Despite pledging a “battle without limits” against Israel, Hezbollah’s response to back-to-back Israeli attacks appears to have been carefully calibrated.

Its strike Wednesday that was intercepted near Tel Aviv managed to be both unprecedented and understated. It marked many firsts: The first time Hezbollah launched what it said was a ballistic missile at Israel; the first time a missile had reached near Tel Aviv from Lebanon; and the first time Hassan Nasrallah, the militant group’s leader, made good on his promise to respond to Israeli strikes on Beirut with Hezbollah’s own on Tel Aviv.

But given the strength of Israel’s air defenses, a single missile – even a ballistic one – was always likely to have been shot down.

Why, then, launch just one? As the risk of all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah – and their respective American and Iranian backers – grows each day, the lone shot on Tel Aviv could be taken as both a threat and a cease-and-desist. We have powerful weapons at our disposal, and a powerful friend at our beck and call – don’t try us, Hezbollah seemed to say. The militant group’s gloves are far from fully off – the group has a range of medium and long-range missiles in its arsenal – but Wednesday’s strike appeared to be a signal to indicate how powerful a punch it could pack.

This strike is the latest notch in Hezbollah’s managed escalation as it seeks to respond to an intensive Israeli campaign to force the armed group to cease its daily fire at Israel’s northern-most territory.

It is worth remembering how we got here. Hezbollah joined the fight against Israel out of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza after Hamas’ October 7 attacks against Israel. So far, it has avoided a full-scale war with Israel. Until last week, it had largely limited its involvement to near-daily cross-border strikes that the Israeli military has returned.

The strikes forced more than 60,000 Israelis to flee their homes in the north of the country, but the number of casualties remained relatively low. The Lebanese side of the border was also emptied of its nearly 100,000 residents in Israeli strikes as part of the cross-fire.

But things began to spiral after a rocket attack in the Israeli-occupied Golan heights killed 12 Druze children. Israel accused Hezbollah of firing the rocket, which came from the direction of Lebanon, but Hezbollah has “firmly” denied it was behind the strike.

For Israeli officials, though, the situation had become untenable. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began to pivot from fighting Hamas in Gaza to Hezbollah in Lebanon, backed by bellicose allies on his extreme right.

For almost a year, Israel had waged its war in Gaza with the twin aims of destroying Hamas and returning the hostages it had taken. On September 16, Israel added a new objective: ensuring the safe return of residents from communities along its border with Lebanon to their homes.

Israel’s attacks did not relent. The next day, it launched an airstrike on a multi-story building in a Beirut suburb where a group of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force had met, killing its leader Ibrahim Aqil other high-level figures. This week, another airstrike killed Ibrahim Qubaisi, another senior official who commanded Hezbollah’s missile units.

Reeling from the biggest-ever hits to its military structure, Hezbollah has also discreetly expanded its war aims. It said it launched the ballistic missile Wednesday in support of Palestinians in Gaza and, crucially, in “defense of Lebanon and its people” – an explicit recognition that it is now engaged in a conflict to protect its own territory.

While both sides have refrained from declaring that they are at war with each other, their ramped-up goals may make that moot.

Hezbollah insists there will be no ceasefire in Lebanon until there is one in Gaza. Netanyahu’s government not only insists there will not be a ceasefire in Gaza – its pivot to Lebanon makes the possibility of a deal even more remote.

Where do both sides go from here? Neither has much space to back down.

As international calls to defuse the tensions grow, many Lebanese residents are not waiting to find out whether they will be successful. Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said Israel’s offensive has displaced up to half a million people. Beirut’s streets are emptying, as foreign embassies urge their citizens to flee the country and many Lebanese move even further north.

After years of crises, the growing military conflict is inflicting further despair on Lebanon’s increasingly exhausted population. The fact that neither Hezbollah nor the Lebanese authorities have called this a war is little consolation for those in throes of bombardment and mass displacement.

The first-ever visit by a president of the United Arab Emirates to the White House took place this week as Israel’s war in Gaza expanded to Lebanon. That war, however, was not at the top of the agenda in talks with US officials.

