World
The Toll of 10 Months of Simmering Conflict on the Israel-Lebanon Border
Source: Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project
Even before a deadly rocket strike and a round of assassinations renewed fears of a wider war across the Mideast, the steady, simmering conflict between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon proved devastating.
For almost a year, both sides have been carefully calibrating their tit-for-tat attacks to avoid a larger conflict. But the near-daily exchanges of fire have added up.
Satellite imagery makes clear just how profound the toll has been on both sides of the border. This is what one Lebanese town, Aita al-Shaab, looked like before and after it came under attack.
Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants, who are backed by Iran, have been fighting off and on for years. But the conflict intensified last October after another Iranian ally, Hamas, led an attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip, setting off the war there.
In the cross-border fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, the most widespread structural destruction has been in Lebanon, where thousands of buildings have been damaged or destroyed. The thousands of Israeli attacks since October have far outnumbered Hezbollah attacks into Israel, according to data collected by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a nonprofit that studies world conflicts.
Around a quarter of the structures are damaged in some villages, according to an analysis of satellite data by Corey Scher of the CUNY graduate center.
Israeli airstrikes and shelling in Lebanon have killed nearly 500 people, at least 100 of them civilians, according to the U.N. and Lebanon’s health ministry.
Hezbollah has launched 7,500 rockets, missiles and drones since the start of the war in Gaza, according to the Israeli prime minister’s office, killing 43 people in Israel, more than half of them civilians, and setting swaths of farmland ablaze. Northern Israel has seen more than 700 wildfires, according to the prime minister’s office, which Israel has blamed on the Hezbollah barrages.
This satellite imagery shows what happened to large areas of dry brush surrounding the Malkiya kibbutz after it was ignited.
Sources: Planet Labs, OpenStreetMap
It is not only Israel that is burning.
The fighting has caused significant fires on both sides of the border, and many fear they may cause long-lasting damage to land that plays an important role in food production.
Many villages near the border on both sides are ghost towns. Roughly 60,000 people in northern Israel and 100,000 in southern Lebanon have been displaced by the fighting along the border since October, with no clear timeline for returning home.
Sources: Ororatech, OpenStreetMap
Note: Fire boundaries are rough estimates of thermal activity based on satellite detections. Detections since the war began are from Oct. 7, 2023 to Aug. 6, 2024, and those before the war are from the same period a year earlier.Where fires have broken out
Now, there is fear that like the wildfires, the conflict itself may spread. In the past three weeks, attacks have escalated, threatening a larger regional war.
In July, a rocket from Lebanon killed 12 civilians in a town in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. It was the deadliest attack on Israeli-controlled territory since the Oct. 7 attacks led by Hamas.
Israel responded with a strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs, killing a Hezbollah leader along with five civilians, according to Lebanese authorities. A senior Hamas figure was assassinated hours later in the capital of Iran. Both Hezbollah and Iran vowed vengeance.
Lebanon’s border towns with Israel, made up mainly of Shiite Muslims, are a bastion of support for Hezbollah. But there are also Christian and Sunni Muslim enclaves.
Some of those border towns that have borne much of the destruction in the current attacks were the scene of heavy ground fighting in 2006, when Israel and Lebanon fought their last war.
A U.N. peacekeeper inspecting a house destroyed by an Israeli attack in the southern Lebanese village of Yarine.
Diego Ibarra Sánchez for The New York Times
Now, with hostilities heating up, some Israelis want their country to mount a full-scale invasion again. Others fear that an all-out response from Hezbollah could be devastating. The militants’ arsenal of sophisticated precision-guided missiles is considered capable of striking cities across Israel, along with critical infrastructure like power plants and ports.
Israeli military commanders have their own concerns. They are still prosecuting one major war — against Hamas in Gaza — and do not relish the prospect of a second. And with munitions stockpiles dwindling, it is unclear how intense a battle the military could wage in Lebanon.
World
Colin Jost Says ‘SNL’ Rejected Joke About Pete Hegseth Reading ‘Pulp Fiction’ Bible Verse Two Weeks Before It Happened in Real Life
Donald Trump’s defense secretary Pete Hegseth was widely mocked in April after he read a fake Bible verse from Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 classic “Pulp Fiction” during a Pentagon worship service. It turns out Colin Jost sort of saw it coming.
During a recent visit to “The Tonight Show,” Jost revealed that before Hegseth’s viral gaffe he told the “SNL” writers room: “Would it be funny if Hegseth just did that Bible verse that they have in ‘Pulp Fiction’ Remember, from Ezekiel, Samuel L. Jackson?”
