Palestinian civilians in the southern Gazan city of Rafah voiced despair yesterday as Israel dropped fliers urging them to evacuate for their own “safety” ahead of a “limited” military operation.

Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark’s first female prime minister and leader of the Danish Social Democrat Party, has joined the Asian University for Women (AUW) in Bangladesh as a patron.

Israel played down the likelihood of a ceasefire in Gaza yesterday after Hamas said it had accepted a proposal from mediators, even as residents fled the city of Rafah in fear of an Israeli assault.

Columbia, the prestigious New York university at the heart of US campus protests against the Israeli offensive in Gaza, announced yesterday that it has canceled the main ceremony for graduating students next week.

French bakers cooked the world’s longest baguette on Sunday at 140.53 metres (461 ft), reclaiming a record for one of the nation’s best-known emblems taken by Italy for five years.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered nuclear weapons drills near Ukraine, Moscow said yesterday, in response to “threats” from Western officials to deploy Nato troops to Ukraine.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels said yesterday they had exposed a “spy” network aiding the United States and Israel and arrested suspected members of it.

Hamas on Monday agreed to a ceasefire proposal in the seven-month-old war with Israel in Gaza, hours after the Israeli military told residents to evacuate some parts of Rafah, which has been sheltering more than a million displaced people

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday that at least 34,735 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory during almost seven months of war between Israel and Hamas

American campuses -- home to some of the best and most prestigious universities in the world where numerous world leaders in politics and academia have spent their early years -- have a potent history of student movements that lead to drastic change

Israel called on civilians to evacuate parts of Rafah on Monday in what appeared to be preparation for a long-threatened assault on Hamas holdouts in the southern Gaza Strip city where more than a million war-displaced Palestinians have been sheltering

President Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian military to hold nuclear weapons drills involving the navy and troops based near Ukraine, the defence ministry said today

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters today that Israel's Rafah evacuation order ahead of an expected offensive is a "dangerous escalation that will have consequences".

The Biden administration paused a shipment of US-made ammunition to Israel last week amid the latter's ongoing attack on Gaza, but the reasons for doing so were not clear, according to media outlets in the US and Israel

Medics and first responders in Gaza said 16 people were killed in Israeli air strikes in the southern city of Rafah Sunday, hours after Hamas rockets had killed three Israeli soldiers earlier in the day

Israeli authorities raided a Jerusalem hotel room used by Al Jazeera as its office after the government decided to shut down the Qatari-owned TV station's local operations on Sunday, an Israeli official and an Al Jazeera source told Reuters

A Hamas official said Sunday the group's delegation for Gaza truce talks in Cairo was leaving for Qatar, after public disagreement with Israel intensified over demands to end their seven-month war.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Secretary-General Hissein Brahim Taha has called on Member States to redouble efforts to stop Israel's genocide and war crimes against the Palestinian people

Prospects for a Gaza ceasefire appeared slim yesterday as Hamas reiterated its demand for an end to the offensive in exchange for the freeing of hostages, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flatly ruled that out.

Police on Saturday arrested at least 25 pro-Palestinian protesters and cleared an encampment at the University of Virginia, the university said in a statement, as US campuses braced for more turmoil during graduation celebrations.