US President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and UAE president Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed instead prioritized their discussions around a set of technological and economic deals between both countries centered around artificial intelligence (AI) and the infrastructure needed to develop the growing technology.

“The UAE is a nation of trailblazers that’s always looking to the future – always making big bets… In fact, it’s a cornerstone of our growing cooperation, in AI, in clean energy, in space, in investing in infrastructure to connect regions,” Biden said in the Oval Office on Monday alongside the UAE president. “Today we honor that legacy in carrying our relationship forward as the UAE will become a major defense partner with the United States.”

Sheikh Mohammed responded that the UAE has “a firm and unwavering commitment to work with the USA for the sake of deepening the strategic partnership between our two nations”

The White House said the leaders charted “an ambitious course” to lead global efforts to develop and expand advanced technologies.

The UAE president’s visit to the US “was mostly and almost exclusively about the future,” Gargash said. “It was about the economy. It’s about technology, and about the UAE bid to partner in what is the technology of the future…The AI component was “front and center in the discussion.”

The UAE is the second-largest Arab economy, a top oil exporter and major investor in the US economy. One of the US’ closest allies in the Middle East and a major recipient of US arms, it hosts 5,000 US military personnel. It now seeks to significantly upgrade the “360-degree relationship,” according to Gargash, through an ambitious plan to become a regional technology and AI hub as the US moves to protect its national security and tech industries from Chinese influence.

Abandoning advanced Chinese technology

The deal, struck under the Donald Trump administration, was seen as a reward for the UAE’s normalization of relations with Israel in 2020. But the Biden administration repeatedly pushed the UAE to drop China’s Huawei Technologies Co. from its telecommunications network, and claimed that the technology could pose a security risk for its weapons systems.

Wary of being deprived of US technology, the UAE has since abandoned closer cooperation with China in the field of AI and semiconductors in favor of the US. Earlier this year, Abu Dhabi’s state-backed technology firm G42 announced it had agreed not to engage with Chinese companies for advanced technology. The Financial Times reported earlier this year that the company had off-loaded all investments in China as a pledge to its commitment for its “US partners.”

In Washington on Tuesday, Sheikh Mohamed met with the chief executives of chipmaker NVIDIA, asset manager Blackrock and Microsoft – three US firms that recently partnered with MGX, an Abu Dhabi-owned firm seeking to raise $100 billion to fund AI infrastructure, AI-enabled technology, and semiconductors in the US and beyond.

Despite the focus on technology, discussions with US officials did include the war in Gaza and Lebanon, Gargash said, adding that de-escalation is the “main goal.”

Beyond providing humanitarian aid in Gaza, Abu Dhabi has so far refused to contribute to the rebuilding of the territory without a clear commitment by Israel for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“It’s very complicated,” Gargash, who previously served as the UAE’s minister of state for foreign affairs, said. “We think that maximalist views are hindering the sort of consensus on a day after (the war). And we’re worried without a clear day after, any attempt really at the ceasefire might appear futile.”

Still, he defended the UAE’s decision to normalize relations with Israel and said the agreement is a “component of a future Middle East that is based on compromise” and one that could provide a “different architecture” for the region.

He said the two pillars of the UAE’s policy are stability and prosperity. “I think we also have a responsibility towards regional stability and regional prosperity….You can’t prosper alone. You have to prosper collectively.”

India has confirmed its first case of a deadlier strain of mpox, which has raised alarm among health officials around the world over the rapid pace of its spread.

The clade Ib strain of the virus was confirmed by health authorities in the southern state of Kerala after being detected last week in a 38-year-old man who had recently traveled to Dubai.

On Wednesday, the state’s Health Minister Veena George hailed Kerala’s “robust health care system” for detecting the case.

The outbreak of the strain, which had previously been contained to the Democratic Republic of Congo, was declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO) last month after it spread to four previously unaffected African countries.

The strain has since been detected in several countries outside Africa, including Sweden and Thailand.

Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, is a viral disease that can spread easily between people and from infected animals. It can spread through close contact such as touching, kissing or sex, as well as through contaminated materials like sheets, clothing and needles, according to WHO.

Symptoms include fever, rash, lesions, headache, muscle and back pain, low energy and enlarged lymph nodes.

