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Deutsche Welle;Dresden: Robo-conductor takes the baton;https://www.dw.com/en/dresden-robo-conductor-takes-the-baton/a-70490890?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-04 02:00:07

The Dresden Symphony Orchestra revisits the relationship between man and machine — and the results are surprising. Is this the future of classical music?

Deutsche Welle;Nobel Prize: Trio win 2024 award for economics;https://www.dw.com/en/nobel-prize-trio-win-2024-award-for-economics/a-70484442?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-04 02:00:07

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson were picked for their studies on how institutions shape the economic success of nations. The $1 million prize was announced at a news conference in Stockholm.

Deutsche Welle;A Haydn project feted at Opus Klassik awards;https://www.dw.com/en/a-haydn-project-feted-at-opus-klassik-awards/a-70466340?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-04 02:00:07

Germany's top classical music prize, the Opus Klassik, goes to a recording of Joseph Haydn's music by the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. The making of the album is featured in a new DW documentary.

Deutsche Welle;Ruth Chepngetich breaks marathon world record for women;https://www.dw.com/en/ruth-chepngetich-breaks-marathon-world-record-for-women/a-70482013?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-04 02:00:07

Kenyan runner Ruth Chepngetich smashed the women's marathon world record in the Chicago Marathon. She dedicated the surprise run to a late compatriot who set the men's record last year.

Deutsche Welle;Germany national team: Goalkeeper Baumann's wait is over;https://www.dw.com/en/germany-national-team-goalkeeper-baumann-s-wait-is-over/a-70481640?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-04 02:00:07

Oliver Baumann will become the third oldest man to make his debut for Germany at 34. The Hoffenheim goalkeeper may have had to wait for his chance, but his coach thinks he is ready to grab it.

Deutsche Welle;Bosnia's Barbarez falls to second homeland in home debut;https://www.dw.com/en/bosnia-s-barbarez-falls-to-second-homeland-in-home-debut/a-70475585?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-04 02:00:07

Bosnia and Herzegovina's head coach, Sergej Barbarez, failed to pull off a miracle against his country of residence. Deniz Undav made sure of that.

Deutsche Welle;Why Germany's dying forests could be good news;https://www.dw.com/en/why-germany-s-dying-forests-could-be-good-news/a-70461269?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-04 02:00:07

Germany is losing its forests — and fast. In the central Harz region, over 90% of spruce trees are dead or dying because of climate change and pests. But there may be a silver lining to these withering landscapes.

Deutsche Welle;Hurricane Milton: What's fueling stronger storms?;https://www.dw.com/en/hurricane-milton-what-s-fueling-stronger-storms/a-67233959?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-04 02:00:07

Why have devastating hurricanes like Milton become so common? Ocean warming may be a key factor driving the increase in frequency and severity of storms worldwide.

Deutsche Welle;Hundreds of viruses live on showerheads and toothbrushes;https://www.dw.com/en/hundreds-of-viruses-live-on-showerheads-and-toothbrushes/a-70447438?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-04 02:00:07

No one showerhead or toothbrush bristle is the same, with US researchers finding a rich, diverse world of viruses living in biofilms coating surfaces in bathrooms across the US and Europe.

Deutsche Welle;Nobel Prize: Baker, Hassabis, Jumper win award for chemistry;https://www.dw.com/en/nobel-prize-baker-hassabis-jumper-win-award-for-chemistry/a-70374543?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-04 02:00:07

David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper have been awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their research into designing proteins and predicting their structures.

Deutsche Welle;John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton win Nobel physics award;https://www.dw.com/en/john-hopfield-and-geoffrey-hinton-win-nobel-physics-award/a-70374538?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-04 02:00:07

Physicists John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton have been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics. They were honored for their research on machine learning with artificial neural networks.

Deutsche Welle;Is the US really experiencing a boom in green energy jobs?;https://www.dw.com/en/is-the-us-really-experiencing-a-boom-in-green-energy-jobs/a-70333893?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-04 02:00:07

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act has revved up the US green energy economy and created thousands of jobs. Can the landmark climate bill continue to deliver the goods?

Deutsche Welle;Can hydropower hold its own against weather extremes?;https://www.dw.com/en/can-hydropower-hold-its-own-against-weather-extremes/a-68929058?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-04 02:00:07

Recent droughts in Colombia and Ecuador have severely hampered energy supplied by hydropower. How viable is the low-carbon renewable in an increasingly hot and dry world?

Deutsche Welle;Nobel Prize in medicine goes to Victor Ambros, Gary Ruvkun;https://www.dw.com/en/nobel-prize-in-medicine-goes-to-victor-ambros-gary-ruvkun/a-70374530?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-04 02:00:07

US scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun have been awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their research into microRNA.

Deutsche Welle;Is the Nobel Prize still relevant today?;https://www.dw.com/en/is-the-nobel-prize-still-relevant-today/a-70346756?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf;2024-11-04 02:00:07

The Nobel Prize is considered the "Mount Everest of science." But it faces criticism over how winners are chosen, and may give a warped idea of scientific progress.

The Guardian;Middle East crisis live: US steps up criticism of Israel over Gaza conditions amid threat of possible sanctions;https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/nov/05/middle-east-crisis-live-israel-gaza-lebanon-us;2024-11-05T09:52:51Z

Reuters has a quick snap, citing Interfax, that Russia is evacuating about 100 of its citizens from Beirut to Moscow on a special flight. Israel’s army and the Shin Bet have announced that they have arrested what they described as over 60 members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Lebanon. In a statement they said senior figures were among those arrested. Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that Israeli security forces have detained at least 15 people this morning in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It takes, the agency says, the number of people detained by Israel in the 13 months since the 7 October attack to over 11,600. Here are some images of the scenes of protest in Tel Aviv, where relatives and loved ones of Israelis still being held captive in Gaza by Hamas are calling on Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government to do more to secure their release. Al Jazeera reports that the death toll from an Israeli strike on tents housing displaced people in central Gaza has risen to six, and includes a six-year-old and a four-year-old child. Lebanon’s Nation News Agency has reported that the Israeli army, which has been staging incursions inside the south of the country, “is booby-trapping and destroying entire neighbourhoods in cities and towns, such that more than 37 towns have been wiped out and their homes destroyed, and more than 40,000 housing units have been completely destroyed.” The report suggests that Israeli forces are clearing an area 3km deep that runs from Naqoura on the coast to Khiam in the east. At least four people were killed on Tuesday during an Israeli military raid and airstrikes on the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Reuters reports the Palestinian ministry said two people had been killed in the city of Qabatiya and two others in the Tammoun area. Palestinian news agency named one of those killed in Tammoun as Hani Bani Odeh, and said that the body of the second dead person there had been taken by Israeli forces. Palestinian media sources report that Hezbollah claims to have targeted Israeli forces in the north of the country at Dovev, which is close to the UN-drawn blue line that separates Lebanon and Israel. Earlier the Israeli military reported that warning sirens were sounding in the Upper Galilee area. Israeli media reports that the Iranian-backed militia Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed to have launched three drones overnight that were aimed at Haifa. A protest in Tel Aviv by relatives and friends of those still being held hostage in Gaza by Hamas has again blocked the southern Ayalon highway. Haaretz quotes the protestors saying in a statement: Netanyahu is sacrificing the lives of the 101 hostages in Gaza, who have been held there for nearly 400 days, and repeatedly endangering our security. A government that conducts psychological warfare against its own people, while continuously forsaking them, has no mandate to continue a war. Only signing a hostage deal and ending the war in Gaza will bring everyone home. Hamas seized about 250 hostages from Israel during the 7 October attack in 2023, of which about 100 are still believed to be held in Gaza. A significant number of them are believed to have been killed. The National News Agency in Lebanon has reported fighting in the south of the country, near Halta, Kfarchouba and Chebaa, all of which are close to the blue line that separates Israel and Lebanon. In its report, the agency says “some heights are witnessing movements of enemy [Israeli] infantry forces and vehicles … these movements are being targeted by [Hezbollah] rocket salvos, while the forested areas remain exposed to artillery shelling and airstrikes from time to time.” Yesterday the Israeli military said it was “conducting limited, localised, targeted raids based on precise intelligence in thicketed terrain along the border fence in southern Lebanon, where the Hezbollah terrorist organisation has established itself.” The death toll in Lebanon since Israel stepped up its campaign and began launching significant airstrikes has reached over 3,000 according to Lebanese authorities. Tens of thousands of Israelis have been forced to flee their homes in northern Israel by near constant rocket fire from inside Lebanon, which itself has seen over a million people displaced by Israeli attacks. Israel’s military says that following an “hostile aircraft infiltration” warning in Masada in southern Israel near the Dead Sea, its air force intercepted a UAV that crossed into Israel from the east. It also claims to have intercepted a separate drone that crossed into Israel from Lebanon this morning. At least 29 Palestinians were killed early on Tuesday by Israeli airstrikess on Gaza, including on tents housing displaced people. Casualties were recorded in Beit Lahiya, Deir Al-Balah and the town of Al-Zawayda, Reuters reports, citing Palestinian news agency Wafa. According to Wafa, 20 people were killed in a heavy airstrike on a home in Beit Lahiya, located in the northern part of Gaza, two people were killed when a tent in central Deir al-Balah was hit and four people were killed and others injured in a similar attack on a tent in al-Zawayda. It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict. Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the conflict in the Middle East. The Biden administration has stepped up criticism of Israel for not doing enough to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza as a 30-day deadline for Israeli officials to meet certain requirements or face potential sanctions looms. State department spokesperson Matthew Miller on Monday gave Israel a “fail” grade in terms of meeting the conditions laid out in a letter last month to senior Israeli officials by secretary of state Antony Blinken and defense secretary Lloyd Austin. He said there were still roughly nine days until the deadline expires, but that limited progress thus far has been insufficient. “As of today, the situation has not significantly turned around,” Miller told reporters. It comes as Israel formally notified the United Nations of its intention to ban the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, in a move the country’s allies and aid workers warn will deepen the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East. Israeli airstrikes killed at least 16 Palestinians in Gaza on Monday and residents feared new air and ground attacks were aimed at emptying areas of civilians in the territory’s north. In other developments: More than 50 countries are urging the UN security council and general assembly to take immediate steps to halt arms sales or transfers to Israel, saying there are “reasonable grounds” to suspect the military materiel will be used in conflict-torn Gaza and the West Bank. Israel claims to have killed two senior Hezbollah commanders in southern Lebanon in two separate strikes, as it continues its attacks on what it calls terrorist infrastructure. Lebanese authorities have put the death toll from Israeli airstrikes in the country at over 2,800. Palestinian authorities in the Israeli-occupied West Bank have said that a massacre was narrowly avoided after an arson attack attributed to Israeli settlers on a building and about 20 cars in Al-Bireh, near to Ramallah. Witness said ten people poured liquid on the cars to torch them. Israeli security forces say they are investigating the incident. The World Health Organization (WHO) says that 94,431 children under the age of 10 got a polio vaccine over the weekend, which represents 79% of the target in northern Gaza. At least 90% vaccination of a population is needed to stop the spread of the virus. Leaks from Netanyahu’s office may have compromised a peace deal, an Israeli court found. A breakdown in peace negotiations may have been caused by leaked and falsified documents involving a close aide to the prime minister, an Israeli court has said. The leaking of the documents – to Britain’s Jewish Chronicle and Germany’s tabloid Bild – came at a crucial time for hostage negotiations.

The Guardian;Tuesday briefing: Hour by hour, what to expect as the results roll in;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/05/tuesday-briefing-what-to-expect-from-us-election-night-hour-by-hour;2024-11-05T06:57:19Z

Good morning. This time tomorrow, we may know who’s going to be the next president of the United States. Or we may know that we don’t yet know. Or we may know who’s projected to win, but be bracing ourselves for weeks of enervating legal action and protest. It’s going to be that sort of night, I’m afraid. There’s been a bit of a sense in the last few days that momentum has been shifting towards Kamala Harris, but most respected polling dorks are treating that narrative with the same caution they viewed the one before that, which suggested a rush towards Donald Trump. The smart way to approach it is to remember that there is literally no need to make a prediction because we will have actual numbers very soon, and then get into a flotation tank and stick on some Sigur Rós. Today’s newsletter is your cut-out-and-keep guide to the night. If you were shockingly thinking of sleeping through it, we’ll be with you first thing tomorrow with the very latest – and it is eminently possible we won’t be bringing you decisive news. Whatever happens, if you’d like to help the Guardian keep covering US politics and everything else without fear or favour, please consider supporting us. Here are the headlines. Five big stories Education | University tuition fees in England are to go up for the first time in eight years, taking annual payments up to a record £9,535 per student, the government has announced. The inflation-linked rise, amid warnings of a deepening financial crisis in the sector, was coupled with an increase in student maintenance loans. Conservatives | Kemi Badenoch has appointed Robert Jenrick shadow justice secretary, with Mel Stride shadow chancellor and Priti Patel shadow foreign secretary, as she began to put together a frontbench team. But there were questions over whether Jenrick, who lost to Badenoch in the leadership contest, had initially sought another post. Brazil | Federal police in Brazil have formally charged the alleged mastermind of the murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira in the Amazon, accusing him of arming and funding the criminal group responsible for the crime. Social care | Care workers from countries such as India, Nigeria and the Philippines who faced losing their immigration status in the UK if they left their employers have been promised new protections under the migrant care workers charter. UK news | A teenager has been remanded in custody after he appeared in court charged with attempting to murder a 13-year-old girl and possessing a samurai sword. The 14-year-old was arrested after a girl was found with life-threatening injuries near Hull on Friday morning. In depth: What will happen, when and where If you’re only really tuning in to the detail today, David Smith’s Q&A is a great place to get up to speed. An obligatory reminder of the basics: whether Trump or Harris is the next president will be decided by the electoral college rather than a straight count of the public vote – meaning that the winner will be the person who gets to a majority of 270 of the 538 electors on offer across the 50 states, whether or not they get more votes than their opponent nationwide. Here’s a more detailed explainer on how it works. That means the result is quite likely to come down to who prevails in the seven battleground states identified by both sides as being up for grabs: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Meanwhile, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are on the ballot, as are 34 of the 100 seats in the Senate. There are also 13 state and territorial governorships to be decided. If you’re based in the US, interested enough to be reading this and still not sure how to watch it on TV, you may be beyond help, to be honest. In the UK, it will be covered across the BBC (including radio), ITV, Channel 4, Sky News and various others. You can get CNN’s US coverage by signing up on its website; it’s also available on Sky. Mark Brown has more information on the broadcasts here – and the Guardian live blog will also be running, obviously. Here’s a guide to how the night will unfold. UK residents determined to stick around to the bitter end, whenever that might be, should consider getting some sleep at 8pm or 9pm, and setting alarms (let’s say … six? At three minute intervals) for midnight or 1am, since not much will happen before that anyway. But pace yourself. For all that we talk about election night, any of the key races – or several of them – could take well into the next day, or longer, to produce a clear result. *** 10pm UK/5pm Eastern Time | Exit polls give context Voting ends in Indiana and most of Kentucky, but neither is in play. Meanwhile, the first batch of exit polls are released. Unlike in the UK, where exit polls are usually a decent guide to the final outcome, the American version offers only a tantalising hint of what may be in store. Rather than providing a projection of final results on the basis of asking people at polling stations how they voted, they ask respondents about the issues that matter to them most. They’re based on a bigger sample than typical polls – numbering in the tens of thousands – so they ought to give pretty robust findings. But knowing that voters were motivated by the economy or abortion, for example, will only be a clue to how the night might go, rather than a basis for projecting the result. *** Midnight UK/7pm ET | Georgia and North Carolina Polls close in nine states over the next hour. Don’t just follow the running count of electoral college votes to get a sense of how it’s going, though: Trump is expected to have the biggest tally coming out of this first batch however well his night’s going, because five of the nine are firmly in his column, and represent more electoral college votes. Harris’s biggest, safest states like New York and California come later. But polls also close in the first states that could give a major indication of what’s happening: Georgia and North Carolina. Just as importantly, we may start to see whether any clear pattern is emerging that holds true across different states, and therefore provides evidence of what could happen elsewhere. Confusingly, the fact that the result is uncertain that doesn’t mean it’s definitely going to be close. By the end of this hour, if there has been a major polling error in either direction, we could have a sense of it. If it’s a surprise blowout for either candidate, we’ll know pretty quickly. Even a “normal” polling error of two or three points produced consistently across the country would mean a decisive result, and the first signs of that around now. But it’s also possible everything will still be on the line for a long time yet. We don’t know when any of the states will be called, and the results in Georgia and North Carolina may not be known for hours – or, and let’s hope not, days – yet. It’s possible that broadcasters and the Associated Press (AP) will start to call states that haven’t finished counting around now if they conclude that the other side has no chance of catching up, but the closer the race, the longer it may take. (When we talk about states being “called”, we mean that major news organisations have examined the data and reached a conclusion that they feel it is statistically impossible for the other side to win. Official declarations can take much longer.) *** 1am UK/8pm ET | Oh God, it’s Pennsylvania Polls close in about half the country – so any nationwide patterns should be becoming clear. But it’s Pennsylvania that matters most. With more electoral votes – 19 – than any other swing state, and polls suggesting that it’s the closest race in the country, this is a huge moment. (This dispatch from Joan E Greve and Sam Levine gives you a flavour of how tense things have been.) If Trump wins, tell your friends that it was madness for Harris not to pick the state’s popular Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, as her running mate; if Harris wins, you can muse that the insults hurled towards the state’s 470,000 Puerto Ricans at a recent Trump rally might have made the difference. Again, the polls closing doesn’t necessarily mean a quick declaration. In Pennsylvania, rules against counting mail-in ballots before polls close are likely to slow things down. So it might end up being one of the later races to be called among the key states. It took four days in 2020. Whenever they come, if Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina all go in one candidate’s favour, it will be very difficult for the other to win – partly because of the electoral college arithmetic and partly because that would suggest that late-deciding voters may well have broken in similar numbers elsewhere. If we don’t get that sort of news by now, find some caffeine or a cocktail and pin your eyelids to your forehead, because we might be in for a long night. *** 2am UK/9pm ET | Three more battleground states In this hour, polls will close in 15 more states, including three of the four remaining battlegrounds: Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin. But in 2016 and 2022 Wisconsin wasn’t called until after 2pm the following day. Arizona took more than a week in 2020, and there are more onerous rules in place around the count this time. It was around this time in 2016 – 2.29am, to be precise – that AP called the race for Trump, with Hillary Clinton calling to concede a few minutes later; in 2020, the result wasn’t called until the following Saturday. Another interesting state to watch in this hour: Iowa, where a shock poll at the weekend, by a usually reliable pollster, gave Harris a lead of three points in a state generally assumed to be a sure thing for Trump. If that bears out in reality, it probably won’t make a difference to the overall outcome – but only because it is likely to indicate that Harris has had a better night than expected in other similar states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. *** 3am UK/10pm ET | Nevada Polls close in Nevada, the last swing state, this hour. It’s unlikely that its eight electoral college votes will be decisive, but if they are, things are probably going to feel uncertain for a while yet. It took 88 hours to call the state in 2020. Another question will be whether either candidate comes out to speak to their supporters, and when. Everything Trump has said suggests that it is very unlikely that he will concede defeat on election night, except in the unlikely event of a landslide defeat. (In 2020, he made a speech at the White House at 2.21am ET, in which he made his first false claims of electoral fraud.) The tone he and Harris strike in these hours and afterwards will give a sense of whether the result is going to be accepted all round – or if we could be in for a much more febrile period. *** 4am/11pm ET | California, Alaska and everything after The last polls close over the next two hours, and while it is just about theoretically possible that it could all come down to Alaska, I wouldn’t bet your house on it. It seems significantly more likely that – whatever the candidates have said – if the race looks close, lawyers for both sides will be gearing up for court challenges in key states – while pro-Trump poll watchers and other supporters are likely to be making numerous claims of election interference. Last time around, exhaustive legal processes found similar claims to be without foundation, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be repeated. It is entirely possible that we will have a clear call of a result from the major networks by this time, but everything will still appear to be in flux. What else we’re reading Poppies have been an exhausting part of British political discourse for more than 20 years. Samira Shackle’s long read is a definitive exploration of how they shifted from “a modest sign of remembrance” to “a prop for performative patriotism”. Archie These days, every product, app and service seems to be designed to make life as frictionless, quick and easy as possible. But in this week’s edition of The Big Idea, Alex Curmi asks whether the relentless pursuit of hyper-convenience and optimisation is actually making life more difficult. Nimo Climate protesters’ contentious nonviolent tactics – such as throwing soup on expensive artwork and disrupting sports events – may draw attention to environmental issues, but they have also led to activists being accused of undermining their cause. In New York magazine, Elizabeth Weil explores the idea of the “climate anti-hero”. Nimo RIP Quincy Jones. It’s a fine occasion to revisit David Marchese’s rip-roaring 2018 interview with him for New York magazine, widely shared on social media yesterday. You will have your own favourite bit, but it’s his anecdote about Ringo Starr and shepherd’s pie, for me. Archie Justin McCurry has written a fascinating, bleak piece about the North Korean soldiers headed to Ukraine to join their Russian counterparts – desperately inexperienced, unfamiliar with the terrain, and said by many to be cannon fodder. Archie Sport Football | A remarkable stoppage-time double from Harry Wilson (above) was enough to give Fulham a 2-1 win over Brentford. Vitaly Janelt’s first half goal looked to have secured all three points for the visitors until Wilson pounced with a flicked volley and a superb header. Rugby | The former Scotland rugby international Stuart Hogg has admitted abusing his estranged wife over the course of five years. Hogg, 32, had been due to stand trial at Selkirk sheriff court on Monday but pleaded guilty to a single charge when he appeared at the court yesterday. Football | Arsenal’s sporting director, Edu, is to leave the club and looks likely to join the network of clubs spearheaded by Evangelos Marinakis, the owner of Nottingham Forest. Edu’s shock departure will bring to an end his five years in Arsenal’s senior management and means Mikel Arteta will lose one of his major allies. The front pages “Harris or Trump: US faces its moment of reckoning” – the Guardian’s splash headline today while the Daily Telegraph has “Farage tells Trump: Do not fight poll result”. “America decides – as world holds its breath” – that’s the i. The Financial Times has “America votes as polls show dead heat”. “Starmer’s 180 degree uni U turn” is the top story in the Metro while the Daily Mail says “Now that’s what you call a U-turn!” and in the Times it’s “Labour vow to improve universities as fees rise”. The Express wants a different reversal: “Labour has to U-turn on ‘spiteful’ farm tax”. “My broken heart” – Amy Dowden in the Mirror after having to quit Strictly Come Dancing. Today in Focus A road trip through Pennsylvania, the ultimate swing state From traditional rural Republicans who won’t vote for Trump to Latino voters who will, Michael Safi finds voters taking surprising stances as he embarks on a road trip through the biggest swing state in the US Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Islamic State’s brutal three-year occupation of Mosul in northern Iraq was marked by the destruction of cultural sites and the banning of literature, arts and sports. Seven years since the occupation ended, the city’s poets and writers have begun to revitalise its rich literary heritage. Residents convene in a public reading club, where they can engage in open dialogue free from the fear of reprisal or judgment. “People want the city to rise again,” says Unesco adviser Wifaq Ahmed. “Writing is the simplest weapon people have to save our identity [and] history, and restore social cohesion.” 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;‘It was carnage’: students describe suspected mass food poisoning at New Zealand university;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/05/university-of-canterbury-new-zealand-food-poisoning-outbreak-chicken-souvlakia;2024-11-05T06:21:35Z

