A missile fired from Lebanon was intercepted near Israel’s economic center Tel Aviv on Wednesday, Israel’s military said, in a rare attack far from the front lines of the conflict with Hezbollah.

“Following the sirens that sounded in the Tel Aviv and Netanya areas, one surface-to-surface missile was identified crossing from Lebanon and was intercepted by the IDF Aerial Defense Array,” the Israeli military said.

There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties.

Since the outbreak of conflict between Israel and Hamas last October, Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets and drones from Lebanon targeting northern Israel.

The missile intercept comes days after Israeli strikes targeting the militant group killed more than 500 people across Lebanon. Monday was the deadliest day in Lebanon in nearly two decades.

Hezbollah has not yet commented on the attempted attack on Tel Aviv.

Flights at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport continued as usual, the airport’s spokesperson said.

Sirens were heard Wednesday in the central city of Netanya for the first time since October 7, 2023, according to Israeli authorities.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Money is often tight for university students, but for Chinazom Arinze, a limited income was an opportunity that sparked a business venture.

While studying law at Babcock University, in Nigeria, and working part-time at a car dealership, she set up a side hustle, informally launching AutoGirl in 2019. Initially also a car dealership, it evolved into a platform that connects people looking to rent out their vehicles with people who want to hire them.

“I think I was about 19 or 20 at the time,” Arinze recalls. “I was just doing it because it was fun, and it did bring some money, but then it grew a lot larger than I expected. I started getting consistent customers.

“I started my business with zero money; the only thing that I had leverage upon was connections. I used my network from the car dealership I worked in, and social media.”

Arinze says she knew car owners who wanted to monetize their vehicles and knew she could match them with people looking for short-term hires, especially tourists. While there are established car rental companies in Nigeria, such as Hertz and Budget, Autogirl’s vehicles come with drivers, and Arinze says her company offers a greater range of cars and “competitive prices.”

One of the cheapest rentals on Autogirl’s website at the time of writing was a Hyundai, priced at 45,000 naira ($27) per day, and one of the most luxurious was a 2018 Lexus, costing approximately 2.85 million Naira ($1,722) per day. The company lists the average income for its vehicle owners as 7 million naira ($4,230) per car.

As her side hustle grew into a thriving business, Arinze realized she couldn’t do things alone.

“For a good few years, it was just me. I was the secretary, I was the social media manager, I was everything … I was working around the clock,” says Arinze, now aged 26. “The only time I wasn’t working was when I was sleeping and even then, if a customer had an issue at night, I was the only person, so I’d be the one they would call and I’d have to resolve it.

“I had to start bringing people on. I brought (on) a social media manager, an admin manager, finance people and an operations team that works 24/7.”

Now, with more than 3,000 customers, and more than 12,000 rides under its belt, Autogirl also offers boat and even private jet rentals through its website. This June, the company expanded into Ghana and plans to launch in Benin later this year.

Empowering women

Arinze concedes that it hasn’t always been easy for her to work in a male-dominated industry. She says she took classes in auto mechanics and produced social media reviews of cars to demonstrate that she knew what she was doing: “I showed them I had knowledge and then people would say, ‘Oh, she’s not a clueless young girl.’”

To encourage other women to follow her path, Arinze recently launched the Autogirl Women Empowerment Programme, which offers free classes in driving, mechanics and affiliate marketing, and hopes to also provide internship opportunities. Arinze says they plan to train 60 women before the end of November.

Ultimately, she sees Autogirl expanding elsewhere in Africa, and eventually beyond. ‘‘We want to be the Airbnb of vehicle rentals in Africa and ultimately the world,” Arinze says.

“The way people thought that Airbnb did not have a chance because there are hotels all over the world is how people think about us and traditional car rentals — but people pay for more flexibility and variety and that’s what we offer.”

After nearly a year of fighting in Gaza, Israel is ramping up hostilities with Hezbollah in Lebanon, with covert operations targeting communications devices and a ferocious bombing campaign that has left hundreds dead.

The fight against Hamas has strained the Israeli military, with soldiers receiving little respite, officials citing army shortages, the economy facing its steepest decline in years, and growing public pressure for a ceasefire and a hostage deal.

It is unclear whether Israel intends – or will feel compelled – to launch a ground invasion into Lebanon. But the question looms: Can the country take on a second front?

Since October 8, the day after Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel, there has been regular cross-border fire between Hezbollah and the Israeli military. Hezbollah first fired at Israel to protest the war in Gaza, demanding a ceasefire there as a condition to end its attacks.