The virus is characterized by two genetic clades, I and II. A clade is a broad grouping of viruses that has evolved over decades.

Clade II was responsible for a global outbreak that WHO also declared a global health emergency from July 2022 to May 2023. Clade Ib causes more severe disease.

According to Dr. Shubhin C, a health official in Kerala’s Mallapuram district, the infected patient is being tested every four days as he recovers in isolation in a local hospital.

Authorities had identified 29 people who came into contact with the patient and they are now in self-quarantine, he said.

Some 37 passengers on the flight from Dubai to Kerala and five other close contacts of the patient are being monitored, he added.

Health authorities in Kerala are well-versed in grappling with infectious diseases.

“Surveillance has been strengthened, including at airports,” said George, the health minister, adding there are five mpox testing facilities with more to be set up if required. Isolation facilities have also been established, he said.

Last year, the state contained an outbreak of the Nipah virus after two people died. It shut schools and tested hundreds of people to prevent the spread of the rare and often deadly disease.

Three months after a historic election victory, it felt like the downpour at the Labour Party’s conference would never end.

Lawmakers and officials in Britain’s new governing party have been trudging through a massive conference center in Liverpool, northwest England since Sunday in sodden suits, a rumbling River Mersey as their backdrop, for the group’s first set-piece event as a governing party in 15 years.

It was supposed to feel like a celebration. Prime Minister Keir Starmer touted July’s gigantic electoral landslide in his keynote speech on Tuesday, telling his party: “People said we couldn’t do it, but we did.”

But the gathering was dampened by more than the weather. Like Britain’s rather fickle summer, Starmer’s honeymoon is a distant memory.

A string of negative stories – about ministers accepting gifts and handouts, and reported conflict within Starmer’s top team – has clashed uncomfortably with a set of joyless policy decisions aimed at stabilizing Britain’s strapped finances, many of which go further and deeper than some inside the party expected when they promised a platform of change during the summer election campaign.

It means Britain’s new prime minister is already deeply unpopular with the public, according to a batch of unflattering opinion polls that landed with a thud as Labour’s conference began.

And while his lawmakers are broadly behind his disciplined agenda, questions are percolating there too about his political judgment and ability to keep his government on message.

“It has felt a bit blunt,” a Labour Member of Parliament admitted after Starmer’s speech Tuesday, summing up the sentiment across much of conference. “It should have been more exciting,” a longtime Labour activist complained.

Starmer dangled a sliver of optimism in his speech Tuesday – promising the country “light at the end of this tunnel” – and in an effort to underline the rare display of cheer, the sun did finally emerge outside a short while later.

The speech was an important hurdle for Starmer, who needed to reclaim the reputation for focus, diligence and honesty that he spent four years building, only to see seriously fractured in three months.

But he nonetheless begins the unenviable mission of boosting Britain’s limp economic growth, and reviving its tired public services, with a fragile coalition of public support.

Starmer has insisted the latter issue will need a decade to truly fix. Unfortunately, the realities of governing are beginning to bite the Labour Party – and it is likely he will need to show some returns far sooner.

A ‘freebie’ row

Labour’s conference was trailed by a series of stories that felt uncomfortably similar to the sleaze scandals that dogged previous Conservative administrations.

Public records showed that Starmer had accepted tens of thousands of pounds in gifts from a key financial donor, including money for clothes and glasses. He had also watched his Arsenal soccer team from a hospitality box and accepted four tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour concert at Wembley Stadium, worth £4,000 ($5,300).

The donations are not unique for British leaders. But they were particularly surprising – and damaging – for a prime minister who spent four years painting himself as an antidote to the cronyism and coziness with donors displayed by consecutive Tory prime ministers.

No rules have been broken by Starmer or his team, but little common sense has been displayed either, and his lawmakers have noticed.

Maskell said the decision to take gifts and donations showed “poor political and personal judgment.” She is one of few Labour MPs to publicly criticize the front bench but said she is “not alone” among parliamentary colleagues – the group that can ultimately decide Starmer’s fate were a movement to emerge against him.

