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Tvorchi performs "Heart of Steel" on stage during the 2023 Eurovision Grand final in Liverpool, England. They finished in sixth place, behind Sweden, Finland, Israel, Italy and Norway.
Dominic Lipinski/Getty Images
Tvorchi performs "Heart of Steel" on stage during the 2023 Eurovision Grand final in Liverpool, England. They finished in sixth place, behind Sweden, Finland, Israel, Italy and Norway.
Dominic Lipinski/Getty Images
As the Ukrainian band Tvorchi prepared to take the stage of the Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool, England, on Saturday, its members learned Russian missiles had just hit their hometown. Then came another attack.
Ukrainian producer Andrii Hutsuliak and Nigerian-born vocalist and songwriter Jeffrey Kenny, who make up the electronic music duo Tvorchi, are based in the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil.
City officials in Ternopil later confirmed that two people were injured in the attack, according to Reuters.
Tvorchi referenced the missile strike in Instagram posts before and after their performance of "Heart of Steel."
"Ternopil is the name of our hometown, which was bombed by Russia while we sang on the Eurovision stage about our steel hearts, indomitability and will," they wrote. "This is a message for all cities of Ukraine that are shelled every day. ... Europe, unite against evil for the sake of peace!"
Hutsuliak and Kenny wrote "Heart of Steel" last spring as they watched Ukrainian fighters defending the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, an experience they told NPR about in February.
"It's a song about unbreakable people who [no matter] how bad the situation happened in their life, it doesn't stop them," Hutsuliak said from Ternopil via Zoom.
Russia has not said it targeted the city because of the competition.
Last year, after Ukrainian folk-rap group Kalush Orchestra won Eurovision, reports surfaced of handwritten messages on Russian missiles referencing the band's onstage calls for aid. "Kalush, as you requested! To #Azovstal," reads the translation of a message on one of the reported missiles.
The attacks happened before and during the show
Ternopil came under a pair of overnight attacks on Saturday, reports The New Voice of Ukraine. Missiles hit an industrial warehouse, destroyed two private houses and damaged a dozen more.
Missile fragments also damaged civilian commercial and business facilities and nine trucks, and sparked a warehouse fire, Ternopil Mayor Serhiy Nadal said. City officials said the two people injured had been hospitalized with shrapnel wounds and burns.
One of the attacks happened during Tvorchi's Eurovision final performance, Nadal wrote on Facebook.
"Thank you, because your speech has become a symbol of not only the unity of the country, but of the whole world," he said.
It shows why Ukraine didn't host this year
Melinda Simmons, Britain's ambassador to Ukraine, applauded the duo's "brave hearts" in a tweet, noting their performance took place "minutes after their university home town had been bombed" by Russia.
"This #Eurovision night Ukraine is under another Russian missile attack," she wrote. "Reminder that the reason why [Ukraine] could not host this event is because [Russia] continues to invade and the people of [Ukraine] live in continuing danger."
Ukraine won Eurovision last year, but a panel of security experts and broadcasters deemed it unfit to host this year's competition because of the war. The U.K., last year's runner-up, ended up staging it in Liverpool "on behalf of Ukraine."
Sweden won this year's competition, and Tvorchi placed sixth. The band from Ukraine later wrote on Instagram that the fact that so much of the audience voted for Tvorchi "shows our unity." | Europe Politics |
Niger’s coup generals have asked for help from the Russian mercenary group Wagner as the deadline nears for it to release the country’s removed president or face possible military intervention by the West African regional bloc, a news report says.
The request came during a visit by a coup leader – General Salifou Mody – to neighbouring Mali, where he made contact with someone from Wagner, Wassim Nasr, a journalist and senior research fellow at the Soufan Center, told The Associated Press.
Three Malian sources and a French diplomat confirmed the meeting first reported by France 24, Nasr added.
“They need [Wagner] because they will become their guarantee to hold onto power,” he said, adding the private military company is considering the request.
Niger’s military government faces a Sunday deadline set by the regional bloc known as ECOWAS to release and reinstate the democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum, who has described himself as a hostage.
Defence chiefs from ECOWAS members finalised an intervention plan on Friday and urged militaries to prepare resources after a mediation team sent to Niger on Thursday was not allowed to enter or meet with military government leader General Abdourahmane Tchiani.
After his visit to Mali, run by a sympathetic military government, Mody warned against military intervention, promising Niger would do what it takes not to become “a new Libya”, Niger’s state television reported.
Niger has been seen as the West’s last reliable counterterrorism partner in a region where coups have been common in recent years. Military leaders have rejected former coloniser France and turned towards Russia.
Wagner operates in a handful of African countries, including Mali, where human rights groups have accused its forces of deadly abuses.
‘It’s all a sham’
Some residents rejected the military’s takeover.
“It’s all a sham,” said Amad Hassane Boubacar, who teaches at the University of Niamey.
“They oppose foreign interference to restore constitutional order and legality. But on the contrary, they are ready to make a pact with Wagner and Russia to undermine the constitutional order … They are prepared for the country to go up in flames so that they can illegally maintain their position.”
Niger’s military leaders have been following the playbook of Mali and neighbouring Burkina Faso, also run by military governments, but they are moving faster to consolidate power, Nasr said.
“[Tchiani] chose his path so he’s going full-on it without wasting time because there’s international mobilisation.”
One question is how the international community will react if Wagner comes in, he said. When Wagner came into Mali at the end of 2021, the French military was removed soon afterwards after years of partnership. Wagner was later designated a “terrorist” organisation by the United States, and international partners might have a stronger reaction now, Nasr said.
And much more is at stake in Niger, where the US and other partners have poured hundreds of millions of dollars of military assistance to combat the region’s growing security threat.
No details on possible intervention
It’s unclear what a regional intervention would look like, when it would begin, or whether it would receive support from Western forces. Niger’s military government has called on the population to watch for spies, and self-organised defence groups have mobilised at night to monitor cars and patrol the capital.
“If the junta were to dig in its heels and rally the populace around the flag – possibly even arming civilian militias – the intervention could morph into a multifaceted counterinsurgency that ECOWAS would not be prepared to handle,” said a report by the Hudson Institute.
While some in Niger are bracing for a fight, others are trying to cope with travel and economic sanctions imposed by ECOWAS after the coup that have closed land and air borders with ECOWAS countries and suspended commercial and financial transactions with them.
Residents said the price of goods is rising and there’s limited access to cash.
“We are deeply concerned about the consequences of these sanctions, especially their impacts on the supply of essential food products, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, petroleum products and electricity,” said Sita Adamou, president of Niger’s Association to Defend Human Rights. | Africa politics |
Thousands of Afghans who escaped their country after the Taliban's shocking 2021 takeover are still being report released Wednesday by Human Rights Watch.without fair access to processes by which they can apply for refugee status, according to a
Between 2,400 and 2,700 Afghans hoping to resettle in Western countries have been stuck in the "Emirates Humanitarian City" for more than 15 months without freedom to leave the fenced housing complex, at which conditions have deteriorated significantly since they first arrived, the report said.
"Emirati authorities have kept thousands of Afghan asylum seekers locked up for over 15 months in cramped, miserable conditions with no hope of progress on their cases," said Joey Shea, United Arab Emirates researcher at Human Rights Watch. "After enduring significant trauma fleeing Afghanistan, they are facing further trauma now, after spending well over a year in limbo in the UAE."
Following the collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan on Aug. 15, 2021, the United States and its partners evacuated thousands of vulnerable Afghans and their families at an incredible rate to other locations around the world, including the U.S. and Canada. The UAE agreed to act as an intermediary nation and took in thousands of people who were then hoping to apply for asylum protection in third countries. They were transferred to a specially designed accommodation facility, the "Humanitarian City," pending those onward moves.
Among those still stuck in the UAE camp are high-ranking officials from the previous government and people who worked for U.S. government-affiliated entities or programs in Afghanistan. Some of those peoples' asylum cases have been rejected, while other applications are still pending as they lacked sufficient documentation to be accepted by third countries.
One person interviewed by HRW said they had worked as a security guard at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, and another in the laundromat of a U.S. airbase.
"The camp is exactly like a prison," HRW quoted one of the Afghans at the camp as saying.
"The big problem is we don't know our future and we don't know our destination," another said.
HRW did not name the individuals, but said it had "interviewed 16 Afghans detained in the Emirates Humanitarian City in October and November 2022, including eight who previously worked at some point for U.S. government-affiliated entities or programs in Afghanistan."
One Afghan man told the group that authorities at the camp had told him he needed a visa to leave the camp. A similar account was given to CBS News in January by an Afghan man whose wife and children were stuck at the facility. He said he was in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, but hadn't been able to see his wife or children just a few miles away for more than a year.
Each family at the camp has a one-room accommodation.
"We have been here for 14 months, and life is very difficult… the same room is used as a dining room, living room, and sleeping room and the washroom is inside the room," said a woman interviewed by HRW. Others spoke of poor sanitation, bed bug infestations and housing complex residents suffering with mental and physical health problems.
Those stranded at the facility have staged repeated protests, calling on the U.S. and its allies to relocate them to third countries.
A video from January shows protesters chanting, "we want justice," while holding a white banner declaring themselves "forgotten" by the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service and the international community.
In another video, from mid-2022, children inside the camp hold up a banner that reads "justice."
HRW calls on the UAE government to immediately grant the Afghan evacuees freedom to move in and out of the camp and to ensure access to fair and individualized processes for refugee status determination and protection.
The group also calls on the United States and other developed nations to urgently expedite the resettlement process for those stuck in the camp, and to generously consider individuals' cases as they seek to reunited with their families, and find safe new homes with access to education and employment.
As CBS News immigration reporter Camilo Montoya-Galvez reported in August, unlike more than 70,000 Afghans who were directly evacuated and thenby the U.S. in 2021 after some security vetting, those living in the Humanitarian City have been subjected to a slower, case-by-case immigration review by U.S. officials that does not include any guarantee of U.S. resettlement.
Under U.S. policy, Afghans evacuated to the UAE before Aug. 31, 2021 – just a couple weeks after Kabul fell to the Taliban - were effectively guaranteed permission to enter the U.S. if they passed certain medical and security checks, the State Department told CBS News. But those who arrived after that date but wish to be relocated to the U.S. must prove they qualify for a U.S. immigration benefit, such as a visa or refugee status.
for more features. | Human Rights |
A North Korean missile landed in the Sea of Japan this morning after Pyongyang threatened an "unprecedented" response to Western allies' rumoured military drills in the region.
The long-range ballistic missile was fired at 5.22pm (8.28am UK time) from Pyongyang's international airport, South Korean army officials said.
The rocket landed around 125 miles (201km) west of northwestern Oshima Island, according to Tokyo's vice minister for defence Toshiro Ino, and within Japan's exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
North Korea had vowed "unprecedently" strong action against "arch-criminal" states after South Korea announced a series of military drills with the US over the coming months.
Kim Jong Un attended a large-scale military parade on the streets of Pyongyang last week, as troops rolled out more than a dozen intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) - the largest haul ever held by North Korea.
It signalled a continuation of expansion of Pyongyang's military capabilities despite limited resources, while negotiations with American officials remain at a stalemate.
Experts suggested the stunt may be related to Mr Kim's stated desire to build a solid-fuel ICBM. That would allow for less preparation time before launches and greater vehicle portability, making transportation less obvious.
It is not known what type of missile was fired today.
Ewha Womans University international studies professor Leif-Eric Easley told AP: "North Korean missile firings are often tests of technologies under development, and it will be notable if Pyongyang claims progress with a long-range solid-fuel missile."
Last year North Korea fired more than 70 ballistic missiles, including ICBMs with potential reach to hit mainland America.
Pyongyang's army also simulated nuclear attacks against South Korean and US targets after the allied nations resumed large-scale drills following COVID and former US president Donald Trump's attempt to court Mr Kim.
Read more:
Kim Jong Un brings young daughter to football in sixth public appearance
UN chief fears world 'sleepwalking into wider war' - as North Korea steps up preparedness
The North Korean leader has vowed to double down on his nuclear push this year, calling for an "exponential increase" in the country's nuclear warheads, mass production of battlefield tactical nuclear weapons targeting "enemy" South Korea and the development of more advanced ICBMs.
A North Korean statement on Friday accused Washington and Seoul of planning more than 20 rounds of military drills this year, including large-scale field exercises.
The statement came hours after South Korea's defence ministry officials briefed politicians that Seoul and Washington will hold an annual computer-simulated combined training in mid-March.
In December, Japan made a major break from its defence-only post-Second World War principle, adopting a new national security strategy that includes pre-emptive strikes and cruise missiles to counter growing threats from North Korea, China and Russia. | Asia Politics |
Switzerland has fallen eight places – to 21st – in the annual gender equality index of the World Economic Forum (WEF). More generally, the global situation on this issue is stagnating: at the current rate it will take 131 years to achieve parity.
A week after women across Switzerland marched against inequality and sexism, the WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report 2023 reveals that the Alpine country did slightly worse than last year in absolute terms. Nor does it rank among the top countries in terms of wages, with the gender gap having been narrowed by just 70%.
Among the individual countries, Switzerland’s performanceExternal link falls far behind that of Iceland, which remains the best performer. Norway moved up one place to second, overtaking Finland. By region, for the second year running, Europe is the region that has succeeded most in reducing the difference between men and women, by almost 77%. Switzerland is 13th in this regional bloc.
Out of the four indicators included in the WEF’s assessment, published in Geneva on Wednesday, Switzerland ranks only 63rd for economic participation. Worse, the country, which is usually praised for its education, is ranked 102nd for gender parity in educational attainment. However, it remains in first place for the literacy rate, access to higher education and the birth ratio.
Switzerland ranks 115th for health, the only indicator on which it has improved over the past year compared to other countries. On the other hand, it is in the top 15 for political emancipation, coming 14th.
131 years for equality
Gender parity globally has recovered to pre-Covid levels, but the pace of change has stagnated as converging crises slow progress, according to the report’s authors. The overall gender gap has closed by 0.3 percentage points compared with last year’s edition.
“While there have been encouraging signs of recovery to pre-pandemic levels, women continue to bear the brunt of the current cost of living crisis and labour market disruptions,” said Saadia Zahidi, WEF managing director. “An economic rebound requires the full power of creativity and diverse ideas and skills. We cannot afford to lose momentum on women’s economic participation and opportunity.”
The Global Gender Gap Report, now in its 17th edition, says that at the current rate it will take 131 years to achieve equality. This is a step backwards, as 100 years would have been expected without the regressions in 2020 and 2021.
The WEF surveyed the differences in 146 countries. Of these, 102 have been in the index since 2006. Not included in 2022 were Russia, Cuba, Croatia, Iraq, Mauritania, Papua New Guinea, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, and Trinidad and Tobago.
In compliance with the JTI standards | Europe Politics |
GENEVA -- The U.N.'s top human rights body overwhelmingly approved a measure calling on countries to do more to prevent religious hatred in the wake of Quran burnings in Europe, over the objections of Western countries who fear tougher steps by governments could trample freedom of expression.
Applause broke out in the cavernous chamber of the Human Rights Council on Wednesday after the 28-12 vote, with seven abstentions, on a measure brought by Pakistan and Palestine that was backed by many developing countries in Africa, as well as China and India, and Middle Eastern countries.
The resolution comes in the wake of recent Quran burnings in parts of Europe, and among other things, calls on countries to take steps to “prevent and prosecute acts and advocacy of religious hatred that constitute incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.”
After the vote, Ambassador Khalil Hashmi of Pakistan insisted the measure “does not seek to curtail the right to free speech,” but tries to strike a “prudent balance” between it and “special duties and responsibilities.”
“The opposition of a few in the room has emanated from their unwillingness to condemn the public desecration of the Holy Quran or any other religious book," Hashmi said. "They lack political, legal and moral courage to condemn this act, and it was the minimum that the council could have expected from them.”
A day earlier, however, Michele Taylor, the U.S. ambassador to the council, said that the United States “strongly condemns the acts that have precipitated today’s discussion, including desecration of the Holy Quran on June 28” — a reference to an incident in Sweden last month that fanned protest in some Muslim communities.
After the vote, Taylor said she was “truly heartbroken” that the council was unable to reach consensus "in condemning what we all agree are deplorable acts of anti-Muslim hatred, while also respecting freedom of expression.” | Human Rights |
Authoritarian rule to continue as he raced ahead of secular challenger.
In a decisive victory, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan emerged triumphant from the Turkish elections, securing his fifth term in office and extending his rule to a staggering 20 years. Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) also clinched a majority in parliament, solidifying their control over the country’s political landscape.
The election campaign was closely watched, as the opposition, led by Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, had launched a spirited effort to challenge Erdoğan’s grip on power. Kılıçdaroğlu and his coalition had advocated for economic reform and greater democratic freedoms, aiming to tap into public dissatisfaction with the struggling Turkish economy and concerns over Erdoğan’s increasingly authoritarian rule.
However, despite the opposition’s valiant efforts, Erdoğan’s popularity prevailed. His enduring support base in rural areas and among conservative voters propelled him to victory, leaving the opposition disillusioned and their aspirations for change thwarted. The Turkish electorate, it seems, prioritized stability and security over the promises of economic reform and democratic ideals put forth by the opposition.
This resounding triumph for Erdoğan dealt a significant blow to the opposition’s hopes of unseating him. Their campaign, built on addressing economic woes and challenging authoritarian tendencies, failed to resonate with a majority of voters. It underscored the enduring appeal of Erdoğan’s leadership, despite the allegations of corruption and the erosion of democratic institutions during his tenure.
With Erdoğan’s continued reign, the prospects of Turkey’s democratic future face uncertainty. Critics argue that his victory signals an accelerated descent into authoritarianism, as his policies have stifled dissent and curtailed freedom of expression. Erdoğan’s consolidation of power during his tenure has been marked by a crackdown on opposition voices, raising concerns among those advocating for a more inclusive and open society.
The ramifications of this election outcome extend beyond Turkey’s borders. Erdoğan’s victory reflects the growing influence of Islamism in Turkish politics. His devout religious beliefs have served as a foundation for policies promoting Islamic values during his time in office. While this has endeared him to some segments of society, it has simultaneously alienated secular Turks who value the country’s historically more secular nature.
The aftermath of this election prompts speculation about the trajectory of Turkey under Erdoğan’s prolonged rule. The Turkish economy, beset by challenges such as inflation and unemployment, remains a pressing issue that demands attention and effective policies. The opposition, now grappling with the disappointment of defeat, will need to reassess their strategies and re-energize their base if they hope to mount a formidable challenge to Erdoğan’s dominance in the future.
Turkey stands at a crossroads, with the election outcome emphasizing the delicate balance between stability and democratic values. The path forward remains uncertain, but it is evident that Erdoğan will continue to shape Turkish politics as a formidable force, further entrenching his authoritarian rule and leaving an indelible mark on the nation’s future. | Middle East Politics |
The Colombian government and armed dissidents called Estado Mayor Central (EMC), announced on Saturday that they had agreed to renew a ceasefire, brokered and broken several times in recent months, and peace talks.
It's part of leftist President Gustavo Petro's bid to expand on his predecessor's landmark peace deal with the country's biggest rebel group, FARC, which disarmed in 2016.
The current truce will "aim to reduce confrontation and violence" said the joint statement.
The ceasefire, the statement said, will apply across the country with the aim of including "civil society in the peace process."
Peace talks in the horizon
The weekend agreement was made with the EMC, a guerrilla group, which broke away from FARCand rejected the peace negotiations with Colombia's government that began in 2016, continuing hostilities.
Representatives of the EMC and the government began a meeting in the mountains earlier this week seeking an agreement to try to restart negotiations.
Following that, they said that going forward, the peace process would be supervised by other countries and international organizations like the UN, the Organization of American States and the World Council of Churches.
They did not specify when the peace talks between the government and EMC dissidents would begin.
Petro's quest for 'total peace'
A previous such ceasefire with the EMC ended in May after President Gustavo Petro accused a faction of the rebel group of murdering four children from the Murui indigenous community in Southern Colombia.
Petro, elected last year, campaigned on a pledge to pursue "total peace" and to strike accords with the remaining rebel groups in Colombia still fighting over access to drug routes and other illegal commerce, among other things.
ns/msh (AFP, EFE) | Latin America Politics |
Karnataka Government Mulling Ban On Bursting Crackers In Bengaluru During Deepavali
His comments come in the wake of the Attibele fire mishap near here earlier this month, which claimed 16 lives.
Karnataka Home Minister G Parameshwara on Wednesday said the government is mulling to impose a ban on the bursting of crackers in Bengaluru city during Deepavali.
His comments come in the wake of the Attibele fire mishap near here earlier this month, which claimed 16 lives.
Speaking to reporters here, he said, "Every year during Deepavali such fire incidents happen. Yesterday too, in Tamil Nadu, about 12 people died. We will be bringing new laws in the days to ensure that such incidents don't occur and to regulate things. Discussions are on in this regard. This incident has taught us a lesson...we will also bring in amendments to existing laws, if necessary," he said.
Parameshwara said the government has to think about whether to allow or not to burst crackers in the city during the upcoming Deepavali festival.
"Many innocent people die, some lose vision, such things happen. In Delhi, bursting of crackers during the Deepavali festival is banned. We will examine whether it can be banned in Bengaluru city. What should be done for it -- from the Centre, legal protection that is required -- how to do it, we will discuss with the chief minister and decide," he added.
The fire at a facility belonging to private traders, which had firecrackers stocked up on Oct. 7, had killed 14 people on the spot. Two others succumbed to injuries later.
The Karnataka government on Tuesday ordered a magisterial inquiry into the incident. | India Politics |
Backflip on distribution of Voice to Parliament referendum pamphlets as Peter Dutton lashes 'arrogant' Anthony Albanese
Peter Dutton has lashed out at "arrogant" Anthony Albanese amid a backflip on the distribution of pamphlets on the Voice to Parliament referendum.
Opposition Leader Perter Dutton has taken a swipe at Prime Minister Anthony Albanese after an "obvious backflip" on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
The Albanese Government had been seeking to avoid sending out pamphlets providing information on both the "yes" and "no" cases through legislative changes.
The opposition on Tuesday demanded the government distribute booklets to households equally advocating both cases, indicating it would vote against the referendum machinery bill if that was not provided.
Labor would need the support of the Greens and two independents to get legislation approving the Voice referendum through Parliament if the Coalition opposes it.
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On Wednesday, reports emerged Mr Albanese had tasked Special Minister of State Don Farrell with starting the process for an educational pamphlet to be distributed.
"It was never sustainable for the Prime Minister to say to the Australian people that he wanted them to vote in a referendum and then only provide an argument for one side of the case," Mr Dutton told journalists in response to the reports.
"Australians have their views, I think 99 per cent of Australians have a view that they want to see an improved situation for Indigenous Australians.
"They want to see a narrowing of all of the indicators and I think it was frankly quite arrogant of the Prime Minister to believe that he didn't need to provide details to the Australian people."
Mr Dutton said it was important for Australians to be provided with the pamphlet as it has been done in past referendums so they can "make an informed judgement" before voting in the second half of this year.
He added there were some Australian residents who needed to be given the information in a booklet format rather than be presented with the details online.
"The fact is that many people, particularly those where English is not their first language, they do want to sit down, particularly older Australians, not online but to do it with the booklet in front of them," Mr Dutton said.
"So that they can, in a language they feel most comfortable with, read all the detail, and then if there are further questions, they can research from there."
The Opposition Leader on Wednesday also reiterated the Coalition's calls for equal funding for the "yes" and "no" cases.
"The other thing... the Prime Minister has to do is to provide equal funding for both sides of the argument. That is completely and utterly rational. It's the precedent and it should be the case in relation to the yes or no case," Mr Dutton said.
"Whether you agree to the yes or no case doesn't matter.
"It's about informing Australians and providing them with the most information that you reasonably can in a measured way so that people can have some of their own questions or hesitations answered or have their own views reinforced in relation to how it is they want to vote."
However, it has been reported the government is unlikely to agree to the equal funding request. | Australia Politics |
WhatsApp messages from 2020 released by the Covid inquiry have revealed senior civil servant Simon Case complaining about the influence of Carrie, the partner of then-PM Boris Johnson.
In exchanges with a Downing Street adviser at the time, Dominic Cummings, Mr Case jokes that Mrs Johnson was "the real person in charge".
In a later text Mr Case also says the government looks like a "tragic joke".
The messages came as the Covid inquiry heard evidence on political governance.
The screenshot of the WhatsApp group chat from autumn 2020, provided by Mr Cummings, was displayed on screen during a session in which the senior lawyer for the inquiry, Hugo Keith KC, was drawing attention to what he called "dysfunctionality" at the heart of government.
In a discussion about introducing regional circuit breakers, Mr Case writes: "Am not sure I can cope with today. Might just go home."
Lee Cain - Mr Johnson's head of communications - asks what "are we talking about".
"Whatever Carrie cares about, I guess," replies Mr Case.
He later adds: "I was always told that Dom [Cummings] was the secret PM. How wrong they are. I look forward to telling select [committee] tomorrow... don't worry about Dom, the real person in charge is Carrie."
"So true," Mr Cummings replies along with a laughing emoji.
Mr Cain agrees and adds that "she doesn't know [what] she is talking about either".
Mr Case goes on to say: "This government doesn't have the credibility needed to be imposing stuff within only days of deciding not too [sic]. We look like a terrible, tragic joke.
"If we were going hard, that decision was needed weeks ago. I cannot cope with this."
The messages were sent in autumn of 2020 - around the time the government was reintroducing some Covid restrictions in England.
Carrie Johnson was in a relationship with Mr Johnson before he became prime minister in 2019. The lived together in Downing Street and married in May 2021.
Throughout Mr Johnson's time in office, Mrs Johnson was target for criticism - particularly from Mr Cummings - a close adviser to Mr Johnson who later became a fierce critic.
Mr Case was a senior civil servant in No 10 until September 2020 when he was promoted to be head of the civil service.
During the session, the inquiry was also shown texts between Mr Johnson and Mr Cummings from March 2020 in which Mr Johnson describes the chief medical officer Sir Chris Whitty and chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance as "wonderful men... but they are both in new territory".
Mr Johnson also describes Mark Sedwill, the head of the civil service until September 2020, as "miles off pace".
Mr Cummings replies that "the problem is CabOff [the Cabinet Office] and DHSC [the health department] haven't listened and absorbed what the models truly mean."
Separately, in an email sent to Mr Johnson in July 2020, Mr Cummings writes: "Current CABOFF [Cabinet Office] doesn't work for anyone - it is high friction, low trust, and obv many good parts but overall low performance."
Mr Keith KC warned the inquiry that "due caution must be applied to the accuracy of WhatsApps which lack nuance and can be intemperate, and also diary entries, which may not accurately reflect the reality of the position day by day and which indeed may have been drafted for a different audience."
He went on to suggest that the messages and other pieces of evidence, including diary entries and notes from Sir Patrick Vallance, demonstrated that factionality and infighting were prevalent at a time when the government was responding to the coronavirus pandemic.
Sir Patrick's notes were not displayed but Mr Keith said they showed "according to the Cabinet Secretary himself, this is in November 2020 so that would be Simon Case, No10 was at war with itself - a Carrie faction with [Michael] Gove, another with SPADs [special advisers], the PM caught in the middle."
The witness, former senior civil servant Alex Thomas, said that in the early period of the pandemic there "was an anxious and chaotic and sometimes divided situation between the Cabinet Office and Number 10".
Mr Keith suggested that: "In the early part of the pandemic, the early months, the dysfunctionality... was reflective of the system, the structures, that were in place.
"Latterly the dysfunctionality lay more in the personalities and their working relationships and indeed the people who were in government."
This second stage of the Covid Inquiry is examining political decision-making during the pandemic, from January 2020 until February 2022, including the timing and effectiveness of lockdowns and other social-distancing restrictions.
It is taking witness evidence in London until Christmas, before moving to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to look specifically at the decisions made by administrations in those parts of the United Kingdom.
Mr Johnson will give evidence in person to the inquiry later this year, along with other ministers, advisers, civil servants and health officials. | United Kingdom Politics |
Italy’s far-right government has announced plans to create centres in Albania to accommodate asylum seekers, the prime minister said on Monday, hailing it as a “historic” deal with Tirana to manage migration flows.
“I am pleased to announce with Albanian prime minister Edi Rama a memorandum of understanding between Italy and Albania concerning the management of migration flows,” said Giorgia Meloni. “Italy is Albania’s top trading partner. There is already close collaboration in the fight against illegality.”
The agreement involves setting up centres in Albania that can accommodate up to 3,000 people. Those allocated to Albania will be people rescued at sea by Italian boats.
“We started discussing this with the idea that mass illegal immigration is a phenomenon no EU member state can handle alone, and collaboration between EU states is crucial,” added Meloni.
The partnership was solidified during the mid-August Ferragosto holiday, according to sources in the prime minister’s office, despite previous reports of Meloni being on holiday in Albania.
“This is the first agreement of its kind,” the sources said. “It is a historic agreement, not only for Italy, but for the entire European Union.”
Italy’s opposition parties have criticised the agreement, describing it as a “mess”.
“They are creating a sort of Italian Guantánamo, outside of any international standard, outside of the EU without the possibility of monitoring the detention status of the people locked up in these centres,” said Riccardo Magi, the president of the leftwing More Europe party. “Italy cannot transport people saved at sea to a non-EU country as if they were packages or goods.”
Sources from the government reported in the media said Albania would host in its centres only people rescued at sea and not asylum seekers who arrive on Italian shores and territory, with the exception of minors, pregnant women and vulnerable individuals, who will be moved to Italy.
The centres are capable of accommodating a total of up to 3,000 of the 39,000 people expected within a year.
“If Italy calls Albania, we respond,” said Rama. “It is not for us to judge the political merits of decisions made in this and other institutions. It is our duty to lend a helping hand.”
“Geography has become a curse for Italy. When you enter Italy, you enter the EU,” said the Albanian prime minister. “We may not have the strength and capacity to be the solution, but we have a duty towards Italy and the ability to lend a hand. Albania may not be part of the union, but it is a European state. We lack the ‘U’ at the beginning, but that does not prevent us from being and seeing the world as Europeans.”
In exchange for Rama’s support in managing migration flows, Meloni said she would do everything in her power to support Albania’s entry into the EU.
“Albania continues to be a friendly nation, and despite not yet being a member, it behaves as if it were one. This is one of the reasons why I am proud that Italy has always been one of the countries supporting the enlargement to the western Balkans,” said Meloni.
“The EU is not a club. So, I am not talking about entry but the reunification of the western Balkans, which are EU countries in all but name.” | Europe Politics |
The temporary cease-fire between Hamas and Israel ended early Friday, and Israel has resumed its bombardment of Gaza.
The end of the cease-fire came after Hamas freed over 100 of the more than 200 people its militants took hostage during the Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel. In exchange, Israel released more than 200 Palestinians from Israeli prisons.
Click here for updates from previous days.
Latest headlines:
What we know about the conflict
The Israel-Hamas war is now approaching two months.
In the Gaza Strip, more than 15,500 people have been killed and over 41,000 have been wounded by Israeli forces since Oct. 7, according to figures released by Gaza's Hamas-run Ministry of Health and the Hamas government media office.
In Israel, at least 1,200 people have been killed and 6,900 others have been injured by Hamas and other Palestinian militants since Oct. 7, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
There has also been a surge in violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israeli forces have killed at least 241 Palestinians in the territory since Oct. 7, according to Palestinian health authorities.
IDF says it struck 200 Hamas targets in Gaza overnight, including school
The Israel Defense Forces said Monday morning that its aircraft bombed "approximately 200 Hamas terror targets" in the Gaza Strip overnight as troops continued operations on the ground.
Israeli ground troops struck "terror infrastructure" that was located inside a school in Gaza’s northeastern city of Beit Hanoun, while Israeli fighter jets struck "military infrastructure" as well as "vehicles containing missiles, mortar shells, and weapons," according to the IDF.
Israeli ground troops also directed an aircraft to bomb a "cell of terrorists" and a "weapons storage facility from which the terrorists exited," the IDF said.
Meanwhile, Israeli warships struck "a number of Hamas terror targets" overnight, including "observation posts belonging to the Hamas naval forces and terrorist infrastructure at the Gaza harbor" as well as "Hamas military compounds," according to the IDF.
-ABC News' Dana Savir and Morgan Winsor
Hundreds of Americans, Canadians approved to leave Gaza
Over 600 foreign passport holders -- nearly half of whom are Americans and Canadians -- were on a list of people approved to leave Gaza on Sunday. Some 566 foreign passport holders, whose nationalities were not released, later exited the Gaza Strip through Egypt’s Rafah border crossing on Sunday, crossing spokesman Wael Abu Omar told ABC News.
Thirteen wounded Gaza residents and 11 of their family members also left Gaza and entered Egypt on Sunday, the spokesman said.
-ABC News' Ayat Al-Tawy
Israel says it's started 'powerful' ground operation in southern Gaza
The Israel Defense Forces has started a ground operation in southern Gaza that "will be no less powerful than" the operations in northern Gaza, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said.
"We have the capabilities to do it in the most thorough way, and just as we did it with strength and thoroughly in the north of the Gaza Strip, we are also doing it now in the south of the Gaza Strip, and we also continue to deepen the achievements in the north of the Gaza Strip," Halevi said.
The IDF said it's carried out 10,000 airstrikes in the Gaza Strip since fighting began.
"The forces ‘closed circles’ and thwarted terror cells, terror infrastructure, operational apartments, tunnel shafts, weapons warehouses and more,” the IDF said in a statement.
-ABC News' Dana Savir
'About 8' Americans remain hostage: Kirby
With the temporary Israel-Hamas cease-fire now over, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told ABC News' "This Week" that the U.S. is "working at this literally by the hour … if we can get these discussions back going" to get a new pause in place.
Kirby said the Israel-Hamas agreement "fell apart because Hamas was unwilling and refused to come with additional [hostage] lists of women and children -- which we know they are holding -- and put them on the list so that Israel can evaluate that and we can get them exchanged."
Kirby said the U.S. thinks "about eight" Americans remain hostage.
He added, "We don’t have perfect visibility on where they all are, we certainly don’t have perfect visibility on their physical or mental condition."
When asked Sunday about The New York Times report alleging Israel knew about Hamas' attack plan a year in advance, Kirby said the U.S. had no knowledge of the Hamas planning document.
He added, "The focus has got to be on making sure Israel has what it needs to go after Hamas leadership." | Middle East Politics |
Today host Karl Stefanovic blows up over proposed Superannuation overhaul as Labor government floats possible reforms
The Albanese Government is under fire over its proposal to revamp Australia's $3 trillion Superannuation system, with Today host Karl Stefanovic claiming the plan "doesn't make any sense".
Today host Karl Stefanovic has critisised the Labor government's superannuation overhaul that was flagged earlier this week.
The Albanese Government has opened the door to major changes to Australia's Superannuation system in recent days including possible cuts to the tax concession and limits on individuals accessing their funds early.
Speaking to Australian Financial Review's economics editor John Kehoe on the Today show, Stefanovic said Labor's mission to revamp Super "doesn't make any sense".
"It doesn't make any sense, economically or fiscally from my point of view," he said.
The Labor government wants to switch up the way Superannuation funds invest money to better meet the "interest of members and national economic priorities".
Mr Kehoe suggested the Treasurer was trying to "nudge" Super funds into investing in "social causes", including housing projects and green energy.
"Chalmers is saying, 'Look I'm not saying you have to take sub-optimal returns, but if these returns stack-up financially, you should go and do it",' he said.
"So, it's more of a gentle nudge rather than forcing the funds to do it."
However, Stefanovic argued the floated reforms made no sense as "it's our money".
"It's our money in a Super fund, and maybe I'm silly. I would just want the best return," he added.
Mr Kehoe responded, saying: "The only way that these social investments are going to stack up, is perhaps if the government provides a subsidy or some other red tape reduction," he said.
"I can't see many of the Super funds doing this unless the financial returns actually stack up."
Stefanovic was fired up about the Super overhaul, shaking his head before admitting that he does not know much about the topic.
The latest comments from the Prime Minister and Treasurer also fuelled outrage amongst senior Coalition figures, including shadow employment minister Michaelia Cash who condemned the government’s plans given the importance of millions of Australians’ retirement.
The Western Australian Senator demanded the prime minister apologise, declaring it a “clear broken promise”.
“What I say to the prime minister is this, perhaps you need to start making apologies to the Australian people for breaking what was a very very clear election commitment that Australians relied on,” Senator Cash told Sky News Australia on Tuesday.
“In this term of government any changes made to Superannuation in particular when they talk sustainability; You know what that’s code for? Going after your money and higher taxes."
However, Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones has maintained that Labor is not breaking an election promise by proposing changes to concessional tax breaks in Australia’s Superannuation system.
He flatly denied breaking any promises and signalled that measures would be aimed at “excessively high” Superannuation balances not typical of the average Australian.
“This is about excessively high Superannuation balances… we have got accounts in Australia with in excess of $100 million in them, some well in excess of $10 million and $20 million in them, getting amazing tax concessions, big cost on the budget,” Mr Jones told Sky News Australia on Wednesday.
“Superannuation is about retirement income, it’s not about tax minimisation and it’s not about estate planning, we intend to normalise and ensure we have a sustainable system.”
Current tax concessions allow people to contribute up to $25,000 annually at a reduced concessional tax rate of 15 per cent.
The Treasurer used a landmark speech to the investor community on Monday to pledge the government would legislate a clear “objective” of the scheme.
However, Mr Chalmers highlighted the scheme may not be sustainable as Super tax concessions will cost the federal budget $52.5 billion this year alone.
Mr Chalmers said while the government was focused on ensuring the future of the system, he added he was “not convinced” tax concessions were a “sustainable way to get to our destination”. | Australia Politics |
Ukrainian authorities ordered a mandatory evacuation Thursday of nearly 12,000 civilians from 37 towns and villages in the eastern Kharkiv region, where Russian forces reportedly are making a concerted effort to punch through the front line.
The local military administration in Kharkiv’s Kupiansk district said residents must comply with the evacuation order or sign a document saying they would stay at their own risk.
Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, had said the previous day that “the intensity of combat and enemy shelling is high” in the area.
The city of Kupiansk and the territories around it were under Russian occupation until September 2022, when Ukrainian forces conducted a rapid offensive operation that dislodged the Kremlin’s forces from nearly the entire Kharkiv region.
The re-taking of those areas strengthened Ukraine’s arguments that its troops could deliver more stinging defeats to Russia with additional armament deliveries, which its Western allies duly provided.
But as Ukraine has pursued a slow-moving counteroffensive in recent weeks, Russian forces have struck back in some areas.
Ms Maliar said Russia “has formed an offensive group and is attempting to move forward” in the area in an effort to advance on the Ukrainian-held city of Kupiansk, which is an important rail junction.
It was not possible to independently verify either side’s claims.
Earlier Thursday, Russian air defence systems shot down two drones heading toward Moscow for a second straight day, officials said.
The attack disrupted flights at two international airports as Ukraine appeared to step up its assault on Russian soil.
One drone was downed in the Kaluga region south-west of Moscow and another near a major Moscow ring road, according to Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin and the Russian Defence Ministry, which blamed the attack on Ukraine.
No casualties or damage were immediately reported.
Domodedovo airport, south of the city, halted flights for more than two hours and Vnukovo airport, south-west of the city, stopped flights for more than two-and-a-half hours and redirected some incoming aircraft to other airports, according to Russian news agencies.
It was not clear where the drones were launched, and Ukrainian officials made no immediate comment. Ukraine usually neither confirms nor denies such attacks.
Firing drones at Moscow after more than 17 months of war has little apparent military value for Ukraine, but the strategy has served to unsettle Russians and bring home to them the conflict’s consequences.
Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said: “This cannot but please us because people in Moscow thought they were safe. Now, the war affects each and every Russian.”
“We now see that ‘something’ happens in Moscow on a regular basis,” he added.
Russia’s Defence Ministry also said it had stopped Ukrainian drone attacks in Moscow-annexed Crimea. It said it shot down two drones near the port city of Sevastopol and electronically jammed nine that crashed into the Black Sea.
On Wednesday, Ukrainian media reported social media blogs as saying that a thick plume of smoke billowed over Sevastopol, which is the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
The governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said the smoke came from a “fleet training exercise” and urged local residents not to worry.
The incidents have come against the backdrop of Ukraine’s ongoing counter-offensive, which Ukrainian and Western officials have warned will be a long slog against the Kremlin’s deeply entrenched forces.
The Pentagon is to provide Ukraine with another 200 million dollars (£156.75 million) in weapons and ammunition to help sustain the counter-offensive, according to US officials.
Ukraine has already received more than 43 billion dollars (£33.7 billion) from the US since Russia invaded last year.
Ukraine’s presidential office said at least six civilians were killed and 27 were injured between Wednesday and Thursday mornings.
In eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk province, Russia shelled 16 cities and villages, and three people were killed, the office reported. In Zaporizhzhia, three people were killed and nine wounded, including an 11-month-old baby.
Meanwhile, 12 people remained missing after an explosion on Wednesday at a factory that makes optical equipment for Russian security forces, Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing emergency officials.
Russia’s Emergency Ministry said 71 people required medical assistance after the explosion.
Russian officials did not offer a suspected cause of the explosion at the Zagorsk plant in the region around Moscow, which added to jitters about potential Ukrainian drone strikes.
The fallout from Russia’s war against Ukraine has brought concerns to neighbouring countries, including the presence of Russia-linked Wagner group mercenaries in Belarus this summer after their short-lived mutiny in Russia.
Poland’s defence minister said the country intends to put 10,000 soldiers along its border with Belarus amid fears of a spike in illegal immigration.
Polish officials have accused Belarusian authorities of organising illegal border crossings to disrupt and pressure Warsaw, which along with other Nato countries has provided support for Kyiv’s war effort. | Europe Politics |
Caroline Lucas, the Green Party's former leader and only MP, has announced she will stand down at the next general election.
Ms Lucas said the pressures of her role meant she had not been able to focus on "the challenges that drive me - the nature and climate emergencies".
She thanked her supporters, who she said had "put the politics of hope above the politics of fear".
She was elected for Brighton Pavilion in 2010, becoming the first Green MP.
Ms Lucas, who had two stints as Green leader, has increased her majority at every election since, winning by a margin of almost 20,000 votes in 2019.
The MP's decision comes a month after her party lost control of Brighton and Hove council, despite making record gains in May's local elections in England.
