TICK TOCK AURA

On the 387th day of the war on Gaza , Israel continued its aggression on the Palestinian sector and Lebanon, while Israeli media reported that 50 people were injured, including soldiers, 15 of whom were in critical condition, in a truck-ramming operation north of Tel Aviv, and that the perpetrator was shot.

On the Lebanese front, the occupation army today acknowledged the killing of 4 soldiers in southern Lebanon after announcing that 61 soldiers were injured there during the last 24 hours, while Hezbollah warned the residents of 25 Israeli settlements yesterday, Saturday, and asked them to leave their homes immediately, before starting to bombard them with missiles and drones.

An Israeli strike has killed several people at the Asmaa school west of Gaza City, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense.

Video from the scene showed victims being placed in pick-up trucks, including at least two children, and several people who appear to be dead on the ground.

The Hamas-run Government Media Office later said three of the dead worked for Hamas-affiliated media outlets.

The Civil Defense said crews were able to retrieve a number of bodies and wounded people, and that rescuers were still searching for missing people under the rubble.

The school compound in Al-Shati refugee camp, where hundreds of displaced people are staying, has been struck several times.

CNN has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment on the target of the strike.

After a previous strike targeting what it said were Hamas operatives in the compound, the IDF had said Hamas “systematically, intentionally and strategically places its infrastructure and operates from within civilian areas.”

Remember: Renewed Israeli military operations in northern Gaza have once again displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians, and left many others dead from bombardment. Authorities in Gaza say the Israeli military has stopped aid from reaching parts of the area.

Some 33 people were physically injured — six seriously — when a truck rammed a bus near a military base in central Israel on Sunday, according to Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency services.

When paramedics first reached the scene, they said eight people were trapped underneath the truck that rammed into them.

The emergency services were able to rescue seven people from underneath the truck with the help of civilians, they said, and rescued the final person with the help of the fire brigade.

In Michigan last night, former First Lady Michelle Obama appealed directly to male voters to "take our lives seriously," in a fiery speech on women's healthcare

Meanwhile, Muslim community leaders in the same swing state endorsed Donald Trump at a rally

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Former President Donald Trump on Saturday invited several Muslim leaders onstage with him at a campaign rally in Michigan as he courts Arab American and Muslim voters disillusioned or angry over US policy on Israel and Gaza in the critical battleground state.

“They could turn the election one way or the other,” Trump said in the Detroit suburb of Novi, located about a half hour from Dearborn, which last year became the first Arab-majority city in the US.

Trump said in his speech that he had held a meeting earlier in the day with Muslim leaders. He was joined onstage by what his campaign described as “prominent leaders of Michigan’s Muslim community,” including Imam Belal Alzuhairi, who described Trump as the “peace” candidate.

“We, as Muslims, stand with President Trump because he promises peace – he promises peace, not war,” Alzuhairi said. “We are supporting Donald Trump because he promised to end war in the Middle East and Ukraine.”

Trump has criticized Israel’s war in Gaza on public relations grounds, saying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his military need to “get it over with fast.” He has also slammed President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for not adequately supporting Israel, though the current administration – and Harris’ campaign – has largely refused to criticize Israel or consider halting weapons shipments to the country.

“You know, as a developer, it could be the most beautiful place – the weather, the water, the whole thing, the climate,” Trump said. “It could be so beautiful.”

During his first month as president, in 2017, Trump issued an executive order banning entry for 90 days by citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. The order indefinitely banned Syrian refugees and blocked all refugees from entering the US for four months. (After a lengthy court battle, the “travel ban” survived in part. Biden revoked the orders in 2021 immediately after being sworn in.)

The Trump campaign and its allies, though, have sought to seize on Arab American and Muslim anger over continued US support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and, more recently, Lebanon, by criticizing Harris and Biden from both sides – telling anti-war voters that Trump would secure peace and claiming to pro-Israel voters that the Democrats don’t have their back.

Trump has frequently questioned why Jewish Americans would consider voting for Harris, repeatedly saying that Jewish Democrats “should have their head examined.” At an event in September billed as opposing antisemitism, he even warned that “the Jewish people would have a lot to do” with his potential loss in November.

