Hezbollah said Tuesday it is now ready to engage in cease-fire talks with Israel, after suffering serious blows to its leadership and ranks in recent months.
The terror group in Lebanon made the announcement after firing more than 100 rockets at the Jewish state hours earlier.
Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general, Naim Qassem, publicly endorsed a truce with Israel, the first such time the terror group has proposed a cease-fire not conditioned on the war in Gaza.
The Israeli military has taken out dozens of Hezbollah leaders, including most of its top officials.Israel Defense Forces
“We support the political efforts led by [Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih] Berri under the banner of achieving a cease-fire,” Qassem said, according to a CNN translation.
“Once the cease-fire is firmly established and diplomacy can reach it, all other details will be discussed and decisions will be made collaboratively,” he added.
Qassem’s announcement came within hours of a massive barrage that sent more than 100 missiles soaring from Lebanon at Israel’s northern city of Haifa, the third-largest metropolis in the Jewish state.
Officials said one woman in her 70s was wounded by shrapnel from the attack, which came just a day after another missile barrage on the city that left two others injured.
Hezbollah had previously vowed that it would not stop attacking Israel until it agrees to end the war in Gaza, with the Iran-backed terror group firing missiles over the border nearly every day since Oct. 8.
More than 100 rockets were fired at Israel’s northern city of Haifa on Tuesday.@YakiLopez/X
Qassem’s willingness to accept a cease-fire comes as he is currently the highest-ranking member in the terror group after Israel decimated its ranks in recent months.
Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was killed Sept. 27, with Israeli defense officials revealing Tuesday that his planned successor, Hashem Safieddine, was likely also killed in an airstrike last week before he could even be formally elected as a replacement.
Along with the two chiefs, the IDF’s airstrikes in southern Lebanon and Beirut have killed more than a dozen senior officials, including the top commanders of Hezbollah’s elite military and missile firing units.
Israeli continues to bombard Beirut with the goal of destroying Hezbollah’s headquarter stations.REUTERS
The terror group also suffered a serious blow last month when its pagers and radio systems were detonated in a suspected Israeli attack, killing dozens of people and leaving thousands of operatives injured.
Israel’s ground raids in Lebanon, which are aimed at demolishing Hezbollah’s weapons depots and infrastructure, have also taken a toll on the terrorist group’s numbers.
The Israeli military said it has killed more than 200 Hezbollah operatives during last week’s raids, with multiple tunnels and rocket launching facilities destroyed along the border.
Israeli troops destroy boobytrapped facilities during a ground operation inside Lebanon.IDF/GPO/SIPA/Shutterstock
It remains unclear if Israel would accept a cease-fire deal with Hezbollah as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reiterated that the operations in Lebanon would not end until he is assured the terror group will no longer pose an active threat to northern Israel.
The US and France have repeatedly urged for the two sides to engage in a truce over fears the conflict would spark an all-out war in the Middle East.
U.S. consumers won't see much of a change in the cost to heat their homes this winter compared with last winter, thanks to lower prices for energy, including natural gas, the Energy Information Administration said in its winter fuels report, released Tuesday.
Retail energy prices in the EIA's forecast are lower than they were last winter, but temperatures across much of the country are likely to be colder this year, so homes will use more energy for heating, the government agency said. "The combination of lower prices and colder weather results in relatively little change in expenditures." it said.
In its base-case forecast, the EIA expects households in the U.S. that primarily use natural gas for heat to spend an average of $602 for heating fuel this winter. That's up 1% from last winter.
Still, "there's a lot of uncertainty about the weather over an entire season - not to mention uncertainty over commodity prices," EIA administrator Joe DeCarolis said in a statement.
The agency's report also included cost forecasts in the event that the weather is warmer or colder than expected.
If winter is 10% colder than its base case, the EIA expects to see average U.S. fuel expenditures of $637 for households primarily using natural gas. That's up 7% from last winter. A 10% warmer forecast would lead to an average expenditure of $583, or 2% less than last winter.
"Natural-gas-heated homes in the West have the largest forecast decrease in spending this winter because we expect natural-gas prices will fall the most from last winter in that region," the EIA said. In the West, households that primarily use natural gas as their heating fuel may see an average cost of $573 this winter under the agency's base-case scenario, down 6% from last winter.
On Tuesday, natural gas for November delivery (NG00) (NGX24) settled at $2.73 per million British thermal units, with prices based on the most active contracts down about 18% from a year ago, FactSet data show.
