The Israeli military has successfully intercepted drones launched by the Houthi group in its ongoing efforts to neutralize threats in the region. This interception is part of Israel's broader strategy to secure its airspace and counter hostile drone activities.

Israeli Military intercepts drones in ongoing efforts against Houthi targets

In a move to meet its climate targets, Germany's largest passenger airport, Frankfurt is testing its possible future runways using sustainable asphalt concrete derived from cashew shells.

Germany: Future Of Runway With Sustainable Asphalt

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory along with the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)'s National Radio Astronomical Observatory's (NRAO) Very Long Baseline Array spotted gargantuan black holes firing strong beams of supercharged particles which were slowly changing direction over millions of years.

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory along with the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)'s National Radio Astronomical Observatory's (NRAO) Very Long Baseline Array spotted gargantuan black holes firing strong beams of supercharged particles which were slowly changing direction over millions of years. The supermassive black holes were seen spinning in different directions and shooting these particle jets in deep space. In a statement, Astrophysicist Francesco Ubertosi said, "We found that about a third of the beams are now pointing in completely different directions than before. These Death Star black holes are swivelling around and pointing at new targets, like the fictional space station in Star Wars." Also Read: Parasite black holes devouring stars from inside, says study As per a new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, these cosmic jets which were released from every black hole in two opposite-facing streams created cavities in clouds of gas. Supermassive black holes are a type of colossal black holes which are present at the centres of many galaxies, which include our own Milky Way. As per the paper, scientists can understand the direction of the jets which were released from 16 supermassive black holes by investigating pairs of bubbles present in clouds of gas in space. The force of the powerful particle beams may have created such cavities in gas. Scientists remain puzzled about the change in the direction of jets It was found by the researchers that many of the black holes, which were studied, changed the direction in which their jets were released by around 90 degrees. In a statement, study co-author and researcher at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CFA) Gerrit Schellenberger said, "Considering that these black holes are likely more than 10 billion years old, we consider a large change in direction over a few million years to be fast. Changing the direction of the giant black hole beams in about a million years is analogous to changing the direction of a new battleship in a few minutes." Watch: Scientists unveil Black Hole's plunge, bizarre region around black holes found The researchers have failed to figure out how the black holes are turning their beams in different directions, as they were earlier believed to align with the axis. It is around this axis that the black holes continue to rotate. As per the scientists, if the material falls into the black hole at an angle which is not parallel to its disk it may change the direction that is faced by this rotational axis. In the statement, co-author and a researcher at CFA Jan Vrtilek said, "It's possible that material rapidly falling towards the black holes at a different angle for long enough would drag their rotation axes in a different direction, causing the beams to point in a different direction." (With inputs from agencies)

Black holes captured acting like a Death Star’s weapon, point jets at new targets

A terrifying map of New York City was shared by a pro-Palestinian activist group in which they marked businesses, newsrooms and landmark buildings, and appealed for “direct action” to “globalise intifada.”&nbsp; Intifada is the Arabic word for an uprising or rebellion. 
 
Palestinian-led community organisation Within Our Lifetime, also appealed&nbsp; followers to target some technology companies' offices. 
 
“Each of the locations on this map reflects the location of an office of an enemy of both the Palestinian people and colonised people all over the world. Today and beyond, these locations will be sites for popular mobilisation in defence of our people,” read the post shared by the group.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/watch-israel-demolishes-gaza-home-of-hamas-leader-ismail-haniyeh-in-overnight-airstrikes-659331">Israel demolishes Gaza home of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in overnight airstrikes</a>

“May this map serve as a call for every struggle to act in their own interest. As we do so, we uplift one another’s struggles and free Palestine from the river to the sea,” it added while repeating the calls of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Hamas to eradicate Israel.

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Extremist Palestine account "wolPalestine" (Within Our Lifetime), who has over 120k followers on Instagram, posted a "zone of direct actions" map where followers can carry out attacks on targets. They list businesses, banks, media and more. <a href="https://t.co/LGUBFLBMjc">https://t.co/LGUBFLBMjc</a> <a href="https://t.co/ZZxDV3JVTg">pic.twitter.com/ZZxDV3JVTg</a>
— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) <a href="https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1725305404719022083?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 17, 2023</a></blockquote>
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However, later the pro-Palestinian group pulled down the controversial post.

<h2>NY City Hall says 'no place for hate' in city, Democrats criticise post</h2>

“As Mayor Adams has said repeatedly, hate has no place in our city,” stated a City Hall spokesperson. 
 
