Politics
Fire shuts down London’s Heathrow Airport, more than 1K flights affected – National TenX News
A large fire near London’s Heathrow Airport knocked out power Friday to Europe’s busiest flight hub, forcing it to shut all day and disrupting global travel for hundreds of thousands of passengers.
At least 1,350 flights to and from Heathrow were affected, flight tracking service FlightRadar 24 said, and the impact was likely to last several days as passengers try to reschedule their travel and airlines work to get planes and crew to the right places.
Authorities do not know what caused the fire but so far found have no evidence it was suspicious.
Residents in west London described hearing a large explosion, followed by a fireball and clouds of smoke, when the blaze ripped through the electrical substation near the airport.
Some 120 flights were in the air when the closure was announced, with some turned around and others diverted to Gatwick Airport outside London, Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris or Ireland’s Shannon Airport, tracking services showed.
Lawrence Hayes was three-quarters of the way to London from New York when Virgin Atlantic announced they were being diverted to Glasgow.
“It was a red-eye flight and I’d already had a full day, so I don’t even know how long I’ve been up for,” Hayes told the BBC as he was getting off the plane in Scotland. “Luckily I managed to get hold of my wife and she’s kindly booked me a train ticket to get back to Euston, but it’s going to be an incredibly long day.”
Heathrow is one of the world’s busiest airports for international travel. It had its busiest January on record earlier this year, with more than 6.3 million passengers, up more than 5 per cent from the same period last year.
Still, the disruption Friday fell short of the one caused by the 2010 eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which spewed clouds of ash into the atmosphere and created trans-Atlantic air travel chaos for months.
Fire under control but impact to last days
It was too early to determine what sparked the huge blaze about 2 miles (3 kilometers) from the airport, but there’s “no suggestion” of foul play, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said.
The London Fire Brigade was leading the investigation with help from the Metropolitan Police, officials said. A person familiar with the investigation said counterterrorism detectives were also involved as a matter of course because the cause was unknown. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly.
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Miliband said the fire, which took seven hours to control, also knocked out a backup power supply to the airport. Heathrow said in a statement that it had no choice but to close the airport for the day.
“We expect significant disruption over the coming days, and passengers should not travel to the airport under any circumstances until the airport reopens,” the airport said.
Heathrow was at the heart of a shorter disruption in 2023 when Britain’s air traffic control system was hit by a breakdown that slowed takeoffs and landings across the U.K. on one of the busiest travel days of the year.
Anita Mendiratta, an aviation consultant, said the impact of the closure will be felt over two to four days as airlines, cargo carriers, and crews are moved into position and passengers rebooked.
“As soon as the airport opens up at midnight tonight, it’s not only about resuming with tomorrow’s flights, it’s the backlog and the implications that have taken place,” Mendiratta said. “Crew and aircraft, many are not where they’re supposed to be right now. So the recalculation of this is going to be intense.”
Diverted, canceled and in limbo
At Heathrow, a family of five traveling to Dallas showed up in the hopes their flight home — still listed as delayed — would take off.
But when Andrea Sri brought her brother, sister-in-law and their three children to the airport, they were told by police that there would be no flight.
“It was a waste of time. Very confusing,” said Sri, who lives in London. “We tried to get in touch with British Airways, but they don’t open their telephone line until 8 a.m.”
Travelers who were diverted to other cities found themselves trying to book travel onward to London. Qantas airlines sent flights from Singapore and Perth, Australia, to Paris, where it said it would bus people to London, a process likely to also include a train shuttle beneath the English Channel.
Budget airline Ryanair, which doesn’t operate out of Heathrow, said it added eight “rescue flights” between Dublin and Stansted, another London airport, to transport stranded passengers Friday and Saturday.
National Rail canceled all trains to and from the airport.
Flights normally begin landing and taking off at Heathrow at 6 a.m. due to nighttime flying restrictions. But the skies were silent Friday morning.
“Living near Heathrow is noisy, there are planes every 90 seconds or so, plus the constant hum of traffic, but you get used to it, to the point of no longer noticing,” said James Henderson, who has lived next to the airport for more than 20 years. “Today is different, you can hear the birds singing.”
Blaze lit up the sky and darkened homes
Matthew Muirhead was working Thursday night near Heathrow when he stepped outside with a colleague and noticed smoke rising from an electrical substation and heard sirens crying out.
“We saw a bright flash of white, and all the lights in town went out,” he said.