In an open letter, Ms Lucas said it had been the "privilege of my life to serve this extraordinary constituency and community".
She said: "I have always been a different kind of politician - as those who witnessed my arrest, court case and acquittal over peaceful protest at the fracking site in Balcombe nearly 10 years ago will recall.
"And the truth is, as these threats to our precious planet become ever more urgent, I have struggled to spend the time I want on these accelerating crises.
"I have therefore decided not to stand again as your MP at the next election."
The Green Party's co-leader, Carla Denyer described Ms Lucas as a "force of nature" and said the party was "so proud of her achievements".
Ms Denyer - her party's candidate for the Bristol West constituency - said Ms Lucas's record "demonstrates how essential it is to have Green voices in UK politics".
The party's joint leader, Adrian Ramsay, said the party would be "striving to get more Green MPs elected at the next general election so that we can build on Caroline's achievements".
Green shoots
Although Ms Lucas is the only Green MP in the House of Commons, the party has enjoyed success in recent local elections.
In England's local elections in May, the Green Party won more than 240 seats and made history in Mid-Suffolk, taking control of the council for the first time.
The Greens have traditionally performed best in urban areas, such as Brighton and Bristol, but the party concentrated its campaigning firepower on rural, traditional Tory areas in May's local elections.
The party won its highest ever vote share of 3.8% in 2015's general election but Ms Lucas was the only Green candidate to win a seat.
Her first period as Green leader was between 2008 and 2012, before her second as co-leader with Jonathan Bartley for two years from September 2016.
The Brighton Pavilion MP said she came into politics "to change things".
She said she had put a universal basic income on the political agenda, secured the first parliamentary debate in a generation on drug law reform, and been involved in the addition of a natural history GCSE to the syllabus.
She told the BBC she was "definitely not quitting" politics, or "retiring with my knitting".
"I think right now, the Greens are at such as exciting stage," she said. "Working to get more Greens elected is my priority."
Ms Lucas is the latest senior MP to announce her departure from Parliament at the next election, which is expected to be held in 2024.
Dozens of MPs have stated their intention leave the Commons, including former health secretary Matt Hancock, the former deputy prime minister, Dominic Raab, and former SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford. | United Kingdom Politics |
Tens of thousands of protesters converged outside a French military base in Niger, demanding its 1,500 soldiers leave as France shows no sign it will comply after a coup d’etat removed the elected president.
Outside the base, demonstrators slit the throat of a goat dressed in French colours and carried coffins draped in French flags on Saturday as a line of Nigerien soldiers looked on. Others carried signs demanding France to depart.
“We are ready to sacrifice ourselves today because we are proud,” said demonstrator Yacouba Issoufou. “They plundered our resources, and we became aware. So they’re going to get out.”
It was the largest gathering since the July 26 coup, indicating support for the new military leadership is not waning.
France had cordial relations with overthrown President Mohamed Bazoum. President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday he spoke to the deposed Nigerien leader every day and “the decisions we will take, whatever they may be, will be based upon exchanges with Bazoum”.
Anti-French sentiment rose further last week when France ignored a military order for its ambassador, Sylvain Itte, to leave. Police have been instructed to expel him.
The July coup – one of eight in West and Central Africa since 2020 – has sucked in global powers concerned about a shift to military rule across the region.
Most affected is France, whose influence over its former colonies has waned in West Africa in recent years as popular vitriol has grown. Its forces have been kicked out of neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso since coups in those countries, reducing its role in a region-wide fight against armed groups. | Africa politics |
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has announced that the Ethiopian government is exploring all options to secure a port for the country, including negotiation, “give and take,” and force.
In a meeting with investors and businessmen on Thursday, Abiy said that Ethiopia’s current port costs are unsustainable, and that the country must have its own port to reduce its reliance on neighboring countries.
The Prime Minister said that the government has already started negotiations with Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somaliland to secure port access. In the case of Eritrea, the government has proposed to give 30% of Ethiopian Airlines to the Eritrean government in exchange for port access.
Abiy said that the government is also considering the use of force to secure a port, but that this would be a last resort.
“We want to get a port through peaceful means, but if that fails, we will use force,” Abiy said.
The Prime Minister’s announcement comes as Ethiopia is facing increasing pressure from the international community to resolve its border dispute with Eritrea. The two countries fought a war from 1998 to 2000, and the border has been closed since then.
Abiy’s announcement is seen as a sign that the Ethiopian government is serious about securing a port, and that it is willing to take steps that could lead to conflict.
Background
Ethiopia is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country has a population of over 120 million people, and its economy is growing rapidly. However, Ethiopia’s lack of a port has been a major obstacle to its economic development.
Ethiopia currently relies on the ports of Djibouti and Somaliland to import and export goods. However, these ports are expensive to use, and they are often congested.
The Ethiopian government has been trying to secure a port for the country for many years. However, the border dispute with Eritrea has made it difficult to reach an agreement.
The Future
It is unclear what the future holds for Ethiopia’s port access. The government’s negotiations with Eritrea could succeed, and the two countries could reach an agreement on the use of the Eritrean ports.
However, it is also possible that the negotiations will fail, and that Ethiopia will be forced to use force to secure a port.
The outcome of the negotiations will have a major impact on Ethiopia’s economy and its relations with its neighbors. | Africa politics |
July 10 (Reuters) - Ukrainian troops pressed on with their campaign to recapture Russian-held areas in the southeast on Sunday as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in broadcast comments that his country's forces had "taken the initiative" after an earlier slowdown.
Russian accounts said heavy fighting gripped areas outside the eastern city of Bakhmut, captured by Russian mercenary Wagner forces in May after months of battles. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said one of his units was deployed in the area.
Equipped with increasingly sophisticated Western weaponry after more than 500 days of war, Ukraine has launched an anticipated counter-offensive focusing so far on capturing a cluster of villages in the southwest. Its forces have also been trying to retake areas around Bakhmut.
Ukraine's deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said heavy fighting raged in two areas of the southeast.
"We are consolidating our gains in those areas," she wrote.
Russian troops, she said, were defending Bakhmut, while Ukrainian forces had registered "a certain advance" on the city's southern flank.
There were no changes in position to the north of Bakhmut, and Ukrainian forces remained engaged in heavy fighting west of Bakhmut and near Lyman, further north in Donetsk region.
Zelenskiy was interviewed on U.S. television network ABC ahead of this week's NATO summit in Lithuania, where Kyiv hopes to receive firm indications about both future membership in the Western defence alliance and guarantees for its security.
Zelenskiy acknowledged that advances were slower than what he and his generals wanted, but said Ukrainian forces held the initiative.
"All of us, we want to do it faster because every day means new losses of Ukrainians. We are advancing. We are not stuck," he said, noting that the military had overcome a "kind of stagnation" in previous months.
"We would all love to see the counteroffensive accomplished in a shorter period of time. But there is reality. Today, the initiative is on our side."
Much attention in recent days has focused on the village of Klishchiivka, lying on heights to the south of Bakhmut.
Chechen leader Kadyrov, writing on Telegram, said his "Akhmat" unit was "in the difficult Bakhmut sector". He posted a video of a commander atop an armoured vehicle near Klishchiivka.
Russian reports in recent days had suggested that Kadyrov, whose forces have been active since the beginning of the Russian invasion, was ill or injured or "on holiday".
Reuters could not independently verify the reports on Kadyrov or the battlefield reports.
Russia's Defence Ministry said its forces had repelled Ukrainian advances near Bakhmut, with fighting made difficult "not only by the daily intensity of fire and battle, but also by topography. The line of contact runs between two hills."
Ukrainian military analyst Denys Popovych said Ukrainian forces had taken "important positions near Klishchiivka.
"This will allow for artillery control of Klishchiivka itself and of parts of Bakhmut and supply routes," he told Ukraine's NV Radio. "Just as Wagner surrounded the city, so will we."
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | Europe Politics |
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte's coalition government collapsed after just a year and a half in office on Friday in a row over measures to curb the flow of migrants.
Rutte, the Netherlands' longest-serving leader, presided over crisis talks between the four coalition partners but failed to reach a deal.
The resignation was broadly reported in the Netherlands for a couple of hours on Friday evening before Rutte confirmed the resignation in a statement.
"This evening we have unfortunately reached the conclusion that the differences are insurmountable. For this reason, I will shortly present my written resignation to the king in the name of the whole government," Rutte told a press conference.
What was the dispute about?
Rutte, the leader of the center-right VVD party, the largest in the four-party coalition, had wanted to tighten curbs on reuniting families of asylum seekers, following a scandal last year about overcrowded asylum centers.
He called for the number of relatives of war refugees allowed into the Netherlands to be capped at 200 per month, and had threatened to topple the government if the measure did not pass.
Two junior partners, including the Christen Unie — a Christian Democratic party that draws its main support from the protestant "Bible Belt" in the central Netherlands — were staunchly opposed to the proposal.
Both Christen Unie and D66, the left-leaning party in the rainbow coalition, saw the issue as less of a problem than Rutte's VVD.
The four parties had held crisis talks on Wednesday and Thursday as well in a bid to save the shaky government, which only took office in January 2022.
Rutte said late on Friday that it was "no secret" that the coalition had its differences on the issue, describing it as "very regrettable, but a political fact."
Asylum applications in the Netherlands jumped by a third last year to more than 46,000, and the government had projected they could increase to more than 70,000 this year, which would top the previous high from 2015.
Asylum and migration is a difficult issue for Rutte and has been for years because of the strength of far-right parties in the Netherlands, most famously that of Geert Wilders, and the threat this poses to center-right parties like his VVD.
What happens next?
The most likely outcome seems to be new elections, far earlier than the next scheduled 2025 date.
Opposition parties were quick to call for a vote on Friday. Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration Party for Freedom (PVV), called on Twitter for "Quick elections now."
Jesse Klaver, leader of the Green Left party also called for elections and told Dutch broadcaster NOS: "This country needs a change of direction."
It's also possible that the king ask another political leader to try to set up a coalition, but given the parliamentary arithmetic that seems highly unlikely.
The vote in late 2021 in the Netherlands was spread extremely broadly. It took around nine months to find a functioning coalition afterwards.
Rutte's VVD was the largest party but won less than 22% of the vote. Only two other parties had support above 10%, while no fewer than 17 groups won at least one seat in the House of Representatives. Practically, it's not clear what other coalition options exist besides the current one.
In the event of new elections, Rutte would hope his party could emerge from a fifth successive vote as the strongest party and try to form a new coalition, possibly with an altered landscape in parliament. He managed this in 2021 after his government resigned over a childcare scandal but went on to fare best at the polls a few months later.
msh/jcg (Reuters, AP, AFP) | Europe Politics |
Residents of India's capital, Delhi, woke up to smoky skies as air quality dropped after the festival of Diwali.
People in the city burst crackers late into Sunday night despite a ban on fireworks due to high pollution levels.
Delhi has been battling toxic air for weeks, with the government announcing an early winter break for schools in an effort to protect children.
The city has high pollution through the year due to factors including vehicular emissions and dust.
But the problem becomes worse in winter as farmers in neighbouring states burn crop stubble. Low wind speeds also trap pollutants - such as those produced by firecrackers - in the lower atmosphere, making it hard to breathe.
On Monday morning, according to the Sameer app - which provides hourly updates based on federal pollution control board data - the Air Quality Index (AQI) across 37 monitoring stations in Delhi was above 200, with several places recording readings above 350. The AQI measures the level of PM 2.5 - fine particulate matter that can clog lungs and cause a host of diseases - in the air.
Levels between 101 and 200 are considered moderate while those between 201 and 300 are categorised as poor. Anything over 300 is categorised as "very poor" and a figure higher than 500 is considered "severe".
Prolonged exposure to high levels of pollution can cause discomfort and breathing difficulties to people.
India's Supreme Court has banned the use of firecrackers during Diwali, only allowing "green crackers" or those with reduced emissions. The Delhi government has also banned firecrackers during Diwali for the past few years, but there is little enforcement of the rule.
The ban on fireworks has also developed political tones, with some arguing that it is an attempt to target Hindu festivals.
On Monday, Delhi's environment minister Gopal Rai alleged that leaders from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - which is in power nationally but in the opposition in Delhi - had "incited" people to light firecrackers.
"The bursting of firecrackers has increased pollution levels in Delhi. Not many people have burst firecrackers but it was done in some places in a targeted manner," he said.
Leaders from the BJP had not officially responded to this.
The poor air quality on Monday came after rains on Friday morning led to a drop in pollution levels in Delhi over the weekend.
BBC News India is now on YouTube. Click here to subscribe and watch our documentaries, explainers and features. | India Politics |
Russia struck theBlack Sea again on Sunday, local officials said, keeping up a barrage of attacks that has damaged critical port infrastructure in southern Ukraine in the past week. At least one person was killed and 22 others wounded in the attack in the early hours.
Regional Gov. Oleh Kiper said that four children were among those wounded in the blasts, which severely damaged the historic Transfiguration Cathedral, a landmark Orthodox cathedral in the city.
Ukraine's Air Force reported on Telegram that Russia had launched 19 missiles against the Odesa region, including five high-precision winged Onyx missiles and four sea-to-shore Kalibr cruise missiles. It said that Ukrainian air defense had shot down nine of the missiles.
According to BBC News, Kiper wrote on Telegram that six residential buildings, including apartment buildings, were destroyed by the strikes. "Odesa: another night attack of the monsters," Kiper wrote on Telegram, according to BBC.
Russia has been launching persistent attacks on Odesa, a key hub for exporting grain, sinceon Monday amid Kyiv's grinding efforts to retake its occupied territories.
In one such case in downtown Odesa, some people became trapped in their apartments as a result of the damage caused by the attack, which left rubble strewn in the street and partly blocking the road, and damage to power lines.
Svitlana Molcharova, 85, was rescued by emergency service workers. But after she received first medical aid, she refused to leave her destroyed apartment.
"I will stay here," she said to the emergency service worker who advised her to leave.
"I woke up when the ceiling started to fall on me. I rushed into the corridor," said Ivan Kovalenko, 19, another resident of the building. He came to Odesa having fled the city of Mykolaiv in search of a safer place to live after his house was destroyed.
"That's how I lost my home in Mykolaiv, and here, I lost my rented apartment. "
In his home, the ceiling partially collapsed, the balcony came off the side of the building, and all the windows were blown out.
The Transfiguration Cathedral, one of the most important and largest Orthodox Cathedrals in Odesa, was severely damaged.
In a video posted to social media by the city council, Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov could be seen walking through rubble inside the church, BBC News reported.
After the fires were put out, volunteers donned hard hats, shovels and brooms at the cathedral to begin removing rubble, combing through to salvage any church artifacts — under the watchful gaze of the saints whose paintings remained intact.
Local officials said that the icon of the patroness of the city had been retrieved from under the rubble.
"The destruction is enormous, half of the cathedral is now roofless," said Archdeacon Andrii Palchuk, as cathedral workers brought documents and valuable items out of the building, the floor of which was inundated with water used by firefighters to extinguish the fire.
Palchuk said the damage was caused by a direct hit from a Russian missile that penetrated the building down to the basement and caused significant damage. Two people who were inside at the time of the strike were wounded.
"But with God's help, we will restore it," he said, bursting into tears.
The cathedral belongs to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which has been accused of links to Russia. The church has insisted that it's loyal to Ukraine, has denounced the Russian invasion from the start and has even declared its independence from Moscow.
But Ukrainian security agencies have claimed that some in the Ukrainian church have maintained close ties with Moscow. They've raided numerous holy sites of the church and later posted photos of rubles, Russian passports and leaflets with messages from the Moscow patriarch as proof that some church officials have been loyal to Russia.
Odesa's historic center was designated an endangered World Heritage Site by UNESCO earlier this year despite Russian opposition.
Russia's Defense Ministry said Sunday that Russian forces had attacked sites in Odesa, "where terrorist acts against the Russian Federation were being prepared."
The ministry said in a statement that the strikes were carried out with sea- and air-based long-range high-precision weapons, and that there are "foreign mercenaries" at the targeted sites.
In a later statement, the ministry denied that its attacks had struck the Transfiguration Cathedral, claiming that the destruction of the cathedral was likely due to "the fall of a Ukrainian anti-aircraft guided missile."
In contrast to Russia's claims, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church said that the attack had been a direct strike, writing on Facebook that "a Russian rocket hit the central altar."
Earlier Russian attacks this week crippled significant parts of export facilities in Odesa and nearby Chornomorsk and destroyed 60,000 tons of grain, according to Ukraine's Agriculture Ministry.
The attacks come days after President Vladimir Putin, a wartime deal that enabled Ukraine's exports to reach many countries facing the threat of hunger.
Putin vowed to retaliate against Kyiv for an attack Monday on the crucial Kerch Bridge linking Russia with the Crimean Peninsula, which the Kremlin illegally annexed in 2014.
In other developments:
– Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko were meeting on Sunday in St. Petersburg, two days after Moscow warned Poland that any aggression against its neighbor and ally Belarus would be considered an attack on Russia.
– Putin announced at the start of the meeting that talks would also take place on Monday, and declared that Kyiv's counteroffensive had failed.
– Lukashenko said that Wagner troops, who launched joint drills with the Belarusian military on Thursday, almost a month after their short-lived rebellion against Moscow, wanted to go west "on an excursion to Warsaw, to Rzeszow" in Poland, but that Belarus would not allow them to relocate.
– Kharkiv regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov reported Sunday morning that two people were killed in Russian strikes on the northeastern province on Saturday, when Russia attacked populated areas of the Kharkiv, Chuhuiv, Kupiansk and Izium districts.
– Donetsk regional Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said Sunday that four residents of the eastern region were killed and 11 wounded in attacks the previous day.
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N. Korea slams S. Korea-US-Japan summit as 'Asian version of NATO'By Yonhap
Published : 2023-08-24 21:38:45
North Korea on Thursday denounced the trilateral agreement among South Korea, the United States, and Japan as "the Asian version of NATO," and the US scheme to encircle Russia and China.
Pyongyang's defense minister, Kang Sun-nam, issued a statement after the leaders of Seoul, Washington and Tokyo held a trilateral summit at Camp David last week, and agreed to beef up cooperation to deal with North Korea's nuclear and missile threats.
"The recent confab brought to light the US sinister intention to lay big siege to China and Russia by tightly binding the hands and feet of Japan and the ROK (Republic of Korea), the primary bullet shield for realizing its greedy ambition for world domination, to the Asian version of NATO," read the English statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency, referring to South Korea's official name, the Republic of Korea.
It was the first statement by a high-ranking North Korean official following an anonymous commentary that ran on the state media two days earlier accusing the trilateral summit of adopting a series of documents to "detail, plan and formulate" nuclear war provocations.
Kang slammed Washington for "driving the Ukraine crisis to the brink of world nuclear war" by sending weapons, including F-16 fighter jets, to Ukraine, and for slandering "the normal cooperation between sovereign states in the field of national defense for peace and security," in its thinly-veiled response to rumors over Pyongyang's arms trade with Russia.
The defense chief said the North will "resolutely take the overwhelming and preemptive armed counteraction," and "redouble the militant friendship and solidarity with Russia" to fight against their common enemy.
It was seen as the North's latest efforts to boost ties with China and Russia against Seoul forging stronger security cooperation with Washington and Tokyo amid the Russia-Ukraine war and intensifying China-US rivalry.
The statement came after the North's second attempt to put a spy satellite into space failed, three months after its first launch crashed into the sea. (Yonhap)
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Greece’s ruling New Democracy party scored a crushing victory in parliamentary elections Sunday but fell short of winning an outright majority in a vote dominated by the cost-of-living crisis, a wiretapping scandal and anger over the country’s deadliest-ever train crash.
With more than 99% of votes counted, ruling center-right party of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, surpassed all expectations garnering more than 40% of the vote in a result he described as a “political earthquake.”
His main opposition, Alexis Tsipras’s centre-left Syriza party, suffered major losses, coming in second with just over 20% of the vote.
However, Mitsotakis did not win enough votes to secure a single-party government. The vote was held under a new proportional representation system that requires a threshold of around 45%.
Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou will now give the top three parties up to three days to form a coalition, though Mitsotakis has already indicated he’s not interested in sharing power.
“Without a doubt, the political earthquake that occurred today calls on us all to speed up the process for a definitive government solution so our country can have an experienced hand at its helm as soon as possible,” Mitsotakis told jubilant New Democracy supporters massed outside party headquarters in Athens.
If he fails to form a coalition, a caretaker government will be sworn in and a second vote will take place in late June or early July. That round will be held under different rules requiring the winning party to achieve just 37% of the votes.
Greece’s economic future on the ballot
Greeks headed to the polls with the future of the economy and their strained personal finances topping their priorities.
New Democracy’s bid for a second term focused on the country’s successful economic recovery since coming to power in 2019 with Mitsotakis portraying himself as a safe pair of hands to further boost growth.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” Mitsotakis told CNN while on the campaign trail. “We were laggards when it came to growth back in 2019 and now we are one of the best-performing economies in the eurozone.”
The country’s economy has staged a stunning turnaround in the last decade, and is now on the brink of returning to investment grade on the global market for the first time since it lost market access in 2010.
Significantly for the elections though, the country’s financial gains have not yet been felt by many Greeks struggling with high inflation and living costs.
A belt-tightening financial crisis throughout the 2010s saw the country’s GDP slashed by a quarter and people’s salaries and pensions severely cut leading thousands to the breadline.
Asking for a second chance is main opposition leader Alexis Tsipras, who came to power in 2015 promising radical change that saw bank runs and capital controls fall short of convincing voters.
“Greeks did not vote feeling optimistic,” says political analyst Petros Ioannides, managing partner of aboutpeople pollsters. “Neither of the two main parties are new to the scene. They have both been in government during the last 10 years,” he said.
“In 2015 people voted for change, and a newcomer prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, and there was hope in that. In 2019 there was a different kind of hope, a yearning for a return to stability, again with a first-time prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
“In these elections, the parties and leaders are known and so are their perceived shortcomings.”
Backdrop to election
The elections also took place in the shadow of a wiretapping scandal in which the government was accused of spying on opposition politicians and journalists, raising overall concerns over the rule of law.
The turmoil, which one political party referred to as “Greek Watergate,” forced a number of high-profile departures.
But potentially, the most severe blow for the government came in the form of a head-on train collision that killed 57 people in February, many of them university students.
The country’s deadliest railway disaster saw tens of thousands of people take to the streets across Greece, venting their anger against corruption and chronic lack of infrastructure. It also pushed some voters away from established parties.
Young protesters were seen on national television crying, saying they felt betrayed by their politicians. Out of a total of 9.8 million registered voters, there were around 440,000 first-time voters in this election, and many may have been influenced by the rail disaster.
What next?
Despite not gaining enough votes in the first round, New Democracy has indicated that it does not want to enter a coalition government.
The most likely scenario is that a caretaker government will be sworn in and a second vote will take place, most likely, in early July.
This vote will take place under a bonus system that benefits the winning party by giving it a bonus of up to 50 seats in parliament calculated on a sliding scale depending on the percentage of votes won.
Wolfgango Piccoli, co-president at financial advisory firm Teneo, said markets and investors are looking for strong leadership and political stability, and would prefer a single-party government.
“A coalition government would raise concern about political stability. That would certainly increase the risk from a market perspective that there will be bickering and not much will get done,” he added.
With many Greeks having already factored in a second ballot, analysts say some of Sunday’s voters chose to vote for smaller parties, to show their discontent with the political establishment.
They are expected to rally behind the main parties in a second election where they will want to see a strong government emerge. | Europe Politics |
Federal Labor must make crucial decisions on the future role of gas in Australia – and of the powerful fossil fuel lobby pushing against the progress of the energy transition – or risk missing the opportunity of a generation to electrify the nation.
In a speech to the Smart Energy Conference in Sydney on Thursday, Greens leader Adam Bandt said Labor was faced with a number of increasingly urgent calls on gas that would determine the speed of electrification in Australia, which he said had been turned into a petrol state.
The Albanese government is coming under increasing pressure, both politically and from energy industry experts and heavyweights, to throw its full weight behind electrification – of homes, businesses and transport – as a huge economic and climate action opportunity.
According to Rewiring Australia chief scientist and co-founder Saul Griffith, electrifying everything and powering it with solar will remove 40 per cent of Australia’s domestic economy emissions and save the average household $3000-5000 per year – a major plus in a cost-of-living crisis.
But as Bandt put it on Thursday, the plan to get electrification into people’s homes also requires a plan for getting gas out, and that is where political progress is getting bogged.
“Australia’s opportunity is to electrify our homes and businesses and export our renewable energy overseas,” Bandt told the conference.
“The opportunity of a generation, to truly stand on our own two feet, and to tackle the climate crisis.
“But we may be about to blow it.”
As the Greens leader explained, that’s because despite repeated climate science warnings against any new fossil fuel exploration; despite the natural decline of gas in homes and the obvious climate and economic imperatives to getting off gas, there’s still a huge pull in the other direction from Australia’s powerful fossil fuel lobby groups.
“We’re witnessing the last gasp of gas. And like a cornered animal, they will fight tooth and nail to slow down the electrification transition,” Bandt told the conference.
As RenewEconomy has reported, this bid to slow down what now looks like an inevitable transition away from gas has included an electrification “cost shock” media offensive, based on highly questionable modelling.
“So now, the Greens, together with everyone in this room and everyone who wants to see electrification fast-tracked, needs to push Labor again to make the right decisions at this crucial inflection point.”
Bandt says this includes decisions about the future of the gas code of conduct, the gas tax, new gas fields and the level of support for businesses and households to get off gas, all of which are expected to be made in coming weeks and months.
“Labor promised to end the climate wars. But the climate wars are not between the Liberals and Labor, or between us and Labor. They never have been.
“The climate wars are the people, and the planet, against the coal and gas corporations and their political representatives.
“It must now be all shoulders to the wheel to ensure Labor picks the right side, and stops trying to walk both sides of the fence.”
Bandt pointed to data that shows that in 2020 Qatar collected approximately $26.6 billion in annual royalties from LNG, while Australia exporting about the same amount of gas only collected less than $1 billion from the PRRT.
He said that in one year, 27 big gas corporations brought in $77 billion of revenue but paid no tax. “I’m willing to wager that in many years, each of you individually in this room may have paid more tax than many gas multinationals,” he said.
Research conducted by Daniel Bleakley, now lead reporter at The Driven, while at The Australia Institute shows that Australia has reaped little from its fossil fuel exports, in sharp contract to Norway which has ensured its citizens have gained from the profits.
This graph above shows the revenues from the oil and gas sectors (blue) for Australia (top left) and Norway (top right), and the government share of the revenue (orange).
“Australia exports 75% of the gas that we produce – instead of new gas fields we need to tax the profits of the big coal and gas corporations and use it to drive the transition,” Bandt said.
“We do not need new gas to “keep the lights on”, as Labor likes to argue. We are the world’s third largest exporter of LNG, and there’s already enough uncontracted gas in the system. We need more renewables.
“Gas is as dirty as coal. It’s not a transition fuel. It’s poison. But yet, gas still calls the shots.”
The rallying cry from the Greens follows a similar call, on Wednesday, from the independent member for Wentworth, Allegra Spender, to establish “a one-stop shop” for electrification” to help households navigate the laborious process of electrifying and installing EV chargers.
Spender – who formed part of a powerful crossbench that pushed the government to include a cap on emissions or an explicit objective that they must come down under the Safeguard Mechanism – also called on the government to deliver on its promise of implementing fuel efficiency standards for light vehicles.
“Every day without a fuel efficiency standard in place families will continue to feel the pain of sky high fuel prices; transport emissions will continue to rise; and the queue of people who want to go electric but can’t will get longer,” Spender told the Smart Energy Conference.
“So let’s not pretend the government are out of the slow lane just yet.
“At best, they’ve got the indicators on – looking nervously in the rear-view mirror for the thumbs up from the fossil fuel lobby.” | Australia Politics |
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Opponents of French President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform failed on Thursday to pass a repeal bill, in their latest effort to maintain the retirement age at 62.
Centrist opposition group LIOT decided to withdraw its bill a couple of hours after the heated debate started because the text had been emptied of its initial content.
Macron’s unpopular reform provides that the legal retirement age will go up to 64 by 2030.
Bertrand Pancher, from the LIOT group, said “this pension reform has been enacted, but at what cost? At what cost for the more modest of our fellow citizens who will suffer more from the impact of this reform? … And at what cost for our democracy, our social cohesion?”
The repeal bill was supported by the left and the far-right.
Macron’s centrist party doesn’t have a majority in the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, but it allied with some Republican lawmakers to push back the opposition’s efforts.
As a result, the key article stipulating the retirement age was removed from the bill when it was reviewed by the Social Affairs Committee last week.
READ MORE: French President Macron says he hears people’s anger but insists pension change was needed
Leftist lawmakers said they would now prompt a confidence vote, to be held at the beginning of next week. Macron’s government has survived previous confidence votes.
Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally group of lawmakers, said the government doesn’t have a majority on the bill either at the Assembly or among the French people. “You are afraid of the vote, yes it’s true, but because in fact you are afraid of the people. The consequence is that your pension reform is illegitimate,” she said.
Macron’s move to raise the retirement age — and force the measure through parliament without a vote — inflamed public emotions and triggered some of France’s biggest demonstrations in years. But the intensity of anger over the pension reform has ebbed since the last big protests on May 1, and since the measure became law in April.
Turnout at protests on Tuesday in Paris and across France was lower than at previous demonstrations.
In recent weeks, Macron has sought to focus public attention on some other changes he promised to re-industrialize France, improve working conditions and finalize a new immigration bill. Yet with no majority at parliament, his government is expected to keep struggling to pass most measures.
Some more consensual texts, however, have been approved in recent weeks by the National Assembly.
That includes a key bill to increase France’s military spending for the period of 2024-2030 by more than a third compared with the previous timeframe, as a consequence of the war in Ukraine. It was approved Wednesday by a large majority, with 408 lawmakers in favor and 87 against. The bill is now heading to the Senate, where it is expected to be approved.
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Susie Blann, Associated Press
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The Pentagon is set to hold a briefing Tuesday as Ukrainian officials report that their air defenses downed 32 of 35 Shahed exploding drones launched by Russia overnight. Most of them were in the Kyiv region, officials said, and part of a broader bombardment that exposed gaps in the country’s air protection after almost 16 months of war.
The briefing is scheduled to begin at 2:00 p.m. ET. Watch it live in the player above.
Russian forces mostly targeted the region around the Ukrainian capital in a nighttime drone attack lasting around three hours, officials said, but Ukrainian air defenses in the area shot down about two dozen of them.
The attack was part of a wider bombardment of Ukrainian regions that extended as far as the Lviv region in the west of the country, near Poland.
The Shahed drones made it all the way to Lviv because of the inability of air defense assets to cover such a broad area, Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said.
Air defense systems are mostly dedicated to protecting major cities, key infrastructure facilities, including nuclear power plants, and the front line, he said.
READ MORE: Ukraine, Russia both suffering heavy casualties amid Kyiv’s counteroffensive, UK assesses
“There is a general lack of air defense assets to cover a country like Ukraine with a dome like Israel has,” he said, in a reference to Israel’s Iron Dome aerial defense system.
In the Lviv region, the Russian strike hit a critical infrastructure facility, starting a fire, according to Lviv Gov. Maksym Kozytskyi.
Russia also struck the southern Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine with ballistic missiles.
Ukraine’s air defenses have been reinforced with sophisticated weapons from its Western allies, allowing it a higher success rate recently against incoming drones and missiles.
Previously, a winter bombardment by Russia damaged Ukraine’s power supply, though speedy repairs blunted that Kremlin effort.
The latest aerial assaults behind Ukraine’s front line coincided with the early stages of a Ukrainian counteroffensive, as it aims to dislodge the Kremlin’s forces from territory occupied since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The counteroffensive has come up against heavily mined terrain and reinforced defensive fortifications, according to Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces.
Russia has also mustered a large number of reserves, he said in a post accompanying a video of him visiting front-line positions with other senior officers.
Heavy battles are taking place in eastern Ukraine, around Bakhmut, Lyman, Avdiivka and Marinka, the Ukrainian armed forces said. Russia shelled 15 cities and villages in the eastern Donetsk region, wounding five civilians, including three in Chasiv Yar near Bakhmut, according to Ukraine’s presidential office.
“Despite the fierce resistance of the occupiers, our soldiers are doing everything possible to liberate Ukrainian territory. The operation continues as planned,” Zaluzhnyi’s post said.
Russia has relocated about 20,000 troops from the areas in the Kherson region after flooding from the recent Kakhovka Dam collapse made it impossible for Ukraine to conduct an offensive there, Ukrainian military analyst Roman Svitan said.
The flooding removed the need for the Kremlin’s forces to protect about 300 kilometers (180 miles) of the more than 1,000-kilometer (680-mile) front line, according to Svitan, and allowed Moscow to increase its military density in the Zaporizhzhia and the Donetsk regions where intensive fighting is occurring.
WATCH: Experts warn of humanitarian and environmental crisis following Ukraine dam breach
Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to breach the dam earlier this month while under Russian control, according to information obtained by The Associated Press.
Svitan said the Zaporizhzhia region appears to be the focus of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, seeking to smash through Russia’s land corridor with the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
In other developments, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, known by its acronym SVR, invited Ukrainian diplomats stationed abroad to come to Russia with their families to avoid returning to Ukraine. It claimed many Ukrainian diplomats are unwilling to return home after their tours and want refugee status in the European Union and Asian countries where they worked.
Also, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu alleged that Ukraine plans to use U.S.-made HIMARS and U.K.-provided Storm Shadow missiles to attack Russian territory, including Crimea. He warned that using those missiles on targets outside the current war zone would “trigger immediate strikes on the decision-making centers on the territory of Ukraine.” He didn’t elaborate and didn’t provide any evidence to support his claim.
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The IDF ordered civilians in Khan Yunis, the city where Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is believed to be hiding, to evacuate on Friday morning as the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas ended, warning "the city of Khan Yunis is a dangerous combat zone," according to Palestinian reports.
On Friday morning, Hamas renewed rocket fire toward southern Israel and failed to provide an adequate list of hostages to release to extend the ceasefire deal, with Israel announcing that this stood in violation of the ceasefire agreement and that the war was resuming.
Over an hour before the ceasefire was set to end at 7 a.m., a rocket was fired from Gaza toward southern Israel, with a second round of rocket fire reported a few minutes before the end of the ceasefire.
After the ceasefire ended, intense clashes were reported in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City in northern Gaza, with Palestinian media reporting Israeli airstrikes throughout Gaza as well. The clashes expanded to additional areas in northern and central Gaza and Israeli airstrikes continued throughout the Strip.
مصادر محلية: طيران الاحتلال يقصف منزلاً في جباليا pic.twitter.com/wNlIExKURq— شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) December 1, 2023
Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry reported that at least 32 Palestinians were killed and others had been injured in Israeli airstrikes throughout the Gaza Strip on Friday morning.
The IDF dropped leaflets over southern Gaza warning residents of several neighborhoods in Khan Yunis to evacuate to shelter areas in Rafah, warning "the city of Khan Yunis is a dangerous combat zone," according to Palestinian reports.
الاحتلال يلقي مناشير لسكان عدة مناطق في خان يونس ( الجنوب الآمن ) للتوجه إلى مدينة رفح واعتبار خان يونس منطقة قتال اللهم سلم pic.twitter.com/3JiVoIgrhI— REMAN #طوفان_الاقصى (@reemiiiii04) December 1, 2023
In mid-November, Israeli media reported that Sinwar and the commander of the Hamas's al-Qassam Brigades, Mohammed Deif, were believed to be hiding in Khan Yunis.
Mediators had been working to extend the ceasefire for an additional day overnight by reaching an agreement on a further release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, but those efforts appeared to have failed.
Shortly after the ceasefire ended, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit stated on Friday morning that "Hamas violated the agreement and additionally fired toward Israeli territory. The IDF has renewed combat with the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip."
The Prime Minister's Office stated on Friday morning that "The terrorist organization Hamas-ISIS violated the agreement, did not live up to its commitment to release all the kidnapped women today, and launched rockets at the citizens of Israel."
"With the return to fighting we emphasize: The Israeli government is committed to achieving the goals of the war - to release our hostages, eliminate Hamas, and ensure that Gaza will never again pose a threat to the residents of Israel."
Home Front Command reinstates restrictions in southern and northern Israel
The Home Front Command tightened restrictions for communities near the the Gaza border and the Lebanese and Syrian borders on Friday morning shortly before the ceasefire ended.
In communities near the Gaza border, gatherings in open areas were restricted to 10 people in open areas and up to 50 people indoors. Businesses will only be allowed to operate in they have a shelter and no schools will operate.
In the western Lachish region, some of the towns in the southern Golan Heights, all of the towns in the northern Golan Heights, and towns and cities along the confrontation line on the northern border, gatherings in open areas were restricted to up to 30 people outdoors and up to 300 people indoors. Businesses will only be allowed to operate in they have a shelter and only schools with easily accessible shelters will be allowed operate.
In many cities in central and southern Israel, only schools which have an easily accessible shelter will be allowed to operate.
The Holon municipality in central Israel announced on Friday morning that schools would not operate on Friday due to the end of the ceasefire.
After the fighting resumed, Highway four from Zikim southward and Highway 34 from Nir Am northward were closed to traffic.
Hamas blames US for giving Israel 'green light' to resume war
The Hamas-run government media office in Gaza responded to the end of the ceasefire, accusing the US of "giving [Israel] the green light to continue the war without any regard to the laws of war and international and humanitarian laws."
"Our Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves by all means, and they have the right to gain their freedom and independence, establish their Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, and completely remove the occupation from their lands in accordance with international and UN laws." | Middle East Politics |
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country's navy would become “a component of the state nuclear deterrence,” state media said Tuesday, as the U.S., South Korea and Japan held a trilateral naval exercise to deal with North Korea’s evolving nuclear threats.
The U.S. and South Korean militaries have been separately holding summer bilateral exercises since last week. North Korea views such U.S.-involved training as an invasion rehearsal, though Washington and its partners maintain their drills are defensive.
Kim said in a speech marking the country’s Navy Day on Monday that the waters off the Korean Peninsula have been made unstable “with the danger of a nuclear war” because of U.S.-led hostilities, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.
Kim said that military units of each service would be given new weaponry in line with the government’s decision to expand the operation of tactical nuclear weapons. He said the navy
This suggests North Korea would deploy new nuclear-capable missiles to its navy and other military services.
He also called for his military to be constantly ready for combat to thwart its rivals’ plots to invade his country.
Kim accused the U.S. of conducting “more frantic” naval drills with its allies and deploying strategic assets in waters around the Korean Peninsula. Kim also cited a recent U.S.-South Korean-Japanese summit where an agreement to boost defense cooperation was reached to counter North Korea’s nuclear program. Kim called President Joe Biden, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida “the gang bosses” of the three countries.
“The prevailing situation requires our navy to put all its efforts into rounding off the war readiness to maintain the constant combat alertness and get prepared to break the enemy’s will for war in contingency,” Kim said.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry expressed deep regret over Kim’s use of “very rude language” to slander the South Korean, U.S. and Japanese leaders. Spokesperson Lim Soosuk told reporters that North Korea must immediately stop acts that raise tensions with “reckless threats and provocation.”
Tuesday’s South Korean-U.S.-Japanese drills in international waters off South Korea’s southern Jeju island involved naval destroyers from the three countries. The training was aimed at mastering procedures for detecting, tracking and sharing information about incoming North Korean missiles, South Korea’s navy said in a statement.
The U.S. and South Korean militaries began the 11-day bilateral drills on Aug. 21. The annual Ulchi Freedom Shield training is a computer-simulated command post exercise. But they included field exercises this year.
North Korea typically responds to U.S.-South Korean military drills with its own missile tests. Last Thursday, its second attempt to launch a spy satellite into space failed. The day the drills began, KCNA said Kim had observed the test-firings of strategic cruise missiles.
Since the beginning of 2022, North Korea has carried out more than 100 weapons tests, many of them involving nuclear-capable missiles designed to strike the U.S., South Korea and Japan. Many experts say North Korea ultimately wants to use its boosted military capabilities to wrest greater concessions from the U.S.
The North’s testing spree has forced the U.S. and South Korea to expand their drills, resume trilateral training involving Japan and enhance “regular visibility” of U.S. strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula. In July, the United States deployed a nuclear-armed submarine to South Korea for the first time in four decades.
Earlier this month, the leaders of the U.S., South Korea and Japan held their first-ever stand-alone trilateral summit at Camp David. During the meeting, they announced they intend to put into operation by year’s end the sharing of real-time missile warning data on North Korea and hold annual trilateral exercises.
Kim has been pushing hard to expand his nuclear arsenal and introduce a slew of sophisticated weapons systems.
State media photos showed Kim visiting the navy headquarters with his daughter, reportedly named Ju Ae and aged about 10. It was her first public appearance since mid-May. Kim has brought her to a series of public events since November, sparking speculation about her political status.
South Korean officials say Kim hasn’t anointed her as his heir. They believe Kim likely attempts to use his daughter’s public appearance as a way to show his people that one of his children would one day inherit his power in what would be the country’s third hereditary power transfer. | Asia Politics |
Treasurer Jim Chalmers asked about Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe’s future during live interview with CNBC
The Treasurer was asked on US television if he is “happy” with the job Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe has been doing, given the amount of pressure he’s been under.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has been forced to address Reserve Bank Governor Philip’s performance during an interview on an American television.
The RBA boss has faced intense scrutiny in recent months over comments made in 2021 when he said he did not expect the cash rate to rise until 2024.
Australia has since seen nine consecutive rate rises, increasing the cash rate from 0.1 per cent to 3.35 per cent.
Mr Chalmers, who is in India for a G20 meeting, was asked by CNBC’s Tanvir Gill if he is “happy” with the job Mr Lowe and the RBA has been doing.
The Treasurer said Mr Lowe has taken multiple opportunities to explain his comments, adding the Government won’t interfere with decisions made by the bank.
“Governor Lowe has explained that commentary that he provided at the time,” he said.
“He's taken a number of opportunities to explain where he was coming from in those instances.
“There's a long-standing convention in Australian politics for treasurers of either political persuasion not to second guess or take shots at the Governor of the independent Reserve Bank.
“I think that's an important thing. I cherish and respect the independence of the Reserve Bank, and I work with Governor Lowe in other areas.”
