Israel will say it had no choice, but its airstrikes in Lebanon risks igniting a regional war
Israel carried out "pre-emptive" strikes against Hezbollah overnight, while the militant group says it has completed the "first phase" of an attack on 11 Israeli military sites.
This appears to have been a high-stakes Israeli military operation that risked igniting a regional war.
Israel will say it had no choice: One of the pillars of Israeli military doctrine has long been the principle that offence is the best form of defence.
It is not the first time it has used its air force hoping to defang an imminent threat. Israel insists it sent an armada of warplanes to the skies over Lebanon, more than a hundred strong, to stop an 'extensive planned attack involving thousands of rocket launches' about to be let loose by Hezbollah.
Just as Israel launched audacious air attacks obliterating Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser's air force in 1967 and Saddam Hussein's atomic programme in 1981, Israel says it despatched jets overnight to neutralise Hezbollah.
It is not clear how many enemy drones and missiles were already in the air. Hezbollah claims all 11 of its targets in Israel were hit and it launched 320 Katyusha rockets.
The primary strike it says was aimed at "a qualitative Israeli military target that will be announced later" as well as "enemy sites and barracks and Iron Dome [missile defence] platforms".
Israeli intelligence sources had claimed the airbase used in the strike on Shukr and the headquarters of Unit 8200, the Israeli military intelligence agency, north of Tel Aviv, were on Hezbollah's target list.
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Hezbollah meanwhile says Israel's operation failed to pre-empt its long-awaited retaliation and insists it succeeded in striking targets deep within Israel.
Two questions for now: Hezbollah's next move and what this does to efforts to end the war in Gaza.
Will Hezbollah draw a line under the Shukr/Haniyeh affair? The organisation says today's action is over but is more planned in the coming days? All eyes are on its commander Hassan Nasrallah who will address his faithful by video link tonight.
He has not been seen in public since Hezbollah's war with Israel in 2006 for fear of being assassinated by Israeli jets himself.
Hezbollah attacked Israel in the wake of Hamas atrocities on 7 October and has been locked in an almost daily artillery duel with Israel over their border ever since.
Israeli intelligence claims Hezbollah has amassed an arsenal of 150,000 missiles secreted in the hills of southern Lebanon since 2006, 10 times the amount it possessed back then.
It has so far refrained from unleashing that firepower: Analysts believe its paymasters and patrons in Tehran prefer to keep that armoury in reserve as an insurance policy for the day Israel may attack Iran itself, as well as its alleged nuclear programme.
But Israel has been testing that theory for months now, responding with force to Hezbollah's attacks in the north. Each exchange of fire has the potential to escalate the region into a wider war through miscalculation and unintended mass civilian casualties.
So far, events overnight do not seem to have upended the fragile efforts towards a ceasefire in Gaza. Delegations are still on their way to Cairo for the next round of talks. If anything the escalation reemphasises the urgency behind the diplomacy.
But it could also offer the Israelis a distraction, should they want one, from huge pressure from the US to make the concessions required to reach a deal.
Most Israeli observers believe Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not want a ceasefire on the terms currently being negotiated for fear it could lead to his coalition government falling apart.
But US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators insist the truce terms are the best and possibly last chance of bringing home Israel's hostages and ending the war.
They also believe a ceasefire in Gaza is the best way of reducing tensions in the north - which have exploded overnight so spectacularly.
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40,405 Palestinians killed in Israel's military offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, Gaza health ministry says
CAIRO, Aug 25 (Reuters) - At least 40,405 Palestinians have been killed and 93,468 others injured in Israel's military offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, said the Gaza Health Ministry.
In the last 24-hours, 71 were killed and 112 were injured in what the ministry called three "massacres" by Israel in the strip.
The recent war in Gaza started after Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel says it goes out of its way to avoid civilian casualties and accuses Hamas of using human shields, an allegation the group denies.
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Artificial intelligence has been applied to some of the world's most famous works of art. See the impressive result of the technology era.
Artificial intelligence has revolutionized the art world by reinterpreting and recreating some of the most famous works of art. Through techniques like style transfer, AI algorithms can emulate the distinct styles of iconic artists, blending technology with creativity to produce stunning and innovative visual masterpieces. The results are a testament to the transformative power of AI in the modern era. #Art #IA Read More...
The History of Space Exploration
Space exploration is one of humanity's most significant achievements, showcasing our desire to explore the unknown and push the boundaries of what is possible. From the earliest rocket experiments to landing on the Moon and exploring distant planets, the journey of space exploration has been marked by remarkable milestones and technological advancements.
Early Beginnings
The dream of space travel dates back centuries, with early theories and stories about flying to the stars. However, practical attempts began in the early 20th century with the development of rocketry. Pioneers like Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert Goddard, and Hermann Oberth laid the groundwork for modern rocketry with their theories and experiments.
