Hamas said it will release Israeli hostages as initially planned after holding “positive” talks with mediators, following a dispute with Israel over the Gaza ceasefire deal.

The militant group had postponed the release of more hostages this weekend, accusing Israel of violating the fragile ceasefire. In response, Israel warned it would return to fighting.

After talks with key mediators Egypt and Qatar, Hamas said that the releases – which will see Palestinian prisoners exchanged in return – will go ahead.

“Hamas confirms its continued position to implement the deal according to what was signed, which includes exchanging prisoners according to the specified timetable,” a statement by the militant group said.

“The talks were characterized by a positive spirit,” the statement said, adding that Egypt and Qatar affirmed they would work to “remove obstacles and fill gaps.”

Israel has not responded to Hamas’ statement.

It is unclear yet whether Hamas’ announcement will be enough to resolve the dispute with Israel. The standoff had threatened the first pause in fighting in over a year, and the next phase of the ceasefire has yet to be determined.

US President Donald Trump has suggested dismissing the multi-staged approach of the deal altogether and giving Hamas an ultimatum to release all the hostages at once.

While Netanyahu welcomed Trump’s demand, he hasn’t explicitly agreed to it – instead issuing an ambiguous statement, saying Hamas must “return our hostages by Saturday noon” – without giving a figure – or the military “will return to intense fighting until Hamas is completely defeated.”

So far, 16 out of 33 Israeli hostages scheduled for release in the current phase of the agreement have been freed by Hamas, and 656 Palestinian prisoners from a list of nearly 2,000 have been released by Israel.

In its statement on Thursday, Hamas said mediators pledged to follow up on its demands for Israel to allow the entry of housing supplies, medical equipment, fuel, and relief aid. The group also said mediators confirmed they would “remove obstacles” to resuming the ceasefire agreement.

US President Donald Trump’s “lengthy and highly productive” phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin has sparked fears in Europe of a “dirty deal” being struck to end the war in Ukraine on terms favorable to Moscow without Kyiv’s involvement.

President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday said Ukraine would not accept a peace deal negotiated by the United States and Russia alone. He conceded it was “not pleasant” that Trump spoke with Putin before calling Kyiv, calling into doubt the West’s policy of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” that has largely held over three years of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, warned against a “quick fix” and a “dirty deal” to end the war, saying that Europe and Ukraine must be at the table for talks because no peace deal can be implemented without their involvement.

For European members of NATO the future suddenly looks a whole lot more uncertain. Since the foundation of the alliance, Europe has relied on the American nuclear umbrella, the deployment of sizable US military contingents in Europe and the vast US defense budget and weapons pipeline.

Trump’s call with Putin, and his subsequent announcement that negotiations would begin immediately on reaching a deal in Ukraine, blindsided European leaders and threatened to leave them with the grunt work of funding and overseeing any settlement.

In other words: Washington will do the deal (and may get paid in rare earth minerals by Ukraine as Trump has demanded), and Europe will pick up the tab.

Newly minted US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told NATO allies in Brussels that European and non-European troops – but not Americans – would have to police any agreement between Ukraine and Russia. There was also a brutal denial of Ukraine’s aspirations to join the alliance. Hegseth said Washington did “not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome.”

A NATO official subsequently briefed that “NATO membership is not necessarily something that needs to be negotiated with Russia. It’s something that’s a decision for allies and that decision has been linked to when the time is right.”

The official insisted that “the alliance’s position has not changed and Ukraine is still on a path to membership.”

‘Any deal behind our backs will not work’

The Europeans, both in NATO and in the EU – are struggling to be heard as Trump focuses on doing a deal with Putin to end what he has called the pointless bloodshed in Ukraine.

Kallas said that “any deal behind our backs will not work.” She added that “appeasement also always, always fails. So Ukraine will continue to resist and Europe will continue to back Ukraine.”

The allies have been fond of the mantra “No settlement in Ukraine without Ukraine.” That might now be expanded to “…without Ukraine and Europe.” Six European governments, including France, the UK and Germany, said Wednesday night in a panicked joint statement: “We are looking forward to discussing the way ahead together with our American allies.… Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiations.”

Šakalienė and her Baltic counterparts, on Russia’s borders, are especially anxious at the turn of events. She said there was a stark choice: “Whether we decide to fall under the illusion that Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin are going to find a solution for all of us, and that would be a deadly trap, or we will, as Europe, embrace our own economic, financial and military capacity.”