The donations row was handled badly – Starmer naively fronted a reception celebrating London Fashion Week just hours after news emerged that a donor had bought his wife clothes – but it was especially harmful because it coincided awkwardly with a cut to the Winter Fuel Payment, an allowance given to retirees, to help with utilities bills.

The move to limit that benefit to those already in receipt of state support was opposed by dozens of Labour MPs, and was controversial in a country still dragging itself through a lingering cost of living crisis.

Maskell said she had been “sickened” by the timing. “People are hearing that (ministers) are getting donated clothes, and yet they haven’t got warmth themselves,” she said.

The “one rule for them, another for everyone else” slogan that Starmer attached to Boris Johnson’s premiership became the sentiment that, above any other, caused that Conservative leader – himself fresh off a landslide election win – to be dumped from office two years ago.

Starmer will be desperate to stop it from infecting his premiership too. He told conference attendees Tuesday that rebuilding the country would be “tough in the short-term,” but “we’re all in it together” – and that framing will likely be recycled in the coming weeks as he seeks to restore a reputation for integrity that was so valuable in July.

Patience wears thin

Far beyond the heavily secured gates of Labour’s conference, the country is casting its judgment as well.

The combination of Labour’s miserabilist message on public finances with the costly scandal over its own donations has contributed to an astonishing collapse in Starmer’s popularity since his election win. An opinion poll published by Opinium on Sunday found his net approval rating had dropped to the same depths as Rishi Sunak, the former Tory prime minister that Starmer routed at the ballot box 12 weeks ago.

He pointed to a sparsely detailed economic agenda, adding: “The PM and chancellor have labored on the tough decisions, but given us relatively limited information about what those will look like. The almost sole focus on Winter Fuel Payments has made the government look like it’s unfair and out of touch.”

And they have already been forced to lighten their tone, after the barrage of gloom threatened to undermine confidence in Britain’s economy. Reeves, in her keynote speech on Monday, told attendees that “Britain’s best days lie ahead,” a useful pick-me-up after months weeks of somber addresses that blamed the previous Conservative governments for mismanaging public services and for a financial “black hole” that Labour said it discovered after taking office,but failed to hit a hopeful tone for the years ahead.

More painful measures are expected when Chancellor Rachel Reeves outlines the government’s budget next month. Starmer and Reeves have styled themselves as tough, frugal guardians of the public purse, but they are facing pressure to improve their financial offer for Britain’s public services, including a National Health Service (NHS) that was described in a damning review this month as being in “critical condition.”

In a helpfully timed piece of good news, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said Wednesday that it now expects Britain to log faster economic growth than the eurozone this year, predicting an expansion of 1.1%.

Starmer, who left Liverpool for the United Nations General Assembly in New York, will consider the week a relative success; the party managed to refocus the political narrative on its core message after leaks and missteps threw it off course. Starmer’s speech was was light on fresh content but a heckler was calmly removed and the key messages were confidently delivered.

But a premiership can only survive on doom and gloom for so long, and patience is already wearing thin among much of the wider party.

An MP whose surprise victory in July’s election was illustrative of Labour’s huge success in virtually every pocket of the country was already thinking about what they could run on in five years’ time. “It’s all very well saying it will take a decade,” they said. “But where are the tangibles?”

Money is often tight for university students, but for Chinazom Arinze, a limited income was an opportunity that sparked a business venture.

While studying law at Babcock University, in Nigeria, and working part-time at a car dealership, she set up a side hustle, informally launching AutoGirl in 2019. Initially also a car dealership, it evolved into a platform that connects people looking to rent out their vehicles with people who want to hire them.

“I think I was about 19 or 20 at the time,” Arinze recalls. “I was just doing it because it was fun, and it did bring some money, but then it grew a lot larger than I expected. I started getting consistent customers.

“I started my business with zero money; the only thing that I had leverage upon was connections. I used my network from the car dealership I worked in, and social media.”

Arinze says she knew car owners who wanted to monetize their vehicles and knew she could match them with people looking for short-term hires, especially tourists. While there are established car rental companies in Nigeria, such as Hertz and Budget, Autogirl’s vehicles come with drivers, and Arinze says her company offers a greater range of cars and “competitive prices.”