The stakes were raised last week when Israel injured thousands of people across Lebanon, detonating pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah. Escalating exchanges of fire have followed.

Should Israel enter full-scale war with Hezbollah, experts say it will face a much stronger threat than Hamas – and commensurate costs.

Over the weekend, the group launched one of its deepest strikes into Israel, with the Israeli military reporting impacts in Kiryat Bialik, Tsur Shalom and Moreshet near the port city of Haifa, around 40 km (25 miles) south of the border.

The cross-border exchange over the past year has already led to more than 62,000 residents being evacuated from their homes in Israel’s north, and the deaths of 26 Israeli civilians and 22 soldiers and reservists, according to Israeli media. Ahead of the weekend’s escalation, over 94,000 had been displaced and more than 740 killed on the Lebanese side, including some 500 Hezbollah fighters, according to Reuters. Israeli strikes since Monday alone have killed at least another 558 people and led to the displacement of 16,500, according to Lebanese authorities.

Here are some of Israel’s main challenges in a potential wider conflict with Hezbollah:

A stronger enemy

Iran’s closest regional partner, the Shiite Islamist group has not only showcased more sophisticated weaponry over the past year, but it also boasts strategic depth through its allies and partners across the Middle East – including in Iraq and Yemen.

While Israel’s military capabilities have improved since its last war in Lebanon in 2006 – when the Jewish state did not yet have its Iron Dome defense system – so has Hezbollah’s arsenal.

Military analysts estimate Hezbollah to have between 30,000 and 50,000 troops, but earlier this year its leader Hassan Nasrallah claimed it has more than 100,000 fighters and reservists. The group is also believed to possess between 120,000 and 200,000 rockets and missiles.

Its biggest military asset is the long-range ballistic missile, of which it is estimated to have thousands, including 1,500 precision missiles with ranges of 250–300 kilometers (155–186 miles).

During the weekend attack, Hezbollah said it targeted Israel’s Ramat David airbase with Fadi 1 and Fadi 2 missiles, longer-range weapons that are believed to have been used for the first time. The base is some 30 miles from the Lebanese border.

The Israeli military did not respond to queries about whether the base was impacted. Israeli emergency services reported that three people were wounded in the attacks.

⁠Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank in Washington DC who focuses on Iran and its proxies, said that the “warhead weight of these projectiles is reminiscent of the heavy Burkan IRAM (improved rocket assisted munition) first introduced last winter against Israel by Hezbollah, but at considerably longer range.”

Orna Mizrahi, a Hezbollah expert at INSS said that much of Israel’s ability to fight a two-front war rests on US support.

“The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) can fight both fronts for a long time, and we have the capabilities to do it if we have the ammunition from the Americans,” Mizrahi said, adding that if there is a full-scale war, the US will likely intervene to support Israel.

Israel also has a huge intelligence advantage, most notably seen in last week’s audacious attacks on Hezbollah’s communications.

Stretched military

Israel is a small state and its military manpower is not limitless. As it gears up for a possible second war, the IDF is diverting some of its key divisions from Gaza to its northern border.

“When you are fighting more than one front, you cannot invest too much in every front,” Mizrahi said. “So it will be a different way of fighting.”

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant last week said that “the center of gravity is moving north,” and that “forces, resources, energy” are now being moved.

Among those units is Israel’s elite 98th Division. Also known as Utzbat HaEsh, this paratrooper division is believed to consist of 10,000 to 20,000 troops, according to Israeli media.

Guzansky said that diverting resources toward Lebanon does not mean the Gaza war is over, but that Netanyahu feels compelled to deal with the northern front amid mounting domestic pressure to facilitate the return of evacuees from the area.

Analysts and army officials cited in Israeli media have also repeatedly said the IDF is suffering from shortages.

At the outset of the war with Hamas, the military recruited about 295,000 reservists in an effort to boost its manpower. But that number is proving insufficient.

The fighting in Gaza and elsewhere has also taken its toll on soldiers, of whom 715 have so far been killed since October 7, including in the north.

“This is the longest (war) of its kind in Israel’s history, longer than the War of Independence in 1948,” Guzansky said, adding that this is Hezbollah and Iran’s goal, “to weaken Israel gradually.”

“To fire rockets every day, on a low scale, and to occupy the IDF, to overstretch the IDF,” he said.