Productive discussions with key partners at #G20India about our shared challenges and ways we can work together to address inflation â the number one challenge facing the global economy and our own economy #auspol #auecon @g20org pic.twitter.com/Z1t9FBHpZw— Jim Chalmers MP (@JEChalmers) February 25, 2023
Governor Lowe apologised for the communication bungle in November last year, he defended the statements as having included caveats.
“Well, I’m certainly sorry if people listen to what we’d said and then acted on ... what we said, and now regret what they have done,” Dr Lowe said.
“So that’s regrettable. I’m sorry that that happened. I’m certainly sorry if people listen to what we’d said and then acted on that.”
Earlier on Sky News Australia Mr Chalmers indicated that a decision on Governor Lowe’s future will be announced in the middle of the year, and will depend on the direction the government wants for the bank going forward.
"We'll come to a view on the Governorship of the Reserve Bank closer to the middle of the year, after we get the Reserve Bank review at the end of March and consider its recommendations, but the review and the appointment won't be about any one decision or set of decisions," Mr Chalmers told Sunday Agenda.
"It will be about who is best placed to take the Bank forward into the future, based on what we run with . . . but that doesn't change [the fact] I have a very good, very respectful relationship with Phil Lowe.
“I have [had] for a long time, he's got a difficult job to do, get on top of this inflation without crunching the economy."
Mr Lowe confirmed in Senate Estimates he would serve out his term as Governor, which expires on September 17 this year, adding it would be a "very bad outcome" for the board to have him resign. | Australia Politics |
Resolving rail disputes would have cost less than strikes, admits minister The UK economy has lost more money due to rail strikes than it would have if the government settled the dispute with unions months ago, a minister has admitted.Rail minister Huw Merriman told MPs the row has "ended up costing more" than a resolution but insisted the "overall impact" on all public sector pay deals must be considered.Transport Select Committee member Ben Bradshaw put it to the minister that "we're talking of a cost to the government of over a billion (pounds) so far" from the impact of strikes, which have disrupted services for several months.He asked: "That would easily be enough money to have solved this dispute months ago, wouldn't it?"Mr Merriman replied: "If you look at it in that particular lens, then absolutely, it's actually ended up costing more than would have been the case if it was just settled in that part."However, he said it was important to look at "the overall impact on the public sector pay deals", with multiple industries striking over pay in the face of soaring inflation.The RMT has now written to business leaders accusing the government of using them as "collateral damage" following Mr Merriman's admission.In the letter to companies who have been impacted by the rail strikes, RMT general secretary Mick Lynch wrote: "Today the government admitted that prolonging the rail dispute was part of a deliberate strategy that was dictated by the government's concern to keep down the pay of rail workers, nurses, ambulance workers and teachers."The wider economy and the business interests who relied on pre-Christmas trade were just collateral damage in that policy."Mr Lynch repeated his accusation that the government had interfered at the eleventh hour to scupper a deal between RMT and Network Rail to end strikes in December.You can read more from political reporter Faye Brown here: Talks with education unions to continue this week Discussions between teaching union leaders and the government are set to continue. Teachers are set to strike for seven days in February and March in an ongoing row over pay. A Department for Education spokesperson said a further meeting was held with union leaders this morning.They said Education Secretary Gillian Keegan had "reiterated that strike action would be highly damaging to children's education, particularly following the disruption experienced over the past two years". 'No light at the end of the tunnel': What a week in the NHS looks like The NHS is facing a crisis. Three years of a pandemic and even more of underfunding have seen waiting lists and ambulance delays hit record highs, while some staff strike for better pay.On the Sky News Daily with Niall Paterson, using voice notes from the frontline, NHS staff explain how they deal with the realities of providing care.Plus, Niall speaks to Helen Buckingham, director of strategy at the Nuffield Trust, and Sally Warren, director of policy at the King's Fund, about knock-on effects the NHS crisis has on the social care system.Click to subscribe to the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts Health secretary appears to rule out 10% pay rise for nurses In further comments during 48 hours of strike action, Steve Barclay has insisted a 10% pay rise for nurses is "not affordable".The health secretary said the independent pay review body should be dealing with disputes between health unions and the government.When asked how he would avoid a further wave of strikes in February, he pointed again to the independent pay review body. Mr Barclay said a 10% pay rise could cost a further £3.6bn a year and take away money from patient services. He added this had to be balanced with the needs of teachers and train drivers who have also been striking. The health secretary said he was working "constructively" with unions and acknowledged a new pay process will start in April. Mum whose son is in induced coma joins picket line to represent his nurse Retiree Anne Gadsden is at the picket line outside UCL Hospital in northwest London for a particularly heartbreaking reason. "I've come here to represent the nurses looking after my child," she explained. "He's in intensive care... in an induced coma. So I'm here because she's looking after my son. She can't come so I'm here."Ms Gadsden called the NHS "the most wonderful thing in the world" and said that it was "going under".Asked if her son's care has been affected, she said it was the "quality of people" looking after him that was "holding it together". British North Sea's biggest oil and gas producer to cut UK jobs in wake of windfall tax The largest producer of British North Sea oil and gas plans to cut UK jobs due to the government's windfall tax.A spokesperson for Harbour Energy confirmed the outfit was considering the cuts at its North Sea hub of Aberdeen.The windfall tax was introduced by the Conservatives last year to bring in extra tax receipts from the money being made as energy prices rose.A 25% tariff was placed on the "extraordinary profits" being made - which was then raised to 35%.This means taxes are at 75% - one of the highest rates for the sector in the world.The Labour Party wanted the tax to go further, and be backdated further.The Habour Energy spokesperson said the extent of the cuts will be consulted on.Some Conservative backbenchers warned the windfall tax would discourage investment in the North Sea.You can read more here: Patients the 'losers' during industrial action, says health secretary Steve Barclay has argued patients are losing out because of two days of nurses' strikes. Speaking on a visit to Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow, he said: "I am disappointed in the strikes. The losers in that are the patients."He added the government has been "working with the trade unions" but its "focus is on the patients and how we get innovation into the NHS".As we mentioned in our 14.39 post, recent polling shows the majority of the public blames the government for the length of the dispute. Public doesn't believe Sunak can deliver on his goals, polling suggests At the beginning of the month, Rishi Sunak delivered a speech in which he laid out his five goals to the public.But polling from Ipsos, carried out for The Economist, shows that most people do not believe the PM can deliver on them.They also do not seem to think Sir Keir could reach the targets - but do seem to think the Labour leader might be better at affecting change.A total of 1,141 people were asked about the pledges.The promises from the PM were each split into two parts - the action and the consequence.For example, pledge one consists of a pledge to half inflation with the consequence of easing the cost of living.Take a look below to see how Mr Sunak and Sir Keir compare: Senior backbencher says Tories risk defeat on scale of 1997 shellacking if Johnson 'acolytes' keep calling for his return A senior Conservative backbencher has told his party they risk a defeat on the scale of 1997 if Boris Johnson's "acolytes" keep trying to return him to power.David Davis has written for The Independent, warning his party of the consequences of their actions.The 1997 election saw Tony Blair sweep aside the Tories in a landslide win.The Conservatives were left with just 165 MPs, and it took them years to rebuild. It was 13 years before they returned to government, and 18 before they had a parliamentary majority.Mr Davis wrote: "After the turbulence of last year, the most common question put to me by young MPs is: 'Will the next election be a repeat of 1997?' "My answer used to be 'no, the gap with Labour is wide but not deep. There is no enthusiasm for them and we can win it back.'"That was until Boris's acolytes started calling for his return. Now, I add: 'At least it won't be 1997, unless you make it so.'"He added: "The papers in the last few weeks have been full of Boris's old disciples predicting armageddon at the polls in a way that makes you think that they are wishing for it to be true. "This seems to be just so that their hero can make a triumphant return."Mr Davis points out that both Mr Johnson and Liz Truss "presided over a 10% long-term decline in our standing", and that the Uxbridge MP "famously avoided any hard decisions like the plague"."His share of the decline was a straight judgement on his character by the public, largely around partygate."Polling conducted around the time he left office gave him a net popularity rating of -53 per cent, one of the worst ratings for a prime minister in modern times."Mr Davis says Mr Johnson "is not going to be the electoral asset that his acolytes claim", and that "the continual drumbeat calling for his return is certainly going to fail, but in the process it is corroding the party's chances at the next election." Only three in 10 people are against nurses' strikes - poll The latest polling suggests the majority of the public remain behind nurses during a second wave of strike action.Only three in 10 said they opposed the strikes, Ipsos said. Support was significantly higher among 2019 Labour voters, with 65% in favour - while 32% of Conservative voters agreed. Nearly three in five said the government is more at fault for the length of the industrial dispute than the nurses themselves.However, support for the latest strike action is two percentage points lower than similar walk-outs in December. Large majorities said they felt sympathy towards nurses (82%) and ambulance workers (80%), however they were most likely to feel sympathy towards NHS patients (90%). | United Kingdom Politics |
Turkey has led international diplomatic condemnation of Israel after its troops entered the Shifa hospital complex in Gaza, as the UN and aid agencies expressed concern about the impact of the Israeli operation on staff and patients.
Speaking in parliament, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, described Israel as a “terror state” that was committing war crimes and violating international law in Gaza, and he repeated his view that Hamas was not a terror organisation.
Erdoğan called on Benjamin Netanyahu to announce whether Israel had nuclear bombs or not, and claimed that the Israeli leader was finished in his post. He went on to say that Turkey would work on the international stage to ensure that Israeli settlers were recognised as terrorists.
Turkey has withdrawn diplomats from Israel in the wake of Israel’s response to the 7 October Hamas attack. Israel has never disclosed in public whether it possesses nuclear weapons, although earlier in the war against Hamas a junior minister in Netanyahu’s government stated that dropping a nuclear weapon on the Gaza Strip was an option.
Erdogan’s latest comments drew a fierce response from Israel, where the opposition leader, Yair Lapid, said: “We won’t take lessons in morality from President Erdoğan, a man with an appalling human rights record. Israel is defending itself against brutal terrorists from Hamas-Isis, some of whom have been allowed to operate under Erdoğan’s roof.”
The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, had already enraged Israel by calling on its forces to stop “killing babies”.
Israel is under pressure internationally to produce evidence that the basement of the hospital was being used as a Hamas HQ, as it has long claimed.
Troops had found weapons and “terror infrastructure” at one specific location within the hospital, a senior IDF official said. Hamas said the claim was a “blatant lie”.
The White House said on Tuesday that it possessed intelligence to show the hospital was being used by Hamas, adding that it did not support airstrikes on the hospital nor it being the venue for a firefight. Israeli officials said no fighting had taken place inside the hospital since soldiers arrived during the night.
The UN humanitarian agency chief, Martin Griffiths, said on X: “I am appalled by reports of military raid at al-Shifa hospital. The protection of newborns, patients, medical staff and all civilians must override all other concerns. Hospitals are not battlegrounds.”
The World Health Organization director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the agency had lost touch with staff at the hospital again. “We’re extremely worried for their and their patients’ safety,” he said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was “extremely concerned about the impact on sick and wounded people, medical staff, and civilians”. “All measures to avoid any consequences on them must be taken,” the ICRC said, insisting that “patients, medical staff and civilians must be at all times protected”.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees, said the agency’s operation in Gaza was on the verge of collapse. “By the end of today, around 70% of the population in Gaza won’t have access to clean water,” he said.
The French foreign ministry said France was deeply concerned about the military operations at al-Shifa. “No use of civilian infrastructure for military purposes is acceptable,” it said. “The Palestinian population should not have to pay for the crimes of Hamas, and even less so the vulnerable, wounded or sick and the humanitarian workers.”
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, urged Israel to end the “indiscriminate killing of Palestinians” in Gaza. “We demand an immediate ceasefire on the part of Israel in Gaza and strict compliance with international humanitarian law, which today is clearly not respected,” he said during a debate in parliament.
The Jordanian ministry of foreign affairs said the hospital raid was a violation of the Geneva conventions of 1949 and it held Israel “responsible for the safety of civilians and medical personnel working at the hospital”.
The Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry accused the Israeli army of having “flagrantly violated” international law by launching a military operation against the hospital and called for an international intervention to protect civilians there.
In the only bright diplomatic news, the first truck carrying a UN fuel shipment into Gaza since Israel imposed its siege crossed from Egypt on Wednesday, though it will do little to alleviate shortages that have hampered relief efforts.
The delivery was made possible by Israel giving its approval for 24,000 litres (6,340 gallons) of diesel fuel to be allowed into Gaza for UN aid distribution trucks, though not for use at hospitals, according to a humanitarian source.
“This is only 9% of what we need daily to sustain life-saving activities,” Tom White, the director of the UN relief agency in Gaza, posted on X. He confirmed that just over 23,000 litres, or half a tanker, had been received. | Middle East Politics |
More than £1.5m has been raised for the Guardian and Observer’s appeal in aid of grassroots charities working on the frontline of the cost of living crisis in some of the UK’s most deprived communities.Donations to the appeal, which closed at midnight on Sunday evening, will be shared between our two charity partners, Citizens Advice and Locality, enabling them to invest in local services from emergency food banks and warm rooms to debt and housing advice, and mental health help.A total of £1,557,000, inclusive of estimated gift aid, was raised over the 38-day campaign, making it the most successful Guardian and Observer charity appeal since 2016. More than 13,400 people donated, including several hundred readers who phoned in their donation at the annual journalists’ telethon held in December.The Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, said: “This year’s charity campaign has been truly inspiring in highlighting essential work being done all around the country in such challenging times. Thank you to the readers of the Guardian and Observer for their generosity, which means that more brilliant work will be done by brilliant people to hold their communities together.”The enterprise and commitment of our appeal partners in responding to the hardship and poverty faced by local communities has been highlighted in a series of articles and an Anywhere But Westminster short film over the past month focusing on the work of their members and branches UK-wide.Clare Moriarty, chief executive of Citizens Advice, said: “The generosity shown by Guardian and Observer readers during this year’s appeal is simply amazing. We’re extremely grateful to everyone who has supported the campaign.”She added: “Each and every day our advisers help provide a life raft to people who can no longer afford to heat their homes and put food on the table. The support given to this year’s appeal is testament to their work and crucially will enable us to continue to be there for people facing impossible choices.”Tony Armstrong, the chief executive of Locality, said: “It’s been amazing to see the extent to which this appeal has resonated with Guardian and Observer readers. The work of local community organisations has too often been undervalued or ignored.“Locality members don’t have massive budgets. What they do have is local knowledge, trust in their communities, and the tenacity to make things happen when others have written off their neighbourhoods. These are the vital skills that community organisations possess and your support will help ensure they are not lost.”It is the eighth year in a row that the Guardian and Observer’s annual charity appeal has raised more than £1m. Recent appeal causes have included climate justice, coronavirus and young people, Windrush and immigration injustice, and refugees. | United Kingdom Politics |
Behind those words, more than a dozen opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) figures — from elected representatives to officials and activists — have been arrested by police in the three weeks since the election, the party says.
Others have been targeted with violent abductions.
Among those arrested recently was opposition CCC MP and councillor, Maureen Kademaunga, who appeared in court this week on charges of attempted murder and malicious damage to property.
Her lawyer said the court decided there was no evidence against her.
“There’s a broad crackdown against the opposition, which includes the use of law enforcement and the judiciary,” human rights lawyer, Douglas Coltart, told The Associated Press.
In another incident, barely a week after being elected as a local councillor for Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, Womberaiishe Nhende and a relative were pulled out of their car by unidentified men, shot with a stun gun and handcuffed.
They were then bundled into a pickup truck and driven about 70 kilometers (more than 40 miles) outside of Harare, the capital, where they were whipped, beaten with truncheons and interrogated, and injected with an unknown substance, their lawyers say.
Nhende recounted his experience and showed his wounds in a video released by the CCC, the closest challenger to ZANU-PF in the election.
Having been questioned over what their CCC party is planning after August’s disputed and troubled national election, the ordeal ended when the two men were dumped naked near a river, the lawyers allege.
These stories aren’t new in the southern African nation, which has a long history of violence and intimidation against opposition to the ZANU-PF party during its 43-year rule.
More than 15 years ago, then-opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was photographed by the world’s media with a swollen and badly bruised face, one eye completely closed, after having been detained by police during the era of renowned autocratic leader Robert Mugabe and severely beaten.
Mnangagwa, a former guerrilla fighter known as “the crocodile,” won a second term as president last month in an election rejected by the CCC as flawed and questioned by international and regional observers, who cited numerous problems, including a climate of fear and intimidation.
That appears to still be a mainstay in Zimbabwe six years after Mugabe was ousted in a coup and replaced by Mnangagwa in 2017.
Mnangagwa and his party have repeatedly denied allegations of using repression to crush dissent.
Yet the president, who turned 81 on Friday, described the opposition’s allegations as “noises from some little boys” and threatened to imprison “anybody who wants to be nonsensical and bring chaos.”
Mnangagwa’s often-repeated assertion that Zimbabwe is a mature democracy under him is seen as a facade by many, including prominent international rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
It appears little has changed in a country that offers unrealised potential for Africa, given its rich agricultural land, mineral resources that include the continent’s biggest lithium deposits, and potential oil and gas finds.
Police announced a new bout of arrests of opposition figures last week.
CCC leader Nelson Chamisa, who lost to Mnangagwa in the presidential election, said that his party was under siege and facing a backlash.
The CCC says two of its lawmakers have recently been arrested. Other representatives were reelected last month while in detention.
Party spokesperson Promise Mkwananzi has left the country after police said they were seeking to arrest him for failing to attend a court hearing in 2019, and charged him with assault and damage to property.
CCC deputy spokesperson Gift Siziba was arrested on charges of inciting violence at a soccer game.
Amnesty has raised the case of another CCC activist, who it says was abducted and tortured in the days after the election.
The CCC and analysts say there is a clear post-election clampdown now that the international observers have left.Post published in: Featured | Africa politics |
December 13, 2022 07:15 AM RUNNING LOW, BUT NOT OUT: The Pentagon estimates that despite burning through its inventory of artillery shells and precision-guided missiles, and in some cases being forced to use unreliable 40-year-old munitions, Russia likely has enough ammunition to continue its ground offensive and aerial assault on Ukrainian infrastructure through the winter months. “We assess that at the rate of fire that Russia has been using its artillery and rocket ammunition, in terms of what we would call fully serviceable and rocket ammunition, they could probably do that until early 2023,” a senior defense official told reporters at the Pentagon on Monday. “Their stocks of fully serviceable ammunition — this would be new ammunition — are rapidly dwindling, which is probably forcing them to increasingly use ammunition in what we would consider degraded conditions,” the official said. “This essentially puts Russian forces in a position to have to make a choice about what risks it’s willing to accept in terms of increased failure rates, unpredictable performance.” The official was less specific on Russia’s remaining inventory of precision-guided munitions, such as cruise missiles, other than to say those are running low, too. “We do assess that they have used quite a bit of their stockpile and that the numbers available to them have really diminished their ability to sustain their current rate of fire when it comes to PGMs.” RUSSIAN AMMUNITION ‘RAPIDLY DWINDLING’ AS WAR DRAGS ON, US OFFICIAL SAYS ZELENSKY: ‘RUSSIA STILL HAS THEM’: In his nightly address to Ukrainians, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that with Russian missile strikes continuing to degrade the country’s energy grid, the challenge now is to get through the winter. “Every day, we add new energy forces to Ukraine. After each Russian attack, we restore the system as much as possible,” Zelensky said. “We are doing everything to bring to Ukraine as much equipment as possible, which can compensate for the damage caused by missile hits.” “So as long as they have missiles, and Russia still has them, please take seriously all warnings from the Ukrainian military command, from our air force and air alarms,” he said. “Russia has not given up its terror tactics. The absence of massive missile strikes only means that the enemy is preparing for them and can strike at any time.” Zelensky said he would be making a virtual appearance at today’s international donor conference in Paris, where dozens of countries and international organizations, under the leadership of French President Emmanuel Macron, will try to coordinate a massive relief effort to help Ukrainians survive the frigid winter months. “We will do everything to get through this winter,” he said. PUTIN PULLS PLUG ON YEAR-END PRESS CONFERENCE: It’s become a tradition in Vladimir Putin’s Russia that at the end of the year, the president holds a marathon Q&A media event and waxes on about the successes of the past year, replete with bragging about accomplishments and boasting about new weapons, all while bashing the United States and the West. Not this year. “There won’t be one before New Year,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call on Monday, adding that Putin would try to find other opportunities to talk to reporters. “This will be the first time in 10 years that Putin has not held the annual event, while the usual public phone-in also did not take place this year,” the British Defense Ministry noted in its daily Twitter update. “The cancellation is likely due to increasing concerns about the prevalence of anti-war feeling in Russia.” “Kremlin officials are almost certainly extremely sensitive about the possibility that any event attended by Putin could be hijacked by unsanctioned discussion about the ‘special military operation,’” the assessment said. In an update delivered to the House of Commons, British Defense Minister Ben Wallace said that as the war approaches its 10th month, more than 100,000 Russian troops are either dead, injured, or deserted and Russia has lost 4,500 armored vehicles, 63 fixed-wing aircraft, 70 helicopters, 150 drones, 12 ships, and over 600 artillery systems. “President Putin’s three-day war, or 'special operation,' turns out to have been a disaster for him and his army,” Wallace said. PUTIN'S PRESS CONFERENCE CANCELLATION COMES AS RUSSIA STRUGGLES IN UKRAINE WAR Good Tuesday morning and welcome to Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense, written and compiled by Washington Examiner National Security Senior Writer Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre) and edited by Stacey Dec. Email here with tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. Sign up or read current and back issues at DailyonDefense.com. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email and we’ll add you to our list. And be sure to follow us on Twitter: @dailyondefense. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP OR READ BACK ISSUES OF DAILY ON DEFENSE NOTE TO READERS: Daily on Defense will be taking a two-week end-of-the-year holiday hiatus beginning next Monday the 19th through Jan. 2, 2023. We’ll be back in your inbox and online at DailyonDefense.com, beginning Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023. Subscribe today to the Washington Examiner magazine and get Washington Briefing: politics and policy stories that will keep you up to date with what's going on in Washington. SUBSCRIBE NOW: Just $1.00 an issue! HAPPENING TODAY: Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are jointly hosting the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit for the next three days at the downtown convention center in Washington, D.C. Delegations from 49 invited African countries and the African Union are attending, along with members of the private sector. Blinken is scheduled to deliver remarks at the Peace, Security, and Governance Forum at 12:30 p.m., while Austin will be moderating a Q&A session at about the same time. President Joe Biden will address the African leaders on Wednesday. “This summit is an opportunity to deepen the many partnerships we have on the African continent,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “We will focus on our efforts to strengthen these partnerships across a wide range of sectors spanning from businesses to health to peace and security.” At a Monday White House briefing, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden would use the gathering to declare his support for adding the African Union as a permanent member of the G-20 nations. “It's past time for Africa to have permanent seats at the table in international organizations and initiatives,” said Sullivan. “And the president also plans to underscore his commitment to U.N. Security Council reform, including support for a permanent member from the African continent.” THE BATTLE FOR BAKHMUT: After embarrassing defeats in Kharkiv in the northeast and Kherson in the south, Russia has concentrated most of its firepower on capturing the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. A stubborn Ukrainian defense has prevented the fall of the city, but months of unrelenting artillery fire have reduced much of the city to rubble. “The front-line situation remains very difficult in the key areas of Donbas — Bakhmut, Soledar, Maryinka, Kreminna,” Zelensky said Friday. “There is no living place left on the land of these areas that has not been damaged by shells and fire. The occupiers actually destroyed Bakhmut, another Donbas city that the Russian army turned into burnt ruins.” At the Pentagon, a senior defense official said Russia’s way of war with “heavy artillery strikes and throwing forces at the problem” had produced “significant casualties” and only “incremental gains.” “The Ukrainians are fighting very, very hard in the Donbas. And it is true that the fighting around Bakhmut, particularly of late, has been very, very violent, very intense,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on CNN. “But the Ukrainians have done a very agile, capable job of trying to win back that territory from the Russians. … The Bakhmut area, that's really the only area where the Russians have made even some incremental progress.” “Elsewhere along the front, all the way down to the south, the Russians are largely in defensive positions and the Ukrainians are doing the pushing on them,” he said. ‘BRAINSTORMING’ PAUL WHELAN’S RELEASE: White House and State Department officials held a Zoom meeting with Elizabeth Whelan yesterday, a follow-up to a conversation the sister of imprisoned former Marine Paul Whelan had with Biden after the prisoner swap with Russia that freed Brittney Griner but not her brother. National security adviser Jake Sullivan described it as a “brainstorming” session to figure out “ how to go forward” in attempting to secure Whelan’s freedom. “I will just say that the conversations with Paul Whelan’s family have been substantive,” Sullivan said. “They have had a number of very good questions and also a number of suggestions that they’ve put forward.” “It certainly helps us come up with options and alternatives,” said Kirby on CNN. “We have a better understanding of their position, what their expectations are, and that will help us come up with proposals and alternatives. We're going to stay at this work, and we're going to do everything we can to get Paul home just as quickly as we can.” BIDEN ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS MEET WITH FAMILY OF PAUL WHELAN FOLLOWING GRINER DEAL The Rundown Washington Examiner: Russian ammunition ‘rapidly dwindling’ as war drags on, US official says Washington Examiner: Putin's press conference cancellation comes as Russia struggles in Ukraine war Washington Examiner: McConnell threatens short-term continuing resolution if Democrats don't meet omnibus demands Washington Examiner: Greece accuses Turkey of bringing 'North Korean-style attitude' into NATO Washington Examiner: Iranian official condemns Khamenei crackdown on protesters Washington Examiner: Biden administration officials meet with family of Paul Whelan following Griner deal Washington Examiner: Border Patrol overrun with 4,500 in custody as immigrants rush to beat Title 42 end Washington Examiner: Opinion: The US has better European allies than Germany and France Defense Daily: Schumer Says Senate To Consider FY ‘23 NDAA, One-Week CR This Week Reuters: G-7 Considers More Air Defence For Ukraine As Fighting Rages New York Times: Norway Starts To See Russian Spies Everywhere Washington Times: Navy Denies Curtailing Warships, Reconnaissance In South China Sea Bloomberg: China Sends Most Bombers Toward Taiwan In At Least Two Years Reuters: Ex-US Pilot Held In Australia Faces US Charges Over Chinese Military Pilot Training Military.com: Visa Program for Afghans Who Helped US Military in Danger of Lapsing After Exclusion from Defense Bill Defense One: Can We Actually Build It?’ Defense Industry Leaders Look Ahead to Uncertain 2023 Washington Post: Japan To Buy Tomahawk Missiles As Part Of New Buildup Defense News: US Navy Secretary Sees No Need To Rush Next-Gen Destroyer Program USNI News: SECNAV Del Toro: Navy Needs To ‘Be Realistic’ In Pursuit Of Next Destroyer, Sub, Fighter Stars and Stripes: Future Of US Navy Base In Diego Garcia Hinges On UK-Mauritius Negotiations Air & Space Forces Magazine: First Test of All-Up ARRW Hypersonic Missile Deemed a Success Defense Post: US Marine Corps Receives Cottonmouth Reconnaissance Vehicle Prototype Air & Space Forces Magazine: B-2 Damaged Following Emergency Landing and Fire at Whiteman Air Force Times: Predictive Maintenance Works. Why Isn’t the Military Using It More? Air & Space Forces Magazine: How a B-1 Bomber Task Force ‘Pushed the Envelope’ on ACE 19fortyfive.com: Top Gun III Coming Soon? New York Times: Military To Replace Guantanamo Bay Hospital With $435 Million Health Facility 19fortyfive.com: Is Russia's War in Ukraine Going on 'Winter Break'? 19fortyfive.com: Make Putin Pay: How Will Ukraine Rebuild After the War? 19fortyfive.com: Ukraine War: Why Bakhmut Became Hell on Earth Forbes: Biden’s Antitrust Crusade Is A Negative For National Security The Cipher Brief: EU Leaders Must Strike ‘Grand Energy Bargain’ The Cipher Brief: There is a Place for Japan in AUKUS Air & Space Forces Magazine: Col. Joe Kittinger — Fighter Pilot, POW, Longtime Freefall Record Holder — Dies at 94 Calendar TUESDAY | DECEMBER 13 8 a.m. 801 Mount Vernon Pl. NW Washington — State Department hosts three-day 2022 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, with Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai https://www.state.gov/africasummit 8:30 a.m. — Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe virtual briefing: “No Safe Haven: Launching the U.S.-Europe Coalition on Russia Sanctions,” with Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), CSCE co-chairman; Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), CSCE ranking member and commissioner; Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksii Goncharenko, chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament caucuses "For free Caucasus" and "For democratic Belarus;" U.K. Parliament member Robert Seely, British Conservative Party politician who serves in Parliament for the Isle of Wight; Estonian Parliament member Eerik-Niiles Kross, head of the Estonian delegation in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe; European Union Parliament member Petras Austrevicius, Lithuanian member of the EU Committee on Foreign Affairs; and Polish Sejm member Arkadius Mularczyk, leader of the Polish delegation to the Council of Europe https://www.youtube.com/HelsinkiCommission 9 a.m. — Center for Strategic and International Studies virtual discussion: "The NATO alliance and the road to the 2023 Vilnius Summit,” with U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO Julianne Smith https://www.csis.org/events/conversation-ambassador 9 a.m. — German Marshall Fund of the U.S. virtual discussion: "EU-Turkey in Central Asia: Scope for Cooperation?" with Idil Bilgic Alpaslan, principal infrastructure economist at EBRD; Nargis Kassenova, senior fellow at Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies; Temur Umarov, fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Samuel Doveri Vesterbye, managing director at the European Neighborhood Council; and Kadri Tastan, GMFUS resident senior fellow https://www.gmfus.org/event/eu-turkey-central-asia-scope-cooperation 10 a.m. 310 Cannon — House Homeland Security Intelligence and Counterterrorism Subcommittee hearing: “Examining the Operations of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis,” with Kenneth Wainstein, Homeland Security undersecretary for the Office of Intelligence and Analysis http://homeland.house.gov 10 a.m. 2118 Rayburn — House Armed Services full committee markup of H.R. 1475, resolution of inquiry requesting the president and directing the secretary of defense to transmit to the House of Representatives any record created on or after Jan. 21, 2021, under the control of the president or the secretary, respectively, that refers to the Department of Defense and includes certain terms and phrases relating to gender or a related measure https://armedservices.house.gov/ 10 a.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW — Wilson Center Global Europe Program discussion: “The Law and Politics of Neutrality: A Comparative Analysis Amidst Resurging Russian Revanchism,” with Benedikt Harzl, general editor of the Review of Central and East European Law https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/law-and-politics-neutrality 10:30 a.m. 1225 I St. NW — The Hill hosts an event: "Risk to Resilience: Cyber and Climate Solutions Bolstering America's Power Grid," with Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT); Puesh Kumar, director of the Energy Department's Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response; Tom Fanning, chairman, president, and CEO of Southern Company; Jason Grumet, founder and president of the Bipartisan Policy Center; and Steve Clemons, contributing editor at the Hill https://thehill.com/events/3742089-risk-to-resilience 12 p.m. — Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists virtual conversation: “What’s next for Russia: Does Putin matter?” with Ukraine expert Melinda Haring, deputy director, Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center; Charles Strozier, professor emeritus of history, John Jay College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York; and Daniel Drezner, professor of international politics and nonresident senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register 3 p.m. House Triangle, U.S. Capitol — House Republican news conference calling for the impeachment of DHS Secretary Mayorkas,” with Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ). 6:30 p.m. Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivers remarks at a reception for African innovators as part of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit at the State Department https://www.state.gov/public-schedule WEDNESDAY | DECEMBER 14 8 a.m. 801 Mount Vernon Pl. N.W. — State Department 2022 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit Day Two, with President Joe Biden delivering keynote remarks https://www.state.gov/africasummit 10 a.m. 2154 Rayburn — House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing: “The Rise of Anti-LGBTQI+ Extremism and Violence in the U.S.” http://oversight.house.gov 10 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. N.W — Center for Strategic and International Studies book discussion: American Defense Reform: Lessons from Failures and Successes in the Navy, with co-author retired Navy Rear Adm. Dave Oliver and co-author Anand Toprani, associate professor of strategy and policy at the Naval War College https://www.csis.org/events/reforming-dod-management-lessons-navy 10:30 a.m. — McCain Institute virtual discussion: "Reaffirming America's Strategic Alliances," with Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte and former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, fellow at the McCain Institute https://www.eventbrite.com/e/conversations-with-secretary-mark-esper 11:45 a.m. — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin welcomes Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to the Pentagon. 2 p.m. — Stimson Center forum: “North Korea: Is Denuclearization Dead?’ with Robert Gallucci, distinguished professor, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service; Siegfried S. Hecker, senior fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University; Sharon Squassoni, research professor of international affairs, George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs; and Joel Wit, distinguished fellow in Asian and Security Studies, Stimson Center https://www.stimson.org/event/north-korea-is-denuclearization-dead/ 2 p.m. — Defense News webcast: “Smart Bases for Defense,” with Jay Bonci, chief technology officer, Office of the Chief Information Officer, U.S. Air Force; and Phillip Ritter, principal architect, Federal Division, Nokia https://events.defensenews.com/smart-bases-for-defense/ 2 p.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. N.W. — Center for Strategic and International Studies discussion: "Emerging Security Issues in Space Policy,” with Assistant Defense Secretary for Space Policy John Plumb; FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr; Jaisha Wray, associate administrator for international affairs at the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration; and Sarah Mineiro, CEO and owner of Tangara Enterprises https://www.csis.org/events/emerging-security-issues-space-policy 3 p.m. 1201 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W. — Hudson Institute discussion: "Taiwan Policy in the New Congress," with Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) https://www.hudson.org/events/taiwan-policy THURSDAY | DECEMBER 15 9 a.m. 801 North Glebe Rd., Arlington, Virginia — Intelligence and National Security Alliance discussion: “Today's global challenges and CIA's efforts to address them," with CIA Director William Burns and former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Sue Gordon https://www.insaonline.org/detail-pages/event 11:30 a.m. 550 C St. SW — Washington Space Business Roundtable discussion: “Satellite acquisition reform," with Assistant Air Force Secretary for Space Acquisitions and Integration Frank Calvelli and Sandra Erwin, reporter at Space News https://www.wsbr.org/events/wsbr-december-luncheon 11:30 a.m. — Carnegie Endowment for International Peace virtual discussion: "Is Russia-Ukraine a Forever War?" with Ekaterina Schulmann, Russian political scientist; Andrew Weiss, CEIP vice president for studies; and Aaron David Miller, CEIP senior fellow https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/12/15/carnegie-connects 11:30 a.m. — Brookings Institution virtual discussion: "Ukraine's Economy: Today's Challenges, Tomorrow's Needs, and Lessons from Past Reconstruction Efforts" https://www.brookings.edu/events/ukraines-economy-todays-challenges-tomorrows-needs-lessons-from-past-reconstruction-efforts/ 11:45 a.m. — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin meets with Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvydas Anusauskas FRIDAY | DECEMBER 16 9 a.m. — Middle East Institute 11th annual Turkey Conference https://www.mei.edu/events/meis-11th-annual-turkey-conference QUOTE OF THE DAY “You can lose your seat because you're viewed as someone who talks to the other side. I have a Republican friend. He was facing a primary in the Senate. I said, ‘What are they going to charge you with? You're conservative as hell.’ He said, ‘They're going to charge me with being reasonable.’ Think about that for a minute.” Sen. Angus King (I-ME), on the advantage of being an independent and not having to run in a party primary | Europe Politics |
Port Sudan is rapidly becoming a crucial hub in the midst of Sudan's violence. The BBC's Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet joined the latest evacuation mission to Jeddah.
In the dead of night, as HMS Al Diriyah approached Sudan's coast, Saudi officers flicked on sweeping search lights to secure safe passage for their warship into a harbour rapidly transforming into a major evacuation and humanitarian hub in Sudan's deepening crisis.
Even at 2am two other hulking vessels were also anchored offshore at Port Sudan, its largest port, waiting their turn in this international rescue effort.
"I feel so relieved but also so sad to be part of this history," Hassan Faraz from Pakistan told us, visibly shaken.
We reached the quayside in a Saudi tugboat at the end of a 10-hour journey through the night in HMS Al Diriyah from the Saudi port city of Jeddah. A small group of foreign journalists were given rare access to enter embattled Sudan, if only briefly.
"People will be speaking about these events for many years to come," Faraz reflected, as a long queue formed on the wharf for passports to be checked against the Saudi manifest. This time, it was many young workers from South Asia who said they had waited here for three long days - after two hard weeks in this hellscape of war.
Another man from Pakistan, who said he had worked at a Sudanese foundry, spoke of having "seen so much, so many bomb blasts and firing". Then he fell silent, staring into the sea, too traumatised to say more.
The fighting which raged in recent weeks, amidst very imperfect and partial ceasefires, is a pitched battle for power between the Sudanese army led by Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group headed by Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti.
"Port Sudan has fared relatively better in this war," my British-Sudanese colleague Mohanad Hashim explained. "Fighting only erupted here on 15 April, the first day, but now this port city is overwhelmed by people fleeing Khartoum and other places."
We had just sailed past the graceful Naval Club turned tented village for the displaced. Many people are now sleeping rough on the streets as they wait for a way out. Local hotels are swamped by people with passports from the world over, along with emergency consular services hastily established by embassies who have evacuated most of their staff from the capital.
Many fear there is no way out. Port Sudan is packed with people who have less lucky passports, including Yemenis, Syrians and Sudanese.
Some 3,000 Yemenis, mainly students, have been stuck for weeks in Port Sudan. "The Saudis are rescuing some Yemenis but they're nervous about accepting large numbers," admitted a security adviser trying to help them find a way back to their own war-torn country.
Many passengers arriving in the Saudi kingdom are provided with a short hotel stay. But it's made clear that their own countries are expected to soon pick up the bill and arrange onward travel.
Mohanad Hashim scanned the wharf at Port Sudan, hoping to catch sight of any of his own Sudanese relatives who may be trying to make it out. The day before, at the King Faisal naval base in Jeddah where we began our journey, he suddenly found himself embracing a cousin who had made it to the Saudi city, along with two of his teenage children, after an 18-hour passage across the Red Sea.
For the Sudanese with foreign passports who make it to safe shores, the moment is bittersweet.
"Please, please help our family left in Sudan," a pink-scarfed Rasha pleaded, one child sleeping on her shoulder, three more waving flowers handed out by Saudi soldiers. "Please tell the world to protect Sudan," she implored us. Their family had been living near Sport City in Khartoum where gunfire erupted the morning of 15 April.
Her eight-year-old daughter Leen, speaking fluent English with an American accent, recounted in excited detail how armed men burst into their home. "We had to all hide, all ten of us, in the back room," she declared with youthful bravado. "I stayed calm. I didn't cry because we couldn't make any noise."
"They were bad, bad guys," her younger brother chimed in. Her father explained that it had been RSF forces. Their gunmen are blamed for much of the looting and violence.
This worsening and deeply worrying war between Sudan's two most powerful men is fuelled not just by deep personal and political animosities, but also by the competing interests and influence of major powers.
Regional heavyweights, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have long bankrolled Hemedti, who grew ever richer by sending forces to fight for their side in the early years of their destructive war against Yemen's Houthis.
But in recent years Riyadh has also drawn close to Gen Burhan and also has longstanding ties to Sudan's army. The tangled political geography in a country with vast mineral wealth and agricultural potential also includes Egypt, Israel and Russia, including the mercenary Wagner group.
But in this current crisis, where the United States and Britain and other would-be peacemakers are also weighing in, outside powers are now said to be speaking with one voice in trying to end this dangerous spiral and the enormous suffering of civilians.
Diplomats express gratitude for Saudi Arabia's evacuation effort. So far, more than 5,000 people, of 100 nationalities, have made the Red Sea crossing on Saudi warships or private vessels chartered by the Saudi military. The biggest single operation on Saturday, which carried some 2,000 passengers, even included Iranians. Arch-rivals Riyadh and Tehran recently moved towards a cautious rapprochement, including reopening their embassies and consulates.
"It is our luck. We hope there will be peace between our countries," 32-year-old civil engineer Nazli remarked as she disembarked in Jeddah with her engineer husband, who has also worked for years as an engineer in Sudan.
In Port Sudan on Sunday, as another packed tugboat sailed in choppy waters to a waiting Saudi warship, its passengers turned en masse to wave a final farewell to a country they regretted, with sadness, they may never return to. | Africa politics |
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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The influential sister of North Korea’s leader warned Tuesday that her country is ready to take “quick, overwhelming action” against the United States and South Korea, a day after the U.S. flew a nuclear-capable B-52 bomber in a demonstration of strength against the North.
READ MORE: North Korea fires missile after threatening strong response to U.S., South Korea drills
The U.S.-South Korean training on Monday involving the B-52 bomber over the Korean Peninsula was the latest in a series of drills between the allies in recent months. Their militaries are also preparing to revive their largest field exercises later this month.
Kim Yo Jong didn’t describe any planned actions in her statement, but North Korea has often test-launched missiles in response to U.S.-South Korean military drills because it views them as an invasion rehearsal.
“We keep our eye on the restless military moves by the U.S. forces and the South Korean puppet military and are always on standby to take appropriate, quick and overwhelming action at any time according to our judgment,” Kim Yo Jong said in the statement carried by state media.
“The demonstrative military moves and all sorts of rhetoric by the U.S. and South Korea, which go so extremely frantic as not to be overlooked, undoubtedly provide (North Korea) with conditions for being forced to do something to cope with them,” she said.
Hours after Kim’s statement, the General Staff of North Korea’s Korean People’s Army said it put its front-line artillery units on alert and heightened surveillance activities after it detected a live-fire artillery drill by “the enemy” in the South Korean border town of Paju on Tuesday morning.
The General Staff said about 30 rounds were fired during the South Korean exercise, which it described as a “very grave military provocation” that aggravated tensions, and urged its rival to immediately stop such activities near the border.
WATCH: South Korea concerned about U.S. protection as North increases missile tests
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff described the North Korean claim as absurd and denied that the South’s military had fired any artillery at the shooting range the North was referring to.
The South Korean Defense Ministry said after Monday’s training that the B-52’s deployment demonstrated the allies’ capability to deter North Korean aggression. The U.S. deployed B-1B bombers to the peninsula a few times earlier this year. Last month, the U.S. and South Korea also held a simulation in Washington aimed at sharpening their response to North Korean nuclear threats.
