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DOHA: UN chief Antonio Guterres made a new attack on the Taliban government’s “unprecedented” curbs on Afghan women’s rights on Tuesday as he highlighted international fears over stability in the crisis-stricken state.
Meanwhile, Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi will visit Islamabad at the end of the week for talks with Pakistani and Chinese officials, his ministry said.
The United Nations is reviewing its Afghan operations after the Taliban authorities banned women working for aid agencies, but Guterres said leading powers at a two-day meeting in Doha wanted new efforts to try to change its policies.
The review will only be completed on Friday and the UN has said it faces an “appalling choice” over whether to stay in Afghanistan.
Afghan FM to visit Islamabad at end of week for talks with Pakistani, Chinese officials, ministry says
But Guterres told a press conference: “Throughout the past decades, we stayed, and we delivered. And we are determined to seek the necessary conditions to keep delivering. To achieve our objectives we cannot disengage and many (in the meeting) called for engagement to be more effective.”
The UN secretary general called the talks to seek new ways to pressure the Taliban government after it banned Afghan women from working for UN agencies and NGOs.
That added to international outrage after they were also barred from almost all secondary and university education and most government jobs.
The talks involved envoys from the United States, Russia, China and 20 other countries and organisations, including major European donors and neighbours such as Pakistan. Taliban authorities were not invited however and Guterres said he was not ready to meet them “today”, though he did not discount a future meeting.
Taliban rejection
The head of the Taliban representative office in Doha, Suhail Shaheen, said that excluding a representative at the meeting could prove “counter-productive”.
“Putting pressure doesn’t help in solution of issues,” Shaheen told AFP in a written statement.
“The world should listen to us. By denying our legitimate rights and not inviting us to meetings about Afghanistan or not listening to us, they neither can change the reality which is IEA (the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan) nor can find a palatable solution which is a need.”
The UN secretary general said countries at the talks had raised fears over rights, “the persistent presence of terrorist organisations” and drug trafficking. “The participants are worried about the stability of Afghanistan and expressed those serious concerns.”
Guterres said the “unacceptable” ban on women taking part in aid agency work “puts lives in jeopardy” because of their vital role.
“We will never be silent in the face of unprecedented and systemic attacks on women and girls’ rights,” said Guterres.
Afghan FM to visit Pakistan
Mr Muttaqi is scheduled to visit Islamabad by the end of the current week, an Afghan foreign ministry statement said on Tuesday, without specifying a date.
However, according to a letter of Pakistan’s UN mission said Mr Muttaqi would travel between May 6-9, the state-run APP news agency reported.
It said the minister would lead a comprehensive political and business delegation.
Afghan Foreign Ministry deputy spokesman Hafiz Zia Takkal posted the statement in Pashto on his official Twitter account, Dawn.com reported.
“The Afghan government wants to hold comprehensive bilateral talks on political, Pakistan-Afghanistan economic relations, regional stability and transit,” the statement said.
The minister will represent Afghanistan in a trilateral meeting with the foreign ministers of Pakistan and China. It will be the sixth such trilateral meeting.
Mr Muttaqi is subject to a UN travel ban but has previously been given exemptions for official visits to Pakistan.
A UNSC committee earlier accepted a Pakistani request to allow the acting Mr Muttaqi to travel to Pakistan, according to Ambassador Munir Akram.
Published in Dawn, May 3rd, 2023 | Middle East Politics |
Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has claimed that Russia is plotting a potentially dangerous attack on, which Russian forces have occupied for more than a year. Russia has accused Ukraine, meanwhile, of plotting to attack the same sprawling Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Enerhodar, southern Ukraine, in the next two days.
It was a nerve-racking night for people across Ukraine amid the crossfire of accusations, but especially in the towns and cities near the Zaporizhzhia plant, including the city of Zaporizhzhia just a few miles away, which Russia never managed to capture.
Zelenskyy laid out his claims in detail Tuesday night, saying Russian forces had "placed objects resembling explosives on the roof of several power units" at the power plant.
Russia, meanwhile, accused Ukraine of planning to strike the plant with missiles or drones packed with radioactive waste from other nuclear facilities.
Neither side has provided any evidence to back up its claims.
The Zaporizhzhia plant has been under Russian control since it was captured just a month after Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The sprawling compound has been fought over ever since, with rocket strikes — blamed by either side on the other — repeatedlyto Ukraine's national electricity grid.
Fears of a catastrophe spiked in early June when Ukraine accused Russia of, dropping water levels in a reservoir used to provide cooling water to the Zaporizhzhia facility.
The head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency has visited the plant multiple times,, and described the situation there as "serious," but not an immediate safety threat — unless the cooling pond at the compound, or any other part of it, comes under new attack.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) experts at the Zaporizhzhia plant have in recent days inspected parts of the facility, including some sections of the perimeter of the cooling pond, and have also conducted regular tours of the site without observing any apparent indications of mines or explosives, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said Wednesday.
Grossi said the IAEA team had requested additional access to look for mines or explosives at the site following the claims made this week, in particular access to the rooftops of reactor units 3 and 4, as mentioned by Zelenskyy, and parts of the turbine halls and some parts of the cooling system at the plant.
"With military tension and activities increasing in the region where this major nuclear power plant is located, our experts must be able to verify the facts on the ground," Grossi said. "Their independent and objective reporting would help clarify the current situation at the site, which is crucial at a time like this with unconfirmed allegations and counter allegations."
Regional sources told CBS News on Wednesday that IAEA inspectors have been kept out of key sites at the nuclear facility by the Russian forces who control it.
Authorities routinely run emergency drills in the region for civilians to practice what to do in the case of a major incident.
A Ukrainian government official told CBS News on Wednesday that residents would receive a warning on their phones in the event of an incident instructing them to either remain inside and close all doors and windows, or to get ready to evacuate.
CBS News' Christina Ruffini in Washington D.C. contributed to this report.
for more features. | Europe Politics |
DALLAS -- As the Taliban swept back into power in Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, Fahima Sultani and her fellow university students tried for days to get into the Kabul airport, only to be turned away by gun-wielding extremists.
“No education, just go back home,” she recalled one shouting.
Nearly two years later, Sultani, now 21, is safely in the U.S. and working toward her bachelor’s degree in data science at Arizona State University in Tempe on a scholarship. When she's not studying, she likes to hike up nearby Tempe Butte, the kind of outing she enjoyed in her mountainous homeland.
Seeing students like Sultani rush to leave in August 2021 as the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan after 20 years, colleges, universities and other groups across the U.S. started piecing together the funding for hundreds of scholarships so they could continue their education outside of their home country.
Women of Sultani's generation, born around the time the U.S. ousted the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, grew up attending school and watching as women pursued careers. The Taliban's return upended those freedoms.
“Within minutes of the collapse of the government in Kabul, U.S. universities said, ‘We’ll take one;’ ‘We’ll take three;' ‘We’ll take a professor;’ ‘We’ll take a student,’” said Allan Goodman, CEO of the Institute of International Education, a global not-for-profit that helps fund such scholarships.
The fears leading the students to quickly board flights were soon justified as the Taliban ushered in a harsh Islamic rule: Girls cannot attend school beyond the sixth grade and women, once again required to wear burqas, have been banned from universities, parks and gyms and are restricted from most employment.
Sultani is one of more than 60 Afghan women who arrived at ASU by December 2021 after fleeing Afghanistan, where she'd been studying online through Asian University for Women in Bangladesh during the pandemic.
“These women came out of a crisis, a traumatic experience, boarded a plane not knowing where they were going, ended up in the U.S.,” said Susan Edgington, executive director and head of operations of ASU's Global Academic Initiatives.
After making their way to universities and colleges across the U.S. over the last two years, many are nearing graduation and planning their futures.
Mashal Aziz, 22, was a few months from graduating from American University of Afghanistan when Kabul fell and she boarded a plane. After leaving, she began scouring the internet, researching which schools were offering scholarships and what organizations might be able to help.
“You’ve already left everything and you are thinking maybe there are barriers for your higher education,” Aziz said.
She and three other Afghan students arrived at Northeastern University in Boston in January 2022 after first being taken to Qatar and then a military base in New Jersey.
Aziz graduated this spring with a bachelor's degree in finance and accounting management. She plans to start working on her master's degree in finance this fall at Northeastern.
The hurdles for students who left can include everything from needing help to overcome language barriers to getting credit for the courses they completed in their home country to affording tuition, Aziz said.
Just two days after the fall of Kabul, the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma announced it had created two scholarships for Afghans seeking refuge in the U.S. Later, the university created five more scholarships that went to some of the young Afghans who settled in the area. Five more Afghans have received scholarships to study there this fall.
Danielle Macdonald, an associate anthropology professor at the school, has organized a regular meetup between TU students and college-aged Afghans who have settled in the Tulsa area.
Around two dozen young people attend the events, where they talk about everything from U.S. slang to finding jobs. Their outings have included visiting a museum and going to a basketball game, Macdonald said.
“It’s become a really lovely community,” she said.
For many young people leaving Afghanistan, familiarity with the U.S. made the country a natural destination.
That was the case for Hamasa Zeerak, 24, and her 30-year-old husband, Hussain Saifnijat. In Kabul, Zeerak attended the American University of Afghanistan, while Saifnijat worked for a U.S.-based technology company.
They both began studying at Rutgers University, in New Jersey, last fall. He may be able to graduate as early as this fall with a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering. She is studying to get her bachelor’s degree in business administration and graduates in 2025.
“My worries were a lot at the beginning because I was thinking about how to continue our life in America; how can we find a job?” Zeerak said. “It was stressful at the beginning but everything goes smooth.”
Sultani, like many others who left Afghanistan, often thinks about those who remained behind, including her sister, who had been studying at a university, but now must stay home.
“I can go to universities while millions of girls back in Afghanistan, they do not have this opportunity that I have,” Sultani said. “I can dress the way I want and millions of girls now in Afghanistan, they do not have this opportunity."
There will be 20 Afghans studying this fall at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green. Atifa Kabuli, 46, had studied nursing there for the last two semesters but now is focused on studying for exams that will allow her to practice medicine in the U.S.
Older than most of the arriving students, Kabuli left behind her career as an a obstetrician and gynecologist. During the Taliban’s first rule, from 1996 to 2001, she was only able to continue her education by studying in Pakistan.
When the Taliban regained control, she knew she and her husband would have to leave so their daughters, now 15 and 10, would be able to continue going to school. Her time at WKU, she said, helped her find the confidence to pursue a medical license in the U.S.
Since the initial flurry of scholarships, efforts to assist Afghan students have continued, including the creation of the Qatar Scholarship for Afghans Project, which has helped fund 250 scholarships at dozens of U.S. colleges and universities.
But there are still more young people in need of support to continue their educations in the U.S. or even reach the U.S. from Afghanistan or other countries, explained Jonah Kokodyniak, a senior vice president at the Institute of International Education.
Yasamin Sohrabi, 26, is among those still trying to find a way to the U.S. Sohrabi, who had been studying law at American University of Afghanistan, realized as the withdrawal of U.S. forces neared that she might need to go overseas to continue her studies. The day after the Taliban took Kabul, she learned of her admission to WKU but wasn’t able to get into the airport to leave Afghanistan.
A year later, she and her younger sister, who also has been accepted at the university, got visas to Pakistan. Now they are trying to find a way to get into the U.S. Their brother, who accompanied them to Pakistan, is applying to the school, as well.
Sohrabi said she and her siblings try not to focus on what they have lost, but instead on how to get to the U.S. to continue their studies.
“That's one of the things in these days we think about," she said. "It keeps us going.” | Asia Politics |
The paramilitaries fighting Sudan’s army say they have seized control of Nyala, the country’s second largest city, in a potential turning point in the six-month war.
The Rapid Support Forces said in a statement that they had taken over the army’s main headquarters in city, which is the capital of South Darfur state, and seized all of its equipment. The RSF published video, which Reuters could not verify, of its soldiers celebrating with gunfire, claiming to have overrun the base.
The army did not respond to a request for comment, and a network blackout made it difficult to immediately verify the claim, which came as the two sides were scheduled to restart negotiations in Jeddah.
The RSF have covered most of Khartoum on the ground, but the army has managed to protect its key bases in the national capital. Much of the government has decamped to Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast.
The RSF also published video of their second-in-command, Abdelrahim Dagalo, who has been sanctioned by the US, and said he was leading the effort.
Nyala, a trade hub which observers say could serve as a base for the RSF, had been the site of fierce fighting, with airstrikes and artillery fire killing scores of people, destroying homes and disabling basic services.
At least 670,000 South Darfur residents have been displaced from their homes, the second worst affected state after Khartoum.
The RSF, whose power base lies in pockets of the Darfur region, have been accused of carrying out an ethnic massacre in West Darfur’s capital, Geneina, and stoking tensions across the region.
It has also taken control of Zalingei, the capital of Central Darfur state. As for the other two state capitals in the region, the RSF have deployed across the East Darfur capital, El Daein, although the army has retained its bases there, and fierce battles continue for control of the North Darfur capital, El Fasher. | Africa politics |
- Summary
- North Korea marks 70th year of 'Victory Day'
- Russia, China first prominent visitors since COVID pandemic
- Leader Kim shows Russia defence chief missiles at arms expo
- North backs Russia's 'battle for justice'
SEOUL, July 27 (Reuters) - Russia's defence minister accompanied North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to a defence exhibition that featured the North's banned ballistic missiles as the neighbours pledged to boost ties, North Korean state media reported on Thursday.
The Russian minister, Sergei Shoigu, and a Chinese delegation including a Politburo member arrived in North Korea this week for the 70th anniversary of the end of the Korean War celebrated in North Korea as "Victory Day".
The missiles were banned under U.N. Security Council resolutions adopted with Russian and Chinese support but this week they provided a striking backdrop for a show of solidarity by three countries united by their rivalry with the U.S.
Shoigu is making the first visit by a Russian defence minister to North Korea since the fall of the Soviet Union.
For North Korea, the arrival of the Russian and Chinese delegations marks its first major opening up to the world since the coronavirus pandemic.
Shoigu gave Kim a letter from Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean media reported.
Kim thanked Putin for sending the military delegation led by Shoigu, saying the visit had deepened the "strategic and traditional" relations between North Korea and Russia.
"(Kim) expressed his views on the issues of mutual concern in the struggle to safeguard the sovereignty, development and interests of the two countries from the high-handed and arbitrary practices of the imperialists and to realize international justice and peace," North Korean media said.
"He repeatedly expressed belief that the Russian army and people would achieve big successes in the struggle for building a powerful country," it said.
KCNA did not refer to the war in Ukraine but North Korea's defence minister, Kang Sun Nam, was reported as saying North Korea fully supported Russia's "battle for justice" and to protect its sovereignty.
Kim led Shoigu on a tour of an exhibition of new weapons and military equipment, KCNA said.
State media photographs showed Kim and his guests at a display of some of the North's ballistic missiles in multi-axle transporter launchers. Another image showed what analysts said appeared to be a new drone.
One analyst said Shoigu's inspection of the North Korean missiles visit suggested Russian acceptance of North Korea's nuclear programme.
"We've come a long way from when North Korea would avoid showing off its nuclear capabilities when senior foreign dignitaries from Russia and China were in town," said Ankit Panda of the U.S.-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, calling the tour "remarkable".
"The personal tour for Shoigu - and Shoigu's willingness to be photographed with Kim in the course of this tour - is evidence that Moscow is complacent with North Korea's ongoing nuclear modernization," he said.
Kim also met Chinese Communist Party Politburo member Li Hongzhong for talks and was handed a letter from Chinese President Xi Jinping, North Korean media reported.
The visit by Li's delegation showed Xi's commitment to "attach great importance to the DPRK-China friendship," Kim was quoted as saying by the North's KCNA state news agency, referring to the North the initial of its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
'NO SECRET'
The Russian visit raises the prospect of more open support for North Korea, especially with Russia isolated by the West over is invasion of Ukraine, analysts said.
"While Russia has kept its official military cooperation with the North Korea limited, any veritable rupture in the so-called post-Cold War order may see Russia more willing to openly violate sanctions, especially given their relatively lax attitude to the shifts in North Korea's nuclear status last year," said Anthony Rinna, a specialist in Korea-Russia relations at the Sino-NK think tank.
Last year, North Korea codified a new, expansive nuclear law declaring its status as a nuclear-armed state "irreversible".
This month, it threatened nuclear retaliation over a show of force by the United States, saying the deployment of strategic military assets near the Korean peninsula could meet criteria for its use of nuclear weapons.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Russia's overtures to North Korea comes as the Kremlin struggles to procure arms.
"It’s been no secret ... Mr Putin is reaching out to other countries for help and support in fighting his war in Ukraine. And that includes, we know, some outreach to the DPRK," he said.
North Korea has backed the Kremlin over its war with Ukraine and has shipped weapons including infantry rockets and missiles in support of Russia's war, the White House has said.
North Korea and Russia deny they have conducted arms transactions.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | Asia Politics |
Chinese troops to hold rare joint military exercise in Laos
BEIJING (Reuters) - China will hold a rare joint military exercise with its landlocked neighbour Laos this month as Beijing tries to bolster security ties with regional allies to counter an expanding U.S. presence in Southeast Asia.
Southern Theater Command, one of the five theatre commands of the People's Liberation Army, will send troops to Laos for the "Friendship Shield 2023" joint exercise, the Chinese defence ministry said on Friday in a brief statement.
The exercise, to be held from May 9 to 28, will simulate attacks on transnational armed criminal groups, and involve more than 900 personnel, including more than 200 Chinese troops, China's state television reported.
The drill marks a step up from previous "Peace Train" joint humanitarian medical rescue exercises between Chinese and Laotian militaries in Laos.
This year, China and Cambodia held drills in Cambodian waters for the first time, also involving Southern Theater Command, whose operational area includes the South China Sea, largely claimed by Beijing. Other countries in the region, and international law, say those waters do not belong to China.
China also just concluded joint drills with Singapore in the southern reaches of the South China Sea, in international waters, according to Singapore's defence ministry on Friday.
In February, China's defence ministry sent a working group to Laos, Vietnam and Brunei for talks on regional security issues, with a focus on "bilateral defence cooperation mechanisms."
China's stronger military ties with its Southeast Asian allies coincide with Beijing's diplomatic push to deepen engagement with its southerly neighbours.
In November, Chinese President Xi Jinping told Laotian President Thongloun Sisoulith on a visit to Beijing that the two countries must ensure efforts to "build a shared future between China and Laos."
The exercise in Laos also comes as the United States increases military exercises in the region with annual war games in Indonesia and Thailand and the largest-ever annual drill last month with ally the Philippines involving more than 17,000 personnel.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said on Thursday that granting U.S. access to Philippine military bases is a defensive step that would be "useful" if China attacked democratically governed Taiwan, claimed by China as part of its territory.
(Reporting by Ryan Woo. Editing by Gerry Doyle) | Asia Politics |
Ukraine has said its troops have pushed Russian forces three to eight kilometers away from the Dnipro on its left bank in Kherson region, as it continues to establish a significant bridgehead in the area.
Natalia Humeniuk, spokesperson for Operational Command South, said on Sunday it meant Russian mortar fire is no longer a threat to the right bank settlements.
“Tentatively, the distance varies from 3 to 8 kilometers, depending on the specifics of geography and landscape across the left bank,” she said.
“Now their mortars can’t hit the right bank, so we see it as a certain achievement.”
Humeniuk estimated Russian forces in the area still number several tens of thousands, adding: "The enemy still continues artillery fire on the right bank."
“There’s a massive force there so we’ve plenty of work to do,” she said, adding that Ukrainian forces are not recording any Russian offensive groupings being formed at the moment, meaning they have no capacity to prepare for any assault efforts.
The announcement comes following Kyiv’s first official announcement last Tuesday acknowledging that one month ago its forces had captured a bridgehead there – an important goal in Ukraine’s counteroffensive.
A bridgehead on the left bank of the Dnipro would allow a deeper offensive in the south, though it would require deploying more men and armour in the difficult-to-reach marshy region.
Ukraine’s Marine command in a Friday statement claimed its fighters destroyed hundreds of Russian combat vehicles in battles on the east bank of the Dnipro River.
Friday’s statement was the first official announcement by Kyiv of Russian losses, resulting from Russian attempts, thus far unsuccessful, to eliminate fortified Kyiv footholds on the eastern (left) bank of Ukraine’s biggest waterway, in the southern Kherson region.
The first Ukrainian cross-river raids, by special operations troops aboard small boats, were reported in open sources in May.
Official Russian army statements in October acknowledged Kyiv forces were operating on the east bank of the Dnipro, but characterized them as weak in strength and each in turn eliminated by Russian artillery and air strikes.
On Oct. 30 the Kremlin sacked the general commanding all Russian forces in the southern sector, reportedly, because he and his staff concealed from their Moscow bosses the fact that the Ukrainian crossing was for the first time in strength.
In a Nov. 9 report, ISW said that the Russian military command will likely face challenges in transferring combat-capable reinforcements to respond to Ukrainian operations on the left bank of the Kherson region.
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More than 70 young people were arrested on Saturday by security forces on charges of organising a gay wedding in north-east Nigeria, where such unions are criminalised and violence against the LGBT+ community is widespread.
Same-sex marriage is illegal in Nigeria under a 2014 law, and punishable by 14 years in prison.
"We apprehended 76 suspected homosexuals at a birthday party organised by one of them who was due to marry his fiancé at the event," said Buhari Saad, the spokesman for the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) in Gombe State, a paramilitary organisation under the government.
The arrested youths include 59 men and 17 women.
Lawyers for those arrested could not immediately be contacted for comment or confirmation.
Intimidation of the LGBT+ community is rife in Nigeria, and in recent years the security forces have carried out numerous raids on parties where they believe weddings are taking place. However, none of those arrested have been convicted.
In August, police arrested more than a hundred men in similar circumstances in south-east Nigeria.
The human rights organisation Amnesty International has called for an end to this "witch-hunt".
"In a society where corruption is endemic, the law prohibiting same-sex relationships is increasingly being used for harassment, extortion and blackmail by law enforcement officials and other members of the public", it also condemned.
In December, 19 men and women in their twenties were arrested in Kano, the largest city in northern Nigeria, by the Islamic police, known as Hisbah, on charges of organising a gay wedding.The suspects were reprimanded and released without being brought to justice.
Gombe State, where the arrests took place on Saturday, is also one of the northern states with a Muslim majority where Islamic Sharia law is applied alongside the federal and state judicial systems.
Under Sharia law, homosexual relations are punishable by death. However, this sentence has never been applied in northern Nigeria. The NSCDC spokesman refused to say whether the suspects arrested on Saturday would be charged under Sharia law or ordinary law. | Africa politics |
Thousands of people rallied Thursday in Niger's capital in support of the coup that toppled the democratically elected government, as security concerns mounted among Western nations.
Demonstrators in the heart of Niamey, some brandishing giant Russian flags, chanted anti-French slogans at the rally called to mark the anniversary of the west African nation's 1960 independence from France.
Issiaka Hamadou, one of the protesters, said that it was "only security that interests us", irrespective of whether it came from "Russia, China, Turkey, if they want to help us".
"We just don't want the French, who have been looting us since 1960 -- they've been there ever since and nothing has changed," he said.
The crowd at the rally around him was shouting "Down with France", "Long live Russia, long live (Vladimir) Putin".
A week after the toppling of elected President Mohamed Bazoum, European citizens have been evacuating from Niger, which has had a key role in French and Western strategies to combat a jihadist insurgency that has plagued the Sahel since 2012.
The clock is ticking down on Sunday's ultimatum from West African regional bloc ECOWAS for the coup leaders to restore Bazoum to power within a week or face the possible "last resort" of military intervention.
Niger is the fourth member of the group to undergo a putsch since 2020.
Senegal said Thursday it would send soldiers to join ECOWAS if it decided to intervene militarily in Niger.
"It is one coup too many," said Foreign Minister Aissata Tall Sall.
Bazoum has been held by the coup plotters since July 26, prompting US President Joe Biden to call for his immediate release Thursday, urging the "preservation of Niger's hard-earned democracy".
Britain and the United States have announced the pulling back of embassy personnel in Niger as a precaution.
Paris -- which said Thursday it had completed its evacuation flights -- urged the junta led by General Abdourahamane Tiani to "fully guarantee" the safety of embassies in Niamey ahead of Thursday's protests. | Africa politics |
What’s the biggest mistake Keir Starmer has made this year? Given that the Labour leader enjoys a 19-point poll lead, you could argue there aren’t many to pick from. Figures on the left of the party cite policy decisions such as sticking with the two-child benefit cap. But Downing Street would point you back to four months ago and Labour’s attack ads. The springtime offensive saw Starmer fight dirty as his party accused Rishi Sunak of not believing adults convicted of sexually abusing children should go to prison.
They were designed as a stress test (with mixed results) for the shadow cabinet and parliamentary party on the need to hold a difficult line in an election campaign. But in No 10 they were seen as a green light for the Tories to go further. “His strategic mistake was to step in the gutter,” argues one senior government figure. With the polls showing little sign of improvement, No 10 is now planning to join Starmer there. The Tories are going into fight mode.
While Sunak often gives the impression of being squeaky clean, his team hasn’t always been. Listen to Nadine Dorries – whose soon-to-be-published book, The Plot: The Political Assassination of Boris Johnson, is expected to make unhappy reading for No 10 – and Team Sunak are as machiavellian as it gets. But rather than fight with one another, No 10 hopes to turn its ire on Starmer.
“It’s coming up to a year of Rishi, and the polls are not moving enough,” says one government aide. “It’s throw-the-dice territory.” That means trying to prise open the cracks in Labour as the party sets out dividing lines on immigration, law and order, welfare and green energy. Special advisers are to find more attack stories. Sunak will also be doing his fair share – rather than hiding behind outriders.
There was a hint of what’s to come this week when Sunak embarked on a Twitter thread accusing Labour of being on the same side as criminal gangs when it comes to illegal migration. Howls of outrage quickly followed, with the Labour peer Stewart Wood declaring that he was wrong to have thought Sunak in No 10 would “mark the end of childish, disingenuous, divisive, desperate and misleading rhetoric from our country’s prime minister”. Wood is unlikely to enjoy what comes next.
As one No 10 figure put it in a meeting with colleagues recently: “The gloves are off and we are going to run at everything to expose how the country would be worse off under Labour. Boats, crime, energy and more.”
A particular focus will be Starmer’s time as director of public prosecutions – with plans to depict the Labour leader as on the side of criminals, leading to tragic consequences for the victims. “Everyone got very angry about Boris’s Jimmy Savile jibe, but this stuff cuts through,” says a senior Tory. “In focus groups, the DPP stuff comes up.”
Of course, there are risks to such a move. The attacks could prove a turnoff, and Sunak could prove a bit too polite to be all that convincing as an attack dog. But perhaps more problematic is whether the Tories can themselves hold the line. One area where the Conservatives see a clear dividing line with Labour is green energy. Starmer’s plan to end new oil and gas licences has delighted Tory MPs in Scotland. Meanwhile, the now scaled-down plan of investing billions in green energy has allowed the party to go on the attack on Labour spending.
But the surprise Tory victory in the Uxbridge byelection – by less than 500 votes – has complicated the picture. It certainly stopped the Tories from descending into open warfare, as had been expected if it were a triple byelection defeat. But since then it has seen the two sides of the Tory party clash over whether it shows there is an electoral win in backsliding on net zero. The campaign against Ulez is viewed as being “wot won it”.
It means MPs have spent the first week of recess not attacking Labour but bickering over net zero. “How have we kept Uxbridge but made it into an internal environment row?” asked one exasperated government figure this week. While there have been a few tentative signs of a climbdown, with the delay of recycling reforms and hints from ministers that more could follow, the debate in Downing Street on how far to go is live.
Tory MPs on the right of the party – including the Conservative candidate for London mayor, Susan Hall – see the 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel cars as unrealistic, arguing that this could be delayed in a vote-winning move, and create a clear dividing line with Labour. The problem? A large chunk of the party – particularly MPs in southern seats where the Liberal Democrats are the second largest party – see this as an electorally disastrous move that would actively lose them votes. “It’s a fault line in our party,” says one former minister. “Very crudely, it’s the ‘red wall’ MPs who are net zero sceptic and the ‘blue wallers’ who take the opposite view.”
While the one-nation types often come across as a less rebellious Tory tribe when compared with MPs on the right of the party, here they have numbers. The Conservative Environment Network is very active, with more than 100 members, and is ready to mobilise if Sunak backslides further. What’s more, there is scepticism in parts of No 10 that a war on net zero would be electorally helpful. Under Theresa May, there was a drive to focus on the environment and animal welfare – a path Boris Johnson also took – after the 2017 snap election saw the party punished over comments on foxhunting and other issues.
The row points to the decisions coming down the line. As the election draws closer, Sunak plans to take bolder stances on various issues – with an awareness that it means standing up to parts of the party. “We can’t please every faction,” says a senior government figure. Putting off the reshuffle until the autumn meant that MPs were on better behaviour after two byelection losses.
But given that there are always more losers than winners, the downside is that a reshuffle on their return from recess risks planting seeds of discontent in the first week back. It means Sunak had best hope that his new attack mode isn’t overshadowed by Tories turning on one another.
Katy Balls is the Spectator’s political editor | United Kingdom Politics |
Eight released Israeli hostages wrote a letter to the International Committee of the Red Cross on Monday, asking the humanitarian organization to provide medical assistance and to visit their relatives still being held by Hamas in Gaza.
In an Oct. 7 cross-border attack, Hamas militants killed 1,200 people and seized 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Hamas freed over 100 of the captives during a seven-day truce last month in return for the release by Israel of scores of Palestinian detainees, as well as an increase in humanitarian aid shipments to Gaza.
While the deal was brokered by Qatar, the US, and Egypt, the handover of hostages and Palestinian detainees was facilitated by the Red Cross.
Israeli authorities have said seven civilians and an army colonel died in captivity and that 137 hostages remain in Gaza, their condition not always known.
Growing calls for Red Cross to do more for hostages
The released hostages said in their letter that they had endured "harsh conditions" while being held and asked the Red Cross to help secure the immediate release of those still in captivity. They also asked the Red Cross to make visits to verify the health status of the captives and provide medical assistance and proof of life which they said was urgent.
The Red Cross has not commented on the letter, but it has previously called for agreements to allow its teams to check on hostages and deliver medication. It has said it cannot force its way to where hostages are held and does not always know their locations.
The hostages said their Hamas captors subjected them to "lack of medical treatment for illnesses and injuries with culpable neglect, severe food shortage, and unsanitary living conditions."
"Some of the hostages undergo psychological and physical abuse," the letter said.
The letter also requested a meeting with the organization's president.
In response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, Israel has bombarded Hamas-ruled Gaza with air strikes and pressed a ground campaign. The Palestinian health ministry has said at least 15,899 people have been killed during the eight weeks of warfare. | Middle East Politics |
United Nations — The U.N. Security Council voted Monday to approve sending a multinational force to Haiti with the goal of combattingthat has spiraled in recent years.
With 13 votes in favor, the Security Council approved sending a one-year, non-U.N. force that will be led by Kenya, which has committed to sending 1,000 security personnel. The force is expected to include personnel from Jamaica, Barbados and several other nations. The mission was authorized under the "use of force" provision of the U.N. Charter.
Both Russia and China abstained, allowing the measure to pass.
Although it is not a U.N. peacekeeping mission, the U.N. Security Council resolution gave its "blessing" to the mission, according to Sérgio França Danese, Brazil's U.N. ambassador who currently holds the rotating presidency of the council.
What will the force be responsible for?
The U.N. has beento as civilians face hunger and gang violence that has cut off water and gas supplies, left thousands dead and driven an increasing number of Haitians to flee to the U.S.
The new international force — dubbed the Multinational Security Support Mission or "MSS" — is being sent at the request of the Haitian government and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. It will be tasked with protecting hospitals, schools, airports, ports and traffic intersections in conjunction with the Haitian National Police.
A senior Biden administration official told reporters on a call Monday that the Kenyan forces will not supplant the Haitian police, but "support and strengthen its ability to provide security for the Haitians over the long term."
The vote was "an expression of solidarity with people in distress," Haitian Foreign Minister Jean Victor Geneus told the Security Council. "It is a glimmer of hope for people who have been suffering the consequences of a difficult political, socioeconomic, security and humanitarian situation for too long."
What role will the U.S. have?
The Biden administration has been clear that it will not commit to "boots on the ground," but it is seeking $100 million from Congress to support the mission. It's expected that the Pentagon will also provide another $100 million of support — including intelligence, airlifts, communications and medical funds — to support training for the Haitian National Police.
These funds would be in addition to the $500 million that the U.S. already provides in development and humanitarian assistance to Haiti.
U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, in a statement issued Monday, called the U.N. vote "an important milestone in bringing much-needed help to the people of Haiti who have suffered for far too long at the hands of violent criminals."
He thanked the nations that committed forces to the mission and said it was "now crucial that we focus on making progress in mobilizing the international support necessary to deploy this mission swiftly, effectively, and safely. The people of Haiti deserve to feel safe enough to leave their homes, restore their livelihoods, and go to the polls to democratically elect a government that represents their interests."
"Haitians are leaving the country because of fear… because of intimidation and being terrorized," U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters in a call late Monday, adding that it was the Biden administration's hope that the mission "works to provide stability, it works to provide security [so] that fewer Haitians will feel the need to leave the country."
Knowing that past missions to help Haiti have been ill-fated, including an international peacekeeping force that, Monday's resolution provides a mechanism for oversight to prevent abuses and sexual exploitation.
How effective will the force be at quelling violence?
Those who know Haiti's history remained skeptical after the Security Council vote.
A senior Biden administration official told reporters on a call Monday that the Kenyan force of roughly 1,000 officers will not supplant the Haitian National Police, but "support and strengthen its ability to provide security for the Haitians over the long term."
But the official expressed doubt as to whether sending forces alone would be enough, saying such action would be "insufficient without progress on the political side."
Amy Wilentz, author of "The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier" and a professor at the University of California, Irvine, told CBS News the mission was "unlikely to be a success."
"First, it's too small," Wilentz said. "There are an estimated 20,000 active gang members in Port-au-Prince, and they are heavily armed. So in combat, the Kenyans will be outmanned and perhaps outgunned."
Wilentz also noted the Kenyan police "have a quite poor human rights record in Kenya. In Haiti, they don't know the turf, don't speak the language."
Wilentz noted that the international force will be contending with the aftermath of twin crises — thein 2021 and the devastating erased decades of progress in rebuilding stability in Haiti.
Haitian journalist and broadcaster Michele Montas, who ran Radio Haiti Inter with her husband Jean Dominique for 30 years until he was assassinated, was positive about some aspects of the mission.
"In the terrible war that the gangs are waging against the population, the force might give some temporary breathing space to people who have been fleeing their neighborhoods for months as the gangs are gaining more and more territory," Montas told CBS News. But she added that, "without a real change and a responsible transitional government, the violence might be temporarily reduced, lives would be saved, major critical infrastructures might be functional again, but it can only be, in the long run, another failure."
China's U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun said that while Beijing "appreciates Kenya's willingness" to lead the mission, "without a legitimate, effective, and responsible government in place, any external support can hardly have any lasting effects."
"If the council had taken this step at an earlier time, the security situation in Haiti might not have deteriorated to what it is today," Zhang said.
for more features. | Global Organizations |
The military-installed president of Myanmar has warned that the country is in danger of breaking apart if the government cannot control fighting which has broken out in Shan State.
Former General Myint Swe, who was appointed after a coup in 2021, was speaking at an emergency meeting held by the ruling military council to address a series of co-ordinated attacks by anti-military insurgents which have inflicted serious losses on the armed forces.
Three ethnic insurgent armies in Shan State, supported by other armed groups opposing the government, has overrun dozens of military posts, and captured border crossings and the roads carrying most of the overland trade with China.
It is the most serious setback suffered by the junta since it seized power in February 2021. After two-and-half years of battling the armed uprising it provoked with its disastrous coup, the military is looking weak, and possibly beatable.
The government has responded with airstrikes and artillery bombardments, forcing thousands of people to leave their homes. But it has been unable to bring in reinforcements or recover the ground it has lost. Among hundreds of troops killed is believed to be the commander of government forces in northern Shan State, Brigadier General Aung Kyaw Lwin, the most senior officer killed in combat since the coup.
What makes this attack even more significant is that it marks the first time that the well-armed insurgents operating in Shan State have explicitly aligned themselves and their military operations with the wider campaign to overthrow the junta and restore democratic rule.
However, there are other factors at play. These three insurgent groups have long-held ambitions to expand the territory they hold. And crucially China, which normally acts as a restraining influence on all the groups along its border with Myanmar, has not prevented this operation from going ahead.
That is probably because of its frustration over the military government's inaction over the scam centres which have proliferated in Shan State. Thousands of Chinese citizens and other foreigners have been forced to work in these scam centres. The insurgents say one of their aims is to close them down.
Back in 2021, when peaceful protests against the coup were violently crushed by the military and police, opposition activists decided they had no choice but to call for a nationwide armed uprising against the junta.
Many fled to areas controlled by ethnic insurgents along Myanmar's borders with Thailand, China and India, where they hoped to get access to the training and weapons most of them lacked.
Some well-established ethnic armies, like the Karen, the Kachin, the Karenni and Chin, decided to ally themselves with the National Unity Government (NUG), which was set up by the elected administration that was deposed by the coup.
Others did not, notably the various groups in Shan State, a huge, lawless region bordering Thailand and China.
Perhaps best known as one of the world's biggest producers of illicit narcotics, Shan State has also recently begun hosting a booming business in casinos and scam centres.
It has been blighted by conflict and poverty since Myanmar's independence in 1948, fragmented into the fiefdoms of different warlords, drug bosses or ethnic rebels who have been fighting each other and the army.
Two rival insurgent forces claim to represent the Shan, the largest ethnic group, but in recent years four smaller ethnic groups have built up powerful armies.
The strongest of all of them are the Wa, with sophisticated modern weapons and around 20,000 troops backed by China.
Then there are the Kokang, an ethnically Chinese group with a long tradition of insurgency; the Palaung, or Ta'ang, people of remote hilltop villages whose army has grown rapidly since its formation in 2009; and the Rakhine, who are actually from Rakhine State on the other side of Myanmar. But they have a large migrant population in the east of the country which helped establish the Arakan Army, now one of the best-equipped forces in Myanmar.
The Wa agreed a ceasefire with the Myanmar military back in 1989, and have generally avoided armed clashes. They say they are neutral in the conflict between the junta and the opposition. But they are presumed to be the source of many of the weapons heading to the anti-military resistance groups in the rest of the country.
The other three ethnic armies - the Kokang MNDAA, the Ta'ang TNLA and the Arakan Army - have formed themselves into what they call the Brotherhood Alliance. They have all clashed repeatedly with the military since the coup, but always over their own territorial interests, not in support of the NUG.
These three insurgent groups have discreetly given sanctuary, military training and some weapons to dissidents from other parts of Myanmar.
But, situated as they are on the Chinese border, they have also had to consider China's concerns, which are to keep the border stable and trade flowing. China has been giving diplomatic support to the junta and kept its distance from the NUG.
In June this year, under pressure from China, the Brotherhood Alliance agreed to join peace talks with the military, although these quickly broke down. But they still appeared to be staying out of the wider civil war.
The operation they launched on 27 October has changed that.
They have made dramatic progress. Entire army units have surrendered without a fight. The alliance say they have taken more than 100 military posts, and four towns, including the border crossing at Chinshwehaw, and Hsenwi, which straddles the road to Muse, the main gateway to China.
They have blown up bridges to prevent military reinforcements from being brought in, and have surrounded the town of Laukkaing, where many scam centres are run by families allied to the junta.
Thousands of foreign nationals are believed to be trapped in Laukkaing, where there is growing chaos as people queue for the limited food left in the town. China has warned all its citizens to evacuate via the nearest border crossing.
The Brotherhood Alliance say their ultimate goal now, like that of the NUG, is to overthrow the military government.
The NUG, whose volunteer fighters have been waging a desperately unequal armed struggle against the full might of the army and air force, has applauded the alliance's success, and talked about a new momentum in their struggle.
Pro-NUG People's Defence Forces, which are not as well-armed or experienced as the Shan insurgents, have launched their own attacks in areas near Shan State to take advantage of the military's apparent weakness, and have for the first time captured a district capital from government forces.
The Brotherhood Alliance timed their attack carefully, right after an incident in Laukkaing which snapped China's patience with the junta.
For the past year the Chinese government has been pressing the military government to do more to shut down the scam centres, which are largely run by Chinese syndicates. They have become an embarrassment to Beijing after widespread publicity about the brutal treatment of the trafficking victims trapped in them.
Chinese pressure persuaded many of the Shan groups, like the Wa, to hand people suspected of involvement in the scams to the police in China. More than 4,000 were sent over the border between August and October. But the families in Laukkaing balked at shutting down a business which had been generating billions of dollars a year for them.
Sources from the area have told the BBC that there was then an attempt to free some of the thousands of people held in Laukkaing on 20 October, which went wrong.
Guards working for the scam centres are believed to have killed a number of those attempting to escape. That resulted in a strongly worded letter of protest being sent by the municipal government in the adjacent Chinese province demanding that those responsible be brought to justice.
The Brotherhood Alliance saw their opportunity and attacked, promising they would shut down the scam centres to assuage China. China has publicly called for a ceasefire, but alliance spokesmen say they have received no direct request from the Chinese government to stop fighting.
But their longer term aim is also to gain as much ground as they can, in anticipation of a potential collapse of the military government. This would put them in the strongest possible position for the negotiations, promised by the NUG if the junta is overthrown, on a new federal structure for Myanmar.
The TNLA has long wanted to expand the area it controls beyond the small Ta'ang self-administered zone allotted to them in the constitution.
The MNDAA wants to recover the control of Laukkaing and the adjacent border which it lost in a military operation in 2009, one led by none other than Myanmar's military chief General Min Aung Hlaing.
And everyone is watching the Arakan Army. It has so far only been supporting the fighting in Shan State. If it chooses to attack the military in Rakhine State, where it has most of its forces and already controls many towns and villages, the junta would find itself dangerously overstretched.
As a TNLA spokesman told the BBC, his group no longer sees any value in negotiating with the military government because it lacks legitimacy.
Any deal they strike would be invalidated by a future elected government. The Ta'ang, the Kokang and the Wa share the goal of winning constitutional recognition of statehood for their people within a new federal system.
In joining the fight these groups may help bring an end to military rule in Myanmar. But their aspirations, which are bound to conflict with the interests of other groups in Shan State, are a portent of the many challenges which will confront those trying to map out a democratic future for Myanmar. | Asia Politics |
Chandrayaan-3 Undergoes Last Moon-Bound Manoeuvre, Prepares For Propulsion, Lander Module Separation
The spacecraft completed its lunar-bound manoeuvres and will now prepare for propulsion module and lander module separation.
India's ambitious third Moon mission's spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 on Wednesday successfully underwent a fifth and final Moon-bound orbit manoeuvre, bringing it even closer to the lunar surface.
With this, the spacecraft has completed its lunar-bound manoeuvres and it will now prepare for the propulsion module and the lander module separation, ISRO said.
"Today's successful firing, needed for a short duration, has put Chandrayaan-3 into an orbit of 153 km x 163 km, as intended. With this, the lunar bound manoeuvres are completed. It’s time for preparations as the Propulsion Module and the Lander Module gear up for their separate journeys," the national space agency tweeted.