A mass outbreak of suspected food poisoning has caused “carnage” across two university halls in New Zealand, with reports of early morning queues for toilets, vomit dripping down building windows and students abandoning exams to dash to the loo. More than 100 students reported being struck down with vomiting and diarrhoea at two University of Canterbury student residences on Sunday night, the university confirmed on Tuesday. The cause of the illness was yet to be determined, but students at University Hall and Ilam Apartments – both run by UniLodge – said they began feeling sick on Sunday evening, after eating the catered chicken souvlakia dinner, local news outlet Stuff reported. Students have described to New Zealand media waking in the night with terrible stomach pain and rushing to the toilets, only to be met with queues of fellow students feeling similarly unwell. Some did not make it and vomited off their balconies, leaving a film of fluids splattered on the windows. One student, who remained anonymous, told The Press she had used the toilet more than a dozen times on Monday morning, and later soiled herself at the university library because the toilets were full. Plum Olsen and her boyfriend, Lincoln Christensen, told the paper they had not slept after eating the chicken dinner because they had been so ill. Meanwhile, students reported abandoning exams partway through because they needed to regularly use the bathroom, while others had been too unwell to attend at all. “I kept going in and out of the room so I just decided to leave. It was carnage,” one told Stuff. Students who were unable to sit exams due to illness could apply for special consideration and may be offered a resit for exams in the coming weeks, the university said in a statement. The national public health service would help investigate the cause of the illness, the university said, while those affected could request electrolytes, bottled water and packaged meals from UniLodge. In a statement to the Guardian, UniLodge said it was aware of some students at its residences becoming ill and was offering them support. It said it was working closely with the health service, university and the University of Canterbury Student Association – which it said provides catering to the halls – to investigate the situation. In a separate statement, the students’ association president, Luc Mackay, said the “investigation is still ongoing, and the cause has not been determined”. Mackay said the association was working closely with the university to minimise the impact on affected students.

The Guardian;Full-scale war in Middle East involving Israel and Iran likely, say most Europeans in poll;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/05/full-scale-war-in-middle-east-involving-israel-and-iran-likely-say-most-europeans-in-poll;2024-11-05T05:00:13Z

Full-scale war in the Middle East involving Israel and Iran is now likely, most western Europeans responding in a poll believe, with many criticising Israel’s conduct thus far and saying that if such a war did occur, the US and Europe should not provide it with military aid. A YouGov Eurotrack survey in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Denmark and the UK found that strong majorities in all seven countries, ranging from 65% in France to 82% in Spain, felt the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023 were not justified. However, the most commonly held opinion in each country – from a low of 43% in Germany, 46% in France, 47% in the UK, 57% in Italy to a high of 65% in Spain – was that neither have Israel’s subsequent attacks in Gaza been justified. Similar if slightly larger pluralities – from 47% in Denmark through 49% in Germany, 50% in France and the UK and 68% in Spain, consistently one of the EU’s most pro-Palestinian member states – said Israel’s attacks on Lebanon were unjustified. Israel’s attacks on Iran were also most commonly viewed as not justified in all seven countries, by between 45% (Denmark) and 68% (Spain) of respondents, while Iran’s attacks on Israel were condemned by between 58% (France) and 71% (Spain). The EU has been divided over the conflict in Gaza, with countries such as Spain and Ireland formally recognising a Palestinian state earlier this year but others, including Germany, arguing support of Israel’s security is central to its foreign policy. Asked about Israel’s attacks on Gaza, which Palestinian health authorities say have killed more than 43,000 people, the most popular opinion was that Israel had been “right to send troops into Gaza, but has gone too far and killed too many civilians”. That view was held by somewhat smaller pluralities of between 25% (Italy) and 39% (Sweden) – but more respondents (between 16% and 26%) felt Israel had been wrong to use military force against Hamas than that it had acted proportionately (10% to 19%). Similarly, when asked whether Europe and the US should be doing more to help Israel meet its military objectives or to restrain Benjamin Netanyahu’s government from taking military action, pluralities of between 22% (France) and 36% (Spain) chose the latter. Significant minorities of between 21% (France and the UK) and 25% (Italy), meanwhile, said they felt Europe and the US “should not be involved at all”. Outright majorities ranging from 52% in Denmark through to 58% in France, 59% in Germany and Italy and 61% in the UK and 65% in Spain said they thought full-blown war in the region involving Israel and Iran was either “very” or “fairly” likely. If such a war were to break out, the most widely held view in all seven countries – from 42% in Denmark to 47% in Britain, 51% in Germany and 59% in Italy – was that Europe and the US should not provide military aid to Israel. Asked to give their overall opinion of Palestine and Israel, the most common assessment of both in all seven countries was “very” or “fairly” unfavourable. Only in Italy were opinions of Palestine remotely close, with 33% negative and 30% positive. Elsewhere, 61% of Germans said they had an unfavourable view of Palestine, compared with 15% who were favourable, while the corresponding figures in Sweden were 57% and 20% and in France, 42% unfavourable against 25% favourable. Opinions of Israel were equally poor, with net favourability ratings ranging from minus 15 in France through minus 24 in Germany, minus 30 in Sweden and minus 33 in Spain.

The Guardian;‘A shrine’: Turkish visitors throng to Atatürk’s birthplace in Thessaloniki;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/05/ataturk-birthplace-thessaloniki-greece-turkey;2024-11-05T05:00:12Z

This autumn, Ozlem Karakus, her son Ali and cousin Cansu made the long drive from Ankara to Thessaloniki. Their three-day odyssey had a single goal: to get to the three-storey, Ottoman-style building on Apostolou Pavlou Street in the Greek port city where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish republic, was born and spent his early years. “He is our father,” Karakus said of the soldier-statesman who created the modern nation from the ruins of the Ottoman empire just over a century ago. “Atatürk is incredibly important to us. He is the best leader who ever came into this world.” For the 43-year-old tax inspector, it was a “dream come true” to visit the house. “To come here and see his birthplace has meant so much,” she enthused. “It was wonderful even if I would have liked to have seen more from his childhood, a few more belongings, a few more personal effects.” Few places are as indicative of Atatürk’s enduring appeal as the pink-walled abode where Turkey’s first president is thought to have been born in the spring of 1881. This year alone, nearly half a million visitors – the vast majority from Turkey – are expected to make the pilgrimage to Thessaloniki with the sole purpose of visiting the place that the legendary leader first called home. Numbers have soared since 2013 when the building was transformed into a modern museum chronicling his life and achievements. “Since January around 430,000 people have visited the house,” said an official at the Turkish consulate general, which shares grounds with the museum and oversees its daily management. “There are days when up to 6,000 visitors arrive, many on special tours in buses from Turkey, and the queues are very big.” On feast days and high days – especially the 10 November anniversary of Atatürk’s death, from cirrhosis of the liver, in 1938 – officials have been forced to erect giant screens outside the building to accommodate the crowds, with emotions often running high. “We love him,” said another visitor, Cansu Gigdem, who trained as an opera singer in Ankara, cupping her hands in a gesture of gratitude. “He did so much for us.” Until 1912, when Thessaloniki was incorporated into the Kingdom of Greece, the city was under Ottoman control, with the young Mustafa Kemal growing up in what was then an impoverished Muslim neighbourhood. Noticeboards in the building’s courtyard, where his father, Ali Rıza, is believed to have planted a pomegranate tree, describe the fabled multicultural metropolis as “a window of the Ottoman empire opening to the western world”. Once visitors reach the room where the national independence hero “opened his eyes to the world” they are often in tears. “No figure is more iconic for secular Turks than Atatürk,” said Kostas Ifantis, a professor of international relations at Panteion University in Athens, referring to his programme of reforms that turned Turkey into a western-facing secular republic. “Through top-down social engineering and policies that included empowering women with the vote, replacing the Arabic script with the Roman alphabet and banning the headscarf and fez, he transformed Ottoman society. What we see today is people paying homage to a man they feel deeply indebted to.” How the house came to be given to the leader barely more than a decade after the Turkish republic’s foundation following the 1919-22 Greco-Turkish war is testimony to a rare period of rapprochement between the two rivals and the visionary policies of the former field marshal, then still known as Mustafa Kemal, and his Greek counterpart, Eleftherios Venizelos. Although the Greek army was routed by forces commanded by Kemal in a conflict that would also end with the sacking of Smyrna and the mass exchange of populations – a calamity still referred to as the Asia Minor catastrophe – the leaders were bent on reconciliation. In 1930 a Greek-Turkish friendship agreement was signed in Ankara by the two men; four years later, Venizelos proposed that Kemal be awarded the Nobel peace prize. It was in the spirit of détente that the municipality of Thessaloniki gave the house to the Turkish state in 1935. “That the house of Atatürk exists at all is extraordinary,” said Richard Jackson, a retired US diplomat, recalling the hostilities between the countries when he served at the American consulate general in Thessaloniki in the 1970s. “That it has become such a shrine for secular Turks is one of those remarkable but little known asides in Greek-Turkish history.” The surge in Turkish visitors to Thessaloniki – the museum has seen a four-fold increase since the Covid-19 pandemic – reflects the uptick in numbers visiting Greece more generally. In recent years the longtime foes, at loggerheads over maritime and territorial disputes and the war-split island of Cyprus, have pursued an array of initiatives to ease tensions. A relaxation of visa requirements has been among the bilateral cooperation accords signed by the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis. The Aegean islands close to Turkey’s western coast have reported a dramatic influx of Turkish tourists this summer, and descendants of Muslim families uprooted in the 1923 population exchange are frequently among those returning to Thessaloniki. “The climate has much improved,” said Pantelis Filippidis, who heads the commercial association of Thessaloniki. “You hear and see Turkish visitors everywhere and it’s really helped the local economy. The area around Atatürk’s house was very depressed before, but now it’s thriving. On a people-to-people level Greek and Turks get along wonderfully. Trade unites; all the rest is political games.” But under Erdoğan, Turkey’s most influential leader since Atatürk, many of the reforms have been reversed, with the ruling Islamist-rooted AKP party lifting restrictions on religious education and allowing headscarves to return to the public domain as both have moved to change the character of the country. By contrast, Atatürk had ensured that, before their short-lived liaison dissolved, his wife, Latife, who had studied law in Europe and was fluent in English and French, donned western attire as the embodiment of the social reforms he so cherished. One of his adopted daughters, Sabiha Gökçen, became the world’s first female fighter pilot. “For many Turks there is a fear that many of Atatürk’s reforms are under attack because of Erdoğan’s more pious policies,” said Ifantis. “There is no denying that [Atatürk] is very much a part of the DNA of modern Turkey but the country is changing, and that may play a role in so many people now wanting to visit his birthplace.”

The Guardian;Reformist clerics imply Iran should back two-state solution for Israel and Palestine;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/05/iran-reformist-clerics-two-state-solution-israel-palestine;2024-11-05T05:00:11Z

Reformists in Iran have ignited a debate about whether Tehran should be willing to shift from its deeply held opposition to a two-state solution in the Palestinian territories, which would require it to recognise the existence of an Israeli state. “Death to Zionism” has been a staple of Iranian revolutionary thinking since 1979, and was the position effectively of the Palestine Liberation Organisation until the Oslo accords in the 1990s. Under the former president Mohammad Khatami and his foreign minister Kamal Kharazi, Iran proposed a referendum on a one-state solution, with only descendants of those who lived there “before the Zionist invasion” and Palestinian refugees being permitted to vote – a process that would leave Israeli Jews largely outnumbered in the vote. Iran has always seen Israel as a colonial enterprise of settlers, and some of its leaders have championed outright Holocaust denial. Last week Iran did not attend a two-day meeting of an international coalition for a two-state solution held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. However, on 21 October, the assembly of lecturers and scholars at Qom Seminary, a reformist-leaning body of clerics, issued a statement calling for the “return of the Zionist regime to its legal borders prior to the 1967 aggression and formation of an independent Palestinian state”. This implied support for a two-state solution led to protests outside the assembly’s offices, in Qom, after Friday prayers. The Tehran-based hardline daily Kayhan labelled the assembly a “propaganda machine for the enemy” and characterised its “recognition of the fabricated regime of Israel” as “despicable and shameful”. The head of the judiciary also criticised the statement, saying corrective action was required, implying closure may be necessary. But reformist newspapers reported the statement sympathetically. In response to the criticism, the seminary relented only to the extent that it clarified that it understood “the heinous crimes of the Zionist state” and did not recognise Israel, but believed an independent Palestinian state would bring the bloodshed to an end. Iran’s opposition to a two-state solution has made it harder for it to build diplomatic alliances in the region – its absence from last week’s conference is a case in point. The historian and author Arash Azizi denied that the backdrop of possible imminent military conflict between Israel and Iran made it a totally inappropriate moment for such a debate to be held. “It is a debate between those that want Iran to be an incubator of revolutionary Islamist anti-Zionism, and those that support a pragmatic foreign policy based on the national interest,” he said. “Iran is going through a transition. The supreme leader is 85. Power is being passed on to a new generation. Iran cannot go on in these full-out crises. Khomenei’s strategy of no war no peace has not worked. It should not be Iran’s business to want to destroy Israel, and then say it does not want war. This is a moment of truth.” He added that “if there was a Palestinian-Israeli agreement, Iran would not be able to do much”. Azizi said the former Iranian foreign minister Mohammed Javad Zarif recently said Iranians were tired of a government “that is trying to be more pro-Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves”. The possible flexibility in the Iranian position started under the last president, Ebrahim Raisi. In December, for instance, Iran backed a Jordanian-tabled resolution at the UN general assembly – albeit with a heavy reservation – that declared a two-state solution was the only way to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The Guardian;Kiss chaste: number of high school boys in Japan who have had first kiss falls to record lows;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/05/kiss-chaste-number-of-high-school-boys-in-japan-who-have-had-first-kiss-falls-to-1970s-levels;2024-11-05T03:22:45Z

Just one in five of boys at senior high school in Japan have had their first kiss, according to the Japanese Association for Sex Education – the lowest figure since the organisation conducted its first survey of sexual behaviour among young people in 1974. In its latest poll, which covers the 2023 academic year, the association found that girls in the same age group were similarly cautious, with 27.5% saying they had experienced their first kiss, compared with 22.8% among boys – down 13.6 percentage points and 11.1 points since 2017. The proportion of senior high school students – aged 15-18 – who had kissed for the first time has been declining since its 2005 peak, when one in two said they had locked lips. The latest survey, the association’s ninth in half a century, showed a lower percentage of affirmative answers to the kissing question than in the 2017 poll across all the surveyed age groups, which also sought responses from junior high school and university students, according to the Mainichi Shimbun. The association, which surveyed more than 12,500 students, said 12% of junior and senior high school students said they had had sexual intercourse, as did 14.8% of girls – down 3.5 percentage points and 5.3 points, respectively. But a different trend emerged when the subject turned to solitary sexual habits, with rising proportions of students in all three groups saying they masturbated. The association partly attributed the downward trend in kissing and intercourse to the Covid-19 pandemic, which triggered school closures and official advice to avoid the “three Cs”: confined spaces, crowded places and close-contact settings. “Limited contact with others during the coronavirus outbreak may have lowered the rate of sexual activity among junior and senior high school students,” it said. Yusuke Hayashi, a sociology professor at Musashi University who analysed the results, said the combination of school closures and restrictions on face-to-face contact during the pandemic came “at a sensitive time, when junior and senior high school students are beginning to become interested in their sexuality”. Hayashi told the Mainichi that the greater prevalence of masturbation “may be due to increased exposure to [sexual imagery] in manga and other media, rather than as a substitute for interpersonal sexual behaviour”. Tamaki Kawasaki, a columnist and sociology lecturer, said the survey’s findings suggested that young Japanese were “uniformly disengaging” from sex post-pandemic. “It shows that the trend is for people to move away from real, physical sexual activity, even at a time when it’s natural for them to be sexually active,” Kawasaki wrote in the online edition of President magazine. “Instead, there is a stronger tendency for them to stay home and watch sexual content alone. If teens, who represent the country’s future, continue like this then it is hard to see any improvement in the declining birthrate.”

