Russia has captured the key eastern Ukrainian town of Vuhledar, ending months of resistance and underscoring the scale of Kyiv’s challenge as it heads into its third wartime winter.

Ukraine’s military confirmed its withdrawal from Vuhledar Wednesday, noting Russia had managed to send reserves on the flanks, leading to the “threat of encirclement.” The decision to withdraw, it said, was taken “to save personnel and military equipment.”

A key goal of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is to take the whole of the eastern Donbas region. Russia has been making incremental gains this year in the east and the loss comes as Ukraine’s President Zelensky returns from a meeting with US President Joe Biden without his key demands met.

Vuhledar, a town built around a coal mine (its name comes from the Ukrainian word for coal), sits some 50km (30 miles) south of Pokrovsk, viewed for the past few months as Russia’s main nexus of attack in the east.

While not a transport and logistics hub like Pokrovsk, Vuhledar was heavily fortified and viewed as a crucial bastion at the intersection of Ukraine’s eastern and southern fronts. One prominent Russian war blogger Boris Rozhin said this made the victory “operational, if not operational-strategic.”

“The fact is that this ‘balcony’ [an apparent reference to Vuhledar’s elevated position] was located at the junction of the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk fronts posed a constant threat to the grouping that covered the approaches to Mariupol,” he noted, referring to the southern Ukrainian city that has been in Russian hands since 2022.

Just like Avdiivka, another strategic eastern town which fell in February, Vuhledar is a victim, not of Russian strategic prowess, but brute force attrition.

For two years Ukraine had put up a formidable defense there, as Russia tried and failed several times to take the town.

In February 2023, an attempted Russian assault on Vuhledar led to an uproar among pro-Kremlin military bloggers, as hundreds of Russian troops advanced right into the crosshairs of Ukrainian artillery, launched from the town’s high-rise apartment blocks.

Another Russian blogger, Voenkor Kotenok, alluded to this bittersweet victory Tuesday.

“It’s painful, Vuhledar or rather those who settled there, drank a lot of blood,” he said.

Now, it is Ukraine that will face the difficult questions.

A fresh blow to Ukraine

The fact that Russia was able to bring in sufficient reserves to encircle the town underscores the manpower advantage it still has, four months after Ukraine’s mobilisation law came into force.

“I confidently said that one would have to be a moron to allow our guys to be surrounded, but someone did,” wrote Stanislav Buniatov, a Ukrainian soldier and blogger, in a Telegram post. He claimed soldiers ended up withdrawing from Vuhledar in small groups, taking fire from Russian drones, and that the wounded were left “to be shot by the enemy.”

The timing of this loss will also be keenly felt in Kyiv.

It comes less than two months after Ukraine expanded the battlefield to Russia’s Kursk region – a move designed to ease the pressure on other fronts and help reverse Ukrainian fortunes after Russia spent the spring and summer gradually advancing in the east and opening a new front in the northern Kharkiv region.

It’s also just days since Zelensky returned from a politically-charged diplomatic blitz in the US with the promise of new aid, but no NATO-style security guarantees or permission to use Western missiles in Russia.

Just a week ago Zelensky told US network ABC that “we are closer to peace than we think.” The loss of Vuhledar means Ukraine now has to fight to stop Russia advancing further west, making the prospect of retaking territory even more remote.

There has also been no let-up in Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, with the International Energy Agency warning that “this winter will be, by far, its sternest test yet.”

In the days after Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, fears ran high of a regional war. The conflict would not be contained in Gaza, the thinking went –  Hezbollah would attack Israel from the north, the Houthis from Yemen, and Iranian proxies from Iraq. Israel would be forced to respond, it would come into direct conflict with Iran, and the wider war would be upon us.

Nearly one year later, all those things have come to pass. A day after Iran launched its largest ever ballistic missile attack on Israel – and as Israeli troops battle Hezbollah fighters on the ground in Lebanon – regional war is effectively here. The big question now is: Will it escalate, or cool?

Israel’s leaders stand at a juncture. When Iran first staged a missile attack in April, in retaliation for an Israeli strike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus, Israel was restrained, striking only an Iranian air defense installation in response.

