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Palestinians call for global strike on Monday to demand immediate ceasefire | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Trade union activists and international influencers join call for global strike on December 11 as Israel pummels Gaza.

Palestinian activists and grassroots organisations have called for a global strike on Monday to demand an immediate ceasefire as Israel continues its aggression on Gaza.

The call for the strike has been given by the National and Islamic Forces, a coalition of major Palestinian factions, to Palestinians across the occupied West Bank and supporters across the world to participate in a strike that would include “all aspects of public life” in a show of solidarity amid relentless Israeli attacks.

“We expect the entire globe to join the strike, which comes in the context of a broad international movement involving influential figures. This movement stands against the open genocide in Gaza, the ethnic cleansing and the colonial settlement in the West Bank,” said a statement released by the coalition.

“The strike also opposes attempts to undermine the just national cause of the Palestinian people,” it said.

The coalition called on people across the globe to unite in sending a message of solidarity with the women, children and elderly who have come under Israel’s brutal bombardment of Gaza, which has killed nearly 18,000 people so far – including 297 in the past 24 hours alone – and wounded more than 49,500 others in just more than two months.

In response to the call, Lebanon on Sunday said all public offices, primary and secondary schools, as well as official and private higher education institutes, will hold a general strike in support of “the global call for Gaza”, Lebanon’s LBCI news reported on X, formerly known as Twitter.

A growing number of activists across the globe also posted on social media, calling on people to join the global strike on Monday.

Rejection of US veto

Muwafaq Sahwil, political party Fatah’s secretary in Ramallah and el-Bireh, said the strike, called by the Palestinians, trade union activists and international influencers, is a rejection of Friday’s veto by the United States against a United Nations Security Council resolution to stop the war on Gaza.

“This is a message to the US administration that stands against the aspirations of our people. It is also a message from people around the world to their politicians and the international community to stand up for the Palestinian people who have been suffering from occupation for 75 years,” he told Al Jazeera.

“We hope the strike will push the international community to help stop the war and to respond to Palestinians’ aspirations to achieve self-determination.”

The 193-member UN General Assembly is likely to vote on Tuesday on a draft resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, media reports said on Sunday.

The General Assembly in October adopted a resolution – 121 votes in favour, 14 against and 44 abstentions – calling for “an immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities”.

The calls for the global strike also came as the World Health Organization director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on Sunday said it will be all but impossible to improve the “catastrophic” health situation in Gaza even as the board passed an emergency WHO motion to secure more medical access.



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Nearly 300 killed in Gaza in 24 hours as Hamas, Netanyahu trade threats | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Fierce fighting has killed nearly 300 Palestinians in the past 24 hours in Gaza as the Palestinian armed group Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exchanged threats.

Israeli raids continued across the beleaguered territory on Sunday, including in northern Gaza where entire neighbourhoods have been flattened by air strikes and where ground troops that have been operating for more than six weeks continue to face heavy resistance from Hamas fighters.

Gaza’s health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told Al Jazeera in a telephone interview that 297 people were killed and more than 550 wounded in the past 24 hours in Gaza, bringing the death toll since the start of the war on October 7 to more than 18,000 – the majority of them women and children.

Hamas, Netanyahu exchange threats

Israeli attacks on Gaza continued for the 65th day on Sunday, with Hamas warning that no captives it took on October 7 would leave Gaza alive unless its demands were met.

“Neither the fascist enemy and its arrogant leadership… nor its supporters… can take their prisoners alive without an exchange and negotiation and meeting the demands of the resistance,” Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida said in a televised broadcast.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on his part, called on Hamas to surrender.

“It is the beginning of the end of Hamas. I say to the Hamas terrorists: It’s over. Don’t die for [Yahya] Sinwar. Surrender now,” he said, referring to the Hamas chief in Gaza.

Hamas earlier said Israel launched a series of “very violent raids” targeting the southern city of Khan Younis and the road linking it to Rafah near the border with Egypt.

Gaza residents also reported fierce fighting in Gaza City’s neighbourhood of Shujayea and in the Jabalia refugee camp, a dense urban area.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said Israeli forces raided an area near the UNRWA clinic in the heart of the Jabalia camp where its emergency teams and medics are operating a medical post.

“The team consists of nine doctors, nurses, and volunteers. The surrounding area is currently under bombardment, posing a constant threat to the lives of medical teams and the wounded,” the Red Crescent said in a post on X on Sunday evening.

