The suspected attacks against the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah are the latest in a series of covert operations that Israel’s government refuses to acknowledge but which are alleged to have been carried out by Israeli operatives.

Munich massacre response

Israel’s alleged history of planting explosives in telecommunication devices goes back as far as 1972, as part of its revenge for the killing of 11 Israelis, including athletes, at the Munich Olympics, which was carried out by the Palestinian militant group Black September.

In response, Israel launched “Operation Wrath of God” and spent years tracking down those involved in the Munich Massacre.

Mahmoud Hamshari, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) representative in Paris, was among those targeted. Unidentified operatives reported to be linked to Israeli intelligence broke into his home and planted a bomb in his phone, before another person – posing as an Italian journalist – arranged a telephone interview with Hamshari. When he picked up the call and identified himself, the bomb was activated remotely.

The ‘engineer’

Tuesday’s attacks reminded many of the 1996 killing of Yahya Ayyash, Hamas’ chief bombmaker known as “the engineer,” responsible for killing dozens of Israelis.

Ayyash was killed in Gaza after his cell phone, which had been packed with 50 grams (1.76 ounces) of explosives, blew up near his head. After his killing, dozens of Israelis were killed in four retaliatory suicide bombings.

Iranian nuclear scientists

Since 2010, five Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in foreign-linked assassinations, as Israel tries to prevent its greatest adversary from developing nuclear weapons. In August 2015, at the height of the assassinations, then-Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon cryptically told the German magazine Der Spiegel that he could not be held responsible “for the life expectancy of Iranian scientists.”

Experts believe Israel and the United States were responsible for deploying the complex computer virus called Stuxnet that destroyed centrifuges at an Iranian nuclear facility in 2010.

Iranian officials have said they believe the cyberattack, which targeted centrifuges including those at the Natanz and Bushehr nuclear plants, originated in Israel and the United States, but neither country has commented on the malware’s origin. Notably, Stuxnet was one of the first times a cyberattack had a manifestation outside cyberspace, causing the centrifuges to spin out of control unnoticed. The pager attack is seemingly another instance of a cyberattack causing a physical consequence, unlike stealing money from a bank account or taking down a website.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was Iran’s chief nuclear scientist, was assassinated east of Tehran in 2020 by a remote-controlled machine gun operating out of a nearby Nissan. Iranian officials said the weapon had used artificial intelligence and facial recognition to detect Fakhrizadeh and open fire, before the car, reportedly packed with explosives, self-destructed.

Top Iranian officials blamed Israel for the assassination. Israel did not comment.

Human intelligence

While many of these assassinations have a sci-fi aspect, experts stressed that each operation requires high levels of human intelligence that raised questions about the security protocols of Israel’s adversaries. After Fakhrizadeh’s assassination, intelligence analysts stressed that a country or actor would still have had to smuggle in specialist equipment to stage the operation.

After this week’s events, some speculated that the explosions could have been caused by an Israeli cybersecurity breach that caused the lithium batteries in the pagers to overheat and detonate.

Kennedy said it was more likely that Israel had human operatives in Hezbollah who were able to intercept the supply chain and tamper with the devices. “The pagers would have been implanted with explosives and likely only to detonate when a certain message was received,” he said.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that Israel had hidden explosives inside a batch of pagers ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo and destined for Hezbollah, and that a switch was embedded to detonate them remotely, according to unnamed American and other officials briefed on the operation.

The Iranian government and Hamas say Israel carried out the assassination. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.

A Thai woman has been rescued by police after being strangled by a python for more than two hours.

The python then wrapped itself around her until she fell to the ground. She struggled to free herself from the snake’s tightening coils for two hours without success, according to the police.

The woman cried out for help, but no one answered initially. Eventually, one of her neighbors heard her distressed calls and sought assistance from police.

In footage filmed by police, Arom was seen sitting on the floor of a tiny dark room, trapped in the grip of the python, which had wrapped itself around her waist.

It took rescuers about 30 minutes to free her, after which she was sent to the hospital for treatment, according to the police.

The snake escaped afterward, police said, adding: “We couldn’t catch it.”

