Former Kosovo president Hashim Thaci has been found guilty of war crimes including murder, torture and illegal detention by the Kosovo war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
Thaci, 58, is sentenced to 25 years in prison for crimes committed as top commander of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during the territory’s violent break from Serbia in the 1990s.
The tribunal says he is guilty of the murder of 96 political opponents and perceived collaborators with Serbian security forces by Kosovo Liberation Army forces during the conflict.
He is also convicted for the arbitrary illegal detention of 385 people, torture of 303 people and cruel treatment of around 50.
The court says Thaci “actively participated in and encouraged crimes.”
Thaci, who stood in silence as the judge read out the conviction and the sentence, has denied all charges.
The ruling was closely watched in Kosovo and Serbia, where the legacy of the 1998-99 conflict and Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence remain a source of tension between ethnic Kosovo Albanians and Serbs. Thaci remains a revered figure for many Kosovo Albanians, while the tribunal itself is deeply unpopular in Kosovo.
Hamas-led authorities in Gaza now say at least 12 people including children have died and more than 100 are missing after a Gaza apartment building collapsed from damage sustained in previous Israeli strikes.
The six-story building, which had four apartments per floor, crumbled overnight onto nearby homes and tents in the Tal al-Hawa area of Gaza City, according to the Hamas-run civil defense agency.
Agency spokesman Mahmoud Basal tells AFP the building had sustained structural damage from Israeli strikes. The building was hit multiple times in 2024 and March 2025, leading to warnings for Gazans not to go back, he adds.
“At least 12 martyrs, including five children, have been recovered so far,” Basal says.
“They have no other choice. With neither tents nor homes available, they are living in cracked, damaged buildings despite the risk of collapse,” Basal says.
The vast majority of buildings in Gaza were damaged or destroyed in Israeli strikes during the war with the terror group, according to the United Nations.
The High Court of Justice rejects a petition by the Shas party seeking the overturning of a decision by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to block a state-funded memorial for the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, which had been scheduled for October 6.
Although the government passed legislation providing for state-funded events to commemorate the Shas spiritual leader close to the day of his passing, the attorney general determined earlier this year that because that date falls within three weeks of the upcoming election, and due to the expected participation of Shas political leaders, the event would become a party political event funded by the taxpayer.
The attorney general suggested several alternative arrangements, including holding the memorial without Shas politicians present, but these were rejected, leading the Religious Services Ministry to cancel the event earlier this month.
At the end of a short hearing today, High Court judges say that the petition against the attorney general’s decision is moot since the event can no longer be arranged in time, and the court will therefore not rule on a theoretical issue.
Shas Chairman Aryeh Deri says in response: “Today, the High Court judges, with callousness and a disconnect from the feelings of large numbers of Jews, are lending a hand to preventing the state commemoration event for [Rabbi Yosef’s] legacy.
“Neither the High Court nor the attorney general will succeed in stopping the legacy of Maran [Rabbi Yosef]. It lives in the hearts of millions and will continue to illuminate generations.”
Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity in the crackdown on 2022 protests that left hundreds dead, Amnesty International says, adding that Tehran’s suppression of new demonstrations early this year bore the “same hallmarks” but on an even wider scale.
The crackdown in 2022 amounted to “crimes against humanity” including murder, torture, rape and enforced disappearance, Amnesty says in a report marking four years since those protests, warning that the authorities’ actions against rallies earlier this year were “on an even deadlier and more staggering scale.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pitches setting up a “European Security Council” with countries including Britain and Ukraine, as the continent grapples with the threat from Russia.
“For a long time, we have discussed a leaders’ format focused on the security of our continent, with partners like Canada, Norway, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and others involved,” von der Leyen says in her annual state of the union address.
“This is even more urgent now, given the nature and scale of the risks at play. This is why we will set out our ideas to make a European Security Council a reality.”
Europe is grappling with what it calls a campaign of “hybrid attacks” by Moscow aimed at undermining support for Ukraine.
“We should be under no illusions about what is happening here: hybrid threats facing Europe are less and less hybrid and less and less threats,” von der Leyen says.
