Category World News

Cross-border fighting between Thailand, Cambodia enters fourth day

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Renewed fighting between Thailand and Cambodia has entered its fourth day, with both sides accusing one another of violating international law, as they await a promised phone call from United States President Donald Trump.

Cambodia’s Ministry of Defence accused Thailand’s military of carrying out numerous attacks within the country in the early hours of Thursday morning, including deploying tanks and artillery to strike targets in the country’s Pursat, Banteay Meanchey, and Oddar Meanchey provinces.

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In one such attack, Cambodia accused Thai soldiers of violating international humanitarian law by firing on civilians in Prey Chan village in Banteay Meanchey province.

In another, it accused Thai forces of shelling “into Khnar Temple area”, and said Thai forces had also “fired artillery and support fire into the O’Smach area”.

“Cambodia urges that Thailand immediately stop all hostile activities and withdraw its forces from Cambodia’s territorial integrity, and avoid acts of aggression that threaten peace and stability in the region,” the Defence Ministry said.

Clashes took place on Wednesday at more than a dozen locations along the contested colonial-era demarcated 817-kilometre (508-mile) Thai-Cambodian border, with some of the most intense fighting being reported since a five-day battle in July, which saw dozens killed on both sides.

Cambodia’s Ministry of the Interior said homes, schools, roads, Buddhist pagodas and ancient temples had been damaged by “Thailand’s intensified shelling and F-16 air strikes targeting villages and civilian population centres up to 30km [18.6 miles] inside Cambodian territory”.

“It should be noted that … these brutal acts of aggression of the Thai military indiscriminately opened fire targeting civilian areas, especially schools, and further destroyed Ta Krabey and Preah Vihear temples, the highly sacred cultural sites of Cambodia and the world cultural heritage,” it said.

The ministry added that, as of Wednesday, the death toll on the Cambodian side of the border stands at 10 civilians, including one infant, while 60 people have been injured.

Responding to the accusations, the Thai army said Cambodia had “intentionally” used a historical site as a “military base of operations” and therefore was guilty of violating international law.

“Cambodia intentionally used the ancient site for military operations, as a base to attack Thailand, and deliberately undermined the protection of the ancient site. Thailand retaliated as necessary,” the Thai army said.

Eight Thai soldiers have also been killed in the fighting so far this week, with 80 more wounded, it said.

Both sides have blamed one another for reigniting the conflict, which began on Monday and has expanded to five provinces across Thailand and Cambodia, according to a tally by the AFP news agency.

More than 500,000 Thai and Cambodian civilians have been forced to flee border areas due to fighting.

It was only on October 26 that Trump presided over the signing of a ceasefire between the Southeast Asian neighbours in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Hailing the deal, which was also brokered by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, Trump said mediators had done “something that a lot of people said couldn’t be done”.

Optimistic of securing another peace deal, Trump told reporters on Wednesday that “I think I can get them to stop fighting”.

‘A gesture of love’: Italy’s cuisine joins UNESCO’s cultural heritage list

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Italian cuisine, long cherished for its deep regional traditions, has been officially recognised by UNESCO as an “intangible cultural heritage” – a designation the country hopes will elevate its global prestige and draw more visitors.

“We are the first in the world to receive this recognition, which honours who we are and our identity,” Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in a statement on Instagram on Wednesday.

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“For us Italians, cuisine is not just food, not just a collection of recipes. It is much more, it is culture, tradition, work, and wealth,” Meloni said.

The vote by a cultural panel of UNESCO – the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – meeting in New Delhi capped a process Italy launched in 2023, with the government portraying the country’s culinary tradition as a social ritual that binds families and communities.

‘Cooking is a gesture of love’

UNESCO did not single out any famous dishes or regional specialities. Instead, the citation focused on how much Italians value the everyday rituals around food: the big Sunday lunch, the tradition of nonnas teaching kids how to fold tortellini just right, and simply sitting down together to enjoy a meal.

“Cooking is a gesture of love; it’s how we share who we are and how we look after each other,” said Pier Luigi Petrillo, part of Italy’s UNESCO campaign and a professor at Rome’s La Sapienza University.

In its announcement, UNESCO described Italian cuisine as a “cultural and social blend of culinary traditions”.

“Beyond cooking, practitioners view the element as a way of caring for oneself and others, expressing love and rediscovering one’s cultural roots. It gives communities an outlet to share their history and describe the world around them,” it added.

The UNESCO listing could deliver further economic benefits to a country already renowned for its cooking and where the agri-food supply chain accounts for about 15 percent of the national gross domestic product (GDP).