One of the cheapest rentals on Autogirl’s website at the time of writing was a Hyundai, priced at 45,000 naira ($27) per day, and one of the most luxurious was a 2018 Lexus, costing approximately 2.85 million Naira ($1,722) per day. The company lists the average income for its vehicle owners as 7 million naira ($4,230) per car.

As her side hustle grew into a thriving business, Arinze realized she couldn’t do things alone.

“For a good few years, it was just me. I was the secretary, I was the social media manager, I was everything … I was working around the clock,” says Arinze, now aged 26. “The only time I wasn’t working was when I was sleeping and even then, if a customer had an issue at night, I was the only person, so I’d be the one they would call and I’d have to resolve it.

“I had to start bringing people on. I brought (on) a social media manager, an admin manager, finance people and an operations team that works 24/7.”

Now, with more than 3,000 customers, and more than 12,000 rides under its belt, Autogirl also offers boat and even private jet rentals through its website. This June, the company expanded into Ghana and plans to launch in Benin later this year.

Empowering women

Arinze concedes that it hasn’t always been easy for her to work in a male-dominated industry. She says she took classes in auto mechanics and produced social media reviews of cars to demonstrate that she knew what she was doing: “I showed them I had knowledge and then people would say, ‘Oh, she’s not a clueless young girl.’”

To encourage other women to follow her path, Arinze recently launched the Autogirl Women Empowerment Programme, which offers free classes in driving, mechanics and affiliate marketing, and hopes to also provide internship opportunities. Arinze says they plan to train 60 women before the end of November.

Ultimately, she sees Autogirl expanding elsewhere in Africa, and eventually beyond. ‘‘We want to be the Airbnb of vehicle rentals in Africa and ultimately the world,” Arinze says.

“The way people thought that Airbnb did not have a chance because there are hotels all over the world is how people think about us and traditional car rentals — but people pay for more flexibility and variety and that’s what we offer.”

After nearly a year of fighting in Gaza, Israel is ramping up hostilities with Hezbollah in Lebanon, with covert operations targeting communications devices and a ferocious bombing campaign that has left hundreds dead.

The fight against Hamas has strained the Israeli military, with soldiers receiving little respite, officials citing army shortages, the economy facing its steepest decline in years, and growing public pressure for a ceasefire and a hostage deal.

It is unclear whether Israel intends – or will feel compelled – to launch a ground invasion into Lebanon. But the question looms: Can the country take on a second front?

Since October 8, the day after Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel, there has been regular cross-border fire between Hezbollah and the Israeli military. Hezbollah first fired at Israel to protest the war in Gaza, demanding a ceasefire there as a condition to end its attacks.

The stakes were raised last week when Israel injured thousands of people across Lebanon, detonating pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah. Escalating exchanges of fire have followed.

Should Israel enter full-scale war with Hezbollah, experts say it will face a much stronger threat than Hamas – and commensurate costs.

Over the weekend, the group launched one of its deepest strikes into Israel, with the Israeli military reporting impacts in Kiryat Bialik, Tsur Shalom and Moreshet near the port city of Haifa, around 40 km (25 miles) south of the border.

The cross-border exchange over the past year has already led to more than 62,000 residents being evacuated from their homes in Israel’s north, and the deaths of 26 Israeli civilians and 22 soldiers and reservists, according to Israeli media. Ahead of the weekend’s escalation, over 94,000 had been displaced and more than 740 killed on the Lebanese side, including some 500 Hezbollah fighters, according to Reuters. Israeli strikes since Monday alone have killed at least another 558 people and led to the displacement of 16,500, according to Lebanese authorities.

Here are some of Israel’s main challenges in a potential wider conflict with Hezbollah:

A stronger enemy

Iran’s closest regional partner, the Shiite Islamist group has not only showcased more sophisticated weaponry over the past year, but it also boasts strategic depth through its allies and partners across the Middle East – including in Iraq and Yemen.

While Israel’s military capabilities have improved since its last war in Lebanon in 2006 – when the Jewish state did not yet have its Iron Dome defense system – so has Hezbollah’s arsenal.