Separation of the lander module from the propulsion module of the spacecraft is planned for Aug. 17, it said.
Post its launch on July 14, Chandrayaan-3 entered into the lunar orbit on Aug. 5, following which three successive orbit reduction manoeuvres were carried out on Aug. 6, 9 and 14 to move closer to the Moon.
As the mission progresses, a series of manoeuvres is being conducted by ISRO to gradually reduce Chandrayaan-3's orbit and position it over the lunar poles.
The spacecraft is scheduled to make a soft landing on the south polar region of the Moon on Aug. 23. | India Politics |
By Kang Yoon-seung
SEOUL, Sept. 12 (Yonhap) -- More than half of the regions in South Korea are facing the risk of losing population completely, data showed Tuesday, amid the country's critically low birth rate.
Of South Korea's 228 administrative districts, 118, or 51.8 percent, saw the population risk index fall below 0.5 as of February, according to the Ministry of Economy and Finance.
The population risk index is calculated by dividing the number of females aged 20 to 39 by the population of those aged 65 and above. A region is classified as a risk-prone area when it falls below 0.5.
"(The decline) will impose burdens on the regional economy and finance, posing a threat to the survival of local communities," First Vice Finance Minister Kim Byoung-hwan said during a government meeting on addressing the regional population issue.
Kim added the decline of regional communities will eventually hurt the country's economic competitiveness, emphasizing the importance of creating jobs in such regions to prevent the outflow of population.
"We need to foster regional industries to prevent the outflow of people and have companies and talented workforces gather in provinces," he added.
Meanwhile, only 18,615 babies were born in June, down 1.6 percent from a year earlier to hit another fresh low, a monthly report from Statistics Korea showed last month.
In contrast, the number of deaths in the country shot up 7.6 percent over the period to 26,820 amid the aging population, resulting in a natural decrease in population by 8,205. The trend of deaths surpassing births has continued for 44 straight months.
The country's total fertility rate, the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime, came to a record low of 0.7 in the second quarter of 2023, much lower than the replacement level of 2.1 that would keep South Korea's population stable at 51 million.
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Dominic Perrottet responds to ClubsNSW boss after he claimed the Premier's faith influenced his gambling policy reforms
Dominic Perrottet has found support from some of his fiercest political rivals as he blasted ClubsNSW boss Josh Landis who claimed the Premier's gambling reforms were informed by his "catholic gut" rather than evidence.
Dominic Perrottet has lashed out at ClubsNSW boss Josh Landis after he made explosive claims that the government’s gambling reform was based on the Premier’s “conservative Catholic gut”.
Opposition Leader Chris Minns and other NSW parliamentarians also rushed to support Mr Perrottet’s faith as calls grow for Mr Landis to retract the comments.
Gambling reform will be a major part of both the Liberal and Labor election campaigns after a report from the state Crime Commission made a series of recommendations to stem money laundering and problem gambling.
Mr Landis claimed Mr Perrottet was unaware of the intricacies surrounding effective gambling reform and ignorant of the evidence because he was Catholic.
“I think it’s fair to say that the Premier has very little understanding of this issue and has acted from his conservative Catholic gut rather than based on evidence,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday.
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“What he’s done is create hyper-anxiety among the industry and among people who go to clubs, and hyper-excitement among those who want reform.
“That perhaps explains to some extent why he’s having trouble with his parliamentary colleagues.”
Mr Perrottet slammed the ClubsNSW boss for his comments and said they were "an attack on" all people of faith in the state and across the country.
“What I would say to ClubsNSW today is it is incredibly inappropriate and offensive to people of faith right across NSW in respect to the comments he made today,” he said on Tuesday morning.
“Those comments aren’t an attack on me they’re an attack on every single person of faith in our state.
“We live in a tolerant state, a tolerant country and there is no place for comments like that in modern Australia."
The government is yet to release its new gambling reform policy but it has promised to propose a cashless gaming card for poker machines in NSW.
Mr Perrottet was asked whether he would struggle to work with Mr Landis after the ClubsNSW boss attacked his faith but the Premier insisted he never took anyone’s views or faith into consideration when engaging in negotiations about policy.
“I work with people from a range of different backgrounds who have a range of different views I’m not interested in personalities, I’m interested in policy,” he said.
“I’m not focussed on his comments but I will call out comments which are deeply offensive to people across our state who have faith and they have no place in a modern Australia.
“People of faith respect people who don’t have faith, people who don’t have faith respect people who do that is what a harmonious, tolerant society is all about and he should reflect on his comments to that.”
Mr Minns leapt to support the Premier and called for Mr Landis to immediately apologise and retract the comments.
“I don’t think there’s any place for that kind of sectarian and discriminatory language in NSW politics,” he said.
“I frankly haven’t heard anything like this for decades inside our political system and political conversation and I think the CEO of ClubsNSW should retract and apologise for those comments immediately.”
Independent MP for Sydney Alex Greenwich also backed up the Premier insisting Mr Landis’ position was “beyond untenable” and said “it’s time for him to go”.
“I’ve had my policy disputes with the Premier on social reforms, but I would never attack him because of his faith,” he wrote on social media.
“In addition to these wholly inappropriate comments, he has presided over community based clubs becoming mini-casinos, turned ClubsNSW into an NRA style political operation, and ignored the damning Crime Commission report that highlights the extent of criminal activity in clubs.”
In addition to these wholly inappropriate comments, he has presided over community based clubs becoming mini-casinos, turned ClubsNSW into an NRA style political operation, and ignored the damning Crime Commission report that highlights the extent of criminal activity in clubs.— Alex Greenwich MP (@AlexGreenwich) January 30, 2023
The March election will be the first in over 10 years that ClubsNSW has not secured a pre-election deal with the Liberal Party with Mr Perrottet saying he had “no intention” of following his predecessors in signing a memorandum of understanding.
Mr Minns echoed the premier and said it would “not be appropriate” to sign up to policy changes before the election due to the “major independent review” and cashless gaming card trial proposed by Labor. | Australia Politics |
RBI Has Withdrawn Nearly 97.26% Of The Rs 2,000 Banknotes In Circulation
The Rs 2,000 banknotes continue to be a legal tender, the RBI said.
The Reserve Bank of India has so far withdrawn 97.26% of the Rs 2,000 currency notes in circulation after announcing its withdrawal in May.
The value of the highest-denomination currency note in circulation as of Nov. 30 stands at Rs 9,760 crore, according to a press release by the RBI on Friday. That compares with Rs 3.56 lakh crore, the total value of these notes as of May 19, when the central bank announced its decision to pull back the banknotes from circulation.
The RBI emphasised that the Rs 2,000 banknotes continue to be legal tender.
BQ Prime reported on Thursday that several people have been beelining outside the RBI headquarters to exchange the said banknotes for nearly two months. Moreover, there is a group of middlemen spread out in the area who are facilitating the exchange of currency notes after charging 20–50% commission on every Rs 2,000 note.
Initially, the RBI had allowed the exchange or deposit of banknotes at bank branches until Sept. 30. The deadline was later extended by a week to Oct. 7. But a depositor could exchange Rs 2,000 banknotes for only up to Rs 20,000 at one time.
The facility for exchange of the Rs 2,000 banknotes was also available at the RBI's 19 issue offices as of May 19.
Following the date, depositors can exchange the currency notes at the RBI's issue offices as well as deposit them into their banknotes, the central bank said. Besides, people "from within the country" can send these banknotes through India Post.
"Members of the public from within the country can send ₹2000 banknotes through India Post from any post office in the country to any of the RBI Issue Offices for credit to their bank accounts in India," the RBI said in the release.
The central bank has issue offices in the cities of Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Belapur, Bhopal, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jammu, Jaipur, Kolkata, Kanpur, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, New Delhi, Patna, and Thiruvananthapuram. | India Politics |
One person was reported killed and eight wounded in a "terrorist" attack at a shrine in the Iranian city of Shiraz, state media reported on Sunday.
The official IRNA news agency said a gunman attempted to enter the Shah Cheragh shrine and opened fire on visitors before he could be subdued.
Shah Cheragh was the scene of another attack in October, claimed by Islamic State (IS), when 13 people died.
No group has immediately claimed the latest attack.
State media originally stated two attackers were involved and four people had been killed, but revised the figures to a lone attacker, one dead and eight injured.
Yadollah Bouali, the regional Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander, told State TV that "a terrorist entered the gate of the shrine and opened fire with a battle rifle".
The semi-official Fars news agency meanwhile said that the gunman had tried to enter the shrine from the Bab al-Mahdi door but was met with "resistance" from "protection forces".
Witnesses told Fars that a gunman began to shoot indiscriminately after being confronted.
Tasnim, another semi-official news organisation, said that at least seven people were wounded and shops in the area had been closed. State TV said the shrine area had been cordoned off by security forces.
Pictures from Tasnim showed bullet holes in what appeared to be the barred windows at the entrance to the shrine, one of Iran's most important pilgrimage sites.
The shrine includes the tombs of two sons of the seventh Shia Imam Musa al-Kadhim, who are also the brothers of the eighth Imam Ali al-Rida.
Last month, Iran executed two people alleged to have helped carry out the October attack. The main protagonist, identified as an Afghan national in his 30s named Hamed Badakhshan, was killed at the scene in the attack.
Three other defendants were sentenced to prison for up to 25 years for their membership of IS.
IS has claimed previous attacks in Iran, including the deadly twin bombings in 2017 that targeted the country's parliament and the tomb of the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. | Middle East Politics |
Military operations and warfare on land, at sea, in the air and even in cyberspace are highly dependent on space technologies. Since the 1960s, satellites have been a key part of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) for many countries, and in particular for nuclear early warning systems for the Soviets and the United States. Today, there is hardly a military operation that could be undertaken without satellite-based communications, navigation, weapons guidance, and ISR.
This has led to space becoming not only an operational domain, but also a contested strategic domain. The best way to compromise an adversary is to remove their “eyes and ears” by targeting the space systems they depend upon. This is most effective through “soft kill” options such as jamming communications signals, spoofing (sending false) position, timing and navigation signals, temporarily dazzling Earth-observation satellites, or undertaking cyber attacks on ground stations or satellite operations.
The challenge is that today, space systems are overwhelmingly “dual use”: a single service is provided both for civilian use and for military purposes. Space is also highly commercialised, with more than two-thirds of all satellites belonging to commercial entities, who have many end-users and clients around the world. Therefore, when a space system is targeted, civilians feel the impact.
One example came at the beginning of 2022, when Russia undertook a cyberattack on an American commercial telecommunications satellite system owned by Viasat. Not only did this have the desired effect of temporarily eliminating communications for Ukrainian forces, it also meant civilians in Ukraine and neighbouring, neutral countries lost connectivity. A German windfarm was also rendered inoperable for a few days.
Despite global dependencies and the high risks associated with attacks on space systems, space arms control discussions have been deadlocked for many decades. Geopolitical tensions have long played out in space, and continue to mar developments.
China and Russia have co-sponsored a draft treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space for a decade and a half. But the United States and its partners refused to engage in this proposal, in part because of an unwillingness to enter into new treaties in general, and in part because it is impossible to define what a “weapon” is in space, as many benign technologies could be re-purposed or “weaponised”. For a long time, however, the United States did not offer any alternatives, and was seen by many as blockading advances in space security.
But over the last two years, the UN Open- Ended Working Group on Reducing Space Threats (OEWG) held four multilateral sessions, and achieved more in that time than has been achieved in the last two decades on space arms control. The initiative was led by the United Kingdom, which is demonstrating itself to be an effective leader in space diplomacy, and Australia was part of the core group of nations in support of the OEWG.
By moving away from attempting to define capabilities, and instead focusing on “responsible behaviour”, the intention of the OEWG was to come to consensus on a handful of norms, rules and principles that could reduce threats to critical space infrastructure and reduce the risk of space warfare. As a result, a new norm is emerging that the use of direct ascent anti-satellite missiles (DA-ASATs) is irresponsible, with 155 countries voting in favour of a UN General Assembly resolution to this effect. The debris created by the DA-ASAT tests undertaken by China, the United States, India and Russia in the last two decades is long-lasting and causes significant threat to the safety of all satellites, upon which our global economy and individual wellbeing depend.
Moreover, to date, 37 states including Australia have unilaterally committed not to test DA-ASATs. These binding commitments follow an initiative led by the United States, which is now demonstrating good faith and leadership on space security, where it was lacking in the past. An industry statement signed by 26 companies from eight countries has just been released in support of these commitments.
The OEWG discussions remained highly politicised, and at the final session in September 2023, Russia blocked the consensus process in retaliation against UN and international responses to its invasion of Ukraine. This prevented even a procedural report from being adopted. However, there is strong agreement internationally that the process was still valuable. Agreement was evident about the irresponsibility of DA-ASATs, along with increased understanding among the delegates of more than 70 nations about current and future risks to the space environment.
Australia will remain engaged in the next iteration of the OEWG, which gives the government opportunities to partner more explicitly with Japan and South Korea, with whom Australia already has close space cooperation agreements. There is also the chance to engage with smaller neighbours in Asia and the Pacific on joint statements and space capacity building. This contributes to Australia’s commitments to regional stability, and also has the potential to influence India via the Quad grouping towards adopting the “responsible behaviours” agenda, on which India has abstained as a political choice.
Australia has more vested interest in space security than may be apparent to many. Sectors such as agriculture, mining, fishing, and the ability to respond to climate change and disasters all depend heavily on space-based technologies, as do military operations. If Australia is to shore up critical infrastructure, space security must be included in national priorities. | Global Organizations |
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Key developments on May 22:
- Attacks involving anti-Kremlin fighters reported in Russia's Belgorad Oblast
- Russia announces ‘counter-terrorist operation’ in Belgorad Oblast
- Ukrainian military reports small advance on Bakhmut flanks
Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of Russia's Belgorod Oblast, announced a "counter-terrorist operation" in the region on May 22 amid reported attacks by Russian anti-government groups.
"The situation in the Grayvoron district remains tense, a sabotage and reconnaissance group entered the territory, the majority of the population left the district," Gladkov said.
Since early morning, Russian officials have reported fighting within the country's region bordering Ukraine.
On May 22, a group of armed men calling themselves the Free Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps recorded a video saying they had crossed into Russia and took hold of bordering villages.
"The Legion returns home," armed men in one of the videos said, alleging it was shot within Russia.
According to Russian officials, the fighting is ongoing near the town of Grayvoron, located 7 kilometers north of the Ukrainian border. So-called Free Russia Legion announced that it had taken the village of Kozinka, located next to the border.
Ukrainian officials have issued mixed signals about the reported incursion.
Armed Russian anti-government groups allegedly fighting on Ukraine's side have started a combat operation in Russia's Belgorod Oblast, spokesperson for Ukraine's military intelligence Andrii Yusov told Suspilne news outlet on May 22.
Senior Ukrainian officials have refrained from commenting on the situation.
The number of people involved in the fighting remains unknown, with Russia's Gladkov saying midday that eight people were injured.
Back in March 2023, the so-called Russian Volunteer Corps said it crossed into Russia's Bryansk Oblast, neighboring Ukraine.
The attack was inconclusive, leading to no territorial gains.
The Free Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps claim they employ Russian citizens fighting against the Russian regime.
Battle of Bakhmut
Three days after Russia claimed victory over Bakhmut, a city in Donetsk Oblast destroyed after more than ten months of heavy fighting, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said that the situation “has not significantly changed” over the past day.
Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said that Ukraine still controlled certain areas in the city’s southwestern part near the destroyed MiG-17 aircraft monument.
While Kyiv has not officially admitted it, Russian forces have effectively captured Bakhmut. Fighting continues for the outskirts of the city.
The Ukrainian military reported on May 22 that it advanced from 200 to 400 meters in some areas over the past day and that it is working on launching counterattacks against Russian forces on the flanks of the city.
Speaking on television, Eastern Operational Command spokesman Serhiy Cherevaty reported that Russian forces were trying to capture Ukraine’s last holdouts in Bakhmut – a row of buildings and fortifications in the city’s southwest.
International observers, including the Institute for the Study of War, appeared to have confirmed Russia’s capture of Bakhmut.
“Wagner Group mercenaries likely secured the western administrative borders of Bakhmut City while Ukrainian forces are continuing to prioritize counterattacks on Bakhmut’s outskirts,” the Washington-based ISW said in its May 21 report.
Brief electricity outage at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant
Ukraine reported on May 22 that early morning Russian shelling near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant caused a blackout at the facility for the seventh time since Moscow seized the plant in March 2022.
The incident resulted in the last remaining high-voltage power line temporarily being disconnected from Ukraine’s energy system, Ukraine's nuclear energy company Energoatom reported.
A few hours later, Ukraine's state energy operator Ukrenergo said the power line was reconnected to the Ukrainian energy system.
The incident occurred as Ukrainian authorities continued to call for a buffer zone around the Russian-occupied plant to avoid what could develop into an irreversible accident.
Ukraine's State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate reported in May, citing information from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), that Russian troops have placed military equipment, weapons, and explosives in the turbine department of unit four of the Zaporizhzhia plant.
On May 22, Ukraine called for “urgent action by the entire international community” for Energoatom to regain full control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant, located in the Russian-occupied town of Enerhodar in southeastern Ukraine.
Rafael Grossi, the director of the IAEA, called the nuclear safety situation at the plant “extremely vulnerable.”
“We must agree to protect plant now; this situation cannot continue," said Grossi, who traveled to the Russian-occupied plant in March during a second monitoring trip. | Europe Politics |
THE HAGUE, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Venezuela told the World Court on Wednesday that it will go ahead with a referendum on Dec. 3 over its rights to a potentially oil-rich territory that is the subject of a border dispute with Guyana, which asked the court to halt the vote.
In April the International Court of Justice, as the World Court is formally known, ruled that it had jurisdiction over the issue. But a final ruling on the main case could be years away.
The referendum asks Venezuelans among other things if they agree with Caracas' position to reject the ICJ's jurisdiction over the Esequiba region and agree to a plan to incorporate it and create a state called Guayana Esequiba. It would also grant its population Venezuelan citizenship.
Guyana on Tuesday asked the court to issue emergency measures to stop the vote. Venezuela said that demand interfered with its internal affairs and constitutional order.
"Nothing will prevent the referendum scheduled for the Dec. 3 from being held," Venezuela's Vice President Delcy Rodriguez told the court.
She added that her appearance in court did not mean she recognized its jurisdiction over the dispute.
The 160,000 square km (61,776 square mile) territory of Esequiba is mostly impenetrable jungle and has long been the subject of a border dispute between the two neighbours.
Venezuela's claim over Esequiba was reactivated in recent years after the discovery of oil and gas near the maritime border. Just last month Guyana announced another significant discovery in offshore areas.
The Venezuela referendum has been described by critics as a way for the ruling party to test its support ahead of planned elections next year and to encourage the international courts to give it full rights over the disputed border territory.
No date has been set for a ruling but the ICJ usually issues a decision on emergency measures within a few weeks.
The ICJ is the United Nations highest court for disputes between states. Its rulings are final but it has no way of enforcing its decisions.
Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg, Editing by Angus MacSwan
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | Latin America Politics |
In 1938, former British colonial administrator Sir John Hope Simpson offered an unusual solution to the ‘refugee problem’ that had plagued international politics since the First World War. In a world of closing borders, Hope Simpson observed during a speech at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, the onward movement of refugees was increasingly stymied. Serving as the director of the world’s first international refugee survey, he criticized the League of Nations for not grasping the nature of the problem, despite the many decrees for refugee protection it had issued. ‘These legal definitions’, Hope Simpson admonished, ‘do not … give us really an idea of what a refugee is’.
Footnote 1 What could do so, however, were statistics that rendered refugees visible as a biopolitical aggregate. Relying on past census work, Hope Simpson predicted in his speech that Russian refugees would soon disappear, partially through old age and a high death rate and partially through successful integration in Europe and the Near East.Footnote 2 Similarly, his proposed solution to the increasing number of refugees from Germany followed demographic supply and demand. ‘Now of all times when … we may look forward to a somewhat rapid decline in our population’, he announced to his British colleagues, ‘surely the time has come to welcome those who will counteract this fall’.Footnote 3 This vision of managing refugees neither accurately predicted nor prevented the mass displacement of the Second World War. Yet Hope Simpson’s survey, which was published in full a few months later, had one lasting legacy: in its attempt to clearly define the ‘refugee problem’ through a reliable count, the report offered a blueprint for our understanding of the modern refugee as a fixed category. Scholars of refugee history have largely traced the formalization of this category—from a vague nineteenth-century designator to an internationally recognized class—through the growing legal corpus that culminated in the landmark United Nations (UN) Convention relating to the Status of Refugees in 1951.
Footnote 4 After decades of piecemeal legislation, the Convention comprehensively defined refugees by displacement resulting from political persecution, independent of nationality.Footnote 5 Although recent revisionist arguments have highlighted the politicized nature of how this legal protection is applied, they still foreground the assumed link between categorization and international protection.
Footnote 6 This narrative, however, omits an alternative genealogy for the twentieth-century refugee that relies decidedly less on ideas of surrogate protection and human rights. Here, I highlight instead the parallel impulse for categorizing refugees emerging from interwar debates about global population. Drawing on archival sources from Britain, Switzerland, and the United States, I follow the international survey’s trajectory from its philanthropic inception across think tanks and international organizations, and I elucidate the scientific and political stakes inherent to refugee enumeration. As part of his survey, which was eagerly anticipated by national governments, Hope Simpson set out to define refugees as an abstract category coalescing around political persecution. Enumerating them across national borders, the survey marked a prime example of what Ian Hacking has termed ‘the creation of kinds among the masses’.Footnote 7 Following a process of collective category-making, statistics variously overlapped and competed with legal attempts at defining refugees as a new ‘kind of people’. Hope Simpson’s survey, for example, offered a draft wording that would feed into the UN Convention a decade later.
Footnote 8 While historians today primarily cite his work as a descriptive data source, the broader intellectual link between Hope Simpson’s project and the UN legal framework was evident to contemporaries in the international civil service. John George Stoessinger, an employee of the short-lived International Refugee Organization (IRO)—the forerunner of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)—and a former refugee himself, indicated as much in his reflection on post-war attempts to codify the refugee. Instead of referencing the milestone Convention of 1933 as a precursor, he suggested that the international community arrived at a definition that ‘would coincide with the classic one of Sir John Hope Simpson’ from the 1939 statistical survey.Footnote 9 What is now heralded as the ‘classic’ legal definition of the refugee was, in Stoessinger’s mind, itself drawn from another, quite differently framed ‘classic’. Historically contextualizing the Hope Simpson survey elucidates a social-scientific legacy evident (and too often repressed) in the concept of the modern refugee. It also highlights the merits of employing global history as a framework for analysing refugee management: politically, interwar refugees may have appeared as an inter-national ‘problem’, but statistical calculations and the practical solutions based thereon emerged from the world of late imperial governance, transcended the borders of new nation states, and animated myriad stakeholders, including imperial officials and refugees themselves. I first situate the survey within a broader discourse on population control that was riddled with interwar anxieties about the distribution of an ever-growing world population and intersected with economic debates. Refugees, alongside other ‘surplus populations’, inevitably became the object of calculation and classification on an international scale. However, as I show, refugees constituted a different kind of mobile population that resisted established parameters of demographic measurement. To solve this dilemma, Hope Simpson drew on his experience in colonial administration: on the one hand, refugees proved akin to colonial subjects that had long evaded an accurate count; but on the other, reimagined as colonists, they appeared integrable into existing, highly racialized migration schemes. Hope Simpson’s proposed solutions for the ‘refugee problem’, I thus argue, were both inspired by and fed into imperial schemes of population redistribution. Finally, I highlight the parallels between legal and scientific category-making by detailing how enumeration emerged in tandem with legal codification as a way to identify and solve the interwar ‘refugee problem’ and thus tangibly contributed to the making of the modern refugee as a category with global stakes and ambitions. Shaping population(s): resources, territory, distribution Scholars of refugee history typically frame efforts to ameliorate the interwar ‘refugee problem’ within a discourse on humanitarian assistance and the negotiation of human and minority rights in international law. The League’s attempts to find ‘durable solutions’, overseen by High Commissioner Fridtjof Nansen, included engineering population exchanges, advocating for mass naturalizations, and securing legal protection for stateless refugees.Footnote 10 These early relief activities have all received attention in scholarship, as they slowly established an international regime that guided national refugee policies but simultaneously reinforced national interests and often coincided with nation-building projects.Footnote 11 As Claudena Skran has illustrated, the nascent refugee regime was widely accepted not only out of humanitarian concerns but also because it promised to decrease states’ individual responsibility—as well as the number of refugees in the main host countries—and proposed refugee resettlements based on national economic needs.Footnote 12 Although refugees gained international recognition and protection for the first time under the League in the 1920s, such relief efforts emerged partially because member states had a keen interest in a system of ‘burden-sharing’. With the repatriation of Russian refugees to Soviet-controlled territory constituting an impossible manoeuvre on both legal and humanitarian grounds, relief schemes quickly pivoted toward resettlement, which in turn necessitated reliable statistics. Nansen—who was not a career politician but had been trained in the natural sciences—proved a vocal proponent of gathering numeric knowledge. When assigned the post of High Commissioner for Russian Refugees in 1921, his first measure was to order a census to determine the exact size of the refugee population.Footnote 13 In subsequent discussions, legal questions figured as a secondary and largely pragmatic concern: they hindered the controlled cross-border movement of refugees to match them with vacant employment opportunities, and thus proved an impediment to ‘a more equitable distribution of Russian refugees’ across the continent.Footnote 14 While the League continued to debate refugees’ legal limbo in special committees and sought to redress it by issuing the so-called Nansen passports, the lack of rights was not the primary motivating factor for Nansen and his collaborators at the High Commission and the International Labour Office (ILO). Foregrounding operational concerns, international civil servants quite explicitly framed the rapidly multiplying national groups of refugees as an aggregate of economic valence. This calculated approach to refugee management aligned with the League’s broader practice of collecting and disseminating information on a variety of international ‘problems’, including infectious diseases and crime.Footnote 15 Information gathering was guided by social-scientific principles, and statistics in particular appeared as a factual language that could circulate with ease across borders, even when it became increasingly harder for people and goods to do so. At the same time, the internationalist quest to document refugees in the 1920s and 1930s can be fruitfully read as embedded in broader scientific debates about global population control. Alison Bashford has demonstrated that these debates did not exclusively focus on reproductive technologies and ‘family planning’ to limit exploding birth rates: they also linked population to resources and territory in a neo-Malthusian manner.Footnote 16 While the League was interested in population questions, for example, it dealt with them primarily in its Economics Section.Footnote 17 Monitoring population developments across the globe, in 1926 the League’s Economic Intelligence Service began issuing the Statistical Year-Book of the League of Nations, which included estimates of every country’s population next to data on worldwide production and consumption. Although statistics were broken down by country and appeared as national figures, the League’s analysists subsequently correlated them with territory to make visible areas of high population density and urge international redistribution. From their point of view, southern and central Europe presented one of the worldwide hot spots that needed new territorial outlets to maintain economic stability. Population redistribution was further debated at the World Population Conference in 1927, organized by birth-control advocate Margaret Sanger as the first formal get-together for the scientific study of global population. Held in Geneva, the conference featured a number of international civil servants and devoted one session to international migration. This session was headed by Albert Thomas, the director of the ILO, which had begun to statistically investigate the patterns of worldwide migration.Footnote 18 Following Thomas’ lead, the debate revolved around the imperative to manipulate migration patterns in the interests of population control. After all, as Thomas put it, ‘of all demographic phenomena, migration is the most susceptible to direct intervention and control’.Footnote 19 In discussion, a clear consensus emerged against legal immigration restrictions, such as those implemented by the USA, because they hindered the natural flow of ‘surplus population’ from Europe into less densely populated areas. By contrast, the assisted migration scheme advanced by the British government following the Empire Settlement Act of 1922 was referenced as an example of how to usefully manipulate migration patterns for political and economic gain. Similarly, the assistance of refugees, some of whom the ILO had attempted to resettle in South America through colonization schemes since the mid-1920s, was lauded as another ‘step of a practical kind’ in a policy of worldwide rebalancing.Footnote 20 Thomas even went so far as to suggest that planned migration should form an essential part of any ‘rational’ population policy—so long as the movement was measured and controlled.Footnote 21 Quantifying the ‘refugee problem’: the conception of the Hope Simpson survey Any attempt to manage and redistribute refugees as a ‘surplus population’, however, had to first establish how numerous it was. In 1936, the Rockefeller Foundation, an ardent supporter of research on population questions, began to circulate memos within its Social Science Section on the importance of a scientific study ‘relating to the present status of refugees’ that would provide an overview of the problem and ‘all possible solutions’.Footnote 22 The Foundation’s officers sought to gather a report they could deliver to the League’s projected Assembly in September 1938, presumably to lead the intergovernmental body to devote further resources.Footnote 23 Their choice for executing such a study, which they deemed ‘of great practical as well as scientific interest’, fell upon the Royal Institute of International Affairs, also known as Chatham House, which had been founded in 1919 and quickly become one of the institutional centres of the nascent discipline of international relations.Footnote 24 An Executive Committee grant from the Rockefeller Foundation over £6,000 in January 1937 (roughly £410,000 today) aimed to facilitate the completion of the survey by December 1938.Footnote 25 Endowed with substantial financial investment—in stark contrast to Nansen’s perennially underfunded efforts to manage refugees at the League—Chatham House set out to assemble a small survey team to create an authoritative data set on European refugees.Footnote 26 It was implicitly understood that the solution to the distinctly international ‘refugee problem’ would require equally international expertise. As recent scholarship has revealed, however, ‘international’ was often synonymous with ‘imperial’ at Chatham House, an institution steeped in the political mindset of British settler colonialism.Footnote 27 No surprise, then, that for the survey’s directorship they courted Sir John Hope Simpson, a ‘man of distinction and experience’ when it came to population questions but also a loyal imperialist.Footnote 28 Born in 1868, he trained for the Indian Civil Service and spent most of his professional life in India, first as a district magistrate and collector and then in higher administrative roles as Secretary and briefly Acting Chief Commissioner of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.Footnote 29 Having returned to the metropole during the First World War, he had a brief stint in Parliament, where he chaired the India Colonies Committee, but soon resumed his life abroad on a series of imperial and international assignments that involved the resettlement of displaced populations.Footnote 30 He served as Vice-President of the Refugee Settlement Commission in Athens, which the League established after the 1920–1923 war between Greece and Turkey; was sent to Palestine by the British government for an investigation into immigration, land settlement, and development in 1930; was again recruited by the League to resettle refugees in China in the aftermath of the Yangtze River flood in 1931; and became Commissioner for Natural Resources in economically bankrupt Newfoundland until his formal retirement in 1936.Footnote 31 He thus came to the refugee survey with the long resume of a colonially trained technical expert—a clear antecedent, as Chris Courtney has suggested, to the post-war development officer’s profile.Footnote 32 The scientific study Hope Simpson and a core team of sixteen investigators carried out between September 1937 and October 1938 produced a 640-page report.Footnote 33 It brimmed with facts culled from published sources, reports from the League and various relief organizations, and ad-hoc visits investigators had made to individual countries. The report was roughly structured in three parts: first, an exhaustive summary of refugee movements in the early twentieth century, including their origins and causes; second, an overview of responses by governments as well as international and private organizations and a detailed description of the ‘machinery’ employed to bestow order on the chaos; and third, a comparatively shorter prognosis of future refugee movements with tentative policy recommendations. Answering to a non-scientific advisory board, which included then-president of the League’s Nansen International Office for Refugees Michael Hansson, the survey was presented in a fluent, simple narrative. Each part featured plenty of prose and even basic legal analysis, drawn from special reports submitted by the investigators. Yet measures of progress and prediction were typically circumscribed through statistics: numbers of refugees registered, refugees assisted, refugees to be resettled. As the author of the final report, Hope Simpson also took great care to translate the political-economic concerns behind the ‘refugee problem’ into seemingly objective scientific terminology: in the laboratory of interwar Europe, the experimental challenge was to reach an optimal ‘dispersion’ of population through ‘infiltration’ and ‘absorption’ of refugees into respective host countries. To tackle said challenge, statistics seemed the logical tool: an unbiased determinant of the most desirable distribution pattern, it also served as a control mechanism to stabilize the ‘flow rate’ and establish ‘orderly emigration’ by recording, registering, and classifying refugees across borders. Defying the laws of statistics: refugees as an object of quantitative analysis Statistics as method merits close observation here because, in the framework of the refugee survey, its use was both traditional and experimental. Modern statistics had succeeded as an explanatory framework as part of a larger nineteenth-century intellectual turn away from a determinist, quasi-religious understanding of the universe towards the recognition of stochastic factors in the unfolding of social life.Footnote 34 Borrowing from medicine, this new way of scientific reasoning set up normalcy and deviation as a central binary for understanding and controlling the social sphere, thereby making statistical laws not merely descriptive but prescriptive.Footnote 35 Applied to demographic data, it could swiftly ‘diagnose’ phenomena of national under- and overpopulation.Footnote 36 Further, as part of a wider state project of ‘legibility and simplification’, it offered a new way of knowing the body politic qualitatively.Footnote 37 Autonomous statistical law often postulated a racialized normalcy and identified ‘problematic’ conduct by delineating particular subpopulations. Twentieth-century international civil servants, too, threaded these normative dimensions throughout their practice of statistical inquiry, all the while presenting data collection and analysis as an objective, apolitical methodology. In the setting of the League, comparative statistics became crucial to generating shared international spaces, such as a stable world economy.Footnote 38 Transnational numerical calculations also contributed to the idea of global population as an interconnected whole, in the vein of a living organism that could be scientifically ‘treated’ for under- or overgrowth. Within this organism, however, refugees appeared as a foreign object, an odd pathology that seemed hardly curable through statistics. Designated as a special legal category by the League, they marked a novel variable in the established equation of population with yet unclear relations to other subunits. Not formally associated with any state—being either de jure stateless or de facto exiled from their home country—refugees could not feasibly be treated like any another ‘deviant’ subpopulation nor fully incorporated into national statistics. Still, they had to be measured in relation to nation-states in order to determine their present distribution and aggravating effects on population density hotspots. For the 1939 survey, these conceptual problems reached deeper still because refugees were, quite literally, ‘moving targets’.Footnote 39 For one, the statistical events traditionally used for measuring a given population—birth and death—proved ill-devised. Refugees’ numerical ‘death’ did not usually occur when they physically died, but rather when they categorically disappeared through either naturalization or exit of the national territory. In fact, their ‘death’ in one national census, when induced by leaving their host country, often entailed a ‘re-birth’ in another as they crossed national borders. In short, the vital markers of the refugee population were largely artificial because the statistical birth and death of a refugee rarely mapped onto the biological occurrences. This was, to an extent, by design: the refugee category was meant to be a temporary marker and not to last a lifetime, much less to be inherited across generations. For the purpose of tracking and projecting, however, it rendered vital statistics meaningless and made presence, not life, the prime factor to be counted. Change over time within the refugee population was similarly registered through movement, not make-up, as expulsion rates replaced reproduction rates. Because their movement appeared unpredictable, driving refugees’ total towards zero emerged as the only way to safely return to a normal population count. After all, most states—as well as the League—sought to reduce the number of refugees, not to stabilize or increase it. Interwar refugees were thus constructed as a precarious category: their very right to statistical existence was constantly questioned as governments, international organizations, and humanitarians worked to effect a numerical ‘liquidation’.Footnote 40 This in turn produced eerie discursive echoes of the persecution practices that brought them into existence as refugees in the first place. Yet, as Hope Simpson wrote in the preliminary version of the report, ‘absorption is a condition defying quantitative analysis’—i.e. it was hard to decide exactly when a refugee ceased to be one.Footnote 41 Recalcitrant masses: refugees, colonial subjects, and the limits of numerical surveillance In addition to these conceptual conundrums, the survey’s team faced practical hurdles in assessing the quantitative dimension of the ‘refugee problem’. Throughout the final report, Hope Simpson acknowledged repeatedly that the numbers used in the survey were often mere estimates, considering that the usual surveillance tool of the identity card was largely nullified by refugees’ transitory legal status. The famed Nansen passport issued by the League had remedied this circumstance to a certain extent but was only reluctantly extended to groups other than Russian and Armenian refugees and thus remained unreliable for gauging the entire refugee population.Footnote 42 In attempting to count refugees, census takers instead depended on an aid network that encompassed both national governments and private relief organizations and was largely coordinated—but not streamlined—by the League. Upon closer inspection, the refugee survey’s quantitative basis was derived from a variety of sources that did not employ the same units or standards. A 1921 estimate of Russian refugees in Finland was deemed to ‘probably exclude Jews and Ukrainians’.Footnote 43 The figure for the foreign population in 1936 France was ‘thought to be less than the real total because of unwillingness to disclose foreign origin at a time of depression’.Footnote 44 To calculate the potentiality of the Jewish population in Germany and Eastern Europe becoming refugees, the survey’s investigators added a seemingly arbitrary number, ‘probably inadequately’, to make up for hitherto unrecorded emigration.Footnote 45 In the end, the report simply stated that ‘there can be no accurate statistics except of the assisted emigration’ from Europe.Footnote 46 These shortcomings highlighted how international statistics, though ubiquitous by the mid twentieth-century, were not standardized methodologically across national borders.Footnote 47 Strikingly, they also echoed perceived flaws in the adjacent realm of colonial statistics. Census-taking was an important tool of colonial control and social investigation widely applied across European empires.Footnote 48 Judging by the writings of contemporaries, however, statistics often failed as an imperial science, and colonial populations remained ill-defined in the hands of demographers. The same year that Hope Simpson and his team set out to quantify refugees, influential demographer Robert René Kuczynski, who had attended the 1927 Population Conference as a German representative but then emigrated to Britain, memorably complained that ‘the population statistics of most colonies are to-day in a condition similar … to that of the population statistics of most European countries 150 years ago’.Footnote 49 According to Kuczynski, who worked as an advisor to the British Colonial Office, census-takers in the colonies were inconsistent in their calculation methods and their choice of categories, which made it impossible to track change from one census to the next, let alone make comparisons across different colonies.Footnote 50 Further, Kuczynski reported that population estimates were broken down into flawed categories that did not correspond to the local social hierarchies colonial subjects used for self-identification. With birth and death registration often not compulsory or properly enforced, colonial censuses offered at best a ‘reasoned guess’ at the size and make-up of the population and produced knowledge that Kuczynski deemed ‘utterly inadequate’.Footnote 51 Given Kuczynski’s and Hope Simpson’s shared reference point, the British Empire, Hope Simpson was certainly aware of colonial demography’s problems. In fact, while he pursued the refugee survey, he maintained his involvement in a Chatham House working group that produced the lengthy 1937 report The Colonial Problem, which devoted an entire subsection to ‘The Population Problem’.Footnote 52 The parallels between the colonial and the refugee census were obvious. Like Kuczynski, Hope Simpson was attempting prognostics on top of statistical analysis and was engaging both cross-section and time-series data: comparing refugee groups in different countries at a certain moment while also predicting their change across time.Footnote 53 And like colonial subjects, refugees often figured as non-national populations and—especially in the case of refugees arriving from ‘the East’—easily appeared as non-European to Hope Simpson’s contemporaries.Footnote 54 Unsurprisingly, the recalcitrant subjects of Kuczynski’s and Hope Simpson’s respective inquiries also produced some of the same practical complications. As Kuczynski pointed out in his critique of colonial statistics, the quantitative assessment of the colonial population depended on the latter’s cooperation and therefore left an opening for resistance. Similarly, refugees’ agency posed a problem to their management, which Hope Simpson addressed in the final report with particular regard to Russian refugees. Expelled from their country of origin about a decade prior, they should have settled and ‘disappeared’ within statistics by the 1930s, he thought. But some resisted naturalization and ‘final absorption’ based on the politics of their national identification. Philosophizing about these often-stateless refugees from Russia, Hope Simpson wrote in the report: ‘on objective grounds their position was stabilized as repatriation became impossible; on subjective grounds their nostalgia stabilized them as refugees’.Footnote 55 In France, Russian refugees retained their belief in an eventual return to their homeland even after twenty years of displacement. ‘To the outside observer this attitude cannot but seem somewhat pitiful’, Hope Simpson remarked.Footnote 56 Persistent nostalgia and accordant political loyalties—a phenomenon extending beyond Russian refugees—was understandable but ultimately counterproductive in his eyes, as it meant that ‘in many ways the refugees themselves contribute to their insecurity by their political activity’.Footnote 57 By hampering the natural flux inherent in the category, refugees actively turned a temporary into a permanent condition. Yet the parallels between the two quantification projects ultimately reached their limits. Kuczynski successfully advocated for streamlining colonial census-taking and realized his aspiration to capture the entire British colonial population through one comprehensive census in the three-volume Demographic Survey of the British Empire in 1948.Footnote 58 Hope Simpson, meanwhile, continued to struggle with his slippery object of study. Refugees’ simple presence appeared as a constant dilemma: unlike colonial subjects, they did not remain at a safe distance overseas and instead erased the imperial spatial separation by appearing in the midst of the ‘regular’ national population—indistinguishable unless further specified. Making visible, letting disappear: imaginaries of refugee data Following the example of colonial statistics, the first step in quantifying the interwar ‘refugee problem’ consisted of filtering out refugees from other migrants and the populace at large by instituting a centralized site for registration: the refugee camp. By default, the camp created a separate group that could be delineated and definitively counted.Footnote 59 However, only those who landed inside its walls were recorded as legitimate refugees, while those who had sufficient means to settle outside of the camp were typically not. Nevertheless, Hope Simpson concluded in the survey that ‘temporary camps [are] a necessary stage in the process; there is no alternative’.Footnote 60 Mass encampment of ‘suspect’ populations has a long prehistory within the British Empire and reveals the imperial origins of modern refugee management.Footnote 61 But interwar refugees’ temporary incarceration also replicated the power structures instantiated by the nationalist policies that caused their displacement, and the irony of rescuing would-be refugees from concentration camps (e.g. in Germany) only to install them in ‘humanitarian’ internment camps did not escape contemporaries.Footnote 62 In the refugee survey, Hope Simpson further had no qualms relying on the census data collected in concentration camps by Nazi Germany’s Racial Political Office to calculate the growing number of Jewish refugees. Despite his political disagreement with the German government, he posited in the report that if anything, their statistics were not detailed enough because, in their preoccupation with the camps, the German census-takers had not tracked emigration properly.Footnote 63 Emphasizing the supposedly impartial nature of statistics, he suggested patiently waiting for Germany’s 1939-census to obtain more accurate, up-to-date numbers regarding Jewish emigration.Footnote 64 At the same time, many among Hope Simpson’s own investigators had a personal interest in documenting and improving the fate of specific national groups. The investigators’ ‘special reports’ on individual countries constituted the study’s backbone and often linked back to local advocacy work. This was most obvious in the case of the lengthy reports on Russian refugees, which were drawn up by Russian exile jurists such as Arsène Stoupnitzky, Alexis Goldenweiser, and Jacques Rubinstein, who had emigrated westward after the revolution and were deeply invested in relief work. Similarly, in his report on refugees from Germany, social worker Salomon Adler-Rudel focused mainly on documentation by Jewish aid organizations—to the consternation of the survey’s main statistician Käthe Liepmann, who was tasked with synthesizing the data. Having herself fled Berlin for Britain just years prior, Liepmann approached the ongoing expulsion of German refugees with particular scrutiny. The drawn-out nature of the persecution, which hinged on a gradual increase of political pressure ra | Human Rights |
Liberal Senator condemns foreign influence laws for focussing on issues of 'no concern to the Australian community' while failing to address real threats
A senior Liberal Senator has condemned Australia's foreign influence laws, arguing the scheme focusses on issues of "no concern to the Australian community" rather than capturing threats from authoritarian governments intent on covertly influencing our politics.