Thailand is home to 250 snake species, including three varieties of pythons — the reticulated, Burmese and Blood — according to Thai National Parks.

Pythons are not venomous, but they kill by suffocation, coiling themselves around their prey and squeezing tight to constrict blood flow before swallowing their victims whole.

According to Thailand’s National Health Security office, some 12,000 people were treated for venomous snake and animal bites in the country last year. Twenty-six people died from snake bites during that period, official figures show.

The attack on Arom is the second such incident in the country to attract global attention in recent weeks. Last month, a man had his testiclebitten by a python while sitting in the bathroom.

He managed to survive the encounter byhitting the snake with a cleaning brush before calling a security guard to help remove it, according to local media.

Ukraine’s electricity supply risks “severe disruptions” this winter, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned, urging Kyiv’s allies to help address the country’s energy security.

Russia has repeatedly attacked Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with missiles and drones since its full-scale invasion in February 2022, but its bombardments have intensified recently, leaving the country in a precarious position as colder weather approaches.

“Ukraine’s energy system has made it through the past two winters thanks to the resilience, courage and ingenuity of its people and strong solidarity from its international partners,” IEA executive director Fatih Birol said in a statement Thursday.

“But this winter will be, by far, its sternest test yet.”

Last month, Russia launched one of its largest aerial attacks on Ukraine since the start of the war, firing more than 200 missiles and drones mainly at energy infrastructure. The onslaught caused power outages in several Ukrainian cities, affecting millions of households. Ukraine has also attacked Russia’s energy infrastructure.

Even before that attack by Moscow, more than two-thirds of Ukraine’s pre-war power generation capacity was offline because it had been destroyed, damaged or occupied by Russian forces, the IEA said in a report.

That has made rolling blackouts, which can also affect water supply, a feature of daily life in Ukraine.

“The situation could become even more dire as the days get shorter and colder,” the agency cautioned. “A yawning gap between available electricity supply and peak demand risks emerging — bringing the threat of even more severe disruptions to hospitals, schools and other key institutions in the depths of winter.”

The IEA estimates that Ukraine’s electricity supply shortfall could reach as much as 6 gigawatts this winter, or almost a third of expected peak demand and equivalent to the peak annual demand of Denmark, for example.

In its report, the agency outlines 10 measures that Ukraine and its allies should implement to tackle risks to the country’s energy supply. These include bolstering the physical and cyber security of critical energy infrastructure, expediting delivery of equipment and spare parts for repairs, investing in energy efficiency and increasing the capacity to import electricity and natural gas from the European Union.

But, according to the report, effective air defense is “by far the most important” measure to safeguard the minimum level of energy services in Ukraine through the coming months.

Help from frozen Russian assets

To help Ukraine through the upcoming winter, the EU will disburse €160 million ($179 million) — including €60 million ($67 million) in humanitarian aid for shelters and heaters, and €100 million ($112 million) for repair works and renewable energy, with the larger amount flowing from the proceeds of frozen Russian assets.

“It is only right that Russia pays for the destruction it caused,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters Thursday. She also noted that the EU had contributed at least €2 billion ($2.2 billion) toward Ukraine’s energy system since Russia’s full-scale invasion began.

Work currently underway to repair Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and connect its electricity grid to the rest of Europe will cover more than 25% of the country’s energy needs this winter, according to the president of the EU’s executive arm.

In one example of such efforts, a thermal power plant in Lithuania is being dismantled and shipped to Ukraine where it will be reassembled. The EU has also dispatched solar panels to 21 hospitals in the country, eight of which will be “fully equipped” by the winter, she said.

The high-end London department store, Harrods, said Thursday that it is “utterly appalled” by allegations of abuse – including rape – perpetrated by its former owner, the late billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed.

More than 20 female ex-Harrods employees have accused Al Fayed, who died last year at age 94, of sexually assaulting them, according to an in-depth BBC investigation. One said she was assaulted when she was 15 and Al Fayed was 79. Harrods acknowledged that Al Fayed was “intent on abusing his power wherever he operated.”