Military analysts estimate Hezbollah to have between 30,000 and 50,000 troops, but earlier this year its leader Hassan Nasrallah claimed it has more than 100,000 fighters and reservists. The group is also believed to possess between 120,000 and 200,000 rockets and missiles.

Its biggest military asset is the long-range ballistic missile, of which it is estimated to have thousands, including 1,500 precision missiles with ranges of 250–300 kilometers (155–186 miles).

During the weekend attack, Hezbollah said it targeted Israel’s Ramat David airbase with Fadi 1 and Fadi 2 missiles, longer-range weapons that are believed to have been used for the first time. The base is some 30 miles from the Lebanese border.

The Israeli military did not respond to queries about whether the base was impacted. Israeli emergency services reported that three people were wounded in the attacks.

⁠Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank in Washington DC who focuses on Iran and its proxies, said that the “warhead weight of these projectiles is reminiscent of the heavy Burkan IRAM (improved rocket assisted munition) first introduced last winter against Israel by Hezbollah, but at considerably longer range.”

Orna Mizrahi, a Hezbollah expert at INSS said that much of Israel’s ability to fight a two-front war rests on US support.

“The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) can fight both fronts for a long time, and we have the capabilities to do it if we have the ammunition from the Americans,” Mizrahi said, adding that if there is a full-scale war, the US will likely intervene to support Israel.

Israel also has a huge intelligence advantage, most notably seen in last week’s audacious attacks on Hezbollah’s communications.

Stretched military

Israel is a small state and its military manpower is not limitless. As it gears up for a possible second war, the IDF is diverting some of its key divisions from Gaza to its northern border.

“When you are fighting more than one front, you cannot invest too much in every front,” Mizrahi said. “So it will be a different way of fighting.”

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant last week said that “the center of gravity is moving north,” and that “forces, resources, energy” are now being moved.

Among those units is Israel’s elite 98th Division. Also known as Utzbat HaEsh, this paratrooper division is believed to consist of 10,000 to 20,000 troops, according to Israeli media.

Guzansky said that diverting resources toward Lebanon does not mean the Gaza war is over, but that Netanyahu feels compelled to deal with the northern front amid mounting domestic pressure to facilitate the return of evacuees from the area.

Analysts and army officials cited in Israeli media have also repeatedly said the IDF is suffering from shortages.

At the outset of the war with Hamas, the military recruited about 295,000 reservists in an effort to boost its manpower. But that number is proving insufficient.

The fighting in Gaza and elsewhere has also taken its toll on soldiers, of whom 715 have so far been killed since October 7, including in the north.

“This is the longest (war) of its kind in Israel’s history, longer than the War of Independence in 1948,” Guzansky said, adding that this is Hezbollah and Iran’s goal, “to weaken Israel gradually.”

“To fire rockets every day, on a low scale, and to occupy the IDF, to overstretch the IDF,” he said.

An economy in decline

Israel’s economy has been one of the biggest casualties of the war in Gaza, taking a sharp blow from the early days of the October 7 attack. Thousands of businesses suffered as reservists abandoned their civilian lives to take up arms, and the country’s economy is shrinking at an alarming rate.

“It’s devastating on the Israeli economy, on Israeli society,” Guzansky said, adding that the impacts will live on for years to come.

Of all 38 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Israel showed the sharpest economic slowdown between April and June of this year, the organization said in its quarterly report.

According to OECD data, Israel’s economy shrank by 4.1% in the early months of the war, and continued to contract, albeit at a slower rate, throughout the first and second quarters of 2024.

The contracting economy comes as Israel’s military spending skyrockets. Earlier this year, Amir Yaron, the governor of Israel’s central bank, warned that the war is expected to cost Israel up to 253 billion Israeli shekels ($67 billion) between 2023 and 2025, Israeli media reported. That’s almost 13% of Israel’s GDP, in addition to regular military expenditure, which has stood at an annual 4.5% to 6.5% of GDP, according to World Bank data.

An expansion of the conflict has also impacted Israel’s credit rating, making it more expensive to take on debt, with multiple rating agencies downgrading the country since the war began.