Australia’s Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme has been slammed as a failure, with Liberal Senator James Paterson saying that rather than combating foreign interference, the scheme captures things of no concern to the Australian community.
The shadow minister for countering foreign interference spoke to Sky News Australia’s Sharri Markson about a review of the scheme being undertaken by Parliament’s powerful intelligence and security committee.
“On an objective test, it has failed,” Senator Paterson said.
“What has been captured so far in the Foreign Influence transparency scheme is people like [Malcom Turnbull] giving speeches in South Korea or Taiwan, or people like Kevin Rudd being interviewed by the BBC.
“But what it hasn't captured is groups like the United Front Work Department, which is an agency of the Chinese Communist Party, which engages in manipulation and coercion of the Chinese diaspora overseas to try and corral them to support Beijing's political objectives.”
Senator Paterson, who was chair of the intelligence and security committee under the previous government, said both legislative and cultural changes were needed to fix the scheme.
The Liberal Senator said there were common sense legislative changes which would ensure the scheme better-targeted issues of concern, such as the activities of authoritarian governments who are “trying to covertly influence our political system.”
But he also called out the Attorney-General’s department for how it had been implementing the scheme.
“Frankly, I think they've pursued the wrong targets and they haven't pursued the right targets with enough vigour,” Senator Paterson said.
“They told us today that the Australian Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China, which was ten years ago the pre-eminent United Front Work Department group in Australia, has only just been issued a notice under the Act requiring them to register.”
“This scheme has been in operation for almost five years and it was only in January and then February that the first and then final notice was issued by the Attorney-General's Department.”
“Anybody in the street could have told you five years ago they were a problem… they could have pursued that target a lot earlier. ”
Earlier on Tuesday Sky News Australia’s Kieren Gilbert spoke to the University of Melbourne’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor International, Professor Michael Wesley, about the testimony he gave to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security about the foreign interference scheme.
Professor Wesley said the law was not a well-drafted piece of legislation from the university’s perspective.
“It takes a lot of compliance costs and burdens and it doesn’t actually get us to dealing with foreign interference very well or very effectively,” Professor Wesley said
“We actually spend a lot of time and money and legal fees actually interpreting the legislation as it applies to activities that we think may be captured by the act.”
“Quite often we spend a lot of time and money determining that they’re not captured under the act.”
“It’s a high compliance, low effectiveness piece of legislation”
Professor Wesley said he had urged the government to be much more clear about what they are trying to achieve with the legislation. He said they needed to be much better at helping universities so they could better address the risks of foreign interference. | Australia Politics |
YEREVAN, Armenia — Two Armenian servicemen were killed by shelling on the tense border with Azerbaijan on Friday morning, the country’s ministry of defense said, amid warnings the neighboring South Caucasus nations could be spiraling toward another full-blown war.
“There are two killed in action and one wounded on the Armenian side as a result of Azerbaijani armed forces’ fire at the Armenian combat outposts” near the village of Sotk, officials said in a statement. The ministry later added that “the intensity of fire … has decreased.” It said it urged citizens not to “disseminate unverified and unreliable information”on the attack.
Azerbaijan’s defense ministry said its forces “are taking decisive retaliatory measures” after troops were targeted by “attack UAVs” launched from positions around Sotk, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles. Two of its servicemen were reportedly injured.
The bloodshed comes just weeks after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan warned that a new war with Azerbaijan “is very likely” given that negotiations on a lasting peace deal are stalling. Talks brokered by the U.S., the EU and Russia in recent months have failed to achieve a consensus, with the two sides at odds over the future of the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh — inside Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders but controlled since a war that followed the fall of the Soviet Union by its ethnic Armenian population.
In 2020, Azerbaijan launched an offensive to take back swathes of territory around Nagorno-Karabakh, and has since installed a checkpoint on what was the only road linking the mountainous territory to Armenia. Aid organizations including the Red Cross have since said they are unable to bring supplies of food and fuel in or out, and there are warnings a humanitarian catastrophe is now unfolding.
Sotk, inside Armenia’s border, also came under heavy fire a year ago when Azerbaijani troops launched an incursion into the country. In the wake of those clashes, the EU deployed a civilian monitoring mission to the area.
Azerbaijan denies the claims it is orchestrating a blockade, insisting the Karabakh Armenians should lay down their weapons, accept aid from inside Azerbaijan and agree to being governed as part of the country.
U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, however, has reiterated that Washington believes a peace agreement “is still within reach,” urging both sides to continue negotiations. | Europe Politics |
NEW DELHI, Aug 1 (Reuters) - At least five people, including two police personnel, were killed in clashes between Hindus and Muslims in India's Haryana state, neighbouring capital New Delhi, on Monday, police officials told Reuters.
The violence erupted when a Hindu religious procession passed through the Muslim dominated Nuh region, located around 50 kilometres away from New Delhi.
"The procession was meant to move from one temple to another but clashes broke out between two groups on the way, which resulted in the death of four people," Krishan Kumar, spokesperson of Nuh police, told Reuters.
He said two of the dead were members of the home guard, a voluntary force that helps police control civil disturbances.
Another 10 police personnel were injured in the clashes, he added.
By Monday night, however, the violence spilled over into neighbouring Gurugram, where a mosque was torched around midnight, killing one person and injuring another.
Gurugram, formerly known as Gurgaon, shares a border with New Delhi and has emerged as a business hub for the country, housing several multinational companies.
Prohibitory orders had already been issued for the district after some cars were set on fire on Monday evening, and schools and colleges had been directed to remain closed on Tuesday.
"The attackers (who torched the mosque) have been identified and several of them have been rounded up," Gurgaon Police said in a statement on Tuesday morning, adding that security around places of worship had also been tightened.
Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, in a post on messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter, also condemned the incident in Nuh, where curfew orders have been imposed and the internet shut off.
"The guilty will not be spared at any cost, strictest action will be taken against them," he said.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | India Politics |
Israel Re-Affirms Pakistan-Based Lashkar-E-Taiba As Terrorist Organisation
The re-affirmation comes weeks after Israel said that the time had come for India to declare Hamas a terror organisation.
Israel on Tuesday re-affirmed its declaration of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba as a "terror organisation" ahead of the 15th year anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks in which 166 persons, including six Jews, were killed.
“Yes, I can confirm it. It's not a new thing and it is actually from 2013. It was recently re-published because of a bureaucratic error but it is not a new thing,” Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson, Lior Haiat, told PTI.
Haiat's statement came after a press release by the Embassy of Israel in India earlier in the day said, “To symbolise the marking of the 15th year of commemoration of the Mumbai terror attacks, the state of Israel has listed Lashkar-e-Taiba as a ‘Terror Organisation’.”
The re-affirmation comes weeks after Israel said that the time had come for India to declare Hamas a terror organisation.
Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip since 2007, used land, sea and air routes to launch an attack on Israel territories that killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians on Oct. 7. It prompted Jerusalem to declare war on the Islamic outfit, killing more than 11,000 people.
In almost a similar manner, on November 26, 2008, ten Pakistani terrorists entered the south Mumbai areas through a sea route and attacked a number of places, including Chabad House, a Jewish centre. The indiscriminate attack killed 166 people, including six Jews and 18 security personnel.
Six Jews were killed at Nariman House, more popularly known as the Chabad House, considered by many Israelis as a “shared pain.”
The terror siege continued for three days during which more than 300 were wounded even as the coordinated shooting and bombing attacks at 12 sites also damaged properties, including the heritage building of the sea-facing Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.
“Despite not being requested by the Government of India to do so, the state of Israel has formally completed all necessary procedures and has satisfied all required checks and regulations to the result of introducing Lashkar-e-Taiba into the Israeli list of illegal terror organisations', the Israeli embassy statement said.
“While Israel only lists terror organizations who are actively operating against it from within or around its borders, or in a similar manner to India - those globally recognized by UNSC or the US State Department; the Israeli ministries of Defence and Foreign affairs, have jointly worked in the last few months towards an expedited and extraordinary listing of the Lashkar-e-Taiba organisation on this date, to highlight the importance of a Unified Global Front in combating terrorism,” the release stressed.
“Lashkar-e-Taiba is a deadly and reprehensible terror organisation, responsible for the murder of hundreds of Indian civilians as well as others. Its heinous actions on Nov. 26, 2008, still reverberate in force, through all peace-seeking nations and societies,” it further said offering “sincere condolences to all victims of terrorism and to the survivors and bereaved families of the Mumbai attacks, including those in Israel.”
“We stand with you united in the hope for a better peaceful future,” the statement said. Seen by many as a “shared pain,” the 26/11 terror attack continues to stir outrage in Israel every year with commemorative events condemning the senseless killings and demands for justice against the masterminds of the terror attack heard across the country.
In 2021, the Jewish outreach movement, Chabad, unveiled a plaque in the southern coastal city of Eilat in memory of the six Jewish victims of the Mumbai terror attacks at Chabad House.
“To the memory and rise of souls of Rabbi Gavriel Noah and Rivka Holtsberg, who were martyred during the time of their holy mission in a terror attack at Chabad house in Mumbai, India, from which the message of Torah was being spread all over the area. And for the four guests who stayed in Chabad house at the time of the attack, and were also martyred: Rabbi Gavriel Taitelbaum, Mrs. Norma Rabinovich, Rabbi Ben Zion Kurman, Mrs. Yocheved Orpaz. May their souls be bound up in the bond of eternal life,” the plaque in Hebrew reads.
Israeli leaders and officials have repeatedly called for the perpetrators of the horrendous crime to be “brought to justice.” Outraged at Hamas leader Khaled Meshal's virtual participation at a pro-Palestine rally in Kerala last month, Israel’s Ambassador to Israel, Naor Gilon, had called for adding Hamas to India’s list of terror organisations.
“Unbelievable! #HamasTerrorist Khaled Mashal speaks from Qatar in a #Kerala event under the slogan ‘Uproot bulldozer Hindutva & Apartheid Zionism’,” Gilon wrote on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
“Mashal calls participants to: 1. Take the streets and show anger. 2. Prepare for jihad (on Israel). 3. Support Hamas financially. 4. Promote Palestinian narrative on social media,” he said adding, “It’s time to add #HamasISIS also to #India’s terror list.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned Hamas's brutal attack on Israel on October 7.
“Deeply shocked by the news of terrorist attacks in Israel. Our thoughts and prayers are with the innocent victims and their families. We stand in solidarity with Israel at this difficult hour,” Modi tweeted following the attacks. | Middle East Politics |
Outrage over Katalin Novák's comments in Rwanda, as Women Deliver president tries to reassure participants
July 20. 2023. – 10:00 AM
updated
The President and CEO of the Women Deliver conference held earlier this week in Kigali, Rwanda, has published an open letter, reassuring those who were outraged by the invitation of Hungarian President Katalin Novák to participate in the event focusing on gender equality.
"I agree with very little of what President Novak believes in, espouses or takes forward. And I am sure she agrees with very, very, very little of what I believe in, especially around our views on the role of women, reproductive rights and justice and other issues. It’s also important to note that if we want to achieve our goals as a feminist community, we have to talk with people whom we don’t always agree with.
Women Deliver's stance on promoting gender equality and women's rights is unwavering and unambiguous. We are determined to stand by our values while also welcoming feedback, differing opinions, and criticism. The presence of President Novak at the opening ceremony does not reflect nor will it change our commitment to these values" Maliha Khan, President and CEO of the conference wrote in the letter, pointing out that the Rwandan government, who led the opening ceremony, had been an "incredible partner and host". She further stated that
“President Novak’s views on gender equality, inclusion, and sexual and reproductive health and rights are in no way aligned to the views of Women Deliver, so I am glad that there is a backlash.”
The conference president also said that when organising the conference, they had "sought the cooperation of all heads of state and government, although she herself disagreed with the decision to include Novák in the event". Novák has been criticised mainly for her previous actions during her time as Minister of Family Affairs, and over Hungary's abortion legislation and the anti-LGBTQI+ law.
Speaking at a panel discussion, Katalin Novák said that electing a woman as president doesn't mean a country has achieved gender equality, but it is a very good start. She pointed out that in Hungary there are more women graduating from university every year than men, and the number of female university graduates in the workforce is higher than that of men.
"The main challenge women face is the decision between motherhood and a career," she said in response to a question. According to her, in Hungary, women can choose both, thanks to the support provided by the state, because women are needed both in the labour market and in the family.
The Women Deliver conference, which aims to improve women's rights and health and advocates gender equality, attracted 6,000 participants to Kigali this year.
For more quick, accurate and impartial news from and about Hungary, subscribe to the Telex English newsletter! | Europe Politics |
Press releases Special Procedures
Syria: UN expert calls for an end to mass arbitrary and indefinite detentions and urges protection for children in Northeast Syria
21 July 2023
GENEVA (21 July 2023) – Indefinite mass detention without legal process violates international law and should be immediately ceased, especially for children, a UN expert urged today.
“Meaningful access to places of detention, including high-security sites, is essential to ensure that serious human rights violations are identified, reported, and prevented,” said Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, at the end of a six-day visit to Syria, with a focus on detention and repatriation issues in the Northeast.
“I welcome the access granted to me as an important first step in the necessary transparency and oversight of all places of detention,” she said. Given the scale of indefinite and arbitrary detention in Northeast Syria,” Ní Aoláin said “continued independent access is essential and must be secured.”
Ní Aoláin arrived in Damascus on 15 July, met with relevant government officials and then travelled to Qamishli in al-Hassakeh Governorate on 16 July. She visited prisons and sites of detention in Qamishli, Gweiran, Al Hol districts, and al-Malikiyah city. She departed Damascus on 20 July. The Special Rapporteur had access to several prisons and detention places, a first for an independent human rights expert and she noted the cooperation of the detaining authority to that end.
Ni Aolain recognized the intense political and security complexity of the situation on the ground, including the presence of a number of State and non-state actors exercising various forms of control and competences over parts of the population and institutions in this region, as well as the presence of UN Security Council designated terrorist groups.
The Special Rapporteur highlighted the major humanitarian challenges experienced by the population, particularly access to water and electricity, having a direct impact on the human rights of all individuals including those held in detention facilities. She highlighted the broader constrictions on health services affecting both the general population and those held in detention facilities.
An estimated 52,000 people are reportedly detained in al-Hol and al-Roj camps, 60 per cent of whom are children and 80 per cent under the age of 12. “Without denying that the history and current situation of the men, women and children detained there is complex, the conditions of confinement in both camps constitute arbitrary and indefinite mass detention without legal or judicial process,” the expert said.
Conditions in al-Hol camp are dire, despite the considerable efforts of under-funded humanitarian actors. She highlights serious concerns about the situation of women in the Annex at al-Hol, given the lack of meaningful access by anyone other than security actors to that location.
She expressed profound concern about the widespread arbitrary detention of children, boys and girls, in Northeast Syria in various types of facilities, premised on their – or their parents’ - alleged prior links to ISIL/Da’esh.
The Special Rapporteur observed a systematic practice of separating boys, in particular third country nationals, from their mothers in the camps upon reaching adolescence, causing irreparable harm. “Every single boy child I met was clearly traumatised by the separation from their mothers, often reported as violent,” she said. “This is a clear violation of international human rights law and incompatible with the rights of the child”. “This abhorrent practice of forced mass separation of boys from their mothers and families must end.” She said the enormous trauma and harm caused by separation would inevitably work against any stated efforts at rehabilitation. “There is no legal basis in international law for these forms and organisation of dedicated detention facilities for boys,” Ní Aoláin said.
The Special Rapporteur said she was profoundly disturbed about the presence of a significant number of young boys in adult male prisons, including Alayah and Gweiran Sina’a/Panorama prisons. “There appears to be no plan for these boys once they ‘age out’ other than prison,” Ní Aoláin said. “The harm done may be irreparable”.
“The detention of Syrian, Iraqi and third country juvenile and adolescent boys with no legal process is simply unacceptable and engages multiple fundamental breaches of the rights of the child under international law,” the expert said. States of nationality enabling the mass arbitrary detention of boys may also have legal responsibility for human rights violations under international law.
“I regret that I was unable to access the Annex in Al Hol camp where third country nationals are detained and did not interview men detained at the newly built high-security Gweiran Sina’a /‘Panorama prison’,” Ní Aoláin said, reiterating concerns about human rights violations in the Annex and practices of incommunicado detention and disappearances, including against children, in the Gweiran Sina’a /‘Panorama prison. She was profoundly concerned that no legal process applies to the detention of adult men and approximately 700 children that are detained there. She was further alarmed by the health crisis in this prison, specifically widespread tuberculosis.
The Special Rapporteur appealed to all States whose nationals are detained in Northeast Syria to live up to their fundamental human rights obligations and repatriate their nationals. “The dire conditions of detention for all categories men, women and especially children, which I witnessed first-hand, make such returns absolutely imperative,” she said.
Ms. Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, was appointed as Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism by the United Nations Human Rights Council. She took up her functions on 1 August 2017. Ms. Ní Aoláin is concurrently Regents Professor and Robina Professor of Law, Public Policy and Society at the University of Minnesota Law School and Professor of Law at the Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Her mandate covers all countries and has most recently been renewed by Human Rights Council resolution 49/10.
The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.
UN Human Rights, Repatriations Page — Repatriations
For more information and media requests please contact:
Ms. Yasmine ASHRAF (+41 75 414 3081) or write to [email protected]
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Then STAND UP for someone's rights today.
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Michel Euler/AP
toggle caption
Niger's President Mohamed Bazoum smiles before a working lunch with French President Emmanuel Macron, Feb. 16, 2023 at the Elysee Palace in Paris.
Michel Euler/AP
Niger's President Mohamed Bazoum smiles before a working lunch with French President Emmanuel Macron, Feb. 16, 2023 at the Elysee Palace in Paris.
Michel Euler/AP
NIAMEY, Niger — Niger's mutinous soldiers say they will prosecute deposed President Mohamed Bazoum for "high treason" and undermining state security, hours after they said they were open to dialogue with West African nations to resolve the mounting regional crisis.
The announcement on state television on Sunday night, by spokesman Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane, said the military regime had "gathered the necessary evidence to prosecute before competent national and international authorities the ousted president and his local and foreign accomplices for high treason and for undermining the internal and external security of Niger."
Bazoum, Niger's democratically elected president, was ousted by members of his presidential guard on July 26 and has since been under house arrest with his wife and son in the presidential compound in the capital, Niamey.
People close to the president as well as those in his ruling party say their electricity and water have been cut off and they're running out of food. The junta dismissed these reports Sunday night and accused West African politicians and international partners of fueling a disinformation campaign to discredit the junta.
International pressure is growing on the junta to release and reinstate Bazoum. Immediately after the coup, the West African regional bloc ECOWAS gave the regime seven days to return him to power or threatened military force, but that deadline came and went with no action from either side.
Last week, ECOWAS ordered the deployment of a "standby" force, but it's still unclear when or if it would enter the country. | Africa politics |
One of the newest members of the pioneering Afghan girls robotics team wants the world to know that after the Taliban takeover, women in her homeland are still striving for their rights and thirsting for education.
The young woman, 19-year-old Afsana Ahmadi, also said she misses her dad, terribly.
“When I left Afghanistan, it was the last time I saw him,” she said in a Zoom interview with NBC News to mark International Women’s Day.
Learn more about this story on “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” tonight at 6:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. CT.
Ahmadi, who hails from the city of Herat in western Afghanistan, said her father accompanied her to Kabul last summer and wept when she was evacuated to Qatar, where most of the team is now based.
“He cried with me and told me that, ‘Dear Afsana, never ever be hopeless and continue your path,’” she said. “I really miss him.”
Known at home as the “robot girls,” Ahmadi is part of an all-woman team that became a symbol of Afghan progress by taking part in competitions around the world where budding scientists show off their latest robotic creations.
The team became famous in 2017 when the United States twice denied members visas needed to compete in the country. Then-President Donald Trump stepped in, and they were able to attend.
When the Taliban returned to power in 2021, most of the team fled to Qatar fearing that the arch-conservative Islamic regime would once again impose draconian rules that would bar women from attending school or work outside the home. The Taliban, which had initially said they had modernized during their 20 years out of power, soon began to make it impossible for women and girls to go to work and school.
The Taliban say they support the education and employment of women "within the bounds of Shariah," or Islamic law. The interpretation of Shariah varies widely, and some Afghans and experts accuse the fundamentalist Taliban of imposing archaic tribal traditions specific to the Taliban onto the rest of the country.
On Wednesday, foreign ministers from the United States, European Union and dozens of other countries released a statement saying, in part, that since the return of the Taliban, "Afghan women and girls have been denied access to secondary education, to higher education, to public and political spaces, and to employment opportunities."
Ahmadi, who didn’t leave for Qatar until 2022, lived for almost a year under the rule of the Taliban, which had previously been in power from 1996 to 2001.
“So it was kind of shocking news for me and kind of going in a way that I don’t know what to do,” she said.
Fellow team member Sadaf Hamidi, 19, who left for Qatar in 2021, said she has gotten horrifying reports from her family about how the Taliban have changed life for women.
“One of my sisters used to be a medical student, the other one was high school student,” Hamidy said. “But right now they have to stay at home and they cannot continue their education. … This is heartbreaking for me and for them.”
Team captain Florence Pouya, 17, said they think constantly “about the other girls in Afghanistan, who cannot even go to school.” She said that motivates them to try harder.
“We are not just the robotics team; we are not just building the robot,” she said.
Ahmadi said that while the “Afghan Dreamers” were making their mark on the international stage, word of their scientific exploits reached her in Herat as the Taliban were making life harder for women.
“It was like kind of a hope,” she said. “It was kind of a light like inside of you that pushed us to not surrender to the life. Continue, it’s not the end point.”
Inspired by their example, Ahmadi was determined to join “this amazing team,” a younger generation of which was still operating in Herat. And after running through a series of interviews and tests, she made the team.
But as the Taliban tightened their grip, it became increasingly clear to Ahmadi that if she wanted to become a scientist, she would have to leave Afghanistan and say goodbye to everyone she knows and loves. And she would have to do so by herself.
“No, I left the country alone,” she said. “So like the situation was difficult for girls to leave the country, and it’s still difficult to leave the country, you know, without a person that can accompany them.”
For now, home is a compound in Qatar she shares with other team members.
“I’m so thankful for having this opportunity,” Ahmadi said. “At the same time, I do wish that my friends and all my classmates, they have this opportunity too.”
Ahmadi said she has been in touch with family and friends and life in Afghanistan right now is “clearly difficult.”
But as a member of the robotics team, Ahmadi said they have been able to show the world that Afghan women are capable of doing “amazing” things.
“I can be the voice of my friends and I can do something from here that can help them,” she said. | Middle East Politics |
- Companies
NEW DELHI, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Indian police have formally accused Chinese smartphone makers Xiaomi Corp and Vivo Mobile of helping transfer funds illegally to a news portal under investigation on charges of spreading Chinese propaganda, documents showed on Friday.
A Xiaomi India spokesperson strongly denied the accusation. A spokesperson from Vivo did not respond immediately to repeated requests for comment, nor did the NewsClick news portal, which has denied all wrongdoing in the past.
Media rights and opposition groups in India have said the investigation into NewsClick and surrounding accusations are part of a crackdown on the press - a charge dismissed by the government.
The allegations were laid out in a police complaint that was filed on Aug. 17.
It was shared with lawyers for people named in the complaint on Friday, days after officers raided NewsClick's New Delhi office and journalists' homes, then arrested its founder-editor Prabir Purkayastha and a senior administrative official.
The complaint, a copy of which has been seen by Reuters, accused NewsClick's Purkayastha of conspiring with a little-known voluntary group to disrupt India's sovereignty and cause disaffection.
The police document said, as part of this plan, large amounts of funds were received from China to push biased news criticising Indian policies and projects and defending Chinese policies and programmes.
“It is further learnt that big Chinese Telecom companies like Xiaomi, Vivo, etc. incorporated thousands of shell companies in India in violation” of India’s foreign currency laws “for illegally infusing foreign funds in India in furtherance of this conspiracy,” the complaint said.
A senior police officer confirmed the document was genuine and that it made allegations about those two companies.
"We have no knowledge about this. We strongly deny the said allegation against Xiaomi in the FIR," the spokesperson for Xiaomi India said, referring to the First Information Report as a police complaint is formally called in India.
"Xiaomi conducts its business operations with utmost respect to, and in strict compliance of applicable laws. Any allegation of conspiracy is completely baseless," the spokesperson said.
Xiaomi and Vivo are among India's biggest phone brands.
The police document did not go into further detail about how the information had been learned, set out any proof of the companies' involvement or say what steps the police were now considering.
NewsClick said this week it does not publish any news or information at the behest of any Chinese entity or authority. Its lawyers have challenged the complaint in the Delhi High Court.
China has dismissed accusations of interference in India in the past and has urged New Delhi to provide a fair and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese companies.
Ties between India and China have nosedived since a 2020 military clash on their disputed Himalayan border in which 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese troops were killed.
Although border tensions have since reduced after several rounds of military and diplomatic talks, New Delhi says relations cannot return to normal until there is complete disengagement and de-escalation.
Additional reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by YP Rajesh and Andrew Heavens
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | India Politics |
"I was under the bridge trying to get some drugs when I felt a hand grab me from behind. It was the Taliban. They had come to take us away."
Mohamed Omar recalls the moment Taliban soldiers showed up unexpectedly at the Pul-e-Sukhta bridge in western Kabul.
Long before the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, the area was a notorious hangout for drug addicts.
In recent months, they have been rounding up hundreds of men across the capital - from the bridge, from parks and from the hilltops. Most have been taken to a former US military base, which has been turned into a makeshift rehabilitation centre.
Afghanistan is the drug addiction capital of the world. An estimated 3.5 million people - in a country with a population of about 40 million - are addicted, according to the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement.
Under the Pul-e-Sukhta bridge, hundreds of men can often be seen squatting - hunched among piles of rubbish, syringes, faeces and occasionally the corpses of those who had overdosed.
The drugs of choice are heroin or methamphetamine.
The stench beneath the bridge is overwhelming, with dogs rummaging through piles of litter, looking for scraps of food. Overhead, traffic flows, street vendors hawk goods, and commuters rush to catch buses at the local depot.
"I would go there to meet my friends and take some drugs. I didn't fear death. Death is in God's hands anyway," says Omar.
The men who called this place home were mostly forgotten, despite the previous government's policy of rounding up addicts and placing them in centres. But when the Taliban retook control of the country, they launched a more aggressive campaign to remove them from the streets.
"They used pipes to whip and beat us," says Omar. "I broke my finger because I didn't want to leave the bridge and I resisted. They still forced us out."
Omar was shoved onto a bus, alongside dozens of others.
Footage later released by the Taliban government showed their soldiers clearing the area of addicts who had died from an overdose - their lifeless bodies being carried away wrapped in dark grey shawls. Others, still living, had to be taken out on stretchers because they were unconscious.
The rehabilitation hospital where Omar was taken has 1,000 beds and currently 3,000 patients. Conditions are squalid. The men are kept in the centre for roughly 45 days where they undergo an intense programme before being released.
There is no certainty that these patients will not relapse.
While those removed from the streets are overwhelmingly men, some women and children have also been taken to dedicated rehabilitation centres.
Omar, like the rest of the addicts in the room at the centre in Kabul, is severely emaciated, his brown garment - provided by the authorities - loosely hanging off him, and his face gaunt.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he describes the life he once had.
"One day I was in Dubai, the next Turkey and sometimes Iran. I travelled the world as a flight attendant with Kam Air and would often have VIP guests like the former presidents on the aircraft."
He lost his job when Kabul fell. Facing economic hardship and an uncertain future, he turned to drugs.
When the Taliban were in power in the 1990s, they all but stamped out poppy cultivation. But the drugs trade became a major source of income for them throughout their 20-year insurgency.
Now the Taliban say they have ordered an end to the poppy trade and are trying to enforce this policy. But according to the UN, cultivation increased by 32% in 2022 compared to 2021.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan's economy is on the brink of collapse, suffering from a loss of international support, security challenges, climate-related issues and global food inflation.
Since coming to the rehabilitation centre, Omar has become determined to get better.
"I want to get married, have a family and live a normal life," he says. "These doctors are so kind. They are trying their best to help us."
For the doctors at the centre, this is a rudimentary operation. The Taliban continue to deliver more people and the staff are struggling to find space for them.
"We need help. The international community left and cut off their assistance. But our problems have not gone away," one doctor tells me.
"There are many professionals among this group. Smart, educated people who once had good lives. But the difficulties in our society, the poverty and lack of jobs mean they were looking for an escape."
Despite the overcrowding and lack of resources, the doctors remain committed to doing everything they can to help these addicts.
"There is no certainty that these patients won't relapse once they leave. But we need to keep trying and most importantly, we need to give them hope for the future. Right now, there is none." | Middle East Politics |
The relevant statement was made by General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, the Commander of the Tavria Operational and Strategic Grouping of Troops, in an interview with The Guardian, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.
“We are now completing the destruction of enemy units that provide cover for the retreat of Russian troops behind their second defensive line,” Tarnavskyi told.
A vast minefield trapped Ukrainian troops for weeks as infantry sappers slowly cleared an assault route on foot. In the meantime, Russian troops were shelling Ukrainian vehicles with artillery and drones, Tarnavskyi noted.
In his words, now that barrier has been crossed, Russians have been forced into maneuvres and Ukrainians are back in their tanks and other armoured vehicles. In a sign that Moscow is feeling the pressure, it has redeployed troops to the area from other directions, such as Kherson and Lyman, and also from inside Russia.
“The enemy is pulling up reserves, not only from Ukraine but also from Russia. But sooner or later, the Russians will run out of all the best soldiers. This will give us an impetus to attack more and faster. Everything is ahead of us,” Tarnavskyi explained.
The Ukrainian commander shrugged off criticism from certain Western politicians regarding the pace of Ukraine’s counteroffensive. In his opinion, it is better to judge a job when finished.
“When we started the counteroffensive ... we spent more time than we expected on de-mining the territories. Unfortunately, the evacuation of the wounded was difficult for us. And this also complicated our advance,” Tarnavskyi admitted.
He believes that Russians did not expect Ukrainian forces to get through that line of defence. They had been preparing for over a year and “did everything to make sure that this area was prepared well”.
According to Tarnavskyi, the second line is not as well built, so Ukrainians can use their vehicles, although there are still minefields. Because Russian forces are also operating in this area, they are in patches rather than a single defensive cordon.
When asked about slow progress breaking through Russian lines in another offensive further east along the enemy’s defensive line, Tarnavskyi said it had other aims and added that Ukraine was preparing other surprise offensives to drain Moscow’s forces.
“To be successful in one direction, you always need to mislead the enemy,” Tarnavskyi noted.
In his words, Ukraine will continue to fight for its territories.
“If we stop advancing, the enemy will gather new forces and strengthen. We will reach the 1991 borders of Ukraine ... We don’t want to see our kids and even our grandkids fighting against Russians, and who is there to stop them? Only us,” Tarnavskyi stressed.
The Ukrainian commander mentioned that the closer to victory, the harder it is.
“Why? Because, unfortunately, we are losing the strongest and best. So now we have to concentrate on certain areas and finish the job. No matter how hard it is for all of us,” Tarnavskyi concluded. | Europe Politics |
Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Wednesday he is sending the armed forces to boost security at some of the country's most important airports, ports and international borders as part of a renewed effort to tackle organized crime in Latin America's largest nation.
The decision comes days after members of a criminal gang set fire to dozens of buses in Rio de Janeiro, apparently in retaliation for the police slaying their leader's nephew.
"We have reached a very serious situation," Lula said at a news conference in Brasilia after signing the decree. "So we have made the decision to have the federal government participate actively, with all its potential, to help state governments, and Brazil itself, to get rid of organized crime."
Brazil will mobilize 3,600 members of the army, navy and air force to increase patrols and monitor the international airports in Rio and Sao Paulo, as well as two maritime ports in Rio and Sao Paulo's Santos port, the busiest in Latin America — and a major export hub for cocaine.
The deployment is part of a government's broader plan that includes increasing the number of federal police forces in Rio, improving cooperation between law enforcement entities and boosting investment in state-of-the-art technology for intelligence gathering.
State and federal authorities have said in recent weeks they want to "suffocate" militias by going after their financial resources.
Rio's public security problems go back decades, and any federal crackdown on organized crime needs to be supported by a far-reaching plan, the fruits of which might only be seen years from now, according to Rafael Alcadipani, a public security analyst and professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university in Sao Paulo.
"The federal government is being rushed into this due to previous lack of action," said Alcadipani. "The government is trying, but the chance of this not working is huge ... This is an emergency plan, something being done last minute as though it were a problem that arose just now, but it isn't."
Brazil's Justice Minister Flávio Dino said the measures announced Wednesday are part of a plan being developed since Lula took office on Jan. 1, and the result of months of consultations with police forces, local officials and public security experts.
The latest wave of unrest in Rio began Oct. 5, when assassins killed three doctors in a beachside bar, mistaking one of them for a member of a militia. The city's powerful militias emerged in the 1990s and were originally made up mainly of former police officers, firefighters and military men who wanted to combat lawlessness in their neighborhoods. They charged residents for protection and other services, but more recently moved into drug trafficking themselves.
There has since been increased pressure for the state and federal governments in Brazil to come up with a plan and demonstrate they have a handle on public security in the postcard city.
On Oct. 9, days after the doctors were killed, Rio state government deployed hundreds of police officers to three of the city's sprawling, low-income neighborhoods.
And on Oct. 23, Rio's police killed Matheus da Silva Rezende, known as Faustão, nephew of a militia's leader and a member himself. In a clear show of defiance, criminals went about setting fire to at least 35 buses.
On Wednesday, federal police in Rio said it had arrested another militia leader and key militia members in Rio das Pedras and Barra da Tijuca, both in Rio state. They also seized several luxurious, bullet-resistant cars, a property and cash. | Latin America Politics |
A Russian drone strike has hit port facilities in the south of Ukraine's Odesa region, starting fires, authorities say.
A grain silo and port infrastructure were damaged, authorities said, without revealing which port was hit.
Ukraine's air force said earlier that drones were heading for the Danube river, where Ukraine has ports along the border with Nato country Romania.
Russia began targeting Ukraine's ports after abandoning a UN grain deal.
The agreement, brokered a year ago, had meant that Ukrainian and Russian exports could be shipped safely across the Black Sea.
Odesa regional leader Oleh Kiper said emergencies services were working on the site of the latest Russian attack, and there were no reports of any casualties. He added that further information would be given by the Ukrainian military.
Ukraine's military command in the south said air defences had been operating for almost three hours. President Volodymyr Zelensky said that "unfortunately there has been damage", most significantly in southern Ukraine.
After withdrawing from the grain deal, Russia threatened to target any vessels heading towards Ukraine's Black Sea ports - de facto imposing a naval blockade.
The Danube route has grown in importance as an alternative, via the Ukrainian ports of Izmail and Reni.
Last month, Russia destroyed grain storage infrastructure in Reni, across the Danube from Romania.
Ukraine is one of the major exporters of wheat and corn, and the bulk of the shipments had been moving from the country's Black Sea ports.
Wheat prices spiked on world markets immediately after the Russian withdrawal from the grain deal.
There are now also concerns about global food security, especially for impoverished African and Asian nations.
Overnight, Russia also launched more than 10 drones against Ukraine's capital Kyiv, local officials say.
All the projectiles were destroyed by anti-aircraft systems but several non-residential buildings were damaged by falling debris, the officials say.
Russia has so far not publicly commented on the reported attacks. | Europe Politics |
Karnataka Rajyotsava 2023: All You Need To Know About Karnataka Formation Day
Karnataka Rajyotsava or Karnataka Foundation Day is celebrated on November 1 every year to mark the state's formation in 1956.
Karnataka Foundation Day or Karnataka Rajyotsava is celebrated on November 1 every year. On this day in the year 1956, all the Kannada language-speaking regions of South India were merged to form the state of Karnataka.
Karnataka Formation Day: History
Prior to India's independence in 1947, Karnataka was divided into various princely states such as Mysuru and regions under direct British administration like the Bombay and Madras Presidencies.
After India gained independence in 1947, the country was divided into states on the basis of administrative convenience rather than linguistic lines. This meant that Kannada-speaking regions were scattered across different states.
The 1950s saw a growing demand for the unification of all Kannada-speaking regions into a single state. There were protests, demonstrations, and literary movements which were led by several notable figures from the fields of literature, politics, etc
In 1956, the Government of India passed the States Reorganisation Act after considering the demands for linguistic-based states across the country.
As a result of this act, on November 1, 1956, the Kannada-speaking regions of the Bombay Presidency, the Madras Presidency, the princely state of Hyderabad and the old state of Mysore were merged to form a new state. This state was initially called the 'Mysore State'. In 1973, the Mysore State was renamed as 'Karnataka' to better represent all the Kannada-speaking regions of the state.
Karnataka Formation Day: Significance
The Rajyotsava day is listed as a government holiday in the state of Karnataka and is celebrated by Kannadigas across the world. It is marked by the announcement and presentation of the honours list for Rajyotsava Awards by the Government of Karnataka, hoisting of the official Karnataka flag with an address from the Chief Minister and Governor of the state along with community festivals, orchestra, Kannada book releases and concerts
Karnataka Formation Day: Events
Karnataka Rajyotsava is celebrated with great enthusiasm and state pride throughout Karnataka. The state flag is hoisted, and cultural events, parades and other festivities mark the occasion. | India Politics |
BRATISLAVA, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Slovakia's Robert Fico, who won an election after pledging to end military aid to Ukraine, was in pole position to start talks on forming a government on Sunday while a liberal rival vowed to seek partners to prevent the former leftist prime minister's return to power.
With 99.98% of voting districts reporting in the Saturday election, Fico's SMER-SSD party scored nearly 23% of the vote, followed by almost 18% for the Progresivne Slovensko (Progressive Slovakia, PS) party.
The winner is expected to be given a political mandate by President Zuzana Caputova to try to find a majority, and form a government if successful.
A government led by Fico and his SMER-SSD party would see NATO member Slovakia joining Hungary in challenging the European Union's consensus on support for Ukraine, just as the bloc looks to maintain unity in opposing Russia's invasion.
The result - with SMER-SSD in need of coalition partners to rule - sets up the third-placed moderate leftist HLAS (Voice) as kingmaker.
HLAS leader Peter Pellegrini, who has previously said his party leans closer to SMER-SSD on policy, said on Sunday that the chance for a stable coalition and agenda priorities would guide negotiations, which could last days or weeks.
Seven factions crossed the threshold to sit in the next parliament. As the party with the most votes, SMER-SSD is expected to be given the first chance to form a government, and it is likely to turn to the nationalist, pro-Russian Slovak National Party and HLAS to gain a majority.
The party will hold a news conference at 1:00 p.m. (1100 GMT) to discuss the election results.
HLAS had not made Ukraine a campaign issue, with Pellegrini saying during campaigning that ammunition supplies were good for Slovakia's defence industry. Its party programme has also backed having a united EU against Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
A Fico-led government would signal a further shift in central Europe against political liberalism, which may be reinforced if the ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) wins an election in Poland later this month.
Fico has leaned close to Hungary's leader, Viktor Orban, who congratulated the Slovak politician on his victory with a post on X social media platform on Sunday saying "Guess who's back!"
"Always good to work together with a patriot. Looking forward to it," Orban said.
Fico's party is critical of social liberalism, which it says is imposed from Brussels.
PS, which is liberal on green policies, LGBT rights, deeper European integration and human rights, will also court HLAS, with PS leader Michal Simecka on Sunday saying he still saw an option to form a ruling coalition.
"We believe that this is very bad news for Slovakia," Simecka told a news conference of SMER-SSD's victory.
"And it would be even worse news if Robert Fico succeeds in forming a government," he added. "We will do everything...so that Robert Fico does not rule in Slovakia."
** Click here for an interactive graphic on election results:
Reporting by Jan Lopatka and Jason Hovet; Writing by Jason Hovet; Editing by Kirsten Donovan
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The wall of a major dam in southern Ukraine collapsed Tuesday, triggering floods, endangering Europe’s largest nuclear power plant and threatening drinking water supplies as both sides in the war rushed to evacuate residents and blamed each other for the destruction.
Ukraine accused Russian forces of blowing up the Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric power station on the Dnieper River in an area that Moscow controls, while Russian officials blamed Ukrainian bombardment in the contested area. It was not possible to verify the claims.
The potentially far-reaching environmental and social consequences of the disaster quickly became clear as homes, streets and businesses flooded downstream and emergency crews began evacuations; officials raced to check cooling systems at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant; and authorities expressed concern about supplies of drinking water to the south in Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
READ MORE: Russia makes unverified claims that Ukraine is launching major attacks
Both Russian and Ukrainian authorities brought in trains and buses for residents. About 22,000 people live in areas at risk of flooding in Russian-controlled areas, while 16,000 live in the most critical zone in Ukrainian-held territory, according to official tallies. Neither side reported any deaths or injuries.
The dam break added a stunning new dimension to Russia’s war in Ukraine, now in its 16th month. Ukrainian forces were widely seen to be moving forward with a long-anticipated counteroffensive in patches along more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) of front line in the east and south.
It was not immediately clear whether either side benefits from the damage to the dam, since both Russian-controlled and Ukrainian-held lands are at risk. The damage could also hinder Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the south and distract its government, while Russia depends on the dam to supply water to Crimea.
Patricia Lewis, director of the International Security Program at Chatham House think tank in London, said apportioning blame is difficult but “there are all sorts of reasons why Russia would do this.”
“There were reports (last fall) of Russians having mined the reservoir. The question we should pose is why the Ukrainians would do this to themselves, given this is Ukrainian territory,” she said.
READ MORE: Biden to meet with leaders of two key NATO allies this week for talks focused on Ukraine
Experts have previously said the dam was suffering from disrepair. David Helms, a retired American scientist who has monitored the reservoir since the start of the war, said in an e-mail that it wasn’t clear if the damage was deliberate or simple neglect from Russian forces occupying the facility.
But Helms reserved judgement, also noting a Russian history of attacking dams.
Authorities, experts and residents have expressed concern for months about water flows through — and over — the Kakhovka dam. After heavy rains and snow melt last month, water levels rose beyond normal levels, flooding nearby villages. Satellite images showed water washing over damaged sluice gates.
Amid official outrage, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he convened an urgent meeting of the National Security Council. He alleged Russian forces set off a blast inside the dam structure at 2:50 a.m. (2350 GMT Monday) and said about 80 settlements were in danger. Zelenskyy said in October his government had information that Russia had mined the dam and power plant.
But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called it “a deliberate act of sabotage by the Ukrainian side … aimed at cutting water supplies to Crimea.”
Both sides warned of a looming environmental disaster. Ukraine’s Presidential Office said some 150 metric tons of oil escaped from the dam machinery and that another 300 metric tons could still leak out.
READ MORE: U.S. sanctions Russia-backed actors accused of trying to destabilize Moldova
Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s President’s Office, posted a video showing swans swimming near an administrative building in the flooded streets of Russian-occupied Nova Kakhovka, a city in the Kherson region where some 45,000 people lived before the war. Other footage he posted showed flood waters reaching the second floor of the building.