The alleged assaults are said to have taken place at a wide range of locations, including Al Fayed’s luxury apartment in London, the Ritz hotel in Paris, which Al Fayed owned, and a Parisian villa that Al Fayed rented called Villa Windsor, known for being the main residence of the Duke of Windsor, a former British king, and his wife, for decades.

Al Fayed’s son, Dodi Fayed, died in 1997 along with Princess Diana in a high-speed car crash in Paris.

Former Harrods employees told the BBC that Al Fayed’s treatment of women was known throughout the department store, with one former department manager saying that it “wasn’t even a secret.”

“I knew and I think, if I knew, everybody knew. Anyone who says they didn’t they’re lying,” the former department manager Tony Leeming said.

In 2008, Al Fayed denied allegations of sexual assault on a girl under the age of 16. Police said the alleged assault took place at a business address in central London.

Harrods apologized to victims in a statement, adding that “the Harrods of today is a very different organization to the one owned and controlled by Al Fayed between 1985 and 2010.”

“We are utterly appalled by the allegations of abuse perpetrated by Mohamed Al Fayed,” the company said. “These were the actions of an individual who was intent on abusing his power wherever he operated and we condemn them in the strongest terms. We also acknowledge that during this time as a business we failed our employees who were his victims and for this we sincerely apologize.”

Harrods said that last year “new information came to light” about historic allegations of sexual abuse perpetrated by Al Fayed. Since then, it said, “it has been our priority to settle claims in the quickest way possible, avoiding lengthy legal proceedings for the women involved. This process is still available for any current or former Harrods employees.”

Reactions to the proposal have widely been that it will be a non-starter for Hamas, which has not commented on it.

It is unclear whether the proposal addresses the presence of Israeli troops in Gaza after a ceasefire and hostage deal – a key sticking point in stalled negotiations. And the idea that Sinwar would leave Gaza is seen as unlikely by American officials.

A separate Israeli source familiar with the negotiations said the proposal was not being discussed among the Israeli negotiating team as a basis for new negotiations with Hamas, which have been at a standstill for weeks now.

The Hostages Families Forum, which has been scathing about Netanyahu’s approach to hostage negotiations, welcomed the proposal.

“A one-shot deal that includes all 101 hostages is the wish of all Israeli citizens in general and the families of the hostages in particular,” the organization said in a statement. “The Prime Minister must lead with courage, determination and speed the proposal he formulated.

“We must put an end to almost a year of neglect.”

Talks stall

The proposal comes at a time when the prospects for a deal have never been lower. The families of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza have expressed dismay at escalating tensions with Hezbollah in Lebanon, saying that a widescale war there would only lower the chances of a hostage deal.

Hirsh met early last week with Roger Carstens, the US special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, to discuss negotiations to free the hostages held in Gaza.

The notion of facilitating Sinwar’s exile has been discussed at various points in the negotiations as part of the later stages of an eventual ceasefire agreement, although there is no indication that Sinwar would agree to such terms.

“Gaza is Sinwar’s sea and he is a fish. A fish does not come out of the sea willingly.”

Nonetheless, if the agreement included the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, it would come “close to a deal that Hamas is ready for,” Baskin added.

Previously, when the idea was raised of allowing top Hamas leaders like Sinwar to leave Gaza as part of a ceasefire agreement, American officials said they thought it was unlikely Sinwar would agree. They cited Israel’s assassinations of Hamas leaders in foreign capitals, and said they believed Sinwar would prefer to die fighting Israel than to leave Gaza.

Moscow — Vladislav Bakalchuk, the estranged husband of Russia’s richest woman, was arrested and charged with murder Thursday, his lawyers said, after a deadly shootout at the Moscow office of Russia’s largest online retailer.

Two people were killed in a shooting Wednesday just a few blocks away from the Kremlin at the Wildberries office, as a dispute over the company’s future took a violent turn. Seven others were wounded, including police officers.

Vladislav and his wife Tatyana Bakalchuk, who filed for divorce in July, have been embroiled in a bitter public tussle since Wildberries announced plans to merge with outdoor advertising firm Russ Group in June.

Tatyana founded Wildberries, Russia’s answer to Amazon, in 2004, growing it from an online clothes reseller into a major marketplace for all kinds of goods.