But Iran’s attack on Tuesday night was unprecedented in its ferocity. Despite some strikes on Israeli bases, damage was minimal, nearly all missiles were intercepted, and one person – a Palestinian man struck by shrapnel in the Israeli-occupied West Bank – was killed.

Iran’s government has “absolutely no interest in a broader war,” government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said Wednesday, adding that the country restrained itself after the assassination in July of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran “despite demands” from its people to respond.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ridden a string of assassinations around the Middle East to a remarkable political rehabilitation. Israel’s bombing campaign in Lebanon has devastated the civilian population – displacing more than 1 million people – but has achieved a long-coveted goal of at least temporarily neutering a persistent threat to the north. Why not seize the moment to weaken the patron state itself, Iran?

“The elimination of Nasrallah is a necessary condition in achieving the objectives we have set: Returning the residents of the north safely to their homes and changing the balance of power in the region for years,” Netanyahu said in the wake of a massive strike in Beirut last month that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Two days later, he addressed Iranians themselves, saying, “when Iran is finally free, and that moment will come a lot sooner than people think, everything will be different.”

His stance is in tune with Israeli public opinion too. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is leading the charge pushing for a maximalist response to Tehran’s attack, proposing that Israel bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, which the US and others say are responsible for a weapons program, a charge Iran has long denied.

Iran’s two arms to fight Israel – Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon – “are temporarily paralyzed,” Bennett said. “So it’s like a boxer out in the ring without arms for the next few minutes. Now is the time that we can attack, because Iran is fully vulnerable.”

That response, of course, carries with it the danger of the unknown. Hezbollah is certainly weakened, but no one knows for certain how much capacity it still has. The US government believes that Iran could build a bomb in just weeks once it decides to do so. Short of the nuclear option, Tehran has other ways of applying further pressure on Israel and its allies. Escalating responses could spiral completely out of anyone’s control and drag allies into the fight.

The former senior Israeli military official explained that “there are always schools of thought.” Bennett’s, according to the official, is that “it’s time to neutralize the whole axis of evil. We started with Hamas, then Hezbollah. It is now the time for Iran, maybe Syria.”

The former official said they had no direct knowledge of Israel’s plans but requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

“Last night it seemed to me like it was going to be an overwhelming response,” they said. “This morning, I am getting messages that they are taking the time to think.”

A more restrained response would see Israel target a military facility, as Iran did on Tuesday in Israel.

“You could hit infrastructure, very similar to what happened in Yemen,” the former official, referring to an Israeli bombing campaign on the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeidah on Sunday. “National export of oil, or anything else.”

The unknown factor is how far Israel’s most important ally – the United States – will go in supporting its response.

“We have made clear that there will be consequences — severe consequences — for this attack, and we will work with Israel to make that the case,” US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday. “It is too early for me to tell you anything publicly in terms of our assessment or in terms of what our expectations are of the Israelis or the advice that we would give them.”

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (AP) — The Dominican Republic announced Wednesday that it would start massive deportations of Haitians living illegally in the country, expelling up to 10,000 of them a week.

Government spokesman Homero Figueroa told reporters that the government took the decision after noticing an “excess” of Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

Figueroa said officials have seen an increase in Haitian migrants as a UN-backed mission in Haiti to fight gang violence flounders. He said authorities also agreed to strengthen border surveillance and control, but he did not provide details.

Last year, the Dominican Republic deported more than 174,000 people it says are Haitians, and in the first half of the year, it has expelled at least 67,000 more.

Activists have long criticized the administration of President Luis Abinader for what they say are ongoing human rights violations of Haitians and those of Haitian descent born in the Dominican Republic. Abinader has denied any mistreatment.

Wednesday’s announcement comes a week after Abinader announced at the UN General Assembly that he would take “drastic measures” if the mission in Haiti fails. It is led by nearly 400 police officers from Kenya, backed by nearly two dozen police and soldiers from Jamaica and two senior military officers from Belize. The US has warned that the mission lacks personnel and funding as it pushes for a UN peacekeeping mission instead.

