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Paraguay Opens Israel Embassy in Jerusalem after Moving it from Tel Aviv

A man opens a door at the new premises of the Paraguayan embassy in Jerusalem on December 12, 2024. (Photo by GIL COHEN-MAGEN / AFP)
A man opens a door at the new premises of the Paraguayan embassy in Jerusalem on December 12, 2024. (Photo by GIL COHEN-MAGEN / AFP)
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Paraguay Opens Israel Embassy in Jerusalem after Moving it from Tel Aviv

A man opens a door at the new premises of the Paraguayan embassy in Jerusalem on December 12, 2024. (Photo by GIL COHEN-MAGEN / AFP)
A man opens a door at the new premises of the Paraguayan embassy in Jerusalem on December 12, 2024. (Photo by GIL COHEN-MAGEN / AFP)

Paraguay formally opened its new Jerusalem embassy in Israel on Thursday in a ceremony attended by President Santiago Peña and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, following a back-and-forth struggle over the diplomatic seat that kicked off in 2018.
The South American nation's embassy had for decades been located in the coastal Israeli city of Tel Aviv, but in 2018 former President Horacio Cartes ordered its move to Jerusalem. Months later, the facility was moved back to Tel Aviv after an abrupt reversal announced by Cartes' successor, Mario Abdo, Reuters reported.
Cartes, a Netanyahu ally, is also a close confidant of Peña, with both men coming from Paraguay's conservative Colorado Party.
Peña took office last year and shortly afterwards announced the embassy's move back to Jerusalem. He traveled to Israel to officially open it on Thursday.
"This step symbolizes our commitment to shared values and the strengthening of the ties that build a future of peace, development and mutual understanding," he said at the new embassy's opening ceremony.

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Russia Says it Thwarts Ukrainian Plots to Kill High-ranking Officers, their Families

A woman sits on a bench with a dog on a leash and surrounded by snow outside the Savvino-Storozhevsky monastery in Zvenigorod, 30 km west of Moscow, Russia, 25 December 2024. EPA/MAXIM SHIPENKOV
A woman sits on a bench with a dog on a leash and surrounded by snow outside the Savvino-Storozhevsky monastery in Zvenigorod, 30 km west of Moscow, Russia, 25 December 2024. EPA/MAXIM SHIPENKOV
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Russia Says it Thwarts Ukrainian Plots to Kill High-ranking Officers, their Families

A woman sits on a bench with a dog on a leash and surrounded by snow outside the Savvino-Storozhevsky monastery in Zvenigorod, 30 km west of Moscow, Russia, 25 December 2024. EPA/MAXIM SHIPENKOV
A woman sits on a bench with a dog on a leash and surrounded by snow outside the Savvino-Storozhevsky monastery in Zvenigorod, 30 km west of Moscow, Russia, 25 December 2024. EPA/MAXIM SHIPENKOV

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday that it had foiled several plots by Ukrainian intelligence services to kill high-ranking Russian officers and their families in Moscow using bombs disguised as power banks or document folders.
Ukraine's SBU intelligence service killed Lieutenant General Kirillov, chief of Russia's Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, on Dec. 17 in Moscow outside his apartment building by detonating a bomb attached to an electric scooter.
An SBU source confirmed to Reuters that the Ukrainian intelligence agency had been behind the hit. Russia said the killing was a terrorist attack by Kyiv and vowed revenge.
"The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation has prevented a series of assassination attempts on high-ranking military personnel of the Defense Ministry," the FSB said.
"Four Russian citizens involved in the preparation of these attacks have been detained."
The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said that the Russian citizens had been recruited by the Ukrainian intelligence services.
One of the men retrieved a bomb disguised as a power bank in Moscow that was to be attached with magnets to the car of one of the defense ministry's top officials, the FSB said.
Another Russian man was tasked with reconnaissance of senior Russian defense officials. One plot involved the delivery of a bomb disguised as a document folder, the FSB said.