“We are continually monitoring multiple channels to identify any potential threats to New York City. The NYPD is aware of a social media post urging ‘direct action’ towards several institutions in the city and is deploying resources to protect public safety at these locations. But to be clear, threatening businesses and organisations and referring to them as the ‘enemy’ is exactly the kind of hateful rhetoric that seeks to divide New Yorkers, but it won’t work, because we are better than that,” he added. 
 
The group did not clarify why the locations needed to be targeted, or what kind of action they should take, however, the map was denounced by New York lawmakers, who insisted that the violence was implied.

Watch:&nbsp;How Israel is wiping out Hamas tunnels

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/how-israel-is-wiping-out-hamas-tunnels-659670/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

 
Taking to X, Democratic Bronx Representative Ritchie Torres on Thursday (Nov 16) warned that the messaging was an example of “Coded calls for violence against Jews”&nbsp;that are “proliferating on social media.” 
 
Democrat Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine wrote it was “dangerous and reprehensible.”

“This is clear incitement against a group of predominantly Jewish institutions, based on the trope that they are ‘enemies’ of ‘colonized people all over the world,” he added. 
 
Speaking to The New York Post, Levine said, “I reject this hateful language and am grateful that the NYPD is taking this threat seriously.”

Disclaimer: WION takes utmost care to accurately and responsibly report ongoing developments on the Israel-Palestine conflict after the Hamas attacks. However, we cannot independently verify the authenticity of all statements, photos and videos.

(With inputs from agencies)&nbsp;

A terrifying map of New York City was shared by a pro-Palestinian activist group in which they marked businesses, newsrooms and landmark buildings, and appealed for “direct action” to “globalise intifada.

A terrifying map of New York City was shared by a pro-Palestinian activist group in which they marked businesses, newsrooms and landmark buildings, and appealed for “direct action” to “globalise intifada.” Intifada is the Arabic word for an uprising or rebellion. Palestinian-led community organisation Within Our Lifetime, also appealed followers to target some technology companies' offices. “Each of the locations on this map reflects the location of an office of an enemy of both the Palestinian people and colonised people all over the world. Today and beyond, these locations will be sites for popular mobilisation in defence of our people,” read the post shared by the group. Also read: Israel demolishes Gaza home of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in overnight airstrikes “May this map serve as a call for every struggle to act in their own interest. As we do so, we uplift one another’s struggles and free Palestine from the river to the sea,” it added while repeating the calls of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Hamas to eradicate Israel. Extremist Palestine account "wolPalestine" (Within Our Lifetime), who has over 120k followers on Instagram, posted a "zone of direct actions" map where followers can carry out attacks on targets. They list businesses, banks, media and more. https://t.co/LGUBFLBMjc pic.twitter.com/ZZxDV3JVTg — Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) November 17, 2023 × However, later the pro-Palestinian group pulled down the controversial post. NY City Hall says 'no place for hate' in city, Democrats criticise post “As Mayor Adams has said repeatedly, hate has no place in our city,” stated a City Hall spokesperson. “We are continually monitoring multiple channels to identify any potential threats to New York City. The NYPD is aware of a social media post urging ‘direct action’ towards several institutions in the city and is deploying resources to protect public safety at these locations. But to be clear, threatening businesses and organisations and referring to them as the ‘enemy’ is exactly the kind of hateful rhetoric that seeks to divide New Yorkers, but it won’t work, because we are better than that,” he added. The group did not clarify why the locations needed to be targeted, or what kind of action they should take, however, the map was denounced by New York lawmakers, who insisted that the violence was implied. Watch: How Israel is wiping out Hamas tunnels Taking to X, Democratic Bronx Representative Ritchie Torres on Thursday (Nov 16) warned that the messaging was an example of “Coded calls for violence against Jews” that are “proliferating on social media.” Democrat Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine wrote it was “dangerous and reprehensible.” “This is clear incitement against a group of predominantly Jewish institutions, based on the trope that they are ‘enemies’ of ‘colonized people all over the world,” he added. Speaking to The New York Post, Levine said, “I reject this hateful language and am grateful that the NYPD is taking this threat seriously.” Disclaimer: WION takes utmost care to accurately and responsibly report ongoing developments on the Israel-Palestine conflict after the Hamas attacks. However, we cannot independently verify the authenticity of all statements, photos and videos. (With inputs from agencies)

Pro-Palestinian group marks locations in NYC as 'targets' in antisemitic map

Canada has unveiled its immigration plan for 2024-2026, with the same targets mentioned in last year's 2023-2025 list, keeping in mind the prevalent housing crisis plaguing the country, media reports said citing the official data.&nbsp;

As per the official list, Canada is set to welcome over 485,000 new immigrants in 2024. The new target is 485,000 permanent residents (PRs), with an additional 500,000 immigrants planned each for both 2025 and 2026.