In Shujayea – where Israeli snipers and tanks positioned themselves among the abandoned buildings – residents said the dead and wounded were left in the streets as ambulances could no longer reach the area.

“They are attacking anything that moves,” Hamza Abu Fatouh told the Associated Press.

‘Journey of death’

Israel had ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza early in the war but tens of thousands of people have remained, fearing that the south would be no safer or that they would never be allowed to return home.

Heavy fighting was also under way in and around the southern city of Khan Younis on Sunday.

“The mass exodus continues. Those fleeing northern Gaza in order to survive are describing it as the ‘journey of death’,” said Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Rafah in southern Gaza.

“Those in Khan Younis have been ordered to flee to al-Mawasi on the coastline – an area considered to be very dangerous,” he added.

“It’s also a region without any infrastructure – including access to water, food and electricity. There’s also no access to toilets. The situation is deteriorating extremely fast now.”

Israeli attack on a residential home in az-Zawayda, central Gaza [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

Gaza’s health situation ‘catastrophic’: WHO

The World Health Organization’s 34-member executive board on Sunday adopted a resolution calling for immediate, unimpeded aid deliveries to Gaza.

“Gaza’s health system is on its knees and collapsing,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, with only 14 of 36 hospitals functioning at any capacity.

The emergency action, proposed by Afghanistan, Qatar, Yemen and Morocco, seeks passage into Gaza for medical personnel and supplies, requires the WHO to document violence against healthcare workers and patients, and to secure funding to rebuild hospitals.

“I must be frank with you: these tasks are almost impossible in the current circumstances,” Tedors said, commending the countries for finding common ground and saying it was the first time any United Nations motion had been agreed to by consensus since the conflict began.

About 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced within the territory. With very little aid allowed in, Palestinians are facing severe shortages of food, water and other basic goods.

Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian politician who heads the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees with 25 teams working in Gaza, said: “Half of Gaza is now starving.”

Barghouti said 350,000 people had infections including 115,000 with severe respiratory infections and lacking warm clothes, blankets and protection from the rain.

He said many were suffering from stomach complaints because there was little clean water and not enough fuel to use to boil it, risking outbreaks of dysentery, typhoid and cholera.

“To add insult to injury, we have 46,000 injured people who cannot be treated properly because most of the hospitals are not functioning,” he said.

Renewed US support to Israeli attacks

Israel intensified its bombardment on Gaza after the latest United States veto on a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire. The vote was triggered by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter – a measure unused in decades.

The article allows the Secretary-General to “bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security”.

The US also pushed through an emergency sale of about 14,000 tank shells worth more than $100m to Israel without congressional review, the Pentagon said on Saturday.

Fending off criticism over the sale from Palestinians and rights groups who say it does not align with Washington’s stated effort to press Israel to minimise civilian casualties, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ABC on Sunday that Washington is in almost constant contact with the Israelis “to ensure they understand what their obligations are”.

In an address to the two-day Doha Forum event that started in the Qatari capital on Sunday, Antonio Guterres said he expected the “public order to completely break down soon” in Gaza.

“And an even worse situation could unfold, including epidemic diseases and increased pressure for mass displacement into Egypt,” he added.

Qatar, a key mediator of last month’s seven-day truce, which saw 80 Israeli captives exchanged for 240 Palestinian prisoners and a flow of humanitarian aid, on Sunday said it was still working on a new truce deal.

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told the Doha Forum that mediation efforts will continue to stop the war and have all captives released, but “unfortunately, we are not seeing the same willingness that we had seen in the weeks before”.

“Our efforts as the state of Qatar along with our partners are continuing,” he said, adding that Israel’s relentless bombardment was “narrowing the window” for success.



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Could an Israeli designated safe zone in Gaza become another ‘death zone’? | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Rights groups criticise Israeli move to displace Palestinians to a tiny and barren area.

Another wave of Palestinians were forced from their homes in Gaza. This time, to a small slice of land in the south designated by Israel as a “safe zone”.

But conditions in al-Mawasi are bleak, and for those living in its makeshift camps, bitterly cold.

International aid organisations do not recognise the facility and are not providing services there.

And in the last two months, Israeli forces have bombed areas where they ordered people to take shelter.

Those in al-Mawasi say there is no guarantee they will be spared Israeli bombings and air strikes.

So, how can what Israel calls a “safe zone” protect civilians from suffering and attacks? And could it become what one UNICEF official has described as another “zone of death”?

