Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida killed in Gaza, Israel says

 

Abu Obeida, the spokesman for Hamas's armed wing, has been killed in an aerial attack in Gaza City, Israel has said.

Israel's Defence Minister Israel Katz congratulated the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israel's security agency, Shin Bet, for the "flawless execution" in a post on X.

Hamas has not confirmed his death. The Palestinian armed group earlier said dozens of civilians were killed and injured in the Israeli air strikes on a residential building in the district.

Local journalists reported that at least seven people had been killed and 20 injured in the strikes on the densely populated al-Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza City, with children among the casualties.More>>>

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Wissa asks Brentford to 'keep word' & allow Newcastle move

 

Striker Yoane Wissa has called on Brentford to "keep their word" and let him leave before the transfer deadline, accusing the club of "unduly standing in his way" of a move to Newcastle United.

With two days of the transfer window remaining, the DR Congo international is furious the west London club are refusing to sell him to Newcastle, who have had two offers rejected - the latest being £35m guaranteed, plus a further £5m in add-ons.

In a statement on social media on Sunday, Wissa said he had "repeated promises" from the club he could leave this summer if they received a "reasonable offer" and says he has this "in writing".

He now says Brentford have "significantly changed its position, going against what was communicated" and is now publicly asking to go, adding that being made to stay will "tarnish" his four years at the club.More>>>

The first game to feel truly cinematic is back - years after its creator left

 

Metal Gear is one of the best-selling video game series in history, shifting more than 60 million copies.

The series pioneered cinematics in gaming by blending cutting-edge cutscenes, voice acting and dynamic camera angles to create something that would have looked more at home on the big screen at the time.

Metal Gear tackled themes not commonly seen in games, such as nuclear disarmament and child soldiers, and posed philosophical questions while also leveraging offbeat humour.

The games would often break the fourth wall and ask players to find solutions to puzzles in unusual ways - such as looking on the back cover of the game's physical box.

The series' significant place in gaming history meant fans were stunned when its creator Hideo Kojima quit game publisher Konami in an acrimonious split in 2015.

One of gaming's biggest titles was left directionless - and there's been no game in the best-selling series since.

But now, a decade later, Konami has released a remake of Metal Gear Solid 3.

So what happened between Konami and Kojima, and how does the new game hold up without its original creator?More>>>

The trade in US body parts that's completely legal - but ripe for exploitation.

 

Harold Dillard was 56 when he was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer around his abdomen in November 2009. Within weeks the former car mechanic and handyman - a Texan "Mr Fix It" type who wore a cowboy hat and jeans nearly every day - was in end-of-life hospice care.

In his final days, Mr Dillard was visited at the hospice by a company called Bio Care. They asked if he might like to donate his body to medical science, where it could be used by doctors to practise knee replacement surgery. The company would cremate the parts of his body that weren't used and return his ashes free of charge.

"His eyes lit up," his daughter, Farrah Fasold, remembers. "He viewed that as lessening the burden on his family. Donating his body was the last selfless thing he could do."

Mr Dillard died on Christmas Eve, and within hours, a car from Bio Care pulled up outside the hospice and drove his body away.

A few months later, his daughter received a call from the police. They had found her father's head.

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Intermittent fasting: benefits or risks? Study raises questions about heart health

 

Intermittent fasting has become the diet trend of the decade.

It promises to hack biology without the drudgery of counting calories or cutting carbs: simply change when you eat, not necessarily what you eat. Tech moguls swear by it, Hollywood stars insist it keeps them trim. Britain's former prime minister Rishi Sunak once spoke of starting his week with a 36-hour fast.

So far the science has seemed supportive. Research suggests that extending the overnight fast may improve metabolism, aid cellular repair and perhaps even prolong life. Nutritionists, however, have long warned that skipping meals is no magic bullet - and may be risky for those with underlying conditions.

Intermittent fasting compresses eating into a short daily window, often eight hours, leaving a 16-hour gap without food. Other time-restricted diets, like the 5:2 plan, limit calories on certain days rather than hours.