The plan details the targets for each of the three immigration classes, including economic, family, and humanitarian. The announcement was made on November 1 in annual release from the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).&nbsp;

Also Read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/canadian-pm-justin-trudeaus-posts-on-halloween-draw-netizens-ire-in-light-of-israel-hamas-war-654347">Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s post on Halloween draws&nbsp;netizens' ire in light of Israel-Hamas war</a>

In 2024, the Express Entry target is 110,700 permanent resident admissions, which will rise to 117,500 in both 2025 and 2026. Meanwhile, the Provincial Nominee Program is aiming for 110,000 immigrants in 2024, increasing to 120,000 each year for 2025 and 2026.

Also Read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/teeth-of-children-allegedly-burnt-by-hamas-found-under-debris-in-israel-minister-shares-images-654340">Teeth of children allegedly burnt by Hamas found under debris in Israel, minister shares images</a>

The goal for Spousal, Partner, and Children sponsorship is to admit 82,000 people in 2024, with an increase to 84,000 in 2025 and 2026. Similarly, the Parents and Grandparents Program (PGP) targets 32,000 newcomers in 2024, and it is expected to welcome an additional 34,000 in 2025 and 2026.

<h2>Canada's immigration challenges</h2>

Canada's immigration is driven by its economic necessity. However, the country has been facing a significant housing crisis.&nbsp;Earlier WION threw the spotlight on the country's housing crisis in a data-driven video report which can be watched here:&nbsp;&nbsp;

Watch | Truth Behind 'Canadian Dream' of Indian Students

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The country is also facing the challenges of an aging population and low birth rates, leading to economic and fiscal pressures.

These demographic factors result in a low labour force and economic growth, making it difficult to fund essential social services like education and healthcare,&nbsp;IRCC said in a statement.&nbsp;

The latest report came a day after Immigration Minister Marc Miller pledged to bring about major changes in the country's immigration system.&nbsp;“IRCC has been engaging with stakeholders and the public throughout the year to help shape the future of a stronger immigration system," the Canadian immigration minister said.

(With inputs from agencies) 
&nbsp;

 
&nbsp;

Canada has unveiled its immigration plan for 2024-2026, with the same targets mentioned in last year's 2023-2025 list, keeping in mind the prevalent housing crisis plaguing the country, media reports said citing the official data.

Canada has unveiled its immigration plan for 2024-2026, with the same targets mentioned in last year's 2023-2025 list, keeping in mind the prevalent housing crisis plaguing the country, media reports said citing the official data. As per the official list, Canada is set to welcome over 485,000 new immigrants in 2024. The new target is 485,000 permanent residents (PRs), with an additional 500,000 immigrants planned each for both 2025 and 2026. The plan details the targets for each of the three immigration classes, including economic, family, and humanitarian. The announcement was made on November 1 in annual release from the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). Also Read | Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s post on Halloween draws netizens' ire in light of Israel-Hamas war In 2024, the Express Entry target is 110,700 permanent resident admissions, which will rise to 117,500 in both 2025 and 2026. Meanwhile, the Provincial Nominee Program is aiming for 110,000 immigrants in 2024, increasing to 120,000 each year for 2025 and 2026. Also Read | Teeth of children allegedly burnt by Hamas found under debris in Israel, minister shares images The goal for Spousal, Partner, and Children sponsorship is to admit 82,000 people in 2024, with an increase to 84,000 in 2025 and 2026. Similarly, the Parents and Grandparents Program (PGP) targets 32,000 newcomers in 2024, and it is expected to welcome an additional 34,000 in 2025 and 2026. Canada's immigration challenges Canada's immigration is driven by its economic necessity. However, the country has been facing a significant housing crisis. Earlier WION threw the spotlight on the country's housing crisis in a data-driven video report which can be watched here: Watch | Truth Behind 'Canadian Dream' of Indian Students × The country is also facing the challenges of an aging population and low birth rates, leading to economic and fiscal pressures. These demographic factors result in a low labour force and economic growth, making it difficult to fund essential social services like education and healthcare, IRCC said in a statement. The latest report came a day after Immigration Minister Marc Miller pledged to bring about major changes in the country's immigration system. “IRCC has been engaging with stakeholders and the public throughout the year to help shape the future of a stronger immigration system," the Canadian immigration minister said. (With inputs from agencies)

Canada limits immigration targets for 2024-2026 with view to contain housing woes

Targets recent earnings report provides valuable insights into the current state of American economy and consumer behaviour. The retail giants' performance sheds light on what people are buying.