Šakalienė acknowledged that historically the US had been “paying for our security. And that needs to be corrected.”

Her Estonian counterpart, Hanno Pevkur, cited the poet Alexandre Dumas – “One for all, all for one” – as the bedrock of the transatlantic relationship, and also spoke of raising defense spending.

Flat-footed

But production lines, investment in new technology and recruitment do not happen overnight. There’s been intense talk since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began of ramping up defense industries in Europe. But that’s a multi-year process.

The head of French defense giant Dassault, Éric Trappier, said last year that “Europe believes all of a sudden that working on defence is a good thing… Between that realisation and the reality of building a European defense industry it’s going to take many years and even many decades,” he told the Financial Times.

Those words were echoed Thursday by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. “We are not producing enough and this is a collective problem…. Russia is producing in three months in ammunition, but the whole of the alliance is producing in a year.”

European weapons manufacturers have also complained about arcane decision-making processes in Brussels, where the European Commission has angled for a much greater role in procurement.

And this sudden increase in spending is expected at a time of sluggish growth and tight public finances.

The events of 1989, when the Soviet bloc evaporated, left a legacy of defense cutbacks in the West that are only now being reversed.

Together, as Zelensky noted this week, Ukraine and Europe have fewer men under arms than Russia. Zelensky is doubtful that Europe or another monitoring force alone is up to the task of securing any peace. “I don’t think any UN troops or anything like that have ever really helped anyone,” he told the Guardian this week. “We are for a (peacekeeping) contingent if it is part of security guarantees, and I would underline again that without America this is impossible.”

With Hegseth saying there is no way the US will commit troops to some sort of 1,000-kilometer long demilitarized zone stretching from the Black Sea to Kharkiv, there is no clarity over what those guarantees might be. Zelensky said Thursday that rather than a contingent of maybe 5,000 peacekeepers, there would need to be 100,000 as part of a “deterrent package.”

Some European ministers fear that Trump fatally misunderstands Putin. German defense minister Boris Pistorius said Thursday he regretted the new administration taking Ukraine’s prospective membership of NATO off the table immediately and added: “Putin is constantly provoking the West and attacking us again. It would be naive to believe the threat would actually diminish after such a peace agreement.”

Their next chance for allies to temper – or at least interrogate – the administration’s strategy will be at this weekend’s Munich Security conference, to be attended by US Vice-President JD Vance and Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg.

Europe sidelined?

Europeans may now be forgiven for glancing backwards to existential moments in their modern history.

One is the Munich agreement of 1938 that gave Hitler free rein to continue Nazi aggression against allies that were neither armed nor ready for war against a fully militarized society.

The other is the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 that suppressed the Prague Spring, an effort at liberalization that threatened Moscow’s dominance of Eastern Europe, just as Ukraine’s sharp tilt to the EU was seen as a threat by Putin.

At that time, US Senator Henry Jackson told NATO parliamentarians that while there was little disagreement in the US about the value of the Atlantic Alliance, there was “a widespread feeling in my country that so many Europeans were less concerned with the security of their homelands than we were.

“To many Americans it has seemed that a prosperous Western Europe was not making a reasonably proportionate contribution to the common defense effort,” Jackson said. “I am convinced that the future vitality of the alliance depends in very large measure on the degree and quality of European efforts to keep NATO strong.”

Fast forward half a century and the demands of the Trump administration that European members of NATO, many of which have struggled to reach a defense spending target of 2% of GDP, are now expected to hit 4 or 5% – (a level higher even than the US) and step beyond that security umbrella.

Daniella Gilboa has wasted no time in putting the joy back into her life after being released from 15 months in captivity in Gaza. She got engaged to her longtime boyfriend and sang at a party when she and other freed hostages left the hospital.

But Orly knows that what she is seeing in these first days after Daniella’s release is just the surface. “There are a lot of things under and I’m sure that we can see them when the days go by.”

It’s the same for Naama Levy and Liri Albag, released alongside Daniella on January 25, their mothers said. They appear physically healthy, and they are home. But they were imprisoned in Gaza for 477 days and free less than three weeks, so much of their recovery is yet to come.

“She’s back in her room,” Ayelet Levy Shachar said of her daughter and her girly pink bedroom complete with soft toys. “Although she does prefer to sleep with her mom at night.”