The writers shot down Jost’s pitch, deeming it “too ridiculous” and claiming it “would take up all this time in the cold open. “And then he for real did it, like two weeks later and I was like, ‘Well, the good news is, I’m being surveilled, so that’s a relief.’” Jost has been playing Hegseth on “SNL” this season to much acclaim from critics and viewers.
The real Hegseth was at a Pentagon prayer service in April when he read the altered version of Ezekiel 25:17 that’s delivered by Samuel L. Jackson’s character in “Pulp Fiction” before he shoots a man. Hegseth said the prayer was recited by the “Sandy 1” Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) mission in Iran.
Calling on everyone to pray with him, Hegseth then read a prayer that was nearly word-for-word the line delivered by Jackson in Tarantino’s film: “The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of camaraderie and duty shepherds the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother, and you will know my call sign is Sandy 1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee. Amen.”
Watch Jost’s full interview on “The Tonight Show” in the video below.
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A car reportedly drove into a crowd in the northern Italian city of Modena on Saturday, injuring several people.
The vehicle slammed into a store window, and its driver allegedly stabbed a passerby who attempted to intervene, Reuters reported, citing local Italian media.
Mayor Massimo Mezzetti told Italian TV no one was killed but eight people were injured, including four who were in critical condition, according to The Associated Press.
Blood is seen next to a destroyed car on a street of Modena, Italy, Saturday, May 16, 2026. (Lapresse via AP)
He said a woman pinned against a shop window may require the amputation of both legs.
Financial Police patrol a scene after a car incident in a street of Modena, Italy, Saturday, May 16, 2026. (Lapresse via AP)
The driver is a 31-year-old man born in Bergamo and raised in Modena with Maghreb origins, Mezzetti said.
The man was detained and was being questioned at police headquarters as authorities worked to determine whether he was under the influence of substances or acted deliberately, the mayor said.
Mezzetti said the vehicle entered one of the city’s main streets and “drove onto the sidewalk, sending several people flying,” before crashing into the shop window.
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This is a developing story. Please check back for updates. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Published on •Updated
A tragedy unfolded in the night between Friday and Saturday on the island of Lampedusa, where a newborn migrant baby girl just a few weeks old died of hypothermia immediately after disembarking and while being rushed to the island’s outpatient clinic.
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At 4.30 a.m., after being rescued by the V1307 patrol boat of the Guardia di Finanza, 55 people from Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Nigeria and Sierra Leone landed at Favarolo pier. Among them were seven women and six minors. The baby girl, whose condition immediately appeared critical, was taken together with her mother to the medical facility, where doctors could do nothing but declare her dead.
Investigation opened into the baby girl’s death
The Agrigento prosecutor’s office has opened an inquiry into the tragic case and ordered a post-mortem examination of the child’s body, a necessary step to confirm hypothermia as the actual cause of death.
The body is being transferred to the mortuary at the Cala Pisana cemetery, while in the coming hours the mother will be questioned by investigators to reconstruct the details of the crossing and establish exactly how and when the baby fell ill.
According to accounts from other migrants on board, the group had set off from Sfax-El Amra in Tunisia at around two o’clock yesterday morning, making the journey in a seven-metre metal boat that cost between 400 and 600 euros per person.
The baby girl’s mother, originally from Côte d’Ivoire, was later taken to the hotspot in the Imbriacola district together with her other daughter, aged around two. According to reports, the woman is currently in a severe state of shock over the loss of her child and is receiving continuous support from staff of the Italian Red Cross, which manages the island’s reception centre.
The centre’s director, Imad Dalil, confirmed to Italian media that psychosocial support measures had been activated. “The mother and the sister are here in the hotspot and are in good physical condition; for them and for the other people psychological support was activated immediately and in the coming hours the medical and psychosocial teams will continue their work,” he said.
NGOs’ reaction
The German NGO Sea-Watch voiced its outrage in a strongly worded post on X. “While the state attacks those who save lives at sea, investigating the captain of Sea-Watch, a one-month-old baby has arrived in LAMPEDUSA, dead in her mother’s arms, after a three-day crossing. Who will be held responsible for this injustice?” The outburst refers to the news, received by the NGO after arriving in Brindisi with 166 rescued people, that a criminal investigation has been opened against the captain of the Sea-Watch 5 on suspicion of aiding illegal entry.
The UN agency specialising in the protection and assistance of people forced to flee war, violence and persecution (UNHCR) also intervened to express deep condolences and grave concern over yet another victim claimed along the Mediterranean routes.
“A mother has lost her newborn daughter, who arrived dead this morning together with 54 other people in Lampedusa. Deep sorrow and concern for the many children and adults who should not be dying in the Mediterranean,” reads a post published on social media by UNHCR, which explains that the agency is on the ground providing assistance to the mother and all the other survivors of the landing.
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