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The Guardian;Barnier fights to form French government amid no-confidence threats;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/16/barnier-fights-to-form-french-government-amid-no-confidence-threats;2024-09-16T15:37:11Z | The new French prime minister, Michel Barnier, has continued negotiations with potential ministers as he struggles to form a government to end the country’s political deadlock. The veteran politician and former EU Brexit negotiator, appointed by the president, Emmanuel Macron, earlier this month, had promised to form a new administration this week after “listening to everybody”. However, with threats from the far right and hard left to call a vote of no confidence in any ministerial team that fails to meet their approval, sources close to Barnier say he is unlikely to put names to posts until the end of next weekend. Vincent Jeanbrun, a spokesperson for the centre-right Republicans party (LR), which Barnier represents, said the PM had “a complex equation to solve” and he did not expect an announcement before then. Barnier has promised to seek ministers from across the political spectrum, but leftwing candidates have been reluctant, while the far-right National Rally (RN) is seen as a behind-the-scenes arbiter. Macron’s decision in June to call a snap general election left the national assembly with three roughly equal political blocs – left, centre and far right – none of which has an absolute majority. A leftwing coalition, the New Popular Front (NFP), won the most seats, followed by the centrist alliance that includes Macron’s Renaissance party and the centre-right LR – but the RN emerged the most powerful single political party. It is now in a position to make or break any government unless the NFP and centrists ally to oppose it. Christian Le Bart, a political scientist at the Institute of Political Studies at Rennes, said Barnier was “stuck”, particularly as the LR’s group had won only 47 of the 577 seats in the national assembly. “If he reappoints a significant number of [centrist] ministers, people will rightly complain that the executive has not heard the message. And if he swings too far towards the Republicans, everyone will take offence at the fact that a political family with 47 MPs is over-represented in the government,” Le Bart told the newspaper La Dépêche. Marine Le Pen’s far right is banking on a new general election being called next year. Macron cannot dissolve parliament and call another general election until 12 months after the last dissolution. At the weekend, Le Pen told RN leaders she hoped Barnier’s tenure as head of the government would be “as short as possible”. “We find ourselves in a situation where the party that got the least votes is in charge of forming a government. It cannot hold,” she said. On Monday, the RN president, Jordan Bardella, who has said “nothing can be done without the RN”, warned the new premier not to continue with a Macronist programme. He threatened a censure motion against any new government that “recycled” Macron’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, or justice minister, Éric Dupond-Moretti – both on the centre-right of the previous government. “If Michel Barnier continues with the programme driven by Emmanuel Macron since seven years, which was severely defeated in the European and legislative election ballot boxes … then the government will fall,” he told RTL radio. “If Mr Barnier echoes the hopes expressed by millions of French people, then we’ll vote for the bills on a case-by-case basis.” Fabien Roussel, the national secretary of the French Communist party, one of four leftwing parties that make up the NFP, also warned Barnier it was ready to use a censure motion and called on the new PM to repeal the contested pension law that raised the official retirement age from 62 to 64. “He [Barnier] is a veteran of 50 years of rightwing politics … The censure motion is on the table. It’s ready, we’re working on it,” Roussel said. Le Bart believes the only possibility of Barnier escaping censure is a reluctance among opposition parties to leave the country without a government. “They would not want to add disorder to disorder,” he said. A poll by Ipsos published at the weekend suggested 64% of French people believed Macron had ignored the result of the election. Among those who voted for the NFP, that figure rose to 91%. Only one-third of those polled approved of his choice of Barnier as PM. The next parliamentary session will begin on 1 October. One of the government’s first acts will be to draw up and present the 2025 budget. |
The Guardian;Israel-Gaza war: new generations being recruited as conflict continues, senior Hamas official says – as it happened;https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/16/israel-gaza-war-hamas-houthis-netanyahu;2024-09-16T15:00:06Z | Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed on Monday that they shot down another American-made MQ-9 Reaper drone, with video circulating online showing what appeared to be a surface-to-air missile strike and flaming wreckage strewn across the ground. The US military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Houthis’ claimed downing of a drone over the country’s southwestern Dhamar province, AP reported. The Houthis have exaggerated claims in the past in their ongoing campaign targeting shipping in the Red Sea over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. Al Jazeera is reporting that “according to medical sources” who have spoken to the network, the number of people killed by Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since dawn is now 21. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has banned Al Jazeera from operating inside Israel, and the government has moved to revoke the accreditation of all Al Jazeera journalists living there. Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 41,226 Palestinians and wounded 95,413 since 7 October, the Palestinian health ministry said on Monday. A senior Hamas official has told Agence France-Presse that new generations of fighters have been recruited since the 7 October attacks, less than a week after Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant told journalists that Hamas, “no longer exists” as a military formation in Gaza. Osama Hamdan claimed during an interview in Istanbul that the militant group “has a high ability to continue”. “There were martyrs and there were sacrifices … but in return there was an accumulation of experiences and the recruitment of new generations into the resistance.” Tehran has not sent hypersonic missiles to Yemen’s Houthis, Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian claimed in a televised news conference on Monday, according to a report from Reuters. On Sunday the Houthis claimed that they had, for the first time, fired an advanced surface-to-surface hypersonic missile towards Israel, which hit an open area in the Ben Shemen forest, causing a fire near Kfar Daniel. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned them they would pay a “heavy price”. Polio vaccination coverage in Gaza has reached 90%, the head of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency said on Monday, adding that the next step was to ensure hundreds of thousands of children got a second dose at the end of the month. The campaign to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza under 10 years of age against polio, which began on 1 September, presented major challenges to Unrwa and its partners due to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, Reuters reported. Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant told US defence secretary Lloyd Austin on Monday that the window was closing for a diplomatic solution to the standoff with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement in southern Lebanon. Gallant’s remarks came as the White House Special envoy Amos Hochstein visited Israel to discuss the crisis on the northern border where Israeli troops have been exchanging missile fire with Hezbollah forces for months, Reuters reports. Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian said on Monday that Tehran would never give up on its missile programme as it needs such deterrence for its security in a region where Iran’s arch-foe Israel is able to “drop missiles on Gaza every day”. The Islamic Republic has for years defied western calls to limit its missile programme. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed publicly on Tuesday that three Israeli hostages were mistakenly killed in a strike that also took the life of Hamas’ northern Gaza brigade chief, Ahmed Ghandour, in November. According to reports from Hebrew media, families of Sgt. Ron Sherman, Cpl. Nik Beizer, both 19, and civilian Elia Toledano, 28, who were abducted by Hamas on 7 October, were informed by IDF officials that their loved ones had tragically lost their lives as a result of IDF actions after a comprehensive inquiry. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will travel to New York on 24 September, the first day of the high-level general debate by world leaders at the annual UN general assembly, his office said Sunday. It said Netanyahu is scheduled to stay until 28 September in the US, which he had visited in July for official talks and a congressional address. The archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is understood to be considering a visit to Israel after being warned Bethlehem risks becoming a “new Gaza” cut off from the world if extremist Israeli settlers are given their way. The warning was given to the archbishop by Munther Isaac, a Luthern Pastor based in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ. A sniper killed a UN worker on the roof of his home in the northern West Bank, the UN has said, as friends and family gathered in Turkey to bury a US-Turkish activist who had been killed by the Israeli military at a protest six days earlier and around 30km away. Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad, a sanitation worker with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, was the first Unrwa employee killed in the West Bank in more than a decade. Shot in the early hours of Thursday morning in el Far’a camp, he left behind a wife and five children. That’s all from the Israel-Gaza war live blog for today. Thanks for following along. In Britain, the Labour leadership is facing a challenge at its party conference to extend its current limited arms embargo to Israel to cover all arms export licences and to go faster in recognition of Palestine as a state. Campaigners say they intend to advance an emergency motion similar to one passed unanimously at the TUC last week, calling on the government not just to impose an embargo on 30 arms export licences, but all current licences. They are confident they will receive the votes at conference for the issue to be chosen for debate. The UK government on 3 September, after two months intense internal discussion, suspended 30 of the 350 arms export licences to Israel but the decision has left both pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian groups disssatisfied. The Palestinian ambassador to the UK Husan Zumlot has been working the union conference circuit hard this spring and summer building support, and Labour is also aware that it remains under electoral challenge in some of its strongholds from the Green party and independents in local elections. Both the Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner and the Middle East minister Hamish Falconer are due to speak at a Palestinian reception on Monday evening alongside Zumlot. In a 20-minute address to the TUC, Zumlot said it would be unconscionable if the UK continued to sell arms to Israel. The archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is understood to be considering a visit to Israel after being warned Bethlehem risks becoming a “new Gaza” cut off from the world if extremist Israeli settlers are given their way. The warning was given to the archbishop by Munther Isaac, a Luthern Pastor based in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ. He told the Guardian: All it takes for Israel is to close two checkpoints and then Bethlehem becomes another Gaza in terms of isolated from the rest of the world. There are new checkpoints, and new gates around towns and cities. Roads are still blocked. We are becoming more isolated and fearful Pointing to the announcement by the Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, of a new settlement to be built in the Al-Mahrur Valley on land that will be seized from Palestinians, Isaac said the confiscation of one of the last Christian villages in the region would further increase Bethlehem’s isolation. He said: I would think three or four times before thinking of going to Ramallah or Nablus, out of fear of not just closures, but really the violence of the settlers these days. The settlers can do whatever they want and never be held accountable, not just in terms of land confiscation, but in terms of violence. After the meeting, the archbishop called for the a ceasefire, saying: “I cry out to God for the war in Gaza to stop. How many more stories of families, homes and communities destroyed must we hear before this senseless killing ceases.” Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian said on Monday that Tehran would never give up on its missile programme as it needs such deterrence for its security in a region where Iran’s arch-foe Israel is able to “drop missiles on Gaza every day”. The Islamic Republic has for years defied western calls to limit its missile programme. The United States and its allies have more recently accused Iran of transferring ballistic missiles to Russia for its war in Ukraine, imposing fresh sanctions on Moscow and Tehran. Both countries have denied the claims, Reuters reported. At least 16 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes across central Gaza on Sunday night and Monday morning, including five women and four children, Palestinian health officials have said. Rescuers said an airstrike early on Monday destroyed a residential building in the densely populated Nuseirat refugee camp in the heart of central Gaza, killing at least 10 people, including four women and two children. The al-Awda hospital, which received the bodies, confirmed the deaths and said another 13 people were wounded. Hospital records quoted by local media show that the dead included a mother, her child and her five siblings. In a separate strike targeting a building in Gaza City, six individuals lost their lives. A woman and two children were among the dead, according to the civil defence, a team of emergency responders working under the governance of Hamas. In a message on its official Telegram channel. Israel’s military has claimed its air force “struck Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure sites in the area of Houla in southern Lebanon.” It said that earlier in Upper Galilee “a number of projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory. Some of the projectiles were intercepted and the rest fell in open areas. No injuries were reported.” The claims have not been independently verified. Tehran has not sent hypersonic missiles to Yemen’s Houthis, Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian claimed in a televised news conference on Monday, according to a report from Reuters. On Sunday the Houthis claimed that they had, for the first time, fired an advanced surface-to-surface hypersonic missile towards Israel, which hit an open area in the Ben Shemen forest, causing a fire near Kfar Daniel. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned them they would pay a “heavy price”. Al Jazeera is reporting that “according to medical sources” who have spoken to the network, the number of people killed by Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since dawn is now 21. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has banned Al Jazeera from operating inside Israel, and the government has moved to revoke the accreditation of all Al Jazeera journalists living there. Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed Monday that they shot down another American-made MQ-9 Reaper drone, with video circulating online showing what appeared to be a surface-to-air missile strike and flaming wreckage strewn across the ground. The US military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Houthis’ claimed downing of a drone over the country’s southwestern Dhamar province, AP reported. The Houthis have exaggerated claims in the past in their ongoing campaign targeting shipping in the Red Sea over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian officials say Israeli airstrikes have killed 16 people in the Gaza Strip, including five women and four children. A strike early on Monday flattened a home in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, leaving a total of 10 people dead. Four of the deceased were women and two were children, AP reported. Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 41,226 Palestinians and wounded 95,413 since 7 October, the Palestinian health ministry said on Monday. A senior Hamas official has told Agence France-Presse that new generations of fighters have been recruited since the 7 October attacks, less than a week after Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant told journalists that Hamas, “no longer exists” as a military formation in Gaza. Osama Hamdan claimed during an interview in Istanbul that the militant group “has a high ability to continue”. “There were martyrs and there were sacrifices … but in return there was an accumulation of experiences and the recruitment of new generations into the resistance.” Polio vaccination coverage in Gaza has reached 90%, the head of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency said on Monday, adding that the next step was to ensure hundreds of thousands of children got a second dose at the end of the month. The campaign to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza under 10 years of age against polio, which began on 1 September, presented major challenges to Unrwa and its partners due to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, Reuters reported. Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant told US defence secretary Lloyd Austin on Monday that the window was closing for a diplomatic solution to the standoff with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement in southern Lebanon. Gallant’s remarks came as the White House Special envoy Amos Hochstein visited Israel to discuss the crisis on the northern border where Israeli troops have been exchanging missile fire with Hezbollah forces for months, Reuters reports. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed publicly on Tuesday that three Israeli hostages were mistakenly killed in a strike that also took the life of Hamas’ northern Gaza brigade chief, Ahmed Ghandour, in November. According to reports from Hebrew media, families of Sgt. Ron Sherman, Cpl. Nik Beizer, both 19, and civilian Elia Toledano, 28, who were abducted by Hamas on 7 October, were informed by IDF officials that their loved ones had tragically lost their lives as a result of IDF actions after a comprehensive inquiry. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will travel to New York on 24 September, the first day of the high-level general debate by world leaders at the annual UN general assembly, his office said Sunday. It said Netanyahu is scheduled to stay until 28 September in the US, which he had visited in July for official talks and a congressional address. A sniper killed a UN worker on the roof of his home in the northern West Bank, the UN has said, as friends and family gathered in Turkey to bury a US-Turkish activist who had been killed by the Israeli military at a protest six days earlier and around 30km away. Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad, a sanitation worker with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, was the first Unrwa employee killed in the West Bank in more than a decade. Shot in the early hours of Thursday morning in el Far’a camp, he left behind a wife and five children. Polio vaccination coverage in Gaza has reached 90%, the head of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency said on Monday, adding that the next step was to ensure hundreds of thousands of children got a second dose at the end of the month. The campaign to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza under 10 years of age against polio, which began on 1 September, presented major challenges to Unrwa and its partners due to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, Reuters reported. It followed confirmation by the World Health Organization (WHO) last month that a baby had been partially paralysed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in Palestinian territory in 25 years. More than 446,000 Palestinian children in central and south Gaza were vaccinated earlier this month before a campaign to vaccinate a final 200,000 children in north Gaza began on 10 September despite access restrictions, evacuation orders and shortages of fuel. The first round of the polio vaccination campaign in Gaza ended successfully, Unrwa’s chief Philippe Lazzarini said, adding that 90% of the territory’s children had received a first dose. “Parties to the conflict have largely respected the different required “humanitarian pauses” showing that when there is a political will, assistance can be provided without disruption. Our next challenge is to provide children with their second dose at the end of September,” he wrote on X. Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant told US defence secretary Lloyd Austin on Monday that the window was closing for a diplomatic solution to the standoff with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement in southern Lebanon. Gallant’s remarks came as the White House Special envoy Amos Hochstein visited Israel to discuss the crisis on the northern border where Israeli troops have been exchanging missile fire with Hezbollah forces for months, Reuters reports. “The possibility for an agreed framework in the northern arena is running out,” Gallant told Austin in a phone call, according to a statement from his office. As long as Hezbollah continued to tie itself to the Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza, where Israeli forces have been engaged for almost a year, “the trajectory is clear,” he said. The visit by Hochstein, who is due to meet Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, comes amid efforts to find a diplomatic path out of the crisis, which has forced tens of thousands on both sides of the border to leave their homes. Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed Monday that they shot down another American-made MQ-9 Reaper drone, with video circulating online showing what appeared to be a surface-to-air missile strike and flaming wreckage strewn across the ground. The US military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Houthis’ claimed downing of a drone over the country’s southwestern Dhamar province, AP reported. The Houthis have exaggerated claims in the past in their ongoing campaign targeting shipping in the Red Sea over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. However, the online video bolstered the claim, particularly after two recent claims by the Houthis included no evidence. Other videos showed armed rebels gathered around the flaming wreckage, a propeller similar to those used by the armed drone visible in the flames. One attempted to pick up a piece of the metal before dropping it due to the heat. AP’s report continued: Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, a Houthi military spokesperson, identified the drone as an MQ-9, without elaborating on how he came to the determination. He said it was the third downed by the group in a week, though the other two claims did not include similar video or other evidence. The US military similarly has not acknowledged losing any aircraft. Saree said the Houthis used a locally produced missile. However, Iran has armed the rebels with a surface-to-air missile known as the 358 for years. Iran denies arming the rebels, though Tehran-manufactured weaponry has been found on the battlefield and in seaborne shipments heading to Yemen despite a United Nations arms embargo. Reapers, which cost around $30m apiece, can fly at altitudes up to 50,000 feet (15,240 meters) and have an endurance of up to 24 hours before needing to land. The aircraft have been flown by both the US military and the CIA over Yemen for years. Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 41,226 Palestinians and wounded 95,413 since 7 October, the Palestinian health ministry said on Monday. In case you missed it, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has warned Yemen’s Houthi rebels will pay a “heavy price” after the group claimed its first ballistic missile strike on Israel and its leader warned of bigger attacks to come. The missile – claimed by the Houthis as an advanced surface-to-surface hypersonic missile – triggered air sirens across the country at about 6.30am, and local media aired footage of people racing to shelters at Ben Gurion international airport south-east of Tel Aviv. According to reports, it hit an open area in the Ben Shemen forest, causing a fire near Kfar Daniel. There were no reports of casualties or damage. The Israeli military is investigating whether the fire was the result of falling fragments caused by the interceptor missiles launched at the projectile, or if it successfully penetrated Israeli air defences as the Houthis have claimed. Yemen’s Houthis downed a US MQ-9 drone in Dhamar province, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson, Yahya Saree, said on Monday. Palestinian officials say Israeli airstrikes have killed 16 people in the Gaza Strip, including five women and four children. A strike early on Monday flattened a home in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, leaving a total of 10 people dead. Four of the deceased were women and two were children, AP reported. Gaza medical facility Awda hospital received the bodies, confirmed the death toll, and said another 13 people were wounded. Hospital records show the deceased include a mother, her child, and her five siblings. Another strike on a home in Gaza City killed a further six people which included a woman and two children, as per Hamas-run first responders Civil Defence. Israel says it only targets militants and accuses Hamas and other armed groups of endangering civilians by operating in residential areas. Welcome to our live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis. I’m Tom Ambrose. A senior Hamas official has told Agence France-Presse that new generations of fighters have been recruited since the 7 October attacks, less than a week after Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant told journalists that Hamas, “no longer exists” as a military formation in Gaza. Osama Hamdan claimed during an interview in Istanbul that the militant group “has a high ability to continue”. “There were martyrs and there were sacrifices … but in return there was an accumulation of experiences and the recruitment of new generations into the resistance.” Last week, Gallant said Hamas’s military capabilities had been severely damaged after more than 11 months of war. At least 41,206 Palestinians have been killed and 95,337 others injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the health ministry in Gaza said on Sunday. The war was triggered by Hamas’ attacks on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 250 hostages taken. Hamdan also said Sunday’s first ballistic missile strike on Israel by Yemen’s Houthi rebels showed the limits of Israel’s ability to defend itself, including its oft-touted aerial defence system. “It is a message to the entire region that Israel is not an immune entity,” Hamdan said. “Even Israeli capabilities have limits.” The Israeli military is investigating whether the fire near Kfar Daniel, in central Israel, was the result of falling fragments caused by interceptor missiles launched at the projectile, or if it successfully penetrated Israeli air defences, as the Houthis have claimed. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday: “This morning, the Houthis launched a surface-to-surface missile from Yemen into our territory. They should have known by now that we charge a heavy price for any attempt to harm us.” Here is a summary of the latest developments: The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed publicly on Tuesday that three Israeli hostages were mistakenly killed in a strike that also took the life of Hamas’ northern Gaza brigade chief, Ahmed Ghandour, in November. According to reports from Hebrew media, families of Sgt. Ron Sherman, Cpl. Nik Beizer, both 19, and civilian Elia Toledano, 28, who were abducted by Hamas on 7 October, were informed by IDF officials that their loved ones had tragically lost their lives as a result of IDF actions after a comprehensive inquiry. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will travel to New York on 24 September, the first day of the high-level general debate by world leaders at the annual UN general assembly, his office said Sunday. It said Netanyahu is scheduled to stay until 28 September in the US, which he had visited in July for official talks and a congressional address. A sniper killed a UN worker on the roof of his home in the northern West Bank, the UN has said, as friends and family gathered in Turkey to bury a US-Turkish activist who had been killed by the Israeli military at a protest six days earlier and around 30km away. Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad, a sanitation worker with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, was the first Unrwa employee killed in the West Bank in more than a decade. Shot in the early hours of Thursday morning in el Far’a camp, he left behind a wife and five children. |
The Guardian;Europe floods: death toll rises – as it happened;https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/16/europe-floods-death-toll-storm-boris-poland-austria-romania-slovakia;2024-09-16T14:15:59Z | The death toll in Central Europe rose to at least 15 due to heavy rain and flooding over the past days. While water was receding in some areas, others were shoring up defences. Poland introduced a 30-day “state of natural disaster”. Austria’s chancellor, Karl Nehammer, said that “in difficult times, we are grateful for the friendship and solidarity of our neighbours and friends.” The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, has said that the country set aside 1 billion zlotys ($260.31 million) to help victims of floods. The Czech prime minister, Petr Fiala, said that the situation is difficult. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán said he was postponing “all my international obligations” due to the floods. Factories in the region shuttered production lines. The Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said that “we need a united and decisive European response to adapt to the escalating challenges of the climate crisis.” Climate scientists said they are troubled by the damage but unsurprised by the intensity. “The catastrophic rainfall hitting central Europe is exactly what scientists expect with climate change,” said Joyce Kimutai, of Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute. Meanwhile, the EU is mobilising firefighting planes to help Portugal battle wildfires. Picturesque towns across central Europe are inundated by dirty flood water after heavy weekend rains turned tranquil streams into raging rivers that wreaked havoc on infrastructure. The floods have killed at least 15 people and destroyed buildings from Austria to Romania. The destruction comes after devastating floods around the world last week when entire villages were submerged in Myanmar and nearly 300 prisoners escape a collapsed jail in Nigeria, where floods have affected more than 1 million people. Climate scientists say they are troubled by the damage but unsurprised by the intensity. “The catastrophic rainfall hitting central Europe is exactly what scientists expect with climate change,” said Joyce Kimutai, of Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute. She said the death and damage across Africa and Europe highlighted “how poorly prepared the world is for such floods”. Read the full story here. The Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said “we need a united and decisive European response to adapt to the escalating challenges of the climate crisis.” Austria’s Karl Nehammer said “in difficult times, we are grateful for the friendship and solidarity of our neighbours and friends.” “Bavaria, Slovenia, South Tyrol, The Netherlands, Liechtenstein and Ukraine have offered help in the fight against the consequences of the floods in Austria. Thank you very much, you are true friends!” he added. While water was receding in some areas, others were shoring up defences for floods heading their way. The Topola reservoir in southern Poland had overflowed and water was gushing towards the village of Kozielno. Local authorities said residents of several nearby towns and villages would be evacuated. In Wroclaw, in the south-western region of Silesia, the mayor Jacek Sutryk said the city of 600,000 people was preparing for water levels peaking on Wednesday. Slovakia’s capital Bratislava and the Hungarian capital Budapest were both preparing for possible flooding as the River Danube rose. Hungarian interior minister Sandor Pinter said efforts were focused on keeping the river and its tributaries within their banks and said up to 12,000 soldiers were on standby to help. In Austria, the levels of rivers and reservoirs fell overnight as rain eased but officials said they were bracing for a second wave as heavier rain was expected. Austria’s chancellor, Karl Nehammer, said a disaster fund is available to handle damage. 300 million euros can be accessed immediately, and if more is needed, the fund will be increased, he said. Hungarian opposition politician Péter Magyar said national unity is needed as the country braces for flooding, writing that Viktor Orbán, the prime minister, made the right call to cancel his planned travel to the European parliament. Here’s more footage from the region. The Green group in the European parliament said “these floods show that more than ever our fight against climate change is a common social and economic challenge we must tackle together.” Poland is introducing a 30-day “state of natural disaster”. The Czech prime minister, Petr Fiala, has provided an update on the situation in his country, writing that the situation is difficult. The most problematic situation is now in southern Bohemia, he said. Ostrava residents have been asked not to go to the city. The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, has said that the country set aside 1 billion zlotys ($260.31 million) to help victims of floods, Reuters reported. Here are the latest images from the region. Germany’s Olaf Scholz said his country is ready to help European neighbours impacted by the floors. He also said water levels are rising in Germany and the situation is being closely monitored. The death toll in central Europe has risen as more rivers burst their banks. Six people have died in Romania. Five have reportedly died in Poland. A total of three people have died in Austria: one firefighter died over the weekend and two people were found drowned in their homes, Reuters reported. One person has died in the Czech Republic. The floods in Europe are just one of a number of extreme weather events around the world in the last few days. Floods have also been devastating western and central Africa, with hundreds estimated to have died. Meanwhile in Southeast Asia Typhoon Yagi has been causing havoc, with at least 300,000 people displaced in Myanmar following heavy rains. Although these specific events cannot be definitively attributed to climate change, it’s well established now that extreme rainfall is more common and more intense because of human-caused climate breakdown across most of the world, particularly in Europe, most of Asia, central and eastern North America, and parts of South America, Africa and Australia. This is because warmer air can hold more water vapour. Flooding has most likely become more frequent and severe in these locations as a result, but is also affected by human factors, such as the existence of flood defences and land use. Human-caused climate breakdown is supercharging extreme weather across the world, driving more frequent and more deadly disasters from heatwaves to floods to wildfires. At least a dozen of the most serious events of the last decade would have been all but impossible without human-caused global heating. Watch footage from Central Europe, which has been hit with torrential rain and flooding. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who was scheduled to speak at the European parliament this week, said he is postponing “all my international obligations” due to the ongoing floods. Two more people died in Austria, the chancellor, Karl Nehammer, said. Factories and stores across central Europe shuttered production lines and closed their doors today due to flooding, Reuters reported. Late yesterday, the Czech prime minister, Petr Fiala, reiterated his call for people to follow instructions from mayors and emergency services. Karl Nehammer, the Austrian chancellor, has said that the Austrian armed forces have been deployed in storm-hit regions and that 2,400 soldiers are on standby to help fill sandbags, evacuate people or do clean-up work. Here are some images of the flooding in Poland. The Hungarian defence forces are deploying equipment to support flood protection efforts. Czech police has said that one person died and seven are missing amid flooding, AFP reported. The death toll rose in central Europe over the weekend after severe flooding impacted the region, the Associated Press reported. Six people died in Romania, one person in Austria and one person in Poland, while police in the Czech Republic said four people were missing. |
The Guardian;At least 16 people killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/16/israeli-airstrikes-gaza-houthis-netanyahu-gallant;2024-09-16T13:11:37Z | At least 16 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes across central Gaza on Sunday night and Monday morning, including five women and four children, Palestinian health officials have said. Rescuers said an airstrike early on Monday destroyed a residential building in the densely populated Nuseirat refugee camp in the heart of central Gaza, killing at least 10 people, including four women and two children. The al-Awda hospital, which received the bodies, confirmed the deaths and said another 13 people were wounded. Hospital records quoted by local media show that the dead included a mother, her child and her five siblings. In a separate strike targeting a building in Gaza City, six individuals lost their lives. A woman and two children were among the dead, according to the civil defence, a team of emergency responders working under the governance of Hamas. Israel says its military operations exclusively target combatants and claims Hamas and other armed factions place civilians at risk by operating within residential areas. Eleven months into the Gaza war, the death toll among Palestinians has passed 41,000, according to health authorities in the territory. Most of the dead are civilians and the total is nearly 2% of Gaza’s prewar population, or equal to one in every 50 people. The conflict was triggered by Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, in which 1,200 people died and about 250 were taken hostage. On Sunday evening, a senior Hamas official told Agence France-Presse that new generations of fighters had been recruited since the 7 October attacks, less than a week after the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, told journalists that Hamas, “no longer exists” as a military formation in Gaza. During an interview in Istanbul, Osama Hamdan claimed that the militant group “has a high ability to continue”. He added: “There were martyrs and there were sacrifices … but in return there was an accumulation of experiences and the recruitment of new generations into the resistance.” Hamdan spoke of a surface-to-surface missile that reached central Israel for the first time on Sunday, causing a fire near Kfar Daniel. The Hamas official said the attack, claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, showed the limits of Israel’s ability to defend itself, including its aerial defence system. “It is a message to the entire region that Israel is not an immune entity,” Hamdan said. “Even Israeli capabilities have limits.” The Israeli military is investigating whether the fire was the result of falling fragments caused by interceptor missiles launched at the projectile, or if it successfully penetrated its air defences, as the Houthis have claimed. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the Houthis would pay a “heavy price”, while the Houthi leader warned of bigger attacks to come. On Monday, the Houthi military spokesperson, Yahya Saree, said the group downed a US MQ-9 drone in Yemen’s Dhamar province. In a separate development on Monday, Gallant told the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, that time was running out for an agreement with Hezbollah to halt the fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border, where on Sunday the Israeli military reported that approximately 40 projectiles had been launched, with the majority being intercepted or landing in uninhabited regions. “The possibility for an agreed framework in the northern arena is running out as Hezbollah continues to ‘tie itself’ to Hamas,” Gallant said, “The trajectory is clear.’’ Hezbollah said it would halt its attacks if there was a ceasefire in Gaza, but months of talks brokered by the US, Qatar and Egypt have repeatedly stalled. Gallant told Austin that “in any possible scenario, Israel’s defence establishment will continue to operate with the aim of dismantling Hamas and ensuring the return of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza – by any means”. Meanwhile, media reports in Israel suggested Gallant’s position could be under threat, with sources in the prime minister’s office saying Netanyahu was considering appointing the New Hope chair, Gideon Sa’ar, as Gallant’s replacement. After the report, the far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said on X “the time has come to [fire Gallant] immediately”. Rumours that Netanyahu would replace Gallant have been circulating for months. The already strained relationship between the two has been tumultuous since Netanyahu’s sudden decision to dismiss Gallant in March 2023 because of his vocal disapproval of the government’s judicial changes. However, the prime minister’s move was later rescinded after public outcry. Some in Netanyahu’s administration have called for Gallant’s removal, citing a range of grievances including his stance against a government-supported ultra-Orthodox enlistment bill and his public disagreement with the prime minister on matters such as a hostage negotiation and Israel’s presence in the Philadelphi corridor on the Gaza-Egypt border. |
The Guardian;French rape trial adjourned after Dominique Pélicot health issue reports;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/16/french-trial-adjourned-after-dominique-pelicot-health-issue-reports;2024-09-16T13:05:42Z | The trial of Dominique Pélicot and 50 other men accused of rape has been adjourned again after it was reported he was suffering from kidney problems and had refused to leave his prison cell. Lawyers now fear the hearing, scheduled to last four months, may have to be postponed and have criticised the prison authorities for not acting sooner to treat him. In a case that has horrified the world, the 71-year-old retired electrician has admitted drugging his wife, Gisèle, and inviting up to 90 men to rape her as she was unconscious and while he filmed the attacks. On Monday, after Pélicot failed to appear, the court appointed two medical experts to examine him. The president of the bench, Roger Arata, said it was hoped the trial could resume on Tuesday but warned he may have to postpone it if the principal accused was too unwell to attend. Defence lawyers have accused the prison authorities of failing to act as soon as Pélicot complained of being unwell 10 days ago. He was reportedly taken to hospital on Sunday evening, where he was diagnosed with a kidney infection, a kidney stone and a “prostate problem”. He was returned to his cell after tests. “This could all have been avoided if he’d been treated from Monday [last week]. Why did they wait eight days?” Pélicot’s defence lawyer Béatrice Zavarro asked outside the court in Avignon. Gisèle Pélicot’s lawyer Stéphane Babonneau said that if the hearing had to be postponed because of the prison authorities’ failure to treat her former husband, it would be “a legal catastrophe, a scandal”. “We are all waiting to hear if Dominique Pélicot can appear. If the hearing has to be postponed because he has a health problem that wasn’t treated, yes, we can talk of it being a scandal,” Babonneau said. “Of course she [Gisèle Pélicot] is worried. She finds herself in a very difficult situation, as we all are. The trial is really at a very early stage; it has hardly even started. There is the presentation of the videos and the interrogation of the principal accused to come.” Gisèle Pélicot, 72, has become the face of victims of rape and sexual abuse across France, where hundreds of protesters turned out at the weekend to show their support for her, many carrying posters showing her image and the words “Shame changes sides” – implying that instead of female victims being made to feel ashamed, the male accused should be. She has been hailed for her courage in insisting the trial be held in public and not behind closed doors as defence lawyers had requested. In a statement outside the court on Monday morning, Pélicot said she wanted to thank all those “who have shown me their support from the beginning of this ordeal and particularly those who took the time to gather on Saturday across France. “I was deeply touched by this movement … thanks to you all I have the strength to fight this to the end. I dedicate this fight to all people, women and men, who are victims of sexual violence across the world. To all those victims I say today look around you, you are not alone.” Babonneau said: “She does feel very comforted by the support she has received this weekend. She is a simple and genuine woman and was surprised that so many people wanted to show their support. Her message to every victim of sexual abuse is that they should know that they are not alone and should not be alone.” Pélicot had no idea that for more than a decade her husband had recruited men on an online chatroom to rape her while she was in a coma-like state until after he was arrested in 2020 for filming up the skirts of customers in a local supermarket. The accused were aged between 26 and 73 when they were arrested and include a local councillor, a journalist, a former police officer, a prison guard, a soldier, a firefighter and a civil servant. Many were the couple’s neighbours in the small town of Mazan, near Avignon in southern France. Several of the men insist they were unaware Pélicot had been drugged and assumed the sex was consensual. If convicted of rape they face up to 20 years in jail. On Monday, Babonneau said he was shocked to find his client having to queue up to clear security at the courthouse with those accused of raping her. “I arrived to see her in the queue literally sandwiched in between them. It was unbelievable that she should be there. I pulled her out and said we would skip the line,” he said. “She has had to find the strength in herself to cope … I can tell you that she is even more of an incredible woman than she appears.” |