It could also bring some relief to traditional family-run restaurants, long the backbone of Italian dining, which are facing a harsh economic climate in a market increasingly polarised between premium and budget options.

The Colosseum is illuminated during a special light installation, after Italy won a place on UNESCO’s cultural heritage list [Remo Casilli/Reuters]

Honouring cultural expressions

Italy is not the first country to see its cuisine honoured as a cultural expression.

In 2010, UNESCO inscribed the “gastronomic meal of the French” on its intangible heritage list, calling out France’s tradition of marking life’s important moments around the table.

Other food traditions have been added in recent years, too, including the cider culture of Spain’s Asturian region, Senegal’s Ceebu Jen dish, and the traditional cheese-making of Minas Gerais in Brazil.

UNESCO reviews new candidates for its intangible-heritage lists every year under three categories: a representative list; a list for practices considered in “urgent” need of safeguarding; and a register of effective safeguarding practices.

At this year’s meeting in New Delhi, the committee evaluated 53 proposals for the representative list, which already includes 788 entries. Other nominees included Swiss yodelling, the handloom weaving technique used to make Bangladesh’s Tangail sarees, and Chile’s family circuses.

A woman spoons onto a plate some
A woman spoons ‘spaghetti alla Carbonara’ during a cooking competition [Andrew Medichini/AP Photo]

Despite opposition, US House passes record $901bn defence spending bill

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The United States House of Representatives has passed a far-reaching defence policy bill authorising a record $901bn in annual military spending.

The tally in Wednesday’s vote saw 312 lawmakers vote in favour of passing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), with 112 opposing the bill. It has now been sent to the Senate for consideration and is expected to pass next week.

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The $901bn in defence spending for the 2026 fiscal year is $8bn more than US President Donald Trump requested in May this year.

The sweeping 3,086-page bill, which was unveiled on Sunday, includes typical NDAA provisions on defence acquisitions to compete militarily with rivals such as China and Russia. It also includes measures to improve living conditions for American troops, including an almost 4 percent pay rise and improvements in military base housing.

Lawmakers also forced the inclusion of several provisions cementing Washington’s commitment to Europe’s defence in the face of Russian aggression, including $400m in military assistance to Ukraine in each of the next two years to help repel Russia’s invasion.

Another measure requires the Pentagon to keep at least 76,000 troops and major equipment stationed in Europe unless NATO allies are consulted.

This year’s bill, however, also cut several programmes reviled by Trump, including about $1.6bn in funding to initiatives focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as climate change.

The legislation will now head to the Senate, with leaders aiming to pass the bill before lawmakers depart for a holiday break. Trump will then sign it into law once it reaches the White House.

Bill puts pressure on Defense Secretary Hegseth over transparency of attacks

The NDAA is one of a few major pieces of legislation to typically enjoy broad bipartisan support, having made it through Congress every year since its enactment in 1961.

This year’s process was rockier than usual, coming at a time of growing friction between the Republican-controlled Congress and the Trump administration over the management of the US military.

Before the vote, members of both parties urged their lawmakers to support the vital defence legislation, even if they objected to individual provisions contained within it.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Washington, DC, Mike Hanna, said that while there was “some significant dissent”, the bill still passed “very easily indeed”.

Also tucked into the NDAA are several measures pushing back against the Department of Defense, notably a demand for more transparency on deadly attacks carried out by the US military on alleged drug smuggling vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean in recent months.

Hanna said a “very noticeable” part of the bill threatens to take away 25 percent of US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel funding unless he discloses more information on the US attacks on vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, including allowing lawmakers to review unedited video of the strikes and the orders given to carry out the attack.

“This is a very strong move by the House forcing, it would appear, the defence secretary to provide full details of these attacks,” Hanna said.

At least 86 people have been killed across 22 known strikes since the Trump administration announced the first attack in early September.

The president has depicted them as a necessary counter-narcotics effort, even though they are widely considered illegal under both international and US law.

Hardline conservative lawmakers had expressed frustration that the NDAA did not do more to cut US commitments overseas, including in Europe.

Republican chair of the House Armed Services Committee Mike Rogers responded, saying “we need a ready, capable and lethal fighting force”.

“The threats to our nation, especially those from China, are more complex and challenging than at any point in the last 40 years,” Rogers said.

The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Adam Smith, said that while the bill does not do enough to rein in the Trump administration, it’s a “step in the right direction towards reasserting the authority of Congress”.

Ukraine reports large Russian mechanised assault in battle for Pokrovsk

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Ukrainian forces have reported an unusually large Russian mechanised attack inside the strategic eastern city of Pokrovsk, where Russia has reportedly massed a force of some 156,000 troops to take the beleaguered and now destroyed former logistics hub.