Last Friday, the South Korean and U.S. militaries announced they would conduct a computer-simulated command post training from March 13-23 and restore their largest springtime field exercises that were last held in 2018.
The allies had canceled or scaled back some of their regular drills since 2018 to support now-dormant diplomacy with North Korea and guard against the COVID-19 pandemic. But they have been restoring their exercises after North Korea last year conducted a record number of missile tests and openly threatened to use its nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with its rivals.
In a separate statement Tuesday, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry called the flyover of the U.S. B-52 bomber a reckless provocation that pushed the situation on the peninsula “deeper into the bottomless quagmire.” The statement said “there is no guarantee that there will be no violent physical conflict” if U.S.-South Korean military provocations continue.
North Korea often uses fiery rhetoric in times of heightened animosity with the United States and South Korea. Possible steps North Korea could take include a nuclear test or the launch of a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile capable of targeting the mainland U.S., observers say.
READ MORE: North Korea fires 2 missiles into sea, continuing nuclear threat escalation
Last month, Kim Yo Jong threatened to turn the Pacific into the North’s firing range. In her statement Tuesday, she said North Korea would consider a possible U.S. attempt to intercept a North Korean ICBM a declaration of war. She cited a South Korean media report saying the U.S. military plans to shoot down a North Korean ICBM if it is test-launched toward the Pacific.
All known North Korean ICBM tests have been made at steep angles to avoid neighboring countries, and the weapons landed in the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.
South Korea on Monday took a step meant to ease a thorny history dispute with Japan in what was seen as an effort to boost Seoul-Tokyo-Washington security cooperation. The step involves a plan to use local funds to compensate Koreans who performed forced labor during Tokyo’s colonial rule, but without requiring Japanese companies to contribute to the reparations.
U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel on Monday praised the leaders of South Korea and Japan, saying the two came to understand that the “potential of collaboration into the future is more important.”
Associated Press writers Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea, and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.
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Qatar is a rich Gulf nation known for both its huge oil reserves and its flagrant human rights abuses. It is a dictatorship in which women have to seek permission from their male guardians to marry or work in many government jobs, in which being gay is criminalised and can result in a prison sentence, in which migrant workers are treated appallingly and in which journalists have been imprisoned for reporting critically on domestic politics. Yet all of this will inevitably be minimised as the world’s eyes fall on Qatar for the start of the 2022 World Cup next month.Qatar’s leaders know this and this is why they have paid through the nose – estimates put it at $220bn (£190bn), by far the most expensive World Cup of all time – to host the competition, including lavishing money on efforts to lobby British politicians, as we report today. And so football teams, international supporters, the world’s media and foreign dignitaries will duly head to Qatar for an international sporting tournament that has serious environmental implications and will, some predict, leave a huge carbon footprint. At a conservative estimate, at least 6,500 migrant workers have lost their lives n Qatar since it was awarded the World Cup in 2011.This World Cup is just the latest in a long line of expensive international sporting events that have been hosted by nations that stand accused of fundamental human rights breaches. The 2008 Summer Olympics and 2022 Winter Olympics in China; the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia; the Bahrain Grand Prix; the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Qatar; the 2019 Anthony Joshua fight in Saudi Arabia: there is an indisputable trend of big sporting events being hosted by rich but unsavoury countries.This is the reflection of a number of trends. There is the push factor of dictatorships around the world seeking to launder their reputations through the medium of international sport – $200bn on a World Cup doesn’t just secure international visitors and sporting entertainment but PR that money normally can’t buy. This is particularly valuable in an age when Gulf states recognise that at some point the oil and gas will run out and so are looking to build other sources of power on the world stage. In response, competitions are more and more expensive to put on, as democracies that have to justify the expense to voters get priced out of the market. The 2006 World Cup in Germany cost just $4.3bn. The levels of financial corruption in international sport – governing bodies such as Fifa and the International Olympic Committee have been notoriously porous to expensive bribes and shady deals in exchange for votes behind the scenes – have made things worse.All this means that sporting bureaucrats often face unenviable choices, for example, between Beijing in China and Almaty in Kazakhstan for the 2022 Winter Olympics, which ultimately went to the former, necessitating the manufacture of fake snow out of 49m gallons of water.Sports governing bodies advance the case that awarding competitions to countries with questionable human rights records draws attention and scrutiny to their abuses, encouraging liberalisation. Sebastian Coe, president of the International Association of Athletics Federations, claimed at the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Qatar that sport can uniquely “shine the spotlight on issues” and is “the best diplomat we have”. But there is little academic evidence of these effects. China’s human rights abuses got worse between the 2009 Summer Olympics and the 2022 Winter Olympics. The same is true of Russia and the 2014 Sochi Olympics. And the 1936 Munich Olympics were undoubtedly a propaganda coup for the Nazis.Sporting competitions would lead to improvements only if sports bodies were to take a tough approach with host nations, attaching stringent conditions that improve human rights records beyond the period of the competition itself. But they are not, generally, willing to do this. In fact, they are much more likely to equivocate and protest their neutrality over the most dreadful human rights abuses. Thomas Bach, the president of the IOC, when asked what he would say to Chinese Uyghurs forcibly separated from their children and interned in concentration camps, declared on the eve of the 2022 Beijing Olympics: “The position of the IOC must be to give political neutrality… if we get in the middle of intentions and disputes and confrontations of political powers, then we are putting the Games at risk.” Could there be anything more morally decrepit than a policy of neutrality on genocide?The problem does not start and stop with sport. In truth, the approach the international sports bodies take to countries such as the Gulf states is just a reflection of international politics. Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are considered close allies of the UK, with cooperation on security and the fostering of trade links, including arms sales. The RAF even has a joint air force squadron with Qatar; earlier this year Boris Johnson went to Saudi Arabia to meet Mohammed bin Salman despite the fact that his government had arranged for the Saudi journalist Jamal Kashoggi to be murdered in its consulate in Istanbul in 2018. International sporting competitions should not be awarded to governments with appalling human rights records. But this is a line that western political, not just sporting, leadership has proved all too willing to cross. | Middle East Politics |
A beach resort bristling with fortifications. A major road lined with anti-tank ditches. Satellite analysis by BBC Verify has uncovered some of the extensive defences built by Russia as it prepares for a major Ukrainian counter-attack.
After months of stalemate, the expected assault is likely to be a crucial test for Ukraine as it seeks to prove it can achieve significant battlefield gains with the weapons it has received from the West.
By examining hundreds of satellite images, the BBC has identified some key points in the significant build-up of trenches and other fortifications in southern Ukraine since October.
These four locations offer an insight into what Russia expects from the counter-offensive, and what defences Ukrainian forces might encounter.
1. Crimea's west coast
Seized by Russia in 2014, Crimea was formerly known for its beach resorts.
Now, instead of sun loungers and parasols, the coastline stretching for 15 miles (25km) is littered with defence structures installed by Russian troops.
The image below shows the only open sandy beach on the west coast without natural defences such as cliffs or hills.
Firstly, there are "dragon's teeth" along the shore: pyramid-shaped blocks of concrete, designed to block the path of tanks and other military vehicles.
Behind them is a line of trenches, providing cover from incoming attacks. Several bunkers can also be spotted along the trenches.
Stacks of wood, digging machines and stores of dragon's teeth along the coast suggest building work was still in progress when the image was taken in March.
Some military experts suggest the defences are likely to be a precaution, rather than a sign that Russia expects to defend a seaborne assault, since Ukraine has little naval capacity.
Intelligence analyst Layla Guest says: "The fortifications are likely in place to deter any bold Ukrainian operation to attack Crimea via the sea rather than on land."
The beach fortification is just one example of a vast network of trenches, as shown by the black dots in the map below, based on work by open-source analyst Brady Africk.
BBC Verify has been able to identify other key fortification sites by pinpointing individual trench locations from videos on social media.
Once an exact location was discovered it was then possible to trace an entire trench network using satellite images.
2. Tokmak
The small city of Tokmak lies on a key route in the south-east of the country that Ukrainian forces may want to use to cut off Crimea from other Russian-held territories.
There have been reports that Ukrainian civilians have been moved out in order to turn the city into a military fortress. This would provide soldiers with access to supplies and a base to retreat to.
The satellite image above shows that a network of trenches in two lines has been dug north of Tokmak - the direction Ukraine would have to attack from.
Behind these trenches is a further ring of fortifications around the city, with three layers of defences that can be seen distinctly in this close-up satellite image.
The top of the satellite image shows an anti-tank ditch. These are usually at least 2.5m deep and designed to trap any enemy tanks that attempt to cross.
Behind the ditch are several rows of dragon's teeth and another trench network.
But Ukrainian forces are likely to face further traps.
It's highly likely that mines have also been hidden between Tokmak's three defence lines, says Mark Cancian from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"Minefields are a standard part of every defence, and the Russians have used them extensively throughout the war.
"Here they will be large and better concealed, slowing down Ukrainian attacks so that other combat elements, like artillery and infantry, can strike the attacking forces."
BBC Verify has also discovered three other towns near Tokmak have been similarly fortified.
3. E105 highway
A line of anti-tank ditches and trenches now runs alongside a 22-mile (35km) stretch of the E105 main highway, west of Tokmak.
The E105 is strategically important, connecting Russian-held Melitopol in the south with the northern city of Kharkiv, held by Ukraine. The side that controls it can easily move around troops around the region.
If Ukrainian forces attempt to use this road, Russia will likely target it with heavy artillery from behind their defences. Russia's position is also in range of another nearby road - the T401 - which could also be targeted.
"The Russians are worried about the recently built Ukrainian armour units. If these units can get on a main highway, they can move very quickly," says Mr Cancian.
"The Russian defences aim to push them off the roads and therefore slow them down."
4. Rivnopil, north of Mariupol
The port of Mariupol has a strategic position between the Russian-occupied territories in the east and Crimea in the south. It also became a symbol of resistance to invasion when a hard-core of fighters held out for months as the city was besieged.
Given Russia expects Ukraine to try to retake it, BBC Verify decided to look at the territory surrounding the city - leading to the discovery of a collection of circular trenches.
Located near the small village of Rivnopil about 34 miles (55km) north of Mariupol, each circular trench has a mound of soil in the middle, possibly either to protect artillery or to keep guns stable.
Meanwhile, the circular trenches allow soldiers to take cover and to move the artillery so it can aim in any direction.
It shows that Russia is preparing to defend areas of open ground (without natural protection from hills and rivers) alongside their wider trench network.
But some analysts note that Ukrainian forces can use similar satellite images and drone surveillance to identify and bypass many of these defences.
Alexander Lord from strategic advisory firm Sibylline Ltd says: "The Russians will therefore likely attempt to funnel Ukrainian forces down certain routes which are heavily mined and pre-targeted by Russian artillery."
Satellite images show obvious defences - but that might all be part of Russia's plan.
Additional reporting by Tom Spencer
What questions do you have about this investigation? Daniele Palumbo and Erwan Rivault, together with Ukrainecast presenter Vitaly Shevchenko, will be answering a selection of your questions on Monday 22 May.
Use this form to ask your question: | Europe Politics |
Russia bombarded 118 Ukrainian towns and villages in 24 hours, more than on any other day this year, says Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko.
He said 10 of Ukraine's 27 regions had come under attack and the onslaught had caused deaths and injuries.
Many of the communities hit were near the front lines in the east and south.
Russia has for weeks trained much of its military firepower on Avdiivka, a strategically significant town in the eastern region of Donetsk.
"[Avdiivka] is being erased, shattered. There have been more than 40 massive shelling attacks against the territorial community in the past day," said local leader Vitaliy Barabash.
He said two civilians had been killed and warned that Russia was building up to a third wave in its offensive. Ukraine says Russia has been pouring reinforcements into the area in a bid to encircle and capture the town.
Twenty attacks in the Avdiivka area alone were repelled on Tuesday, Ukraine's armed forces general staff said.
Russia has also ramped up attacks on the town of Kupyansk in the north-eastern Kharkiv region and sought to stop Ukrainian forces from recapturing territory around Bakhmut.
There were also attacks away from the front lines, on a block of flats, shops and a pharmacy in the southern city of Nikopol on the bank of the Dnipro river, and in Kremenchuk, where a disused oil refinery was set on fire by a Russian drone.
The refinery, in the central region of Poltava, has been targeted several times by Russia and officials said it had come under attack throughout the early hours of Wednesday.
The Kremenchuk refinery was the biggest in Ukraine until Russian attacks put it out of action a few weeks into the full-scale invasion.
Ukraine's counter-offensive has so far made little headway in recapturing land occupied by Russian forces in the south and east, prompting fears of Western fatigue with the war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has admitted the slow progress, repeatedly urging Kyiv's allies to urgently provide more advanced weapon, and also stay united.
On Wednesday, Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny warned that the war was now moving to a "positional" or static stage.
In a column for the Economist, he said this would benefit Moscow by "allowing it to rebuild its military power".
Despite heavy losses, Russia still had "superiority in weapons, equipment, missiles and ammunition", Mr Zaluzhny warned, calling on Ukraine's allies to deliver warplanes and drones, as well as modern electronic warfare and mine-breaching technology, among other things.
One of the Ukrainian leader's closest allies, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, addressed the issue of fatigue during a hoax call from two Russian pranksters, widely known for targeting Kremlin opponents.
"I see there is a lot of fatigue, if I have to say the truth, from all the sides," she is heard to tell the pair, Vovan and Lexus. "We're near the moment in which everybody understands that we need a way out."
"The counter-offensive of Ukraine is maybe not going as they were expecting. It is going, but it didn't change, I mean, the destiny of the conflict."
US President Joe Biden's administration has asked Congress to approve a $106bn package for both Ukraine and Israel. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned this week: "I can guarantee that without our support [Russia's Vladimir] Putin will be successful."
President Volodymyr Zelensky told Ukrainians in an overnight address on Tuesday that "we live in a world that gets used to success too quickly".
He reserved particular praise for the military's success in reducing Russia's control over the Black Sea: "The more protection we have along our coastline and in our sea, the more protection there is in the world."
Recent Ukrainian attacks have hit the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea fleet prompting most of its ships to leave occupied Crimea.
Kyiv has tried to create an export corridor safe for civilian vessels to carry grain along Ukraine's Black Sea coast, via Romanian waters and on to the Turkish coast.
Although at least 700,000 metric tonnes of grain have evaded Russian bombardment in recent months, Ukrainian officials said war planes had dropped "explosive objects" on the expected paths of civilian ships. "However, the functioning of the navigational corridor continues under the aegis of the defence forces," said Ukraine's southern operational command.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Wednesday that Ukraine was losing the war despite supplies of new weapons from Nato.
He said that Ukraine was taking heavy losses as it tried to push into Russian-held areas of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Donetsk and "demoralisation of personnel is growing". He also claimed Russian units were advancing.
Mr Shoigu provided no evidence to back his claims.
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. | Europe Politics |
Four people have been killed in an explosion at a Catholic Mass in the southern Philippines on Sunday morning.
The incident occurred at the gymnasium of Mindanao State University in Marawi, the country's largest Muslim city.
Forty-two others suffered mostly minor wounds, authorities said, adding the situation was "under control".
In 2017, Marawi was the scene of a five-month battle between government forces and militants with links to the Islamic State.
The militants called Daulah Islamiyah-Maute Group could be behind Sunday's bombing, said Brig Gen Allan Nobleza, the police commander in the region.
Gen Nobleza said 11 militants died in an encounter with the Philippine Army last Friday in neighbouring Datu Hoffer Ampatuan town - suggesting Sunday's explosion could be a form of retaliation.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr condemned the blast as a "senseless and most heinous" act, which was "perpetrated by foreign terrorists". He did not elaborate.
He appealed to the public to remain calm. "Rest assured, we will bring the perpetrators of this ruthless act to justice," he said.
A grenade or an improvised bomb is likely to have caused the explosion, officials said, citing a preliminary investigation.
Photos shared on social media by local officials showed plastic chairs in disarray and dark fragments on the ground of the MSU gymnasium after the blast. Aside from its floor, the building did not appear to sustain major damage.
Those who were brought to a nearby hospital received treatment mostly for minor wounds and bruises, photos suggested. The Provincial Governor, Mamintal Adiong Jr, said many of the three dozen wounded have been sent home.
Masses on Sunday drew larger crowds than usual across the Philippines as it is the start of Advent, the Catholic Church's four-week vigil to Christmas Day.
Nearly 80% of the country's 113 million population are Catholic and it is not uncommon for school gymnasiums and even shopping malls to designate areas for Sunday Mass, especially in places where there are no churches.
The MSU, one of country's largest universities, said it was "deeply saddened and appalled" by the "senseless and horrific" violence.
"Violence has no place in a civilized society, and it is particularly abhorrent in an institution of higher learning like MSU," it said.
"We stand in solidarity with our Christian community and all those affected by this tragedy."
The university added that additional security staff had been deployed on its campus and that all academic activities would be suspended until further notice.
Mindanao is home to the country's Muslim minority and has borne the brunt of decades insurgency and extremist violence.
In 2012, Manila and the country's largest Muslim rebel group agreed to establish an autonomous region in Mindanao and the first elections for the regional assembly was held in 2022. However, sporadic violence flares up from time to time. | Asia Politics |
The State Department is placing additional visa restrictions on certain current and former Taliban members over the regime’s repression of girls and women in Afghanistan.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a Wednesday statement that the restrictions will also be imposed on “members of non-state security groups” and others who are believed to be responsible for or complicit in the repression through restrictive policies and violence.
Blinken noted that the most recent actions from the Taliban, including prohibiting women from attending universities in the country and from working with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), have shown their “disregard” for the wellbeing of the Afghan people.
“We condemn in the strongest of terms the Taliban’s actions,” Blinken said. “The United States stands with the Afghan people and remains committed to doing all we can to promote and advance respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all Afghans, including women and girls.”
Blinken did not name the individuals facing the restrictions.
He said the Taliban’s actions have forced more than 1 million school-aged Afghan girls and young women out of the classroom and even more women out of higher education and the workforce. He said the number will grow with time and worsen Afghanistan’s humanitarian and economic crises.
Multiple major NGOs have announced that they would halt their work in Afghanistan over the Taliban’s restrictions on women.
After the U.S. completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban retook power in August 2021, a great deal of international aid to the poverty-stricken country stopped.
The U.S. provided more than $1 billion in aid to support the humanitarian crisis in the year since its troops pulled out of the country.
But Blinken warned that support from the world is not going to be granted without conditions.
“The Taliban cannot expect the respect and support of the international community until they respect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all Afghans, including women and girls,” he said.
Blinken said the U.S. will continue to work with its allies to make clear that the Taliban’s actions will “carry significant costs” and reduce the chances of an improved relationship with the international community. | Human Rights |
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Dutch political leaders sought support from undecided voters in frantic campaigning Tuesday, on the eve of a general election that will change the face of the country’s politics after 13 years of leadership by Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
Pollsters were predicting a knife-edge vote with four parties across the political spectrum vying to become the largest bloc in the 150-seat lower house of parliament.
Rutte's fourth and final coalition resigned in July after it failed to agree on measures to rein in migration. Rutte subsequently said he would not seek re-election but he remains in power as caretaker prime minister until a new coalition is formed — a process that could take months.
The vote could provide the Netherlands with its first ever female prime minister — the new leader of Rutte's People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) is 46-year-old Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, a former refugee who now advocates cracking down on immigration.
But also polling strongly in the final days of the campaign is veteran lawmaker Geert Wilders, who has toned down his trademark strident anti-Islam rhetoric in campaigning in favor of promoting policies aimed at halting asylum-seekers from entering the Netherlands and tackling the cost-of-living crisis and housing shortages.
One poll Tuesday even put Wilders’ Party for Freedom, or PVV, in first place, very narrowly ahead of the VVD.
A center-left bloc of the Labor Party and Green Left also was in a three-way race to win the vote. Its leader, former European Union climate chief Frans Timmermans, was in his home city of Maastricht campaigning at the city's university.
Were Wilders' party to win the most seats, he would take the lead in moves to form a new ruling coalition in this nation where the voting system all but guarantees that no single party wins an overall majority.
If he does, he shouldn't count on the support of Yeşilgöz-Zegerius.
Asked Tuesday on NPO Radio 1 if she would serve in a Cabinet led by Wilders, she replied: “I don't see that happening.”
“The Netherlands is looking for a leader who can unite the country ... who is for all Dutch people, who can lead our country internationally," she added. "I also don't see that Mr. Wilders could build a majority.”
Wilders said the comments were a sign that the VVD fears his party could win the vote.
“Panic at the VVD. The PVV is getting too big for them,” he said in a statement urging supporters to make his party the biggest. The closest Wilders has come to power previously was when he agreed to support Rutte's first coalition without actually joining the Cabinet.
Meanwhile Thierry Baudet, leader of the far-right Forum for Democracy, was back in parliament on Tuesday after being attacked at a campaign event Monday night by a man who hit him on the head with a beer bottle.
“I was very lucky,” Baudet told reporters, saying the attack did not seriously injure him. A small wound was visible above his left eye.
“I see it as a political attack,” he said, adding that “we must continue with our campaign.”
Polls suggest that Baudet's party, once seen as a rising star of the populist far right, will win a handful of seats Wednesday.
The New Social Contract party, set up over the summer by lawmaker Pieter Omtzigt, was trailing slightly behind the top three contenders. | Europe Politics |
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday insisted that the residents of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow illegally annexed a year ago “made their choice — to be with their Fatherland.”
In an address released in the early hours to mark the first anniversary of the annexation, Putin insisted that it was carried out “in full accordance with international norms.” He also claimed that residents of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions had again expressed their desire to be part of Russia in local elections earlier this month. Russia’s Central Election Commission said the country’s ruling party won the most votes.
The West has denounced both the referendum votes carried out last year and the recent ballots as a sham. The votes were held as Russian authorities attempted to tighten their grip on territories Moscow illegally annexed a year ago and still does not fully control.
A concert was held in Red Square on Friday to mark the anniversary, but Putin did not participate.
The address came after Russia’s Defense Ministry said Friday it would enlist 130,000 men for compulsory military service this fall, beginning Oct. 1, in most regions of the country. It announced it would for the first time begin enlisting residents of the annexed territories as part of its twice-yearly military conscription campaign.
Russia says conscripts are not deployed to what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine, or to serve in the annexed territories. However, after their service, conscripts automatically become reservists, and Russia has previously deployed reservists to Ukraine.
In Ukraine, EU chief diplomat Josep Borrell referenced the anniversary of the regions being “illegally annexed” by Russia in a video recorded during an unannounced visit to the Black Sea port city of Odesa on Saturday. Speaking from the city’s Transfiguration Cathedral, severely damaged in a Russian missile strike in July, Borrell reiterated the EU’s support for Ukraine.
READ MORE: Odesa port bombarded by Russian drones, cut ferry service to Romania
“Odesa is a beautiful historic city. It should be in the headlines for its vibrant culture and spirit. Instead, it marks the news as frequent target of Putin’s war,” the EU Foreign Affairs and Security Policy chief wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Meanwhile, the governor of Ukraine’s partly occupied southern Zaporizhzhia region, Yurii Malashko, said five people were wounded on Saturday in two missile strikes on the village of Matviivka, located on the northeastern outskirts of the regional capital, also called Zaporizhzhia.
Air defenses shot down 30 out of 40 Iranian-made drones aimed at the Odesa, Mykolaiv and Vinnytsia provinces overnight, the Ukrainian air force said Saturday.
Vinnytsia regional Gov. Serhii Borzov said that air defenses shot down 20 drones over his central Ukrainian region, but that a “powerful fire” broke out in the town of Kalynivka when a drone struck an unspecified infrastructure facility.
Romania’s Ministry of National Defense said Saturday that a possible unauthorized entry into its national airspace occurred overnight amid the bombardment.
It said the radar surveillance system of the Romanian Army detected “a possible unauthorized entry” into the national airspace of NATO member Romania, with a signal detected toward the city of Galati, which is close to the border with Ukraine.
“At this moment, no objects have been identified that fell from the airspace onto the national territory,” the statement read, adding that NATO allies were informed in real time and that searches will continue through Saturday.
Emergency authorities issued text message alerts overnight to residents living in the counties of Galati and Tulcea, after detecting what the defense ministry said was “groups of drones heading toward Ukrainian territory” near the border.
In recent weeks, Romania has found drone fragments on its soil from the war next door at least three times as Russian forces carry out sustained attacks on Ukraine’s Danube ports.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Saturday that it had shot down nine Ukrainian rockets fired at its southern Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine. Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said that an artillery shell created a crater and shrapnel damaged a house, a store and a gas pipeline in an attack on the regional capital, also called Belgorod. Local officials in Russia’s Bryansk region, also bordering Ukraine, reported disruptions to the power supply following an unspecified attack on the town of Pogar. Drone strikes and shelling in the Russian border regions are a regular occurrence.
Associated Press writers Stephen McGrath in Sighisoara, Romania, and Elise Morton in London contributed to this report.
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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Christian and Muslim leaders in Kenya are urging President William Ruto to repeal a finance bill whose new taxes have sparked protests and police killings of civilians, warning that Kenyans face a level of hopelessness that “can easily inspire insurrection.”
Friday’s statement by national religious organizations came as the main political opposition group announced the next protest would take place next Wednesday, and as Ruto declared it would not be allowed.
READ MORE: Truck crash in western Kenya kills at least 51 people, injures 32, officials say
Human rights watchdogs have asserted that police killed as many as 10 people in the latest protests this week, while a police official told The Associated Press that officers killed at least six across the country for disturbing businesses. Meanwhile, more than 50 children were sent to a medical clinic after tear gas was thrown into a school in the capital, Nairobi.
“Firearms should never be used to disperse protests,” the United Nations human rights office said Friday. It urged Kenyan authorities to ensure the right to peaceful assembly as guaranteed by the constitution.
Ruto’s government accused demonstrators of “extensive damage of major public assets” after hundreds on Wednesday dismantled part of an entrance to a recently constructed toll expressway that for some symbolizes inequality as everyday traffic surges in its shadow.
The government also blames longtime opposition leader Raila Odinga for the unrest. Odinga, who lost last year’s election to Ruto, has urged Kenyans to civil disobedience to protest the rising cost of living. Odinga’s movement seeks to protest Wednesday, Thursday and Friday next week.
READ MORE: Kenya cult death toll surpasses 200, more than 600 people reported missing
Some Kenyans have described the new taxes as leaving them with the highest burden they’ve ever faced. The finance bill increased the value added tax on petroleum from 8 percent to 16 percent, boosted a business turnover tax from 1 percent to 3 percent and created a new 1.5 percent housing tax for salaried workers.
Pressure is rising on Ruto, who won election by appealing to Kenya’s “hustlers” as a man of humble childhood and by vowing to reduce the cost of living. But the country struggles with debt and has turned to the new taxes for some relief.
The statement by religious groups also warned Odinga that his calls for mass action risked pushing Kenya into insurrection. “Indeed, the destruction of businesses as well as public and private properties is pushing the cost of living higher, not lower,” it said.
The statement also urged all Kenyans to embrace dialogue and non-violence: “We must not allow the selfish interests of political leaders to destroy our homeland and push us into destitution,” it said.
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Ukraine is ready to launch its long-expected counter-offensive against Russian forces, one of the country's most senior security officials has told the BBC.
Oleksiy Danilov would not name a date but said an assault to retake territory from President Vladimir Putin's occupying forces could begin "tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week".
He warned that Ukraine's government had "no right to make a mistake" on the decision because this was an "historic opportunity" that "we cannot lose".
As secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, Mr Danilov is at the heart of President Volodymyr Zelensky's de facto war cabinet.
His rare interview with the BBC was interrupted by a phone message from President Zelensky summoning him to a meeting to discuss the counter-offensive.
During the interview, he also confirmed that some Wagner mercenary forces were withdrawing from the city of Bakhmut, the site of the bloodiest battle of the war so far - but he added they were "regrouping to another three locations" and "it doesn't mean that they will stop fighting with us".
Mr Danilov also said he was "absolutely calm" about Russia beginning to deploy nuclear weapons to Belarus, saying: "To us, it's not some kind of news."
Ukraine has been planning a counter-offensive for months. But it has wanted as much time as possible to train troops and to receive military equipment from Western allies.
In the meantime, Russian forces have been preparing their defences.
Much is at stake because the government in Kyiv needs to show the people of Ukraine - and Western allies - that it can break through Russian lines, end the effective military deadlock and recapture some of its sovereign territory.
Mr Danilov said the armed forces would begin the assault when commanders calculated "we can have the best result at that point of the war".
Asked if Ukrainian armed forces were ready for the offensive, he replied: "We are always ready. The same as we were ready to defend our country at any time. And it is not a question of time.
"We have to understand that that historic opportunity that is given to us - by God - to our country we cannot lose, so we can truly become an independent, big European country."
He added: "It could happen tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week.
"It would be weird if I were to name dates of the start of that or those events. That cannot be doneâ¦. We have a very responsible task before our country. And we understand that we have no right to make a mistake."
Mr Danilov dismissed suggestions the counter-offensive had already begun, saying that "demolishing Russian control centres and Russian military equipment" had been the task of Ukrainian armed forces since 24 February last year - the date Russia launched the invasion.
"We have no days off during this war," he said.
He defended the decision by Ukraine's army to fight in Bakhmut for so many months, a battle that has cost the lives of many of its soldiers.
"Bakhmut is our land, our territory, and we must defend it," he said. "If we start leaving every settlement, that could get us to our western border as Putin wanted from the first days of the war."
He said that "we control only a small part of the city, and we admit to that. But you have to keep in mind that Bakhmut has played a big role in this war."
Asked if Wagner mercenaries were leaving, he replied: "Yes, that is happening. But it doesn't mean that they will stop fighting with us. They are going to concentrate more on other fronts⦠they are regrouping to other three locations." | Europe Politics |
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WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki offered his conservative government’s resignation on Monday as required as the newly elected parliament met for the first time in a protracted transition of power following last month’s election.
The lower chamber, or Sejm, in its first vote overwhelmingly chose center-right Szymon Holownia, an opponent of Morawiecki, as its speaker.
An alliance of pro-European Union parties vowing to restore democratic standards won a strong parliamentary majority in the Oct. 15 election and is expected to take power. Its candidate for prime minister is Donald Tusk, the centrist and pro-EU former prime minister.
But the alliance will have to wait, perhaps for weeks. Conservative President Andrzej Duda, who is allied with Morawiecki’s right-wing Law and Justice party, is asking Morawiecki to try to build another government and will reappoint him as a prime minister candidate on Monday evening.
READ MORE: Germany seeks answers from Poland in a visa fraud scandal involving migrants from Asia, Africa
Morawiecki in an address to parliament expressed a desire to build a new government that transcends party divisions. When he appealed for support, his critics responded with laughter.
Duda, whose term runs for another year and a half, is expected to have a difficult relationship with the new legislature. He has already angered the winning coalition by asking Morawiecki to try to build a government even though he is far short of a majority.
In the new parliament’s first vote, Holownia with the winning coalition was backed by 265 lawmakers while a candidate from Morawiecki’s party received 193.
“After this vote there can be no doubt that there is a majority in the Sejm that is ready to take responsibility for Poland,” said Holownia, the leader of the Poland 2050 party and a rising star in politics.
He stressed that this parliament will no longer serve the government by pushing through controversial laws, as was the case under Law and Justice rule.
Among Holownia’s first decisions was one to remove barriers that the previous government put up around the parliament building following massive protests. As he spoke, activists and others were already dismantling them.
READ MORE: In the pursuit of jobs, Ukrainian refugees are choosing Germany over Poland
Duda called on the legislature to rise above divisions but warned that he would use his power of the presidential veto to defend “controversial” solutions.
“The constitutional order must be preserved, I will not agree to any circumvention or bending of the law,” Duda said, to some laughter. Law and Justice and Duda himself have been accused by critics of violating procedures in recent years.
Tusk and his allies accuse Duda of disrespecting the will of the voters by not giving them the first chance at governing. His coalition vows to rebuild the legal order in Poland and bolster foreign alliances and security at a time of war in neighboring Ukraine.
Tusk says his future government will work to obtain billions of euros in EU funding that were frozen due to Law and Justice’s laws that were criticized as eroding the independence of the courts.
Law and Justice received 194 seats in the 460-member Sejm. The winning coalition holds 248 seats. It includes parties ranging from conservatives to the left. They ran separately but promise to work together after eight years of Law and Justice rule. In the vote for Holownia, they were supported by the far-right Confederation party.
The 100-seat Senate, where the Tusk-led alliance won an overwhelming majority, held its first session Monday afternoon.
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Dominic Perrottet jokes about his 'pretty weird' dance moves as he gets into the groove on the NSW election campaign trail
Dominic Perrottet showed off his dance moves while campaigning in Sydney's south on Friday but his style has been described as "pretty weird".
New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet has joked about his "pretty weird" dance moves after getting into the groove on the campaign trail.
Mr Perrottet visited the Carss Park community centre in Sydney's south on Friday to make a funding commitment for seniors ahead of the March 25 state election.
While at the centre, Mr Perrottet joined with locals in performing the Macarena dance moves, to the Sister Sledge hit song 'We are family'.
"It was great fun. Everyone was getting in the groove, including (Seniors Minister Mark) Coure," Mr Perrottet told media afterwards.
When quizzed by reporters about how we would describe his dancing style, the Premier said: "Pretty weird".
Mr Perrottet, who has seven children, added he was a "dad dancer" and noted that in his household there was a "lot of late night Disney dancing before bed", with Frozen the popular choice.
Along with Mr Coure, Mr Perrottet was in Carss Park with the local Liberal candidate for the seat of Kogarah, Craig Chung.
Further asked if he was willing to take the dancing to the streets, Mr Perrottet quipped: "Absolutely. They'll all be dancing in Kogarah for Craig Chung".
The funding announcement involved an extra $2 million for the Tech Savvy Seniors Program, which the Coalition said would better protect older residents from scams.
"We will ensure more seniors have access to scam-awareness training and that customer service representatives can better support them when they need to access government services," Mr Perrottet said.
"This funding boost is about ensuring elderly people have the support they need when using technology in our rapidly changing digital world and that our government services are the most accessible in the country."
Kogarah is the Labor Party's most marginal seat at 0.1 per cent and is held by opposition leader Chris Minns.
Mr Minns on Friday acknowledged the tough task ahead of him to win both government and retain his electorate.
"I don't take anything for granted. I'm going to fight for every vote. It's always been a marginal electorate," the Labor leader said.
"The truth of the matter is, in order for Labor to win the election on March 25 we have to hold the seat of Kogarah."
Labor goes into the election with a notional 38 seats, needing an additional nine electorates to win majority government which was last achieved at the 2007 election. | Australia Politics |
Jamie Fejo stands outside a house at the Ilpeye Ilpeye town camp on the edge of Alice Springs. The Arrernte and Larrakia man grew up here, but he’s shocked at what’s happening to the place he loves.“It’s a disgrace,” he says. “They’re running amok, walking the streets, breaking and entering, making us Aboriginal people look bad.”As night falls in Alice Springs, dozens of children, some as young as seven, can be seen wandering the streets. Locals say it’s been quiet this week after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese came to visit. On some nights, they say, up to 200 children will be on those streets.Mr Fejo says most of the people causing trouble are not from Alice Springs. They live in Indigenous communities surrounding the town and are travelling in, often in search of alcohol.“It’s making us look like fools,” he says. “We’re the owners of this land because we’re Arrernte people you know. “For them to walk the streets without permission from the elders and camping and staying in Alice Springs, I don’t know, it’s just a big disrespect for our country as well.”Crime rates have been rising fast in Alice Springs for the past three years. Police have attributed a spike in 2021 to the Morrison Government’s decision to double welfare payments during Covid-19 and allow early access to superannuation. Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker has said bottles of Bundaberg Rum were selling on the black market for up to $700 during this period. When the extra payments ended, there was a subsequent increase in property crime.But Alice Springs community leaders say the bigger issue was a change to alcohol policy in July last year. In 2007, the Howard Government Northern Territory Emergency Response – better known as the Intervention – banned alcohol in hundreds of smaller Indigenous communities, homelands and town camps in Darwin, Katherine, Tennant Creek and Alice Springs. Those bans were extended under Federal Labor’s Stronger Futures legislation in 2012. But when that legislation expired on July 17 last year, the alcohol was allowed back in.Most of the bigger Indigenous communities, including those surrounding Alice Springs, were not affected by the change. They had been dry before the Intervention under the Northern Territory Liquor Act and remained so after Stronger Futures expired. But according to health experts and community leaders, the decision to allow alcohol to return to town camps has been catastrophic. Buying takeaway alcohol is never easy in the Northern Territory. Every customer must produce a valid form of identification to prove they are fit to make a purchase. People who commit offences while intoxicated are placed on a banned drinker register, preventing them from buying takeaway booze. In Katherine, Tennant Creek and Alice Springs, there are also police auxiliaries who stand at bottle shops checking customers’ identification. If you can’t prove you have a valid address at which you plan to consume your alcohol, you can’t make a purchase. Lifting the alcohol bans has meant people living in the town camps can now buy takeaway grog. But it also means relatives who travel in from communities that remain dry can humbug others to buy alcohol for them.The Northern Territory and federal governments were repeatedly warned the changes would have disastrous consequences. Most expected the NT Government would extend alcohol bans in the town camps and communities for at least two years while alcohol management plans were developed. Instead, it implemented an “opt-in” policy, where alcohol was returned to the communities and town camps immediately, unless they “opted-in” to remain dry.Two of the NT’s Alice Springs-based federal politicians – Labor’s Lingiari MP Marion Scrymgour and Country Liberal Party Senator Jacinta Price - used their maiden speeches in Parliament to warn of an impending disaster. “When a government puts a protective regime of that kind in place and leaves it in place for that long, you can’t just suddenly pull the pin on it without any protection, sanctuary or plan for the vulnerable women and children whom the original measure was supposed to protect,” Ms Scrymgour said.“To do that is more than negligent; at the level of impact on actual lives, it is tantamount to causing injury by omission.”The Central Australian Aboriginal Congress – the biggest Aboriginal healthcare provider in Central Australia – also urged the NT Government to reconsider its decision. But no-one listened. For more than six months, Northern Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles refused to budge. She and her cabinet colleagues said the bans were part of a “race-based policy” that her government wanted no part of. It was a line the Chief Minister was sticking to, even as Anthony Albanese was about to arrive in Alice Springs on Tuesday, after the town’s crime crisis became the biggest story in the country.The Alice Springs crime figures were through the roof. Property damage was up 60 per cent in the 12 months to last November. Commercial break-ins were up 56 per cent, alcohol-related assaults had risen by 55 per cent and domestic-violence related assault was up 54 per cent.The town’s police couldn’t keep up. Neither could the hospital. A doctor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said staff were overwhelmed by the volume and severity of the injuries they were having to treat.“In the time I’ve been working here I’ve never seen the violence as bad as it is,” he said. “It’s extreme violence. We had a patient in here the other night who tried to decapitate his wife and he cut his own throat. We had both of them in. I’ve never seen anything like it.” A special police operation was launched at the beginning of December. More than 300 arrests were made in seven weeks.When a 13-year-old boy walked into a supermarket on January 15 armed with a machete, Mayor Matt Paterson had had enough. He called for the Australian Defence Force to be sent in.Pressure soon mounted on the Prime Minister to act, and by 2pm on Tuesday he had landed in Alice Springs.Albanese met with members of the Northern Territory Government, police and Mr Paterson for three hours. They emerged to announce strict alcohol restrictions.Takeaway alcohol sales have been banned on Mondays and Tuesdays and restricted to between 3pm and 7pm on other days. And the decision to lift the alcohol bans on communities and town camps is under review. It could be reversed as soon as this week.Christine Davis, an Arrernte woman who lives at Ilpeye Ilpeye town camp, is urging the Prime Minister to reinstate the bans. She says there was an instant increase in problems when the bans were lifted, with visitors bringing grog into the camps.“It was alright before with the restrictions and everything but soon as the Intervention finished it’s just got bad from day one,” she said.She said the Prime Minister needed to “turn the tap back down a bit and send people back to their community”.But she also questioned why there were no plans to improve programs and facilities in remote communities.Business owner Darren Clark, who has run a three-year Facebook campaign trying to highlight the town’s crime crisis, says the failure of governments to properly invest in remote communities was now wreaking havoc on the streets of Alice Springs.He said Mr Albanese and Ms Fyles had made “token announcements” on Tuesday, committing more money to “programs that don’t work”.“How about you spend the money in the bush, get these people an economy in the bush, get them jobs,” he said.“They’ve got no hope, you can train them all you like but they haven’t got a job out there, because governments keep failing on economic development in remote communities and they wonder why they migrate to the towns like Alice Springs.“How about you work for a race of people who have been suppressed and disadvantaged for too long.“The money never trickles down to the people that matter, on the ground. There’s no extra food in communities, there’s no extra health services in remote communities. Half the police stations in remote communities are empty.“Try and ring the police on a remote community. You’re lucky if the line even works.”Back at Ilpeye Ilpeye town camp, Jamie Fejo worries all Aboriginal people in Central Australia are being blamed for this crisis.“It’s just a big discrimination that’s going on in Alice Springs,” he says.“Because the kids are walking on the streets they’re making us look bad. The good people, you know.”Sky News Northern Australia correspondent Matt Cunningham has been reporting on Indigenous issues in the NT for the past 15 years. | Australia Politics |
The woman killed in a rocket strike in Rehovot was named as 80-year-old Inga Avramyan, as her grandson said Saturday that she died as she tried to help her paralyzed husband reach shelter.
Avramyan’s husband Sergei had limited mobility after a car accident left him partially paralyzed and with a leg amputated, meaning he was unable to reach shelter unaided. He was lightly wounded in the rocket attack.
“She was hit by a collapsing ceiling, while Grandpa Sergei was only slightly injured,” the grandson named only as Arthur told Channel 12 news.
“They didn’t have time to get to the reinforced room,” he said.
“Grandpa was probably stressed and grandma tried to help him get up. It was difficult for him to move because his leg was amputated and he is partially paralyzed after a car accident,” the relative said.
“They heard the siren late and had too little time to get to the shelter,” the grandson said.
Arthur said that his grandparents had immigrated from Yerevan in Armenia around 30 years ago.
“My grandmother taught Russian, she was an educated and wise woman. My grandfather had a manufacturing plant. They lived a high status life in Armenia, but they struggled in Israel with the Hebrew language,” he said.