In a statement last month, credit ratings agency Moody’s warned that an all-out war with Hezbollah or Iran could have significant “credit consequences for Israeli debt issuers.”

A legitimacy crisis

A second front, especially one that could be far more damaging to Lebanon than to Israel, could be the final straw for many countries already critical of Israel’s war in Gaza, experts said.

The global sympathy that Israel received in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attack has turned into sharp criticism due to Israel’s devastating reaction, as it now faces accusations of war crimes and genocide in international courts, which it strongly denies.

Domestically, while Israelis showed a greater appetite for fighting at the outset of the Gaza war, polls show that domestic support has waned over the last months.

On support for a war with Hezbollah, Israelis appear split on the matter.

A survey published by the Israel Democracy Institute think tank in July found that 42% of Israelis think their country should pursue a diplomatic agreement with Hezbollah, despite the chances of an additional conflict in the future, while 38% think Israel should pursue a military victory against the group, even at the cost of significant damage to civilian areas.

Despite the split in opinion, there is now less support for war with Hezbollah compared to responses in late 2023, the poll said.

Guzansky said that pressure for war is likely more palpable in northern Israel, where “people that don’t have businesses anymore, families (are) broken apart… people (are) being killed.”

Many of these residents, who have lived close to the frontline for nearly a year, believe that “only a full-scale war can change the reality in the north,” he added.

China says it successfully fired an intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday, a rare public test that comes amid growing tensions with the United States and its regional allies.

An ICBM carrying a dummy warhead was launched at 8:44 a.m. Beijing time and fell into a designated area in the high seas of the Pacific Ocean, the Chinese Defense Ministry said in a statement. It did not specify the missile’s flight path or landing location.

The ministry said the launch, by the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, was part of its routine annual training and was not directed at any country or target. It comes as China and Russia conduct joint naval exercises in nearby seas close to Japan.

China “notified relevant countries in advance,” state news agency Xinhua said in a separate report, without specifying who it notified.

The launch “effectively tested the performance of weapons and equipment as well as the training level of the troops, and achieved the expected objectives,” Xinhua reported.

This is the first time China has publicly announced a successful ICBM test in the Pacific Ocean in more than four decades.

In 1980, China celebrated the successful test of its first ICBM, fired into the South Pacific from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the country’s northwestern desert.

Under leader Xi Jinping, China has bolstered its nuclear capabilities and revamped the PLA’s Rocket Force, an elite branch overseeing the country’s fast-expanding arsenal of nuclear and ballistic missiles.

In the past few years, satellite photos have shown the construction of what appears to be hundreds of silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles in China’s deserts, and the US Defense Department is predicting exponential growth in the number of nuclear warheads in Beijing’s arsenal in the next decade.

China held more than 500 operational nuclear warheads as of 2023 and will probably have over 1,000 warheads by 2030, the Pentagon said in its annual report on Beijing’s military last year.

A missile fired from Lebanon was intercepted near Israel’s economic center Tel Aviv on Wednesday, Israel’s military said, in a rare attack far from the front lines of the conflict with Hezbollah.

“Following the sirens that sounded in the Tel Aviv and Netanya areas, one surface-to-surface missile was identified crossing from Lebanon and was intercepted by the IDF Aerial Defense Array,” the Israeli military said.

There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties.

Since the outbreak of conflict between Israel and Hamas last October, Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets and drones from Lebanon targeting northern Israel.

The missile intercept comes days after Israeli strikes targeting the militant group killed more than 500 people across Lebanon. Monday was the deadliest day in Lebanon in nearly two decades.

Hezbollah has not yet commented on the attempted attack on Tel Aviv.

Flights at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport continued as usual, the airport’s spokesperson said.

Sirens were heard Wednesday in the central city of Netanya for the first time since October 7, 2023, according to Israeli authorities.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Police in Spain have arrested five people accused of scamming two women out of 325,000 euros ($362,000) by pretending to be Hollywood star Brad Pitt online.

Ten other people were also investigated as part of Operation Bralina, which spanned eight provinces, according to a statement from the Guardia Civil published Monday.

One woman lost 175,000 euros ($195,000) to the fraudsters, while another lost 150,000 euros ($167,000). Of that total, police managed to recover 85,000 euros ($95,000).

