: Worldhttps://globalnews.ca/?p=12090907<![CDATA[Israel mourns Oct. 7 attacks as Palestinians in Gaza live in ruins of war]]>Wed, 07 Oct 2026 13:44:44 +0000Israelis gathered Wednesday to commemorate the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack that killed 1,200 people, saw 251 taken hostage and sparked a devastating war in Gaza that has left much of the territory in ruins and its 2 million people living in dire conditions.
In southern Israel, families mourned at intersections, bomb shelters and the site of a music festival that the militants overran three years ago in the deadliest attack in the country’s history. It is the first anniversary since all the hostages, living and dead, were returned, marking a new stage of grief.
Canadian families reflect on October 7th attacks two years later
For Palestinians, the anniversary brings another day of misery after an Israeli retaliatory campaign in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of people.
Most Gaza residents live in vast, squalid tent camps, with large parts of the strip’s cities reduced to rubble. More than half the territory remains in the hands of the Israeli military. Despite a ceasefire deal reached nearly a year ago, Israeli strikes continue almost daily.
For the region, the day highlights a startling transformation over the past three years.
Israeli troops occupy a large chunk of southern Lebanon in their conflict with the Hezbollah militant group, which began firing on Israel in 2023 in support of Hamas. Iran and the United States are locked in a confrontation that has seen attacks across Gulf Arab countries and has shaken the global economy — a conflict that Israel helped launch and that the Gaza war paved the way for, even if they weren’t directly connected.
Families mourn at the Nova Festival site
Near the town of Reim, where the music festival was underway when militants attacked, families gathered around photos of their killed relatives. Hundreds of people paid their respects to the more than 350 people killed in and around the festival site. Videos from that day showed militants gunning down fleeing revellers, shooting the wounded at point-blank range and ambushing those seeking refuge in nearby bomb shelters.
On Wednesday, survivors’ relatives hugged at 6:29 a.m. — the exact time the first rockets were launched three years ago — as explosions boomed in nearby Gaza.
Anya Davitashili, who lost her 25-year-old son, Sean, said she visits the site every Saturday. It’s where she feels closest to him.
“I have a video of him dancing here that ends at 6:29 in the morning; it’s in front of my eyes all the time,” she said. “Every morning, you wake up and there is just endless missing.”
Israeli soldiers patrol at a memorial for the victims at the site of the Nova Music Festival attack that took place on October 7, 2023 by Palestinian militants, in Kibbutz Reim in southern Israel, on March 30, 2025.
Menahem KAHANA / AFP
A released hostage marks his first Oct. 7
Elkana Bohbot, 37, is marking the anniversary in Israel for the first time since his release after 738 days of captivity. For most of that time, he said, he was held underground in a dark, damp tunnel.
Bohbot, who was abducted from the festival, was kept in a small cell with other hostages, given little food and allowed to bathe only every few weeks, he said. His captors forced him to take part in propaganda videos, including one where he acts out a fake call to his family.
In the year since his release, Bohbot has undergone physical and emotional rehabilitation. In August, his wife, Rivka, gave birth to a daughter, fulfilling his promise to himself in the tunnels to give his 5-year-old son, Reem, a sibling.
The newborn Michele is “not a symbol for my people; she is more of a symbol for the enemy,” Bohbot told The Associated Press. “This child is the message for you that we were here and we will always be here forever.”
Released hostages, Keith Siegel and Aviva Siegel participate in an interview ahead of the third anniversary of the Oct. 7th 2023 attacks on October 06, 2026 in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images
Palestinians in Gaza live surrounded by ruins
No events are expected Wednesday in Gaza, but Hamas in a statement praised the Oct. 7 attack as an example of ”heroism, resilience and national solidarity” and said it had returned the Palestinian cause to the world’s attention.
“The conflict with the enemy did not begin on that day, as its final chapters are not written yet,” it said.
Palestinians in the territory said the extent to which their lives had deteriorated over the past three years was previously unimaginable.