Presenter: Tom McRae

Guests:

Juliette Touma – Director of Communications at UN Refugee and Works Agency for Palestine refugees

Mukesh Kapila – Former UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator and Professor Emeritus at Manchester University

Hisham A Hellyer – Senior Associate Fellow in International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

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‘A hand here, a head there’: Israeli warplanes kill dozens in central Gaza | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Central Gaza Strip – In the town of az-Zawayda in central Gaza, neighbours have been working since Sunday morning, collecting the body parts of dozens of people that used to live in the Nisman family home.

At about 4am local time (06:00 GMT), Israeli warplanes bombed the home, destroying it completely.

“This is my uncles’ house,” Fadi Nisman told Al Jazeera. “My two uncles were with their families, three generations of them.”

Only weeks ago, the extended family had fled from the Shati refugee camp in the west of Gaza City following Israeli orders to head south of the enclave and taken refuge with the Nismans.

But in the Gaza Strip, there is no such thing as a safe place.

Fadi described Sunday’s attack as an “atomic bomb”.

“We are collecting body parts from the nearby lands, a hand here, a head there,” he said.

“We haven’t managed to pull out anyone from under the rubble, just those torn bodies that were flung in the air from the force of the bomb.”

His neighbour, Wael al-Mahanna, said the attack was worse than a powerful earthquake.

“There was no warning from the Israelis – they didn’t call or text or tell us to evacuate,” he said, adding that the neighbourhood had civilian residents.

“No one in the house survived. There were about 45 people inside,” he said.

“There was a body flung on one of the posts, and his head was found further on the rooftop. No one can even begin to comprehend what happened.”

At least 15 bodies were transferred to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah, local sources said.

The blast damaged the surrounding homes, devastating the residential block.

As the Israeli offensive on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continued for the 65th day, the death toll has reached close to a dizzying 18,000, nearly 8,000 of them children.

More than 48,700 others have been wounded while a further 7,780 Palestinians remain missing, believed to be dead under the rubble of their homes.

Fadi Nisman said people want an end to the bloodshed. “We want an end to this criminality,” he told Al Jazeera.

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COP28 pledges so far not enough to limit warming to 1.5C, warns IEA | Climate Crisis News

The International Energy Agency warns against lack of progress in limiting the global warming as climate talks headed into the final phase.

A raft of new pledges announced at the COP28 climate summit will not be enough on their own to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), as the talks headed into the final phase on Sunday.

So far, 130 countries have agreed to triple renewables and double the rate of energy efficiency improvements, while 50 oil and gas companies have agreed to cut out methane emissions and eliminate routine flaring by 2030 under the Oil and Gas Decarbonisation Charter.

If everyone delivered on their commitments, it would lower global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions by 4 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2030, the IEA said in an analysis.

That is about a third of the emissions gap that needs to be closed in the next six years to limit warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, as agreed to in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

“They would not be nearly enough to move the world onto a path to reaching international climate targets,” the IEA said on Sunday.

“The IEA will continue to monitor the ongoing developments at COP28 and update its assessment as needed,” it added.

Message from Jaber

COP28 President Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber also stepped up pressure on countries on Sunday to quickly resolve differences over a deal on fossil fuels.

“Failure is not an option. What we are after is the common good. What we’re after is what is in the best interest of everyone, everywhere,” al-Jaber, the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co, said on Sunday.

“We need to find consensus and common ground on fossil fuel, including coal,” he added.

The IEA has previously said countries would need to deliver in five key areas at COP28 to keep 1.5C a possibility.

In addition to adding renewables, boosting energy efficiency and cutting methane, it said a large-scale financing mechanism is needed to triple clean energy investment in poorer nations. The IEA also said the world would need to commit to a decline in the use of fossil fuels and end new approvals of unabated coal-fired power plants.

The COP28 summit runs through December 12.

Saudi Arabia, a major oil producer, and India, which is heavily reliant on coal, are said to be the main obstacles to an agreement on phasing out fossil fuels at COP28.

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Tensions rise as two more boats with over 300 Rohingya land in Indonesia | Rohingya News

Since November, more than 1,500 refugees have arrived in Indonesia’s Aceh province, triggering anger among the locals.

Over 300 Rohingya refugees have arrived on the coast of Aceh province in Indonesia after weeks of drifting across the sea from Bangladesh.