“After the accident, my grandfather was paralyzed in half of his body and used a wheelchair,” he said. “My grandmother cared for him with love and devotion. She raised us all and was a brave woman.”
“I don’t know what my grandfather will do without her. He communicated only with her. She was his whole life. There was a love between them that you don’t see every day,” he said.
The direct hit blew a massive hole in the Avramyam’s apartment on the third story of a building in Rehovot, a city of 150,000 some 45 kilometers (27 miles) north of Gaza, raining rubble on the street below.
“It was hard to see — everything was destroyed and there was nothing left,” Arthur said.
Avramyan is set to be buried at the Rishon Lezion cemetery and the family said that when the exact time and date were announced, the public was invited to attend.
“Grandma wanted to live her life with dignity and it should end with dignity too,” Arthur said.
In the wake of the attack, Home Front Command chief Maj. Gen. Rafi Milo, visiting said the reinforced room was being used for storage, and said it was an example of why it was important to follow instructions of the Home Front.
The Israel Defense Forces said Friday that an Iron Dome interceptor missile suffered a âtechnical faultâ on Thursday, missing the rocket launched from the Gaza Strip that ultimately struck the building in Rehovot, killing Avramyan and injuring several others — four moderately and one lightly.
However, military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari described the issue — the second to plague the system in just over a week — as likely isolated, claiming that the missile defense system managed to down 91 percent of targeted projectiles. Last year, the IDF boasted of a 97% interception rate.
He said the deadly rocket was similar to the hundreds of other crudely made projectiles launched from Gaza over the recent escalation, but it hit the apartment building at “a complex angle,” causing widespread destruction.
The malfunction came after the Iron Dome had a separate issue that kept it from activating during a flareup with Islamic Jihad earlier this month. The malfunction led to several rockets landing in populated areas, including one that hit a construction site in the city of Sderot and wounded three foreign nationals.
The Iron Dome has seen malfunctions in the past. In May 2021, a technical issue with an Iron Dome battery during a massive rocket barrage toward the coastal city of Ashkelon prevented some rockets from being intercepted and may have been responsible for the deaths of two women and the injury of dozens of people.
Operation Shield and Arrow, as it is known in the military, was launched early Tuesday with the killing of three top Islamic Jihad commanders in the wake of rocket fire from Gaza earlier this month. Another three senior Islamic Jihad members have been killed in separate strikes during the fighting.
The terror group responded to the deadly strikes in Gaza by firing hundreds of rockets at Israeli communities, killing one, injuring at least 22 others, and causing extensive material damage, mostly across southern Israel.
Over 40 people have also sought treatment for acute anxiety from nearby impacts.
At least 33 people in Gaza have been killed since Israel launched the surprise offensive, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, and at least 93 more injured.
Military officials have said Israel has killed at least 18 terror operatives but admit the IDF was responsible for the deaths of 10 civilians during the initial strikes, which destroyed residential structures where families were sleeping. Officials believe four Gaza civilians have been killed by Palestinian rocket misfires.
Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report. | Middle East Politics |
The United States has carried out strikes on two facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and affiliated groups in response to a recent series of attacks against American personnel based in Iraq and Syria by Tehran-backed militias, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Thursday.
US bases and personnel in the Middle East have been targeted in a slew of drone and missile attacks since October 17.
In assaults that used drones to target al-Asad Airbase in Iraq and al-Tanf Garrison in Syria, an American contractor for the US military died from a cardiac arrest while sheltering during one of the strikes and 21 US soldiers were lightly injured before returning to duty shortly thereafter, the Pentagon said.
US President Joe Biden “directed today’s action to make clear that the United States will not tolerate such attacks and will defend itself, its personnel, and its interests,” Austin said in a statement.
Austin stressed that the US “does not seek conflict and has no intention nor desire to engage in further hostilities, but these Iranian-backed attacks against US forces are unacceptable and must stop.”
“Iran wants to hide its hand and deny its role in these attacks against our forces. We will not let them. If attacks by Iran’s proxies against US forces continue, we will not hesitate to take further necessary measures to protect our people,” the US defense chief said.
“These narrowly tailored strikes in self-defense were intended solely to protect and defend US personnel in Iraq and Syria. They are separate and distinct from the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, and do not constitute a shift in our approach to the Israel-Hamas conflict,” Austin clarified
“We continue to urge all state and non-state entities not to take action that would escalate into a broader regional conflict,” he said.
According to the Pentagon, there have now been at least 19 attacks on US bases and personnel in Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17, including three on Thursday.
A senior US military official said the precision strikes hit weapons and ammunition storage areas that were connected to the IRGC, which is a US-designated terrorist organization.
Two US F-16 fighter jets carried out the sortie on sites near the town of Boukamal near the Iraqi border, the official said.
The area is thought to be a main conduit for weapons transfers between Iran and Syria or Lebanon, via Iraq.
The official said there had been Iranian-aligned militia and IRGC personnel on the base and no civilians, but the US does not have any information yet on casualties or an assessment of damage.
The official would not say how many munitions were launched by the F-16s.
A senior defense official said the sites were chosen because the IRGC stores the types of munitions that were used in the strikes against US bases and troops.
The official told reporters that the F-16 airstrikes will have a significant impact on the ability of Iranian proxy groups to continue to attack US forces.
Asked which groups were targeted, the official said there are several that may have different names, but the US holds Tehran responsible for funding, arming, equipping and directing the proxies.
The official said the airstrikes were not designed to expand the conflict in the region but to compel Iran to direct the militia groups to cease the attacks on American bases and personnel.
The two officials briefed reporters after the strikes on condition of anonymity providing details on the mission that had not yet been made public.
The strikes in Syria followed a direct warning Thursday from US President Joe Biden to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei against attacks on US troops, the White House said.
“There was a direct message relayed. That’s as far as I’m going to go,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters, declining to say how it was delivered.
Israel has repeatedly accused Iran of being a key force behind the coordinated Hamas attack on Israel, in which terrorists streamed across the border to carry out a devastating assault on nearby communities, killing some 1,400 people, and taking over 220 people hostage. The vast majority of those killed as gunmen seized border communities were civilians — including babies, children and the elderly. Entire families were executed in their homes, and over 260 were slaughtered at an outdoor festival, many amid horrific acts of brutality by the terrorists.
However, the Biden administration has not publicly accused Iran of having a direct role in the devastating Oct. 7 attack and has said it appears so far that Tehran was not aware of it beforehand.
The US has noted that Iran has long supported Hamas and has raised concerns that Iran and its proxies could turn the conflict into a wider war.
US officials have routinely stressed that the American response is designed to be proportional, and is aimed at deterring strikes against US personnel who are focused on the fight against the Islamic State group.
While US officials have not publicly tied the recent string of attacks in Syria and Iraq to the Israel-Hamas war, Iranian officials have openly criticized the US for providing weapons to Israel that have been used to strike Gaza.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, has also beefed up air defenses in the region to protect US forces. Israel has reportedly agreed to delay its Gaza ground operation until the systems are in place.
The US has said it is sending several batteries of Patriot missile systems, a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery and additional fighter jets.
The THAAD is being sent from Fort Bliss, Texas, and the Patriot batteries are from Fort Liberty in North Carolina and Fort Sill in Oklahoma. An Avenger air defense system from Fort Liberty is also being sent.
Officials have said as many as two battalions of Patriots are being deployed. A battalion can include at least three Patriot batteries, which each have six to eight launchers.
US troops have also deployed or are in the process of going to the Middle East region, including those associated with the air defense systems.
The United States has already deployed two aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean in a powerful show of support for Israel. | Middle East Politics |
Slovakia’s populist former prime minister, Robert Fico, who campaigned on a pledge to end military aid to Ukraine, has said his position “has not changed” after his party’s clear election win made him favourite to lead the country for a fourth time.
Fico told reporters he was waiting for Slovakia’s president to give him a mandate to start forming a government – expected on Monday – after officials said on Sunday that Smer-SD had scored 22.9% in Saturday’s vote with 99.98% of ballots counted.
Fico said he was ready to open talks with other parties on forming a coalition government. “We’re here, we’re ready, we’ve learned something, we’re more experienced,” he said. “We have clear ideas; we have clear plans.”
The 59-year-old, whose pro-Moscow stance has sparked fears Slovakia will join Hungary and its authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán in challenging the EU’s consensus on support for Kyiv, added: “People in Slovakia have bigger problems than Ukraine.”
Fico has leaned close to Orbán, who congratulated him on his victory on Sunday. “Guess who’s back!” the Hungarian prime minister said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Always good to work together with a patriot. Looking forward to it.”
Fico said his party was “not changing [its view] that we are prepared to help Ukraine in a humanitarian way … We are prepared to help with the reconstruction of the state. But you know our opinion on arming Ukraine.”
The liberal, pro-western Progressive Slovakia (PS) party finished second on just under 18%, with Hlas – a spin-off from Smer formed after Fico was forced to resign in 2018 over political turmoil surrounding the murder of an investigative journalist and his fiancée – third on almost 15%.
With his party set up as kingmaker, Peter Pellegrini, the Hlas leader, who has previously said his party favoured Smer, said on Sunday the priority in negotiations would be a stable coalition and legislative agenda. Talks could last days or weeks, he said.
PS, which is liberal on environmental policies and LGBTQ+ and minority rights, and seeks deeper European integration, also suggested on Sunday it would approach Hlas. Its leader, Michal Šimečka, insisted he still saw a route to forming a ruling coalition.
“We believe that this is very bad news for Slovakia,” the 39-year-old European parliament vice-chair said of Smer’s victory. “And it would be even worse news if Robert Fico succeeds in forming a government.”
Analysts said Slovakia’s new ruling coalition would most likely be formed by Smer, Hlas and the nationalist, pro-Russian Slovak National Party (SNS), which would have a slim but functioning majority of 79 seats in the 150-seat parliament.
“If this transpires, a major assault on the rule of law is on the menu – Smer promised ‘vengeance’,” said Michal Ovádek, a European politics specialist at University College London. “We will have to wait a few days to find out whether it materialises.”
Milan Nič, of the German council on foreign relations, called Smer’s victory a “stunning political revival for a veteran populist who is still entangled in corruption cases”, adding that Pellegrini would likely be offered the job of parliamentary speaker.
The key task for the west would be “not to lose Slovakia”, Nič said on X. It would be vital to “engage constructively with Fico and manage cracks in support for Ukraine, as Hungary is no longer alone”.
Radoslav Štefančík, an analyst from the University of Economics in Bratislava, said: “It can’t be ruled out that Fico will be looking for a [European] partner who uses similar rhetoric - and that partner will be Viktor Orbán.”
Analysts have, however, said Fico, who was pragmatic during previous mandates, may cool his rhetoric in a coalition with Hlas, which has said ammunition supplies to Ukraine are good for Slovakia’s industry and backed the EU’s stance on the invasion.
Several experts noted that one of the election’s big surprises was the failure of the far-right Republika party, long seen as a potential Smer partner, to clear the 5% threshold for a seat in parliament, despite polling at between 7 and 10% for much of the year.
In total, seven parties and groups scored high enough to enter parliament, including the centrist, anti-corruption OLaNO coalition that won the previous elections in 2020, the centrist Christian Democrats, and the rightwing SaS.
President Zuzana Čaputová, a former member of Progressive Slovakia and a longtime political rival of Fico, said she would task him with forming a new government. “Tomorrow I will entrust the formation of the government to the winner of the election,” she said on Sunday. | Europe Politics |
Al-Shifa is the main hospital in Gaza City - I've been there many times. It has big grounds, so people in Gaza went there to seek shelter and camp out as they saw it as a safe area.
It has now become a symbol of the juxtaposition of the war - the Israeli invasion of Gaza inflicting masses of casualties and damage, set against the crisis of urgent humanitarian need inside the hospital.
The Israelis have made a very big point about saying that, as well as going after the Hamas military command, they have brought in some fuel and incubators, because there has been a very concerning claim that premature babies in Al-Shifa Hospital had to be taken out of their incubators.
However, the issue isn't a lack of incubators, it's a lack of fuel. Until Wednesday, Israel hadn't allow fuel into the Gaza Strip because they argued that Hamas would steal it and use it.
Some 23,000 litres (5,060 gallons) of fuel has now been allowed in, but it is only to be used to refuel UN lorries. The UN says the delivery comprises only a fraction of what's needed for humanitarian operations, and the entry of fuel to run generators at hospitals and at water and sanitation facilities remains banned.
Israel says Hamas has stockpiles of its own, and that it should use that fuel for the generators supplying the hospital electrical system.
So there are a lot of strands coming together in what's unfolding in Al-Shifa Hospital this morning, but that's not the whole war - it will continue once this particular operation is over.
At the same time, we have seen a hardening of the international position around the Israeli offensive in the last few days with the US, the UK and France using language that is shifting the tone - perhaps summed up best by what US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last weekend: "Far too many" Palestinian civilians have been killed.
Two running clocks
The Israelis knew this shift would come because this is a repeat of the pattern we have seen many times before with Israel's military operations. They talk about different clocks running during any operation.
One is military: how long do they need before they accomplish their military objectives? The other is diplomatic: how long does Israel hold legitimacy to carry out that operation before its allies say, "you've killed enough people, civilians, you need to stop now please."
Israel feels that because of the absolute enormity of the numbers of casualties in the Hamas attacks on 7 October, they have more time than usual, and I think they have gone in - as we can see from the levels of casualties in Gaza - using a great deal of force.
I have seen some estimates that suggest the Israel Defense Forces will continue to work in this way for a couple more weeks, but I think the forces are gathering among their allies to say you need to change the nature of your military operation.
That doesn't necessarily translate to a call for this to stop - certainly we haven't yet heard a call for a ceasefire from the British or the Americans.
More on Israel-Gaza war
- Follow live: Latest updates
- From Gaza: Giving birth with no painkillers under the bombs in Gaza
- From Israel: Hostages' fates haunt Israel as Gaza war intensifies
- Explained: The faces of hostages taken from Israel
- History behind the story: The Israel-Palestinian conflict | Middle East Politics |
The head of Ukraine's military intelligence has warned of a swift response to a series of Russian missile strikes on Kyiv.
General Kyrylo Budanov said Monday's attacks failed to intimidate people in the capital who just got on with life.
All the missiles were shot down, officials said, and there were no reports of casualties.
However flaming debris from the intercepted missiles landed in residential areas in central Kyiv.
Monday's attack followed two nights of heavy drone strikes, the latest in some 16 air attacks on the Ukrainian capital this month.
The latest was unusual because it came during the day and seemed targeted at the city centre, whereas other strikes on Kyiv in May have been at night and directed at key infrastructure or air defences on the outskirts.
Gen Budanov said he wanted to "upset" Russia's supporters by letting them know people in Kyiv were undeterred by the attack and had continued working after it.
"All those who tried to intimidate us, dreaming that it would have some effect, you will regret it very soon," he added in a statement published by Ukraine's intelligence ministry. "Our answer will not be long."
According to reports, only one person was injured and all missiles were destroyed by Ukrainian air defences. Russian authorities claimed all their targets had been hit.
Air raid sirens reportedly also rang out across several other Ukrainian regions.
Local military commanders in Kyiv accused Russia of changing its tactics and deliberately targeting the civilian population. It certainly appears that Moscow wants to step up its pressure on Ukraine even further ahead of any counter-offensive.
Oleksandr Scherba, ambassador-at-large at Ukraine's ministry of foreign affairs, told the BBC that the last few days had been very difficult for Kyiv residents.
"Almost every night, the skies look and sound like another Star Wars episode, but we don't feel much of Russian rockets hitting their targets here within the city area. And this is all thanks to the decent countries, decent people of the world who gave us this air defence," he said.
Living in the capital was anything but normal at the moment, Mr Scherba said, adding that the drone attacks and sleepless nights had become "part of our routine".
On Sunday, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky praised his country's air defence forces after Kyiv sustained the largest drone attack since the war began.
"You are heroes," said Mr Zelensky, after military commanders said most of the drones launched by Russia were brought down.
In its recent attacks, Russia - which launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022 - has been using kamikaze drones as well as a range of cruise and ballistic missiles.
Analysts say Moscow is seeking to deplete and damage Ukraine's air defences ahead of its long-expected counter-offensive.
Ukraine has been planning a counter-offensive for months. But it has wanted as much time as possible to train troops and to receive military equipment from Western allies.
On Monday, in Russian region of Belgorod, the governor said that several frontier settlements were being shelled simultaneously by Ukrainian forces. | Europe Politics |
India To Resume Select Visa Services For Canadian Citizens
India will begin issuing certain categories of visas for Canadian citizens, in a sign of softening of tensions between the two nations over the killing of a Sikh separatist leader.
(Bloomberg) -- India will begin issuing certain categories of visas for Canadian citizens, in a sign of softening of tensions between the two nations over the killing of a Sikh separatist leader.
India will resume issuing visas from Oct. 26 to people of Indian origin, and those requiring permits to attend conferences or for business or medical reasons, the Indian High Commission in Ottawa said on Wednesday. The decision was taken after a “considered review of the security situation that takes into account some Canadian measures in this regard,” it said in a statement. The Indian High Commission and consulates will also address any emergency situation, according to the statement.
The move comes days after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration forced the North American nation to cut its diplomatic staff in India, which External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said was triggered by concerns about interference by Canadian diplomats in his country’s internal affairs. Diplomatic ties between the two countries deteriorated since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused India’s government of helping orchestrate the killing of a Sikh separatist activist on Canadian soil.
New Delhi called the allegation “absurd” and retaliated with several measures, including a suspension of visas for Canadians. India asked Ottawa to reduce its diplomatic presence and make it equal to the number of Indians who have diplomatic immunity in Canada.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P. | India Politics |
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
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Nigerian President Bola Tinubuspeaks at a panel at a G20-led summit for Africa in Berlin in November.
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Nigerian President Bola Tinubuspeaks at a panel at a G20-led summit for Africa in Berlin in November.
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
LAGOS, Nigeria — Nigeria's president has ordered an investigation after the country's military launched a drone strike at a public gathering this weekend, killing at least 85 people and wounding dozens of others.
Villagers in Nigeria's northern Kaduna state had gathered for the Muslim celebration of the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, when they were hit by the airstrike operated from an armed drone at around 9 p.m. Sunday.
Those killed included children and elderly, according to emergency services, as a search for more bodies continues. Community leaders told local media the death toll was over 90 people, and eyewitnesses in the rural town of Tudun Biri described horrific scenes of several mutilated bodies.
In a statement through Tuesday, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu said the attack was "disturbing and painful" and pledged a "thorough and full-fledged investigation into the incident," which he described as a "bombing mishap."
A spokesman for the army, Brig. Gen. Onyema Nwachukwu, said its forces had located a group of people and determined they were militants, who officials often refer to as "bandits," at large in north and central Nigeria. Officers "misinterpreted their pattern of activities to be similar to that of the bandits," he said.
Criminal groups of thousands of militants have become the primary security threat in much of northern and central Nigeria, effectively occupying rural villages, launching attacks and mass kidnappings.
On Tuesday, the head of the Nigerian army, Lt. Gen. Taoreed Lagbaja, visited the scene and the local hospital where victims were taken to be treated.
"It is grave, regrettable," Lagbaja said. "We will do everything possible to prevent such an occurrence from happening again in the conduct of our operations going forward."
Yet calls for accountability are building, following one of the worst apparently accidental attacks against civilians among a pattern of similar incidents.
In January, 39 people were killed by an army airstrike in the central state of Nasarawa. In June, the Nigerian air force admitted responsibility, and has since provided no further details on whether any officers were held accountable.
In 2017, the air force bombed a refugee camp in the northeastern town of Rann in Borno state, the epicenter of the Boko Haram insurgency. More than 100 people were killed, including aid workers. The air force said the airstrike was launched using the wrong coordinates, and it did not reveal whether any officers were held accountable.
The U.S. government has provided Nigeria's armed forces with support and weapons in its fight against insurgent groups, despite a long record of human rights violations in the West African nation and "accidental" attacks against civilians without prosecution. In April last year, the State Department approved an almost $1 billion weapons sale to Nigeria. | Africa politics |
TOKYO (AP) — The assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has unearthed long-suspected, little-talked-of links between him and a religious group that started in South Korea but has spread its influence around the world. Police and Japanese media have suggested that the alleged attacker, Tetsuya Yamagami, who was arrested on the spot, was furious about Abe’s reported ties to the Unification Church, which has pursued relationships with politically conservative groups and leaders in the United States, Japan and Europe. The suspect reportedly was upset because his mother’s massive donations to the church bankrupted the family. Many Japanese have been surprised as revelations emerged this week of the ties between the church and Japan’s top leaders, which have their roots in shared anti-communism efforts during the Cold War. Analysts say it could lead people to examine more closely how powerfully the ruling party’s conservative worldviews have steered the policies of modern Japan.A look at the church and its deep ties to Japan’s governing party and Abe’s own family: ___WHAT’S THE UNIFICATION CHURCH?The church was founded in Seoul in 1954, a year after the end of the Korean War, by the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the self-proclaimed messiah who preached new interpretations of the Bible and conservative, family-oriented value systems. The church championed anti-communism and the unification of the Korean Peninsula, which has been split between the totalitarian North and democratic South. The church is perhaps best known for mass weddings where it paired off couples, often from different countries, and renewed the vows of those already married, at big, open places such as stadiums and gymnasiums. The group is said to have a global membership of millions, including hundreds of thousands in Japan.The church faced accusations in the 1970s and ’80s of using devious recruitment tactics and brainwashing adherents into turning over huge portions of their salaries to Moon. The church has denied such allegations, saying many new religious movements faced similar accusations in their early years. In Japan, the group has faced lawsuits for offering “spiritual merchandise” that allegedly caused members to buy expensive art and jewelry or sell their real estate to raise donations for the church. ___WHAT’S THE CHURCH’S LINK TO WORLD LEADERS?Throughout his life, Moon worked to transform his church into a worldwide religious movement and expand its business and charitable activities. Moon was convicted of tax evasion in 1982 and served a prison term in New York. He died in 2012.The church has developed relations with conservative world leaders including U.S. presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and more recently Donald Trump.Moon also had ties with North Korea’s founder Kim Il Sung, the late grandfather of current ruler Kim Jong Un.Moon said in his autobiography that he asked Kim to give up his nuclear ambitions, and that Kim responded that his atomic program was for peaceful purposes and he had no intention to use it to “kill (Korean) compatriots.”___WHAT WAS ABE’S LINK TO THE CHURCH?Abe was known for his arch-conservative views on security and history issues and also was backed by powerful lobbies such as the Nippon Kaigi. He appeared in events organized by church affiliates, including one in September 2021. In a video shown on a big screen at the meeting of church-related Universal Peace Federation, or UPF, Abe praised its work toward peace on the Korean Peninsula and the group’s focus on family values. An emphasis on traditional, paternalistic family systems was one of Abe’s key positions.“I appreciate UPF’s focus on family values,” he said in the video. “Let’s be aware of so-called social revolutionary movements with narrow-minded values.”Reports of his appearance in the 2021 event drew criticisms from the Japanese Communist Party and cult watchers, including a group of lawyers who have watched the Unification Church activities and supported its alleged victims.In a news conference Monday after the church’s connection to Abe’s assassination was revealed, the church’s leader in Japan, Tomohiro Tanaka, said Abe supported UPF’s peace movement but that he was not a member.Police still have not publicly identified the group cited by the suspect, presumably to avoid inciting violence.___WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR JAPAN’S GOVERNING PARTY?The ties between the church and Japan’s governing party go back to Abe’s grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, who served as prime minister and shared worries with Washington over the spread of communism in Japan in the 1960s as labor union activists gained strength. Kishi, who was arrested as a war criminal but never charged, was known for his right-wing political views, and the Unification Church’s anti-communist stance matched his views of Japan’s national interests, experts say.Kishi’s close relationship with the church was publicly known. The church headquarters at one point was housed in a building next to Kishi’s Tokyo residence, and he was seen with Moon in photos taken at the church and published in group publications. Media reports say the suspect believed that Kishi brought the church to Japan.“Japanese leaders at the time saw the church as a tool to promote anti-communist views in Japan,” said Masaki Kito, a lawyer and expert on religious businesses. For the group, showcasing close ties with prominent politicians was a way to get endorsement for its activity.Ties between church-affiliated organizations and Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers developed over decades since the church expanded, providing solid political support and votes for the governing party, experts say, though the group denied it.A survey of 128 lawmakers obtained from police and published in the Weekly Gendai magazine in 1999 showed most attended events organized by the Unification Church’s anti-communism affiliate, the International Federation for Victory Over Communism, also funded by Moon, and more than 20 LDP lawmakers had at least one church member in their offices as a volunteer. ___WHAT IS BEING SAID BY THE CHURCH AND ITS CRITICS?The church denied any favorable treatment by Kishi when it opened a Japan branch. Tanaka said Abe supported current leader Hak Ja Han Moon’s peace movement, but denied any movement of money between the group and the LDP. The church said Monday it had no records showing that Yamagami was a member. The church said it had had no direct relationship with Abe, although it interacted with other lawmakers through an affiliated organization.Members of the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales, who watch the church, say they have repeatedly asked Abe and other LDP lawmakers to stop appearing at or sending messages to the events organized by the Unification Church or affiliates while ignoring the long-standing church-related problems.___WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR THE PARTY?“The assassination is shedding a light on the Unification Church,” said Koichi Nakano, an international politics professor at Sophia University in Tokyo. “The church’s relationship with the LDP’s right-wing factions and its ultra-right-wing policies could come under close scrutiny,” and lead to a reevaluation of Abe’s legacy.It could lead to revelations of how the party’s views have distorted postwar Japanese society, while stalling progress of gender equality and sexual diversity issues, Nakano said.Takuya Tasso, the governor of Iwate in northern Japan, said Friday that as a former bureaucrat and national lawmaker he knew about the LDP’s links to the church and he said its alleged influence on voting and government policies should be thoroughly investigated.___Associated Press writer Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed. | Asia Politics |
Susan Walsh/AP
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gestures during a meeting with President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan, Sunday, May 21, 2023.
Susan Walsh/AP
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gestures during a meeting with President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan, Sunday, May 21, 2023.
Susan Walsh/AP
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that Bakhmut was "only in our hearts," hours after Russia's defense ministry reported that forces of the Wagner private army, with the support of Russian troops, had seized the city in eastern Ukraine.
Speaking alongside U.S. President Joe Biden at the Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima, Japan, Zelenskyy said he believed the city had fallen, but added: "You have to understand that there is nothing," saying of the Russians, "They destroyed everything."
"For today, Bakhmut is only in our hearts," he said. "There is nothing in this place."
The Russian ministry statement on the Telegram channel came about eight hours after a similar claim by Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin. Ukrainian authorities at that time said that fighting for Bakhmut was continuing.
Zelenskyy's comments came as Biden announced $375 million more in aid for Ukraine, which included more ammunition, artillery, and vehicles.
The eight-month battle for Bakhmut is the longest and probably most bloody of the conflict in Ukraine.
Analysts said that Russia's victory in Bakhmut was unlikely to turn the tide in the war.
The Russian capture of the last remaining ground in Bakhmut is "not tactically or operationally significant," a Washington-based think tank said late Saturday evening. The Institute for the Study of War said that taking control of these areas "does not grant Russian forces operationally significant terrain to continue conducting offensive operations," nor to "to defend against possible Ukrainian counterattacks."
Using the city's Soviet-era name, the Russian ministry said, "In the Artyomovsk tactical direction, the assault teams of the Wagner private military company with the support of artillery and aviation of the southern battlegroup has completed the liberation of the city of Artyomovsk."
Russian state news agencies cited the Kremlin's press service as saying President Vladimir Putin "congratulates the Wagner assault detachments, as well as all servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces units, who provided them with the necessary support and flank protection, on the completion of the operation to liberate Artyomovsk."
In a video posted earlier on Telegram, Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin said the city came under complete Russian control at about midday Saturday. He spoke flanked by about a half dozen fighters, with ruined buildings in the background and explosions heard in the distance.
Fighting has raged in and around Bakhmut for more than eight months.
Russian forces will still face the massive task of seizing the remaining part of the Donetsk region still under Ukrainian control, including several heavily fortified areas.
It isn't clear which side has paid a higher price in the battle for Bakhmut. Both Russia and Ukraine have endured losses believed to be in the thousands, though neither has disclosed casualty numbers.
Zelenskyy underlined the importance of defending Bakhmut in an interview with The Associated Press in March, saying its fall could allow Russia to rally international support for a deal that might require Kyiv to make unacceptable compromises.
Analysts have said Bakhmut's fall would be a blow to Ukraine and give some tactical advantages to Russia but wouldn't prove decisive to the outcome of the war.
Russian forces still face the enormous task of seizing the rest of the Donetsk region under Ukrainian control, including several heavily fortified areas. The provinces of Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk make up the Donbas, Ukraine's industrial heartland where a separatist uprising began in 2014 and which Moscow illegally annexed in September.
Bakhmut, located about 55 kilometers (34 miles) north of the Russian-held regional capital of Donetsk, had a prewar population of 80,000 and was an important industrial center, surrounded by salt and gypsum mines.
The city, which was named Artyomovsk after a Bolshevik revolutionary when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, also was known for its sparkling wine production in underground caves. Its broad tree-lined avenues, lush parks and stately downtown with imposing late 19th-century mansions — all now reduced to a smoldering wasteland — made it a popular tourist destination.
When a separatist rebellion engulfed eastern Ukraine in 2014 weeks after Moscow's illegal annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, the rebels quickly won control of the city, only to lose it a few months later.
After Russia switched its focus to the Donbas following a botched attempt to seize Kyiv early in the February 2022 invasion, Moscow's troops tried to take Bakhmut in August but were pushed back.
The fighting there abated in autumn as Russia was confronted with Ukrainian counteroffensives in the east and the south, but it resumed at full pace late last year. In January, Russia captured the salt-mining town of Soledar, just north of Bakhmut, and closed in on the city's suburbs.
Intense Russian shelling targeted the city and nearby villages as Moscow waged a three-sided assault to try to finish off the resistance in what Ukrainians called "fortress Bakhmut."
Mercenaries from Wagner spearheaded the Russian offensive. Prigozhin tried to use the battle for the city to expand his clout amid the tensions with the top Russian military leaders whom he harshly criticized.
"We fought not only with the Ukrainian armed forces in Bakhmut. We fought the Russian bureaucracy, which threw sand in the wheels," Prigozhin said in the video on Saturday.
The relentless Russian artillery bombardment left few buildings intact amid ferocious house-to-house battles. Wagner fighters "marched on the bodies of their own soldiers" according to Ukrainian officials. Both sides have spent ammunition at a rate unseen in any armed conflict for decades, firing thousands of rounds a day.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has said that seizing the city would allow Russia to press its offensive farther into the Donetsk region, one of the four Ukrainian provinces that Moscow illegally annexed in September. | Europe Politics |
SEOUL (Reuters) -- North Korea on Tuesday made a rare mention of dissenting votes in recent elections, although analysts dismissed it as an attempt to portray an image of a normal society rather than signaling any meaningful increase of rights in the authoritarian state.
The reclusive North has one of the most highly controlled societies in the world, with leader Kim Jong Un accused of using a system of patronage and repression to retain absolute power.
Reporting on the results of Sunday's election for deputies to regional people's assemblies, the North's state media said 0.09% and 0.13% voted against the selected candidates for the provincial and city councils, respectively.
"Among the voters who took part in the ballot-casting, 99.91% voted for the candidates for deputies to provincial people's assemblies ... (and) 99.87% voted for candidates for deputies to city and county people's assemblies," state news agency KCNA said.
The North's parliament and regional councils serve as a rubber stamp to the ruling Workers' Party, with their elections usually registering over 99% voter turnout.
This month's election marks the first time North Korea has referred to dissenting votes in local polls since the 1960s, an official at South Korea's unification ministry handling relations with the North said.
Held every four years, the latest regional election was also the first poll since North Korea revised its election law in August to allow multiple candidates.
"The portrayal of a more democratic society, particularly in comparison to South Korea and the U.S., is aimed at reinforcing the regime's legitimacy and authenticity on the world stage," the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada think tank said in a report.
A photo released by state media showed Kim casting a ballot, standing before two boxes -- one in green for approval and the other in red for dissent.
"Discreet voting will likely remain limited as the boxes will continue to be conspicuously monitored," the report said, adding that the candidate selection process will remain tightly controlled by Pyongyang.
The voter turnout slightly decreased to 99.63% from 99.98% four years ago, a sign analysts say that could indicate a minor weakening in state control in a country where voting is considered mandatory. | Asia Politics |
Uganda leader accuses World Bank of coercion after loan freeze
Kampala (AFP) – Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni on Wednesday accused the World Bank of using money to try to "coerce" the government over its controversial anti-gay legislation.
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His comments followed an announcement by the US-based global lender on Tuesday that it was suspending new loans to the East African country over what are considered among the world's harshest laws targeting LGBTQ communities.
The World Bank said that Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act "fundamentally contradicts" the institution's values and that no new public financing would be presented to its board of directors for approval for the time being.
But Museveni, who signed the measures into law in May, posted on X, the former Twitter, that "Ugandans will develop with or without loans".
"It is therefore unfortunate that the World Bank and other actors dare to want to coerce us into abandoning our faith, culture, principles and sovereignty, using money," the veteran leader said.
"We do not need pressure from anybody to know how to solve problems in our society."
Museveni nevertheless said Uganda was continuing discussions with the World Bank "so that they and we avoid this diversion if possible".
The United Nations, foreign governments including the United States, and global rights groups have condemned the new law, which contains provisions making "aggravated homosexuality" a capital offence and imposes penalties for consensual same-sex relations of up to life in prison.
In May, US President Joe Biden called for the immediate repeal of the measures he branded "a tragic violation of universal human rights" and threatened to cut aid and investment in Uganda.
But the government has remained defiant and the legislation has broad support in the conservative majority Christian country, where lawmakers have defended the measures as a necessary bulwark against alleged Western immorality.
Uganda's Information Minister Chris Baryomunsi also confirmed to AFP earlier Wednesday that consultations were ongoing with the World Bank.
"However, the World Bank and others should be reminded that Uganda is a sovereign country, which takes decisions in the interests of her people, and this is the spirit of the Anti-Homosexuality Act."
In the wake of Tuesday's announcement, Uganda's health ministry, which is among recipients of the World Bank funds, issued a circular reiterating that no one should be denied medical services.
The statement said that healthcare providers and workers were "not to discriminate, stigmatise any individual who seeks health care for any reason, gender, religion, tribe, economic or social status or sexual orientation".
Rights campaigners had voiced concerns that following the new law, healthcare providers could report to the police members of the LGBTQ community seeking medical care, or that people would be wary of going to hospital for fear of being stigmatised.
© 2023 AFP | Africa politics |
A Norwegian mountaineer is defending her actions in the face of backlash surrounding drone footage that appears to show her team climbing over a dying sherpa to reach the summit of K2 in Pakistan.
Kristin Harila, 37, set a world record when she completed the K2 climb on July 27, becoming the fastest person to scale all 14 of the world’s tallest mountains with an elevation over 8,000 metres.
She completed the feat, alongside her Nepali sherpa Tenjen (Lama) Sherpa, in just three months and one day, breaking the previous record held by Nepali-British mountaineer Nirmal Purja, who took six months and six days.
But Harila’s critics are saying she will be remembered not for her record-breaking accomplishment, but for her inhumanity, after her team failed to save 27-year-old Mohammed Hassan from dying on K2. Meanwhile, the Norwegian climber says the dangerous conditions that day forced her team to split up.
The footage that sparked the scandal was released by Austrian climbing duo Wilhelm Steindl and Philip Flämig, who were also on K2 that day. They were recording drone footage when they captured video of multiple climbers walking over Hassan’s body to continue their summit.
Flämig described what they captured to Austria’s Standard newspaper: “He is being treated by one person while everyone else is pushing towards the summit. The fact is that there was no organized rescue operation, although there were sherpas and mountain guides on site who could have taken action.”
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Flämig and Steindl were far below “the bottleneck” of K2, where Hassan died, when they filmed the drone footage.
“If he had been a Westerner, he would have been rescued immediately,” Steindl said. “No one felt responsible for him. What happened there is a disgrace. A living human was left lying so that records could be set.”
“He was treated like a second-class human being,” he added.
According to Steindl, who spoke with Hassan’s family after descending K2, Hassan took the job of rope fixer to pay for his diabetic mother’s medical expenses, despite his lack of mountaineering experience. Rope fixers, or fixing teams, climb ahead to fix bolted ropes in place to assist climbers. The practice is quite dangerous, but makes climbing easier and safer for the mountaineers below.
Hassan, who leaves behind a wife and three children, was climbing with the group just in front of Harila’s team when the accident happened, according to a post on Harila’s website. In the statement, the Norwegian climber insists she and her team did everything they could to save the sherpa, but were unable to rescue him because of the dangerous conditions.
“I did not see exactly what took place, but suddenly Hassan had fallen and was hanging on the rope between 2 ice anchors,” Harila wrote.
“At first, nobody moved, probably out of shock and fear, then we realised that he was hanging upside down and was not able to climb up by himself. He must have fallen almost 5 meters and his harness was all the way down around his knees,” Harila said, noting that Hassan didn’t even have a down jacket or gloves on for the cold and treacherous climb up K2.
When they managed to reach Hassan, she says they gave him oxygen from their tanks and hot water to warm him up.
“As we were trying to move Hassan up closer to the path, an avalanche went off around the corner where the fixing team was,” Harila said. “Worried for the safety of the fixing team, Lama and myself went forward to see how we could help them.”
Meanwhile, the cameraman in Harila’s team stayed behind to help Hassan.
When Harila and Lama reached the fixing team, they asked the sherpas if they were going to head back down the mountain.
“They said yes, and as we understood it, that meant there was more help going to Hassan. We decided to continue forward as too many people in the bottleneck would make it more dangerous for a rescue,” Harila writes.
“Considering the amount of people that stayed behind and that had turned around, I believed Hassan would be getting all the help he could, and that he would be able to get down. We did not fully understand the gravity of everything that happened until later.”
Eventually, Harila’s cameraman left Hassan’s side because he had run out of oxygen himself.
After Harila’s team summited K2 and were climbing back down, they found Hassan dead. She said it would have been too dangerous for her team to bring Hassan’s body safely down the mountain.
“You need 6 people to carry a person down, especially in dangerous areas. However, the bottleneck is so narrow that you can only fit one person in front and one behind the person being helped. In this case, it was impossible to safely carry Hassan down,” she writes.
She described Hassan’s death as a “tragic accident,” and writes that she is angry that people are being blamed for his death.
“This was no one’s fault, you cannot comment when you do not understand the situation.”
She added that Hassan was unprepared for the dangerous trek.
“Everyone that goes up a summit needs proper training, proper equipment and proper guidance. From what I understood, Hassan was not properly equipped to take on an 8000m summit. What happened is in no way his fault, but it shows the importance of taking all of the possible precautions so that we can help ourselves and others,” she stated.
A GoFundMe for Hassan’s family was started by Austrian climber Steindl, who wrote that the family now has no source of income in the wake of Hassan’s death. The campaign has raised over 100,000 euros on Friday, just shy of the target of 110,000 euros.
The money will go directly to Hassan’s family, the message on the donation page states, ensuring his children have access to education.
In an update posted Wednesday, Steindl thanked donors for their money and wrote: “Together we save the livelihood of a family abandoned by western mountaineers. Let’s show them we’re better than that!”
K2 is widely considered one of the most difficult mountains to summit in the world, even harder than Everest, where more of the mountain flattens off, giving respite to climbers. | Asia Politics |
CAIRO -- U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Sudan was on the brink of a “full-scale civil war” as fierce clashes between rival generals continued unabated Sunday in the capital, Khartoum.
He warned on Saturday evening that the war between the Sudanese military and a powerful paramilitary force is likely to destabilize the entire region, according to Farhan Haq, deputy spokesperson for the secretary-general.
Sudan descended into chaos after months of tension between military chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and his rival Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, exploded into open fighting in mid-April.
Health Minister Haitham Mohammed Ibrahim said in televised comments last month that the clashes have killed over 3,000 people and wounded over 6,000 others. The death tally, however, is highly likely to be much higher. More than 2.9 million people have fled their homes to safer areas inside Sudan or crossed into neighboring countries, according to U.N. figures.
The fighting came 18 months after the two generals led a military coup in October 2021 that toppled a Western-backed civilian transitional government. The conflict dashed Sudanese hopes of a peaceful transition to democracy after a popular uprising forced the military removal of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.
The war has turned the capital Khartoum and other urban areas across the country into battlefields.
Residents in Khartoum said fierce fighting was underway early Sunday south of the capital. The warring factions were using heavy weapons in the battles in the Kalaka neighborhood and the military’s aircraft were seen hovering over the area, said resident Abdalla al-Fatih.
In his statement, Guterres also condemned an airstrike Saturday that health authorities said killed at least 22 people in Omdurman, a city just across the Nile from the capital, Khartoum. The assault was one of the deadliest in the conflict.
The RSF blamed the military for the attack in Omdurman. The military, in turn, denied the accusation saying in a statement Sunday that its air force didn’t carry out any airstrikes in the city that day.
The secretary-general also decried the large-scale violence and casualties in the western region of Darfur, which has experienced some of the worst fighting in the ongoing conflict, Haq said in a statement.
“There is an utter disregard for humanitarian and human rights law that is dangerous and disturbing,” Guterres said.
U.N. officials have said the violence in the region has recently taken an ethnic dimension, with the RSF and Arab militias reportedly targeting non-Arab tribes in Darfur, a sprawling region consisting of five provinces. Last month, the governor of Darfur, Mini Arko Minawi, said the region was sliding back to its past genocide, referring to the conflict that engulfed the region in the early 2000s.
Entire towns and villages in West Darfur province were overrun by the RSF and their allied militias, forcing tens of thousands of residents to flee to neighboring Chad. Activists have reported many residents killed, women and girls raped, and properties looted and burned to the ground.
There were clashes between the military and the RSF elsewhere in Sudan on Sunday including the province of North Kordofan, South Kordofan and Blue Nile. | Africa politics |
Finance Ministry Notifies Rules For Appointing President, Members In GST Appellate Tribunals
In September, the finance ministry had notified 31 benches of GSTAT, which will be set up in 28 states and 8 Union Territories.
The finance ministry has notified the rules for the appointment of the president and members of GST appellate tribunals.