Both parties blamed each other for Wednesday’s shooting.

Vladislav said he had arrived for a pre-arranged meeting and that it was staff at the office who fired the first shots. Tatyana said Vladislav and his colleagues had tried to seize the office and that there was no meeting scheduled.

Vladislav’s lawyers said he had been arrested and charged with murder and the attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, something they said was a “blatant and unprecedented violation” of their client’s rights.

The business dispute is centered around the merger that formed RVB, a new company with Robert Mirzoyan as CEO, which reduced Tatyana’s overall stake to around 65% in RVB from 99% in Wildberries.

Vladislav at the time said his wife was being “manipulated.” Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who stepped in to support Vladislav, called the merger an “asset grab.”

Tatyana has dismissed both of those allegations. The Kremlin said the merger had won President Vladimir Putin’s backing but he would not interfere with its progress.

In a tearful video message posted on Telegram early Thursday, Tatyana said: “Vladislav, what are you doing? How will you look into the eyes of your parents and our children? How could you bring the situation to such absurdity?”

The affair harks back to the 1990s, when deadly corporate turf battles were commonplace in Russia as huge swathes of property were redistributed after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Hezbollah is on the backfoot. The first sign of that was the absence of a public gathering – typically consisting of high-level party officials and supporters – to watch the militant group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah deliver a televised speech on Thursday.

The second sign was that Nasrallah’s address – his first since two waves of attacks detonated thousands of Hezbollah wireless devices earlier this week – was very possibly pre-recorded.

The leader of the powerful militant group has not delivered a speech in person since the start of Lebanon’s last all-out war with Israel in 2006. But he will often make a point of proving that his broadcasts are being carried by a live transmission. In his speech last month, for example, Nasrallah referenced two sonic booms caused by Israeli jets that had broken the sound barrier over Beirut. These happened in the seconds leading up to the start of his address.

Thursday’s speech was billed as a live transmission, but audiences were given reason to doubt around 20 minutes in, when Israel dropped flares over the Lebanese capital and sent windows shaking with a fresh wave of sonic booms. The roar reverberated throughout the city yet the Beirut-based militant leader neither flinched nor referenced the incident during his speech.

Israel’s fighter jets seemed intent to underscore the gains of Tuesday and Wednesday’s attacks on Hezbollah’s wireless devices: the group had been driven deeper underground.

“Without a doubt, we have suffered a major blow,” said Nasrallah in his speech on Thursday. “(It is) unprecedented in the history of the resistance in Lebanon at least, unprecedented in the history of Lebanon, and it may be unprecedented in the history of the conflict with the Israeli enemy across the entire region.”

Thousands of small explosions swept through the pockets and homes of Hezbollah members this week, targeting pagers on Tuesday, and then walkie-talkies on Wednesday; in all, the blasts killed at least 37, including some children, and injured nearly 3000. The attack, dystopian in its style and scale, blindsided the group that had opted for analogue technologies after forgoing cell phones to avoid Israeli infiltration.

Nasrallah vowed a “reckoning” but was scant on the details. The attack “will be met with a reckoning and fair punishment in ways that they expect and don’t expect,” he said.

But he continued with an unmistakably subdued tone. “However, because this battle was carried out by invisible faces, you must allow me to change my style,” he said.

“The reckoning will come. Its nature, scope, when and where … that’s something we will definitely keep to ourselves,” he added. “Within the tightest circle, even within ourselves, because we are in the most precise, sensitive and deeply significant part of the battle.”

Nasrallah tried to buoy the sober speech by extolling what he described as strategic gains of nearly a year of confrontations with Israeli forces on the Lebanon-Israel border. He also vowed to continue striking Israeli positions until Israel’s offensive in Gaza ends.

“We’ve been saying this for 11 months; we might be repeating ourselves, but this statement comes after these two major blows, after all these martyrs, wounds, and pain,” said Nasrallah. “I say clearly: no matter the sacrifices, consequences, or future possibilities, the resistance in Lebanon will not stop supporting Gaza.”