The emaciated survivors – children, women and men – told of running out of supplies and of fearing death at sea as they landed on the unwelcoming shores of the villages of Pidie and Aceh Besar in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday morning.

“The boat was sinking. We had no food or water left,” told Shahidul Islam, a 34-year-old survivor, saying he had left from a refugee camp in Bangladesh.

A group of 180 refugees arrived by boat at 3am local time (20:00 GMT on Saturday) on a beach in the Pidie regency of Aceh province.

The second boat carrying 135 refugees landed in neighbouring Aceh Besar regency hours later after being adrift at sea for more than a month, while a third boat is missing.

“We just want to find somewhere safe,” one refugee told Al Jazeera at a shelter on the coast. “We knew that we might die at sea, but finally we are safe. That’s all we want for our children.”

On Sunday evening, Aceh Besar’s acting regent Muhammad Iswanto said the refugees were transferred to a temporary shelter during the visit of a United Nations representative.

“They are relocated to the camping ground by the province’s [refugee] task force. They will join other Rohingya refugees that have been there,” said the official.

Unwelcoming shores

Nearly a million Rohingya live in refugee camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar near its border with Myanmar, most after fleeing a military-led crackdown and alleged acts of genocide in Myanmar in 2017.

Thousands of them risk their lives each year on long and expensive sea journeys, often in flimsy boats that sail from Bangladesh, to try to reach Malaysia or Indonesia.

But the mainly Muslim minority who fled Myanmar after persecution has not found refuge in these communities, where local villagers have tried to push refugee boats back to sea.

Rohingya refugees after landing in Blang Raya, Pidie, Aceh province, Indonesia [Reuters]

While the people of Aceh in Indonesia had previously welcomed refugees, tensions have been escalating as the number of arrivals has grown.

Over 1,500 Rohingya have arrived in Indonesia since last month after taking perilous journeys across the sea.

The residents in Aceh say they will neither provide funds nor supplies or shelter for the arriving Rohingya nor do they want them to stay in the area.

The local government in Pidie said earlier it would not take responsibility for providing the refugees with tents, or other basic needs, or “bear any expenses”.

‘They can’t stay here’

Rijalul Fitri, head of Blang Raya village in Aceh, said on Sunday they do not want the refugees in their village. “We stayed up all night so as not to allow them to dock, but … they arrived,” he said.

Fitri was adamant that the refugees must relocate. “They can’t stay here,” he said.

Over 100 protesters in Sabang Island in Aceh, where there is a temporary shelter, clashed with police as they called for the Rohingya refugees to be relocated.

“It’s one boat after another,” one woman told Al Jazeera.

“We are poor people, why don’t they use the money to help us? Why are they giving them food?” she said, referring to volunteers distributing food and water to the refugees.

“We reject the Rohingya,” another protester said. “We want them to be moved as soon as possible. We don’t want to catch the diseases they carry,” he said.

The UN refugee agency’s protection associate Faisal Rahman said the organisation has been trying to reassure the local communities.

“We continue to explain the situation to the people and ensure that they will not be burdened with the handling of refugees,” he said, acknowledging that designated shelters were over-capacity.

But “the government is working to provide shelter as the number of refugees arriving is very high”, Rahman said.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Friday said temporary relief would be provided for refugees “with a priority on the interests of the local community”.

Indonesia’s government says it is looking for a new site to house the refugees, and has acknowledged the opposition from residents in its goal to find a sustainable solution, Al Jazeera correspondent Jessica Washington reported from Jakarta.

The UN says the difficult conditions and increase in crime in Bangladesh as well as the worsening crisis in Myanmar is the reason for the increase in the flow of refugees, with experts predicting more boats could arrive in the coming months.

“Around 75 percent of the new arrivals are women and children,” Emily Bojovic of the UN refugee agency’s Southeast Asia office told Al Jazeera.

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Israel cannot carry out ‘collective punishment’ of people in Gaza: Lavrov | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Speaking at the Doha Forum, the Russian foreign minister calls for international monitoring of the situation in Gaza.

The Russian foreign minister says it is unacceptable that Israel is using Hamas’s October 7 offensive as justification for a collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza and has called for international monitoring of the situation on the ground in the besieged enclave.

Speaking virtually at the Doha Forum on Sunday, Sergey Lavrov told Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor James Bays the unprecedented attack by Hamas inside the Israeli territory did not happen in a vacuum.