Both victims were contacted via a Brad Pitt fan site by fraudsters who managed to convince them that the actor wanted to invest in various projects with them, police said.

“In order to find their victims, the cyber criminals studied their social networks and put together a psychological profile of them, discovering as a result that both women were vulnerable people suffering from depression and a lack of affection,” reads the statement.

“They also used instant messaging platforms to exchange messages and emails with the two women until they thought they were chatting via WhatsApp with Brad Pitt himself, who promised them a romantic relationship and a future together.”

Both women ended up making numerous bank transfers to the person they thought was Pitt, until they realized they had been scammed and went to the police.

Investigators found that, as part of the scam, a network of bank accounts were created using fake identity documents. “Mules” were also used to help to launder money through their own bank accounts in exchange for a small payment.

Russia appears to have suffered a “catastrophic failure” in a test of its Sarmat missile, a key weapon in the modernization of its nuclear arsenal, according to arms experts who have analyzed satellite images of the launch site.

The images captured by Maxar on Sept. 21 show a crater about 60 metres (200 feet) wide at the launch silo at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. They reveal extensive damage that was not visible in pictures taken earlier in the month.

The RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile is designed to deliver nuclear warheads to strike targets thousands of miles away in the United States or Europe, but its development has been dogged by delays and testing setbacks.

“By all indications, it was a failed test. It’s a big hole in the ground,” said Pavel Podvig, an analyst based in Geneva, who runs the Russian Nuclear Forces project. “There was a serious incident with the missile and the silo.”

Timothy Wright, research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, said the destruction of the area immediately surrounding the missile silo was suggestive of a failure soon after ignition.

“One possible cause is that the first stage (booster) either failed to ignite properly or suffered from a catastrophic mechanical failure, causing the missile to fall back into or land closely adjacent to the silo and explode,” he told Reuters.

James Acton, nuclear specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, posted on X that the before-and-after satellite images were “very persuasive that there was a big explosion” and said he was convinced that a Sarmat test had failed.

The Kremlin referred questions on Sarmat to the defense ministry. The ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for comment and has made no announcements about planned Sarmat tests in recent days.

The US and its allies are closely watching Russia’s development of its nuclear arsenal at a time when the war in Ukraine has pushed tensions between Moscow and the West to the most dangerous point for more than 60 years.

Since the start of the conflict, President Vladimir Putin has said repeatedly that Russia has the biggest and most advanced nuclear arsenal in the world, and warned the West not to cross a threshold that could lead to nuclear war.

Repeated setbacks

The 35-meter-long (115 feet) RS-28 Sarmat, known in the West as Satan II, has a range of 18,000 kilometers (11,000 miles) and a launch weight of over 208 tons. Russian media say it can carry up to 16 independently targetable nuclear warheads as well as Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles, a new system that Putin has said is unmatched by Russia’s enemies.

Russia had at one point said the Sarmat would be ready by 2018, replacing the Soviet-era SS-18, but the date for deployment has been repeatedly pushed back.

Putin said in October 2023 that Russia had almost completed work on the missile. His defense minister at the time, Sergei Shoigu, said it was set to form “the basis of Russia’s ground-based strategic nuclear forces”.

IISS analyst Wright said a test failure did not necessarily mean that the Sarmat program was in jeopardy.

“However, this is the fourth successive test failure of Sarmat which at the very least will push back its already delayed introduction into service even further and at most might raise questions about the program’s viability,” he said.

Wright said the damage at Plesetsk – a test site surrounded by forest in the Arkhangelsk region, some 800 km (500 miles) north of Moscow – would also impact the Sarmat program.

The delays would put pressure on the serviceability and readiness of the ageing SS-18s the Sarmat is meant to replace, as they will have to remain in service for longer than expected, Wright said.

Nikolai Sokov, a former Russian and Soviet arms control official, said he expected Moscow to persist with the Sarmat, a product of the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau.

He said the Russian military had shown itself keen to preserve competition between rival designers and would therefore be reluctant to depend on Makeyev’s rival, the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology, as the single source of all missiles.