Cartonomics: Decoding the state of US economy | World DNA

In less than nine months, an assassin on a motorbike fatally shot an al-Qaida commander given refuge in Tehran, Iran’s chief nuclear scientist was machine-gunned on a country road, and two separate, mysterious explosions rocked a key Iranian nuclear facility in the desert, striking the heart of the country’s efforts to enrich uranium.

The steady drumbeat of attacks, which intelligence officials said were carried out by Israel, highlighted the seeming ease with which Israeli intelligence was able to reach deep inside Iran’s borders and repeatedly strike its most heavily guarded targets, often with the help of turncoat Iranians.

The attacks, the latest wave in more than two decades of sabotage and assassinations, have exposed embarrassing security lapses and left Iran’s leaders looking over their shoulders as they pursue negotiations with the Biden administration aimed at restoring the 2015 nuclear agreement.

The recriminations have been caustic.

The head of parliament’s strategic center said Iran had turned into a “haven for spies.” The former commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard called for an overhaul of the country’s security and intelligence apparatus. Lawmakers have demanded the resignation of top security and intelligence officials.

Most alarming for Iran, Iranian officials and analysts said, was that the attacks revealed that Israel had an effective network of collaborators inside Iran and that Iran’s intelligence services had failed to find the moles.

“That the Israelis are effectively able to hit Iran inside in such a brazen way is hugely embarrassing and demonstrates a weakness that I think plays poorly inside Iran,” said Sanam Vakil, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House.

The attacks have also cast a cloud of paranoia over a country that now sees foreign plots in every mishap.

Over the weekend, Iranian state television flashed a photograph of a man said to be Reza Karimi, 43, and accused him of being the “perpetrator of sabotage” in an explosion at the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant last month. But it was unclear who he was, whether he had acted alone and if that was even his real name. In any case, he had fled the country before the blast, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said.

On Monday, after Iranian state news media reported that Brig. Gen. Mohammad Hosseinzadeh Hejazi, the deputy commander of the Quds Force, the foreign arm of the Revolutionary Guard, had died of heart disease, there were immediate suspicions of foul play.

Hejazi had long been a target of Israeli espionage, and the son of another prominent Quds Force commander insisted on Twitter that Hejazi’s death was “not cardiac-related.”

A Revolutionary Guard spokesman failed to clear the air with a statement saying the general had died of the combined effects of “extremely difficult assignments,” a recent COVID-19 infection and exposure to chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war.

The general would have been the third high-ranking Iranian military official to be assassinated in the last 15 months. The United States killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Quds Force, in January 2020. Israel assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s chief nuclear scientist and a brigadier general in the Revolutionary Guard, in November.

Even if Hejazi died of natural causes, the cumulative loss of three top generals was a significant blow.

The attacks represent an uptick in a long-running campaign by the intelligence services of Israel and the United States to subvert what they consider to be Iran’s threatening activities.

Chief among them are a nuclear program that Iran insists is peaceful, Iran’s investment in proxy militias across the Arab world, and its development of precision-guided missiles for Hezbollah, the militant movement in Lebanon.

An Israeli military intelligence document in 2019 said that Hejazi was a leading figure in the last two, as the commander of the Lebanese corps of the Quds Force and the leader of the guided missile project. Revolutionary Guard spokesman Ramezan Sharif said that Israel wanted to assassinate Hejazi.

Israel has been working to derail Iran’s nuclear program, which it considers a mortal threat, since it began. Israel is believed to have started assassinating key figures in the program in 2007, when a nuclear scientist at a uranium plant in Isfahan died in a mysterious gas leak.

In the years since, six other scientists and military officials said to be critical to Iran’s nuclear efforts have been assassinated. A seventh was wounded.

Another top Quds Force commander, Rostam Ghasemi, said recently that he had narrowly escaped an Israeli assassination attempt during a visit to Lebanon in March.

But assassination is just one tool in a campaign that operates on multiple levels and fronts.

In 2018, Israel carried out a daring nighttime raid to steal a half-ton of secret archives of Iran’s nuclear program from a warehouse in Tehran.

