The Times of Israel liveblogged Monday’s events as they unfolded.
An Italian-Moroccan student has been freed by Moroccan authorities after she was detained on blasphemy charges after arriving in June to visit relatives, Italian officials say.
Italy’s Foreign Ministry says Ikram Nazih, 23, had been convicted of “offenses against religion” for having shared a satirical cartoon on Facebook in 2019.
The Italian newspaper Domani, which had championed her cause, said the cartoon had transformed a verse of the Quran into a verse about whisky.
A top World Health Organization official says the agency only has “a few days left of supplies” for Afghanistan and wants help to ferry in 10 or 12 planeloads of equipment and medicine for its beleaguered people.
Dr. Rick Brennan heads WHO’s eastern Mediterranean region that includes Afghanistan. He says from Cairo that the UN health agency is negotiating with the US and other countries to help efforts to replenish strained stockpiles.
“We estimate we’ve only got a few days left of supplies,” Brennan says, alluding to a distribution center in Dubai that has what’s needed. “We have 500 metric tons ready to go, but we haven’t got any way of getting them into the country right now.”
Brennan says US and other authorities have encouraged WHO and partners to look to other Afghan airports than Kabul’s, which is facing a crush of thousands of people trying to get out of Afghanistan after a Taliban takeover.
He says those authorities “have suggested that it’ll be too difficult a logistics exercise and security exercise to bring supplies into Kabul,” where teams would be required to unload planes and allow in trucks to carry out the supplies — which could complicate the evacuations.
Needed supplies include emergency kits and essential medicines for treatment of chronic diseases, like diabetes, the WHO says.
Approval for people over 30 to receive the COVID-19 booster shot is expected in the coming days, and even as early as tomorrow, according to multiple television reports.
Channel 12 and 13 say the Health Ministry is likely to approve the move within days. Kan news says it might even happen tomorrow.
Initial data after two days of serological testing for children shows that 13 percent of tested children under the age of 12 are positive for COVID-19 antibodies, indicating that they were infected with the coronavirus without knowing it, Channel 12 reports.
Mass testing for antibodies is taking place throughout the country ahead of the start of the school year.
Israeli security officials believe Israel and Hamas are again on a collision course in Gaza, as the terror group encourages further violent protests along the border, Channel 12 news reports.
Officials say conflict may be inevitable. But Israel is cautious ahead of planned meetings between Prime Minister Bennett and US President Joe Biden.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is calling on the Spanish government to block a planned seminar at the University of Santiago de Compostela that will be held under the title: “Auschwitz/Gaza: A testing ground for comparative literature.”
In a letter to the country’s minister of universities, the Center says, “This very title and expected content is not an issue of ‘freedom of expression,’ but a banalization of the Holocaust, which can incite to hatred and violence against Jews of today.”
It is also “an insult to Spanish republicans deported to the Nazi death camps,” it says.
Likud lashes out at Prime Minister Bennett after an unnamed top source said that the previous government had left the current one with “a very difficult inheritance” on Iran.
“Bennett lies as much as he breathes,” the party says. “He himself lauded [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s major actions on Iran.”
It says Netanyahu “led the global fight against the dangerous nuclear deal, while all world powers ran toward it.
“Unlike Netanyahu, Bennett has failed on coronavirus and is failing in the fight against Iran.”
Anti-vaccine protesters earlier barged into the offices of Channel 4 and ITV News in London, as they shouted out conspiracy theories against the government and accused the media of backing them.
Several dozen protesters occupied the ITN headquarters. Employees were advised to stay away from the entrance as police dealt with the situation.
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Around 16,000 people were evacuated from Afghanistan over the past 24 hours, through the Kabul airport, the Pentagon says, as the US speeds toward completing its airlift by an August 31 deadline.
General Hank Taylor tells reporters that 61 military, commercial, and charter flights involving a number of countries flew out from Hamid Karzai International Airport in the 24 hours to 3:00 a.m. Monday (0700 GMT) carrying people escaping the country after the Taliban seized power.
Of the total evacuated that day, 11,000 were taken out by the US military airlift operations, Taylor says.
Taylor says the number of people relocated from Afghanistan since July on US flights hit 42,000, with 37,000 of those since the intense airlift operations started on August 14 as the Taliban moved to take Kabul.
Three more Jewish men have been arrested in connection with the mob attack on an Arab in Bat Yam in May, during the war with Gaza and the internal Jewish-Arab violence it brought on.
The three, all residents of the city, are suspected of beating Saeed Mousa, as he tried to flee from a huge violent crowd by the beach.
Several people have already been indicted in the incident that shocked the country.
