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The little village of Ghajar has been a sore point between Israel and Lebanon for years, split in two by the border between Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. But after a long period of calm, the dispute has begun to heat up again. Israel has been building a wall around the half of the village in Lebanese territory, triggering condemnation from the Lebanese militiant force Hezbollah, accusing Israel of moving to annex the site. A recent exchange of fire in the area raised alarm that the dispute could trigger violence. The growing tensions over Ghajar add to the jitters along the Lebanese-Israeli border, where Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah fought a destructive 34-day war in the summer of 2006. The two sides have studiously avoided outright battle ever since, despite frequent flare-ups of tension -- but each constantly says a new conflict could erupt at any time. The dispute over a small village in the green hills where Lebanon, Israel and Syria meet brings a new point of worry amid broader unrest. The West Bank has seen increased bloodshed the past week, with a major two-day offensive that Israel says targeted Palestinian militants. Within Israel, moves by the hard-right government to overhaul the judicial system have sparked large anti-government protests. “This is Lebanese land, not Israeli,” said Lebanese shepherd Ali Yassin Diab, pointing to the half of Ghajar being enclosed by the Israeli wall as he grazed his sheep and goats nearby. Members of the U.N. peacekeeping force UNIFIL watched from a distance. Yassin used to take his herds to drink at a pond there. He now has to buy water for his sheep. The village’s division is an unusual byproduct of the decades of conflict between Israel and its neighbors. Ghajar was once part of Syria but was captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war as part of Syria’s Golan Heights, which Israel occupied and later annexed, with little world recognition. In the 1980s and 1990s, Ghajar’s population expanded north into nearby Lebanese territory, held by Israel in its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon. When Israel withdrew from Lebanon in May 2000, U.N. surveyors delineating temporary borders ruled that Ghajar’s northern part was in Lebanon, its southern part in the Golan, dividing it in two. Six years later, Israeli troops moved into the northern part of Ghajar during the Israel-Hezbollah war. They have occupied it since, preventing people from entering it from Lebanon. Under the truce that ended the 2006 fighting, Israel agreed to withdraw from Ghajar, but it wanted to clinch an arrangement to keep Hezbollah from entering the village. Most of Ghajar’s around 3,000 residents hold Israeli nationality — some of them alongside Lebanese — and they largely identify as Syrians. Last year, Israel started erecting a concrete wall around the northern part of the village. It also began encouraging Israeli tourism to the village. In apparent reply to the near finishing of the wall, Hezbollah set up two tents nearby, including one in the area of Chebaa Farms, which both Israel and Lebanon claim as its territory. It is not clear what is inside the tents. Israel filed a complaint with the United Nations, claiming the tents were several dozen meters (yards) inside of Israeli territory. Hezbollah says the tents are in Lebanese territory. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Lior Haiat told the AP that Israel has turned to UNIFIL and “other countries” to resolve the situation but did not identify the countries and did not immediately comment on the wall in Ghajar. On Monday, UNIFIL’s commander relayed an Israeli request to Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister and parliament speaker to remove the tent. They responded that Israel should withdraw its troops from the Lebanese part of Ghajar, according to Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bouhabib. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech Wednesday night that Israel cordoned off Ghajar before Hezbollah set up its tents. “Over the past days, it became clear that they (Israel) have annexed it,” Nasrallah said. He added: “The land of Ghajar will not be left for Israel, and certainly not Chebaa Farms and Kfar Chouba,” another border area claimed by both countries. A female resident of Ghajar, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity due to security concerns, said the villagers consider themselves Syrian but their main concern “is to stay in Ghajar, in this village, living in peace and security. No matter under who rules.” “There is a (border) line that was drawn by the United Nations. Why are they allowed to cross it while we as Lebanese citizens cannot?” Mohammed Rammal, the mayor of the nearby Lebanese border village of Oddeissi, said of Israel’s presence in Ghajar. Last week, an anti-tank missile was fired from Lebanon near Ghajar, with some fragments landing in Lebanon and others inside Israeli territory. Israel fired shells on the outskirts of the nearby village of Kfar Chouba. On Wednesday, an explosion elsewhere near the border slightly wounded at least three Hezbollah members. Nasrallah said the case is still under investigation. Late last month, Hezbollah said it shot down an Israel drone flying over a village in southern Lebanon. On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Joe Biden’s special envoy for energy, Amos Hochstein, during which they discussed “regional issues,” according to the Israeli prime minister’s office. Some Israeli media said Netanyahu and Hochstein, who helped last year broker a maritime border deal between Israel and Lebanon, discussed tensions along the border with Lebanon. “We continue to monitor and engage with authorities in Lebanon and Israel on the issue of Ghajar,” UNIFIL spokeswoman Kandice Ardiel said. She added that UNFIL has repeatedly called on Israel to stop its works north of the line and that Israel’s occupation of northern Ghajar violates the U.N. Security council resolution that ended the 2006 war. Israel considers Hezbollah its most serious immediate threat, estimating it has some 150,000 rockets and missiles aimed at Israel. During a tour by an Associated Press team near Ghajar this week, more patrols by U.N. peacekeepers and Lebanese army along the border were visible. Residents in nearby villages appeared defiant and going on with life as usual during the summer season, when many expatriates come to spend time with their families. In Lebanese media, many analysts say neither side wants a new war. But Lebanese political analyst Faisal Abdul-Sater warned that the situation is very dangerous as Israel and Hezbollah are on alert. “Whoever fires the first shot will bear the responsibility for the consequences,” he said. ___ AP correspondent Josef Federman contributed to this report. Read More Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide AP Week in Pictures: Europe and Africa Stock market today: Asian shares buoyed by Wall Street's winning week as inflation eases For a group of Ukrainian women, painting is a form of therapy to help them cope with loss