Ukraine’s Interior Ministry urged residents of 10 villages on the Dnieper’s right bank and parts of the city of Kherson downriver to gather essential documents and pets, turn off appliances, and leave, while cautioning against possible disinformation.
The Russian-installed mayor of occupied Nova Kakhovka, Vladimir Leontyev, said it was being evacuated as water poured into the city.
Ukraine’s nuclear operator Energoatom said in a Telegram statement that the damage to the dam “could have negative consequences” for the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is Europe’s biggest, but wrote that for now the situation is “controllable.”
READ MORE: UN nuclear watchdog’s safety concerns rise as fighting intensifies near Ukraine plant
The U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement there was “no immediate risk to the safety of the plant,” which requires water for its cooling system.
It said that IAEA staff on site have been told the dam level is falling by 5 centimeters (2 inches) an hour. At that rate, the supply from the reservoir should last a few days, it said.
The plant also has alternative sources of water, including a large cooling pond than can provide water “for some months,” the statement said.
Ukrainian authorities have previously warned that the dam’s failure could unleash 18 million cubic meters (4.8 billion gallons) of water and flood Kherson and dozens of other areas where thousands of people live.
The World Data Center for Geoinformatics and Sustainable Development, a Ukrainian nongovernmental organization, estimated that nearly 100 villages and towns would be flooded. It also reckoned that the water level would start dropping only after five-seven days.
A total collapse in the dam would wash away much of the broad river’s left bank, according to the Ukraine War Environmental Consequences Working Group, an organization of environmental activists and experts documenting the war’s environmental effects.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that “a global ecological disaster is playing out now, online, and thousands of animals and ecosystems will be destroyed in the next few hours.”
Video posted online showed floodwaters inundating a long roadway; another showed a beaver scurrying for high ground from rising waters.
The incident also drew international condemnation, including from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who said the “outrageous act … demonstrates once again the brutality of Russia’s war in Ukraine.”
Ukraine controls five of the six dams along the Dnieper, which runs from its northern border with Belarus down to the Black Sea and is crucial for the country’s drinking water and power supply.
Ukraine’s state hydro power generating company wrote in a statement that “The station cannot be restored.” Ukrhydroenergo also claimed Russia blew up the station from inside the engine room.
Leontyev, the Russian-appointed mayor, said numerous Ukrainian strikes on the Kakhovka hydroelectric plant destroyed its valves, and “water from the Kakhovka reservoir began to uncontrollably flow downstream.” Leontyev added that damage to the station was beyond repair, and it would have to be rebuilt.
Ukraine and Russia have previously accused each other of targeting the dam with attacks.
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NSW Opposition leader Chris Minns receives grilling over Labor's backtrack on public sector wages ahead of state election
Labor leader Chris Minns has come under fire over its plan to abolish public sector wages cap in New South Wales after admitting workers pay would not match rising inflation.
NSW Opposition Leader Chris Minns has appeared to backdown from its promise to match public sector wages with inflation.
The Opposition has received criticism from the Perrottet Government over its plan to abolish the wages cap - which was brought in by the Coalition and currently sits at three per cent - if it wins the March 25 election.
Following increased pressure to meet better pay and conditions in the public sector, Mr Minns admitted increasing wages to match inflation is not a possibility.
“With inflation at 7.8 per cent, we cannot make a commitment to lift public sector wages by the level of inflation," he said during a press conference on Tuesday.
Mr Minns ruled out a zero per cent wage increase for public sector workers, which he claims could be the case under a re-elected Coalition Government, but reiterated pay increases under a Labor government will not be at inflation-level.
“We can’t offer inflation-level increases, but given that fact that we’re 40 days from the NSW election, we’re being upfront about the constraints that we’re in," he said.
“We cannot commit to CPI – we’re saying that well before the NSW election.
“We haven’t been in a position where we’re saying we will offer seven or eight per cent wage increases.”
The Labor leader dismissed calls of breaking its promise to deliver inflation-level wages, arguing when he made those comments last year inflation was much lower than it is right now.
“We do want to sit down with public sector workers and look at wages and conditions, but within a strict economic framework," Mr Minns said.
With the public sector union yet to weigh in, Mr Minns said any increase to wage growth would be based on productivity gains or budget savings.
“Any increases above what’s already been budgeted for in terms of wages will need to come as a result of productivity gains or budget increases and I cannot nominate the figure," he added.
The Labor Party is aiming to engage in negotiations with public sector workers over pay amid the rising cost of living to stop "artificially holding down wages".
But the government on Monday seized on analysis from NSW Treasury that revealed the budget will take a hit to the tune of billions of dollars if the cap is scrapped.
The analysis found lifting wages in line with seven per cent inflation as forecast in a mid-year review will cost the budget $8.6 billion.
"Labor's plan to scrap the public sector wage cap would be a disaster for NSW," Treasurer Matt Kean told reporters.
"Make no mistake, this will blow a budget black hole of $8.6 billion if wages track inflation and that is what the unions are asking for.
"This would be a disaster for the budget, it would destroy the budget, it would destroy the economy and it will destroy the opportunities we've created for future generations and that's just too high a price to pay.
"Let me be very clear, put simply NSW will go backwards, back to the years of Labor neglect when nothing was built."
Premier Dominic Perrottet said the wages cap is necessary to balance the budget and ensure critical infrastructure like metro railways and schools can be built.
He also defended the measure, arguing it was "prudent financial management".
"Our approach has been fair and reasonable particularly during a time of difficulty for everyone across NSW," Mr Perrottet said.
"But if you don't have that prudent financial management, you are not able to invest in the things that matter.
"When (Labor) didn't have a cap in when they were previously in office, only around half of the savings that were required to be found were actually realised.
"And that's why when we first came to government we brought that cap in. It was incredibly important in providing the certainty for our budget so we could continue to invest in records amount of infrastructure across our state." | Australia Politics |
An anthropology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, whose identity as Native American had been questioned for years apologized this week for falsely identifying as Indigenous, saying she is "a white person" who lived an identity based on family lore.
Elizabeth Hoover, associate professor of environmental science, policy and management, said in an apology posted Monday on her website that she claimed an identity as a woman of Mohawk and Mi'kmaq descent but never confirmed that identity with those communities or researched her ancestry until recently.
"I caused harm," Hoover wrote. "I hurt Native people who have been my friends, colleagues, students, and family, both directly through fractured trust and through activating historical harms. This hurt has also interrupted student and faculty life and careers. I acknowledge that I could have prevented all of this hurt by investigating and confirming my family stories sooner. For this, I am deeply sorry."
Hoover's alleged Indigenous roots came into question in 2021 after her name appeared on an "Alleged Pretendian List." The list compiled by Jacqueline Keeler, a Native American writer and activist, includes more than 200 names of people Keeler says are falsely claiming Native heritage.
Hoover first addressed doubts about her ethnic identity last year when she said in an October post on her website that she had conducted genealogical research and found "no records of tribal citizenship for any of my family members in the tribal databases that were accessed."
Her statement caused an uproar, and some of her former students authored a letter in November demanding her resignation. The letter was signed by hundreds of students and scholars from UC Berkeley and other universities along with members of Native American communities. It also called for her to apologize, stop identifying as Indigenous and acknowledge she had caused harm, among other demands.
"As scholars embedded in the kinship networks of our communities, we find Hoover's repeated attempts to differentiate herself from settlers with similar stories and her claims of having lived experience as an Indigenous person by dancing at powwows absolutely appalling," the letter reads.
Janet Gilmore, a UC Berkeley spokesperson, said in a statement she couldn't comment on whether Hoover faces disciplinary action, saying discussing it would violate "personnel matters and/or violate privacy rights, both of which are protected by law."
"However, we are aware of and support ongoing efforts to achieve restorative justice in a way that acknowledges and addresses the extent to which this matter has caused harm and upset among members of our community," Gilmore added.
Hoover is the latest person to apologize for falsely claiming a racial or ethnic identity.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warrenduring her presidential campaign in 2018 when she used the results of a DNA test to try and rebut the ridicule of then-President Donald Trump, who had derisively referred to her as "fake Pocahontas."
Despite the DNA results, which showed some evidence of a Native American in Warren's lineage, probably six to 10 generations ago, Warren is not a member of any tribe, and DNA tests are not typically used as evidence to determine tribal citizenship.
Warren later offered a public apology at a forum on Native American issues, saying she was "sorry for the harm I have caused."
In 2015,as head of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP and was kicked off a police ombudsman commission after her parent told local media their daughter was born white but was presenting herself as Black. She also lost her job teaching African studies at Eastern Washington University in nearby Cheney.
Hoover said her identity was challenged after she began her first assistant professor job. She began teaching at UC Berkeley in the Fall of 2020.
"At the time, I interpreted inquiries into the validity of my Native identity as petty jealousy or people just looking to interfere in my life," she wrote.
Hoover said that she grew up in rural upstate New York thinking she was someone of mixed Mohawk, Mi'kmaq, French, English, Irish and German descent, and attending food summits and powwows. Her mother shared stories about her grandmother being a Mohawk woman who married an abusive French-Canadian man and who committed suicide, leaving her children behind to be raised by someone else.
She said she would no longer identify as Indigenous but would continue to help with food sovereignty and environmental justice movements in Native communities that ask her for her support.
In her apology issued Monday, Hoover acknowledged she benefited from programs and funding that were geared toward Native scholars and said she is committed to engaging in the restorative justice process taking place on campus, "as well as supporting restorative justice processes in other circles I have been involved with, where my participation is invited."
for more features. | Human Rights |
As the death toll climbs from Israel’s attacks on Gaza and the U.S. makes few moves to rein in its closest military ally, one group is saying that it has never felt so invisible.
Muslim and Arab staffers and those whose family come from the region say they are struggling with a gnawing belief that their lives don’t matter to their colleagues. They describe the agony of watching the institution to which they’ve dedicated their career sending military aid amid the killing of thousands of civilians who look like them.
“They have the same faith as us, have the same names as us, a lot of our families live in the region,” one staffer said. “So when we hear that dehumanizing language, it’s dehumanizing us.”
Every day brings some new confirmation that “my life would not matter to this place if I had been born somewhere else,” said another.
Staffers who spoke for this story all requested anonymity because of a pervasive fear of retaliation. They ranged from junior staff to veterans in moderate and progressive offices in the Senate and the House.
A number said they have contemplated quitting. But they questioned who else would speak up for Palestinians as forcefully if they were to leave.
One aide, who broke down in front of their boss, said the congressperson resolved that night to call for a cease-fire. Another described to their boss how frightening it was for their family to visit relatives in the Palestinian territories because of the arbitrariness of the violence there.
“I did it in the hopes it would humanize the issue for him. And I know it reinforced what he was feeling,” the staffer said. Their boss also called for a cease-fire.
“They have the same faith as us, have the same names as us … . So when we hear that dehumanizing language, it’s dehumanizing us.”
But those members are firmly in the minority. Since the Oct. 7 attack in which Hamas killed an estimated 1,200 in Israel and took nearly 240 hostages, Israel has besieged the Gaza Strip with airstrikes, killing an estimated 11,000 people in Gaza — 4,200 of them children. The magnitude of the retaliatory strikes has caused a surge of outrage in the U.S., and polls have found rising support for an end to the bombing. Still, only two dozen members of Congress have called for a cease-fire.
The Biden administration and most of Congress have rejected cease-fire calls and are instead negotiating to send Israel billions of dollars’ worth of additional military aid.
Staffers say the disregard for Palestinian lives goes deeper.
Some offices have shown little urgency to help U.S. citizens and legal residents trapped in Gaza.
“Not only did those calls come in, we had absolutely zero guidance” to offer them, one aide said. “I read mail from folks who had relatives who were still trapped, and that, as far as I know, was lost in the pipeline, or they received the same generic responses that any constituent got.”
In the days after Hamas’ massacre, as Israel was announcing preparations for an all-out siege, the State Department’s crisis intake form, which is key to keeping track of which U.S. citizens and residents need evacuation or are unaccounted for, lacked the option to request assistance in the Palestinian enclaves of Gaza or the West Bank. A group of congressional staffers raised an alarm, and the State Department eventually updated the form. The department did not respond to a request for comment.
‘Wow, A Lot Is Going On’
In many corners of Capitol Hill, support for Israel is manifesting as a refusal to acknowledge the bloodshed of civilians in the Gaza Strip.
The office of Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) responded to an earnest email calling for an end to the siege on Gaza and the resumption of electricity to its hospitals by equating the writer’s concern for Palestinian deaths with support for Hamas.
“This is in response to your form letter where you take a stance against Israel,” Foxx’s office replied, in a letter shared with HuffPost. “You need the facts because your position is alarming.” Saying her heart aches at the news coming out of Israel (and notably making no mention of Gaza), she continued, “it is unwise to support a regime which destroys its own hospitals during a humanitarian crisis.”
Reached for comment, Foxx’s office asked for the identity of the staffer who shared Foxx’s letter and likened this article to “ghostwriting for Hamas.”
The office of Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, helped organize special transportation for members of Congress to attend Tuesday’s March for Israel on the National Mall. A spokesperson for Jeffries’ office said the Sergeant at Arms’ office suggested group transportation for security reasons because so many members planned to attend — but to many staffers, the unusual arrangements gave the event the imprimatur of a high-level function, like a state funeral.
At the rally, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) pledged “all the assistance you need” while House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) set off a chant of “no cease-fire” among the crowd.
Meanwhile, discussions of the human toll in Gaza are taking place in hushed voices or not at all. One staffer said her office ignored the siege until calls began pouring in from angry constituents. “Now they’ll say, ‘Wow, a lot is going on’ — but no one wants to say what is going on.”
Several offices have been warned not to contradict their boss’s position in any public forum. Even the more supportive offices, others said, are fearful of the backlash if a staffer were identified at a pro-Palestinian rally. Some senior aides discouraged staff from joining a recent walkout on the House steps and warned that they should wear a mask if they feel they have to protest.
“We just want to be included in the empathy.…Even if you just add ‘and Palestinian lives’ and you don’t mean it. This is a place of performances. We do that all the time.”
But tiptoeing around the subject of mass death is becoming unbearable.
Last week, congressional leadership held a bipartisan candlelight vigil on the House steps to honor the victims of Hamas’ attack one month earlier. A Muslim aide recalled her disbelief when she realized the invitation made no mention of the lives lost among Palestinians. A day before the vigil, the estimated death toll in Gaza exceeded 10,000, and the United Nations secretary general warned that Gaza was becoming a “graveyard for children.”
The staffer said she left her desk and sobbed in the stairwell of the Rayburn House Office Building. She said she had never felt so invisible.
“Mourn Israeli lives, release the hostages ― I agree with all of that. We just want to be included in the empathy,” she said. “Even if you truly don’t care. Even if you just add ‘and Palestinian lives’ and you don’t mean it. This is a place of performances. We do that all the time.”
Others have similarly said that the lack of even empty gestures is crushing.
After Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) compared “the idea of innocent Palestinian civilians” to “throw[ing] around the term ‘innocent Nazi civilians’ during World War II,” all but a handful of House members were silent. Democrats later abandoned an attempt to censure him.
“You would at least expect statements, which are empty and don’t have any action behind them, that recognize the value of human life, but we don’t even have that,” an aide said. “And that’s devastating.”
‘I Feel Betrayed By This Country’
The feeling of walking the hallways and seeing no recognition for the lives being lost is alien, one congressional staffer said. Her colleagues are planning their office holiday party while her social media feeds are flooded with photos of suffering and destruction, and her group chats are vibrating with grief.
“Several of the children who have died have not only looked like me or my siblings but bore my name,” said a staffer whose boss is avoiding any discussion of civilian deaths in Gaza. “When you are a Hill staffer working with the folks who have the power and the authority to change these outcomes and they choose not to, and choose not to even have the conversation, it frankly doesn’t get more scary than that.”
Lately, he said, he’s found it difficult to look his lawmaker in the eye.
“Literally you have people working in this building who know people who have died because of the policies this institution is supporting,” another staffer added. Last month, an Israeli bombardment destroyed the home of their mutual friend. She survived but lay trapped beneath her mother’s body for hours.
“As soon as I go in, I plaster a smile onto my face, and I’m nice and really friendly all day,” the staffer said. “But inside I feel like I’m being torn apart. I cannot wait to leave every day.”
Plenty are contemplating whether to leave Capitol Hill for good.
Those who work for the Democratic caucus have grown rapidly disillusioned with its claims to be the party of inclusion.
Unlike in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, one noted, there are a significant number of Muslim and Arab staffers on the Hill with foreign policy expertise and lived experience with the “war on terror.” They have strategic advice and warnings to offer. But any debate is so stifled that they have few opportunities.
“We can’t even start a conversation about whether what’s going on in Palestine is in our national interest,” this staffer said. “We’re finding that you can come to the table with every possible qualification, but just by coming to the table as a Muslim American, your opinion will be cast aside as ‘biased.’”
Another questioned “why we’re even here.”
“What’s the point of having Muslims on the Hill if we’re not even being asked our opinions or being given a little bit of space to share without doxxing, without being labeled pro-terrorist?” she asked. “All we’re expected to do is come in and blend in.”
For many, their colleagues’ apathy evokes a bitter question.
“At the end of the day, do they really think my life matters?” one staffer asked.
Recently, one staffer realized they’re not sure if they can bring themselves to volunteer for Joe Biden’s reelection campaign — or even, despite building a whole career in Democratic politics, continue to call themselves a Democrat.
But after Biden cast doubt on the number of Palestinians who had died so far in the siege, the staffer realized they couldn’t vote for him.
“I feel disgusted, abandoned, and, more than anything, I feel betrayed by this country,” the staffer said. They plan to write in the name of someone who was killed instead. “My vote has already been cast.” | Middle East Politics |
An anthropology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, whose identity as Native American had been questioned for years apologized this week for falsely identifying as Indigenous, saying she is "a white person" who lived an identity based on family lore.
Elizabeth Hoover, associate professor of environmental science, policy and management, said in an apology posted Monday on her website that she claimed an identity as a woman of Mohawk and Mi'kmaq descent but never confirmed that identity with those communities or researched her ancestry until recently.
"I caused harm," Hoover wrote. "I hurt Native people who have been my friends, colleagues, students, and family, both directly through fractured trust and through activating historical harms. This hurt has also interrupted student and faculty life and careers. I acknowledge that I could have prevented all of this hurt by investigating and confirming my family stories sooner. For this, I am deeply sorry."
Hoover's alleged Indigenous roots came into question in 2021 after her name appeared on an "Alleged Pretendian List." The list compiled by Jacqueline Keeler, a Native American writer and activist, includes more than 200 names of people Keeler says are falsely claiming Native heritage.
Hoover first addressed doubts about her ethnic identity last year when she said in an October post on her website that she had conducted genealogical research and found "no records of tribal citizenship for any of my family members in the tribal databases that were accessed."
Her statement caused an uproar, and some of her former students authored a letter in November demanding her resignation. The letter was signed by hundreds of students and scholars from UC Berkeley and other universities along with members of Native American communities. It also called for her to apologize, stop identifying as Indigenous and acknowledge she had caused harm, among other demands.
"As scholars embedded in the kinship networks of our communities, we find Hoover's repeated attempts to differentiate herself from settlers with similar stories and her claims of having lived experience as an Indigenous person by dancing at powwows absolutely appalling," the letter reads.
Janet Gilmore, a UC Berkeley spokesperson, said in a statement she couldn't comment on whether Hoover faces disciplinary action, saying discussing it would violate "personnel matters and/or violate privacy rights, both of which are protected by law."
"However, we are aware of and support ongoing efforts to achieve restorative justice in a way that acknowledges and addresses the extent to which this matter has caused harm and upset among members of our community," Gilmore added.
Hoover is the latest person to apologize for falsely claiming a racial or ethnic identity.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren angered many Native Americans during her presidential campaign in 2018 when she used the results of a DNA test to try and rebut the ridicule of then-President Donald Trump, who had derisively referred to her as "fake Pocahontas."
Despite the DNA results, which showed some evidence of a Native American in Warren's lineage, probably six to 10 generations ago, Warren is not a member of any tribe, and DNA tests are not typically used as evidence to determine tribal citizenship.
Warren later offered a public apology at a forum on Native American issues, saying she was "sorry for the harm I have caused."
In 2015, Rachel Dolezal was fired as head of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP and was kicked off a police ombudsman commission after her parents told local media their daughter was born white but was presenting herself as Black. She also lost her job teaching African studies at Eastern Washington University in nearby Cheney.
Hoover said her identity was challenged after she began her first assistant professor job. She began teaching at UC Berkeley in the fall of 2020.
"At the time, I interpreted inquiries into the validity of my Native identity as petty jealousy or people just looking to interfere in my life," she wrote.
Hoover said that she grew up in rural upstate New York thinking she was someone of mixed Mohawk, Mi'kmaq, French, English, Irish and German descent, and attending food summits and powwows. Her mother shared stories about her grandmother being a Mohawk woman who married an abusive French-Canadian man and who died by suicide, leaving her children behind to be raised by someone else.
She said she would no longer identify as Indigenous but would continue to help with food sovereignty and environmental justice movements in Native communities that ask her for her support.
In her apology issued Monday, Hoover acknowledged she benefited from programs and funding that were geared toward Native scholars and said she is committed to engaging in the restorative justice process taking place on campus, "as well as supporting restorative justice processes in other circles I have been involved with, where my participation is invited." | Human Rights |
The long-running fractures that define Australian climate politics can do weird things to people who have been involved in it too long.
One observer with more experience than most had a moment of reverie this week, joking about a fantasy universe in which Labor, the Coalition and the Greens all made substantial compromises to transform the landscape, literally and figuratively.
In his dream world, new fossil fuel developments were immediately banned, nuclear energy was legalised and supported, and the safeguard mechanism revamped with tri-partisan support. Everyone got what they wanted at the price of something they didn’t. Gigantic likenesses of the parties’ three celebrated Bobs – Hawke, Menzies and Brown – were carved side-by-side into a mountain to celebrate the shock outbreak of political harmony.
Back here in the real world, there is no Three Bob Mountain, divisions are deep and compromise, when it happens, is painstaking.
The safeguard mechanism – a failed Coalition policy that the Albanese government has promised to reboot into something meaningful – is being asked to carry the weight of Australia’s long-running failure to introduce meaningful and durable policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
That’s a problem, because the safeguard is highly complicated and has design issues that could stop it driving deep and genuine emissions cuts.
With the Coalition having opted out of an adult discussion about how industrial polluters should respond to the climate crisis, tough decisions lie ahead for Labor, the Greens and independents on what they are each willing to accept, and whether they will draw red lines that could lead to them walking away with nothing.
The point of this piece is not to say where those red lines should be drawn, or to predict what will happen. But it is worth considering what a deal might involve if one is reached.
The Greens’ leader, Adam Bandt, has offered to set aside other concerns about the safeguard if the government agrees to not approve any more new coal and gas mines. The minor party had been expected to present a more technical pitch, but instead kept its message simple: how about we just stop the expansion of the thing that causes the climate crisis?
There was an element of cheek in this. Bandt knew the government would not agree. The prime minister said so before the election and several times since. Asked on Sky News last week if she would say yes to some coal and gas developments, the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, replied: “Yeah, of course.” The next day her department approved a 116-well expansion of a Santos coal seam gas development in Queensland’s Surat Basin.
They have copped a wave of criticism, but there is evidence the Greens’ campaign to try to make all climate debates about new coal and gas developments is not only evidence-based, it has been tactically smart. It avoids a fight over putting people out of work – projects that haven’t begun don’t employ people – and the focus has thrust the issue of new fossil fuels – and their vast uncounted emissions when Australian coal and gas is burned overseas – to the centre of political debate. It points to where the climate battleground will be at the next federal election.
But a deal that blocks new coal and gas is not going to happen, whatever its merits. So what could be agreed?
One option could be a short-term pause on approving new developments until changes to national environmental law – the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act – are dealt with over the next year.
This would sharpen the focus on whether the reformed EPBC Act should finally, belatedly, include a “climate trigger” – a requirement that CO2 emissions are considered when developments are assessed. It could be done in a number of ways, from requiring that the impact of big polluting projects be considered, to an outright ban on developments that emit above a certain level.
Senior figures from both major parties have supported a climate trigger in the past. Robert Hill, the Liberal environment minister who introduced the EPBC Act backed one more than 20 years ago. Labor would not be breaking a pledge if it supported one now – it made no promise either way before the election.
A second option is a concerted crackdown on fossil methane emissions, which are released during gas and coal extraction. Methane is a short-lived but highly potent greenhouse gas, responsible for about a third of global heating. Satellite evidence suggests Australian mines may leak substantially more of it than federal government accounts suggest. Technology is available that can significantly reduce it.
A more radical but admittedly less likely possibility could be to redesign the policy so that fossil fuels are treated differently to other industries under the safeguard, such as steelmaking, aluminium smelting and cement production, which all parties agree should have a future and will need help to clean up. There is a good case the two groups should not be shoehorned into the same scheme, given their vastly different future trajectories.
There is also the contentious issue of carbon offsets, which allow companies to pay for forest regeneration and other projects rather than cut their direct emissions.
Credible criticisms of the integrity of the offset scheme have not been thoroughly addressed. The climate change minister, Chris Bowen, says he is confident there will be substantial cuts onsite at polluting facilities, but has also proposed allowing companies to buy an unlimited number of offsets. Independent senator David Pocock has flagged he wants some checks introduced and the Greens have also raised concerns.
None of these paths would address all concerns raised about the safeguard mechanism. Some of them are probably as likely as Three Bob Mountain suddenly appearing on the horizon.
But they are potential starting points, which is where we are at. | Australia Politics |
A drone attack on a Syrian military academy in Homs has killed more than 100 people, a monitoring group says.
Ten civilians were among those who died when drones carrying explosives targeted a graduation ceremony attended by cadets' families, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
The army blamed "terrorist groups backed by known international forces".
There was no immediate claim from the rebels and jihadists battling the government in the country's civil war.
The drone attack is believed to have been launched from opposition-held areas north-west of Homs.
Later, first responders from the White Helmets reported that five civilians had been killed in intense government artillery and missile strikes on several cities, towns and villages in the opposition stronghold of Idlib province.
Syria's state news agency, Sana, quoted a statement from the General Command of the Armed Forces as saying that several drones carrying explosives targeted the Homs military academy just after the afternoon graduation ceremony had ended.
"The aggression resulted in the death of several civilians and military personnel [and] in addition the injury of dozens of the invited families, as well as several participating students," it added, without giving any figures.
The statement said the armed forces "considers this act an unprecedented criminal one, and affirms that it will respond with full force and determination to these terrorist groups wherever they are".
A man who had earlier helped set up decorations at the site said: "After the ceremony, people went down to the courtyard and the explosives hit. We don't know where it came from, and corpses littered the ground."
A graphic video of the aftermath of the attack showed dozens of casualties and their relatives screaming for help inside a large, walled parade ground. Gunfire can also be heard in the background.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group that has a network of sources on the ground, said most of those killed were cadets and that a child and four women were among the civilian fatalities.
Another 125 people were injured, many of them seriously, it added.
The SOHR also reported that Syria's defence minister attended the graduation ceremony but left minutes before the attack.
A security source in a regional alliance backing the government told Reuters that at least 66 people were killed.
In a separate development in Syria on Thursday, at least 10 people were reportedly killed in Turkish drone strikes in a Kurdish-controlled region of north-eastern Syria that were prompted by a bomb attack in Ankara claimed by Kurdish militants.
The SOHR said 17 sites were targeted, including facilities affiliated with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed, Kurdish-led militia alliance, as well as a power station in Qamishli, a water station near Hassakeh and an oil field.
The US military also shot down an armed Turkish drone that was operating near its troops in Syria, a US official told Reuters.
More than half a million people have been killed by the civil war that erupted after President Bashar al-Assad cracked down violently on peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in 2011.
Some 6.8 million people are internally displaced, while another 6 million are refugees or asylum-seekers abroad. | Middle East Politics |
Myanmar is gripped by the worst escalation in violence since the military seized power in a coup almost three years ago, the UN has said, with intense clashes taking place across a number of states and regions.
The UN said an escalation in the fighting that began late in October was “the largest in scale and most extensive geographically” since the military coup, and has affected swathes of the country.
The military, which seized power in February 2021, has struggled to control widespread opposition to its rule, including an armed resistance formed of pro-democracy activists. However, an operation launched recently in northern Shan state by an alliance of powerful ethnic armed groups, in coordination with newer anti-junta groups, has posed the greatest military challenge yet to its rule – and has galvanised opponents elsewhere.
The operation, led by a grouping known as the Brotherhood Alliance, made dramatic progress when it was launched on 27 October, seizing dozens of outposts and several towns along the Chinese border.
Myint Swe, Myanmar’s junta-appointed president, warned the country was at risk of breaking apart after the attacks, saying it was necessary to “carefully control this issue”.
Elsewhere in Myanmar, groups have sought to exploit the military’s vulnerability. In Rakhine state, in the west, where a ceasefire has been in place for a year, the Arakan Army opened a new front on 13 November, with fierce fighting continuing over the past week.
Operations by opponents of the military have also escalated in Sagaing region, as well as Chin state, bordering India, and Kayah state along the Thai border, where anti-coup fighters are battling for control of the state capital, Loikaw.
Khun Bedu, the chair of the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force, told AFP on Tuesday that the group, and the ethnic minority Karenni Army, were engaged in “very intense fighting” in the town. The groups, as well as newer anti-coup groups, were “in control in many areas”, he said, without giving details.
The UN has evacuated most of its staff from Loikaw owing to “aerial bombardment of the town and active fighting in urban areas”, a spokesperson told AFP.
Figures in the pro-democracy movement say the developments can be exploited by people’s defence forces, which were formed after the 2021 coup by pro-democracy activists to fight against the military. These groups have received support from more experienced ethnic armed groups, including those that make up the Brotherhood Alliance, which have greater resources and have fought against the military for decades.
Analysts say it is unclear if military opponents will be able to hold on to territory taken. Since the coup, the military has relied on indiscriminate air attacks and scorched earth tactics to suppress opposition, with UN-appointed independent human rights investigators in September reporting increased “frequency and intensity of war crimes and crimes against humanity”.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the armed clashes “have expanded into more areas, including densely populated urban centres” in recent weeks.
More than 286,000 people have been displaced as a result of the recent surge in violence, it said, while 187 civilians have reportedly died and 246 have been injured. More than 2 million people have been internally displaced across Myanmar, according to the UN. | Asia Politics |
Teal MP Monique Ryan is being sued by her former chief-of-staff Sally Rugg over an alleged breach of the Fair Work Act.Independent MP Monique Ryan is being sued by activist turned chief-of-staff Sally Rugg over an alleged breach of general protections under the Fair Work Act.A self-described activist and regular ABC pundit, Ms Rugg was appointed to the top role in the Kooyong MP’s office in July after Josh Frydenberg was toppled at the May election.Ms Rugg filed a case against the Teal MP on 25 January, which is due for an interlocutory hearing on 3 February. No further details are known about the alleged breach. The Saturday Paper columnist Chris Wallace hinted at Ms Rugg’s abrupt exit last week, saying she was “not quite a comfortable fit” in the Melbourne electorate.Stream more breaking news with Flash. 25+ news channels in 1 place. New to Flash? Try 1 month free. Offer ends 31 October, 2023 “Of course, some people have come in, some people are already leaving,” she told the 7am podcast on Friday.“Sally Rugg, one of the few experienced Teal staffers, a very renowned activist herself, proved to be not quite a comfortable fit with the Kooyong electorate.“She is not going to continue as Monique Ryan’s Chief of Staff.”When Ms Rugg was named chief of staff she told the Nine newspapers she was drawn to Ms Ryan following Sky News Australia’s town hall debate against Mr Frydenberg.“What drew me to Monique was obviously the policy priorities – climate change, gender equity, integrity and transparency in politics – but also her approach as a grassroots, community-connected independent,” she said at the time.Ms Rugg is understood to still be employed by the Teal MP. The Australian reported Nina O’Connor, who was previously a staffer for Adam Bandt, is now listed as Ms Ryan's acting chief of staff on the parliament house website, in Ms Rugg's absence. Ms O’Connor was previously Head of Campaigns for Climate 200, the group which provided financial backing for many Teal independents.She has a long history in the activist space, having worked in the US Peoples’ Climate Movement and for change.org as a Senior Campaigns Director. SkyNews.com.au has reached out to Monique Ryan’s office for comment. | Australia Politics |
Far-right AfD overtakes Germany's Social Democrats in polls
If a federal election was held today in Germany, the anti-migrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party would pick up more votes than the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), a new poll reveals.
In the ARD Deutschlandtrend poll released on Friday, almost a fifth (19 percent) of respondents said they were planning to vote for the AfD at the next federal election in Germany.
This would make the far-right party the second largest in the Bundestag behind the centre-right CDU/CSU parties, which would pick up 29 percent of the vote, according to the poll.
The centre-left SPD, who are currently heading up the three-party traffic light coalition alongside the Greens and Free Democrats (FDP), would be forced into third place with just 17 percent of the vote.
The Green Party, which has recently seen approval ratings plummet due to its unpopular heating bill, would pick up 15 percent of votes, while their coalition partners in the FDP would accrue just six percent.
Four percent of voters said they would vote for the Left Party, falling short of the five percent hurdle for entering the Bundestag.
Growing support for AfD
The poll is the latest in a series of surveys that have shown support growing for the far-right party among the German population. In a similar ARD poll on June 2nd, the AfD was level with the SPD on 18 percent.
The latest figures represent a record level backing for the AfD among the German population.
Speaking on ARD's Morgenmagazin programme, Thorsten Frei, the head of the CDU's parliamentary group, blamed the governing traffic-light coalition for the uptick in AfD support.
"If bad policies are made - and those can primarily be made by the government - then it is a stimulus programme for the political fringes," Frei said.
The votes gained by the AfD can be traced directly back to votes lost for the SPD, Greens and FDP, he added.
However, the government's antisemitism commissioner, Felix Klein, pointed out that the highest level of support for the far-right party could be seen in the former East Germany.
"The dissatisfaction with the overall development of society actually manifests itself more strongly there than in the West," he told DPA. "It has to be better communicated - government work in general - and it must also be made clear to people that populists do not offer answers."
No coalition with AfD
So far in Germany, all other mainstream parties in the Bundestag have refused to work with the AfD and have said they would never enter a governing coalition with the party due to their extremist views.
This effectively shuts the party out of government - unless they are able to get an overall majority, or more than 50 percent of the vote.
In order to prevent AfD candidates from running in run-off elections for mayoral or district council offices, other parties have also recently joined forces.
In another ARD poll, 52 percent said they thought this was the right thing to do, while more than a third of the respondents (35 percent) were against this kind of move.
A further 13 percent either did not want to answer or did not know.
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In the ARD Deutschlandtrend poll released on Friday, almost a fifth (19 percent) of respondents said they were planning to vote for the AfD at the next federal election in Germany.
This would make the far-right party the second largest in the Bundestag behind the centre-right CDU/CSU parties, which would pick up 29 percent of the vote, according to the poll.
The centre-left SPD, who are currently heading up the three-party traffic light coalition alongside the Greens and Free Democrats (FDP), would be forced into third place with just 17 percent of the vote.
The Green Party, which has recently seen approval ratings plummet due to its unpopular heating bill, would pick up 15 percent of votes, while their coalition partners in the FDP would accrue just six percent.
Four percent of voters said they would vote for the Left Party, falling short of the five percent hurdle for entering the Bundestag.
Growing support for AfD
The poll is the latest in a series of surveys that have shown support growing for the far-right party among the German population. In a similar ARD poll on June 2nd, the AfD was level with the SPD on 18 percent.
The latest figures represent a record level backing for the AfD among the German population.
Speaking on ARD's Morgenmagazin programme, Thorsten Frei, the head of the CDU's parliamentary group, blamed the governing traffic-light coalition for the uptick in AfD support.
"If bad policies are made - and those can primarily be made by the government - then it is a stimulus programme for the political fringes," Frei said.
The votes gained by the AfD can be traced directly back to votes lost for the SPD, Greens and FDP, he added.
However, the government's antisemitism commissioner, Felix Klein, pointed out that the highest level of support for the far-right party could be seen in the former East Germany.
"The dissatisfaction with the overall development of society actually manifests itself more strongly there than in the West," he told DPA. "It has to be better communicated - government work in general - and it must also be made clear to people that populists do not offer answers."
No coalition with AfD
So far in Germany, all other mainstream parties in the Bundestag have refused to work with the AfD and have said they would never enter a governing coalition with the party due to their extremist views.
This effectively shuts the party out of government - unless they are able to get an overall majority, or more than 50 percent of the vote.
In order to prevent AfD candidates from running in run-off elections for mayoral or district council offices, other parties have also recently joined forces.
In another ARD poll, 52 percent said they thought this was the right thing to do, while more than a third of the respondents (35 percent) were against this kind of move.
A further 13 percent either did not want to answer or did not know. | Europe Politics |
The USA had provided Ukraine with 190 Bradley vehicles, about a dozen of which have been fully destroyed; the Ukrainian military lacks spare parts for their repair.
Source: The Washington Post citing sources
Quote from WP: "‘The United States has committed 190 Bradleys overall, with more than half delivered to operational units in Ukraine,’ said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
... About a dozen Bradleys have been destroyed, a senior U.S. defence official said."
Details: Data from the analytical website Oryx, which only takes into account the loss of equipment with video or photo evidence of damage, indicates that several dozen more machines have been damaged to varying degrees. Many of them have been repaired and returned to the battlefield. Some of them have to be sent to Poland for more serious repairs.
In particular, WP journalists recorded six vehicles being repaired in a forested area; most of them were damaged by mine explosions.
Some vehicles can take just a few hours to repair. At the same time, the soldiers with whom the publication spoke feel a lack of spare parts for repairs.
Quote from WP citing the military: "Some vehicles are labelled ‘donors’, meaning the Ukrainians will strip out the usable parts to install in other, less-damaged Bradleys and then fill the donor vehicle with the broken bits before shipping it off for a larger-scale repair at the facility in Poland.
One early limitation for how quickly the Ukrainians can fix the Bradleys and get them back on the battlefield: not enough spare parts, military personnel said."
More details: A high-ranking source of the publication said that in many cases, the Ukrainians used the machines exactly as they were taught during training in Germany, namely as part of a strategy called "combined arms", when infantry, armoured vehicles and aircraft act together.
At the same time, the same source states that there were "anecdotal reports to the contrary". In his opinion, in some cases, Ukrainians are "just not using them [the vehicles – ed.] to their fullest potential with all their other assets that they have available".
Background:
At the end of June, The New York Times reported that about 15% of Bradley combat vehicles were damaged during the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Predominantly, the vehicles exploded on mines.
Earlier, Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi emphasised that Ukraine received the Bradley not in order to "parade on them, but in order for them to be targeted on the battlefield": "Yes, we lose them. A little, let's say, but there are losses. You cannot get away from this. This is normal". | Europe Politics |
More than a year after the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia dropped the tightly held news they were combining submarine forces, the trio released more details Monday of their ambitious plan to counter China’s rapid military expansion.
Under the multi-decade AUKUS deal, the partners will build a combined fleet of elite nuclear-powered submarines using technology, labor and funding from all three countries, creating a more formidable force in the Indo-Pacific than any of them could achieve alone.
But the long timeline and huge financial costs – running into the hundreds of billions for Australia alone – pose questions about how far the partners’ plans could stray from their “optimal pathway” in the decades to come as governments, and potentially priorities, change.
In a joint statement Monday, US President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and UK counterpart Rishi Sunak said the “historic” deal will build on past efforts by all three countries to “sustain peace, stability, and prosperity around the world.”
The plan begins this year with training rotations for Australian personnel on US and UK subs and bases in the expectation that in roughly 20 years, they’ll commandeer Australia’s first ever nuclear-powered fleet.
But there’s a long way to go between now and then, as outlined in a series of phases announced by the leaders as they stood side-by-side in San Diego Harbor.
Submarines in stages
From 2023, along with training Australians, US nuclear-powered subs will increase port visits to Australia, joined three years later by more visits from British-owned nuclear-powered subs.
Come 2027, the US and UK subs will start rotations at HMAS Stirling, an Australian military port near Perth, Western Australia that’s set to receive a multibillion dollar upgrade.
Then from the early 2030s, pending Congress approval, Australia will buy three Virginia-class submarines from the US, with an option to buy two more.
Within the same decade, the UK plans to build its first AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine – combining its Astute-class submarine with US combat systems and weapons.
Soon after, in the early 2040s, Australia will deliver the first of its homemade AUKUS subs to its Royal Navy.
As a series of bullet points on the page, the plan seems straightforward.
But the complexities involved are staggering and require an unprecedented level of investment and information sharing between the three partners, whose leaders’ political careers are set to be far shorter than those of the man they are working to counter: China’s Xi Jinping.
Last week China’s political elite endorsed Xi’s unprecedented third term, solidifying his control and making him the longest-serving head of state of Communist China since its founding in 1949.
The most assertive Chinese leader in a generation, Xi has expanded his country’s military forces and sought to extend Beijing’s influence far across the Indo-Pacific, rattling Western powers.
Richard Dunley, from the University of New South Wales, said Australia was under pressure to respond after years of inaction and the proposal is an impressive scramble for a workable plan.
“It’s a last roll of the dice. And they’ve managed to just about thread the eye of a needle coming up with something that looks plausible.”
Regional response
A rush of diplomacy took place before Monday’s announcement, partly to avoid the shock impact of the initial announcement in 2021, when French President Emmanuel Macron accused former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison of lying to him when he pulled out of a 90 billion Australian dollar deal to buy French subs.
That deal would have delivered new submarines on a faster timeline, but they would have been conventional diesel-powered vessels instead of state of the art nuclear ones.
Australia learned from that diplomatic row and its senior leaders – including Albanese – made around 60 calls to allies and regional neighbors to inform them of the plan before it was announced, according to Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles.
China wasn’t one of them.
Biden told reporters Monday that he plans to speak with Xi soon but declined to say when that would be, adding that he was not concerned Xi would see the AUKUS announcement as aggression.
That contrasts with the sentiment emerging from Beijing including its accusations the trio is fomenting an arms race in Asia.
At a daily briefing Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the AUKUS partners had “completely ignored the concerns of the international community and gone further down a wrong and dangerous road.”
He said the deal would “stimulate an arms race, undermine the international nuclear non-proliferation system and damage regional peace and stability.”
Peter Dean, director of Foreign Policy and Defense at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, said the Chinese claims are overblown.
“If there is an arms race in the Indo-Pacific, there is only one country that is racing, and that is China,” he told CNN.
Smaller countries around the region are watching the AUKUS plan with concern that a greater presence in their waters could lead to unintended conflict, said Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto, from the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University.
“With more rotational presence of US and UK subs in Australia, there is a greater necessity for China to surveil these units and thereby, increase the likelihood of accidents or incidents at sea,” he said.
Biden stressed Monday that he wanted “the world to understand” that the agreement was “talking about nuclear power not nuclear weapons.”
According to a White House fact sheet, the US and UK will give Australian nuclear material in sealed “welded power units” that will not require refueling. Australia has committed to disposing of nuclear waste in Australia on defense-owned land. But that won’t happen until at least the late 2050s, when the Virginia-class vessels are retired.
Australia says it doesn’t have the capability to enrich it to weapons grade, won’t acquire it and wants to abide by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) principles on non-proliferation.