The Guardian;North Korea tells UN it is speeding up nuclear weapons programme;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/04/north-korea-tells-un-it-is-speeding-up-nuclear-weapons-programme;2024-11-05T00:34:03Z

North Korea’s UN envoy has said Pyongyang will accelerate a buildup of its nuclear weapons programme just days after it test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time this year at a moment of rising tensions with the west. Kim Song, North Korea’s ambassador to the UN, said during a security council meeting on Monday that Pyongyang would accelerate the programme to “counter any threat presented by hostile nuclear weapons states”. Early on Tuesday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the North had fired several short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea east of the Korean Peninsula. Japan’s coast guard said the projectile wsa believed to be a ballistic missile, and broadcaster NHK reported it appeared to have landed outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone in the ocean. The security council meeting was convened to address Pyongyang’s testing of an intercontinental ballistic missile on Thursday meant to demonstrate North Korea’s growing prowess at developing missiles that could deliver more powerful nuclear warheads potentially to the mainland US. The US and Ukraine have warned that North Korea has nearly 8,000 soldiers stationed in the Kursk region of Russia who could go into combat in Ukraine in the coming days, and both countries have warned that those troops will become legitimate military targets if they take part in fighting. “The nuclear threat of United States against [North Korea] has already reached critical point in terms of its scale and danger,” Kim said. “Due to reckless moves of the United States, the potential situation is approaching the brink of war.” During the meeting, the US accused China and Russia of “shamelessly” protecting Pyongyang at the UN from “closer scrutiny of its sanctions-violating activities”, and said Pyongyang had been “emboldened to continue advancing its unlawful ballistic missile, nuclear and WMD programmes”. North Korea is believed to be seeking Russian missile and space technology as part of a deal to provide troops in Russia’s war against Ukraine. But US officials have not said what they believe Vladimir Putin has provided to North Korea in exchange. “Russia and China have shamelessly protected Pyongyang from any reprisal, or even condemnation of its actions,” said Robert Wood, the deputy US ambassador to the UN. Putin greeted North Korea’s foreign minister in a surprise meeting in the Kremlin after the US warnings about North Korean soldiers approaching Ukraine. Footage was broadcast showing Putin meeting Choe Son Hui, the North Korean envoy, with whom he shook hands for a full minute. The meeting took place on Russia’s National Unity Day, a national holiday, and Choe said he brought “sincere, warm, comradely greetings” from the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. The meeting was not previously scheduled and may have been prompted by the warnings by the west about the North Korean troops preparing to fight. The US and South Korea announced a new memorandum of understanding to develop cooperation on civil nuclear energy, strengthening their “administration of export controls on civil nuclear technology”, the US Department of Energy said in a statement. The department claimed that the announcement would help combat the climate crisis and protect critical supply chains, while “creating billions of dollars worth of new economic opportunities”.

The Guardian;Inexperienced, poorly trained and underfed: the North Korean troops heading to Ukraine;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/05/north-korea-troops-russia-ukraine-war-kim-jong-un-putin;2024-11-05T00:18:12Z

Depending on whom you ask, they are the boost that Russian forces need to make a significant breakthrough in Ukraine, or they are simple cannon fodder, destined for repatriation in body bags. After weeks of speculation, Nato and the Pentagon have confirmed that around 10,000 North Korean troops are in Russia, with most massing near Ukraine’s border in Kursk, where the Kremlin’s forces have struggled to repel a Ukrainian incursion. US officials believe the North Koreans could enter the conflict within days, as the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, pleads with his country’s allies to “stop watching” while his troops prepare to confront a new and untested enemy. It is too early to say how the Russian-North Korean “blood alliance” will change the dynamics of the conflict. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said Russia had been training them to use artillery, drones and “basic infantry operations, including trench clearing, indicating that they fully intend to use these forces in frontline operations”. But not one of the young men drafted from Kim Jong-un’s regular army of around 1 million – the “strongest in the world”, according to Kim – has seen combat. And they will be fighting on unfamiliar territory, with new weapons and in uniforms bearing the flag of a country – Russia – they know little about. While their arrival relieves pressure on Russia to draft more of its own citizens, with the US estimating that more than 500,000 Russians have been killed or wounded since the war started in February 2022 – experts believe the military dividends for the Kremlin will be limited. North Korean pilots flew during the Vietnam war, and the country provided military advisers and air force personnel to Egypt during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, as well as military aid to Syria. But North Korea has not fought in a major war since the early 1950s, when a three-year conflict between North and South ended in an uncomfortable truce but not a peace treaty. The soldiers, thought to be mostly in their teens or early 20s, have been trained in mountainous North Korea and have no experience of the large, flat battlefields of Ukraine, according to experts. Russia appears to have armed more than 7,000 North Korean soldiers positioned near the border with Ukraine with 60mm mortars, AK-12 rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles, anti-tank guided missiles and anti-tank grenade launchers, as well as night vision equipment, the Yonhap news agency said, citing Ukraine’s intelligence agency. “This deployment is historic for North Korea, which has previously sent advisory or specialist groups abroad but never a large ground force,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US thinktank, said in an online post. The North Korean forces in Russia are thought to include about 500 officers and a small number of generals, as well as members of the Storm Corps, elite troops who are better trained – and fed – than most of their comrades, who are poorly equipped and vulnerable to illness and malnutrition. In 2017, a North Korean soldier who made a frantic escape across the border – barely surviving multiple gunshot wounds from his own side – was found by the South Korean doctors who saved him to have a 27cm intestinal worm and a host of other parasites in his system. His stomach contents reflected a poor diet – cheaper corn instead of rice – and this for a staff sergeant said to be from the relatively elite border guard. South Korean researchers in 2015 cited elevated rates of chronic hepatitis B and C, tuberculosis and parasites among North Korean defectors. ‘Most of them are unlikely to come back home alive’ Provided they survive, the transplanted troops could benefit from their time on the Ukrainian front, according to former North Korean soldiers who say many will see their tour as a source of pride. It will also an opportunity to earn extra money and, perhaps, secure better treatment for their families who, according to South Korean military intelligence, have been moved en masse to unknown locations to keep the deployment secret. “They are too young and won’t understand exactly what it means,” said Lee Woong-gil, a former member of the Storm Corps who defected to the South in 2007. “They will just consider it an honour to be selected as the ones to go to Russia among the many North Korean soldiers. But I think most of them are unlikely to come back home alive.” Most of their wages will go directly to the regime – potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign currency that is rumoured to form part of a deal Kim reached with Vladimir Putin this summer. Depending on how long the conflict lasts and the number of North Korean troops involved, their mutual defence agreement could include the transfer of sophisticated Russian weapons technology in return for North Korean ammunition, missiles and personnel. Reports of dead and wounded soldiers would have little impact on the North Korean army – state media claimed last month that 1.4 million people had applied to join or return to the army in the space of a week. But significant losses would deal a blow to Kim should the news ever get past the country’s tightly controlled propaganda machine. “Kim Jong-un is taking a big gamble,” said Ahn Chan-il, a former North Korean army first lieutenant who is now head of the World Institute for North Korean Studies, a thinktank in Seoul. “If there are no large casualty numbers, he will get what he wants to some extent. But things will change a lot if many of his soldiers die in battle.” The coming weeks will tell if the North Korean troops are more than poorly prepared, unwitting mercenaries Kim has offered up to enrich and strengthen his regime. Choi Jung-hoon, a former first lieutenant in North Korea’s army who now leads an activist group in Seoul, said his “heart ached” when he saw a Ukraine-released video purporting to show young North Korean soldiers lining up to collect their Russian military fatigues and equipment last month. “None would think they are going to Russia to die,” Choi said. “But I think they’re cannon fodder because they will be sent to the most dangerous sites. I’m sure they will be killed.” Agencies contributed reporting.

The Guardian;Middle East crisis live: Leaks from Netanyahu’s office may have compromised peace deal, Israeli court finds – as it happened;https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/nov/04/israel-gaza-lebanon-hezbollah-palestinian-territories-middle-east-crisis-latest-news;2024-11-04T22:07:10Z

