most elusive creatures in the wild and it is hard to catch even one on camera, let alone four, with the sighting being celebrated as a success story for Pakistan’s conservation efforts.

Sakhawat Ali, a gamekeeper and photography enthusiast from the remote village of Hushe, captured the footage on March 13 after what he described as “two weeks of tracking their pawprints” through the snow-covered Central Karakoram National Park – close to K2, the world’s second highest mountain.

“In the village we are used to seeing snow leopards but, nobody, not even the elders that I spoke to, have ever seen four snow leopards in one go,” he said.

He spotted the mother first, then started noting additional pawprints. He later “got lucky” sighting the animals together while observing a nearby cliff, through binoculars, from the rooftop of his house. He them scampered out with his camera to film them, from a distance of 200 meters.

Ali said neighbors from his village are celebrating the sighting – even though they have some concerns that their livestock could be in danger.

Snow leopards are currently listed as “vulnerable” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. Known locally as the “ghost of the mountains,” they camouflage easily in their natural habitat of the Karakoram Mountain range in Pakistan’s Gilgit Baltistan region.

Environmental anthropologist Shafqat Hussain says the rocky terrain in the north of Pakistan is perhaps the “best snow leopard habitat in the world.”

They only inhabit high alpine areas of the Himalayas and while their habitat spreads over 12 nations, including China, Bhutan, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Russia, and Mongolia, sightings are exceedingly rare.

The World Wildlife Fund for Nature, Pakistan, said it was optimistic about the sighting but stressed snow leopards remain an endangered species still facing “numerous threats.”

In a statement, it said it’s crucial that local communities “work together to protect and conserve these incredible big cats, ensuring future generations can witness their splendor in the wild.”

According to the United Nation’s Environment Program “human activities and growing livestock herds in some areas have led to the degradation of pastureland and wildlife habitats,” affecting the snow leopards food supplies.

Other threats according to the UNEP include poaching and the fragmentation of the animal’s habitat due to massive new infrastructure projects in addition to climate change – which is “expected to aggravate these existing threats.”

In 2023, Pakistan was ranked as the 5th most vulnerable country to climate change according to the World Bank’s Global Climate Risk Index.