Donald Trump is effectively arguing that for as long as he's running for president, he should be spared from standing trial over his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

Special counsel Jack Smith told a federal judge Thursday that there was no reason to postpone scheduling a trial date in the classified documents case against Donald Trump, in a court filing that aggressively rejected the reasons the former president and his co-defendant gave for why the trial should be delayed.

Lawyers for the president’s son Hunter Biden sent Donald Trump a cease-and-desist letter on Thursday, alleging that the former president’s frequent hostile comments about Mr Biden are defamatory and likely to inspire violence. “We are just one such social media message away from another incident,” the letter, obtained by Law360, claims, citing the violent attack on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband as a cautionary tale of the dangers of online rhetoric. “You should make it clear to Mr Trump – if you have not done so already – that Mr Trump’s words have caused harm in the past and threaten to do so again if he does not stop,” the letter adds. The letter points to recent examples of Mr Trump’s aggressive statements about Mr Biden, such as a March social media post allegedly implying Mr Biden should get a “death sentence” and July message claiming cocaine found in the White House “was for use by Hunter”. The letter claims such provocations could inspire one of Mr Trump’s “easy-to-trigger followers.” Donald Trump’s lawyers Joe Tacopina declined to comment when contacted by The Independent. In June, Mr Biden reached a tentative agreement with federal prosecutors to plead guilty to two misdemeanour counts of failing to pay taxes and to admit the facts of a gun charge in exchange for likely avoiding jail time. The plea still needs to be approved by a federal judge, and a hearing is scheduled for later this month. Republicans in Congress and beyond have alleged that Mr Biden is benefitting from his famous name to avoid harsher prosecution. During a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee this week with FBI Director Christopher Wray, GOP members sharply criticised the agency, alleging a political bias. “Here’s what the American people know and believe about the FBI today, sir,” Rep Wesley Hunt told Mr Wray. “If you are a Trump, you will be prosecuted. If you are a Biden, you will be protected.” “I obviously disagree with your description of the two standards,” the FBI director said in response. “In my view, at least under my watch, we have one standard. And that is we’re going to pursue the facts wherever they lead, no matter who likes it. Read More Trump news – live: Hunter Biden lawyer warns Trump over ‘inciting violence’, as Kushner testifies over Jan 6 Secret Service ends probe into mysterious bag of cocaine found in White House: ‘No fingerprints or DNA’ GOP lawmaker compares Hunter Biden to glitter: ‘You cannot get rid of him. We’re sick of it’ GOP lawmaker compares Hunter Biden to glitter: ‘You cannot get rid of him’ FBI director set to clash with Republicans on the Trump case, Hunter Biden and more Gal Luft claimed he had dirt on the Bidens – now he’s facing charges