Why it’s needed
The AUKUS plan is an admission by Australia that without submarines that can spend long periods of time at great depths, the country is woefully unprepared to counter China in the Indo-Pacific.
“It is hugely complex and hugely risky,” said Dunley from the University of New South Wales.
“But when the original announcement and decision was made in 2021, there were very few good options left for Australia. So I think they’ve come out as well as they could have done,” he added.
Challenges are posed by a project of this scale, which includes many moving parts with potential knock-on effects to the timeline and cost.
The deal involves upgrades to ports and fleets, including expanding the operational life of Australia’s Collins-class submarines to the 2040s, to aid in the transition to nuclear.
“You’re having to take submarines out for quite a significant chunk of time to refit them, and if there are delays or issues that could cascade, you could see issues where Australia actually doesn’t have enough submariners to maintain its current forces of mariners, let alone augment that,” Dunley said.
As all three countries race to expand their fleets, training enough staff could become a serious challenge, Dunley said.
The security element of the roles mean the pool of skilled workers is inevitably shallow. Efforts are being made in all countries to entice trainees to a life below the surface of the sea for months at a time – potentially not an easy sell in a competitive jobs market.
And then there’s the funding.
The Australian government says it’ll find 0.15% of gross domestic product every year for 30 years – a cost of up to $245 billion (368 billion Australian dollars).
Max Bergmann, the director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the deal will ultimately require healthy economies, and all three countries are dealing with cost of living pressures.
“The UK economy is not doing great. And part of what it will need is a thriving economy, such that it can maintain the level of spending needed,” he told a reporter briefing.
The long journey ahead
Xi’s move to allow himself to retain the Chinese leadership for life means he could be approaching his 90s by the time Australia and Britain have launched their new AUKUS fleets.
By then, the landscape of the Indo-Pacific could be vastly changed.
Xi, 69, has made it clear that the issue of Taiwan, an island democracy that China’s Communist Party claims but has never ruled, cannot be passed indefinitely down to other generations.
For now, Australia says it is confident of continued bipartisan support in Washington for the program, which will rely on the ongoing transfer of nuclear material and other weapons secrets from the US.
“We enter this with a high degree of confidence,” Defense Minister Marles said Monday.
However the risk remains that in future years an inward-facing US leader in the style of former President Donald Trump – or even perhaps Trump himself – could emerge to threaten the deal.
Charles Edel, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the deal was about much more than a combined effort to change China’s calculations about its security environment.
“It’s meant to transform the industrial shipbuilding capacity of all three nations, it’s meant as a technological accelerator, it’s meant to change the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, and, ultimately, it’s meant to change the model of how the United States works with and empowers its closest allies.”
CNN’s Kathleen Magramo contributed to this report. | Asia Politics |
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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed again Sunday to push for a second attempt to launch a spy satellite as she lambasted a U.N. Security Council meeting over the North’s first, failed launch.
The North’s attempt to put its first military spy satellite into orbit last Wednesday failed as its rocket crashed off the Korean Peninsula’s western coast. An emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council was still convened at the request of the U.S., Japan and other countries to discuss the launch because it had violated council resolutions banning the North from performing any launch using ballistic technology.
On Sunday, Kim’s sister and senior ruling party official, Kim Yo Jong, called the U.N. council “a political appendage” of the United States, saying its recent meeting was convened following America’s “gangster-like request.”
She accused the U.N. council of being “discriminative and rude” because it only takes issue with the North’s satellite launches while thousands of satellites launched by other countries are already operating in space. She said her country’s attempt to acquire a spy satellite is a legitimate step to respond to military threats posed by the U.S. and its allies.
“(North Korea) will continue to take proactive measures to exercise all the lawful rights of a sovereign state, including the one to a military reconnaissance satellite launch,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by state media.
READ MORE: North Korea’s satellite launch failed. It still triggered fear and confusion
In her earlier statement Friday, Kim Yo Jong said the North’s spy satellite “will be correctly put on space orbit in the near future” but didn’t say when its second launch attempt would take place.
South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers Wednesday it will likely take “more than several weeks” for North Korea to learn the cause of the failed launch but it may attempt a second launch soon if defects aren’t serious.
Washington, Seoul and others criticized the North’s satellite launch for raising international tensions and urged it to return to talks.
A military surveillance satellite is among a list of sophisticated weapons systems that Kim Jong Un has vowed to acquire amid protracted security tensions with the United States. Since the start of 2022, Kim has carried out more than 100 missile tests in what he called a warning over expanded military drills between the U.S. and South Korea.
READ MORE: North Korea says it tested new solid-fuel long-range missile
Experts say Kim would want to use his modernized weapons arsenal to wrest concessions from Washington and its partners in future diplomacy.
North Korea was slapped with rounds of U.N. sanctions over its past nuclear and missile tests and satellite launches. But the U.N. Security Council failed to toughen those sanctions over North Korea’s recent testing activities because China and Russia, both permanent members of the U.N. council, blocked the U.S. and others’ attempts to do so. During the latest U.N. council session Friday, China and Russia again clashed with the U.S. over the North’s failed launch.
After repeated failures, North Korea placed Earth-observation satellites into orbit in 2012 and 2016, but foreign experts say there is no evidence that either satellite transmitted imagery and other data.
Also Sunday, North Korea threatened not to notify the International Maritime Organization of future satellite launches in advance to protest the group’s condemnation of North Korean missile tests.
The IMO’s maritime safety committee on Wednesday adopted a rare resolution denouncing North Korea for conducting launches without proper notification that “seriously threatened the safety of seafarers and international shipping.”
Kim Myong Chol, an international affairs analyst in North Korea, said in a statement carried by state media: “In the future, IMO should know and take measures by itself over the period of (North Korea’s) satellite launch and the impact point of its carrier and be prepared to take full responsibility for all the consequences from it.”
Ahead of its recent spy satellite launch, North Korea told the IMO and Japan that a launch would occur between May 31 and June 11.
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An Israeli woman is thought to have given birth while being held captive by Hamas, officials said, as a deal to secure the hostages’ release hit a “crisis”.
The woman, who has not been named, was nine-months pregnant when she was abducted with around 240 others during the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on Oct 7.
“She gave birth to her baby in Hamas captivity,” Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a letter to the US First Lady Jill Biden. “You can only imagine, as I do, what must be going through that young mother’s mind as she is being held with her newborn by these murderers,” she wrote.
The woman is only assumed to have given birth because of the time she has now been held captive. Israeli officials have received no confirmation of the fact.
Mrs Netanyahu said she was appealing to her US counterpart “first and foremost as a mother” to “speak out on behalf of these children” as she highlighted the plight of the newborn and the other Israeli children currently being held hostage.
She said that 32 children have been held in Gaza for more than five weeks, including a 10-month-old baby who was “kidnapped even before he learned how to walk or talk”.
‘Children suffering untold trauma’
The children, she said, are “suffering from untold trauma”, not only from being taken but from “having witnessed the brutal murder of their parents and siblings”.
Mrs Netanyahu said: “We must call for the immediate release of them and all those being held ... the nightmare that began over a month ago must end.”
Israel has launched a widespread offensive in response to the Hamas attacks which killed 1,200 people, the deadliest attack in its history. Its aim now is to root out the terror group from Gaza.
The retaliatory strikes have killed more than 11,300 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Earlier this week, Joe Biden expressed optimism that a deal with Hamas to free the hostages, many of whom are foreign nationals, was “going to happen”.
Qatar, which is mediating the hostage talks between Israel and Hamas, sought on Wednesday to broker a deal that included the release of around 50 hostages in exchange for a multi-day ceasefire, a source told Reuters. The deal, which has been coordinated with Washington, would also reportedly see the release of some Palestinian women and children from Israeli jails and increase the humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza.
It is unclear how many Palestinian women and children Qatar proposed Israel release from its jails as part of the agreement.
The proposal would mean the biggest release of hostages to date but Arab and Palestinian sources involved in the negotiation said the talks had reached a crisis point last night. While Hamas had agreed to the general outlines of the proposed deal, Israel had rejected some elements and was demanding further negotiation, an official told Reuters.
A key point of contention was Hamas’s demand for a five-day ceasefire, according to sources cited by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Israel agreed to a three-day maximum halt, the newspaper reported.
Hamas’s demand that Israel stop flying drones over the Gaza Strip during the ceasefire also met resistance. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the US military have been flying surveillance over the coastal enclave in an effort to locate the hostages.
Hamas also reportedly requested that the IDF allow free movement between the south of the Gaza Strip and the north, where the Israeli strikes have been focused. Israel strongly opposed the demands, according to Haaretz, while Hamas is refusing to agree to compromises which could reveal its operational methods or intelligence on the location of hostages. | Middle East Politics |
KCNA/AP
toggle caption
This photo provided by the North Korean government, shows what it says an intercontinental ballistic missile during a military parade on Feb. 8, 2023.
KCNA/AP
This photo provided by the North Korean government, shows what it says an intercontinental ballistic missile during a military parade on Feb. 8, 2023.
KCNA/AP
North Korea says it has successfully tested a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that can be launched far more quickly than the ones in its current arsenal.
Experts say the missile, which uses solid fuel as opposed to liquid, is a major milestone for the nation's military and will greatly strengthen its already formidable nuclear arsenal.
"It's just going to be much, much harder for the United States to ultimately find and destroy these missiles in a conflict," says Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on North Korea's nuclear program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. "That gives North Korea a much better deterrence."
The test took place on Thursday morning, local time. The missile appears to have flown at a high angle far above the Earth, according to Japan's Ministry of Defense. Its flight path caused it to briefly trigger an alert on the Japanese island of Hokkaido. North Korea typically tests its long-range missiles on so-called "lofted trajectories" that go almost straight up instead of traveling for long distances around the Earth.
Photos released by North Korean state media showed the missile to be a previously unknown type of solid-fueled missile, which it described as the Hwasong-18. The photos show the missile lifting off as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watches on with his young daughter. Experts have geolocated the launch site to a field near the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.
Lewis says many North Korea watchers had been expecting the test. "North Korea has indicated that it has been building solid propellant ICBMs for several years now," he says.
But nonetheless, it represents a huge leap in the North's nuclear capabilities. Until now, North Korea had relied on large, liquid-fueled missiles to launch its nuclear weapons towards the U.S. Those missiles require fueling before launch – a process that can take potentially an hour or more to complete. In addition, each missile has to be escorted by a convoy of fuel trucks, making them easy targets for any adversary trying to take them out.
KCNA/AP
toggle caption
North Korea's previous missiles have been liquid fueled. Liquid-fueled missiles are easier to spot and take longer to fire.
KCNA/AP
North Korea's previous missiles have been liquid fueled. Liquid-fueled missiles are easier to spot and take longer to fire.
KCNA/AP
Not so for solid-fueled missiles. The propellant in these weapons is loaded in the factory and remains stable until it is lit. That means the missiles don't need an escort of tank trucks, and can be launched as soon as they're erected – usually a matter of tens of minutes, according to Lewis.
Developing large-diameter solid fueled missiles is a difficult task, Lewis says. "I think it's a lot harder to develop an effective solid-propellent ICBM than it is to develop a nuclear weapon to go on it," he says. Nevertheless, the North has been making steady progress. Last month, it successfully launched a submarine-based missile that was also solid-fueled.
Lewis says it's difficult to say what the political effect of the new missile will be. On the one hand, such a weapon is far more threatening to the U.S. than a liquid-fueled missile, but that very fact may make Kim Jong Un's regime feel more secure.
Regardless, he says, the missile shows that U.S. efforts to keep North Korea from developing advanced nuclear technology have largely failed. "I think we are well past the point where we have any leverage to get North Korea to stop its development of nuclear systems," he says. "There aren't any real fundamental show-stopping technical barriers." | Asia Politics |
Australia is adding renewable energy at less than half the pace required to replace retiring coal-fired generation and meet its own 2030 climate targets, one of the country's top energy experts says.
Key points:
- University of NSW research shows the growth rate of green energy needs to more than double
- A senior researcher says grid stability is at stake as transition away from coal-fired generation accelerates
- Energy Minister Chris Bowen says there is a lot of catching up to do
In a wake-up call for state and federal governments, the University of New South Wales said there was a "mismatch" between Australia's renewable energy ambitions and the reality on the ground.
The warning comes after a pivotal year in which closure dates for many of the country's biggest coal-fired power plants were fast-tracked – in some cases by decades.
UNSW senior research associate Dylan McConnell said the watershed nature of 2022 showed there was little contention among politicians and investors about the need to transition away from fossil fuels.
Dr McConnell said the critical issue now was the speed at which the shift took place.
He said Australia was lagging well behind the rate at which it needed to add and connect new renewable energy capacity to replace coal power poised to leave the system.
Adoption 'needs to ramp up'
"On an energy basis, we have pretty much been adding the same gigawatt hours of energy for the last five years," Dr McConnell said.
"It's been a fairly linear addition.
"That linear addition really needs to ramp up to hit those targets."
Research by Dr McConnell shows Australia's renewable energy output has been growing since 2018 at an average of 7.5 terawatt hours a year – equivalent to about four per cent of demand in the national electricity market servicing the eastern states.
Dr McConnell said the growth rate needed to more than double to 15.7 terawatt hours by the end of the decade under the Australian Energy Market Operator's central plan.
Despite this, he said activity was in some senses slowing, pointing to Clean Energy Council reporting that showed just one renewable energy project reached "financial close" in the September quarter last year.
He suggested there would need to be policy changes before the energy market operator's plans could be reconciled with reality.
"There's basically a difference between how the market operator models a system versus what happens in the real world," he said.
"We have market dynamics and other factors driving investment decisions in the real world.
"And so you have private actors and governments doing things at whatever pace they see fit.
"Whereas the market operator does a central planning, top-down least cost optimisation.
"They assume a carbon budget, for one, which doesn't exist in the real world."
Goals 'ambitious but achievable'
Federal Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said the government's 2030 goal of meeting 82 per cent of Australia's energy needs from renewable sources was "ambitious, but achievable".
Mr Bowen said the government was trying to overcome years of "stop-start energy policies", which he argued had delayed and complicated the transition.
"We have a lot of catching up to do," Mr Bowen said.
"That's why we're investing in new storage and transmission projects, with our Rewiring the Nation projects ... to allow more renewable energy into the grid.
"This will also mean more jobs in storage, transmission and adaptation."
Symptomatic of the challenges is opposition to transmission projects deemed critical to connecting massive volumes of new wind, solar and hydro capacity.
At Darlow, about 420km south west of Sydney, Rebecca Tobin has been resisting plans to build a high-voltage power line known as HumeLink through her cattle breeding farm.
Ms Tobin said she was particularly worried about the increased risk of bushfires.
"The Dunns Road fire ignited mere kilometres away from where we are," Ms Tobin said in reference to a blaze from the black summer of 2019.
"That fire was terrifying and living through that [makes] you think you're going to lose everything.
"We already have a 330kV line. This will parallel that.
"In the fires, my dad witnessed the 330kV line arc.
"And he's completely petrified by what he saw."
Community concerns mount
The 40-year-old is part of a group of landholders affected by HumeLink pushing for the project to be built underground as much as possible.
Transgrid, the company behind HumeLink, has suggested the cost of putting the line underground could be as much as three times higher than building overhead.
It says the $3.3 billion project is needed to fully connect an expanded Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro plant, due for completion from 2025.
A Transgrid spokeswoman said the company was always vigilant in its maintenance of assets to guard against the risk of bushfires.
"We are working with all stakeholders to find the best solution to this challenge and welcome further engagement on this critically important issue," the spokeswoman said.
"Transgrid shares the Australian Energy Regulator's vision to ensure a secure, reliable and affordable energy future for all Australians."
Ms Tobin said she was a supporter of renewable energy but it was wrong to build transmission lines in places where they could aggravate the risks of bushfires in a warming climate.
"We understand that HumeLink is needed to safeguard the electricity grid," she said.
"But what we don't understand is the way it is being done and that when you've got the technology to put it underground, why that isn't what we're going for."
New capacity 'really not optional'
Dr McConnell said Australia was running out of time to build the renewable generation capacity needed to keep the system stable.
"We do need to deploy a lot of capital and build a lot of capacity but even if we didn't care about emissions, we'd still have to deploy a lot of capital and build a lot of stuff quite quickly," Dr McConnell said.
"It's a bit of a false choice in that sense, saying whether or not it's necessary or achievable because it's something we kind of have to do to have a reliable electricity system.
"If we don't build these things fast enough, or we don't replace plants coming out, then we are going to have challenges with reliability and keeping the lights on." | Australia Politics |
There has been speculation for many years about internal rifts within's Taliban, but the Islamic extremist group that retook power over the country in 2021 has largely managed to act as a cohesive military and political entity. Its commanders and politicians take their orders from a powerful leadership council based not in the capital of Kabul, but in the Taliban's traditional homeland of Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan.
Behind this powerful entity is a reclusive supreme leader, Mawlavi Hibatullah Akhundzada. Since the group came back to power with the U.S.-led military coalition withdrawal a year and a half ago, he has issued a series of draconian edicts.
During the two decades of war with the West between the Taliban's previous reign and its current one, women gained a huge foothold withand the workplace. Those basic rights have been all but erased in less than two years by Akhundzada, despite a huge international backlash that has seen the Taliban regime shunned by the international community.
But the leader's obstinance appears to have created, or at least brought into the light, a power struggle.
Influential figures in Afghanistan, seemingly frustrated by Akhundzada's refusal to considerin exchange for desperately needed financial support, have issued rare public criticism aimed at the supreme leader.
Last week, the Taliban's powerful acting Minister of Interior, Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is also the leader of theand a deputy to the supreme leader, publicly criticized his boss for damaging the government and monopolizing power.
"Today we consider ourselves so entitled that targeting, challenging and defaming the entire system have become common," Haqqani said in a speech at a graduation ceremony for religious students in his own powerbase, in the eastern Khost province.
He did not name Akhundzada in the address, which CBS News has obtained video of, but said "this situation cannot be tolerated any longer … Today I have a different responsibility, and that is to make myself closer to the people."
Despite being the leader of a brutal terror network that killed hundreds of innocent civilians and dozens of U.S. soldiers in suicide attacks during the war — and having a $10 million FBI bounty on his head — Haqqani is said to be in favor of restoring at least some of the rights to education and work that Afghan girls and women had prior to the Taliban's takeover in 2021.
After his remarks, more criticism came from the office of Afghanistan's Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi. Last weekend, he also publicly expressed disapproval of the supreme leader's edicts. He said the Taliban could not claim to lead an independent nation without ensuring a robust education system.
"The duty of a mufti — a Muslim scholar who gives rulings on religious matters — is not only to say prohibited, prohibited, prohibited," he said at a gathering at Kabul University. Without naming the supreme leader, he said: "When you prohibit something, you should also state the solution for it."
Although the position Hannafi holds within the Taliban regime is largely a symbolic role, his criticism clearly indicated discontent with the supreme leader.
The third noteworthy criticism within a week came from the Taliban's acting Minister of Defense, Muhammad Yaqoob Mujahid. In an event celebrating the anniversary of the former Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan, the powerful Taliban figure said, "we should never be arrogant and should consider the legitimate demands of people."
Mujahid is the son of the Taliban's founder, the late Mullah Omar, and is one of the group's most influential figures in southern Afghanistan.
"It is now clear that the rejection [of the Taliban's legitimacy] by the international community — which includes major Islamic countries — comes from the negative decisions about the status of women the Taliban have taken," political analyst Tariq Farhadi told CBS News. "Those decrees come from the Taliban leader who is based in Kandahar. Important voices of disagreement have now risen from within Taliban."
An independent news channel run by exiled Afghan journalists in Virginia and Canada, Amu TV, has reported that, following the Taliban's return to power in 2021, the group's leadership has taken on a triangular format, with Akhundzada, Yaqoob and Haqqani all taking on specific roles, but the supreme leader at the top.
Both Yaqoob and Haqqani are said to be in favor of trying to restore relations with the outside world, but they are deputies of Akhundzada within the apparent power-sharing structure, and there's no indication that they're about to unite to challenge the supreme leader.
Still, their public criticism is significant, and it may herald a difficult phase for the group which, if not checked, could descend into factional in-fighting that would be devastating for the country.
The Taliban's main spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, dismissed the reports of any rift among the group's leaders, telling a state-run news outlet Thursday that "some foreign circles … misuse the statements of our leaders" to wrongly portray disunity.
for more features. | Middle East Politics |
Every now and then, scholars of international relations devise a neologism that enhances our ability to understand important international phenomena. It doesn’t happen very often, of course. Like many other academic fields, ours is chronically vulnerable to Shiny Object Syndrome (or, in academia, Shiny Concept Syndrome), defined as the chronic tendency of people to be easily distracted by the flashy and new, often at the expense of the useful and enduring. But “ontological security” may be one of those rare neologisms that is more than just another shiny concept — one that actually illuminates rather than merely dazzles. Consider the case of the Russian decision to invade Ukraine. The stale binary currently in circulation, of course, pits realpolitik explanations against imperialist ones. According to proponents of the former, the outbreak of war was the result of NATO’s seemingly inexorable eastward expansion and the fear this inspired in Russia. In the realpolitik view, the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO and bringing the old enemy right to Russia’s doorstep was always going to be considered intolerable to Moscow, and was always going to result in a military effort to prevent or preempt such an eventuality. And on Feb. 24 of this year, that is precisely what happened. According to the imperialist interpretation, on the other hand, the war is simply the latest in a long line of Russian wars of conquest. In this view, Russia is today what it was in the age of both the czars and commissars: an aggressive imperial power driven ceaselessly to subordinate and/or incorporate neighboring countries. That being the case, the war in Ukraine today is merely the latest manifestation of an ancient Russian imperial impulse. The problem is that neither of these explanations is adequate. Both oversimplify, reducing the war to the nefarious actions of either “bad NATO” or “bad Russia.” And neither is persuasive: Is Russia really afraid of being attacked by NATO? Can 19th century notions of imperialism really explain Russia’s attack on Ukraine? Enter ontological security. According to this theoretical framework, states are motivated less by imperial desire or irrational fear than by identity politics. No, not that identity politics. Identity politics in the sense that states have an innate, if socially constructed, sense of who they are: what both defines them and distinguishes them from other states. And, at least with respect to states, identity politics also entails a sense of “natural cartography” — that is, a sense of where the state and its associated nation naturally begins and ends. As is the case with individual persons, states then enact the scripts entailed in their identities, including steps to secure them against threats and enemies, foreign and domestic. Viewed through this lens, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine becomes very explicable. Russia’s historical identity has always constructed Ukraine as being part of its natural cartography — as being an indivisible part of the Russian world, if not the Russian state. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the “nominal” independence of Ukraine – its separation from the Russian state – was not considered a problem as long as Ukraine remained firmly anchored in the Russian world. And the fiction that it was so anchored was sustainable until 2014, when it became clear to Moscow that elements within the Ukrainian population had decisively rejected Russia’s mythical identity and were bent on taking Ukraine out of the Russian sphere and into the West. That prompted the relatively modest military intervention in 2014, and the subsequent Minsk accords, which seemed to have solved the problem. Except that once the fighting stopped, Ukraine continued to drift westward, in the process renewing and amplifying the threat to Russia’s identity. Faced with this increasingly menacing ontological threat, Moscow reacted the way states often do — by using armed force. Hence the invasion last February. This is not to suggest, of course, that the concept of ontological security is some sort of “royal road” or “magic bullet” — a concept capable of quickly and easily explaining all that has hitherto proven inexplicable. As is often the case, while this shiny new concept may provide keen insights into the motives of certain states in certain circumstances, it will likely prove to be utterly unnecessary or unhelpful when it comes to explaining others. Even the most parsimonious proponent of realpolitik, for example, working with little more than the assumption that all states seek to survive and thrive in a dangerous world, would have no need for the abstraction of ontological security when seeking to explain, say, Japan’s recent decision to abandon its longstanding strategic posture and double its investment in military capability. In that case, the assumption that vulnerable states like Japan will necessarily take steps to balance increasingly powerful and assertive states like China is all that is needed to explain Tokyo’s strategic demarche. In other words, if the puzzle is why is Japan investing in greater military capability, the basic realpolitik assumption that all states will do what they must to survive and thrive in a dangerous world are all that is required to solve it. Sometimes, as the English scholastic philosopher William of Ockham surmised long ago, the simpler explanation, the one that requires the fewest assumptions and abstractions, is to be preferred. And in this case, the razor that bears that famous medieval friar’s name can be used to quickly cut away such superfluous concepts as ontological security. But sometimes, as in the case of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the simplest or most parsimonious theory is simply not up to solving the puzzle. Sometimes, the more complex concept is necessary. So where does that leave those of us with an interest – sometimes a pressing interest – in international politics? Perhaps the best way to answer that question is to harken back an exchange between the emperor Napoleon and two of his leading mathematicians. When the first of those mathematicians, Pierre-Simon Laplace, presented Napoleon with a revolutionary new theory of celestial mechanics, the emperor is said to have responded: “You have written this huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the author of the universe.” The implication being that maybe Laplace’s parsimonious mathematical model had left out an important explanatory variable, God. Laplace’s response was telling: “Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.” His implication, of course, was that the shiny new concept he had just articulated was all that was needed to explain the properties of the solar systems — and that the complicating “abstraction” of God was unnecessary. In turn, Laplace’s fellow mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange retorted: “Ah, but [God] is a fine hypothesis. It explains so many things.” The implication here being that, while Laplace’s shiny new concept was perhaps sufficient to explain some things, it was not up to the task of explaining many other things. Perhaps the art of statecraft – or at least the art of studying statecraft – is ultimately about understanding when we have need of a given abstraction and when we don’t, when to side with Laplace or with Lagrange. At least that’s what I teach my students. I also teach them that, when it comes to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Lagrange has the better of it. Andrew Latham is a professor of international relations at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minn., a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities in Washington, D.C., and a Senior Fellow with the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy in Ottawa, Canada. Follow him on Twitter @aalatham. | Europe Politics |
Rahul Gandhi Gets Back Tughlaq Lane Bungalow, May Shift Soon
The House Committee of the Lok Sabha decided to allot the bungalow which Gandhi was asked to vacate after he was disqualified as member of the lower house on March 24 and given a two-year jail term for the 'Modi surname' remarks.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has been re-allotted the 12, Tughlaq Lane bungalow a day after his Lok Sabha membership was restored following the Supreme Court staying his conviction in a defamation case, officials said on Tuesday.
The House Committee of the Lok Sabha decided to allot the bungalow which Gandhi was asked to vacate after he was disqualified as member of the lower house on March 24 and given a two-year jail term for the 'Modi surname' remarks.
"Mera ghar pura Hindustan hai (Whole country is my home)," quipped Gandhi when asked about being allotted the 12, Tughlaq Lane bungalow.
Sources said Gandhi has received the letter re-allotting the same house he occupied as Lok Sabha MP for the past almost two decades.
They said Gandhi would be shifting back to his residence soon. He is currently staying with his mother Sonia Gandhi, who is also the chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party.
On Monday, the Lok Sabha Secretariat restored Gandhi's membership of the lower house after the Supreme Court stayed his conviction in the defamation case.
In April, Rahul Gandhi vacated his official residence in central Delhi, in line with protocol, after he was disqualified as an MP in March following a Surat court's conviction in the criminal defamation case.
A disqualified MP is not entitled to a government accommodation and gets a month's time to vacate the official residence. | India Politics |
BEIJING — China’s People’s Liberation Army sent 13 aircraft and six vessels into airspace and waters around Taiwan over the past 24 hours as of early Saturday, overlapping with United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s visit to Beijing aimed at mending strained relations.
Taiwan's Defense Ministry said it is monitoring the situation from the air and sea, and land-based missile systems were prepared to respond. It said four Chinese aircraft — two SU-30 fighters, one BZK-005 reconnaissance plane and one Y-8 anti-submarine warfare plane — crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait that serves as a de facto border between the sides, and had entered Taiwan's southwestern air defense identification zone.
China claims Taiwan as its own territory to be annexed by force if necessary and sends air and naval missions on virtually a daily basis in an attempt to wear down the island’s defense capabilities and intimidate its 23 million people, who thus far seem largely unfazed by such moves.
U.S. support for the self-governing island republic that split from mainland China amid civil war in 1949 remains a major irritant in relations with Beijing.
Shortly before Yellen’s arrival, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the headquarters of the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater on Thursday. Its area of operations directly faces the island across the Taiwan Strait.
Addressing commanders at the Jiangsu province headquarters, Xi “stressed efforts to … break new ground for theater command development and war preparedness,” state media reported.
He called for “enhancing the planning of war and combat … and stepping up training under real combat conditions to raise the forces’ capabilities to fight and win,” the reports said.
The PLA, the world's largest standing armed force, serves as the military wing of the Communist Party and is overseen by a committee headed by Xi.
Beijing also objects vigorously to United States military support for Taiwan, and lashed out Wednesday at an upcoming $440 million sale of cannon shells and other equipment, accusing the U.S. of turning Taiwan into a powder keg.
Yellen is not expected to meet with Xi during her visit. | Asia Politics |
Russia’s UN envoy was accused of floundering in a “mud of lies” after he claimed at an emergency session of the security council that Ukraine destroyed Kakhovka dam in a “war crime”.
Sergiy Kyslytsya, the Ukraine envoy to the UN, said it was typical of Russia to blame the victim for its own crimes, pointing out Russia has been in control of the dam for more than a year and it was physically impossible to blow it up by shelling. He said the dam was mined by the Russian occupiers and they blew it up. He accused Russia of “floundering again in the mud of lies”.
“By resorting to scorched earth tactics, or in this case to flooded earth tactics, the Russian occupiers have effectively recognised that the captured territory does not belong to them, and they are not able to hold these lands,” Kyslytsya said.
Neither the French, US or British representatives at the UN directly said there was evidence of Russian responsibility, but called for an investigation and insisted their support for Ukraine was unwavering.
Outside the UN security council chamber, the deputy US ambassador to the UN, Robert Wood, said: “We’re not certain at all, we hope to have more information in the coming days.
“But, I mean, come on … why would Ukraine do this to its own territory and people, flood its land, force tens of thousands of people to leave their homes – it doesn’t make sense.”
Vasily Nebenzya, the Russian envoy to the UN, claimed Ukraine had committed an unthinkable crime. His main supportive evidence was an article in the Washington Post in which Andriy Kovalchuk, Ukraine’s southern commander, claimed Ukraine had tested strikes on the dam.
Nebenzya said the west was responsible for a coordinated disinformation campaign full of flawed logic that “reeks of schizophrenia and not of a latent variety”. He said the attack was part of an effort to distract from Ukraine’s clearly bogged down military offensive that was failing to meet its objectives.
“We are deeply bewildered that the UN secretariat repeatedly fails to condemn the attacks perpetrated by the Kyiv regime citing insufficient information. The secretary’s leadership does not hesitate to replicate politicised conclusions that suggest all such crimes are as a result of Russia’s actions in Ukraine,” he said.
Martin Griffiths, the UN humanitarian envoy, did not accuse Russia of responsibility for the humanitarian disaster, saying investigations would be held, but he asserted that the incident would not have occurred if it were not for Russia’s invasion.
The UN “has no access to independent information on the circumstances that led to the destruction in the hydroelectric power plants”, he said, but added that the destruction of the dam was one of the most significant pieces of damage to Ukrainian infrastructure since the war started and would have grave consequences for thousands of people, as well as the environment.
An emergency response was under way to help 16,000 people, Griffiths said, pointing out that the dam was a key source of support to agriculture for south Kherson as well as livestock, and its destruction would be a massive blow to food production and clean water supply into Crimea.
He warned that the risks of mine and explosive ordnance contamination had increased as fast-moving water washed them into areas previously assessed as safe, thus putting people in further, unpredictable danger. | Europe Politics |
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian missiles slammed into an apartment complex and a university building in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih Monday, killing four people and wounding scores of others as the blasts trapped residents beneath rubble, Ukraine’s interior minister said.
One of the two missiles destroyed a section of the apartment building between the fourth and ninth floors, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said. Video showed black smoke billowing from corner units and burned out or damaged cars on a tree-lined street.
READ MORE: Moscow blames Kyiv for a missile attack in Russia as Kremlin battle for Ukrainian village
A 10-year-old girl was among those killed, officials said. Dnipro Gov. Serhii Lysak said 53 people were wounded in the morning attack, which also destroyed part of the four-story university building.
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian artillery strike on partially occupied Donetsk province killed two people and wounded six in the regional capital, according to Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-installed leader of the illegally annexed province.
A bus was also hit as Ukrainian forces shelled the city of Donetsk multiple times Monday, Pushilin said.
Neither side’s claims could be independently verified.
A recent Ukrainian counteroffensive, deploying weaponry supplied by Kyiv’s Western allies and aimed at driving Russian forces out of occupied areas, intensified last week. At the same time, Ukraine has sought to take the war deep into Russia, reportedly using drones to hit targets as far away as Moscow.
Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia and Moscow-annexed territory, especially Crimea, have become more frequent. The latest strike, on Sunday, damaged two office buildings a few miles (kilometers) from the Kremlin.
Russia has tightened security in the aftermath of that attack, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday, describing the assault as an “act of desperation.”
“The Kyiv regime is in a very, very difficult situation,” Peskov said, “as the counteroffensive is not working out as planned.”
“It’s obvious that the multibillion-dollar resources that have been transferred by NATO countries to the Kyiv regime are actually being spent inefficiently,” Peskov said.
“This raises big questions in Western capitals and great discomfort among taxpayers in Western countries.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, analysts say, is wagering that Western support for Kyiv will wane as the war drags on and its cost mounts.
Another Ukrainian drone targeted a district police department early Monday in Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine, but there were no casualties, the local governor said.
In Kryvyi Rih, which is the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, rescue crews searched Monday for people who were trapped in the wreckage of the two hit buildings. The Kremlin’s forces have occasionally targeted the city since they invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Bombarding populated areas with missiles, artillery and drones has been a hallmark of Moscow’s military strategy during the war, an approach that has continued during the Ukrainian counteroffensive that started in June.
WATCH: Inside Ukraine’s counteroffensive as forces step up grueling fight against Russia
Russian officials insist they only take aim at legitimate military targets, but Ukraine and its supporters say mass civilian deaths during previous attacks provide evidence of war crimes.
“In recent days, the enemy has been stubbornly attacking cities, city centers, shelling civilian objects and housing,” Zelenskyy said in a statement on social media. “But this terror will not frighten us or break us.”
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Monday that his forces have increased the intensity of attacks on Ukrainian military facilities.
It wasn’t immediately clear which military facilities he was referring to, as Russia’s recent missile strikes have hit civilian infrastructure.
In the southern city of Odesa, Russian strikes in recent weeks targeted port infrastructure and grain silos, after Moscow broke off an export agreement for Ukrainian grain. Civilian buildings are also regularly hit in the Ukrainian-held part of the southern Kherson region.
Russian shelling Monday also killed a 70-year-old woman in her home in a Kharkiv province village near Izyum, as well as a civilian in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, local authorities said.
In eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk province, one person was reported killed and seven people were injured after Russia shelled 12 cities and villages, according to Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko.
Ukrainian officials didn’t acknowledge Sunday’s drone attacks in the Moscow region. In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy said: “Gradually, the war is returning to the territory of Russia — to its symbolic centers and military bases, and this is an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process.”
China introduced restrictions Monday on the export of long-range civilian drones. Authorities cited the war in Ukraine and concern that drones could be converted for military purposes.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s government is friendly with Moscow, but says it’s neutral in the war. It has been stung by reports that both sides might be using Chinese-made drones for reconnaissance and possibly attacks.
Meanwhile, Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said Monday his Wagner Group is not currently recruiting fighters.
In an audio message published on a Telegram channel associated with the Wagner chief, Prigozhin said the company had suspended recruitment as there is currently “no shortage of personnel.”
Prigozhin previously agreed with Western estimates that he lost more than 20,000 men in the long battle for the Ukrainian city Bakhmut.
Prigozhin last month led a short-lived mutiny against Moscow, demanding a leadership change in the Russian military. In an attempt to control him, Russian authorities insisted that Wagner fighters can only return to Ukraine if they join Russia’s regular army.
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UNITED NATIONS, Aug 30 (Reuters) - A planned United Nations vote on Wednesday to renew approval for a peacekeeping mission in Lebanon has been delayed as France, the United States and the United Arab Emirates argue over the freedom of movement of U.N. troops, diplomats said.
The U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) - established in 1978 - patrols Lebanon's southern border with Israel. The mandate for the operation is renewed annually and its current authorization will expire on Thursday.
The Security Council stalemate comes amid an escalating war of words between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon with each vowing to return the other to the "stone age" and preparing for possible conflict even as they deny seeking one.
France has drafted a U.N. Security Council resolution to extend the peacekeeping mission for another year, but the United States and the United Arab Emirates argue it has weakened some language on the ability of U.N. troops to move freely.
"UNIFIL's freedom of movement is absolutely paramount at a time when tensions in the area are rising to dangerous levels," said a UAE diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council in an Aug. 3 letter, seen by Reuters, that UNIFIL continued to face restrictions to its freedom of movement and delays in access to locations of interest.
"The Mission's ability to conduct patrols and activities independently must be maintained," Guterres wrote.
According to a draft resolution seen by Reuters, France has added language spelling out that peacekeepers should coordinate with the Lebanese government, and deleted text included in last year's council resolution that demanded all parties allow "announced and unannounced patrols" by U.N. troops.
'INK ON PAPER'
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said talks were continuing and that the United States wanted a resolution "that strengthens UNIFIL and provides UNIFIL with what it needs to continue to operate effectively."
The French U.N. mission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
"Lebanon's demands to limit the freedom of oversight and monitoring of UNIFIL personnel regarding what is happening in southern Lebanon are not accepted," Israel's U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan told Israel's Army Radio on Wednesday.
Lebanon's caretaker foreign affairs minister Abdallah Bou Habib has said that the new Security Council resolution should stipulate that UNIFIL coordinate with the Lebanese army.
UNIFIL's mandate was expanded in 2006, following a month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah, to allow peacekeepers to help the Lebanese army keep parts of the south free of weapons or armed personnel other than those of the Lebanese state.
That has sparked friction with Hezbollah, which effectively controls southern Lebanon despite the presence of the Lebanese army. Hezbollah is a heavily armed party that is Lebanon's most powerful political force.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah warned on Monday that even if the Security Council adopted the same language as last year on the freedom of movement of U.N. troops it would "remain ink on paper."
"The people will not allow (it)," he said in a televised address on Monday. "There is no intention to use weapons, but ... people in the south will not allow a decision to be implemented despite the Lebanese government's rejection of it."
In December, an Irish peacekeeper was killed when his UNIFIL vehicle came under fire in southern Lebanon. A Lebanese military tribunal has accused members of Hezbollah of involvement in the killing. Hezbollah has officially denied involvement.
Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Additional reporting by Dan Williams, Laila Bassam and Maya Gebeily; Editing by David Holmes
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | Middle East Politics |
Whole families have been wiped out in Israel's air strikes on the densely populated streets of Gaza, where many Palestinians live in multi-generational homes. Three Palestinians in the UK told the BBC that more than 20 of their relatives had been killed in one blow - and many were still stuck under the rubble.
It was just another lazy, sunny Friday afternoon four years ago when Ahmed al-Naouq snapped this selfie with his family. But he remembers it well, especially now.
Under the shade of olive trees by his father's house, his sisters and brothers got together with their children to eat, play and chat.
Taking a break from running around, the children were ready to eat when Ahmed captured them together. Now, most of them are dead, he says.
They were killed in an air strike which struck the family home on 22 October. In total, 21 people were killed including his father, three sisters, two brothers and 14 of their children.
More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli bombardment, according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry. The air strikes began after the 7 October attack by Hamas, in which Israel says about 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 taken hostage.
Israel says its strategy in Gaza has been to root out Hamas which it accuses of operating in the heart of civilian communities - and that it takes steps to mitigate civilian casualties.
In Ahmed's photo, only seven of the children who were killed appear. Some weren't there that day, some weren't even born.
Like many Palestinians, Ahmed's brothers built their family homes above their father's - a tradition which means generations are being wiped out in one fell swoop.
His sister Aya had gone there to take shelter with her children after her own apartment was damaged by an air strike. His other sisters, Walaa and Alaa, were there too with their children. The house was in the centre of Gaza in the town of Deir al-Balah, an area that had never been targeted before. They thought it was safe.
"I thought it's a scary time for them but they will be OK," Ahmed says, stunned now by his naivety.
Ahmed moved to London four years ago to work for an NGO and hasn't been home since. The last time he saw the children together was by video call. He had been given a bonus and, as part of a family tradition, he promised his nieces and nephews a treat.
"They all said that they want to go to the beach and rent a chalet and have food and dance together and enjoy," he says. So, he hired one and bought them dinner and snacks.
The children called him from the beach that day, fighting over the phone to talk.
So many of them are dead now that Ahmed stumbles as he remembers the names and ages of each one.
His 13-year-old nephew Eslam was the eldest and the one he knew best. Ahmed was a teenager and living at home when Eslam was born. His mum looked after the baby while his sister was at work, so Ahmed often helped to feed and change him.
As Eslam grew older, he said wanted to be like his uncle. He was the top of his class, Ahmed says and working hard at English so that he could also come to the UK.
Eslam was killed alongside his little sisters - Dima who was 10, Tala who was nine, Nour who was five and Nasma who was two, as well as his cousins Raghad (aged 13), Bakr (aged 11), girls Eslam and Sarah who were both nine, Mohamed and Basema who were eight and Abdullah and Tamim who were six.
After the attack, Ahmed posted pictures of each of the children online to let the world know what had happened to them. Among them was three-year-old Omar. The little boy had been in bed with his mum Shimaa and dad Muhammed - Ahmed's brother - when the bomb fell.
Then Ahmed got a call from one of his surviving sisters: Omar was alive. Ahmed's brother Muhammed had been killed but Shimaa and her little boy miraculously survived.
"That was the happiest moment in my life, ever," Ahmed says.
The only other person pulled from the rubble alive was 11-year-old Malak. She was badly injured, with burns over half of her body.
When I met Ahmed, he showed me a picture of Malak in her hospital bed - her body was entirely covered in bandages. At first, I mistook her for a boy because her hair was short. It must have burned in the fire, Ahmed said.
Malak's father wasn't in the house when it was hit and he is alive. But his wife and two other children were killed. When Ahmed messaged him to ask how he was doing, he replied: "A body, no soul."
A week after the bomb, communications from Gaza were almost entirely cut off as Israel escalated its attack, and Ahmed couldn't contact anyone. When the signal was reconnected two days later, he learned that Malak had died.
Medical supplies were dwindling to nothing and the 11-year-old had to be taken off the ICU unit when a more urgent case came in. She was in a lot of pain.
"I died a hundred times every day," her father told Ahmed, as he watched the eldest and last of his three children fade away.
Just before the communication blackout, Ahmed also found out that his uncle's house had been hit. He's still not sure who was killed there. On Tuesday, he also learned that the home of his close friends Maisara and Laura had been hit. Again several generations were killed - Laura survived but Maisara is still missing underneath the rubble.
In all, we spoke to three people in the UK who had each lost more than 20 family members in Gaza.
Darwish al-Manaama told the BBC that 44 of his family died. Among them was his niece Salma and her husband, their four adult children and their grandchild who was barely one.
Darwish found out his family had died from a list sent to him on WhatsApp. After sharing some details, he was too overwhelmed to talk.
