标签： Oceania

In a sharp escalation of its two-decade deepest incursion into Lebanon, Israel announced plans Monday to launch new airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold that has largely avoided heavy bombardment since April. The announcement comes just hours before an emergency UN Security Council meeting convened to address Israel’s expanding military operations, and as global powers scramble to prevent a full-scale regional conflict.

In a joint statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz, the Israeli leadership ordered the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to target militant positions in Beirut’s densely populated Dahiyeh district. The order frames the operation as a response to repeated ceasefire violations by the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, which has launched daily attacks on Israeli territory since a fragile truce took effect in mid-April. “In light of the repeated violations of the ceasefire in Lebanon by the terrorist organisation Hezbollah and the attacks on our cities and citizens, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz have instructed the IDF to strike terror targets in the Dahiyeh district of Beirut,” the statement read.

Katz doubled down on the threat in a separate remarks, warning that “there will be no calm in Beirut” if Hezbollah continues its offensive operations. He also formally outlined Israel’s new strategic goal: establishing a military-controlled security zone stretching to the Litani River in southern Lebanon, cleared of all weapons and militant presence. The announcement comes one day after Israeli troops seized the iconic Beaufort Castle (Qalaat al-Chakif), a strategic high point overlooking all of southern Lebanon that served as an Israeli military base during its 22-year occupation of the region ending in 2000. Netanyahu described the capture of the castle as a “dramatic shift” in Israel’s current policy in Lebanon.

The current cycle of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah erupted on March 2, when Hezbollah launched a massive rocket barrage into Israel in retaliation for the US-Israeli killing of Iran’s supreme military leader. A truce brokered to halt hostilities went into effect on April 17, but the agreement has never been fully respected, with both sides trading daily accusations of breaches that justify renewed attacks.

By Monday morning, panic had already spread across Beirut’s southern suburbs, with dozens of civilian families fleeing the area ahead of expected strikes. An AFP correspondent on the ground reported seeing families with young children packing only a few bags onto motor scooters to evacuate, while others loaded cars full of belongings to leave the area. “That feeling did not last long… Our fears intensified this morning after I received a series of messages about orders to bomb the southern suburbs, which caused widespread panic, and we immediately left the area,” 24-year-old resident Hadi told AFP by phone. Since April 8, when widespread Israeli strikes across Lebanon killed hundreds of people in minutes, Dahiyeh has only been targeted twice.

Along with the planned strikes on Beirut, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported Monday that the IDF had issued new evacuation orders for nine towns and villages in Lebanon’s Sidon and Jezzine districts, located far from the Israel-Lebanon border. Hezbollah responded to the escalation by claiming responsibility for a missile attack on Tiberias, a city roughly 19 miles inside Israeli territory, and confirmed it had engaged Israeli ground forces operating inside southern Lebanon.

The escalating violence has drawn immediate condemnation and urgent diplomatic action. France, which requested the emergency UN Security Council meeting scheduled for later Monday, has already spoken out against the escalation. French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday that “nothing justifies the major escalation under way in south Lebanon”, while the European Union has called on Israel to immediately “stop its military escalation”.

Diplomatic efforts to de-escalate are already underway, with the United States brokering a new round of security talks between Israeli and Lebanese military delegations. A fourth round of negotiations is set to open Tuesday, following an initial working meeting in Washington last Friday. A senior anonymous US official told AFP Sunday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has spoken with both Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Netanyahu to lay out a US-backed de-escalation framework: Hezbollah must cease all attacks on Israel first, in exchange for Israel backing away from its planned strikes on Beirut. The official added that Rubio has emphasized Hezbollah must take the first step to end hostilities.

For Iran, which is currently engaged in stalled negotiations with the United States to end their wider ongoing conflict, a ceasefire in Lebanon remains a non-negotiable condition for any final agreement. Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei reaffirmed this position during a weekly press briefing Monday, stating that “a ceasefire in Lebanon is an essential condition for any deal aimed at ending the war” with the US. Lebanese President Aoun has labeled Israel’s expanding operation as “a vicious and reprehensible Israeli aggression”.

Official casualty figures underscore the heavy human cost of the three-month conflict: Lebanon’s health ministry reports that more than 3,412 Lebanese people have been killed in Israeli attacks since March 2. Over the same period, 26 people have been killed in Israel – 25 soldiers and one civilian contractor.

A new analysis conducted by Agence France-Presse (AFP) using official data from Ukraine’s Air Force has revealed that Russia unleashed a historic barrage of long-range drones on Ukrainian territory in May, hitting a new all-time high for monthly drone strikes amid ongoing escalation of the full-scale invasion.

Compiled from daily operational reports released by Ukraine’s military air branch, the data puts the total number of Russian long-range drones launched in May at 8,150. That marks a 24% increase compared to the total drone count recorded in April, confirming a sharp ramping up of Moscow’s long-range air campaign. In addition to the unprecedented drone volume, Russia also fired 211 missiles across Ukraine last month—one of the highest monthly missile totals registered since the start of the full-scale invasion.