“The Russians used armoured vehicles, cars, and motorcycles. The convoys attempted to break through from the south to the northern part of the city,” Ukraine’s 7th Rapid Response Corps said in a statement on Wednesday regarding an assault earlier in the day.

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A source in the 7th Rapid Response Corps told the Reuters news agency that Russia had deployed about 30 vehicles in convoy, making it the largest such attack yet inside the city. The source added that previously, Russia had deployed just one or two vehicles to aid troop advances.

While Russia has claimed full control of Pokrovsk, Kyiv maintains that its troops still hold the northern part of the city, where fierce urban battles continue to rage.

Russian troops have pushed into the city for months in small infantry groups, looking to capture the former logistics hub as a critical part of Moscow’s campaign to seize the entire industrial Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Video clips shared by the 7th Rapid Response Corps showed heavy vehicles in snow and mud, as well as drone attacks on Russian troops and explosions and burning wreckage.

Russian forces were attempting to exploit poor weather conditions but had been pushed back, the unit said on Facebook.

Capturing Pokrovsk would be Russia’s biggest prize in Ukraine in nearly two years, and the city’s weakening defence amid Moscow’s onslaught has added to pressure on Kyiv, which is attempting to improve terms in a United States-backed proposal for a peace deal that is widely seen as favourable to Moscow.

Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, told journalists earlier this week that the situation around Pokrovsk remained difficult as Russia massed a force of some 156,000 around the beleaguered city.

Syrskii said Russian troops were staging the military buildup in the area under the cover of rain and fog.

George Barros, Russia team lead at the Institute for the Study of War – a US-based think tank – said Moscow is “hyping” the importance of the fall of Pokrovsk “in order to portray Russia’s battlefield advances as inevitable”.

“That sense of inevitability is being echoed by some members of President Donald Trump’s negotiating team trying to pull together a peace proposal for the Ukraine war,” Barros wrote in an opinion piece shared online.

But Russia has paid a huge price in its push to take the city with “more than 1,000 armoured vehicles and over 500 tanks” lost in the Pokrovsk area alone since the beginning of Russia’s offensive operations in October 2023 to seize nearby Avdiivka, which fell to Russian forces in early 2024 in one of the bloodiest battles of the war so far.

On Wednesday, President Trump said he had exchanged “pretty strong words” with the leaders of France, Britain and Germany on Ukraine, telling them their plan to hold new talks on a proposed US peace plan this weekend risked “wasting time”.

“We discussed Ukraine in pretty strong words,” Trump told reporters when asked about the phone call with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

“They would like us to go to a meeting over the weekend in Europe, and we’ll make a determination depending on what they come back with. We don’t want to be wasting time,” Trump said.

The initial US peace plan that involved Ukraine surrendering land that Russia has not captured was seen by Kyiv and its European allies as aligning too closely with many of Russia’s demands to end the war, and has since been revised.

Displaced Gaza families struggle as winter storm hits

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Deir el-Balah, Gaza – After a night of relentless rain, Arafat al-Ghandour and his wife, Nour, finally exhaled in relief as the morning sun emerged, if only briefly, over the soaked displacement camp.

The couple, parents of five, live in a worn tent riddled with holes. They spent the night battling water pouring in from every direction.

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Arafat, 39, shares the cramped space, no larger than eight square metres (86sq feet), with 15 family members, including his elderly parents, his sister and her family, and his brother’s wife and children. The conditions, he says, are “inhumane”.

“All night I was plugging the holes with rags and plastic bags,” Arafat told Al Jazeera. “I haven’t slept yet. And they say the storm hasn’t really started.”

In the early morning, the family hurried to spread their drenched clothes, blankets, and belongings in the sunlight.

“We finally breathed a sigh of relief when the sun came out,” said Nour, sitting beside her husband. “All our clothes were soaked. We have nothing else. Even our blankets and the children’s clothes were drenched. I took the kids outside immediately just to dry off a little.”

Nour described the panic of waking up to find water pouring into the tent.

“My children were asleep and soaked. I started waking them one by one so they wouldn’t get even more drenched,” she said. “This isn’t living.”

Once a season she loved, winter now makes her anxious and miserable, with only meagre shelter offered by the tents.

Arafat lives in their tent with 15 members of his family [Maram Humaid/Al Jazeera]

“We’ve lost faith in everything. I’ve given so many interviews and made appeals. They all come to film our tents and our lives, and the media and everyone else see us crying out, but nothing changes,” Nour tells Al Jazeera angrily, pointing to the tattered sides of her tent.