The Middle East crisis blog is now closing. Thank you for following along. Please see the main news page to see all the latest news from the region. Israel has formally informed the United Nations of its intention to sever ties entirely with the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees in a move the country’s allies and aid workers warn will deepen the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East. The Knesset passed two bills last week banning Unrwa from Israeli territory and prohibiting Israeli state contact with the agency on the basis of allegations that Hamas had infiltrated it. The ban will take effect in three months but in the first step towards implementing the Knesset vote, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, sent a letter to the UN secretary general and the president of the general assembly officially withdrawing Israel from a 1967 cooperation agreement with Unrwa. “Despite the overwhelming evidence we submitted to the UN that substantiate[s] Hamas’s infiltration of Unrwa, the UN did nothing to rectify the situation,” Danon wrote on X on Monday. Israel has taken some measures to increase aid access to Gaza but has so far failed to significantly turn around the humanitarian situation in the territory, state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday, as a deadline set by the US to improve the situation approaches. The Biden administration told Israel in a letter it had 30 days to take specific steps to address the dire humanitarian crisis in the strip, which has been pummeled for more than a year by Israeli ground and air operations that Israel says are aimed at rooting out Hamas militants. Aid workers and UN officials say humanitarian conditions continue to be dire in Gaza. “As of today, the situation has not significantly turned around. We have seen an increase in some measurements. We’ve seen an increase in the number of crossings that are open. But just if you look at the stipulated recommendations in the letter, those have not been met,” Miller said. Miller said the results so far were “not good enough” but stressed that the 30-day period had not elapsed. He declined to say what consequences Israel would face if it failed to implement the recommendations. Here are the latest headlines this evening: Israel claims to have killed two senior Hezbollah commanders in southern Lebanon in two separate strikes, as it continues its attacks on what it calls terrorist infrastructure. Lebanese authorities have put the death toll from Israeli airstrikes in the country at over 2,800. Israel’s military has said Hezbollah has fired more than 60 rockets into Israeli-controlled territory during the course of Monday. There were no reports of any casualties Ten people have been reported killed by Israeli airstrikes inside Gaza. The Hamas-led health authority there has said that 33 people were killed in the previous 24 hours. It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict Palestinian authorities in the Israeli-occupied West Bank have said that a massacre was narrowly avoided after an arson attack attributed to Israeli settlers on a building and about 20 cars in Al-Bireh, near to Ramallah. Witness said ten people poured liquid on the cars to torch them. Israeli security forces say they are investigating the incident. Israel’s foreign ministry has said in a statement it has formally notified the UN that the country will ban the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, Unrwa, from operating inside Israel within 90 days. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that 94,431 children under the age of 10 got a polio vaccine over the weekend, which represents 79% of the target in northern Gaza. At least 90% vaccination of a population is needed to stop the spread of the virus. Leaks from Netanyahu’s office may have compromised a peace deal, an Israeli court finds. A breakdown in peace negotiations may have been caused by leaked and falsified documents involving a close aide to the prime minister, an Israeli court has said. The leaking of the documents – to Britain’s Jewish Chronicle and Germany’s tabloid Bild – came at a crucial time for hostage negotiations. Israel have attacked the Syrian capital of Damascus. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said the strikes hit a house “used by members of Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard”, in a farm in the Sayyeda Zeinab area. The Lebanese health ministry has said that the death toll in Lebanon has crossed 3,000 in the Israel-Hezbollah war, which has been so far going on for 13 months. The director of the last partially functioning hospital in north Gaza, says he does not understand the purpose behind the bombing. “At this moment, occupation forces are continuing to violently bombard and destroy Kamal Adwan Hospital, targeting all parts of the hospital,” the Gaza Health Ministry told Reuters Israel acknowledges attack on alleged Hezbollah intelligence headquarters in Syria. Israel’s military said its air force struck the intelligence headquarters of Hezbollah’s Syrian branch in a strike on Damascus on Monday, an attack that claimed the lives of two people believed to be Hezbollah members. Warplanes “conducted an aerial operation and struck Hezbollah terror targets belonging to Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in Syria”, the military said in a statement. The Syria branch “includes an independent intelligence gathering, coordination, and assessment network”, the military said, adding that the attack aimed to degrade Hezbollah’s intelligence capabilities. The strikes hit a house “used by members of Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard” at a farm, the The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said. Syria’s foreign ministry condemned the attack, saying it targeted “civilian areas” south of Damascus. Syrian state media said the strike occurred at approximately 2:18 pm (British time) and came “from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights”. Israel has killed at least 16 people and injured 90 others in Lebanon on Monday, according to the Health Ministry’s latest figures. A ministry statement says fatalities caused by Israeli attacks have risen to 3,002 with 13,492 others injured since October 2023. Meanwhile Hebollah says it bombed targets in Kidmat Tzvi and the Ayelet Hashahar area in northern Israel. Israel is bracing itself for another Iranian attack after a crescendo of threatening rhetoric from leaders in Iran warning that the country would retaliate for an Israeli missile strikes last month. Iran initially played down the impact of the 26 October Israeli strikes on its military facilities, which were in turn a response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack on Israel at the beginning of October. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gave an initially ambivalent verdict on the Israeli strikes, saying that the attack “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed” while Tehran weighed a response… Juliette Touma, UNRWA director of communications, said UNRWA received one formal accusation directly from Israeli authorities, alleging 100 staff were associated with Palestinian armed groups. Touma said Israel has not responded to their requests for evidence. Israel told the United Nations it’s cancelling the agreement that regulated its relations with the UN relief organisation for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) because Hamas was operating within the organisation. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said the UN “was presented with countless pieces of evidence that Hamas operatives are employed by UNRWA and about the use of UNRWA facilities for terrorist purposes – yet nothing was done about this”. The Lebanese health ministry has said that the death toll in Lebanon has crossed 3,000 in the Israel-Hezbollah war, which has been so far going on for 13 months. Further to our post of 16.02 reporting Israeli strikes in Damascus, AFP has the following: At least two Hezbollah members were killed on Monday near the Sayyeda Zeinab area south of Damascus, home to an important Shia sanctuary and guarded by pro-Iranian groups, a war monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said the strikes hit a house “used by members of Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard”, in a farm in the Sayyeda Zeinab area. Israel’s military has intensified its strikes on targets in Syria since it launched its war on Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon more than a month ago. Two Hezbollah members were killed and several others were wounded, according to the monitor. Syrian state media also reported the strikes but said they only caused material damage. Mehdi Mahfouz, 34, who lives nearby, said he “heard three successive explosions, one of which was very strong. Then I saw a large black cloud of smoke rising.” The blasts were heard in the neighbouring Jaramana suburb of Damascus, according to an AFP photographer, as ambulances headed to the area. The director of the last partially functioning hospital in north Gaza says he does not understand the purpose behind the bombing. “At this moment, occupation forces are continuing to violently bombard and destroy Kamal Adwan hospital, targeting all parts of the hospital,” the Gaza health ministry told Reuters Hospital director Hossam Abu Safieh said in a statement that the situation was “catastrophic” and that “the army did not contact the hospital before directly targeting it.” “Several of our staff have been injured, and we are unable to leave the hospital,” he said of the facility in the northern city of Beit Lahia. “We do not understand the purpose behind this bombing that is targeting the hospital.” Al Jazeera reports that Israel has attacked the Syrian capital of Damascus. This news comes hours after Israeli special forces captured a man in Syria accused of helping an Iranian network to gather intelligence on targets in Israel, the military said. “The operation prevented a future attack and led to the exposure of the operational methods of Iranian terror networks located near the Golan Heights. Al-Assi was transferred for further investigation,” the military said in a statement on X More to follow … Gaza’s health ministry says it may be making its “last distress call” as the IDF bears down on Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza. The ministry says that Israeli soldiers “continue to bomb and destroy” the hospital, affecting all its facilities. “There are many injuries among the medical staff and patients. The medical staff cannot move between the hospital departments and cannot save their injured colleagues,” the ministry says. Fadi was praying on Wednesday afternoon when the ground began to shake. At first he thought it was an earthquake, but then he saw a plume of smoke rising from his house. He rushed home and began to dig. One by one, he pulled family members from the rubble, all eight of them killed in an Israeli airstrike. “I pulled my brother out of the rubble in pieces. I found his four-year-old daughter’s hand in the branches of an olive tree 20 metres away,” he said. The owner of a gaming cafe in Bednayel, a town on the outskirts of the historic eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek, he asked only to be identified by his first name for fear of being targeted by the Israeli drones that circled overhead. The day before, Fadi’s brother Ali had asked him if his family could stay at his house since they lived next to a petrol station and he feared it would blow up in the event of an Israeli bombing; a local family had burned to death in an earlier Israeli bombing and Ali did not want his wife and two children to suffer the same fate… A breakdown in peace negotiations may have been caused by leaked and falsified documents involving a close aide to the prime minister, an Israeli court has said. The leaking of the documents – to Britain’s Jewish Chronicle and Germany’s tabloid Bild – came at a crucial time for hostage negotiations. The documents claimed Hamas were going to smuggle Israeli hostages to Egypt, jeopardising any peace arrangement. Over 100 hostages out of 251 taken by Hamas on 7 October 2023 are still captive and their whereabout remains unclear. Commentators say the leaks were made to protect Netanyahu who faces a strong possibility criminal charges for allegedly accepting bribes. Benny Gantz, who until recently was in Netanyahu’s war cabinet, said that if sensitive security information was used for a “political survival campaign”, it would not only be a criminal offence but also “a crime against the nation”. The leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid, argued that if the prime minister was aware of the leaks, “he is complicit in one of the most serious security offenses” and that if he wasn’t aware, he shouldn’t be in office. Families of the hostages stated that it is “a moral low that has no depth. This is a fatal injury to the remnants of trust between the government and its citizens”. It is approaching 5pm in Beirut, Tel Aviv and Gaza City. Here are the latest headlines … Israel claims to have killed two senior Hezbollah commanders in southern Lebanon in two separate strikes, as it continues its attacks on what it calls terrorist infrastructure. Lebanese authorities have put the death toll from Israeli airstrikes in the country at over 2,800 Israel’s military has said Hezbollah has fired more than 60 rockets into Israeli-controlled territory during the course of Monday. There were no reports of any casualties Ten people have been reported killed by Israeli airstrikes inside Gaza. The Hamas-led health authority there has said that 33 people were killed in the previous 24 hours. It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict Palestinian authorities in the Israeli-occupied West Bank have said that a massacre was narrowly avoided after an arson attack attributed to Israeli settlers on a building and about 20 cars in Al-Bireh, near to Ramallah. Witness said ten people poured liquid on the cars to torch them. Israeli security forces say they are investigating the incident Israel’s foreign ministry has said in a statement it has formally notified the UN that the country will ban the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, Unrwa, from operating inside Israel within 90 days The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that 94,431 children under the age of 10 got a polio vaccine over the weekend, which represents 79% of the target in northern Gaza. At least 90% vaccination of a population is needed to stop the spread of the virus A Lebanese MP has accused Israel of attempting to turn areas in the south of the country into “burnt out areas where there is no way to live even after the end of the war and attacks.” The National News Agency quotes MP Ali Khreis speaking after an inspection of areas in the south. He is quoted as saying: These southern villages and towns are struggling against the Zionist machine. Lebanon expressed and stated … that we want to implement UN Resolution 1701, and we want the Lebanese army to protect the borders and maintain security and stability, and that the presence of Unifil is an international guarantee for implementing the international resolution. Israel’s military has claimed that it is carrying out “limited, localized, targeted raids based on precise intelligence in thicketed terrain along the border fence in southern Lebanon, where the Hezbollah terrorist organisation has established itself,” but Lebanese authorities have put the death toll from Israeli airstrikes inside the country at over 2,800 dead. Before and after satellite photographs have shown the extent of destruction wrought by Israeli attacks on a village in the south of Lebanon. Israel has been accused of breaking international humanitarian law by opening fire on Unifil peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon. Juliette Touma, global communications officer for Unrwa, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, has spoken to Al Jazeera from Amman in Jordan. Israel this morning said it had formally notified the UN that it would be banning the agency from operating inside Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Touma told the news agency: Who is going to replace Unrwa? When this brutal war finally comes to an end, who will provide education to 400,000 children who go to Unrwa schools, who? What is the plan? We don’t have any answer to that. We are the only UN agency in the world that runs 700 schools. In the absence of a political solution for Palestinian refugees, there is no alternative to Unrwa. It’s easy to talk. The question is what are you going to do about the ban and how are you going to fill the void? You meaning the state of Israel. On Monday last week Israel’s parliament voted to ban the agency from the country within 90 days. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has also banned Al Jazeera from operating inside Israel, as well as raided its offices in Ramallah. Lebanon’s media reports that Israeli forces continue to target areas in the south of the country with artillery fire and airstrikes. Israel’s military has said that as of 3pm local time (1pm GMT), “approximately 60 projectiles that were fired by Hezbollah” had crossed into Israel or Israeli-controlled territory. In an operational update via Telegram, the IDF claimed to have located and destroyed underground infrastructure belonging to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and said “troops located terrorist infrastructure, military sites, weapons stockpiles, a missile storage facility, and compounds designated for infiltrating into Israeli territory.” The claims have not been independently verified. AFP reports it has spoken to a witness to the arson attack in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Al-Bireh, near Ramallah. Ihab al-Zabin, a resident of the building damaged in the attack, which also saw about 20 cars torched, told the news agency he saw around ten people he identified as settlers “pouring liquids on vehicles in front of the building and then setting them on fire.” He said “I yelled from my apartment, and at that moment they ran away. When I went down with my neighbours to put out the fire, settlers shot towards us.” AFP reports that Laila Ghannam, governor of Ramallah and Al-Bireh, told journalists at the scene “there could have been a massacre in this building”, which residents say housed more than 60 people. She said the attacks were increasing because the settlers were treated by Israeli authorities with “impunity”. About 490,000 settlers live in settlements considered illegal under international law in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967. About three million Palestinians live in the occupied West Bank territory. Israeli media reports that graffiti left nearby during the attack said “war on Judea and Samaria”. Settlers often refer to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria, after two ancient Israelite kingdoms. These terms are also used administratively by the Israeli government. Rami Omar, head of the local civil defence office, said the incident happened at 3.30am, and an Israeli security official told AFP notification of the incident came at 4am. Israeli police and the Shin Bet have said they are investigating. Al-Zabin said he saw the arsonists run away towards the nearby Israeli settlement of Beit El. Reuters reports that three people have been killed by an Israeli strike on a house in Nuseirat camp in Gaza. Citing local medics for the information, it takes the total number of people reported killed today in Gaza to ten. Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the news wires from Gaza. Both Reuters and Palestinian news agency Wafa are reporting that medical sources in Gaza have told the agencies that seven people have been killed on Monday by an Israeli airstrike in Beit Lahia in the north of Gaza. Numerous people were reported injured with some reported missing. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that 94,431 children under the age of 10 got a polio vaccine over the weekend, which represents 79% of the target in northern Gaza. At least 90% vaccination of a population is needed to stop the spread of the virus. About 15,000 children are thought to be a zone besieged by Israeli ground forces in Beit Hanoun, Beit Latiya and Jabalia in the northern governorate, and they cannot be reached because of military operations. The humanitarian pause the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) agreed to did not include that zone. The IDF denies involvement in a blast at a clinic in Sheikh Radwan on Saturday, where six people were reported injured, four of them children, while vaccinations were going on. The IDF put out a tweet referring to a bomb attack near the Sheikh Radwan clinic by “terrorist organisations” while a humanitarian convoy was passing, saying that six children at the clinic had been injured in the explosion. But the incident it refers to is supposed to have happened on Sunday, not Saturday. The WHO says there was a blast near its convoy on Sunday to evacuate patients and health workers from besieged hospitals in the north, but it said the convoy was not affected. The Guardian is asking the IDF for further clarification. Germany urges Israel to allow more aid into north Gaza to help the “unbearable” situation in the region. A spokesperson for the German foreign ministry said: “We call on the Israeli government urgently to meet its responsibilities under international law. “Israel has the right to self-defence against Hamas within the framework of humanitarian international law.” The spokesperson’s comments were in response to the ultimatum the United States imposed on Israel to improve humanitarian assistance. If Israel fails, Washington has said it will restrict military aid. Kamala Harris pledged that as president she would ‘do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza’ in her final rally in Michigan on Sunday, as she tried to appeal to the state’s large Arab American and Muslim populations. She said she would also work to bring home hostages, ensure Israeli security, end the suffering of the Palestinian people and ensure their ‘dignity, freedom and self-determination’ Reporting for Haaretz, Bar Peleg writes that another arrest has been made on Monday in Israel after a joint investigation by the police, internal security services and the army into a suspected “breach of national security.” Peleg writes: An Israeli Court ruled on Sunday evening that the leak of military intelligence from the IDF to the prime minister’s office, and subsequently to foreign media outlets, could have harmed the security services’ ability to secure the release of the hostages held in Gaza by Hamas. The court allowed the publication of the name of Eli Feldstein, the spokesperson in Netanyahu’s circle who is suspected in the case. It was also revealed that the three other detainees being questioned are members of the security establishment. Peleg says that the Shin Bet have made a further arrest today. Israel’s military has issued a statement in which it claims to have killed “a commander in the Hezbollah Radwan force’s anti-tank missile system.” Naming him as Riad Rida Ghazzawi, the IDF claimed he “planned and executed a significant amount of terrorist attacks, including firing anti-tank missiles at Israeli civilians and at IDF troops operating in southern Lebanon.” Israel’s military has been staging incursions inside Lebanon since 1 October, claiming to be targeting Hezbollah. Lebanese authorities have reported over 2,800 dead in Israeli attacks on Lebanon in the past month. Tens of thousands of Israelis have been forced to leave their homes in northern Israel due to repeated rocket fire from inside Lebanon. At least 50 rockets have been fired so far today according to IDF statements. A large number of people have also been displaced from their homes in Lebanon by the fighting. Earlier today Israel also stated it had killed a Hezbollah commander in the Baraachit area in southern Lebanon, who it named as Abu Ali Rida. The claims have not been independently verified. Israel’s military has claimed to have intercepted “a number of suspicious aerial targets that approached Israeli territory from east” on Monday. Gaza’s Hamas-led health ministry has issued updated casualty figures, reporting that 33 Palestinians were killed and 156 more injured by Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours. The ministry claims this takes the total death toll in the Gaza Strip since Israel began its military campaign against Hamas in October last year to 43,374 killed with 102,261 wounded. It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict. Germany has called on Israel to let more humanitarian aid into north Gaza, where a lack of supplies has led to a “desperate” and “unbearable” situation, a spokesperson for the German foreign ministry said on Monday. “We call on the Israeli government urgently to meet its responsibilities under international law,” Reuters reports the spokesperson told a regular news conference in Berlin, adding “Israel has the right to self defence against Hamas within the framework of humanitarian international law.” Earlier on Monday Israel announced that it had formally instructed the UN that it would be banning the Palestinian refugee agency Unrwa from operating inside Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that thousands of people in Halhul, north of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, gathered today for the funeral of a 14-year-old child shot by Israeli security forces. Wafa reported that a general strike spread through Halhul during the funeral for Naji Nidal Al-Baba. Some news sources have given the child’s age as 16. In a statement the UK-based Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) group has said that all three hospitals in northern Gaza are under attack. In the statement is said: All three remaining hospitals in northern Gaza are under attack. Kamal Adwan hospital has come under direct artillery fire, resulting in the serious injury of a child. Al Awda hospital has also been shelled, and Indonesian hospital hit by drone strikes. ⁠The Israeli military is killing and injuring hundreds of Palestinians a day and the patients in need of lifesaving care in northern Gaza are now left helpless under siege. These latest attacks by Israeli forces are part of a sustained assault on Gaza’s health system, amounting to war crimes and the crime of extermination. Israel is making Palestinian survival in northern Gaza impossible as part of a policy of sustained pressure and forcible expulsion. The international community must not allow this brutality to go unchallenged. An earlier statement today by the Hamas-led health ministry in Gaza said that all three hospitals had been put out of operation. The statement from the Gaza’s government media office, reported by Al Jazeera and Israeli media, said the “northern district is devastated due to the ongoing Israeli aggression.” It claimed that about 1,800 Palestinians had been killed and about 4,000 others wounded as a result of IDF operations in the north of the Gaza Strip over the past three weeks. It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict. It accused the Israeli army of “continuing to destroy civilian infrastructure”, and halting the vaccination campaign for children in northern Gaza “as part of its destruction plan.” It described the area as “disaster-stricken”. The claims have not been independently verified. A statement on Friday signed by the heads of UN agencies, including the UN children’s agency Unicef and the World Food Programme, and other aid groups, warned that “The entire Palestinian population in north Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.” Israeli media is reporting that about 50 rockets have been fired into Israel from the direction of Lebanon so far on Monday. A barrage of 20 rockets was aimed at Western Galilee, with 30 aimed at Upper Galilee. Tens of thousands of Israelis have been displaced from their homes in northern Israel, with Benjamin Netanyahu’s government setting their ability to return safely as a war aim for its campaign in Lebanon which it says targets Iranian-backed Hezbollah. Lebanon’s National News Agency is reporting new Israeli air strikes on the south of the country. Israel’s military has issued further details of the interceptions carried out this morning. It says that “four UAVs fired from both Lebanon and the east were intercepted by the IAF,” stating that two were intercepted outside of Israel. Here are some of the latest images sent over the news wires from Gaza, Lebanon, Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israeli media reports that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet today with opposition leader Yair Lapid for a security briefing. The Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry has issued a statement condemning the reported burning of cars by Israeli settlers in Al-Bireh in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. In a statement, the ministry said it condemned the “brutal attack” in “the strongest terms”, saying that “it considers it an extension of the crimes of settler gangs throughout the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, and a copy of the manifestations of the genocide and displacement of our people in the Gaza Strip.” It continued: The ministry affirms that the Jewish terrorist elements who stormed Al-Bireh would not have committed this heinous crime had they not felt protected, supported and immune from the political level in the occupying state, especially the ministers of the extreme Israeli right who openly incite against Palestinian citizens, their land and their property in full view. Senior members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government have repeated stated their intention to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state and their desire to encourage further illegal settlements inside the West Bank. Al-Bireh is to the north-east of Ramallah. Lebanon’s National News Agency reports that caretaker minister of the interior Bassam Mawlawi will convene a central internal security council meeting at noon to, it says, “follow up on security developments in light of the continued Israeli attacks on Lebanon.” The caretaker minister is expected to make public remarks after the meeting. Palestinian news agency Wafa is reporting that one person has been injured after Israeli security forces opened fire near Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and also reports that Israel has detained one man in Beitunia, west of Ramallah. Israel’s foreign ministry has said in a statement, reported by AFP, that it has formally notified the UN that the country will ban the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, Unrwa, from operating inside Israel. Unrwa operates 96 schools in the Israeli-occupied West Bank serving 45,000 students, as well as 43 health centres, food distribution services for refugee families, and psychological support services, according to the agency’s website. It has played a crucial logistical role in facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aid in Gaza, as well as providing shelters for displaced Palestinians. “On the instruction of foreign minister Israel Katz, the ministry of foreign affairs notified the UN of the cancellation of the agreement between the state of Israel and Unrwa,” the foreign ministry said. Israel has alleged that 12 Unrwa employees took part in the Hamas attack inside southern Israel on 7 October 2023. The agency fired several staff members as a result of an independent inquiry, but says that Israel’s wider accusations of staff in Gaza supporting Hamas are unfounded. In Monday’s statement, Katz said “Unrwa, the organisation whose employees participated in the 7 October massacre and many of whose employees are Hamas operatives, is part of the problem in the Gaza Strip and not part of the solution.” Unrwa’s mandate is to provide life-giving services to anyone who has “lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict”, a mission widened after the 1967 war, when the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories began. Foreign minister Katz disputed that cutting off Unrwa would damage the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, which has been besieged by Israeli forces and subjected to aerial bombardment for over a year. Nearly all of the territory’s 2.4 million people have been displaced from their homes at least once. “Even now, the vast majority of humanitarian aid to Gaza is delivered through other organisations, and only 13 percent of it is delivered through Uurwa,” Katz said. “The state of Israel is committed to international law and will continue to facilitate the entrance of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip in a manner that does not harm the security of the citizens of Israel.” Israel is yet to provide any proposal for how the functions of Unrwa would be replaced. Israel has been repeatedly accused of breaching international humanitarian law in its response to the 7 October attack. During a recent visit to the region, US secretary of state Antony Blinken cautioned Israel that the US was watching “very carefully” for progress being made on stepping up the amount of aid being delivered to Gaza. Israel’s ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said “the state of Israel will continue to cooperate with humanitarian organisations but not with organisations that promote terrorism against us.” Palestinian media sources are reporting that between 15 and 20 cars were set alight in Al-Bireh in the Israeli-occupied West Bank by Israeli settlers. Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority, is quoted by news agency Wafa described the incident as a crime by “terrorist settler militias.” The Times of Israel reports that Israel’s police force has said it has opened an investigation. Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that overnight Israel has continued its assault on Gaza, stating that “local sources reported hearing successive explosions north of the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, while the occupation’s warplanes targeted the city of Rafah in the south.” It said there were dead and wounded after the attacks. Wafa reports that one child was injured according to medical sources from the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza. They told the news agency “artillery shelling targeted the hospital wards, the nursery, the hospital yard and the water tanks.” The claims have not been independently verified. In a message on its official Telegram channel, Israel’s military has claimed that on Monday morning it had intercepted what it termed “a suspicious aerial target” that crossed into Israeli-controlled territory “from the east”. There were no reports of any casualties. In the same message the IDF said it had also intercepted “a suspicious aerial target in the Upper Galilee area” that had crossed into Israeli territory from Lebanon. Emanuel Fabian, who reports for the Times of Israel, posted to suggest that two drones had headed towards Israeli-controlled territory from Iraq. In a message on its official Telegram channel, Israel’s military has claimed to have killed a Hezbollah commander who it names as Abu Ali Rida. It said he commanded the Baraachit area in southern Lebanon. The IDF described him as being “responsible for planning and executing rocket and anti-tank missile attacks on IDF troops.” In the operational update, Israel said: IDF troops continue to conduct limited, localised, targeted raids in southern Lebanon, dismantling terrorist infrastructure, locating weapons, and eliminating terrorists. Huge swathes of Lebanon’s population have been displaced from their homes by Israel’s military action against Hezbollah. According to Lebanese authorities, more than 2,800 people have been killed inside Lebanon by Israeli attacks. Tens of thousands of Israelis in the north of the country have also been displaced from their homes by near constant rocket frie from Hezbollah and other anti-Israeli forces inside Lebanon. Welcome to the Guardian’s continued coverage of the conflict in the Middle East. Here are the latest headlines … In a strike inside Lebanon, Israel has claimed to kill a Hezbollah commander responsible, the IDF said, for “planning and executing rocket and anti-tank missile attacks on IDF troops” Israel’s military said that on Monday morning it had intercepted what it called “a suspicious aerial target” heading towards Israeli-controlled territory from the east A polio vaccination centre and the car of a UN aid official involved in this weekend’s vaccination campaign came under fire despite a promised “humanitarian pause” in Israeli bombardment, the UN has said At least 43,341 Palestinian people have been killed and 102,105 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is at the centre of a new political storm related to a hostage deal in the Gaza war after the arrest of several people in connection with an alleged leak of classified documents from his office

The Guardian;Israel formally tells UN of intent to sever all ties with Unrwa relief agency;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/04/israel-formally-tells-un-of-intent-to-sever-all-ties-with-unrwa-relief-agency;2024-11-04T21:25:10Z

Israel has formally informed the United Nations of its intention to sever ties entirely with the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees in a move the country’s allies and aid workers warn will deepen the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East. The Knesset passed two bills last week banning Unrwa from Israeli territory and prohibiting Israeli state contact with the agency on the basis of allegations that Hamas had infiltrated it. The ban will take effect in three months but in the first step towards implementing the Knesset vote, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, sent a letter to the UN secretary general and the president of the general assembly officially withdrawing Israel from a 1967 cooperation agreement with Unrwa. “Despite the overwhelming evidence we submitted to the UN that substantiate[s] Hamas’s infiltration of Unrwa, the UN did nothing to rectify the situation,” Danon wrote on X on Monday. An internal UN inquiry found in August that nine Unrwa employees “may have been involved” in the surprise Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October last year, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage, triggering the current conflict. Unrwa has 13,000 employees in Gaza and is by far the biggest aid agency in the coastal strip. The UN has denied charges that the agency has been fundamentally compromised by infiltration. Aid experts, as well as Israel’s closest allies, have said there is no alternative to Unrwa in terms of providing relief to Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and across the region, and that the ban could cripple services to an embattled population that increasingly depends on them. The head of Unrwa, Philippe Lazzarini, said Israel had cut the flow of aid entering Gaza to a trickle, with an average of 30 trucks entering the territory a day, only 6% of the quantity delivered to Gaza before the war. “Restricting humanitarian access and at the same time dismantling Unrwa will add an additional layer of suffering to already unspeakable suffering. Only political will can put an end to a politically made situation,” Lazzarini said. The state department said on Monday that Israel had failed to significantly improve conditions in the strip, as Washington’s deadline for a permanent transformation of the humanitarian crisis approached. In a letter on 13 October, the Biden administration told Israel it had 30 days to take specific steps to address the situation or face possible punishment, including the potential stopping of US weapons transfers. “As of today, the situation has not significantly turned around,” the state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said on Monday. “We have seen an increase in some measurements. We’ve seen an increase in the number of crossings that are open. But just if you look at the stipulated recommendations in the letter, those have not been met.” In its retaliatory military campaign in the 13 months since the Hamas attack, Israel has killed more than 43,000 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry, which is run by Hamas but provides reliable figures on the death toll according to the UN. The focus of the military campaign in the past month has been in the far north where an area comprising Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and Jabalia has been besieged and heavily bombed, including the few remaining medical facilities. The Kamal Adwan hospital continued to come under direct fire on Monday, according to its director, Hossam Abu Safieh, who described the situation as catastrophic. He said the “the army did not contact the hospital before directly targeting it”. “Several of our staff have been injured, and we are unable to leave the hospital,” he said. The bombardment comes at a time when health workers have been attempting to carry out a second round of polio vaccinations for children under 10. The World Health Organization (WHO) said 94,431 children had received a dose of the vaccine over the weekend, which represents 79% of the target in northern Gaza. At least 90% vaccination coverage is needed to stop the spread of the virus. About 15,000 children are thought to be trapped in the zone besieged by Israeli ground forces and cannot be reached because of military operations.