President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Thursday allowing the Pentagon to tap an additional 3,000 military reservists to support the US mission in Europe to bolster Nato amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. The additional troops will join the estimated 100,000 US service members already on the European continent. "These authorities will enable the department to better support and sustain its enhanced presence and level of operations,” Lt Gen Douglas Sims told Military.com of the move. The current US mission in Europe, dubbed Atlantic Resolve, began in 2014, as Russia annexed Crimea and put pressure on Ukraine’s Donbas region, a prelude to its wider invasion in 2022. So far, the US has sent more than $76bn in aid to Ukraine, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, more than $46bn of which has been military-related. The additional US forces came as President Biden made a high-profile swing through Europe for Nato summit in Lithuania on Wednesday. On Thursday, speaking from Helsinki, Mr Biden reiterated US support for Nato. “There’s overwhelming support from the American people. There’s overwhelming support from the members of the Congress, both House and Senate, in both parties,” he said, though he conceded “some extreme elements” of the Republican Party feel differently. The previous day, Mr Biden voiced his awe at the “unbroken” people of Ukraine,” who had shown “incredible dignity” in the face of Russia aggression. “One country cannot be allowed to seize his neighbour territory by force,” Mr Biden said. The US visit to Europe was not without its complications. Shortly before the Nato summit, Mr Biden threw cold water on the idea of Ukraine joining the defensive organisation in the near term. “I don’t think there is unanimity in Nato about whether or not to bring Ukraine into the Nato family now, at this moment, in the middle of a war,” he told CNN last week. The president also said that Ukraine would need to make reforms in terms of “democratization” before joining the alliance. Read More Thousands of Ukraine civilians are being held in Russian prisons. Russia plans to build many more Marjorie Taylor Greene’s antics show that the 2024 election will be about America’s role in the world Pentagon says cluster munitions have arrived in Ukraine The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary

A revised personal financial disclosure filing from former President Donald Trump made public Thursday offered new details about the roughly $1 billion that he appears to have earned in his post-presidential life, including lucrative speaking engagements by Trump and his wife, along with more specifics about his foreign business ventures.

A number of Republican-led states spent their most recent legislative sessions relaxing child labour laws — while one state is already experiencing a rise in child labour cases. A report from WFTV in Orlando published Wednesday suggests that central Florida is already seeing a spike in child labour cases that dates back to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. The nature of the cases reportedly range in scope and seriousness from having children working too many hours on school days to operating heavy machinery and beyond. “From [fiscal years] 2020 until 2022, we have seen more child labor that we had seen from 2011 to 2020,” Department of Labor District Director Wildalí De Jesús told WFTV. The Covid pandemic began in 2020 and upended the labour market — causing the service economy to contract and then leaving a number of employers without adequate staff when lockdown measures were relaxed and consumption habits returned to pre-pandemic levels. Still, the data shows an alarming trend in the illegal exploitation of minors in the workforce at a time when states across the country are working to roll back child labour laws that are a longstanding legacy of the children’s rights and labour movements. Already this year, numerous GOP-led states including Missouri, Ohio, Arkansas, and Iowa have passed laws weakening child labour laws — allowing companies to hire children without work permits and making it legal for them to working longer hours in more dangerous conditions. The push to weaken child labour laws has reportedly been led by a Florida-based think tank, the Foundation for Government Accountability, which drafted the model legislation for states to use to roll back their child labour protections. The data from Florida is not entirely clear on several points, including how many of the children in question are undocumented immigrants. In her comments to WFTV, Ms De Jesús said parents are not always in a position to know the exact details of the work their children are doing and how it aligns with child labour law. “We’re seeing a trend of much younger children… because sometimes the children don’t know what they’re supposed to do or not supposed to do,” Ms De Jesús told the television station. “A lot of times parents don’t know either. They may assume that it’s safe or that [the child is] working the correct hours and that there’s no limitations, but there are.” Earlier this year, the Department of Labor reported a 68 per cent increase in the number of children illegally employed by US companies since 2018. A number of those children may be undocumented migrants. Read More Wisconsin teen dies in sawmill accident in one of 14 states looking to roll back child labour laws

A Georgia lawmaker who represents part of Atlanta in the state House of Representatives switched her party affiliation to Republican this week after repeatedly breaking with her former party on several key votes this session.