Harris, who has called for a ceasefire in Gaza and has said she supports a two-state solution in the region, has taken more heat from pro-Palestinian and anti-war activists, who have pleaded with her to break from Biden and say she supports conditioning military aid to Israel.

During a brief meeting three weeks ago in Flint, Michigan, a group of Arab American advocates and leaders pressed Harris “to show distance between how she would govern on this matter with the current administration policies, which we don’t agree with,” as Wa’el Alzayat, the CEO of Muslim American advocacy group Emgage Action, told CNN afterward.

Trump at his rally on Saturday claimed that “Jews, Catholics, evangelicals, Mormons, Muslims are joining our cause in larger numbers than ever before and now the most wonderful thing is happening.”

“The Muslim and Arab voters in Michigan and across the country want a stop to the endless wars and a return to peace in the Middle East. That’s all they want,” Trump said.

Trump also, again, used Harris’s recent round of campaigning alongside former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, whose father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, was one of the leading architects of the US invasion of Iraq and the yearslong war that followed. Both Cheneys have endorsed Harris.

Hours later, Harris, while campaigning in Kalamazoo, Michigan, was interrupted early in her speech by a protester, who shouted, “No more Gaza war.”

The number of dead and missing in massive flooding and landslides wrought by Tropical Storm Trami in the Philippines has reached nearly 130 and the president said Saturday that many areas remained isolated with people in need of rescue.

Trami blew away from the northwestern Philippines on Friday, leaving at least 85 people dead and 41 others missing in one of the Southeast Asian archipelago’s deadliest and most destructive storms so far this year, the government’s disaster-response agency said. The death toll was expected to rise as reports come in from previously isolated areas.

Dozens of police, firefighters and other emergency personnel, backed by three backhoes and sniffer dogs, dug up one of the last two missing villagers in the lakeside town of Talisay in Batangas province Saturday.

A father, who was waiting for word on his missing 14-year-old daughter, wept as rescuers placed the remains in a black body bag. Distraught, he followed police officers, who carried the body bag down a mud-strewn village alley to a police van when one weeping resident approaching him to express her sympathies.

The man said he was sure it was his daughter, but authorities needed to do checks to confirm the identity of the villager dug up in the mound.

In a nearby basketball gym at the town center, more than a dozen white coffins were laid side by side, bearing the remains of those found in the heaps of mud, boulders and trees that cascaded Thursday afternoon down the steep slope of a wooded ridge in Talisay’s Sampaloc village.

President Ferdinand Marcos, who inspected another hard-hit region southeast of Manila Saturday, said the unusually large volume of rainfall dumped by the storm — including in some areas that saw one to two months’ worth of rainfall in just 24 hours — overwhelmed flood controls in provinces lashed by Trami.

“We’re not done yet with our rescue work,” he said. “Our problem here, there are still many areas that remained flooded and could not be accessed even big trucks.”

His administration, Marcos said, would plan to start work on a major flood control project that can meet the unprecedented threats posed by climate change.

More than 5 million people were in the path of the storm, including nearly half a million who mostly fled to more than 6,300 emergency shelters in several provinces, the government agency said.

In an emergency Cabinet meeting, Marcos raised concerns over reports by government forecasters that the storm — the 11th to hit the Philippines this year — could make a U-turn next week as it is pushed back by high-pressure winds in the South China Sea.

The storm was forecast to batter Vietnam over the weekend if it would not veer off course.

The Philippine government shut down schools and government offices for the third day on Friday to keep millions of people safe on the main northern island of Luzon. Inter-island ferry services were also suspended, stranding thousands.

Weather has cleared in many areas on Saturday, allowing cleanup work in most areas.

Japanese voters are today heading to the polls in a snap election, following a tumultuous few years for the ruling party which saw a “cascade” of scandals, widespread voter apathy and record-low approval ratings.

The election was announced by Shigeru Ishiba three days after he was selected as the leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) - before he had been officially sworn in as prime minister.

The decision was made despite the LDP seeing approval ratings of below 20% earlier in the year, in the wake of a political fundraising corruption scandal.