The Guardian;Indigenous Canadian judge who reshaped nation’s legal system dies aged 73;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/04/canadian-judge-senator-and-indigenous-reformer-murray-sinclair-dies-aged-73;2024-11-04T19:51:52Z

Murray Sinclair, the Anishinaabe judge, senator and university chancellor, who reshaped Canada’s legal system and forced the public to confront the brutal realities of the Indigenous residential school system, has died at the age of 73. Sinclair – whose spirit name was Mizhana Gheezhik, meaning “The One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky” – was a champion of Indigenous rights and reconciliation efforts, dedicating his life to reversing the stark inequities many Indigenous communities face as the result of colonial policy. Sinclair, Manitoba’s first Indigenous judge, chaired Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which spent six years compiling testimony from survivors of horrific abuses at the country’s residential school system and concluded that Canada had carried out a policy of “cultural genocide”. “The impact of our dad’s work reached far across the country and the world,” his family said in a statement, confirming his death. “From residential school survivors, to law students, to those who sat across from him in a courtroom, he was always known as an exceptional listener who treated everyone with dignity and respect.” A sacred fire to help guide his spirit home has been lit outside Manitoba’s legislature, they said. Tributes poured in from political leaders. “He was kind, patient and understanding to people like me, who had a lot to learn,” the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, posted on social media. “With his passing, Canada has lost a giant – a brilliant legal mind, a champion of Indigenous rights, and a trusted leader on our journey of Reconciliation.” Wab Kinew, the premier of Manitoba, praised Sinclair’s legacy. “It will be a long time before our nation produces another person the calibre of Murray Sinclair. He showed us there is no reconciliation without truth.” Marc Miller, who previously served as minister of crown-Indigenous relations, wrote: “I’ll miss you, my friend.” The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs said Sinclair “broke barriers and inspired countless individuals to pursue reform and justice with courage and determination”. Sinclair, a member of Peguis First Nation, was born on 24 January 1951 and was a child of the Canadian prairies, growing up in Selkirk, Manitoba. He graduated high school as valedictorian and the year’s top athlete. His postsecondary studies in physical education were cut short when he left school to care for his grandmother. Sinclair later enrolled in law school, graduating at the top of his class, and was called to the bar in 1980. Less than 10 years later, he became Manitoba’s first Indigenous judge in 1988 and that year was named co-commissioner of Manitoba’s Aboriginal Justice Inquiry. The inquiry, which looked at the fraught relationship between Indigenous people and the province’s justice system, played a key role in the Gladue principles, a nationwide rewriting of the criminal code which required courts to consider the backgrounds of Indigenous offenders and weigh alternatives to prison when sentencing. Sinclair was also tasked with leading the historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission which in 2015 concluded that the residential school system amounted to cultural genocide. Painful survivor testimony to the commission made it clear that sexual, emotional and physical abuse had been rife. The final report estimated that more than 4,100 children died from disease, neglect and suicide, although Sinclair has said he believes the true figure could be as high as 15,000. In an interview with the Guardian in 2021, Sinclair said the commission was prevented from investigating allegations of criminality and efforts to obtain key church and government records were stymied. “The government, our social institutions, and even our population acknowledge what was done to Indigenous people was wrong. There have been several apologies and a promise of things will change. But there’s been no change,” he said. “So long as any change is only given reluctantly, it means there remains a willingness, ability – and even desire – to go back to the way things were.” In 2016, Sinclair was appointed to the Senate and retired in 2021. The next year, he received the Order of Canada, the country’s top honour, for championing the rights and freedoms of Indigenous people. He used the award to highlight the need for all Canadians to fight to end a sustained, decades-long campaign to create and sustain racial inequity. “It took constant effort to maintain that relationship of Indigenous inferiority and white superiority,” he said. “To reverse that, it’s going to take generations of concerted effort to do the opposite.” Sinclair is survived by his five children.

The Guardian;Mexico president lashes out at supreme court amid looming constitutional crisis;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/04/mexico-supreme-court-claudia-sheinbaum-judicial-reform;2024-11-04T19:05:52Z

Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum has accused the country’s supreme court of overstepping its functions and “trying to change what the people of Mexico decided” as it prepares to discuss whether to strike down parts of a transformative judicial reform. The court is expected to vote on Tuesday whether the controversial reform violates other parts of the constitution, setting up a showdown with Sheinbaum barely a month into her government. The move would shift Mexico to a system where almost all of its judges, including the supreme court, are elected by popular vote. No other country in the world has such a system. The US elects judges at the lower level, while Bolivia elects 26 judges across its top courts. But in Mexico, thousands of positions at all levels would be put to the vote. Proponents say the reform is needed to root out corruption in the judicial system. Opponents say it will do little to address corruption, but will hand the ruling Morena party control of the courts, while giving organised crime groups another chance to impose their candidates in elections. “It has to be made very clear that eight justices cannot be above the people,” Sheinbaum told reporters on Monday. Morena already has a level of political power not seen for decades in Mexico, after its landslide election victory in June gave it a supermajority in Congress and control of enough state legislatures to change the constitution at will. It has passed a whirl of amendments since, including the judicial reform in September. The judicial system itself has come out strongly against the reform, with strikes and protests. Though three members of the supreme court have said they support the reform, the other eight showed their resistance by declaring they would not run in the elections scheduled for August 2025. Now the court will discuss whether the judicial reform violates existing precepts in the constitution in a last-ditch effort to stop it moving forwards. This has already prompted the legislative to pass another amendment last week that blocks the court from reviewing legal challenges to any constitutional reforms, potentially nullifying any decision that the court takes. That means if the supreme court does vote against the judicial reform, Mexico will be in uncharted territory. And Sheinbaum will have to decide whether to ignore or comply with the ruling. “This will lead to a constitutional crisis of a kind we have not seen for the duration of the 1917 constitution,” Olvera Rangel told Proceso, a Mexican magazine. The dispute has dominated the agenda during Sheinbaum’s first month in government, sucking attention away from other issues such as the expansion of social programs, the further militarisation of public security, and the rising violence in states such as Sinaloa and Chiapas. It has also spooked markets, leading the peso to depreciate more than 15% against the dollar, and drawn rare public criticism from the US, Mexico’s largest trade partner, which said it jeopardised democracy and rule of the law in the country. To defuse the crisis, one supreme court judge, Juan Luis González Alcántara, has suggested a compromise: that the top courts stand for election, but the thousands of other judges do not. But it is unclear whether the other judges on the supreme court would agree to this, let alone Sheinbaum and her party. Sheinbaum inherited the judicial reform from former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who founded Morena and was frustrated when the courts blocked some of his key policies. Even if Sheinbaum was inclined to negotiate with the supreme court, she could face resistance from power brokers within Morena. In any case, she has showed no signs of backing down, accusing the court of being a political actor and violating the constitution itself. On Monday she added that her government has a plan in case the court goes against the judicial reform: “We are prepared, whichever way they vote.”

The Guardian;Israel braces for another Iranian attack after threats from leaders in Tehran;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/04/israel-braces-iran-attack-threats-leaders-tehran;2024-11-04T19:04:39Z

Israel is bracing itself for another Iranian attack after a crescendo of threatening rhetoric from leaders in Iran saying the country would retaliate for Israeli missile strikes last month. Iran initially played down the impact of the 26 October Israeli strikes on its military facilities, which were in turn a response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack on Israel at the beginning of October. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gave an initially ambivalent verdict on the Israeli strikes, saying that the attack “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed” while Tehran weighed a response. On Saturday, however, Khamenei delivered a clear threat. He said: “The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will definitely receive a crushing response.” Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani, the supreme leader’s chief of staff, vowed on Thursday that an Iranian response was certain and that it would be “fierce and tooth-breaking”. On the same day, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps, Maj Gen Hossein Salami, said the Iranian response “will surpass all expectations”. “Israel believed it could change the regional balance of power by launching a few missiles,” Salami said. “You have once again proven that you do not understand the Iranian people, and your calculations are completely wrong.” The Wall Street Journal on Sunday quoted Iranian and Arab officials briefed on Tehran’s plans as saying the looming Iranian strikes would be more complex, involving more weapons and more powerful warheads than the 1 October attack, and the new barrage would come between Tuesday’s US elections and the inauguration of the next US president in January. According to some reports, Israeli intelligence believes the next Iranian attack could be launched from Iraq, where Iran has close allies among the Shia militias, who are armed with Iranian ballistic and cruise missiles. The flight time from Iraq would be substantially shorter than from Iranian territory, from where the missiles were launched towards Israel on 1 October. The previous Iranian missile attack was in turn a response to the Israeli airstrike that killed the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on 27 September, setting off the current cycle of escalation. Israeli commanders have reportedly said that any new Iranian attacks would be met with a rapid response, and that Iran would have little protection, as many air defence batteries were damaged in the 26 October Israeli strikes. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said at a graduation ceremony for Israeli officers on Thursday: “Regarding Iran, we struck its soft underbelly … The haughty words of the Iranian regime’s leaders cannot cover up the fact that in Iran today, Israel has greater freedom of action than ever before. We can go anywhere that we need to in Iran.” On Monday, Israel’s air force said it had struck Hezbollah intelligence assets near Damascus in an attack that Syria said had targeted civilian sites. “Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters has a branch in Syria, which includes an independent intelligence-gathering, coordination, and assessment network,” the Israeli military said in a statement, expanding on the air force’s post on X. Syria’s defence ministry said Israel had caused some damage in attacks that had targeted civilian sites south of the capital. The US has vowed to help defend Israel against any Iranian attack. Last month it deployed an anti-ballistic missile defence system, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, in Israel with nearly 100 American troops to operate it. Six US B-52 bombers arrived in the Middle East over the weekend, probably in Qatar, after the deployment of a squadron of F-16 fighters and refuelling tankers in the region in October. The movements, the Pentagon said, were “in keeping with our commitments to the protection of US citizens and forces in the Middle East, the defence of Israel, and de-escalation through deterrence and diplomacy”. Raz Zimmt, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said Iranian leaders initially wanted to play down the significance of the Israeli strike last month but “when they realised its impact and the significance, certainly the most significant [strike on Iran] since the Iran-Iraq war, they reached a conclusion they can’t leave it without any kind of retaliation.” Zimmt said the Tehran leadership faced a dilemma: failing to respond would be interpreted as weakness, at home and abroad; but a new attack on Israel could further fuel escalation at a time when Iran is vulnerable. He said: “It might be very risky for them … It’s very obvious that Israel, in case of an Iranian retaliation, will probably move forward to the next stage of attacks on Iran, which could certainly involve not just military targets, but also symbols of the Iranian regime, oil installations and then also nuclear facilities.” In Netanyahu’s remarks to graduating officers last week, he made clear that the Iranian nuclear programme was the ultimate Israeli target. The Israeli prime minister said: “The supreme objective that I have set for the IDF [the Israel Defense Forces] and the security services is to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons … We have not taken – and we will not take – our eyes off this objective. Obviously, I cannot detail our plans to achieve this supreme goal.”

The Guardian;Alleged Netanyahu leak may have harmed Gaza hostage deal, says court;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/04/alledged-netanyahu-leak-may-have-harmed-gaza-hostage-deal-says-court;2024-11-04T18:36:38Z

An alleged intelligence leak from Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has ballooned into a major scandal for the Israeli prime minister after a court partly lifted a gag order on the case, saying that the affair may have undermined efforts to reach a hostage deal in the Gaza war. Four people have been arrested in connection with the joint investigation by the police, internal security services and the army, a court in the city of Rishon LeZion said on Sunday night. The central suspect was named as Eliezer Feldstein, whom the Israeli media said was hired as a spokesperson and media adviser in the prime minister’s office shortly after the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. The other three people to be arrested are members of the security establishment. A partial gag order is still in place, but the case involves a “breach of national security caused by the unlawful provision of classified information” that “harmed the achievement of Israel’s war aims”, the court said on Friday. The suspects are alleged to have been involved in leaking Hamas strategy documents found by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza, and manipulating or editing the material to make it seem as though the Palestinian militant group’s leadership planned to drag out the talks as long as possible, as well as smuggle hostages to Egypt. Reports apparently based on the doctored documents appeared in the British outlet the Jewish Chronicle and the German tabloid Bild in September, leading the IDF to launch an investigation. The Jewish Chronicle later retracted the story and fired the journalist who wrote it. Netanyahu’s detractors say the articles appeared at a time when he was facing renewed criticism over his handling of the negotiations after six killed hostages were found in a tunnel in Rafah. The reports also appear to have bolstered Netanyahu’s new demand in the talks after a conditional framework had already been reached – that Israeli troops remain on the Gaza-Egypt border. The demand was rejected by Hamas, and the talks foundered. Netanyahu has long been accused of stalling on a deal as a way to appease his far-right coalition partners, for whom any concession to Hamas is untenable. He is believed to see staying in office as the best way of avoiding prosecution in longstanding corruption charges, which he denies. In a statement on Monday, the Hostage Families Forum, which represents most of the friends and relatives of the abductees, said it demanded an investigation “against all those suspected of sabotage and undermining state security”. It added: “The suspicions suggest that individuals associated with the prime minister acted to carry out one of the greatest frauds in the country’s history. This is a moral low point like no other. It is a severe blow to the remaining trust between the government and its citizens.” Netanyahu has sought to downplay the affair, calling for the gag order to be lifted and accusing the judiciary of bias. On Saturday he denied any involvement in the leak, or wrongdoing on the part of his staff. The main suspect, Feldstein, “never participated in security discussions, was not exposed to or received classified information, and did not take part in secret visits”, his office said. Questions have arisen over whether Feldstein was formally employed by the prime minister’s office after reports were published alleging he failed a security clearance polygraph test; he has been photographed next to Netanyahu many times over the past year. The 32-year-old, from the ultra-Orthodox Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak, previously worked for the far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and in the IDF’s media unit. Feldstein was arrested on 27 October and has been remanded in custody until Tuesday, the date of his next hearing. One of the other three suspects is understood to have been released. The charges of leaking classified information, negligence in handling the material, and using it to influence public opinion, could result in a 15-year prison sentence, the ynet news site reported.

The Guardian;Narendra Modi condemns attack on Hindu temple in Canada as tensions rise;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/04/canada-hindu-temple-attack-modi;2024-11-04T17:21:06Z

India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has condemned a “deliberate attack” on a Hindu temple in Canada, blaming Sikh activists for the violent clash at a time of escalating diplomatic tensions between the two countries. Videos on social media showed demonstrators protesting outside the Hindu Sabha Mandir temple in the city of Brampton, where Indian diplomats were visiting ahead of Diwali celebrations. Some protesters held yellow Khalistan flags, representing a region of India they hope to one day carve out as a Sikh homeland. As tensions rose, isolated fights broke out. Canada’s Peel regional police said on Monday that three people had been “arrested and criminally charged” following the attack and they were investigating “several acts of unlawfulness”. The alleged offences include assault with a weapon and assaulting a police officer. In the hours after the clashes, each side blamed the other for inciting violence. Modi denounced “cowardly attempts to intimidate” consular staff, writing in a post on social media: “Such acts of violence will never weaken India’s resolve.” The group Sikhs for Justice alleged in a statement the protest “turned violent” when a group of “Indo-Canadian nationalists, incited by Indian consulate officials” attacked the Sikh demonstrators. The group says some attenders retreated into the temple and began throwing rocks and wielding iron rods. Canadian federal party leaders all condemned the violence. “Every Canadian has the right to practice their faith freely and safely,” Justin Trudeau wrote on social media. The Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, “unequivocally” condemned violence “targeting worshippers” and Jagmeet Singh, leader of the New Democratic party also “unequivocally” condemned the clashes. “Violence anywhere is wrong,” he wrote. The Ontario premier, Doug Ford, said the violence was “completely unacceptable and must be condemned”. Relations between India and Canada have remained tense ever since Trudeau publicly accused the Indian government of assassinating Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a prominent Khalistan activist. Tensions rose in October when Canada expelled six Indian diplomats including the country’s high commissioner. The move came as federal police warned of a vast, covert network of violence operated by the Indian government in Canada. Indian officials, conversely, say Canada has ignored the rise of Sikh separatism and done little to tamp down on what Delhi says is violent rhetoric.

The Guardian;Two novels on impact of post-colonial conflict win key French literary awards;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/04/two-novels-on-impact-of-post-colonial-conflict-win-key-french-literary-awards;2024-11-04T17:04:24Z

Novels about wide-scale violence in Algeria and Rwanda have won France’s two most important literary prizes and been hailed as groundbreaking narratives about the pressure on younger generations to come to terms with conflict in post-colonial societies. The French-Algerian writer Kamel Daoud won the Goncourt literary prize for his novel, Houris, about a young woman scarred by the violence of Algeria’s civil war in the 1990s. The writer and hip-hop artist Gaël Faye won the Renaudot prize for his bestselling novel, Jacaranda, about young people navigating the legacy of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, congratulated the two writers, saying they had shown how the French language can evoke “beauty, tragedy and the universal”. Daoud’s powerful and shocking novel was praised by the Goncourt jury for its tragic lyricism. A fictional account of a young woman who was mutilated aged five during the civil war, the book asks how Algerian society can rebuild itself amid the trauma left by the 10-year conflict. Between 1991 and 2002, the conflict between the Algerian government and Islamist groups resulted in up to 200,000 deaths and thousands of disappeared, victims of torture and sexual violence. Daoud is the first Algerian novelist to win France’s top literary prize. But the novel, which was published in France in September, has caused controversy in Algeria. At the beginning of the book, Daoud cites the law in Algeria that restricts what can be said about the decades-long conflict of the 1990s and states that anyone using the “wounds of the national tragedy” to weaken the state can be punished by prison or a fine. While the book has therefore not been published in Algeria, Daoud told a French literary festival in September he understood that pirated copies had been circulated there and told Le Monde he would like to see the book published in the country. Daoud’s French publisher, Gallimard, said it was told not to attend the prestigious Algiers book fair this month, which was interpreted by the French media as Algerian authorities’ reacting over Daoud’s book. Daoud was born and grew up in Algeria and worked as a journalist in the city of Oran during the 1990s violence that became known as Algeria’s “black decade”. He has since taken French nationality and works as a columnist for the French magazine Le Point. He has published several novels including the acclaimed The Mersault Investigation, a post-colonial retelling of Albert Camus’s novel, The Outsider, from an Algerian perspective. Daoud told Le Monde that so little was taught about the violence of the 1990s in Algeria that his own teenage daughter did not at first believe the book could be based on real events. He said Algeria’s war of independence against France was well-taught and documented but the violence of the 1990s had not been addressed. “I think that above all, we’re ashamed,” Daoud told Le Monde. “During the war of independence, violence was noble, we were defending ourselves against the enemy. In 1992, we were killing amongst ourselves.” The Renaudot prize, regarded as a key driver of sales in French publishing, was won by Faye, a hip-hop artist and one of France’s most popular writers. He was born in Burundi to a Rwandan mother and French father. Faye’s novel Jacaranda is a haunting exploration of the legacy of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide against the backdrop of the country’s political and economic transformation. Characters from younger generations in Rwanda and the diaspora carefully attempt to unpick the silence of older relatives who struggle to find words for the unspeakable. It became a bestseller when it was published in September. Faye’s first novel, Small Country, about a 10-year-old who comes of age during the Burundi civil war, sold more than 1.5m copies, was translated into 45 languages and adapted for the cinema and as a graphic novel. Faye told France Inter radio: “Rwandan society is a young society, 70% of the population was born after 1994 … I was 11 at the time of the genocide and I felt a kind of responsibility, because when you chat to young people, they are conscious of the genocide but are also surrounded by silence. Often the words are lacking.”