Gangs in Haiti control 80% of the Port-au-Prince capital, and the violence has left nearly 700,000 Haitians homeless in recent years, while thousands of others have fled the country.

An Israeli military reservist who survived the Nova festival massacre has been hailed as a “hero” by the country’s security minister, for confronting two gunmen behind Tuesday’s shooting and stabbing attack in Tel Aviv.

Seven people were killed and 16 wounded in the attack on Jerusalem Boulevard in Jaffa, a port neighborhood in southern Tel Aviv, according to Israeli Police.

The incident happened just minutes before Iran launched a barrage of about 200 ballistic missiles at Israel, its largest-ever such attack, sending sirens blaring across the country and residents running to bomb shelters.

Video posted online showed Lev Kreitman, who served six months as a reservist with the Israeli military in Gaza, firing a gun at an unknown target before running away. The footage was filmed from a nearby building in Jaffa and appears to show Kreitman wearing a pink shirt, white shorts and flip flops.

In another video, Kreitman was seen walking in the background among Israeli soldiers who were at the scene of the attack.

Recalling Tuesday’s incident, he recalled how he spotted what he described as “two terrorists,” one moving toward him.

“The other goes somewhere else, runs somewhere else, and I’m here, right where we’re standing, I surprised him from the side, shoot,” Kreitman said, adding he understood straight away it was an attack.

“I tried to do my best in the very crazy situation, amid alarms, missiles, and interceptions in the sky,” he said.

Kreitman survived the Hamas attack on the Nova music festival on October 7. The trance festival in southern Israel’s Negev Desert was one target of the militant group’s rampage in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 others kidnapped and taken to Gaza.

Israel’s ensuing war against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 people, created a humanitarian catastrophe and left much of the Palestinian enclave in ruins.

Police said Wednesday that two gunmen had begun their “killing spree” by opening fire on passengers aboard a light rail car that had stopped at a station in Jaffa. They had then continued their attack on foot on Jerusalem Boulevard, according to police.

The attackers were stopped by security forces and civilians who used personal guns, police added. “They had an M-16 type weapon, cartridges and a knife in their possession,” police said in a statement.

Medics said they treated victims at several sites on Jerusalem Boulevard, including near train tracks, in the street, at a synagogue and in a butcher’s shop. The injured were taken to hospitals while air-raid alarms sounded in the region and throughout Israel.

Israeli authorities identified the gunmen as Muhammad Mask, 19, who was killed at the scene, and Ahmed Himoni, 25, who was severely injured. Police said the pair were residents of Hebron, a Palestinian city in the occupied West Bank.

Hamas later claimed responsibility for the attack.

Following the incident, the Israel Security Agency and IDF forces arrested a number of suspects accused of being involved in assisting the gunmen in purchasing weapons and entering Israel, according to police.

In a post on X, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called Kreitman a “hero who neutralized the attack” in Jaffa and acted “bravely” in the October 7 attack as he “saved many people.” Ben-Gvir called for more Israelis to arm themselves.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned Tuesday’s attack and sent condolences to the families of those who were killed.

The 47-year-old German national, who has been identified by local media as Christian Brueckner, is on trial at the Braunschweig state court in northern Germany over offenses he is alleged to have committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.

Closing arguments in the trial that opened in February started on Wednesday. Prosecutor Ute Lindemann argued that he should be convicted of two counts of rape and two of sexual abuse, and should be kept in preventive detention after he has served a 15-year sentence, German news agency dpa reported. Lindemann said he should be acquitted of a third count of rape.

The defense is expected to make its case on Monday, and a verdict could follow on Tuesday.

The suspect hasn’t been charged in the McCann case, in which he is under investigation on suspicion of murder. He spent many years in Portugal, including in the resort of Praia da Luz around the time of Madeleine’s disappearance there in 2007. He has denied any involvement in her disappearance.

He is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for a rape he committed in Portugal in 2005.