It was due to “decades and decades of a blockade [in Gaza] and decades and decades of unfulfilled promises to the Palestinians that they would have a state, living side to side with Israel in security and good neighbourliness”, he said.

At least 17,700 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7 – 70 percent of them women and children, prompting rights bodies and experts to call it a “genocide”.

In Israel, the revised official death toll from the Hamas attack stands at about 1,147.

Addressing the Doha Forum, a two-day global meeting being held in the Qatari capital, Lavrov said the ongoing war in Gaza is about “cancel culture” – a recent phenomenon that refers to the mass withdrawal of support to public figures or celebrities who did things in the past that are no more acceptable today.

“Whatever you don’t like in the events which lead to a situation, you cancel,” he said.

Netanyahu speaks to Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called Israel’s offensive in Gaza a failure of US diplomacy and suggested that Moscow could be a mediator in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Moscow has also condemned this week’s US veto of a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s representative at the UN, said US diplomacy was “leaving scorched earth in its wake”.

Shortly after Lavrov spoke at the Doha Forum, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a telephone conversation with Putin, expressing his “displeasure” at Moscow’s positions against Israel at the UN and other global forums.

“The prime minister emphasised that any country that would suffer a criminal terrorist attack such as Israel experienced would act with no less force than the one Israel is using,” read a statement from Netanyahu’s office.

Lavrov’s comments to Al Jazeera came as Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to rage. Since February 2022, Ukraine has faced a full-scale Russian invasion that has seen its eastern territories occupied.

Lavrov, however, dubbed it a “hybrid war on Russia launched by the United States and NATO”, adding that the Ukraine conflict is also based on cancel culture.

“It is not a war of choice [for Russia]. It is the operation which we could not avoid, given the years and years of the US and NATO preparing Ukraine to be an instrument to undermine Russia’s security,” he said.

Lavrov said the Ukrainian government had passed legislation intended to cancel “everything Russian”, including language, media, culture and education.

“This [law] is against people who for generations have been living in eastern and southern Ukraine … The only thing the Western media is being encouraged to say is that Russia invaded Ukraine,” he told Bays.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, however, insists it was Moscow that spurred the current phase of “de-Russification efforts” in the country.

“You are doing it – in one generation’s lifetime and forever,” he said in a televised address in March last year.

“You are doing your best so that our people abandon the Russian language, because Russian will be associated with you, only with you, with these explosions and killings, with your crimes.”

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Deadly tornadoes sweep through US state of Tennessee | News

Recovery operations are under way as multiple tornadoes leave behind death and devastation in Nashville area.

Recovery and rescue workers are surveying the devastation after powerful tornadoes tore through the US state of Tennessee, leaving at least six people dead and injuring dozens, authorities said.

The tornadoes touched down on Saturday afternoon in and around Nashville, the capital of Tennessee, causing “extensive damage” as officials asked residents to seek shelter.

The mayor of Clarksville, 65km (40 miles) north of the capital city Nashville, where two adults and one child were killed, declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew from 9pm Saturday (03:00 GMT Sunday).

“Additionally, 23 people have been treated at the hospital,” county officials said.

“This is devastating news and our hearts are broken for the families of those who lost loved ones,” said Clarksville Mayor Joe Pitts in a statement. “The city stands ready to help them in their time of grief.”

Residents were asked to stay at home while first responders evaluated the situation. “Please, if you need help, call 911 and help will be on the way immediately. But if you can, please stay home. Do not get out on the roads. Our first responders need time and space,” Pitts said.

Another three people died in a suburb of Nashville, while photos posted by the city’s Office of Emergency Management revealed debris-strewn streets, downed trees, overturned cars and collapsed homes.

First responders were “still in the search and rescue phase of this disaster”, it added, asking residents to stay off the roads.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee said he and his wife, Maria, were praying for all Tennesseans who had been affected by the storms.

“We mourn the lives lost and ask that everyone continue to follow guidance from local and state officials,” Lee said in a statement.

Shaken residents recalled harrowing close encounters as tornadoes passed overhead while they sheltered in basements, shops, schools and hotels. Many homes and businesses were destroyed and nearly 52,000 customers reported power outages in the state Saturday evening, down from an earlier 86,000, according to poweroutage.us.

The storm came nearly two years to the day after the National Weather Service recorded 41 tornadoes through a handful of states, including 16 in Tennessee and eight in Kentucky. A total of 81 people died in Kentucky alone.

Scientists say climate change has amplified the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events around the world.