The Guardian;It’s time for Britain to acknowledge the need for slavery reparations | letters;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/04/its-time-for-britain-to-acknowledge-the-need-for-slavery-reparations;2024-11-04T17:04:11Z

Kojo Koram says Keir Starmer should engage with the argument about reparations, in part to help keep “the size of the cash transfer politically palatable” (Here’s what Keir Starmer gets wrong about reparations: we’ve made them before, but now we have to do it right, 30 October). Surely this goes to the heart of the problem. With figures mooted on behalf of claimants being of the order of £18tn, no British prime minister who has any thought of long-term survival can engage realistically with a process that would more than totally bankrupt their country. Indeed, no one appears, in our media at least, to have explained exactly what the claimant countries would do with such vast sums should they receive them. Interestingly, Koram points out that the £20m paid to enslavers via the 1837 Slave Compensation Act is “worth about £17bn today”. Such a figure is surely a much more sensible basis to start a discussion about enhanced development aid for the Caricom countries. Indeed, as this is in the ballpark of other domestic compensation schemes, such as the £11.8bn being set aside for victims of the infected blood scandal, it might prove harder for the prime minister to resist a similar discussion around slavery. Alan Tanner Staunton on Wye, Herefordshire • Calls for reparations are not new. In 1787, a little-known African writer called Quobna Ottobah Cugoano described his childhood experiences of enslavement. His was the first British publication in which an African writer had pressed for reparations to be made to African nations for the loss of their people and the impact of so much human trafficking. Then, in 1824, a Leicester woman, Elizabeth Heyrick, took up the cudgels. In a pamphlet entitled Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition, she wrote forcefully of the unconditional right of slaves to receive recompense for their long years of labour, saying “let compensation be made in the first place where it is most due”. Eventually, it was, of course, the enslavers who were compensated, not the enslaved people themselves. But now, more than 200 years later, there is still time to acknowledge the need for reparative justice and to offer a formal apology to those who were affected by slavery and their descendants. Jocelyn Robson London • In his speech in Samoa last month, King Charles said: “None of us can change the past, but we can commit with all our hearts to learning its lessons and to finding creative ways to right inequalities that endure.” This showed an understanding of the sensitivities to the cruelty and barbarism of the slave trade, which will have affected the 33 African and Caribbean countries that are part of the 56-nation Commonwealth. This empathetic leadership struck a chord with many. While the Commonwealth has said the time has come for “discussions on reparatory justice” for the slave trade, it is now incumbent on the governments of member states to take this forward. Zaki Cooper London • Those who continue to castigate the Whig government for its “generous compensation to enslavers” in the act of 1833 (Letters, 29 October) should consider that without compensation, abolition might have been delayed for several years. Vested interests sometimes need to be placated. As Nye Bevan found in 1948, progress is often possible only by accepting a less than perfect solution. “Stuffing their mouths with gold,” as he put it, ensured that consultants were allowed to keep their lucrative private practice while being brought into the new NHS. Terry Fulton Stonehouse, Gloucestershire • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

The Guardian;Britain must not be complicit in genocide | Letters;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/04/britain-must-not-be-complicit-in-genocide;2024-11-04T17:03:30Z

You report Keir Starmer as saying, “I have never described what is going on in Gaza as genocide, but I do agree that all sides should comply with international law” (UN should consider suspending Israel over ‘genocide’ against Palestinians, says special rapporteur, 31 October). Yet the prime minister cannot pretend that these are opposites: the genocide convention is a central part of international law, and the UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese is not alone in believing that Israel is breaking it in Gaza – many of my scholarly colleagues agree with the case that South Africa has brought to the international court of justice. Given the “plausible risk” of genocide that the court has identified, the British government should be ceasing all arms sales to Israel, ending its extensive military and political support, and using its position on the UN security council to help force Israel to withdraw from Gaza. The government should be openly condemning Israel’s genocide, not denying it, as the foreign secretary, David Lammy, did in parliament last week. Unless it takes these steps, Starmer and the UK will be liable for complicity in genocide under the convention. Martin Shaw Author, What Is Genocide? • Francesca Albanese, who said the UN should consider suspending Israel as a member state, is twice described as “divisive”. The effect of this word is to diminish her input and make her the problem when she palpably is not. In fact, it is Israel, by its actions, that is divisive. Widespread international failure to properly hold Israel to account for its appalling behaviour is also divisive. In the midst of this, Ms Albanese is just doing her job. Roger Haydon Ryton, Tyne and Wear • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

The Guardian;Sweden scraps plans for 13 offshore windfarms over Russia security fears;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/04/sweden-scraps-plans-for-13-offshore-windfarms-over-russia-security-fears;2024-11-04T15:31:42Z

Sweden has vetoed plans for 13 offshore windfarms in the Baltic Sea, citing unacceptable security risks. The country’s defence minister, Pål Jonson, said on Monday that the government had rejected plans for all but one of 14 windfarms planned along the east coast. The decision comes after the Swedish armed forces concluded last week that the projects would make it more difficult to defend Nato’s newest member. “The government believes that it would lead to unacceptable consequences for Sweden’s defence to build the current projects in the Baltic Sea area,” Jonson said at a press conference. The proposed windfarms would have been located between Åland, the autonomous Finnish region between Sweden and Finland, and the Sound, the strait between southern Sweden and Denmark. The Russian exclave of Kaliningrad is only about 310 miles (500km) from Stockholm. Wind power could affect Sweden’s defence capabilities across sensors and radars and make it harder to detect submarines and possible attacks from the air if war broke out, Jonson said. The only project to receive the green light to was Poseidon, which will include as many as 81 wind turbines to produce 5.5 terawatt hours a year off Stenungsund on Sweden’s west coast. “Both ballistic robots and also cruise robots are a big problem if you have offshore wind power,” Jonson said. “If you have a strong signal detection capability and a radar system that is important, we use the Patriot system for example, there would be negative consequences if there were offshore wind power in the way of the sensors.” A Nato maritime commander said earlier this year that the security of nearly a billion people across Europe and North America was under threat from Russian attempts to target the extensive vulnerabilities of underwater infrastructure, including windfarms, which he said had “system vulnerabilities”. V Adm Didier Maleterre, the deputy commander of Nato’s allied maritime command (Marcom), told the Guardian in April: “We know the Russians have developed a lot of hybrid warfare under the sea to disrupt the European economy through cables, internet cables, pipelines. All of our economy under the sea is under threat.” Sweden’s energy and industry minister, Ebba Busch, said it had been a tough announcement to make, but that security policy was paramount. While many Nato countries are rapidly expanding their wind power, Busch said they were “cleaning up an incredibly messy system”. Nato recently established a centre dedicated to undersea security at Marcom’s UK-based headquarters in Northwood, north-west London.

The Guardian;‘We won’t leave’: survivors defiant after Israel turns sights on Lebanon’s Baalbek region;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/04/israel-bombing-lebanon-baalbek-region;2024-11-04T14:53:24Z

Fadi was praying on Wednesday afternoon when the ground began to shake. At first he thought it was an earthquake, but then he saw a plume of smoke rising from his house. He rushed home and began to dig. One by one, he pulled family members from the rubble, all eight of them killed in an Israeli airstrike. “I pulled my brother out of the rubble in pieces. I found his four-year-old daughter’s hand in the branches of an olive tree 20 metres away,” he said. The owner of a gaming cafe in Bednayel, a town on the outskirts of the historic eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek, he asked only to be identified by his first name for fear of being targeted by the Israeli drones that circled overhead. The day before, Fadi’s brother Ali had asked him if his family could stay at his house since they lived next to a petrol station and he feared it would blow up in the event of an Israeli bombing; a local family had burned to death in an earlier Israeli bombing and Ali did not want his wife and two children to suffer the same fate. All four were killed on Wednesday, along with Ali’s wife’s parents and two of her sisters. Five hours before Fadi’s home was bombed, Israel’s military had ordered the residents of Baalbek and two nearby towns, Douris and Ain Bourday, to evacuate ahead of what it said were strikes on Hezbollah – the first time it had issued evacuation orders outside southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut. But intense Israeli bombing had signalled that it was turning its focus to the eastern Bekaa valley two days before any evacuation orders were given. More than 60 people were killed on Monday last week in bombing across the valley, and by Friday the death toll from strikes in the region had surpassed 120. Bednayel, like most of the villages surrounding Baalbek that were struck by Israel, was not included in the evacuation orders, nor did it receive a warning before being bombed. “Israel’s goal is to get us to stop supporting Hezbollah – but we won’t. We’re proud to be here and we won’t leave,” Fadi said. He added that while his family supported Hezbollah politically, they were civilians and not a part of the organisation. He pulled a pair of baby socks out of his pocket, which belonged to his one-year-old nephew Hassan, and pointed to a pink ballet slipper in the rubble, which belonged to his niece Fatimah, to illustrate his point. Hezbollah traditionally enjoys strong support in the Bekaa valley, it being where many of its top officials originated and where training camps for the organisation’s recruits were held. However, the valley is the largest geographic area of Lebanon and encompasses towns with many different political and religious affiliations. In the city of Baalbek, the streets were deserted. Wednesday’s evacuation orders had caused panic, with tens of thousands of residents fleeing to safer areas, according to the city’s mayor, Moustapha al-Chall. At the centre of the city stood ancient ruins, including one of the world’s largest extant Roman temples, which was designated a world heritage site in 1982. The provincial governor instructed residents not to seek shelter near the ruins, as he could not guarantee they would be spared from bombing. A nearby Israeli air raid on Monday had already damaged the Gouraud barracks, a structure from the French-mandate era built near the ancient Roman complex. The weathered stones that made up one of the walls of the complex had been shattered and strewn across the city’s streets. Amir al-Nimr, a 21-year-old resident of Baalbek, was trapped under the debris on Monday after Israel dropped a bomb on his house, the same strike that damaged the barracks’ walls. He, unlike the other three members of his family who were in the house, survived the attack. But it left him with two fractured hips and burns all over his body. “There was nothing in our home from Hezbollah. We had sent our women to Syria but we couldn’t leave because we needed to protect the house from theft. I’m not upset for my family, I’m upset that I didn’t get to join them in heaven,” Nimr said, his voice breaking as he spoke from a hospital bed in Dar al-Amal hospital in Douris. His hair had been scorched from his scalp, one of his eyes was filled with blood and scabs had spread across his face like webbing where he had been burned. “From my point of view, this is a war against the Shia, you can see what regions of Lebanon they’re hitting. But no matter what happens, I won’t leave,” Nimr said. Those who stayed behind despite the intensifying bombing on Baalbek and surrounding areas spoke with a sense of defiance. But the majority of residents have already left, joining the more than 1.2 million people already displaced by Israeli bombing in Lebanon. About half of the 700 staff members at the Dar al-Amal hospital have left, displaced by fighting and fearful of an evacuation order that just barely includes the hospital. Three of its nurses were killed in Israeli strikes while off duty in the last month. “Our main threat now is manpower. Our other resources are available and we can manage it,” said Ali Allam, the hospital’s director. The hospital has received much of the injured and dead from nearby bombings, as well as patients evacuated from hospitals closer to Baalbek. Allam said that prior to last Monday, a sense of normalcy had returned to the hospital as the pace of Israeli bombing had slowed. That changed as Israel turned its sights on the Bekaa valley. “Maybe the good thing is that in the Bekaa, the houses are spread far apart. Economically, it will be more costly for them to bomb us. They wouldn’t get their money’s worth. But who could stop them if they finish in south [Lebanon]?” Allam said with a grim smile.

The Guardian;Meredith Kercher’s sister speaks out as Amanda Knox project starts filming in Italy;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/04/sister-of-meredith-kercher-speaks-out-as-filming-of-amanda-knox-co-production-begins-in-italy;2024-11-04T14:49:59Z

Meredith Kercher “will always be remembered for her own fight for life”, the sister of the murdered British student has said as filming began in Italy on a controversial TV series co-produced by Amanda Knox about the case. Filming of the eight-episode series, Blue Moon, has coincided with the 17th anniversary of the murder, for which Knox was twice convicted before being definitively acquitted in 2015. The series is also being co-produced by Monica Lewinsky, who was at the centre of a 1990s media storm after an affair with the then US president, Bill Clinton, and focuses on Knox’s legal battle. It is being shot in the Umbrian hilltop town of Orvieto this week before moving to Perugia, the university town where Kercher, 21, was murdered in the house she shared with Knox. Kercher’s body was found in her bedroom, partly undressed and with multiple stab wounds. She had been sexually assaulted. Her sister Stephanie Kercher said Meredith’s “strength and love remains strong after 17 years” and that she “will forever hold a lasting legacy in friendship and kindness that no media can change”. Kercher said her family had been through a lot and found it “difficult to understand” how the series served any purpose. “Meredith will always be remembered for her own fight for life, and yet in her absence, her love and personality continues to shine,” she said. “We will forever feel this indescribable void but we live by Meredith’s standards with dignity.” Knox was convicted of the murder along with her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito. The pair spent four years in prison before being released in 2011. They were convicted again in 2014 by an appeals court in Florence, which ruled that the multiple injuries inflicted on Kercher’s body proved that Rudy Guede, an Ivorian man who served 13 years for the murder, could not have acted alone. Italy’s highest court overturned the decision against Knox and Sollecito in a ruling in 2015, because of what it described as “stunning flaws” in the investigation that led to the convictions. The Kercher family rarely respond to the publicity generated by Knox, who reportedly earned about £3.5m for her memoir, took part in a Netflix documentary about the case in 2016 and has been the subject of other books and films. In June this year, a Florence court upheld a slander conviction against Knox for wrongly accusing Patrick Lumumba, who owned a bar in Perugia, of murdering Kercher. Knox, 37, had asked for the conviction to be dropped on the basis of a ruling by the European court of human rights in 2019 that found her defence rights had been violated during police questioning in 2007. She said she had returned to Italy in the hope of clearing her name “once and for all of the false charges” against her. She had been handed a three-year jail term for wrongly accusing Lumumba, which she served during the four years she was imprisoned before being found not guilty of Kercher’s murder on appeal in 2011. Lumumba spent two weeks in jail in 2007 and was released only after a witness came forward with an alibi for him. Guede, the only person definitively convicted of the murder, was released from prison in November 2021 after completing 13 years of a 16-year sentence.

The Guardian;Alleged mastermind in murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira formally charged;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/04/alleged-mastermind-dom-phillips-bruno-pereira-murders-formally-charged-brazil;2024-11-04T14:41:02Z

Federal police in Brazil have formally charged the alleged mastermind of the murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira in the Amazon, accusing him of arming and funding the criminal group responsible for the crime as well as plotting to hide the victims’ bodies. In a statement released on Monday morning, police in the Amazon city of Manaus announced they had concluded the two-year investigation into the shootings of the British journalist and the Brazilian Indigenous expert in June 2022. Police said their final report identified nine people who had played some role in killings that drew attention to the criminal assault on the world’s largest tropical rainforest and the Indigenous communities that call that region home. Those alleged culprits included the main architect of the murders who police claimed “provided the rounds for the crime to be carried out, offered financial support to the criminal organisation’s activities, and was involved in coordinating the concealment of the corpses of the victims”. The statement did not name the alleged mastermind but multiple Brazilian press reports identified him as Ruben Dario da Silva Villar, an alleged illegal fishing and poaching boss from the border region where Phillips and Pereira were ambushed and shot. Silva Villar, whose nickname is Colombia, is in custody having been arrested in late 2022 for a different offence. He has denied involvement in the murders. Until September, three fishers had been due to stand trial by jury next year for carrying out the murders along the Amazon’s Itaquaí River: Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, Jefferson da Silva Lima and Oseney da Costa de Oliveira. However, appeal judges ruled that only the first two should face trial given what they called a lack of evidence about Oseney’s involvement. On Monday the federal police said their inquiries had “confirmed that the murders took place as a result of the monitoring activities carried out by Bruno Pereira” in the area around the Javari valley Indigenous territory. At the time of his murder, Pereira, a former government official from the Indigenous agency Funai, had been working with an Indigenous association called Univaja to help its activists defend their lands from illegal fishing and mining gangs. The police statement contradicted claims from a prominent Amazon politician last week that the murders were the result of a personal squabble between Pereira and a fisher he had supposedly “humiliated” in front of his family. During a hearing in the capital, Brasília, the senator Omar Aziz minimised widely held suspicions that drug trafficking and organised crime had played a role in the murders. Rather, Aziz claimed a river-dweller who was angry at Pereira had simply “waited for the right moment to take his revenge”. Those comments sparked outrage among friends and relatives of the two victims. Speaking for both families, the Dom Phillips Institute – which was created earlier this year to honour the journalist’s legacy – criticised what it called Aziz’s “frivolous pronouncement”, which had no basis in fact and undermined the Brazilian state’s “arduous” efforts to solve the crime.

The Guardian;British couple missing after Valencia floods found dead in their car;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/04/british-couple-missing-after-valencia-floods-found-dead-in-their-car;2024-11-04T14:34:15Z

A British couple missing in Valencia after floods hit the region have been found dead in their car, their daughter has told the BBC. Don Turner, 78, and his wife Terry, 74, had not been seen since torrential downpours caused flash floods in eastern Spain. Their daughter, Ruth O’Loughlin, from Burntwood, Staffordshire, confirmed to the BBC that her parents’ bodies had been found in their car on Saturday. She had previously told the BBC her parents had moved to Spain a decade ago because they had “always wanted to live in the sunshine”. She was told they were missing on Thursday after friends checked on them and found their pets at home but their vehicle gone. Terry had told friends they were popping out to get some gas, she said. O’Loughlin told BBC Radio WM she had found out about the death of her parents, who lived near Pedralba, in a message from one of their friends. O’Loughlin said: “He said ‘Ruth, get your husband’. I called my husband in and he just said ‘Martin, hold your wife’, and said that they’d been found and they’d been found in their car. “We still don’t know exactly what happened to them. The only thing we’ve got from this is that they were together. It’s not the way you want your parents to go.” A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We are supporting the family of a British man and woman who have died in Spain, and are in contact with the local authorities.” The flooding, which has prompted the central government to deploy 10,000 troops and police officers, has killed 210 people in Valencia, three in Castilla-La Mancha and one in Málaga. There are fears the death toll could rise as the relief efforts reach previously inaccessible areas. Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has described the floods as the worst natural disaster in the country’s recent history and said all necessary resources would be mobilised to deal with its aftermath. Yellow and amber weather warnings were in place for parts of Valencia and neighbouring Catalonia on Monday, with people in the affected areas advised to stay off the roads and keep away from the coast and rivers. Heavy rain had fallen in the Barcelona area, leading the regional government to issue civil protection alerts and cancel all local train services. Thousands of UK air passengers are experiencing disruption after Barcelona airport was hit by the storms.

The Guardian;‘It’s kind of whispered in corridors’: women being forced into underground abortion networks in rural NSW, study finds;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/05/abortion-access-study-rural-new-south-wales-women;2024-11-04T14:00:15Z

A small but influential number of medical practitioners who obstruct abortion care or are uninterested in providing it are leaving women unable to access abortion in many parts of rural New South Wales, a study has found. It has led to informal and often underground networks of health workers providing information and access to abortion care to patients, the study found, with these providers burning out due to high demand and attitudes toward them. Dr Anna Noonan, a research fellow at the University of Sydney’s school of rural health, interviewed 16 healthcare providers, including GP registrars, GP obstetricians, nurses, midwives and women’s health nurses asking them about unintended pregnancy. All of the staff worked in the western region of NSW, where 17% of the population is female and of reproductive age (15 to 44 years), and where there is only one publicly advertised abortion service. “We found the decision of one person in a position of power can result in there being no access to an abortion service at all,” Noonan said. “What I ended up hearing from the primary care providers was that they experienced this constant, often passive obstruction by the health system at multiple layers.” For example, doctors training as rural generalists and willing to provide abortion healthcare found the rural clinical hospitals where they did their work placements did not provide abortions. “So they’re learning to provide healthcare without receiving any clinical training or exposure to abortion,” Noonan said. “It meant many felt underprepared and undertrained to provide (surgical abortion) care.” The study – published in the journal Rural and Remote Health – found that one tertiary institution had even requested censorship of education about abortion services during student clinical placements. One health worker told researchers: “The problem is that you do have a number of conscientious objectors in the hierarchy of these larger hospitals … that is going to be super hard to get past, because they’re the people that make the rules.” Most study participants identified professional stigma as a reason why abortion services were limited, hidden and unadvertised. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email One health worker said patients who Googled the name of a gynaecologist providing abortion would not find any information about the service online. “It’s just like this underground service that he provides,” the health worker said. Another study participant described how “it’s kind of whispered in corridors, like – ‘Do you know anyone who does abortions?’” The unwillingness of providers to openly share information even about where medicines to end early pregnancies could be prescribed or dispensed meant some health workers spend considerable clinical time searching for answers, ringing around pharmacies, asking if they stock the medication, and coming up with a plan for the patient. Noonan said those health workers trying to refer patients on to services found it hard to navigate who to call and where to go. Some health workers come up with their own informal, underground workarounds, the study found. A nurse at one rural clinic shared that she would connect patients to an interstate GP who would prescribe medication for abortion via telehealth. Nurse practitioners and midwives are not allowed to prescribe abortion medication in NSW. The nurse then took on all pre- and post-abortion care. “That was working well for two years,” the nurse said, until “we got a new medical director, and he axed it”. Noonan said this kind of workaround was sometimes scrapped because managers believed abortion care should be provided by obstetricians and gynaecologists, and because it was too time-consuming for general health service providers to manage on top of other healthcare. “Australia has taken the most extraordinarily narrow view on abortion, often perceiving it as an obstetrics and gynaecology issue,” Noonan said. “And maybe it is for the really complicated surgical cases, but it isn’t for the routine prescribing of an abortion pill for an under nine-week pregnancy. We are still holding on to this catastrophising of abortion, this exceptionalising of abortion, where abortion is seen as something so specialised that it needs to be managed by a minute population of the health workforce, and it’s a misguided approach.” Evidence from the World Health Organization shows that nurse- and midwife-led abortion care models are safe and effective. Noonan said delays finding a provider of medical abortion might mean a patient reaches beyond nine weeks of pregnancy, leaving surgical abortion the only option, which is also hard to access. The study found that the paucity of GP abortion providers meant existing services were “flooded with requests from other primary healthcare workers trying to find local options, creating tension and overwhelm”. An obstetrician, who did not want to be named due to the attitudes of some colleagues towards abortion, told Guardian Australia that one in four Australian women need an abortion during their reproductive years. The clinician, who is also a spokesperson for the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, agreed with Noonan that abortion care should be seen as normal, routine healthcare but often was not. “Abortion care is a high demand service,” she said. “I think another part of the reason health services are reluctant to provide it is because there’s such a chronic shortage of funding for women’s health, and the Medicare rates for providing women’s health are very low. “To do a more complex ultrasound on a woman, you actually get paid less than doing a very simple scrotal ultrasound on a man.” She said some health services feared being overwhelmed by an increase in patient numbers if they were to provide abortion. “For that reason they want to keep abortion care outside of normal care,” she said. “It doesn’t make financial sense to provide it, when women’s health services are so underfunded already.” She said any hospital funded with public money should be working within the full scope of their facilities to provide all women’s health services, including abortion. Greg Johnson is the managing director of MSI Australia, a non-profit advocate and provider of abortion and contraception services. He said while Noonan’s study was small and focused on one region, “the experiences ring true with all of the things that we hear at MSI Australia across rural and regional care”. “Fundamentally, abortion is still at the periphery of an unaccommodating health system,” he said. “Abortion care should be truly seen as an equal and accepted part of healthcare. Until we get there, we’ll continue to have the problems that we currently have, particularly in rural and regional Australia.” Do you know more? [email protected]