More on Israel-Gaza war
Yara Sharif, an architect and academic in London, sent me photos of her aunt's family home which was destroyed in an Israeli strike a week into the war.
"It was a very beautiful house," Yara says, "A beautiful mansion with a big courtyard in the middle." Like Ahmed's family, the sons built apartments for their own families on top of their parents.
Yara found out that 20 of her relatives had been killed on Facebook - her aunt and uncle, her two cousins and their 10 children, as well as six members of the extended family.
Some of their bodies were pulled from the rubble and they appear as numbers on the list of dead released by the Ministry of Health.
Yara sent us a screenshot of the list with a rough red mark by each name and, on the right-hand side, their ages. Sama was 16, Omar and Fahmy were 14-year-old twins, Abdulrahman was 13, Fatima 10, Obaida seven, cousins Aleman and Fatima were both five, Youssef was four and Sarah and Anas were three.
Yara has two cousins left. They asked not to be named, worried by an unsubstantiated rumour that those who speak to the media are being targeted.
The sisters are in different parts of Gaza and can't reach each other to hold a funeral or grieve. And anyway, as Yara's cousin messaged her: "Muhammed's body and Mama's and the two children are still under the rubble."
There is not enough fuel to run excavator machines in Gaza and any that are working are needed to rescue those who are alive.
On Friday, as I sat with Ahmed al-Naouq watching the news, the list of the dead scrolled down the screen. I asked him if his family were on it. "Only 12 of them," he said. The other nine hadn't yet been recovered.
After the bombing, his oldest sister, who was at her own home when it happened, went to visit the ruins. But she told Ahmed she couldn't stay long because she couldn't stand the smell of rotting flesh.
Ahmed struggles to keep in touch with his surviving sisters. Often phones aren't working, and he loses touch with them.
He struggles to find the words in English to describe what he has been feeling since the bombing, saying it feels as if his heart is no longer in his chest. Crying is pointless, he says, because it changes nothing.
"I feel like I can't stand still. I can't sit still. I can't sleep at night," he says. "There's nothing you can do to stop this feeling."
Ahmed says his father was the kindest man he had ever known. He worked hard driving a taxi and in construction to build a home for his children and educate them well. He listened obsessively to the news and believed the only solution to this conflict was a one-state solution, where Jews and Palestinians would live alongside each other in peace.
But thinking of his only surviving nephew, Ahmed wonders: after this war has taken so many people he loves, what will Omar believe?
Additional reporting by Husna Wahid | Middle East Politics |
Ukrainian forces recaptured the village of Piatykhatky in the southern Zaporizhzhia region on Sunday, a local occupying Russian official said.
This is one of Ukraine’s first wins on that front since the start earlier this month of the counteroffensive against Russia’s unlawful invasion of the country.
“The enemy’s ‘wave-like’ offensives yielded results, despite enormous losses,” said Russian-installed official Vladimir Rogov on his Telegram channel, Reuters reported.
The U.K. Defense Ministry said on Sunday that “heavy fighting has continued, with the most intense combat focused in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, western Donetsk Oblast, and around Bakhmut,” the devastated town that was captured by Moscow last month. The ministry added that in all these areas, Ukraine “has made small advances,” but that “Russian forces often conduct relatively effective defensive operations.”
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“Both sides are suffering high casualties, with Russian losses likely the highest since the peak of the battle for Bakhmut in March,” the U.K. ministry said.
The Ukrainian military also said on Sunday that it had destroyed a “significant” ammunition depot near the Russian-occupied port city of Henichesk in the southern region of Kherson.
Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesperson for the Odesa military administration, said “our armed forces dealt a good blow in the morning — and a very loud one — in the village of Rykove, Henichesk district, in the temporarily occupied territory of the Kherson region.” He added that “there was a very significant ammunition depot. It was destroyed,” Reuters reported.
POLITICO could not independently verify the information.
Earlier this month, Ukrainian armed forces launched a counteroffensive to try to regain control of occupied territories in the south and east of the country. Russian President Vladimir Putin predicted on Friday that Ukraine had “no chance” of success in this endeavor.
Just as Kyiv’s counteroffensive was starting, the Nova Kakhovka hydroelectric dam in southern Ukraine was blown up, forcing thousands to flee and restraining the pace of potential advancement by the Ukrainian military. Ukraine said on Sunday that the death toll has risen to 16 following the flooding, while Russian officials said 29 people died in territories controlled by Moscow, Reuters reported.
A New York Times investigation published Friday found evidence suggesting that Russian forces could be responsible for the bombing of the dam.
A delegation of African leaders led by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa met with Putin in St. Petersburg on Saturday to try to spur peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
Putin replied he was ready to review any peace plan proposal, but he poured cold water on the African initiative by listing numerous reasons why the proposed plan wasn’t meeting Russian demands. These include Russia’s right to recognize the independence of the Russian-occupied Donbas region — a red line for Kyiv.
Putin also reiterated his position that Ukraine and its Western allies had started the conflict long before Russia sent its armed forces over the border in February last year, something they deny.
“The special military operation against Ukraine, against the Kiev regime, was launched to ensure the safety of the people of Donbass … Now it is practically a war between Moscow and the collective West,” said Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov, state-controlled TASS news agency reported. | Europe Politics |
American warship, multiple commercial vessels come under attack in Red Sea
An American warship and numerous commercial vessels came under fire in the Red Sea on Sunday, prompting the warship to open fire in self-defense.
The Associated Press first reported news of the assault on Sunday, saying that the attack was claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels. This marks another incident of escalation in the Mideast connected to the Israel-Hamas war, which is approaching two months of fighting.
“We’re aware of reports regarding attacks on the USS Carney and commercial vessels in the Red Sea and will provide information as it becomes available,” a Defense Department official said in a statement to The Hill.
The AP reported that the USS Carney, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, opened fire in self-defense on Sunday in the attack that lasted hours. A defense official told the AP that the Carney responded after a Bahamas-flagged bulk carrier said it was under missile fire. The Carney shot down two drones during the attack, the official said.
The AP said that Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree claimed the attacks but did not mention a U.S. warship being involved in the attack.
“The Yemeni armed forces continue to prevent Israeli ships from navigating the Red Sea (and Gulf of Aden) until the Israeli aggression against our steadfast brothers in the Gaza Strip stops,” Saree said, according to AP. “The Yemeni armed forces renew their warning to all Israeli ships or those associated with Israelis that they will become a legitimate target if they violate what is stated in this statement.”
This is not the first time the U.S. warships have shot down drones in the Red Sea in recent months since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The USS Carney shot down an Iranian-made drone launched from a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen last week, which came after the U.S. military warned Iran over an “unsafe and unprofessional” drone maneuver near the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike group the previous day.
It also comes after the USS Thomas Hudner, also a Navy destroyer, shot down multiple one-way attack drones in the Red Sea.
The U.S. military has increased the number of Navy ships stationed in the Middle East since Oct. 7 as tensions began to rise in the Middle East.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | Middle East Politics |
BAGHDAD, Nov 21 (Reuters) - U.S. forces were attacked at an air base west of Baghdad on Tuesday and a U.S. military aircraft responded in self-defence, killing a number of Iranian-backed militants, U.S. officials said.
Ain al-Asad air base was attacked by a close-range ballistic missile that resulted in eight injuries and minor damage to infrastructure, two U.S. officials said.
The United States responded using an AC-130 aircraft already in the air and it hit an Iranian-backed militia vehicle and a number of personnel involved in the attack, said Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokesperson.
She added that the aircraft was able to determine the point of origin and hit the militants because they were able to keep an eye on their movements.
This is the first public retaliation on Iraqi territory to the recent militant drone and missile attacks on U.S. troops, but Singh said there had been previous responses that had not been announced.
The United States had so far limited its response to the 66 attacks against its forces in Iraq and neighbouring Syria, claimed by Iran-aligned Iraqi militia groups, to three separate sets of strikes in Syria.
At least 62 U.S. personnel have suffered minor injuries or traumatic brain injuries in the attacks.
The attacks began on Oct. 17 and have been linked by Iraqi militia groups to U.S. support for Israel in its bombardment of Gaza following attacks by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel.
The attacks against U.S. targets have ended a year-long unilateral truce that Iraqi factions, some formed in the aftermath of the 2003 U.S. invasion to fight U.S. troops and others in 2014 to fight Islamic State, declared with Washington.
Social media accounts linked to Iran-aligned Iraqi militias published a statement in the name of the "Islamic Resistance in Iraq" mourning a member who they said had been killed in battle against U.S. forces on Tuesday, without elaborating.
His killing is the first reported casualty in Iraq linked to the Gaza war, which has drawn in other factions in Iran's network of regional militias, known as the Axis of Resistance, such as Lebanon's Hezbollah.
The United States has 900 troops in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq on a mission it says aims to advise and assist local forces trying to prevent a resurgence of Islamic State, which in 2014 seized large swaths of both countries before being defeated.
Reporting by Timour Azhari in Baghdad and Phil Stewart and Ali Idrees in Washington; Writing by Timour Azhari; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Alexandra Hudson, Chizu Nomiyama and Mark Porter
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | Middle East Politics |
A number of South American countries have registered diplomatic protests against Israel, in response to its latest conflict with Hamas, with Bolivia’s leftwing government cutting ties entirely and attributing its decision to alleged war crimes and human rights abuses being committed in the Gaza Strip.
The decision by Bolivia was announced at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon by María Nela Prada, a minister in President Luis Arce’s administration. “We demand an end to the attacks on the Gaza Strip which have so far claimed thousands of civilian lives and caused the forced displacement of Palestinians,” the minister told reporters in her country’s de facto capital, La Paz.
Hours later, the governments of Chile and Colombia recalled their ambassadors from Israel, while Brazil’s president criticised the continued airstrikes on Gaza.
Bolivia’s deputy foreign minister, Freddy Mamani Machaca, said the decision represented “a repudiation and condemnation of the aggressive and disproportionate Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip and its threat to international peace and security”.
The move came after the former president Evo Morales called for his country to sever ties with Israel because of the “horrific situation facing the Palestinian people”. Writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, earlier this month, Morales demanded Israel be classified as a “terrorist state” and for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and “his accomplices” be denounced to the international criminal court for genocide and war crimes.
Bolivia previously broke off relations with Israel in 2009 after the county’s invasion of the Gaza Strip but re-established ties in 2020 under the rightwing president Jeanine Áñez.
Colombia’s leftwing president, Gustavo Petro, said on Tuesday he had recalled his ambassador over Israel’s “massacre of the Palestinian people”.
Petro recently likened Israel’s actions to those of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis, drawing a rebuke from Israel’s foreign ministry, which accused him of putting Jewish lives in danger and encouraging “the horrific acts of Hamas terrorists” with his “hostile and antisemitic statements”.
Chile’s president, Gabriel Boric, also announced he had recalled his country’s ambassador in Tel Aviv to discuss the “unacceptable violations of international humanitarian law” he said Israel was committing in Gaza.
Boric said the more than 8,000 civilian victims of Israel’s offensive – many of them them women and children – demonstrated that the military operation represented the “collective punishment of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza”.
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, last week criticised what he called “the insanity of the prime minister of Israel [in] wanting to destroy the Gaza Strip but forgetting that there aren’t just Hamas soldiers there but also women and children who are the big victims of this war”.
“Just because Hamas committed a terrorist act against Israel, it doesn’t mean Israel has to kill millions of innocent people,” Lula added in another interview.
On Tuesday evening, after reports that dozens had been killed by Israeli airstrikes at a refugee camp in northern Gaza, Lula tweeted: “For the first time, we are witnessing a war in which the majority of the dead are children … Stop! For the love of God, stop!” | Latin America Politics |
Human rights abuses are still being committed in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region more than 10 months after a ceasefire formally ended the bloody civil war, according to a group of UN experts.
The latest report by the UN’s International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia said the nation’s government was failing to protect its citizens from “grave and ongoing” human rights abuses being committed by militias and Eritrean troops, who fought alongside Ethiopia’s federal military and remain in border areas of Tigray.
These human rights abuses include sexual and gender-based violence “abetted or tolerated” by the Ethiopian government, according to the report, which was released on Monday.
It said a “transitional justice” process initiated by Ethiopia’s government did not meet international standards and expressed alarm over recent increases in violence in Oromia and Amhara, Ethiopia’s two most populous regions.
The failure to implement a meaningful justice process was fostering a culture of impunity and heightening the risk of future atrocities, said the experts, who noted rising online hate speech in Ethiopia against ethnic and political groups and LGBT people.
“The conflict in Tigray, still not resolved in any comprehensive peace, continues to produce misery,” the report said.
“Equally alarming, hostilities in Ethiopia are now at a national scale, with significant violations particularly in [the] Amhara region, but also ongoing in Oromia and elsewhere.
“The risk to the state, as well as regional stability and the enjoyment of human rights in east Africa, cannot be overstated,” it said.
The conflict in Tigray, which erupted in November 2020 and spilled over into other regions of Ethiopia, was one of the bloodiest of recent times. It is believed to have killed hundreds of thousands of people and was characterised by massacres and rape.
About 5.4 million of Tigray’s population of 6 million still rely on humanitarian assistance, although food aid to the war-battered region has been paused since mid-March, after the uncovering of a huge, nationwide scheme by officials to steal donated grain. Food aid to the whole of Ethiopia has been on hold since June.
A previous report by the UN human rights body found that all sides had committed violations during the war, many of them amounting to war crimes. It also concluded that the government had used hunger as a weapon.
An Ethiopian government spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on the latest report. Ethiopian officials have previously denounced the UN commission as politically motivated, blocked its investigators and tried to defund it.
The commission’s mandate expires in December. It is not clear whether the UN Human Rights Council will renew it for another year during its current session, which lasts until 6 October.
The US and EU suspended aid worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Ethiopia during the war, citing human rights violations. They said accountability for these crimes was a precondition for restoring this support and normalising relations.
The US also imposed sanctions on individuals involved in abuses, which were renewed by President Joe Biden this month.
However, there are fears that EU officials may drop their demands for accountability and not call for the renewal of the UN human rights commission. The bloc is keen to shore up diplomatic relations with Ethiopia after the Ukraine war reignited a scramble for influence in Africa between Russia and the west. | Human Rights |
The United Nations deputy secretary-general said Monday that the organization plans to arrange a conference in the coming days to discuss granting recognition to Afghanistan's Taliban, stressing the need for engagement with the fundamentalist authorities.
Amina Mohammed's remarks come as the reclusive Taliban chief, Hibatullah Akhundzada, renewed his resolve Tuesday to achieve his goal of "the religious and moral reform of the [Afghan] society" through the vigorous implementation of Islamic law, or Shariah.
Mohammed told an audience at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs that the international meeting would bring envoys for Afghanistan from around the world to the table, among others.
"What we are hoping is that we'll gather them now in another two weeks in the region, and they will have that first meeting of envoys across the board — the region and internationally — with the secretary-general for the first time," she said.
"And out of that, we hope that we'll find those baby steps to put us back on the pathway to recognition [of the Taliban], a principled recognition," Mohammed said. "Is it possible? I don't know. [But] that discussion has to happen. The Taliban clearly want recognition, and that's the leverage we have."
The top U.N. official visited Afghanistan in January and discussed with Taliban leaders the sweeping curbs the fundamentalist authorities have imposed on women's freedom of work and movement since taking control of the strife-torn nation.
The restrictions have effectively blocked women and girls' access to work and education beyond 6th grade across the country. Afghan female staff have been banned from working for the U.N. and nongovernmental aid groups.
Mohammed said the Taliban maintain they have enacted several laws to deter gender-based violence and to give more inheritance rights to women, among others, besides eliminating corruption in Afghanistan.
"But I don't have any engagement that the international community will allow me to have to know whether they are implementing it or not," she said.
Mohammed said engagement with the Taliban would help to hold them accountable for their actions. "We cannot allow that they continue to get worse, which is what happens when you don't engage," she said.
She noted that the Taliban are becoming stronger because neighboring countries are engaging with them economically to ensure Afghanistan does not plunge into chaos and implode from within.
"There are trade surpluses with Afghanistan today. There's the banking system that's put in place for Afghanistan today, and we still say there are sanctions. So, we either engage and pull them to the right side, or we don't and see where it drifts. We must dine with the devil with [a] long spoon," she said.
Mohammed said the U.N. told its Afghan female staff to work from home while it negotiates with the Taliban for the removal of the ban on women. She added that female employees could work from home and earn a salary.
"Please treat the Taliban like COVID. We don't know what they're going to do or how they're going to react. … But I know three or four [women] are picked up, and maybe I wouldn't see them again. I am not going to risk any one Afghan woman to people we know are unpredictable," she said.
Mohammed did not share further details about the date or venue of the proposed envoys’ conference.
Former U.S. envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad tweeted Tuesday that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will host the meeting in Doha, Qatar, on May 1.
Khalilzad wrote that Guterres and the envoys "should have a session with the Taliban during their deliberations" to develop a "roadmap" that must address the issue of Afghan women’s education and employment.
The Taliban waged a deadly insurgency for almost two decades. They reclaimed power in August 2021 from the then-internationally backed Afghan government as the United States and NATO troops withdrew.
The international community has refused to give the Taliban legitimacy, citing human rights concerns, particularly the restrictions on women.
In his statement Tuesday in connection with the three-day Eid al-Fitr festival later this week, Akhundzada lauded "reforms" in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover.
"Significant reform measures have been taken in culture, education, economy, media and other fields, and the bad intellectual and moral effects of the 20-year occupation are about to finish,” he said.
The Taliban chief referred to the U.S.-led Western military intervention in Afghanistan and its former Afghan allied government in Kabul. Akhundzada has rejected calls for lifting bans on women, saying it is an internal Afghan matter and should be respected by all sides.
The Taliban takeover prompted Washington and other Western nations to suspend economic aid to Afghanistan, impose financial and banking sector sanctions, and strictly enforce long-running curbs on the Taliban to press them to ease restrictions on women and combat terrorism.
Billions of dollars in Afghan central bank foreign reserves have also been blocked. However international humanitarian aid has continued to flow into the country.
The international restrictions have pushed the Afghan economy to the brink and exacerbated humanitarian conditions in a country where the U.N. estimates that more than 28 million people — two-thirds of the population — require urgent aid.
A study released Tuesday by the U.N. Development Program warned that the Taliban edicts restricting the rights of women and girls would worsen Afghanistan’s economy and may also affect the level of aid inflows.
“The development of Afghanistan is the responsibility of Afghans. We should not rely on others. Rather, with courage and enthusiasm, we should build this country and provide all possible conveniences to the people," Akhundzada said in his Eid message. | Asia Politics |
An American is reportedly being detained in North Korea for the first time in five years after a soldier "willfully and without authorisation" crossed the border from South Korea.
US authorities say the soldier fled across the heavily armed border into North Korea after serving nearly two months in a South Korean prison.
Let's take a look at what we know so far.
What do we know about the US soldier?
Private 2nd Class Travis King had finished serving time in prison in South Korea for assault.
He was released on July 10 and was being sent home on Monday.
Back in Texas he could have faced additional military disciplinary actions and discharge from the service.
The army released his name and limited information after his family was notified of the incident.
According to US Army spokesman Bryce Dubee, King is a cavalry scout who joined the service in January 2021.
He was in Korea as a cavalry scout with the 1st Armored Division.
King's mother told US-based ABC News she was shocked when she heard her son had crossed into North Korea.
"I can't see Travis doing anything like that," Claudine Gates said.
She said she last heard from her son "a few days ago," when he told her he would return soon to Fort Bliss, Texas. She added she just wants "him to come home".
How did he come to cross the border?
It is not clear how he got to the border.
Two US officials say he was transported by the US military to the airport to return to his home unit in the United States.
He had already passed alone through security to his gate and then, for whatever reason, decided to flee, according to a US official.
Instead of getting on the plane, he left the airport and later joined a tour of the Korean border village of Panmunjom.
He bolted across the border, which is lined with guards and often crowded with tourists, on Tuesday afternoon local time in Korea.
A person who says they were part of the same tour group was quoted by CBS News saying they had just visited one of the buildings at the site when "this man gives out a loud 'ha ha ha,' and just runs in between some buildings".
It is also not clear how he spent the hours between leaving the airport on Monday and crossing the border a day later.
What's it like on the border?
Low-slung buildings, blue huts and sombre soldiers dot the border village of Panmunjom.
The village is inside the 248-kilometer-long demilitarised zone or DMZ which is the swath of land between North and South Korea.
The DMZ is lined with observation posts on both sides.
Soldiers watch the border and each other carefully for any signs of transgression.
Tours to the southern side of Panmunjom reportedly drew around 100,000 visitors a year before the COVID pandemic.
South Korea's Unification Ministry says all tours to Panmunjom have been cancelled indefinitely on the request of the UN Command which oversees security for the area.
The State Department tells US nationals not to enter North Korea "due to the continuing serious risk of arrest and long-term detention of US nationals."
The most famous incident at Panmunjom happened in August 1976, when two American army officers were killed by axe-wielding North Korean soldiers.
The US officers had been sent to trim a 12-metre tree that obstructed the view from a checkpoint.
The attack prompted Washington to fly nuclear-capable B-52 bombers toward the DMZ to intimidate North Korea.
How has the US responded?
The American-led UN Command says King is believed to be in North Korean custody.
The command is working with its North Korean counterparts to resolve the incident.
North Korea's state media didn't immediately report on the border crossing.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says they are "closely monitoring and investigating the situation".
Mr Austin says it is a developing situation and updates will be provided as they come to hand.
It is not known whether and how the US and North Korea, which have no diplomatic relations, will hold talks.
In the past, Sweden, which has an embassy in Pyongyang, provided consular services for other Americans detained in North Korea.
But its embassy's Swedish diplomatic staff reportedly have not returned to North Korea since the country imposed a COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020 and ordered out all foreigners.
Some observers say North Korea and the US could still communicate via Panmunjom or the North Korean mission at the UN in New York.
How long could he be detained for?
It is unclear, but analysts say the incident could be valuable propaganda for North Korea.
"Historically, the North holds these folks for weeks, if not months, for propaganda purposes (especially if this is a US soldier) before a coerced confession and apology," Victor Cha, who is a Korea expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies says.
"It also sometimes requires an American official or ex-official to travel there to obtain the release.
"Having high-level White House officials on the ground in Seoul …. might expedite this, if the North is willing to talk to them."
In the past, the US, South Korea and others have accused North Korea of using foreign detainees to wrest diplomatic concessions.
Some foreigners have said after their release that their declarations of guilt were coerced while in North Korean custody.
What's happened when other Americans have crossed the border?
The last American who tried to defect to North Korea was denied and returned.
In 2014, Arturo Pierre Martinez entered North Korea and gave a news conference there denouncing US policy.
Jenny Town, a director of Washington-based North Korea monitoring project 38 North, says it is important that the soldier seemingly went to North Korea voluntarily.
"This isn't a case of arrest, but whether North Korea will accept him as a defector," she says.
During the Cold War, there was a small number of US soldiers who went to North Korea, including Charles Jenkins.
He deserted his army post in South Korea in 1965 and fled across the DMZ.
He appeared in North Korean propaganda films.
In recent years, some American civilians have been arrested in North Korea after allegedly entering the country from China.
They were later convicted of espionage, subversion and other anti-state acts, but were often released after the US sent high-profile missions to secure their freedom.
What about other Americans detained in North Korea?
American university student Otto Warmbier died in 2017 days after he was released by North Korea in a coma after 17 months in captivity.
Warmbier and other previous American detainees in North Korea were imprisoned over a variety of alleged crimes, including subversion, anti-state activities and spying.
In May 2018, North Korea released three American detainees – Kim Dong Chul, Tony Kim and Kim Hak Song.
Their release was during a short-lived period of warm relations between the two countries.
Later in 2018, North Korea said it expelled American Bruce Byron Lowrance.
Since his ouster, there have been no reports of other Americans detained in North Korea before Tuesday's incident.
What's the relationship like between US and North Korea?
The incident comes at a time of high tensions as the pace of both the North's weapons demonstrations and joint military training between US and South Korea have intensified.
North Korea has been testing increasingly powerful missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
This includes a new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile that launched last week.
According to Japan's and South Korea's militaries North Korea launched two ballistic missiles eastward early on Wednesday.
This was just hours after a US ballistic missile submarine arrived in a South Korean port for the first time in four decades.
Both of the missiles appeared to have fallen outside Japan's exclusive economic zone, the Japanese Defence Ministry said.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) called on the North to cease such launches.
The US military said it was aware of the missile launches and was consulting closely with its allies and partners.
The launches do not appear to pose an immediate threat to the United States or to its allies.
However, the US Indo-Pacific Command says the events highlight the destabilising impact of North Korea's illicit weapons program.
ABC/ wires | Asia Politics |
WASHINGTON -- A Russian fighter jet flew very close to a U.S. surveillance aircraft over Syria, forcing it to go through the turbulent wake and putting the lives of the four American crew members in danger, U.S. officials said Monday.
The officials said the incident, which happened just before noon EDT on Sunday, was a significant escalation in what has been a string of encounters between U.S. and Russian aircraft in Syria in recent weeks. The intercept by the Russian Su-35 impeded the U.S. crew’s ability to safely operate their MC-12 aircraft, the officials said, calling it a new level of unsafe behavior that could result in an accident or loss of life.
In recent weeks, Russian fighter jets have repeatedly harassed U.S. unmanned MQ-9 drones, but the latest incident raised alarms because it endangered American lives.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of a military operation, would not say how close the Russian jet got to the U.S. warplane. The MC-12, which is a twin-engine turboprop aircraft routinely used by special operations forces, was doing surveillance in support of operations against the Islamic State groups in Syria, the officials said.
On multiple occasions in the past two weeks, Russian fighter jets flew dangerously close to MQ-9 Reapers, setting off flares and forcing the drones to take evasive maneuvers. U.S. and Russian military officers communicate frequently over a deconfliction phone line during the encounters, protesting the other side's actions.
The U.S. is considering a number of military options to address the increasing Russian aggression in the skies over Syria, which complicated efforts to strike an Islamic State group leader earlier this month, according to a senior defense official. The U.S. was eventually able to launch a strike and kill the militant.
The official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations, declined to detail the options under consideration, but said the U.S. will not cede any territory and will continue to fly in the western part of the country on anti-Islamic State missions.
The Russian military activity, which has increased in frequency and aggression since March, stems from growing cooperation and coordination between Moscow, Tehran and the Syrian government to try to pressure the U.S. to leave Syria.
There are about 900 U.S. forces in the country, and others move in and out to conduct missions targeting Islamic State group militants. | Middle East Politics |
The government has not ruled out making changes to superannuation tax concessions in the coming May budget, the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, says.
He said on Wednesday the government “hasn’t determined” whether it should change its position on the scheme.
Imposing a cap on super balances to which tax breaks still apply is something the government is “clearly” thinking about, the assistant treasurer, Stephen Jones, said.
“We haven’t formed a view – a final view on that yet,” Jones told the ABC. “I’m not going to say we’re not thinking about it, clearly we are.”
The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) raised the prospect of a $5m cap on tax concessions on super in its pre-budget submission.
Caps are one of the issues under discussion since Chalmers raised the cost of the superannuation tax concessions to the budget in a speech to fund managers on Monday, making the point the scheme was about to cost more than the aged pension.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, backed the need to have a “conversation”, despite attacks from the opposition on “broken promises”, given Albanese and Chalmers had said during the election campaign there were no planned changes to the tax concessions.
Chalmers, speaking to ABC radio, denied the government had broken an election promise.
“I do genuinely believe that governments of either political persuasion should acknowledge the various costs and pressures on the budget at a time when we’ve got a lot of debt, where we need to fund decent aged care and decent health care and decent national security,” he said.
“At a time like that we need to acknowledge where some of these pressures lie. We haven’t changed our view. We haven’t taken any decisions, but we should be up for a national conversation about the future of some of these concessions which cost the budget a lot of money.”
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Asked if there would be changes in the May budget, or if the government believed it would need an election mandate, Chalmers said: “We haven’t changed our view. We haven’t taken any decisions in this area.”
Asked another three times, Chalmers gave different versions of the same answer: “We haven’t decided to do that; we haven’t changed our position on that,” but when asked if he believed the government should change its position, Chalmers said: “We haven’t determined that.”
Jones said the government was asking people to consider what a “reasonable contribution” from taxpayers was to assist in building retirement savings.
“Let me be very clear – this is not about the government saying to people ‘you can’t save more than $5m, $10m, $100m for their retirement,’” he said. “That’s not what we’re saying.
“We’re saying ‘what is a reasonable contribution that the Australian taxpayer through the budget should be making to assisting people to save for retirement incomes?’ To put that in context, the average retirement balance, the average superannuation fund balance at retirement is around about $150,000. That’s a long, long way from $100m.”
Jones confirmed no decision had been made, but key members of the Senate crossbench have expressed their support for discussions.
Treasury will release the latest tax expenditure statement at the end of the month, which will outline lost revenue to the budget in concessions, including the superannuation scheme.
Chalmers will hand down his second budget in May. | Australia Politics |
Almost 25 years ago, when Jörg Haider’s far-right populist Freedom party (FPÖ) won just under 27% of the vote and entered government in Austria, the shock waves reverberated around Europe. Diplomatic visits were cancelled and punitive measures imposed.
Not long after, when Jean-Marie Le Pen of France’s National Front (now National Rally or RN) reached the presidential runoff, the eventual winner, Jacques Chirac, refused even to debate with the far-right leader, so abhorrent – and abnormal – were his views.
But now across western Europe, far-right parties are advancing: climbing steadily up the polls, shaping the policies of the mainstream right to reflect nativist and populist platforms, and occupying select ministerial roles in coalition governments.
Giorgia Meloni, whose party has neofascist roots, is prime minister of Italy, and Spain’s far-right Vox, after recently doubling its regional and local vote, could soon be sharing power nationally.
The far right is part of the new coalition government in Finland and, in exchange for key policy concessions, is propping up another in Sweden. Back in Austria, the FPÖ is comfortably ahead in the polls, roughly a year from the next election.
In a “watershed moment” in the Germany’s politics, the country’s far-right AfD has just won its first district council election, after surging in the past year from 10% to 20% and into second place in the polls, ahead of the centre-left SPD.
In Greece, a trio of little-known hard-right and nativist parties won parliamentary seats in Sunday’s elections. They included the three-week-old Spartans, backed, from his prison cell, by a leading light of the now defunct neo-Nazi Golden Dawn.
“They are all different, and the cultures and political systems they operate in are all different,” said Catherine Fieschi, director of policy at Open Society Foundations Europe and an expert on populism, authoritarianism and the far right.
“But after every crisis, we have told ourselves that the populists and far right are waning in Europe, and the fact is they have been rising more or less steadily, with a few interruptions, since the 1980s. They are really now a part of the landscape.”
What’s more, Europe’s increasingly fragmented and polarised politics means “a 48/52 split basically turns these parties into kingmakers. That’s what happened in the Nordics, will probably happen in Spain, [and] could happen in France,” Fieschi said.
“In Italy and Austria there are additional factors – a far right that was never really rejected postwar, disenchantment with a system that feels rigged and inefficient – and in Germany, it’s all about the east and the weakness of the current coalition.”
For long, opposition to immigration, Islam and the EU were what united Europe’s far-right parties. New causes have now also emerged: the culture wars, minority rights, the climate crisis and the unfair sacrifices that governments insist will be needed to combat it.
Their appeal has been further enhanced by the cost of living crisis flowing from pandemic recovery and Russia’s war on Ukraine; by rapid and confusing social and digital change and, everywhere, by mounting mistrust of the mainstream.
But behind the surge, there also lies a two-way process of normalisation: as the centre right increasingly adopts far-right talking points and opens itself up for deals, smart far-right parties moderate some of their more voter-repellent views.
From Italy to Finland, much of Europe’s centre right is as hardline on immigration as the far right, while far-right parties are busy projecting economic discipline, dialling back on Euroscepticism and downplaying past support for Russia.
“The far right’s rise has coincided with the decline of a certain kind of left,” Fieschi said. “Far-right parties now seem like a reasonable vote for many of the people who in previous circumstances would have voted for a popular, protective left.”
What has changed, she said, is that we live “in the era of control. The Brexiters got that. The left may promise protection, but the far right promises order and control. It can’t necessarily deliver it – but it speaks more to people’s individual and cultural fears.”
Italy
Giorgia Meloni became western Europe’s first far-right postwar prime minister after her Brothers of Italy won nearly 26% of the vote in September elections (up from 4% in 2018) and she successfully formed a coalition with Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Matteo Salvini’s anti-migrant League, both of which scored more than 8%. Her strategy since has been focused on normalisation – economic orthodoxy, support for Ukraine, good relations with Brussels – while quietly prosecuting her culture war at home.
Spain
Founded almost a decade ago, the nationalist Catholic-conservative Vox is now the third-largest party in Spain’s national assembly and last month doubled its vote in regional and municipal elections, striking deals with the centre-right People’s party (PP) to rule the Valencia region and several big Spanish cities in coalitions. Polls suggest the PP will win next month’s snap general election but fall short of an absolute majority and the prospect of it seeking Vox’s support to form a government is looking increasingly likely.
France
Marine Le Pen scored a record 41.46% in last year’s presidential election, and her far-right National Rally (RN) went on to win 89 of the 577 seats in parliament, an 11-fold increase. As the biggest single opposition party, it is striving to show discipline and responsibility in an effort to further sanitise its image and bury longstanding accusations of racism and xenophobia. Sidestepping its traditional France-for-the-French agenda, it says it has only one objective: the “concrete improvement of French people’s lives”. Four years out from the next presidential election, polls have suggested Le Pen would win a runoff held today.
The Netherlands
Three nationalist populist parties – Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam Freedom party (PVV); the libertarian, conspiracist and pro-Russian Forum for Democracy (FvD) of Thierry Baudet; and its supposedly more moderate offshoot, JA21 – hold 28 of the Dutch parliament’s 150 seats. The meteoric rise in provincial elections this year of a new populist party, the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), which fights government environmental policies, underlined the fragmented and febrile nature of Dutch politics in the run up to national elections, due by March 2025.
Germany
Sunday’s district election win by the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in eastern Germany could herald the end of the longstanding “firewall” thrown up by a united mainstream against the far-right party. Experts say the anti-AfD front is crumbling, at least at a local level in disgruntled eastern Germany, and the party now believes it can win state elections due next year in Thuringia, Brandenburg and Saxony. Opinion polls suggest that at the national level – faced with inflation, recession, rising refugee numbers and a fractious coalition government – voters favour the xenophobic, anti-Islam AfD more than the chancellor, Olaf Scholz’s, Social Democrats.
Austria
One of Europe’s oldest far-right movements, the Freedom party (FPÖ), founded in 1956 and first led by a former Nazi functionary and SS officer, is polling at 28%, five points clear of the centre-right ÖVP with which it first entered government after the 1999 elections, and six ahead of the centre-left SPÖ. Its past record and outspoken pro-Moscow views may, however, make it difficult for the party to form a coalition even if it wins next year’s vote. As with neighbouring Hungary, support for Russia remains – for the time being beyond the western European pale.
Finland
The influence of the far-right Finns party in Finland’s new four-party coalition government – the most rightwing in the country’s history – is clear: cutting refugee quotas, raising the bar for work-based immigration, making citizenship harder to obtain and establishing separate benefit systems for immigrants and permanent residents. Experts have said the prime minister, Petteri Orpo of the centre-right National Coalition party – which has 48 seats in parliament to the Finns’ 46 – took a hard line on immigration in order to gain support for €6bn of spending cuts.
Sweden
After a narrow win by the rightwing bloc in elections last September, the conservative Moderates formed a minority coalition with two other centre-right parties that relies – in exchange for a say in policy – on the parliamentary backing of the far-right Sweden Democrats: the first time the nativist party, which won 20.5% of the vote, has had direct input in a government programme. Long unthinkable, the decision to include the far right in policymaking has produced radical changes in Sweden’s approach to law and order, asylum, immigration and integration.
Britain
The far right may not be formally represented in Westminster, but analysts argue that populism, nativism and cultural conservatism have long dictated certain centre-right policy positions. They cite nationalist sloganeering by government ministers and Conservative MPs before and since the Brexit referendum; an immigration policy – and related rhetoric – that are arguably tougher than those of any continental European government; and an unabashed “war on woke”. | Europe Politics |
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KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — The Sudanese army said Saturday it was coordinating efforts to evacuate foreign citizens and diplomats from Sudan on military aircraft, as the bloody fighting that has engulfed the vast African nation entered its second week.
Army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan said he would facilitate the evacuation of American, British, Chinese and French citizens and diplomats from Sudan after speaking with the leaders of several countries that had requested help. The prospect has vexed officials as most major airports have become battlegrounds and movement out of the capital, Khartoum, has proven intensely dangerous.
Burhan “agreed to provide the necessary assistance to secure such evacuations for various countries,” Sudan’s military said.
Questions have swirled over how the mass rescues of foreign citizens would unfold, with Sudan’s main international airport closed and millions of people sheltering indoors. As battles between the Sudanese army led by Burhan and a rival powerful paramilitary group rage in and around Khartoum, including in residential areas, foreign countries have struggled to repatriate their citizens — many trapped in their homes as food supplies dwindle.
READ MORE: What sparked the violent conflict to control the future of Sudan?
The White House would not confirm the Sudanese military’s announcement. “We have made very clear to both sides that they are responsible for ensuring the protection of civilians and noncombatants,” the National Security Council said. On Friday, the U.S. said it had no plans for a government-coordinated evacuation of the estimated 16,000 American citizens trapped in Sudan.
Saudi Arabia announced the successful repatriation of some of its citizens on Saturday, sharing footage of Saudi nationals and other foreigners welcomed with chocolate and flowers as they stepped off an apparent evacuation ship at the Saudi port of Jeddah.
Officials did not elaborate on exactly how the rescue unfolded but Burhan said the Saudi diplomats and nationals had first traveled by land to Port Sudan, the country’s main seaport on the Red Sea. He said that Jordan’s diplomats would soon be evacuated in the same way. The port is in Sudan’s far east, some 840 kilometers (520 miles) from Khartoum.
In a security alert, the U.S. Embassy in Sudan said it had “incomplete information about significant convoys departing Khartoum traveling towards Port Sudan” and that the situation remained dangerous. “Traveling in any convoy is at your own risk,” it said.
With the U.S. focused on evacuating diplomats first, the Pentagon said it was moving additional troops and equipment to a Naval base in the tiny Gulf of Aden nation of Djibouti to prepare for the effort.
WATCH: Civilians caught in crossfire as rival factions battle for control of Sudan
Burhan told Saudi-owned TV station Al-Hadath on Saturday that flights in and out of Khartoum remained risky because of the ongoing clashes. He claimed that the military had regained control over all the other airports in the country, except for one in the southwestern city of Nyala.
“We share the international community’s concern about foreign nationals,” he said. “Living conditions are deteriorating.”
In a separate interview with Saudi-owned Al Arabiya satellite channel, Burhan promised Sudan would provide “necessary airports and safe passageways” for foreigners trapped in the fighting, without elaborating.
Even as the warring sides said Friday they’d agreed to a cease-fire for the three-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, explosions and gunfire rang out across Khartoum on Saturday. Two cease-fire attempts earlier this week also rapidly collapsed. The turmoil has dealt a perhaps fatal blow to hopes for the country’s transition to a civilian-led democracy and raised concerns the chaos could draw in its neighbors, including Chad, Egypt and Libya.
“The war has been continuous since day one. It has not stopped for one moment,” said Atiya Abdalla Atiya, secretary of the Sudanese Doctors’ Syndicate, which monitors casualties. The clashes have killed over 400 people so far, according to the World Health Organization. The bombardments, gunbattles and sniper fire in densely populated areas have hit civilian infrastructure, including many hospitals.
The international airport near the center of the capital has come under heavy shelling as the paramilitary group, known as the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, has tried to take control of the compound. In an apparent effort to oust the RSF fighters, the Sudanese army has pounded the airport with airstrikes, gutting at least one runway and leaving wrecked planes scattered on the tarmac. The full extent of damage at the airfield remains unclear.
The conflict has opened a dangerous new chapter in Sudan’s history, thrusting the country into uncertainty.
“No one can predict when and how this war will end,” Burhan told Al-Hadath. “I am currently in the command center and will only leave it in a coffin.”
The current explosion of violence came after Burhan and the chief of the RSF, Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, fell out over a recent internationally brokered deal with democracy activists that was meant to incorporate the RSF into the military and eventually lead to civilian rule.
The rival generals rose to power in the tumultuous aftermath of popular uprisings that led to the ouster of Sudan’s longtime ruler, Omar al-Bashir, in 2019. Two years later, they joined forces to seize power in a coup that ousted the civilian leaders.
Both the military and RSF have a long history of human rights abuses. The RSF was born out of the Janjaweed militias, which were accused of atrocities in crushing a rebellion in Sudan’s western Darfur region in the early 2000s.
Many Sudanese fear that despite the generals’ repeated promises, the violence will only escalate as tens of thousands of foreign citizens try to leave.
“We are sure both sides of fighting are more careful about foreign lives than the lives of Sudanese citizens,” Atiya said.
Associated Press writers Isabel DeBre in Jerusalem and Fay Abuelgasim in Beirut contributed to this report.
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The death toll in Gaza is rising as Israel presses on with its war against Hamas, following the attacks on 7 October in which 1,400 people were killed in Israel.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 9,000 people have been killed since the war began.
Because of safety concerns, there are relatively few journalists in Gaza to document the human cost of the fighting.
But the BBC has been speaking to a number of families and eyewitnesses who have told us stories of loved ones who have been killed in recent days.
Yusof Abu Mousa
With serious power supply issues in the Gaza Strip, Yusof and his two older siblings - sister Jury, 13, and nine-year-old brother Hamed - felt quite lucky.
Their father, Mohamed Abu Musa, a radiographer at the Nasser hospital in the city of Khan Younis, had installed solar panels at their house, so the children could watch their favourite cartoons on TV.
They were settling down in front of the television on 15 October when, their father says, their home was hit by an Israeli air strike.
Jury and Hamed somehow survived, but Yusof was killed when the roof of their house collapsed.
He was seven years old.
Mohamed was working a 24-hour shift at the hospital when his wife, Rawan, entered, screaming in search for their youngest son.
She had been able to find Hamed, while rescue teams helped pull Jury out of the rubble. Jury had suffered head injuries but her parents say she is "improving".
A video showing Rawan asking at the hospital for her "handsome and curly-haired son" circulated widely on social media. But Mohamed would later find his son's body in the hospital morgue.
"The last time I saw Yusof alive was when he ran to hug me on the doorstep of our home, just before I left for work," Mohamed recalls.
"He kissed me and said goodbye after I had given him some biscuits and bananas. He wanted to be a doctor, maybe because he always saw me going to hospital for work."
Dr Midhat Saidam
On the evening of 15 October, Dr Saidam needed a rest. The 47-year-old surgeon had not left the al-Shifa hospital, in Gaza City for more than week.
He told his colleagues he was going home for the night. But a few hours later he was killed in a strike at his home.
"This calm, funny and kind-hearted man came back to the hospital the next morning, but as a lifeless body," his colleague Dr Adnan Albursh explained.
Dr Albursh, who had known the surgeon for more than 20 years, added that his late colleague had been nicknamed "the relentless surgeon" by his peers for his dedication to the job.
A veteran of the operating room, Dr Saidam was also known as a great mentor to younger doctors.
