For most of the people of Lebanon, a ceasefire could not come quickly enough. A leading Lebanese analyst at a conference on the Middle East that I’m attending in Rome said she couldn’t sleep as the appointed hour for the ceasefire came closer. “It was like the night before Christmas when you’re a kid. I couldn’t wait for it to happen.” You can see why there’s relief. More than 3,500 citizens of Lebanon have been killed in Israeli strikes. Displaced people packed their cars before dawn to try to get back to whatever remains of their homes.

Well over one million of them have been forced to flee by Israeli military action. Thousands have been wounded and the homes of tens of thousands of others have been destroyed. But in Israel, some feel they have lost the chance to do more damage to Hezbollah.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met the heads of Israel’s northern municipalities, which have been turned into ghost towns with around 60,000 civilians evacuated further south. Israel’s Ynet news website reported that it was an angry meeting that turned into a shouting match, with some of the local officials frustrated that Israel was taking the pressure off their enemies in Lebanon and not offering an immediate plan to get civilians home. In a newspaper column, the mayor of Kiryat Shmona, close to the border, said he doubted the ceasefire would be enforced, demanding that Israel creates a buffer zone in south Lebanon. In a poll commissioned by the Israeli station Channel 12 News those questioned were roughly split between supporters and opponents of the ceasefire. Half of the participants in the survey believe Hezbollah has not been defeated and 30% think the ceasefire will collapse.

MIAMI – The United States (US) Coast Guard says the crew of its “Cutter Vigilant” has returned home to Cape Canaveral in Florida after offloading more than 1,510 pounds of cocaine and 1,470 pounds of marijuana seized in the Caribbean Sea with a combined value of about US$18.5 million. The US Coast Guard said that during the Vigilant’s 54-day patrol, coast guard crews, working alongside interagency and international partners, seized the illegal drugs in the Caribbean Sea during two separate interdictions. Along with the illicit narcotics, the US Coast Guard said 15 suspected smugglers were apprehended and will face prosecution in federal courts by the US Department of Justice. The crew also rescued or assisted more than 40 people in the Caribbean before and after Hurricane Milton. “We are proud to work seamlessly with partner nations, partner agencies, and other coast guard assets to keep drugs off the streets and rescue people in distress during a very busy hurricane season. We look forward to returning to our community and families and celebrating Cutter Vigilant’s 60 years of service.” (Jamaicaobserver)

Russia’s widespread overnight attack targeting critical energy infrastructure facilities in Ukraine was a response to strikes on Russian territory using US-made ATACMS missiles, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.

Putin claimed Russia hit 17 targets that were “military facilities, defense industry facilities and their support systems,” without acknowledging the hits to power infrastructure. “As I have said many times, there will always be a response from our side (to the use of American ATACMS),” Putin said during comments made at a security summit in Kazakhstan.

More than a million households in Ukraine were left without power following the aerial bombardment, authorities in the country said. This is Russia’s 11th large-scale assault on Ukraine’s energy supplies this year alone, according to the energy ministry in Kyiv, a strategy that has caused nationwide rolling blackouts.

Ukraine’s energy system came “under massive enemy attack,” overnight, Energy Minister German Halushchenko said Thursday, adding the attacks took place “all over Ukraine.” Bombardments have intensified in recent months, leaving Ukraine in a precarious position as the war grinds into its third winter.

In the immediate aftermath, Ukraine’s energy operator introduced emergency power cuts in many regions, with large outages in the western regions of Lviv, Volyn and Rivne. It has since shifted back to implementing scheduled hourly power cuts. At least five people were injured, including one person in the central Vinnytsia region, two in the southern Odesa region, and two in the capital Kyiv, officials said. In the city of Kharkiv, a missile struck a civilian business, according to local military authorities. (CNN)

Photo: People take shelter inside a metro station in Kyiv during Russia’s overnight attack. Alina. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON – The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is calling on Latin America and Caribbean countries (LAC) to coordinate fiscal and human resource management more closely to optimise government employment which accounts for a third of regional public expenditure. The IDB has released a comprehensive study titled “Better Government for Better Lives” that compiles data from the past 10 years on the professionalisation and modernisation of the civil service in Latin America and the Caribbean. It said this report provides a detailed overview of the region’s challenges and proposes a roadmap for building a more efficient, inclusive and resilient civil service. This third edition of the regional study reveals mixed progress on building capacities to boost the performance of the civil service. Some countries showed major progress while in others the gains have slowed over the last decade.

The study highlights improvements in planning and merit-based hiring, as well as training for public employees, an area driven by new technologies and the COVID-19 pandemic. “But challenges persist including: pay gaps that make it difficult to attract, motivate and retain talent; difficulty implementing performance evaluations, which is a common challenge in OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries as well; and limited use of merit-based criteria for top leadership,” the IDB said.

The study also finds significant disparities in the maturity of civil service oversight among countries in the region. “As the fiscal environment becomes increasingly complex, trust in public institutions erodes and technology changes at a rapid pace, civil service plays a crucial role in making governments’ administrative work more efficient and effective. “Professionalising the civil service is essential to meet demands for more and better services and foster a merit-based, inclusive, efficient and transparent public administration,” said Paula Acosta, chief of the IDB Innovation for Citizens Services Division. (Jamaicaobserver)

China is ready to keep expanding economic and trade exchanges with the Netherlands while adhering to the principle of mutual benefit, Chinese Premier Li Qiang said on Wednesday. During a phone call with Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof, Li said that in recent years, under the strategic guidance of the leaders of the two countries, China-Netherlands relations have developed steadily and rapidly, and cooperation in various fields has been continuously expanded, bringing tangible benefits to the two peoples.

China is ready to maintain close exchanges with the new Dutch government and work together to uphold the positive momentum in promoting the bilateral relations, he said. Openness and practicality are valuable lessons drawn from the development of China-Netherlands relations, Li said, adding that China is ready to maintain close high-level exchanges with the Netherlands, strengthen dialogue and communication, continue to consolidate political mutual trust, so as to provide a solid foundation for the development of bilateral relations. For his part, Schoof said that China plays an increasingly important role in global affairs, and the Netherlands attaches great importance to its relationship with China.

Bilateral relations, particularly in terms of economic and trade cooperation, have seen strong growth. The Dutch government firmly adheres to the one-China policy, recognizing that the government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China, Schoof said. The Netherlands is ready to serve as a gateway for China’s cooperation with Europe, and looks forward to further strengthening cooperation in economic, trade, and other fields to advance Netherlands-China relations.(China.rog)