“Europe needs its own counter-hybrid playbook. We urgently need a consensus on how to respond to certain incidents. Those which fall below armed aggression but clearly threaten our national security.”
The European Commission president says she wants to establish an “emergency security protocol” that would allow any EU member state to convene urgent talks in case of crisis.
While the EU is struggling to counter Russian activities, von der Leyen pledges that the bloc will ramp up support for Kyiv as Russia steps up bombardments ahead of the winter.
Air Canada is bringing forward the resumption of nonstop flights between Tel Aviv and Toronto to November 30, ahead of its originally scheduled return date of January 17, 2027.
The Canadian airline says the decision follows a “thorough review of the security environment.” Flights between Tel Aviv and Toronto will operate four times a week on Boeing 787-9 and Boeing 787-8 aircraft.
“Air Canada’s resumption of service to Tel Aviv follows a detailed assessment of operational, safety, and security considerations in the region,” the airline says in a statement.
After Israel’s airspace was closed on February 28, following the outbreak of war with Iran, Air Canada repeatedly extended the suspension of all flights to and from Tel Aviv.
After declaring he would seek to revoke the citizenship of the filmmakers behind the controversial film “NAZA,” Culture Minister Miki Zohar has now appealed to Shin Bet chief David Zini to investigate how various materials reached Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.
The film includes testimonies from 24 purported anonymous Israeli intelligence soldiers who allege “mass killing on an industrial scale” in Gaza, claiming Israel used AI-assisted systems to sanction mass civilian deaths as collateral damage for hitting military targets. Israel rejects the claims, and says it has gone to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties.
In a letter to Zini, Zohar asks that the agency investigate whether there was any illegal use of sensitive or secret information.
“When anonymous sources are used to disseminate serious and false allegations against the State of Israel and the IDF during wartime, it is imperative to establish who is behind them,” Zohar says. “I asked the Shin Bet chief to investigate where the material came from, who provided it, and whether enemy elements were involved.”
Fourteen Russian spy satellites passed over a US military base in Saudi Arabia days before it suffered a major Iranian strike during this year’s war, CNN reports.
According to the network, citing US officials and intelligence sources, the wealth of data gathered by Russia was likely sent to the Iranians and enabled them to carry out the high-precision strike on American forces.
The March 27 attack, involving at least one missile and several drones, wounded 12 US service members and destroyed and damaged several planes.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen calls for the 27-nation bloc to fight back against “the ultranationalists or the anti-Europeans” who want to undermine it.
The EU is dealing with “an openly hostile world,” she says. “A territorial war of aggression is raging on our continent; others have erupted nearby. A fight for industrial capacities is shaping global competition. And a battle of narratives is seeking to weaken confidence in Europe,” she says.
“Do we let our democracies be undermined by the proxies and puppets of authoritarians?” von der Leyen says in a keynote speech. “They despise our values, and they want to shatter our European unity. So let’s not only fight back against that, let’s fight together for our European idea.”
Defense Minister Israel Katz says it is only a matter of time before the country resumes full-scale war in Gaza and moves to encourage the emigration of its two million Palestinians.
Katz makes the comments while responding to criticism from another right-wing contender, Ofer Winter of the People of Israel party, ahead of the October 27 election.
Katz says 70 percent of Gaza has already been emptied of its population by the war there. He says that an October 2025 ceasefire announced by US President Donald Trump had “supreme value for all Israelis” by leading to the return of remaining hostages and ensuring “a commitment by the United States” to disarming Hamas.
“We all understand that this is not going to happen — and the IDF is prepared, once given the directive to eliminate Hamas, to finish the job so that we can also implement the migration plan,” Katz says.
He said earlier this month that Israel was ready to remove Palestinians from Gaza by sea and land but was waiting for the United States, which he said was discussing where the two million people would go. Katz described the migration plan as voluntary, saying most Palestinians wanted to leave. The basis of that claim was unclear.
US Ambassador Mike Huckabee has denied any plan to “displace people out of Gaza against their will.”
Nearly all of Gaza’s population has been internally displaced, and most of the territory lies in rubble after the war.
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