Naama, Liri and Daniella were all in their teens on October 7, 2023, when Hamas fighters stormed their outpost at Kibbutz Nahal Oz near the border with Gaza.

They were performing their mandatory military service as unarmed “spotters,” tasked with looking at activity inside Gaza and reporting back to commanders at another base.

Fifteen of their fellow spotters were killed in the surprise militant attack on communities and a music festival that left 1,200 Israelis dead and 250 kidnapped in the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. The Israeli war on Hamas that followed has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, injured twice as many and leveled much of Gaza.

Daniella, Liri and Naama were captured with four more young women: Karina Ariev, Agam Berger, Ori Megidish and Noa Marciano. Ori was rescued weeks after the attack, while Noa was killed in Gaza. Karina was also released on January 25, while Agam was freed five days later.

Video taken by Hamas on October 7 and later released by the women’s families showed the female soldiers being lined up against a wall by men with rifles. Their hands were bound behind them, and they were ordered to sit, many still in their pajamas, their faces and bodies spattered with blood.

On the day of the attack, with no word from Naama, Ayelet had first thought maybe her daughter was just unable to reach her in the chaos. But then she saw a video of Naama being dragged by her hair, her pants covered in blood, and being shoved into a vehicle.

And unknown to her, her daughter saw it too.

“She saw the video, she knew about it, and she did see myself and her father in different interviews,” Ayelet said. “She heard sometimes on the radio her brother speaking, her grandfather speaking. It wasn’t an everyday thing, but sometimes she was exposed to the media, and it did give her a lot of strength and support and helped her throughout those days.

“She waited to catch a glimpse of one of us. She told me even that she was following with the color of my hair during this time,” Ayelet added with a laugh.

Naama was wounded by shrapnel that day. Some she was later able to pick out of her skin; the rest remains in her body, Ayelet said.

Naama and Liri had only arrived at the outpost a couple of days before the attack, but Daniella had already been there nine months, her mom said.

Orly knows Daniella was hit in the leg that day, but much else is still unknown.

“October 7 is the most hard thing for her to speak about, and I don’t ask her about it,” Orly said. “She didn’t tell me yet about what happened that day. I just know that she lost a lot of her good friends … The loss of them is very hard for her, even more than the period of time of the captivity … I assume that in a few days or a few months, she’ll decide to talk about it, and she will tell me about it herself. I don’t want to make any pain for her.”

The mothers have learned a little about the conditions their girls, all now 20 years old, were kept in.

Shira Albag said Liri was held with Agam Berger, and sometimes Naama.

“Liri most of the time was in apartments with civilians,” she said. “It was difficult because they needed to do some things for the people of the house — to clean the house and to cook for them and to sit with the children and try to teach them English or play with them.”

Despite the physical closeness, there was little human kindness. “They didn’t treat them nice,” she said of the captors.

Amit Soussana, a woman freed in November 2023, has credited Liri for saving her life. She said the militants were convinced she was in the Israeli military and tied her up and beat her as they demanded a confession. At one point, other hostages were brought in to pressure her. Instead, Liri spoke to the guard and persuaded the captors that Amit was not a soldier.

“It seems like Liri, but I heard this story from Amit. Liri didn’t tell us yet the story,” Shira said. “I know it was very difficult for her. She saved Amit’s life. But when Liri will be ready, she will tell the story herself.”

Liri, Daniella and Naama were, along with Karina Ariev, the second group of hostages to be released under the first phase of the ceasefire deal. In a highly choreographed handover, they were paraded on a stage, dressed in olive-green military style outfits, and given certificates about their release and “gift bags” including souvenir keychains.

Their release was in marked contrast to the chaotic first handover of the 2025 truce and they seemed healthier than the three pale, emaciated men freed on Saturday.

Daniella watched that last release with her mother and talked about the condition of one of the men — her cousin Eli Sharabi.

“Daniella told me, ‘Mama, just know that if we were released two months ago, I looked like Eli’ because she also lost a lot of weight there,” Orly said. A change happened two or three months ago when Daniella and Karina were separated from other captives. And instead of four of them having to share one plate of food, then it was just two.

“It’s important to understand that we see Daniella, how she looks like right now, it doesn’t mean anything about what happened there and how she felt there.”

Hamas and its allies still hold a total of 73 people — some believed to be dead — taken from Israel during the October 7 attacks. Three additional hostages, held captive since 2014, are also still in Gaza.