The Guardian;France’s European commissioner resigns amid row with von der Leyen;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/16/france-european-commissioner-thierry-breton-resigns-amid-row-with-von-der-leyen;2024-09-16T12:45:52Z | France’s European commissioner, Thierry Breton, has resigned, citing “questionable governance” at the EU executive led by Ursula von der Leyen. Breton, who was in charge of the EU’s single market and industrial policy, announced his immediate resignation in a post on X on Monday morning. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, had appointed Breton to serve a second term as EU commissioner in June. But Breton said in his resignation letter that von der Leyen had asked Paris to withdraw his name “for personal reasons that in no instance you [von der Leyen] have discussed directly with me”. “In light of these recent developments – further testimony to questionable governance – I have to conclude that I can no longer exercise my duties,” he added. Breton announced his resignation with a touch of theatricality, by posting on X an empty frame hanging on a wall. “Breaking news: my official portrait for the next European Commission term,” he wrote, with his resignation letter following in a separate post. The announcement adds to the disarray over the appointment of von der Leyen’s top team, which is already running late. In seeking a more gender-balanced lineup, von der Leyen inadvertently triggered a political row in Slovenia after putting pressure on the government to withdraw a male candidate. She is expected to reveal details of the next commission, which has a five-year term, after meetings with senior MEPs on Tuesday. Her team consists of 27 EU commissioners, one from each member state, who will collectively be responsible for enforcing EU law spanning a swathe of areas including environment and climate, industrial and economic policy, foreign affairs, migration, farming and fishing. Breton was one of von der Leyen’s most high-profile commissioners, who sparred with US technology companies such as X and Meta over regulations to curb the harmful effects of the internet, and oversaw moves to increase EU production of ammunition in light of the war in Ukraine. Hours after the news broke, France’s foreign minister, Stéphane Séjourné, was announced as his country’s commissioner nominee. A close ally of Macron who served as the leader of the centrist group in the European parliament, Séjourné has been put forward by Paris for a job involving EU industrial and competitiveness policy. The commission has yet to name the person who will take over Breton’s portfolio for the final weeks of the outgoing commission, in a sign his departure has blindsided von der Leyen. EU officials had expected Breton to serve a second mandate, taking on a weighty portfolio as an executive vice-president and one of the most senior members of von der Leyen’s team. His dramatic resignation comes soon after a politically weakened Macron announced the centre-right Michel Barnier as prime minister in an attempt to quell France’s political crisis following snap elections that resulted in a hung parliament. Against a backdrop of political tumult at home, Macron’s star has waned in the EU, but France remains influential in setting the EU agenda of a more “sovereign Europe”, meaning less dependence on the rest of the world for security, vital resources and industrial goods. After Breton’s announcement, one EU diplomat observed that he “wasn’t as well liked in Paris as he thought he was”. A spokesperson for the European Commission declined to comment on the charges of “questionable governance” under von der Leyen. “The president takes note and accepts Thierry Breton’s resignation and thanks him for his work as commissioner throughout the mandate,” the spokesperson said, citing Breton’s work on EU laws, notably the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act and “other important digital and industrial files”. Von der Leyen had received the resignation letter on Monday morning, the spokesperson said, but they could not say whether the commission president had been informed of Breton’s decision to go before he posted on X. Von der Leyen “hopes to be in a position” to announce the details of her new commission on Tuesday, the spokesperson said, adding that “24 hours in politics are a long time”. A statement from the Élysée Palace described Breton as a “remarkable European commissioner” who had “significantly contributed to advancing a policy of European sovereignty” in digital policy, industry and technology and resilience of the European single market during the Covid crisis. “The president of the republic has always defended obtaining for France a key portfolio of European commissioner, focused on the issues of industrial, technological sovereignty and European competitiveness,” the statement said. The veteran German Social Democrat MEP Bernd Lange said the nomination of the new commission was “slowly degenerating into absurd theatre” and was “not a good omen for the future”. Rym Momtaz, the editor-in-chief of the Carnegie Europe thinktank’s Strategic Europe publication, wrote: “There’s never been any love lost between von der Leyen and Breton, but this EU commission composition is like a Succession/Game of Thrones mashup.” Breton, a former business executive, was not afraid to criticise his boss. He joined other senior colleagues last year in criticising von der Leyen’s decision to appoint a fellow German member of the Christian Democratic Union party to a senior role he was said to be less qualified for than others. When von der Leyen was running for re-election this year, Breton questioned whether she should get a second term. “Is it possible to (re)entrust the management of Europe to the EPP for five more years?” he wrote on X after the centre-right European People’s party alliance gave von der Leyen an underwhelming majority when selecting her as their candidate. “The EPP itself does not seem to believe in its candidate,” he wrote. Von der Leyen, who was reappointed by EU leaders and re-elected by the European parliament to serve a second term, has long faced accusations that she is aloof, lacks transparency and fails to involve senior colleagues in EU decision-making. Supporters point to her record of support for Ukraine and creation of a post-Covid recovery fund, but Breton’s letter is likely to add to criticism about her working methods. Brando Benifei, an Italian Democratic party MEP who worked with Breton in drawing up the EU’s AI Act, wrote on X: “I didn’t agree on all the actions and plans of Commissioner Breton, but his dedication to pursue more European pooled sovereignty and his efforts for a healthier digital environment were to be supported.” Tomasz Froelich, a German MEP with the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party, described Breton as “one of the greatest threats to freedom of expression in Europe, who recently wanted to cancel Twitter and Elon Musk”, and said his departure was a “good thing”. |
The Guardian;Amnesty calls for release of peaceful protesters in Angola;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/16/amnesty-international-calls-for-release-peaceful-protest-activists-angola;2024-09-16T12:41:26Z | Amnesty International has urged authorities in Angola to free four activists who were detained a year ago for planning a peaceful protest, and an influencer who criticised the president in a TikTok video. The four activists were arrested in September last year before a protest against restrictions on motorcycle taxi drivers. They were sentenced to two years and five months in prison for “disobedience and resisting orders”. The health of three of the four activists has deteriorated sharply in prison, Amnesty said. The southern African country’s government regularly clamps down on dissent. In August, the president, João Lourenço, signed into law two sweeping bills that extended security forces’ control over the media and permitted prison sentences of up to 25 years for protests that cause “vandalism” or service disruptions. Vongai Chikwanda, Amnesty International’s deputy director for east and southern Africa, said: “One year in prison simply for peacefully protesting is a travesty of justice. We see a troubling pattern of Angolan authorities withholding medical care as a means of punishing peaceful dissent, amounting to torture.” Adolfo Campos was in good health when he was imprisoned but has since lost much of his vision and become completely deaf in one ear, Amnesty said. It said prison doctors recommended in February that Campos receive surgery externally, but that had been blocked. Hermenegildo Victor José, known as Gildo das Ruas, also entered prison with no health problems. In June he started experiencing fever and aches, but he was not allowed to see a doctor until the beginning of August. Das Ruas now cannot stand for more than 30 minutes without pain. A wheelchair was delivered to him on 15 August but he was initially stopped from using it. Gilson Moreira, known as Tanaice Neutro, has had bowel surgery scheduled since 2022, which he was denied when he was imprisoned for 18 months. Amnesty International said he had continued to be prevented from having surgery. Ana da Silva Miguel, an influencer also known as Neth Nahara, was arrested in August last year after she criticised the president in a TikTok livestream. Nahara, who is HIV positive, was denied her medication for eight months, Amnesty said. Angola’s ministry of justice and human rights did not respond to requests for comment. The oil-rich country has in recent years been courted by the US and the EU as they seek to fund infrastructure projects and counter Chinese influence. |
The Guardian;Death toll reaches 16 as ‘dramatic’ flooding in central Europe continues;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/16/dramatic-flooding-in-central-europe-continues;2024-09-16T12:28:01Z | The death toll from torrential rain and flooding in central and eastern Europe has risen to at least 16, with several more people missing, as authorities reported deaths in the Czech Republic, Poland and Austria and warned the worst may yet be to come. The number of victims in Poland rose to five after a surgeon returning from work drowned in the south-western town of Nysa, where the hospital was evacuated and patients rescued by raft. Four more people had died in the southern towns of Bielsko-Biała and Lądek-Zdrój, firefighters said. In Austria, local media reported that two men aged 70 and 80 drowned after being trapped by rising flood water in their homes in the towns of Böheimkirchen and Sierndorf, both in the hard-hit north-eastern state of Lower Austria. The Czech police chief, Martin Vondrášek, told local radio a woman had drowned in a stream that overflowed its banks near Bruntál, a town of about 15,000 people in the north-east of the country, while seven more people were still unaccounted for. Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated from their homes across a swathe of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia as Storm Boris unleashed the worst flooding recorded in the region for more than two decades. It was described by one Romanian mayor as a “catastrophe of epic proportions”. The flood water burst dams, inundated streets, knocked out electricity and in some places submerged whole neighbourhoods. “I have lived here for 16 years and I have never seen such flooding,” one Austrian woman, Judith Dickson, told public radio. Seven people died in Romania over the weekend, as well as one in Poland and a firefighter in Austria. The rain was expected to ease in many areas on Monday but, with some rivers unlikely to reach peak water levels for days, several major cities were preparing for potentially disastrous flooding. Extreme rainfall is becoming more common and more intense because of human-caused climate breakdown across most of the world, particularly in Europe, most of Asia, central and eastern North America, and parts of South America, Africa and Australia. Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, declared a state of emergency in the flooded areas and announced an emergency aid fund of 1bn zlotys, while his counterpart in Hungary, Viktor Orbán, cancelled all his international engagements. Tusk said he was in touch with the leaders of other affected countries and that they would ask the EU for financial help. “From today, anyone affected by the flood – flooding, collapsed buildings, flooded garages, lost cars, losses linked to the flood – will be able to easily” claim funds, he added. More than 2,600 people were evacuated across Poland in the last 24 hours, according to the defence minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz. Michał Piszko, mayor of the Polish town of Kłodzko on the Czech border, said waters were receding but aid was badly needed. “We need bottled water and dry provisions ... half of the city has no electricity,” he told Polish radio. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, described images from the flooded areas in Austria, the Czech Republic, Romania and Poland as “dramatic” and said Germany was “deeply saddened by the news of dead and missing people” and ready to help. Hungary’s capital, Budapest, was bracing for severe flooding as the Danube rose. The interior minister, Sándor Pintér, said efforts were focused on keeping the river and its tributaries within their banks and said up to 12,000 soldiers were on standby to help. Slovakia’s capital, Bratislava, was also on a high state of alert, while the 600,000 residents of Wrocław in Poland were told water levels might not peak before Wednesday. Austria’s chancellor Karl Nehammer said the situation in his country “continues to worsen”, particularly in Lower Austria, which has been declared a disaster area. More than 10,000 relief workers had evacuated 1,100 houses in the state, he said. Lower Austria’s governor, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, said people there were facing “difficult and dramatic hours … probably the most difficult hours of their lives”. The municipality of Lilienfeld, with about 25,000 residents, was completely cut off from the outside world, local media reported. So far 12 dams have broken and thousands of households were without electricity and water, authorities said. “It is not over,” Mikl-Leitner added. “It stays critical. It stays dramatic.” She said there there was a high risk of more dams breaking and it was as yet too early to assess the scale of the damage. The Czech prime minister, Petr Fiala, urged people to “follow the instructions of mayors and firefighters”. As of Sunday evening, he said, emergency services had dealt with 7,884 incidents and 119,000 households were without power. At least 12,000 people had been evacuated from their homes across the country, Fiala said, adding that although the rain had stopped in the most affected areas, the situation would become critical for others as the storm moves westwards and rivers continue to rise. “Very difficult days for many people, unfortunately, continue,” Fiala said on Monday, with 207 areas across the country facing flood conditions. The most critical situation was in southern Bohemia, he said, adding: “Please be careful and responsible.” The rising Morava River put about 70% of the Czech city of Litovel, 140 miles (230km) east of the capital, Prague, underwater overnight, its mayor told local media, shutting down schools and health facilities. In the country’s third biggest city, Ostrava, a power plant supplying heat and hot water to the city was forced to shut down. Thousands were evacuated from their homes in Krnov and Český Těšín. In Opava, up to 10,000 people out of a population of about 56,000 were asked to move to higher ground. “There’s no reason to wait,” the mayor, Tomáš Navrátil, told Czech public radio, saying the situation was worse than during the last devastating floods in 1997, known as the “flood of the century”. Romania’s prime minister, Marcel Ciolacu, said the country would “clean up and see what can be salvaged”, adding that compared with the worst recent flooding in 2013, “the amount of water was almost three times bigger”. One resident of the Romanian village of Pechea, in the stricken Galati region, told Agence France-Presse: “The water came into the house, it destroyed the walls, everything. It took the chickens, the rabbits, everything. It took the oven, the washing machine, the refrigerator. I have nothing left.” The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, expressed solidarity with those affected by flooding and she said the EU would provide support. The climate emergency is causing more incidents of extreme rainfall because warmer air can hold more water vapour. Flooding has most likely become more frequent and severe as a result, but human factors, such as the existence of flood defences and land use, are also important. |
The Guardian;Climate scientists troubled by damage from floods ravaging central Europe;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/16/climate-scientists-troubled-by-damage-from-floods-ravaging-central-europe;2024-09-16T11:03:16Z | Picturesque towns across central Europe are inundated by dirty flood water after heavy weekend rains turned tranquil streams into raging rivers that wreaked havoc on infrastructure. The floods have killed at least 15 people and destroyed buildings from Austria to Romania. The destruction comes after devastating floods around the world last week when entire villages were submerged in Myanmar and nearly 300 prisoners escape a collapsed jail in Nigeria, where floods have affected more than 1 million people. Climate scientists say they are troubled by the damage but unsurprised by the intensity. “The catastrophic rainfall hitting central Europe is exactly what scientists expect with climate change,” said Joyce Kimutai, of Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute. She said the death and damage across Africa and Europe highlighted “how poorly prepared the world is for such floods”. Scientists take care when attributing extreme rains to human influence because so many factors shape the water cycle. Although it is well established that hotter air can hold more moisture, whether violent downpours occur also depends on how much water is available to fall. Sonia Seneviratne, a climate scientist at ETH Zürich, said immediate analyses of the central European floods suggested most of the water vapour came from the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea, both of which have grown hotter as a result of human-induced climate breakdown, resulting in more water evaporating into the air. “On average, the intensity of heavy precipitation events increases by 7% for each degree of global warming,” she said. “We now have 1.2C of global warming, which means that on average heavy precipitation events are 8% more intense.” Weather station data indicates that bursts of September rainfall have become heavier in Germany, Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia since 1950, Kimutai said. In Poland, the floods collapsed a bridge and washed houses away, according to local media. In the Czech Republic, helicopters rescued stranded citizens from rising waters. In Austria, one firefighter is reported to have died in the rescue efforts. In the Austrian capital, Vienna, which has been home to Europe’s biggest weather and climate conference since 2005, the rain flooded a motorway and closed metro lines. Erich Fischer, a climate scientist at ETH Zürich, said scientists at the conference used to discuss the physics of how climate change increases rainfall intensity over lunch on the banks of the New Danube. “It is ironic to now see these banks, where we were sitting in the sun and discussing the science of extreme precipitation, now being flooded.” The death toll from floods hinges on how well communities prepare for the rain and respond to its effects. Scientists have urged governments to invest in adapting to extreme weather events through early warning systems, more resilient infrastructure and support schemes for victims, while also ending their reliance on fossil fuels. “It’s clear that even highly developed countries are not safe from climate change,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at the Grantham Institute. “As long as the world burns oil, gas and coal, heavy rainfall and other weather extremes will intensify, making our planet a more dangerous and expensive place to live.” |
The Guardian;Germany reintroduces border checks to far-right praise as EU tensions mount;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/16/germany-reintroduces-border-checks-to-far-right-praise-as-eu-tensions-mount;2024-09-16T06:38:44Z | Germany has reintroduced temporary checks at all nine of its land borders in a move that has drawn criticism from several of its European partners but praise from the far right. The embattled coalition government in Berlin said last week that checks already being carried out on its borders with Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland would be extended to France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark. The decision came after a series of deadly knife attacks in which the suspects were asylum seekers, and historic successes by the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) in two crunch state elections in the east of the country. Nancy Faeser, the country’s interior minister, said the border checks would curb migration and “protect against the acute dangers posed by Islamist terrorism and serious crime,” but critics have denounced it as politically motivated and likely to be largely ineffective. Europe’s passport-free Schengen zone, which includes 25 EU nations plus four others including Switzerland and Norway, allows free movement without border checks and is thought of as one of the bloc’s biggest achievements as well as a critical economic asset. Temporary checks are allowed in exceptional circumstances to avert specific threats to internal security or public policy. Eight members currently impose them on selected borders, citing increased terror threats or pressure on asylum capacity. Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, was the first to openly criticise Germany’s decision, calling it “unacceptable from Poland’s viewpoint” and demanding more help from Berlin in securing the EU’s external borders rather than tighter internal controls. Warsaw has proposed consultations with all EU member states bordering Germany to address a decision Tusk said was a result of the country’s “internal political situation” and could lead to “the de facto suspension of the Schengen agreement on a large scale”. Greece’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said on Thursday it would be wrong to “move to a logic of ad hoc exemptions from the Schengen agreement, with border controls that will … hurt one of the fundamental achievements of the EU.” The response, Mitsotakis said, “cannot be unilaterally scrapping Schengen”. Others, however, were more sanguine, with the Czech interior minister, Vit Rakusan, saying he did not expect much material change as checks would mostly be random. Far-right leaders were jubilant in response to the news. Geert Wilders of the Dutch Freedom party (PVV) said Berlin’s decision was a “great idea” and asked when the Netherlands would follow suit, while the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbàn, said on X: “Welcome to the club.” Marine Le Pen of France’s National Rally said her party had proposed a “double – external and internal border – system” in recent elections and been told it was not possible. “Now Germany is doing it,” she said. “When will France follow?” Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party has praised Berlin’s decision. Orbàn’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, said laxity on the EU’s external borders combined with tougher internal border checks were combining to “destroy free movement”. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, whose divided three-party coalition is trailing far behind AfD and the centre-right opposition Christian Democrats (CDU) in the polls a year before federal elections, has defended the decision. With days to go before another critical state election in Brandenburg which the AfD is expected to win, Scholz told parliament the move was necessary and the government would “continue with it, even though it is getting difficult with our neighbours”. It is not yet clear what the impact of the increased border checks will be. Berlin has pledged to “coordinate closely with our neighbours … and keep the impact on everyday life in the border regions as low as possible”. The interior ministry last week insisted the measures, scheduled to last an initial six months, would be in line with existing border controls – in other words, random spot checks or targeting specific vehicles based on police intelligence. Freight industry representatives have said they believe the tighter checks should not lead to excessive tailbacks and consequent economic losses, but associations for cross-border workers have said they will be watching the situation closely. More likely, analysts suggest, are rising tensions with Germany’s neighbours if the checks – along with plans to make it easier to turn people back directly at the border – lead to authorities returning many more people to the country they arrive from. |