Goods and Services Tax Appellate Tribunal (Appointment and Conditions of Service of President and Members) Rules, 2023, defines the rule for appointment and removal of the president and members of the appellate tribunals, their salary, allowances, pension, provident fund, gratuity and leave.
The GST council, chaired by the Union Finance Minister and comprising state counterparts, in its 52nd meeting on Oct. 7 decided that the maximum age limit for the president and members of the GST Appellate Tribunal (GSTAT) would be 70 years and 67 years, respectively.
In September, the finance ministry had notified 31 benches of GSTAT, which will be set up in 28 states and 8 Union Territories.
Setting up state-level benches of GSTAT would help businesses by way of faster dispute resolution.
Currently, taxpayers aggrieved with the ruling of tax authorities are required to move to the respective High Courts. The resolution process takes longer time as High Courts are already burdened with a backlog of cases and do not have a specialised bench to deal with GST cases.
As per the notification, Gujarat and UTs -- Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu -- will have two benches of the GSTAT; Goa and Maharashtra together will have three benches.
Karnataka and Rajasthan will have two benches each, while Uttar Pradesh will have three benches.
West Bengal, Sikkim, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry will together have two GSTAT benches each, while Kerala and Lakshadweep will have one bench.
The seven northeastern states -- Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura -- will have one bench each.
All other states will have one bench of the GSTAT.
"With the issuance of this notification, we anticipate that the expeditious commencement of activities related to identification, selection, appointment and training of tribunal members will begin," AMRG & Associates Senior Partner Rajat Mohan said. | India Politics |
Gaza's only power plant has run out of fuel, and medical and food supplies are dwindling, after another night which saw hundreds scramble onto the streets to flee relentless air strikes.
At 02:00 on Wednesday, a neighbour banged on my door and told me to leave now as my flat was being targeted.
Air strikes from Israeli warplanes have continued into their fifth day.
The situation for 2.3 million people in Gaza is increasingly desperate, with no way of leaving the tiny territory.
The only power station in Gaza stopped operating completely on Wednesday at 14:00 local time (11:00 GMT), authorities say.
Israel cut essential supplies, including fuel, to the sealed-off territory on Monday following a violent incursion by Hamas militants.
The lack of mains power means residents of Gaza have to rely on generators for electricity. But there is no way to import fuel for generators either.
There is now little hope of leaving the territory, after Israeli crossings were shut and Egypt was forced to close its only crossing point with Gaza due to nearby air strikes.
I tried to get my family out, because it is unclear what might happen here in the future - but that was impossible.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, I woke up my three children, we grabbed our emergency kit and headed to the hospital.
But when we got there, hundreds of people were blocking the entrance - they too were looking for a place to shelter overnight.
Half-asleep children screamed as they stumbled through the streets with rockets flying overhead.
On Wednesday morning, Hamas said 30 people were killed in overnight strikes. In total, more than 1,000 Gazans have died in the retaliatory air strikes.
Israel's military said they had hit 450 targets in the Gaza strip in the past 24 hours.
The air strikes began after Hamas militants crossed into Israel and launched a wave of attacks on communities across the south of the country, killing at least 1,200 Israelis. An estimated 150 people have been taken hostage by Hamas.
More on Israel Gaza war
Israel declared a "complete siege" on Gaza on Monday, declaring electricity, food, fuel and water would be cut off. The impacts of that siege can now be seen.
On Tuesday, I met a woman in a supermarket scouring the shelves looking for milk for her baby. She only had half a bottle left, but the supermarket was bare.
About 80% of people in Gaza relied on humanitarian aid even before the latest war began - and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said at least a million people had not been able to get their food rations since Saturday.
The World Health Organisation has called for a humanitarian corridor to be opened into the territory. But here, civilians don't hold out hope that will happen.
A leading British-Palestinian doctor, Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, told the BBC the health system in Gaza would collapse within a week unless aid was allowed.
"All of the beds are full. Patients who need surgery are unable to go into surgery because the operating rooms are operating at maximum capacity," he said, adding that this was the bloodiest assault he had seen since he started working in Gaza over 40 years ago.
"Because people are being injured in their homes, around 30-40% of the injuries are children. Whole families are being brought in wounded... In war you try to discharge cases early so you can free up beds, but these patients are all coming from houses that have been destroyed and so you cannot send them back to the street," he said.
Hamas's leader said he would not negotiate prisoner swaps for food and medicine, and he would not negotiate with Israel while the territory was under fire.
The UN human rights chief has said sieges are illegal under international law. UN agencies have also condemned the mass killings by Hamas and called on them to release the hostages they have taken.
And while Israel insists it is not targeting the civilian population in Gaza, the people here feel a decision to cut water, food, medical and electrical supplies to 2.3 million people is a collective punishment.
People in Gaza know what war looks like, but this one feels different. | Middle East Politics |
The Australian government will reinstate the term “Occupied Palestinian Territories”, vowing to strengthen its objections to “illegal” Israeli settlements before next week’s Labor party national conference.
The move sparked claims from the Coalition opposition that “the faceless men and women of the Labor party” were dictating foreign policy, but the government maintained it was acting in line with Australia’s key allies.
Some delegates at the Labor national conference in Brisbane are expected to agitate for the party to take a stronger position and commit to a timeframe to recognise Palestinian statehood.
The government has given no indication it is ready to go that far, but has signalled a return to more forthright language about the occupation.
The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, outlined the position to Labor MPs and senators at Parliament House on Tuesday. In a sign of internal concerns, it was the second time members of caucus have raised questions about Israel in two weeks.
Wong later told the Senate the Australian government was “gravely concerned about alarming trends that are significantly reducing the prospects of peace”.
“The Australian government is strengthening its opposition to settlements by affirming they are illegal under international law and a significant obstacle to peace,” she said.
Wong also indicated the government would return to the position of previous governments of explicitly referring to the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
When asked by the Coalition to explain the precise boundaries, Wong said the stance was in line with UN security council resolutions. She said it matched “the approach taken by key partners including the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and the European Union”.
“In adopting the term we are clarifying that the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and Gaza, were occupied by Israel following the 1967 war and that the occupation continues and reaffirms our commitment to negotiate a two-state solution in which Israel and a future Palestinian state coexist.”
Wong said the Australian government had engaged with the Israeli ambassador on the issue because it remained “a committed friend of Israel”.
She said the government had “rebalanced Australia’s positions in international forums, while opposing anti-Israel bias in the UN”. Australia would continue to condemn “all forms of terrorism and violence against civilians”, Wong said.
Sources with knowledge of the policy shift said ministers had broadly refrained from using the term “occupied” or “occupation” since 2014, even though Australia had continued to support UN general assembly and security council resolutions that use such language.
The reluctance to use the term began early in the life of the former Coalition government.
“The description of East Jerusalem as ‘occupied’ East Jerusalem is a term freighted with pejorative implications, which is neither appropriate nor useful,” the then attorney general, George Brandis, told a Senate hearing in 2014.
But Scott Morrison told the Sydney Institute in 2018 that Australia was “subject to UN security council resolutions that apply to the Jerusalem issue, including resolutions 478 and 2334”.
The latter “reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under law”.
The Coalition’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Simon Birmingham, denounced Tuesday’s announcement.
He said it had “everything to do with managing factional differences ahead of the Labor national conference and nothing to do with advancing a lasting two-state outcome”.
The Liberal MP Julian Leeser went further, telling ABC TV the decision showed Australian foreign policy was subject “to the whim of the faction bosses” and it showed “a weak prime minister and foreign minister”.
Leeser said next week’s national conference was “controlled by the hard left and trade union movements and the Jeremy Corbyn faction [that] doesn’t even want to recognise the right of the state of Israel to exist”.
In fact, the government continues to express its strong support for Israel.
In 2018 and 2021 Labor’s national conference backed a resolution that “supports the recognition and right of Israel and Palestine to exist as two states within secure and recognised borders” and “calls on the next Labor government to recognise Palestine as a state”.
But Wong has so far declined to commit to a timeframe for recognising a Palestinian state.
Labor figures are working behind the scenes before the conference to ensure the government is not embarrassed on defence and foreign policy, including Aukus.
Last October, Israel’s foreign ministry summoned the Australian ambassador for a diplomatic dressing down after the Albanese government reversed the former Morrison government’s recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
At the time Wong said Australia was restoring its “previous and longstanding position that Jerusalem is a final-status issue that should be resolved as part of any peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian people”.
The Palestinian foreign ministry welcomed the move as a “significant and important development in the Australian position”, but said it should go further and “recognise the state of Palestine swiftly, in accordance with international law and international legitimacy”.
Comment has been sought from the Israeli embassy. The ambassador to Australia, Amir Maimon, has previously appealed to the Albanese government not to recognise Palestinian statehood before a final peace agreement. | Australia Politics |
(Reuters) - Myanmar's junta leader Min Aung Hlaing has called on armed ethnic groups involved in an offensive against the country's ruling military to solve their problems "politically", state media reported on Tuesday.
"(He) warned that if armed organisations keep on being foolish, residents of the relevant regions will suffer bad impacts. So, it is necessary to consider the lives of the people, and those organisations need to solve their problems politically," the Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported.
Myanmar's military is facing the biggest challenge to its grip on the Southeast Asian nation since taking power in a 2021 coup, after three ethnic minority forces launched a coordinated offensive in late October, capturing some towns, including major border trade zones, and military posts.
A parallel civilian government backing some of the armed rebel groups dismissed Min Aung Hlaing's call for dialogue.
"As they are losing badly on the ground, they are trying to find an exit route. There would be genuine dialogue if the military guarantees that it no longer has a role in politics; they must be under an elected government," said Kyaw Zaw, a spokesperson for the parallel National Unity Government.
Amid fighting in Shan State on the border with China, and Rakhine and Chin States in the west, dozens of military and police officials have surrendered, according to media and footage verified by Reuters.
Tens of thousands of residents have been displaced by the fighting, according to the United Nations.
(Reporting by Reuters staff; Editing by Kanupriya Kapoor) | Asia Politics |
NEW YORK -- The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $200 million to help save the lives of mothers and children during child birth, as the largest American philanthropic donor throws its weight behind the issue during the nonprofit's annual Goalkeepers conference on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
Melinda French Gates, who says the issue is personal to her, smiled broadly as she introduced herself not just as the co-founder and co-chair of the foundation but as “Nona,” or grandmother, gesturing to her oldest daughter, Jennifer, who was seated in the audience in New York on Wednesday.
The foundation pledged $100 million each to health products manufacturer Unitaid, and UNFPA, the U.N. agency for reproductive health, to fund access to health care and contraceptive supplies and information in low- and middle-income countries. The Gates Foundation has been a major supporter of Unitaid, donating $50 million in each 2012 and 2017, according to the foundation's grant database.
Founded in 2017, the Goalkeepers initiative is how the foundation tracks progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals, which U.N. member countries agreed in 2015 to meet by 2030. The goals set lofty targets to reduce poverty, improve health and education and protect the environment, though progress toward achieving them has fallen significantly off track, especially following the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
In an effort to reach an audience outside of government officials, experts and policy circles, the foundation hosted an award ceremony in New York Tuesday evening and recruited social media influencers to cover it, said Blessing Omakwu, who leads the Goalkeepers initiative.
“My goal is they go back and take these things that we said in a very policy way and make it accessible to their followings and say, ‘Look, this matters. You should care about maternal health,’” she said.
Humanitarian and singer Bono received a special award for his work advocating over many years for access to health care in developing countries and for the role he played in launching the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.
The program to combat HIV/AIDS was created by President George W. Bush and the U.S. Congress two decades ago and is credited with saving 25 million lives. The fate of the program, set to expire at the end of September, is uncertain because of a demand from Republican lawmakers to bar nongovernmental organizations that used any funding to provide or promote abortion services.
Bill Gates was absent from the award ceremony Tuesday because he had been invited to attend an event with President Joe Biden, French Gates said on stage. The two announced their divorce in 2021 but committed to continuing to work together at the foundation.
Speaking of the future of PEPFAR on Wednesday, Bill Gates said the idea the program would not continue is quite scary, given that it continues to provide life saving medications for millions of people around the world.
“It's a shame that, at least temporarily, this is caught up in sort of a, ‘Does the U.S. reach out to the world and help the world?’ — some of those controversies. I think we will overcome that because the U.S. has a lot to be proud on this one,” Gates said.
Gates also made the case for a suite of interventions to prevent the deaths of children in the year after they are born, which he said was one of the first priorities of the foundation. He spoke with emotion about a visit he made to a South African clinic, where doctors asked the mother of a child who had died that day if she would allow them to try to determine more specifically the cause of the baby's death as a part of a larger study. Cumulatively, the results of that study, which the foundation funded, has advanced knowledge about the causes of infant mortality.
The foundation also recognized the leaders of projects they said exemplified the aims of the development goals, including Eden Tadesse from Ethiopia, who designed a platform to provide job opportunities to refugees, and Aidan Reilly, Ben Collier, and James Kanoff, who started a project that delivers vegetables and produce that otherwise would be thrown out to food banks in the U.S.
Award winner Ashu Martha Agbornyenty, a midwife from Cameroon, called the foundation's recognition of her work a victory for those who study to become midwives and for the health of women in her country.
“Everyone around me was like, ‘There’s nothing for midwifery. Midwifery is just a layman’s profession. There’s no future for midwifery.’ But me being here in New York today, it’s victory,” she said standing on a red carpet.
The Gates Foundation was not alone in announcing new commitments to support progress toward the development goals. On Tuesday, the IKEA Foundation pledged $20 million to help workers and communities who may lose jobs in the transition to renewal energy sources in Vietnam, South Africa and Indonesia. The Rockefeller Foundation announced last week that it will focus 75% of its resources over five years on what it calls climate solutions in energy, health, agriculture and finance, committing $1 billion in granted funds. And the Clinton Global Initiative announced that gender equity would now be a pillar of its work.
Last year, the Gates Foundation put the spotlight on hunger and promoted its support for crops engineered to adapt to climate change and resist agricultural pests, which have been criticized by farming groups and researchers who say that conflicts with worldwide efforts to protect the environment.
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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy. | Human Rights |
As the death toll in Gaza surpasses 13,000 Palestinians, including more than 5,500 children, the Israel Defense Forces propaganda machine has sought to use Al-Shifa Hospital as its main exhibit in justifying the unjustifiable. It is clear that the Israeli strategy centers on a belief that if the IDF can convince the world that Hamas used the hospital as a base of military operations, all of the carpet bombing — the attacks on refugee camps, schools, and hospitals — will retroactively be viewed as just acts of war against a terrorist enemy.
Both Israel and the White House, including President Joe Biden personally, have staked their credibility on the claim that there is a massive smoking gun lying below Al-Shifa Hospital. The U.S. said publicly it was not relying exclusively on Israel to back up its own assertions. Leaving aside the fact that both the U.S. and Israel have track records as long as the Gaza Strip of lying about the alleged crimes of their adversaries, the key question is not whether a tunnel or rooms exist under Al-Shifa, but whether they were being used for a clear military or combat purpose by Hamas, as the U.S. and Israel have alleged.
Since the October 7 raids led by Hamas in Israel that resulted in the deaths of more than 845 Israeli civilians, along with some 350 soldiers and police, and saw more than 240 people taken as hostages, the IDF has placed an intense focus on Hamas’s underground infrastructure. Israel’s allegation that Hamas’s main headquarters was housed in or under the sprawling Al-Shifa Hospital compound is not new. But the zealous focus on it is an indication that Israel wants to make it the central issue in its case to push back against critics of its indiscriminate campaign of civilian death and destruction in Gaza. Israel has sought to make Al-Shifa a Rorschach test in its narrative war, and Israel has accused journalists, the United Nations, doctors, and nurses of being part of the conspiracy to hide Hamas’s use of the hospital as a military command center from the world.
To date, this propaganda campaign has not gone well.
After initially claiming that Al-Shifa Hospital was effectively Hamas’s Pentagon — a narrative publicly bolstered by the Biden administration — the IDF released its first round of purported evidence, which more or less consisted of a smattering of automatic rifles, some nestled behind an MRI machine, and a conveniently placed combat vest with a Hamas logo on it. With the exception of Israel’s most die-hard supporters, this effort appeared to convince almost no one of the sweeping assertions about Al-Shifa’s importance to Hamas’s current operations. After all, the IDF had already shown the public a slick 3D video model purporting to be a depiction of an advanced underground command and control lair used by Hamas. So Israel’s first effort at selling the case fell flat.
Several other efforts to produce videos of what Israel claimed to be evidence of a significant Hamas base at hospitals have been met with widespread derision and skepticism, including from Western media outlets that historically report Israeli military assertions about its operations against Palestinians as fact. The IDF videos have been mocked across social media and compared to Geraldo Rivera’s much-hyped — and utterly disastrous — live 1986 nationally televised special promising to reveal the secrets hidden in Al Capone’s underground vault.
Al-Shifa staff, as well as a European doctor who worked there for years, vehemently deny that the hospital is used by Hamas for any military purpose. For what it’s worth, Hamas also denies it.
On Sunday, Israel released two new videos that it claimed document a 55-meter fortified tunnel 10 meters below Al-Shifa. The camera footage, presumably filmed using a remotely piloted vehicle, ends with what Israel said is a blast-proof door equipped with a shooting hole allowing Hamas to attack IDF forces should they seek to breach the purported Hamas command and control center. “The findings prove beyond all doubt that buildings in the hospital complex are used as infrastructure for the Hamas terror organization, for terror activity. This is further proof of the cynical use that the Hamas terror organization makes of the residents of the Gaza Strip as a human shield for its murderous terror activities,” the IDF said in a statement.
It’s no secret that Gaza houses extensive underground tunnels. Over the past two decades, Israel has repeatedly conducted operations aimed at destroying parts of the underground tunnel networks and has often boasted of its successes in doing so. Tunnels stretching from southern Gaza into Egypt served as smuggling lines for many years. Israel claimed their primary purpose was to move weapons, while other observers portrayed them as a lifeline to smuggle in food and other supplies to the blockaded population of Gaza. It’s likely that both assertions are true. In recent years, both Israel and Egypt have taken measures to block or flood tunnels that penetrated their territory, and Israel reportedly installed underground concrete walls and subterranean sensors around its border with Gaza to stop Hamas or other militants from using them to enter Israel to conduct operations. In 2006, Hamas operatives used such a tunnel to take IDF soldier Gilad Shalit back to Gaza after capturing him. Shalit was freed as part of a prisoner exchange in 2011.
Al-Shifa’s Tunnels Were Built by Israel
It’s also well known that there are, in fact, tunnels and rooms under Al-Shifa. We know that because Israel admits that it built them in the early 1980s. According to Israeli media reports, the underground facilities were designed by Tel Aviv architects Gershon Zippor and Benjamin Idelson. “Israel renovated and expanded the hospital complex with American assistance, in a project that also included the excavation of an underground concrete floor,” according to Zvi Elhyani, founder of the Israel Architecture Archive, writing in Israel’s Ynetnews.
The underground infrastructure was part of a modernization and expansion effort at Al-Shifa commissioned by Israel’s Public Works Department. “The Israeli civil administration in the territories constructed the hospital complex’s Building Number 2, which has a large cement basement that housed the hospital’s laundry and various administrative services,” according to a report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The room and tunnels under Al-Shifa were reportedly completed in 1983. Tablet magazine described the space as “a secure underground operating room and tunnel network.” Zippor’s son Barak, who began working at his father’s architecture firm in the 1990s, said that during the construction at Al-Shifa in the 1980s, the Israeli construction contractors hired Hamas to provide security guards to prevent attacks on the building site.
“You know, decades ago we were running the place, so we helped them — it was decades, many decades ago, probably four decades ago that we helped them to build these bunkers in order to enable more space for the operation of the hospital within the very limited size of this compound,” former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak told a visibly stunned CNN host Christiane Amanpour.
Israel has claimed that following Hamas’s consolidation of power in Gaza in 2006, the group took over the Israeli-built facilities beneath Al-Shifa and modernized and expanded them into a full-fledged command and control operations center. During this period, some international journalists have described being called to meetings with Hamas officials on the hospital grounds, and Israel has long referred to it as a vital Hamas headquarters. During the 2014 war in Gaza, the Washington Post’s William Booth asserted that Al-Shifa “has become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices.” Assuming these claims are true, it is both shameful and logical that Hamas would choose to meet journalists at a civilian hospital given Israel’s well-known campaign to systematically assassinate them. Shameful as it may be, this is quite different than using a secret facility buried beneath the hospital as a military command and control center.
The fact that Israel built tunnels and rooms under Al-Shifa does not prove anything. Many modern hospitals, especially in war zones, have underground infrastructure, including Israeli hospitals. Nor do past reports about Hamas members being spotted inside the hospital. Israel will need to present much more convincing evidence, particularly to back up its claim that the site was of immense military and operational significance during this specific war.
The standard for such evidence should be extremely high, particularly because of the extent of civilian death and suffering caused by Israel’s operations. The Biden administration made allegations about Al-Shifa Hospital to offer preemptive cover for Israel to raid it, and the onus is on the administration to provide irrefutable, clear evidence to support its specific claims.
Propaganda vs. International Law
As Israel wages its propaganda war over Al-Shifa, it is simultaneously laying siege to yet another medical facility, the Indonesian Hospital, which is now the sole remaining medical facility in northern Gaza. Israeli artillery fire has killed at least 12 people at the hospital, according to local officials. Indonesia’s foreign minister, Retno Marsudi, has accused Israel of violating international law. “All countries, especially those that have close relations with Israel, must use all their influence and capabilities to urge Israel to stop its atrocities,” she said Monday.
International humanitarian law is clear that in case of any doubt as to whether the hospital is being used as a party to a conflict to “commit an act harmful to the enemy,” then it remains a protected site. Even if there were clear evidence that the hospital’s protected status had been abused, there are a range of rules governing any military action against the hospital — and the civilian patients would remain protected individuals.
“Even if the building loses its special protection, all the people inside retain theirs,” said Adil Haque, the Judge Jon O. Newman scholar at Rutgers Law School, in an interview with the Washington Post. “Anything that the attacking force can do to allow the humanitarian functions of that hospital to continue, they’re obligated to do, even if there’s some office somewhere in the building where there is maybe a fighter holed up.”
The staff at Al-Shifa have directly accused Israel of causing the deaths of civilians at the hospital, including several babies in the neonatal intensive care unit whose incubators were rendered useless after electricity was severely restricted as a result of the Israeli siege. On November 18, a U.N. humanitarian team led by the World Health Organization visited Al-Shifa. According to the WHO, its staff on the delegation described the hospital as a “death zone,” saying in a statement, “Signs of shelling and gunfire were evident. The team saw a mass grave at the entrance of the hospital and were told more than 80 people were buried there.”
Israel has also released what it says is CCTV footage from within Al-Shifa recorded in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 Hamas raid into Israel. It claims that the video depicts armed fighters entering the hospital with two international hostages, one Thai and one Nepali. The footage shows one of the alleged hostages injured on a stretcher.
Assuming that this footage is genuine and armed Hamas militants brought a wounded hostage in for treatment, what does Israel believe the hospital staff should have done in this case? Doctors have an ethical obligation to treat all wounded individuals, and it is not their job to serve as police or intelligence operatives.
“Given what the Israeli occupation reported, this confirms that the hospitals of the Ministry of Health provide their medical services to everyone who deserves them, regardless of their gender and race,” Gaza’s Ministry of Health said in a statement after the videos were released. The ministry added that it could not verify the videos. Hamas spokesperson Izzat Al-Rishq said that Hamas had previously acknowledged that it had taken wounded hostages to Al-Shifa on October 7. “We have released images of all that and the [Israeli] army spokesman is acting as if he has discovered something incredible,” he said. Rishq also claimed some of the hostages Hamas took to Al-Shifa had been wounded in Israeli strikes. Israel has also claimed, without evidence, that some hostages were murdered by Hamas inside the hospital grounds, though the IDF’s own maps indicate their bodies were recovered from locations outside Al-Shifa’s campus.
The onus is on both the Israeli government and its sponsors in the Biden administration to prove the sweeping claims about Hamas’s alleged use of Al-Shifa Hospital. This evidence should be strong enough to irrefutably prove that all of the suffering and death inflicted on the patients, doctors, and nurses at Al-Shifa was justifiable under the law, as well as basic principles of proportionality and morality. Such a conclusion is unfathomable when placed in the context of the civilian suffering caused by Israel’s siege on the hospital.
If Hamas is decisively proven to have intentionally abused the hospital’s protected status and did, in fact, actively operate a command center hidden beneath it, then it should face war crimes charges for having done so. Hamas, not innocent civilians, should be held accountable for these actions.
At the same time, if it is proven that Israel perpetrated fraud in its relentless campaign to portray the most important hospital in Gaza as a secret Hamas military base, then the world should hold Israeli officials accountable for this grave and lethal propaganda. So, too, should the Biden administration — including the president himself — be made to answer for the U.S. role.
Israel is seeking to justify its industrial-scale killing of civilians in Gaza with accusations that Hamas is hiding among civilians and using them as shields. Yet Israel’s leading human rights group B’Tselem has documented how the IDF has engaged in this very activity for decades. “Since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, Israeli security forces have repeatedly used Palestinians in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip as human shields, ordering them to perform military tasks that risked their lives,” according to a 2017 report.
In the bigger picture, the controversy around Hamas and Al-Shifa has served mostly as a distraction from the overarching, indisputable facts about Israel’s war against Gaza: Using U.S. weapons, financing, and political support, Israel has waged a campaign of violent collective punishment against the civilians of Gaza. | Middle East Politics |
Italy outraged by death of young woman in latest suspected case of domestic violence
Italy has erupted in outrage over the death of a young woman, allegedly at the hands of her possessive ex-boyfriend
ROME -- Italy has erupted in outrage over the death of a young woman, allegedly at the hands of her possessive ex-boyfriend, with the Italian premier vowing to crack down further on domestic violence that has claimed the lives of more than 50 women so far this year.
Police in Germany over the weekend arrested Filippo Turetta, who had been on the run since Nov. 11, when he was last seen fighting with 22-year-old Giulia Cecchettin, hitting her in a physical attack that was captured by roadside video cameras.
Cecchettin's body, reportedly with multiple stab wounds, was found wrapped in plastic on Saturday in a ditch near Lake Barcis, in the province of Pordenone north of Venice.
Italian newspapers had been consumed with the search for them both, given multiple reports from friends and family that Turetta had refused to accept Cecchettin's decision to end the relationship. Cecchettin’s sister, Elena, had said she had been concerned about Turetta’s possessiveness of her sister, but never imagined he could hurt her.
Police in the eastern German city of Halle said Sunday that they had detained a 21-year-old Italian man who was wanted by police in Italy after his car broke down on the A9 highway in the south of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.
Italian news reports said police road cameras had traced Turetta’s black Fiat Punto as he drove on mountain roads through northern Italy, into Austria and then Germany.
State-run RAI radio said Turetta had agreed to be extradited, and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said he was expected back in Italy within days.
The fate of Cecchettin, who was about to graduate with a degree in engineering, had dominated news reports for a week and led to an outpouring of anger when her body was finally found. Even Turetta's parents attended a candlelit vigil for her, and RAI led its main evening news program Sunday with a backdrop made up of portraits of all the women killed this year.
Premier Giorgia Meloni expressed outrage at Italy’s long history of violence against women by their partners or ex-partners, saying it has appeared to be getting worse recently. She cited data from the Interior Ministry saying of the 102 women killed in Italy this year up to Nov. 12, 53 died at the hands of their partners or former partners.
“Every single woman killed because she is ‘guilty’ of being free is an aberration that cannot be tolerated and that drives me to continue on the path taken to stop this barbarity,” she said in a statement on social media.
A government-backed bill that has already passed the lower Chamber of Deputies and is coming to the Senate later this month would boost preventative measures to protect victims of domestic violence.
In addition, the Interior Ministry urged all schools to hold a minute of silence on Tuesday in honor of Cecchettin “and all abused women and victims of violence.” | Europe Politics |
SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea filed a 44.7 billion won ($35 million) damage suit against North Korea on Wednesday for blowing up a joint liaison office just north of their border in 2020, which highlighted a revival of tensions between the rivals following the collapse of larger nuclear talks between the U.S. and North Korea.
The symbolic lawsuit filed with the Seoul Central District Court comes amid a prolonged freeze in diplomacy and growing concerns over North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs. South Korea had until this Friday to claim damages, when a three-year statute of limitations over the incident would expire.
Koo Byoungsam, spokesperson for Seoul’s Unification Ministry, which handles relations with North Korea, described the North's detonation of the building as an unlawful and violent act that breached previous agreements between the countries and “fundamentally damaged the foundation of mutual respect and trust.”
There's no clear way for South Korea to force North Korea to pay if it is found liable for damages. Koo said the lawsuit, the first ever filed by South Korea’s government against North Korea’s government, was aimed at beating the statute of limitations and preserving South Korea’s legal right to compensation.
In June 2020, North Korea used explosives to blow up the South Korean-built liaison office in the North Korean border town of Kaesong after criticizing South Korea’s failure to stop North Korean defectors from flying anti-North propaganda leaflets across the border using balloons. North Korea shut down the office in January 2020 as it closed its borders over coronavirus concerns, and the building was empty at the time of the detonation.
The building's destruction, which was seen as a calculated display of anger to pressure Seoul over deadlocked nuclear negotiations with Washington, posed a serious setback to efforts by then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in, a liberal, to engage with the North.
Moon met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un three times in 2018 while helping set up Kim’s first summit with then-U.S. President Donald Trump in June that year. However, the diplomacy derailed after a second Kim-Trump summit in February 2019 at which the Americans rejected North Korea's demand for major sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities.
Tensions have further increased in past months as Kim used distractions created by Russia’s war on Ukraine to increase weapons tests, including the firing of around 100 missiles since the start of 2022. Kim has accompanied the tests with a new nuclear doctrine that authorizes preemptive strikes on rivals in a broad range of scenarios in which the North may perceive its leadership is under threat.
Current conservative South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has been labeled a “traitor” by North Korean state media, has departed from Moon’s dovish policies and taken a harder stance on the North. Yoon has expanded the country’s military training with the United States while seeking stronger assurances from the Biden administration that the United States would swiftly and decisively use its nuclear weapons to protect South Korea in the event of a North Korea nuclear attack.
Meanwhile, South Korea’s spy agency said it has detected signs that North Korean government-backed hackers were trying to steal people's personal details through a phishing website mimicking Naver, South Korea’s biggest website.
The National Intelligence Service warned internet users to check whether they are accessing Naver through the correct domain address, naver.com. The agency didn’t specify whether it had confirmed actual data breaches through the fake site. | Asia Politics |
The Greens have accused Labor of “making the climate crisis worse” and being more interested in opening new coal and gas mines than working together to improve climate policy after the government approved a new coal seam gas expansion in Queensland.
Documents posted on the environment department website show the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, on Friday approved a project by the oil and gas company Santos to open 116 new coal seam gas wells in Queensland’s Surat Basin.
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The approval under national environment law, signed off by an official on Plibersek’s behalf, allows the company to construct and operate the wells at the Towrie gas development to feed a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility at Gladstone. It says the wells can have an operational life of about 30 years and the approval is valid until 2077.
The Greens attacked the decision, which comes as the minor party is negotiating with Labor over the design of the safeguard mechanism, a policy the government has promised to transform to cut emissions from Australia’s 215 biggest polluting industrial facilities.
Adam Bandt, the Greens leader, has offered to support the policy, despite having other reservations about the design, if the government stops approving new fossil fuel developments. Labor has rejected the proposal, arguing it would breach an election commitment and decisions on new coal and gas developments were for investors.
In a Twitter thread, Bandt accused Labor of “wanting coal and gas corporations to keep polluting, profiting, and opening more mines”. He said Plibersek had granted the approval on Friday without issuing a media release or public statement, and Santos had donated at least $521,719 to Labor since 2015.
“For a government that likes to talk about integrity and transparency this is straight out [of] Morrison’s playbook,” Bandt said.
The independent MP Monique Ryan also focused on Santos’ donations to Labor. “You’d have to say they’ve received an excellent return on their investment,” she said in a tweet.
A spokesperson for Plibersek said Santos’ proposal was assessed on its merits. “It was subject to robust scientific assessments, and strict environmental approval conditions have been applied,” they said.
Santos already has a large coal seam gas operation in the Surat Basin, with more than 8,000 wells approved since 2010 connected to its GLNG export development. The company said it welcomed the government’s decision. A spokesperson said it would spend “more than a billion dollars this year alone” drilling new wells and developing infrastructure to supply long-term contracts in Korea and Malaysia.
Rod Campbell, research director with the Australia Institute, said while the latest development was not massive compared to others, the decision illustrated that major fossil fuel projects were often approved and expanded through a series of small decisions that added up to a significant impact.
“Our systems are entirely set up to approve these fossil fuel developments, sometimes piece by piece,” he said. “It really needs to change so the government is asking ‘do we need these any more?’”
The independent senator David Pocock who, like the Greens, is negotiating with the government over the safeguard mechanism design and a list of other policies, said scientists and the International Energy Agency had been “absolutely clear” that the world could not could not afford to keep opening new coal and gas facilities if they wanted to keep global heating to 1.5C or 2C above pre-industrial levels.
On the safeguard mechanism, Pocock said he had several concerns, particularly the government’s proposal to allow companies to buy an unlimited number of carbon offsets to meet emissions limits. “I think there is a number of measures to improve the integrity and ensure that we are actually driving down emissions,” he told the ABC.
He also backed the introduction of a climate trigger into the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act so emissions would have to be considered before developments were approved.
The climate change minister, Chris Bowen, said he believed the government had “the balance right” on the safeguard design, but acknowledged changes were possible following consultations with companies, interest groups and others in parliament.
“I’ll sit down with people in good faith across the parliament. What we do will be in keeping with, one, our election commitments and, two, what we need to do in the national interest,” he said.
Greens’ deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi said: “The Greens will continue negotiations, but Labor seems to want new coal and gas mines more than they want their safeguard mechanism.”
Under its proposed changes, Labor would set a new pollution limit, known as a baseline, for each big polluting site based on emissions intensity. Baselines would mostly be reduced by 4.9% a year. Companies could meet their limit through direct cuts or by buying carbon credits, meant to represent cuts made elsewhere.
Academics and activists have raised concerns over whether some carbon credit projects deliver real and new emissions reductions. A review of the carbon credit scheme commissioned by the government said the system had integrity, but critics have called for an evaluation of individual projects. | Australia Politics |
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- The U.S. Navy has deployed a guided-missile submarine capable of carrying up to 154 Tomahawk missiles to the Middle East, a spokesman said Saturday, in what appeared to be a show of force toward Iran following recent tensions.
The Navy rarely acknowledges the location or deployment of submarines. Cmdr. Timothy Hawkins, a spokesman for the 5th Fleet based in the Gulf nation of Bahrain, declined to comment on the submarine's mission or what had prompted the deployment.
He said the nuclear-powered submarine, based out of Kings Bay, Georgia, passed through the Suez Canal on Friday. “It is capable of carrying up to 154 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles and is deployed to U.S. 5th Fleet to help ensure regional maritime security and stability,” Hawkins said.
The 5th Fleet patrols the crucial Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all oil transits. Its region includes the Bab el-Mandeb Strait off Yemen and the Red Sea stretching up to the Suez Canal, the Egyptian waterway linking the Mideast to the Mediterranean Sea.
The U.S., the U.K. and Israel have accused Iran of targeting oil tankers and commercial ships in recent years, allegations denied by Tehran. The U.S. Navy has also reported a series of tense encounters at sea with Iranian forces that it said were being recklessly aggressive.
Last month, the U.S. launched airstrikes against Iran-backed forces in Syria after a rocket attack killed a U.S. contractor and wounded seven other Americans in that country's northeast.
Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from ships or submarines can hit targets up to 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles away). They were famously employed during the opening hours of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and in response to a Syrian chemical weapons attack in 2018.
U.S.-Iranian tensions have soared since then-President Donald Trump withdrew from a 2015 agreement with world powers that provided sanctions relief in return for Iran curbing its nuclear activities and placing them under enhanced surveillance.
The Biden administration's efforts to restore the agreement hit a wall last year. The tensions have worsened as Iran has supplied attack drones to Russian forces in Ukraine and as Israel and Iran have escalated their yearslong shadow war in the Middle East.
In addition to drawing closer to Moscow, Tehran has sought improved relations with China, which brokered an agreement last month to restore diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia. | Middle East Politics |
Israel will begin to implement daily four-hour military pauses in areas of northern Gaza, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.
However Israel's defence minister stressed they were only "localised and pinpoint measures" that would "not detract from the war fighting".
On Thursday heavy fighting was reported around two big hospitals in Gaza City.
Meanwhile, pictures once again showed thousands of Palestinians fleeing south from the city and other northern areas.
The US called the daily pauses a "significant first step". But speaking to the BBC, Mr Kirby said each pause "will depend on the purpose and on the conditions on the ground".
Meanwhile a UN spokesperson said any halt to fighting would need to be coordinated with the UN "to be truly effective".
A conference in Paris earlier heard repeated appeals for a ceasefire in Gaza, where the UN has warned that the humanitarian situation is "intolerable".
Israel has been bombarding Gaza for over a month and began a major ground offensive almost two weeks ago with the objective of destroying Hamas, which it, the US and other Western powers consider a terrorist organisation.
The war began after an unprecedented cross-border assault on southern Israel by Hamas gunmen on 7 October, in which 1,400 people were killed and 240 others taken hostage.
Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says 10,800 people have been killed in the territory since then, while 1.5 million have fled their homes.
On Thursday the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had raided Hamas's "military quarter" near Al-Shifa Hospital and killed 50 "terrorists".
A witness said he had also seen tanks opening fire near Al-Quds Hospital.
About 2,000 patients and 50,000 displaced people are said to be inside Al-Shifa Hospital, which is located in Gaza City's northern Rimal neighbourhood and is the largest medical complex in Gaza.
Its director, Mohammed Abu Selmia, told the Associated Press that Israeli troops were about 3km (2 miles) away and that conditions there were "disastrous in every sense of the word".
In footage filmed inside the hospital on Thursday, a man who was accompanied by two children tells a journalist that they had been walking on a street, trying to flee south, when an Israeli tank opened fire at them.
"The remains of seven or eight martyrs were left at the scene," he says.
An unverified video posted on social media overnight also purportedly showed a number of people being helped after being hit by shrapnel from a shell on a street close to Al-Shifa.
The IDF has previously alleged that Hamas is also operating underground command centres beneath Al-Shifa itself. Hamas and hospital staff have denied the accusation.
Fierce battles were also reported on Thursday around Al-Quds hospital, which is 2.3km (1.4 miles) to the south-west in the Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood.
Hamouda Musa, 34, told the BBC he and his neighbour had escaped from a building opposite the hospital after he saw four tanks and a bulldozer advancing from the coast, 1km away to the north.
"They were firing intensely towards a nearby residential building," he said. "We fled under a barrage of bullets via a back street. We miraculously came back from the dead."
On Wednesday, the Palestinian Red Crescent said that areas in close proximity were struck, injuring patients and displaced people, and damaging buildings.
The hospital also said on Wednesday that its main generator had been shut down because of a shortage of fuel, forcing it to close its surgical ward, oxygen generation plant and MRI ward.
The clashes and strikes in the north, as well as the struggle to secure enough drinking water and food to survive, has prompted some of the several hundred thousands of civilians staying there to flee southwards in recent days.
Pictures from drones showed a stream of people walking along Salah al-Din Road and crossing the Wadi Gaza river, after the IDF opened the route for a sixth consecutive day.
An estimated 50,000 people fled the north on Wednesday, which was 10 times more than on Monday.
Although the IDF has ordered civilians to move south of Wadi Gaza for their own safety, it has continued to carry out strikes on what it says are Hamas targets in areas where hundreds of thousands have sought refuge.
The Hamas-run interior ministry in Gaza said 12 people had been killed and many more injured in an Israeli air strike on a house in the central town of Deir al-Balah on Thursday. There was no immediate comment from the IDF.
While visiting Egypt's Rafah Crossing with Gaza on Wednesday, UN human rights chief Volker Türk said both sides in the conflict had committed war crimes.
"The atrocities perpetrated by Palestinian armed groups on 7 October were heinous, they were war crimes - as is the continued holding of hostages."
"The collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians amounts also to a war crime, as does the unlawful forcible evacuation of civilians. The massive bombardments by Israel have killed, maimed and injured in particular women and children," he added.
Israel has insisted it has been acting in complete compliance with international law and that it has done everything possible to minimise civilian casualties.
It has also rejected the UN's warnings of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, arguing that there is sufficient food, water and fuel despite the "complete siege" it imposed in response to Hamas's attack, and has rejected its calls for a ceasefire unless the hostages are released.
The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), Philippe Lazzarini, told the Paris conference on Gaza that there had to be a ceasefire so that more aid could be delivered.
He called the volume currently coming through Rafah "blatantly inadequate".
A total of 756 lorries have crossed from Egypt since 21 October. Before the war, an average of 500 lorry loads entered Gaza every working day from Egypt and Israel. | Middle East Politics |
March 24, 2023
This weekend, a large asteroid that could have wiped out a city will safely pass between Earth and the moon's orbit, providing scientists with an opportunity to study it up close. This week also marked 20 years since the US invasion of Iraq, with many questioning what was achieved by the invasion. While Washington forgets, much of the world remembers. Finally, once again Boris Johnson is in the headlines as he faces allegations of lying to parliament. Is this finally the end of Boris?
An asteroid that was discovered a month ago, dubbed the âCity Killerâ will approach the moon within a distance of 515,000km on Saturday US time, before speeding past Earth at a velocity of around 28,000km/h several hours later.
This weekend, a large asteroid that could have wiped out a city will safely pass between Earth and the moon's orbit, providing scientists with an opportunity to study it up close.
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Although common, Nasa said it was rare for an asteroid flybys so big to come so close to occur, and that events like this occurred only about once a decade.
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Scientists estimate its size to be somewhere between 40 and 90 metres in diameter.
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The asteroid, known as 2023 DZ2, was discovered a month ago and will pass within 515,000km of the moon before flying past Earth at around 28,000km/h.
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Despite being a "city killer," there is no danger of it striking Earth. Astronomers will observe the space rock from just over 68,000km away, which is less than half the distance between Earth and the moon, and the Virtual Telescope Project will provide a live webcast of the close approach.
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While this event is not a threat, it is good practice for planetary defense and will provide valuable information in the event of a dangerous asteroid that could impact Earth.
