标签： Oceania

Just days after the most intense exchange of fire between the United States and Iran since an April truce took effect, negotiators from both sides have reached a preliminary framework for a 60-day extension of the ceasefire, multiple anonymous U.S. sources confirmed to Agence France-Presse on Thursday. The deal, which also paves the way for formal negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, still requires final sign-off from U.S. President Donald Trump to move forward.

The breakthrough comes amid heightened tensions that have put wider diplomatic efforts to end the three-month conflict to the test. The war began in late February when U.S. and Israeli forces launched joint strikes on Iranian targets, and the April truce had largely held until this week’s flare-up.

On Wednesday, the U.S. carried out airstrikes on the southern Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas. In response, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced it had targeted the U.S. airbase that launched the attack, though it did not specify the base’s location. Kuwait, which hosts U.S. military personnel on its territory, said its air defense systems intercepted incoming projectiles, drawing the U.S. ally directly into the clash. Kuwait’s foreign ministry quickly condemned what it called “criminal Iranian attacks” on its territory, labeling the incident a dangerous escalation.

U.S. Central Command denounced Iran’s response as an “egregious violation” of the existing ceasefire. Separately, Iranian state media reported Thursday that Iranian forces had opened fire on four commercial ships that attempted to transit the Strait of Hormuz without authorization. Iran has blocked all commercial traffic through the strategic waterway, a critical chokepoint for global energy supplies, since the start of the war. U.S. forces confirmed they intercepted five attack drones in and around the strait, and disabled a sixth drone before it could launch from a ground control station near Bandar Abbas.

For its part, Iran has pushed back against U.S. accusations of truce violations. Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said Iran would “take all necessary measures to defend its national sovereignty,” and called the U.S. airstrikes themselves a clear breach of the truce. A senior U.S. official countered that American actions were “measured” and carried out with the goal of preserving the existing ceasefire agreement. The IRGC issued a fresh threat Thursday, promising a “firm response” if the U.S. carries out any new attacks against Iranian territory.

Beyond the immediate ceasefire extension, a core sticking point in the proposed deal is the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. The closure has disrupted global oil and gas supplies, roiling international energy markets. On Thursday, oil prices rose sharply following news of the fresh clashes, erasing most of the gains from the previous day’s drop driven by growing optimism over a potential diplomatic breakthrough.

The Trump administration has taken a hard line on any arrangement that would keep the strait restricted. When asked about a proposal that would let Oman and Iran jointly manage transit through the waterway, Trump issued an explicit threat to the U.S. ally, saying “No, the strait is going to be open to everybody. It’s international waters and Oman will behave just like everybody else or we’ll have to blow them up.” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent echoed the threat, saying the U.S. would “aggressively target” Oman if it moved forward with plans to implement a tolling system for ships transiting the strait. Oman, which previously mediated U.S.-Iran talks in Geneva before the war broke out, has already come under attack from Tehran. Pakistan has since taken over the lead mediation role in ongoing peace efforts. Baqaei called the U.S. threats against Oman “a worrying sign of the normalisation of anarchy and intimidation in international relations.”

The conflict also remains unresolved in neighboring Lebanon, where a separate ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah has failed to stop escalating violence. Iran has insisted that any comprehensive deal to end the wider war must include a cessation of hostilities in Lebanon. On Thursday, the Israeli military carried out a targeted strike in southern Beirut, a known Hezbollah stronghold, hitting a residential apartment. Lebanese authorities reported that 14 people, including three children and one soldier, were killed in Israeli attacks across southern Lebanon on Thursday. A day earlier, Israel declared most of southern Lebanon a combat zone and ordered all civilian residents to evacuate. As of Wednesday, Lebanon’s health ministry reported that 3,269 people have been killed since fighting escalated in the country. On the Israeli side, one soldier was killed in a Hezbollah drone attack near the Lebanese border Wednesday, bringing the total Israeli death toll to 23 troops and one civilian contractor since the fighting began.

For ordinary Iranians, uncertainty over the future remains a constant, even amid hopes for a ceasefire deal. “I feel like nothing is certain yet,” said Amir, a 27-year-old software developer based in Tehran. “The daily question is: Will there be missile strikes tonight?”

A chilling morning rush-hour stabbing at Switzerland’s Winterthur main railway station left three people injured on Thursday, with regional officials quickly classifying the assault as a confirmed terrorist act. The 31-year-old attacker, identified as Swiss-Turkish national Nesip Dedeler, was taken into custody by police within five minutes of the first emergency call, bringing a swift end to the incident that sparked widespread panic among commuters.

Witnesses recount the attacker shouting the phrase “Allahu akbar” as he launched his stabbing spree in the busy transit hub, located just 25 kilometers northeast of Zurich in Switzerland’s sixth-largest city. Officials confirmed the attacker had a well-documented history of psychological instability, alongside previous connections to extremist ideology. More than a decade ago, Dedeler faced formal charges for violating Swiss laws banning the spread of Islamic State propaganda. Just two days before the attack, he had been admitted to a local psychiatric hospital after showing up at a nearby police station speaking incoherently. However, psychiatric staff cleared him for discharge on Wednesday, assessing he posed no threat to himself or the public – an assessment now confirmed to be fatally incorrect. “Why that decision was made is beyond our knowledge, but the assessment was obviously wrong,” stated Mario Fehr, the security chief for the canton of Zurich, during an immediate press briefing.