The EIA expects that the 45% of U.S. homes that primarily heat with natural gas to consume 48 thousand cubic feet from November through March, which is 5% more than last winter.
Even with increased consumption, the U.S. average price for natural gas for residential consumers in the agency's forecast is 4% less than last winter, resulting in "negligible change in winter bills for natural gas in our base case," it said.
eBay will clamp down on the sale of e-bikes and e-bike batteries in the UK from 31 October, the BBC has learned.
The firm says that only "eligible business sellers" will be allowed to list them after this date.
It did not explain what the necessary criteria would be.
E-bikes, which have electrically-assisted pedals and are battery-powered, have soared in popularity, but incidents involving battery fires have also risen.
The brigade warned e-bike users to check their batteries after battery packs were officially classed as "dangerous" products by the UK's regulatory body.
"Consumer safety is a top priority for eBay," an eBay spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Earlier this year, it said it would also audit sellers to make sure they had the CE mark for safety documentation for listed e-bike products.
A quick look at the eBay platform reveals nearly 3,000 used e-bikes currently for sale in the UK.
The charity Electrical Safety First said it welcomed the firm’s change in policy.
But it suggested that new laws were also needed because of the fire safety risks posed by the vehicles.
"Whilst this voluntary move is welcome, we continue to call for online marketplaces to be legally obligated to take reasonable steps to ensure products sold via their sites are safe," said a spokesperson.
The Product Regulation and Metrology Bill, which is currently making its way through Parliament, could potentially enforce this in future.
A mother’s tears of worry and frustration over her 17-year-old daughter’s secret social gender transition at school tell the story of what many parents are facing in California schools.
“I cry every day, not only for my daughter but for the parents that are now contacting me about their kids,” one Los Angeles County mom told The Epoch Times on the condition of anonymity to protect her daughter’s identity.
Lena is one of several parents representing nine families that joined a lawsuit filed by the City of Huntington Beach against state officials over a new law that bans parental notification policies, effectively prohibiting school staff from revealing social gender transitions of students to their parents without the child’s consent.
California is the only state to enact such a law.
Unbeknown to her parents, Hannah began secretly identifying as “trans” in 2020, when she was 13, after spending a lot of time on social media platforms.
She was homeschooled until the ninth grade when she attended public high school and is now in her senior year.
In 2021, as Lena was cleaning her daughter’s bedroom, she was shocked to find a sketchbook that contained Hannah’s drawings depicting self-mutilation, suicide ideation, and the bloody aftermath of gender transition surgeries.
“I’m going through her books, and I see very disturbing pictures of her bloody body cut up, saying, ‘I need to come out. I need to pick a name, and I need to tell my parents I’m trans. I want to be on testosterone. I want top surgery,’” Lena said.
She knew something was seriously wrong, and wanted to talk with Hannah but said it took a few weeks to find the right words and broach the sensitive subject.
“I told her what I found and that we love her, and we don’t care what sexual orientation she is as she grows into herself, but she’s not trans,” Lena said.
Lena told her daughter she is female down to her DNA chromosomes and that she and her husband will only call her by her birth name, she said.
After the talk, Hannah agreed to not use the male name—only her birth name—at school, but at the end of the school year when students’ work was showcased online for parents to see, Lena noticed a male name on a biology assignment.
At the start of the academic year, school staff had asked Hannah for her preferred name and pronouns and began socially transitioning her to a male name and identity, Lena said.
According to the complaint, the principal allegedly pulled Hannah aside for a meeting to tell her that school staff were not allowed to tell her parents about the social transition.
As she entered tenth grade in 2022, teachers and administrators continued referring to Hannah by a male name, and Lena was repeatedly denied meetings with the school principal to discuss the situation, so Lena began speaking out at school board meetings. By the end of the school year, the school district agreed to inform Lena if her daughter ever resumed using a male name.
The next year, Hannah again used a masculine name, prompting the principal to arrange a meeting with Lena. Then, after repeated communications from Lena’s attorney and a written statement signed by Hannah agreeing to use her legal name and female pronouns, the school agreed to stop calling Hannah by a male name and pronouns, Lena said.
But Lena said she fears that once California’s Assembly Bill 1955 goes into effect in January, “it will undermine her hard-won contractual rights, her parental rights, and her ability to protect her daughter,” according to the complaint.