Brueckner’s lawyer said in February that his client wouldn’t respond to the charges, but that he expected an acquittal. There are no formal pleas in the German legal system and there is no obligation for defendants to respond.

In July, the court lifted an arrest warrant in the cases at stake in the current trial, citing a lack of “urgent suspicion” against the defendant. But he has remained behind bars because of the sentence he is currently serving.

A North Korean defector who escaped to the South more than a decade ago was detained after attempting to cross back into North Korea on a stolen bus, police said.

The area is heavily guarded by military forces due to its proximity to the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, one of the most heavily fortified borders in the world.

Since moving to South Korea in 2011, the 35-year-old man had been working day-to-day jobs without a stable home.

He told police he missed his family back in North Korea.

“However, he has failed to settle down in the South and has been missing his family in North Korea,” they said.

The man’s case is rare. More than 34,000 North Korean defectors have arrived in South Korea since fighting ended in the Korean War in 1953, according to official data.

In the past decade, roughly 30 have returned home.

Defectors and advocates say the fact that some North Korean defectors try to return home points to how difficult it can be for them to assimilate into South Korean society.

The defector, who has not been named by authorities, is being investigated for possible charges including vehicle theft, driving without a proper license, violation of military base protection, and National Security Law violation, police said.

CCTV footage released by local police showed a man wearing shorts and a hoodie wandering around parked buses. He is seen checking a couple of buses before the lights of one turn on. Shortly after, he drives the bus away.

This is not the first time a North Korean defector has attempted to cross the bridge to return to their home country, according to police.

In recent years, there have been at least three other similar failed attempts, though this is the first one involving a stolen bus.

In September 2021, a woman in her 60s tried to cross the same bridge on foot but was apprehended.

In August 2018, a man in his 30s drove a car across the bridge, passing checkpoints, but was apprehended by forces in the Joint Security Area – the section of the DMZ where North and South Korean forces stand face to face.

The man had previously crossed the border into North Korea via China but was returned by North Korean authorities.

Two people have died after a typhoon slammed into southwestern Taiwan, deluging the major port city of Kaohsiung with heavy rain and forcing the island to shut down for a second day.

With winds of up to 135 kilometers per hour (85 miles per hour), Typhoon Krathon made landfall along southern Taiwan shortly after noon on Thursday, the equivalent of a Category 1 Atlantic hurricane.

Two people died and 219 injuries have been reported, according to Taiwan’s Central Emergency Operations Center, adding that one person is also missing.

One was a 66-year-old driver hit by falling rocks. The other was a 70-year-old man who fell while trimming a tree during the typhoon, according to the center.

For several hours before making landfall, Krathon moved slowly along the southern coast. In previous days it had hovered between Taiwan and the Philippines as a Category 4 equivalent, with Taiwan President Lai Ching-te warning of “catastrophic damage.”

While the storm has since weakened, it has battered Taiwan with a deluge, forcing the closure of schools and the stock market earlier this week. Hundreds of flights have been suspended, and as of 3 p.m. close to 100,000 households faced power outages, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

A wide swath of 250-500 mm (10-20 inches) with isolated totals over a meter (40 inches) have occurred from Krathon. Additional rainfall of 250 – 500 mm (10-20 inches) are possible from Krathon as it meanders over and near Taiwan.

Schools and offices were once again closed across Taiwan on Thursday. More than 38,000 Taiwanese soldiers are on standby to help in case of emergencies.

Kaohsiung officials warned of the impact of Krathon’s slow pace. “If it passes very slowly, and even stops at Kaohsiung and the Tainan areas, it could lengthen its damage on Kaohsiung,” mayor Chen Chi-mai told reporters on Thursday.

“Please avoid going out,” he added.

University student Liao Shian-rong, 24, told Reuters that he traveled from Taipei to Kaohsiung to chase the storm, calling it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“We are being hit by the eyewall now and will enter the eye soon,” he said, filming the storm from a hotel lobby.

Footage posted by users on social media platform Threads showed fierce winds had toppled motorcycles and scaffolding structures, ripping off roofs.

The storm, known in the Philippines as Julien, has already lashed that country’s northernmost islands, prompting evacuations and severe flooding in coastal communities.