Fehr made an explicit public designation of the incident as a terrorist attack, a position echoed by regional police commander Marius Weyermann. Weyermann told reporters that “it was clear from the scene that the motive for this act must be sought in the realm of radicalisation and extremism.”

First responders received the initial emergency call at 8:28 a.m. local time (06:28 GMT), and officers had apprehended Dedeler by 8:33 a.m. All three of the attacker’s victims were men: aged 28, 43, and 52. The oldest victim suffered life-threatening stab wounds to the thigh and required urgent emergency surgery, while the 28-year-old sustained a leg wound and the 43-year-old was stabbed in the neck. Both younger victims have already been released from hospital, Weyermann confirmed.

Mobile phone footage and witness accounts captured the chaotic scene that unfolded as commuters scattered for safety. The attacker, captured in distant footage wearing a black T-shirt and shorts, ran past a group of young schoolchildren on a group trip without stopping, adding to the shock of the incident. 65-year-old taxi driver Turhan Muslu, one of the first witnesses to the attack, told local Swiss daily Blick that he saw Dedeler rush down a station ramp and attempt to stab a commuter, who fought back aggressively until station security officers arrived to subdue the attacker. “It all happened so fast. If those security guards hadn’t arrived so quickly, I don’t know what would have happened,” Muslu said. Another anonymous witness told the outlet that the attacker shouted “Allahu akbar” five or six times in a visibly agitated state, sending children and bystanders fleeing across the main road in panic. “I still have goosebumps,” the witness added.

Random targeted attacks on civilian passersby remain extremely rare in Switzerland, a fact that has amplified public shock across the small Alpine nation. Local residents and workers in Winterthur expressed widespread dismay at the violence that upended a routine Thursday morning. “This is not OK. We want peace,” Basharat Iqbal, a taxi driver who arrived at the station shortly after the attack, told AFP. “I was shocked.”

An unprecedented early-season heatwave, driven by a stationary high-pressure heat dome, has engulfed Western Europe, forcing governments across the continent to activate emergency heat protocols and leaving millions of residents and visitors grappling with sweltering conditions. Italy became the latest nation to roll out urgent safety measures Thursday, when civil protection authorities issued the country’s first red heat alert of 2024 for five major urban centers, including the capital Rome, as well as Florence, Bologna, Brescia and Turin.

The alert, the highest level of heat warning in Italy’s national system, cautions that even otherwise healthy people engaging in outdoor activity face significant risks of adverse health impacts. For tourists flocking to Rome’s iconic landmarks, the 32-degree Celsius temperatures recorded Thursday have forced drastic adjustments to sightseeing plans. Spanish visitor Nana Martinez Garcia told reporters she and her travel companion have prioritized staying hydrated and sticking to shaded routes whenever possible. “We’re sweating a lot,” Garcia explained outside the Colosseum. “We’re drinking a lot of water so we can cool down.” Her friend Maria Angeles Mellinas Tello added that the pair seek out shade at every opportunity to avoid heat exhaustion. American tourist Josh Ren shared that he restructured his entire itinerary to beat the heat, waking before dawn to explore outdoor sites, then retreating to air-conditioned museums or restaurants during the midday peak when temperatures climb highest.

Italy had avoided the most extreme temperatures earlier in the week, but the heat dome has shifted south, bringing soaring conditions to the Italian peninsula. The heatwave first shattered long-standing temperature records across Britain and France earlier this week, with both countries logging their hottest May temperatures in recorded history. Tragically, the extreme heat has already claimed lives: authorities have linked multiple fatalities in both Britain and France to the heatwave, most occurring in drowning incidents as people sought relief from sweltering conditions in open water.

While the most intense heat has begun to ebb in Britain, France remained in the grip of extreme temperatures Thursday. In the southwestern Landes region, extreme heat forced a local school to close early for the week, after corridor temperatures spiked to 53 degrees Celsius on Tuesday, leaving multiple students ill. Landes official Florian Deygas confirmed that several pupils experienced severe heat-related illness, including one case of fainting and vomiting. National meteorological service Meteo France maintained an orange heat alert for Paris, where forecasters predicted temperatures would hit 34 degrees Celsius following the record-breaking heat that baked the country earlier that week.

The ongoing heat has also disrupted major sporting events underway in the French capital. At the Roland Garros French Open tennis tournament, located on the outskirts of Paris, competing players have struggled to cope with oppressive court conditions, with one athlete collapsing mid-venue after finishing a grueling, multi-hour match. Tournament maintenance staff have adopted extraordinary measures to keep the clay courts manageable, spraying water between every set and fully flooding the surface after daily play concludes to rehydrate the layered clay. “We flood the courts, we soak them, so as to replenish with water the different layers that make up the clay,” explained head maintenance worker Philippe Vaillant.