An economy in decline

Israel’s economy has been one of the biggest casualties of the war in Gaza, taking a sharp blow from the early days of the October 7 attack. Thousands of businesses suffered as reservists abandoned their civilian lives to take up arms, and the country’s economy is shrinking at an alarming rate.

“It’s devastating on the Israeli economy, on Israeli society,” Guzansky said, adding that the impacts will live on for years to come.

Of all 38 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Israel showed the sharpest economic slowdown between April and June of this year, the organization said in its quarterly report.

According to OECD data, Israel’s economy shrank by 4.1% in the early months of the war, and continued to contract, albeit at a slower rate, throughout the first and second quarters of 2024.

The contracting economy comes as Israel’s military spending skyrockets. Earlier this year, Amir Yaron, the governor of Israel’s central bank, warned that the war is expected to cost Israel up to 253 billion Israeli shekels ($67 billion) between 2023 and 2025, Israeli media reported. That’s almost 13% of Israel’s GDP, in addition to regular military expenditure, which has stood at an annual 4.5% to 6.5% of GDP, according to World Bank data.

An expansion of the conflict has also impacted Israel’s credit rating, making it more expensive to take on debt, with multiple rating agencies downgrading the country since the war began.

In a statement last month, credit ratings agency Moody’s warned that an all-out war with Hezbollah or Iran could have significant “credit consequences for Israeli debt issuers.”

A legitimacy crisis

A second front, especially one that could be far more damaging to Lebanon than to Israel, could be the final straw for many countries already critical of Israel’s war in Gaza, experts said.

The global sympathy that Israel received in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attack has turned into sharp criticism due to Israel’s devastating reaction, as it now faces accusations of war crimes and genocide in international courts, which it strongly denies.

Domestically, while Israelis showed a greater appetite for fighting at the outset of the Gaza war, polls show that domestic support has waned over the last months.

On support for a war with Hezbollah, Israelis appear split on the matter.

A survey published by the Israel Democracy Institute think tank in July found that 42% of Israelis think their country should pursue a diplomatic agreement with Hezbollah, despite the chances of an additional conflict in the future, while 38% think Israel should pursue a military victory against the group, even at the cost of significant damage to civilian areas.

Despite the split in opinion, there is now less support for war with Hezbollah compared to responses in late 2023, the poll said.

Guzansky said that pressure for war is likely more palpable in northern Israel, where “people that don’t have businesses anymore, families (are) broken apart… people (are) being killed.”

Many of these residents, who have lived close to the frontline for nearly a year, believe that “only a full-scale war can change the reality in the north,” he added.

Three months after a historic election victory, it felt like the downpour at the Labour Party’s conference would never end.

Lawmakers and officials in Britain’s new governing party have been trudging through a massive conference center in Liverpool, northwest England since Sunday in sodden suits, a rumbling River Mersey as their backdrop, for the group’s first set-piece event as a governing party in 15 years.

It was supposed to feel like a celebration. Prime Minister Keir Starmer touted July’s gigantic electoral landslide in his keynote speech on Tuesday, telling his party: “People said we couldn’t do it, but we did.”

But the gathering was dampened by more than the weather. Like Britain’s rather fickle summer, Starmer’s honeymoon is a distant memory.

A string of negative stories – about ministers accepting gifts and handouts, and reported conflict within Starmer’s top team – has clashed uncomfortably with a set of joyless policy decisions aimed at stabilizing Britain’s strapped finances, many of which go further and deeper than some inside the party expected when they promised a platform of change during the summer election campaign.

It means Britain’s new prime minister is already deeply unpopular with the public, according to a batch of unflattering opinion polls that landed with a thud as Labour’s conference began.

And while his lawmakers are broadly behind his disciplined agenda, questions are percolating there too about his political judgment and ability to keep his government on message.

“It has felt a bit blunt,” a Labour Member of Parliament admitted after Starmer’s speech Tuesday, summing up the sentiment across much of conference. “It should have been more exciting,” a longtime Labour activist complained.

Starmer dangled a sliver of optimism in his speech Tuesday – promising the country “light at the end of this tunnel” – and in an effort to underline the rare display of cheer, the sun did finally emerge outside a short while later.

The speech was an important hurdle for Starmer, who needed to reclaim the reputation for focus, diligence and honesty that he spent four years building, only to see seriously fractured in three months.

But he nonetheless begins the unenviable mission of boosting Britain’s limp economic growth, and reviving its tired public services, with a fragile coalition of public support.