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This close encounter presents an opportunity for astronomers to observe the space rock from a distance of just over 68,000km away, which is less than half the distance between Earth and the moon.
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The asteroid will be visible through binoculars and small telescopes.
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The asteroid is due to return in 2026 and although there initially appeared to be a slight chance it might strike Earth then, scientists have since ruled it out.
20 years after the US invasion, Iraq is a freer place, but not a hopeful one. Conversations with dozens of Iraqis offer a portrait of a nation that is rich in oil, hobbled by corruption and unable to guarantee its citizensâ safety. We take a look back at the history of the war-torn country.
The March 2003 invasion of Iraq proved to be a catastrophic event for the country and its people.
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The devastation of this conflict is still being felt, as evidenced by the discovery of a suspected mass grave in the desert outside Sinjar.
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The photos of individuals, mostly men, were displayed on a wire fence around the site in Zile-li, a nearby village, the location where 1,800 men were taken and killed on August 3, 2014, as part of the Islamic State's genocidal assault on the Yazidis.
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Despite the Americans and British having ended their occupation, a direct link can be traced between the invasion and the catastrophic years that followed.
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Naif Jasso, the Sheikh of Kocho, another Yazidi community that suffered an even worse attack than Zile-li, was present at the excavation. He noted that in Kocho, 517 people out of a population of 1,250 were killed by jihadists from IS. In Zile-li, the men were separated from their families at gunpoint and shot dead at the quarry. Sofian Saleh, who was 16 at the time, witnessed the killing of his father, brother, and other men from his village.
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He was among the crowd watching the excavation and is one of only two men from Zile-li who survived. Although his hands were tied before the shooting, Sofian survived because the bodies of the dead fell on him and covered him up.
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The preferred tactic of Islamic State was evident as they killed the men first and then took the women as slaves. Children were separated from their mothers and indoctrinated as recruits for IS.
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One grieving mother sat near the suspected grave, weeping as she recalled her baby being forcefully taken from her and given to a jihadist family.
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Nearby, Suad Daoud Chatto, a woman in her 20s, stood with a poster displaying the faces of nine men from her extended family who were killed, as well as two female relatives who were still missing.
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She recounted how she was captured by jihadists in 2014, at the age of 16, along with many other women and girls, and held captive in Syria until 2019, when she was finally rescued following the fall of the Caliphate.
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Although the jihadist ideology that inspired the 9/11 attacks existed before the US invasion of Iraq, the years of turmoil and brutality that followed in 2003 actually turbo-charged jihadist violence, instead of eradicating it.
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While the Americans and Sunni tribes were able to temporarily weaken Al-Qaeda, the jihadist group eventually regrouped and evolved into the even more ruthless and barbaric Islamic State.
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In 2003, America's anger and power blinded President George W. Bush to the realities that had constrained his father twelve years earlier.
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When the US and UK failed to persuade the UN Security Council to pass a resolution that explicitly authorized invasion and regime change, Bush and Blair claimed that earlier resolutions gave them the necessary authority.
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Many, including UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, did not believe their argument.
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In an interview with the BBC, 18 months after the invasion, Annan stated that it was illegal and not in conformity with the UN Charter. France and other Nato allies refused to participate in the invasion, and Blair ignored massive protests in the UK.
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Blair's decision to go to war haunted his political career. No leader faces a more significant decision than going to war. Bush and Blair chose a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
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The justifications for the invasion were soon shown to be false, and the weapons of mass destruction that Blair insisted made Saddam an imminent threat were not found. It was a failure of intelligence and leadership.
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Despite the devastation caused by the war, there are signs of hope in Iraq. Though many towns and villages remain in ruins, Iraqis feel safer and well-trained anti-terrorist units are containing jihadist cells.
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While bombings and ambushes still occur, shopkeepers are optimistic about the upcoming Ramadan season.
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However, the political system implemented by the Americans after the invasion has created opportunities for corruption and has caused significant harm to the people of Iraq.
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Estimates suggest that between $150bn and $320bn has been stolen since 2003, leaving most Iraqis without access to basic necessities like power, clean water, and medical care.
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Children can often be seen working or begging on the streets instead of attending school. Iraq's latest prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, has promised to address corruption but faces significant challenges in doing so.
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Ultimately, it is the innocent victims who matter most in this conflict. The war has caused immeasurable harm to millions of Iraqis and others in the Middle East, making their lives much more difficult than before.
Once again, Boris Johnson is under scrutiny over accusations about lying to parliament. Could this be the end of his political career? Johnson says he âemphaticallyâ did not set out to deceive members of Parliament over Covid rule-breaking parties that occured in Downing Street, but many critics disagreeâ¦
Boris Johnson has admitted to misleading Parliament about Covid rule-breaking parties in Downing Street, but denies doing so intentionally.
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Ahead of being questioned by MPs on Wednesday, the former Prime Minister has released a 52-page document in which he says that his assurances to MPs that lockdown rules had been followed were made in "good faith".
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If MPs determine that Johnson did deliberately mislead them, he may face suspension or even expulsion from Parliament.
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A group representing families of Covid victims have called his claim to have acted in good faith "sickening" and have said it was "obvious" he misled MPs.
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Since April last year, the Commons Privileges Committee has been investigating whether Johnson initially misled Parliament over what he knew about parties in No 10 during lockdown.
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An inquiry by senior official Sue Gray later found rule-breaking had taken place across multiple events, and police issued fines to 83 people, including Johnson himself, for breaching Covid laws.
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The committee has previously suggested that Johnson may have misled Parliament on multiple occasions and that rule breaches would have been "obvious" to him at the time. Johnson's defence document, prepared by his legal team and headed by top barrister Lord Pannick KC, claims that he had not "intentionally or recklessly" misled MPs and would "never have dreamed of doing so".
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He says he believed at the time that events he attended in No 10 abided by restrictions, and relied on officials to advise him about other events in the building he did not attend, and they did not tell him rules were broken.
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Johnson says that he corrected the record in May 2022, on the day Ms Gray's report was published, and that it was "not fair or appropriate to give a half-baked account before the facts had been fully and properly established.â
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Mr Johnson's defense document criticizes the Privileges Committee's investigation, accusing it of being biased and disregarding precedents established by previous similar inquiries.
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The committee has determined that Mr Johnson's intentions are not relevant to their inquiry's focus, which is whether his statements to Parliament hindered the committee's work.
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However, if the committee finds that Mr Johnson's statements did obstruct their investigation, then his intentions will be considered when determining any potential penalties.
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If the committee concludes that Mr Johnson deliberately misled MPs, the strongest sanction may be imposed, while the alternative is finding that he misled Parliament "recklessly". The committee's final recommendations and any penalties will require approval by the full House of Commons, with Conservative MPs given a free vote.
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Sanctions could range from a formal apology to suspension from the Commons.
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If Mr Johnson is suspended for more than ten days, a by-election in his constituency may be triggered, although such lengthy suspensions have been uncommon in the past.
â | United Kingdom Politics |
A Ukrainian air attack on a naval shipyard in Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea has caused a large fire and injured at least 24 people, the Moscow-installed governor of the port city said.
Mikhail Razvozhayev said on the Telegram messaging app that Ukraine carried out a missile attack in the early hours of Wednesday morning and Russian air defences had attempted to repel the incoming projectiles.
“All emergency services are working on the site, there is no danger to civilian objects in the city,” Razvozhayev said.
Sevastopol is the largest city in Crimea and a major port where the Russian Black Sea fleet is based.
Kyiv officials have promised to retake Crimea from Russian control and Ukraine has stepped up air and sea attacks on the peninsula in recent weeks.
Several Russian Telegram news monitoring channels reported that the Sevastopol shipyard, which carries out construction and repair on the ships and submarines of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, was on fire.
The size of the fire and scale of damage at the shipyard was not immediately known though images posted on social media showed large flames in the darkness engulfing what seemed to be large port infrastructure. Russian Telegram channels posted videos and more photos of sizeable flames at a facility bordering water.
Ukraine’s Kyiv Independent news outlet said the attack took place at approximately 3am local time (about 00:00 GMT).
⚡️Explosions reported near occupied Sevastopol.
Photos and videos posted to Telegram on Sept. 13 appeared to show an explosion around Sevastopol, a major naval city in Russian-occupied Crimea. The blasts were reported around 3 a.m. local time.
Photo: Crimeanwind/Telegram pic.twitter.com/dwIZBXFlcg
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) September 13, 2023
Also on Wednesday morning, a Russian drone attack on the Danube river port of Izmail, in Ukraine’s Odesa region, caused a fire and civilian injuries, the regional governor said.
“Several groups of strike drones were directed to the Izmail district,” Odesa Governor Oleg Kiper said on Telegram, describing the Russian air raid on the civilian port as the action of “terrorists”.
“Damage to port and other civil infrastructure was recorded… rescuers are putting out the fire,” Kiper said, adding that six civilians were injured and taken to hospital, with three in a serious condition and three others in “moderate condition”.
Located on the border with Romania, Ukraine’s Danube river ports have become a main export route for Ukrainian agricultural products following Russia’s withdrawal from a United Nations-brokered grain deal in July and Moscow’s renewed blockade of the country’s Black Sea ports. | Europe Politics |
Two Myanmar military fighter jets bombed the village at 7.30pm on Wednesday, killing six boys and two girls between the ages of 5 and 12, along with their teacher and two villagers, authorities in Matupi township of Chin State told The Irrawaddy.
One of the bombs fell on a building where children were studying, killing eight children, reported the Associated Press.
Myanmar has been emroiled in a bloody civil war since February in which the junta crushed the rebels with violence and arbitrary detention.
The Chin state is the centre of an armed struggle against the country’s military rule since Myanmar’s army takeover and communities here were among the first to take up arms against the junta after the coup in 2021.
Myannar’s military continues to fight with the guerrillas of the Chin Defence Force near the country’s border with India.
However an alliance of rebel forces joined hands and launched an offensive in the junta-controlled areas on the border with China in Shan State last month and have captured over 100 military outposts.
Over 50,000 civilians have been displaced since in the two weeks since the offensive began, according to the UN.
“Essential roads are obstructed by checkpoints operated by both sides, while phone and Internet services are disrupted. The main airport in Lashio, the area’s largest town, has been closed since the fighting escalated,” the UN said in a statement.
Junta president Myint Swe warned last week that the country “will be split into various parts” if the situation was not contained. | Asia Politics |
In Italy, a one-of-a-kind school sees Palestinians graduating alongside Israelis, Americans with Tribal origins alongside those with European origins, and Bosnian Muslims next to Orthodox Serbs—all in the name of creating a generation of interfaith peacebuilders.
The Swallow Citadel of Peace, located in a medieval campus in the hills of Tuscany near the city of Arezzo, offers a variety of higher educational programs and degrees, but it comes with a catch.
Prospective students must live with the “enemy”—either those of a domestic ethnic group or a neighboring nation—all in the name of deconstructing the reasons behind their hatred and conflict, breaking the trance of viewing people as the “other,” and returning to their nations as peace leaders.
In this time of ethnic conflicts all over the world, where a generation has been brought up tending plants sewn by seeds of conflict four or five generations in the past, it could be the most important school on Earth.
“We didn’t want to build a Utopian place where students could pretend war doesn’t exist,” explains Franco Vaccari, co-founder and president of Rondine. “We wanted, rather, to create a neutral ground, away from the chaos of their homelands and bigger Western cities, where our students could focus on a peaceful dialogue.”
The school, called Rondine which means the swallow in Italian, offers various degrees like a master’s program in conflict management and humanitarian action. Students arrive and begin an intensive course in Italian language, and then proceed to study interfaith dialogue, methodological and leadership skills to deconstruct the idea of “the enemy,” and reconciliation.
At the end of their journey, they are required as per the scholarship to go back to their country of origin and lead a peacebuilding and reconciliation program for 1 year.
Ruzica Markovic is one such student, who spoke to Christian Science Monitor about her progress. A Bosnian Croat born in the aftermath of the Balkans War which saw the ethnically motivated killing of 100,000 people across the region, she has since graduated and returned home to hold interfaith cafe events, conferences, and summer camps focused on reconciliation.
“I learned to see the other person as myself: a being with emotions, challenges, pain, frustrations, maybe some traumas. That’s the lesson I brought back home,” Ms. Markovic told CSM in a video call from Sarajevo.
CONFLICTS IMPROVING AROUND THE WORLD: Deforestation Fell 26% in Colombian Amazon Last Year Since Peace and Reconciliation with Rebels in FARC
It’s not as easy a mission as it might seem when walking through the veritable medieval castle that makes up the Rondine campus, filled with gnarled oaks and beautiful Tuscan food, and educators at the Citadel of Peace said that sometimes the news gets turned on and arguments flair up that haven’t been expressed in months.
But many opportunities like shared study, communal dorms, and sporting events all help to reinforce the idea, nay the truth, that the students there are just people, not enemies.
MORE WORK LIKE THIS: Locals Are ‘Interrupting Violence’ in Minneapolis – One Lawn Chair at a Time
This year’s new class will include Armenians and Azerbaijanis—hot on the heels of the latter’s seizing, and some say ethnic cleansing, of the former’s presence in the disputed territory of Artsakh-Nagorno-Karabakh. It will include Russians and Ukrainians, hot on the heels of the latter’s recent defeat by the former in the Donbas and Kherson.
It will include Canadians and Americans of tribal origin and those of European origin, and Palestinians and Israelis.
SHARE The Inspiring, World-Changing Work Of This Unique School… | Europe Politics |
Joseph Shapiro/NPR
toggle caption
Judy Heumann was a major American civil rights activist who remained little-known until a flurry of attention in the last three years of her life.
Joseph Shapiro/NPR
Judy Heumann was a major American civil rights activist who remained little-known until a flurry of attention in the last three years of her life.
Joseph Shapiro/NPR
Judy Heumann was the first person I called when, in 1987, I reported my first story on disability rights. Judy, who contracted polio when she was 18 months old, gave me the quote that perfectly summed up that little-known civil rights movement.
"Disability only becomes a tragedy when society fails to provide the things we need to lead our lives — job opportunities or barrier-free buildings, for example," she said. "It is not a tragedy to me that I'm living in a wheelchair."
That idea seemed so unexpected and strange that my editors at a newsmagazine decided not to publish my story.
It was still a radical claim that disabled people didn't see themselves, or their conditions, as something to be pitied. Or that they insisted what most held them back wasn't their health condition but society's exclusion — maybe attitudes that they were less capable to do a job, go to college or find romance; or a physical barrier, like a sidewalk without a curb cut.
That reimagining of what it means to be disabled did gain traction over the years — the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act just three years later in 1990 was a milestone — thanks to leaders like Heumann, who died suddenly on Saturday at age 75 at a hospital in Washington, D.C. She'd been hospitalized the previous weekend with breathing problems.
Heumann was a major American civil rights hero who remained little known until a flurry of attention in the last three years of her life. It started with the publication of her autobiography, Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist, co-authored with Kristen Joiner and released in February 2020, in the weeks just before the pandemic.
The celebration of Heumann took off shortly after with the release of the documentary Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution. Filmmakers James LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham found forgotten film of a summer camp in upstate New York for children with disabilities and used it to smartly explore issues of identity. The young people using wheelchairs and with various disabilities long to be included in a world that rejected them, but also find commonality and pride at a place that's exclusively for them. Heumann, who had attended Camp Jened from the time she was 8 and was a counselor at the time of the original film footage, quickly emerges as the documentary's star — a smart and self-confident organizer.
When the ADA marked its 30th birthday, in July of 2020, I and a lot of other journalists dialed up Judy. For NPR, I got Judy to share wisdom with a young activist, Imani Barbarin, who'd been born just four months before the ADA became law. Judy, who was working to spread knowledge of disability civil rights to the moment she died, noted the importance of the new directions of young activists like Barbarin who don't see the ADA as a capstone of rights, but as just a floor for achieving equality.
Other events of 2020 helped propel awareness of Heumann's work and the rise of the disability civil rights movement — the killing of George Floyd created discussion of diversity, equity and inclusion, with disabled people insisting it had to include them and the pandemic itself, one of the largest causes of new disability since the spread of polio.
Early in life, Heumann's wheelchair was called a fire hazard
In 1949, Judy, the daughter of a New York butcher and his wife, contracted polio. When she was 5 and it was time to go to kindergarten, her parents — German Jewish immigrants — went to register her but were turned away at the nearby public school.
It would create a fire hazard, the principal said, to let a girl in a wheelchair go to the school.
Her mother, Ilse Heumann, fought to end the isolating and erratic hours — just a few hours a week — of home instruction and eventually Judy was allowed into a school building.
Years later, Heumann graduated from college where she studied to become a teacher. Being a speech therapist was one of the few professions, she was told, open to a young woman in a wheelchair.
But again, she was deemed a fire hazard. This time, in 1970, New York City's Board of Education ruled that a teacher in a wheelchair would be unable to evacuate children during an emergency and denied her a teaching license.
Heumann, having learned from her mother's advocacy, sued. She got support in the local press. "You Can Be President, Not Teacher, with Polio," ran one newspaper story, noting the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt.
For that story, Heumann told the reporter: "We're not going to let a hypocritical society give us a token education and then bury us." Other disabled people around the country saw press coverage and wrote her letters detailing their own discrimination stories.
Heumann co-founded Disabled in Action, a protest group modeled on the work of Black civil rights activists, the women's movement and anti-Vietnam War protesters.
Heumann's activism expanded in the 1970s
In 1972, Heumann and a small group of DIA demonstrators shut down rush hour traffic on Madison Avenue outside President Richard Nixon's reelection campaign headquarters. They wanted to call attention to Nixon's veto of the Rehabilitation Act of 1972, which expanded programs to help people with disabilities.
Heumann moved to Berkeley, Calif., the center of a small but growing disability civil rights movement. (When, in 1990, I started writing a book, No Pity: People With Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement, I took my first reporting trip to Berkeley to spend time learning from Judy, Ed Roberts and other leaders.)
In 1973, Nixon did sign the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which added milestone language to prevent discrimination against people with disabilities. But the Nixon and Ford administrations did not write the rules required to make that anti-discrimination language operative.
When the new administration of Jimmy Carter seemed unsure whether to act, disabled people took over a federal building in San Francisco. The protest, over 26 days in the spring of 1977, was one of the first actions of the rising disability civil rights movement to gain national press attention.
Heumann, then 29, emerged as a leader. When California congressmen convened a hearing at the occupied building and a federal official tried to reassure the protesters, Heumann did not let him off easy. "We will no longer allow the government to oppress disabled individuals. We want the law enforced. We will accept no more discussion of segregation," she said in a voice that quivered with emotion and indignation. "And I would appreciate it if you would stop shaking your head in agreement when I don't think you understand what we are talking about."
The protesters forced the Carter administration to implement Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which specified that no government agency, or even a private business, that accepted federal funds could discriminate against someone on the basis of their disability.
Section 504 became a model for the ADA which would extend the principles of non-discrimination to all public accommodations, employment, transportation, communications and access to state and local government programs.
In her autobiography, Heumann wrote of her excitement to be present on the White House lawn when President George H.W. Bush signed the ADA into law on July 26, 1990. Although she had criticized the legislation that she thought didn't go far enough to help people, like her, who needed assistance from aides to live at home.
Heumann led various disability groups in California. In 1991, she met Jorge Pineda, at a disability conference, and they married the following year.
Heumann turned her efforts to working in the government and promoting global disability rights
Susan Ragan/AP
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Judy Heumann, center, is sworn in as U.S. assistant secretary for special education and rehabilitative services in Berkeley, Calif., in 1993.
Susan Ragan/AP
Judy Heumann, center, is sworn in as U.S. assistant secretary for special education and rehabilitative services in Berkeley, Calif., in 1993.
Susan Ragan/AP
In 1993, President Bill Clinton named Heumann — the woman who had once been declared a fire hazard too dangerous to be a student or a teacher — as assistant secretary of education, in charge of all of the nation's federal education programs for students with disabilities.
Later, in the Obama administration, she worked as a special assistant to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in charge of spreading ideas about civil rights across the world.
The disability civil rights revolution, which Heumann had helped launch in America, was now becoming a democracy export. Between 2000 and 2015, 181 countries passed disability civil rights modeled after the ADA (although many were laws with little power or follow up). In her hulking power wheelchair, Heumann traveled to more than 30 countries to spread the gospel of disability rights.
For the 25th anniversary of the ADA in 2015, I followed Judy at a State Department conference in Washington that brought 50 disabled advocates from 33 countries. They treated Judy like a rock star. They posed for selfies and brought her gifts. They sought her advice about closing down abusive orphanages for disabled children and about how to win equal rights for women with disabilities. "We are slowly changing the world," Judy told them.
Heumann was sunny and quick to smile, an optimist about the future. But she was also quick to call out discrimination.
Heumann appreciated the growing recognition of her work and the way demand for her time had grown starting in 2020. She was generous with that time and kept mentoring young activists around the world. She started a podcast and traveled or, during the pandemic appeared on Zoom, to keep up with a growing demand to hear her speak.
"We're simmering to a boil," she liked to say about seeing her work for the disability civil rights movement spread into the mainstream and across the globe. | Human Rights |
The Australian Defense Department will rip out more than 900 Chinese-made security devices from government buildings over fears they could enable spying by China.
Australian officials announced the move after a six-month audit revealed the flabbergasting number cameras, access control systems, and intercoms made by the Chinese companies Hikvision and Dahua in government buildings earlier this week. Before the audit, the country’s Home Affairs Department couldn’t determine how many surveillance devices were in government buildings, according to opposition cybersecurity spokesman Sen. James Paterson.
Paterson told ABC Australia that some government departments didn’t know exactly how many of the devices from Hikvision and Dahua were in their buildings.
“We urgently need a plan from [Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s] government to rip every one of these devices out of Australian government departments and agencies,” Paterson said.
When addressing the issue, Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said his agency was analyzing the government’s surveillance devices, the Associated Press reported.
“Where those particular cameras are found, they’re going to be removed,” Marles stated. “There is an issue here and we’re going to deal with it.”
The U.S. banned equipment from Hikvision and Dahua in government buildings last November, citing the “unacceptable risk to national security.” The United Kingdom also took similar action against Hikvision that same month over “current and future security risks.” Like Australia, the U.S and the UK worry that Chinese companies could be forced to hand over sensitive data when asked to do so by the Chinese government, which is required by law.
“We would have no way of knowing if the sensitive information, images and audio collected by these devices are secretly being sent back to China against the interests of Australian citizens,” Paterson, the cybersecurity spokesman, laid out.
China blasted Australia’s move on Thursday and claimed the country was discriminating against Chinese businesses. At a daily news briefing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Australia’s decision overstretched “the concept of national security and abuse state power to suppress and discriminate against Chinese enterprises.”
She added that China had always encouraged its companies to carry out business abroad in compliance with local laws, according to the AP.
“We hope Australia will provide a fair and non-discriminatory environment for the normal operation of Chinese enterprises and do more things that are conducive to mutual trust and cooperation between the two sides,” Mao said. | Australia Politics |
Brexit is a convenient scapegoat for the UK’s economic woes, but if we did into the data we’ll see a different story, writes Paul Ormerod.
Two quite contradictory messages have been given about Brexit over the past few days or so.
First, Makoto Uchida, the chief executive of Nissan, a company originally very critical about the UK’s exit from the EU, pronounced that the impact of Brexit on its UK operations is now negligible. He urged the country to be more optimistic about its prospects. A £2bn upgrade of the firm’s Sunderland plant was announced, confirming the UK as Nissan’s main operational base in Europe.
Hot on the heels of Mr Uchida, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission President, claimed that her generation of politicians had “goofed up” over Brexit. The upcoming one should fix it and put Britain firmly on the path to rejoining.
One thing we know for certain is that the short-term forecasts put out by the Remain campaign during the referendum were shown to be spectacularly wrong.
Following the vote in June 2016, by the end of that year the UK was meant to be in a deep recession and unemployment was going to rise by half a million. In fact, in the second half of 2016 GDP grew at a respectable annual rate of two per cent, and unemployment fell.
But how do we stand now, over seven years after the decision to leave?
The estimates of GDP published by the OECD in Paris tell a revealing story. Between the second quarter of 2016 and the most recent figure for the third quarter of this year, the British economy only grew by 9.1 per cent.
The figure, amounting to not much more than one per cent a year, is disappointing. This is why both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have placed the aim of raising the growth of both output and productivity centre stage in their policy objectives.
In Spain, however, growth over the same period was a bit less, at 8.3 per cent. In both France and Italy it was even lower, at 5.5 and 5.3 per cent respectively. Perhaps Germany, the poster country for many Remainers, can alter the story? But no. GDP there rose by just 6.2 per cent.
The manufacturing lobby makes a lot of noise, almost portraying Brexit as a catastrophe for the sector. The positive pronouncements of companies like Nissan do not seem to dampen the relish and enthusiasm with which this narrative is set out.
But it is Germany rather than the UK where manufacturing has performed really badly since Brexit. Again using OECD data, here in the UK output has grown by 7.6 per cent. True, lower than the economy as a whole. But in Germany, manufacturing output is actually six per cent lower than it was in the first half of 2016.
The American economy offers a fairly sharp contrast. From the first half of 2016, GDP in the US has risen by 18.2 per cent, a respectable annual rate of some 2.4 per cent.
An even better performance has been registered by Poland. Since the Brexit vote, the Polish economy has grown by 25.6 per cent. This annual growth rate of over three per cent would go a long way to solving the problems with the public finances which face the British government, whichever party is in power, both now and after the election.
Of course, countries like Poland are still in the phase of playing catch-up with Western economies after spending decades in the centrally planned Soviet bloc. But they are carrying this out with admirable levels of entrepreneurial drive which we would do well to emulate.
What is abundantly clear is that there are no real lessons to be learned from the longer standing member countries of the EU. Since Brexit, the UK has outperformed them. | United Kingdom Politics |
- Summary
- Russia launches eighth air raid on Kyiv this month
- Ukraine says all missiles and drones were shot down
- Ukrainian military says Russia aims to cause panic
KYIV, May 16 (Reuters) - Russia unleashed an air strike of "exceptional" intensity on Kyiv early on Tuesday, but Ukraine said it shot down all 18 missiles fired at it overnight including six hypersonic missiles.
Bright flashes lit up the night sky over Kyiv during the eighth air attack on the capital this month. City authorities did not immediately report any major damage and said only three people had been wounded by falling debris.
"It was exceptional in its density - the maximum number of attack missiles in the shortest period of time," Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv's city military administration, said in comments posted on the Telegram messaging app.
After a weeks-long hiatus, Russia - which launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 - resumed its tactic of long-range missile strikes in late April
It has launched a series of attacks in recent days, often targeting Kyiv, as Ukraine prepares to launch a counteroffensive to try to take back land occupied by Russia. Early on Tuesday, air raid sirens blared across nearly all of Ukraine, and were heard over Kyiv and its region for more than three hours.
The Ukrainian military said all 18 missiles, six Iranian Shahed drones and three reconnaissance drones fired at Ukraine by Russia overnight were shot down though it did not make clear how many were launched at the capital.
It said the missiles shot down included six Kinzhal ballistic missiles fired from aircraft, nine Kalibr cruise missiles launched from ships in the Black Sea and three Iskander land-based missiles.
"The enemy's mission is to sow panic and create chaos. However, in the northern operational zone (including Kyiv), everything is under complete control," General Serhiy Naev, Commander of the Joint Forces of the Armed Forces, said.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the reports. Russia did not immediately comment.
The Kinzhal, which means "dagger" in Russian, is one of six "next generation" weapons unveiled by President Vladimir Putin in 2018 when the Russian leader boasted that it could not be shot down by any of the world's air defence systems.
"The work of air defences was extremely successful. Six Kinzhals are an impressive indicator of that," said air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | Europe Politics |
President Joe Biden confirmed that four-year-old Israeli-American Abigail Edan, held hostage by Hamas since its October 7 attack on Israel, was released Sunday morning.
“She’s now safely in Israel," the president said while vacationing with his family on the Massachusetts island of Nantucket. "We continue to press and expect for additional Americans to be released as well. We will not stop working until every hostage has been returned to their loved ones.”
On the third day of a fragile cease-fire, 17 hostages were released on Sunday–14 Israelis and three foreigners—according to a list from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office. In exchange, Israel freed 39 Palestinian prisoners, all minors, according to a Qatari spokesman.
Red Cross officials confirmed the transfer of some of the hostages out of Gaza according to The Associated Press. Some hostages were handed over directly to Israel, while others left via Egypt. One of the hostages was airlifted directly to an Israeli hospital, according to Israel Defense Forces.
Earlier in the day, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan reported that the U.S. has “reason to believe” that an American held hostage by Hamas will be released sometime during the day, but declined to say whether Edan was scheduled to be released.
Sullivan was asked about Israel’s stated commitment to extending the temporary ceasefire an extra day for every additional ten hostages freed. “The ball is in Hamas’ court on that,” the Biden diplomat said. “If the pause stops, the responsibility for that rests on the shoulders of Hamas, not on the shoulders of Israel.”
Biden has said that he believes the “chances are real” that a truce will be extended. On Sunday, he reiterated that his goal is "to keep this pause extended beyond tomorrow so we can keep seeing hostages come out and surge more humanitarian receive to those in need in Gaza.” | Middle East Politics |
Last summer, all the Tory party could talk about was tax. It was at the heart of the leadership contest and the dividing line between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. The then foreign secretary promised to move fast and bring in deficit-financed tax cuts; the former chancellor said this would end in tears and instead pledged fully funded cuts over six years.
Neither plan saw the light of day. All talk of tax cuts was suspended after Truss’s mini-Budget, when the premise of her borrow-and-spend agenda was tested to destruction. Since then, tax has become a difficult topic to bring up. Even within Tory circles, calls to cut tax are usually met with a pointed question: did you forget what happened last time?
As a result, the Conservative party is heading towards a general election with the tax burden almost at its highest point in post-war history. ‘There was a gaping hole in the Prime Minister’s promises at the start of the year,’ laments a former minister. ‘Sunak promised to tackle inflation, he promised growth. He said nothing about taxes. You could forgive our voters for thinking we’ve forgotten what a burden we’ve put on their shoulders.’
Sunak’s supporters insist that he is a low-tax Tory who knows his party needs a compelling offer going into the next election. ‘All the difficult things we’re doing to get inflation down are so that we can then cut tax,’ says one government insider. ‘The cuts will be sustainable this time,’ they insist. But it is still unclear which taxes would fall and by how much.
‘I want to take an axe to inheritance tax,’ says one Tory MP, ‘but is that an election winner?’ Scrapping the much-loathed ‘death tax’ is an idea that has been discussed a lot over the past month. It was brought to the forefront once again this week, after it was revealed that four times as many people will be dragged into paying inheritance tax as was originally expected last year. Just 5 per cent of UK estates pay the levy, but inheritance tax is still considered one of the ‘most unfair’ taxes by the public. This is, after all, money that has already been taxed. What is the justification for taxing it again?
Another argument for cutting inheritance tax comes from inside the Treasury, which thinks it would be a less inflationary policy than an income tax cut. Inheritance is likely to be used to pay down mortgages or grandchildren’s student debt. An income tax cut (so the theory goes) would restore a small amount of spending power to every worker. But whether the inflation rate would really jump up due to a small sprinkling of tax relief is a disputed point, even within the party.
The real appeal of an inheritance tax cut is, as one MP puts it, that ‘Rachel Reeves won’t copy it’. Sunak’s latest strategy is to try to show the differences between the Tories and Labour. So far, it has amounted to announcements over energy policy but many of the Prime Minister’s colleagues would like to see him do the same with tax.
‘The politics of inheritance tax could be quite significant, if it creates a clear dividing line between us and Labour,’ says a minister. ‘But that doesn’t make it the right tax to cut, when you’ve got Middle England caught up in a current of fiscal drag.’ Millions are being hit by freezes to tax thresholds. Inflation means that two million more people will be pulled into the higher tax bracket over the next five years. Around three million more low-paid workers will end up paying income tax on what little they earn, because the personal allowance has been frozen at £12,570.
When George Osborne was in the Treasury, the coalition government worked to take lower earners out of the income tax bracket altogether. It helped the party win an unexpected majority in 2015. Tax relief for lower earners is seen as an alternative electoral offer to cutting inheritance tax (currently there is little optimism that money can be found for both). This is what the government must weigh up: a policy that generates headlines, such as cutting inheritance tax, versus one that is more widely felt, such as taking a penny off income tax.
The markets are still anxious about Britain borrowing money: the UK now pays more than any other major country to do so. At 4.4 per cent, Britain’s rate is higher than Italy’s. And while predictions about where interest rates will peak have fallen in recent weeks, the base rate is still far higher than some of Sunak’s supporters had hoped it would be by this point. ‘Things look better than they did four weeks ago,’ says one government insider, ‘but not four months ago.’ Immediate tax cuts, then, will need to be financed by restraint on spending.
This is the conversation the Tory party did not want to have last summer. But the Treasury is forcing it now, asking ministers what savings can be found in their departments. Secretaries of state are supposed to be using this month to work out where money can be found for tax cuts next year. Special attention is being paid to the Department for Work and Pensions, which has budgeted for a massive increase in long-term sickness benefits. There are now 4,000 claims a day – twice the pre-pandemic rate. Welfare spending will be a particular focus, not least because there are more than a million job vacancies to be filled. Getting people back into work will have to be the main priority.
Then comes the price tag attached to ending the strikes: some £5 billion in public sector pay raises. Given that welfare and pensions have risen in line with inflation, questions are being asked about how restrained the government can be. ‘Do we have the guts to look at means-testing for pension benefits, or to reduce the pensions triple-lock to a double-lock?’ asks a minister. ‘If we want to cut taxes, at some point we have to talk about the size of the state.’ As chancellor, Rishi Sunak used to say precisely the same. As Prime Minister, he has discovered how hard it is to stop spending money. | United Kingdom Politics |
Media caption, Watch: Drone footage shows extent of damage after Jenin raidNine Palestinians have been killed during an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank - the deadliest in years - Palestinian officials say.A woman aged 61 was reported among the dead in the flashpoint town of Jenin.The Israeli military said its troops went in to arrest Islamic Jihad "terror operatives" planning "major attacks".The Palestinian presidency accused Israel of a "massacre" and later announced it had ended co-ordination with Israel on security matters.A 10th Palestinian was meanwhile shot and killed during a confrontation with Israeli troops in the town of al-Ram, near Jerusalem, as residents protested against the Jenin raid, Palestinian officials said. Overnight, Israel said it carried out airstrikes against Palestinian militants in Gaza after two rockets were fired into Israel. No group in Gaza has claimed responsibility for the rockets, both of which were intercepted by Israeli air defence systems. The scale of the bombing in Gaza is not yet clear, although the AFP news agency said there were no reported injuries on either side.Tensions have recently risen in the West Bank, as the Israeli military continues what it describes as an anti-terrorism offensive that began last year following a series of deadly attacks in Israel.Heavy gunfire and explosions echoed across the crowded, urban Jenin refugee camp, as fierce battles between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces raged for three hours on Thursday morning. The Palestinian health ministry identified three of those killed as Magda Obaid, 61, Saeb Izreiqi, 24, and Izzidin Salahat, 26. Twenty people were also wounded, four of them seriously, it said.The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its troops entered Jenin to arrest an Islamic Jihad "terror squad", who it accused of being "heavily involved in planning and executing multiple major terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers".It said forces surrounded a building and that three armed suspects were "neutralised" after they opened fire, while a fourth suspect surrendered. The IDF said troops were shot at by other Palestinian gunmen and returned fire, hitting targets. It added it was looking into "claims regarding additional casualties".Islamic Jihad and Hamas said their fighters had targeted the troops with gunfire and improvised explosive devices.The house which the IDF said was being used as a hideout by the Islamic Jihad cell was still smouldering where furniture inside caught fire.The outer walls on the ground floor were reduced to rubble, leaving the taps and sink of a bathroom exposed. The upper floor was meanwhile pocked with bullet holes, while the stairwell contained a pool of blood.Aisha Abu al-Naj, 73, who lives next door, told the BBC that her house shook during the raid and that she and her family feared for their lives."We were afraid. I saw the army and then I couldn't open or look through the window. It was a scary situation," she said. "There were some young Palestinians next to our building who then came and surrounded it. They shot at them. And then there was a lot of people who were killed."Magda Obaid's daughter said her mother also lived near the targeted house, and that she was shot in the neck as she peered out of her window to see what was happening.The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that seven youths were shot and wounded while attempting to prevent the Israeli forces from entering Jenin, and that the troops "completely destroyed" the Jenin Camp Club.Taxi driver Mohammed Ammori said he had been talking to a friend when Israeli troops pulled up beside a building close to the club in cars and a lorry."We heard gunshots. We fled into the Jenin club and we stayed under siege there for three hours."He added: "After about an hour, military bulldozers destroyed cars on both sides of the road, then destroyed the club's wall."Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila said Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances were initially unable to reach the wounded because Israeli troops restricted access to the scene.The children's ward of a local hospital was also hit by Israeli tear gas, she said. The IDF told AFP news agency that there was activity not far away and that it was possible some tear gas entered through an open window.As funerals took place, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared three days of national mourning in response to what his spokesman called a "massacre" happening "amidst international silence"."This is what encourages the occupation government to commit massacres against our people in full view of the world," Nabil Abu Rudeineh said.Jenin Deputy Governor Kamal Abu al-Rub told AFP that residents were living in a "real state of war" and that Israeli forces were "destroying everything and shooting at everything that moves".Top Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri said that "the response of the resistance will not be late in coming".Later, the Palestinian Authority declared that security co-ordination with Israeli authorities "no longer exists as of now". A statement said the decision was taken by the leadership "in light of the repeated aggression against our people, and the undermining of signed agreements".United Nations Middle East envoy Tor Wennesland said he was "deeply alarmed and saddened" by the violence. "Since the beginning of this year, we are continuing to witness high levels of violence and other negative trends that characterized 2022. It is crucial to reduce tensions immediately and prevent more loss of life," he added.At least 30 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank so far this year, including militants and civilians, as the military continues operations there.Last year in the West Bank more than 150 Palestinians were killed, nearly all by Israeli forces. The dead included unarmed civilians, militant gunmen and armed attackers. A series of attacks by Palestinians and Israeli Arabs targeting Israelis, as well as militant gunfire at troops during arrest raids, meanwhile killed more than 30 people including civilians, police and soldiers. | Middle East Politics |
SEOUL, South Korea -- Leaked U.S. intelligence documents suggesting that Washington spied on South Korea have put the country's president in a delicate situation ahead of a state visit to the U.S., the first such trip by a South Korean leader in 12 years.
The documents contain purportedly private conversations between senior South Korean officials about Ukraine, indicating that Washington may have conducted surveillance on a key Asian ally even as the two nations publicly vowed to reinforce their alliance.
Since taking office last year, conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol has put a bolstered military partnership with the United States at the heart of his foreign policy to address intensifying North Korean nuclear threats and other challenges. The April 26 summit with President Joe Biden is seen as crucial to winning a stronger U.S. security commitment and resolving grievances over the Biden administration’s economic and technology policies.
The leaked documents were posted online as part of a major U.S. intelligence breach. The papers viewed by The Associated Press indicate that South Korea’s National Security Council “grappled” with the U.S. in early March over an American request to provide artillery ammunition to Ukraine.
The documents, which cited a signals intelligence report, said then-NSC Director Kim Sung-han suggested the possibility of selling the 330,000 rounds of 155 mm munitions to Poland, since getting the ammunition to Ukraine quickly was the United States' ultimate goal.
South Korea, a growing arms exporter, has a policy of not supplying weapons to countries at war. It has not provided arms directly to Ukraine, although it has shipped humanitarian aid and joined U.S.-led economic sanctions against Russia.
Yoon’s government said it discussed the leaked papers with the United States, and they agreed that “a considerable number” of the documents were fabricated. The South Korean government avoided any public complaints about the U.S. and did not specify which documents were faked.
“There’s no indication that the U.S., which is our ally, conducted (eavesdropping) on us with malicious intent,” Kim Tae-hyo, Seoul’s deputy national security director, told reporters Tuesday at Dulles Airport near Washington at the start of a trip aimed at preparing for the summit.
The Yoon government's stance invited criticism from liberal rivals, who called on the government to lodge strong protests with the U.S. They also suspected what they call Yoon’s hasty relocation of his presidential office to a Defense Ministry compound in central Seoul may have left the office vulnerable to wiretapping.
“As a sovereign nation, we must sternly respond to the spying of state secrets, even if it was committed by an ally" with whom South Korea has "bonded over blood,” said Park Hong-geun, floor leader of the main liberal opposition Democratic Party.
In an official statement, Yoon’s office said it maintains tight security, including anti-eavesdropping systems. It called the opposition party’s attempts to link the office relocation to the spying allegation “diplomatic suicidal acts” that shake South Korea’s national interests and its alliance with the U.S.
The situation is unlikely to threaten the country's alliance with the U.S. that was forged during the 1950-53 Korean War, many experts say.
“No big damage is expected on the Korea-U.S. alliance as it seems both governments share the view that they would focus on the alliance, more concretely on a successful state visit by Yoon,” said Bong Young-shik, an expert at Seoul’s Yonsei Institute for North Korean Studies.
If Yoon returns with some achievements, Koreans will conclude that he put up with the spying allegations "because bigger matters were at stake,” Bong said. But if the visit amounts to a ”pomp-only trip," people could question whether South Korea "made lots of concessions.”
One possible achievement for Yoon would be if South Korea takes on a role in the management of U.S. nuclear weapons in the face of North Korea’s advancing nuclear arsenal.
Other wins would be securing U.S. benefits for major South Korean businesses involved in the making of electric vehicles and easing U.S. restrictions on technology exports to China, which has been a major manufacturing base for South Korean chipmakers.
If the U.S. intends to help Yoon, "the latest incident on the documents could end up strengthening the Korea-U.S. alliance and helping South Korea win something from the U.S,” said Kim Yeol Soo, an expert at South Korea’s Korea Institute for Military Affairs.
Kim Tae-hyung, a professor at Seoul’s Soongsil University, said the exposure of possible U.S. spying could help Seoul maintain its existing policy of not supplying weapons to Ukraine. But it’s also possible that the Yoon government reconsiders that policy now that the U.S. demands are public, Kim said.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, South Korea has agreed to provide billions of dollars' worth of tanks, howitzers, fighter jets and other weapons to Poland, a NATO member.