The Guardian;Monday briefing: How Manchester City’s 130 legal battles could turn football upside down;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/16/first-edition-manchester-city-premier-league-legal-battle;2024-09-16T05:49:51Z | Good morning. Donald Trump says he is “unharmed” after what the FBI believes was the second attempt on the former president’s life in two months. On Sunday, Trump was golfing at his club in West Palm Beach Florida when a US Secret Service agent spotted a man with a firearm. The suspect fled after the agent opened fire, but he was later detained and remains in custody. For now, it remains too early to speculate on the motives of the alleged attacker, or on how this latest twist will affect the election that is now less than two months away. Today’s newsletter is on one of the most significant legal cases in football history, but for the latest information on the attempted assassination, you can follow live updates on the story and if you need a quick summary of what has happened overnight, we’ve got that covered here. ---------------------------------------- When Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family acquired Manchester City in 2008, the club had only won two league titles and had gone without a trophy for 32 seasons. After decades of purgatory, the last 16 years under Mansour have been defined by a turbo-charged transformation that turned the club into a record-breaking machine. The club made history this year by winning the Premier League title for the fourth time in a row (and its sixth in seven years), sealing a streak of unparalleled dominance. These wins have come at a steep cost – by 2018, City’s owners had spent over £1.3bn directly investing in players, managers, the home stadium and marketing worldwide. But, over the years, there have been accusations that the club’s financial transactions have not all been above board. Last February, the Premier League announced the Sky Blues were facing 115 breaches of its financial rules, which later increased to 130. The case into possible financial impropriety begins today at an unknown location and is expected to run for 10 weeks. For today’s newsletter, I spoke with Jonathan Wilson, who writes the Guardian US football newsletter, about City’s legal battle and what it tells us about the impact of ever-increasing amounts of money on the sport. That’s right after the headlines. Five big stories Europe | Germany will reintroduce temporary checks at all nine of its land borders on Monday in a move that has drawn criticism from several of its European partners but praise from the far right. The decision came after a series of deadly knife attacks in which the suspects were asylum seekers, and historic successes by the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland party in two state elections. Environment | The UK government is planning to appoint a special envoy for nature for the first time, in an attempt to put the UK at the centre of global efforts to tackle the world’s ecological crises, the Guardian has learned. Labour | Keir Starmer is under pressure to distance his government from Giorgia Meloni’s hard-right immigration policies. After the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, said the UK would consider copying Italy’s plans to process asylum applicants in a third country, one backbencher questioned why a Labour administration was “seeking to learn lessons from a neo-fascist government”. Welfare | Black and other ethnic minority benefit claimants are disproportionately likely to be hit with universal credit sanctions – financial penalties typically running into hundreds of pounds – according to official statistics unveiled for the first time. Emmys | Shōgun has made Emmys history as the first ever non-English language series to win for best drama. Hacks was the surprise winner of best comedy series, beating out previous winner The Bear and Abbott Elementary. The Bear took the majority of the comedy awards, winning four Emmys. In depth: ‘We could be talking in terms of hundreds of points being docked’ Jonathan traces this story all the way back to the early 1990s, when top-tier clubs broke away from the Football League to form the Premier League. This nascent league consciously adopted “a very light-touch regulatory approach and that meant that pretty much anybody could buy a club”. What no one anticipated at the time were the oligarchs, venture capitalists and even states that would eventually be investing in English football. Manchester City’s most recent legal woes began in 2018 when German magazine Der Spiegel published leaked emails, and alleged that the club’s owners were breaking Uefa’s financial fair play (known as FFP) regulations through fabricated sponsorship deals and secret contracts. The club was also allegedly paying players using surplus funds from the Abu Dhabi royals, which amounted to more than was in the club’s accounts. The allegations sparked a Uefa investigation that eventually led to a two-year ban from European football. (The ban was eventually lifted after an appeal and the club were instead told to pay an £8m fine). The scrutiny subsided until February 2023, when the Premier League brought a catalogue of charges against the club. *** The Premier League charges Despite the scale and seriousness of the charges, there was no press conference or announcement. “There was no great moment,” Jonathan says. “They just suddenly cropped up on the Premier League’s website and everybody became aware of it quite slowly.” Broadly, the Premier League has accused Manchester City of repeatedly breaching financial rules across nine seasons. The 130 charges include: • 54 breaches of failing to provide accurate and up-to-date financial information from 2009/10 to 2017/18. • 14 breaches of failing to provide accurate financial reports for player and manager compensation from 2009/10 to 2017/18. • Five breaches of failing to comply with Uefa’s regulations, including Uefa’s club licensing and financial fair play regulations. • Seven breaches of Premier League profitability and sustainability regulations from 2015/16 to 2017/18. • 35 breaches of failing to cooperate with Premier League investigations from December 2018 to present. The hearing will litigate these charges, but a verdict is not expected until next spring. When the charges were brought against them, Manchester City said it was “surprised” and issued a full-throated denial of all the charges. *** The stakes There has been a lot of speculation about what could happen to Manchester City if it is found guilty of some or all of these breaches. The punishment could range from a substantial fine to a points deduction, relegation or even expulsion from the league. “We’re not sure what expulsion from the league means in practice because presumably City would try to rejoin, but it’s not clear if they would join at the Championship or League Two or whether they would have to start even lower down,” Jonathan says. Last season, Everton were docked eight points for much smaller infractions than the allegations against Manchester City. “So we could be talking in terms of hundreds of points being docked,” Jonathan says. “Obviously, once you get beyond about 60 or 70 it’s irrelevant because you’re already bottom of the league – there’s no difference”. If this were to happen, City would inevitably appeal, as it did in the Uefa investigation, and it would probably mark a new phase in a very lengthy, very expensive legal battle. Even if City is exonerated, or given a less serious punishment like a fine or a ban from signing players for a year or two, the situation has already left other clubs in the Premier League“furious”, Jonathan says. He says that if Manchester City isn’t severely reprimanded, “[other clubs] are briefing that they are prepared to take legal action of their own and potentially even quit the Premier League and go back into the Football League”. Taking the steps to actually quit the league may prove too difficult in the end, but the fact that some clubs are threatening to do so demonstrates the level of anger and the enthusiasm to see City penalised. The Premier League is in a bind either way. Losing this case would deal a heavy blow to its credibility and authority, while winning would inevitably lead to an extensive and extremely costly legal battle against City that could go on for years. *** The bigger picture The effects of this case on football as a whole could be seismic because it threatens to fundamentally disrupt trust in the sport. “As soon as you think that what you’re watching could be overturned in a court later on, then why would you invest emotionally in that?” Jonathan asks. Once points get docked and the lead position is determined not by results on the pitch but by what happens in these committees, people will inevitably be turned off. The legal battles and financial regulation have begun to subsume the sport itself, Jonathan says. “I think it’s a great shame for Manchester City this season that [City’s lawyer] Lord Pannick is almost as important as Erling Haaland, and that’s really not the way it ought to be,” Jonathan says. However, the City case is just one strand, Jonathan adds, of a much wider problem in the sport and “we are reaching crisis point”. “The problem now with pretty much every European league is that the big teams win everything all the time,” Jonathan says, which disrupts the competitive balance of the games. Inevitably, as these teams win they become wealthier, allowing them to buy the best players and managers, and the cycle continues. As Jonathan says, “the greed is phenomenal”. What else we’ve been reading I loved Neneh Cherry answering Observer reader questions, expertly threaded together by Miranda Sawyer. Hannah J Davies, deputy editor, newsletters 625,000 children in Gaza are starting a second academic year with no school. Bethan McKernan spoke with educators trying to maintain some semblance of normality for them, although – sadly – “no ceasefire that could help restore normality is on the horizon”. Nimo Hannah Ewens is strong on star singer Chappell Roan and why a whole generation now struggles to respect musicians’ boundaries. Hannah It often feels like every corner of London is littered with Lime e-bikes, strewn about haphazardly across the pavement. One council has said enough is enough. Sammy Gecsoyler spoke with the leader of Brent council, the first in the UK that is trying to impose a ban on the bikes. Nimo I loved Ammar Kalia’s latest New start after 60 column on Norma Geddes, who found her inner artist at 70. Just look how gorgeous Norma’s stained glass is! Hannah Sport Football | Arsenal left rival Tottenham’s stadium with a win for the third season in a row after Gabriel Magalhães’ second-half header settled a feisty and physical north London derby. Newcastle fought back from a half-time deficit with two long-range strikes in the space of five minutes to beat Wolverhampton 2-1, moving into third place in the Premier League. Golf | Suzann Pettersen vowed Europe would “come back very hungry” after losing the Solheim Cup for the first time since 2017. The US held off a brave fightback from Pettersen’s side to win 15.5 to 12.5 at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Virginia, where world number two Lilia Vu birdied the final two holes against Swiss rookie Albane Valenzuela to edge a nervy home team over the line. Formula One | Oscar Piastri won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix with an exceptional drive for McLaren after an enormously tense battle to the flag with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in Baku. Lando Norris made a superb and unlikely comeback drive to take fourth having started in 15th to keep his title hopes alive, finishing in front of title rival Max Verstappen who was fifth. The front pages The Guardian leads with “Trump targeted in attempted assassination at his golf course”. The Times has “Trump targeted again in attempted assassination”, while the Telegraph follows the same story with “Trump ‘targeted by gunman’ on his golf course”. The Financial Times looks ahead to the presidential election with “Harris maintains post-debate lead over Trump on economy, says poll”. The i reports “PM sets sights on Italy-style migration deal to tackle small boats crisis.” The Mail has “Why can’t millionaire Starmers buy their own clothes?” The Mirror reports on “olive branch” moves from King Charles and Prince William on Prince Harry’s 40th birthday, with “Royal peace gesture”. Today in Focus Revenge of the childless cat ladies Elle Hunt reports on how Donald Trump’s vice-presidential running mate JD Vance calling Democrats “childless cat ladies” backfired. Cartoon of the day | Edith Pritchett Sign up for Inside Saturday to see more of Edith Pritchett’s cartoons, the best Saturday magazine content and an exclusive look behind the scenes The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad In the heart of east London, Anthony Ussher has transformed a small patch of land into a thriving garden, blending his passion for sustainable living with innovative composting techniques. What began as a Covid lockdown project to mend fences – literally and figuratively – with his neighbour has evolved into City Soil Lab, a unique composting initiative that turns food waste collected from nearby restaurants into nutrient-rich material. Ussher uses fermentation composting to enrich the garden and to grow herbs and vegetables, which are often on the menu at local high-end restaurants. This example of a closed-loop system is just the start of the project, with other small-scale experiments planned locally. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply |
The Guardian;‘Quite shocking’ lack of government contact during UK riots, says MCB head;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/16/muslim-council-of-britain-zara-mohammed-labour-government-riots;2024-09-16T05:00:16Z | The head of the Muslim Council of Britain has called for an explanation and a review of the government’s policy of non-engagement with the body after her appeals for contact during the summer riots were ignored. Zara Mohammed, who was elected more than three years ago as the MCB’s youngest and first female secretary general, said there had been a “quite shocking” lack of contact with the new government at a time when mobs were targeting Muslims and mosques. The MCB had been “heavily engaged” with Labour’s shadow cabinet when the party was in opposition, including a meeting in 2021 between Mohammed and Keir Starmer where they discussed “the importance of engaging with Muslim communities”, she said. Downing Street then ignored attempts to discuss the dangers being posed to Muslim people during the riots, Mohammed said, even as Northern Ireland’s first minister, Michelle O’Neill, and senior police officers held talks with her in Belfast. Mohammed, 33, whose tenure as MCB leader will end in January, said she hoped ministers would now review the government’s “baffling” approach to the UK’s largest Muslim umbrella group, which has more than 500 affiliated members including mosques, schools and charitable associations. She said: “There’s been no official communication from government since the election, and when the riots happened, I guess that’s where we would have expected. “We appreciated that, with any new government, they’ve got to settle in, and there’s got to be some time to work out [things]. There’s a lot of things going on in the country, economic downturns, we appreciate that. “But I think what was really disappointing, and perhaps for many in the Muslim community, quite shocking, was no formal or meaningful engagement with the Muslim Council of Britain during a time when mosques and Muslims were being targeted by the far right in a terrifying way.” The Conservative government had a policy of non-engagement with the MCB and in a statement to parliament on 1 August the Labour communities minister Alex Norris disclosed that there had “been no change to HMG [his majesty’s government] policy and there are no plans for ministers to meet with the Muslim Council of Britain”. The new government has not expanded on its approach but the reason given to parliament by Rishi Sunak’s administration for its policy of non-engagement was that “previous MCB leaders have taken positions that contradict our fundamental values and these have not been explicitly retracted”. That statement was a reference to a row dating back to 2009 when the then MCB deputy secretary general, Daud Abdullah, signed a document known as the Istanbul declaration, which advocated attacks on the Royal Navy if it tried to stop arms for Hamas being smuggled into Gaza. The then Labour government said it would have nothing more to do with the MCB unless Abdullah stepped down. He did resign and the MCB said the views expressed did not represent those of the body, leading to a re-engagement in the last year of Gordon Brown’s government. Liberal Democrat ministers in the coalition government elected in 2010 also engaged with the MCB. Penny Mordaunt, when she was the Conservative paymaster general, had a meeting with Mohammed in 2021 but was heavily criticised in parts of the media, including the Daily Mail. Mohammed said the MCB had since been “locked out”, although she added that policy had not been consistent, with the body providing a reference service for the appointment of Muslim chaplains by the Ministry of Defence until it was highlighted in a Daily Telegraph article last year. Last week the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, told the Commons that the government was “actively considering” its approach to tackling Islamophobia. Mohammed said she was “optimistic” that the government would “get its act together”. She said: “I think what I’m hopeful of is that the government will review the former position and will look at offering a position of clarity as to why [they are not engaging], and having a conversation with us to see, you know, what are the challenges; what are the blocks in 2024, not in 2009. “Ultimately, talking to a national body is critical when it comes to national representative issues. That’s why we exist, because those mosques sign up to be an umbrella where we’ve had big political issues to talk about. “We never claim to be the only voice for British Muslims. We claim to represent our bodies. But just as other faith communities have representative bodies, of course, we have one, and of course we want to vocalise on the policy issues, on national representation.” A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said: “The government engages regularly with faith communities. During the recent disorder, the minister for faith spoke to representatives of Muslim communities through numerous roundtables and visits to places of worship.” |
The Guardian;Ukraine war briefing: people trapped after Russian strike on Kharkiv apartment block, Zelenskiy says ;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/16/ukraine-war-briefing-people-trapped-after-russian-strike-on-kharkiv-apartment-block-zelenskiy-says;2024-09-16T01:01:17Z | One person has died and at least 41 people were wounded on Sunday afternoon when a Russian guided bomb struck a multi-storey residential building in Kharkiv, mayor Ihor Terekhov said, adding that the bomb hit the 10th floor of the building, with the fire spreading across four storeys. Prosecutors in Kharkiv said on Telegram the body of a 94-year-old woman had been recovered from the ninth floor of the building. Twelve other buildings were also damaged, Terekhov said. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday night that rescue operations were under way at the 12-storey building, with people trapped under the rubble. He said three children were among 35 people injured. “In this single strike on Kharkiv, four air bombs were dropped. One hit the building in the city, and the other three struck villages in the region,” he said. Russia did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the attack but has previously denied intentionally targeting civilians despite having killed thousands of them since it invaded Ukraine in 2022. Zelenskiy on Sunday again appealed for a shift in the west’s policy on the use of long-range weapons, saying Russia was carrying out at least 100 airstrikes comparable to the one that hit Kharkiv every day. “The only way to counter this terror is through a systemic solution – long-range capabilities to destroy Russian military aviation at its bases. This is an obvious, logical solution. We have already explained to all our partners why Ukraine truly needs sufficient long-range capabilities,” he said on X. Moscow and Kyiv exchanged drone and missile attacks over the weekend. The Ukrainian air force said on Sunday it shot down 10 of the 14 drones and one of the three missiles Russia launched overnight. Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said it downed 29 Ukrainian drones overnight into Sunday over western and south-western regions, with no damage caused by the falling debris. It also said another Ukrainian drone was shot down on Sunday morning over the western Ryazan region. Ukrainian troops are suffering high losses because western arms are arriving too slowly to equip the armed forces properly, Zelenskiy told CNN in an interview aired on Sunday. Russia has been gaining ground in parts of eastern Ukraine including around Pokrovsk. Capture of the transport hub could enable Moscow to open new lines of attack. Zelenskiy said the situation in the east was “very tough”, adding that half of Ukraine’s brigades there were not equipped. “So you lose a lot of people. You lose people because they are not in armed vehicles … they don’t have artillery, they don’t have artillery rounds,” said Zelenskiy, speaking in English. CNN said the interview had been conducted on Friday. Zelenskiy said weapons aid packages promised by the United States and European nations were arriving very slowly. “We need 14 brigades to be ready. Until now … from these packages we didn’t equip even four,” he said. The only thing Russian president Vladimir Putin fears is the reaction of his people if the cost of the war makes them suffer, Zelenskiy said. “Make Ukraine strong, and you will see that he will sit and negotiate”. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Saturday said Washington was working on a “substantial” new aid package for Ukraine. Zelenskiy is due to meet President Joe Biden this month and will present a plan to seek an end to the war. The main elements are security and diplomatic support, as well as military and economic aid, he said. |