“We witnessed death, destruction, and bombardment that we had never known before,” said Walid Akram, a Gaza City resident who, like most in Gaza, has been displaced by the war.
Raed Khozeiq’s coastal neighbourhood in Tel al-Hawa was largely flattened. Nothing about his life now is the same, he said.
“No country in the world has gone through what we have experienced here,” he said. “A war of extermination, starvation, the absence of schools and universities — nothing remains.”
More than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its figures but says around half were women and children. The numbers from the ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts.
While a ceasefire that took effect Oct. 10, 2025, halted the heaviest fighting, Israeli strikes have continued, targeting what Israel says are Hamas militants. Since the ceasefire, 1,460 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the ministry. Seven Israeli soldiers have been killed in that period. Restrictions on the entry of goods and aid have contributed to a hunger crisis, food security experts say.
The anniversary comes to a radically altered Middle East
A contentious election in Israel at the end of the month hangs over this year’s anniversary. The government’s official memorial services took place Oct. 5, closer to the Hebrew calendar’s anniversary of the attack.
The separate commemorations reflect deep divisions over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his handling of the war and his reluctance to launch an official inquiry into failings of the day.
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who hopes to unseat Netanyahu, looked at the photos of the dead in Reim and spoke with sobbing family members.
Gadi Eisenkot, the head of the opposition Yashar! party, met with families at a bomb shelter where many were killed as they tried to flee.
The attack set in motion a cascade of events that led to wars across the Middle East as Israel confronted Hamas, Hezbollah and their backer Iran. Israel has seized swaths of territory in Syria and Lebanon, where more than 300,000 Lebanese remain displaced. The United States joined Israel in attacking Iran’s military and nuclear program in two rounds, battering Iran and upending global markets far from the battlefield.
Violence has also risen across the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israel’s far-right government has heightened restrictions on Palestinians while emboldening extremist settlers who have attacked them and destroyed their property.
]]>: Worldhttps://globalnews.ca/?p=12090909<![CDATA[Canadian buoy found on shore of Irish island after journey across Atlantic]]>Wed, 07 Oct 2026 12:32:53 +0000
Officials in northwestern Ireland say they’re working to recover a large Canadian buoy that floated across the Atlantic Ocean and washed up on a coastal island.
A news release from Mayo County Council says the mariner marker, weighing in at roughly 3.5 tonnes, came ashore on Achill Island, known for its rugged mountains and bright sandy beaches.
It says council was told by the Canadian Coast Guard that its buoys, while “very friendly,” have quite the habit of drifting far from home.
The council is looking to recover the buoy so as to prevent it from floating away and becoming a hazard to vessels or coastal infrastructure.
The release says the unusual visitor to the island can carry a navigation light and make a distinctive wave-powered whistling sound to alert nearby vessels.
The council adds the discovery is a lighthearted reminder of Mayo County’s connection to Canada through generations of emigration, before demanding a blithe bit of a ransom.
“Should the Canadians wish to see their buoy again, they may have to make a special trip to Mayo to collect it,” the release said.
]]>: Worldhttps://globalnews.ca/?p=12090901<![CDATA[Nobel Prize in chemistry goes to Kagan and Saoi for solving molecular mystery]]>Wed, 07 Oct 2026 12:19:38 +0000
Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for their efforts to resolve mysterious mirror images in chemical molecules, a discovery that transformed modern medicine.
Many molecules of life come in versions that look alike but aren’t exactly identical, like right and left hands. One mirror image of the chemical carvone smells like mint, for example, while the other has a whiff of caraway.
When designing drugs to treat diseases, scientists want to be choosy about which mirror image they’re getting. They want the version of a molecule that’ll treat a cold, not the kind that’ll make the sniffles worse.
Kagan and Soai found ways to make chemistry pick a side, designing and manipulating reactions to produce the desired mirror image.
“This is probably the coolest experiment in organic chemistry,” said Peter Somfai, a member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry. “Taken together, the groundbreaking discoveries by Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai have reshaped our understanding of molecular chirality — how it is created, amplified and transmitted.”