Now, the first large-scale study of its kind raises a more serious red flag. Researchers, analysing data from more than 19,000 adults, found that those who confined their eating to less than eight hours a day faced a 135% higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease - death due to heart and blood vessel diseases - than people who ate over 12-14 hours.

An elevated cardiovascular risk means that, based on a person's health, lifestyle and medical data, they are more likely than others in the study to develop heart-related problems such as heart attack or stroke.

• The benefits of intermittent fasting the right way

The link to overall mortality - deaths from any cause - was weaker and inconsistent, but the cardiovascular risk persisted across age, sex and lifestyle groups even after rigorous testing.

In other words, the study found only a weak and inconsistent link between time-restricted eating and overall deaths. But the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease was sharply higher.

The authors stress that the study doesn't prove cause and effect. But the signal is striking enough to challenge the narrative of fasting as a risk-free path to better health.

Researchers tracked American adults over eight years. To understand their eating habits, participants were asked on two separate days - about two weeks apart - to recall everything they ate and drank. From these "dietary recalls", scientists estimated each person's average eating window and treated it as representative of their long-term routine.

Those who ate within an eight-hour window faced a higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease than those who spread meals over 12-14 hours, the study found.

They found the elevated cardiovascular risk was consistent across socioeconomic groups, and strongest among smokers and people with diabetes or existing heart disease - suggesting they should be especially cautious about long-term, narrow eating windows. The link held even after adjusting for diet quality, meal and snack frequency, and other lifestyle factors, researchers found.

I asked the researchers how we should read the finding that heart-related deaths go up so dramatically, but overall deaths don't - is it biology, or bias in the data?

Diet is a major driver of diabetes and heart disease, so an association with higher cardiovascular mortality is not unexpected, said Victor Wenze Zhong, the lead author of the peer-reviewed study in Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research and Reviews.

"The unexpected finding is that sticking to a short eating window less than eight hours over years was linked to increased death risk from cardiovascular disease," says Prof Zhong, an epidemiologist at Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine in China.More>>>

Reeling from Trump's tariffs, India and China seek a business reboot

 

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed in China on Sunday with the sting of Donald Trump's US tariffs still top of mind.

Since Wednesday, tariffs on Indian goods bound for the US, like diamonds and prawns, now stand at 50% – which the US president says is punishment for Delhi's continued purchase of Russian oil.

Experts say the levies threaten to leave lasting bruises on India's vibrant export sector, and its ambitious growth targets.

China's Xi Jinping, too, is trying to revive a sluggish Chinese economy at a time when sky-high US tariffs threaten to derail his plans.

Against this backdrop, the leaders of the world's two most populous countries may both be looking for a reset in their relationship, which has previously been marked by mistrust, a large part of it driven by border disputes.

"Put simply, what happens in this relationship matters to the rest of the world," Chietigj Bajpaee and Yu Jie of Chatham House wrote in a recent editorial.

"India was never going to be the bulwark against China that the West (and the United States in particular) thought it was... Modi's China visit marks a potential turning point."

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Life inside notorious immigration centre 'Alligator Alcatraz' as it enters final days

 

When her son was taken into immigration custody, Yaneisy Fernandez feared the worst. Then she got a call from him inside "Alligator Alcatraz".

"We had no idea where he was until he called us," Yaneisy told the BBC. "He said, 'mom, they took me to the facility of the crocodiles.' That's how he put it."

The temporary immigration detention centre built in Florida's Everglades has quickly become a polarising symbol of President Donald Trump's immigration policy.

Now, just two months after it opened, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said it will be shutting it down, in compliance with a judge's orders. The process is already under way - border tsar Tom Homan told the BBC during a press conference that only about 50% of the detainees remain.

The BBC spoke to the families of two inmates who were moved in the past month, who say that their loved ones disappeared into the system when they were at their most vulnerable.

That includes Yaneisy's son Michael Borrego Fernandez, who says he was left bleeding while in serious pain after a medical incident, before being moved to another facility. He is part of an ongoing lawsuit alleging inmates were denied in-person access to their lawyers.

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