Ayelet took time to thank US President Donald Trump for getting the ceasefire deal done and allowing the release of hostages. The terms of the deal map closely to an agreement then-President Joe Biden unveiled last May but could not complete.

Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister until November, told Israel’s Channel 12 News earlier this month that Hamas had agreed to that deal in July, but Israel did not go along with it.

“Unfortunately, there are fewer hostages still alive now, more time has passed, and we are paying a heavier price,” he said.

Ayelet echoed that sentiment. “They could have been home sooner. They should have been home sooner,” she said.

The drive and passion shown by the families and much of Israel over nearly 500 days to get the hostages freed is ramping up to a new urgency as the truce — and hope for more releases — hangs by a thread.

“We need to see them all home now,” Ayelet said.

Last year was the deadliest for journalists in more than three decades, with the majority killed in the Middle East, according to a report released Wednesday by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

At least 124 journalists and media workers were killed in 2024, the most recorded since the CPJ began collecting data three decades ago.

Nearly 70% of those deaths were at the hands of the Israeli military in Gaza and Lebanon, the report said, with 82 Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza.

The Israel Defense Forces denied targeting media workers, saying it “takes all operationally feasible measures to mitigate harm to civilians including journalists.”

Last year’s death toll exceeded the previous record in 2007, when 113 journalists were killed, almost half of them amid the US-led war in Iraq.

“The war in Gaza is unprecedented in its impact on journalists and demonstrates a major deterioration in global norms on protecting journalists in conflict zones, but it is far from the only place journalists are in danger,” the committee’s CEO Jodie Ginsberg said in a statement.

It accused Israel of being “slow and not transparent” in its inquiries into soldiers’ killings of journalists, of shifting blame to the victims and ignoring its duty to hold its military to account.

After Gaza and Lebanon, the report identified Sudan and Pakistan as the deadliest places for journalists, with six media workers killed in each last year. Mexico, Syria, Myanmar, Iraq and Haiti also had multiple killings of journalists in 2024.

“The number of conflicts globally – whether political, criminal, or military in nature – has doubled in the past five years, and this is reflected in the high number of deaths of journalists in nations such as Sudan, Pakistan, and Myanmar,” the CPJ said, citing data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) monitoring initiative.

Targeted killings on the rise

The CPJ report said at least 24 journalists worldwide had been killed deliberately because of their work over the past year, describing this as “an alarming rise in the number of targeted killings.”

Among them was Ismail Al-Ghoul, a 27-year-old Palestinian journalist, who was killed alongside his cameraman, Rami Al-Rifi, in an Israeli airstrike on Al-Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza last July, sparking condemnation from advocacy groups.

In the immediate aftermath of Al-Ghoul’s killing, his employer, Al Jazeera, denied what it called “baseless allegations made by the Israeli occupation forces in an attempt to justify its deliberate killing of our colleague, journalist Ismail Al-Ghoul, and his companion, cameraman Rami Al-Rifi.”

The IDF has rarely provided specific answers about the circumstances that led to the killing of journalists. Instead, the Israeli military has issued vague statements that reiterate their forces do not intentionally target journalists or that the matter is under investigation.

Trapped in the strip alongside their fellow Gaza residents, Palestinian reporters have been the eyes and ears of those suffering under the shadow of war. And with foreign media largely unable to enter, it is their photos, footage and reporting, often gathered at great personal risk, that have shown the world what is happening.

The committee said 10 journalists were deliberately killed by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon. The 14 other journalists whose deaths it determined were deliberate were from Haiti, Mexico, Pakistan, Myanmar, Mozambique, India, Iraq, and Sudan.

Failures to protect press

The report highlighted the ongoing failures to protect journalists and media workers, especially freelancers, in countries with consistently high rates of killings.

It cited the killing of a veteran journalist, Alejandro Martínez Noguez, who was shot last August in Mexico while under police protection as an example of the “persistent flaws” in the country’s mechanisms meant to protect journalists.

“The death tolls in Mexico, Pakistan, India, and Iraq reinforced the extreme dangers journalists face in these nations, which have experienced repeated killings over multiple decades despite numerous efforts in some of these countries, including at the national level, to address this,” the report said.

Freelancers, it said, were killed at an “unprecedented rate” last year. A total of 43 were killed, more than a third of all media worker deaths, the majority of which were Palestinians in Gaza.