The Guardian;Netanyahu tells Houthis they will pay ‘heavy price’ as missile hits Israel;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/15/netanyahu-tells-houthis-they-will-pay-heavy-price-as-missile-hits-israel;2024-09-15T18:21:31Z | The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has warned Yemen’s Houthi rebels will pay a “heavy price” after the group claimed its first ballistic missile strike on Israel and its leader warned of bigger attacks to come. The missile – claimed by the Houthis as an advanced surface-to-surface hypersonic missile – triggered air sirens across the country at about 6.30am, and local media aired footage of people racing to shelters at Ben Gurion international airport south-east of Tel Aviv. According to reports, it hit an open area in the Ben Shemen forest, causing a fire near Kfar Daniel. There were no reports of casualties or damage. The Israeli military is investigating whether the fire was the result of falling fragments caused by the interceptor missiles launched at the projectile, or if it successfully penetrated Israeli air defences as the Houthis have claimed. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that interceptors from Israel’s Iron Dome and Arrow air defence systems were deployed but said it had not yet determined whether any had been successful. It said an “initial inquiry indicates the missile most likely fragmented in mid-air [after] several interception attempts”, adding that “the entire incident is under review”. Netanyahu hinted at a military response in a statement released at the start of a cabinet meeting on Sunday. “This morning, the Houthis launched a surface-to-surface missile from Yemen into our territory. They should have known by now that we charge a heavy price for any attempt to harm us,” he said. “Those who need a reminder in this matter are invited to visit the port of Hodeidah,” he added, referring to Yemen’s Red Sea city, which Israeli warplanes bombed in July after the Houthis claimed a drone strike that killed a civilian in Tel Aviv. The Houthi leader, Abdul-Malek al-Houthi, warned on Sunday of further attacks on Israel. “The operation our forces carried out today with an advanced Yemeni missile is part of the fifth stage of the escalation. What is to come will be greater,” he said in a speech. Nasruddin Amer, the deputy head of the Houthi media office, described the attack as the “beginning”, claiming in a post on X that a Yemeni missile had reached Israel after “20 missiles failed to intercept”. A Houthi military spokesperson, Yahya Saree, said a “new hypersonic ballistic missile” had been aimed towards an Israeli military target, which crossed 1,270 miles in 11 minutes and which the IDF failed to intercept, while another senior Houthi official, Hezam al-Asad, posted a taunting message in Hebrew on X. Israeli media reports suggested the missile had been detected at a very late stage.“The warhead of this missile is separate from the body, and with the help of wings and jam-proof navigation systems it zigzags its way towards the target, which can make interception systems very difficult,” said a report on the Ynet newspaper website. The Houthis, who, like Hezbollah, are aligned with Iran, have repeatedly fired drones and missiles toward Israel since the start of the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, but nearly all of them have been intercepted over the Red Sea. They have also repeatedly attacked commercial shipping in what they portray as a blockade against Israel in support of the Palestinians, although most of the targeted vessels have no connection to Israel. If Sunday’s strike is confirmed, it would mark the first instance of a missile launched from Yemen landing on Israeli soil. In July, an Iranian-made drone sent by Yemen’s rebels struck Tel Aviv, killing one person and wounding at least 10. At the time, the drone appeared to have crossed much of the country through the multilayered air defences that have intercepted almost all Houthi drones and rockets since the war in Gaza began. The incident will raise concerns across Israel about the ability of the country’s anti-ballistic missiles systems to defend it from attacks that could come simultaneously from Gaza, Iran, Lebanon and Yemen. The ballistic missile launched from Yemen was anticipated, with the Houthi foreign minister issuing an early warning the previous day. A senior Biden administration official told CNN in June that Israel’s air defences risked being overwhelmed by multiple attacks. On Sunday morning, the Israeli military also reported that approximately 40 projectiles had been launched from Lebanon, with the majority being intercepted or landing in uninhabited regions. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border, and Netanyahu said on Sunday that the current situation was not sustainable. “The existing situation will not continue. We will do everything necessary to return our residents safely to their homes,” he said. “We are in a multi-arena campaign against Iran’s evil axis that strives to destroy us.” Tensions are also high in the West Bank, where Israeli military operations have been going on for weeks and violence has reached unprecedented levels, posing a significant threat to local communities. A UN worker was fatally shot by a sniper while on the roof of his home in the northern West Bank on Saturday. Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad, who worked as a sanitation worker with Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, became the first employee of the agency to be killed in the West Bank in more than a decade. The incident came as mourners gathered in Turkey to lay to rest a US-Turkish activist who was killed by the Israeli military during a protest in the West Bank this month. In a separate development on Sunday evening, an Israeli border police officer was lightly wounded in a stabbing attack at the Damascus Gate entrance to Jerusalem’s Old City, police said. The assailant attacked the officer with a sharp object before attempting to flee into the Old City, according to authorities. A police spokesperson said the attacker was shot and “neutralised”. Ten months into Israel’s war on Gaza, the death toll has passed 41,000, according to health authorities there. Most of the dead are civilians and the total represents nearly 2% of Gaza’s prewar population, or one in every 50 residents. The conflict was triggered by Hamas’s attack on 7 October in which 1,200 people died and about 250 were taken hostage. |
The Guardian;‘Catastrophe of epic proportions’: eight drown in Europe amid heavy floods;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/15/catastrophe-of-epic-proportions-six-drown-in-europe-amid-heavy-floods-storm-boris-poland-austria-slovakia-hungary;2024-09-15T15:45:34Z | Eight people have drowned in Austria, Poland and Romania and four others are missing in the Czech Republic as Storm Boris continues to lash central and eastern Europe, bringing torrential rain and floods that have forced the evacuation of thousands of people from their homes. Swathes of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia have been battered by high winds and unusually fierce rains since Thursday. Austria’s vice-chancellor, Werner Kogler, said on Sunday that a firefighter had died tackling flooding in Lower Austria, as authorities declared the province, which surrounds the capital, Vienna, a disaster area. Some areas of the Tirol were blanketed by up to a metre (3ft) of snow – an exceptional situation for mid-September, which saw temperatures of up to 30C (86F) last week. Rail services were suspended in the country’s east early on Sunday and several metro lines were shut down in Vienna, where the Wien River was threatening to overflow its banks, according to the APA news agency. Emergency services made nearly 5,000 interventions overnight in Lower Austria where flooding had trapped many residents in their homes. Firefighters have intervened about 150 times in Vienna since Friday to clear roads blocked by storm debris and pump water from cellars, local media reported. Extreme rainfall is more common and more intense because of human-caused climate breakdown across most of the world, particularly in Europe, most of Asia, central and eastern North America, and parts of South America, Africa and Australia. This is because warmer air can hold more water vapour. Flooding has most likely become more frequent and severe in these locations as a result, but is also affected by human factors, such as the existence of flood defences and land use. Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said one person in the Kłodzko region had drowned. Tusk was travelling through the south-west of the country, which has been hit hardest by the floods. About 1,600 people have been evacuated in Kłodzko, and Polish authorities have called in the army to support firefighters on the scene. “The situation is very dramatic,” Tusk said on Sunday after a meeting in Kłodzko, which was partly under water as the local river rose to 6.7 metres on Sunday morning – well above the alarm level of 2.4 metres – before receding slightly. That surpassed a record set during heavy flooding in 1997, which partly damaged the town and claimed 56 lives. On Saturday, Polish authorities shut the Gołkowice border crossing with the Czech Republic after a river flooded its banks, as well as closing several roads and halting trains on the line linking the towns of Prudnik and Nysa. In the nearby village of Głuchołazy, Zofia Owsiaka watched with fear as the fast-flowing waters of the swollen Biała river surged past. “Water is the most powerful force of nature. Everyone is scared,” said Owsiaka, 65. In Budapest, officials raised forecasts for the Danube to rise in the second half of this week to above 8.5m, nearing a record 8.91m seen in 2013, as rain continued in Hungary, Slovakia and Austria. “According to forecasts, one of the biggest floods of the past years is approaching Budapest but we are prepared to tackle it,” said Budapest’s mayor, Gergely Karácsony. Meanwhile, police in the Czech Republic said four people were missing on Sunday. Three had been in a car that was swept into a river in the north-eastern town of Lipová-lázne, while another man was missing after being swept away by floods in the south-east. A dam in the south of the country burst its banks, flooding towns and villages downstream. “What you see here is worse than in 1997 and I don’t know what will happen because my house is under water and I don’t know if I will even return to it,” said Pavel Bily, a resident of Lipová-lázne. In a message on X, Czech police urged people to heed evacuation warnings, adding: “Police and firefighters know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. The situation is changing quickly and we can’t be everywhere immediately. Within a few moments, the only way out could be by helicopter.” Six people have died in floods in south-east Romania over the past two days. In the worst-affected region, Galati in the south-east, 5,000 homes were damaged. Romania’s president, Klaus Iohannis, said: “We are again facing the effects of climate change, which are increasingly present on the European continent, with dramatic consequences.” Hundreds of people have been rescued across 19 parts of the country, emergency services said, releasing a video of flooded homes in a village by the Danube river. “This is a catastrophe of epic proportions,” said Emil Dragomir, the mayor of Slobozia Conachi, a village in Galati where 700 homes had reportedly been flooded. Slovakia has declared a state of emergency in the capital, Bratislava. Heavy rains are expected to continue until at least Monday in the Czech Republic and Poland. |
The Guardian;Women ‘disheartened’ by UK decision to halt Harvey Weinstein charges;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/15/women-attack-uk-decision-to-halt-harvey-weinstein-charges;2024-09-15T15:44:54Z | Women who were key to exposing the disgraced Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein have told of their frustration at the decision by UK prosecutors to discontinue two indecent assault charges against him. Zelda Perkins, a former personal assistant to Weinstein who broke a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to help expose him as a rapist, said the decision called into question the justice system’s attitude towards sexual assault and rape. “It’s about how the Crown Prosecution Service balances what it’s going to cost them in terms of resources and the likelihood of a conviction,” she said. The CPS announced this month that it was discontinuing the charges of indecent assault against a woman in London in 1996 after a review of evidence found “there is no longer a realistic prospect of conviction”. Perkins, who said she had asked the police to return pieces of evidence including diaries and tapes relating to Weinstein, said she believed the UK developments were partly influenced by recent events in the US, where Weinstein’s 2020 conviction for sex crimes was overturned by a New York appeals court. He is due to be retried and now also faces new charges there. “What happened in the US is not about his guilt,” she said. “There was a legal technicality and all that does is highlight, yet again, that this is about the disparity of power. If you are wealthy, you can afford lawyers, you will continue looking for smaller and smaller and smaller legal loopholes. “I don’t think that was the sole reason but it fed into the decision here. There is a huge issue with the British justice system and the ability of the CPS to deal with rape and sexual assault and where they consider it’s worth spending money pursuing cases.” Rowena Chiu, who was also an assistant to Weinstein and who publicly accused him of attempting to rape her in Venice in 1998, said it had been her understanding that British prosecutors were waiting to see how the trials in the US would go. “But it does appear the case that the logistics and the cost and the barriers to getting very powerful, wealthy men convicted remains a deterrent,” she said. “It is disheartening that the balance of power is so tipped against survivors, who have to jump through what seems to be an extraordinary set of hoops in order to get a conviction and to get a conviction to stick. “Legal reform is needed to shift that balance. But I also take an optimistic view. [The New York case] is not over and there are other brave women willing to come forward. I’m constantly impressed by the conviction of people who will not give up and I hope that that is a signal to the world at large that this is a reckoning. This is a new moment. It’s an answer to everyone who said that #MeToo will be flash in the pan. It’s a decade later. We’re still here.” The CPS decision would be “hugely disheartening” to victims of sexual assault, said Perkins, the co-founder of Can’t Buy My Silence, an organisation campaigning against the use of NDAs. But she added: “The root of this issue is much broader than weak men’s proclivity for sexual assault. It has to do with the system that enables those in power to abuse and buy justice. That is far more problematic on a global scale in terms of the integrity of law. Weinstein is going to die in prison, and the headlines always follow how it’s about him not being brought to justice. But I think it’s more about systemic weakness.” Weinstein, 72 – who is recovering from emergency heart surgery – was indicted last week on additional sex crime charges before a retrial in New York. He was convicted in 2020 after a jury found him guilty of a criminal sex act in the first degree and rape in the third degree. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison. A Los Angeles jury in 2022 found him guilty in a separate case on three counts of rape and sexual assault and he was sentenced in 2023 to an additional 16 years. He denies wrongdoing. |
The Guardian;Middle East crisis: Netanyahu says Israel will ‘exact heavy price’ for Houthi attack – as it happened;https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/15/middle-east-crisis-live-un-worker-killed-by-israeli-sniper-in-west-bank-israel-reports-missile-from-yemen;2024-09-15T15:00:07Z | The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed publicly on Tuesday that three Israeli hostages were mistakenly killed in a strike that also took the life of Hamas’ northern Gaza brigade chief, Ahmed Ghandour, in November. According to reports from Hebrew media, families of Sgt. Ron Sherman, Cpl. Nik Beizer, both 19, and civilian Elia Toledano, 28, who were abducted by Hamas on 7 October, were informed by IDF officials that their loved ones had tragically lost their lives as a result of IDF actions after a comprehensive inquiry. Israel is allegedly recruiting asylum seekers from Africa to take part in military operations in Gaza in exchange for residency rights, according to an investigation by Israel’s daily newspaper Haaretz. According to the report, based on testimonies of asylum seekers and defence officials, speaking off-the-record, Israel’s defence establishment is “offering African asylum seekers who contribute to the war effort in Gaza assistance in obtaining permanent status in Israel”. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will travel to New York on 24 September, the first day of the high-level general debate by world leaders at the annual UN general assembly, his office said Sunday. It said Netanyahu is scheduled to stay until 28 September in the US, which he had visited in July for official talks and a congressional address. A sniper killed a UN worker on the roof of his home in the northern West Bank, the UN has said, as friends and family gathered in Turkey to bury a US-Turkish activist who had been killed by the Israeli military at a protest six days earlier and around 30km away. Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad, a sanitation worker with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, was the first Unrwa employee killed in the West Bank in more than a decade. Shot in the early hours of Thursday morning in el Far’a camp, he left behind a wife and five children. A missile fired at central Israel from Yemen hit an unpopulated area, causing no injuries according to Israel’s military on Sunday, Reuters reports. Moments earlier, air raid sirens had sounded in Tel Aviv and across central Israel, sending residents running for shelter. “Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in central Israel, a surface-to-surface missile was identified crossing into central Israel from the east and fell in an open area. No injuries were reported,” the military said. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that the Houthis in Yemen should have known that Israel would exact a heavy price after an attack on Israeli soil. At a weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu also said that the current situation in northern Israel “will not continue,” and that he was determined to do everything possible to return northern evacuees to their homes. Yemen’s Houthis claimed responsibility for a ballistic missile attack that reached central Israel for the first time on Sunday. “It forced more than two million Zionists to run to shelters for the first time in the enemy’s history,” the military spokesperson for the Houthis said in a statement. Hezbollah’s second-in-command warned on Saturday that an all-out war by Israel aimed at returning 100,000 displaced people to their homes in areas near the Lebanon border would displace “hundreds of thousands” more, AFP reports. Naim Qassem, number two in the Iran-backed Lebanese group, was speaking after defence minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was determined to restore security to its northern front. At least 41,206 Palestinians have been killed and 95,337 others injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the health ministry in Gaza said on Sunday. Thousands of people again took to the streets of Israel’s main cities on Saturday in a bid to increase pressure on the government to secure the release of hostages in Gaza, AFP reports. Weekly rallies have sought to keep up pressure on the Israeli government, accused by critics of stalling on a deal to free the remaining hostages. Mourners gathered in the Aegean town of Didim, south-west Turkey, on Saturday for the funeral of a US-Turkish activist, who was shot dead while protesting Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The killing last week of 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi has sparked international condemnation and angered Turkey, further escalating tensions over the war in Gaza. A large crowd gathered during the prayers including Eygi’s family, members of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Islamic-rooted AKP party, and activists advocating the Palestinian cause. Erdoğan has vowed to ensure “that Aysenur Ezgi’s death does not go unpunished”. The Israeli military has said it was likely Eygi was hit “unintentionally” by forces while they were responding to a “violent riot”, and said it is looking into the case. Israeli airstrikes hit central and southern Gaza overnight into Saturday, killing at least 14 people, Gaza’s civil defence agency said.“We have recovered the bodies of 11 martyrs, including four children and three women, after an Israeli airstrike hit the house of the Bustan family in eastern Gaza City,” agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told Agence France-Presse (AFP). The strike took place near the Shujaiya school in the al-Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City, he said. The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strike. Bassal said Israeli forces carried out similar strikes in some other parts of the territory overnight, killing at least 10 people. Five people were killed in northwestern Gaza City when an airstrike hit a group of people near Dar Al-Arqam school, he said. Three others were killed in a strike in the al-Mawasi area of the southern Khan Younis governorate, where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge, Bassal added. At least 41,182 Palestinians have been killed and 95,280 others injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday. The toll includes 64 deaths in the previous 48 hours, according to the ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its count. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) disaster risk management teams, in cooperation with the Palestine Ministry of Social Development, distributed food parcels to 11,000 families in Gaza and North Gaza governantes, the humanitarian organisation shared on X. Richard Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) representative in Gaza and the West Bank, said in a statement on Saturday that he is “hopeful these pauses will hold” as the UN agency prepare for the next round of polio vaccinations in Gaza in four week’s time. About 559,000 children under the age of 10 have recovered from their first dose, the WHO said, as part of a campaign to inoculate children in Gaza. The second doses are expected to begin later this month as part of an effort in which the WHO said parties had already agreed to. A new attempt has begun to try to salvage an oil tanker burning in the Red Sea after attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, an EU naval mission said on Saturday. The EU’s Operation Aspides published images dated Saturday of its vessels escorting ships heading to the Greek-flagged oil tanker Sounion. That’s all from the Middle East crisis live blog. Thanks for following along. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed publicly on Tuesday that three Israeli hostages were mistakenly killed in a strike that also took the life of Hamas’ northern Gaza brigade chief, Ahmed Ghandour, in November. According to reports from Hebrew media, families of Sgt. Ron Sherman, Cpl. Nik Beizer, both 19, and civilian Elia Toledano, 28, who were abducted by Hamas on 7 October, were informed by IDF officials that their loved ones had tragically lost their lives as a result of IDF actions after a comprehensive inquiry. For ten months, the IDF denied the incident, after the army in December recovered their bodies from a Hamas tunnel in Jabaliya on 14 December. On Sunday, the IDF said: “The findings of the investigation suggest that the three, with high probability, were killed by a byproduct of an IDF airstrike, during the assassination” of Ghandour. “This is a highly probable estimate given all the data, but it is not possible to determine with certainty the circumstances of their death,” the military says. Every evening, for two hours, Asma Mustafa sits down with the small children of Nuseirat camp in central Gaza for what now passes as school in the beleaguered strip. She makes do with what is available: sometimes there are pens and paper for basic maths and literacy, but most of the time class time is taken up with storytelling, singing and play. “I have been doing this since November,” said Mustafa, 38, who taught at a girl’s high school in Gaza City before the war. “Many children are now working or helping their families find basic things like food during the day, but I try to give them a little bit of structure and normality in the evenings.” Last week was supposed to mark the beginning of the new school year in Palestine, but in Gaza 625,000 school-age children are now entering a second year in which they have been denied the right to education because of the Israel-Hamas war. More than 45,000 six-year-olds were due to start school this year. In the 11 months since Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, almost all of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have been displaced from their homes, and some of the strip’s schools have become shelters – but about 90% of Gaza’s 307 public school buildings and all 12 universities have been damaged or destroyed in Israeli attacks, according to the Education Cluster, a collection of aid groups led by Unicef and Save the Children. Yemen’s Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for a surface-to-surface ballistic missile that landed a few miles south-east of Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv on Sunday morning as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, warned the group it would pay a “heavy price”. The missile triggered air sirens across the country at about 6.30am, with local media airing footage of people racing to shelters at the international airport. According to reports, the missile hit an open area in the Ben Shemen forest, sparking a fire near Kfar Daniel. There were no reports of casualties or damage. The Israeli military is investigating if the fire was the result of falling fragments due to the interceptor missiles launched at the projectile, or if the rocket had actually penetrated Israeli air defences as the Houthis have claimed, saying the group had used a hypersonic missile for the first time. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they made several attempts to intercept the missile using their multi-tiered air defences but had not yet determined whether any had been successful. “An initial inquiry indicates the missile most likely fragmented in mid-air,” the IDF said, with “several interception attempts made by the Arrow and Iron Dome aerial defence systems”. It added that “the entire incident is under review”. Israel is allegedly recruiting asylum seekers from Africa to take part in military operations in Gaza in exchange for residency rights, according to an investigation by Israel’s daily newspaper Haaretz. According to the report, based on testimonies of asylum seekers and defence officials, speaking off-the-record, Israel’s defence establishment is “offering African asylum seekers who contribute to the war effort in Gaza assistance in obtaining permanent status in Israel”. Haaretz reported that the programme was being carried out in an “organised manner” under the supervision of “defence establishment” legal advisers. Sources who spoke with Haaretz said: “While there were some inquiries about granting status to asylum seekers who assisted in the fighting, none were actually given status. At the same time, the defence establishment sought to provide status to others who contributed to combat efforts.” Contacted by the Guardian, the IDF did not immediately respond to a request for comment, citing it is still reviewing and “checking” the allegations. Benjamin Netanyahu said the Houthis should expect a “heavy price” for the missile attack on Israel. “Whoever needs a reminder of that is invited to visit the Hodeida port,” Netanyahu said, referring to an Israeli retaliatory airstrike against Yemen in July for a Houthi drone that hit Tel Aviv. The Houthis have fired missiles and drones at Israel repeatedly in what they say is solidarity with the Palestinians, since the Gaza war began with a Hamas attack on Israel in October. The drone that hit Tel Aviv for the first time in July killed a man and wounded four people. Israeli airstrikes in response on Houthi military targets near the port of Hodeidah killed six and wounded 80. Previously, Houthi missiles have not penetrated deep into Israeli airspace, with the only one reported to have hit Israeli territory falling in an open area near the Red Sea port of Eilat in March. Israel should expect more strikes in the future “as we approach the first anniversary of the 7 October operation, including responding to its aggression on the city of Hodeidah,” Sarea said. The deputy head of the Houthi’s media office, Nasruddin Amer, said in a post on X on Sunday that the missile had reached Israel after “20 missiles failed to intercept” it, describing it as the “beginning”. The Israeli military also said that 40 projectiles were fired towards Israel from Lebanon on Sunday and were either intercepted or landed in open areas. “No injuries were reported,” the military said. In an update to our earlier report on a missile fired from Yemen landing in Israel, the missile triggered air raid sirens at Israel’s international airport. Israel hinted that it would respond militarily. There were no reports of casualties or major damage, but Israeli media aired footage showing people racing to shelters in Ben Gurion international airport. The airport authority said it resumed normal operations shortly thereafter. A fire could be seen in a rural area of central Israel, and local media showed images of what appeared to be a fragment from an interceptor that landed on an escalator in a train station in the central town of Modiin. The Israeli military said it made several attempts to intercept the missile using its multitiered air defences but had not yet determined whether any had been successful. It said the missile appeared to have fragmented mid-air, and that the incident is still under review. The military said the sound of explosions in the area came from interceptors. The Yemeni rebels, known as Houthis, have repeatedly fired drones and missiles toward Israel since the start of the war in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, but nearly all of them have been intercepted over the Red Sea. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will travel to New York on 24 September, the first day of the high-level general debate by world leaders at the annual UN general assembly, his office said Sunday. It said Netanyahu is scheduled to stay until 28 September in the US, which he had visited in July for official talks and a congressional address. A sniper killed a UN worker on the roof of his home in the northern West Bank, the UN has said, as friends and family gathered in Turkey to bury a US-Turkish activist who had been killed by the Israeli military at a protest six days earlier and around 30km away. Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad, a sanitation worker with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, was the first Unrwa employee killed in the West Bank in more than a decade. Shot in the early hours of Thursday morning in el Far’a camp, he left behind a wife and five children. A missile fired at central Israel from Yemen hit an unpopulated area, causing no injuries according to Israel’s military on Sunday, Reuters reports. Moments earlier, air raid sirens had sounded in Tel Aviv and across central Israel, sending residents running for shelter. “Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in central Israel, a surface-to-surface missile was identified crossing into central Israel from the east and fell in an open area. No injuries were reported,” the military said. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that the Houthis in Yemen should have known that Israel would exact a heavy price after an attack on Israeli soil. At a weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu also said that the current situation in northern Israel “will not continue,” and that he was determined to do everything possible to return northern evacuees to their homes. Yemen’s Houthis claimed responsibility for a ballistic missile attack that reached central Israel for the first time on Sunday. “It forced more than two million Zionists to run to shelters for the first time in the enemy’s history,” the military spokesperson for the Houthis said in a statement. Hezbollah’s second-in-command warned on Saturday that an all-out war by Israel aimed at returning 100,000 displaced people to their homes in areas near the Lebanon border would displace “hundreds of thousands” more, AFP reports. Naim Qassem, number two in the Iran-backed Lebanese group, was speaking after defence minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was determined to restore security to its northern front. At least 41,206 Palestinians have been killed and 95,337 others injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the health ministry in Gaza said on Sunday. Thousands of people again took to the streets of Israel’s main cities on Saturday in a bid to increase pressure on the government to secure the release of hostages in Gaza, AFP reports. Weekly rallies have sought to keep up pressure on the Israeli government, accused by critics of stalling on a deal to free the remaining hostages. Mourners gathered in the Aegean town of Didim, south-west Turkey, on Saturday for the funeral of a US-Turkish activist, who was shot dead while protesting Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The killing last week of 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi has sparked international condemnation and angered Turkey, further escalating tensions over the war in Gaza. A large crowd gathered during the prayers including Eygi’s family, members of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Islamic-rooted AKP party, and activists advocating the Palestinian cause. Erdoğan has vowed to ensure “that Aysenur Ezgi’s death does not go unpunished”. The Israeli military has said it was likely Eygi was hit “unintentionally” by forces while they were responding to a “violent riot”, and said it is looking into the case. Israeli airstrikes hit central and southern Gaza overnight into Saturday, killing at least 14 people, Gaza’s civil defence agency said.“We have recovered the bodies of 11 martyrs, including four children and three women, after an Israeli airstrike hit the house of the Bustan family in eastern Gaza City,” agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told Agence France-Presse (AFP). The strike took place near the Shujaiya school in the al-Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City, he said. The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strike. Bassal said Israeli forces carried out similar strikes in some other parts of the territory overnight, killing at least 10 people. Five people were killed in northwestern Gaza City when an airstrike hit a group of people near Dar Al-Arqam school, he said. Three others were killed in a strike in the al-Mawasi area of the southern Khan Younis governorate, where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge, Bassal added. At least 41,182 Palestinians have been killed and 95,280 others injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday. The toll includes 64 deaths in the previous 48 hours, according to the ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its count. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) disaster risk management teams, in cooperation with the Palestine Ministry of Social Development, distributed food parcels to 11,000 families in Gaza and North Gaza governantes, the humanitarian organisation shared on X. Richard Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) representative in Gaza and the West Bank, said in a statement on Saturday that he is “hopeful these pauses will hold” as the UN agency prepare for the next round of polio vaccinations in Gaza in four week’s time. About 559,000 children under the age of 10 have recovered from their first dose, the WHO said, as part of a campaign to inoculate children in Gaza. The second doses are expected to begin later this month as part of an effort in which the WHO said parties had already agreed to. A new attempt has begun to try to salvage an oil tanker burning in the Red Sea after attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, an EU naval mission said on Saturday. The EU’s Operation Aspides published images dated Saturday of its vessels escorting ships heading to the Greek-flagged oil tanker Sounion. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that the Houthis in Yemen should have known that Israel would exact a heavy price after an attack on Israeli soil. At a weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu also said that the current situation in northern Israel “will not continue,” and that he was determined to do everything possible to return northern evacuees to their homes. At least 41,206 Palestinians have been killed and 95,337 others injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the health ministry in Gaza said on Sunday. Hezbollah warns Israel against Lebanon border flare-up Hezbollah’s second-in-command warned on Saturday that an all-out war by Israel aimed at returning 100,000 displaced people to their homes in areas near the Lebanon border would displace “hundreds of thousands” more, AFP reports. Naim Qassem, number two in the Iran-backed Lebanese group, was speaking after defence minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was determined to restore security to its northern front. In a speech in Beirut, Qassem said: “We have no intention of going to war, as we consider that this would not be useful.” “However, if Israel does unleash a war, we will face up to it – and there will be large losses on both sides,” he said. On Saturday evening, the Israeli military said its air force had struck suspected Hezbollah weapons storage facilities at two locations in Lebanon’s eastern Beqaa Valley, as well as in six locations in the south. Three children were among four people wounded in an Israeli strike in the northern Beqaa’s Hermel district, 140km from the Israeli border, the Lebanese health ministry said. Yemen’s Houthis claimed responsibility for a ballistic missile attack that reached central Israel for the first time on Sunday. “It forced more than two million Zionists to run to shelters for the first time in the enemy’s history,” the military spokesperson for the Houthis said in a statement. Thousands of people again took to the streets of Israel’s main cities on Saturday in a bid to increase pressure on the government to secure the release of hostages in Gaza, AFP reports. Weekly rallies have sought to keep up pressure on the Israeli government, accused by critics of stalling on a deal to free the remaining hostages. Protest organisers say crowd sizes have swelled this month after an announcement by Israeli authorities that six hostages whose bodies were recovered by troops had been shot dead by militants in a southern Gaza tunnel. Thousands of people joined the rally in Tel Aviv and another in Jerusalem, seat of the Israeli parliament, AFP correspondents said. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is facing rising anger from critics who accuse him of not doing enough to secure a truce deal that would see hostages exchanged for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. Of 251 captives seized during Hamas’s 7 October attack on southern Israel, 97 are still held in the Gaza Strip including 33 the Israeli military says are dead. The vast majority of the hostages freed so far were released during a one-week truce in November. Israeli forces have rescued alive just eight. A missile fired at central Israel from Yemen hit an unpopulated area, causing no injuries according to Israel’s military on Sunday, Reuters reports. Moments earlier, air raid sirens had sounded in Tel Aviv and across central Israel, sending residents running for shelter. “Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in central Israel, a surface-to-surface missile was identified crossing into central Israel from the east and fell in an open area. No injuries were reported,” the military said. Loud booms were also heard in the region, which the military said came from missile interceptors that had been launched. It added that its protective guidelines to Israel’s residents were unchanged. Smoke could be seen billowing in an open field in central Israel, according to a Reuters witness, though it was unclear if the fire was started by the missile or debris of an interceptor. A sniper killed a UN worker on the roof of his home in the northern West Bank, the UN has said, as friends and family gathered in Turkey to bury a US-Turkish activist who had been killed by the Israeli military at a protest six days earlier and around 30km away. Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad, a sanitation worker with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, was the first Unrwa employee killed in the West Bank in more than a decade. Shot in the early hours of Thursday morning in el Far’a camp, he left behind a wife and five children. The war in Gaza has overshadowed spiralling conflict in the West Bank, which has seen weeks of Israeli military operations and violence has reached “unprecedented levels, placing communities at risk,” Unrwa said. For more on this story: Welcome back to our live coverage on the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis. I’m Tom Ambrose. The UN says a sniper killed one of its employees on the roof of his home in the northern West Bank. Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad, a sanitation worker with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, was the first Unrwa employee killed in the West Bank in more than a decade. Meanwhile, a missile fired at central Israel from Yemen has hit an unpopulated area, causing no injuries according to Israel’s military on Sunday, Reuters reports. More details on those stories shortly, in other recent developments: Mourners gathered in the Aegean town of Didim, south-west Turkey, on Saturday for the funeral of a US-Turkish activist, who was shot dead while protesting Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The killing last week of 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi has sparked international condemnation and angered Turkey, further escalating tensions over the war in Gaza. A large crowd gathered during the prayers including Eygi’s family, members of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Islamic-rooted AKP party, and activists advocating the Palestinian cause. Erdoğan has vowed to ensure “that Aysenur Ezgi’s death does not go unpunished”. The Israeli military has said it was likely Eygi was hit “unintentionally” by forces while they were responding to a “violent riot”, and said it is looking into the case. Israeli airstrikes hit central and southern Gaza overnight into Saturday, killing at least 14 people, Gaza’s civil defence agency said.“We have recovered the bodies of 11 martyrs, including four children and three women, after an Israeli airstrike hit the house of the Bustan family in eastern Gaza City,” agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told Agence France-Presse (AFP). The strike took place near the Shujaiya school in the al-Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City, he said. The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strike. Bassal said Israeli forces carried out similar strikes in some other parts of the territory overnight, killing at least 10 people. Five people were killed in northwestern Gaza City when an airstrike hit a group of people near Dar Al-Arqam school, he said. Three others were killed in a strike in the al-Mawasi area of the southern Khan Younis governorate, where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge, Bassal added. At least 41,182 Palestinians have been killed and 95,280 others injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday. The toll includes 64 deaths in the previous 48 hours, according to the ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its count. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) disaster risk management teams, in cooperation with the Palestine Ministry of Social Development, distributed food parcels to 11,000 families in Gaza and North Gaza governantes, the humanitarian organisation shared on X. Richard Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) representative in Gaza and the West Bank, said in a statement on Saturday that he is “hopeful these pauses will hold” as the UN agency prepare for the next round of polio vaccinations in Gaza in four week’s time. About 559,000 children under the age of 10 have recovered from their first dose, the WHO said, as part of a campaign to inoculate children in Gaza. The second doses are expected to begin later this month as part of an effort in which the WHO said parties had already agreed to. A new attempt has begun to try to salvage an oil tanker burning in the Red Sea after attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, an EU naval mission said on Saturday. The EU’s Operation Aspides published images dated Saturday of its vessels escorting ships heading to the Greek-flagged oil tanker Sounion. |
The Guardian;Israeli military admits ‘high probability’ it mistakenly killed hostages;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/15/israeli-military-admits-high-probability-it-mistakenly-killed-hostages;2024-09-15T14:46:21Z | The Israeli military has said there is a “high probability” that three hostages found dead in a tunnel at the end of last year were mistakenly killed in a strike that also took the life of Hamas’s northern Gaza brigade chief, Ahmed al-Ghandour, in November. The families of Col Nik Beizer and Sgt Ron Sherman, both 19, and the French-Israeli civilian Elia Toledano, 28, who were abducted by Hamas on 7 October, were informed in the last week by officials from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that a comprehensive inquiry revealed their loved ones had lost their lives as a result of IDF actions. Their bodies were recovered on 14 December from a tunnel in Jabaliya but the most likely cause of death was only recently determined, the military said. “The findings of the investigation suggest that the three, with high probability, were killed by a byproduct of an IDF airstrike,” a statement said. “This is a highly probable estimate given all the data, but it is not possible to determine with certainty the circumstances of their death.” The families were initially told the hostages had been killed by Hamas captors and, in January, the IDF rejected Hamas’s assertions that they were killed in an Israeli airstrike. The conclusions of the investigation could add to pressure on the government to strike a deal to bring home the remaining hostages held by Hamas. The mothers of the two soldiers had pressed, since their bodies were discovered, for a full account of how their sons had died. “We have to find out the truth about everything,” Maayan Sherman, the mother of Sherman, told the Wall Street Journal in May. “Even if the truth is: ‘We had to kill them.’” The November airstrike was aimed at al-Ghandour, who was taking cover in a tunnel. The IDF’s inquiry at the time concluded that the military was unaware of the presence of hostages in the area during the strike. “At the time of the strike, the IDF did not have information about the presence of hostages in the targeted compound,” the military said. “Furthermore, there was information suggesting that they were located elsewhere, and thus the area was not designated as one with suspected presence of hostages.” |
The Guardian;Saudi Arabia calls for more pressure on Iran as Houthi threat grows;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/15/saudi-arabia-iran-houthi-threat-yemen-israel-red-sea;2024-09-15T14:13:57Z | The claimed acquisition by Yemen’s Houthi rebels of hypersonic missiles capable of penetrating Israeli air defences threatens to further heighten Middle East tensions, as Saudi Arabia calls for more than “pinprick bombings” to constrain the supply of weapons to the group. Saudi Arabia, which supports the Yemen government opposing the Houthis, believes Iran has been arming the group, including with the weapons used in the attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Those attacks have led to a halving of the traffic on the Red Sea route, pushing up the costs of maritime transport and damaging the Egyptian economy through disruption to the Suez canal. But in the Houthi capital, Sana’a, from where the rebel group mastermind their attacks on shipping, the leadership celebrated Sunday’s claimed attack on Israel – which landed in an open area near Ben Gurion international airport – as a homegrown breakthrough and claimed the technology was created by the hard work of Yemeni technicians. It promised more strikes would come. Before the attack the Houthis had issued warnings of some kind of attack on Israel. Previous Houthi missile attacks have not penetrated far into Israeli airspace, with the only one reported to have hit Israeli territory falling in an open area near the Red Sea port of Eilat in March. An attack with an Iranian-made drone on Tel Aviv in July killed one person and wounded 10 others. Israel used its Arrow and Iron Dome defences against the Houthi missile on Sunday but has not yet determined if any of the multiple attempts to intercept it were successful. The Houthis, a Shia group that have held Sana’a since 2014, may have employed the Qadr F variant of Iran’s 20-year-old Qadr-110 or Ghadr-110 medium-range ballistic missile. Iran has repeatedly been accused, including by the UN, of supplying weapons to the Houthis initially for use in fighting the Saudi-backed Yemen government based in Aden. Despite an intensive bombing campaign by the Saudis in 2016, the Houthis have proved impossible to displace, even mounting drone attacks into Saudi Arabia. A ceasefire exists inside Yemen but the UN special envoy for the country, Hans Grundberg, told the UN security council that the threat of a return to all-out civil war remained. Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi intelligence chief and diplomat, has expressed the kingdom’s disappointment at the way Iran has been helping the Houthis. Speaking at Chatham House in London on Friday, he called for more international action to block such assistance and said the “pinprick bombings” mounted on Houthi positions by US and UK naval forces in the Red Sea needed to be more effective. “We have seen the deployment of European and US fleets along the Red Sea coast and more can be done there to interdict the supply of weaponry that comes to the Houthis from Iran,” he said. “Putting pressure on Iran by the world community can have a positive impact on what the Houthis can do in launching these missiles and drones to hit international commerce.” Faisal claimed that by continuing to interfere in Arab states such as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, as well as in Palestine, Tehran had not fulfilled its side of the diplomatic bargain struck between Iran and Saudi Arabia in China two years ago. “The Houthis now hold the world as hostage in the Bab al-Mandab entrance to the Red Sea, and yet Iran is not showing that it can do something there if it wanted to, and the kingdom would have expected Iran to be more forthcoming in showing not just to us but to others that it can be a positive factor in securing stability and removing differences not just with Saudi Arabia but the rest of us.” He said it was unclear if the Iranians could control the Houthis, and the world was in trouble if it could not. Saudi Arabia has not joined the US military attacks because it says it has been pursuing a diplomatic route to form a national government in Yemen. The commander of the Middle East-based US 5th Fleet, V Adm George Wikoff, has said sporadic US and UK bombardments of the Houthi positions along the Yemen coast has not yet led to commercial shipping returning. The attacks caused a 50% drop in ship traffic through the Red Sea, prompting shipping companies to begin routing vessels around Africa, adding 11,000 nautical miles and $1m in fuel costs to journeys. The Houthi attacks have continued despite multiple strikes against positions on the Yemen coastline by the US and Israel in recent months. |