The London Fire Brigade sent 10 engines and around 70 firefighters to control the blaze and about 150 people were evacuated from their homes near the power station.
“This was a very visible and significant incident, and our firefighters worked tirelessly in challenging conditions to bring the fire under control as swiftly as possible,” Assistant Commissioner Pat Goulbourne said.
Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks said in a post on X the power outage affected more than 16,300 homes.
The U.K. government earlier this year approved building a third runway at the airport to boost the economy and connectivity to the world.
Politics
UK refuses to invite Israeli government officials to London arms fair over the war in Gaza – National TenX News
The U.K. has barred Israeli government officials from attending the country’s biggest arms fair over growing concern about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The decision does not cover representatives of Israeli defense contractors, who will be allowed to attend the DSEI UK exhibition, scheduled for Sept. 9-12 in London. The event was formerly known as Defense and Security Equipment International.
“The Israeli Government’s decision to further escalate its military operation in Gaza is wrong,” the British government said in a statement. “As a result, we can confirm that no Israeli government delegation will be invited to attend DSEI UK 2025.”
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The decision comes after Prime Minister Keir Starmer in July announced plans to recognize a Palestinian state unless Israel takes steps to end the crisis in Gaza, agrees to a ceasefire with Hamas and commits to a long-term peace agreement. Britain previously barred sales to Israel of any arms that could be used in the nearly 23-month war in Gaza.
Israel’s Defense Ministry said the decision was based on politics and “serves extremists.”
“These restrictions amount to a deliberate and regrettable act of discrimination against Israel’s representatives,” the ministry said.
The Israeli ministry said it would withdraw from the exhibition and will not establish a national pavilion.
Pro-Palestinian and anti-war groups have announced plans to for protests during DSEI, which will take place at the Excel center in east London.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
Politics
Israel soon will halt or slow aid to northern Gaza as military offensive grows – National TenX News
Israel will soon halt or slow humanitarian aid into parts of northern Gaza as it expands its military offensive against Hamas, an official said Saturday, a day after Gaza City was declared a combat zone.
The decision was likely to bring more condemnation of Israel’s government as frustration grows in the country and abroad over dire conditions for both Palestinians and remaining hostages in Gaza after nearly 23 months of war.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, told The Associated Press that Israel will stop airdrops over Gaza City in the coming days and reduce the number of aid trucks arriving in the north as it prepares to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people south.
Israel on Friday ended recently imposed daytime pauses in fighting to allow aid delivery, describing Gaza City as a Hamas stronghold and alleging that a tunnel network remains in use, despite previous large-scale raids. The United Nations and partners have said the pauses, airdrops and other measures fell far short of the 600 trucks of aid needed daily in Gaza.
A ‘massive population movement’ coming
AP video footage showed several large explosions across Gaza overnight. Israel’s military Saturday evening said it had struck a key Hamas member in the area of Gaza City, with no details.
In recent days, Israel’s military has increased strikes on the outskirts of Gaza City, where famine was recently documented and declared by global food security experts.
By Saturday there had been no airdrops for several days across Gaza, a break from almost daily ones. Israel’s army didn’t respond to a request for comment or say how it would provide aid to Palestinians during another major shift in Gaza’s population of over 2 million people.
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“Such an evacuation would trigger a massive population movement that no area in the Gaza Strip can absorb, given the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure and the extreme shortages of food, water, shelter and medical care,” Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in a statement.
It’s impossible that a mass evacuation of Gaza City can be done in a safe and dignified way, she said.
Hundreds of residents have begun leaving Gaza City, piling their remaining possessions onto pickup trucks or donkey carts. Many have been forced to leave their homes more than once.
Killed while seeking food
Israeli gunfire killed four people trying to get aid in central Gaza, according to health officials at Al-Awda Hospital, were the bodies were taken.
An Israeli strike on a bakery in Gaza City’s Nasr neighborhood killed 12 people including six women and three children, the Shifa Hospital director told the AP, and a strike on the Rimal neighborhood killed seven.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said another 10 people died as a result of starvation and malnutrition over the past 24 hours, including three children. It said at least 332 Palestinians have died from malnutrition-related causes during the war, including 124 children.
At least 63,371 Palestinians have died in Gaza during the war, said the ministry, which does not say how many are fighters or civilians but says around half have been women and children. The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals. The U.N. and independent experts consider it the most reliable source on war casualties. Israel disputes its figures but has not provided its own.
“There is no food and even water is not available. When it is available, it is not safe to drink,” said Amer Zayed, as he waited for food from a charity kitchen in Deir al-Balah on Friday.