Scientists paid tribute to Kagan and Soai’s groundbreaking work, which the Nobel committee described as a feat never previously achieved by anyone “other than life itself.”
“It might be difficult to say that this drug, or that drug, was developed using this,” Somfai said. “I would say all of them, because we use this as a tool, we use this as an understanding, how to develop catalysts, how they function.”
“Chirality” comes from the Greek word for “hand.”
In the 1980s, Kagan’s work showed there might be a way to design reactions to produce one form of a molecule over the other. Years later, Soai brought that dream to life. He created the first-ever chemical reaction to produce only one of a molecule’s mirror images, in what’s now known as the “Soai reaction.”
“The medicines we have today would not be possible without this chemistry,” said Rigoberto Hernandez, president of the American Chemical Society.
Kagan, 95 years old and born in France, is affiliated with the Université Paris-Sud in Orsay, France, and Soai, born in 1950 in Japan, with the Tokyo University of Science.
The French Academy of Sciences, of which Kagan is a member, congratulated the two scientists and expressed its pride in the prize.
Neither the Université Paris-Sud nor the Tokyo University of Science responded immediately to AP requests for comment.
“I’m very excited to receive the very nice news,” Soai told the committee and journalists by phone. “Of course this is one of the most exciting days in my life.”
He said he was shopping near his home when he was reached by the Nobel committee.
Nobel Peace Prize: Is Prime Minister Mark Carney a contender for the prestigious award?
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the winner in Stockholm.
Last year, three scientists won the chemistry Nobel for their development of new molecular structures that can trap vast quantities of gas inside, laying the groundwork to potentially suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere or harvest moisture from desert environments.
This year’s prizes began with the Nobel for medicine, awarded Monday to three scientists whose work led to a tool that uses light to help unravel how the brain works. The physics award Tuesday recognized a scientist’s efforts to demystify a rare group of neutrinos.
The literature prize is set to be awarded Thursday. After Friday’s peace prize is awarded, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be announced Monday.
The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million), whether for an individual, a small group of laureates or an organization.
Leviev, who gained fame after the 2022 documentary exposed his alleged patterns of romance fraud and financial crimes, plans to call the new dating app, Safe Love.
Unbreaking Project launching in Canada, offering support to romance scam victims
“I lived 10 years on a false passport so yes, I do know how to lie. I do know how to cheat. I do know how to manipulate. It’s not something that I hide. I falsified a cheque. I lived 10 years under a false identity,” Leviev said.
“Obviously I’ve been convicted. Obviously, I’m not proud of it but it’s made me a set of skills that some other people don’t have out there,” he added.
“There will be people watching this today who think it’s really distasteful that you as the ‘Tinder Swindler’ are launching a dating app,” ITV host Ben Shephard told Leviev.
“With everything that comes with it, with the trust that has to be implicit in one of those things, when you’re notorious for being anything other than trustworthy,” Shephard added.
Leviev said that he has to prove himself and “create something so great.”
“Obviously, it needs to be regulated and I need to get approval. I know unfortunately how the system works and I designed something to protect the world and there is nothing out there like this,” Leviev responded.
Leviev was convicted of fraud, theft and forgery in 2019 and sentenced to 15 months in prison, according to the BBC. He was released after serving only five months.
He posed as the wealthy heir of diamond mogul Lev Leviev on the dating app and swindled women into lending him money, which he never repaid, the outlet reports.
His victims shared their stories in the Netflix documentary, claiming they were lured into romantic relationships with him filled with private jets and luxury holidays.
Once they were in a relationship with Leviev, the women alleged that he would pretend he was being pursued by criminals and ask them to transfer him large sums of money before disappearing.
Romance scams: Expert breaks down the red flags you need to watch out for
After Leviev revealed his plans to launch the dating app, he received backlash from the Online Dating and Discovery Association.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) was first to report that the Online Dating and Discovery Association (ODDA) has sent letters to Apple and Google to ask them to cancel Leviev’s planned app and consider the harmful impact that could occur if they host a dating app founded by Leviev.