The Guardian;‘The war has stolen our future’: Gaza children begin second school year without education;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/15/gaza-children-school-year-education-israel-war;2024-09-15T12:23:29Z | Every evening, for two hours, Asma Mustafa sits down with the small children of Nuseirat camp in central Gaza for what now passes as school in the beleaguered strip. She makes do with what is available: sometimes there are pens and paper for basic maths and literacy, but most of the time class time is taken up with storytelling, singing and play. “I have been doing this since November,” said Mustafa, 38, who taught at a girls’ high school in Gaza City before the war. “Many children are now working or helping their families find basic things like food during the day, but I try to give them a little bit of structure and normality in the evenings.” Last week was supposed to mark the beginning of the new school year in Palestine, but in Gaza 625,000 school-age children are now entering a second year in which they have been denied the right to education because of the Israel-Hamas war. More than 45,000 six-year-olds were due to start school this year. In the 11 months since Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, almost all of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have been displaced from their homes, and some of the strip’s schools have become shelters. But about 90% of Gaza’s 307 public school buildings and all 12 universities have been damaged or destroyed in Israeli attacks, according to the Education Cluster, a collection of aid groups led by Unicef and Save the Children. “Education has totally stopped since 7 October and the future is still unclear,” Mustafa said. “There’s no vision for how we start again because we are still under attack. Everything and everyone is targeted – the tents, the shelters, the schools, the streets. It’s a very dangerous situation.” According to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, whose data various investigations and the World Health Organization have found to be broadly accurate, 25,000 school-age children have been killed or injured in the war. For those who are clinging on, daily life has become a nightmarish struggle. There is no reliable data but it appears that many children have been put to work, collecting firewood or building makeshift shelters and gravestones. Younger children are sent to queue for hours at water and food distribution stations. Yara al-Shawa, 22, from Gaza City, found out last September she had won a full scholarship towards a master’s programme in human rights law in Qatar. Unable to leave the strip because of the Israeli blockade, she and her school-age siblings now spend morning to night trying to keep their family alive and well. “My younger brother now takes on responsibilities that no child should bear: gathering supplies, fetching water, tending to our household needs. School is a distant memory for him now. He’s been forced to grow up too fast under these circumstances,” she said of 15-year-old Ayman. “I’m always struck by how much he has changed. He’s not little any more,” she added. “The war has stolen our future. What once seemed like achievable dreams – me becoming a lawyer, my brother finishing school – now feel like fantasies.” Studies show that the more school time children miss, the more difficult it is to catch up on lost learning, and the less likely they are to return. Younger children’s cognitive, social and emotional development suffers; girls are more likely to be married off at younger ages, and boys forced into work or militancy. Small-scale initiatives to keep children learning and engaged are present all over Gaza, and last month Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, managed to launch a “back to learning” programme in 45 shelters across the strip, which includes games, drama, arts, music and sports activities to try to mitigate the war’s impact on children’s mental health. For Mustafa, the teacher in Nuseirat, the Unrwa programme is welcome but highlights how much more needs to be done. “There is only so much local or international organisations can do when sometimes five notebooks cost $50,” she said. “There is nowhere safe, schools and shelters are targeted. These challenges can’t be solved except by ending the war.” For now, as internationally mediated talks founder once again, no ceasefire that could help restore normality is on the horizon. Like so many in Gaza, Mustafa has little choice but to cling to the hope that the war will end soon and the children of Gaza will be able to go back to a more normal life. “The kids of Gaza are the future. They give me hope,” she said. “They give me the power to keep standing, to keep going.” |
The Guardian;South Africa school language law stirs Afrikaans learning debate;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/15/south-africa-school-language-law-stirs-afrikaans-learning-debate;2024-09-15T12:20:29Z | A contentious South African education law has drawn furious condemnation from politicians and campaigners who claim it is putting Afrikaans education under threat while evoking for others an enduring association of the language with white minority rule. The Basic Education Laws Amendment Act was signed into law on Friday by the president, Cyril Ramaphosa, who said he would give dissenting parties in his coalition government three months to suggest alternatives to two sections that give provincial officials the powers to override admission decisions and force schools to teach in more than one of South Africa’s 12 official languages. The provisions have meanwhile been welcomed by those who say they are necessary in order to stop some government schools using language to racially exclude children. The controversy has tapped into multiple sensitive political topics in South Africa: forcing children to learn in languages they don’t understand, the enduring association for some of the Afrikaans language with apartheid, persistent racial inequalities and the parlous state of many schools. “We have seen cases of learners being denied admissions to schools because of their language policies,” Ramaphosa, the leader of the African National Congress, the country’s largest party, said before signing the bill, which was passed before May’s elections. “The bill is part of the states’ ongoing effort to build an education system that is more effective and more equitable.” The Democratic Alliance (DA), which gets the majority of its support from white voters and is the second largest party in South Africa’s coalition government, threatened legal action if mother-tongue schooling was not protected after the three-month negotiation period. “Afrikaans-medium schools constitute less than 5% of the country’s schools,” said the DA’s leader and agriculture minister, John Steenhuisen, referring to schools that teach only in Afrikaans. “Their existence in no way contributes to the crisis in education, and turning them into dual-medium or English-medium schools will not help improve the quality of education for South Africa’s learners.” Afrikaans evolved from the Dutch settlers around Cape Town, as well as African and south-east Asian enslaved people, local Indigenous people and their mixed-race Cape Coloured descendants. Some of the first texts in Afrikaans were written in Arabic script by Cape Malay Muslim scholars in the early 19th century. Language and education have a tortuous history in South Africa. When the Boer war ended in 1902, Afrikaans became a form of resistance among white Afrikaners to British colonial rule and English education. After Afrikaner nationalists took power in 1948, with policies including intentionally making segregated black schools worse, the language became identified with white minority rule. In 1976, hundreds of children were shot dead by police in the Soweto uprising when they marched peacefully against the imposition of Afrikaans tuition in schools. According to census data, the number of South Africans speaking Afrikaans at home rose from 5.9 million in 1996 to 6.6 million in 2022, with the majority of speakers non-white. But by share of the population the figure has fallen from 14.5% to 10.6%, and some Afrikaner rights groups argue they are losing their language, culture and identity. “For our cultural community it’s essential that we have schools where there is Afrikaans education, it’s used as the language of tuition and that it should be monolingual schools,” said Alana Bailey, the head of cultural affairs at Afriforum, which she said campaigns for minority rights, rejecting accusations of racism. Since apartheid ended, many black parents living near the limited number of good historically white schools have tried to send their children there. In some cases this has resulted in officials trying to force Afrikaans-only schools to also teach in English, with legal battles reaching the constitutional court. “There were historically quite a few Afrikaans schools that were not full to capacity and would use language provision as a way to create barriers to access,” said Brahm Fleisch, a professor of education at the University of the Witwatersrand, expressing his support for the new law as a safeguard. “When schools are full and there’s no evidence of discrimination on the basis of race … schools are not compelled to change their language policy.” South Africa’s constitution guarantees the right to education in an official language of choice where “reasonably practicable”. But Marius Swart, a language policy expert at the University of Stellenbosch, said the lack of state capacity meant mother-tongue education in indigenous languages was still a distant dream for many children. Meanwhile, most of South Africa’s children continue to struggle in school. In 2021, a survey found that 81% of 10-year-olds could not read for understanding. “We still, to a very large extent, have a stratified school system with a relatively small elite of rich schools,” Swart said. “With relatively rich children from relatively rich families attending them and then many, many children who are in … poorly resourced schools and who really struggle.” |
The Guardian;Real Madrid pauses concerts after ‘torture-drome’ noise complaints;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/15/real-madrid-bernabeu-stadium-cancels-reschedules-concerts-noise-complaints;2024-09-15T11:56:47Z | Real Madrid has cancelled or rescheduled all concerts at its Santiago Bernabéu stadium and is working to comply with council noise regulations after local people complained that a series of loud, late gigs had turned the arena into a “torture-drome”. Although best known as the home of one of Spain’s greatest football teams, the Bernabéu – which has just undergone a five-year, €900m (£760m) refurbishment – has hosted a string of high-profile concerts over the spring and summer. Recent headliners have included Taylor Swift, Luis Miguel and the Colombian star Karol G. But while the concerts delighted some music fans, they drove many local people to despair. Faced with decibels far exceeding legal levels, midnight finish times, fans camping out in local parks, drunk people urinating in doorways and the blocking off of residential roads, a group representing those living around the stadium began legal action against those responsible, including Madrid city council. In a statement released on Friday, the club said it had decided to rethink its concert schedule. “Real Madrid FC is announcing that it has decided to provisionally reschedule its event and concert programme at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium,” it said. “This decision is part of a raft of measures that the club is taking to ensure that the concerts comply strictly with the relevant municipal regulations.” Despite the introduction of soundproofing measures, “different organisers and promoters” had still found it difficult to comply with council noise regulations, the statement said. It added: “Real Madrid will continue working to make sure that the necessary sound production and emission conditions are in place to allow concerts to be held in our stadium.” The statement said concerts by the Spanish artists Dellafuente and Aitana, slated for November and December, would be rescheduled, as would concerts next March by Lola Índigo. A K-pop concert in October has been cancelled. The club said it was still planning a large number of shows and events to make the most of the revamped stadium, but added: “Real Madrid will continue working with the Madrid regional government and Madrid city council when it comes to sustainability and coexistence, and its aim is always to ensure that the stadium’s activities live up to its commitment to the city of Madrid and are beneficial to the surrounding environment.” José Manuel Paredes, a spokesperson for the association that was formed in response to the concert noise, said the announcement had come as a temporary relief to those around the stadium but stressed that the group had not abandoned its legal action. “We’ve managed to stop things in the neighbourhood getting worse for at least six months, so things are better,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean that we’re giving up the fight. The problem is still the fact that the stadium isn’t equipped to be a concert venue, nor will it be.” Paredes said the Bernabéu was only licensed by the council to hold sporting fixtures and the odd “extraordinary event”, and was not meant to be holding frequent concerts. “We just need them to follow the law – no more, no less,” he said. |
The Guardian;Kyiv’s botanical garden staring at disaster as Russia targets Ukraine’s energy sector;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/15/kyivs-botanical-garden-staring-at-disaster-as-russia-targets-ukraines-energy-sector;2024-09-15T10:22:30Z | Zhanna Yaroslavska showed off a barrel-shaped stove in the middle of a tropical greenhouse. Nearby was a large pile of logs. “It’s a pretty neanderthal arrangement,” she explained. “When the power shuts off we feed the stove with wood. In winter we do this round the clock. Our plants require constant temperatures. They don’t like cold and hot.” Inside the glass nursery were dozens of rare specimens. All were bromeliads native to the Americas. Silvery wisps of beard-like Tillandsia descended from a pipe. A pineapple poked out of a stem. A screen next to the stove protected a group of starfish-like earth stars, native to Brazil. The collection needed a minimum temperature of 10C, Yaroslavska – a senior researcher – said. Below that everything would die off. The greenhouse is one of eight in the Mykola Hryshko national botanical garden in Kyiv. Founded in 1935, it is Ukraine’s biggest garden and one of the largest in Europe. It is home to about 13,000 species of trees, flowers and other plants from around the world. The 52-hectare (130 acres) site has scientific departments and two laboratories. With its roses and camellias, it is a popular venue with wedding photographers. But the park is now staring at disaster. In recent months, Russia has systematically destroyed most of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Power cuts in the capital and across the country are common, with the situation getting worse. The city authorities have said they will not be able to guarantee supply in the freezing months ahead. Prices for electricity have doubled, as the garden’s funding has shrunk. “Worst-case scenario is we lose a big part of our collection,” Roman Ivannikov, the head of the tropical and subtropical plant department, said. Money is so tight he and his colleagues recently took a pay cut. Last winter, £55,000 in donations kept the garden going, allowing the purchase of 242 tonnes of fuel pellets. Volunteers chopped firewood. The garden is appealing for help, under the hashtag #greenhousewarming. Before the first chilly night of October arrives, Ivannikov said his team urgently needed additional generators. The orchid house had a unique collection of exotic specimens and was especially vulnerable. Last year, three Samsung heat pumps were fitted to maintain temperatures at 20-22C. But there was no back-up in the case of a prolonged shutdown. Ivannikov pointed out some of the collection’s highlights. They included an egg-in-the-nest orchid from China – it has a strange white-and-purple-spotted flower – and a delicate green jewel orchid. Another example – Doritis pulcherrima – was descended from a plant sent into space in 1986. The orchid was part of a Soviet mission to the Mir space station, where the crew performed experiments in biology. The garden collaborates with international partners. In 2014, it sent plants to Vietnam, after their original habitat was destroyed to make way for banana and coffee crops. “I travelled with 45 orchids,” Ivannikov recalled. “I watched on TV, as Russia took Crimea.” Scientific conferences with Moscow stopped. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion Ivannikov took his family out of Kyiv and returned a week later. The Kremlin continues to fire missiles at the capital. From time to time, falling debris breaks glass in the hothouses. Blast waves from explosions have dislodged a chunk of wall and knocked over red-listed plants. “We haven’t had a direct hit. But we suffered a lot of damage,” Ivannikov said. In January, a rocket flew above the main orangery, a giant glass dome containing banks of shaggy vines and a towering king palm. Iryna Yudakova, an engineer, was inside. “I didn’t hear the air alarm. I went out and saw a streak in the sky,” she said. “There was an explosion. A piece of shrapnel fell next to me. Another hit a window. I was lucky.” Yudakova said she enjoyed her job but that the pay – 8,000 hryvnia a month (£150) – was measly. “Previously I was a psychologist. When the war started I lost my clients. Without my husband I couldn’t survive,” she said. Yudakova’s duties include looking after the rhododendrons and azaleas. In February, one of her favourite plants – an old specimen bred in Germany in the 1930s – lost most of its leaves during a blackout. “It got too cold,” she said. “The younger, smaller plants survive better.” Standing next to the denuded shrub, she reflected: “It’s like losing a relative or a pet. I think of them as my kids. I water them, care for them, talk to them.” Many employees have worked at the garden for decades. Others fled Russian occupation. Among them are a father and daughter in charge of the bonsai collection, who escaped from Mariupol. Ivannikov said his soldier cousin died defending the eastern city, which Russia flattened in 2022. About 1,000 volunteers do various tasks. They prune lavender, remove unwanted hops and water juvenile plants. “It’s gardening therapy. The volunteers do useful work. They go home feeling better,” Ivannikov said. Last weekend, dog walkers and young couples visited the alpine garden and sat in a pleasant outdoor cafe. A red squirrel bounded between trees. Next to the administration building – where new orchids are nurtured in glass flasks – a sale of succulents was going on. Proceeds went to Ukraine’s armed forces. Back at the bromeliad house Yaroslavska said she would like to replace the building – constructed in 1976 under communism – with a modern, more heat-efficient version. She recognised there was no point in making improvements while the war rumbled on and bombs fell randomly from the sky. For now, the objective was for the garden and its 4,000 tropical and subtropical plants to get through the coming winter. There were also smaller challenges, she said. A bold squirrel had climbed in through a ventilation window and made off with the figs from a rare tree. Apart from getting rid of the squirrel, what else did she want? “If I had a magic wand I would wish there was no Russia,” she replied. “No Russia means no problem. We could live normally.” |
The Guardian;US rejects claims of CIA involvement in alleged plot to kill Maduro after Venezuela arrests six ;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/15/us-rejects-claims-of-cia-involvement-in-alleged-plot-to-kill-maduro-after-venezuela-arrests-six;2024-09-15T01:09:39Z | The US state department rejected allegations of CIA involvement in an alleged assassination plot against Nicolás Maduro after Venezuelan officials announced the arrest of three Americans, two Spaniards and a Czech on Saturday. The claims of a plot against Maduro – the Venezuelan president, whose recent re-election is contested – were made on state television by Diosdado Cabello, the interior minister. Cabello said the foreign citizens including a US navy member were part of a CIA-led plot to overthrow the Venezuelan government and kill several members of its leadership. In the television programme, Cabello showed images of rifles that he said were confiscated from some of the alleged plotters. The US state department late on Saturday confirmed the detention of a US military member and said it was aware of “unconfirmed reports of two additional US citizens detained in Venezuela”. “Any claims of US involvement in a plot to overthrow Maduro are categorically false. The United States continues to support a democratic solution to the political crisis in Venezuela.” The claims come two days after the US treasury imposed sanctions on 16 allies of Maduro, accused by the US government of obstructing voting during the disputed 28 July Venezuelan presidential election and carrying out human rights abuses. During the past week, Spain’s parliament recognised the opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez as the winner of the election, angering Maduro allies who called on the Venezuelan government to suspend commercial and diplomatic relations with Spain. Tensions between Venezuela’s government and the US have increased as well following the election, whose result sparked protests within Venezuela in which hundreds of opposition activists were arrested. Venezuela’s electoral council, which is closely aligned with the Maduro administration, said Maduro won the election with 52% of the vote but did not provide a detailed breakdown of the results. Opposition activists surprised the government by collecting tally sheets from 80% of voting machines. They were published online and indicate that Gonzalez won with twice as many votes as Maduro. Despite international condemnation, Venezuela’s supreme court, which has long backed Maduro, confirmed his victory in August. Venezuela’s attorney general then filed conspiracy charges against Gonzalez, who fled to Spain last week after it became clear he would be arrested. Maduro has dismissed requests from several countries, including the leftist governments of Colombia and Brazil, to provide tally sheets that prove he won. Maduro, who has been in power since 2013, has long claimed the US is trying to overthrow him through sanctions and covert operations. The Maduro administration has previously used Americans imprisoned in Venezuela to gain concessions. In a 2023 deal, Maduro released 10 Americans and a fugitive wanted by the US government to secure a presidential pardon for Alex Saab, a close Maduro ally who was held in Florida on money laundering charges. According to US prosecutors, Saab had also helped Maduro to avoid US treasury sanctions through a complex network of shell companies. Associated Press contributed reporting |