Polls show Donald Trump way ahead. Will that change when the 2024 debates begin next month?

Federal prosecutors investigating Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results have questioned his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, among other witnesses to see if the former president acknowledged he had lost. Mr Kushner testified in Washington DC last month, according to a report from The New York Times, and maintained that the former president believed the election was stolen, a source briefed on the matter said. It has also emerged that other key administration figures including Alyssa Farah Griffin and Hope Hicks were also questioned. Elsewhere, special counsel Jack Smith told a federal judge there is “no basis in law or fact” for indefinitely postponing the federal trial of Mr Trump and urged the court to proceed with jury selection in December. In a new court filing, Smith wrote that one of Trump’s legal arguments "borders on frivolous" and said there’s no evidence that waiting until after the 2024 presidential election would make the process any easier. Meanwhile, recent financial disclosure forms show Melania Trump was paid as much as $155,000 by a Super PAC linked to her husband for “event planning and consulting”. Read More Ron DeSantis rules out being Trump’s running mate: ‘I’m not a number two guy’ GOP lawmaker compares Hunter Biden to glitter: ‘You cannot get rid of him. We’re sick of it’ Trump sees democracy as ‘enemy territory’ says journalist who helped bring down Nixon Everything we know about Ray Epps, the man conservatives blame for the Capitol riot

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott -- whose presidential campaign announced this week that it has more than $21 million in cash reserves -- is getting fresh attention from deep-pocketed donors looking for alternatives to the front-runners in the GOP primary, people familiar with the outreach say.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s obvious impatience over Nato’s slow-moving decision-making process has reportedly irritated US officials enough that they reconsidered Ukraine’s invitation to join the alliance. For months, Mr Zelensky has appealed to Nato leaders hoping they would accept his country’s application to join the alliance as they fight off Russian troops. But Nato countries have been reluctant – not wanting to rock the boat too much with Russia during the middle of the war. Then, after Nato countries failed to deliver a specific timeline to Mr Zelensky on Nato membership before the summit this week, Mr Zelensky’s frustration resulted in a more aggressive approach in the form of a tweet. “It’s unprecedented and absurd when time frame is not set neither for the invitation nor for Ukraine’s membership. While at the same time vague wording about "conditions" is added even for inviting Ukraine. It seems there is no readiness neither to invite Ukraine to NATO nor to make it a member of the Alliance,” Mr Zelensky wrote on Tuesday. “This means that a window of opportunity is being left to bargain Ukraine’s membership in NATO in negotiations with Russia. And for Russia, this means motivation to continue its terror.” He added: “Uncertainty is weakness. And I will openly discuss this at the summit.” Mr Zelensky’s strong message was a clear response to Nato’s unspecific and vague statement regarding Ukraine’s membership: “We will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine when allies agree and conditions are met” However the Ukrainian’s message to Nato leaders left US officials feeling particularly “furious”, a source familiar with the situation told The Washington Post. Several US officials allegedly questioned whether the alliance should get rid of the passage which Mr Zelensky found “absurd”, The Post reported. The US has already given Ukraine more than $75bn in assistance. Most recently the Pentagon announced that they had sent the controversial cluster munitions to assist in Ukraine’s fight against Russia. Despite the hiccup, byy the end of the Nato summit on Wednesday, Mr Zelesnky had come to Nato’s accept decision calling it a “significant security victory” while still reiterating the preferred outcome would be an invitation to join Nato. Read More Pentagon says cluster munitions have arrived in Ukraine The Nato summit was not the triumph that Zelensky hoped it would be Nato could have sent a stronger signal on Ukraine’s future – Iain Duncan Smith Pentagon says cluster munitions have arrived in Ukraine Senators renew effort to bar future US withdrawal from Nato Republican senator should drop his 'irresponsible' protest and OK military nominees, Biden says