An American official said in November that the United States had agreed to buy 100,000 artillery rounds from South Korean manufacturers to provide to Ukraine, although South Korean officials have maintained that the munitions were meant to refill depleted U.S. stocks.
Choi Jin, director of the Seoul-based Institute of Presidential Leadership, said it’s also no secret that allies spy on each other, as well as their adversaries.
The U.S. wiretapping activities “are something that everyone already knows,” although it becomes a more sensitive matter when the practice is made public, Choi said.
"I think South Koreans also try to wiretap (U.S. officials) as well,” Choi said. “People feel animosity toward the word ‘wiretapping.’ But in other words, it’s called intelligence gathering.” | Asia Politics |
South Korea called North Korea "our enemy" for the first time in six years in its biennial defense document published on Thursday.
The Associated Press reported the document said, "North Korea doesn't give up its nukes and is persistently posing military threats to us, so the North Korean government and military… is our enemy."
The country's description of its rival in defense papers typically reflects the relationship between the two. During past times of animosity, South Korea referred to its neighbor as the "main enemy," "present enemy" or "enemy."
When relations were on better terms, such references were not made.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's reference to South Korea as "our undoubted enemy" during a speech at a key ruling party meeting in December was also included in the document, as well as a passage of a new North Korean law authorizing preemptive use of nuclear weapons in a broad range of scenarios.
Kim Jong Un was also referred to by only his name – a change from documents issued under former President Moon Jae-in where references included his titles.
The latest defense papers listed the main objectives of South Korea's defense policies as bracing for threats and a potential invasion by North Korea, adding that its nuclear program and provocations "are seriously threatening our security."
Deterring a war on the Korean Peninsula and contributing to a peaceful reunification of the Korean countries are also included in SK's defense goals.
North Korea did not immediately respond to the revived use of the enemy label, according to The AP. In the past, the North has lashed out at similar terminology by accusing South Korea of demonstrating hostility.
SOUTH KOREA CONSIDERS NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT FOR FIRST TIME IN FACE OF GROWING NORTH KOREA SECURITY THREAT
South Korea first called North Korea its "main enemy" in 1995, a year after the North threatened to turn Seoul into a "sea of fire." Similar rhetoric has been used repeatedly since then if tensions are heightened.
The South stopped using the enemy terminology in the 2000s during a time of low hostility, but brought it back in 2010 when 50 navy sailors were killed in a torpedo attack attributed to North Korea.
South Korea again avoided referring to North Korea as its enemy when it was governed by Moon from 2017 to 2022, who focused heavily on reconciling with the North.
Defense documents published during that time did not mention North Korea by name when they said South Korea’s military "considers any force that threatens and violates the sovereignty, territory, people, and properties of the Republic of Korea as an enemy."
Yoon Suk-yeol, who took office in May 2022, has promised a stern response to North Korea's provocations. During his election campaign, he wrote on Facebook that SK's "main enemy is North Korea" after it conducted a series of missile tests.
North Korea conducted more than 90 cruise and ballistic missile tests in 2022, including simulated nuclear attacks on South Korea. The number of tests is the highest on record.
In response, Yoon said he is seeking a stronger security commitment from the U.S and boosting South Korea's own military capabilities. | Asia Politics |
Iraq bill calling for homosexuality ban submitted to parliament
A proposed bill to ban homosexuality in Iraq has been submitted to its parliament.
The deputy head of the committee on legal affairs at the federal parliament in Baghdad, Mortada Al-Saadi, called on Mohamed al-Halbousi, the speaker of the council of representatives, to put the bill on the agenda for the next legislation season, which starts in September.
Same-sexual activity isn’t explicitly prohibited in Iraq, but certain items in the 1969 Penal Code, as well as in sharia law, allow lawmakers to criminalise the LGBTQ+ community.
According to an independent Erbil-based news agency, Basnews, the move follows the head of the nationalist Sadrist movement, Muqtada al-Sadr, announcing plans to rally millions of Iraqi citizens to call for a ban on homosexuality.
Shia cleric Al-Sadr’s call saw him reach out to education institutions to spread awareness of his bid to protest against LGBTQ+ lives in Iraq.
Iraq remains a dangerous place for LGBTQ+ people
Anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric is prevalent in Iraq with Al-Sadr repeatedly making dangerous remarks about the queer community. He once tweeted that gay people were to blame for the pandemic and Mpox, which he referred to as “gay-pox”.
Last year, the Iraqi authority criticised the presence of the Pride rainbow flag in the capital, Baghdad.
That same year, the Iraqi parliament began the process of collecting signatures to pass a law to make homosexuality illegal, sparking anger and fear in the local LGBTQ+ community.
In a statement to the state-run Iraqi News Agency, Aref al-Hamami, who sits on the parliamentary legal committee, said: “The new law will hold homosexuals to account and impose the most severe penalties on them.”
In September, members of the Kurdistan regional government in Iraq proposed a bill that, if passed, would punish any individual or group who advocates for the rights of LGBT people.
Punishment under the “bill on the prohibition of promoting homosexuality” inclide advocates of the community facing up to one year in prison and a fine of up to five million dinars (£3,000).
It would also enforce bans of up to one month on media companies and civil society organisations that “promote homosexuality”.
MyPinkNews members are invited to comment on articles to discuss the content we publish, or debate issues more generally. Please familiarise yourself with our community guidelines to ensure that our community remains a safe and inclusive space for all. | Middle East Politics |
has fired at least one ballistic missile into its eastern sea, South Korea's military said, adding to a recent streak in weapons testing that is apparently in protest of the U.S. sending major naval assets to South Korea in a show of force.
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command confirmed the launches later Monday. "While we have assessed that these events do not pose an immediate threat to U.S. personnel or territory, or to our allies, the missile launches highlight the destabilizing impact of the DPRK's illicit weapons program," the U.S. command's public affairs office said in a statement.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff on Tuesday did not immediately say where the weapon was launched from or how far it flew.
The launch came hours after South Korea's navy said a nuclear-propelled U.S. submarine — the USS Annapolis — arrived at a port on Jeju Island. The arrival of the USS Annapolis adds to the allies' show of force to counter North Korean nuclear threats.
Last week, the USS Kentucky became the first U.S. nuclear-armed submarine to come to South Korea since the 1980s. North Korea reacted to its arrival by test-firing ballistic and cruise missiles in apparent demonstrations that it could make nuclear strikes against South Korea and deployed U.S. naval vessels.
Also on Monday, the American-led U.N. Command said it has started awho ran into the North last week across one of the world's most heavily fortified borders.
Andrew Harrison, a British lieutenant general who is the deputy commander at the U.N. Command, refused to say when the conversation started, how many exchanges have taken place and whether the North Koreans responded constructively, citing the sensitivity of the discussions. He also declined to detail what the command knows about Pvt. Travis King's condition.
"None of us know where this is going to end," Harrison said during a news conference in Seoul. "I am in life an optimist, and I remain optimistic. But again, I will leave it at that."
It wasn't immediately clear whether Harrison's comments referred to meaningful progress in communications after the command said in a statement last week that it was "working with" its North Korean counterparts. The U.N. Command, which was created to fight the Korean War, has remained in South Korea to supervise the implementation of the 1953 armistice that stopped the fighting in the conflict.
The contact happened through "mechanisms" set up under the armistice, Harrison said. That could refer to the so-called pink phone, a telephone line between the command and the North Korean People's Army at the border truce village of Panmunjom, where King crossed.
The Koreas are still technically at war since a peace treaty was never signed. The U.S., which fought alongside the South Koreans and other allies during the war, never established diplomatic relations with the North, but the line is a common way they communicate.
North Korea has remained publicly silent about King, who crossed the border during a tour of Panmunjom while he was supposed to be heading to Fort Bliss, Texas, following his release from prison in South Korea on an assault conviction.
U.S. officials have expressed concern about his well-being and said previously that North Korea ignored requests for information about him.
Analysts say North Korea may wait weeks or even months to provide meaningful information about King to maximize leverage and add urgency to U.S. efforts to secure his release. Some say North Korea may try to wrest concessions from Washington, such as tying his release to the United States cutting back its military activities with South Korea.
King's crossing came at a time of high tensions in the Korean Peninsula, where the pace of both North Korea's weapons demonstrations and the United States' combined military exercises have intensified in a tit-for-tat cycle.
for more features. | Asia Politics |
A fight has erupted between the Northern Territory Labor government and Jacinta Price over a bill the senator has introduced to federal parliament that seeks to reinstate intervention-era restrictions, with the NT chief minister saying it was drafted without consultation and confers power on a body “that does not exist”.
Price, a Country Liberal party senator for the Territory, tabled the Northern Territory safe measures bill on Wednesday, which provides for “all Territorians to be safe consuming and being exposed to alcohol and alcohol-related harm and violence”.
The bill seeks a return to alcohol-protected areas in prescribed communities in the NT. Communities could opt out of blanket bans if their alcohol management plan (AMP) had been approved by the “relevant federal minister”.
“This will ensure that there is Commonwealth oversight over the Northern Territory Government responsibility in delivery of AMPs, that the plans are local and community-driven, that they meet the objective and are consistent with human rights,” the bill reads.
“The measures of the Bill have been developed through consultation with Territorians and service providers, following the cessation of the [Stronger Futures] Act,” Price’s explanatory memo reads.
Under the Stronger Futures Act, which lapsed in 2022, only one alcohol management plan was ever approved by the federal minister, and seven others were refused.
The NT chief minister, Natasha Fyles, rubbished Price’s plan, saying it was “an extension of the intervention with the associated lack of consultation with community”.
“This approach has failed previously and does not empower the communities to be involved in decision-making or implementing actions to reduce harm,” she wrote to Price on Tuesday, in a letter seen by Guardian Australia.
Fyles, who is also the minister for alcohol policy, said “no consultation has occurred with either myself or the statutory bodies your Bill imposes further responsibilities on”.
“I also note the Bill refers to the NT Licensing Commission throughout, however this body does not exist,” she wrote.
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Intervention-era bans on alcohol in remote Aboriginal communities came to an end in July, when liquor became legal in some communities for the first time in 15 years, while other communities were able to buy takeaway alcohol without restrictions.
The NT government has already announced it would introduce urgent amendments to the Liquor Act next week to strengthen alcohol restrictions so that town camps and communities will revert to dry zones.
This follows the restrictions on the sale of takeaway alcohol in Alice Springs announced last month, including dry days on Mondays and Tuesdays, reduced takeaway trading hours, and limits of one transaction per person per day.
In the letter to Price, Fyles also cites the NT’s other measures, including the banned drinker register, minimum unit price, local liquor accords, moratorium on takeaway licences, police auxiliary liquor inspectors, declaration of restricted premises and grocery store alcohol sale limits.
Fyles urged Price to stay out of territory matters.
“I’m sure we can both agree, that it is most appropriate to allow for the Northern Territory to legislate for itself in the NT Legislative Assembly, and not in Canberra, where the majority of the voices in such a debate will have limited experience or understanding of our community.”
Price declined to comment on the letter but said she invited Fyles to discuss her draft bill in October last year. | Australia Politics |
The European Union has said it is suspending financial support and cooperation on security with Niger following this week’s military coup, as the African Union called on the coup’s military leaders to return to their barracks.
The commander of Niger’s presidential guard General Abdourahamane Tchiani on Friday declared himself the head of a transitional government after his soldiers took President Mohamed Bazoum into custody on Wednesday.
“In addition to the immediate cessation of budget support, all cooperation actions in the domain of security are suspended indefinitely with immediate effect,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement on Saturday.
According to its website, the EU has allocated 503 million euros ($554m) from its budget to improve governance, education and sustainable growth in Niger over the 2021-2024 period.
Borrell’s statement also said Bazoum “remains the only legitimate president of Niger”, and called for his immediate release and for holding the coup leaders to account for the safety of the president and his family.
Borrell said the EU was ready to support future decisions taken by West Africa’s regional bloc, “including the adoption of sanctions”.
Earlier, the United States’ top diplomat also offered his “unflagging support” to Niger’s overthrown leader, warning his captors that hundreds of millions of dollars of assistance could be at risk if democratic norms were not restored.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Bazoum in a phone call that Washington would work to re-establish the constitutional order after his toppling in the coup, the state department said on Friday.
Blinken also “praised Bazoum’s role in promoting security not only in Niger but the wider West Africa region”.
Blinken’s comments came after he told Bazoum earlier in the week that Washington’s support of the landlocked African nation would depend on its “democratic governance and respect for the rule of law and human rights”.
In an address on state television on Friday, the 62-year-old General Tchiani said he had taken control of the government to prevent “the gradual and inevitable demise” of the country.
‘Return to barracks’
The African Union also demanded the military in Niger “return to their barracks and restore constitutional authority” within 15 days since it grabbed power.
The AU’s Peace and Security Council “demands the military personnel to immediately and unconditionally return to their barracks and restore constitutional authority, within a maximum period of fifteen (15) days”, it said in a communique following a meeting Friday on the Niger coup.
The group said it “condemns in the strongest terms possible” the overthrow of the elected government, and expressed deep concern over the “alarming resurgence” of military coups in Africa.
@ #AUPSC Emergency Meeting (Virtual) – Council condemns in the strongest terms possible, the military coup d'état in the Republic of #Niger – See link to the Communiqué –https://t.co/DKOUgwtBWC pic.twitter.com/GrvmmErSm5
— African Union Political Affairs Peace and Security (@AUC_PAPS) July 29, 2023
Tchiani previously led the resistance to a failed coup in March 2021, when troops tried to take over the presidential palace days before the swearing-in of the then-newly elected Bazoum.
The pro-West Bazoum’s election marked the first peaceful transfer of power since Niger gained its independence from France in 1960.
Niger, which borders seven African countries including Libya, Chad and Nigeria, is seen by the US and former colonial ruler France as an important partner to address security threats in the region.
The country is the largest recipient of US military assistance in West Africa, having received an estimated $500m in assistance to the country since 2012.
The country also hosts more than 2,000 Western troops, mostly from the US and France. | Africa politics |
According to the Kurdistan Counterterrorism Forces, a suicide drone targeted Harir airbase, where American troops are stationed, on Friday morning. Kurdistan CT reported that the attack took place around 10:25 am at Harir airport which is A U.S airbase in Kurdistan Region.
A security source informed Kurdaily that after the attack, smoke was observed rising from the airport for approximately 10 minutes. However, no information regarding casualties or damages caused by the attack has been reported thus far.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an alliance of Iraqi militias supported by Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has claimed responsibility for the attack on Friday. On Telegram, they stated that they used a drone to target the U.S airbase in Kurdistan Region, and hit their target. The group said the base was attacked in response to Israeli attacks on Gaza.
The group has taken credit for numerous attacks targeting US troops in Iraq and Syria. Harir airbase has been repeatedly attacked since October 17th. Situated 77 kilometers northeast of Erbil, the capital city of the Kurdistan Region. The airbase serves as a home to the US-led international coalition combating the Islamic State (ISIS). The Harir base has been attacked before by Iran-backed armed groups on Nov. 8 and Nov. 9.
US troops stationed in Iraq, the Kurdistan Region, and Syria have faced a string of rocket and drone attacks from pro-Iran militias since mid-October. These attacks are believed to be in retaliation for the US’s support of Israel in its conflict with Palestinian Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
Following attacks on US troops in Iraq and Syria, the US has conducted three retaliatory strikes against Iran-backed militia in Syria. The most recent strikes targeted two Iran-affiliated facilities in Deir ez-Zor province in the eastern part of the country. Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh revealed that Iran-backed militia groups have attacked American coalition bases a total of 58 times in Iraq and Syria.
“So as of today, there have been approximately 58 attacks. So that’s 27 in Iraq and 30-31 attacks in Syria,” Singh said according to a transcript provided by the Pentagon.
Singh said that The attacks have not caused significant damage, they have injured no U.S soldiers”
Kurdish President Nechirvan Barzani expressed deep concern over the drone attacks targeting the US-led global coalition forces in Iraq. He deemed these attacks as highly perilous for both Iraq and the Region. President Barzani urged Iraq to take action and prevent unlawful forces from causing troubles in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.
Following the attack, The Kurdish prime minister has urged the Iraqi prime minister to deal with these groups. Additionally, the Ministry of Interior denounced the attack, calling on Iraq to stop future attacks.
Nearly 2,500 US troops in Iraq, along with 900 others in Syria, spearhead an international alliance under Operation Inherent Resolve. This operation aids Kurdish, Iraqi, and Syrian local forces in combating ISIS. | Middle East Politics |
Pakistan arrests 17 suspects in connection to the weekend bus shooting that killed 10
Pakistani police say they arrested at least 17 suspects in the weekend bus shooting that left 10 people dead and 25 others wounded, authorities said
PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Police in Pakistan arrested at least 17 suspects in the weekend bus shooting that left 10 people dead and 25 others wounded, authorities said Monday.
Security forces raided several areas in the northern Gilgit Baltistan region — where the attack took place — and arrested the men who were currently being questioned, local police chief Shah Wali said.
He added that the death toll from the attack rose to 10 on Monday when one critically injured man died in hospital.
The bus was carrying passengers from Gilgit to the city of Rawalpindi when it was shot at, causing the driver to lose control and crash into a truck, which in turn caught fire. Both drivers were killed on site.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, however, the Pakistani Taliban, also known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, have denied involvement in the shooting in a statement on Sunday.
The TTP is a separate group but allied with the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021 as U.S. and NATO troops were in the final stages of their pullout from the country. The group has waged an insurgency in Pakistan over the past 15 years. | Asia Politics |
A woman who believed her boyfriend was killed in the 7 October attack on Israel has spoken of her joy at realising they would soon be reunited.
Kittiya Thuengsaeng told the BBC she recognised Wichai Kalapat in TV images of the 10 Thai hostages released from Gaza on Friday.
It was feared Wichai was among Thai citizens killed in the Hamas raid.
She said confirmation her boyfriend was among the foreign nationals being held only came five days ago.
Two days after the 7 October attack, Kittiya was given the devastating news her boyfriend of three years was believed to be among a group of at least 30 Thai nationals killed.
She posted messages on social media mourning the man she planned to marry next year when he returned from Israel, where he had travelled for work.
However, when an official list of the dead was published, Wichai's name was not on it.
After an agonising wait for information, Kittiya discovered last week that he was among 26 Thai citizens being held hostage inside Gaza.
Speaking to the BBC after seeing him alive in a car carrying hostages from the border to an Israeli hospital, she said: "I'm so happy because I feared he wouldn't be among those released.
"I want him to heal from any mental condition he may have first, then he can return to Thailand.
"Right now, I can wait for him. I've been waiting for so long, I can wait a little longer."
Thai nationals were disproportionately impacted as around 30,000 have travelled to Israel for work, primarily in the agriculture sector.
Other families are nervously awaiting news to find out if their loved one is among those whose release was secured on Friday.
Thongkoon Onkaew, the mother of Natthaporn Onkaew, a 26-year-old Thai farmer, said the last time she spoke to her son was on the morning of 7 October, when he was planning to play football with friends.
She said: "I wish my son is one of the first being released. It has been a painful month with no good news.
"I wish my son and other Thai hostages are safe, I thank all the authorities for the effort negotiating the release of Thai nationals."
Wanida Maarsa, the wife of Anucha Angkaew, 28, said: "I need to call the local representative to check the news. I am now bombarded with messages.
"If my husband is one of them, I would be so happy."
Thailand's Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin initially said 12 people were released, but an official from the Qatari government - which has mediated between Israel and Hamas - later said the number was 10.
The release of Thai nationals is separate to an agreement which is expected see 50 Israeli hostages freed from Gaza during a temporary four-day pause in fighting.
Thirteen Israeli citizens - all women and children - and a Filipino national were among the first group of hostages to be freed.
Israel has released 39 Palestinian detainees as part of the agreement.
Thailand's foreign ministry said its freed citizens would be placed under medical supervision without access to relatives for 48 hours after being transferred to an Israeli hospital.
A statement issued by the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it sent its heartfelt congratulations to the released Thai nationals and their families, and would do all possible to get them home to Thailand quickly. | Middle East Politics |
More junta bases were seized and clashes continued to intensify over the last three days as People’s Defense Force groups (PDFs) and ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) stepped up attacks on regime targets and junta bases across the country.
Incidents were reported in Mon, Shan and Rakhine states and Sagaing and Mandalay regions.
The Irrawaddy has collected the following reports of significant attacks from PDFs and EAOs.
Some military casualties could not be independently verified.
Military’s Southeast Command HQ bombed by kamikaze drones in Mon
Two regime soldiers were killed and at least four battalion commanders were reportedly seriously injured in Mawlamyine town, Mon State on Thursday evening when the drone unit of the Karen National Defense Organization (KNDO), the armed wing of the Karen National Union, and other resistance groups used two fixed-wing kamikaze drones to attack the headquarters of the military’s South East Command, according to local media reports.
The resistance group told the media it targeted an event commemorating the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the South East Command attended by several battalion commanders, local businessmen and junta border guard forces.
After being bombed, regime forces responded indiscriminately with firearms, local media reported, citing residents.
Two junta bases seized in northern Shan
The Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) claimed to have seized a pro-regime militia camp and another junta position in Hseni and Namkham townships, northern Shan State on Thursday morning as part of Operation 1027.
Two additional clashes between junta troops and the TNLA broke out in Muse and Kyaukme townships on the same day.
The TNLA said it managed to seize ammunition and medicine dropped by junta transport aircraft intended for the Mine Kyat junta outpost in Lashio Township, the capital of northern Shan and home to the military’s North East Command.
Clashes continue in Rakhine
The ethnic Rakhine armed group Arakan Army (AA) said it continued to attack two strategic junta strongholds in Paletwa Township, Rakhine State for a fourth day amid heavy rain on Thursday.
AA troops also attempted to seize the Done Nyo junta outpost in Maungdaw Township amid heavy rain on the same day. The junta used a fighter jet to defend the base.
The junta also used helicopter gunships and gunboats to attack Pauktaw town, where its police forces and officials from the junta-run general administration office surrendered to the AA.
Police station occupied in Sagaing
The Defense Ministry of the civilian National Unity Government (NUG) said its armed units managed to attack and seize the police station in Kyar Tat Village in Salingyi Township, Sagaing Region on Wednesday.
After being attacked, junta soldiers and police officers abandoned the police station. Salingyi Special Task Force (SSTF) said in order to seize the station, it conducted guerrilla attacks and drone strikes, besieging the stronghold for months.
On Sunday, the SSTF and other resistance forces ambushed 15 soldiers and policemen including the chief of the police station from close range while they were looking for food in Kyar Tat Village.
In the ambush, seven regime forces including the police chief were killed. During the shootout, the junta troops shot dead a villager nearby.
Meanwhile, other resistance forces used drones to bomb the police station.
A PDF video shows junta troops in a street being shot from close range by resistance fighters taking up positions in houses and on a street.
Junta-appointed administrator killed in Mandalay
The urban resistance group Generation Z Power (Mandalay) said it and Patheingyi PDF jointly shot dead junta-appointed Nyaung Kone Village administrator Nay Myo Aung, who was also a member of a pro-junta Pyu Saw Htee militia, in Madaya Township, Mandalay Region on Tuesday.
The resistance group said it seized two improvised firearms from Nay Myo Aung. | Asia Politics |
North Korea vowed on Sunday to launch a second space rocket after calling last month's botched attempt at launching a satellite the "gravest failure."
The North Korean government has ordered researchers and other workers to analyze the failed launch and prepare for another one in the future.
The comments were made at a key meeting for the ruling Workers' Party of Korea in Pyongyang that ran from Friday to Sunday.
Party officials at the meeting "bitterly criticized the officials who irresponsibly conducted the preparations for (the) satellite launch," state news agency KCNA said.
North Korea claims 'strides' in nuclear program
At the meeting, officials said North Korea was making "big strides" in developing nuclear weapons and continued to strengthen ties with countries that oppose what it called the "US strategy for world supremacy."
The Politburo members also analyzed the "extremely deteriorating security situation" in the region caused by the "reckless war moves" of its rivals, apparently referring to the expanded US-South Korea military drills, KCNA said.
It said they unanimously approved unspecified plans for counteraction.
The KCNA report did not say whether North Korean leader Kim Jong Un spoke during the meeting.
A spokesperson for South Korea's Unification Ministry, Koo Byoungsam, said it would be highly unusual for Kim to sit through such a high-profile party meeting without making a public speech.
Koo said the apparent lack of a speech by Kim could stem from the failure of the satellite launch.
The failed launch of May 31 was widely denounced by South Korea, Japan and the United States.
Although Pyongyang said the launch was to put a military reconnaissance satellite into orbit, critics said the rocket technology overlapped with ballistic missile technology and therefore breached sanctions.
South Korea recovered some of the wreckage from the ocean. Seoul hopes the debris can help experts gain insight into Pyongyang's ballistic missile program.
zc/wd (Reuters, AFP, AP) | Asia Politics |
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Russian air defenses on Tuesday foiled a Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow that prompted authorities to briefly close one of the city’s international airports, officials said, as a Western analysis said that Russia has managed to slow Kyiv’s recently launched counteroffensive.
The drone attack, which follows previous similar raids on the Russian capital, was the first known assault on the city since an abortive mutiny launched 11 days ago by mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin. His Wagner troops marched on Moscow in the biggest — though short-lived — challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin in more than two decades of his rule.
READ MORE: Putin says Russia is ‘united as never before’ during Shanghai multilateral summit
Authorities in Ukraine, which generally avoids commenting on attacks on Russian soil, didn’t say whether it launched the drone raid.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that four of the five drones were downed by air defenses on the outskirts of Moscow and the fifth was jammed by electronic warfare means and forced down.
There were no casualties or damage, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.
As with previous drone attacks on Moscow, it was impossible to verify the Russian military’s announcement that it downed all of them.
The drone attack prompted authorities to temporarily restrict flights at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport and divert flights to two other Moscow main airports. Vnukovo is about 15 kilometers (nine miles) southwest of Moscow.
In May, two daring drone attacks jolted the Russian capital, in what appeared to be Kyiv’s deepest strikes into Russia.
Tuesday’s raid came as Ukrainian forces have continued probing Russian defenses in the south and the east of their country in the initial stages of a counteroffensive.
Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s Security and Defense Council, said that the military was currently focusing on destroying Russian equipment and personnel, and that the past few days of fighting have been particularly “fruitful.” He provided no evidence and it wasn’t possible to independently verify it.
The Ukrainians are up against minefields, anti-tank ditches and other obstacles, as well as layered defensive lines reportedly up to 20 kilometers (12 miles) deep in some places as they attempt to dislodge Russian occupiers.
The U.K. Defense Ministry said Tuesday the Kremlin’s forces have “refined (their) tactics aimed at slowing Ukrainian armored counteroffensive operations in southern Ukraine.”
Moscow has placed emphasis on using anti-tank mines to slow the onslaught, the assessment said, leaving the attackers at the mercy of Russian drones, helicopters and artillery.
“Although Russia has achieved some success with this approach in the early stages of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, its forces continue to suffer from key weaknesses, especially overstretched units and a shortage of artillery munitions,” the assessment said.
Western analysts say the counteroffensive, even if it prospers, won’t end the war, which started with Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Russia, meanwhile, has continued its missile and drone barrage deep behind the front line.
Russian shelling of Pervomaiskyi, a city in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, wounded 31 civilians, Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said Tuesday. Nine children, including two babies, were among the wounded, he said.
Oleksandr Lysenko, mayor of the city of Sumy in northeastern Ukraine, said that three people were killed and 21 others were wounded in a Russian drone strike on Monday that damaged two apartment buildings.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the attack also damaged the regional headquarters of the Security Service of Ukraine, the country’s main intelligence agency. He argued that the country needs more air defense systems to help fend off Russian raids.
In all, Ukraine’s presidential office reported Tuesday, at least seven Ukrainian civilians were killed and 35 others injured in the fighting over the previous 24 hours.
Putin referred to the recent mercenary rebellion that rattled the Kremlin during a video call Tuesday with leaders of the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or SCO, which is a security grouping dominated by Moscow and Beijing.
Putin said that “Russian political circles, the entire society have shown unity and responsibility for the fate of the motherland by putting up a united front against the attempted mutiny.”
He thanked the SCO members for what he described as their support during the uprising.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu also said that a united front thwarted Prigozhin’s mutiny. He said Monday in his first public comment about the episode that it “failed primarily because the armed forces personnel have remained loyal to their military oath and duty.” He said that the uprising had no impact on the war in Ukraine.
In contrast, Prigozhin said that he had the public’s backing for his “march of justice” toward Moscow.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday it saw “no grounds” to extend a deal that has allowed Ukraine to ship grain through the Black Sea to parts of the world struggling with hunger. The statement came less than two weeks before the expiration of the agreement, which was extended for two months in May.
Moscow has complained that a separate agreement with the United Nations to overcome obstacles to shipments of its fertilizers has not produced results.
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- Summary
- LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
- Hamas says release of 50 hostages in exchange for 150 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails
- Hamas says truce deal to allow hundreds of trucks of humanitarian, medical and fuel aid to enter Gaza
GAZA/TEL AVIV, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Israel's government and Hamas on Wednesday agreed to a four-day pause in fighting to allow the release of 50 hostages held in Gaza in exchange for 150 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, and the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave.
Officials from Qatar, which has been mediating negotiations, as well as the U.S., Israel and Hamas have for days been saying a deal was imminent.
Hamas is believed to be holding more than 200 hostages, taken when its fighters surged into Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies.
A statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Office said 50 women and children will be released over four days, during which there will be a pause in fighting.
For every additional 10 hostages released, the pause would be extended by another day, it said, without mentioning the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange.
"Israel's government is committed to return all the hostages home. Tonight, it approved the proposed deal as a first stage to achieving this goal," said the statement, released after hours of deliberation that were closed to the press.
Hamas said the 50 hostages would be released in exchange for 150 Palestinian women and children who are held in Israeli jails. The truce deal will also allow hundreds of trucks of humanitarian, medical and fuel aid to enter Gaza, Hamas said.
Israel had committed not to attack or arrest anyone in all parts of Gaza during the truce period, it added.
The accord is the first truce of a war in which Israeli bombardments have flattened swathes of Hamas-ruled Gaza, killed 13,300 civilians in the tiny densely populated enclave and left about two-thirds of its 2.3 million people homeless, according to authorities in Gaza.
Before gathering with his full government, Netanyahu met on Tuesday with his war cabinet and wider national security cabinet over the deal.
Ahead of the announcement of the deal, Netanyahu said the intervention of U.S. President Joe Biden had helped to improve the tentative agreement so that it included more hostages and fewer concessions.
But Netanyahu said Israel's broader mission had not changed.
"We are at war and we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals. To destroy Hamas, return all our hostages and ensure that no entity in Gaza can threaten Israel," he said in a recorded message at the start of the government meeting.
Three Americans, including a 3-year-old girl whose parents were among those killed during Hamas's oct. 7 attack, are expected to be among the hostages to be released, a senior U.S. official said.
Israeli media including Channel 12 news said the first release of hostages was expected on Thursday. Implementing the deal must wait for 24 hours to give Israeli citizens the chance to ask the Supreme Court to block the release of Palestinian prisoners, reports said.
Hamas has to date released only four captives: U.S. citizens Judith Raanan, 59, and her daughter, Natalie Raanan, 17, on Oct. 20, citing "humanitarian reasons," and Israeli women Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, on Oct. 23.
The armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which participated in the Oct. 7 raid with Hamas, said late on Tuesday that one of the Israeli hostages it has held since the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel had died.
"We previously expressed our willingness to release her for humanitarian reasons, but the enemy was stalling and this led to her death," Al Quds Brigades said on its Telegram channel.
HOSPITAL ORDERED TO EVACUATE
As attention focused on the hostage release deal, fighting on the ground raged on. Mounir Al-Barsh, director-general of Gaza's health ministry, told Al Jazeera TV that the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza City. Israel said militants were operating from the facility and threatened to act against them within four hours, he said.
Hospitals, including Gaza's biggest Al Shifa, have been rendered virtually inoperable by the conflict and shortages of critical supplies. Israel claims that Hamas conceals military command posts and fighters within them, a claim that Hamas and hospital staff deny.
On Tuesday, Israel also said its forces had encircled the Jabalia refugee camp, a congested urban extension of Gaza City where Hamas has been battling advancing Israeli armoured forces.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA said 33 people were killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli air strike on part of Jabalia.
According to the United Nations, most Palestinians in Gaza are registered as refugees because they or their ancestors were displaced by the 1948 war of Israel's creation.
In southern Gaza, Hamas-affiliated media said 10 people were killed and 22 injured by an Israeli air strike on an apartment in the city of Khan Younis.
Reuters could not immediately verify the accounts of fighting on either side.
Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Emily Rose and Henriette Chacar in Jerusalem, Andrew Mills in Doha, Steve Holland and Jonathan Landay in Washington, Ahmed Mohamed Hassan in Cairo and Reuters bureaux; writing by Lincoln Feast; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Stephen Coates & Simon Cameron-Moore
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | Middle East Politics |
United Nations – The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday voted in favor of a resolution calling for pauses in theto allow for the provision of humanitarian aid.
The 15-nation council's resolution — the first since the beginning of— was adopted 40 days after Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel, which Israel says killed at least 1,200 people, most of them civilians.
The 12-0 vote was not unanimous. The U.S., U.K. and Russia abstained on the measure, with the other dozen council members voting in favor.
The resolution calls for "urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors throughout the Gaza Strip for a sufficient number of days" to enable humanitarian access for U.N. humanitarian agencies and their partners, as well as the "unhindered provision of essential goods and services" to Gaza.
The resolution also calls for the unconditional release of.
Additionally, it demands that all parties to the conflict comply with international law, "notably with regard to the protection of civilians,."
"The council's resolution is disconnected from reality and is meaningless," Israeli U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan said in a statement rejecting the measure.
"Regardless of what the council decides, Israel will continue acting according to international law," said Erdan, who was still in Washington, D.C., after. "It is truly shameful!" he added.
Speaking at the Security Council, Israel's deputy U.N. ambassador Jonathan Miller criticized the resolution for focusing "solely on the humanitarian situation in Gaza."
"It makes no mention of what led up to this moment," Miller said. "The resolution makes it seem as if what we are witnessing in Gaza happened of its own accord."
Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour emphasized the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, telling diplomats, "Our hospitals have been destroyed. Our people have no food or clean water."
More than 11,070 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and minors, have been killed since the war began, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza. The U.N. estimates that some 1.5 million people — more than two-thirds of Gaza's population — have fled fighting in the north of Gaza to head south.
"It is a failure of humanity of terrifying magnitude," Mansour said.
Before the vote, the council rejected an amendment by Russia calling for a "humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities."
United Arab Emirates' U.N. Ambassador Lana Nusseibeh said to diplomats, also before the vote, "Outside this building, and in our region in particular, the council appears indifferent to the carnage and dismissive of the suffering. "
U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield acknowledged the loss of 101 U.N. staff members in the conflict. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, she noted, "Terrorists continue to lob bombs into Israel."
Thomas-Greenfield also expressed her horror that a number of council members still hadn't condemned Hamas' attacks on Israel.
"What are they afraid of?" she asked. "What is stopping them from unequivocally condemning the actions of a terrorist organization that is determined to kill Jews."
for more features. | Middle East Politics |
The US must honor its promises to Afghanistan’s women journalists
Almost two years after American soldiers swiftly packed and left the nation’s longest-running war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are still targeting tens of thousands of Afghans left behind. Among them are Afghan women journalists.
The United States recognized the risks Afghanistan’s female journalists would face under a Taliban takeover. In early August 2021, the Biden administration established a resettlement program for Afghanistan citizens at risk, including Afghan women journalists who worked for U.S. media organizations. Classified as Priority 2 or P-2 cases, the program allows U.S.-based media organizations to refer their Afghan employees for relocation to the United States.
The program was an acknowledgment of the debt America owes these women. Since then, hundreds of journalists have fled Afghanistan for Pakistan. There, they struggle to survive with little or no financial support, no jobs, and no legal status.
Many are waiting for the U.S. government to review and make decisions on their P-2 cases. But two years on, this process has yet to even begin.
Pakistan and the United States are pointing fingers at each other. The Pakistani government says that if they allow the United States to set up a case processing operation in Pakistan, more Afghans hoping to be resettled will enter their territory. Conversely, the U.S. government claims that they must process resettlement cases within Pakistan — and because the Pakistanis will not allow it — their hands are tied.
But there are alternatives. The United States can transfer these families to other transit countries where U.S. government agencies can vet them before they are approved to travel further. These agencies can also complete some of the processing virtually. They can process small numbers of cases from within the American embassy in Islamabad.
It has never been particularly safe to be an Afghan woman journalist. Even before the Taliban assumed power, their fighters targeted these women. In 2021, Taliban fighters shot and killed three young women journalists in Jalalabad and used explosives to kill two others in 2020. Now, the Taliban have denied women journalists the ability to work freely, and they continue to harass and intimidate female journalists. In March 2022, 8 in 10 Afghan women journalists reported physical abuse and threats from the Taliban.
These women cannot safely return to Afghanistan. Yet, living in Pakistan under current conditions is unsustainable. Afghans who arrived in Pakistan after 2017 have no protection — the Pakistani government refuses to register them or consider them refugees. Many Afghan women journalists arrived on short-term visas that have expired, and they cannot afford to renew them. Without visas and with no way to get refugee status, humanitarian organizations cannot assist them, and they are at risk of deportation.
Pakistan also does not permit them to work formally, making it difficult to survive. Most women journalists have been in Pakistan for two years with no source of income and waning savings, if any. Some were the primary breadwinners in their families in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, they cannot afford basic necessities like rent and food.
Meanwhile, they are still at risk in Pakistan. The Haqqani Network — a terrorist group with close ties to the Taliban — is based in northern Pakistan. Afghan women journalists in Pakistan have reported members of the network following and intimidating them. Additionally, representatives of the Taliban embassy in Islamabad have approached Afghan journalists, warning them not to publish anything against them and not to interact with foreigners. The Taliban have threatened severe punishments for those who defy these directives.
The net result is conditions that take a heavy toll on the mental well-being of Afghan women journalists in Pakistan. Having fled their country, they now live in fear — often confined to their apartments. The loss of their careers has affected their confidence and self-worth. Some have even reported contemplating suicide because their futures seem so bleak.
The list of hardships faced by Afghan women journalists in Pakistan is long. The Pakistani government needs to register these Afghans and recognize them for what they are, refugees who have fled the Taliban and who cannot safely return home. Pakistan needs to allow these women to work and their children to go to school and assure them that they will not be deported.
But for those with P-2 resettlement cases, there is a path to an even more secure future. The U.S. government must work with their Pakistani counterparts to get these women to the United States: a country that prides itself on valuing a free press.
It is time to support brave Afghan women journalists who have nowhere else to turn.
Devon Cone is the senior advocate for women and girls at Refugees International. She recently traveled to Pakistan to speak with Afghan women and published a report, ‘They Left us Without Any Support:’ Afghans in Pakistan Waiting for Solutions.”
Salma Niazi is the founder of The Afghan Times and a journalist who fled Afghanistan. She now lives in Pakistan.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | Human Rights |
Leaked Pentagon documents appear to reveal a sensitive conversation between high-level South Korean officials on whether to send weapons to Ukraine.
The secret document, seen by the BBC, suggests that the US has been spying on its decades-old ally South Korea.
It was in a leak that includes information about the war in Ukraine, as well as on China and US allies.
The leak has the potential to upset South Korea's relationship with both the US and Russia.
South Korea says it is investigating the leak but has insisted that it is impossible to intercept private conversations inside its presidential office, and that this discussion could not have taken place in its private underground bunker.
Washington has been scrambling to trace the source of the leaks, which the Pentagon says is a serious risk to national security.
The document seen by the BBC appears to show that South Korea was torn over whether to sell ammunition that could be used by Ukraine.
Washington has been pushing Seoul to arm Kyiv, but it has so far resisted, citing its policy not to supply weapons to countries at war.
Last year, South Korea agreed it would sell artillery shells to the US, to replenish its stocks, which have been depleted by the war in Ukraine.
As part of the deal, Seoul insisted that the US had to keep the shells for itself, they could not be diverted onto Kyiv. The leaked report shows the government was concerned about the deal and suspected the US might indeed pass the artillery on to Ukraine.,
It details a sensitive, high-level conversation from 1 March 2023 between two of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol's senior national security advisors.
President Yoon's foreign affairs secretary advisor Yi Mun-hui reportedly told the then National Security Advisor Kim Sung-han that the government was "mired in concerns that the US would not be the end user" of the ammunition.
They also worried that President Biden could call President Yoon directly about the issue, and that if South Korea were to change its policy on providing weapons to Ukraine, it could look as if it had been pressured by the US.
According to the document, South Korea's national security advisor, Mr Kim, then suggested they could sell shells to Poland instead, given that "getting the ammunition to Ukraine quickly was the ultimate goal of the United States".
The US has made no secret of the fact that it wants Seoul to arm Ukraine. It believes South Korea, with its ability to build advanced weapons at a breakneck speed, could make a significant contribution to the outcome of the war.
But Seoul has been reluctant to do so, for fear of burning bridges with Russia. This leak suggests Seoul not only understood that South Korean shells could end up in Ukraine, but that they were open to this happening, which could strain its relationship with Russia.
"South Korea always plays this delicate balancing act, with the US on one side, and Russia and China on the other," said Jenny Town, a Korea analyst from the think tank 38 North. "This leak shows it is the optics they are most concerned about. They're trying to balance what they're willing to do to support Ukraine with how it will be perceived."
The timing of the leak is unfortunate. In a fortnight President Yoon will travel to the White House on a state visit to celebrate 70 years of the alliance between the two countries - an alliance the US is at pains to point out is still "iron-clad".
This has triggered security concerns in Seoul, with the opposition party questioning how the US was able to intercept such a high-level conversation. "This is a clear violation of our sovereignty by the United States and a super-scale security breach on the South Korean part," it said in a statement on Monday.
Kim Jong-dae, an advisor for the former liberal government, describes this as an "intelligence disaster" for the South Koreans. "This is the tip of the iceberg. There is no way in hell this is it," he said.
South Korea's government is trying to downplay the leak. It says it agrees with a US assessment that some of the documents may have been distorted.
Meanwhile a government source warned that any attempt to "exaggerate or distort this incident, to shake the alliance ahead of the summit, will be resisted".
The US was expected to use the upcoming summit to further press Mr Yoon to send weapons to Ukraine. That matter is suddenly more delicate. | Asia Politics |
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