The Space Race
The Cold War era saw the rise of the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union, driving rapid advancements in space technology. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, marking the beginning of the Space Age. This achievement spurred the United States to accelerate its space program.
Human Spaceflight
The next significant milestone was human spaceflight. On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet cosmonaut, became the first human to orbit the Earth aboard Vostok 1. This historic flight demonstrated the feasibility of human space travel and intensified the Space Race.
The Moon Landing
One of the most iconic achievements in space exploration is the Apollo 11 mission. On July 20, 1969, NASA's Apollo 11 mission successfully landed astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin on the Moon, while Michael Collins orbited above. Armstrong's famous words, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," echoed around the world as he became the first human to set foot on the lunar surface.
Space Stations
The development of space stations allowed humans to live and work in space for extended periods. The Soviet Union launched the first space station, Salyut 1, in 1971. Later, the International Space Station (ISS), a collaborative effort involving multiple countries, became a symbol of international cooperation in space exploration. The ISS has been continuously occupied since November 2000, conducting scientific research and technological experiments.
Mars Exploration
Mars has been a focal point of robotic exploration. NASA's Viking program, launched in the 1970s, sent two landers to Mars, providing valuable data about the Martian surface and atmosphere. More recently, rovers like Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance have explored Mars, searching for signs of past life and studying the planet's geology and climate.
The Future of Space Exploration
The future of space exploration holds exciting possibilities. Space agencies and private companies are working on missions to return humans to the Moon, establish a sustainable presence on Mars, and explore asteroids and other celestial bodies. Innovations in spacecraft design, propulsion systems, and international collaborations are paving the way for the next era of space exploration.
Space exploration continues to inspire and drive technological advancements, expanding our understanding of the universe and our place within it. As we look to the stars, the spirit of exploration and discovery that has guided humanity for centuries will undoubtedly lead us to new frontiers and unimaginable achievements.
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Age of Mythology: Retold is still mostly a classic RTS, but the visual overhaul makes a big difference.
How the mighty are fallen. In a bygone era, Tiberium harvesters and chariot archer rushes were a mainstay on my monitors, and my keyboards bore careworn lines where the 'build archery range' shortcut keys lay. It was a time of plenty, but modern real-time strategy games are far rarer, and that means the stakes always feel high when one arrives. Particularly one that starts with Age of...
Enter Age of Mythology: Retold—not a 100% faithful translation of Ensemble’s 2002 original but, as the name indicates, a modern interpretation which walks the tightrope of updating the bits that feel clunky by today’s standards without killing the sense of nostalgia. It’s a particularly tricky kind of alchemy, and although there are some tonal mis-steps *cough* voice acting *cough* it largely succeeds in knowing when to stick and when to twist.
That’s despite a list of developers so long that it makes the average Call Of Duty seem like a mad auteur’s passion project. World's Edge, Forgotten Empires, Tantalus Media, CaptureAge, and Virtuos Games have all lent their talents to this one, and maybe it’s unfair for me to be surprised that it feels so cohesive. This is modern game development after all, the pipeline that never sleeps.
Age of Mythology is more or less Age of Empires set in mythical eras, where powerful hero units and mythological beasts fight alongside conventional military archers and spearmen. Friendlier and slower-paced than Starcraft’s ruthlessly aggressive take on RTS, but built around the usual rock-paper-scissors game of unit strengths and weaknesses. Victory is wrought by finding the right army composition and using your limited resources—food, wood, gold and favor—to materialise it.
A UI and visual overhaul occupies the headline billing since it’s the most noticeable element, and it feels in touch with the original game without being overly married to it. The arrangement of your units, resources and build options is logical and clean. Hero units glimmer with a distinctive aura, and the ancient environs hit your eye with impressive detail. One of the many reasons I’ll never rank particularly highly online in this game is that I get distracted by the lovely oceans and spend seconds at a time just… watching them.
Onto more meaningful nuts-and-bolts changes: I’ve chalked up many Ls in RTS skirmishes past and present due to over-adventurous units taking mad hikes across the map, but with the new ‘attack move’ command in Retold comes a lifeline. Micromanagement’s still important for arranging your unit types so that they hit the battle in the right order, but ‘attack move’ tells everyonne to engage with all enemies they meet along the way to your waypoint. That meant no suicidal dashes towards buildings for my campaign armies while ignoring the infantry units pelting them in close proximity. Outside of combat units can still be caught going for an unsanctioned wander off into nothingness, but Retold feels like a big upgrade on the original’s often baffling pathfinding where it matters most.