In a statement to Global News, ODDA chief Simon Newman said, “The Online Dating and Discovery Association (ODDA) is deeply concerned to hear that Simon Leviev plans on launching his own dating app. As a convicted fraudster, Leviev continues to cause harm to those he targeted. Allegations of using false identities to manipulate women he met online into providing him with substantial sums of money were well documented in a Netflix series and extensively corroborated by independent journalism.”
“Multiple victims have since spoken publicly about the financial and psychological harm they suffered, linked directly to the impact of his deception,” Newman’s statement continued. “Leviev’s conduct is a textbook case study in the harm that romance fraud inflicts. A harm the online dating industry, working alongside regulators, law enforcement and survivors of romance scams, has spent years building safeguards to prevent.”
“That’s why the ODDA wrote to Apple and Google recently asking them to block or immediately remove any dating app founded, operated or fronted by Simon Leviev,” Newman added.
Global News has reached out to Google and Apple for further comment, but has not received a response.
]]>: Worldhttps://globalnews.ca/?p=12089709<![CDATA[WHO says Russia told it ‘no cases of plague’ but isn’t identifying pathogen]]>Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:48:51 +0000
Russian authorities told the World Health Organization (WHO) Tuesday that “no cases of plague” have been recorded in the Irkutsk Oblast region of Siberia,according to the UN health agency, after reports that a lab worker had died of possible pneumonic plague.
However, the WHO says Russian officials have not yet told the agency what the pathogen that killed the lab worker is.
“WHO is aware of media reports that a laboratory worker in Irkutsk oblast, in the Russian Federation, died of suspected pneumonic plague, and that nearly 200 of her contacts were under medical observation and being tested,” the WHO said.
“On 3 October, WHO asked the Russian authorities under the International Health Regulations (IHR) for any further information they had, so we could assess the risk. The IHR asks countries to respond within 24 hours acknowledging WHO’s request and then provide additional public health information within 48 hours.”
The statement continued: “The Russian authorities replied on 6 October and told WHO that the woman’s illness first looked like a typical acute respiratory viral infection, and that no case of plague has been recorded in Irkutsk, either in her or in anyone else.”
“WHO has requested additional information from Russia on which pneumonia-causing pathogen led to the woman’s death. WHO is following the situation closely, keeping other countries informed, and ready to support the Russian authorities if they ask.”
Russian plague: What we know about suspected case linked to lab worker’s death
The update comes hours after Russian health officials said a full range of preventive measures had been carried out — including tracing of the deceased woman’s contacts, medical monitoring and lab tests.
“Test results showed no presence of dangerous infectious disease pathogens in any of the contacts,” said the note from Russian authorities, which was relayed to The Associated Press by WHO.
The Public Health Agency of Canada told Global News Monday evening that “at this time, no risk to Canada has been identified” and that it was “closely monitoring the situation.”
The lab worker, a 28-year-old woman, died at a hospital in Shelekhov, a town just outside the city of Irkutsk. Its mayor said earlier this week that the hospital was placed under quarantine, and officials from Russia’s national public health watchdog travelled to the region.
On Monday, Irkutsk Oblast Gov. Igor Kobzev did not identify the illness but said it was a suspected case of “a particularly dangerous infection,” later calling it “pneumonia of unknown etiology,” the Associated Press and Reuters reported.
WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told a UN briefing on Tuesday that the institute where the woman worked “studies dangerous pathogens,” including plague in a part of Siberia where the disease “occurs naturally in wild animals.”
He said Russian officials have not yet asked for WHO experts to deploy to Russia, which had determined that health risks were moderate-to-low for Irkutsk; a low risk for the Russian Federation as a whole; and very low for the WHO European region.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that he was watching the situation.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged Russian authorities to share more information.
“Maybe there’s nothing there. Maybe it’s bigger than we thought. We don’t know,” he said at a news conference in Iceland. “We’re watching it very closely, and I think the whole world is watching it very closely.”
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