“Would anyone accept living in this place? To face winter like this?”

“Would anyone accept living like this?”

The family fled Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza a year and a half ago and settled in Deir el-Balah after losing their home. With no means to rebuild or return, they remained in the south.

“There’s a tent there and a tent here. So we said, ‘Why try to move?’ We stayed,” said Arafat, who has been unemployed for two years.

“Can you believe we all sleep crammed together in this place without any privacy? Imagine me sleeping here with my wife next to me, while my brother’s wife and brother sleep directly opposite us?” Arafat says bitterly.

“No man with any sense of honour in the world would accept this. But what can we do? We have no other options. Our dignity has been trampled on from all sides.”

He looked around the camp, frustrated.

“Where are the caravans and housing units the media keeps talking about? We never see anything. Why isn’t anyone solving our suffering?”

The family, like thousands of displaced Palestinians, lives with no income and cannot afford food, clean water, clothes, or blankets.

“I can’t even feed my children,” Arafat said. “How am I supposed to buy a tent at these ridiculous prices? If charity kitchen (tekkiya) comes, we eat; if it doesn’t, we don’t. That’s our life now.”

According to Arafat, a good quality tent costs between 1,800 and 2,500 shekels, equivalent to about $550 to $775.

Tarpaulins and nylon range in price from 250 to 400 shekels (roughly $75-125) depending on their length, he said.

“These tents should be given to the displaced for free, not sold at prices no one can afford,” he said. “How can an unemployed man who has been struggling for two years, like me, buy a tent to shelter my children?”

Deeply anxious about the storm expected to hit Gaza from Wednesday night until next Saturday, Arafat desperately hopes his plight will be heard and his family’s suffering seen, even just once.

“We heard about caravans and housing units coming into Gaza. All lies. Empty promises,” he said. “I just want a decent tent to protect my children. Nothing more.”

Family after flood.
‘Our lives are beyond words’ [Maram Humaid/Al Jazeera]

Nearby, Basma al-Sheikh Khalil, 66, stood silently in front of her rain-soaked tent, watching sewage flow through the muddy paths between tents.

“Our situation is not like anyone else’s,” she laments to Al Jazeera with a sigh. “A woman my age needs rest and warmth, not this endless exhaustion we’ve endured for two years.”

She described watching her young grandchildren tremble through the night.

“I was so sad to see my young grandchildren shivering from the cold last night and continuing into the morning in the rain.”

“These children have suffered so much in the war.”

“My heart breaks for them,”  Basma said, tears welling in her eyes.

Basma recounted to Al Jazeera their recurring suffering with the winter, their tattered canvas tents unfit for habitation.

“Last night, we were completely flooded. The water reached halfway up our feet, and my children and I spent the night wading through it to get out.”

To make matters worse, their makeshift cesspool overflowed with rainwater, flooding the entire area with sewage.

“You can imagine the stench, how it permeated everything, how our tents and blankets were soaked with sewage,” Basma said, pausing.

“What can I say? What can I say? Our lives are beyond words.”

Pointing to a hole in the ground covered with scraps of wood and worn-out cloth, she added, “This filthy sandy hole has been our toilet for two years. Can you imagine what our lives must be like?

“Who understands us? Who feels our lives and what we endure? No one,” Basma said, clapping her hands together.

Basma and her family, her husband, their six married sons, and their children, were displaced to Deir al-Balah after fleeing the Shuja'iyya neighborhood in eastern Gaza fleeing intense Israeli bombardment of their area.
Basma and her family were displaced to Deir el-Balah after their neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City came under intense Israeli bombardment [Maram Humaid/Al Jazeera]

Basma and her family, her husband, their six married sons, and their children, were displaced to Deir el-Balah after fleeing the Shujayea neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City, fleeing intense Israeli bombardment of their area.

“We escaped by a miracle. We left everything behind, no blankets, no furniture, nothing.”

They returned to northern Gaza after October’s ceasefire, but headed back to the south as the situation deteriorated.

“The situation is catastrophic throughout Gaza. Our lives are a constant cycle of destruction, displacement, hunger, exhaustion, and suffering. It’s as if we’re destined to continue living like this,” she adds.

For Basma, the changing seasons are no longer a source of optimism now that she lives in a tent.

She said that the summer and its scorching heat were extremely difficult, but the winter rains were causing even more suffering.

“In summer, we would run away from the tent to find shade under any wall or nearby building, but the rain and its downpour? How do we deal with it? Where do we go in it? How do we endure the bitter cold and the rain at the same time?”

She shook her head slowly.