The best thing about combat in this game is finding the sweet spot between human and mythical units, and knowing when to send super-tough heroes into battle with them. It took me a few skirmishes to find that mix for Nords, whose reworking now involves more ranged units but still play very differently to their enemies (pro tip: their military units also handle building construction).
With apologies to all historical shipwrights, I found great success in naval combat by spamming ships to distract my enemies and keep the pressure off my base. That meant destroying their docks was an important step towards resigning them to the history books. With all ship types available from the Classical age, the aquatic version of rock-paper-scissors is just as tactical as the terra firma equivalent that you’re managing with your archers and infantry.
God powers are no longer one-shot, game-changing cataclysms, but now operate on cooldown timers and can be deployed more than once per round. I can’t decide whether that feels more or less strategic—the gravity of deciding when to use a powerful one-shot in the original game is offset by the depth of timing one just right in Retold so that you’ll get it at a useful moment later. The powers break down into AoE damage-dealing abilities, with some enjoyable twists like Aphrodite’s curse, which turns enemy units into pigs, and resource buffs.
God powers aren’t exclusively about raining death down on your foes with satisfying AoE icons, though. Take wonders, for example. Where before you could construct certain wonders that would win you a round if you defended them for long enough, now they simply provide you with constant passive buffs that hasten your victory. That feels like a less stressful route to the win, but not necessarily a simpler one since you still need to carefully consider how to spend those resources.
The sell here, after sitting with all of Retold's changes to a 22-year-old game, is that the slower pace and the combination of historic and mythological units makes for a relaxing, therapeutic RTS session. The Greeks, Egyptians, Norse and Atlanteans play differently enough to take some pleasure from mastery of each, and although it’s an odd business decision that the Chinese—added as DLC after the original’s release—haven't been bundled in, they are at least being added in Retold’s first DLC.
There have been concerns over the character portraits in Retold, and speculation that the devs used AI to generate them—an accusation that the devs squarely denied, stating clearly that they’re drawn by human artists. The problem to my eye isn’t who drew them, it’s that they lack charm. People get understandably attached to characterful touches in classic games when so much of the presentation was of limited fidelity, so the bar’s high when you’re updating them. It’s a minor misstep that they lack some personality, nothing more.
The same’s probably true of the voice acting. It’s probably just a minor issue. Probably. After all, cutscenes are not the game. They’re the bits that bookend it. But the performances are a rogue’s gallery of slightly off accents, and that does detract from the drama and immersion. I found myself feeling harsher towards this one point as I got deeper through the campaigns, but we should all probably remember that bad cutscene performances are basically mandatory in real-time strategy. The great Tim Curry taught us that.
Retold is brave enough to play with the balance and the stat values of its source material, and that makes for some knotty, tactically fascinating skirmishes. Watching Hittites flanked by Minotaurs lay siege to the walls of Troy has been a genre highlight for me. It could have been braver about the stylistic bits, the way gods and heroes are characterised visually and in motion. But given real-time strategy’s tenuous spot in the current PC gaming pantheon, Retold is an important, if qualified, win.
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Kenyan police deployed to Haiti haven’t received full promised salary in two months
Hundreds of Kenyan police officers leading an international policing force in Haiti have not received their full pay for two months, the latest complication in what has been a rocky start to the security mission in the gang-plagued Caribbean nation.
The first Kenyan officers deployed to Haiti arrived in June, the vanguard of a multinational security support mission (MSS) that is being funded largely by the United States. There are now around 400 Kenyan police in the country, many from specialized units.
In an August 25 statement acknowledging delays to payments, the MSS announced that officers could expect the missing funds to hit their bank accounts this week.
“Therefore, there is nothing to worry about (regarding) welfare issues of the MSS officers, since mainstream processes have been finalized,” the MSS added.
In a “progress report” released Monday, Kenya’s National Police Service (NPS) said that the officers were continuing “to draw their NPS salaries” while waiting for the supplemental pay for their MSS duties.
Kenyan officers had expected to be paid a significant supplement for their Haiti deployment – a grueling assignment more typical of a military than of a police force. Officers are not allowed to leave their base in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince during non-working hours.
Speaking to CNN, some officers expressed frustration and concern about the missing supplemental payments. With schools reopening in Kenya this week, some say they need the money urgently to manage school fees and other expenses for their families back home.
“The officers feel frustrated after not having been paid for two months. And we hear that the money has already been sent to Kenya but they haven’t paid us, so please help us out,” one officer in Haiti told CNN before the police statement was released, requesting anonymity.
The MSS force is expected to ultimately grow to 2,500, with more troops expected from Jamaica, Benin, Chad, the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados and Belize. The force is hoped to bolster the Haitian National Police’s battles against an alliance of gangs that controls an estimated 85% of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area.