Nearly 23,000 families in three regions have been affected by the storm, the Philippines’ national disaster agency said Tuesday, according to the Philippine News Agency.

International concern is growing over the arrest of a prominent Cambodian journalist who helped expose human trafficking fueling online scam centers, with several governments and rights groups calling for his immediate release.

Mech Dara was arrested Monday by Cambodian police and charged with incitement “to provoke serious social chaos” over social media posts he made last month about operations at a rock quarry, according to a statement from the Phnom Penh Municipal Court in the country’s capital. He could face two years in prison for each count.

The award-winning reporter is renowned for his investigations exposing corruption, environmental destruction and human trafficking in a country that heavily restricts press freedom. Cambodian NGO LICADHO said he has consistently pushed for accountability and justice.

In 2023, Mech Dara won the US State Department’s TIP Hero Award for his work uncovering the multi-billion-dollar illegal scam center industry in Cambodia. Images show him standing alongside US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who presented the award.

In a statement on X, the US Embassy in Cambodia said “we are deeply troubled by the arrest of Mech Dara and call for his release.” The embassy called the reporter a “leading voice against human trafficking and online scams” and an “advocate for freedom of expression-guaranteed in the constitution.”

The USAID Cambodia Counter Trafficking in Persons project said Mech Dara “is the embodiment of the ideals of a free society in Cambodia” and that it “stands publicly in its support for this great person and anti-trafficking hero.”

The European Union and Australia also shared concerns over his arrest. “All Cambodians should be able to exercise their right to freedom of expression without the fear of arrest and prosecution,” the Australian embassy in Cambodia said.

A group of 46 Cambodian media and civil society organizations called for Mech Dara’s immediate release, saying his arrest “is a clear attempt to intimidate and silence him and other journalists.”

Human rights groups have said charges of incitement are commonly used by Cambodian authorities against human rights defenders, activists, journalists and government critics.

Southeast Asia’s scam operations

A major focus of Mech Dara’s work is Cambodia’s role at the center of a scamming epidemic in Southeast Asia that has ensnared hundreds of thousands of victims and raised global security concerns from bodies like the US State Department and the United Nations.

Many people across Asia are duped into seemingly legitimate jobs around the region and are then trafficked into scam compounds where they face serious abuse, including forced labor, arbitrary detention, degrading treatment or torture – often with minimal or no help from local authorities.

Forming the epicenter of this network is Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos, according to the US Institute of Peace and law enforcement bodies. The UN says 100,000 people could be held in compounds across Cambodia with another 120,000 people held in Myanmar in conditions that amount to modern slavery.

From these compounds, the mainly Chinese-run transnational criminal gangs run lucrative online operations ranging from illegal gambling to love scams and crypto fraud. Victims are from around the world, including the US.

In Cambodia, the industry is worth $12.8 billion annually – equivalent to half of the country’s GDP, according to the USIP.

Clampdown on press freedom in Cambodia

Rights groups say Cambodia’s once thriving media sector has been decimated in recent years by former strongman Hun Sen, who ruled the country for more than three decades before handing power to his eldest son Hun Manet in 2022.

Cambodia is ranked 151 out of 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders’ 2024 World Press Freedom Index. Since 2018, independent media outlets have been gutted or forced to close, and censorship, state surveillance, media blackouts and online harassment are rampant.

As a freelancer, Mech Dara worked for several local and international media outlets including Voice of Democracy, which was forced to close last year.

The closure of Cambodia’s last remaining independent media organization was widely condemned as the final blow to press freedom in the country.

“There are so many stories to be told about Cambodia from Cambodia and this extends to the wider region – countries like Myanmar and Vietnam,” he added. “It’s a space that’s getting narrower and narrower and voices are stifled so that the outside world can’t see in.”

In a statement on his arrest, a research director for Amnesty International, Kate Schuetze, said the charges against Mech Dara show “yet again that the Cambodian government will not hesitate to repress journalists.”

“This is the latest step in the new government’s campaign to erase press freedom,” she said.