“If I had known that they socially transition kids at school behind parents back, I would have never put her in public school,” Lena said. “I will never give up on her or any child. ... She is my child—not the school’s, the state’s, or this country’s.”
Hannah no longer identifies as “trans,” Lena said.
Public Pushback
Assembly Bill (AB) 1955, also known as the Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth (SAFETY) Act, which is set to take effect Jan. 1, 2025, bans “parental notification policies,” which have been enacted by more than a dozen California school districts.
Controversy over AB 1955 made national headlines when Elon Musk, whose son identifies as a transgender woman, called the new law “the final straw” when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law in mid-July.
Musk vowed to move the headquarters of his companies SpaceX and social media platform X out of state to Texas.
In the Huntington Beach and parents’ case against Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta, and State Superintendent of Public Schools Tony Thurmond, Lena is referred to as “1A” and Hannah is called “1C.”
Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark told The Epoch Times the city—which declared itself a “Parents’ Right to Know” city in September—decided to sue the state to assist parents who want to overturn the state law.
“We have no jurisdiction over schools, but we represent everyone in the City of Huntington Beach, including the parents,” Van Der Mark said. “It’s about our parental rights and the state chipping away at [them] and trying to raise our children for us.”
Van Der Mark, elected to the city council in 2022, said defending parental rights is what led her into politics. She said parents have told her their children were exposed to material in schools that forced them to have discussions about sex and gender ideology before they were ready.
Schools are now having these conversations with children at younger and younger ages, she said.
“Whether it’s gender or whether it’s depression, anxiety, it is our right as parents to handle these issues, and that’s been taken from us,” Van Der Mark said.
The state doesn’t have to like the way parents raise their children, but it’s bound by law to respect parental authority, she said.
“To us, it’s about … protecting our children before it’s too late—before they go out and mutilate their bodies,” she said.
Burdening teachers who don’t have counseling or psychiatric credentials with the “huge responsibility” of dealing with issues as serious as gender dysphoria also isn’t fair and puts them in a “bad situation,” Van Der Mark said.
Proponents of AB 1955 said that notifying parents without a child’s consent is a “forced outing,” and puts children who identify as transgender at risk of abuse and suicide.
Van Der Mark questioned the argument.
“Who exactly do you think you’re outing them to?” she asked.
If a boy wants to identify as a girl, changes his name and wears a dress to school, and other children tell their parents who then tell the neighbors, the only ones kept in the dark are the boy’s parents, she said.
“You’re not really outing them to anyone, because everyone is going to know except the parents,” she said.
The legal complaint states that according to the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, gender dysphoria is a mental health disorder, and as such, parents should be notified.
The new state law sets no age limit on banning parental notification, so “schools cannot notify parents even if preschoolers socially transition,” the complaint states.
The law also prevents schools from disciplining staff who initiate or facilitate social gender transitioning, “which courts have recognized is a type of medical intervention or treatment,” the lawsuit argues.
“A child with gender dysphoria often has other mental health issues. To help their child, parents need to know what is going on,” the complaint states.
“Imagine the outrage if parents were kept in the dark about a child’s epileptic seizures at school and the treatment being provided that child by school employees for that condition.”
State Response
Newsom, Bonta, and Thurmond did not respond to specific requests for comment about the Huntington Beach lawsuit and other related court cases.
“While we are unable to comment on ongoing litigation, Attorney General Bonta is committed to providing his unwavering support to ensure every student has the right to learn and thrive in a school environment that promotes safety, privacy, and inclusivity,” the attorney general’s office stated in an email to the Epoch Times.
Bonta’s office highlighted a January legal alert issued by his office notifying education officials and institutions that “forced outing policies” violate the California Constitution and state laws prohibiting discrimination and safeguarding students’ right to privacy.
“The SAFETY Act,” Bonta said in an emailed statement in July, “reaffirms that forced outing policies and any form of retaliation against teachers, parents, and allies who protect students against such constitutional and statutory harms are a clear violation of state law.”
The attorney general commended the LGBTQ Caucus for prioritizing the bill “to ensure no student is ever forcibly outed against their will, especially when such disclosure could result in serious harm.”
In July, Thurmond also celebrated the signing of AB 1955.
“I am proud to work alongside our legislators who have courageously championed the privacy rights of our most vulnerable students, and whose partnership has helped ensure that this bill made it to the Governor’s desk for signing,” he said in a statement.