Around 600,000 Haitians have been forced to flee their homes due to gang violence, and some 2 million people live in gang-ravaged areas where fear of attack is constant, Haitian interim Prime Minister Garry Conille said in an interview with CNN in early August.
The MSS is financed through a UN-managed trust fund, to which the US, Canada, France and Spain have contributed millions of dollars. The United States has committed at least $380 million overall in support of the mission, largely in the form of equipment and materiel.
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in 1961, Ranger 1, the first mission in the Ranger program, launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
#OTD in 1961, Ranger 1, the first mission in the Ranger program, launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. A rocket malfunction during launch caused the spacecraft to get stranded in low-Earth orbit. Read More...
Generation Gap 🤣👖
Best Comic funny😂🤣#thefarside #garylarson
#comicstrips #comicbooks #dailycomics
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She's a model
She’s a model
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#jenniferlopez
#alexandradaddario #AngelinaJolie #MeganFox #margotrobbie
#chrisevans #ChristianBale #AnneHathway #BrieLarson
#ScarlettJohansson #elizabetholsen #JenniferLopez
#JenniferAniston #JenniferLawrence #priyankachopra
#KristenStewart #HaileeSteinfeld #emiliaclarke #galgadot
#wonderwoman #DC #mcu #MeganFox #kyliejenner
#kimkardashian #kendalljenner❤️❤️❤️
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Runescape's latest content roadmap includes group ironman mode, a new skilling boss, and exciting advancements in woodcutting
Runescape, the game that isn't the old school one that I imagine when someone says "Runescape," just rolled out a new roadmap of upcoming content. On YouTube, Runescape developer Jagex unveiled Runescape Ahead, which it says will be its ongoing format for long-term previews of updates on the horizon. In the first instalment, detailing what'll be hitting Runescape through late 2024 and early 2025, Jagex offered early glimpses at a pile of new features, updates, and content additions, like new story quests and bosses, a group ironman mode, and more. Try to contain your excitement, woodcutters: You're getting a new tree.
Jagex will kick off its autumn updates with a new Underworld dungeon, where players will face a new skilling boss to enter the shrine of an absent goddess and earn new rewards. Later in autumn, alongside a new Halloween event called Harvest Hollow, Jagex is planning on bringing a group ironman mode to Runescape, where a team of players can face the game and earn unique cosmetic rewards using only what they can gather, craft, and loot amongst themselves—all without XP bonuses.
Throughout, Jagex will be implementing player-requested updates to skills. A fourth Necromancy conjure ability will arrive sometime in autumn, allowing players with sufficient skill to summon a phantom guardian. There'll also be a new Slayer monster to hunt, offering a Necromancy upgrade for the Slayer helm.
Winter will bring the first quest in an ongoing series, where players will return to the desert and take up their "unfinished business" with the goddess Amascut the Devourer. Around that time, Woodcutting and Fletching will get a 110 skilling update in line with the recent Mining and Smithing update, bringing a new tree to cut, a new hatchet to cut said tree with, and new level 100 and masterwork ranged weapons. Big disruptions in the wood space.
The Christmas Village event will return to close out the year with new quests, activities, and rewards, with more opportunities to get a Black Partyhat. Across early 2025, there'll be 110 skilling updates for Runecrafting and Crafting and an eventual across-the-board skilling overhaul to make skilling "competitively profitable" with combat loot. Along the way, a second and third quest will arrive for the new desert questline, culminating in a new boss fight with Amascut herself in mid-2025.
Source: PC GAMER
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Which state(s) could Kamala and Walz *realistically* try to win that she and Biden did not win in 2020 (flip from red to blue)?
#USElections
I was looking at the 2020 presidential election results the other day on Wikipedia, and based on the states that were won by a narrow margin by either candidate, most were won by Biden.
However, Trump won North Carolina by 1.35% (74,483 votes), which seems to be the most likely state Kamala and Walz could flip.
Although Florida was won by Trump by 3.36% (371,686 votes), it’s likely to remain red especially based on the 2022 governor election results.
I’m not sure how much effort the Harris campaign would/will put into Maine’s 2nd congressional district 7.44%, 27,996 votes).
By this point things are looking like more of a longshot. Trump won Ohio by 8.03% (475,669 votes).
Trump won Iowa by 8.20% (138,611 votes).
Based on this alone, it seems like only North Carolina could be where the Harris campaign could expand from 2020, but of course that would be in addition to holding the close states they won that election (Arizona, Georgia…).
Any thoughts on how the Harris campaign will proceed? Would the Harris campaign be better off with focusing all their efforts on maintaining what she and Biden won in 2020? Or would it depend how polls are trending in the next few/several weeks?
Edited to add: I completely missed mentioning Texas, my mistake. Trump had won by 5.58% (631,221 votes). Maybe if there’s a strong enough push this could be flipped?
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