The Guardian;Ukraine war briefing: more than 100 Ukrainians released in prisoner swap with Russia;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/15/ukraine-war-briefing-more-than-100-ukrainians-released-in-prisoner-swap-with-russia;2024-09-15T00:51:17Z | More than 100 Ukrainian prisoners of war will be able to return to their families after an exchange of captives of the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces. The swap on Saturday, mediated by the United Arab Emirates, involved 206 military personnel from both countries. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said that of the 103 Ukrainian “warriors” who were released, 82 were soldiers and privates and 21 were officers, including police officers and border guards. In return for their freedom, Ukraine released more than 100 Russian military personnel taken prisoner in the Kursk border region since Ukrainian forces invaded. It is the second such swap since Ukraine’s incursion into Russia, and occurred after mediated negotiations. Russian shelling killed at least seven people in four attacks on the south, south-east and east of Ukraine on Saturday, regional Ukrainian governors said. Russian shells struck an agricultural enterprise in the town of Huliaipole, killing three people in the Zaporizhzhia region in south-east Ukraine, governor Ivan Fedorov said. A missile attack in the suburbs of Odesa killed a man and a woman and injured a 65-year-old woman, the Odesa regional governor said. Shelling killed one person in the southern region of Kherson, according to governor Oleksandr Prokudin. In the Kharkiv region, the body of a 72-year-old woman was retrieved from the rubble after Russia struck the village of Pisky-Radkivski, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said. Details could not be independently verified. Britain and the US have raised fears that Russia has shared nuclear secrets with Iran in return for Tehran supplying Moscow with ballistic missiles to bomb Ukraine. During their summit in Washington DC on Friday, Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, and the US president, Joe Biden, acknowledged that the two regimes were tightening military cooperation at a time when Iran is in the process of enriching enough uranium to complete its long-held goal to build a nuclear bomb. British sources indicated that concerns were aired about Iran’s trade for nuclear technology, part of a deepening alliance between Tehran and Moscow. However, it’s unclear how much technical knowledge Tehran has to build a nuclear weapon at this stage, or how quickly it could do so. Iran denies that it is trying to make a nuclear bomb. Iran’s foreign minister said that Tehran was open to diplomacy to solve disputes but not “threats and pressure”, state media reported on Saturday. Abbas Araqchi’s comments came a day after the EU’s chief diplomat said the bloc was considering new sanctions targeting Iran’s aviation sector, in reaction to reports Tehran supplied Russia with ballistic missiles in its war against Ukraine. Keir Starmer has been urged by former UK defence secretaries and an ex-PM to allow Ukraine to use provided long-range missiles inside Russian territory even without US backing, according to the Sunday Times. The call came from five former Conservative defence secretaries – Grant Shapps, Ben Wallace, Gavin Williamson, Penny Mordaunt and Liam Fox – as well as from Boris Johnson. They warned Starmer that “any further delay will embolden president Putin”, the Sunday Times reported. Starmer and Joe Biden held talks in Washington on Friday on whether to allow Kyiv to use the long-range missiles against targets in Russia. No decision was announced. Joe Biden will use the remaining four months of his term “to put Ukraine in the best possible position to prevail”, according to the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan. Biden would meet Volodymyr Zelenskiy in late September at the UN general assembly in New York to discuss aid to Ukraine, Sullivan said. “President Zelenskiy has said that ultimately this war has to end through negotiations, and we need them to be strong in those negotiations,” Sullivan said, adding Ukraine would decide when to enter talks with Russia. The head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the GUR, Kyrylo Budanov, said North Korean military aid to Russia presented the biggest concern on the battlefield compared with support provided by Moscow’s other allies. “They supply huge amounts of artillery ammunition, which is critical for Russia,” he said, pointing to the ramp up in the battlefield hostilities after such deliveries. Ukraine and the US, among other countries and independent analysts, say the North Korean ruler, Kim Jong-un, is helping Russia in the war against Ukraine by supplying missiles and ammunition in return for economic and other military assistance from Moscow. Senior Russian security official and former president Dmitry Medvedev said on Saturday that Russia could destroy Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, with non-nuclear weapons in response to the use of western long-range missiles by Ukraine. Medvedev claimed Moscow already had formal grounds to use nuclear weapons since Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, but could instead use other weapons technologies to reduce Kyiv to “a giant melted spot” when the Kremlin’s patience runs out. |
The Guardian;Mother of man accused in California wildfire says ‘he did not light that fire’;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/14/arson-southern-california-wildfire-san-bernardino;2024-09-14T23:43:22Z | The mother of the 34-year-old man accused of starting the Line fire in southern California – which has scorched at least 38,000 acres (15,378 hectares) and destroyed one home – has spoken out in defense of her son, telling the Los Angeles Times on Thursday that “he did not light that fire”. Arson-related charges have been filed against Justin Wayne Halstenberg, who is accused of starting the San Bernardino county blaze on 5 September. He is due to be arraigned on Monday according to the San Bernardino county district attorney’s office. Halstenberg’s mother, Connie Halstenberg, told the Los Angeles Times that there were things that her son does that she does not approve of but that “he is not an arsonist”. Prosecutors in the San Bernardino county district attorney’s office allege that Halstenberg tried to start a fire in at least two other locations before succeeding. The first, on Bacon Lane in Highland, California, was reported and extinguished by firefighters. “The second was stomped out by a good Samaritan,” the district attorney’s office said. “Undeterred, he ignited a third fire which is what we now know as the Line fire,” prosecutors said in the statement. Prosecutors said additional charges may be filed for any further structure damage or injuries as the fire continues. The full extent of the damage caused by the blaze remains unclear, but Jason Anderson, the San Bernardino county district attorney, said at least one home had been destroyed. The wildfire was 25% contained as of Saturday. Cool weather over the next several days should help, fire officials said. The Line fire is burning through dense vegetation that grew after two back-to-back wet winters when snowstorms broke tree branches, leaving behind a lot of “dead and down fuel”, Jed Gaines, a Cal Fire operations section chief, said. Four firefighters have been injured in the fire, according to Cal Fire, the latest on Friday. Los Angeles news channel KESQ reported that a firefighter had been airlifted to a hospital after experiencing weakness on the frontlines, citing a Cal Fire official. Thousands of firefighters, aided by cooler weather, made progress on Saturday against three southern California wildfires, and officials in northern Nevada were hopeful that almost all evacuees from a blaze there could soon be home. Authorities have started scaling back evacuations at the largest blaze. The Bridge fire east of Los Angeles has burned 81 sq miles (210 sq km), torched at least 33 homes and six cabins and forced the evacuation of 10,000 people. Two firefighters have been injured in the blaze, state fire officials said. Don Freguila, an operations section chief, said on Saturday that containment was estimated at 3% and improving, with nearly 2,500 firefighters working the lines. He said Saturday’s focus would be the fire’s west flank and northern edge near Wrightwood, where air tankers have dropped retardant on the flames in steep, rugged areas inaccessible to ground crews. “A lot of good work. We’re really beating this up and starting to make some good progress,” Freguila said. He said a new spot fire broke out on Friday night near the Mount Baldy ski area along the blaze’s southern edge, burning only about an acre before crews “buttoned it up”. The Airport fire in Orange and Riverside counties has been difficult to tame because of the steep terrain and dry conditions, and because some areas had not burned in decades. Reportedly sparked by workers using heavy equipment, it has burned more than 37 sq miles (96 sq km). It was 9% contained as of Saturday. “Although direct lines have been challenging to build due to rugged terrain, favorable weather conditions have supported their efforts,” the Saturday situation report from the California department of forestry and fire protection said. Eleven firefighters and two residents have been injured in the blaze, according to the Orange county fire authority. The fire has destroyed at least 27 cabins in the Holy Jim Canyon area, authorities said. The southern California blazes have threatened tens of thousands of homes and other structures since they escalated during a triple-digit heatwave. Smoke and ash from the wildfires have degraded the air quality, as the South Coast Air Quality Management District issued advisories for residents to limit their exposure to the smoky orange skies. The blaze in Nevada near Lake Tahoe broke out last weekend, destroying 14 homes and burning through nearly 9 sq miles (23 sq km) of timber and brush along the Sierra Nevada’s eastern slope. Some 20,000 people were forced from their homes early this week. Fire officials said there was a 90% chance the last of the evacuees would be able to return to their homes by the end of Saturday. Containment of the blaze was estimated at 76% Saturday, fire spokesperson Celeste Prescott said. Some of the 700 crew members should soon be sent off to other fires, she added. Firefighters were mostly mopping up but anticipated winds picking up in the afternoon, and so stood ready to attack any spots that flare up. “We’re on the verge of big success here,” said Charles Moore, the Truckee Meadows fire district chief. |
The Guardian;‘Transformative, for better and for worse’: what’s the legacy of Peru’s Alberto Fujimori;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/14/transformative-for-better-and-for-worse-whats-the-legacy-of-perus-alberto-fujimori;2024-09-14T19:37:36Z | At 11.45 on Thursday morning, six white-gloved pallbearers carried a coffin holding the body of the most divisive, beloved and reviled Peruvian politician of the last four decades. They passed the mourners, the cameras and the flag-topped lances of the Húsares de Junín cavalry regiment, and set it down in the hall of Lima’s brutalist culture ministry. Behind the coffin, holding hands and dressed in black under a pale but warm spring sky, came its occupant’s eldest daughter and youngest son. A crowd of ministers, political allies and military top brass awaited them at the ministry. And so began three days of national mourning to honour Alberto Fujimori, the political upstart who served as president of Peru from 1990 to 2000 and who, nine years later, was ordered to serve a 25-year sentence for authorising kidnappings and murders during his government’s “war against terrorism”. On Saturday, after a state funeral at the ministry, supporters gathered as he was buried at the Campo Fe de Huachipa cemetery in the city. The fact that Fujimori, who died of cancer aged 86 on Wednesday, was afforded the kind of send-off not seen since the 2020 funeral of the Peruvian former UN secretary-general Javier Pérez de Cuéllar may have infuriated many in the South American country, but it came as little surprise. After all, the life and legacy of Fujimori – who was pardoned and released from prison just 10 months ago – is perhaps the most bitter and disputed topic in contemporary Peru. To many, he will always be the cynical autocrat whose corruption, hunger for power and disdain for human rights poisoned the nation. To others, he will forever remain the political outsider who came from nowhere but somehow managed to defeat the twin scourges of terrorism and hyperinflation. Those in the latter camp were evident on the streets outside the culture ministry on Thursday, where they queued, cheered and cried as they reminisced about the man affectionately known as “El Chino”, while floral wreaths sent by the country’s business elite piled up. “He’s getting the honours he deserves because he was the best president in the history of Peru,” said Milagros Parra, 54, who had come with companions from the San Juan de Lurigancho neighbourhood on the outskirts of Lima. “He inherited a country full of blood with massive hyperinflation. We have to thank him.” Her friend Bonifacia Moreno, 79, was also grieving. “Our economy is thanks to him; our peace is thanks to him, she said. “Who will defend us now?” Fujimori, the son of Japanese immigrants, was the all-but-unknown candidate who ran against the Peruvian novelist – and future Nobel prize-winner – Mario Vargas Llosa in the 1990 election, which was held after almost a decade of the Shining Path’s Maoist terrorism and years of economic upheaval. With Vargas Llosa perceived as another candidate from the country’s white, Lima-centric elite, Fujimori, an agricultural engineer and mathematician schooled in France and the US, capitalised on his appeal to ordinary Peruvians by riding a tractor and pledging “honesty, technology, work”. The pitch worked and Fujimori won. His drastic market reforms and deregulation of the Peruvian economy appealed to the business elite, while programmes to build schools, roads and bridges in poor, abandoned communities, won him votes and lifelong support. As a result, said José Alejandro Godoy, the author of two books about Fujimori, “both wealthy and poor sectors continue to be the main bases of support for him and the political movement he founded”. But, faced with economic and terrorist turmoil from the outset, Fujimori governed with an increasingly authoritarian hand in connivance with his spymaster, Vladimiro Montesinos, a corrupt lawyer and former soldier who offered him control of the judiciary and the armed forces. Emboldened by broad public support, Fujimori embarked on the “war against terrorism” that eventually crushed the Shining Path insurgency and then the smaller Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, which made headlines when it took hostages during a party at the Japanese ambassador’s residence in December 1996. The capture in 1992 of the Shining Path’s leader, Abimael Guzmán, proved a major coup – the much-feared terrorist mastermind was paraded in a cage in prison stripes – as did the operation that ended the siege at the Japanese ambassador’s residence in April 1997. Desperate for an end to the bloodshed – the country’s truth and reconciliation commission would later establish that 69,280 people were killed between 1980 and 2000, 54% of them by the Shining Path – many Peruvians supported Fujimori’s “by any means necessary” tactics. In the early 1990s, Fujimori holed up in the intelligence service headquarters from where he directed a dirty war using a death squad, the Grupo Colina, to carry out massacres for which he was eventually convicted and jailed for 25 years in 2009 in a landmark trial against a former head of state. These crimes, which included the murder of an eight-year-old boy and a string of other human rights violations, turned a large sector of public opinion against Fujimori, as did increasing revelations of corruption. But it took time. Even when he dissolved congress in 1992, allied himself with the military and co-opted national institutions to rewrite the constitution, allowing him to run for re-election, he still had broad support. With a chokehold on power, he gutted and corrupted public bodies and, via Montesinos, controlled a significant part of the press that trashed his opponents through tabloids known as the prensa chicha. “He perfected the use of ‘fake news’ to control and subjugate the population,” said Jo-Marie Burt, professor of political science at George Mason University and a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America. Things finally began to fall apart towards the end of his second term when he began pushing for a third mandate using much of the apparatus of a co-opted state. Protests against his regime grew until they became daily in Lima and, after an election in 2000 that was beset with allegations of ballot-rigging – and the emergence of videos that showed Montesinos bribing lawmakers with stacks of cash – Peruvians tired of the Fujimori government and its graft. Soon after, on an official trip to Asia, Fujimori fled to Japan, his parents’ homeland, and resigned the presidency by fax. But Peru’s congress rejected his resignation and, instead, stripped him of the presidency, arguing that he was “morally unfit” to be head of state. With Fujimori in disgrace and, latterly, in prison, it was left to his daughter, Keiko, who had been his first lady since 1994 when her parents separated, to defend and perpetuate her father’s legacy. Today, Keiko, who has finished second in the past three presidential elections, remains the standard bearer for the political force known, after her father, as fujimorismo – a viciously divisive movement that has contorted Peruvian politics ever since he won power. Fujimori may be dead, but experts say his shadow lingers – and will continue to do so for a while yet. Hundreds of thousands of women and men – many poor and Indigenous – are still seeking justice after being forcibly sterilised under his presidency. For Godoy, the late president “degraded Peruvian politics to extremes rarely seen in national history” and can be considered the father of the “competitive authoritarianism” seen today in El Salvador under Nayib Bukele. The author Michael Reid describes Fujimori as “a transformative president for better and for worse”. Although many, unsurprisingly, associate the late president with human rights violations and the poisoning of democracy, Reid points out that “most poorer Peruvians look back on Fujimori as somebody who saved the country and somebody who improved their lives and the economy” during a time of crisis. But, he added, Fujimori “introduced corruption as an instrument of rule and I think that was immensely damaging … Above all, his legacy, sadly, has been one of dividing Peruvians because he did rule as an autocrat from 1992 to 2000.” As Peru digs in for the mourning period and the many memories it will stir up, some have noted that, in a quirk of fate, Fujimori died exactly three years to the day after his terrorist nemesis Guzmán died in a military hospital , also at the age of 86. Some have even dared to imagine that the coincidence might herald a better future for a country desperately in need of a break with its recent past. “And so Alberto Fujimori dies on the same day as Abimael Guzmán,” the Peruvian writer Santiago Roncagliolo wrote on X. “Let’s hope this is an omen for an era with neither terrorists nor dictators. Let’s hope the universe is saying that Peru can be a democracy.” |
The Guardian;‘It’s the height of horror’: protests in 30 French cities in support of Gisèle Pélicot ;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/14/its-the-height-of-horror-protests-in-30-french-cities-in-support-of-gisele-pelicot;2024-09-14T18:48:43Z | Hundreds of protesters gathered across France on Saturday in support of Gisèle Pélicot, the woman whose husband drugged her and invited more than 80 men to rape her at their home over the course of a decade. Feminist groups organised about 30 protests in cities including Paris and Marseille. Demonstrators also gathered in Brussels. At Place de la République in Paris, protesters held placards with messages of support for victims of sexual violence. One read: “Gisèle for all. All for Gisèle.” The case of the 72-year-old, who was repeatedly assaulted while unconscious, shocked the world. Her husband, Dominique, 71, who has pleaded guilty, is being tried with 50 other men accused of raping her. Gisèle Pélicot has been widely praised for her courage in saying the trial should be held in public, rather than behind closed doors. The men who allegedly raped her were aged between 26 and 73 when they were arrested and include a local councillor, a journalist, a former police officer, a prison guard, a soldier, a firefighter and a civil servant. Many were the couple’s neighbours in the small town of Mazan, near Avignon, in southern France. It was only after a security guard caught Dominique Pélicot filming up women’s skirts in a supermarket and he was arrested that the crime he committed against his wife of 50 years was discovered. Detectives found a file labelled “Abuses” on a USB drive. It contained about 20,000 images and films of his wife being raped up to 100 times. A video obtained by Paris Match shows him filming up a woman’s skirt in 2020. The security guard can be heard saying: “You’re disgusting… You’re lucky. If it was my mother I’d rip your head off.” At the trial in Avignon, Gisèle Pélicot said police had “saved my life”. When showed evidence of the rapes, she said, her world “fell apart”. She told the court the word rape was not strong enough; it was “torture”. The couple were married at 21 and had three children and seven grandchildren. “We weren’t rich, but we were happy,” she said. “Even our friends said we were the ideal couple.” Several of the men whom Pélicot, a retired electrician, recruited on an online chatroom insist they did not know his wife had been drugged and thought the sex was consensual. At a protest in Marseille, Martine Ragon, 74, said she was there to “denounce rape culture”. She told journalists: “This well-publicised trial will allow people to speak out about it, to raise awareness.” Her partner, Gérard Etienne, 75, added: “We need to support women who are treated like this. When you hear some of the testimonies, you wonder how a man can treat a woman like that.” Photographer Pedro Campos, 21, agreed: “It’s shocking… because we see that the [men on trial] are a bit like Mr Everyman. It goes against the idea that there is only one type of rapist.” Deborah Poirier, 36, protesting in Nice, said the attack was “the height of horror, crystallising everything that should never happen again”. The trial, scheduled to last four months, was suspended on Thursday, as it entered its second week, after Dominique Pélicot was taken ill on the day he was to be cross-examined. It will reopen on Monday, but presiding judge Roger Arata has warned that the hearing may have to be postponed if Pélicot remains unable to give and hear evidence. |
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Dataset Card for World_News
A collection of news articles from around the world. The script ensures no duplicate articles are added.
This dataset card aims to be a base template for new datasets. It has been generated using this raw template.
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The articles are drawn from these sources:
Reuters News Agency
BBC World News
Al Jazeera
Le Monde
South China Morning Post
The Hindu
Deutshce Welle
The Gauardian
NPR
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The JSON format file contains a label and text column. The text column contains the article content while the label contains the publisher, publish date, and article name.
"label": "The Guardian;Middle East crisis live: protesters across Israel call for Netanyahu to agree hostage deal;https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/01/middle-east-crisis-live-israeli-military-says-bodies-of-six-hostages-recovered-in-gaza;2024-09-01T18:16:45Z", "text": "US vice-president Kamala Harris has spoken to Jon and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the parents of Hersh who was one of the hostages ..."
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