The escalation of air attacks came shortly after a brief three-day humanitarian truce in April that had briefly raised global hopes for expanded diplomatic negotiations to end the conflict. Those hopes quickly faded, however, as both Kyiv and Moscow traded accusations of truce violations, before both sides resumed and intensified long-range strikes against each other’s territory.

One of the deadliest single attacks of the month targeted Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, when a Russian missile struck a residential apartment block, leaving the building partially destroyed and killing 24 people alongside multiple injuries. May also saw Moscow deploy its Oreshnik, a nuclear-capable ballistic missile, for only the third time since the full-scale invasion began in 2022.

Ukraine has built an extensive, multi-layered air defense network across its territory over the course of the war, and official data shows the system successfully intercepted roughly 91% of all incoming Russian drones and missiles launched in May. The high interception rate underscores Ukraine’s progress in developing countermeasures to defeat Russian long-range drone attacks, but military officials warn the country remains critically dependent on military support from Western allies to counter Russian missile strikes.

Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly sounded the alarm over dwindling stockpiles of ammunition for anti-missile systems, including the U.S.-supplied Patriot air defense systems that form a core part of Kyiv’s frontline air defense. Kyiv has made urgent appeals to Washington for additional ammunition supplies to replenish these shrinking stocks, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky directly raising the issue with U.S. President Donald Trump during talks last month.

The shortfall in air defense ammunition has been worsened by parallel demands from the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, where U.S. allies have expended massive volumes of air defense munitions to protect strategic sites across the Persian Gulf. Diplomatic efforts to resolve the Ukraine conflict have stalled in recent months, as Moscow and Kyiv remain irreconcilable over Russia’s demands to annex large swathes of Ukrainian territory. Trump, who reclaimed the White House in 2024 on a campaign promise to end the Ukraine war quickly, has seen his peace efforts stall amid continued disagreement between the two warring sides. More recently, diplomatic progress has been further derailed as Washington shifted its full foreign policy attention to the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran that began on February 28.

In a coordinated operation with international partners, French authorities detained a Russia-tied oil tanker suspected of evading Western sanctions over Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the Atlantic Ocean over the weekend, triggering a sharp rebuke from the Kremlin that has labeled the seizure an act of modern piracy. This interception marks the fourth such vessel detained by French forces since September 2024 as part of a broader crackdown on Russia’s shadow fossil fuel fleet, a loose network of unregulated ships used to bypass export restrictions imposed after the 2022 Ukraine invasion.

The 23-crew vessel, identified as the *Tagor*, was intercepted early Sunday morning more than 400 nautical miles off the coast of Brittany in international waters, after its Russian captain repeatedly ignored orders to stop for inspection, French maritime prosecutors confirmed. The operation received logistical and intelligence support from the United Kingdom and other allied nations, according to official statements. French maritime officials revealed the ship was falsely flying a Cameroonian flag while traveling from Murmansk, a major Russian Arctic port, toward Limbe, a coastal city in Cameroon. A criminal investigation has already been opened by prosecutors in the northwestern French city of Brest, focusing on charges of vessel identity fraud, unregistered flag use, and refusal to comply with maritime law enforcement orders.

Open-source sanctions tracking database Opensanctions.org has linked the *Tagor* to Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani, an Iranian petroleum shipping magnate and son of prominent Iranian security official Ali Shamkhani, who was killed alongside his son in a US-Israeli airstrike in late February that ignited the latest round of open conflict in the Middle East. French officials declined to comment on the specific connections to Shamkhani when pressed for details.

Footage of the interception, shared publicly by French President Emmanuel Macron on social media, shows French special operations commandos rappelling from a military helicopter onto the tanker’s deck to seize control. Macron emphasized in a accompanying statement that sanction-busting vessels that violate international maritime law effectively fund Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, an outcome the international community cannot accept. “It is unacceptable for ships to circumvent international sanctions, violate the law of the sea, and fund the war that Russia has been waging against Ukraine,” Macron said.

Following the interception, the *Tagor* is currently being escorted by the French Navy to a designated French anchorage for full documentation and cargo inspections. Guillaume Le Rasle, spokesperson for France’s Atlantic maritime prefecture, told reporters the vessel had been on the international community’s radar for months: “It is a vessel that was known and tracked. It is already subject to EU and U.S. sanctions.” The decision to divert the ship to French waters was finalized Sunday evening, he added, with the primary initial goal of verifying the validity of its registration and flag.

Shadow fleet vessels routinely engage in a practice called “flag-hopping,” constantly switching their country of registration or using invalid, expired registrations to avoid detection by international sanctions enforcers. Since September, France has detained three other vessels suspected of being part of Russia’s shadow fleet; all three were eventually allowed to resume travel after their owners paid administrative fines. In April, French authorities announced plans to double fines for unflagged or non-compliant sanction-busting ships, as part of a national effort to strengthen enforcement of international sanctions.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov rejected the French operation as a violation of international law in comments to reporters Monday, saying the seizure amounts to international piracy. “We consider these acts illegal. They border on international piracy,” Peskov said, adding that “Russia is taking measures to ensure the safety of its cargo” moving through global waters. The Russian Embassy in Paris also confirmed it had formally requested information from French authorities about the *Tagor* and its crew, saying no official notification of the interception had been provided by Paris. Prior to the seizure, the *Tagor* had previously flown flags of Madagascar, the Marshall Islands, and Panama, consistent with the flag-hopping behavior common to shadow fleet operations.