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Haney dominates Prograis to grab WBC super-lightweight world title | Boxing News

Devin Haney beat Regis Prograis by unanimous decision in his division debut to win the WBC super-welterweight title.

Devin Haney has wrested the WBC super-lightweight world title from Regis Prograis, knocking his opponent down once on the way to a unanimous decision victory in San Francisco.

Haney, the former undisputed lightweight world champion stepping up to the 140-pound division for the first time, won by scores of 120-107 from all three judges on Saturday.

Haney sent Prograis to the canvas in the third round with one of many devastating combinations and wobbled Prograis again in the sixth on the way to the dominant victory.

Haney (31-0) remained unbeaten with a slow but dominant victory over Prograis in front of a sellout crowd at Chase Center in San Francisco, home of the Golden State Warriors.

He was cheered wildly while repeatedly landing a stiff left hand and several hard right hooks that kept Prograis from finding a rhythm.

He dropped Prograis in the third round with a stinging straight right hand.

Prograis couldn’t avoid Haney’s crisp right hand to the head that repeatedly landed and opened a small cut on his nose in the sixth round.

“It’s a dream come true,” Haney said. “I knew I had him hurt a few times. I went in there and was real disciplined. I made it as easy as possible.”

‘The biggest fights are the most money’

It was Haney’s first fight as a super welterweight after dominating as the undisputed lightweight crown. Haney made the decision to move up after having trouble making weight at lightweight.

Now as a two-division champion, Haney is eyeing a third title.

“I want to talk to my dad and see what’s next,” Haney said. “I want to do a fight at 147 but there’s a lot of fights at 140.”

The hometown favourite later said the move up in weight had made a new fighter of him.

“A tremendous difference,” a victorious Haney told DAZN in the ring at the Chase Center, home of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.

“You see it in my performance. I felt so much stronger… 140 got a new king.”

Hard-hitting southpaw Prograis was making the second defence of the WBC title he won with an 11th-round knockout of Jose Zepeda for the vacant title in November last year. Prograis lost for the first time since October 2019.

He notched a split decision win over Danielito Zorrilla in June but fell to 29-2 with 24 knockouts with the defeat.

The win opens the door for Haney to take part in big money fights now. Among those being rumoured for his next fight are Gervonta Davis and Ryan Garcia.

“I want to make the biggest, best fights happen,” Haney said.

“The biggest fights are the most money.”

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Philippines and China accuse each other of South China Sea collisions | South China Sea News

Manila and Beijing have a long history of maritime incidents in the contested South China Sea.

The Philippines and China have traded accusations over a collision of their vessels near a disputed shoal in the South China Sea as tensions over claims in the vital waterway escalate.

The shoal is part of what are internationally known as the Spratly Islands.

China’s coastguard said in a statement on Sunday that two Philippine vessels, ignoring repeated warnings, had “illegally entered the waters adjacent to Ren’ai Reef in the Nansha Islands without the approval of the Chinese government”.

It said the Unaizah Mae 1 “made an unprofessional and dangerous sudden turn, intentionally ramming into China Coast Guard vessel 21556”. It said the Philippine side bore full responsibility.

Spokesperson Gan Yu also called on the Philippines to stop its “provocative acts”, saying Beijing would continue to carry out “law-enforcement activities” in its waters.

Meanwhile, the Philippine coastguard accused China of firing water cannons and ramming resupply vessels and a coast guard ship, causing “serious engine damage” to one.

Spokesperson Jay Tarriela said in a statement on the social media platform X that the “M/L Kalayaan suffered serious engine damage. Contrary to China Coast Guard disinformation, UM1 rammed by CCG vessel”.

Hours before Sunday’s incident, around 200 Philippine fishermen, youth leaders and civil society groups had joined a Christmas convoy to the area to deliver donations.

But the convoy’s organiser said the fishing boats decided to pull out as they “erred on the side of caution” due to the presence of Chinese boats.

The Philippines and China have a long history of maritime incidents in the contested South China Sea, through which more than $3 trillion of annual ship-borne trade passes annually.

Sunday’s incident comes a day after Manila accused Beijing of firing water cannon at a civilian-operated government fishing vessel, a move Beijing called legitimate “control measures”.

According to Chinese state media, Beijing also said that it took “control measures” against the three Philippine vessels in the South China Sea that it claimed had intruded into waters near Scarborough Shoal on Saturday.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, including parts claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. But the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 2016 said China’s claims had no legal basis.



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