The world in brief

Israel registers commercial flight to UAE

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Israel has listed an El Al flight taking off Monday for Abu Dhabi, which would be Israel’s first commercial passenger flight to the United Arab Emirates after the two countries agreed to a U.S.-brokered deal to normalize relations.

The confirmation of the flight comes as the latest concrete sign of a deal that saw Israel agree to halt plans to annex land sought by the Palestinians. It also brought into the open a long-standing relationship between Israel and the UAE that both countries hope now will benefit their economies and strengthen their ties to the U.S. amid tensions with Iran.

The website of the Israel Airports Authority listed the flight on Friday. It said the flight would be numbered LY971, a nod to the UAE’s international calling code number. A return flight to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport on Tuesday will be numbered LY972, Israel’s international calling code.

Emirati officials and the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The flight was not immediately bookable on the website of El Al, Israel’s flag carrier.

However, U.S. officials earlier said the anticipated first flight will include American officials led by President Donald Trump’s senior adviser Jared Kushner. Other U.S. officials on board will include national security adviser Robert O’Brien, Mideast envoy Avi Berkowitz and envoy for Iran, Brian Hook.

U.K. man guilty in deaths of 39 migrants

LONDON — Ronan Hughes, 40, a truck driver from Northern Ireland, on Friday pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the deaths of 39 people found in the back of a container truck last year in southeastern England.

The victims, all of whom were Vietnamese, were found Oct. 23 in the back of a truck in an industrial park in the English town of Grays.

The scope of the tragedy became clear as police released the names and ages of those who died in one of Britain’s worst incidents of human smuggling.

Two of the dead were only 15, while the oldest was 44. About 20 of the victims came from one province, Nghe An, in north central Vietnam.

Hughes also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration of non-European Union citizens between May 1, 2018, and Oct. 24, 2019.

Hughes appeared alongside Eamonn Harrison, 23, also of County Down, Northern Ireland, who is alleged to have driven the truck’s trailer to the Belgian port of Zeebrugge before it sailed to Purfleet in England.

Harrison pleaded innocent to 39 counts of manslaughter and one count of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration and will face trial Oct. 5 with three others.

Putin critic improving but still in coma

BERLIN — Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is still in an induced coma from a suspected poisoning but his condition is stable and his symptoms are improving, the German doctors treating him said Friday.

Navalny, a politician and corruption investigator who is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia on Aug. 20 and was taken to a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk after the plane made an emergency landing.

Last weekend, he was transferred to the Charite hospital in Berlin, where doctors found indications of “cholinesterase inhibitors” in his system.

“While his condition remains serious, there is no immediate danger to his life,” the hospital said. “However, due to the severity of the patient’s poisoning, it remains too early to gauge potential long-term effects.”

Navalny’s wife Yulia has been visiting him regularly at the hospital and Charite said physicians remain in close contact with her.

Navalny’s allies insist he was deliberately poisoned and say the Kremlin was behind it, accusations that Russian officials rejected as “empty noise.”

Rockets fired from Gaza; Israel hits back

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The Israeli military says it struck militant targets in Gaza, including a weapons manufacturing site, after six rockets were fired from the territory early Friday.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or major damage on either side. But the U.N.’s Mideast envoy warned that the situation was “rapidly deteriorating” and that life inside the blockaded Palestinian territory had become “unbearable.”

Israel and Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza, have traded fire on a number of occasions in recent weeks, and Hamas-linked groups have launched a wave of incendiary balloons across the frontier that have torched wide swathes of farmland.

Hamas is pressing Israel to ease its blockade on Gaza and allow large-scale development projects. Egypt and Qatar are trying to shore up an informal cease-fire.

Those efforts have grown more urgent in recent days as authorities in Gaza have detected the first cases of local transmission of the coronavirus. Hamas has imposed a lockdown in the coastal territory bordering Israel and Egypt, which is home to 2 million Palestinians.

Upcoming Events