IDF reported to strike car in southern Lebanon

The IDF is reported to have struck in southern Lebanon overnight.

Local media says a car was destroyed by the military. There are no immediate further details.

Barcelona ends ‘friendship agreement’ with Tel Aviv over Gaza war

Barcelona’s city council voted yesterday to cut institutional ties with the Israeli government and suspend its friendship agreement with the city of Tel Aviv, citing alleged violations of international law and the rights of Palestinians.

The motion, supported by the governing Socialist party along with far-left and leftist pro-independence groups, calls for an end to all official relations with Israel “until respect for international law” and the “basic rights of the Palestinian people” are restored.

Barcelona will also suspend a 1998 friendship agreement with Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and it urged the trade fair organizer Fira de Barcelona not to host Israeli government pavilions or companies involved in the arms trade or profiting from the conflict in Gaza.

A similar recommendation was made to the Port of Barcelona.

“The suffering and death in Gaza over the past year and a half, and recent attacks by the Israeli government, make any relationship unviable,” Barcelona’s Mayor Jaume Collboni said during the council session.

It is not the first time Barcelona has moved to suspend ties with Israel. In 2023, then-mayor Ada Colau took similar steps, which were later reversed when Collboni won local elections.

While the move has little practical impact, the decision by Spain’s second-largest city — a top tourist destination and home to one of the world’s best-known football clubs — adds to a growing list of critics of Israel amid the devastating war in Gaza.

Pentagon chief warns of imminent China threat

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warns that the threat from China was real and potentially imminent as he pushed allies in the Indo-Pacific to spend more on their own defense needs.

Hegseth, speaking for the first time at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Asia’s premier forum for defense leaders, militaries and diplomats, underlines that the Indo-Pacific region was a priority for the Trump administration.

“There’s no reason to sugarcoat it. The threat China poses is real, and it could be imminent,” Hegseth says, in some of his strongest comments on the Communist nation since he took office in January. He adds that any attempt by China to conquer Taiwan “would result in devastating consequences for the Indo-Pacific and the world,” and echoes Trump’s comment that China will not invade Taiwan on the president’s watch.

China views Taiwan as its own territory and has vowed to “reunify” with the democratic and separately governed island, by force if necessary. It has stepped up military and political pressure to assert those claims, including increasing the intensity of war games around Taiwan.

Taiwan’s government rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, saying only the island’s people can decide their future.

“It has to be clear to all that Beijing is credibly preparing to potentially use military force to alter the balance of power in the Indo Pacific,” Hegseth says.