“The typical freelancer frequently works alone, without staffers’ access to protective equipment, security guards, insurance for medical treatment, or benefits that would help surviving family members,” the report said.

It called on governments, international institutions and media organizations to ensure accountability for threats and attacks against journalists and to provide media workers with the necessary support to do their work.

“Every journalist killed is the loss of a truth-teller. Those who chronicle our reality and hold power to account deserve justice. We will not stop seeking it,” the committee said in a post on X.

The first of two vessels carrying 1,000 tons of a Chinese-made chemical that could be a key component in fuel for Iran’s military missile program has anchored outside the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas on Thursday, ship tracking data shows. It could be a signal that Iran’s missile production is back to business as usual after the devastating, and embarrassing, attacks by Israel on key factories last year.

The ship, Golbon, left the Chinese port of Taicang three weeks ago loaded with most of a 1,000-ton shipment of sodium perchlorate, the main precursor in the production of the solid propellant that powers Iran’s mid-range conventional missiles, according to two European intelligence sources.

The sodium perchlorate could allow for the production of sufficient propellant for some 260 solid rocket motors for Iran’s Kheibar Shekan missiles or 200 of the Haj Qasem ballistic missiles, according to the intelligence sources.

The shipment comes as Iran has suffered a series of regional setbacks with the collective defeat suffered by its allies: The fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Hezbollah’s losses in Lebanon. Following Israel’s strike on Iran’s missile production facilities in October, some Western experts believed it could take at least a year before Iran could resume solid-propellant production. This delivery points to Iran being not far from – or that they could already be back to – the production of its missiles.

The shipment was purchased on behalf of the Procurement Department of the Self Sufficiency Jihad Organization (SSJO), part of the Iranian body responsible for the development of Iran’s ballistic missiles, according to the sources.

The sources could not say if the Chinese government knew of the shipments prior to media reporting about their movement late January. The delivery of sodium perchlorate in itself is not illegal, nor does it breach Western sanctions.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters in January that she was not aware of the specifics of the case, but that China has always abided by its export control laws as well as the country’s international obligations.

Sanctions backdoor

The United States and United Kingdom have levied sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines company, with the State Department saying the firm is the “preferred shipping line for Iranian proliferators and procurement agents.”

The UK treasury said the company was “involved in hostile activity” by Iran and highlighted its links to the Iranian defense sector.

Both the Golbon and Jairan are under US sanctions.

Meanwhile, China has remained a diplomatic and economic ally for sanctions-hit Iran, decrying “unilateral” US sanctions against the country and welcoming Tehran into Beijing and Moscow-led international blocs like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS.

China also remains by far Iran’s largest energy buyer, though it has not reported purchases of Iranian oil in its official customs data since 2022, according to analysts.

Despite China’s historic ties to Iran’s defense sector, observers say Beijing has scaled back security ties over the past decade as it seeks to bolster relations with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. The US has in recent years, however, sanctioned a number of Chinese entities for alleged roles supporting Iranian military drone production. Recent joint naval drills between China, Iran and Russia have also signaled a potential deepening of government to government strategic ties.

A key ingredient

Although sodium perchlorate trade is not restricted by Western sanctions, it can be chemically transformed into ammonium perchlorate – a fuel and oxidizer which is a controlled product.

“There really aren’t very many alternative things” that the chemical in the Chinese deliveries can be used for, aside from for rocket propellants, fireworks and fuel, he said, adding: “perchlorates have a fairly narrow range of uses.”

Increasing controls on perchlorates in the West have seen China become a major alternative supplier of such chemicals, he said.

“This is just the latest shipment in a decades-old pattern,” Lewis added.

Supply troubles

Defense analyst Hinz said that while Iran has previously boasted of its ability to produce ammonium perchlorate themselves, this delivery hints at supply chain bottlenecks as domestic precursor supply has been unable to meet missile production needs. It’s a problem even countries like the US can face, he added.

Hinz said that Iran’s solid propellant production infrastructure has “dramatically expanded in the last few years – and potentially even since October 7, (2023),” with new sites built and existing ones enlarged.

Kheibar Shekan missiles have a range of 880 miles (around 1,420 km), with their Haj Qasem cousins able to reach targets 900 miles (around 1,450 km) away, according to the Western intelligence source. Although not the most technically advanced weapons in Iran’s arsenal, their range does make them valuable for attacks on Israel.