Israel has also reached around the world, tracking down equipment in other countries that is bound for Iran to destroy it, conceal transponders in its packaging or install explosive devices to be detonated after the gear has been installed inside of Iran, according to a former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official.

A former Israeli intelligence operative said that to compromise such equipment, she and another officer would drive by the factory and stage a crisis, such as a car accident or a heart attack, and the woman would appeal to the guards for help. That would get her enough access to the facility to identify its security system so that another team could break in and disable it, she said, speaking on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to discuss covert operations.

In an interview on Iranian state television last week, Iran’s former nuclear chief revealed the origins of an explosion in the Natanz nuclear plant in July. The explosives had been sealed inside a heavy desk that had been placed in the plant months earlier, said Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani, the former chief of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.

The explosion ripped through a factory producing a new generation of centrifuges, setting back Iran’s nuclear enrichment program by months, officials said.

Alireza Zakani, head of parliament’s research center, said Tuesday that in another case machinery from a nuclear site had been sent abroad for repair and was returned to Iran with 300 pounds of explosives packed inside it.

Little is known about the more recent explosion at Natanz this month except that it destroyed the plant’s independent power system, which in turn destroyed thousands of centrifuges.

It would have been difficult for Israel to carry out these operations without inside help from Iranians, and that may be what rankles Iran most.

Security officials in Iran have prosecuted several Iranian citizens over the past decade, charging them with complicity in Israeli sabotage and assassination operations. The penalty is execution.

But the infiltrations have also sullied the reputation of the intelligence wing of the Revolutionary Guard, which is responsible for guarding nuclear sites and scientists.

A former Guard commander demanded a “cleansing” of the intelligence service, and Iran’s vice president, Eshaq Jahangiri, said that the unit responsible for security at Natanz should be “be held accountable for its failures.”

The deputy head of parliament, Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, told the Iranian news media on Monday that it was no longer enough to blame Israel and the United States for such attacks. Iran needed to clean its own house.

As a publication affiliated with the Guard, Mashregh News, put it last week: “Why does the security of the nuclear facility act so irresponsibly that it gets hit twice from the same hole?”

But the Revolutionary Guard answers only to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and so far there has been no sign of a top-down reshuffling.

After each attack, Iran has struggled to respond, sometimes claiming to have identified those responsible only after they had left the country or saying that they remained at large. Iranian officials also insist that they have foiled other attacks.

Calls for retaliation grow louder after each attack. Conservatives have accused the government of President Hassan Rouhani of weakness or of subjugating the country’s security to the nuclear talks in hopes they will lead to relief from U.S. sanctions.

Indeed, Iranian officials shifted to what they called “strategic patience” in the last year of the Trump administration, calculating that Israel sought to goad them into an open conflict that would eliminate the possibility of negotiations with a new Democratic administration.

Both Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif have said they would not allow the attacks to derail the negotiations because lifting sanctions was the priority.

It is also possible that Iran has tried to retaliate but failed.

Iran was blamed for a bomb that exploded near Israel’s Embassy in New Delhi in January, and 15 militants linked to Iran were arrested last month in Ethiopia for plotting to attack Israeli, American and Emirati targets.

But any overt retaliation risks an overwhelming Israeli response.

“They are not in a hurry to start a war,” said Talal Atrissi, a political science professor at the Lebanese University in Beirut. “Retaliation means war.”

Conversely, the timing of Israel’s latest attack on Natanz suggested that Israel sought if not to derail the talks, to at least weaken Iran’s bargaining power. Israel opposed the 2015 nuclear agreement and opposes its resurrection.

The United States, seeking to negotiate with Iran in Vienna, said it was not involved in the attack but has not publicly criticized it either.

And if the repeated Israeli attacks had the effect of fomenting a national paranoia, an intelligence official said, that was a side benefit for Israel. The additional steps Iran has taken to scan buildings for surveillance devices and plumb employees’ backgrounds to root out potential spies has slowed down the enrichment work, the official said.

The conventional wisdom is that neither side wants full-scale war and is counting on the other not to escalate. But at the same time, the covert, regionwide shadow war between Israel and Iran has intensified with Israeli airstrikes on Iranian-backed militias in Syria and tit for tat attacks on ships.

But as Iran faces a struggling economy, rampant COVID-19 infections and other problems of poor governance, the pressure is on to reach a new agreement soon to remove economic sanctions, said Vakil of Chatham House.