The Guardian;Germany accuses Russia of ‘massive’ effort to stop Moldovans abroad voting;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/04/moldova-president-maia-sandu-wins-western-praise-for-election-triumph;2024-11-04T13:05:12Z

Germany has condemned what it called “a massive, coordinated attempt” to prevent Moldovans abroad from voting in the second round of the country’s presidential election. Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said vote-buying, manipulation and bomb threats against Moldovan polling stations – “even in Germany” – were aimed at “the heart of European democracy”, and showed that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, “will stop at nothing”. A German foreign ministry spokesperson said polling stations in Hamburg, Frankfurt, Kaiserslautern and Berlin had been targeted by bomb threats, describing the intimidation as “totally unacceptable”. The remarks came as Europe’s most powerful leaders congratulated Moldova’s pro-western president, Maia Sandu, after she won a second term, cementing the country’s EU aspirations and dealing a setback to the Kremlin. With nearly 98% of the vote counted in the second round of the presidential elections on Sunday, Sandu had 54% of the vote, ahead of Alexandr Stoianoglo, a Kremlin-friendly political newcomer, backed by the pro-Russia party of Socialists. The party described Sandu as an “illegitimate president” on Monday. Moldovan authorities reported evidence of attempts to meddle in the electoral process before Sunday’s vote and during the first round of voting and a referendum on EU membership that was won by a wafer-thin margin two weeks earlier. Allegations of Russian or pro-Russia interference, including cyber-attacks on polling stations, bussing in voters, vote-buying and intimidation, underscored the stakes for the small former Soviet republic that has pursued a decisively pro-western path under Sandu, seeking to join the EU. Moldova’s foreign ministry said on Sunday that polling stations in Frankfurt, as well as Liverpool and Northampton in the UK, had been targeted by false bomb threats “intended only to stop the voting process”. On Monday the US president, Joe Biden, hailed Sandu’s victory as a win for democracy and said Russia had failed to undermine the former Soviet republic. “For months, Russia sought to undermine Moldova’s democratic institutions and election processes. But Russia failed,” Biden said. “The Moldovan people have exercised their democratic right to choose their own future, and they have chosen to pursue a path aligned with Europe and democracies everywhere,” he added in a statement. That sentiment was echoed by European leaders. The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said: “It takes a rare kind of strength to overcome the challenges you [Sandu] have faced in this election. I’m glad to continue working with you towards a European future for Moldova and its people.” In a joint statement, the commission and the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, praised the Moldovan authorities “for the successful conduct of the election, despite unprecedented interference by Russia, including with vote-buying schemes and disinformation”, adding that “these hybrid attempts have sought to undermine the country’s democratic institutions and its EU path”. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said democracy had triumphed over all interference and manoeuvring: “France will continue to remain at the side of Moldova in her European path,” he wrote on X. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, agreed. “@sandumaiamd has steered the Republic of Moldova safely through difficult times and set the country on a European course. We stand by Moldova’s side,” he said. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said his country was ready to support Moldova’s European choice. “Moldovans have made a clear choice – they chose a path toward economic growth and social stability. Only true security and a peaceful, united Europe can guarantee each person and every family the confidence to face tomorrow with hope and certainty.” Moldova filed its application to join the EU in March 2022 only days after Ukraine announced its intention to become an EU member state, following Russia’s full-scale invasion. Both countries were granted EU candidate status in June 2022 in an accelerated process. In the run-up to the first round of voting in the presidential elections, the commission proposed a €1.8bn (£1.5bn) growth plan for Moldova, with the aim of doubling the size of the Moldovan economy over the next 10 years. The plan links financial aid (grants and cheap loans) to reforms, but still has to be agreed by EU member states and the European parliament, a five- or six-month process. Siegfried Mureșan, a Romanian MEP who will lead talks for the European parliament on the Moldova growth plan, promised the EU would pass the legislation as quickly as possible “so we can enable the necessary investments needed to help the country modernise and be prepared for EU accession”. He described the result as “a victory for the citizens of the Republic of Moldova and a defeat for the Russian Federation”. The Kremlin has denied interfering in the vote. “We resolutely reject any accusations that we are somehow interfering in this. We are not doing this,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said. A senior Russian senator and an ally of Putin said on Monday that votes were “brought in” to help Sandu win. “You count the votes, you see how many the ‘right’ candidate is missing and bring in the required number of votes from foreign polling stations,” said Andrei Klishas, a member of Russia’s Federation Council, referring to diaspora voting. Russia’s foreign ministry described the election as the “most undemocratic” in Moldova’s post-Soviet history. Spokeswoman Maria Zakarova said the outcome exposed a “deep split” in Moldovan society. One EU leader conspicuous by his silence in the immediate aftermath of the vote was Viktor Orbán. The Hungarian prime minister angered EU officials last week when he flew to Georgia the day after parliamentary elections, having offered his congratulations to the pro-Russian ruling party before the final tally had been officially announced. In the first 12 hours after the results of Moldova’s election became clear, Orbán had not immediately commented to international media. Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, offered his congratulations in a message that appeared to point to the US presidential election on Tuesday, a race that has also been beset by allegations of Russian interference. “Despite Russia’s aggressive and massive interference in the Moldovan presidential elections, Maia Sandu most likely defeated Moscow’s favourite,” Tusk wrote on X before the final election results were counted. “Let’s hope that this trend will continue in the coming days and months in other countries as well.”

The Guardian;Eight go on trial over beheading of teacher Samuel Paty in Paris;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/04/eight-on-trial-in-paris-beheading-teacher-samuel-paty;2024-11-04T11:51:15Z

Eight people have gone on trial in Paris for their alleged role in events leading to the beheading of the history teacher Samuel Paty in 2020, a case that horrified France and heightened fears of terrorist attacks on schools. Paty, 47, was stabbed and then decapitated near his secondary school in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, by Abdoullakh Anzorov, a radicalised 18-year-old who arrived in France aged six with his Chechen parents and had been granted asylum. Anzorov, who was shot dead at the scene by police, killed Paty after messages spread on social media that the teacher had shown his class cartoons of the prophet Muhammad from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Seven men and one woman appeared in Paris’s special criminal court on Monday. They included friends of Anzorov who are accused of helping purchase weapons for the attack, as well as people who are accused of spreading false information online about the teacher and his class, contributing to a climate of hatred before the attack. Brahim Chnina, a 52-year-old Moroccan man who worked in transport for people with disabilities, appeared in court after spending four years in jail on remand. He is the father of a schoolgirl in Paty’s class who was aged 13 at the time of the attack and is central to the case. She claimed Paty had asked Muslim students to identify themselves and leave his classroom before showing caricatures of the prophet Muhammad. The claim was false and she later told investigators she was not in the classroom that day. Chnina’s daughter was last year convicted for making false allegations and given an 18-month suspended prison sentence in a trial held behind closed doors in the juvenile court, without the media present. Chnina and another defendant, Abdelhakim Sefrioui, are accused of launching an online campaign against Paty. According to the prosecution, the two men spread the daughter’s lies on social networks with the aim of “designating a target”, “provoking a feeling of hatred” and “thus preparing several crimes”. They are being tried for participation in a criminal terrorist act, a crime punishable by 30 years in jail. Paty is now regarded as a hero of free speech by the French authorities and his school is being renamed after him. He had made references to Charlie Hebdo magazine and cartoons of the prophet as part of an ethics class to discuss free speech laws in France, which included a class debate. Paty told students beforehand that they were not obliged to look at the cartoons if they did not want to. Weeks before the class, Charlie Hebdo had republished the cartoons, having first published them in 2012. In 2015, radicalised gunmen stormed its Paris office, killing 11 people inside and a police officer outside, in coordinated terrorist attacks that also resulted in a second police officer being killed and four hostages murdered at a kosher supermarket. Two young friends of Anzorov appeared in court on charges of “complicity in terrorist murder”, a crime punishable by life imprisonment. Naim Boudaoud, 22, and Azim Epsirkhanov, 23, a Russian of Chechen origin, are accused of having accompanied Anzorov to a knife shop in the northern city of Rouen the day before the attack. Their lawyers have denied they had any “complicity” in the crime. Five other teenagers, who were aged between 14 and 15 at the time, were found guilty of criminal conspiracy with intent to cause violence in a trial at the juvenile court last year. They were found guilty of having helped point out Paty to Anzorov when he asked who the teacher was. They said they never thought it would lead to his murder. Four were given suspended sentences. The trial, heard by a panel of judges, runs until 20 December.

The Guardian;UK says it voted against UN nuclear war panel because consequences already known;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/04/uk-joins-russia-and-france-in-voting-against-un-nuclear-war-inquiry;2024-11-04T11:12:12Z

The UK was one of three countries to vote against creating a UN scientific panel on the effects of nuclear war because, the Foreign Office argued, the “devastating consequences” of such a conflict are already well known without the need for a new study. The UK, France and Russia were the only countries to vote on Friday night against a UN general assembly committee resolution drafted by Ireland and New Zealand to set up an international scientific inquiry to take a fresh look at the multifaceted impact of nuclear weapons use. Backers of the motion said the last such UN study had been carried out towards the end of the cold war and that a lot had changed since then, in geopolitics and in science. A total of 144 UN member states voted for the resolution, and 30 abstained, including the US. North Korea had been expected to vote no, but abstained. In another surprise, China voted for the proposal, the only nuclear-armed state to do so, as did eight Nato allies. The resolution will now go to the full general assembly for a final vote. A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “Nuclear war would have devastating consequences for humanity. We don’t need an independent scientific panel to tell us that. “The UK remains fully committed to its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). The resolution does not advance this cause.” The French foreign ministry and the Russian mission to the UN were also approached for comment. The UK’s vote was condemned by British arms control advocates, who had hoped the new Labour government would change policy on the issue. Rebecca Johnson, the founder and director of Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, said: “With nuclear use being evoked and threatened in today’s wars, Keir Starmer’s government has ridiculously aligned the UK with Russia and France in voting against UN backing for up-to-date research about nuclear war and the effects of nuclear weapons use when so-called deterrents fail. “Not only is this ostrich head-in-sand decision an embarrassing mistake politically – it foolishly risks UK credibility and standing in scientific, nuclear, legal and humanitarian circles.” Johnson, who is also a co-founder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, said updating nuclear war research was an imperative to prevent wars going nuclear, “so UK scientists should be fully involved in this research, not running away”. Nuclear weapons experts say that understanding of the impact of various nuclear scenarios has evolved considerably in the decades since the last UN study. For example, it is now thought that even a “limited” regional nuclear conflict could trigger a global “nuclear winter” by propelling huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Patricia Lewis, the head of the international security programme at the Chatham House thinktank, said: “The Foreign Office say: ‘We know it all’, and I’m sure the experts at the Foreign Office and the MoD [Ministry of Defence] do know it all. But so many people in the UK don’t know, so many people around the world don’t, and so many governments don’t.” Lewis said the proposed 21-expert panel would almost certainly be approved by the general assembly, in which case it would be in the UK’s interests to be part of it. She noted that when the resolution went to the full assembly the UK would have an opportunity to change its vote.

The Guardian;Spain floods: searchers scour car parks and malls amid fears death toll will rise;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/04/spain-floods-military-unit-searches-car-parks-and-malls-amid-fears-death-toll-will-rise;2024-11-04T10:05:48Z

Hundreds of civil and military emergency workers are searching shopping centres, garages and underground car parks for more victims of floods in the Valencia region that have killed at least 214 people, as public anger mounts over Spanish authorities’ handling of the disaster. Yellow and amber weather warnings were in place for parts of Valencia and neighbouring Catalonia on Monday, with people in the affected areas advised to stay off the roads and keep away from the coast and rivers. Heavy rain pounded the Barcelona area on Monday morning, leading the regional government to issue civil protection alerts and cancel all local train services. More than 50 flights due to take off from El Prat airport were cancelled or severely delayed. Over the weekend, personnel from the armed forces’ military emergencies unit (UME) focused their efforts on shopping malls and car parks where people could have been trapped by the floods, which were caused by torrential rains that experts have linked to the climate emergency. On Sunday, UME workers managed to enter the underground car park of the huge Bonaire shopping complex in the Valencian town of Aldaia. . Using a small boat and flashlights, police searched the lot’s 1,800 parking spaces, telling reporters that so far about 50 vehicles had been found and no bodies had been discovered. The disaster, which has prompted the central government to deploy 10,000 troops and police officers, has killed 210 people in Valencia, three in Castilla-La Mancha and one in Málaga. The number of missing remain unknown. There are fears the death toll could rise as the relief efforts reach previously inaccessible areas. The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has described the floods as the worst natural disaster in Spain’s recent history and said all necessary resources would be mobilised to deal with its aftermath. On Monday, another 2,500 soldiers were sent to the affected areas, adding to the 5,000 sent in recent days. A Spanish navy vessel also arrived at Valencia’s port on Monday, carrying marines, helicopters and lorries loaded with food and water. But anger over the response to the crisis – and, in particular, over the Valencian regional government’s delay in sending an emergency alert when the floods hit on Tuesday – has only risen. On Sunday, a high-profile visit to the badly affected Valencian town of Paiporta was disrupted after a furious crowd threw mud at Sánchez, as well as the regional president, Carlos Mazón, King Felipe and Queen Letizia. There were also shouts of “Killers!” and “Get out!” Speaking a few hours after he was swiftly escorted from the area, the prime minister acknowledged people’s pain but said a small minority of those in Paiporta were behind the angry scenes. “We know what people need and our priorities are clear: saving lives, finding the bodies of the people who have died, and rebuilding the affected areas,” he said. “The violence carried out by a few people won’t deflect the collective interest. It’s time to look ahead and to keep on working with all the means and coordination needed to get through this emergency together.” Sources in Sánchez’s socialist administration were a little more forthright, describing the protests in Paiporta as “a far-right and anti-political show”. Spain’s transport minister, Óscar Puente, conceded the visit may have been mistimed. “Maybe it wasn’t the best time,” he told the Spanish TV channel La Sexta. “There’s a lot of anger and people feel abandoned … and then you have the activities organised by some people who belong to the extreme right.” The country’s interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, told broadcaster TVE that police had opened an investigation into the incidents that marred the official visit. King Felipe, who insisted on continuing the visit, said he appreciated the scale of people’s fury. “One has to understand the anger and frustration of many people given all that they have gone through, as well as the difficulty in understanding how all the mechanisms work when it comes to the emergency operations,” he said on Sunday. Mayors from the affected municipalities have been pleading with officials to send help as soon as possible. “We’re very angry and we’re devastated,” said Guillermo Luján, the mayor of Aldaia. “We have a town in ruins. We need to start over and I’m begging for help. Please help us.”

The Guardian;Ukraine war briefing: UN chief ‘very concerned’ about reports of North Korean troops in Russia;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/04/ukraine-war-briefing-un-chief-very-concerned-about-reports-of-north-korean-troops-in-russia;2024-11-04T00:04:06Z

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has said he is “very concerned” about reports that North Korean troops have been sent to Russia, and at their possible deployment to the conflict zone of Ukraine. “The Secretary-General is very concerned about reports of troops from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea being sent to the Russian Federation,” said Stephane Dujarric, the UN chief’s spokesperson, on Sunday. US intelligence has said North Korean forces have made their way to Russia’s Kursk border region, with Washington and Seoul urging Pyongyang to withdraw its troops. North Korea and Russia have not denied the troop deployment reports. Russian forces attacked Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, on Sunday, injuring at least five people, Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said. Syniehubov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said a Russian guided bomb hit a supermarket in Kharkiv’s Shevchenkivskyi district, near the city centre. Four people were injured. Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the supermarket was located next to residences. An earlier strike had hit a forested area of the city, he said. Moldova’s pro-western President Maia Sandu has won a second term in office in a pivotal presidential runoff against a Russia-friendly opponent, in a race that was overshadowed by claims of Russian interference, voter fraud, and intimidation in the European Union candidate country. Europe will need to rethink its support of Ukraine if Donald Trump is elected president of the United States, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said on Sunday, as the continent “will not be able to bear the burdens of the war alone”. Orban opposes military aid to Ukraine and has made clear he thinks Trump shares his views and would negotiate a peace settlement for Ukraine. He backs former president Trump, the Republic candidate, to beat Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in Tuesday’s US election. The Guardian’s Luke Harding has been in Kupiansk, where Russian combat units are now less than two miles away. A little to the south, troops have already reached the Oskil River, turning Ukrainian-controlled territory on the left bank into two separate and shrinking bulges. Bridges across the river are relentlessly bombed. Moscow’s apparent plan is to flatten Kupiansk and then reoccupy it. A second Taiwanese volunteer fighting alongside Ukrainian soldiers against Russia has been killed, Taiwan’s foreign ministry said on Sunday. The man was a member of Ukraine’s military legion of foreign fighters, the foreign ministry said in a statement, expressing condolences to his family, who did not want him publicly identified. The ministry said they received reports of the man’s death on Saturday and Taiwan’s representative office in Poland verified it with Ukraine’s International Legion. No other details were released.

