After weeks of intensive diplomacy aimed at securing a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah militants, the United States has settled on an altogether different approach: let the unfolding conflict in Lebanon play out.

Just two weeks ago, the United States and France were demanding an immediate 21-day ceasefire to ward off an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. That effort was derailed by Israel's assassination of Hezbollah leader Syed Hassan Nasrallah, the Oct. 1 launch of Israeli ground operations in southern Lebanon and Israeli airstrikes that have wiped out much of the group's leadership.

Now, U.S. officials have dropped their calls for a ceasefire, arguing that circumstances have changed.

"We do support Israel launching these incursions to degrade Hezbollah's infrastructure so ultimately we can get a diplomatic resolution," State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told a press briefing earlier this week.

The course change reflects conflicting U.S. goals - containing the ever-growing Middle East conflict while also severely weakening Iran-backed Hezbollah.

Sediment and pebbles are all that’s left on the earth around much of Bernardino Mosquera’s small riverside community in northwest Colombia’s Choco region.

Just a year ago, healthy shrubs and trees filled this important biodiversity spot teeming with species native to the land. But then illegal miners arrived, using their heavy machinery to dredge the riverbeds for gold.

“It’s just desert here,” said Mosquera. “Illegal mining affects the ecosystem in every way … it leads to degraded land. There are no trees. The water sources are drying up, it’s polluted by mercury.”

Mosquera is a river guardian, a title bestowed upon him and 13 others. The unpaid guardians serve as the eyes and ears of the Atrato River: They liaise with government institutions on environmental and social issues in the face of aggression from armed groups and hope to reverse the devastation they see along the river. But after eight years, they are increasingly disenchanted by the lack of support from institutions and growing threats from armed groups that control the region.

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Donald Trump’s campaign requested military aircraft for Trump to fly in during the final weeks of the campaign, expanded flight restrictions over his residences and rallies, ballistic glass pre-positioned in seven battleground states for the campaign’s use and an array of military vehicles to transport Trump, according to emails reviewed by The Washington Post and people familiar with the matter.

The requests are extraordinary and unprecedented - no nominee in recent history has been ferried around in military planes ahead of an election. But the requests came after Trump’s campaign advisers received briefings in which the government said Iran is still actively plotting to kill him, according to the emails reviewed by The Post and the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions. Trump advisers have grown concerned about drones and missiles, according to the people.

In the emails over the past two weeks from campaign manager Susie Wiles to Ronald L. Rowe Jr., the head of the Secret Service, she expressed displeasure with the Secret Service and said the campaign recently had to cancel a public event at the last minute because of a “lack of personnel” from the Secret Service - instead only putting Trump in a small room with reporters. Wiles said Trump’s campaign is being hampered in its planning because of threats expects to hold far more events in the final weeks of the campaign.

American Jeremy Loffredo was one of five journalists reportedly detained by the Israel Defense Forces on 9 October. He’s reportedly charged with endangering national security and aiding and sharing information with the enemy, apparently because of his reporting on Iranian strikes.

The case requires the immediate attention of American officials (Loffredo has reportedly been released from custody but is barred from leaving Israel as authorities try to build their case). But, no matter what direction it takes, it should serve to highlight the plight of dozens of Palestinian journalists who are being held incommunicado in Israeli prisons.

Loffredo’s American citizenship makes it more likely – but by no means guaranteed – that the Biden administration might actually care that he’s being detained. After all, Joe Biden was eager to claim credit for the release of the journalists Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, who were held in Russian prison on bogus charges.

If Israel’s theory is that reporters illegally share information with the enemy whenever the enemy reads the news, that could criminalize a whole lot of journalism. If Israel has proof that Loffredo did something more nefarious than that, it should say so, and be specific. The Dissenter reports that several more mainstream journalists reported similar information and footage to Loffredo and weren’t charged – if so, why was a particularly adversarial journalist singled out?

Authorities in the German city of Cologne have evacuated three hospitals and thousands of homes after the discovery of an unexploded second world war bomb during construction work on a new medical campus.

The 1,000kg US aerial bomb, equipped with a front and rear impact detonator, is due to be defused on Friday.

A complex evacuation procedure had been in the planning since excavation work on the site began about six months ago, owing to well-founded fears that unexploded ordnance would be discovered there.

The Office of the Provincial Veterinarian Animal Welfare informed the Winnipeg Police Service (WPS) about the videos and images in August 2024.

Police note the content was posted on the dark web, and approximately 10 cats were believed to be involved. Some of the animals were acquired through social media selling platforms.