Responding to Israeli threats of creating a security buffer zone in Lebanon’s southern border area, Nasrallah struck a defiant tone, “welcoming” Israeli troops into the territory where he said Hezbollah militants would swiftly seize the opportunity to attack them.

Meanwhile in Lebanon, people are continuing to reel from the attacks that overwhelmed hospitals with wounded people, mostly with deep flesh wounds to the eyes and face.

Hezbollah will likely recede further into the shadows and regroup about their methods. During the 2006 war, the militant group’s Al-Manar television was on air for the duration of the 34-day conflict, despite Israel’s heavy-handed bombing campaign.

Live broadcasts have long been hailed by Hezbollah as a symbol of defiance against the long arm of Israeli spyware, and their ability to keep broadcasting against the odds has been a point of pride for the group – lending it a mythical quality among its Lebanese constituents and even some of its detractors.

But this week’s attacks on wireless devices punctured that aura. Hezbollah – which literally translates into Party of God – has been rattled, forced to contend with the new reality that it is more exposed than it has ever believed itself to be.

Karachi, Pakistan — Police in southern Pakistan shot dead a blasphemy suspect during an alleged shootout with armed men, officials said Thursday, the second such apparent extra-judicial killing in a week, drawing condemnation from human rights groups.

Police identified the slain man as Shah Nawaz, a doctor in Umerkot district, Sindh province, who had gone into hiding two days ago after being accused of insulting Islam’s prophet Mohammed and sharing blasphemous content on social media.

Local police chief Niaz Khoso said Nawaz was “killed just by chance” on Wednesday night when officers signaled two men riding on a motorcycle to stop in Mirpur Khas, a city in Sindh.

He said instead of stopping, the men opened fire and tried to flee, prompting police to return fire. One of the suspects fled on the motorcycle, while the other was killed, he said.

Khoso claimed it was only after the shootout that officers learned the slain man was the doctor being sought by them for the alleged blasphemy.

Videos circulating on social media showed local clerics throwing rose petals at police and praising officers for killing the blasphemy suspect. There was no immediate clarification from the Sindh government about the circumstances in which the suspect was killed.

The killing of Nawaz drew strong condemnation from the country’s independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, or HRCH, which said it was “gravely concerned by the alleged extrajudicial killing of two people accused of blasphemy.”

“This pattern of violence in cases of blasphemy, in which law enforcement personnel are allegedly involved, is an alarming trend,” it said in a statement. HRCP also asked the government to conduct an independent inquiry to ascertain who was responsible for Nawaz’s death and ensure those responsible for it were punished.

The killing of Nawaz in Mirpur Khas came a day after Islamists in a nearby city, Umerkot, staged a protest demanding his arrest. The mob also burned Nawaz’s clinic on Wednesday, officials said.

The latest killing comes a week after an officer opened fire inside a police station in the southwestern city of Quetta, fatally wounding Syed Khan, another suspect held on accusations of blasphemy. Khan was arrested Wednesday after officers rescued him from an enraged mob that claimed he had insulted Islam’s prophet.

But he was killed by a police officer, Mohammad Khurram, who was quickly arrested.

However, the tribe and the family of the slain man said they pardoned the officer, saying Khan hurt the sentiments of Muslims by insulting the prophet Mohammed.

Though killings of blasphemy suspects by mobs are common, the extra-judicial killings by police are rare in Pakistan, where accusations of blasphemy — sometimes even just rumors — often spark rioting and rampage by mobs that can escalate into killings.

Under Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws, anyone found guilty of insulting Islam or Islamic religious figures can be sentenced to death — though authorities have yet to carry out a death sentence for blasphemy.

Pakistan has witnessed a surge in attacks on blasphemy suspects in recent years.

In June, a mob broke into a police station in the northwestern town of Madyan, snatched a detainee who was a tourist, and then killed him over allegations that he had desecrated Islam’s holy book.

Last year, a mob in Punjab province attacked churches and homes of Christians after claiming they saw a local Christian and his friend desecrating pages from a Quran. The attack in the district of Jaranwala drew nationwide condemnation, but Christians say the men linked to the violence are yet to be put on trial.