Hinz said that variants of such missiles have been used by Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen against Israel, despite the distance ostensibly outstripping the missiles’ standard range. Modifications of the warhead mass or secondary propulsion units could lengthen their reach, he said.

Solid propellant is also used in Iran’s short-range missiles – like those used in the past against US bases in the region and in exports to Russia, Hinz said. Iran’s largest and most powerful ballistic missiles typically use liquid propellant.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, wreckage from at least one Kheibar Shakan missile was recovered following Iran’s October 1, 2024 barrage against Israel. Analysis from one of the Western sources confirmed that some 50 medium-range missiles with solid propulsion were fired at Israel by Iran in this attack.

Iran’s arsenal is believed to hold “over 3,000 ballistic missiles,” US Air Force Gen. Kenneth McKenzie told Congress in 2023 – but exact numbers of each type of missile are unknown.

A humpback whale briefly swallowed a 24-year-old kayaker last Saturday during a father-son excursion out on the icy waters around Chile’s southernmost Patagonia region.

The terrifying moment, captured on camera by the kayaker’s father, showed the whale surfacing in the Strait of Magellan and gulping Adrian Simancas for a few moments before releasing him.

“I thought it swallowed me,” Adrian said in the video.

“When I turned around, I felt on my face like a slimy texture; I saw colors like dark blue, white, something approaching from behind that closed… and sank me,” he said. “At that moment, I thought there was nothing I could do, that I was going to die, I didn’t know what it was.”

But despite the uncertainty, he felt his life vest “pull me up, and then two seconds later I was back on the surface and then started understanding what happened,” he said.

He then heard “what sounds like a strong wave hitting behind me and when I turn around, I don’t see Adrian or his pack raft, so I got worried, and around three seconds later I see he’s shot up to the surface and the pack raft after him.”

When asked if both father and son would go back to kayaking, they said in chorus: “of course.”

The Strait of Magellan is a popular tourist destination due to its outdoor activities and flora and fauna. Kayaking with dolphins and humpback whales is one of the activities advertised on the government’s tourism website.

Humpback whales typically feed on krill and small fishes, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The NOAA says humpback whales are popular among whale watchers as they are active on the surface and often jump out and slap the water with their pectoral fins or tails.

Thailand has received 260 human trafficking victims, more than half of them Ethiopians, from Myanmar, its army said on Thursday, in a massive repatriation that comes amid a mounting crackdown on scam centers operating along a porous border.

Criminal gangs have trafficked hundreds of thousands of people and forced them to work in illegal online operations generating billions annually across Southeast Asia, especially along the Thai-Myanmar border, according to the United Nations.

“After screening the group and verifying their nationalities, it was found that there were 20 nationalities,” the Thai army said in a statement, with 138 of them Ethiopians.

Although these illegal operations have been in place for years, Thai authorities renewed efforts last month after Chinese actor Wang Xing was abducted in Thailand, lured on the promise of an acting job.

He was later freed by Thai police who found him in Myanmar.

On Wednesday, a large group of trafficking victims who were sent back from Myanmar’s Myawaddy area were seen crossing the Moei River to Thailand, where they were directed onto Thai military vehicles as soldiers looked on.

The Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, a Myanmar rebel group based along the Thai border, said it had found around 260 people from unspecified “businesses” when its personnel looked for forced labor in areas under its control.

“We don’t know how they got here,” the outfit’s chief of staff Major Saw San Aung told Reuters. “We are continuing the search of forced labor, and we will send them back.”

Thailand earlier this month cut electricity, fuel and internet supply to parts of Myanmar where the illegal compounds operate, reflecting growing unease in Bangkok over the impact of scam centers on the vital tourism sector.

Sri Lanka extended power cuts for a third day on Thursday as it scrambled to restore its national grid to full capacity after a monkey triggered a widespread blackout over the weekend that disrupted supply to the island’s 22 million people.

An outage lasting six hours on Sunday was blamed by power minister, Kumara Jayakody, on a monkey that disrupted a grid station in a Colombo suburb. No power cuts were implemented on Wednesday, which was a holiday in Sri Lanka.

The animal had come into contact with the transformer at the station, disrupting supply to the entire country. There were no immediate details on whether the monkey survived the incident.