The Guardian;French pupil’s father to go on trial for spreading lies that led to teacher’s Islamist beheading;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/03/french-pupil-father-samuel-paty-teacher-islamist-beheading-murder-paris;2024-11-03T12:00:43Z

It was a killing that started with a lie. In October 2020, an Islamist terrorist tracked down and decapitated secondary school teacher Samuel Paty as he left school on the last day before half-term holidays. In the days preceding his murder, Paty, 47, who taught geography and history, had been the subject of an intense campaign of online harassment sparked when a 13-year-old student claimed he had discriminated against his Muslim pupils during a class on moral and civic education. The girl told her father Paty had instructed Muslim students to leave the classroom at the Bois-d’Aulne secondary school at Conflans-Sainte-Honorine in the Paris suburbs while he showed students caricatures of the prophet Muhammad from the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. In truth, the girl was not in Paty’s class that day and had made up the story to cover the fact she had been suspended from school for bad behaviour. Paty had used the images as part of an ethics class to discuss free speech laws in France and the question of “dilemmas”. He posed the question “to be or not to be Charlie?”, referring to the #JeSuisCharlie hashtag used to express support for the paper after a terrorist attack on its offices in January 2015 that killed 12 people. But Paty had not ordered any children to leave the room – instead he had told them they could turn away if they thought they would be offended by the images. The teenager could not have known that the story she told her father would spark a chain of events that would lead an 18-year-old Chechen, Abdoullakh Anzorov, to travel 100km (62 miles) from his home in Normandy to kill the teacher after her furious father posted the lie on social media. On Monday, the father, Brahim Chnina, will be one of eight adults – seven men and a woman – on trial in connection with the murder. Chnina is accused of association with a terrorist organisation after allegedly launching a social media campaign against Paty, including publishing videos online attacking Paty and designating him as a target by giving precise information about his identity and place of work. Prosecutors say Chnina was in contact with Anzorov nine times before the killing. He has denied the charge. Abdelhakim Sefrioui, founder of the pro-Hamas Sheikh Yassine collective in France, which was dissolved by the government after the murder, is accused of participating in the preparation of a video presenting “false and distorted information intended to arouse hatred” towards Paty. In the video, Sefrioui described Paty as a “thug”. During questioning, he told police he would never have posted the video had he imagined there was “one billionth of a chance” of provoking the teacher’s killing. Instead, he said he and Chnina were calling for disciplinary sanctions against Paty. His lawyers describe the charge against him as an “intellectual and judicial aberration”, arguing there is no proof of contact between him and Anzorov. Six others are charged with association with a criminal terrorist group and risk up to 30 years in jail if convicted. Two of Anzorov’s friends have been charged with complicity in Paty’s murder, the most serious charge carrying a 30-year prison sentence. Chnina’s daughter, whose story sparked the tragedy, and five other former students aged between 13 and 15 at the time of the killing, were tried last year. Chnina’s daughter received an 18-month suspended sentence for making “slanderous and false accusations”. The five other teenagers were found guilty of criminal conspiracy with intent to cause violence. The girl, who had been suspended from school because of repeatedly failing to attend lessons, was reported to have told police she lied because she wanted to avoid disappointing her father. “She would not have dared to confess to her father the real reasons for her exclusion shortly before the tragedy, which was in fact linked to her bad behaviour,” Le Parisien reported. Chnina subsequently shared a video on Facebook in which he denounced Paty and called for him to be sacked from the secondary school. A second video posted on social media accused Paty of “discrimination”. Chnina complained to the school and the police, claiming Paty was guilty of “diffusing a pornographic image” and was “Islamophobic”. The issue snowballed on social media; 10 days later, Paty was dead. One of the convicted teenagers, had given Anzorov a description of Paty, pointed out the route he took on leaving the school and recruited other students to keep an eye out for the teacher. Anzorov, 18, a radicalised Islamist who had arrived in France aged six with his Chechen parents and had been granted asylum, was shot dead by police after the incident. The town of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine is a civil party in the case. Laurent Brosse, the local mayor, said: “ For the vast majority of us, across all generations, the murder resonates as an attack on freedom, an attack on each and every one of us, on our society as a whole, on the values of our Republic, on our fundamental rights.” Brosse said: “Samuel Paty embodied the values of our Republic. Through his teaching, he sought to awaken the critical spirit of his pupils. He showed them the importance of debating ideas, mutual respect and tolerance.” The school will be named the Samuel Paty School from next year. • This article was amended on 4 November 2024. An earlier version referred to Samuel Paty as a “professor” when secondary school teacher was meant. Also a misspelling of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine was fixed.

The Guardian;Ukraine war briefing: Military holding off one of Russia’s fiercest offensives since invasion began, says Syrskyi;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/03/ukraine-war-briefing-kyiv-and-moscow-trade-accusations-over-stalled-pow-exchanges;2024-11-03T06:44:46Z

Ukrainian forces are restraining one of Russia’s most powerful offensives since the start of Moscow’s 2022 invasion, the top commander of Kyiv’s forces has said. Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s military commander, said: “The armed forces of Ukraine are holding back one of the most powerful Russian offensives from launching a full-scale invasion.” Moscow said on Saturday it had taken two more settlements along the Donbas frontline in eastern Ukraine. Syrski added: “The enemy does not stop assault actions in several directions, using air superiority and long-range firepower, and also has a significant advantage in artillery shells.” Syrskyi said he told the chair of the US joint chiefs of staff, Gen Charles Brown, of the Ukrainian military’s “urgent needs” and that Brown assured him of continued US support. Washington said on Friday it would provide an additional $425m in military aid to Ukraine. A Russian air attack on Kyiv damaged buildings, roads and several power lines, the capital’s military administration said early on Sunday, after the military said air defences were trying to repel a drone attack. The attack came in waves and approached the city from different directions, said Serhiy Popko, head of the Kyiv military administration. It was Russia’s second drone attack on Kyiv in as many nights. According to preliminary information, all of the attack drones were destroyed, Popko said. Falling debris damaged an entrance and windows of at least five buildings in the Shevchenkivskyi and Holosiivskyi districts, including a hostel and windows in an office building. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday that strikes were reported in the central Poltava and north-eastern Sumy and Kharkiv regions. “This year, we have faced the threat of ‘Shahed’ drones almost every night – sometimes in the morning, and even during the day,” he said on social media, referring to the Iranian-made attack drones used by Russia. The Ukrainian air force said air defences destroyed 39 of 71 Russian drones launched during Moscow’s air attacks on Ukraine overnight to Saturday, with 21 drones “locationally lost” and five turned back to Russia. Ukraine has called on Moscow to provide a list of Ukrainian prisoners of war ready for a swap after Russia accused Ukraine of sabotaging the exchange process. In requesting the list of Ukrainians from his Russian counterpart on Sunday, the Ukrainian human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, wrote online: “We are always ready to exchange prisoners of war!” On Saturday, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Ukraine was essentially sabotaging the process and had refused to take back its own citizens. She said Russia’s defence ministry had offered to hand over 935 Ukrainian PoWs but that Ukraine had taken only 279. Lubinets, in turn, said Ukraine was always ready to accept its citizens and accused Russia of slowing down the exchange process. Kyiv and Moscow’s last PoW exchange took place in mid-October, with each side bringing home 95 prisoners. A court in Russia’s far east has said it convicted Robert Shonov, a former US consular employee, of illegally and covertly cooperating with the US government to harm Russia’s national security and had jailed him for nearly five years. Russia’s FSB security service detained Shonov, a Russian, in Vladivostok in May last year and accused him of taking money to covertly supply US diplomats with information that was potentially harmful to Russia, including on Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine. The US on Saturday condemned the conviction as “an egregious injustice”. A US citizen who Russia said was spirited out of eastern Ukraine by its special forces after reportedly helping the Kremlin target Ukrainian troops said in Moscow on Saturday that he had asked for Russian citizenship. “My name is Daniel Martindale,” he told a press conference reported by state media. “Here is my passport. It went through the war with me, you can see in what condition it is,” he said in English, holding up what appeared to be a well-used US passport and birth certificate. He said he was under no duress and wanted to receive Russian citizenship. The US embassy in Moscow did not immediately comment.

NPR;Voters could flip these state legislatures, changing the path for some big issues;https://www.npr.org/2024/11/05/nx-s1-5178076/legislature-elections-pennsylvania-michigan;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 04:30:00 -0500

They don’t get as much attention as the presidential election, but state government races play a crucial role in the laws that govern our lives. This year, several state capitols are up for grabs.

NPR;Elon Musk’s $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes can proceed, a Pennsylvania judge says;https://www.npr.org/2024/11/05/g-s1-32345/elon-musk-voter-sweepstakes-proceed;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 02:09:38 -0500

Common Pleas Court Judge Angelo Foglietta in Pennsylvania — ruling after Musk’s lawyers said the winners are paid spokespeople and not chosen by chance — did not immediately explain his reasoning.

NPR;Puerto Rico holds general election that promises to be historic;https://www.npr.org/2024/11/05/g-s1-32338/puerto-rico-holds-general-election;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 01:08:16 -0500

Puerto Rico is holding elections that will be historic regardless of which of the top two gubernatorial candidates wins.

NPR;Live: 2024 Gubernatorial Election Results;https://www.npr.org/2024/11/05/g-s1-30256/live-2024-gubernatorial-election-results;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:42:51 -0500

View live election results for the 2024 governor races.

NPR;Live: Senate Election Results 2024;https://www.npr.org/2024/11/05/g-s1-30252/senate-2024-election-results;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:40:17 -0500

View live results for the 2024 United States Senate elections.

NPR;Live: House Election Results 2024;https://www.npr.org/2024/11/05/g-s1-30254/house-2024-election-results;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:38:21 -0500

NPR;Live: Presidential Election Results 2024;https://www.npr.org/2024/11/05/g-s1-30250/president-2024-election-results;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:36:25 -0500

View live results for the 2024 United States presidential election.

NPR;See live updates on key election results from Texas;https://www.npr.org/2024/11/05/g-s1-25985/texas-2024-election-results;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:24:06 -0500

Voting concludes Tuesday in Texas' presidential, Senate and House contests. View the live results.

NPR;See live updates on key election results from Florida;https://www.npr.org/2024/11/05/g-s1-28309/florida-2024-election-results;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:23:46 -0500

View live results for Florida's ballot measures and races for president, Senate and House.

NPR;See live updates on key election results from Michigan;https://www.npr.org/2024/11/05/g-s1-28419/michigan-2024-election-results;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:23:37 -0500

View live results for Michigan's races for president, U.S. Senate and U.S. House.

Al Jazeera;Fact Check – US Election 2024: Your guide to spotting falsehoods;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/5/fact-check-us-election-2024-your-guide-to-spotting-falsehoods?traffic_source=rss;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 09:04:08 +0000

There have been plenty of claims of voter fraud in the past and they are likely to resurface this election.

Al Jazeera;What time do polls close in your state on Election Day in the US?;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/5/what-time-do-polls-close-in-your-state-on-election-day-in-the-us?traffic_source=rss;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 09:03:23 +0000

All across the US, American voters are headed to the polls. But the cut-off time to vote varies from state to state.

Al Jazeera;Trump calls Harris a ‘disaster’ as he concludes final day of campaigning;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/5/trump-calls-harris-a-disaster-as-he-concludes-final-day-of-campaigning?traffic_source=rss;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 08:19:54 +0000

In his last appeal in Grand Rapids, former president claims people believe God ‘saved me in order to save America’.

Al Jazeera;US prosecutor warns against election interference;https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/11/5/us-prosecutor-warns-against-election-interference?traffic_source=rss;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 08:09:08 +0000

The lead prosecutor of Philadelphia city issued a warning to anyone considering interfering with the elections.

Al Jazeera;As US election nears, migrants contemplate a perilous journey;https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2024/11/5/as-us-election-nears-migrants-contemplate-a-perilous-journey?traffic_source=rss;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 08:00:46 +0000

Amid the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the presidential election, experts warn the humanity of migrants is being ignored.

Al Jazeera;Myanmar military government chief on first visit to ally China since coup;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/5/myanmar-military-government-chief-on-first-visit-to-ally-china-since-coup?traffic_source=rss;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 07:53:11 +0000

Min Aung Hlaing travels to Beijing as conflict near Chinese border escalates.

Al Jazeera;Next Gen Diplomacy: Foreign Policy & Elections;https://www.aljazeera.com/program/rebellionz/2024/11/5/next-gen-diplomacy-foreign-policy-elections?traffic_source=rss;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 06:04:32 +0000

How does Gen Z view the future of US foreign policy?

Al Jazeera;Death toll from Israeli attacks on Lebanon surpasses 3,000: Health Ministry;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/5/death-toll-from-israeli-attacks-on-lebanon-surpasses-3000-health-ministry?traffic_source=rss;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 05:58:41 +0000

Ministry says 589 women and at least 185 children have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon over past 13 months.

Al Jazeera;US election: It’s voting day – What polls say; what Harris, Trump are up to;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/5/us-election-zero-days-left-what-polls-say-what-harris-and-trump-are-up-to?traffic_source=rss;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 05:27:40 +0000

Harris and Trump spent the eve of Election Day campaigning across swing states in a final push for votes.

Al Jazeera;Boeing workers vote to end seven-week strike;https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/11/5/boeing-workers-vote-to-end-7-week-strike?traffic_source=rss;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 05:17:30 +0000

International Association of Machinists votes to approve latest contract offer after rejecting two previous proposals.

Al Jazeera;How Biden’s Indigenous boarding school apology could impact the Native vote;https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/11/5/how-bidens-indigenous-boarding-school-apology-could-impact-the-native-vote?traffic_source=rss;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 04:45:55 +0000

The Democrat issued a historic apology for a system that aimed to erase Indigenous culture. But will it mobilise voters?

Al Jazeera;Syria condemns deadly Israel air strikes on ‘civilian sites’ near Damascus;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/5/syria-condemns-deadly-israel-air-strikes-on-civilian-sites-near-damascus?traffic_source=rss;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 04:11:44 +0000

Syria's Foreign Ministry calls for 'urgent action' from the UN to stop 'Israeli aggression' against civilians.

Al Jazeera;Trump praises Muslim supporters, says they could win him Michigan;https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/11/5/trump-praises-muslim-supporters-says-they-could-win-him-michigan?traffic_source=rss;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 03:24:31 +0000

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump praised his Muslim supporters at one of his final campaign rallies.

Al Jazeera;Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 984;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/5/russia-ukraine-war-list-of-key-events-day-984?traffic_source=rss;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 02:50:23 +0000

As the war enters its 984th day, these are the main developments.

Al Jazeera;Russian rocket takes Iranian satellites into orbit as ties grow closer;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/5/russian-rocket-takes-iranian-satellites-into-orbit-as-ties-grow-closer?traffic_source=rss;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 02:38:13 +0000

The Iranian-made satellites, Kowsar and Hodhod, were successfully placed into orbit by a Russian Soyuz-2.1 spacecraft.

Al Jazeera;Harris appears in Pennsylvania with Oprah Winfrey in final push for votes;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/5/kamala-harris-makes-final-push-for-votes-in-battleground-pennsylvania?traffic_source=rss;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 02:16:17 +0000

Vice president makes quick but crucial stops in series of rallies across swing state.

Al Jazeera;Record 600 police officers sacked for misconduct in England and Wales;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/5/record-600-police-officers-sacked-for-misconduct-in-england-and-wales?traffic_source=rss;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 02:09:06 +0000

Sackings come as UK police chiefs battle to restore public trust following a series of scandals.

Al Jazeera;Trump vows tariffs on Mexico over border issues;https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/11/5/trump-vows-tariffs-on-mexico-over-border-issues?traffic_source=rss;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 01:08:30 +0000

Trump vows a 25% tariff on Mexico over border issues

Al Jazeera;Elon Musk’s $1m US voter giveaway to continue, Pennsylvania judge rules;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/5/elon-musks-one-million-voter-giveaway-to-continue-pennsylvania-judge-rules?traffic_source=rss;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:06:20 +0000

The state's top Democratic legal official says the giveaway in states likely to decide the US election is a 'scam'.

Al Jazeera;“We are not going back”: Harris rallies supporters on eve of election;https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/11/5/we-are-not-going-back-harris-rallies-supporters-on-eve-of-election?traffic_source=rss;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:05:03 +0000

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris rallied her supporters in the must-win swing state of Pennsylvania.

Al Jazeera;North Korea launches barrage of short-range ballistic missiles towards sea;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/4/north-korea-launches-ballistic-missile-towards-sea-south-korean-military?traffic_source=rss;Mon, 04 Nov 2024 23:07:13 +0000

South Korea's military said 'several' ballistic missiles were launched by North Korea in its latest weapons display.

Al Jazeera;Canada’s largest port could see lockout of more than 700 workers;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/4/canadas-largest-port-could-see-lockout-of-more-than-seven-hundred-workers?traffic_source=rss;Mon, 04 Nov 2024 22:41:55 +0000

The dispute between port foremen and their employers could disrupt crucial international shipments.

Al Jazeera;“I suspect that the levity is a little bit inappropriate”;https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/11/4/i-suspect-that-the-levity-is-a-little-bit?traffic_source=rss;Mon, 04 Nov 2024 22:26:55 +0000

A journalist rebuked State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller for laughing during a question about aid in Gaza.

Al Jazeera;Trump or Harris? Gaza war drives many Arab and Muslim voters to Jill Stein;https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/4/trump-or-harris-gaza-war-drives-many-arab-and-muslim-voters-to-jill-stein?traffic_source=rss;Mon, 04 Nov 2024 21:49:04 +0000

Support for Green Party candidate grows as some voters stress the need to break away from Democrats and Republicans.

Al Jazeera;Boeing workers start vote on latest offer to end strike;https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/11/4/boeing-workers-start-vote-on-latest-offer-to-end-strike?traffic_source=rss;Mon, 04 Nov 2024 21:34:53 +0000

If workers reject Boeing's offer for a third time, it will plunge the firm into further financial peril, uncertainty.

BBC News;A crazy ride - Watch how the US election campaign unfolded;https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cdj39x21lxyo;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:01:27 GMT

A quick refresher of the entire US presidential campaign.

BBC News;I'm more grateful for each day - Sir Chris Hoy;https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/articles/cgejgnxzg32o;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:00:57 GMT

Six-time Olympic gold medallist Sir Chris Hoy tells BBC Breakfast about his life with terminal cancer and the legacy he hopes to leave.

BBC News;Chris Philp appointed shadow home secretary by Kemi Badenoch;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgv7pj4vd2o;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 09:56:34 GMT

The former Home Office minister supported Kemi Badenoch's campaign to be Conservative leader.

BBC News;Smoking to be banned outside schools and hospitals but not in pub gardens;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c79ze8gv1w4o;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:33:02 GMT

Government proposals could mean some places become vape-free too, subject to consultation.

BBC News;Doctors paid as much as £200,000 overtime to tackle NHS backlog;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0lkxl7061o;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:01:01 GMT

Some consultants are being paid £200 an hour for working extra hours, a BBC News investigation finds.

BBC News;Price and 5G promises needed for Vodafone-Three merger, says regulator;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgznpx44q3o;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 09:32:50 GMT

It wants commitments on prices and 5G if the creation of the UK's biggest mobile network is to go ahead.

BBC News;University tuition fees rising to £9,535 in England;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0gjyj4979o;Mon, 04 Nov 2024 22:22:29 GMT

Maintenance loans are also going up to help students manage the cost of living.

BBC News;Boeing strike ends as workers back 38% pay rise deal;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0mz9ml473mo;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 05:42:46 GMT

The damaging walkout by around 30,000 unionised Boeing workers started on 13 September.

BBC News;Call for 'immediate action' to tackle shoplifting;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gzreg4dypo;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 09:54:07 GMT

Cases are underreported and "immediate action" is needed to tackle the crisis, a Lords review finds.

BBC News;Elon Musk can keep giving $1m to US voters in swing states, judge rules;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crlnjzzk919o;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 02:58:13 GMT

The giveaway is not a lottery-like contest and the recipients are not chosen randomly, his lawyer said.

BBC News;Two new cases of more spreadable mpox found in UK;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx27q0y6rl9o;Mon, 04 Nov 2024 22:05:46 GMT

All three patients were infected with the Clade 1b variant, which appears to transmit more easily.

BBC News;America braced as two starkly contrasting visions collide on election day;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2d7y87z0jo;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 05:05:12 GMT

After a history-making year, a divided country will soon face the reality of elections: there has to be a winner.

BBC News;When will we know who has won the US election?;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cde7ng85jwgo;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 09:56:22 GMT

Once polls close on Tuesday, a winner may not be projected for several hours, days or even weeks.

BBC News;Who is ahead in the polls?;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4x71znwxdo;Tue, 05 Nov 2024 08:41:36 GMT

An in-depth look at the polls and what they can and can’t tell us about who will win the election.

BBC News;A simple guide to the US 2024 presidential election;https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67285325;Mon, 04 Nov 2024 11:51:55 GMT

Trying to understand it for the first time or need a refresher? This guide can help.

BBC News;How to follow the US election on the BBC;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4nevep0dzo;Mon, 04 Nov 2024 15:25:58 GMT

Whether you plan to follow the White House race on TV, radio or online, the BBC has you covered.

BBC News;10 reasons both Harris and Trump can be hopeful of victory;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0jq134y91o;Mon, 04 Nov 2024 09:20:34 GMT

Polls suggest the race is deadlocked - but if one candidate pulls away, these factors could explain why.

BBC News;Who did these undecided US voters finally pick?;https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7484kwl55qo;Mon, 04 Nov 2024 10:53:40 GMT

The BBC speaks again to a group who have struggled to pick between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.