Yet the LDP still remains the strongest contender against opposition parties which have failed to unite, or convince voters they are a viable option to govern.

The main opposition party had an approval rating of just 6.6% before parliament was dissolved.

“It is so hard to make decisions to choose parties, I think people are losing interest,” Miyuki Fujisaki, a long-time LDP supporter who works in the care-home sector, told the BBC ahead of polls opening.

The LDP, she said, has its problems with alleged corruption, “but the opposition also does not stand out at all”.

“They sure complain a lot, but it’s not at all clear on what they want to do,” the 66-year-old said.

For all the apathy, politics in Japan has been moving at a fast pace in recent months.

Shigeru Ishiba took over as prime minister after being voted in by the ruling party following his predecessor Fumio Kishida - who had been in the role since 2021 – making a surprise decision to step down in August.

The move to call the election came at a time when the LDP is desperate to restore its tarnished image among the public. Ishiba - a long-time politician who previously served as defence minister - has described it as the “people’s verdict”.

But whether it’s enough to restore trust in the LDP - which has been in power almost continuously since 1955 – is uncertain.

A series of scandals has tarnished the ruling party’s reputation. Chief among them is the party’s relationship with the controversial Unification Church - described by critics as a “cult” - and the level of influence it had on lawmakers.

Then came the revelations of the political funding corruption scandal. Japan’s prosecutors have been investigating dozens of LDP lawmakers accused of pocketing proceeds from political fundraising events. Those allegations - running into the millions of dollars - led to the dissolution of powerful factions, the backbone of its internal party politics.

“What a wretched state the ruling party is in,” said Michiko Hamada, who had travelled to Urawa station, on outskirts of Tokyo, for an opposition campaign rally.

“That is what I feel most. It is tax evasion and it’s unforgivable.”

Israel’s attack on Iran deepens the war in the Middle East. Avoiding, or risking, an even worse escalation is at the heart of decisions being taken by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his key advisors.

They must decide on the least bad of a series of difficult choices. At one end of the spectrum is hitting back with another wave of ballistic missiles. Israel has already threatened to retaliate again if that happens.

At the other is deciding to draw a line under the destructive exchanges of direct strikes on their respective territories. The risk for Iran if it holds its fire is that looks weak, intimidated and deterred by Israel’s military power and political determination, backed up by the United States.

Iranians walk next to an anti-Israel billboard on a street after several explosions were heard, in Tehran, Iran, on Saturday.

After Israel’s attack on Iran Saturday, US officials were quick to caution both countries against perpetuating the cycle of violence, but analysts say lasting de-escalation is not a foregone conclusion.

The airstrikes “should be the end of this direct exchange of fire between Israel and Iran,” a senior US administration official said after the attacks.

After reports emerged of explosions heard in Tehran, Israel in a statement said it launched what it described as “precise strikes on military targets in Iran” early Saturday. The strikes were in response to Iran’s barrage of missiles fired at Israel on October 1, in retaliation to the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and others.

Israel strikes Iran in high-stakes retaliation

Iran said Israel “attacked parts of military centers” on Saturday in the provinces of TEHRAN, Khuzestan and Ilam, causing “limited damage” in some areas.

Iran appeared to have downplayed the Israeli strike, Iranian experts said. State media broadcast images showing calm on the streets of Tehran, with traffic moving and people going about their daily business.

Iran’s foreign ministry condemned the attack, calling it “clear violation” of international law. The ministry added that Iran “considers itself entitled and obligated to defend itself” after the Israeli strikes.

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington, DC, said Iran’s downplayed response may be “more reflective of their desire to de-escalate than a true assessment of the damage Israel inflicted on Iran,” like Israel’s attempts to hide damage caused by Iran’s October 1 attack.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense for Democracies, also based in DC, said Iran’s downplayed response may be “a strategic move to save face and keep US constraint on Israel.”

After several hours of strikes Saturday, the Israeli military said it had targeted manufacturing sites used to produce missiles that Iran has fired at Israel over the past year. Israel also said it hit Iranian aerial defense systems early Saturday to allow its aircraft to attack the other targets.