A 55-year-old woman and 40-year-old man have been charged with killing or injuring animals; causing unnecessary suffering to an animal; failing to provide adequate medical attention to an animal when it was ill or wounded; and inflicting upon an animal acute suffering, serious injury or harm, or extreme anxiety or distress that significantly impairs its health or well-being.

Archaeologists have identified the cannibalized remains of a senior officer who perished during an ill-fated 19th-century Arctic expedition, offering insight into its lost crew’s tragic and grisly final days.

By comparing DNA from the bones with a sample from a living relative, the new research revealed the skeletal remains belonged to James Fitzjames, captain of the HMS Erebus. The Royal Navy vessel and its sister ship, the HMS Terror, had been under the command of Sir John Franklin, who led the voyage to explore unnavigated areas of the Northwest Passage. The treacherous shortcut across the top of North America meanders through the islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

A different team of researchers in 1993 found 451 bones thought to belong to at least 13 of Franklin’s sailors at a site on King William Island in Canada’s Nunavut territory. The remains identified as Fitzjames’ in the new study, published September 24 in the Journal of Archaeological Science were among them.

Accounts gathered from local Inuit people in the 1850s suggested that some of the crew members resorted to cannibalism. While these reports were initially met with disbelief in England, subsequent investigations conducted over the past four decades found a significant number of bones had cut marks that offered silent evidence of the expedition’s catastrophic end.

North Korea has accused rival South Korea of flying drones to its capital to drop anti-North Korean propaganda leaflets and threatened to respond with force if such flights occur again. South Korea issued a vague denial of the allegation.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday that South Korean drones were detected in the night skies of Pyongyang on Oct. 3 and Wednesday and Thursday this week.

The ministry accused the South of violating North Korea’s “sacred” sovereignty and threatening its security, and described the alleged flights as a “dangerous provocation” that could escalate to an armed conflict and even war.

It said North Korean forces will prepare “all means of attack” capable of destroying the southern side of the border and the South Korean military, and respond without warning if South Korean drones are detected in its territory again.

BrucePac of Woodburn, Oregon, recalled the roughly 5,000 tons of ready-to-eat foods this week after U.S. Agriculture Department officials detected listeria in samples of poultry during routine testing. Further tests identified BrucePac chicken as the source. The recall includes 75 meat and chicken products.

The foods include products like grilled chicken breast strips that were made at the company’s facility in Durant, Oklahoma. They were produced between June 19 and Oct. 8 and shipped to restaurants, food service vendors and other sites nationwide, government officials said.

The products have a best-by date of June 19, 2025 to Oct. 8, 2025. Officials said they are concerned that the foods may still be available for use or stored in refrigerators or freezers. The products should be thrown away, they added.

One person was killed and 12 people were rescued after being trapped for about six hours at the bottom of a former Colorado gold mine when an elevator malfunctioned at the tourist site, authorities said.

The elevator was descending into the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine near the town of Cripple Creek when it had a mechanical problem around 500 feet (152 meters) beneath the surface, creating a “severe danger for the participants,” Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell said.

The 12 adults who were trapped about 1,000 feet (305 meters) below ground had access to water and used radios to communicate with authorities, who told them there was an elevator issue, Mikesell said.

Two U.S. Navy SEALs drowned as they tried to climb aboard a ship carrying illicit Iranian-made weapons to Yemen because of glaring training failures and a lack of understanding about what to do after falling into deep, turbulent waters, according to a military investigation into the January deaths.

The review concluded that the drownings of Chief Special Warfare Operator Christopher J. Chambers and Navy Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Nathan Gage Ingram could have been prevented. But both sank quickly in the high seas off the coast of Somalia, weighed down by heavy equipment they were carrying and not knowing or disregarding concerns that their flotation devices could not compensate for the additional weight. Both were lost at sea.

The highly critical and heavily redacted report — written by a Navy officer from outside Naval Special Warfare Command, which oversees the SEALs — concluded there were “deficiencies, gaps and inconsistencies” in training, policies, tactics and procedures as well as “conflicting guidance” on when and how to use emergency flotation devices and extra buoyancy material that could have kept them alive.

Two employees killed when hydrogen sulfide leaked at a Houston-area oil refinery were employees of a subcontractor performing maintenance work, the director of Pemex, Mexico’s state-owned oil company that operates the plant, said Friday.

The two “were in the zone directly affected, and who received the direct impact of the gas,” Pemex Director Victor Rodriguez said during a news briefing in Mexico City. Both bodies have been recovered.

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said the two workers were killed and nearly three dozen others were either transported to hospitals or treated at the scene following the leak of hydrogen sulfide Thursday at the facility in Deer Park.