Starmer has insisted the latter issue will need a decade to truly fix. Unfortunately, the realities of governing are beginning to bite the Labour Party – and it is likely he will need to show some returns far sooner.

A ‘freebie’ row

Labour’s conference was trailed by a series of stories that felt uncomfortably similar to the sleaze scandals that dogged previous Conservative administrations.

Public records showed that Starmer had accepted tens of thousands of pounds in gifts from a key financial donor, including money for clothes and glasses. He had also watched his Arsenal soccer team from a hospitality box and accepted four tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour concert at Wembley Stadium, worth £4,000 ($5,300).

The donations are not unique for British leaders. But they were particularly surprising – and damaging – for a prime minister who spent four years painting himself as an antidote to the cronyism and coziness with donors displayed by consecutive Tory prime ministers.

No rules have been broken by Starmer or his team, but little common sense has been displayed either, and his lawmakers have noticed.

Maskell said the decision to take gifts and donations showed “poor political and personal judgment.” She is one of few Labour MPs to publicly criticize the front bench but said she is “not alone” among parliamentary colleagues – the group that can ultimately decide Starmer’s fate were a movement to emerge against him.

The donations row was handled badly – Starmer naively fronted a reception celebrating London Fashion Week just hours after news emerged that a donor had bought his wife clothes – but it was especially harmful because it coincided awkwardly with a cut to the Winter Fuel Payment, an allowance given to retirees, to help with utilities bills.

The move to limit that benefit to those already in receipt of state support was opposed by dozens of Labour MPs, and was controversial in a country still dragging itself through a lingering cost of living crisis.

Maskell said she had been “sickened” by the timing. “People are hearing that (ministers) are getting donated clothes, and yet they haven’t got warmth themselves,” she said.

The “one rule for them, another for everyone else” slogan that Starmer attached to Boris Johnson’s premiership became the sentiment that, above any other, caused that Conservative leader – himself fresh off a landslide election win – to be dumped from office two years ago.

Starmer will be desperate to stop it from infecting his premiership too. He told conference attendees Tuesday that rebuilding the country would be “tough in the short-term,” but “we’re all in it together” – and that framing will likely be recycled in the coming weeks as he seeks to restore a reputation for integrity that was so valuable in July.

Patience wears thin

Far beyond the heavily secured gates of Labour’s conference, the country is casting its judgment as well.

The combination of Labour’s miserabilist message on public finances with the costly scandal over its own donations has contributed to an astonishing collapse in Starmer’s popularity since his election win. An opinion poll published by Opinium on Sunday found his net approval rating had dropped to the same depths as Rishi Sunak, the former Tory prime minister that Starmer routed at the ballot box 12 weeks ago.

He pointed to a sparsely detailed economic agenda, adding: “The PM and chancellor have labored on the tough decisions, but given us relatively limited information about what those will look like. The almost sole focus on Winter Fuel Payments has made the government look like it’s unfair and out of touch.”

And they have already been forced to lighten their tone, after the barrage of gloom threatened to undermine confidence in Britain’s economy. Reeves, in her keynote speech on Monday, told attendees that “Britain’s best days lie ahead,” a useful pick-me-up after months weeks of somber addresses that blamed the previous Conservative governments for mismanaging public services and for a financial “black hole” that Labour said it discovered after taking office,but failed to hit a hopeful tone for the years ahead.

More painful measures are expected when Chancellor Rachel Reeves outlines the government’s budget next month. Starmer and Reeves have styled themselves as tough, frugal guardians of the public purse, but they are facing pressure to improve their financial offer for Britain’s public services, including a National Health Service (NHS) that was described in a damning review this month as being in “critical condition.”

In a helpfully timed piece of good news, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said Wednesday that it now expects Britain to log faster economic growth than the eurozone this year, predicting an expansion of 1.1%.

Starmer, who left Liverpool for the United Nations General Assembly in New York, will consider the week a relative success; the party managed to refocus the political narrative on its core message after leaks and missteps threw it off course. Starmer’s speech was was light on fresh content but a heckler was calmly removed and the key messages were confidently delivered.

But a premiership can only survive on doom and gloom for so long, and patience is already wearing thin among much of the wider party.

An MP whose surprise victory in July’s election was illustrative of Labour’s huge success in virtually every pocket of the country was already thinking about what they could run on in five years’ time. “It’s all very well saying it will take a decade,” they said. “But where are the tangibles?”