"If any of the doctors faced any difficulties, they knew Dr Saidam was the one who would sort it out," agreed Dr Ahmed El Mokhallalati, the head of the plastic surgery department at al-Shifa Hospital.
"His death is a huge loss not only to this hospital but also to the medical profession," he added.
Nour Yousef al-Kharma
Seventeen-year-old student Nour was killed on 11 October when an Israeli air strike hit her family home in the town of Deir al-Balah, 14km south of Gaza City, according to her uncle.
Mohammed al-Kharma said his niece wanted to relocate because of the bombing and stay with relatives elsewhere.
"Her father asked her to stay in her house, which was bombed the very next morning. It was her fate," he said.
Nour was killed alongside her nephew Yazan. The pair had been playing in the living room. Her elder sisters, Ola, and Huda, who were preparing breakfast with their mother, Jamalat, survived.
Nour was in her last year of high school and always wanted to be a doctor. Her uncle said his family pulled her school bag from under the rubble. It contained books and a diary, and in one of the pages she had written: "I want to make my family proud of me and I will get high grades by the will of Allah."
Lurin Azzam Abuhalima
In her last communication with her fiance Khaled al-Masry, Lurin said she was exhausted from moving from place to place in search of safety from the war. The 30-year-old had just arrived at the Nusairat refugee camp, in the centre of the Gaza Strip, to stay with her aunt.
Lurin had survived two strikes, including one on 16 October that flattened the building where she lived with her parents in Gaza City.
"She told me she was going to have a shower, pray and rest," Khaled recalls.
According to her fiance, who lives and works in Cyprus, she was praying in a room when the house she was in was hit.
"She was killed while she was praying," he says.
Lurin and Khaled had postponed their wedding a couple of times due to the unstable situation in Gaza.
They were planning finally to get married in December and move to Cyprus.
A devastated Khaled said: "She is now resting forever. She used to wear a white dress, but now is wearing a white shroud."
Fekriya Hassan Abdul A'al
People in Gaza City's Radwan district who needed women's formal clothing would head straight to Fekriya Hassan Abdul A'al's place.
"I remember when we used to have our house full of brides-to-be and bridesmaids who would come to my mother's place to have a fitting. She was exceptionally talented," Fekriya's daughter Nevine says.
The 65-year-old tailor was killed along with two of her siblings, two of her children and two of her grandchildren, after the house they were sheltering in was hit by an air strike on 23 October.
Nevine, who was taking cover at a friend's house, says that Fekriya was devoted to her family and would host large weekly gatherings. But Nevine says her mood had been severely affected by the escalation in the conflict: "She told me in our last phone call: 'I'm very depressed and exhausted from what seems to be an endless war'."
Mazen and Ahmed Abu Assi
Brothers Mazen, 17 and Ahmed, 13 were among those killed by the explosion at the al-Ahli Hospital on 17 October.
Palestinian officials say the blast was caused by an Israeli air strike. But the Israeli military say it was the result of a failed rocket launch by Palestinian Islamic Jihad - an accusation the group rejected.
Arafat Abu Massi, the father of Mazen and Ahmed, said the two brothers were "very close to each other" but had very different personalities.
Arafat and his wife had undergone IVF therapy for eight years to have Mazen, who was at high school and wanted to become a dentist. "He was the brightest of all my children," he says. While Ahmed was described by his father as "the strongest and bravest in the family" - and the entrepreneurial one.
"He used to sell toys and school supplies in a small booth near our house," Arafat said.
His only remaining child now is three-year-old Faraj, who, according to Arafat, keeps crying and asking where his siblings are. "I told him that God has chosen them to stay in heaven. That is a better place for my two young smart gentlemen."
Salam Mema
Salam Mema, a 32-year-old Palestinian journalist, was killed on 10 October when her house in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza, was hit by an Israeli air strike, her friend told the BBC.
Her husband, their two-year-old daughter Sham, their seven-year-old son Hadi, and other members of the family, were also killed, leaving their five-year-old son Ali as the sole survivor.
As of 31 October, Salam was one of 31 journalists confirmed killed on both sides, since the Israel-Hamas conflict began.
Safaa Nezar Hassouna
The 26-year-old pharmacist was killed in an air strike in the southern city of Rafah, on 17 October.
She was sleeping beside her three-month-old baby girl Elyana, and her husband.
Safaa's uncle and a retired medical doctor based in the UK, Omar Hassouna, said her parents managed to survive the strike but are in shock and devastated by her death.
Omar said the last time he saw his niece was in January, during his holiday in Gaza. "Safaa was polite, helpful, and loved by everyone.
"I have lost a lovely niece. Her death is unfair, as all the deaths of all of the civilians in Gaza have been."
"I would prefer to be in Gaza with them right now, I feel so hopeless here."
More on Israel-Gaza war
- Follow live: Latest updates
- Hostages: Teen taken by Hamas back home in Chicago
- From Gaza: 'I don't want to die at 24' - trapped woman
- Explained: What is happening in Israel and Gaza, and why now?
- History behind the story: The Israel-Palestinian conflict | Middle East Politics |
The United Nations has launched a review of its operations in Afghanistan and asked all Afghan staff not to come to work at least until May after the Taliban barred its female staff from working.
The UN said last week that the Taliban, who swept to power in 2021, had communicated that Afghan women would not be able to work for the global organisation. Taliban officials have not commented on the order.
“Through this ban, the Taliban de facto authorities seek to force the United Nations into having to make an appalling choice between staying and delivering in support of the Afghan people and standing by the norms and principles we are duty-bound to uphold,” the UN mission (Unama) said in a statement on Tuesday.
The UN has said that implementing the order would put it in breach of its charter.
It has asked 3,000 staff – men and women – to stay home until 5 May while it made “necessary consultations”, any required adjustments to its operations and accelerated contingency planning.
The restriction on female UN workers, coming after a ban on most female NGO workers in December, has prompted heavy international criticism.
Some officials have flagged concerns donors may pull back on support to Afghanistan’s humanitarian aid programme, the largest in the world, and that implementing some programmes and reaching women in the conservative country without female workers would not be possible.
The Taliban have imposed a series of restrictions on women’s access to work, education and public life. Taliban officials have said they respect women’s rights in line with their strict interpretation of Islamic law. | Human Rights |
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russian forces of shelling Ukrainian emergency workers who are trying to rescue people from floodwaters caused by the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam.
Speaking in his nightly address on Wednesday, Zelenskyy said that more than 2,000 people have been rescued so far from flooding in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions which, he said, contrasted starkly with Russian-occupied regions where he accused Moscow’s forces of simply abandoning people to the flood.
“Evacuation continues. Under fire!” Zelenskyy said. “Russian artillery continues to fire, no matter what. Savages,” he said.
“Our military and special services are rescuing people as much as it is possible, despite the shelling.”
Zelenskky described conditions in Russian-occupied parts of the Kherson region as “absolutely catastrophic” and called on international humanitarian organisations, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, to immediately deploy to and help people abandoned in occupied areas now hit by flooding from the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam on Tuesday.
“The occupiers simply abandoned people in these terrible conditions. Without rescue, without water, just on the rooftops in flooded communities,” Ukraine’s president said.
“It is even impossible to establish for sure how many people in the temporarily occupied territory of Kherson region may die without rescue, without drinking water, without food, without medical care,” he added.
Reporters said on Wednesday that artillery booms could be heard as people scrambled to leave affected areas with the help of rescue workers.
Earlier on Wednesday, Zelenskky said he was disappointed that the UN and the Red Cross had so far failed to respond rapidly to the dam disaster, according to comments published by media outlets.
“Each person who dies there is a verdict on the existing international architecture and international organisations that have forgotten how to save lives,” he said later in his evening address.
“If there is no international organisation in the area of this disaster now, it means that it does not exist at all, that it is incapable of functioning. All the relevant appeals from Ukraine and our government are in place,” he said.
The situation in the occupied part of Kherson region is absolutely catastrophic. The occupiers simply abandoned people in these terrible conditions. Without rescue, without water, just on the rooftops in flooded communities. And this is another deliberate crime of Russia: after… pic.twitter.com/SPGzXyoCen
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 7, 2023
Putin’s first comments on dam
Commenting for the first time on the blowing up of the dam on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin repeated Moscow’s line that Ukraine was to blame.
In a call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Putin alleged that Kyiv authorities, encouraged by Western supporters, had destroyed the dam and were escalating “war crimes, openly using terrorist methods and staging acts of sabotage on Russian territory”, the Kremlin said in its account of the call.
Erdogan has proposed a commission of inquiry into the dam’s destruction, the presidential office in Ankara said, following separate telephone conversations with Putin and Zelenskyy on Wednesday.
It remains unclear how the dam disaster would affect the war and Ukraine’s planned counteroffensive against Russian forces, but Kyiv said on Wednesday that its troops had advanced more than 1km (just over half a mile) around the ruined city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.
Reports of the advance were the most explicit claim of battlefield progress by Ukraine since Russia said that the Ukrainian counteroffensive had begun – unannounced – earlier this week.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security council, said assaults under way were still localised, and the full-scale offensive has yet to begin, adding that the public would know when the counteroffensive starts.
“Our troops have switched from defence to the offensive in the direction of Bakhmut,” Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said on Telegram.
Russia’s defence ministry confirmed eight Ukrainian attempts to attack near Bakhmut but said that all had been repelled.
Addressing the issue of the dam’s destruction as Kyiv and Moscow trade blame, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington, DC-based think tank, said Russia has “a greater and clearer interest in flooding the lower [Dnipro] despite the damage to their own prepared defensive positions”.
Believing that Ukraine had already begun its counteroffensive, the ISW said, Russian forces may have thought breaching the dam could cover their possible retreat and delay Ukraine’s advance.
However, the flooding is now heavily disrupting Russia’s prepared defensive positions along the occupied bank of the Dnipro river, the ISW said on Thursday.
Near-infrared imagery captured at 0400 am ET on June 7 indicates that flooding is heavily disrupting prepared Russian defensive positions on the east bank of the #Dnipro River – especially affecting Russian first-line positions in Hola Prystan & Oleshky. https://t.co/W6mPtd0HgQ https://t.co/ai9DXhGgrC pic.twitter.com/7A4tXHzqdb
— ISW (@TheStudyofWar) June 8, 2023
“The flooding has destroyed many Russian first-line field fortifications that the Russian military intended to use to defend against Ukrainian attacks,” the ISW added.
Authorities are now warning of the impact on global hunger and the environment due to the dam’s destruction with the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) warning that the flooding could destroy crops and lead to greater hunger worldwide.
Ukraine’s agriculture ministry said that it expects about 10,000 hectares (38.6 square miles) of agricultural land on the northern bank of the Dnipro river in the Kherson region to be flooded, according to initial estimates. On the southern bank, in the Russian-occupied region, this area will be flooded many times, the ministry said on its website.
Environmental organisation Greenpeace also warned of enormous damage to the country’s water supply and food security.
“Due to the scale of the disaster […] there will be inevitable impacts on the water supply for millions of people and agriculture during the coming summer months and beyond,” Greenpeace said. | Europe Politics |
Israel reveals signs of Hamas activity at Shifa, but a promised command center remains elusive
Three weeks ago, the Israeli military unveiled a detailed 3D model of Gaza’s Shifa Hospital
JERUSALEM -- Three weeks ago, the Israeli military unveiled a detailed 3D model of Gaza’s Shifa Hospital – showing a series of underground installations that it said was part of an elaborate Hamas command and control center under the territory’s largest health-care center.
Days after taking control of the hospital, the military has yet to unveil this purported center. But it has released videos of weapons allegedly seized inside the hospital, a tunnel running through the complex and videos appearing to show Hamas militants dragging hostages through the hospital's hallways. Israel says there will be much more to come.
What Israel finds – or fails to find – could play a large part in its efforts to rally international support for its war against Hamas, launched on Oct. 7 in response to a bloody cross-border attack by the Islamic militant group.
Here is a closer look at Israel’s raid on the Shifa Hospital.
Gaza’s hospitals have played a central role in the dueling narratives surrounding the war.
Hospitals enjoy special protected status under the international laws of war. But they can lose that status if they are used for military purposes.
Israel has long claimed that Hamas uses hospitals, schools, mosques and residential neighborhoods as human shields. In particular, it says Hamas has hidden command centers and bunkers underneath the sprawling grounds of Shifa. The United States says its own intelligence corroborates those claims. Hamas denies the allegations.
Israel says other hospitals are similarly used for military purposes. It has ordered the evacuations of a number of Gaza hospitals, including Shifa, as it presses ahead with its ground operation against Hamas.
The U.N. and other international organizations say these evacuations have endangered patients and overwhelmed the remaining hospitals in the besieged territory.
With Israel already facing mounting international criticism of its offensive, a failure to uncover a significant Hamas presence could step up the pressure to halt the operation. Israel has vowed to press ahead until it destroys Hamas.
The Israeli military has released videos showing AK47s, ammunition and other military equipment it said was found in the hospital’s MRI unit. It also said it discovered a Toyota pickup truck filled with weapons in a hospital garage. The vehicle appears to be the same type of truck used by Hamas militants during the Oct. 7 incursion.
On Sunday, it released a video of a 55-meter (60-yard) tunnel in a hospital courtyard. The underground structure was heavily fortified and led to a blast-proof door with an opening that Israel says was meant to be used by Hamas snipers.
It also released security-camera images of Hamas militants escorting what Israel said were two hostages – one from Thailand, the other from Nepal – who were seized in the Oct. 7 cross-border attack. One video showed a group of men forcefully dragging their hostage through the hospital's main entrance and down a hallway. The other showed a group of men, including at least one gunman, pushing a motionless man on a stretcher in a hallway. Hospital workers could be seen in both videos looking on.
The videos had time stamps from the morning of Oct. 7, matching the time of the attack. But the faces of the two purported hostages were blurred, making it difficult to verify the authenticity of the videos.
The army also released photos of what it said were two military jeeps stolen from the Israeli military. The photos showed the jeeps parked in the hospital complex on the morning of the attack.
“By now the truth is clear: Hamas wages war from hospitals, wages terror from hospitals,” said the Israeli military’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari. “Everyone who cares about the future of humanity must condemn Hamas.”
Hamas played down the images, saying it had been offering the men in its custody medical treatment.
“We put our fighters at risk to guarantee the injured prisoners the best treatment possible in the Gaza Strip’s hospitals,” the militant group said in a statement.
Osama Hamdan, a top Hamas leader based in Beirut, acknowledged that Israel could find a tunnel “here or there.”
“We don’t deny there are hundreds of kilometers of tunnels in and around Gaza,” he told a news conference. But he said Hamas does not use hospitals for militant activities.
Israel has not said where the Shifa tunnel leads to or given specifics on what it was used for.
It also has not yet provided anything close to the images of underground bunkers and conference rooms it showed in that Oct. 27 illustration.
Hamdan, the Hamas leader, mocked the Israeli discoveries so far. “The Israelis said there was a command and control center, which means that the matter is greater than just a tunnel,” he said.
Israeli military officials say those initial illustrations were “conceptual” and not meant to be taken literally. They have also promised many more discoveries as troops continue the painstaking task of scouring a complex spread out over more than 10 acres (40,000 square meters).
“It’s going to take time,” said Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, another military spokesman.
___
AP's full war coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war | Middle East Politics |
‘Don’t do drugs’: NSW Premier addresses reignited debate of introducing pill testing sites at Sydney music festivals
Premier Dominic Perrottet has addressed renewed pill testing calls on the election campaign trail, following the death of a Sydney man at a large trance music festival on Saturday.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has responded to renewed calls for the introduction of pill testing to prevent drug overdoses, following the death of a Sydney man over the weekend.
The 26-year-old died from a suspected overdose at the Transmission festival in Sydney on Saturday, with a further 12 people hospitalised after drug-related reactions.
The fatality has sparked debate around having pill testing sites at music festivals and abolishing the use of sniffer dogs, as per the recommendations of a landmark government inquiry in 2019.
Mr Perrottet was clear in his message to condemn drug use across the state as he sent his thoughts to the young man’s grieving family.
“Obviously the first thing I’d say is my thoughts go out to his family at a very difficult time. The first thing as well is, don’t take drugs. To people across NSW; stay safe, and don’t take drugs,” he said at Jamison High School in South Penrith.
“We had an inquiry into ice which we adopted many recommendations in relation to those issues which we believe will make a real difference to families right across NSW.
“But my clear message to people right across NSW [is] stay safe and don’t take drugs and you will be safe.”
The stance was consistent with his predecessor Gladys Berejiklian, who in 2019 refused to adopt the guidance of coroner Harriet Grahame’s inquest into six drug related deaths and subsequent report.
The former Premier’s opposition to the recommendations of the report, which included pill testing and decriminalising drugs, was met with criticism from both Greens and Labor at the time.
Instead of introducing pill testing at festivals Ms Berejiklian decided to place drug amnesty bins at music festivals to allow festival goers to discard illegal substances safely.
Mr Perrottet made the comments while announcing his $130 million Cooler Classes Program in the hotly contested seat of Liberal seat of Penrith.
The investment is part of the WestInvest fund and aims to provide a further 84 public schools with air-conditioning which will improve learning environments for both students and teachers.
Penrith, held by former Liberal Party deputy leader Stuart Ayres since 2010, is reportedly deadlocked with Labor at 50-50.
Mr Perrottet approval rating with Opposition leader Chris Minns in the electorate is neck-to-neck, with Liberals flagging it is as a key battleground to retain power.
NSW voters will head to the polls on March 25 to decide whether to give the Coalition a fourth election victory or return Labor to power for the first time since 2011. | Australia Politics |
J&K Saw Unprecedented Peace, Progress After Abrogation Of Article 370: Centre
Defending the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution, the Centre on Monday told the Supreme Court that the entire region of Jammu and Kashmir has witnessed an “unprecedented” era of peace, progress and prosperity, with street violence, orchestrated by terrorists and secessionist networks, becoming a thing of the past. Referring to the characteristic security situation in the region, the Centre said organized stone pelting incidents connected with terrorism-separatist agenda, which were as high as 1,767 in 2018 has come down to zero in 2023 till date and casualty of security personnel has shown a 65.9 per cent decline in 2022 as compared to 2018.
Defending the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution, the Centre on Monday told the Supreme Court that the entire region of Jammu and Kashmir has witnessed an “unprecedented” era of peace, progress and prosperity, with street violence, orchestrated by terrorists and secessionist networks, becoming 'a thing of the past.'
Referring to the 'characteristic security situation' in the region, the Centre said organized stone pelting incidents connected with terrorism-separatist agenda, which were as high as 1,767 in 2018 has come down to zero in 2023 till date and casualty of security personnel has shown a 65.9 per cent decline in 2022 as compared to 2018.
The Centre’s affidavit will be taken up on Tuesday by a five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, which is scheduled to hear a batch of petitions challenging the decision to abrogate Article 370 that had given special status to Jammu and Kashmir.
On August 5, 2019, the Centre had decided to strip the erstwhile state of J and K of special status and bifurcate it into two Union Territories.
Several petitions challenging the Centre's decision to abrogate the provisions of Article 370 and the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, which split J-K into two Union Territories--Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh--were referred to a Constitution bench in 2019.
The Centre contended that the 'historic constitutional step' being challenged has brought unprecedented development, progress, security and stability to the region, which was often missing during the old Article 370 regime. It is submitted that the same has been possible due to the policy of the Union of India of ensuring peace, prosperity and progress in the region, the affidavit said.
“It is submitted that the hosting of G-20 Tourism Working Group meeting at Srinagar in the month of May 2023, was a watershed event in the history of valley tourism and the country proudly displayed its resolute commitment to the world that secessionist terrorist region can be converted into a region where even international dignitaries can be invited and global events can be held.' The Centre said after the historic changes, the UTs of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh have witnessed profound “ameliorative, affirmative and progressive changes in last four years encompassing its entire governance - including the developmental activities, public administration and security matters which has positively impacted every resident irrespective of caste, creed or religion”.
It said bandhs and stone pelting (together), engineered, financed and forced by the separatist-terrorist networks, had tremendous negative ripple effects on economy and the society as a whole.
“It is submitted that the defining characteristic of the security situation in the region, which has a direct bearing on the day-to-day life of common citizens is 'street violence' which was a methodical and regular phenomenon. The street violence, engineered and orchestrated by terrorists and secessionist networks has now become thing of the past. The organized stone pelting incidents connected with terrorism-separatist agenda, which were as high as 1,767 in the year 2018 has come down to zero in the year 2023 till date,” the Centre said in its 20-page affidavit.
It added that ‘bandhs’ and stone pelting had resulted in closure of schools, colleges and universities, trade, industries and businesses on a regular basis intermittently, leading to severe loss of income especially of the poor and those who worked in unorganized sectors.
“In the year 2018, there were 52 incidents of organized ‘Bandh/Hartal’, which have come down to zero in the year 2023 till date. In addition, resolute anti-terror actions have resulted in dismantling of the terror eco-system which is reflected in a significant drop in terrorist recruitment from 199 in the year 2018 to 12 in the year 2023 till date.' The Centre said work on transit accommodation for Kashmiri Pandits for their safe return to the valley is in the advanced stage and is expected to be majorly completed in the next one year.
Highlighting numerous schemes launched by the Centre for the development of the entire region, the government said life has returned to normalcy in the region after over three decades of turmoil.
“It is submitted that schools, colleges, universities, hospitals and other public institutions are functioning efficiently without any strikes or any kind of disturbances during the last three years. The earlier practice of daily hartals, strikes, stone pelting and bandhs are things of the past now,” it added.
Emphasising that certain sections of the society, including displaced persons from Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir and children of women married outside J&K, were earlier deprived of their basic rights prior to the August 5, 2019 decision, the government said all the residents of the region are enjoying all rights which are available to citizens in other parts of the country.
It said with the constitutional changes and enactments of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, seats have been reserved for the persons belonging to Scheduled Tribe, which has resulted in grant of reservation in Legislature to them similar to the reservation available to such community in Legislative Assemblies of other States/Union territories in the country.
“It is submitted that with the improved security scenario, the Union territory has also witnessed highest ever footfall of tourists viz. 1.88 crore tourists visited Jammu & Kashmir only during January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2022 which is significantly contributing to the growth of the economy and has a direct impact on the income of common man”, the Centre highlighted. PTI MNL ABA SJK GSN MNL GSN GSN | India Politics |
Going into the next general election, Labour's plan to pour billions of pounds into clean energy will be one of the clear dividing lines between it and the Conservatives.
A pledge to invest £28bn a year in green industries is one of Labour's five national missions, and a key plank of the "greener, fairer future" it has promised.
It gave climate activists reasons to be excited by Labour.
But last month, Labour announced it was delaying its spending commitment until the second half of its first term in government, blaming the UK's bleak economic outlook.
Many climate activists were furious, and during a recent speech in Gillingham, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer felt their wrath.
Several minutes into his speech, two activists from Green New Deal Rising unfurled a banner behind him. "No more U-turns. Green New Deal," it read.
Sir Keir assured the activists he would meet them to discuss their demands, as they were hastily ushered off stage.
More than a week on, the meeting still has not happened and now activists from the group are lining up fresh attempts to grab his attention.
On Friday, activists staged sit-outs outside the constituency offices of Sir Keir, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves and deputy leader Angela Rayner. They plan to continue these protests until Labour's annual party conference in October, and are not ruling out further disruption - including interrupting speeches - if Sir Keir fails to meet their demands.
"We're escalating our campaign against Labour now, because we want to influence their manifesto," says Hannah Martin, co-director of Green New Deal Rising.
"We want what they offer to voters to be something bold."
Meeting stand-off
Labour says it is already offering voters something bold - a plan to turn Britain into a "clean energy superpower".
The plan involves creating a publicly-owned energy company, insulating millions of homes, and using a national wealth fund to build green industries.
"Labour is the only party with a long-term mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower to cut bills, create jobs, provide energy security, and tackle the climate emergency," a Labour spokesperson said.
The BBC has been told Green New Deal Rising has been offered a meeting with party officials, but has shown no interest.
Instead, the group appears to have its sights set on Sir Keir and those at the top of the party. With no time for a chat in Gillingham, the wait for a meeting goes on.
"We were removed from the building," says Sophia Coningham, one of the activists involved in the Gillingham stunt.
She says they gatecrashed the speech to remind Sir Keir that, "to really stand up for young people, they need to commit to a green new deal".
"There's a feeling that Labour is backsliding," says Ms Coningham, an 18-year-old who has just finished her A-levels.
So what is a green new deal?
Campaigners say it's a set of policy proposals to address the root causes of climate change while promoting a more sustainable model of economic growth. It harks back to the New Deal economic programme of 1930s US president Franklin D Roosevelt, and more recently, it's an idea that's been revived and modernised by Democratic politicians in the United States.
It's been fiercely opposed by Republicans there. Donald Trump cast the Green New Deal as a socialist "takeover" when he was in the White House.
Back in the UK, the idea has been floating around for more than a decade, with campaign groups and left-wing MPs - including Labour's shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband - calling for different flavours of a green new deal.
For the Conservatives, what they see as the economic dangers of funding such green policies through borrowing have been deployed as a political attack line against Labour.
By the time Green New Deal Rising emerged in 2021, the notion of an economic approach centred on clean energy had entered the political mainstream.
Even so, since its launch, the group of about 500 organisers and young climate activists has been lobbying Labour and claims its campaigning has influenced the party's energy policies.
Now it is trying to push Labour to go even further.
"Part of why we took action last week was that we want to see a future government that's committed to the green new deal," says Ms Martin. "We're not going to be silent."
Disruptive tactics
In a campaign targeted at Labour, Green New Deal Rising has put five demands to the party. One Labour source argues that two of the five demands - "expand public ownership" and "tax wealth now" - are not related to green policies.
The other three demands include creating more green jobs, setting up a national nature service, and making polluting companies pay.
"What they're asking for isn't radical," says Labour MP Clive Lewis. "If you look at the science, and what that's showing us on climate change, then their asks are quite mild."
He describes recent briefings against activists as "attempts by some close to the [Labour] leadership to put some distance between them and the climate movement".
With Prime Minister Rishi Sunak accusing Sir Keir of being in the pocket of "eco-zealots", some senior Labour figures have begun lashing out at climate protesters, with the Labour leader himself branding Just Stop Oil "arrogant".
Mr Lewis says he hopes activists from Green New Deal Rising have "done everything to engage with Labour MPs" before resorting to disruptive tactics.
"If they feel they have no option but to do this, then that's their prerogative," he says. "The danger is that this pushes politicians into a corner where they might react in a negative way. Politicians are human."
If disruptive tactics became more commonplace, it's possible a more antagonistic relationship could develop between Labour and climate activists.
That could risk alienating some younger voters, as Ms Coningham explains.
"I think Labour has to earn my vote and that means signing up to our demands," she says. "Labour need to stop taking young people's votes for granted."
Voters from younger generations who care about the climate are a big constituency and one that Labour will want to win over. As things stands, a more radical Labour plan on energy and climate seems unlikely, given the financial discipline the party has been signalling.
But with the Labour manifesto yet to be completed, there is still time for minds to be changed - and a meeting or two perhaps. | United Kingdom Politics |
Islamabad, Pakistan – As soon as Akram* saw the news last week that Imran Khan had been arrested, he thought of stepping out and protesting against what he believed was an “abduction” of a former prime minister.
“I messaged our WhatsApp group of PTI [Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf] supporters, asking that we must gather outside to protest against this illegal act,” the 40-year-old told Al Jazeera on Wednesday on condition of anonymity due to fears for his safety.
Akram, a marketing professional, joined some 80 others who took to the streets in Pakistan’s largest city of Karachi to demand the release of Khan, who was detained by paramilitary troops on charges of corruption on May 9 as he appeared at a court in the capital, Islamabad, for a different case.
“We had placards and we were chanting slogans supporting Khan. Initially, uniformed policemen came to us and strictly told us not to block roads or create any civic unrest. But within half an hour, a group of policemen in civilian clothes came and picked more than 40 of us, threw us in a police vehicle and took us to a lock-up,” Akram told Al Jazeera.
He added that he was taken to five different police stations before being placed “in a tiny cell” with more than 30 others.
“The conditions were repulsive, and there was barely any space to breathe there. The police kept me for two days, without filing any case, before releasing me,” said Akram.
His release on May 11 came on the same day the Supreme Court declared Khan’s arrest illegal. The arrest had triggered 48 hours of violence across the country that saw rioting, arson and vandalism against public and private properties, including military installations.
More than 10 people were killed in the clashes and thousands were arrested, including many senior PTI leaders.
Fears of military court trials
Amir Mir, the interim information minister of Punjab province, where more than 3,200 people were arrested, said those accused of targeting the residence of the top military commander in the eastern city of Lahore and other military buildings would be tried in military courts.
“The offenders were identified only after 100 percent confirmation of their involvement in the attacks. We will make an example out of them so nobody can dare repeat this in future,” Mir told reporters on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Pakistan’s National Security Committee (NSC) approved the military’s decision to try those involved in rioting under the country’s draconian army laws, which overrule civilian courts.
The military courts are separate from Pakistan’s civilian legal system where the judges are members of the army’s legal branch. The hearings taking place at military installations where the media does not have access. If convicted, a person has no right to appeal their case in another court.
International rights organisations and groups within Pakistan have staunchly criticised the decision to use military courts to try civilians, arguing that this risks violating their right to due process.
HRCP strongly opposes the use of the Pakistan Army Act 1952 and Official Secrets Act 1923 to try civilians. While those responsible for arson and damaging public and private property during the recent protests should be held to account, they remain entitled to due process. 1/2
— Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (@HRCP87) May 16, 2023
The Pakistani army is a dominant player in the country’s political affairs and directly ruled it for more than three decades since 1947.
Khan, who was removed last year through a parliamentary vote of no confidence, has repeatedly blamed the army chief, General Syed Asim Munir, for his arrest and the crackdown against the PTI.
Both the government and the military have singled out Khan for sowing hatred against the army and said the people involved in riots last week will be brought to justice.
In a statement on Wednesday, the military, quoting the army chief, said “the recently planned and orchestrated tragic incidents will never be allowed again at any cost”.
Family members arrested
While relatives of those arrested in the crackdown were too scared to talk about it due to fears of state retaliation and intimidation, others did.
Azhar Mashwani, a Lahore-based PTI worker, said he was out of his hometown of Lahore when he was informed that his 73-year-old father and his brother were picked up from their home.
“My house where my parents, my wife and my brother’s family all live together was raided by plain-clothed officials thrice on May 10 … [They] asked about my whereabouts and then when they came a third time, they took away my father and brother,” Mashwani told Al Jazeera by phone from Lahore where he is hiding at an undisclosed location.
He added that while his family also supported the PTI, none of them had attended the protests last week.
“My brother is a college professor and has four children. My father has retired and is in frail health. But still, they were picked up and were constantly pressurised that they reveal my location,” Mashwani told Al Jazeera.
“My father was returned after three days but we have no idea where my brother is. We have not spoken to him for the last six days. His children haven’t gone to school.”
Mashwani, who is a member of the PTI’s social media team, was arrested by the police in April for more than a week, taken to different cities and made to take a polygraph test where he was questioned on his role in the party. No formal case was filed against him. Mashwani called it an “abduction”.
‘I don’t know what to do’
A similar story was recalled by Atique Riaz, a 43-year-old accountant in Lahore and a father of two children. His wife, Sanam Javed Khan, was arrested on May 10 and is still in custody.
“Sanam is a huge PTI supporter and she was protesting on the streets of Lahore on May 9, but she was not part of any kind of violence or riots,” Riaz told Al Jazeera.
“My wife was attending another demonstration on Wednesday when I received a call from her, informing [me] she has been picked up by the police along with 17 other women.”
Riaz said he was able to see his wife at the detention centre for the first five days of her arrest but has not had any contact since Monday night. He does not know where his wife has been taken to.
“I don’t know what to do. My kids have not stopped crying and calling for their mother,” said Riaz, adding that he has barely slept over the past week.
“I don’t know if my wife will be tried under the Army Act or not. I don’t even know on what charges she is being detained. She was not even involved in any kind of arson.”
Hammad Azhar, a senior PTI leader who has evaded arrest over last week’s violence so far, said the decision to try protesters under the Army Act “is being done to intimidate and victimise the party”.
“In the 14 months since this ruling alliance is in government, democratic norms have been snatched. The decision to set up military courts by the NSC is just another sequence in this long chain of events,” he told Al Jazeera from an undisclosed location in Lahore.
However, Akram, the Karachi-based marketing professional, said he did not feel any anger towards the security forces when he was released from jail.
“I just felt sorry for the people who work for these institutions, and who must follow the instructions given to them by their bosses. These people in uniform, they need freedom. Only a handful of people at the top are maligning the army with their actions. They should be taken to task. This persecution cannot continue forever.”
*Name changed to protect the person’s identity. | Asia Politics |
Rajya Sabha Proceedings Washed Out, To Meet On Monday
Rajya Sabha proceedings were on Friday washed out for the second day in a row amid uproar by the opposition over the Manipur situation and other issues.
Rajya Sabha proceedings were on Friday washed out for the second day in a row amid uproar by the opposition over the Manipur situation and other issues.
The house, which was adjourned in the morning session over the Manipur issue and the Opposition raising objections to the Chair expunging certain words from the record, witnessed uproarious scenes when it reassembled post-lunch.
Soon after reassembling at 2:30 pm, Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar informed the members about the report of the business advisory committee after its meeting held on Thursday and said it should be taken into account.
This led to uproar in the house with several opposition members raising objections over the listing of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill along with the Forest Conservation Bill, saying they had already expressed their views against the proposed legislations during the BAC meeting.
Amid the uproar and with most opposition members on their feet, the Chairman adjourned the house till Monday within minutes of its resumption.
The pre-lunch session also saw uproar over the Manipur violence and the chair expunging certain words from proceedings of the House.
Dhankhar adjourned the proceedings till 2:30 pm as TMC's Derek O'Brien sought to raise a point of order over the expunging of certain words from the House proceedings on Thursday.
The opening day of the Monsoon session of Parliament had witnessed heated exchanges over the Manipur violence and the May 4 video of two women being paraded naked in the northeastern state.
While the House proceedings were washed out in protests, Dhankhar had expunged references made by O'Brien seeking the prime minister's response to the violence.
On Friday, he sought to raise a point of order over the expunging of the words.
Referring to the rule and page number from the rule book, O'Brien said the rule pertains to expunging of words used in Parliament -- what can be used and what can't be.
"Three words were expunged. Yesterday we said the Prime Minister should open his mouth on Manipur. Prime Minister got expunged. Manipur got expunged. Why?" he asked.
While he sought to know if any of the words were not fit for parliamentary proceedings, the chairman repeatedly asked what his point of order was.
As O'Brien tried to explain, the House plunged into disorder. At this point, Dhankhar adjourned the proceedings till 2:30 pm.
O'Brien walked up to the Chair's podium to convey the point he was raising but Dhankar left the chamber.
Earlier, after official papers were laid, Dhankhar started reading out time allocated for government business. He began this by mentioning The Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill that is to replace an ordinance on services in Delhi.
Even before he could complete it, AAP MPs were up on their feet calling the bill "unconstitutional". Dhankhar asked them to maintain decorum in the House.
But MPs from AAP, including Sanjay Singh, continued to object, saying no bill can be brought that is unconstitutional.
"I give time to everyone in accordance with rules. This House is the house of elders. Our conduct is being watched by more than 1.3 billion people. We have to be exemplary in our conduct so that we can be appreciated. It is not a public street. It is not a platform," the chairman said. | India Politics |
TOKYO, May 30 (Reuters) - A Japanese court ruled on Tuesday that not allowing same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, a decision activists welcomed as a step towards marriage equality in the only Group of Seven nation with no legal protection for same-sex unions.
The ruling by the Nagoya District Court was the second to find a ban against same-sex marriage unconstitutional, out of four cases over the past two years, and is likely to add to pressure to change the law in a country in which the constitution says marriage is between a man and a woman.
"This ruling has rescued us from the hurt of last year's ruling that said there was nothing wrong with the ban, and the hurt of what the government keeps saying," lead lawyer Yoko Mizutani told journalists and supporters outside the court.
She was referring to a ruling in Osaka last year that the ban was not out of line with the constitution.
A Tokyo court later upheld the ban on same-sex marriage but said a lack of legal protection for same-sex families violated their human rights.
Tuesday's ruling was greeted with cheers from the activists and supporters waving rainbow flags outside the court.
Though opinion polls show some 70% of the public supports same-sex marriage, the conservative ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida opposes it.
Kishida in February sacked an aide who sparked outrage by saying people would flee Japan if same-sex marriage was allowed, but the premier remains noncommittal about it and has said discussions must proceed "carefully".
Nevertheless, more than 300 Japanese municipalities covering some 65% of the population allow same-sex couples to enter partnership agreements.
But the right is limited in scope. Partners can't inherit each other's assets or have parental rights to each other's children. Hospital visits are not guaranteed.
Mizutani said the court in its ruling had noted that such partnership agreements were not fully sufficient, which she took as an encouraging sign, adding that she felt the court recognised there was little difference between same-sex couples and other couples.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told a press conference that the government did not believe the civil code and marriage laws were unconstitutional.
"With regard to issues surrounding the introduction of same-sex marriage, we believe it is important to pay close attention to the opinions of all parts of the public," he said.
While in general the world's third-largest economy is considered relatively liberal, the LGBT community has been largely invisible because of conservative attitudes. Taiwan became the first place in Asia to legalise same-sex marriages in 2019.
A new law would have to be passed in Japan before same-sex marriages could actually take place.
The government pledged to pass a law promoting "understanding" of LGBT people before hosting the G7 summit this month, but opposition from conservatives delayed it so much a watered-down version was only submitted to parliament the day before the summit began.
The initial draft stipulated discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity should "not be tolerated" but was changed to "there should be no unfair discrimination", wording that critics say tacitly allows bigotry.
Japan has come under increasing pressure to change, both from other G7 members but also from economic lobbies, with businesses arguing that greater diversity is needed for international competitiveness.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | Asia Politics |
The Australian government has announced a direct pathway to citizenship for New Zealanders, ending a tension between the two countries that has lasted for more than 20 years.
Since 2001, New Zealanders in Australia have been able to reside there on a Special Category Visa. While it has allowed them to remain in Australia indefinitely, getting permanent residency and citizenship has been much more difficult.
It has meant New Zealanders have been unable to access benefits such as student loans, join the Defence Force, or even vote.
In contrast, Australians in New Zealand have had a clear pathway to citizenship after five years.
But from 1 July, New Zealanders who have been on the Special Category Visa and lived in Australia for four years will be able to get citizenship.
They will still need to meet standard criteria (such as pass a character check, a language test, and intend to stay in Australia), and attend a citizenship ceremony.
The pathway is retrospective, meaning those in Australia since 2001, when the SCV came into effect, will be able to apply for citizenship without gaining permanent residence first.
Kiwi children born in Australia will become citizens at birth, rather than waiting until they are 10 years old.
"This is a fair change for New Zealanders living in Australia, and brings their rights more in line with Australians living in New Zealand. This is consistent with our ambition to build a fairer, better managed and more inclusive migration system," the Australian government said in a statement.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said the announcement has brought the nations closer together.
"This is the biggest improvement in the rights of New Zealanders living in Australia in a generation," he said.
"Most of us know someone who's moved across the Tasman. They work hard, pay taxes and deserve a fair go. These changes deliver that and reverse erosions that have taken place over 20 years."
The announcement has been deliberately timed to be close to Anzac Day, with Hipkins flying to Brisbane to mark the occasion.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Closer Economic Relations agreement between the two countries, as well as the 50th anniversary of the Trans-Tasman travel arrangement, which allowed each country's people to live and work in the other country.
"Australia and New Zealand have a deep friendship, which has been forged through our history, shared values and common outlook.
"As we mark the 50th anniversary of the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement, I look forward to strengthening our relationship," said Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
The two prime ministers will celebrate the announcement with a community barbecue and citizenship ceremony in Brisbane on Sunday.
They will also visit a cemetery to attend the unveiling of plaques for previously unmarked graves of soldiers who served during World War I and World War II. | Australia Politics |
- A 10% drop in the yen since December has forced Japan to scale back defense spending, Reuters reported.
- The currency's decline has boosted the cost of US-made weapons that Japan plans to procure.
- In response, Japan is prioritizing frontline weapons and spending less on support systems.
When the $320 billion budget plan was first announced in December, its estimated price tag was based on a 108 yen-to-dollar exchange rate, according to the report. But the currency has since slid more than 10%, dipping to 151 earlier this week.
And because the defense ministry doesn't hedge against foreign-currency volatility, it must shoulder higher costs for top acquisition programs like the F-35 stealth fighter and Tomahawk cruise missile, the report said.
In response, Japan is prioritizing outlays on US-made frontline weapons that would be key in any conflict with China, sources told Reuters.
The tradeoff is less money for secondary equipment, such as support aircraft. For instance, an expected order of 34 twin-rotor Chinook transport helicopters was pared to 17 in next year's budget request, given that their cost rose by about 5 billion yen each. Around half the increase was due to the weak yen.
And the purchase of two ShinMaywa Industries US-2 seaplanes was also scrapped as the aircraft's price almost doubled from three years ago.
The historic military build-up is in response to rising geopolitical tensions that require the US ally to prepare for any potential conflict with China.
Meanwhile, the yen's plunge results from ultra-loose monetary policy in Japan, as record low yields in the country have pulled down its competitiveness against other global markets. That's as other central banks like the Federal Reserve have become more hawkish, making overseas assets more attractive.
Though the Bank of Japan has recently eased its yield curve control — a unique measure that restricted yields from climbing — analysts have suggested that this isn't enough. In a recent note, Deutsche Bank outlined that yen volatility will continue until the central bank lifts interest rates and sheds its quantitative easing campaign.
Since the start of this year, the yen has plunged 12% against the dollar. | Asia Politics |
The U.S. military completed an evacuation of the American embassy in war-torn Sudan, President Joe Biden said late Saturday evening.
Biden confirmed the evacuation of U.S. government personnel from Khartoum under his orders and said the administration would continue to assist Americans in Sudan. Biden praised embassy staff, saying on a statement they "embodied America's friendship and connection with the people of Sudan."
"I am grateful for the unmatched skill of our service members who successfully brought them to safety," he said. "And I thank Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Saudi Arabia, which were critical to the success of our operation."
Biden said the embassy had been temporarily closed but "our commitment to the Sudanese people and the future they want for themselves is unending."
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the suspensions of operations at the embassy in Khartoum were due to the growing security risk and ensuring the safety of personnel.
"The widespread fighting has caused significant numbers of civilian deaths and injuries and damage to essential infrastructure and posed an unacceptable risk to our Embassy personnel," Blinken said in a statement.
The State Department updated its travel advisory for Sudan to reflect that the U.S. embassy in Khartoum had suspended operations. The department's advisory for Sudan remains at its highest warning level -- where it has been since August of 2021.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin noted the successful evacuation operation was conducted at Biden's direction. He also highlighted the countries that assisted the operation.
"We also thank our allies and partners, including Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Saudi Arabia, which were critical to the success of this operation," Austin said in a statement.
The Rapid Support Forces, the Sudanese paramilitary group battling Sudan's army, issued a statement claiming to have aided in the U.S. evacuation.
"Today, Sunday, the Rapid Support Forces, in coordination with the US forces mission consisting of 6 planes for the purpose of evacuating diplomats and their families, supervised the necessary arrangements that preceded the evacuation process," the statement read.