“These low-level, gray zone attacks reveal that the Islamic Republic urgently needs to get the JCPOA back into a box” to free up resources to address its other problems, she said, referring to the nuclear deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

In less than nine months, an assassin on a motorbike fatally shot an al-Qaida commander given refuge in Tehran, Iran’s chief nuclear scientist was machine-gunned on a country road, and two separate, mysterious explosions rocked a key Iranian nuclear facility in the desert, striking the heart of the country’s efforts to enrich uranium.

In less than nine months, an assassin on a motorbike fatally shot an al-Qaida commander given refuge in Tehran, Iran’s chief nuclear scientist was machine-gunned on a country road, and two separate, mysterious explosions rocked a key Iranian nuclear facility in the desert, striking the heart of the country’s efforts to enrich uranium. The steady drumbeat of attacks, which intelligence officials said were carried out by Israel, highlighted the seeming ease with which Israeli intelligence was able to reach deep inside Iran’s borders and repeatedly strike its most heavily guarded targets, often with the help of turncoat Iranians. The attacks, the latest wave in more than two decades of sabotage and assassinations, have exposed embarrassing security lapses and left Iran’s leaders looking over their shoulders as they pursue negotiations with the Biden administration aimed at restoring the 2015 nuclear agreement. The recriminations have been caustic. The head of parliament’s strategic center said Iran had turned into a “haven for spies.” The former commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard called for an overhaul of the country’s security and intelligence apparatus. Lawmakers have demanded the resignation of top security and intelligence officials. Most alarming for Iran, Iranian officials and analysts said, was that the attacks revealed that Israel had an effective network of collaborators inside Iran and that Iran’s intelligence services had failed to find the moles. “That the Israelis are effectively able to hit Iran inside in such a brazen way is hugely embarrassing and demonstrates a weakness that I think plays poorly inside Iran,” said Sanam Vakil, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House. The attacks have also cast a cloud of paranoia over a country that now sees foreign plots in every mishap. Over the weekend, Iranian state television flashed a photograph of a man said to be Reza Karimi, 43, and accused him of being the “perpetrator of sabotage” in an explosion at the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant last month. But it was unclear who he was, whether he had acted alone and if that was even his real name. In any case, he had fled the country before the blast, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said. On Monday, after Iranian state news media reported that Brig. Gen. Mohammad Hosseinzadeh Hejazi, the deputy commander of the Quds Force, the foreign arm of the Revolutionary Guard, had died of heart disease, there were immediate suspicions of foul play. Hejazi had long been a target of Israeli espionage, and the son of another prominent Quds Force commander insisted on Twitter that Hejazi’s death was “not cardiac-related.” A Revolutionary Guard spokesman failed to clear the air with a statement saying the general had died of the combined effects of “extremely difficult assignments,” a recent COVID-19 infection and exposure to chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war. The general would have been the third high-ranking Iranian military official to be assassinated in the last 15 months. The United States killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Quds Force, in January 2020. Israel assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s chief nuclear scientist and a brigadier general in the Revolutionary Guard, in November. Even if Hejazi died of natural causes, the cumulative loss of three top generals was a significant blow. The attacks represent an uptick in a long-running campaign by the intelligence services of Israel and the United States to subvert what they consider to be Iran’s threatening activities. Chief among them are a nuclear program that Iran insists is peaceful, Iran’s investment in proxy militias across the Arab world, and its development of precision-guided missiles for Hezbollah, the militant movement in Lebanon. An Israeli military intelligence document in 2019 said that Hejazi was a leading figure in the last two, as the commander of the Lebanese corps of the Quds Force and the leader of the guided missile project. Revolutionary Guard spokesman Ramezan Sharif said that Israel wanted to assassinate Hejazi. Israel has been working to derail Iran’s nuclear program, which it considers a mortal threat, since it began. Israel is believed to have started assassinating key figures in the program in 2007, when a nuclear scientist at a uranium plant in Isfahan died in a mysterious gas leak. In the years since, six other scientists and military officials said to be critical to Iran’s nuclear efforts have been assassinated. A seventh was wounded. Another top Quds Force commander, Rostam Ghasemi, said recently that he had narrowly escaped an Israeli assassination attempt during a visit to Lebanon in March. But assassination is just one tool in a campaign that operates on multiple levels and fronts. In 2018, Israel carried out a daring nighttime raid to steal a half-ton of secret archives of Iran’s nuclear program from a warehouse in Tehran. Israel has also reached around the world, tracking down equipment in other countries that is bound for Iran to destroy it, conceal transponders in its packaging or install explosive devices to be detonated after the gear has been installed inside of Iran, according to a former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official. A former Israeli intelligence operative