Majid Asgaripour/Wana News Agency/Reuters

A general view of Tehran after several explosions were heard, in Tehran, Iran on Saturday.

Russia struck a major Ukrainian hospital used to treat injured soldiers, killing at least five people, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the Mechnikov Hospital in the south-central city of Dnipro one of the country’s “most important.” Before the war it treated up to 40,000 patients a year.

Five people, including a child, were killed in the strikes overnight, said Serhii Lysak, head of the Dnipro regional military administration, posting on his official Telegram.

The strike comes just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin faced calls from world leaders attending the BRICs summit in Kazan, Russia to end the war in Ukraine.

Zelensky made a pointed reference to this week’s summit in his statement posted on social media, saying that “after everything said in Kazan, Russian murderers have resumed their usual business.”

“This proves once again that aggression cannot be stopped by words alone but only by decisive action in defense of the state and the people against whom this war is waged,” the Ukrainian leader added.

At least 21 people were injured in the attack on Dnipro including a 17-year-old boy who is in a “serious condition,” according to Lysak.

“As a result of the overnight missile attack, there is damage in several locations in the city,” Lysak said, adding that one apartment building had been destroyed and two dozen others damaged by the strike.

Photos shared by Lysak showed rescuers working through huge piles of rubble and the inside of what looked to be a hospital room with blown out windows.

The city’s mayor, Borys Filatov described a sleepless night he spent as missiles descended upon the city.

“This is not just a two-story building;. This is an ordinary residential building with eight apartments hit with a ballistic missile,” Filatov added.

Dnipro was not the only major Ukrainian city hit overnight. The capital, Kyiv also experienced a drone attack, according to the head of the military administration, Serhii Popko.

A young girl was killed after her apartment building in the Solomianskyi district was struck, Popko said. A woman in her 50s was also killed by strikes in the Kyiv region, according to the regional military administration.

More than 100 people were evacuated from the same residential building in the city after what Popko said was the sixteenth air attack on Kyiv this month alone.

The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia used a combination of “various types of missiles, Shahed-type attack UAVs, and drones of unspecified type” to carry out attacks across the country.

Hong KongCNN — 

Dinosaur fossils have been discovered in Hong Kong for the first time, on a remote island in the financial center’s countryside.

The fossils were found on Port Island, an uninhabitable expanse of rocks in the northeastern waters of the city, by Hong Kong’s Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department in March, the government said in a statement Wednesday.

Researchers have determined that the bone fossils likely originated from a “large aged dinosaur” from the Cretaceous period –– an era more than 145 million to 66 million years ago that followed the Jurassic period.

Hong Kong’s Secretary of Development Bernadette Linn said that “the discovery is of great significance and provides new evidence for research on palaeoecology in Hong Kong,” the statement read.

Since 1979, Port Island has been designated as a site of special scientific interest and is also part of Hong Kong’s UNESCO Global Geopark –– a cluster of islands protected by an international framework and primarily used for education and sustainable development.

“Further studies will have to be conducted to confirm the species of the dinosaur,” officials said, adding that Port Island and the wider country park will be closed for further excavations and research. The dinosaur fossils will also be on public display at Hong Kong’s Heritage Discovery Centre from Friday onwards.

Experts in paleontology say the landmark discovery is a big deal for Hong Kong, a city with a complex geological history and ever-changing weather patterns.

“The only way we can find dinosaur fossils is if there is a bit on the surface that we can see,” Michael Pittman, an assistant professor of life sciences at the Chinese University of Hong Kong told CNN, adding that the remains may have fully eroded if researchers arrived later.

The only “dinosaur-era things” Hong Kong has found so far are plants and fish, he said.

Pittman also noted that the discovery of body fossils is rare regionally, as skeletal remains are not typically found in southern China, known instead for its dinosaur eggs.

Since 2020, however, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found dinosaur remains buried shallowly across nine localities in the southwestern province of Yunnan and have carried out excavations.

Earlier this year, paleontologists in China discovered the fossils of a Gandititan cavocaudatus at a construction site in Jiangxi province. The fossils, estimated to date back 90 million years, were part of a new dinosaur species previously unknown in East Asia.

It’s unclear how long Port Island will remain closed to visitors.