State Department Under Secretary for Management John Bass refuted those claims.
"That was not the case. They cooperated to the extent that they did not fire on our service members in the course of the operation," he said. "I would submit that was as much in their self-interest as anything else."
The Sudanese army said Saturday that evacuations of foreign diplomatic staff from the U.S., U.K., France and China will begin in the coming hours on military airplanes, as fighting persisted in the capital, including at its main airport. Their evacuation will be by air in military transport aircrafts belonging to their armed forces, the army said.
The Saudi Arabian mission was earlier evacuated by land to Port Sudan then by air to Saudi Arabia, Sudan's army said. A similar evacuation plan will be secured for the Jordanian mission at a later time.
The rescue mission is the product of days of preparation across the administration and comes as the violent power struggle for control of Sudan that has already claimed almost 100 lives enters its second week.
On Friday, Austin told reporters U.S. forces had deployed to Africa to assist with a possible evacuation of U.S. embassy personnel.
"We've deployed some forces into theater to ensure that we provide as many options as possible if we are called on to do something," he said during a news conference in Ramstein, Germany.
Austin and other senior administration officials said at that time that no final call had been made to evacuate the embassy.
Speaking late Saturday, Bass said the quickly deteriorating situation in recent days left the administration with no other option other than to turn to the military to rescue embassy personnel. But he said private U.S. citizens in the country should not expect similar assistance
"We certainly continue to be in close touch with many American citizen residents in Khartoum and elsewhere in Sudan to give them our best assessment of the security environment and to encourage them to take appropriate precautions to the best of their ability in and around that environment," he said.
National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby emphasized the challenges in conducting even a limited military operation in Sudan during a press briefing on Friday, remarking that it was "not as simple as jumping in a taxicab" and that at the time, all U.S. government personnel had not yet been consolidated in a single location.
Despite a 72-hour ceasefire agreed upon to coincide with the religious holiday of Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, deadly clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, a powerful paramilitary group continued through the weekend.
In a statement on Friday, Blinken urged both sides to uphold the truce.
"I reiterate my call on both sides to pause the fighting to allow civilians to take care of themselves and their families, to permit full and unimpeded humanitarian access, and to enable all civilians, including diplomatic personnel, to reach safety," he said.
But both sides show little interest in laying down arms, and the violence seems poised to continue. An estimated 16,000 Americans are still in Sudan, but despite the ongoing danger, the Biden administration has repeatedly declared they should not expect a government-led mass evacuation.
"It is not our standard procedure to evacuate American citizens living abroad," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a White House press briefing on Friday.
The U.S. Embassy in Sudan reiterated this saying, "Due to the uncertain security situation in Khartoum and closure of the airport, it is not currently safe to undertake a U.S. government-coordinated evacuation of private U.S. citizens," in a statement Saturday.
Principal Deputy State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said that officials had been in touch with several hundred U.S. citizens in Sudan concerning "security measures and other precautions they can take on their own."
So far, the State Department has confirmed that one American citizen has been killed through the course of the conflict, but the limited information flow in Sudan could mean there are other victims not yet accounted for.
ABC News' Morgan Windsor, Matt Seyler and Josh Margolin contributed to this report. | Africa politics |
May 8 (Reuters) - Russia launched a large-scale wave of strikes on Kyiv and across Ukraine sowing destruction and injuries, officials said early on Monday, as Moscow prepares for its cherished Victory Day holiday that marks the anniversary of its defeat of Nazi Germany.
At least five people were injured due to Russian strikes on Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said, while Russian missiles set ablaze a foodstuff warehouse in the Black Sea city of Odesa and blasts were reported in several other Ukrainian regions.
The fresh attacks come as Moscow prepares for its Victory Day parade on Tuesday, a key anniversary for President Vladimir Putin who has evoked the spirit of the Soviet army that defeated Nazi German forces to declare that Russia would defeat a Ukraine supposedly in the grip of a new incarnation of Nazism.
Russia intensified shelling of Bakhmut hoping to take it by Tuesday, Ukraine's top general in charge of the defence of the besieged city said, after Russia's Wagner mercenary group appeared to ditch plans to withdraw from it.
Three people were injured in blasts in Kyiv's Solomyanskyi district and two others were injured when drone wreckage fell onto the Sviatoshyn district, both west of the capital's centre, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on his Telegram messaging channel.
The Kyiv's military administration said that drone wreckage fell on a runway of the Zhuliany airport, one of the two passenger airports of the Ukrainian capital, causing no fire, but emergency services were working on the site.
It also said that in Kyiv's central Shevchenkivskyi district, drone debris seemed to have hit a two-storey building, causing damages. There was no immediate information about potential casualties.
Reuters' witnesses said they had heard numerous explosions in Kyiv, with local officials saying that air defence systems were repelling the attacks. It was not immediately clear how many drones were launched on Kyiv.
Serhiy Bratchuk, spokesperson for the Odesa military administration, posted on his Telegram channel photos of a large structure fully engulfed in flames, in what he said was a Russian attack on a foodstuff warehouse, among others.
After air raid alerts blared for hours over roughly two-thirds of Ukraine, there were also media reports of sounds of explosions in the southern region of Kherson and in the Zaporizhzhia region in southeast.
Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed local official in Zaporizhzhia, said that Russian forces hit a warehouse and Ukrainian troops' position in Orikhiv, a small city in the region. Reuters was not able to independently verify the report.
Separately, Russian forces shelled eight locations in Sumy region in northeastern Ukraine on Sunday, the regional military administration said in a Facebook post.
In the past two weeks, strikes have also intensified on Russian-held targets, especially in Crimea. Ukraine, without confirming any role in those attacks, says destroying enemy infrastructure is preparation for its long-expected ground assault.
Putin invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, calling it a "special military operation" to defend Russia from neo-Nazis in Ukraine, but Kyiv and its allies say it was an unprovoked, land grab.
The invasion sparked the biggest conflict in Europe since World War Two and has killed thousands and forced millions to flee the country.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | Europe Politics |
'Concerning': Foreign Minister Penny Wong 'accelerates' removal of Chinese Communist Party-linked surveillance cameras
Penny Wong has confirmed she has fast-tracked the removal of CCP-linked cameras from government buildings as she did the rounds on Adelaide radio programs on Friday morning, where she also declared Australia needs to keep its "relationship growing" with Beijing.
Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong has confirmed she called on her department to accelerate the removal of Chinese-linked security cameras from government buildings.
Shadow cyber security minister James Paterson led calls to eliminate the surveillance technology after he exposed they were manufactured by companies partially owned by the Chinese Communist Party.
Ms Wong appeared on ABC Adelaide on Friday where she admitted the revelations were "concerning".
"It's unfortunate that the previous government, despite doing a review of this in 2018, really didn't do anything about it," she said.
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The Minister said she asked her department to accelerate the replacement of the cameras, noting that Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles had on Thursday asked his team to ensure 1,000 devices were removed and replaced from 250 Commonwealth sites.
“I think this can be resolved," she said.
"The advice to me is that they’re not connected to the internet, so there’s minimal security concerns, but obviously given what has happened in other countries, it’s probably a good idea to do it.”
Ms Wong earlier appeared on FiveAA Adelaide on Friday morning where she flagged her intention to improve Australia's relationship with China.
She said she spoken with her Beijing counterpart State Councillor Wang Yi about removing trade impediments between the two countries.
“I think more broadly rather than just trade, the fact that we have managed to re-engage, and China's made a decision to re-engage, we've worked to… stabilising the relationship,” she told FiveAA Adelaide.
The Foreign Minister said it was a wise decision to keep the “relationship growing” while managing certain differences.
“We've got dialogue going, and we'll continue to leave the door open to dialogue and engagement,” she said.
China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning slammed Australia’s move to dismantle its cameras from government buildings during a press conference on Thursday.
Ms Mao said the country strongly opposed “over-stretching the concept of national security” to disguise discriminating and suppressing Chinese companies.
“We hope the Australian side will provide a fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for the normal operation of Chinese companies and do more things that could contribute to mutual trust and cooperation between our two countries,” she said. | Australia Politics |
KYIV, June 20 (Reuters) - Russia launched a widespread overnight air attack on Ukraine on Tuesday, targeting military and infrastructure facilities in Kyiv and other cities, officials said on Tuesday.
Ukraine said it had shot down 32 out of 35 Iranian-made Shahed drones launched from Russia's Bryansk region and the Azov Sea.
There was no mention of any casualties in the latest air strikes launched by Moscow since Kyiv began a counteroffensive in which it says it has recaptured 113 square km (44 square miles) of land from Russian forces.
The air force said on the Telegram messaging app that air defences had been in action in most regions of Ukraine.
"However, the main direction of attack by Iranian drones was the Kyiv region. More than two dozen Shaheds were destroyed here," its said on the Telegram messaging app.
Serhiy Popko, head of the Kyiv military administration, said the air alert in the capital lasted over three hours. He gave no details of any damage.
An unspecified critical infrastructure facility was hit in Lviv, around 70 km (43 miles) from the border with NATO member Poland, and some tram routes were altered during the morning rush hour, officials said.
"They hit a critically important facility. There were three hits," said regional governor Maksym Kozytskiy.
The air force said Russia had also hit the southeastern industrial city of Zaporizhzhia with Iskander and S-300 missiles.
Yuriy Malashko, head of the military administration of the Zaporizhzhia region, said Russia had targeted telecommunication infrastructure and agriculture and farming properties.
Ukraine's military said that, according to preliminary information, Russia had fired seven missiles at Zaporizhzhia.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Russia.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | Europe Politics |
Emily Hand, a young girl who was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists during the October 7 massacre and brought to Gaza, then initially falsely reported as having been killed, turned 9 years old on Friday while in captivity in Gaza.
The young girl, who possesses Irish and Israeli citizenship, was abducted from a sleepover at her friend's house in Kibbutz Be'eri, along with her friend's mother, Raya Rotem.
Initial reports from the IDF seemed to confirm the worst - she was reported as one of the dead. However, her father said at the time that he was comforted by a sense of relief that she was not suffering among the over 240 hostages taken to Gaza by Hamas. Weeks later, he learned that this was, in fact, her fate, as her body had not been found and an eyewitness reported seeing her being taken away in a Hamas vehicle.
"Unofficial reports came in that she was found dead in the kibbutz," said Emily's father, Tom Hand, who is now living in a hotel on the Dead Sea with others evacuated from Be'eri. "I was relieved. I was relieved that she was dead and it was all over, it would have been pretty quick."
Tom Hand, a 64-year-old Irish immigrant who came to Be'eri in 1992 as a 32-year-old volunteer, worked as a printer in the kibbutz, where he met Emily's mother Liat.
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Liat died when Emily was just two-and-a-half years old, but the family had remained in the kibbutz where Hand's first wife Narkis also lived. She was among the about 100 murdered residents on October 7 - 10% of the community's population.
More than 100 people were killed in Kibbutz Be'eri over more than 24 hours. Many were shot with their families or found dead with their hands bound. Rescue workers said some were burned alive. He had been at home and the gunmen never reached his house.
"You try to imagine the, the best, you know. You hope that it was quick," Hand said. "Crazy thought, for a parent to say but, yeah, it was a relief thinking that she wasn't in Gaza."
"So now I know she is in Gaza and she's alive. She's going to be nine in the tunnels," he said. "She won't even know it's her birthday. She'll have no idea of night or day or time."
"There'll be no birthday party, no birthday cake, no friends around. But you know, yeah. Now we hope, now we pray."
Beyonce, Disney: 'I've got to give her fun'
Since the October 7 attack, Israel has attacked the Gaza Strip in a campaign that Hamas says has killed more than 11,000 people and launched a ground operation to destroy Hamas. The government and military have vowed to bring as many hostages back as possible.
Now that Hand has learned that Emily was alive, he said he had been forced into a complete mental shift to think: "OK, we're going to get her back, we're going to get her back. We're going to get them all back."
He said Emily was a fan of the American singer Beyonce and he focused on staying strong enough to bring her home and thinking of ways to bring her enjoyment.
"I'll make sure I'll get her to the next Beyonce concert. Bring her to Disney World, I'll spend all my money, every penny I've got to give her fun to make up for everything that she's lost and everything she's going through," he said, fighting tears. "I'm going to give her the world."
Rumors and reports of Israel and Hamas closing in on a deal to free some of the hostages in exchange for the release of some female and teenage Palestinians held in Israeli prisons have intensified this week, though the hostages' families are still left waiting for their miracle.
"We're all waiting for her," he said. "We know we're going to get you back. Be strong every day and wait, we're coming to get you. We're coming to get you home. We're going to bring you home."
Reuters contributed to this report. | Middle East Politics |
United Nations — On March 2, 2022, just one week into Russian President Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Kahn opened an investigation into alleged war crimes committed in the country at the request of 43 nations that are state parties to the court. Only a year later, the prosecutor is set to open two war crimes cases, as first reported by The New York Times and Reuters, and will seek arrest warrants for individuals involved in the alleged abduction of Ukrainian children and targeting of civilian infrastructure.
Over the course of the last year, the prosecution — as well as the Ukrainian prosecutor's office — has been gathering evidence from a multitude of country and individual sources.
CBS News investigated alleged torture and war crimes committed in Ukraine by Russian forces last month. In August, CBS News correspondent who had been taken to Russian territory against their will, then rescued and brought back to Ukraine.
"Due to the expanding number of perpetrators and victims, justice for Russia's horrific atrocities will require a comprehensive approach," the State Department's Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack told a Senate Judiciary Committee in September.
The U.S. is not a party to the statute that established the court, but Van Schaack said "the State Department is looking for ways to support the ICC in accordance with U.S. law and policy to ensure that the ICC is able to operate effectively and fairly and that its prosecutors can level charges against foreign nationals who bear significant responsibility for atrocity crimes committed in Ukraine."
What information is actually handed over by U.S. authorities is for President Biden to decide at this point.
Ukraine has alreadyin its national courts for crimes committed during the invasion, but the ICC's plan to seek warrants marks the beginning of the first international war crimes cases stemming from Russia's war. It's a record-breaking speed for such international proceedings to get underway.
Earlier this month, the ICC prosecutor visited Ukraine for a fourth time, "so that we can deliver tangible results and demonstrate the relevance of the rule of law in real-time," he said.
Like the U.S.,to the Rome Statute, which established the court, but the Ukrainian government has accepted the ICC's jurisdiction for crimes committed in its territory since 2014.
Russia is not a state party to the court either and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made it clear earlier this week that Moscow "does not recognize the jurisdiction" of the ICC.
"There is no question that international justice is a long game, and while Russia will not cooperate with the ICC at present, there is still significant value in this step from ICC prosecutor Khan," Akila Radhakrishnan, president of the Global Justice Center, told CBS News. "An arrest warrant is a direct signal to perpetrators that their actions will have serious consequences. For example, it took 16 years for Ratko Mladic to be arrested by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, but once arrested, he was."
"There is a powerful argument that the ICC had to launch these cases to show that Russia cannot assume it can commit crimes with impunity," Richard Gowan, U.N. director for the International Crisis Group thinktank, told CBS News. "In theory, it is possible that this will deter Russian officers and officials from committing more crimes, for fear of ending up in court one day."
Leila Sadat, a professor of international criminal law at Washington University in St. Louis who's served as a special adviser on crimes against humanity to the ICC prosecutor since 2012, told CBS News the court can issue arrest warrants in absentia and could have a confirmation [similar to a U.S. indictment] of the charges in absentia, too.
Sadat said it's possible an international arrest warrant.
"There is no immunity before the International Criminal Court for the nationals of non-state parties, and even the highest officials of those non-state parties, assuming that they're committing crimes on the territories of the state party, such as Ukraine as a state that accepted the ICC's jurisdiction."
"An ICC indictment is a ferocious thing if you are on the receiving end," Sadat said. "The issuance of arrest warrants is the first step to achieving accountability for war crimes — it signals that there is evidence that war crimes have been committed and that identified individuals are responsible for them and the persons charged will forever run the risk of arrest or surrender, particularly if they travel to one of the 123 states that are members of the court," Alex Whiting, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School who worked in the office of the ICC prosecutor for three years, told CBS News.
"Many of the defendants tried for war crimes at international tribunals never thought that they would face justice when charged, but over time, the political wheel can turn and suddenly the accused persons find themselves in a courtroom," said Whiting.
for more features. | Europe Politics |
Gaza was plunged into darkness, isolation and violence on Saturday night, its communications with the outside world almost entirely cut, as Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced his country was entering “the second stage” of what was likely to be a long and difficult war against Hamas.
In a televised press conference Netanyahu told Israelis: “We have unanimously approved the widening of the ground invasion … Our objective is singular: to defeat the murderous enemy. We declared ‘never again’, and we reiterate: ‘never again, now’.”
Describing the expanding war as Israel’s “second war of independence” Netanyahu continued: “In the initial weeks of the war, we launched massive airstrikes that dealt a severe blow to the enemy.
“We eliminated many terrorists. However, we are only at the beginning. The battle within the Gaza Strip will be difficult and long; this is our second war of independence.”
As 2.3 million Palestinians in the blockaded coastal strip braced themselves for a second night of sharply escalating Israeli military operations, Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said that the campaign against the Islamist militant group Hamas would continue until a new order was given.
After the heaviest airstrikes of the war so far, which saw up to 100 Israeli jets pound scores of targets throughout Friday night, Israeli armour and infantry which had entered Gaza under cover of darkness remained fighting in the enclave .
Netanyahu’s comments came hard on the heels of those by Gallant and IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi both signalling the war was entering a new phase. Halevi, head of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), announced that the objectives of the war against Hamas required a ground operation inside the coastal strip. “IDF ground forces are conducting a significant and complex operation,” he said.
“There are no achievements without risks, and as we know, there is no victory without sacrifices. To expose the enemy, to destroy it, there is no choice but to enter forcefully into their territory. This operation serves all the goals of the war.”
With links to mobile networks, the internet and electricity inside Gaza almost entirely severed, emergency services, including paramedic teams, were operating almost blind as they struggled to respond to scores of deaths and injuries from the airstrikes.
Some civilians used their bare hands to pull injured people from the rubble, loading them into cars or donkey carts to rush them to the hospital.
In one video posted by local media, Palestinians sprinted with a wounded man covered in the dust of a collapsed building while he winced, eyes clenched shut, on a stretcher.“Ambulance! Ambulance!” the men shouted as they shoved the stretcher into the back of a pickup and shouted at the driver: “Go! Go!”
Israel launched its assault on Gaza after hundreds of fighters from Hamas crossed the Israeli border in vehicles, by air and sea on 7 October, indiscriminately killing civilians in the streets, their homes and at an outdoor rave.
Lynn Hastings, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, posting on social media, said: “Hospitals & humanitarian operations can’t continue without communications,” even as Elon Musk, the owner of X – formerly known as Twitter – offered to supply internationally recognised agencies in Gaza with his Starlink satellite system. Amid mounting world concern over the civilian death toll, the IDF said its jets had struck 150 underground Hamas targets in Gaza overnight on Friday as Palestinian residents reported clashes with Israeli armour and infantry in three locations inside the Gaza Strip.
As rocket launches from within Gaza targeting Israel continued, exchanges of fire also took place on Saturday on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon after anti-tank guided missiles and mortars were launched at towns and Israeli military positions. The latest airstrikes came as the IDF repeated its call for residents of northern Gaza to move south of Wadi Gaza in leaflets dropped from the air.
With communications cut, a trickle of reports from Gaza described scenes of overflowing hospitals and morgues on the point of collapse and terrified civilians uncertain where to flee.
In a statement calling for a humanitarian ceasefire, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it had lost contact with its staff and described horrific scenes at hospitals.
It said: “During a night of intense bombardment and ground incursions in Gaza, with reports of hostilities still continuing, health workers, patients and civilians have been subject to a total communication and electrical blackout. Reports of bombardment near the Indonesia and al-Shifa hospitals are gravely concerning. The WHO reiterates that it is impossible to evacuate patients without endangering their lives.
“Hospitals across Gaza are already operating at maximum capacity due to the injuries sustained in weeks of unrelenting bombardment, and are unable to absorb a dramatic rise in the number of patients, while sheltering thousands of civilians.
“Health workers who have stayed by their patients’ sides face dwindling supplies, with no place to put new patients and no means to alleviate their patients’ pain.
“There are more wounded every hour. But ambulances cannot reach them in the communications blackout. Morgues are full. More than half of the dead are women and children.”
The WHO statement echoed a warning from the UN’s human rights chief, Volker Türk, of the “possibly catastrophic consequences” of large-scale ground operations in the Gaza Strip, leading to thousands more deaths.“There are a large number of martyrs and a large number of survivors under the rubble, and we cannot reach them,” a Gaza civil defence official said.
“The stench of death is everywhere – in every neighbourhood, every street and every house,” said respiratory physician Raed al-Astal, speaking to the AFP agency from Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
The Hamas-run Palestinian health ministry said about 7,700 people had been killed inside Gaza since 7 October after Hamas’s massacre of about 1,400 Israelis living along the Gaza border. The numbers claimed by Hamas cannot be verified.
On Saturday, the Israeli military released grainy images showing tank columns moving slowly in open areas of Gaza, many apparently near the border. “The forces are still on the ground and are continuing the war,” said army spokesman R Adm Daniel Hagari.
According to reports from Gaza residents, the heaviest clashes appeared to be taking place in the north of the Gaza Strip in the area of Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, while fighting was also reported to the east of Bureij in central Gaza and east of Khan Younis – approach routes for Israeli incursions in the past.
Witnesses said bombing was concentrated in the Jabalia district of northern Gaza, leaving craters in the streets and flattening many buildings.
The strikes on the extensive Hamas tunnel system in Gaza, known to Israeli military planners as the “metro”, follow the account of released hostage Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, that she was taken deep inside the tunnels along with other hostages during her captivity.
Wafaa Abdul Rahman, director of a feminist organisation in the West Bank city of Ramallah, said she had not heard for many hours from her family trapped in central Gaza.
“We’ve been seeing these horrible things and massacres when it’s live on TV, so now what will happen when there’s a total blackout?” she said, referring to scenes of families who have been crushed in homes by airstrikes over the past weeks. | Middle East Politics |
Police fired tear gas at protesters in Kenya's capital Nairobi and other parts of the country on Friday to break up demonstrations called by the opposition against newly imposed taxes.
Opposition leader Raila Odinga's Azimio alliance has called for the demonstrations to protest a new law that sees new or increased taxes on fuel and food, and introduced a housing levy for taxpayers.
Addressing some 2,000 supporters outside Nairobi's main business district, Odinga accused the government of failing to tackle the high cost of living.
What happened during the protests?
Odinga, who lost against President William Ruto in the tight 2022 race, announced during the rally plans to launch a petition to remove his rival from office. The opposition leader is hoping to collect 10 million signatures.
"Kenyans elected leaders to parliament and they have betrayed them," the French AFP news agency quoted him as saying. "Ruto himself who took over power illegally has betrayed Kenyans."
Police in Nairobi arrested over 20 people by midday, Police Commander Adamson Bungei said.
Protesters barricaded sections of two roads, the private Daily Nation newspaper reported, prompting police to fire tear gas to disperse them.
Police also used tear gas to break up the protesters in the port city of Mombasa. People were seen on local television chanting: "the struggle is not over."
Why are Kenyans protesting?
It comes as Kenyans struggle with a biting cost-of-living crisis.
"[President William] Ruto is imposing taxes on us without our consent and making laws whose net effect is to make life increasingly difficult," Odinga's Azimio said in a statement issued earlier this week.
President Ruto's government argues that the tax hikes are integral to addressing the country's growing debt repayments and funding job-creating initiatives.
The taxes are projected to annually raise an extra $1.42 billion (roughly €1.3 billion) for the cash-strapped country.
Kenya's High Court ordered that the tax hikes be suspended but the government has raised petrol prices anyway
The opposition senator who had initially lodged the case at the High Court is now seeking a jail sentence for the head of the energy sector regulator, accusing him of contempt.
The court is due to rule on the contempt application on Monday.
rmt/lo (AFP, AP, Reuters) | Africa politics |
- Ukraine's security service said it foiled a Russian attempt to assassinate President Zelenskyy.
- It learned of the attack in advance and was able to keep Zelenskyy safe, it said.
- By tracking a woman, it said it learned she was trying to share information on Ukraine's arms locations.
Ukraine's security service said it foiled an effort to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with an airstrike, and that it had detained a collaborator that tried to reveal his location.
The SBU said on Monday that Russia planned to use information gathered by the alleged informant to launch a massive airstrike on the southern Mykolaiv region while Zelenskyy was visiting.
A spokeswoman for Ukraine's armed forces said that the SBU was able to "foil the attack on the president during a recent trip to Mykolaiv," describing it as an "aborted assassination attempt."
The woman had tried to figure out the timings and the route for Zelenskyy's visit, but the SBU learned about her efforts in advance and put extra security in place during his trip, the SBU said.
"Zelenskyy is safe, the plot was foiled in advance," the spokeswoman said.
By tracking the woman they also found that she was trying to locate where Ukraine's electronic warfare systems and ammunition warehouses were placed.
The SBU published screenshots of text messages consistent with an exchange between an informant and handler, but with few specifics.
The woman was arrested on Monday after Ukraine learned the extent of her "treason," the armed forces spokeswoman said.
She now faces up to 12 years in prison, the SBU said, identifying her as a resident of the city of Ochakov, in Mykolaiv, and a former saleswoman in a military store.
The armed forces spokeswoman said she was "turned collaborator by FSB agents and continued to work for them."
The FSB is Russia's main security and spy agency.
It is not clear when the attack on Zelenskyy was planned. He was last recorded visiting Mykolaiv at the end of July, though he also made trips there earlier in the war.
Other Russian attempts to assassinate Zelenskyy have been reported.
Zelenskyy himself said he carries a pistol and would have fought to the death if Russian forces had got into his headquarters.
Zelenskyy has repeatedly visited the front lines since Russia launched its full-fledged invasion, with his office typically announcing his visits after he has already left, in order to reduce the risks on his life.
Ukrainian officials and lawmakers told Politico this month that Ukraine has a plan in place if Zelenskyy is killed. | Europe Politics |
GAZA, Nov 22 (Reuters) - The Israeli army showed a reinforced tunnel beside Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza on Wednesday, complete with a bathroom, kitchen and an air conditioned meeting room that it said had served as a command post for Hamas fighters.
The tunnel shaft, some two meters (6-1/2 feet) high, was accessed through an outdoor shaft in the hospital complex grounds, which were once crowded with tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians the army said had served as a human shield from war.
"That's the way that they survive because they use the hospital as a human shield that protects them," said Colonel Elad Tsuri, commander of an Israeli armoured brigade that found the tunnel. "And here they can stay for a long time. There is a room with air conditioning inside."
Israel has long accused Hamas of using the Shifa hospital complex as a command and control center as part of a wider strategy that seeks to hide its forces among the civilian population.
Hamas and hospital officials have denied the accusation and the hospital site has been at the centre of accusations of war crimes on both sides, with Palestinians accusing Israel of targeting hospitals and Israel saying the sites were being used to shelter armed fighters.
Journalists were driven in Israeli military vehicles to the hospital complex in the northern Gaza Strip past a landscape of buildings destroyed or vacated during Israel's nearly seven-week-old invasion of the Palestinian enclave.
Graced with arches, the tunnel was a well-built structure lined with stone and concrete. Army escorts used flashlights to illuminate the way in the dark and showed a small kitchen, a bathroom equipped with a toilet and sink behind a closed door, as well as a room large enough for meetings with two metal beds.
"We assume that there is another way out that they prepared. It's not open yet and we are sure that there are ways to the city from here," Tsuri said. He said the army knew the tunnel led to another opening in a Gaza kindergarten.
Israel has faced international criticism for its Gaza campaign, including its attacks on Shifa, the enclave's largest hospital. Medical officials say Israel has killed around 13,000 people in the strip since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel in which Israel says 1,200 people were killed and 240 taken hostage.
Outside on the ground, the army showed scores of guns, grenades and other explosives that military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said had been collected in recent days inside the hospital, a motor home and nearby cars.
He said the body of one hostage, Noa Marciano, 19, had been recovered by the army outside a nearby medical clinic. Hamas earlier released a video saying she had died in an Israeli air strike. It was impossible to verify the claim.
In Washington, the White House has said its independent intelligence supported Israel's claim that Hamas was using Gaza's hospitals, including Shifa, to hide command posts.
Hamas responded at the time: "The White House and the Pentagon's adoption of the false (Israeli) narrative, claiming that the resistance is using Al Shifa medical complex for military purposes, was a green light for the occupation (Israel) to commit more massacres against civilians."
But Hagari, referring to Hamas' use of a hideout beneath the hospital, said: "The world now should say what happened in Shifa, what happened in the hospitals, is a war crime."
Reporting by Ronen Zvulun; Writing by Howard Goller; Editing by James Mackenzie and Daniel Wallis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | Middle East Politics |
Martin Mejia/AP
toggle caption
Peru's former President Alberto Fujimori listens to a question during his testimony in a courtroom at a military base in Callao, Peru, March 15, 2018.
Martin Mejia/AP
Peru's former President Alberto Fujimori listens to a question during his testimony in a courtroom at a military base in Callao, Peru, March 15, 2018.
Martin Mejia/AP
LIMA, Peru — Peru's constitutional court ordered an immediate humanitarian release Tuesday for imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori, 85, who was serving a 25-year sentence in connection with the death squad slayings of 25 Peruvians in the 1990s.
The court ruled in favor of a 2017 pardon that had granted the former leader a release on humanitarian grounds but that later was annulled.
In a resolution seen by The Associated Press, the court told the state prisons agency to immediately release Fujimori "on the same day."
Fujimori was sentenced in 2009 to 25 years in prison on charges of human rights abuses. He had been accused of being the mastermind behind the slayings of 25 Peruvians by a military death squad during his administration from 1990 to 2000, while the government fought the Shining Path communist rebels.
Fujimori's 2017 pardon granted by then-President Pablo Kuczynski was annulled under pressure from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and its status was the subject of legal wrangling since then.
The constitutional court previously had ordered a lower court in the southern city of Ica to release Fujimori, but that court declined to do so, arguing in ruling last Friday that it lacked the authority. It returned the matter instead to the constitutional court. | Latin America Politics |
- Silvio Berlusconi was the billionaire Italian media mogul who served as the premier of four Italian governments over nine years.
- The tycoon was the controlling shareholder of Mediaset, Italy's largest commercial broadcaster.
- He was convicted, but later cleared, of charges of having sex with an underage nightclub dancer at one of his wild "bunga bunga" parties.
Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire media mogul who served as the premier of several Italian governments over nine years, has died at age 86, Italian media said Monday.
CNBC was not able to immediately verify the reports.
The tycoon suffered from several serious ailments, including Covid-19, which resulted in repeated hospitalizations beginning in September 2020.
Born Sept. 29, 1936, Berlusconi faced numerous scandals and trials over tax schemes and sexual escapades. He was once convicted, but later cleared, of charges of having sex with an underage nightclub dancer, Karima El-Mahroug, at one of his wild "bunga bunga" parties.
Berlusconi was the controlling shareholder of Mediaset, Italy's largest commercial broadcaster.
In June 2023, his fortune was estimated at around $7 billion. He also owned the Italian football club A.C. Milan from 1986 to 2017.
He led governments — from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011 — and since 2019 had served as a member of the European Parliament, where he had also served from 1999 to 2001. At a 2009 campaign rally during his last stint as premier, he was struck in the face by a mentally ill man wielding a statuette of the Milan cathedral. The bloody attack broke Berlusconi's nose, cut his lip and knocked out two teeth.
His nine years as prime minister made him the third-longest head of government in Italy after fascist dictators Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Giolitti.
He had promised — but failed — to sell his assets in Mediaset when he was prime minister.
In 2013, Berlusconi was convicted on charges that he paid for sex with the 17-year-old El-Mahroug at one of his parties and was sentenced to seven years in prison and banned from public office for life. Two years later, Italy's highest court ordered him acquitted.
Berlusconi was married twice and had five children.
— CNBC's Sam Meredith contributed to this report. | Europe Politics |
Campaigns begin as anxieties in Poland are rising over the presence of Russian Wagner mercenaries near the border.
Poland's is set to hold parliamentary elections on 15 October, kicking off an electoral campaign that has already been unofficially underway for months.
Polls show the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), in government since 2015, is currently the most popular party, but it is likely to fall short of an outright majority in parliament.
It holds a small lead over a centrist bloc, the Civic Coalition, headed by Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister and ex-president of the European Council.
Support for Tusk's party has grown in past months but mostly at the expense of other opposition parties.
The vote - which will see lawmakers elected for a four-year term - is being shaped by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which sparked tensions across the region.
Fears of a provocation on Poland's borders have risen, following the arrival of thousands of mercenaries from the Russian Wagner group on Belarussian soil.
Last week, a small contingent of around 100 Wagner fighters moved towards the Suwalki Gap land corridor, which experts could be captured to "cut off" NATO allies in the Baltics from Poland.
Warsaw in response beefed up its border security, with the ruling PiS wanting to present themselves as strong on defence.
However, a Polish security expert told Lithuania's public broadcaster LRT worries about Russian provocations - echoed by Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki - were “bizarre and absurd”, suggesting those in power were "trying to use the situation to their advantage" in view of the upcoming election.
Tensions have also grown with Poland's ally Ukraine, though it has so far been one of the country's most steadfast supporters.
A diplomatic spat was sparked last week after Warsaw called Kyiv "ungrateful" amid a squabble over grain imports.
PiS has taken a more confrontational stance with Ukraine as the far-right political group Confederation, which has fomented anti-Ukrainian sentiment, has risen in the opinion polls.
Millions of Ukrainian refugees have fled through Poland since Russian tanks rolled across the border in February 2022 - with the latest figures showing around a million remain there still.
While Poles have been praised for their welcoming reception, there are concerns their presence is putting a strain on local resources, which the small - yet increasingly influential - far-right is capitalising on.
PiS has gained popularity with many Poles for its conservative values and increase in state support for the elderly and families with children.
Early in its first term it introduced a monthly cash payment of 500 zlotys (€112) per month for each child under 18.
President Duda, who is aligned with the party, on Monday signed legislation raising that monthly payment to 800 zlotys (€179) per month, starting next January.
In July, Poland passed a controversial "Russian influence" law that critics warned could be used to target the opposition.
When it takes effect, it will create a powerful committee of experts who can investigate alleged Russian interference in Poland and name politicians who allegedly allow it.
The committee could then bar those concerned from holding public positions.
PiS has been widely condemned for veering towards authoritarianism, undermining the independence of the judiciary, media and eroding democratic norms. | Europe Politics |
SEOUL, South Korea -- The United States flew nuclear-capable bombers to the Korean Peninsula on Friday in its latest show of force against North Korea, days after the North staged massive anti-U.S. rallies in its capital.
The long-range B-52 bombers took part in joint aerial drills with other U.S. and South Korean fighter jets over the peninsula, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said in a statement. The bombers’ flyover is the latest in a series of temporary U.S. deployments of strategic assets in South Korea in response to North Korea’s push to expand its nuclear arsenal.
Two weeks ago, the U.S. deployed a nuclear-powered submarine capable of carrying about 150 Tomahawk missiles to South Korean waters for the first time in six years. The USS Michigan’s arrival came a day after North Korea resumed missile tests to protest previous U.S.-South Korean drills that it views as an invasion rehearsal.
The South Korean Defense Ministry said the B-52 bombers' deployment boosted the visibility of U.S. strategic assets to the peninsula. It said the allies have been demonstrating their firm resolve to strengthen combined defense postures and will continue joint drills involving U.S. strategic bombers.
On Sunday, more than 120,000 North Koreans participated in mass rallies in Pyongyang to mark the 73rd anniversary of the start of the Korean War. During the rallies, officials and residents delivered speeches vowing “merciless revenge” against the United States over the war while accusing the U.S. of plotting an invasion on North Korea.
The Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the peninsula in a technical state of war. The U.S. stations about 28,000 troops in South Korea as deterrence against potential aggression by North Korea.
Since its June 15 launches of two short-range ballistic missiles, North Korea hasn’t performed any further public weapons tests. But the U.S. bombers’ deployment could prompt it to launch weapons again in protest.
Enhancing “regular visibility of U.S. strategic assets" to the Korean Peninsula was part of agreements reached between U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol during their summit in Washington in April. Biden stated at the time that any North Korean nuclear attack on the U.S. or its allies would “result in the end of whatever regime” took such action.
Since the start of 2022, North Korea has carried out more than 100 missile tests in a bid to enlarge its arsenal of nuclear-capable missiles targeting the U.S. mainland and South Korea. The allies have responded by expanding their military exercises.
In late May, a North Korean launch of a rocket carrying its first spy satellite ended in failure, with the rocket plunging into waters soon after liftoff. North Korea has since repeatedly said it would attempt a second launch, saying it’s crucial to build space-based surveillance system to cope with what it calls U.S. hostility. | Asia Politics |
SRINAGAR, India — Weapons left behind by U.S. forces during the withdrawal from Afghanistan are surfacing in another conflict, further arming militants in the disputed South Asian region of Kashmir in what experts say could be just the start of the weapons’ global journey.
Authorities in Indian-controlled Kashmir tell NBC News that militants trying to annex the region for Pakistan are carrying M4s, M16s and other U.S.-made arms and ammunition that have rarely been seen in the 30-year conflict. A major reason, they say, is a regional flood of U.S.-funded weapons that fell into the hands of the Taliban when U.S.-led NATO forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021.
Most of the weapons recovered so far, officials say, are from Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) or Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), both Pakistan-based militant groups that the U.S. designates as terrorist organizations. In a Twitter post last year, for example, police said they had seized an M4 carbine assault rifle after a gunfight that killed two militants from JeM.
Militants from both groups had been sent to Afghanistan to fight alongside or train the Taliban before the U.S. withdrawal, said Lt. Col. Emron Musavi, an Indian army spokesperson in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir.
“It can be safely assumed that they have access to the weapons left behind,” he said.
Government officials in Afghanistan and Pakistan did not respond to requests for comment.
Kashmir, a Himalayan region known for its beautiful landscapes, shares borders with India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and China. A separatist insurgency in the part of Kashmir controlled by India has killed tens of thousands of people since the 1990s and been a constant source of tension between nuclear powers India and Pakistan.
The year opened in violence as Kashmir police blamed militants for a Jan. 1 gunfire attack that killed four people in the southern village of Dhangri, followed by an explosion in the same area the next day that killed a 5-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl. At least six people were injured on Jan. 21 in two explosions in the city of Jammu.
While the U.S.-made weapons are unlikely to shift the balance of power in the Kashmir conflict, they give the Taliban a sizable reservoir of combat power potentially available to those willing and able to purchase it, said Jonathan Schroden, director of the Countering Threats and Challenges Program at the Center for Naval Analyses, a research group based outside Washington.
“When combined with the Taliban’s need for money and extant smuggling networks, that reservoir poses a substantial threat to regional actors for years to come,” he said.
A trove of weapons
More than $7.1 billion in U.S.-funded military equipment was in the possession of the Afghan government when it fell to the Taliban in August 2021 amid the withdrawal, according to a Defense Department report published last August. Though more than half of it was ground vehicles, it also included more than 316,000 weapons worth almost $512 million, plus ammunition and other accessories.
While large numbers of small arms that had been transferred to Afghan forces most likely ended up in the hands of the Taliban, “it’s important to remember that nearly all weapons and equipment used by U.S. military forces in Afghanistan were either retrograded or destroyed prior to our withdrawal,” Army Lt. Col. Rob Lodewick, a spokesperson for the Pentagon, said in a statement.
The Defense Department report also pointed out that the operational condition of the Afghan army’s equipment was unknown.
Questions around the weapons being used in Kashmir were raised in January 2022, when a video of militants brandishing what appeared to be American-made guns was shared widely on Indian social media. Though the origin of the weapons in such cases can be difficult to verify — some may be modified to look like U.S. weapons, while others may not have been manufactured in the U.S. — the Indian military says it has recovered at least seven that are authentic.
“From the weapons and equipment that we recovered, we realized that there was a spillover of high-tech weapons, night-vision devices and equipment, which were left by the Americans in Afghanistan [and] were now finding their way toward this side,” Maj. Gen. Ajay Chandpuria, an Indian army official, was quoted as saying by Indian media last year.
Jammu and Kashmir Lt. Gov. Manoj Sinha said the government was aware of the issue and that measures were in place to combat the infiltration of U.S. weapons into Kashmir.
“We are monitoring the situation closely and have taken steps accordingly. Our police and army are on the job,” Sinha, the region’s top official, said on the sidelines of a news conference last year at his official residence in Srinagar.
Kashmir police official Vijay Kumar also said authorities were fully capable of countering the militant threat.
“Our forces are tracking down militants on a daily basis,” he said. “We are constantly upgrading our equipment and have the latest weaponry at our disposal.”
The militant groups JeM and LeT could be buying U.S. weapons from the Taliban in Afghanistan, where the United Nations says both groups have bases, or through smugglers in Pakistan, said Ajai Sahni, an author on counterterrorism who serves as executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management, a think tank in New Delhi.
Militants will struggle to get the upper hand, however, without more advanced weapons that have greater firepower but are more difficult to smuggle into the region, Sahni said.
Schroden said that although he had not seen substantial reports of U.S.-made weapons left behind in Afghanistan appearing outside of Kashmir, it would not be surprising if they eventually began turning up farther away in places such as Yemen, Syria and parts of Africa.
“I suspect there hasn’t yet been enough time for these weapons to percolate out that far,” he said. “It’s also possible that the Taliban have held tightly to most of them thus far as part of their efforts to consolidate power and seek legitimization from the international community.”
Beyond weapons, the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan gave an ideological boost to radical militants in Kashmir and elsewhere, said Ahmad Shuja Jamal, a former Afghan civil servant living in exile in Australia.
Such militants, he said, “now see in clear terms the political dividends of long-term violence.” | India Politics |
Early warning missile data information sharing between Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the United States of America will be available before the end of the year, according to US officials.
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The schedule was announced after all three countries completed a trilateral phone call on 7 September. The call was organised between US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J Austin III, Japan Minister of Defense Yasukazu Hamada, and ROK Minister of National Defense Lee Jong-Sup.
Earlier this year, the countries sent their respective leaders to discuss defence and security cooperation during a summit at Camp David in August.
“The officials highlighted ongoing trilateral efforts by the United States, the ROK, and Japan to fully operationalise early warning missile data information sharing this year, to build and implement a multi-year exercise plan, and to enhance coordination of activities to address regional security challenges,” said Pentagon Press Secretary Brigadier General Pat Ryder, regarding the call on 7 September.
“The secretary affirmed the ironclad US extended deterrence commitment to Japan and the Republic of Korea.
“The leaders also discussed and strongly condemned North Korea’s August 24 attempted space launch using ballistic missile technology as a violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions.”
The region is in a period of increasing tension after the US military and allies held joint military exercises last month and North Korea launched two short-range ballistic missiles during weapons testing at the same time.
The United States is already on a diplomatic campaign in the Indo-Pacific as it steps up near-peer competition with North Korean ally, the People’s Republic of China.
Earlier this month, US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner said the country is undertaking a number of activities to lead a more distributed mobile, resilient, and lethal force posture in the region.
“We are delivering on our vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific and absolutely strengthening deterrence in the region,” Assistant Secretary Ratner said.
“US military-to-military relations between the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the other countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are stronger than they had ever been.” | Asia Politics |
Subsets and Splits