said that to compromise such equipment, she and another officer would drive by the factory and stage a crisis, such as a car accident or a heart attack, and the woman would appeal to the guards for help. That would get her enough access to the facility to identify its security system so that another team could break in and disable it, she said, speaking on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to discuss covert operations. In an interview on Iranian state television last week, Iran’s former nuclear chief revealed the origins of an explosion in the Natanz nuclear plant in July. The explosives had been sealed inside a heavy desk that had been placed in the plant months earlier, said Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani, the former chief of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization. The explosion ripped through a factory producing a new generation of centrifuges, setting back Iran’s nuclear enrichment program by months, officials said. Alireza Zakani, head of parliament’s research center, said Tuesday that in another case machinery from a nuclear site had been sent abroad for repair and was returned to Iran with 300 pounds of explosives packed inside it. Little is known about the more recent explosion at Natanz this month except that it destroyed the plant’s independent power system, which in turn destroyed thousands of centrifuges. It would have been difficult for Israel to carry out these operations without inside help from Iranians, and that may be what rankles Iran most. Security officials in Iran have prosecuted several Iranian citizens over the past decade, charging them with complicity in Israeli sabotage and assassination operations. The penalty is execution. But the infiltrations have also sullied the reputation of the intelligence wing of the Revolutionary Guard, which is responsible for guarding nuclear sites and scientists. A former Guard commander demanded a “cleansing” of the intelligence service, and Iran’s vice president, Eshaq Jahangiri, said that the unit responsible for security at Natanz should be “be held accountable for its failures.” The deputy head of parliament, Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, told the Iranian news media on Monday that it was no longer enough to blame Israel and the United States for such attacks. Iran needed to clean its own house. As a publication affiliated with the Guard, Mashregh News, put it last week: “Why does the security of the nuclear facility act so irresponsibly that it gets hit twice from the same hole?” But the Revolutionary Guard answers only to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and so far there has been no sign of a top-down reshuffling. After each attack, Iran has struggled to respond, sometimes claiming to have identified those responsible only after they had left the country or saying that they remained at large. Iranian officials also insist that they have foiled other attacks. Calls for retaliation grow louder after each attack. Conservatives have accused the government of President Hassan Rouhani of weakness or of subjugating the country’s security to the nuclear talks in hopes they will lead to relief from U.S. sanctions. Indeed, Iranian officials shifted to what they called “strategic patience” in the last year of the Trump administration, calculating that Israel sought to goad them into an open conflict that would eliminate the possibility of negotiations with a new Democratic administration. Both Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif have said they would not allow the attacks to derail the negotiations because lifting sanctions was the priority. It is also possible that Iran has tried to retaliate but failed. Iran was blamed for a bomb that exploded near Israel’s Embassy in New Delhi in January, and 15 militants linked to Iran were arrested last month in Ethiopia for plotting to attack Israeli, American and Emirati targets. But any overt retaliation risks an overwhelming Israeli response. “They are not in a hurry to start a war,” said Talal Atrissi, a political science professor at the Lebanese University in Beirut. “Retaliation means war.” Conversely, the timing of Israel’s latest attack on Natanz suggested that Israel sought if not to derail the talks, to at least weaken Iran’s bargaining power. Israel opposed the 2015 nuclear agreement and opposes its resurrection. The United States, seeking to negotiate with Iran in Vienna, said it was not involved in the attack but has not publicly criticized it either. And if the repeated Israeli attacks had the effect of fomenting a national paranoia, an intelligence official said, that was a side benefit for Israel. The additional steps Iran has taken to scan buildings for surveillance devices and plumb employees’ backgrounds to root out potential spies has slowed down the enrichment work, the official said. The conventional wisdom is that neither side wants full-scale war and is counting on the other not to escalate. But at the same time, the covert, regionwide shadow war between Israel and Iran has intensified with Israeli airstrikes on Iranian-backed militias in Syria and tit for tat attacks on ships. But as Iran faces a struggling economy, rampant COVID-19 infections and other problems of poor governance, the pressure is on to reach a new agreement soon to remove economic sanctions, said Vakil of Chatham House. “These low-level, gray zone attacks reveal that the Islamic Republic urgently needs to get the JCPOA back into a box” to free up resources to address its other problems, she said, referring to the nuclear deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Iran rattled as Israel repeatedly strikes key targets

China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) on Friday said that the anti-pollution campaign for this year's autumn-winter heating season will set stricter emissions targets for cities that had higher concentrations of damaging particles the last time around.