Further south, Spain has also rolled out heat alerts for regions in the country’s northeast and north, forecasting temperatures could climb as high as 37 degrees Celsius on Friday. National weather agency Aemet noted in a social media statement that current temperatures are “extraordinarily high” for the month of May, matching the extreme heat levels normally not seen until the height of summer. The agency forecasts a noticeable drop in temperatures across the country next week as the heat dome begins to break down.

Climate scientists have repeatedly emphasized that human-caused climate change is amplifying the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events globally, including early-season heatwaves, droughts, and catastrophic flooding, a trend that is expected to continue without dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Four months after a fragile ceasefire paused open hostilities between the United States and Iran, a new round of mutual strikes has shattered the relative calm, triggering fresh fears of a wider regional conflict and roiling global energy markets already on edge over the future of the Strait of Hormuz.

The escalation unfolded Thursday, marking the most serious confrontation between the two adversaries since the truce took hold in April, and came as violence surged along the Lebanon-Israel border, where Iran-backed Hezbollah has been locked in continuous low-intensity conflict with Israeli forces. The clash also drew in Kuwait, a key US ally in the Gulf, which activated its air defense systems to intercept incoming fire shortly after the exchange of attacks began.

According to Iran’s state-run broadcaster IRIB, Iranian forces opened fire on four commercial vessels attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway that Iran has fully blockaded since the war began in late February, when US and Israeli forces launched a coordinated attack on Iranian targets. In response, a US official confirmed that American military forces targeted an Iranian ground control station located in the port district of Bandar Abbas, Iran’s primary Gulf shipping hub.

Minutes after the US strike, IRIB quoted Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) confirming that it had retaliated against the American air base that launched the original attack. The IRGC declined to publicly disclose the base’s location, but the confirmation of a counterstrike aligned with Kuwait’s announcement that it was responding to an incoming attack on its territory, which hosts large contingents of US military personnel.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei issued a formal condemnation of the US action, framing the strikes as a clear violation of the April ceasefire and emphasizing that Iran would take “all necessary measures” to protect its territorial integrity and national sovereignty. The US pushed back on this framing, with an unnamed official characterizing the American strike as a purely defensive action taken to preserve the terms of the existing truce.

The latest escalation has cast deep uncertainty over the stuttering diplomatic negotiations aimed at reaching a permanent peace deal to end the conflict that began on February 28. While neither Washington nor Tehran has signaled a willingness to return to full-scale open war, the clash has reinforced fears that the fragile truce could collapse entirely. For ordinary Iranians, that uncertainty has become a constant part of daily life. “I feel like nothing is certain yet,” said Amir, a 27-year-old software developer based in Tehran, speaking before Thursday’s strikes. “The daily question is: Will there be missile strikes tonight?”

At the heart of the ongoing diplomatic talks is the future of the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway that carries roughly a fifth of global oil and gas supplies. The Iranian blockade has cut off that key transit route, leaving global energy markets grappling with constrained supplies and volatile pricing. Thursday’s strike news sent oil prices jumping higher, erasing most of the gains from the previous session, which had risen on growing optimism that a peace deal to reopen the strait was close.

The diplomatic wrangling over Hormuz took a dramatic turn this week when US President Donald Trump issued an unusual threat against Oman, another Gulf nation that has served as a neutral mediator in the conflict and has itself been targeted by Iran in recent months. When asked about a proposed short-term arrangement that would let Oman and Iran jointly manage transit through the strait, Trump rejected the idea outright. “No, the strait is going to be open to everybody,” Trump said. “It’s international waters and Oman will behave just like everybody else or we’ll have to blow them up.”

Baqaein condemned the threat against Oman, calling it “a worrying sign of the normalisation of anarchy and intimidation in international relations.” The verbal threat came one day after the US Treasury Department announced new sanctions against Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority, the new Tehran-led agency established to collect transit fees from ships passing through the blockaded waterway.

Beyond the Gulf, the violence has also escalated sharply in Lebanon, where a separate ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah has failed to stop continuous skirmishes that have intensified over the past week. On Thursday, the Israeli military launched new airstrikes against Hezbollah infrastructure around the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, a day after it issued a sweeping order declaring all territory south of the Zahrani River — roughly 25 miles from the Israeli border — an active combat zone and ordering all civilian residents to evacuate immediately.

The evacuation order, the first large-scale such warning since the April 17 ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah went into effect, interrupted Eid al-Adha celebrations for thousands of Lebanese families in the region. Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported multiple airstrikes targeting residential areas in the city of Nabatieh, causing what it described as “huge destruction” to civilian property.

As of Wednesday, Lebanon’s health ministry reported that the total death toll from the conflict that began on March 2 stands at 3,269 people. On Thursday, the Israeli military confirmed that one additional soldier was killed in a Hezbollah drone attack along the Lebanese border the previous day, bringing the total number of Israeli troops killed in the conflict with the Iran-backed group to 24. Iranian officials have insisted that any final peace deal between Tehran and Washington must also include a permanent ceasefire and resolution for the Lebanese front.