One-hour power cuts will be implemented from 6 p.m. (12:30 GMT), the island’s state-run power monopoly, the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), said in a statement.

Sunday’s disruption also affected the island’s only 900 MW coal fired power plant, causing it to operate in safe mode, the CEB said.

“All efforts are being made to restore the grid to full capacity but power cuts will be implemented to manage peak demand hours in the night,” the CEB statement added.

Ninety-minute power cuts were implemented on Monday and Tuesday to manage demand. An investigation into the outage was being conducted by the energy ministry.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said a Russian drone struck the destroyed nuclear power plant at Chernobyl near Ukraine’s border with Belarus on Thursday night.

Ukraine’s State Emergency Service later said that the radiation background limits remain within normal limits.

“A Russian attack drone with a high-explosive warhead struck the shelter protecting the world from radiation at the destroyed 4th power unit” at the plant, Zelensky said on X.

The concrete shelter that covers the unit was damaged, Zelensky added and a fire was extinguished. “Radiation levels have not increased and are being constantly monitored. According to initial assessments, the damage to the shelter is significant,” Zelensky said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said on X that shortly before 2 a.m. local time its team at the Chernobyl site “heard an explosion coming from the New Safe Confinement, which protects the remains of reactor 4 of the former Chernobyl NPP, causing a fire.”

“They were informed that a UAV [drone] had struck the NSC roof,” the IAEA added.

Unit 4 at Chernobyl exploded in 1986, sending extensive clouds of radioactivity across parts of the Soviet Union and Europe. It was later encased in a concrete and steel sarcophagus.

Altogether, on Thursday night, the Ukrainian military reported that Russia fired 133 drones at Ukraine, 73 of which were shot down and 58 did not reach their targets. The numbers are broadly in line with the recent average of drone attacks. It said drones were shot down in 11 regions, covering much of the country.

Zelensky said in his post that the nightly drone attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure meant that Russian President Vladimir Putin “is definitely not preparing for negotiations — he is preparing to continue deceiving the world.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman was involved in a collision with a merchant ship near Egypt in the Mediterranean Sea on Wednesday night, a Navy spokesperson said Thursday.

It’s not clear what caused the collision between the US warship and the Panamanian-flagged vessel Besiktas-M, but the spokesperson said it did not result in any flooding on board the Truman and its nuclear propulsion plants were unaffected.

No injuries were reported on either vessel, though the merchant ship sustained some damage, a Navy official said.

An investigation is ongoing to determine how they collided, but the official noted that the area they were in near the Suez Canal is typically very densely packed with ships.

The Besiktas-M, a 617-foot (188-meter) long bulk carrier, had exited the Suez Canal and was heading to Romania, according to tracking website Marine Traffic.

The Truman, a 1,100-foot-long Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, was heading toward the canal, tracking data indicates.

Marine expert Sal Mercogliano, a professor at Campbell University, said in an X Spaces conversation that the area where the collision occurred, near an anchorage off Egypt’s Port Said, had around 100 ships in it at the time of the incident.

Former US Navy captain Carl Schuster, an instructor at Hawaii Pacific University, said such conditions leave little room for error.

“There is not a lot of room for maneuvering in a restricted seaway and both ships require about one nautical mile to stop,” Schuster said.

Small navigation mistakes, misreading of the other ship’s intentions or delayed decision-making from the crew of either ship could have put them in danger quickly “with very few viable options,” Schuster said.

Last week the Truman was in Souda Bay, Greece, for a “working port visit” after two months of combat operations in the Central Command region, a Navy statement said. During that time, it conducted multiple strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen and launched airstrikes against ISIS in Somalia, the Navy said.

The Truman is one of 11 aircraft carriers in the US Navy fleet.

Accidents involving the huge ships and commercial vessels are rare as the carriers usually travel with a strike group, protected by a screen of destroyers.

But ships entering the Suez Canal must travel in single file, which could make them more vulnerable to a collision, experts said.

The last known time a US carrier collided with a merchant vessel was on July 22, 2004, when a dhow, a sailing vessel common in the Middle East, struck the former USS John F. Kennedy in the Persian Gulf, according to maritime outlet USNI News.

Two US Navy destroyers were involved in fatal collisions in 2017. Seven sailors died after the USS Fitzgerald struck a cargo ship off Japan in June that year, and 10 sailors were killed when the USS John S McCain collided with a tanker off Singapore and Malaysia two months later.