Cities that met pollution targets last year will be exempt from targets this year, MEE spokesman Liu Youbin said, speaking at a briefing in the capital.

The strategy comes as China enters its sixth year of an aggressive clampdown on pollution in a bid to cut the smog that envelops many cities during the winter months when homes and businesses crank up the heating.

The ministry didn't provide details on precise levels for concentrations of PM 2.5 (lung-damaging particles of less than 2.5 microns in diameter) that will be set for the cities that did not meet last year's targets. But preferential treatment for cities that performed well is a part of China's efforts to put an end to what it calls "one-size-fits-all" measures.

According to a draft for the Key Smog Control Zone of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei circulated on industry websites, the target for the capital itself is zero growth in emissions from last year. The remaining 27 cities will be expected to cut concentrations of PM 2.5 by 1% to 11%, or an average of 5.5% during the 2019-2020 autumn-winter season.

Even a cut of 11% will not be enough to offset the increase in pollution in some cities last year.

Ministry spokesman Liu did not comment directly on details but said that the ministry had already sent a draft to local governments to solicit their opinions.

Reuters calculations based on official data showed that only four out of the country's 28 key pollution control cities in northern China met their targets last year, including Beijing, Changzhi, Jincheng, and Jining.

Cities likely to be given even more stringent targets this winter include Langfang, Baoding, Zhengzhou, and Anyang, all of which saw double-digit percentage growth in PM 2.5 last winter.

Official data shows air quality in August was better than last year, with average PM 2.5 readings falling 13% to an average of 27 micrograms per cubic metre in the key 28 cities in northern China. However, over the eight months, concentrations rose by 1.8% to 56 micrograms, more than the national standard of 35 micrograms.

China's central government will not set overall output restrictions on heavy industry for the coming winter but will direct local governments to impose limits based on manufacturers' emissions, the environment ministry had said in July.

Last year China ditched its blanket production curbs on heavy industry, which includes steelmaking, coal-fired power plants, cement factories, coke plants, metal casting, and chemical production from October 1 to March 31.

China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) on Friday said that the anti-pollution campaign for this year's autumn-winter heating season will set stricter emissions targets for cities that had higher concentrations of damaging particles the last time around.

China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) on Friday said that the anti-pollution campaign for this year's autumn-winter heating season will set stricter emissions targets for cities that had higher concentrations of damaging particles the last time around. Cities that met pollution targets last year will be exempt from targets this year, MEE spokesman Liu Youbin said, speaking at a briefing in the capital. The strategy comes as China enters its sixth year of an aggressive clampdown on pollution in a bid to cut the smog that envelops many cities during the winter months when homes and businesses crank up the heating. The ministry didn't provide details on precise levels for concentrations of PM 2.5 (lung-damaging particles of less than 2.5 microns in diameter) that will be set for the cities that did not meet last year's targets. But preferential treatment for cities that performed well is a part of China's efforts to put an end to what it calls "one-size-fits-all" measures. According to a draft for the Key Smog Control Zone of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei circulated on industry websites, the target for the capital itself is zero growth in emissions from last year. The remaining 27 cities will be expected to cut concentrations of PM 2.5 by 1% to 11%, or an average of 5.5% during the 2019-2020 autumn-winter season. Even a cut of 11% will not be enough to offset the increase in pollution in some cities last year. Ministry spokesman Liu did not comment directly on details but said that the ministry had already sent a draft to local governments to solicit their opinions. Reuters calculations based on official data showed that only four out of the country's 28 key pollution control cities in northern China met their targets last year, including Beijing, Changzhi, Jincheng, and Jining. Cities likely to be given even more stringent targets this winter include Langfang, Baoding, Zhengzhou, and Anyang, all of which saw double-digit percentage growth in PM 2.5 last winter. Official data shows air quality in August was better than last year, with average PM 2.5 readings falling 13% to an average of 27 micrograms per cubic metre in the key 28 cities in northern China. However, over the eight months, concentrations rose by 1.8% to 56 micrograms, more than the national standard of 35 micrograms. China's central government will not set overall output restrictions on heavy industry for the coming winter but will direct local governments to impose limits based on manufacturers' emissions, the environment ministry had said in July. Last year China ditched its blanket production curbs on heavy industry, which includes steelmaking, coal-fired power plants, cement factories, coke plants, metal casting, and chemical production from October 1 to March 31.

China to set stricter targets for polluting cities in heating season

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