“The suffering gets worse when there are more displaced people,” he added.
Israelis rally again to demand a ceasefire deal
Israelis waited to hear the identity of the remains of a hostage that Israel on Friday said had been recovered in Gaza. It also said it recovered the remains of hostage Ilan Weiss.
Forty-eight hostages now remain in Gaza of the over 250 seized in the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that sparked the war. Israel had believed 20 are still alive.
Their loved ones fear the expanding military offensive will put them in even more danger, and they were rallying again Saturday to demand a ceasefire deal to bring everyone home.
“Netanyahu, if another living hostage comes back in a bag, it will not only be the hostages and their families who pay the price. You will bear responsibility for premeditated murder,” Zahiro Shahar Mor, nephew of hostage Avraham Munder, said in Tel Aviv.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
The Trump administration said Friday it was denying and revoking U.S. visas from members of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
That comes ahead of next month’s United Nations General Assembly, where Canada and several other countries have said they intend to officially recognize a Palestinian state.
The U.S. State Department cited the groups’ efforts to secure statehood recognition at the UN, along with their appeals to the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice to investigate alleged Israeli crimes in Gaza, as reasons for the decision by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“Both steps materially contributed to Hamas’s refusal to release its hostages, and to the breakdown of the Gaza ceasefire talks,” the department said in a statement.
“The Trump Administration has been clear: it is in our national security interests to hold the PLO and PA accountable for not complying with their commitments, and for undermining the prospects for peace.”
The statement did not name the officials being denied entry. It was not immediately clear if the list included Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who was expected to travel to New York for the UN gathering.
The Palestinians’ ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour, told reporters at the UN headquarters that they were checking exactly what the U.S. move means “and how it applies to any of our delegation, and we will respond accordingly.”
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Representatives assigned to the Palestinian Authority mission at the UN, led by Mansour, will be granted waivers so they can continue their New York-based operations, the U.S. statement said.
Mansour said Abbas still intends to lead the delegation to the high-level meetings and is expected to address the General Assembly — as he has done for many years — and to attend a meeting on the afternoon of Sept. 22 on a two-state solution co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia.
U.S. President Donald Trump will travel to New York and address the general assembly on Sept. 23, the White House said on Thursday.
Canada, Britain, Australia and France in recent weeks have announced or signalled their intention to recognize a Palestinian state during the meeting.
The countries have said their recognition is conditional on the Palestinian Authority — which has limited self-rule over parts of the occupied West Bank and has for years been positioning itself as a legitimate government alternative to Hamas in Gaza — undergoing reforms and new elections.
Abbas has signalled he will co-operate with the Western nations’ demands.
The Palestinian Liberation Organization is an internationally recognized coalition that represents Palestinian people in its occupied territories and abroad.
The Trump administration has staunchly backed Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. The U.S. has also refused to condemn expanded Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which Canada and other allies have said undermine two-state solution efforts.
Rubio hosted Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar in Washington on Wednesday “to reaffirm our two nations’ close cooperation,” the U.S. secretary said in a post on X.
Saar, asked after the meeting what the plan was for a Palestinian state, said there would not be any.
The Israeli minister on Friday thanked Rubio for holding the PA and PLO “accountable for rewarding terrorism, incitement and efforts to use legal warfare against Israel” in a social media statement.
Officials with the Palestinian Authority reject that they’ve undermined peace prospects.
Under the 1947 UN “headquarters agreement,” the U.S. is generally required to allow access for foreign diplomats to the UN in New York. But Washington has said it can deny visas for security, terrorism and foreign policy reasons.
Hamas earlier this month said it had accepted a U.S.-backed proposal on a ceasefire in Gaza that would see the release of some hostages in exchange for talks with Israel that would end the conflict and see the return of all remaining hostages.
But Israel has said it will only accept the full return of all the hostages and has pressed ahead with a plan to occupy Gaza City, which international monitors like the UN have warned could worsen a famine already afflicting the Palestinian territory.
Rubio last week announced sanctions against multiple International Criminal Court judges and prosecutors involved in the court’s investigation into Israel’s actions in Gaza and the issuing of arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant.
—With files from Reuters
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
UK refuses to invite Israeli government officials to London arms fair over the war in Gaza – National TenX News
Israel soon will halt or slow aid to northern Gaza as military offensive grows – National TenX News
U.S. scraps Palestinian officials’ visas ahead of UN General Assembly – National TenX News
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