The interception comes as Western nations ramp up pressure on Russia’s shadow fleet of oil tankers. The European Union currently has sanctions in place against nearly 600 ships confirmed or suspected of being part of the network, which Russia uses to sell oil to third-party nations at discounted prices bypassing Western price caps and export bans.

Deep beneath the Finnish soil, 433 meters below the surface in the southwestern municipality of Eurajoki, a landmark engineering project is nearing its final stages. Carved into 1.9-billion-year-old geologically stable bedrock, Onkalo — Finnish for “cave” — is poised to become the world’s first permanent repository for high-level radioactive spent nuclear fuel, closing a decades-long gap in global nuclear waste management.

Since the first commercial nuclear power plants launched in the 1950s, governments around the world have grappled with the intractable challenge of what to do with the toxic, long-lived byproducts of nuclear energy generation. To date, the vast majority of global spent nuclear fuel remains in temporary above-ground or shallow storage facilities, a stopgap solution that leaves future generations to bear the risk of contamination. While other nations including neighboring Sweden and France have plans for similar permanent repositories in development, Finland is on track to commission its facility first, breaking new ground for the global nuclear industry.

The project has cleared most regulatory hurdles already. Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) is scheduled to release its final safety assessment this coming June, after which an operating license will be formally granted. Philippe Bordarier, chief executive of Finnish nuclear operator Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO), told reporters the facility is on track to begin operations by the end of 2024, or more likely early 2025. The first canisters of spent fuel, currently cooled in water pools at the nearby Olkiluoto nuclear power plant on the Baltic Sea coast, will be the first to be moved to the permanent underground site.

Once fully operational, Onkalo will hold a total of 6,500 tons of uranium waste, enough to accommodate all spent fuel produced by Finland’s five existing nuclear reactors, three of which are located at Olkiluoto. Developed by Finnish nuclear waste management firm Posiva, construction began at the site back in 2004, with total projected costs now reaching 1 billion euros ($1.16 billion).

The facility is designed for millennia-long safety. Fuel will be deposited incrementally in Onkalo’s sprawling network of underground tunnels over the next century, with operations potentially extended if Finland approves and builds new nuclear reactors in the coming decades. After operations conclude, the entire vault will be sealed permanently, engineered to remain secure for at least 100,000 years. “Basically, it needs to be safe forever,” explained Lauri Parviainen, a Posiva chemist leading facility tours for media. Parviainen noted that after 100,000 years of radioactive decay, the waste will drop to roughly the same natural radioactivity level as the original uranium ore from which the fuel was manufactured.

The multi-layer safety protocol is designed to prevent leakage over that extraordinary timeline. Above ground, spent fuel assemblies are first sealed inside thick, highly corrosion-resistant copper canisters. These canisters are then lowered into individually drilled holes in the tunnel bedrock, and the gaps are filled with dense bentonite clay to block water flow and radiation. Once a 300-meter disposal tunnel is completely filled, it is sealed off with a steel-reinforced concrete plug. “So if the bentonite stays in place, we are safe,” Parviainen said.

STUK safety experts have run detailed risk assessments modeling potential hazards across up to a million years of future geologic change. Jarkko Kyllonen, a STUK nuclear safety specialist, told AFP that the first 10,000 years are the most critical period for maintaining canister integrity, when radioactivity levels remain highest. Key long-term risks include slow corrosion of the copper canisters and seismic activity associated with future ice ages, which could shift bedrock and damage the sealed containers. To date, however, all risk assessments have returned positive conclusions that the probability of leakage remains well within acceptable safety thresholds.

Unlike similar projects in other nations that have faced fierce grassroots pushback, the Onkalo facility has enjoyed broad public support in Finland. Local opposition emerged when plans were first floated in the 1970s, but over time public trust in regulatory oversight has grown. “People have gotten used to it and they trust the assessments made by STUK,” said Matti Kojo, a social sciences professor at the University of Lappeenranta (LUT). He added that public support for nuclear power in Finland is currently at a historic high, amid global efforts to transition away from fossil fuels.

That said, the project is not without its critics. The Finnish Association for Nature Conservation remains publicly opposed, warning that the facility imposes unmanageable long-term risk on future generations. “No one can guarantee the safety of Onkalo for thousands of years,” association director Tapani Veistola said in a statement to AFP.

The facility comes as Finland actively expands its nuclear energy sector. Under current Finnish law, all nuclear waste produced within the country must be permanently stored on domestic soil — a policy that replaced the pre-1994 practice of exporting spent fuel to Russia. Finland’s current right-wing government has prioritized expanding nuclear generation to boost energy independence and cut carbon emissions, and is currently evaluating proposals for new small modular reactors (SMRs) across the country. Climate and Environment Minister Sari Multala told AFP that a framework for managing spent fuel from future SMRs has not yet been finalized, with an official assessment expected to be completed by March 2025.